More photos of the larkspur at the small flower farm near Wicken, Cambridgeshire, for a good dollop of floral dopamine 🌿:

It looks like the most critical digital ID systems in Norway - which people use to access public services, health services, financial aid etc have been under a massive DDoS attack for the past 23ish hours. Likely state backed. Something to keep an eye on. www.aftenposten.no/norge/i/Okld...

Sikkerhetsekspert om angrepet i Norge: – Står øverst på listen for dem som vil angripe

I Digitaliseringsdirektoratets egen risikovurdering for 2025, ble det pekt på manglende evne til å kunne identifisere og oppdage avanserte digitale angrep.

aftenposten.no

This feeling of overwhelm is precisely why students and I spent the first half of my Regulating AI course at McGill Law reading this book from cover to cover. We then mapped out the AI system elements Hao describes and used them as sites to ground our regulatory discussions.

2-way protected bike lane enthusiast@seachanger.bsky.social · 2d ago

the relentlessness of the AI headlines and data center fights starts to feel chaotic and difficult to hold cohesively in my mind UNTIL i listen to another interview with Karen Hao, and then I feel clear and get my talking points back in order www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/...

August wildflower colours in full bloom here in Estrie. 💛💜💚🤍 #Bloomscrolling

Joy is a form of resistance, too <3 This poem also makes me think of this powerful quote by Dan Savage: "We buried our friends in the morning, we protested in the afternoon, and we danced all night. The dance kept us in the fight because it was the dance we were fighting for.”

Damn... 300% higher yields for peppers 200% for tomatoes. 65% lower water use for jalapenos. #agsky #agrivoltaics ,🌱🌞🔌..

hoergen@hoergen.bsky.social · 3d ago

*American farmers slid solar panels over 62,000 acres of farmland, and the biggest payoff had almost nothing to do with electricity* #Erneuerbare #Renewable #Solar #Photovoltaik energiesmedia.com/solar-panels…

Protest organized against 'devastating' data centre in Sturgeon County www.stalbertgazette.com/local-news/s...

Protest organized against 'devastating' data centre in Sturgeon County

Read the full story and comment on stalbertgazette.com

stalbertgazette.com

Our relationship to visual evidence is being profoundly disrupted by GenAI tools, which will impact how we know, what we can know, and what we think can be known about the world. A massive epistemological shift is upon us.

Faine Greenwood@faineg.bsky.social · 5d ago

I used to do some work on the ethical use of satellite and drone imagery for aid and disaster response, and it is genuinely hard to express in words what a dangerous, stupid thing Google is doing by making it easy to use GenAI to create faked satellite imagery:

New article on wildfire smoke in the Canadian Medical Association Journal 🍁 "Relying on people to protect themselves is not enough & top-down strategies such as building measures to ensure quality of indoor air & legislation to protect outdoor workers are needed" www.cmaj.ca/content/197/...

Wildfire smoke air pollution: new approaches needed to protect people affected

cmaj.ca

This article reiterates key points Jutta Treviranus made in a breathtaking keynote at #FAccT2026. One is how statistical marginalization affects many people. People "out of distribution," whose experiences are "noise" in population datasets, but who are collectively large in number, and growing.

Inclusive Design Research Centre@idrc-ocadu.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Jutta Treviranus recently wrote an opinion piece for University Affairs about how AI homogenizes humanity and devalues outliers. Read the piece: buff.ly/kSLedqU #AI #AIethics #AIequality

How do we build governance that's truly community-led? Join us Aug 19, 1 PM EDT: “Creating Participatory Architecture” with Madeline Toubiana (uOttawa) & Natalie Eng (UAlberta). Free and accessible. Register: ocadu.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

Municipal/local government law is often an afterthought in conversations about regulating AI in Canada. But it has the potential to do a lot of heavy lifting when it comes to determining where the physical infrastructures underlying AI systems are located, or whether they get built at all.

Emmerson Jull@emmersonj.bsky.social · 7d ago

Mississauga councillors vote 11-0 to support a one-year pause on data centres. If approved on Sept. 16, this could be the first interim control bylaw in Canada. It’s likely to face appeals. My latest for @nationalobserver.com www.nationalobserver.com/2026/07/29/n...

Many in the migrants' rights sector have been warning about exactly this. AI is absolutely not suitable for being used in asylum cases. Not only because of the risk of "hallucination", but also because it is unable to deal with the nuance and complexity. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

Home Office used ‘AI hallucinated’ information to refuse asylum claim, judge suggests

Upper tribunal unable to find document cited in case and claims it is ‘analogous to relying on bogus evidence’

theguardian.com

This pattern of politicians running against their own bureaucracies as champions of the people was tagged as "the dysfunctional dance of local governance" by Mariana Valverde when she saw it in Toronto in EVERYDAY LAW ON THE STREETS from 2012. Its biggest beneficiary? Rob Ford.

Justin McElroy 🇨🇦@jmcelroy.bsky.social · last wk.

