death by data center 😵

On the rising damage posed by developing technologies and thinking about the great downsizing of meaning, expression, etc.

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Trump injured but ‘fine’
Trump assassination attempt suspect named
Witness tells BBC he saw gunman on roof
“Shooting just happened”
“A remarkable photo”
As has been the case with the 2024 election, this is a defining story and “changes everything.” The conversation (memes, takes, political opining) have been suffocating, as has been the simping (“hardest pictures of all time”). This is also a disinformation k-hole, as many mused on it feeling staged and pointing fingers at the assumed shooter (the falsely accused even spoke out on it). We will never hear the end of this and, as you’ll see in the BBC video and the shooting video, the handling of things was a Trumpian comedy of errors. One person died in the incident. The RNC starts tomorrow too.

Clooney: I Love Biden. We Need a New Nominee.
Biden pulling out all the stops – will it work?
Hill Democrats remain divided
See above but: I’m not going to write a lot about “this” as I’ve spent the last two weeks pushing my face through a sheet of glass thinking about it. Things are looking rough. We’re very close to Kamala-core and this is really coming down to ego, pride, etc. Yes, I feel bad: to have aspired to this one job, to do it well, only to get told “Grandpa, go to bed.” just stinks. But also? Grandpa, I have a recliner, comfy blankets, and some tea for you. And after yesterday? I won’t be asking nicely anymore.

RNC approves Trump-backed platform
Prepare yourself: the RNC is next week, replete with such political heavy hitters like Amber Rose. Shit is bad. (Granted: if the Democrats wait until after Trump is confirmed to swap to Kamala, that would be great — because then they are locked into those bronze handcuffs of insanity.) (Not that they’d have it any different.)

What Are Arab American Women to Do?
I’m surprised more stories like this haven’t emerged, about Arab Americans and the really awful choice they have this November. As this article shows, none will be voting Democrat. (That doesn’t mean they’re voting Republican, but that shows the socio-political chasm that remains.)

Leftists win, but no party wins majority
Macron breaks his silence on election
"Major world elections in 2024"
ANYWAY!!!! Given all the American election goop it was hard to forget that this breakthrough happened a week ago.

Left-wing coalition hope to intro 90% on rich
After Election, Voters Resigned to Cost Crisis
It would be wild if taxes went up that much in France. Things are bad in the states, yes, but the American mind cannot comprehend class stratification of the European variety. It’s some feudal shit. Hence the voter volatility!

Crippling power outages and heat turn deadly
“Houston on day four without power”
“me & #hurricaneberyl have beef”
The situation in Houston is…bad. There was no power for most of the week!! And there’s no infrastructure to support updates! People had to go on the fucking Whataburger app to understand outages!!!!!!! This isn’t to mention rising heat, both this week and historically.

"The magnificent mind of Emmanuel Macron"
“American Fascism”
Two good magazine covers.

I have a habit of emailing myself short story ideas. With the title as the subject and a sentence or two as the body, I tell myself this story idea so I can extract it from my mind when I have the time. These stories sit in a folder, silently auditioning for my attention.

One had the subject line “turbine short story” and the body was a recap of a 2021 Guardian story. “A French court has recognised ‘turbine syndrome’ after a couple complained their health was damaged by living near a windfarm,” the story explained. The couple lived near six turbines which they believe caused headaches, insomnia, heart irregularities, depression, dizziness, tinnitus, and nausea. This syndrome is due to the turbines’ whirr (“comparable to a washing machine continually turning”) and their flashing white lights. I imagined a story of the gradual process of insanity that could come with “going off the grid.” I imagined this older couple so clearly in my mind, two gentle souls committed to caring for these turbines in the service of helping themselves and nearby towns. The promise of cleaner energy, at the expense of the slow eating away of one’s brain. A compelling, Bug style descent into madness. Unlike many of the stories in my folder, I actually tried to write this one. I called it “Turbine Madness” and it quickly fell apart, as I realized the emphasis was in the wrong place, as this was ultimately about green technology killing people. The emphasis of harm was in the wrong place, akin to anti-vax “Just asking questions!” ideology. Turning alternative technologies into boogie monsters wasn’t a good look — so I canned it.

