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Mark Fabian

@markfabian.bsky.social

1.5K followers 1.7K following 950 posts

Ass-Prof of Public Policy at Warwick. Work mostly on wellbeing from an interdisciplinary perspective. Interested in *everything*. Run ePODstemology: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1763534/episodes

www.buzzsprout.com

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Mark Fabian @markfabian.bsky.social · Feb 26

Friends, foes, family:

I have a popular booking coming out on April 10 - Beyond Happy: How to rethink happiness and find fulfilment. It's the book I wish existed when I was 18. I couldn't find it in 20 years of searching, so I went and wrote it.

A video brief:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XPZ...

Beyond Happy: How to rethink happiness and find fulfilment

YouTube video by M. Fabian Education

www.youtube.com

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Mark Fabian @markfabian.bsky.social · 10h

Just saw an advertisement with Chris Rock spruiking for a gambling company and I have never lost all respect and admiration for a person faster.

Imagining being a multi-millionaire hall of famer and still saying yes to advertising life-ruining crap for £. Bleak.

Reposted by Mark Fabian

Alex Hanna-ween @alexhanna.bsky.social · 21h

I'm not an economist but seems worrying that the whole US economy is seven companies in a trenchcoat, passing the same $20 up and down

Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 23h

NVIDIA and OpenAi:

Concerns that their “increasingly complex and interconnected web of business transactions is artificially propping up the trillion-dollar AI boom.“

@bloomberg.com $NVDA 👀
www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

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Reposted by Mark Fabian

Rafe Meager (they/them) @economeager.bsky.social · 1d

(1) banger
(2) i wish non-economists would realise just how much time each economics paper takes to write (because of our norms about how thorough each paper has to be)

Seema Jayachandran @seema.bsky.social · 1d

We just spent 6 months to add 1 figure to this paper. Some people said, "Couples aren't prioritizing men's careers. Men just have better earnings opportunities when moving."

Earnings effects of moves for couples on the left, singles on the right. Negligible gap between single men and women.

Event study coefficients that show that men's earnings rise more than women's among couples following a cross-commuting zone move (left panels). The pattern is muted or reverses among single men and single women (right panels).

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Reposted by Mark Fabian

Jean-François Bonnefon @jfbonnefon.bsky.social · 1d

Taylor Swift singing about peer review

It's actually sweet
All the time you've spent on me
It's honestly wild
All the effort you've put in
It's actually romantic
Stop talking dirty to me
It sounded nasty, but it
Feels like you're flirting with me

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Mark Fabian @markfabian.bsky.social · 2d

I would have thought basically everywhere once you get past coursework (often recorded), and that is also only during semester. Seminars and supervision meetings are often online.

The better the place the less time you get with your glamorous supervisor, so things shouldn't get more in person.

Reposted by Mark Fabian

Mark Chadbourn @chadbourn.bsky.social · 2d

Anyone remember Reform promising to go into their new councils with DOGE-style units to slash “waste” and stop taxes from rising? Yeah, it went exactly as you’d expect if you put people in charge who have no idea how anything works.

Reform poised to raise Kent council tax as Musk-inspired attack on costs falters
ANNA GROSS - KENT
Kent's local authority will probably raise council tax rates next year as Reform UK strugglesto find big savings under an Elon Musk-inspired cost-cutting drive.
Kent was one of 10 councils that Nigel Farage's rightwing populist party seized in a swath of local election victories in May. He vowed to save "a lot of money" by abolishing "wasteful" spending.
But Diane Morton, Reform's cabinet member for adult social care on Kent county council, told the Financial Times that services were already "down to the bare bones".
"We've got more demand than ever before and it's growing." she said, stressing she did not believe access to those services should be limited. "We just want more money." As with many local
authorities in England, the bulk of declined to say whether council tax Kent's budget went on adult and chil-
would be raised but other Reform coun-
dren's social care, as well as on children cillors said they wanted to avoid hitting
with special educational needs, which the full 5 percent.
together accounted for about 50 per
Reform's experience highlights some
cent of its £2.5bn annual expenditure.
of the obstacles it may face in national
All councils have a legal duty to bal-
government if it won the next general
ance their books and will set next year's
election and pursued its pledge to slash
budgets in February or March. Ahead of taxes and spending. "Everyone thought
that, most councils in England are we d come in and there were going to be
expected to increase council tax by 5 per
these huge costs we could cut away but
cent, the maximum allowed.
there just aren't," said a third senior
"I think it's going to be 5 per cent,"
Reform cabinet member in Kent.
Morton said of where Kent would land
Farage has set up a Reform Depart-
on tax rises, adding that every 1 per cent ment of Government Efficiency team -
increase equated to an extra E10mn.
modelled on Musk's "Doge" i…

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Reposted by Mark Fabian

John Oxley @joxley.jmoxley.co.uk · 5d

GDPR is a great example of the sort of regulation which (I) creates a bunch of effort for people who want to comply (ii) gets innocently over-zealously deployed (III) becomes deployed as an excuse for orgs not to do things they don't want to and (iv)is fairly easily disregarded by those who want to.

Nicola @scrapegroat.bsky.social · 5d

Also actually I am sick of how much you hear about GDPR when absolutely every fucker signs you up to their email list by default no matter how careful you are not to opt in.

