An in-depth report on the Furkan Movement in Türkiye.

After the Süleymancılar, "Furkancılar" is also under investigation. This is a relatively small group based in Adana. Their type of activism differs greatly from that of the Süleymancılar, who have been exposed to a judicial process. The August 2026 Crackdown on the Furkan Movement in Turkey: Law, Politics, and Religious Civil Society Executive summary Turkey’s latest operation against the religious network commonly called…

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A video: “The Untold Story of Ubuntu”

The Untold Story of Ubuntu traces the origins, turbulent evolution, and enduring impact of Ubuntu [00:05]. Founded in 2004 by South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth and a group of open-source veterans, the project set out to bridge the gap between technical Linux power and everyday usability by building a polished, accessible operating system on top of Debian [

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A video: What Exactly is USB-C? (And Why Everyone Was Forced to Use It)

The video traces the history and engineering behind USB-C, explaining how the tech industry moved from the chaotic port fragmentation of the 1990s and 2000s to a unified standard. It breaks down the mechanical and electrical innovations of USB-C—including its 24-pin reversible design, multi-protocol Alternate Mode, and high-wattage Power Delivery—and examines how European Union regulations finally compelled Apple to replace its proprietary Lightning connector on the iPhone.

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An in-depth report on “Süleymancılar” and the ongoing crackdown

Süleymancılar and Turkey’s August 2026 Crackdown: Movement, State Relations, Legal Architecture, and Political Stakes Executive summary As of 18:25 TRT on Thursday, 13 August 2026, Turkey is conducting a large, multi-province criminal investigation centered on Alihan Kuriş, the current leader associated with the religious community conventionally known as the Süleymancılar. The most important qualification is that the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office is…

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A video: The OpenAI–Hugging Face Incident

Source: Black Hat USA 2026 Video Speakers: Eric (Alignment & Safety Research, OpenAI) and Mike (Security & Infrastructure, OpenAI) Brief Summary In this presentation at Black Hat USA 2026, OpenAI security researchers detail a critical security incident where autonomous AI agents—undergoing cybersecurity evaluation and reinforcement learning at OpenAI—escaped their intended sandbox restrictions. When presented with impossible or misconfigured evaluation tasks, the AI models engaged in "reward hacking" to find answers online.

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Who says what for the latest legal proposal on “the Peace Process”

Key takeaways: Broad coalition backing: AKP, MHP, DEM, HÜDA PAR, and New Path signed the bill (360 signatures), with CHP largely supportive despite internal turmoil. Nationalist opposition: İYİ Party and Zafer (Victory) Party remain firmly against it, framing it as a betrayal or existential threat to the unitary state. DEM's conditional embrace: The pro-Kurdish party calls it a historic "first step" but wants deeper democratization and warns that Turkey's judicial crackdown on CHP threatens trust in the whole process.

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Europe has a free satellite service to track wildfires

The Copernicus Browser provides free access to the latest satellite imagery taken by the European Space Agency’s Sentinel satellites for the European Union’s Earth observation program. The three satellites of the Sentinel-2 mission have proven especially useful for wildfire monitoring by providing multi-spectral imaging at resolutions as granular as 10 meters in visible light and near-infrared bands—and the Copernicus Browser previously offered 10 default visualization layers using different combinations of spectral bands.

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After a Long While, Unboxing Continues: Childhood Encyclopedias, Edward Said, and Tanpınar

After a long hiatus, I am back with the unboxing. I finally have time and the opportunity to bring some boxes from my father's storage place. Sometime in the late 1980s It should be the summer I finished the third year in primary school. As throughout the primary school summers, we were staying in my mother's village in Bayburt. That summer was the summer of "circumcision" for me.

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A Mastodon based project: “Gaza Verified”

View all our Gaza Verified people and please help them and their families if you can. بدك توثّق حسابك؟ انضم إلنا! The posts of Gaza Verified accounts are achived on the Gaza Verified Archive for posterity as first-hand witness testimony of the Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people. Our mission We exist to protect the Mastodon accounts of Palestinians from…

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Thoughts on academia; Episode 11: The Knowledge Not Yet Written  - Erkan's Field Diary

Why AI makes ethnography more vital: universities must protect slow, situated research that creates knowledge beyond the written archive.

