Marc Ratkovic
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marcratkovic.bsky.social
Marc Ratkovic
@marcratkovic.bsky.social
140 followers 300 following 84 posts
Chair of Political Science, Social Data Science
Departments of Political Science and Data Science
University of Mannheim
Political Science, Data, Causal Inference, recently AI and Linguistics
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marcratkovic.bsky.social
Marc Ratkovic @marcratkovic.bsky.social · Jan 14
My group has a 3-year position available for a PhD student or post-doc interested in India, ML models/data pipelines/python, and crime and protecting children. Must be eligible to work in Germany. DM or email me for details. Formal calls later, trying here first. #poliscisky #datasciencesky
Reposted by Marc Ratkovic
jeczjan.bsky.social
Thought I’d start posting from time to time some of the most famous Polish paintings, so that my non-Polish followers can learn a thing or two about our culture. This one by Jan Matejko is called “Jestermaxxing”, and it portrays a guy who, tragically, jestermaxxed
Matejko’s “Stańczyk”. From Wikipedia: “Stańczyk is shown sitting alone in a dark room, while a ball, hosted by the royal family, is in full swing in the neighbouring hall. His appearance is unlike that one would expect in a jester – gloomy, deep in thought. His seriousness is reinforced by his accessories: his marotte lies discarded on the floor, whereas a holy medallion of the Black Madonna of Częstochowa can be seen on his torso. The wrinkled carpet at Stańczyk's feet could have been formed by his collapsing heavily into the chair upon reading the letter, or through a nervous shifting of the feet thereafter. On the table lies a letter likely announcing that the Grand Duchy of Lithuania has lost Smolensk (now in Russia) to the Grand Duchy of Moscow, causing Stańczyk's sorrow and reflection on his fatherland's fate”
February 16, 2026 at 1:21 PM
Reposted by Marc Ratkovic
lakes.stefanbohacek.online.ap.brid.gy
Lake Constance at the borders of Germany, Switzerland, and Austria.

📷 https://www.bergfex.com/sommer/konstanz/webcams/c20748/
🗺️ https://www.openstreetmap.org/?mlat=49.79015&mlon=-84.144547#map=12/49.79015/-84.144547

#lake #lakes #outdoors #webcam
This webcam usually shows a view of the lake with tall and colorful buildings on the further side away from camera. The image may be overlaid with text in German. It's cloudy. It's 0ºF/-18ºC.
February 7, 2026 at 8:02 PM
Reposted by Marc Ratkovic
hakeemjefferson.bsky.social
I’ve also gone analog in my advanced undergrad seminar on identity this quarter. Students keep reading/seminar notebooks—questions, confusions, insights—and complete several field exercises, including a “seeing identity in the world” task.

www.npr.org/2026/01/28/n...
To keep AI out of her classroom, this high school English teacher went analog
Forth Worth teacher Chanea Bond says sticking with pen and paper keeps generative artificial intelligence out of her American literature classes.
www.npr.org
January 28, 2026 at 5:15 PM
Reposted by Marc Ratkovic
gmcclendon.bsky.social
JOIN us for this year’s Rebecca Morton conference on experimental political science at NYU! March 6-7. We have a great line up of papers and posters!

Program (scroll down) here: wp.nyu.edu/cesspolitica...

