Henry Farrell
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himself.bsky.social
Henry Farrell
@himself.bsky.social
35K followers 600 following 5.5K posts

Professor of democracy and international affairs. http://www.henryfarrell.net and newsletter at http://www.programmablemutter.com. Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy (Holt, Penguin). https://www.publishersweekly.com/9781250840554. .. more

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Henry Farrell is an Irish-born political scientist at Johns Hopkins University. He previously taught at the University of Toronto and earned his PhD from Georgetown University. His research interests include trust and co-operation; e-commerce; the European Union; and institutional theory. He is an elected member of the Council on Foreign Relations. .. more

Political science 57%
Economics 15%
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Reposted by Henry Farrell

fbermingham.bsky.social
Finbarr Bermingham @fbermingham.bsky.social · 6h
A piece here from January explaining the situation
EU to resume WTO case against China over alleged economic coercion of Lithuania
Bloc says Beijing orchestrated trade embargo against Baltic state because of controversially named Taiwan office.
www.scmp.com

Reposted by Henry Farrell

fbermingham.bsky.social
Finbarr Bermingham @fbermingham.bsky.social · 6h
The case was paused then restarted last January as the time to submit new evidence approaches.

Privately EU officials said they struggled to argue the case since few companies wanted to give evidence on the record.

Also a sense that the case does not got neatly with WTO rules

himself.bsky.social
Henry Farrell @himself.bsky.social · 6h
fun syllabus!

himself.bsky.social
Henry Farrell @himself.bsky.social · 8h
I am discovering several people who have made similar intellectual jumps - I'm guessing that the comparison is nearly irresistible to anyone who has read Parry/Lord and thought at all about LLMs.
dasmiq.bsky.social David Smith @dasmiq.bsky.social · 9h
I like this piece, though I was primed to do so because I introduced my AI seminar last year by talking about Parry/Lord and oral composition. Oral epic is unfamiliar enough that it makes a better example of a cultural technology than language itself.
himself.bsky.social Henry Farrell @himself.bsky.social · 9h
www.programmablemutter.com/p/large-lang... The complicated relationship between LLMs and the oral tradition.

Reposted by Henry Farrell

dasmiq.bsky.social
David Smith @dasmiq.bsky.social · 9h
I like this piece, though I was primed to do so because I introduced my AI seminar last year by talking about Parry/Lord and oral composition. Oral epic is unfamiliar enough that it makes a better example of a cultural technology than language itself.

himself.bsky.social
Henry Farrell @himself.bsky.social · 9h
www.youtube.com/watch?v=B544... I'll take any excuse to link the greatest song on US foreign policy ever

himself.bsky.social
Henry Farrell @himself.bsky.social · 9h
www.programmablemutter.com/p/large-lang... The complicated relationship between LLMs and the oral tradition.
Large Language Models As The Tales That Are Sung
Gene Wolfe, Albert Lord, machine culture.
www.programmablemutter.com

himself.bsky.social
Henry Farrell @himself.bsky.social · 20h
www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZmc... [she was great in DC on Friday]

himself.bsky.social
Henry Farrell @himself.bsky.social · 22h
McKillip's Riddlemaster books? Wilce's Flora Segunda books are also great, though they get darker as things go on, and it isn't clear that they'll ever be finished. Rosemary Kirstein's Steerswoman books (also dunno if they'll be finished but pretty damn good even as is).

