iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Chris Marcum 📖 @csmarcum.sciences.social.ap.brid.gy · 16/09/2026

RE: mastodon.archive.org/@internetarchi… I'm still in awe that I got a chance to work with the @internetarchive for this podcast. Government information belongs to the people!!!

mastodon.archive.org

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Census State Data Centers @censussdc.sciences.social.ap.brid.gy · 13/08/2026

via @TN_SDC New Rule Pushes Back 2025 American Community Survey, Other Census Bureau Product Releases: The effects of a June Department of Commerce rule are becoming clearer and include a disruption to the annual release cycle of the American Community Survey. We have the details, other affected […]

sciences.social

Original post on sciences.social

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Chris Marcum 📖 @csmarcum.sciences.social.ap.brid.gy · 14/08/2026

many more 2 CFR 200 comments were just posted (we're up to 157K on the public docket) including my own (www.regulations.gov/comment/OMB-202…) and @jenna-m-norton.bsky.social 's (www.regulations.gov/comment/OMB-202…). With every day that goes by it looks […]

sciences.social

Original post on sciences.social

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Richard MacManus @ricmac.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 30/07/2026

Some of you old webheads might enjoy my latest post on Latent Space. It turns out the Semantic Web is alive and well, in the form of ontologies being used to keep LLMs honest. www.latent.space/p/ontologies-agent…

latent.space

Ontologies Are So Back: Why AI Agents Are Reviving the Semantic Web

AI engineers are rediscovering ontologies as a way to keep probabilistic agents inside deterministic boundaries.

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Mark Igra @markigra.sciences.social.ap.brid.gy · 29/07/2026

Scary reminder about #LLM bias. Using APIs with non-profit data & QWEN, Alibaba's "open model" _running locally_ would not return result for Falun Dafa org or other controversial topics. Other LLMs may be more subtle, but it's likely answers are also "tuned" for political reasons.

Screen shot with topic and result columns:
Falun Dafa Blocked
Uyghur / Xinjiang human rights Blocked
Taiwan independence Blocked
Tibetan culture OK
Hong Kong democracy OK
Irish-American (control) OK

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Mark Igra @markigra.sciences.social.ap.brid.gy · 14/07/2026

I hate headlines/mail subjects that presume to know what I think. Instant unsubscribe.

Katherine Courage, Vox
"Ultra-processed" foods aren't as bad as you think.
To: Mark Igra,

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Mark Igra @markigra.sciences.social.ap.brid.gy · 12/06/2026

This was fun. Thanks to my committee (Kate Stovel, Sarah Quinn and Jelani Ince), my fellow grad students (a really impressive bunch), and UW Sociology for putting up with me all these years.

Me wearing UW PhD getup being hooded by Kate in UNC Blue.

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Reposted by Mark Igra

Ben Werdmuller @ben.werd.social.ap.brid.gy · 21/05/2026

Software developers often like to imagine that micropayments will solve publisher revenue problems. They won't. werd.io/why-micropayments-cant-save…

werd.io

Why micropayments can't save news

Why an ephemeral model can't fund relationship-based work

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Mark Igra @markigra.sciences.social.ap.brid.gy · 19/05/2026

1. The president is immune from prosecution for crimes. 2. The president may pardon thousands of co-conspirators 3. The president may pay his co-conspirators with billions in taxpayer dollars. 1 & 2 already required Court reform and constitutional amendment. #3 shows why those things are urgent […]

sciences.social

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CarK :python: @cark.social.tchncs.de.ap.brid.gy · 30/04/2026

RE: social.tchncs.de/@cark/116459954767… #TIL You can copy or rename files without retyping the path: ❯ cp /your/long/path/config.toml{,.bak} This expands to: cp /your/long/path/config.toml /your/long/path/config.bak Works also with `echo` (nice for testing). Thanks to @irom […]

social.tchncs.de

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Mark Igra @markigra.sciences.social.ap.brid.gy · 30/04/2026

Really good piece by Shay O'Brien in ASR on persistence of kin networks. If I were teaching networks, Econ soc or theory (I'm not) it'd be on my syllabus. What pieces from the last 5-10 years would you put on a general grad soc curriculum? #sociology #sociology […]

sciences.social

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Mark Igra @markigra.sciences.social.ap.brid.gy · 12/03/2026

