Issues You May Know, 16 May 2025.
A list of things you might want to know about - or write your reps about.
Former CEO of the coal waste & tire burning crypto printing operation in PA named Trump's Dept of Energy Loan Program Director.
This is the operation that's relatively local to me that I specifically talked about on The Letterhack stream a month ago, and that I've been writing about for many months now.
No to air pollution & burning tires for the benefit of cryptocurrency tycoons. Cryptocurrency power hogging schemes are unacceptable. Chloe Humbert Oct 11, 2024 Stronghold Digital Mining's CEO Greg Beard lists his location as New York, NY on twitter, where he was last active in December 2023 promoting carbon capture bullshit. His Linkedin says he has “more than 25 years experience investing in the Natural Resources sector”...
Elon Musk's "temporary" (but actually permanent) AI power burner ruining the air in Memphis.
These data center power plants exist for no other purpose than to power the AI, or just cryptocurrency like in the case of Panther Creek in Pennsylvania. Panther Creek provides no power to the community. They just pollute it. And for what? Pointless and dangerous AI.
Musk’s xAI gas turbines: no emission controls, filling Memphis air with smog - David Gerard 14 May 2025 xAI’s environmental consultant, Shannon Lynn, says “there’s rules that say temporary sources can be in place for up to 364 days a year. They are not subject to permitting requirements.” xAI has applied for permits for the first set of turbines. But it won’t install pollution controls unless and until its permits are approved.
The “Genius Act” is financial corruption.
The pseudoscience eugenics apparent in the idea suggested that crypto tycoon profiteering is a sign of genius is horrendous political folly.
The New Republic - Jeff Hauser / May 16, 2025 Are Some Dems About to Cave to Crypto? It Wouldn’t Be the First Time As the Senate considers a GOP-backed stablecoin bill, it’s a good time to look back on when the Biden administration bailed out a bunch of high-rolling, right-wing crypto crybabies. Because it appears that despite the cryptocurrency industry’s support for the Republican Party … and despite the Trump family’s brazen embrace of cryptocurrency, Senate Democrats are probably set to provide the critical votes necessary to pass the so-called GENIUS Act sometime before Memorial Day. The GENIUS Act is a very soft touch “regulatory framework” to entrench the so-called “stablecoins” (including one associated with the Trump family) that grease the wheels of cryptocurrency speculation. Some Democrats pushed for language aimed at the Trump family’s crypto profits, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to be in there.
My letter to reps:
There are so many accusations of misleading business practices and all sorts of shady stuff and serious problems with crypto printing and the entire operations of cryptocurrency. Yet I see politicians being on board with cryptocurrency and all this clearly bad practice. The “GENIUS” Act demonstrates the folly of duped politicians and gall of profiteers and con artists. VOTE NO TO ALL CRYPTO.
Please feel free to copy or repurpose for your own letters to reps.
We all need to get up to speed on what AI really is AND what it ISN'T.
“What we have right now are self-driving cars that are monitored remotely in Mexico and get confused if you put an orange cone on their hood.”
– Emily Bender on the podcast Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 podcast, AGI: "Imminent", "Inevitable", and Inane, 2025.04.21
We need to pull back the curtain for everyone on the PR tricks and outright lies about what AI can and more importantly can't do. As well as the harms caused by implementing and relying on what they're calling AI.
AI does not exist but it will ruin everything anyway Angela Collier Jul 16, 2023
Chatbot use is frowned upon, regardless of the hype.
Study: Your coworkers hate you for using AI at work - David Gerard - 10 May 2025 Today in science discovering the obvious, if you use chatbots to pump out the AI slop at work, your coworkers think you’re an incompetent and lazy arse. And they are absolutely judging you for it. [PNAS] This also applies if you’re looking for a job — using chatbots at work is the mark of a shirker. Jessica Reif, Richard Larrick, and Jack Soll at Duke University surveyed 4,400 people over four studies. They found that using AI at work consistently attracts a strong “social evaluation penalty.”
Despite all the AI hype, and the "everyone is doing it" chatter, which includes all the messaging I'm so sick of coming from "job tips" sources insisting that being a good "prompt engineer" is essential to your job future…
But the fact is that I only rarely come in contact with people actually sanguine about the use of AI chatbots, and typically it's people in comments sections making off-hand comments who either have no idea how faulty and wrong chatbots can be, or are perhaps just paid internet trolls or something.
You’ll be shocked to hear ‘prompt engineer’ is not a real job Pivot to AI May 9, 2025
Most people I know personally, even those barely informed about what AI isn't, are still skeptical, and at a minimum find people using it for all sorts of communications in the workplace or elsewhere to be severely off-putting.
Are the masked bandits in plain clothes that refuse to show badges even actual trained law enforcement hired through civil service?
