This is impressionistic, but there's both a lot more antisemitism and a lot more anti-Muslim bias since the last time I did this

Kevin Collins@kwcollins.bsky.social · 2d ago

Survey research is a good way to keep in touch with how much the public actually knows on a given topic, but reading open ends is always particularly sobering

“Frog!” cried Toad. “I am sorry for all the dumb things I do. I am sorry for all the silly things that I say. Please be my friend again!”

A few weeks ago I realized that tomorrow is the date the Ray Bradbury story “There Will Come Soft Rains” takes place. It’s a shame science fiction from 75 years ago isn’t relevant anymore

There Will Come Soft Rains by Ray Bradbury

The voice-clock sang, breakfast was ejected, but no doors slammed. The garage chimed and lifted its door to reveal the waiting car. The house sat alone in a city of rubble and…

short-stories.co

In Philly, I have seen vague orange signs warning about irresponsible development ("Their Profit. Your Loss!"). The Inquirer traced them to the Carpenters union, working to mobilize residents into zoning meetings. My work w/ Asya Magazinnik & Anna Weissman helps explain their logic.

Added something new today. I've had several users ask me for an image of a box score that was meaningful to them in some way. Maybe they got engaged at the game, or caught a home run. You can now create an image of your favorite box score. boxscore.email/mlb/art

I think some history is important here. After HRC lost in 2016, there was a very strong sense among "the establishment" that the party needed to move left.* *I experienced this personally, because all of a sudden I was getting invited to foreign-policy events. 1/x

Oliver Willis@owillis.bsky.social · 2w ago

Because the party has been ignoring them.

I don't have a very strong opinion about year-round DST, but the time that Congress tried this in the 1970s is pretty interesting . . . 🧵

📢 JOB ANNOUNCEMENT 📢 Our department is hiring an Assistant Professor of Quantitative Political Science. We seek a scholar in AP, CP, PE, or IR who applies frontier methods of statistics and data science to substantive questions in their area of expertise. apply.interfolio.com/189477

Here's a little something that might interest a number of you in my network, part of a forum in the Journal of Public Policy: www.cambridge.org/core/journal.... Many thanks to editor Josh Ryan and the commentators Samuel Bagg, Tara Grillos, Agustin Markarian, and Mary Scudder!

Latest version of Positron can open xlsx files in the data viewer(!) and it has a dropdown menu now for previewing different formats of #QuartoPub documents And—most importantly, but also from a few weeks ago, so less new—the plots panel can pick up dimensions from chunk options!!!! #rstats

The image here borrows its title from Grant's 1868 presidential campaign slogan, "Let us have peace." Here's what Frederick Douglass had to say about that sentiment.

Jacob T. Levy@jacobtlevy.bsky.social · last mo.

Hey, look at that, what had been subtext is once again just text. This is a Redeemer administration.

Internecine Democratic Party Bluesky is absolutely the worst Bluesky.

Pork roll, egg, and cheese on an egg everything bagel = perfect start to Father's Day in New Jersey

*with sound effects*

CJ Fogler@cjzero.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Rory hitting into the Windows XP default wallpaper

For years I've tracked billionaire excess. Each year I show students a chart that blows their minds. This year I had to redraw it for a trillionaire: Elon Musk, $1.32T. Depressing that we're here. Silver lining: couldn't have happened to a less deserving person, proof that wealth ≠ merit.

Elon Musk's $1.32 Trillion, to Scale

The first trillionaire's fortune, one pixel per $1,000 — scroll past every dollar, and see what a fraction of it could do instead.

stanford.edu

How has the US added housing supply since 2000? Are conservative places building a lot more than liberal places? In new research, I show that: —Additional homes were disproportionately in high-income, conservative, greenfield areas —BUT infill growth was more likely to be located in liberal areas

The Paradox of Housing Supply Growth: Conservative Sprawl and Liberal Infill in the 21st-Century United States

Housing affordability is declining in the United States. To explain this phenomenon, many scholars and policymakers point to slowing construction, which they argue is particularly troublesome in co...

tandfonline.com

Let’s not be hasty. The Queen of England was almost assassinated this way.

Air-rum@aarum.bsky.social · 2mo ago

This is RIDICULOUS

Added BlueSky compatibility to Wallflower. All your Mastodon and BlueSky posts in one (quiet, restrained) place. https://thewallflower.app

Mike has written a terrific book about what happened in state legislatures after the imposition of Jim Crow. Data are amazing, analysis is nuanced, and the lessons are important. Check it out!

