Is moose calf slobber good for solar energy efficiency? Maybe @alaskawx.bsky.social knows.

Vandal caught in the act of peeling paint off the bottom of the DC reflecting pool.

Step 1: Hire overpriced consulting firm. 2: CF recommends centralizing services, eliminating mid-level jobs in local units, & buying new systems software. 3: New software doesn't work. Centralized services unpopular. Promised cost savings never realized. 4: Local staff jobs return. 5: Go to step 1.

Hello world 👋

I'm reminded of Willer et al's 2013 study that randomly assigned scores on a masculinity/femininity scale. Men who were told they scored low on masculinity expressed more interest in buying an SUV. (This was before oversized pickups were a thing.) Also more homophobia & support for social dominance.

My sister in law is looking for blue nylon marine twine for an American flag project. I’ve got her covered.

The complete loss of cold years in the Arctic since the 1980s is astounding. The last "blue" stripe was 1992, following the Pinatubo Volcano eruption in the summer of 1991. #ShowYourStripes #Climate #Arctic

AK politics are wild part 99833. Dan S Sullivan (R-AK) challenged newcomer Dan J Sullivan's run for Senate, claiming w/o evidence that it's a plot to help Dem Peltola. AK has RCV so elections often bring 1st-timers. GOP-led Div of Elections: Dan J can't run. How is this decision constitutional?

I couldn't access the paper to evaluate it, but the results reported in the abstract are consistent with what I and professor-friends have observed on the ground: students who use AI to "help" with out-of-class assignments bomb in-class exams. Also unsurprising that AI hit is greatest for boys.

Homer, Alaska. 11:30 pm. A sunset worth waiting for.

Is there anything cuter than a baby chipmunk?

New working paper with Adriana Reyes on the link between inter vivos transfers and bequests. Though largely studied separately, bequests are significant because they can either offset between-sibling inequality in financial transfers or exacerbate it. osf.io/preprints/so...

Looking at change rates in wages versus consumer prices 3-month annualized, in the most recent data... Wages (red) up at a 2.8% rate and prices up at 7.3% rate (blue). So real hourly wages falling at abt 4.5% annualized rate. If continues, average hour'll buy 4.5% less than a year before

“.. No female officers were included on the new one-star list, .. despite the fact that women make up about 21 percent of the active-duty Navy. The list appears to include only two nonwhite officers, even though .. minorities make up about 38 percent ..” www.nytimes.com/2026/06/01/u...

“.. The U.S. is now spending more on data center construction than on public transportation infrastructure, according to new Census Bureau figures out today.” @bloomberg.com www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Remember that recent paper claiming to show that "ideological bias" determined the results obtained by immigration policy research teams? A careful, open-code reanalysis by @kauspurg.bsky.social & Josef Brüderl finds that the result arises from a coding error. —> doi.org/10.31222/osf...

I am completely shocked by this tragic news. I really can't believe it. Raúl Pacheco-Vega was an outstanding scholar who did so much to promote good scholarship. Utterly devastating news.

Such an important point, and one that I have yet to hear addressed by administrators who are pushing faculty to explore "radical innovation" with AI in their research and pedagogy. ("Radical" here means "radical but within the bounds of acceptability for an inherently conservative institution.")

A President ordering the Justice Department to criminally investigate a woman who won a sexual assault lawsuit against him makes Watergate look like an unpaid parking ticket.

On June 5, the Trump admin plans to auction 680,000+ acres of the coastal plain despite legal challenges and the irreversible harm drilling would cause to caribou, wildlife, and Indigenous communities. Protect the Arctic Refuge. Tell Big Oil to stay out. Take action: trustees.org/help-protect...

Shifting returns to education, not educational inequality, is the main force driving intergenerational income persistence today. doi.org/10.1093/sf/s... Proud supervisor moment to see this out in @sfjournal.bsky.social

How Measurement Changes Can Exaggerate the Growth of Religious "Nones" no paywall: sociologicalscience.com/download/vol...

Today I remember Robert L Weeden. As far as I know, he is no relation -- none of the many Robert Weedens in my family tree had the middle initial "L" -- but whoever he was, may he rest in peace. (pic taken at the Vietnam memorial, August 2019).

New technological context, same old double standards in the assessment of men and women's competence.

Every summer I repost this article on how to spot drowning. Please read it and pass on. In the last few years I’ve had SIX messages from people who saved a kid’s life after clicking on the link from my feed. slate.com/technology/2...

Before a recent trip to Berlin, Concur sent 3 increasingly dire warnings about dangerous protests. Readers, I walked 24 miles of Berlin streets. Didn't see a single sign. Does Concur just make up threats to justify charging unis exorbitant fees for its dump-the-admin-work-on-faculty software?

Today is my 25th Shiny Happy People Laughing day at Cornell Sociology. It never gets old. Congratulations Hyo Joo, Haowen, and the rest of our new Sociology PhD, MA, and BA degree holders.

