Thomas Franssen

Think it’s time for billionaires to learn that their wealth being taxed is in fact the most moderate solution to society’s billionaire problem.

Voor in de categorie everybody wins (behalve een paar multimiljonairs):

It kinda comes down to this:

I am only ever going to "trust ai" if it learns how to die.

German sociologists of science (glaser/laudel) also integrate ANT into their sociology much easier than the haraway/mol stuff as it is much more similar to empiricist qual sociology

it really decimated european sociology of science

me and the girls finding out that everything is political

'we worden niet; we woorden.' Nice

Ha i was thinking of matter 'out there' but yes also the matter of scientific practice!

I'm finally starting to understand that when you say that science is political, the Q how matter figures in the doing or science becomes super important. Because without matter you evidently end with unproductive relativism

True!

Thanks! I found Bob Young's 1977 'Science is Social Relations' in Radical Science Journal as a really good example of quite extreme relativism in the sense of 'all science=ideology'. Turns out there are quite a few different 'relativisms' in the 1970s. Compared to those ANT is really modest.

helder dank!

waarom is het in friesland zoveel goedkoper? Is dat een vertekening door de data?

I will let you know where this lecture takes me! (probably to spending days and days on stuff I don't get paid for :))

that is quite hardcore cultural relativism indeed! It's a weird kind of sociological relativism. I suspect that there are a few relativisms in that I would probably have to tease out. Thanks, very informative!

Cool I will do some digging in that direction as well as the feminists, thanks!

So i guess it is the latter, we can't make any truth claims at all, everything is power.

and so conestability, of every later of the onion of scientific and technological constructions, and we end up with a kind of epistemological electroshock therapy'. It is basically what positivists accused Haraway/Latour of being I think? But I can't find good examples of it being argued.

Haraway writes in situated'about this position: 'science is a contestable text and a powerfield; the content is the form. Period' and 'I, and others, started out wanting a strong tool for deconstructing the truth claims of hostile science by shwoing the radical historical specificity....'

For a politics of science lecture I am looking for a good example of an actual relativist understanding of science (science=text) (from the 1970s or early 1980s i guess?). @toteraltermann.bsky.social as the most prominent STS historian on my timeline, do you have a good suggestion?

on my way to a meetup i initiated in a bout of extraversion

Ook als mensen hem verbijsterden wilde Paul Mepschen (1976-2025) begrijpen wat hen bewoog De laatste bladzijde: Voor de bevlogen antropoloog en socioloog Paul Mepschen, overtuigd marxist, waren politiek, werk en leven niet van elkaar te scheiden. „We zagen onszelf als revolutionaire activi...

Blij met dit mooie in memoriam voor mijn recent overleden studievriend Paul Mepschen.

www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2026/...

The US unilaterally and illegally using state violence in South America to achieve the goals of capital is a long-standing tradition

“Capitalism tends to destroy its two sources of wealth: nature and human beings.”

- Karl Marx

I’m an “A.i.” abolitionist - gregpak.net I’m an “A.i.” abolitionist. No consumer-facing LLMs or generative “A.i.” in anything. Sure, machine learning in science and a f...

I'm an "A.i." abolitionist. Here's why.

gregpak.net/2025/12/19/i...

Ik vraag me echt af hoe die LULUCF reductie vorm gaat krijgen en of een koolstofcertificaten markt daar een rol in gaat krijgen. Nu LULUCF geen onderdeel wordt dat van EU-ETS2 ben ik nogal sceptisch. Maar inderdaad als zuivel en vlees net zero moeten worden dan kan je het in de keten wel kwijt

die 100 mil/jr aan koolstofcertificaten, verwacht je dat er genoeg vraag is om die via insetting in de keten te plaatsen? Want van vrijwillige offsetting moeten we het niet hebben met vezelgewassen denk ik.

Lottery before peer review is associated with increased female representation and reduced estimated economic cost in a German funding line - Nature Communications The authors show evidence from a German funding line that a lottery-first approach followed by peer review is accompanied by increased female representation both at the submission stage and among fund...

🔥 A lottery-first system 🎲 makes research grants allocation cheaper, faster, and boosts funding for women, while "traditional" (patriarcal?) peer review drags everyone down.

🤔 Maybe randomness is fairer than the experts.

🔄 Time to rethink the whole game! 💣

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🧪

Ik kan het niet lezen want @unileiden.bsky.social heeft geen geld over voor @scienceguide.bsky.social maar @sarahderijcke.nl heeft vast iets zinnigs gezegd.