Many Popes Have Been Entangled in Politics. Here Are 5 of Them.

exhausted historian of christianity screaming into the void, once again: christianity has never been apolitical. to wit: jesus was executed by the roman state.

Sir, you've lost the mediocre freestyler vote. The swimmers who are kind of shitty at freestyle are concerned.

The Desire for Terror And the defense of democracy

A purpose of the war on Iran might well be to provoke a terrorist attack inside the United States. This would provide Donald Trump with a pretext to try to cancel or “federalize” the coming Congressional elections.
snyder.substack.com/p/the-desire...

Social media created this nonsense idea that not exposing yourself to hatred is isolationist. Choosing to not spend your free time with bigots isn’t living in a bubble. I don’t need to know what’s going on at X. I won’t be smarter or more knowledgeable or empathic by being there. Neither will you.

“Rutherford Statement on Operation Epic Furry” “Furry” highlighted by me http://rutherford.house.gov/media/press-releases/rutherford-statement-operation-epic-furry

Google result showing the presser for Rutherford’s statement on “Operation Epic Furry” was posted 11 hours ago

What a time to be alive

Hey everyone! I’m leading a student mentoring table at SPSP on Family Planning and Pregnancy during graduate school. I'm trying to collect some useful data: If you had kids in academia (any career stage)-- I would be grateful if you filled out this 10-question survey: forms.office.com/r/JeLL5cBk3w

I realise I'm just a freak, but living in a multicultural city is the best thing of all time, it's just the best possible human experience and i can not understand why anyone on earth would be like "weve got to destroy this"

You’ve heard of gatekeeping—but what about gate closing? How does it shape households’ division of labor?

🎧 Find out on this week’s Equal-ish podcast episode featuring @ccfamilies.bsky.social Board Member @sjss.bsky.social!

🔗 linktr.ee/equalish

Genuinely delighted to download a PhD thesis from a university repository where the author has neglected to remove the words "BITCH THIS IS YOUR THESIS" from the filename.

Beverly and Liv are best buds!

Can we inoculate ourselves against misinformation?
In episode 4 of The We Society podcast, @profsanderlinden.bsky.social joins Will Hutton to discuss how people can become influenced by misinformation and how we can gain resistance to false persuasion.
🎙️ media.leverhulme.ac.uk/podcast/sand...

‼️New @ccfamilies.bsky.social Brief Report ‼️

How Do We Know When Fertility Is Too Low?

Falling birth rates have fueled worries about “below replacement” fertility. But the link between today’s fertility rate and long-term population decline isn’t so simple.

Check it out here:

🔗 bit.ly/4hjOHyS

Protester holding a sign that says “Resisting tyrants is patriotic.”

Picture of crowd at NoKings protest

Person in chicken suit holding up No Kings sign

Person at protest holding up We Love America sign

Massive turnout at the #NoKings protest in Pasadena. Calm, peaceful, multigenerational crowd. Patriotic signs and American flags everywhere. I’m still waiting for my check from Soros.

Creatives aren't anti-technology. They are anti-THEFT! Especially when the people stealing from them have millions and they don't even know how they are going to make rent if they can't get another gig.

In a new paper, we find that sycophantic #AI chatbots make people more extreme--operating like an echo chamber

Yet, people prefer sycophantic chatbots and see them as less biased

Only open-minded people prefer disagreeable chatbots: osf.io/preprints/ps...

Led by @steverathje.bsky.social

From Willowbrook to the Geiers: Families Speak Out “Once, I went down to the Geiers’ basement to use the bathroom. I saw several ladies packaging drug bottles into boxes. And in the bathroom I saw what appeared to be equipment from a chemistry lab.”

Terrific sleuthing and deep background research by @alex23.bsky.social into the horrors of "research" on autism conducted by none other than the person RFK Jr put in charge of ... you guessed it, the (non-existent) link between autism and vaccines:

For Expertise to Matter, Nonpartisan Institutions Need New Communications Strategies To avoid irrelevance when they are needed most, experts and nonpartisan analysts must rethink not just their channels of communication but also their theory of influence.

People like me, who have spent a lifetime building credibility, face a real problem when most Americans no longer trust institutions. We need to face the new terms of trust for our expertise to matter. Renée DiResta@noUpside & I wrote this to explain why & how: carnegieendowment.org/research/202...

This is amazing!!!

📢 Check out our third @thesocietypages.bsky.social post from this month!

3Q With William D. Lopez on Raiding the Heartland: An American Story of Deportation and Resistance

🔗 thesocietypages.org/ccf/2025/09/...

📢 Our second September blog post features @ccfamilies.bsky.social co-chairs @aliciamwalker1.bsky.social and @ariellekuperberg.bsky.social discussing their book:

BDSM Without the Sex: What Kink Practitioners Can Teach Us About Building Community?

🔗 thesocietypages.org/ccf/2025/09/...

Check it out!

📢 September Notice!

Have you visited the @ccfamilies.bsky.social blog hosted by @thesocietypages.bsky.social this month? Make sure to check it out!

First up:
3Q with Andréa Becker Get it Out: On The Politics of Hysterectomy

🔗 thesocietypages.org/ccf/2025/09/...

@andreabeckerphd.bsky.social

#psychscisky

People are making Rapture jokes like there's no tomorrow

Rethinking measurement invariance causally Highlights: It is preferable to work with a causal definition of measurement invariance A violation of measurement invariance is a potentially substantively interesting observation Standard tests for measurement invariance rely on strong assumptions Group differences can be thought of as descriptive results

Conceptual graph illustration the central points of the manuscript. A group variable is potentiall connected to a construct of interest which affects items. Measurement invariance is violated if the group variable directly affects the items, for example by modifying the loadings from the construct to the items, or by directly affecting an item

To make this less abstract, consider a scenario where students take an exam, R, meant to capture some ability, T, and then are admitted to a program, V, depending on their exam results: R → V. This is sufficient to result in a violation of the statistical definition of measurement invariance. Exam results and admission are not independent given ability because exam results have a direct effect on admission. Even if we know somebody’s ability (e.g., we know it’s very high), learning about their admission status (e.g., they were not admitted) can tell us something about their exam result (e.g., it may have been worse than expected). According to the causal definition, this in itself does not constitute measurement bias, which seems a sensible conclusion here. After all, the scenario does not involve any reason to believe that the measurement process varied systematically by admission status. Admission happens after the exams took place, it cannot retroactively influence the measurement process (and, for example, lead to unfair treatment depending on admission status).

New paper out with @boryslaw.bsky.social 🥳 In which we sketch out how to rethink measurement invariance causally for applied researchers. And provide a causal definition of measurement invariance!

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

Texas A&M System on X: "A statement from The Texas A&M University System Board of Regents: https://t.co/aYHoNDCi0L" / X A statement from The Texas A&M University System Board of Regents: https://t.co/aYHoNDCi0L

This is clearly an attack on academic freedom. One of the consequences of this unfortunate episode is that the Texas Board of Regents has decided to launch a comprehensive audit of all courses across the A&M System. This matter is far from over. x.com/tamusystem/s...

"This isn't about academic freedom"

Here's the catalog description the now-fired Texas A&M lecturer allegedly transgressed by giving a lecture about gender in children's literature.

ENGL 360 Literature for Children

Credits 3. 3 Lecture hours. Representative writers, genres, texts and movements.

president.tamu.edu/messages/an-...

All of this is true. I would add sometimes your paper is stuck because the editor is just a person and it is ok to ask