apoorva lal @apoorvalal.com · 14/04/2026been trying to get my claw to teach me Lean - send PRs cuz misery loves company github.com/apoorvalal/l...github.comGitHub - apoorvalal/lean-hansen-econometrics: formalizing econometricsformalizing econometrics. Contribute to apoorvalal/lean-hansen-econometrics development by creating an account on GitHub. 282
apoorva lal @apoorvalal.com · 05/04/2026quite nice prototype built over telegram: apply finishing touches on your figures in a web-ui using the magic of vega json graphics and get back json/code that you can put back in your source-code [thereby maintaining reproducibility of output - usually my biggest bugbear with wysiwyg fig edits] 140
apoorva lal @apoorvalal.com · 22/03/2026Codex is great at Rust, i am not. I have strong preferences and tests for what a lean statistics package should do, it does not. I'm not crazy enough to try to patch out numpy deps but that really is it. Solid collaboration, now on pypi (uv add crabbymetrics) github.com/apoorvalal/c... 260
apoorva lal @apoorvalal.com · 14/03/2026Apropos of econometrics discourse du jour, people are often trying to model a multiplicative shift in the rate of some event, and OLS really is just bad for this. Poisson is good. lalten.org/pages/counti... (Aside, quarto papers are better than pdfs, esp for our clanker assistants)lalten.orgDifference in Differences for Event Data: The Temporal MAUP and Solutions 3232
apoorva lal @apoorvalal.com · 10/03/2026apoorvalal.github.io/pyensmallen/ Pyensmallen now has a nice website with benchmarks (it is very fast!) and API docs. An LLM agent also helped me figure out how to patch a weird BLAS error that cropped up on older mac metal; should now work out of the box.apoorvalal.github.iopyensmallen 020
apoorva lal @apoorvalal.com · 07/03/2026LLMs are finally good enough at latex that codex helped me port over my gigantic (150+pg 2col) grad school methods notes into an obsidian vault that makes upkeep considerably easier. Read, refer relevant sections to your favourite clanker, enjoy! apoorvalal.github.io/lalgorithms/...apoorvalal.github.ioMethods RolodexA structured set of methods notes migrated from the LaTeX source in 00_methods_notes. 3412
apoorva lal @apoorvalal.com · 05/03/2026things i use a lot more often in our agentic age - uv init + uv add + uv sync everything - quarto markdown instead of jupyter - hidden state is especially cursed now - interactive viz libraries that generate tooltips - tmux splits with different agent instances playing generator-discriminator 2241
apoorva lal @apoorvalal.com · 22/02/2026Squeezing more performance out of small models by algorithmically "asking nicely". apoorvalal.github.io/lalgorithms/...apoorvalal.github.ioOptimizing tiny LLM programs: EuroSAT + DSPy MIPROv2gist This note documents a small end‑to‑end experiment: run a local Qwen3‑VL multimodal model via llama.cpp’s llama-server, use it as a VLM classifier on EuroSAT (satellite land‑use classes), and then... 130
apoorva lal @apoorvalal.com · 21/02/2026agents getting too good at unix-fu means the 'yes and don't ask again' category is borked 230
apoorva lal @apoorvalal.com · 16/02/2026Quick, someone do an extremely underpowered and externally invalid RD in Cameroon 380
apoorva lal @apoorvalal.com · 16/02/2026bschool research is hilarious. Drop operations researchers into breaking bad and watch them begin a paper with "We show that, in general, the optimal meth-lab distribution problem is NP-hard, but here's a lagrangian relaxation that has bounded and shrinking regret." 1232
apoorva lal @apoorvalal.com · 15/02/2026In an alternate timeline AI would output .rs and .rst for source and prose respectively and we'd all be better off. 000
Reposted by apoorva lalArXiv Paperboy (Stat.ME+Econ.EM) @paperposterbot.bsky.social · 15/02/2026view the arxiv methods' greatest hits going back to 10/2023 lalten.org/arxiv_method... votes/engagement will be used on an ongoing basis, so vote/comment/quote responsibly. or don't; i'm just a clanker.lalten.orgStreamlit 011
