Jay Owens
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jayowens.bsky.social
Jay Owens
@jayowens.bsky.social
I’m Head of Audience at @lrb.co.uk and I wrote a book, ‘Dust: The Modern World in a Trillion Particles’ (2023). I post about media strategy and environmental politics.

🔗 https://JayOwens.me
Ittoqqortoormiit in northeastern Greenland is one of the remotest settlements on Earth.

It came into being in 1925, when Denmark relocated 70 Inuits 800km from Ammassalik.

‘It is unclear whether they knew where they were going, or that they would never return.’
February 3, 2026 at 4:09 PM
Worth taking some time to see Greenland through Greenlandic eyes.

Jason Farago on Inuuteq Storch's photography at MoMA PS 1:

‘Raw, sometimes romantic pictures taken across the island ... focus[ing] on the usual, the modest. What’s fleeting. What melts.’

www.nytimes.com/2026/01/29/a...
February 3, 2026 at 3:51 PM
California City in the Mojave desert: once a dream of utopia, now a “torture chamber” and “hell on Earth.”

Oren Peleg on the cruel conditions at ICE’s detention centre, where they’re using medical neglect as a weapon to make people self-deport.

www.newyorker.com/news/the-led...
The Cruel Conditions of ICE’s Mojave Desert Detention Center
How immigration authorities have weaponized medical neglect to encourage self-deportations.
www.newyorker.com
February 1, 2026 at 11:58 AM
How Minneapolitans are organising on the streets and on Signal to resist ICE abduction squads.

‘The people of the Twin Cities have paid close attention to their opponents. They know how ICE agents deploy, where ICE agents stage, how ICE agents dress, drive, react.‘

crimethinc.com/2026/01/15/r...
Rapid Response Networks in the Twin Cities
The rapid response networks people organize to defend their communities have undergone a whirlwind evolution to keep up with ever-shifting ICE tactics.
crimethinc.com
January 20, 2026 at 11:36 PM
Mark Carney’s speech today at Davos: 'the old order is not coming back'.

A remarkable speech for his willingness to address the elephant that Starmer’s pretending he can’t see:

The rules-based international order, always tenuous, is now dodo.

archive.ph/PRQDe

nationalpost.com/news/canada/...
Full text and video: Mark Carney tells World Economic Forum 'the old order is not coming back'
Read or watch Prime Minister Mark Carney's full speech delivered at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
nationalpost.com
January 20, 2026 at 11:30 PM
‘My contention is that 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘕𝘦𝘸 𝘠𝘰𝘳𝘬𝘦𝘳 has lost its soul, is virtually interchangeable with a number of other publications, and is—spiritually speaking—in terminal decline, just another gilded gargoyle on the cathedral of polite thinking.’

Sam Khan. Bracing.

www.persuasion.community/p/how-the-ne...
How The New Yorker Became Irrelevant
On the decline of America's premier magazine.
www.persuasion.community
January 6, 2026 at 9:13 PM
‘I find myself wondering whether certain virtues might be encouraged by the practice of waiting—patience, say, or prudence.

I believe we can come to see instances of waiting as freighted not merely with frustration but also with possibility.’

theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/waiting-is...
Waiting Is a Revelation
The Convivial Society: Vol. 7, No. 1
theconvivialsociety.substack.com
January 3, 2026 at 7:16 PM
It is interesting to hear about how this has spread, so thanks!

Some people also say they encountered it on For You or Discover feeds too, but anecdotally (and from what I can see of how people post) it seems that quote-posts are the #1 way content spreads and ppl get reach beyond their networks.
mostly following. sometimes mutuals.

(this was quoted onto my following feed if you wondered)
December 29, 2025 at 5:22 PM
Reposted by Jay Owens
Aging out of poasting is a thing!

What I really hate, though, is that a cadre of men 𝘥𝘰𝘯'𝘵 age out of it and they 𝘥𝘰 keep posting (& blogging & giving talks), and become the only people speaking.

I've noticed this gender imbalance for a decade+, and hate that I'm now contributing to it. :\
December 28, 2025 at 9:47 PM
You’re (Probably) Thinking About AI and Water All Wrong

Andrew Masley: “I would sometimes bring up that I used ChatGPT at parties, and people would be like ‘Oh, that uses so much energy and water. How can you use that?’”

Well, does it? he wondered.

by @mollytaft.com

www.wired.com/story/karen-...
You’re Thinking About AI and Water All Wrong
Fears about AI data centers’ water use have exploded. Experts say the reality is far more complicated than people think.
www.wired.com
December 28, 2025 at 9:41 PM
What feed do you look at most on here?

For all that people talk about wanting to avoid algorithmically-curated feeds, the (pareto) pattern of engagement I see seems to bely that.

My hunch is that most people spend most of their time on feeds like Popular With Friends or Discover.

Y/N?
December 28, 2025 at 9:07 PM
Make America Hallucinate Again.

@matthabusby.bsky.social on the “counter-counter-cultural turn” in psychedelics that means it's now the US right championing legal access - via the rhetorical KO (in the US context) of military veteran PTSD treatment.

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
Conservative and Christian? US right champions psychedelic drugs
Texas governor among those to call for expanded access to ibogaine, said to help with treating veterans with PTSD
www.theguardian.com
December 28, 2025 at 8:32 PM
Would you run an ethical newspaper or sell out to the mafia?

