One of the big tells of a scam is the false urgency. Whether it's phishing emails, or the random dudes showing up to pave your driveway because they've got some extra material from a job in the neighborhood at some guy named John's house. The fake time pressure tries to bypass your reasoning process, make you worry you'll miss out, get you to move ahead without fully thinking.

Now listen to this AI bro talk about AI: "Yash Kadadi, a 23-year-old start-up founder and Stanford dropout, summarized the sentiment of his peers: “There’s only a matter of time before GPT-7 comes out and eats all software and you can no longer build a software company. Or the best version of Tesla Optimus comes out,” and can perform all physical labor as well. In that world, this year is a human’s “last chance to be a part of the innovation.”"

"A Human's "last  chance to be part of the innovation."" That sounds amazing. I can just fuck off all day? Would I need to rush to get into that?  "Eats all software?" Sure man, if you don't need the software to work. Or it's ok if your software deletes itself every so often. But yeah, of course, those fixes, they're right around the corner, and that's why you need to invest now. Except for the AI companies. “No the software gods that can write all software clearly won't be able to create AI for you. That's why you need my AI start-up. AGI for everything except the one very specific thing my company does. Wait, why are you laughing at me?”

But sure, AI will revolutionize work. As long as you don't need to do that work during peak hours. Or at a time where the model "upgrade" has broken existing functionality. Or with a model where the true cost far outstrips your budget now that you're being charged a more realistic price. As long as local residents are ignored and we build baby, build. Oh, wait, we can’t actually build the data centers anyway. Demand is not driving supply. We can’t even supply the meger demand today because there’s simply not economic incentives to do so, unless the rest of us carry the costs for the 1%.

We don’t need more data centers, actually. We could instead invest in schools, transit, and free and high quality care offerings by the government. AI cannot be a world changing technology if it requires destroying our economy, our communities, and our ability to recognize what is true and false.

If these 1% douchebags want to invest in a world changing technology, solar, wind, and batteries are sitting right there. An actually revolutionary technology that will not only allow us to not destroy the planet, but also represents the first major innovations on our century old electrical system. Way more upside, very little downside, and it actually improves people’s lives, both in the global north and the global south, something that no AI product can attempt to claim. Instead, we’re passing 75% electricity cost increases on to all of us, to pay for data center load that benefits almost no one. At the very least, make the data center’s pay their own way for transmission and generation and ban onsite dirty gas generators. I guarantee you, they’d stop building tomorrow. That tells you how these projects are fatally flawed.

There’s an argument that AI will be a tool for equity. But if we’re going to entertain that, we have to stop pumping toxic chemicals into the air in Black neighborhoods in Memphis, Tennessee, and start building data centers and methane turbines on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. And we have failed to address equity for centuries in the US. So why the rush to push AI forward, right now? Why the false urgency?

We see the same scam of urgency in the justifications for genocide in Gaza, or the ethnic cleansing of Lebanon, or the illegal strikes of aggression in Iran. Hamas was planning more October 7 style attacks. Hezbollah was plotting to strike or invade, or something. Iran was weeks away from having a nuclear bomb, just as the prophet Bibi Netanyahu has warned us for the past 3 decades. Months away, weeks away, months, weeks, time has no meaning when you’re the imperial colonizer. But at the same time, time is on the side of the resistance.

Reading

Untitled by Ashley Woodfolk

They're pulling the skeletons of children out of the rubble in Gaza.
They're pulling the small and broken skeletons of children out of the rubble in Gaza
and my son wants to watch a video on youtube
and my daughter wants to hear the same song again.
She can't even pronounce half the lyrics.

They're pulling skeletons of children out of the rubble in Gaza,
and I have to drop off my daughter at daycare.
I have to pick up my son from school.

He doesn't want to brush his teeth
and she has a tantrum and refuses to get into her car seat
and I think these are stressful moments.
He can't find his birthday money
and she can't find her blankey
and they think these are emergencies.

