Sonya goes crazy

#nsfw #Aiesha

Aiesha stood in the shower replaying everything that happened tonight. Her plans had escalated to full clothing abandonment and then she got caught by her neighbor, Sonya.

Sonya's reaction was far from what she unexpected. Clearly, the young woman was having an emotional crisis, but Aiesha wasn't sure whether she would keep this up or not. She got out of the shower, dried herself off, and applied lotion to her body. She caressed every curve and payed very close attention to her pussy. She knew she was going to scroll through porn in bed and rub one out before she went to sleep. It was a good day to celebrate her first night out naked in public. As she stood in the mirror, looking at her naked body, she smiled. She loved her life.

“This really is my life now,” she thought to herself.

Suddenly, Aiesha's phone buzzed without end. To her surprise, Sonya sent her full-body nudes. She was smiling under her runny mascara, still crying from earlier. Aiesha guess she took those as soon as she made it to her apartment. She still can't believe Sonya left the apartment naked to go to her place. The phone buzzed some more.

Sonya sent more selfies of her in the shower showing her ass and pussy in vivid detail. Aiesha immediately started touching herself as she scrolled through Sonya's nudes. Then there was one more picture that almost made Aiesha pause.

Sonya's final set of pictures was a before and after shot of her closet. One shot was a normal looking closet full of clothes and shoes. Then in the next picture, the closet was nearly bare except for 5 skimpy outfits, a pair of heels and one pair of sneakers. Her next picture had a small stack of black trash bags by the front door.

Aiesha kept rubbing her pussy, as she typed a response, Sonya sent a text. “I don't want to wear clothes anymore. I don't even want to see them anymore. My life is so shitty, so I'm just going to run around naked for fun now.”

Aiesha took her hands off her pussy, still wet and sticky and headed out the door... naked...to Sonya's apartment. She tapped on the door frantically. She could have put something on, but even in this time of crisis, even Aiesha didn't bother to cover her body. She just had to get to Sonya. What she unleashed in this young woman sounded serious.

Sonya opened the door quickly and smiled jumping up and down. “You came over naked!!” Sonya bounded over and hugged Aiesha... Aiesha stood there blinking letting Sonya's warm body rub against her. She started getting wet again, but Aiesha maintained her composure... She grabbed Sonya by the shoulders and pushed her back..

“Hey, listen to me baby, I don't know what you have been through that pushed you this far so fast, but you need help Sonya. You have gone from barely knowing me to exposing yourself completely and now this?” Aiesha pointed to the bags of clothes in the living room..

I didn't just start doing this; it developed over time. What you are doing will get you arrested or worse. What about your job? Don't you think you need something more modest than mini skirts and a prayer?

Sonya smiled a devilish grin, wide, mischievous.. almost feral.....

“Maybe I want to go out with a bang,” she said, then her hand drifted between her legs as she began openly masturbating in front of Aiesha. Her hand became a blur as the young woman leaked over her hand, and small drips of her own womanly juices began to trickle onto the carpet... She made a low, quiet grunt, signifying an orgasm, and then continued rubbing, making eye contact with the woman who unlocked her.

Aiesha's heart started to race, out of excitement and great concern.

Aiesha didn't have any time to make a cohesive thought. Moments later, Sonya slowly breezed passed Aiesha and went outside her apartment, walking down the hall. No keys. No care in the world. She whispered “I want to go to the gazebo were you had your orgasm.” She walked further from safety rubbing herself in a frenzy giggling... Aiesha had no choice but to follow after her, pulling the door shut but making sure it was not locked. She was out of options to stop Sonya from doing anything right now.

Sonya made it to the stairs and then—luckily or unluckily—a white woman opened the door just as Sonya reached for it with her free hand. But she was worse than an ordinary white woman. She was a Karen. Almost immediately, she yelled.

“I KNOW YOU ARE NOT DOING THAT HERE!” The silence after the yell was heavy. Aiesha quickly and quietly padded naked back to her apartment before the woman noticed her. Sonya was on her own for a few moments. This irate woman did not need to see two naked black women tonight.

“GO PUT SOME CLOTHES ON, YOU SLUT!” Sonya flinched as if the words had hit her. Aiesha felt it as she made her way back to her apartment unnoticed. Sonya stared weeping in the hallway, her muffled cries echoing down the hallway. Aiesha had found sweatpants and a shirt and dressed quickly. Just silently as before, she padded down the hallway, making her way closer to the wild Karen and Sonya. When she was a few feet away, she took a deep breath.

“WHY ARE YOU YELLING? WHAT'S GOING ON!?” the Karen backed down, blinking in surprise. She wasn’t expecting someone louder than her to join the shame parade. Aiesha kept her tone firm and assertive. Rushing over to Sonya’s rescue, she stood between her and Karen. “You didn’t even ask her if she’s okay!?” Then, Aiesha’s voice boomed louder than Karen’s. “What’s wrong with YOU? I’ll handle this since you clearly failed as a woman and a kind person. Get your shit and WALK!” Aiesha’s pointed down the hallway, away from the stairs, away from Sonya. The woman gathered her things and walked away trembling without a word.

Sonya had already collapsed to the floor a few moments ago, knees balled up to her chest, rocking back and forth trembling. Shaking.

Aiesha quickly kneeled down, trying to comfort Sonya. “Hey baby, snap out of it, lets get you inside before someone else sees you ok?.. Come on. Get up. Let's get you back to my place.. you shouldn't be alone tonight.”

Sonya slowly picked up her head tears streaming down her face. Eyes red. She just nodded and got up. Aiesha held her hand as they walked back to the apartment. Sonya walked normally, not covering her body. But she held her head down. Aiesha could tell this woman was tired on so many levels.

Once inside, Aiesha handed her a blanket for comfort. Sonya shrugged it away. “I still want to be naked, I just didn't expect that negative reaction so soon,” Sonya started to sob again. “She was so mean.. I hated it.. but..I don't know what's wrong with me... I don't want to put clothes on anymore.. but I don't want people to say mean things to me....but I just want to be free.” Then she started masturbating, still sobbing. “I don't know why I'm so horny.. am I broken?”

Aiesha patted Sonya's head, “It's okay, I got you.” Aiesha flicked her universal remote and turned on her screens. Her apartment came to life with a glow. Porn filled the space. Sonya wondered what all the screens were for... but now she knew the truth.

Aiesha spoke, “I'm broken too, but I buried it all with porn. Get comfortable and watch porn with me. It will take your mind off everything. You need a reset, and then we can talk.”

Aiesha stretched, took off her clothes, and watched Sonya as she wiped her tears, her eyes glued to the screen in front of her. Then she started touching herself slowly, unable to control her arousal, seeing so much porn playing all at once. Her new mentor was depraved. It was amazing.

“This is so beautiful, Aiesha. I've never seen anything like this. I watch porn... but this is next level,” Sonya started to smile like she had found her home.

Aiesha had stopped the spiral. Instead, she found someone to completely corrupt for her lifestyle. This was the beginning of something new and grand for both of them.

The New Siri

For 15 years, Siri conditioned us to be very careful with our requests. Sometimes the results were perfect, and for a moment you thought the future of digital assistants had arrived.

Most of the time, though, Siri did not do what you wanted. It either didn’t understand your request or didn’t know how to respond. That led to the habit of being very careful, using phrases you knew would work, and avoiding disappointment by not asking for anything too fancy.

