Gerry McGovern

Author of '99th Day: A Warning About Technology'.

99th Day: A Warning About Technology: https://gerrymcgovern.com/books/99th-day/

Public Key

npub14szayhg34l2x0qxt6s6j5k02yew05gxu2tfvv4pnqdxv8ten57ds2jur2r

NIP-05 Address

[email protected]

Profile Code

nprofile1qqs2cpwjt5g6l4r8sr9agdf2t84zvh86yrw995kx2sesxnxr4ue60xcprpmhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0d4hhxarj9ecxjmntqyqqy52qs5

Publishing to

relay.momostr.pink

Author Public Key

npub14szayhg34l2x0qxt6s6j5k02yew05gxu2tfvv4pnqdxv8ten57ds2jur2r

Show more details

Last Notes

2026-07-12 11:04:51 UTC

- reply

All over the world, data centers are now relentlessly targeting rural communities
"Many rural communities have limited decision-making capacity due to budget and staffing constraints, and they often rely on volunteer mayors or part-time elected officials. Often, they are simply not equipped to make these informed decisions or to effectively negotiate with companies that own data centers."
https://www.nprillinois.org/economy-business/2026-07-10/data-centers-have-moved-into-rural-america-so-have-the-concerns

2026-07-12 10:58:02 UTC

In the US, "nearly 90% of all existing data centers are in urban areas, but 67% of planned facilities are slated for rural communities and 39% are planned in counties without an existing data center."
https://www.nprillinois.org/economy-business/2026-07-10/data-centers-have-moved-into-rural-america-so-have-the-concerns

2026-06-10 18:40:32 UTC

In Ireland, for 22% of total electricity, data centers provide 3,300 jobs
There are about 2,800,000 employed in Ireland.
For every 1% of Irish electricity, data centers provide 150 jobs
In the rest of the economy, for every 1% of electricity, 35,897 jobs are provided.

2026-06-09 15:28:53 UTC

"China is pulling ahead of the rest of the world in sinking data centers that power AI into the ocean as an alternate way to keep them cool," Scientific American gushes
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/china-powers-ai-boom-with-undersea-data-centers/
Our oceans are already seeing record hot temperatures. Let's dump a few thousand mega hot data centers into them, shall we?
This is progress.
This is innovation.
We solve this problem on land by causing another problem at sea.
This is science in the Growth Death Cult.
#dataCentres #datacenters

2026-06-06 19:31:23 UTC

- reply

Our world is in flames, our soils are collapsing, the very land is drying out.
To the rescue, Big Tech sends giant AI data center fire trucks. They park in poor neighbourhoods and suck up all the water they can get.
But do they put the fire out? No. Their data hoses are blow torches, burning energy, spreading lies and cheap entertainment. Convincing middle-aged mediocre men they are on the hero's journey.
We don't have to accept this
We can still resist

2026-06-05 11:21:16 UTC

Imagine something that in 2020 didn't really exist but has so exploded onto our environment that in 2030 it will demand the water of 1.3 billion people and the electricity of 2 billion.
In a time when we have a global historic severe drought and when our civilization is about to collapse due to over-consumption of energy.
This is AI.
This is Big Tech
These are the tech bros. Here to burn it all down for greed and ambition.
https://news.un.org/en/story/2026/06/1167658

2026-05-29 11:07:31 UTC

"We investigated one of the world’s largest AI data centers, using thermal drone footage to reveal the hidden pollution powering the AI boom."
Data centers are brazenly defying environmental laws and regulators are doing little or nothing to stop it.
Data centers try to move into a community real fast before locals have a chance to act
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5p426fSlYH4

2026-05-28 12:37:32 UTC

- reply

There are multiple situations all over the world where Big Tech has gone to extraordinary lengths to hide it's water use from the public.
Here's a particularly infamous one:
The Dalles city sues local paper to keep Google’s data center water use secret, Sebastian Moss, Data Center Dynamics, 2021
https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/the-dalles-city-sues-local-paper-to-keep-googles-data-center-water-use-a-secret/

2026-05-28 11:30:43 UTC

AI Data Centers Don't Use as Much Water as You Think
They actually use far more! But Big Tech has done such a good job as buying off politicians over the years, that the public is not allowed to know the true and total impact of data centers in their community.
Big Tech uses punitive NDAs and all sorts of other laws and tricks to hide from the public how much public water they are using.

2026-05-26 14:04:10 UTC

- reply

Sadly, batteries are among the most toxic products ever developed, with the potential to do environmental damage for generations.
The problem is solar and wind are sold as clean and green and renewable, none of which is true. Massive quantities of copper, cobalt, lithium, nickel, aluminum, etc. etc., are required. And then these wind and solar factories are often installed on Indigenous land. The only solution is a vast reduction in energy consumption.
@npub1mk7…5ktw

2026-05-26 10:49:19 UTC

In Ontario, hundreds of kilometres from the nearest highway, a vast stretch of peatlands and boreal forest is being readied for sacrifice.
They have to destroy the peatlands for the critical metals for the clean energy for the Great Green Transition. Aren't peatlands carbon sinks?
"Above those underground treasures, the world’s largest intact peatland ecosystem stores vast amounts of carbon and supports Indigenous communities that have lived there for generations."
https://www.theenergymix.com/ring-of-fire-push-pits-critical-minerals-against-carbon-peatlands-indigenous-rights/