She wants to wear a backpack to bed
and he has swim class in the morning
and his picture day is coming up
and she needs to be potty trained by summer
and I can't find the energy to care.

We make them breakfast and lunch and dinner
and they don't eat it.
All they want is applesauce and french fries.
And I wonder how many of the skeletons in Gaza
belonged to children who starved.

They're pulling the skeletons of children out of the rubble in Gaza
and my daughter is hugging my leg
and my son is climbing onto my back
and for a moment I want to be free of them.
But then I remember.

They're
pulling
the skeletons
of children
out of the rubble
in Gaza.

And the mothers are claiming their children's remains
by a pair crushed glasses still on their cracked skulls
or their tattered clothes
or their matted hair.

They're pulling skeletons of children out of the rubble in Gaza
and I wonder,
would I know it was my son because of his hair?
He's always had so much hair.
Would I know it was my daughter's favorite Mickey Mouse shirt,
even if it was ripped and dirty
and only clinging to a tiny ribcage?

I would know.
I would know them even if barely anything
was left of them.
They're pulling the skeletons of children out of the rubble in Gaza
and I hug my children tight enough
to feel their still beating hearts
still safe inside their bodies
behind their still hidden bones.

Untitled by Ashley Woodfolk on Threads

Trapped by Mobs on Jerusalem Day: Far-right Jewish Rage Didn't Spare Journalists by Linda Dayan

If celebrating your illegal annexation and decades long occupation by parading through your occupied territory under heavily armed guard wasn’t fucked enough, rioting while doing it is an extra level of irredeemable rot.

"You need to stop filming, you're hurting Israel's image," a young Haredi man told me in English in Jerusalem's Old City, as Israeli teenagers began to stream in ahead of the annual Jerusalem Day flag march. Beside him, young boys, no older than 12-years-old, tried to cover my phone's camera with their hands and kippot. A group of far-right teens had gathered outside Damascus Gate, the main entrance to the Muslim Quarter, chanting "death to Arabs."

"I think what's hurting Israel's image is that they're doing this, not that I'm filming it. I wouldn't be filming it if they weren't doing it," I responded.
"You might be right," he reasoned, "but filming this gives us a bad name abroad."

Jerusalem Day is a national holiday marking the liberation of the city from Jordanian control after the Six-Day War in 1967. Each year on this day, mobs of far-right youths parade through the Old City, harassing and assaulting Arab shopkeepers

…

Earlier on Thursday, at around 1 P.M., mobs had begun to roam - teenagers in thickly knitted kippot and streaming peyot, the youngest among them no older than 11. Despite police blockades, they had managed to come through in droves, seeking out shops that remained open. Most shopkeepers in the Muslim Quarter close their shops, fearing violence.

On Al-Hanqa alley, a group ran through while banging on the shops' closed shutters. They approached an open shop, and the calamity began: shouting, throwing chairs, glass bottles flying in either direction. Activists from the Jewish-Arab grassroots movement Standing Together, there to help protect Arab residents of the city, tried to put themselves between the mob and the Arab men, but the violence continued.

Trapped by Mobs on Jerusalem Day: Far-right Jewish Rage Didn't Spare Journalists - Israel News

I Thought I Was Just Caught in the Crossfire, but Hadn't Realized That I, Wearing My Press Card, Was Also a Target. When Police Finally Arrived, It Was to Push Reporters Away Rather Than Defend Us. 'Go, Get Out of Here!' Shouted a Border Policeman as He Shoved Me

The fight against AI datacenters isn’t just about tech – it’s about democracy by Astra Taylor and Saul Levin

This plethora of ills represent the downsides that aren’t communicated when developers come to town, and that too many politicians remain reluctant to face. Farmers turning down millions for their land is less surprising when you consider the threats posed to the places they call home.

While some dismiss this as nimbyism, local fights help create conditions that are far more conducive to broader reforms, including basic AI controls. Most people aren’t enthusiastic about the bot-filled privacy-invading world Silicon Valley seems hellbent on building, and poll after poll shows that the vast majority of Americans want the industry to be regulated. Right now, there are more rules on opening a salon or a burrito shop than an AI startup.