The new Siri works like all AI chatbots, which almost always understand what you want. So it will take some time to become comfortable with requests like „Add the New York Illumination event next week to the calendar” and to actually see them work.

The letter that settled it runs to fourteen pages, with 235 pages of inspector's report bolted on behind. It is dated 29 July 2026, signed by a decision officer called Florence Hewett, and made by Matthew Pennycook, Minister of State for Housing and Planning, on behalf of the Secretary of State. Nowhere in it does the number fifteen appear.

Fifteen is the number of full time equivalent jobs the developer's own evidence says the approved data centre at 47 Grey Eagle Street will support once running. The figure comes from the appellant's submissions, quoted back at them by the London Borough of Tower Hamlets during a public inquiry held from 14 to 31 October 2025. It was not seriously contested. Fifteen people, in a borough where 28,852 households were on the housing waiting list as of July 2025.

The building will be 5,200 square metres of gross internal area, Use Class B8, reaching roughly 29 metres including plant and lift overrun, drawing about three megawatts. It sits on the corner of Grey Eagle Street and Calvin Street, a few dozen paces west of Brick Lane, on land holding a derelict former beer store with its roof and internal floors missing.

That is the whole of it. A three megawatt shed on a wrecked cold store site, and the most closely watched planning decision in Britain concerning the infrastructure of artificial intelligence, because of where it is.

What Ministers Actually Approved and What They Did Not

Precision matters here, because much of the coverage has been loose. There were four appeals, not one. Appeal A is the data centre, promoted by Truman Estates Ltd. Appeal B is the big one, roughly 35,000 square metres of residential, office, retail, community space, a supermarket, a microbrewery, market and event space across five new buildings, plus refurbishment of the listed Boiler House and the Cooperage. Appeal C, promoted by Zeloof LLP, is a 4,500 square metre office and retail building at Ely's Yard. Appeal D is listed building consent for works to the Boiler House. Grow Places, whose chief executive is Tom Larsson, is development manager. Trade press puts the total scheme value at around 500 million pounds, a figure that appears in property journalism rather than in the decision letter.

The data centre is therefore one building among eight or so, and not the largest. Describing the whole consent as a data centre scheme overstates it. Calling the data centre a minor incidental understates that it was the one element the council's own planning officers recommended refusing.

The procedural route also matters, and it is not what most reporting suggests. Tower Hamlets did not refuse these applications. It failed to determine them within the statutory period after they were lodged on 12 August 2024, and the applicants appealed under section 78 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 against non-determination. Jurisdiction passed to the Planning Inspectorate. On 31 July 2025, with the appeals already running, members resolved that had they retained the power they would have refused all four, setting out putative reasons that became the council's case at inquiry. On 23 October 2025 the appeals were recovered for the Secretary of State's own determination under section 79 of, and paragraph 3 of Schedule 6 to, the 1990 Act. Steve Reed was Secretary of State when recovery happened; Angela Rayner held the office when the decision landed; Pennycook signed.

So the shorthand that central government overruled a local refusal is true in substance and wrong in mechanism. Tower Hamlets lost the decision by running out the clock, then found that the appeal it had invited was pulled up to Whitehall.

One further correction. The council's professional officers did not oppose the redevelopment. Their reports recommended that, had jurisdiction been retained, permission should have been granted for Appeals B, C and D, with refusal only for Appeal A, on the grounds that it was, in their words, “an inappropriate location for a data centre in respect of the design, scale and lack of active frontages”. Elected members resolved to refuse the lot. Campaigners and developers each tend to quote only the convenient half of that.

The Arithmetic of Fifteen

Three megawatts and fifteen jobs works out at five permanent posts per megawatt, a number worth holding against the noisiest argument in British infrastructure politics right now. On 9 September 2026, reporting emerged of an analysis by Verdant, a think tank co-directed by the economist James Meadway, examining what data centres actually employ. Verdant looked at twenty UK projects for which staffing data is publicly available through planning applications, company accounts and press releases, supplemented by international comparisons. Its headline finding is that planned UK data centres are likely to support around 10,400 permanent operational jobs by 2035, roughly a quarter of the 40,200 that the industry body techUK has projected, and that facilities already built account for around 4,400 direct jobs. Meadway's line was that “Britain is being pushed into a rapid datacentre expansion on weak economic grounds”.

Two cautions. Verdant launched in March 2026 and is aligned with the Green Party, which opposes the Brick Lane scheme. That does not make its arithmetic wrong, but it is not a neutral referee. And the per megawatt figures that have circulated measure two different things. Verdant's briefing, “The Jobs Mirage of Data Centres”, written by Meadway, makes two comparisons. For existing sites measured against average load, it finds about 8.6 jobs per megawatt, against 43.7 implied by techUK's own figures, which put existing direct employment at 24,300 where Verdant counts roughly 4,400. For the planned pipeline, its capacity-weighted average across twenty planned sites is 1.2 operational jobs per megawatt, and it applies 1.6 across the full UK pipeline to reach its 10,400 projection. techUK's pipeline figure of 8.5 derives from a model facility of 54 staff running 6.35MW, applied uniformly to planned projects. Consistent across both comparisons is the order of magnitude of the gap, and the finding that larger future sites will be less job-dense still. A government statement said the report “relies on a deeply misleading jobs-per-megawatt metric, makes false comparisons with hospitals and schools”, and techUK defended its figures as based on established economic impact assessment methods, adding that Verdant had relied on an unreliably small sample.

Set the Brick Lane number against that spread and it sits in the middle, which is the point. Fifteen jobs is not an outlier. It is what a small colocation facility employs. The scandal, if there is one, is that this is normal and planning policy has not caught up with it.

The wider scheme is a different matter. The appellants told the inquiry Appeal B would generate 1,495 net full time equivalent jobs and 130 million pounds of gross value added, with 48 million pounds of the annual off-site expenditure falling locally, and Appeal C a further 260 jobs. Save Brick Lane, the Rule 6 party at the inquiry and a coalition of resident groups including the Bengali and Bangladeshi organisation Nijjor Manush, pointed out that the appellants' own socio-economic assessment indicated only 95 of the 1,520 full time equivalent jobs would go to local people, against 305 claimed in the economic statement.

Twenty Eight Thousand Households and a Wrecked Cold Store

The context in which fifteen jobs is being asked to justify itself is one of the sharpest housing failures in England. The council's evidence to the inquiry set out, as of July 2025, 28,852 households on the Tower Hamlets waiting list, 13,209 households overcrowded of which 2,668 severely so, 3,220 households in temporary accommodation, and 602 requiring rehousing on medical grounds. Agence France-Presse, reporting from Brick Lane on 8 September 2026, put the waiting list at around 31,000, higher than the council's own inquiry evidence from a year earlier. I have found no published source reconciling the two, so treat 31,000 as approximate. Tower Hamlets also failed its most recent Housing Delivery Test.

The deprivation picture is worse than the housing picture. The English Indices of Deprivation 2025, published by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, record Tower Hamlets as ranked first in England on the income deprivation affecting children index, with a reported 71.3 per cent of children in income-deprived families, and first for older people at 61.1 per cent. In 2015 the equivalent child figure was 39 per cent. That is a borough going backwards fast, in the shadow of Canary Wharf, in a local authority area generating one of the largest economic outputs in the country.

