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Spencer Williams

@swilliams1918.bsky.social
381 followers 162 following 122 posts

Assistant Teaching Professor at University of Washington Information School. Studying science communication and social media.

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Reposted by Spencer Williams
Meredith Rose (from the grave) 👻 @mrose.ink · 15h
NEW AVALANCHES ALBUM, THIS IS NOT A DRILL
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Spencer Williams @swilliams1918.bsky.social · 14/10/2026
Doing backward citation search on google for a systematic lit review and getting blocked for automated scraping. Worst part is I was doing it manually; hours of manual labor just to get throttled anyway with no recourse... I hate the modern internet 😭
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Ed @notdred.bsky.social · 14/10/2026
I think Ossoff captures something that Newsom never did: the Dem base wants you to fight but they want real shit not goofy memes and too-online riffs
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Ada Palmer @adapalmer.bsky.social · 13/10/2026
Was watching Buffy’s Anya backstory episode. Friend asked why I sighed. “She’s not of a sufficiently high social class to have domesticated rabbits that far north in Europe in that century, but the writers couldn’t know, the paper was only presented at a conference yesterday.” Accuracy is fleeting.
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Spencer Williams @swilliams1918.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
I think it's worth having conversations about where generative AI is/can be conscious, but the amount of people confidently asserting it obviously is or isn't is wild to me. They don't call it the hard problem of consciousness for nothing
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tj nightmahr 🧟‍♂️ @tjmahr.com · 08/10/2026
i'm a stats guru. i just defined what a confidence interval is off the top of my head
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Dr. Samantha Hancox-Li @sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com · 07/10/2026
i'm actually going to take this goofy post somewhat seriously: much as going to the gym requires discipline, so too does going to the mental gym require discipline. and discipline is harder than it looks: it is about *your* ability to discipline *yourself*
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Spencer Williams @swilliams1918.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
I like white lotus but this feels pretty spot on
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University of Washington Information School @ischool.uw.edu · 21/09/2026
Join the dynamic, interdisciplinary faculty at the University of Washington Information School. We're hiring for the following positions: (1/4) • Assistant Professor, Tenure-Track, AI: ischool.uw.edu/about/jobs/f...
The large bronze "W" statue at the north end of the University of Washington campus in Seattle, pictured on a sunny early fall day.
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Spencer Williams @swilliams1918.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Trying to articulate what's novel about my findings for a paper revision.
Chimp looking at a laptop, scratching his head, with text that says "i dont knowwwwwww"
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Spencer Williams @swilliams1918.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Saw someone use the phrase "cartoons are solved" in reference to a 15-minute AI-generated clip. Can we all just take a deep breath? Art is supposed to be fun, chill out!
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Spencer Williams @swilliams1918.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
The demo for this is officially live! You can check it out on Steam via the link below if interested (and wishlist if you want updates when the full game launches!)
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Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dave @davebrowne.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
Pigpen had hoes
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Sam @samd.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
the HRW statement is insane: “yeah Orban was bad but you’re moving too quickly to clean up his mess and kick the fascists out of government!” it’s legitimately a bad parody of liberalism. these people have lost the fucking plot. we do not have time to navel gaze while restoring democracy
"Hungary's new government has a mandate to set right the damage done to the rule of law during 16 years of Fidesz rule, including reversing its arbitrary stacking of key state institutions with Fidesz loyalists," said Benjamin Ward, deputy Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "But restoring the rule of law requires respecting due process and taking time to ensure genuine consultation before enacting sweeping constitutional changes."
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lastpositivist.bsky.social @lastpositivist.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
No honestly I hate anyone shipping Ron with any of the women in that show. Absolute loser surrounded by Queens, they deserve so much better and its too much loserboy fantasy that such women will fall for them. No. Get good.
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Julia M. Rohrer @dingdingpeng.the100.ci · 27/08/2026
"Statistical analyses serve to answer statistical questions. It is imperative that these questions align closely with the substantive research questions. But quite often, research questions are vague or formulated in several logically distinct ways."
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William B. Fuckley @opinionhaver.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
dude you gotta use this new technique, it's a way better than OLS. your data doesn't have any clusters, right? there's at least 60k observations, but less than 65k, right? all of your data was collected under a waxing moon, right?
