Bronwyn Isaacs

"This is not the story of accidents. Rather, it chronicles how a refugee crisis has metastasized into something more insidious — an infrastructure of permanent crisis."

"Pakistan’s bar associations announced a three-day strike in protest. Amnesty International and the International Commission of Jurists described the trial as a miscarriage of justice. Legal observers pointed to what they said were clear violations of due process."

Woolworths forced to rein in chatbot that claimed to have angry mother Woolworths has been forced to tweak its AI-powered virtual assistant after users reported bizarre interactions with the chatbot.

"Even when connecting me to a human it made fake typing sounds"
www.smh.com.au/business/com...

<em>American Anthropologist</em> | AAA Anthropology Journal | Wiley Online Library As anthropology reckons with its past, present, and future, anthropologists increasingly seek to challenge inequities within the discipline and academia more broadly. Anthropology, regardless of subd....

"Writing in community is a collaborative form of writing that centers care, abundance, joy, and personal satisfaction over the individuality currently rewarded by the academy. . . .engenders consensus, circumvents normative hierarchical research" anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Being “left behind” is straight up 19th cent #socialevolutionism. It’s giving “three stages of development” vibes. It’s a “Morgan, Spencer and Tylor go into a bar”-joke without anybody laughing. It’s myth without structure. It’s #anthropology without humans. It’s bullshit without Graeber #ContraAI 🤖

Lots of Little Fires | Social Innovation and Advocacy through Storytelling Lots of Little Fires creates video stories with community leaders in Aotearoa New Zealand to shift funding, policy, and power. Stories led by lived experience that change how decisions get made.

Too good not to share: These affirming videos for social change from here in the Waikato, New Zealand: "Every story here shows something that actually shifted. Actual change. These are the fires already lit. Some are roaring. Some are still catching." www.lotsoflittlefires.co.nz

"Flood, fire and heat risk now feed into mortgage underwriting, bond ratings, supply-chain planning and insurance portfolios (Condon, 2023). That is a powerful reason for the corporate lineage to invest—and to treat its best climate knowledge as a proprietary edge".

"In Mandarin, Malfoy 马尔福 (Ma er fu) contains phonetic elements that resonate with words associated with horses (马, ma) and good fortune (福, fu). Hanging Malfoy upside-down on a door or wall extends the same pun, suggesting “good horse fortune has arrived” in your home"

Where the Museum Breathes: Fluidity, Black Anthropologists, and the Art of Holding What Moves - Anthropology News The first lesson the Georgia coast ever taught me was that nothing stays still. Shorelines shift, marshes breathe, and the tide draws new shapes in the

"We were never meant to be just one thing—not in the academy, not in our communities, and not within structures of knowledge that sought to categorize us. Fluidity became our inheritance" www.anthropology-news.org/articles/whe...

Hoping for the best, preparing for well, whatever -- in the upcoming election in #Thailand.

Fun as in Horror.

Yes! A fun but overly straight-forward read. The article would be better if it aimed for some of the juicy contradictions and unexpected perspectives of a good film.

"Kyle Stine, a film and media-studies professor at Johns Hopkins, usually begins his course with an icebreaker: What’s a movie you watched recently? In the past few years, some students have struggled to name any film"

"What happens when the foundational premises enabling
fieldwork collapse entirely? Myanmar’s CDM researchers cannot exit . . . This convergence produces what we term “solidarity knowledge”: understanding validated
through shared persecution" rcsd.soc.cmu.ac.th/publications...

Watch: National and Labour MPs team up to get slavery bill heard after ACT objects A new process to skip the 'biscuit tin' lottery is being used for the first time - because ACT refused to support a government bill.

The modern slavery bill proposes all companies operating in NZ making 100 million a year must report on modern slavery risks "public naming and potential liability for directors and senior managers, along with fines up to $200,000" 👏 www.rnz.co.nz/news/politic...

