An interactive OJS playground demonstrating a linear congruential generator (LCG) using the formula X_n = (aX_{n-1} + c) mod m. Controls on the left set modulus (m=8), multiplier (a=5), increment (c=3), seed (X_0=1), and numbers to generate (12). A table on the right shows the resulting sequence of X values, intermediate calculations, mod m results, and normalized values X_n/m, with the final "random" numbers highlighted in yellow.

Excerpt from the blog post with R code that tests all seeds from 1 to 10,000 to find which ones produce 10 heads in a row when simulating coin flips. The possible_seeds data frame is filtered to show 10 seeds (614, 1667, 3212, 4166, 4580, 5527, 5824, 7365, 7468, 8975) that meet this criterion. The post notes that seed 614 actually produces 13 heads in a row, confirmed with a withr::with_seed(614, ...) call below.

R console output demonstrating that set.seed(1234) produces reproducible results. The first block calls runif(5) and returns five values: 0.1137, 0.6223, 0.6093, 0.6234, 0.8609. The second block uses the same seed but splits the draw into runif(2) then runif(3), returning the same five values in the same order, showing that the sequence is preserved regardless of how many numbers are drawn at a time.

Table of contents for the post: Introduction Seeds and reproducible randomness My (somewhat incorrect) mental model of how seeds work Making “random” numbers with an equation Live interactive playground Cycles and fancier algorithms Why does it matter if “random” numbers aren’t actually random? You’re limiting yourself to narrow, known universes You can seed hack and get any values you want Real world bad things can happen because of pseudorandom numbers Can computers even create true randomness? Moving a mouse around Lava lamps Atmospheric noise How I use true randomness in my own work “…as an ook cometh of a litel spyr…”

I've been using random seeds for years but I have no idea how they work. Seeds somehow(?) make the same random numbers?

So I figured it out! New post includes an interactive PRNG generator, lava lamps, lottery fraud, @random.org, Chaucer, and Minecraft #rstats

www.andrewheiss.com/blog/2026/04...

New paper out in @thejop.bsky.social : "Immigration, Public Housing, and Support for the French National Front."

How does expanding public housing affect far-right support? The answer depends heavily on local conditions, and specifically on local immigrant shares.

Paper: doi.org/10.1086/736361

Screenshot of title and abstract of article, “Reconsideration of Secure Communities rollout reveals preemptive local-federal cooperation in immigration enforcement.”

NEW (and open access!) in @pnas.org:

We find that Secure Communities triggered “preemptive” immigration enforcement, increasing detentions, transfers, & removals even before formal county activation.

Joint with @cvargas100.bsky.social and @immigrationlab.bsky.social

www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10....

Does public service deprivation boost support for the populist right?

New evidence in our paper, conditionally accepted at APSR 🥳, where we study how GP closures shape voting intentions in England. 👇

Text from linked article “There's a much more important difference between clanker and hu-man. A human is a bottleneck. A human cannot shit out 20,000 lines of code in a few hours. Even if the human creates such booboos at high frequency, there's only so many booboos the human can introduce in a codebase per day. The booboos will compound at a very slow rate. Usually, if the booboo pain gets too big, the human, who hates pain, will spend some time fixing up the booboos. Or the human gets fired and someone else fixes up the booboos. So the pain goes away. With an orchestrated army of agents, there is no bottleneck, no human pain. These tiny little harmless booboos suddenly compound at a rate that's unsustainable. You have removed yourself from the loop, so you don't even know that all the innocent booboos have formed a monster of a codebase. You only feel the pain when it's too late.

mariozechner.at/posts/2026-0...

Can feed algorithms shape what people think about politics? Our paper "The Political Effects of X's Feed Algorithm" is out today in Nature and answers "Yes."

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🚨📰New WP 🚨📰
How does social housing design affect neighborhoods decades later? We study London gangs to show that postwar urban planning—specifically high-rise public housing construction—had lasting effects on gang formation
@cep-lse.bsky.social

Great!!

New year, new chapter: I’m starting a new position at @ox.ac.uk. Thrilled to join DPIR as a Departmental Lecturer and Nuffield College as an Associate Member. Looking forward to what’s ahead!

@yangyangzhou.bsky.social, @shuningge.bsky.social Naijia Liu, and I have a new (AND BETTER) draft of our paper "Liberalizing Refugee Hosting Policies withoutLosing the Vote".

Link: osf.io/preprints/os...
Comments are welcome!

🥳 New year, new publication

📑"Contested memories: the political effects of de-commemoration proposals" @jeppjournal.bsky.social

With Francesco Colombo, we study a street renaming proposal in Berlin and find -contrary to conventional wisdom- no political backlash, but a positive feedback effect.

A new paper by George Borjas—who served this past year in the Trump White House designing some of its anti-immigration policies—claims to display evidence of ideological bias among researchers who study immigration.

doi.org/10.1126/scia...

🧵 Thread—>

4. Ecological crises as accelerator of the far-right

@jksteinberger.bsky.social, Céline Keller and @simonecremaschi.bsky.social show that climate shocks hit hardest where austerity has hollowed out public services, breeding narratives of state abandonment and boosting the far-right (5/6)

A great overview of a great special issue, including our paper on the legacies of antifascist resistance in Italy.

