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Noel Johnson

@ndjohnson.bsky.social
608 followers 159 following 396 posts

Professor of Economics at GMU. Very mid practitioner of Brazilian jiu jitsu. I like dogs. noeldjohnson.github.io

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Noel Johnson @ndjohnson.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
4/ Yet the cannon books barely traveled. Biringuccio's manual of gunpowder and cannon founding took 16 years to reach a second language. Tartaglia's ballistics was never translated before 1650. Valturio's war machines waited 83 years. Nine, five, and eight editions in all.
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Noel Johnson @ndjohnson.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
🧵The AI-safety worry is that a model explaining how to build a weapon puts it in anyone's hands. Europe ran this experiment with print. Gunpowder, cannon founding, ballistics, and drill went into print in the 1500s. Whether the know-how spread depended on what else you needed. #econsky #AIsafety
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Noel Johnson @ndjohnson.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
Some days you just need to stay low and keep your eyes on things.
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Noel Johnson @ndjohnson.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
Managed to image M51 and M13 from rural Ohio last night. Great conditions until the clouds rolled in!
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Noel Johnson @ndjohnson.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
5/ And it's the violence, not colonial cities in general. The same test on proximity to Delhi, Calcutta, or Bombay shows nothing like it. Only Lucknow is positive and peaks in the 1880s.
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Noel Johnson @ndjohnson.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
3/ Within the same province, holding geography, rail access, and gov spending constant, vaccination falls the closer a district sits to Lucknow, about 9 to 11 fewer infant vaccinations per 1,000 a year in the 1880s. It's sharpest in the Awadh core, the region collectively punished after the revolt.
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Noel Johnson @ndjohnson.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
🧵1/ The half-life of a grudge. Britain crushed the 1857 revolt in northern India with mass reprisals centered on Lucknow. For decades after, districts closer to that violence vaccinated their children less against smallpox and the effect faded as the generation that lived through 1857 died off.
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Noel Johnson @ndjohnson.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
3/ And Latin isn't alone. Queen lands in the top handful in three languages: • Latin: rex − uir + femina → regina (#1) • English: king − man + woman → queene (#3) • French: roi − homme + femme → reine (#4) (Dutch's koninginne sneaks in at #8, just outside.)
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Noel Johnson @ndjohnson.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
2/ I trained word embeddings on ~800,000 early-modern book titles across seven languages and ran the analogy in each. Latin is textbook-perfect: rex − uir (man) + femina (woman) → regina (queen) — the single closest word. From book titles. From 500 years ago.
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Noel Johnson @ndjohnson.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
Way ahead of you, GMU Emergency Alert System. The World Cup is on and I've decided to limit all activities both outside AND inside.
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Noel Johnson @ndjohnson.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
Was watching an instructional video on reverse de la riva and my wife walked in and looked at me like I'm weird. I have no idea why...
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Noel Johnson @ndjohnson.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
Now zoom out from German to Latin — early-modern Europe's language of scholarship — to see the cost to the wider market for ideas.
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Noel Johnson @ndjohnson.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
A couple things I learned doing research this week... The Thirty Years' War (1618–48) didn't simply shrink German printing — it redrew the map. After imperial forces sacked Magdeburg in 1631, the city's presses went nearly silent. Neutral Hamburg's boomed. The two cities traded places.
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Noel Johnson @ndjohnson.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
Big thanks going out to Amazon for ruining their book search on the app by integrating ai into it.
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Noel Johnson @ndjohnson.bsky.social · 21/06/2026
I have the best helper chef for Father’s Day.
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Noel Johnson @ndjohnson.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
I think it’s safe to say one of The greatest threats ever to my academic career was someone giving my kid this kitty piano…
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Noel Johnson @ndjohnson.bsky.social · 07/06/2026
I guess we have a duck in our fireplace. 🦆
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Noel Johnson @ndjohnson.bsky.social · 30/05/2026
I love the difference in translation for this product. Says much about the difference between the two cultures.
