Social Studies: The ripple effects of hockey fights; the speech problem in Congress; lobbying bans backfire
Language on the floor
A study analyzed the Congressional Record from 1879 to 2022 and found that speeches in both houses used to rely on evidence more than intuition, but the opposite is true now. The peak era for speeches with more evidence-based keywords (e.g., 'fact,' 'proof,' 'analysis') than intuition-based language (e.g., 'guess,' 'doubt,' 'believe') was the mid-1970s. The trend since then toward more intuition-oriented speech is closely associated with greater partisan polarization and the greater difficulty of passing major legislation.
Get The Gavel
A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr.
Enter Email
Sign Up
Aroyehun, S. et al., 'Computational Analysis of US Congressional Speeches Reveals a Shift From Evidence to Intuition,' Nature Human Behaviour (forthcoming).
Advertisement
Creative differences
In experiments, people were shown a joke, caption, drawing, poem, or story that was attributed to either a person or AI. Participants were then asked whether they could have come up with a better one. They were more confident that they could do so if the item they had been shown was purportedly authored by AI.
Advertisement
Reich, T. & Teeny, J., 'Does Artificial Intelligence Cause Artificial Confidence? Generative Artificial Intelligence as an Emerging Social Referent,' Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (forthcoming).
The upside of the revolving door
Research from Boston University finds that restrictions on legislators becoming lobbyists may backfire. The idea is that this rule reduces the long-term benefits of winning office and thus discourages some people who would be good candidates from running. It also disincentivizes incumbents from leaving office. The researchers compared election trends in states that adopted lobbying restrictions and in those that hadn't done so. They found that in states with restrictions on lobbying after leaving office, legislative elections see fewer new candidates, fewer moderate candidates, and more unopposed candidates.
Fisman, R. et al., 'Revolving Door Laws and Political Selection,' National Bureau of Economic Research (March 2025).
The local news scandal
A political scientist at George Washington University analyzed data on scandals involving statewide elected officials and members of Congress from 1990 through 2022 and found that local news coverage of such scandals in the last decade fell to just one-fourth of what it was in prior decades. The upshot appears to be reduced accountability. Politicians who were the subjects of scandals were less likely to resign or retire and earned a greater percentage of the vote if they ran for reelection. National coverage (as measured by stories in The New York Times) did not make up for the falloff in local coverage.
Hayes, D., 'The Local News Crisis and Political Scandal,' Political Communication (forthcoming).
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
9 hours ago
- Yahoo
Former federal prosecutor warns SCOTUS about giving DOGE access to Social Security data
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man deported to El Salvador by the Trump administration, was surprisingly returned to the U.S. to face federal criminal charges after the Trump administration adamantly refused to bring him back to U.S. soil. Former federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York Berit Berger shares her insight on this and recent SCOTUS decisions.
Yahoo
13 hours ago
- Yahoo
Wall Street Has a New Secret Code for Laughing Behind Donald Trump's Back
Wall Street traders have adopted a term to mock President Trump's flip-flopping trade policy. TACO, an acronym that stands for 'Trump Always Chickens Out,' was coined by Financial Times columnist Robert Armstrong. It has since become a favorite among stockbrokers. Simply put, the tongue-in-cheek term describes how markets dip on President Trump's tariff threats, only to rebound when he inevitably reverses course. In the latest example, markets rallied earlier this week after Trump delayed the 50 percent tariff on the European Union that he had threatened just days earlier. In response to his relenting, the S&P 500 posted its biggest gain in weeks. Speaking on MSNBC Tuesday, Australian economist Justin Wolfers mocked Trump by saying this tariff policy 'nearly lasted one entire long weekend.' 'He was a little unlucky. There was Memorial Day, extended the weekend to three days, and you couldn't have a tariff policy last a full weekend. So, Friday's policy was reversed by Monday. And so, we get to analyze it today on Tuesday. And I think that's really symptomatic,' he said. Suggesting that Trump's word is worth very little in certain circumstances, including tariff threats, Wolfers used the example of Wall Street's new favorite acronym. 'In fact, on Wall Street right now, and it's one level funny and another level tragic. There's a trade called the TACO trade, T-A-C-O, Trump Always Chickens Out,' he said. Wolfers had said Trump's word now lacks 'credibility.' 'There was a time when the president opened his mouth, when you had to pay attention because you thought it meant something, that it was a shift in policy that other countries could rely on and respond to. That's no longer the case,' he said. Salomon Fiedler, an analyst from German bank Berenberg, is just one of many speculators who now say they are happy to wait it out when Trump makes a threat. 'Wild threats by Trump are not unusual,' he wrote in a note last month, when the president 'paused' the super-charged 'Liberation Day' duties he imposed on a slew of countries. 'Given the damage the U.S. would do to itself with this tariff, he will probably not follow through.' Trump paused the duties to allow his economic buffs to secure renewed deals with dozens of nations. So far, only the United Kingdom and China have inked any sort of agreement. Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
14 hours ago
- Yahoo
This investment turned $50,000 into $23 million in 10 years. It's still a buy.