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Rob DenBleyker @robdenbleyker.com · 07/08/2026
this changes everything
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Spencer Williams @swilliams1918.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
Went to my office for like the third time this summer and had a 500% more productive day than normal. Turns out when you work on a computer without Steam installed, anything is possible
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Spencer Williams @swilliams1918.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
My summer(s) hobby project, HeroNet, finally has a Steam store page: store.steampowered.com/app/4970180/... I've been tinkering with #GameDev since college, but this is the first time I've had the discipline to make it across the finish line. If you have Steam, you can wishlist for future updates!
store.steampowered.com
HeroNet on Steam
Hire unique heroes, fight fearsome battles, and solve the inane problems of your clients in HeroNet!
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User with this avatar just got blocked @avijustgotblocked.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
An account with this avatar was just blocked.
Avatar of an account that was just blocked.
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USER WAS BLOCKED FOR THIS POST @blockedforthispost.bsky.social · 05/07/2026
Looking forward to this popping up in the user was blocked for this post feed 😝
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Randall Munroe @xkcd.com · 24/06/2026
Sports Commentary xkcd.com/3262/
Comic. [A person and a second person with a ponytail sitting at a table with a screen showing a soccer game behind them.] PERSON 1: They could be in trouble. Over the last 36 years, they’ve gone 0 for 2 when they’ve scored in the 37th minute to lead 2-1 against a team whose country comes before theirs alphabetically. [caption] I wish sports commentators hadn’t discovered p-hacking.
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Cat Hicks @grimalkina.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
I got to this study because I saw a NYT headline and I was like ".....how on earth would you study this" Always ask "how on earth would you study this" www.nytimes.com/2026/06/22/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | The Secret Reason Bosses Want Everyone Back in the Office, Every Day of the Week
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derek guy @dieworkwear.bsky.social · 21/06/2026
This Father's Day, I'm thinking about how my dad immigrated to the US after escaping the bloody Vietnam War, only to see his bloodline die out because his son stumbled into a menswear forum, where he spent the bulk of his adult life arguing about pants with teens named Pablo Thriftscobar.
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NANCY COMICS BY ERNIE BUSHMILLER @nancycomics.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
FINALLY IT’S FRIDAY!
NANCY IS TWIRLING A BATON WHILE MARCHING DOWN THE STREET 
SLUGGO IS RIGHT BEHIND NANCY CARRYING AND BEATING A LARGE BASS DRUM, HE IS USING A PERISCOPE SO HE CAN SEE WHERE HE IS GOING
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Prasad Jallepalli, MD, PhD @prasad.bsky.social · 02/06/2026
we could triple the NIH budget without reducing the ROI the main problem is drought, not seed, not soil
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Emma Baccellieri @emmabaccellieri.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
Blanked when I got to the deli counter and came up with “It’s a beautiful day for a sandwich” to have something to say
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Doctora Malka Older @older.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
"He continued, “Whatever your chosen profession is, please don’t let AI rob you of the fun part of it. Your generation’s upcoming battle won’t be humans against AI [...]… It’s going to be people with substance versus people with shallow knowledge. It’s going to be mastery versus faking it."
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🎃 scarecrowcialism 👻 @swolecialism.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
Where the fuck do dentists offices find this music. Who asked for a slow piano solo cover of Golden by Huntrix. Whats even going on there
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John Stuart Thrill @jsthrill.modphi.com · 18/05/2026
Post a meme made by you
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Spencer Williams @swilliams1918.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
I think we should charge people a $1 fine every time they fail to use their turn signal when changing lanes, and out it toward public transit. Seattle could have the greatest metro in the world in no time.
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the possibility that love is not enough @rhena.bsky.social · 09/05/2026
happy Piccolo Day
Demon King Piccolo (a green demon with antennae (but actually Namekian)) from Dragon Ball, saying "Therefore every May 9th will be celebrated as Piccolo Day"
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William B. Fuckley @opinionhaver.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
I think 'earning' or 'deserving' or 'good' billionaires or 'bad' billionaires are all sort of missing the point tbh. There are decent people who are billionaires and there are unobjectionable ways to make lots of money but that's not the point. The point is that level of unaccountable power is bad.
