In competitive authoritarian systems, prominent opposition figures are harassed -- some are forced out, potential ones decide it's not worth even trying. Eventually, when the opposition loses, people blame the fact that they have terrible leaders, but rarely ask why their leaders are so terrible...

That's what Brazil has done. You cannot leave it to voters to protect democracy, that has never ever worked.

The Venezuelan dictatorship seems to continue on just as before. Maybe the only thing that will change is that they add Trump to their murals, right next to Chávez, and paint pro-American slogans over the worn-out "socialist" and "anti-imperialist" ones.

This is an excellent piece.

For at least a decade we've been in the period of American history that will cause later historians to say "a lot of these stories have to be false" like Suetonius writing about Caligula and Nero

The seizure of the wonderful network we spent years building on Twitter, and its perversion into this filthy tool for slugs, will forever stain everyone involved.

In competitive authoritarian regimes, the government deters and undermines opposition by using its powers to inflict costs on those who challenge it rather than recognizing their legitimacy as democratic opponents

It's Brazilian political lore: under authoritarianism, the proverbial "police officer around the corner" (guarda da esquina, in proper Portuguese) also gets empowered to crack down, no need for specific orders from above. Seems like the "guardas da esquina" have been let loose in Trump's America...

1/Leaders are abducted/allies are threatened but pundits and governments are scratching their heads on what the US is doing. Danish PM on Greenland "It makes absolutely no sense". Why? Because actors using old IR models when we need a new lens. Enter neo-royalism. abcnews.go.com/Internationa...

Sorry for being that kind of person, but having recently read Mary Shelley’s book, Del Toro’s Frankenstein is kind of infuriating. It’s not so much that there are so many departures from the source material, but rather that every single one of them makes the story worse…

The foreign policy of a personalist dictatorship. There are no constraints.

And... even though trying to steal and extract the oil may not be economic for the US as a whole, it may yet provide opportunities for Trump and his circle to enrich themselves...

Of all the competitive authoritarian developments of the past year I think the fall of CBS News is among the most chilling. That this can happen to easily and so quickly freaks me the fuck out.

It’s early on, but Maria Corina put all her chips on the Trump administration, and it doesn’t look good so far. I have to assume many others around the world are taking note of that…

The more I think about it, the more it seems like the fundamental transformation brought on by the Trump era. People have talked about “imperial presidency” for ages, but we had never had an imperial president — that “t” replacing the “cy” makes a world of difference.

This is 100% true, and I don’t think that’s ever been the case.

Weak.

This is such a perfect antithesis of what Trump represents, and I think the 2028 Democratic nominee would be well advised do double down on this. There’s no more “return to normalcy” such as Biden represented in 2020; but “return to decency” is a path forward.

Every one of these deals exceeds the severity of the Clinton Foundation and Hunter Biden controversies by orders of magnitude. And there are already dozens, probably hundreds.

And yet Feliz Ano Novo = Happy New Year again! #portuguese

It’s a World Cup year!

This is such an important point. PhD students are essentially the cheap labor on which the entire edifice of higher research rests. These foreign students don’t tuition, but they forego several years of lucrative work they could get in the private sector. Many Americans don’t want to do that.

Has got to be “Smells Like Teen Spirit”… I remember exactly where I was when I first saw it, and that tapping foot, on MTV Brasil.

Vão reclamar no Brasil com certeza, mas a verdade é que a idade do Lula é um problema sério, e o pessoal finge que não vê. www.economist.com/leaders/2025...

Vão reclamar no Brasil com certeza, mas a verdade é que a idade do Lula é um problema sério, e o pessoal finge que não vê. www.economist.com/leaders/2025...

Poilievre is arguably the biggest political loser of all time, from a sheer win probability perspective.

Interested in what my poli sci friends would say, but based on the Brazilian experience, impeachment can be an amazing tool of congressional power, a permanently loaded gun threatening the president. But it seems like it can only have live ammunition under PR and a multiparty system…

Eu diria que isso aqui é quase tão importante quanto a prisão de Jair e dos generais. Antes de aderirem à próxima tentativa de golpe, os subordinados também terão que levar em conta a possibilidade de acabarem na cadeia.

This piece is a great illustration of how the long-term effect of Trump’s destruction of US institutions won’t be felt in a dramatic market collapse, but rather in permanently worse economic conditions, and lower prosperity. giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... So long, American exceptionalism

The easiest way to see that this is the result of market forces is to note that every high-caliber research center anywhere in the world will soon come to hire foreigners, as they tap the global market for talent.

Concordo.

Remember the 1920s when nobody was left-handed

Awesome thread.

I don’t want to ruin the Christmas spirit, but it has to be said: Mariah Carey’s All I Want For Christmas has the most atrocious bassline ever recorded…

It’s great that @economist.com is talking about our paper in their piece on “slop” as word of the year — not so great that they don’t cite/link to it… www.economist.com/culture/2025...

I mean yeah it’s an authoritarian takeover but can we take some comfort in the fact that the people doing it are INSANELY stupid?

This speaks to the conversation I had here the other day with @brendannyhan.bsky.social and @mayasen.bsky.social, in the context of higher ed.

Really perceptive piece, by two of my brilliant @jhu.edu colleagues, @himself.bsky.social and @radchenko.bsky.social.

It's good to reminisce sometimes... (via Yellow_blackjack/reddit) #NBA

Another way to frame this is that capturing the (news section of the) WSJ is prohibitively expensive.

Saiu na Folha @folha.com

This is 1 1/2 hours of Americans completely befuddled by the experience of autocratic governance. Just trying their hardest to see some sort of coherence, when it’s all about an autocrat, and everyone else trying to flatter/bribe/steer him toward their goals. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t...

Scary "US-has-turned-into-Latin-America" thought of the day...

This is pretty cool, worth reading...

This is the closest thing to the Frederic Weis "Dunk of Death" that I've seen in an NBA game.

Nessas horas que eu percebo o quanto tempo faz que saí do Brasil... Ravi?? Sério? Não sei nem pronunciar isso, qual é a sílaba tônica??

Life under competitive authoritarianism. Explore this gift article from The New York Times. You can read it for free without a subscription. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/21/b...

This would be a great feature!

This is what captured media looks like.

Que ano inesquecível para a torcida do Palmeiras!