Just read through the intro chapter preview and to say I'm excited seems like a massive understatement. Can't wait for it to come out in April!

Mark Rutte best illustrates what neoliberalism and extreme right authoritarianism have in common: a strong disdain for the rule of law, int. law and human rights; the deeply held conviction that, ultimately, might is right; and the presupposition that 'freedom' merely belongs to white, wealthy men.

Yup. See also the shift to drones and autonomous weapons systems.

"We want the murder software to murder accurately" isn't the absolution everyone seems to think it is. Anthropic is enacting a huge PR campaign and too many people are helping them

too tired to engage directly but "other fields have to balance both sides" replies need to imagine a world in which a paper starting with "tobacco is known to benefit x,y, &z while it also poses risks to lung cancer" is acceptable

i’m tired of every paper (even critical ones) on societal impact of AI starting by both-siding the “benefits” and risks/harms of AI in academia, i would like us to arrive at a collective reckoning that we don’t need to play both sides. it's totally legit to clearly state just the harms. period

I'm something of a supply chain risk myself

Join us on 6 March at 16.00 for a data centre walk to the yet-to-be-built but already highly controversial Microsoft hyperscaler in Amsterdam Sloterdiijk. Co-organised by Papertrail, @yancong.bsky.social and the critical infrastructure lab. Sign up here: www.criticalinfralab.net/upcoming/?id...

Join us on 6 March at 16.00 for a data centre walk to the yet-to-be-built but already highly controversial Microsoft hyperscaler in Amsterdam Sloterdiijk. Co-organised by Papertrail, @yancong.bsky.social and the critical infrastructure lab. Sign up here: www.criticalinfralab.net/upcoming/?id...

OKAY BIG ONE FOR YA NEW report out today: I dig deep into how big tech has been muddling tech types and overstating evidence to claim "AI" will make global emissions drop like a stone.... Not only will it not, it seems to be verifiably doing the opposite!! ketanjoshi.co/2026/02/17/b... + 📼+🧵>

When you build an unprecedented amount of renewable energy but it gets used to meet new data centre demand instead of replacing fossil fuels

“But I am a hater, and I will not be polite. The machine is disgusting and we should break it. The people who build it are vapid shit-eating cannibals glorifying ignorance” 🔥

Me when I find out my employer, maker of software solutions for genocide, is doing bad things: 😧

‼️New article out "Thirsty Forests and Expansive Droughts: The Environmental Impacts of Data Centers in Latin America" where we investigate the feral effects of cloud industry's compensatory projects to mitigate environmental impacts. journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10....

Sheep herder announces new skills training courses, sponsored by wolves!

Their entire industry deserves to die

In Amsterdam komt een hyperscale voor Microsoft, ondanks het verbod op hyperscales

So glad this is being used in schools and universities.

A very strange turn of phrase in a WaPo article about protein I was using to distract myself from the runaway bus: “Entire data centers are devoted to the debate…” This seems new, measuring online discourse in data center usage

for me, this may be the funniest product offering in the AI bubble so far

Loved listening to this episode. Includes some really poignant commentary on the “impoverished position” of projecting all our hopes onto AI as a viable future-making technology.

Been googling a lot of simple facts for a piece I’m writing — re religious and demographic breakdown of countries, and of course google comes back with the AI generated response up top and it’s really wild how often it’s flat out wrong or misleading. On facts!

"research" means to investigate or study something closely. if you flush a toilet and take whatever burbling sounds come out that's not research lol

it's not research if you use chatGPT. i don't even mean this in a derisive way, it's just literally not research. if you just want plausible-looking words disconnected from any context except the query you gave it, then chatgpt is great. but that's not research.

Why would I use the sycophantic fancy autocorrect for research? I’m a professional researcher for a living, I have skills, standards, and a sense of shame.

Fun game! [try it out yourself: tenpages.github.io/us-level/eu....