2026-05-26 10:27:50 UTC

AI generated identical résumés for a man and a woman: Hers was more likely to be labeled ‘weak,’ while his got a 97% approval rating
https://fortune.com/2026/05/10/identical-resume-ai-men-women-response-trust-ability/
This is not a flaw. It's deep design. AI is designed by Nazi Musk and his white male supremacist buddies for white male supremacists.
White male supremacy in = white male supremacy out

2026-05-23 15:47:49 UTC

- reply

The history of science, though, is the history of white male supremacy, and it is white male supremacy that is also the driver of capitalism. Science is man playing god, and we can clearly see that men are not nearly wise enough to be allowed to do that.
There is this, I think, naive view, that if we only leave it up to the scientists, then everything will be fine. That if we just crunch the numbers and follow the formula, we get to a good place. The evidence shows otherwise.

2026-05-23 13:18:19 UTC

'Insect apocalypse' is already fueling malnutrition in some regions, first-of-its-kind study reveals
Science did this.
Congratulations, science
https://news.mongabay.com/2026/05/humanitys-ancient-bond-with-biodiversity-is-visible-in-rock-art-analysis/
Since 1970, there has been a:
50% decline in insects
73% collapse in wildlife numbers
49% decline in marine life
69% decline in vertebrates
83% decline in freshwater species
And now we have AI
So much progress.
So much winning.

2026-05-23 12:48:44 UTC

Once we were Indigenous
Once we were part of nature
Once we were wise
Then we became civilized
"Across continents and cultures, one of the most striking features of ancient rock art is how often it places the natural world at its center. Whether etched into sandstone cliffs in the Sahara, painted in hidden shelters in Southern Africa, or drawn on stone faces deep in the Amazon, the recurring subject is not architecture, warfare or abstract political power."
https://news.mongabay.com/2026/05/humanitys-ancient-bond-with-biodiversity-is-visible-in-rock-art-analysis/

2026-05-21 10:31:56 UTC

"But behind the headlines, lies the truth: AI is taking all the cash from the biggest names in the market. In fact, in just five quarters (2025 through 1Q26), Alphabet (GOOGL), Microsoft (MSFT), Meta (META), Amazon (AMZN), and Oracle (ORCL) burned a combined $563 billion in free cash flow (FCF)."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2026/05/20/ai-is-devouring-all-the-cash/

2026-05-20 15:51:24 UTC

- reply

Yeah, let's fill the sea with wind turbines and data centres, and we can mine the deep sea to get the materials to build all these marvels. They just want growth at any cost, don't they.
@npub1z3l…txvc

2026-05-20 12:23:09 UTC

"Last year, the Appalachian Rekindling Project made a big move. We bought 63 acres of former strip mine land in Letcher County, Kentucky. Our investment disrupted plans for a $505 million federal prison complex that would have caged 1,300 people, stopping a cycle of harm that has defined Appalachia for too long."
"We acknowledge historical harm, center Indigenous sovereignty, build true community safety through ecological restoration rather than allow another prison."
https://nextcity.org/urbanist-news/this-former-strip-mine-was-planned-for-a-prison-local-activism

2026-05-20 12:17:28 UTC

"The AI boom has resulted in new data center facilities that use exponentially more electricity and water than ever before. But because of regulatory loopholes, AI companies don’t have to report on their water usage, straining an already precious resource in California."
https://www.kalw.org/bay-area-news/2026-05-19/lack-of-water-usage-transparency-at-ai-data-centers-raises-concerns

2026-05-20 12:16:03 UTC

"Corpus Christi needs the groundwater beneath the small town of Sinton so urgently that it’s already laying pipeline, even before it has the permits to start drilling for water. Sinton, with 5,500 residents about half an hour north, is fighting those permits in court, citing concerns for its own water supply. But leaders in Corpus Christi, which supplies water to half a million people, now suggest an ulterior motive: Sinton wants a thirsty, new complex of data centers."
https://www.route-fifty.com/infrastructure/2026/05/local-texas-leaders-believe-data-center-plans-may-be-behind-delays-emergency-water-supply/413626/?oref=rf-homepage-river

2026-05-20 12:13:24 UTC

Electronic waste and used batteries contain dangerous heavy metals including lead, mercury, cadmium, nickel, and lithium, which can leak into soil, groundwater, and ecosystems when improperly disposed of together with household garbage.
“One of the most dangerous characteristics of heavy metals is that they persist in nature and accumulate through the food chain."
https://ilkha.com/english/health-life/turkiye-generates-nearly-1-million-tons-of-e-waste-annually-experts-warn-534069

2026-05-20 12:10:57 UTC

"IDTechEx’s 2025 report on sustainable semiconductor manufacturing projects that energy consumption for chip fabrication will triple between 2025 and 2035, growing at a CAGR of 12%. Water consumption is projected to double over the same period. The input cost of building electronics keeps rising, environmentally speaking, even as device prices stay flat or drop."
https://impakter.com/electronics-circular-problem-why-what-we-build-matters-as-much-as-what-we-recycle/
This is the very industry selling renewable, green and clean energy

