Source: The Atlantic
As they scramble to keep their systems online, AI companies are making things expensive for the rest of us. Large language models such as ChatGPT and Claude are so resource-hungry that tech companies may be purchasing 70 percent of the world’s supply of high-end computer memory, causing a shortage. As a result, the prices of computer memory and storage are skyrocketing: Hard drives that I bought for my reporting two years ago for $350 each were $800 when I checked two weeks ago, and are now out of stock. The prices of some laptops have gone up as much as 50 percent, and low-cost computers are being hit the hardest. Affordable entry-level computers may “disappear by 2028” according to one forecast. And the memory shortage is expected to continue for years.
The memory is being put into data centers, which tech firms are expanding at incredible speed. They are planning to multiply total U.S.-data-center capacity by a factor of eight over the next few years. The demand for electricity at these sites is already so great that some companies are repurposing jet engines to power them.
The problem is not simply that AI is being deployed so widely or quickly. Other computer technologies have seen similarly massive growth without triggering such a large spike in electricity or a shortage of computer components: Video and music are now streamed around the globe, accounting for many terabytes of internet traffic daily; the smartphone boom required the manufacturing of billions of devices that are now transferring huge amounts of data; billions of household devices are also now part of the Internet of Things; and whole industries have moved their operations to cloud software, which is hosted not in the sky but in, yes, data centers.
AI is the center of conversation in many circles these day.Folks are using it in various ways, from school essays to solving mathematical problems to coming up with creative ways to bake or cook something different. I use it for delving deeply into various spheres of knowledge & expanding my knowledge in novel ways. In fact, that is the strength & exciting promise of AI - expanding our knowledge of our world, generally speaking. Of course, one would have to ask creative, intelligent & detailed questions in order to get the most out of it. So recently I asked ClaudeAI to synthesize the philosophical ideas of James Baldwin, Alice Walker, Toni Morisson, Eduardo Galeano, Thich Nhat Hanh, Malcom X & Arundhati Roy & it gave me quite a bit of eye-opening detail. The more detail you input, the more interesting the results.:
A Synthesis: On Witness, Love, and Liberation
1. Truth-telling as a moral obligation, not a choice
Baldwin insisted that to be aware and human in an unjust world is to be in a "rage almost all the time" — and that the writer's task is to bear witness regardless of comfort. Galeano's Open Veins of Latin America did the same for a continent's plundered history. Roy has called silence, in the face of power, itself a political act — one she refuses. The throughline: looking away is a betrayal, and naming injustice precisely is the first act of resistance.
2. History is not past — it lives in bodies and structures
Morrison's fiction (especially Beloved) insists that trauma is inherited, that the past is not dead but "rememory" — something that literally waits in places for people to return to it. Galeano's work is built on the same premise: colonial extraction didn't end, it just changed shape. This is a rejection of tidy progress narratives in favor of reckoning.
3. Love as a radical, disciplined practice — not sentiment
Baldwin: "Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within." Walker's womanism centers love — of self, of other women, of the earth — as inseparable from justice work. Thich Nhat Hanh grounds this same idea in engaged Buddhism: compassion isn't passive feeling but active practice (his concept of "interbeing" — that no self exists separate from others, so harming another is harming yourself).
4. The oppressor is also unfree
Both Baldwin and Malcolm X (especially post-Mecca, later Malcolm) arrived at versions of this: systems of domination damage everyone within them, though radically unequally. Thich Nhat Hanh's teaching that "the wave does not need to die to become water" — that liberation isn't destroying the other but recognizing a shared condition — offers a spiritual register for what Baldwin argued politically.
5. Dignity and self-definition against imposed narratives
Malcolm X's insistence on self-determination ("by any means necessary") and Walker's insistence on defining Black womanhood on its own terms (against both white feminism and Black patriarchy) share a refusal to let others narrate your existence. Morrison put it simply: she wrote the books she wanted to read because no one else was writing them for her.
6. Interconnection as both spiritual and political fact
Roy's essays on globalization, dams, and nationalism argue that the fates of the poor, the environment, and democracy are inseparable. Thich Nhat Hanh's "interbeing" makes the same claim metaphysically — you cannot have a flower without the rain, the sun, the soil; you cannot have yourself without everyone and everything else. Political solidarity and spiritual insight converge here.
One condensed line, if you wanted it in a sentence: Seeing clearly, telling the truth about what you see, and loving fiercely — including the parts of the world and the self that resist being loved — is the whole of the work, and it is never finished.
(NOTE: I am no hokey pokey optimist with regards to AI. I see the destructive potential & the out of control greed &power tripping of these Tech Bros. Honestly, it's not looking too good for the planet if serious questions about it are not resolved very soon. )
Source: TRNN
A few weeks ago, we argued the Trump administration was seeking to invent new ways to punish Americans. The idea was that the authoritarian impulses of the MAGA-run government will need to dial up the cruelty in order to sow chaos and pave the way for a broader assault on democracy.
Well, this week a rule was issued by Medicare and Medicaid services that shows just how proficient the Trump administration is at inflicting pain. And the consequences for poor, seriously ill Americans could be devastating.
