" A robot-lead reality is unlikely, but a reality where we accept violence as the status quo is already here" tacticaltech.org/news/insight...

Reports of modernity's disenchantment of the world were apparently wildly premature. "Science" has seamlessly replaced the "supernatural" as the preferred medium of magical thinking.

"One Piece, by Eiichiro Oda, holds the record for the most copies published in the same comic book series by a single author, with 500m copies printed worldwide" www.theguardian.com/world/2025/s...

Want to work in the Waikato, New Zealand? My school is hiring a few positions in #Psychology: Senior Tutor in Psychology Lecturer in Clinical Psychology Senior Lecturer in Behavioural Analysis elhs.fa.ap1.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...

"Why does this absolutely unfounded myth that the Family Court somehow always sides with women and always harms men have so much traction? Because it resonates with underlying stereotypes,” she says. “It’s familiar to us, because it’s the baggage that we all carry around"

Amazing guest lectures today in Protest Movements of the Asia Pacific class today from activist-scholar, Kerry Tabuni and from Assistant Professor dos Santos @eraldo.bsky.social. People in very different parts of the world - all speaking to the West Papuan Independence Movement. Waa waa waa!

Rawe! 50 years of Maori language week today: www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa... ""We've gone from a time when te reo Māori was barely heard in public, to a time when it's sung in stadiums, spoken in workplaces and celebrated in our homes."

🚨 8 days left to submit an abstract for the ASAA/NZ conference this year in beautiful Raglan/Whāingaroa 🌊. 9-12 December. Thanks to @wennergrenorg.bsky.social participants from Low and Middle Income countries can apply for travel awards ✈️ #anthropology #conference www.asaanz.org/conference

To kill is exhausting Tuer fatigue

Another lawsuit against the “virtual vending machine” www.theverge.com/news/772101/...

My paper in Urban Studies is finally out! Check it out to see how cheap digital infrastructures and technologies are used to bolster inequality and monarchical authority in Bangkok. doi.org/10.1177/0042...

"Current debates about AI’s future potential take us into related territory around concepts like creativity or thinking. We need inalienability as a theoretical framework for articulating what is at stake" www.at-commons.com/pub/8wem4ske...

Paetongtarn Shinawatra has been removed by the Constitutional Court. Here, I lay out four potential scenarios on what comes next. www.coffeeparliament.com/p/paetongtar...

In which I compare AI content to 2 minute noodles. 🍜 www.1news.co.nz/2025/08/24/c...

I promise you.

14 'Ua'u Hawaiian Petrel Endangered species formerly found on all main Hawaiian Islands except Niʻihau. Now mostly restricted to Haleakalā crater on Maui. Birds travel as far as Alaska and Japan during two-week-long feeding trips. #artYear #ArtChallenge #drawing #bird #watercolour #pen #sciart

"smoothed-out look to footage that makes it look “like plastic""

Robert Sullivan: A new NZ Poet Laureate! From Waka 78: "amid the context of a minor colony draining Imperial coffers, Imperial forces, amid the resistance of souls to becoming the essence of souls the Empire took the waka" thebigidea.nz/stories/stan...

"There were interviews to conduct and transcribe, students to support, messages that needed to be sent. The urgency to bear witness outweighed the need to rest."

In the 14th century, someone who didn't have a highlighter handy thought to use octopus tentacles to mark the most important parts. I love it so much (Manuscript from the Bankcroft library, UC Berkeley)

I’ve been using it for Spanish since this past winter, and the decline in quality since the inclusion of AI is striking. The things it’s teaching me make no sense anymore. As my best friend put it, “Duolingo’s goal is not to teach you a language, but to keep you using Duolingo.”

"we can do theory-building through ethnography by insisting that we hold practices of risk classification accountable for the outcomes in service to which they are pressed: namely, pooling of wealth and the conferral of social and political entitlements enjoyed by the wealthy”

Are you an anthropologist interested in extractivism at the margins? Vast concentration of wealth enabled by novel monopolistic and interventionist economies? See the CFP for "New Fascist Economies" panel at the Anthropology Conference in Aotearoa @carlyschuster.bsky.social www.asaanz.org/conference

"tech and AI are booming in Australia,. . . We're in the top five global destinations for data centres. . . so it's not the case that Australian copyright law, which is robust and protects creators, is hindering any kind of innovation and investment." www.abc.net.au/news/2025-08...

"the government would take "firm action" if there were any deliberate acts of flying the pirate flag on Indonesia's Independence Day. . . Suyanto, a sociologist from University of Airlangga, told the ABC the One Piece flag trend was a "massive movement" www.abc.net.au/news/2025-08...

Did you know there is a free tool alectoai.com that finds and reports explicit deepfake content? "It’s almost impossible for ordinary people to navigate the complex system and do damage control" www.wired.com/story/deepfa...

“GPT-5 is the first time that it feels like talking to an expert in any topic — a Ph.D.-level expert,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said.

It’s #InternationalOwlAwarenessDay 🦉❤️ To celebrate here’s an Ancient Greek clay aryballos (perfume flask) in the shape of a little owl! Dated c. 640 BC. The Louvre, Paris 📷 by me #OwlishMonday #Archaeology

Five travel awards for scholars from low & middle income countries are available for this years ASAA/NZ #anthropology Conference in Whāingaroa, Raglan! www.asaanz.org/conference Priority will be given to applicants from #Oceania and #SoutheastAsia

"And while some may see the draping of flags and the placing of patu on desks as defiant acts, many rangatahi saw them for what they truly were: a peaceful but firm reminder that Māori and Pasefika voices will not be sidelined."

True! This one made it into my history of anthropology syllabus.

"The medium has got higher production value and normal people felt that they couldn't necessarily keep up with that. It wasn't a conducive space to put yourself out there anymore" www.youtube.com/watch?v=bN4M...

Always plenty of fine pets to admire up and down Ponsonby Road, but this one might just be the GOAT.

The deathcap mushroom. Gemini: "Yum!" 🙊

No country for historians. History matters but not to this government and this Minister who was himself once a historian. Et tu, Brute! 25 years ago the Ministry (my first job as a historian) was a powerhouse and now just a shadow. #HistoryMatters #history www.rnz.co.nz/news/politic...

"Like requesting the bullet points of grief. Like demanding the key takeaways about laughing until your stomach hurts. . . The early universities (Bologna, Paris, Oxford) were built around the radical idea that complex ideas required communal struggle. . . Knowledge wasn't something you collected"

Selfishly tweaking the algorithm 🙈 with this flashback to an article I wrote in 2022. Ethnographic exploration from Bangkok examining how commercial imagery and the push to scale up creativity can misfire across cultural and political contexts rai.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

"the culmination of six years of advocacy and diplomatic manoeuvring which started with a group of Pacific university students. . . Iwasawa said states had clear obligations under international law, and that countries - and, by extension, individuals and companies ...are required to curb emissions."

As Public-use AI helping in surveillance and warfare Will ChatGPT users find themselves unwittingly contributing to increasing population surveillance, human rights violations, or warfare? newsroom.co.nz/2025/07/18/p...

"The Māori in the beginning of the video wear tā moko that bear no cultural significance . . . most of the phone-obsessed young people in the video are depicted as Asian." thespinoff.co.nz/society/18-0...

This has been available for two years, but now officially published by @culturalstudies.bsky.social Exploring settler colonialism in Aotearoa: the fab @fmcc.bsky.social , Priya Kurian, Rolande Paekau, Cayathri Divakalala & Sharayne Bennett www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

"there's a self-managed super fund with more than half a billion dollars. If the person behind that fund is retired, in a half-decent year, the fund would be throwing off about $50 million or so in income, a little under $5 million a month."

"There are . . ways to violence embedded in the very infrastructure of AI, such as the way prompts . . . are rendered into actual imagery. This process can contribute to dehumanizing people, making them legitimate targets by rendering them invisible" Ameera Kawash. globalvoices.org/2025/04/18/w...

"What is particularly alarming is that anyone with a ChatGPT licence and about a minute of spare time could very easily produce a document similar in content, tone and structure to the government’s strategy."

"I’m shocked by this announcement, bluntly, given my research group has been working with tangata whenua, iwi, hapū, rūnanga, and trusts around the motu for over 10 years, and there is very little support for de-extinction of New Zealand species for many reasons"- Nic Rawlence

"The world's oldest known dress is a simple V-necked garment that was overlooked as rags for decades" www.livescience.com/archaeology/...

"She celebrated her heritage, spoke about education, and simply existed in a digital space that is often hostile to women. That act alone, being visible, was enough for a man to believe he had the right to end her life."

Weaponising social media against academics: David Seymour's problematic posts www.linkedin.com/pulse/weapon... (LinkedIn) sanjanah.wordpress.com/2025/06/23/w... (WordPress) #nzpol

"So yes, I do think I have a better insight than the president of the company." I am going to hang this in my office to look at every time I have imposter syndrome to remind me that some people need less confidence.

I feel you Eddie! Flights between Hamilton and Australia are back.