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Mél Hogan / The Data Fix

@melhogan.bsky.social

5.8K followers 2.6K following 1.6K posts

Critical media scholar interested in the meanings we make of perpetual tech promises. Bilingue. Focused on the environment. I typo a lot 😷🏳️‍🌈 🎙️ thedatafix.net 📝 heliotropejournal.net 📷 https://pixelfed.social/melhogan

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Mél Hogan / The Data Fix @melhogan.bsky.social · May 24

A list of everything I’ve written/published: (enviro/tech/AI/planet/necropolitics/etc)

docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Hogan publications (2015-2025)

Clouded Conveniences (2024) An archive of suffering: hunger stones and the (n)ec(r)opoetics of climate crisis (2024) The Fumes of AI (2024) Big Cloud Solastalgia (2024) Nothing left. Nothing right (20...

docs.google.com

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Reposted by Mél Hogan / The Data Fix

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 16h

These modern day takes on Cyrano really suck.

‘I realised I’d been ChatGPT-ed into bed’: how ‘Chatfishing’ made finding love on dating apps even weirder

Where once people were duped by soft-focus photos and borrowed chat-up lines, now they have to watch out for computer-generated charm. But it’s one thing to use a witty phrase – another thing entirely...

www.theguardian.com

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Mél Hogan / The Data Fix @melhogan.bsky.social · 16h

While these data infrastructures shape global economies and politics, they truly do far more by profoundly impacting local communities, ecosystems, and labor conditions—realms so often rooted in (neo)colonial structures of exploitation. …”

Mél Hogan / The Data Fix @melhogan.bsky.social · 16h

Data may appear immaterial, but it relies on extensive global networks: the extraction of raw materials, the deployment of thousands of undersea cables, and an exponentially growing number of energy-intensive data centers.

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Mél Hogan / The Data Fix @melhogan.bsky.social · 16h

CITY IN THE CLOUD -
DATA ON THE GROUND

THE ARCHITECTURE OF DATA

“This book investigates the hidden physical infrastructures behind the digital world.

www.architekturmuseum.de/en/publicati...

City in the Cloud – Data on the Ground – Architekturmuseum der TUM

www.architekturmuseum.de

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Reposted by Mél Hogan / The Data Fix

Paris Marx @parismarx.com · 2d

“I am exhausted, running out of body parts, and feeling more cyborg than human with each passing day. And if we blindly race toward a future where everyone feels like that? We’ve lost sight of why any of us ever loved technology in the first place.” — @vicmsong.bsky.social

We’re all about to be in wearable hell

I’m rapidly running out of body parts to do my job.

www.theverge.com

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Reposted by Mél Hogan / The Data Fix

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 2d

“Apple is reportedly prepping a Health+ service that will use AI to dispense advice on nutrition, exercise and more.”

Apple might launch Health+ with AI doctor, food tracking and more

Apple is reportedly prepping a Health+ service that will use AI to dispense advice on exercise and eating right.

www.cultofmac.com

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Reposted by Mél Hogan / The Data Fix

Dorian Dawes @doriandawes.bsky.social · 2d

I want it understood right now that Peter Thiel is one of the people who believes AI will become God.

Karly Kingsley @karlykingsley.bsky.social · 2d

Say no to drugs, kids

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Reposted by Mél Hogan / The Data Fix

Ryan "Spirit Halloween of '76" Randall @ryanpatrickrandall.com · 2d

I, a human with a bias toward potable water, have a surprisingly difficult time maintaining a disinterested approach to this topic.

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Reposted by Mél Hogan / The Data Fix

Ryan "Spirit Halloween of '76" Randall @ryanpatrickrandall.com · 2d

Not only are the highly addictive, truth-agnostic output generators polluting our information ecosystems and degrading our knowledge practices, they're also materially exacerbating the ongoing effects of climate change in order to accomplish the above at scale.

Heck of a job.

Mél Hogan / The Data Fix @melhogan.bsky.social · 2d

theconversation.com/openais-newl...

