Sign in

Rachel Leah Childers

@donskerclass.bsky.social
2.5K followers 396 following 765 posts

Econometrics, Statistics, Computational Economics, etc donskerclass.github.io 🇺🇲 in 🇨🇭. 🏳️‍⚧️

PostsRepliesMedia
Rachel Leah Childers @donskerclass.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Don't beat yourself up over it. She would have told you but she's super shy.
youtu.be
NewJeans (뉴진스) 'Super Shy' Official MV
YouTube video by HYBE LABELS
130
Rachel Leah Childers @donskerclass.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
This is a big part of why I and many people I know are building personalized recommender systems. Not a perfect solution, but a good complement to word-of-mouth.
1120
Rachel Leah Childers @donskerclass.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Derenoncourt has done pioneering work on the distributional effects of policies on wealth doi.org/10.1093/qje/... and wages doi.org/10.1093/qje/... combining detailed micro data, historical context, and effective application of theory, inspiring all of us who work on economic heterogeneity. Brava!
052
Rachel Leah Childers @donskerclass.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
What I really want to ask the Keynes bot:
4 panel Meme:
Panel 1: Screaming man with Paul Samuelson book: "If Keynes was alive today he would agree with the Neoclassical Synthesis!"
Panel 2: Other screaming man with Hyman Minsky book: "Nooo he would support the Post-Keynesian school!"
Panel 3: Keynes in his armchair with a book and the bi flag" "Damn, this `Grindr' thing is really something, huh?"
Panel 4: Grindr logo: "Thank you Mr. Keynes"
121
Rachel Leah Childers @donskerclass.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
I should also mention @brice.green's more social reading list app, papers.club which is more about organizing and sharing your current reading, which is a nice complement to paper search apps. See also lea.ac, which is a Bluesky client with features including highlighting posted papers.
papers.club
papers.club
010
Rachel Leah Childers @donskerclass.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
The format was inspired by a similar but more ambitious personalized paper sorter by @ddimmery.com: papers.ddimmery.com Sorting is mostly tf-idf with some similarity comparisons to small local embeddings. Code at github.com/donskerclass... though the hardest part was assembling my own library data.
papers.ddimmery.com
Papers — new preprints worth reading
New preprints in causal inference, experimental design, statistics and computational social science, ranked by similarity to one researcher's own work.
140
Rachel Leah Childers @donskerclass.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
With the rising tide of slop papers, I can no longer mainline the raw nightly arXiv, so I decided to fight slop with slop and vibecode a recommender system based on my library and own interests and papers to sort and select new ones that I would care about. Now live at: donskerclass.github.io/papers
donskerclass.github.io
Papers — Friday 25 September 2026
2123
Reposted by Rachel Leah Childers
yaoi gagarin @mel.bzky.team · 21/09/2026
FINALLY SOME ACTIONABLE ADVICE
So you are looking for a masculine partner who is not overtly queer but will engage in queer sexual activity and is also an expert in international commerce? 
Sounds like you want a trade economist.
0574
Rachel Leah Childers @donskerclass.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
So you are looking for a masculine partner who is not overtly queer but will engage in queer sexual activity and is also an expert in international commerce? Sounds like you want a trade economist.
060
Rachel Leah Childers @donskerclass.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
This is an addendum to my previously stated view on the "trans sports issue" which is that sports are about having a fun time with your friends and I like them a lot!
020
Rachel Leah Childers @donskerclass.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
My nuanced opinion on trans women in sports is: God I wanna go see a tgirl baseball game so bad!
230
Rachel Leah Childers @donskerclass.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
You have a point. That's strong evidence Lola cherry cola and Lola Copacabana are the same woman, years apart. Important info to relay to my gender fluid skateboard crew.
010
Rachel Leah Childers @donskerclass.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Important distinction: Lola showgirl or Lola cherry cola?
100
Rachel Leah Childers @donskerclass.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
I used to give a problem set to my students using this guinea pig DAG to teach d-separation, backdoor criterion, etc. It's not nearly so charming when encoded in dagitty and plotted in standard ggdag style - someone clearly needs to add a theme_guinea_pig()
Sewall Wright's guinea pig DAG from the parent post, encoded in R library Dagitty and plotted in R library ggdag with black circles for nodes and letters for labels rather than the charming hand-drawn guinea pig nodes in the original.
071
Rachel Leah Childers @donskerclass.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Employment data is hard to come by and existing surveys suggest higher rates, indicative of flows, but it's one pathway that can measure these factors. I'm literally always thinking of this @goingdowntv.bsky.social "trans unemployment survey" sketch and wishing we had a trans BLS, CPS, and JOLTS.
instagram.com
Instagram
Create an account or log in to Instagram - Share what you're into with the people who get you.
100
Rachel Leah Childers @donskerclass.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
I thought the results were fairly reassuring; it's better to have data. Given the stories one hears, a 15% callback penalty for being out and (one algorithm's construction of) clocky, and substantially less given factors modifiable with some effort, is not extreme relative to those for other groups.
110
Rachel Leah Childers @donskerclass.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
All they’re going to give you:
Microeconomic Theory

