Virtual event starting soon! My lab @communitydata.science is hosting a discussion about new research on organizing software communities. Sign up & join us! wiki.communitydata.science/The_Impacts_...

Hey how's it going here? been a minute.

LLMs are now widely used in social science as stand-ins for humans—assuming they can produce realistic, human-like text But... can they? We don’t actually know. In our new study, we develop a Computational Turing Test. And our findings are striking: LLMs may be far less human-like than we think.🧵

Computational Turing Test Reveals Systematic Differences Between Human and AI Language

Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used in the social sciences to simulate human behavior, based on the assumption that they can generate realistic, human-like text. Yet this assumption rem...

arxiv.org

Defending public information goods and online communities under attack. zenodo.org/records/1560... A @communitydata.science strategy brief led by @zarine.net (with @mako.cc and me riding shotgun)

a new short research brief with @mako.cc and @aaronshaw.bsky.social synthesizes some of the work I presented at @communitydata.science Science of Community Dialogues back in April! zenodo.org/records/1560...

Important message from @ethanvporter.bsky.social @aaronshaw.bsky.social @emmaspiro.bsky.social “NSF has accepted a dangerous myth that misinformation research (and research more generally) is really just partisan activism […] Nothing could be further from the truth” www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Misinformation research continues to be urgent science

By one account, roughly 70% of Americans regard misinformation as a major threat, outpacing fears about climate change and infectious disease (1). This is true although the current and longer-term imp...

science.org

Misinformation research continues to be urgent science. By @ethanvporter.bsky.social, @emmaspiro.bsky.social, and me. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Misinformation research continues to be urgent science

By one account, roughly 70% of Americans regard misinformation as a major threat, outpacing fears about climate change and infectious disease (1). This is true although the current and longer-term imp...

science.org

A policy brief on what generative AI simulations of people might be good for! (based on work with the amazing team of @joon-s-pk.bsky.social @cqzou.bsky.social @mako.cc @robbwiller.bsky.social @mbernst.bsky.social Merrie Morris, Carrie Cai, and Percy Liang)

Stanford HAI@stanfordhai.bsky.social · last yr.

AI agents that can simulate human behaviors and attitudes can help test ideas in social science. Our latest brief introduces a generative AI agent architecture that simulates the attitudes of 1,000+ real people. Read more: hai.stanford.edu/policy/simul...

🧵🧵🧵 effective commons governance doesn't mean you get the equilibrium you want...

George Monbiot@georgemonbiot.bsky.social · last yr.

1. This is Piles Copse, the largest remaining fragment of high-ground temperate rainforest on Dartmoor. It’s a tiny speck of green in a dismal, human-made desert. Prepare yourselves for a story of breathtaking perversity, told in this thread. (There’s a one-page version at the bottom). 🧵

That part of the timeline where I'm watching the White Sox game and realize maybe I'm in solidarity with the pope 🧦

Find me a better Bluesky thread. Go ahead, I'll wait.

rahaeli@rahaeli.bsky.social · last yr.

Pope Leo's first sermon and, uh, his using the phrase "be ever more fully a city set upon a hill" and cf'ing it to Rev 21:10 instead of any of the others before saying "many baptized Christians" are "living in a state of practical atheism" is. Well. Shots fired! www.npr.org/2025/05/09/g...

University leaders are looking for capital. They have political capital. As with their endowments, they are inclined to sit on it. The thing about political capital though, is that if you spend it wisely it grows.

Bill Grueskin@bgrueskin.bsky.social · last yr.

New AP poll on Trump/higher education: Maintain fed'l funding for scientific/medical research? 62% approve Remove colleges' tax-exempt status? 30% approve Withhold fed'l funds unless they comply w/ Trump's demands? 27% approve Overall on Trump/colleges? 56%👎, 42%👍 apnorc.org/projects/few...

New interview up at the Protocol Oral History Project—Camille Acey on organizational closures: protocol.ecologies.info/interviews/a...

Camille Acey: Organizational closures

Organizations too often fail to prepare for their inevitable end; The Wind Down shares best practices for healthy closures.

protocol.ecologies.info

dailynorthwestern.com/2025/05/08/c...

