When communication becomes a capitalist game
In the age of artificial intelligence, which voice of authority carries more weight? As AI reshapes how people receive information, we’re all asking How do you evaluate a source that cannot show its work? How do you trust a voice that has no face, no history, no skin in the game? How do you resist a system that sounds like it knows everything? How do you tell true good news from sophisticated manipulation? After Pope Leo XIV released “Magnifica humanitias” (magnificent humanity), about “safeguarding the human person in the age of artificial intelligence,” a priest suggested that the Church is discovering a new mission: teaching people what deserves to be believed.
After my last substack about the Strait of Hormuz’s closure causing empty shelves, I realized how many of my “necessities” depend on international supply chains: salt, cooking oil, PFAs-free dental floss, anything packaged in plastic…to name a few. Then Nate Hagens posted a conversation with Michael Every: the U.S. can’t back down: the Strait of Hormuz closure is messier than you think. Before we buy anything, Every suggests we think about its supply chain. What’s involved in getting an apple to your grocery store in June (months before autumn apple season)? What elements, chemicals, smelting, water and shipping go into a mobile phone—or a solar PV system or a generator? How do Palestinian-Israeli relations, the price of gas and the Strait of Hormuz’s closure relate? Michael Every also suggests going local as much as possible. Get to know neighbors. Get to know nearby farmers. What can you offer for trade?
Even if you don’t like Elon Musk or believe in a high value of SpaceX, beware: if you have a 401(k), the stock is likely to end up in your pension fund.
WHETHER OR NOT A CORPORATION HAS PROPOSED BUILDING A DATA CENTER NEAR YOU, check out Erin Brockovich’s report: Patterns of Success: What’s Working in the Pushback on Data Centers. In January and February of 2026, the data center industry spent more than $36 billion on new construction in the United States—compared to $1.4 billion it spent in those months in 2025. Unfortunately, most people don’t know that a data center is coming until it’s too late. These massive facilities consume as much electricity as 80,000 homes each, drain hundreds of millions of gallons of water annually, run diesel backup generators that pump toxic pollution into the air, and drive up utility bills. In many communities, they can be (and have been) approved without a single public hearing, without a single elected official casting a vote, and without anyone living in the community getting a say.
Brockovitch and Suzanne Boothby report that cities and counties (not states) are finding new tools beyond the moratorium. Monterey Park, California residents became the first in the country to vote on a permanent ban on data centers through a ballot initiative. Ballot initiatives carry far more legal and political weight than a city council-passed ordinance. Local governments can act on shorter timelines with far less lobbying pressure than state legislatures face.
Signed bills such as Florida’s SB 484, Oklahoma’s HB 2992, Washington’s SB 5982 are not moratoriums. They are ratepayer protection and cost-allocation laws. Framing the issue as “data centers shouldn’t pass their costs onto residents and small businesses” is proving more politically durable than broader bans. Concrete harm to identifiable people is more actionable than abstract environmental concern. Both water resource protection and electricity cost allocation give legislators and local councils the most defensible ground to stand on.
Brockovitch and Boothby also report on what does not work to stop data centers. And a retired civil servant from India unpacks data centers’ environmental impacts.
The U.S.’s largest wind facility will begin commercial operations this month—in New Mexico. Spanning San Miguel, Lincoln and Torrance counties, the facility will have a total net summer generating capacity of 3,650 megawatts. Composed of 916 wind turbines and about 550 miles of high voltage transmission lines, The SunZia Wind Project will deliver wind power to Arizona and California. Each blade in a wind turbine can weigh 20,000 pounds. Each turbine requires as much as 1500 tons of concrete for its foundation. Each nacelle requires around 800 gallons of synthetic gear oil (to cool and lubricate the gearbox) and about 1200 gallons of transformer oil (for the transformer linked to the turbine). It takes oil to transport the cement for each foundation and every blade to the facility. Wind turbine blades do not biodegrade. At their end-of-life, they need another shipping expedition to get buried…somewhere. Call this a big win(d) for people who call solar PVs, wind and battery power “clean, green and renewable.”
For more info about the ecological impacts of wind turbines, see Jeff Gibbs and Michael Moore’s documentary, Planet of the Humans—or Bright Green Lies, Derrick Jensen, Lierre Keith and Max Wilbert’s book and Julia Barnes’ documentary about how the environmental movement lost its way
EMR EXPOSURE
Effects of Exposure to Electromagnetic Fields: Thirty years of research: summaries compiled by Dr. Henry Lai from 1990 through May 2026.
The 4th international expert forum on the public health and environmental impacts of cellular and wireless radiation exposure 2024 posted an editorial in Frontiers of Public Health, 09 June 2026. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/public-health/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2026.1856852/full
Rob Brown, MD’s new book, UnPlug: A Radiologist Explores the damage caused by electropollution and how you can prevent it, will ship June 23, 2026.
