Google just made a major move to secure the future of its data centers.
The company spent $4.75 billion to acquire Intersect Power, an energy infrastructure firm that develops large-scale power projects closely tied to data center operations. This move isn’t about launching a new AI model or expanding cloud features. It’s about solving a much more fundamental problem: electricity.
AI systems and modern data centers consume enormous amounts of power. As AI workloads scale, access to reliable and long-term energy has become one of the biggest constraints for tech companies. By acquiring Intersect Power, Google is bringing energy development closer to its core infrastructure, reducing future power risks.
This deal shows how the tech industry is changing. Chips and software still matter, but without guaranteed energy, growth slows down. Power is no longer just an operating cost. It’s a strategic asset.
There was a meeting with the negotiating team regarding all the outcomes of communication with the American team.
The guys stay in contact essentially every day, and a lot has already been done.
We are coordinating with the envoys of President Trump on the schedule of meetings – our documents are, in many respects, already prepared for signing.
We expect that the Davos format this year will be sufficiently productive specifically in terms of our relations with partners and our recovery after Russian strikes.
Now it is necessary for government officials to promptly analyze each of the documents on economic agreements so that all of Ukraine’s interests are fully taken into account.
We are also working to create effective financing mechanisms for recovery – fair for Ukraine.
Thank you to everyone who is helping us.
We understand that the American side is in constant contact with Russia, including regarding the basic document for ending the war.
This is a political document, and we have outlined our vision – what can realistically work.
And although the diplomacy of Ukraine, the United States, and our partners has been extraordinarily active over the past few months, the main question remains unanswered – and this question concerns Russia, and what they are ready for.
Russia’s behavior and rhetoric in no way indicate that they want to end this war or are preparing for that.
Everyone sees this.
And it depends entirely on our partners – first and foremost on the United States and the President of the United States – what Russia will choose: peace or continued war.
That is why all options for pressure on the aggressor must remain on the table – all pressure options.
The story of Netflix these past several years has been a fairly
consistent one, told primarily across a few main pillars. The company
has begun hitting subscriber adoption issues as it raised prices, raised them some more, and then raised them even further, all as the company attempts to gobble up more live content, largely sports streaming, all while experiencing occasional service failures
with the backend not being able to keep up with the usership. It’s a
strange confluence of events, with Netflix clearly attempting to build
up more content, particularly live content, all while not having enough
beef behind the platform to support peak usage despite consistently raising prices.
But it’s one thing to occasionally experience usage disruption in the
middle of a massive live event, such as the Mike Tyson fight from a few
months ago. It’s an entirely new level of embarrassing when content
that doesn’t exist causes service disruption, as just happened briefly this past week.
If you have no idea what “Conformity Gate” is, I’m both jealous and
curious how you ducked it. Netflix recently aired the series finale of Stranger Things.
It got mixed reviews, but a very vocal crowd had major problems with it
and explained it all away with the idea that it was a fake ending (I
won’t go into details, it’s all out there for you to find if you like)
and that a secret new ending episode would be dropped on January 7th.
While Netflix was mostly silent on this theory that exploded throughout
social media and the internet, the show’s stars and creators were fairly
vocal about how the theory wasn’t true. Enough people didn’t belive
them, however, such that on January 7th the platform briefly had trouble keeping up with the number of people attempting to log in and find this non-existent episode.
Netflix experienced a service disruption on January 7, 2026, at
around 8 p.m. ET, which coincided with the time fans anticipated a
secret ninth episode of Stranger Things 5 dubbed “Conformity Gate.”
The theory, widely circulated on platforms like TikTok and
Reddit, falsely claimed that the finale released on December 31 was a
decoy and that a real ending would be revealed in a surprise episode.
“Netflix crashed after many fans thought a secret final episode of
‘Stranger Things’ was dropping tonight,” posted Culture Crave on X (formerly Twitter). Pop Base confirmed, “Netflix crashed as ‘Stranger Things’ fans anticipated a secret ninth episode of the final season. Nothing dropped.”
Again, we have a confluence of failures here that all contributed to
this. Netflix clearly didn’t invest enough of its price-hike money into
its platform to be able to handle peak load generally for situations
like this. The platform also didn’t do nearly enough to temper the
public’s expectations as speculation and this Conformity Gate conspiracy
theory ran wild. Netflix did finally put some messaging out with a
vague confirmation that all of the series episodes were currently live
for streaming. That obviously wasn’t enough.
Was this a huge deal? Probably not. Was it a prolonged outage? Not
really. But it’s an event that exposed where Netflix has placed its
priorities when it comes to its streaming platform and how it has spent
the millions of extra dollars it has raked in through price hike after
price hike.
And if the company really wants to expand into more and more live streaming events, it’s not a great sign that a non-event could crash the platform like this.
Whatever the stated reasons for doing this, we all know what this
really is: another effort from the Trump regime to put as much distance
between it and accountability.
Even before DHS head
Kristi Noem decided it’s now suddenly legal to force congressional
oversight to notify ICE of impending inspections, her agency was making
public statements claiming it was going to start arresting visiting
congressional reps for obstruction if they failed to comply with ICE’s
unlawful refusals to provide access to detention centers.
Those assertions were followed almost immediately by ICE doing exactly what Noem and other officials promised: a middle finger to the law and its oversight. The following months brought more reports of ICE denying access to members of Congress, as well as other attempted arrests or threats of obstruction prosecutions.
Then it got quiet for a bit as ICE did other, far more awful things
all around the nation, often while accompanied by CBP and Border Patrol
officers, if not members of the US military. But now that ICE has once
again lets its murderous impulses get the better of it, Kristi Noem is
now pretending she has the legal authority to demand prior notice for detention facility inspections.
A day after an ICE agent fatally shot Renee Good in Minneapolis, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem quietly ordered new restrictions on congressional visits to immigration detention facilities.
That order, put into effect Thursday by the Trump administration and revealed in court late Saturday,
forces lawmakers to seek a week’s advance notice before conducting
oversight visits to ICE facilities. That new policy appears to explain a
conflict that unfolded Saturday, when three House Democrats from
Minnesota were denied entry to a detention facility in the Whipple
federal building in Minneapolis.
The order
[PDF] isn’t actually an order. It’s just a memo saying Kristi Noem
wants this to happen and thinks she has the legal authority to make it
stick. Here’s the opening of the memo, which pretends ICE has been
suffering such an onslaught of protests, this is the only way to make
sure it remains intact in the future.
In June 2025, following significant and sometimes violent
incidents at ICE facilities, I directed that requests by Members of
Congress to visit an ICE facility be submitted at least seven days in
advance of the visit. DHS also determined that because ICE field
offices, including holding facilities, are not detention facilities,
they are not subject to the same requirements as detention facilities.
On December 17, 2025, in Neguse v. ICE, the U.S. District Court for the
District of Columbia stayed this guidance, concluding that DHS’s policy
is inconsistent with Section 527(b) of the Department’s appropriation.
First, no request needs to be made. Second, no request is legally
subject to the DHS’s arbitrary seven-day waiting period. Third, the memo
explicitly admits its policy is illegal under current law and court
precedent.
Here’s where the memo gets particularly Trumpian:
I disagree with this decision, but as even the district court
explicitly acknowledged, funds deriving from the One Big Beautiful Bill
Act (OBBBA) “are not subject to Section 527’s limitations.” Accordingly,
effective immediately, and to ensure compliance with this court order, I
am issuing this new policy.
There it is: Kristi Noem saying she’s going to start demanding
seven-day’s notice because “I disagree with this decision.” It’s also a
very selective quoting of the order by the DC Court,
which made it clear that (1) DHS couldn’t pretend ICE field offices
were subject to the same oversight inspection rules, and (2) that even
though additional funding from the Big Beautiful Big might be exempt
from Section 527’s oversight provisions, there was nothing on the record
indicating this additional funding was being used to solely to fund
detention centers. That means the funding is intermingled with funds
covered by Section 527, which means ICE can’t claim its facilities are
exempt from that funding’s requirements.