By Andreu Mas-Collel, Michael D. Whinston, and Jerry Green
020
Rachel Leah Childers @donskerclass.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Childhood memory unlocked
Logo for 1992 PBS TV series "Ghostwriter", featuring a cast of children in incredibly 1990s-kids-TV clothing and design aesthetics.
130
Rachel Leah Childers @donskerclass.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Joyland was great. Somehow one of the best trans movies of the past few years was produced by Malala.
030
Rachel Leah Childers @donskerclass.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
See defs 1, 2, 4, and 6 for standard queer usage. See also "fish". The term is most prominent in drag/ballroom culture and has spread from there, so you may see it less in more culturally distant LGBT communities. www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?t...
urbandictionary.com
Urban Dictionary: cunty
cunty: sexy, iconic, epic, never been done before, serving.
020
Rachel Leah Childers @donskerclass.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Important clarifying question: is that Australian K-pop blogger LGBTQIA++? I hesitate because the overlap of K-pop standom and that community is substantial enough that I would honestly be more surprised if the blogger were using the word in the (non-LGBT) Australian way.
100
Rachel Leah Childers @donskerclass.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
in re: cunt Is the LGBT Australian usage different from the LGBT US usage, or just more frequent? We have intersectional polysemy to handle here.
110
Rachel Leah Childers @donskerclass.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
Also re: macrofounded IO, the firm dynamics literature is basically that. Heterogeneous firms models a la Hopenhayn, patent race models of innovation, Haltiwanger style data work, and substantive questions re: labor share/productivity/trade. It ends up in macro venues because IO people don't like it
afinetheorem.wordpress.com
Models of Innovation I: The Patent Race
I’ve been going through some old literature on innovation again as part of a current project, so I figured I ought put up a little review of this literature. I’ll cover five strands: th…
041
Rachel Leah Childers @donskerclass.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
I think the high stakes and compensation litigation role of IO has made it extremely specialized in a few subareas of what it could be. I do think NEIO gave a good measurement toolkit for micro that mitigates the party trick tendencies of price theory, but it's hard to think abstractly with it.
110
Rachel Leah Childers @donskerclass.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
Aggregation, accounting identities, intertemporal budget constraints, all have a respectable place. Price theory is a fun cocktail party trick, but addition is more fundamental than calculus.
140
Rachel Leah Childers @donskerclass.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
A nice tutorial on modern gradient-based MCMC samplers highlighting the link between continuous time theoretical analysis and issues that matter to practitioners. This would have been ideal background for understanding modern developments in MCMC I saw at math.ethz.ch/fim/activiti...
arxiv.org
From Continuous Dynamics to Practical Gradient-Based Samplers
Gradient-based Markov chain Monte Carlo methods are often introduced as a catalog of algorithms: Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC), the Metropolis-adjusted Langevin algorithm (MALA), the No-U-Turn Sampler...
0204
Rachel Leah Childers @donskerclass.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
It seems a bit closer to one of the solution concepts where agents treat a future self as a separate agent (CF below) then play an imperfect info game via Bayes (perfect? One of those sequential refinements) eq'm. Maybe with learning on top? They're at least thinking carefully about info sets.
000
Rachel Leah Childers @donskerclass.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
I think it's a metaphor about the tarot readings we got from a girl at the bar over a shot of malort at 1 am, which seemed more meaningful at the time than the day after.
030
Rachel Leah Childers @donskerclass.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
"The Abyss" by the way, née The Abyssinian, is the name of the combination queer bar/performance venue/Ethiopian restaurant Mel took me out to in West Philadelphia. Recommended. Get the sambusas.
351
Rachel Leah Childers @donskerclass.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
Correct answer!
010
Reposted by Rachel Leah Childers
Rachel Leah Childers @donskerclass.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
Due to a travel mishap, I have one night in Philadelphia starting now. What should I do in (almost) paradise?
411
Rachel Leah Childers @donskerclass.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
Due to a travel mishap, I have one night in Philadelphia starting now. What should I do in (almost) paradise?
411
Rachel Leah Childers @donskerclass.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
Thanks, I'm testing out Nutpie now! It's simple enough to test because there's already a Julia implementation. Blackjax is already the sampling backend for our Python version, though I know it has a lot more options to explore than I've tried so far.
010
Rachel Leah Childers @donskerclass.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
Cruel of you to post this right after I deleted my long thread about what the closet was like for me, just because "employers" can be touchy about concepts like "suicidal ideation". TBH though it was largely just a much less funny version of this thread:
120
Rachel Leah Childers @donskerclass.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
"How many selves are there? At least three. What are they? Don’t play games with me kid." -Rafe on a game-theoretic model of the closet (among other things) by Benabou and Tirole.
181
Rachel Leah Childers @donskerclass.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
Thanks! GPU stuff probably won't make it into the formal comparisons in the paper since we would need to rewrite a lot of code, but it seems like the way of the future so is likely to be filed under "future work". Logarithmic scaling is pretty tempting.
000
Rachel Leah Childers @donskerclass.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
I mean, basically no because the whole JAX implementation was a whim by my coauthor with a lot of Claude credits that we're not putting in the paper. I know for a fact the algorithm is subpar, but we would need to implement some exotic linear algebra primitives not currently in JAX to fix it.
010
Rachel Leah Childers @donskerclass.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
That is definitely worth trying. We find for small models we get a big advantage out of a dense mass matrix, but the n^2 matrix multiply overwhelms that for bigger ones, where diagonal is OK but slows mixing. A better diagonal mass matrix at least has a chance of helping in that case.
010
Rachel Leah Childers @donskerclass.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
It's (reportedly) great for parallel algorithms on GPUs but not optimized for sequential algorithms on CPUs, where Julia shines. But also, it's not fair in this case since there are algorithmic differences and optimizations in the Julia code while we haven't tried to optimize our JAX implementation.
010
Rachel Leah Childers @donskerclass.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
This is exactly the kind of thing I was looking for, thanks! I will try out the code and read the paper, which seems to have a comprehensive and up-to-date set of comparisons.
Figure 1 from "Particle-MALA and Particle-mGRAD: Gradient-based MCMC methods for high-dimensional state-space models" by Corenflos and Finke