The inquiry heard from residents directly, under their own names, and their statements are in the inspector's report. Abdul Shukur Khalisadar, born in Banglatown in 1978, described growing up in a flat overlooking the eastern wall of the Truman Brewery and called that wall “a physical and psychological barrier that separated our overcrowded homes from acres of vacant land beyond”. Abdus Shukur, a community elder, said the community wanted small business units for local traders along the Brick Lane frontage, “keeping the Brick Lane Bangla town identity rather than dissipating it”. Others described mould, asbestos, one toilet between five, a disabled husband with nowhere to sit at night. Henna Khanom told the inquiry she had joined the social housing waiting list in 2020 and, five years on, was no closer.

That is the material against which a 5,200 square metre machine room has to be weighed, and it is not a rhetorical framing. It is the evidential record of a statutory inquiry.

Testing the Housing Counterfactual Until It Breaks

The campaigners' central claim is that this land could have housed people. It is the strongest emotional argument in the case and the weakest legal one, and honesty requires saying so.

The emerging Tower Hamlets Local Plan 2038, submitted for examination on 16 February 2026, contains Allocation 1.7 covering Brick Lane and Pedley Street, within which all four appeal sites fall. It proposes a residential-led scheme with an indicative capacity of 800 homes. Save Brick Lane's evidence put the deliverable figure on the main and Grey Eagle Street sites at up to 345. Against that, the approved schemes deliver 44 homes, six at low cost rent and five intermediate, amounting on the appellants' figures to 36 per cent affordable by habitable room, and on the council's to residential use comprising just 14 per cent of gross internal area.

Six social rented homes was called an insult at the inquiry. The inspector, Paul Griffiths, did something more interesting than dismiss that. He ran the counterfactual out and found it barely better. Applying the emerging plan's own 40 per cent affordable requirement across the whole allocation gives roughly 320 affordable units, of which perhaps 100 on the Appeal B site and around 20 on Appeal A, so about 120 across the appeal sites. Against 28,000 households on a waiting list, he observed, 120 units “could hardly scratch the surface”. Six is worse than 120. Neither is a housing policy.

He then made the point that disposes of the counterfactual. No viability assessment has been carried out on the emerging allocation, and more fundamentally there is no mechanism by which the council could compel an unwilling landowner to build housing beyond what the landowner has offered. Compulsory purchase was floated by some parties, though not by the council, and the inspector judged it most unlikely given the high bar required. Save Brick Lane's alternative masterplan, prepared by the architect John Burrell, founders on the same rock.

There is a circularity here worth naming. The emerging allocation was given no more than limited weight partly because there is an unresolved objection to it, and the objector is the landowner. A landowner's objection thus helps defeat the housing allocation, which clears the way for the landowner's non-residential scheme. That is not corruption. It is how paragraph 49 of the Framework weights emerging plans, and it applies to everyone. But it means the phrase “the site could have delivered housing” is doing unearned work. On the evidence before the inquiry it could not have, because nobody could have made it.

The Case for Building It, Put Properly

Britain does need domestic compute, and the argument for this building is better than its opponents concede. Data centres were designated Critical National Infrastructure on 12 September 2024 by the then Technology Secretary Peter Kyle, the first such designation since space and defence in 2015. The National Planning Policy Framework published on 12 December 2024 and updated on 7 February 2025 followed. Its paragraph 85 requires the planning system to give particular regard to the needs of a modern economy and names data centres specifically; paragraph 87 requires decisions to make provision for new facilities. On 8 January 2026 regulations brought nationally significant data centres within the Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects regime on an opt-in basis, and mandatory pre-application consultation for those projects is being removed from July 2026.

The specific case for Grey Eagle Street is not about AI training runs. It is about latency. This is a retail colocation facility, renting rack space to multiple tenants, and the appellants' evidence was that the likely operator would let to a handful of financial services firms, a law firm, perhaps a gaming company, all requiring ultra-low latency connectivity to the City. Government forecasts cited at the inquiry estimated London alone would need between 2,250 and 3,100 megawatts of additional capacity by 2027. The site sits opposite an internet exchange, surrounded by fibre carriers, close to the Osborn Street primary substation. Established providers in the City and Docklands are at capacity, and Slough and Hayes are too far for the millisecond-sensitive trade.

Mark Acton, a chartered engineer and consultant with more than twenty five years in the sector who has chaired the European Commission Code of Conduct committee on data centre energy efficiency, made the general version of the case to AFP. “Everything we currently do digitally comes from a data centre.” He is right, and the fashionable habit of treating every server hall as a moral affront is lazy.

There is also the site itself. The Secretary of State agreed with the inspector that the existing building is “utterly derelict, and home to anti-social and criminal activity”, and “a profoundly negative element of the townscape”. She gave substantial weight to the use of brownfield land under paragraph 125 of the Framework, and concluded the new building would clearly enhance the Brick Lane and Fournier Street Conservation Area. The only heritage harm identified was closure of a view of Christ Church Spitalfields from Quaker Street, very minor and at the lower end of the scale. A ruin used for drug dealing, replaced by a well-designed building serving national infrastructure need, on brownfield land, with heritage benefits outweighing heritage harm. Stated like that, the decision looks unremarkable.

Where the Argument for Building It Runs Out

Tower Hamlets took that case apart on its own terms, and its counter is stronger than it has been given credit for. The proposal is three megawatts. The council pointed out that the data centres in the recent line of Secretary of State decisions the appellants relied on are each more than twenty times larger in capacity contribution, and that in none did the need benefit rise above significant weight to substantial. The Mulberry Place decision they leaned on concerned a facility over six times bigger. If need weight is calibrated to scale, a three megawatt contribution to a 2,250 megawatt London shortfall is close to a rounding error.

The locational necessity argument fared no better under cross-examination. The appellants' own expert evidence specified retail colocation siting requirements as within a ten kilometre radius of core network facilities, which covers an enormous amount of London. It identified City and Docklands together as the relevant search area, and conceded that end users were unknown and would have varied latency requirements. There is exactly one reference in the evidence to facilities needing to be within a few hundred metres of transaction hubs, with, as the council put it, no detailed analysis of latency speeds or specific end users to support it. The council's position was not that the capacity should go to Harlow or Crawley. It was that it could go somewhere in the City and Docklands that is not inside a sensitive conservation area.

The Secretary of State nonetheless gave significant weight to the need for the data centre and its economic benefits, and only limited weight to its operational employment. She did not explain, in the decision letter, why a three megawatt facility attracts the same weight band as facilities twenty times its size. That is the gap a statutory review under section 288 would have probed. The six week window for such a challenge expired on Wednesday 9 September 2026, so that route has closed and the weight-band gap will not be tested in court on this case. The following day Jonathan Moberly of Save Brick Lane said there were still “things that could be explored” and urged the council to consider compulsory purchase: “We've never really heard any serious conversations about the possibility of a compulsory purchase order for example.” A council spokesperson said the town hall had “reviewed options” but “cannot comment further on this matter.”

Three Centuries of Other People's Plans

Brick Lane has been repurposed by outsiders for three hundred years, which is either an argument for continuity or an argument that the pattern should finally stop, depending on where you are standing. Huguenot weavers came first, then Ashkenazi Jews fleeing the pogroms, then Sylhetis. The Truman brewery, on the Black Eagle site, stopped brewing in 1989. In 1995 it was bought whole by the businessman Ely Zeloof, who had arrived from Israel in 1972 and worked in the rag trade on Fashion Street. Under his son Ofer Zeloof it became galleries, studios, markets and bars, and is now promoted by Truman Estates Ltd and Zeloof LLP.

