Looking forward to presenting at this panel, as well as seeing the posters and roundtable that follow #CJPoliSci20 (note: this was once part of #APSA2020, but is now independent and free to attend, though you have to sign up via a link in the thread below)
We had unusually beautiful weather this weekend, so naturally I spent all day yesterday and half of today playing my first chess tournament in the basement of a Quality Inn:
In my second game, my opponent played Bg4 on move 6, which was a big blunder (+6.5 for white). Unfortunately I couldn't find the right move over the board (despite spending a lot of time on it) and ended up losing. I'll post the right move later in case anyone wants to guess.
Special shout out to all the adults in my section who got crushed by the small child who had to sit on her knees to be able to see the board. I lucked out and didn't get paired with her.
I thought I was being clever here by playing Re4 to deflect the queen and set up checkmate, but it's actually +7.7 for white
I could see Rf8+, but I thought by playing Ka7 I could escape any trouble there. I missed the possibility of a *rook sacrifice*
If white plays Ra8+ and black responds by taking with the king, queen taking the rook on e4 is a check that forces a queen trade, undermining the checkmate threat and leaving white with a big advantage
Republican politicians started strategically calling all accurate historical information about racial inequality "critical race theory" and a lot of media outlets are just uncritically running with the phrase now
Even the Guardian is doing it:
"Critical race theory" is a real thing, of course, but the political strategy here is concept stretching and, well, it appears to be working.
I've finally completed my APD scholarly transition from "I can't believe I have to read this much about the post office" to "I'm going to make my students read about the post office"
There's a certain set of classic APD books that I honestly found borderline incomprehensible as a new grad student that I now think are much more interesting and it's hard to know exactly how that mental transition happened (or how to make it happen for current grad students).
I suspect everything from the general promise to "deconstruct the administrative state" to the still ongoing effort at undermining the postal service has been, while bad for the world, "good" for APD scholars who work on administration/bureaucracy
I have no idea who wrote the APSA statement, but thousands of political scientists signed an open letter calling for the president to be removed. It doesn't speak for everyone, to be sure, but I think it speaks for more people than the APSA statement does. docs.google.com/document/d/1iL…
It's fascinating to me that the APSA statement came out 2 days ago and a lot of people, myself included, didn't notice it until now.