Data Centers and the Energy Future Data centers have been a hot topic in the news recently.

A thing I wrote about data centers and energy democracy. I haven't done much with this Substack but I think about doing more with it.

The Bone Farmer comic by Matt Lubchansky Panel 1: a bearded man leaning in as a woman sits on a chair wiping away a tear. Man: Hey is everything okay? Woman: It’s just… the Bone Farmer … he died. Panel 2: the man is now in the woman’s space. Man: He was that thing that would break into people’s homes and steal their skeletons while they slept, right? Woman: So sad. Panel 3: Behind the heads as they look at a picture of an eldritch horror. Woman: I mean obviously: ideologically I didn’t agree with him. With regard to skeleton ownership. But his smart lil bow tie! Man: You have to admire his tenacity for a cause he believed in! Panel 4: a person whose skeleton has been removed is in a jar, speaking as the man replies. Geoff: Gonna have to disagree with you folks here - Man: Too soon, Geoff!

Felt apropos

This is also true of the urban fantasy of Changeling: the Dreaming. I think it was completely unplayable as written but if you didn't know better you could have some fun before it became too unwieldy to manage.

Slightly diminish a book

The Grapes of Irritation

A comic by Pearls Before Swine artist Stephan Pastis. Panel one: a person with a beard says “Did you hear what they’re doing with these gender-neutral bathrooms?” A bald person responds “Yeah what’s happening in this country?” Panel two: an anthropomorphic rat says “What’s happening is that good middle-class jobs that used to be in this country were moved overseas for the benefit of hedge funds and corporations far richer than you.” Panel three: the rat continues, “Together with their captive judges and politicians, they are part of an elite class who have become significantly more powerful while the rest of us argue over bathrooms.” Panel four: the rat is talking to an anthropomorphic goat: “Someone had to say it.”

The rat has a point.

Top: a tweet from Tim Thornton @burntfort: “The searing photos that helped end child labor in America” over a sepia toned picture of a child in a factory. Bottom: a tweet from Professional Argologist @Tesseraconteur: “if a modern newspaper were to write about the girl in this photo the headline would read: HEARTWARMING: this little girl works 18 hours a day so her disabled mother doesn’t starve”

An image of a tweet from Ken Klippenstein. A picture of JD Vance with the text: Vice President JD Vance: "I empathize with Americans who are exhausted after 25 years of foreign entanglements in the Middle East. I understand the concern, but the difference is that back then we had dumb presidents."

We still do, but we did back then, too.

Trump Administration Delays Rule Protecting Coal Miners from Black Lung — Again Exposure to toxic silica dust is driving an increase in black lung cases among miners across Appalachia.

For all the talk about Trump’s appeal to working people his main goal seems to be to sacrifice as many as possible to the desire for profit.

An image of a crude burlap sack with silver coins near it. The caption reads: "ICE Recruiters excited to offer signing bonus of 30 pieces of silver."

(Slaps bag) Imagine the field you can buy with this silver.

A bear with a guitar and harmonica is busking with a wall behind them, and a hat full of dollar bills. The bear's guitar has the words "This Machine Kills Fascists." The bear is talking to a person in an overcoat and scarf. Below the cartoon is the text: "It says 'This Machine Kills Fascists' but if that doesn't work I just bite their heads off."

I like this bear's ideas.

A female-presenting person in a lab coat looks in on a room full of monkeys with typewriters, taking notes, as a male-presenting person leans out of the room with a manuscript in hand, saying: "No Shakespeare yet, but here's another copy of 'Art of the Deal'."

The monkeys are more likely to write a book themselves than Donald Trump.

The caption “Companies when June starts:” above a picture of K-2SO from Rogue One against a rainbow backdrop with the text: “Congratulations, homosexuals, you are being praised. Please do not resist.”

Perhaps not quite as common today but it still feels true.

An image of a Monopoly board but in the center there is the text: “Imagine playing monopoly and never buying any assets or investments that generate income. Imagine you just went around collecting $200 after passing GO, giving your money to the rich and trying to stay out of Jail. Do you know that this is how most people live their lives?”

The game, of course, was an anticapitalist metaphor that was meant to show the negative outcome of private ownership of land in fewer and fewer hands.

A comic with two dinosaurs against a snowy background. One dinosaur has a top hat and monocle, the other has a row of plates on its back. Top Hat Dinosaur: "poor people shouldn't have children" Dinosaur with Plates: "rich countries shouldn't have poor people"

An image of Eugene V. Debs wearing a hat, along with the quote: "Under this system each one is forever pitted against each other one. I want a system in which we can live side by side like brothers. I want an era of love, when the standard of greatness will be service to others; when we will not have to spend all of life to earn bread."

