Laura K. Nelson

💥 Northeastern University in Boston is hiring a tenure-track Assistant Professor in Network Science & Communication! Joint appointment with Communication Studies & College of Science. Review of applications begins 𝗗𝗲𝗰𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿 𝟭𝟱, 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟱. Please share!!
northeastern.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/careers/job/...

$7M grant from NASA, Schmidt Sciences to upgrade arXiv | Cornell Chronicle The funding will help arXiv – which is maintained and operated by Cornell Tech – finish migrating to cloud infrastructure and modernizing its code.

Many people don't know this but arXiv is maintained and operated by @cornelltech.bsky.social (that does NOT mean you can send me complaints or feature requests!)

Everyone in the community should be excited that arXiv got $7M to upgrade from Schmidt Sciences, NASA

news.cornell.edu/stories/2025...

For all three positions, we welcome applicants with backgrounds in technical fields (e.g., ML, AI, NLP, statistics) and sociotechnical fields (e.g., human--computer interaction, information science, law, media studies, philosophy, science and technology studies, sociology).

Three exciting opportunities at
@msftresearch.bsky.social in NYC!!! 🎉

Internship w/ FATE: apply.careers.microsoft.com/careers/job?...

Internship w/ STAC on AI evaluation and measurement: apply.careers.microsoft.com/careers/job?...

Postdoc w/ FATE: apply.careers.microsoft.com/careers/job?...

That was one of the first "clever" assignments faculty came up with when ChatGPT dropped. It wasn't a good assignment then, it's not a good assignment now.

I'm seeing a trend in our students at UBC as well. STEM students, but particularly CS students, looking to the humanities to provide more depth and meaning to their studies. Lean in and stay strong, humanities. Your time is here!

Looking at online syllabuses for classical social theory courses, as one does on a Friday evening instead of reading that thing everyone is talking about. ANYWAY, one syllabus assigns Durkheim's The Division of Labor in Society for Week 4. **Can we assign entire books in one week, in AY 2026/27?**

Honored to contribute to “Machine Decision Is Not Final,” a fascinating collection of global (and especially Chinese) perspectives on the future of AI.

In my chapter, “The Mother of Ten Thousand Things,” I explore perception and collective creativity.

(No regrets about assigning the German Ideology though - that magnificent beast)

I almost assigned this in my theory course, then walked it back and assigned the German Ideology instead. But next time I teach this course I might work it back in.

Whoo boy

I am finally re-reading the 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte and, boy, is it THE read for our times

the Watts-Strogatz model, on stage!

From my kitchen, while simultaneously cooking chicken and entertaining a 4 year old. Sure 👍

Reframing artificial intelligence: critical perspectives from AI social science To untangle the links between technological and social forces, this Collection invites social science perspectives to advance the study of AI’s ...

www.nature.com/collections/...

Call for Papers, due April 30, 2026

"Reframing artificial intelligence: critical perspectives from AI social science"

Absolutely no chance I can join a meeting at 6pm, even once a month. Childcare, folks. Childcare.

In my field (sociology) the paper-killer term is "not novel". "There's nothing novel here, don't publish." I actually prefer incremental to novel because what does novelty even mean?

👀

Visualizing the DOGE Firings

D. Bloome’s new #datavisualization in #Socius highlights commonalities, inequalities, and the majority composition of #federalworkers targeted by the Department of Government Efficiency.

Read: doi.org/10.1177/2378...

if you are considering submitting an application for this position, you still have just under 2 weeks to do so

any and all suitable candidates, please apply. everyone else, pls share with your networks

Whew glad I wasn't the only one 😬

Ah yup that was my confusion. Carry on! (And solidarity with battling the fake cites)

I can't tell if you're being serious here (and if this is a joke that is sailing over my head then that's very much on me), but the Journal of Cultural Analytics is very much not a predatory journal? Look at the editorial board? It's genuinely impressive.

Super interesting read. I'm not convinced it's about narrowing perspective tho rather than having any perspective at all. Almost by definition these models are perspective-less. In the technical sense, like art before artists discovered perspective.

Viral Authors: Postwar American Literature in the Age of Social Media and AI Viral Authors: Postwar American Literature in the Age of Social Media and AI

Nov 17: "Viral Authors: Postwar American Literature in the Age of Social Media and AI " with Melanie Walsh (@mellymeldubs.bsky.social), Assistant Professor in the Information School and Adjunct Assistant Professor in the English Department at the University of Washington. Info/RSVP:

It’s Day One of our Computational Social Science Meets Qualitative Research workshop ✍️

We kicked things off with the first paper from @audreyalejandro.bsky.social @dandekadt.bsky.social 💡

Error high will not use. Beauty. Publish this surely, beautiful! Very low. Something wrong. Will not work out. Agreement poor. Perhaps Publish.

Unintentional poetry from the lab notebooks of Millikan, Nobel Prize in Physics 1923

Totally agree. I have no idea what was behind the OSU decision. If it was admin led or forced, not good at all. But if it was faculty led, faculty driven asks based on intellectual interest or real or perceived demand from students, then it could in fact be a really interesting initiative.

Oh I very much support people being critical of this, and to outright oppose it. I'm aware I'm an outlier here. This initiative sends a strong signal of what OSU values, and many will disagree. It's a debate we very much should be having

From the linked post, the person you describe is only one of many types of experts they're looking for. A few positions for AI+humanities (I think you're right about those numbers!), a chunk from AI+other disciplines, and then a chunk of the NeurIPS type. To me, that's a neat collection of faculty!

A screen shot of the NeurIPS call for papers listing many different subtopics in ML/AI

The 20,000 people who attend NeurIPS have a very different expertise than me :) It's a broad but deep field, and it's absolutely massive. I'm not trying to be annoying. I think we need to critique initiatives like this, but not on the grounds that "there are no experts in the field".