Sunday Serendipity

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whskyjack — A different art form today, A poem instead of music.

A poem that addresses some of the thoughts I have on this Sunday, 2 days after Juneteenth and 2 weeks before the 250th anniversary of our nations founding.

Binge Jack’s full playlist at trailmix.cc/sunday

Let America Be America Again by Langston Hughes. Performed by Aldo Billingslea

This poem was written in 1935 by Langston Hughes one of this country’s greatest poets and part of the Harlem renaissance. For more here is his Wikipedia biogrphy, a very interesting read, (Link)

Enjoy, Jack

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64 thoughts on “Sunday Serendipity”

  2. also in celebration of all the papas out there today, here’s a suggestion from ludwigvanoranto
    O mio babbino caro (Gianni Schicchi)
    Where better to start a Father’s Day playlist than with one of the most beautiful arias ever written? And, one that happens to be about a daughter masterfully manipulating her father into giving her exactly what she wants? In Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, Lauretta demonstrates that if you sing and ask sweetly enough, your father will do whatever you want. A favourite aria for any young, experienced or world famous soprano, this rendition, sung impressively by a mezzo-soprano, convinces effortlessly

  5. I had a selfish reason to become a Langston Hughes fan. We moved into his neighborhood 22 years ago! We share an alley, our houses just half a block apart.

    National Trust For Historic Preservation:

    “Langston Hughes lived in Washington, D.C. 1924-26. He lived briefly at the YMCA on 12thSt., but mostly he was at 1749 S. St. NW. He came to D.C. to live with his mother and brother Kit, but he also aspired to attend Howard University. On S. St., the small family lived in two unheated, rented rooms. To raise money, he held a series of odd jobs, including proof reading for the Washington Sentinel, personal assistant to historian Carter G. Woodson at the Association for the Study of African American Life and History and busing tables at the Wardman Park hotel. At the segregated hotel, poet Vachel Lindsay read Hughes’s poetry and gave him his break where he earned the moniker, “Negro Busboy Poet.” Hughes began his career: “While living in DC, he published his first book of poems, The Weary Blues (1926), and wrote most of the poems that would become his second book, Fine Clothes to the Jew (1927).”

  6. Thanks to WinterLInde for finding this one.
    It does make the brain hurt: they destroy the reflecting pool, do nothing to the criminal donor who’s responsible but arrest an Olympian who picked up a paint chip for a souvenir…

  8. So the WH pivot away from a hissy fit with the prime minister of Italy is to a disaster of a pool bigger than any skyscraper and having a U.S. Olympics champion arrested for a made up charge? Each day of every week is some sort of self-made circus. And, it is not issues that can be hidden, no, these idiots, sfb and support staff, pick very public disasters to showcase how inept they are.

    Back a couple weeks when the pool boy was painting, not repainting, the bottom of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, questions arose about what were they actually doing. A few experienced water feature technicians pointed out that they were using the wrong coating and applying it incorrectly. I tried to dig back to find the tweets but the quantity of tweets was overwhelming. A couple of the techs predicted the coating would not stick to the pool concrete.

    The water supply filtration system, damaged years earlier, was not corrected. The algae was reintroduced to the water. The shallow pool with the blue paint absorbed the power of the Sun very well. The algae grew in the nasty water and became a tourist stop for many. Using hydrogen peroxide instead of filtration and algaecide provided the next laugher.

    Today dawned with National Guard and law enforcement officers protecting the failure of a pool. Dare to approach and feel the water will result in being arrested on a phony charge. But, stupid will not feel the shame of his actions, the Epstein files are still hiding.

  9. What an absolute treat to wake up to this morning.

    Jack, Thank you for this marvelous creation by one of my favorite writers.

    Patd, One of my favorite arias and a gift to all spoiled young girls.

    I wrote this about Langston Hughes many years ago: How to Write A List

  10. Join us Live at 11am ET 🎙️trailmix.cc/chat

    Technical Critiques of the Reflecting Pool Renovation

    Adhesion Failure and Trapped Moisture: Civil engineering experts note that the peeling is likely the result of poor surface preparation and moisture contamination. R. Douglas Hooton, professor emeritus of civil and mineral engineering at the University of Toronto, stated: “Either the concrete was not sufficiently dry when the coating was applied, or that there is water rising up through the slab from the ground below. The coating is meant to be waterproof, so any trapped water will cause it to debond.”