The graphs compare expected squared jumping distance (a performance measure) with problem size parameters (dimension D of state and time horizon T) for 13 different variant state space samplers, on a toy linear-Gaussian state space model.

Graph (a) Empirical scaling with D for fixed time horizon T = 25. Graph (b) Empirical scaling with T for fixed state dimension D = 10.
110
Rachel Leah Childers @donskerclass.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
We have differentiable likelihoods, so gradient-based anything is an option. Code is in Julia but could be black boxed, and also a vibe-coded JAX version for Python though it's several times slower. Applications include a mix of uni- and multi-modal posteriors.
210
Rachel Leah Childers @donskerclass.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
OK, it's time to fortify our set of baselines for an MCMC paper. What's the latest in fast/reliable samplers for nonlinear state space models? We have NUTS/HMC/SMC^2/a few variants of Particle Metropolis. There have to be some new update schemes or maybe GPU options worth trying.
560
Rachel Leah Childers @donskerclass.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
I guess that means I'm a cis woman now. 🙃 Remember me when I'm gone (actually able to hold down stable employment and housing).
110
Rachel Leah Childers @donskerclass.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
☹️
110
Rachel Leah Childers @donskerclass.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
OMG, someone found Yu Deng's Xiaohongshu post about the win. I love... PDE 😭
Rednote Post from Yu Deng

Profile pic of an anime girl with a question mark over her head

邓煜

届到了 www

(Translation: Yu Deng It arrived www)

2 attached images (included next) followManga drawing of a blonde girl in a school uniform with the word "PDE" over her head, looking back at a dark-haired girl in the same uniform, labeled "2022 Fields Medal" running away Manga drawing of blonde girl with "PDE" over her head embracing and about to kiss dark haired girl with "2026 Fields Medal" over her head.
030
Rachel Leah Childers @donskerclass.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
No comment on the phrasing, but there do appear to be a class of holders of mostly illiquid assets with high marginal propensity to consume out of current temporary income who appear not to be able to smooth over income fluctuations. Kaplan Violante and Weidner call them "the wealthy hand to mouth."
brookings.edu
041
Reposted by Rachel Leah Childers
Dr Yuchen Yang @dr-yang.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
Yuri forums even made it to his dissertation acknowledgement #girlslove #yuri #anime
021
Rachel Leah Childers @donskerclass.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
It did not escape my attention:
120
Rachel Leah Childers @donskerclass.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
Inspirational: one of the new Fields Medalists is a himedanshi.
For comfort, Deng turned to manga. “I remember him at Courant. He was always holding a manga,” said Jalal Shatah(opens a new tab), a professor there who formerly chaired the math department. Deng particularly liked stories about deep friendship and romance and found himself drawn to a genre known as yuri, which focuses on those kinds of relationships between women — stories that “feel nice and warm and beautiful,” as he put it. They helped him be kinder to himself, “more comfortable with life.”
26122
Rachel Leah Childers @donskerclass.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
This problem is called "coreset selection" in ML. Methods generally depend on choice of target quantity, but presumably if you are willing to select survey measures you can choose those. Some randomly chosen lit reviews: arxiv.org/abs/1703.06476 arxiv.org/abs/2505.17799
arxiv.org
A Coreset Selection of Coreset Selection Literature: Introduction and Recent Advances
Coreset selection targets the challenge of finding a small, representative subset of a large dataset that preserves essential patterns for effective machine learning. Although several surveys have exa...
250