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Mark Igra

@markigra.bsky.social
393 followers 644 following 263 posts

Sociology PhD at the University of Washington, studying altruism and morality. Former software guy. Started sciences.social.

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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 10h
Amazon thinks I have an “ongoing academic reading habit”. I wish. Sadly browsing isn’t acquiring & acquiring isn’t reading. Plus, local bookshop can order most academic books.
Product Preferences:
Ongoing academic reading habit
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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 14h
The food is lousy. I’d prefer to eat it forever than bother with cooking .
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Mark Riedl @markriedl.bsky.social · 19h
The Capabilibara project seeks to understand how a language model learns to interpret people's beliefs, emotions, intentions, and everyday moral choices. We trace that ability back to the training data using influence functions and unlearning hcai-lab-gt.github.io/capabilibara/ Find us at COLM!
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Hendrik Erz, PhD @hendrik-erz.de · 05/10/2026
+++ PUBLICATION ALERT +++ My first solo-authored PhD paper is finally out in Network Science! I am so happy that it finally happened! TL;DR: Representatives in Congress do not just disagree on issues, they oftentimes do not even talk about the same things at all. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
cambridge.org
Measuring issue-level polarization in congressional speech using community detection-algorithms | Network Science | Cambridge Core
Measuring issue-level polarization in congressional speech using community detection-algorithms - Volume 14
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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
The photo & post reminded me about "Heart Sellers," a play about two women who came to the US with their husbands in the wake of Hart-Cellar. As a 2-person play its impact likely depends greatly on the quality of the performances, which at Seattle Rep were superb. www.seattlerep.org/plays/past-s...
seattlerep.org
The Heart Sellers | Seattle Rep
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Christopher Silver @christophersilver.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
"The Department of Jewish Studies and the Department of Sociology invite applications for a tenure-track Assistant Professor position (Segal Chair in Jewish Studies), commencing August 1, 2027." Come work with us at McGill! More information can be found here: www.mcgill.ca/jewishstudie...
mcgill.ca
Job Postings
For course lectureship opportunities in Winter 2027, please see the Course lectureships tab. Assistant Professor Tenure-Track Faculty Position in Jewish Studies, with a Second Specialization in Socio...
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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
For other nerds who do what @kjhealy.co calls Modern Plain Text computing, how do you keep quarto/markdown/obsidian files synced across devices (e.g. iPad/laptop)? In a pinch I used a file sync service & it messed up my git history. But constant git commits are painful, not iPad friendly.
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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
I liked this bit: Calling results you don’t like “cheating” is a bad use of anthropomorphism, because for an A.I. model, there is no difference between cheating and not cheating
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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
The conclusion that drones et. al. lead to stagnant conflicts and more attacks on "Factories. Infrastructure. 'Morale.' Individual human lives." is a gut punch that's hard to deny. From @sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com at www.liberalcurrents.com/the-return-o...
This is why the Iran war will not end. Trump will sign no agreement; neither will his successor. There will be a status quo on the ground-some combination of bribes paid and platitudes mouthed to allow the Gulf's oh- so-valuable produce to flow through that pinched strait—interrupted by periodic raids, from one side or the other, attempting to nudge that status
quo further in their direction. Second point: with this blurring of boundaries between the state of peace and the state of war, we should also expect to see the blurring of boundaries between military and civilian targets. The era of mass mobilization aimed to directly destroy the enemy's armed forces in the field-to take the tools of violence out of their hands-occupy their territory, and impose the victor's will by force. The cutting-off way takes as its proximate target the enemy's ability to make war—largely made up
of what in modern times have been labeled "soft targets." Factories.
Infrastructure. "Morale." Individual human lives.
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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Aliza Luft has very good evidence of this in the context of the Rwandan Genocide here: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
journals.sagepub.com
Sage Journals: Discover world-class research
Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.
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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Would love to read the whole thing, where is this interview?
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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
He may have beclowned himself in the fact-based world, but this piece says he immediately was praised in the MAGA media world: Schmitt joined host Andrew Kolvet, who praised his work in the hearing. He also amplified Schmitt’s conspiracy theory even though it had already begun to fall apart.
