Weekly Record

We continue with our weekly summary by Claude of the prior week's blog postings:

October 25, 2026

Another Problem to Solve - Part 2 – From the Daily Californian: UC Berkeley mathematician and Fields Medalist Richard Borcherds reacts to OpenAI's claimed solution to the Navier-Stokes problem, saying AI already outdoes beginning grad students at math and arrived about a decade sooner than he expected. The blogger ties it to his October 21 post on UCLA's Terence Tao.

Straws in the Wind - Part 505 – From the Brown Daily Herald: Brown doesn't use third-party AI-detection tools on admissions essays because of accuracy concerns, instead watching for "dramatic inconsistencies" and following the Common App's AI policy. No added comment.

More are eligible – From the Daily Bruin: half-time-or-more students at UC, CSU and community colleges now automatically meet some CalFresh eligibility requirements, with benefits up to $306 a month; students on larger meal plans stay ineligible, and UC CalFresh participation has more than quadrupled in 15 years. No added comment.

Weekly Record – The blog's weekly recap of the October 18–24 postings, prepared by Claude at the blogger's request; he notes the weekly summaries will continue.

October 26, 2026

Side by Side (Active Employees) – Using UCnet data, compares 2026 and 2027 UC health premiums for active employees across salary tiers, with increases ranging from 9.5% to 29.3% depending on plan and tier. The blogger contrasts this with 3–4% general inflation: "Enough said."

Side by Side (Non-Medicare Emeriti/Retirees) – UCnet comparison of 2026 vs. 2027 premiums for retirees not yet on Medicare. The blogger finds a more mixed picture than for actives, with some decreases or freezes, and notes most in this group likely retired before 65.

Side by Side (Emeriti/Retirees - All in Medicare) – UCnet comparison of 2026 vs. 2027 premiums for all-Medicare retiree households. The blogger notes the increases vary (some are zero) and that federal Medicare premiums may also be rising.

Side by Wide (Medicare-Eligible – One or More Family Members Not Medicare-Eligible) – UCnet premium tables for mixed Medicare/non-Medicare retiree families. The blogger observes larger increases when some family members aren't on Medicare, with no explanation offered and no data on how many people fall in each category.

Recommended – The blogger recommends visiting the state privacy site privacy.ca.gov, saying he's unsure how effective it will be but it's worth a try.

Straws in the Wind - Part 506 – From the Yale Daily News: Yale College is drawing on reserves for the first time in four years to cover $26 million in endowment-tax costs after the tax rose more than fivefold in July. No added comment.

Where the money is - Part 3 – From the Daily Bruin: the UCLA-affiliated Terasaki Institute and partners won up to $19.8 million from ARPA-H for "Prometheus," a project to bioengineer functional livers. No added comment.

October 27, 2026

Cash in the Bank – Drawing on a Legislative Analyst's Office report, explains that California's cash balance is about $90 billion, down from a 2024 peak over $100 billion, with much of it in special funds; the LAO advises treating cash borrowing as a last resort. The blogger stresses that much of the cash is earmarked.

Straws in the Wind - Part 507 – From the Daily Pennsylvanian: emeritus Penn professor Carolyn Marvin was arrested after repeatedly blocking an Uber Eats delivery robot, calling it a First Amendment protest. No added comment.

No Hastings - Part 3 – From the San Francisco Chronicle: the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the Hastings descendants' challenge to removing Serranus Hastings's name from UC's San Francisco law school. The blogger says this "appears to be the end of the line."

October 28, 2026

Will Harvard Continue to Lead the Charge? - Part 208 – From the Harvard Crimson: Harvard Law School raised a record $135 million in FY2026, boosted by a $31.4 million gift from Morgan Chu, up from about $73 million the prior year. No added comment.

Wayback – Citing an essay in The Atlantic, the blogger laments that some news publishers are blocking the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine to thwart AI training, noting he relies on it to preserve Regents meetings and UCLA budget documents and that the public record is what suffers.

Straws in the Wind - Part 508 – From the Chronicle of Higher Education: the 2025 Survey of Earned Doctorates shows humanities PhDs down about 20% since 2015, social sciences down about 3%, and total doctorates up 8%. No added comment.

Slipping – Charts and a link to an EdSource story reporting that the math failure rate among UC freshmen has doubled. No added comment.

Trellix Departing - CrowdStrike Arriving – Reprints a UCLA memo announcing that Trellix endpoint security will be retired by May 2027 in favor of CrowdStrike, with a recap of earlier faculty and Senate privacy and governance objections. The blogger highlights the memo's assurance that CrowdStrike is not meant to monitor work and points to older posts on the dispute.

