New data centers, what are they for? Speculation on a bizarre & flawed futurism.

The AI industry celebrates blatant nepotism and corruption in Pennsylvania while politicians making dubious bets on the real future for Pennsylvanians.

Note: there is a podcast version.

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As with anything, having an inside track on information is key. If you don’t know about something, there’s information asymmetry that makes it hard to make good decisions. And this also means that conflicts of interests are a constant threat, and that seems very much true in the AI financial bubble and the data centers debacle. But now, blatant conflicts of interest are being celebrated by the industry in the press.

In what I think is a PR piece because it’s not behind the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette‘s usual paywall, the article from December 2025 describes AI Strike Team as storytellers and advocates for AI in Pennsylvania.¹ This non-profit organization operates as part of Team Pennsylvania Foundation,² another industry promoting non-profit.³ And the AI Strike Team was noted by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in January 2026 for their press release, celebrating as a win what most would view as corruption: the appointment of PA's US Senator Dave Mccormick's wife, Dina Powell Mccormick, to the position of President of Meta.⁴ In addition to being the wife of Republican Senator Dave McCormick, Dina Powell McCormick worked in the George W. Bush administration under Condoleezza Rice.⁵ Team Pennsylvania describes themselves as "nonpartisan" and "inclusive of diverse voices".⁶ And there's definitely a bipartisan buy-in. The AI Strike Team employs as an intern the son of Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro.⁷ Brian Regli, now a consultant for a data center developer in the Pittsburgh area, had previously been appointed by Governor Josh Shapiro to the PA Infrastructure Investment Authority making decisions on implementation of $21 billion in federal funds, and at the same time as that he was a director of Asset Entities Inc. which was merging with Strive Inc. a Bitcoin company founded by Vivek Ramaswamy,⁸ and had an SEC filing that explicitly described the Asset Entities Inc. business model as trying to mimic the "success" of the Gamestop Meme Stock debacle which Dan Olson aka "Folding Ideas", a Canadian documentarian, described that whole cult-like situation by saying it was like “if 4chan found a Bloomberg terminal”,⁹ and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) made a cautionary analysis report on it.¹⁰ Before leaving office, President Joe Biden ordered federal land to be leased for AI data center development with agencies expected to prioritize that infrastructure according to a report by Nextgov.¹¹ The Trump administration appointed Greg Beard as the US Dept. of Energy Director of Loans¹² and Greg Beard has his cryptocurrency data center that the PA DEP, under Governor Josh Shapiro, approved burning tires at that data center in Carbon County Pennsylvania.¹³ The US Dept of Energy approved a billion dollar loan to Microsoft to restart the infamous Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania. That's the nuclear plant that had a meltdown in 1979. And yeah the same Microsoft that, according to a headline in ExtremeTech, is scaling back AI goals because almost nobody is using their AI Copilot. The article from December 2025 says Microsoft's Copilot is used less than OpenAI's ChatGPT and less than Google's Gemini, "and that is because very few people actually find them useful".¹⁴ But people in the know are making money on stock trades, such as Republican Representative Rob Bresnahan with his stocks related to the tech industry,¹⁵ and the healthcare industry,¹⁶ while at the same time ironically supposedly advocating to stop such stock trading in Congress.¹⁷

There are just so many conflicts of interests around data centers in Pennsylvania. And to what ends?

Oklo is a SMR nuclear reactor company. Small Modular Reactors sound like some sort of pre-fab nuclear power plants that Wikipedia describes this way: “SMRs require new designs with new technology, the safety of which has yet to be proven.”¹⁸ I believe this is the type of nuclear reactor that was planned in secret to be installed at the planned data center outside Scranton Pennsylvania in the Pocono Mountains.¹⁹ The developer used the threat of gas turbines and nuclear reactors as leverage to get what they wanted in moving forward with their monster plant.²⁰ Oklo is definitely reported as the company involved with the Meta connected data center plans around Pittsburgh. One of the largest investors of Oklo Inc. is Sam Altman of OpenAI, a company that is reported by many as financially dubious and sketchy with their seemingly nonsensical business model²¹ because it sounds like the OpenAI Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar²² is hoping to turn ChatGPT into some kind of Multi-Level Marketing scheme. Business Insider described a January 2026 episode of The OpenAI Podcast where: "Sarah Friar floated the idea of "licensing models," in which the company could take a share of downstream sales if a customer's product takes off."²³ And one financial expert writing in The New York Times has in the same month predicted OpenAI will go bust by mid 2027.²⁴

Oklo Inc. is named after a region in Gabon Africa²⁵ where it's said, according to sources in Wikipedia, that 1.7 billion years ago "self-sustaining nuclear fission reactions are thought to have taken place" when life on Earth "consisted largely of sea-bound algae and the first eukaryotes, living under a 2% oxygen atmosphere".²⁶ For contrast, the oxygen in the atmosphere today is around 21%, so that was a very different world that far back. And the presumed "self-sustaining" and "natural" nuclear fission used for a name feels like a PR choice to natural-wash²⁷ commercially produced industrial nuclear reactors, as if they're invoking almost a pie in the sky idea of a perpetual motion machine,²⁸ when of course nuclear reactors are not without waste pollution, not without risks, and nuclear reactor plants absolutely need fuel to keep the reaction going, and transportation of that fuel is part of the risk that needs to be considered. But it won't be considered because the Trump administration is, NPR reports: "sidestepping the regulatory system" to "fast-track construction of new and untested reactor designs built by private firms".²⁹

Oklo and their nuclear reactor projects, and indirectly Sam Altman of OpenAI, appear to be leaning really heavily on a payoff from Meta AI,³⁰ which frankly sounds iffy on its own. Meta's hype for an AI use case sounds a lot like what they said about that Metaverse idea which was an utter failure, and indeed some think the AI talk is even more grandiose. Mark Zuckerberg stated he intends for this Meta AI to replace human relationships.³¹ This is what they need these huge data centers for. To replace people friends with artificial interactions. In an interview Mark Zuckerberg described a world where instead of watching an Instagram Reel from your friends and even from your influencer faves, you'll be interacting instead with fake AI content.³² So this is all what's behind the motivation to create these big Meta AI data centers in Louisiana and around Pittsburgh PA and Ohio. This is what the monster palaces are for, that's what Donald Trump referred to them as, monstrous palaces,³³ and I quite like that actually, it's descriptive.

But of course people already don't like data centers and all the problems that come to communities with them. The noise pollution,³⁴ the air pollution,³⁵ the light pollution, the stress on the grid,³⁶ home values plummeting because quality of life is in the toilet, and the utility bill increases for electricity³⁷ and water. And people don't want nuclear reactors pushed out at breakneck speed with little to no regulations or little mind to safety. Unregulated nuclear is a risk assessment nightmare, and the private insurance industry already won't insure nuclear plants,³⁸ and actually the insurance industry has been asking to be able to exclude AI related claims as well.³⁹

But politicians keep telling us that it's just the way it is, that we need these data centers. Supposedly we need them like we need books at the library; one Pennsylvania lawmaker, Republican Senator Gene Yaw, inexplicably compared opposing data centers to book burnings.⁴⁰ It’s really bizarre the things politicians will say. PA Senator Rosemary Brown claimed that you couldn’t object to some data center project in our area, that very well might be just to print crypto for some rich guy, that you couldn’t object to that if you used online shopping or backed your phone photos up to the cloud. We’ve had banking data on computers at least as far back as when I worked at a bank in 1993 and we’ve had the whole internet stored on servers in the so-called cloud for decades now. Even all our streaming fits right now in the data centers we have. This buildout isn’t for your photoroll. And it should go without saying that we the people don’t need data centers for some rich guy’s bitcoin operation. AI chatbots are not the same as libraries just because they steal the work of the books in the libraries⁴¹ just to regurgitate them,⁴² often with errors. Who is it that thinks we need fake friends and more fake content on Instagram? Because that’s what Mr. Facebook Mark Zuckerberg himself explained that Meta would be using AI data centers to do. This isn’t hypothetical, he’s talking in public about these plans, and explaining what the AI is going to be used for, openly. So why doesn’t this really narrow use case ever get mentioned when they talk about the supposed need for Meta data centers? Because of course nobody would be on board for that nonsense if they did talk about it that way.

It took awhile but it finally got around how most of these companies have been promising employers their AI will cause an “AI Jobs Apocalypse” so they can justify cutting their human workforce. I say “justify” because many suspect it’s just an excuse to goose their stock prices, because announcements of layoffs always signals pump to Wall Street,⁴³ even though it's reported that the stock market is not falling for that tactic as much anymore.⁴⁴ But this is in fact what most of the tech companies have been promising as the goal of their AI products, to cut human jobs. That's not actually Mark Zuckerberg's promise, though I guess he's threatening to replace human content creators on instagram. Not that I think that would work either. But his main idea, a really out there idea, is literally to replace human friends. This really should be front page news in Pittsburgh regarding these data centers, that the purpose of them is to have everyone isolated interacting with artificial addictive chatbot "friends" instead of real people.⁴⁵

Not that I think threatening people's jobs is somehow better. I personally think it's insulting to expect me to beg "job creators" to toil in bullshit jobs in order to survive under trickle down economics.⁴⁶ I've been there, done that. I think we should have a world where all of us share in the productivity gains of actual technological advancements that are real. I don't think the promises are real of so-called "AI" today, I think these things are more or less hopped up LLMs that function like the I Ching or a fancy magic 8 ball.⁴⁷ I would love it if there was automation that made it so everyone could work less, but since there’s been no spreading of the benefits of productivity gains in decades, obviously people who have no other way to eat don’t like the sounds of apocalyptic levels of mass layoffs.

So of course politicians are eager to justify, as “economic development”, the issuance of tax exemptions and taxpayer funded grants and taxpayer backed loans to private businesses, and who even knows what other perks and handshakes are happening behind all the NonDisclosure Agreements that have been reported on.⁴⁸ So these politicians in addition to telling ordinary citizens they can't complain because we're responsible for the need for data centers, on top of that, they also keep insisting against all evidence that the data centers will be "job creators" even though the tech industry is simultaneously promising job losses. Those are two things that can't be true at once, because of the way math works. But also we know that data centers just don't need a lot of jobs,⁴⁹ and we've known this for a long time.⁵⁰ But it's also the case that AI chatbots are not anywhere near being able to actually replace humans in jobs anyway,⁵¹ and there's already evidence that the AI tools are often not even making people more productive.⁵² It truly seems to be a lot of hot air. And in some cases, like the preposterously wrongheaded idea of replacing human mental health therapists with AI chatbots,⁵³ it could actually be harmful and dangerous.⁵⁴

These chatbots are not really comparable to productivity tools of the past. And even the productivity tools that have made things more efficient have still not even made "the robots are coming for your jobs" myth come true either. This "robots coming for the jobs" story is an old one, and it was debunked by the economist Dean Baker a decade ago.⁵⁵ Frankly, the story only seems to exist as a way to rhetorically discipline labor with fear mongering, to make workers feel insecure and grateful for scraps instead of asking the obvious question: Why can’t we have a share in the fruits of the robots? But the robots just take the jobs discourse is evergreen, because it’s worked in the past for the elite class, so they can’t help but dip their buckets back down into that well.

The giveaway is if you think of the automation tools of the past, and just try to imagine if the printing press or a sewing machine, added mistakes that people wouldn’t notice easily but would cause big problems. What if the banks and stores used adding machines that inserted math errors? Imagine if when you used a calculator, you had to do the math out yourself to “fact check” the output because it very often could be wrong. Nobody would buy or use a calculator like that. Because not everyone can fail upwards like Kevin Hassett, Donald Trump’s economic adviser who makes math errors over and over repeatedly over decades.⁵⁶ If a copier machine was designed to make false information look real, would that be an automation tool you think anyone would trust? Of course not. I saw someone in a tech podcast forum put it this way: "LLMs always generate stuff that "looks right". That doesn't mean it IS right." That's what these chatbots are doing, sometimes getting it way wrong in ways that seem right. They're significantly error prone, this is not new, there are several baked in reasons for this tendency to fabricate and output false information,⁵⁷ which includes making up fake citations in science output that's made it into science journals,⁵⁸ and fake lawsuit history in legal output that's wound up in the Pennsylvania courts.⁵⁹ It's understood by experts in this field that it is an inherent unfixable aspect of these AI LLM chatbots, and we've also known this for years now. In speaking to the Associated Press in August 2023, Emily Bender, an expert in computational linguistics, said the problem is: "inherent in the mismatch between the technology and the proposed use cases" and that "when the text they have extruded happens to be interpretable as something we deem correct, that is by chance", and that the most likely times they're wrong "will be in the cases where it’s harder for a person reading the text to notice".⁶⁰ So it's like this post on social media by ShutUpMikeGinn that's turned into a meme, saying, "It's amazing how chatgpt knows everything about subjects I know nothing about, but is wrong like 40% of the time about things I'm an expert on. Not going to think about this any further."⁶¹ A professor of computer science Nicholas Weaver described it this way, that LLMs are really only good for situations where being wrong is okay, and he says, "If you use it in a place where wrong is not okay, you are asking for trouble."⁶² And I would say that being wrong is not okay in a hospital where lives are on the line. Yet this "innovation" is being used in healthcare settings where mistakes are definitely happening⁶³ and that's not okay. This should be disturbing to everyone that this shoddy technology has been rolled out in hospitals to threaten patient safety, let alone to jeopardize whole communities with dubiously slapdashed nuclear reactors.⁶⁴ Do we really want data centers that facilitate dangerous tools that are simply not ready for prime time, fueled by unregulated nuclear and or pumping out all manner of pollution?⁶⁵

And why is the cryptocurrency almost never mentioned in any of these local news stories about data centers? Because that's what some data centers are for. Some of the already running data centers in Pennsylvania are for Bitcoin and even reportedly get tax credits for it,⁶⁶ and so it seems likely some of these proposed projects are for cryptocurrency. We may just not know that because of NDAs; the nondisclosure agreements hide a lot of pertinent details.⁶⁷ I don't know why the reporters aren't point blank asking though, and then at least reporting that politicians and business people are saying no comment or refusing to specify, and then maybe doing FOIA or RTK requests. Of course they won't be eager to tell the community that crypto is a good reason to pollute the air,⁶⁸ raise utility bills,⁶⁹ zero out home values,⁷⁰ and torture people with noise pollution.⁷¹ And the data centers already causing lots of that are actually built to print cryptocurrency.⁷² Cryptocurrency data center operations provide no other service at all, except to create a speculative "alternative" currency investment vehicle, which is overwhelmingly used for bad things,⁷³ and some even wind up looking like a ponzi scheme,⁷⁴ or some kind of pyramid scheme.⁷⁵ There have even been cases where cryptocurrency operations have been actual rug pull exit scams,⁷⁶ or have been categorized by authorities as being MLM (Multi-Level Marketing) fraud.⁷⁷ And even people who have chosen to hold cryptocurrency won’t benefit from more data centers printing more cryptocurrency, the data center serves to enrich only the investors who own the data center, not existing holders.

