Hey everyone; sorry for missing yesterday's post.

Last week we read a petition and a few essays from people involved in the University of Michigan-Los Alamos National Laboratory proposal. This week I'd like to point you to a few more essays.

Readings for this week

Last week The Michigan Daily published a collection of letters from members of the community (both at UM and Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti). I'd like to have folks read the letters and hopefully we'll get to chat with a few of the authors on Thursday.

Let's also look at this piece by Elena Nicholson about how the University of Michigan is being deceptive about the datacenter proposal.

Next book

Remember, we'll be reading Resisting AI by Dan McQuillan in 2026. We'll start January 12, which is less than a month away (and that includes several holidays which will affect deliveries), so please try to get the book ASAP.

Get involved

If you're new, there are various ways to participate:

• this newsletter: obviously you'll get emails if you subscribe. I usually send emails on Mondays (except this week) and Thursdays.
• video chats: on Thursdays at 8pm ET at https://al2.in/ReadingGroupRoom
• signal group chat for people who would like to chat about the content from this week's readings over text, or who can't participate in video chats. You can join the signal chat here. Just a heads up, the chat is pretty active.
• social media: I'm on twitter/x, bluesky, mastodon, etc... and I'll post about reading group stuff sometimes.

Okay, that's all for now; hope to chat on signal, or see you on Thursday.

(PS: if you've read, watched, or listened to something that you think would be good to share, please feel free to suggest it for one of these weeks.)

(PPS: some news: in Chandler, Arizona, residents appear to have successfully rejected a datacenter proposal. Turns out, we can live in whatever kind of world we want. Hope to have more stories like this for you soon.)