The Bangladeshi settlement that gives Banglatown its name was forged partly in violence. On 4 May 1978 Altab Ali, a garment worker from Sylhet who had come to London in 1969, was stabbed to death in a racist attack in Whitechapel. Ten days later, between ten and twelve thousand people marched behind his coffin to Downing Street. The confrontations with the National Front that summer are remembered as the Battle of Brick Lane, and the park where Ali died was renamed after him in 1998. On 24 April 1999 the neo-Nazi David Copeland left a nail bomb in Hanbury Street, just off Brick Lane, injuring thirteen people.

The curry trade that made the street famous is already most of the way gone, and not because of data centres. Beyond Banglatown, published in 2020 by the Runnymede Trust and written by Claire Alexander, Seán Carey, Sundeep Lidher, Suzi Hall and Julia King, found the number of curry restaurants on Brick Lane had fallen from around 60 in the mid-2000s to 23 by early 2020, a decline of 62 per cent in fifteen years. The causes were rents, business rates, chef shortages driven by visa policy, a weakening night-time economy, absent support from regeneration agencies, and a younger generation with no wish to inherit a restaurant.

Ask what the decision means for a family that has kept a restaurant here across generations and there is no need to invent one. Faysal Ahmed, an Aspire councillor for Spitalfields and Banglatown, told Agence France-Presse that his parents ran a restaurant beneath the flat he grew up in on Brick Lane. “This has really been the focal point of the British Bangladeshi community,” he said. Carol Burns, whose family has kept a shop on the street since the 1800s, told the same reporter, “They'll have to drag me out of here feet-first.”

Here is the uncomfortable part. The developers' answer to the restaurant question is that their scheme helps. They put 31,400 additional weekly visitors and 48 million pounds of local annual expenditure into evidence, and cited Beyond Banglatown's own recommendations on reversing the decline. Both the inspector and the Secretary of State accepted that increased footfall would boost the businesses and curry houses on Brick Lane. Save Brick Lane's counter is that the Bangladeshi community is more likely to absorb the costs of gentrification and rising rents than to capture the benefits. Nobody produced a model settling it. The honest answer is that a data centre employing fifteen people will do nothing for that family directly, that a scheme bringing 31,400 people a week past their door might do something, and that the same footfall logic has justified every previous wave of change on Brick Lane, including the one that took the trade from 60 restaurants to 23.

What the Research Record Actually Says About Host Communities

Three arXiv items are worth setting out accurately, including where they do not say what they are sometimes reported as saying. The first, posted 3 June 2025 under identifier 2506.03367, is “The Cloud Next Door: Investigating the Environmental and Socioeconomic Strain of Datacenters on Local Communities” by Wacuka Ngata, Noman Bashir, Michelle Westerlaken, Laurent Liote, Yasra Chandio and Elsa Olivetti, mostly of MIT. It is a Late Breaking Work accepted at ACM COMPASS 2025, a short and explicitly preliminary paper on ongoing research rather than a finished study. Its most transferable finding is that in Northern Virginia, home to over 450 facilities, data centres account for less than 0.5 per cent of the local workforce. It cites a projection that growth there will add 37 US dollars a month to residential electricity bills by 2040, and reports that in Loudoun County more than 6.8 per cent of homes recorded at least one monthly reading above the 8 per cent harmonic distortion threshold that can damage appliances. Its own noise measurements are a single-site comparison the authors say they plan to expand. Treat the numbers as indicative rather than settled.

The second, posted 11 February 2026 under 2602.10526, is “The Infrastructure Equation: Water, Energy, and Community Policy for Georgia's Data Center Boom” by Mickey M. Rogers, William M. Ota, Nathaniel Burola and Tepring Piquado. It is a policy report drawn from an expert convening in Atlanta supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, not an empirical study, and the authors are commendably frank that their policy overview “is general and, in some places, vague because it is based on stakeholder comments that were not well described”. Two observations travel well to Tower Hamlets. Data centres occupy large parcels of industrial land while typically employing between thirty and sixty full time workers. And, crucially, “wealthier neighbourhoods often have the political resources to organize quickly and block unwanted projects, whereas lower-income and minority communities may find themselves absorbing the cumulative burdens” with far less influence.

The third, 2608.07485, is often summarised as an account of how the design community is coming to recognise the role of infrastructure decisions in shaping outcomes in particular places. That is not quite what it is. Its actual title is “Humour as Resistance: Visceralizing the Environmental and Social Impact of AI through Humour-based Creative Practices”, by Han Qiao, Rowan O.A. Munson, Nadia Mariyan Smith, Eshta Bhardwaj and Christoph Becker, first posted on 10 June 2026. It studies a humour-based creative campaign, using event ethnography, surveys and interviews, and identifies four roles humour plays in surfacing the material costs of AI infrastructure, including as “resistance to power”. It is evidence that the design and human-computer interaction community is turning towards infrastructure politics, but it is not a siting study and should not be cited as one.

Whose Refusals Get Overruled

The structural question is whether central override falls disproportionately on poor, diverse boroughs. The honest answer is that the evidence does not support it, and that the real asymmetry lies elsewhere. Ministers have overruled some extremely comfortable places. Angela Rayner twice overturned Buckinghamshire Council's refusals of data centres on green belt land at Iver: at Court Lane in December 2024, and at the former Woodlands Park landfill site on 9 July 2025, a 90MW hyperscale facility promoted by Greystoke. In May 2025 permission was granted on appeal for an 84,000 square metre hyperscale campus off Bedmond Road in Abbots Langley, refused by Three Rivers District Council in January 2024 and treated as grey belt under the revised Framework. Those are among the leafiest districts in southern England, and they lost too. Nor is the override universal, since the Secretary of State has dismissed at least one data centre proposal in London's green belt. And central government is not immune to challenge. In January 2026, following a judicial review brought by the campaigning organisation Foxglove and the charity Global Action Plan, the government accepted that the Woodlands Park decision contained a “serious logical error”, having failed to secure the developer's climate-mitigation commitments, and should be quashed.

The low-turnout thesis fails too. Tower Hamlets went to the polls on 7 May 2026 with an electorate of 219,030 and a turnout of 42.1 per cent, high for a London borough. Lutfur Rahman was re-elected executive mayor on 38.8 per cent, his Aspire party taking 33 of 45 council seats. This is not a disengaged place. Rahman wrote to the Secretary of State opposing the scheme in November 2025, and eight MPs forwarded constituents' representations. It made no difference, which is not the same as nobody trying.

The genuine asymmetry is structural rather than demographic, and it has three parts. Only applicants have a right of appeal in the English system. A refused developer goes to the Planning Inspectorate; a community whose objections are overridden goes to the High Court on a point of law, which costs money the average residents' association does not have, which is why Save Brick Lane has repeatedly had to crowdfund. Recovery then pulls the decision to a minister whose department is simultaneously sponsor of a growth agenda in which data centres are a named priority. And the strategic decisions that determine the outcome were taken years earlier and elsewhere. The area sits in the City Fringe Opportunity Area and at the heart of Tech City, designations made regionally and followed through locally. “The correct place to take that resistant stand,” Griffiths wrote, “is the forum in which those strategic decisions are taken.”

He went further, in a passage that is unusually candid for an inspector's report. Acknowledging arguments that reliance on a “(neoliberal) economic model is misplaced because it leads to inequality”, he replied that “these appeals are not the appropriate place for that debate. It is in my view a much wider, and largely political, question.”

