Dean Eckles

@eckles.bsky.social

9.5K followers 1.3K following 330 posts

networks, contagion, causality
faculty at MIT

Videos

Mathematics 19%

Physics 19%

Posts Replies Media Videos

Reposted by Ken Caldeira, Steve Peers, Rosemary A. Joyce , and 2 more Ken Caldeira, Steve Peers, Rosemary A. Joyce, Robert C. Richards, Dean Eckles

Mike Masnick @mmasnick.bsky.social · 3d

Ok. Now had a chance to check and, well, at least some docs do appear to be straight up classic redaction fail. And there are some *interesting* bits here.

www.justice.gov/multimedia/C...

Showing highlights of paragraphs 202 through 206 in a doc with 203-205 blacked out. Text in next image

202. Defendants also actively obstructed law enforcement by denying investigators
access to Little St. James beyond its boat dock.

203. Defendants also attempted to conceal their criminal sex trafficking and abuse
conduct by paying large sums of money to participant-witnesses, including by paying for their
attorneys’ fees and case costs in litigation related to this conduct.

204. Epstein also threatened harm to victims and helped release damaging stories
about them to damage their credibility when they tried to go public with their stories of being
trafficked and sexually abused.

205. Epstein also instructed one or more Epstein Enterprise participant-witnesses to
destroy evidence relevant to ongoing court proceedings involving Defendants’ criminal sex
trafficking and abuse conduct.

206. Defendants also concealed their fraud on the Government in obtaining unearned
tax benefits by providing false testimony and submitting false and inaccurate reporting to the
Economic Development Commission to prevent detection of Defendant Southern Trust
Company’s non-compliance with requirements concerning the nature of its business and the
residency of the persons it employed.

Reposted by Brendan Nyhan, Dean Eckles

Paul Fairie @paulisci.bsky.social · 3d

2025 Headline of the Year nominee (July)

Bitter fight over 2020 Microsoft quantum paper both resolved and unresolved
--The Register, 31 Jul 2025

Reposted by Dean Eckles

Dan Williams @danwphilosophy.bsky.social · 4d

A very interesting data-rich analysis of persuasion on digital media by @benmtappin.bsky.social. Recommend!

open.substack.com/pub/benmtapp...

For Digital Mass Persuasion, Exposure Matters More Than Persuasiveness

If you are interested in understanding the mass persuasive impact of digital media content you should generally pay more attention to content exposure than to its persuasiveness.

open.substack.com

Reposted by Dean Eckles, Patrick Präg

Marc Keuschnigg @marckeuschnigg.bsky.social · 4d

How can analytical sociology harness the computational social science revolution? 🔆
👉Observe behavior in actual social environments, capture interdependent dynamics, follow up cumulative effects
🔗Access chapter 5 on strengthening mechanism-based explanations of macro phenomena osf.io/preprints/so...

Reposted by Lisa W. Fazio, Brendan Nyhan, Robert C. Richards , and 1 more Lisa W. Fazio, Brendan Nyhan, Robert C. Richards, Dean Eckles

@NewsJennifer (Jennifer Schulze) @newsjennifer.bsky.social · 4d

Sharyn Alfonsi is an award-winning journalist who has worked for 60 Minutes for 20 years. Before that she reported for ABC, CBS & local news outlets. If Alfonsi says her story was spiked by Bari Weiss political reasons, that’s exactly what happened. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/21/b...

"Our story was screened five times and cleared by both
CBS attorneys and
Standards and Practices," Ms. Alfonsi wrote in the note, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times. "It is factually correct. In my view, pulling it now, after every rigorous internal check has been met, is not an editorial decision, it is a political one."

In her note, Ms. Alfonsi said that her team had requested comment from the White House, the state Department, and the Department of Homeland Security. "If the administration's refusal to participate becomes a valid reason to spike a story, we have effectively handed them a 'kill switch' for any reporting they find inconvenient," Ms. Alfonsi wrote.

"We have been promoting this story on social media for days," Ms. Alfonsi added.
"Our viewers are expecting it. When it fails to air without a credible explanation, the public will correctly identify this as corporate censorship.
We are trading 50 years of
'gold standard' reputation for a single week of political quiet."
"I care too much about this broadcast to watch it be dismantled without a fight," she wrote.

Tim Carvell @timcarvell.bsky.social · 5d

Now seems like a swell time to point out that Frontline just released this excellent 11-minute mini-documentary about what happened inside CECOT.

Surviving CECOT (full documentary) | Deported to a Maximum-Security Prison | FRONTLINE + ProPublica

YouTube video by FRONTLINE PBS | Official

m.youtube.com

Reposted by Nancy Kanwisher, Robert C. Richards, David R. Miller , and 5 more Nancy Kanwisher, Robert C. Richards, David R. Miller, Aaron Sojourner, Dean Eckles, Christina Ho, Timothy D. McBride, David Darmofal

Catherine Rampell @crampell.bsky.social · 5d

Skilled-worker visa holders who traveled back to India this month to renew their US work permits are now stranded far from home after their appointments were abruptly canceled by U.S. consular offices and rescheduled for months later.

H-1B workers flew to India to renew U.S. visas. Now they’re stuck.

H-1B holders who returned to India this month to renew their visas had consular appointments canceled, stranding them far from their homes and jobs, lawyers said.

www.washingtonpost.com

Reposted by Arthur Charpentier, Dean Eckles

The Wall Street Journal @wsj.com · 7d

Kids who are stars in sports and music don’t usually grow up to be stars as adults, a new study found. 🔗 on.wsj.com/3KPddMF

Reposted by David R. Miller, Dean Eckles, Nathan P. Kalmoe

Mike Masnick @mmasnick.bsky.social · 7d

Hi Senator, excuse me for jumping in, but... while I agree with you that this is really damaging, I couldn't help but notice YOU VOTED FOR THE FREAKING BILL THAT GAVE TRUMP THIS POWER (which some of us warned you not to do).

www.senate.gov/legislative/...

Reposted by Dean Eckles

Noah Barkin @noahbarkin.bsky.social · 7d

These two stories on inflation from the FT and NYT underscore why I read the former for news on the US these days. The FT tells it straight. The NYT gives us endless paragraphs of Trump team propaganda high up

www.ft.com/content/c90d...

www.nytimes.com/2025/12/18/b...

Flawed inflation data dashes Donald Trump’s hopes of a quick affordability victory

White House hails figures showing cooling price growth but Wall Street says report was ‘a mess’

www.ft.com

Reposted by Marina Costa Lobo, Dean Eckles, Richard M. Carpiano

Kate Starbird @katestarbird.bsky.social · 8d

Researchers find that influencers influence. New experimental evidence for old theories around opinion leaders, parasocial relationships, and persuasion, with implications for political messaging in our digitally connected era.

www.wired.com/story/the-mo...

The Most Powerful Politics Influencers Barely Post About Politics

New research shows that social media creators have enormous influence over their audiences' politics—especially those who don't normally share political content.

www.wired.com

Reposted by Dean Eckles

Manoel Horta Ribeiro @manoelhortaribeiro.bsky.social · 9d

In a new blog post, I argue that CS is already an empirical discipline, even though we often act as if it is not (mostly to our students).

doomscrollingbabel.manoel.xyz/p/the-empiri...

The Empiricization of Computer Science

Scientific disciplines, like nations, have their own founding myths.

doomscrollingbabel.manoel.xyz

Reposted by Dean Eckles

Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 9d

Competitive authoritarianism tilts the playing field

Joe Adalian @tvmojoe.bsky.social · 9d

Also, I get why the networks caved and agreed to air a clearly political speech not related to breaking news: They're scared, it's his first year back, and it's not worth the blowback. But the same networks refused to run Biden's Democracy speech and Obama speeches on health care + immigration.

Joe Adalian @tvmojoe.bsky.social · 9d

In case you missed it, Trump's speech tomorrow will interrupt the finales of SURVIVOR and THE FLOOR for people in the Eastern and Central time zones. He could've easily started the speech at 8, and I'm sure the networks suggested that to the WH. The WH didn't care; viewers of both shows will suffer.

Reposted by Kim L. Scheppele, Nicholas A. Christakis, Tom Clark , and 5 more Kim L. Scheppele, Nicholas A. Christakis, Tom Clark, Steve Peers, Rebecca Tushnet, Dean Eckles, Andrew Rudalevige, Dan Immergluck

David Bier @davidjbier.bsky.social · 11d

On Dec. 4, DOJ labeled people who impede or "dox" ICE agents "domestic terrorists." I document how DHS believes following, recording, and protesting agents is "impeding," and has a policy of threatening & arresting ICE observers. That's unconstitutional. www.cato.org/blog/dhs-pol...

Reposted by Dean Eckles

404 Media @404media.co · 11d

“You just grabbing, like, random people, dude,” Gutiérrez said he told the agents after they scanned his face. The officials eventually dropped off Gutiérrez after driving for around an hour.

“This is a flagrant violation of rights and incompatible with a free society."

How a US Citizen Was Scanned With ICE's Facial Recognition Tech

Jesus Gutiérrez told immigration agents he was a U.S. citizen. Only after they scanned his face, did the agents let him go.

www.404media.co

Reposted by Lisa W. Fazio, Dean Eckles, Kristina McElheran

Zoë Plakias @zoeconomy.bsky.social · 12d

"Friedberg visited Rhode Island Hospital on Saturday night, where she said she spoke with her teaching assistant, who had traveled there to support several of their injured students." Wow, the TA was present at the shooting and then went with students in the class to hospital to support.

Reposted by Jacob T. Levy, Dean Eckles

Liberal Currents @liberalcurrents.com · 14d

“In fact, it would not have occurred to any liberal before the 1950s that one could settle these issues by rejecting the desirability of human flourishing; and that without some conception of the good, even the public good, one could decide what policy is ‘best’ (and how to rank its kinds).”

Ezra Klein, Self-Harm, and Liberal Perfectionism

From the beginning, liberals have felt the need to promote the development and flourishing of human nature in light of the good even if they disagreed about what it might be.

www.liberalcurrents.com

Dean Eckles @eckles.bsky.social · 14d

A point estimate much smaller wouldn't have been stat sig

Reposted by Dean Eckles

Bill Grueskin @bgrueskin.bsky.social · 14d

“News is what somebody somewhere wants to suppress. Everything else is advertising.”

(Congrats to the CBS advertising department)

Reposted by Dean Eckles

Nicholas A. Christakis @nachristakis.bsky.social · 15d

We performed a lab-in-the-field experiment (2,591 participants across 134 Honduran villages; ten rounds) and tracked how contribution behavior unfolds in fixed, anonymous groups of size five. Contribution separates early into two durable paths, one low and one high, with rare convergence thereafter.

Group Cooperation Diverges onto Durable Low versus High Paths: Public Goods Experiments in 134 Honduran Villages

We performed large, lab-in-the-field experiment (2,591 participants across 134 Honduran villages; ten rounds) and tracked how contribution behavior unfolds in fixed, anonymous groups of size five. Con...

arxiv.org

Reposted by Dean Eckles

YY Ahn @yyahn.bsky.social · 15d

"it is possible for machines to discover a state-of-the-art RL rule that outperforms manually designed rules. This was achieved by meta-learning from the cumulative experiences of a population of agents across a large number of complex environments."

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

Discovering state-of-the-art reinforcement learning algorithms - Nature

An autonomous method discovers reinforcement learning rules from the cumulative experiences of a population of agents across a large number of complex environments, and the discovered rule achieves st...

www.nature.com

Dean Eckles @eckles.bsky.social · 16d

I think this is only in EU oriented materials (but sometimes combined with those for eg US and Canada), and perhaps only emerging after this new standard 1888-3 was released

Dean Eckles @eckles.bsky.social · 16d

Thanks. Their top pick, for example — despite having the brand "Baby Jogger"! — has a statement saying it isn't for running... Not really sure what to make of this. Maybe "jogging" and "running" are not the same? bsky.app/profile/eckl...

Dean Eckles @eckles.bsky.social · 16d

But I don't think this is unusual: EU-oriented materials often say strollers clearly designed for running aren't.

Baby *Jogger* summit x3 has a safety statement saying "This product is not suitable for running or skating."

Oddly this is immediately followed by a section titled "When Jogging".

Dean Eckles @eckles.bsky.social · 16d

Yeah, the manuals for those also seem to say "This product is not suitable for running or skating."

I actually haven't found clear evidence of even a single product consistently represented as for running!

Dean Eckles @eckles.bsky.social · 16d

For example, the Thule Urban Glide, as called out here:
www.babygearlab.com/reviews/gett...

Reposted by Dean Eckles

Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham @paulgp.com · 16d

Great post by Saloni on the value of visualization #linkoftheday

www.scientificdiscovery.dev/p/salonis-gu...

Dean Eckles @eckles.bsky.social · 16d

Are there literally *any* strollers being marketed as for running in the EU?

It seems like all manufacturers have a "not suitable for running or skating" statement. And some seem to conspicuously lack images of people jogging with them.

A consequence of the 2025 rollout of the EN 1888-3 standard?

Dean Eckles @eckles.bsky.social · 17d

And presumably for many attendees of those institutions their earnings without a degree weren't great either, no? So

Reposted by Andrew K Przybylski, Dean Eckles

Eiko Fried @eikofried.bsky.social · 17d

Looks like Australia's social media ban came into effect. Age verification appears based on 1) facial scan age estimation or 2) ID scan. This in turn appears to be done by third party companies, so opens doors to privacy issues / leaks.

Also, what exactly was the evidence base for this ban again?

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