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The Foush Report

Join Digital Anthropologist and Author Rahaf Harfoush for a weekly dispatch that covers culture, technology, leadership and creativity. Come for the analysis, and stay for the memes.

Galileo Galilei
Featured Post

Delete, Censor, Vanish: The Disappearing Act of Data & Culture

Hey, People love to say data is the new oil. But oil is just a resource—extracted, refined, burned. Data is different. It’s our DNA, our values, our knowledge. It doesn’t just power industries; it shapes reality. And watching that reality be erased in real time is terrifying. The Trump administration is systematically deleting public health records, LGBTQ health data, and climate research—gutting the CDC’s databases under the guise of bureaucracy. Meanwhile, Elon Musk illegally accessed...

C'est quoi DeepSeek, le ChatGPT chinois qui bat tous les records ? -  Numerama

Hi, January always feels like an entire year crammed into four weeks. For me, January is about laying the groundwork—planning, structuring, getting clear on what I want this year to look like. But February? February is when my first quarter truly begins. The wheels start turning. The energy starts shifting. February 2nd marks Imbolc, the Pagan holiday that sits at the midpoint between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. Which means: the light is returning. So if January felt like a...

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Hi, It’s been a strange couple of days (or years, really?). Once again, we’re standing at a split in the timeline, moving forward into a distinctly different future. I can’t help but imagine the parallel universe where the American election results turned out differently—what would it feel like to be living in that version of the world right now? Buckle Up for More Global Turbulence Currently, I’m in Paris for meetings ahead of France’s AI Action Summit this February. Technology is moving so...

Transcript: Mark Zuckerberg Announces Major Changes to Meta's Content  Moderation Policies and Operations | TechPolicy.Press

Hi! Happy New Year! January has become my on-ramp to the year—a deliberate slowdown, where I’ve learned to resist the pull of travel and big projects. It’s a month I’ve carved out for myself, to step back and think about my business, my goals, and the dreams I want to nurture over the next twelve months. It's the perfect time to start thinking about the future after taking the last few weeks of December to be still and reflect. But I’d be lying if I said stepping into 2025 didn’t feel heavy....

Hi!! I know I said you wouldn’t be hearing from me until 2025, but here I am—popping into your inbox one last time before the year ends. Over on Instagram, I shared some snapshots of my planning documents for the year ahead, and enough of you asked for a copy that I decided to send it out here. Because remember, as a subscriber and a member of my community, you always get my best stuff first. 2024 Year End Review .pdf The PDF is simple: just a couple of pages designed to help you reflect on...

Thich Nhat Hanh

Hi hi, I’m back at the Farm, where I’ll be hunkering down in hibernation mode for the next several weeks. The holidays have always felt like a complicated season for me—equal parts nostalgia and a quiet ache. As a child, the magic felt automatic, effortless, as if the universe itself conspired to string lights, bake cookies, and make snow fall at just the right time. But as I got older, I realized that the magic was never spontaneous. It was crafted. Curated. Facilitated by my mother,...

The Meme Glorification of Luigi Mangione

Hi, I'm headed back to Paris after finishing my final event of the year in Las Vegas and —of course—my last flight home is delayed. Classic, right? To top it off, I somehow managed to leave my AirPods in a completely different terminal. Cool. Now I’m in the lounge, bonding with fellow stranded travelers over a glass of wine and collective exasperation with flying. There’s something oddly hilarious about how these little disasters turn complete strangers into temporary besties. Delayed...

How You Goin? I'm currently in Sydney after an unforgettable eight days in Japan, a trip that combined awe, reflection, and meaningful connection. It marked the culmination of a yearlong collaboration with researchers from South Korea, France, Japan, and Taiwan, organized by the French Mission in Taipei. Focused on AI and digital culture, this initiative has been incredibly helpful on informing my own perspective, and meeting face-to-face after a year of virtual conversations was a powerful...

Hi! I'm currently in Dubai, where I had the chance to talk with Chief Technology Officers about something that feels increasingly urgent: the quiet but profound ways that new tools shape an organization’s culture. It's fascinating—each feature a tool has, each workflow it supports, impacts not just how work gets done, but how people connect, collaborate, and ultimately, how they feel within the workplace. Technology isn’t neutral; it has a personality, a set of values, even biases embedded in...

Hey you, Ooooooooof. I know I’m not alone in still feeling the weight of the American election results. There’s a particular kind of exhaustion that follows, the kind that comes not just from processing what’s happened but from seeing so clearly what’s ahead. Right now, I’m back at the Farm for a few days before I head out on my last round of trips for the year, and it’s here, in the quiet, that I’ve been able to lean into something that feels like hibernation. Not to escape, exactly, but to...