Mahesh Somashekhar

Mahesh Somashekhar

@msoma.bsky.social

39

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Asst Prof of Sociology at UIC studying urban inequality, economic development, gentrification, gayborhoods, & immigrant entrepreneurs. Affiliate of UChicago Stone Center for Research on Wealth Inequality & UW's Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology

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Great to see new breakdowns of the British election. Very clear that the right splits its vote, creating an opening for the left. But most interesting to me is that Tories made big gains in Hindu areas like Leicester East. Can anyone explain that to me? www.theguardian.com/politics/art...

Labour put 'safe' seats at risk to target marginals. It paid off – but there’s a cost | Robert Fordwww.theguardian.com The party’s landslide victory on only 34% of the vote was a masterpiece of electoral Jenga. But the taller the tower, the weaker the base, writes Robert Ford

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How is agency distributed between characters in fiction writing? In a new PNAS paper, I present a large-scale analysis of the interaction networks of 87,531 fiction works written between 1850 and 2010. What I found is an “agency gap”… Here's a rundown of my findings: 1/ www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10....

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Italian prosecutors in Milan investigated how Dior is producing their handbags. They found that the workers were sleeping in the facility so bags could be produced around the clock. Consumers pay $2,780 per bag. The production of the bags costs Dior $57. Ht: @maxroser.bsky.social

Now we know how much it costs to make a $2,800 Dior bagwww.businessinsider.com In recent months, Italian authorities raided Dior subcontractor workshops where people were working around the clock, they said.

I'm surprised more urbanists aren't talking about this! Tourism accounts for a minority of Barcelona's economy, yet it has become a flashpoint in its culture war and frustration with high housing prices. Will actions like these spread to other cities? www.bbc.com/news/videos/...

Mass tourism protesters squirt water at Barcelona touristswww.bbc.com Thousands of people in the Spanish city have been taking part in demonstrations against mass tourism.

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Happy #primeweek! I just want to let y’all know that the Amazon shipping warehouse where my husband works is denying workers fans during a nationally recognized heat emergency and everything you order during time week places workers’ lives at risk.

I just spoke with a colleague whose credit card was hacked after they registered it with Open AI. If you are relying on the GPT-4 API to do any work, make sure you monitor the credit card you register with!!!

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Interesting new study in question wording for election polling: asking voters who they would vote against papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Fewer Voters Opt Out of Decisions to Reject the Worst Candidatepapers.ssrn.com <p>Voting is central to democracy, yet many people choose not to vote. Voters appear to be especially likely to opt out of voting when they are unhappy with the

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Something I as a tech services librarian recommend: As soon as you hear about a forthcoming book you’d like to borrow, go to your library’s catalog and try to place a hold. There’s a good chance a record is already there. Strong demand stats help us plan—and look good to trustees & administrators. 📚

Universities are experimenting with the use of 3-year degree programs instead of the traditional four, cutting out electives in programs such as nursing. I can't tell if this is good or bad for a college's educational goals. What do you think? stateline.org/2024/05/30/u...

Universities try 3-year degrees to save students time, money • Statelinestateline.org Some educators are advocating for three-year bachelor’s degrees in certain fields instead of the traditional four years, in order to save students time and money. But critics say it would shortchange ...

Researchers at Yelp have found that "tipping fatigue" is affecting consumers all across the country. Mentions of tipping in reviews has grown exponentially, especially among more inexpensive restaurants. data.yelp.com/state-of-the...

State of the Restaurant Industry Report, 2024data.yelp.com Yelp data reveals rise in self-service in fine dining restaurants and nationwide increase in tipping fatigue

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New in PNAS! Qualitative interviews help us understand the origins of unpredictability in life outcome prediction tasks doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

The origins of unpredictability in life outcome prediction tasks | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciencesdoi.org Why are some life outcomes difficult to predict? We investigated this question through in-depth qualitative interviews with 40 families sampled fro...

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New in the American Sociological Review! Kate Weisshaar (co-lead), Tania Hutt, and I attempt to better understand patterns of gender and racial hiring discrimination in today’s context of strong pressures to diversify https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00031224241245706 (1/1)

This isn’t good. “…last month something happened that has little, if any, public precedent: A university fired a faculty member almost immediately not for out-of-classroom speech but for an optional course assignment.” www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty...

DePaul adjunct ousted for optional Gaza assignmentwww.insidehighered.com Colleges have punished several professors since Oct. 7 for out-of-classroom speech. Now a faculty member has been fired for a task description that referenced “genocide,” “ethnic cleansing” and “a dec...

When reflecting on the AIDS crisis, the work of activist orgs in large cities, like ACT UP, may come to mind. So would it surprise you that AIDS inspired more queer orgs to be founded outside of, not within, large cities? See my latest article to learn why. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Where the Great Cities Go, Do Other Cities Follow? Divergent Trajectories of LGBTQ Organizational Growth Across the United States During the AIDS Crisiswww.tandfonline.com Numerous studies examine how LGBTQ life differs between large, cosmopolitan cities like San Francisco and other, less prominent cities. Nevertheless, most of this research is done through case stud...

