Tom van der Meer

Paul Ingrassia—a 30-year-old former right-wing blogger and newly minted lawyer who was admitted to the bar in 2024—is Trump’s pick to lead the Office of Special Counsel.

Ingrassia has called Jack Smith a “disgusting man,” accused him of “election interference,” and said he should be jailed.

Wow. A group of top scholars at Harvard just sent a letter to its president, Alan Garber, warning against surrendering to Trump.

Signatories include Steven Levitsky, Dani Rodrik, Ryan Enos, Theda Skocpol, and Steven Walt.

Someone forwarded it to me. Read it here:

“The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth.”

www.washingtonpost.com/entertainmen...

✔️ Tickets voor Jade Bird in de Melkweg.

The world's most prestigious university fails the Lando test:

"University officials...concluded months ago that even if they prevailed in their court fight against the government, a deal could help Harvard to avoid more troubles over the course of Mr. Trump’s term." www.nytimes.com/2025/07/28/u...

Voorpagina Trouw vandaag

#wirhabenesgewusst

Researchers value null results, but struggle to publish them Survey finds that fear of reputational harm and a lack of support and publication platforms are among respondents’ key concerns.

“just 68% of the 7,057 researchers whose work had produced null results had shared them in some form, and just 30% had tried to publish them in a journal.”

What a joke.

#NullEffectsMatter

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

We are looking for a lecturer in Comparative European Politics at Oxford. Join an incredibly stimulating intellectual environment. It is a 5-year position that should be great for early career researchers. Please get in touch if you have any questions.

📢 Out now! The Handbook of Affective Polarization is officially published 🎉

📖 Open Access & packed with 30 great chapters thanks to amazing authors. Huge thanks to everyone, and in particular to @marianotorcal.bsky.social for the great (and fun) collaboration! 💙

Link below for the e-book 👇

Artsen vallen flauw van de honger, steeds meer kinderen sterven door ondervoeding: massale hongersnood dreigt in Gaza Mensen lopen wankelend over straat, artsen vallen flauw van de honger en steeds meer kinderen sterven vanwege een gebrek aan voedsel. Meer dan honderd hulporganisaties waarschuwden woensdag voor massa...

www.volkskrant.nl/buitenland/a...

Volgens mij hebben de meeste politicologen en historici hier een gedeelde opvatting, namelijk dat die logica nogal betekenisloos is.

Volgens diezelfde logica moet het CDA zich bijzonder verantwoordelijk voelen voor kiezers van D66, GroenLinks, en PvdD. Die kiezers hadden - obv dezelfde retrospectieve percepties in het NKO - immers relatief vaak ouders die stemden op CDA en/of voorgangers.

Sans intervention immédiate, les derniers reporters de Gaza vont mourir 21 juillet 2025 L'AFP travaille avec une pigiste texte, trois photographes et six pigistes vidéo dans la Bande de Gaza depuis le départ de ses journalistes staff courant 2024. Avec quelques autres, ils sont aujourd'hui les seuls à rapporter ce qu'il se passe dans la Bande de Gaza. La presse internationale est interdite d'entrer dans ce territoire depuis près de deux ans. Nous refusons de les voir mourir. L'un deux, Bashar, collabore pour l'AFP depuis 2010, d'abord comme fixeur, ensuite comme photographe pigiste, et depuis 2024 comme principal photographe. Samedi 19 juillet, il est parvenu à poster un message sur Facebook: « Je n'ai plus la force de travailler pour les médias. Mon corps est maigre et je ne peux plus travailler ». Bashar, 30 ans, travaille et vit dans des conditions égales à celles de tous les Gazaouis, allant d'un camp de réfugiés à un autre camp au gré des bombardements israéliens. Depuis plus d'un an il vit dans le dénuement le plus total et travaille en prenant d'énormes risques pour sa vie. L'hygiène est pour lui un problème majeur, avec des périodes de maladies intestinales sévères. Bashar vit depuis février dans les ruines de sa maison de Gaza City avec sa mère, ses quatre frères et sœurs et la famille d'un de ses frères. Leur maison est vide de tout aménagement et confort, à part quelques coussins. Dimanche matin, il a rapporté que son frère aîné était « tombé, à cause de la faim ». Même si ces journalistes reçoivent un salaire mensuel de l'AFP, il n'y a rien à acheter ou alors à des prix totalement exorbitants. Le système bancaire a disparu, et ceux qui pratiquent le change entre les comptes bancaires en ligne et l'argent liquide prennent une commission de près de 40%. L'AFP n'a plus la possibilité d'avoir un véhicule et encore moins de l'essence pour permettre à ses journalistes de se déplacer pour leurs reportages. Circuler en voiture équivaut de toutes les façons à pre…

🚨BREAKING: The last journalists working for AFP in Gaza have said they can no longer work for the news agency.

They are out of energy and they are starving to death.

I have never seen a statement from a news organisation like it.

🧵

Farage should never be interviewed without being forced to answer for failures of Brexit. That the man whose lies fuelled Brexit vote which has cost UK Billions & who said Liz Truss budget was “best Tory budget since 1986” could be trusted on *anything* is mind-boggling #bbclaura

BJPolS abstract discussing scholars' investigation into polarization and logical comparisons across party entities, cultural priming in economic discussions, and the effect of cultural debates on political discourse.

