Yes, sports betting is a blight on society, but think of the alternative: Chris Christie might have had to bail out the municipal government of Atlantic City, forcing spending cuts or tax increases that would have significantly hurt his Presidential run.

Consumer sentiment is mostly partisanship.

Been seeing everyone else's #9games, and it turns out that I'm very, very old.

All done. Sent. Should be out next year.

Millenarianism is becoming the dominant political and social view of the 21st century: people who see no way to succeed under present conditions are going to want to burn it all down.

The impulse to demonstrate knowledge of esoteric knowledge (but only on maasculine-coded topics) drives not just extreme political views among young men, but all sort of behaviors, like crypto, prediction markets, meme stocks, and more.

I know I’m a goddamn broken record, I really do, but Congress had a way to change that, it worked for decades, and the Supreme Court blew it up in the 1980s in a way that was impossible for Congress to fix. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

I talked about that Montclair election with our local paper. Still provisionals and late VBMs outstanding, but the margins are big enough that a change in the outcome is really unlikely.

I was impressed by Montclair's 28% turnout on a school funding measure election last night (standard turnout for these things in NJ is around 14%), but I'm shocked to see that Ho-Ho-Kus blew Montclair out of the water: 47% turnout in their election last night (their school funding measure passed).

You know what would also reduce stress & promote wellness? Embrace modern Finnish traditions like: baby boxes & paid family leave, phasing out fossil fuels in heating and electricity & funding education at all levels. But sure, let's buy a wooden sweatbox & pretend THAT's the secret to wellness.

Pending late ballots, Montclair has voted for Question 1 by a margin of 50.4% to 49.6% to add one-time $12.6 million in revenue to rescue the school district from its budget deficit. Margins in wealthier Upper Montclair for YES delivered a win while southern portion voted NO

Very interested to see the results of the special bond election in Montclair, NJ tonight. This is a the town referred to by Chris Christie as “The People’s Republic of Montclair.” John Oliver said that the town motto is “We’ve all done very well for ourselves.” It also has terrible government.

@montyashley.bsky.social I was listening to a 10 year old episode of The Incomparable, and you mentioned a crackpot theory about Batman (1989) that you would share only upon request. If that offer is still valid, I would love to hear it.

I own Action Philosophers in three formats. I have the original art for one of the trade covers on my wall. It is joyful and ridiculous and very smart and I will continue to support this comic in whatever format Fred and Ryan want to put it out in for as long as they want to do it.

taschen needs to publish a high-quality oversized book with every hostess cupcake comic book ad

I just backed Action Philosophers: Modernity Bites on @kickstarter.com www.kickstarter.com/projects/roc...

I would have lost money betting on a less than full payment to the teacher's pension fund. Have to imagine the cuts to the StayNJ program are going to be hard to get through the legislature, but they're targeted enoug that there's a chance.

Thanks to @interpretivemm.bsky.social for featuring my article in @pspolisci.bsky.social on patterns of gender and LGBTQIA+ research in top journals: alas, still a long way to go towards inclusion! Read the section's great new research digest here: us13.campaign-archive.com?u=481e9fba53....

I spoke with the CBC about the importance of gas prices for US politics. www.cbc.ca/news/world/t...

Couple years ago, I’m teaching a section of Intro to American Government, and the students notice a Maserati parked outside. Real flashy; probably a pharma guy visiting administration.

Doing my last read through the next book, and this remains my favorite footnote.

In one sense, I am not the right target for this marketing email. But I am going to watch the heck out of a video that condescends to women about why they’re dumb to not buy Bitcoin.

Phil is right that fabricating plausible data and results are now easier to do than in the past. The question is what to do about it. Requiring data and .do files for all analyses in a paper adds work to the submission process, but is almost certainly a necessary step.

Donald Trump is changing how men understand masculinity. New research by @dancassino.bsky.social on @lseusablog.bsky.social

AI slop ads on news sites (in this case, Politico) are scams, bad, misleading, etc. But they are also hi-larious. Do you prefer the steampunk glasses, you know, the ones that come with a loose gear, or the compass lens glasses too small for your face?

