Welp. Went to the dentist today for a regular checkup, and just as he was about to start the whole shebang… water went out to the entire building. And the sucker thing shut off! Womp womp. Do I *have* to reschedule? LOL.
Dr. Katherine Haenschen
@drkath.bsky.social
Asst Prof at Northeastern. Digital media & politics. Proud NJ native. Brookline TMM. Fan of #UCONN, enabling multi-family housing near transit, meatballs, field experiments.
It *does* suggest to be wary of polling, both sampling and weighting, especially against a backdrop of $60M+ in outside money for one candidate, who may yet win despite being outspent 9-to-1.
Matthew Gertz@mattgertz.bsky.social · 6h agoMy ice-cold boring take that will definitely not go viral is that a primary result with a margin of victory of roughly 1 percent tells you precisely nothing about The Future Of The Party.
Pedro weeps
Will Sommer@willsommer.bsky.social · 2d agoTransportation secretary Sean Duffy benefited from millions in corporate donations to make a show about road trips. But two months after Duffy said the show would premiere, it doesn't appear to exist at all. My latest False Flag @thebulwark.com: www.thebulwark.com/p/what-the-h...
so weird that dem voters are choosing candidates who repeatedly, in word and in deed, oppose capitulation and fail to gain support of the capitulators!
Noah Berlatsky@nberlat.bsky.social · 2d agoeveryday the news is like: "polls show voters want trump flayed alive 55-35." "new busload of elites pulls up to white house to drink trump's warmed over piss"
Guess there's some truth to those recent TX-Gov polls after all...
Christopher Mims@mims.bsky.social · 2d agoDo you have any idea how unpopular your industry has to be to get the governor of Texas to pause approvals of your newest facilities? Abbott just halted all data center approvals in his state until they're properly vetted: www.texastribune.org/2026/08/03/t...
when people say "do your own research" they generally mean "do not trust anyone with any relevant training or experience"
Marc Veldhoen@marcveld.bsky.social · 2d agoI'm a full Professor of Immunology and fully vaccinated. I didn't get vaccinated out of obedience, but after decades of studying the immune system and evaluating all evidence. Calling that "lack of critical thinking" is not an argument. It's ideology masked as pretend intellect.
Gonna have to update the slide in my media relations training. Just over a decade ago, this number was 3.5 to one. If you're a flack, remember this ratio. Then ask yourself what it takes to make sure that your pitches aren't just another piece of flotsam in an endless sea.
Josh Sternberg@joshsternberg.com · 2d agoThere are 7 PR people for every journalist in the US. www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...
The WNBA has never had a trans woman play in the league’s 30-year history and now the right and other anti-trans activists are hammering the league over something that has never been an issue, proving once again it isn’t about protection but exhibiting cruelty toward trans people.
Or that a good field campaign can *maybe* move margins by 5%! And that the *best* tactics we have move the needle maybe 1% on turnout, and that persuasion maybe-probably doesn’t work in a D vs R contest.
Daniel Gilmore@gilmored85.bsky.social · 3d agoOne gets the impression that as much as political hobbyists fixate on elections, they dont actually understand them nor do they understand things like thermostatic public opinion or uniform swing. You cant just think about races in isolation, you must also think about them as part of an environment.
The case for turning golf courses into affordable housing www.vox.com/future-perfe...
The case for turning golf courses into affordable housing
A major housing project in Nevada used to be a fairway. Other states should take a swing.
vox.com
I think that not only is this good politics, but the stability of American society depends on it. Liberal American normies are out for blood, but *everyone* is in an anti-system mood. If we don't feed that beast some sacrifices, it'll find someone who can, and those sacrifices will be innocent.
Jay Willis@jaywillis.net · 5d agoChaperoning a preschool trip to the aquarium and one of the other dads who is vaguely familiar with what I do comes up to me and goes “man I sure hope we get some Nuremberg-style trials at the end of all this”
The DSA is filling a vacuum, both rhetorically and (see below) practically that a lot of mainstream Democrats seem to have forgotten: Make people's daily lives materially better.
wishda@wishda.bsky.social · 5d agoThe DSA in Wilmingotn, N.C. has created a "crisis" by putting benches at city bus stops, after literal decades of the city promising and failing to do so.
