Melissa Gregg
@melgregg.bsky.social
Professor and advisor on sustainable computing futures at the University of Bristol. On loan from lutruwita/ Tasmania. https://melgregg.com
Political science
27%
Sociology
25%
Early sketch of Tektronix Sunset plant location, c1951, with a timeless description of Beaverton: “If you land here you are lost”
🚨3 Lectureships in Biology 🚨
Come join us in Bristol @bristolbiosci.bsky.social!
We are looking for new collegues working across a broad spectum of topics in biology, including ecology & environmental change. Get in touch if you have Qs!
Apply here by 8 March: www.bristol.ac.uk/jobs/find/de...
Come join us in Bristol @bristolbiosci.bsky.social!
We are looking for new collegues working across a broad spectum of topics in biology, including ecology & environmental change. Get in touch if you have Qs!
Apply here by 8 March: www.bristol.ac.uk/jobs/find/de...
A recipe for finding and mapping data centres
Geographers like me are really interested in understanding landscape changes. I’ve been doing some research on how the infrastructure of digital life (e.g., data centers or semiconductor fabs…
electronicplanet.xyz
By focusing on Washington County in Hillsboro, OR, we observe changes to land, waterways and air quality that semiconductor manufacturing has brought since the 1970s. Josh explains one of the methods here: electronicplanet.xyz/2026/01/21/a...
What Grows in a Silicon Forest?: Environmental Amnesia in High Tech Expansion
A lecture by Melissa Gregg, Professor of Digital Futures in the Bristol Digital Futures Institute & University of Bristol Business School.
www.gold.ac.uk
Speaking at Goldsmiths today on my current collaboration with Prof Josh Lepawsky, What Grows in a Silicon Forest? We chart the waves of environmental impact high tech industries bring, many of which appear unsolvable (PFAS) and irreversible (farmland erasure). www.gold.ac.uk/calendar/?id...
@devikanarayan.bsky.social We need to talk about "cookie licking" some time
The Anthropic Hive Mind
As you’ve probably noticed, something is happening over at Anthropic. They are a spaceship that is beginning to take off.
steve-yegge.medium.com
"If you have a strictly online or SaaS software presence, with no atoms in your product whatsoever, just electrons, then you are, candidly, pretty screwed if you don’t pivot." steve-yegge.medium.com/the-anthropi...
Climate change is reshaping the Winter Olympic Games
Cortina d’Ampezzo records almost one-fifth fewer freezing days annually compared with those in decade after 1956 Games
giftarticle.ft.com
The infrastructure “required to maintain the illusion of a reliable winter . . . contributes to the very climate deterioration that is making traditional mountain environments a scarce resource” giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...
Bale out: How a huge Northwest hay exporter got into trouble
If you’ve ever traveled east to west in Washington, hay trucks are a consistent sight, tracing the mountain pass over Interstate 90, funneling into Puget Sound ports where the hay is loaded on ships a...
www.opb.org
Excellent headline www.opb.org/article/2025...
Workers are ‘friction-maxxing’ to resist AI
Real-life meetings, in-person hiring and learning skills from scratch: the future may be intentionally inconvenient
giftarticle.ft.com
Lauren Berlant wrote the book on this and it has nothing to do with AI. It’s the eternal human dilemma - the inconvenience of other people. giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...
Technoecologies - Daniel Cardoso Llach - The Mississippi Colossus
Boxtown is a neighborhood in South Memphis established in 1863 by emancipated former slaves. Since 2024, it is also the home to one of the world’s largest supercomputers, property of Elon Musk’s artif...
www.e-flux.com
“In a caustic twist of history, while the first Colossus was built to decode and disrupt Nazi messages, the second seems inclined to recast and amplify them.” www.e-flux.com/architecture...
Utility watchdogs accuse PGE of skirting new law meant to make data centers pay for rising demand • Oregon Capital Chronicle
PGE doesn't plan to simply assign the costs of energy investments needed to support data centers, to data centers.
oregoncapitalchronicle.com
Consumers should not have to subsidise a specific industry's energy needs, especially when its products have been purposefully designed to grow demand for energy. What happens in this case is going to set precedents for every other DC build out. 👀 oregoncapitalchronicle.com/2025/12/15/u...