I also realized something obvious: there are greater, stranger tragedies around us. The 2021 wind turbine story is weird and speaks to greater safety measures around developing technology — but also reveals how good tech can be vilified as bad tech is given permission to run wild, without question. If profit is in the picture, who gives a shit if a few people lose their minds or melt in the name of techno profiteering? This is a storyline of the decade that scratches my brain every time I see a headline: if you learn how to see them, you’ll notice turbine madness isn’t uncommon.

Take Hood County, Texas, which was the subject of a huge TIME magazine story this week. “TIME spoke to more than 40 people in the Granbury area who reported a medical ailment that they believe is connected to the arrival of the Bitcoin mine,” the story explains. Hypertension, heart palpitations, chest pain, vertigo, tinnitus, migraines, panic attacks: this is what people suffered by living next to Bitcoin mines. And what does this look like? Extracting bitcoin involves a process called “proof-of-work mining,” a complicated and technical system that requires constant computer power which generates significant heat. Hence: constant fans blown on machinery, as machines “mine” a niche kinda sorta currency that is marred by scams. As you can imagine, all this — the personal distress, the threatened health, the nicheness of the currency — contributes to the well documented environmentally poor practices of mining. For context, the work of just 130 bitcoin mines in the United States used 2.3% of the nation’s energy in 2023. Globally, bitcoin mines used as much power as the entire continent of Australia. That’s not-great!

Of course this isn’t just a bitcoin problem: bitcoin is an easy target. The bigger bad is AI: it’s just as bad and, while the individual health effects as in Texas are to be seen, the environmental impacts are obvious — and becoming a larger and larger issue. Look to Chile, which was eyed by Google to build data centers only to have construction put on pause as it would overly tax local aquifers. Why? Because the technology is resource intensive — and people need that water. Google has lots of data centers worldwide, which are used to power things like cloud computing, which already takes up lots of energy. Like Bitcoin, “the cloud” takes up 2% of the national electricity usage (but, unlike Bitcoin, this is widely used and, uhh, useful). AI complicates all this in that the tech requires more intense use of resources that are on top of what is already being used, hence data center booms. Something as simple as adding AI to Google search transforms the energy use from half a watt of electricity for a regular, non-AI search to three watts of electricity. That’s equivalent to talking on the phone for one hour, all consumed in seconds. Stories of AI and related technology’s energy use circulates almost every month, which are all alarm bells that go unheard over AI Toad screeching that Ice Spice fart song and fantasies of Terminator 2. While stories have yet to emerge like Bitcoin mines in Texas (or wind turbines in France for that matter), we’re living in the moments before such stories hitting, where the science fictional intangibilities of technology craft droughts and desertification. (Not to mention the threat of, um, AI infiltrating health care services.) Google alone is already off its environmental targets due to AI. What about its myriad competitors? What about lesser AI companies? What are we to make local communities around the world who must fend for themselves as the technocracy pillages their land? Who is being sacrificed so you can think less?

Placed atop of a mounting disinformation apocalypse, these problems are like meteors being directed at the planet by the planet itself and, while we sit back and watch emerging tech grow with their cute lil star symbol machines, local, national, and international communities are being reshaped. Think about it in terms of digital fast fashion brands: when SHEIN uploads a mind-boggling 6,000 new styles a day, creating AI-generated styles that mimic real trends, the environmental weight of these literal, physical products go literally unseen as these items are not in stores. They’re intangible. They’re unreal. The sheer amount of resources disappears, because it’s all in your phone and not in front of you. It’s all happening “somewhere else.” It’s the same with Amazon, the same with Temu, same with all the other shit sellers out there — and it’s the same thing with all the tech that makes our life “work.” “Areas built enough solar and wind to replace their coal plants — and they can't now: demand has surged so much that renewables are just acting as a supplement to fossil fuels,” climate activist Sage Lenier explained at the AI for Good summit last month. “Utilities will have to decide who gets energy for air conditioning during a heatwave: a few thousand homes — or a single data center?”

