We Share What We Don't Have
Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in the 21st with social media. For these collective blunders, we now regret our involvement or apathy as scientists, and society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. Currently, we are similarly entangled with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually, Microsoft Office is bundled with chatbots, and we, our students, and our employers have had no say, as it is not considered a valid position to reject AI technologies in our teaching and research. This is why in June 2025, we co-authored an Open Letter calling on our employers to reverse and rethink their stance on uncritically adopting AI technologies. In this position piece, we expound on why universities must take their role seriously to a) counter the technology industry's marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. We include pointers to relevant work to further inform our colleagues. - Zenodo
There has been a psychological strategic decoupling between the US and China, along with growing Chinese confidence in managing the international situation over the past eight years. This reduces interest in reaching an agreement and leads to a more tense bilateral atmosphere. It’s Cold War II, and it could last a long time. - Asia Times
Undocumented AI immigrants are flooding in and stealing jobs.
В Советской России телевизор смотрит вас!
BurnBot isn’t the fastest way to rid a landscape of dangerously flammable vegetation (it tops out at around 0.5 mph) but it can do something that traditional vegetation management techniques cannot: with almost surgical precision, it can kill the flammable brush sitting within feet of homes and highways on even the hottest and driest days and with virtually no safety risks or disruptions to daily life. - LA Times
Universals bring us together not by imposing a common structure on us but by revealing that we share what we don't have and can never have. - Todd McGowan
“Israel has always been a racist project, against Palestinians but even against Jews, it’s been an antisemitic project too. Zionism requires antisemitism to justify its existence. Zionist don’t want to defeat antisemitism, they use it to strengthen the state of Israel" - Katie Halper
The war in Europe and the growing military tensions with China in the South China Sea have unsettled analysts as Moscow and Beijing draw closer together with their increasingly powerful armies. Recently a Chinese decoy drone was found on the Ukrainian battlefield for the first time and while China is not yet supplying Russia with military tech, clearly both Russia and China are working increasingly closely together and using the Ukraine war to drive more weapons innovation. - BNE
For months, Google has maintained that the web is “thriving,” AI isn’t tanking traffic, and its search engine is sending people to a wider variety of websites than ever. But in a court filing from last week, Google admitted that “the open web is already in rapid decline,” as spotted earlier by Jason Kint and reported on by Search Engine Roundtable. - The Verge
“Value does not stalk about with a label describing what it is.” - Karl Marx, Chapter I, Capital, Volume I, 1867
An increasing number of important Russian energy firms have secured Chinese credit ratings. They include Atomenergoprom JSC, an affiliate of Rosatom; top LNG supplier Novatek, whose recently sanctioned Arctic plant supplied a cargo to China in August; and Zarubezhneft, which develops Russian energy projects overseas. - FT
Uber is leveraging its Indian driver network for AI data labeling, offering them extra income through micro-tasks within the Uber app. This initiative, already underway in twelve Indian cities, supports Uber AI Solutions, which provides data-labeling services to companies in AI, autonomous vehicles, and tech. The program aims to utilize driver downtime and potentially expand to other global markets. - Economic Times India
Economic sanctions simply won’t spark a revolution. History has proved this. But that doesn’t mean that things are hopeless. There’s an alternative way to undercut the power of dictators: kill them with kind capitalism. End the embargo. Let foreign goods flow into Cuba, Iraq, and Iran, so that the people there can see the fruits of a free society. Of course, Fidel Castro and other dictators won’t necessarily let those goods in, but then at least they’ll be the ones who are seen as the bad guys. In his book Dismantling Utopia: How Information Ended the Soviet Union, Scott Shane, who was the Baltimore Sun’s Moscow correspondent from 1988 to 1991, writes that in the late 1980s private entrepreneurs in Moscow with VCRs and reels of wire set up primitive cable systems. Needing content, they often used American movies like Harry and the Hendersons. The result: Soviet citizens saw average Americans with nice houses, refrigerators, cars, and high-quality food, and they said, “I want.” - Hoover Institution
EU Weighs New Sanctions on Russia to Hit Banks and Oil Trade. - September 8 2025
Macron Plays Both Sides: French arms sales to Israel hit record high in 2024: Report
The European Commission’s cloud operations are almost entirely dependent on US providers, leaving the EU's daily operations exposed to the threat of US sanctions, according to the institution’s own data. - Euractiv
Larry Ellison Is Spending Billions to Reshape Oxford and His Own Legacy. Oracle’s founder is spending big around the 900-year-old university campus and even bought a famous local pub. His Silicon Valley management style is already raising hackles. - WSJ
“The fact is that the subject, because they are a speaking subject, and solely for this reason, is unable to harm the other without harming themself, so much so that the demand for death is the death of demand.” - Lacan
