I think I Finally Got Monads
Sometimes, we all get hung up on fringe phenomena that are largely inconsequential for the world's pressing issues, but still satisfy some urge to understand within us. One such thing for me were monads, a weird little concept from group theory that sits at the heart of many programming jokes. I have spent years trying to understand them, and now that I finally did, I had to realize that I will probably never need them. [Read more]
PhDone
After five years of research and writing, I successfully defended my dissertation thesis on Monday. I am now officially PhDone. Time for a first reflection on the process of writing a dissertation. I also share a "Thank you" to my supervisors and all of my colleagues and peers for being part of this incredible journey. [Read more]
What is Analytical Sociology?
This might be one of the hardest articles I have ever written. But it answers a seemingly simple question: What exactly is analytical sociology? The answer, it turns out, is surprisingly hard, and this article, too, is unable to unanimously answer it. [Read more]
Between Theory and Methods
In this second reflection article on my dissertation, I talk about theory. I explore my theoretical origins, why I am no longer a theory guy, and how the PhD journey over the past five years have changed the way I approach and write theory. I reflect on the style of theory, and why it needs to differ between theoretically-heavy and methodologically-heavy papers, as both parts need to match each other. [Read more]
Five Years of Studying U.S. Congress: What Remains?
I am almost done. A few days ago, my dissertation "On the Record: Understanding a Century of Congressional Lawmaking through Speech and Vote Behavior" was published. Now it is time to sit back, and reflect. With this article, I am beginning a series of articles that will answer many questions and contextualize findings from my PhD research. [Read more]
Supporting Liquid Glass Icons in Apps Without XCode
Apple released its new operating system five days ago, and so in this article I will explain how developers can add new icons based on Liquid Glass to their apps if they don't use XCode, but rather Electron or Tauri. [Read more]
I Built an Interactive Schedule for my Field's Largest Conference (and yours, too)
How do you communicate the what and where of various events at large conferences? This seems to be still a relatively unsolved problem, at least in the FOSS space. To properly navigate participants around the IC2S2 conference 2025 in Norrköping at my institute, I decided to build a flexible solution for this. In addition, it should work for any conference. So if you have to organize a conference at some point, this tool may come in very handy. [Read more]
The Illusion of Thinking
Apple has just released a paper which claims that "reasoning" chatbot models are not much better than their non-reasoning counterparts, and AI apologetics are fuming. While the Apple paper certainly is lacking in terms of quality, I believe the researchers are making an important and valid point. In this article, I explain why generative AI fundamentally cannot reason and that mistaking next-word-prediction for thinking abilities is a dangerous fallacy. [Read more]
Lying to your Research Subjects, and other avoidable ethical pitfalls
Two weeks ago, a scandal shook the research community. Researchers from the University of Zürich have conducted an experiment and drawn in the ire of an entire Reddit community. While much has already been said about the problems of this study in particular, I want to take today to reflect more broadly on the state of ethics in the research community. Because I believe we can, and should, do better. [Read more]
Is Markdown Taking Over?
A few weeks ago, an article titled "Markdown and the slow fade of the formatting fetish" has been published, and it has been suggested multiple times to me. Given the resonance it has generated with the community, I take the opportunity to reflect on Markdown and my personal stance on it. [Read more]