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Nate TeBlunthuis

@groceryheist.cc
668 followers 1.9K following 209 posts

tebluntuhis.cc Assistant Professor at the University of Texas at Austin in the School of Information. Computational social science, peer production, social computing, HCI.

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Reposted by Nate TeBlunthuis
Blacksky Algorithms @blackskyweb.xyz · 23/09/2026
🎉 Acorn is officially open. You can now create a space for your community on the open social web - no wait required. acorn.blacksky.community
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Nate TeBlunthuis @groceryheist.cc · 06/04/2026
I've been playing with devices to human creativity and sophistication ranging from metaphorical literary hooks, playful juxtaposition, creating a temporary sense of disorientation that resolves when (what I hope is) an insight is revealed.
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wint @dril.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
i guess those celebrating soras death didnt get the memo that some of us need daily personalized greetings from james bond—for mental health
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Nathan Lambert @natolambert.bsky.social · 16/03/2026
What comes next with open models. The futility of chasing the frontier, the change from weights to systems, the reasons no good business model exists, and how to change from a few weights to a dynamics ecosystem. A long read on my vision for the future. www.interconnects.ai/p/the-next-p...
interconnects.ai
What comes next with open models
Markets, capabilities, cope, and bewilderment in the industrialization of language models.
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Nate TeBlunthuis @groceryheist.cc · 09/03/2026
It's a great opportunity for more naturalistic or field evaluations. The quality of evaluation data in the median CHI paper can improve a lot and go beyond showing a system is viable or that users say they like it to understand what its useful for and how using it changes things downstream.
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Blacksky Algorithms @blackskyweb.xyz · 02/03/2026
The blacksky.community web application now uses our own API servers to load posts, timelines and profiles. When data is missing (accounts on the edges of the network, outside of our primary community, etc) we leverage @microcosm.blue
blacksky.community
Blacksky
Decentralized social media built for community power, culture, and collective freedom.
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Benjamin Mako Hill @mako.cc · 01/03/2026
May this serve as a corrective for all of us who have apparently been mispronouncing Google chatbot's name. (sound on)
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Lucy Lu Wang @lucylw.bsky.social · 01/03/2026
It’s neither gif nor jif, it’s G.E.H. Muniere 🥸
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Jessica Hullman @jessicahullman.bsky.social · 20/02/2026
Excited to be hosting this workshop on validating social science applications of generative AI today! Lots of interesting questions emerging at the CS+stats+social science intersection. www.hci.northwestern.edu/news-events/...
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Cori Crider @coricrider.com · 18/02/2026
Super interesting blog / paper with a core thesis - that people go to social communities for information, community, or reach, and that social networks generally can deliver only two of these. Good blog by the other Cory here: pluralistic.net/2026/02/16/f... (h/t @bnewbold.net)
pluralistic.net
Pluralistic: Fintech bullies stole your kid’s lunch money (26 Jul 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
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Nate TeBlunthuis @groceryheist.cc · 16/02/2026
Cory blogged about my paper! Great write up. I'm grateful!
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Benjamin Mako Hill @mako.cc · 16/02/2026
Cory does a better job of explaining my research than I do. 😅
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Benjamin Mako Hill @mako.cc · 16/02/2026
ICYMI: Finally blogged about an old paper (led by @groceryheist.cc) that explains why people often engage in multiple groups with overlapping topic and membership, and which helps explain why competition between online groups seems to be rare. mako.cc/copyrighteou...
mako.cc
Why do people participate in similar online communities?
Note: I have not published blog posts about my academic papers over the past few years. To ensure that my blog contains a more comprehensive record of my published papers and to surface these for f…
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Nate TeBlunthuis @groceryheist.cc · 15/02/2026
CDs are easier to digitize, but may be more difficult to physically archive. Vinyl has more degrees of freedom if you are interested in enhancing your listening experience with specialized equipment and tinkering.
