Longtime listener, first time caller. Mél is a wonderful interlocutor, which made this an absolute privilege.

I loved doing this with the brilliant Mél... hop in and have a listen once it's out next week!

This is a bloody good read

My university has announced a fund to essentially poach doctoral students from US institutions. DM me if you do work on the history/social impacts of AI and are interested in being poached 😂

Terrific essay from @mmasnick.bsky.social I wish more of the business community would recognize this https://www.techdirt.com/2025/07/17/fascism-for-first-time-founders/

I think this is the best thing I’ve read about journalism, AI and the business models of media companies. Must read for anyone who cares about this stuff, which really should be everyone.

Nailing it. “It is the only “business model” that we have and that I am certain works: We trade good, accurate, interesting, human articles for money and attention. The risks of offloading that trust to an AI in a careless way is the biggest possible risk factor that we could have as a business.”

My legendary friend and colleague wrote for @crikey.com.au about the Gaza sized hole in Australian universities and what the draconian demands of special envoy Segal would mean for learning, teaching and being in the university. It is fire and you should read it. www.crikey.com.au/2025/07/15/i...

Final registration call for the @britishacademy.bsky.social funded symposium, 'Speculative Machines and Us: Histories and Futures of AI', @lancasteruni.bsky.social on 17 July! 💥🤖 FULL PROGRAMME, ABSTRACTS AND BIOS here: wp.lancs.ac.uk/sciencestudi... Register now here: wp.lancs.ac.uk/sciencestudi...

Mass extraordinary rendition. And we know with certainty from the War on Terror that those certifications against persecution and torture are pro forma and are better understood as a document colluding to such treatment.

missing from this otherwise insightful account of the extremely online young men of the American far right is the tech platforms that host this garbage, there’s just this tendency to take social media as given but these platforms could be reined in or shut down www.nytimes.com/2025/07/10/o...

This is the entire OpenAI business model

The intent behind this project makes me think of viral AI-gen image of girl holding puppy in a dingy during Hurricane Helene, legitimized for being "emblematic of people's trauma." Thru AI there's an active shift from evidentiary images towards a designed emblematic. www.404media.co/the-un-made-...

I've written a lot about the need to extend witnessing beyond the human, but this ain't it. We need to attend more closely to the abundance of very human testimony about war and suffering, to listen and act in response, not look for ways to dehumanise the survivors of dehumanising violence.

If you want to know how political realignment is achieved and how the centre-left is moved inexorably to the right, this is it.

The Albanese govt is seemingly backing a plan that could withhold uni and arts funding if they're seen to not tackle antisemitism. But what counts as "failure"? This sets a dangerous precedent, threatening academic independence, and informed and open debate. www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07...

I can’t count the number of conversations with students, friends, and academics where people dismissed at the idea that mass data collection was a huge risk to people’s lives and especially the most vulnerable www.404media.co/ice-is-searc...

Non-academics: if you see an interesting academic paper on here and you can’t access it due to a paywall just email the author and (depending on the state of their inbox 😜) they will generally be thrilled you are interested in their work and send you a copy.

New article from me and Zoe Horn. "Digital twins and logistical labour: Models, plans and the inversion of the ‘real’," in which we show how operative, virtual replicas of material environments are beginning to subordinate the real within a logistical paradigm www.scienceopen.com/hosted-docum...

Eliminate the humans so we can all get “popped up into some kind of sugar cube for a billion simulated years of bliss, but it's only six hours in clock time”

Or the violation of international law, which is actually more important to the rest of the world

Excellent new research on the eco impacts of AI, and the necessity of better transparency regimes and data standards from @sashamtl.bsky.social and crew

Looking for a research associate to explore societal engagement with forest restoration on digital media – with @lboungr.bsky.social @wildflyingpanda.bsky.social @gabrielecolombo.bsky.social & more. Grateful for help sharing with those who might be interested! jonathangray.org/2025/05/31/s...

students and even some teachers need to understand that the essay-as-outcome isn’t what matters, but the essay-as-learning is crucial because it teaches thinking, analysis, communication, knowledge-making, resilience, planning, and more

This is — and I cannot stress this enough — absolutely bonkers

At defence tech conventions data fusion has been among the most common software and hardware services pitched to militaries around the world for at least half a decade

“War Machjne” looks amazing — just a shame we all have to wait until 2026 to read it!

