Anne's great piece should be read in full and is available here: www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

🚨🚨 Spot on by @anneapplebaum.bsky.social on allies "abandoning" #Trump: "This isn’t cowardice. It’s a calculation. Most of them have stopped trying to find the hidden logic behind Trump’s actions, and they understand that any contribution they make will count for nothing".

🚨🚨Dire warning by Polish PM @donald-tusk.bsky.social suggesting a potential #Polexit from the EU is now a “real threat,” accusing nationalist President Karol #Nawrocki and right-wing opposition parties of steering the country toward leaving the bloc. 🧵 www.politico.eu/article/dona...

Pretty staggering that the FT Trump interview opens with ‘if NATO doesn’t help us sort this mess, there’ll be problems’ and ends with ‘Russia might be helping target American soldiers, but really that’s sort of fair enough - we started it’. www.ft.com/content/1ca6...

Trump insulted, patronized and tariffed American allies. Now he wants their help. How should they respond?

On Sunday, one of Germany’s largest states went to the polls in a closely contested election. What can we learn from the results & how do they relate to looming deindustrialization in one of Germany’s industrial heartlands? A thread with some decriptive patterns from data on 1,101 municipalities. 🧵

This essay best captures my experience on how context-aware AI like Claude Code/Codex adds value to my research. AI as a Research Collaborator, Not a Paper Mill modelinganunforeseeablefuture.substack.com/p/ai-as-a-re...

Agreed. “Let’s one shot a mediocre paper in 15 minutes” is a fun parlor trick but the more exciting thing is the ability to produce higher quality research faster by treating AI like a hyper efficient (if not particularly creative and sometimes mistake-prone) collaborator.

Today in "Things that should have ended this presidency within 24 hours"

“Refusing to throw troops into the grinder, Kyiv has taken a diff path to victory-one defined by precision, patience and technology. Now, that strategy is starting to pay off [..] The aim is simple: make it impossible for Ru forces to move forward fast enough to sustain offensive operations.”

His whole life, Trump has always had someone else around to bail him out of the messes he creates: his father, Allen Weisselberg, the "adults in the room" in his first term. Now all those protectors are gone and he is openly begging for someone to save him from his own folly.

Chronicle of Higher Ed op/ed: Universities and colleges are facing existential problems. Clearly it's the professors who are wrong www.chronicle.com/article/coll...

Anglosphere agony vs Nordic nirvana. (PS Can't believe I'd never seen this graph before, so grateful to @stephenkb.bsky.social for sharing in his fab morning newsletter (www.ft.com/inside-polit...)

The latest step, and a major one, in the Trump administration’s consistent efforts to keep the Russian army in the field against Ukraine. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/12/u...

This is definitely what the people of Pennsylvania were demanding.

The Iran war and global energy markets are beyond Trump’s control. Like COVID in term 1, except this crisis is entirely of his own making. In Minnesota too, bullying and a show of force didn’t work like he wanted, and he couldn’t BS it away. Great to talk about this with @gregsargent.bsky.social.

Congrats Vicente @valentimvicente.bsky.social !!! And if you are interested in Vicente's book (and you should), you can watch his presentation, followed by the comments of Catherine de Vries @catherinedevries.bsky.social , recorded some months ago at UNED, here: canal.uned.es/video/68394f...

Again, one easy way for major media outlets to avoid what they clearly believe to be unfair & unjustified criticism of their wildly different double standard in how the 2 parties & presidents have been covered since 2017, would be for them to simply stop applying a wildly different double standard.

👇🎯 Again, just completely opposite of the breathless EPIC FAILURE OF INCOMPETENCE Narrative™️ that the media immediately & thoroughly adopted when Joe Biden did not provide a surgically clean implementation of Donald Trump’s totally unplanned 🇦🇫 withdrawal timeline.

Trump is saving putin.

Breaking news: European countries including France have opened talks with Tehran seeking to negotiate a deal to guarantee safe passage for their ships through the Strait of Hormuz, according to people briefed on the efforts. ft.trib.al/MjGIZ7Z

Hegseth is so grossly unqualified and out of his depth it is almost beyond parody. He's a weekend Fox News host. His one qualification is that he will never say "no" to Trump, and like many people before him, he will find himself holding the bag for The Big Guy in the end.