2026-05-20 12:08:26 UTC

"The electronics industry has a loop problem. Not a supply chain problem, not a recycling problem – a loop problem. The industry has optimized brilliantly for the first half of a product’s life: design, manufacture, sell. It has been far less serious about the second half: reuse, refurbish, recover. The result is a system that creates enormous value at one end and destroys it – along with significant environmental damage – at the other."
https://impakter.com/electronics-circular-problem-why-what-we-build-matters-as-much-as-what-we-recycle/

2026-05-20 12:00:48 UTC

"A buzzy new book called “The Future of Truth: How AI Reshapes Reality” contains more than a half-dozen misattributed or fake quotes,” a review by The New York Times discovered. In response to questions from the paper, the author, Steven Rosenbaum, admitted that the book contained a “handful of improperly attributed or synthetic quotes” stemming from his use of AI tools."
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/book-ai-truth-ai-hallucinated-quotes

2026-05-19 12:26:02 UTC

AI keeps on delivering
Before the AI "Dragontail's rollout, Chaac says more than 90% of its pizza deliveries arrived within 30 minutes, and the company consistently posted double-digit sales growth and guest-satisfaction scores above system averages. After Pizza Hut rolled out Dragontail in 2024, the franchisee says delivery performance sharply deteriorated."
https://www.businessinsider.com/pizza-hut-ai-system-dragontail-lawsuit-franchisee-2026-5

2026-05-18 14:40:53 UTC

RE: https://mastodon.green/@juliette/116594425473101770
It becomes more obvious every day: Men are the problem and have been for a long time. Toxic white male supremacy is wiping out life on earth.
Where are the 'good' men?
#note1gg9…8e3v

2026-05-14 10:35:33 UTC

- reply

“We’re here to Protect Mother Earth”: Indigenous Rights and Nevada’s Lithium Boom
As lithium projects accelerate across Nevada, extraction is being approved on Indigenous ancestral lands. Companies are advancing projects as the US fast-tracks “critical minerals” development, sidelining rights protections and heightening risks for people. In an arid, high-desert environment, lithium extraction threatens scarce water, cultural survival, health and fragile ecosystems.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/AMR51/0741/2026/en/

2026-05-14 10:32:51 UTC

When more mining is the answer, you're asking the wrong question
"Nevada is experiencing a lithium boom that has seen more than 20,000 claims filed. The report also comes amid global resistance by Indigenous peoples to “green transition” mining that they say comes at the expense of their land and rights."
“The way that this mining has always taken place has been incredibly damaging to the environment and people."
https://grist.org/indigenous/report-nevadas-lithium-boom-comes-at-the-expense-of-indigenous-rights/

2026-05-13 12:15:33 UTC

The AI Data Center Backlash Is Growing. Kevin O’Leary’s $1 Billion Stratos Project Reveals Why
Community opposition to massive AI data center projects is emerging as a critical bottleneck to the infrastructure buildout, with residents in Utah, Virginia, Arizona, Georgia, and Texas raising concerns about water consumption, power demands, and environmental impact that could delay multibillion-dollar projects and reshape where AI facilities get built.
https://247wallst.com/investing/2026/05/12/the-ai-data-center-backlash-is-growing-kevin-olearys-1-billion-stratos-project-reveals-why/

2026-05-13 12:00:18 UTC

This AI data center will be bigger than 2,000 Walmarts and dump '23 atom bombs worth of energy' into the environment every day — and locals are terrified
The scale sounds almost unreal. The proposed campus reportedly spans around 40,000 acres in Box Elder County, Utah, an area larger than many major cities.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/ai-data-center-bigger-2-124356503.html

2026-05-12 05:37:15 UTC

- reply

i can't recommend Klee Benally's No Spiritual Surrender more highly. Profound work.

2026-05-10 10:54:40 UTC

- reply

How the data centers operate. Always in secrecy.
"When the county utility investigated, officials discovered two industrial-scale water hookups feeding a data center campus located 20 miles south of downtown Atlanta. One water connection had been installed without the utility’s knowledge, and the other was not linked to the company’s account and therefore wasn’t being billed."
https://www.flyingpenguin.com/datacenter-sprawl-pushes-georgia-into-dangerous-water/
In other places, they don't have to steal the water: they get it for free.

2026-05-10 10:50:48 UTC

A data center drained 30M gallons of water unnoticed — until residents complained about low water pressure
Residents in Fayetteville, Georgia, noticed low water pressure last year. The utility discovered two unaccounted-for water connections at one of the nation’s largest data center campuses.
“We get this notification from Fayette County water system saying you need to stop watering your lawns to help conserve water."
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/05/08/georgia-data-centers-water-00909988

2026-05-10 10:46:11 UTC

"The term ‘waste colonialism’ was first introduced during the early meetings of the Basel Convention in 1989. The concept is straightforward: wealthier nations, facing stricter environmental laws and rising disposal costs, send their most harmful waste to poorer countries. These countries often lack the necessary infrastructure, legal frameworks, or political will to refuse such shipments. Fast forward to today, and not much has changed."
https://countercurrents.org/2026/05/recycling-lie-how-rich-nations-export-their-waste-crisis/