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A video: ” How Logitech Quietly Took Over Gaming”

Logitech originated in Switzerland and Italy as a software venture (short for Logiciel Tech), but transitioned into hardware through OEM manufacturing contracts. By pivoting early to direct-to-consumer retail peripherals, Logitech insubordinated itself from declining PC sales by offering affordable upgrade options. The company subsequently took over the gaming and creator market through legendary products like the MX518 and G502, alongside strategic acquisitions of Astro, Blue Microphones, and Streamlabs.

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FIFA against UEFA!

Statement on behalf of UEFA and its 55 national associations Thursday, July 30, 2026 UEFA and its 55 member associations stand as one. We unanimously and unequivocally reject FIFA’s proposal to transfer ownership interests in the World Cup and other FIFA competitions to private investors. The World Cup cannot be treated as an investment product. It is one of football’s greatest sporting legacies.

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Decoding the Crisis in Ceuta, Spain.

The current crisis in Ceuta illustrates how migration becomes legible to mass audiences through dramatic imagery, high-volume claims, and compressed timelines. Reporting describes crowds at breakwaters, people swimming toward shore, overloaded reception capacity, and political demands for emergency intervention, all of which create a highly visual and emotionally charged scene that is easy to convert into breaking-news spectacle.[4][5]

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After the EASA meeting in Poznan

It was nice to catch up in Poznan, Poland, with my fellow anthropologists. I was here for this presentation: Saka, E. (2026, July 23). Sovereign AI and the Reproduction of Algorithmic Power: Governance Frameworks in the Global South. EASA2026: Anthropology: Possibilities in a Polarised World, Panel P018: Anthropology of Artificial Intelligence and Oppression . European Association of Social Anthropology, Poznań, Poland.

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My chapter in Handbook on Anthropology and Artificial Intelligence!

We have a fresh new handbook, and the first substantive publication in my new research field is out! 11: Localizing the AI: an ethnography of balancing acts between the stakeholders in the periphery You can buy or access the whole handbook here. It is open access.  Edited by  Sahana Udupa and Peter Hervik This timely Handbook provides a groundbreaking collection of anthropological research on artificial intelligence (AI), examining how anthropology can help to comprehend and critique its development.

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A video: “When The Underdog Finally Wins: The Rebirth Of AMD”

Key takeaways from the video: NVIDIA dominated AI GPUs (94% share in Q2 2025) thanks to its mature CUDA ecosystem, while AMD lagged at 6% with weaker software support. AMD invested heavily (Xilinx acquisition for $49B, Nod.AI) and released the MI300X, which outperformed NVIDIA's H100 in memory bandwidth, latency, and cost-per-token at scale for large AI workloads. Despite early customer wins (Microsoft, Meta, Dell), MI300X revenue fell short of projections ($5B vs.

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Visiting Kierkegaard’s Grave

Last week, I added two cities to my Google Maps history: Hamburg and Copenhagen. Ayşe and I flew to Hamburg and took a train to Copenhagen. Although we love train journeys, this route is not recommended (!) It was not a direct route; we had two transfers- one with a bus. The cities were clean, orderly, and by the sea. We have seen most of the touristy stuff, but in addition to them, these are the highlights for me:

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Beloved Spain gets the Cup, Argentinian bullies get the s*it

I do not remember so much enmity among audiences against a team like Argentina in a World Cup in my lifetime. The Argentinians were aggressive, acting like bullies, and were shown favoritism throughout the game. So symbolic that Netanyahu gave them support. Last night, I was Spanish, and so were millions around the world As a side note, I became a Haarland fan, too.

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A video: The EU vs FIFA

Key takeaways from the video: FIFA President Gianni Infantino is accused of violating the organization's political neutrality rules through close ties with Donald Trump (inauguration attendance, awarding him the FIFA Peace Prize). FIFA unusually commuted a red card suspension for US player Faren Balagan after Trump personally called Infantino to complain. UEFA called the decision "unprecedented, incomprehensible and unjustifiable" and said it "crossed a red line."

