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Putin the weak strongman

  Putin-centered approaches to Russian politics also assume that President Putin can easily turn his preferences into policy outcomes. To be sure, Putin is the

Links I liked

These New Yorker cartoons do not exist: A thread of panels created by AI trained on the magazine’s comics But deep learning is probably hitting

Our willing gullibility on war news

On Twitter, it makes me a little uncomfortable that some people seem to follow the trials and tribulations of the Russian army with the same

FAQs on PhD applications

I’m asked about PhD admissions a lot. I’m going to give some advice and demystify the process of US admissions a bit. I also address the

Links I liked

Illustrator Sam Owen’s creepy muppet series Latecomer’s guide to crypto What we can learn from our political adversaries STDs in the centuries before syphilis From

Links I liked: Ukraine edition

How a Putin lookalike banded together with a Kim Jong-un impersonator to smuggle a Zelenzky doppelgänger out of Ukraine [Kim Jong-un impersonator] Howard X told

Links I liked

Interview with Penny Goldberg Duncan Green reviews a history of the rise and power of Constitutions as a global ‘political technology’ Why was Nirmal Purja’s

Opioids in America

In 2019 the age-adjusted death rate from an opioid overdose was 21.6 per 100,000 people. This compares with 12.9 for kidney disease, 14.2 from suicides,