    Thermal Dynamics and Algae Generation: The choice of a dark “American Flag Blue” coating fundamentally altered the pool’s heat dynamics. Because the pool is only 18 to 30 inches deep, the dark floor acts as a massive heat sink. It absorbs solar radiation and rapidly warms the shallow water column, creating an ideal incubator for the massive algae bloom that turned the water green within days.

    Hasty Execution: Critics, including Charles Birnbaum of The Cultural Landscape Foundation, argue the administration “acted in haste” to finish the $14.7 million project ahead of the July 4th America 250 celebrations, bypassing proper planning and curing procedures, which led directly to these “predictable problems.”

    Sources:

  12. The Flying Bribe

    n the immortal words of Quick Draw McGraw, “Hold on there!”

    A foreign government gave the presidency a $400 million luxury jet, and we’re arguing about it like it’s a fucking zoning dispute?

    Seriously? Because I feel like I’m losing my goddamn mind here.

    If somebody gave your mayor a $400 million airplane, you’d have questions. If somebody gave your governor a $400 million airplane, you’d have questions. Hell, if somebody gave the assistant manager at Arby’s a $400 million airplane, you’d have questions, and the first one wouldn’t be complicated:

    “What the hell do they want in return?”

    That’s how normal human beings think.

    According to Reuters, Qatar’s royal family gifted a Boeing 747-8 valued at roughly $400 million for use as a presidential aircraft, with the offer drawing scrutiny over gift-disclosure and emoluments rules.

    But somehow we’ve reached the point where a foreign government hands over what critics have called a flying palace, and instead of asking why this is happening, half the country retreats into partisan formation. One side insists it’s fine, the other insists it’s the apocalypse, cable news does what cable news does, social media turns into a screaming match, and everybody picks a team while the actual story slips quietly out the back door. Because this isn’t really a story about an airplane. It’s a story about what the hell we’ve let the presidency become.

    More at link

  19. Happy Father’s Day to all the dads that grace this blog!

    Nash… what a treat to see you on this blog again!

  22. Watching the Jack Schlossberg interview on Connect. He makes a great point about the Kennedy Center. Trump is not attacking just Kennedy but trying to destroy the actions of all the Greatest Generation Presidents who among them created the progressive America we all took granted until he came along.

    New Deal – FDR
    Fair Deal – Truman
    Kennedy – New Frontier
    Great Society – Johnson

    Even Richard Nixon supported universal health care coverage and actively proposed a plan to ensure that every American had access to affordable health insurance. While he opposed a government-run, single-payer system (which he criticized as “socialized medicine”), he sought a public-private compromise to achieve total population coverage.

  27. Today in the Diner…
    Ken Paxton Hoffman Files & AI Data Centers

    Ken Paxton’s Hoffman files are catching fire thanks to James Talarico. Plus, we dive into the AI data center power drain and the Maine Senate race.

    The Digital Diner crew hits the ground running with the bizarre and unsettling Ken Paxton sweetheart deal in Texas. James Talarico is keeping the heat on the Hoffman files, and we are tracking exactly why the national media is sleeping on this scandal while obsessing over Graham Platner.

    Our Maine bureau chief Nash checks in with the latest on the Platner versus Collins Senate race, rank choice voting, and why university students are furious about footing the bill for a new AI tax. Speaking of AI, we dig into the looming power grid disaster caused by data centers, Elon Musk’s gas turbines, and the incoming noise pollution problem.

    From my days dodging Margaret Chase Smith’s subway accidents as a Senate page to pitching a brand new DNC algae meme coin to fund the party, we cover the waterfront. We close out this Sunday serendipity with a powerful look back at Langston Hughes.