From May 2025 -

Beyond Observational Relationships: Evidence from a Ten-Country Experiment that Policy Disputes Cause Affective Polarization - cup.org/3Zvgchx

- @noamgidron.bsky.social, James Adams, @rwillh11.bsky.social & @ttichelbaecker.bsky.social

#OpenAccess

Had a blast presenting yesterday!
I received very insightful comments.
Thank you to everyone who was attending. ☺️

(and to @favstats.eu for taking pictures where I gesture wildly)

Call for Nominations: ODISSEI Open Science Award 2025 - ODISSEI – Open Data Infrastructure for Social Science and Economic Innovations ODISSEI Open Science Awards 2025

🔍 Nominations open: ODISSEI Open Science #Awards 2025! 🏆

Celebrating researchers & teams making social science more transparent, reproducible & reusable.

Know someone making a difference? Or part of a project that should be recognised? 👉 edu.nl/48uy8

#OpenScience #FAIR

En voor iedereen met een SURF-account (via NLse onderwijs- en onderzoeksinstellingen) is er natuurlijk de SURFfilesender

WeTransfer just changed their TOS giving themselves permission to train AI on any content you transfer and produce derivative works based on content you transfer that they are allowed to monetize and you are not allowed payment for.

Stop using WeTransfer.

Voor mijn nieuwe Nederlandse volgers, hier zijn enkele andere Nederlandstalige experts op het gebied van uiterst-rechts om te volgen:

@sldelange.bsky.social
@leoniedejonge.bsky.social
@catherinedevries.bsky.social
@lindabos.bsky.social
@mrooduijn.bsky.social
@mauritsmeijers.bsky.social

Far-right challenges to liberal democratic press norms: “indexing by proxy” in a German immigration debate Abstract. This study examines the mechanisms by which illiberal politics make the news by disrupting democratic systems. During the late 20th century, a li

This is such a great new piece of research by @curdknupfer.bsky.social et al. It should be mandatory reading for journalists. academic.oup.com/joc/advance-...

Hoogleraar Cas Mudde is een van de toonaangevende kenners van extreemrechts: ‘Sociaaldemocraten hebben de PVV-kiezer niet verloren en ze gaan die ook nooit winnen’ De Nederlandse hoogleraar Cas Mudde is vanuit de VS een van de toonaangevende kenners van extreemrechts. Op bezoek in Nederland reflecteert hij op de Nederlandse politiek: ‘De gemiddelde PVV-stemmer z...

Ik gaf een (zeldzaam) interview aan een Nederlandse krant. 👇

A Swedish economist just dropped a paper where he used data from a quarter of a billion chess.com games to test a classic Q: do “hot hands” exist?

Finding:

✅ Wins predict wins
❌ But wins don’t cause wins

Using random piece assignment, he finds that win streaks exist; but they’re just noise.

The Republican governor, who took a helicopter tour of the disaster zone, dismissed a question about who was to blame for the deaths, saying, “That’s the word choice of losers.” “Every football team makes mistakes,” he said. “The losing teams are the ones that try to point out who’s to blame. The championship teams are the ones who say, ’Don’t worry about it, man, we got this. We’re going to make sure that we go score again and we’re going to win this game.’ The way winners talk is not to point fingers.”

Today, in a fb group I'm in, a mom asked if anyone had her daughter's now-discontinued stuffy lost to the flood. To put in her coffin. Her baby's coffin

But our governor said our football team is having a winning season. Just a football loss that cost 100+ lives

www.kgns.tv/2025/07/08/h...

What it took to get tenure in the Batman Studies Department in the 1960s, and what it takes to get tenure in Batman Studies today...

Hoogleraar Cas Mudde is een van de toonaangevende kenners van extreemrechts: ‘Sociaaldemocraten hebben de PVV-kiezer niet verloren en ze gaan die ook nooit winnen’ De Nederlandse hoogleraar Cas Mudde is vanuit de VS een van de toonaangevende kenners van extreemrechts. Op bezoek in Nederland reflecteert hij op de Nederlandse politiek: ‘De gemiddelde PVV-stemmer z...

“Een van de grote problemen is dat uiterst rechts vaak competenter overkomt dan ze zijn, omdat ze altijd prominent zijn in verhalen over immigratie. Vraag eens wat een uiterst rechtse partij gaat doen voor hoger onderwijs of hoe ze klimaatverandering gaat stoppen” www.parool.nl/nederland/ho...

Great, but sobering, piece by @simonkuper.bsky.social about AI:

“Humans lost their swordsmanship and weaving skills once machines took over most fighting and weaving. Thinking and writing may go the same way.”

Key question for universities is how do we get students to keep thinking and writing?

Laten we het organiseren van debatten eens een keer aan mensen overlaten die politiek wél serieus nemen. Door mensen die willen dat Nederland weet wat er inhoudelijk te kiezen valt.

📣 Call for Applications 📣

3-year Postdoc position in Berlin 🚀

Join our Comparative Political Behavior Group at @humboldtuni.bsky.social & the @humboldt-govlab.bsky.social

Great people, great projects, great city – come work with us!

🗓️ Deadline: 31 July 2025

Et al...