@SamCrawley@sciences.social avatar

SamCrawley

@SamCrawley@sciences.social

Political Science postdoc researcher at Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand). My research focusses on politics of climate change, and on comparative politics in general.

I've been coding most of my life, and use FOSS whenever possible.

#PoliticalScience #PoliSci #Academia #ClimateChange #OpenScience

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SamCrawley, to climate
@SamCrawley@sciences.social avatar

New article! I compared climate opinion in NZ and Australia and found:

  • Climate opinion is more polarised in Aus than NZ but
  • More people see climate as high importance in Aus than NZ
  • For most people, climate change is a cultural (not economic) issue
  • Being culturally conservative is associated not just with being a "hard" climate denier, but also with being "lukewarm" on climate action

Open Access article: https://academic.oup.com/ijpor/article/36/2/edae027/7673544

@politicalscience

SamCrawley,
@SamCrawley@sciences.social avatar

@phil_stevens @politicalscience Agree that it's about accepting science (or not)

At the same time, this really is about people's belief systems. That's really what I'm talking about when I say climate is a cultural issue, fewer cultural conservatives accept climate science. So in that respect it is about "belief" (in my view at least)

(Arguably, we often engage with science through our belief systems, since it's impossible for anyone to understand all science).

Anyway, thanks for the comment!

shoq, to random
@shoq@mastodon.social avatar

Why I’m Leaving Twitter: A Reflection on Elon Musk’s Takeover and Anti-Democratic Values

https://mem.ai/p/e83QTrTPntGEmmZYQUEc

SamCrawley,
@SamCrawley@sciences.social avatar

@shoq A shame that so many people who don't share Musk's anti-democratic values haven't been able to leave.

If they did, the platform would become irrelevant overnight.

SamCrawley, to academicchatter
@SamCrawley@sciences.social avatar

  • Had a paper accepted for publication! 🥳

  • The peer review process was long, and in the mean time, my institution's read & publish agreement with the publisher expired... so now I can't publish as open access! 😞

@academicchatter

SamCrawley, to linux
@SamCrawley@sciences.social avatar

I've been trying out "winapps" to run Office 365 on #Linux and it's been working very smoothly. Was pretty easy to set up as well. Definitely recommend trying it out if you need to use Office but don't want to dual boot. #OpenSource

https://github.com/winapps-org/winapps

(It works by running Windows in a VM and using Remote Desktop so the apps you run appear in their own window).

jimbob, to random
@jimbob@aus.social avatar

I keep hearing about this deluge of spam, but I have not seen a single one. And for that I praise the sysop.

SamCrawley,
@SamCrawley@sciences.social avatar

@scholar_farmer @academicchatter @adamhsparks @jimbob yeah it's actually quite a problem for some guppe groups, and no easy fix on the horizon

thomasfuchs, to random
@thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io avatar

Fun fact apropos of nothing: when Hitler came into power democratically it took him like 3 months to dismantle democracy completely and there were no new elections for 17 years.

He came into power after earlier starting an insurrection. State institutions and government failed to ban him from future elections.

SamCrawley,
@SamCrawley@sciences.social avatar

@thomasfuchs Not in any way minimising the risk to democracy in the US right now, but it's highly likely that elections will continue for the foreseeable future in the US, regardless of who wins in November.

They may not be free and fair elections, but they will still happen. This is usually what authoritarianism looks like in the modern world. e.g. Russia is holding Presidential elections in a few weeks, but we know they're not a democracy.

SamCrawley,
@SamCrawley@sciences.social avatar

@thomasfuchs I'm saying if democracy ended in the US, it wouldn't look like democracy ending when Hitler came to power.

It is extremely difficult to know what constitutes a "free and fair" election, and even more difficult to tell if a particular election meets those criteria. If democracy were to end in the US, it could be a long time before people actually realise this is the case (again, you can look at Russia as an example, although the same is true in many other countries).

SamCrawley, to climate
@SamCrawley@sciences.social avatar

I'm always perplexed by NZ's strategy for "helping" Pacific countries deal with #ClimateChange - putting money into renewable energy and batteries for the Cook Islands is nice, but does nothing for global emissions.

If the NZ government really wants to help Pacific countries, they should lead the global effort to reduce emissions. That's the only way to truly help.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/350172248/peters-announces-165-million-towards-climate-change-initiatives-cook-islands

#nzpol #ClimateCrisis

SamCrawley, to academicchatter
@SamCrawley@sciences.social avatar

I wish every peer reviewer who has ever thought "I know! I'll say they need to add more controls to their models" would stop and think about whether that is actually a helpful comment. @academicchatter

tragiccommons, to random

I've been reading a lot about the state of scientific publishing. Some people seem to think it's in trouble, but I see signs of health from the various innovations people are trying. Some interesting examples include the use of openreview.net to open up reviews and give credit to reviewers, and the decision by eLife to stop issuing rejections, but open up the process instead. There is an interesting critique of the eLife decision by @MarkHanson located here: https://mahansonresearch.weebly.com/blog/do-we-really-need-journals

It's a weird time for me to be working on a new journal publishing platform, but maybe it's the right time. I've always been bugged by the economics of journal publishing, and that's what got me started working on it. Maybe I should shift my focus to the social process of publishing. The death of #AcademicTwitter hasn't helped, and I don't think LinkedIn and #AcademicChatter on the fediverse have filled the need yet.

SamCrawley,
@SamCrawley@sciences.social avatar

@tragiccommons I have vague ideas of a federated academic publishing model (primarily hosted by universities) on an OSS stack... but you're right there is evolution in publishing which may work better than revolution

On connecting with academics, you can also follow @academicchatter

andrew, to random

Finally decided to switch from %>% to |> this semester! #rstats

SamCrawley,
@SamCrawley@sciences.social avatar

@andrew I've found it a tough habit to get into!

davidho, to random
@davidho@mastodon.world avatar

I freely admit that I don't know what a +3°C world will look like, but given the climate impacts we already see at +1.2°C, I really don't want to find out.

