Recently read something about how we grieve when the futures we imagined are lost. We've got a long, uneven grieving process ahead of us, don't we?

"People need to know that the universe is bigger than the bad things that are happening to us." ❤️

HELLO PARTY PEOPLE! I am back with another episode of "Put Down the AI and Read a Fucking Book" I present to you: **Kin by Tayari Jones is SO FUCKING GAY/GOOD!!!!!!; or, This Book is a Beautiful Homage to All the Shapes Black Women's Friendships Take** earrings and paintings by Crystal Galindo 📚💙

Cool cool cool cool.

Wow.

"Like free Black people before the Civil War who carried the burden of proof to demonstrate that they were not enslaved people to any white person who might ask, the burden of proof today has been borne disproportionately by US citizens and immigrants who are people of color..." New book to read!

Executive orders are not laws - yes we know this. But the intent is disruption. Antidote is preparation. 1. Check your voter registration: www.vote411.org 2. Know your precinct and polling station 3. Help register others 4. Volunteer to be an election watcher

GIFT LINK: www.nytimes.com/2026/03/31/u...

In other news, I am really excited to share some new initiatives we're launching at The Rumpus including increased pay, writing and editorial fellowships, and microgrants. therumpus.net/2026/03/31/e...

Wild thing to say. These articles are meant to function as AI-normalizing propaganda right? So why do I only feel more and more disgusted?

The Supreme Court did not strike down conversion therapy bans today. Not nationwide. Not in Colorado. Not anywhere. Here's what actually happened in Chiles v. Salazar—and why the coverage you're seeing serves the conservative legal movement more than it serves you.

“Trans people in prison are experts on organizing under conditions of extreme censorship, surveillance, and repression." --Pooja Gehi of @arcgenderjustice.bsky.social (in a crucial piece by Gabriel Arkles) truthout.org/articles/tra...

Now that I've come to terms with the fact that this draft I haven't touched for months is NOT close to publication, I'm revisiting resources on framing academic articles. In case they're useful: -Zuckerman's On Genre mitmgmtfaculty.mit.edu/esivan/other/ -Belcher Ch2 www.google.com/books/editio...

It was an honor to tell the truth. Preorders are love, y’all.

My next book, a practical guide for how to write for mass media, publishes four weeks from today. I hope you'll consider ordering it now, inviting me to speak, and to tell others. Here's what @tressiemcphd.bsky.social said about my work. Pre-order here: www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/...

I don't think we fully appreciate how children fulfill an important social service: keeping us up-to-date on obscure animals. Untapped research communications collaboration for zoologists and other animal scientists?

NSF's Social, Behavioral and Economic Directorate has awarded only 16 grants since October. No big budget cuts went through. No freeze. The courts have acted to keep funds flowing at every turn. The money just isn't going out. Why...? 1/x source: grant-witness.us/funding_curv... 🟦🧠 #academicsky

"I believe in a future in which trans people aren't forced to live in fear, shame and secrecy." My strip for TDOV.

You shouldn't have to pay $2,000 to go to the national conference for your association so you can present a paper that does not operate as an actual prestige marker within the discipline

So excited to share this excerpt, which also contains the first identifiable book typo! What a year for me to make that one in particular too lolol (iykyk)

Sir, a second César Chávez investigation has dropped www.nytimes.com/2026/03/29/u...

“men at once become fascinated by any extension of themselves in any material other than themselves.”

I think about this a lot when people say the ASA is not or should not be “political” (whatever that means).

What a review from Ricky D’Andrea Crano. Some highlights: "Behind the veneer of good-natured advice lies a techno-managerial dream of seamless optimization, predictive personalization, and ubiquitous data capture." /1

See, we need poetry because sometimes a title alone is enough to send you spiraling through a memory. Oh Indiana.

Journal submission instructions that are music to my ears: "Reference list does not count toward page total." Bless them.

