Teresa Heffernan
@tjheffernan.bsky.social
Literature prof; author; current project: how literal readings of fiction by the tech industry are destroying the world. Let's read/interpret fiction as fiction. Boycott generative AI (chatbots etc); Website: https://www.socialrobotfutures.com/
A really important read
Carole Cadwalladr@carolecadwalla.bsky.social · 4d agoNEW: It was a digital lynching. And the media is never going to hold itself to account for the role it played in Jason Arday’s death. But there are things we can do. This is a practical guide based on my own experience. broligarchy.substack.com/p/a-digital-...
Meanwhile Alberta Tech Minister Nate Glubish saying the quiet part out loud: '“We’re essentially looking at these data centers as digital pipelines and digital refineries for us to help get the value from our natural gas to global markets” www.oilandgas360.com/alberta-pitc...
Alberta pitches cheap natural gas for data center boom - Oil & Gas 360
The latest oil and gas news, dedicated to all things oil and gas: people, technologies, transactions, trends, and macro-economic analysis that impact commodity prices.
oilandgas360.com
Ketan Joshi@ketanjoshi.co · 5d agoFolks: here's a meaty long read for you on how Australia's data centre industry lobbied (successfully) to kill regulations that would force them to cover their new demand with renewables And how (this is spicy) the desire within some climate/energy spaces to see data centres as 'cleantech' helped
This should be illegal! The power-hungry AI industry wants to destroy knowledge so they can control it. I really wish dem governments would catch up, stop catering to them, and at least read them: “for the first time ever, our planet was run by a single power" (Musk-funded Tegmark, 2017)
Emanuel Maiberg@emanuelmaiberg.bsky.social · 4d agoWe put a tracking device in a shipment of rare books acquired by an anonymous buyer. It ended up at an Amazon facility where the company scans books for training data and destroys them in the process: www.404media.co/we-tracked-a...
'Billions of dollars have backed AI industry with their fiction-fueled dreams of sentient robots, space colonies, uplifted animals, and downloaded brains while science-based climate research has met resistance, deferral, and denial as the world burns.' heiup.uni-heidelberg.de/journals/apo...
The idea of a Black academic being hounded to death for alleged acts of plagiarism in an era when universities are entering into contracts with AI companies and encouraging AI use among students, while Big Tech is stealing EVERYTHING humans write...
18-34 year-olds can't stand (the most infamous) nine executives running AI-obsessed companies. If you know any of these young folks (or are one!), I am their/your people! If I were any more furious about these technofascist loser bros, I would burst into flames. 1/
Futurism@futurism.com · 5d agoThey're even more unpopular than data centers.
Very much true. @cnygren.bsky.social and I wrote here. www.publicbooks.org/four-frictio...
Dr Vanessa@hpsvanessa.bsky.social · 5d agoMy sounds-like-conspiracy-theory-but-is-probably-true take is slopAI firms are deliberately targeting education sector; it’s underfunded & weakly protected & by becoming standard there they create generations of dependent users which is only thing that can stop inevitable financial bubble bursting
For the bro-oligarchs, 'free speech' was always about shutting it down: “The basic idea was that we could never win an election based on certain things because we were in such a small minority but maybe you could actually unilaterally change the world...through technological means” (Thiel, 2010)
Gil Durán@gilduran.com · 6d agoIt’s official: the Nerd Reich podcast is getting banned from YouTube….the week of my book launch! Incredible timing, since I’ll be all over the media next week talking about tech fascism. They can delete my account. They can’t stop my work. Buy the book: www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Ne...
Claiming instead that just throwing unfathomable amounts of data into ever larger piles of "perceptrons" will lead to scientific breakthroughs (and the 4 hour workweek and everything else they are claiming) is in fact magical thinking. >>
Brockman again (of the Epstein-fund Edge): '"Clark met Epstein in March 2011 through John Brockman, a literary agent who knew Epstein, with emails in the Epstein files showing Brockman telling Epstein he “should connect for dinner with my girls,” referring to Clark and her business partner'
Forbes@forbes.com · 7d agoClark approached Epstein after he had already been convicted for soliciting prostitution.
Meanwhile: 'transatlantic influence, race science, and far-right politics ...the university has steadfastly refused to explain why it has allowed itself to quietly become a vehicle of Peter Thiel’s ‘Dark Enlightenment’
Pete Marchetto@petemarchetto.bsky.social · 6d agoMeanwhile this, also in Cambridge, and zero coverage. Whatever the accusations against Arday, this is clearly the far bigger story. bylinetimes.com/2026/07/09/p...
our entire global financial system is currently leveraged to the hilt on the premise that it was good and right for a small cadre of US companies to steal all of the intellectual work ever produced by humanity and sell its back to us without credit or remuneration to the authors (plagiarism)
'AI,' the last gasp of a dying industry: 'The research highlights just how closely knit the AI and oil and gas industries really are, from a 20-year contract between Microsoft and Chevron for a massive natural gas plant to Amazon building the largest fossil fuel plant in the entire United States,'
Baldur Bjarnason@baldurbjarnason.com · 6d ago"AI’s Impact on the Environment Is Absolutely Horrifying, New Paper Finds" > AI companies are the fossil fuel industry's best friends. futurism.com/artificial-i... And yet so many people I know in tech keep finding excuses to justify not only using the tech but even working on the tech itself
Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ@olivia.science · 6d agoAnd just to really hammer home the point that everyone has to have known very clearly what he thinks about Black people, the quote from him here in a mainstream media piece: “Zwarte mensen zijn minder slim” — literally means: “Black people are less intelligent” www.hln.be/gent/zwarte-... 4/n
With respect to Cofnas, why is nobody talking about this in the MSM? > We find it [improbably] that [he] was the best out of 14 candidates for this job[. His boss] repeatedly stated in the press that [he] published in highly ranked journals and had been affiliated with leading institutions. 1/n
Pieter T. L. Beck@ptrbck.bsky.social · 6d agowww.dropbox.com/scl/fi/t47r5... Statement of the department. Has been taken offline due to complaint of the prof who hired Cofnas
Related! This article sort of implies Australia is mandating renewable energy and avoiding gas for data centres but both are very much not the case. www.nationalobserver.com/2026/08/13/a...