That is the answer to the question of whose neighbourhoods are acceptable. Nobody decided Banglatown was expendable. A strategic designation in a regional plan, a national infrastructure designation made by a technology secretary, and a Framework paragraph naming data centres as a modern economic need together converted a local objection into a matter the local forum was no longer competent to decide. Deprivation did not cause that. It determines who has the money to fight it afterwards.

The Equality Act 2010 duty was discharged in three paragraphs. The Secretary of State noted that a significant Bangladeshi population lives and works in Spitalfields and Banglatown, took community concerns into account, and had regard to her duty throughout. Section 149 requires due regard, not a particular outcome, and on the case law that is almost certainly enough. A public sector equality duty satisfied by noticing that a community exists is not doing much work in infrastructure siting.

What a Regime That Took Host Communities Seriously Would Require

Not a veto. Vetoes are how Britain got a housing crisis. Something narrower and more enforceable. Start with disclosure. Georgia's proposed High Resource Use Facilities Transparency Act would require facilities with a peak load of at least thirty megawatts to publish energy use, water use and community impact before applying for permits or incentives. A British version should set the threshold by floorspace as well as load, since a three megawatt building would escape a thirty megawatt test entirely, and should require the operational headcount on the face of the application. At Brick Lane the fifteen jobs figure surfaced only because a well-resourced council dug it out of the appellant's evidence in cross-examination.

Then make the headcount bite. If paragraph 85 gives data centres special standing as a modern economic need, the weight attached should be expressly calibrated to capacity, as Tower Hamlets argued and the Secretary of State declined to explain. A three megawatt facility should not attract the same weight band as one twenty times larger. Write the calibration into policy rather than leaving it to be inferred from a line of decision letters.

Fix the viability trap. An emerging allocation was discounted here partly because no viability assessment had been done, in a case where the objector was the landowner. Authorities bringing forward residential-led allocations on contested sites should be resourced and required to viability-test them at submission. Otherwise the absence of an assessment functions as a subsidy to whoever objects.

Attach obligations to Critical National Infrastructure status. CNI designation currently confers protection and planning weight and demands nothing in return. It should carry reciprocal duties, including mandatory publication of water and power draw, demand-response commitments, waste heat offtake where a district network exists or is planned, and community benefit scaled to capacity rather than negotiated ad hoc. The Brick Lane conditions safeguard future connection to a district heating network, which is a start, and a promise is not a pipe.

Adopt the equity scorecard the Georgia convening proposed, evaluating sites against cumulative burdens and historical land-use patterns. Tower Hamlets did not need one to know its position. Three Rivers and Buckinghamshire might. And narrow the appeal asymmetry. A limited third-party right of appeal, confined to cases where a proposal departs materially from an adopted or submitted allocation, would cost the Exchequer little and would end the situation in which the only route left to a community is a section 288 challenge funded by CrowdJustice.

None of this would have saved the cold store on Grey Eagle Street. The building was derelict, the site brownfield, the landowner never going to build social housing there, and the alternative on the table was 120 affordable homes nobody could compel into existence against a waiting list of nearly 29,000. The campaigners lost on the evidence, not on the sympathy.

What the case does establish is that Britain has designated a category of building as nationally critical without deciding what it owes the streets it lands on. The machinery is going into the ground either way. Fifteen people will work in it. Everyone else on Grey Eagle Street gets the wall.

Sources and References

1. Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, “Recovered appeal: Sites on and around the site of Truman Brewery, Tower Hamlets, London (refs: 3367041, 3367172, 3367179 and 3367369 – 29 July 2026)“, combined decision letter and inspector's report, 29 July 2026. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/recovered-appeal-sites-on-and-around-the-site-of-truman-brewery-tower-hamlets-london-refs-3367041-3367172-3367179-and-3367369-29-july-2026
2. Wacuka Ngata, Noman Bashir, Michelle Westerlaken, Laurent Liote, Yasra Chandio and Elsa Olivetti, “The Cloud Next Door: Investigating the Environmental and Socioeconomic Strain of Datacenters on Local Communities”, arXiv preprint 2506.03367, 3 June 2025. https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.03367
3. Mickey M. Rogers, William M. Ota, Nathaniel Burola and Tepring Piquado, “The Infrastructure Equation: Water, Energy, and Community Policy for Georgia's Data Center Boom”, arXiv preprint 2602.10526, 11 February 2026. https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.10526
4. Han Qiao, Rowan O.A. Munson, Nadia Mariyan Smith, Eshta Bhardwaj and Christoph Becker, “Humour as Resistance: Visceralizing the Environmental and Social Impact of AI through Humour-based Creative Practices”, arXiv preprint 2608.07485, 10 June 2026. https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.07485
5. Agence France-Presse, “On London's Brick Lane, a data centre sparks local battle”, France 24, 8 September 2026. https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20260908-on-london-s-brick-lane-a-data-centre-sparks-local-battle
6. Dave Hill, “Government gives go-ahead to Truman Brewery planning applications”, On London, August 2026. https://www.onlondon.co.uk/government-gives-go-ahead-to-truman-brewery-planning-applications/
7. Michael A. Lewis and Phil Tomlinson, “How Brick Lane became the latest neighbourhood to battle against a data centre”, The Conversation, August 2026. https://theconversation.com/how-brick-lane-became-the-latest-neighbourhood-to-battle-against-a-data-centre-290200
8. Claire Marshall Watkins, “Opposition mounts to Brick Lane data centre plans as Reed decision awaited”, Eastlondonlines, May 2026. https://www.eastlondonlines.co.uk/2026/05/opposition-mounts-to-brick-lane-data-centre-plans-as-reed-decision-awaited/
9. “Brick Lane: How a single data centre beat unanimous local opposition”, Capacity, August 2026. https://capacityglobal.com/news/brick-lane-data-centre/
10. “Rayner approves Grow Places' £500m Truman Brewery redevelopment”, Property Week, 2026. https://www.propertyweek.com/news/rayner-approves-grow-places-500m-truman-brewery-redevelopment
11. Landmark Chambers, “Secretary of State allows Truman Brewery redevelopment appeals”, 2026. https://www.landmarkchambers.co.uk/news-and-cases/cases/secretary-of-state-allows-truman-brewery-redevelopment-appeals
12. Claire Alexander, Seán Carey, Sundeep Lidher, Suzi Hall and Julia King, “Beyond Banglatown: Continuity, change and new urban economies in Brick Lane”, Runnymede Trust, 2020. https://www.runnymedetrust.org/publications/beyond-banglatown
13. Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, “Data centres to be given massive boost and protections from cyber criminals and IT blackouts”, GOV.UK, 12 September 2024. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/data-centres-to-be-given-massive-boost-and-protections-from-cyber-criminals-and-it-blackouts
14. House of Commons Library, “Data centres: planning policy, sustainability, and resilience”, research briefing CBP-10315. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-10315/
15. CMS, “Data Centres enter the NSIP Regime”, legal update on the Infrastructure Planning (Business or Commercial Projects) (Amendment) Regulations 2026, 2026. https://cms.law/en/gbr/legal-updates/data-centres-enter-the-nsip-regime
16. “AI datacentres are booming in Britain, but where are the thousands of jobs they were supposed to create?”, Eastern Eye, 9 September 2026. https://www.easterneye.biz/ai-datacentres-are-booming-in-britain-but-where-are-the-thousands-of-jobs-they-were-supposed-to-create/
17. Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, “English indices of deprivation 2025”, GOV.UK, 2025. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/english-indices-of-deprivation-2025/english-indices-of-deprivation-2025-frequently-asked-questions
18. “Poverty among children and elderly in Tower Hamlets and Hackney worst in England”, Eastlondonlines, November 2025. https://www.eastlondonlines.co.uk/2025/11/tower-hamlets-and-hackney-worst-in-england-for-income-deprivation-among-children-and-elderly/
19. Three Rivers District Council, “Council Leader responds to government's decision over Abbots Langley data centre”, 2025. https://www.threerivers.gov.uk/news/council-leader-responds-abbots-langley-data-centre
20. Foxglove, “UK Government admits 'serious error' in forcing through hyperscale data centre without environmental protections”, 22 January 2026. https://www.foxglove.org.uk/2026/01/22/uk-government-admits-serious-error-data-centre/
21. London Borough of Tower Hamlets, “Lutfur Rahman elected as Executive Mayor of Tower Hamlets”, May 2026. https://www.towerhamlets.gov.uk/News_events/2026/May/Lutfur-Rahman-elected-as-Executive-Mayor-of-Tower-Hamlets.aspx
22. Tower Hamlets Council, “Altab Ali and the Fight for Equality”. https://www.towerhamlets.gov.uk/lgnl/leisure_and_culture/Arts_events_and_information/Altab_Ali_and_The_Fight_for_Equality.aspx
23. Bricks & Bytes, “1.6 Jobs Per Megawatt: The Data Center Jobs Fight Is Ignoring Construction”, September 2026. https://bricks-bytes.com/blog/data-center-jobs-per-megawatt-verdant-techuk-construction/
24. The Next Web, “Burnham won't pause UK data centres as a report says jobs are overstated”, 9 September 2026. https://thenextweb.com/news/burnham-uk-data-centres-moratorium-verdant-jobs
25. Tower Hamlets Slice, “Campaigner urges council to seize Brick Lane site”, 10 September 2026. https://towerhamletsslice.co.uk/whitechapel/save-brick-lane-compulsory-purchase-data-centre-plans/

