Spending way too much time working and not in the places I thought I was trying to save.

Trying to bridge my training in theory/history with my (newer) work facilitating regulatory processes sounds great in theory and is not always easy in practice.

a very fat child is eating a cookie while wearing a blue shirt . ALT: a very fat child is eating a cookie while wearing a blue shirt .

Me wanting to wade into the bad-faith discourse on racial capitalism on the other site but also needing to work on *checks notes* transmission permitting stuff for me job.

Data centers (in their current form) are deeply contingent upon the imaginaries of a platformized web, which began consolidating in the mid-2000s. They are far from inevitable and alternatives already exist. They’re just not as cheap, ubiquitous, nor profit-generating.

I think a lot of ostensibly pro-climate people in energy (e.g. regulatory, policy, research), broadly speaking, have made the foregone conclusion that data centers are inevitable so should be done “right,” and I think this is wildly mistaken.

I was lucky enough to leave teaching before AI really disrupted everything in the classroom, so outside of using Canvas-embedded plagiarism checkers very sparingly pre-2023, I haven't really used AI checkers until recently. My impression is that they're mostly useless.

I think over the last two years I've written so much dry policy-related stuff and put together so many grant proposals that my writing affect is mirroring AI? I truly don't know, but I think this gives me license to be a little more verbose so I don't become a robot.

I recently hired someone. During the search, finalists submitted timed written essays. One of my colleagues flagged two responses as AI when reviewing. Different tools showed different likelihoods of AI use, from 3%-70%. Then I plugged my original writing in and it said 80% AI. We are cooked.

Jerk chicken, beans and peas, mango salsa, fried plantains. Heaven.

So like what should I stock up on before the bread lines start to grow

One plausible reason data centers elicit more outrage than fossil fuel infrastructure is a problem of visibility, of "materializing" fossil fuel infrastructure beyond sites of extraction (h/t energy humanities scholarship). Data centers are just more tangible.

Yeah, maybe it really is just a problem of visibility.

Maybe a different way of putting this: there appears to be more visceral anger towards data centers and their proponents than the fossil fuel industry despite people largely accepting fossil fuels cause climate change, climate impacts accelerating, climate orgs demonizing them, etc.

It is striking to me that pro-data center officials are experiencing more violence than fossil fuel execs. Not sure what to think of this yet.

Placing data centers within a broader corpus of large infrastructure that harms local communities but purportedly contributes to a “greater good” (dams/mines/pipelines), they aren’t visible technical marvels and it’s very hard to craft disingenuous stories about their real benefits (which are few).

On the other hand, as loud, resource-intensive warehouses that host tenants trading in personal data and digital slop to enrich oligarchs and fascists, they are a good match for the current national zeitgeist much the way mega dams once were for the U.S., India, China, etc. in the 20th century.

Placing data centers within a broader corpus of large infrastructure that harms local communities but purportedly contributes to a “greater good” (dams/mines/pipelines), they aren’t visible technical marvels and it’s very hard to craft disingenuous stories about their real benefits (which are few).

Source tells me the TPUSA SRP candidates are stable.

Please god

Source tells me the TPUSA SRP candidates are stable.

Please god

Absolutely - places vulnerable due to industrial/economic decline that have been searching for decades for ways to transition their economies. I imagine data center developers view them as exploitable in a lot of cases.

!!!! I’m so excited to see this project come into the world!

The coal state/community to data center hub is something to keep an eye on.

This is not a healthy way to live

In the past week I:

Learned we were awarded $600k to do some really exciting work on transmission permitting.

Hired a brilliant policy analyst to support my work in the Intermountain West.

Worried constantly about nuclear war, genocide, and food and fuel scarcity

Installed a new garbage disposal

Journalism schools around the country should design a new course called “How to not be a transactional piece of shit” centered around Jake Sherman.

I regret to inform you that our military is putting us all, and the world, in a shitload of danger and are not the “good guys” (but rather an empty vessel for the ideological whims of leaders) the way we’ve been indoctrinated to believe.

Even Ezra Klein doesn’t think Trump’s doing nuclear threats the right way.

I’m thinking a lot about people who have been arguing since early 2025 that the military would do the right thing in the event of a fascist takeover… as they now gratuitously commit war crimes in Iran.

Anyway if anyone wants to pay me to give talks or something on the side lmk

So SAVE ending is going to destroy our finances. Super awesome.