Nick Seaver

Nick Seaver

@nickseaver.website

anthropology, algorithms, attention | he/him | The conversation is characterized by Nick's use of language, but the content of the discussion remains unknown.

6.5K followers1.1K following3.3K posts

I think the Republican candidate for Massachusetts governor is sending red-baiting messages about the independent candidate to people in Somerville, so that we actually decide to vote for her instead of the Democrat.

like no one actually thinks the independent is going to win, and this is designed to appeal specifically to me and all my neighbors

snagged back row seats to You Can See Everything in a theater that turns out to be half under construction and the back row is actually the front row because of some Fandango bug that they know about but don’t care to correct?

queen

Josh Shepperd@joshshepperd.bsky.social

The professor is Carolyn Marvin, one of the founders of media history research in the US, one of my subfields. Now leading the resistance against robot replacement of human labor. 

expertly titled to make anthropologists go "oh god not another one— wait, literally bedouins? okay, I'm in"

University of Texas Press@utexaspress.bsky.social

Is social media really making us “tribal”? Out now, SOCIAL MEDIA TRIBES by Geoffrey Hughes (geofffhughes.bsky.social) explores how Bedouin communities in Jordan use Facebook truces & WhatsApp organizing to redefine the digital frontier. 📲

Peggy Parish: In my book I invented Amelia Bedelia as a cautionary tale AI agent company: at long last, we have created Amelia Bedelia from classic children's book Amelia Bedelia

one fun thing about driving through Cambridge is that you can see things like William James’s former house covered in skeletons

he’s not a real doctor but he is a real worm

Rachel Fairbank@sweetsciencewriter.bsky.social

“The children who are randomly selected not to receive the birth dose of the vaccine, those who “lost the lottery”, face in their earliest days the risk of contracting hepatitis B, which can cause irreversible lifelong damage.” No words. I am speechless. This violates all ethical boundaries.

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saw a sunn o))) clip on tiktok where someone had commented “this sucks, it’s just feedback” and the poster replied “actually, they strum multiple times [in the minutes-long video]”

not jean twenge catastrophizing from misleading data, I can’t believe it

Christopher Julian@chrisajulian.bsky.social

I reanalyzed the CDC data behind the LGB “free fall” headline. It rests on a change in bisexual identification among one grade, in one wave, of one survey. Gay or lesbian identification did not change significantly. Calling it a "free fall" is sensational and just gives bad actors talking points.

what was the first R-rated movie you saw and how old were you? (and, I guess, were you scarred?) dealing with the first R-rated Godzilla movie over here…

I have sympathy for my colleagues trying desperately to figure out what it means for us to train students in AI literacy, but so much of it assumes that the faculty are clever enough to figure out anything, the students just need to be told the right tricks, and that this can durably help anyone

folks coming to #4S2026, I'm organizing not one, not two, not three, but *four* panels on the social study of contraptions. come by my new home, the Wentworth room on the second floor of the venue this Thursday, to say hi