iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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...

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Nate Ela @nateela.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Hey hey yay yay it‘s twofer Tuesday with new arrivals from @athenais.bsky.social @nikobowie.bsky.social & @daphnarenan.bsky.social! 🎉🎉📖📖🤓🤓

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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

When they get back in power, Democrats need to go all-in on higher education. We need a campaign of reinvestment in public universities across the country that makes the Morrill Land-Grant Act look like nothing by comparison *and* a GI Bill of Rights-style program of tuition grants.

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LSM @slukemorgan.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I'm writing (tangentially) about this. Most of them do not own individual stocks. The last time this came up was in litigation about the tribune leveraged buyout where basically every mutual and index fund in the country was a defendant.

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Nate Ela @nateela.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Ok neat that Alito recused in Suncor but I’m old enough to remember when they couldn’t even grant cert in the S. Af. apartheid litigation bc they lacked quorum. Is there an optimal strategy for multi-justice recusal in major corporate cases? Or maybe only the oldsters still hold individual stocks.

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Ben Heath @jbentonheath.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

This is great. It articulates a lot of things that I and my colleagues have been trying to put together, but does it better and more clearly, and draws a clear line between the privatization of research funding, university self-governance, and faculty/worker organizing. Well done. 1/5

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Julian Go @juliango.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Latest news: 2 of my sociology colleagues, John Levi Martin & Geoff Wodtke & I each wrote separate reviews of the Vanderbilt-Wash U Report on Sociology by A. Rubin. For my brief opinion and links to all 3 reviews, see this blogpost: scatter.wordpress.com/2026/09/19/g...

scatter.wordpress.com

guest post: scholarly malpractice and the vanderbilt-washington university report on sociology

The following is a guest post by Julian Go. By now readers of scatterplot will be aware of the Sociology portion of the Vanderbilt-Washington University Report (VWUR) by Ashley Rubin. Part of the “…

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Nate Ela @nateela.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Envisioning Realer Utopias [niche, admittedly]

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Nate Ela @nateela.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I suppose there's a chance that address will align with the subject of the day for my seminar, which runs from 1-3pm ET, and he'll announce a grand federal initiative to incentivize states to support rather than preempt local measures that promote climate resilience. But, well... probably not.

Katie Martin @katie0martin.ft.com · 25/09/2026

Reposted by Nate Ela

I have blamed The agents That hacked Your website And which You probably Reasonably thought I controlled Forgive me I am rich And unaccustomed To taking responsibility

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Re: interview-drink discourse, i recall this silly event at the end of college where career services hosted a free meal so that we could learn to hold a plate napkin and drink in one hand while shaking with the other. They seemed to think it was a life skill that would get us employed.

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Very much this. ⬇️ The tech required to replicate and/or super-human oneself isn't free, and the ability to become an article-generating cyborg isn't evenly distributed.

Stand by for analysis from the Philly perspective

“a few bold states might try mass purges of purported non-citizens...” Indeed, alas, seems v. likely that some states will test the line between individualized/systematic review to attempt 11th hour mass purges. (“See, judge, it’s just 500k individual reviews…”)

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Drexel wants to sell the Academy of Natural Sciences museum. A Council bill could restrict its redevelopment.

🎁🔗 for the land use profs: a bill to rezone Philly's Academy of Science building—which is closing, and not designated historic—would limit use to hospital, museum, library/culture, govt, or "community-supported" farm(?!). Seems likely to result in... a vacant, moldering building? Discuss...

share.inquirer.com

If the bill from Councilmember Jeffery Young Jr. passes, it will limit the redevelopment of the museum building to specific uses.

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looking at this app before sitting down to write some hopefully original thoughts and seeing prominent person posting about experimenting w using expensive frontier models to auto-generate scholarship is, well, a feeling…

Nate Ela @nateela.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

It's that time of year when I, a law professor, dutifully study 33 slides read out loud at 2x speed in order to learn how to handle hazardous chemicals. #compliance

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Nate Ela @nateela.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Seeing that one D+14 LV poll and wondering if that would get to the 2/3 house majority (290 seats) needed to do certain things, and looking back to this skeet... nope, probably not. (Plus, it's one poll.)

