"La Route" by Manu Larcenet An absolutely gorgeous graphic novel adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's The Road. After reading the novel I dreamt in shades of ashen grey for days; Larcenet's drawings feel like you're breathing in ash and despair. Tough, harsh, but unmissable.

Japanese and Korean soon-to-be-former Twitter users are waking up. Merry Christmas everyone

Can anyone confirm that this is what's driving the user surge?

Where does one sign up to join this list?

Gee, I wonder if there's some kind of European institution with the power to do something about this.

basically all collective/interactive human activities: we have rules and processes and those are useful and helpful, but there are ALWAYS edge cases, and personalities and moods and non-obvious factors matter, and there is no way to make rules fit every case. That's why malicious compliance works,

the broad inability to leave a social media platform owned by a white supremacist and prolific manipulator of public perception really is one of the most discouraging data points right now

If you go through Leuven, don't miss Sint-Pieterskerk's exhibit of @faineg.bsky.social's earlier work, including this St Michael with a Big Naturals Dragon bottom centre and precursor Alf Hog on the smitten dragon.

👇🎯 The entire problem is that it isn’t Eurobonds, & it isn’t big enough. As during the euro crisis, it’s a messy compromise that doesn’t meet the moment & again kicks the can on what really needs to be done down the road. Still waiting for the Hamiltonian Moment everyone claimed we had c.2015.

🎊📜 NEW PAPER 📜🎊 Can we seriously build synthetic consciousness? And if so, where do we start? I’m super excited to present recent publication in Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews where @jaanaru.bsky.social and I confront this challenge head on. 1/n

also, low-key, this coming year is the 10th anniversary of publication! Great time to celebrate by sharing it with your friends!

Internat Handle

If academics & researchers in AI (like myself) don’t want the coming AI winter to destroy our field, we need to be accountable for how we allowed another hype cycle on our watch. We have the expertise to stop it. We need to speak truth to power in our own institutions!

Heh

@seabass.bsky.social & @laurenshof.online are you two at the beach together?

You can tell they're pulling her leg because proper dropbear protection requires a helmet.

Since it's come up again, I'll try to succinctly state my view on "AI" as we think of it in culture & tech these days. I think "Big AI" products (ChatGPT, Google Gemini) are mostly terrible for society, because they've been foisted without consent on millions, with lies about what they can do.

The best part of this amazing short film is when the snow plow shows up and you're like AWW YEAH HERE COMES OUR HERO, and then it just glides into failure

If you need some hope as the year ends, try this anthology about protest, resistance, and building a more just world.

POV: you suddenly find out someone you thought you knew has a parallel career as a poet.

Building a relationship with readers is hard for publishers. But for f**k's sake, this can't be the way to go??

If we are banning cell phones for kids we need to be talking about banning chatbots for boomers www.persuasion.community/p/my-chatgpt...

Primer discurso público de la nueva jefa del MI6. Señala directamente a las grandes plataformas online y a sus dueños como una amenaza para la seguridad nacional e internacional. inews.co.uk/news/politic...

"With its democracy now explicitly under threat, Europe must join India, Brazil and China in standing up to Trump." And here's how; enforce Europe's laws and pop the AI bubble. by @johnnyryan.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Algorithmic pluralism: we flood the zone with diversity. You still get bad actors, but people can pick good ones. Also, it's a lot easier to crack down on bad actors when alternatives aplenty exist than when they control everything. This is a media problem and we should treat it as such. 🧵

Being the product would be easy. You're the free labor.

This is a good question and my take is: because AI working in ways that both match what the tech is actually good at and what people would buy obliterates nudging and the tech monopolies can't maintain their margins if they can't corral people against their preferences. Brief 🧵

AI is going to make the word "adoption" toxic in tech. www.404media.co/anthropic-ex...

But dont go looking for it in Trump’s Policies. www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/n...

