In the new TMK, we chat with folks from Amazon Employees for Climate Justice about their campaign to build solidarity among workers, confront the impacts of AI, apply pressure on corporate leadership, and agitate for socio-environmental justice at Amazon and beyond. soundcloud.com/thismachinek...

NEW YORK CITY: I hear you're in a celebratory mood over there. Well how would you like to use some of that energy to help dismantle big tech? Join me, @parismarx.com, @edwardongwesojr.com, @jathansadowski.com, @veenadubal.bsky.social, and special guests for the Second NYC Luddite Tribunal.

In the new TMK Premium, we discuss the massive layoffs at Amazon and Meta, and how tech companies are gutting their labor force to sustain (in the short term) their over-leveraged, over-investment into capital expenditure for AI infrastructure. full episode: www.patreon.com/posts/142935... teaser:

The fact that people still respond to Chotiner's requests for interviews is proof that the Dunning Kruger Effect is rampant in politics and beyond. Each person who says yes thinks they are special and will not be made a fool. Some people are correct, but many vastly overestimate their capability.

In the new TMK, I chat with @alybatt.bsky.social about her excellent new book — Free Gifts: Capitalism and the Politics of Nature — and we get into capitalism’s strange relationship to the natural world: one defined by brutal extraction but also strategic neglect. www.patreon.com/posts/142206...

GenAI has never saved anyone any money, nor made them more productive. Companies like Klarna and Duolingo are hiring back the people they laid off in their AI fever; others are hiring expensive consultants to patch up AI botch jobs. But sure, EA will be the first ever company to make it work.

Melbourne folks! I'm going to be part of a Luddite Tribunal organised by the Brunswick Library — you gotta love public libraries and their critical workers — on November 27th at 6:30pm. I'll be joined by Lizzie O'Shea; it'll be a ton of fun! Free registration: www.eventbrite.com.au/e/the-luddit...

2(ish) weeks until the New York launch of Witch Power! So excited for this one!! Here's the link to register: www.eventbrite.com/e/witch-powe...

Melbourne folks! I'm going to be part of a Luddite Tribunal organised by the Brunswick Library — you gotta love public libraries and their critical workers — on November 27th at 6:30pm. I'll be joined by Lizzie O'Shea; it'll be a ton of fun! Free registration: www.eventbrite.com.au/e/the-luddit...

Just in time for Halloween, our @asapjournal.bsky.social cluster on Algorithms and the Occult is out! 👻 Featuring @emmaquilty.bsky.social, @aketchum22.bsky.social, @xrw.bsky.social, @drs.bsky.social, @serife.bsky.social, @thechristinet.bsky.social, @jessrauchberg.bsky.social, and more!

In the new TMK Premium, we engage in an exegesis of Peter Thiel’s deeply scholastic interpretation of the biblical revelations contained within One Piece—plus some choice bits from his Antichrist lecture series. • teaser: soundcloud.com/thismachinek... • full episode: www.patreon.com/posts/141761...

Oh damn, Kohei Saito has entered into the techno-feudalism debate and his argument aligns with what me and @bigblackjacobin have been saying for a long time: Stop saying techno-feudalism, this is called rentier capitalism, and it's the basis for techno-fascism. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

This is a disingenuous / bad faith or stupid / bullshit claim not a serious position. There are experts across Silicon Valley and Wall Street—the two places that “rock star” economist Justin Wolfers respects—who are very skeptical of AI and critical of the obviously ouroboros-like bubble.

@jacobsilverman.com spotted at the State Library of Victoria bookshop in Melbourne!

Brooklyn folks! Come to the launch at Hive Mind Books in Bushwick on November 7th for my lovely wife @emmaquilty.bsky.social's new book WITCH POWER. Emma is a feminist anthropologist whose book offers a captivating, critical, and deeply personal analysis of the witch as a cultural figure.

Sora flopping, bleeding cash on pro subscriptions, lawsuits left and right accusing the company of inventing the emotional torment nexus, age verification lobby with a stranglehold on the adult internet... pivoting to porn is masterful gambit www.404media.co/chatgpt-erot...

In the new TMK, I'm joined by @lalehkhalili.bsky.social to discuss her new book, Extractive Capitalism, about the great many foot soldiers, systems and circuits of extraction that are essential to capitalism—from sand smugglers to management consultants, and much more www.patreon.com/posts/141154...

one thing LLMs have revealed is that the belief that there is a magical incantation that will give you what you want is not just confined to pick-up artists and freemen on the land

In the new TMK Premium, we trace how the sprawling networks of data capture built to funnel profits through the adtech ecosystem and platform economy are also powering an exterminationist techno-politics carried out by fascist agencies and their corporate collaborators. Oops!

We get a lot of wild publicity pitches for TMK, but this one is among the most pathological. I shudder to think of the people who this pitch – and insane person – would excite, rather than repulse.

Looking forward to giving the keynote at this very cool conference in New York City next month along with so many other comrades-in-luddism — New Luddism: Technology and Resistance in the Modern Workplace

Call for abstracts: "Insurance, Climate Change, and Spatial Governance" paper session for the American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting, San Francisco, California, March 17-21, 2026 I'm co-organizing this session with some amazing scholars. Here's our extended abstract:

At this point I am just a @triofrancos.bsky.social superfan & wanna recommend everything she’s doing but I particularly enjoyed this interview with @jathansadowski.com & @edwardongwesojr.com on all things extraction, stranded renewables assets, China, & much more 🫡 open.spotify.com/episode/4kfb...

Climate and insurance folks: please join @jathansadowski.com, Leigh Johnson, Stephen Collier and me for an AAG session on insurance, spatial governance and climate adaptation. CFP below, abstract form here: forms.gle/wQNrgtRmJETV...

Call for abstracts: "Insurance, Climate Change, and Spatial Governance" paper session for the American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting, San Francisco, California, March 17-21, 2026 I'm co-organizing this session with some amazing scholars. Here's our extended abstract:

The AI bubble is gonna tank the economy. The ironic future of AI is to throw us backwards into a great depression. Let’s gooooo www.marketwatch.com/story/the-ai...

According to reports by journalists and activists on the flotilla, “Thunberg was “wrapped in the Israeli flag and paraded like a trophy”—a scene described with disbelief and anger by those who witnessed it.” Israel calls the flotilla “terrorists,” while their rights are “systematically violated”.

““They dragged little Greta [Thunberg] by her hair before our eyes, beat her, and forced her to kiss the Israeli flag. They did everything imaginable to her, as a warning to others,” the Turkish activist ErsinÇelik, a participant in the Sumud flotilla, told Anadolu news agency.”+

Just discovered there's a whole category of stock photos that are people biting their computers out of frustration.

OpenAI is essentially a social arsonist, developing and releasing tools that hyper scale the most racist, misogynistic, and toxic elements of society, lowering the barriers for all manner of abuse. The so called guardrails make a pinky swear look like an ironclad contract.

What an unsurprising decision by corporations that desperately need to make money with AI. If every other company with a chatbot isn't already doing this, then expect them to be following Meta's lead soon. The chatbot is not your friend; it's a corporate listening device. www.ft.com/content/22f7...

This discussion is so fuckin good holy shit

Incredible ruling in a case brought by the AAUP against Rubio and the State Department. A federal court found that "arresting, detaining, and deporting noncitizen students and faculty members for their pro-Palestinian advocacy violates the First Amendment." www.aaup.org/news/court-r...

WE WON: "This case -– perhaps the most important ever to fall w/in..this district court squarely presents the issue whether non-citizens lawfully present here in US..have the same free speech rights as the rest of us. The Court answers this Constitutional question unequivocally “yes, they do.”"

On the way to my girlfriend's on an Amtrak listening to @edwardongwesojr.com and @jathansadowski.com 's podcast while playing hades 2 does life get any better than this?

In the new TMK, @triofrancos.bsky.social joins us to discuss the about the many frontiers, tensions, and futures of green capitalism. We go deep into the political economy of lithium and the material infrastructures of extraction. Thea is so sharp and this is such a great conversation.

I’m the subject of this week’s “What’s on Your Bookshelf” column at @rockpapershotgun.bsky.social — they reached out when I was on a week off so got deep-reading me. Revolutions, Egyptian alt fantasy comics, citizen assemblies, Luddism and Stewart Lee abound www.rockpapershotgun.com/whats-on-you...

It's very cool to see my book recommended in RPS by game narrative designer @hannahnicklin.bsky.social — alongside books by Murray Bookchin and Hilary Mantel — especially since I have RPS opened in a different tab to help me find the witch crest in Silksong www.rockpapershotgun.com/whats-on-you...

Every paragraph hit me with more psychic damage

Honestly it's pretty cool that a bigger than expected part of my job is reading the Financial Times every day.

In the new TMK Premium, we discuss the growing genre and tropes of personal literary essays about AI — what N+1 dubs the "AI-and-I" genres — where artists and intellectuals pen long essays laying out their thoughts, worries, and ultimate embrace of AI. www.patreon.com/posts/139592...

This essay is so damn good. I love to see @edwardongwesojr.com digging in the crates to find sharp, prescient critiques of technological political economy from Victorian literature that could / should be written today. thetechbubble.substack.com/p/on-the-ori...

Capricon 46 is delighted to begin announcing our Guests of Honor! Welcome @edwardongwesojr.com and @jathansadowski.com, co-hosts of the podcast This Machine Kills. Their podcast explores the political economy of technology; we are thrilled to have them join us! capricon.org/guests-of-ho...

"Layered both literally and figuratively on top of the future pathway of the Google internet infrastructure, the sugarcane railway tracks evoke the longevity of colonial infrastructures as well as the ideologies underlying them." – @emmaquilty.bsky.social datasociety.net/points/confr...

In the new TMK, we discuss the assassination of Kirk—the latest immense, spectacular, and perhaps ephemeral event in a weird world. Will it be a catalyst for civil war, for years of lead, or for just the latest viral media cycle? Depends on who—and when—you ask. soundcloud.com/thismachinek...

"This is one of those books my mind keeps coming back to. [...] As Mechanics and Luddites, we could prepare students to not simply be cogs, but machine breakers as well as builders." Really lovely review of my book in the context of education technology www.civicsoftechnology.org/mechanic-and...

This outcome was so predictable. It doesn’t matter who shot Kirk or for what reason, it was always going to be a catalyst for cracking down on liberals, leftists, snd “anti-conservative thought.” The point is to never let a good crisis go to waste, especially if that crisis is a massive spectacle.

Feel like I’m going insane with the revisionist history that Charlie Kirk fostered open debate. He chilled speech and his targeting of professors for wrongthink led to threats, harassment, and being forced out of their jobs. His legacy is chilling speech right now, about him