Still very funny to me that the Tories rode anti-immigrant sentiment & Brexit to get elected in the 2010s, immediately turned around and implemented one of the most significant immigration liberalizations in UK history (good), and then got absolutely vaporized electorally for it

Very good news! "Our World in Data have agreed to a seven-year funding arrangement with The Wellcome Trust, a major charitable foundation focused on global health."

Excellent thread from Basil on one of *the* most important questions in economics - catch up growth

On how heat is hostile to human health, productivity, and social cohesion -

We are happy to release the first results of a RCT of a US program that provided $1,000/month unconditionally for 3 years to 1,000 individuals in the treatment group, with a group of 2,000 people receiving $50/month serving as the control. These are sizable transfers. 1/ 🧵

KUDOS to authors for this monumental evaluation of Universal Basic Income. This was so carefully done, with a lot of rigor both in the pre-analysis and amount of data collected. The results from *large* increase in income (40%!!) are...mostly in line with econ 101 predictions.

New poll presents 1,000 voters with what I think is a decent summary of the arguments for and against SB 1047 (although maybe could've mentioned some political economy counterarguments?) and finds +39 net support, rising to +47 among tech workers.

Massive research effort on the effects of unconditional ‘basic income’ style cash transfers! IMO most striking result is no large negative effects on employment, but no transformational positive effects either - neither detractors or promoters of UBI seem right in this setting

Very cool paper corroborating the rest of the literature finding that air pollution and lead pollution are both very bad:

For decades, animal advocates lobbied to stop the worst abuses of farm animals -- with limited results. Then they changed strategy and achieved wins that have already benefited hundreds of millions of animals, and are set to benefit billions more. Here's the story... 🧵

Excellent from ⁦Barney Ronay⁩ In the Olympics boxing arena, facts and fairness are taking a battering theguardian.com/sport/article/…

I find hateful attitudes towards refugees just soul-crushingly sad 😔 Really feels awful that people are fleeing from suffering and seeking sanctuary and they are met with the opposite of the compassion and refuge they deserve (and we’d all deserve in their situation)

Impressive new study exploring the many different "flavors" of cash transfers. Paper by Dean Karlan Christopher Udry Finley Ong Julius Rüschenpöhler 🇺🇦 Crosta of Northwestern, USAID, CEPR, etc NBER nber.org/papers/w32779

To our Black, Brown and minority communities: never forget that you are loved and wanted in London.

Nigeria is such an insane outlier on child mortality. 3 to 4 TIMES more child deaths than its income would predict.

Excited to announce that I will be starting today as a Research Fellow at Open Philanthropy, working on investigating cause areas in global health and development!

Exciting to see another retailer stop selling caged eggs. A decade ago, eggs from caged hens were the default at retail everywhere except Germany and the UK. Today cage-free eggs are taking over across Europe + US, sparing hundreds of millions of birds from cages.

excellent thread on the YIMBY movement in the US - main point that there is still lots of work to do, even if the ideas are now becoming mainstream. Very similar situation in the UK too - now mainstream in Labour but a long way to go for significant housing supply gains

If you've ever wanted to hear me talk for nearly four hours about 1) how cool I think bugs are and 2) how I'm not certain they're sentient but 3) I also have reasons to be suspicious of prior works that say they're not (and a lot more), here's a podcast: 80000hours.org/podcast/episod…

New USDA guidance lets factory farms use “humanely raised” labels. The factory farms get to define what “humanely” means. For the absurdity of where this leads, see the USDA’s example label below. They define “humanely raised” = fed vegetables, an unorthodox definition. This