University council stacked with consultants: ‘I believe that there's an intended infiltration of our governing boards by consultancy firms. It's all the mates looking after each other and seeing these consultancy costs balloon right across the…sector’ www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03...

I've done absolutely no fact-checking, but I believe this is the first Geography professor to leave and become the leader of a major Canadian political party.

The emerging political economy of deep-sea mining: an analysis of opaque ownership structures www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowships are available in Human Geography at Aberystwyth, Cardiff, and Swansea Universities. wgsss.ac.uk/fellowships/. Interested candidates should email me as soon as possible. [email protected] Initial deadline is May 1, 2026. Please distribute widely!

Underrated that the era of neoliberal globalism characterized by fierce defense of intellectual property as rents, patents, and copyrights gave way so quickly to a new paradigm marked by the blithe plunder of all human creativity for LLM training data.

Last few days to register for the Planners Network 50th Anniversary Conference, "Planning in the Face of Fascism" -- come join us in Toronto! www.plannersnetwork.org/events/may-2...

When listening to business podcasts, I'm struck by how surprised they are about the importance of geography. A lesson that people seem to have to constantly relearn is how much effort goes into 'time-space compression' aka smoothing the way for trade and accumulation - and its fragility in crises.

They're going to write books about all the big brain moves of this gang of imbeciles and among them will be "Spending a year trying to kill renewable energy and then launching a war that sends oil prices soaring"

Oh look, investible tolls on the horizon, hurry Larry!

Tech: "Data centers bring jobs!" Actual study: "In our analysis of a long term data set of Virginia (USA) we found that it took $33 million of investment into data centres to create one job, around 400 times the cost of a job from [other] IT investment." How about we build solar/HSR/etc. instead?

You can now register (for free) to watch the live stream of the launch of The Story of Capital, published by @versobooks.bsky.social, at the People's Forum on March 30th at 6:30 PM [ET]. Featuring @davidharvey.org in conversation with @adamtooze.bsky.social peoplesforum.org/events/the-s...

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I am begging my fellow Canadians to take a break for a second from obsessing about American corruption to focus on our home grown versions. Ford is a corrupt crony goon who has done countless shady backroom deals. He wants to remove one of our most powerful tools to hold him accountable. Fuck that!

I've never as clear an insider description of the infrastructural power of finance as this Odd Lots episode with Lloyd Blankfein. He channels @benbraun.bsky.social and @danielagabor.bsky.social in saying the state needs finance to transmit policy so are over the barrelhead to support it in crises.

The Infrastructural Geography of the US/Israel War on Iran… …From data centres to logistical bottlenecks, supply chains to real estate markets, shipping to petroleum networks globalcorridor.substack.com/p/global-cor...

As data and compute power become spatially fixed as expensive and integral infrastructure, it won't be surprising when the dynamics of violently securing its logistics emerge in ways geographers have documented in sectors like fossil fuel extraction and shipping. www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...

I have a new open access article in Geoforum, looking at how abrasive online “finfluencers” promise riches through buying cheap properties to rent to Housing Choice Voucher (“Section 8”) holders, using outdated spatial arbitrage strategies and AI automation: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Very low on the list of concerns, but why are data centers so ugly? You are spending untold billions on these things, spend a bit more and at least make them vainglorious monuments to our tech oligarchy rather than drab rectangles. We used to be a society - do our elites have no pride!?!

I once completely faked out an active NBA player on the fast break during a charity basketball tournament.

Call for applications -- Antipode Foundation "Right to the Discipline" grants -- due date 10 April 2026 -- funding available for imaginative, daring, and unruly scholarship and praxis, including scholar-activism, workshops, and much more antipodeonline.org/a-right-to-t...

Who stands to profit as energy prices are rising due to the escalating war in the Middle East? NYT and FT quoting our research on the 2022 energy crisis! Spoiler: in the West it's mainly affluent shareholders. High time to dust off the discussions on excess profit taxes & strategic price controls.

Hi friends - I'm working on article about efforts to measure, track, and adjust WORKLOAD in higher ed, both for staff and faculty. I'm interested in talking to people who have experiences w/: -Workload management gone wrong -Exemplars of workload measurement -True tales of workload being adjusted

Can a PM cross the floor to join another party? Because Carney might as well just merge the Conservatives and the Liberals at this point.

