Tag Archives: links

Interview with Penny Goldberg Duncan Green reviews a history of the rise and power of Constitutions as a global ‘political technology’ Why was Nirmal Purja’s ascent of all fourteen 8,000m peaks controversial? (Seems like persnicketiness to me) Digital reconstruction of ancient Rome From This Week in Africa, some links on West African coups: Erica De Bruin and Maggie Dwyer explain how this wave of African coups differs from previous ones. Christopher Faulkner, Jaclyn Johnson and Naunihal...

The changing of the guard at the India/Pakistan Wagah/Attari border puts the shame to West Side Story Quote of the week: “My goal is not to disparage the NYT as a church but to note that the relevant market is lifestyle.” From this great thread: Most people think @nytimes is in the journalism business. This morning, when using towels recommended by Wirecutter, it occurred to me that’s wrong (or incomplete). It is in the culture (or lifestyle) business. This has interesting economic and...

Photo essay of the interior spaces of labor union offices around the world (Pictured above: “Solidarity”; Gdansk, Poland) For those who enjoyed Pranab Bardhan’s memoir posts, here is a recent podcast with the famed development economist How to embed invisible messages in an an email, that ensures it will go straight to the recipient’s spam folder Pasting PDF text to to text! If you spend a lot of time copying text from PDFs into Word like me, I hope this tip might be useful! If the PDF...

Photoessay: Polar bears living in an abandoned weather station in Kolyuchin (Russia) One reason Russia is strategically powerful is because much of Europe abandoned nuclear power for natural gas from the east (or so goes one account. This was an interesting article on why it’s so hard to rebuild support for new nuclear plants in Western Europe. Late night at the video store, 1993 I am loving John Holbein’s newsletter, the Social Science Research Roundup, including articles this week on how...

The best of dibs in Chicago: A photo essay of the objects people use to assert their property rights over a snow-filled parking spot they have shoveled. (This doesn’t always work so well in Hyde Park, with so many out-of-town residents. Last year someone walked off with my kitchen step-stool thinking it was left in the street for free. Norms are hard.) On the continuing theme of pandemic fiction, I just read Mary Shelley’s The Last Man. I won’t write a full post because I don’t recommend it...

[embedded content] Little Richard at the 1988 Grammys “Interestingness = Novelty + Importance” and other simple writing advice from The Atlantic‘s David Thompson “When the Taliban offers you—a pregnant, unmarried woman—safe haven, you know your situation is messed up.“ One of my best pandemic decisions: a subscription to cooking magazine Milk Street Tales of the manuscript thief: Someone, or possibly a cartel of someones, was impersonating influential figures in the publishing industry to...

Topography of Colombia If you like Wordle, you might also like this history timeline game (via Kottke) Great thread on why violence sometimes rises, sometimes doesn’t, when police pull back What happens to crime in US cities when police pull back? It depends. When police reduce proactivity for reasons other than a viral incident, most papers don’t find a crime increase. But when a pull back accompanies a viral incident, most papers find that crime rises. Citations👇 — Aaron Chalfin...

A photoessay with Bolivian skateboarding girls, via kottke Gimlet is killing it podcast-wise, including this 2-part Heavyweight episode and this one from Crime Show — whatever you expect from the titles, you will be wrong Tatooine sucks With such an experienced President and team, why isn’t Biden’s foreign policy coherent and bold? How you can study history in the field rather than the archives I would have never discovered these dynamics if I had stayed in the archives alone. It was only...

[embedded content] What the Spider-verse sadly missed (above) The anti wordle Great slides on why you should use Poisson regression instead of using log(1+y) Advice from Abby Post on approaching teaching evaluations: I see a lot of faculty members complain about student course evaluations. Let me tell you, I get it. I taught a 4-4 for 3 years with 12 distinct course preps. Here’s what I learned. (1/8) — Abby Post (@AbigailSPost) January 14, 2022 Lee Harris on the case for rapprochement...

If you like Wordle, you will love Evil Wordle (which keeps changing the word to give you the fewest possible matches) You probably underestimate the wage you can earn elsewhere A summary of the differences in the differences-in-differences literature America’s falling democracy score looks more like politics than political science A flurry of articles on whether the US is headed for sustained insurgent violence (I’m working on a post about why that’s not the risk that worries me most) Dan...