Dustin Edwards

Tomorrow! A sneak peak from my prepared remarks: "To build AI at scale has required enduring legacies of extraction that date back to 1492—material and ideological forces that render land as exploitable, people as disposable, and so-called progress as inevitable."

The playbook.

Highlights: alias company targeted low income and historically disenfranchised communities, moved forward in secrecy, engaged in backroom deals with county officials, threatened to leave if the deal wasn't closed soon, and as already begun construction (despite two lawsuits to halt construction).

A Mysterious Company Came to Town With a $165 Billion Idea

Project Jupiter, OpenAI's gigawatt data center, in Santa Teresa, New Mexico made it to the NYT. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/07/b...

We are where we are, in part, bc of people dismissing problems in red states as the fault of backwards people, and not recognizing it as the organized effort over decades that it is.

Your dismissal and willingness to throw us under the bus means that you won't have allies when they do it to you.

I am BEGGING people to stop dismissing shit like the OU debacle as "red state bullshit." They start it here bc they know they have the backing of the politicians who will put funding pressure on schools.

But this is the model they will expand everywhere. that they are ALREADY expanding everywhere.

get his ass

As AI wipes jobs, Google CEO Sundar Pichai says it’s up to everyday people to adapt accordingly: ‘We will have to work through societal disruption’ | Fortune AI isn’t just coming for entry-level workers. Google CEO Sundar Pichai says no job, not even his own, is safe. But those who don’t adapt will be the first to fall.

Corporate CEOs' breathless predictions of generative AI-fueled work disruption ought always to be considered in light of the fact that their companies have billions invested in the tech that, statistically, few use or want.

I've heard this 1,000 times a day. I believed it until 2 weeks ago. Then I learned that the 2026 National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) Jobs Outlook report found that only 10% of job ads ask for AI skills. Tell your friends.

Also mark your calendar for the third reading circle as @nobugsnous.bsky.social, @vymanivannan.bsky.social, & Travis Margoni will facilitate a workshop on applying these conversations to the teaching of writing.

Happening on Monday, Jan 12, 4–5 PM ET! my.ncte.org/event-inform...

Facing endless technofix promises from Big Tech (closed loop water systems, water positivity, clean energy in x years), the mantra from the @nodesertdatacenter.com coalition—Not One Drop for Data—is such a powerful response to AI boosters.

The next CCCC Reading Circle on Land, Labor, Water & Writing: The Costs of Gen AI in the Writing Classroom is happening in 1 week!

Join @hannahhopkins.bsky.social & @donniejsackey.bsky.social for a discussion of @dustinedwards.bsky.social's Enduring Digital Damage on Wed Dec 10, 4–5 PM ET.

Amazon pulls out of Project Blue data centers, sources say Amazon Web Services has pulled out of its long-planned role as future operator of the Project Blue data center complex on the Tucson area's far southeast side, three sources told

"'Amazon is out because they can't live with air cooling,' one source told the Star." Amazing. Jeff Bezos wants your water to consume and pollute, won't settle for anything else.

tucson.com/news/local/s...

d e p r e s s i n g

I've seen this starting to appear on LinkedIn too, and via some usually interesting critical thinkers. In qual research I've done this year, environmental impacts of AI have repeatedly bubbled up as a key public concern. Can't help but wonder if there are moves to close that down.

The CCCC Special Committee on Generative AI in College Composition & Writing Studies is pleased to share two docs that have been in the works since this past summer:

Academic Integrity, Plagiarism, & Generative AI: Guidelines for Postsecondary Writing Teachers docs.google.com/document/d/1...

I think one of the most helpful ways to think about AI systems comes from Jasmina Tacheva and Srividya Ramasubramanian's article, "AI Empire: Unraveling the interlocking systems of oppression in generative AI’s global order" and this figure. Open article is at: journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1...

No more PJM data centers unless they can be reliably served: market monitor The PJM Interconnection’s market monitor urged the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to rule that large data centers can only come online if the grid operator can still meet reliability metrics.

big late breaking news: the market monitor for the largest energy grid in the u.s., covering much of the midwest and mid-atlantic, has called to block new data centers connections to the grid, saying current course of growth assures regular blackouts

PROMOTE YOUR BOOKS! EVERYONE WANTS TO HEAR ABOUT YOUR PUBLISHED BOOKS!

here's mine: about data centers, and legacies of extraction, and the unmet promises of the tech industry, and the brilliant rhetorical practices of refusal that demand something better

www.uapress.ua.edu/978081732247...

PROMOTE YOUR BOOKS! EVERYONE WANTS TO HEAR ABOUT YOUR PUBLISHED BOOKS!

gonna be reposting your books because hoo you made a book!

www.versobooks.com/products/303...

The Trump Administration’s Data Center Push Could Open the Door for New Forever Chemicals The EPA is prioritizing review of new chemicals to be used in data centers. Experts say this could lead to the fast approval of new types of forever chemicals—with limited oversight.

NEW from me: the Trump administration is moving new chemicals that have some link to data centers to the front of the line for approvals — creating huge loopholes to push all kinds of chemicals through, experts tell me, under potential political pressure

Don't call it a "bubble."

OpenAI, Microsoft, & Alphabet are just fine with that term because they get to tell you that all the dot-com bubble or the railroad bubble or the whatever bubble was, was a shaking out the greats after an intense period of mania. This isn't a bubble. This is a time bomb.

nothing humbles you more than getting the shortest, most cutting comments back on an irb application

(they won't)

read the room

We need more honest language:

Theft Tech (AI)

Grift Tech (crypto)

Death Tech (automated weapons and military surveillance)

The AI bubble may be about to bust.

Peter Thiel has sold all of his Nvidia stock.

We all need to say this very clearly:

NO BAILOUTS FOR THEFT-TECH!

Expropriate their asses instead.

They stole from all of us and fully plan to burn the planet.

They owe us - not the other way around. 1/3

"The Printing Press Democratized Knowledge": When Slogans Masquerade as History — Sonja Drimmer The phrase is said so frequently it seems, like the mechanism it celebrates, to mechanically replicate itself.  It's become a favorite catchphrase among tech boosters of any sort (see my post on...

What, exactly, does this string of words mean? Why does everyone who stands to profit from selling "AI" love to repeat it? And what's the value of slogans that masquerade as history?

sonjadrimmer.com/blog-1/2025/...

Sam Altman Tweet: “Small-but-happy win: If you tell ChatGPT not to use em-dashes in your custom instructions, it finally does what it's supposed to do!”

AGI any day now

I say it nearly everyday about the rapid expansion of AI data centers and the immense extraction that is happening in the name of a failing business model but I'll say it again: REAL SICK STUFF.