Last night, after an hours-long public hearing, Monterey Park became the first city in California to pass an ordinance permanently banning data centers.
The city council voted unanimously to declare data centers a public nuisance, and to "prohibit all data centers within city limits."
My story:
“I used AI to combine the data from two excel lists and then send emails to people who were on one list but not another. Saved me so much time.”
My brother in academia, you just fucking discovered mail merge. Welcome to early nineties computing.
“It’s really been driven by speculation,” said Andrew Yip, an organizer with SVG Progressive Action. “Right now, you know, the faster your data center can process information, the more money can make. So that’s why we’re seeing larger data centers with more processing capabilities, meaning more energy use, more pollution, more water use. And so when we saw that come into Monterey Park, you know, just hearing all the horror stories from across the country. Yeah, we had to fight back.” Monterey Park may be the first city in California to ban data centers (and not just pause them); if the voters give them the thumbs down in June, it will be the first time American citizens directly vote to ban them.
"Monterey Park becomes the first city in California to ban "all data centers within city limits""
Extremely clean and elegant quote here. This is pretty much it folks:
www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/monterey-p...
Absolutely true, conservatives realized universal higher education was turning their children into independent thinkers and they *hated* it. Students were even protesting Democrats for not stopping the war!
They started by charging tuition for the UC’s under Reagan…
So miss me with the AI literacy solutions. In fact, keep missing me until you propose “AI literacy” that teaches folks how these systems incorporate systemic oppression into its operations. That’s the kind of literacy we need.
No amount of AI literacy can protect us because the problem isn’t knowledge, or how to use the system, it’s that the system exists in a culture that has been radically structured around white supremacy and patriarchy and your precious autocomplete incorporates it into its operations.
Anyone arguing that some flavor of AI literacy will protect women from AI deep fake porn is at best unserious and at worst desperate to protect their automated goon generator. This is prima facie not a literacy problem.
Like, AI literacy in any form will not protect black and disabled folks from the algorithmic bias, and the violence that emerges from it, of spicy autocomplete. Full stop. No amount of AI literacy can protect us in the deployment of the system because it is tracking the wrong problem.
So I am reflecting on AI as one does and I have come to realize that “learn to use AI” and “embrace AI” and “develop AI literacy” won’t fucking protect ua from existential and stochastic harms of AI, and my overlooking this as a vector for criticism is really something.
Duolingo "backtracked" on including AI usage in employee evaluations—nearly a year after facing backlash for announcing that it would become an 'AI-first" company. www.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/n...
Hot off the press:
Platforms and the Planet
Big Tech, Digital Platforms and Environmental Responsibility
Salla-Maaria Laaksonen|Mervi Pantti|Olga Dovbysh
bookstore.emerald.com/platforms-an...
"[The mission of education] was already compromised when our institutions decided to pay for products and partner with tech firms with the left side of their mouths, while insisting that we, the educational laborers, preserve the integrity of education with the right side of their mouths."
The same week Hampshire College (a place predicated on community between faculty and students) closes, the Khan TED Academy (an institution without faculty) rises. Academic freedom depends on the shape and kind of our institutions. substack.com/inbox/post/1...
OpenAI: We’re burning money like the Joker. A miracle needs to happen for us to turn a profit
Microsoft: Please please use our AI systems, we’re teetering on the edge here
Anthropic: I wonder what’ll kill us first: lawsuits, regulations or model collapse
Media and universities: AI is here to stay
Turn this up
why is colonel pronounced like that
AI slop is cringe round holographic stickers
bye bot lime green sticker
Tax big tech bumper sticker
New stickers dropped! Plus some sold out designs have been restocked in the etsy shop. www.etsy.com/shop/byebot
Since opening on March 16, I've been able to sell enough stickers to make $300 in donations to organizations challenging AI hyperscale data center buildouts: (check the thread!)
I don’t understand why people aren’t more moved by the suggestion that poisoning their communities might eventually result in curing cancer.
This made me lol...for all the glasses wearers 😆https://www.instagram.com/reels/DVIXP8vDani/
we could have a fair number of data centres without destroying the planet, but we can’t have endless buildouts to unknown ends
i’m guessing that more than 90% of current data center building projects are to train models to undefined AI ends
Me too!!
The cover of Rua M. Williams' book "Disabling Intelligences: Legacies of Eugenics and How We Are Wrong About AI". The cover image is a spiral of yellowish orange leaves set against a red background.
Come join @civicsoftech.bsky.social's May book club on Wed, May 20, at 7pm ET. I'll be leading a discussion of @fractalecho.bsky.social's Disabling Intelligences: Legacies of Eugenics and How We Are Wrong About AI - and Dr. Williams is joining too!
Register at: www.civicsoftechnology.org/book-clubs
I recently attended an event where Sal Khan spoke. He sounded exactly like what he is--a salesperson.
Truly mindblowing to know folks will invite a CEO w/a vested interest in a very narrow take on education to offer insights about the future of higher education. Trash takes all around.
“Chatbots are failed products of corporate America. Now the market, the grift, is public education.”
- Dr. Safiya Noble bringing the 🔥🔥🔥 at #AERA2026
we should have a third industry besides AI and gambling
