We don’t talk enough about how Yoda’s distinctive way of talking suggests that he learned the tongue of the galactic republic in his teens or in adulthood (not as a child), which means that like Luke he was too old to begin training as a Jedi in the conventional manner. Makes you think.

So Im on a 15 hour Amtrak run across the center of America and I’m on hour 6 of listening to Epic…it is going to be really hard to keep sub vocalizing banger after banger when I want to belt this musical with my full voice! I wont but it is taking all of my self control!

This is a totally shit attack line. Stop trying to use shame to attack people who have none. People who vote for Collins (or any Republican) do so because they want to put a Republican in office no matter what. No. Matter. What. “Oh you are being inconsistent” is not a meaningful argument.

One thing I’ve observed is that Americans hate education and educated people. When students explain their studies to non-university affiliated folks, invariably the reaction is mockery or some snarky attack implying the student is making a mistake. There is no ”right” answer. People just suck.

A young couple next to me at a restaurant are discussing flying dreams and they both agree that fairy wings are not good wings because they are not well suited for battle. Honestly that is a good take.

If he’s really ill, watch the betting lines.

I’ve played along with the BlueSky is dying game because it is fun. And you have too. We played the same game every day when on Twitter (and honestly keep playing it in a different way). We are a species that needs to soil the nest to feel at home.

Imagine how a 1 trillion dollar investment in shifting the US economy over to renewables would have upended the global order and collapsed petro dictatorships around the world. Instead we get this shit.

Me (a dude): so I don’t want to read too much into [literally anything] but do you think maybe there is a gender component at play. Her (and literally every woman I have ever interacted with): Yes.

Oh Christ! It is even worse than you imagine. Over half of the BlueSky “survivors” didn’t even march on Moscow but joined the retreat from a column that was dispatched to Polotsk early in the campaign!

I love Chicago. But I also love fantasy of a fresh start. Right now those two things are feeling in sync

Oh you think BlueSky is dying. Are there other places on the internet where I can see cats, because … … so I’m just hearing this now… … Yes there are apparently other places on the internet one can see cats. Sorry ya’ll. You had an ok run.

If BlueSky doesn’t make it I’m going to open a text file for my posts and put it on a Dropbox shared folder with a public link. My engagement will probably be the same. #ControlYourData #FederatedSocialMedia

I don’t believe BlueSky actually dying. We have a vibrant community of desirable, interesting people. It is possible it will be gobbled up by a more successful social media platform…like Yahoo dating…but that would increase our numbers by a factor of 10 and simplify my login situation.

If you want to know why BlueSky is dying it is because no one (literally no one) wants to see sexy Alf drop trou. Stop trying to make it a thing and go back to what the people really want—being yelled at for not doing alt text right like they do on Mastodon.

So I obviously don’t want BlueSky to die…but have we considered that people come here for fun and community. But it has been a year of non stop trauma bonding. I love you all but I am not liking your post on American war crimes and I might need some time in a quiet room. So yeah, the stats are down

So we meme/vaporize this asshole who read the constitution and is going to speak truth to power about how zoning for a new community pool is treading on his rights. Time to switch it up. Dude just read Fanon, or Orwell, or Baldwin, or Arendt, or Foucault or Said…and he is righteously pissed!

I’m in chicago and ai always make a point to hit Untitled supper club. The results are always spectacular.

Man. Sometimes BlueSky just gets the moment we are in.

Is this Drunk Shakespeare Chicago — Romeo and Juliet? Yes. How does it compare to Drunk Shakespeare Chicago — McBeth? I’ll let you know in 90 minutes!

If project Hail Mary taught us anything it is that we can’t assume space missions will be staffed by [***spoiler redaction***]

Since all* of BlueSky is talking about reoccurring dreams, my most horrifying reoccurring dream is staring at an eclipse because I keep forgetting (and momentarily remembering) that it will burn my eyeballs out of my eyeball holder. It is horrible. * no one is actually doing this, but they should.

If you know, you know. #PoliSciMeca

So this is not great, but it is worth remembering that none of this would be happening if our data centers were in space. Why don’t you think about that for a second. Huh? That is why we are in this mess! I bet you wish you had been nicer to billionaires now.

Because I live in a low population density area I’m waiting for the train (there is only one) to arrive at 2:30am. Also the US is incredibly big and our trains are ridiculously slow.

Academic Bat Signal: Has anyone been at an institution that has built positive faculty / staff relations? What helps? What works?

