James Dennison

It's hard to fathom that every 6-8 years UK universities spend years and hundreds of millions doing something that can be done in an afternoon by one person with access to impact-factor weighted citation counts.

Le Monde publishes new details of campaign against Karim Khan and ICC An intensifying campaign has targeted the ICC chief prosecutor over his investigation into alleged Israeli war crimes

Le Monde publishes new details of campaign against Karim Khan and ICC www.middleeasteye.net/news/karim-k...

Great to see research which tries to reconcile conjoints & real world choices, but strange for this bloot to lead w/ description of past research ("sexism is… consequential for voter behaviour") rather than the actual finding ("no evidence for [fx] of voter sexism on support for women candidates")

a fox curled up and looking up to the upper left corner, beams of sunlight and dustmotes floating in the rays. Fox surrounded in flowers, at the corner bottom right there are a fox skull and a fossilized heartshaped sea urchin. Mixed media, black fineliner, yellow turmeric ink, purple shadows in blackberry ink, watercolour paints, Maria Strutz

a curled up fox, savouring the warmth of the sun 🦊🌀🌻
The yellow in the painting is mostly turmeric, the purple blackberry ink
#whistpr #content

The DoD Rapid Response team on Twitter writes: "The Secretary of Defense has great jeans." The attached photo shows Sec. Pete Hegseth wearing a blue sport coat, white button-up shirt, blue jeans, and a big buckle Western belt.

I disagree. I will tell you what's wrong with his jeans. 🧵

We grow up thinking of ourselves as individuals, with jobs, opinions, and plans.

Inside all of us is something older. We are animals, shaped by wind and soil, attuned to weather, and to the sound of birds.

Our ecological identity is something we would do well to remember in a time of #collapse 1/5

Democratising Measurement: or Why Thick Concepts Call for Coproduction - European Journal for Philosophy of Science Thick concepts, namely those concepts that describe and evaluate simultaneously, present a challenge to science. Since science does not have a monopoly on value judgments, what is responsible research...

We desperately need to get more savvy about the value judgements that suffuse all science.

This is especially true of social scientists.

And even more true for anybody who wants to comment on policy issues.

Please at least dabble in philosophy of science, eg:

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

As the story notes, this is consistent with the April 2024 investigation by 972/Local Call, reported in the Guardian, that the IDF were deliberately targeting the homes of Hamas members.

remarkable—and utterly devastating—report. English media may be a garbage fire, by and large, but outlets like Sky and @financialtimes.com have really led the way on western coverage of Gaza, and for that I'm grateful.

I wish EU countries like my own had the same courage, decency, and competence.

I've seen this reaction so many times through the years from continental Europeans to British media. I agree the analysis is great. It's shameful how much (quantitative) scholars have neglected the Palestinian genocide.

Israeli forces killed more Palestinians waiting for food at aid sites over the weekend, as it continues to starve the population of Gaza.

Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal — and we as a nation are complicit in this bloodbath.

We must stop all military assistance to Israel.

A social media post from Donald J. Trump on Truth Social, dated July 31, 2025, at 5:29 AM, reads: "Wow! Canada has just announced that it is backing statehood for Palestine. That will make it very hard for us to make a Trade Deal with them. Oh’ Canada!!!"

By trying to bully nations out of recognising Palestine, Trump is making himself the biggest hurdle to a two-state solution and a lasting peace.

The UK must stand strong with Canada and our allies, we should recognise the Palestinian state right now. No more delays.

Gaza's deadliest days linked by a pattern of attacks on families Using exclusive new data, social media obituaries and satellite imagery, Sky News has tracked the killing of families in Gaza over the past 21 months.

Data on every Israeli killing in Gaza shows whole families were targeted
news.sky.com/story/gazas-...

Like Caroline Lucas, I'm backing Ellie Chowns and Adrian Ramsey to be the next leaders of the Green Party.
I think it's fairer to their constituents for MPs to share the job of leader,
and it's too much work for one person to do both without a lot of help.
also no Caesars...
bsky.app/profile/caro...

Yay! The European Political Science Society (EPSS @epssnet.bsky.social) has a Call for Papers out for their June 2026 conference.

Hope to see you all in Belfast.

