Joanne Nucho
@jnucho.bsky.social
anthropologist, filmmaker writing about electricity, energy, and the future of the grid author of Everyday Sectarianism in Urban Lebanon (Princeton 2016) opinions expressed are own, and do not reflect the views of my employer www.joannenucho.com
Here in LA 100 year old pipes burst and flood parts of the city on the daily while 85 million pounds of meat rot in a burned warehouse in 100 degree heat. Brokenness is no longer hidden, but out in plain sight. I guess La noir is over: there’s nothing to “uncover” and everyone just shrugs.
"Data centers are promising 500GW to communities but can only realistically build 50GW by 2030 due to GPU, memory, and CPU limits. Empty promises are fueling the backlash." pretty explosive reality check projection of stalled AI data centers from Biden's DOE loan program office head Jigar Shah
What sorts of politics emerge around microgrids? Open access in American Anthropologist “Interconnection, Obligation, Solar Power, and the Remaking of Energy Citizens on and off the Grid in California“ @amanthro.bsky.social anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
<em>American Anthropologist</em> | AAA Anthropology Journal | Wiley Online Library
Electricity grid infrastructures shape future publics and the contours of political belonging or exclusion, including citizenship. But in fire-prone, more precariously grid-connected regions in Calif....
anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Squeezed by data centers' relentless demand for electricity, a Nevada energy company just said it's going to stop supplying energy to Tahoe. The city has a year to figure out how to meet 75% of its energy needs without it.
Lake Tahoe isn’t sure where it’s power will come from after the next ski season
The area’s longtime power supplier, NV Energy, will cut off the region next year. It has said data centers are driving “unprecedented” demand.
calmatters.org
Incredible that a lot of governments haven’t started it already
ishmael@ishmael.bsky.social · 5mo agoincredible www.ft.com/content/f6eb...
Oil shock will cause suffering around the world. But even in ‘wealthy’ but highly unequal US, the approach to residential solar was based on individual debit and at times outrageous predatory lending. @alanasemuels.bsky.social did great reporting on this back in 2023. time.com/6317339/roof...
time.com
isaac@sevier.io · 5mo agoAnxious and angry about forever wars over energy? Want to do something to make a better world happen sooner? i have good news. Electricity is the backbone for everything in our future, and you can do something now. Instead of feeling hopeless, you can join in with others to change everything.
Anxious and angry about forever wars over energy? Want to do something to make a better world happen sooner? i have good news. Electricity is the backbone for everything in our future, and you can do something now. Instead of feeling hopeless, you can join in with others to change everything.
Why public power campaigns win
Electricity affordability is an urgent, widely felt problem that public power can solve. Anger alone isn't enough to win. Sarahana Shrestha talks to me about the organizing model in Fabian Holt's book...
isaacsevier.com
I have a short piece in this MERIP collection of essays on the war on Iran and across the region. Some great interventions covering a lot of topics: IRGC, Lebanon, GCC, geopolitics, Afghanistan, and more
War Across Boundaries–Perspectives on Iran and a Region Under Siege
On February 28, 2026, the United States and Israel launched airstrikes on Iran, initiating a war with wide-ranging consequences for Iran and the broader region and devastating effects for their popula...
merip.org
Nearly one in five people in Lebanon have been forced from their homes as Israel launches new 'ground operations' https://aje.news/3grqr2
War and technology: As broadcasting one's position via the usual technologies (GPS, AIS etc) makes a ship a target, seafarers have turned off their transponders (only 16% of all vessels in the Gulf have their transponders on) and are reverting to navigation by "traditional" methods.
This is so good and key. And another good reminder of why we need to push for rights to housing instead of "access" to real estate. Sobering number in this report is that there are only 1.7 million people in public housing in the US. climatecommunityinstitute.substack.com/p/public-hou...
Public Housing Can Drive a Clean Energy Market Transformation
By Sonal Jessel
climatecommunityinstitute.substack.com
Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò@olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 5mo agoelectrified public transit, heat pumps, home weatherization all make life easy for people and hard for fossil capital. here's some recs from @cplusc.bsky.social climateandcommunity.org/research/blo...
What a great pair of essays to see side by side and read together and share widely.
Hammer and Hope@hammerandhope.bsky.social · 5mo ago@keeanga.bsky.social offers a sharp-eyed, historically rooted assessment of white supremacy's evolution under the Trump White House (tinyurl.com/2xf8csmn) and Khury Petersen-Smith contextualizes this current era of U.S. militarism within a broader history of U.S. imperialism. (tinyurl.com/j2ywj8sp).
I'll add a few to this list, works of fiction. First one is by Emil Habibi, a relative of mine: www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Se...
The Secret Life of Saeed
This award-winning novel-in-translation is clever tragicomedy that demonstrates the complex life of a Palestinian living in Israel.Saeed is the com...
simonandschuster.com
In Octavia Butler's 'Parable of the Sower,' set in a dystopian Los Angeles after there is no fuel left for cars or a functioning electricity grid, people are faced with a choice: live in homemade fortified gated communities, or sell themselves to corporate agro-farms.
An utterly necessary collection of essays on the US/Israeli war on Iran, and its impact not only on Iran, but the wider region: www.merip.org/2026/03/war-...
War Across Boundaries–Perspectives on Iran and a Region Under Siege
On February 28, 2026, the United States and Israel launched airstrikes on Iran, initiating a war with wide-ranging consequences for Iran and the broader region and devastating effects for their popula...
merip.org
Much ink has been spilt on Elon Musk as an individual personality rather than as a product of political economy. On 28 October listen to Quinn Slobodian propose a theory of Muskism analogous to Fordism. For details and to register go to www.exeter.ac.uk/events/detai...
this has been one of my central arguments the past ten years. the theory underpinning the anti-democratic elements of the american constitutional order is wrong!
@lastpositivist.bsky.social · 9mo agoThe more democratic elements of the American constitutional and economic order are actually throwing up road blocks to Trumpism. Protests and boycotts and low level courts and juries and cetera. Elite actors on the other hand are all too frequently caving. Fascinating study in who actually cares!
Really hits home how the only way the Left can deliver a massive public goods agenda is through power at the Federal level. 🫤
Sadly the US govt and state of California has underwritten Tesla. So I guess all of us have paid him out of our tax dollars.
Wanderfound@wanderfound.bsky.social · 9mo agoIf you buy anything at all from Tesla, you are endorsing a corporation that chose to give a trillion dollars to this man:
If 1000 billion dollars for a single human beings work really makes you think about the labor theory of economic value AND the madness of economic reason... the Pope:
Complicated, intricate arrangements between consumers, big solar companies and desrisking federal loans will create disappointing results. We need a public green energy transition, not layers of derisked debt for consumers or solar tech companies. 1/
Why carbon offsetting (and big business) will not save the planet.
Carbon Offsetting is Not Going to Save the Planet
There is not enough planet Earth to first turn it inside out and then turn it outside in again. Available resources do not allow for removal of the total aggregate of CO2 from the fossil fuels in s…
buff.ly
Incredibly instructive reporting on what appears well on its way to becoming the biggest, most concentrated, most energy- and resource-intensive, and most speculative wave of capital investment ever. ig.ft.com/ai-data-cent...
This is an incredible film about the horrors of the bail bonds system. No description in words could do it justice. I am in awe and heartbroken. www.newyorker.com/video/watch/...
A Musical Indictment of the Harris County Jail in “Criminal”
newyorker.com
