Thanks to the moon—before and after Tuesday night

You know SpaceX—the enterprise Elon Musk founded in 2002 to improve ordinary peoples’ access to outer space and to colonize Mars? As I write, the upper stage of a discarded Falcon 9 Space X rocket barrels (unplanned) toward the Moon at 5400 miles per hour. Falcon 9 transports commercial payloads, satellites and national security missions to space. Researchers expect this rocket part will slam into the Moon’s western lunar limb on Tuesday, August 4 at 11:34pm PST (2:34am ET August 5). Since they know the rocket’s speed and the exact time that it’ll crash (trash?), Los Alamos National Lab researchers in New Mexico consider the event a unique opportunity to study lunar impacts—and collect data.

The moon is about 4.5 billion years old, a bit younger than the Earth. The Earth’s solid crust, oceans, plants, corals, dung beetles and more develop in relationship to lunar gravity and light. Since humans first appeared on Earth about 300,000 years ago, our psyches, menstrual cycles and sense of time have oriented by the moon.

How/will tomorrow night’s crash affect sentient creatures?

Is the moon sentient?

I think of Henry David Thoreau, lamenting in 1861: “Most men…do not care for Nature and would sell their share in all her beauty, as long as they may live, for a stated sum.... Thank God men cannot yet fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the Earth.”

FCC, AT&T, LANDLINES and CELL TOWERS

In May, 2026, AT&T petitioned the FCC and sued in federal court to be relieved from state regulations that prevent it from retiring copper landlines. The company argued that California’s carrier-of-last-resort rules, created to ensure that basic telephone service reaches all residents, should be preempted in communities with more modern networks. In June, the FCC approved AT&T’s request. Then, The Communication Workers of America, rural counties in California and a consumer advocacy group for affordable utilities urged the FCC to reverse this approval, and first address significant public interest concerns. The labor union, Rural County Representatives of California and the Utility Reform Network said in an application to the FCC that the agency must consider adequate replacement services, emergency communications and impacts on rural communities. A federal judge denied AT&T’s bid. For now, AT&T must continue to provide wired telephone service, while the underlying lawsuit continues.

In a proposal to re-allocate spectrum and boost radiofrequency emission power, the FCC has adopted an order that doubles the limit of devices’ power and increases cell tower power for next-generation terrestrial wireless use. According to the Order, these actions will “put America on a path toward massive gains that could result in at least $264 billion in GDP, 1.5 million new jobs, and $388 billion in consumer surplus.”

Cell towers drop property values, create fire risks and emit radiofrequency (RF) radiation that effects health. Children absorb higher rates of wireless radiation and are biologically more vulnerable to cell towers’ radiation emissions. Scientific studies, expert recommendations, and international policies increasingly support stronger protections and greater setbacks for cell towers from schools. Yet the U.S. has not updated its federal safety rules since 1996; and communities have little legal authority to stop cell tower construction, even when credible health concerns are raised.

704 NO MORE!

Do you know Section 704 of the 1996 Telecommunications Act? It states that no health or environmental concern may interfere with the placement of a cellular antenna. (N.B. that Section 704 does NOT address cell towers’ fire and collapse hazards.)

To create setback policies and community rights regarding cell towers, check out 704NoMore.org.

WHY DO WE BUILD DATA CENTERS?

The number of data centers is poised to explode. Rob Wachen, co-founder of the microchip firm Etched, calls this “the largest scale infrastructure build-out in the history of humanity.” From the American Midwest to the Persian Gulf, hundreds of major data centers will be turned on in the coming years. Find your state’s operating and planned projects at this map from Cleanview.

Why are we building all these data centers? Here’s one reason: Israel will pay Brad Parscale, Trump’s former campaign manager, $46.5 million to train chatbots how to talk about Gaza. According to Drop Site News, tens of millions of Americans who ask chatbots about Israel are increasingly likely to receive answers manipulated by Parscale.