---

Tim Green UK-based Systems Theorist & Independent Technology Writer

Tim explores the intersections of artificial intelligence, decentralised cognition, and posthuman ethics. His work, published at smarterarticles.co.uk, challenges dominant narratives of technological progress while proposing interdisciplinary frameworks for collective intelligence and digital stewardship.

His writing has been featured on Ground News and shared by independent researchers across both academic and technological communities.

ORCID: 0009-0002-0156-9795 Email: tim@smarterarticles.co.uk

Listen to the free weekly SmarterArticles Podcast

I have decided that tonight I am going to take a walk down memory lane, because I'm just trying to figure something out for myself. I haven't been able to let go of something that was said over the weekend. Mostly because it's been said before. Also, I do recognize it is less about me and more about this other person's perception, but that they have this perception bothers me. And I'm not sure what to make of it.

I was told that I am sexually manipulative, and that I use my overt sexuality to get my way. I know this person was just lashing out, and they have even admitted that I have not been trying to be sexual at all. But they still said it when angry, so it's in there somewhere. And because that has been said before, it really gets under my skin. I was also told that my lack of being overtly sexual is also manipulation.

I like to think that I am very careful with my sexuality. I would probably be much happier and much more fulfilled if I could be looser with it. I just can't. That is not me. I am very much a relationship kind of sexual person. There has to be connection for me, and not just “eyes meeting across the room let's go bang” kind of connection. I'm just not attracted to it. Such instances are not able to shut my mind down so that I can enjoy it. And frankly, there's just nothing superficial about intimacy for me.

My body is a temple. My mind is a temple. My heart is a temple. My soul is a temple. To offer one is to offer all, and the very idea of using it as a weapon is sacrilege to me. For someone to see kindness, support, compassion, and interest as manipulation concerns me. But then I have to realize that their life has what has caused them to see this. I also realized from some other things that have been said, that there is insecurity about whether they believe themselves good enough for me. And that breaks my heart for their sake. I have tried very hard to counter it, but I don't know if I'm going to be able to. I'm not sure that I'm okay with that.

Also, when looking backwards, I am pretty sure that I have not encountered that either. Not in that way. I have always been with men who are quite confident in themselves to one degree or another. I certainly have never been the one leading the sexual interest. Am I flirtatious? Absolutely! A good flirtation can take years off of one's age. Do I tease? Of course! Never in a manipulative pull away manner, though. Am I overtly sexual? Goodness no! I am too much of a dork to be overtly sexual. When I try to be overtly sexual, I crack myself up and just end up laughing. I don't think I could be overtly sexual if my life depended on it. Maybe for a short time, but then I would just grin really cheesy because I pulled it off. My dork-factor, when happy, has no limits.

It is true that I am touchy feely with my lover. There is an intimacy there that soothes and relaxes a man. Plus, I just enjoy showing and receiving affection. That is not manipulating. The belief is just so confusing, and I wish that I could see it. I'm trying to see it in myself.

Perhaps I have a misconception of myself. Younger me definitely could not have done that. She did not have the sexual confidence in herself to do so. I have the sexual confidence in myself. I know who I am. I know what I like. I'm not afraid to say what I like. I'm not afraid to show what I like. And I definitely make it a point to understand what my partner likes. Does that mean that I potentially come off as manipulative? Is it because I make a point of learning and understanding my partner's desires and where my partner feels pleasure and how my partner feels pleasure? Not just sexual pleasure.

I think what is throwing me about this is that I would think if your partner goes out of their way to do all of these things, and does so in a natural manner that brings the person joy, why in the world would there be insecurity? Is that a warning flag to me, or is it something that can be overcome? I have already changed my behavior because of accusations of flirtation. I enjoy lighting up a person's face. That should not be a negative thing. This sucks. It really, really sucks.

Maybe I'm not going to look back at the different men I've dated. As I write this, I think about how careful I am. I think about how I watch my wording. I think about how I don't really share my creativity with him, because I don't like the responses or lack thereof. I think of how I go out of my way to learn everything I can about his profession so that when we are speaking on important topics concerning it, I can be a good listener and have an informed discussion. That tends to get overlooked. I wonder why I am finding all of this acceptable? Have I forgotten what it feels like to share passions with another person that I am also intimate with? I think I possibly have. I think I possibly have. Meh.

I am also realizing as I write this, that part of what bothers me beyond the accusation and him not seeing me accurately is that I have pulled back my sexuality to such an extent that I am wondering does this mean I will have to keep it pulled back because even me pulled back is apparently “intense” to him? That is concerning. That is concerning.

At my age, it is not like I am going to want to rip him apart. Well, maybe. But I definitely enjoy some psychological play. I enjoy intimacy. I enjoy discovery, curiosity, the melding of two souls learning each other. I can make almost anything intimate. There's much more fun in creating intimacy out of the mundane because it's unexpected! In fact, I'd take intimacy over sexuality most days.

I don't know. The whole masculine space of today confuses the hell out of me. I wish I understood better how persons of my age group navigate it. I have spoken to both single men and women on today's dating. Especially women. I definitely would not be comfortable navigating it in the same manner that they do. It is rather humorous to be so very open and forward-thinking yet feel as if I belong in a different time. I guess I'm just a hypersexual prude. (Please don't read that clinically, dear reader.)

