iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Nick Wilson @nickhwilson.bsky.social · 9h

Just shove a pencil in the air vent!

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Nick Wilson @nickhwilson.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Jesus, the nakedly imperial language here is...quite a (bad) play... www.nytimes.com/2026/10/07/w...

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Nick Wilson @nickhwilson.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

**Absolutely**. They really like heterodox thinkers, from what I hear.

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Peter Sagal @petersagal.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

This is where I confess I never finished Battlestar Galactica.

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Gautam Kamath @gautamkamath.com · 16/09/2026

Nihar Shah did a heroic experiment for TMLR: he spent 20-25 hours over two weeks interviewing authors of seemingly low-quality submissions about their own papers. He confirmed what we all suspected: people submitting these papers have *no idea* what is going on in them.

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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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Nick Wilson @nickhwilson.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

For the moment, this is the Wikipedia page for Eric Schmitt:

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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 29/09/2026

🤡 Schmitt beclowns himself 🤡 Schmitt concocted an elaborate conspiracy theory that Smith traveled to Atl for a Hawks game and to collude with Fani Willis, & flashed his "evidence" before accusing Smith of perjury. There's just one problem -- his facts were totally wrong. Here's the whole sequence:

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Nick Wilson @nickhwilson.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Soon-to-be-removed Wikipedia edit by someone FTW:

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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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Dan Hirschman @asociologist.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

"If Rubin were actually sincere about not having sufficient evidence to make sweeping claims about the discipline, then she would not make such sweeping claims about the discipline. Yet she does. Over and over again." @juliango.bsky.social on the U Chicago responses to the Rubin report on sociology.

scatter.wordpress.com

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

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Victor Ray @victorerikray.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

I spent the morning reading John Levi Martin's absolutely brutal takedown of the Vanderbilt report's assessment of politicization in sociology. I recommend it and hope it gets as much attention as the initial (crap) Vanderbilt report. A Reader’s Guide to the Rubin Report osf.io/preprints/so...

osf.io

OSF

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Onion Sports @onionsports.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Rockies Pitcher Pledges To Give Up Home Run For Sick Child theonion.com/rockies-pitc...

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Nick Wilson @nickhwilson.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

....and this person has spent more than a million dollars on Amazon, etc.?

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Nick Wilson @nickhwilson.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

He usually finds them in his toy basket. When he's been good.

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Nick Wilson @nickhwilson.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I think it depends on whether you're interested in colleagues sniff-testing the analyses (memos and phone calls) vs substantive analysis (talks, etc...)

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Nick Wilson @nickhwilson.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Yeah, love the "and, trivially" followed by grandstanding derivations.

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Nick Wilson @nickhwilson.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Excellent, even-handed, and damning analysis of Ashley Rubin's subsidiary Vanderbilt "report" on sociology. That (and the Vanderbilt report drawing on it) are deeply suspect as good-faith interventions into sociology (and other fields). osf.io/preprints/so...

osf.io

OSF

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lukelukeluke @lukelukeluke.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Me: I’d like a slice of pizza Server: that comes with three sides Me: I know what shape it is

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Nick Wilson @nickhwilson.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Also, awesome that it's an old enough article where they just printed the code for their computer simulation in a short appendix to the article.

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Nick Wilson @nickhwilson.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Always makes me think of this one:

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Katie Martin @katie0martin.ft.com · 10/09/2026

Being ejected from the plane entirely costs extra

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Nick Wilson @nickhwilson.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

....and he destroyed the moon?

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Three Scary Rogue Agents in a Trenchcoat @alexhanna.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

@tante.cc: 'Those “proofs” are about narrative building. Which is why especially people with no b/g in math keep using them as definite proof of LLMs being “more than just stochastic language models” which is just factually untrue and the mark of deeply unserious people.' tante.cc/2026/09/07/t...

tante.cc

The function of LLM-based math "proofs"

There has been quite the uptick in “AI” labs’ claims of their LLMs “solving complex math problems”. I wondered why that is, especially given that LLMs are not exactly built for the kind of rigor that ...

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Nick Wilson @nickhwilson.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Oh, fair, disinterested merchant, you have made me afraid. Pray tell: is there some poultice I might purchase to save me from these spirits?

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Nick Wilson @nickhwilson.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Uhhh, Michigan is not even on their map?

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Nick Wilson @nickhwilson.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Oh, *and*, Meta wants google-glass weirdos to do their brand-ambassador-ing for them!

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Nick Wilson @nickhwilson.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

This product launch is going great (if you have to advertise to other people how to safely interact with people using your product)!

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Nick Wilson @nickhwilson.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Proton down for you too, eh? That frankfurt data center heating incident sounds like it was a doozy...

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Nick Wilson @nickhwilson.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Dunno, listening to "Slim's Return" right now and it doesn't really bang. /s

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Nick Wilson @nickhwilson.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Shit. This made me realize...I forgot about a symposium

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Nick Wilson @nickhwilson.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

It really is the narratives, and their deep roots in folklore. Like, the Bloody Baron (an early arc) is just heartbreaking, and it's one of ~200 or so storylines. And don't get me started on Master Mirror!

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Tim Gill @timgill924.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Speaking as a sociologist, I had never heard of Jason Arday until this whole scandal. So I’m not really sure he was “on top” of the discipline.

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Nick Wilson @nickhwilson.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

*golf clap over soup and firearm puns*

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Nick Wilson @nickhwilson.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

So....they'd just eat around the gun I guess?

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jon ben-menachem @jbenmenachem.com · 28/07/2026

New job market paper 🚨 Local newsrooms are cutting crime coverage—but not homicide, which nearly every journalist I interviewed considers too important to skip. So why did so many journalists recount open newsroom disagreements over homicide coverage? onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Which deaths count? Debating homicide coverage amidst newsroom scarcity

Past research documents disparities in which homicides receive news coverage and how victims are portrayed, yet the organizational processes producing these patterns remain understudied. This paper asks how crime journalists navigate homicide coverage under resource scarcity—and why widely voiced concerns about the racialized consequences of coverage fail to resolve disagreements about equitable practice. Drawing on interviews with 58 crime journalists across 40 local newsrooms, I find that homicide coverage generated the most sustained professional disagreements in the data. Journalists agreed homicides were newsworthy and shared a vision for ideal coverage, but resource constraints often made it unrealizable. Participants invoked competing moral frameworks organized around two concerns: that selective coverage risks symbolic annihilation of primarily Black victims whose deaths go publicly unacknowledged, and that universal episodic coverage risks territorial stigmatization of communities where violence is concentrated. Because scarcity forecloses the coverage that would avoid both harms, it transforms professional discretion into a choice among ethically unsatisfactory alternatives. Some journalists responded by abdicating discretion entirely, endorsing universal coverage because they distrusted selective judgment. These findings illuminate why the coverage patterns that criminologists have identified as harmful persist even among practitioners who recognize and contest them.

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Nick Wilson @nickhwilson.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

Also, NorCal hip hop doesn't get enough love (though you noted DJ Shadow!) Also Latyrx, The Album (1997).

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Philip N Cohen @philipncohen.com · 27/07/2026

Per @asanews.bsky.social email, after being cut off by NSF, ASA is ending the Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant.

AS American Sociological Association
Dear Colleagues,
We are writing with important information about the ASA Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant (DDRIG), which has been funded by the National Science Foundation for the past six years.
After learning that we will not be receiving our next funding increment from NSF, we are suspending the ASA DDRIG program and will not be opening the 2027 application cycle. This does not affect any student who currently holds an ASA DDRIG.
Over six application cycles, the ASA DDRIG program awarded 153 grants to students at 62 institutions. We would like to extend our sincerest thanks to all the reviewers who have made the program possible and to all the students, both applicants and grantees, whose work has inspired us. We are actively seeking other funding opportunities and will be back in touch with the sociology community if funding becomes available in the future.
In the meantime, we encourage you to write to your representatives in Congress to let them know how the cancellation and suspension of research funding impacts you, your students, and your colleagues. Please visit ASA Action Center to view our current action alerts on this matter. Feel free to customize your message if you received an ASA DDRIG or NSF DDRI and share how the program helped shape your trajectory.
Thank you for your understanding and continued support of ASA's efforts to promote the work of sociologists and the discipline of sociology.
ASA DDRIG Program Team
For assistance or information, contact communications@asanet.org.
To unsubscribe from future Messages from the ASA, click here.
American Sociological Association
1717 K Street NW, Suite 900, Washington, DC 20006
Privacy Policy Pop

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Nick Wilson @nickhwilson.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

Psychodrama: I felt so badly for that one in the front right...

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