New York folks! I’m launching my book at @ipk.bsky.social next month, in conversation with the wonderful @paulachak.bsky.social and @reecepeck.bsky.social. I hope you can join us! ipk.nyu.edu/events/book-...

❗❗ PALANTIR IS SUING US❗❗ Because of our reporting on the #SwissPalantirFiles. More specifically, #Palantir is suing #RepublikMagazine, with whom we (@adfichter.bsky.social, Lorenz Naegeli, Jennifer Steiner,Balz Oertli & me) published our major investigation in collab with #WAVRecherchekollektiv

Mexico is setting up free vaccination stations against measles, and I am encouraging all my friends and relatives under 49 to get one. In the US, I know it's more complicated, but I got an MMR shot in the fall because my doctor tested me and I had no antibodies. I'm 36!

NEW: CBP signs a new deal with Clearview AI to access its scraped image database for "tactical targeting," including efforts to “disrupt, degrade, and dismantle” networks of people labeled security threats.

Now imagine how this might be used against people trying to exercise their right to vote.

I was warned about this when I taught for a semester in Turkey in Fall 2018, that students or administrators might record my classes without my knowledge. But even then, it was more of an informal practice that instructors warned each other about, not a formal policy rolled out by the university.

I'll be speaking at the New Civic Terrains Speaker Series at Northeastern on Feb 26th and give a preview of my forthcoming book, Smart as a City. If you're in the Boston area and interested, please join! It's open to the public. www.eventbrite.com/e/new-civic-...

You’ve seen the halftime show … now read my friend Petra’s new book from @dukepress.bsky.social about how Bad Bunny became the global voice of Puerto Rican resistance! 👏🏽👏🏽 www.dukeupress.edu/p-fkn-r

some exciting news: announcing CREATOR & INFLUENCER STUDIES, the first open-access peer reviewed journal dedicated to creator and influencer culture research. I'm honoured to be named as one of the journal's inaugural associate editors. submissions open Feb 12.

ICYMI: 950+ Google workers signed a petition demanding that executives "disclose all contracts and collaboration with DHS, CBP, and ICE, and to divest from these partnerships." www.nytimes.com/2026/02/06/b...

WaPo laying off entire Middle East team

NEWS: The cuts were so severe that at least one department head asked to leave The Post rather than be included in the planning. Peter Finn, The Post's international editor, requested that he be laid off once he learned about the scope of the cuts to his section. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/04/b...

Media coverage of Gaza has plummeted. So today on @thenation.com, we're doing something pretty special: we're only running pieces by people in and from Gaza. We're calling it "A Day for Gaza." You can find links to all of the incredible pieces here. Please read! www.thenation.com/article/worl...

So while there may be rollbacks, I feel it is unlikely to ever go back to pre-2025, because having covered fed IT and cyber issues for a decade, I know that interoperability is a huge issue. Even where connecting data would be legal/benign, it was a technical challenge that has now been solved.

Interoperability between federal datasets is likely to be one of the long term impacts of the Trump administration. Most of these databases were designed not to easily share information with other systems/agencies. You'd need to be committed and willing to break ton of laws...

NEW: Our investigation for @thenerve_news reveals not only that Peter Thiel’s Palantir is completely enmeshed in our critical national infrastructure. It’s also the ‘cloud support’ for our nuclear weapons system 🤯 1/ www.thenerve.news/p/palantir-t...

The “colonial boomerang” is not a boomerang, it’s a continuum. Settler colonial policing/occupation of a divided society at home begets occupation tactics/mindsets abroad begets tactics at home. The R&D of empire and population pacification is a collective endeavor shared by all empires.

"Non-violent tactics that waste a company’s time or money are really effective. For Enterprise, we’ve made and cancelled car reservations, saying the roads are too icy. At Home Depot... people [lined] up to buy ice scrapers and then getting in line to return them, in a way that clogs the lines."

Marimar Martinez was the first US citizen shot by ICE. They claimed she was a terrorist. Said she was brandishing a weapon. They lied. Video footage exonerated her and showed the ICE agent shot her five times. He bragged to other agents “five shots, 7 holes”. A 🧵 of ICE abuse

Conflicting info about whether Pretti was murdered by ICE or CBP makes it clear that ICE is not single "rogue agency" ICE, CBP and ALL policing & borders must be abolished. This isn't just one agency; its an entire infrastructure of carceral control, illegalization & criminalization, and fascism.

this photo. minneapolis. 💜 📷️ Alex Kormann/Star Tribune

Statements here. knightcolumbia.org/content/fede...

ICE surveillance sweeps up activists, organizers, journalists, family members, and entire communities. When the government buys access to location data and online histories, everyone’s rights are at risk. www.eff.org/deeplinks/2...

Am I that naive to think that stopping, downsizing, and even abolishing ICE should have been an easy point to defend for Democrats, especially right now??

Notably did NOT post this to bluesky, where her office bends to local custom and mostly just says "this is wrong!!" about a news link.

*POSTDOC ANNOUNCEMENT* @casipenn.bsky.social @upenn.edu We invite recent PhDs in the social sciences, whose work focuses on contemporary India, to apply for a postdoctoral fellowship position for the 2026-2027 academic year. Review of applications begins Feb 2. More at the link below 👇

I'm co-chairing the Society for Social Studies of Science @4sweb.bsky.social Conference in Toronto, Oct 2026. #STS #scipol #innovation Theme: "TechnoPower • Technoscientific Futures". Open panel submissions portal is open! ls! Deadline: 2nd February 2026 www.4sonline.org/about_the_co...

🟡 NEW: The New York Times and Washington Post learned of a secret US raid on Venezuela soon before it was scheduled to begin Friday night — but held off publishing what they knew to avoid endangering US troops. www.semafor.com/article/01/0...

The New York Times has just confirmed that 40 civilians died in President Trump's invasion. This is the aftermath in one area

AAUP-TNS explains how the New School is vanguard in its approach to cuts, but its a model that will be rolled out elsewhere. Our fight is your fight! Solidarity is the only way forward, and no data or consultant can control or manipulate it. Join our struggle today: linktr.ee/aauptns

BREAKING: A federal judge ordered the government to restore Rümeysa Öztürk's SEVIS student record after it was wrongfully terminated in retaliation for exercising her freedom of speech. This allows her to fully engage with the opportunities of her PhD program.

realizing it’s not just administrators’ salaries that are sucking the life out NSSR but that they spent 800k to get Busta Rhymes to play a failed fundraiser (a fact I learned from @kmunro-econ.bsky.social) is just too fucking much. get me out of this badly written satirical novel.

They claim financial exigency, but then turn down $4 million pledges to keep the PhD programs open and disregard financial analyses that point to the real problem—bad real estate deals, spending on consultants, and their own salaries 2/2

I published this book four years ago, drawing together a decade+ of writing. At the time I noted on Reddit that some SV types took the title as a challenge: "not *yet*; if we can just perfect the model, we'll have full-on automated luxury libertarian urbanism!"

Similar to its precursor (smart cities), the real money in these speculative projects lies not in any eventual product but in the ecosystem of summits, workshops, and gatherings that circulate the idea and monetize the fiction itself under the pretense of design or planning.

Similar to its precursor (smart cities), the real money in these speculative projects lies not in any eventual product but in the ecosystem of summits, workshops, and gatherings that circulate the idea and monetize the fiction itself under the pretense of design or planning.

Holy shit. Reuters reporting that new admin instructions on visas are if you worked at a platform in trust & safety or content moderation or on fact checking or online safety at an platform you *and your loved ones* are ineligible for H-1B visa. www.reuters.com/world/us/tru...

Every presenter giving a talk with AI generated images. Every person suggesting using AI to generate survey questions in a discussion. Every person pulling up ChatGPT to come up with "suggestions" in workshops. Every academic using it to review papers. I think less of all of them.

This means NSF dissertation improvement grants in the social sciences are simply...not happening.

This is the importance of buying the books we write and teach from university presses. The same administrations that don’t care about the humanities would be just as happy to have academic publishing handled by these companies. We can save our own publishing ecosystem- but we have to do it.

The New School is now a place where students cannot major in History, Anthropology, Sociology, Global Policy & International Affairs, Global Studies, Urban Studies, or Environmental Studies. And more pauses, closures, and mergers coming down the pike this week. The future is uncertain.

When I think about how exquisitely careful NEH staff were to be fair, impartial, and rigorous, and how much work people put into grants so small they’re pocket change…I just want to scream.

WE WON. I am *begging* you to take note of who did this. *Not* UCLA admin—they’re still scuttling around behind closed doors, attempting to appease—but FACULTY AND STAFF, led by AAUP.

NIH-funded research ftw. www.umass.edu/news/article...

Join us Nov 25 for Engaging Publics in Media, Cities & Space -free online conference on research impact in media and urban studies. Talks on monographs, journals, podcasts, walking tours + networking, incl. a special session for ECRs. 👉 Full programme & register: docs.google.com/document/d/e...

I study tech’s capture of government data, and this is a new low even for me.

today, 11/06! Book launch at NYU *Decolonizing Afghanistan* (@dukepress.bsky.social, 2025 )with MATTHIEU AIKINS, WAZHMAH OSMAN, ZOHRA SAED, MORWARI ZAFAR! Come thru! docs.google.com/forms/d/19ZG...

Now comes the even harder work. But for tonight, let's celebrate.

billions of ticketing records are sold to the US government; the DHS, and records show agencies like ICE, CBP, ATF, TSA, and others. @josephcox.bsky.social found a way for you to opt-out of this in this essential guide to prevent even more gov surveillance