iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Michael Flynn @flynnpolsci.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

It’s not great that the secretary of defense seems to overwhelmingly base his policy priorities on his insecurities, animosoties, personal prejudices, and cartoonish understanding of the world and the military’s relations to society and foreign policy.

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Michael Flynn @flynnpolsci.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Even the facilities need to be lethal?! Makes me think back to when substandard construction was leading to people being electrocuted while showering in Iraq.

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Michael Flynn @flynnpolsci.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

While nothing in this explicitly outlines plans for firing civilian faculty the trend definitely seems to be moving in that direction. The problem is that civilian expertise *is* valuable for the goals Hegseth claims to pursue, and that’s not expertise the military can perfectly replicate in house.

thehill.com

Hegseth freezes hiring of civilian tenured faculty at US military academies

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth directed departments on Tuesday to halt appointments of civilian staff to tenured positions at U.S. military service academies and develop hiring plans that prioritiz…

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Michael Flynn @flynnpolsci.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

The bureaucratic burden of IT security theater is real and the time and money spent on this and other useless bits of IT infrastructure stands in stark contrast to the lack of investment in anything cool and usable.

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Michael Flynn @flynnpolsci.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Every few episodes Danny Go changes his hat and my immediate reaction is “wait who the fuck is that??”

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Reposted by Michael Flynn

The Great Pumpkin Papers 🎃🎃🎃 @professormusgrave.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

As a professor, most of what I do is log in to things

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Michael Flynn @flynnpolsci.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

A while back someone compiled a spreadsheet containing the various reasons for the Iran war offered by administration officials. Has anyone updated this or created anything similar that runs through the summer or fall?

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Michael Flynn @flynnpolsci.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

“I don’t know my zip code, my phone number, where I am, or how I got here.” That’s a bold sales pitch.

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Michael Flynn @flynnpolsci.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

We love to spend $75 to fill up the family car don’t we folks?

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Michael Flynn @flynnpolsci.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

It used to be putting your hands on an ominous looking glowing orb with a guy meant something.

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Michael Flynn @flynnpolsci.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

While investigating an epic bark fest in the back yard I ushered the dogs inside, and then I heard a creaking sound and saw a large ball of fur go plummeting to the ground from the roof about three feet in front of me, and proceeded to watch a very frazzled raccoon tear ass towards the street.

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Michael Flynn @flynnpolsci.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Ugh. A muscular Hutt? No. Just no.

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Michael Flynn @flynnpolsci.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

Middle age is listening to Slayer as we paint the living room and dining room a relaxing color called “dainty lace”.

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Michael Flynn @flynnpolsci.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

None of this is exculpatory. It’s an explicit acknowledgement that they’re participating in theater designed to deceive the American public and degrade independent journalism aimed at keeping leaders accountable. In any other context we’d call this behavior duplicitous, deceptive, and abusive.

Screenshot of New York Times reporter praising White House press secretary for being helpful.

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Michael Flynn @flynnpolsci.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

This is a really good episode insofar as they condense a lot of material on defense production and strategy into a fairly short podcast episode. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t...

podcasts.apple.com

The U.S. Missile Stockpile Is Dangerously Low

Podcast Episode · The Daily · August 11 · 32m

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Michael Flynn @flynnpolsci.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

“Let me tell you about my journey from a prestigious Ivy-adjacent research university to a tenure track humanities job at a highly selective small liberal arts college” immediately signals your experience is probably unlike 99% of academics but big publications will treat it as representative.

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Reposted by Michael Flynn

Skip Mark @skipmark.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

@royaizadi.bsky.social has a wonderful piece in @goodauth.bsky.social. A few takeaways 1/3 1.) pre war support for the government was higher than most people think (50%), while support for regime change was low (30%). The regime had a lot more support than media coverage would suggest.

goodauthority.org

Why Washington keeps misreading Iran

What history and political science can tell us about the resilience of the Islamic Republic’s government and institutions.

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Michael Flynn @flynnpolsci.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

It took me too long to discover Perkins restaurants.

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Michael Flynn @flynnpolsci.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

I often have the urge to do this too but general work demands make it hard to set aside the time when brms usually does 99% of what I need. I’ve tinkered with it, run models, I get the gist, but the incentive to become truly proficient with Stan proper hasn’t become strong enough yet.

