Tech companies are pushing AI to squeeze it before it squeezes them

Eamon Caddigan writes:

"The largest tech companies—which already comprise an uncomfortably large portion of the economy (in spite of the fact that they produce none of the necessities of life)—have bet their fortunes on AI. Actual innovation in neural networks themselves has slowed as the companies and investors focus on building larger models, requiring tremendous amounts of training data and energy to create.

It’s worth highlighting that explicit climate denialism is well out of vogue here in 2026. Most people profess belief in the scientific consensus that society’s dependence on fossil fuels is warming the climate. This stops few of them from using a technology that is directly increasing society’s thirst for oil. When people like me argue that this technology is unfit for adoption on the basis of its energy requirements alone, AI users will simply ignore anything that we have to say.

This is the template for a common pattern. We can point out all of the harms being done by the technology right now, and we can speak to the additional harms that will be done if things continue like this, but our concerns are spurned or ignored. AI users seem untroubled by—or unaware of—the dissonance, because the richest individuals and corporations have decided that the future must be built on this specific approach to this specific technology that they own.

* * *

Eschewing AI is one thing that we can actually do to live out ethics that affirm values of human and environmental rights. It’s almost a gift! Just use a computer the same way you did three years ago!

... My emotional state in this moment recalls that from late 2002, during the lead-up to the US invasion of Iraq. It seemed obvious then that the people leading the nation were lying to justify war, and that nothing good would come of it (for anyone but a small handful of rich people anyway), yet the media and much of the population treated critics with absolute contempt. Being anti-AI feels the same as being anti-war. The salient differences between then and now are that the bloodshed will be harder to attribute (how many people are killed by one tenth of one degree of global warming, and what proportion of that temperature rise comes from one specific gas-burning data center?), and that more of my actual peers—including dear friends—are on the wrong side of this. The familiarity stings, but the pattern is repeating itself because nothing has fundamentally changed about us since then."

— Eamon Caddigan, "Hating AI in 2026," Potentially Useful: Writing boring posts is okay, May 27, 2026

Amelia Rose Barlow, who is co-stewarding We the Interdependent and Declaring Our Tech Futures, a campaign inviting Americans to shape our technological future together, writes:

"...adulthood demands more than independence. It asks not only what we want to be free from, but what we are responsible for. Whom our choices affect. What we are prepared to protect. And the future we want to create by declaring it together.

My father knew his declaration was imperfect: a lone man invoking the Founding Fathers, planting a flag in the dark. It is time for a second draft, one that empowers every voice as part of a collective and recognizes our inherent relationship and responsibility to one another and the living world that sustains us."

— Amelia Rose Barlow, "My Father Gave the Internet Its Declaration of Independence. It’s Time for a Second Draft." In 1996, Grateful Dead lyricist John Perry Barlow wrote “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace.” The age of AI demands we reimagine it. Rolling Stone, Oct 22, 2026

2026: Voting rights in the US (a collection of reading material)

Some sources I've collected.

The U.S. Lacks What Every Democracy Needs, Richard Hasen, New York Times, Jan. 16, 2024

I wrote: Can Trans People Still Vote in the US?: Trump’s March 25, 2025 executive order will require U.S. voters to show ID that displays our citizenship and gender

‘Batshit Authoritarianism’: Trump Allies Drafting Order to Give Him ‘Extraordinary Power Over Voting’: “This is a plot to interfere with the will of voters and undermine both the rule of law and public confidence in our elections,” said Sen. Mark Warner. Brad Reed, Common Dreams, Feb 26, 2026

Sarah Kendzior wrote in her memoir, The Last American Road Trip (2025):

"You mourn the lost leverage of the ordinary American — of elections, of courts, of protest, of documentation. You remember when those things seemed to matter, or at least when the powerful felt obligated to pretend they did."

