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Caleb Scoville

@calebscoville.bsky.social
6K followers 4.2K following 1.1K posts

sociology prof @Tufts and Andrew Carnegie Fellow studying our contradictory relationship with nature. extraction, knowledge, conservation, political division. projects on the Delta Smelt and partisanship and the environment. calebscoville.com

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Caleb Scoville @calebscoville.bsky.social · 14h
a student journalist asked me for a comment on “viewpoint diversity.” rather than answer their specific questions, I offered the following comment about one reason I find the terms of the debate to be frustrating and insufficient.
As a sociologist who studies partisanship in the USA, I think the terms of this debate are largely backwards. Yes, universities and campuses are mostly populated by left-of-center individuals. But I do not think it makes a lot of sense to focus this conversation exclusively on how universities have changed without asking the same question about the political parties. The partisan coalitions have transformed significantly over the past several decades, with college graduates increasingly leaving the Republican Party and sorting into the Democratic PartyIt is an empirical question, but my guess is that changes in the partisan coalitions do much more to explain the political lean of university populations today than anything universities have done in particular. Do we really think that people decide if they’re going to go to college based on politics? Or is it more likely that the kinds of people who are more likely to go to college are increasingly the kinds of people who identify as Democrats/liberals? What universities should do about this is a valid question, but we should not treat “liberal” and “conservative” as fixed or sacred identities worthy of equal representation in the academy as such. They are dynamic categories that have become increasingly associated with educational attainment in the first place. I happen to think education polarization produces bad politics (e.g., the current attacks on the public funding for science), but I am less concerned about its direct effects on education and research per se. Disagreement is alive and well in academia, even when it does not line up with the national partisan divide.
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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
we’re hiring an assistant professor in American politics 🐘 apply.interfolio.com/194599
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Jeff Sharlet @jeffsharlet.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
I give up. I’m moving into a cave.
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Nate Ela @nateela.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
✅ Book has cover (and looks v. nice) ✅ Proofs are proofed ✅ Available for pre-orders now All systems go, set to drop on March 9... press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...
Cover for a book titled "Cultivating the City: The Long Struggle to Put Land to Use," with an image of a community garden in the foreground, Chicago skyline in the background, and a map of Chicago traced into the blue sky above.
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bleddwgan @radekllundain.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
What will finally drive me mad is people using compute as a noun
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Sammy Roth @sammyroth.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
“The rail line has been there since the 1880s, but in the last five years, there’s been no other time in history where we’ve had this much impact.” El Niño is accelerating the climate threat to SoCal's Pacific Surfliner: www.latimes.com/california/s... via @summerrlin.bsky.social
latimes.com
El Niño threatens the beloved Pacific Surfliner. Can the iconic train survive the winter?
A section of railway in San Clemente, as well as other portions in coastal Orange County, have repeatedly shut down for landslides, coastal erosion and rockfalls. Another stormy winter is coming.
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Noel Healy @drnoelhealy.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
The assault on US universities didn't start in 2025. Our new paper traces the decades of corporate capture that made it possible, and why climate research is a primary target. Open access: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
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Caleb Scoville @calebscoville.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
fake list. no Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!
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Daniel Aldana Cohen @aldasky.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
I'm thrilled to be quoted in @dharna.bsky.social's terrific piece on the candidates running on climate politics in new and surprising ways. Candidates *can* center climate politics and win—by embedding them in the everyday crises of working class life. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...
theguardian.com
Disaster insurance, datacenters, right to repair: meet the midterm candidates running on green policies
Some of the everyday struggles animating voters have a climate link lurking in the background
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Caleb Scoville @calebscoville.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
we are entering that critical moment in the semester where there is a non-trivial chance of the responses to all of those outstanding scheduling polls colliding into tangle of calendar conflicts.
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Caleb Scoville @calebscoville.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
mass hysteria
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Caleb Scoville @calebscoville.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Tufts University’s Environmental Studies Program has three openings this year. These are all full time non-tenure track teaching positions (although the PoP position is a bit different than the other two). Full time teaching faculty are unionized (SEIU) at Tufts University. Ads below:
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Emily Atkin @emorwee.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
A few weekends ago I went to Miami and attended 9 open houses in extremely high-risk flood areas to see what agents are telling prospective buyers about them. Here is my journey
heated.world
The open houses at the edge of disaster
What are buyers being told about climate risk in Miami? I posed as one to find out.
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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
If any of these guys spent 1 hour with someone outside of their ideological bubble they might have learned something. For example, if you think you can cut the deficit via personnel cuts, you are a fucking clown who does not deserve to be listened to. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/a-year-on-...
Musk seems to have genuinely thought the government was Twitter. This was one of the rationales for hiring him - he dramatically cut Twitter’s personnel and underlying costs, and no big deal! But one major difference is that unlike a tech firm, personnel for the federal government is a minor cost. Because federal employee salaries make up only about 5% to 6% of spending, you can fire a huge proportion of them, and barely put a dent in federal spending.