    Live Chat: https://trailmix.cc/chat
    Website: https://trailmix.cc
    Alerts: https://trailmix.cc/alerts

    00:00 Intro
    03:22 Maine Politics and The Platner Senate Race
    05:40 Margaret Chase Smith Senate Page Story
    08:35 Ranked Choice Voting Upsets
    11:00 University Students Fight AI Fees
    14:22 The Ken Paxton Hoffman Files Scandal
    24:00 Graham Platner and Election Buzz
    38:22 AI Data Centers and Power Grid Drain
    47:00 Kamala Harris on Data Center Regulations
    54:30 Langston Hughes Sunday Serendipity

  30. Trump policies kill Maine hospitals

    Our Maine Bureau Chief Nash 3.0 reports: Trump’s legacy leaves 40% of Maine hospitals facing financial ruin. They cut food stamps and Medicaid, leaving voters to hunt moose to survive the winter. Welcome to the Appalachia of New England.

    From today’s Digital Diner menu 🍽️

  31. Kennedy Center says it isn’t required to reschedule shows after judge blocks 2-year closure

    WASHINGTON (AP) — The Kennedy Center’s management isn’t making a commitment to scheduling new shows or building up its staff even as the performing arts venue considers options short of a full two-year closure that a federal judge blocked last month.

    In a court filing Friday, Kennedy Center lawyers said the institution plans to “maintain an operational model” after the July 5 date when it was initially scheduled to shutter for renovations. Under that status, the Kennedy Center’s public spaces will still be accessible but the stages may largely be silent.

    “The Court’s order did not affirmatively require the Board to reschedule programming that had previously been cancelled or to seek new programming,” the lawyers wrote in the filing.

    The Kennedy Center has been forced to reassess its plans after a May ruling from U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper upended many notable moves imposed by a board dominated by President Donald Trump’s allies. Cooper said Trump’s name was illegally added to the building and ordered it taken down. He blocked the closure and gave the institution’s leadership — along with Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, an ex-officio board member who filed the lawsuit — until Friday to provide a status update.

    The venue said its management would present the board with several renovation options to consider for a vote. The options would include a complete closure or a partial closure that would allow “some continued public access and limited programming in spaces unaffected” by the work. A third option would “consider a highly limited series of phased closures to address only the Center’s most serious infrastructure needs while scheduling and maintaining a full slate of programming.”

    Kennedy Center lawyers said the recommendations have not been finalized and a vote would happen in mid-July.

    Beatty’s lawyers, meanwhile, argued the Kennedy Center hasn’t fully complied with Cooper’s order. While Trump’s name has been removed from the building, they took issue with a tarp that was put in place to cover the areas where the letters had been installed. There appears to be no immediate effort to remove the tarp.

    They also argued that without making an effort to return to some form of programming, the Kennedy Center would effectively be closing the institution despite Cooper’s ruling.

    “Having gutted staff and programming, Defendants believe they can sit back and allow their pre-planned shutdown to commence,” Beatty’s lawyers wrote in the filing.

    They also argued that without making an effort to return to some form of programming, the Kennedy Center would effectively be closing the institution despite Cooper’s ruling.

    “Having gutted staff and programming, Defendants believe they can sit back and allow their pre-planned shutdown to commence,” Beatty’s lawyers wrote in the filing.

  33. Tech Billionaires Want Christians to Believe in AI

    Tech Billionaires Want Christians to Believe in AI – For Peter Thiel and JD Vance allies, the tech right is framing AI as a moral—even divine—mission.

    The average American understands AI is a thing that wastes water, skyrockets power costs, and scams their grandparents in exchange for exposing children to deviant sexual content, sports gambling, and all other manner of sin,” he writes. “If we cannot articulate why innovation is a moral imperative, we can expect the entire technology industry to end up like Boston. First taxed, then looted, then exhausted. And we’ll be stuck wondering where it all went.”

    Manidis, who describes himself as a Christian, writes about religious matters on X and his Substack. When I called to talk with him about this idea of tech as a “moral imperative,” he used a theological metaphor: “The mix of oligarchs and tech people and tech money and tech politics and the tech right,” he told me, “they’ve just been unable to communicate a coherent apologetic.”

    Last summer, right-wing luminaries converged at the annual National Conservatism Conference, a group that has emerged as a strong influence on the Trump administration’s policy decisions.

    University of New Mexico psychology professor Geoffrey Miller, for instance, confronted Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar during a heated exchange reported by The Verge. The AI industry, Miller told Sankar, is “globalist, secular, liberal, feminized transhumanists. They explicitly want mass unemployment, they plan for UBI-based communism, and they view the human species as a biological ‘bootloader,’ as they say, for artificial superintelligence.”

