Gerry McGovern

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

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

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gerrymcgovern_at_mastodon.green@momostr.pink

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Last Notes

2026-07-29 11:51:42 UTC

Big Tech has a 'solution' for its water use!
"While liquid cooling systems may reduce—but not eliminate—data center water use, they often rely on dangerous per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), which are highly toxic, lab-made chemicals that persist in the environment and harm many systems of the human body. Data centers are poised to increase the use of these “forever chemicals” just as some other industries are phasing them out."
https://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/FSW_2607_DataCenterPFAS.pdf

2026-07-20 16:05:18 UTC

The Valley of Pimps and Pushers (aka Silicon Valley) keep the drugs out of their own neighborhood
"As far back as 2010, Apple cofounder Steve Jobs told a New York Times reporter his kids had never used an iPad and that “we limit how much technology our kids use at home.”
https://fortune.com/article/peter-thiel-tech-billionaires-limit-kids-screen-time-social-media-smartphones-short-form-video-risks/

2026-07-20 12:30:19 UTC

Black prisoners are assigned harsher living conditions in Ontario jails—thanks to AI
Ontario jails are using a program that claims it can predict prisoners’ behaviour, disproportionately putting Black prisoners in higher-security facilities
https://breachmedia.ca/black-prisoners-are-assigned-harsher-living-conditions-in-ontario-jails-thanks-to-ai/
This is not a flaw of AI. It's a key feature.
AI was designed to be racist.

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.

2026-05-08 16:11:26 UTC

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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

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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/

2026-04-30 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/

2026-04-18 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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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/

2026-03-08 10:25:21 UTC

"Environmental groups are calling on the Indonesian government to send more than 900 seized containers with electronic waste back to where they’re believed to come from: the United States."
https://recyclinginternational.com/commodities/electronics-recycling/indonesia-urged-to-send-illegal-e-waste-back-to-the-us/63409/

2026-03-07 10:48:28 UTC

Offshore Wind Platforms Could Host AI Data Centers at Sea
https://environmentenergyleader.com/stories/offshore-wind-platforms-could-host-ai-data-centers-at-sea,118036
Lets cover the oceans with those wonderful green and clean wind turbines. Those industrial machines that so many environmentalists love to eulogize. And lets mine the deep seas for those green metals.
Yet again, fake renewable energy is used as a license to consume. We can have as much AI as we want once we use fake renewable energy. So much of the environmental movement has been captured by the energy industry.

2026-03-06 11:12:50 UTC

Mining copper is environmentally devastating
In 1920, mining 1 ton of copper caused 30 ton of toxic waste
In 2020, mining 1 ton of copper caused 180 ton of toxic waste
Since 1900, the energy required to produce a unit of copper is up 16 fold.
The water required has doubled.
We need to mine as much copper in the next 18 years than in all of previous history.
In 2020, a data center might have used 5,000 tons of copper.
An AI data center can require up to 50,000 tons of copper
'Green'?

2026-03-06 10:21:44 UTC

Amazon.com is coming for your water
“We are scared about our water shortages, the quality of water, or if there will ever be water,” said Connor Ward, a protester of the center.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/amazon-12-billion-data-center-130130738.html

2026-03-05 16:44:55 UTC

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People all over world know that this civilization is rotten, corrupt an doomed. They instinctively know that we face a moral crisis of values. But they feel trapped by a whole range of things, not least the convenience and ease of corrupt lifestyles. Big Tech and Big Consumer feeds off the worst of us. Big Tech thinks our base instincts will always triumph over our good nature.
One step at a time, we must break away from the Growth Death Cult. Resistance is slowing down, being kind.
2/2

2026-03-05 16:39:13 UTC

Someone trying to promote Degrowth in her local community. Did survey of 100 local people:
1. What qualities do you value in yourself or others?
2. Do you feel these are prevalent in our society today?
3. What do envisage life would be like if in 30 years time we all practiced these qualities?
4. What do you think could be done bring those values back?
Q1: honesty, kindness, patience
Q2: No, these values are not prevalent today.
Q3 & Q4: People want to try and bring back these values.
1/2

2026-03-05 10:32:22 UTC

Residents Say Elon Musk’s AI Facility Is Like Living Next Door to Mordor
"The $20 billion facility, run by Musk’s AI firm xAI, is powered by 27 methane gas turbines that run day and night, belching fumes and emitting a constant noise like jet engines, NBC News reports. The turbines were trucked in because Southaven, the unsuspecting rural community that Musk chose to build the data center in, can’t provide the electricity the facility needs."
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/elon-musk-ai-facility-mordor