Opinion | State Terror Has Arrived

The brilliant @mashagessen.bsky.social on the current moment in the U.S.: "A regime based on terror, on the other hand, deploys violence precisely to reinforce the message that anyone can be subjected to it."

www.nytimes.com/2026/01/24/o...

So many excellent articles in the recent issue of @culanth.bsky.social Particular shoutout for @fmcc.bsky.social look at Blue Growth Extractivism in Aotearoa where she argues "the relationality of tribal seascapes becomes an obstacle to capital accumulation" journal.culanth.org/index.php/ca...:

An email from Martin Peterson to university administrators.

Martin Peterson's creative response to being banned from teaching Plato (shared with his permission).

"The more these false citations are unquestioningly repeated from one article to the next, the more the illusion of their authenticity is reinforced. Fake citations have turned into a nightmare for research librarians,. . . responding to requests for nonexistent records."

Grok Is Generating About 'One Nonconsensual Sexualized Image Per Minute' Elon Musk’s chatbot Grok keeps churning out nonconsenual images of women and minors in bikinis and lingerie, outraging users and regulators

""Musk chimed in to assign blame to Grok users, warning: “Anyone using Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content.”

So far, there’s no sign of that being remotely true" www.rollingstone.com/culture/cult...

Started 2026 with Covid and Adiche's Dream Count as solace: "The formless days bled into one another and I had the sensation of time turning inwards. My joints throbbed, and the muscles of my back, and the sides of my neck, as if my body knew too well that we are not made to live like this" #newyear

Under military rule, Thai students used the Hunger Games three-finger salute to signal their resistance. Myanmar students also adopted it against the 2021 military coup. Now time for youth in the USA to join?

12 dead at a mass shooting at a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach.💔

A 43-year-old father of two, Ahmed al Ahmed, snuck up & tackled a gunman to disarm him. Ahmed was shot twice.

Both Jewish & Muslim faiths teach that “to save one life is to save all humanity.” Let us hold fast to our humanity.❤️

What a week at the ASAA/NZ conference in Whāingaroa/Raglan. Privileged to interact with incredible anthropologists and students who love "peripheral" places including the peripheries of the discipline. Here's a highlight moment, listening to Angeline Ngahina Greensill at the Kokiri Center.

Smart cars used as 'weapons' by domestic violence abusers A new eSafety advisory warns Australians about technology-facilitated abuse and provides advice on how to protect themselves from it.

Businesses must "take responsibility for thinking through how their technology can be weaponised". Examples include
1. Locking the fridge to control access to food
2. Limiting car's drivable radius to 1km
3. Remote locking car, blasting horn
4. Stalking via petfeeder
www.abc.net.au/news/2025-12...

We had almost 300 people on the Resisting GenAI webinar this morning! There is a huge appetite for pushing back against harmful technologies. 💪

Resources! (more coming soon!) justsustainabilitydesign.org/resistinggen...

Climate Justice Universities Union: climatejusticeuniversitiesunion.org

“We’ve now got the data to show high loads of tyre microplastics in comparison to other types, such as from takeaway containers or clothing,” says Dr Samantha Ladewig, a marine microplastics researcher at the University of Auckland.

“Tyres come out on top by a long way.”

States to tighten rules on watching workers in age of WFH and AI The Allan government has backed greater protections for workers against spying bosses as technology and work from home test the boundaries of employee privacy.

“During the pandemic, 80 per cent of private companies across advanced economies were putting spyware on computers – it was 90 per cent in Australia. It’s a 19th-century management attitude in the 21st century.” www.afr.com/work-and-car...

We planted two woody meadows a decade ago to see what would thrive. Now the concept is popular across Australia. — The Conversation AU Woody meadows can create green corridors in urban landscapes at much less cost than traditional methods. Now keen gardeners can plant their own.

"Installation costs for woody meadows are comparable to business-as-usual plantings of low-diversity, low-functioning monocultures . . .But they require 75% less maintenance over time. Their adaptable design has overcome barriers to planting in hostile urban sites" apple.news/AlE6ONH0cTxC...