These are “low enrollment” majors but the classes are regularly at capacity. They changed the funding structure a few years ago here, switching the allocation from course enrollments to majors then blamed these departments for a structural, top-down change. This is entirely a political choice.

A hell of a graphic from the Economic Policy Institute

Great event on March 3: How powerful corporations — including Amazon, Instacart, and major landlords — are using pricing algorithms to inflate prices and undermine competition. With Doha Mekki, Katie Wells, Ted Tatos, and moderator Geoffrey Fowler. Register here: ilsr.org/article/inde...

the democratisation of private markets is going just great www.ft.com/content/cdca...

At a minimum, cuts to OSAP grants will have paid for 43% of announced university funding increases—and possibly more. These changes exacerbate the affordability crisis and risk putting a university education out of reach for many students. tinyurl.com/yjccsa9r

Guys I found the best Epstein Files email. The one that illuminates an elite class that's cocooned themselves into an unaccountable shell of wealth and privilege, fighting to protect their secrets and offenses. I could write a novel about this email. prospect.org/2026/02/17/e...

The pace at which US wealth concentration is rising is simply staggering The concentration of AI wealth into the hands of a few tech barons + plutocratic capture ==> unchartered territory

“That people move from representing the presidency to representing banks is so normal that we forget the costs: the private job done with the savvy to outfox one’s former public-sector colleagues, the public job done gently to keep open doors” @anandwrites.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2025/11/23/o...

Between the announced provincial cuts to student aid and the apparent reduction in federal aid back to pre-covid levels (which the feds claim they are still undecided on but come on), low-income Ontarians are looking at an aid cut (or net tuition increase if you prefer) of about $2500 next year.

Thread worth checking out on how the Government of Ontario has paired their long-needed increase in funding for higher ed with a corresponding decrease in student aid grants. We forestall the burgeoning crisis and decline in higher ed quality on the backs of equitable, accessible education.

I'm particularly impressed that when Ford reduced/froze tuition fees, he decided that the policy corollary was "let's cut student aid" Now that tuition fees are going up again, the policy corollary is "let's cut student aid!" Nothing if not consistent.

Wonderful interview with Harvey. Starts off with a great reflection on the importance of geography on Marxist political economy and (close to my heart) touches on the importance of studying finance to understand capitalism and the role of the Fed / central banks in addressing its contradictions.

With this and the Oren Cass financialization piece in the NYT, I'm beginning to think the chattering capitalist class is trying to undercut political economists by stealing all our takes to troll us: "What if we admit they are right and just change absolutely nothing?"

You know things are bad when the WSJ puts it this plainly: "The rewards are going toward capital instead of labor. Profits have soared since the pandemic, and the market value attached to those profits even more. The result: Capital is triumphant, while the average worker ekes out marginal gains."

The more I think about this problem, the more it seems like one of those fundamental Marxist contradictions — and it’s going to generalise. Coding is just the canary in the coalmine.

Absolute anti-financialization screed by Oren Cass in NYTs (paywall). I wish populists would start to take these arguments (which many of us in the academy have been making for years if not decades) more seriously. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/06/o...

Market be like

Notable ideas like postal banking and taking on Canada's price grocery oligopoly from the Lewis campaign. Given the effects of concentrated market power (seller's inflation, low wages, personalized pricing), they are important challenges to market-based discourse. lewisforleader.ca/ideas/public...

AI allows the results of human sociability and collective pursuit of knowledge to be appropriated as private property. That’s the killer app.

William Nordhaus received the Nobel Memorial Prize for these flawed economic models, and Bjorn Lomborg built a highly lucrative career on them. They told rich and powerful people what they wanted to hear. While helping to consign us all to catastrophe. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Bit of analysis from me - “The clash between progressive policies and the powerful financial sector laid bare in the Epstein emails is still evident – and as in the case of Jamie Dimon, even some of the characters are the same”: www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Applications are open for the Finance Summer School 2026. Last two have been at Brown. This one is at LSE thanks to LSE European Institute and Huth Initiative, plus the Berkeley Program on Finance and Democracy. Stellar Line up. Apps open: forms.gle/WsEVk4Yy52Dn...

We're recruiting 2 PhD candidates in human geography here in Uppsala, one position focused on urban/housing issues and one in political ecology. Please spread the word/repost etc. Being a PhD student in Sweden is a good gig.

My politics

I really wish we could take some of the negative valence off of “performative” because performance is tremendously important right now especially

Sounds like my provost’s office.