I think it’s possible some of the data centers local to Lackawanna County Pennsylvania, are in fact plans for cryptocurrency, because some are far too small for the type of hyperscaler monster palaces that they say are required for AI operations. This was described by Seth Hudson the Executive Director for Corporate Relations and Economic Engagement at University of Wisconsin-Stout, in his public comment at a town meeting in Menomonie Wisconsin in August 2025, where he explained, in detail, that the developers were trending toward “large site selection projects” and that “it’s all about scale for a lot of these companies.”⁷⁸ The size of the plot of land in Menomonie Wisconsin that was proposed, but then withdrawn, for a data center, was 324 acres, which is nowhere near the size of Meta's Hyperion 5 gigawatt 2,250-acre data center project with construction already underway in rural Louisiana⁷⁹ which is being compared to the size of Manhattan in New York City by Meta itself, with a picture depicting scale which was published by Bloomberg in August 2025.⁸⁰

And with all that being built, it's a wonder that they will also need all these planned facilities in Ohio and Southwestern Pennsylvania just to power fake Instagram Reels and so-called AI companions as human friend replacements? Do we really think this new version of the Metaverse is really going to be taking off? So I think a lot of these proposed data centers may be planning on pivoting back to cryptocurrency, and as I understand it, they can't then be easily converted to other purposes either. So what they're built for is what they're built for, and to convert them would mean stripping them down to the ground according to analysts cited by CNBC in August 2024.⁸¹ Many of the plots proposed for data centers near Scranton Pennsylvania are smaller than the Menomonie Wisconsin site, which is one reason I've been suspecting they're for cryptocurrency data centers.⁸² Also, one property is co-owned by Jim Marzolino who told the local newspaper that: "his interest in data centers stems from a Bitcoin mining hobby".⁸³ Marzolino is the manager of Lackawanna Executive Park Dickson LLC and is planning on putting in a Wawa⁸⁴ at the chaotic intersection in Dickson City where Main Avenue turns into Main Street at the intersection of Viewmont Drive that really ought to be a roundabout instead of a bunch of lanes going every which way, but instead of the municipality doing something, PA Senator Marty Flynn announced in January 2026 that Jim Marzolino's development company was given a $450,000 Multimodal Transportation Fund Grant for "roadway safety improvements" at the intersection.⁸⁵ Jim Marzolino has plans for a data center where there was a junkyard⁸⁶ on a property sandwiched in between a new luxury housing and townhouse development and Ed Staback Park. Jim Marzolino also partnered with Al Patel on another data center project that was in Blakely but was withdrawn when, as the Times-Tribune reported, they "faced significant community opposition".⁸⁷ That same Al Patel is listed on the Lackawanna County Democratic Party website as the Executive Director.⁸⁸ And in August 2025, there was a Chris Kelly column in the Times-Tribune that revealed that Al Patel is also sharing a business interest in something called AM 421 Real Estate LLC with PA state Senator Marty Flynn.⁸⁹ Senator Marty Flynn's campaign also gave a notably large campaign donation for Thom Welby⁹⁰ who won the special election for Lackawanna County Commissioner during a tumultuous time, after a surprise resignation by former NFL football player and then county commissioner, Matt McGloin.⁹¹ And then the Lackawanna County Democratic Committee had sued to block the special election and had pushed to install an unelected person who wound up in the seat for a few weeks.⁹² At the January 21, 2026 Lackawanna County Commissioners Board Meeting, Commissioner Thom Welby came out against what he called "insane" water usage planned for the Wildcat Ridge Data Center Campus project, and said that data centers "do not belong in neighborhoods. And I don't think there's anybody up here that disagrees with that. We just can't allow for that."⁹³ And then he said people need to speak up and stand up like in the "I'm Mad As Hell Scene" in the movie Network from 1976.⁹⁴ Democrat Commissioner Bill Gaughan and Republican Commissioner Chris Chermak also expressed reservations about data centers. It seems that a number of politicians are finding it in their interest to see which way the wind is blowing with their constituents. And opposition to data centers is by no means limited to people who vote Democrat. Local MAGA enthusiast Bob Bolus led locals to the trucker convoy demonstration in DC in 2022,⁹⁵ and he was charged with a hit-and-run when he went counter-protesting with his Trump truck at a "No Kings" rally in downtown Scranton in June 2025.⁹⁶ That Bob Bolus gave a public comment in opposition to data centers at the Lackawanna County board meeting in January 2026, and the day before at the Scranton City Council Meeting,⁹⁷ in both instances expressing concerns about the water usage. There was a notable article in the local paper the same week as the meetings with the headline "WIldcat Ridge Data Center in Archbald to use huge amounts of power, water". That proposed data center in Lackawanna County Pennsylvania used to be called the "Wildcat Ridge AI Data Center Campus",⁹⁸ but it's now just called the "Wildcat Ridge Data Center Campus", dropping the "AI" out of the name, in that article in the Times-Tribune.⁹⁹ (The reporter who wrote the story, confirmed to me by email on January 20, 2026, that is the current name, without the AI)

One of the other larger projects proposed in Northeastern Pennsylvania, in Clifton and Covington Townships, just outside Scranton in the Poconos, is called “Project Gold” which vibes crypto¹⁰⁰ because lots of people into crypto are also goldbugs,¹⁰¹ and that's part of why they refer to printing cryptocurrency as "mining". In addition I think it's also to give it an air of legitimacy. As the granddaughter of two Anthracite coal miners who both suffered and died with Black Lung, I think calling it "mining" is stealing valor and thus offensive industry propaganda.¹⁰² And I think there's a similar trick being done with the terminology used for AI chatbot LLMs, calling the data they draw from "training data" to perpetrate the illusion that it's capable of being trained like a living creature, a person or a pet, and perhaps exploiting that understanding for financial and legal reasons.¹⁰³ And there has been similar criticism of the term "machine learning" for other types of automation algorithms and maths, as well as other industry jargon.¹⁰⁴

There is another reason driving data center proliferation that I think most people probably would have a problem with as well, and it's so outlandish it's shocking that it doesn't get more press when they talk about building these hyperscale data centers for this purpose. The purpose for these tech tycoons is to create something they refer to as AGI. Artificial General Intelligence. The goalposts certainly move a lot on what that actually means at the granular level, but they're quite explicit in that they are talking about a god, an entity capable of surveilling everything and controlling everything. A bit like the disturbing non-character The Machine, in that tv show Person of Interest, which was a kind of counterterrorism plus tech futurism propaganda serial about a pre-crime policing surveillance system that gained sentience and its own agendas to control the public using humans as tools.¹⁰⁵ Now that the Flock cameras used by so many municipalities and police departments in communities are getting more scrutiny¹⁰⁶ including their the scandalous security issues,¹⁰⁷ and the grotesque abuse of power stemming from AI errors,¹⁰⁸ I think people are catching on to that aspect of it. But it's more than that, because these believers, or at least they pretend to believe, and it IS sort of like a religion, sometimes referred to as Longtermism¹⁰⁹ or the whole "TESCREAL" bundle,¹¹⁰ they believe that they can create this AGI god, a sentient control center, just by making the LLMs bigger and bigger. And what's really strange is that this boom has continued despite the fact that this LLM chatbot technology has been debunked as not a possible way to do that anyway,¹¹¹ which makes it seem even more like a religion I guess.

That’s what this race for so many AI hyperscale data centers is about. You would think this aspect of it would make every AI data center story get on the front page of every newspaper. That the reason there’s this rush to build all these big AI data centers is about trying to create a god. And that’s not my word,¹¹² that's the word the tech industry press has been using,¹¹³ and used in headlines¹¹⁴ at major outlets,¹¹⁵ because that's the only way to describe it.¹¹⁶ Because these tech tycoons have a knack for getting quoted saying things like when Sam Altman described working in the AI industry that he felt that "Working on these models definitely feels like being on the side of the angels."¹¹⁷ Even Donald Trump seems to believe this as he stated out loud in the Oval Office when he was signing the executive order that he seemed to believe could prohibit AI regulation at the state and local level, he said that instead of calling it artificial intelligence he'd rather it was called "supreme intelligence" instead.¹¹⁸

And there I think is the rub. There are tech tycoons and wackadoo weirdos who've gained power and prominence in recent years, and I think normalcy bias leads many of us to downgrade really outlandish things in our minds to something more sensible, when it's just absolutely not the case. Well, it just really can't be a Nazi salute, can it? A nation in denial about what hacker gang affiliated Edward Coristine of DOGE,¹¹⁹ who still works in federal government,¹²⁰ did with all the government data that was taken.¹²¹ When Donald Trump says something off the wall, like that AI really means "supreme intelligence", it gets sanewashed. I only heard that he had said that because Justin Hendrix played a clip of the entire statement by Donald Trump on the Tech Policy Press podcast. I couldn't find that entire spiel in any of the videos readily available on youtube covering that press conference in the Oval Office. All the media outlets, including the AP, either cut the clip before he says it,¹²² or they just skip it,¹²³ or they edit it out with jump cuts.¹²⁴

And I've heard reporters explain the problem they feel they have, like Andrew Egger in a Bulwark video with JVL, he says "You almost can't talk about these things with people who aren't paying attention to them because they are so ludicrous. They're so grotesque. It's just nuts that any of this stuff is happening, like just to narrate it." and then JVL responds by mentioning the white nationalist posts the federal government staff puts out on social media, and Egger continues: "You have to actively make you have to like sane-wash the stuff that the administration is doing while you speak to normal people in your life just to not get written off yourself as crazy." And then JVL points out how this is a pattern over the years specifically with Donald Trump and the people around him, JVL says: "the respectable people or the people who want to be respectable say he's just kidding until he then says he's not, at which point they go silent. And then once he tries doing the thing, they say, "Well, of course he should do that. It's obvious.""¹²⁵

It's uncomfortable for Very Serious People to talk about these really outlandish things and I think this might explain a lot of really horrible shit that's gone down in history. The very people, the journalists and reporters, who are tasked with informing people of the facts, just refuse to do so because they might risk sounding weird. Humans are really good at communication, language, and gossip is a foundational part of survival. But there's a hack where if people are way out of bounds from what feels normal and reasonable, they can act outrageously while hiding in plain sight. I think that's why this doesn't penetrate well enough to Very Serious People. I'm far from the only "Cassandra"¹²⁶ who's been yelling about the big "hints" for years.¹²⁷ But I don't care about being called alarmist anymore, been there, done that.¹²⁸ Had I lived in that famous ancient city of Pompeii, I would've preferred to be among the 90% of people who fled early and lived out their lives in other towns, than to have been in the 10% of notoriety who got pyroclasted into a grim posterity.¹²⁹ But normalcy bias is real. It's the reason that even though there are fire alarms, usually there are people tasked with guiding people during alarms and drills because people don't always react promptly.¹³⁰

One would think that we are paying with our taxes to have representatives in government act as the fire marshals, to provide oversight, and make sure people are kept safe and resources aren't wasted on bizarre pointless crap. This is why we have a civilization. But instead the tycoons with these outrageous agendas have bought politicians, and bought whole governments, and now they're pouring taxpayer money into a pointless pit widely recognized as being a financial bubble.¹³¹

This technology is not going to be human-like, it's not going to be a god. And chatbots can't cure cancer because the cure for cancer isn't in the so-called "training" data, and chatbot LLMs can't come up with anything new, they just regurgitates reconfigurations of all the data included, which even might incorporate pirated copyrighted materials,¹³² and the personal identity information from data breaches,¹³³ which may even include mental healthcare records being bought and sold on the internet,¹³⁴ inexpensively available for sale with location data precision down to the patient's home residence address, according to the Duke University Tech Policy Program research which detailed the "highly sensitive mental health data" that included "names and postal addresses of individuals with depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety issues, panic disorder, cancer, PTSD, OCD, and personality disorder, as well as individuals who have had strokes and data on those people’s races and ethnicities", and this was for sale, provided the purchaser would sign a NonDisclosure Agreement of course.¹³⁵

Big tech companies are acquiring anything and everything in search of profit and with the supposed purpose of creating "AGI" – some god-like system for a panopticon dystopian society with faulty AI controlling things. It won’t ever be sentient, and it isn’t a useful tool, but people with power and money are already using it to attempt totalitarian control. This isn't an exaggeration, it's not hyperbole. They just throw everything into the mix willy-nilly, and that output is inherently unpredictable and unreliable and error prone because of how it works (and how it doesn't work).¹³⁶ And a lot of these billionaires and their cohorts have aspirations to be kings in their own fiefdoms they talk about openly called "the network state",¹³⁷ but they seem to have little in the way of sensible ideas about governance, they just want control and domination.¹³⁸ When I say "no kings" I know it's not rhetorical, because I know that Curtis Yarvin, the favourite "philosopher" of silicon valley tech tycoons has been advocating for monarchy.¹³⁹

This is the underlying supposed "need" for these data centers and is what should be front and center when deciding if they are quote unquote "worth the costs". They keep saying that in the news, yet rarely articulate the actual proposed purposes for all these data center plans. Citizens try to bring up these issues like a guy named Tim and some others did in Menomonie, Wisconsin, but the politicians only ever seem to hand wave with industry PR talking points about technology and "innovation" (a word that I view with deep suspicion).¹⁴⁰ And I'm not the only one to notice this, someone named Pam at that Wisconsin meeting pointed that out about talking to the city council members: “as I've talked to several of you, it's the same repeated talking points that you probably got from Balloonist in other meetings.”¹⁴¹

It’s becoming so obvious now that politicians are going to try to have it both ways, where they insist they want to cater to the industry and dutifully worship the so-called AI technology and innovation, while also claiming to care about their constituents, even though it’s a circle they cannot square because they are in opposition. And the politicians seem to either be clueless about this, or want to pretend to be clueless about it. But for some reason we’re still not allowed to openly debate that, the discourse is in silos. The bonkers tech tycoon AI and cryptocurrency nonsense can be reported as a tech story, and the data centers are reported on as an “environmentalist” or “NIMBY” (Not In My Backyard) story, or even an “economic development” story, but almost never within an integrated big picture. Yet they keep mentioning how people wonder whether it’s worth the cost! How are people supposed to decide that if they never get an accurate explanation of why these monster palaces supposedly need to be built?

