christhomas.bsky.social
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christhomas.bsky.social
christhomas.bsky.social
@christhomas.bsky.social
2.4K followers 1.4K following 91 posts
Research: punishment & inequality, race, computational social science
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brettrushforth.bsky.social
Loved this book - congrats to Jack (and @yalepress.bsky.social)!
henrysnow.bsky.social Henry Snow @henrysnow.bsky.social · Oct 7
My colleague Jack Bouchard's book Terra Nova is out today! It's about early 16th-century mariners and the seasonal fishery around present-day Newfoundland, and its place within the Atlantic World. I cannot wait to read it

yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300...
Terra Nova
A bottom-up story of the fishworkers, whalers, First Nations, merchantwomen, oceans, and animals who together made a new colonial world in the early Atlantic...
yalebooks.yale.edu
October 7, 2025 at 6:56 PM
christhomas.bsky.social
Great assistant professor opportunity for crim/CJ folks, and I've heard it's a super collegial and cool department.
professorkd.bsky.social Katie Durante 🍹🦕 @professorkd.bsky.social · Sep 4
University of Utah Dept of Sociology and Criminology is hiring a tenure track assistant professor! I’m happy to chat and answer any questions about the job, SLC, etc. DM or email me.

PS: we are a great group of colleagues to have 😁

Link:

utah.peopleadmin.com/postings/187...
Assistant Professor in The Department of Sociology and Criminology
utah.peopleadmin.com
September 8, 2025 at 7:41 PM
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daniellaurison.bsky.social
Hi #ASA2025.

I am not usually nervous about public speaking but I am about this - there are SO MANY things I want to make sure to say (or hope someone else will say) and things I'm really not sure what the answer is but I want us to be thinking about together.

Hope to see many of you there.
asanews.bsky.social American Sociological Association @asanews.bsky.social · Aug 8
The first Plenary Session of #ASA2025 starts in 2 hours. The State of the Sociological Union features David Takeuchi, Lindsay Owens @lindsayowens.bsky.social‬, Alondra Nelson @alondra.bsky.social‬, Dan Laurison @daniellaurison.bsky.social‬, & Catherine Moran. Live stream here: bit.ly/3TDl6Wl.
August 8, 2025 at 8:11 PM
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daniel-semenza.bsky.social
The systems that have made America safer are under attack.

My new op-ed in @commondreams.org explains why we can’t stay quiet as the Trump admin rapidly dismantles much of our violence prevention + public safety infrastructure. We can't go backward.

www.commondreams.org/opinion/trum...
America’s Safety Is Fragile; Trump Is Tearing Down the Systems That Protect It | Common Dreams
The systems that protect our lives and our communities were built through years of tireless effort. They can’t be allowed to collapse overnight.
www.commondreams.org
May 5, 2025 at 6:19 PM
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louiseseamster.bsky.social
Is this a good time to remind everyone that Elon Musk is a longtermist? www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
screenshot of text from article: "Musk is unserious but is toying with dangerous ideologies nonetheless. He subscribes to “longtermism”, a muddled pseudo-philosophy that emerged from an amalgam of radical utilitarianism and “effective altruism”. It exhibits complete faith in the ability of technological and financial elites like Musk himself to re-engineer humanity, transcend corporeal limits, embrace other planets as homes and destinations, and surrender autonomy to elites instead of people. It’s fundamentally anti-democratic and anti-humanistic. This goofy collection of dorm-room-bong-hit-level ideas is taken deeply seriously among the rich boys of Silicon Valley. While, like the libertarianism that intersects with it, longtermism is easy to dissect and dismiss, it is also dangerous because it’s so attractive to the rich and powerful. The short-term implications of longtermism include a tolerance, if not embrace, of chaos agents that might include antisemites, fascists, misogynists, tricksters and trolls. Any group or force that can disrupt or distract serious thought about serious problems serves the cause of longtermism. If enough people resign from the public sphere and surrender their autonomy to technology, those who control that technology can guide us anywhere they want, regardless of the pain suffered along the way. The basic tenet of longtermism is something like: “As long as we can check out of this hotel room, we might as well trash it. We will build and own a better hotel in the long term.” Or, as political scientist David Karpf put it, “from a longtermist perspective, it doesn’t matter if Tesla mistreats factory workers, or if Palantir lies about its predictive capabilities. What matters is that these ‘great men’, these hero-inventors, be encouraged and rewarded for their ambitions. They are extending the light of consciousness throughout the cosmos, warding off existential risks, providing bounteous gifts to the far-future of humanity.”
February 6, 2025 at 12:17 PM
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neillewisjr.bsky.social
"There are very good reasons that the federal faucet has always been controlled by apolitical bureaucrats. Having a president—or, even more so, an unelected billionaire—hold direct, granular control of nearly seven trillion dollars is power beyond the Founders’ wildest dreams."
February 4, 2025 at 9:24 PM
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epopppp.bsky.social
I want to spell out the basic reason it’s so dangerous for Elon to have control of the U.S. payments system. It may seem like a technical matter, but the dynamics are simple. 1/x
Elon Musk’s Team Now Has Access to Treasury’s Payments System
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gave Mr. Musk’s representatives at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency a powerful tool to monitor and potentially limit government spending.
www.nytimes.com
February 2, 2025 at 1:57 PM
christhomas.bsky.social
I started an academic criminologists/criminal justice scholars starter pack.
This is an ongoing starter pack that I am still expanding, so please let me know if you'd like to be added (sorry for any omissions!), and please share if you find it useful.
go.bsky.app/SL8dP7Z