himself.bsky.social
Henry Farrell @himself.bsky.social · 22h
It's a crime that @unlikelyworlds.bsky.social Cowboy Angels isn't available in the US. A 70s-style paranoid sf thriller set in an alternative America that builds mirror gates to alternative universe versions of itself and begins to "liberate" them unlikelyworlds.blogspot.com/2025/11/seem...
Stone remembered streets empty of traffic except for the armoured limos of bosses and apparatus men, and the personnel carriers and light tanks of the FBI. He remembered long lines of scarecrow people waiting to receive a daily ration of two ounces of mystery meat and a loaf of black bread that had the texture of ground glass bound by wallpaper paste. The show trials on TV, mass hangings of traitors and saboteurs. The hopeless gazes of starving children begging on the streets while posters everywhere boasted of record harvests. The military parades in Times Square, columns of soldiers saluting the Dear Leader and his trio of psychotic sons in their armoured-glass podium, missile carriers and tanks creeping between monumental buildings under a blizzard of ticker tape, accompanied by military bands and phalanxes of blonde, blue-eyed cheerleaders. He remembered the slave farms, and the vast death camp he and Tom Waverly had found in South Dakota: a discovery that had been instrumental in convincing President Davis, at the beginning of his first term, to approve LOOKING GLASS, the covert action that had led to the revolution.

himself.bsky.social
Henry Farrell @himself.bsky.social · 1d
nor did I!

himself.bsky.social
Henry Farrell @himself.bsky.social · 1d
sort of? Butlers are more household managers I would say. For the more bullying class of chief-of-staff, you'd not go wrong with that most terrifying of personal secretaries, the Efficient Baxter in the Blandings novels. For seedier variants on the type, St. John Clarke's various emmanuenses ...

himself.bsky.social
Henry Farrell @himself.bsky.social · 1d
Jeeves was not a butler, but a valet, or, as he termed it, 'gentleman's gentleman.' The canonical Wodehouse butler, Beach, preferred copping wine (a traditional perquisite) and reading the racing press in his parlor to following dudes around. [Thank you for briefly entertaining my pedantry]
ianboudreau.com Ian Boudreau @ianboudreau.com · 2d
Computer, please summarize everything PG Wodehouse ever wrote in ten seconds
roryblank.bsky.social Rory Blank @roryblank.bsky.social · 2d
rich dudes got freakier after butlers fell out of fashion, like say what you will about having domestic servants but clearly it was some sort of moderating force on old rich dudes having a fancy man follow you around saying shit like "oh dear sir, that wouldn't be very becoming"

Reposted by Henry Farrell

ianboudreau.com
Ian Boudreau @ianboudreau.com · 2d
Computer, please summarize everything PG Wodehouse ever wrote in ten seconds
roryblank.bsky.social Rory Blank @roryblank.bsky.social · 2d
rich dudes got freakier after butlers fell out of fashion, like say what you will about having domestic servants but clearly it was some sort of moderating force on old rich dudes having a fancy man follow you around saying shit like "oh dear sir, that wouldn't be very becoming"

Reposted by Brendan Nyhan, Henry Farrell

filipecampante.bsky.social
Filipe Campante @filipecampante.bsky.social · 2d
This is one advantage of having the historical memory of authoritarianism, as I have from Brazil: you know that, when the regime is gone, the people who collaborated and acquiesced look terrible in retrospect. It may look reasonable and justifiable now, but believe me, it will age like milk.

Reposted by Laurent Pech, Alan Richardson, Aaron Sojourner , and 2 more

filipecampante.bsky.social
Filipe Campante @filipecampante.bsky.social · 2d
Look, every single “deal” reached by a university with the Trump administration is a moral stain that will be seen with deep embarrassment once we’re through this. But for Northwestern to do this now, when the administration is visibly weakened, is even more shameful and inexcusable.

himself.bsky.social
Henry Farrell @himself.bsky.social · 3d
Ever since www.vox.com/the-big-idea..., my working hypothesis has been (a) Weiss wants to build a discourse where race-science-curious is Good and anti-semitism is Bad, and (b) this is effectively identical with reviving New Republic centrism circa 1994.

