Chris Moreh

@MichaelAArouet Slowly, and then very suddenly.

The UK is no longer a serious country. How did that happen?

@KemiBadenoch @Conservatives @RicHolden Plans are fine until you get into government and your unsavoury touchy-feely American uncle starts going through your pockets for your change.

Today I’m announcing the @Conservatives National Pothole Patrol. That’s a fleet of road-repairing machines which could be deployed directly to fix potholes. To get Britain working again, we have to fix Britain’s roads. And only the Conservatives will get it done.

@jipgeria_ @airesearch12 @grok 😂

OMG, someone just leaked the linux sourcecode 🤯 github.com/torvalds/linux

@alphafox Was the reason behind their resignation that the two of them plus the one student don't add up to four?

I don't recall this ever happening when I was a kid:

@CuriosityonX Snickers

If you could name the first city on Mars, what would it be called?

@AnchoressT @GoodwinMJ Why do you need to read out stats from a book? You can make up better ones yourself for free. If you like reading instead, you can ask ChatGPT to put them into a table or text paragraph for you and paste it into a Word document, then you can print it out and read from there.

@GoodwinMJ I’m gripped! Been reading all the stats out to my family over the last couple of days - we’re all outraged, literally spitting mad, what a revelation this book is!! Can’t wait to finish it.

Facebook is just full of these People posting pics of book “Arrived today” “Finally here” They want the truth.

@GoodwinMJ If they want the "truth", can't they just ask ChatGPT for free?

@TheRealJamieKay Either one could bring an ice-age upon hell.

WTF???

@WhiteHouse Shame that fatso war criminal is too old to die of a lethal injection in a Beijing basement. SAD.

“All of those countries that can’t get jet fuel because of the Strait of Hormuz, like the United Kingdom, which refused to get involved in the decapitation of Iran, I have a suggestion for you…” - President Donald J. Trump

@akoustov My only ever US conference was ASA in SF few years ago. Thoroughly enjoyed the content because as a (non-IR) sociologist most of the topics/approaches/references were completely new to me 😂 Refreshing after conferences where I belonged had only made me want to pull my hair out

@CGMoreh lol I do need to say that I learned approximately zero at this event (with a possible exception of one panel on language politics which was surprisingly intact)

Another real talk, folks. We need to make large academic conferences better before it's too late. I just came back from the annual convention for the International Studies Association (ISA) in Columbus, Ohio. This was my second time at this conference, and probably the last. It's an open secret in academia that big conferences are mostly good for networking and not much else. I had a great time reconnecting with old friends and colleagues while exploring Columbus. But apart from that, the experience was pretty grim. And I don't think I was alone. I'd be curious to see the actual data, but my own panels were more than 50% empty, with many participant cancellations not reflected in the program. Research quality is one serious problem. I sat through half-baked, error-ridden presentations from professors that had no thesis of any kind and would barely get a C in any of my classes. Human slop is omnipresent. I hate to say it, but experiences like this make me even more convinced that AI can already do social science research better than most professors. Fixing presentation quality is hard without making the conference much more selective, and I get that. I'm not in the business of organizing large events amid visa restrictions, and I'm sure that's genuinely hard. But I don't want to just complain. At the very least, ISA and other conference organizers can do this to improve the experience for everyone: — Enforce attendance norms. If you're on the program, show up. If you can't make it, inform the organizers ASAP. — Make sure all participants are informed about their roles. I was randomly assigned as a discussant on at least two panels without the panelists being informed or getting any notification myself for that matter. — Update the program in real time so attendees aren't walking into half-empty rooms. — Communicate clearly across disciplines that discussants need full papers in advance to provide feedback. I saw many graduate students and professors who had no idea they were supposed to send papers ahead of time. This is especially important for any international, interdisciplinary conference. Different disciplines and national contexts have different norms, and that's fine. But a cohesive event needs to enforce common rule, or the whole format breaks down. Between AI making mediocre research increasingly redundant and growing concerns about the environmental cost of academic travel, event organizers can no longer coast on inertia. I used to roll my eyes at colleagues who said they couldn't justify flying internationally for a conference. I now see their point. If the experience isn't worth the flight, people will stop coming. Many already have.

@akoustov @bluesky And finally, don't even get me started on the anti-AI/AI-illiterate attitudes among colleagues in my field. That's a whole different discussion. Yet, all that said, @bluesky still feels like a haven for those who want to escape the totalising politicisation of everything

@akoustov @bluesky For example, just the first thing I could find, reporting on factual findings from a recently published article. When I say apolitical I mean that the aim should be dissemination and discussion of scholarly ideas, not that the topic or findings do not have political implications

I'm now a bit biased, obviously. But good riddance! Whatever you think of this platform, bsky is an absolute cancer of leftist groupthink and human slop.

@akoustov @bluesky And another caveat: my neck of the social sciences wood is indeed insufferably politically biased, and I tend to follow methodological/statistical/programming discussions more, to be totally honest.

@akoustov @bluesky But just on the @bluesky question: I agree that whenever political posts appear in my feed they are insufferably one-sided; good thing us I can just mute those people and eventually I see fewer and fewer non-academic/technical/professional content

@BDSixsmith @TateTheTalisman Mate, you're going straight for the senior management opening?

@TateTheTalisman I have the morals of a member of Los Zetas and the brains of a hamster. When do I start?

I’m hiring. Won’t give the job description. Post underneath why you think you’re qualified to work for me. 2 positions available.

@Twangberry @mikee_degen @owenjonesjourno @GoodwinMJ Agree, one should use words with precision. Sometimes, new phenomena require new terminology. "Champagne socialism" was for the nineties. Maybe "Shari'a socialism" for our day and age?

@mikee_degen @owenjonesjourno @GoodwinMJ If you're going call someone a communist you should find out what it means. It has a very specific meaning, which you can look up. It doesn't just mean someone you don't like.

What Reform should do is stop taking Tory Wets like you. I've responded to my critics here (x.com/GoodwinMJ/stat…). All you do is criticise Reform & our campaigns. I have no idea why you are even in Reform unless it is to try and weaken it?

@montie @GoodwinMJ @reformparty_uk People don't leave academia and move into Reform motivated by upholding academic standards and integrity. Nor are Reform voters interested in such characteristics. Intellectual integrity would only undermine the outcomes they want to see given the unscrupulous means they require.

The whole controversy over @GoodwinMJ's book reminds me of the early warning sign that Rachel Reeves' dodgy footnotes provided about her. @reformparty_uk should now fully investigate Mr Goodwin's book and if there are repeated examples of factual error he should be removed from the candidates list. We need our future MPs to be trustworthy and credible.

@georgemillo @andytwelves @GoodwinMJ Wait till the @X intelligentsia stumble upon Dangerfield's "The Strange Death of Liberal England" from 1935

@andytwelves @GoodwinMJ Wait what he literally stole the subtitle directly from a Douglas Murray book:

EXC: .@GoodwinMJ’s new book “Suicide of a Nation: Immigration, Islam, Identity” is out now, and I’m only 5 chapters in and have found a huge amount of what appears to be false quotes and basic misinterpretations of data, that appear to be AI hallucinations. Matthew, can you explain the claims you made in the book that I’ve outlined in the below thread?