In an Eagle Scouts rabbit hole (not for the first time, sigh). 1st image: text from a 2020 article by the official Scouting America org 2nd image: re-mixed (and extremely wrong) AI slop, posted on LinkedIn by someone with >10k followers

Mathematicians birthed LLMs. You've forgotten your mommy, OpenAI. My new piece in Wired: www.wired.com/story/solvin...

Solving Math’s Greatest Problems Was an Art Form. Then Came AI

Mathematics has been one of humanity’s most creative endeavors, akin to painting and poetry. Now, mathematicians are trying to save it from the brute force of AI.

wired.com

Super interesting paper by Giebel et al. showing how education policy researchers tend to ignore Asians in their research (even when the data on them should be available)... and when they are included, they are increasingly being positioned as White-adjacent. journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

journals.sagepub.com

🚨 Job alert 🚨 The Department of Sociology at Ohio State University is hiring: 1) Asst prof in tech and society 2) Assoc or full prof in social stratification osu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/OSUCareers?q... should pull up both openings Happy to answer questions.

🚨 Job alert 🚨 The Department of Sociology at Ohio State University is hiring: 1) Asst prof in tech and society 2) Assoc or full prof in social stratification osu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/OSUCareers?q... should pull up both openings Happy to answer questions.

NEW from @pewresearch.org: For the first time, a majority of adults under 30 say they're more concerned than excited about AI. And 73% say AI will lead to fewer jobs in the US, up from 61% who expressed that view two years ago.

Young adults in the U.S. are increasingly wary of AI, concerned it will take jobs

About half of Americans say they're more concerned than excited about AI, and young adults' concern is rising.

pewresearch.org

I have a footnote about this in my (thisclose to finished) book manuscript!! >> "Fellow academics have asked me if this is why they receive so many emails from high schoolers asking for research assistantships. The answer is yes." (I'm writing about advice from private admissions consultants.)

Christina Wolbrecht@cwolbrecht.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Folks, who is telling high school students -- who I am sure are smart and talented and ambitious -- to cold email college professors and volunteer to do research or collaborate with them? This is not a good idea. Please stop this.

If you have so much work to do that you feel you need AI in order to get it all done: you don't. You need a union.

New: We found 50 cops who misused Flock cameras and other license-plate readers for personal purposes, often to spy on their girlfriends or ex-wives. He "watched every single move I made. ... Who do you turn the chief of police in to?" wapo.st/3S6rTuo

She left her ex. He secretly tracked her through a network of policing cameras.

Flock’s array of license-plate cameras was built to fight crime. But at least 50 law enforcement officers were charged with or accused of misusing it and other systems.

wapo.st

I think people understandably but magically believe that surveilling your loved ones will protect them from harm because it promises knowledge and control. But when you get more knowledge but little actual control, your anxiety goes through the roof

Tressie McMillan Cottom@tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 3mo ago

None of this tech has made us safer but you cannot argue that with scared parents, scared targets or discrimination, scared caregivers, scared spouses etc. You just can’t.

My first time on the Vergecast! Have a listen if you've ever wondered what's the deal with quantum computing, or if you've never wondered at all (which is most of my friends and family).

Marina Galperina@mfortki.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Talking quantum computer hype and Majorana drama with @sophurky.bsky.social and @jake--k.bsky.social, and fulfilling my lifelong dream of being head on thumbnail www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnIE...

gotta love when a whole education system makes itself vulnerable by making a large number of institutions dependent on a proprietary lms whose continuity or reliability they have no control over *chef's kiss* now let's do it again, but bigger, with ai

Recently out in @ersjournal.com: @vanctran.bsky.social, Mehr Mumtaz, and I analyzed 50 years' worth of research about Asian diasporic populations. 🔓 Open access: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Asian diaspora research in Ethnic and Racial Studies, 1978–2025

What research has been conducted on the Asian global diaspora, and who produces this knowledge? We compiled a corpus of 128 ERS articles published from 1978 to 2025, focusing on four Anglophone cou...

tandfonline.com

New in Big Data & Society 🗞️ Alejandra Regla-Vargas, AJ Alvero, and Hajar Yazdiha analyze anti-Asian hate and counter-hate on social media during COVID-19, showing how hate and resistance enact racial projects through shifting frames. 🔗 doi.org/10.1177/2053...

Can AI please fold my clothes, that’s what I really need

🧵on my new paper "Synthetic personas distort the structure of human belief systems" w Roberto Cerina I'm v excited about... 🚨 Do synthetic samples look like human samples? We compare 28 LLMs to the 2024 General Social Survey (GSS) to find out + develop host of diagnostics...

Morning read. A good paper about how admissions “consultants” make sense of their work in a deeply, deliberately unequal competition for a limited good. Humans are good at making stories. academic.oup.com/socpro/advan...

Inequality and moral meaning-making in the admissions consulting profession

Abstract. Prior research has described how middle-class and affluent families draw on private supplemental educational resources to help their children mai

academic.oup.com

No document will protect you. All they have to do is take it from you and "lose" it; take it from you and say you never gave it to them; claim it's fake ⬇️; make a new rule that you need ANOTHER document. Citizenship is a made-up status that governments decide the rules for. No one is free until all.

America's Voice@americasvoice.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Dulce Consuelo Diaz Morales was born in Maryland. She has a valid U.S. birth certificate, medical and immunization records, and sworn affidavits. Yet, ICE claims her documents are “not authentic” and has held her in immigration detention for days.

New in @socprobsjournal.bsky.social w/ @estelabdiaz.bsky.social: the rapid growth of the admissions consulting industry has raised questions about inequality, privilege, and merit. We combine two original data sources to ask how consultants make sense of their work. academic.oup.com/socpro/advan...

Inequality and moral meaning-making in the admissions consulting profession

Abstract. Prior research has described how middle-class and affluent families draw on private supplemental educational resources to help their children mai

academic.oup.com

Two-thirds of Democrats say their own party makes them feel frustrated. By far the most commonly cited reason is that the party is not pushing back hard enough against Trump. www.pewresearch.org/politics/202...

New from me +friends! When my colleagues and I decided not to grade our course assignments, I was certain it would blow up in my face. But it didn't! We studied how our students responded—and discussed what we found on the Teaching Sociology podcast. sagesociology.libsyn.com/teaching-soc...

Sage Sociology: Teaching Sociology - Free to Learn: Ungrading in Sociology Courses

Authors Alex M. Kempler, Sam Mitchell, and Dawson P. R. Vosburg discuss the article, "," published in the October 2025 issue of Teaching Sociology.

sagesociology.libsyn.com

Turn off location permissions for as many apps as you can. (3/4)

Turn off your phone’s “advertising ID” to make it harder for location data brokers to track you. (2/4)

I do not want the video. I will never watch the video. I usually won’t even give the video the effort of complaint. I just want to read the news story. Give me the text. This would be my Ted Talk but that would be text too.

With alt text:

You cannot effectively delete what is posted publicly on Bluesky. Data scientists (not affiliated with Bluesky) and commercial companies capture it all live, every comma and em dash. Anything said in the heat of the moment could follow you to a job interview ten years from now. Capisce?

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌@chanda.blacksky.app · last yr.

Remember that you don’t have to post your first reaction and Bluesky is forever even if you delete

Remember, if you encounter what seems like an implausible survey finding, ask: 1. Were survey respondents selected randomly or was this an opt-in poll? 2. Could the results, especially for young adults, be driven by bogus respondents? Keep this post in mind: www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/... 🧪