This one has been on the makings for years now, glad to finally see it out there!

all these universities kept axing medieval history departments as if they thought tyrants beefing with the Pope was going to stop being relevant

This is a really important piece, which I would commend to anyone interested in the future of creativity under finance capitalism. The pressures on the art world are in some ways distinct from those encroaching on the humanities but there are also plenty of overlaps. doi.org/10.1162/OCTO...

This is so, so well-articulated.

Katherine Rundell · Consider the Greenland Shark I am glad not to be a Greenland shark; I don’t have enough thoughts to fill five hundred years. But I find the very...

Have you read this?

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

if Wikipedia, an org with a shoestring budget and volunteer workforce can ban use of llms, what excuse do large orgs and universities have

Asking ChatGPT to evaluate my research idea

Pray for us now and in the hour when we really should have gone to bed ages ago

Unprompted AI guardrails:
1. Do not use AI to help you do something you know absolutely nothing about.
2. Do not let AI lead your project.
3. Do not let AI make key decisions about what is useful in your project.
4. Do not present AI output as your own.

Learn to use AI. Don’t use AI to learn.

Entries from an AI-generated child friendly version of Wikipedia: Pierre Bourdieu Facts for Kids, Louis Althusser Facts for Kids, Norbert Elias Facts for Kids.

Start em young

a raccoon standing in an aisle at the library

what is he doing here? he can’t even read

Differentiating Regulative and Constitutive Normativity: Talcott Parsons, Harold Garfinkel and the Sticky Problem of Meaning In everyday life, individuals regularly confront novel situations which demand their attention and response. In such situations, they routinely deploy portable norms to select between appropriate and....

New from me in Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour! Social theorists have trouble explaining how intersubjectivity is possible if norms are open-ended. I contrast two proposed solutions (offered by Talcott Parsons and Harold Garfinkel), both ultimately unsatisfying. #EMCA 1/4

Dragon Ball Z meme: It's over 9000!!!!

When people ask me what my article's word count is

The SSHA deadline has been extended to March 15, 2026 - please see the cfp and submit your work! ssha2026.ssha.org @socscihistory.bsky.social

my great idea when i sit down to write

Looking forward to this ASA Culture Section event: "Diversity in Culture: The Current Landscape and Limitations" with Natasha Warikoo (Tufts University), Ellen Berrey (University of Toronto), and Laura Garbes (University of Minnesota).
February 27, 2 PM EST

www.eventbrite.com/e/culture-an...

Billie Holiday avoids making political statement, sings Strange Fruit instead

Consider submitting a paper to the session I am organizing at ASA this year on “Comparative-Historical Sociology and Computational Social Science.” The submission deadline is February 25.

A New AI Math Startup Just Cracked 4 Previously Unsolved Problems Axiom says its AI found solutions to several long-standing math problems, a sign of the technology’s steadily advancing reasoning capabilities.

One of the problems of the LLM/AI debate is that 1) it is guided by an implicit theory of mind and intentionality that is indemonstrable, 2) is riddled with “all in” arguments that miss the point.
www.wired.com/story/a-new-...

Two Invitations To Sociology Bourdieu vs. Garfinkel

In this post, I articulate two invitations to sociology. One is predominant, represented by Pierre Bourdieu. The other is a persistent undercurrent and can be usefully formulated via a look at Harold Garfinkel’s ethnomethodology.

open.substack.com/pub/thesilve...

Being interdisciplinary mostly means everyone agrees your work is interesting but not for their journal.

I am watching what is happening in Minneapolis on Ali Velshi and one of the ICE officers (off camera) literally says, “It’s like Call of Duty. Pretty cool huh?” as they shoot whatever it is they are shooting. Agents walking around, guns unholstered for no reason. This is insanity

A Comparative Historical Sociology of Corruption Cambridge Core - Historical sociology - A Comparative Historical Sociology of Corruption

Like a world-famous band (which we are), *A Comparative Historical Sociology of Corruption* "drops" simultaneously and worldwide TODAY. Thanks to my partners-in-crime, Marco Garrido and Marina Zaloznaya, and to all the contributors!

tinyurl.com/muyeezka

Macron in a hoodie.

Macron with sunglasses in Davos.

Left: writing the damn paper in the shadows of an archive nearby.

Right: presenting the said paper as a keynote at a fancy conference.

#academicchatter

Most of research is discovering that the data doesn't care about your theory

Nothing makes you feel alive like submitting a paper and immediately finding a typo

Conference | Social Science History Association The conference involves over a thousand scholars from around the world, although graduate students and faculty from the leading American universities predominate.

The Social Science History Association 2026 Call for Papers is up! The meeting will take place in Atlanta, Georgia, from November 19th to 22nd, 2026. Submission deadline is March 1st, 2026. Submission link and details here: ssha.org/conference/

🔔 Upcoming Talk

"Speaking of Solidarity" w/ Phil Gorski

Monday, January 12 · 2:00 PM EST

Join us for a conversation with sociologist Philip Gorski about the possibilities and challenges of solidarity and the role of sociology in these times.

www.eventbrite.com/e/speaking-o...

Academia is mostly just opening pdfs you swear you've never seen before, only to find your own highlights