Sheriffs are deputizing random citizens they know. Then ICE is deputizing sheriff's deputies. Maybe that’s why some of the “ICE” agents that are invading homes and seizing people are dressed in “plain clothes”?
Is your local county sheriff making deputies defacto ICE agents? The answer is maybe, because it's happening in Bucks County Pennsylvania which is 2,000 miles from the Mexico border, and not close to Canada, nor even too close to the coastline. Chloe Humbert Apr 29, 2025 Some of these county sheriffs have been deputizing vigilantes, just rando pals who are members of the public. This was all happening without much fuss being made about it apparently. So maybe we shouldn't be surprised.
By law all sorts of things aren't supposed to happen.
Rob Bresnahan sent me a constituent reply letter assuring that he would not vote for a bill that "guts the benefits my neighbors rely upon" – even though he voted for the first one. In this letter he also mentioned: "By law, Social Security cannot be touched in the budget reconciliation process." Well by law the Trump administration can't rendition people without due process and call it deportation. By law Trump can't manipulate funding that's already been allocated by Congress. By law the president isn't supposed to be the one who can just do tariffs on his own. Does anyone see the problem here with these people in Congress? Republicans? Anyone?
Speaking up about losing history.
TIME - May 13, 2025 7:00 AM ET - Why I’m Resigning from Positions at the National Science Foundation and Library of Congress by Alondra Nelson Since January 2025, scientists and librarians, program officers and policy analysts at the National Science Foundation, the Library of Congress, and other federal offices and agencies have focused on their work, despite an increasingly hostile political environment. We’ve also seen civil servants fired and accused of not making the mark, vendors’s contracts ignored, and grants and fellowships cancelled. Perseverance has its limits. The erosion of these institutions’ integrity—and the growing realization that it is impossible to fulfill their missions in good faith—has made the cost of continuing untenable.
My letter to reps:
The attempted dismantling of the Library of Congress is unacceptable. What are you doing to rectify this situation?
Please feel free to copy or repurpose for your own letters to reps.
Pseudoscience eugenics conspiracy theory is what's driving the push to keep vaccines from American children.
I really hope people voice support and interest in vaccines for children specifically to elected representatives and to the FDA VRBPAC in public comment. People have been pushing for ages now to age-restrict the vaccines to the very very elderly, some ridiculous people with stupid arguments. And there have been supposedly pro-vax people saying crap like this for years that seems to nod at the idea that children ought to be put through some kind of ringer for natural herd immunity. This is eugenics, which is an ideology, and it's pseudoscience, not science.
I was screaming out about this a couple of years ago, and now we have reached fruition in the current RFKJr iteration of public health. And I tried to explain more than a couple of years ago the horrible truth about the eugenics belief system behind the anti-vax push and the push against public health interventions and disease prevention in general.
The Economy demands full participation, herd debt paid on an altar of lies “Public health” is operating, but with the wrong information and the wrong solutions to solve the wrong problems, because those calling the shots have the wrong goals. Chloe Humbert Dec 23, 2022 They are NOT blaming their own covid precautions (that they didn’t do) for ruining their children’s immune systems. They are blaming OTHER people’s covid precautions for ruining herd immunity for their children. And it seems that’s why they want everyone else to unmask and get infected - as if that’d be a good thing when it’s obviously not doing good for the people, especially not the ones winding up in hospital or six feet under. But somehow they want more spread. Why? (...) People have been told to blame the infections in their kids on other people taking precautions. And this is why they are okay with the reversal of mitigations, and in some cases are demanding it. What “public health measures” will they demand next to reverse other people taking precautions if they think this way? That if those cautious people would’ve just “gotten it over with” (and maybe died) we’d be “back to normal” by now somehow because they now believe the viruses “must have their due” or something like that. This is evidenced by their remarks about how it’s “just delaying the inevitable” (such as death, yes) - and their obsession with criticizing people who choose to take precautions - while at the same time blathering on about “personal risk calculations” and wanting “respect for all choices”3 - as if anyone actually wants all bad choices in play all the time.
It's not too late to go on record and submit a comment if you haven't already, even if It's too late to sign up to speak at the meeting.
RFKJr connected anti-vaxxers have been profiteering from the Texas measles outbreak.
