Nathan

🏳️‍🌈🇹🇹🇦🇺🇧🇧 | He/him/his
I occasionally talk politics, policy and research

[solo 💽 @souloradio]

pulled up to popeyes seven minutes after they opened

[big-goonks @Stefanaj1234]

Tbh it doe really matter what you say. Nothing you can say gonna fix anything but if you can manage to convey that you recognize they're going thru a difficult time and you care about them, you're on the right path.

[Nathan @RetIntellectual]

Gonna see if I could get permission to do research on the proliferation of strip malls and "Shops of...." and what that means for the structure of the economy and how (financial) capital is behaving.

[campbell g @rodeoman]

Odysseus leaving every island they visit

[Samvastatin @samneuer15]

This is elite, upper dimension cinematography

[hotsexymamayepa💋 @lotoscuffs_]

#foodforthought

[Cucumber Bro 🍃✨ @vanitaaaa_]

I promise you bigotry is not ‘dying out with old people’. There’s sooooo many young people who are homophobic, racist, violently sexist, intolerant of other people’s religious beliefs, classist etc 😭😭😭 it’s so scary outside irl lmao

[Nathan @RetIntellectual]

An AI data centre for AI-based computation we (1) don't need and (2) likely won't have access to. As opposed to a storage-based data centre holding both our own government data and that of other CARICOM countries. They are going to hold this up as some boon when it is not

[Nathan @RetIntellectual]

It's also funny to hear people advocating for Dasani (owned by Coca-Cola...a foreign company) while also watching the recent news regarding Nestle...

This is all about value judgement at the end of the day, but value judgement only goes so far

[Nathan @RetIntellectual]

Boycotts against Blue Waters in supermarkets (if they even exist) are strange because it isn't changing future demand. You're 'hurting' the supermarket more than the Blue Waters Company itself. Given that restaurants and other retailers have said they aren't dropping them /1

[Nathan @RetIntellectual]

It's easy to see how these 'boycotts' would ultimately fizzle away because the places where the company get's its real money have said they're remaining committed to the company and its products.

[Nathan @RetIntellectual]

Instead of using state-owned enterprises as tools of a much larger industrial policy, they're using them to settle petty squabbles. It's really sad to watch this slow train wreck while being in one of the train cars.

[kira 👾 @kirawontmiss]

this is what it feels like every time you tap the earbud twice to change the song

[Nathan @RetIntellectual]

The fact that that party doesn't even have a website and relies almost exclusively on Facebook is a missed opportunity to signal to people that you're genuinely serious. So if people want to familiarise themselves with your platform, they have to dig through Facebook posts?

[Nathan @RetIntellectual]

@dandandanitup The absence of economic planning or at the very least an industrial policy is becoming more and more evident. If the gov't were serious, the energy and noise they made for that "Global Hub Blueprint" could have been spent on clearly articulating they'd move from A to B.

[Jesús Fernández-Villaverde @JesusFerna7026]

I have always had a fondness for Trinidad and Tobago. Which other country has ever had an economic historian, let alone someone as good as Eric Williams, as prime minister?

Williams would have been fascinated by Trinidad and Tobago’s recent demographic history, which is also a perfect example of what is happening across the Caribbean as a whole.

Trinidad and Tobago’s total fertility rate (TFR) fell below 2.1 (roughly its replacement rate) in 1994. After hovering around 1.7 to 1.8 for a decade, the TFR began to decline sharply around 2014 and reached 1.04 in 2024, lower than Japan’s. Since 2022, deaths have exceeded births, resulting in negative natural population growth (accurate data on net migration are harder to obtain).

Trinidad and Tobago thus illustrates a point I often emphasize: it takes between 25 and 30 years to go from a sustained drop below 2.1 to negative natural population growth (here, 28 years). This is important because it shows that demographics induce low-frequency movements that are easy to miss or to misread.

As I mentioned above, Trinidad and Tobago is representative of many countries in the region. Although the data are not great, other countries like Jamaica, Barbados, or the Bahamas are around 1.00, or perhaps already below.

In another post, I noted that Haiti lags behind (although the data are totally useless), but even the Dominican Republic and, for its own idiosyncratic reasons, Cuba are not far behind, both already well below the replacement rate.

Demographic change creates its own challenges for small island nations already facing economic headwinds and climate change.

One last thing. Read Eric Williams. “Capitalism and Slavery” (1944) came out of his Oxford thesis and still, eighty years on, forces the field to argue on his terms. You do not have to buy the whole thesis (I do not, and neither does most of the later cliometric work) to see that. Reframing a question is harder than answering it.

Which brings the uncomfortable part. Williams was a better economic historian than prime minister. Two decades running Trinidad and Tobago left a much more mixed legacy than that one book. So perhaps academics should not be politicians after all!

P.S. Trinidad and Tobago has not reported TFR since 2019, but it has reported total population and births. I have reconstructed the implied TFR myself for 2020 to 2024. The reconstruction is likely precise (this is a relatively easy exercise), but minor differences may emerge when the complete microdata are released.

[Blackish Press @blackishpress]

August Alsina fires back at Young Thug's past comments about LGBTQ men, saying they should be focusing on bigger things

"The older I get, I'm not into convincing people that they stupid no more. Your life will show you that. Life results will show you that. But the older I get, at the same time, I am into simply saying, that's stupid. Like, that's a dumbass take. I don't even know why this shit would even be a conversation. You think about the idea that you're saying that you don't respect somebody because they gay, or whatever, because they turned gay or whatever. Why is this shit on your mind as a man who just got out of jail by the fucking grace of God? Why?

The older I get, it's so much shit you could be talking about, but this is the shit that's on your mind. That tells me way more than I need to know about you. Like, that shit got y'all brain in a chokehold that you will randomly, nobody even got to be talking about nothing, no gay shit, that shit just come up out you, out your mouth, because it's on your mind. And like, when you talk about respect, I respect who can pay they own bills. I'm not crying, calling, complaining. I don't got to call no other celebrity, for my bail money. I got me. That's what I respect.

[They're] talking about what they respect and what they don't respect. Like, what is we talking about? Talk about something beneficial, bro. I don't know what's wrong with you.

[Jeniece @jeniece_s]

💙 OUR FOOD BANK IS OPEN! 💙

If you or your family need a little assistance, feel free to visit my office and take items from our shelves. In addition to food, we also have clothing, toys, and stationery available.

[Nathan @RetIntellectual]

@jphillipspencer You have a time stamp on parlview that I can see? Thanks in advance

[𝒮 🇹🇹🏝️ @mcintosh_sian]

Guys we have a Trini Darts Team and apparently they getting on real bad!!
I never knew this was even a team, love this!
🎯🇹🇹🔥