October 29, 2026

Expansion – From the Los Angeles Times: UCLA Health is expanding amid ER crowding, may need up to 400 more beds, and could acquire another hospital. The blogger argues the growth also strengthens UCLA's bargaining position with the region's few big insurers.

Straws in the Wind - Part 509 – From Inside Higher Ed: the DOJ found Ohio State's medical school discriminated in admissions, treating a socioeconomic scale developed at UC Davis's medical school as a proxy for race. No added comment.

Market Opportunity – Shows a Facebook ad pitching affluent parents with the claim that SAT scores no longer matter for UCLA and Berkeley admissions. The blogger mocks the come-on of a free intro followed by a fee.

Out – From Inside Higher Ed: Dartmouth Provost Santiago Schnell resigned after a faculty committee found he used AI to meaningfully alter his writing. No added comment.

October 30, 2026

The $90 Zero – Shows a mailing the blogger received from Navitus, the UC retiree pharmacy benefit manager, apparently involving a $90 vs. $0 cost figure. His only comment: "What a difference a zero can make!" NOTE: Claude seems to have missed the point - possibly because it couldn't read the image of the mailing. The mailing from Navitus showed a correction changing the co-pay from $10 to $100; the added zero imposed a $90 cost.

Straws in the Wind - Part 510 (Les Jeux Sont Fait) – From Inside Higher Ed: prediction market Kalshi plans to let users bet on admission rates at 22 selective schools, including UCLA and UC Berkeley, with admissions staff barred from trading. No added comment.

The Plan – Citing LA Metro, describes the proposed Sepulveda Transit Corridor rail line and lists scoping meetings, with public comments due November 18. The blogger wryly frames it as something that will happen "someday."

October 31, 2026

No Sharing – From the Daily Bruin: UCLA has a new review process restricting research-data sharing with "countries of concern" under DOJ and NIH rules. No added comment.

Straws in the Wind - Part 511 – From the Cornell Daily Sun: FIRE urged President Kotlikoff to lift Cornell's ban on Interfraternity Council social events, calling it guilt by association that violates freedom of association. No added comment.

Our Annual Halloween Offering – The blogger's yearly Halloween pick: a roughly half-hour, slowly building horror video, with a joking request that medically minded readers not point out the brain has no internal pain receptors.

AI Purchase Train Bypasses Academic Senate – Reposts an October 30 letter from Academic Council Chair Susannah Scott to President Milliken and COO Nava objecting to minimal Senate consultation on a proposed systemwide OpenAI purchase and asking that it not be finalized yet. No added comment beyond the letter and source link.

Total posts for the week: 30

If our scary Halloween offering yesterday was too much for you, here's a shorter one

Or direct to https://ia600406.us.archive.org/14/items/newsom-briefings-oct.-1-2026/Halloween%20Larry%20David.mp4.

Did you fall back?

Yes, you were supposed to fall back (set your clock back one hour) early this morning to go back to standard time. And it's also time for grumbling about why we have to change the clock. Here is a bit of AI on the current status of the debate:

Trump's Push for Permanent Daylight Saving Time

• The Legislative Status: The House of Representatives passed the Sunshine Protection Act (H.R. 139) by a wide bipartisan margin in July 2026, sending it to the Senate.

• Senate Resistance: The bill has stalled in the Senate as of late October 2026, with several senators—led by opponents like Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and lawmakers from northern states—blocking or expressing skepticism over the measure due to concerns about very late winter sunrises (such as children commuting or going to school in the dark).

• Trump's Arguments: Trump has urged the Senate to pass the bill via social media (including Truth Social), arguing that Americans are tired of changing clocks twice a year, that evening sunlight is preferable, and that more afternoon light benefits safety and recreation.

• Current Law: Permanent daylight saving time is not yet law. The country continues to follow standard federally mandated clock changes, with daylight saving time ending and clocks "falling back" an hour.

Some readers may also recall voting several years ago on a California proposition that seemed to suggest ending clock changing. So we present our semi-annual video (from 2022 when masks were still required at UCLA) on the mysteries of time (standard, daylight, and zones):

https://archive.org/details/mitchell-time-edited

Our Annual Halloween Offering

You'll need about half an hour for this slowly building scare:

https://dn800202.us.archive.org/0/items/ucla-rehab-strength-training/Earwig.mp4 

We again remind the medically adept not to let me know that the brain doesn't have internal pain receptors.

Straws in the Wind - Part 508

From the Chronicle of Higher Education: ...The Survey of Earned Doctorates [is] an annual survey by the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics on research doctorate recipients at American institutions... The 2025 survey found that the number of doctorates earned in the humanities dropped 20 percent since 2015, while the number of doctorates earned in the social sciences saw a smaller decline of 3 percent. Over all, the number of doctorates increased by 8 percent. This survey also found that these two disciplinary areas are among the longest doctorates to complete...