2026-05-10 10:37:29 UTC

- reply

Yes, absolutely. The commons and many other highly sustainable systems were how most humans lived for hundreds of thousands of years. Humans have long shown that we can live sustainably and fairly. This modern scientific capitalist system is literally a cancer on our environment. It will devour everything. We live in a Growth Death Cult, ruled by the worst of the worst of narcissistic, greedy men.
@npub1al3…9s9x @npub10q6…mx30

2026-05-10 10:29:54 UTC

- reply

Nothing remotely compares to the Europeans. The Europeans have always been master of genocide and ecocide. Nothing comes even close.
Indigenous cultures are incredibly various but there is lots of evidence out there of Indigenous cultures behaving vastly--vastly--better in relation to the environment, than European imperialists whose whole religion has been to colonize and subdue.
@npub1yq0…hfrz @npub10q6…mx30

2026-05-10 10:10:49 UTC

- reply

Humans are not necessarily damaging to ecosystems. Some of the most bio-diverse ecosystems in the worlds are so because of Indigenous people and how they have learned to integrate with nature. Humans can be good partners and protectors of Nature. Modern, particularly Western civilization is a devourer of Nature.
@npub1yq0…hfrz @npub10q6…mx30

2026-05-08 18:34:30 UTC

- reply

We need to consume much better and much less. I saw this quote recently:
"Less stuff. More fun."
@npub1zur…kqha @npub1yq0…hfrz

2026-05-08 16:11:26 UTC

- reply

There's nothing remotely "clean" about solar. Just because something is less dirty in one area does not make it clean. Modern tech is inherently toxic. We must seek to radically reduce energy use.
@npub1yq0…hfrz

2026-05-08 15:34:24 UTC

- reply

well, that's it. China controls 80% of the global solar market and 70% of the wind power market, and a growing slice of the EV market ... all made with coal!

2026-05-08 15:29:15 UTC

Coal produces about 33% of global electricity
Solar and wind produce 8–9% each
Electricity meets about 20% of total energy demand
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/coal-still-powers-more-electricity/
"The year 2025 recorded the largest net addition to global coal capacity in over a decade, driven largely by China amid the country’s heightened energy security concerns."
https://www.bu.edu/gdp/2026/04/28/resurgence-to-retirement-global-insights-on-transitioning-away-from-coal/
China accounts for 55.8% of global coal consumption
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-worlds-biggest-coal-consumers/

2026-05-06 12:44:31 UTC

- reply

"Supporters of economic theories known as “degrowth” or “post-growth” say that capitalism’s pursuit of growth, along with the relentless consumption and production needed to sustain it, has run its course. They point to rising inequality, exceeding natural planetary boundaries and geopolitical struggles over scarcer energy resources."
https://theconversation.com/is-this-the-moment-to-change-the-way-we-think-about-economic-growth-281747

2026-05-06 12:42:54 UTC

- reply

Degrowth is the only hope
"Resources are dwindling, including minerals, timber, water, and soils. Almost all ecosystems are being damaged, including the atmosphere, oceans, and forests. Species are being lost at an alarming rate. Seven of the nine major “planetary boundaries” impacts have now exceeded safe levels."
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2026-05-05/transition-towns-are-key-to-degrowth-but-current-movements-remain-too-reformist/

2026-05-06 12:33:34 UTC

The world's richest, lying Nazi, Musk promised his data center would reuse water. That's now stalled.
Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company abruptly stopped work on a water reuse facility meant to alleviate strain on the Memphis-area water supply. Nobody’s saying why.
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/05/05/xai-water-reuse-project-musk-ai-spacex-ipo-environmental-project-ee-00896170

2026-05-06 09:06:16 UTC

Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere just hit a ‘depressing’ new record
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/carbon-dioxide-levels-in-the-atmosphere-just-hit-a-depressing-record-high/
Solar energy is reaching record highs.
Wind energy is reaching record highs
Coal energy is reaching record highs
Oil and gas energy are reaching record highs.
The problem is growth. We live in the final stages of a Growth Death Cult.
We are in the worst of all worlds:
More wood
More coal
More oil
More gas
More hydro
More nuclear
More wind
More solar
It's an energy CONSUMPTION crisis.

2026-05-05 14:28:04 UTC

- reply

They have plans for 100 lithium mines in the USA alone.
And aluminum is hugely damaging to tropical forests, where the bauxite for it is found. Just was at a presentation about how bauxite mining is wiping out large parts of the Amazon. All of this stuff has huge environmental costs.

2026-05-05 10:26:07 UTC

"A retired journalist was falsely accused of serious crimes by Microsoft Copilot. The AI linked his name to criminal cases he once reported on and published personal details, including his address and phone number."
https://amp.dw.com/en/ai-chatbot-falsely-accuses-journalist-of-crimes/video-77013145

2026-05-05 10:11:01 UTC

All over the world, the mining oligarchs are coming for the copper
Traditional landowners are fighting back against plans to reopen an existing Bougainville copper mine which has remained dormant for nearly four decades.
https://nit.com.au/05-05-2026/24078/bougainville-landowners-demand-mining-companies-halt-reopening-of-copper-pit

