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Nate Angell

@xolotl.org
1.4K followers 2.3K following 1.4K posts

#communications & #community @nudgital.com. Wandering IQ. Raised by wolves. Friend to cheese. he/him. All posts #CCBY. Mastodon: social.coop/@xolotl

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Reposted by Nate Angell
Eryk Salvaggio @eryk.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
In the past week I have been quoted in a lot of pieces and the titles are all over the map: “humanities researcher,” “technologist,” “tech critic,” “artist (derogatory)”…My fave was “respected AI researcher” in The New Yorker last year. None of these are really wrong, but none are really correct.
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infoDOCKET @infodocket.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
National Science Foundation (NSF) Announces Launch of the Open #Knowledge Network, A National Open-Data Platform Connecting More Than 40 Knowledge Graphs www.infodocket.com/2026/09/25/n... #opendata #data #knowledgegraphs #AI #MCP
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Nate Angell @xolotl.org · 25/09/2026
One of the most misleading terms is “AI hallucination”. Use “AI mirage” instead. Why “mirage”? Don’t make me tap the preprint > papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
papers.ssrn.com
Are We Tripping? The Mirage of AI Hallucinations
There is a deep disorder in the discourse of generative artificial intelligence (AI). When AI seems to make things up or distort reality — adding extra fingers
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Shannon Mattern @shannonmattern.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
In case you’re interested: I wrote about pneumatic tubes a long time ago :)
wordsinspace.net
Puffs of Air: Communicating by Vacuum
Words in Space is the work of Shannon Mattern.
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scott b. weingart @scottbot.net · 22/09/2026
Join my team! Help us figure out how to be as careful stewards of today's born-digital archives of state as we've been for physical archives over the last 200 years. Seeking experience in digital archives/collections/preservation, or related cultural heritage work. Due 10/6. Up to $91k.
jobs.virginia.gov
Born-Digital Collections Coordinator #00220 - Richmond, Virginia, United States
Title: Born-Digital Collections Coordinator #00220 State Role Title: Library Specialist III Hiring Range: Commensurate with experience up to $91,080 Pay Band: 5 Agency: The Library of Virginia Locatio...
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⿻ Audrey Tang 唐鳳 @audreyt.org · 24/09/2026
AI policy is dominating #UNGA81 dialogue.🌐 Who’s holding the steering wheel? Are we going in the right direction? Are we going too fast? Are we going off a cliff? 🤔 Read my essay with @hlandemore.bsky.social via @noemamag.com.🙏 We must let the people set the pace of frontier AI!💯 #LLAP🖖
A split-panel graphic featuring a left-aligned, faded-red column of people crossing a street set against the tiers of an empty black-and-white amphitheatre with a right-positioned pink circle accent promotes the Noema Magazine-published essay Let The People Set The Pace Of Frontier AI. The piece is co-authored by Helene Landemore, Damon Wells ‘58 professor of political science at Yale University and distinguished researcher at Oxford Institute for Ethics in AI, and Audrey Tang, Taiwan’s cyber ambassador, first digital minister, architect of the Taiwan Model for digital diplomacy, 2025 Right Livelihood laureate and 2026–27 Carnegie distinguished fellow.
https://civic.ai/
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E z r a @bruit.eurosky.social · 22/09/2026
absolute bangers left and right, this page should be required reading at every ischool:
Consider two cases of what the information metaphor explains badly: language and knowledge.  Like many others, Beniger treats language as principally a vehicle for transmitting or evoking information (pp. 840°). Seeing language in terms of information makes language (like everything information touches) an engineering problem. "Communication" becomes the great solution, that is, people agreeing to use common signs and symbols to refer to the same "information." Thus you place human sociality within the realm of physics rather than politics; the essentially contestable nature of many of the topics of human discourse thus gets portrayed as an obstacle to be overcome by a consensus of signs or a smooth transmission of "information" rather than as a permanent feature of human society arising from differences of experience and power. The urge to engineer away the messiness of talk is an abiding one in the twentieth century, it accounts in part for the phenomenal diffusion and application of concepts from mathematical communication theory in the 1950s and 60s.  There is so much wrong with the conception of language as information processor that I don't know where to begin. Allow me simply to assert: language does; it does not transmit (or if it does, that is the least of its functions). With it humans cajole, wheedle, seduce, hate, politic, assert, perform, and of course, promise. It creates worlds, it is not only about the world "outside." As Beniger notes, many of its functions are ritual ones. But these are not merely "preprocessing, " as he suggests, but the essence of human life. Play, poetry, drama, religion, love, politics all involve horribly uninformative, even anti-informative, uses of language. A conception of language as information processor denigrates the ways that language shapes and structures consciousness rather than just provides it with content. In his 1848 essay on the literature of power and the literature of knowledge,
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Charles Logan @charleswlogan.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
👋🏻 The @civicsoftech.bsky.social is accepting proposals for our weekly blog on issues at the intersections of teaching, learning, (ed)tech, and society. Share ideas-in-progress, reflections on a classroom experience, research, and more. We’re also always happy to hear from students. More info 👇🏻
docs.google.com
Blog Post Proposal Form
We welcome guest contributions to our blog! Please use this form to propose your post. We will get back to you as soon as we can
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MIT Press @mitpress.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
"Archiving Machines" and "The Patina of Distrust" are co-winners of this year's Best Information Science Book Award from ASIS&T! We're proud to be able to provide both of these books #openaccess. Congratulations authors!
