Brad Jones

@today.yougov.com have we considered a cross promotion?

Having spent a few unhappy months working for Meta, this rings very true

4-panel vertical comic. (1) 100 Years Ago [two people standing next to bicycle with small car nearby] PERSON 1: It’s too dangerous riding a bike with these cars around. I should get a car, too. (2) 50 Years Ago [two people between smaller car and bigger car] PERSON 2 with short hair: Small cars are less safe in collisions with larger vehicles, so I should get a bigger one. (3) Today [two people between big car and even bigger car] PERSON 1: Everyone has huge SUVs now. If I don’t get the biggest one, I’m putting my family at risk. (4) Soon [two people next to large armored car with spiked clubs attached] PERSON 2: If I don’t install more whirling spike clubs, I’ll be destroyed by all the other drivers who...

Car Size

xkcd.com/3167/

I want a god
as my accomplice
who spends nights
in houses
of ill repute
and gets up late
on Saturdays

...

a god
knocked
unconscious
by the billy club
of a policeman
at a demonstration

...

I want a
more godlike
god

Prayer, by Francisco X. Alarcón www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53880/...

I want a god
as my accomplice
who spends nights
in houses
of ill repute
and gets up late
on Saturdays

...

a god
knocked
unconscious
by the billy club
of a policeman
at a demonstration

...

I want a
more godlike
god

Prayer, by Francisco X. Alarcón www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53880/...

I'd love to see something like this from LDS leaders

The process of being subjected to "open enrollment" seems designed in a lab to radicalize people against our byzantine health care system.

Just me?

The new Mountain Goats album is soooo good

One of the characters that haunt Camilla Stark's beautiful desert... the priest

The cover of Desert Prophet by Camilla Stark

I don't know if it is still possible to get hardbound copies of @camillagluh.bsky.social 's Desert Prophet, but if you can, you should.

An all around beautiful object and a story that will haunt you.

PSA: exit polls can be valuable tools for understanding voter attitudes once the results are known, but unweighted pre-results releases should be taken with an ENORMOUS grain of salt.

I was very excited to receive my copy of @camillagluh.bsky.social 's Desert Prophet. The book is beautiful.

A pair of bald eagles in a tree

Spotted a pair of bald eagles on a walk this evening around the Windsor lake

Phrenology Chart, 14 January 1840–B, Page 1 DEVELOPMENTS OFMr. Joseph Smith jr’sHEAD.Dr. Alfred WOODWARD11 Mar. 1807–15 Dec. 1884. Phrenologist....

Got to admire the comprehensiveness of the Joseph Smith Papers Project

www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summar...

#mormonhistory

My kids loved seeing the costumes at the #NoKings rally today in Windsor, Colorado

Great turnout for a blustery, Windsor Colorado #NoKings protest

YouTube video by Benjamin Park, Historian Christopher Columbus in LDS Scripture: What We Get Wrong

TIL that (partly) why we talk about Columbus at all is that revolutionary-era Americans were looking for non-British founding figures as they tried to forge their own identity (h/t @benjaminepark.bsky.social). I think we can do better.

Happy Indigenous Peoples' day!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=0I47...

I look forward to tracking the work that @fiftyplusone.news will be doing, but people who are interested in public opinion should read the good work that is being done *within* individual polls in addition to seeing how they fit in the big picture.

Let's not lose the trees for the forest.

5/5

The American National Election Study (the longest running study of voters with waves going back nearly 80 years) very rarely does "well" in predicting the result of the election, but it is an incredibly valuable resource for understanding how public opinion has shifted in the post-WWII era

4/

that the primary purpose of opinion polling is to predict the result of a particular election, and when there are high-profile "misses" on this front (e.g. the overconfident projections from polling aggregators in 2016), it undermines the public's confidence in the whole enterprise

3/

This is especially apparent in the various modeling exercises that take place during election season. While it is an interesting exercise to try to forecast the results of the presidential election based on the available polling. I worry that it contributes to the idea

2/

I think @gelliottmorris.com does great work, and people are justifiably excited about the revival of this project.

My concern with this general enterprise is that it flattens the purpose of polling. Key topline numbers are important, but polls are much more than just grist for the aggregators. 1/

A graph comparing the trend in the share of people who say they are "Pure Independents" in the ANES timeseries. The solid line shows the trend for face-to-face interviews, the dashed line shows the trend including web interviews (which were added to the ANES sampling strategy in 2012). There were no face-to-face interviews in 2020 because of the COVID pandemic, so a dotted line connects the F2F trend between 2016 and 2024 (when face-to-face interviewing resumed).

Here's what I see when looking only at the F2F interviews vs the inclusion of the web sample:

The trend moves in the same direction, but you get a bump of about 5 pp when including the web sample.

Do we know if there was a methodology shift in the 2024 web survey? There have been big mode differences in the past between self administered modes and interviewer mediated surveys

I'm looking forward to meeting up with a great lineup of survey folks in Minneapolis on Friday celebrating the 80th (!) anniversary of the Minnesota Poll.

I'll be talking about new methods in conducting local and state opinion research.

mnpoll.umn.edu/symposium-3-...

I've heard some objections to this approach based on accessibility (e.g. speech-to-text uses the same paste functions). Have you given any thought to how to allow valid uses of pasting?

A picture of the nutrition label of the chimichurri container with an implausible precise number of servings of 45.36

Serving sizes 🤝 polling estimates

Better when rounded

Does "Department of War" branding make it easier for Dems to cut defense spending?

The Bear Shaped Hole by John and Thomas Dougherty

This was excellent (even though I almost couldn't make out the words toward the end through the tears welling up). An extraordinarily beautiful book about grief and rememberance.

@writerpoetjohn.bsky.social @thomasdocherty.bsky.social

I think between 200 and 300 people

Pete Seeger as an excuse to post the lyrics in alt text: [Verse 1] What a friend we have in congress Who will guard our every shore Spend three quarters of our taxes Getting ready for the war [Verse 2] Guns will make our coastline bristle And we have to fill the skies Full of planes and missiles They'll be paid for by and by [Verse 3] Have you noticed all the progress In our mighty airborne fleet? By the time a plane's adopted It's already obsolete [Verse 4] Modern bombs are sure to carry Loads of glory, joy and thrills What a privilege to bury All the death our money kills [Verse 5] There's no factory profit brothers And we have to do or die One improvement then another They'll be paid for by and by

Is someone working on updating Pete Seger's "What a friend we have in Congress" to fit our current situation? (original lyrics in the alt text)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSEI...