Tessera

Folgen

Josef Woldense

@woldense.bsky.social

josefwoldense.com

162 Posts4360 Follower 297 Folgt

Josef Woldense @woldense.bsky.social · 2d ago

Want to learn about empires across human history? @fallofcivilizations.com has you covered. Incredibly well produced podcast. Check it out!

Fall of Civilizations Podcast@fallofcivilizations.com · 5d ago

🏝️🌋 Episode 21 is now live! 🌋🏝️ This time we look at the Majapahit Empire on the island of Java. With traditional music, shadow puppet performances, and readings in Old Javanese, find out how the empire of the islands fell. YouTube: youtu.be/01CZBhZM430?... Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/3xZ9...

Sunset at the temple of Borobudur in Java.

Anne Meng @annemeng.bsky.social · 2w ago

🚨 New in @apsrjournal.bsky.social! 🚨How do the origins of authoritarian regimes shape their subsequent trajectories? @kbclarke.bsky.social @jackpaine.bsky.social and I are excited to share "Rebel Victory and Authoritarian (Dis)Order" /1

Josef Woldense @woldense.bsky.social · last wk.

Do you teach about authoritarian regimes? Check out this new book! I snuck my way in it and shared my coup game you can play with your students.

Edward Goldring@edwardgoldring.bsky.social · last wk.

“Teaching Autocracy and Autocratic Politics” is now out. To my knowledge, this is the first book that considers how instructors can teach about autocracy in a university setting. www.e-elgar.com/shop/gbp/tea...

Aditya Dasgupta @adasgupta.bsky.social · last mo.

New (well, finally published) paper out at AJPS on "Bureaucrat Assignments as Instruments of Political Control": doi.org/10.1111/ajps... . We estimate Indian land officials' preferences over geographical posts and test a "matching market" model of how politicians use assignments to extract rents 1/3

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 2mo ago

Mamdani's speech at the Knicks parade was easily the best I've ever heard at an event of that sort. I posted the whole thing on YouTube for your viewing pleasure. Highly recommended.

Mamdani Remembers Some Knicks Guys during phenomenal parade speech

YouTube video by Aaron Rupar

youtube.com

APSA @apsa.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Learn more about #APSA2026 Short Course: The Job Talk as Storytelling!

2026 Short Course: The Job Talk as Storytelling

The Job Talk as Storytelling Full Day Short Course | Register here 2026 APSA Annual Meeting & Exhibition -- Boston, MA 9:00 am – 5:00 pm What is a job talk? Simple, it is an oral presentation that displays your research. The problem is that you have spent all your time thinking and expressing your research in a medium other than the oral form of communication.

politicalsciencenow.com

Sacha Epskamp @sachaepskamp.bsky.social · 3mo ago

I spent the past semester building interactive teaching apps with AI-assisted coding. I used my personal website to share them with my students, but that makes them hard to find for other educators. So I built Galvoro — galvoro.app

Carl Müller-Crepon @carlmc.bsky.social · 4mo ago

🚨 New paper in the @apsrjournal.bsky.social: Nils-Christian Bormann and I propose to model the electoral effects of ethnic and other cleavages with a new *Covoting Regression Model*. A short on the method and our results on ethnic voting in Sub-Saharan Africa. doi.org/10.1017/S000...

Coethnics Covote in Africa: Studying Electoral Cleavages with a Covoting Regression Model | American Political Science Review | Cambridge Core

Coethnics Covote in Africa: Studying Electoral Cleavages with a Covoting Regression Model

doi.org

Josef Woldense @woldense.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Civil war is not just a human trait www.nytimes.com/2026/04/09/s...

nytimes.com

African Politics Conference Group @africanpoliticscg.bsky.social · 5mo ago

The call for 2026 APCG Award Nominations is live! The deadline for nominations is May 1st. Nominate scholars for Best Dissertation, Best Graduate Student Paper, Distinguished Africanist, Best Article and Best Book! www.afpol.org/blog/2026-ap...

