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
My nephew, now close to 5, is growing fast, and Sinem and I want to see him as many times as possible before he loses his baby charm. My sister and her husband are currently stationed in Nizip, Gaziantep, serving as a judge and a prosecutor, respectively. So, for the weekend, we flew to Gaziantep … Read more
I must have blogged about this. In every few years, I see this: This is the world’s most dangerous road On one of my visits, I took my uncle and his family to Uzungöl through this route. My uncle was frustrated that I was driving slowly, so he took control of the car. I am glad … Read more
I just came back from Ankara. Sinem and I love Ankara, so whenever we have time, we stop by Ankara. This time, we mostly settled in Çankaya, in our favorite hotel, Hotel Jinnah- but unfortunately, this will be the last time we will stay there as the hotel has been poorly maintained. Anyway, my excuse … Read more
I wasn’t a person to travel a lot. In my first two years in Houston, I saw only a few places except the Rice campus. In order to motivate myself to see more places, I began to collect local newspapers at that time. But I changed a lot. I wouldn’t call myself a traveler, but … Read more
While we were flying back to İstanbul from Adana after an intense day of media training, Sinem took these photos. Turkish Airlines should pay us:) Taken by Iphone latest model. Now we are in Amsterdam to celebrate our first marriage anniversary. Maybe more photos will come!
Last week I was in Eskişehir attending the 5th New Media Studies Conference. The conference is organized by an association, Alternatif Bilişim Derneği. I have been a member from the outset. The association, which is not too active nowadays, was a pioneer in internet freedom causes and now organizes biannual conferences and publishes ebooks with … Read more