Hello! If you're going to be joining us to speak with Hagen Blix in about an hour (at 8pm ET), the link and everything is at the bottom of the email.

Also, there's news about stickers, so especially if you're premium, there's news for you down there.

This week I asked you to reflect on Why We Fear AI by Hagen Blix & Ingeborg Glimmer, and also listen to a couple of podcast episodes Hagen was on last year to discuss the book:

• "AI is the Demon God of Capital (ft. Hagen Blix)" from This Machine Kills with Jathan Sadowski and Ed Ongweso Jr.
• "Deskill, with Hagen Blix" from The Data Fix with Dr. Mél Hogan

Something I just noticed from listening to both podcast interviews again was how sharply Blix wanted to make sure we understood that AI is a tool of class warfare from above. I feel like a comment he made in The Data Fix with Dr. Mél Hogan about how tech companies and AI boosters don't really care if this stuff "works" because the point is that it's a weapon you can use to browbeat people into accepting lower wages, or worse conditions, is really salient to me today. How many times have we heard or shared in the group chat or on social media about how our managers are demanding that we use AI in our work or "get left behind" (ie get laid off and replaced with someone who will use AI to produce something "70% as good for 20% of the price" if I remember him correctly)? How often do we hear about and see people talk about AI as a cudgel to "put artists in their place" or to suppress the bargaining power of writers, artists, and other workers? And, to bring this back to the conversations we've been having about strategizing and organizing against AI... how can we use this observation to recruit comrades in this new luddite movement?

If you have any questions you'd like to put into the queue (my paper notebook), please consider joining the signal group chat and @'ing me (or just message me on signal; that's also good).

When you're ready to join at 8p ET, you can click on this link or you can go here:

https://al2.in/ReadingGroupRoom

See you then.

Oh, PS: stickers arrived:

I'm going to get stickers distributed in Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor first, to help support the Stop the Data Center organizing effort. On Monday, I'm going to send an email to all the premium subscribers to this newsletter to try to get you all packets of stickers (so... please be sure to look for that email).

(If you're not premium, but you want to jump into that group to get stickers, you can upgrade now and be included in that group; I'm not checking or anything.)

If you can't afford premium, reach out from whatever email you're subscribed with, and tell me you want stickers but you can't do premium membership; I'll get you in the queue to get stickers eventually, don't worry.

If you're reading this and you don't want to be subscribed, stay tuned (somehow) for some public form or something to get stickers sent your way. But hopefully you can understand my priorities are with the local organizers, reading group members, etc... So please be patient.

Okay, that's actually it. Talk to you soon!