Finally finished this amazing book by @triofrancos.bsky.social. An absolute must read for anyone who cares about “green” exctractivism and how we might possibly overcome it through global solidarity – and of course relentless trans-local organising!

2025 was just two dumb LLMs telling each other “exaaaaactlyyyy”

Finally in English: "The Swiss government was also on the tech company’s wish list, but no deal ever came to be. The country’s federal agencies and army have so far shied away from cooperation." www.swissinfo.ch/eng/war-peac...

If you can’t be bothered to do your own research, develop your own ideas, and bring it all together in your own words that you have written then why on earth are you in academia?

New data by CBS, the Dutch statistics agency, suggest that data centres consumed 4,6 % of the Netherlands’ electricity in 2024. In 2017, data centre consumption amounted to just 1,5 % of all electricity supplied. www.cbs.nl/en-gb/news/2...

the re-emergence of zines as samizdat in the US right now www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...

Oh, and they collect and keep it even if they deny your application. Plus the $160 fee.

Hey… pssst. The reason why the 5 year social media histories are only being asked of ESTA applicants is because the US government has been collecting social media information of visa applicants for almost a decade now. Once again, migration rights were the canary in the coal mine.

how much water does it take to disrupt the careers of millions of people? how much water does it take to make deepfakes of underage kids? how much water does it take to exacerbate people's mental health crises? is there a good number? is there an acceptable number?

While other AI companies are still struggling to monetize #genAI, Google has found an obvious solution: Sell it to the military. Now, U.S. soldiers can unleash the power of AI for tasks such as «summarizing policy handbooks,» a task that will certainly prove vital on the battlefields of the future

It is so striking to see the disclaimer "AI can make mistakes. Check outputs before using" on every single piece of software. Imagine the equivalent warning label on the Ford Pinto. "The fuel tank ruptures and bursts into deadly flames when crashed. Do not crash the Ford Pinto while driving"

«Sie sind alle hier, weil ihre Unternehmen hier keine Steuern zahlen. … Weil wir kaum Techregulierung haben. Weil wir einen der schnellsten Supercomputer der Welt haben: ‹Alps›, von der ETH mit Steuergeldern entwickelt, um KI-Modelle wissenschaftlich zu prüfen.» www.tagesanzeiger.ch/palantir-in-...

Mind you, the other big Meta bet is making is "Artificial Superintelligence" -- being led by a 28 year old who previously led a company that made money by having poorly paid workers fix AI slop.

chaser: after local outcry against a massive proposed AWS data center near Tucson (yes, in the desert!), developers agreed to use a less water-intensive cooling system. AWS has now backed out because "its operations aren't compatible" with the less water-intensive option. tucson.com/news/local/s...

I’m interested in the idea of anonymous community formation and maintenance in the (urban) public sphere (and how it is mediated by infrastructural and architectural structures). I know that this idea comes up in Richard Sennett’s writing repeatedly. Are there others who wrote about this as well?

Artists: “ai can never replace what we do, we get the value we infuse into the world” Scientists: “what if the computer went brrr and spit out science”

I’m interested in the idea of anonymous community formation and maintenance in the (urban) public sphere (and how it is mediated by infrastructural and architectural structures). I know that this idea comes up in Richard Sennett’s writing repeatedly. Are there others who wrote about this as well?

Super interesting podcast episode about how activist groups (pragmatically) use digital technologies for organising and the different imaginaries that underpin how specific groups relate to tech critique

more than anything, this should remind you how bad generative has ruined the information ecosystem

Really great piece bringing together historical analysis and insights into the real-world social and environmental harms of the growing AI industry with an emphasis on its ideological underpinnings that shape and define AI as a political project. www.e-flux.com/architecture...

What was ChatGPT? Now nearly three years old, we can look at OpenAI's LLM as a product of its time, optimized ever since to its earliest uses. While this period of deep disorientation and social isolation has been obscured from public memory, it remains embedded within the interface.