Petia Kostadinova

Notre Dame is investing in democracy research in lots of exciting ways, including these hires. Happy to talk to senior folks about working at Notre Dame and living in South Bend. (Spoiler: There are lots of good reasons I've spent my entire career here).

This is bad

👇🎯 As with university presidents, the Democrats' current Congressional leaders have spent their entire career advancing & being selected for leadership positions based on qualities/skills that were rewarded in a political system that simply no longer exists in the United States of America.

The excuses Westerners make for Ru society’s consistent/broad support for the attempted conquest of Ukraine are endless! After « they don’t know the truth » and « they are afraid of repression », we now have « they have to make a living ».

US higher ed basically started to copy the German research-university model in the early 20th century. Then Germany tore it down themselves.

Not unrelated, one reason Germany lost the race for the A-bomb is that Hitler thought theoretical physics was essentially Jewish

More Random Data! More random data questions for student analysis - focusing on continuous/numerical variables this time.

PLEASE GIVE ME MORE WACKY DATA! Crazy questions make memorable examples! My students will thank you!

buff.ly/a3hUOBA

Speeding tickets! Cookie consumption! Feeling thermometers about cats and dogs and people who eat anchovies straight from the tin!

10 essential reads on African politics for summer 2025. From cultural revival to election campaign violence, these books offer a rich dive into how politics works – and who it works for across Africa.

Here are 10 essential reads on African politics for this summer.

From cultural revival to election campaign violence, these books offer a rich dive into how politics works – and who it works for across Africa.

goodauthority.org/news/10-esse...

I like that the NYT story on Mamdani's college application is sparking dialogue on how race is a political expression. ~100 years ago, Minnesota expelled Finnish labor organizers by declaring them Asian and Alabama let a Black man marry a Sicilian woman because Italians weren't "White."

We Should Have Finished Reconstruction: A Brief History Of American Democracy, 1865-2025

There’s not one rule that says you can’t use kittens

We're also going to find out that RFE/RL, USAID and the rest of the American soft-power apparatus was also load-bearing.

It turns out a radio station is a lot cheaper than if you have to intervene to fight a war or control refugee flows.

A *lot* of this stuff is load-bearing.

The US Supreme Court rules that there is no law and there is no constitution

No One Knows If Decades-Old Nukes Would Actually Work Atomic weapons are highly complex, surprisingly sensitive, and often pretty old. With testing banned, countries have to rely on good maintenance and simulations to trust their weapons work.

Flattened cities, millions of people burnt to death, and yet more tortured by radioactive fallout. That harrowing future may seem outlandish to some, but only because no nation has detonated a nuclear weapon in conflict since 1945.

Our 2023 story on if old nukes would actually work.

Wild how the Fed chair saying that *entire regions of the United States* won’t be able to get a mortgage in the next decade barely registered as a news event

Call for Participants: APSA Working Group on American Civics Undergraduate Course Requirements | Deadline: July 7, 2025 Join the working group here! Application Deadline: July 7, 2025 The American Political Science Association’s Departmental Services Program seeks faculty and department leaders to join a new working group supporting political science departments whose programs and courses help their university or college meet externally mandated American politics and civics undergraduate credit requirements. Nine states already require undergraduate students at public higher education institutions to take course requirements, while many state legislatures and regents boards across the U.S.

Call for Participants: APSA Working Group on American Civics Undergraduate Course Requirements | Deadline: July 7, 2025

Assassin was Trump voter

No Kings protest sign with a Ukrainian flavor

Donald Trump does NOT want you to share this footage of his pathetically tiny birthday parade crowd.

Chicago is showing up.

I once confronted then-Rep Keith Ellison at an event in '16, and asked if he understood that Democrats ideally want to work with Republicans, but Republicans ideally want to jail Democrats. His quick reply was "brother, don't I know it, you have to convince Chuck Schumer, I've tried"

No Kings On June 14—Flag Day—Donald Trump wants tanks in the street and a made-for-TV display of dominance for his birthday. A spectacle meant to look like strength. But real power isn’t staged in Washington. ...

Find your closest rally on Saturday and go. You can tell your kids where you were on the other side of this. Outnumber him everywhere.

www.nokings.org#map

LAPD fired rubber bullets at Australian journalist @laurentomasi.bsky.social

Forces loyal to the president still appear to be in control of the broadcasting stations

Please call Congress today. Programs for survivors face catastrophic cuts, and we will all be less safe without this funding.

Vitamin D builds your bones and keeps your gut sealed, among many other essential functions − but many children are deficient Because vitamin D plays a crucial role in many aspects of health and growth, inadequate levels can put children at risk of developing chronic disease early on.

Vitamin D builds your bones and keeps your gut sealed, among many other essential functions − but many children are deficient.

Владельца интернет-радио «Эхо» и американское научное общество признали «нежелательными» в России | ОВД-Инфо Генпрокуратура признала «нежелательными» еще две организации. Информация об этом опубликована на сайте Минюста.В перечень внесли американскую «Ассоциацию славянских, восточноевропейских и евразийских ...

Russia has declared ASEEES @aseees.bsky.social an "undesirable organization." ASEEES is the largest Western academic association for Slavic studies. This ruling puts Russian scholars at risk of prosecution for being members or participating in the annual conference.

ovd.info/express-news...

Your body already has a built-in weight loss system that works like Wegovy, Ozempic and Mounjaro – food and your gut microbiome Weight loss and diabetes drugs target regulatory pathways involved in metabolism that the microbes in your gut and certain molecules from food already play a key role in regulating.

Your body already has a built-in weight loss system that works like Wegovy, Ozempic and Mounjaro – food and your gut microbiome.

#health #weightloss

Same. I don’t remember why.