Incredible. Nepal’s Gen Z just elected their prime minister on #Discord.

It shows that when politics is blocked, the internet becomes a public square where people can self-organise & decide. It’s usually the simple, familiar tools that people pick up.

Sometimes, that’s enough to change a country.

Back in Utrecht again and the Catharijnesingel scene still fascinates me. Canal became highway in the ’60s, highway became canal again in 2020. Sixty years of concrete undone, neighborhoods reconnected, water restored. Never too late to admit car-centric planning was a bad idea.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Just visited Schoonschip, Amsterdam’s floating neighbourhood where 100+ ppl live on water. Residents share solar energy & know each other well after 13 years building together. All the kids were out playing in the water. Climate adaptation with so much life. Guess that’s the point.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

PhD completed 🎓 Just defended my doctoral thesis "Designing Computational Methods for Digital Democracy" at @ethz.ch! Huge thanks to my supervisor Dirk Helbing, reviewers @trivikrama.bsky.social & @cesifoti.bsky.social. I got one of these Swiss team-made PhD hats—with a cat casting votes non-stop.

Wholeheartedly enjoyed my time in #FAccT2025 in Athens (not so much the heat wave). It’s an open, welcoming, human-facing, an truly interdisciplinary community where the most timely & crucial questions are being asked and explored. Having a gorgeous city as the backdrop certainly didn’t harm either.

This is what you get when you host a conference in a compact, walkable city- infrastructure for spontaneity. Here we are, a group of #FAccT2025 academics at the top of Athens past midnight, talking about the wild future scenarios of AI, with the Acropolis and Agora glowing below us.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

We’re at #FAccT2025 in the Athens Conservatoire, & I was surprised to find a beautiful mid-century modernist venue. A brutalist building w/ a Greek twist- Pentelic marble, courtyards, long corridors, open foyers. Designed by Ioannis Despotopoulos, the only Greek architect to study at the Bauhaus.

First day at ACM #FAccT 2025 conference in Athens! The venue is beautifully designed with such thoughtful @facct.bsky.social aesthetics. There’s also something quite special about discussing AI fairness and transparency in the birthplace of democracy itself 🏛️

Had a great time sharing our work on how social choice and computational methods can bridge voting and deliberation in the EDDY Digital Democracy conference in Paris. But always find myself missing the swiss lakes on hot days like these!

“AI tends towards uniformity and conformity to the dominant discourse, according to a study by the ETH Zurich”

Best thing about having your research covered in Swiss news is that it would be translated into at least a few languages! Now available in French 😂👇🏾

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