Every so often you get to do really cool things at universities. This is one of them. Can't wait to facilitate a dialogue on Powering AI from the Borderlands: Organizing Against Data Centers on Feb 24th.

Every so often you get to do really cool things at universities. This is one of them. Can't wait to facilitate a dialogue on Powering AI from the Borderlands: Organizing Against Data Centers on Feb 24th.

I took a close look at the latest Department of Homeland Security AI use case inventory, which details over 200 applications across DHS component agencies, including CBP and ICE. DHS is rapidly deploying these tools in US cities, while increasingly engaging in violence and defying court orders.

The problem is that blue states are fully committed to “return on investment” analysis and are fully committed to undergrad business degrees and whatever the latest tech trend is. There is no theory of holistic education supported by democratic leadership.

In the most desolate, American techno-fascist story one can imagine: ICE descends on a data center construction site in Louisiana to abduct workers. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

The vibe I bring to the function: week 9: addressing technologies of distortion and control week 10: SPRING BREAK 😜

I deeply regret having those big fall 2025 plans to reimagine my spring 2026 class.

Excited to be headed to Toronto for MLA where I will be presenting with great folks on GenAI Refusal. I will be presenting "After Accelerationism: A Collage of Community Testimony from the AI Supply Chain."

"We Reject the Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence for Reflexive Qualitative Research" journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Sometimes I think I have a good pulse on what's happening in the world, but then I look up and see the newest Avatar has grossed past 1 billion

Nicolás Maduro Charged With Felony Oil Possession

Reading beautiful and brilliant writing in a review—what a treat!

Find me a piece of ed tech from the past thirty years that's genuinely more about student learning than it is about extracting more labor from fewer teachers. Can't be done!

the academic version of me saying: REAL SICK STUFF

WHAT IS CAUSING THE RISING DEMAND, CNN

New publication out: "Weathering the Rhetorical Climates of AI." I'm really excited that it's open access! publicationsncte.org/content/jour...

also: if the anonymous reviews were any indication, this may not be *everyone's* cup of tea 😈

New publication out: "Weathering the Rhetorical Climates of AI." I'm really excited that it's open access! publicationsncte.org/content/jour...

"Refusing is actually the more hopeful, expansive vision of the future than the one that is telling us that the future is already settled and decided"

"This promise of an AI future, is really just a collective anxiety that wealthy people have about how well they're gonna be able to control us in the future." - @tressiemcphd.bsky.social with an absolute mic drop moment about AI bullshit. Incredible words. Listen to all of it!

I MAY have used the wrong "peak" here, BUT I am human damnit

Tomorrow! A sneak peak from my prepared remarks: "To build AI at scale has required enduring legacies of extraction that date back to 1492—material and ideological forces that render land as exploitable, people as disposable, and so-called progress as inevitable."

Project Jupiter, OpenAI's gigawatt data center, in Santa Teresa, New Mexico made it to the NYT. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/07/b...

We are where we are, in part, bc of people dismissing problems in red states as the fault of backwards people, and not recognizing it as the organized effort over decades that it is. Your dismissal and willingness to throw us under the bus means that you won't have allies when they do it to you.

I am BEGGING people to stop dismissing shit like the OU debacle as "red state bullshit." They start it here bc they know they have the backing of the politicians who will put funding pressure on schools. But this is the model they will expand everywhere. that they are ALREADY expanding everywhere.

get his ass

Corporate CEOs' breathless predictions of generative AI-fueled work disruption ought always to be considered in light of the fact that their companies have billions invested in the tech that, statistically, few use or want.

I've heard this 1,000 times a day. I believed it until 2 weeks ago. Then I learned that the 2026 National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) Jobs Outlook report found that only 10% of job ads ask for AI skills. Tell your friends.

Also mark your calendar for the third reading circle as @nobugsnous.bsky.social, @vymanivannan.bsky.social, & Travis Margoni will facilitate a workshop on applying these conversations to the teaching of writing. Happening on Monday, Jan 12, 4–5 PM ET! my.ncte.org/event-inform...

Facing endless technofix promises from Big Tech (closed loop water systems, water positivity, clean energy in x years), the mantra from the @nodesertdatacenter.com coalition—Not One Drop for Data—is such a powerful response to AI boosters.

The next CCCC Reading Circle on Land, Labor, Water & Writing: The Costs of Gen AI in the Writing Classroom is happening in 1 week! Join @hannahhopkins.bsky.social & @donniejsackey.bsky.social for a discussion of @dustinedwards.bsky.social's Enduring Digital Damage on Wed Dec 10, 4–5 PM ET.

"'Amazon is out because they can't live with air cooling,' one source told the Star." Amazing. Jeff Bezos wants your water to consume and pollute, won't settle for anything else. tucson.com/news/local/s...

d e p r e s s i n g

I've seen this starting to appear on LinkedIn too, and via some usually interesting critical thinkers. In qual research I've done this year, environmental impacts of AI have repeatedly bubbled up as a key public concern. Can't help but wonder if there are moves to close that down.

The CCCC Special Committee on Generative AI in College Composition & Writing Studies is pleased to share two docs that have been in the works since this past summer: Academic Integrity, Plagiarism, & Generative AI: Guidelines for Postsecondary Writing Teachers docs.google.com/document/d/1...

I think one of the most helpful ways to think about AI systems comes from Jasmina Tacheva and Srividya Ramasubramanian's article, "AI Empire: Unraveling the interlocking systems of oppression in generative AI’s global order" and this figure. Open article is at: journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1...

big late breaking news: the market monitor for the largest energy grid in the u.s., covering much of the midwest and mid-atlantic, has called to block new data centers connections to the grid, saying current course of growth assures regular blackouts

PROMOTE YOUR BOOKS! EVERYONE WANTS TO HEAR ABOUT YOUR PUBLISHED BOOKS! here's mine: about data centers, and legacies of extraction, and the unmet promises of the tech industry, and the brilliant rhetorical practices of refusal that demand something better www.uapress.ua.edu/978081732247...

PROMOTE YOUR BOOKS! EVERYONE WANTS TO HEAR ABOUT YOUR PUBLISHED BOOKS! gonna be reposting your books because hoo you made a book! www.versobooks.com/products/303...

NEW from me: the Trump administration is moving new chemicals that have some link to data centers to the front of the line for approvals — creating huge loopholes to push all kinds of chemicals through, experts tell me, under potential political pressure

Don't call it a "bubble." OpenAI, Microsoft, & Alphabet are just fine with that term because they get to tell you that all the dot-com bubble or the railroad bubble or the whatever bubble was, was a shaking out the greats after an intense period of mania. This isn't a bubble. This is a time bomb.

nothing humbles you more than getting the shortest, most cutting comments back on an irb application

read the room

We need more honest language: Theft Tech (AI) Grift Tech (crypto) Death Tech (automated weapons and military surveillance)

The AI bubble may be about to bust. Peter Thiel has sold all of his Nvidia stock. We all need to say this very clearly: NO BAILOUTS FOR THEFT-TECH! Expropriate their asses instead. They stole from all of us and fully plan to burn the planet. They owe us - not the other way around. 1/3

What, exactly, does this string of words mean? Why does everyone who stands to profit from selling "AI" love to repeat it? And what's the value of slogans that masquerade as history? sonjadrimmer.com/blog-1/2025/...

AGI any day now

I say it nearly everyday about the rapid expansion of AI data centers and the immense extraction that is happening in the name of a failing business model but I'll say it again: REAL SICK STUFF.

Absolute must read on the AI bailout-in-progress: apparently it's not enough that lifetimes of human ingenuity and creativity have been stolen and enclosed to create generative AI and balloon billionaire wealth - much more public looting is in store...

this is my spot*fy wr*pped