Last night’s election results, in a nutshell. (watching this legitimately made me laugh out loud)

LA County developed a publicly owned and open source voting system that supports 18 different languages. It's ADA compliant. (Though a second generation voting machine is coming out to make it easier for low vision and blind voters). No Diebold, etc. no proprietary black box software

The change in county-level vote gubernatorial margins in Virginia since 2013 and 2021. (About 140 more maps and charts at the link.) www.pbump.net/o/what-chang...

I did not write the headline, but I have an op ed on Prop 50 over at the @sfchronicle.com. Shorter version: the nationalization and polarization of our politics is what got us here, and it's also the most likely way out. It will take national partisan Democratic hardball to enact anti-hardball.

“In a study I led earlier this year, my colleagues and I found that if big new power users curbed demand just 0.25 percent of the time — about 22 hours a year — the United States could accommodate more data centers without burdening household electricity users.” Gift: www.nytimes.com/2025/11/04/o...

“Gary Kamimori, a longtime Army blast safety researcher, said that repeated small exposures may cause damage that accumulates unnoticed.“ “Stretch a rubber band a hundred times and it bounces back, but there are micro tears forming,” he said. “The hundred-and-first time, it breaks.” Gift link:

The biggest project I've worked on for the last chunk of years was just published. It asks, how big are US Black-white lifespan differences? This might seem like a narrow question. I hope to convince you by the end that there are answers you didn't anticipate. And I hope some of them will move you.

This is such an interesting paper. #suffrage

“Can political activism foster electoral participation?” Study examines “1913 Pilgrimage, a large-scale nationwide march in support of women’s suffrage.” Finds “women’s activism can drive political participation even in the virtual absence of women politicians.” www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Marathon day hands down the best thing NYC does. Mobs of people lining the streets to cheer on regular-ass people doing a hard-ass thing. All of life should be like this!

Feels like there’s a “Where’s Trump?” meme waiting to happen Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2025/10/31/u...

Just needs Curb Your Enthusiasm soundtrack

Dia de los Metros?

Someone should come up with a slogan about this and organize mass protests or something

“By a lopsided 71–19 margin, Americans say presidents should be constrained by constitutional checks and share power with Congress and the courts, not govern by fiat.” — @gelliottmorris.com www.gelliottmorris.com/p/new-poll-v...

“an approach that challenged mainstream theories without insisting on their essential rottenness might gain a lot of purchase”

As a longtime caregiver, I’ve seen the best and the worst of our medical system. It’s hard to hold both my gratitude for miraculous cures and my rage at malpractice-level screw-ups. This piece did a good job of striking the balance: critiquing Means & MAHA while acknowledging need for change. Gift:

In a four-way assignment of iPoll database questions across the broad categories of knowledge, attitudes/beliefs, personal characteristics, & behaviors/experiences, knowledge made up >2% They are in there; the idea is not new! But fewer than any other category

I jump into the moderation debate. I agree with @adambonica.bsky.social and @gelliottmorris.com on the methodology, but I want to draw attention to a bigger issue. The collapse of candidate effects generally. leedrutman.substack.com/p/the-modera...

Hard to see the batter from these seats but can’t beat the view

People ask a lot about whether protests matter. While Trump’s approval rating is driven by many factors, events like the No Kings rallies likely play a role, too. Media coverage and people seeing their neighbors take a stand help convey that disapproval is not just acceptable but widespread.

What's more fear-inducing than ghosts, ghouls, and goblins on Halloween week!?! Sharks! (JK) Join us this Wednesday (10/29) at 1PM ET for our next session on Shifts in Racial Liberalism and Class Politics featuring Marco Avina and Jack Garigliano! Register here: american.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

Dear programmer / #statsky: hivemind: I have to clean up R code written over 5+ yrs to standardize variable names, remove `eval = FALSE` code, etc. Seemed like a good task for Claude or ChatGPT but results have been mediocre. Are there tricks? Better prompts? Other tools? Curious what others do…

Apparently separation of powers doesn’t work as well when there’s one branch of government.

Anyone can take this transcript ⤵️ and use it. (You don't need to credit.) I usually keep my most pungent editorial views more separate from newsy stuff to simplify other people s re-posting. I couldn't get past my outrage on this. P.S. There is full alt text. So, grab that too.

