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William Martindale

@wijama.bsky.social

540 followers 840 following 770 posts

Taiwanese-American MCEPA student at UC San Diego. Known as 馬凱威 to the other half of my family. I research conspiracy theories in the Chinese-speaking world. Follow me for bad jokes, stats nerd stuff, and updates on whatever I'm reading.

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William Martindale @wijama.bsky.social · Aug 8

Pleased to share that my undergraduate thesis, "Partisanship, Security, and Global Status: Anatomy of Taiwan’s March 19 Shooting Conspiracy Theories" is now available to read on BYU ScholarsArchive. In it, I examine an understudied conspiracy theory and implications on the field. Here's a summary 🧵

Partisanship, Security, and Global Status: Anatomy of Taiwan’s March 19 Shooting Conspiracy Theories

Previous research has shown how belief in particular conspiracy theories is subject to their salience to believers. Using the example of Taiwan’s March 19 shooting conspiracy theories, I show in this ...

scholarsarchive.byu.edu

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Sarah Posner @sarahposner.bsky.social · 2h

These are terrible numbers for Trump (via @pewresearch.org)

www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/...

"Majorities say trump has used his office improperly; fewer say he has improved government, U.S. standing" (graphs via Pew Research)

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Mark Joseph Stern @mjsdc.bsky.social · 2h

It is pretty galling that the Supreme Court spent four years telling Biden "you can't do that without Congress" then allowed Trump to seize a once-unthinkable amount of power from Congress within nine months and concentrate law-making authority almost entirely in the executive branch.

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William Martindale @wijama.bsky.social · 17h

I'm learning QGIS for a class and it is a very frustrating experience. Doing anything requires 400 clicks. Whenever I use it I just wish there was a program that let you just type what you want and get a map out. They could integrate it with a statistical program and call it ggmap

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Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 20h

Good lord.

@apnews.com

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Danielle Froom 🏳️‍🌈 @danifroom.bsky.social · 9d

I don't think we'll ever get another sentence which sums up everything the New York Times embodies quite like "Some legal experts have called it a crime to summarily kill civilians".

Matt Cameron @mattcameron.bsky.social · 9d

hey @nytimes.com: there is no counterpoint here. There are no credible legal experts who would EVER say that the US military has any right or authority to blow civilian craft out of the Caribbean and kill their crews from afar without any provocation. There is no other side to this question.

"Some legal experts have called it a crime to summarily kill civilians not directly taking part in hostilities, even if they are believed to be smuggling drugs."

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William Martindale @wijama.bsky.social · 1d

I'll have to try this, salmon skin is so good omg. A sushi place near where I grew up has an incredible salmon skin roll that I always get when I come by because it's so good.

William Martindale @wijama.bsky.social · 1d

the fried skin of, like, any animal. I used to get meat skin-on just so I could make my own fried chicken skin or pork rinds or whatever. these days it's usually too much trouble for me but man I love eating skin

Faine Greenwood @faineg.bsky.social · 2d

What foods do you love that you fully acknowledge make you a pervert for loving them?

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George Pearkes @peark.es · 2d

It's black letter, can't get more explicit, printed in US code you ignoramus. 31 U.S. Code § 1341 (c)(2)

*JOHNSON: SOME LEGAL ANAYLYSTS DON'T BELIEVE IN SHUTDOWN BACKPAY

(2)Each employee of the United States Government or of a District of Columbia public employer furloughed as a result of a covered lapse in appropriations shall be paid for the period of the lapse in appropriations, and each excepted employee who is required to perform work during a covered lapse in appropriations shall be paid for such work, at the employee’s standard rate of pay, at the earliest date possible after the lapse in appropriations ends, regardless of scheduled pay dates, and subject to the enactment of appropriations Acts ending the lapse.

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Ulrike Franke @rikefranke.bsky.social · 2d

And here we go. I never wrote this article, and yet it is cited here.

www.liberalbriefs.com/geopolitics/...

And of course, it sounds so plausible, I seriously checked whether I had forgotten it, or the footnote was slightly wrong.

#AIisnotresearch

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William Martindale @wijama.bsky.social · 2d

they go to me. I'm the one collecting all the nets

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Chaucer Doth Tweet @levostregc.bsky.social · 5d

Peacehammer 40K: Paintinge litel miniatures of gardeneres, sculptors, academics. Trimminge hedges. Makinge friendes.

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Brendan O’Kane @bokane.org · 2d

Literary Chinese for bust-ass dynasties:

鋪眉苫眼早三公
Cozen. Flatter. Ingratiate --
The Three High Offices of state.

(from 譏時 'The Times We Live In' by Zhang Mingshan 張鳴善, fl. 14th c.)

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David Roberts @volts.wtf · 3d

They literally just fought a Supreme Court case for the right to racially profile. It was in the news!

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 3d

DHS's Tricia McLaughlin: "It is a disgusting smear to say there is racial profiling going on."

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Xu Xu @xuxupolitics.bsky.social · 3d

Why do authoritarian states charge political opponents with non-political crimes? In our @thejop.bsky.social paper with Jennifer Pan & @yiqingxu.bsky.social, we examine how *Disguised Repression* undermines opponents’ moral authority and mobilization capacity. doi.org/10.1086/7342...