#ASC2024 #criminology
November 15, 2024 at 1:22 AM
Reposted by christhomas.bsky.social
chrisuggen.bsky.social
Survey experiment finds that people who rely on conservative news sources report much warmer feelings about police after seeing Floyd protest images — but not after seeing Capitol insurrection images.

-Christopher Thomas @christhomas.bsky.social in J of Exptl Crim
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Figure 1 shows the predicted marginal effects of the Floyd Protest experiment on consumers of mainly conservative news compared to consumers of mainly non-conservative news. Figure 2 shows the predicted marginal effects of the second experiment on the Capitol insurrection on consumers of mainly conservative news compared to consumers of mainly non-conservative news.
January 23, 2024 at 9:39 PM
christhomas.bsky.social
So excited to share my new J. of Experimental Criminology study "Racial reckoning protests, the Capitol insurrection and asymmetric social facts: A mixed-methods study of public opinion," based on national surveys I ran June 2020 and during Jan. 6th
www.researchgate.net/publication/...
🌐#AcademicSky
(PDF) Racial reckoning protests, the Capitol insurrection, and asymmetric social facts: A mixed-meth...
PDF | Objectives To test whether news images from George Floyd protests and the Capitol insurrection affected feelings about the police differentially... | Find, read and cite all the research you nee...
www.researchgate.net
January 23, 2024 at 5:22 PM
christhomas.bsky.social
In the Philly area?
Today at 5:30pm at Rutgers Law School in Camden, join Dr. Sarah Tosh as she discusses her new NYUP book "The Immigration Law Death Penalty: Aggravated Felonies, Deportation, and Legal Resistance."
Open event, no registration. Should be really cool!
#lawsky #sociology #academicsky
November 28, 2023 at 3:31 PM
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mguariglia.bsky.social
Wow! With the code CYBER23 you can get 50% off books at @dukepress.bsky.social through 12/8-- that includes Police and the Empire City. So all your friends who were wondering how police departments got like this? They can learn that they've always been like this!

