This would have been useful to for anyone who imagined that a bombing campaign would result the spontaneous collapse of the Iranian regime to read

People need to understand how bad, how devastating, how unjustified Israel’s bombardment of Beirut is — it’s not just yet another of the strikes that have become routinized. Catastrophic civilian harm and human suffering that simply must not be shrugged off as normal and forgotten. Stop the madness.

It’s crazy that the vice president openly intervening in a foreign election for the candidate backed by Russia ranks a distant second in insane things happening today.

everything we are seeing now is the consequence of having a political environment in which indifference to the deaths and suffering of other people - even by the state whose supposed responsibility is to safeguard their welfare - is a superpower rather than a political liability

All of this was very foreseeable but lots of people spent the election prosecuting their precious factional disputes rather than rallying to prevent a fascist from taking office and so here we are.

something strange and horrible and somehow fitting that we should have a very real threat of madman civilizational destruction at the very moment when we also have humans on the dark side of the moon taking pictures that show how small, precious, and beautiful our world and existence is

Today, April 7, is Kwibuka32, the commemoration of the 32d anniversary of the first full day of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsis in Rwanda. Past US presidents marked the date with stock statements of “never again.” Today the president instead echoed the language & threats of the perpetrators.

Impeach Trump.

“A whole civilization will die tonight” The president is openly threatening genocide. I don’t think it’s a stretch to wonder if he’s depraved enough to order a nuclear strike. The consequences of that would be existential, for everyone on the planet. www.nytimes.com/live/2026/04...

Great articulation of my main worry about AI use among researchers (including myself!) Among current students, a hugely beneficial trait will be the ability to force oneself to sometimes do hard stuff on their own to really understand it even when AI is faster. ergosphere.blog/posts/the-ma...

From our FirstView articles: A Precolonial Paradox? Rethinking Political Centralization and Its Legacies by MARTHA WILFAHRT. doi.org/10.1017/S000...

Deadline for submission to the Boston/New England Area Working Group in African Political Economy (BWGAPE) at Harvard is March 27. Please apply! @nlnathan.bsky.social @evlieb.bsky.social @piaraffler.bsky.social @scrosenzweig.bsky.social @chinemeluokafor.bsky.social Link: forms.gle/7R9PkFWEZTc6...

Horrific. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/16/h...

Listening to Bobi Wine on BBC speaking about fleeing Uganda, it strikes me how much the recent attack on international human rights led by Trump has empowered dictators like Museveni to act with impunity. Wine was attacked and intimidated before, but now they feel free to try to kill him,

The quiet part being illuminated: there have been very few new awards from NIH this fiscal year, for some very specific reasons 🆘 www.science.org/content/arti...

That's about half of what it cost for USAID for a whole year www.nytimes.com/live/2026/03...

Who knows if AI will replace us. But I'm feeling pretty confident its about to overwhelm us in an absolute tsunami of crap research...

This is the part about the Gen AI revolution that gives me great pause. This is a real example: compare two PDFs, text only, tell me if one copied the other. Claude Code *cannot do it* What level of task do you trust without verification?

going to keep saying: to keep functioning, a society must discourage baldfaced lying, especially by authorities

www.ft.com/content/84ea... The former African minister in ICE detention

Demanding Idi Amin-level sychophany will destroy our military and bureaucratic capacity for generations to come.

The United States has just begun a massive, open-ended war — and nobody knows why

The Board of Peace has wasted no time starting its first war.

If you still believe a word that comes out of this man’s mouth I have a plot of land on Jupiter I would like to sell you that could be great for onion farming.

-Zero Congressional consultation or approval. -Zero preparation of public for need/consequences of war. -Zero evidence of thought about "OK, what might the other side do?" Next month. Next year. -Zero mention of anti-nuke agreement Trump voided, or Trump claim last year that nukes "obliterated."

Have had this same thought for months. The Thom Tillises of the world, who clearly seem to think poorly of a lot of Trump's most extreme behaviors, can go out quietly, retire into complete anonymity, and be lost permanently to America's historical memory by February 1 2027. Or...

Have had this same thought for months now. The Thom Tillises of the world, who clearly seem to think poorly of a lot of Trump's most extreme behaviors, can go out quietly, retire into complete anonymity, and be lost permanently to America's historical memory by February 1 2027. Or...

This is also true of the universities, law firms, and media orgs that settled with Trump. They gave away their integrity and their rights—and got what in return? www.nytimes.com/2026/02/22/b...

Civil rights activist Medgar Evers was shot in the back by a Klansman in 1963. The National Park Service has removed visitor brochures from Evers' museum and reportedly plans to remove references that call his murderer a “racist"

Imagine how much they’d be lying about what happened without all the videos showing it from multiple angles.

People still somehow naively laugh off Trump's claims as bluster. But the Miller CNN interview is as clear as can be. They've backed themselves into a corner where they'll probably now think they can't not attack Greenland, to avoid looking like capitulating to their critics. It's completely insane.

So important. Peace Is Unraveling www.nytimes.com/2026/01/06/o...

I know it was funny for people to laugh about "TACO" a few months ago... but we actually really *do* want him to chicken out on most of this stuff. Sheesh. In a government where all policy is ego and preening and performative dominance displays, giving him an off ramp to chicken out is a good thing.

As I can recall, the "policy planning process" is a) in first term, Trump makes stray offhand, uninformed remark about Greenland; b) people laugh at him about; c) defensive to the slights, he post hoc decides he meant it; d) sycophants race to tell him its genius; e) now its policy... ... RIP NATO??

People still somehow naively laugh off Trump's claims as bluster. But the Miller CNN interview is as clear as can be. They've backed themselves into a corner where they'll probably now think they can't not attack Greenland, to avoid looking like capitulating to their critics. It's completely insane.

Taking a cue from @mattglassman312.bsky.social, I have created a text-first blog for occasional musings of the sort that fit better into 300 words than 300 characters. Here is my first post—on urbanity, and where we see it. scottgehlbach.bearblog.dev/urbanity-her...

On days like today, it’s nice to have a preoccupation that isn’t tied too directly to current events. Here, a few thoughts on urban design and social interaction, inspired by @nlnathan.bsky.social’s really innovative work on gridded streets and political mobilization.

Needless to say, Congress did not authorize the US military intervention in Venezuela.

Some thoughts on what Trump has done in Venezuela and what it might mean for US national security. Caveat: not a Latin America scholar so this is focused on US policy. Clearly huge consequences for Venezuela that others can address. First, despite the buildup, I didn't think Trump would do it. 1/

Whatever happens now, we absolutely cannot allow Trump's refusal to seek Congressional authorization for what appears to be a large scale military attack on another country vanish from the media discussion, which already appears to be happening.

Among the many reasons you don’t kidnap a foreign head of state at gunpoint even if you have the capability, is that it sparks consequences you can neither control nor anticipate.

Absolute lawlessness

What this will mean, in practice, that if you are deemed an enemy of the administration, they will pore through your citizenship application paperwork looking for some reason to retroactively disqualify you. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/17/u...

I am hiring a post-doctoral fellow (2 years) to work on all things political finance in Africa. There are no teaching obligations, and lots of opportunities for fieldwork. A PhD in Political Science is a requirement. Please spread the word! Happy to answer questions - send them to my LSE email.

With the invasion in Iraq there was some effort to portray it (for the rubes who did not believe it was about 9/11) as about some higher ideals, promoting democracy, empowering women. Here, there isn't even a coherent lie. Its all the personal pique of the mad King that no courtiers will question.

It’s really not funny that we are starting a war for no apparent reason.

New out today