Today is the day the story There Will Come Soft Rain is set. An amazing and heartbreaking work of fiction for our modern age. Read it here:
a wooly man without a face@jojororo.bsky.social · 6d agoRyan Hagen
@alltheshapes.bsky.social
Sociologist studying risk, disaster, and social change http://ryan-hagen.com
a wooly man without a face@jojororo.bsky.social · 6d ago
The journal article is paywalled but I wrote a post summarizing it, about how society is shaped by the distributed work we all do when we find ourselves wrong-footed by events.
The Invisible Heel
How we shape the world when things get out of hand
memoriesofthefuture.substack.com
Ryan Hagen@alltheshapes.bsky.social · last wk.Why does it feel like we’re still experiencing the social aftershocks of COVID? In this paper (finally in print!) we offer an explanation: in crises people change how they think and act to try to make their lives predictable again. This work of repair isn’t always successful, or always constructive.
Why does it feel like we’re still experiencing the social aftershocks of COVID? In this paper (finally in print!) we offer an explanation: in crises people change how they think and act to try to make their lives predictable again. This work of repair isn’t always successful, or always constructive.
Repertoires of repair: managing ontological insecurity during the COVID-19 pandemic
Abstract. This article examines the practices used by people who, while in a state of crisis, attempt to restore the sense of continuity and dependability
academic.oup.com
This is just to say I have OCRed the text thet was in tne arch:ve and whicb yov were prabaldy seamhing for "breahtast" Fargme ms fheg mem debo:w5 sb ?mccf mmb 5c oc1b
I wonder how much Nolan’s Odyssey, a movie about a clever guy with existential guilt over an idea he had that he thinks doomed civilization, is about his guilt for his socially corrosive Batman movies, which are beloved and misunderstood by the most toxic people of the past decade?
Thomas Jefferson recorded the weather on July 4, 1776. It was in the 60s and 70s. Today's forecast? Around 100 degrees. Here's a fascinating look at the weather on the day America declared its independence — and how it compares with today: www.capitalweather.com/july-4-weath...
RIP Herman Melville, you would have loved that the US is spending its 250th birthday fixated on a monumental reflecting pool in the nation’s capitol
Moby Dick@mobydickatsea.bsky.social · 6mo agoNarcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned.
“Europe was meant to be shocked into action after a 2003 heatwave killed over 70,000 people. But the deranged idea—as Amitav Ghosh puts it—that things are under control, that bad things only happen to the far away, persists.“ @katemac.bsky.social & I: phenomenalworld.org/analysis/glo...
Global Boiling | The Polycrisis
Stocks and flows, action and inaction in the planetary impasse
phenomenalworld.org
Do you like surprises? Do you want to not foresee events and then fail to understand them afterwards? Use Polymarket, the site where qualitative ignorance is tallied into quantitative errors.
Kathryn Cramer 📚🎨@kathryncramer.bsky.social · 2mo agohahahaha!
When reality surpasses fiction! Top: fictional forecast for August 2050, broadcast by French TV in 2014 to warn about the consequences of global warming. Bottom: Real French forecast for yesterday, June 22, 2026.
In this story about a study of how socioeconomic factors shape brain development, the reporter doesn’t quote any sociologists or economists. Why is that a problem? The concluding graf says we should focus on “stress, sleep, and screens” to fix inequality, all of which are guaranteed dead ends.
Socioeconomic factors are becoming 'biologically embedded' in children's brains
A study of more than 2,300 9- to 10-year-olds found that socioeconomic factors explained most differences in the preteens' brain development.
npr.org
“Has AI made human pratfalls obsolete?”
Brugal Enthusiast 🇯🇲@knewyorksfinest.life · 3mo agoYO PLEASE WATCH THIS IM FUCKING SCREAMING
Story out today on my new research in the @nytimes.com We find ICE activity in Trump 2.0 hurt the labor market and hurt US-born workers. Article: www.nytimes.com/2026/05/19/r... Paper: www.nber.org/papers/w3512...
