Josef Woldense
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woldense.bsky.social
Josef Woldense
@woldense.bsky.social
4.3K followers 250 following 130 posts
josefwoldense.com
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Reposted by Josef Woldense
adasgupta.bsky.social
Do architecture and urban planning affect political behavior? Happy to share a paper that @tesaliarizzo.bsky.social and I have coming out at the APSR which uses computer vision to investigate how the built environment shapes inequalities in civic participation in Mexico: osf.io/preprints/so.... 🧵1/5
November 8, 2025 at 9:29 PM
Reposted by Josef Woldense
scrosenzweig.bsky.social
Great analysis of the situation in Tanzania by Dan Paget
Has Tanzania Reached Its Breaking Point? | Journal of Democracy
President Hassan promised Tanzanians freedom, transparency, and reform. Instead, she has delivered repression, violence, and arrests as she bars anyone who dares challenge her.
www.journalofdemocracy.org
October 31, 2025 at 5:38 PM
Reposted by Josef Woldense
felixhaass.bsky.social
🚨 New article out!

“Right-Wing Terror, Media Backlash, and Voting Preferences for the Far Right” in @bjpols.bsky.social

👉 doi.org/10.1017/S000...

We (Alex De Juan, @juvoss.bsky.social & I) examine how right-wing attacks shape support for the far-right in Germany.

Short summary thread below 👇
Abstract for the article: How does right-wing terrorism affect electoral support for populist radical right parties (PRRPs)? Recent research has produced contrary answers to this question. We argue that only high-intensity attacks, whose motives and targets mirror PRRPs’ nativist agenda, are likely to generate a media backlash that dampens electoral support for PRRPs. We test this argument by combining high-frequency survey and social media data with a natural and survey experimental design. We find that right-wing terror reduced support for the radical right party Alternative für Deutschland after one of the most intense nativist attacks in recent German history. An analysis of all ninety-eight fatal right-wing attacks in Germany between 1990 and 2020 supports our argument. Our findings contribute to an understanding of how political violence triggers partisan detachment and have important implications for media responsibility in the aftermath of terrorist attacks.
October 22, 2025 at 3:14 PM
Reposted by Josef Woldense
mikewoldemariam.bsky.social
New essay in Foreign Policy with Abel Abate D. on Eritrea-Ethiopia tensions. It covers the sources of mutual restraint thus far; some of the factors that are eroding this delicate balance; and what can be done to avert another war the Horn of Africa cannot afford.

foreignpolicy.com/2025/10/21/e...
The Risk of a New Ethiopian-Eritrean War Is Growing
Changing dynamics in Tigray could erode the current balance of uncertainty.
foreignpolicy.com
October 22, 2025 at 6:16 PM
woldense.bsky.social
Excellent video on bias-variance tradeoff in stats/AI

youtu.be/z64a7USuGX0?...
What the Books Get Wrong about AI [Double Descent]
YouTube video by Welch Labs
youtu.be
October 20, 2025 at 6:38 PM
Reposted by Josef Woldense
jacobnyrup.bsky.social
Paths to Power (PtP) is out in @bjpols.bsky.social! It is a database with data on cabinet members' social profile globally from 1966-2021.

This is a great team effort with @chknutsen.bsky.social, @peterla.bsky.social, @inalkristiansen.bsky.social. But many more helped us along the way 🙏

A short 🧵
Paths to Power: A New Dataset on the Social Profile of Governments | British Journal of Political Science | Cambridge Core
Paths to Power: A New Dataset on the Social Profile of Governments - Volume 55
www.cambridge.org
October 20, 2025 at 1:52 PM
Reposted by Josef Woldense
isanet.bsky.social
Preparing for your upcoming #ResearchTalk? Sign up for two courses, taught by @woldense.bsky.social, to enhance your #Communication and apply #Storytelling principles to your #Presenting, and #Teaching skills! Open to both ISA Members and non-members. Register: buff.ly/PUXowRN
Virtual PASS Course. The Research Presentation as Storytelling: A Two-Part Training. Part 1: October 9. Part 2: October 10. 11 AM to 3 PM (ET). Part 1 Cost: $35. Part 2 Cost: $35. ISA logo. Background: An open laptop with an open book sitting on the keyboard.
September 24, 2025 at 4:10 PM
Reposted by Josef Woldense
vincentab.bsky.social
Whoa—my book is up for pre-order!