Reposted by Robert W. Wallace, Robert C. Richards, Henry Farrell

olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social
Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 3d
obviously plenty of other things should have already been disqualifying but people willing to defy Trump publicly and appeal to decency as their reason for doing so both seem pretty good
ericmgarcia.bsky.social Eric Michael Garcia @ericmgarcia.bsky.social · 3d
h/t @adamwren.bsky.social

Michael Bohacek, a Republican state senator from Indiana who has a daughter with down syndrome, says he will vote against redistricting in Indiana after Trump used the word "retarded."

himself.bsky.social
Henry Farrell @himself.bsky.social · 5d
good to see "partyism" taken up (and if anyone can come up with better branding for the tendency, they have my blessing fwiw)

himself.bsky.social
Henry Farrell @himself.bsky.social · 5d
Yes - also the future of Paul McAuley's Cowboy Angels, which I suspect was an important influence on The Peripheral (Gibson mentions McAuley in the acknowledgments, though not for this book]

himself.bsky.social
Henry Farrell @himself.bsky.social · 5d
basically unavailable in the US right now, which is an enormous shame.

himself.bsky.social
Henry Farrell @himself.bsky.social · 5d
[also, while we're on the topic of older SF that is unexpectedly on-the-nose, yesterday finished a re-read of @unlikelyworlds.bsky.social Cowboy Angels, about an America that semi-colonizes alternative versions of itself, including a former Nazi US once run by a "Dear Leader" with three idiot sons.]

himself.bsky.social
Henry Farrell @himself.bsky.social · 5d
I have occasionally wondered if this is one of the implications of the title of @greatdismal.bsky.social The Peripheral, where no-one quite understands what is happening in China, except that it is way ahead on tech, and is weird.
interfluidity.com Steve Randy Waldman @interfluidity.com · 5d
China is the center. Everywhere else is the periphery.

Reposted by Henry Farrell

interfluidity.com
Steve Randy Waldman @interfluidity.com · 5d
China is the center. Everywhere else is the periphery.

Reposted by Henry Farrell

princetonupress.bsky.social
Princeton University Press @princetonupress.bsky.social · 5d
@daschloz.bsky.social and @samrosenfeld.bsky.social's The Hollow Parties is a major history from the Founding to our embittered present that “explains the void” (Politico) at the center of America’s political parties.

Now in #paperback!

Read a free preview: press.princeton.edu/books/paperb...
The Hollow Parties: The Many Pasts and Disordered Present of American Party Politics by Daniel Schlozman and Sam Rosenfeld. A major history from the Founding to our embittered present that “explains the void” (Politico) at the center of America's political parties.

himself.bsky.social
Henry Farrell @himself.bsky.social · 5d
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/68_Mill....
en.wikipedia.org

himself.bsky.social
Henry Farrell @himself.bsky.social · 5d
The more that gerrymandering tries to squeeze more seats out a fixed pool of voters by lowering expected margins of victory, the more vulnerable it becomes to a wave in which the expectations are upset. There are self-interested reasons why many Republican incumbents haven't wanted to redistrict.
kevinmkruse.bsky.social Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 5d
This race is close and, given how much Democrats outperformed the polls a few weeks ago, a win is actually possible.

But even a narrow loss in a gerrymandered district Trump won by 22 points last year would be a sign of significant progress.
polltracker.bsky.social Poll Tracker 📊 @polltracker.bsky.social · 5d
Emerson poll | 11/22-11/24 LV

Tennessee’s 7th congressional special election (Trump +22)

(Leaners pushed)
🟥Matt Van Epps 49.4%
🟦Aftyn Behn 47.0%
Others 3.5%

emersoncollegepolling.com/tennessee-7t...

Reposted by Henry Farrell, Dan Immergluck

kevinmkruse.bsky.social
Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 5d
This race is close and, given how much Democrats outperformed the polls a few weeks ago, a win is actually possible.

But even a narrow loss in a gerrymandered district Trump won by 22 points last year would be a sign of significant progress.

himself.bsky.social
Henry Farrell @himself.bsky.social · 5d
Top 5 side 2 last track.
1. "Soon."
2. "Soon."
3. "Soon."
4. "Take 3"
5. "Soon"

Reposted by Henry Farrell