Exeter, Galway, Queen’s, Birmingham, Warwick, Kent, and UKRI’s KTN…

If anyone wondered where the same obsession with ‘modernising’ the crest, speaking in abstract nouns, and questionable colour schemes for these originated:

EU fails to agree Israeli suspension from research fund over Gaza EU member states could not rally the support necessary to suspend Israel from the Horizon Europe fund in response to the war in Gaza. The proposal needed a qualified majority of member states to pass ...

Again, Germany & Italy, along with Hungary, Bulgaria, Czech Republic can’t agree to partially suspend israel from EU research fund as response to Israel’s war crimes in Gaza.

Despite two israeli NGO’s concluding Monday that Israel is committing genocide.

www.euronews.com/my-europe/20...

Statement from Ed Davey: Recognition of the state of Palestine should not be used as a bargaining chip. It should have happened months ago. We also need far greater action to stop the humanitarian disaster in Gaza, including fully ceasing arms sales and implementing sanctions against the Israeli cabinet.

The Liberal Democrats welcome this first step but urge Keir Starmer to go further and recognise Palestine immediately.

Far greater action is also needed to address the humanitarian disaster in Gaza, including fully ceasing arms sales and imposing sanctions on the Israeli cabinet.

Frontiers to retract 122 articles, links thousands in other publishers’ journals to “unethical” network t.co/6msTSJ9lGV

Artisanal, small batch, typo-strewn emails are becoming the real currency of our time

Trump is planning to release the Epstein’s list. Most likely, it will look like this.

Astronomer uploads new video with Gwyneth Paltrow, ex-wife of Coldplay’s Chris Martin, answering questions as a temporary spokesperson.

Amid rising starvation in the Gaza Strip, an Israeli government minister said on Thursday that Israel had no duty to alleviate hunger in the territory and was seeking to expel its population. Amichay Eliyahu, a far-right lawmaker who leads Israel’s Heritage Ministry, said in a radio interview that “there is no nation that feeds its enemies,” adding that “the British didn’t feed the Nazis, nor did the Americans feed the Japanese, nor do the Russians feed the Ukrainians now.” He concluded that the government was “rushing toward Gaza being wiped out,” while also “driving out the population that educated its people on the ideas of ‘Mein Kampf,’” an antisemitic text written by Adolf Hitler.

pretty telling comment here. Britain and America absolutely did feed and clothe Nazi and Japanese POWs during WWII. and they provided food and supplies to occupied territories as the war was won. the Hunger Plan by contrast was a Nazi thing

Why is it still getting EU grant money?

France recognizing the state of Palestine won’t have much immediate effect but it’s a necessary step in the horribly long road to a durable peace. There’s no settlement or peace possible without partition and two states. Recognition is a small step in that direction.

Sometimes, a descriptive figure is worth more than a thousand model coefficients: the importance of data description in social research Many social research questions aim at understanding relationships between different phenomena, and increasingly complex multivariate statistical models are often employed to address these questions...

Finally got this banger of a title out: 𝑆𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑒𝑠, 𝑎 𝑑𝑒𝑠𝑐𝑟𝑖𝑝𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑒 𝑓𝑖𝑔𝑢𝑟𝑒 𝑖𝑠 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑡ℎ 𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑛 𝑎 𝑡ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑠𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑚𝑜𝑑𝑒𝑙 𝑐𝑜𝑒𝑓𝑓𝑖𝑐𝑖𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑠.
If your descriptive figures and your model tell different stories, trust the figure. (And maybe rethink the model.)
👉 📄 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

I loved working on this paper having mulled it over for at least a decade. Thx to the reviewers, eds. & the fantastic
@lindsayaqui.bsky.social for useful chats. I hope it helps plug a gap in the event-driven nature of EU attitudes & 🇬🇧&🇪🇺, & that its non-technical nature makes it useful for students.

The final process to and from "Europhoria" is represented graphically and in terms of factors to include null findings

Covering three time periods—83-87, 88-92, 92-97—means that the reasons why "Europhoria" ended (and started) are covered: ERM in the short-term, pan-EU mobilisation around Maastricht and the disappointment of "1992", again in quant and qual terms.

However, there was also a strong cultural component, with several trends in sport, music, media, and the arts temporarily moving British gazes and all-important identities towards the continent.