iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

👓 Byunghwan 'Ben' Son @textvulture.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Never been rich, so I wouldn't know for sure. But if I were, I would live in places like Manhattan, where nice things are in arm's reach. Poverty is inconvenience. So wealth must be convenience. Tax rates wouldn't be too much of an issue in that calculation.

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👓 Byunghwan 'Ben' Son @textvulture.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

I fail to see much reason for using McCune–Reischauer (or any) romanization in the age of internet. Why not just “Seoul” rather than “Sŏul”? **Better yet**, why not just 서울? Particularly in references (where you have to make things up). If curious, people can Google it. #AcademicSky

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John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

It's for this paper. We'll release it soon.

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Prisonculture @prisonculture.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

I want to say that if you have ghosted on your comrades while part of an organizing group, it's never too late to get back in touch to explain yourself. Most people will appreciate that you followed up.

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👓 Byunghwan 'Ben' Son @textvulture.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

#APSA2026 Logan Express Bus from the Convention Center to the Airport was pretty effective. From hop-on to the gate (past security) was about 30 minutes. Just 3 bucks.

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Vincent Arel-Bundock @vincentab.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Big news! 🎉 𝚖𝚊𝚛𝚐𝚒𝚗𝚊𝚕𝚎𝚏𝚏𝚎𝚌𝚝𝚜 1.0.0 for #Rstats is out. It’s a big number and it feels like a big step. I wrote a blog on the challenges of interpreting statistical models, SPEED, cool new features, the future, and a 5 year package development and writing odyssey. arelbundock.com/posts/margin...

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👓 Byunghwan 'Ben' Son @textvulture.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Can tell this is not just APSA. ISA and MPSA too. Or maybe more serious there. Parallel trends.

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David Burbach 🇺🇸 @dburbach.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

NSF will no longer fund graduate students in political science or public policy (though keeps anthropology, sociology, and geography) Personal to me -- I owe my career to being awarded an NSF fellowship when I started graudate school

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Dr. Lucky Tran @luckytran.com · 26/08/2026

The FDA just approved daraxonrasib, a breakthrough drug for advanced pancreatic cancer that doubles survival time. This is huge: pancreatic cancer was once thought untreatable. The researchers received a standing ovation when they presented the trial results, unheard of at scientific conferences.

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👓 Byunghwan 'Ben' Son @textvulture.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

I am concerned that we’ve let things slide down too deep; when we finally decide to go back up, the distance we will have to climb up is too much.

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👓 Byunghwan 'Ben' Son @textvulture.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Examining the cases of Park and Yoon (#SKorea) led me to suspect that trying to rationalize an autocratizer's policies, particularly foreign policies, is essentially a fool's errand. Often, whims, coverups, and mistakes triggered decisions. No 'strategic consideration' or '3-D poker.'

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👓 Byunghwan 'Ben' Son @textvulture.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

You know you have served on too many committees when just listing them goes out of the word limit. #AcademicSky

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👓 Byunghwan 'Ben' Son @textvulture.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

cannot emphasize this enough and apologies in advance!!

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👓 Byunghwan 'Ben' Son @textvulture.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

FWIW, the whole drill-reduction thing is really not that big of a deal in S. Korea. Yes, it made headlines, but that’s about it. The tariff negotiation had received much more attention, I think. Ordinary Koreans don’t really think about N. Korea that much.

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👓 Byunghwan 'Ben' Son @textvulture.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Not sure if it's just my panels, but non-US based people are backing out. #APSA2026 Had a similar issue at the #ISA2026 and #MPSA2026 earlier this year.

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Mike Murphy @mjamurphy.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

New causal inference primer just dropped - he's not on socials but many thanks to Scott Cunningham for this amazing free resource #EconSky

mixtape.scunning.com

Causal Inference The Remix

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👓 Byunghwan 'Ben' Son @textvulture.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

The irony is that this aligns with one of the longest-standing demands of left-leaning activists in South Korea (though it's not as important as it used to be).

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👓 Byunghwan 'Ben' Son @textvulture.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

The End of Oak Street wasn't bad. It was actually quite good.

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👓 Byunghwan 'Ben' Son @textvulture.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Some anecdotal evidence I overheard indicates that there are 'college entrance consultants' charging quite a bit of money to guide high schoolers on this. Another aspect of this that bothered me was that based on the email, they seemed to have better grasp of my research than my students do.

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👓 Byunghwan 'Ben' Son @textvulture.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

I wonder how much effect the hugely inaccurate polls had on the #WI #primary. Had people known that the race was actually quite close, what would the result have been like?

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👓 Byunghwan 'Ben' Son @textvulture.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Higher Ed definitely has problems, some of which are not so negligible. But it still remains true that it is one of the areas where US comparative (and competitive, probably) advantages rest on.

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👓 Byunghwan 'Ben' Son @textvulture.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

My policy usually is to help students make an 'informed decision' but it gets *very* challenging when a median student expects having a PhD near-guarantees you: - a prof job in a big city - social respect/recognition (or 'fame') - $250k a year No, like, seriously. I become the bearer of bad news.

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👓 Byunghwan 'Ben' Son @textvulture.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

And here I thought (until now) it was 'the cause of death'. Like, all along. 😅

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👓 Byunghwan 'Ben' Son @textvulture.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

Not sure if the identification holds very well here tho, because it seems to draw on the assumption that students are coming to class, let alone engaging in discussions or doing the reading. This ‘treatment’ often doesn’t exist ;)

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👓 Byunghwan 'Ben' Son @textvulture.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

Probably everything is better? The only (arguable) exception is music.