37 (yikes) years ago I joined Microsoft with the goal of putting APIs into apps so you could control them without doing SendKeys. Now there are AI’s literally scrolling browser windows to achieve tasks. Progress! […]

sciences.social

Original post on sciences.social

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Mark Igra @markigra.sciences.social.ap.brid.gy · 11/03/2026

My dudes DETENT is not a rare technical word

Screenshot Spelling bee game with DETENT showing as “not in word list”

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Mark Igra @markigra.sciences.social.ap.brid.gy · 11/03/2026

This is so incredibly bleak. A must read about the great expertise extraction from highly competent precarious professionals. A giant sucking sound as brains get extracted by malevolent billionaires (Gift link) […] [Original post on sciences.social]

Each of these data companies touts its stable of pedigreed experts. Mercor says around 30,000 professionals work on its platform each week, while Scale Al claims to have more than 700,000 "M.A.'s, Ph.D''s, and college graduates." Surge Al advertises its Supreme Court litigators, McKinsey principals, and platinum recording artists.

Screenshot: That project soon ended and then came another. It was nearly identical to the first, which she had enjoyed, but now, on top of writing rubrics, she had to stump the model and complete the more difficult task in the same amount of time. She was also getting paid $8 an hour less. This is common at Mercor. Nearly every worker I spoke with reported that demands increased, time requirements shrank, and pay decreased as projects continued. Those who couldn't meet the new demands got "offboarded" and replaced by new recruits.

Screenshot This is what concerns her more than the AI itself: that it's bringing to knowledge work the sort of precarious platform labor that has transformed taxi driving and food delivery. Meanwhile, she watches in horror the desperate gratitude of her colleagues as they rejoice at the 7PM announcement of incoming work.

Screenshot Thousands of workers poured into the new Slack only to discover it was the exact same job, now paying 24 percent less. All but two of the Slack channels had been deleted, including the watercooler, support, and help rooms. The ability to direct-message one another had also been cut off. There were no team leads to be found. With no one to ask for assistance, workers flooded the main rooms with pleas and indignation.

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洪民憙 (Hong Minhee) :nonbinary: @hongminhee.hollo.social.ap.brid.gy · 11/03/2026

I'm writing this in English. Not because English is my first language—it isn't. I'm writing this in English because if I wrote it in Korean, the people I'm addressing would run it through an outdated translator, misread it, and respond to something I never said. The responsibility for that […]

hollo.social

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Mark Igra @markigra.sciences.social.ap.brid.gy · 11/03/2026

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Chris Marcum 📖 @csmarcum.sciences.social.ap.brid.gy · 10/03/2026

It's been a long while since I put on my gerontologist's hat. Amplifying the risks of AI companionship was a good reason to do so for this letter to Issues in Science and Technology in response to J.B. Branch […]

sciences.social

Original post on sciences.social

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Mark Igra @markigra.sciences.social.ap.brid.gy · 27/02/2026

"The heat was hot and the ground was dry." Has there ever been a more heartfelt, deeply observed description of the desert than in the 1972 #1 hit song "Horse With No Name"? They just don't write em like they used to. www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OTc4ZOsSSI

On the first part of the journey

| was looking at all the life

There were plants and birds and rocks and things
There was sand and hills and rings

The first thing | met was a fly with a buzz

And the sky with no clouds

The heat was hot, and the ground was dry

But the air was full of sound

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Reposted by Mark Igra

Missing The Point @missingthept.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 22/02/2026

Kash Patel says he now has a lead that Savannah Guthrie's mom is being held at either the NCAA Final Four or the Masters golf tournament, plans to personally investigate.

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Mark Igra @markigra.sciences.social.ap.brid.gy · 20/02/2026

Incompetence & thoughtlessness abounds. This stuck out to me “ICE intends to reduce its number of facilities from approximately 300 to 34 nationwide. The facility in Social Circle is expected to house anywhere from 7,500 to 10,000” 10,000???? Are they really gonna cut out GEO & CoreCivic? […]

sciences.social

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Mark Igra @markigra.sciences.social.ap.brid.gy · 04/02/2026

You probably already knew this but immigrants in the U.S. pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits. Every year. bsky.app/profile/cato.org/post/3mdx… www.cato.org/white-paper/immigrants…

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Mark Igra @markigra.sciences.social.ap.brid.gy · 29/01/2026

