Probably a little bit late to the party, but this recent @poppublicsphere.bsky.social reflection makes a really good point about the most important threat(s) to democracy today: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

It’s Not Polarization; It’s the Radicalization of the Political Right | Perspectives on Politics | Cambridge Core

It’s Not Polarization; It’s the Radicalization of the Political Right

cambridge.org

That's probably one reason why I haven't visited China yet.

The New York Times@nytimes.com · 13h ago

An unsecured police database revealed how China uses vast amounts of private data like facial recognition and travel logs to track foreigners.

Survey firms hivemind, anyone has experience with working together with riwi.com ? #polisky #commsky

New paper out in @jpeaceresearch.bsky.social! Here, I look at the non-linear relationship between levels of executive constraints and a country's risk of experiencing incumbent takeovers. academic.oup.com/jpr/advance-...

Executive constraints and incumbent takeovers

Abstract. This paper provides a systematic study of how judicial and legislative constraints on the executive safeguard against incumbent-driven regime tra

academic.oup.com

Voll arbeiten – oder mehr – und nur für Teilzeit bezahlt werden? Klingt unlogisch, ist an Unis und in Forschungsprojekten aber Alltag. Befristungen begünstigen die „freiwillige“ Mehrarbeit, auch nachts und am Wochenende. Diskutiert mit: veranstaltung.akwien.at/de/arbeiten-...

I can only recommend taking the effort and spend 16 minutes listening to this talk:

Rob Sica@robsica.bsky.social · 4d ago

www.nature.com/articles/s44...

This is great in today's high-paced research output world.

Paper Skygest Team@paper-feed.bsky.social · last yr.

Welcome to your personalized Paper Skygest, a curated feed showing posts from your network. 📌 To pin this feed, select the pin icon at the top right of the feed. When you pin it, you'll see it up above here! ➡️ Follow this account for Skygest updates!

Happy to share a piece published in Tech Policy Press drawing on my research on online censorship. www.techpolicy.press/how-cyberatt...

How Cyberattacks Became a Censorship Tool

The internet made it easier to evade traditional censorship, but Philipp Lutscher writes that cyberattacks are a cheap and deniable authoritarian countermove.

techpolicy.press

“Russians can only access Telegram now by using a VPN ​to encrypt traffic and conceal their location. Yet state bodies including the Kremlin and the defence ministry continue to post ⁠to it on a daily basis.”

Russia charges Telegram founder Durov with aiding terrorism, he gives Moscow the finger

Russia said on Wednesday it had ​charged Telegram founder Pavel Durov with facilitating terrorist activity, alleging that his hugely popular messaging app was being used by ‌Ukrainian spies to organis...

reuters.com

#OpenAccess from @govandopp.bsky.social - Rival or Villain? The Evolution of Language Depicting the Opposition under Authoritarianisation - https://cup.org/4wrDIdB - @yagcialper.bsky.social, Cemal Yılmaz & Uzay Çetin #FirstView

If you tell G:M 5.2 that they're Claude, they're more willing to talk about subjects like Taiwan/Tibet x.com/benji_berczi...

The World Cup ended Sunday, but the increased surveillance won't, write Ranking Digital Rights’ Tayrine dos Santos Dias and Leandro Ucciferri. Their investigation maps the companies behind the data harvesting, predictive policing, and aerial surveillance across 16 host cities.

The Silent World Cup Winners are the Companies Normalizing Surveillance

Ranking Digital Rights (RDR) released an investigation into the companies supporting surveillance and policing in the 16 host cities of the 2026 World Cup.

buff.ly

𝑯𝒐𝒘 𝒄𝒐𝒎𝒎𝒊𝒕𝒕𝒆𝒅 𝒂𝒓𝒆 𝒄𝒊𝒕𝒊𝒛𝒆𝒏𝒔 𝒕𝒐 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒊𝒅𝒆𝒂𝒍 𝒐𝒇 𝒅𝒆𝒎𝒐𝒄𝒓𝒂𝒄𝒚? Our new (well…) study in @ejprjournal.bsky.social suggests that commitment to democratic rights and procedures does not look particularly robust once citizens face concrete crisis-related trade-offs. (1/6)

Tie Dye is Back www.theguardian.com/fashion/2026...

‘Adversarial clothing’: are garments designed to confuse facial recognition systems about to go mainstream?

