ugh in two weeks I will have to teach NHST I feel so dirty

(This was obvious to anyone with a pair of eyes $50bn ago. Autocracies - no matter how much oil they can drill, how many foreign advisors they can hire, and how slick their PR - remain highly inefficient at allocating resources in the long run.)

German doesn’t care about ¬(p ∧ ¬p)

It’s fascinating comparing the front page coverage of the Huntingdon train attack (below) with how the British press treated another case 30 years ago. I’m referring to the 1995 Netto supermarket attack in Birmingham in which a man stabbed 10 people, killing one of them.

Anyway, we need some joy, so here's the Egyptian foreign minister being given a Lego Pyramid by the Danish foreign minister.

Interesting how often “going on about migration, free speech and Islam” correlates with “moving to Dubai”.

Things universities can make national news for: - people on the internet are a bit upset about the speaker selection of an obscure student group, - a member of faculty copy-pasted a sentence of boilerplate methods language in her PhD thesis 30 years ago. Things no one cares about: - Bombs.

Mandatory centrist dad post

I appreciate how purely Conor Lamb hates Fetterman

(The logic of most anti-tourism or anti-gentrification arguments is virtually indistinguishable from that of anti-immigration politics.)

X is not only completely out of control, it is also increasingly dangerous.

Multiverse studies seem doomed to perpetuate a cycle of "look it varies!" "but not that much" "does too!". Here's another exchange that I had missed. "Robustness is better assessed with a few thoughtful models than with billions of regressions" doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

Happy 100th birthday *checks notes* Margaret Thatcher

Migrant Electoral Rights Dataset (1960-2020) 📊 Link to dataset: hdl.handle.net/1814/93661 📕 Link to codebook: cadmus.eui.eu/server/api/c... 💼 Link to 400 page documentation: cadmus.eui.eu/server/api/c...

Rock ‘n’ roll is not what it used to be.

(I've written the narrowest, nerdiest paper and I *can't wait* for it to be out.)

Ageing societies are simultaneously safer and more scared societies.

Abundance update

Me one year ago: "I'm going to write a short research note. I can do it in two weeks, and send it out. Quick and easy." Me now: "in section E.4 of the appendix (page 78), the reviewer will now find alternative model specifications..."

Big week for me and the team as "The British General Election of 2024" has now gone into production. The definitive book of last year's landmark election will be hitting stores later this autumn, and is available to pre-order right now! Here's the Amazon page: www.amazon.co.uk/British-Gene...

After a democracy turns illiberal, can it return to democracy again? Here are the reasons why democracy after illiberalism is hard to maintain.

Radical-right parties are often linked to the “left-behind”. But supporting them when stigma is strong is costly. So who is willing to pay that cost early on, before it’s normalized? In my new WP, I argue that breaking political norms is socially stratified. 🧵👇

“I too came from a poorish family,” says the 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, eldest son of Major-General Gilbert Monckton, 2nd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley and Marianna Letitia, Viscountess Monckton of Brenchley.

"Sweeteners can harm cognitive health equivalent to 1.6 years of ageing, study finds" Or does it? Let's take a look at this "study"... www.theguardian.com/food/2025/se...

IN NEW ISSUE: British attitudes to ‘Europe’ have been long characterised as ‘reluctant’. @jamesrdennison.bsky.social explores the exception between 1988–1992 - Britain’s Pro-European Moment: buff.ly/3D41PIx (OPEN ACCESS) @polstudiesassoc.bsky.social @uoypolitics.bsky.social #ECRs @sagepub.com

Returning from vacation and looking for a late summer read? @ivobantel.bsky.social and I got you covered! In our new @wepsocial.bsky.social paper, we assess how mainstream parties rhetorically create an affect-based "common front" against the radical right. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

(The EU keeps failing on its own stated terms. It is no regulatory superpower internationally and struggles to enforce its rules internally, it caves on trade like a medium-sized nation state, it doesn't behave as normative power in its neighbourhood or with the member states.)

As we enter September, you may see posts with news of jobs, promotions, grants, fellowships, and the like. That’s great! We should celebrate with colleagues, especially in an industry where rejection is the modal outcome. 1/n

🏛️ @markuskollberg.bsky.social: The challenger advantage – how challenger parties disrupt mainstream party dominance in the European Parliament 🧷 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

The war on empathy youtu.be/QwpanShgOp4?...

We have a decades of scholarship on how pro-democracy forces win in competitive authoritarian systems: they form a united opposition that brings together people with otherwise profound political disagreements.

Me on why Labour jeed to fight back www.independent.co.uk/voices/farag...

Dreams are just artisanal AI slop.

There was a phase of the internet in the mid-to-late 2000s when conspiracy theorists were obsessed with seigniorage - is this still a thing?

I don't like everything the New York Times prints either but the way people now pick apart individual story-placement decisions like it's some sort of talismanic path to understanding why the world sucks is bordering on lunacy

Bingo. Westminster majoritarianism makes democratic backsliding not only easier to carry out but also harder to warn against, as I argued here. bsky.app/profile/leon...

Imagine having to explain a headline that says “Taliban ‘ready and willing’ to work with Nigel Farage” to a time-traveller from, say, 2011.

Profoundly important from @davidallengreen.bsky.social. The lack of meaningful restraints against executing power in our system leaves us utterly exposed in the face of a Reform government. They could do whatever they want. open.substack.com/pub/emptycit...

Some pills for when you feel dangerously left-wing

Two points worth noting on the Farage stuff today. 1. The Tories have completely ceded the August opportunity to get publicity when govt slows down to Reform. Nothing to suggest they're not headed fast towards oblivion. 2. Labour look even more lost than before. Paralysed with indecision and fear.

SCOTUS thought they could ride the tiger and get what they wanted ideologically. In exchange, they would give him everything he wanted except the Fed. Just leave the Fed alone and you can ignore all federal law. But it ended the same way it has for everyone who tried to ride the tiger since 2016.

🧵 I have a new paper online @apsa-preprints.bsky.social where I try to answer a deceptively simple question: 𝘞𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦’𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 '𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘵' 𝘪𝘯 𝘧𝘪𝘳𝘴𝘵-𝘱𝘢𝘴𝘵-𝘵𝘩𝘦-𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘢𝘭 𝘴𝘺𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘮𝘴? Summary below 👇 preprints.apsanet.org/engage/apsa/...

Just got round to watching Mario Draghi's speech in Rimini in the original Italian. It is easily the most important speech on Europe so far this year and I hope someone (@grandcontinent.bsky.social?‬) publishes it in English and other EU languages soon. www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMME...

✨Very happy to see my paper "Attitudinal ambivalence toward multiculturalism" out on @jeppjournal.bsky.social ! www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... 1/8 🧵

Very fond of the wordiness of this message

A key point that often gets lost in discussions on immigration and diversity: people's view are more nuanced and contingent than crude two-camps distinctions allow.

Another step in the unconditional surrender of the British establishment to Reform, to intimidation and to mob rule.

(The reflex to monster Democrats or Dem-adjacent media for Trump's authoritarianism is an unhealthy by-product of the social media attention economy, is deeply unhelpful and at some point people should start to call it out. Pick-me girls and pick-me boys are no use during a democratic collapse.)