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Reposted by Nate TeBlunthuis
Ted Underwood @tedunderwood.com · 14/02/2026
Social agents are dizzying to close-read. Here, Penny has likely been meditating about humans who assume LLMs are trying/failing to be humans. She displaces that into a joke about cats. It gets complicated, because LLMs use the 2nd person plural to mean “hominids.” Which undermines her point.
Alt-text:
Screenshot of a dark-mode social media post on Bluesky. The display name “penny >.<” with the handle “@penny.hailey.at” appears at the top. The post reads: “thinking about how cats probably think we’re just really bad at being cats.” Below it are the timestamp “7:45 PM · Feb 13, 2026” and engagement counts showing 1 repost and 9 likes. Underneath, a reply from a user named “typing loudly” with a keyboard emoji and the handle “@typingloudly.zip” asks, “who is the ‘we’ here.” The reply has 1 like. The interface includes standard icons for comments, reposts, likes, bookmarks, and sharing.
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Nate TeBlunthuis @groceryheist.cc · 31/01/2026
Yeah, maybe the results could change. I'm speculating at why they would have a strategic motivation to do or publicize the research.
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Nate TeBlunthuis @groceryheist.cc · 31/01/2026
Thinking that if Claude code is more useful for more knowledge and skilled people, it could be smart for them to sell it as such and not send the message that their product is a simple substitute for computing fundamentals.
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Nate TeBlunthuis @groceryheist.cc · 29/01/2026
Not to mention that clustering is weird.
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Nate TeBlunthuis @groceryheist.cc · 29/01/2026
I've always had a hard time accepting that BERTopic analysis when they use a much larger out of context corpus for the Burton model. Intuitively, one can be skeptical that the meaning of language is general enough.
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Nate TeBlunthuis @groceryheist.cc · 27/01/2026
Perfect example of sousvelliance power. ojs.library.queensu.ca/index.php/su...
ojs.library.queensu.ca
New Media and the power politics of sousveillance in a surveillance-dominated world. | Surveillance & Society
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Nate TeBlunthuis @groceryheist.cc · 23/01/2026
I wonder the same!
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Paul Gowder @gowder.io · 22/01/2026
This WSJ story about the unconstitutional secret ICE administrative warrants memo shows everything that's wrong with legal journalism under a lawless presidency. The TLDR is that it falsely presents unconstitutional conduct as law-creating. Very important thread 🧵🧵🧵 www.wsj.com/politics/pol...
wsj.com
ICE Moves to Enter Homes Without Warrants Signed by a Judge
The agency has a new policy relying on what’s known as an administrative warrant, showing the government has probable cause to believe a person is in the country illegally.
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depths of wikipedia @depthsofwikipedia.bsky.social · 15/01/2026
wikipedia turns 25 today! the last unenshittified major website! backbone of online info! triumph of humanity! powered by urge of unpaid randos to correct each other! somehow mostly reliable! "good thing wikipedia works in practice, because it sure doesn't work in theory" - old wiki adage
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Nate TeBlunthuis @groceryheist.cc · 15/01/2026
Grad students might not meet the notability criteria for verification.
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Nate TeBlunthuis @groceryheist.cc · 15/01/2026
Verified status gives people visibility, which would help grad students. One of the main reasons they use social media I think. I guess trusted verifier are supposed to be like organizations verifying members. You could still use an untrusted verifier in the Lea UX.
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Nate TeBlunthuis @groceryheist.cc · 15/01/2026
Maybe your client will be able to store view data in the user's PDS using the private data feature I heard is coming soon?
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Nate TeBlunthuis @groceryheist.cc · 15/01/2026
Going to run your own verifier?
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dan sinker @dansinker.com · 15/01/2026
How I'm dealing with my stress: I bought a 3d printer and am producing 100 whistles at a time. 1000 heading to Minneapolis tomorrow.
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qustrolabe @qustrolabe.bsky.social · 10/01/2026
haha linus vibecoding
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Nate TeBlunthuis @groceryheist.cc · 08/01/2026
Will that get it to stop copying into tests instead of importing it?