Just learned Barbara Harris Combs is working on a book about the Alabama Riverboat Brawl and I am EXCITED. #sociology #AcademicSky

Heeey, new teacher! Yes, this is really forking hard. No, it’s probably not supposed to be THIS hard. Although you can’t control most of it, you can make sure to drink water, eat your lunch, and take some breaks. Teaching’s a big deal, but you’re a big deal too! Signed, Your teacher big sister

"We are at war, and thousands of people are dead. We are at war, and we are complaining about high gas prices and long lines at the airport. We are at war, and running late for our next appointment." organizingmythoughts.org/the-zombie-d...

ok, here's the list of concerns I added to my org's draft AI policy, and my board is asking me to back each of these with references and sources. would anyone like to help? in return, you can use the same list! with sources! for your policy!

A frustrating aspect is that a lot of conditions, even physical ones, are notoriously difficult to diagnose through "objective metrics" (ask anyone with lupus...). Medicine is not a precise discipline in a lot of ways, bodies are weird and complicated! That ambiguity is just a vehicle for prejudice.

I really, really need academic organizations to think more critically about travel (conferences, talks, and meetings) during the Trump administration. Sadly, most are not.

Anyway, AI is a managerial technology that came out of fields where researchers act more like managers than researchers and this is not a coincidence. It’s fundamentally related to why certain people jumped at the chance to try to build certain kinds of systems that devalued (other people’s) work.

Colorado is keeping kids in jail-like settings for weeks or months on end even after juvenile court judges have found that these kids shouldn't be placed in highly-restrictive detention facilities. We're suing.

Excellent resource to share with your classes

"The search bar replaced the reference desk without replacing the skills behind it: knowing how to ask a question precisely, understanding how information is organized and who funds it, knowing the difference between a primary source and a summary of one." (2/3)

ICE says it provides 'proper meals.' Detainees see crystalized jelly, rancid beans and iced bologna In the business of immigration detention, researchers say "bad food is the business model."

Irritated that a piece like this is necessary but great considerations here. The unequal risk of coding errors for marginalized populations (which differ most from training data) is an important point. But I'm still stuck on the idea that LLMs could replace both interviewers AND interviewees. What.

I’m sure there are outliers, but I think it’s beautiful and important for Californians to be able to say, we don’t need to honor this guy by name anymore but we’re going to continue to honor farm workers because the values they fought for were always about more than just one man.

"Black women ...comprise 6 percent of the overall U.S. labor force and 12 percent of the federal labor force. But of the almost 300,000 federal jobs slashed in 2025, Black women were a stunning 33 percent of those cuts."

The Cokie Roberts Fellowship jump-started my research for my next book. It supports women's history archival research, the kind of scholarship we really need right now. They are accepting applications for the next cycle by April 15. archivesfoundation.org/cokie-robert...

We learned in 2024, when the late great Michael Burawoy led a President's Letter in support of the ceasefire resolution, that most ASA presidents are anti-genocide. Mary Romero (2019) announced she'll boycott the ASA meeting in reaction to the decision to refuse to put BDS on the ballot.

"More than ever the American Sociological Association has to choose if it will use data and rationality to take a public stand & protect all social groups including Palestinians or knuckle under an administration that has no respect for our discipline and in some cases see sociologists as the enemy"

S4P rejects ASA leadership's authoritarian decision to bypass its own procedures & membership engagement re: our BDS resolution. If the resolution is not considered via existing procedures we will BOYCOTT the 2026 meeting. SIGN ON TO JOIN US: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Gonna hold on to this croissant metaphor for the rest of my creative life

1/ I've taught/referenced three democracy indexes/reports over the years- from Freedom House, the V-Dem Institute, and The Economist Intelligence Unit. V-Dem just came out with its 2026 report. Like most measures of the health of democracy, it's not good news. www.v-dem.net/documents/75...

If you live in the US and you feel like your head has been spinning, this is why. Typically, autocratizing countries take a decade to make the kind of decline we've seen here in the past year, according to V-Dem.

Happy St Patrick’s Day. Irish people weren’t always considered white, and there’s a centuries-long history of anti-Irish racism both here and in Europe. However, we need to be honest with ourselves that our assimilation into whiteness came at the expense of other people, particularly Black people.

I really like @hammerandhope.bsky.social because I see stories like this and think, wow, I am so glad someone wrote this. hammerandhope.org/article/trum...

I fear my mad rush to meet this deadline has spilled over into a mad flurry of reposts on my breaks. Nothing quite like that just before the deadline, "is this paper finally going to be done?" anticipatory energy.