This was a fun methodological project. We built new software that outputted different data streams: the raw data and how that data was algorithmically remodeled by Google. This allowed us to see how these models produced locations that fit the needs of data gathering for surveillance and profit.

In which surveillance study scholars, computer scientists, digital geographers, and a random economic geographer (me) collaborate to unpack the black box of how/why cell phone companies model your location in cities. There's more ambiguity than you'd think! journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Apropos Miran making it onto the Fed's Board of Governors and using some technical terms last week without really getting into the details, I wrote more about exorbitant privilege, and Miran's origin story as someone who says they want the dollar to depreciate: open.substack.com/pub/ninaeich...

The Kids are OK… “As thousands took to the streets to protest ICE in the offline world — Roblox players protested within the game, battling cops, breaking down barricades, waving Mexican flags, and facing off across a line of players dressed in police SWAT gear” www.teenvogue.com/story/kids-a...

the fash love their AI so they can make believe things even harder while destroying the environment newsocialist.org.uk/transmission...

Sigh.

"I think it's worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights" - Charlie Kirk, 2023 www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk...

it would be in poor taste to joke about this, so LIGHT EM UP (CNN seems to be saying it was a trump supporter fwiw)

Scientists: We need to reduce meat consumption to keep food production within planetary limits. EU consumers: We like alt protein and know what's meat and what isn't since it's obvious. EU politicians: Let's legislate language to protect the meat industry. www.foodnavigator.com/Article/2025...

Enough is enough is enough

🚨 ONLINE EVENT Join us for a free panel on the war economy, the climate impacts of war & the geopolitics of the climate transition. Speakers: @stephensemler.bsky.social, @triofrancos.bsky.social & @iliasalami.bsky.social, chaired by @lalehkhalili.bsky.social 📅 16 Oct 6PM BST 🔗 shorturl.at/NwJCL

Here's part 1 of the three-part Better Offline Guide To Arguing With AI Boosters. I walk you through why AI is nothing like the early days of the internet, why it's not the early days of AI, and why every booster argues in the future tense. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/b... Linktr.ee/betteroffline

rewatching this episode of the Twilight Zone where a man becomes obsessed with getting advice from a demonic fortune telling machine until he can no longer make any decisions without consulting the machine. for no reason in particular.

No promises, but I may have found your answer for fighting back against ICE: The ‘Red Dot - ICE Activity Alerts’ app Created by and for *immigrant communities* - Location never stored or tracked - No personal info required or collected - 100% anonymous reports - Data auto-deletes after 5 hours

oxymoron (noun) | ox·​y·​mo·​ron A combination of contradictory or incongruous words; broadly: something (such as a concept) that is made up of contradictory or incongruous elements Example: “Meta Ethics”

ICEBlock is incredibly false privacy claims for marketing. They falsely claim it provides complete anonymity when it doesn't. They're ignoring both data kept by Apple and data available to the server but not stored. They're also spreading misinformation about Android: www.iceblock.app/android

“Elon Musk's xAl is constructing one of the world's largest Al supercenters in one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods. This mirrors a long history of environmental racism where polluting industries and hazardous developments are placed in communities with the least political and financial power.” 🧵

“I was laid off after my company introduced a new AI-driven tool that automated a significant portion of the editorial workflow. While the tool promised efficiency, what it really delivered was displacement” In the last 90 days, 300,000 Black women have lost their jobs!… 🧵

hey all! join us Tuesday, Aug 26 at 6pm ET for a @workshops4gaza.bsky.social virtual fundraiser event where we'll be talking about work to stop cop cities and carceral infrastructure across the country. hope you can make it! www.workshops4gaza.com/calendar/sto...

"The next few years are going to be pretty massive for IWGB Game Workers Union." You can read about what the union for the games industry has been up to in this interview! Work in games in the UK? Want to see a better, fairer games industry? Join us today: iwgb.org.uk/en/join/game...

Kids today don't know about finding poetry in the quotidian details of public space (w/all respect if this had run in an actual local NYC outlet and not whatever NYT is at this point it would probably be perceived as a charming little blog post)

rural america fundamentally no longer believes in public goods and hasn't for a long time now

What an absolutely pathological thing to say when the humanities subsidize the sciences and all the science funding is getting cut to the bone. Like just look at the vaccine stuff and the cancer research that’s disappearing. They hate science as much if not more than the humanities

Totally insane people running our government into the ground.