Two book covers on a grey background: "The Patina of Distrust" and "Archiving Machines"
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New_ Public @newpublic.org · 21/09/2026
Social media algorithms don't allow us to understand or control what we see online and why... until now! Top scholars @jonathanstray.com and @noupside.bsky.social are sharing @mysky.social, a tool that allows users to adjust their feed’s priorities and explains why certain posts appear over others.
newpublic.substack.com
🎛️📲 Meet the algorithm you can actually control and understand
Jonathan Stray and Renée DiResta introduce MySky, a feed that shows its work
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Nate Angell @xolotl.org · 20/09/2026
Today's question: Do people think through the vibe they will give off yelling at the park when they name their dogs?
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Nate Angell @xolotl.org · 18/09/2026
Best popsicle you ever had! Piňa colada! Mangolada! Ice Queen paletas in Portland OR. #getdeel #drbombayicecream #snoopdogg #SNOOPISHIRING
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Nate Angell @xolotl.org · 15/09/2026
Invented a new hors d'oeuvre that I named "I Seafood & I Eat It" > Thin rice cake, pickled yellow watermelon rind, white queso dip, topped with teriyaki-roasted seaweed. UMAMI!
Four square pieces of an hors d'oeuvre named "I Seafood & I Eat It" made by layering thin rice cake, pickled yellow watermelon rind, white queso dip, and teriyaki-roasted seaweed, all on a white plate.
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Nate Angell @xolotl.org · 13/09/2026
I’m just now starting to realize that Bertrand Russell may not have been that great of a guy…
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Jane Rosenzweig @janerosenzweig.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Resharing as we embark on another day that will be consumed by talk of whether AI will kill us all.
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Nate Angell @xolotl.org · 12/09/2026
<coughs in Betteridge's law>
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Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D. @sarahmackattack.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Really good stamp from @bittelmethis.bsky.social
Possum playing possum stamp
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Roopika Risam @roopikarisam.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
“But solving problems is only a tool and proxy for achieving the primary goal of conceptual understanding and insight.” terrytao.wordpress.com/2026/09/11/a...
terrytao.wordpress.com
A Severe Misalignment of AI in Mathematics
I am proud to be among the list of 25 initial signatories — all Fields Medallists — to the declaration below, which grew out of discussions between ourselves over the last week. We have…
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Nate Angell @xolotl.org · 11/09/2026
If you are only going to read one entry in this salutary glossary, please read on ”stochastic flocks” but even better to read all the entries www.cyberneticforests.com/glossary-of-...
cyberneticforests.com
Eryk Salvaggio: Critical AI & Culture | Glossary — Cybernetic Forests.
Stochastic Flocks, Systems From Nowhere and other citable terms for describing AI systems without borrowing from cognition, by Eryk Salvaggio.
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Eryk Salvaggio @eryk.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
I've added a glossary to my website to consolidate the themes I have been working with across various pieces over the years in a single place with concise definitions, clarifications, and links, all in citable formats. www.cyberneticforests.com/glossary-of-...
cyberneticforests.com
Eryk Salvaggio: Critical AI & Culture | Glossary — Cybernetic Forests.
Stochastic Flocks, Systems From Nowhere and other citable terms for describing AI systems without borrowing from cognition, by Eryk Salvaggio.
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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Every half-ass plan for our extinction that they provide just turns me on. No internet, you say? No online banking?? No 2FA to use the bathroom at my job??? Baby I was a latchkey kid in the 1980s. You’re describing my platonic ideal. Extinct me.
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Dr. Lisa Corrigan @drlisacorrigan.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
The Department of Communication at the University of Arkansas is hiring a new Assistant Professor in Communication and Democracy as part of a cluster hire in Democracy and the Public Good! uasys.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/UAF_Ex...
