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jon ben-menachem

@jbenmenachem.com

18K followers 860 following 7.5K posts

criminalization, abolition, labor, politics, journalism—social science theory & methods too. sociology phd candidate @ columbia. @swcolumbia.bsky.social

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jon ben-menachem @jbenmenachem.com · Apr 17

It shouldn't matter if Trump’s victims have criminal records. If we only defend the “innocent,” the fascists will argue that their victim “was no angel.” An anti-fascist rhetoric that carves out exceptions for imperfect victims is a gift to our opponents.

New from me for @us.theguardian.com:

What is a ‘criminal’ immigrant? The word is an American rhetorical trap | Jonathan Ben-Menachem

Labels like ‘gang members’ and ‘terrorist supporters’ are an easy way to make humans disposable

www.theguardian.com

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BronSays @bronsays.bsky.social · 3h

www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

"A prominent anti-DEI campaigner appointed by Meta in August as an adviser on AI bias has spent the weeks since his appointment spreading disinformation about shootings, transgender people, vaccines, crime, and protests."

Meta AI adviser spreads disinformation about shootings, vaccines and trans people

Critics condemn Robby Starbuck, appointed in lawsuit settlement, for ‘peddling lies and pushing extremism’

www.theguardian.com

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Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 6h

"Look at the picture... One of these is a member of a private militia that supports the President and was involved in a violent effort to overturn the election, the other is an agent of the state. Can you tell the difference?" donmoynihan.substack.com/p/purge-merg...

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jon ben-menachem @jbenmenachem.com · 5h

I think using the concept in the case of domestic labor is more defensible than, say, describing the effort it takes to write a reply in a dating app chat.

jon ben-menachem @jbenmenachem.com · 5h

Sorry this one maybe more relevant onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

<em>Journal of Marriage and Family</em> | NCFR Family Science Journal | Wiley Online Library

Attempting to explain why biological sex remains the primary predictor of household labor allocation, gender theorists have suggested that husbands and wives perform family work in ways that facilit...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

jon ben-menachem @jbenmenachem.com · 5h

I think SCOTUS would be unable to prevent federal law enforcement budgets from being zeroed out at the very least, but yeah I agree with the structural point

jon ben-menachem @jbenmenachem.com · 5h

I think this is a well-explored case in scholarship! pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...?

Emotion work is characterized as activities relevant to the enhancement of significant others’ emotional well-being and the giving of emotional support (e.g., offers of encouragement, listening closely to partner; Erickson, 2005). Emotion work is an important construct in predicting divisions of household labor, childcare and relationship satisfaction, and contributions to family life (Erickson, 2005; Holm, Werner-Wilson, Cook, & Berger, 2001; Pfeffer, 2010; Stevens, Minnotte, Mannon, & Kiger, 2006). Emotion work is distinguished from other kinds of work in that the former cannot be delegated to individuals outside of the partnership or group (Erickson, 2005), and from emotional labor, or work occurring in the paid or public sections of the market economy (Hochschild, 1989).

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jon ben-menachem @jbenmenachem.com · 5h

The thing that's really distinctive about the status quo is that feds are being used specifically to punish partisan enemies. Criminalization is always already political, but it has not been partisan...

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jon ben-menachem @jbenmenachem.com · 5h

There would be real downsides to this (for example the ATF plays a key role in firearm industry regulation) but I'm really at a loss to describe other alternatives

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jon ben-menachem @jbenmenachem.com · 5h

If we regain power, what can be done to prevent this from happening again? Could we remove the federal government's ability to engage in domestic law enforcement?

Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 6h

New, from me:
Trump's 3 step plan to create a military omniforce
1. Purge - those deemed disloyal
2. Merge - different parts of law enforcement/military
3. Surge - impose the omniforce on Dem cities; instigate unrest; assert dominance; silence dissent
donmoynihan.substack.com/p/purge-merg...

Purge, Merge, and Surge

Trump is creating a omniforce of armed loyalists to establish his police state

donmoynihan.substack.com

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Countess Sappho @countess-sappho.bsky.social · 23h

YOU HEARD THEM

Meme image of Shinji from Evangelion leaning forward in a folding chair with his heads in his hands. Text around him reads "GET IN THE FUCKING FROG" and there are two depictions of someone in inflatable frog suits

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jon ben-menachem @jbenmenachem.com · 5h

the one piece read isn't far off lol

jon ben-menachem @jbenmenachem.com · 5h

emotional labor is a thing that happens *at work*. i will be pedantic about this until the bitter end en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotion...

