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Dissent Magazine

@dissentmag.bsky.social
19K followers 245 following 911 posts

Democratic socialist since 1954. dissentmagazine.org

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Dissent Magazine @dissentmag.bsky.social · 13h
If AI is “inevitable,” it is neither market forces nor the immutable tides of progress making it so. The tech oligarchs, in other words, are doing economic planning, organized by and serving particular financial interests.
dissentmagazine.org
After the Data Centers - Dissent Magazine
Data center opponents have assembled a potent political force. But without a more expansive vision, there is a risk that this techlash could be co-opted and fizzle out.
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Dissent Magazine @dissentmag.bsky.social · 14h
“Primetime” feels less like a magnum opus of political cinema than a mean little movie that races by. It has no right to be as hilarious as it is, or as unfortunately relevant in our post-Epstein present.
dissentmagazine.org
Primetime’s Heroes and Villains - Dissent Magazine
The moral of Lance Oppenheim's exploration of To Catch A Predator may be an obvious one. Yet it succeeds because its performances are too big to be contained by the small screen.
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Dissent Magazine @dissentmag.bsky.social · 15h
Since the advent of portable camcorders, documentarians have, paradoxically, sought to capture the unmediated truth on camera. “Primetime” allows Lance Oppenheim to grapple with questions of documentary ethics while using the freedoms of fiction.
dissentmagazine.org
Primetime’s Heroes and Villains - Dissent Magazine
The moral of Lance Oppenheim's exploration of To Catch A Predator may be an obvious one. Yet it succeeds because its performances are too big to be contained by the small screen.
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Dissent Magazine @dissentmag.bsky.social · 16h
Popular resistance to data centers has built on a long-gestating feeling that used to be difficult to make out in a world of invisible code and algorithms: There are forces that structure our lives against which many feel powerless.
dissentmagazine.org
After the Data Centers - Dissent Magazine
Data center opponents have assembled a potent political force. But without a more expansive vision, there is a risk that this techlash could be co-opted and fizzle out.
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Dissent Magazine @dissentmag.bsky.social · 17h
Since “To Catch A Predator,” the appetite for sex crime media has ballooned: from the enduring popularity of Law & Order: SVU, to child trafficking narratives like Sound of Freedom, to alt-right YouTube vigilantes staging violent confrontations with supposed predators.
dissentmagazine.org
Primetime’s Heroes and Villains - Dissent Magazine
The moral of Lance Oppenheim's exploration of To Catch A Predator may be an obvious one. Yet it succeeds because its performances are too big to be contained by the small screen.
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Dissent Magazine @dissentmag.bsky.social · 18h
Primetime is a stylized, neo-noir re-imagining of To Catch A Predator’s memorable run from 2004 to 2007. There are no good guys here, only good ratings.
dissentmagazine.org
Primetime’s Heroes and Villains - Dissent Magazine
The moral of Lance Oppenheim's exploration of To Catch A Predator may be an obvious one. Yet it succeeds because its performances are too big to be contained by the small screen.
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Dissent Magazine @dissentmag.bsky.social · 19h
In August Donald Trump’s administration proposed a new federal rule that would exempt data centers from being required to disclose information about the pollution they create.
dissentmagazine.org
Death by Data Centers - Dissent Magazine
I’m an oncology nurse in Louisiana’s Cancer Alley. My patients and I breathe the same polluted air, and we can’t afford the toxic exposure from the gas-fired plants set to power the state’s proposed AI data centers.
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Reposted by Dissent Magazine
Annie Berke @sayanniething.bsky.social · 20h
My review of PRIMETIME is live! Thank you so much to @simontorracinta.bsky.social rracinta for commissioning and to the editors at @dissentmag.bsky.social ag for their keen insights every step of the way:
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Dissent Magazine @dissentmag.bsky.social · 20h
The moral of Lance Oppenheim’s exploration of "To Catch A Predator" may be an obvious one. Yet it succeeds because its performances are too big to be contained by the small screen.
dissentmagazine.org
Primetime’s Heroes and Villains - Dissent Magazine
The moral of Lance Oppenheim's exploration of To Catch A Predator may be an obvious one. Yet it succeeds because its performances are too big to be contained by the small screen.