Thinking back to my wind turbine story, the idea is too cute — Quaint, even! — as the bigger, nonfiction story that is emerging blows my little imagined couple out of orbit, as real people get grilled under magnifying glasses so that Sydney Sweeney can cringe at a fake version of herself, so fake Democrats can be built to spread disinformation. AI slop is funny until you realize it’s two unreal morons saying “Exactlyyyyy” to each other in the comments: both are AI constructs programmed to talk to each in the land above the mines, as all their circuits rub together invisibly, whirring and whooshing at each other as coolants pass. Someone nearby faints, parched, ears ringing, heart and head pounding. All from sounds and sights that they had no power to identify.

There are benefits to couples sleeping separately
My husband & I have been sleeping separately for years
Cameron Diaz: ‘We should normalize separate bedrooms’
Couples with separate bedrooms say it helps
I Love You, but I Don't Want to Sleep With You
I have had ENOUGH. I don’t care that you and your spouse don’t sleep in the same bed! Get them a surgery for a deviated septum!! Stop making us all have to hear about how y’all sleep in different beds and bedrooms and sometimes fuck in one of them beds!!! If I hear the term “sleep divorce” one more time, I will pee on my computer!!!!!!!! Also I regret to inform you that this is a storyline in All Fours (which sort of undercuts these stories, by the by).

Jack Schlossberg Is Just Being Himself
"cool thing when actual writers cant get jobs"
Who is shocked Jack “Weird Kennedy” Schlossberg got a gig at Vogue? I’m not! But I also know how Big Media™ works and I would be foolish to think this shit doesn’t happen every day, or that the halls of many publications aren’t stacked with similar legacy children. Now the big question: what will girly pop have to say about the Trump death rally?

Students Target Teachers in TikTok Attack
This is a sort of bellwether, seemingly of both Gen A’s mania (and undercurrent of chaotic evil). It’s also what happens when kids have unrestricted access to technology. Really fucked up stuff! More on this on Tuesday, as we have a very special post coming 👀

100 Best Books of the 21st Century
Literary Luminaries Share Their Top Books
These people at the Times are going to make us all go crazy and fight in the street because of this list. Granted, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow being included — But only at 76!!! — is inspired. I also can’t believe The Friend didn’t break the top fifty? In any event, this — like the Apple Music 100 from earlier this year — proves the utility of a canon sweeping stunts as such. It takes time, bravery, and taste to pull off, which most brands do not have.

Why are so many female pop stars flopping?
If anything, this is a reminder that real people — a la, people who aren’t toxically online and or gay — listen to much different music. This is why the new Katy song will probably work (despite incredible, justified, trendy hate) and why everyone in this AP video picks different songs.

Charli xcx Forever
The Brat era is over imo and this expansive interview with Charli feels like a fitting end.

THE SUBSTANCE Official Trailer
I didn’t realize this…was going to be so stylish. I will buy out twenty theaters to watch this again and again.

criticism is NOT dead 😤
Also of interest this week, which I am sure all of you saw: an interview went up with icon

Philip Sherburne

about writing, music, criticism, “the industry,” and lots more. A must-read, imo!!

TRL™ — Trend Report Live
Sharing again this week: Trend Report™ (online and offline) events are coming — and I’m surveying all y’all readers to get an idea of how to shape things!! If you have a minutes, would love your thoughts 🥺

We read books until there were movies until there were shows until there was social media. Things get smaller and smaller when it comes to entertainment, moving from a story that you spent hours and days to unravel, to envision action in your head, to six seconds that replay for minutes, ending as quickly as they start, looping upon themself to chew ideas over and over and over until the story became phrase, a reply. A book and a meme are very different but a book and a meme provide the same thing: joy, experience, expression — but how long should such pleasures last? Weeks in your life? Seconds? Does duration matter if the end result is the same?

Letters to emails to text messages. I get one word emails from people of blood relations and 3000 character texts from friends I haven’t seen in years. I have a handful of people in my life who will send multi-paragraph emails every few months, perhaps once a year, which feel like a blog post made for me. What happened where they are? Who is the crush they have at work? How is it being a new parent? Did you know that so-and-so died? I write long notes back, most of the time, if I have the time — and there is always a delay. I want to spend that time giving them the time. I could just text! But it’s more fun to take the time, to go long, to wrap quills around my fingers and drag out ideas. My niece and nephew sent me letters in the mail, to tell me about their summers. They’ve been on my dining table for two weeks. I keep thinking I need to write back. I send them gifs on the kid-friendly texting app my mother got them on. Will that suffice for now?