The end around Kristi Noem proposes is this: that any visits by
congressional oversight should be logged so they any ICE expenses during
these inspections are taken from the Big Beautiful Bill funding, rather
than ICE’s regular budget. It’s a meaningless distinction, since it’s
just ICE securing funds after the fact to justify the seven-day lead
time demand. It’s a budget being reverse-engineered for the sole purpose
of thwarting accountability efforts.
And because it’s just a dodge meant to head off future litigation and
congressional action, it is of course couched in the us vs. them
language this administration is so fond of:
The basis for this policy is that advance notice is necessary to
ensure adequate protection for Members of Congress, Congressional staff,
detainees, and ICE employees alike. Unannounced visits require pulling
ICE officers away from their normal duties. Moreover, there is
an increasing trend of replacing legitimate government oversight
activities with circus-like publicity stunts, all of which creates a
chaotic environment with heightened emotions.
This is the Trump regime cliché: anything it doesn’t like is just a
“stunt” being pulled by the people it considers to be its political
inferiors, if not inferior human beings. The Trump administration is
nothing but a string of political stunts, punctuated occasionally by
illegal actions and acts of unjustified violence. There’s no irony being
lost here. This is a post-irony presidency. This is hypocrisy at scale,
perpetrated by people who are leaning into this hypocrisy as hard as
they can because they honestly don’t care what anyone thinks as long as
they’re able to get what they want.
If you support the protests, you should tell everyone you know that you support them.
Some of us have jobs, commitments, health conditions, or other
circumstances that prevent us from marching with our fellow citizens in
the streets. But for those of us who cannot march out of love for our
country and to protect our fellow citizens from the criminal bullies who
have stolen our federal government, we must feel free to tell everyone
that we support the marchers.
Tell your boss at work. Tell your coworkers. Tell your neighbors. Tell your family. Let everyone know you support the marchers.
This does not make you a radical. It makes you part of the human race.
The marchers are defending constitutional government. They’re
defending the rule of law. They’re defending your rights and mine.
They’re standing up to criminals who wage unconstitutional war, who
shoot citizens in the streets, who violate every principle this country
was founded on.
Supporting them isn’t extreme. Silence is extreme. Silence is collaboration. Silence is choosing the side of the criminals.
You don’t have to march to matter. You don’t have to risk arrest to
resist. You just have to stop pretending neutrality is an option when
your government is killing people.
Say it: I support the protests.
Say it to everyone. Say it at work. Say it at home. Say it to strangers.
This is how majorities recognize they’re majorities. This is how
isolated people realize they’re not alone. This is how the criminals
learn there are more of us than there are of them.
I support the protests. So should you. And you should say so.
Out loud. To everyone.
That’s not radicalism. That’s citizenship.
Mike Brock is a former tech exec who was on the leadership team at Block. Originally published at his Notes From the Circus.
ICE killed a US citizen in broad daylight
for the apparent crime of not being sufficiently intimidated when
surrounded by ICE officers. Renee Good was shot by ICE officer Jonathan
Ross, who selectively leaked his recording to a right-wing news outlet
in apparent hopes of shoring up the administration’s swiftly crumbling
narrative.
The wagons are circling even tighter — a metaphor that ICE has made
extremely apt now that it’s just the extension of the administration’s
xenophobic id: an invading force that’s meant to rid America of anyone
not sufficiently white enough to “deserve” to live in the United States.
It’s back on its old bullshit,
continuing to pretend it’s not legally obligated to allow members of
Congress to tour its detention facilities. DHS and ICE have claimed
(without legal support) that they need advance notice, citing unspecified “security” concerns of the “national” variety. The government continues to place obstacles
in the path of congressional representatives who are engaged in acts
that are supported by law and legal precedent: oversight of ICE
operations.
