How to access the Bluesky API from R, fast
Programmatically accessing Bluesky is a breeze with the atrrr package for #Rstats
Orbán travels in style, Putin meddles in Germany, Wagenknecht blackmails the CDU, and 1 Spanish scientist cheats his way to the top: 4 (or 5?) links I liked
If you are not worried, you have not been paying attention. “National populism” – itself a polite misnomer for a radical right ideology that also claims to attack the elites – is going international. Viktor Orbán, bankrolled by the EU and the Hungarian treasury, is trying to establish himself as the impresario of this transnational…
New publication: the 2024 European parliamentary elections in Germany and 26 other EU member states
After the 2019 Green wave, many observers expected a blue-brownish backlash for 2024. And in many countries, these observers (who are these people, and why are they always so well-informed?) were not disappointed. In Germany, the governing “progressive” coalition took a rather spectacular beating, while the main opposition, the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) performed ok-ish. The…
Friedrich Merz has a women problem
Friedrich Merz, the CDU/CSU candidate for the chancellorship, is much more popular with men than with women. It makes you wonder why.
What just happened in the Brandenburg election, and how will it affect German Politics?
Here’s an interview with DW in which I try to make sense of the 2024 state elections in Brandenburg.
I talked to Deborah Cole about the AfD & Germany’s east
Ten days or so ahead of the state elections in Saxony and Thuringia, I had a chat with Berlin-based British Deutschlandversteher Deborah Cole. Some quotes made it into this excellent explainer piece in the Guardian. Looks like Germany failed the test. https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/29/germany-state-elections-populists-afd-bsw
Loving the alien
Need to something uplifting? 50 minutes to spare? Listen to how the hunt for alien life is gearing up.
How does the Far Right end up in government? And do Far Right governments make a difference?
How it started: far right governments as an exception A decade or two ago, far right governments were a rarity in Europe. Of course, there were the Berlusconi governments of the 1990s and early 2000s that included the radical right Lega (then still the Lega Nord) and the post-fascist Alleanza Nazionale, i.e. the rebranded MSI.…