Assistant Professor of Communication & Democracy position at the University of Arkansas. Apply by October 10, 2025.
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Roundabout @roundabout.town · 08/09/2026
Imagine if an app was all about getting you to put down your phone and get involved in your community✨ Chicagoans, join us alongside @wbez.org and the @chicago.suntimes.com at chicago.com! Here’s Chicago Public Media CEO Melissa Bell in @niemanlab.org 👀:
This is a digital platform designed to ultimately bring people together at local in-person events. “Our top priority is that people can find what they need and then take that info out into their community,” Bell said. She noted that corporate-owned social media platforms “are typically trying to keep [users] on there as long as possible, in order to show them as many ads as possible. We do not have that incentive for chicago.com.”
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Deanna Mascle @deannamascle.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
This practice not only requires students to say they are writers…it shows them that they are writers while demonstrating the power and magic of writing in human lives. metawriting.deannamascle.com/bell-ringers...
metawriting.deannamascle.com
Bell Ringers and Community Building : Metawriting
What’s New? In the final reflections that my students write for me and in official course instructor evaluations, our practice...
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Chris Newfield @cnewf.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
I was induced to critique that Vanderbilt slam of humanities scholarship, and had a strangely good time doing it. I explain why Appiah should like and help, not trash The Activist Humanist. Collaboration can cure ALL real epistemic ills in the humanities: do this! criticalnoise.org/the-struggle...
criticalnoise.org
The Struggle to Face Forward – History of the Present
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George S @harmonygritz.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
35 minutes, y'all. You can handle it. #race #labor #workers #BlackPanthers #documentary
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Nate Angell @xolotl.org · 07/09/2026
you know you are living on the edge when warnings include "hallucinating raw destructive commands"
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Nate Angell @xolotl.org · 06/09/2026
Thread “LLMs work by printing a path through a process that arrives at a completion point by tightening the tension between word salad and a legible destination” 👇
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Isaac Wink @iwink.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
An article 2.5 years in the making and it’s finally published! TL;DR Make people use ROR IDs for institutional affiliation: www.iastatedigitalpress.com/jlsc/article...
iastatedigitalpress.com
Assessing Researcher Data Sharing Practices Using Publicly Available Dataset Metadata: A Reproducible Workflow for Institutional Stakeholders
Introduction: Scholarly communities are experiencing increased emphasis on research data sharing and reuse. Given the range of available data repositories and variability in the use of persistent iden...
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Open Education Network @openednetwork.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Kudos to these open ed champions! 👏 And an OEN round of applause for Jonathan Lashley (Idaho State Board of Education), recognized as an open education policy & systems leader, moving the field forward & strengthening the community that the Open Education Network is proud to be part of. Congrats!
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Roundabout @roundabout.town · 02/09/2026
For thriving online groups, finding the right community stewards is everything. These aren’t just moderators — they’re unicorns 🦄 Stewards need to be entrepreneurial, emotionally intelligent, and discerning. @clockwerks.bsky.social, leading Roundabout @newpublic.org, lays it out in @niemanlab.org:
 Brundrett sees community stewards as more than just moderators — almost like a “really great dinner party host,” he explained, whose role is more proactive than reactive. “It’s somebody who is thinking about, ‘hey, what do I want this to be?’ And they’re inviting people in, they’re setting the tone.”
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Eryk Salvaggio @eryk.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
I wrote about the OpenAI-Hugging Face hack following my conversation with @melhogan.bsky.social on The Data Fix this week - more on how it happened, what it means, and why I still see "stochastic flocks" rather than "artificial hiveminds": mail.cyberneticforests.com/models-dont-...
mail.cyberneticforests.com
Models Don't Go Rogue
Stochastic Flocks & Cybersecurity 'Pandemonium' 💡This essay was drafted from my appearance on Mél Hogan's podcast, The Data Fix, discussing the OpenAI / Hugging Face hack. Embedded below or find it o...
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Tyler Rablin @mrrablin.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
For those who view the threat of low grades as a motivator: Today for our writing diagnostic, I told students, "If you give it your best effort, you'll get full credit." 8th graders. I figured some would try to toe the line of what was "enough." I figured it would be sloppy work. 1/
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Savannah Garmon @quantumsavannah.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
"I make the case that, like poetry, physics gives us a viewpoint on the universe that we need because it is our ancestral inheritance. I also argue that spending time with what feels strange about physics can help prepare us to better reckon with difficult political questions." 🧪
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BikeLoudPDX @bikeloudpdx.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
Going Back to School in PDX? Find Your Bike Bus! Want to start your own Bike Bus? Learn How! www.bikebuspdx.org/bike-buses
A map showing all the locations and names of Bike Buses in Portland
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Nate Angell @xolotl.org · 30/08/2026
I am excited to attend @educause.bsky.social! The conference agenda is now available so check it out and join me in Denver. See you there! #EDU26 i.snoball.it/p/UuAAzc1Y/b/1
i.snoball.it
EDUCAUSE Annual Conference 2026 | Sept 29–Oct 2 in Denver
Join the EDUCAUSE Annual Conference 2026 in Denver, CO from Sept 29 to Oct 2. Connect, learn, and explore the latest in higher education technology.
