Why Everyone Hates Data Centers (And You Can, Too!)
Data centers have become so hated that developers are now calling them "transmission of information centers." The rebrand tells you everything: from Marietta to New York, Americans of every political stripe have decided the buildings powering AI are a raw deal, and they're organizing to prove it.
Trump Tilts at Fraud and Antifa Windmills for Last Ditch Summer Blockbuster
What's going on with the counterterrorism NSPM-7 attacks on the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, the Minnesota direct action groups, and the Cop City protesters?
About That New Counterterrorism Strategy
Sebastian Gorka has a list, and you’re probably on it.
An Update on the Plot to Kill Greenpeace
A $345 million judgment against Greenpeace marks a new escalation in the fossil fuel industry's "nuke the whales" strategy. An analysis of Energy Transfer’s legal war, movement solidarity, and the rising market price of dissent.
Dark Money Red Herrings
House Republicans are using "foreign influence" hysteria to label progressive nonprofits as national security threats. An analysis of the February 10 Ways and Means hearing, the "process as punishment" strategy, and the MAGA playbook for smothering dissent.
Is This AI?
Being “against AI” is like being “against” a technology, like, on a simple machine level, the screw. But, in the same way we can be “pro-screw” and yet “anti-getting-screwed,” we can be “pro-AI” while at the same time “anti-getting-screwed-by-AI.” Here’s how.
Grok and the Ascension of Cro-MAGA Man
Musk’s Grok weaponizes the lizard brain to degrade women for profit. As regulators strike back, 2026 is the first major test of Cro-MAGA man’s synthetic information warfare. Instrumental What/So What/Now What analysis.
Epstein and Affordability: This is How We Win
Affordability got attention 2025. Campaigns that centered housing, insurance, and energy won by reaching voters who supported Trump but now face economic crises he hasn't solved. The Epstein files compound this economic betrayal with moral injury. Clean Listening identified these voters and a Feed First strategy converted their economic anxiety into political action. This is how we win.
Could OpenAI’s financial future hinge on teens making deepfakes?
Rolling Stone recently featured Instrumental and Ekō’s investigation into the potential harms of OpenAI’s video generation platform, Sora2. The piece highlighted some of Sora2’s more problematic content, but, in this here newsletter, we’ll see how the deeper issue is structural.