Thinking about that timeline where the US had elected Harris president. Would’ve been so much better. And much cheaper, too.

#USpol

Brat summer is over, besties.

“Why are Silicon Valley's biggest bosses swapping hoodies for military tailoring?

Marina Hyde investigates the strange new world of combat-ready suits, concealed daggers and tech billionaires dressing like they're in Kingsman—and what it reveals about Big Tech's growing relationship with the Pentagon.”

I’m pretty sure there’s also some John Wick cosplay going on, but crikey, this is so pathetic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBQ_rrG8vlY

“RVO figures published this summer showed that Microsoft's largest Dutch data centre alone uses 1% of national electricity, though the power is said to come from renewable sources.”

Important caveat to that claimed caveat; Microsoft did not install any renewable sources, but bought up capacity for it from Vattenfall, which in turn bought wind turbines from local farmers in areas like the Wieringermeerpolder, who suddenly found themselves flush with cash.

This is wind power that could have powered homes and local businesses instead, and should be considered a form of resource extraction.

This is a very common pattern whenever another big datacenter is built, a pattern that has intensified as these fuckers race to build ‘the AI future’.

https://www.dutchnews.nl/2026/09/most-major-dutch-data-centres-keep-energy-usage-secret-report/

#News #FuckHyperscalers #EUpol

“In Italy, Il Manifesto found that requests for new energy grid connections already exceed the total installed power in the country. In Greece, Solomon spoke to local residents who felt sidelined by new developments. 'We are all being kept in the dark', an MP said. In Spain, El Confidencial exposed the scale of Amazon's macro-campus in the region of Aragón, the company's biggest outside the United States.”

“So we sent a reporter to the largest European industry conference, DataCloud in Cannes, to get a sense of what insider conversations were. What we heard was a roomful of industry leaders laughing as a company executive described concerned members of the public as ‘cave people’ – ‘Citizens Against Virtually Everything’.”

Always a great sign when the real conversation runs completely opposite of the PR campaign.

https://www.lighthousereports.com/investigation/data-centre-silence/

#News #FuckHyperscalers #EUpol

"Most data centres in the Netherlands do not make their environmental impact public, which conceals water and electricity usage, according to an investigation by Trouw and Lighthouse Reports.

The Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO), which collects data on behalf of the EU, lists only 104 data centres but the industry body Dutch Datacenter Association (DDA) says there were 186 commercial data centres at the end of 2025.

These figures cover data centres with at least 500 kW of installed IT capacity, which are required to report their energy and water use, among other things, under the EU's Energy Efficiency Directive."

https://www.dutchnews.nl/2026/09/most-major-dutch-data-centres-keep-energy-usage-secret-report/

https://www.trouw.nl/duurzaamheid-economie/nederland-weet-amper-hoeveel-stroom-en-water-zijn-datacentra-opslokken~bbd70381/

It's not just the Netherlands, either; apparently data about the rest of Europe is even more lacking;

https://www.lighthousereports.com/investigation/data-centre-silence/

#News #FuckHyperscalers #EUpol

“On Friday, Amazon committed to donating more than $1 billion over the next five years to communities neighboring data centers.

In a press release, Amazon Web Services' CEO Matt Garman said that communities would decide how to prioritize funds across ‘education, job training, energy affordability, water, and energy preservation, and local priorities’.

Laying out other community commitments, Amazon also promised to ensure data centers wouldn't increase power bills or wipe out local water supplies.”

Any time a company wants to commit that much money to changing the narrative, they are a) not paying anywhere near enough in taxes, and b) full of shit.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/10/amazons-1b-plan-to-combat-data-center-backlash-draws-more-backlash/

#News #FuckHyperscalers

Also, speaking of things that are now more than 25 years ago; remember the Microsoft antitrust case?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp

The .com domain was introduced closer to the end of the Second World War than to today, and the dot-com boom is more than 25 years ago.

“OpenAI apologized Tuesday after reports of the company's models going rogue and accessing Australian government websites without permission, including by penetrating cybersecurity protections.”