The anti-datacenter movement, which has popularized the call for pauses or moratoriums on datacenter development, is essential to amassing the political leverage required to implement popular and sensible safety measures. It’s a demand that plays hardball with an industry accustomed to steamrolling the public. The national moratorium bill recently introduced by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for example, is explicitly designed to force AI regulation – the ban would lift as soon as laws were put in place that actually constrain datacenter harms.

…

The anti-datacenter movement, in other words, isn’t just about the future of a novel technology. It’s about the future of democracy. It’s about who controls the economy and whether regular people have a say in the decisions that affect them. Given how we’ve all been denied a voice in this technological upheaval, everyone should be cheering the movement on. Or better yet, joining the fight.

The fight against AI datacenters isn’t just about tech – it’s about democracy | Astra Taylor and Saul Levin | The Guardian

Claims of nimbyism are a misunderstanding: the movement is about whether regular people have a say in fundamental decisions

Data centers drive 76% surge in PJM power prices by Christa Marshall

Power prices in the nation’s largest grid market jumped almost 76 percent in the first quarter year-over-year, showcasing how energy demand driven by data centers is remaking the economy across the mid-Atlantic and Midwest.

“The price impacts on customers have been very large and are not reversible,” the market monitor said. “The price impacts will be even larger in the near term unless the issues associated with data center load are addressed in a timely manner.”

Data centers drive 76% surge in PJM power prices - E&E News by POLITICO

The findings highlight inflationary pressures on electricity costs in mid-Atlantic and Midwestern states. “The price impacts on customers have been very

Where Are All The Data Centers? by Ed Zitron

You’ve heard plenty about data centers getting opposed and canceled — how about ones that fully opened? No, really, if you’ve heard about them please get in touch, because it’s really difficult to find them.

Why don’t we know? This is apparently the single most important technology movement since whatever the last justification somebody made up was, shouldn’t we have a tangible grasp? Because the way I see it, if these things aren’t coming online at the rate that people think, we have to start asking for fundamental clarity from NVIDIA about where the GPUs are, and when they’re coming online. 

Where Are All The Data Centers?

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Proportional Representation Would Fix That by Dennis Lytton

Republicans made constitutional hardball their mission under Obama and Biden. The new 21^st century filibuster became a norm. The Supreme Court began to erode long established civil and voting rights protections.

All the while simple statutory or rules fixes—principally filibuster elimination and Supreme Court expansion—could have been undertaken under the trifectas that each Democratic president since the end of the Cold War enjoyed during their first two years.

But we told ourselves that the norms will hold. McConnell will allow Obama to appoint Scalia's replacement. After he didn't, we told ourselves that if we did expand the Supreme Court or get rid of the filibuster that after our inevitable loss in the  future that the Republicans would get back at us.

…

The inevitability of the president losing control of Congress in the midterms is called the thermostatic election cycle. We can end that inevitability by changing the law that effectively mandates our strict two-party system. Instead, we can have a vibrant multiparty Congress where no single party has a majority and where the fascists who hijacked a zombie GOP are marginalized.The center-left would be expanded by new enthusiasm for real choices. A responsible center-right could emerge from the ashes of the GOP, joined to “responsible” small-d democrats of the Romney/Bulwark variety. The sharp urban-rural electoral divide between conservatives and liberals is greatly exacerbated by single-member districts. Prairie populists and urban conservatives would emerge under multipartyism.

Proportional representation (PR) is a family of voting systems that replace the winner-take-all principle and replace them with a formula that ensures, to some extent, that seats are distributed in proportion to their votes. Under single-member districts, if the second-place finisher gets 49% of the votes, they get 0% of the seats. Under PR, they would get approximately 49% of the seats. Sounds fairer, right?

Proportional Representation Would Fix That

We can change the structure of elections in America to make them more free, more democratic, and more fair to every voter.