It's good that it will become easier to move to whole council elections. Whole council elections boost turnout compared to elections by thirds chrishanretty.co.uk/posts/stagge...

Yes, copy-editor, I did mean to describe an "electric field of research" rather than an "eclectic field" *facepalm*

Is there etiquette for matching cowboy hats to business suits? Black suit means black hat, no? But maybe there is no @dieworkwear.bsky.social for cowboy hats

Yes, celebrities do play Traitors differently from regular contestants... and here's the political science to prove it https://hardboardscrookedtimbers.org/yes-celebrities-do-play-traitors-differently-from-regular-contestants-and-heres-the-political-science-to-prove-it/

For me, it is objectively ridiculous that the UK left knows and cares a lot more about Zohran Mamdani than it does about Pedro Sánchez - the left-wing Prime Minister of Europe's fastest growing economy.

I liked this story more than most people on my timeline. The reasons I liked it are mostly to do with how it shows that much of the UK state exercises a purely notional control over anything. Trading Standards? Pfft. Companies House? Don't make me laugh. www.bbc.com/news/article...

This is an incredible and very specific hater energy substack.com/home/post/p-...

If you know anyone considering doing a PhD in political science or sociology, encourage them to apply to the EUI PhD program and join the institute's landmark 50th cohort of PhD researchers in the SPS Department! Applications from Central and Eastern Europe are particularly welcome!

I'm in Florence for the first time in more than a dozen years, having lived there for 3+ years. It's strange returning to a place after so long; like coming home to find someone else's smell is there, or like seeing someone you know wearing contact lenses not glasses. Heraclitus was right!

Pretty extraordinary story here www-bbc-co-uk.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.bbc....

Japan's "Mundane Halloween" costume contest is back! Each year website DailyPortalZ holds a contest where people dress up as something super duper ordinary. Here's a thread of some of my favorites from the 2025 contest! #MundaneHalloween

I think this is good evidence that LLMs are more than just "next token predictors" www.quantamagazine.org/in-a-first-a...

... but they were, all of them, deceived, for a seventh factor was made...

It's that special, scary time of year -- the time of year when lots of academics grumble about having to complete innumerable training courses before the end of year

Lord Neuberger's lectures on "Justice for All" would be taken more seriously if he didn't serve on Hong Kong’s highest court Last August it unanimously dismissed a bid by Jimmy Lai & six other pro-democracy activists to overturn their convictions for taking part in a peaceful protest in 2019.

If you're "staying on X to fight the Nazis"...you're very much not winning

nope, check check check

A true "instant classic"

I've completed an analysis of the spoiled voter in the link below. This is a voter who will invariably come into play in the future. kevcunningham.substack.com/p/who-are-th...

not to be confused with quesadilla

Something I would enjoy and which may have already been done: a compilation of quotes about how democracy is being overwhelmed by technological change and an increased range of demands. I expect the 1970s would contribute a lot, but I'm sure there are early C20 examples

Writing on a hotel notepad, but taking extra care not to press too hard. I've seen that spy trick: they're not getting my intel on *checks notes* the Latvian election of 1995.

Sweden, the place with the best historical data, finds that a larger percentage of births in the late 1800s (12%) were by mothers over age 40 than today (5%). I extremely did not know this www.scb.se/hitta-statis...

"Within a seminar series, women are interrupted more than men... Interruptions that are negative in tenor or tone, or cutoff the presenter mid-sentence, increase for women presenters"

Great work by my colleagues showing teachers are more likely to nudge higher-income and female students above a grade threshold @sriucl.bsky.social @cepeo-ucl.bsky.social

This is why Duterte's in the Hague, no?

I *think* that if you were picking *at random*, the chances of identifying only faithfuls in five rounds of banishments would be reasonably high, at about three in ten (1/n)

NEW - Election Pledges in Multiparty Governments: When do Voters Accept Non-Fulfillment? - https://cup.org/4hIsvyV - Juha Ylisalo, @theresmatthiess.bsky.social, Katrin Praprotnik & @laurenzennser.bsky.social #OpenAccess

Why do people *not* respond to the Labour Force Survey? For a while the biggest problem was thought to be failure to make contact with the sampled households. New data suggests by far the bigger problem - arguably more worrying - is people knowing they've been invited but refusing to take part.

The academic publishing industry is an oligopoly, an inefficient market. Oligopoly actors force us to buy a long list of crap so we can read the dozen journals we want. Anti-trust action would be rational. Let's hope at least that exploitative bundle deals are refused. We can walk away!

What Bastiat called the "broken window fallacy"; a pretty shocking indictment of GDP measurement. I wonder how this compares to other countries www.bloomberg.com/features/202...

Somewhere there is a social scientist, who has been grappling all through their career with the complexities of structure and agency, crying.

Niche question: can anyone who understands Turkish politics explain to me how, in the 1991 general election, the DYP was able to win all seven seats in Balıkesir on < 35% of the vote?

For context on just how far the Overton Window has shifted to the right on this issue, here’s a snippet from the BNP’s 2010 manifesto.

It's a great pity that anyone who applies for this will have to sign an NDA as long as my arm before they get anywhere near the parents

Elections with greater vote-level fragmentation which used FPTP: Liberia (2005, 2011, 2017) India (1998, 1999, 2004, 2009, 2014) Kenya (2013) Sri Lanka (1960) Source: mattgolder.com/elections

I’ll give Your Party some credit for actually proposing to write into tablets of stone the underlying internal contradiction and conflict of every British party on the left hand side of the spectrum since mass party membership emerged. It won’t do them much good, but credit for the transparency.

Useful replies to this

Close reading as a scientific method jacksantucci.substack.com/p/close-read...

🤮🤮🤮

Latest from our politics of impatience project - some excellent analysis by @mbarnfield.bsky.social showing Labour is losing the jam today voters. Labour sheds support from impatient Britons: on.ft.com/48EaX4h

TIL: there is an album of acoustic covers of MBV's Loveless open.spotify.com/album/7sBKUO...

Because I am cheap, I pay for very few newsletters; I've never regretted paying for this one. There is genuine reporting!

Absolutely none of this makes sense. The experience of her refugee parents taught her to be anti-immigrant? The post-war order was built on the assumption of human niceness?

Discworld QOTD, from Feet of Clay

Because I'm teaching it soon, and b/c parts of my t/l are arguing about electoral reform, I have a YouTube playlist on the Seat Product Model suitable for any English language institution, with no institutional branding. youtube.com/playlist?lis...

Seems like it comes around earlier every year www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

*NYT voice* On a list of stupid things, one thing stands out for being stupider than the rest en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methods...