SamCrawley,
@SamCrawley@sciences.social avatar

@davidho I'm not sure we really know what even a +1.5C world looks like. Even if we can figure out what the physical effects are, the social effects are extremely hard to predict (and, frankly, at least as terrifying as the physical effects).

SamCrawley, to random
@SamCrawley@sciences.social avatar

My greatest hope in life is that I live long enough to experience Mastodon when 90% of the posts are not flame wars about Quote Posts.

Private
SamCrawley,
@SamCrawley@sciences.social avatar

@TEG @tiago @academicchatter

This is a much bigger limitation than lack of quotes to me. I feel like I have to work really hard to understand what's going on in my feed because everything's always happening backwards.

I think instead of "algorithmic feeds" we should just call it "more sorting options".

My feeling is there is enough content for many communities here, it's just often really hard to find it.

SamCrawley,
@SamCrawley@sciences.social avatar

@crecente @TEG @tiago @academicchatter Thanks, seems interesting. Hopefully some of these options become available soon.

DrEvanGowan, to random

Since I am planning to delete my Twitter account soon, I am slowly deleting every post I made manually, so I can see what I posted (I also do not trust that they will delete the posts if I delete the account). A large portion of my replies are congratulating people on things like their newly published paper, graduating, getting a grant, etc. These kind of posts are what I miss about Twitter, and I hope more people come and post their successes on Mastodon. #AcademicChatter

SamCrawley,
@SamCrawley@sciences.social avatar

@prachisrivas @gpollara @DrEvanGowan @yetiinabox @academicchatter

I think there's a bit of an issue with the chronological feed as well.. academics are spread across many timezones, and it's easy to miss posts on the other side of the world.

You can get around it with Lists, etc., but it's a lot harder than on the other site.

SamCrawley,
@SamCrawley@sciences.social avatar

@DrEvanGowan @prachisrivas @gpollara @yetiinabox @academicchatter I think some sort of user-selected sorting would be the best of both worlds. Similar to lemmy where you can sort by new, top in the last x hours, active, etc.

Completely transparent and controllable by users, so doesn't have most of the problems of commercial social media algorithms

Private
SamCrawley,
@SamCrawley@sciences.social avatar

@ml @janechen @academicchatter Yeah good points. It's also worth looking at a range of academic work with a critical eye.

Looking at the best articles, conference presentations and theses, it's easy to think "I'll never be that good".

But you can also find work (including by established academics) that is only "average" (or worse). It's easier to imagine yourself getting to that level.

Of course, in an ideal world we wouldn't worry so much about comparisons, but easier said than done.

shoq, to random
@shoq@mastodon.social avatar

Earlier today on bluesky, I asked a semi-popular account with an impressive few thousand followers how she grew her following there. In the fediverse, I have to be careful asking questions like that because I can be overwhelmed by responses. This user hasn’t bothered to respond. Not unique. It’s common behavior on twitter. Many swear they engage, but don’t seem to understand the concept. It’s just a whole different culture. It always creeped me out on Twitter.

SamCrawley,
@SamCrawley@sciences.social avatar

@shoq I feel like maybe 10% of my tweets were ever read by more than a handful of people (even pre-Musk).

If I ever check my Twitter feed (which is almost never nowadays) it is the same people with largish follower counts saying the same stuff... most of them only got that many followers by being in the right place at the right time, not because they say anything particularly interesting.

Mastodon is not perfect, but at least it feels like people are genuinely trying to connect here.

SamCrawley, to random
@SamCrawley@sciences.social avatar

For those in #Aotearoa, please sign the petition to stop job cuts to many NZ unis that are about to happen as a result of government underfunding.

We need to show the govt how many people care about this issue - it's not hard for the govt to fix this in the short term to prevent years of damage to the NZ uni system

https://www.together.org.nz/provide_tertiary_institutions_a_funding_boost_to_enable_good_long_term_staffing_decisions

Please boost for visibility!

#NZ #StopTheCuts

SamCrawley, to academicchatter
@SamCrawley@sciences.social avatar

Really disheartening to get a journal manuscript submission returned (after spending hours trying to get the formatting to meet their very specific requirements) because font was not right, footnotes weren't placed in an obscure/non-standard place, and figure captions weren't numbered correctly...

None of this should be required until the paper is accepted for publication... Almost tempted to find another journal!

@academicchatter

SamCrawley, to internet
@SamCrawley@sciences.social avatar

Looks like #reddit is going down the Twitter route and killing off all third party apps (by making API requests ridiculously expensive).

https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/13ws4w3/had_a_call_with_reddit_to_discuss_pricing_bad/

I guess that's another vote for the #Fediverse

SamCrawley, to academicchatter
@SamCrawley@sciences.social avatar

I had hoped asking students to write a reflective essay might make it harder to use ChatGPT ...

But I fed ChatGPT the prompt (with minor adjustments) and it does a pretty good job of explaining that what it "learnt" in the course gives it a better understanding of politics... 😞

Guess I either need a better essay prompt, or... just give in? @academicchatter

SamCrawley, to random
@SamCrawley@sciences.social avatar

Re-#introduction, I've just moved to this server having been on Mastodon for about a year...

I do research on public opinion on #ClimateChange change (and other topics in comparative politics) and will be finishing up a PostDoc fellowship in #PoliticalScience at Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand) later this year (!)...

Look forward to connecting with people on this server, and elsewhere in the fediverse!

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