Cambridge University Press Political Science & IR@cambup-polsci.cambridge.org · 2mo ago

Stolen Representation by Michael P. Olson This book uses a tremendous amount of new historical data to illuminate how voting rights shape legislative representation. 📚 https://cup.org/3PNjr1B

New preprint: Jack Lucas, @breunig.eurosky.social and I reanalyze 70,470 assessments made by 12,860 politicians about their constituents' public opinion and demographics, sourced from every available published study of elite perceptual accuracy, and our own original data. /1 osf.io/preprints/ps...

As a native Iowan who has settled in New Jersey, this is spot-on.

Elizabeth Bruch@ebruch.bsky.social · 3mo ago

A favorite graph that never made it into a paper. Circa 2014: "What's the worst personality trait someone can have?" by place of residence. Being boring is a sin in the Boston/NY corridor. Arrogance? Not so much. Immaturity reigns in the South-Central. Best of all, New Orleans: no sense of humor.

Politics by Formula: How Congressional Policymaking Creates Disparities is now out! I show how politics shapes and often distorts important federal programs, driving inequalities across states.

A summary of key findings from our recent @strathplacelab.bsky.social & @parliview.bsky.social findings on the use and perceptions of AI for learning about politics in the recent Scottish elections @strathpolir.bsky.social @connectedpol.bsky.social

strathplacelab.bsky.social@strathplacelab.bsky.social · 3mo ago

AI chatbots –ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, etc. – are becoming part of everyday life, but we know very little about whether & how citizens use these tools to gain political information. Ahead of Holyrood elections, we surveyed over 1,000 Scottish voters with @Survation.bsky.social. Here’s what we found 🧵

The NJ Bike Walk Coalition is organizing a rally at the statehouse in Trenton this Thursday, May 21, to try to get New Jersey's terrible e-bike law repealed or replaced with something better. Details are here, would be great if we could get a turnout at it... bit.ly/ride-rally

If members of Congress cannot maintain political support independent of the president, then Congress is not an independent and coequal branch of government.

Joe Sonka 😐@joesonka.lpm.org · 3mo ago

In a major victory for President Trump, his hand-picked challenger, Ed Gallrein, beat out U.S. House Rep. Thomas Massie in a Kentucky House GOP primary, ending Massie's reelection bid. From KPR's @sylviaruthg.lpm.org #ky4

This is insane. The terms of DOJ's slush fund appear to transfer control of $1.8 billion beyond US government entirely. Unless I'm misreading this, that would circumvent Congress *entirely* and put the money outside of *any* constitutional and/or legal constraints ofany kind. Straight up theft.

Greg Sargent@gregsargent.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Unreal. Now that Trump dropped IRS lawsuit, DOJ just announced a new slush fund for alleged victims of "weaponization." Two Qs: *Will there be *any* congressional oversight? Most reporting suggests not. *Would payments to J6ers violate 14A? Raskin explains here: newrepublic.com/article/2105...

I'm seeing a lot of dunking on this; but this type of analysis is useful for several reasons. 1/4

The Upshot@upshot.nytimes.com · 3mo ago

Our simulations show that the act isn’t needed for minority representation in the South, if partisan gerrymandering were checked. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/17/u...

“He’s dealing with a personal heath condition, and he’ll be back soon,” Mr. Scharfenberger said in an interview. When pressed on the nature of the health condition and why Mr. Kean had not been seen in New Jersey or in Washington, Mr. Scharfenberger said, “There’s no cameras where Tom is.”

The Mystery of a Congressman’s Absence Deepens

nytimes.com

I would totally try this.

Discontinued Foods!@discontinuedfoods.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Libby's Spread n Heat Pizza (1975-circa 1978): A thick, creamy, brownish-orange, tomato-based, pizza-flavored melange in a can, that could be spread on toast or English muffins to make a quick pizza (just add cheese!) Available in Three flavors: Plain, Peppers & Onions, and Sausage

New paper in Nature. The more a government controls its domestic media, the more it dominates AI training data, the more pro-regime outputs we get from AI. By scraping the open web, LLMs are unwittingly laundering state-coordinated narratives into seemingly objective answers.