I have considered it, I’ve looked into it, and it seems obvious to me this isn’t about NIMBY, as they say, it’s a NOPE – (N-O-P-E. Not On Planet Earth). And just pass on the galaxy brain spaceship idea about putting the data centers in space, that isn’t some happy solution, and if you don’t know why it isn’t, just look into why your coffee thermos keeps your coffee warm. Here’s a hint, they’re called vacuum flasks.¹⁴²

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References:

1. AI Strike Team finds a new partner and fresh leadership The organization has led local efforts to make Pittsburgh a global AI hub and now plans to widen its reach throughout the commonwealth Chloe Jad Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Dec 10, 2025 12:00 PM As self-proclaimed storytellers and advocates for the state, and specifically the Pittsburgh region, the AI Strike Team has also created AIPowerPittsburgh.com, which is “an open-source hub featuring tools like the first AI cost calculator comparing Pittsburgh to other tech hubs,” Wednesday’s announcement said.

2. Standard & Works - Dec 10, 2025 • AI Strike Team Goes Statewide, Supercharging Pennsylvania’s AI Ambition The AI Strike Team has launched “Strike Team 2.0” — a statewide expansion with a reconstituted board of business and industrial heavyweights Zach Silber The AI Strike Team has launched “Strike Team 2.0” — a statewide expansion with a reconstituted board of business and industrial heavyweights and a new organizational home at Team Pennsylvania beginning January 2026.

3. Team Pennsylvania Foundation Harrisburg, PA Tax-exempt since Aug. 1998

4. Dina Powell McCormick tapped to lead Meta as president - The appointment is an ‘extraordinarily powerful signal for Pennsylvania and for America’s AI future,’ says Pittsburgh-based AI Strike Team - CEO CHLOE JAD Pittsburgh Post-Gazette JAN 12, 2026 3:26 PM “Dina has been a valuable member of our board and will be an even more critical player as she joins our management team,” Mr. Zuckerberg continued in his social media post. “She brings deep experience in finance, economic development, and government. She’ll be involved in all of Meta’s work, with a particular focus on partnering with governments and sovereigns to build, deploy, invest in, and finance Meta’s AI and infrastructure.” Ms. McCormick and her husband, U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick, are no strangers to the national tech stage. In July, they hosted the inaugural Energy and Innovation Summit at Carnegie Mellon University that drew global tech leaders and President Donald Trump to Pittsburgh. “Dina Powell McCormick’s appointment as president of Meta is an extraordinarily powerful signal for Pennsylvania and for America’s AI future,” said Joanna Doven, CEO of the Pittsburgh-based AI Strike Team.

5. Williamsport Sun-Gazette - Dina Powell McCormick wife of Sen. Dave McCormick, named Meta president Jan 13, 2026 Christina Lengyel | The Center Square “Congratulations to DINA POWELL MCCORMICK, WHO HAS JUST BEEN NAMED THE NEW PRESIDENT OF META. A great choice by Mark Z!!! She is a fantastic, and very talented, person, who served the Trump Administration with strength and distinction!” wrote President Donald Trump on Truth Social. Powell McCormick also served under Condoleezza Rice in George W. Bush’s administration and worked in leadership at Goldman Sachs.

6. Team Pennsylvania - About NONPARTISAN We partner with the highest levels of Commonwealth leadership regardless of party affiliation to achieve economic vitality for all Pennsylvanians. We are committed to remaining a credible and independent resource to advance economic growth through long-term thinking and collaborative approaches that are practical and inclusive of diverse voices.

7. Jonah Shapiro - Linkedin

8. Crypto connected real estate man revolving-doored in & out of the Shapiro admin and into data center consultancy. Dodgy looking conflict of interest crypto & AI stuff in Pennsylvania. Chloe Humbert Oct 02, 2025 Brian Regli’s Linkedin lists experience as having worked at Revere Suburban Realty for 24 years with a year and a half of that as the president. Then Brian Regli reports on Linkedin that he was named by Governor Josh Shapiro in January 2023 to chair of PENNVEST which is the PA Infrastructure Investment Authority, from January 2023 to April 2025 and was in the Shapiro administration in the role of “Executive Director, Critical Investments” to “oversee Pennsylvania’s implementation of more than $21 billion in federal funding from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) of 2021 and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022.” And Brian Regli’s listed consultancy (called “Mad Hat Ventures”) is listed as May 2025 to present. Before and during Brian Regli’s serving in Governor Josh Shapiro’s administration, Brian Regli was reportedly the director of Asset Entities Inc. from February 2023 to May 2024, according to The Asset Entities Inc.(Stock ticker: ASST) 10-K form for 2024. Asset Entities Inc. SEC IPO form S-1 reported Michael Gaubert as the Executive Chairman. Michael Gaubert is an attorney and, according to SEC forms, the cousin of Brian Regli. Asset Entities Inc. merged with and is now known as Strive Inc. a bitcoin company that was co-founded by Vivek Ramaswamy, who stepped down as Executive Chairman to run for president in 2023

9. The GameStop Stock Cult (ft. Folding Ideas) October 15, 2023

10. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Press Release SEC Staff Releases Report on Equity and Options Market Structure Conditions in Early 2021 Washington D.C., Oct. 18, 2021 The meme stocks experienced a dramatic increase in their share price in January 2021 as bullish sentiments of individual investors filled social media. As the companies’ share prices skyrocketed to new highs, increased attention followed, and their shares became known as “meme stocks.” Then, as the end of January approached, several retail broker-dealers temporarily prohibited certain activity in some of these stocks and options. GME experienced a confluence of all of the factors that impacted the meme stocks: (1) large price moves, (2) large volume changes, (3) large short interest, (4) frequent Reddit mentions, and (5) significant coverage in the mainstream media.

11. Nextgov/FCW - Biden orders federal land to be leased for AI data center development By Alexandra KelleyJanuary 14, 2025 The Department of Interior will lead the effort to identify lands suitable for data center construction, while simultaneously enhancing permitting for corresponding geothermal energy projects. Energy will then take further steps to promote distributing resources to power these data centers. Participating agencies will be expected to allocate resources, namely staff, towards prioritizing the launch of this infrastructure.

12. Politico Pro - DOE to name new loan program director Greg Beard joined the Department of Energy in recent weeks as a political appointee. Brian Dabbs 05/15/2025 04:40 PM EDT

13. No to air pollution & burning tires for the benefit of cryptocurrency tycoons. 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”...

14. ExtremeTech Microsoft Scales Back AI Goals Because Almost Nobody Is Using Copilot Google’s Gemini is on pace to push Copilot into third place. By Jon Martindale December 10, 2025 Microsoft has cut its sales targets for its agentic AI software after struggling to find buyers interested in using it. In some cases, targets have been slashed by up to 50%, suggesting Microsoft overestimated the potential of its new AI tools. Indeed, compared with ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, Copilot is falling behind, raising concerns about Microsoft’s substantial AI investment. Microsoft was an early investor in many of the latest AI companies. It ended up with a serious stake in OpenAI and benefited from early access to its models, creating Bing Chat and Copilot when Google, Meta, and Anthropic were just getting started. But now its momentum has stalled, and like everyone else, it’s not making much money from its AI products. That’s because no one is buying them, and that is because very few people actually find them useful, The Information reports.

15. Rep. Rob Bresnahan has gone all in on the nightmare of data centers to fuel AI scams. Rep Rob Bresnahan's stock trades, including in tech companies, as of March 2025 are interesting. Chloe Humbert Apr 02, 2025

16. The New Republic - Malcolm Ferguson/ July 3, 2025 Republican Votes for Budget After Dumping Medicaid-Related Stock Representative Robert Bresnahan has some explaining to do. GOP Representative Robert Bresnahan voted for Trump’s budget on Thursday, conveniently after he dumped his shares of stock in a Medicaid provider. The Pennsylvania representative sold his Centene stock in May, just one week before he voted “yes” on an early House version of the budget bill that crippled the health care system. By Thursday, when he voted for the final version of the bill, Centene stock had plummeted by 43 percent.

17. The Times Leader - Rep. Bresnahan introduces legislation to ban stock trades May 3, 2025

18. Small modular reactor - From Wikipedia Proponents say that nuclear energy with proven technology can be safer; the nuclear industry contends that smaller size will make SMRs even safer than larger conventional plants. This is because the main problem associated with nuclear meltdowns is the decay heat that is present after reactor shutdown, which would be much lower for SMRs because of their lower power output. Critics say that many more(3) small nuclear reactors pose a higher risk, requiring more transportation of nuclear fuel and also increasing the production of radioactive waste.(35) SMRs require new designs with new technology, the safety of which has yet to be proven.

19. Clifton Twp. to consider settlement with data center developer By Frank Lesnefsky | The Times-Tribune PUBLISHED: December 31, 2025 at 7:31 PM EST “the township would permit the developer to use the property for data centers and battery storage without the need for conditional use approval” (…) “Notably, the developer would agree to abandon plans for a small modular nuclear reactor and/or a gas-fired power plant on the site.”

20. Data center in the Poconos being forced by what looks like literal nuclear option extortion. People of Clifton Township Pennsylvania legally bullied to accept zeroed home values and noise pollution by threatening nuclear reactors and toxic fumes. Chloe Humbert Jan 02, 2026 How long did everyone know about the plans for a nuclear plant in the Poconos?

21. Ed Zitron ‪@edzitron.com‬ 12:11 AM · Jan 20, 2026 OpenAI has absolutely zero ideas. They have no business. This is not a real business line and it’s so utterly vague and specious, I’m shocked at the credulousness to just print it without saying “there is no logical way this works of course” or talking about how the CFO of OpenAI is saying nonsense (making shit up as the words leave my mouth) Let’s say drug discovery (chatgpt does not do this) if we licensed our technology (chatgpt? GPT? You already sell api access what are you talking about) and you have a breakthrough (what?) and we get a licensed portion of sales (??? So you get…IP?)

22. Sarah Friar - From Wikipedia Sarah Jane Friar OBE (born 24 December 1972) is an Irish-American business executive, who has been the chief financial officer (CFO) of OpenAI since June 2024. She was the chief executive officer of American technology company Nextdoor from 2018 to 2024 and the CFO of Block, Inc. (formerly Square, Inc.) from 2012 to 2018.

23. Business Insider - OpenAI’s finance chief just dropped some hints about how the company plans to make more money - By Lee Chong Ming In an episode of “The OpenAI Podcast” published Monday, Sarah Friar floated the idea of “licensing models,” in which the company could take a share of downstream sales if a customer’s product takes off. “Let’s say in drug discovery, if we licensed our technology, you have a breakthrough. The drug takes off, and we get a licensed portion of all its sales,” Friar said. “It’s great alignment for us with our customer,” she added.

24. Financial Expert Says OpenAI Is on the Verge of Running Out of Money He expects OpenAI to go bust "over the next 18 months." By Victor Tangermann Published Jan 14, 2026 3:06 PM EST Futurism In a new essay for the New York Times, Sebastian Mallaby, senior fellow at the nonpartisan think tank Council on Foreign Relations, predicts that the Sam Altman-led company could run out of money “over the next 18 months.” He argued that OpenAI’s competitors, industry stalwarts like Google, Microsoft, and Meta, could use the money they earned from their legacy businesses to pour hundreds of billions into developing and scaling their AI models — while OpenAI doesn’t have that luxury. Mallaby is no AI hater. He’s extremely bullish on AI overall, arguing that “businesses usually take decades to deploy new technologies successfully,” whereas the AI industry has made “striking” progress in just three years. In other words, Mallaby isn’t betting against a growing AI bubble — he’s singling out his predicted winners and losers of the ongoing AI race. And despite becoming a household name after the launch of ChatGPT just over three years ago, he expects OpenAI to become a footnote in AI history less than two years from now.

25. Oklo Inc. - From Wikipedia Oklo Inc. is a designer of Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) based in Santa Clara, California.(1)(2) Founded in 2013 by Jacob and Caroline DeWitte, Oklo Inc. focuses on fast reactor, SMR plants. OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman served as an early CEO, but stepped down in April 2025(3) to “avoid a conflict of interest ahead of talks between his company and the nuclear start-up on an energy supply agreement.”(4)(5) The company’s name is derived from Oklo, a region in the country of Gabon, Africa where self-sustaining nuclear fission reactions occurred approximately 1.7 billion years ago.

