Hi and bye | Recycling (still lives with Nam June Paik)

Yesterday, Mr Fico's gov't Smer+Hlas+SNS amended Slovakia's constitution with the help of KDH (EPP). Current polling gives the four parties less than the needed 90 votes even with the out-of-parliament Republika (ESN) added. Two of ex PM Matovič's MPs (EPP) also voted with the gov't.

September poll by AKO finds the support of ex-PM Matovič's ex-OĽaNO (EPP) [for now "Hnutie Slovensko"] heavily skewed towards men [dark blue in the chart, women are in light blue]. This skew is even heavier than those of the far-right Republika (ESN) and the center-right liberal SaS (ECR).

September polls find Mr Fico's gov't coalition roughly on the downward trend that started around the time of the assassination attempt against him. The trend is downwards even with the growing far-right Republika added to the govt's numbers. 1/n

The global retrenchment of academic freedom, as estimated by V-Dem and FAU: 2008-2015: mostly at the lower part of the scale 2015-2024: the upper part of the scale moves as well More by FAU at: academic-freedom-index.net @vdeminstitute.bsky.social

“If we want [front-end] things to stay as they are, [back-end] things will have to change.”

Of front end and back end.

R package updates that break backward compatibility as a defense against LLM-based coding assistants?

Rotated 90° anti-clockwise and flipped horizontally, the flag of Slovakia's Žilina region becomes a political compass with the authoritarian half stretched. This loosely reflects the fact that that half is more densely occupied by Slovakia's citizens. The transformed flag | Survey estimates by NMS.

A few charts on Nepal About 1 in 2 Nepalese are 26 or younger, 1 in 3 are below 18, per the UN WPP estimates. Electoral democracy strengthened considerably over the past two decades, and mobilization for democracy decreased from its early 2000s peak, per @vdeminstitute.bsky.social estimates.

Impressed that Gemini 2.5 Flash managed to match the eight flags of Slovakia's kraje to their names with zero successes. On a good day, even your humble poster would do better.

Over 60% of Slovakia's citizens is on the left — 44% on the traditionalist/authoritarian/nationalist left — and only ~12% on the right, per latest NMS estimates. The TAN camp is a bit over 50%, the GAL one a bit above 20%. Source nms.global/sk/politicke...

"Old as the republic" [„Starý jak republika“] goes an erstwhile popular Slovak phrase. Periods of Slovakia's history, from Habsburg Transleithania, through fascist Slovakia and various iterations of Czechoslovakia, to the present compared. The post-89 period is 2162 days short on communist ČS.

Local government's wedding halls preserved in their full 1960s, 1970s, 1980s flair in some of Slovakia's towns. From a new book by Čierne Diery eshop.ciernediery.sk/product/knih... 1/2

The 2025 ECR Starting Grant results are out. The Visegrád Four recorded 12 successful applications. A breakdown by institution | applicant nationality 🇵🇱 6 | 10 🇨🇿 4 | 5 🇭🇺 2 | 5 🇸🇰 0 | 4 The reining post-K.u.K. champion remains 🇦🇹 20 | 10 Also (institutions) 🇸🇮 3 🇭🇷 1 Congrats to the winners!

Railyways in the Kingdom of Hungary in 1906 vs in Slovakia in 2019. What (little) difference did 100+ years make.

"Saint Slota Chapel" The forest mansion of Ján Slota, the former firebrand nationalist leader of the Slovak National Party and Žilina's mayor in 1990-2006, got some parody reviews on Google Maps. maps.app.goo.gl/7hR9hGhW4wBH...

Only a tad larger than a Chelsea tractor

Just a matter of time before some debt-laden tech company starts lobbying for minimum wage for chatbots.

Mr Fico's gov't coalition back to its slow decrease of the past months, per August poll by FOCUS. Neither of the two main blocs with a clear path towards a parliamentary majority. Unusually for the pollster, the poll has a sample of 3,100 and combines face-to-face and online collection.

Not by Jeff Koons: Partizánske's emblematic sculpture of a high-heeled pump. It likely dates back to the 1970s. During the heyday of the town's footwear industry in the post-war era, the town was said to have had 13 women for each man among its residents.

The world's only official coat of arms that features a high-heeled pump may be that of Partizánske, originally Baťovany, a Baťa company town, est. 1938 in Czechoslovakia. The flame in the 1979 arms represents anti-fascist resistance, from which the town's current name also derives.

Excited to introduce a new working paper with @danpemstein.com, @chknutsen.bsky.social and other colleagues not on Bluesky! We use experimental and observational data to investigate the degree to which general biases affect expert perceptions of specific cases. 🧵 1/17 v-dem.net/media/public...

found poetry

Mr Fico's coalition back to its downwards trend of the past year, per August poll by AKO. 1/

In Aztec lore, one year in their 52-year solar calendar is especially unlucky: "One Rabbit was always associated with disaster; there was even an old saying, “We were really one rabbited,”" (Townsend 2019) The next One Rabbit starts on 23 October 2025, per Caso-Nicholson's calendar alignment.

