#technofascists

[victusinveritas]

Hurrah for the Union Army in its holy fight against the Confederacy the evil AI overlords and the destruction of historic sites.

I'd pay way too much money to see a full Civil War era artillery assault on an AI data center.

[themancorialist]

Thomas Street, Manchester.

[blackfem]

Now that I have a bong I absolutely agree with the sentiment that flower > cartridges

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

I thought people might like to know what Elon Musk and Trump have planned for the country, and it's shocking that no one is talking about their real agenda here. All we see are threats to completely end so many government programs and agencies and spending, seemingly as simple hatred of government and retribution to those who opposed Trump or didn't vote for him, along with massive cruelty to all sorts of people, from immigrants to people who rely on government benefits. Terrible as that is, it's not what's really going on.

Musk's plan, that he's convinced Trump to commit to, is to transform the entire way our government works, by running it as a giant series of AI programs.

No, that's not science fiction, and it's not me going paranoid crazy. It's what Musk is planning to do. And fast.

Musk has been building giant AI programs and massive AI computing centers for years now. He just finished building Colossus in Tennessee, the world's largest AI computing center. Colossus was just launched in September 2024. It's a part of Musk's xAI company, which he intends to use to completely revamp how the federal government works. All these reductions in the federal workforce and bureaucracy are a prelude to putting the entire government in the hands of his AI company, and other subcontractors.

This is technofascism on a massive scale. Musk intends to make trillions from this, and probably give Trump a piece of the pie. Would that be illegal? Sure, but Trump can't be prosecuted for this, thanks to the Supreme Court's rulings. He has immunity even to charges of bribery.

I think this explains Musk's huge role in Trump's government, and his focus on DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency), which by executive order has been given immense power across the government at every level.

Trump could never do any of this on his own, much less even think of it. But Musk has dreamed of this for decades, and he has convinced Trump to back it to the hilt.

In the next few months, were going to see it happen. It won't be noticed at first, because it's quite complex and our journalists and media are cowered by fear and narrowness of vision. But it's already happening. And this explains the outer confusion as to what Trump is planning, what his end game is. Turns out it's not Trump's end game, it's Musk's. And Musk is way ahead of everyone on this.

Call me crazy if you like, but this is what's really happening behind the scenes. Trump will say all kinds of crazy shit to distract from it, do crazy things as well, but this is the real program. Don't get caught up in all the cruelty and threats and BS being thrown about. That's bad enough, but it's not the real point.

Turning the government of the United States into a technofascist AI kleptocracy that enriches the investor class even more is the point. And this is why all the techno-oligarchs like Bezos and Zuckerberg and Ellison are all now gung-ho Trumpers. They will get even richer themselves through the AI government programs Musk will oversee.

Trump himself is just a distraction from the real powers remaking our country. A simple pawn enriching himself in the process of turning democracy into a computer algorithm controlled by the techno-oligarchs.

Don't say you weren't warned.

[Conrad Goehausen]

[victusinveritas]

[331-reblogs]

```Info: Artificial Intelligence (environmental cost is only one major problem, but it is the biggest):```

# AI Energy Costs

1. https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/ais-energy-use-big-problem-climate-change

2. https://earth.org/environmental-impact-chatgpt/

3. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00616-z

4. https://www.theverge.com/24066646/ai-electricity-energy-watts-generative-consumption

5. https://www.sciencenewstoday.org/the-ethics-of-ai-how-we-can-build-a-better-future-together

```

Info: They forgot about the egregious environmental/power grid harms```

6. https://www.sciencenewstoday.org/the-ethics-of-ai-how-we-can-build-a-better-future-together

7. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/05/elon-musk-grok-white-genocide/682817/ ⚠️

8. https://time.com/7021709/elon-musk-xai-grok-memphis/

----

# AI Energy Costs & Worse

1a. https://time.com/7021709/elon-musk-xai-grok-memphis/

> And Garcia, at the SELC, says that while xAI waits for more power to become available, they’ve turned to non-legal measures to sate their demand, by installing gas combustion turbines on the site that they are operating without a permit.

