"But there is a structural analysis that Enshittification doesn't seem to be making, and that taking Lorde's speech seriously rather than as a meme might push us toward. Whose experience of platform decay is centered in the enshittification story? Whose experience is supplementary?"

"Historians will eventually decide whether that stance was an anomaly or the culmination of a long process in which Frankfurt School critical theory turned into a form of liberalism that was too often complicit with US imperialism." www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/ma...

Everything happening now in Lebanon & Iran—the killing of schoolchildren, the targeting of hospitals & healthcare workers, the murder of journalists & its open justification, the bombing of universities—every single war crime that has been normalized was forced upon our consciousness first in Gaza

"You don't have to cancel an election to undermine it. You just have to make sure people think there might be a problem with the results." - @ekoshy.bsky.social and I talk about why canceling elections is the last thing an authoritarian needs to do. itallhappenedbefore.substack.com/p/episode-2-...

"You don't have to cancel an election to undermine it. You just have to make sure people think there might be a problem with the results." - @ekoshy.bsky.social and I talk about why canceling elections is the last thing an authoritarian needs to do. itallhappenedbefore.substack.com/p/episode-2-...

US/Israel now bombing university campuses — the same places that were the sites of anti-regime protests a few weeks ago. And I wonder what provosts and deans of US universities on Qatar and the UAE are thinking this morning

More here: paa.ge/itallhappene...

I'm surprised that we're still surprised by this at this point, but yes, the government is buying your data and also selling it. www.npr.org/2026/03/25/n...

I am tabling and doing other outreach this weekend and one of my goals is to get at least 75 people to sign a letter to the City Council in support of funding our libraries at 0.5% of the city expense budget. actionnetwork.org/letters/city... - I'll report back on Monday, lol.

my unscientific answer would be that probably a lot of people care but also feel pretty powerless to do anything about it

I was asking about this kind of coverage the other day and it looks great. The next question I have is: do people care? (not a rhetorical q)

"We are not asking whether the midterms will happen. We are asking what kind of elections they will be by the time they do." open.substack.com/pub/itallhap...

In a new podcast, @ekoshy.bsky.social and I share our experiences from Turkey about elections in a competitive authoritarian system. With Americans worried about how the 2026 midterms will be held, our stories offer a reframing of what's at stake itallhappenedbefore.substack.com/p/episode-2-...

In a new podcast, @ekoshy.bsky.social and I share our experiences from Turkey about elections in a competitive authoritarian system. With Americans worried about how the 2026 midterms will be held, our stories offer a reframing of what's at stake itallhappenedbefore.substack.com/p/episode-2-...

Heard a great new euphemism today for academics who never reply to emails: "not quite an institution builder."

is there anyone who's writing about this? journalistic or academic?

Catching everyone up on last week's City Council preliminary library budget hearing for those who are keeping track of Mayor Mamdani's broken promises to our city libraries... open.substack.com/pub/prisoncu... - also sharing some next action steps.

I'm delighted to be returning to UMass Amherst tomorrow, my alma mater, to give the distinguished annual history lecture in association with the Five College Grad Program in history.

I actually don’t mind waiting on this line because Fuck ICE. I choose inconvenience over funding for the terror state.

"Under the Trump administration, democracy has been rolled back as much during just one year as it took Modi in India & Erdogan in Turkey 10 years to accomplish..." Instead of exceptionalizing the US moment, it's time to understand the global context: itallhappenedbefore.substack.com

The real theme of the modern age is "Nobody Wants This". AI, ICE in airports, ICE in general, the Iran War, data centers sending actual cities wiht people into blackouts -- "nobody" wants this. And yet here we are.

From a business perspective, I imagine airlines and airports are not thrilled with this. Ticket prices are up because oil prices are up. And now fear of being deported … or worse will cause people to not fly. Yet another way to crash the economy.

VERY happy to announce a renewal of our summer grant program for PhD students and freshly minted PhDs. Hearing about people's research is my favorite part of our @hpe-project.bsky.social so please apply! www.hpeproject.org/grants-cfp?s...

"Under the Trump administration, democracy has been rolled back as much during just one year as it took Modi in India & Erdogan in Turkey 10 years to accomplish..." Instead of exceptionalizing the US moment, it's time to understand the global context: itallhappenedbefore.substack.com

Efforts to shut down pro-Palestinian speech face series of setbacks in court Rulings in cases alleging antisemitism on US campuses say common pro-Palestinian speech is constitutionally protected www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

I don't want to amplify Hegseth's video and the US never felt truly secular to me, even sometimes compared to Turkey. But turning a military address into a prayer rally is a new level that they're unlocking.

“Many AI-based health-focused products aren’t yet available in areas with stringent privacy laws like Europe, for example, and experts warn that users should be careful with what they share. That goes doubly for things like reproductive data in America.”

This is as good a time as any to introduce a new podcast I'm co-hosting with @ekoshy.bsky.social We believe the global record of democratic backsliding is the essential context for this moment. Listen to our first episode and stay tuned for more: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/i...

Has anyone read this book? I want to hear what others think about it.

i need dramamine after taking this journey

lol

A key insight of this work is that secret police forces are made up not so much of ideological true believers as of losers who couldn’t make through the relatively meritocratic system of conventional law enforcement. After all, even low-rent specialists in violence need jobs!

Postdoc in Palestine Studies at the University of Toronto for next academic year. Applications are due April 6. Please share and apply.

a year without any charges whatsoever. it still stuns me. i can't begin to think what she must have gone through.

We are pleased to host Dr. @baykurt.bsky.social on April 14 at DeGroote School of Business @mcmasteruniversity.bsky.social Join us online or in person in Hamilton for what promises to be a great talk by Dr. Baykurt at the forefront of debates on the "smart" city. #SmartCities #UrbanPolicy

Reminder that this fascist hired a man, and made him wealthy, solely on the basis that he strangled my neighbor to death for being Black. Andreessen will see justice for this someday, and I hope I’m there when he does.

I’ll be at McMaster next month to talk about Smart as a City. April 14 at noon, part of DeGroote's Information Systems Seminar Series. If you’re in the Hamilton area, come say hi and spread the word!

NYC! See you tonight!

The US State Department has made a policy to deny visas to researchers and deport noncitizen researchers who study social media. Our group, the Coalition for Independent Technology Research (@thecoalition.bsky.social) is suing: www.npr.org/2026/03/09/n...

For this year's @4sweb.bsky.social I'm organizing an open panel on Remaking the State: Moral Economies of Gov-Tech and Automated Governance. Do you work on data infrastructures, tech vendors & automated governance? Submit a 250-word abstract; deadline April 30: www.4sonline.org/accepted_ope...

(Polio. It's polio)

Local Massachusetts weekly says it's confirmed that the Pentagon was relying on Claude for strike targeting, which is how they came to bomb a girls' school. thisweekinworcester.com/exclusive-ai...

For this year's @4sweb.bsky.social I'm organizing an open panel on Remaking the State: Moral Economies of Gov-Tech and Automated Governance. Do you work on data infrastructures, tech vendors & automated governance? Submit a 250-word abstract; deadline April 30: www.4sonline.org/accepted_ope...

It's either that data are useless, or they're just going to do what they want independent of what the data tell them, or as is often the case, BOTH

“Promise them anything, give them what they get, and f… them if they can’t take a joke.” Kissinger to a staff member regarding the Kurds, 1975. - theinsightinternational.com/kissingers-k...

A deeply underreported story. I know so many people struggling to pay their electric bills

I have seen a lot of cursed stuff in my time in academia but this is among the *most* cursed. Grammarly is generating miniature LLMs based on academic work so that users can have their writing ‘reviewed’ by experts like David Abulafia, who died less than two months ago.

Wait till they come up with "synthetic data" to "improve" their prediction rates

"... the specifics of the relationship between Anthropic and the Department of Defense... highlight more general contradictions in the Trump coalition between executive-authority enthusiasts and Silicon Valley oligarch-wannabes" -- @himself.bsky.social www.programmablemutter.com/p/who-loses-...

Congrats to @ncaaup.bsky.social & all who fought against this surveillance policy that would've allowed admin to hijack microphones in the classroom for secret recordings. This move would've chilled classroom discussion & suppressed students' willingness to ask questions & take intellectual risks.