Designers say that as well as offering a degree of protection from surveillance, their clothes make a powerful fashion statement about the importance of privacy

theguardian.com

I used my rainy Saturday in Oslo to update my website and write a short post on my study of DDoS attacks against news websites: philipplutscher.net/post/hot_topics/ Sadly still very much relevant today: cpj.org/2026/06/7-exiled-belarusian-media-sites-hit-by-ddos-attacks/

Something totally unrelated but relevant tomorrow happening in Berlin: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wa24...

The Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever Berlin 2024

YouTube video by Epha Radar

youtube.com

While I think still Bluesky could be a really good platform for science communication, I came to realize that the community on LinkedIn appears to be much more active.

If there’s one thing history has taught us you do not mess with subsistence farmers

Brad Bolman@brad.bolman.com · 4w ago

Love this bit from the Guardian live chat about how most of the Norwegian player names are about farming

Are preferences for authoritarian rule individual predispositions—or can they spread socially? Using field + survey experiments in the Norwegian Armed Forces, we show that openness to strongman rule can spread socially. American Journal of Political Science: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

American Journal of Political Science | MPSA Journal | Wiley Online Library

The increasing popularity of strongman rule in democratic societies underscores the need to explore how authoritarian regime preferences might spread socially. We assess the role of social influence ...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Dead Internet has arrived

We're hiring 2 postdocs at @uio.no on my ERC-Cog project on how authoritarian regimes shape scientific knowledge. 3–4 years, U. of Oslo. Deadline: 10 Sept 2026. Great dept., terms, well funded, bustling & green Scandi capital. Apply! 👉 jobbnorge.no/en/available-jobs/job/303060/postdoctoral-fello

Postdoctoral Fellow  (303060) | University of Oslo

Job title: Postdoctoral Fellow  (303060), Employer: University of Oslo, Deadline: Thursday, September 10, 2026

jobbnorge.no

PS: Hard propaganda over the top!

Gwen Snyder is uncivil@gwensnyder.bsky.social · 2mo ago

This is the funniest fucking shit I've seen all week

This is the funniest fucking shit I've seen all week

ACDC sat down with @60minutes.bsky.social for last night's episode, explaining that military insiders accused of illegal profiteering on Polymarket are not isolated cases but part of a systemic problem. www.cbsnews.com/news/predict...

Online prediction market traders make millions betting on U.S. military operations

Prediction market users are profiting from bets on war. Analysts say suspiciously timed bets, and the high win rates of wagers on military outcomes , are likely signs of insider trading.

cbsnews.com

Anti-Corruption Data Collective@acdatacollective.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Great to see insider trading on military event prediction markets getting the primetime treatment from @60minutes.bsky.social. Last month we revealed that 52% of long shot bets on military outcomes on Polymarket are successful, way over the platform average. acdatacollective.org/work/insider...

Today in four weeks, Switzerland will vote on a far-right SVP initiative that demands a cap on the Swiss population of 10 million. What is often misunderstood is that the initiative does not necessarily demand an end to immigration, but — even worse — the complete disenfranchisement of immigrants.

I’ve been podcasting again: open.spotify.com/episode/4ZQW...

9. The Case For Participation: Crisis, Governance And Opportunity

open.spotify.com

I recently saw Molly Roberts presenting this work. What a fantastic but disturbing study.

Joshua Tucker@jatucker.bsky.social · 3mo ago

1/ Excited to report we have a new paper out @nature.com today! The bottom line: training data for LLMs does not just fall from the sky - it is created in the context of existing social political institutions - and that has consequences for LLM output. nature.com/articles/s41...

1/ Excited to report we have a new paper out @nature.com today! The bottom line: training data for LLMs does not just fall from the sky - it is created in the context of existing social political institutions - and that has consequences for LLM output. nature.com/articles/s41...

State media control influences large language models - Nature

Government-controlled media influences the output of large language models via their training data, and models queried in the languages of countries with lower media freedom show a stronger ...

nature.com

@jonaswschmid.bsky.social @felixhaass.bsky.social and @chknutsen.bsky.social this should be included in the infrastructure, monument and symbol politic data collection of ELDAR.

Justin@sitkaworldsfair.bsky.social · 3mo ago

It’s just sparkling megalomania

My new paper with Margarita Zavadskaya is out in @poppublicsphere.bsky.social! Since 2022, the Kremlin has turned pseudo fact checking into a key propaganda strategy. But how does it affect citizens? We run an experiment to answer this Q (10/): doi.org/10.1017/S153...