This is interesting on several levels. Mostly: "AI adoption is now a leadership capability test." It is. Just not in the way he thinks. I think that people underestimate why CEOs, particularly American CEOs, think that. 🧵 (HT @mariafarrell.bsky.social)

Not only is use of x-twitter by EU organisations unethical and self-destructive - its owner is a far-right extremist actively working to destroy the EU - but the its utility is broken for non-users, too. The algorithmic feed for non-members is now completely broken for circulating public info.

OK, I'll start. So i have moved most of my tech stack off US bigtech. Closing down google this month. Swapped to fairphone. Moved from Digital Ocean to OVHCloud. Using open source. The thing is, with plane, penpot, and onlyoffice, if i use their cloud, i am still using AWS. Thoughts?

The Irish Nazi Party used to be run by a fella who lived with his mum in a cottage in Ringsend. In those days, no one said you lived in an "echo chamber" if you didn't go around to listen to him.

What's that? Time to promote research about #bluesky on bluesky? Happy to share a new paper from @omerrothenstein.bsky.social @ilovejazzmusic.bsky.social & I: "Stuck in the middleware with you: the challenges of capitalizing a market-oriented approach to platform governance" doi.org/10.1007/s443...

Very happy with my latest Semble collection: Post-growth & Regenerative Economics. Under the imaginary ‘Primers’ sub-header I’d list: * postgrowth.org/post-growth-... * www.becomingdenizen.com/essentials/p... * www.becomingdenizen.com/podcast/post... Inviting @postgrowth.org to co-curate w/me 😌

please take a moment to appreciate Tesla's epic accomplishment of coming dead last in the auto industry in reliability, despite making relatively expensive cars with a tiny fraction of the moving parts www.consumerreports.org/cars/which-b...

Very interesting analysis of EU vs US productivity. We can achieve similar outcomes in the digital space if we make it policy: less rent extraction and toxicity, better mental health, less inequality, lower emissions, happier youth, more democracy, innovation you actually want to use.

Announcing eurosky.social accounts - launching January 2026. ✅ Managed by Eurosky, a European non-profit initiative ✅ Hosted on European cloud ✅ Governed by European law www.eurosky.social/register

And people are lying to themselves if they think any kind of balanced 'debate' is possible on a far-right platform. Tech expert @robin.berjon.com explains how: berjon.com/fascintern-m...

Forget the far right. The kids want a 'United States of Europe.' On social media, the upcoming generation is expressing more European solidarity than the continent has seen in decades. #EU www.politico.eu/article/unit...

Really long post on this topic by @berthubert.bsky.social is worth inserting in this thread and reading berthub.eu/articles/pos...

Ok what’s everyone’s preferred alternative to Google Maps? A creepy thing today has persuaded me to kick the habit.

“We are not weak, we are not small.” Big deal from Merz. I’ve long thought weaning Europe off its dependency on US monopoly tech requires member states to drive it - especially but not only 🇩🇪 and 🇫🇷. Brussels should follow, but sadly won’t lead, the seismic shift required. Capitals are key.

J'aime bien la clarté avec laquelle @robin.berjon.com explicite les logiques à l'œuvre dans les "médias Fascintern" (en référence au Comintern d'antan). Je ne vais pas commenter la pertinence de l'analogie ; le sujet est le choix entre 2 absolues ; impossible d'avoir un "juste milieu". 1/5

Also people who think that digital infrastructure just means cloud. So if public procurement buys some cloud from European providers, all is good! No need to worry about other infrastructure — what other infrastructure?

And more datapoints that in the America Crisis era the Europeans should have more confidence about the resilience of the EU and worry a lot more about the stability of the US

🛜 Europe’s tech dependency: risks and solutions 🔗 buff.ly/crTMokz W/ @digitalmario.bsky.social, @robin.berjon.com, Darren Ennis and @alexandrageese.bsky.social

Hace un par de semanas me entrevistaron en el diario Gara sobre mi libro. Creo que en poco espacio se plasman bien los temas y nudos principales del texto, y si por lo que sea no sabéis euskera seguramente vuestro navegador os deje traducirlo mágicamente. www.naiz.eus/eu/hemerotec...