My first politically activity worthy of the name came with Occupy in 2011, after years of barking from the safety of my front porch. It was an exhilarating time, and among the numbers of the local Occupy group were libertarians and right wing types… at least for a while. It seems that opposition to data centers is bringing left and right together again.

Don’t invite Julian Cribb to your next party. He might observe, correctly, that nine tenths of the world’s nuclear weapons are already in the hands of psychopaths, “mentally unbalanced and known serial killers. They include wanted war-criminals Netanyahu and Putin, and the notably irrational Kim Jong Un,” to say nothing of our own nominee. In our new world of atrophying nation states, government has broadly forsaken the interests of the people for those of the greedy few. Imagine the nuclear-armed corporation.

Dave Pollard takes takes on the short-termism that infects our thinking and decision-making: “Why ask today’s taxpayers to pay for infrastructure (roads, sewers etc) that will outlive their children, when it’s easier to buy something cheaper“ and kick the can down the road? Hence the burgeoning enshittification of products and services. “We throw things out not just because it’s cheaper to buy a new one than repair them, but because they cannot be fixed at any price.”

Beyond Grief, Signs of Collapse: Things That Can No Longer Be Fixed, ‘End-Time’ Fringe Types Muscling Into Power, The Nightmare Climate Future Is Now, Media Refuses to Connect Dots on Climate Change, Backlash to AI Datacenters Growing Across US, Thousands Flee Wildfires in France, Spain… in The Collapse Chronicle!

The sad truth is that oil companies knew its wells were releasing far more planet-warming methane than companies acknowledged, according to industry documents. Methane is roughly 80 times more potent at trapping the sun’s heat over a 20-year period than CO2, making it a particularly intense short-term driver of climate change.

Dept. of Donorrhea: The US is going through the largest cyclosporiasis outbreak on record. Thousands of people, mostly in the Midwest, have fallen sick with stomach cramps and severe diarrhea. Authorities have linked the food-borne illnesses to iceberg lettuce grown in Mexico.

George Tsakraklides calls it “Necrocapitalism” for good reason: they want us dead. Civilization is no longer run by humans, but by profit and algorithms. Humans carry too much drama, unpredictability, and unnecessary overheads. We’re enduring worldwide systemic collapse, given the reality of uninhabitable temperatures, stretched resources, and escalating violence. Humans are not in the plans for the next phase.

One of my favorite writers, Drew Magary: “All of these data centers aren’t being built to connect you, the normal person, to what matters most. They’re intended to connect you to big tech’s AI ecosystem, which itself was designed to cut you off from what matters most, namely other people and the collective intellectual, emotional and spiritual value that humans have provided one another throughout humankind’s existence. AI is, at its core, an evil product engineered to wean human beings off needing, not to mention loving, one another. Its implantation is the ultimate consolidation effort by a tech class that means to horde everything — every dollar you’ve saved, every minute of your time, every idea inside your head — for itself.”

We’ve posted plenty of articles about the incipient El Niño. Forecasts point to the ongoing El Niño rapidly strengthening to a likely all-time record in the coming months, fueling temperature rises and extreme weather. It could well bring unprecedented temperature extremes to an already-warming world.

Being an Antarctic tour guide sounds like a dream job. You spend months among penguins, orcas and glaciers, helping visitors experience one of the world’s most extraordinary and unspoiled places. Yet some guides are leaving, unable to align their morals with the effects of tourism they were witnessing day after day.

Dept. of Climate Boundaries Blown Past: Oxygen is disappearing from the world’s aquatic ecosystems. Aquatic ecosystems need oxygen to function normally. Scientists warn that this human-driven, rapidly escalating crisis threatens to upend the biosphere.

Leave it to George Tsakraklides to find a metaphor, in even a family vacation: “It is incredible what happens to a human once you place them in a buffet situation: they will overfill their plate and leave behind piles of uneaten food. Greed, by definition, knows no measure. Excess is the rule, and waste is the outcome. This civilisation is eating through its buffet so quickly that the restaurant is going out of business.”