Project Syndicate asked @profhilaryallen.bsky.social, @simonhrjohnson.bsky.social, Corey Klemmer, Anat Admati, and me about the prospects of a financial crisis in 2026. I focused on the concentration of risk in the AI sector and the opacity of how it's being managed in off-balance-sheet debt deals.

As CEO of Mott’s Applesauce I really have to question your mental state if Applesauce isn’t on your plate, in your toilet, in the bedroom, really everywhere that Applesauce could help

🧕Why do authoritarian regimes with poor records on women’s rights promote narratives about those same issues? A recent @3streamsblog.bsky.social post by @jieun-lee.bsky.social highlights the political motives behind this move. medium.com/3streams/wom... #polisky

And we knew this. This wasn't speculation. We studied it, we had the talking points. We trained volunteers to explain this to people. It's not a surprise. Rich people don't flee places with good quality of life when we increase the quality of life. They might try to cheat us, but they don't leave.

Some astonishing numbers in here: -OpenAI loses $2 for every $1 it makes -OpenAI projects annual losses of $14 billion by 2026 -To break even OpenAI needs to increase revenue 25x in just 5 years -33% of VC portfolios are committed to AI -5 AI-heavy stocks account for 29% of the S&P 500's value

I’m very happy to announce that I won a book prize from the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians. You can download the book for free at tinyurl.com/kahnbk. It’s about the history of Turkish migration to Germany and anti-migrant racism. @ghiwashington.bsky.social @universitypress.cambridge.org

Just a quick heads-up: I'm offering another post-election session of Dumpster Fire Fighting for Academics, my popular survival course for brain workers during troubled times. FREE, as always. Fri Nov 21, 12 noon ET (GMT-5). www.payments.leannecpowner.com/service-page...

Here's how three professors started a research academy - training undergrad students in research methods and then matching them to faculty mentors to apprentice as RAs for 10 weeks! Ft. @dadakim.bsky.social & @ucrpolisci.bsky.social! doi.org/10.1017/S104... #polisky #academisky

This is so cool. I think I’ll only ever be comfortable w/ AI up to a point. But I feel like THIS👇is the sort of thing AI in journalism was intended to create.

AI makes effective science communication more difficult and more important than ever. More difficult because AI makes laypeople think they can bypass experts and interpret data for themselves. And more important because AI's errors threaten to further erode laypeople's trust in science itself.

9) Good research takes time. Asking people to publish so much is often counterproductive. 10) Micromanaging academics is counterproductive. Providing freedom. 11) Requiring young academics and PhD candidates to ask for permission to go to international conferences kills their career.

You go into a store to buy a 2-litre bottle of milk at the supermarket and pay $3. But the person in front of you in line paid $3.50. And the person behind you paid $2. Surveillance pricing is the practice of monitoring consumer data to charge you the most they think you will be willing to pay.

Three years after my husband died, I’m still trying to prove our life together was worth losing his family. What I live with isn’t forgetting — it’s the blurring of memory. On the third anniversary, I wrote about grief, memory, and continuing without answers. www.dataandpolitics.net/the-blurring/

We need to talk about how social media algorithms push moms down a slippery slope of distrust. From "Are my kids getting enough support in school?" To "Maybe I should homeschool." To "Maybe modern medicine is bad." I've seen this first-hand in research I'm doing on parenting apps. 1/🧵

1. This has been the rule for non EU visa applicants in the #RestofTheWorld for a while. 2. We told you that the dragnet was only going to get smaller. The visa process in the UK has been a cash grab for years now. 3. Spain, Portugal and France have an opportunity to do the funniest thing ever.

EU rules on political ads – aimed at countering information manipulation and foreign interference in elections are now in effect. Here's what will change for users. www.euronews.com/next/2025/10...

You're living through one of the biggest technological transformations in world history and it has nothing to do with AI

Forgot to update: Tried it, it is great. 5 minutes in the air fryer and çıtır çıtır simit. It is not some Americanized bagel wannabe. It is the real deal. So good. I hope it is a permanent product, not seasonal. Definitely give it a try.