PROTECTING BROADBAND WATCHDOGS A California Democrat is trying to prevent her state’s Public Utilities Commission from making broadband affordable for low-income families. Assemblymember Tasha Boerner’s Assembly Constitutional Amendment 9 aims to strip telecommunications oversight authority away from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) and shift it to a (more easily lobbied) state legislature and a hypothetical state broadband office that doesn’t yet exist. On May 18, Boerner’s bill passed in the Assembly in a 67-1 vote. It’s now headed to the state Senate, where it needs a two-thirds majority to get on a statewide ballot for California voters to ultimately decide. The proposed legislation would remove the state’s existing constitutional requirement to define and regulate telecommunications as a public utility. Boerner has received significant campaign contributions from the telecom industry. Recently, she claimed that the CPUC needs to drop telecom regulation from its set of responsibilities so it can better focus on the rising cost of electricity in California. Meanwhile, a Brattle Group study finds that broadband access produces significant savings in Medicaid costs and hospital visits alone. Democratic leaders in New York, New Mexico, Maryland and other states have also addressed broadband affordability.
ENCOURAGING NEWS
Globally, phone-Free social events grew by 567%. Gen Z and millennials are attending phone-free experiences 567% more often. Eventbrite data shows that members of Gen Z and millennials, who grew up with limited-to-no social media and smartphone use, then adopted it ubiquitously, now lead the world away from constant connectivity.
Mayors and local governments draw a line in the sand against FCC permit shot clocks. The Federal Communications Commission is set to vote this month on local permitting shot clocks, building on proceedings underway since the agency’s 2018 Small Cell Order, which established 60-day review windows for small wireless facility co-locations on existing structures and 90-day windows for new structure attachments. The current proceeding goes considerably further, examining whether to establish new shot clocks on rights-of-way authorizations, create a “deemed approved” provision that would treat any project not acted upon within a specified timeframe as automatically approved, and restrict local governments from charging fees beyond cost-based amounts. USA mayors and local governments have formally pushed back against these federal proposals, arguing that the push to accelerate deployment comes at a direct cost to public safety and local oversight.
In this conversation from Lucid, the newsletter about threats to democracy, Ruth Ben-Ghiat looks to El Salvador, which took on a gold mining giant and won. Ben-Ghiat spoke with Robin Broad and John Cavanagh, co-authors of a graphic version of “The Water Defenders, How Ordinary People Saved a Country from Corporate Greed.”
LANDLINES ARE LIFELINES: PLEASE MAKE YOUR COMMENT by JUNE 15th!
If the FCC authorizes preemption of state regulations, AT&T plans to end landline service to existing customers by July 2027. Some customers have already received notices from AT&T saying this discontinuance of service will take effect pending FCC approval.
Comments to the FCC about this proposal to disconnect landlines are due tomorrow, MONDAY, JUNE 15th by 7pm Eastern Time.
1. Submit an express comment: https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/filings/express OR upload a PDF of your comments: https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/filings/standard
2. Label your letters with the docket numbers and the comp. pol. file numbers.
WC Docket No. 26-120/Comp. Pol. File No. 2137 (business)
WC Docket No. 26-121/Comp. Pol. File No. 2138 (residential)
26-123 and 26-125 do not have Comp. Pol. File Numbers.
3. If you file Express Comments, note that the portal does not recognize formatting, so any paragraphs or spacing won’t show up. The comments will come through as one paragraph. To deal with that, you can put hyphens at the beginning of paragraphs or main points to help separate your themes. Uploading a doc or PDF will preserve your formatting. Here are line-by-line instructions on sending in standard filings.
https://montereybaymatters.org/2026/06/01/protect-landlines-and-lifeline-from-att/
Whichever type of comment format you choose: when you type in the docket number in the FCC form, and the docket name appears, click on that docket name. That officially inserts the docket number into your form. If you don’t, the system won’t recognize your form as complete.
4. In your comments, urge the FCC to deny AT&T’s petitions to discontinue service and for preemption. Tell why “alternatives” are not reliable or not accessible/functional for you. Be specific. Tell anecdotes about “alternatives” failing or being unreliable. Talking points include: during power outages, legacy landlines still work. Hilly terrain, wildfires, Internet outages make cellular service unreliable. People disabled by exposure to radiation emitted by wireless devices can only use legacy landlines. People with medical implants need landlines since their implants can malfunctions around electromagnetic radiation emitted by wireless devices. Cell phone connections pose cyber security risks. Medical alert systems and alarm/security systems work with copper legacy landlines.
Would you buy me a cup of tea each month and upgrade to paid?