Google to tap into gas plant for AI datacenter in sharp turn from climate goals Texas power plant would emit 4.5m tons of carbon dioxide per year, more than that of the entire city of San Francisco

Generative AI and the associated data centre buildout is whatever the opposite of electrification is

www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

We're barrelling pretty fast into annual report season, so worth catching up on this v good summary of everything tech-climate-accountability (which also mentions the latest work I led on greenwashing narratives!)

Your state and local pensions could be making big investments to accelerate the clean energy transition. Solid returns for pension beneficiaries - and would strengthen the state & local economies and tax base on which pensions depend.

Multisolving Moments are a regular gathering hosted by Multisolving Institute to build community and share ideas. The next one is April 30 at 12PM ET when we will explore actions folks are finding helpful to build both individual and community resilience in the midst of destabilization.

Tax Day is a reminder of America’s unequal tax system. But we can fix it | Zohran Mamdani, Gabriel Zucman and Joseph Stiglitz There is no justification for a regressive system in which the super-rich contribute less than the rest of us

"There is no justification for a regressive system in which the super-rich contribute less than the rest of us," write @josephestiglitz.bsky.social, @gabrielzucman.bsky.social, and @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social.

Marine heatwaves can supercharge cyclones Storms that cross exceptionally warm ocean waters intensify more quickly and do more damage than storms that do not.

Storms that cross exceptionally warm ocean waters intensify more quickly and do more damage than storms that do not

go.nature.com/48Qw16P

Making events into public memory is a cultural technology you have to do on purpose and repeat over and over. The fight to keep hold of the truth never ends it's generational and idk, maybe we're bound to lose in the end. But I have to believe we can do better than we did in the last six years.

As a therapist and a healthcare worker, chatbots are becoming a public health crisis, and I’m tired of hearing people who don’t see the harm every day explain why this is totally fine and just like people pearl-clutching over cellphones. It’s getting worse and we haven’t scratched the surface.

I’ve spent way too long thinking about this image. I think the poster is legitimate and believes in these values. But….nothing about this image is human.

It’s ….unfortunate that so many university leaders are in the liking AI group

AI is profoundly unpopular. A recent NBC News poll found that among 18-34 year-olds, AI's net favorability rating is -44. *Negative 44*. Those are basically serial killer numbers. It's not much better among women 18-49. (Men over 50 and upper class are the only ones who like AI, and just barely.)

Inside a jubilant DC conference where ‘the climate deniers are in charge now’ Trump’s EPA chief Lee Zeldin’s presence shows how much influence climate deniers now have, experts say

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

What to Expect at the Santa Marta Climate Conference Colombia and the Netherlands will host government ministers, scientists, Indigenous peoples, and civil society groups from at least 50 states, determined to work together to figure out a just transiti...

By me: what to expect at the first coference on the transition away from fossil fuels in Santa Marta @drilledmedia.bsky.social
drilled.media/news/santa-m...

Authoritarianism 101 - AHA Authoritarianism 101 A Global History About Authoritarianism 101: A Global History is a set of 30 primary source-driven teaching modules designed to offer teachers and students a broad perspective on ...

The AHR has launched a new project, Authoritarianism 101: A Global History, as part of the #AHRSyllabus series.

Explore 30 modules from different contributors and key questions on authoritarianism—each paired with primary sources and teaching resources. The first twelve modules are now live.

The American experiment has been infected by oligarchs How our supposedly progressive tax system guarantees extreme wealth concentration.

How our tax system guarantees extreme wealth concentration

Midlands historians have a hard time sometimes convincing people that slavery ran just as deeply through our economy as through Colston's Bristol, say. But here we are: inherited wealth from enslavement in the family history leading to urban change.

