Smart as a City: The Politics of Test-Bed Urbanism -- Book Launch & Panel Date: Monday, April 27, 4-5:30 pm Location: UMass Amherst, ILC HUB (3rd Floor) RSVP: https://forms.gle/LTnTi6Y7ZJrY8U1aA Speakers: Burcu Baykurt (UMass Amherst) Sareeta Amrute (Parsons, The New School) Jonathan Ong (UMass Amherst) Timothy Pachirat (UMass Amherst) Supported by the Department of Communication, the Global Technology for Social Justice Lab (GloTech), and the Ethnography Collective at UMass.

Smart as a City drops May 5th and on April 27th I’m hosting a launch event at UMass with some of my favorite thinkers in critical tech studies & ethnography. If you're anywhere in Western Mass or on the East Coast, I'd love to see you there!

RSVP here: forms.gle/vthGWYE5Pp1A...

Help Hampshire Workers | Support Hampshire Workers Today Support Hampshire College staff and faculty facing job loss with emergency relief funds for essential needs. Contributions and support help provide immediate assistance during this critical time.

PS - if you're interested in donating to a mutual aid fund to help out Hampshire workers losing their jobs, the link is here: www.helphampshireworkers.com

If you want to hear more about the "damat" (son-in-law) economy that shapes foreign policy in authoritarian contexts, listen to the recent episode of our podcast with @ekoshy.bsky.social

itallhappenedbefore.substack.com/p/episode-5-...

Q&A with Sarah Sharma, Author of Insufferable Tools Sarah Sharma is Professor of Media Theory and Director of the Institute for Communication, Culture, Information and Technology at the University of Toronto. She is author of In the Meantime: Tempor…

Sarah Sharma has a super interesting, counterintuitive take on feminist technodeterminism. Fabulously enticing interview! Plus an amazing book and cover . . . @dukepress.bsky.social dukeupress.wordpress.com/2026/04/16/q...

The insider trading suspicions looming over Trump's presidency The BBC has found a pattern of spikes in trades ahead of public announcements by the US president.

"The insider trading suspicions looming over Trump's presidency"
www.bbc.com/news/article...

If you want to hear more about the "damat" (son-in-law) economy that shapes foreign policy in authoritarian contexts, listen to the recent episode of our podcast with @ekoshy.bsky.social

itallhappenedbefore.substack.com/p/episode-5-...

The Son-in-Law Problem What Hungary's election, Jared Kushner's fund, and two Turkish damats tell us about the shape of autocratic rot

In this week's newsletter @ekoshy.bsky.social writes about the "damat" economy in authoritarian countries and its consequences for domestic politics, foreign policy, and the possible/eventual decline of strongmen itallhappenedbefore.substack.com/p/the-son-in...

Abolitionist Feminism - Dissent Magazine An interview with Kathi Weeks.

"There’s always this pragmatic assumption: 'If we lose, people will go home and be disappointed.' How do we narrate what it means to commit to fights that won’t be won in our generation?" dissentmagazine.org/online_artic...

Also, US tech has always been "nationalistic" but it was strategically obscured and, as the Palantir statement agrees, softer in earlier periods www.baykurt.org/wp-content/u...

The shift from anti-state, libertarian rhetoric to “we gotta defend the nation” has been in the making for a while. I hope we focus on the continuities as much as the so-called ruptures when we contrast these statements with the earlier manifestos.

The Son-in-Law Problem What Hungary's election, Jared Kushner's fund, and two Turkish damats tell us about the shape of autocratic rot

Why do sons-in-law keep ending up at the center of power? From Ottoman damats to Kushner to Orbán’s Tiborcz. This week @baykurt.bsky.social and I on in-law power, nepotism, and what Hungary just told us. Subscribe! Episode + newsletter: open.substack.com/pub/itallhap...
#Hungary #democracy

The Son-in-Law Problem What Hungary's election, Jared Kushner's fund, and two Turkish damats tell us about the shape of autocratic rot

In this week's newsletter @ekoshy.bsky.social writes about the "damat" economy in authoritarian countries and its consequences for domestic politics, foreign policy, and the possible/eventual decline of strongmen itallhappenedbefore.substack.com/p/the-son-in...

I cannot think of a better community than CBI scholars, students, and friends to celebrate the release day of Smart as a City. And it's online so wherever you're in the world, you can join me! @ucpress.bsky.social

Details here: cse.umn.edu/cbi/events/s...

Talk flyer with Burcu Baykurt image and text on the May 5th event.

THRILLED to announce Smart as a City: A CBI Virtual Book Release Day Talk by @baykurt.bsky.social Burcu Baykurt on her tremendous book!! #mediastudies #aistudies #urbanstudies

Register today at
share.google/ygVx7xFGmaLR...

Thank you Dan!