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Caleb Scoville @calebscoville.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
there‘s still time for me (my 40th is next June)
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Caleb Scoville @calebscoville.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
it seems like a condition of being called an "industry" should be actually making something.
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Le Cagle @lecagle.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
you are *not* prepared for what this technology company is called, nothing can prepare you
wkyt.com
UK installs AI facial scanning technology at residence halls
The University of Kentucky is installing artificial intelligence facial scanning technology on several campus buildings.
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Caleb Scoville @calebscoville.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Do others in non-PhD granting sociology departments get frequent emails (with strong AI writing energy) from prospective PhD students asking if they are accepting graduate students? I always offer a polite and informative reply but it’s a bit strange.
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Richard Waite @waiterich.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
*stares in river water over-promised since 1922*
Sankey diagram showing Colorado River Basin’s water availability (left) and consumption (right). Consumption is mostly by agriculture. Consumption by crop is mostly cattle feed.
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Paul Ford @ftrain.com · 16/09/2026
hey I heard you like sankey diagrams that show huge populations making terrible decisions
A very complicated Sankey diagram showing the usage of electricity in the United States. Or the left are sources of energy and on the right are consumers, so, for example, nuclear is on the left and residential is on the right. Petroleum dominates.
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Stephen Nuñez @socio-steve.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Incentives are a lie.
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Caleb Scoville @calebscoville.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
what planet do people who worry more about the “AI apocalypse” than climate change live on?
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Caleb Scoville @calebscoville.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
I think most people don't understand that the politics of a lot of podcast bros is rooted, not so much in "ideology," but in an antipathy for politics itself, and therefore a rejection of whoever happens to be in power at the moment, especially when things (vaguely) seem to be going badly.
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Caleb Scoville @calebscoville.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
I am increasingly frustrated with analyses of partisan sorting that treat party labels as contingent (Democrat/Republican) but ideological ones (liberal/conservative or left/right) as obvious and transhistorical. Clearly there is contingency to the latter as well. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
nytimes.com
Opinion | This Is Why So Many Voters Hate Both Parties (Gift Article)
Most voters have messier views than their partisan labels would suggest.
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Caleb Scoville @calebscoville.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
www.nytimes.com/2026/09/16/c...
nytimes.com
Trump Administration Moves to Gut a Core Endangered Species Protection (Gift Article)
An internal memo reinterprets the law so that only the intentional killing of animals, not collateral harm, is illegal.
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Caleb Scoville @calebscoville.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
somewhere in Virginia, there is a datacenter full of skeets berating OPs for not including alt text.
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Daniel Kay Hertz @danielkayhertz.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Your 20s are for believing everything is structural and your 30s are for learning that actually it's often just some guy or small group of guys (gender neutral)
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Caleb Scoville @calebscoville.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Just came across this "climateskeptics" thread about my work. Setting aside the illiteracy of the post, the author's free associations unwittingly support the thesis of my work on how environmental problems acquire partisan meaning. www.reddit.com/r/climateske...
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Dan Hirschman @asociologist.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
For sociology, Cao finds similar patterns with an interesting breakdown by subfield:
Image from Cao 2026 showing the rise in LLM language across sociology subfields.
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Waldo Jaquith @waldo.net · 15/09/2026
Please admire this slop-guide to the U.S. government that my kid received in his ninth grade government class. “Watergsstate Impreachment Imeachment bolity Precedent”
A sort of map of US government, with lots of arrows and words. It’s labelled “SIMPLIFIED CONCEPT MAP: U.S. GOVERNMENT.”Close up of the diagram:

Example: Watergate Impeachment Key 2473 - Watergsstate Impreachment
Imeachment bolitiy Precedent
Legislative Checks
Executive
Veto
No
Executive Cheeks
Example:
Washington's 2-Ter-in Precedent
Example 3: Impeachment Precedent Key 2016 - Declares political inconinitional comnoladunt precedions hutsite avothov Uncostitutional: Bleachmens on the divisience of the Barizon Precedent
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The New York Times @nytimes.com · 14/09/2026
Breaking News: The E.P.A. is said to be planning to announce that the U.S. will no longer limit climate pollution from power plants.
nyti.ms
E.P.A. Will Erase Limits on Climate Pollution From Power Plants
Generation of electricity is the second largest source of carbon dioxide and other planet-warming gases in the United States.
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Seth Rockman @sethrockman.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
This is a big one: Brown University is searching for the next director of the Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice. Please help us identify excellent candidates to lead this signature program into the future. Please write me with ideas; please share in your networks; please apply.
networks.h-net.org
Brown University - Professor and Director of the Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice | H-Net
1. Academic Accomplishment. We seek a scholar with a strong scholarly record, including excellence in both research and teaching, appropriate for appointment at the level of full professor in a social science, humanities, or arts department at Brown.