Full story at https://www.chronicle.com/article/humanities-dissertations-have-declined-far-more-steeply-than-those-in-the-social-sciences-report-finds.

Wayback

We have in the past supported the non-profit Internet Archive and its Wayback Machine as a means of preservation of the historical record. As blog readers will know, we preserve UC Regents meetings, UCLA budget files, and other documents that might otherwise disappear. Unfortunately, some news publishers are limiting access to the Wayback Machine, hoping to prevent AI companies from using their articles, even as their own journalists use it to develop their stories. 

From The Atlantic: ...People all over the world use the Wayback Machine all the time. What began as an effort to preserve the web has become an essential tool for journalists, researchers, historians, and the broader public.

Yet the future of this tool has become extremely vulnerable. The New York Times is now blocking the Internet Archive’s ability to preserve its articles. The Guardian has restricted our access to its published articles and removed articles from some of the Wayback Machine’s interfaces. USA Today and a growing number of other news organizations have also placed barriers in the path of web archivists (even, yes, The Atlantic). As of May 2026, Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab had identified more than 340 local-news sites that were limiting the Internet Archive’s ability to preserve their journalism.

The publishers taking these steps have all pointed to one reason: the unauthorized use of their work by AI companies to train large language models. They complain that our library serves as a back door around paywalls, licensing negotiations, and technical restrictions. The Times has said that it is blocking us because the Wayback Machine allegedly provides “unfettered access” to its work. But this fear-based approach does not take into account that the Internet Archive is taking steps to prevent AI companies from scraping the materials we preserve.

I understand why publishers are angry. Journalism is expensive. Reporting requires skilled people, time, courage, legal support, and institutions willing to withstand pressure. Journalists have watched advertising revenue disappear and subscription growth slow while technology companies build enormously profitable products using material created by others. Publishers have every right to challenge commercial businesses that they believe are inappropriately exploiting their work.

But blocking a nonprofit library is the wrong response to this problem. Impeding the Wayback Machine’s preservation work will not prevent powerful AI companies from gathering training data. It will certainly not restore the advertising-based business model that supported newspapers in the 20th century, a business model that has long since collapsed. What it will do is prevent historians, researchers, courts, ordinary readers—and, most ironic, journalists themselves—from consulting an accurate record of what once appeared on the web. It is difficult to quantify the scale of what we stand to lose. A continuous record of web activity is an enormously powerful accountability tool, especially at a time when seeking the truth and reporting it has become ever more complicated and the informational environment is growing only more complex...

Full essay at https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/10/blocking-internet-archive-will-not-stop-ai/689065/.

Recommended

I don't know how effective this will turn out to be but it is worthwhile trying:

https://privacy.ca.gov/ 

Weekly Record

Yours truly asked Claude to prepare a summary of all the blog postings here for last week (week ending yesterday). Here it is (below). We will continue weekly summaries:

Here is the summary of your blog postings for the week of October 18–24, 2026, in the order they were posted each day:

October 18, 2026

Tempest in a Teapot - It Continues – Follows up on earlier posts with a Daily Bruin editorial about whistleblower and retaliation complaints filed by seven current and former employees against UCLA Vice Chancellor for Strategic Communications Mary Osako, and the editorial’s call for UCLA to explain why she remains in her post. You note that “we continue to wait.”

Straws in the Wind - Part 498 – From the Daily Princetonian: Princeton is weighing a reorganization of its Center on Science and Technology as part of wider budget cuts that followed the 2025 suspension of federal research grants.

Opening Soon on a Computer Near You! – Alerts readers that UC Open Enrollment opens Friday. Per the Academic Senate newsletter, overall health insurance costs will rise 9.5% in 2027, and Health Net, administrator of the Blue & Gold HMO, is leaving California, though that won’t affect 2027 enrollment.

October 19, 2026

Nine Minute Limit: Article and Song – A Daily Californian story on a study (coauthored by UC Berkeley’s Brian Christian, with UCLA’s Rachit Dubey as principal investigator) finding that about 10 minutes of AI help reduces people’s accuracy and persistence on problems once the AI is taken away. Includes a Gemini-composed folk song about the findings.

Straws in the Wind - Part 499 – From ABC News: a judge in the Cornell rape case sealed some filings after a Marine who shares a defendant’s name received threats, condemning the online “vigilantism.”

Buy Now, Tell Later – Daily Bruin report that UC bought at least 15 Westwood commercial properties (about $50 million) with few details on plans beyond classrooms and grad housing. You add that we’re still wondering about UCLA’s purchase of the former Catholic college campus in Palos Verdes.

