“New Yorkers have the remarkable ability of being unable to interest themselves in places that are not New York. I was going to a lot of parties then and a mention of Chicago, much less China – it was like when they put you under for a colonoscopy. One-two-three lights out.”

"Radicals, Realists & Repression: The State of Activism in the U.S." Panel discussion on the state of US activism & state repression. Ft. @sparki1969.bsky.social @zeitzoff.bsky.social @owasow.bsky.social & Jason Myles w/ This is Revolution. May 21 at 6:30pm in Berkeley, CA. RSVP: bit.ly/3QFR1XO

"Thinking that an assassination would advance a political cause is likewise delusional. The only cause these attempted assaults have benefited is Trump’s." Phenomenal piece from @adamserwer.bsky.social here:

What is parliamentary speech used for in a Westminster style system? How much are parliamentary skills valued by party leaders when looking for new ministerial talent? These are questions I look at in my paper on speech and ministerial selection, recently published in Legislative Studies Quarterly.

“In the 1960s, a good first novel might receive 90 individual newspaper reviews in America and England, the novelist Reynolds Price wrote in his memoir ‘Ardent Spirits.’ By 2009, the year ‘Ardent Spirits’ was issued, he reckoned the number was 20 at best. What would it be now? Two? Three?” Gift link

Race as a Bundle of Sticks got rejected from a handful of journals and I still recall one reviewer who took issue with our claim that age was associated with race. This plot would’ve helped:

One of the hardest problems in politics is that people who are capable eloquently organize their thoughts and perspectives in writing are really weird and unrepresentative! This is true between groups but also is even more true *within* groups

Men only want one thing, and it’s to have been the hacking consultant on HACKERS

Random but true story: I have a credit on this film. www.imdb.com/title/tt0113...

From our February Issue: Plutopopulism: Wealth and Trump’s Financial Base by SEAN KATES, ERIC MANNING, TALI MENDELBERG and @owasow.bsky.social. doi.org/10.1017/S000...

Putting the gas in gaslighting

This semester I taught a course on the History of the Far Right in the US. We were lucky to have one of the Pacific Northwest's best contemporary chroniclers and interpreters of the far right, @leahsottile.bsky.social, visit the class. This piece by Leah was inspired by what she heard students say.

GOOD USE OF POLLING

"Radicals, Realists & Repression: The State of Activism in the U.S." Panel discussion on the state of US activism & state repression. Ft. @sparki1969.bsky.social, @zeitzoff.bsky.social, @owasow.bsky.social & Jason Myles w/ This is Revolution. May 21 at 6:30pm in Berkeley, CA. RSVP: bit.ly/3QFR1XO

What a delightful approach. One of the few useable insights I gained from a failed measurement experiment was that angry people tended to write more than calm people. Now I have a useful citation to back me up!

“Writing is hard.” Thrilled to share that this simple idea led to a new paper in Political Analysis! Where most text methods focus on content, I test if expression is also effortful action. I find simple measures like character counts reveal attitudes and predict voting. cup.org/4cUmoXi 1/

#OpenAccess from @polanalysis.bsky.social - Text as Behavior - https://cup.org/4cUmoXi "Text analysis typically focuses on content—such as sentiment or topic—but expression is also a form of effortful action." - @owasow.bsky.social#OpenAccess #FirstView

A great thread on the evidence regarding human capital vs. signaling explanations of the return to higher education.

It should be political malpractice to enact a “jungle primary” without also including a consensus-forcing mechanism like approval voting or ranked choice. All this drama in California over a nonpartisan primary would be a non-issue if the rules actually captured which candidates have widest appeal.

The land that elevators forgot

ICE is everywhere. In 2022, ICE made arrests in 30% of counties. In 2025, ICE made arrests in 62% of counties. We ask: Do ICE arrests spark political action? Theory and prior evidence suggest it should. We find that ICE activity mostly does not mobilize citizens.

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his [ideology] depends upon his not understanding it.”

Has anyone done an analysis of what a not-worst-case scenario might look like for Black voting power post-VRA? Not trying to put a silver lining on terrible decisions but genuinely wonder what intermediate scenarios might look like. For example, a ~30% Black district could build biracial coalitions.