Karl Jacoby @karl-jacoby.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Reposted by Nate Ela

This past summer was the warmest ever recorded in US history.

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Pamela Oliver @pamelaoliver.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Sociologists you really should read this. I'm going to repost a few more skeets with quotes.

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Bat 🦇 Borus @matthewborus.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

“The irony should be palpable. We are to listen to mainstream sociology being excoriated for its lack of scientific rigor by someone who deliberately sets out to cherry pick evidence to support her predetermined conclusion.” JLM calmly and methodically tears the Vanderbilt report apart.

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Nate Ela @nateela.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

"We are not proposing a plan 'for later,' when the world moves past 2°C of warming, but rather a starting action to put anticipatory redesign adaptation measures into place. The time to start building national redesign adaptation foresight is now."

scholarship.law.vanderbilt.edu

4°C

In March 2020, while the world's attention was focused on the coronavirus pandemic, an international team of eighty-nine polar scientists from fifty organizations reported that Greenland and Antarctic...

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Nate Ela @nateela.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

No school today so took kids to Academy of Natural Sciences for one last visit. Don’t think I’ve ever felt so sad around so many excited kids and so many dedicated educators. 😢 🦕 It’s a shame we can’t have nice things @governor.pa.gov @mayorparker.bsky.social @visitphilly.bsky.social (& Drexel U)

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Nate Ela @nateela.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Roughly what discourse in the Kansas City Star was like back in the late 1880s, when its publisher backed compulsory voting in local elections so Responsible Men would get off the sidelines and vote for leaders who would protect property rights. Can't wait for Bret to go all in for fusion and CV

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Nate Ela @nateela.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

You can’t imagine how eager I was to get to the office this morning 🚲 💨 ⚡️

A badge from an activity tracker suggesting I biked an average of 211mph over a quarter mile. (I didn’t.)

Nate Ela @nateela.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Trying to sit with possibility that multiple actual existential risks could exist, *&* that self-interested actors might try to leverage one risk for their benefit. Many takes on the Big-Risk-Must-Pace moment seem to be a) “distraction!” b) “don‘t believe u!” or c) “you’re in it for yourself!”

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Nate Ela @nateela.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Reading these scenarios, the Hugging Face news, the statements by Amodei etc. makes it feel like its February 2020 again, except then govts had public health experts & infrastructure, while now for ai they mostly don’t and the attitude is 🤷‍♂️

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Nate Ela @nateela.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

I would've thought this insane when I was a student there, and it only seems more insane now that I'm fortunate enough to teach law students. HLS should know better than to do this to their students. (They presumably do, but simply don't care enough about the impact on learning and well-being.)

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Nate Ela @nateela.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

On 9/11 I was in Peace Corps, teaching in central Mozambique. Someone said a plane had hit a building in New York and I listened to shortwave BBC. It was pretty clear the US would respond by going to war. I felt it was my job as the only American in town to say I didn't think that was a good idea.

Nate Ela @nateela.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

In my climate seminar I have students read future scenarios and write speculative sociolegal fiction. In land use last year my exam featured a data center issue spotter. On reading this AI scenario, the stakes of training up superintelligent anti-data-center attorneys seem well nigh existential...

ai-2027.com

AI 2027

A research-backed AI scenario forecast.

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Nate Ela @nateela.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

The letter says this all will promote "economic competitiveness" & "improve quality of life for all Americans"... yet meanwhile NSF axes 🪓 support for social, behavioral, and economic science. 🤔 💸 Not studying the economy or American life makes it super easy to declare a Golden Age. Et voila! 🪄

nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov

Nate Ela @nateela.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Whenever I see an image like this I'm taken back to the 2011 protests in the Wisconsin Capitol building against Act 10... but this was the first time that into my brain popped the chant "this is what rotundas are meant for" (to the rhythm of "this is what democracy looks like")

An photo on the front page of nytimes.com depicting a protest at the Missouri state capitol over a redistricting plan, with protestors gathered along three levels of balconies, holding signs, and draping banners over railings.