I cannot think of a better community than CBI scholars, students, and friends to celebrate the release day of Smart as a City. And it's online so wherever you're in the world, you can join me! @ucpress.bsky.social

Details here: cse.umn.edu/cbi/events/s...

I also love the idea of having a launch event specifically for the e-book :) Thank you for these kind words, Jeff! I'm very much looking forward to it!

Episode 5: We’ve Seen Nepotism Before In this episode, we go deep into the role of family in political power, unpacking how nepotism operates under the cloak of democracy.

Between Erdogan's son-in-law's drone company quietly becoming the backbone of Turkey's foreign policy and Kushner's Gulf investment relationships shaping the US Middle East strategy, we've definitely seen this specific version of nepotism before.

itallhappenedbefore.substack.com/p/episode-5-...

Preview piece from our upcoming issue on campus activism since 10/7!

I find it difficult to believe that distrust in universities is more traceable to grade inflation and high tuition than to deliberate, sustained, bad faith attacks from the authoritarian right. president.yale.edu/sites/defaul...

Episode 5: We’ve Seen Nepotism Before In this episode, we go deep into the role of family in political power, unpacking how nepotism operates under the cloak of democracy.

Between Erdogan's son-in-law's drone company quietly becoming the backbone of Turkey's foreign policy and Kushner's Gulf investment relationships shaping the US Middle East strategy, we've definitely seen this specific version of nepotism before.

itallhappenedbefore.substack.com/p/episode-5-...

Episode 5: We’ve Seen Nepotism Before <p>In this episode, we go deep into the role of family in political power, unpacking how nepotism operates under the cloak of democracy. From Donald Trump’s inner circle—Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump...

Why is it always sons-in-law who engage in the most nepotistic behavior in authoritarian settings? @ekoshy.bsky.social and I compare and contrast Trump, Erdogan, Orban (and their sons-in-law) to come up with a typology of nepotism in the family. itallhappenedbefore.riverside.com/e/episode-5-...

Episode 5: We’ve Seen Nepotism Before <p>In this episode, we go deep into the role of family in political power, unpacking how nepotism operates under the cloak of democracy. From Donald Trump’s inner circle—Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump...

Why is it always sons-in-law who engage in the most nepotistic behavior in authoritarian settings? @ekoshy.bsky.social and I compare and contrast Trump, Erdogan, Orban (and their sons-in-law) to come up with a typology of nepotism in the family. itallhappenedbefore.riverside.com/e/episode-5-...

CBI's MOSAICS logo, basic information on the MOSAICS Symposium, and list of the members of the Program Committee.

Call for Papers for CBI's MOSAICS Symposium: cse.umn.edu/cbi/call-pap...

Thrilled to announce this & to work with Sareeta Amrute, @babintsevak.bsky.social, @anitachan.bsky.social & Gerardo Con Diaz!!

MOSAICS Symposium: October 15-16, 2026

Proposal Deadline: May 29, 2026

#AIstudies #histtech

CPJ calls on Kuwait to release US-Kuwaiti journalist Ahmed Shihab-Eldin - Committee to Protect Journalists Washington, D.C., April 13, 2026—The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on Kuwaiti authorities to immediately and unconditionally release Kuwaiti-American journalist Ahmed Shihab-Eldin. Shihab-Eld...

Unreal: journalist Ahmed Shihab-Eldin has been in detention for six weeks in Kuwait for posting news of the war in Iran online. Per @pressfreedom.bsky.social he was charged with "spreading false information, harming national security, and misusing his mobile phone."

It's tax season. This is what Americans are paying for.

What the U.S. Is Learning About Media Capture — And What Turkey Already Experienced What we've been reading to make sense of it — and what you should too

What the U.S. Is Learning About Media Capture And What Turkey Already Experienced
open.substack.com/pub/itallhap...

Episode 2: We Still Vote Burcu flew from Germany to Turkey for 36 hours just to vote.

"You don't have to cancel an election to undermine it. You just have to make sure people think there might be a problem with the results." - @ekoshy.bsky.social and I talk about why canceling elections is the last thing an authoritarian needs to do. itallhappenedbefore.substack.com/p/episode-2-...

Beyond the practical limits of retaining power: This is also a reminder that basically all present-day authoritarian regimes, all the different variants of authoritarianism that are out there today, find it necessary to make some gesture towards democratic legitimacy to support their claims.

Episode 4: We've Seen Journalists Adapt Before FCC Chair Brendan Carr threatens to revoke broadcast licenses over war coverage.

The term "tavşan boku," Turkish for rabbit poop, neither smears nor smells. @ekoshy.bsky.social uses it to describe what some journalists may become under media capture. New episode with Matthew Powers on newsrooms in Turkey & the US : itallhappenedbefore.substack.com/p/episode-4-...