Speculative futures reveal complex relationships with woodland
www.stockholmresilience.org/research/res...
"ncluding a reemergence of an imagined precolonial landscape, an enabler for non-urban prosperity, and a stage for culturally embedded management practice"
If we made the green energy transition this war would be unthinkable and these authoritarians wouldn’t be in power — not in the US, not in Iran, not in Saudi Arabia, not in Russia. Hydrocarbons are killing our freedom and just plain killing us.
“AI can never be AI without humans. It is not artificial intelligence. It’s African intelligence...We are training our own death. We train ChatGPT and it’s killing us slowly.”
Kenyan workers are still the underpaid labor behind AI training, moderation, and sex chatbots. Now, they're fighting back.
If you’re looking for a short film that tackles AI, computer vision, data and power, Alan Warburton’s three-and-a-half minute “Image Empire” is a brilliant scratch for that itch. If you’re teaching critical AI, it’s ideal. Has a very accessible paper attached too. alanwarburton.co.uk/image-empire
“Dust and Echoes” by Amani Mosi is an ethereal journey into cultural loss and memory. Here, they stole Africa’s dreams and her songs, and buried them in your sleep; but the time has come for an ancient griot release the secrets and their melody. omenana.com/2025/07/31/d...
and a recent review of our futures methods
Transformative foresight for diverse futures: the Seeds of Good Anthropocenes initiative
Preiser+
doi.org/10.1111/dpr....
The Beginning Comes After the End
by Rebecca Solnit
"shines a light on the vibrant world often hidden within our own seemingly gloomier one — a world that has embraced ideas of interconnection, ecological care and political equality"
www.nytimes.com/2026/03/07/m...
This is one of the most reasoned & persuasive arguments for not allowing LLMs anywhere near reading & writing intensive classrooms. We can 100% choose not to outsource our reading & writing labor to a bot, and model for our students why they should do the same. #EduSky
www.tue.nl/en/our-unive...
The danger of superhuman AI is not what you think. This essay in @noemamag.com by @shannonvallor.bsky.social is brilliant. Well worth a read. www.noemamag.com/the-danger-o...
OKAY BIG ONE FOR YA
NEW report out today: I dig deep into how big tech has been muddling tech types and overstating evidence to claim "AI" will make global emissions drop like a stone....
Not only will it not, it seems to be verifiably doing the opposite!!
ketanjoshi.co/2026/02/17/b... + 📼+🧵>
“The climate scientists we surveyed were unambiguous: current economic models can’t capture what matters most – the cascading failures and compounding shocks that define climate risk in a warmer world – and could undermine the very foundations of economic growth.” www.theguardian.com/environment/...
I'm getting some questions regarding the playingfutures.today call for papers regarding interactive works, so here's a tl;dr:
- It's not mandatory that the interactive works submitted become part of the conference's itch collection. It will be up to the creators to decide!
(1/3)
A list of companies to boycott: www.resistandunsubscribe.com.
Support your local businesses.
My thread on petrotech and gas build-out in the US -->>>
bsky.app/profile/keta...
Ten(ish) of the Best African Speculative Short Fiction Stories of 2025 picked by Wole Talabi
(author of "Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon")
reactormag.com/tenish-of-th...
As I've written before, people don’t trust institutions because institutions aren't doing the job. Democracy rests on three pillars: Verification, Deliberation, Accountability, which can be understood as being substantial, performative, and simulated.
demos.co.uk/research/ver...
Join us for COST Action CA24163 CROSS-CASCADE Webinar: “Storylines and Policy Simulations for understanding cascading climate impacts”.
📅12 Feb, 14:00–15:30 CET
Held by: Piotr Magnuszewski (Centre for Systems Solutions) & Jana Sillmann (CICERO).
📝Register here: eveeno.com/cost_webinar...