Animals can sense a good heart and sincere intentions

TT: the.littlecabinthatcould

@devo3000.bsky.social
@devingarofalo.bsky.social
@phdhurtbrain.bsky.social
@nathankhensley.bsky.social
@navsa.bsky.social
@jbritishstudies.bsky.social
@vsawc.bsky.social

Good teaching is never easy, but has it ever been this hard? Since the COVID-19 pandemic, educators have been asked to pivot and reimagine their pedagogical practices again and again. Six years later, the "new normal" has yet to arrive. Instead of a return to business as usual, culty are facing a barrage of legislative attacks on academic freedom and the dizzyingly rapid adoption of AI by universities and students alike. As teachers, we are being tasked with simultaneously revolutionizing our approach to assignment design and assessment, while ridding our curriculum and lesson plans of material associated with DEI initiatives or deemed "divisive" by politicians. This roundtable series, organized by the Victorian Interdisciplinary Studies Association of the Western United States (VISAWUS), is dedicated to the problem and practice of teaching, Victorian studies in an era marked by retrograde policies and techno-optimistic imperatives. It asks, how do we teach nineteenth-century literature and culture, while remaining present to the challenges of the twenty-first century university? And what might we gain by employing Victorian modes of embodied Icarning-such as object lessons and recitation assignments—in the contemporary classroom? This series will take place over several dates in Fall 2026 and will be geared toward resource sharing and community building. Participants will be invited to share a 6-8 minute presentation, as well as a tangible part of their classroom practice: an assignment, exercise or activity. We invite proposals from contingent faculty, graduate students, early career scholars, and senior faculty alike. Possible topics may include, but are not limited to: • Teaching reading and writing in the age of I.L.Ms and Al • Navigating contemporary politics in the Victorian classroom • Forms of attention and distraction and/or strategies for cultivating focus • Object lessons, especially models for hands-on engagement and approaches to teaching material cult…

CFP for VISAWUS 2026 online series on teaching. Please apply and share!

TIME FOE TEACHING!

A roundtable series to address the crisis in teaching Victorian Studies. Literary scholars, historians, art historians please join us!

#VictorianStudies
#19thCentury
#AcademicSky

We’ve created a little demon that lives in a machine and offers to spin thread into gold but there is a bit of fine print involved in the transaction…

Red flare for Trump: 'No Kings' rallies a show of political force With a Revolutionary-era slogan, the protests had an historic geographical reach across the country. What does that mean for November?

"The third No Kings protests were an unmistakable display of political force..."

"Two-thirds of participants live in suburban, small town or rural areas, a 40% increase over last time in protesters from outside big cities..."

www.usatoday.com/story/news/p...

Spain invested heavily in clean energy over the last 6 years. Now, as gas prices rise, Spain has some of the lowest electricity costs on the continent.

In August 2025, Spain used zero coal — just 10 years ago it powered 25% of the country.

This is what energy independence actually looks like. 🌎

Jon Hartley ® @Jon_Hartley_ X.com * Another update to our Generative AI US adoption time series results from our paper "The Labor Market Effects of Generative Artificial Intelligence": we find LLM adoption at work in the US fell over the past quarter (while still up substantially from a couple years ago). 100% Fraction of U.S. Labor Force Using Generative AI At Work 90% 80% 70% 60% (%) 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% May-22 Dec-22 -Pew Survey (ChatGPT use) -I-Bick, Blandin, Deming Gen Al Survey -Hartley, Jolevski, Melo, Moore Gen Al Survey Public Release of ChatGPT (First Public Large Language Model) Jun-23 Jan-24 Jul-24 Feb-25 Aug-25 Mar-26 Oct-26

I like how every study that tries to prove AI is being adopted at scale is like “jobs that AI might be able to do a small amount of are sort of affected” and every other study on AI use is “adoption is low” and “it doesn’t really work reliably or in a way with measurable outcomes”

The bottom line is we need to work on the levers of the climate challenge — not just one. All gases, all sources, all timescales.

And, if we’re smart, we’ll design a portfolio of solutions that takes advantage of different opportunities to reduce climate disruptions — short-term and long-term.

“it is difficult to identify any particular part or element as being more hers than all the rest. The whole mode of thinking of which the book was the expression, was emphatically hers. But I also was so thoroughly imbued with it that the same thoughts naturally occurred to us both.”
J. S. Mill

electrified public transit, heat pumps, home weatherization all make life easy for people and hard for fossil capital. here's some recs from @cplusc.bsky.social

climateandcommunity.org/research/blo...

Speaking as someone who has had a smartphone on mute with zero notifications and all autocorrect functions shut off since 2009: you can and should free yourself

It took them 6 hours to get Cesar Chavez off shit and holidays, but them confederate monuments took 678654 years to come down.

I'm like damn, ain't never seen y'all hate evil folks like y'all hate evil minorities 😂

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