Steven Goldman

From Mexico to Ireland, Fury Mounts Over a Global A.I. Frenzy

"When Microsoft opened a data center in central Mexico last year, nearby residents said power cuts became more frequent. Water outages, which once lasted days, stretched for weeks. The shortages led to school cancellations and the spread of stomach bugs in the town of Las Cenizas..."

@ramez.bsky.social:
"Wow. 12 GWs of natural gas plants have unplanned outages in Texas right now, more than twice the amount the grid is supposed to be able to handle. Batteries keeping the lights on as we speak."

9.1: There Is No Time Hubris: A 24-Hour Podcast Project · Episode

HUBRIS, the 24-hour #audiodrama / #audiofiction challenge is back!

For this round, I wrote and we produced a #scifi / #timetravel short titled "There Is No Time," an ode to knowing when to trust the path you're on vs. when to chart a new one.

Check it out here: open.spotify.com/episode/11uX...

True, but then you don't get to practice your Spanish or learn and the D.R. like I did this morning. 😃

The “inside you there are two wolves” meme, with one wolf labeled “I have the most amazing idea for a new project“ and the other wolf labeled “I need to take a vacation soon or I will literally explode.“

Good morning, Bluesky.

In 2016, Robert Schenkkan wrote a deeply disturbing play titled BUILDING THE WALL that was about *exactly this*. www.dramatists.com/cgi-bin/db/s...

Hey remember when people said “we need a domestic terrorism statute” and people like me said “that would be super ripe for abuse for whatever lunatic is in power, would you want Trump to have that power” and you sneered at “slippery slope thinking”? Yeah, I remember, dipshit.

Why Corporate DEI Is Such a Perfect Target for Trump It’s an attack on labor. But he can frame it as something else.

"The fact is, the battle over “DEI” has always been a fight about labor, work, and who has access to the jobs and political institutions that build and protect wealth. If we ever forgot that, we’re learning it again now."

me for @slate.bsky.social

slate.com/news-and-pol...

NOAA firings hit the birthplace of weather and climate forecasting Dismissed researchers were improving severe weather predictions

Hi - I'd like to share this story of what is happening at NOAA GFDL, where some of my colleagues and I worked until the mass firings at NOAA last week.

"...the birthplace of weather and climate forecasting"

#ERCOT has been running at 85% clean today: 75% wind and solar and 10% nuclear. You would have been laughed out of the room if you predicted this 10 years ago. But the smallest interconnection in North America is cranking away at 75% variable resources. Beautiful sight.

@gridstatus.io

#EnergySky

For Indian Country, federal cuts decimate core tribal programs • Michigan Advance President Donald Trump’s sweeping cuts to the federal workforce and government spending have reverberated across Indian Country, leaving tribes with deep uncertainty about their health clinics, school...

For Indian Country, federal cuts decimate core tribal programs

michiganadvance.com/2025/03/05/f...

What's the Matter with Billionaires? How America's wealthiest sabotage their own prosperity (and ours) to avoid paying taxes

As another Trump-induced market crisis unfolds from tariffs, it's time we ask "What's the Matter with Billionaires?" I've run the numbers. Billionaires do better under Dems. So why do billionaires keep supporting GOP policies against their economic interests? See my latest piece on why. (TLDR 🧵⬇️)

One more time for the people in the back.

So... they're cool with the Novavax shots then? (Wonder if someone in the voting bloc owns stock.)

Plus bond values won't be a great alternative when the current admin is done trashing full faith and credit.

Peace <> surrender.

Former Social Security Head Warns System Could ‘Collapse’ in ‘Next 30 to 90 Days’ The agency’s former commissioner said the Department of Government Efficiency’s cuts could cause disruptions in benefit payments.

The former Social Security chief has warned that Elon Musk’s cost-cutting spree could cause a system breakdown within the next 30 to 90 days.

TL;DR - American exceptionalism isn't about morality or for limitless ability; it's about the belief that because we're here and we got here from somewhere, we deserve something.

And you don't want to be the one telling Americans they actually don't. Especially if they already paid for it.

It's all tied up in the independent spirit, which keeps us clawing for the next rung in the ladder, what keeps us divided enough to never harness that spirit into a single will. Not for self-preservation (i.e. pandemics), not for the protection of all (i.e. b/c some who didn't "earn it" benefit).

Americans aren't the fat, impotent simpletons in the floating wheelchairs from WALL-E; not yet. We have too many guns, too much faith in the "American Dream," too much "investment" and "sunk costs," too much tied up in the things that make us "strong," "independent," vulnerable and complacent.

Incels? Over feeling entitled to be loved by women, b/c they were told they deserved it as men.

Equal rights? For many, that's been every day long before the anti-DEI crusade.

I'm not defending the rage or misplaced entitlement - but you don't want to be up against it when Americans get aggrieved.

That rage, that desire for perceived justice fuels so much of our actions, right or wrong.

Revolutions? Over taxation, attempted ending of the slave trade, capitalism run amok w/ no safety net.

Trump's own election/reelection? Broken promises over pensions, job security, cities vs rural concerns.

Know why they're called "entitlements"? Because people paid into them so they'd be entitled to them.

You poach from those pots, you wake the largest outrage an American can muster - *give me what I'm owed, what I signed a [social] contract for.*

But why the US president would choose the Kremlin over America’s traditional partners remains the subject of intense speculation. Much of it, like the frequent suggestion that Trump is somehow a Kremlin agent, or beholden to Putin, is without evidence.

But *why the US president would choose the Kremlin over America’s traditional partners remains the subject of intense speculation.* Much of it, like the frequent suggestion that Trump is somehow a Kremlin agent, or beholden to Putin, is without evidence.

Nikolay Patrushev: To achieve success in the election, Trump relied on certain forces to which he has corresponding obligations....he will be obliged to fulfill them.

CNN: Why the US president would choose the Kremlin over America’s traditional partners remains the subject of intense speculation.

No better way to siphon and hide American taxpayer dollars. Drinking our milkshake indeed...

Feature, not bug for these monsters. Musk probably high-fived them when he found out.

If you are using Signal, and you are doing something the government considers illegal, the way they are going to read your messages about it is they'll arrest the person you sent the messages *to* and make them show the logs. We see this technique appear repeatedly in "Jan. 6" court filings.