“Finding the truth at times of conflict has always been difficult, and now in the age of AI and social media, it is even more difficult.” Witness media is in crisis at the worst possible time. www.404media.co/the-ai-slop-...

This is why the new trend of AI native browsers is so cooked. They’re completely inverting the relationship to information proposed by the decentralised internet in favour of an opaquely filtered and probabilistically generated single source of “truth”.

New in Digital War: Anthony Downey with an excellent new article titled “The alibi of AI: algorithmic models of automated killing” link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Detachment 201: Executive Innovation Corps. Not a joke. That’s what it’s called.

Escalating transfers of military tech to domestic policing isn’t only about tactics, handheld weapons, and terrestrial vehicles. Military grade drones in civilian skies radically reshapes the means of policing protest.

Techbros have been very open about this: As Sam Altman stated, «the whole structure of society will be up for debate and reconfiguration» – but by «up for debate,» he obviously didn't mean a democratic debate about the consequences of their actions, a debate he's actively undermining 3/

Deeply grateful to @richardacarter.bsky.social generous and thoughtful review of my book Nonhuman Witnessing: War, Data and Ecology after the End of the World! www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... @dukepress.bsky.social

“‘You think you are talking to an objective confidant or guide, but actually what you are looking into is some kind of distorted mirror — that mirrors back to your own beliefs,’ said Matthew Nour, a psychiatrist and researcher in neuroscience and AI at Oxford university.”

adapting to AI in university teaching really means that we need to more proactively teach students how to learn, starting with basic study skills and syllabus reading through to self reflection on the richness of showing what you’ve learned in your work

They left off the last part: parents and students decide to cut out the middle man, get their “education” from chatbots, and universities collapse.

The ruling class of each era is psychotic in its own way.

Great to see this long piece out in the ABC about drones and noise on Australia, with extended input from @juliapowles.bsky.social and @jakegoldenfein.bsky.social www.abc.net.au/news/2025-06...

Well worth a read, and more than that — a reconsideration of our book buying and book assigning practices as researches

They want the fear, the outrage, the spectacle

Bullshit, but dangerous bullshit that tells you what these people want and why resisting AI isn’t about being anti technology but being for workers, democracy and life

the problem of AI fraying trust and making new but hidden labour isn’t going away because it’s inextricable from so many of the generalisable use cases

Incredible opportunity to do your PhD with a bunch of legends working on net zero in Northern Australia

“This is and has always been a company of risk-takers who are unafraid to move fast and break things. Or at least, that’s what I thought, until a bunch of you started bringing up the many merits of proceeding cautiously and keeping things unbroken.” www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/a-c...

Weird how copyright and IP was totally inviolable when it primarily served the capital classes, but as soon as it’s an impediment to their ability to promote their latest means to siphon off and keep all the value from labour it becomes unworkable.

Seems like a feature, not a bug

Surveillance researchers and activists have been warning for decades that everything from supermarket rewards cards to credit scores to social media interactions were ripe for exploitation. This was considered alarmist, if not fantastical, and now stuff like this is happening exactly as feared.

once again, when I include stuff like this as hypotheticals in papers, people think I'm being dramatic, but really commercial surveillance is just rampant, and the public/private divide is fake

This is—it bears repeating—ethnic cleansing and a war crime. It feels utterly pointless to say, and roughly equivalent to screaming into the void, but the United States should not be supporting or providing any aid to a state that has ethnic cleansing as a policy position.