    *That guy is a psychology prof, who is a conservative, and who probably follows tRUMP.

    . A Pew Research Center survey last November found that more than half of Americans say they are “more concerned than excited” about the technology, up from 37 percent in 2021, the year before ChatGPT launched. Historically, Republicans share this opinion slightly more than Democrats, but Manidis doesn’t think the messengers of the tech world are doing AI any favors bolstering support on either end of the political spectrum. For example, that one time in 2015 when Sam Altman, co-founder of OpenAI, famously opined that AI “will probably most likely lead to the end of the world, but in the meantime, there’ll be great companies.”

    The likes of Palantir’s Peter Thiel and other religious techies such as Andreessen Horowitz’s Katherine Boyle and Anduril’s Trae Stephens are spearheading an effort to create the “apologetic” that Manidis called for. Bolstered by their own Christian zealotry, they argue that far from being the demonic force described by Miller, technology is more comparable to a savior—even a Christlike messiah. Not only are Christians called to embrace technology, but they have an obligation to do so, because progress itself is a moral good.

    Culturally speaking, these tech elites are coded very differently from charismatic Holy Rollers who have had a long tradition of promising their followers that adherence to Christian faith and practices will yield material wealth. But essentially, they are offering a similar, though slightly inverted proposition: Tech can make you rich and a good Christian. Call it the prosperity gospel of technology. Much in the way they have shaped culture with social media algorithms, tech evangelists now are attempting to normalize the use and acceptance of AI by wrapping it in a spiritual message. They also have explicit policy goals, and the Trump administration appears to be heeding their call, with new federal efforts aimed at unshackling AI from safety regulations.

    Greg Epstein is a humanist chaplain at Harvard University and MIT who has spent the last two decades building ethical communities for nonreligious people and, more recently, writing about the similarities between Silicon Valley and faith groups. In 2024, he published the book Tech Agnostic: How Technology Became the World’s Most Powerful Religion, and Why It Desperately Needs a Reformation. Epstein laments that while many have written about the cultlike aspects of the tech world, few have examined the motivations that lie behind making it that way. “What becomes incredibly useful for these people to do is to present their products as the answer to the meaning of life,” Epstein told me.

    In Silicon Valley’s embrace of Christianity, he sees a marriage of convenience: “They’re trying to imbue wealth with meaning,” he said. “But they’re also trying to imbue a certain kind of meaning with wealth.” In other words, Christianity gets an elite, luxury-set rebrand, and in return, the tech titans get to sanctify their vast fortunes.

    If one were to name a spokesperson for the anti-AI right, it would be hard to imagine someone more perfectly suited for the role than British writer Paul Kingsnorth. In his 2025 book, Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity, Kingsnorth, an erstwhile lefty environmental activist turned Orthodox Christian crusader, makes the case that technology, especially AI, is a semi-sentient being with its own anti-human, anti-Christian agenda.

    He describes “progressive leftism and the Machine” as a “usefully snug fit” because they are both “suspicious of the past, impatient with borders and boundaries, and hostile to religion.” Both progressive leftism and the Machine, he concludes, “are in pursuit of a global utopia where, in the dreams of both Lenin and Lennon, the world will live as one.”

    Kingsnorth considers this technology demon to be the true culprit behind “mass gender confusion.” Moreover, the struggle for transgender acceptance is actually a step on the path toward permanently abandoning our bodies. “A young generation of hyper-urbanized, always-on young people, increasingly divorced from nature and growing up in a psychologised, inward-looking anticulture,” he writes, “is being led toward the conclusion that biology is a problem to be overcome.” Young people learn that the “body is a form of oppression and that the solution to their pain may go beyond a new set of pronouns, or even invasive surgery, towards ­nanotechnology, ‘cyberconsciousness software,’ and perhaps, ultimately, the end of their physical embodiment altogether.”

    *None of this is new. And it’s a pretty big jump from transgender to transhumanism, abandoning a human body for a machine. Wild jump.