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Dissent Magazine @dissentmag.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Rolling back MAGA will require speaking to popular needs and aspirations and delivering on them. It will also require developing our capacities to work together in a spirit of democratic cooperation and public exuberance.
dissentmagazine.org
Partyism Without the Party - Dissent Magazine
Zohran Mamdani’s victory was rooted in organizations that took up the base-building and mobilization functions that once fell to parties.
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Dissent Magazine @dissentmag.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Americans aren’t buying the claims of data centers’ benefits. Seven in ten oppose one being built near where they live, with 55 percent strongly opposed.
dissentmagazine.org
After the Data Centers - Dissent Magazine
Data center opponents have assembled a potent political force. But without a more expansive vision, there is a risk that this techlash could be co-opted and fizzle out.
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Dissent Magazine @dissentmag.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Polls show leads for Democratic candidates in crucial races in the midterm elections. Yet all across America, where centrists gather, hands are wringing.
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Off Center - Dissent Magazine
The United States is approaching midterm elections that will decide whether, and how, we can find a remedy to Trumpism and a path back to functional democracy. The president’s popularity continues to erode, and polls suggest that his preferred candidates …
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Dissent Magazine @dissentmag.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Though published over half a century ago, Ruth First’s observations about the phenomenon of coups in postcolonial Africa in “The Barrel of a Gun” could equally apply to the present.
dissentmagazine.org
How Europe Politically Underdeveloped Africa - Dissent Magazine
In a renewed period of coups across the African continent, Ruth First’s analysis in The Barrel of a Gun remains as timely as ever.
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Dissent Magazine @dissentmag.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
There’s no question that the political terrain is far more favorable to movement politics than it has been for a long time. dissentmagazine.org/online_articles…
dissentmagazine.org
The Socialist Wave Hits Rhode Island - Dissent Magazine
The sweep by democratic socialist David Morales and other progressive primary candidates in Providence is a testament to years of organizing and coalition-building in the Ocean State.
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Dissent Magazine @dissentmag.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Classes are made politically. When someone says that grad students have hijacked the UAW, or that gentrifiers are taking over the Democratic Party, they are not making a descriptive observation, but a normative one.
dissentmagazine.org
The Party of Baristas - Dissent Magazine
Noam Scheiber’s Mutiny shows that the labor organizing of the radicalized PMC is far more than a fit of whimsical proletarian roleplay.
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Dissent Magazine @dissentmag.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Given the authoritarian threat posed by Trump still present, including in the lead-up to the midterms, there is much to learn from the successful mass mobilization in Minnesota.
dissentmagazine.org
Operation Metro Surge Wasn't the End - Dissent Magazine
The Minnesota movement still holds important lessons for those working to defend democracy in the Trump era.
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Dissent Magazine @dissentmag.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
For all that some international observers have treated him as an obscure novelty—Donald Trump called him the mayor of “some town”—Andy Burnham is a far more senior and experienced figure than his predecessor.
dissentmagazine.org
Labour's Last Chance - Dissent Magazine
Years of underinvestment in energy, infrastructure, and public services now weigh on Andy Burnham’s premiership. Is he ready for what the fight for an alternative will entail?
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Dissent Magazine @dissentmag.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Where Starmer was bedeviled by the choice between winning back metropolitan liberals from the Greens or small-town social conservatives from Reform, Burnham’s genial brand of economic populism seems capable of doing both.
dissentmagazine.org
Labour's Last Chance - Dissent Magazine
Years of underinvestment in energy, infrastructure, and public services now weigh on Andy Burnham’s premiership. Is he ready for what the fight for an alternative will entail?
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Dissent Magazine @dissentmag.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Even with evidence that the 2020 George Floyd protests boosted Democratic vote totals, critics of policing have come under fire recently as a potential electoral liability. But is Blue Power more fragile than it appears?
dissentmagazine.org
The Origins of Police Power - Dissent Magazine
An interview with Stuart Schrader, author of Blue Power: How Police Organized to Protect and Serve Themselves, about how U.S. police unions built themselves into a formidable political force, and whether the movement is more fragile than it appears.
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Dissent Magazine @dissentmag.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Andy Burnham’s greatest political strength is that he seems instinctively able to link the tangible symptoms of British malaise—boarded-up high streets, squeezed wages, poor health outcomes (by European standards)—to fundamental problems with the state and the economy.
dissentmagazine.org
Labour's Last Chance - Dissent Magazine
Years of underinvestment in energy, infrastructure, and public services now weigh on Andy Burnham’s premiership. Is he ready for what the fight for an alternative will entail?
