Kevin Reuning
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reuning.bsky.social
Kevin Reuning
@reuning.bsky.social
4.2K followers 1.3K following 12K posts
politics, protests, quant methods, bad takes, labor, etc
https://kevinreuning.com/
https://unionelections.org/
https://voterperceptions.org/
All opinions, views, thoughts, and takes are strictly my own.
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reuning.bsky.social
Miami University is on the list of schools losing funding for the Diplomacy Lab www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
November 25, 2025 at 9:57 PM
reuning.bsky.social
Pretty depressing to live in a society where this is seen as a pretty reasonable thing to say
Screenshot of a Facebook comment: Some will say "kids will be kids" but in this day and age, I encourage parents to warn their children that approaching anyone's house uninvited is dangerous.
November 25, 2025 at 12:14 PM
reuning.bsky.social
Now it makes sense
@evanbernick.bsky.social quoting @andycarr.bsky.social. Carr's post is a screenshot of a Michelle Goldberg article entitled "We should all know less about each other" and Bernick's quote includes: "In Defense of Bowling Alone"
November 24, 2025 at 6:36 PM
reuning.bsky.social
Sometimes I think about how we DOGE, the supposed attempt to create efficiency, is just a duplication of GAO. Trump and Musk literally duplicated work as part of their demand for efficiency.
Our History at a Glance The Budget and Accounting Act created GAO in 1921 when Congress realized the need to control growing government expenditures and debt after World War I. Until the end of World War II, GAO primarily checked the legality and adequacy of government expenditures. After World War II, as government responsibilities and programs grew, so did GAO. The focus of our work shifted toward helping Congress monitor executive branch agencies’ programs and spending. In 1974, Congress broadened GAO's evaluation role and gave us greater responsibility in the budget process. This was when we started to recruit scientists, actuaries, and experts in fields such as health care, public policy, and computers. In 1986, we assembled a team of professional investigators, many with law enforcement backgrounds, to look into allegations of possible criminal and civil misconduct. During the last 20 years, we’ve strived to improve accountability by alerting policymakers and the public to emerging problems throughout government. In 2004, GAO's legal name changed from the General Accounting Office to the Government Accountability Office. The change reflected the agency’s expanding role in a growing federal government. Moving beyond financial audits, GAO began conducting performance audits—examining how government programs were performing and whether they were meeting their objectives.
November 24, 2025 at 4:51 PM
reuning.bsky.social
Noah Smith is not a serious person. www.politico.com/story/2010/1...
Here’s John Boehner, the likely speaker if Republicans take the House, offering his plans for Obama’s agenda: “We’re going to do everything — and I mean everything we can do — to kill it, stop it, slow it down, whatever we can.” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell summed up his plan to National Journal: “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”
November 24, 2025 at 2:17 PM
reuning.bsky.social
X has got something for everyone.
Screenshot of two news articles. Headline of first one is "US 'Homeland Security' Twitter account seemingly run from Israel" second one is "X rolls out location tool, unmasks fake Gaza influencer network"
November 23, 2025 at 11:47 PM
reuning.bsky.social
For a minute I thought this said demographic crunch.
November 22, 2025 at 5:57 PM
reuning.bsky.social
I heard a clip of Mike Johnson saying that Members of Congress talking about ignoring unlawful orders is "unprecedented" and anyways here is Mike Pompeo defending a letter where he told military leaders to ignore unlawful orders. centerforsecuritypolicy.org/rep-mike-pom...
FG: Well it would and I want also to salute you, Mike Pompeo, for your leadership in another area. You’ve enlisted a number of your colleagues who, like you, have served in uniform to really put a marker down with the United States military that this could constitute an unlawful order. I hope that will be another break on the president’s action in this regard MP: We do too, its unconscionable to put our military leaders in this position. Where the commander in chief asks of them something that is clearly unlawful, and my intention was not to put pressure on those amazing soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, but rather to inform everyone that you can’t ask folks in the military to execute an unlawful order, and I hope that they understand there’re members of congress who have their back in the event that they choose to make a decision that comports with their duty. FG: Lets turn to another topic on which you’ve been very importantly engaged Congressman Pompeo, you and your colleague Senator Tom Cotton really led in the debate about this so-called Iran deal becoming less and less of a deal all the time bad deal to being with, now not even a deal according to the State Department, but you were warning about the role of the International Atomic Energy Agency and side deals and the like. Talk if you would about what the latest shenanigan has been out of the IAEA with the respect to the so-called Nuclear Program File of Iran.
November 21, 2025 at 1:23 PM
reuning.bsky.social
Because I'm a weirdo sometimes I like making charts showing the actual numbers instead of as "thousands" or whatever.

(IRS data on where revenue comes from)
Chart showing the sources of revenue. The x axis has numbers of $1 trillion, $2 trillion, etc
November 20, 2025 at 5:26 PM
reuning.bsky.social
People are being grabbed off the streets, the President is unilaterally executing foreign nationals in international waters, and the economy is tumbling into a recession but Politico is excited about the "glorious end-of-season" feel of Mamdani and Trump meeting.
THIS IS REALLY HAPPENING: New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani will meet Trump in the Oval Office tomorrow, the president has announced — and boy, it is going to be quite a scene. “Communist Mayor of New York City, Zohran ‘Kwame’ Mamdani, has asked for a meeting,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “We have agreed that this meeting will take place at the Oval Office on Friday, November 21st. Further details to follow!” It’s only late November, but the coming-together of the two standout politicians of 2025 has the feel of a glorious end-of-season finale. We can only pray they’ll invite the cameras in to watch.
