NYT model has El-Sayed winning with +1.4 but you can see how the race has tightened over time. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
Omar Wasow
@owasow.bsky.social
Asst Prof, Berkeley, Political Science: 1/ Agenda Seeding http://j.mp/agenda-seeding 2/ Race as a Bundle of Sticks http://j.mp/bundle-of 3/ Text as Behavior https://cup.org/4cUmoXi 4/ Plutopopulism http://cup.org/4cfm0Az
My friend runs intense 100 mile ultras but, despite seven years of training, hadn't been able to beat her first race PR. Then this weekend, a breakthrough. Some lessons for the rest of us: progress often looks like repeatedly showing up and failing. Don’t sleep on sleep. Call your shot.
Is My Goal Too Big?
Can I call my shot even after years of coming up short?
lindsayphenix.substack.com
Relateable management technique
Pixie Casey@pixiecasey.bsky.social · yesterdayin insane local news, the 26 year old director of a rocky horror production was arrested for sending threatening messages to himself in order to get the play shut down bc he didn’t want to deal with cast drama www.mynbc5.com/article/rock...
If I’m such a bully, why do kids keep giving me their lunch money?
“He would get in trouble and just—nothing ever seemed to happen,” said a Shaker Heights classmate. “He gets out of stuff,” said another classmate. “He’s rich, he’s well-connected, his family is well-connected. It’s not surprising to me that he doesn’t pay consequences for the things he does.”
Jen Taub@jentaub.bsky.social · 3d agoMax Miller has a documented history of violence against women dating back to high school. Read this article from 2021. web.archive.org/web/20211105...
This confused me so much in 5th grade in the 70s. I knew the common definition of "civil." How could a rebellion led by traitors be civil? Thanks for making it clear 50 years later. I learn more about US history on Bluesky than I did in Honors US History in college in 1989.
“We should return to an older and more accurate name for the Civil War: the Slaveholders’ Rebellion. If a country unquestioningly adopts language that obscures its bloodiest crimes to absolve their worst perpetrators, how can we expect successive generations to remember the new assaults on democracy
Opinion | The ‘Civil War’ Is a Lie. Let’s Call It the ‘Slaveholders’ Rebellion’ Again. (Gift Article)
To face our own history, we must be honest about it.
nytimes.com
“The latest surveys indicate that Mr. Trump is now all but the most unpopular second-term president at this stage of their tenure in the history of polling going back to the 1940s.” www.nytimes.com/2026/08/01/u...
Trump’s Polling Numbers Hit a New Low. Don’t Expect Him to Change Course. (Gift Article)
Barely a third of Americans approve of Mr. Trump’s handling of the job, putting him at historic depths for a second-term president at this stage of his tenure.
nytimes.com
“We should return to an older and more accurate name for the Civil War: the Slaveholders’ Rebellion. If a country unquestioningly adopts language that obscures its bloodiest crimes to absolve their worst perpetrators, how can we expect successive generations to remember the new assaults on democracy
Opinion | The ‘Civil War’ Is a Lie. Let’s Call It the ‘Slaveholders’ Rebellion’ Again. (Gift Article)
To face our own history, we must be honest about it.
nytimes.com
“Nationwide, some 1.5 million children have lost food stamps under Trump’s crackdown over the last year, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.” www.nytimes.com/2026/08/01/o...
Opinion | Meet the Americans Who Can’t Afford Hair Cuts or Toilet Paper (Gift Article)
Millions of Americans struggle in sometimes unimaginable ways, and Trump’s cuts in food stamps and other benefits are now making life even more precarious.
nytimes.com
My dad recently gave me his childhood copy of the first issue of Sports Illustrated, published on August 16, 1954. The cover shows the Milwaukee Braves' Eddie Mathews at bat against the New York Giants. Before I get it framed, I want to go through it and post some of its contents.🧵
It's actually rare for me to be *truly* tempted by something I see on Zillow. But this one is special. Oceanfront, unique, gorgeous, with a view of the Golden Gate. How is this only $899K? Lumiere House in Pt Richmond is on #SaturdayNightZillow. Enjoy! www.zillow.com/homedetails/...
Saw American Zoo yesterday and thought it was excellent. “Part investigative thriller, part historical reckoning, the film traces an unsettling lineage connecting the zoo’s founders to controversial experiments in animal breeding and the racial ideologies of twentieth-century Europe.”