1b. https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/06/datacenters_set_to_emit_3x/

2. [AI-sympathetic source outlines harms] https://unric.org/en/artificial-intelligence-how-much-energy-does-ai-use/

> Initially, energy concerns in computing were consumer-driven, such as improving battery life in mobile devices. Today, the focus is shifting to environmental sustainability, carbon footprint reduction, and making AI models more energy efficient. AI, particularly large language models (LLMs), requires enormous computational resources. Training these models involves thousands of graphics processing units (GPUs) running continuously for months, leading to high electricity consumption. By 2030–2035, data centers could account for 20% of global electricity use, putting an immense strain on power grids.

3. https://www.washington.edu/news/2023/07/27/how-much-energy-does-chatgpt-use/

> Training a large language model, such as ChatGPT, uses on average roughly equivalent to the yearly electricity consumption of over 1,000 U.S. households, according to Sajjad Moazeni, UW assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, who studies networking for AI and machine learning supercomputing.

```Me: The AI trains and retrains every time someone uses it, it is always learning.```

> Today [**in 2023!**] there are hundreds of millions of daily queries on ChatGPT, though that number may be declining. This many queries can cost around 1 GWh each day, which is the equivalent of the daily energy consumption for about 33,000 U.S. households.

Brackets added by me.

---

# Climate Crisis Resources

These are from a quick search.

1. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/climate-change-and-health

2. https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/newsroom/news-releases/2025/03/global-warming-can-lead-to-inflammation-in-human-airways-new-research-shows

3. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/climate-change/how-to-live-with-it/health.html

4. [OLD] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-survive-in-a-warmer-world-interactive/

----

Book(s) to Read:

– https://booksthatslay.com/fire-weather-a-true-story-from-a-hotter-world-summary-and-analysis/

----

```Me: Take note of the catastrophic amplified wildfires, tornadoes, floods, hurricanes, extreme summers and winters, climate-fueled disasters, the climate refugee problem, and farming problems worldwide.```

#ArtificialIntelligence

AI Energy Costs

1. https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/ais-energy-use-big-problem-climate-change

2. https://earth.org/environmental-impact-chatgpt/

3. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00616-z

4. https://www.theverge.com/24066646/ai-electricity-energy-watts-generative-consumption

5. [AI-sympathetic source outlines ethics] https://www.sciencenewstoday.org/the-ethics-of-ai-how-we-can-build-a-better-future-together

6. https://www.sciencenewstoday.org/the-ethics-of-ai-how-we-can-build-a-better-future-together

AI Energy Costs & Worse

1a. https://time.com/7021709/elon-musk-xai-grok-memphis/

Egregious damages.

1b. https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/06/datacenters_set_to_emit_3x/

2. [AI-sympathetic source outlines harms] https://unric.org/en/artificial-intelligence-how-much-energy-does-ai-use/

3. https://www.washington.edu/news/2023/07/27/how-much-energy-does-chatgpt-use/

Bonus: Deepseek/China's AI Race

– https://techcrunch.com/2025/05/29/deepseeks-distilled-new-r1-ai-model-can-run-on-a-single-gpu/

– https://www.indiatoday.in/technology/news/story/deepseek-says-its-r1-update-rivals-chatgpt-o3-and-gemini-25-pro-in-performing-math-coding-and-logic-2732876-2025-05-30

– https://www.techrepublic.com/article/news-deepseek-r1-update-china-ai/

– https://earth.org/google-emissions-grow-48-in-five-years-owing-to-large-scale-ai-deployment-jeopardizing-companys-net-zero-plans/

Obligatory AI hate post bc I intend to be even more annoying about this

[oxfordcommalover666]

i love lord of the rings so much i wish all republicans would die

[catinfroghat]

I already thought the brotherhood sucked but seeing Veronica's questline to the end is making me want to wipe their shitty bunker out they are the worst... Plus I'm super protective of the followers because they're just so cute they want to give medicine and food to everyone they must have been so scared when the brotherhood just came to massacre them with all their massive laser guns :(

[reachartwork]

re: "outlawing AI"

the thing i think a lot of people have trouble understanding is that "ai" as we know it isn't a circuitboard or a computer part or an invention - it's a discovery, like calculus or chemistry. the genie *can't* be re-corked because it'd be like trying to "cork" the concept of, say, trigonometry. you can't "un-invent" it.

even if you managed to somehow completely outlaw the performance of the kinds of linear algebra required for ML, and outlawed the data collection necessary, and sure, managed to get style copyrighted, you can't un-discover the underlying mathematical facts. people will just do it in mexico instead. it'd be like trying to outlaw guns by trying to get people to forget that you can ignite a mixture of powders in a small metal barrel to propel things very fast. or trying to outlaw fire by threatening to take away everyone's sticks.

the battleground is already here. technofascists and bad actors without your ethical constraints are drawing the lines and flooding the zone with propaganda & slop, and you’re wasting time insisting to your enemies that it’s unfair you’re being asked to fight with guns when you’d rather use sticks.

