Jul 9, 2026, 9:15 PM(1/2)
I've become fascinated learning more about how the current AI bubble will pop, and what that'll look like.
First up, we have an entertaining historical perspective on bubbles. The thesis here is that much of the "pro AI" vs. "anti AI" discourse may be asking the wrong questions; focusing on the demand side rather than the supply side.
Jul 9, 2026, 9:18 PM(2/2)
Next, hat tip to @msb for sharing this earlier today:
https://mastodon.sdf.org/@msb/116890779438682355
❝This is not a software business that happens to own servers. It is a real estate business that happens to compute.❞
❝This is precisely why the analogy is 2008, not 2000. AI capital expenditure is not a capital budget. It is a loan book.❞
CC @cR0w
Aug 10, 2026, 6:58 PM(3/X)
Here's another fascinating (for me, at least! :blobfoxnerd: ) analysis on the tension between two clocks / bottlenecks:
1. How long do developers building AI #dataCenters need to wait in the queue to power a newly built data center? (A: in the US, 6-10 years)
2. What's the useful life of the chips being used in these data centers? (A: Meta, for instance, says 5.5y on its depreciation schedules. Debatable.)
It features analysis from #michaelBurry (made famous in The Big Short)
@dusk I started looking into the power process once the plans for all the Texas data centers hit the table. Texas has an unregulated market. It’s insane here. The requests for the massive Amarillo plant, and the proposed one down by the Rio, each one of those centers would require more energy than all of Dallas and Houston combined.
That power doesn’t exist. It’s not anywhere on the grid. There are no plans to build new power plants, so where exactly, is this power coming from? And in a state where more than a thousand people died when the grid failed in the winter storms, and drought so bad I can’t drive a tractor across my land without the danger of getting stuck, maybe putting in giant golems that feed on water and electricity isn’t a great idea.
@MissConstrue How's your water supply? @dusk
The Colorado river is running dry, the rio grande is dry, the red river is not flowing at all, the aquifers are being drained faster than they refill, about 10 million people are trying to keep a golf course alive in an area that is black prairie, and I literally cannot take equipment out to deal with the back acre and pecans because the cracks in the ground are big enough I’m afraid my little tractor would get stuck.
It hasn’t rained in literally months where I am. No measurable rain since the spring floods. When the rains finally come, it’s gonna flood. This soil is clay and limestone. It doesn’t do absorb, it does runoff. The native grasses and plants that hold the soil have been abandoned in favor of McMansion hoa approved invasive plants.
We are well and truly fucked if more data centers go online. Well and truly.
@MissConstrue @dusk Not sure if you’d be interested but just in case https://youtube.com/shorts/WKrANHuWM8E?si=josBCkr_e-4u6jdQ
@Alison @dusk I have seen that project. I may have even contributed to it.
I've done something sort of similar, but with hügelkultur. Mostly because my house is higher than the house beside and the house behind my property, so my runoff flows directly towards them. So, when I had the fence replaced, I had them use the old boards to sort of build lumps that direct flow to the pecans, and then hopefully retains it, rather than just running off into a ditch. But, I replaced the fence in April or May, and we haven't had any rain, so I dunno if it works. The bunnies have colonized them though, and I've got 5 foot tall hemlock, so...there's that? ;)
@MissConstrue I'm so pleased to hear you've been trying things out. North America has to get paying attention to these ways to trap water everywhere we can. So much easier done if there is equipment rather than like these poor fools with pick axes. @dusk