Earlier I thought it might be smart to buy Stevens contracts when they were at 1 cent (not because I thought she'd win, but I thought things might at least fluctuate), but I talked myself out of it because gambling is bad, etc. I guess what I've learned here is gambling is good and has no downsides.

I find this genuinely confusing and would be open to hearing from people about why they think it's a good idea. Just empirically speaking, I can't imagine it helps El-Sayed and I don't understand how it's supposed to help professors either.

AAUP@aaup.org · 6d ago

The AAUP is proud to endorse Dr. Abdul El-Sayed for U.S. Senate in the Michigan Democratic primary. Dr. El-Sayed is a fierce champion for debt-free & tuition-free higher education & will be an invaluable ally for academic freedom & higher education as a public good in Washington.

Too much social media focus on the contentious (but conventionally so) Michigan Senate primary, not enough focus on the utterly bizarre Wisconsin Gubernatorial primary

Genuinely funny local politics story here, made all the more well suited for poli sci discourse because the bill was about term limits

Taniel@taniel.bsky.social · 3w ago

This is wild: the GOP executive of NY's Onondaga County (Syracuse) wanted to veto a bill passed by the Democratic county legislature. But he mistakenly sent over a signed version first, and the legislature says that's legally binding. spectrumlocalnews.com/nys/central-...

I think it's largely true that Harris's loss is mostly explained by macro-level things like the economy and anti-incumbent sentiment. But it's interesting that many political scientists on Bluesky have only convinced themselves of this now after spending 2024 thinking she was probably going to win.

Term limits are probably bad. But we don't really know what the effect of U.S. Senate term limits would be, because we've never observed a U.S. Senate with term limits. We're just extrapolating from research on less prestigious/professional state legislatures. Which, maybe? But it's at least unclear

Josh Chafetz@joshchafetz.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Very few propositions command such wide assent among political scientists. Legislative term limits empower executive branches and lobbyists at the legislature’s expense.

At least they were union jobs I guess?

I recently learned that 20 American universities actually do have their own mini nuclear reactors, including Idaho State and UMass Lowell neup.inl.gov/infrastructu...

Quantian@quantian.bsky.social · 3mo ago

US universities genuinely are like “welcome to Tennessee Agricultural College in Bumfuck Nowheresville. We invented the modern potato and our facilities include a particle accelerator, nuclear reactor, and TOP500 supercomputer. Tuition is $12,000 for instate students and we have 40,000 of them”

Amazing in retrospect that there was once a poli sci debate about whether majority-minority districts hurt Black Democratic voters because they could break up 2 districts with a moderate White Dem into 1 Black Dem and 1 white GOP district. An example where polarization really has changed the context

There's a disconnect between how Maine Dems view Platner & how people on Bluesky (including many political scientists) view him. I think this raises a lot of academic questions (about national vs local perspectives, social media, etc) that are more interesting than trying to label him as bad or good

The NYT isn't perfect, but I don't get why people are mad about the focus groups. Mass democracy with high voter turnout means people who barely understand what's going on in the government will sometimes determine major electoral outcomes. If you believe in democracy, it's worth understanding them.

They really did ask better survey questions in the 1940s

Looks like we missed the funniest possible outcome, the VA referendum losing by one vote because of Matt Glassman

I was actually thinking this would be an interesting way to dig into the data when people were talking about it a couple of days ago, but must have missed this at the time.

Drew Engelhardt@amengel.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Focusing in on 2024 battlegrounds offers some interesting context for national trends in turnout differences.

Interesting nuance: "emigrants came disproportionately from the NSDAP’s bourgeois-nationalist wing of merchants, professionals, and early joiners rather than its working-class populist base"

eric gonzalez juenke@egojunk.bsky.social · 4mo ago

“To study… how extremist political commitments transmit across generations, I digitized 3.4 million Nazi Party membership cards, identify those that emigrated to the United States using the census, and examine the political attitudes of their descendants today.” www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/nafra...

As a Hampshire graduate, this is sad to see. It's a weird place in a lot of ways, but in a world where universities are increasingly just converging towards being exactly the same it's a real loss to have fewer and fewer places actually trying new experiments in what's possible

Jody Rosen@jodyrosen.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Devastating: Hampshire College is permanently closing following the Fall 2026 Semester. A beautiful institution & community that has done so much for so many. My child is a current Hampshire senior. Hampshire's approach to education is so unique, humane, & exciting—I've seen it first hand. Tragic

Caruana's not going to win the Candidates, but at least he's going out with some extremely weird (and, for this game at least, seemingly winning) chess: three pawns for his bishop and they're all on the g file

I had a lot of fun the other day giving a workshop on the modern DID revolution at Syracuse University's Maxwell School — thank you @adam42smith.bsky.social for hosting! I have posted the slides to my website at amandakweiss.com/did if anyone is interested.