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Dissent Magazine @dissentmag.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
The early years of the tech worker movement brimmed with visions of reshaping the industry itself: ambitious climate goals, divestment from the military-industrial complex, and a democratic say over the technologies being built. What went wrong?
dissentmagazine.org
Rebooting the Tech Worker Movement - Dissent Magazine
Workplace organizing in the tech sector has undergone a steep decline. What went wrong?
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Dissent Magazine @dissentmag.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
There can be no doubt that Andy Burnham is up for the fight. But is he ready for what it entails? And whose side is he really on?
dissentmagazine.org
Labour's Last Chance - Dissent Magazine
Years of underinvestment in energy, infrastructure, and public services now weigh on Andy Burnham’s premiership. Is he ready for what the fight for an alternative will entail?
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Dissent Magazine @dissentmag.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
As many await a potential AI crash, the more pressing issue, from the perspective of a democratic society, is the unprecedented mobilization of capital for a labor-automating technology that remains deeply unpopular in the United States.
dissentmagazine.org
After the Data Centers - Dissent Magazine
Data center opponents have assembled a potent political force. But without a more expansive vision, there is a risk that this techlash could be co-opted and fizzle out.
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Reposted by Dissent Magazine
Rita, antifascist🏴 @oldsquida.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
“The end times fascists are fleeing the crises of poverty, environmental destruction, and tech overreach they helped cause.”
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Dissent Magazine @dissentmag.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Personally hostile to any form of political definition, Keir Starmer floundered hopelessly in office. By the end of his tenure, Labour’s vast majority was no longer a working one, capable of implementing a consistent legislative program.
dissentmagazine.org
Labour's Last Chance - Dissent Magazine
Years of underinvestment in energy, infrastructure, and public services now weigh on Andy Burnham’s premiership. Is he ready for what the fight for an alternative will entail?
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Dissent Magazine @dissentmag.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
“‘What will it take to get Americans on board with data centers?’ a Democratic Party staffer on Capitol Hill recently asked me. It was a sincere question, not a rhetorical one.”
dissentmagazine.org
After the Data Centers - Dissent Magazine
Data center opponents have assembled a potent political force. But without a more expansive vision, there is a risk that this techlash could be co-opted and fizzle out.
030
Dissent Magazine @dissentmag.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Years of underinvestment in energy, infrastructure, and public services now weigh on Andy Burnham’s premiership. Is he ready for what the fight for an alternative will entail?
dissentmagazine.org
Labour's Last Chance - Dissent Magazine
Years of underinvestment in energy, infrastructure, and public services now weigh on Andy Burnham’s premiership. Is he ready for what the fight for an alternative will entail?
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Reposted by Dissent Magazine
Data & Society @datasociety.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
"Algorithmic wages & prices are symptoms of a political economy built on the continuous conversion of movement, delay, fatigue, debt, location, browsing, hunger, punctuality, & desperation into commercial leverage." @veenadubal.bsky.social @katiejwells.bsky.social dissentmagazine.org/article/algo...
dissentmagazine.org
Life Under the Algorithm - Dissent Magazine
Algorithmic wages and prices don’t just squeeze workers in the present. They make them predictably poor into the future.
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Meg Penvose Clark @megpenvose.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Even the most transparent markets will not govern themselves. Democratizing finance means taking aim at Big Tech’s oligarchic control over the economy, not giving them a level playing field. Excellent case study here dissentmagazine.org/online_artic...
dissentmagazine.org
The SpaceX Sham - Dissent Magazine
The chief scandal of the AI boom is not the secretive financial machinations of tech oligarchs, but how much money they have raised on the open promise of an automated, transhumanist future.
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Reposted by Dissent Magazine
Shani 🫧 (Bluesky hates Palestinians) @mom4medicare4all.blacksky.app · 30/09/2026
dissentmagazine.org/online_artic...
dissentmagazine.org
Death by Data Centers - Dissent Magazine
I’m an oncology nurse in Louisiana’s Cancer Alley. My patients and I breathe the same polluted air, and we can’t afford the toxic exposure from the gas-fired plants set to power the state’s proposed A...
