The most surprising political development of the 21st century was that Donald Trump became president of the United States. The least surpris…
On today’s walk in the local woods, I found this unexpected piece of political art. Stick-Trump is saying “bye”. The stick-kids are asking where their family might be. Who made this and left it here?


Germany’s Home Secretary said in an interview that the AfD wants to destroy the state and put this interview on the Home Office’s website. Now the FCC ruled that he was not allowed to do that. But the ruling does not say that Seehofer’s claim is factually incorrect. Like in previous cases, the judges upheld a kind of two-bodies-theory. As a politician, Seehofer was free to make this statement, but as a minister he was not allowed to use his official platform for distributing it.
Over at the Quantiative Peace, Joshua Zingher looks at Trump’s base. The bottom line? Trump’s 2020 path to the presidency is narrow. May he stray from it.
“Why are German Nazis training in Russia“? That is a bit of a rhetorical question, but the article has at least some answers.
Bonus track: German IR theory-building kit (thread)
https://twitter.com/KilianSpandler/status/1270643085140246528

“The invention of Essex: how a county became a caricature” is an excellent feature about the political economy of one (seriously under-appreciated) county.
Some Trump supporters are actually stock-photo/video models. Are you surprised?

James F. Downes has an interesting long read on Alternative for Germany’s internal/inter-regional conflicts. It chimes with my own recent article on the development of the AfD and the normalisation of right-wing populism in Germany. Somewhat surprisingly, these contradictions are still not harming the party.
Sorry to disappoint: Brendan Nyhan explains why the current polls showing that Trump is trailing various Democrats are useless.
People in rich & healthy countries stop believing in vaccinations. In the so-called developing world, vaccinations are still trusted. Find these and other fascinating findings in the latest Wellcome Monitor

In case you were wondering whether Trump is a) evil, b) senile or c) a master strategist: here is a piece arguing that c) is unlikely, though a) and b) could easily be true at the same time.
This is surprisingly accurate: academic life told through Wallace & Gromit gifs
This is what being an academic feels like pic.twitter.com/3vwccD8wDP
— Dr Stella Pedrazzini (@StellaPe12) January 21, 2019
When I needed to maximise a two-variable function over a given range of input values, I found this brief tutorial helpful.
Bonus: a pic of Gromit:

Photo by VGB.Studios

Which then reminded me (yes, I’m old enough to remember both the outrage over Iraq and the euphoria of Blair coming to power in 1997) of a cartoon video featuring Tony Blair, Michael Howard, and other politicians of the day, happily dancing to the same song (“I was told that there were weapons hidden underneath the sand”). I tried to google it, but it is gone, a victim of the death of flash.
What is it about this song and wildly unpopular politicians? Is there something about this song that could be coaxed into a paper (“Pseudo-Rap as Liberalism. A Conceptual Sketch and Some Applications”)? Most certainly not, so let’s just post the latest video.
- One of the best (and most depressing) articles on Trump I’ve read so far: “Inside Trump’s Hour-by-Hour Battle for Self-Preservation”
- If you learnt R as a grad student and if that was some time ago (cough), here is help to get you started on the new ways of doing things in R
- To further drive this home, here is a quick and only slightly dirty analysis of the Weinstein effect in newspaper reporting using tidytext
- What remains of the traditional French centre-right after Macron is poaching on the Front National. Art Goldhammer nails it.
- Meanwhile, the Front National is once more in hot water over the misuse of EU funds.
Then again, there is one thing that does not get enough coverage in there, and that is the whole polling/prediction disaster. So you should read this, too:
There. Your Sunday sorted out.