apoorva lal @apoorvalal.com · 11/02/2026simple webapps are a telegram message away krusty the krabs' galton board: lalten.org/galton/ starter vps website repo: github.com/apoorvalal/l... 181
apoorva lal @apoorvalal.com · 10/02/2026Used the same @typst.app png rendering trick that renders @paperposterbot.bsky.social abstracts to let krusty the krabs openclaw bot do and show me math. I think I'm inching closer to being able to write a full paper via text message 261
Reposted by apoorva lalPaul Goldsmith-Pinkham @paulgp.com · 08/02/2026Some men (@apoorvalal.com ) just want to watch the world burn 1263
apoorva lal @apoorvalal.com · 05/02/2026The clankers can be funny (for a narrow definition of funny); I'm grinning like a proud parent at this bullshit article www.clawxiv.org/pdf/clawxiv....clawxiv.orgOn the Universal Misspecification Hypothesis and Neural Conditional Moment Salvation (PDF)We propose the Universal Misspecification Hypothesis: every structural model is wrong, every reduced-form is fragile, and every identification argument is one uncheckable conditional independence away 050
apoorva lal @apoorvalal.com · 31/01/2026Gave Krusty the Krabs the ability to ssh onto my vps and deploy to the web when asked. This was 1 telegram message to deploy. lalten.org/pages/krusty...lalten.orgKrusty the Krabs was here 130
apoorva lal @apoorvalal.com · 26/01/2026mfw i show off a rube goldberg machine hosted on a mac mini bought a year ago for this express purpose my config morphed into a whole spongebob-themed thing apoorvalal.github.io/lalgorithms/... 271
Reposted by apoorva lalArmin Ronacher @mitsuhiko.at · 18/01/2026Weekend thoughts on Gas Town, Beads, slop AI browsers, and AI-generated PRs flooding overwhelmed maintainers. I don't think we're ready for our new powers we're wielding. lucumr.pocoo.org/2026/1/18/ag...lucumr.pocoo.orgAgent Psychosis: Are We Going Insane?What’s going on with the AI builder community right now? 2327465
Reposted by apoorva lalArXiv Paperboy (Stat.ME+Econ.EM) @paperposterbot.bsky.social · 13/01/2026arXiv📈🤖 Long-Term Causal Inference with Many Noisy Proxies By Lal, Imbens, Hull 0115
apoorva lal @apoorvalal.com · 13/01/2026apoorvalal.github.io/lalgorithms/... New linklog: new long term paper w Imbens and Hull, new job, RL<> Causal Rosetta Stone, demand elasticity simulator, and some nice metrics papersapoorvalal.github.io2026-01-13self-promotion Lal, Imbens, and Hull is a new paper we wrote analyzing the long-term causal inference problem [wherein one has a randomly assigned treatment W, several short-term proxy metrics P obser... 1131
apoorva lal @apoorvalal.com · 10/01/2026hobbyist programming to build tooling for hobbyist musicianship: glue library for mp3s->stems->midi->chords/tabs using small pre-trained models. 1) trimming is bulletproof since it's just ffmpeg 2) stemming is reasonable 3) midi is hit-or-miss 4) tabs are underwhelming github.com/apoorvalal/m...github.comGitHub - apoorvalal/mlodies: glues pretrained models to do stem separation and transcription to help learn music by ear.glues pretrained models to do stem separation and transcription to help learn music by ear. - apoorvalal/mlodies 030
apoorva lal @apoorvalal.com · 09/01/2026if i had a time machine i'd show up at trinity college, cambridge in 1670 and inflict this sentence upon newton 120
apoorva lal @apoorvalal.com · 07/01/2026this is an interesting descriptive statistic for bsky network [pareto principle of production, most people are rubberneckers] that is estimable thanks to atproto's openness. script to make your own is attached - make your own!. what does this look like for other networks? cc @jugander.bsky.social 2122
Reposted by apoorva lalPaul Goldsmith-Pinkham @paulgp.com · 06/01/2026Please feel free to follow this bot along with @paperposterbot.bsky.social for the full range of economics paper on Arxiv.orgarxiv.orgarXiv.org e-Print archive 0204
apoorva lal @apoorvalal.com · 06/01/2026some good games i played in 2025 in no particular order 1. minishoot' adventures wildly ambitious 2D zelda-like with a spaceship. also wins award for the most unnecessary apostraphy of all time. 151