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Mark Fabian @markfabian.bsky.social · 7d

I don't see this talked about enough. My colleagues in machine learning think this is where the value is in the technology, yet the media & investor ecosystem is flooded with chatbot-related content.

This application of ML is not an environmental disaster either.

www.nytimes.com/2025/09/30/t...

Reposted by Mark Fabian

Brett "Solidarity 2025" Banditelli @banditelli.org · Jan 24

At a time where it feels like we're losing, we need to remember our victories that not only have happened in the past, but continue to exist today.

Thus I give you, California Condor 926 of the SoCal flock.

Great grandchild of Condor # 1.

We as humanity can still do good things.

#birds

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Mark Fabian @markfabian.bsky.social · 8d

Also Seluna's Sacrifice

Mark Fabian @markfabian.bsky.social · 8d

Adding to things people have already mentioned (especially Disco Elysium):
- Horizon Zero Dawn
- The Stanley Parable
- Mass Effect

Honourable mentions:
- Death Stranding
- Detroit: Become Human
- Persona 5 for 'cool' aesthetics and the weird nostalgia it generates for an adolescence you never had.

Mark Fabian @markfabian.bsky.social · 8d

The date note is interesting. What subset of sectors is data being collected on in Belgium?

Reposted by Mark Fabian

Jo Kershaw @mthrjo.bsky.social · 8d

Yes - remember Kemi complaining about the archetypal Lib Dem council candidate in rural areas being “a nice man who helps repair the local church roof” and isn’t very ideologically driven. Nice, well off, community minded people in villages who aren’t obsessed with politics used to be default Tories

Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 8d

If anything this is worse for the Conservatives, whose distaste for the managers, professionals, local worthies and (shiver) yuppies who used to vote for them led them to shedding sixty-odd wealthy seats to the Lib Dems. Like a divorced dad shredding his nice suits. 7/n

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Reposted by Mark Fabian

Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 8d

Piece is here:

benansell.substack.com/p/british-po...

British Politics' Midlife Crisis

Why British Parties Can't Make Peace with Their Actual Voters

benansell.substack.com

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Mark Fabian @markfabian.bsky.social · 8d

Thanks! I've now ordered both.

Mark Fabian @markfabian.bsky.social · 9d

Thank you!

Mark Fabian @markfabian.bsky.social · 9d

I remember once reading a series of tweets where someone was reminiscing, and it sort of went:

You dance all night to spite them, those that hate you.

You visit your best friend in hospital. He's dead 3 days later.

You turn 23.

Mark Fabian @markfabian.bsky.social · 9d

Are there any good biographies or qualitative studies of the AIDs epidemic from the 80s? Ideally from the perspective of the LGBTQ community?

Whenever I read glimpses of it it sounds so heartrending and I want to know how people came back from that, especially people who were so young.

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Reposted by Mark Fabian

Rafe Meager (they/them) @economeager.bsky.social · 9d

correct. what klein means is, i am scared to draw the line, because then i will have to grieve the loss of who i thought i was and what i thought other people were.

Michael Hobbes @michaelhobbes.bsky.social · 9d

"I don't get to draw the line" — you are a wildly influential journalist with an audience of millions, you absolutely do get to draw the line!

John M. Cunningham @jmcunning.bsky.social · 9d

IMO, the most revealing part is Klein wrestling with the question of where "the line" is (between acceptable and unacceptable politics). Realizing that what he considered past the line is now the GOP mainstream doesn't make him commit harder to fighting it. He wonders if he needs to move the line.

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Mark Fabian @markfabian.bsky.social · 9d

OMG when he says "No I mean: welcome to Black America" that was the guillotine. Shiiiiiiiiiiiiit.

No metaphor suffices for how hard Klein got the veil of comforting falsehoods torn from him there. I hope so anyway. If that moment doesn't make you question your worldview I don't know what can.

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Mark Fabian @markfabian.bsky.social · 9d

Yeah no doubt but it has to be trained on something in the first place, right?

I had this mild brain fizzle when I thought "maybe I could get AI to write me LinkedIn posts for my blog updates" and then another part of my brain was like "[SLAP!] STFU fool we aren't fake like that". It was intense.

Mark Fabian @markfabian.bsky.social · 9d

Why do LinkedIn posts have such a distinct aesthetic?

The use of bold and emojis.

The breathless questions and inspiring personal stories.

Everything feeling like a bit of a half baked op ed.

How did this evolve as a style? I think it's a bit cringe but it clearly slaps for a lot of people.

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Mark Fabian @markfabian.bsky.social · 9d

Free speech is the wrong framework for thinking about hard conversations, political or otherwise. When everyone is a bit scared, hurt, and confused, we need collaborative dialogue, not antagonistic debate, and that is mostly a matter of listening, not speaking.

substack.com/home/post/p-...

Free speech is pointless if nobody is listening

No rights without duties

substack.com

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Mark Fabian @markfabian.bsky.social · 10d

Is this a doom loop where everyone gets recommended radicalising political content because it tends to generate 'engagement' and that's what the algorithms are optimised for? It's scary.

I'm out here playing videogames and reading permaculture blogs - don't send me blowhards and trolls!

Mark Fabian @markfabian.bsky.social · 10d

This is like when my YouTube account that was exclusively for Street Fighter videogame content starting recommending me mysogyny/manosphere videos. At least YouTube has a 'not interested' and 'don't recommend channel' option.