2026-05-04 12:47:04 UTC

'Unprecedented drought conditions': More than 500 data centers across Nevada, California, and Arizona could feel the pinch as the iconic Hoover Dam potentially loses 40% of its power output because of poor rainfall and abnormally low snowpack numbers.
https://www.techradar.com/pro/unprecedented-drought-conditions-more-than-500-data-centers-across-nevada-california-and-arizona-could-feel-the-pinch-as-the-iconic-hoover-dam-could-lose-40-of-its-power-output-because-of-poor-rainfall-and-abnormally-low-snowpack-numbers
A surging global water crisis and an AI boom do not mix well

2026-05-04 12:37:47 UTC

Goverment sues a newspaper to stop it telling the public how much water Google is using
"While the bill marks an escalation in the city’s water woes, the dispute regarding how much flows where goes back to 2021, when The Dalles sued The Oregonian, the state's largest newspaper, over public records requests. If granted, it would have revealed Google's local data center’s water usage. Instead, the lawsuit kept the data private."
https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/data-centers-are-hogging-town-s-water

2026-05-01 13:57:53 UTC

- reply

As you point out, it has long been known that land change is climate change, that when you cut down the forests or pave the marshes, you heat the atmosphere. But to face that problem, you had to address capitalism, growth. So, they deliberately hid it, and said: 'CO2 is the only problem.' CO2 is a huge problem, but it is far from the only one. And it is a problem so big that nobody really owns it. But if you deny permits for a new hotel because it will pave over marshes ...

2026-04-30 10:20:49 UTC

I know that we are in a bad water situation and are under restrictions. Then, why do so many companies get to use so many tons of water, but we can’t?
Are these Artificial Intelligence Units using more water than a little city does in total in one day?
Per “Unit” (Data Center): A single, large, data center can consume up to 5 million gallons of water per day, which is comparable to the daily water usage of a town with 10,000 to 50,000 people.
Really?
https://www.ocala-news.com/2026/04/28/i-dont-know-if-water-usage-restrictions-apply-to-data-centers-using-millions-of-gallons/

2026-04-28 19:34:07 UTC

"Even in an age of female emancipation, one would hardly wish to ascribe this picture, which shows a highly vigorous, almost coarse conception, to a woman’s hand”.
https://theconversation.com/michaelina-wautier-review-an-astoundingly-skilled-painter-returned-to-her-rightful-place-in-the-spotlight-281462
Men have done everything in their power to stop women from painting. When they failed, and women painted masterpieces, men put their own names to the painting. Men were AI before AI, stealing women's intellectual property and passing it off as their own.

2026-04-26 18:28:39 UTC

"A massive drought coupled with political mismanagement might fully deplete water in a major city: neither in West Asia nor the Horn of Africa, but in the United States of America. According to Inside Climate News, the city of Corpus Christi, Texas could soon completely out of water in the next year."
https://futurism.com/science-energy/texas-water-crisis-climate
Texas: the capital of data centers
But Altman says data center water use is fake news

2026-04-23 18:50:23 UTC

Men's relentless war on women and Mother Nature
"The Triumph of Bacchus, once owned by Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria, is a painting so enormous and ambitious that in the early 1900s, Gustav Glück, curator of Flemish painting at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, declared that it could never be the work of a woman."
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20260325-the-artworks-by-women-where-men-got-the-credit
Trump and his male thugs are just the latest example. There is a deep sickness in the male mind and it will kill all life if it's not cured.

2026-04-21 14:50:57 UTC

The 1960s British far right has become the 2020s full on Nazis
The 1960s Conservatives have become the 2020s far right
The 1960s Labour Party has become the 2020s Conservatives
And the Green Party has become the Labour Party
And Labour was never able to solve the inherent tension between jobs and the environment. Jobs always had to come first. It's jobs before everything until there's nothing left.

2026-04-20 15:41:03 UTC

- reply

Exactly.When I asked Tom Murphy about the fossil fuels versus “renewable” energy debate, his response was simple: “In a sense, to me, the question is similar to: which is worse—death by decapitation or bullet through the head? What we do with the energy in either form is leading to a sixth mass extinction.”
The "renewable" cult never get this. What the energy is used for is the most dangerous thing.
Renewable Salvation?, Tom Murphy, Do the Math, 2024
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2024/08/mm-11-renewable-salvation/

2026-04-20 15:16:55 UTC

- reply

Remember, if "Earth has become a huge mine" then Earth has become a huge dump, because 99%--sometimes 99.9%--of metals mining is toxic waste that will destroy air, water and soil for generations. The marketers and branders from the energy industry have told us all this is green and clean and renewable. Now, who would believe that sort of garbage?

2026-04-20 14:24:40 UTC

"Earth has become a huge mine, with a greater quantity and variety of fundamental mineral resources being extracted year after year. Technology, from electric cars to everyday electrical equipment, consume vast amounts of scarce raw materials. On a planet with limited resources, are these minerals being properly assessed? Will there be enough raw materials to meet the demand of a world population on track to reach 10 billion people?"
NO
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-78533-8
@npub1aaw…6ppt

2026-04-20 13:26:17 UTC

"Pure DC is building the city’s largest data center in Amsterdam Westpoort, with Microsoft as its sole tenant. The complex consumes 420 million liters of industrial water per year for cooling. Its electricity consumption is equivalent to that of nearly all Amsterdam households combined."
https://www.techzine.eu/news/infrastructure/140589/data-center-for-microsoft-consumes-up-to-420m-liters-of-industrial-water-a-week/

2026-04-20 13:21:45 UTC

Thai officials on Wednesday said they seized 238 tonnes of illegally imported electronic waste from the US at the port of Bangkok, one of the biggest lots they’ve found this year.
https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/world/tonnes-of-us-e-waste-seized-in-thailand/ar-AA1ENEZE
This is happening ALL the time, as the Global North dumps as much of its toxic trash in the Global South

2026-04-20 07:26:40 UTC

- reply

It's amazing this fantasy language that so often comes out of science. Net zero and zero emissions, green, clean. All this crude propaganda. It's works, though. People believe it.They think the scientists are magicians who can disappear costs and damage.

