Few technologies have remained as futuristic and frankly magical to me as noise cancelling headphones.

So I assume we all have that one scholar who has already published in whatever shiny new research area we're starting to get interested in? Major tortoise and the hare vibes...

Say it with me everybody: Copy-editing is dead!

I find it so silly seeing so many articles that claim X percent of ChatGPT answers are wrong. I can create a test where it gets 100 percent of the questions wrong. To me, that's an irrelevant metric. It's on users to understand what good questions are to ask of AI, what good use cases are.

Reading term papers, it occurs to me that there is a massive disconnect between everyone being worried that all student submissions are written by AI and the quality of the papers that I get to read... If students are using AI, I wish they would use it better...

So we're all in agreement that copy-editing is dead, right?

It’s a profound tragedy of our time how many people are apparently angry all the time.

I just learned that pigeons can be trained to discriminate between good and bad children's paintings by pecking at the good ones. Brutal.

I keep hearings that there is a lack of blood donors. Would it be unethical for blood donation organizations to advertise by saying that donating blood reduces PFAS levels in the blood? Seems more effective than advertising by appealing to citizenship.

It occurs to me that an e-scooter is the vehicle equivalent of a vape in terms of sex appeal.

Is there any other service like academic publishing where the brand name is all that matters and the quality of the service is absolutely irrelevant?

How is it possible that despite having ungodly amounts of money, no major journal publisher has been able to develop a decent eproofing platform?

I have a really interesting political science puzzle, to which I don't have a good answer at all. Can somebody please set up the Journal "Political Science Puzzles", so I can get that published?

We gotta stop saying "this lack of political professionalism shouldn't happen in times of the AfD". It's setting an impossible standard for the messiness of real world politics and it strengthens the bizarre reading that somehow anything less than perfect is a validation of the AfD

Arrows are the most self-explanatory symbols that have no basis in the physical world

The contemporary political right makes a much greater effort to develop a coherent theory for their project, something that was historically true for the left.

Do we have a sense that popular TV shows have become more conservative in the last couple of years? No, right? Isn't there a surprising disconnect between culture and society/politics at the present moment? And should we expect TV to become more conservative now?

Why aren’t there any successful parties of (new) ethnic minorities in Europe? Shouldn’t there be a market?

Never stops being a joy to see your delivery truck on a map in real time. What a delightful and pointless feature.

Companies printing their Facebook/Instagram/etc. links (along with the logos) on their products is such a huge marketing success for social media companies. I get my bread in a bag with a Facebook logo on it. Everybody sees the logo, even though nobody needs it or wants it.

I don't understand why so many parties go for a dual leadership. Doesn't that create a whole lot of unnecessary problems?

I have encountered the worst footnote.

The notion that science is populated by big egos is probably never more evident than when a reviewer says, you forgot to cite X, Y, Z papers (all by the same author)

The other day I've heard e-mail being compared to a slot machine. I don't know whether that's a common metaphor but man does it ring true. Both the unpredictability of when something might come in and whether it's a winner or not. I suppose people would say the same about social media.

How it started | How it's going

Hypothesis. Rearranging your furniture will generate a boost in creativity. Seeing things from a different perspective.

As long as we are a digital society (not a given), emojis will continue to grow in meaning (good pun but not intended). Super easy language learning for young people. The technical limitation right now is finding the correct one on the keyboard.

Does ChatGPT try to automatically identify which of their users provide the most lucrative input? Should be possible to quantify.

So, help me out here. Quantum physics, you’re just telling me that reality has pixels, right?

Professional communities are much less subject to the problem of everyone possibly being a bot online these days, since we know the other participants in the conversation.

I'm really glad I don't work in political communication. The publication output in political communication seems insane to me.

So even Overleaf is starting to get gross now?

Feels a little off to be working on a run-of-the-mill paper on Congressional legislation right now. Can't imagine how Americanists must feel going about their ordinary research business these days.

It's not new, ya know

The only people who consistently like my posts are people that I employ. I don’t think that’s a great indicator for the quality of my posts. Or, rather, it is a great indicator, just not the one I would like…

I'm guessing Gen Z has been wise to this for a while, but no longer striving really is the revolutionary mode du jour

Really impressed with @philippkoeker.bsky.social for spotting a (small) recording error in the electoral data from Sunday. Poli sci street cred through the roof.

Despite a big increase in turnout, yesterday's elections have seen the lowest share of invalid votes at any German federal election ever at 0.6 percent. People can vote correctly when they want to.

23 electoral districts wake up to headlines like these. That will create enormous frustration for voters.

83% turnout despite not liking anyone on offer.

This has been true for the entire existence of the AfD, but it is worth emphasizing again and again: Among German voters, the AfD is the most unpopular party.

I am betting that we'll end up having the lowest share of invalid votes in decades in today's German federal election.

Speaking of the uncharismatic AfD leadership, I would bet that the AfD has had a far smaller share of their posters depicting Alice Weidel than the other mainstream parties had their leaders on their posters.

As the far right is headed for a stunning win in the German federal election on Sunday, one wonders what they could have achieved if they didn’t have whatever the polar opposite of a charismatic leadership is

When will the first academic journal switch to pre-screening their submissions using AI? Can't be far off given the flood of manuscripts and the lack of reviewers.

I have a brand problem on social media. I know I'm supposed to have a professional presence but the things that I find most interesting/want to post about seem to me like the most unprofessional things I could post about. So I guess I view my brand as more conservative than I view the product?

Political science has a massive over-supply of public opinion research because it's too cheap and easy to do.

Not loving the "party X shouldn't promote issue Y because it strengthens party Z" discourse in German political science these days. It completely negates that party X might have preferences/convictions independent of strategic considerations, something we would applaud in every other circumstance.

The globalist elite will scream and yell but the tariffs on Colombia will be great for Iowa coffee farmers.

Are wars perceived to be more costly by governments in times of declining populations in many parts of the world? Seems like a dead young person is an economically bigger deal now than it was in the past. (The lack of empathy expressed here makes me feel like a proper economist.)