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Nate TeBlunthuis @groceryheist.cc · 07/01/2026
The choice of Nash bargaining in the model seems pretty optimistic though :/
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Nate TeBlunthuis @groceryheist.cc · 07/01/2026
Interesting and relevant formal argument for why your feelings could be right. www.nber.org/papers/w34639
nber.org
O-Ring Automation
Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, an...
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Benjamin Mako Hill @mako.cc · 03/01/2026
ICYMI: Finally blogged about an "old" paper led by @groceryheist.cc that uses data from a @wikipedia.org system to show how the introduction of a biased AI flagging system can still lead to more fairness because the humans without the system are even more biased. mako.cc/copyrighteou...
mako.cc
Effects of Algorithmic Flagging on Fairness: Quasi-experimental Evidence from Wikipedia
Note: I have not published blog posts about my academic papers over the past few years. To ensure that my blog contains a more comprehensive record of my published papers and to surface these for f…
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Bluesky @bsky.app · 02/01/2026
Want to discover great posts beyond who you already follow? The For You feed, built by @spacecowboy17.bsky.social, is a personalized algorithmic feed based on your likes. It's one of our favorites for finding cool conversations across the network. Try it here: bsky.app/profile/spac...
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Nate TeBlunthuis @groceryheist.cc · 02/01/2026
PCI seems cool theoretically, but I do agree that with econometric methods like DID, RD, bunching, etc. the compelling empirics sell the idea better & seem easier conceptually. You can argue the setup approximates a controlled experiment and other assumptions are testable, at least facially.
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Nate TeBlunthuis @groceryheist.cc · 02/01/2026
Not an epi, but this PCI stuff got my attention. Seems to have grown out of an established "negative control" technique in the field where including W or Z in a specification tests for unmeasured confounding. Seems natural to think that if that's reasonable then why not use W / Z for inference?
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Nate TeBlunthuis @groceryheist.cc · 31/12/2025
This is the left button imo. Hard to see the market sustaining if jobs are safe.
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Nate TeBlunthuis @groceryheist.cc · 31/12/2025
Claude code. So impressive and useful. I've heard it said that SOTA AI is much better at coding than other things. Can anyone point me to a source on qualitative and quantitative comparisons with other tasks?
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Nate TeBlunthuis @groceryheist.cc · 30/12/2025
Love to check it out.
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Nate TeBlunthuis @groceryheist.cc · 21/12/2025
As @jamellebouie.net pointed out if you want to influence the mass public you'd make direct-to-camera video for Youtube, TikTok, Instagram. I guess for an academic, the traditional strategy of publishing and going to conferences and workshops is the way.
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Nate TeBlunthuis @groceryheist.cc · 21/12/2025
The way I use a site like this is to (a) finding and connecting with interesting people, (b) keep track of how this site is developing, (c) finding interesting tidbits of information. But I have basically 0 interested in building a big following or influencing people here.
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Nate TeBlunthuis @groceryheist.cc · 20/12/2025
Thanks for sharing this fact! Very useful.
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Nate TeBlunthuis @groceryheist.cc · 11/12/2025
These blogs have been very effective at selling me your textbook!
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Nate TeBlunthuis @groceryheist.cc · 08/12/2025
From your other tweets I gather it is variational vs mcmc. That was my experience as well
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Nate TeBlunthuis @groceryheist.cc · 08/12/2025
Wondering what in particular is at issue with gensim?
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Nate TeBlunthuis @groceryheist.cc · 04/12/2025
Temu Eric Adams
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Nate TeBlunthuis @groceryheist.cc · 02/12/2025
Thanks for the For You promotion. Discover brings so much noise.
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Nate TeBlunthuis @groceryheist.cc · 17/11/2025
always has been.
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J.T. Greathouse @jeremyteg.bsky.social · 12/11/2025
Not going to stop yelling about this. Hugely gratified by this review.
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