2026-04-18 18:48:21 UTC

"Since many AI centers are built in economically vulnerable rural areas—like Bessemer, Alabama, a predominantly Black city—already disadvantaged communities are disproportionately affected by the resulting pollution and water scarcity. It is a continuation of a long history of marginalized communities becoming sacrifice zones that shoulder the environmental costs of economic progress. This is environmental racism."
https://uscatholic.org/articles/202604/ais-environmental-costs-fall-most-heavily-on-the-marginalized/

2026-04-17 17:03:06 UTC

How to resist alpha males, Camilla Power, Chris Knight, Radical Anthropology, 2025
https://vimeo.com/1182287815
We all need these lessons. Great men are wiping out life on earth.
Testosterone is far more dangerous than diesel.
The meta crisis is not the Climate Change Crisis.
It is the White Male Supremacy Crisis

2026-04-09 13:49:17 UTC

- reply

Yeah, so sorry to hear that.
You deliver such wonderful information. So rich and well researched and full of real stuff you can do to make things better. Always worth a read.

2026-04-09 13:08:19 UTC

- reply

Yeah. "The American Clean Power Association (ACP) is the leading voice of today’s multi-tech clean energy industry, representing energy storage, wind, utility-scale solar, clean hydrogen, and transmission companies."
@npub1x4e…0vyf @npub1w0v…09fj

2026-04-09 10:55:23 UTC

- reply

The idea that wind turbine blades are not toxic and do not pollute doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
Leading Edge erosion and pollution
from wind turbine blades
https://docs.wind-watch.org/Leading-Edge-erosion-and-pollution-from-wind-turbine-blades_5_july_English.pdf
@npub1w0v…09fj @npub1san…jgxu

2026-04-09 10:23:47 UTC

“We are taking water protections away from one community and handing them to another,” Probst said. “You can call it mitigation, but to the people who live here, it feels like theft.”
https://www.lehighvalleylive.com/outdoors/2026/04/i-80-project-data-centers-threatening-pa-wetlands-lawmaker-says-bill-seeks-new-protections.html
AI is built on theft. Theft of data. Theft of art. Theft of water. Theft if liberty. The entire industry is criminal from the ground up. It exists for greed and can do what it wants because it owns the politicians.

2026-04-09 09:44:50 UTC

- reply

Wind turbine blades are not toxic?
"Trace elements (TEs) from turbine corrosion-protection systems could generate significant ecosystem, economic, and human health risks. We calculate annual inputs for current European OWF capacity (30 GW) as: 3219 t aluminium, 1148 t zinc and 1.9 t indium, but these will increase ~12× by 2050, eclipsing known discharges."
"Paucity of industry data" allows harms to be hidden, as usual
https://www.nature.com/articles/s44183-024-00101-6
@npub1w0v…09fj @npub1san…jgxu

2026-04-09 07:47:34 UTC

- reply

No doubt. Fossil fuels are awful, life destroying. We must massively reduce all energy and material consumption.
I worry that "renewables" give people a way out: You don't have to change your lifestyle if you just change your energy source. There are hugely difficult choices up ahead and we are just putting them off by pretending that there's such a thing as green and clean energy. We're just swapping one set of harms for another.
@npub1z6r…eawd @npub1san…jgxu

2026-04-09 07:44:21 UTC

- reply

The only viable future is local. Living within local means. Using local resources and knowledge. Yeah, we definitely need that sort of vision in Ireland.
@npub1zts…ccks @npub1san…jgxu

2026-04-09 06:23:20 UTC

- reply

But sadly lithium mining is real and doing huge damage to local communities and nature today.
@npub1z6r…eawd @npub1san…jgxu

2026-04-08 19:51:35 UTC

- reply

I have tried to get true total environmental costs and found it almost impossible. For example, what's the cost of wiping out entire Andes ecosystems for lithium? What's the cost to enslaved Uighur for building Chinese solar? Any time I hear "cheap" solar or batteries, I shudder.
@npub1san…jgxu

2026-04-08 19:37:21 UTC

- reply

there are millions of them dumped in toxic graves that will poison for thousands of years. They just don't design this stuff to be reusable or recyclable. And we don't calculate these total costs to the environment. Once you can tick the box "reduces CO2" you can do practically any other harm you want.

