Will Royce

Researcher. Fan of the welfare state. See also

[Will Royce @willroyce_]

I'm starting a newsletter (ik, ik) on the administration of the welfare state. It's called Makeshift Arrangements, after my favorite Frances Perkins quote. First full piece out tomorrow.

Free to subscribe, and hey, you can always just unsubscribe later. https://t.co/Ez7wZsjEQi

[Will Royce @willroyce_]

Major Claude outage, bad sign for Alex Bores

[Will Royce @willroyce_]

If you're in line, please get out of line, because I would like to see the results

[DC Board of Elections @Vote4DC]

Election results release update: Election results will be available on https://t.co/b4CLvSYuWD after all voters in line at 8 pm have cast their ballots. Check back here for updates! #vote4dc

[Will Royce @willroyce_]

@LeePrevost @_carlbeijer @MattBruenig The book was published in 2022 and the op-ed I’m referencing is from December 2025. The op-ed was by Gramm and John Early, who was also a co-author on the book. The op-ed was grossly wrong at the time of publishing. So I’m skeptical of the book. https://t.co/DUO6zle4Zg

[Will Royce @willroyce_]

@LeePrevost @_carlbeijer @MattBruenig I haven’t read the book, but the WSJ op-ed I wrote about in the post was co-authored by Phil Gramm. He consistently overcounts benefits and makes elementary errors. Take the CTC, for example:

[Will Royce @willroyce_]

@_carlbeijer @LeePrevost @MattBruenig He's referencing Phil Gramm's (obviously wrong) math https://t.co/MtBCo6IyMc

[Will Royce @willroyce_]

@LeePrevost @MattBruenig Gramm is wrong https://t.co/MtBCo6IyMc

[Will Royce @willroyce_]

Ok clanker 🤣🤣😂😂😂

[OpenAI @OpenAI]

Today, we share a breakthrough on the planar unit distance problem, a famous open question first posed by Paul Erdős in 1946.

For nearly 80 years, mathematicians believed the best possible solutions looked roughly like square grids.

An OpenAI model has now disproved that belief, discovering an entirely new family of constructions that performs better.

This marks the first time AI has autonomously solved a prominent open problem central to a field of mathematics.

[Will Royce @willroyce_]

All three of the letters here appear to be AI generated, per @pangram.

Have to imagine papers are receiving a lot of AI generated letters these days. Would be interested to see if/how they try to detect and weed them out.

[Nicholas Kristof @NickKristof]

Letters to the editor in @nytopinion about my column on sexual assaults of Palestinians: https://t.co/LYPlQRFMHz

[Will Royce @willroyce_]

@DarkEnergyBand @PEWilliams_ From what I can tell it seems more likely that they're running automated arbitrage (with a likely flawed algorithm/method) than mass buying for AI training?

[Will Royce @willroyce_]

@DarkEnergyBand @PEWilliams_ For the books that they bought, are the next lowest-priced copies available online much higher than what you sold them for? Seems to be a common theme for sellers in the Amazon Sellers threads, even though they often say that the next lowest price is completely unrealistic.

[Will Royce @willroyce_]

@RedOctoberJuls @PEWilliams_ Huh. Fascinating

[Will Royce @willroyce_]

@RedOctoberJuls @PEWilliams_ Multiple sellers said the books bought could be seen as underpriced, and one of them mentioned a first name that matches one of the Canadian company's co-founders. Nothing definitive of course, I could definitely be wrong! Just thought it pointed in that company's direction.

[Will Royce @willroyce_]

@PEWilliams_ My best guess is it's this Canadian company that "uses proprietary software to list and price books" across platforms. A "Zoom Books US Operations Corp" was incorporated last week in OH—suggests subsidiary of foreign company? May be wrong. Not sure what the Henderson NV angle is.

[Will Royce @willroyce_]

@JoshuaTMcCabe Great book

[Will Royce @willroyce_]

What so a guy's not allowed to have a pet with a short name?

[Will Royce @willroyce_]

In the Louis Theroux manosphere doc, it’s quite striking how all of the subjects, who are clearly virulent misogynists, insist that they love women

[Scarlett Maguire @Scarlett__Mag]

Strikingly, young women are *a lot* more negative about the opposite gender than young men.

✴️U30 women are 3x as likely to hold a negative view of young men than the other way around

✴️Just 35% of u25 women hold a positive view, only 11% a very positive view

[Will Royce @willroyce_]

The FEC really needs to restructure individual contributions data such that people stop double-counting donations made through Joint Fundraising Committees. Way too common

[Matt Bruenig @MattBruenig]

Cory Booker's new tax plan provides the most benefits to people who have a $587,000 household income.

[Jeff Stein @jstein_star]

Tonight Trump said the White House "will give" ~half of all American workers matching retirement contributions of up to $1,000/year

“We will match your contribution with up to $1,000 each year,” Trump said

A WH official tells me what is being proposed is unilaterally expanding eligibility for a limited means-tested account cut off for those earning more than $20.5K/year

Separately the WH may also explore additional legislation to submit to Congress, the official says

[James Medlock @jdcmedlock]

It's silly to pretend like fiscal policy doesn't exist or won't respond to a crisis, but it's even sillier to not start working on fixing up our fiscal infrastructure right now, when we can see labor market disruptions coming from a mile away.