When teaching accountability models I sometimes describe the incumbent action as "taking money from the treasury" and have to explain that this need not be literal. Maybe not anymore! www.nytimes.com/2025/10/21/u...

I don’t think this should primarily be described as autocratic rather just extremely stupid and embarassing. Not autocracy, clownocracy.

Ok - so I'm going to do a real context+write up but for now, here's what some of these things look like. To start my data reference is DCinbox which is ~208,000 official e-newsletters over the past 15 years.

The CCP’s triumph over the KMT shocked the world—even the Soviets bet on the KMT with more aid. My book, Domination and Mobilization, asks: how did the CCP survive and prevail? Domination and Mobilization offers three fresh arguments that explain the reversal of the century. 👇 cup.org/3G6WKB2

Very happy to share this paper: Like it says on the tin, we study how simplifying assumptions drive overprecision (excessive certainty) and disagreement (divergence in beliefs), using theory, an experiment, and observational data. Draft here: osf.io/preprints/os... Quick thread below.

Using LLMs as a sounding board has helped me solve a lot of technical problems, or at least solve them faster than I would have otherwise. But when you do this on a topic you know well you realize they make a ton of mistakes (while exhibiting 100% confidence) that a non-expert wouldn't catch.

I've seen editors of journals say this before but being on the other side can confirm: the easiest zero-cost way to speed up the review process is to quickly turn down requests to review that you can't do.

The GOB presidency youtu.be/APWXorE6h8U?...

Maybe a good day to recommend this podcast on the Whitmer kidnapping plot. Those convicted were far from blameless, but closer to "jokers strung along by government informants" than criminal masterminds. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t...

I’m generally on team “talking about Abrego Garcia is good both politically and morally” and this is clever but I’d want to see if the treatment durably shifts beliefs before reading too much into it. Would guess this is mostly changing how people interpret the Q.

Bumping in case anyone has leads?

I recently saw a paper where subjects had to do something like write arguments that they thought sounded like what out party members would say about a topic, with the result that it was hard to tell apart “real R” vs “D pretending to be R” args. Anyone know where to find this?

As someone who thought we should avoid confident claims about the best messaging to oppose Trump very early on, I'm now pretty convinced that this is true. Though I'll stand by the claim that we should have expressed uncertainty, and am not sure earlier strident opposition would have changed a ton.

Power corrupts. It’s time for Singapore to become a democracy.

Great paper! Perhaps the team is already doing this but it would be great to see what studies using expert coded data do and don’t replicate when using the predicted values.

Getting close to the Manksi bounds here

Happy to see more people joining team “Trump is too short-sighted and incompetent to effectively dismantle democracy”!

Wouldn’t be surprised if Canada is the start of a wave of left parties winning elections across the world.

Many formal checks and balances in DC have failed but other checks seem to be holding up: — National mass protest — Courts (to a degree) — Powers like voting decentralized to states — Political culture that’s skeptical of autocracy — Big country that sustains pockets of resistance. What else?

Also if you zoom out globally, 2020 was a good year for incumbents, 2016 and particularly 2024 were good years for challengers, and the entire period has been favorable to more right-wing politicians.

Such a clear collective action problem for Rs in moderate districts. If they band together to push back against the craziest part of Trumpism they might survive the midterms. If not he will continue to plummet and they will get wiped out.

So the guy who wrote “it’s time to build” just spends all day texting his buddies? www.semafor.com/article/04/2...

2016-2020 was the term of the 🤡. 2024-2028 looking like the term of the 🐓.

Don’t regret deleting my account but do wish I could easily follow this

Is this the lawyer version of submitting a revision to a journal without deleting [INSERT RESPONSE TO R2s STUPID COMMENT]?

At least in terms of making good predictions there is a clear answer and it is not the one most give to Scott’s survey

Very curious what the Chotiner invitation to do an interview looks like

Interesting how the two leading contenders for pope are considered moderate. Sorry @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social the Median Cardinal Theorem is undefeated.

I think if your entire organization is resisting your leadership you are not doing a great job of leading? www.politico.com/news/2025/04...

Footage from the White House/Pentagon when they learned the news

Fortunately if Rabois confidently asserts something to be true we can be pretty confident it is not

I bet the next leak is Hegseth also sent the plans to his WhatsApp group “cool foreign friends I recently met who are definitely not spies”

To be considered realistic, future formal theories of political appointees must have three competence types: High, Low, and Hegseth

The right objective function here is not “minimize Trump’s approval rating tomorrow,” it’s “minimize R seats after the midterms”

It only took 3 months to reach the warring factions leak to the NYT phase of the Trump admin

According to my sophisticated (linear) model, Trump disapproval will be around 150% by the 2028 election

The R advantage on immigration is not etched in stone. Talking about unpopular/terrible stuff Trump is doing on immigration is how you change this!

Underrated fact

Great piece, which highlights why I think excessive pessimism about the state of our democracy can be counterproductive

found a new feature in word, and i'm not sure I'm doing this right

Writing to get added to the syllabi

I’m generally skeptical of international explanations of domestic politics but this is pretty striking

Big if true

Fair point, Harvard is notorious for letting their untenured faculty run the show

Clearly we must have DEI for people who don't like DEI

infuriating that I must hand it to harvard

Is Trump scared of Bukele (🐓) or just a bad negotiator (🤡)?