Charm: How Magnetic Personalities Shape Global Politics by Julia Sonnevend
The utilization—and weaponization—of charm in contemporary global politics.
Charm by Julia Sonnevend is now available in #paperback, with a new preface by the author!
Learn more: press.princeton.edu/books/paperb...
#Sociology
Never forget that this what The Washington Post said when Noem was nominated.
DOJ's recent 6th Circuit filing misspelled:
Voters as “Votors”
Emergency as "Emeregency"
United States as "United Staes"
And, it included a non-party in the caption.
These are the people who want access to your sensitive voting records and who my team fights in court every day.
Commentary: Anyone Else Have Those Weird Dreams Where Sobbing Future Generations Beg You To Change Course?
I made this monster of a chart to show the partisan split of the early/abs vote in the TX primary by age/race/gender.
You can see why Republicans must be worried about what they're seeing in the turnout data.
New Pre-Print:
www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...
We’re all familiar with having to practice a new skill to get better at it, but what really happens during practice? The answer, I propose, is reinforcement learning - specifically policy-gradient reinforcement learning.
Overview 🧵 below...
This aged well. Note the author.
If you are an elected official that opposes military strikes on Iran, the head of CBS News will clap back at you. Will be interesting to see if she does this for other objectors, or just Muslim politicians, but it does raise the question how much her views of the Middle East shape the news.
Musical ability and emotion recognition in speech prosody: The role of pitch discrimination link.springer.com/article/10.3... "Why does musical expertise predict enhanced emotion recognition in speech prosody? ...music training is an artifactual correlate of prosodic emotion recognition" 😮
U.S. military spending is set to hit a record $1.5 trillion.
Roughly half of defense spending goes to private contractors that routinely price-gouge the government.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon has failed EIGHT straight audits.
The military industrial complex is cheering today.
Five corporations control 90% of the US media market.
Airlines merged from 12 major carriers in 1980 to 4 today.
Four giants control 80% of meat processing.
The evidence of corporate consolidation is everywhere.
It means more power for them and less freedom for you.
The richest man owns X.
The second and third richest men control Google.
The fourth richest man owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
The fifth richest man owns The Washington Post.
And now the sixth richest could soon take over both Paramount and Warner Bros.
See the problem here?
why do nerds
suddenly appear
every time
I post here
"In Chicago, of 92 people arrested for assaulting or impeding officers last fall, 74 cases have resulted in no charges; in 13 cases, charges were filed and dismissed; and five charged cases were still pending. . . there have been no convictions.
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...
“As Karen got to know the guards at the Northwest ICE Processing Center where she was held, she kept hearing the same thing from them: that ICE officers are paid a bonus every time they detain someone. “Individual ICE agents get money per head that they detain – the guards told me that,” Karen says”
😕
Okay, but here is what is going to happen: mainstream candidates are going to win primaries, and if we say “vote blue no matter who,” people will accuse us of saying it as a secret trick to boost moderates. Establishing VBNMW NOW, before the primary, makes it clear the obligation is universal.
Moskowitz on Maria Bartiromo show's: "Americans voted to have people deported -- criminals and gang members -- they did not vote for people to be shot in the street by masked men. So I think Kristi Noem needs to go."
Yes! Let's have more discussion about the big things holding back neurosci so we can rally to find solutions.
I agree with @suthanalab.bsky.social that silos across species in both measures and the uptake of results into theories is on the "big problems" short list.
What do you see as solutions?
Really wonderful interview here about alternatives to capitalism. Mattei does a great job responding to a lot of centrist knee-jerk reactions here, and I think sounds really active on the ground in Oklahoma.
#econ
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/c...
Many people in South Africa, where Elon is from, died to create a genuinely multiracial polity. They were killed by people who thought like Elon.
The people who thought like Elon also lost. Seems their “common culture” of white supremacy wasn’t enough.
bsky.app/profile/alan...
Today’s reminder that the 2026 elections already weren’t going to be free & fully democratic by any actual meaningful standard even before we started worrying about ICE & outright fascism.
Again normal pro-democracy parties do not make restricting suffrage the central pillar of their policy agenda.
This is what ICE does every day. Hunt little kids who are here legally. They get sent to a place called the “baby jail” in Texas. Very little of it ends up on video like this. But it’s routine. And disgusting.
Seems like the inevitable consequence of arguing over the exact definition of fascism.
Medicare for All would save $450B a year.
Every dollar spent on food stamps generates $1.50-$1.80 in economic activity.
Each dollar going to low-wage workers adds $1.20 to the economy overall.
It’s not about what this country can or can’t afford.
It’s about priorities.
“I’ve never protested before - but I just watched 4th & 5th grade kids run away from our own government.” 😕🇺🇸💔
(From @crindivisible.bsky.social )
Glad this is getting covered, but also… Completely surreal to read the NYT report on this as recently disclosed info, and just an allegation. This happened to every observer I know! It happened to me twice! I have it on video both times! www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/u...
This story feels too crazy, but also right on brand.
““Will take down (Pope) Francis,” Bannon wrote to Epstein in June 2019. “The Clintons, Xi, Francis, EU – come on brother.””
www.cnn.com/2026/02/14/w...
🌹 Happy Valentine's Day
From the Private Eye archive.
Issue 1437, February 2017.
Letterboxd screenshot Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) Watched by Branson Reese 28 Apr 2022 Abrams isn't a man so much as he's an avatar of cultural entropy. If you make something popular enough eventually you will die or sell it off and and a person in thick rimmed glasses whose main artistic vision is that he loves to have meetings will take it and sandblast it until it's nothing. I hate to see this happen here but maybe it's good that this happened. Maybe every franchise should collapse into a version of itself that makes shareholders nod and shake each others' hands. We should learn to speak in a language that rich people who don't dream can't comprehend.
i often think about this review