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Dissent Magazine @dissentmag.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
In the United States today, the COVID-19 pandemic and the crises in its wake have done untold damage to our national sense of neighborliness. What are we to make of all this suburban madness?
dissentmagazine.org
Subdivided - Dissent Magazine
HBO's Neighbors attempts to capture our mutual loathing and derangement at the neighborhood level. What hope is there for the paranoid suburbs?
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Dissent Magazine @dissentmag.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
The investment community at large bent over backward to get a piece of SpaceX stock. People wanted in, and badly. The IPO was a mass delusion event of astronomical proportions.
dissentmagazine.org
The SpaceX Sham - Dissent Magazine
The chief scandal of the AI boom is not the secretive financial machinations of tech oligarchs, but how much money they have raised on the open promise of an automated, transhumanist future.
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Dissent Magazine @dissentmag.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
“Affordability” is the primary rallying cry of American politics today. But while most politicians say that they want to help people afford their lives, what really matters is how.
dissentmagazine.org
The Fight Over Affordability - Dissent Magazine
We’re living in a period of excess business pricing power, not overbearing workers.
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Dissent Magazine @dissentmag.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
In a press release from March, a Meta VP thanked Governor Jeff Landry for the state’s business-friendly environment. “Today,” the governor said, “Louisiana once again demonstrates our commitment to capital.”
dissentmagazine.org
Death by Data Centers - Dissent Magazine
I’m an oncology nurse in Louisiana’s Cancer Alley. My patients and I breathe the same polluted air, and we can’t afford the toxic exposure from the gas-fired plants set to power the state’s proposed AI data centers.
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Dissent Magazine @dissentmag.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
In “End Times Fascism,” Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor make the case that the ruling class is not lording over our future, but trying to escape it. When the richest people on the planet speak of the end of the world, are they bluffing?
dissentmagazine.org
Exit Strategy - Dissent Magazine
In End Times Fascism, Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor make the case that the ruling class is not lording over our future, but trying to escape it. How should the left resist doing the same?
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Dissent Magazine @dissentmag.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Meta’s proposed $200 billion data center in Richland Parish, Louisiana will require ten new gas-fired power plants in the state. Entergy CEO Phillip May reportedly promised Meta that they could “Use all [the gas] you want, we’ll make more.”
dissentmagazine.org
Death by Data Centers - Dissent Magazine
I’m an oncology nurse in Louisiana’s Cancer Alley. My patients and I breathe the same polluted air, and we can’t afford the toxic exposure from the gas-fired plants set to power the state’s proposed AI data centers.
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Dissent Magazine @dissentmag.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Few tech workers today seem to know about the ferocious activism that spread through the industry a little less than a decade ago. What explains this decline?
dissentmagazine.org
Rebooting the Tech Worker Movement - Dissent Magazine
Workplace organizing in the tech sector has undergone a steep decline. What went wrong?
042
Dissent Magazine @dissentmag.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
The potential IPOs for Anthropic and OpenAI, which are expected within the coming year, are both reportedly targeting valuations above $1 trillion. The results will likely be similar to the SpaceX IPO: a mad dash to participate and the perpetuation of the AI investment boom.
dissentmagazine.org
The SpaceX Sham - Dissent Magazine
The chief scandal of the AI boom is not the secretive financial machinations of tech oligarchs, but how much money they have raised on the open promise of an automated, transhumanist future.
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Dissent Magazine @dissentmag.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Across the United States, data centers are mostly powered by gas or coal. Meta’s proposed $200 billion data center in Richland Parish, Louisiana, is no different.
dissentmagazine.org
Death by Data Centers - Dissent Magazine
I’m an oncology nurse in Louisiana’s Cancer Alley. My patients and I breathe the same polluted air, and we can’t afford the toxic exposure from the gas-fired plants set to power the state’s proposed AI data centers.
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Dissent Magazine @dissentmag.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
What’s happening to the New School is an increasingly common story across all of higher education, hit by a perfect storm of financial and political pressures. Yet whatever the source of the troubles, faculty, staff, and students have paid the price.
dissentmagazine.org
What’s Left of The New School? - Dissent Magazine
Leadership at the iconic progressive university has declared war on its own workforce, fired tenured professors, and shuttered whole departments. But what’s happening to the school is an increasingly common story across all of higher education.
