Notices by Gerry McGovern (gerrymcgovern@mastodon.green)

I am almost finished a book that deeply explores the negative impacts of modern technology on our environment and society. There is a particular focus on the huge environmental and social costs of mining, with extensive sections on Brazil, Ireland and Spain. It is a very hard hitting book.

It will initially published in English later this year, and then probably Italian. Any publishers out there interested in possibly translating it?

Tech bro: AGI is just around the corner

Public: Didn't 50 year old Atari just humiliate ChatGPT?

Tech bro: ChatGPT is not AI. It's just fancy autocomplete.

Pubic: Isn't this what Big Tech has been aggressively selling us?

Tech bro: You weren't listening properly.

Public: Sounds like a scam to me. Sounds like Big Tech has been grifting us. All those trillions in investment. All those materials, water, energy, for fancy autocomplete that lies half the time. Sounds like a scam to me.

Sam Altman claims an average ChatGPT query uses 'roughly one fifteenth of a teaspoon' of water
https://www.theverge.com/news/685045/sam-altman-average-chatgpt-energy-water

Altman is a scamming liar.

Here's what Shalei Ren, an actual expert, just wrote to me:

"Let's just use their numbers as is. It's not clear how they got the water number from energy; the ratio doesn't match with the water efficiency reported by Microsoft.. This type of inconsistency raises concerns with the validity of their statement."

Big Tech are massive scammers, liars

Despite all its billions, ChatGPT is less smart than an Atari game console from almost 50 years ago.

Atari’s humble 8-bit engine smashes the super hot NVIDIA chips.

ChatGPT "got absolutely wrecked" playing beginner level chess with Atari.

For an hour-and-a-half, ChatGPT "made enough blunders to get laughed out of a 3rd grade chess club" while insisting over and over again that it would win "if we just started over."

https://futurism.com/atari-beats-chatgpt-chess

AI is a scam.

“This isn’t a conspiracy theory; this was a recent issue in my Congressional district,” he wrote of concerns over the placement of data centers. “It was resolved at the local level because local officials had leverage. The big beautiful bill undermines the ability of local communities to decide where the AI data centers will be built.”

https://www.wired.com/story/a-political-battle-is-brewing-over-data-centers/

Bitcoin is pure evil: Part 33,456

New Alaska Bitcoin Mine Would Burn as Much Energy as the State’s Largest Coal Plant

https://www.planetizen.com/news/2025/06/135217-new-alaska-bitcoin-mine-would-burn-much-energy-states-largest-coal-plant

Bitcoin is as sick and as twisted as you can get. Pure greed. Pure evil.

AI is massively accelerating environmental crisis

AI Boom Drives 150% Surge in Indirect Emissions at Major Tech Firms, UN Warns

Amazon’s emissions spiked the most—up 182%—with Microsoft, Meta, and Alphabet also posting triple-digit growth.

Without aggressive intervention, AI-linked emissions could reach 102.6M metric tons of CO₂e annually, straining energy grids globally.

https://esgnews.com/ai-boom-drives-150-surge-in-indirect-emissions-at-major-tech-firms-un-warns/

Climate crisis must be tackled without resorting to degrowth, says MEP
https://www.euronews.com/business/2025/05/22/climate-crisis-must-be-tackled-without-resorting-to-degrowth-says-mep

Growth-caused climate crisis must be tackled without addressing growth, says MEP

Obesity crisis must be tackled without resorting to healthy eating and dieting, says MEP

Smoking must be tackled without having to stop smoking, says MEP

Everything is connected.

Because of the 'Green' Revolution, three billion birds were exterminated in North America between 1970 and 2020.

Staggering.

Everything is connected.

40% of insect species declined between 2015 and 2025, according to Greenpeace. Insects are "vanishing 8 times faster than mammals, birds or reptiles."

Everything is connected.

When the insects go, so do we.

