Flutterby™! (short)

An Ask MeFi question for "Fluffer pro tips" did *not* go in the direction I was expecting...

It's been a while since I've been cycle counting, but this is interesting: The Performance Impact of C++'s `final` Keyword

In case you skimmed to the end, here's the summary:

• Benefit seems to be available for GCC.
• Doesn't affect Apple's chips much at all.
• Do not use final with Clang, and maybe MSVC as well.

At the very least, it's another one of those things to hide behind the preprocessor so you've got options.

Study: Alphabetical order of surnames may affect grading

An analysis by University of Michigan researchers of more than 30 million grading records from U-M finds students with alphabetically lower-ranked names receive lower grades. This is due to sequential grading biases and the default order of students’ submissions in Canvas — the most widely used online learning management system — which is based on alphabetical rank of their surnames.

30 Million Canvas Grading Records Reveal Widespread Sequential Bias and System-Induced Surname Initial Disparity

Mike Masnick: The Coddling of the American Parent

Jonathan Haidt’s new book “The Anxious Generation” blames youth mental health issues on social media in a way that’s easy, wrong, and dangerous.

Great article on the politicization of insurance risk, perverse incentives, and rebuilding in flood zones: Mother Jones: These Floridians Rebuilt Houses in Flood Zones. Now FEMA Is Cracking Down.

National Bureau of Economic Research: Nothing for Something: Marketing Cancer Drugs to Physicians Increases Prescribing Without Improving Mortality Colleen Carey, Michael Daly & Jing Li

...We find that prescribing of the associated drug increases 4\% in the twelve months after a payment is received, with the increase beginning sharply in the month of payment and fading out within a year. A marketing payment also leads physicians to begin treating cancer patients with lower expected mortality. While payments result in greater expenditure on cancer drugs, there are no associated improvements in patient mortality.

Mastodon thread about Sears kit homes.

College applications rose in states that legalized recreational marijuana

Contemporary Economic Policy: Higher education: The impact of recreational marijuana on college applications Christopher D. Blake, Danna Kang Thomas, Joshua Hess

Using a two-way fixed effects difference-in-differences model, we investigate the effects of local recreational marijuana (RMJ) policy changes on college applications and find that the three largest state public schools reaped, on average, an almost 54% increase in applications. This increase does not appear to come solely from low-ability students as both first and third quartiles of admitted student composite SAT scores to the largest three public schools do not decrease. Rather, they both increase by almost 3.8% though these estimates are not statistically significant. Robust difference-in-difference and event study models support the signs and magnitudes of these gains and show they diminish over time.

https://doi.org/10.1111/coep.12633