26. Natural nuclear fission reactor - From Wikipedia A natural nuclear fission reactor is a uranium deposit where self-sustaining nuclear chain reactions occur. The idea of a nuclear reactor existing in situ within an ore body moderated by groundwater was briefly explored by Paul Kuroda in 1956.(1) The existence of an extinct, or fossil, nuclear fission reactor, where self-sustaining nuclear reactions occurred in the past, was established by analysis of isotope ratios of uranium and of the fission products (and the stable daughter nuclides of those fission products). The first discovery of such a reactor happened in 1972 in Oklo, Gabon, by researchers from the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) when chemists performing quality control for the French nuclear industry noticed sharp depletions of fissile 235 U in gaseous uranium hexafluoride made from Gabonese ore. Oklo is the only location where this phenomenon is known to have occurred, consisting of sixteen sites with patches of centimeter-sized ore layers. There, self-sustaining nuclear fission reactions are thought to have taken place approximately 1.7 billion years ago, during the Statherian period of the Paleoproterozoic. Fission in the ore at Oklo continued off and on for a few hundred thousand years and probably never exceeded 100 kW of thermal power.(2)(3)(4) Life on Earth at this time consisted largely of sea-bound algae and the first eukaryotes, living under a 2% oxygen atmosphere.

27. GRIST - ‘Nature-rinsing’: How polluters use the beauty of nature to clean up their image Ever wonder why ads show SUVs dashing through the forest? Kate Yoder Senior Staff Writer Published Sep 27, 2022

28. Charles Redheffer - From Wikipedia Charles Redheffer was an American inventor who claimed to have invented a perpetual motion machine. First appearing in Philadelphia, Redheffer exhibited his machine to the public, charging high prices for viewing. When he applied to the government for more money, a group of inspectors were sent to examine the machine. It was discovered the machine was actually powered by a device Redheffer claimed was powered by the machine. Redheffer moved to New York City and set up a similar scam after rebuilding his machine. However, an engineer detected that it was a fake by listening to its unsteady motions at an exhibition. He discovered that the machine was operated by a man using a crank in a room on the floor above.

29. OPB - Trump’s rush to build nuclear reactors across the U.S. raises safety worries By Geoff Brumfiel (NPR) Dec. 17, 2025 10:58 a.m. Now, a new Trump administration program is sidestepping the regulatory system that’s overseen the nuclear industry for half a century. The program will fast-track construction of new and untested reactor designs built by private firms, with an explicit goal of having at least three nuclear test reactors up and running by the United States’ 250th birthday, July 4, 2026. If that goal is met, it will be without the direct oversight of America’s primary nuclear regulator. Since the 1970s, safety for commercial reactors has been the purview of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. But the NRC is only consulting on the new Reactor Pilot Program, which is being run by the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy. The existing staff of that office recently asked outsiders for help. In an email seen by NPR, the Office of Nuclear Energy requested volunteers from universities to assist in speeding up safety reviews.

30. Meta signs 3 deals for nuclear energy to power AI data centers January 9, 2026 / 1:27 PM EST / AP Meta will also buy more than 2.1 gigawatts of energy from two operating Vistra nuclear power plants in Ohio, in addition to the energy from expansions at the two Ohio plants and a third Vistra plant, Beaver Valley, near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The deal with Oklo, which counts OpenAI’s Sam Altman as one of its largest investors, will help to develop a 1.2 gigawatt power campus in Pike County, Ohio, to support Meta’s data centers in the region.

31. Zuckerberg Says in Response to Loneliness Epidemic, He Will Create Most of Your Friends Using Artificial Intelligence That’s pretty grim, Mark. By Victor Tangermann Published May 1, 2025 12:13 PM EDT - Futurism When asked if AI chatbots can help fight the loneliness epidemic, the billionaire painted a dystopian vision of a future in which we spend more time talking to AIs than flesh-and-blood humans. “There’s the stat that I always think is crazy, the average American, I think, has fewer than three friends,” Zuckerberg told Patel. “And the average person has demand for meaningfully more, I think it’s like 15 friends or something, right?” “The average person wants more connectivity, connection, than they have,” he concluded, hinting at the possibility that the discrepancy could be filled with virtual friends. Zuckerberg argued that we simply don’t have the “vocabulary” yet to ascribe meaning to a future in which we seek connection from an AI chatbot. However, he also admitted there was a “stigma” surrounding the practice right now and that the tech was “still very early.” He has a point. The current state of AI chatbots leaves a lot to be desired.

32. ARS TECHNICA - Meta’s “AI superintelligence” effort sounds just like its failed “metaverse” Zuckerberg and company talked up another supposed tech revolution four short years ago. Kyle Orland – Jul 3, 2025 1:21 PM When I hear Zuckerberg talk about the promise of AI these days, it’s hard not to hear echoes of his monumental vision for the metaverse from 2021. If anything, Zuckerberg’s vision of our AI-powered future is even more grandiose than his view of the metaverse. As with the metaverse, Zuckerberg now sees AI forming a replacement for the current version of the Internet. “Do you think in five years we’re just going to be sitting in our feed and consuming media that’s just video?” Zuckerberg asked rhetorically in an April interview with Drawkesh Patel. “No, it’s going to be interactive,” he continued, envisioning something like Instagram Reels, but “you can talk to it, or interact with it, and it talks back, or it changes what it’s doing. Or you can jump into it like a game and interact with it. That’s all going to be AI.”

33. ‘People are scared out of their minds’: Weak jobs report shows warning signs for Trump’s economy MSNBC Sep 6, 2025 Donald Trump: “but it will be in a year from now when these monstrous, huge, beautiful places, the palaces of genius. and when they start opening up, you’re seeing, i think you’ll see job numbers that are going to be absolutely incredible.”

34. Daily Mail - Residents of small Pennsylvania town are being driven mad by huge BITCOIN MINE whose two large cooling towers vibrate and hum more loudly than a waterfall By Dominic Yeatman For Dailymail.Com Published: 14:40 EDT, 13 December 2023 ‘I have a little pond in front of my house where I used to sit and have my coffee at,’ he added. ‘I can’t even enjoy that because I can’t even hear the water over the Bitcoin. It is louder than the waterfall.’ Talen Energy won over locals with promises of hundreds of news jobs and an economic boom in the township of 6,000 when they announced plans for the operation last year. ‘Amazon, Google, all those cloud computing applications, those are the potential clients, customers that we will have in the data center buildings,’ said Dustin Wertheimer, VP and Division CFO Talen Cumulus and Susquehanna Data Center. ‘On the coin mining side, there will be computers again located in those buildings and those computers will run computations that will trigger and generate the issuance of coins.’ The controversial cryptocurrency has been in the news again after a wild ride since the start of December. A rally last week saw it rise above $44,000 to reach its highest level in almost two years - then on Sunday it lost 6.5 percent of its value in just 20 minutes and dipped below $41,000. Global bank Standard Chartered thinks bitcoin could surpass $100,000 before the end of 2024 - yet well-known JP Morgan boss Jamie Dimon said last week that US lawmakers should ‘close it down’. The first 1,500 Bitcoins out of Salem Township were sold for $37.6 million after the 180 megawatt mine was plugged in this summer, but that was little consolation to residents at an angry town hall meeting on Tuesday.

35. Tennessee Lookout - A billionaire, an AI supercomputer, toxic emissions and a Memphis community that did nothing wrong Memphis’s dealings with Elon Musk provide a textbook example of how the people who contribute the least to environmental harm often suffer the most from it. Ren Brabenec July 7, 2025 The facility is currently operating 33 methane-powered gas turbines to fuel its AI technology despite holding a permit for only 15. The supercomputer facility is located in a poor, predominantly Black Memphis community with historically high rates of pollution-related illness and disproportionate rates of industrial pollutants. The magnitude of the energy draw — and resulting pollution — at Colossus is, well, colossal. According to the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC), the facility draws enough electricity to power approximately 100,000 homes. Those inputs are alarming, but the outputs are even worse. The facility’s behemoth methane gas turbines increase Memphis’s smog by 30-60% as they belch planet-warming nitrogen oxides and poisonous formaldehyde around the clock, pollutants linked to respiratory and cardiovascular disease.

36. How AI is Ruining the Electric Grid Wendover Productions Jun 19, 2025 “Your refrigerator, for example, includes a motor to operate its compressor. When the current is not smooth, the fluctuations in power will lead to fluctuations in torque as it spins around its axis. Meaning, in addition to the rotational force it’s intended to create, it’ll also create oscillations as it spins. As these oscillations interact with the motor casing and surrounding components, it creates noise, a rattling sound. So, that’s to say, AI is making your refrigerator louder. And that noise is more than just annoying. It’s representative of mechanical stress that will lead that motor to die out sooner, spoiling your groceries and mandating a costly, cumbersome fix. The same applies to all the rest of your electronics.”

37. Fortune - States are taking action as electric bills rise amid data-center boom. ‘There’s a massive outcry’ By Marc Levy By The Associated Press August 9, 2025 at 10:18 AM EDT

38. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists - The US government insurance scheme for nuclear power plant accidents no longer makes sense By Victor Gilinsky | February 26, 2020 Price-Anderson frees nuclear plant operators and all firms involved in nuclear construction and maintenance of any liability for offsite accident damage. The only chance for additional compensation lies in the act’s declaration that if accident damages exceed the legal limit “Congress will thoroughly review the particular incident” and will “take whatever action is determined to be necessary” to provide full compensation to the public. In short, a Fukushima-level accident would toss the costs of compensation and cleanup unto the lap of Congress. Is such an accident possible in the United States? The nuclear community argues that it is essentially an impossibility. It explains away the major accidents that have occurred (and were similarly regarded as essentially impossible before they occurred): The 1979 Three Mile Island accident, during which 60 tons of the uranium core melted but did not release significant radioactivity; the 1986 Chernobyl accident, which did release huge amounts of radioactivity, but the Soviet plant had vulnerabilities not present in US-type plants; and the 2011 Fukushima accident, which did release large amounts of radioactivity and did involve US technology but was triggered by an earthquake-tsunami combination that the United States has not experienced.

39. Insurance companies don't want to pick up the tabs on AI slop and dangerous chatbot errors. These LLM products are so risky and potentially dangerous that even the insurance industry won't touch the liability. Chloe Humbert Nov 30, 2025

40. Many Pa. residents don’t want data centers in their communities. State leaders are welcoming them. by Kate Huangpu of Spotlight PA | Jan. 15, 2026 Pennsylvania residents across the state, from Allegheny to Lackawanna Counties, have expressed concerns about planned data centers and their impacts on energy prices, water usage, and pollution. In a recent poll, 42% of Pennsylvanians said they do not want one built in or near their community. Yet many state and local lawmakers — even skeptics — have accepted the proliferation of data centers in Pennsylvania as a fact of life. “I’ve had people tell me, ‘Well, just let’s bar them. We’ll prohibit them,’” state Sen. Gene Yaw (R., Lycoming) told Spotlight PA. “Then let’s go to the library and burn all the books too while we’re at it.”

41. Tom’s Hardware Nvidia accused of trying to cut a deal with Anna’s Archive for high‑speed access to the massive pirated book haul — allegedly chased stolen data to fuel its LLMs Mark Tyson January 21, 2026 One of the most damning pieces of correspondence between Nvidia reps and Anna’s Archive is shown above. The snippet appears to show an unnamed Nvidia exec inquiring about the use of Anna’s Archive for LLM training. Probably worse, though, is the section of the new court filing which alleges that “Within a week of contacting Anna’s Archive, and days after being warned by Anna’s Archive of the illegal nature of their collections, Nvidia management gave ‘the green light’ to proceed with the piracy.”

42. Meta’s AI memorised books verbatim – that could cost it billions Many AI models were trained on the text of books, but a new test found at least one model has directly memorised nearly the entirety of some books, including Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, which could complicate ongoing legal battles over copyright infringement By Jeremy Hsu 10 June 2025 New Scientist

43. Nasdaq - Why Layoffs Can Actually Lift a Company’s Stock Price February 07, 2023 — 10:25 am EST Written by Sarah Hansen for Money.com All businesses have costs, whether for the buildings they operate in, the raw materials they use to make their products or the costs of paying their employees. When those costs are lower, a company can keep more of its revenue and increase its profits.

44. MarketWatch - Wall Street is no longer rewarding job-cut announcements, Goldman analysis finds Share prices used to rally when layoffs were announced. Not any longer, says Goldman Sachs. By Jules Rimmer Published: Dec. 16, 2025 at 4:36 a.m. ET In the past, company share prices typically responded very positively to announcements regarding job layoffs if they were motivated by productivity gains or cost savings. Now though, corporates have underperformed the overall market by 2% after making such disclosures. Equity markets, it appears, have stopped rewarding companies making job cuts, even if their stated justifications are benign, and are punishing share prices regardless. Why is this? Well, Goldman Sachs analyst Elsie Peng thinks the explanation is that investors are more skeptical of the reasons companies provide to account for the redundancy programs. In a note published Monday, Peng analyses share price performance in the aftermath of these announcements and suggests that investors may fear the productivity gains cited may actually be a smokescreen for more negative signals in operational performance like rising interest expense or declining profitability.

45. Generative AI runs on gambling addiction — just one more prompt, bro! Pivot to AI Jun 5, 2025 “Hooked” builds on research papers about the mechanisms of gambling addiction a life- destroying problem to explain how you can use the same psychological manipulation techniques in your app this book is on the bookshelf at every startup.

46. Christmas movie propaganda, job creator myths, and “sides” in perpendicular axis People frame things as “conservative vs. liberal” but there’s also “regular people vs. elites” and successful fiction writers know this, because “All art is propaganda” after all. Chloe Humbert Dec 25, 2023

47. The oracle of chatbot phenomenon is not benign. Don't Wait For Everybody - Episode 022 Chloe Humbert May 07, 2025

48. Boondoggle - The Secret Cost of Data Centers Corrupt nondisclosure agreements hide Big Tech’s impact on communities. Pat Garofalo and Sumitra Rajagopal Aug 11, 2025 Not only has Project Blue been shelved by the council, but Tucson and Pima County officials are reportedly examining ways to reform their nondisclosure agreement processes to ensure a repeat episode doesn’t occur. More states and localities should consider doing the same, because economic development NDAs are corrupt under any circumstance. But they’re proving particularly problematic when used in development deals for data centers — which house the servers that store and process the data that keeps the internet running — as those deals can be especially costly for local communities due to the power and water data centers require, as well as the large and growing amount of state and local tax incentives data center operators receive.