A picture of a man in a hat looking at the camera with the text: 100 men vs one gorilla? Bro it’s 10 billionaires vs 8,000,000,000 of us and we’re losing that too

A matter of numbers

From Breakfast of Champions: So this book is a sidewalk strewn with junk, trash which I throw over my shoulders as I travel in time back to November eleventh, nineteen hundred and twenty-two. I will come to a time in my backwards trip when November eleventh, accidentally my birthday, was a sacred day called Armistice Day. When I was a boy, and when Dwayne Hoover was a boy, all the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month. It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind. Armistice Day has become Veterans’ Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans’ Day is not. So I will throw Veterans' Day over my shoulder. Armistice Day I will keep. I don't want to throw away any sacred things. What else is sacred? Oh, Romeo and Juliet, for instance. And all music is. Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

I usually reserve my favorite piece of Kurt Vonnegut's writing for November 11, when it hits the hardest. The sacred meaning of Armistice Day is worth something. To hear that Trump is making the day "Victory Day" for World War I redoubles the sacrilege.

A painting of men in Civil War uniforms. Ulysses S. Grant and Union officers on the right watch Robert E. Lee and Confederate officers on the left surrendering after the Battle of Appomattox Court House.

160 years ago today, the Army of Northern Virginia surrendered to Union forces at Appomattox Court House, ending a rebellion in defense of slavery.

A four-color vintage comic with a man with short hair and a dark suit. Behind him is a blonde woman wearing a white sweater over a red dress as she says, "You get what you fight for, not what you wish for."

But the freeze peach!

An image of Mickey Mouse walking by a tree as he says with a sad expression on his face: "To solely concentrate on reforming capitalism helps produce the stultifying idea that nothing lies beyond it."

John Brown from the painting "Tragic Prelude" by John Steuart Curry with the text: You might be cool But you'll never be "Here, before God, in the presence of these witnesses, from this time, I consecrate my life to the destruction of slavery!" cool

A post by ChrisO_wiki: "Ian Fleming's original James Bond novels haven't aged well. For example, Moonraker - published almost exactly 70 years ago in April 1955 - features a villain who's a super-rich industrialist and rocket-maker seeking to cause chaos because he's a secret Nazi. such a silly idea!" The post uses an image of Michael Lonsdale as Hugo Drax in Moonraker.

Tech oligarchs continue to be literal supervillains.

A color photograph from 1967 of Martin Luther King, Jr.

When evil men plot, good men must plan. When evil men burn and bomb, good men must build and bind. When evil men conspire to preserve an unjust status quo, good men must unite to bring about the birth of a society undergirded by justice.
MLK, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?

A screen image of a simplistic cartoon of Karl Marx from a PragerU video. Marx is wearing a suit and using a pointer to indicate words that are written on a blackboard. The board says: "Good: Workers, Evil: Owners".

No lies detected.

Martin Luther King Jr facing a political moment not unlike ours:

“In several Southern states men long regarded as political clowns had become governors or only narrowly missed election, their magic achieved with a “witches’” brew of bigotry, prejudice, half-truths and whole lies.”

A picture of Guinea-Bissau revolutionary leader Amílcar Cabral with the quote: "Hide nothing from the masses of our people. Tell no lies. Expose lies - even when they are told. Mask no difficulties, mistakes, failures. Claim no easy victories."

Cabral on relations with the masses.

A post by nise_yoshimi saying: “its an irony that goes back to Mussolini, but one that hasnt been so apparent since; the basis of this type of politics is a return, aspiring to a lost ideal of traditional, mythical masculine humanity, and yet its biggest advocates are the most idiotic, embarrassing freaks” Below it is a photograph of alleged billionaire Elon Musk holding a chainsaw gifted to him by Argentinian President Javier Milei, who looks like a hobbit in the background.

Politics as the midlife crisis of the worst men you’ll ever find.

There is definitely a feeling of momentum. People need to organize. Democrats don’t want to lead, but they do hear the rumbling even as the media tries to ignore it. 🧵 4/4

He gave a politician answer, not committing to anything but putting all the onus on Republicans to oppose a reconciliation bill with massive cuts. His constituents were genuinely afraid and concerned about the grave crisis going on in this country, and he did not have very good responses. 🧵 3/4