It's not news that the vetting process of candidates for Reform UK is sketchy at best, but this hit particularly close to home.
There are some genuine concern among HKers in UK on where Lee's loyalty and allegiance lie.
It is frankly unbelievable that Starmer "Wasn't told" of Mandelson's failed vetting.
Did he appoint him without knowing the result of the vetting process? Or did someone from FCO lied to the PM that Mandelson did pass the process. Either way, this make Starter appear incompetent and clueless.
Thrilled to share that my paper with @mattgrossmann.bsky.social and Caleb Lucas is now out at American Politics Research. In it, we introduce CongressData, a novel repository of 1,300+ variables on the US Congress.
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/....
This is absurd! There are partial result of the first round already. There could be massive strategic voting among those who is voting today, benefiting from the hindsight not available to those already voted yesterday.
A new dawn has broken, has it not? 🇭🇺
The same vibe:
This is the Whitehall equivalent of pubs near football grounds banning fans from wearing football scarves etc on matchdays.
With this poll, Orbán is laying the ground to refuse to recognise anything but a win by him as legitimate, eg. www.hungarianconservative.com/articles/cur.... Such an outcome would drive a further wedge between Europe and the US government.
The same vibe:
You're going to need a bigger distraction
🌮🤭
Trump threatens that 'a whole civilization will die tonight'
Somebody should just show this clip to him and call it a day
The toughest part of the astronaut training program that nobody knew: Facial expression management
This is almost exactly the same as the Euro-Sausage episode of Yes Prime Minister 😂
(A sign that there will be a new PM soon? 🤔)
It's crazy that the last time Italy was in a World Cup knock out game, I was a first year undergraduate student
It's based on a sci-fi book about a scientist working with extraterrestrial alien to save the world with science! In the end the protagonist put all life on Earth at risk and sacrifice his life to save an alien planet!
It's about as "woke" as it can get!
Is partner partisanship associated with vote choice? @cerifowler.bsky.social finds that it was for the 2016 Brexit Referendum & subsequent elections in the UK & argues that this can help us understand gender gaps in vote choice. Read OPEN ACCESS: buff.ly/D8Fdnbw
@polstudiesassoc.bsky.social #polsky
Watched Project Hail Mary the other day. Quite surprised that I was among the handful in the theater that laughed at the reference to Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Am I really that old? I'm still in my 30s
BTW, my review of the movie: 👎👎 #IYKYK
"Why would you punish people for being strong?"
"But all the strong people will move away, and who would be left to protect us?"
"We need to lower their obligation so that people are incentivised to get stronger"
Just out: the new @vdeminstitute.bsky.social is clear:
"The speed with which American democracy is currently dismantled is unprecedented in modern history"
V-dem uses a global dataset on democracy with over 32 million data points for 202 countries, from 1789 to 2025.
www.v-dem.net/documents/75...
V-Dem v.16 is now released, w. updated scores for 2025.
Most countries remain stable from 2024, but some clear improvements (on diff’t democracy indices), incl. S. Korea, Sri Lanka & Mauritius.
Largest declines came, by far, in the US.
This figure shows 10-yr changes on the Liberal Dem. index.
Somebody at GBNews has been watching the Yes Prime Minister Christmas special 😏
New research on Hong Kong’s 2019 Anti-ELAB movement shows that constituencies exposed to tear gas saw more businesses publicly align with the protest movement. When repression meets pro-movement consumers, activism can become profitable.
Read more:
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Years ago, when I was a polisci undergrad, getting sick of being asked by friends and relatives over and over if I am going to become a politician upon graduation, I came up with the following response:
What you are saying is like asking a criminologist if s/he wants to become a criminal 😏
Women MPs and climate action 🌍👩💼
@hannahsalamon.bsky.social's new research from the UK Parliament shows women MPs talk about the environment more than men helping embed #Climate issues across politics
This proof the fan theory that For All Mankind is in fact the prequel of The Expanse