2026-03-02 11:49:33 UTC

"Human activity has grown to challenge planetary limits, yet the official solution to any problem that arises is to grow more. Like fish unable to live anywhere but in water, our leaders find it hard to imagine any way of life outside the Growth paradigm. Production and consumption, income and expenditure define our lives."
https://www.juancole.com/2026/03/paradigm-instead-growth.html

2026-02-28 19:32:19 UTC

“Water’s a finite resource,” Blanchard told Streetlight. “During drought-prone months, they’re asking citizens to ration water and at the same time we have data centers using millions of gallons per day. I have trouble comprehending that.”
https://streetlightnews.org/data-centers/

2026-02-27 18:34:22 UTC

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Yes, I am. The only thing that matters is keeping Big Tech happy.

2026-02-27 17:52:32 UTC

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Built more data centers and fracked gas terminals as fast as they can. It's a Growth Death Cult in Ireland

2026-02-27 12:13:19 UTC

The number of Irish people unable to pay their electricity bills rose to almost 320,000 in December last year, an increase of just over 20% on the previous year.
Ireland has amongst the highest electricity bills in Europe.
Ireland has amongst the highest data center electricity demand in the world.
Data centers drive up people's electricity bills all over the world
The hidden cost of 'free' Big Tech
https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2026/0227/1560686-energy-bill-arrears/

2026-02-23 10:56:42 UTC

Malaysia intercepts over 186,000 kg of illegal e-waste amid import ban
The shipment are said to be over RM2.15 million (US$550,000) in value and found to be entering the country from Canada, Spain and Croatia, being falsely declared as copper concentrate.
The Global North constantly dumps its e-waste in the Global South
https://www.eco-business.com/news/malaysia-intercepts-over-186000-kg-of-illegal-e-waste-amid-import-ban/

2026-02-21 10:16:57 UTC

"Dryden officials believe they are the first town in the state to ban data centers. The decision, which also bans cryptocurrency mines, comes after a local 18-month land-use moratorium put a halt to these kinds of projects. Dryden Deputy Supervisor Dan Lamb said that the decision to pass the ban stemmed from local concerns regarding data centers energy draw."
https://ithacavoice.org/2026/02/the-town-of-dryden-just-banned-data-centers-heres-why/

2026-02-20 16:28:47 UTC

Man Opposing Data Center Arrested for Speaking Slightly Too Long
An Oklahoma man tried to talk about a data center coming to his community. Police arrested him when he went a few seconds over his time limit.
Big Tech fascism in full flow.
https://www.404media.co/man-opposing-data-center-arrested-for-speaking-slightly-too-long/

2026-02-18 18:32:27 UTC

“We’ve been invaded by data centers,” activist Teresa Roldan Soria explains, with grim humour. “The data centers have the privilege to be in spaces that have water access. But they want to give the people ‘regenerated’ water. They named the state the paradise of data centers, but it’s the State of Extinction, because we don’t have water.
“We have to fight the government,” she said.
https://www.hotpress.com/opinion/ai-data-centres-will-eat-you-alive-23123736

2026-01-31 12:03:20 UTC

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Strip mining is environmentally devastating and is massively expanding because of severely declining one ratios.

2026-01-29 05:58:38 UTC

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There's some very good information here:
What should you do when a data center is being built in your community? Data Center Boom, 2025
https://datacenterboom.net/en/home/
https://mastodon.green/@npub14hs…epac

2026-01-28 10:43:25 UTC

A.I. Was Supposed to “Revolutionize” Work. In Many Offices, It’s Only Creating Chaos.
So he posted a third “article” on his own LinkedIn account in which the AI described how our company collaborated with the CDC on researching a certain disease and published a groundbreaking study. Then, according to the article, we apparently went into underserved communities and funded a bunch of clinics and immunizations.
None of this happened.
https://slate.com/life/2026/01/work-artificial-intelligence-ai-office-chaos.html

2026-01-28 10:22:29 UTC

"An expert has warned that the large-scale smuggling of electronic waste (e-waste) into Malaysia is a public health emergency, with consequences that extend beyond environmental pollution."
When it can, the Global North dumps its e-waste in the Global South
https://www.nst.com.my/news/nation/2026/01/1366057/toxic-trade-expert-raises-concern-over-public-health-risks-linked-e

2026-01-28 10:20:34 UTC

E-waste contains harmful elements like:
Lead
Mercury
Cadmium
Brominated flame retardants.
These materials can seep into soil and groundwater. This impacts:
Vegetation
Wildlife
Whole ecosystems.
https://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/72690/20260127/growing-environmental-cost-electronic-waste-why-regulation-matters.htm

