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benansell.bsky.social
Professor of Comparative Democratic Institutions, Nuffield & University of Oxford, FBA. http://benansell.substack.com. Why Politics Fails. BBC Reith Lecturer 2023. Host of What’s Wrong With Democracy? and BBC Radio 4’s Rethink
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NSF employees were unlawfully reclassified from career to probationary, and then fired. www.reuters.com/world/us/us-...

submitted 1 hour ago • 4 comments

submitted 1 hour ago • 13 comments

PRAMS is the source of data for basically every effort to limit infant mortality and all the health dangers mothers face before and after birth. So a pretty big deal the Elon and Co decided to cancel the program.

submitted 2 hours ago • 32 comments

So Mad King Elon posted this about two hours ago and I've now seen one of the actual emails. Not going to mention the agency my source works out. But suffice it to say it's entirely shuttered. So everyone there was forced to stop working more than a week ago. The actual email is one is that in ...

submitted 1 hour ago • 108 comments

I just donated and I encourage other social scientists to do so - let's make sure social science data is kept secure.

submitted 3 hours ago • 2 comments

ICPSR at University of Michigan has been one of the longest-running secure data archives in the world and is stepping up to the challenges being presented in the current U.S. environment to keep government data as a resource for researchers and policymakers. isr.umich.edu/giving/suppo...

submitted 5 hours ago • 3 comments

Every federal employee - all two million odd of them - should email Elon some Python code that they just asked Grok to write for them.

submitted 3 hours ago • 4 comments

In modern history, what is the least popular that party leaders have ever been to their OWN voters? Second place was the GOP in 2009, where their net approval with Republican voters was only +6. Currently Dems are -8, shattering all previous records.

submitted 5 hours ago • 62 comments

Guy who doesn’t even respond to the mothers of his children: reply to my email or you’re fired

submitted 3 hours ago • 419 comments

This is 100%. Almost everything in the constitution is general or implied. The document literally says there's going to be a post office and congress is in charge of setting it up, deciding what it's rules are.

submitted 4 hours ago • 28 comments

People want to believe that Musk is running the government like he runs SpaceX but he’s running it like he runs X.

submitted 4 hours ago • 2 comments

Why Are Some Of Our Most Successful Leaders Mentally Ill? @ianleslie.bsky.social www.ian-leslie.com/p/why-are-so...

submitted 12 hours ago • 6 comments

This AM I have re-posted stories from WaPo, the NYT and NPR. The NYT story has multiple bylines and is a thorough factual debunking of an official government communication. You can argue about headlines and stay mad about past errors or you can realize institutional journalists are doing the work.

submitted 8 hours ago • 161 comments

I understand the importance of clickbait to the Times' social media outreach but I think the more germane fact about the German election is that 'polls predict' that the CDU/CSU will win the election and the AfD will lag substantially behind and have no hope of being in a governing coalition.

submitted 8 hours ago • 7 comments

My view is that subconsciously what he craves is a return for the type of energy you can only have in politics in the 50 days before and maybe the first 10 days after you win an election.

submitted 11 hours ago • 18 comments

Perhaps I’ve missed it but so far none of those who claim to be negotiating with Russia for humanitarian reasons have even so much as mentioned the need to return home the tens of thousands of kidnapped Ukrainian children.

submitted 9 hours ago • 3 comments

Weaponised interdependence along the lines described by @abenewman.bsky.social and @himself.bsky.social over access to raw materials, as discussed by @edconway.bsky.social. If you haven’t listened to this week’s Rethink now’s your chance. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

submitted 15 hours ago • 1 comment

It's happening INFLECTION: The Backlash Begins As Elon Goes Wild talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/infle...

submitted 1 day ago • 83 comments

I’d like to think I’m the first person to get into a flame war with VPOTUS from the swimming pool of Woburn Center Parcs at half-term.

submitted 1 day ago • 137 comments

From the article the Welsh government are trying to do a bit but saying they need UK wide coordination, and the central gov... isn't responding. The "no plan so there's a series of painful adhoc adjustments that no one really thinks is a good idea" outcome for Uk higher ed looking incredibly likely.

submitted 1 day ago • 3 comments

Can confirm that reviewers for CPS seem strangely unexcited about null results despite the profession’s puritanically stated beliefs about them. Perhaps a few more rounds of the hairshirt are called for.

submitted 1 day ago • 5 comments

one thing that does irritate me a little about senior academics complaining about research integrity, p-hacking, etc. (concerns that I totally agree with) is like, I wanna see how many manuscripts with null results you've recommended for publication as reviewer/editor.

submitted 1 day ago • 9 comments

"Beware false realists" is a great line from @shashj.bsky.social

submitted 1 day ago • 2 comments

Call me reactionary but I'm not sure that having a 'department of government efficiency' will seem quite as fashionable in a few months time...

submitted 1 day ago • 4 comments

Standing up to the authoritarian wave requires more than cheerleading for democracy; it demands making democratic societies more participatory, responsive, and adaptable at all levels, from local to national, in response to the societal shifts driven by the Internet over the past 15 years.

submitted 1 day ago • 35 comments

I just cannot imagine this kind of thing ending well for the popularity of the Trump administration or of a certain head of DOGE

submitted 1 day ago • 2 comments

A great complementarity of interests in this conversation as we all figure out how the infrastructures of the world actually work!

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

The only legit "Trump third term?" story was Andy Ogles introducing a ridiculous amendment that would have let Trump but not Obama run for a third term and using it to get DOJ to drop its investigation into him.

submitted 1 day ago • 14 comments

This is a really good thread

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments