It isn't that data centers use too much water (though they can and do). It's that the water could be used for other, more worthwhile things! Water used in one place might return through the water cycle elsewhere. So, the costs and benefits are distributed geographically and unequally

In the UK, the @ippr.org and @cmmonwealth.bsky.social concluded that "large companies appear to have preserved or even expanded profit margins during inflationary times, thereby amplifying the inflationary shock." www.ippr.org/media-office...

And analysis by Unite argued that in a recent half-year, 58.7 % of inflation was due to profit increases (versus ~8.3 % from labour cost rises). www.unitetheunion.org/media/4757/u...

Some interesting thoughts here about which critiques of AI are worth pursuing and in what ways

Problematic (to put it kindly) on so many levels. 1) there isn't really 'unfunded' research. The REF is there to allocate resources so that research is possible without a grant.

Blood Orange's new album is really just an astonishing piece of work. Moving across genres in a way that still feels coherent, homages to Elliot Smith sitting alongside beautiful jazz saxophone, rnb, and 80s synth pop. An achievement and a joy. 5 ⭐

Hmm, I hate to be a party pooper. But I definitely do see the idea of 'academic debates' circulating frequently through journals, grant apps etc. It is perhaps what debate means in this context, a very different set of practices, which is at stake (some I'm not sure we should valorise uncritically).

Astonished to learn that the most recent practitioners of mutual aid are... Hmmmm... The police. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Really like this extension of Langdon Winner's touchstone essay by Kean Birch journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Revising an article and it would be handy if there were any good books and articles that were media histories of the use of human bodies as analogue sensors (e.g of heat, light, electricity and so on). Any recommendations?

What should radical democrats think of expert knowledge? In this new piece I argue that democratic theorists could learn a lot by asking this question in the context of ecological activism. 👇 journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Feeling nostalgic for the days when "being the biopower of the enlightenment" was a real career option.

Some interesting correspondence between Amnesty International and Palantir on the question of human rights dropped a few days ago. www.amnesty.org/en/wp-conten...

I am giving away one *free copy* of my new book "Governing the Past: 'Never Again' and the Transitional Justice Project". Simply repost to enter the draw. I will randomly select the lucky reader on Friday 5 September. The book can be shipped within the UK or internationally!

Bad for thinking and also potentially deadly are not two things one would likely associate with university sanctioned "educational" software but here we are.

"rates of e-bike theft are rising fast... A recent survey by the Workers’ Observatory, a gig work monitoring group involving workers and researchers from St Andrews and Edinburgh Universities, found that 40 per cent of riders had bikes stolen..." www.scotsman.com/news/opinion...

Palantir's human rights posits a particularist, white human defended through a vast ecosystem of military technologies. This becomes obvious in docs for its 'Target Workbench' which refers to the undoubtedly non-white lives it facilitates ending not as human but only as target. tinyurl.com/2nttkxdb

Palantir's human rights posits a particularist, white human defended through a vast ecosystem of military technologies. This becomes obvious in docs for its 'Target Workbench' which refers to the undoubtedly non-white lives it facilitates ending not as human but only as target. tinyurl.com/2nttkxdb

Reading Palantir blogs for a new project. Would be easy to dismiss their 'human rights' talk as ideological fluff but it is logically articulated here as post-9/11 military humanitarianism and, even more uneasily, yoked to contemporary right authoritarian tropes blog.palantir.com/safeguarding...

As a relatively new Dad I face this problem with annoying regularity!

'“unisex cubicles are the way to go”, says Martin (...) As a single father, taking the girls to the loo was difficult (...) He would often stand outside the women’s loos, which were the only facilities to have baby changing tables, then choose his moment to ask if he could go inside.'

Every tech update now is like: "Great news, the word processor you've relied on for twenty years has learned to juggle! Is it good at it? No! Does it help in any way? Of course not! Has it made it insufferable to use? Oh, absolutely."

At the very least the language used by the BBC here is extremely curious regarding the CDC and vaccinations, given it's targeting by a right wing terrorist

Wow, what a crooked, wretched government

I'd argue the Times is right for the wrong reasons: Real Estate redevelopment has always part of the militarized urban frontier and it is impossible to disentangle the two.

No one talks about the "practicalities" of proscribing Al Qaeda or ISIS. Because when such a group presents a genuine terrorist threat, the question of whether its "practical" to treat it as such simply doesn't arise. Necessity dictates. Which is very different to this case. As everyone knows.

So this is grim. www.404media.co/ice-taps-int...

So pleased to see this letter from MPs in support of students in Gaza with offers at UK universities. It's been signed by over 100 MPs and is a real cross-party effort. I hope now that Starmer will respond to our requests.

JFC

Proud to see my former PhD supervisor Gilbert Achcar here, alongside some of the biggest names in progressive academia. Every one of us needs to raise our voice in this moment. Its a matter of basic moral obligation and civic duty. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...

I have a new article out: "Do artifacts have political economy?" It's a riff on an old argument by Langdon Winner about the embedding of politics in technology #STS #sociology #technoscience #technology #innovation journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Link: open.substack.com/pub/jamescra...

We are looking for a Senior Manager for our Leverhulme Centre for Algorithmic Life @leverhulmecal.bsky.social A key person in our team & a future valued colleague. Apply here durham.taleo.net/careersectio... & feel free to DM me. Also look out for our October research fellows posts.

This letter is already at over 1000 signatures, showing the level of support in UK academia for these students - and hopefully increasing pressure on the Home Office and FCDO. Still open to sign.

Shaimaa has a funded place at Edinburgh to study for a PhD with me, but is stuck in Gaza due to Home Office restrictions. I'm proud of her for speaking about her situation on TV and grateful to reporter Paris Gourtsoyannis for covering her story. news.stv.tv/east-central...

This is, frankly, an incredible piece that connects the carceral logic and violence of the border to the Israeli genocidal project in Gaza and beyond. I am dead serious when I say anyone who is teaching in any of these areas needs to have this on the syllabus this year.

'My latest' an attempt an conceptualizing a critical eviction-logistics as the allocation of loss, at the convergence of mobility race and housing, while trying to follow the moving parts of Eviction in Cape Town (and working within the complexities of a pandemic where eviction was paused):

Well this will be totally fine I'm sure www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

My book is on sale for just £12 online on the @edinburghup.bsky.social store right now. If you want a critique of the digitality of human rights politics and it's imbrication with capitalism, this is the book for you. edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-the-inf...

My book is on sale for just £12 online on the @edinburghup.bsky.social store right now. If you want a critique of the digitality of human rights politics and it's imbrication with capitalism, this is the book for you. edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-the-inf...

IME, mentioning I'm an identical twin often stirs up a latent fascistic violence. 'if I hit you, will the other one feel it,' is a regular response I've come to expect. Setting me up from the outset both as science experiment and legitimate object of violence. www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

This is really very funny. Centrist politics and neoliberal capitalism created such a high trust society that its legitimacy is *check notes* yep, currently falling apart at the seams..

If you think chanting death to a military *organisation* is antisemitism do yourself a favour and give your head a wobble, I beg you. Cheers.

On Gaza now I keep thinking of Toscano @alfatau.bsky.social on Fortuni in @proteanmag.com: ‘“If I have changed, I owe it to this—to the way in which great world events forced me to interpret myself differently.” In this view, the political break is always also inner’ proteanmag.com/2025/06/22/z...

Tech companies only have five ideas: robot slave (actually just human slaves), hallucinatory counter-reality, untaxable money, The Everything App, and Clippy

Oh I dunno actually. Maybe it's good to warn people off an environmentally destructive infrastructure based on highly exploited labour that often can't do even the basic things its creators put on the 'tin'.

Sally Rooney is lucid about everything- her rake on pretry much any rooc is always spot on www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Your regular reminder that the anti-abortion, 'pro-life' movement in the US (which has infected the UK) exists because of racism... www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpNe...