Hi everyone, we're starting a new book!

This week we're starting Hyperscale: The Ambition and Excess of Big Tech's Data Empires by Paris Marx, but since the book actually comes out tomorrow (in most markets), it'd feel a bit weird (and maybe more specifically rushed) to start us off with a week of normal reading.

... so... this week, let's just focus on getting your copy of the book. We'll skip this Friday's usual meeting and everything in the interest of taking a short breather after sprinting through several books, and to let us get squared away and ready for our next book.

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Ok, let's get back to the rest of the thing.

routine stuff

As a reminder, there are a few good ways to keep up with the reading group:

• newsletter: I generally send updates on Mondays and Fridays. In the Monday updates, I'll point to what to read; in the Friday updates (except for this week), I'll send some reflections and an icebreaker question to think about, and a reminder of where & how to join the video chat.
• video chats: Fridays at 3p ET we'll have a video chat on jitsi where we talk about the week's readings. (remember, no meeting this week)
• group chat: if you want to chat with friends, we have a few pretty active group chats: We're using Fluxer, which is similar to Discord or Slack. We also have a signal group chat (but keep in mind that Signal group chats can get overwhelming, especially at large scales like this).

last thoughts

If you come across something you think we'd like to read, I'd love to hear about it; contact me.

Okay, that's it for now. Take care, be safe, talk to you next week.

miscellaneous

Matthew Gault at 404 Media recently published a story on how the governor of Texas ordered a pause on permits being issued for data centers... and apparently proceeded to issue permits for data centers anyway.

It's a pretty wild and frustrating story, made all the more annoying by the fact that the data center permit pause that Abbott announced was already a pretty transparent, vacuous gesture to try to seem more aligned with which way the wind is blowing: a plurality of Republicans (and, for that matter, the overwhelming majority of Democrats, and pretty much everyone else in Texas) don't support data centers in their communities. This corresponds with what we see pretty much everywhere else - I relayed this before, but I keep talking to people about this specific piece by Brian Merchant: data centers are basically very unpopular, and especially unpopular among the working class!