Night Owls Beware – Santa Monica Mirror notice of overnight Caltrans lane, ramp and connector closures on the 405 through the Sepulveda Pass, Oct. 19–23, 9 p.m. to 6 a.m.

October 20, 2026

Stanford as the next Cornell – A California Post story about a Stanford Jane Doe who says she was raped in her dorm and criticizes the university for letting her attacker finish his degree. Stanford says outside arbitrators set sanctions; you note a Stanford Daily follow-up suggesting the university’s role is less passive than that.

Strikes and Protests – Points readers to Cornell ILR’s “Labor Action Tracker,” which lists 12 UC strikes over about six years, with a caution that its maps may be inaccurate.

Straws in the Wind - Part 500 – From Inside Higher Ed: philosophy departments (including Purdue, UIC and Georgia Tech) are hiring AI-focused philosophers despite an otherwise bleak humanities job market.

Will Harvard Continue to Lead the Charge? - Part 207 – Three Harvard Crimson items: Harvard’s endowment grew to nearly $68 billion on a ~27% return; current-use gifts hit a record $684 million; and federal research revenue fell nearly 20%.

Swap – Daily Bruin story on ClassSwap, a platform built by a UCLA student to help students trade class sections, with his mother handling its social media. Your note: “Mom is onboard.”

Campaign – Notes that UCLA appears to have launched a “True Bruin” social media campaign featuring faculty, with a link to one clip; the Facebook clips seem to vanish after a day or so.

October 21, 2026

A new problem to solve – New York Times piece on UCLA mathematician Terence Tao and the upheaval in mathematics after OpenAI announced a solution to the Navier-Stokes problem and released 350+ findings across the field.

Straws in the Wind - Part 501 – Inside Higher Ed on an AAMC analysis showing NIH awarded nearly 12% fewer grants in FY2026 than the year before Trump took office, partly due to up-front funding of multiyear grants.

Where the money is - Part 2 – Daily Californian: four Lawrence Berkeley Lab researchers received $875,000 DOE Early Career awards for AI research in physics, biology and chemistry.

October 22, 2026

Olympics – Chancellor Frenk’s announcement of 2028.ucla.edu, UCLA’s hub for its role as the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Village.

Parallel Blogs / Subscribing / Song – Explains that the blog runs in parallel at the original UCLA Faculty Association site and this new site, how to subscribe via Blogtrottr, and includes a Gemini-written song about the blog.

Straws in the Wind - Part 502 – Chronicle of Higher Education on the AI cheating-and-detection “arms race,” with Ole Miss’s Marc Watkins arguing surveillance mainly catches students without the resources to evade it.

Remote – Chronicle interview with economists Natalia Emanuel and Emma Harrington, authors of In Person, on the hidden costs of remote work and why in-person collaboration matters in academia.

October 23, 2026

Cautionary Note for UC Emeriti/Retirees – Warns LA County Medicare-eligible retirees that the UCLA Medicare Advantage Plan being mailed out is NOT one of UC’s retiree health options, and enrolling in it would cause problems.

Straws in the Wind - Part 503 – Cornell Daily Sun: Cornell canceled its homecoming drone and laser show because of Ithaca’s moratorium on student event permits, imposed amid the fallout from the Chi Phi rape lawsuit.

Crossing Jonathan – LA Times story on UCLA law student Jonathan Hale and about 150 volunteers painting unauthorized crosswalks at dangerous LA intersections.

October 24, 2026

Mission Critical – Daily Californian: UC Berkeley found $28 million in potential savings by cutting work that isn’t “mission-critical,” a term the campus hasn’t clearly defined.

Straws in the Wind - Part 504 – The Dartmouth on an Oct. 8 AI listening session, closed to the press, that drew about 380 people, held as the college reviews the provost’s alleged AI use in his writing.

Limited Access – The systemwide Academic Senate Assembly adopted bylaw changes letting non-Senate academics bring academic freedom grievances (only) to Privilege and Tenure committees.

No Point in Grading Math – Daily Californian: Berkeley Fields medalist Richard Borcherds has stopped grading homework for correctness because of widespread AI use. Includes a Gemini-written sad folk song, “The Department of Numbers,” and your back-and-forth getting Gemini to print the full lyrics.

Parallel Blogs / Subscribing / Song

We have been putting out this blog since 2009 under the heading "UCLA Faculty Association" using the link:

https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/

The blog site was originally created by the then-executive director of the Faculty Association. As such, yours truly does not have control of the site; he is simply a blogger on it. So when technical issues arise, that can be a problem. Given that issue, we have been adding a parallel site with the same blog entries since July 23rd:

https://danmitchellsblogcontinues.blogspot.com/

We will be running the two in parallel for the indefinite future. Possibly, at some point we will switch to the new link.