Creating a 5-second AI video is like running a microwave for an hour

"This report arrives at a time in which people are using generative AI for absolutely everything. Google announced at its annual I/O event that it's leaning into AI with fervor. Google Search, Gmail, Docs, and Meet are all seeing AI integrations. People are using AI to lead job interviews, create deepfakes of OnlyFans models, and cheat in college."

https://mashable.com/article/energy-ai-worse-than-we-thought

"The mismanagement of e-waste poses an alarming threat to a variety of human rights, including the right to a healthy environment, right to health, right to a safe working environment, and the rights of children who are often used as cheap labour."

"At the Dandora dump site in Nairobi, Kenya, this tension was captured by a worker who remarked, “if you don’t go to work, you don’t eat”.18 For many, scavenging is a survival strategy."

https://www.nortonrosefulbright.com/en-us/knowledge/publications/f54afc62/environmental-injustice-how-informal-e-waste-recycling-impacts-human-rights

@ReggieHere Yeah, it's hard to see how business schools could ever embrace degrowth.

Business schools must challenge growth-focused management education.

Degrowth pedagogy encourages critical thinking and innovation.

Students show openness to alternatives to free-market capitalism.

Integrating degrowth can inspire future leaders for systemic change.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001632872500076X

"New study reveals that when used to summarize scientific research, generative AI is nearly five times LESS accurate than humans. Many haven't realized, but Gen AI's accuracy problem is worse than initially thought."

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/epdf/10.1098/rsos.241776

"These fierce men appeared in the forest suddenly, coming from all over the place, and quickly encircled our houses in large numbers. They were frenetically searching for an evil thing that we had never heard about and whose name they repeated unceasingly: oru, gold ... I soon understood that the gold prospectors were land eaters who would destroy everything."

Davi Kopenawa, Yanomami shaman

"Typical Chat-GPT query uses about 10 times more energy than Google search That’s just for a basic generative AI function. More advanced queries require substantially more power that have to go through an AI Cluster Farm to process large-scale computing between multiple machines."

"AI is typically deployed in 20-30 cabinet clusters at or above 40 KW per cabinet. This represents a fourfold increase in KW/ cabinet with the deployment of AI. The difference is staggering."

https://www.techradar.com/pro/security/i-sat-down-with-two-cooling-experts-to-find-out-what-ais-biggest-problem-is-in-the-data-center

Resistance is not violence.

What is violent is dumping mercury into rivers.

What is violent is strip mining mountains sacred to Indigenous nations.

What is violent is arresting children for protesting while oil CEOs collect subsidies.

What is violent is letting millions die so billionaires can keep flying to conferences about climate change.

Justin McAffee

https://collapsecurriculum.substack.com/p/total-resistance-why-we-must-learn

“Population decline is only a threat to an economy based on growth. Shifting to a model based on degrowth and equity alongside lower fertility rates will help fight climate change and increase wealth and well-being.”

https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/depopulation-or-degrowth-3539172

“This is our ancestral land. We have the right to be here,” whispers Hortencia Zhagüi, who represents the Kimsakocha Women’s School of Agroecology, as she edges past a security guard who immediately reaches for his phone to document the intrusion. The guard shouts warnings about trespassing, but the group moves forward undeterred, their footsteps barely audible against the soft, water-laden moss underfoot. "
https://ricochet.media/indigenous/brandi-morin-in-ecuador-indigenous-water-defenders-take-on-a-canadian-mining-giant/

"Degrowth is voluntary and democratic. It can’t be achieved through violence or unjustified coercion –– though of course nature is coercive and, as Hannah Arendt puts it, so is the truth. On the road toward degrowth, citizens of settlements ranging in size from neighbourhoods and hamlets to cities will need to share a favourable understanding of degrowth, and voluntarily participate in the labour necessary to achieve it"

https://www.resilience.org/stories/2025-05-13/familiarizing-degrowth-art-and-grounded-communities/