Melissa Gregg
@melgregg.bsky.social
· Jan 10
Pilitika / Robbins Island at risk
YouTube video by Bob Brown Foundation
youtu.be
Part of The Carnival of Alive and Extinct Animals at Cygnet Folk Festival this weekend. As Bob Brown said, the wilful acceleration of species extinction has to stop!
youtu.be/_aqD4nGsfHw?...
youtu.be/_aqD4nGsfHw?...
Melissa Gregg
@melgregg.bsky.social
· Dec 22
Solstice greetings: guiding lights · Probable Futures
It’s a testament to technological progress that lighthouses have become scenic. These towers with their glass rotundas are now mostly quaint relics whose images evoke nostalgia and attract tourists to...
probablefutures.org
“We are all sailors now” probablefutures.org/perspective/...
Melissa Gregg
@melgregg.bsky.social
· Dec 22
A3 Poster, 12 Birds of Bruny Island — Lois Bury
A3 Colour poster of the 12 Birds of Bruny in ‘12 Days of Christmas’ format. There are 12 endemic birds of Tasmania, all found on Bruny. Perfect for Christmas or not.
lois-bury.squarespace.com
The longest day of the year here in Tasmania started and finished with these friends lois-bury.squarespace.com/shop/12-ende...
Melissa Gregg
@melgregg.bsky.social
· Dec 1
The Texan Ideology | Fred Turner
The Texan Ideology reflects a century-old fusion of the oil industry and millenarian Christianity.
thebaffler.com
Fred Turner updates the California Ideology thesis for our current era, showing it is consistent with the age old mission of white men exploiting an unregulated frontier: thebaffler.com/salvos/the-t....
Melissa Gregg
@melgregg.bsky.social
· Nov 21
The final step allowed visitors full immersion in the future city at scale.
Melissa Gregg
@melgregg.bsky.social
· Nov 21
Futurama was Bell Geddes’ remarkable design for GM at the 1939 World’s Fair. The work of building giddy expectations for a fossil fuel century. Again from Roland Marchand’s “Creating the Corporate Soul”.
Melissa Gregg
@melgregg.bsky.social
· Nov 18
Climate TRACE
We make meaningful climate action faster and easier by mobilizing the global tech community to track greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions with unprecedented detail.
climatetrace.org
Intrigued by Al Gore's indefatigable commitment to just keep on communicating about climate: climatetrace.org/about
Melissa Gregg
@melgregg.bsky.social
· Nov 16
More historical refs for myopia pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...
Melissa Gregg
@melgregg.bsky.social
· Nov 16
www.nationalacademies.org
Note to self as I head outdoors for the rest of the day www.nationalacademies.org/news/2024/09....
Melissa Gregg
@melgregg.bsky.social
· Nov 15
@bleudeciel.bsky.social I would love to grab the reference to Paramount and Oregon forests for a current project. Ordering your book now! 🤓
Melissa Gregg
@melgregg.bsky.social
· Nov 15
Sustainable Media: Lessons from Film History
YouTube video by Distinctive Voices
youtu.be
Brian R. Jacobson delivers an exquisite lecture on environmental impacts of media - and alternative imaginaries beyond oil youtu.be/24FcbPZWohs?...
Melissa Gregg
@melgregg.bsky.social
· Nov 14
In the Nov-Dec issue of ACM-Interactions, I summarize ongoing discussions with @digitaldang.bsky.social and others working on the regional contours of electronics afterlives. interactions.acm.org/archive/view...
Melissa Gregg
@melgregg.bsky.social
· Nov 14
“The technology is not yet taking young professionals’ jobs. But it is possible that, when the economy begins to perk up, there will be fewer left to take.”
Melissa Gregg
@melgregg.bsky.social
· Nov 13
Climate Change through the Lens of Increasing Hydroclimate Whiplash
YouTube video by Distinctive Voices
youtu.be
Concepts worth learning at this moment in time: hydroclimate whiplash and the atmospheric sponge. youtu.be/hLexkPPqo1E