If you read the blog using the Facebook page of Yousee Elayemeriti, you can continue to do so:

https://www.facebook.com/yousee.elayemeriti

===

Want to subscribe?

You can't subscribe directly. But you can subscribe indirectly to this blog via a service called Blogtrottr. Go to blogtrottr.com and fill in the URL for the blog:

https://danmitchellsblogcontinues.blogspot.com/ 

or

https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/

and put in your email address. 

You will then receive an email at the email address you provided asking you to confirm. After you confirm, you will receive an email notification of new postings whenever they appear. If there are, say, three postings on a particular day, you will receive three notifications (one for each one). 

Note and full disclosure: There are ads on these notifications. 

==

And here's a little song, based on the information above, composed by Gemini:

"Sharp and Clever Pen":

Or https://archive.org/details/sharp-and-clever-pen

Verse 1

I scroll the screen looking for some light

A voice that cuts right through the noise

They talk about the taxes and the spin

But Dan Mitchell has a different kind of truth

He talks about the spending and the waste

The parallel blogs that keep us truly free

Independent channels are the only way to go

To find the analysis the mainstream never shows

--

Chorus

Get real economic facts!

Escape the corporate tracks!

Subscribe and find the key!

To keep your mind free!

Get real economic facts!

Escape the corporate tracks!

Subscribe and find the key!

To keep your mind free!

--

Verse 2

He analyzes policy with a sharp and clever pen

Decentralized and honest, standing on his own ground

You don't need their filters and you don't need their spin

Just some liberty and facts to help you really win

Bookmark the connection and let the truth begin to flow

A parallel alternative to the status quo we know

Fiscal sense and freedom are waiting on the page

The perfect antidote for a confusing modern age

--

Chorus

Get real economic facts!

Escape the corporate tracks!

Subscribe and find the key!

To keep your mind free!

Get real economic facts!

Escape the corporate tracks!

Subscribe and find the key!

To keep your mind free!

--

Outro

Yeah, find the facts for yourself

Dan Mitchell's blog is out there waiting

Just click and subscribe and see the difference

Get free and stay informed always.   

Parallel Blogs / Subscribing / Song

We have been putting out this blog since 2009 under the heading "UCLA Faculty Association" using the link:

https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/

The blog site was originally created by the then-executive director of the Faculty Association. As such, yours truly does not have control of the site; he is simply a blogger on it. So when technical issues arise, that can be a problem. Given that issue, we have been adding a parallel site with the same blog entries since July 23rd:

https://danmitchellsblogcontinues.blogspot.com/

We will be running the two in parallel for the indefinite future. Possibly, at some point we will switch to the new link.

If you read the blog using the Facebook page of Yousee Elayemeriti, you can continue to do so:

https://www.facebook.com/yousee.elayemeriti

===

Want to subscribe?

You can't subscribe directly. But you can subscribe indirectly to this blog via a service called Blogtrottr. Go to blogtrottr.com and fill in the URL for the blog:

https://danmitchellsblogcontinues.blogspot.com/ 

or

https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/

and put in your email address. 

You will then receive an email at the email address you provided asking you to confirm. After you confirm, you will receive an email notification of new postings whenever they appear. If there are, say, three postings on a particular day, you will receive three notifications (one for each one). 

Note and full disclosure: There are ads on these notifications. 

==

And here's a little song, based on the information above, composed by Gemini:

"Sharp and Clever Pen":

Or https://archive.org/details/sharp-and-clever-pen

Verse 1

I scroll the screen looking for some light

A voice that cuts right through the noise

They talk about the taxes and the spin

But Dan Mitchell has a different kind of truth

He talks about the spending and the waste

The parallel blogs that keep us truly free

Independent channels are the only way to go

To find the analysis the mainstream never shows

--

Chorus

Get real economic facts!

Escape the corporate tracks!

Subscribe and find the key!

To keep your mind free!

Get real economic facts!

Escape the corporate tracks!

Subscribe and find the key!

To keep your mind free!

--

Verse 2

He analyzes policy with a sharp and clever pen

Decentralized and honest, standing on his own ground

You don't need their filters and you don't need their spin

Just some liberty and facts to help you really win

Bookmark the connection and let the truth begin to flow

A parallel alternative to the status quo we know

Fiscal sense and freedom are waiting on the page

The perfect antidote for a confusing modern age

--

Chorus

Get real economic facts!

Escape the corporate tracks!

Subscribe and find the key!

To keep your mind free!

Get real economic facts!

Escape the corporate tracks!

Subscribe and find the key!

To keep your mind free!