49. NPR - Data centers bring money to small towns. But do they also bring jobs? April 10, 2025 4:42 PM ET Heard on All Things Considered By Stephan Bisaha

50. TechRepublic - Why data centers fail to bring new jobs to small towns Published September 19, 2016 Apple, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft continue building large data centers in rural areas, but most do not create jobs for local residents. Here’s what you need to know.

51. Firing people for AI is not going so well - David Gerard 26 May 2025 Pivot to AI Replacing programmers with AI coding isn’t working out so well. I’m hearing stories of consultant programmers being called in to quietly rewrite vibe code disasters that were the CEO’s personal pet project, because the code cannot be fixed in place.

52. Pivot to AI UK government productivity not enhanced by Copilot AI DAVID GERARD 15 SEPTEMBER 2025 The main uses were “transcribing or summarising a meeting”, “writing an email”, and “summarising written communications”. The bot didn’t do so well on anything more complicated. Users could churn out PowerPoint slides faster, but worse. Excel data analysis was slower, and worse. And Copilot hallucinated all the way through the study. Some workers didn’t want to use Copilot from “ethical concerns, particularly the environmental impacts of large language model development and maintenance.” But what about the supercharged productivity benefits of Copilot? “The evaluation did not find evidence that time savings have led to improved productivity, and control group participants had not observed productivity improvements from colleagues taking part in the M365 Copilot pilot.”

53. Chatbots can’t be therapists, once more this time with feeling. Write your reps, because apparently many are only hearing from AI tech company PR propagandists. Chloe Humbert Nov 20, 2025 My letter to reps: Chatbot therapy defeats the purpose of mental health therapy since the therapeutic value of therapy is in the relationship with a trained professional. This should not be offered or ever thought of as a substitute or even a supplement to mental healthcare. It can’t even be thought of as a “last resort” unless you would also tell a young cancer patient to binge watch some netflix as a “last resort” alternative to cancer treatment. It’s apples and oranges. Chatbots are simply NOT healthcare and should NEVER be equated to a trained and thinking healthcare provider person providing a therapeutic relationship. And all that is before you even get to the security breach issues with chatbots. It’s just not possible to use chatbots in place of a healthcare provider, and they make mistakes so much that they should really not be anywhere near life and death situations. That is foolish talk if you listen to anyone who understands how LLM chatbots work and isn’t paid to lobby politicians or make sales to businesses. Politicians need to not spread muddied misunderstandings that hide the fundamental limitations of these chatbot products. Mentioning the related risks misses the forest for the trees and is wholly inadequate to properly inform any regulation, or inform the public.

54. The Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI - Exploring the Dangers of AI in Mental Health Care Date June 11, 2025 Sarah Wells A new Stanford study reveals that AI therapy chatbots may not only lack effectiveness compared to human therapists but could also contribute to harmful stigma and dangerous responses.

55. Dean Baker: Robots are coming for our jobs? Not so much - Akron Beacon Journal May 12, 2015, 11:00 a.m. ET Los Angeles Times When I was young, Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano was a must-read tale of a society in which machines did all the work and people were unnecessary. So we have seen this script many times before. Turning to the evidence, if technology were rapidly displacing workers then productivity growth — the rate of increase in the value of goods and services produced in an hour of work — should be very high, because machines are more efficient. In the past decade, however, productivity growth has risen at a sluggish 1.4 percent annual rate. In the past two years it has limped along at a pace of less than 1 percent annually. By comparison, in the post-World War II “Golden Age,” from 1947 to 1973, productivity grew at an annual rate of almost 3 percent. And let’s not ignore that the rapid productivity growth of the Golden Age was associated with low unemployment and strong wage growth. So even if we did see a big uptick in productivity growth, there is no reason to assume that this would be bad news for (human) workers. The other scary robots story that won’t seem to die is that even if technology isn’t hurting everyone and making all humanity redundant, it is responsible for growing inequality. The economist David Autor popularized this “hollowing out of the middle” narrative, which holds that many of the jobs that used to support a middle-class living standard, like manufacturing and clerical work, are disappearing because of technology. As a result, less-skilled workers are scrambling for an ever-smaller number of jobs and falling behind their better-educated peers. But the data don’t support that theory either. If Autor’s story were true, we would expect to see higher demand for high-skilled jobs relative to less-skilled jobs. That’s not happening. Instead, there’s been a modest decline in the relative demand for almost all occupations above the bottom 25 percent to 30 percent.

56. Donald Trump has repeatedly wrong economic advisor Kevin Hassett working on bird flu. Kevin Hassett is an economist with a history of being way wrong. Chloe Humbert Jan 30, 2025 Kevin Hassett predicted that stocks were undervalued in a book from 1999 right before the bursting of the dot-com bubble. Paul Krugman said the book had basic math mistakes in it, and in 2009 Nate Silver practically called Hassett an irrationally exuberant charlatan. In April 2020 Kevin Hassett was clamouring for reopening and predicted covid deaths would peak in the middle of April 2020 according to his faulty amateur infectious disease model, and said publicly that everything would be back to normal by mid-May 2020. He apparently had no experience with infectious disease modeling.

57. Why AI Content Is Prone To Errors, Misconceptions And Falsehoods by Shirley Gibbins on 23-Oct-2023 12:30:00 A controversial and unexpected question surrounding AI programming is whether the program algorithms themselves may be incentivised to tell ‘lies’. Let’s be clear, generative AI software does not lie in the sense that they deliberately invent false data, and there is no intention behind what they do. At this stage, AI applications are still software. However, the applications do create outputs based on the patterns they learn from their training data, and this sometimes results in outputs that are not factual or accurate, or that contain harmful biases. All current generative AI programs use a method called Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) to fine tune the output produced from the dataset. RHLF works by increasing the probability of the AI producing the best answer, by using a reinforcement or reward-learning algorithm in which the software learns from feedback to adjust the parameters of its model. The idea behind this is to encourage the software to generate more accurate and relevant responses based on the feedback it has received, e.g. up votes and down votes, ranking different outputs etc. (If you’re interested, a deep dive into RHLF can be found here.) The unfortunate side effect of the RHLF model is that the software could be inadvertently trained to value outputs that are biased, stereotyped and factually incorrect. This is because the AI is programmed to seek out positive feedback, not to discern truth and falsehood.

58. Librarians can’t keep up with bad AI From false sources to hallucinations, it’s become a major problem. Andrew Paul Published Dec 12, 2025 3:33 PM EST - Popular Science Falls estimated that around 15 percent of all the reference questions received by her staff are written by generative AI, some of which include imaginary citations and sources. This increased burden placed on librarians and institutions is so bad that even organizations like the International Committee of the Red Cross are putting people on notice about the problem. “A specific risk is that generative AI tools always produce an answer, even when the historical sources are incomplete or silent,” the ICRC cautioned in a public notice earlier this month. “Because their purpose is to generate content, they cannot indicate that no information exists; instead, they will invent details that appear plausible but have no basis in the archival record.”

59. Judges are identifying suspected AI hallucinations in Pa. court cases — including one at the highest levels by Sarah Boden for Spotlight PA | Jan. 7, 2026 “Who wrote it? And does it contain AI, artificial intelligence hallucinations?” Wolf asked King. The attorney seemed rattled and apologized to the justice. The issues Wolf noted include misquotes, attribution errors, and quotes that don’t exist. One quote in the brief was attributed to Bayada Nurses, Inc. v. the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Department of Labor and Industry, a 2010 ruling from the state Supreme Court. The brief reads, “agencies ‘may not, under the guise of interpretation, enlarge a statute or engraft additional substantive requirements not included by the General Assembly.’” This quote appears nowhere in the Supreme Court’s opinion.

60. Fortune - Tech experts are starting to doubt that ChatGPT and A.I. ‘hallucinations’ will ever go away: ‘This isn’t fixable’ By Matt O’Brien and The Associated Press August 1, 2023, 12:54 PM ET “This isn’t fixable,” said Emily Bender, a linguistics professor and director of the University of Washington’s Computational Linguistics Laboratory. “It’s inherent in the mismatch between the technology and the proposed use cases.” (...) It’s how spell checkers are able to detect when you’ve typed the wrong word. It also helps power automatic translation and transcription services, “smoothing the output to look more like typical text in the target language,” Bender said. Many people rely on a version of this technology whenever they use the “autocomplete” feature when composing text messages or emails. The latest crop of chatbots such as ChatGPT, Claude 2 or Google’s Bard try to take that to the next level, by generating entire new passages of text, but Bender said they’re still just repeatedly selecting the most plausible next word in a string. When used to generate text, language models “are designed to make things up. That’s all they do,” Bender said. They are good at mimicking forms of writing, such as legal contracts, television scripts or sonnets. “But since they only ever make things up, when the text they have extruded happens to be interpretable as something we deem correct, that is by chance,” Bender said. “Even if they can be tuned to be right more of the time, they will still have failure modes — and likely the failures will be in the cases where it’s harder for a person reading the text to notice, because they are more obscure.” So it's like this post on social media by ShutUpMikeGinn that's turned into a meme, saying, "It's amazing how chatgpt knows everything about subjects I know nothing about, but is wrong like 40% of the time about things I'm an expert on. Not going to think about this any further."

61. mike ginn @shutupmikeginn 9:27 PM · Mar 7, 2025 its amazing how chatgpt knows everything about subjects I know nothing about, but is wrong like 40% of the time about things im an expert on. not going to think about this any further

62. The futile future of the gigawatt datacenter Pivot to AI Nov 7, 2025 Nick Weaver: “That it basically is taking a huge corpus of all the text on the planet compressing it down and the output is a function of the compressed corpus of all the text on the planet and the input. And these things are big because they’re basically trying to start with all the text on the planet. But there’s two problems. First of all, people keep trying to use them in places where wrong is not okay. If you use it in a place where wrong is not okay, you are asking for trouble. And if you are somebody purveying that this can be used in an application where wrong is not okay, you are a bovine excrement artist because in that case you aren’t saying statements divorced from whether they are true or false. You are stating false statements and then you are the swearing boine excrement artist, not the philosophical bullshitter. So that’s limitation number one and that actually kills most applications. So like LLMs for programming uh they’re really good for autocomplete on steroids. That is have the tab autocomplete be better at knowing what variable you want to use in this context. Although non AI powered editors are still remarkably good at this.”

63. National Nurses United survey finds A.I. technology degrades and undermines patient safety May 15, 2024 Some 29 percent of nurses said they are unable to change assessments or categorizations that are software-generated by A.I., in facilities that use devices to capture images and sound information about patients, such as pain scores and wound assessments. In facilities that use a scoring system to predict a patient’s outcome, risk for a complication, or determine if patients are on schedule for discharge, 40 percent of nurses said they are unable to modify scores to reflect their clinical judgment and the individualized needs of the patient. “While our employers argue A.I. will help us, they’re using these technologies to erode our ability to practice our clinical judgment,” said Aretha Morgan, RN in emergency pediatrics at New York Presbyterian in Manhattan and a board member of the New York State Nurses Association, who also teaches nursing.

64. Op-Ed: AI infiltrates US nuclear plants via unregulated back door By Stephen M. Saunders MBE Oct 21, 2024 10:43am Fierce Network All it takes is one AI agent to misinterpret reactor sensor data and reduce water flow to the cooling tank, and — presto — Fukushima meltdown or Chernobyl core-collapse-plus-steam-explosion. Unlike Europe and China, which both have centralized, comprehensive systems of rubrics designed to allow AI innovation without compromising public safety, the U.S. has devolved the responsibility of defining AI governance to no less than 13 national agencies — from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to the Department of Transportation (DoT). And this number doesn’t include state and local government regulators. It’s a bizarre strategy, and has left the U.S. with no agency specifically tasked with AI oversight in the nuclear industry. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the main agency responsible for regulating the overall safety and security of civilian nuclear facilities and materials, has no regulations focused on AI. At all. The reason for this nuclear logic bomb is cultural. China and Europe have chosen to prioritize safety over speed, but the U.S. has an innovation-at-all-costs approach designed to fast-track technology and foster competition with fewer upfront restrictions. But is “move fast and break things” really the way to go when the application is nuclear energy?

65. Clifton Twp. to consider settlement with data center developer By Frank Lesnefsky | The Times-Tribune PUBLISHED: December 31, 2025 at 7:31 PM EST “the township would permit the developer to use the property for data centers and battery storage without the need for conditional use approval” (…) “Notably, the developer would agree to abandon plans for a small modular nuclear reactor and/or a gas-fired power plant on the site.”

66. WFMZ 69 News - Nearly 100 residents sue company that owns Carbon County power plant, say burning rubber tires to mine bitcoin pollutes air Grace Griffaton Mar 26, 2024 “We get all of the risk, but none of the benefit,” said resident Steve Chuckra. “They are causing a tremendous amount of toxic waste into the air, into the water, noise pollution to the people who live nearby, and, probably, worst of all, Pennsylvanians are paying for this,” claimed Freiwald Law Founder & Managing Partner Aaron Freiwald. Aaron Freiwald says the nonprofit Save Carbon County has partnered with his firm. They’re suing for monetary damages caused by the alleged environmental harm. “It is an incredibly energy hungry process: thousands and thousands of computers running 24/7, so they need electricity,” stated Freiwald. They also name a number of state agencies – including the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and the Utility Commission – and the governor in their suit, asking them to require emission testing, create and enforce rules relating to crypto mining operations, and stop providing tax credits to the plant.

67. Public officials who sign NDAs should resign because they don’t understand the job. And there really ought to be a law to prevent any such thing from ever happening where elected officials sign agreements to keep secrets from the communities they serve. Chloe Humbert Aug 12, 2025 I have been hearing about NDAs a lot in relation to data center project plans in Pennsylvania and in Wisconsin, and it’s shocking how this has really become not uncommon. This is not acceptable, and the defense of it that was given by officials at the Wisconsin data center town meeting that I reviewed was so nonsensical. It was off the charts mansplaining bizsplaining which just shocks the conscience if you believe in democracy and just makes no sense.