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What do we mean when we study “meaning”? In a 🚨new ARS article🚨, Madison Singell and I suggest thinking of meaning as an actor interpreting something. Integrating sociological literature, we propose the Categorization-Association Model of Interpretation. >> www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

The Sociology of Interpretation | Annual Reviewswww.annualreviews.org Recent years have seen a growing sociological interest in meaning. In fact, some argue that sociology cannot confront its foundational questions without addressing meaning. Yet sociologists mean many ...

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With polling and esp. Black voters in the news, grateful that "Getting the Race Wrong: A Case Study of Sampling Bias and Black Voters in Online, Opt-In Polls" with W. Halm, M. Huerta, and J. Torres was accepted by the Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics. URL: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

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My article, “How to divide people with things: division entrepreneurs, wedges, and the Delta Smelt controversy,” is out in the American Journal of Cultural Sociology. link.springer.com/article/10.1... (Lack access? Let me know. I’ll send you a PDF.)

More bad news for the U.S. Census Bureau's shift to using differential privacy: The algorithm "contains too much noise...especially for Hispanic and multiracial populations," and error "can be relatively substantial for geographies with small total populations." www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Evaluating bias and noise induced by the U.S. Census Bureau’s privacy protection methodswww.science.org Old and new Census Bureau privacy protection systems introduce generally small errors, except for less populated geographies.

CFP for anyone interested in evictions, the right to housing, and related housing issues... metropolitics.org/CALL-FOR-PAP...

CALL FOR PAPERS | Horizons in the Housing Struggle / Horizontes en la Lucha por la Viviendametropolitics.org This call for papers aims to receive contributions about current housing issues across urban geographies worldwide, focusing on, but not limited to, public/social housing debates, evictions and resist...

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My fab PhD student, Lexie Milmine, and I have a new paper out today in Socius. While religion plays a significant role in women's abortion attitudes, it is not a significant predictor of whether they have had an abortion in their lifetime. 🤔 journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Sage Journals: Your gateway to world-class research journalsjournals.sagepub.com Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

Urban nightlife is dying around the world. Bars and clubs can't afford rents in the most expensive cities, and people are going out to drink less. Income inequality in cities has consequences for everything--including the nightlife that gives cities their character. www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

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This recent @psjeditor.bsky.social article by Bertrand, @mimiarnoldlyon.bsky.social & Jacobsen shows that increased exposure to narratives about critical race theory (CRT) is associated with increased support for ban on teaching CRT. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... #policysky #polisky

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The protests sweeping college campuses don't just involve students. Professors are increasingly pushing back against university administrations that they say are infringing on students' free speech rights.

How some faculty members are defending student protesters, in actions and in wordswww.npr.org The protests sweeping college campuses don't just involve students. Professors are increasingly pushing back against university administrations they see as infringing on students' free speech rights.

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🚨🚨Do Americans accurately perceive union benefits? 🚨🚨Our new paper (led by Jonne Kamphorst) out this week at PNAS finds: Americans significantly and systematically underestimate material benefits associated with union benefits. 🧵👇 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

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Hey #sociology and #economics we have some brand new statistics about your disciplines, hot off the presses! There are some real surprises in there. Half the authors in each field are disciplinary outsiders! Authors are less diverse than new PhDs, current faculty, or even ASA members.

Who Authors Social Science? Demographics and the Production of Knowledge - Jeffrey W. Lockhart, Molly M. King, Christin Munsch, 2024doi.org Author demographics are of key epistemic importance in science—shaping the approaches to and contents of research—especially in social scientific knowledge prod...

I would like to publicly praise coverage of the ongoing college campus protests by @chronicle.com. Their insights have been tremendous and balanced. If you’re not reading it, then you’re missing out.

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Now that Tom Cotton and Josh Hawley are calling for the National Guard to be deployed to Columbia, it's worth remembering what happened when the National Guard was deployed to Kent State and Jackson State some 54 years ago. New post at CAMPAIGN TRAILS: open.substack.com/pub/kevinmkr...

Bloodlustopen.substack.com This afternoon, Senator Tom Cotton — whom you might remember from his previous principled stances like “drivers should simply assault left-wing protesters,” “the military should simply attack left-win...

More than half of older adults in the U.S. now spend more time at home and less time socializing in public due to #COVID19. It seems the pandemic permanently changed socialization habits for elderly Americans. scrippsnews.com/stories/pand...

Pandemic changed older adults' fears, social lives, data findsscrippsnews.com The months and years of pandemic lockdown might have conditioned more older adults to fear infection and feel uncomfortable in social settings, according to new study data from the University of Color...

One of the many reasons why homeowners’ associations and their annoying rules prevent neighborhoods from developing any real sense of community…

A new study finds a neighborhood's front yards may be the window to its soul: Welcoming or whimsical features such as benches and flamingos are linked to happier, more connected neighbors.

Garden gnomes and porch swings: Lively front yards linked to more connected residentswww.npr.org A new study finds a neighborhood's front yards may be the window to its soul: Welcoming or whimsical features such as benches and flamingos are linked to happier, more connected neighbors.

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An analysis by University of Michigan researchers of more than 30 million grading records from U-M finds students with alphabetically lower-ranked names receive lower grades. This is due to sequential grading biases and the default order of students' submissions in Canvas. #AcademicSky #EduSky #Bias

Researchers find lower grades given to students with surnames that come later in alphabetical orderphys.org Knowing your ABCs is essential to academic success, but having a last name starting with A, B or C might also help make the grade.