2026 APCG Award Nominations

The 2026 APCG Award nominations are now open and due May 1st! Nominate scholars for Best Dissertation, Best Graduate Student Paper, Distinguished Africanist, Best Article and Best Book.

afpol.org

Edward Goldring @edwardgoldring.bsky.social · 5mo ago

My book - “Purges” - has a release date (August 15) and a front cover. I started work on this as my PhD dissertation at the end of 2017 - excited for it to finally be coming out! www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501...

Josef Woldense @woldense.bsky.social · 5mo ago

A 4 minute comedy skit worth your time www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4Up...

A Day in the Life of an Ensh*ttificator

YouTube video by Forbrukerrådet - Norwegian Consumer Council

youtube.com

Adam Scharpf @ascharpf.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Russia, Venezuela, Iran, China, the Sahel region, the United States ... Want to know why state agents carry out brutal repression — or participate in illegal coups? Our new book "Making a Career in Dictatorship" provides answers — it just got published by @academic.oup.com: tinyurl.com/ystwm3tf

𝙅𝙖𝙘🍩𝙗 𝙉𝙮𝙧𝙪𝙥 @jacobnyrup.bsky.social · 7mo ago

We are happy to release the Paths to Power Dashboard. It is the perfect tool for politics nerds! You can find it here: ptp.isv.sv.uio.no/ptp/ It allows you to explore governments from 1966-2021 using the PtP and WhoGov datasets. See examples below. The app has been programmed by Stuart Bramwell.

Felix Haass @felixhaass.bsky.social · 7mo ago

🚨Job alert! 🚨 I'm advertising a PhD position (66%) in Comparative Politics at HU Berlin. Ideal candidates combine a research interest in autocratic politics, conflict, and/or political violence with strong quantitative methods skills. ⏳ 4 (+2) years | 🗓 DL 16.01; Start March/April 26 More info:

Research fellow (m/f/d) in the field of “contentious politics/political violence/autocratic politics” - Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

hu-berlin.de

Elizabeth (Bit) Meehan, PhD @elizabethbitmeehan.com · 8mo ago

the analogy I use with friends and family all the time is the jump from collegiate to professional sports. as soon as I explain it that way, it clicks in their brains what the academic job market is like.

David M. Perry@lollardfish.bsky.social · 8mo ago

THERE ARE NO JOBS IN ACADEMIA! NO JOBS! DOZENS OF HYPER QUALIFIED APPLICANTS PER JOB!

Sarah Brierley @sarahbrierley.bsky.social · 8mo ago

I am hiring a post-doctoral fellow (2 years) to work on all things political finance in Africa. There are no teaching obligations, and lots of opportunities for fieldwork. A PhD in Political Science is a requirement. Please spread the word! Happy to answer questions - send them to my LSE email.

LSE Department of Government@lsegovernment.bsky.social · 8mo ago

🚨We're #hiring! We're looking for a #Research #Fellow to join our team. The successful candidate will be part of the research project "Political #Finance in #Africa" led by Associate Professor @sarahbrierley.bsky.social for 2 years. 🗓️Apply by Monday 12 January 👇🏽 jobs.lse.ac.uk/Vacancies/W/...

Andrew Heiss @andrew.heiss.phd · 8mo ago

Some closing thoughts for my students this semester on LLMs and learning #rstats datavizf25.classes.andrewheiss.com/news/2025-12...

Will you incorporate LLMs and AI prompting into the course in the future?
No.

Why won’t you incorporate LLMs and AI prompting into the course?
These tools are useful for coding (see this for my personal take on this).

However, they’re only useful if you know what you’re doing first. If you skip the learning-the-process-of-writing-code step and just copy/paste output from ChatGPT, you will not learn. You cannot learn. You cannot improve. You will not understand the code.

In that post, it warns that you cannot use it as a beginner:

…to use Databot effectively and safely, you still need the skills of a data scientist: background and domain knowledge, data analysis expertise, and coding ability.

