WEDNESDAY (2/18), 4 PM, LA City Hall, Room 350: the Charter Reform Commission meets to vote on whether to advance key reforms. Also on the agenda: a motion for Commission STAFF to disclose their communications w/elected officials. More meeting info at: bit.ly/FRLA26

I keep coming back to @cdsamii.bsky.social essay on the “problem-centered” over “puzzle-centered” research paradigm and I can’t help but feel like so many problems with social science methods boil down to this cyrussamii.com?p=3682

It was such a fantastic experience to get to facilitate at LA’s first civic assembly! Much thanks to all participants and @publicdemocracyla.bsky.social for making this happen.

Our full video of this meeting of the LA Charter Reform Commission is now up at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMg5...

📢New co-authored article in @polbehavior.bsky.social about PARTICIPATION and REPRESENTATION! ✨We ask "Are the Politically Active Better Represented?" Our answer, using the most comprehensive data to date: A clear "YES" for nonelectoral participation like protest. ⬇️See Jesper's 🧵for more ✨

I decided to start an open @semble.so collection to curate more examples/inspiration for "extreme citizen science": semble.so/profile/joel... cc @ronentk.me

existential cookie message from the olympics website

WEDNESDAY (2/11) @ 4 PM - LA City Hall, Room 350: the full Commission meets to (hopefully) finally vote on the Charter reforms the Ad Hoc Committee purged. Stand up and be counted to restore the Charter reforms LA's future needs! Zoom & meeting info: bit.ly/FRLA26

Much AI ethics work focuses on preventing future harm through better design or regulation. Ntapanta’s work draws attention to ethical judgement that takes place when prevention has already failed health.uct.ac.za/ethics-lab/a...

As we navigate the undermining of democratic processes & witness how tech facilitates/resists authoritarianism, join us on Feb 20@12pm to hear from @technolua.bsky.social @tamigraph.bsky.social @thakurdhanaraj.bsky.social @royapak.bsky.social B.Wylie, J.Bolthouse dtdlab.virginia.edu/event/digita...

The LA Charter Reform Commission's Ad Hoc Committee finally executed their reform purge. Time to fight back. Tell the FULL Commission to purge the Ad Hoc Committee instead, and put real reform back on the table. More meeting info: bit.ly/FRLA26

Updated our long-list of resources on accessibility and visualization, including 2025 articles, guides, and technical tools! (For those that don't know, this single-page doc is one of my most-starred projects on github.) github.com/dataviza11y/...

📢 New article! What if “populist” political visuals aren’t really populist at all? Using insider interviews with top party communication strategists in 🇮🇹, we show that emotional and stylistic visuals are used across the board driven by social media logics Link: journals.sagepub.com/eprint/2IXE9...

Mary Ellen Pleasant, American civil rights pioneer, entrepreneur. The “Mother of Civil Rights in California”; one of the wealthiest & most powerful people in California. Key role in major #civilrights court cases; California black rights activist #womenshistory #BlackHistoryMonth #BHM #woc #PolSky

The Open Visualization Academy (OVA) IS LIVE! openvisualizationacademy.org Thread follows #dataViz #infographics #dataJournalism #dataVisualization

What makes technical expertise a legitimate source of authority? Trym Nohr Fjørtoft (@trymnf.com) examines “technical legitimacy”, proposing conditions under which expertise can justify delegation to non-majoritarian institutions. Read OPEN ACCESS: buff.ly/b3DAdu1 @polstudiesassoc.bsky.social #ECRs

THIS SATURDAY (1/31) • 9:30 AM • Occidental College The LA Charter Reform Commission’s “electric saw” committee is back to decide which proposed changes to how LA works move forward…and which get cut. 🪚 More meeting info: bit.ly/FRLA26

Thank you Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez! CM Hernandez is the 1st City of LA elected official to offer their support for allowing "residents 16 and up to vote in LAUSD Board elections to allow for representation of the people most impacted by these elections."

"If misinformation stabilizes disrupted worldviews, the solution lies not in better facts, but in better ways of making meaning." Fantastic work on the need for broader lenses to address the disordered discourse that emerges from epistemic collapse (to borrow from @eliothiggins.bsky.social).

this lecture series is really useful for people who took the roundabout route to programming: missing.csail.mit.edu

🌍🇺🇸 Published Today in PNAS Nexus 🌍🇺🇸 How can we foster collective climate action? - led by @dgoldwert.bsky.social, @smconstantino.bsky.social & @madalina.bsky.social - 17 behavioral interventions, designed by 50 experts - tested on >30000 US participants academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar... 🧵 1/11

🎺 Call for proposals 🎺 1️⃣ replicate an existing experiment 2️⃣ run a novel experiment on repdata.com 3️⃣ coauthor with Mary McGrath and me to meta-analyze the replications and existing studies 4️⃣ publish your study details: alexandercoppock.com/replication_... applications open Feb 1 please repost!

