Cripes! Imagine heading to school and seeing the books locked up!
Industry-based sociologist. UX Strategy and Research. Enterprise Software. Future of work. Foresight. Also photography. šØš¦ living SF Bay Area. Working on a book on strategic foresight to be published by Routledge. More: https://www.samladner.com/
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Cripes! Imagine heading to school and seeing the books locked up!
Time will tell
Not just a belief but actually true. digitaleconomy.stanford.edu/wp-content/u...
"Doeās allegations are āpart of a larger pattern of sexual violence perpetrated by staff and volunteers on people who are under their supposed care" www.independent.co.uk/news/world/a...
I see this over and over again. Katalin Kariko didnāt have a full time academic job until after she invented the mRNA vaccine. I didnāt do that so I never got an academic job.
Some ppl like Trump because he is a businessman. But he's clearly a terrible businessman who has built nothing, no legacy, no iconic business like an IBM or an Apple. This dysfunction in govt mirrors his business failures. www.wsj.com/politics/pol...
Itās horrible!
Of the illnesses and food-borne pathogens they can no longer properly track: tuberculosis, HIV, listeria, shigella. I'm especially worried about food.
This is most absurd thing Iāve ever read. The org chart is NOT about routing work but social organization. Engineers, please, step aside when you donāt know what youāre talking about stocks.apple.com/A5sG54ijWSzi...
A reminder: Ukrainians have withstood 3.5 years of war. Putin is a war criminal www.nytimes.com/2025/08/28/w...
This story reminds me of the scene from Andor when Cassian gets a 4 year sentence for being at the beach because of the new law. www.themarysue.com/this-andor-s... www.newsweek.com/veteran-regr...
BREAKING: Big moment as CDC staff stage a mass walkout. They have lined the street outside its HQ to greet and salute the four top officials who have resigned in protest at RFK Jrās attack on the agencyās science base. (š„ AP)
I used to live across the street from Christie Pits Park and I never knew this history. It's a fine park but this makes it even better.
This is precisely what I have been thinking. Itās stage 3: order of sorcery. The aesthetic masks the absence of any reality.
Fact: Commercial fishing kills more than 300,000 whales and dolphins every year.
I loved that article. Just re-read it after seeing the link. Never seen anything better.
T*ump's ham-fisted "design" hire has some work to do. Specifically, what happened to all those talented designers you fired? americabydesign.fail
This WaPo piece about the Airbnb/DOGE guy who is now the head of design in government ignores that: *DOGE fired the actual talented design people in government, including Social Security! *IRS had a beautifully designed tax filing system that DOGE killed *USDS already did online passport renewals
These are absolutely *atrocious* numbers at any point during a presidency but they're downright calamitous for the first year! This man, his government, and his policies are EXTREMELY unpopular! P.S.: Do not obey in advance.
Because structural thinking offers inoculation against authoritarianism, the Right has vilified terms that nod to structure (privilege, patriarchy, critical theory), and attacked the institutions trying to help people understand systemic problems. Refusing to use the terms emboldens further attacks.
Once you study sociology, you can never see āa few bad applesā as a legitimate explanation for anything ever again.
Proud to be Canadian www.politico.com/news/2025/08...
Another signal that the bubble is about to pop.
Motivated skepticism is a good way to put it. I might call it "bad faith."
Treasury is required to produce a report to Congress related to Direct File, the free tax filing option that the current administration intends to kill. They've created a survey with a bunch of leading questions. The survey deserves some responses supportive of the program to counteract its framing:
I am willing to reserve judgment on this because Carney is a smart mfer. I suspect there's a turning of screws going on in the background, but who is the screw-ee? Unsure.
This is how a community fights facism. F*ck DeSatan. #DCFL
we have to ask: why are UXRs not listened to? I wonder if it has to do with a general antipathy to science and knowledge in general? Hmmmmm
With you.
It ain't. And that's a damn shame.
Itās just disgusting
UX researchers are not ok, according to this post. Theyāre asked often to find some data that affirms users want more AI but when they donāt find that, they worry about losing their jobs quantuxblog.com/things-im-he...