In life, you make things happen, watch things happen or wonder what happened. Don't let your cash slip away unnoticed. Throughout history, moments come when our basic assumptions shift quietly beneath our feet. Most people don't notice until it's too late. I bought my mother-in-law a condo — and she took out a $30,000 car loan. Now she refuses to get a roommate. 'I prepaid our mom's rent for a year': My sister is a millionaire and never helps our mother. How do I cut her out of her will? Circle's stock is having another big day. What the blockbuster IPO has meant for other cryptocurrency plays. I help my elderly mother every day and drive her to appointments. Can I recoup my costs from her estate? S&P 500 changes are imminent. Robinhood and these other stocks could join the index. Imagine two young fish swimming together. An older fish passes by, greeting them, 'Good morning, boys. How's the water?' One fish looks puzzled, leans toward the other, and mutters, 'What the hell's water?' This analogy perfectly illustrates our relationship with our money. You've been floating cluelessly in a fish tank of government funny money for so long you've forgotten you're all wet. Every year, central banks crank the printing presses into overdrive, flooding the economy with more paper currency. Politicians treat debt as endlessly available, with no consequences. This is not capitalism. This is economic waterboarding. And yet we accept it as normal, just as residents of a town that floods every spring casually accept disaster. They move their sofas upstairs, prop up their televisions and shrug: Flooding, to them, is inevitable. When a fresh-faced optimist asks, 'Why don't we just drain the swamp?' he's laughed out of town — until someone suddenly realizes, 'Wait, we actually can drain the swamp.' That's our money system. Instead of sandbags, politicians toss trillions of newly printed dollars at us, hoping we'll float a bit longer. But each fresh flood of cash makes the problem worse. MarketWatch Live: Home to the world's top-performing currency this year, Russia cuts interest rates for the first time since 2022 Bitcoin BTCUSD is the grown-up choice in a world run by toddlers with credit cards. It's not a Band-Aid or a 'patch' or one more empty promise from a politician who'd lose money running a lemonade stand. Instead, bitcoin is stable precisely because no central banker can muck it up. Every minute you hesitate is another moment your wealth gets eaten by money-printing machines run by bureaucrats who think math is an inconvenience. Bitcoin isn't just another investment; it's financial Kevlar for the inevitable gunfight between your wallet and the world's central planners. Protect your savings, or don't — but don't say you weren't warned. But first, understand clearly why you're facing this situation. We live with a profound economic paradox: Technological advances continually lower the cost of living, yet prices keep climbing. Your money buys far less today than 10 or 20 years ago, despite incredible progress. Why? Inflation. It's baked into a monetary system engineered to steadily devalue currency. Most accept this erosion as natural — it isn't. Bitcoin provides an alternative, yet few truly grasp it. Labels like 'digital gold,' 'investment' and 'bubble' confuse rather than clarify, causing bitcoin to remain vastly underutilized. Bitcoin isn't digital gold, although it shares gold's GC00 scarcity. It is not merely a speculative asset you buy hoping prices rise. Instead, understanding bitcoin requires adopting a new mindset. Bitcoin is an open, decentralized system built specifically to securely store and freely exchange value — without banks or bureaucrats getting in the way. Nobody controls bitcoin. Yet everybody can benefit. Consider how the internet transformed information. Before, gatekeepers— newspapers, TV networks — controlled what you saw. The internet removed those gatekeepers, allowing free and instant access to information. Bitcoin applies the same principle to money. It removes financial gatekeepers, eliminates fees and prevents inflationary manipulation, putting control of your finances permanently into your hands. Bitcoin's core innovation is decentralization. Its security isn't backed by banks or governments; it's rooted in mathematics, cryptography and a global network of independent participants. There is no CEO, no headquarters and, crucially, no way to print more currency. This revolutionary design ensures no one can seize your bitcoin, freeze your accounts or dilute your savings. It's money designed intentionally to be fair, neutral, secure and universally accessible. Grasping bitcoin demands a fundamental rethinking — not just about