There is no LLM-based shortcut to those skills. You cannot LLM your way into domain knowledge, data analysis expertise, or coding ability.

The only way to gain domain knowledge, data analysis expertise, and coding ability is to struggle. To get errors. To google those errors. To look over the documentation. To copy/paste your own code and adapt it for different purposes. To explore messy datasets. To struggle to clean those datasets. To spend an hour looking for a missing comma.

This isn’t a form of programming hazing, like “I had to walk to school uphill both ways in the snow and now you must too.” It’s the actual process of learning and growing and developing and improving. You’ve gotta struggle.

This Tumblr post puts it well (it’s about art specifically, but it applies to coding and data analysis too):

Contrary to popular belief the biggest beginner’s roadblock to art isn’t even technical skill it’s frustration tolerance, especially in the age of social media. It hurts and the frustration is endless but you must build the frustration tolerance equivalent to a roach’s capacity to survive a nuclear explosion. That’s how you build on the technical skill. Throw that “won’t even start because I’m afraid it won’t be perfect” shit out the window. Just do it. Just start. Good luck. (The original post has disappeared, but here’s a reblog.)

It’s hard, but struggling is the only way to learn anything.

You might not enjoy code as much as Williams does (or I do), but there’s still value in maintaining codings skills as you improve and learn more. You don’t want your skills to atrophy.

As I discuss here, when I do use LLMs for coding-related tasks, I purposely throw as much friction into the process as possible:

To avoid falling into over-reliance on LLM-assisted code help, I add as much friction into my workflow as possible. I only use GitHub Copilot and Claude in the browser, not through the chat sidebar in Positron or Visual Studio Code. I treat the code it generates like random answers from StackOverflow or blog posts and generally rewrite it completely. I disable the inline LLM-based auto complete in text editors. For routine tasks like generating {roxygen2} documentation scaffolding for functions, I use the {chores} package, which requires a bunch of pointing and clicking to use.

Even though I use Positron, I purposely do not use either Positron Assistant or Databot. I have them disabled.

So in the end, for pedagogical reasons, I don’t foresee me incorporating LLMs into this class. I’m pedagogically opposed to it. I’m facing all sorts of external pressure to do it, but I’m resisting.

You’ve got to learn first.

Carl Müller-Crepon @carlmc.bsky.social · 8mo ago

🚨Jobs!🚨 3-year PostDoc positions (aka Research Officers) at @lsegovernment.bsky.social to work with me on the local consequences of border change. Please reach out for questions and apply by Jan 4th to join the team and department: I’d love to hear from you! Job ad: jobs.lse.ac.uk/Vacancies/W/...

Research Officer

Research Officer, , <p style="background: white; margin: 0cm; text-align: center;"><em><span style="color: #333333;">LSE is committed to building a diverse, equitable and truly inclusive university</s...

jobs.lse.ac.uk

Daniel de Kadt @dandekadt.bsky.social · 8mo ago

For anyone interested in the visualisation workshop materials I mention in this thread, you can find them here: github.com/ddekadt/MY58...

GitHub - ddekadt/MY580_data_visualisation

Contribute to ddekadt/MY580_data_visualisation development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

Daniel de Kadt@dandekadt.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Today I published a replication outlining concerns with "Instrumentally Inclusive" by Turnbull-Dugarte and López Ortega (2024, APSR). I document seemingly idiosyncratic and ad hoc choices made by the authors that create a pattern of statistically significant results consistent with their theory.

Parking Reform Network @parkingreform.org · 8mo ago

Minimum parking requirements create financially insolvent land use patterns. The two apartment buildings on the right generate six times more in property taxes than the big box store on the left, while occupying almost half the space! #BlackFridayParking

Satellite image of a commercial development along a stroad. On the left there's a big box store that says "Property taxes: $102,485, Parcel Size: 17,766 meter square. On the right there's two apartment buildings that read "Property taxes: $626,002, Parcel Size: 10,930 meter square"

Josef Woldense @woldense.bsky.social · 9mo ago

Excellent presentation. Worth a watch even if you're not an academic youtu.be/PygUK16aQgk?...