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jon ben-menachem @jbenmenachem.com · 29/09/2026
"Replication crisis" reforms like preregistration & pre-analysis plans were developed to control false positives in experimental research. Does that work in observational studies? Our new paper in Sociological Methods & Research argues for a different approach. 🧵 journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
A Replication Framework for Observational Research: From Specification Restriction to Specification Expansion
Jonathan Ben-Menachem https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8092-0848 jbenmenachem@gmail.com, Ari Galper https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7909-8837, and Nic Fishman
Abstract
Sociology has remained relatively insulated from debates about the “replication crisis.” Heeding calls to consider replication more deeply, we introduce a distinction between two types of research reforms that have emerged in the wake of the crisis: specification-restricting and specification-expanding reforms. Specification restriction is often promoted as a way to increase the repeatability of research findings by controlling false positives. We argue that this statistical justification is less compelling in observational contexts—where the assumptions licensing false-positive control are harder to sustain and rigid ex ante analytical commitments can instead enshrine fragile specifications—than in experimental contexts. We further argue that apparently low replication rates do not necessarily imply a high prevalence of false positive findings. Instead, we propose a replication framework centered on specification-expanding reforms, stronger incentives for confirmatory research, and meta-analysis. This approach equips sociologists to assess the repeatability of findings and build a more cumulative discipline.
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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Got this newsletter from @austinkocher.com in my inbox & had to pass it on for the info about responses to deportation to Mexico, but also for the appreciation of CDMX (can't wait to go back) & the take on brutalist architecture austinkocher.substack.com/p/notes-from...
austinkocher.substack.com
Notes from Mexico City: The View from the South Side of U.S. Deportation Policy
Mexico City is on lots of people’s radars these days, and for good reason: it’s a hip, world-class city with a warm, bohemian exuberance, all the art, culture, and cuisine you can handle, and it’s an ...
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Austin Kocher, PhD @austinkocher.com · 25/09/2026
I'll be in New York on Oct 20 to talk about The Truth Tellers, a new film by Pamela Yates and Paco de Onís, and about documenting immigration detention right now. With @documentedny.bsky.social. Tue, Oct 20, 6 p.m., Columbia SIPA, NYC. Get tickets: givebutter.com/Documented-T...
givebutter.com
Private Screening: Borderland – The Line Within. A Conversation on Immigration Detention, Accountability, and Who Profits
immigration, media, New York, Borderland
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large language marge @mcdonalds.help · 26/09/2026
it's kind of the dominant culture of text based social media. People who could read critically but prefer to offload the work of interpretation by skipping the article and going straight to the comments so they have a quick digest of what they should think about something
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Kyle Walker @kylewalker.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
The classic Racial Dot Map inspired me and a whole generation of mapmakers. Today, I'm publishing a modern take on this map, built with the geospatial tools I've been developing over the past decade. Interact with the map here: walker-data.com/maps/census-...
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The Needling @theneedling.com · 25/09/2026
Car-Free Pike Place Market Pilot Deemed Too Successful to Continue: tinyurl.com/uund6kej
People and flowers take up space on street of Pike Place in front of the Public Market Center sign
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Social Forces @socialforcesfan.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
From "Reflections on Editing <i>Social Forces,</i> …" by Arne L Kalleberg: Sixteen years editing one of sociology's flagship journals, and a candid look back at what changed in the field and in the craft of an editor. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/sf/soag084
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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Mostly loved it - but damn had to hang on tight during that COVID section of the machinery.
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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Grad school.
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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
“Science progresses one funeral at a time” — Paul Samuelson’s gloss Planck’s principle — is a fun place to start. Why do scientists across fields embrace that aphorism? Where does death fit in this student’s story of the scientific method? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck%...
en.wikipedia.org
Planck's principle - Wikipedia
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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Lower percentage of daily requirements for sodium than I thought. Then again, 1942 servings per container. “INGREDIENT” (singular) is a flex
Nutrition Facts 
About 1942 servings per container
Serving size 1/4 tsp (0.7g)