Australia and Canada diverge on plans to power AI
Australia wants renewable energy to power its future AI data centres. That's a sharp contrast to Ottawa’s up to $200 million backing for Meta’s gas-powered facility in Alberta.
nationalobserver.com
Teresa Heffernan@tjheffernan.bsky.social · last wk.Canadian politicians please stop spreading AI industry propaganda, like blue washing. Also, your data is NOT protected because it is stored in a Canadian data centre. Check out excellent interview with @ketanjoshi.co : links.org.au/ai-data-cent...
From Saudi to Canada, the main point of the AI industry is to keep the oil industry alive: "Nearly a hundred data-centre projects are in the works across Canada...The AI build-out is essentially a machine for manufacturing new long-term demand for natural gas."
DeSmog@desmog.com · 7d agoNEW: Mark Carney's government recently announced a national electricity strategy, but it is undermined by Carney's support for gas-burning data centres. Read Mitchell Anderson's analysis: buff.ly/4RQ0FYb
"They found surface temperatures increased by an average of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit after a data center started operations. In extreme cases, nearby temperatures increase by up to 16.4 degrees Fahrenheit."
Data centers are creating ‘heat islands’ and warming the land around them by up to 16 degrees | CNN
The vast data centers that power artificial intelligence are so energy hungry that they’re heating up their surroundings, according to new research. It’s an alarming finding given the number of data c...
edition.cnn.com
And it's worth restating my huge respect for people who express well-founded critical perspectives like @olivia.science , @irisvanrooij.bsky.social and @abeba.blacksky.app . That these particular researchers are under constant personal attack simply for being women is unconscionable.
Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ@olivia.science · last wk.Anti-intellectualism from tech industry stooges or confused people really does just manifest as attacking women academics online. It's honestly just that simple. You can log off instead of push onto the world the idea that these specific academics are online to debate you, amass followers, or wtv.
A decade ago, Elon Musk called burning fossil fuels “the dumbest experiment in history." Now he owns a gas turbine company and has quickly turned into a fossil fuel tycoon.
Elon Musk, the World’s Most Famous EV Pioneer, Is Now Leaning Into Fossil Fuels
SpaceX is planning a Texas natural gas plant to power a new chip facility, while gas turbines are already being used for campuses in Tennessee and Mississippi.
wsj.com
Canadian politicians please stop spreading AI industry propaganda, like blue washing. Also, your data is NOT protected because it is stored in a Canadian data centre. Check out excellent interview with @ketanjoshi.co : links.org.au/ai-data-cent...
AI data centres are fuelling climate destruction
Ketan Joshi discusses the climate impacts of Big Tech and data centres, the possibility of “green AI” and whether the AI bubble will ever pop.
links.org.au
Mél Hogan / The Data Fix@melhogan.bsky.social · last wk.Ford is ‘misinformed’ about data centres as province releases AI playbook globalnews.ca/news/1202000...
As the world burns and ground water sources are diminishing, the AI industry is not the future.
Ketan Joshi@ketanjoshi.co · last wk.Here's Amazon's two new planned fossil-fuelled AI data centres next to the ENTIRE POWER GRIDS OF SEVERAL LARGE COUNTRIES Together, the two gas-burning data centres will emit more than Spain's entire grid, if built
🔇 🔇 🔇 My book, Deep Unlearning, is now available for preorders! I don't know how people write so many books because this one took a lot out of me. It turns out, I had a lot to say 😂, with editors cutting out 50k of my words 🫣 ✴️ You can now preorder it at www.simonandschuster.com/books/Deep-U....
If politicians/university admin would stop listening to the snake-oil AI industry salesmen and actually read the tech bros who fund them, this would be obvious: 'Silicon Valley’s most rich and powerful technologists are trying to end democracy in favor of a corporate-run authoritarian world order.'
KQED News@kqednews.kqed.org · last wk.
When an Alberta creek ran dry, farmers rang alarm bells about how much water fracking companies are drawing from the Prairies' most significant source of groundwater — and who's keeping tabs on it all. @drewanderson.bsky.social reports. 📸 @amberbracken.bsky.social thenarwhal.ca/alberta-cent...
Alberta landowners fight fracking’s water use | The Narwhal
Landowners near Rimbey, Alta., are ringing alarm bells about oil and gas companies using billions of litres of fresh water for fracking
thenarwhal.ca
> In our capacity as academics, perhaps the most radical thing we can do is our job itself. [...] And [...] to refuse all the frames that want us scared and distrustful and instead embrace just doing our jobs and supporting each other. Also have a listen: shows.acast.com/63997541ed12...
Hollowed, with Olivia Guest, Iris van Rooij and Andrea Reyes Elizondo | The Data Fix with Dr. Mél Hogan
shows.acast.com