68. Tennessee Lookout - A billionaire, an AI supercomputer, toxic emissions and a Memphis community that did nothing wrong Memphis’s dealings with Elon Musk provide a textbook example of how the people who contribute the least to environmental harm often suffer the most from it. Ren Brabenec July 7, 2025 The facility is currently operating 33 methane-powered gas turbines to fuel its AI technology despite holding a permit for only 15. The supercomputer facility is located in a poor, predominantly Black Memphis community with historically high rates of pollution-related illness and disproportionate rates of industrial pollutants. The magnitude of the energy draw — and resulting pollution — at Colossus is, well, colossal. According to the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC), the facility draws enough electricity to power approximately 100,000 homes. Those inputs are alarming, but the outputs are even worse. The facility’s behemoth methane gas turbines increase Memphis’s smog by 30-60% as they belch planet-warming nitrogen oxides and poisonous formaldehyde around the clock, pollutants linked to respiratory and cardiovascular disease.

69. The Philadelphia Inquirer - As promised, Mikie Sherrill immediately declares state of emergency on utility bills in NJ: ‘just the beginning’ Gov. Mikie Sherrill declared a state of emergency and froze utility rates in New Jersey within moments of being sworn in during her inauguration speech. In another request of the public utilities board, she asks officials to require electric utility companies to report on how much energy data centers request. The order also creates a Nuclear Power Task Force to support nuclear power generation. “I heard the people of New Jersey loud and clear – these rate hikes are unacceptable – and as your governor, I will not stop fighting to lower costs and make New Jersey a more affordable place to live, work, and raise a family,” Sherrill said in a statement.

70. The New York Times - Their Water Taps Ran Dry When Meta Built Next Door By Eli Tan Visuals by Dustin Chambers Reporting from Newton County, Ga. Published July 14, 2025 Updated July 16, 2025 The hardest part, Ms. Morris said, is that the house now has just one usable bathroom, which they have to share with her adult son Jon, 48, who has Down syndrome. They tried selling the house, with no luck.

71. Daily Mail - Residents of small Pennsylvania town are being driven mad by huge BITCOIN MINE whose two large cooling towers vibrate and hum more loudly than a waterfall By Dominic Yeatman For Dailymail.Com Published: 14:40 EDT, 13 December 2023 ‘I have a little pond in front of my house where I used to sit and have my coffee at,’ he added. ‘I can’t even enjoy that because I can’t even hear the water over the Bitcoin. It is louder than the waterfall.’ Talen Energy won over locals with promises of hundreds of news jobs and an economic boom in the township of 6,000 when they announced plans for the operation last year. ‘Amazon, Google, all those cloud computing applications, those are the potential clients, customers that we will have in the data center buildings,’ said Dustin Wertheimer, VP and Division CFO Talen Cumulus and Susquehanna Data Center. ‘On the coin mining side, there will be computers again located in those buildings and those computers will run computations that will trigger and generate the issuance of coins.’ The controversial cryptocurrency has been in the news again after a wild ride since the start of December. A rally last week saw it rise above $44,000 to reach its highest level in almost two years - then on Sunday it lost 6.5 percent of its value in just 20 minutes and dipped below $41,000. Global bank Standard Chartered thinks bitcoin could surpass $100,000 before the end of 2024 - yet well-known JP Morgan boss Jamie Dimon said last week that US lawmakers should ‘close it down’. The first 1,500 Bitcoins out of Salem Township were sold for $37.6 million after the 180 megawatt mine was plugged in this summer, but that was little consolation to residents at an angry town hall meeting on Tuesday.

72. I Live 500 Feet From A Bitcoin Mine. My Life Is Hell. More Perfect Union Jul 24, 2025 “It’s a different type of noise pollution. It’s not like truck traffic or anything like this. It’s a special noise. It’s a low frequency noise that is coming from these operations. And it is incessant.” (...) “The last thing we needed was more pressure on this lake. I know I can survive without electricity. I do know that. I can’t survive without water. “ (...) “These ginormous conglomerate corporations are having real impacts. They consume vast quantities of water, especially in Texas.” (...) “Who would buy this place? You have to disclose? My property value has gone down 75%, and that’s according to Hood County Appraisal District. The reality is, my property value is worthless.”

73. Cryptocurrency is bad - it's a vehicle for hurting people. It's bad for the environment and the society where all us people have to live. Chloe Humbert Feb 25, 2025

74. Fortune - Former FTX users say the failed crypto exchange was a ‘Ponzi scheme.’ Here’s how those work, and what we know about how Sam Bankman-Fried operated By Will Daniel December 3, 2022, 7:30 AM ET Despite the allegations, and admissions by SBF of mistakes, lawyers contacted by Fortune said it’s too early to declare FTX a true “Ponzi scheme”—though they say prosecutors may eventually do so. “I don’t know if it’s a Ponzi scheme, and it’s probably going to be a while before we do know,” said Thomas P. Vartanian, executive director at the nonprofit Financial Technology and Cybersecurity Center. Vartanian, who has represented parties in 30 of the 50 largest collapses of financial institutions in U.S. history, noted that it could take years for prosecutors to dig through the complex, interconnected, and mismanaged accounting of FTX and its subsidiaries. “They’ll follow the money, and they’ll follow it down to the cent. And they’ll figure out whether we’re dealing with negligence, civil fraud, criminal fraud, and whether it’s a Ponzi scheme, a pyramid scheme, or whatever it is,” he said.

75. Bank Policy Institute - Crypto as a Ponzi Scheme: You Don’t Know the Half of It Greg Baer July 5, 2022 So, he looked for another way to generate returns, and conceal his losses. To this end, he bought a bank, Hanover Trust, and took actions to take control of others. In the end, Hanover Trust failed. Its failure triggered a run on other Boston banks, and three more failed in short order. But… Banks Are Bad. Showing a capacity for hypocrisy, closet banker Ponzi delighted in comparing the 50 percent returns on his notes to the paltry 5 percent returns then being paid by banks. Alas, Ponzi never thought to deride the holdings of banks as mere fiat currency.

76. The Motley Fool - What is a Cryptocurrency Exit Scam? By Lyle Daly – Updated Feb 22, 2025 at 10:49 AM EST Because of the lack of regulations on cryptocurrency and the fact that it’s decentralized, scams are exceedingly common. Losses from scams reached $7.8 billion in 2021, and cryptocurrency exit scams made up more than one-third of the total. If you invest in cryptocurrency, and especially if you like to buy into smaller projects, understanding this type of scam is a must. What is a cryptocurrency exit scam? A cryptocurrency exit scam is when the developers of a cryptocurrency pull their funds and abandon the project to profit from investors.

77. Texas State Securities Board - Securities Commissioner Warns Investors About MLM Crypto Investment Schemes May 28 2024 Securities Commissioner Travis J. Iles issued an Emergency Cease and Desist Order to halt a fraudulent MLM scheme that purportedly offered investments in cloud mining cryptocurrency. The order outlines the use of deceptive image and video manipulation techniques and the employment of actors to bolster their online marketing efforts. This action highlights the need for investors to be cautious when engaging with investment opportunities through social media.?

78. Menomonie City Council for August 4, 2025 - Eye On Dunn County Streamed live on Aug 4, 2025 Seth Hudson: “Additionally, over the past several years, there have been a trend towards large site selection projects, especially in the industrial sector driven by a number of factors. Manufacturing investment. The manufacturers are experiencing a surge in investments leading to higher demand for larger and larger facilities in order to spread out their costs. Also, expanding companies are requiring infrastructure capacity that grows with them as they grow, and so they’re looking for key sites where that infrastructure is already in place or is easily added. There’s also the availability of the development-ready sites. With all this demand, these larger sites are getting fewer and fewer to be found and to be recognized. Finally, there is the difference between large site investments versus multiple smaller site investments. Again, it’s all about scale for a lot of these companies. If you have multiple sites having to run a lot of infrastructure versus one large site, it saves money and makes more sense from the company perspective. The city of Menomonie’s comprehensive plan acts as the city’s blueprint for its future growth and development. Through its adoption in 2016, This area was identified for future industrial growth. Both the city and private companies have been invested in this area based on that plan to support the future growth in this area for quite some time. And finally, the Dunn County Economic Development Partnership, which was formed recently, to facilitate business retention expansion, attraction, as long as some other areas, will need land in order to make its goals a reality. This organization is comprised of the Dunn County Economic Development Corporation, the Greater Menomonie Development Corporation, the Stout Technology and Business Park, the County of Dunn, UW Stout, and the City of Menomonie. And the goal through this partnership is that it aligns strongly and directly with the city’s long-range goals within the comprehensive plan. The director works under the oversight of this member entity to add capacity and expertise while positioning Menomonie and the greater Dunn County area for future growth and development opportunities. So I’m asking you tonight to keep in mind that without the land that industry requires, the community will not be able to reach its goals and effectively removes itself from consideration when new opportunities arise. The other thing I want to mention real quick is we’ve, over the last couple of, I’d say five to six years, we’ve had two rounds of site selectors that have come through this region. Site selector tours, basically. Some of the information actually came from Sarah White, who came through this community about four years ago. When they come through, they look for communities that are open for business. Not having land available. for those industries has a ripple effect. The site selectors keep track of what communities have what land and who’s open and who’s willing to work with them. And so you’ve got to watch out that you wind up not being put on lists that can have the opposite effect. Thanks.”

79. Data Center Map - Meta Hyperion - Building 5 Meta’s Hyperion Data Center Campus is a $10 billion AI-optimized facility under development in Richland Parish, Louisiana. Spanning 4 million square feet across a 2,250-acre site, it will be Meta’s largest data center to date, with up to nine buildings planned. The campus is designed to support Meta’s Superintelligence Labs and will deliver over 2GW of compute capacity by 2030, with the potential to scale up to 5GW over time.

80. Bloomberg - Why Meta’s Hyperion Data Center Looks Like It’s Crushing New York City A graphic for the tech company’s 5-gigawatt data center in rural Louisiana uses a futurist visual of Manhattan for a powerful metaphor. By Kriston Capps August 24, 2025 at 8:00 AM EDT Graphic: “Meta’s city-eating Hyperion data center Courtesy of Meta”

81. CNBC - Bitcoin miner Core Scientific rides AI from bankruptcy to $6.7 billion partnership in eight months Published Tue, Aug 6 2024 MacKenzie Sigalos For months, publicly traded bitcoin miners have been shifting into the AI infrastructure business because it became a lot less profitable to mine bitcoin after the halving in April. The companies had already spent the time and money decking out data centers across the country that could be retrofitted to serve an entirely new category of customers. But converting to AI isn’t as simple as repurposing existing infrastructure and machines, because requirements are different, as are the needs of the data network. Needham analysts wrote in a report in May that almost all infrastructure that miners currently have would “need to be bulldozed and built from the ground up to accommodate HPC,” or high-performance computing. Core Scientific’s Sullivan was among the mining leaders who attended a closed-door roundtable in June with former President Donald Trump, who recently jumped into the conversation of the convergence of bitcoin mining and AI.

82. Three Mile Island, pouring taxpayer money into the AI bubble. Don’t Wait For Everybody - Episode 031 Chloe Humbert Nov 22, 2025 A whole lot of the plots of land in the county where I live that are being proposed for data centers they’re not they’re not big enough for ai data centers like for example mark zuckerberg’s meta data center in rural louisiana uh they say that it’s going to be the size of manhattan there’s no room for that in Archbold Pennsylvania sandwiched between a luxury townhome development and Ed staback park uh so they’re likely crypto data centers being proposed here uh the kind that are making people’s lives hell with noise in other states. And the other piece of evidence they’re probably looking to make crypto printing data centers in Lackawanna County is that one of the business partners involved with these proposed projects, quote, told the Times-Tribune his interest in data centers stems from a Bitcoin mining hobby, unquote.

83. Developer buys Highway Auto junkyard in Archbald for data centers By Frank Lesnefsky | The Times-Tribune PUBLISHED: August 12, 2025 at 1:38 PM EDT | UPDATED: August 19, 2025 at 6:23 PM EDT Marzolino said his interest in data centers stems from a Bitcoin mining hobby, and about three years ago, he began researching the market and seeing the demand for them. He now has a team of about 20 people in-house working on finding land, developing, planning and engineering. He is working with global commercial real estate firm Avison Young to find users of the data centers.

84. Making way for Wawa: Demolition in Dickson City prepares property for store. Four other Wawa locations elsewhere in Lackawanna County also proposed in recent years By Jim Lockwood | The Times-Tribune PUBLISHED: January 6, 2026 at 1:40 PM EST | UPDATED: January 6, 2026 at 2:25 PM EST Demolition of the former Lackawanna Executive Park is a step toward bringing a Wawa to that site. Efforts Tuesday to reach Jim Marzolino, the manager of the Lackawanna Executive Park Dickson LLC, were unsuccessful. Prior activity in this project involved conducting a traffic study with the borough for the site that recommended timing improvements and an additional turning lane from Main Street onto Viewmont Drive. Elsewhere in Dickson City, Marzolino also manages a project to develop a site pad for a Wawa along Cold Spring Road on Bell Mountain just above Business Route 6.

85. PA Senate - Senator Marty Flynn Secures Over $5.7 Million in CFA Multimodal Transportation Fund Grants for Lackawanna and Luzerne Counties January 20, 2026 Dickson City Borough Awarded: $450,000 from the Multimodal Transportation Funds on behalf of Lackawanna Executive Park Dickson, LCC for Phase III of the roadway safety improvements to the Main Street and Viewmont Drive intersection.

86. Data Center Dynamics - Junkyard in Pennsylvania acquired, developer files to develop data center campus One of three new campuses proposed in Lackawanna County August 18, 2025 By Dan Swinhoe Marzolino told the Times-Tribune his interest in data centers stems from a Bitcoin mining hobby. After starting to research data centers some three years ago, he is now working with global commercial real estate firm Avison Young and has a team of about 20 people in-house working on finding land, developing, planning, and engineering.

