Christopher Zorn

It’s been a bit over a month since my five-year-delayed, backed-by-the-department-and-college-committee sabbatical application was denied by the @psuliberalarts.bsky.social dean in a one-sentence email. What I’ve learned:

Comment to defend or deny your abject terror to read "this". Also...what did you think "this" was? For quality purposes our staff is anonymous, protected under aggressive NDAs, and cannot speak in public for any reason.

What the world... ...needs now... ...is doom... ...sweet doom

The English Premier League finished this year with 14 teams (out of 20) having a goal difference between -10 and 10. In the last five seasons preceding, that number was eight, five, five, eight, and four. What a weird season.

Academics in Assyria in the 7th c BC complain that admin is preventing them from doing research and teaching

📣 IF YOU HAVE A LITTLE FREE LIBRARY TURN IT INTO A COMMUNITY PANTRY ASAP IF YOU ARE ABLE

There is definitely "no place like Nebraska": U. of Nebraska-Lincoln (@unlincoln.bsky.social) is recommending the elimination of my Dept. of Statistics along with 5 other departments and other cuts. These recommendations include laying off 50+ tenured faculty--no other university does this. 1/

While I have you papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

JOB: psu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/PSU_Ac...

Lower league football (soccer) >= minor league baseball www.theguardian.com/football/202...

Check out this great piece by @mcclennen65.bsky.social in which I played a small part: www.salon.com/2025/08/09/n...

OMG #COYS

Well this is weird. (Link: constitution.congress.gov/constitution/)

Political science friends: help a sister out. #polisky #polmeth #politicalscience

Chk out my new piece on the first time that CBS sacrificed satire and caved to pressure. It is a good reminder that they may be cancelling Colbert, but satire will adapt and thrive. #colbert #colbertcancellation #satire #smothersbrothers #CBS #Paramount www.salon.com/2025/07/25/s...

ATTN: If you’re one of the 1,000 FBI agents who reviewed the Epstein files, feel free to reach out to me via signal (in my bio). I’ll keep you anonymous- as I have the thousands of current and former federal workers who have sent me tips. Please share this widely. 🙏🏻

Colbert - South Park crossover, who’s in?

Medium or Substack?

Happy “Berhalter Out” Day to all who celebrate! #USMNT #Greggg

All Republican appointees (two Trump, one Bush Sr.). www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Add: law professors.

Happy birthday to the greatest articulation of critical American patriotism, Frederick Douglass’ “What, to the Slave, is the Fourth of July” www.blackpast.org/african-amer...

Just for everyone who sees this? This is exactly the level of rigor and dedication NYT has practiced in regards to its entire body of work on trans kids, affirmative action, and progressive policies. this is what they've always been. They just fluked up where everyone could see it this time.

Shameful. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

There will now be 10,000 new ICE agents & 100,000 new detention beds--and few safeguards protecting people from constitutional violations by the feds. Time for states to pass laws allowing people to sue fed agents. Read about it these "converse-1983" statutes here: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

I find that Claude and ChatGPT both reliably tune any statements about AI to be subtly or overtly more positive.

It's no more popular than it was yesterday, and it's just a lot of pieces of paper unless people treat it like something that carries some sort of obligation. That's the way we should be thinking at this point, if we aren't already.

Scientists warn US will lose a generation of talent because of Trump cuts www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

{tinytable} is a dead simple, ultra-flexible, and dependency-free #Rstats 📦 to turn data frames into beautiful tables: html, word, pdf, latex, typst, markdown, etc. v0.10.0 has cool new features and important bug fixes. Check out the detailed tutorials at: vincentarelbundock.github.io/tinytable/

Every member of congress who votes for this reconciliation bill will be voting to cut Medicaid coverage and food assistance for hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians. The impact of this vote would be devastating — and it will be on them.

An absolutely remarkable concurrence by Chief Justice Karofsky in the WI Supreme Court case that held the state's total abortion ban is not in effect. CJ Karofsky recounts the stories of women, including her great-grandmother, who died bc of abortion restrictions. www.wicourts.gov/sc/opinion/D...

I told you Barrett was no better than the rest of them.

hawt

1. New Paper "Violent and Nonviolent Death Tolls in the Gaza War: New Primary Evidence" by me, Jon Pedersen, Khalil Shikaki, Michael Robbins, Eran Bendavid, Håvard Hegre and Debarati Guha-Sapir

thinking about adding a couple letters to my last name, idk

I'm sure this will be great and not at all exploited by bad faith zealots to misdirect and distort good reporting and criticism

This is a very important post from @donmoyn.bsky.social At the end, it highlights something that should be on all of our radar screens -- the prospect that, later this year, Trump appoints a toady to run GAO. open.substack.com/pub/donmoyni...

Nice to see NYC following the rest of the nation in going from “sex pest boomer” to “insufferable millennial.”

Identification with one-shot observational data is hard.

If true, this is bad bad bad. They haven’t even been in Alexandria that long. And moving them again so soon is just cruel to the permanent team.

Remember that one time when we beat United four times in a season including for our first trophy in 17 years? That was awesome.