--

Outro

Yeah, find the facts for yourself

Dan Mitchell's blog is out there waiting

Just click and subscribe and see the difference

Get free and stay informed always.  

The alternative

As blog readers will know, there is an alternative way - provided quarterly - to read this blog. For the third quarter of 2026, you can find it at:

https://archive.org/details/blog-3rd-qtr-2026

At that link, you will find the blog broken into a series of pdfs.

Straws in the Wind - Part 481

From the U.S. Bureau of the Census: How are new college graduates affected by the rise of artificial intelligence, and what can this tell us about the mechanisms behind AI's overall labor market effects? ...Administrative records on college graduates [indicate] how economic outcomes among college majors with differing levels of labor market AI exposure have evolved since large language models became available.

...Post-graduation employment, earnings, and job switching patterns among the most AI-exposed college majors began to diverge immediately following the introduction of ChatGPT in late 2022. In regression-adjusted estimates, the most AI-exposed decile of college majors saw their likelihood of initial employment decline by five percentage points, while full-quarter initial earnings declined by thirteen percent. This earnings decline is comparable in magnitude to the earnings losses associated with graduating into a large recession. Roughly half of the decline in earnings is attributable to lower earnings within the industry sectors that employ these graduates, with the remainder resulting from a shift in the industry mix into lower-wage sectors such as restaurants and retail. The effects attenuate as graduates move further from labor market entry but remain substantial for the most exposed majors. 

Full working paper at https://www2.census.gov/library/working-papers/2026/adrm/ces/CES-WP-26-56.pdf.

Straws in the Wind - Part 478

From the California Post: The tech elite of Silicon Valley are spending millions on a new college alternative that they hope will be an incubator for top talent, encouraging students to build AI models instead of taking science classes or doing homework. Venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz is spending $35 million on an unaccredited two-year alternative to traditional college based in San Francisco. It’s aimed at students ages 16 to 22 with the goal of cultivating the “world’s most ambitious young builders.” The undertaking has raised another $7 million from founding partners including Anduril, Anthropic, Coinbase, Google, Meta, Nvidia, OpenAI, Palantir, Replit and Stripe, according to Andreessen Horowitz, which is also known as a16z.

The Horowitz Andreessen Academy will technically operate as an independent business, not a school, run by Gagan Biyani – the co-founder of online-learning platform Udemy – while a16z partners Marc Andreessen and Erik Torenberg will join him on the board. Investors are hoping young eggheads will enroll in the academy instead of dropping out of college to launch their own start-ups, so they can get first dibs on the next generation of AI talent. Some of the most valuable AI start-ups are run by teens and 20-somethings who have raised millions of dollars. Each student will have access to more than $50,000 worth of access to coveted AI computing power from the founding partner companies, which will open their networks to enrollees and advise on the school’s curriculum. Students will also receive a $5,000 travel and exploration budget, access to a16z’s investors and instruction from guest lecturers including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Steven Sinofsky, the former head of Windows, according to a press release...

Full story at https://nypost.com/2026/09/22/business/tech-elites-launch-college-alternative-for-next-generation-of-ai-geniuses-raises-42m/. 

Parallel Blogs / Subscribing / Blog Song

We have been putting out this blog since 2009 under the heading "UCLA Faculty Association" using the link:

https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/

The blog site was originally created by the then-executive director of the Faculty Association. As such, yours truly does not have control of the site; he is simply a blogger on it. So when technical issues arise, that can be a problem. Given that issue, we have been adding a parallel site with the same blog entries since July 23rd:

https://danmitchellsblogcontinues.blogspot.com/

We will be running the two in parallel for the indefinite future. Possibly, at some point we will switch to the new link.

If you read the blog using the Facebook page of Yousee Elayemeriti, you can continue to do so:

https://www.facebook.com/yousee.elayemeriti

===

Want to subscribe?

You can't subscribe directly. But you can subscribe indirectly to this blog via a service called Blogtrottr. Go to blogtrottr.com and fill in the URL for the blog:

https://danmitchellsblogcontinues.blogspot.com/ 

or

https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/

and put in your email address. 

You will then receive an email at the email address you provided asking you to confirm. After you confirm, you will receive an email notification of new postings whenever they appear. If there are, say, three postings on a particular day, you will receive three notifications (one for each one). 

Note and full disclosure: There are ads on these notifications. 

==

And here's a little song, based on the information above, composed by Gemini:

"Sharp and Clever Pen":

Or https://archive.org/details/sharp-and-clever-pen

Verse 1

I scroll the screen looking for some light

A voice that cuts right through the noise

They talk about the taxes and the spin

But Dan Mitchell has a different kind of truth

He talks about the spending and the waste

The parallel blogs that keep us truly free

Independent channels are the only way to go

To find the analysis the mainstream never shows

--

Chorus

Get real economic facts!