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Anna Bower @annabower.bsky.social · 3d

This is notable because the government isn’t supposed to indefinitely hold people in immigration detention just for funsies if it doesn’t plan to remove the person any time soon. Abrego’s counsel has raised SCOTUS case law to that effect in seeking his release

bsky.app/profile/anna...

Anna Bower @annabower.bsky.social · 3d

The government said it was going to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia to Uganda. Then it said Eswatini.

But today, a DOJ attorney just told a federal judge that they haven't formalized a plan for removal yet. They apparently haven't even contacted Eswatini about the plan to remove Abrego there.

Roger Parloff @rparloff.bsky.social · 3d

O'H: YH, we--
J: is that a no?
O'H: respondents haven't formalized a poarticular plan for removal yet. gov'ts position is taht under Zadvydas govt has 6 months
J: so answer is no?
O'H: i can't make that representation. we dont know.
J: then answer is no.
/14

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William Martindale @wijama.bsky.social · 3d

uhhhhhhhhhhh

William Martindale @wijama.bsky.social · 3d

what

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BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 4d

I keep going back to this, but one of the reasons South Korea has an incredibly effective protest culture is because they have *decades* of organizational experience through daily/weekly protesting. it helps a lot to do the routine stuff to be able to pull off the big stuff.

Stephen Nuñez @socio-steve.bsky.social · 5d

Why doesn't the US have a general strike? Well you can point to culture or whatever but I think structure is of not immediate use here: does the US have organizations and institutions it can use to network, organize and mobilize a general strike? No.

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William Martindale @wijama.bsky.social · 4d

seriously what is wrong with these people

Screenshot from Wikipedia. It reads:

"Motor Generation
In July 2024, the party established a youth wing, Motor Generation, under the leadership of former Svobodní member and Ostrava-Vítkovice councillor Matěj Gregor. Gregor claimed that the purpose of the organization is to offer a right-wing political alternative for young people and provide a voice for conservative youth, as well as bringing "order and discipline" into members' lives.

However, a controversy erupted shortly after the organization's foundation, as it set up a photo booth at its inaugural congress featuring cards with the quotes "I have an SS dagger at home", "Certified racist", and "Congress 9.11.", with an image of a plane and the Twin Towers.

Respekt also reported that Gregor was planning on creating a network of Motor Generation clubs at Czech universities under the disguise of "conservative clubs", as it is illegal to create partisan organizations in universities under Czech law. In an internal memo, Gregor allegedly said that the clubs would "create hell" for progressives on in the academic field, and would make them "whine and scream". Gregor later confirmed the authenticity of the memo, but called it "twisted" by the media. He also denied comparisons made between the organization and Hitlerjugend, or the youth organizations of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia."

William Martindale @wijama.bsky.social · 4d

I'm reading up on the small Czech political party Motorists for Themselves, which is likely to join the next parliamentary coalition, and their party platform reads like satire

Screenshot from Wikipedia:

"Ideology and positions
The party opposes green politics, liberalism and progressivism and wants to abolish all bicycle lanes.[11] It has stated its support for "cars, coal and the crown". Later, the party also proclaimed its opposition to the European Union, adoption of the Euro and the European Green Deal, while voicing its support for a free market, coal and a nuclear-based energy strategy."

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Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 5d

This is what authoritarians do - use the powers of the state to humiliate and degrade their opponents in public so that others will not challenge them

Scott Horton @robertscotthorton.bsky.social · 5d

“The source told CBS News that [Kash Patel and Dan Bongino] asked for "large, beefy" agents to conduct an arrest of Comey "in full kit," including Kevlar vests and exterior wear emblazoned with the FBI logo.” The leadership of the FBI is now in the hands of infantile psychopaths.

The FBI is weighing an arrest and perp walk for Comey — and suspended an agent for refusing to help, sources say

The FBI is considering carrying out a "showy" arrest and perp walk of the agency's now-indicted ex-Director James Comey, sources tell CBS News.

www.cbsnews.com

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William Martindale @wijama.bsky.social · 5d

That said I only had issues with four prefectures out of 333 in my list so I can't be that mad. I just wish this was in the documentation so I didn't spend an hour trying to figure out why it behaved this way

William Martindale @wijama.bsky.social · 5d

regioncode is really cool but its fuzzy matching is definitely not perfect. It only looks at the first two characters and chooses the first match on the list, leading to miscoding. Additionally I can't find a way to specify that I'm looking at prefecture-level regions, which would mostly fix this

William Martindale @wijama.bsky.social · Aug 18

Stumbled on this really cool #rstats package during work. Haven't tried it out yet, but looks like countrycode but for Chinese prefectures, a boon for sinologists.

regioncode: One-Step Solution for Chinese Region Conversions

cran.r-project.org

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If you know you know @privatechand.bsky.social · 6d

We all suspected this but it’s incredible to see a systematic study on the automation of caste bias in GPT-5. The harm is immense, especially when we consider India is already OpenAI’s second largest market. Screenshots of findings that will haunt me below www.technologyreview.com/2025/10/01/1...

OpenAI is huge in India. Its models are steeped in caste bias.

www.technologyreview.com

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Jonathan Ladd @jonmladd.bsky.social · 6d

Two things can be true: 1) Universities are not perfectly run. There are many problems that we should try to fix. 2) It's actually very hard to run a college or university. It's much much easier to perform worse than the status quo than better. www.insidehighered.com/news/governa...

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