I'm signing out for the holidays here. It's been a long time since I've had a year to remember in terms of research #publications but this year, after virtually nothing for 2-3 years, I had 4 pieces come out, all fully #OpenAccess.. Here is a threaded list for those interested. #AcademicSky 1/6

One of a lot of reports out there on another new Próspera-style neocolonial cryptobro tax avoidance scheme / Special Economic Zone #SEZ / post- #smartcity... this time on the island of #Nevis. I wish it nothing but disaster. h/t for this story to @rosamundevb.bsky.social

Just in case anyone is unclear: the principle of Permanent Sovereignty over Natural Resources (PSNR) passed by the UN General Assembly in December 1962, means the #USA has no legal claim over Venezuelan #oil.

“The three hundred largest yachts in the world emit as much carbon dioxide as the ten million inhabitants of Burundi.” Burned by Billionaires: How Concentrated Wealth and Power Are Ruining Our Lives and Planet Hardcover – 14 January 2026 by Chuck Collins

I do love how mainstream critics engage with #sciencefiction. This interesting reissued Danish novel by Anders Bodelsen, apparently, "uses the armature of science fiction to frame urgent questions about the present" –as if that's not what science fiction does. www.theguardian.com/books/2025/d...

Thomas Piketty on how the Heritage Foundation's #Project2025 has become reality. #Trump #USA thomaspiketty.wordpress.com/2025/12/16/p...

The onward march of free trade zones continues... #cities

The Koch Network Is Pushing Trump to Accelerate AI, Documents Show www.desmog.com/2025/12/11/t...

How come I am only now discovering that Michel Callon died earlier this year? 😢 #ANT #AcademicSky www.tandfonline.com/eprint/AREJA...

NEW: CBP is doubling down on a surveillance strategy built around small, human-portable drones, pushing border enforcement toward a distributed surveillance network that can operate in harsh climes and mixed terrain to rapidly cue agents.

Brilliant piece from, Dr Johnny Ryan, on why Europe needs to confront directly on AI and tech regulation. Every chancellery in Europe has should read this. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

This is one of many reasons why I use my “smart” TV as a dumb monitor, and don’t connect it to the internet. As @jesgilbert.bsky.social & I discuss in “The Secret Life of Data,” all networked devices are Trojan horses, whose function can be flipped long after we’ve invited them into our homes.

No journalist from The Globe and Mail or Le Devoir – who understands IP and the new economy – should be under the illusion that the “Buy Canadian Policy” will buttress domestic Canada-owned firms. The policy recognises Amazon Canada, Google Canada, and Microsoft Canada as “Canadian” firms.

Critical minerals currently being stockpiled by the Pentagon for weapons could be used to decarbonize the economy instead– at a time when our shrinking climate window demands decisive action. Read our Global Systems and Policy Manager in @financialtimes.com www.ft.com/content/42ab...

I'm a veteran criminal justice reporter. I've never seen anything like ICE-occupied Memphis. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

Great piece by Jimmy Wu on the new #SiliconValley "intelligentsia", and the cultural support for we the slide into #fascism... bayareacurrent.com/meet-the-new...

Exclusive: The Trump administration is moving to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, according to a senior White House official, taking aim at one of the world's leading climate research labs.

This is great issue!

I invite you to ask yourself why the language of protestors has been a terrifying daily concern, but e.g. successive governments giving the US unlimited use of our airbases to fly a gajillion dollars of weapons of destruction into Israel for use on huge numbers of civilians is not concerning at all.

The ACM Digital Library, where a LOT of computing-related research is published (I'd say at least 75% of my own publications), is now not only providing (without consent of the authors and without opt-in by readers) AI-generated summaries of papers, but they appear as the *default* over abstracts.

Some good news! There will be no #Trump Tower in #Belgrade, instead a minister will be prosecuted for corruption and the authoritarian President of #Serbia is furious... www.theguardian.com/world/2025/d...

When mad drivers tell you that you, a cyclist, don't belong on roads because you don't pay registration and the gas tax, show them the Road Damage Calculator. Compare, for example, the damage made by a small SUV and a longtail cargo e-bike. Very different orders of magnitude roaddamagecalculator.com

Did you know that from tomorrow, Qualtrics is offering synthetic panels (AI-generated participants)? Follow me down a rabbit hole I'm calling "doing science is tough and I'm so busy, can't we just make up participants?"

Stephen Miller is employing state terror in service of the open goal of shifting the ethnic mix of the country. In numerous ways he's doing this at the expense of public safety. We spent weeks reporting on Miller's real aims. Here's the result. We hope you'll read: newrepublic.com/article/2041...

FFS

The Carney-Smith ‘grand bargain’ is a fire sale of our future. The former UN #climate envoy is trading Indigenous rights and Canada’s climate legacy for a financially toxic tar sands pipeline deal with #Alberta. New from @richardbrooks.bsky.social: ricochet.media/climate/the-... #cdnpoli

Wrong question.

Astonishing maps which show the impossibility of making any political sense of #Israel 's settler-colonization of #Palestine. And this is just the #WestBank - it does not include the new reduction of #Gaza (which will also no doubt go the same way of micro-division)...

New issue of Surveillance & Society out now! Featuring a special section on digital confinement, a roundtable on criminalization of environmental activism, and a dialogue section on 25 years since the “surveillant assemblage”... #surveillance #privacy #data ojs.library.queensu.ca/index.php/su...

Big Tech firms have been complaining about the “patchwork” of state laws ever since Californians adopted their landmark privacy law in 2020, Alan Butler writes. Trump's AI executive order is thus an escalation of a fight that has been brewing for years.

we can kill them all if we just work together and ✨believe💫

"'I had to leave!' A whole generation of rural youngsters felt this yearning." So grateful for this essay by Zheng Xiaoqiong in @equatormag.bsky.social (tr. Eleanor Goodman) on the aspirations, disillusionment, and perseverance of fellow migrant workers whose labor powered China's industrial rise👇

I have grown to believe that excessive wealth does something to your brain that is analogous to a serious head injury

🧵As AIPAC faces growing opposition, pro-Israel donors are looking for other ways to push pro-Israel policy around the globe. U.S. donors are funneling millions to AIPAC's protege in Europe: Elnet, whose U.S. nonprofit arm has raked in millions since Oct 7 theintercept.com/2025/12/15/e...

European governments are voluntarily handing the keys of their vital IT systems in police, health care and intel to #Palantir, whose boss explicitly wants to end democracy. The Swiss seem to be the only ones who are paying attention when all the others have gone into snooze mode

There’s a specific mechanism in authoritarian movements that we’re seeing play out in real-time across American media and tech. It’s a simple rule: "If we cannot co-opt it, we must destroy it." It is the logic of "scorched earth." It's the logic of the Nero Decree and it's happening right now. 🧵

Because the issue of population change is so widely misunderstood, here's a short thread which seeks to lay it out simply. It explains why there is almost nothing anyone can do to change the global population trajectory, both as numbers rise, then as they fall. 🧵1/13

1/Beijing is using an increasingly powerful tool to control and monitor its own officials: Surveillance technology, much of it originating in the U.S., an @apnews.com investigation has found. Buckle up for a twisting ride through China's corruption crackdown... apnews.com/article/whis...

Another poison pill buried in Mark Carney’s budget: a repeal of a reduced postage rates for books and shipments between libraries. Libraries across the country are sounding the alarm for what it would mean for the viability of another essential public institution.

Dec. 18 will mark the enforcement of a new law aimed at curtailing the dominance of technology giants and fostering competition in the Japanese market. How far is the law going, and what will change for consumers?

Providing an interactive service than generates the illusion of knowledge is not "better than nothing." It's not only a waste of money and time, but actively harmful to people and public trust in government. Stop doing this. #AI #Canada nationalpost.com/news/politic...

There are evil, violent, narcissistic idiots in every belief-system and political ideology. Every day we hope these people don't decide that today is the day they make their make their mark with the lives of others, but then sadly there are days like this one. #BondiBeach #BrownUniversity

In late 2020 a Chinese man called Guan Heng travelled to Xinjiang with our BuzzFeed map of detention facilities to provide ground truth for our work - he provided the first corroborating evidence for many sites. He escaped to the US - then ICE detained him. www.wsj.com/world/china/...

This weekend is the 10th anniversary of the Paris Agreement. I wrote about the biggest change to global climate politics since its passage: The climate story *is* the China story now, and how countries pursue decarbonization is itself a wager on China’s future. heatmap.news/climate/pari...

So, El Fasher looks like one of the worst single event atrocities to happen this century so far, but the evidence has come in such a trickle it seems to only now be getting verified

WOW. @haleaziz.bsky.social with a new scoop: ICE now gets a running list of every person who is going to be taking a domestic flight inside the United States from the TSA and runs it through their database looking for targets. This explains the Babson College student's arrest.

Fantastic and blistering comment about the need for transparency in industry-academic collaborations. From @georgiaturner.bsky.social, Ian Anderson, and Luisa Fassi www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

www.theguardian.com/global-devel... Across Argentina, there are about 5,000 open-air rubbish dumps. In many of them, children scavenge daily – a source of revenue in a country where 1.2 million children under 17 live below the poverty line. “Children who live or work in landfills are invisible.”

Reminder! Call for participation, Planetary Surveillance - the 11th Surveillance Studies Network / Surveillance & Society Conference, Lille, France, 9-12 June 2026. Deadline: 10 January 2026 #SSN2026 #surveillance surveillance-studies.net/conference/ ssn2026.sciencesconf.org