    To say that Silicon Valley’s Christian power players see things differently is an understatement—and they’re working hard to spread the countervailing message of technology’s godly promise. Leading this charge is Boyle, the Andreessen Horowitz partner who is an ally of Vice President JD Vance. Boyle, who shares thoughts about her Catholic faith openly on social media, runs a fund called American Dynamism, which, its website says, aims to back tech companies—in aerospace, defense, education, public safety, and other sectors—whose success “supports the flourishing of all Americans.” For her, the efforts to set guardrails around AI are nefarious, camouflaged, as she co-wrote with her colleague Martin Casado in a 2024 Wall Street Journal op-ed, as efforts “to promote safety.” In fact, they insisted, “We believe the true purpose is to suppress open-source innovation and deter competitive startups.”

    *And with billionaires willing and able to pay off anyone running for Congress to do their bidding, regulations will be too little too late.

    Here, endeth the lesson.

  35. Noise of Virginia data center drowns out neighborhood

    Noise of Virginia data center drowns out neighborhood

    Virginia is the data center epicenter of the world. There are hundreds of them — consuming more than 25% of the state’s power and driving up electric bills.

    Imagine living next to the Vantage data center in Sterling, Virginia — which stands tall, with its blue walls and massive generators — and having to hear its constant ringing.

    “We were told in the beginning that they test the generators to make sure they’re working in case of an emergency,” she told NewsNation’s Brian Entin. “And then as the year and the months have gone on, they’re just never turned off.”

    “Do everything in your power to try to stop it from being built in an area that has any residential properties within 10 to 15 miles of it,” she says.

    Company officials have said noise levels are monitored and do not exceed legal limits.

    *The legal limit got a jet engine?

  37. Patd: Thanks for the opera.

    Rebellious Rene: The algae in the reflecting pool will survive climate change, but humans may not. So … maybe Trump is just preparing us all for the future. He’s a visionary. No one has ever been as visionary.😁

  39. https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/justice-department-backs-xai-mississippi-lawsuit-1804025

    Elon Musk’s xAI gets Trump DOJ backing in fight to keep gas turbines running near black Mississippi homes

    The NAACP and its Mississippi State Conference sued xAI and its subsidiary MZX Tech on 14 April 2026 in the US District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi. Theircomplaint described 27 gas turbines installed between August and December 2025 at 2875 Stanton Road South in Southaven, a plant built to feed the Colossus 2 data centre roughly a mile away in Memphis.

    The filing borrowed the tech industry’s own slogan, accusing the company of trying to ‘move fast and break things’ while breaking the Clean Air Act, which requires major pollution sources to obtain a permit before they operate.

    The Department of Justice filed on 15 June 2026 to intervene in a Clean Air Act case brought by the NAACP, then asked the court to throw it out. Government lawyers argued that cutting power to the turbines would harm national security because they feed Grok, the artificial intelligence model the Pentagon says it now depends on.

    Those 27 turbines alone could emit more than 1,700 tons of smog-forming nitrogen oxides a year, likely making the site the largest industrial source of the pollutant in the greater Memphis area. This was not xAI’s first clash over unpermitted power locally, since the historically Black Boxtown community in south Memphis had already fought similar turbines at Colossus 1 less than ten miles away.

    The Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division told the court that the lawsuit threatens ‘American national, economic, and energy security’ by seeking to switch off power for AI work that underpins military operations. A sworn declaration from Cameron Stanley, the Pentagon’s chief digital and artificial intelligence officer, called Grok one of only four frontier models capable of supporting national security applications across classified networks.

    Stanley wrote that the model, plugged into the Maven Smart System, helped American forces strike ‘over 2,000 munitions to 2,000 distinct targets within 96 hours’ during the campaign against Iran. He warned that losing the data centre’s power would blunt the military’s ability to keep pace with adversaries.

    *Burying the lead.

  40. Fund elections with ALGAE coin:
    The DNC bleeds cash while tech bros pump millions into MAGA PACs. We pitch the ultimate grift to save democracy: The Algae Meme Coin. Sell the swamp sludge for ten bucks a pop and clear $150 million by Tuesday.

