In the run up to COP30 in November, the Anti-Dystopians will be posting series of new and from the archive episodes about the ongoing climate catastrophe.
To kick it off, we’re posting one of my all-time favorite episodes from the archive “Nationalize Gmail!: Climate Change, Critical Infrastructure, and the USPS” with friend of the show Josh Lappen. This episode was recorded all the way back in 2021 (Season 1) in the wake of the failure of Texas’s energy grid, one of the most severe energy crises in U.S. history that left millions without power for days in freezing temperatures. Funnily enough, we were even talking about the environmental impact of Large Language Models (LLMs) all the way back in 2021 — don’t say the podcast didn’t warn you!
Other highlights included why hundreds of Elon Musks can’t (and won’t) solve climate change, how low-tech solutions and indigenous practices are critical sources of knowledge, the surprising number of technological innovations enabled by the US Postal Service, and why the government should give you an email address and a bank account. Lots of these issues remain relevant nearly four years later, so I would absolutely recommend listening if you missed it the first time (or even if you’re hearing it again!).
As always, you can listen to it here or subscribe here (Spotify) or here (Apple Podcasts). If you like us, please rate, review and share the Anti-Dystopians to help us get new listeners.
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By Josh: How Climate-Driven Disasters Threaten Climate Progress
Bill Tripp, the director of natural resources and environmental policy for the Karuk Tribe Department of Natural Resources, in the Guardian: “Our land was taken. But we still hold the knowledge of how to stop mega-fires”, as well as Jared Dahl Alder, “Cultural Fire on the Mountain: An Introduction to Native Cultural Burning.”
How California’s firefighters are made up of incarcerated people who are paid $1 a day.
An explainer on PG&E and California’s (basically, annual) rolling blackoutsand the recent Texas energy grid failures.
If you’re wondering why California doesn’t have a train line between its two most populous cities, here’s a good explainer on the High Speed Rail (spoiler alert: its local politics), and more long view coverage from Ralph Vartabedian at the LA Times. Plus, why Elon Musk’s Hyperloop literally won’t solve anything.
“It’s the government, stupid.” Elon Musk is a state-made man. In case you didn’t catch the number, Musk ventures’ Telsa, Solar City and SpaceX have received a total of $4.9 billion dollars from the government in tax breaks, grants and subsidies, and Tesla literally was not profitable until last year.
More on the climate impacts of AI language modeling in the memo that Google fired Dr Timnit Gebru over, plus the environmental toll of a Netflix binge.
For how Google buses and tech corporations are creating two-tier public/private infrastructure in the Bay, check out Inside a Secretive $250 Million Private Transit System Just for Techies.
And, Congress is Sabotaging Your Post Office. Plus a really interesting argument about the benefit of state-issues crypto-currencies, aka why doesn’t the Fed just give everyone a bank account?
The Real Stakes, and Real Story, of Peter Thiel’s Antichrist Obsession
Larry Ellison Is a ‘Shadow President’ in Donald Trump’s America
AWS Outage That Took Down Internet Came After Amazon Fired Tons of Workers in Favor of AI
I had a great time chatting about Silicon Valley and outer space colonization on the Curious Geographer, a fab programme aimed at secondary school students interested in geography, politics and international studies!
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