It’s Black disenfranchisement, not ‘partisan warfare’ Dan Froomkin, Press Watch, May 15, 2026

The Supreme Court Has Unleashed 'Jim Crow 2.0' As The South Rolls Back Black Representation The decision gutting the Voting Rights Act has commenced the largest rollback of Black representation in the South since the end of Reconstruction. Paul Blumenthal, HuffPost, May 16, 2026

Trump Administration Promotes Program To Check Voter Eligibility. Critics Fear A Midterm Purge: The Trump administration has run the names of at least 67 million voters through government databases as it looks for noncitizens and people who've died. John Hanna, May 17, 2026

We’re going back to Selma and Montgomery. Why? The Supreme Court destroyed the Voting Rights Act, and the country needs to be reminded who we were before Civil Rights - and why we can’t go back.

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— Congressman Greg Landsman (@repgreglandsman.bsky.social) May 15, 2026 at 4:03 PM

The End of the Voting Rights Act Isn’t Just a “Black Problem” Preserving racial hierarchy remains one of most animating impulses in American political life. Alain Stephens, The Intercept, May 20 2026

Khanna: "This is a Dred Scott court. They have engaged in the fastest rollback of Black political rights since Rutherford Hayes ended Reconstruction in 1877. One-third of African American seats are threatened. We are not speaking up strongly enough against a court that's rolling back civil rights"

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) May 24, 2026 at 9:50 AM

"This era demands a new framework for Black politics—fresh strategies, tactics, leaders, and goals. And we should be clear-eyed: even before Callais, the existing models of Black politics were growing stale." newrepublic.com/article/2106...

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— Perry Bacon (@perrybaconjr.bsky.social) May 25, 2026 at 8:41 AM

Trump Official Tried To Ban Half Of U.S. Voting Machines, Citing Conspiracy Theories: The president's election-security czar asked whether the Commerce Department could declare the components in the machines as national-security risks. Erin Banco, Jonathan Landay and Alexandra Alper, Reuters, HuffPost, May 22, 2026

The same people saying the Supreme Court didn’t really gut the Voting Rights Act would have looked at poll taxes and literacy tests and said, “What’s the problem? Everyone still has the right to vote.”

— This Is NOT Business As Usual (@jemartisby.bsky.social) May 25, 2026 at 6:58 PM

Gift link. Great piece, remarkable embedded footage: www.nytimes.com/2026/04/29/u...

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— Rachel Maddow (@maddow.bsky.social) April 29, 2026 at 4:18 PM

I am unspeakably angry about this turnout gap figure, and it gives insight into the whole ballgame for gutting the VRA. Alito points out that Black turnout exceeded White turnout twice in 5 elections. The argument is garbage 1/x

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— Kevin Morris (@kevintmorris.bsky.social) April 29, 2026 at 5:41 PM

The Trump Justice Department is doubling down on an argument that, if accepted, could open the door for the administration — and anti-voting groups — to create lists of voters and send them to states for removal right before elections. www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/...

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— Marc Elias (@marcelias.bsky.social) June 10, 2026 at 3:38 PM

The Supreme Court’s Voting Rights Decision Will Reach Far Beyond Congress: Thousands of seats held by Black, Latino and Native officeholders at the local level could be threatened by the court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais. Paul Blumenthal, HuffPost, Jul 26, 2026

"President Donald Trump on Monday pleaded with Republican lawmakers to pass his SAVE America Act and end the filibuster, telling them to forgo their summer vacation to get it done...Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.)...has repeatedly said there aren’t the votes in the Senate to pass the bill. The president has long proposed blowing up the filibuster, a rule that requires most bills to secure 60 votes to advance in the Senate." Trump Makes Desperate Plea To Ram Through Voter ID Plan, Graeme Demianyk, July 27, 2026

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services issued guidance last month that “appears to be an attempt to intimidate nursing home staff from assisting residents in the voting process," a group of senators wrote this week.

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— Mother Jones (@motherjones.com) August 13, 2026 at 10:15 PM

The Trump administration is sending at least 1,000 "election monitors" to oversee voting in multiple precincts across the country.