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Spencer Williams @swilliams1918.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
If any of my students are reading this, don't worry; I'll simply impute your grades based on your past assignments. We won't let these hackers win
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josh (oldfriend99) @oldfriend99.bsky.social · 05/05/2026
I'll give Wilhelm something to scream about
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USER WAS BLOCKED FOR THIS POST @blockedforthispost.bsky.social · 03/05/2026
you are canadian
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James Medlock @jdcmedlock.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
Comic panel of Donald Duck and a wide-eyed young Mickey Mouse. Donald's speech bubble: "Democrats should do a huge middle class tax cut to address affordability." Mickey's speech bubble: "Fool that you are, for you treat taxation as a burden rather than the means by which our burdens are eased. Behold a civilization rich in private wealth yet starved of public provision, where every man owns what his grandfathers could not imagine and yet trembles at the thought of how he will weather an illness or loss of livelihood. Will you fight for an affirmative vision of broad contribution and universal benefit? Or will you perish like a dog?"
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William B. Fuckley @opinionhaver.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
See this is what I mean by feeling like I live in the future now. This is future news.
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wint @dril.bsky.social · 27/04/2026
why breed dogs with jaws large enough to tear through Flesh, when you could breed dogs with minds large enougj to tear through Fallacy.....
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noam @noamchompers.bsky.social · 27/04/2026
i dunno, seems bad arxiv.org/pdf/2603.18161
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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 23/04/2026
How it started / how it’s going — Jay Bhattacharya edition. 2025: “We will never use this agency to censor scientists who disagree" 2026 : Bhattacharya “has canceled the publication of a study that found that the Covid vaccine sharply cut the odds of hospitalizations and emergency visits”.

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"We will never use this agency to censor scientists who disagree": Director Jay Bhattacharya reflects on his pandemic-era censorship experiences & outlines his commitment to open scientific communication at the NIH.
April 1, 2025A Health Department official said Dr. Jay Bhattacharya had met with the study's authors but that they had not wanted to change its design. Eric Lee for The New York Times
By Apoorva Mandavilli
April 22, 2026
The acting head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has canceled the publication of a study that found jthat the Covid vaccine sharply cut the odds of hospitalizations and emergency visits last winter, a Health Department spokesman said.
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Brett Karlan @oldjerryfodor.bsky.social · 21/04/2026
Just a reminder to all grad students that we definitely DO NOT keep a "Grad Student Power Ranking" in the faculty lounge where we update your ranking weekly based on performance (along with little arrows indicating your movement relative to last week). Just something faculty, again, do not do
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Brendel @brendelbored.bsky.social · 20/04/2026
Celebrating 4/20 in your 20’s vs celebrating 4/20 in your 30’s
Yes, I have just done a naked forward roll.
But there was a good reason
Adrian ChilesOpinion Homes
I've no fewer than 17 wooden spoons. But I have a favourite and I'd miss it for ever if it went missing
Adrian Chiles
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Berna Devezer @devezer.bsky.social · 17/04/2026
grading is suffering. it's our penance for assigning gradable work. wish we could decouple feedback and grading, keep the former, do away with the latter. stop the suffering.
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Jessica Hullman @jessicahullman.bsky.social · 14/04/2026
If you're a faculty, research scientist, postdoc, or senior PhD in any area of science, select your top 6 virtues at this link: shorturl.at/bV2lF You can also tell us if you think we missed any. We want broad participation, so pls RT! 🙏 In collab w/@devezer.bsky.social @statmodeling.bsky.social
shorturl.at
Epistemic Virtues for Scientific Inquiry — Community Survey
In Six Memos for the Next Millenium, Italo Calvino proposed six literary virtues he felt should be preserved and cultivated in literature regardless of how the world changed: lightness, quickness, exa...
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Andy Craig @andycraig.bsky.social · 12/04/2026
On a more serious note, this does show the necessity of a big-tent single-issue pro-democracy coalition. Autocrats lose when anti-authoritarianism is the opposition-uniting priority, and win when they can play divide and conquer on lesser issues.
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Michael Caley @michaelcaley.bsky.social · 12/04/2026
analogy for the America brained is like if the Dems lost to Trump four times in a row and then ran Mitt Romney to save the country and won crazy supermajorities and also Mitt Romney was named Johnny America
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