Do waitresses receive the same occupational prestige as waiters? Using German gendered occupational titles, we find that feminine job titles receive slightly lower prestige than masculine ones, especially among male-domindated occupations. Out now in Social Forces. doi.org/10.1093/sf/s...

At Cornell, courses on concrete and sheep husbandry are more numerous, and probably have higher enrollment, than courses devoted to teaching students about critical race theory (or whatever else happens to be the right-wing's bogeyman-of-the-month).

Thanks to the GOP, the 26,000 Alaskans who enrolled in the ACA this year saw their out-of-pocket healthcare costs rise by $1500, on average. @charlesgaba.com explains his estimate. Sullivan, Murkowski, and Begich III need to explain why they voted for a 25% increase in Alaskans’ hc expenses.

Small town airports can be frustrating, but there’s also something quite charming about an honor system snack bar. Of course, it could be the psych students running experiments again. (And, yes, people do leave money in the cup.)

I went to go look, and this time last year, NSF SBE had funded 216 awards. This year, they have funded 2.

You may be interested in this, @rbreich.bsky.social.

I'd really like to see Cornell raise the funds for a fitting memorial to a young man (and rural sociology major) who was murdered by white supremacists for trying to protect Black Americans' right to vote. Fundraising priorities reflect university priorities. www.cornellsun.com/article/2026...

This is my first Mother's Day since my mom passed. It's hard. She was an amazing woman: artist, biologist, gardener, naturalist, teacher, apple pie-maker extraordinaire, feminist, builder, fixer, mender of scraped knees, source of unconditional love. A recent interview: youtu.be/tnpbVxTT9JE?...

Very nice of United to send a voucher for a hotel in Bozeman, Montana to compensate for the “change in my travel plans”. I’m trying to get from Chicago to Ithaca via Washington DC. That better be a quality Quality Inn if I’m going to travel 2000 miles out of my way for it.

Wrapping up my PAA with a nice catch-up lunch with my PhD advisor @weedenkim.bsky.social. Thanks for the treat, Kim! This is the end of my social takeover 😊 feel free to follow me @zhenghaowen.bsky.social

Timeline cleanse: morning fog in rural NY.

Mad respect to the woman traveling solo with three kids under the age of 5. Saw her in the Ithaca airport at 5:30 am challenging the two oldest kids to a jumping jack and lunge competition. Just saw her at SYR, 4 hours later, challenging the two oldest kids to a jumping jack and lunge competition.

The important thing about Trump’s boondoggle ballroom is less the “political fight” that it might engender than that it symbolizes his fundamental dishonesty, personalism, corruption, and authoritarianism, which are all inimical to a democracy but supported by nearly the entire Republican Party.

I am unreasonably excited about being upgraded to first class on a short, morning flight where sitting in first class just means that I'll get my water in a glass instead of in a plastic cup. Oh, and first shot at the Chocolate Quinoa Crisps, which are really the main reason to prefer United.

💯 Distinction b/n fashion & art is embedded in org structures. E.g., Cornell's fashion program isn't in college of art & architecture; it's in one initially founded to keep female-coded & female-practiced subfields (home econ, child dev, nutrition, family soc) out of elite, male-dominated colleges.

Ice went out on the Tanana River at Nenana Monday evening, extending one of Alaska's very best climate relate time series to 110 years. Although break-up was later than normal by 21st century standards, this would have been a bit early for the ice to go out prior to 1960. #akwx #Climate #Spring2026

As far as I can tell, AI video is used to create hit pieces on public figures by (literally) putting words in their mouths, sexualize girls and women, avoid paying human actors, and fake adorable animal-animal or animal-human interactions for clicks. So glad we're damaging the environment for this.

May the 4th be with you!

Kelly Hunt, 19, disappeared in ANC b/n her village in Western AK and her college. Her remains were recently found. She is 4th young person from Shaktoolik, an Inupiaq village of ≈210, to die in past few years. AK Native women are more likely to be raped or murdered than White women. 1 is too many.

"So we noticed that most professors are NOT voting for the party that's defunding higher education, canceling grants for political grievances, banning books, attacking entire fields, placing professors on 'watch lists,' and pushing pseudoscience." "Well, clearly that is the fault of universities."

NEW: Peter K. Enns, "How a Seemingly Innocuous and Intuitive Methodological Choice Confused a Generation of Research on Policy Responsiveness." sociologicalscience.com/articles-v13...

A big study that was cited as evidence that text generators are good for students has been retracted: www.linkedin.com/posts/ben-wi... www.nature.com/articles/s41...

This is excellent. Why did farmers support Trump II? They thought they'd get - more handouts than what's in BBB - tax breaks for millionaires, which many farmers are - no pesky environmental regulations - rollback of the minimal protections for H-2A workers But Trump doesn't need them anymore.