Didem Türkoğlu

Screenshot of a 3hr old post from the GW Hatchet: “BREAKING: GW sold its Virginia campus to Amazon Data Services, an Amazon subsidiary that manages the company's data centers, for $427 million on Friday. The deed, obtained by The Hatchet, authorizes ADS to develop the campus into a data or information technology center. STORY TK”

GW‘s student newspaper appears to have broken the story that the institution has sold a satellite campus to Amazon to be turned into a data center, which is just about chef’s kiss for the state of American higher education rn

a thing historians will marvel about when they study this era is the extent to which the "war is a thing that happens to poorer, browner people" class went about systematically dismantling every aspect of the global political order that confined the costs of war to poorer and browner people

So he's saying that he knew Israel was going to attack Iran and he believed Iran would retaliate by attacking US bases, so we had to strike first since Israel was going to get US forces attacked.

In case the scam here isn't obvious - Grammarly is, without permission, creating little LLM agents based on the work of academics and then claiming this is the same as their "expert opinion" - using their names and reputations for free without consent.

This is the kind of thing a rich CEO says at the beginning of a science fiction movie to establish for the audience that he is a sociopath and the villain.

Outside the US cases, higher ed structures and gov. orgs can lead to different paths. In my experience though, such analyses are often published outside peer-reviewed journals and depending on context not necessarily in English :/ Interested to hear suggestions here.

My doomer-worry about AI is not that the LLMs become omnipotent and take over the world but that the wealthy and powerful use it as a means to consolidate power and marginalize or lay off skilled workers and also everything about our technological and political and social life gets worse

Love it when nerdy table top RPG references meet political commentary 😎

The Board of Governors decided, unilaterally, that no published textbook in the field of sociology could be used in compliance with the law for an Intro to Sociology class. None. Victor: There's not a single existing textbook on the market that could be used that would qualify under state law? Zachary: Correct. Victor: I'm sorry, that's kind of funny. Like, the absurdity of not a single sociology textbook getting past the censors. I mean, it makes me kind of proud of our colleagues, but...

I do want to shout-out my fellow sociologists, who have collectively created a discipline so woke that not a single one of our introductory textbooks can make it past Florida's censors.

Great work everyone.

I am thinking this through, so genuine question re: #2. To me, a customized AI app does not automatically mean it is better than ChatGPT because it can easily be sold to companies like OpenAI or scaled up with similar intent. IRB should still have oversight since it's done as academic research.

The replies here, with multiple scholars noting that U Chicago’s IRB seemingly approved a study that violated copyright and subject consent, points to a serious failure at that university and the supervising professor on the research. It may not seem so from the outside, but this is a big deal.

"Changes to centers and institutes were initially projected to save $4.8 million."

Bill Belichick's annual salary is $10 million.

I wouldn't use the word collapse here. That brings in too much passive tense. Just like "sunsetting". What is going on is a tragedy though, I agree. With global implications.

This is a terrible blow to the social sciences and humanities at UNC-Ch. I don't think anybody would buy the officially stated reason for "sunsetting", given the amount of money the university spends on sports.

Yikes!

Mark your calendars! Our online panel is coming up next Monday!

Poster - CBSM virtual event

Please join us ! Online Panel on Global Youth Mobilization in Times of Polycrisis December 8th (Monday), 11 am Central/ 12.00 EST
Register at [http://bit.ly/3K1ZUIi].
We will discuss youth mobilization across diverse political contexts—including Indonesia, Morocco, and the United States.

This is terrifying.

"[AI agents] can... infer a researcher's latent hypotheses and produce data that artificially confirms them."

...

"We can no longer trust that survey responses are coming from real people" -@seanjwestwood.bsky.social

📚 In our Collection on #Polarisation in #Turkey

Political #Polarisation on Social Media: Competing Understandings of Democracy in Turkey

🆓Read the #FreeAccess article by @didem-turkoglu.bsky.social, M. Odabaş, D. Tunaoglu & @mustafa-yavas.bsky.social 👇
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Sorry for my ignorence but isn't that a door security camera thing? At least it seems so when I google it, so totally confused.

"...appear to be typical of an investment strategy whereby donors, aided by university administrators and regents, circumvent faculty governance in order to treat universities like incubators or, worse, as click-farms to inflate the user data seemingly keeping the AI investment machine humming."

sometimes there's just Too Much World, isn't there

Now that #NoKings 2.0 is behind us, here's a quick 🧵 into the data we collected in DC on Saturday to start thinking about what the day-of-action can tell us about this wave of Resistance to Trump2.0 and its policies. The day turned out millions across the US in over 2700 locations across the US:

This is an isochronic passage chart for travelers created by Francis Galton. The Princeton library catalog has this description "Landmasses and oceans colored according to travel time (in days) to those points from London, ca. 1881. Includes explanation of colors, showing days journey indicated by each color. Includes note: "showing the shortest number of days journey from London by the quickest through routes and using such further conveyances as are available without unreasonable cost. It is supposed that local preparations have been made and that other circumstances are favourable." From: Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society and monthly record of geography."

This fantastic map by Francis Galton shows travel time from London to the rest of the world in 1881.

Tree trunk with autumn leaves on the ground around it.

Revisions can be overwhelming, and I often encourage authors to rank revisions from "critical" to "if-there-is-time."

I also tell authors to write down three parts of the manuscript that make them proud because every manuscript has fantastic parts, too.

#AcademicSky #amediting #academia #writing

📢 Submit your paper for the British Journal of Sociology 2026 Conference (@bjsociology.bsky.social) by Monday 20 October - three weeks today.

There is no predetermined theme. Scholars are invited to submit abstracts relating to any aspect of sociology.

Find out more: www.lse.ac.uk/sociology/br...

Calling political sociologists and political scientists! Submissions are open for the 2nd People-ing Politics Mini-Conference at ESS! This year's theme is "Bringing the People Back In." To submit a paper, please use the ESS conference portal and be sure to choose our mini-conference. www.essnet.org