Gallup, 1939: "Do you think Americans were happier and more contented at that time (during the horse and buggy days) than they are now?"

The conservative justices on the Supreme Court arguing that you can separate race and partisanship got me thinking about these maps. starkeycomics.com/2021/06/11/h...

“…the historical figures being honored portrays a sanitized version of American history. The description of Martin Luther King Jr., for instance, praises the civil rights leader for having a ‘can-do’ spirit, but makes no direct mention of the racism that he fought.”

A 2016 study hid lead pellets in some racing shoes… “When we added 100 grams per shoe, they ran about 1% slower, and when we added 300 grams, they ran about 3% slower,” said Rodger Kram, an emeritus professor at Boulder. He called the 1% per 100 grams “a rule of toe.” Gift link:

The iron-ish law of YIMBYism: Markets that spend decades below 6% rental vacancy are almost always expensive. Markets that maintain healthy vacancy rates are usually cheap

“In a racially divided society majority rule is not a reliable instrument of democracy. … The answer is that we need an alternative to majoritarianism: a ‘principle of proportionality’ that transcends winner-take-all majority rule and better accommodates… democratic ideals.” —Lani Guinier

“Identity politics are now just secondary, because we’re all Latino,” she said. “We should now be organizing under other issues that matter to all.” www.latimes.com/california/s...

And here is a fine thread about the Bund in Poland by a historian of Jews in Europe. Points out, among other things, that in Poland the Bund's union and school organizations were both coalitions that included Labor Zionists. bsky.app/profile/drjo...

Trying and failing to imagine the consumer awareness testing/ focus groups/ marketing/ liability inputs into this decision

Wrote a piece for @slate.com on how our theories of partisan polarization gave the SCOTUS majority more intellectual cover to kill the VRA slate.com/news-and-pol...

Highly recommend this discussion between @chrislhayes.bsky.social and @mollycrabapple.bsky.social on Jewish and intellectual history that very much speaks to the present. Video: youtu.be/Rvd95L86-kQ?... Podcast: open.spotify.com/episode/1K0u...

The bigger picture: "I should be able to reliably predict what my son’s financial, medical, housing, educational, employment & social opportunities will look like in the next phase of our lives...Instead, I just wait for the next bad news to come from the White House" bsky.app/profile/loll...

“The U.S. is increasingly governed by minority rule…” www.gelliottmorris.com/p/what-the-s...

It’s the “ill will.”

In 1964, when my father was 20 years old, he went to Mississippi to register voters as part of Freedom Summer. NPR interviewed us in 2021: www.npr.org/2021/07/14/1...

“The word most commonly selected by respondents as applying to President Donald Trump was ‘dangerous,’ which 52 percent of respondents said described Trump…” blog.fiftyplusone.news/p/soft-measu...

Well, the Reconstruction Amendments were nice while they lasted.

How is it that people are exceedingly price sensitive when buying gas but seem insensitive to gas mileage when buying cars?

As a technical editor, I'd say that use of third person and passive voice drains all the joy and flow out of most manuscripts I read

This seems like good advice for social science writing as every article and book is an attempt at “discovery.” At the same time, I feel like we do way more “conveying” than sharing joy. What helps scientific writers express the delight of discovery?

Academic Freedom Index has slipped in 50 countries, but taken a nosedive in the United States. "‘This academic freedom erosion is part of broader democratic backslide that we’re seeing in the US"

For anyone who has struggled to explain “edge cases” to non-programmers, a perfect example:

Learned from my 101-year-old grandfather that one problem of being a centenarian is that airlines apparently only have a 2-digit age variable, meaning that every time he shows up at the airport, the data in the system at the check-in counter thinks he's a 1-year-old unaccompanied child.

Jenny Holzer, Marquees, Times Square, 1993

Years ago, read an op-ed in the NYT about how Second Amendment rights can threaten our First Amendment rights. Could hardly have a sharper example of that than tonight.

Rashomon: WHCD

If anyone is in the Bay Area and looking for a fun, family friendly film to see this weekend: COOKIE QUEENS SATURDAY, APRIL 25, 2026 AT 6:00 PM PREMIER THEATER AT ONE LETTERMAN TICKETS: sffilm.org/event/cookie...