November 20, 2025 at 3:06 PM
reuning.bsky.social
I love Abbott Elementary and Quinta Brunson is great but I find it funny to ask her about what teachers want. You know you can just ask some teachers?
Screenshot of Wirecutter recommendations email. Headline is "We asked ‘Abbott Elementary’ star Quinta Brunson what to give teachers"
November 19, 2025 at 11:43 PM
reuning.bsky.social
Obama "bowing" to the Saudi king was a multi week scandal that was spun as the collapse of the West
Getty photo of Obama slightly bowing while shaking the hand of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia
November 18, 2025 at 7:06 PM
reuning.bsky.social
ehhhh I don't think he fully dodged it.
Screenshot of a comment. The text: "Wow, Ryan... I am so sorry...you dodged a major bullet at least?"
November 18, 2025 at 2:02 AM
reuning.bsky.social
Genres are definitely helpful but if you are telling me I listened to three different genres this month and the first band in each is the same band then maybe reevaluate things.
November 17, 2025 at 2:53 PM
reuning.bsky.social
Yanking a priest out of the crowd to throw him to the ground and arrest him.
Screenshot of video in quoted post. In the middle you can see a man with a priest's collar. On his right is a police officer in a tan shirt who has grabbed him and his pulling on him. On the left is a crowd of people trying to hold on to the priest.
November 14, 2025 at 4:40 PM
reuning.bsky.social
Love good chart of Results vs Time
November 14, 2025 at 2:04 AM
reuning.bsky.social
For those who don't know, I spent a lot of my grad school career helping (and eventually failing) to form a union at Penn State. We got a vote, but we lost. I'm so happy and excited for the grad workers there now. They deserve a union.
Instagram of Penn State grad workers announcing their union victory.
November 13, 2025 at 9:17 PM
reuning.bsky.social
Amusingly they appear to have realized this looks bad and are back-pedaling
November 12, 2025 at 1:57 PM
reuning.bsky.social
The American dream is lying about your product until you can afford to build it.

www.reddit.com/r/LinkedInLu...
LinkedIn post from the CTO of Fireflies.ai We charged $100/month for an Al that was really just two guys surviving on pizza. We scaled Fireflies to a $1B valuation after 6 failures from our original crypto food delivery idea. Nothing motivates you more than the pressure of living month to month with no safety net. Before I explain how 2 broke guys validated a $1B idea, you need to understand we were couch surfing while desperately chasing our entrepreneurial dreams. An Al notetaker was our last hope after 6 ideas our friends claimed were "genius". The best way to validate your business idea is by becoming the product yourself. We told our customers there's an "Al that'll join a meeting." In reality it was just me and my co-founder calling in to the meeting sitting there silently and taking notes by hand. When customers scheduled a meeting, we'd manually dial in as "Fred from Fireflies.ai" We'd sit there silently, take detailed notes, and send them 10 minutes later. After taking notes for 100+ meetings (and falling asleep in many), we were finally able to make enough money to pay the $750/month rent for a tiny SF living room. That was the point when we said let's stop and automate everything.
November 12, 2025 at 1:44 PM
reuning.bsky.social
Playing with the ANES 2016-2020-2024 panel, looking at presidential vote choice overtime. Hard to figure out what to do with missingness and what weights to use.
November 10, 2025 at 10:56 PM
reuning.bsky.social
1980 Republican Party Platform
The Republican Party believes that protectionist tariffs and quotas are detrimental to our economic well-being. Nevertheless, we insist that our trading partners offer our nation the same level of equity, access, and fairness that we have shown them. The mutual benefits of trade require that it be conducted in the spirit of reciprocity. The Republican Party will consider appropriate measures necessary to restore equal and fair competition between ourselves and our trading partners.
November 10, 2025 at 6:45 PM
reuning.bsky.social
This addendum from the author is almost as important as the rest of the text.
As an aside, one of the horrifying things I discovered while writing this piece was this site called factually.co, which ranks high in search engines and uses Large Language Models to create fake “fact checking” articles. They’re running multiple articles pretending Rev. Black wasn’t shot with pepper balls at Broadview, which, to be clear, is definitely a thing that happened.
November 10, 2025 at 5:46 PM
reuning.bsky.social
Snow!
Picture of our backyard with a half an inch of fluffy snow. In the foreground are some snow covered juniper bushes. In the middle ground stands a brown dog. In the background lots of trees Our backyard with some fluffy snow. Ok the right is a patio with two chairs. In front is a path leading to a fence.
November 10, 2025 at 2:00 PM
reuning.bsky.social
Referring to Trump's post on Truth Social as a "compromise" is some real sane washing.
Screenshot of CNBC headline and "Keypoints". The first one is highlighted and says: President Trump proposed a compromise on health insurance payments, in a Truth Social post made Saturday morning.
November 8, 2025 at 6:58 PM
reuning.bsky.social
Trump is going to end up demanding that we nationalize health insurance companies and everyone is going to snap
Trump Truth social post: I am recommending to Senate Republicans that the Hundreds of Billions of Dollars currently being sent to money sucking Insurance Companies in order to save the bad Healthcare provided by ObamaCare, BE SENT DIRECTLY TO THE PEOPLE SO THAT THEY CAN PURCHASE THEIR OWN, MUCH BETTER, HEALTHCARE, and have money left over. In other words, take from the BIG, BAD Insurance Companies, give it to the people, and terminate, per Dollar spent, the worst Healthcare anywhere in the World, ObamaCare. Unrelated, we must still terminate the Filibuster
November 8, 2025 at 3:31 PM