Just gonna brag on myself real quick, it's the end of July and I've got both inboxes down to 10 unread emails cumulatively, only 5 of which require any sort of action on my part Pretty sure nothing has been snoozed until August 1, tomorrow should be fine fine fine
Social norms largely inhibited candidates (mostly—but not—solely GOP) from pandering at scale to these most anti-social of impulses. Trump changed that by showing it’s a viable electoral strategy in a Republican primary. Social norms are social constructs chapter eleventy-billion.
Faine Greenwood@faineg.bsky.social · 5d agoI’ve been thinking a lot about how MAGA is the feral embodiment of every single negative stereotype about Americans and American culture, brought to putrid and wildly destructive life.
This is, IMO, the big moral challenge (failing?) of analytics and testing: picking the winner with no regard to why or how it may harm people.
By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C)@doctorow.pluralistic.net · 6d agoIt's "theory-free." You don't have to discover *why* a group is willing to pay more under a given set of circumstances, you merely have to observe and weaponize this fact. You don't have to know why one group of purchasers consistently accept higher prices between 6AM and 8AM. 12/
It is profoundly unfortunate that it took the dead body of a 36-year-old municipal employee to get @mayorwu.boston.gov to say she’ll act on safer streets.
Peter Cheung@bostonaruban.bsky.social · 5d agoAh, the paradox of tolerance rears its head again. Hey @wnba.com, you’re a private entity and you can decide that transphobia is not welcome at your games. Or, I guess, you can cater to a bunch of bigots who don’t actually care about women’s sports! 🏳️⚧️
Defector@defector.com · 6d agoWNBA suspends Seattle Storm minority owner for being rude to transphobic shitheads:
Shout out to Sasha and Malia for keeping their old man up to date
Barack Obama@barackobama.bsky.social · 6d agoHere are some of the songs I've been listening to this summer. It starts with a song Michelle and I love by Glen Hansard, a great musician who passed tragically this week. Our hearts go out to his family.
Great reminder of how much American democracy and government is (was?) a system of social norms, and people NOT doing bad things because the threat of being-thought-of-poorly was a consequence, if the basic immorality itself wasn’t enough motivation!
Seth Masket@smotus.bsky.social · 6d agoI've been seeing a lot of people responding to this with "there ought to be a law," but importantly, we haven't needed a law for this sort of thing because no prior president wanted to be known as a leader who would literally kill people in their hour of need for not voting for him
Are car insurers culpable in civil suits against drivers who use their products as murder machines? How can we, as a society, make it too expensive to operate these giant road-user-killers?
Miser@misernyc.bsky.social · last wk.These two vehicles were just involved in a very public fatal crash in NYC, can you guess which everyone rushed to blame and called to ban? (PS: they should both be banned.)
Is lettuce safe again in the United States or not yet
Quick reminder this morning that pluralistic democracy is the only viable option to foster the well-being of you and your neighbor, no matter who they might be.
And if we can’t ban them in the classroom, then let’s make sure that faculty members can wear them in private meetings with higher admins! Especially over thorny topics like discrimination and cheating. They’ll be cool with it, right??
Dr. Damien P. Williams has to go the way his blood beats@wolven.blacksky.app · 2w agoYeah this "pervert glasses in the classroom" thing is bothering me enough that I emailed both my departments asking if we can get practical guidance from the chancellor & IT. What I'm really, increasingly wanting is a Wi-Fi kill switch for each classroom, but i don't know that that's in the offing.
Once you have a situation where the people with the biggest influence in the economy will actively make choices for power over financial interests, that’s a collapse of whatever benefits one could possibly glean from capitalism.
The movie industry has always used novelty as a marketing device, since its origins. it works!
Will McKinley@willmckinley.bsky.social · 2w agoThose novelty popcorn buckets that I mock every time I go the multiplex? They're expected to generate $100 million in revenue for AMC. “This is a real business." www.nytimes.com/2026/07/23/b... #FilmSky