Oh, it’s that simple now, is it? Terribly sorry, but you connected something to the internet, we stumbled across it, and broke some windows.

Again, deeply sorry. We’ll work with you to make sure your security is better, so you’re prepared for the next time we stumble across the things you connected to the internet.

https://therecord.media/openai-apologizes-australia-medicare-breach

NO. IT IS NOT.

“YouTube channel Gamers Nexus worked with Level1Techs, a technology-focused YouTube channel, and security researchers to analyze LG TVs' tracking capabilities. They shared packet captures that pointed to the TVs, including LG's pricey G5 OLED TV, scanning the LAN for other devices.

'The [G5] crawled our entire network and found dozens of unrelated devices, including smartwatches and phones of our staff who didn't even know we were working on this’, Steve Burke, Gamers Nexus' editor-in-chief, said.

LG's ad business, LG Ad Solutions, has said in recent marketing materials that it can reach 363 million ‘addressable secondary devices’ in the US.”

I hate that this is the technology timeline in which we find ourselves, where pretty much every device is now ‘optimised’ for ads 😒

It is not new, but it does keep getting worse.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/09/lg-tv-shown-capable-of-tracking-user-activity-even-when-offline/

See also ‘The Decade of Dishonest Technology’;

https://ngmx.com/@sindarina/110249658760373159

I feel like this is right up their alley for several of my mutuals 😂

https://nebula.tv/videos/bernadettebanner-i-joined-a-convent-of-undead-seamstresses-conquest-of-mythodea-2026/

(It'll also be on YouTube, sooner or later)

Finally made it through 'Blade Runner 2049', and boy, that was a LONG two-and-a-half hours. Worth it, in the end, and I'll probably need to rewatch it at some point in the future, but for now I think I have had enough running blades for a while.

(Until the new series, perhaps, because Michelle Yeoh)

It's been ages since I've watched it, and I am not sure I ever made it to the end, but I have the Director's Cut of 'Blade Runner' on DVD somewhere, and I remember thinking that both Sean Young and Daryl Hannah were trans 😂

Ahh, the innocence of (relative) youth. And ignorance.

Urgh, I figured I'd rent the original cut of the original 'Blade Runner', as I have never seen that version, but apparently whoever published this particular release couldn't be arsed to check the subtitles, because they keep referring to the 'Voight-Komp test' 😒

This shit is so lazy.

"Cameroon has emerged as one of the leading sources of African recruits for the Russian military, with young men lured to Europe by false promises of jobs and fast-tracked Russian citizenship, only to find themselves on the front lines of the war in Ukraine.

As of May this year, Ukrainian officials say that nearly 3,000 citizens from various African countries were known to have fought — or to still be fighting — for Russia : Cameroon, Ghana, Egypt, Kenya and Uganda were identified as significant."

I feel this is one of the underreported aspects of Russia's war in Ukraine; the fact that Russia keeps sacrificing non-Russians, recruited in all sorts of dishonest ways, from poor regions and countries, in order to avoid having to mobilise its own citizens 😒

https://www.dw.com/en/deceived-and-deployed-how-young-cameroonians-end-up-fighting-in-russias-war-in-ukraine/a-78513256

#News #OrganisedAffiliatedFuckers

"Norway's King Harald, Europe's oldest living monarch, has died at 89, the royal court said on Friday."

"Harald succeeded his father, King Olav V, in January 1991 and went on to modernize the Norwegian monarchy during more than 35 years on the throne. He was widely praised for his response to the 2011 far-right terrorist attacks that killed 77 people and later drew attention for speeches stressing tolerance, diversity and LGBTQ+ equality."

Huh, I did not know this about him. TIL.

https://www.dw.com/en/norways-king-harald-dies-at-89/a-78524572

#News #Death

The third well-known octogenarian to die this week is more than evil enough to rejoice in; Ratko Mladic, the Butcher of Bosnia, is dead at 84.

https://www.dw.com/en/ex-bosnian-serb-military-leader-ratko-mladic-dead-at-84/a-78531323

#News #Death #DeathAndTheGrabClawMachine

Huffing that hopium after an interview with good vibes 😂