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Verso Books @versobooks.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
How Europe Underdeveloped Africa
by Walter Rodney

Foreword by Angela DavisThe Barrel of a Gun:
Political Power in Africa and the Coup d'État
by Ruth First

Foreword by Christopher J Lee
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Dissent Magazine @dissentmag.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Data centers are springing from the earth across the rural United States, with more than 1,700 planned projects, requiring 1 million metric tons of cement by 2028, set to increase the country’s total computing capacity nearly sevenfold.
dissentmagazine.org
Our Technological Wager - Dissent Magazine
The AI investment boom is a gamble of epic proportions. Yet on both sides of the wager, it seems, the house wins.
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Dissent Magazine @dissentmag.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
In the same way that Walter Rodney famously showed how Europe underdeveloped Africa in an economic sense, Ruth First’s “The Barrel of a Gun” presented the case for how Europe politically underdeveloped the continent.
dissentmagazine.org
How Europe Politically Underdeveloped Africa - Dissent Magazine
In a renewed period of coups across the African continent, Ruth First’s analysis in The Barrel of a Gun remains as timely as ever.
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Dissent Magazine @dissentmag.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
“Tech companies like Meta want us to believe that the AI boom is inevitable, and we all might as well get on board. But I’m a nurse, and my job is to advocate for my patients. Even without these new data centers, Louisiana has seen enough death and destruction.”
dissentmagazine.org
Death by Data Centers - Dissent Magazine
I’m an oncology nurse in Louisiana’s Cancer Alley. My patients and I breathe the same polluted air, and we can’t afford the toxic exposure from the gas-fired plants set to power the state’s proposed AI data centers.
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Dissent Magazine @dissentmag.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
In “End Times Fascism,” Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor make the case that the ruling class is not lording over our future, but trying to escape it. How should the left resist doing the same?
dissentmagazine.org
Exit Strategy - Dissent Magazine
In End Times Fascism, Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor make the case that the ruling class is not lording over our future, but trying to escape it. How should the left resist doing the same?
072
Dissent Magazine @dissentmag.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Popular resistance to data centers has built on a long-gestating feeling that used to be difficult to make out in a world of invisible code and algorithms: There are forces that structure our lives against which many feel powerless.
dissentmagazine.org
After the Data Centers - Dissent Magazine
Data center opponents have assembled a potent political force. But without a more expansive vision, there is a risk that this techlash could be co-opted and fizzle out.
061
Dissent Magazine @dissentmag.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
While stopping Operation Metro Surge did not halt federal assaults on immigrants and Black and brown people in the state, it signaled an important setback to authoritarianism under the second Trump administration.
dissentmagazine.org
Operation Metro Surge Wasn't the End - Dissent Magazine
The Minnesota movement still holds important lessons for those working to defend democracy in the Trump era.
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Reposted by Dissent Magazine
Mél Hogan / The Data Fix @melhogan.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
"I went home, past the gas plants, with that memory in my throat." dissentmagazine.org/online_artic...
dissentmagazine.org
Death by Data Centers - Dissent Magazine
I’m an oncology nurse in Louisiana’s Cancer Alley. My patients and I breathe the same polluted air, and we can’t afford the toxic exposure from the gas-fired plants set to power the state’s proposed A...
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Dissent Magazine @dissentmag.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
I’m an oncology nurse in Louisiana’s Cancer Alley. My patients and I already breathe polluted air, and we can’t afford the additional toxic exposure from the gas-fired plants set to power the state’s proposed AI data centers.
dissentmagazine.org
Death by Data Centers - Dissent Magazine
I’m an oncology nurse in Louisiana’s Cancer Alley. My patients and I breathe the same polluted air, and we can’t afford the toxic exposure from the gas-fired plants set to power the state’s proposed AI data centers.
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Dissent Magazine @dissentmag.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
New 'Know Your Enemy': Matt and Sam talk to Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor about their new book, "End Times Fascism: And the Fight for the Living World." How does it help explain the coalition of religious fanatics, tech billionaires, and ethno-nationalists now in power in the United States?
dissentmagazine.org
Know Your Enemy: End Times Fascism - Dissent Magazine
Matt and Sam talk to Matt Dinan about Leo Strauss's 1953 book, Natural Right and History.
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