I AM ENCOURAGED

…by people building a new political coalition that opposes data centers; by people learning and teaching how to stop backyard data centers; by a farmer who rejected a huge payment to turn his land into a giant data center. Two more resources: Reinette Senum and Erin Brockovitch on data centers. WANT TO RESISIT A DATA CENTER?

AT SCHOOL

New York City has introduced a humanoid “Sally” robot ($57K/year) to help “teach.” After backlash, an upstate New York school district paused their plan to deploy a humanlike AI robot teacher.

Meanwhile, the Pew Research Center reports that most Americans now support all-day school cellphone bans. About three-quarters of U.S. adults (77%) support in-class cellphone bans for middle and high school students. Just 18% say they oppose such a ban, while 6% are unsure. Meanwhile more states have enacted such policies.

BEWARE THE CLARITY ACT

To ensure trustworthiness, cryptocurrency code requires vast fields of computers around the globe that race to solve complex math puzzles—while gobbling up massive amounts of energy and water, and creating significant waste. Wendy H. Wong explains how, if it passes, The Clarity Act would enclose global finance within a privatized, digital domain—and end the regulation of banking. This is what Peter Thiel means when he talks about “technology replacing democracy.” The Clarity Act would further legitimize cryptocurrencies, reshape the world beyond finances, and fulfill Trump’s goal of making the U.S. the crypto capital of the world.

REMEMBERING RICHARD HEINBERG

The writer Richard Heinberg died last month. His books include The Party’s Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies (2003) and Peak Everything: Waking Up to the Century of Declines (2007). Jeff Gibbs featured him in Planet of the Humans (produced by Michael Moore), the film that shows why solar, wind and biomass power systems are not clean or renewable. Jeff remembers Richard courageously saying, at an energy conference, that solar and wind could not solve our energy crises.

In his 2006 lecture at the E.F. Schumacher Center, Fifty Million Farmers, Heinberg explained that “modern industrial agriculture…uses soil to turn petroleum and gas into food. We use natural gas to make fertilizer and oil in order to fuel farm machinery as well as to power irrigation pumps, as a feedstock for pesticides and herbicides, in the maintenance of animal operations, in crop storage and drying, and for transportation of farm inputs and outputs. Agriculture accounts for about 17% of the U.S. annual energy budget, which makes it the single largest consumer of petroleum products as compared to other industries. The U.S. military, in all of its operations, uses only about half that amount. Approximately 1,500 liters (350 gallons) of oil equivalents are required to feed each person in the United States each year, and every calorie of food produced requires on average ten calories of fossil-fuel inputs. This is a food system profoundly vulnerable, at every level, to fuel shortages and skyrocketing prices. Both are inevitable.”

In response to our dependence on oil-for-food, Richard proposed intentionally de-industrializing agriculture by drawing on local knowledge, traditional farming and preservation practices. For examples, we’ve had victory gardens during wartime. After Cuba lost its oil supply abruptly, in 1989, when the USSR split up, Cubans quit cars, shifted to bicycles and made farmers the country’s most revered members. Richard saw the transition away from oil as opportunity to rebuild local culture, restore democratic participation and strengthen small communities—with “nature’s web as our primary guide.” He called on 50 million people to start growing food.

While millions of Americans now drain savings and borrow money to afford food (in 2025, about one in ten adults relied on loans to cover their groceries), Heinberg’s idea seems more timely than ever.

WHAT COULD YOU PLANT TODAY?

URBAN FORAGERS MAP EDIBLE PLANTS, INTERNATIONALLY

Ethan Welty and Caleb Phillips originally started Falling Fruit to keep track of edible plants in their city. Foraging helps people save money, learn about edible plants—and prevents food waste. Since launching in 2013, Falling Fruit has mapped over 4,000 different species of edible mushrooms and plants across almost 2 million publicly accessible foraging spots in cities around the world. Interactive maps offer details for foraging and info about neighborhoods. Falling Fruit is completely sustained by app sales. The app costs $1 to download. (Forgive me. This links to a business dependent on manufactured devices, access networks and data centers.)

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