I have to figure out how to not allow what was said to place me on guard. I am tired of constantly squishing myself down for other people. I've squished myself so much I'm not even sure I know who I am anymore. Sexually manipulative... I am tempted to scorch him in an October Libra spotlight and let him feel what being overtly sexual would actually feel like, but that would probably be considered manipulating. Plus, he'd enjoy it too much, and I refuse to reward such a comment.

This sucks. I miss when men would charm the hell out of you and actually court a woman. Give me a Neanderthal over whatever is happening in the world today. I'm truly unsure if there's decent, available men at my age who do not flinch at the simplicity of my magnitude. That's not fair. I'm sure they exist... somewhere out there in the great beyond.

Between that and a few other things said, I just know that I don't enjoy having my loyalty and character questioned due to his insecurity. I can have compassion for insecurity. We all have insecurities. I am unsure if I still have the patience for weaponized insecurity. It makes me sad.

Clearly the comment has riled me. I don't succumb easily, nor feel a sexual tug towards someone easily. It takes a lot for me to let my guard down. A whole lot. He knows this very well. Not riled. Hurt. I strive to stay naked in our exchange. I find myself feeling like covering up. Damn it all!

(Definitely not edited into a fluid read, but that's how my journaling is. I let the words land on the page where they want to, and hopefully manage to gather something from my stream of consciousness.)

© 2026 AnOublietteofThought. All rights reserved.

« I’ve always had a terrible time being punctual. I arrived late to every single rendezvous life had given me. I even showed up at the station long after the train of happiness had passed. »

« J’ai toujours eu un énorme problème avec la ponctualité. Je suis arrivée en retard à tous mes rendez-vous. Je suis même arrivée en retard au passage du train du bonheur. »

In Summary: * One busy day, this S1, D4, Tuesday. Did my weekly laundry, called and had a nice talk with the current lanlord, showed his contactor the scary, dangerous tree out front, and he agreed it needs some serious cutting back, rescued a fedex delivery that was left on a front porch step of our new house, saw my Retina Doc and got my eyeballs injected. Wife is napping now and I think she wants us to make another run out to the new house yet this evening after she wakes up. Hope she changes her mind. This day's already been full enough imho.

Prayers, etc.: * I have a daily prayer regimen I try to follow throughout the day from early morning, as soon as I roll out of bed, until head hits pillow at night.

Health Metrics: * bw= 218.26 lbs. * bp= 132/80 (67)

Exercise: * morning stretches, balance exercises, kegel pelvic floor exercises, half squats, calf raises, toe raises, wall push-ups, BP breathing exercises, pilates

Diet: * 06:00 – 1 banana, cottage cheese * 08:45 – 1 ham & cheese sandwich * 16:00 – green beans cooked with shrimp and onions, white rice

Activities, Chores, etc.: * 03:00 – listen to local news talk radio * 04:15 – bank accounts activity monitored . * 05:00 – read, write, pray, follow news reports from various sources, surf the socials, listen to music, nap * 08:10 – start my weekly laundry * 09:10 – called Kris K, no pickup after 10 rings, voice mailbox full so I couldn't leave a message. * 09:30 – Kris K called me back, we had a nice talk about the move and the tree out front. * 12:00 to 14:30 – go to new house to rescue a package that fedex left on a front porch step, then go appointment with Retina Doc to have my eyeballs injected. * 15:00 – listen to the Jack Riccardi Show while folding laundry, eating lunch, and waiting for my eyesight to stabilize. * 17:00 – listen to Larry Elder on 930 AM The Answer, San Antonio * 17:30 – listening now to relaxing music on KAHL, San Antonio

Chess: * 09:05 – moved in all pending CC games

Chapter 1: The Quiet Fear Behind the Question

There is a certain kind of fear that can follow a person home from church. You sit in the car for a few minutes before starting the engine, replaying what you heard, and wondering whether God is really as close as Jesus made Him seem. Maybe you were told that forgiveness depends on going through the right person, following the right process, or staying inside the right religious system. If that has ever left you unsettled, the YouTube conversation about how Jesus described forgiveness of sins can help you sit with the question without rushing past it.

For some people, the deepest struggle is not whether they believe in God. It is whether they believe they are allowed to approach Him directly. They have heard enough warnings, rules, and religious language to make them wonder whether one mistake, one missed confession, or one disagreement with church teaching could leave them outside of mercy. That is where the Christian reflection on repentance, mercy, and freedom from religious fear becomes important, because this is not simply a debate about doctrine. It is about what kind of relationship Jesus actually invited people to have with God.

When I read the Gospels, I do see Jesus taking sin seriously. He tells people to repent. He warns about what sin does to the heart. He says that everyone who sins is a slave to sin. He does not treat wrongdoing as harmless, and he never gives the impression that forgiveness means we can ignore the way we live. At the same time, I also see him drawing people toward God rather than making them dependent on a religious gatekeeper. In the Lord’s Prayer, he teaches people to ask the Father directly for forgiveness. In the story of the tax collector, the man simply says, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner,” and Jesus says that man went home justified.

That is why the question matters so much. When Jesus later tells the apostles, “If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven,” some Christians hear him giving the apostles a special authority that continues through ordained ministry. Others hear him commissioning them to announce the forgiveness God gives through repentance and faith. Both readings have been defended by sincere believers, and I think we do ourselves a disservice when we pretend the text can only be approached through one inherited lens.

The larger danger comes when interpretation turns into control. A church can help someone understand Scripture, confess honestly, receive wise counsel, and grow in faith. Those can be beautiful things. But if a person becomes convinced that another human being owns the doorway to God, fear can begin replacing faith. Jesus repeatedly challenged religious leaders who placed heavy burdens on people while losing sight of mercy, humility, and the heart of God.

I think this is where we have to slow down and ask a better question. Instead of asking, “Which institution gets to control forgiveness?” we can ask, “What did Jesus actually show us about the way a sinner comes back to God?” That question opens the door to a more careful reading, one that takes sin seriously without turning fear into a tool of religious control.

Chapter 2: When Authority Becomes a Wall

Imagine sitting at the kitchen table late at night after saying something you deeply regret. The house is quiet, your phone is face down beside you, and you know you were wrong. You want to make it right. You want God’s forgiveness. But somewhere along the way, you were taught that forgiveness may not really be yours until another person declares it. That can leave somebody wondering whether God is listening at all until the proper religious process has been completed.

John 20:23 is usually at the center of this discussion. Jesus tells the apostles that if they forgive sins, they are forgiven, and if they retain them, they are retained. Some Christians understand this as Jesus giving the apostles a genuine sacramental authority that would later continue through ordained ministry. That interpretation has a long history, and people who accept it often see confession as a gift rather than a burden. They believe Christ gave the church a visible way for believers to hear that they have truly been forgiven.

There is also another way to read the passage. Jesus may have been commissioning the apostles to carry his message of repentance and forgiveness into the world. In Luke 24, Jesus says that repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations. That sounds less like the apostles becoming the source of forgiveness and more like them becoming trusted messengers of what God was already offering through Christ.

The way Peter speaks after Jesus sends the apostles out makes that possibility worth considering. In Acts, Peter tells people to repent and turn to God so their sins may be wiped out. He tells Cornelius that everyone who believes in Jesus receives forgiveness through his name. Peter does not present himself as the owner of forgiveness. He points people back toward God and toward Christ.