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— Headquarters (@headquartersnews.bsky.social) August 20, 2026 at 2:00 PM

i'm not over Alito saying we shouldn't count ballots that are mailed on or before Election Day but arrive shortly afterwards bc they can “radically flip” the “apparent outcome” cannot stress enough that, until all ballots are counted, there's no outcome to flip! ballsandstrikes.org/scotus/alito...

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— Barred and Boujee aka Madiba Dennie (@audrelawdamercy.blacksky.app) September 18, 2026 at 8:45 AM

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) wrongly identified 185 people on Nevada’s voter rolls as non-citizens, state officials said this week, escalating concerns over the shoddy methodology the government is using to raise fear about non-citizen voting ahead of th... TAT: [Undermining democracy]

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— Trump Action Tracker (@trumpactiontracker.bsky.social) September 25, 2026 at 10:38 AM

Thanks to SCOTUS GOP-appointed majority (same ones who attended Trump's state dinner last night), Trump admin will use faulty & inaccurate data to wrongly label eligible voters non-citizens & pressure states to remove them from rolls. Sets a chilling precedent www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

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— Ari Berman (@ariberman.bsky.social) September 25, 2026 at 12:06 PM

Sanjana Karanth perfectly explains how Trump Gives Nonsense Answer When Pressed About His Mail-In Voting Hypocrisy, HuffPost, Oct 5, 2026. Trump says that his supporters can...

"...“vote by mail or vote in person. I’d rather have them vote in person, but they can vote by mail if they want. Because we seem to have no choice, because a lot of people wanna vote by mail but a lot of very good people wanna vote in person. You can do either,” he rambled at a press gaggle.

“What we’re concerned about is … there is a lot of cheating in vote by mail. A lot of cheating all over,” he continued, citing a narrative he’s pushed for years. When a reporter pointed out the fact that there is no evidence of widespread fraud in mail-in voting, the president accused them of being fake news.

Despite his fearmongering around the method, Trump himself votes by mail."

On October 22, 2026, Advocates for Trans Equality (A4TE) sent an email with this:

"Right now, trans voters in 14 states face nearly impossible barriers to updating their gender marker on their IDs. In some places, photo IDs are required to vote.

* * *

In April 2026, the Supreme Court issued a ruling in Louisiana v. Callais which severely limits the use of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. This section allowed —and sometimes required—the creation of majority-minority districts, enabling more Black and Latino leaders to represent their communities in Congress.

Weeks later, the Kansas government invalidated the driver’s licenses of almost two thousand trans people who had previously updated their gender marker.

Trans people can still vote with a gender marker that is inaccurate, but this can make it much harder for trans people to safely cast their ballots.

This is all a familiar playbook. Extremists are using old tactics in an obvious attempt to control our elections and discourage people from voting."

Thank you.

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Hundreds of U.S. citizens detained by ICE

A year ago:

We Found That More Than 170 U.S. Citizens Have Been Held by Immigration Agents. They’ve Been Kicked, Dragged and Detained for Days. by Nicole Foy, photography by Sarahbeth Maney, ProPublica, Oct. 16, 2025

Since then, the number has increased.

ICE Is Everywhere and Acting with Impunity: Arrests have reached a record high—nearly fifty-one thousand in August alone—with agents conducting operations nationwide at hospitals, at airports, and outside schools. Jonathan Blitzer, New Yorker, October 4, 2026

Reported today: ICE broke the arm of a U.S. citizen in Long Beach, California, and detained him.

Another U.S. citizen was assaulted and injured by ICE. This time in Long Beach, California. Congress must refuse to fund this lawlessness and hold Trump’s rogue militia accountable.

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— Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (@jayapal.house.gov) October 19, 2026 at 5:15 PM

War will increase. Collective action is needed to avoid it.

