iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Ethan Struby @estruby.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

i talk like other people from where I grew up, unsurprisingly (kansas city, my mom grew up in topeka, KS)

a heat map from mydialect.us, highlighting that my pronunciation is most similar to someone from kansas.

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Ethan Struby @estruby.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

today in extremely metal documentation header from the health and retirement study

image of text: "1.3 Weighting the Dead and the Institutionalized"

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Ethan Struby @estruby.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

Just got this advertised to me, no joke

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Ethan Struby @estruby.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

Last line of the tweet is pretty brutal too

You are easily impressed by low quality symbols, which is perhaps why our current political moment is so exciting for you.

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Ethan Struby @estruby.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

Got my new office set up, including the exterior-facing display

A picture of various knickknacks in a set of shelves. Visible are an LED skull with a snake, the ABcs of economics, a Keynesian cross diagram made out of seeds, a set of gay and trans pride flags and some other stuff.

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Ethan Struby @estruby.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

Already had this saved on my phone for ease of use

An illustration from Mo Wilkins of a pig in a chefs hat presenting an unapptizing bowl of green gloop to a surprised elephant. The pig is saying “Do you want to try my slop?”

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Ethan Struby @estruby.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

This is kind of a nice example of anticipation effects

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Ethan Struby @estruby.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

I’m not mad about it but also this

Picture of a guy with the text “I know writers who use subtext, and they're all cowards”

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Ethan Struby @estruby.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

As Andrew Gelman pointed out, the author’s choice of notation in their reply is…nonstandard.

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Ethan Struby @estruby.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

the always-insightful Christian Hellwig has a (recently posted) Chicago Fed working paper that looks provocative and interesting: www.chicagofed.org/publications...

screen shot of abstract with text:

The Inefficient Markets Hypothesis Theory of Casino Capitalism
Christian Hellwig

I develop a general equilibrium model of investment and equity markets in which departures from the Efficient Markets Hypothesis generate “Casino Capitalism”: time-inconsistent, short-termist firm decisions, firm-level over-investment coupled with inefficient liquidation of positive-NPV projects, and aggregate under-investment with depressed stock prices and distorted intertemporal savings. These distortions arise even if all agents are fully rational and forward-looking. At the firm level, the wedge between market-implied and fundamental returns on investment causes an endogenous preference reversal that renders the Laissez-faire outcome time-inconsistent and Pareto-inferior. In the aggregate, firm-level attempts to boost stock prices are self-defeating via an aggregate investment wedge as micro distortions translate into macro inefficiency. Restoring firm-level rationality by empowering shareholders can worsen aggregate outcomes and precipitate a complete capital market shutdown.

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Ethan Struby @estruby.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

absolutely DESTROYING the political science majors in my sci-fi book club group chat

butterfly meme where guy says "is this causal inference" and the butterfly says "plotting a line relative to a date." no, it's not.

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Ethan Struby @estruby.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

i know just the man for the job

screencap of tim robinson from the "Save Corncob TV" sketch of I Think You Should Leave, with the text "Spectrum is planning to drop 22 channels, including Corncob TV"

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Ethan Struby @estruby.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

Two sentence abstract is a real power move

Screenshot of an NBER working paper:

Tatonnement and Price Setting in General
Equilibrium
Iván Werning O Guido
Lorenzoni

WORKING PAPER 35205
DOI 10.3386/W35205
ISSUE DATE May 2026
A foundational question in General Equilibrium theory—when is an equilibrium stable?-has remained largely unresolved for over 150 years despite important contributions. This paper proposes a resolution.

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Ethan Struby @estruby.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

Was not paying attention while I was walking and then the scent of these guys woke me up. Spring in Minnesota is the best, tied with all the other seasons in Minnesota

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Ethan Struby @estruby.bsky.social · 23/05/2026

In honor of today’s graduation at St. Olaf, here’s the series-spanning adaptation of Ole Edvart Rølvaag (class of 1905’s) trilogy of novels about the Norwegian immigrant experience

Star Trek the original series title card for “Giants in the Earth”

Star Trek the Next Generation title card for Peder Victorious

Star Trek Deep Space Nine title card for Their Father’s God

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Ethan Struby @estruby.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

I think about this Hark! a Vagrant strip an unreasonable amount

a three panel comic entitled "Javert is n the wrong musical"
panel 1, two figures dancing and singing "la vie boheme" from the musical Rent; Javert from Les Miserables saying "it is against the law to not pay rent."
Second panel: The figures continue dancing, Javert yells "Did you hear me!!"
Third panel, in front of Life Café, Javert instructs a 19th-century French soldier to "Burn it down."

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Ethan Struby @estruby.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

I feel like one could get a lot of mileage out of Sydney Ludvigson’s response to this question about whether sports prediction markets should be regulated differently kentclarkcenter.org/surveys/pred...

Sydney Ludvigson’s response to a question with “no opinion” and the explanation “Be they gamblers or traders, everyone wants to be ‘better off’ but no agreement on what that means”

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Ethan Struby @estruby.bsky.social · 14/03/2026

And a footnote I also think about when trying to do structural estimation: “we have ideas for how to do this better if we were to approach the problem again”

A footnote from a paper by Sims and Zha, with the text underlined: “we have ideas for how to do this better if we were to approach the problem again”

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Ethan Struby @estruby.bsky.social · 14/03/2026

“They are rhetorical devices that are often invoked to avoid having to confront real econometric difficulties…”

Screenshot of a title and first paragraph of an article by Sims in the Journal of economic perspectives:

But Economics Is Not an Experimental Science
Christopher A. Sims
Without apparent irony, Angrist and Pischke (this issue) quote Griliches
(1986): "If the data were perfect, collected from well-designed randomized experiments, there would hardly be room for a separate field of
econometrics." The fact is, economics is not an experimental science and cannot be. "Natural" experiments and "quasi" experiments are not in fact experiments, any more than are Prescott's "computational" experiments (for example, Kydland and Prescott, 1996). They are rhetorical devices that are often invoked to avoid having to confront real econometric difficulties. Natural, quasi-, and computational experiments, as well as regression discontinuity design, can all, when well applied, be useful, but none are panaceas. This essay by Angrist and Pischke, in its enthusiasm for some real accomplishments in certain subfields of economics, makes overbroad claims for its favored methodologies. What the essay says about macroeconomics is mainly nonsense.

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Ethan Struby @estruby.bsky.social · 12/03/2026

A delightful observation in the introduction to Jan Dutkiewicz and Gabe Rosenberg’s FEED THE PEOPLE

But consider that a single Waffle House waffle would be a remarkable achievement in most human societies throughout the ages. The Mesopotamians, Aztecs, Romans, and countless others, though brimming with brilliance, creativity, and ingenuity, did not produce a single waffle. Billions of waffles? An unimaginable achievement in any

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Ethan Struby @estruby.bsky.social · 11/01/2026

Here is his honest to goodness official gubernatorial portrait

Jesse Ventura’s gubernatorial portrait. Jesse, depicted as a muscular man in a blue suit with American Flag tie, is bizarrely leaning on a statue of the Thinker in front of what appears to be a blasted post apocalyptic hellscape

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Ethan Struby @estruby.bsky.social · 28/12/2025

Economics finally has its "Now it is our turn to study statistical mechanics. Perhaps it will be wise to approach the subject cautiously." www.nber.org/papers/w34564