Mr Fico's Smer lost among men, staying level among women, while Smer's close competitor Republika maintains the 2:1 M:W pattern often seen among far right parties: estimates by NMS. Provides context for Smer's recent publicity with Messrs Tate. nms.global/sk/volebny-m... 1/

2025 well off on the path to become a record year in Lyme disease diagnoses in Slovakia. I'd venture to guess that the record won't stand for long.

To be human is to overfit. Homo Sapiens Superaptator / Homo Sapiens Plagiator

"Temple of Artemis asks citizens to donate unwanted pets for sacrifice"

Just like Mr Timberlake, hundreds got diagnosed with Lyme disease this July, in Slovakia. Including some who haven't even found ticks on themselves (some ticks drop-off when fed without being noticed). In Czechia, researchers found populations of infested ticks in parks. www.uvzsr.sk/web/uvz/mapy

Ireland, Czechia, and Slovakia lead the EU in % of households with children (18 and younger), per Eurostat. 🇨🇿 and 🇸🇰 are among the more rapidly aging members, so the Q is how this relates to address registration rules and the official households of working-age singles. ec.europa.eu/eurostat/en/...

Is Robins 1989 accessible online at all? A surprisingly difficult to access #causalInference classic.

Industrial production in EU member states, 2023 vs 2015. Data: Eurostat.

Attacks on election management body autonomy are common in contemporary autocratization. Burkina Faso's junta is set to abolish the previously moderately autonomous electoral commission. V-Dem's '24 report on elections and autocratization around the world: is.gd/IvVHNC BBC: is.gd/KYSrJh

PM Fico's coalition bucks its year-long trend in new July poll by Focus, with numbers comparable to the beginning of '25. NB Focus, has a well-deserved reputation for excellence. Yet, their polls rely on quota sampling. Thus, it's challenging to obtain meaningful intervals for their estimates. 1/n

General election turnout, voter registration, and Labour votes compared to UK's voting-age population, including those ineligible to register, as estimated by the UN WPP '22.

Longest-serving* heads of government in the EU: 1 🇭🇺 PM Orbán 19 years 2 🇸🇰 PM Fico 11.7 3 🇭🇷 PM Plenković 8.7 4 🇵🇱 PM Tusk 8.4 5 🇪🇸 PM Sánchez 7.1 Had Czechia been there instead of Croatia, it would have been a Visegrád Four win. * Cumulative time in office, includes time before joining the EU.

Cameroon's President since 1982, Paul Biya (b. 1933), has announced he'll seek his eight term. The overwhelming majority of Cameroonians was born after he first took the office.

A free interactive crowd-sourced dataset of water mills in Slovakia. Now with over 1,300 mills, including some completely demolished ones. Still, seems far from complete, at least for the north-western counties. www.vodnemlyny.sk/mlyny/estate...

Smer's eagerness to stand out on this resolution might have to do with the fact that Joseph Figueira Martin has been detained by Russian forces.

The motion of censure on the von der Leyen 🇪🇺 Commission had its highest support in the Visegrád 4 🇸🇰 🇨🇿 🇭🇺 🇵🇱 today in the European Parliament: mepwatch.eu/10/vote.html...

Interesting EP vote "against all" by Smer and a Die Linke MEP: "RESOLUTION on the arbitrary arrest and torture of Belgian-Portuguese researcher Joseph Figueira Martin in the Central African Republic"

Interesting 3-way split in PfE in today's EP vote on "Bulgaria's Euro" RN abstained Fidesz and ANO for Lega, FPÖ, VB against Source: mepwatch mepwatch.eu/10/vote.html...

Ex-PM Matovič's SLOVENSKO (the party formerly known as OĽaNO) holds property comparable to PM Fico's Smer, despite having less than 0.5% of the membership--62 vs over 13,000--per Daniel Kerekes' analysis for @dennikn.bsky.social dennikn.sk/4720971/ma-l...

"How Measurement Affects Causal Inference: Attenuation Bias Is (Usually) More Important Than Outcome Scoring Weights" by Joshua B. Gilbert doi.org/10.5964/meth... #CausalInference #Psychometrics Happy to see the first article as a handling editor at Methodology. Many thanks to the reviewers!

Net support for Slovakia's EU membership at +47%, NATO at +45%, per mid-June Ipsos estimates for @dennikn.bsky.social Even among the supporters of the far right SNS (NI) and Republika (ESN), substantial minorities are in favor. Supporters of PM Fico's Smer at +13% (EU) and +4% (NATO).

Mr Fico's gov't coalition of Smer, Hlas, and SNS keeps inching down, per mid-June poll by AKO. Yet, with the extra-parliamentary Republika (ESN) added to the three, their support seems stable above 40% in the past few months. The center/-right bloc of PS, SaS, & D is in the mid-30%s, per AKO. 1/n

Mr Fico's gov't coalition of Smer, Hlas, and SNS keeps inching down, per mid-June poll by AKO. Yet, with the extra-parliamentary Republika (ESN) added to the three, their support seems stable above 40% in the past few months. 1/n