When does tension and violence become a "world war"? Jared Yates Sexton writes a few days ago (bolded emphases mine):

"We could debate for hours where and when the Cold War began and whether it, with its assortment of coups, proxy battles, and background struggles, should officially be known as World War III. Same with the so-called War On Terror, which was the final push for global capitalism in the wake of the Cold War. Now, parsing headlines and new geopolitical developments, I continue to receive questions as to whether we are already in World War III. You could make the argument this is World War III or IV or V. For the sake of clarity, here, I will refer to the New World War, which I believe we are watching struggle to be born.

Though descendants of the V-2 would be used in this possible war, what we are watching manifest now would take the theoretical applications of that program and bring them into a new age that the Nazis and the Fascists and the Allies might never have imagined. And, because this is so, I believe it is imperative that the New World War never happen."

— Jared Yates Sexton, The War We Must Never Let Happen: The New World War and the Fall of American Empire: We’re sitting on a tinderbox unlike any before and we have choices, Dispatches From a Collapsing State, October 15, 2026

The thing is: "Capitalism has used us for everything we were worth. The parasite sucks the last of the blood and goes looking for the next host. And very rarely does it make the jump without war."

So: "The infrastructure of global capitalism will likely be one of the main battlefields of the New World War. We have seen it with the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of the global trade network as the Strait of Hormuz has been blocked, but it will also manifest in places we cannot and could not possibly hope to see."

"Elon Musk has repeatedly turned off his Starlink systems to benefit Russia in its crimes against Ukraine, most recently this Wednesday when Musk unilaterally, we believe, cut service. These weapons of war and supporting services are under the monopolistic control of oligarchical individuals, not governments, and the oligarchs have contracts and business relations with every major nation state and prefer authoritarian states for business. The New World War would be fought with their weapons, with their systems, and they have no loyalties beyond who can give them the most money, the most power, and the most control."

(On the oligarchs' lack of loyalty to any country: Gil Durán has a new book on the Nerd Reich, which I wrote about.)

Start today, says Sexton:

"...collective action is the answer and it needs to happen well before the New World War starts in earnest and before systems of surveillance and control are fully operational and omnipresent. ... There’s no moderation that will defeat this. No “pragmatic” politics, only paradigm change that is forced and revolutionary in nature."

Similarly, Damian Valdez says:

"The disconnection transmitted from society to the world order is hampering our ability to contain conflict and to confront climate change, our two most salient problems. The world needs a moral authority that can offer impartial arbitration backed by military force and a coherence that can harness all dimensions of the climate effort. Yet such authority requires not that we be in helpless awe of it but that we meet it with our own agency. A clue about where this agency may be cultivated is given by a university degree set up recently in China: “embodied intelligence.”"
— Damian Valdez, We are living in an age of disconnection: The great powers that shape our world compete not only for money and resources, but exploit our isolation. Prospect Magazine, October 7, 2026

In drought, lakes dry up and things are revealed

Drought reveals dinosaur footprints: CNN video, August 2022

...and a plane in the Swiss Alps

Lake Mead is low, October 2022. Lake Mead is at a record low, August 2026.

August 29, 2026 fundraising email from the Sierra Club: "This July was the hottest month ever recorded in the U.S.1 The West and Puerto Rico are facing a disastrous drought, with Lake Mead and Lake Powell -- the nation's two largest reservoirs -- drying up to record lows." Vegas Officials Identify Remains Of Man Found Stuffed In Barrel In Lake Mead, October 16, 2026

Climate: What can I do? Anything

"The Climate Crisis and Its Solutions, by the Numbers: Math illuminates the parameters that humans must live within, and it shines a light on our possibilities. Above all it explains why these are the crucial years: Temperatures and solutions are rising at the exact same moment. Bill McKibben, Common Dreams, Aug 14, 2026

“What can I do?” The answer is still anything. Revisiting a 2021 call to action in the wake of the Nepal-Tibet floods. Emily Atkin, HEATED, Aug 29, 2026

Oil is the cause, the effect, the weapon, and the vulnerability in our world’s myriad wars billmckibben.substack.com/p/are-the-pe...

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— Bill McKibben (@billmckibben.bsky.social) October 18, 2026 at 10:24 AM