This is me in 2017 after the first workshop on complex systems for high school students at Allameh Helli High School in Tehran. Teenage boys and girls were sitting next to each other, curious and full of questions. I loved that school. Seeing it damaged by US and Israeli bombs is heartbreaking.

In 2013 Aaron Swartz committed suicide for facing 35 years in prison for mass downloading scientific articles. 13 years later, Meta is almost getting away with an infraction orders of magnitude larger. The law didn't change. torrentfreak.com/uploading-pi...

When you have to scroll over two pages of AI-generated "summary" drivel to reach, you know, the text abstract written by the authors, you know the Elsevier people have really lost the plot

A retired British primary school administrator with a British passport and a valid visa was shackled, chained and detained for six weeks by ICE www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

Today we launch ORION: a coordinated initiative to make open research information more inclusive, accessible and democratic. Our experience with GoogleBigQuery support collaborative and community solutions for ORI infrastructures, increasing sustainability & resilience. doi.org/10.54900/2pn...

We have an amazing panel ready for you at NetSciX in Auckland!

Three new preprints from our group are now live on arXiv! We explore community mixed membership in aggregated networks, fragmentation in a population-scale social network of the Netherlands, and how social capital shapes economic mobility. Read more:

On Monday I was at @internetarchive.eu in Amsterdam for @jwyg.bsky.social talk about his new book, Public Data Cultures. Instant purchase!

Peer review science relies, more than we care to admit, on what @zey.bsky.social calls "load bearing frictions" that make it difficult to fake good science, and on trust that most ppl also value science itself & won't cheat just for personal gain. This creates the wrong environment for that to hold.

A must-read, in my opinion

These people are losing their thought agency to just act as envoy for LLMs... "Second AI opinion" pffft www.erdosproblems.com/forum/thread...

Any attack targeted at people just because they are Jewish is as barbaric and evil as any attack on people just because they are Palestinian, or whatever other nationality. I will not accept any justification or relativization for this horrifying act of antisemitism in my mentions. Evil, period.

Can people organizing academic conferences in the US please get a grip?

One week to go! Next week we’re hosting an international workshop in Amsterdam on Population-Scale Social Network Analysis. Leading teams from five different countries will join us to share new insights and explore future collaborations. Learn more:

Earlier this year, we had the pleasure of participating in the NetSci 2025 conference in Maastricht. Our team shared exciting new research across topics from social network dynamics to mobility, privacy, and community structure. We even brought home two awards!

It’s almost like if people tell you that to win you have to turn your back on poor people, or Muslims, or trans people, or immigrants, you can just say, “no, that’s immoral, we’re not doing that,” and keep doing good old fashioned organizing and campaigning and things will be ok

Proud member of this great team! Stay tuned for more updates on our work soon👀

arXiv will no longer accept review articles and position papers unless they have been accepted at a journal or a conference and complete successful peer review. This is due to being overwhelmed by a hundreds of AI generated papers a month. Yet another open submission process killed by LLMs.

I am deeply honored to be awarded the Lagrange Prize 🏆, the premier award in the field of Complex Systems. I'd like to share this moment with all my current and past students, research team members, and collaborators over the years. Thank you CRT Foundation & @isi.it for this honor

Great for us Egyptians to be an inspiration for world leaders again! Who knew well-oiled dictatorships were in such high demand?

Omar won! He won! 🤩 So wonderful! From Palestinian refugee to Nobel glory: Omar Yaghi’s incredible journey Born in Amman to refugee parents, Yaghi rose from humble roots to reshape modern chemistry gulfnews.com/world/americ...

We are alarmed by reports that Germany is on the verge of a catastrophic about-face, reversing its longstanding and principled opposition to the EU’s Chat Control proposal which, if passed, could spell the end of the right to privacy in Europe. signal.org/blog/pdfs/ge...

🤩 Fantastic new network plotting package available in Python by Fabio Zanini. The package supports both networkx and igraph networks, and has a wide variety of styling options. iplotx.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

The right to seek, receive, and share information is a recognized human right protected under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This human right is at the heart of Wikipedia's mission to spread free knowledge. Learn more ➡️ w.wiki/F6Rj

New dataset that describes social media activity of a very large group of US elected officials: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Much love to the western governments who've finally undid some of the double-standards they've pushed for for far too long. Self determination is a right second to none. Let it be known that any one hindering such right does not see humans as equals.

We are hiring a PhD candidate in AI for network analysis. Think of agentic LLMs for network generation, AI algorithms for network analysis, and other interesting recombinations. Interested? It's a 4-year position at LIACS @unileiden.bsky.social Details: www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/vacancies...

Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, says UN inquiry

no joke I think the single most effective effort-to-result change that The Tech Internet could make for usability is to move the github readme above the github file list

against Microsoft's involvement in genocide. They record, store, and share every single phone call in Palestine btw

This is a call for the Complex Systems Society to stand with other academic organizations and publicly condemn the ongoing genocide in Gaza 🇵🇸 Add your name to the letter here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Really cool work using showing that there's more connecting human mobility and literally gas particles! We need more of this!

I'm in Vienna for the week attending @csh.ac.at's Visualizing Complexity Workshop. If anyone wants to meet up for a coffee hit me up!

Our article on population-scale networks of social opportunities constructed from administrative data is now available online: www.nature.com/articles/s41....

Big news at the @archive.org: It is now officially a federal depository library! Find out more about what it means to join a network of 1,100+ libraries that archive government documents & make them accessible to the public. See our cross-posted blog here: sparcopen.org/news/2025/in...

The bot picked up fellow PLANET-NL @yuliia-kazmina.bsky.social new paper :D Really insightful analysis on social mobility by looking at population-scale networks

I made the grave mistake today to check the news while at work. It's hard to look on graphs when the images of skeleton-looking children are still burned into my eyes.

Joint statement on Gaza from AFP, AP, BBC News and Reuters

Excellently-composed article. A must-read.

‘Only a small % of users engage in truly toxic behaviour, but they’re responsible for a disproportionate share of hostile or misleading content… [making us] believe that society is far more polarized, angry, & deluded than it really is’ @jayvanbavel.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/books/2025/j...

I'm not going to repost any of the insane antisemitic conspiracy bullshit that grok is spewing today, but it highlights how absolutely essentially is that we not let LLMs become a form of epistemic grounding for our society.

"in 2025 we will have flying cars" 😂😂😂

I'm sorry to report that I'll no longer be seen as White according to the 2030 US census, having briefly enjoyed that previlage from the 2020 census form＞︿＜

There's an open volunteering position on "Research on Migration and Refugee Coordination in Egypt" for the UNRCO. If you know someone with background in social science or international relations that is interested in volunteering, please share with them🙏

From today, every paper submitted to Nature -if published - will be accompanied by peer reviewers comments & authors rebuttal. We started the trial in 2020; we now want to open up the review process & showcase its role in shaping & improving papers 🧪 #AcademicSky www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Universiteit Leiden | PhD Candidate in AI for Network Analysis - Application deadline 📆 Jun 29, 2025

Action speaks louder than words. Danish Minister of Digitalisation @carolinestage.bsky.social wants to phase out Microsoft from the ministry to reduce the dependency on US tech. This will be a long process. But actual action, not just talking points, is noteworthy!