Today, we launch a series @drilledmedia.bsky.social has been working on w/ @propublica.org for almost two years, looking at how Big Oil used universities to turn the plan to solve climate change into a plan to save itself. The first two stories are out now: projects.propublica.org/carbon-captu...

Then I got to team up with @rebeccanagle.bsky.social again to put together a brilliant team and make her new show called First America. It'll blow your mind how everything happening in the US today is rooted in what the US did to Indigenous people. It launched Monday! www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/fir...

Then, final-final edits on my book happened and it is suddenly becoming very real. Pre-order link below (and pinned!) linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%...

First, a project I first started working on with @mollytaft.com 2 years ago, following a corn ethanol kingpin from Iowa to Brazil, turned into our first bilingual podcast season @drilledmedia.bsky.social and a partnership with @intercept.com.br. All 6 eps out now! podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/d...

If I've been slow to get back to you or, uh, kind of a bitch lately it's because this thing happened that comes around every few years where some projects slipped and others got pulled up such that they all piled into one six-month period. Today is my birthday, and this week a bunch of them are out🧵

Molly is on the Algae Pool Beat

Wherein @mollytaft.com talks to YouTube's Swimming Pool Steve about the reflecting pool's "oh, crap" moment

"But you don’t need Swimming Pool Steve to tell you that when you see what appears to be the interior surface peeling up and floating in chunks, that’s an 'oh, crap' moment." Instantly iconic @mollytaft.com interview with the internet's favorite pool guy, Swimming Pool Steve

i have so many questions about the pool. @wired.com's newsroom has so many questions about the pool. so i called Swimming Pool Steve, a youtuber who has shot to quasi-fame in recent weeks. spoiler alert: Steve also has lots of questions about the pool.

Residents of Ypsilanti Township protested against the construction of an AI data center. Now, in a show of support that’s often rare from local leaders, the board is joining the fight, calling out Michigan Gov. Whitmer. @mjgault.bsky.social writes: www.404media.co/we-will-figh...

hell yea

NEW: Meet AllatRa, an Atlanta-headquartered "religious cult" founded by Ukrainian sympathizers of the Russian invasion, that believes humanity will go extinct by 2036. AllatRa rejects the scientific consensus on climate change, yet was invited to participate in the two most recent COP summits.

Of course Hollywood has responded to the singular success of Heated Rivalry with a bunch of straight hockey shows. Smh. by @ejdickson.bsky.social www.wired.com/story/story/...

The most important article I've read this week (so far). Related: @telliotter.bsky.social and @mollytaft.com are doing some of the best tech journalism out there right now. If you're not following them already, I highly recommend doing so

The algae is all I can think about, thank you @mollytaft.com for explaining it

pool still green even though trump want pool blue

This is really worrying.

The "Department of Defense, details how the military relies on Grok’s Gov model to 'support vital national security missions.' That includes using the model as part of recent strikes against Iran." Great @mollytaft.com story

what

NEW: the US government intervened Monday on behalf of xAI in a lawsuit over its gas turbines, claiming that the company needs to run the turbines in order to power Grok, which is "vital" for national security lots of wild stuff in the filing:

this was the only thing even attempting to push data center development in a sustainable direction. without it, expect the proliferation of turbine-powered DCs in the desert, an explosion of government service downtime, and the end of what little data security and privacy we had left

SCOOP from me and @mollytaft.com: As data centers become a hot-button issue in the lead up to midterms, Congress and the White House appear to be allowing a little-known regulation on how the government regulates data centers that hold federal data expire. @wired.com www.wired.com/story/the-us...

SCOOP w @telliotter.bsky.social : a little-known but crucial regulation on how the government regulates data centers that hold federal data is set to expire in a few months—and neither Congress nor the White House is making any moves to replace it

Data centers: the latest claims on foreign interference, the protests, the local opposition, and what the experts are saying courtesy of @mollytaft.com @wired.com

NEW: Is China trying to influence US policy around data centers? Maybe. Does that mean opposition to data centers in the US is fake? Nope. @mollytaft.com reports: www.wired.com/story/china-...

NEW: A variety of actors find it convenient to claim that opposition to data centers is the result of CHINESE COMMUNIST PSYOPS. If so, the crafty CCP has done a hell of a job covering up the evidence, reports the diligent @mollytaft.com:

Everybody with a financial interest in data centers is blaming Chinese interference for the wave of data center hate. That's... not what's happening. from @mollytaft.com

“Despite the outcry from the public and the multiple lawsuits it faces, SpaceX has continued adding unpermitted turbines to its data center sites.”

Elon Musk is set to make hundreds of billions even as communities in Mississippi and Tennessee are fighting to stop the gas turbines powering xAI's supercomputers. www.wired.com/story/spacex...

our first trillionaire says so much about all of us

The SpaceX IPO is going to mint thousands of new millionaires. Elon Musk alone is going to make hundreds of billions of dollars. Who'd not getting rich? Anyone who lives near the pollution-spewing turbines that power the company's AI ambitions. from @mollytaft.com

NEW: on the eve of SpaceX's IPO, i spoke to folks in the memphis area still fighting the company's polluting data centers there, which are now also being leased by Anthropic "We’re the extracted and exploited colony of what is going to be one of the most highly valued entities in the world"

EFF’s Threat Lab confirmed @WIRED.com’s finding that Meta has deployed facial recognition code to millions of their always-on surveillance glasses.

NEW: WIRED analyzed Meta's AI app and found NameTag — a hidden facial recognition system designed to identify people via the wearer's smart glasses — has already shipped to over 50 million phones.

Meta was quietly shipping face-recognition code as part of the mobile app needed for its smart glasses even as it publicly said it's still “thinking through” whether to add the feature. WILD scoop from @dell.bsky.social and (newly back at WIRED!!) @dmehro.bsky.social www.wired.com/story/meta-s...

Because it's Pride, you should read my story on chef Telly Justice, her very queer restaurant HAGS, and how she's been teaching restaurants around the country to do pay-what-you-can dinners www.weareravenous.com/pay-what-you...

went on a podcast this week to talk abt what i think are the biggest environmental worry about data centers (ghg emissions, air pollution in some cases, water use in some cases) and what fears might be overblown and have been called an AI shill at least three times in the comments lol

will is right, actually! note that this is not in and of itself a reason not to oppose data centers, but it's getting strange bedfellows across political groups

As always, @mollytaft.com @wired.com is following the tricky, detailed reality of data centres and water seizure in sensitive areas. My personal take is that this conversation must involve overdevelopment as a force that kills off rational deliberation www.wired.com/story/data-c...

a little bit of wonky data center news from me this morning: while other tech companies are pretty explicitly moving away from evaporative cooling, google is defending it in specific watersheds as a necessary part of building sustainable data centers

If you would like to know wtf the story is behind this Pork Pig lookin thing towering over a small farm town in Brazil, please tune into S15 of the @drilledmedia.bsky.social podcast drilled.media/podcasts/dri...

NEW: A @wired.com analysis of the data pub'd by the White House's Aliens.gov and the site's code shows ICE arrested hundreds of US citizens and includes what appears to be a pirated version of the X-Files theme song. @regret.bsky.social & @dell.bsky.social w/ the scoop: www.wired.com/story/white-...

would like to state definitively for the record that this is not the case on my end

listen i love the pope but the encyclical is very definitively not anti ai. anthropic was invited to the reading, for pete's sake

In which @mollytaft.com wades into the PFAS pan wars and the latest legal front that's opened up for @wired.com

My people you are allowed to link to the articles and you SHOULD do that because outlets like @motherjones.com and @wired.com and journalists like @mollytaft.com who wrote it all benefit from those visit Don't be like the techbros! www.motherjones.com/politics/202... www.wired.com/story/chevro...

NEW from me: two giant cookware companies, who have lobbied against state-level PFAS product bans, are taking a smaller competitor to court over its advertising around forever chemicals and human health, potentially setting up a showdown on the science

So, Anthropic's "chief compute officer" says they're now buying capacity on Colossus 2, which is not only bigger than Colossus 1 but as @mollytaft.com reported, is adding a massive amount of NEW additional unpermitted gas capacity bsky.app/profile/did:...

update on this story: anthropic confirmed yesterday that they are scaling up capacity on colossus 2 as well as colossus 1, so they will indeed be running out of this campus