1. Photoessay: Polar bears living in an abandoned weather station in Kolyuchin (Russia)
2. One reason Russia is strategically powerful is because much of Europe abandoned nuclear power for natural gas from the east (or so goes one account). This was an interesting article on why it’s so hard to rebuild support for new nuclear plants in Western Europe.
3. Late night at the video store, 1993
4. I am loving John Holbein’s newsletter, the Social Science Research Roundup, including articles this week on how cash transfers probably don’t improve mental health that much, and how marijuana legalization doesn’t increase tobacco use
5. Theoretically, it makes a lot of sense that democratic representation makes conflict less likely. But there is relatively little micro evidence on whether this is true. I was excited to see this working paper by Aidan Milliff and Drew Stommes:

Can greater inclusion in democracy for historically­-disadvantaged groups reduce rebel violence? Democracy­-building is a common tool in counterinsurgencies and post-­conflict states, yet existing scholarship has faced obstacles in measuring the independent effect of democratic reforms. We evaluate whether quotas for Scheduled Tribes in local councils reduced rebel violence in Chhattisgarh, an Indian state featuring high­-intensity Maoist insurgent activity. We employ a geographic regression discontinuity design to study the effects of quotas implemented in Chhattisgarh, finding that reservations reduced Maoist violence in the state. Exploratory analyses of mechanisms suggest that reservations reduced violence by bringing local elected officials closer to state security forces, providing a windfall of valuable information to counterinsurgents. Our study shows that institutional engineering and inclusive representative democracy, in particular, can shape the trajectory of insurgent violence.