The False Promise of “Fixing” American Politics

For about six years now I've been contemplating the perfect, comprehensive piece that would lay out how America's institutions are ruining its politics and how a new set of institutions would save it. (Contemplating, mind you; not actually writing.) American citizens are currently focusing on zero-sum issues and forced to choose between suboptimal options, and …

Pendulums, rotations, and traffic lights: Recent events in party politics

1. The Pendulum Swings Left European Council members in mid-2018 (Macron had not yet affiliated with the Liberals). European Council members are usually heads of government, but sometimes head of state. European Council members today. Annoyingly, the shade of blue is different In my early days of writing about European politics, the seemingly inexorable decline …

The trivia dork’s guide to the Caribbean and Pacific

The countries, capitals, and history at one glance. I added their former colonial status mostly because memorizing is easier when creating sub-categories, but also because in the case of the Caribbean it also maps onto the dominant local language. In the Pacific this is not the case, and so I am trying to think of …

[Japan, Take 2] The beginnings of something new and durable

I wrote my initial reactions to last week's upper-house election here. After a few days, my habitual optimism took over from the initial despair, and here I lay out that optimistic case. The populist meme parties had good election nights, and of course so did the LDP. But it wasn't just them. Ishin took close …

[Japan, Take 1] Nothing matters, and nothing will ever change

Following former Prime Minister Shinzō Abe's assassination, there was a wide assumption that the LDP would win "sympathy votes" for last Sunday's Senate half-election, much in the way that Prime Minister's Ōhira's sudden death during the 1980 election campaign resulted in a boost for the governing party at the ballot box. And yet: LDP is …

[Work in Progress] Scraping Japanese timetables

GitHub code here This is a "making-of" piece for the other big scraping project I've done (after this one). This one dates back to early 2020, and it straight-up doesn't have an output graphic at all (at least, not yet). Text in red is all the improvements I would like to make once I'm ready …

[Work in Progress] Graphing the polls for Israel’s elections

GitHub code here It was supposed to be a quick project to get polling averages for Israel's multiple recent elections, but after getting bogged down in unsolvable problems, I remain far away from a graphic I'm satisfied with, so I figured I'd at least get a blog post out of it. The product I've got …

Visualizing interlining in the New York City subway

June 2024: Significantly upgraded all the graphics/diagrams. This is a companion post to "On improving NYC transit", which, yes, is from last year. New York's subway lines famously all “branch” into one another: differently-lettered trains share the same track on one section but split apart in other sections, often sharing track with other trains in …

I Genuinely Couldn’t Care Less About the Upcoming Japanese Elections

The recent elections here in Ontario ended in frustration for progressives — the opposition ended up perfectly divided between the Liberals and NDP, while turnout cratered to 43%, a sign that the electorate was not positively inspired by any opposition party, nor negatively motivated by government shortcomings. My social circles have reacted harshly, bemoaning the …

The Japanese Political Spectrum: 4 Ideologies, 5 Party Groups, and 3 Ways Forward

This post is, quite frankly, not intended to be read all the way through — it is far too detailed while offering little of any relevance for anyone but the most attuned Japanese politics-watcher. It seeks to create a framework that makes sense of Japanese politics, and hopefully it makes sense of coming events as …