dr corinne cath (ccs) is in London

A Cookie for Dario? — Anthropic and selling death - Anil Dash A blog about making culture. Since 1999.

Agree with @anildash.com here, was just saying earlier how the volume of cheers for Anthropic deciding not to help build Terminator or the Panopticon shows just how low the bar is set for American tech firms. www.anildash.com/2026/02/27/a...

As a professional military strategist, I just wanted to make sure everyone has a full understanding of the American strategy in Iran, thank you for your attention to this matter

this is so weak, passive, & unconvincing.

"People are rising up against big tech data centres being built at the expense of people and planet". Photo in black and white of 10 people holding a banner that stays 'STOP DIRTY DATA CENRES'. Global action plan logo.

This weekend we’re coordinating days of action with campaigners and local communities across the country, to oppose Big Tech's unchecked expansion of hyperscale data centres in the UK.

Join an action near you: www.globalactionplan.org.uk/stop-dirty-data-centres

Sources: Amazon's AI tools caused at least two AWS outages, including a 13-hour disruption in December after its Kiro AI deleted and recreated an environment (Rafe Rosner-Uddin/Financial Times)

Main Link | Techmeme Permalink

Silicon Valley is building a shadow power grid for data centers across the U.S. Tech companies are building data centers with their own private power plants, a risky bet that will increase carbon emissions and other pollution.

"After the rapid growth of data centers triggered pushback from politicians, utilities and local residents over the pressures they place on the grid, tech companies are now building their own fleet of private power plants, mostly fueled by natural gas."

So if this is true maybe someone wants to pass on the memo to the media?

(And yes I realize the hardcore IR people will say; we can’t say this part out loud as long as we’re so dependent. But this is what the slow slide into F-ism looks like, good people staying mute)

bsky.app/profile/mijr...

Wellicht zaak voor een sterke antropoloog-journalist om hier iets over te schrijven 🤓 mocht je op zoek zijn naar US-funded NGO perspectieven 👋🏻

World of journalism is still overwhelmingly white/ without migration background. They just don't feel it, when Rubio essentially tells us in Europe: you deport all the brown people and we can be friends again.

Opinie | We zijn in acuut gevaar, maar blijven wensdenken over de VS Geopolitiek: Amerika heeft zich niet alleen van ons af, maar tégen ons gekeerd, ziet Joris Luyendijk. Maar om hem heen doen de meesten alsof er uiteindelijk niets aan de hand is.

Dank voor het delen en voor jouw werk waarin in je het “acute gevaar van wensdenken” over de VS benoemd!

www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2026/...

Yap

100%

a blurred image of a refrigerator with the words the office stan on it . ALT: a blurred image of a refrigerator with the words the office stan on it .

So yes, seeing @vonderleyen.ec.europa.eu & Keir Stamer say they felt reassured by Rudio's speech is, as the official PoliSci term goes, "redonculess-banana-cookoo-delulu"

But clearly there was nothing to see here, keep calm and carry on Europe

all will be well.

Genocide, enslavement, extraction? Erased. Just 'civilization-spreading'. He later rejects alliances that "atone for the purported sins of past generations", dismissing colonial violence as imaginary guilt rather than historical fact

4. Whitewashing colonialism:

Rubio celebrates Columbus's "adventure into the great unknown to discover a new world" that "brought Christianity to the Americas." Five centuries of Western, "expansion", "missionaries, pilgrims, soldiers, explorers", building "vast empires" becomes heroic achievement

This line of thinking is explicit cultural supremacism: Western culture isn't equal to others, it's superior.. (again why does this ring so familiar? hmmmm)

3. Cultural supremacy

Rubio lists only white male European achievement (Mozart, Beethoven, Dante, Michelangelo) as civilization's gifts, rejecting the idea that "our way of life is just one among many" as false politeness..(which yes, as an anthropologist, was 1 of many aw-rong-ful things i noted)

This is textbook "great replacement" rhetoric, demographic change as existential threat

a far right nationalist staple: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_R...

2. Migration as replacement:

Rubio claims mass migration "threatens the cohesion of our societies, the continuity of our culture, and the future of our people" and is "an urgent threat to...the survival of our civilization itself."

He warns against "forces of civilizational erasure" threatening America and Europe. This presents "Western civilization" as superior, eternal, racially coherent..

Imagine a German politician doing this, and tell me what you see?! I guarantee its not (Applause.)

1. Civilizational essentialism:

Rubio calls the West "the greatest civilization in human history," "unique and distinctive and irreplaceable," bound by shared ancestry (where have we heard this before? hmmm... oh wait!)

I listed esp obvious parts below, in no particular order of awfulness. Rubio's speech clearly spells out with whom in Europe the #Trump administration is seeking to make allies

did the Europeans not notice or not care? I am not sure which one is worse #munichsecurityconference

Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the Munich Security Conference - United States Department of State SECRETARY RUBIO:  Thank you very much.  We gather here today as members of a historic alliance, an alliance that saved and changed the world.  When this conference began in 1963, it was in a nation – ...

Rubio's #Munich speech was met with a 'sigh of relief' in Europe: grateful for reassurance of partnership. THIS IS BAFFLING when you examine the white Christian nationalist undertones of his speech

See here for the full speech: www.state.gov/releases/202...

📰 New preprint! By @ferraribraun.bsky.social and @ccs.bsky.social, highlighting the hidden influences of European news media's reliance on the cloud infrastructures of Big Tech. For news work, autonomy is decreasing, while vulnerabilities are increasing.

Read here: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Europe: Time to address cloud infrastructure monopolies - ARTICLE 19 Big tech offer digital infrastructure that underpins the functioning of newsrooms: data storage, content and management tools, audience analytics, AI.

"Across Europe, news media companies increasingly depend on cloud services run by a handful of powerful tech actors.

Amazon, Microsoft, and Google provide the digital infrastructure that underpins the functioning of newsrooms"

By @ccs.bsky.social for @article19.bsky.social

🚨 PAPER OUT 🚨

The first paper of my PhD just got published as a pre-print. Co-authored with @ccs.bsky.social, it looks at the ways in which cloud infrastructures are changing the business operations of European news media companies.

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

2025 — never a dull moment

Another day, another outage — instead of rehashing why our reliance on a handful of big tech companies for our access to literately EvErYThINg is bad — I’m going to point you to the last three times I had to do that over the past 4 weeks, which led to a great convo with @dexdigi.bsky.social

🚨 Brussels, today 🚨Ursula! Stand up for Europe – not for Trump’s tech bros!

As the EU unveils its “Digital Omnibus” today, we're rolling out billboards calling on @vonderleyen.ec.europa.eu to stop bending to US and Big Tech pressure and enforce our digital laws #StandUpUrsula✊

a man in a suit and tie is smiling and says `` im a little worried '' while standing next to another man . ALT: a man in a suit and tie is smiling and says `` im a little worried '' while standing next to another man .

There is a lot happening in the closing speeches, this stands out:

Merz & Macron want to turn EU pensions into AI speculation fuel. 2008 taught us what happens when finance gambles on our futures, I experienced first hand graduating then.

Our retirement isn't tech's piggy bank. EU or otherwise