2026-01-28 10:18:15 UTC

All over the world, politicians are being forced by their communities to address the evils of data centers
Resistance to data centers fuels flood of Georgia bills targeting the industry
Georgia legislators have proposed seven bills regulating data centers by eliminating tax breaks, prohibiting costs from being passed on to residential electricity customers, or temporarily barring their construction entirely.
https://capitol-beat.org/2026/01/resistance-to-data-centers-fuels-flood-of-georgia-bills-targeting-the-industry/

2026-01-28 10:16:06 UTC

The unrelenting depraved greed of the AI tech bros.
"Artificial intelligence has become deeply entwined with all sorts of human enterprise. It pervades business, medicine, scientific research, and, increasingly, everyday life — OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, said recently that the platform processes 2.5 billion queries each day, or 29,000 per second. All that computing, intangible though it seems, requires a lot of energy."
https://www.discovermagazine.com/ai-data-centers-come-with-a-hidden-environmental-cost-is-sustainability-possible-48590

2026-01-28 10:14:09 UTC

Microsoft Pledged to Save Water. In the A.I. Era, It Expects Water Use to Soar.
Driven by the artificial intelligence frenzy, Microsoft is internally projecting that water use at its data centers will more than double by 2030 from 2020, including in places that face shortages.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/27/technology/microsoft-water-ai-data-centers.html
Big Tech is accelerating us on a path to environmental collapse. All for dodgy AI and greed. And all the AI grifters are along for the ride, for a few cheap bucks.

2026-01-28 10:11:43 UTC

"It was also dawning on me that degrowth is difficult to organize around precisely because of how all-encompassing a societal transformation it entails, with a multiverse and plurality of potential solutions. I’d been feeling unsupported by my degrowth community because I was gung-ho heading in one direction, but we all were doing degrowth in our own ways — and it didn’t have to be the same way!"
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2026-01-27/the-being-way-of-degrowth/

2026-01-28 10:09:55 UTC

"So when degrowth came across my path, I recognized it like a kindred spirit. Yes! I too had needed to stop the Doing Doing Doing track that this capitalist world is on — the hamster-wheel metastasizing into oblivion, the thinking-too-much machinations of the head, the frenzied non-stop ‘efficiency’ arising from anxiety and fear; instead, I’d needed to learn Being."
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2026-01-27/the-being-way-of-degrowth/

2026-01-28 09:04:27 UTC

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So sorry to see this has happened to you, Aral, and thanks for the wonderful and kind work you do.

2026-01-27 10:25:34 UTC

Does it seem like electronics don't last that long anymore?
"Does it seem like our electronics just aren't built to last as long as they used to? Kind of like they were made to self-destruct after a few years? Maybe that's why you got a new phone or laptop for Christmas. And now you're wondering what to do with all the old cellphones piled up in your junk drawer."
https://www.wvxu.org/show/cincinnati-edition/2026-01-27/electronics-dont-last-long-ewaste

2026-01-26 19:46:00 UTC

“Data centers do not bring high-paying tech jobs to local communities.” A recent analysis from Food & Water Watch, a nonprofit tracking corporate overreach, found that in Virginia, the investment required to create a permanent data center job was nearly 100 times higher than what was required to create comparable jobs in other industries.
https://grist.org/energy/data-centers-are-facing-an-image-problem-the-tech-industry-is-spending-millions-to-rebrand-them/

2026-01-26 10:31:01 UTC

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Thank you so much, Aral, and I very much look forward to meeting you at the Dublin launch

2026-01-18 17:39:05 UTC

Data centers are amazing. Everyone hates them.
In these politically divisive times, there’s one thing we all agree on—we don’t want a giant data center in our backyard.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/01/14/1131253/data-centers-are-amazing-everyone-hates-them/

2026-01-17 10:41:27 UTC

“With this proposed Ring of Fire, with these minerals being extracted, we are concerned how it affects us as Indigenous people; our rights are being violated,” Koostachin said during a Jan. 13 webinar hosted by Above Ground and MiningWatch Canada.
“So also our land, the environment, it's going to be destroyed. So anything where there's going to be destruction is going to be devastation within the Treaty 9 area where the proposed Ring of Fire is.”
https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/regional-news/far-north-ring-of-fire/were-protectors-indigenous-groups-call-for-mining-safeguards-11750950