    From today’s Digital Diner menu 🍽️

  41. As I read it the Trumpistas are only asking the judge to take “national security” into account as he hears the case.
    Given that Musk has other options
    So move it to another data center, buy power off the grid, This is Musk calling in favors for his fuckup. Not nearly a done deal.
    As the old farmer used to say to such folks.
    “Sounds like a personal problem to me”
    Or as I told a supervisor as I walked out the door “bad planning on your part isn’t an emergency on mine”

    Jack

  42. gas generator huh

    it’s like an effort is being made to build data centers as irresponsibly as possible

  43. I have a question about something odd. This weekend stupid has been at Camp David, a place he has shown utter disdain for. The excuses given are pure BS, family traveled with him and so he can be in the high stakes Iran surrender talks. None of that has been used in the past.

    It is not close to Walter Reed like the WH, although there are medical facilities there. I do have one thought is it is set up for the infusions of the zombie solutions he is being filled with. Those are not done at the WH for some reason, he is moved to Walter Reed for those, out of the public. The Camp David thing would be a good cover.

    Or maybe he is being fitted for an exoskeleton because he can no longer walk or do stairs? Or the WH is being fumigated with Febreeze so staff can work there without self-contained breathing apparatus.

  44. Portland Maine Pride Parade. Crowd sizes reached well into the thousands, with participants and spectators packing downtown sidewalks. More than 1,000 volunteers alone were needed just to carry the city’s iconic quarter-mile-long rainbow flag

  45. you know if they have to supplement grid supplied electricity with gas generators I don’t think they’re going to be able to run them off renewable energy exclusively

    so a nice talking point for Kamala but she better articulate a realistically implementable strategy for doing that

    i’m out if her campaign is only aspirations and platitudes

  46. BB – He was supposed to go to Camp David in May, and they called it off (for weather?), but it seems it was around then that get may have had another health event…his ususual healthcare disappearance is near the first part of each month.

    https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2026/05/26/trump-cabinet-meeting-camp-david-tensions-iran-deal/90260577007/

    He hates Camp David, so why schedule a meeting there. Seems like a distraction, then and now. He could certainly use it as place to recuperate from something.

  47. I saw Death of Robin Hood today. The acting all around is wonderful. Of course, I expect nothing less from Jackman. He, Comer and Skarsgard are excellent. The film is violent and intense. The cinematography and visuals are stunning. It needed better editing as it dragged in spots and is one of those movies where you either feel the premise of violence and redemption or you don’t. I think it may wear better over time. Recommendation: Stream or buy to rewatch unless great acting just to watch a master do it is your thing. The film by itself needed more. Call it B minus.

  48. https://www.kcur.org/politics-elections-and-government/2026-06-06/missouri-amendment-5-income-tax-sales-use-ballot-language

    Missouri appeals court rewrites Amendment 5 language to make clear it allows new sales taxes
    Amendment 5, which is aimed at eliminating the income tax, will stay on the August 4 ballot. But the court ruled that the summary must ensure voters know they are giving lawmakers authority to impose new sales taxes without current constitutional restrictions.

    *The ad I keep seeing is a guy standing (supposedly) in a data center; he says they are mainly used for gambling and pornography, but pay no tax thanks to a law from 1917. He sells it as taxing tech in order to get rid of income tax. There’s more to it than that; see link.

  50. Sales tax can be regressive depending on what is taxed. We don’t have an income tax in WA, but we do have a sales tax. There is none on groceries, but it is applied on prepared and hot foods plus household cleaning supplies, so it doesn’t hit necessary food for the low income but it does penalize them on others. In Tacoma, WA, the combined state and local sales tax rate is 10.3%.

    Naturally, even on larger items, the wealth pay a much smaller percentage of their income on sales taxes.

  51. Nash, I think Maine was the first, or maybe among the first, to legalize gay marriage by popular vote. Vermont gets a lot of credit for gay rights but Maine’s not far behind.

  52. The death of stealing from the rich to give to the poor. How timely. So, the bad guys win, Jamie?

  54. Ha! They are projecting Yertle (is he still alive?) and Hegseth as swamp creatures in front of the reflecting pool…and Stephen Mitler as a bat hanging upside-down in the Lincoln Memorial.

  55. took three months for a rose cutting to root in water and two years for the goldfinches to
    find the feeder i put out

  57. Universities extort students for AI

    Maine just bought a $1.4 million AI plagiarism trap and disguised the extortion as a mandatory student fee. Gen Alpha smells a scam.