“Geometry hates cars. If you multiply all of the journeys by the space cars occupy on the road by the amount of road you need by the distance that pushes people apart because you need to build more roads, you are in a Red Queen’s race you cannot win.”—@Cory Doctorow thewaroncars.org/2022/01/26/t...

Hey Everyone, I highly recommend this fabulous documentary on the history of the Rail Trails Movement. Please check it out and pass it along. 👇

“It is forbidden to gamble; therefore all gamblers are punished,unless they gamble in large numbers and to the sound of expensive ad campaigns.” www.si.com/media/gambli... (With apologies to Voltaire)

“Black don’t crack,” but for architecture www.curbed.com/article/432-... HT @jonmladd.bsky.social

Of all the housing charts not made by MMI, this one is my favourite. It shows how, despite rhetoric, housing shortages aren't a global phenomenon, but they do seem to be an Anglo-American one.

Headline: California renters are very picky customers How are they picky? Do they keep changing apts because of colors? Amenities? Oh… it’s because of rising unaffordable rent.

Social media users adopt the toxic behaviors of ingroup members An analysis of 7 million tweets from over 700,000 accounts finds that exposures to toxic behavior by ingroup members is the primary driver of contagious toxicity online academic.oup.com/jcmc/article...

Will ‘No Kings’ rallies make a difference? Grateful to WHYY for inviting me on their morning call-in show, along with Charlie Sykes, to discuss the recent protests. Listen or watch, here: whyy.org/episodes/phi...

If you know, you know. A steal at $25,000 in SkyMall magazine.

This makes sense - it’s effectively isolating the high-intensity part of polarized training. Normally, this is 5-10% of polarized training, and the rest is ≈10% Z3, and 80% Z2

My latest fitness obsession: “Four seconds of intense intervals, repeated until they amount to a minute of total exertion, led to rapid improvements in strength and fitness in middle-aged and older adults.” Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2020/12/30/w...

Twice today encountered trailers for films I’d like to see if they played in local theaters or, eventually, made it to streaming. Is there any kind of “movie tracker” that allows one to get alerts when a film can be seen nearby or online? See Cutting through Rocks: www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLcP...

🚨 Why do people protest against authoritarian regimes even when facing extreme danger? 🚨 In our new paper on Romania's 1989 Revolution, we find that communities exposed to the communist Gulag showed 5x higher dissent levels. doi.org/10.1177/0010... 1/🧵

Echoes of the 1980s: “Trump himself ensured workers were told to remove the bronze latticework with blowtorches, separate the friezes from the walls with jackhammers, and throw them down into the interior of the building where they shattered into a million pieces.” news.artnet.com/art-world/do...

“There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.” — Oscar Wilde

Eyes in the Prize is a staple in every US History class I teach. I have digitized version of a “made for classroom” VHS that clips key parts of the whole series into classroom usable segments… it’s my most cherished teacher possession 🤓 This 🧵 has other good doc recs. #EduSky 🗺️

I teach a class on film and politics and include docs that offer insight into protest movements and the challenges they face. Some recommendations: Eyes on the Prize: Canonical series on civil rights movement. Shows how ordinary people created extraordinary change. www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGVL...

“The fact that organized protest can break the spiral of silence, and correct our impressions of what other Americans think, is one of the most immediate and important values of protesting in the first place. Scientists have [shown] protests update our impressions of what other citizens believe.”

Half expecting a towel to fly across the screen here. TKO.

Has anyone written about how slogans like “Build the wall,” or “Free busses” are visual and tangible? Compare, for example, to “Stronger Together” or “Restore The Soul of The Nation.”

🎙️ON AIR: Millions of people across the country are expected to take part in 'No Kings' protests this Saturday. We're talking to @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social's @owasow.bsky.social about what to expect. ❓Are you going to a 'No Kings' protest? Why or why not? 📻 Listen:

Really interesting study on MAGA out in Perspectives on Politics. Open access and worth a read.

“Openness is a driver of growth,” www.nytimes.com/2025/10/13/b...

This is a boffo piece from @sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com at @liberalcurrents.com "The Civil Rights Movement is worth studying not just because they were right, but because they won." www.liberalcurrents.com/how-to-win-a...

“These findings suggest that the more force the state uses on peaceful demonstrators, the more the state may inadvertently fuel precisely the kind of mass opposition it seeks to suppress.” ‬@robbwiller.bsky.social‬ @owasow.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2025/06/17/o...