I wrote up some of the conclusions from my recent Politics and Gender article for the LSE blog: Donald Trump is redefining how US men see their masculinity.

Microsoft Word just killing it.

5 or bust.

A man asked me last night what publishing needs to do for literary fiction to begin appealing to men again. I said, as nicely as I could, that, with over 2,000 books published every Tuesday, of which many would appeal to men, it’s not a publishing problem, it’s a men problem.

This is going to look very strange in a week or two, when the administration tells Congress how many billions it needs to get more munitions, and how US security is at risk if they don’t immediately get them.

I distilled some of my work on masculinity and finance into a post for LSE Business. Men are using finance knowledge and risk seeking as way of performing gender: so it’s insecure men who are the most prone to bad, risky investment. blogs.lse.ac.uk/businessrevi...

Includes panel analysis that links within person changes in Fox viewership to changes in GRT belief.

Ah, yes, the invaluable wisdom of the markets.

I got irritated with reading another assertion that AI can outperform social scientists at our jobs. I find these arguments reveal both an intellectual laziness and a lack of appreciation for good writing, which is the heart of our work. I had thoughts. mirandayaver.substack.com/p/in-defense...

Would love to see some systematic testing of this, but I would hypothesize that “AI is driving up your electric bill” works better than any other argument against it for persuasion, including “it’s going to take your job” and “it’s hurting the environment”

I've been thinking about this work since I saw it here this morning, and wanted to see how well this holds up in US public opinion. As in Europe, the sex gap (between men and women) is persistent, and can't be attributed to other factors. But in the US (and maybe in EU?), the gender gap is bigger.

It’s helpful to think of Presidential approval as somewhat elastic, driven up or down by positive or negative coverage. In the absence of good or bad news, it reverts to a natural level. Rally effects are driven by strong positive coverage, boosting a President above their natural level.

Oh, FFS. #momentofgender

I have seen a lot of cursed stuff in my time in academia but this is among the *most* cursed. Grammarly is generating miniature LLMs based on academic work so that users can have their writing ‘reviewed’ by experts like David Abulafia, who died less than two months ago.

Still controlling for gender without thinking about why? You can cite me💚👩‍🔬💚 I show that the gender gap in progressive climate and environmental views is a persistent empirical regularity that cannot be explained by differences in socioeconomic background, political ideology, or risk aversion.

Unfortunately, support for the beliefs that undergird this kind of action aren't fringe in the US. Surveys shows that 1/3 of Americans—and ~2/3 of White Evangelical Christians—hold Christian nationalist views, and similar numbers believe that we're living in the end times, with Christ's return near.

I wonder about the extent to which we’re trying to differentiate between concepts that are linked for voters. It seems to me that “liberal=weak” is a common heuristic.

I had been fed up with students misunderstanding the format of their midterm responses, so this semester I went ahead and posted a full formatted to answer to show them exactly what I was looking for. "Just do this," I said. Swear to God, I could just grade their formatting and get the same scores.

The emerging justification for the Iran War is, apparently, that: 1) Israel was going to bomb Iran 2) which would lead to Iran firing back, potentially at US bases 3) so therefore, attacking Iran was pre-emptive, rather than aggressive.

Funny: over 300 ANES respondents in 2024 REFUSED to promise that they would forgo looking up answers to the political knowledge questions, despite the survey practically begging them.

This is consistent with earlier psychometric work that suggests 5-7 is the best response scale options, but good to see that the finding holds up in contemporary research. Also, good to see that labeling scales whether anchored or not has little impact on findings. academic.oup.com/ijpor/articl...

Sighted this morning. I would purpose that you can communicate a coherent message with: 1) A Punisher Skull 2) An American Flag 3) A Pride Flag But you must pick two of the three. All three, and I have no idea what’s going on.

“One of these things is not like the others, one of these things doesn’t belong…”