Hi all, It feels fitting that the last links of the year (for such is this salvo of egregious geekery) should start with the crushing disappointment that the English test cricket team so reliably brings (rivalled only in its consistent mediocrity by the English political establishment, cur...

As you get older, you accumulate a number of experiences that should—in theory—help you navigate your life with a little more elan and with fewer pitfalls. And for the most part, it works like that: even in the space of a few weeks I’ve seen how my small son has learnt which bits of our furniture ar...

Illness and the prospect of this nu variant has put something of a dampener on my mood, but you know what cheers me up? Every year, without fail, the DI crew unearth a paper-of-the-year candidate in their JMC series, and this year it’s this stunning work from Juan Felipe Riaño. Just d...

How do parents of young children get anything done? Even in a two-parent household, the nursery/home-with-fever cycle is relentless (and, in the case of our little one, a little too heavy on the home-with-fever side of the cycle for my liking). Anyway, by my count I’ve got a few hours before I’m str...

Cricket eh? I was *this far* from celebrating a famous Pakistan win over Australia when Matthew Wade decided to make mince meat out of the best bowler in T20 cricket; meanwhile, I messaged a colleague to tell her that England were 9 overs from the World Cup final once again when Jimmy Neesham t...

Speaking of tax systems, a nice piece from Nishant Yonkan and co-authors (including Branko Milanovic) looks at the discrepancies between survey and tax data to investigate for which populations these data sources disagree and why this disagreement arises. It won’t surprise many to dis...

Hi all, Ah cricket. That magnificent sport that contains all the drama of Lear in a format just as underappreciated. The 20/20 world cup is going on, and while the short form of the game is to Test cricket what an Saturday Night Live skit is to The Tempest, it’s still pretty amazing when done right ...