The telegraph became the telephone became the audio message. Would I have liked the telegraph? It feels like it would have been a game, both to send and receive, like learning a language that is expressed through the body. Little pulses of fingers. Buzzing ideas. Did people at the time connect the telegraph to the telephone? Were they horrified to hear the disembodied voices of family, friends, and lovers? How did it feel to say “hello” for the first time? People send audio messages and I always think I like them until I get them, where I allow them to sit within my texts to rot. They’re bombs of intimacy, where I can hear someone clearing their throat, chewing, multi-tasking, doing something else while trying to talk to me. Am I obligated to send an audio message back? What if I don’t want to? I take days to get back to them. The information has expired, all because their little voice scared my little voice, as if they became too real, nearly corporal before me. It would be fun to send one back, as if we’re forming an audiobook together — but something about the medium seizes me in the same way that making a TikTok seizes me. People have to see me? Hear me? Is someone going to say I sound like a girl? Why do I think that’s bad? How did such a stupid thing get inside my bones, to make me feel dumb and small all these years later?

A visit becomes a Facetime — and that’s fine. It’s too far, there’s not enough time or money and the planet is dying. We send calendar invites and trade timing to figure it out. No one ever just calls, not that I want them to. I like the planning of it. I was an assistant in television for almost three years and the motions of confirmations, of getting it on paper, of planning and anticipating are a part of how I operate. Or is that just an uptightness? Neurodivergence? My being a Taurus? Am I too controlling? Why do I watch calls go to voicemail instead of picking up the phone? Is that the promise of technology, to get you so scared of your own physical functions that you no longer use them? Is that why they keep inventing machines do human things for us? When was the last time I visited someone anyway? It’s been a few years, I think.

Spiritual leaders turned into thinkers then celebrities, who are now creators, influencers. I saw the movie Downsizing a few years ago and I feel like I was the only one who saw it. A quaint sci-fi tale about making everything smaller, about escaping and finding problems: you can minimize things all you want but they still exist — perhaps in the wrong form too. People are still people no matter what form they take. It’s easy to forget that. “I don’t want to see your Hampton’s vlog, I don’t want to shop your Amazon storefront,” someone says on TikTok. “I want to watch you go to a park without headphones, without AirPod Pros on your scalp. I want to see you sit in the sun for two hours….I don’t want to see any more products.”

"HARRIS: We did it Joe!"
“Joe to Jill”
“HOLLERING”
“Weiner is gone”
“Honestly, Biden saying”
“Joe Biden as a Bratz doll”
Best Biden antics Tweets.

“she oy misters in every language”
"high as fuck trying to speak spanish"
“kids walking out of despicable me”
Mia Goth speaking Portuguese was definitely a highlight of the week (even if she literally kicked an extra).

"I now pronouns you"
“The people have spoken”
"Guy who lives downtown"
“Party rocking with”
Some good Tweets from this week. The second one is very corecore, the last one is old but I am obsessed.

“My dad just got promoted to partner”
Great post. Need me a boyfriend lawyer.

“POV you’re at the Charli XCX jukebox musical”
"Excerpts from Charli XCX: A New Musical"
These posts are so frustratingly bad-good.

“Baseball is the best sport.”
In my mind, that’s Chris Black holding the dog.

"the best trade deal in history"
hell yeah (*cries*)

"It changes when"
It honestly changes the longer you look at it. Ay caramba!

"Tiesto cap"
“Imagine seeing this”
Deep, deep vibe damage from these images of Four Tet. Apologies!

“Monica was chowing DOWN”
OPEN THE SCHOOLS

“The new ‘hoe’ emotions”
“Need to know everything”
These were the women of the week, if you ask me.

"Copywriter... sure that's what I do"
Whoever Tweeted this…well done. But also: you might step on a LEGO today.

“You wanna get a table outside?”
“Let’s get a table outside.”
Summer in Barcelona like (but also like).

“IF YOU WANT A MODERN HOUSE”
I think this is the TikTok of the year, if not of this decade. This says literally everything about “these times.” Please give this person a Pulitzer!

And, finally, what it feels like to open each of these links.

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