mastodon 4.7.3Prof @ Trent University (Cultural Studies/School of the Environment)
I think, write, and make art about climate change, digital infrastructures, and energy politics.
Cool news! A network of smart people in my part of Canada won a huge grant to set up a global environmental humanities network for critical perspectives on climate politics and sustainability. We'll be recruiting a PhD student at Trent soon with a nice pot of funding :)
https://sshrc-crsh.canada.ca/en/competition-results/award-recipients/2025/partnership-grants.aspx
Hit me up if you're looking for a debt-free PhD and are into getting real weird about the UNFCCC/COP process...
Our book is out OPEN ACCESS. Please enjoy a FREE BOOK on how we could remake academic research methods for climate action, and fix a lot of inequities in the process. https://www.gold.ac.uk/goldsmiths-press/publications/low-carbon-research-methods/
I'm going to be on this very cool panel with data centre moratorium organizers in Hamilton next week. It'll be a bit of a post-mortem on that effort + thoughts for city councillors/cool people thinking about doing their bit to stop irresponsible data centre development in their town:
https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/39l0DyEYSu2SJan_nWvFTA#/registration
Still thinking about the socialization talk at #CablesOfResistance last week, and the idea in Germany (specifically around Die Linke?) to socialize/nationalize Big Tech platforms.
1) It's neat that this has been in the German constitution all this time!
2) The phrase 'take them over and make them into a penguin' (i.e. more like Linux) is pretty charming
Anyways, all power to comrades in Berlin working towards socializing housing stocks. May you succeed and create a big precedent...
DIY Methods, our little conference-by-zine about unconventional approaches to research, rises again! Maybe you'd like to make a zine on your weird/cool approach to methods, and receive a bundle of similarly weird/cool zines in the mail? Pitch submissions are due April 20th.
We should have magazines again so one can commission me to write a very profound essay on how I feel differently about the Fast & Furious franchise after getting my driver's license the ripe age of 37
Worked out in a k95 today (I go to an old warehouse gym with no air filtration -- just open doors). Coach said I looked like Bane (complementary)
More Europe posting: Here is the bike infrastructure at Amsterdam's central station. You take your bike under the canal (!), on a bike escalator (!), to a huge parking garage with lights to signal which rows are full (!).
I'm filling in for Paris Marx (because we need to maintain Canadian representation levels) at this very cool panel on data centre resistance at the Weizenbaum Institute on Monday. Catch you in Berlin, or on the Livestream?
https://www.weizenbaum-institut.de/veranstaltungen/detailseite/reclaim-the-cloud-contesting-resisting-and-reimagining-data-centers
I just had a lovely time presenting for the Netpolitik working group of the Ruhr Die Linke party. As a Canadian I think it's very neat how local parties can host study groups and use the question asking powers of government representatives (even when not in the governing coalition) to compel information on stuff like data centre development. It's nice to see people building power!
One (perhaps unsurprising) truth that's evident in my time in Europe so far: we are all simply made better by a dense network of interlocutors accessible by train. Intellectual life in North America is lonelier than it needs to be.
Europe is so lovely! I think we should prevent the collapse of the AMOC.
Taking time out of my weekend, and ambivalent feelings about our current equivalent of the 1936 Olympics, to wish ill of England.
Matt Seybold's book is going to be great. This preview on the AI Bubble and the project of 'deliteracy' was really exciting:
The American Vandal: After OpenAI (Live at Wake Forest Humanities Institute): https://media.resonaterecordings.com/the-american-vandal-from-the-center-for-mark-twain-studies/732de364-9c67-4fd8-a4b3-cf0731c472b5.mp3
I printed and folded 600+ zines today. I think that's a new record for me!
Ugh I hate how AI has broken social trust in grad admissions...
Two sides of Stockholm: 1) charming bike-forward city planning, 2) open vistas on which to stare soulfully out onto the water
Later in the month I'll be in Copenhagen for this 2 day workshop on using zines in (place-based) research and teaching. Zines are fun! This will be fun!
Hey Canadians/AI and Data Centre resistance activists!
Registration is open for the AI & Civil Society summit being planned in Montreal in May. It's going to be great and I'm really looking forward to geeking out/ power mapping with folks :)
https://aicivilsociety.ca/
@danmcquillan@kolektiva.social great talk! I particularly appreciate the coffee machine conviviality and the idea of intersectional infrastructures....
Sometimes you gotta break up your fellowship writing sprint to make speculative fiction zines about users on r/AIRelationships going through the fall out of the AI bubble popping
Don't we all