www.dukeupress.edu/police-and-t...
November 27, 2023 at 5:30 PM
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oliviergodechot.bsky.social
You're completing a PhD or a first postdoc in Social Sciences on topics related to socioeconomic polarization (inequality, segregation, discrimination), consider applying to AxPo's postdoc fellowship before the new year:
www.sciencespo.fr/axpo/applica...
November 10, 2023 at 12:57 PM
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katestarbird.bsky.social
Researchers of online misinformation (and related topics) aren’t “buckling” to politically-motivated attacks. Our critical work to understand and address online deception and manipulation continues. But only with the support of our colleagues and institutions. www.seattletimes.com/opinion/uw-m...
UW misinformation researchers will not buckle under political attacks | Opinion
As the 2024 election approaches, misinformation researchers at the University of Washington say they won't be deterred by those seeking to undermine their work.
www.seattletimes.com
October 7, 2023 at 7:02 PM
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irisvanrooij.bsky.social
"The term ‘Artificial Intelligence’ (AI) means many things to many people (see Table 1) (...). One meaning of ‘AI’ that seems often forgotten these days is one that played a crucial role in the birth of cognitive science as an interdiscipline in the 1970s and ’80s." 2/n
Table 1, giving an overview of different meanings of AI
August 6, 2023 at 9:06 AM
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amandaweiss.bsky.social
After a student asked me about borrowing a book for class, I tried to find a good guide to legal, free sources of academic e-books and I couldn't... so I made one! tinyurl.com/book-resources

*So many* fantastic online libraries out there, not to mention open-access textbooks.
Where to Find Books Online.docx
Where to (Legally) Read Books Online for Free(-ish) Let’s say you have been assigned a specific book or textbook for a course. You might be able to borrow it for free online or download a free pdf. ...
tinyurl.com
October 6, 2023 at 4:39 PM
christhomas.bsky.social
Researchers: Federal government data will indefinitely disappear Sunday. So I'm downloading a bunch of Census, BLS,& NIBRS data today for projects in my medium-term pipeline.

www.nytimes.com/2023/09/28/b...

“If we miss two months of collecting data, we’re never getting that back”
-Betsey Stevenson
One Casualty of a Shutdown: Government Data
A lapse in funding would delay data on unemployment and inflation as policymakers try to avoid a recession.
www.nytimes.com
September 29, 2023 at 3:07 PM
christhomas.bsky.social
Hey there, follow Alexis Santos @appdemography.bsky.social -- he's a truly awesome demographer/population health scientist (I personally love his work on the demography of climate disasters).
🧪#demography #publichealth #sociology #academicsky #PennState #HiSciSky
September 24, 2023 at 1:40 AM
christhomas.bsky.social
Check out this new interview with me and Kevin Wolff about our study on climate change and crime: gc.cuny.edu/news/how-vol...

#ClimateChange 🧪#greensky #greencriminology
How Volatile Temperatures Shape Violent Crime
A new study finds that temperature spikes are driving rates of violent crimes in American cities.
gc.cuny.edu
September 22, 2023 at 1:45 PM
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dslakoffphd.bsky.social
In your opinion, what is the best “icebreaker” for the first day of class?
August 21, 2023 at 1:23 AM
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iansociologo.bsky.social
So many great panels and papers on climate change at #ASA2023. This is from our panel "Politics of Climate Change."
August 20, 2023 at 2:48 PM
christhomas.bsky.social
This looks like a good #ASA2023 panel, about institutional accountability, police violence, and social movements. Monday morning 10-1130am.
August 20, 2023 at 2:36 PM
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jacquelyngill.bsky.social
In a new essay, @jeffcorbin.bsky.social, Meg Duffy, @carlyziter.bsky.social and I talk about the urgent need to move beyond "it's real, it's bad, it's us" approaches to climate education, instead sharing pathways to climate action that engage and empower, while fighting the immobility of despair.
Climate Education That Builds Hope and Agency, Not Fear - Eos
Reframing climate change education around a message of “hopeful alarm” not only will underscore the threats we face but will also show students how they can act to shape the future.
eos.org
August 9, 2023 at 2:25 PM
christhomas.bsky.social
Wait, CUNY and SUNY are clients of the predatory consulting group that is currently destroying West Virginia University? Bleurgh.
drlisacorrigan.bsky.social Dr. Lisa Corrigan @drlisacorrigan.bsky.social · Aug 12
Here's the group that is dismantling WVU. They have been hired as consultants at land-grant universities around the country to help shred the liberal arts. More unis will hire them now. A thread.

https://rpkgroup.com/?fbclid=IwAR1lV31aXrEndH4qO1-H4hHby-lvVIpHze17FbV7ndS0oX6rftyee6UX_qg
August 12, 2023 at 9:09 PM