More national self-harm every day... "New international enrollment in the U.S. could drop by 30% to 40% this fall...That would deprive the U.S. economy of $7 billion in spending"

Sick fucking bullshit www.nytimes.com/2025/08/08/u...

Todd Wolfson, the president of the AAUP, called the settlement “a disaster” for “the independence of colleges and universities nationwide.” “The settlement will only fuel Trump’s authoritarian appetite.” #DefendHigherEd

I've had it with data.— www.unpopularfront.news/p/against-po...

thearmed.bandcamp.com/album/the-fu... Congratulations to the punk band that just released a new album titled after an electronics shredder company slogan I photographed in 2016 which escaped containment, what a world

ICYMI: Amazon still doing Amazon things The company is not only reintroducing new versions of old features that allow police to access footage from Ring users Amazon is introducing a new Ring feature that will allow police to request *livestream* access to our home security devices. @eff.org

Antiwar activists led by @jvp.bsky.social occupied the lobby of the New York offices of Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand on Friday to denounce their votes against halting arms shipments to Israel. Banging pots and pans, they chanted "Stop starving Gaza!" and "Never again for anyone!"

It's wild watching someone else maybe blackmailing Trump. From prison no less. And when (because I'm increasingly convinced we're in a when, not if situation) Trump pardons Maxwell, it might actually be enough to break the MAGA coalition permanently. Emphasis on *might.*

Read what "recognizing" a Palestinian state means to Carney's administration. Absolutely disgraceful, disillusioned, & ONLY advances the interests of the colonial, apartheid state of Israel.

Brilliant. EPA moves to end climate regulation under Clean Air Act

Dune

placing.technology/how-does-goo... I got mad at a paper and then I laid out why I lowkey don't think Google Maps is profitable

Shameless plug, but Gabe and I delve into this issue in great depth in our forthcoming book about building a better food system that works for everyone. www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/jan-d...

Glad to see my article, Factory farm gas: Rendering industrial animal waste as renewable energy on North Carolina pig farms published today! You can read it here: journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10.... #Smithfieldagreement #wastemanagement #industrialanimalwaste #biogas

Remember when this company made an AI ethics board to persuade people they were a good company and then the entire board resigned because the company wanted to put tasers on drones

Interesting review by Keith Gessen of Tim Weiner's “The Mission: The CIA in the 21st Century,” about the agency's highs and lows over the past many decades. Weiner casts the CIA as intrepid intel workers who redeemed themselves in Ukraine and could be a last line of defense against Trump.

Woman with fan. Druid Hill Park. Baltimore, MD. 2025.

Hedge funds are becoming more systemically important, purchasing a larger share of government debt on Canada in pursuit of repo-funded basis trades. As the article highlights, this amps up the risk of financial instability in some of the basic financial plumbing ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/posthas...

Assigning bits of this @ajdouglas.bsky.social book in every class I’m teaching this coming term, these kids are gonna be so du Bois pilled.

The world needs to radically ramp up investment to support biodiversity- estimates put the gap at nearly $1T. Public money (especially from the rich world) has been sparse, so policy makers have turned to private finance, and we are supposedly seeing a boom in these investments- but is it real?

A Technical Look at Iran’s Internet Shutdowns > Layered on top of this is the IRGFW—the Iranian Great Firewall. Modeled after China’s Great Firewall (GFW), but with stricter enforcement and more centralized control, it filters, blocks, and surveils traffic across the country.

Ex-farm worker here. We need to talk about this whole "But a living wage for farm workers would spike the cost of food!" thing. Not true AT ALL. Y'all don't understand how fast experienced farm workers are. The average tomato picker pulls 650lbs per hour. At $20/hr, that's $0.03/lb for labor.

OpenICE: Open-Source US Immigration Detention Dashboard

I see we are having a/c discourse today my friends, respectfully, this is 101 level climate discourse staying cool saves lives and you do not need to feel guilty about it. promise. no one benefits from your a/c guilt, least of all the planet also heat pumps that both heat and cool are so great