![In this way, TESCREALists have been able to divert resources toward trying to build AGI and stopping their version of an apocalypse in the far future, while dissuading the public from scrutinizing the actual harms that they cause in their attempts to build AGI. As another example, Max Tegmark, cofounder of the Future of Life Institute along with Jaan Tallinn, delivered a talk at the 2017 Effective Altruism conference (EA Global) in which he argued that “if we don’t improve our technology, we are doomed ... but with tech, life can flourish for billions of years” [122]. But in 2023 the Future of Life Institute circulated a widely publicized petition signed by Tegmark and many of those responsible for the AGI race, including Musk and Altman, to “pause giant AI experiments” to stop “nonhuman minds that might eventually outnumber, outsmart, obsolete and replace us” [123]. Appearing on Democracy Now!, when asked about the present day dangers like biometric surveillance warned by researchers and activists like Tawnana Petty, Tegmark stated: “Extinction is not something in the very distant future ... And once we’re all extinct, you know, all these other issues cease to even matter” (Bengio, et al., 2023). Similarly, when Geoffery Hinton, who also signed the petition, was asked by Rolling Stone about the issues raised by Timnit Gebru who was fired by Google after writing a paper on the dangers of large language models, he answered: “I believe that the possibility that digital intelligence will become much smarter than humans and will replace us as the apex intelligence is a more serious threat to humanity than bias and discrimination” (O’Neil, 2023).](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:azpq3hfq3llpowyqpjkqwgxs/bafkreifmwpzjgwxliviw76h7lhywfeq7bfnqfvioetxyltesmt757ddvd4)
In this way, TESCREALists have been able to divert resources toward trying to build AGI and stopping their version of an apocalypse in the far future, while dissuading the public from scrutinizing the actual harms that they cause in their attempts to build AGI. As another example, Max Tegmark, cofounder of the Future of Life Institute along with Jaan Tallinn, delivered a talk at the 2017 Effective Altruism conference (EA Global) in which he argued that “if we don’t improve our technology, we are doomed ... but with tech, life can flourish for billions of years” [122]. But in 2023 the Future of Life Institute circulated a widely publicized petition signed by Tegmark and many of those responsible for the AGI race, including Musk and Altman, to “pause giant AI experiments” to stop “nonhuman minds that might eventually outnumber, outsmart, obsolete and replace us” [123]. Appearing on Democracy Now!, when asked about the present day dangers like biometric surveillance warned by researchers and activists like Tawnana Petty, Tegmark stated: “Extinction is not something in the very distant future ... And once we’re all extinct, you know, all these other issues cease to even matter” (Bengio, et al., 2023). Similarly, when Geoffery Hinton, who also signed the petition, was asked by Rolling Stone about the issues raised by Timnit Gebru who was fired by Google after writing a paper on the dangers of large language models, he answered: “I believe that the possibility that digital intelligence will become much smarter than humans and will replace us as the apex intelligence is a more serious threat to humanity than bias and discrimination” (O’Neil, 2023).
Our paper: firstmonday.org/ojs/index.ph...
"The ads, from a company calling itself Replacement AI, feature dark, dystopian taglines."
The ads, from a company calling itself Replacement AI, feature dark, dystopian taglines.
Seven key principles for the regenerative governance of social-ecological systems. The seven principles depicted here draw on the seven central insights of resilience and regenerative systems literature as summarized in Fig. 1 for resilience (i, iii, iv) and Fig. 2 for regeneration (ii, v, vi, vii). While each item is derived from either body of literature on resilience or regeneration, the list of items offered here is fully complementary. See main text for details and references and Table 1 for some of the most pertinent similarities and differences between the two bodies of literature
Resilience and regeneration for a world in crisis
Fischer+
doi.org/10.1007/s132...
building on resilience thinking
"regeneration can help through its explicit focus on human agency and mutualistic social-ecological relationships...
‘Poly-opportunities’ thus become a conceptual possibility"
"As an environmental historian, I know that the simultaneous exploitation of labour and nature has underpinned modern economic growth."
I also opted out of having my books (UofT press) used by chatbots & wrote them that from environmental to labour concerns, there is no "ethical" use of genAI.
Despite the bad news, I'm proud to be a coauthor on this paper warning about the intersecting crises we face.
“The essential read” on GPT-5 and Sam Altman’s first major blunder.
Well over 100,000 people have read it.
Check it out!
A taxonomy of
Genres of Climate and Ecological Fiction
dragonfly.eco/distinguishi...
Anthropocene fiction
Ecological weird fiction
Fungoid fiction
Taínofuturism
Climate strange
Lunarpunk
Oceanpunk
Ustopia
and many more
GPS hacking, power grid attacks, deepfake scams.
You’re not ready for what’s coming next, but in this WIRED special edition, we take a look at the attacks of the future so at least you'll know what to expect:
🧵 wrd.cm/3FpD4YW
@gabrielzucman.bsky.social Is there any rebuttal to Daniel Waldenstrom "Inequality Myth" avaialble? He criticized the methodology for calculating inequalities in other studies and using his own, argues that inequalities in Western societies are not increasing. Icouldn't find any response to his arg
Large AI models are cultural and social technologies
@himself.bsky.social +
doi.org/10.1126/science.adt9819
"Large Models should [be viewed as] a new kind of cultural and social technology, allowing humans to take advantage of information other humans have accumulated."
THE RISE OF END TIMES FASCISM
My first major piece of the new Trump era, co-written with @astra.bsky.social.
The governing ideology of the far right has become a
monstrous, supremacist survivalism.
Our task is to build a movement strong enough to stop them. www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...