Shame on those talking greenlash and pointing at their electorate and saying “well but you told us you didnt want climate policy”. Yes people may be capricious and not fully educated but ultimately want to be led. If govts had greened energy, the current fuel crisis would be much smaller. See 🇪🇸.

The “decarbonization will not save us” conclusion is based on a false counterfactual. We simply have not tried to wean from fossil fuels as hard as we should. And it shows.

I still see too many takes in the newspapers that “Europe did what it could with decarbonization after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we could never possibly have gotten to this point protected” and this is just not the full truth

Trump issues a general license for shipments of oil from Russia effective from yesterday, making Russia the principal beneficiary of Trump's war on Iran.

Worse, in comparative perspective, UK govts have an extraordinary concentration of political power to deal with its growth crisis. Instead, long-term economic planning is displaced by headless-chicken month-to-month headline chasing about fiscal headroom, borrowing costs, and inflation.

NEW - How Violations of Electoral Integrity Undermine Partisan Attachments - https://cup.org/4rkKiPC - @aarslew.bsky.social #OpenAccess

“The other Taco problem. This takes place when he wants to chicken out but is unable to. This is probably the most dangerous possible scenario. It’s the one we’re in right now. Trump cannot chicken out of Iran because he is not the only actor participating in it.” open.substack.com/pub/iandunt/...

"Karp’s message is loud and clear: My technology will take political capital away from one of your greatest enemies—liberal women with degrees—and give one of your favorite demographics to patronize—working-class men—more political power to transfer to you." newrepublic.com/post/207693/...

Yes immigration went up, yes social media appeared, yes there was a concerted campaign by billionaires to distract us all with bulls***. But ultimately you can’t have no growth for two decades and expect a political system to hold

There’s a lot of noise in politics but if you want to understand why we’ve had 8 Prime Ministers in the last 20 years and no leading politician has a positive approval rating, you might want to check out this chart

The Financial Times reports that russia is earning as much as $150m a day in additional revenue from oil sales, making putin the "biggest winner" from the Middle East conflict.

When you see the proofs, it feels a bit more real ✨ Grassroots Women in the Populist Radical Right (Oxford University Press) will be published online in June 2026 and in print in July 2026.

"A path-breaking study that redefines neoliberalism and its change over time." Christine Desan Technocrats in Turmoil by Nicolas Jabko (@jhuartssciences.bsky.social), Out Now 🗺️ #PoliSky #EconSky #FederalBanks #LawSky https://cup.org/47bbMQr

Concurso para una plaza de Profesor Titular en Sociología, Universidad de Vigo secretaria.uvigo.gal/uv/web/convo...

Pary Baban has her first cook book out. Hers is an incredible story. From fleeing Sadam in 1988, to coming to London as a refugee, running a kiosk & starting Nandine 10 yrs ago. Her food is delicious & I always look fwd to new dishes from the ever changing menu www.waterstones.com/book/nandine...

The 2026 National Science Foundation budget is $8.75 Billion.

China’s rubber-stamp parliament set to approve ‘ethnic unity’ law

"Violence can destroy power; it is utterly incapable of creating it." -- Hannah Arendt www.jstor.org/stable/23025...

Billionaires’ % share of federal election spending in: 2008: 0.3% 2024: 19% @nytimes.com #GildedAge www.nytimes.com/2026/03/09/u...

Very happy that this article with Samir Negash and Lorenzo Piccoli has just been accepted at the European Political Science Review. In it we show that "welfare chauvinism" is much more nuanced than many assume.

This is a must read book for anyone interested in American society now. fitzcarraldoeditions.com/books/greyho...

Vladimir Putin’s administration has endorsed a plan to bolster the prime minister’s party by flooding social media with messages designed in Russia and posted by influential Hungarians. ft.trib.al/LUbnQf9

That’s more than half the annual budget of the National Science Foundation.

Number of academics working in the UK falls for first time www.timeshighereducation.com/news/number-...

Today in 'shouting 'til we're blue in the face'. But maybe the media will listen when it's published in a journalistic outlet? Just kidding, of course. #farright #radicalright

The Chinese Communist Party is attempting to rename the Tibetan people’s homeland, part of a wider effort to eradicate Tibet’s cultural identity. For Tibet, it’s more than just a name.

With free to read link as.ft.com/r/1754a96b-d...

Fascinating.