A funny thing about Vancouver's Villages rejection happening so close to the election is Ken Sim's office posting a statement being like "we listen to the wisdom of the people" and ABC Vancouver sending supporters an email being like "we're protecting you from city bureaucrats who are garbage"

Today’s the day! Our multimedia exhibit Undercurrents just launched - featuring Ahmed Alaqra, Brad Isaacs, Carlie Trosclair, Danielle Boudreau, James May, Manuel Axel, Matou, Pari Mokradi, & Steve Maldonado Silvestrini. freshwaterfishfutures.ca/undercurrent... Funded by @sshrc-crsh.canada.ca

UNDERCURRENTS EXHIBIT 2026

Undercurrents is an online multimedia exhibit that explores artistic responses to water, fish, and aquatic ecologies, where materiality, memory, myth, and metaphor converge.

freshwaterfishfutures.ca

Yes. Once again thinking about Kate Losse’s work: modelviewculture.com/pieces/the-m...

The Male Gazed

Surveillance, Power, and Gender

modelviewculture.com

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · last wk.

FWIW, Meta was fully aware of how these glasses would primarily be used. The glasses were designed to erase consent, and that is why they exist. Anything that they do that suggests they want to ameliorate this use is an attempt to win the PR battle and manipulate public opinion.

The rare bit of good traffic safety news. Backup cameras work, and have meaningfully reduced severe injuries among kids under 5 years old caused by backovers. We can argue that cars are too big in the first place, limiting visibility, but this is good tech.

Jalopnik@jalopnik.bsky.social · last wk.

Backup cameras have been required on new vehicles for the better part of the decade, but are they making a difference? Let's look at the stats.

Hot fun in the summertime, SEPAQ-style. 😎🚣‍♂️

OpenAI not alerting the authorities was also an issue at the Tumbler Ridge mass shooting.

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · last wk.

After providing the instructions, OpenAI banned the accounts requesting specific details on making bio weapons, but did not alert authorities.

Partial good news everyone.

Quebec scraps AI and automation projects in the public sector

Quebec has abandoned initiatives related to automation and artificial intelligence (AI) within the public sector, including the implementation of a chatbot on the government website “Quebec.ca,” follo...

ctvnews.ca

Pornainen, Finland (pop 5,000) is now heated by a silo of crushed soapstone. I spoke to CNBC about it. 100 MWh, charged when power is cheap, emissions down ~70%. Days to weeks of storage, no critical minerals. www.cnbc.com/2026/07/25/f...

Finland’s radical answer to renewable energy’s biggest headache: The world’s largest sand battery

A small Finnish town has turned to the world's largest commercial sand battery to tackle a major hurdle in the energy transition: intermittency.

cnbc.com

Government of Canada launches public consultation on AI transparency www.canada.ca/en/innovatio...

findingeliza.org is the accompanying website to "Inventing ELIZA: How the First Chatbot Shaped the Future of AI" (MIT Press, 2026)

The first chatbot · ELIZA (1966)

A Critical Code Studies reading of ELIZA, Joseph Weizenbaum’s 1966 chatbot, built on the original source recovered from the MIT archive.

findingeliza.org

Relatedly, this is happening, too 🎉 We have an info session at noon ET on Monday! More info at the 🔗 (I esp want to encourage local grad students to consider applying; my years of academic program admin have made me wily with credit workarounds 😈)

Shannon Mattern@shannonmattern.bsky.social · last mo.

Metro NY Library Council's Cross-Reference Coalition — an experimental school connecting librarians, archivists, grad students, artists, designers — is accepting applications for our fall class exploring PUBLIC STUDY: alternative/radical/progressive schools, lrng communities... crc.metro.org/apply/

A huge portion of #Carney's attack on the social infrastructure has taken the forms of strategically located austerity measures that are not immediately apparent but show themselves at times of crisis or high need. This attack on #wildfire protection is a case in point.

Canada has quietly signed the UN Cybercrime Convention, a treaty it once opposed given fears of expanded state surveillance. The US, Japan, New Zealand, and the Netherlands still haven't signed. Russia, China, and Iran signed on day one. What is happening?

A Surveillance Treaty in Disguise: The Trouble With Canada's Quiet Decision to Sign the UN Cybercrime Convention - Michael Geist

Last week, the government announced that Canada has signed the United Nations Convention against Cybercrime, with Ministers Anita Anand, Gary Anandasangaree and Sean Fraser touting the treaty’s child…

michaelgeist.ca

ottawacitizen.com/public-servi...

Carney government cut nearly half the jobs at nerve centre for managing wildfires: union

The Carney government cut about 50 positions from the federal nerve centre responsible for managing forest fires, the union says.

ottawacitizen.com

A couple years ago I wrote about the history of surveillance on campus:

Surveillance Space

Words in Space is the work of Shannon Mattern.

wordsinspace.net

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 2w ago

“MIT is spending over $3 million on more than 500 AI surveillance cameras in academic buildings, residence halls, and outdoor areas along Memorial Drive.”