Thank you again @laiabalcells.bsky.social @apvjustino.bsky.social @andrearuggeri.bsky.social !

I am very grateful to the QMMR editors Juan Masullo and @egocantos.bsky.social. It is an honor to be part of their last issue as editors, alongside so many thoughtful contributions.

Full issue here:
www.qmmrpublication.com/_files/ugd/7...

I hope this can be useful for PhD students approaching challenging fieldwork, or for anyone navigating uncertainty during the PhD journey.

The data I collected during those years now form the basis of my (slow-cooking) book project on labor exploitation and cooperation among marginalized migrants.

Now out in QMMR (Notes from the Field): I reflect on my PhD fieldwork in informal camps of migrant farmworkers in Italy, and on how the slow work of building trust in a challenging field environment radically reshaped my research questions and methods
doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

INAS Conference 2026 - Nuffield College Oxford University

📢 Analytical sociology is coming home!

Call 4 INAS26 is open

🌍 1-3Jul26 @nuffieldcollege.bsky.social and @sociologyoxford.bsky.social (☔)

☢️ Deadline: 1Feb26

🦹 Organisers: @aksoyundan.bsky.social , @kasimirdederichs.bsky.social, D Kretschmer, @awaldendorf.bsky.social

Info: tinyurl.com/yc2tusjx

screenshot of my post

Big new blogpost!

My guide to data visualization, which includes a very long table of contents, tons of charts, and more.

--> Why data visualization matters and how to make charts more effective, clear, transparent, and sometimes, beautiful.
www.scientificdiscovery.dev/p/salonis-gu...

The geography of the party on the ground: Local branches in Italy and Sweden in the late twentieth century The idea that the presence of Western European political parties at grassroots level rose and fell in the twentieth century is central to some of the …

🎁 Christmas has come early for @ammassarisofia.bsky.social & me with the publication of our article "The geography of the party on the ground: Local branches in Italy and Sweden in the late twentieth century" in @politicalgeography.bsky.social:

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

💪

Agree with much of what Cyrus says in his blog post and the comments below.

I'd add that some of the best recent work in poli sci is mixed methods, and uses a combo of observational data, experiments/quasi-experiments, and in-depth interviews/case studies to answer a puzzle from multiple angles.

Our paper just got accepted in the @thejop.bsky.social 🎉 and is now on the journal website: www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/... For me personally, it's a milestone: my first paper accepted after a peer review!

Abstract It is widely accepted in political science – and remarkably established in public discourse – that status anxieties fuel a far right backlash against progressive politics. This narrative suggests that right-wing conservatives perceive the status of women, racial, or sexual minorities as threatening. Using open-ended survey questions fielded in Germany, we show that women and minorities indeed figure in people’s perceptions of status hierarchies, but in very specific ways: First, overall, people still perceive status as largely socioeconomically determined. Second, sociocultural groups figure in perceptions of who is gaining/losing status, less so in perceptions of the top/bottom of society. Third, more than conservative voters, it is social progressives who mention women and minorities as “winners”. While on race/ethnicity, we find evidence for a backlash, on gender and sexuality we find more evidence for a progressive momentum. This matters for progressive politics today and for how we empirically study status concerns.

New article out in @cpsjournal.bsky.social with Tabea Palmtag and @dpzollinger.bsky.social 📝
We use open-ended survey questions (in Germany) to assess how and among whom social status shifts are perceived. This tests cultural backlash narratives in voters' perceptions.

🔗 doi.org/10.1177/0010...

🚨 New working paper 🚨

We often see populist parties like Reform UK blame higher energy bills on climate change policies. What are the political consequences of this strategy?

Very early draft; comments and criticisms are welcomed!

full draft: z-dickson.github.io/assets/dicks...

🌱 How do environmental protests affect public option? And what if they are disruptive? We have a 💫 new study 💫 out in the BJPS about public support for environmental protests. (cc @catherinedevries.bsky.social , @simonvanteutem.bsky.social ) Summary below 👇

Thanks!

Now out @apsrjournal.bsky.social with page numbers! 🫒

We advance a new argument on how economic crises fuel support for far-right parties in left-behind places by tapping into long-standing community narratives

shorturl.at/bA55v

@catherinedevries.bsky.social

Check out The Qualitative Metamorphosis in @comppol.bsky.social! Great review by @ajayverghese.bsky.social of books by @saragoodman.bsky.social, Jen Cyr, @marioluissmall.bsky.social, Jessica Calarco, @alanjacobs.bsky.social, and @macartan.bsky.social. 👇

www.ingentaconnect.com/content/cuny...

BJPolS abstract discussing the impact of removing controversial monuments and the societal reactions in an empirical study context.

NEW -

Exposure to Confederate Monuments: The Political Effect of Non-Intervention - https://cup.org/42ZHRc0

"results highlight the potential negative consequences of maintaining controversial commemorations"

- Ana Ruipérez Núñez

#OpenAccess