2 Pro Bono Coaching slots available I have room in my coaching schedule this term to take on 1 dissertator and 1 jr faculty member free of charge. 12 weeks, 30-60 min a week. Good for fac who: feel behind all the time, aren't progressing as desired/required, need to adapt to family/context changes,

I don't think it's ever too late to get involved in social justice work. I believe in building a big tent. But my biggest piece of advice for newbies is to remember that just because you're new to an issue, doesn't mean the issue is new.

When political issues are heated, many people think staying neutral is the safest and most moral choice. But, is that how people truly see it? This new research by Ruttan, Adams, and DeCelles shows that’s not how others see political neutrality.

"The disordered society is full of loyal patriots." Tao Te Ching, Ursula K. Le Guin translation

One of my concerns with AI-assisted research in biology is that we're already looking only in the lamplight and AI incentivizes us to narrow the beam. Seems like it's happening... www.nature.com/articles/s41...

UX design so focused on optimizing for a given user task, while completely ignoring: - goal achieved, i want to get back to where i was - i want to immediately do goal again - i want to switch to different goal Way too many times is 3-4 clicks/touches just to... do more stuff with the same app.

Catch up on how the process of reforming LA's founding Charter is going (or isn't) — and how you can help! Our video of this teach-in is at: bit.ly/FRLA126 (slides at: bit.ly/FRLA126S).

[Fab Phd opp] Building the infrastructure for (mass) mobilisation www.uu.nl/en/organisat...

Today’s mood

🚨NEW PAPER The Logic of Connective Faction: How Digitally Networked Elites and Hyper-Partisan Media Radicalize Politics w/ @yunkangyang.bsky.social & @mikecowburn.bsky.social Online radicalization doesn't just affect the public. It also reshapes how elites & parties behave. doi.org/10.1080/1058...

If it’s possible, please keep sharing these links because reach matters. Sadly, 2025 brought me unemployment & health problems: savings are gone, no retirement funds left to draw from, and there’s no family support to fall back on. GFM: www.gofundme.com/f/donate-to-... Venmo: @jgcarpenter.com

🚨New article🥳 ➡️ The Limits of Alarm: How Climate Scenarios Fail to Increase Willingness to Act and Pay for Climate Change Policies, published at @psrjournal.bsky.social co-authored with @mguinjoan.bsky.social & @celiaestruch.bsky.social journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... (1/n)

LUMEN 6 (1999)
 Acrylic on Panel - 32" x 32" 

Looking for the way to the light, a moment of discovery at last. 1/2

Post a perfect album from the 90s that isn’t nirvana, soundgarden, or Alice In Chains. Or try to pick just one, give up, and post 4 instead.

Pokémon or Pill? 💊 I made a silly little game where you guess if a name is a Pokémon or a pharmaceutical drug. Can be harder than you'd think 🙂 Maybe something to challenge your family and friends with over the holidays? pokepill.net

Especially critical insight: “…belief updating alone does not, on average, change policy preferences. Information influences redistribution attitudes only when perceived as morally important and legitimate.”

Perfect Welsh word—my love to all who share this feeling.

What if birds of a feather flock together, but only at specific group sizes? www.nature.com/articles/s41... This is the focus of our new paper, now published in Nature Communications. We introduce a new network model and show how to model and measure homophily to incorporate group variations.

Thrilled to announce the Handbook of Computational Social Science is officially out! 956 pages, 118 authors, and truly global, interdisciplinary perspectives. Deep thanks to the contributors and anonymous reviewers who shaped this over 4 years. Buy your copy now! @elgarpublishing.bsky.social

🎯 Do citizen participation institutions really get stronger once they’re institutionalized—or do they become rigid, predictable, and easier to control? 📚Evidence from participatory budgeting, popular initiatives, and citizens’ assemblies in #Latam @melross.bsky.social bit.ly/4qkXG6h

Interested in accessibility, visualization, or data ethics? I'm looking for Ph.D. students to join @data-and-design.org at CU Boulder Info Sci in Fall 2026. data-and-design.org/recruiting/phd

My face while using this fittingly accessible syllabus website: 🤤

Many think LLM-simulated participants can transform behavioral science. But there's been a lack of accessible discussion of what it means to validate LLMs for behavioral scientists. Under what conditions can we trust LLMs to learn about human parameters? Our paper maps the validation landscape. 1/

🇪🇺🇩🇪 Published Today in @bjpols.bsky.social 🇮🇹🇫🇷 How a voting advice application affected voting behavior in three large-scale field experiments: shorturl.at/2ekBj TLDR of our study (with @simonhix.bsky.social & @rlachat.bsky.social) below 👇 1/14

❄️THURSDAY (12/18) @ 4 PM, City Hall (Rm 350): the Charter Reform Commission takes up personnel & budget reforms, from LAPD to participatory budgeting...right before the process freezes until January. 🚨Don't get iced out: call in & be heard! More meeting info and talking points at: bit.ly/FRLA26

Somos Familia Valle space was attacked & vandalized 💔💔💔 Please contribute to help rebuild this sacred space in the East Valley if you’re able: tr.ee/pAUWtTCjkR