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Jon Mellon

@jonmellon.bsky.social

Co-director British Election Study. Political Scientist and Data Scientist. Political science methods/political behavior/causal inference. Posts do not represent employer.

3,182 Followers  |  2,627 Following  |  807 Posts  |  Joined: 20.09.2023
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Posts by Jon Mellon (@jonmellon.bsky.social)

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I should come clean and admit there were 2 weeks I couldn’t cross because the Hudson froze over entirely.

05.03.2026 15:33 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

There was a river between the train station and my office and the choice was a 7 minute kayak or a 30 minute drive

05.03.2026 14:00 β€” πŸ‘ 4    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

And the nearest bridges were 7 miles in each direction

05.03.2026 13:43 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

There was a river between the train station and my office

05.03.2026 13:38 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

I really do mean every day too

05.03.2026 13:07 β€” πŸ‘ 22    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 2    πŸ“Œ 0

This undersells the fact that you would sometimes do zoom meetings during the kayak!

05.03.2026 12:55 β€” πŸ‘ 22    πŸ” 2    πŸ’¬ 5    πŸ“Œ 0

I kayaked to work every day for 3 years

05.03.2026 12:47 β€” πŸ‘ 88    πŸ” 3    πŸ’¬ 4    πŸ“Œ 1

Definitely agree with all that too

04.03.2026 16:19 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

The main thing I think AI is going to do is generically put pressure on all of these institutions. That opens up space for changes in general including ones that might not be directly tied to AI.

04.03.2026 16:13 β€” πŸ‘ 2    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0
Electoral Shocks

Adam McKay get in touch! library.oapen.org/handle/20.50...

28.02.2026 21:07 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

But who knows, maybe there's a "Big Short" style version of electoral shocks you could make

28.02.2026 20:54 β€” πŸ‘ 3    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 2    πŸ“Œ 0
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Something tells me this very legitimate agent may not have read my book

28.02.2026 20:52 β€” πŸ‘ 3    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

What’s actually going on in this statement is he’s using insider terms to sound credible to influential people within the defense policy community

27.02.2026 02:58 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

There’s a lot of interbranch rivalry that ends up fueling weird terminology stuff like this

27.02.2026 02:56 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

I think it can refer to marines too so possibly it covered most people who were in Iraq. But sailors and airmen definitely aren’t usually called that.

27.02.2026 02:54 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

soldiers and troops are army specific

27.02.2026 02:39 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

It’s a very common term in the defense world. It’s mostly just because you want a single term to refer to members of the army, navy and Air Force

27.02.2026 02:36 β€” πŸ‘ 2    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 2    πŸ“Œ 0
Identification K9 puts professional ethics over personal attachments

Identification K9 puts professional ethics over personal attachments

Time to repost some causality memes #IdentificationK9

26.02.2026 14:22 β€” πŸ‘ 48    πŸ” 13    πŸ’¬ 2    πŸ“Œ 0

I remember reading a paper at one point that drew a distinction between polling vote share error (how far off the vote shares were) and polling narrative error (when the wrong party was said to be ahead). Does anyone remember the reference?

23.02.2026 21:20 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

I haven’t had a chance to dig in but more recent evidence maybe looks more like an epidemic (may well change my mind again) bsky.app/profile/digt...

22.02.2026 15:14 β€” πŸ‘ 3    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

If someone has newer data that shows something very different I’m very happy to have my mind changed on this again. No one’s pointed to anything very conclusive that I’ve seen so far

22.02.2026 03:48 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

See Per's thread here
bsky.app/profile/peng...

21.02.2026 22:15 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

Looking at a couple of panel studies my current working hypothesis is that sustained participation in panel studies decreases respondents life satisfaction.

17.02.2026 14:25 β€” πŸ‘ 26    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 2    πŸ“Œ 0

Problem about the loneliness epidemic is, it's everywhere except in representative survey data. Let's look at where the claim comes from. 1/

17.02.2026 07:13 β€” πŸ‘ 597    πŸ” 226    πŸ’¬ 21    πŸ“Œ 35

Giving me flashbacks to the giant ISCED mapping spreadsheet I've got for one project

20.02.2026 15:35 β€” πŸ‘ 2    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

A world where 90% of people are getting degrees is a world where you’re sending a very strong signal by not getting one

20.02.2026 14:47 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

In other words, high graduate premiums are compatible with a world where non-graduate prospects have worsened as credential requirements have increased for medium skilled jobs

20.02.2026 14:42 β€” πŸ‘ 4    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 2    πŸ“Œ 0

I think it’s worth bearing in mind that graduate premium is a measure of difference not the level of achievement within the graduate group.

20.02.2026 14:42 β€” πŸ‘ 7    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

Great work in this paper figuring out the scaffolding to get this to work

19.02.2026 23:56 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

I've been interested when we were going to reach the capability threshold for this.

Once the tires have been kicked, all social science journals should adopt computational reproducibility on submission.

Huge reduction in reviewer burden by eliminating a whole class of errors up front.

19.02.2026 21:08 β€” πŸ‘ 9    πŸ” 2    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 1