WIRED - By David Gilbert Apr 17, 2025 11:35 AM Anti-Vaxxers Are Grifting Off the Measles Outbreak—and Claim a Bioweapon Caused It Activists affiliated with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are selling a “measles treatment and prevention protocol” for hundreds of dollars, including supplements supposedly formulated by AI. Anti-vaccine activists with close ties to US health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are falsely claiming that the measles public health crisis in Texas is caused by a “bioweapon” targeting the Mennonite community. These activists are now trying to sell their followers a range of pseudo-scientific cures—some purportedly powered by artificial intelligence—that supposedly prevent customers from contracting measles. The claims were made in a webinar posted online last week and hosted by Mikki Willis, an infamous conspiracy filmmaker best known for his Plandemic series of pseudo-documentaries. These helped supercharge COVID-19 disinformation online and were, Kennedy has said, funded in part by Children’s Health Defense (CHD), an anti-vaccine group Kennedy founded. Willis also created a video for Kennedy marking the announcement of his independent run for the presidency. “I’m not going to be careful by calling it a virus,” Willis said in the measles webinar.
That weirdo foolish bogus movie "Plandemic" just keeps coming up, and it's obvious MAGA just can't let go of health misinformation propaganda in opposition of public health, and the promotion of "alternative" products.
Peddling false cures is nothing new.
It's perhaps not surprising that a lot of bogus and iffy claims get repurposed for various diseases, including Long Covid.
I haven't read the book yet, but I recommend the interview with Matthew C. Ehrlich on the AskHistorians Podcast. He's the author of The Krebiozen Hoax, which is a true story about a medical scandal around a bogus cancer cure back in the 1950s. The interview was great. But if I were going to interview this author, I would ask about more specific aspects around the culty behaviour of the people around this ineffective non-legitimate. In the podcast the host had mentioned a few times how people involved were really "ride or die" about the drug. I'd also like to know more about how this quack cure was defeated. The author mentioned that the book was published last year, and in today's political context if he was doing the book now he would've focused more on the "medical freedom" claims that persist until today to justify peddling unproven and even disproven quack remedies.
AskHistorians Podcast Episode 236: Matthew Ehrlich and The Krebiozen Hoax.
Wait until MAGA finds out that Trump's campaign strategy was Spanish language political ads.
Not holding my breath for a Spanish speaker FAFO moment.
BNN Bloomberg - Trump, Harris Fight for Latino Voters With 724% Spike in Spanish Ads By Eliyahu Kamisher, Kelsey Butler, and María Paula Mijares Torres Published: October 19, 2024 at 9:00AM EDT Donald Trump — who has pledged to carry out the largest migrant deportation in US history — is striking a decidedly different tune in his advertising to court Latino voters: an upbeat video montage of the former president dancing set to salsa music. The 31-second compilation of the Republican nominee pumping his fists to a catchy tune with its Spanish lyrics tweaked to decry Kamala Harris shows how intently campaigns are courting Latinos. Some of Harris’ ads depict the Democrat in front of a Puerto Rican flag and chatting with a cook at a Mexican restaurant.
Maybe let's rethink the "great filter" theory (that supposedly explains the Fermi Paradox).
I heard the “great filter” referenced twice in one day, once on PBS Space Time and again on Conspirituality Podcast. And I wish people would understand that this is a concept come up by an economist that’s for some reason probably favoured by the fossil fuel industry, and also has been wrapped up in a lot of this strange techno rapture stuff of tech tycoons. But even worse, in February 2020, he suggested purposely infecting Americans with the pandemic – on Valentine’s Day in fact. This was MONTHS before the Scott Atlas stuff and the Great Barrington Declaration nonsense. Maybe we should rethink his ideas, because maybe they’re not so rock solid on the “Great Filter” concept either. I already started rethinking it with regards to the political economy of Star Trek, but maybe it really doesn't make sense to think about things like this at all.
Outdoor recreation is more popular than ever.
It's funny how PA DCNR Secretary Dunn talked about the pandemic in the past tense when outdoor recreation and camping reservations have only gone up and up. And she neglects to specify that by "physical health" it is often people avoiding spending time indoors where it's easier to catch stuff? I guess that's implied?
Hot on the Trails: Outdoor recreation drives local economy, preserves region's history WVIA | By Kat Bolus | WVIA News Published May 4, 2025 at 5:00 AM EDT "The COVID pandemic was a good indication to us, and the world really, about how essential time in the outdoors really is," she said. "People flocked to the outdoors during the pandemic; they needed that time in nature for mental health, physical health, to be with family or to get away from family." Equipment sales spiked. Bike purchases were up by 121%, camping gear by 30% and kayaks by 85%, according to the state.
Parks are busier than ever, and we need more of them because people are often choosing them yes, to get away from other people and unwind.
Unfortunately the Trump regime is actually curtailing the amount of outdoor options and that's unacceptable. Outdoor recreation actually creates the economic activity these politicians always say they want.
My letter to reps:
There should be NO cuts to national parks. I like parks, trees, ponds, lakes, hiking, camping, and kayaking. I like being in the forest. I'm opposed to anything that diminishes our parks. And you should oppose harming parks too.
Please feel free to copy or repurpose for your own letters to reps.