Why is knowledge getting so expensive? | Jeffrey Edmunds | TEDxPSU

YouTube video by TEDx Talks

youtu.be

Aditya Dasgupta @adasgupta.bsky.social · 9mo ago

Do architecture and urban planning affect political behavior? Happy to share a paper that @tesaliarizzo.bsky.social and I have coming out at the APSR which uses computer vision to investigate how the built environment shapes inequalities in civic participation in Mexico: osf.io/preprints/so.... 🧵1/5

Steve Rosenzweig @scrosenzweig.bsky.social · 9mo ago

Great analysis of the situation in Tanzania by Dan Paget

Has Tanzania Reached Its Breaking Point? | Journal of Democracy

President Hassan promised Tanzanians freedom, transparency, and reform. Instead, she has delivered repression, violence, and arrests as she bars anyone who dares challenge her.

journalofdemocracy.org

Felix Haass @felixhaass.bsky.social · 10mo ago

🚨 New article out! “Right-Wing Terror, Media Backlash, and Voting Preferences for the Far Right” in @bjpols.bsky.social 👉 doi.org/10.1017/S000... We (Alex De Juan, @juvoss.bsky.social & I) examine how right-wing attacks shape support for the far-right in Germany. Short summary thread below 👇

Abstract for the article: How does right-wing terrorism affect electoral support for populist radical right parties (PRRPs)? Recent research has produced contrary answers to this question. We argue that only high-intensity attacks, whose motives and targets mirror PRRPs’ nativist agenda, are likely to generate a media backlash that dampens electoral support for PRRPs. We test this argument by combining high-frequency survey and social media data with a natural and survey experimental design. We find that right-wing terror reduced support for the radical right party Alternative für Deutschland after one of the most intense nativist attacks in recent German history. An analysis of all ninety-eight fatal right-wing attacks in Germany between 1990 and 2020 supports our argument. Our findings contribute to an understanding of how political violence triggers partisan detachment and have important implications for media responsibility in the aftermath of terrorist attacks.

M.Woldemariam @mikewoldemariam.bsky.social · 10mo ago

New essay in Foreign Policy with Abel Abate D. on Eritrea-Ethiopia tensions. It covers the sources of mutual restraint thus far; some of the factors that are eroding this delicate balance; and what can be done to avert another war the Horn of Africa cannot afford. foreignpolicy.com/2025/10/21/e...

The Risk of a New Ethiopian-Eritrean War Is Growing

Changing dynamics in Tigray could erode the current balance of uncertainty.

foreignpolicy.com

Josef Woldense @woldense.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Excellent video on bias-variance tradeoff in stats/AI youtu.be/z64a7USuGX0?...

What the Books Get Wrong about AI [Double Descent]

YouTube video by Welch Labs

youtu.be

𝙅𝙖𝙘🍩𝙗 𝙉𝙮𝙧𝙪𝙥 @jacobnyrup.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Paths to Power (PtP) is out in @bjpols.bsky.social! It is a database with data on cabinet members' social profile globally from 1966-2021. This is a great team effort with @chknutsen.bsky.social, @peterla.bsky.social, @inalkristiansen.bsky.social. But many more helped us along the way 🙏 A short 🧵

Paths to Power: A New Dataset on the Social Profile of Governments | British Journal of Political Science | Cambridge Core

Paths to Power: A New Dataset on the Social Profile of Governments - Volume 55

cambridge.org

International Studies Association @isanet.bsky.social · 11mo ago

Preparing for your upcoming #ResearchTalk? Sign up for two courses, taught by @woldense.bsky.social, to enhance your #Communication and apply #Storytelling principles to your #Presenting, and #Teaching skills! Open to both ISA Members and non-members. Register: buff.ly/PUXowRN