Escape the corporate tracks!

Subscribe and find the key!

To keep your mind free!

Get real economic facts!

Escape the corporate tracks!

Subscribe and find the key!

To keep your mind free!

--

Verse 2

He analyzes policy with a sharp and clever pen

Decentralized and honest, standing on his own ground

You don't need their filters and you don't need their spin

Just some liberty and facts to help you really win

Bookmark the connection and let the truth begin to flow

A parallel alternative to the status quo we know

Fiscal sense and freedom are waiting on the page

The perfect antidote for a confusing modern age

--

Chorus

Get real economic facts!

Escape the corporate tracks!

Subscribe and find the key!

To keep your mind free!

Get real economic facts!

Escape the corporate tracks!

Subscribe and find the key!

To keep your mind free!

--

Outro

Yeah, find the facts for yourself

Dan Mitchell's blog is out there waiting

Just click and subscribe and see the difference

Get free and stay informed always. 

Parallel Blogs / Subscribing / Blog Song

We have been putting out this blog since 2009 under the heading "UCLA Faculty Association" using the link:

https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/

The blog site was originally created by the then-executive director of the Faculty Association. As such, yours truly does not have control of the site; he is simply a blogger on it. So when technical issues arise, that can be a problem. Given that issue, we have been adding a parallel site with the same blog entries since July 23rd:

https://danmitchellsblogcontinues.blogspot.com/

We will be running the two in parallel for the indefinite future. Possibly, at some point we will switch to the new link.

If you read the blog using the Facebook page of Yousee Elayemeriti, you can continue to do so:

https://www.facebook.com/yousee.elayemeriti

===

Want to subscribe?

You can't subscribe directly. But you can subscribe indirectly to this blog via a service called Blogtrottr. Go to blogtrottr.com and fill in the URL for the blog:

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You will then receive an email at the email address you provided asking you to confirm. After you confirm, you will receive an email notification of new postings whenever they appear. If there are, say, three postings on a particular day, you will receive three notifications (one for each one). 

Note and full disclosure: There are ads on these notifications. 

==

And here's a little song, based on the information above, composed by Gemini:

"Sharp and Clever Pen":

Or https://archive.org/details/sharp-and-clever-pen

Verse 1

I scroll the screen looking for some light

A voice that cuts right through the noise

They talk about the taxes and the spin

But Dan Mitchell has a different kind of truth

He talks about the spending and the waste

The parallel blogs that keep us truly free

Independent channels are the only way to go

To find the analysis the mainstream never shows

--

Chorus

Get real economic facts!

Escape the corporate tracks!

Subscribe and find the key!

To keep your mind free!

Get real economic facts!

Escape the corporate tracks!

Subscribe and find the key!

To keep your mind free!

--

Verse 2

He analyzes policy with a sharp and clever pen

Decentralized and honest, standing on his own ground

You don't need their filters and you don't need their spin

Just some liberty and facts to help you really win

Bookmark the connection and let the truth begin to flow

A parallel alternative to the status quo we know

Fiscal sense and freedom are waiting on the page

The perfect antidote for a confusing modern age

--

Chorus

Get real economic facts!

Escape the corporate tracks!

Subscribe and find the key!

To keep your mind free!

Get real economic facts!

Escape the corporate tracks!

Subscribe and find the key!

To keep your mind free!

--

Outro

Yeah, find the facts for yourself

Dan Mitchell's blog is out there waiting

Just click and subscribe and see the difference

Get free and stay informed always. 

The Humanities Slide

From the American Academy of Arts and Sciences: ...In 2025, the nation’s colleges and universities awarded 164,847 bachelor’s degrees in the humanities—the smallest number of degrees awarded since 1991 and 30.4% below the recent high-water mark in 2012... That decline includes a particularly sharp drop of 12.7% from 2021 to 2023, followed by a more modest drop of 2.1% from 2023 to 2024, and a further decline of just 0.4% from 2024 to 2025—the smallest year-on-year decline since 2012. The number of bachelor’s degrees conferred in the “historical categories” (disciplines with data going back to 1949) has been falling more quickly than for the field as a whole—with a decline of 42% from 2012 to 2025...

The share of bachelor’s degrees conferred by disciplines among the historical categories contracted to 3.4% of all degrees conferred in 2025—the smallest share in records extending back to 1949, and just under one-fifth of the share at their peak in 1967 (when they constituted 17.2% of all bachelor’s degrees awarded)... 

Full report at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/students/academics/2026/09/10/report-humanities-majors-disappearing. 