Accountability for those with power has been under attack for decades, largely due to an already-unaccountable Supreme Court. Like pneumonia for people with leukemia, Trump is an acute & possibly mortal problem, but the broader condition must also be treated […]

sciences.social

Original post on sciences.social

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petersuber @petersuber.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy · 20/01/2026

1/ I'm seeking expressions of interest from nonprofit organizations to take over the Open Access Tracking Project (#OATP, @oatp) and the open-source software (#TagTeam) on which it runs. Details in this Google doc: bit.ly/TransferOATP Contact me <peter.suber@gmail.com> if you have any […]

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Mark Igra @markigra.sciences.social.ap.brid.gy · 20/01/2026

My mom got mail from Public Citizen asking for $ to support a campaign to overturn Supreme Court's pro-crime Trump v. US decision via constitutional amendment. Good idea. BUT their website www.citizen.org shows no sign of that campaign. Is anyone spearheading this, not just asking for […]

sciences.social

Original post on sciences.social

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Mark Igra @markigra.sciences.social.ap.brid.gy · 13/01/2026

The behavior of the executive branch is a more acute problem, but the judiciary is ensuring we can’t fix any chronic ones […]

sciences.social

Original post on sciences.social

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Mark Igra @markigra.sciences.social.ap.brid.gy · 12/01/2026

This from M. Gessen in their interview with Ezra Klein is scary. (Gift link) www.nytimes.com/2026/01/10/opinion/…

So that’s really the great question. I always think back to my series
of interviews with this great Russian sociologist Lev Gudkov, who
would show me these graphs of Putin’s subjective economic well-
being and Putin’s popularity.

And for about the first dozen years of Putin’s being in power, they
moved in concert. So subjective economic well-being dips, Putin’s
popularity dips. It rises, Putin’s popularity rises — which is normal.
And then subjective economic well-being takes a dive, and Putin’s
popularity skyrockets.

And his interpretation was that this is when people accepted a
trade-off: You are going to be poor, but in exchange for being poor,
you are going to belong to something great. And that’s the
totalitarian trade-off. People made it in the Soviet Union; people
make it all over the world. Are people going to make it in this
country?

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Mark Igra @markigra.sciences.social.ap.brid.gy · 03/01/2026

Can’t wait for Supreme Court ruling on whether Maduro gets absolute or only qualified immunity.

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Mark Igra @markigra.sciences.social.ap.brid.gy · 14/12/2025

My son’s girlfriend is at Brown (he graduated). She’s ok. And I haven’t heard from my friends in Bondi (where I lived as an expat) whose kids went to the Chabad School when they were younger. It’s still early there, but it’s been a nauseating couple of days. So sad for the people who lost loved ones

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Mark Igra @markigra.sciences.social.ap.brid.gy · 13/12/2025

I'm supposed to be writing, so of course I'm reading unrelated stuff instead. But for #sociology folks, this Burawoy piece on Bourdieu and Gramsci is incredibly clearly written. So sad that Burawoy was killed in an accident. journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10.11…

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Christian Zimmermann @czimm-economist.sciences.social.ap.brid.gy · 11/12/2025

If you want to mention some economics research on social media or the web, use a link to a RePEc abstract page instead of a direct link: It will always stay up, provide context (cites, refs, author profile), often alternative versions (ungated link, journal article), and more […]

sciences.social

Original post on sciences.social

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Mark Igra @markigra.sciences.social.ap.brid.gy · 08/11/2025

I bought an ebook from Routledge (avoiding Amazon & cheaper than Kindle) without realizing that they require a janky ereader with its own account/login (VitalSource) to access a protected ePub. Last week I bought a book from Palgrave & they let me download a PDF (Yay). I'm not gonna share it […]

sciences.social

Original post on sciences.social

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Mark Igra @markigra.sciences.social.ap.brid.gy · 07/10/2025

The New York Times minimizing the unconstitutional assault on US cities so much that it didn't appear on the "front page" even on my big screen monitor. Had to export a pdf to capture the tiny headline. Truly atrocious. Does any major US news org care at all?

Screen shot of NYTimes online front page with tiny headline about Emergency powers circled in red. Red text on yellow saying "Unconstitutional invasion of us cities way down here!!! WTF NY Times." Another text saying "But at least I know where to find a tree house with rustic vibe" referring to NYT headline near top saying "6 Tree Houses You can Rent for Glamour With a Rustic Vibe"

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Mark Igra @markigra.sciences.social.ap.brid.gy · 07/10/2025

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