2026-01-17 10:40:18 UTC

"During past century, resource extraction has doubled every 20 years or so. Indeed, humanity reached a grim milestone in 2021, when the global quantity of human-made mass — that is, the total weight of all things our species manufactured or constructed — surpassed the total weight of all living plant, animal, and microbial biomass on this planet. And worse yet, that mass of human-made stuff continues to grow, year by year, even as the natural world diminishes further."
https://scheerpost.com/2026/01/15/were-racing-down-the-highway-to-a-mad-max-world/

2026-01-17 10:36:25 UTC

Utah needs to know where the next generation of data centers will get their water and power
Utah’s leadership seems far too eager to impress AI creators so they will build here.
https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/editorial/2026/01/16/tribune-editorial-utah-needs-know/

2026-01-17 10:32:18 UTC

Inside the invisible e-waste economy of Delhi’s Seelampur
Toxic debris from wealthier nations is redirected to informal settlements such as Seelampur under the guise of second-hand goods. E-waste markets flourish because informal, marginalised spaces allow hazardous, illicit economies to operate beyond regulatory oversight.
https://www.thenewsminute.com/connecting-the-unconnected/inside-the-invisible-e-waste-economy-of-delhis-seelampur

2026-01-17 10:26:25 UTC

"AI data centers on the East Coast are gobbling up so much juice that nonprofit grid operator PJM may be forced to enact rolling blackouts on its customers during both heat waves and exceptionally cold weather just to protect the grid’s integrity. These blackouts would impact a staggering 67 million people in 13 states, which will no doubt fan more anger from customers and politicians who are already deeply ticked off about the mass construction of AI data centers."
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/ai-data-centers-electric-grid-meltdown

2026-01-12 15:12:42 UTC

"Alarmed by what companies are building with artificial intelligence models, a handful of industry insiders are calling for those opposed to the current state of affairs to undertake a mass data poisoning effort to undermine the technology. Their initiative, dubbed Poison Fountain, asks website operators to add links to their websites that feed AI crawlers poisoned training data. It's been up and running for about a week."
https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/11/industry_insiders_seek_to_poison/

2026-01-10 12:04:08 UTC

URGENT: If you're Irish read this. Please spread the word
"The government now wants to make it super expensive (>€100,000) for ordinary people to go to court to protect the environment.
The Government is currently engaged in an extremely short consultation on proposed rules to cap legal costs when you go to court and hold the state to account for breaking environmental law.
If you think this is wrong, make your views known by emailing
aarhus@dcee.gov.ie by 15 January.

2026-01-10 11:55:02 UTC

Communities are rising up against data centers
Allen Park planning commission postpones data center approval after resident concerns
https://www.wxyz.com/news/data-centers/allen-park-planning-commission-postpones-data-center-approval-after-resident-concerns

2026-01-10 11:53:57 UTC

We’re suing to protect one of the most important conservation areas in the South from data centers
New data center development in ACE Basin could include one of the largest in the U.S.
https://www.selc.org/news/were-suing-to-protect-one-of-the-most-important-conservation-areas-in-the-south-from-data-centers/

2026-01-09 10:27:00 UTC

So Big Tech has started undressing our children so as to make even more profit off them.
Where are the Irish, UK and USA governments? An Irish Minister blames users. While the EU is complaining about Twitter on Twitter.
Big Tech own our governments. They own our politicians.
It's all about innovation and progress. Here we are having our children stripped of their rights and clothes to be sold for Big Tech profit. Here we are, with women facing an onslaught of Big Tech misogyny.
Toxic men.

2026-01-06 10:20:03 UTC

"More than 3,000 people from U.S. territories have signed a petition opposing proposed deep seabed mining in waters near the Mariana Islands and American Samoa, warning of irreversible environmental damage and the exclusion of Indigenous communities from decision-making."
https://www.rnz.co.nz/international/pacific-news/583276/petition-against-deep-sea-mining-near-mariana-trench-gaining-support

2026-01-04 10:26:55 UTC

"A comprehensive study published in Nature Sustainability projects that AI server deployment across the United States could generate between 24 to 44 million metric tons of carbon dioxide annually by 2030. To put this in perspective, that's the same as adding 5 to 10 million cars to U.S. roads."
https://vegoutmag.com/news/r-tns-ais-carbon-footprint-could-equal-10-million-cars-on-the-road-by-2030-study-warns/