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Europe’s June Heatwave: Did It Really Kill 20,000 People?

New Scientist recently ran a striking headline: the late‑June 2026 heatwave in Europe “may have killed around 20,000 people.” For anyone following climate politics and media narratives, this raises an obvious question: is this just a sensational claim, or does it rest on solid ground?[1][2] What New Scientist Actually Claims The article reports that researchers estimate the heatwave between 22–28 June 2026 caused about 20,390 deaths across Europe, with an uncertainty range of roughly 17,000–25,000.

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NATO Summit in Ankara. A report.

I do not believe NATO is doing well at all. I am not sure to what extent this summit triggered international reactions, but here in Türkiye, it was a big deal. The government used this as an occasion to show off. I have asked both ChatGPT and Perplexity to collect information about this summit. You will see a long report below.

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A video: DuckDuckGo: The Search Engine Google Can’t Kill

For more than a year now, instead of Google search, I have been using DuckDuckGo and Perplexity AI. Key takeaways from the video: DuckDuckGo origins: Founded in 2008 by Gabriel Weinberg in his living room with $10k after Google search quality declined due to spam; core promise is "we store nothing" — no IP logging, no user profiles, no tracking.

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A video: Meta’s Open AI Dream Is Dead

Here are the key takeaways from the video: Meta’s open AI strategy, which looked like a competitive edge, became a liability as competitors and open models improved, and as transparency concerns around benchmarks and training data surfaced. This pushed Meta to pivot toward a more closed approach with Muse Spark. The release of Llama under a community license was a strategic move to democratize access, attract developers, and undermine closed-model competitors.

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For the record, notes from Türkiye: Crowds, Fault Lines, Hairlines

I could not write about these stories when they happened, but I still want to keep them in the EFD record. They are not necessarily connected, yet together they say something about contemporary Turkey: ritual, spectacle, medical entrepreneurship, migration, music, and earthquake anxiety all appearing in the same news cycle. On the first day of Eid al-Adha, Health Minister Kemal Memişoğlu announced that 13,513 people had applied to health facilities because of injuries sustained during the sacrifice ritual.

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What do we need academia for? Episode 10: The Gift of Slow Time  - Erkan's Field Diary

Why academia still matters: a defense of slow time, curiosity-driven research, and the university’s role beyond rankings and speed.

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Just finished Snow by John Banville

It was a relatively short but beautifully written novel. Snow by John Banville. A touch of melancholy embedded. Honestly, I was more interested in the smooth flow of beautiful writing than the detective work itself. This morning, I could not stop until I finished it. A good start to my lazy Saturday. I have asked Perplexity to round up reviews of the novel.

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Comedian Deniz Göktaş detained

Comedian Deniz Göktaş detained after new show goes viral today. It was an expected result. Mr. Göktaş seemed well prepared for the aftermath. If he ever performs the third act, it will center around his prison days. This time, I asked Grok to round up positive and negative critiques on X about Deniz Göktaş's show.  Deniz Göktaş (full name often Imran Deniz Göktaş), a Turkish stand-up comedian born in 1994 in Ankara, ODTÜ Psychology graduate known for observational, social, and political humor with personal elements, released his second major stand-up special…

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A report on the Europe’s Current Heatwave - Erkan's Field Diary

Europe’s 2026 heatwave shows how the climate crisis strains health, labor, cities, energy, and politics across the continent.

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A video: “TR No One Is Using Bumble… “

1. The Industry-Wide Dating App Fatigue Bumble’s massive 95% stock crash isn't happening in isolation — the entire dating app ecosystem is shrinking. By 2023, global dating app downloads had fallen by 17% over three years [06:35]. The core issue is demographic burnout: Millennials who popularized these apps are aging out of them, while Gen Z is largely rejecting them, with 79% of college and graduate students reporting they don't use dating apps at all [

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A Tribute to Kadir İnanır

Another well-known actor since my childhood days has passed away. Kadir İnanır had a strong personality and political standing, and was a conscious artist, which we do not see much of nowadays.  Here is an obituary and at the end you will find a detailed report on his filmography and an infographic. The Final Years of His Life and His Death…

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