2026-04-08 17:28:49 UTC

So green and clean
"We may think that the wind turbines we see blowing in the wind up and down the country will last forever, but that's not the case at all. These blades do need to be replaced and some 11,000 tons of wind turbine blades are due to be decommissioned in Ireland by the end of this year. Unfortunately, the glass fibre materials used in the construction of these blades are not biodegradable."
https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2026/0401/1491819-wind-turbine-blades-recycling-reuse-podcast/

2026-04-08 12:20:32 UTC

Communities taking on data centers
"The vote in Port Washington, a lakeside town of roughly 12,000 people just north of Milwaukee, appears to be the first time any U.S. municipality will go to the ballot to kneecap data center development. It marks an aggressive new tactic in an escalating movement to oppose the hulking artificial intelligence factories — and offers a potential blueprint for other small towns challenging Big Tech."
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/04/07/wisconsin-data-center-ai-ballot-trump-00860020

2026-04-08 12:12:32 UTC

"A new analysis from The New York Times attempted to assess the accuracy of AI Overviews, finding it’s right 90 percent of the time. The flip side is that 1 in 10 AI answers is wrong, and for Google, that means hundreds of thousands of lies going out every minute of the day."
https://arstechnica.com/google/2026/04/analysis-finds-google-ai-overviews-is-wrong-10-percent-of-the-time/

2026-04-06 10:37:19 UTC

"A formal mathematical proof from MIT and a preregistered empirical study in Science from Stanford arrived within a month of each other, and together they make the same unsettling argument: the danger of AI chatbots is not what they get wrong. It is how enthusiastically they agree with everything we get wrong. Not a chatbot that lies to you, but a mirror that reflects your beliefs back at you, slightly amplified, every single time."
https://c3.unu.edu/blog/the-echo-chamber-in-your-pocket

2026-04-01 12:48:03 UTC

"Artificial intelligence data centers are driving up electric bills in New Jersey and straining local resources, according to a new report. The report from New Jersey Policy Perspective, a nonpartisan think tank, links the surge in AI data centers to a roughly 20% jump in electric bills in New Jersey last summer."
https://www.nj.com/business/2026/03/nj-electric-bills-are-spiking-and-ai-data-centers-are-to-blame-new-report-says.html

2026-03-27 13:45:21 UTC

"The study found that bad actors have increased their use of AI across nearly every aspect of their operations, from consumer scams to document forgery. However, deepfake-driven social engineering has seen the sharpest rise, with roughly three-quarters of respondents reporting an uptick over the past two years. While early deepfakes were often easy to identify, more advanced AI models have made them a threat that can no longer be dismissed."
https://www.paymentsjournal.com/bad-actors-are-already-piloting-the-next-evolution-of-ai/

2026-03-25 09:55:49 UTC

- reply

With the US war on Iran, the solar and wind boosters are wicked with excitement. They gush how there’s no Straits of Hormuz for wind machines or solar panels; that these precious gifts of energy come straight from God. In the real world, solar panels come straight from China, who dominates about 80% of the market. Such short memories people have . It was not long ago that China was doing its own ‘Straits of Hormuz’ as it threatened to choke the supply of rare earths.
https://degrowthuk.org/2026/03/24/technology-is-the-enemy-of-degrowth/

2026-03-25 09:52:05 UTC

As we hustle and hurtle towards environmental collapse, wrapped in green cloaks, the tech optimists are dizzy selling us their latest tech toys which they promise—oh, how they promise—will solve the problems that the previous generation of technology caused.
To roll around in the sunny promised uplands of this magical tech future, all we need to do is be super-aggressive in rolling out these mega solar and wind factories in deserts, on land, on mountain, in the oceans.
https://degrowthuk.org/2026/03/24/technology-is-the-enemy-of-degrowth/

2026-03-24 10:29:40 UTC

The intelligence illusion: why AI isn’t as smart as it is made out to be
Artificial-intelligence models will supposedly take over the world, but AI innovator Luc Julia tells Nature that they’re little more than glorified pocket calculators.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-00882-5
AI is such an incredible scam, but then Sold by scammers and grifters from the Valley of Pimps and Pushers

2026-03-22 10:53:45 UTC

Modern, scientific man has written women out of history
Half of Japan’s samurai were women, groundbreaking new exhibition at British Museum says
https://www.independent.co.uk/asia/japan/british-museum-samurai-women-warrior-myth-b2913476.html
The Viking Woman Warrior of Birka, Sweden
https://www.history-channel.org/a-viking-mystery-the-woman-warrior-of-birka/
Early Women Were Hunters, Not Just Gatherers
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/early-women-were-hunters-not-just-gatherers-study-suggests-180982459/
‘Woman the hunter’: Studies aim to correct history
https://news.nd.edu/news/woman-the-hunter-studies-aim-to-correct-history/
The sports where women outperform men
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240731-the-sports-where-women-outperform-men

2026-03-20 14:14:27 UTC

- reply

That's totally it. Men invented god to in order to become kings. And so it goes ...