Register (no fee) here: nyu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...
Annual NYU CESS Experimental Political Science Conference
wp.nyu.edu
January 27, 2026 at 4:57 PM
Reposted by Marc Ratkovic
johnholbein1.bsky.social
"How do class gaps compare to race and gender gaps? Strikingly, we find that the class gaps in tenure-track academia are as large as or larger than analogous race or gender gaps."
johnholbein1.bsky.social John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 22d
In academia, class background strongly shapes who advances and who stalls.
January 27, 2026 at 9:50 PM
Reposted by Marc Ratkovic
kottke.org
Science magazine: US government has lost more than 10,000 STEM PhDs since Trump took office. [science.org]
January 27, 2026 at 5:56 PM
marcratkovic.bsky.social
"The secret fear of the morally depraved is that virtue is actually common, and that they're the ones who are alone."
January 27, 2026 at 6:19 PM
Reposted by Marc Ratkovic
antjewiener.bsky.social
academic.oup.com/edited-volum...
Please feel free to access The Oxford Handbook of Norms Research in International Relations edited by @sassangholiagha.bsky.social @philorchard.bsky.social @antjewiener.bsky.social
👇🏻👇🏻
The Oxford Handbook of Norms Research in International Relations
Abstract. Norms research in International Relations (IR) has developed sufficiently over the past 35 years to become its own subdiscipline within the field
academic.oup.com
January 26, 2026 at 11:05 PM
Reposted by Marc Ratkovic
onestpress.onestnetwork.com
Who funds NATO budget ⬇️
January 26, 2026 at 5:07 PM
Reposted by Marc Ratkovic
steventeasdale.bsky.social
I did not know about this! Looks like a powerful research tool for social and family history.
January 26, 2026 at 5:38 PM
Reposted by Marc Ratkovic
pengzell.bsky.social
UCL Centre for Longitudinal Studies Conference invites submissions from all researchers using @clscohorts.bsky.social data.

Conference: 22–23 September. Submissions by: 8 April. cls.ucl.ac.uk/events/cls-c...
CLS Conference 2026: call for papers now open | CLS
The CLS Conference 2026 will bring together researchers from across disciplines, sectors and career stages to showcase outstanding life course research using cohort data.
cls.ucl.ac.uk
January 26, 2026 at 12:58 PM
marcratkovic.bsky.social
Malicious onboarding.
jimprosser.bsky.social Jim Prosser @jimprosser.bsky.social · 23d
I came away from the Davos discourse certain of one thing: we need more workplace trends thought leadership. So I* built Workplace Buzzword Slots. workplacebuzzwordslots.com

*Well, Claude did, but I wrote some pretty fire prompts for it, not gonna lie.
Workplace Buzzword Slots
Discover your next career-defining workplace trend. Pull the lever and become a thought leader.
workplacebuzzwordslots.com
January 26, 2026 at 6:14 PM
marcratkovic.bsky.social
And Madel's decision makes the silence of every other Republican who does not all the more deafening.
January 26, 2026 at 3:28 PM
Reposted by Marc Ratkovic
rowast.com
The murderer before called the woman he had just shot a fucking bitch

They then denied her medical care
nkalamb.bsky.social Nathan Kalman-Lamb @nkalamb.bsky.social · 25d
The AP reports that an ICE officer responded to those protesting the cold blood murder this morning by mockingly saying, “‘Boo hoo.’”

“Agents elsewhere shoved a yelling protester into a car.”

apnews.com/article/immi...
After the shooting, an angry crowd gathered and screamed profanities at federal officers, calling them “cowards” and telling them to go home. One officer responded mockingly as he walked away, telling them: “Boo hoo.” Agents elsewhere shoved a yelling protester into a car.
January 24, 2026 at 5:56 PM
Reposted by Marc Ratkovic
ositanwanevu.com
This random online comment from 2018 remains one of the last half-century's most important works of political commentary. crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/l...
Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protectes but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect. There is nothing more or else to it, and there never has been, in any place or time. For millenia, conservatism had no name, because no other model of polity had ever been proposed. “The king can do no wrong.” In practice, this immunity was always extended to the king’s friends, however fungible a group they might have been. Today, we still have the king’s friends even where there is no king (dictator, etc.). Another way to look at this is that the king is a faction, rather than an individual. As the core proposition of conservatism is indefensible if stated baldly, it has always been surrounded by an elaborate backwash of pseudophilosophy, amounting over time to millions of pages. All such is axiomatically dishonest and undeserving of serious scrutiny. Today, the accelerating de-education of humanity has reached a point where the market for pseudophilosophy is vanishing; it is, as The Kids Say These Days, tl;dr . All that is left is the core proposition itself — backed up, no longer by misdirection and sophistry, but by violence.
January 24, 2026 at 5:42 PM
Reposted by Marc Ratkovic
marlownyc.bsky.social
ICE detained a 2-year-old girl in Minneapolis and put the child on a flight to a detention center in Texas, despite a court ordering her release: www.startribune.com/agents-detai...
January 24, 2026 at 12:29 AM
Reposted by Marc Ratkovic
cambup-polsci.cambridge.org
The Italian Political Science Review / Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica invites submissions for a special issue on “The Comparative Politics of Gender” - https://cup.org/4sPDJXh