technology but about money itself. It challenges deeply held beliefs about freedom and control. Read: Here's how much higher gold prices can still go — even after doubling the past two years Right now, governments and banks decide how much money to print. Imagine playing the board game Monopoly, but one player secretly prints extra bills. Suddenly, everyone's cash is worth less, and prices rise uncontrollably. This is inflation. It shrinks your savings and paycheck, making everyday life more expensive. Asset owners — those with stocks and real estate — benefit, while regular earners suffer dwindling purchasing power. Bitcoin completely flips this scenario. Its supply is capped at 21 million coins. No government or bank can ever create more. Rather than losing value over time, bitcoin protects — and potentially enhances — your purchasing power. Think of bitcoin like rare baseball cards or limited-edition sneakers. Finite supply plus growing demand equals increased value. Instead of your savings eroding each year through inflation, bitcoin rewards you by maintaining or growing your buying power. Secured by mathematics and powerful computing, it's unforgeable digital gold: safe, scarce and impossible to manipulate. Bitcoin isn't just new money — it forces us to reconsider money's role in our lives entirely. Consider this 10-year investing lesson: On June 2, 2015, imagine you faced a crucial choice. You had $50,000 saved for your child's education. Two investment paths appeared clearly. One, a familiar S&P 500 SPX fund — the SPDR S&P 500 ETF SPY —promising stable, reliable growth. The other, bitcoin: experimental, misunderstood, yet uniquely resistant to inflation. Ten years later, the outcomes diverged dramatically: Bitcoin: Your $50,000 bought roughly 220 coins at about $227 each. Now, with the cryptocurrency recently at about $102,000 per coin, your investment is worth around $23.2 million. S&P 500 ETF: Your $50,000 purchased roughly 236 shares at about $212 each. Now, with the ETF recently at $593 per share, your investment totals roughly $140,000. After adjusting for inflation averaging 3% annually, each 2025 dollar equals 74 cents in 2015 purchasing power. In real, after-inflation terms, your bitcoin investment maintains $17.1 million in buying power, while your S&P 500 ETF preserves about $104,000 — still a gain, but dwarfed by bitcoin's inflation-adjusted returns. This 10-year lesson teaches us something profound about our assumptions. Ultimately, the question isn't just about returns; it's about sovereignty. The real lesson isn't about luck or risk. It's about whom you trust with your money. Do you want your financial destiny dictated by institutions that profit from quietly eroding your wealth, or do you want to become your own banker, operating under principles that respect your financial independence? Read: Trump administration rescinds Biden-era caution about crypto in 401(k) plans — here's what that means for you Here's what keeps me up at night: Right now, somewhere, a couple is arguing over money. A parent is calculating whether they can afford their kid's college tuition. A retiree is watching their savings evaporate, one grocery trip at a time. They're all making the same mistake. See, there are only two kinds of people in this story. Those who act. And those who become cautionary tales their grandchildren whisper about: 'If only Grandpa had bought bitcoin when it was just six figures … ' The math doesn't lie. The 10-year proof is staring you in the face. Your choice isn't between safe and risky anymore. It's between two futures: In one, you're explaining to your family why you ignored the biggest wealth transfer in human history when the evidence was screaming at you. In the other, you're the one who saw what was coming and acted. Twenty years from now, only one question will matter: Were you the smart money or the scared money? Garcia holds positions in bitcoin and gold. . More: America's biggest lender is closing its wallet — and investors and home buyers will feel it. Here's what to watch. Also read: The 'mother of all credit squeezes' is coming — hang on to your wallet 'I'm not wildly wealthy, but I've done well': I'm 79 and have $3 million in assets. Should I set up 529 plans for my grandkids? What's at stake if world's most powerful market finally buckles after decades-long U.S. debt splurge My daughter's boyfriend, a guest in my home, offered to powerwash part of my house — then demanded money How do I make sure my son-in-law doesn't get his hands on my daughter's inheritance? Never mind the tariffs and tantrums. The 'dual equity pain trade' means new highs for stocks. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