NU Faculty Senate joins Big Ten peers, signs Mutual Defense Compact

Northwestern’s Faculty Senate voted to sign an amended version of the Mutual Defense Compact signed by faculty senates at several Big Ten Academic Alliance universities at its meeting Wednesday evenin...

dailynorthwestern.com

Northwestern faculty Senate has passed a version of the Rutgers mutual defense compact tonight, making it (I think) a dozen faculty governance bodies around the country to do so. Go cats!

AI-generated from a model prompted with someone's truth social feed?

Eric Columbus@ericcolumbus.bsky.social · last yr.

🚨🚨 Deranged letter from Education Secretary Linda McMahon to Harvard’s president, cutting off federal funding for any new grants. Worth reading in full. It is NUTS.

👀👀👀

Ryan Boyd@ryanboyd.bsky.social · last yr.

Incredible reporting from USC student journalists about how a ginned-up financial crisis is being used to crush faculty and staff power.

Person trailing after a car shouting "Uber STOP" as if the driver would respond to it like their name

the fascist Trump admin is coming after Wikipedia now. the letter reads like a crowd-sourced listicle.

Sarah McLaughlin@sarahemclaugh.bsky.social · last yr.

New Ed Martin letter—this time to Wikipedia about its tax-exempt status. In it, he asks about topics including its editorial practices, editor anonymity, "hateful content and conduct by editors," and content used to train LLMs. www.thefp.com/p/trump-pros... Letter: drive.google.com/file/d/1ocNy...

"With Rogers’ arrest, there have been nine firearm-related busts in or near the Naperville Topgolf parking lot this year, Krakow confirmed."

whet moser@whetmoser.com · last yr.

this is amazing, there’s even a graphic of topgolf parking lot gun arrests by month

I had at least 17 hours worth of material queued up for my most recent flight

Dr. Casey Fiesler@cfiesler.bsky.social · last yr.

So it turns out that if for several days you say "I'll do that on the plane," you can end up with a 2.5 hour flight and like 5 hours of work you said you'd do.

thank you for bringing this to our attention

bryan newbold (⛱️ sabbatical mode)@bnewbold.net · last yr.

@sorry.it.s.really.hard.to.type.with.b.igpa.ws nice handle

Smart strategic investment and political gesture, but let's not pretend these one-offs will save American science and research. Multiple orders of magnitude too small. www.theguardian.com/education/20...

Norway launches scheme to lure top researchers away from US universities

Research council launches 100m kroner fund as Norwegian government calls for the protection of academic freedom

theguardian.com

seems normal www.wsj.com/us-news/educ...

Fearing Trump’s Visa Crackdown, College Students Race to Scrub Op-Eds

Campus newspapers are confronting ethics debates as foreign students ask that their names and views be removed from past articles.

wsj.com

my negotiating tactics culminate in allcaps STOP too

Well-put take on destruction of NSF misinformation research (from an NSF program director whose program funded plenty of it!)

Mary Feeney@mkfeeney.bsky.social · last yr.

For the last 3 yrs, I was the director for the Science of Science program at the NSF. We funded projects on science communication - science communication to the public, communication of public priorities to scientists, citizens engagement & participation in science. 🧵

Thank you @durbin.senate.gov for your service.

Senator Dick Durbin@durbin.senate.gov · last yr.

The decision of whether to run for re-election has not been easy. I truly love the job of being a United States Senator. But in my heart, I know it’s time to pass the torch. So, I am announcing today that I will not be seeking re-election at the end of my term.

April 24 at CASBS | 2025 Sage-CASBS Award Lecture featuring @dacemoglumit.bsky.social "Institutions, Technology and Prosperity" Acemoglu will review the main motivations & arguments of his work on comparative development, colonialism, and institutional change. Event details & RSVP: bit.ly/3RqiJ7S

Northwestern faculty passed in a landslide strong resolutions pushing for defense of academic freedom, integrity, and shared accountable university governance drive.google.com/file/d/1FVu5...

.@cfiesler.bsky.social's research on AI Literacy was abruptly defunded by the Trump administration, possibly because it also included work on misinformation -- who needs those things, i guess? www.nytimes.com/2025/04/22/s...

National Science Foundation Terminates Hundreds of Active Research Awards

The agency targeted grants focused on diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as research on misinformation.

nytimes.com