OpenAI’s newly launched Sora 2 makes AI’s environmental impact impossible to ignore

As AI shifts from text to video, its appetite for power and water soars, presenting a climate-policy issue.

theconversation.com

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Reposted by Mél Hogan / The Data Fix

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 2d

“Another former OpenAI employee who also was not authorized to speak publicly argued that releasing a deepfake AI social media platform was the right business decision, even if it contributes to the collapse of everyone's shared sense of reality.” 💀

Sora gives deepfakes 'a publicist and a distribution deal.' It could change the internet

OpenAI's new hit app has unleashed a new wave of AI slop across the internet. But what happens when there are no rules over hyper-realistic synthetic videos?

www.npr.org

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Mél Hogan / The Data Fix @melhogan.bsky.social · 2d

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Inside tech billionaire Peter Thiel’s off-the-record lectures about the antichrist

The political svengali and investor has been giving lectures on ‘an evil king or tyrant … who appears in the end times’

www.theguardian.com

Mél Hogan / The Data Fix @melhogan.bsky.social · 2d

www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

Inside billionaire Peter Thiel’s private lectures: Warnings of ‘the Antichrist’ and U.S. destruction

In leaked recordings of private lectures by tech billionaire Peter Thiel he argued that “the Antichrist” is likely to take the form of a critic of technology.

www.washingtonpost.com

Mél Hogan / The Data Fix @melhogan.bsky.social · 2d

theconversation.com/openais-newl...

OpenAI’s newly launched Sora 2 makes AI’s environmental impact impossible to ignore

As AI shifts from text to video, its appetite for power and water soars, presenting a climate-policy issue.

theconversation.com

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Reposted by Mél Hogan / The Data Fix

Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 3d

Tomorrow: The AI Bubble is built on impossible promises. GPUs die in 5 years, nobody has built a 1GW data center, and they have the power to do so. Stargate Abilene won't have enough power before 2028.

Here's a link for $10 off premium.

edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo...

Everybody is very casual with how they talk about Sam Altman’s theoretical promises of trillions of dollars of data center infrastructure, and I'm not sure anybody realizes how difficult even the very basics of this plan will be.
Nevertheless, everybody is happily publishing stories about how “Stargate Abilene Texas - OpenAI’s massive data center with Oracle - is open,” by which they mean two buildings, and I’m not even confident both of them are providing compute to OpenAI yet. There are six more of them that need to get built for this thing to start rocking at 1.2GW - even though it’s only 1.1GW according to my sources in Abilene.
But, hey, sorry - one minute - while we’re on that subject, did anybody visiting Abilene in the last week or so ever ask whether they’ll have enough power there?
Don’t worry, you don’t need to look - I’m sure you were just about to, and had simply been busy! - but I did the hard work for you and read up on it, and it turns out that Stargate Abilene only has 200 megawatts of power - a 200 megawatt substation that, according to my sources, has only been built within the last couple of months, with 350 Megawatt of gas turbine generators that connect to a natural gas power plant that might get built by the end of the year in the event that one of the multiple construction firms involved . Said turbine is extremely expensive, featuring volatile pricing (for context, volatility fell in Q2 2025…to 69% annualized, meaning that if you had these prices across the entirety of a year you’d see swings of 69% up or down) and even more volatile environmental consequences, and is, while permitted for it (this will download the PDF of the permit), impractical and expensive to use long-term.
Analyst James van Geelen, founder of Citrini Research recently said on Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast that these are “not the really good natural gas turbines” because the really good ones would take seven years to deliver due to a natural gas turbine shortage.
But th…