Before we explain the rule, it’s worth contemplating the often destructive role healthcare — both the lack of it and exorbitant costs associated with it — play in the lives of working-class Americans.
Poll after poll shows that working people rank anxiety over healthcare costs at the top of the list of high-priority concerns. Unpaid medical bills are the most likely cause of personal bankruptcy in the US. Unlike any other wealthy nation on earth, when Americans lose their jobs, they often lose access to a doctor as well.
Source: GrahamPeebles
The football has been brilliant, because football is brilliant. But the 2026 World Cup—hosted across the US, Canada, and Mexico—mainly in America—is the most corrupt, polluted tournament in the tournament’s 96-year history.
Let’s start with discrimination: Omar Artan, the first Somali referee ever invited to officiate at a World Cup, was refused entry at Miami airport—having been issued a US visa—based on spurious claims of “terrorist connections.” He flew home to a hero’s welcome, celebrated for his dignified response to a humiliating ordeal.
Palestinian Football Federation President Jibril al-Rajoub was denied entry to the US; fifteen members of Iran’s delegation were refused visas, and the Iran national team was forced to commute from Mexico for matches in the US.
Iraqi striker Aymen Hussein was detained for nearly seven hours at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, his mobile phone confiscated and searched; Iraqi team photographer Talal Salah was deported after more than ten hours in detention; Brazilian journalist Karine Alves was racially profiled and subjected to a strip search upon arrival at a New Jersey airport.
Senegal and Ivory Coast fans were barred by Trump’s travel bans. The Ivory Coast supporters’ group president stated: “the US government does not want to see supporters from certain countries, including Ivory Coast, on its soil.”
Dozens of Moroccan supporters were denied entry into the US. Many had purchased match tickets of around $500 each, with some buying three-match packages totalling $1,500, and paid visa fees of $180, with total individual losses reaching up to $2,000, plus flights and hotel costs.
The exclusion of African and Muslim-majority nations was the pattern, a level of discrimination that makes a mockery of FIFA’s claim that this was the “most inclusive World Cup in history.”
Corruption and Greed
It is the financial exploitation of supporters that stands out as the crudest, most visible form of corruption. From FIFA’s eye-watering ticket prices to inflated air and train fares in the US, visceral greed has polluted this World Cup.
Less than 2 per cent of tickets have been made available at the much-trumpeted “budget” $60 price point (for the worst seats in the stadium), and even these were commanding resale prices averaging $1,600. The cheapest ticket for the final exceeds $2,600; the top category, originally priced at $6,730, rose to $32,970—an increase of 417 per cent—thanks to “dynamic pricing,” a demand-based system designed to maximise FIFA’s revenue.
US airlines operating flights to host cities bumped up fares by an average of 42 per cent. Public transport to stadiums has been similarly exploited: a standard $13 journey from New York to MetLife Stadium rose to $98 on match days.
FIFA’s ticket pricing has been so extortionate that prosecutors in New York and New Jersey have launched legal investigations into FIFA’s tariffs, citing “unreasonably high” ticket costs.
Total revenue for the 2022–2026 cycle is projected to be FIFA’s highest ever—hitting $13 billion—virtually double the $7.57 billion generated in the previous period, and a 73% increase on the 2019–2022 cycle.
The 2026 World Cup is the perfect union of filth and greed: the major host, America—a country led by the most corrupt president in US history—and FIFA, an unethical, unaccountable organisation led by a sycophantic megalomaniac—Gianni Infantino—who appears to see himself as the head of a nation state, rather than football’s governing body.
As Reboot FIFA states: “FIFA isn’t fit to govern world football and needs to be rebooted as an organisation so that it runs the global game in the interests of players, supporters and communities, rather than the interests of corrupt football elites, big business and authoritarian states.”
FIFA’s institutional cowardice was revealed in the starkest way on 5 July, when the US forward, Folarin Balogun, who had been given a red card in the match with Bosnia-Herzegovina, miraculously had his automatic suspension lifted—just before the knock-out game against Belgium.
It turned out that Trump, who admits to not knowing anything about football, had telephoned Infantino and asked FIFA to review the red card decision. Infantino agreed and the one-match ban was swiftly suspended, allowing Balogun to play against Belgium. Trump later boasted: “I’m the one that got them to do it.”
To the delight of football fans around the world, who were outraged by the injustice of FIFA’s actions, Belgium hammered the USA 4-1. By playing Balogun, the US team revealed itself to be devoid of principles, complicit in the corruption of Trump and Infantino.
Poisoning everything
All of this filth—the manipulation of the rules, the discrimination, and the corruption—reveals two entwined issues, pervasive and polluting: the total disregard for the law by the rich and powerful, particularly Trump and other demagogues; and the socio-economic doctrine of greed and division, which affects the lives of everyone everywhere. An unjust reductive system that reduces everything to a commodity and everyone to a consumer.
This is the American way: a world without substance, where money and winning are everything. A crass, materialistic world in which wealth and power buy impunity, and the vulnerable and marginalised can be ignored and exploited. It is loud and hollow, and it poisons everything it touches.
