2025 - Week 40 | Etienne's Website

Second week writing weekly notes, I find interesting to anticipate these notes as I see myself reflecting more on what is newsworthy among my readings during the week. I also really appreciated having some people I know reacting to them on Mastodon <3.

What happened in the world#

Another week watching Genocide continue in Gaza. All the boats of the Global Sumud Flotilla were illegally arrested by the Israel authorities on their way to Gaza. In the meantime, the ceasefire negotiations are starting largely led by Israel and the US.
The Gen Z protests are happening all over the world, often under the One Piece banner. After Nepal, we are now seeing large protests in Madagascar or Morocco. I have been particularly interested in the protests in Morocco, where it seems that so far the targets have been the government and social issues and spared the King.
The Trump administration has escalated its attack against civil society and its political opponents in a new dangerous decree targeting specifically antifascist groups. Over 3000 non-profits have signed an open-letter calling this decree a violation of fundamental freedom in America.

What I did#

I attended a meeting with the Canadian Tech Worker Coalition. This decentralized organization was founded in the Bay area to organize tech workers and has local chapters all over the world. In that meeting, I was shocked to discover that after workers unionized, Amazon decided to close its 7 facilities in Quebec, with thousands of employees out of work. It seems that we need unions now more than ever.
I was also invited to talk at a class for journalist master students at Science-Politique Paris. I talked about the usage of digital investigations by journalists and used the Endless Mayfly disinformation campaign as an example of using a mix of different techniques to track an infrastructure.
I also attended an interesting training session on how to write concisely where I discovered George Orwell’s six writing rules.

Reading & listening#

Two important publications on disinformation : first, an update on the latest disinformation campaigns by the Russian group called CopyCop which notably played on French politics with a fake French Royalist party, and Canadian politics with a fake Alberta separatist website. Then, a new fascinating report from the Citizen Lab on a disinformation campaign they attribute to an agency linked with the Israeli government.
On digital investigations, I found this Open Source Munitions Portal very useful to compare traces of weapons in different contexts. Instagram also introduced a new Friends Map that allows to find geotagged stories or posts from people you follow.
This databroker database is a useful tool.
This blogpost by FDroid is really important: the recent policy changes by Google to require approval of side-loaded apps may have some positive benefit to fight against malware and spyware, but it is also going to jeopardize a whole ecosystem of free and open source apps available outside the play store. They are calling to put pressure on politicians (especially in Europe) to force Google to change their policy.
I was impressed by the likely geolocation of the Rubicon Russian headquarter based on very minor details in videos from inside the building. Solid journalist work!
I really enjoyed watching Maria Ressa speaking at the UN and The Daily Show (even if the ratio of serious discussion / jokes is a bit low for me)
Finally, a report by la Cour des Comptes in France has criticized the organization of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games with a budget underestimated by several billions and an estimation of economic benefits largely overestimated.

This week in music#

I really enjoyed this 2020 album “Aralkum” by Galya Bisengalieva who was inspired by the ecological disaster of the Aral Sea. Here is the description provided on the Bandcamp page:

The shrinking of the Aral Sea has been called one of the worst environmental disasters on the planet. Situated in Central Asia, it was once the fourth largest lake in the world, but the rivers that fed the Aral were diverted by soviet irrigation projects from the 1960s. it has been disappearing ever since. By 1997, it had diminished to ten percent of its original size, and satellite images captured by NASA in august of 2014 revealed that – for the first time in modern history – the eastern basin of the aral sea had dried up completely, a region now known as the Aralkum desert.

As the Aral sea dried up, fisheries and the communities that depended on them collapsed. the increasingly salty water became polluted with fertilisers and pesticides. The dust blowing from the exposed lakebed, contaminated with agricultural chemicals, became a public health hazard. The salty dust blew off the lakebed and settled onto fields, degrading the soil. croplands were flushed with increasingly larger volumes of river water. The loss of the mitigating influence of such a large body of water made winters colder, and summers hotter and drier.

In a last-ditch effort to save the lake, Kazakhstan constructed the Kokaral Dam, separating the northern and southern parts. the dam, spanning across 12 kilometres, separates the two bodies of water and prevents a downward outflow. Thanks to the Kokaral, fisheries in the north have rebounded, in spite of it limiting the flow into the south. Water levels recovered notably between 2005 and 2006, with minute improvements recorded throughout the remainder of the time period.

The album is split into three parts: pre-disaster, calamity, future.