This is a much better articulation of something I was trying (and perhaps failing) to express yesterday. More evidence, I suppose, that longer form writing will always be better for this sort of conversation than the quick emotional reactions incentivized by social media.

Brendan Nyhan@brendannyhan.bsky.social · 4mo ago

"Conversation is not a reward to be bestowed on those with whom we agree; it’s a necessary habit in a democracy." www.nytimes.com/2026/04/12/o...

What exactly are people on the more populist/"dirtbag" left supposed to do? When leftists voted for Nader, liberals got mad at them. Now that they're trying to work within the Democratic Party, liberals also get mad at them. Is there some magical third option?

BeijingPalmer@beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 4mo ago

What Piker offers is the most corrosive force on the left; a politics built on contempt and sneering.

What a nice move by Anish Giri to basically end any lingering hope Fabiano Caruana has of ever becoming world champion (giving up the bishop, but if fxg6 black can play e4 with checkmate soon to come)

Maybe this is part of why people like The Pitt so much

Cinema Strikes Back@cinemastrikesback.bsky.social · 4mo ago

There’s only one elegant solution to this problem of increasingly stupid audiences, and that’s to mandate that every film ends with a closing rap song that lays out all the moral lessons of the movie. There will be a government office that reviews the songs for aural and pedagogical value.

Finally read this article. More of a meta point, but it's kind of crazy the Atlantic gave a practicing Mormon $10,000 so that he could nearly destroy his life? (I also didn't realize how central of a role Chris Christie played in all this). www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...

My Year as a Degenerate Sports Gambler

Practically overnight, America made wagering on a game as frictionless as checking the weather. I was determined to understand the consequences—for my country, and for myself.

theatlantic.com

This is a tough issue. Banning a vice people are going to do anyway is arguably illiberal. It's also true that legalization is causing major social problems. But even if we banned it, people would still do it. How much enforcement are liberal skeptics of legalized sports betting comfortable with?

Josh Chafetz@joshchafetz.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Every article I read about sports betting--and the McKay Coppins piece is an excellent one--just makes me more and more convinced that we need to ban this scourge. And that we shouldn't sleep on Murphy v. NCAA in the pantheon of Terrible Roberts Court Decisions. www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...

This is how I learned we have a softball team

Chris Vannini@chrisvannini.com · 5mo ago

The funniest hit-by-pitch you'll ever see

The rare song where I love the bass, guitar, and drum parts equally and can't imagine it without any of them

[Christopher M. Federico]@chrispps.bsky.social · 5mo ago

my all-time favorite New Order single is 45 years old today

I think this is the median position of social science academics. It's just that having a middleground/uncertain position on something doesn't lend itself to enthusiastic posting. IRL conversations about AI seem much more balanced than online conversations among self selected enthusiasts/critics.

William B. Fuckley@opinionhaver.bsky.social · 5mo ago

academia very badly needs people who are neither dogmatically anti-AI nor credulous boosters. the potential is real and the problems are very real. but many critics refuse to even engage with the question of the how and when the things work in the first place.

But how will I know if someone with an incredibly common name has been cited in a field I've never thought about before

Connor Ewing@cmewing.bsky.social · 5mo ago

There is still time to yeet your Academia dot edu profile into the sun.

Not sure this will exactly hurt her support among the Teamsters leadership

Amanda Katz@katzish.bsky.social · 6mo ago

This isn’t even the headline: “The IG’s office is investigating a formal complaint that Ms. Chavez-DeRemer was having an inappropriate sexual relationship with….a member of her security detail…and taking staff to strip clubs, drinking alcohol on the job and taking personal trips at taxpayer expense”

The historical political economy crowd is about to run one million difference in differences models, but not sure what it will mean, if anything, for more qualitative scholars.

Ryan LaRochelle@rlarochelle.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Curious to hear whether/how historically-oriented social scientists and historians have integrated AI into their research workflow. I'm behind the curve, largely due to my own resistance, and because I've been working on a long-term project and haven't seen many examples of AI use in areas I study.