Dr Clea Bourne

The Gulf’s trillion-dollar AI dream has a water problem Tech giants are pouring oil riches into Middle East data centers as water scarcity threatens digital ambitions.

In countries like the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, “the water demands of AI-intensive data centers may force governments to choose between their climate commitments and their technological ambitions.” restofworld.org/2025/gulf-ai...

This looks like an amazing cultural policy experiment (by an institution of this scale), and it will be fascinating to see the results and the implementation too!

I overheard a guy at the airport bragging about being at January 6th and I walked by him sitting in first class. Wealthy business owners stormed the capitol. January 6th was loaded with people who had the leisure time and travel budget to be there. Interrogate who is telling you to hate the poor.

In "Journeying into the liminal unknown", Peter Bryant argues zine-makers and readers view liminality as a destination, rather than a way station to more ‘normal’ social structures. Read it here: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

It has been the honor of my life to serve as Commissioner of BLS alongside the many dedicated civil servants tasked with measuring a vast and dynamic economy. It is vital and important work and I thank them for their service to this nation.

Economic Espionage, Q&A with Dr Nicola Searle New research by Dr Nicola Searle provides the first evidence based understanding of the sectors at risk to knowledge leakage and the trade offs between openess and increased security.

"We are talking about research security a lot more than we used to just a few years ago."

Dr Nicola Searle discusses her work on economic espionage and the balance between openness and security in research and innovation www.gold.ac.uk/news/2025/ec...

Can’t help but reflect on the *5 years of strikes* we did to defend our pensions, on this, the day USS announce their £10 billion surplus.

Ditto to the other responses...But for the full experience you need to go to the French supermarket WITH French people. That way you get to observe the absolute horror on their faces when they see tourists buying bread IN THE SUPERMARKET! 🤯

Rachel Reeves and Andrew Bailey clash over Revolut meeting Chancellor’s aim to discuss fintech becoming fully fledged bank thwarted by BoE governor

Team reporting from the FT, 29 July 2025:
www.ft.com/content/6677...

this hits hard

No Justice, No Shade | Eric Dean Wilson Increasing shade cover is essential to surviving the next, hotter chapter of urban living. Why are cities so often opposed?

“A system of labor that incentivizes workers to skip breaks—to forego water or shade—is a death trap. It bears repeating: as the planet heats, this is getting worse.”

I don't talk about it much on here but I volunteer as an court observer with an interfaith group in southern California and can confirm that ICE arrests in the halls of immigration court are a daily reality here. This is very much happening. It's incredibly hard to witness but we cannot turn away.

Another SI article now out!

Bridget Kenny looks at emerging forms of exploitation linked to the rise of logistics and e-commerce in Gauteng, showing how these ‘adapt and reproduce’ historic racial hierarchies.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Japan has started rice rationing in stores as another harvest gets decimated by extreme heat. The future is grim for island nations that are directly exposed to sea surface heat spike.

Economy and Society Volume 54, Issue 2 of Economy and Society

Issue 2 of 2025 is out now! With papers on ecologization, gendered labour of finance, temporalities of indebtedness, housing in Swedish growth model, state capitalism in France, economization of immunization, cyber socialism/neoliberalism, and necro-economics
www.tandfonline.com/toc/reso20/c...

The Economy and Society Early Career Paper Prize 2026 is now live.
£1000 prize.
Submission deadline: 15/12/25
Details here and in the News and CfP section of our website
files.taylorandfrancis.com/economy-and-...

New: Inside America’s booming immigration detention industry.

The largest domestic deportation operation in US history has seen detention companies’ market value surge. But FT analysis has identified facilities housing 100s more people than they are designed to hold.

👉 ft.com/us-detention-industry

Oh no… what’s wrong with the world.

Decolonising finance and the financial system in Africa Seminar YouTube video by SARChI Industrial Development

Finance, decolonisation, imperialism, Africa. Had a great time discussing these issues with students, academics and activists at Uni of Johannesburg yesterday!

Spoke alongside Amaarah Gardah, Naiefa Rashid & Fiona Tregenna.

Catch it here 👇
www.youtube.com/live/XIubA3Y...

"Nearly half of white students admitted to Harvard between 2009 and 2014 were legacy students or Dean’s Interest List—a list of applicants whose relatives have donated to Harvard, the existence of which only became public knowledge in 2018"

75% of them would not have been admitted otherwise

How AI is shaking up scientific publishing On top of the usual cases of fraud and malpractice, artificial intelligence is sowing discord and transforming the world of academic publishing.

"Even if still marginal, a troubling landscape is emerging. Software is now writing scientific papers that are reviewed and evaluated by other machines, which in turn attempt to outwit those designed to detect them."

Story in Le Monde on AI in scientific publishing.

Archive link: archive.ph/ldxM0

Thanks everyone for coming to the launch of our book Decolonizing Economics with @devikadutt.bsky.social @cacrisalves.bsky.social @surbhikesar.bsky.social! Had such a great time engaging with students, friends, the public. And thanks to Marx Memorial Library for hosting 🤗
hetecon.net/2025/07/03/dec…

Linda Yaccarino steps down as chief executive of X Former NBCUniversal executive leaves platform after two years

Linda Yaccarino steps down. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
www.ft.com/content/12c6...

Last year, I wrote about why the UK needs a Digital Civil Society Observatory to understand how AI and emerging technologies are rolling out and effecting people and communities, making the case that this is needed to balance the focus of the ATI and AISI www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/publications...

Can’t make this up.

My mom and stepdad are from the same diaspora group as Zohran Mamdani’s dad (same like “my stepdad was kicked out of the same town and knows some of his classmates”) and apparently the New York Times doesn’t understand how diaspora works, so I am going to tell you a little about my mom’s people!

Inside the private equity-insurance nexus When the world’s dullest industry gets very exciting

In the UK, we're beginning to understand what happens when private equity owns water companies and public infrastructures, supermarkets, chemists and care homes, but check out what happens when they own and partner with insurance companies.
on.ft.com/4kd077o via @FT

Many years ago I did a piece of research into ATMs, as part of a project on trust and new technology. I can't now find a useful citation for this, but I'm pretty sure one of the best things about ATMs is the fact that the little "ch-ch-ch" noise of the money being counted is a actually sound effect

World War 3 kinda sucks, but you know, it was either this or pronouns