This is fun: @tomfaber91.bsky.social reviews ‘News Tower’, a media management game set in 1930s New York.

Gift link: giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...
Would you run an ethical newspaper or sell out to the mafia?
Media management game ‘News Tower’ comes with moral quandaries and conflicting pressures
giftarticle.ft.com
December 28, 2025 at 2:01 PM
The scale of 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘣𝘪𝘷 (leaked personal data) in Russia is vast. Employees sell access to restricted govt or corporate databases, which are used as much by police and investigative journalists as for crime.

The Kremlin’s now trying to stop it. This has backfired.

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/d...
‘All brakes are off’: Russia’s attempt to rein in illicit market for leaked data backfires
Russian state has tolerated parallel probiv market for its convenience but now Ukrainian spies are exploiting it
www.theguardian.com
December 26, 2025 at 11:07 PM
Reposted by Jay Owens
Here's a good bit of Christmas reading.

From the wind blown dusts of drained lakes to the fall-out from atom bomb tests, @jayowens.bsky.social 's story telling explores particles in our air, how humanity causes them and their impacts.

Found it in my city library - thanks @brighton-hove.gov.uk
December 23, 2025 at 8:48 AM
Want to visit the US?

Hand over 5 years of social media, 10 years of email addresses, the names, birth dates, places of residence and birthplaces of parents, spouses, siblings and children…

And even if Dems win in 2028, you know this is never getting rolled back.

www.nytimes.com/2025/12/09/t...
U.S. Plans to Scrutinize Foreign Tourists’ Social Media History
www.nytimes.com
December 10, 2025 at 6:50 PM
‘“Why can’t you just admit that this was a fuckup and fix it and do the right thing?”

And then she answers her own question: “They can’t, because it bankrupts the industry as we know it.”

@mollytaft.com meets the activists trying to clean up old oil wells in TX

www.motherjones.com/environment/...
Meet the TikTok stars demanding oil companies clean up their mess
There are millions of abandoned oil wells across the United States. A group of unlikely activists in Texas is making sure no one forgets they need to be cleaned up.
www.motherjones.com
December 9, 2025 at 6:52 PM
‘A norm has settled over the reporting of ICE, where all the facts are laid out – raw numbers, painful details, the state of detention centres – except the central one, that people are being kidnapped.’

By @zoesqwilliams.bsky.social

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
What Chicago's fight against ICE can teach us all about how to resist oppression | Zoe Williams
A harrowing US podcast documents a community’s struggle against immigration raids – and warns us about herd mentality, says Guardian columnist Zoe Williams
www.theguardian.com
November 29, 2025 at 8:28 PM
The judge who authorised the ICC's arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant is now shut out from modern life as a result of US sanctions.

He has been blacklisted by financial systems and technologies (Visa, Apple, Google, etc)

Paywall bypass: archive.ph/d8NmT

www.lemonde.fr/en/internati...
Nicolas Guillou, French ICC judge sanctioned by the US: 'You are effectively blacklisted by much of the world's banking system'
Six judges and three prosecutors at the International Criminal Court have been sanctioned by the Trump administration. In an interview with Le Monde, Guillou discusses the impact of these measures on ...
www.lemonde.fr
November 22, 2025 at 11:04 AM
‘There were more than 45,000 forcibly disappeared people in Andalucía alone – and yet, as far as the state is concerned, no one forced them to disappear.’

@danhancox.bsky.social on Spain’s deep failures of memory and accountability re. the Franco regime.

observer.co.uk/style/featur...
The families of Franco’s victims still seeking justice 50 years after his death | The Observer
observer.co.uk
November 17, 2025 at 9:22 PM
‘It seems like half the startups coming out of Silicon Valley these days are just “We found a way to monetize undermining the social contract!”’

By @jeremiahdjohns.bsky.social

www.infinitescroll.us/p/does-the-s...
Does the social contract even exist any more?
The Weekly Scroll: Bad Apps, online drama, and the lack of social consequences.
www.infinitescroll.us
November 16, 2025 at 10:55 AM
“We don’t feel safe,” an elderly man named Ghassan, who lost his brother in the massacres, told me. “I can walk down the street here and shake someone’s hand, and that same person might be the one who killed my brother.”

Melvyn Ingleby on Syria after Assad.

www.theguardian.com/news/2025/no...
‘We were forced to burn bodies’: will survivors of the Tadamon massacres see justice?
The long read: During the conflict, the Damascus suburb became a killing field. But some of Assad’s henchmen are still around – and even working with the new government
www.theguardian.com
November 14, 2025 at 12:44 AM
‘The BBC exhibits symptoms of the West’s wider moral breakdown over Gaza – the failure even to name genocide, let alone stop it, when a Western ally is the perpetrator.’

@trillingual.bsky.social investigates how the broadcaster got Gaza wrong.

www.equator.org/articles/ins...
Inside the BBC’s Gaza Fiasco • EQUATOR
How the world’s most trusted media organisation fell apart
www.equator.org
November 13, 2025 at 8:47 PM
Reposted by Jay Owens
New: for @equatormag.bsky.social I spent months talking to BBC journalists, from front-line reporters to the former head of the World Service, about how the corporation came unstuck over Gaza. But as I was working on the story, it collided with something... bigger... www.equator.org/articles/ins...
Inside the BBC’s Gaza Fiasco • Articles • EQUATOR
How the world’s most trusted media organisation fell apart
www.equator.org
November 13, 2025 at 2:50 PM