The environmental footprint of a bunker buster bomb
Newsletter Travis Nichols Newsletter Travis Nichols

The environmental footprint of a bunker buster bomb

A B2 bomber dropped the bomb, and on its flight from Missouri it burned roughly 28,900 gallons of jet fuel, releasing 282 metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, equal to the yearly collective tailpipe emissions of 66 passenger cars in the U.S.


You wouldn’t have seen it, but immediately after impact, the bomb’s 20-foot-long penetrator drill bit would have ploughed through 60 feet of limestone and dolomite in less than 0.03 seconds.

You could have seen a dull orange flare from the bomb’s work further underground emanating from the hole, but your eyes would probably still be closed, your system still in shock.


For about three seconds, everything would have then been quiet.

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Can AI in Schools Serve the Public Good?
Newsletter Travis Nichols Newsletter Travis Nichols

Can AI in Schools Serve the Public Good?

Data and attention are some of the world’s most valuable commodities, and our personal tech products are wildly efficient extraction tools. AI companies are the latest horde of prospectors in this cognitive gold rush, and their new frontier is the classroom.

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You Don’t Make Friends with Factoids
Newsletter Travis Nichols Newsletter Travis Nichols

You Don’t Make Friends with Factoids

“We didn’t want just another disaster post. We wanted a story that lived in its own rhythm — honest, emotional, and co-created with the person who lived it. That meant slowing down, listening harder, and building trust. The result was What Famine Feels Like, a rare first-person narrative by Dalmar Ainashe, a hunger expert at CARE who lived through famine as a child. It wasn’t just a story about crisis — it was a story about voice, agency, and how storytelling done right can change lives.”

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Persuasion in a time of Brain Rot
Newsletter Travis Nichols Newsletter Travis Nichols

Persuasion in a time of Brain Rot

“We’re not under the old attention regime anymore. We’re in the age of attention warlords, where persuasion doesn’t happen in op-eds but in viral clips and newsfluencer feeds. If you want to shift culture or win campaigns, you can’t just chase legitimacy — you have to capture attention, build trust, and speak in the native language of the algorithm.

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Climate Doomsday vs. AI Apocalypse
Newsletter Travis Nichols Newsletter Travis Nichols

Climate Doomsday vs. AI Apocalypse

The most likely AI bottleneck won’t be misalignment or stolen weights — it will be the ecological cost already baked into humanity’s future. It’s a future grounded in heat, in scarcity, in a power grid held together by fragile cables and unstable clouds.

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Object Lesson
Newsletter Travis Nichols Newsletter Travis Nichols

Object Lesson

A look into how Travis Nichols' Rolling Stone piece on the Greenpeace Energy Transfer trial in North Dakota came about, and how it can serve as an object lesson for rapid response communications.

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How to use AI for comms . . .
Newsletter Travis Nichols Newsletter Travis Nichols

How to use AI for comms . . .

A guide to best practices for using artificial intelligence for marketing and communications work without losing your humanity or taking on unnecessary risks. OpenAI, Gemini, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Cursor, ElevenLabs, Sora, MidJourney, Suno, Veo3

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