2024
#Shenzhen, #China. During our trip to Hong Kong, I also had to dip into the world’s capital of electronics (and #e-waste).
I now visited the holy Eastern trinity of Huaqiangbei in CN, Akihabara in Tokyo, and Guanghua Digital Plaza in Taipei. Shenzhen’s district has the most paralyzing busyness.
On the train, officials are offered traditional Ukrainian dishes and books about Ukraine’s history and wartime struggle.
The images!
The Trains That Take World Leaders to #Ukraine. #War www.nytimes.com/2024/12/0…
So, what’s the #MMT comment of the day? The #shutdown in the #US is looming, as it always is, and #Trump suggests just removing the ceiling altogether? It’s Trump, sure, and we know what this will be used for.
Yet, generally speaking: Why not? How so? How to build on this?
How rice paddies turn into factory land.
Few nations have benefited more than #Vietnam from the scramble — especially north Vietnam, historically an economic laggard compared to the more cosmopolitan south. Around Haiphong, a few hours’ drive from China, factories bloomed.
The NYTimes
We are happy that the new volume of the EASST Review is out. 43/2 baby! Hugs to everyone involved and the fellow editorial team members.
This is a conference issue discussing all #sts things that happened at #EASST4S2024. Plus, the winning pieces of the creative writing competition are included.
Nvidia’s Jensen Huang was in #Hanoi #Vietnam last week, as he was in 2023, and he put on a decent street show.
It’s thus easy to overlook that last year’s formulation that Vietnam will be Nvidia’s “second home” was a slightly misleading claim. Still promising #semiconductor miracles. 🍺 
Now that the seal is broken on scraping #Bluesky posts into datasets for machine learning, people are trolling users and one-upping each other by making increasingly massive datasets of non-anonymized, full-text Bluesky posts
That’s the decentral reality, as 404 reports, your stuff is out there
Both are blocked on #X, attacked by Elon, and both do a solid job of replacing #Twitter.
The #Fediverse aka #Mastodon and #Bluesky play different cards, an open network filled by volunteers here and advanced sharing and moderation tools there.
Team platform organizing! Also, consider linking the two
Wenn ich irgendjemanden fragen würde, ‘Wünschen Sie sich, dass sich die weltweiten Einkommen einander annähern?’, dann wäre die Antwort: Ja, natürlich, das wäre doch toll, … Aber es führt zu Unzufriedenheit, wenn es dann tatsächlich passiert.
Milanović zur Elephantenkurve. #Mittelschicht #China
#blackfriday, und alle bemängeln individuelle Laster und fehlende Initiativen.
Dabei passiert viel, wie ich in meinem Buch zu #Elektroschrott gezeigt habe, von Deutschland bis Indien. Hightech-Recycling, Regulation, Kooperation. Aber die Produktion bleibt ungebremst.
This is perhaps the greatest takeaway of the book, that the prospect of ‘stranded assets,’ or fossil fuel projects rendered unprofitable before the end of their expected economic lives, are the primary force holding the world back from beating #climatechange.
A comprehensive review of Overshoot.
"… make full use of our natural advantage", the official says. Geopolitics returns, as described by @nielswerber.bsky.social.
I enjoyed this (now unlocked!) #NYTimes piece on #Malaysia, #chips, #datacenter industries, and how to benefit from #Trump. #Vietnam tries to do similar things. #tradewar
So we’re back in that kind of era again. Funny, truly funny, of course.
But I will not follow all the small scandals as was common during the last time. What are they thinking. As someone once uttered, You Banbury cheese!
#us #trump
Consider yourself in a wildfire, casually enjoying the fire. Breathe. That’ll be a fine particle, aka PM 2.5 #airpollution of ~1000. Translated to the Air Quality Index, it’ll be an #AQI of ~2000.
#Delhi recently had an AQI of over 1,700.
It’s spiralling.
5 is healthy, 100 dangerous, 300 hazardous.
20 years of #GoogleScholar, holy cow. It’s all nice and weird but what happens when they pull the plug of this very much neglected project? #google #tech
Shooting for new public infrastructure would be nice, and there are interesting things out there like OpenAlex or SemanticScholar. #degoogling
Devaluation and society are closely entangled – my chapter contribution to the Routledge International Handbook of Valuation and Society.
This new volume is the result of our valuation studies group, but in a way the book also feels like a tribute to the late Hilmar Schäfer.
#waste #sociology #sts
Die #FDP mit einer billigen Show, die ihr jetzt kosten könnte.
Was nun folgt, ist ein Ausbruch des Parteichefs, der bei einigen in der Runde lange nachhallt: Die FDP müsse da raus, die Ampel müsse enden. Er könne diese Fressen einfach nicht mehr sehen, soll Lindner gerufen haben.
#Bluesky wächst und wächst.
Ihr flieht von #X.
No personal information that you submit will be available to any user…specified by…your privacy settings.
Das war 2005, #Facebook vs #MySpace. Viele Versprechen.
2024, Bluesky hat als Hauptinvestor “Blockchain Capital”. Wo soll das enden
Mapping university #data #infrastructure. Last week, we hosted a workshop with our interlocutors. This snapshot is from an analysis session, digging into details and tensions.
Using group discussions pays off. And, re: #sustainability, the university has serious structural issues.
#sts #sociology
 &10;&10;This note says, "My house, my car, my HPC [High-Performance Cluster]", hinting at how some professors are thinking about acquiring and using high-tech infrastructure. The comic reminds of a popular ad in Germany.](https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/129890/2024/5a35cc0bee.jpg)
Investing in alternative social media like the #Fediverse (and to a lesser degree, #Bluesky), has been my digital strategy. Making news and taking part is essential in this place.
But is it enough?
Studies have shown that the contraction of local news has created a vacuum — which has been filled by partisan news sources and social media (both polarizing and more likely to spread misinformation).