2026-01-04 10:25:12 UTC

But as more people hear about a data center coming to their community, once-sleepy municipal board meetings in farming towns and growing suburbs now feature crowded rooms of angry residents pressuring local officials to reject the requests.
“Would you want this built in your backyard?” Larry Shank asked supervisors last month in Pennsylvania’s East Vincent Township. “Because that’s where it’s literally going, is in my backyard.”
https://fortune.com/2026/01/03/data-centers-town-halls-angry-citizens-affordability-zoning-utility/

2026-01-02 11:09:55 UTC

"Microsoft and Google keep the energy consumption of their Dutch data centers secret, despite European reporting obligations. The Netherlands Enterprise Agency (Rijksdienst voor Ondernemend Nederland, RVO) received blank forms or no data at all. The Dutch newspaper NRC reports that the government has no legal means to request the actual figures."
https://www.techzine.eu/news/infrastructure/137595/how-much-energy-do-microsoft-and-google-consume-the-dutch-dont-know/

2025-12-20 11:29:37 UTC

"Human-in-the-loop (HITL) safeguards that AI agents rely on can be subverted, allowing attackers to weaponize them to run malicious code, new research from CheckMarx shows. HITL dialogs are a safety backstop (a final “are you sure?”) that the agents run before executing sensitive actions like running code, modifying files, or touching system resources."
https://www.csoonline.com/article/4108592/human-in-the-loop-isnt-enough-new-attack-turns-ai-safeguards-into-exploits.html

2025-12-19 10:12:12 UTC

"Company-wide metrics from the environmental disclosure of data center operators suggest that AI systems may have a carbon footprint equivalent to that of New York City in 2025, while their water footprint could be in the range of the global annual consumption of bottled water. Further disclosures from data center operators are urgently required to improve the accuracy of these estimates."
https://www.cell.com/patterns/fulltext/S2666-3899(25)00278-8?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS2666389925002788%3Fshowall%3Dtrue

2025-12-18 11:43:54 UTC

"The wealthy world has been burning vast resources on a zero-sum status competition — in which workers must perpetually increase their consumption just to “keep up with the Joneses.” By abandoning such spiritually corrosive consumerism — and embracing more egalitarian and communal ways of life — rich countries can downsize their economies and uplift their people simultaneously."
https://www.vox.com/politics/472466/america-money-inflation-happiness-vibecession-degrowth

2025-12-15 05:56:31 UTC

Big Tech tells us it can't exist without forever chemical (PFAS). A pity these chemicals are killing us.
"It is estimated that 836 kg/yr of volatile PFAS are emitted from US landfills in uncollected gas with a 95% confidence interval (2.5% to 97.5% of the distribution) of 15–5,590 kg/yr. This estimate is comparable to ∼600 kg of PFAS released annually into landfill leachate."
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.5c08763

2025-12-15 05:38:23 UTC

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It's astonishing, isn't it. And this is the multi-billion dollar enterprise that is driving 80% of growth in world economies. What a total scam. There will be consequences.

2025-12-15 05:32:51 UTC

A book on AI ethics full of fake citations
You can't make this stuff up.
Publisher under fire after ‘fake’ citations found in AI ethics guide
A book published by Springer Nature includes dozens of questionable citations, including references to journals that do not exist
https://www.thetimes.com/article/8f7d14db-dfd3-4776-8538-f5ce0a5707b2?shareToken=405c6237994f00a2e6ac41636e4ce159

2025-12-14 19:09:49 UTC

"The research reveals that LLMs can be overconfident in their own answers yet quickly lose that confidence and change their minds when presented with a counterargument, even if the counterargument is incorrect. Understanding the nuances of this behavior can have direct consequences on how you build LLM applications, especially conversational interfaces that span several turns."
https://venturebeat.com/ai/google-study-shows-llms-abandon-correct-answers-under-pressure-threatening-multi-turn-ai-systems

2025-12-14 10:30:40 UTC

"The City of Lowell announced Friday that it will suspend its participation in a proposed data center. According to a post on the city's Facebook page, Lowell will resume engagements in the project if and when the prospective tenant provides specific details about their water and wastewater asks."
https://wwmt.com/news/local/lowell-halts-participation-data-center-project-over-lack-water-wastewater-details-township-alden-nash-avenue-franklin-lowell-llc

2025-12-13 11:30:31 UTC

"Despite being valued at billions of dollars, data center companies like Switch are receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in public subsidies. Annually, Nevada spends $139 million in public subsidies for data centers. That means that taxpayers like us foot the bill twice: first, we give data center companies a massive tax break to build in Nevada. Then, we pay for the energy upgrades and ongoing energy use they require through our increased utility bills."
https://nevadacurrent.com/2025/12/12/dirty-data-centers-will-drive-up-our-utility-bills/