[doolallymagpie]

re: the Minutemen ending (which is absolutely not "idk I fucked up and got kicked out of every other faction", what the hell are you on about?) you have to admit that there's something poetic about the most technologically-advanced faction in the Commonwealth being taken down by a bunch of farmers with (laser) muskets who invaded through the sewers

Thinking about how your four endings are "slavery bad" "slavery good" "kill all the slaves" and "idk I fucked up and got kicked out of every other faction"

[technofeudalism]

i've got one more wall of text in me for today. i'm sorry, but hopefully this helps more people than it annoys.

i understand the concerns people have about social media being captured to technofascist oligarchs and i share them.

however, and you can call me a boomer for this if you'd like, i am way more worried about the fact that we are watching a scarier replay of the 2016 hyper-normalization of Donald Trump already being carried out in mainstream/establishment news outlets.

Some political operatives on the right, who saw mainstream media coverage of Trump’s first term as overly hostile, say the way the press covered Trump’s first term unwittingly did him a favor.   “I do expect that the media coverage will be a little different in tone,” one national Republican strategist told The Hill this week. “Not because the media is all of a sudden planning on being more objective and less biased, but because they probably finally recognize that their over-the-top hysterical coverage has done nothing but help Trump politically.”  

there are many reason this freaks me out worse, but i can sum up a couple of them.

the rhetoric this time is a magnitude more insane and suddenly alarmingly expansionist. logic would suggest this would justify an even more critical evaluation from the media that they are seemingly neglecting to provide.

the public, thanks to total dereliction of duty by the Democrats, are far more geared up for fascist shit than ever, but are totally ignorant to how this is going to happen (concentration camps)

speaking of the Democratic party: following a series of humiliating, high profile L's, the party finds themselves leaderless and less popular than they've been in 30 years at the worst time. when asked to name the leader of the Democratic Party, 49% of registered voters couldn’t name a person or said “nobody.”

before i continue, i know that there has been a dramatic decrease in people who get their news from traditional media and instead rely on social media, podcasts and the like. that makes sense. people aren't watching cable news anymore, chiefly because fewer and fewer people under the age of 30 even have cable TV and they definitely aren't paying for a New York Times subscription.

but what people fail to consider is that the "news" people consume via social media is often rehashed or half-baked, word of mouth versions of reporting conducted by the mainstream media or the journalists who work for them. there are still journalists working for these publications who take advantage of the increased exposure podcasts provide and go on them to talk about their writing.

people hear the same stories at the end of the day, but the way the issue is initially framed when the story first "breaks" and how it is approached by other outlets who follow up on it is significant. it's a lot less work to have to clean up and suppress news on your platform when the news is already favorable to your cause.

think along the lines of a massive disinformation campaign emerging from one outlet, social media being thrown into a complete frenzy and the only journalist who knows the truth from another outlet hesitating to speak out because of threats from his publisher to keep outrage revenue high or, perhaps more ominously, to directly serve the interest of the fascists in charge.

the US media has always been servile to whims of corporate interests because... well... they are owned by the corporate interests.

but up until today, i was holding out some sliver of hope that even if the NYT, for example, wasn't taking up antifascist actions, they would hold onto a tiny bit of reliability as a further watered down version of itself. an increasingly rare, delicate weapon against misinformation on social media, as opposed to being another tool wielded by fascists on aforementioned social media to grow legitimacy and manufacture consent.

then i saw this. my feeling is now that if the New York Times can't even write a headline - with THAT photograph underneath it - that says in plain English "Elon Musk Makes Nazi Salute Twice at Trump Inauguration," then there is going to be a frightening decrease in quality journalism being funded by mainstream outlets coming.

if you are not sure what to do and you want to be well informed, i have two suggestions. the first and most important, most difficult one that is a skill hard to master, is to develop decent media literacy and an ability to derive context from history.

the second is to build a network of trustworthy local, national and global sources that you can count on. ideally, they would be completely independent and free from editorial oversight or corporate control.

here are some of my recommendations. all of them are flawed. never rely on one source. do not immediately accept something as the truth from any single source. everyone is capable of accidentally getting a detail wrong, or even deliberately misleading.