I mean, come ON
I wish it werenāt so.
Cripes
Rep. Vince Perez: Under this map, a Hispanic Texan's vote counts about one-third, and a Black Texan's just one-fifth, compared to a white Texan's.
I agree that you cannot afford cynicism or non-voting. Grownups realize that the world is not perfect.
I can't be the only person disgusted by this cynical, lying garbage. (Sidenote: "America By Design" was a great book on the history of how engineers sold themselves down the river to corporate interests, RIP Dave Noble). www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/...
Ask yourself really, really carefully: are you angry that Gavin is has failed as a trans ally OR are you angry that there's so much hate already? These are different things.
I am pained to report that the most exploitative working conditions I ever experienced were from Marxist academics. It sounds like an exaggeration but sadly, it's not. There were ZERO on-ramps to a dignified work life as I finished my PhD program.
What do Californians think about AI? They're more concerned than you might expect. TechEquity did a study and found that qualitatively and quantitatively, Californians are worried about AI techequity.us/2025/08/19/h...
mRNA vaccines continue to surprise researchers. In this study, another breakthrough on cancer (note: this is exactly the research the Trump administration is targeting as lacking scientific merit) www.sciencedaily.com/releases/202...
Itās always who we most suspect, isnāt it? Dude was THAT guy in the grad program. The women knew it.
Just a pre-print but good evidence AGAINST using synthetic participants in research. LLMs don't think -- much less feel. Synthetic participants sure are faster and probably cheaper but you get what you pay for arxiv.org/abs/2508.06950
"You don't know what you've got till it's gone," said the former BLS commissioner www.nytimes.com/2025/08/08/b...
From this month's edition of The Onion.
Iām so sorry for your loss. Pixel had a good life.
The other day I got a bra fitting from the most knowledgeable staff member who was also trans. She knew what she was doing! jK Rowling can get stuffed www.thepinknews.com/2025/08/06/j...
Good morning to everyone except the climate deniers in the White House futurism.com/white-house-...
Itās a proliferation of image-based posts that bother me. I miss Twitter c 2012
I am weirded out by the sheer volume of image-based propaganda on this site. Itās like Facebook arrived overnight.
Ok, I did read this entire article and they have a point: liberal world order falsely erases power imbalances. But regional organizational forms ALSO suffer from this (soft paywall) www.foreignaffairs.com/united-state...
They do note hiring gyrations leading to lay offs and also RTO yes but they are primarily quant so don't have a lot of detail. Personally, I see this part of a larger trend of withdrawal from everything "out there"
Unprecedented drop in manager engagement, according to Gallup. Why? Lack of training may be it but it's in line with other forms of disengagement www.wsj.com/lifestyle/ca...
TIL blue diamonds are blue because they have Boron in them, which makes them conductive to electricity. They call them Boron-doped diamonds. They also plasmonic, meaning they are chemically inert superconductors that could power quantum computers. Wild. grainger.illinois.edu/news/stories...
I read the entire article and itās alarming. Straight up lies leading to false charges.
when they close it all up, I do believe this will go down as the funniest video on the internet
Portrait artist famous for her Michelle Obama portrait cancelled her exhibit at the Smithsonian because the museum would not hang her Trans Forming Liberty portrait. She says it's because the conditions "no longer support the integrity of the work." www.nytimes.com/2025/07/24/a...
Hereās your latest insight on āWhy donāt they swipe left on me?ā āIn other words, malevolent traits were more predictive of conservative ideology among men than among women.ā www.psypost.org/trump-suppor...
Must read. This is criminal conduct, full stop.
So, what you're saying is "it's about rewriting the past." www.nytimes.com/2025/07/22/c...
Reminder of this insightful post. Thereās never just one category of anti social behaviour.
I read pretty much everything David Autor writes. This one is a doozy. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/14/o...
Iām anxiously waiting for the Big Beautiful Obituary! It canāt come soon enough!
Epstein. Thatās it. Thatās the skeet.
Great read
Agree. We are all in a toxic soup of Nowness. The stupefaction of constant notifications freezes us all.
