new paper by Sean Westwood: With current technology, it is impossible to tell whether survey respondents are real or bots. Among other things, makes it easy for bad actors to manipulate outcomes. No good news here for the future of online-based survey research

I fully believe in the corporate death penalty and believe we would be a better world if OpenAI lost its corporate charter and was forcibly dissolved. www.cnn.com/2025/11/06/u...

Lots of US companies have done lots of dreadful things to Americans. But the symbolism of paying to destroy the White House is hard to top.

This is fascism, core fascism. Control of knowledge-producing institutions via subversion of their independence, to conscript them into service of the leader & his regime

We laugh at this shit -- I mean, how can you not? -- but it's serious: these guys want to infuse reactionary thinking into AI and then infuse AI into every nook & cranny of American life. They can't win the argument so they are trying to blunt-force their views onto us with money & power.

Bailing out Argentina clarifies "America First." The transnational right is first, everyone else is an enemy. The Trump admin defends it by calling Argentina an ally. But while US-Argentina relations are friendly, they're not allies. US allies are states Trump is antagonizing, such as South Korea.

Kneecap is no threat to public safety and the government knows it. It is insane that Canada is following the UK's disastrous policies of targeting those who speak out against genocide. Where's this level of condemnation for those alleged to support the state of Israel's genocidal hate and violence?

Again, FCC chair Brendan Carr basically SAID THIS STRAIGHT OUT on Sean Hannity in a quote that nobody noticed: newrepublic.com/article/2006...

Contra this, saw someone (correctly) describe our situation as the administration wanting to skip to the steps at the end of an authoritarian consolidation when they haven’t even managed the first ones

in case you’ve ever wondered how much a nazi prison supervisor would get paid in 2025

"With the passage of Trump's death bill, we face the prospect of many great harms, including an archipelago of concentration camps across the United States." snyder.substack.com/p/concentrat...

🚨B.C. is listening!🚨 The all-party committee on electoral reform wants your input. Think every vote should count? Speak up for proportional representation! Submit your feedback by July 25 at 2 PM PT: consultation-portal.leg.bc.ca/consultation...

My report written in collaboration with @realityclimatique.bsky.social with the support of Mitacs and SFU's 312 Main Research Shop is now available! Check it out to learn more about different tools for local public engagement on climate (and eight case studies!) bit.ly/ClimateDemocracyReport

I will say this - EVERYONE with power seems to be desperately hoping that unpopularity does the work that consequences need to do

you know things are going well when they break out the turnip photos

With Yoon removed from office today, by my count that makes 34 democratic leaders convicted since 2010. Only one—Trump—faced no real consequences. Trump's actions weren't uncommon. What was exceptional was how our institutions failed to hold him accountable.

A recession? In this economy?

Since October I've been working with the Climate Reality Canada team to report on creative ways to include the public in climate policy making. Join us on April 24 for the report launch - registration below!

Here's a picture of someone being pulled off the street in broad daylight during the rule of the Argentine junta. If you do it in public, during the day, it's because you want people to see

Unidentified men grabbing someone off the street and putting her in a car because she wrote an op-Ed. This as flatly authoritarian as anything we’ve seen in this country in a very long time.

Hamdan Ballal, Academy Award winning co-director of No Other Land, has reportedly been kidnapped and imprisoned by the IDF

Look, folks, this is it. The entire ballgame. Either we're a Republic of laws & the Constitution, or we have a dictator. This is fascism, & the impeachment vote should be happening today. Every single university president in the country should be out, in front of microphones, condemning this.

Some figures on the potential death toll from Musk's pointless destruction of USAID, from a memo written by a fired official. He will be remembered as one of the great monsters of history. 1/x

People keep saying "it's gonna be a long four years," and I keep saying: this cannot go on for even a small portion of that. People will die, government will crumble, America will go to war, and our democratic republic will be dead, buried, and rotted out top to bottom. He *must* be removed ASAP

Trump is trying to do two separate things: 1.) become an authoritarian leader, and 2.) implement a massively unpopular policy program. These goals conflict with each other and are hopefully self sabotaging in the end. 1x

I finally got what's bugged me about all these stories on the crippling of the US govt: all of them speak of "cuts" when, in fact, only Congress can 'cut' funding, and it has done nothing of the sort. The story describes illegal & unconstitutional impoundment, BUT SAYS NOT ONE WORD ABOUT IT

I know the material reasons for the rise of fascism. I also think another reason - which doesn’t get talked about as much because it’s embarrassing that humans can be that naive - is that when you are financially comfortable but bored, abstract cruelty can give you a sense of purpose.

The AI coup is “political offloading, shifting the messy work of winning political debates to the false authority of machine analytics. It's a way of displacing the collective decision-making at the core of representative politics.” — @eryk.bsky.social

Unelected agents of a oligarch have seized core services of the state without legal sanction or authorization; yes, that's a coup

if you haven't learned about the imperial boomerang today's as good a day as any

Lessons from Ireland: How the country’s electoral system would strengthen Canadian democracy

It’s time to stop denying what we see with our own eyes and say plainly that Elon Musk is a fascist and the far-right project he’s pushing globally poses a serious threat. He needs to be stopped before it’s too late.

Fresh from @joannacm.bsky.social and me: a look at how setting up embedded, ongoing democratic innovations - rather than just occasionally dipping our toes into the waters of innovation - could help better connect policy makers and the public, incorporating findings from our recent article in CJPS.

He regrets it? Don’t forget Justin Trudeau was the architect of electoral reform’s demise. He bears full responsibility for this. In his retirement, he is free to do whatever he pleases. But he cannot rewrite the history books. #Opinion

Out now and open access: new article from me and @joannacm.bsky.social in the Canadian Journal of Political Science in which we examine the breadth and depth of democratic innovation adoption in Canada! doi.org/10.1017/S000...

Delighted to announce a new (open access) paper the wonderful @meganmattes.bsky.social and me - Failure to Launch: Tracing the Trajectory of Democratic Innovation Adoption in Canada #polsky #demoinno www.cambridge.org/core/journal... (1/?)

Out now and open access: new article from me and @joannacm.bsky.social in the Canadian Journal of Political Science in which we examine the breadth and depth of democratic innovation adoption in Canada! doi.org/10.1017/S000...