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Michael Flynn @flynnpolsci.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

The Odyssey was good. I especially liked how Odysseus asked every host if they had Dunkin’. I thought that added some authenticity to the film.

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Michael Flynn @flynnpolsci.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

To be clearer, I’m especially interested in work that might discuss how we think about potential causal influence of thematically linked groups of variables in cases where policymakers have multiple indicators across different thematic areas that they might use to make decisions.

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Michael Flynn @flynnpolsci.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

I’m looking for recommendations/examples of papers that compare model fit and predictive performance for bundles of different predictor variable groupings rather than focusing on causal effects for individual variables. Preferably from social sciences or medicine. I appreciate suggestions! #rstats

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Michael Flynn @flynnpolsci.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

Some good discussion of professional military education in this thread. Some of it might me dispersed a bit throughout other sub threads but this is a good place to start.

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Reposted by Michael Flynn

Elle @elleisanisland.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

Love how the government's trying to scapegoat Taco Bell but meanwhile everyone's all, "Nah, we've had Taco Bell diarrhea. This one's different."

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Michael Flynn @flynnpolsci.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

“Trying to persuade people is bad electoral politics” argues man who writes the same blog post for years in effort to persuade electoral politics people to adopt his anti-persuasion view of electoral politics.

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Michael Flynn @flynnpolsci.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

Even 2–3 years ago when LLMs were still much worse in terms of the baseline product, documenting two violations and assembling all of the evidence to support my claim took up an enormous amount of time.

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Michael Flynn @flynnpolsci.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

30% Research 30% Teaching 10% Service 10% Administration 20% Jealously guarding all of the decent furniture items I’ve acquired over the years, whether through inheritance, theft, or one-on-one combat.

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Michael Flynn @flynnpolsci.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

I just need to accept that the depression and alcohol screening surveys my doctors office uses for annual physicals are poorly designed surveys and not try to argue with them about it.

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Michael Flynn @flynnpolsci.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

We found a small brood of baby bunnies in the back yard this morning.

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Michael Flynn @flynnpolsci.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

It’s extremely weird that Amazon, a company that kind of built itself around fast two-day shipping, takes over a month to receive and process returns from its own network of return drop sites. I bet the credit card companies love it though.

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Michael Flynn @flynnpolsci.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

I mean, I started mentally priming myself for feeling this way on June 1.

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Michael Flynn @flynnpolsci.bsky.social · 28/06/2026

I wonder if the rush and overhyping with which AI has been sold to large organizations to help generate capital for tech companies will cause a backlash as it fails to fulfill its most fantastical promises. I also wonder if other organizations like universities will take note.

the-independent.com

Ford hired AI and sacked humans. It backfired badly

‘We didn’t pay as much attention as we should have to the experience of our most knowledgeable engineers,’ says automaker

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Michael Flynn @flynnpolsci.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

I’d like to see the originalist argument that manufacturing and agricultural production are distinct from commerce in a country whose very existence was based on the production of agricultural and manufactured goods for commercial exchange.

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Michael Flynn @flynnpolsci.bsky.social · 21/06/2026

Jesus. I had to go look at this. I bought 1TB Samsung T7 just over a year ago for $99 and it’s listed for $274 now.

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Michael Flynn @flynnpolsci.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

Will save for intro to world politics for why definitions and measurement matter.

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Michael Flynn @flynnpolsci.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

A couple of things that have stood out over the last few weeks: 1. The “deals” reported on have almost all seemed to be precursors to actual negotiations. Mostly focusing on Hormuz it seems? 2. Absolutely no discussion of surveillance regime governing any nuclear production?

nytimes.com

U.S. and Iran Sign Preliminary Deal, but Its Terms Remain Secret

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Michael Flynn @flynnpolsci.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

He looks like a villain from the Dick Tracey movie.

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Michael Flynn @flynnpolsci.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

Ahh yes, universities following the old tried and true “put all your eggs in one basket” investment model.

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Michael Flynn @flynnpolsci.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

My podcast consumption tells me that the word “exquisite” has become standard in some natsec/military lexicons and it’s strange.

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Michael Flynn @flynnpolsci.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

A peak at what's coming to the troopdata package. Data for US states!

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