I have had my quibbles with open science in sociology, but I do think that if people are going to start using LLMs as part of analysis, sociology journals must mandate reproducibility norms. Stochastic proprietary algorithms are not conducive to cumulative science

the @chicagoreader.com's august print issue is out this week and it's all about surveillance 📹 i often write about ai and drones and alprs. but the stories in this issue focus on the quieter, more subversive ways people in power have built a society for fascism to thrive. more in my staff note:

The quiet infrastructure of control - Chicago Reader

Staff note: August 2026 Surveillance issue

chicagoreader.com

"America is broadly Islamophobic, and so any enemy of Islam is a friend of ours"

"We should consider the use of facial recognition tools by local police as a type of unchecked experiment on human subjects... Local police have adopted the technology to see if it "works," usually without a basis for its efficacy or guidance as to best practices." @elizabethjoh.bsky.social

yea, i buy the general argument that their huge spending shows their weakness (it used to be a tacit understanding that you don't touch the israel issue, now it's open debate), but not sure what i think about their tactics in 2026. i guess if i were them i'd also still spend the money

post malone ergo propter malone@proptermalone.bsky.social · 6h ago

btw if you’re ticked at AIPAC for whatever reason them spending a maximum amount of money to barely lose is ideal, 10/10, just as a pure matter of don’t-know-ball and forward outcome for them as an organization. this cycle has been catastrophic for them purely in terms of inputs and outputs

Almost every LLM that reaches a broad audience is quantized—compressed to run cheaply. USC's Emilio Ferrara argues this compression is treated as a safety nonevent, when it should be treated as a change to the deployed system. This has policy implications, he says.

The Model You Audit Is Not the Model You Ship

Almost every LLM that reaches a broad audience is quantized—with under-appreciated ramifications for AI safety, writes Emilio Ferrara.

techpolicy.press

1.5 million primary voters seems like a large number! There’s 10 million people in Michigan. The NYC mayoral primary last year had about 1 million participants in a city of 8 million.

so NBC called the race for El-Sayed around 2am and Decision Desk called it around 9. I guess the AP is being conservative about it

people from michigan are united by being able to point to their place of residence on their hand

Ben Rosen@benrosen.bsky.social · 15h ago

i know votes are still being counted but the more i look at this michigan senate map the more it becomes clear that it kind of looks like a mitten

We have video games now, except chatgpt take GPU

Revan@revan.eurosky.social · 15h ago

So this is basically one of the entry points to becoming a reactionary

there are 2 types of people in society. those who thank the bus driver, and barbarians

unfortunately there are soooo many people that want me in their group chats on here that 100 won’t be enough :/

Bluesky@bsky.app · 23h ago

Update: group chats can now host up to 100 members.

Yeah but have you considered it makes for really funny philosophy textbook illustrations

Asawin Suebsaeng@swin24.bsky.social · 24h ago

One reason I don’t like the trolley problem is because are we supposing people can’t get out of the way

Just so everyone knows, this is a tried-and-true mainstream media tactic. For progressives/leftist candidates, every election is a “crucial test” and any loss would serve as proof to the media that the latest left-side moment is at its end. Any win, though, just means it’s time to find a new test.

Politico@politico.com · 2d ago

Michigan will provide another crucial test of whether progressives can not only keep up their winning streak in safe-blue seats but also break through in battlegrounds crucial for control of Congress. The stakes for the Democratic Party are huge.

"If there's one thing about the wealthy people in the United States," Lopez explained, "it's that they are big whiny babies, and that they've got a lot of money to make sure that you hear all their issues that they have with anything that goes on." hellgatenyc.com/nyc-tenants-...

NYC Tenants React to Pied-à-Terrorism: 'I Think It Speaks to How Detached Rich People Are'

A few of the millions of New Yorkers who don't own a home weigh in on the controversy.

hellgatenyc.com

A 39-year-old El Salvadoran man, who was being held at Delaney Hall, has died, the man's family says. He's the father of a 12-year-old US citizen daughter and has lived in the country for nearly 20 years. www.thecityreporter.nyc/2026/08/03/s...