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Tomas Hirst @tomashirstecon.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Another clear and knowable downstream consequence of letting scammers get rich off crypto was that that money would boomerang back into politics in ways that were highly likely to try to skirt around fundraising laws and distort policy incentives.
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Daniel Swain @weatherwest.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Fielding questions re: this article w/bizarre factual errors. First, there's no "Montecito County" in CA. Second, 2 fires are actually in *Monterey,* & 3rd in *Mendocino*. Third, 60k ac have *not* burned in either fictional Montecito nor real Mendocino.🤨
latimes.com
Three Montecito County fires near Big Sur have burned nearly 60,000 acres
In Mendocino County, the total area burned by three fires grew to nearly 60,000 acres on Saturday.
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Jacob T. Levy @jacobtlevy.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
W/o getting drawn into the "seriously or literally" / "it'll never happen" trap, we need to stomp *hard* on the continuing effort to undermine Article 1 power of the purse by saying that this or that revenue stream makes something outside the normal budget process. 1/ www.nbcnews.com/business/eco...
nbcnews.com
Lutnick says Trump’s $5,000 checks for Americans wouldn’t rely on taxpayer funds
A top White House official suggested Congress would use a budget process to fund them. Vice President JD Vance had said tariff revenues.
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Colin Jerolmack @jerolmack.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
NYU Environmental Studies is hiring! We seek applications for a tenure-track position in the area of Environmental Governance, broadly conceived, at the rank of Assistant Professor. Please Re-post, apply if interested, and spread the word. apply.interfolio.com/192746
apply.interfolio.com
Apply - Interfolio {{$ctrl.$state.data.pageTitle}} - Apply - Interfolio
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Daniel Moser @dmoser.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Pollution levels in London after 10 years of advancing sustainable transport.
Map showing Lower Pollution levels in London after 10 years of advancing sustainable transport.
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Caleb Scoville @calebscoville.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
about as close as you can get to a real world experiment in the effects of elite cues.
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Caleb Scoville @calebscoville.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
what does “political economy” even mean anymore?
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Colette Delawalla, PhD @cdelawalla.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
BREAKING: OMB PROPOSED RULE IS PAUSED UNTIL DEC 11th. This is a direct result of OUR ACTIVISM! It's a critical step in the right direction AND the fight continues. NOW, it's time to revoke the rule. Email here: fight2win.standupforscience.net/campaign/rev... www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...
theguardian.com
House passes funding bill to avoid shutdown before midterms
Continuing resolution to approve government spending until 11 December passes 370-48 and will now go to Trump
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Zeke Hausfather @zekehausfather.com · 01/09/2026
The emissions scenarios underlying the next generation of climate model runs that will be featured in the upcoming IPCC 7th Assessment Report are officially out! I have a big new explainer over at Carbon Brief taking an in-depth look at what they mean and whats changed: www.carbonbrief.org/...
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Caleb Scoville @calebscoville.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
RIP Wendell Berry www.nytimes.com/2026/08/31/u...
nytimes.com
Wendell Berry, Writer Who Extolled America’s Agrarian Past, Dies at 92
A Kentucky farmer, he railed against agribusiness and championed small family farms and the environment, winning widespread acclaim.
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Caleb Scoville @calebscoville.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
Not going to pile on this extremely wrong post, but instead point out that a big difference between 2026 and 2008 is that people who experienced 2008 were at different points in the lifecourse than they are now. That and the fallibility of memory make subjective comparisons over time very difficult.
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Caleb Scoville @calebscoville.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
I had no idea there were spiders this big in Massachusetts! And apparently they eat fish. #fishingspider
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Caleb Scoville @calebscoville.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
the natural gas death spiral is increasingly visible in our eversource bills. we are edging toward canceling our natural gas account with each appliance replaced...
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Rolling Stone @rollingstone.com · 25/08/2026
Dolly Parton, the beloved global entertainment icon who sold more than 100 million records and whose songwriting prowess and sure-handed approach to her career reshaped the face of country music, popular music, and the entertainment industry at large, has died. 🕊️
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Katharine Hayhoe @katharinehayhoe.com · 23/08/2026
I've heard thousands of climate denial arguments over the last few decades. But do you know they all fall into one of 5 categories? 1. It's not real 2. It's not us 3. It's not bad 4. We can't fix it 5. You can't trust the info/experts Source: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
A classification tree showing the breakdown of climate denial arguments.
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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
Also this is the best map I've seen of where the water goes. 79% to ag, 56% of that 79% to livestock.
nytimes.com
The Colorado River Is Shrinking. See What’s Using All the Water. (Published 2023)
Hint: It’s less about long showers and more about what’s for dinner.
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Caleb Scoville @calebscoville.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
My sister and I sadly lost our father, Richard Scoville, this summer. It was sudden, and by all accounts, premature. This obituary was the most difficult thing we have ever written, but I believe it captures his spirit as well as words can. lostcoastoutpost.com/2026/aug/19/...
lostcoastoutpost.com
OBITUARY: Richard Scoville, 1963-2026
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