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Noel Johnson @ndjohnson.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
I don't mean to brag, but my 10 year old is obviously an artistic genius...
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Noel Johnson @ndjohnson.bsky.social · 15/04/2026
In any case, here’s a picture of a beaver that’s proud of its work.
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Noel Johnson @ndjohnson.bsky.social · 10/04/2026
NGC 2903 and messier 37. Caught from my front yard.
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Noel Johnson @ndjohnson.bsky.social · 10/04/2026
Friday afternoon naps hit hard.
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Noel Johnson @ndjohnson.bsky.social · 27/03/2026
I’m pleased to report that, apparently, in the eyes of my 10 year old my most outstanding characteristics are being a Brazilian jiu jitsu blue belt and having a very hyper-extended right elbow. The two are likely related.
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Noel Johnson @ndjohnson.bsky.social · 26/03/2026
This is incorrect.
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Noel Johnson @ndjohnson.bsky.social · 15/03/2026
not wrong…
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Noel Johnson @ndjohnson.bsky.social · 12/03/2026
Regrettably, I lost her halfway through our discussion of climate change, science education, and the median voter theorem.
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Noel Johnson @ndjohnson.bsky.social · 12/03/2026
Dog is asking some very pointed questions right now about why it was 80 degrees yesterday but snowing today.
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Noel Johnson @ndjohnson.bsky.social · 21/02/2026
So, walking around my house and this sticky note was stuck on the bottom of my shoe. I think good things are happening here…
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Noel Johnson @ndjohnson.bsky.social · 16/02/2026
Lunar new year dumpling making!
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Noel Johnson @ndjohnson.bsky.social · 15/02/2026
i love technological progress. I just got back into astronomy. Took these using a 50 mm apo triplet from my front yard in a bortle 8 area.
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Noel Johnson @ndjohnson.bsky.social · 13/02/2026
Things are getting weird guys. This ad just popped up for me while reading The Economist.
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Noel Johnson @ndjohnson.bsky.social · 07/02/2026
It‘s cold outside!
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Noel Johnson @ndjohnson.bsky.social · 03/01/2026
I’m getting strong Simpsons used car salesman vibes off this email I just received… www.instagram.com/reel/DRI_k11...
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Noel Johnson @ndjohnson.bsky.social · 02/01/2026
I’ve seen a new thing. #tentonatesla
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Noel Johnson @ndjohnson.bsky.social · 10/10/2025
Thanks for the heads up "K9 advantix II large dog". For use on dogs only. Got it.
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Noel Johnson @ndjohnson.bsky.social · 11/09/2025
Working at the office today and somebody put the following out for free on the break room table. Nice try. I’ve been in this game long enough to know when some phd student in the experimental group is running a behavioral study.
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Noel Johnson @ndjohnson.bsky.social · 09/09/2025
When your little cousin’s new bed looks more attractive than your old one…
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Noel Johnson @ndjohnson.bsky.social · 26/08/2025
Sometimes the Devil tempts you and you just have to force yourself to look away.
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Noel Johnson @ndjohnson.bsky.social · 19/08/2025
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Noel Johnson @ndjohnson.bsky.social · 19/08/2025
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Noel Johnson @ndjohnson.bsky.social · 18/08/2025
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Noel Johnson @ndjohnson.bsky.social · 18/08/2025
Speaking of jiu jitsu, this is world class trolling on the wikipedia page for BJJ:
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Noel Johnson @ndjohnson.bsky.social · 18/08/2025
The good news is that my Wife need never worry again about me taking my wedding band off. The bad news is that jiu jitsu is still really difficult and my guard passing sucks (which is why I jammed my fingers into the mat really, really, hard).
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Noel Johnson @ndjohnson.bsky.social · 18/08/2025
I bought these two guys during COVID lockdown. Just transplanted them to bigger pots. Feels like a win for everybody.
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Noel Johnson @ndjohnson.bsky.social · 12/07/2025
I accidentally typed "wap" into the googles instead of "wapo" when I wanted to check the news. And now I suspect my musical tastes have drifted away from the cultural mainstream...
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Noel Johnson @ndjohnson.bsky.social · 18/06/2025
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Noel Johnson @ndjohnson.bsky.social · 17/06/2025
The German language remains undefeated.
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Noel Johnson @ndjohnson.bsky.social · 15/06/2025
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Noel Johnson @ndjohnson.bsky.social · 13/06/2025
Jiu jitsu makes no sense.
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Noel Johnson @ndjohnson.bsky.social · 08/06/2025
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