I think the reason the lord of the rings is a mainstream hit and the Silmarillion is because “satan-esque dark lord” makes for a better villain than “so he is basically an elven Renfield but also a werewolf 🤷‍♂️”

Probably at my lowest point in 3 years. Relentless optimism can’t really substitute for the loss of those you love. #LessonsIShouldHaveGottenFromTedLassoButIDidntWantTo

So are we agreed that Project Hail Mary is a buddy comedy?

The first three wars a free United States fought were to ensure freedom of navigation. The Iran war lays bare the moral vacuity of the GOP—a party that constantly points to the founders to justify whatever regressive nonsense they want to foist on Americans.

Attending a cheer competition in Brookings SD. Plan to live tweet the event. Watch this space for my reporting of interesting things: …. …. ….

www.ft.com/content/4f09... Genuinely hard to overstate how much of a strategic defeat it would be for the United States if the war ends with effective Iranian control of the Strait.

So I may or may not be teaching a new class in the fall but if I have the bandwidth I’m thinking of teaching a course on insurgency and counter insurgency theory in rouge one. I think I can link a major research stream to every episode…

Made a comment to friends tonight that I’m a good ex husband…and I realized that this is actually the most important thing in my world right now—has been for 3 years and will be for 3-50 more.

While Facebook sucks for a lot of reasons the one that annoys me the most is that it will only show me like 9 posts (mostly ads) before telling me that it is out of content. Seriously? Suck less. The internet is full of very bad takes that can rage bate me into hours of engagement.

So this has been a really good #ISA2026 but I don’t love that Columbus rolls up the street at 10pm. It reduces the options for chatting and connecting by a not insignificant degree. Most of us are not socially at our best when we are highly caffeinated and stressed at 10:30am.

Is it just me or is the appropriate response to Iran closing the straight not to erratically threaten infrastructure but rather to seize Iranian tankers once they clear the straight. Seems like a proportionate tit for tat move…but whatever. I wouldn’t have started a war without a plan so 🤷‍♂️

I #ISA2026 conferenced so hard today I had to afternoon nap my way to the evening receptions.

There is a growing sense among those of us who study peace processes that the window of relevance that began in the early 1990s with the end of the Cold War and Roy Licklider’s “stop the killing” has come to an end. We are now scholars of history rather than doing policy relevant work. #ISA2026

#ISA2026 has brought up moments of reflection on why we (peace and conflict scholars) do what we do and how it is often rooted in difficult / violent childhoods. I’m sure it is not universal but it stands out.

I’ve been a fan of IR scholars “bridging the gap,” but after yesterday at #ISA2026 I’m leaning toward “build a curtain wall around the ivory tower” Got a lot of pushback on findings because of normative/policy implications rather than methodology/data. Somehow I forgot that science is social!

Oh man I always do a couple read through a of my conference presentation before my panel. I had no idea it was so bothersome to others. Sorry past ISAs. I had no idea! #ISA2026

The panel of journal editors discussing AI use has devolved into a rather intense debate over ESL writing and global structural inequalities. This was quite predictable. #ISA2026

I constantly hear how the generative AI is only going to get better. Do we have any evidence for this? I’ve seen the buildout of new applications. But the problems of hallucination, milquetoast answers, and blind confidence remain or have gotten worse.

I’ve rolled into Columbus OH for #ISA2026. Looking forward to being a political scientist again after 7 months as an Ass Dean. Ideas will be exchanged, careers will be made, cocktails consumed, friendships forged, receptions raided, and old enmities resolved. Anything could happen!

I have a month of conference travel coming up and while I’m worried about it decimating my workout/diet routine I got to say I’m excited for all the time on planes and trains and hotel lobbies that will be available for writing.

#ISA2026 is days away. Tried using Notebook LM for a first draft of slides based on the paper draft. The text/organization was ok...but it generated a bunch of graphs that are completely misleading (i.e. fabricated data). The side by side is below. Let the user beware!

When vdem first came out I remember a blog post arguing that it was biased and a volatile measure because it showed a decline of liberal democracy under Bush and a return under Obama…and this was evidence of a measurement problem rather than a warning about the GOP’s growing authoritarian impulses.

If human body temp is critical for pro-social brain development, then we could explain the flood of narcissistic tech bros not as a product of social media or modernity or affluence, but rather as “people are supposed to be riddled with parasites during puberty and have a low grade fever.”

For those of us who remember how indignant the Neo Cons / Bush / Cheney once were about bombing campaigns.