The sociologist Arlie Hochschild provided the first definition of emotional labor, which is displaying certain emotions to meet the requirements of a job.[1] The related term emotion work refers to displaying emotions you don't feel within the private sphere of one's home or interactions with family and friends. Hochschild identified three emotion regulation strategies: cognitive, bodily, and expressive.[5] Within cognitive emotion work, one attempts to change images, ideas, or thoughts in hopes of changing the feelings associated with them.[5] For example, one may associate a family picture with feeling happy and think about said picture whenever attempting to feel happy. Within bodily emotion work, one attempts to change physical symptoms in order to create a desired emotion.[5] For example, one may attempt deep breathing in order to reduce anger. Within expressive emotion work, one attempts to change expressive gestures to change inner feelings, such as smiling when trying to feel happy.[5]

While emotion work happens within the private sphere, emotional labor is emotion management within the workplace according to employer expectations. Jobs involving emotional labor are defined as those that:

require face-to-face or voice-to-voice contact with the public.
require the worker to produce an emotional state in another person.
allow the employer, through training and supervision, to exercise a degree of control over the emotional activities of employees.[1]
Hochschild (1983) argues that within this commodification process, service workers are estranged from their own feelings in the workplace.[1]

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Jack Sapoch @jacksapoch.bsky.social · 4d

One of the earlier and most-viewed examples was an animation of Al Shifa Hospital, published in October 2023.

The “underground command room” was recycled from a 2022 IDF animation of an UNRWA school in Tel Al-Hawa; the street above was built from prefab @kb-3d.bsky.social storefronts

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Jack Sapoch @jacksapoch.bsky.social · 4d

Others assets came from scans made by the Scottish Maritime Museum of their boat-building workshop which was downloaded (via @sketchfab.bsky.social) and reimagined by the IDF adornments for underground missile factories.

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Jack Sapoch @jacksapoch.bsky.social · 4d

We traced over 30 unique assets to Washington-based 3D creator Ian Hubert, who makes bespoke models created for his sci-fi project Dynamo Dream, available to his Patreon subscribers.

Scans of parking lots, antennas, and pipes were repurposed as Hamas and Iranian military sites

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jon ben-menachem @jbenmenachem.com · 6h

this is maybe the most offensive misuse of the term emotional labor that i've ever heard lmao

Mizzy Blundell-Straw MP 🌹 @mizzyblundellstraw.bsky.social · 12h

The emotional labour of thinking

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Prisonculture @prisonculture.bsky.social · 20h

I am happy that more people see that the police state is a BIPARTISAN project.

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jon ben-menachem @jbenmenachem.com · 23h

From a theoretical perspective I actually don't think it has to be the case that increased research productivity via LLMs = more LLM slop in circulation (although that is totally possible as well). Ironically, qualitative methods are best positioned to produce reliable short-term evidence about this

jon ben-menachem @jbenmenachem.com · 23h

It's an interesting research question, but the research design is a bit outdated. I also just tend to think that we'll need to wait a few years to allow for publishing lag to play out; even if someone started working on a bunch of papers in the beginning of 2023, peer review takes a while.

Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 1d

Does AI improve or undercut academic scholarship?

A new study finds that academics who use AI increased both the quantity & quality of their academic scholarship and it appears to reduces inequality (helping junior and non-english speaking scholars the most).
arxiv.org/pdf/2510.02408

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jon ben-menachem @jbenmenachem.com · 1d

I think if you take a cynical view of what productivity means / the relevant disciplinary and organizational incentives, it's totally possible

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jon ben-menachem @jbenmenachem.com · 1d

Given that there is probably variation in treatment uptake, I do wonder whether there's a case for using the Callaway estimator here. It's also just kind of odd to see a DiD paper posted without an obvious parallel trends diagnostic? They say it's Table 5 but that's... not the right diagnostic?

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jon ben-menachem @jbenmenachem.com · 1d

all that being said, I do buy the argument that GenAI use could boost academic research productivity, and I don't necessarily think that it has to occur via the propagation of slop

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jon ben-menachem @jbenmenachem.com · 1d

(4) what is the conceptualization of "technical" disciplines? I would agree that publishing norms differ in important ways and think it's good to look at TE heterogeneity. but if sociology is 'more narrative' and 'more qualitative' (true enough), aren't those areas where LLMs shine? text data?

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jon ben-menachem @jbenmenachem.com · 1d

(3) some questions about matching... "The underlying assumption is that matching
on observables also brings users and non-users close in unobserved dimensions that correlate
with observables." I think this is definitively not the consensus in 2025

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jon ben-menachem @jbenmenachem.com · 1d

Lots of questions about the identification strategy here.
(1), treatment uptake. Would have been nice to see when GenAI use actually picks up; I doubt it's at the beginning of 2023
(2) publishing lag, which differs across fields. Has enough time even elapsed to observe treatment effects?

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