🇰🇷Check out this recent article, “Contested Identity and Prejudice Against Co-Ethnic Refugees: Evidence From South Korea,” published in Political Research Quarterly by Jae Yeon Kim and Taeku Lee👇 journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

If you are teaching a class, unit, or workshop about immigration, I have a tremendous amount of multimedia resources, explanatory posts, digestible data, graphics, photographs and more over at austinkocher.substack.com. You might find something useful!  

NVIDIA and OpenAi: Concerns that their “increasingly complex and interconnected web of business transactions is artificially propping up the trillion-dollar AI boom.“ @bloomberg.com $NVDA 👀 www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

everybody should read alice miller. i haven't read this one (i read the drama of the gifted child (which is not about what you think at all)) but now it's on my list.

At @priec.bsky.social this morning — @fulyafelicity.bsky.social presenting on the ways that authoritarian regimes engage their diasporas and how those emigrants respond (or don’t!)

We are thrilled to announce that our NEW Large Language Model will be released on 11.18.25.

OpenAI's VP for education recently said the company wanted to become "core infrastructure" for schools and universities. Any infrastructure, though, always depends on habituating users to its technical affordances - so I've been trying to track how it's doing that 🧵 www.nytimes.com/2025/06/07/t...

🧵 Fellow academics in N. America if a Sudanese student has been admitted to your graduate program MA or PhD please please do your best to help them gather the necessary paperwork for their visa. So many are getting into great programs but (1/3)

AI and authoritarianism are “two sides of the same coin,” George Packer argues. “We’re surrendering our ability to act as free agents of a democracy at the same moment we’re building machines that take away our ability to think and feel”:

Trader Joe’s, here I come!!! Hem de Ankara simidi! (Although, I have to say, we need a Trader Osman or Trader Can label on this).

You mean things like both parents having to work full time and not being able to afford full-day daycare regardless? Or the ridiculous cost of healthcare and living? Or like having to worry for real about our kids getting shot to death at school? I could go on…

AI companies are about to become very *very* unpopular.

My article "Film-Making the Nation Great Again" with @draege.bsky.social is out in Perspectives! Poli sci work on authoritarianism and populism largely overlooks audiovisual strategies. Our multi-modal study uses a new dataset of 11,000+ regime YouTube videos in Turkey. doi.org/10.1017/S153...

This is what you get with AI, not your perfectly tailored entertainment, but an endless pile of slop and shit produced for the minimum money possible. Just Adorno’s culture industry taken to its absolute extreme.

“We find that women report ethics more than men, women and men report on different dimensions of ethics, and these differences are starker at the intersection of gender and method. We identify a new dimension of gender-based inequality in the profession…”

One of the most genuine insights I’ve had into the messy realities of research design, case selection, and fieldwork, and into what it means to truly feel a sense of belonging in the field and academia.

How do authoritarian regimes keep power over people who have left their countries? @fulyafelicity.bsky.social's job market paper “Remote Control: Authoritarian Diaspora Engagement Policies and Emigrant Political Behavior” (and the dissertation from which it draws) answers that question! 🧵

The human toll of European externalization efforts to contain migrant and refugee movements in Africa. A new @hrw.org report on migration control abuses in Mauritania.

All in stock @stanfordpress.bsky.social books, including their wonderful Middle East Studies list, are 50% off from now until September 8!

Stop offloading cognitive tasks to "generative AI." Stop using systems w/ "AI" features either inextricably woven through them or prominently displayed at the top to nudge you into their use. Stop *Designing* "AI" tools & integrations that way. Stop building or using "AI" like this. Fucking Stop it.

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree ... "Researchers built a social network made of AI bots. They quickly formed cliques, amplified extremes, and let a tiny elite dominate." www.businessinsider.com/researchers-...

With so much going on, it’s hard for anyone to focus. My MENA writing group, which aims to provide structure and solidarity, just finished Week 122. Even today we had a new participant. MENA scholars at all levels are welcome to join to help meet writing deadlines. Message or email me

In this video, I talk about a really neat study recently published in @electoralstudies.bsky.social. I recommend reading it! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Want to make a conjoint experiment in Qualtrics? I'm sharing a template + how-to I made while Survey Lab manager this past semester. I hope it is helpful! sierradavisthomander.com/blogposts/de...

Think about how differently you think about these people when they are "tech workers" versus when they are refugees. Same people. But dignity only afforded them in one context.