Guest editors - @edegiorgi.bsky.social & @klbeckwith.bsky.social

Deadline: 8th of February, 2026.
Logo of the Italian Political Science Review, also known as Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica, displayed in white text on a blue background.
January 23, 2026 at 7:30 AM
Reposted by Marc Ratkovic
thosjleeper.bsky.social
In our depraved country, children like five year old Liam represent themselves in immigration court, tasked with defending themselves against deportation.

coppercourier.com/2025/12/05/c...
January 22, 2026 at 4:32 AM
Reposted by Marc Ratkovic
bakerdphd.bsky.social
As always, fuck cancer
January 22, 2026 at 9:06 PM
Reposted by Marc Ratkovic
kottke.org
Dr. Gladys West, Mathematician Whose Work Made GPS Possible, Dies at 95. “Her painstaking calculations and programming helped transform raw satellite data into precise geodetic models, enabling reliable satellite-based navigation.” [thezebra.org]
Dr. Gladys West, Mathematician Whose Work Made GPS Possible, Dies at 95
ALEXANDRIA, VA — Dr. Gladys West, the pioneering mathematician whose work laid the foundation for modern GPS technology, has died. She passed away
thezebra.org
January 22, 2026 at 9:06 PM
Reposted by Marc Ratkovic
acyn.bsky.social
Nehls: I would like to quickly address the police officers from January 6th. And I can tell you that the fault does not lie with Donald Trump. It lies with the US capitol leadership team.

Fanone: *Coughs: Go fuck yourself*
January 22, 2026 at 7:16 PM
Reposted by Marc Ratkovic
brendannyhan.bsky.social
FBI agent: "I did not go to law school, go to Quantico and work counterterrorism operations overseas to be doing traffic control for arrest-a-brown-person day"

FBI agent 2: "I was working an undercover operation on a neo-Nazi group with a long history of criminal activity... they'd have to close"
January 22, 2026 at 7:18 PM
Reposted by Marc Ratkovic
economista.bsky.social
A study on publication time focussing on differences between the gender-composition of authors.

"Sample averages show that all female-authored articles take about 9 % longer to accept [...] while female solo-authored articles take about 20 % longer to accept"

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
The delayed acceptance of female research in economics lStephan B. Bruns, Anthony Doucouliagos d, Hristos Doucouliagos Johannes König , T.D. Stanley, Katarina Zigova https://doi.org/10.1016/j.euroecorev.2025.105204 Abstract We explore gender differences in the time taken to accept empirical articles of economics research. On average, female-authored articles take 9 % longer to accept. This gender gap cannot be fully attributed to differences in author affiliation, research productivity, research quality and novelty. The gender composition of editorial boards does not affect acceptance time for female authors. Nevertheless, this gender gap narrows as female representation in an area of research deepens. We find evidence of sub-field differences in this gender gap, consistent with differences in social norms.
January 21, 2026 at 10:13 PM
Reposted by Marc Ratkovic
johnholbein1.bsky.social
When political issues are heated, many people think staying neutral is the safest and most moral choice.

But, is that how people truly see it?

This new research by Ruttan, Adams, and DeCelles shows that’s not how others see political neutrality.
January 22, 2026 at 3:16 PM
Reposted by Marc Ratkovic
helenbranswell.bsky.social
The US withdrawal from #WHO became official today, leaving the world less prepared for dangerous disease outbreaks. “When that will bite us in the ass, it’s impossible to predict. But there is a 100% certainty that it will bite us in the ass,” one expert told me. www.statnews.com/2026/01/22/u...
U.S. makes exit from the WHO complete
The U.S. withdrawal from the WHO became official Thursday, formalizing a fissure between the Trump administration and the Geneva-based global health agency.
www.statnews.com
January 22, 2026 at 3:52 PM