Total Fat 0g 0%
Sodium 280mg 12%
Total Carbohydrate 0g 0%
Protein 0g

Not a significant source of saturated fat, trans fat, cholesterol, dietary fiber, total sugars, added sugars, vitamin D, calcium, iron, and potassium

INGREDIENT: SALT
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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
“It’s hard to think clearly about what you’re not allowed to talk about”. Good line — applies to more than just GOP politics.
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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
But remember that gerrymandering for political reasons is fine, and not the same as racial gerrymandering.
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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
One more day left in this Coltrane Centennial broadcast www.cc-seas.columbia.edu/wkcr/john-co...
cc-seas.columbia.edu
John Coltrane Centennial | Columbia College
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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
The New Yorker clearly had an inside source . www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a62026
New Yorker cartoon of a king in a swimsuit going down slide into a moat with 2 advisors to the side. 1 says "Maybe not the best use of the defense budget"
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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
3 non-white refugees and 10,255 white ones. This happened at the same time that the Supreme Court decided that political gerrymandering was not racial gerrymandering. From @austinkocher.com austinkocher.substack.com/p/this-week-...
99.97% The share of every refugee the United States admitted in fiscal year 2026 through July 31 who came from South Africa, 10,255 people out
of 10,258. The Trump administration abolished the refugee system, then reopened it for just one group: white South Africans. The fiscal year opened with a ceiling of 7,500, the lowest in the program's history, and an emergency presidential determination signed on May 21 raised it to 17,500 and allocated every one of the additional 10,000 places to Afrikaners from South Africa under Executive Order 14204. Total admissions were 38,102 in fiscal 2025 and 100,034 in fiscal 2024, so this is a program running at about a
tenth of its size two years ago and drawing entirely from one country. Just
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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
My favorite bit from the conclusion
Rubin's report-and not mainstream journal sociology—displays all the hallmarks of politicization. She rejects others not because their arguments are inconsistent, their data cherry picked, their analyses unsystematic. Instead, she rejects those whose politics she dislikes, and supports this with arguments that are inconsistent, data cherry that are picked, and
analyses that are unsystematic.
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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Seeking courage in getting my book proposal together I came across this set of rejections for what became the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. (Of course nobody proudly posts the wall of rejections from a proposal that never amounted to anything.)
Corkboard with rejections from Ballantine, Doubleday, Houghton Mifflin, Free Press, Dutton, and Dial Press
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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Link is broken for me
NO RESULTS FOUND The page you requested could not be found. Try refining your search, or use the navigation
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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
AI "alignment" will not prevent bad actors from using open models for bad acts: "Heretic is a tool that removes censorship (aka "safety alignment") from transformer-based language models...anyone who knows how to run a command-line program can use Heretic" github.com/p-e-w/heretic
github.com
GitHub - p-e-w/heretic: Fully automatic censorship removal for language models
Fully automatic censorship removal for language models - p-e-w/heretic
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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Spitballing: An aggregator fronting a large number of suppliers with similar content (true for news/opinion) lowers the ability for any individual supplier to get enough engagement to fund original journalism, making freeloading by AI (or farmed) content the only profitable model.
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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
I am confused by this. Isn’t it Congress’s job to set taxes? Are there limits to fees that the executive branch can set? Is this a “major question”? (Not a fan of major questions doctrine, but if it exists it’s worth establishing boundaries).
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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
This is APPALLING. The Trump administration is detaining multiple random Somali immigrants with no criminal record at Guantanamo Bay, seemingly because the White House ordered ICE specifically to detain Somalis at Gitmo as part of its effort to punish an ethnic group Trump has attacked.
According to Mohamed, guards at Guantanamo have said they are being held there because that's what officials in Washington, DC, want. "There's no other nation, only Somali people in Guantanamo Bay, in the prison," he told me. "And when we ask them why we are here, they tell us... Washington...ordered to keep Somali people in the Guantanamo Bay."
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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
How did I not know about @paper-feed.bsky.social until today? Seems like a promising way to see the academic stuff I care about.
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Eugene Vinitsky 🍒 @eugenevinitsky.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
The stability of many things, I believe, rest on the limited capabilities of idiots. But what if we made idiots much more capable.
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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Oh I know it isn't Robert Moses, that was just a flip comment based on what I'm reading now. I generally support pro-density measures and efforts to reform Seattle's sclerotic processes. Friday night meetups aren't my thing, but thanks for the invite.
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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
I understand the need for limiting veto points in Seattle particularly. However I admit my gut reaction to seeing this while listening to "The Power Broker" by Robert Caro, is to be careful giving too much power to someone responsible for roads & traffic.
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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 16/09/2026
new vid up at the youtube channel youtu.be/aNU0g0UExuU
youtu.be
What Mike Johnson might do to subvert the election — and how you can stop him
YouTube video by Takes™ by Jamelle Bouie
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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Art as "the food you eat at a funeral "is an intriguing metaphor. Sad that I did not know of Cat Frazier before reading her obit. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/16/a...
Ms. Frazier was keenly aware of the role her art could play in
helping people deal with pain, including her own. "I always describe it as the food you eat at a funeral," she said in a
2020 interview with the design publication AIGA Eye in Design. "It's nourishing, and we're all at this horrible event together, but
this is helping us cope so we can talk and laugh about it."
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Eugene Vinitsky 🍒 @eugenevinitsky.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
For the past six months @mariaa.bsky.social and I have been working on creating an improved research experience on atproto. It's now live! Check out: lea.ac
leaflet.pub
Lea: research-oriented social media
Introducing a beta-version of our new research-focused social media platform
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Laura K. Nelson @lauraknelson.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
New preprint! A review article on Generative AI and Society, with the fantastic @thomasdavidson.bsky.social & Danny Karell (smartly not online!) osf.io/preprints/so... The lit on genAI is sprawling and mostly not in sociology. Our goal is to synthesize core themes relevant to sociologists. +
GENERATIVE AI AND SOCIETY
Laura K. Nelson,
Daniel Karell,
and Thomas Davidson