In spite of all the ugliness, and to the utter credit of the players and the fans, the football has been brilliant—because football is brilliant, uniting people across cultures, creating moments of collective joy and drama that will live long in the memory.
Source: BAR
A single working mother could once take her child to a Yankees game for $40, but today that money would not even cover the online service fees. Sporting events have been stolen from poor and working class people and are now reserved only for the wealthy elite.
Capitalism has a way of rendering what was once accessible to, and tactile for the masses into distant memories that themselves become the only thing that can be possessed, which is not a bad thing until said memories become the only thing that can be possessed due to profound wealth and income iniquity. For myself, I remember a time when my single, working class mother and I could impulsively decide to go to a Yankees game or a Knicks game the same day they were being played. Moms would head to the Chemical Bank ATM, take out $40, and have the ability to purchase two decent seats along with refreshments for both of us to enjoy. Today, $40 would not even be enough to pay for the service charges that are tacked onto online ticket sales, which demonstrates the fact that attending sporting events are included in the growing list of things including, but not limited to, quality housing, healthcare, education, and access to healthy and nutritious foods that have been pillaged from poor and working class people as racial capitalism continues to solidify the obscene idea that only the bourgeois and elements of the petty bourgeois have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The use of sporting events by empires to appease, mollify, and distract the masses as well as act as a tool to demonstrate the superiority and exceptionalism of a given society is nothing new. For instance, in 1936 when the Olympic Games were hosted in Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler aimed to use the games as a massive propaganda tool to showcase the “superiority” of the Aryan race. To accentuate the propaganda tool, Hitler ordered over $30 Million in state spending to subsidize travel, build grand venues such as the Olympiastadion Berlin, and lower lodging and railway costs by as much as 50% - and even put measures in place to prevent price gouging and keep costs artificially low for tourists. By doing so, Hitler successfully engendered a pastiche of the so-called age of enlightenment, which provided a propaganda palette that portrayed a society of equal rights and liberal values which could not possibly carry out the litany of atrocities we now know took place during and after the 1936 Olympic Games. And centuries before the Third Reich, the Roman Empire instituted a similar praxis for its gladiatorial games by making them free for its citizens. The games were actually funded by the emperor and wealthy elites to provide “bread and circuses” as a form of propaganda to keep the masses happy and distracted from the empire’s decadence and perpetual imperialism.
You can’t have capitalism without racism.
–Malcolm X
Elon Musk is less an aberration than the grotesque byproduct of a capitalist order that converts inequality into virtue, exploitation into spectacle, and mistakes its own deepest failures for its greatest successes. The media frenzy surrounding the prospect of Musk becoming the world’s first trillionaire is not a celebration of human progress or individual initiative. It is a symptom of a deeper social and political crisis, one that exposes the power of class privilege, the corrupting forces of gangster capitalism, and a culture increasingly incapable of distinguishing wealth from worth or exploitation from human flourishing.
Musk is symptomatic of the rot of a capitalist system that generates staggering inequalities while concentrating wealth and power in the hands of a tiny elite whose fortunes depend not simply on markets, but on public subsidies, collective labor, social institutions, and shared resources, all sustained by an authoritarian culture animated by white supremacy, ultranationalism, and the mobilizing passions of fascist politics, especially in the age of Trump. As Dan Dinello argues, Musk has become an “avatar of chaos, cruelty, and death.” The description is difficult to dismiss. How else are we to understand his role as Trump’s chief enforcer?
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Source: CHR
During the two years I spent writing “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America,” I encountered numerous mini-Trumps. These self-proclaimed pastors — very few had any formal religious training — preyed on the despair of their congregants. They were surrounded by sycophants and could not be questioned. They merged fact with fiction, peddled magical thinking and enriched themselves at the expense of their followers. They claimed their wealth and ostentatious lifestyle, including mansions and private jets, was a sign of being blessed. They insisted they were divinely inspired and anointed by God. They were, within their hermetic circles of their megachurches, omnipotent.
These cult pastors promised to use their omnipotence to crush the demonic forces that had created misery in the lives of their followers — unemployment and underemployment, evictions, bankruptcies, poverty, addiction, sexual and domestic abuse, and crippling despair. The more power the cult leaders possess — according to their followers — the more certain is a promised paradise. Cult leaders stand above the law. Those who desperately place their faith in them want them to be above the law.
The economist who predicted the 2008 financial crash reveals why the Iran war is not just about oil prices but is about to hit the global food supply within months. Professor Steve Keen explains that 20 to 30 percent of the world's fertiliser passes through the Strait of Hormuz, a 21-kilometre chokepoint that Iran now controls, and that without fertiliser the planet can only support between one and two billion people.
He warns that India could run out of fertiliser within two to three months, triggering a famine in a country of over a billion people, and that global food production could fall by 10 to 25 percent, creating a famine the world has never experienced before. He reveals that Australia has only 30 days of oil supply, meaning food cannot get from farms to cities once that runs out.