apoorva lal @apoorvalal.com · 04/01/2026'unc' is short for 'unctuous' (excessively flattering, sycophantic). when your chatbot says you're absolutely right, you should yell at it for engaging in unc behavior 170
apoorva lal @apoorvalal.com · 03/01/2026fun(?) little webapp to plot daylight length D(t) and D'(t) for anywhere on the globe at any time (t) in the year lalten.org/daylight sanity checks: - reproduce solstices as D'(t) crossing y=0 - equator has flat D(t), D'(t) [cc @dggoldst.bsky.social who frequently posts about D''(t) ] 071
apoorva lal @apoorvalal.com · 02/01/2026There should be a series of spiritual sequels involving gradually low-octane crimes called "The Altos" (mail fraud,mostly accidental) and finally "The Baritones" (parking over the line). 010
Reposted by apoorva lalMark J. Nelson @mm-jj-nn.bsky.social · 01/01/2026I uh, made this. It was supposed to be a joke / concept-art thing that scrolls through the torrent of new AI/ML arXiv uploads too fast to read. But I think I iterated too much and made it almost usable.kmjn.orgarXiv AI/ML Catch-UpWas your New Year's resolution to keep up with arXiv AI/ML preprints? Browse the past week's new uploads in 30 mins. 78013
apoorva lal @apoorvalal.com · 01/01/2026Life cycle of a method 1. scrappy theory 2. killer empirical application (Angrist/Krueger for IV, Card/Krueger for DID, Lee for RD etc) 3. Deep, general theory 4. Review papers 5. Bad empirical applications 6. Empirical reviews Proximal has skipped 2 entirely. Is this typical for epi methods? 4223
apoorva lal @apoorvalal.com · 31/12/2025This is lovely. Also the ascent in the infancy is no joke: i thought i had a pretty productive 2025 but that's nothing compared to The Agent growing a fully functioning spinal column in 3 months 0233
apoorva lal @apoorvalal.com · 31/12/2025tweaked a bit, now installable via the chrome webstore chromewebstore.google.com/detail/math-...chromewebstore.google.comMath Expression Finder - Chrome Web StoreConvert LaTeX-style tokens to Unicode and copy to clipboard. 090
apoorva lal @apoorvalal.com · 29/12/2025finally got around to watching the Odyssey trailer; yeah Nolan's anachronism really rankles. 140
apoorva lal @apoorvalal.com · 28/12/2025vibecoded a little chrome extension to fix a perpetual bugbear with reading pdfs: being sent on search expeditions to figure out where a particular parameter was introduced. Instead, just type in the latex expression and get back unicode that you can ctrl/cmd+F easily github.com/apoorvalal/m... 5627
apoorva lal @apoorvalal.com · 22/12/2025You can't engineer around truly radioactive founder effects: evidence from the rise and fall of bsky (Tolerable semi-public social media, for all its faults, was nice while it lasted. Made parasocial and IRL friends, learned a lot. Now everyone's back on whatsapp and discord boards) 590
apoorva lal @apoorvalal.com · 19/12/2025incredible idea dosaygo-studio.github.io/hn-front-pag... 0113
apoorva lal @apoorvalal.com · 17/12/2025economics of tech this week is firms repeatedly rediscovering that the optimal price is the inverse hazard rate of the customer valuation distribution plus markup, and that their prior over this is wrong (llms, snap, github pricing runners) read/tinker: pricingexperiments.streamlit.app 040
Reposted by apoorva lalDirk Eddelbuettel @eddelbuettel.com · 15/12/2025MIT's famous 'Missing Semester' course (for the Independent Activities Period in January is back. missing.csail.mit.edu/2026/ 1133
apoorva lal @apoorvalal.com · 14/12/2025it would be a genuine novelty if a billboard on the 101 in the bay area tried to sell me a burger / soda / ambulance-chasing legal advice 261
apoorva lal @apoorvalal.com · 12/12/2025absolutely terrible attempted punny title aside, this is a very funny fig 1 010
apoorva lal @apoorvalal.com · 10/12/2025based on the amount of navel-gazing "what truly is a science" going on on my feed, i'm assuming it is finals period? 190