ABSTRACT
For sociologists, generative AI inherits the legacy of earlier computational technologies:  it is an advancement of machine learning already adopted as a methodology, and it intervenes in a society already shaped by algorithmic systems. Yet it also has a dimension that distinguishes it from previous computational methods, and one that makes it inherently sociological: its interactivity. In this review, we conceptualize the interactivity of generative AI and introduce a framework for understanding how it operates across individual, organizational, and institutional life. Specifically, the framework specifies how generative AI expands users, functions as a proxy for society, and expresses power,
both in sociological practice and in society. We conclude by suggesting three dynamics driven by generative AI that sociology will face in the near future: the transformation of scientific practice, the reorganization of social interaction, and the acceleration of algorithmic governance.

Keywords: generative AI,  interaction, computational sociology, methods, algorithms, algorithmic governance
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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Should be a fox right? (also, really nice hedgehog) books.google.com/books?id=c9Q...
books.google.com
The Hedgehog and the Fox
"The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." This ancient Greek aphorism, preserved in a fragment from the poet Archilochus, describes the central thesis of Isaiah Berlin's maste...
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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
John Roberts wasn't concerned with reproducibility or rigor when he dismissed "sociological gobbledygook" while protecting gerrymandering. Quite the opposite. If the "black ships" worth fighting are the ones with real power, other responses are called for. www.uclalawreview.org/sociological...
uclalawreview.org
"Sociological Gobbledygook”: Gill v. Whitford, Wal-Mart v. Dukes, and the Court’s Selective Distrust of “Soft Science" - UCLA Law Review
Abstract In the last decade, the Supreme Court has heard a number of high-profile cases holding potential for major progressive reform which hinge crucially on the Justices accepting, or at least not ...
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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Certainly SOC needs to be much better about data sharing. Causal modeling is nice when possible (and used in SOC!), but rarely broadly convincing. Not sure that computation critique is valid: there's lots! Used right AI can increase productivity, but likely a drag on credibility (training bias...).
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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
In Skardhamar's view the relevant battle is among disciplines, and soc loses by being short on credibility (anti-positivist, dismissive of causal modeling, data sharing), and behind on AI/computation. Some valid critiques, but is that really the battle? What are the rules of the game? Who decides?
The study programs, departments and seminars are like dojos, and the discipline's own journals, conferences and hiring practices are internal competitions, much like judo tournaments. Open competition means stepping outside the discipline, into other disciplines' conferences, journals, and the most influential interdisciplinary venues, where the discipline-specific scoring system is no longer respected, though these arenas remain academic. The real-world application is outside the ring altogether: policy, bureaucratic use, external problem solving, and public debate, where other standards apply and other rules count. This is equivalent to Fairbairn's gutter fight- ing: no referee, and the only standard that really counts is what works, with real-
world consequences for mistakes.Sociology as a martial art should have a -jutsu orientation, making use of the
scientific tools of the present to make sociological claims credible in venues it does
not control, even as those venues change. The discipline should preserve its authority
over sociological topics. But methods and theoretical traditions should not serve as
markers of identity. When they do, methods developed in other disciplines are easily dismissed for reasons that have little to do with their merits. We should expand the
toolkit rather than defend a portion of it.
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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Appreciated the metaphor as a conversation starter. In short, soc focuses on -do (internal fights by known rules & inculcation of shared culture) rather than -jutsu (fighting to win against external forces). But discussion/conclusion not sociological enough for audience (author rolls eyes here)...
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Larry Glickman @larryglickman.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Perhaps, as one way of combating the dangers of AI, we should develop the writing equivalent of the "slow food" movement.
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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
It’s notable that the music streaming services do micropayments for content based on usage & the artists end up with bupkis. I wish it were easier to make a single payment for an “issue” without defaulting to monthly subscription. Remember newsstands & record stores? Those were cool.
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