Last day of links for now. I’ll be on a bus tomorrow for about eight hours from 3PM to 11PM, so I’ll make up for lost time and content then.

Apparently the Inception approach to kidnapping negotiations is deeply flawed - A fun Atlantic article about decision theory and economics behind hostage negotiations and ransoming. It’d be really cool to get into some theory here but the article is great as-is.

Obama’s shrinking government - Clearly there’s some confounding variables here since Obama is clearly not the one primarily responsible for shrinking state governments; in addition, macroeconomic trends play a huge role in attenuating any potential growth in the federal government. Still, it’s an interesting chart, albeit pretty deeply flawed.

Nate Silver revisits if and why Obama is more popular than the “fundamentals” should indicate - I’ve always been a big fan of Nate Silver’s work, and his earlier posts on Fivethirtyeight about how he does his modeling have guided my own modeling work in other fields. It’s always tough to admit flaws in your work, and here he does so with grace.