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Jon Becker @jonbecker.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
Related, I *finally* read this essay by @alondra.bsky.social . It is as good as advertised; a comprehensive call to action for higher education. (I also hope social scientists welcome us educational researchers into the fold.)
amacad.org
Field Theory: AI as Social Science Question, Object & Tool
Uses of advanced artificial intelligence are changing how societies organize labor, govern, produce knowledge, and make meaning. In light of these developments, this essay argues that AI models, tools...
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Dannagal Goldthwaite Young @dannagal.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
Statistics have a well known liberal bias.
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Bonnie Honig @bonniehonig.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
A beautiful, reflective, informative, essay about teaching under austerity by @johannawinant.bsky.social
bostonreview.net
The Claims of Close Reading
Literary studies have been starved by austerity, but their core methodology remains radical.
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Nate Angell @xolotl.org · 29/08/2026
A man goes to work and does the same thing every day until someone falls in love with him.
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Marcus Luther @marcusluther.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
"AI could accelerate this erosion. Or it could be the impetus for a deliberate rebuilding." There were so many reasons that the MIT report on AI struck a chord with me yesterday—but perhaps more than anything it was the emphasis and urgency leaning into trust, connection, and community.
excerpt from post that includes quote and will be linked in reply
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TechCrunch @techcrunch.com · 26/08/2026
Flipboard acquires Graze, the feed builder working to monetize the open social web
techcrunch.com
Flipboard acquires Graze, the feed builder working to monetize the open social web
Flipboard is acquiring Bluesky feed-building startup Graze, bringing its privacy-friendly ad technology and creator monetization tools into Flipboard’s growing open social web ecosystem.
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Ryan Randall @www.ryanpatrickrandall.com · 28/08/2026
Intentionally pronouncing "Flonase" to rhyme with "Hennessy" for the rest of the semester.
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Nate Angell @xolotl.org · 28/08/2026
Just so you know how it is around here, my wife and I just discussed the proper use of n-dashes for like 20m...
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Mike Masnick @masnick.com · 27/08/2026
The NY Times is just straight up trolling me now, right?
headline of NY Times article: A $17.1 Billion Vote of Confidence That Jonathan Haidt Was Right
In “The Anxious Generation,” he laid out the evils of social media for kids. The landmark Meta settlement seems to agree.
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Human Intelligence® @humancreator.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
We’re proud to support NO QUIET HOURS, a human-made documentary about the glorious, strange, loud history of Pacific Northwest music. Come find the Human Intelligence table, say hi, and grab a free H-shirt or sticker while they last. This Fri, Aug 28 Crystal Ballroom 3 PM All ages
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Dr. Dawn Foster @geekygirldawn.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Matt and I wrote an IEEE Computer article about how the tension created when vendors and cloud providers compete to capture value creates friction and disruption for users and contributors. It's another take on the relicensing / forks research. The full paper can be read at doi.org/10.1109/MC.2...
doi.org
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Flipboard @flipboard.flipboard.social.ap.brid.gy · 26/08/2026
Graze, the custom feed builder for the Atmosphere, has joined Flipboard! We're so excited to start working with them more closely. Read Graze CEO Devin Gaffney's Leaflet post here to learn more. graze.leaflet.pub/3mtypcuxxc22p
graze.leaflet.pub
Better, Together - Graze Newsletter
An announcement from Graze
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Nate Angell @xolotl.org · 26/08/2026
Great news from @devingaffney.com and @graze.social! Graze is one of the most interesting and potentially powerful interventions I've seen in the social media ecosystem. Good move @flipboard.com!
graze.leaflet.pub
Better, Together
An announcement from Graze
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Marcus Bösch @boesch.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
"The media class continued to read X like a thermometer offering data about the climate of opinion when it was actually a probe taking the rectal temperature of the internet’s loneliest men." @aidanwalker.bsky.social 💯 howtodothingswithmemes.substack.com/p/shift-slop...
howtodothingswithmemes.substack.com
shift, slop, chud: operating a vibe
Vincent Bevins recently wrote a great essay re-evaluating the effects of the Musk reign over the platform formerly known as Twitter.
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