    From today’s Digital Diner menu 🍽️

  58. https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-15782855/Dystopian-photo-data-center-permanent-DAYLIGHT-rural-Texas-united-Republicans-Democrats.html

    An eerie image shows how a huge data center has brought permanent artificial daylight to a rural Texas community, with hatred of the facilities now uniting Americans on the left and right.

    ‘If you want to see the effects of a data center first hand, come on over to my place after dark tonight and look east,’ the resident wrote in a Facebook thread.

    He said the artificial light is ‘shining even brighter than the entire city,’ adding that it is ‘polluting the sky so badly you cannot even see the stars we sing about shining big and bright.’

    Another resident shared a video from the same night, describing a continuous low humming sound in place of crickets.

    Crowell, a town of nearly 800 residents, is the latest community gearing up for a hyperscale data center – part of a wave quietly popping up in communities across the US to power the artificial intelligence boom.

    Data centers are emerging as powerful new forces because of the sheer amount of energy, water and land they demand, while also threatening to reshape the areas where they are developed.

    Supporters, including local officials, are turning to these massive projects to bring jobs and tax revenue to struggling economies, while appealing to farmers looking to sell land and unions seeking construction work.

    Meanwhile, as data centers continue to expand, Americans are becoming increasingly furious over electricity prices, declining home values, environmental concerns and fears surrounding AI.

    ‘I don’t care if you’re a Democrat or Republican, we’re all coming together to fight this,’ Republican Starlet Peedle told The Times.

  59. https://x.com/ClaytonTuckerTX/status/2068499140225413563

    @ClaytonTuckerTX

    Most Texans have never heard of “artificial daylight.”

    But ranchers say massive data centers are lighting up the night and disrupting livestock breeding cycles.

    These Corrupt Bigshots shouldn’t get to experiment on our communities and our food supply.

    Sign our petition to stop these Al data centers

  60. BB – You might enjoy today’s installment of the dementia chronicles.

    Not sure what procedure he had, but our tax dollars paid for it, dammit.

  61. AI data centers are specialized facilities designed to handle the massive computational demands of artificial intelligence workloads. Unlike traditional data centers, they feature high rack densities (40–250 kW), advanced liquid cooling systems, and GPU/TPU-based architectures to support large-scale AI training and inference.

    By 2026, there will be nearly 4,000 AI-optimized data centers worldwide, representing 33% of the total 11,800 global facilities. The United States leads with 5,426 centers, followed by Germany (529), UK (523), and China (449). North America accounts for 45% of global AI data center investment, while Asia-Pacific is the fastest-growing region, driven by China’s $100B “New Infrastructure” initiative.

    Key growth metrics show AI data center capacity expanding at 33% annually from 2023–2030, far outpacing traditional centers’ 11.24% growth. By 2030, 70% of global data center capacity will be dedicated to AI workloads, requiring $6.7 trillion in infrastructure investment.

    Market dominance is concentrated among hyperscalers:

    AWS – 30% share, 15–20 GW capacity

    Microsoft Azure – 20%, 12–15 GW

    Google Cloud – 13%, 8–10 GW

    Meta – 8%, 5–7 GW Together, they control 63% of AI infrastructure capacity.

    Hardware is GPU-centric, with NVIDIA holding 92% of the AI data center GPU market. Power needs for GPUs have doubled in three years, driving innovation in direct-to-chip cooling and custom silicon development.

    The next decade will see AI data centers become the backbone of the digital economy, but their sustainability, energy efficiency, and resource management will be critical to balancing innovation with environmental responsibility.

  62. https://theicelist.org/index.php/Main_Page

    The ICE List Wiki is a public, verifiable record of immigration enforcement activity in the United States.

    It documents incidents, agencies, individuals, facilities, vehicles, and legal authorities involved in enforcement operations. Entries are structured, sourced, and timestamped to support verification, cross-referencing, and long-term analysis. The wiki is intended for use by journalists, researchers, advocates, and the general public.

    This project was created by Crust News

    https://crustnews.com/

  63. Digital economy. Not falling in line? You’re being monitored 24/7. Cut off your bank account, your ability to travel, your access to food and shelter.
    Digital economy = Worldwide enslavement
    Illegal to be poor, to be homeless; forced labor camps.

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