To be sure, there are plenty of reasons ICE doesn’t want
congressional reps touring its detention facilities. First and foremost,
ICE doesn’t seem all that interested in treating its indefinite
detainees humanely. Even when confronted by courts about these
constitutional deficiencies, ICE has flat out refused
to comply with court orders demanding a full accounting of detainee
conditions. Not only that, but visiting reps are more likely than not to
come across the occasional US citizen who’s being denied their rights
while ICE decides whether or not to believe the citizenship documents it’s been provided.
Last December, the DC Circuit Appeals Court ruled against ICE,
upholding Congress’s right to inspect immigration detention facilities.
Not that it matters to ICE and other federal components (and it’s
pretty much all of them) involved in Trump’s mass deportation program.
And I’m sure the DHS will just pretend that ruling has no bearing on its
recent obstruction efforts in Minneapolis, Minnesota, even though the
federal law it’s violating is effective everywhere in the nation — not
just in places where the government has been successfully sued.
Three Democratic members of Congress from Minnesota, including House representative Ilhan Omar,
were blocked from entering an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
detention center located near Minneapolis on Saturday morning.
[…]
During a press briefing, Omar explained that they were initially
allowed inside the facility but were soon told to leave. “Shortly after
we were let in, two officials came in and said that they received the
message that we were no longer allowed to be in the building and that
they were rescinding our invitation to come in and declining any further
access to the building,” she said.
First of all, Congress has a right to perform unannounced
inspections. No one needs an “invitation.” Since congressional reps
don’t need an invitation, ICE doesn’t have the option of “rescinding”
something it never had the right to offer in the first place.
Following that by kicking out the people who oversee your work and
vote on your budget is so fucked up that it boggles the mind. It’s like a
tenant evicting a landlord. Things just don’t work that way and these
reps should have called ICE’s bluff and bore witness to any efforts made
by officers to restrict access and/or force these representatives to
leave the building. So, while it’s nice to have this flouting of the law
on the record, the end result looks like a missed opportunity to
further expose the administration’s utter disrespect for the rule of
law.
At least we have whatever the hell this is to take with us from this secondhand experience:
Omar and her colleagues said they were informed the reason for
the denial of access was because the facility’s funding came through the
Big Beautiful Bill Act, and that this funding source was being used to
justify restricting their visit.
Do what now?
ICE is claiming that because the facility was funded with federal
funds derived from a federal budget bill members of the federal
government who voted for (or against) this funding bill were not allowed
on the premises. Never mind the thing I said about evicting the
landlord. There’s nothing in the common vernacular that’s analogous to
this bizarre assertion by the government.
Unfortunately, the party in power will make sure violating the law
remains the status quo. Court orders are being ignored and violated
regularly by federal agencies and officers. And the Democratic party
still seems unwilling to deploy some of its more nuclear options, either
out of fear of failure or a fear of jeopardizing their own political
futures. But we’re well past the point of considering these tactics to
be optional. If they’re not willing to sacrifice themselves to save a
nation, they’re in the wrong business.
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The murder of Renee Nicole Good
by ICE officer Jonathan Ross has certainly created quite the divide
between the reality-based majority of the population who doesn’t want
masked unaccountable federal law enforcement goons invading cities they
have no business being in and shooting people for saying “dude, I’m not
mad at you” and trying to drive away… and the fantasy-land MAGA folks
who are bending over backwards to justify the murder.
Late last week the video from Ross’s phone was released (why Ross was
filming Good is a whole separate issue, but shows how Homeland Security
is much more focused on producing memes,
not doing actual law enforcement), which MAGA cultists pretended
exonerated Ross. It did no such thing. It made him look way, way worse.
He deliberately placed himself in front of the vehicle. He walked
around the car filming Good and her partner. As can be clearly seen in
the video, Good turned steering wheel of her car all the way to the
right such that the car was not heading towards Ross and could not
hit him. And he shot her three times anyway, once through the
windshield and twice through the open driver-side window. Even if you
could (and you can’t) argue the first should was potentially justified
if he thought the car was coming towards him, the fact that he easily
stepped aside and then continued firing shows that it was not justified
at all.
And, of course, his first words after murdering a woman in broad daylight in the middle of the street was: “fucking bitch.”
