I am writing while we wait for our flight to Istanbul. It is the end of our month-long US trip. I want to list a few apps or services I used during the trip. Nothing too unfamiliar, though! I thank Booking.com. As you might know, Booking.com is not very useful for Turkish users in … Read more
After a relaxing and nostalgic stay in Houston, we flew to LA and drove to Irvine to meet with Kaan and İrem, my former students, who are residents here. I felt less nostalgic. Still, a very productive semester spent here reminds me of good times. Now, on our way to San Fransisco to meet with … Read more
Oh this lovely BBQ place (!) Sinem and I had dinner at Goode Company, where I had the taste of beef brisket for the first time! It should be 20 years ago. We had a lovely outing and had seafood with Julie and her friend Amir in Galveston. It is lovely to catch up with Julie … Read more
This is our second week on our US trip. Jessica was such a great host back in Detroit; we just chilled out and enjoyed our time. I will write about where I visited there, but now in Houston, I have strong feelings of nostalgia! Sinem and I visited the Rice University campus. The classes … Read more
Our long-awaited one-month trip to the US begins now. The plane takes off in an hour. We have a relatively flexible plan. Chilling out more than a frenzy of sightseeing in our minds- Well, Sinem is definitely in that mode. I am thinking of my Google Maps saved list.
We had a productive roundtable on AI with a full house. It was one of the few panels/roundtables on AI, and although most anthropologists keep their distance from emerging technologies, we might have had a good reception (I was told the STS conference in Amsterdam just before the EASA would satisfy me with lots of … Read more
The official site is slightly clunky, but you can get it all there. My session is tomorrow. I have asked the chatGPT to categorize the conference topics: Top Topics at the EASA 2024 Conference Doing and Undoing Mobility: Several panels address the dynamics of mobility, immobility, and migration, often from an anthropological lens. Anthropology of … Read more
Sinem and I have been planning a month-long trip to the US. It is all a vacation, but catch-up with friends. I will probably blog as it happens, but let me give you the outline. We will first stay in Detroit. Thanks to Jessica, who has been an early reader of this blog and has … Read more
I will attend the massive biannual meeting of European anthropology. I am presenting in a panel related to anthropology and artificial intelligence, where I focus on the localization of AI. Surprisingly, I have never been to Barcelona, and I hope to explore it a bit. However, I am scared of the anti-tourism movement (!). ## … Read more
Tripadvisor offers an AI-based trip builder at this address. In the old days, Google had a mobile app called Google Trips. This was replaced by Google Travel. The new tools do not offer the same functionalities and are overly profit-oriented, a symbol of Google’s transformation. I loved Google Trips so much! TripAdvisor has brought back … Read more
POINT organizers were just great. We felt at home, productive meetings, exchanging ideas, and some sightseeing… One of the last places I meant to see was Gazi Husrev-beg’s library When you enter the library, the smell of books hits you. I did some reading there with many in the reading room but did not … Read more
At the moment, we have to pay 150 TRY when we travel abroad. Rumor has it that it will be increased to 3000 TRY (nearly 90 USD)! After unimaginable levels of extravagance and corruption that still last in government, Mehmet Şimşek is after our already squeezed travel budgets.
I have landed today in Sarajevo. It is a lovely city that I first visited nearly ten years ago. It was again for a POINT conference. The conference will be followed by IFCN’s summit, and maybe I will see some of the fact-checker friends. The program is very loaded, and I guess I will not … Read more
In the last three weeks, I virtually had no time to document what I was up to. During this physically tiring but mentally satisfying period, I attended several conferences, training programs, and countless graduate thesis meetings. The period started with our Wikipedia event in Arhavi, which I have already blogged about. In four days after, … Read more
Last weekend, I attended the Wikipedians’ gathering in Arhavi, a lovely Black Sea town in Artvin. A group of Georgian Wikipedians also participated in the meeting hosted by Artvin’s only private high school, Artvin Koleji. Wikipedians are very agreeable and hard-working people. There were many young users, and I hope we conveyed the message to … Read more