𝐌𝐨𝐝𝐞𝐥 𝐭𝐨 𝐌𝐞𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠: 𝐇𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐨 𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐭 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐭 & 𝐌𝐋 𝐌𝐨𝐝𝐞𝐥𝐬 𝐢𝐧 #Rstats 𝐚𝐧𝐝 #PyData

The book presents an ultra-simple and powerful workflow to make sense of ± any model you fit

The web version will stay free forever and my proceeds go to charity.

tinyurl.com/4fk56fc8
September 17, 2025 at 7:49 PM
woldense.bsky.social
This looks fascinating!
babeheim.bsky.social Bret Beheim @babeheim.bsky.social · Sep 16
How to quantify the impact of AI on long-run cultural evolution? Published today, I give it a go!

400+ years of strategic dynamics in the game of Go (Baduk/Weiqi), from feudalism to AlphaGo!
Miyagawa Shuntei's 1898 painting, "Playing Go (Japanese Chess)"
September 16, 2025 at 3:15 PM
woldense.bsky.social
Paper alert 📣

Rapid advances in AI has some believe that LLM agents can replace real participants in human-subject research. If true, this would be huge!

Following a growing body of research, we delve deeper into this topic and examine the merits of this claim.

🧵...

arxiv.org/abs/2509.03736
Are LLM Agents Behaviorally Coherent? Latent Profiles for Social Simulation
The impressive capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs) have fueled the notion that synthetic agents can serve as substitutes for real participants in human-subject research. In an effort to evalu...
arxiv.org
September 8, 2025 at 7:03 PM
Reposted by Josef Woldense
mariannedahl.bsky.social
📊 New dataset and paper alert!
We’re proud to launch the Opposition Movements and Groups (OMG) Dataset, 1789–2019: a global dataset covering 1,452 mass mobilization movements. It was just published in Comparative Political Studies. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Below follows a 🧵
August 29, 2025 at 11:08 AM
Reposted by Josef Woldense
nsousanis.bsky.social
My drawn statement on Ai as standalone from my now finished minicomic as syllabus for new liberal studies class! As promised this is shareable, printable - all from my site, feel free to make use of it, cite me & let me know how it’s received. Share away all here! spinweaveandcut.com/fall-2025-sy...
a snippet of a mini-comic, at top - straight line stretches from point A to B. Immediately below, same dot at A, then becomes a curving, meandering line that winds through the page and ends at a point with rays and a question mark emanating from it. Text reads: "Nothing can do this for you - that robs you of experience and conflates answers with learning. Rather, it's all the decisions you make along the way, the mistakes, struggles, and surprises! These pathways you create - this is learning. Pages from a mini comic Pages from a mini comic Pages from a mini comic
August 20, 2025 at 4:48 PM
woldense.bsky.social
Just a reminder: if you're on the job market or just interested in research presentations, join my upcoming workshop.

(I promise, no money was exchanged for @caileighglenn.bsky.social endorsement)
caileighglenn.bsky.social Caileigh Glenn @caileighglenn.bsky.social · Aug 13
This workshop was *immensely* helpful and transformed how I present my research. I cannot recommend it enough!
woldense.bsky.social Josef Woldense @woldense.bsky.social · Aug 13
📢🗣️...Are you a graduate students about to go on the market? Or perhaps you're just interested in research presentations. If so, check out my free two-day workshop:

The Research Presentation as Storytelling
August 20, 2025 at 12:32 AM
Reposted by Josef Woldense
africanpoliticscg.bsky.social
Our member Josef Woldense is leading a two-day virtual workshop on August 26 and 27: The Research Presentation as Storytelling. Learn how to present your work through a compelling narrative.
More details available on our website: www.afpol.org/blog/the-res...
The Research Presentation as Storytelling: A Two-Day Virtual Workshop with Josef Woldense
The goal is to help participants see research presentations not as a monologue of facts but as a compelling narrative. The exploration begins with the fundamentals: What is storytelling? What makes st...
www.afpol.org
August 15, 2025 at 8:35 PM
woldense.bsky.social
📢🗣️...Are you a graduate students about to go on the market? Or perhaps you're just interested in research presentations. If so, check out my free two-day workshop:

The Research Presentation as Storytelling
Flyer for a workshop on giving research presentations. Contains QR code and link to the workshop landing page
August 13, 2025 at 12:04 PM
Reposted by Josef Woldense
antonkronborg.bsky.social
Zambian politics have been quite dramatic in the last 20 years (timeline below). With that kind of competition, you’d expect MPs to fight to gain an edge in every arena, especially MPs elected on a thin margin. However, I find the opposite in Zambia’s parliament: doi.org/10.1080/1357...
August 4, 2025 at 7:56 AM
Reposted by Josef Woldense
apsgworkshop.bsky.social
The Call for Papers for our Fall 2025 Workshop series is now OPEN! Polisky Dictatorsky
To apply complete this form by May 31st: forms.gle/SvZv98ke4QUT...
You can find more information here on the CfP: apsg.work/cfp/
Apply to Present Your Work!
Complete the form to be considered for the Authoritarian Political Systems Group Fall 2025 Season. Read the Seminar Rules before applying.
forms.gle
April 28, 2025 at 9:31 AM
Reposted by Josef Woldense
dingdingpeng.the100.ci
I'm currently tweaking some ggplots to make them pretty & readable and this is most definitely the most productive ChatGPT use case in my daily work.
I know what I want, I can articulate it in natural language, I can check whether the output is right.
May 23, 2025 at 10:07 AM
woldense.bsky.social
There is currently a tornado 🌪️ watch in Minneapolis. And here are two emails I received during this time. Almost seems like someone is pranking me
Email inbox with two contrasting messages in close succession. One is an urgent tornado watch and the other is about spiritual nourishment
May 15, 2025 at 7:45 PM
Reposted by Josef Woldense
dandekadt.bsky.social
🚨 “Good Description” with @annagbusse.bsky.social 🚨

What sets 'good' description apart from 'mere' description?

We develop a framework for evaluating descriptive research, whether we are doing it as scholars or assessing it as readers.

Two main contributions...

🔗📄 tinyurl.com/gooddesc
good_description/good_description_ddk_agb.pdf at main · ddekadt/good_description
Homepage of "Good Description" by Daniel de Kadt & Anna Grzymala-Busse - ddekadt/good_description
tinyurl.com
May 14, 2025 at 9:52 PM
woldense.bsky.social
Whoever thought that mold spreading across lemons could be so mesmerizing

youtube.com/watch?v=LYRA...
Pet mold goes wild on lemons
YouTube video by Photo Owl Time Lapse
youtube.com
May 5, 2025 at 2:42 PM
Reposted by Josef Woldense
frank.computer
I always tell this to my research assistants: if you use AI to summarize and write for you, you don't need to be my assistant. You don't need to do research at all.

Research should be selfish: *you* (not a machine) learn how to read, write, innovate, and dream. Otherwise, what is the point?
Should you use ChatGPT to understand a paper? No. If you have an assignment due, getting ChatGPT to summarize something can be tempting for completing that task. But learning isn’t just a task to complete, you need to be the one who acquires knowledge and really chews on big questions. For the same reason it wouldn’t make sense to ask a robot to lift weights for you at the gym, it doesn’t make sense to ask an agent to “learn” papers for you. Learning how to think creatively is one of the hardest (and most valuable) types of things you can do. So if it feels hard, that’s because it is. For these reasons though, I highly caution against using LLMs too much. Any use of an LLM can risk reducing the overall “reps” your brain should be putting in. And you need practice. So really try your best to answer the questions I listed above on your own before going to an LLM to answer and learn for you.
May 4, 2025 at 1:15 PM
woldense.bsky.social
Have you ever wondered what Equifinality is? Well, here is the basketball version it... fascinating video
youtu.be/mMNDgSkRDEw?...
The importance of basketball IQ, in one play
YouTube video by Thinking Basketball
youtu.be
April 30, 2025 at 8:05 PM
Reposted by Josef Woldense
gregjenner.bsky.social
Someone on Threads noticed you can type any random sentence into Google, then add “meaning” afterwards, and you’ll get an AI explanation of a famous idiom or phrase you just made up. Here is mine
• Al Overview The idiom "you can't lick a badger twice" means you can't trick or deceive someone a second time after they've been tricked once. It's a warning that if someone has already been deceived, they are unlikely to fall for the same trick again. Here's a more detailed explanation: • Licking: "Licking" in this context means to trick or deceive someone. • Badger: The badger is a wild animal, and the phrase likely originates from the historical sport of badger baiting where dogs were used to harass
April 23, 2025 at 10:15 AM