The way these guys talk about stuff that isn't computers is a powerful argument for the humanities and social sciences

If I heard someone on the subway saying some of the things hyperscalers say about AI I would change cars

Am never not astounded by the guys getting freaked out about the stuff they're making potentially wiping out human civilization. If you think it's a demonic force then stop building it

Something to be said about politicians and pundits taking AI developers' apocalypse preaching more seriously than decades of very good climate science

I wrote about AMOC newrepublic.com/article/2091...

Bombs and Porn Are Bad Reasons to Build More Data Centers Is this big AI push supposed to help the U.S. kill more Iranian kids? To help school shooters kill kids at home? Or just to fill the internet with rubbish? We need better answers to this question.

@katearonoff.bsky.social: Let's stop getting distracted by AI execs' self-serving predictions about China winning the race to build "a godlike, world-destroying entity" and instead focus on what AI is doing for us right now to justify all of the environmental destruction. "Not much."

Bombs and Porn Are Bad Reasons to Build More Data Centers Is this big AI push supposed to help the U.S. kill more Iranian kids? To help school shooters kill kids at home? Or just to fill the internet with rubbish? We need better answers to this question.

Very much appreciate @katearonoff.bsky.social questioning whether we actually need all these data centers. Too often taken for granted in energy policy circles that the only question is how to mitigate the impacts/extract benefits. newrepublic.com/article/2089...

Bombs and Porn Are Bad Reasons to Build More Data Centers Is this big AI push supposed to help the U.S. kill more Iranian kids? To help school shooters kill kids at home? Or just to fill the internet with rubbish? We need better answers to this question.

"What and whom, in other words, is all this stuff actually for?"

From @katearonoff.bsky.social:

newrepublic.com/article/2089...

Bombs and Porn Are Bad Reasons to Build More Data Centers Is this big AI push supposed to help the U.S. kill more Iranian kids? To help school shooters kill kids at home? Or just to fill the internet with rubbish? We need better answers to this question.

" In addition to concerns about rising electricity bills, air pollution, and noise, fights over data centers seem to be channeling deeper frustrations. What and whom, in other words, is all this stuff actually for?"

newrepublic.com/article/2089...

I wrote about the debate around data center build-outs, whether AI is making life better right now and/or protecting US national security interests newrepublic.com/article/2089...

Hard to think of a technology more well-suited for public ownership than carbon removal

If no one is going to make Microsoft meet its carbon neutrality goals then why would they? heatmap.news/carbon-remov...

" If they’re gullible enough to fall for OpenAI’s progressive slop, they might as well start paying Sam Altman to build bridges too."

newrepublic.com/article/2087...

OpenAI is trying to pitch Democrats on how much it loves the New Deal ahead of the midterms. I hope as few of them as possible are stupid enough to believe that! newrepublic.com/article/2087...

I do not think that people who have millenarian fantasies about building god should have unilateral control over products that are very powerful, even dangerous, but certainly not gods newrepublic.com/article/2087...

New U.S. Missile Hit Iranian Sports Hall and School, Analysis Shows

Since the headline is a bit confusing, the NYT is reporting that on the same day we hit the girl's school in Minab, we also sent a missile full of tungsten steel pellets at a girl's volleyball tournament hundreds of miles away in Lamerd. Twenty one dead.
www.nytimes.com/2026/03/29/w...

Net-Zero Capital Annihilation by the end of the month newrepublic.com/article/2082...

Markets Are In Denial About the War in Iran ​Investors have been weirdly chill about a spiraling crisis that shows no signs of ending. Remind anyone of climate denial?

Markets are treating the war in Iran, and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, like they treat climate change: not totally ignoring it, but not acknowledging the full scale of the crisis, either newrepublic.com/article/2082...

This site is kind of annoying but at least I don’t have to see anyone retweeting the guy who tried to cancel Alison Roman positing that he has insider knowledge about US foreign policy

He did find *something* www.nytimes.com/1985/02/01/n...

Struck by how much discussion of the war on my admittedly very specific social media feeds is focused on fairly high-level conversations about supply chains & commodity markets

These things really matter!! But all that necessary wonkiness shouldn't obscure the stakes newrepublic.com/article/2081...

I wrote about Trump's jawboning and the increasingly large gap between how much oil costs right now and how much people who know a lot about oil think it should cost, given that the Strait of Hormuz has been closed for almost a month newrepublic.com/article/2081...

Kansas informs trans residents their driver’s licenses become invalid on Thursday Some transgender Kansans said they had received the letters from the Department of Revenue. Others hadn’t by Wednesday evening.

“‘The persecution is the point,’ said Rep. Abi Boatman, a Wichita Democrat and the only transgender member of the Legislature, who received the [Kansas Dept of Revenue] notice on Wednesday.” To underscore that: a Kansas state legislator is among those whose driver’s license will be voided. (🎁 link:)

Sure, but they have to make a scene based on this photo of him and May reading The New Republic.

!!!

Regulations were a big reason why companies were forced to distribute gains, innovate & offer better products, including to export markets. Difficult goal in any case but you can’t grow a manufacturing base in the 2020s by writing policy to reflect your personal fever dream of, like, 1902

So much of the GOP’s project seems to be about restoring their idea of the mid-century US industrial base while dismantling the policies that made people feel fondly about it and made it viable

Climate mostly emerged as a political issue in the US after the New Deal state had been cut to bits, making it sort of a weird, fortunate historical fluke that the Clean Air Act lends itself so well to tackling GHGs, and is so different from all the market-based/techno-optimist stuff popular then

Thing about hacking away at the Clean Air Act and lots of Clean Air Act enforcement is that Congress isn’t likely to return to New Deal State-ish legislation anytime soon, and that’s what makes the CAA so powerful. The people doing the hacking ofc know that