Louisiana's numbers don't show it--yet--but it feels like the epicenter of data center hell. The scale of production and the environmental consequences are staggering. It's sealing the fate of this fragile place financially and climatologically thelensnola.org/2026/04/14/m...

“The point is, I’m not saying all this to defend humanity. Humanity sucks. It’s totally terrible. I’m saying this because I believe in an old-fashioned virtue called Doing the Freakin’ Work.” www.nytimes.com/2026/04/15/o...

The replacement of Jesus with Trump as the messianic figure in right wing American Christianity is predicated on plausible deniability, and Trump breaks this contract every time he explicitly acknowledges that he has taken the place of Christ in their worship.

When today’s far-right pundits use concerns about natural resource scarcity to push the anti-immigrant “great replacement theory,” they’re using a playbook created decades earlier by environmentalist and white nationalist John Tanton. (Published Oct. 2024)

So far in 2026, 80% of big tech's power procurement has been fossil gas (a bit more if you go by gen) Desperation, ideology and material, deepening relationships between big tech and fossil fuels gets you the exact situation we have been warning about for years.

Also of note, Iowa paid Chris Rufo—perhaps the leading propagandist for the current assault on higher ed, an unqualified hack and admitted fabulist—$34,000 to speak. It's embarrassing that any higher ed institution would invite him, especially when they are cutting departmental budgets.

Not to put too fine a point on it but Altman and ChatGPT stole knowledge and are actively trying to privatize it and make you buy it back from them

Aaron Swartz rightfully identified Sam Altman as a sociopath but this article hardly does justice to Swartz’s activism and how diametrically opposed it is to what ChatGPT became. Swartz preached—and acted upon—radical open access to knowledge ia800101.us.archive.org/1/items/Guer...

🎶 “No retreat, baby, / No surrender” 🎶

Yes! Like “election fraud” & doge, the real motive is punishment & control, not cost savings & preventing abuse. Yet another area where mainstream news & Dems validate bigoted rightwing talking points.

The means-testing thing is so pernicious man. Designed in a lab to sow resentment, degrade the public good, shrink services and transfer costs away from government coffers and to individuals’ post-tax income

I’ve moved onto the 7th stage of scandoval 2.0, which is feeling bad for Carl (!) He really had a storyline cooking with Bailey (and maybe even just tried to hard launch?) and this just incinerated it all #summerhouse

This 👏🏻 is 👏🏻the 👏🏻 energy 👏🏻 I’m 👏🏻 talking 👏🏻 about

EVERGREEN but also…wtaf

Holler if you see me out tomorrow!

via @chelseastieber.bsky.social -> bsky.app/profile/chel... If this bubble pops, the fossil fuel infrastructure will stick around for decades to come

It's really difficult to properly express how nuts this is. Meta's 2.2 gigawatt data centre fossil fuel plant was already world-leading bad. Now they're adding 5.2 EXTRA gigawatts on top. So SEVEN NEW FOSSIL FUEL PLANTS for one data centre. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

It’s now up to SEVEN gas powered power plants. From 3. To power Meta’s largest $27 billion data center in Richland Parish, LA www.shreveporttimes.com/story/news/2...

Preparing taxes and just being like, ah and we’re paying them to do it 🤡

This translates as “cat I farted” for the uninitiated. Tell your kids!

i’ve always said the generally hellish experience of going through TSA would be improved by bringing in other federal agents with no understanding of airports who love to shoot people

This is your reminder that if you are a class member and have NOT yet filed a claim in Anthropic v. Bartz, the AI copyright lawsuit, you have 9 days to do so.

In his 1838 Lyceum Address, Abraham Lincoln warned of the rise of an American "Alexander, a Caesar, or a Napoleon":

I strive for Jeremy O. Harris energy in my daily life and have been know to achieve it from time to time. More shame!!!

It is never too late to get into Summer House is what I’m saying

A quotation from my first book that I think about often these days...

Couldn‘t pick this person out of a lineup, yes this is a flex

🧵

Ceci n’est pas une excursion

throwback to that very specific moment in 2015 when you could grab a footlong Sundevich, bring it over to A&D Bar, and have few house dirty martinis and foosball ✨

somebody i know met the fascist NEH head McDonald at a DC event not long ago &, knowing nothing abt academia or how it works (I do not at all fault for that!), told him about me & my wife’s work and then texted me this. “30k grants for interesting projects” are the gifts he could bestow at parties

I see you @kenjennings.bsky.social out here on @jeopardyofficial.bsky.social trolling Timothée Chalamet with Ballet and Opera youtube.com/shorts/a2a1v...

some 10 yr old kids reported that they all make fun of chatGPT and call it “chat j’ai pété” and I felt such hope

Briefly returning from my social media hiatus to share that my article for the Journal of the Early Republic, on Philadelphian freedom-seeking in the Haitian Revolutionary diaspora, is now live (thank you to @chelseastieber.bsky.social for alerting me!). muse.jhu.edu/pub/12/artic...

Honestly it’s the “absolute” that really jumps out the most here

légitimistes are alive and well and, I guess, part of this transnational Catholic far right?

Free zones were never free

Oof, teaching Les Châtiments is hitting different this time around…😭😭 allpoetry.com/poem/8523613...

Alberta is indeed implicated in the transnational institutional-intellectual far right

“We fought alongside Americans and came here as refugees…now this draft-dodging son of a bitch is deporting us to Vietnam”

Mardi Gras is February 9 next year and then February 29 the year after 😱

Catholic integralism is still very much on the table

What a week (year? eternity?) to be teaching the Am Rev class session of my Boundaries of the French Republic seminar. Students were great on American and French early republics and contrasting ideas of republican virtue. But the virtue of “disinterest” launched us into the present like an arrow

France24 with the headlines 🔥 www.france24.com/en/americas/...

The scattershot and continued unconstitutional moves different states and municipalities are making has got me thinking about local colonial legislation against enslaved people in the Spanish Americas (regulations that prohibited types of employment, dress, sale of various goods etc etc)

A bit of hope from the gulf south. Spring is blooming here, it will make its way north eventually

Honestly thinking more about this I think including Ernest Renan in VB’s catalog is at once a legitimizing gesture to balance out some of their more odious (and obvious!) offerings while also still platforming an author who serves the same Western Civilizational supremacy ends

new from me at @curbed.com: everyone ICE did business with in New York City last year www.curbed.com/article/ice-...