Rachel

Sent a little your way, thank you again for this beautiful piece you drew for me a few years back

Would deeply appreciate help. I am a disabled trans man from the global south. I am also the only person in my family who currently works. I have a life limiting condition that will end my life if not medicated. My insurance is only 350 usd a year, I dunno what else to do but ask for mutual aid

ICE has completely broken our social contract.

They manipulate social trust and are creating lasting damage to our most basic social foundations

Another way to phrase this is, “ICE shot someone and got caught lying about it.”

If Non-OpenAI/Anthropic AI Compute Isn’t A $100 Billion A Year Business By 2028, 75%+ Of AI Data Centers Will Go Under I realize this sounds dramatic, but hear me out. If we assume a comparable amount of US-based data center deals happen in 2026, that means that we’re going to need at least $80 billion in annual compute business to make any of it make sense. I realize that somebody could say that Anthropic, OpenAI and hyperscalers are spending $X on compute, but remember: hyperscalers are spending nearly $700 billion in the next year, and while some of that $178.5 billion in debt may be considered theirs, the vast majority of it is likely from independent developers hoping to scoop up some of the revenue from the “insatiable demand for AI compute.” What’s truly insatiable is AI’s appetite for debt. AI is so expensive to build for that it necessitates massive amounts of upfront capital, and because most AI data centers are being built by either brand new entities or cryptocurrency miners attempting to move onto their next grift, the debt is often high-interest, and gosh darn do these motherfuckers need a lot of it. There are also blatantly obvious signs that the demand doesn’t exist, the most glaring being that NVIDIA has pledged $26 billion of its own money to pay its customers to rent back its GPUs per its last earnings: Multi-year cloud service agreement commitments as of October 26, 2025, were $26 billion for which $1 billion, $6 billion, $6 billion, $5 billion, $4 billion, and $4 billion will be paid in fiscal years 2026 (fourth quarter), 2027, 2028, 2029, 2030, and 2031 & thereafter, respectively. Some cloud service capacity may be reduced, terminated or sold to others by the CSPs, in which case our commitments will be reduced. We expect cloud service agreements to be used to support our research and development efforts and DGX Cloud offerings. NVIDIA is also planning to lease 200MW of data center capacity funded entirely by junk bonds, for some reason. …

Why AI Data Centers Are So Uniquely Unstable So, why hasn’t this been a problem in the past? Scale: in the past, data centers were way, way smaller. It was a big deal back in 2023 when Applied Digital vowed to build a 5MW data center that would have 300 GPUs, and likely a lot cheaper to build. Up-Front Cost For Critical IT: building an AI data center is a fucking nightmare for your balance sheet, as you need thousands of GPUs that each cost $50,000 or more and require massive server racks, networking and all sorts of other crap to make them run, and when they finally turn on, revenues have to fill a massive hole. Up-Front Cost For Construction, Power and Cooling: All of that specialized GPU compute requires a bunch of specialized cooling and infrastructure, as well as way, way more power. They Take Years To Build: Depending on the data center, construction can take anywhere from a year to three years. Stargate Abilene started construction in 2024, and won’t be finished until 2027 at the earliest. All of these factors create massive, impossible-to-avoid charges up front, which requires massive debt to fund them, followed by onerous construction timelines, at which point these data centers better have a fucking customer, or they’re absolutely quad-fucked.

The Money Does Not Exist To Make AI Data Centers Make Sense So, one clapback against this piece is to suggest that OpenAI and Anthropic will combine to spend over $550 billion by 2030, and my answer there is “how?” You see, neither company can actually afford to pay that much, and thus rely on a near-constant flume of venture capital to the point that new rounds require a fucking We Are The World telethon to get done. Anthropic’s $30 billion round had thirty seven different investors, which heavily suggests we’re hitting the limits of what venture capital, private equity and even hyperscalers can afford to fund these companies. And to be clear, even with an IPO, neither of these companies can afford to pay their current commitments, and both of these companies are the only entities using large amounts of compute. Anthropic needed that money less than five months after it raised $13 billion! OpenAI is already trying to raise another $100 billion despite receiving $22.5 billion from SoftBank less than two months ago! And really, where’s the rest of the demand? Because unless the AI compute industry is going to 10x in the next 12 months, the demand does not exist! If the argument is that AI startups will want to rent these GPUs directly, then I simply must ask where that money is coming from, because they’re all unprofitable too? Tell me: what happens when the majority of this data center debt goes tits up? That’s the scenario we’re setting up for.

How The Chain Of Pain Breaks The Back Of The Data Center Boom There are really two scenarios here: either there’s a massive, unbelievable surge of AI demand that floods AI data centers with tens of billions of dollars of revenue in the next year, or the majority of data center debt deals are left unpaid. Regardless, the raw economics of the AI data center boom are horrendous. Even in the best-case scenario, with guaranteed tenancy for years, these data centers are so debt-dependent and drenched in depreciation, opex and maintenance that even the most meager margins are hard to attain. Even if you believe that every data center occupant will be timely with its payments, my model shows that even the slightest push or delay can send costs spiralling out of control, and any failure by OpenAI or CoreWeave will likely create a cascade effect, choking off any potential new data center deals and breeding anxiety in the hearts of those who have already issued them. CoreWeave is likely the first domino to fall, and when it does so, it’ll rip a hole in Applied Digital’s balance sheet, and potentially kill Core Scientific, a company with a negative 46.7% operating margin who counts CoreWeave as its largest customer. AI data centers cost too much to build and by extension require too much debt. Their margins stink, their customers are all either compute-curious hedge funds or unprofitable startups, and - I don’t say this lightly - rely on a near-distant future where $50 billion to $100 billion of AI compute spend pops up effectively overnight. And then there’s Oracle, who has tied itself to a billion-dollar failson in OpenAI. Even if it can get the lousy 30.9% margins I believe it’s making on Stargate Abilene, the costs associated with building, maintaining and running it are likely to swallow either Oracle or Crusoe whole far before the completion of the data center. Oracle can try and cover the losses by selling more shares and raising more debt, but at some point it…

Tomorrow's Premium: The Great Data Center Financial Crisis, where 20-40% margins are only possible after years of construction and billions in debt, and if we don't have $100bn in demand by 2028, everything's a wash.

Here's $10 off annual.
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Check out my list on Amazon

Hi, I have been pretty much MIA online due to Operation Metro Surge here in the twin cities. Popping in to say that if you have $12+ to spare and want to get a toy or activity for a shelter-in-place child in my community, you can do so here. Thank you!

www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/...

They just blindly shot through the fucking door.

"Additional photographs show damage consistent with a bullet fragment lodged in a bedroom wall down the hallway — suggesting it traveled between a mattress and a portable crib in a room where several small children sleep."

My Daughter Lived the Liam Ramos Nightmare. It Turned Out Worse for Us. The constant threats took a toll on my health. My daughter’s health deteriorated even faster.

Kelly Vargas writes about what happened to her, her husband, and their 6yo daughter in the family camp in Texas.

Filth, illness, medical abuse—her child has lasting complications from being injured by a staff member.

We don't know the half of what's happening in the camps, but we know enough.

I remain absolutely furious that all this shit in Minneapolis started because a barely-literate homeschooled mormon made a video trying to run up in daycare centers trying to find people of Somalian descent doing fraud despite the ringleader (a white woman) being in jail since March. Demonic.

Thank you so much, sending love from the Twin Cities back to you.

Abolish ICE, prosecute and imprison its leaders, impeach and remove the President from office. This is the only sane reaction to a group of armed men kidnapping and gunning down our neighbors in the street.

Nur-D is home safe!

ICE detention staff reported death of restrained man as a suicide The statements to 911 operators the night Geraldo Lunas Campos died appear to conflict with autopsy’s later finding of ‘homicide.’

They put Geraldo Lunas Campos in a chokehold and compressed his chest until he stopped breathing. And then they lied through their Nazi teeth.
www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...

DO SOMETHING

The whole interview is worth it

There's video from a lawyer outside who was denied entry.

You can HEAR hundreds of children's voices screaming "Let us out"

bsky.app/profile/chri...

Do members of congress know they can write their Very Stern Posts on the way to Minnesota

Pretti clearly did not brandish his gun. Which means the government is saying he was killed for legally exercising his right to carry.

It’s as clear-cut a violation of the Second Amendment as I can possibly imagine. And we’re about to see the bulk of the gun rights crowd defend his murder.

One thing that irks me: people keep calling the folks on the streets in Minneapolis protestors. They are not generally there to protest, they are there to observe and document. This is the product of organizing and mutual aid. It is telling that these acts of citizenship are seen as protest!

Minneapolis protester as he's being brutalized by feds: "You're gonna have to kill me! You're gonna have to kill me! I've done nothing wrong! My name is Matthew James! I'm a US citizen! You're gonna kill me! Is that what you want?" (You can hear his wife screaming)

This video is very difficult to watch. The Twin Cities geek community stands with Nur-D.

1/24/26 Please keep local MSP musician/entertainer Matt "Nur-D" Allen in your thoughts! He was walking away from gas when a dozen ice agents swarmed him and tackled him to the ground. They pepper sprayed him in the face while he was cuffed. He shouted his name and US Citizenship and was ignored.

At the end of the day, the Black Lives Matter era was about whether people should be killed in the street, and lots of people decided yeah and put those little blue flags on their cars. It spread to everyone because it stopped for no one.

I can't get over this bit. Jesus tapdancing Christ.

Screenshot of TikTok terms of service For Legal Reasons We may share Information We Collect → to comply with the law, including to respond to subpoenas, court orders, legal process, law enforcement requests, legal claims, or government inquiries. We may also disclose Information We Collect → to enforce any terms applicable to the Services, and to protect and defend our rights, interests, safety, and security, and those of our affiliates, users, or the public. Information You Provide may include sensitive personal information, as defined under applicable state privacy laws, such as information from users under the relevant age threshold, information you disclose in survey responses or in your user content about your racial or ethnic origin, national origin, religious beliefs, mental or physical health diagnosis, sexual life or sexual orientation, status as transgender or nonbinary, citizenship or immigration status, or financial information. For example, we may process your

TikTok is now under US ownership and their new ToS reads like a guide to giving fascists everything they need to put you on a list.

They’re collecting information about immigration status, citizenship, sexual orientation, whether you’re trans or non binary and physical or mental disabilities.

If the admin's strategic goal was to break public resistance to immigration enforcement activities, it was a tactical mistake to go to the Twin Cities.

Read Rümeysa Öztürk's piece in Vanity Fair last year about what the administration put her through just for co-authoring an op-ed and what she witnessed in ICE prison.

ICE agent asked why he's taking pictures of a legal observer's car, replies: "Cuz we have a nice little database and now you're considered a domestic terrorist. So have fun with that."

Thank you so much. We are a united front and in community.

In solidarity with today's ICE OUT OF MINNESOTA blackout, MinnMax is donating $1 to the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota for every share of this Bluesky post for the next hour.