Dropsite News - ran by Ryan Grim, Jeremy Scahill

The Intercept - sadly running out of money, alleged CIA ties

Democracy Now! - more center-left, better domestically

Jacobin - wide variety, sometimes shitty takes, Alex Press is great

The Grayzone - this one is controversial (mainly just to liberals) and they make no qualms about being committed to reporting from an anti-imperialist view of the world

Black Agenda Report - perspective from Black leftists. founded by Glen Ford (RIP), a Black Panther and accomplished investigative journalist

Hasan Piker - hate him, love him, neutral, doesn't matter. he's the largest independent political commentator on the left (by far), covering news and misinformation 9 hours a day. you can think he has shit takes, but he's still a reliable source and has been insanely accurate with his opinions

The Majority Report - been around forever, Sam Seder & Emma Vigeland are amazing, once home to the incredible Michael Jamal Brooks (RIP)

Breakthrough News

Labor Notes

Ben Norton @ Global Political Economy

Caitlin Johnstone (AUS)

these are just what i could come up with but there are many more if you do a little bit of digging using these as a baseline. just remember that the source ultimately is irrelevant and will have it's own biases. it is up to you to separate fact and fiction.

[creature-wizard]

Siiiiiiigh. This anon message I just got. I'm screencapping because I don't want to draw attention to the blog anon linked.

Sorry anon, but the kind of atheists you have in mind here are the ones who became technofascists and worship Elon Musk. We do not want to encourage their kind of behavior.

I understand that you're upset because the Law of Assumption stuff let you down in a big way. But what you're proposing here won't work and it won't lead to anything good. Antagonistic behavior inflates the ego of the antagonist while making the other person feel bullied, which just makes them cling to their beliefs harder. Consider Falun Gong - it's a very controlling spiritual group that the CCP has tried to eliminate. The persecution has only encouraged its true believers to cling to it even harder, and they often try to use their persecution to gain sympathy. If antagonism this severe hasn't stopped members of Falun Gong, "hardcore atheist/skeptic" methods certainly aren't going to work on Law of Assumption believers.

We shouldn't concern ourselves with convincing this specific person of anything, because this person is not in a state to be convinced. We need to aim our outreach toward people who actually are convinceable. As for how to actually go about persuading these people, I have a post on that over here. It's also helpful to generally promote critical thinking, scientific literacy, and information literacy. (I have a resource post for that here.)

[moonstalk]

six's breath caught as she looked up at the massive airship, her eyes wide with wonder. she’d seen plenty of vertibirds back in NCR territory, but nothing like this. the size of it, the way it hung in the sky, defying gravity—it was a spectacle, something that seemed impossible. she marvelled at the engineering, trying to wrap her head around how something so large could stay airborne. had things like this existed before the war? or was it some new invention, pulled from the ashes of old technology?

for a moment, she forgot the biting cold, the wind gnawing at her exposed cheeks. all she could do was stare, until the mention of new vegas snapped her back to reality. her lips twisted into a frown, and with a final glance at the airship, she started walking again, her boots crunching against the frost-bitten ground.

❛ new vegas survived, yeah, ❜ she muttered, her voice carrying a hint of bitterness. ❛ unfortunately. ❜ she gave her new acquaintance a sidelong glance, her tone sharpening. ❛ it’s pre-war, for the most part. glittering like it’s some grand achievement, but to me? it’s just a waste. a failure of the old world. they build it up like it's the future, but it’s part of the reason civilisation fell. a rotting relic, clinging to what should’ve been buried with the bombs. ❜

she sighed, tugging her jacket tighter around herself as they stepped over the dead feral ghoul. she noticed the clean shot, and nodded appreciatively. ❛ whoever took this one out knew what they were doing. ❜ she cast a glance at the woman. ❛ that you? ❜

the cold bit into her again, reminding her how unprepared she was for the east coast climate. ❛ as much as i hate to admit it, you’re right. do you have more back at yours i could scavenge? ❜

the comment about the brotherhood was SHARP enough to cut through the thick walls that had surrounded her for years. the corners of her mouth was slightly raised, forming a very RARE smile. it was something she hadn't done in a long, long, long time. " tell me about it. those walking tin cans have a real grip around the commonwealth. " lea stopped and suddenly pointed at the sky, at a giant airship, the prydwen. " that's them up there. them FUCKERS. thinking they own the place. " words were harsh and cold as she spit them out with such hatred.