This is not only a great piece, but I love the idea of using Jess's structure -- unpacking the sociological significance of a famous person's quote -- as a window into sociological analysis.
Taxes may also be therapy, turns out
The beautiful town of Jasper burned in the latest climate fire this summer. Premier Danielle Smith is demanding the people of Jasper apologize to her for criticizing her government's handling of the fire. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...
Getting fired or losing a client is often a wake up call for people to correct their own self-defeating behaviors. What happens when that wake up call no longer has any financial impact?
Dysfunctional leadership is when you interfere, demand information, delay decisions, and THEN complain when you're called out for your lack of leadership. YUCK. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...
I am also doubtful that AI is already causing entry-level unemployment. This Bloomberg article suggests itās just low hiring, in general, like this chart suggests. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
You're unlikely to find much for R as that will be mostly quant and lots of finagling to work on visualizing qual data. But there are some interesting visualizations built into MaxQDA (my fav ir code matrix browser). Also recommend this book collegepublishing.sagepub.com/products/qua...
"When the blowoff comes, the mark finds he has no defense for not being a shrewd man." <-- Every QAnon adherent today, realizing they'll never see the Epstein Files
What is happening with Epstein Files? Erving Goffman tells us exactly what to expect. Let's learn sociology of The Con! 1/
P.S. amazing read of the original here from Goffman gwern.net/doc/crime/19...
If the Cooler fails, The Mark may get really angry, call the cops, make a huge scene. I suspect that's what's happening now. Trump supporters are realizing they were The Mark, and with no effective Cooler, this blows up. 6/
Bondi is supposed to be The Cooler. Her job is to chill The Mark out, make them accept they are not shrewd, and quietly stop making a scene. She's not a good Cooler. 5/
After the Blow Off, The Mark may get angry, cause a scene. This is Bongino at the FBI last week. He was livid, yelling, fighting. Causing a scene is bad for (the con) business, so someone has to chill The Mark 4/
Sometimes The Con Man strings The Mark along for a long time but eventually, the jig is up and The Con Man disappears with the money. This is the Blow Off phase. We are in the Blow Off Phase of the Epstein Files 3/
The Con Man starts by fooling The Mark. There are impossible promises made. The Mark believes they are a shrewd operator themselves so they love feeling "in on it". Trump made ppl feel "in on" the Epstein Files. 2/
What is happening with Epstein Files? Erving Goffman tells us exactly what to expect. Let's learn sociology of The Con! 1/
Love the pics. Yes, art (photography in particular) is a healing way to be in the world.
Anthropic apparently let Claude run its internal snack store. Not only did it lose money but it also hallucinated it had a Venmo account, that it would deliver snacks in person wearing a suit and tie, and frantically began emailing security reporting a security breach www.pcgamer.com/software/ai/...
In the last five years or so, I have been labouring under the principle that to live well is to prepare for a good death.
Authoritarianism is saying that reincarnation is run, ordered, and approved by Beijing. apnews.com/article/indi...
Not a bad idea tbh www.cnn.com/2025/07/02/b...
Cool
Somebody told me I should be careful what I say in public or they will put me in jail. Dude, Iām a sociologist. Put me in jail and Iām coming out next year with a book about my buddies in jail.
āThereās a finite amount of blood,ā said Dr. Sarah Prager, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Washington. āAnd when it all comes out, youāre dead.ā www.propublica.org/article/texa...
If you want to know how AI is already affecting jobs, watch this video from David Autor. TL;DR is that it matters whether the new tasks the job has are EXPERT tasks or not. youtu.be/uV3Lttj85gA?...
Happy Canada Day to all those who celebrate! šØš¦ā¤ļø
Unsurprisingly horrible. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/28/u...
Canadian dies while in ICE custody in Florida, U.S. agency says |
The future of work is already here. AI costs are crowding out other costs. The only humans getting hired are AI researchers! www.wsj.com/tech/ai/meta...
The future of work is already here. Number of adults age 65+ grew 13% in 4 years, while working age adults grew by only 1.4%. www.census.gov/newsroom/pre...
What actorās expression in a movie will stay with you for the rest of your life?
That scene is *chefās kiss*