American Zoo
The Catskill Game Farm was America's first ever private zoo, fostering beloved childhood memories for a generation before falling into disrepair and closing in 2006. But found home movies would expos...
jfi.org
“Over the decades, many senators have missed months and even years of Senate business, with some recent prominent figures such as John McCain, and Edward M. Kennedy, going months without voting before they both died in office, of brain cancer, at the end of storied careers.” Gift link:
Why Mitch McConnell Isn’t Giving Up His Senate Seat (Gift Article)
Democrats are demanding that the Kentucky Republican resign. Others who were sidelined for far longer faced no such calls, but times are changing.
nytimes.com
New paper in @nature.com with @lukebeehewitt.bsky.social, @isaiasghezae.bsky.social, & @robbwiller.bsky.social: Can LLMs predict results of social science experiments? Across 70 experiments, we find a strong correspondence (r=.85) between predicted and observed effects. doi.org/10.1038/s415... 🧵
Which vehicles most endanger the drivers of other cars? Giant pickup trucks — and the Dodge Charger Source: www.iihs.org/news/detail/...
“The shifts add to a growing body of evidence that suggests the audience for pro-Trump content has fallen from its heights and, for some creators, has reached new lows.” Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2026/07/31/u...
Generic ballot numbers tend to get outsized attention, but IMO we asked a bunch of interesting stuff in our latest poll, so I want to highlight some of the findings that aren't directly horserace: www.cnn.com/2026/07/30/politics/cnn-poll-midterm-generic-ballot-democrats-republicans-change
New from me: Until recently, the gap between comfortably-off and just-getting-started could plausibly be crossed in a decade or two of hard work. Growth in asset prices means that’s no longer true: even a lifetime of striving doesn’t offer a realistic prospect of feeling you’ve “made it”.
“She wrote up the results for her senior-year high school research project.” !!
Ryan Mac 🙃@rmac.bsky.social · 6d agothe guts it takes to do something like this. props to the goat @davephilipps.bsky.social, who always tells these stories of vets and their families with such care. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/30/u...
I/Claude created a polling average tracker of high quality polls using a variety of methodologies. Ignores A/RV/LV differences. Whether you think 2026 will be a bad for cataclysmic year for Republicans depends entirely on polling. methodology. Topline: Approval 37.6%. Generic ballot at D+6.3 1/
A friend sent me this post so blame him, not me, for this self promotion www.barnesandnoble.com/w/bad-jews-e...
Bad Jews: A History of American Jewish Politics and Identities
Barnes & Noble’s online bookstore for books, NOOK ebooks & magazines. Shop music, movies, toys & games, too. Receive free shipping with your Barnes & Noble Membership.
barnesandnoble.com
Omar Wasow@owasow.bsky.social · 7d agoAm interested in reading more about the boundary drawing and contestation over “who is *really* Jewish?” Am open to work about any country. Recommendations?
Am interested in reading more about the boundary drawing and contestation over “who is *really* Jewish?” Am open to work about any country. Recommendations?
+972 Magazine@972mag.com · 2w ago‘In Germany, Jews who reject Zionism are seen as not really Jewish’ For violinist Michael Barenboim, Germany’s memory culture has become a tool for upholding complicity in Israel's crimes and rendering Palestinians invisible. www.972mag.com/michael-bare...
I try to resist the impulse to read any single story as a sure sign of impending national/civilizational collapse. but at any given moment there are four or five things happening at once that I'm trying not to be a doomer about, which is about three too many
Catherina Gioino@catgioino.bsky.social · last wk.I wrote about how much Americans wagered on sports betting in 2025 and how it’s more than they spent on movies, art, museums and music combined. Read my article @fortunemagazine.bsky.social fortune.com/2026/07/26/g...
Providing authorities with a “duress passcode” that intentionally erases the device risks triggering statutes against destroying evidence. Perhaps a good alternative would be essentially two logins, one private and encrypted, the other an active decoy.
A U.S. Citizen Deleted His Phone’s Data. Now He Faces a Felony Charge. (Gift Article)
Federal prosecutors charged a man returning to the United States with obstruction because he gave them a passcode that erased his smartphone during a customs search.
nytimes.com
Saw parts of this presented a year ago and am still thinking about it. Highly recommend.
Michael Shepherd@mshepruralpolitics.bsky.social · 3w ago🚨New Book Alert 🚨 Thrilled to announce the publication of my first book: Rural Pain, Republican Gain by @uchicagopress.bsky.social ‼️ Officially released in one month but at the warehouse and ready to ship to you and yours! press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...
Here's a larger data set. Note that the rank order is pretty good! The correlation coefficient is +0.934, where +1.0 is perfect. And a measure of getting the order right, which is called "rank correlation", is an amazing +0.980. tl;dr we're good at comparing, but we are the pits at quantifying