El Salvadoran Man Held by ICE at Delaney Hall Dies, Family Says

The detainee had an extensive medical history, including epilepsy, according to a lawsuit. He had complained about his face and hand going numb just before his death, his mother said.

thecityreporter.nyc

"On the day classes resumed their regular scheduling in September, one protester splattered the university’s famous Alma Mater statue in red paint. Following the incident, NYPD investigators deployed an extensive array of high-tech surveillance and investigative tools to identify the alleged vandal"

NYPD Used High-Tech Surveillance to Find Gaza Paint Splatter Protester, Docs Show

Throwing paint on a Columbia statue seems minor, but the NYPD uses tremendous resources when pro-Palestine protesters are in the crosshairs.

theintercept.com

On the day that Barbara Synder, Douglas Girod and Ronald Daniels and the @aau.edu capitulated to the Trump administration, it's worth looking back at history. First. The Red Scare. @aau.edu was there to bend the knee to Senator Joe McCarthy and HUAC. 1/ www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu...

How Elite Colleges Aided Censorship During the Red Scares

Powerful organizations during the Red Scares crafted a world where “academic freedom” was conditional on political allegiance.

insidehighered.com

New Yorkers had to subsidize the $117 million that the NYPD paid out for misconduct lawsuits in 2025 alone, even though most of them were never personally abused by a cop. Where's your worried op-ed on that one?

USA TODAY Opinion@usatodayopinion.usatoday.com · 2d ago

Opinion: Mamdani's idea may sound appealing, but it's NYC taxpayers who will take the hit, subsidizing discounts they may never even use.

Public safety governance is already a thorny topic (for the most part, the public has little power over CJ policy), and technology just makes it worse. Sarah Brayne's research shows how technologists who work with police use proprietary algorithms that resist transparency. It gets worse and worse

Jason Koebler@jasonkoebler.bsky.social · 2d ago

Exclusive: We obtained a leaked playbook that Flock gives to cops to coach them on "how to speak to city council" to avoid getting their contracts canceled. Includes strategies like "own the narrative" by talking to mayor "before public comment periods" www.404media.co/own-the-narr...

Exclusive: We obtained a leaked playbook that Flock gives to cops to coach them on "how to speak to city council" to avoid getting their contracts canceled. Includes strategies like "own the narrative" by talking to mayor "before public comment periods" www.404media.co/own-the-narr...

‘Own the Narrative’: Leaked Flock Guide Shows How It Teaches Cops to Promote Its Tech

"This document shows a coordinated effort from Flock Safety to compel law enforcement agencies to convince our elected leaders to represent their interests as a company rather than the interests of co...

404media.co

Fascinating and encouraging

jon ben-menachem@jbenmenachem.com · 5d ago

Autopsies of Black Lives Matter and George Floyd protests often conclude that movements produced tough-on-crime backlash. My new study in Work and Occupations finds a different kind of movement outcome: BLM changed how local reporters cover cops and jails. 🧵 journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

more than 8 percent of all American newspaper journalists work in Manhattan, up from 2 percent in 2005 www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

NEW: In 2025 ICE obtained DNA from nearly one million people and funneled it into an FBI criminal database. The collection likely included DNA from young children and was backed by the threat of criminal prosecution. The raw genetic material is stored indefinitely. Free to read:

ICE Collected Nearly 1 Million People’s DNA Last Year—Including Young Children

Internal documents show ICE's DNA collection has skyrocketed in the second Trump administration. Now hundreds of thousands of people never convicted of a crime are in an FBI criminal database forever.

wired.com

This absolutely tracks my experience as a publisher

jon ben-menachem@jbenmenachem.com · 5d ago

Autopsies of Black Lives Matter and George Floyd protests often conclude that movements produced tough-on-crime backlash. My new study in Work and Occupations finds a different kind of movement outcome: BLM changed how local reporters cover cops and jails. 🧵 journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

There are 7 PR people for every journalist in the US. www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

cranky late night academic opinion: a lot of complaints about “capitalism” that you see online are more fundamentally about the obligation to work, which is a characteristic of basically all forms of historical political economy

This paper shows that immigration enforcement can _increase_ crime. Undocumented immigrants already have the lowest crime rate, but tough-on-immigration policy makes immigrants less likely to report crime. So immigration enforcement worsens the problem it was ostensibly meant to solve

I think two things can be true...

Max Dubler 🏳️‍🌈@maxdubler.com · 3d ago

I think my most genuinely unpopular take is that a widely held and genuine consumer preference for cheaper, lower-quality goods, not private equity, is driving the decline in quality of consumer goods like clothing and housewares.