It has been one of those weeks. I unscheduled yesterday’s unfinished subscribers-only post to go to an Oktoberfest celebration that we ultimately canceled to avoid right-wing rallygoers in DC. That appears to have been an overreaction; there were more members of the press near Congress yesterday than there were protesters. But I felt the topic of the post was a bit old and tired and I didn’t want to bore you or bring up something that wasn’t relevant anymore.
So I spent most of yesterday catching up on sleep and sitting at my desk thinking of things to write about, making little progress. I have come up with few things that strike me as a good use of my time and your inbox space. Instead, I am potting a few new plants (a small pot each of mint and basil) and trying to recharge for the week ahead.
Not one to leave you hanging, however, I do have a few reading recommendations this week. This reminds me of the weekly blog posts I started out writing years ago: simple lists of things I found interesting and wanted to talk with you email friends about.
I.
First up is this post from Christopher Ingraham, formerly a Washington Post data journalist who now runs his own daily data-driven Substack called “The Why Axis “ (brilliant name). Chris is a friend and most of his posts are really good. Worth subscribing too (most of his posts are free for now).
Then, here is a poll from Navigator that tests various messages for Joe Biden’s Build Back Better budget proposal to Congress. The framing is obviously focused on the more popular, progressive partsof the plan, but I find quantifying the popularity of a priori popular stuff to be useful.
The survey also breaks down support for each individual item. Turns out economic populism is… really popular!
III.
Finally, here is a post from Andrew Gelman on how Nate Silver got the California recall so wrong — mainly by leaning too much on flawed methods for aggregating polling data, but also (I think) in bowing to the pressure from social and news media to have confident opinions on every single thing in politics. There is also a lot of pressure on Twitter in particular to dunk on other people, and especially on liberals, that lots of pundits use as an opportunity to differentiate themselves from the left. I share Andy’s suggestion that people spend less time talking about the stories of the news and more time looking over the data — which is what FiveThirtyEight is supposed to be about in the first place.
. . .
That’s it for this week. Hopefully you all can forgive the late post and (likely, depending on my energy later) lack of the free weekly letter today. I forced myself to write to you in part with the hope this would help aid audience retention. But I also don’t like being late to delivering y’all what you signed up for. Hopefully next week I’ll be back on track!
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Subscribers-only thread on [*waves hand in air*] "all this" going on
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Happy Sunday!
It has been one of those weeks. I unscheduled yesterday’s unfinished subscribers-only post to go to an Oktoberfest celebration that we ultimately canceled to avoid right-wing rallygoers in DC. That appears to have been an overreaction; there were more members of the press near Congress yesterday than there were protesters. But I felt the topic of the post was a bit old and tired and I didn’t want to bore you or bring up something that wasn’t relevant anymore.
So I spent most of yesterday catching up on sleep and sitting at my desk thinking of things to write about, making little progress. I have come up with few things that strike me as a good use of my time and your inbox space. Instead, I am potting a few new plants (a small pot each of mint and basil) and trying to recharge for the week ahead.
Not one to leave you hanging, however, I do have a few reading recommendations this week. This reminds me of the weekly blog posts I started out writing years ago: simple lists of things I found interesting and wanted to talk with you email friends about.
I.
First up is this post from Christopher Ingraham, formerly a Washington Post data journalist who now runs his own daily data-driven Substack called “The Why Axis “ (brilliant name). Chris is a friend and most of his posts are really good. Worth subscribing too (most of his posts are free for now).
II.
Then, here is a poll from Navigator that tests various messages for Joe Biden’s Build Back Better budget proposal to Congress. The framing is obviously focused on the more popular, progressive partsof the plan, but I find quantifying the popularity of a priori popular stuff to be useful.
The survey also breaks down support for each individual item. Turns out economic populism is… really popular!
III.
Finally, here is a post from Andrew Gelman on how Nate Silver got the California recall so wrong — mainly by leaning too much on flawed methods for aggregating polling data, but also (I think) in bowing to the pressure from social and news media to have confident opinions on every single thing in politics. There is also a lot of pressure on Twitter in particular to dunk on other people, and especially on liberals, that lots of pundits use as an opportunity to differentiate themselves from the left. I share Andy’s suggestion that people spend less time talking about the stories of the news and more time looking over the data — which is what FiveThirtyEight is supposed to be about in the first place.
. . .
That’s it for this week. Hopefully you all can forgive the late post and (likely, depending on my energy later) lack of the free weekly letter today. I forced myself to write to you in part with the hope this would help aid audience retention. But I also don’t like being late to delivering y’all what you signed up for. Hopefully next week I’ll be back on track!
Elliott