87. Data center developer tied to projects in Archbald, Blakely moves to Dickson City. There are now 54 data centers proposed across Archbald, Dickson City and Jessup. By Frank Lesnefsky | | The Times-Tribune PUBLISHED: December 12, 2025 at 5:35 PM EST | UPDATED: December 12, 2025 at 6:20 PM EST Marzolino signed an accompanying mortgage as the manager of PDC, which used the address 99 Power Blvd., Archbald. Marzolino also partnered with businessman Alpesh “Al” Patel, known for his Dunmore-based Al’s Quick Stop convenience store chain, to build up to four data centers in Blakely on land off Business Route 6 and Terrace Drive, but the men withdrew a request for a zoning change to facilitate the development in September as they faced significant community opposition that made it unlikely they would receive the needed zoning relief.

88. The Internet Archive 2025-0909 archived page of the home page of the Lackawanna County Democratic Committee website Christopher Patrick Chairman, Al Patel Executive Director.

89. Chris Kelly Opinion: Arsonists and empty assurances Chris Kelly, The Times-Tribune, Scranton, Pa. Sun, August 31, 2025 at 3:06 PM EDT So I called Sen. Marty Flynn, D-22, Dunmore, to ask about his financial interest in AM 421 Real Estate LLC. State corporation records list Alpesh “Al” Patel as its president. Marty’s most recent statement of financial interest lists AM 421 Real Estate LLC as a source of income. His name does not appear in the firm’s filing documents. Marty is a vocal advocate for “high-impact” data center development in Northeast Pennsylvania and will have a hand in any legislation to regulate data center development. Patel is an aspiring data center developer who has a business relationship with Marty. Seems like a connection the public should know about ahead of Tuesday’s hearing of the Senate Democratic Caucus Policy Committee at Marywood University. Marty and Sen. Nick Miller, D-14, Allentown, the committee chairman, will face the public from 4 to 6 p.m. in the upper main dining room at the Nazareth Student Center, 1300 University Drive, Scranton. The hearing is the Democratic version of an August stage show at Valley View High School in Archbald hosted by state Sen. Rosemary Brown, R-40, Middle Smithfield Twp. The Republican production was essentially a sales pitch for putting data centers on every empty parcel in Pennsylvania. The event reflected SB 939, which would essentially hand the state over to developers and handcuff local governments by pruning their zoning authority. SB 939 reflects bipartisan fervor to fast-track data center development across the commonwealth. It’s a gold rush, and Republican and Democratic officials, including Gov. Josh Shapiro, are bedazzled by the billions in tax revenue data centers could bring. They pay obligatory lip service to what those billions will cost communities dwarfed in the shadows of mammoth, vampiric artificial intelligence factories, but are besotted by the prospect of mountains of “easy money.” History tells us that when Democratic and Republican politicians go gaga in bipartisan support of anything, suspicion isn’t just warranted, it’s required.

90. Lackawanna County commissioner candidates tussle over Flynn’s $100K campaign contribution WVIA | By Borys Krawczeniuk | WVIA News Published October 29, 2025 at 4:40 PM EDT Welby was Flynn’s chief of staff for almost a decade, mostly when Flynn was still a state representative. He succeeded Flynn as representative.

91. Lackawanna County Democratic Party, Sacco plan to withdraw election lawsuits, ensuring Welby is next commissioner WVIA | By Borys Krawczeniuk | WVIA News Published November 6, 2025 at 7:39 PM EST The Lackawanna County Democratic Party will withdraw a lawsuit challenging the decision to have a special election for county commissioner this year. The decision means former state Rep. Thom Welby, who won the special election Tuesday, can serve the remainder of former Commissioner Matt McGloin’s term. The term ends Jan. 3, 2028. Welby, the Democratic party’s nominee for the special election, defeated Republican Chet Merli and independent Michael Cappellini, according to unofficial results from the election on Tuesday.

92. Lackawanna County Democratic Party asks court to block special election for county commissioner WVIA | By Borys Krawczeniuk | WVIA News Published September 2, 2025 at 12:29 PM EDT The Board of Elections voted 2-0 with one abstention Friday to schedule the election. McGloin resigned Feb. 24, and a court battle between Commissioner Bill Gaughan and the county Democratic Party remains unresolved. The battle centers on whether the party used the right process to choose three potential replacements for McGloin. The party relied on the county home rule charter to recommend former county planning and economic development director Brenda Sacco, Olyphant Council President James Baldan and Scranton School Director Bob Casey. Under the charter, the county common pleas court judges must pick one of the three. Gaughan challenges selection process Gaughan and the county challenged that process in court. They contend state law and a state Supreme Court administrative rule for choosing commissioners means the common pleas court judges must solicit their own candidates and choose independently of the party. The party won in county court and before the state Commonwealth Court, but Gaughan and the county have asked the Supreme Court to review the case. The state’s highest court hasn’t decided whether to listen to an appeal. Not a unanimous vote In the meantime, the Board of Elections – Gaughan, County Commissioner Chris Chermak and Common Pleas Court Judge Terrence R. Nealon – voted Friday on scheduling the special election.

93. Lackawanna County Commissioners 1-21-26 ECTV Board of Commissioners Wednesday, January 21, 2026 Commissioner Thom Welby: “And there shouldn’t be a conversation about a a data center being located in any area near residences. I mean, it they do not belong in neighborhoods. And I don’t think there’s anybody up here that that that disagrees with that. We we just can’t allow for that. But it’s important that everybody stand up, speak up. Uh, you know, maybe it’s like like the old broadcast news uh movie where it’s time to go to your window, open up that window and and and yell out, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.” Maybe it’s important for each of us to do that regarding this particular issue. And and the thought of the amount of water they’re talking about drawing down from Lake Scranton from a single data center is insane.”

94. Network (1976) - I'm Mad As Hell Scene | Movieclips - Youtube

95. Truck ‘convoy’ delayed after organizer gets two flat tires in Pa. by Ida Domingo Wed, February 23, 2022 at 9:04 AM Updated Wed, February 23, 2022 at 7:12 PM The Scranton, Pa. truck driver leading a convoy to DC reported two flat tires Wednesday morning delaying the start of their journey. The group ended up leaving at 10:30 a.m. and arrived on the Maryland Beltway a little after 6 p.m., but not with the numbers initially expected. Bob Bolus tells 7News he’s leading the convoy to protest federal COVID-19 mandates, inflation and illegal immigration.

96. Scranton police charge Bolus with hit-and-run during ‘No Kings’ protest - Cited for driving pro-Trump tractor-trailer with suspended license By Jim Lockwood | The Times-Tribune PUBLISHED: June 19, 2025 at 5:21 PM EDT | UPDATED: June 20, 2025 at 8:53 AM EDT City police charged Bob Bolus in connection with a hit-and-run collision Saturday downtown while he was driving his pro-Trump tractor-trailer with a suspended driver’s license during an anti-Trump “No Kings” protest. Hundreds of people attended the protest at Lackawanna County Courthouse Square in response to President Donald Trump’s military parade held Saturday in Washington, D.C. The event in Scranton was one of many “No Kings” protests held throughout the nation Saturday. Bolus, 82, an avid supporter of President Donald Trump, attended the protest in Scranton with his trademark tractor-trailer festooned with political messages and images, including his own photo. Bolus parked the tractor-trailer at the event to make a political statement, he said Monday in a phone interview.

97. City Council Public Meeting 1-20-26 ECTV Streamed live on Jan 20, 2026 Bob Bolus: “We’re at the mercy of Mother Nature for our water supply and to be a bunch of dumb idiots to give it away to these data centers.”

98. Data Center Dynamics - $2.1bn data center campus proposed in Archbald, Pennsylvania - Not set to be approved until late 2025, but will feature 14 data centers if given the go-ahead March 08, 2025 By Niva Yadav Dubbed the Wildcat Ridge AI Data Center Campus, the project is expected to span around 17.2 million sq ft (1.6 million sqm), featuring 14 three-story data centers. Each data center is expected to span 379,500 sq ft (35,257 sqm). The campus is located within proximity to a PPL substation but would have its own substation on the property. Other details have not yet been shared.

99. Scranton Times-Tribune Wildcat Ridge Data Center in Archbald to use huge amounts of power, water By Frank Lesnefsky | The Times-Tribune PUBLISHED: January 18, 2026 at 12:00 AM EST | UPDATED: January 18, 2026 at 12:02 AM EST The Wildcat Ridge Data Center Campus became Lackawanna County’s first data center proposal when representatives approached Archbald officials in January 2025 to tout a $2.1 billion investment into data centers for artificial intelligence, but there was little information on how the project would impact local utilities. A 777-page conditional use application submitted to the borough last month provides the clearest picture of just how much water and electricity are needed to sustain 5.66 million square feet of data centers near Archbald’s Eynon and Sturges sections.

100. Is the Clifton Township PA data center project planning on crypto printing? What else don’t we know about data center projects in the works? Chloe Humbert Jan 07, 2026 The data center proposed in Clifton and Covington is together 1,000 acres. So we might assume that this one is actually big enough for AI. I’m not sure we should assume that. The name of the proposed data center is “Project Gold” as referenced in the Times-Tribune article. Calling it “Project Gold” sure makes it sound to me like they are planning this data center to do cryptocurrency printing, as they call it “mining” - the process of cryptocurrency creation via computing. This is something I object to, but it seems quite clear that it was deliberate PR messaging to equate crypto with gold in people’s minds, to make it seem more tangible and legitimate.

101. Paranoia on Parade: How Goldbugs, Libertarians and Religious Extremists Brought America to the Brink by Dave Troy Jun 27, 2022 The Washington Spectator. But for the goldbugs and the Ron Paul “end the Fed” crowd, the most intriguing feature of bitcoin is its scarcity.174 There can only ever be 21 million bitcoins, so, like real estate, there can never be more of it. This was always their complaint about fiat money—a faceless “they” could always devalue one’s holdings by manipulating the monetary supply. With bitcoin, “they” would be defeated in the face of perfect, weapons-grade mathematical cryptography. No one knows exactly where bitcoin came from, but it emerged from several strains of thought. In 1988, Timothy May wrote “The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto,” which imagined a future where the state would be subjugated to cryptography.

102. Don't repeat crypto propaganda buzzwords. Don't Wait For Everybody - Episode 020 Chloe Humbert Apr 17, 2025

103. Copyright Alliance - August 14, 2025 Comparing AI Training to Human Learning Is Cartoonishly Absurd by Rachel Kim Ultimately, learning is not free for humans, and nor should it be free for AI companies—particularly where AI is using human-created works to train and then displacing the market for those works while simultaneously generating revenue and profits for technology corporations. Copyright Law Has No General Exceptions for Learning. Despite these critical differences, AI companies still love to argue that they should get a free pass under copyright law to engage in mass unlicensed scraping and use of creative works because AI is “learning” and the same as human “learning.” What’s important to understand here is that there is no “learning” exception in the Copyright Act and there is not categorical exception for learning in the fair use defense found in Section 107 of the Copyright Act. Educators are not broadly exempted from the copyright law when they use copyrighted works to teach students in classrooms. As noted above, schools and students pay for textbooks and other materials they use to learn. Do we really want to treat AI machines better than human educators and human students by giving AI companies an exception that no human has? That is a very dangerous road to go down.

104. Tech Policy Press - We Need to Talk About How We Talk About ‘AI’ Emily M. Bender, Nanna Inie / Jan 7, 2026 The term “artificial intelligence” may itself even be particularly problematic, given some research has shown that people associate high machine competence with this term compared to, e.g., “decision support systems”, “sophisticated statistical models” or even “machine learning”. Metaphors are helpful shortcuts, but they are also seductive, because they create an impression of understanding.

105. Person of Interest (TV series) From Wikipedia John Reese, a former Special Forces soldier and CIA operative, is burnt out and presumed dead, living as a vagrant in New York City. He is approached by Harold Finch, a reclusive billionaire software genius who built a computer system for the U.S. government after the September 11 attacks, called the Machine, which monitors all electronic communications and surveillance video feeds in order to predict future terrorist activities.

106. You’re Being Watched: The Company Behind America’s Mass Surveillance Takeover Jessica (Ka) Burbank Aug 11, 2025 (documentary) “Police officers know if you follow someone in a car for a couple of miles, the likelihood is you’ll be able to pull them over for something. What we’re doing here is we’re creating that database so that we can always do that for anyone. That you’re constantly tracking people’s movements. um you have that system in place so that you don’t need to articulate the suspicion before you’re gathering data on someone, before you’re actually trying to tag someone with wrongdoing. When you have that system there, all someone has to do is say, “I don’t like that person.” And then you’ve got that surveillance already established.” (...) “this is a real fear and the fact that we’re installing this stuff means that we’re extending that mechanism even if we think it will be used right that database is being fed and as we all know um database data escapes into the wild when you have hackers especially when it’s in private hands. These private institutions use the data for their own purposes which may not be parallel to what the government wants.”

107. This Flock Camera Leak is like Netflix For Stalkers Benn Jordan and 404 Media Premiered Dec 22, 2025

108. Dystopian Town Sends Lying Cop To Innocent Woman’s Home The Civil Rights Lawyer \ Nov 5, 2025

109. Aeon - Against longtermism - It started as a fringe philosophical theory about humanity’s future. It’s now richly funded and increasingly dangerous. By Émile P Torres

110. The Acronym Behind Our Wildest AI Dreams and Nightmares. To understand the deepening divide between AI boosters and doomers, it’s necessary to unpack their common origins in a bundle of ideologies known as TESCREAL. Émile P. Torres Truthdig - Jun 15, 2023 If transhumanism is eugenics on steroids, cosmism is transhumanism on steroids. In his “The Cosmist Manifesto,” the former Extropian who christened the now-common term “artificial general intelligence,” Ben Goertzel, writes that “humans will merge with technology,” resulting in “a new phase of the evolution of our species.” Eventually, “we will develop sentient AI and mind uploading technology” that “will permit an indefinite lifespan to those who choose to leave biology behind.” Many of these “uploaded minds” will “choose to live in virtual worlds.” The ultimate aim is to “develop spacetime engineering and scientific ‘future magic’ much beyond our current understanding and imagination,” where such things “will permit achieving, by scientific means, most of the promises of religions — and many amazing things that no human religion ever dreamed.” This brings us to Rationalism and Effective Altruism. The first grew out of a website called LessWrong, which was founded in 2009 by Yudkowsky, Bostrom’s colleague in the early Extropian movement. Because realizing the utopian visions above will require a lot of really “smart” people doing really “smart” things, we must optimize our “smartness.”

