iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Caleb Scoville @calebscoville.bsky.social · 12h

like in five years we went from being able to buy all kinds of cute patterned duvet covers to being limited to vaguely nautical, beige, and something that I can only describe as 1994 Mervyn’s flashback nightmare

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Caleb Scoville @calebscoville.bsky.social · 12h

who do I blame for the atrociously bland stylistic palette that dominates the contemporary shopping experience? MAHA? GenZ? Private equity?

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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 16h

To give a sense of scale, Musk is spending more on the midterms than he was on the 2024 election, and he was the biggest donor in that election. In 2025 he promised to pull back from politics and do much less political spending. Another lie.

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Caleb Scoville @calebscoville.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

like, one of the big problems in America is that the wealth is so concentrated in a handful of metros. so if this spreads then around, so be it. Normal people have been getting priced out of these places all along.

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Caleb Scoville @calebscoville.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I also think it might be a net positive for most normal Californians if there were fewer hyper rich in California.

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

As I always say to my students (sometimes with this specific example) you really need to think about the size of the effect and not just the sign. “Do rich people move in response to tax increases?” is not the right question for policy. The right question is, *how much* do they move?

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Caleb Scoville @calebscoville.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Honestly, an exodus of hyperwealthy people might be just what California needs.

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Caleb Scoville @calebscoville.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

I did manage to listen to an hour long podcast on grief while I was doing this. possibly related.

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Caleb Scoville @calebscoville.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

to give you a sense of my state of mind, I left my lunch at home, walked back home to retrieve it, picked up the outgoing mail at home, walked it over to the mailbox on my way back to work, then realized I had not actually picked up my lunch, and walked back to get it. ~three miles of walking.

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Dartmouth Arts and Sciences @dartmouthartsci.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Professors @brendannyhan.bsky.social and Jeffrey Friedman offer strategies for countering AI and restoring confidence in the integrity of writing assignments. “Removing such assignments from undergraduate curricula would, we believe, significantly erode the value of higher education,” they say.

chronicle.com

How to Assign Research Papers Again

Three ways to counter AI and restore confidence in the integrity of student writing.

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Caleb Scoville @calebscoville.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

there's someone on here who does long threads making fun of how trumpy people look and it's a very specific kind of cringe that I don't care enough to unpack but am annoyed enough to post this.

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Andrew Dessler @andrewdessler.com · 05/10/2026

Nice post by @zekehausfather.com on The Climate Brink. He analyzes the claim that renewables are all energy additions but are not actually eating into fossil fuels. The world without solar and wind? www.theclimatebrink.com/p/what-if-th...

theclimatebrink.com

What if the world hadn't built wind and solar?

Clean energy does not simply “add to” global energy use; it displaces fossil sources that would otherwise get built.

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William B. Fuckley @opinionhaver.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

It is a little disconcerting that so many people who know a lot about LLMs on a technical level appear to go a little insane. It would be like if there was a really cool and effective new kind of pen, and for some reason about 40% of the people involved in the pen making process went mad.

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Robert Simmon @rsimmon.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

With both Lake Powell and Lake Mead at record-lows, here’s a look at how their water levels have varied since Powell was filled in 1980. Neither has recovered from a severe drought in the early 2020s, while Colorado River flows continue to drop. #dataviz #climate #globalwarming

Two graphs of water stored in Lake Powell (left) and lake Mead (right). The data are measured over the water year, which runs from October 1st to October 1st. Years when the lake level increased are marked in blue, years when they decreased are marked in red. Levels in Lake Powell maxed out at about 24-million-acre–feet in the early 1980s, and are currently just over 5-million-acre-feet. Lake Mead was just over 25-million acre-feet in the early 1980s and late 1990s, but is now just under 7-million acre-feet.

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InfoWars @realinfowars.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

We've read 246 books this year with Z. This is revolutionary!

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Caleb Scoville @calebscoville.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

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 Party

It 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

I think there are big risks and downsides associated with where AI is headed, but human extinction??? and on a plane even close to the destabilization of the actual biosphere?

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Caleb Scoville @calebscoville.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

I guess the biggest danger of the AI age is second order -- its producing people who actually think made up "AI" doomsday scenarios is a bigger threat than actually occurring anthropogenic climate change.

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Caleb Scoville @calebscoville.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

like people have really lost their ability to think if they believe this.

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Caleb Scoville @calebscoville.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

I am on the hiring committee for the Assistant Teaching Professor in Environmental Studies, and would be happy to answer any questions about the position, program, and university.

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Caleb Scoville @calebscoville.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Professor of the Practice in Food Systems – Deadline Oct 15 apply.interfolio.com/193133 Assistant Teaching Professor in Environmental Studies – Deadline Nov 15 apply.interfolio.com/194078 Assistant Teaching Professor in Ecology and Environment – Deadline Dec 8 apply.interfolio.com/193897

apply.interfolio.com

Apply - Interfolio {{$ctrl.$state.data.pageTitle}} - Apply - Interfolio

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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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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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