So her last words: “Dude, I’m not mad at you.” His first words after murdering her: “fucking bitch.”
And then, of course, there’s what was discussed last week: how the
MAGA faithful immediately began lying and claiming she was a “domestic
terrorist” with multiple people trying to twist the story to claim she
somehow “deserved” this.
One of the leaders of the goons, “border czar” Tom Homan, (who appears to have gotten away with taking $50,000 in a paper bag
from federal officials pretending to be business owners seeking favors
from Donald Trump) went on Meet the Press on Sunday and talked about how
Democrats need to stop calling ICE murderers or they’ll have no choice
but to murder again:
The transcript is as ridiculous as it is chilling:
We gotta stop the hateful rhetoric. Saying this officer is a
murderer is dangerous. It’s just ridiculous. It’s gonna infuriate people
more which means there’s gonna be more incidents like this, because the
hateful rhetoric is not only continuing, it’s gonna be double down or
triple down.
It’s the classic abuser’s lament: if you didn’t want me to hit you, why were you so mean to me.
First of all, the ones ramping up the “hateful rhetoric” have been
the MAGA faithful. They’re the ones spreading baseless conspiracy
theories, insisting that Good was a “domestic terrorist” or a “paid
agitator.” This is the same thing Homan, Gregory Bongino, Stephen
Miller, Kristi Noem, and Donald Trump have been doing for months,
encouraging ICE to see the public as enemies to be fought, not a public
they are supposed to be protecting.
Second, if federal agents are so fragile that people calling them
names means they’re going to murder people, they shouldn’t be federal
agents at all. They shouldn’t be allowed to handle firearms, frankly.
This is textbook authoritarian blame-shifting: create the conditions
for violence through dehumanizing rhetoric, then blame the victims when
violence inevitably occurs. And it’s not just Homan. The entire MAGA
ecosystem is working overtime to justify this murder and preemptively
excuse the next one.
Case in point: Fox News columnist Dave Marcus, who wrote this weekend
that “wine moms” protesting ICE’s occupations, invasions, and law
breaking is somehow a criminal conspiracy of “wine moms.”
Say what?
Marcus’s piece is transparently absurd—he’s claiming that citizens
exercising their First Amendment rights to criticize federal agents
constitute a criminal conspiracy—but he gives away the real game a few
paragraphs in. Good and these other “wine moms'” actual “crime” wasn’t
obstructing justice. It was mocking ICE agents in a manner that hurt
their feelings:
The video of Good and her partner heckling and, let’s be honest,
goading ICE officers with an obnoxious smugness that makes most people’s
skin crawl, is just one of many.
It’s difficult to think of something more “obnoxiously smug” than a
Fox News columnist insisting that after an ICE agent murdered a woman in
broad daylight for protesting ICE’s actions… we should blame protesting
women.
We see these self-important White women doing it in video after
video after video, taunting cops, insulting journalists or even
bystanders, often with a weird and disturbing glee.
The inclusion of “journalists” in that list is also telling in
multiple ways. First off, the MAGA world is way more famous for
“insulting journalists.” Hell, it’s part of Trump’s daily activities to
insult and taunt journalists. I can’t find any example of Marcus
complaining about that. But it sounds like if wine moms make fun of him for his journalism, well, that just means they deserve to be shot in the face?
But, more to the point: obnoxious smugness, heckling, and even
goading federal officers is textbook First Amendment-protected speech.
Criticizing government officials, even obnoxiously, is perhaps the
core function of the First Amendment. Marcus seems to have confused
“speech that annoys federal agents” with “criminal conspiracy.” And he’s
using his own confusion to justify murder.
All of this, of course, is coming straight from the top. Late
yesterday, Donald Trump told the press gaggle on his plane that
murdering Good was acceptable because “the woman and her friend were
highly disrespectful to law enforcement” and that “law enforcement
should not be in a position where they have to put up with this stuff.”
Yes, he is literally justifying murder by his personal police force
by claiming that being “highly disrespectful” (i.e., engaging in First
Amendment-protected speech) makes the use of deadly force “necessary.”