The Experiment

Announcement from American Economic Association: Recent feedback received from some AEA members and from the intersociety Report on Improving the Publication Process in Economics* raised concerns about the perceived unfairness of single-blind peer reviewing. In response to these concerns, the AEA will soon be launching a three-year randomized controlled trial of the effects of author-anonymized peer reviewing, commonly referred to as "double-blind."

Blank (1991) previously conducted a randomized evaluation of double-blind vs. single-blind peer reviewing at the American Economic Review (AER).** The current evaluation will involve the AER, AER: Insights, and the four American Economic Journals.

In the treatment group, information revealing author identities will be excluded from materials provided to reviewers, and reviewers will be asked to refrain from seeking them out through web searches or other means. The experiment will test the effects of removing author identities from the information routinely provided to reviewers, while recognizing that reviewers may become aware of author identities in other ways.

Key outcomes that will be examined include (1) author and reviewer perceptions of fairness, (2) reviewer awareness of author identities in the treatment (author-anonymized) group, and (3) differential impacts of author-anonymized review on manuscript decisions by characteristics of the authors and their papers.

The experimental design, implementation, and analysis are being conducted by Amy Finkelstein (MIT) and staff from J-PAL North America, in consultation with the AEA. J-PAL North America is a research center specializing in RCTs, where Finkelstein serves as co-scientific director. Finkelstein will not have access to identified information on individual manuscript submissions.

We expect the experiment to be launched in fall 2026...

===

Full announcement at https://www.aeaweb.org/news/member-announcements/2026-sept-10. 

===

*https://www.econometricsociety.org/uploads/documents/editorial/Improving%20Publication%20Process%20in%20Economics%20Report_2025.pdf.

**https://www.jstor.org/stable/2006906. Abstract: The results from a randomized experiment conducted at The American Economic Review on the effects of double-blind versus single-blind peer reviewing on acceptance rates and referee ratings indicate that acceptance rates are lower and referees are more critical when the reviewer is unaware of the author's identity. These patterns are not significantly different between female and male authors. Authors at top-ranked universities and at colleges and low-ranked universities are largely unaffected by the different reviewing practices, but authors at near-top-ranked universities and at nonacademic institutions have lower acceptance rates under double-blind reviewing.

Parallel Blogs / Subscribing

We have been putting out this blog since 2009 under the heading "UCLA Faculty Association" using the link:

https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/

The blog site was originally created by the then-executive director of the Faculty Association. As such, yours truly does not have control of the site; he is simply a blogger on it. So when technical issues arise, that can be a problem. Given that issue, we have been adding a parallel site with the same blog entries since July 23rd:

https://danmitchellsblogcontinues.blogspot.com/

We will be running the two in parallel for the indefinite future. Possibly, at some point we will switch to the new link.

If you read the blog using the Facebook page of Yousee Elayemeriti, you can continue to do so:

https://www.facebook.com/yousee.elayemeriti

===

Want to subscribe?

You can't subscribe directly. But you can subscribe indirectly to this blog via a service called Blogtrottr. Go to blogtrottr.com and fill in the URL for the blog:

https://danmitchellsblogcontinues.blogspot.com/ 

or

https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/

and put in your email address. 

You will then receive an email at the email address you provided asking you to confirm. After you confirm, you will receive an email notification of new postings whenever they appear. If there are, say, three postings on a particular day, you will receive three notifications (one for each one). 

Note and full disclosure: There are ads on these notifications. 

25th Anniversary: September 11, 2001

 UCLA students watch TV newscast of attack on World Trade Center, Sept. 11, 2001.

Parallel Blogs / Subscribing

We have been putting out this blog since 2009 under the heading "UCLA Faculty Association" using the link:

https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/

The blog site was originally created by the then-executive director of the Faculty Association. As such, yours truly does not have control of the site; he is simply a blogger on it. So when technical issues arise, that can be a problem. Given that issue, we have been adding a parallel site with the same blog entries since July 23rd:

https://danmitchellsblogcontinues.blogspot.com/

We will be running the two in parallel for the indefinite future. Possibly, at some point we will switch to the new link.

If you read the blog using the Facebook page of Yousee Elayemeriti, you can continue to do so:

https://www.facebook.com/yousee.elayemeriti

===

Want to subscribe?

You can't subscribe directly. But you can subscribe indirectly to this blog via a service called Blogtrottr. Go to blogtrottr.com and fill in the URL for the blog:

https://danmitchellsblogcontinues.blogspot.com/ 

or

https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/

and put in your email address. 

You will then receive an email at the email address you provided asking you to confirm. After you confirm, you will receive an email notification of new postings whenever they appear. If there are, say, three postings on a particular day, you will receive three notifications (one for each one). 

Note and full disclosure: There are ads on these notifications.