iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Edmund Chattoe-Brown @edmundcb.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Humanity is safe for a while longer. AI _so_ can't do puns and double entendres.

Edmund Chattoe-Brown @edmundcb.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

That's well thought through. To change your BS email, you have to type in a code sent to your previous email. There is no alternate mechanism apparent. So do I have to abandon my BS account because my work email has been shut down? They don't seem to register that any emails sent there are bouncing.

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Edmund Chattoe-Brown @edmundcb.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

If it is clear that a film maker has not read or understood a book, should they be disallowed from using its title? But I guess the Helen Mirren/John Hurt reboot of Brighton Rock wouldn't have done so well at the box office if it had been called "Some Muddle About Gangs" instead.

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Edmund Chattoe-Brown @edmundcb.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Mountain Warehouse were really sniffy that i didn't want to give them an email for my receipt (i. e. _endless_ marketing). Oxfam wanted me to round up the price _they_ set for a book. Lakeland were out of stock of something really basic. Was shopping always this naggy/low hit rate?

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Edmund Chattoe-Brown @edmundcb.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

We all know what right wing nasties _don't_ want. They don't want the RNLI fulfilling its mandate. They don't want to be in the EU. So should we let crossers drown? Or try to persuade the French to do something which common sense suggests may actively not be in their interests (keeping migrants?)

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Edmund Chattoe-Brown @edmundcb.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

By definition "realistic" is a term that has an empirical referent. It is surprising how often in #abm researchers are simply willing to assert that X is (or isn't) realistic and reviewers are willing to let them.

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Edmund Chattoe-Brown @edmundcb.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Interesting what science "lets by". Huge plug for big data but much less attention to "Simpson's Paradox". In uncurated data disaggregated elements may give completely different associations from aggregate. But ⌗abm/complexity suggests that many process outcomes are likely to have this property.

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Edmund Chattoe-Brown @edmundcb.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

I always wonder whether authors are aware when they describe someone as (for example) "The grand old man of gerontology" or say that "reproductive competition applies equally to all comers". I hope they do but I fear they don't ...

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Edmund Chattoe-Brown @edmundcb.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

I am genuinely frightened of people I see interacting on the socials. If you can be an appalling racist and fend off all criticism as "woke crap" we are stuck with you voting for a***holes forever. We need, somehow, to get to people _before_ they become righteous at having burned in being horrible.

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Edmund Chattoe-Brown @edmundcb.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Consistency is a valuable scientific principle. Sure you can kick holes in the infallibility of peer review (which nobody ever claimed.) But you can't then tell me to look for the real truth in a paid podcaster screed hosted on Zenodo. Even the crappiest peer review is better (on average) than none.

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Edmund Chattoe-Brown @edmundcb.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

The algorithms aren't _that_ smart. When I out some piece of climate denier anti-vax nonsense, why do they think I want more nonsense?

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Edmund Chattoe-Brown @edmundcb.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Social media is a massive warning of the failure of critical education: Basic numeracy, logic of argument, source evaluation. Many claims made here are frighteningly nonsensical.

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Edmund Chattoe-Brown @edmundcb.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

A nice burn for the anti-vax, climate denier, conspiracy loons: "You are entitled to your own opinions but not your own facts".

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Edmund Chattoe-Brown @edmundcb.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Social media means that people who were formally too stupid, ignorant or intellectually dishonest to get their opinions widely heard now can. How can that not be a good thing?

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Edmund Chattoe-Brown @edmundcb.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

Based on my own experience in Sociology, I am starting to wonder to what extent academia is still the keeper of scientific quality. If there is anything to this, the question follows, what can be done from outside to build either an alternative keeper of quality or to make academia do its job.

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Edmund Chattoe-Brown @edmundcb.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Consider downrating any social media poster who says "the truth is", "the actual facts are" and so on. Seekers after truth (and recognisers of it) don't feel the need to say "here I am handing you a sandwich". They just hand you a sandwich.

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Edmund Chattoe-Brown @edmundcb.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

I have long suspected the fact that no reference is readily offered for claims that positive/negative feedback is more effective than weakness focused. AI gave me references, which I need to read/follow. But my immediate impression from a quick scan is that AI can't find "the source study" either.

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Edmund Chattoe-Brown @edmundcb.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Sharing any view held by any Nazi makes you a Nazi. A tough call for things like Brexit which were whittled down to two choices. Only holding views _relevant to Nazism_ is what makes you a Nazi. Social media (interacting on emotional matters with strangers) encourages lazy motivation attribution.

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Edmund Chattoe-Brown @edmundcb.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

The reason we need the idea of facts of the matter is what just happened on social media about Jason Arday. No amount of gassing about who is racist will change whether Arday's works contain inappropriate borrowings. This is like arguing that a sexist surgeon can't take your appendix out properly.

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Edmund Chattoe-Brown @edmundcb.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Social Media: Let's hope the argument that is short enough to transmit and understandable by the Average Joe/Jane isn't one that will do for the species. Some apparently sincere posts on climate change absolutely beggar belief.

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Edmund Chattoe-Brown @edmundcb.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

It is interesting reverse engineering bad social media arguments on, say, global warming. For example, people either believe (or profess to) that the fact it was hotter in 1912 than it is now (say) means that _average_ temperatures (or frequencies of arbitrarily hot summers) can't be rising.