Trump’s Deportations Are Costing Americans Jobs, Study Finds
nytimes.com
I wish I didn’t know as much about the end of Reconstruction as I do. If you understood what is being unleashed now, how it will touch every aspect of our civic life, and how difficult it will be to undo it, you wouldn’t be able to think about anything else.
This 1952 memo from the Pentagon UFO files is superb There is no point preparing for aliens ‘because no one of consequence is going to take this rubbish seriously unless it happens. At that point, our policy will be determined in the traditional manner of grand panic.’ 🤣 www.war.gov/medialink/uf...
Finally got to listen to this podcast miniseries on FEMA and it’s fantastic. First episode is the best-reported piece I’ve read or heard on the origins of the “FEMA camp” conspiracies; makes a good argument about how that line of paranoia was leveraged to dismantle the agency today.
On the Media@onthemedia.bsky.social · 3mo agoHow did FEMA, the agency tasked with saving America, end up distrusted and defunded? Listen to Ep. 1 of our new series, American Emergency: The Movement to Kill FEMA, hosted by @micahloewinger.bsky.social and ft. @vermontgmg.bsky.social lnk.to/onthemedia/b...
‘Point of no return’: New Orleans relocation must start now due to sea level, study finds
‘Point of no return’: New Orleans relocation must start now due to sea level, study finds
Louisiana’s cultural hotspot could be surrounded by Gulf of Mexico before end of this century, authors say
theguardian.com
Giving a talk at Dartmouth today about close reading as a practice for cultivating accountability (the ability to give an account of oneself and others), sensibility (sensitivity of one's sensorium), and gentleness (eliciting potentiality in others). Up with human flourishing through liberal arts!
Anna Kornbluh@annakornbluh.bsky.social · 4mo ago
It's not longing for inconvenience, it's wanting to restore agency: newsletter.danhon.com/archive/s21e...
s21e06: It's (not) the economy stupid; gaining convenience at the expense of agency
0.0 Context Setting It’s Thursday, 16 April, 2026 and unseasonably cold in Portland, Oregon. Before that, it was unseasonably warm. This jackpot sucks. Oh...
newsletter.danhon.com
The New Yorker@newyorker.com · 4mo agoPeople are pining for old technologies—CD players, VCRs, Walkmans. What’s behind our longing for inconvenience? www.newyorker.com/culture/essa...
One funny thing is that a role science plays in Moby Dick is deflating the idea that MD has a specific hatred for Ahab. The more we learn about Sperm Whales the more possible it is that not only does Moby Dick hate Ahab but also, when around other whales, absolutely will not shut up about it.
Daniel Aldana Cohen@aldasky.bsky.social · 4mo agoBeen reading Moby Dick—so good! Love this story. www.theguardian.com/environment/...
The NSF 2027 budget has noted that they will close out the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Science Program (SBE). This is not a good thing. nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov/files/FY-202...
This is the bleakest post imaginable. You look at an engraving of a guy whipping a horse that’s pulling a wagon of coal. Your options for existing are “am I the horse or the coal.”
The Atlantic@theatlantic.com · 5mo agoKnowledge workers are all wondering if AI will replace their jobs, @annielowrey.bsky.social writes—"but there’s a better question for white-collar workers to ask themselves: Am I coal, or am I a horse?”: theatln.tc/Lq0ZgX57
A bright thread running through Malcolm Harris’ history of Palo Alto is how race science was woven into Silicon Valley’s culture and structure from the very beginning.
Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 5mo ago“What was really surprising to me during my initial dive into all of this was how, when you look at the question of superintelligence as a documentarian or journalist, it doesn’t take long before you smack your forehead into the low doorframe of race science, because it’s baked into this technology”
What’s the matter with you? What’s the matter with you, shipmate?
Disturbing anecdotal reports of "AI psychosis" and negative psychological effects have been emerging in the news. But what actually happens during these lengthy delusional "spirals"? In our preprint, we analyze chat logs from 19 users who experienced severe psychological harm🧵👇