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Noah Greifer @noahgreifer.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

I'm so happy to announce version 2.0.0 of my #Rstats package WeightIt is out on CRAN! New features: censoring weights, multilevel propensity scores, improved weights for continuous treatments, bias-reduced ordinal and multinomial models, M-estimation in subgroups Check out the website below!

ngreifer.github.io

Weighting for Covariate Balance in Observational Studies

Generates balancing weights for causal effect estimation in observational studies with binary, multi-category, or continuous point or longitudinal treatments by easing and extending the functionality ...

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👓 Byunghwan 'Ben' Son @textvulture.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

I have some disagreements here and there, but this comes very close to the *aggregate* public opinion, let alone the expert one. I *wish* we could just stop wasting time on MJ-LBJ GOAT debate just right here.

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👓 Byunghwan 'Ben' Son @textvulture.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

Probably an odd take, but this Spiderman movie felt quite a bit like Love and Monsters (2020), in that it seemed to keep telling young people 'hey, I see you.'

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👓 Byunghwan 'Ben' Son @textvulture.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

Even better: the vignette is given through an online survey.

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👓 Byunghwan 'Ben' Son @textvulture.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

The timing is a bit of a head-scratcher indeed.

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👓 Byunghwan 'Ben' Son @textvulture.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

What a great read! Putting it in the context of the recent S. Korean experience (still unfolding), two things (very classic stuff) are worth thinking about. 1/n

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👓 Byunghwan 'Ben' Son @textvulture.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

thought about it a bit, but couldn't come up with a better one that undermines LLM training while still only marginally detrimental to science.

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👓 Byunghwan 'Ben' Son @textvulture.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

Not 100% sure if the Supreme Court upholds this decision (yes, Korean SC is also quite 'political'), but this adds yet another spin to the already chaotic People Power Party. Out of frustration over how few ppl talk abt PPP's GoT-like situation, I will present a related project in Sep. at APSA.

english.hani.co.kr

Yoon’s conviction in election law case could put PPP on hook for 39.7B won in campaign expenses

If the sentence is upheld by the Supreme Court, the People Power Party could have to pay back to the state nearly 40 billion won in reimbursed campaign expenses

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Paul Nadeau @pauljnadeau.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

Things like this need more attention...this new paper by David Autor, Anne B., David Dorn, and Gordon Hanson finds that not only have tariffs not only failed to raise employment, but people in tariff-exposed regions supported the tariffs because they're "confrontational" It's affect, not interests

ddorn.net

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👓 Byunghwan 'Ben' Son @textvulture.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

So all the twitter meltdown over #TheOdyssey was really just the function of not watching the movie.

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👓 Byunghwan 'Ben' Son @textvulture.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

#AKPS announces #cfp for the 5th Korean Political Studies Colloquium #KPSC. If you want to be part of a a great network of scholars, you don't want to miss this opportunity. Details can be found: textvulture.github.io/presentation...

Call for papers screenshot for the Korean Political Studies Colloquium.

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👓 Byunghwan 'Ben' Son @textvulture.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

The Peloponnesian War sort of fits the narrative that a militarized autocracy (Sparta) defeats a ‘liberal’ democracy (Athens). The ‘how’ and the aftermath don’t seem to matter. All the more reasons to teach more world history in our schools.

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👓 Byunghwan 'Ben' Son @textvulture.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

Now I know what we are watching in November.

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👓 Byunghwan 'Ben' Son @textvulture.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

There are some mitigating measures for this. Still not sufficient and time-consuming/extensive (mostly interactive & customized stuff). A more important question is, are faculty (ever) compensated for the ed content engineering type of work in addition to their traditional obligations?

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👓 Byunghwan 'Ben' Son @textvulture.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

Proud to report that I made a meme consistent with this years ago :)

Friends meme showing that radicalized right wing is distorted into partisan polarization.

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👓 Byunghwan 'Ben' Son @textvulture.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

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👓 Byunghwan 'Ben' Son @textvulture.bsky.social · 28/06/2026

We had one right across the street from our first apartment. It was the first real meal we had after arriving in the U.S. I still vividly remember thinking, “So this is America.” 🙂 The very next meal? White Castle. I kid you not. It's been almost two decades now.

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👓 Byunghwan 'Ben' Son @textvulture.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

‘We need to keep suffering such that people don’t forget about the big problem’ is a very privileged position.

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👓 Byunghwan 'Ben' Son @textvulture.bsky.social · 21/06/2026

No cooking. No dishwashing. Happy father’s day!

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British Journal of Political Science @bjpols.bsky.social · 21/06/2026

From April 2026 - Null by Design: Statistical Dilution in Immigration-Crime Research - cup.org/4vDBgkh - @riazsascha.bsky.social #OpenAccess

BJPolS abstract of a research paper discussing the relationship between immigration and crime rates. The text outlines the study's focus on examining crime rates among immigrants compared to local averages and highlights issues with large group comparisons.

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👓 Byunghwan 'Ben' Son @textvulture.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

sad to see a relationship losing its steam this way.

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👓 Byunghwan 'Ben' Son @textvulture.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

‘I didn’t read the textbook. Nor did I care about the lecture. But there was a midterm that I had to pass’ kind of situation.

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👓 Byunghwan 'Ben' Son @textvulture.bsky.social · 14/06/2026

I know Spurs are ahead. But their defense continues to be a problem, it seems. Young players struggle finding what to do when toughening things up doesn't work.

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