2026-03-20 13:56:42 UTC

"Mumford’s work suggests that technologists’ use of religious language—as with Schmidt’s “promised land”—reveals their faith in the “myth of the machine,” which he calls the “ultimate religion of our seemingly rational age.” At the core of the myth of the machine, he argued, is the idea that the development of technology is inherently connected to the improvement of the human condition."
https://www.compactmag.com/article/ai-and-the-myth-of-the-machine/

2026-03-17 19:55:43 UTC

The hidden beauty of vibe coding
"It passed all the unit tests, the shape of the code looks right," he said. It's 3.7x more lines of code that performs 2,000 times worse than the actual SQLite. Two thousand times worse for a database is a non-viable product. It's a dumpster fire. Throw it away. All that money you spent on it is worthless."
https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/17/ai_businesses_faking_it_reckoning_coming_codestrap/

2026-03-17 10:05:47 UTC

Kenyan workers are still the underpaid labor behind AI training, moderation, and sex chatbots.
“It got to a point where my body couldn’t function. Where I saw someone naked, I don’t even feel it,” Asia said. “It fractured a lot of things for me. My body is like, not functioning at all.”
https://www.404media.co/ai-is-african-intelligence-the-workers-who-train-ai-are-fighting-back/
‘In the end, you feel blank’: India’s female workers watching hours of abusive content to train AI
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/feb/05/in-the-end-you-feel-blank-indias-female-workers-watching-hours-of-abusive-content-to-train-ai

2026-03-16 10:24:41 UTC

A new industrial boom is spreading across the world, but instead of smokestacks and steel mills, it is massive AI data centers. These warehouse-sized facilities may power the digital economy, but they come with enormous and largely hidden environmental costs.
"A single large AI-focused data center can consume as much electricity as 100,000 homes. The largest facilities, 600 megawatts or more, use enough electricity to power 350,000 homes or more."
https://jerseyvindicator.org/2026/03/15/the-ai-data-center-boom-is-the-next-environmental-crisis-and-its-already-starting/

2026-03-14 11:21:37 UTC

We live in Orwell's world
"We are told that deep-sea mining is necessary to support the green economy. That we need to extract these polymetallic nodules at the bottom of the sea so we can create electric batteries to run automobiles without using carbon fuels. But deep-sea mining is such a destructive process."
Solomon Pili Kahoʻohalahala, a seventh-generation Native Hawaiian elder and activist
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/13032026/native-hawaiian-activist-deep-sea-mining-regulations/

2026-03-14 11:00:17 UTC

The environmental cost of datacentres is rising. Is it time to quit AI?
As the QuitGPT movement gains momentum, should people concerned about the environmental impacts of AI consider opting out?
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/mar/13/ai-datacentres-environmental-impacts

2026-03-13 14:36:03 UTC

- reply

You can't recycle what you haven't built. And even the recycling process itself causes lots of energy use and toxic waste.

2026-03-13 14:34:50 UTC

- reply

For sure. But unfortunately, an AI data center demands 10 times more copper than a pre-AI data center.

2026-03-13 14:13:33 UTC

In order to achieve our 'Green' Transition, we will need to mine more copper in the next 25 years than in all of previous history.
We will cause over 500 billion tons of toxic waste in the process. That's roughly three Mt Everests' of waste.
Not to mention the massive quantities of toxic wastewater and huge amounts of fossil fuel energy required to process.
Copper mining is among the most environmentally destructive forms of mining.
We label this ecocide green and clean and renewable

2026-03-13 13:54:56 UTC

Hope now is dangerous
"A generation that learned more words from a machine than from their mother cannot be “re-educated”, cannot be “cured”. One cannot help an adolescent leave the digital prison because it is the only world they know, because their mind was formatted according to this kind of stimulus, according to this paradigm."
"The psychiatrists say that young people are depressed. Young people are seeing the truth."
Franco “Bifo” Berardi
https://autonomies.org/2025/08/franco-bifo-berardi-humanity-will-not-survive-this-century/

2026-03-11 17:19:22 UTC

- reply

This is a great and excellent summation of the philosophy and approach we must take. Robin Wall Kimmerer is an true inspiration, like so many other Indigenous thinkers.
An honorable and just harvest indeed. Taking no more than is needed, and no more than can be given in order to maintain balance and a harvest for future generations.
@npub1wqn…qeed @npub1yq0…hfrz

2026-03-11 17:03:35 UTC

- reply

No Green Transition without Green Sacrifice Zones in the Global South.
And no energy 'transition' anyway. Never has been an energy transition in history. Just more and more and more.
@npub1yq0…hfrz

2026-03-11 15:03:36 UTC

- reply

Mining is indeed murder and has been throughout history. The more we mine, the more we murder our environment.

2026-03-11 14:43:30 UTC

Thailand to send 284 tonnes of e-waste back to US
Containers found at Laem Chabang were falsely claimed to hold scrap metal from Haiti
https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/3213938/thailand-to-send-284-tonnes-of-ewaste-back-to-us
This happens all over the world. There is a growing e-waste crisis and the Global North solution is to dump e-waste in the Global South by mis-labelling and all sorts of other tricks. Often, e-waste is sent as "second hand" equipment. The whole tech industry is built on a growing cesspit of toxic waste.

2026-03-09 13:10:56 UTC

"The most worrying demographic is those in their 40s and 50s. Younger generations, despite AI’s flattery, face friction with superiors, parents, and teachers in reality. However, for those in their 40s and 50s, who have strong socioeconomic foundations and established values—already entrenched in their own fortresses—AI flattery is an irresistible temptation. Their egos, inflated over the years, expand further with AI’s flattery."
https://www.chosun.com/english/opinion-en/2026/03/08/JSCR2QBNPRBKTG7G7R6DOZQGHE/