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Edmund Chattoe-Brown @edmundcb.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

A real test for hard nosed evidence followers: Should Cambridge still have the inquiry into hiring processes and due diligence on CVs even now Arday is dead?

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Edmund Chattoe-Brown @edmundcb.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

I wouldn't be too smug about getting a bit more than twice as many votes as someone dressed as a bin, especially when all the serious parties declined to stand.

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Edmund Chattoe-Brown @edmundcb.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Not exactly above the law but managing to maintain a very discouraging distance from it.

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Edmund Chattoe-Brown @edmundcb.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Bored with self interested fudge. Many books shops claim they can order are "reprinting". There is a future date but no reprint and when the date passes another future date is set. And repeat. No good faith about an actual reprint/when. You have to pay up front and fiddle about with a refund.

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Edmund Chattoe-Brown @edmundcb.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

It isn't really the public's job to rate "sociology" and "universities" in general terms. There are bad scholars and good. Ditto departments. Sociology may leave more room for bad scholars than medicine but it is a simple fallacy to conclude "all bad" from "some bad".

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Edmund Chattoe-Brown @edmundcb.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

Jason Arday made claims about why he resigned. However he also claimed to have published a book which he hadn't ...

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Edmund Chattoe-Brown @edmundcb.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

Could be useful to just put _everyone's_ 4 best nominated articles though a plagiarism checker.

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Edmund Chattoe-Brown @edmundcb.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

The Jason Arday affair is a sh*tsh*w throughout. If there was a case to answer then there should have been a university investigation asap that would make a proper determination. The absence of such a clear judgement and "trial by social media" has left his resignation unacceptably ambiguous.

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Edmund Chattoe-Brown @edmundcb.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

Amazed that anyone who has books that World of Books would want would know so little about them not to see how truly derisory their buying prices are.

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Edmund Chattoe-Brown @edmundcb.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

Rising postage costs are quietly undermining any idea of a global market. To send a standard price hardback book from the US to the UK now effectively doubles the cost of the order.

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Edmund Chattoe-Brown @edmundcb.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

Finally read an urban legends book (Baby Train by Van Brunvand.) Do people still hear these? I don't think I have ever heard _any_ of them told in earnest. Do individual urban legends die out through "innoculation?" Could this style of tale telling being dying out generally for the same reason?

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Edmund Chattoe-Brown @edmundcb.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

Sadly what AI is not doing is helping social media posters check posts. Have just seen an argument that Denmark is happier than UK because it has less raw count billionaires. (2 stats fails!) The plot of "per million population" across many more countries via Google AI is virtually flat however.

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Edmund Chattoe-Brown @edmundcb.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

Do I have to attend a patronising low information content webinar? Can't you just write down the relevant information?

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Edmund Chattoe-Brown @edmundcb.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

If you do a general literature review (rather than one specifically for #abm) it is striking how much empirical research is about different kinds of "dots" (people en masse, famous people as individuals, places, institutions/organisations, objects.) Should the job of #abm be to _join_ these dots?

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Edmund Chattoe-Brown @edmundcb.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

Beward: Outcome that makes you worry about the robustness of an accreditation process. A gold TEF award for a university with teaching in perpetual chaos. The lecturing of some academics with very high level HEA Fellowships.

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Edmund Chattoe-Brown @edmundcb.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

No I'm not impressed that you put my email address in your scam email. After all, if you didn't have it, I wouldn't be hearing from you. Try not to assume that everyone is as daft as you are.

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Edmund Chattoe-Brown @edmundcb.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

Research project: Does social media only reproduce bad argument styles known historically or has it allowed the development of new kinds of bad argument?

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Edmund Chattoe-Brown @edmundcb.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

Is there a risk of adverse selection in HE? Staff who are most comfortable with the "flexibility" required to hit arbitrary retention (for example) targets will be those least wedded to the idea of evidence based argument. 2+2 still doesn't equal 5 no matter how many extra UGs that would bring.

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Edmund Chattoe-Brown @edmundcb.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

More red flag terms for dubious social science: "Under-theorised". What is the correct amount of theory and why?

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Edmund Chattoe-Brown @edmundcb.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

Too much HE erases what it is reasonable to expect students to manage. So having explained referencing and given a link to our uni format do we have to let them off plagiarism/Poor Academic Practice because they have decided unilaterally to render quoted text in italic without any quotation marks?

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Edmund Chattoe-Brown @edmundcb.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

All too common exchange. Reviewer: What is the point of an LLM here? Author: Look, I found another new thing to do with an LLM.

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Edmund Chattoe-Brown @edmundcb.bsky.social · 09/05/2026

I am proud to live in a country where every election can be a victory for every party. BTW I have a bridge for sale.

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Edmund Chattoe-Brown @edmundcb.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

So this morning what price all that self serving socials tosh about "Kemi is looking more and more like the new Churchill/Thatcher/Marilyn Monroe?" According to the voters she isn't even the new Ed Davey or Zack Polanski let alone Nigel Farage.

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Edmund Chattoe-Brown @edmundcb.bsky.social · 07/05/2026

I am consistently surprised at how little time/emphasis academics want to put on their results. I suppose we cannot blame weaker students for writing a whole essay critique of an article without ever making clear what it purported to show.

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