Also note how Trump himself reveals that all the retconning nonsense
by his MAGA faithful that the shooting had nothing to do with how Good
spoke to Ross was all pretext. This was always about whether or not you
kiss the boot in front of you. If you don’t—if you are “highly
disrespectful”—Trump and his cronies think they can shoot you. And if
you complain about it, they can shoot more people.
The state sponsored murders of wine moms will continue until morale improves.
You can see how fragile and pathetic these men are. They are so
desperate to subjugate and suppress people who disagree with them
politically. They seemed to think that once they were in power, the
public would love and admire them for their power. Instead, the vast
majority of Americans see them for what they are: pathetic, insecure
man-babies in way over their heads.
So, now their only recourse is to ramp up the threats. To say that if
you actually call out their criminal actions, such as murder, for what
they are, they’ll just be forced to murder more critics and protestors.
They will never take responsibility for their own actions. They will
never reflect on their own culpability. Because to reflect would require
admitting what everyone already knows: they have no argument. They have
no legal justification. They have no constitutional authority for what
they’re doing.
All they have is the authoritarian’s playbook: dehumanize your
critics, commit violence, blame the victims, and threaten more violence
if the criticism doesn’t stop. It’s the logic of every tinpot dictator
in history, now being deployed by federal law enforcement on American
streets.
There is no question that they’ll murder again. Homan has already
promised they will. And it’s why we need to keep exercising our First
Amendment rights to speak out against this authoritarian nonsense,
rather than capitulating and letting them win.
Copilot may very well be useful to some people; but like most tech
companies, Microsoft’s rushed, ham-fisted adoption has been a bit of a
tone-deaf mess. And it actively undermines the stuff that LLMs can
actually accomplish. This is before you get to the environmental impact
of AI, or its quickly-expanding, guardrail-optional use in global
military imperialism at the hands of insane autocrats.
This all recently resulted in some fairly significant backlash for
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Nadella recently shared a fairly innocuous end-of-year post at LinkedIn.
Most of the short post isn’t really all that interesting or
incorrect; he notes that AI is stumbling through a phase where we’re
beginning to sort between “spectacle” and “substance,” something that’s
likely to result in a big bubble pop this year due the chasm between
real-world usefulness and broad tech company misrepresentation of AI (he
doesn’t really acknowledge that latter part, of course).
Where Nadella got into trouble was apparently this part, where he
fairly innocuously laments the rising criticism of “AI slop.” It was first highlighted by Windows Central:
“We need to get beyond the arguments of slop vs
sophistication,” Nadella laments, emphasizing hopes that society will
become more accepting of AI, or what Nadella describes as “cognitive
amplifier tools.” “…and develop a new equilibrium in terms of our
“theory of the mind” that accounts for humans being equipped with these
new cognitive amplifier tools as we relate to each other.”
Nadella’s problem here is he dismissively puts the onus on the
consumer when it comes to “getting beyond” concerns about AI slop. That
dodges any responsibility for the very rich people and companies
dictating the entire trajectory of AI to start using it more
responsibly.
The press aggregation machine (much of it ironically now badly
automated) latched on to Nadella’s demand that people stop calling it AI
slop, immediately resulting in people doubling down on AI slop
criticism in a way that made “Microslop” trend across the internet.
Automation, broadly, certainly has its uses and is, generally, not
going away. The backlash to AI is, in many ways, tethered tightly and
unavoidably to a growing disdain for wealth disparity at the hands of
the authoritarian-simping extraction class keen on eliminating literally all ethical oversight of industry.
A great way for billionaires like Nadella to diffuse this growing
animosity about their rushed, clumsy, non-transparent, integration of
language learning models into everything (whether you like it or not) in
ways that aren’t ethical or useful is to, you know, stop doing that.
Another great step might be to stop kissing the ass of authoritarians
who are actively destroying democracy, civil rights, and the rule of
law?
It sounds like many people might be willing to get over AI slop once
the billionaires in charge of its development, trajectory, and
implementation stop doubling down on AI slop, and stop being tone deaf, irresponsible assholes.