piercing green eyes looked at it one more time before head turned, focusing on the road ahead. " not really. only head bit and pieces about new vegas. i KNOW it survived the bombs. i have also heard that it's kinda wild and crazy? "

carefully she stepped over a dead feral ghoul. HOW did she know it wouldn't surprise them? well, she had killed it earlier today while scavenging for pre-war tech and books. " don't think the cold gonna leave any soon. you should try to find some better clothes if you wanna survive here. "

[wanchotheponcho]

Our technofascist oligarchy doesn't even come with cool supervillains, we just get a billionaire with an insecurity problem in charge of an unofficial government agency named after a meme coin

At least in fiction the bad guys are cool, in real life they're so lame they pay other people to play videogames for them so they can look good to a bunch of sweatlords instead of running a competent business

[victusinveritas]

All of this and more can be found on Instagram by following the splendid @mattxiv there.

[artbyblastweave]

I’ve been rereading some of your Fallout posts lately and something in particular caught my eye. In a post from October 2023 you said that Fallout 1 and 2’s timeframe didn’t really work for the vibe they were going for, especially with regards to Arroyo. Is there any chance you could elaborate a bit on that? I’m interested to know where in the timeline you think the games might fit better.

My thinking at the time that I wrote that post-and, to some extent, my thinking to this day- is that Arroyo and The Brotherhood of Steel are depicting a level of cultural change and mutation that doesn't necessarily align with the time frame on which they're claiming it happened. What's depicted isn't strictly impossible, but the specific aesthetics they're using are usually used to indicate way more time has passed.

With the Brotherhood, the primary referent for their regression to neomedieval monasticism is A Canticle For Leibowitz, a novel from the 50s about a post nuclear monastery that's dedicated, half-successfully, to preserving technical and cultural knowledge in the new dark age; the book opens when they've been at this for about 600 years, with the attendant levels of ritualization, information decay, and historical misinformation about the old world that would imply. Fallout frames the Brotherhood as having ended up in a similar spot, structurally and culturally, after only 80 years, and under the leadership of the grandson of the guy who started the thing. It's not impossible, you can make it work, but ultimately they're using aesthetics that gesture at it having been a longer time.

Arroyo is the other big example of this; 80 years after fallout 1, they've developed a "tribal culture," complete with ancient traditions and mythologization of historical events, despite the fact that the whole settlement was founded within living memory by a person who isn't even confirmed to be dead when the game starts. It's only been three generations! Tandi is still alive and running the NCR! This one's even more egregious than the brotherhood, given the existence of that gigantic fuck-off stonework temple complex ripped out of Indiana Jones. Where did that come from?

Some of this might be is that the nature of 90s graphics prevents you from seeing what Arroyo culture looks like "on the ground" in higher fidelity , which would make the cultural continuity between "exiled vault 13 dwellers" and "sustenance farmers" more obvious. Part of it is that my understanding is that Fallout 2 had a much more disjointed production than Fallout 1, so it's possible different teams were operating under different ideas about the chronology at play. And some of it is that Fallout 2 is a game that, to it's frequent detriment, leaned way harder into 90s pop culture wackiness and, to be blunt, outright racial caricature, than Fallout 1 did. It's possible that having the descendants of Vault dwellers re-organized as a stereotypical "tribe" as envisioned in 50s pulp sci fi is just an extension of the same unfortunate impulse that resulted in the game's depiction of San Francisco as Kung Fu Movie Town-The franchise's use of "Tribal" as a category is already pretty fraught in ways I'm not the best equipped to tackle, but Arroyo's depiction might be wrapped up in that.

Either way, thematically Arroyo functions fine- it creates a fish-out-of-water from an isolated agrarian community who goes on a hero's journey that ultimately brings them into conflict with their aesthetic opposites- a mob of deranged, Americana-draped technofascists. Holds together perfectly well on that level- just don't look at the numbers too closely...