$Stargate Abilene does not have sufficient power to run at even half of its supposed IT load of 1.2GW, and at its present capacity - assuming that the gas turbines function at full power - can only hope to run 370MW to 460MW of IT load. I’ve seen article after article about the gas turbines and their use of fracked gas - a disgusting and wasteful act typical of OpenAI - but nobody appears to have asked “how much power does a 1.2GW data center require?” and then chased it with “how much power does Stargate Abilene have?” The answer is not enough, and the significance of said “not enough” is remarkable. Today, I’m going to tell you, at length, how impossible the future of generative AI is. Gigawatt data centers are a ridiculous pipe dream, one that runs face-first into the walls of reality. The world’s governments and media have been far too cavalier with the term “gigawatt,” casually breezing by the fact that Altman’s plans require 17 or more nuclear reactors’ worth of power, as if building power is quick and easy and cheap and just happens. I believe that many of you think that this is an issue of permitting - of simply throwing enough money at the problem - when we are in the midst of a shortage in the electrical grade steel and transformers required to expand America (and the world’s) power grid. I realize it’s easy to get blinded by the constant drumbeat of “gargoyle-like tycoon cabal builds 1 gigawatt data center” and feel that they will simply overwhelm the problem with money, but no, I’m afraid that isn’t the case at all, and all of this is so silly, so ridiculous, so cartoonishly bad that it threatens even the seemingly-infinite wealth of Elon Musk, with xAI burning over a billion dollars a month and planning to spend tens of billions of dollars building the Colossus 2 data center, dragging two billion dollars from SpaceX in his desperate quest to burn as much money as possible for no reason. This is the age of hubris - a time in which we are going to watc…$

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Mél Hogan / The Data Fix @melhogan.bsky.social · 3d

“Bubbles are useful, the authors say, because they induce people to take more risk.”

www.reuters.com/commentary/b...

Mél Hogan / The Data Fix @melhogan.bsky.social · 3d

thenarwhal.ca/ai-data-cent...

What will the AI data centre boom mean for Canada? | The Narwhal

Sprawling AI data centres, like Kevin O’Leary’s plans for Wonder Valley in Alberta, are hungry for land, water and power

thenarwhal.ca

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Mél Hogan / The Data Fix @melhogan.bsky.social · 3d

“Without the data center boom, we’d probably be in a recession...” paulkrugman.substack.com/p/why-arent-...

Why Aren’t We Partying Like It’s 1999?

Fear, not hope, permeates today’s technology hype

paulkrugman.substack.com

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Mél Hogan / The Data Fix @melhogan.bsky.social · 3d

www.cnn.com/2025/10/08/b...

As AI gets more life-like, a new Luddite movement is taking root | CNN Business

At my local coffee shop a couple of weeks ago, I overheard one 20-something woman say to another: Could I ask, what kind of phone do you have?

www.cnn.com

Mél Hogan / The Data Fix @melhogan.bsky.social · 3d

futurism.com/artificial-i...

New Yorkers Are Defacing This AI Startup's Million-Dollar Ad Campaign

An AI startup called friend has plastered the New York City subway system in advertisements -- and furious riders are vandalizing them.

futurism.com

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Mél Hogan / The Data Fix @melhogan.bsky.social · 3d

arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...

Vandals deface ads for AI necklaces that listen to all your conversations

Critics attacked subway ads to defend human friends and broadly criticize AI.

arstechnica.com

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Mél Hogan / The Data Fix @melhogan.bsky.social · 3d

ha ha thank you!!

Mél Hogan / The Data Fix @melhogan.bsky.social · 3d

The digital-urban frontier in China: Data centres, extraction and the state in peripheral places
Yawei Zhao

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

journals.sagepub.com

Mél Hogan / The Data Fix @melhogan.bsky.social · 3d

Would love to hear this!

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Reposted by Mél Hogan / The Data Fix

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 4d

“The more ways that a student reports that their school uses AI, the more likely they are to report things like 'I know someone who considers AI to be a friend,' 'I know someone who considers AI to be a romantic partner.'"

1 in 5 high schoolers has had a romantic AI relationship, or knows someone who has

A national survey of students, teachers and parents shines a light on how the AI revolution is playing out in schools – including when it comes to bullying and a community's trust in schools.

www.npr.org

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Reposted by Mél Hogan / The Data Fix

Maria Antoniak @mariaa.bsky.social · 3d

Another Emily Bender quote: "We don't need to construct thought experiments to think of conditions to which no human should be subject to."

#COLM2025

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