111. The most underreported and important story in AI right now is that pure scaling has failed to produce AGI By Gary Marcus February 19, 2025, 3:38 PM ET As one commentary put it, the idea behind the scaling hypothesis was that “the blessing of scale suggests that merely throwing more computing power into training Al models will produce machine superintelligence that can beat any human and the entire human civilisation at all cognitive tasks.” Elon Musk’s projection, made last year, that “we’ll have AI that is smarter than any one human probably around the end of next year” [by which he meant the end of 2025] seemed to flow from the same premise.

112. Linkedin - Sam Altman Wanted to Build a God??? Jigisha Dave Building Strategic Narratives for Lasting Impact March 18, 2025

113. The Verge - They think they’re building God by David Pierce Sep 24, 2024, 9:19 AM EDT

114. Everyday Analysis - The Politics of God Building and “Eschatech” Jag Bhalla 03 July 2025

115. VOX - AI companies are trying to build god. Shouldn’t they get our permission first? The public did not consent to artificial general intelligence. by Sigal Samuel Oct 11, 2024, 8:30 AM EDT

116. Futurism - 11.15.23, 12:05 PM EST by Victor Tangermann Sam Altman Seems to Imply That OpenAI Is Building God Is that what AGI is going to be?

117. The Decoder - Nov 1, 2024 OpenAI CEO Sam Altman feels like he’s “on the side of the angels” working on AI models - Matthias Bastian

118. Tech Policy Press: A Critical Look at Trump’s AI Executive Order - Justin Hendrix / Dec 14, 2025 CLIP: President Donald Trump: “Well, thank you very much. We have a big signing right now and we have a tremendous industry where we’re leading by a lot. It’s the AI artificial intelligence. I always thought it should be SI, supreme intelligence, but I guess somewhere along the line they decided in the word artificial and that’s okay with me. That’s up to them. It’s a massive industry.”

119. Teen on Musk’s DOGE Team Graduated from ‘The Com’ – Krebs on Security - February 7, 2025 Rivage largely stopped posting messages on Com channels after that. Wired reports that Coristine subsequently spent three months last summer working at Neuralink, Elon Musk’s brain implant startup. The trouble with all this is that even if someone sincerely intends to exit The Com after years of consorting with cybercriminals, they are often still subject to personal attacks, harassment and hacking long after they have left the scene. That’s because a huge part of Com culture involves harassing, swatting and hacking other members of the community. These internecine attacks are often for financial gain, but just as frequently they are perpetrated by cybercrime groups to exact retribution from or assert dominance over rival gangs. Experts say it is extremely difficult for former members of violent street gangs to gain a security clearance needed to view sensitive or classified information held by the U.S. government. That’s because ex-gang members are highly susceptible to extortion and coercion from current members of the same gang, and that alone presents an unacceptable security risk for intelligence agencies. And make no mistake: The Com is the English-language cybercriminal hacking equivalent of a violent street gang. KrebsOnSecurity has published numerous stories detailing how feuds within the community periodically spill over into real-world violence. When Coristine’s name surfaced in Wired‘s report this week, members of The Com immediately took notice. (emphasis added)

120. US DOGE Service is hiring following mass workforce losses across the government - The group housing Trump’s controversial cost-cutting program is one of several tech teams that are recruiting. By Natalie Alms January 6, 2026 05:17 PM ET Nextgov/FCW USDS is one of several technology teams created or reworked by this administration that are hiring. The National Design Studio, led by former DOGE member and Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia, was created within the White House over the summer to improve government websites and physical spaces. Among those that appear to work for the design group are “Big Balls” Edward Coristine, a young technologist who also worked for DOGE. Coristine posted on X last month that the design studio is looking for web designers and developers. “2am Saturday @ndstudio team is still grinding from the White House,” he posted on Dec. 7. And just last month, the Trump administration launched an effort with nearly 30 private sector companies to recruit 1,000 primarily early-career technologists into a new U.S. Tech Force.

121. Larson, Neal Demand Full Criminal Investigation into ‘DOGE’ Leak of Private Records to Musk Associates and Immediate Congressional Action to Safeguard Americans’ Privacy January 20, 2026 Press Release | Congressman John Larson Today, House Social Security Subcommittee Ranking Member John B. Larson (CT-01) and Ways and Means Committee Ranking Member Richard E. Neal (MA-01) released the following statement after the Social Security Administration admitted in court that ‘DOGE’ employees tried to hand over sensitive personal records to an unnamed advocacy group seeking to “overturn election results,” traded confidential data on an unapproved private server, and sent confidential information on about 1,000 Americans to Elon Musk’s “top lieutenant.”

122. Trump signs executive order to block state AI regulations - CBS19 Dec 12, 2025

123. President Trump signs order attempting to block A.I. regulations at the state level CBS Detroit Dec 13, 2025

124. Trump signs executive order to block state AI regulations Associated Press Dec 12, 2025

125. Trump Says We “Shouldn’t Even Have an Election.” The Bulwark Jan 15, 2026 Andrew Egger: “ I have seen people make this point online and it’s also a point that has occurred to me myself. You almost can’t talk about these things with people who aren’t paying attention to them because they are so ludicrous. They’re so grotesque. It’s just nuts that any of this stuff is happening like just to narrate it.” JVL: “The Department of Labor published a tweet with one homeland, one people, one heritage. Remember who you are, American. Like I am sorry that that worked better in the original German.” Andrew Egger: You just can’t talk to people about this. You have to actively make you have to like sane-wash the stuff that the administration is doing while you speak to normal people in your life just to not get written off yourself as crazy. Like if you just do like baseline narration of like, oh the kid lunatics who run these social media accounts are doing open white nationalist posting and here are six examples. Like they will just think you’re overtorquing it because it just sounds like that if you’re not paying attention. This is like a real problem we all have to deal with all the time. It goes back to the thing we were talking about right at the beginning. You know how can you say like oh Trump’s joking around about canceling the election and not sound crazy to people who have not been following along. So, it’s a difficult thing.” JVL: “Last thing I want to talk about about the cancelling the election thing is that the the way the the kidding stuff, oh, he’s just kidding stuff works is that the the respectable people or the people want to be respectable say he’s just kidding until he then says he’s not, at which point they’re they go silent. And then once he tries doing the thing, they say, “Well, of course he should do that. It’s obvious.”“

126. The New Republic - Toby Buckle / December 18, 2025 The Americans Who Saw All This Coming—but Were Ignored and Maligned. Call them the Cassandras: the people—mostly not white and male—who smelled the fascism all over Trump from jump street. Why were they “alarmists,” and how did “anti-alarmism” become cool?

127. Hinting atrocities. I just keep racking up instances where I see things going on in the US that are eerily familiar to things I’ve read about Rwanda. Seems problematic. Chloe Humbert Jan 02, 2025

128. Alarm is appropriate, the volcano is erupting. Chloe Humbert Jul 06, 2022

129. Sightseeing Tours Italy: Did anyone survive in Pompeii? “Archaeologists have determined from past documents and artefacts that there were around 20,000 people living within the city at the time of the eruption. From studying the skeleton remains, they estimated that around 2,000 people died in the eruption.”

130. Human behaviour during a fire alarm | iHASCO iHasco Jul 12, 2012

131. The AI Bubble’s Impossible Promises Edward Zitron Oct 10, 2025 - Where’s Your Ed At? We’re in a bubble. Everybody says we’re in a bubble. You can’t say we’re not in a bubble anymore without sounding insane, because everybody is now talking about how OpenAI has promised everybody $1 trillion — something you could have read about two weeks ago on my premium newsletter. Yet we live in a chaotic, insane world, where we can watch the news and hear hand-wringing over the fact that we’re in a bubble, read article after CEO after article after CEO after analyst after investor saying we’re in a bubble, yet the market continues to rip ever-upward on increasingly more-insane ideas, in part thanks to analysts that continue to ignore the very signs that they’re relied upon to read.

132. Nvidia Accused of Pirating Books To Train AI in New Lawsuit Evolve Editors Wed, January 21, 2026 at 10:44 AM EST The updated lawsuit in U.S. District Court claims Nvidia’s top executives greenlit reaching out to Anna’s Archive, a site famous for giving free access to millions of copyrighted books and papers. Emails in the complaint say someone from Nvidia’s data strategy team contacted the archive to see if its library could be used to train large language models. The suit alleges that “competitive pressures” in the AI world pushed Nvidia to go after pirated datasets. Besides Anna’s Archive, Nvidia reportedly tapped other sources like LibGen, Sci-Hub, and Z-Library to grab copyrighted material. Although Anna’s Archive allegedly warned Nvidia about legal risks, they moved ahead, gaining access to around 500 terabytes of data. The lawsuit also says some of the material Nvidia accessed came through the Internet Archive’s controlled digital lending system, which is already tied up in copyright battles.

133. MIT Technology Review - A major AI training data set contains millions of examples of personal data - Personally identifiable information has been found in DataComp CommonPool, one of the largest open-source data sets used to train image generation models. By Eileen Guoarchive page July 18, 2025 The bottom line, says William Agnew, a postdoctoral fellow in AI ethics at Carnegie Mellon University and one of the coauthors, is that “anything you put online can [be] and probably has been scraped.” The researchers found thousands of instances of validated identity documents—including images of credit cards, driver’s licenses, passports, and birth certificates—as well as over 800 validated job application documents (including résumés and cover letters), which were confirmed through LinkedIn and other web searches as being associated with real people. (In many more cases, the researchers did not have time to validate the documents or were unable to because of issues like image clarity.) A number of the résumés disclosed sensitive information including disability status, the results of background checks, birth dates and birthplaces of dependents, and race.

134. Your healthcare data is out there. Your mental healthcare data is out there. There are mental health data brokers, this is the reality. Chloe Humbert May 31, 2024 Your health data is out there. This isn’t a maybe. It’s been confirmed by researchers who have themselves dealt with data brokers. This has been known for awhile.

135. Data Brokers and the Sale of Americans’ Mental Health Data. The Exchange of Our Most Sensitive Data and What It Means for Personal Privacy. By: Joanne Kim, February 2023, Duke Sanford Cyber Policy Program Data broker 4 advertised highly sensitive mental health data to the author, including names and postal addresses of individuals with depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety issues, panic disorder, cancer, PTSD, OCD, and personality disorder, as well as individuals who have had strokes and data on those people’s races and ethnicities. Two data brokers, data broker 6 and data broker 9, mentioned nondisclosure agreements (NDAs) in their communications, and data broker 9 indicated that signing an NDA was a prerequisite for obtaining access to information on the data it sells.

136. AI does not exist but it will ruin everything anyway Angela Collier Jul 16, 2023

137. ‘Committee of Vultures’: Tech Billionaires Circle Greenland Gil Duran 19 Jan 2026 As Michel documents, this isn’t speculation. The Guardian reported last April that “some of Donald Trump’s biggest campaign donors and investors are positioned to potentially profit from any American takeover of Greenland.” Tech moguls and fossil fuel executives have invested in extraction companies across the island—all waiting to pluck it clean if they can just eliminate those pesky Danish and Greenlandic regulatory authorities. A “closed loop” of investors, billionaires, and Trump has emerged, circling Greenland like a committee of vultures. And a tech billionaire-funded group has raised the prospect of building a Network State city there.

138. What Trump really wants with AI Trump’s AI agenda is often described as a push for deregulation; an effort to cut red tape so AI companies can innovate. In truth, it’s a big government project with designs toward domination. Brian Merchant Jan 22, 2026.

139. Tech tycoon guru reveals the Accusation in a Mirror of conservative pandemic rhetoric. Curtis Yarvin is reportedly a guru to tech tycoons and their acolytes like JD Vance, and he articulated that the aristocrat revolution should involve pandemic-type measures. Chloe Humbert Oct 21, 2024 These people are not willing to tolerate mitigation measures that might remind people of danger and might quell interest in shopping in person, and are against remote work because it threatens commercial real estate interests. But in an authoritarian regime change — they would totally bring it.

140. Don’t wait for everybody before speaking up. Chloe Humbert Aug 08, 2023 I think most would agree peanut butter should be made out of peanuts, but at one point in the past, manufacturers started making peanut butter with many additives and fillers, and the industry even argued that making it mostly of actual peanuts would supposedly stifle innovation in peanut butter.8 And if that sounds ridiculous yet familiar - stopping innovation is the same claim Stockton Rush used against safety protocols for his dubious and now imploded submarine where he died on that hill, or more specifically in a watery depth next to another spectacular arrogance related maritime disaster.9 And the automated generated linguistics industry (popularly referred to as AI), has also used claims of stifled innovation to argue against privacy and safety regulations in the EU.10

141. Don’t believe trickle down data center hype. Don’t Wait For Everybody - Episode 027 Chloe Humbert Aug 10, 2025 This is a recording including clips from the town meeting on data centers in Menomonie, Wisconsin, from the perspective of someone facing the same data center power plant projects being shoved at us in Pennsylvania.

142. Vacuum flask - Wikipedia Invented by James Dewar in 1892, the vacuum flask consists of two flasks, placed one within the other and joined at the neck. The gap between the two flasks is partially evacuated of air, creating a near-vacuum which significantly reduces heat transfer by conduction or convection. When used to hold cold liquids, this also virtually eliminates condensation on the outside of the flask.