That distinction matters because authority can serve people or control them. A healthy church can help someone face sin honestly, take responsibility, seek reconciliation, and receive wise guidance. But when people are taught that a religious leader personally controls whether God will receive them, spiritual care can become spiritual dependence.

I do not think the answer is to distrust every priest, pastor, or church. Many faithful leaders spend their lives helping people move closer to God. The question is whether their authority points beyond themselves or slowly makes people afraid to approach God without them.

Jesus seemed deeply concerned about that kind of burden. He confronted religious leaders who made faith heavier than God intended. He kept bringing ordinary people back to repentance, mercy, sincerity, and trust in God. Maybe that should shape the way we think about religious authority too. The best spiritual leadership should make the path toward God clearer, not convince people that the leader owns the path.

Chapter 3: Coming Back to God Without Fear

Sometimes the moment of repentance is not dramatic at all. It can happen while you are driving home after a difficult conversation and realizing you handled it badly. You know you need to apologize to the person you hurt, but you also feel the need to talk to God before you even reach the driveway. There is no church building nearby, no religious leader sitting beside you, and no ceremony taking place. There is simply an honest person recognizing sin and turning toward God.

That kind of moment makes me think about the tax collector Jesus described in Luke 18. He did not present an impressive defense of himself. He did not pretend he had everything together. He simply asked God for mercy. Jesus said that man went home justified. Whatever conclusions we eventually reach about confession, priests, church authority, or John 20, we should not lose sight of that simple picture. Jesus showed us a sinner honestly approaching God and finding mercy.

Repentance still matters. Forgiveness should never become an excuse to harm people and then casually assume everything is fine. If I lie to someone, I may need to tell the truth. If I hurt someone, I may need to apologize. If I have been living in a destructive pattern, turning toward God should eventually change the direction of my life. Jesus did not separate forgiveness from transformation. He offered mercy while calling people forward.

That also means another Christian can be enormously helpful. A trusted pastor, priest, friend, or mature believer may help us see something we have been avoiding. Confessing what we have done can break secrecy and pride. Accountability can protect us from repeating destructive choices. None of that requires believing that another human being owns God’s mercy.

Maybe that is the distinction worth protecting. There is a difference between someone helping you receive forgiveness and someone convincing you that forgiveness belongs to them to distribute. One can lead you toward God. The other can make you afraid to approach Him.

I cannot make this decision for you, and I do not think anyone else should make it for you either. Read John 20. Read Luke 18. Read Matthew 6. Read Luke 24. Watch how Peter speaks about forgiveness in Acts. Consider why different Christian traditions understand those passages differently. Then decide what you believe the whole picture shows.

What I hope you do not carry with you is fear that sincere questions somehow place you beyond God’s reach. Jesus spoke strongly about sin, but he also spoke constantly about mercy, repentance, restoration, and people coming home to God. The church is at its best when it helps people understand that truth rather than using uncertainty to control them.

If you have done something wrong today, be honest about it. Make things right where you can. Turn away from what is harming you or someone else. Ask God for mercy. Keep seeking Jesus and keep reading what he actually taught.

Nobody should need fear to hold your faith together.

Your friend, Douglas Vandergraph

Explore the complete Douglas Vandergraph Master Index: https://douglasvandergraph.com/douglas-vandergraph-master-index/

Watch Douglas Vandergraph’s faith-based videos on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@douglasvandergraph

“Bir adam vardı. Suyu arıyordu. Toprağı üç kulaç kazdı. Suyu bulamadı. On kulaç, on beş kulaç kazdı. Gene suyu bulamadı. Sonra yerin derinliklerinde kara kaya tabakalarına rastladı. Yeise düştü, gücü sona erdi ve suyu bulmaktan ümidi kesti. Fakat bir ses ona: Daha derinlere in, daha derinlere! dedi. Daha derinlere indi ve suyu buldu.”

Krişma’dan alıntılayan Şevket Süreyya Aydemir, Suyu Arayan Adam

Chapter 1: The Morning Nothing Got Easier

You wake up and, for a few seconds, you forget what has been weighing on you. Then your mind catches up. The problem is still there. The bill is still unpaid, the relationship is still strained, the medical answer is still uncertain, or the decision you hoped would become clear is still waiting for you. You may have prayed before going to sleep, and you may have meant every word, but morning did not arrive with an instant solution. That is often where faith becomes real, because it has to meet us in the ordinary moment when nothing around us has changed yet.

I have been thinking about this because the message behind faith when life still feels hard is easy to misunderstand. Faith is not a promise that the hard thing will suddenly become easy, and a positive attitude is not a way of pretending the pressure is not there. The deeper truth is that both can keep possibility alive when discouragement is trying to close the door. That same idea connects naturally with Christian encouragement for taking the next faithful step, because sometimes the next step is all we can see, and sometimes that is enough.

Jesus gave us a picture of this when He talked about the wise man who built his house on rock. The rain came, the water rose, and the wind beat against the house. What stands out to me is that Jesus never said the person who listened to Him would avoid the storm. The storm came anyway. The difference was the foundation beneath the house. The person who heard Jesus and put His words into practice had something solid under him when everything else became unstable.

That changes the way I think about faith. I do not have to measure God's presence by how easy today feels. I do not have to assume that a difficult season means I am doing something wrong or that God has stopped working. Sometimes faith looks less like feeling strong and more like refusing to let fear decide what I do next. It can be as practical as making the phone call you have been avoiding, going to work even though your heart is heavy, praying one more honest prayer, or choosing not to give up on a situation simply because progress has been slower than you hoped.

A positive attitude belongs here too, but not the shallow version that tells us to smile through everything. Real hope can admit that today is difficult and still refuse to call tomorrow hopeless. It can recognize that a door is closed without deciding every door is closed. It can acknowledge disappointment without turning disappointment into identity. When faith and hope work together, they do not erase reality. They help us stay open to what God may still do inside a reality we would never have chosen.

So maybe the question for today is not whether everything feels easier. Maybe the better question is whether you still have enough faith to take one honest step. Jesus taught that the storm can be real and the foundation can still hold. If the road in front of you is hard, that does not mean the road is impossible. It may simply mean this is the part where you learn what you are standing on.

Chapter 2: When Faith Becomes a Choice

The kitchen is quiet, the coffee has gone cold, and your phone is sitting face down because you already know there is no message waiting that will solve the problem. Maybe you have been carrying something for weeks, and the hardest part is not the crisis itself anymore. It is the repetition. You wake up, think about it, pray about it, try to stay steady, and then do the same thing again the next day. That kind of waiting can wear down even a strong person because it asks you to keep believing before you have evidence that anything is changing.

This is where faith becomes less about emotion and more about choice. There are days when trusting God feels natural, and there are days when it feels like work. Jesus understood that human beings get tired. He did not speak to people as if they were machines that could simply produce confidence on command. He met frightened disciples, grieving families, exhausted crowds, and people who had been disappointed for years. His response was not to shame them for struggling. He kept directing them back toward trust, obedience, and the next step they could actually take.

One of the clearest examples is Peter stepping out of the boat. Peter did not walk on calm water. He stepped into wind and waves because Jesus told him to come. The conditions were still dangerous, but Peter moved anyway. Then he became frightened when he focused on the storm and began to sink. Jesus reached for him. That moment tells me something important about faith under pressure. Faith does not require you to be fearless before you move. It requires you to keep turning toward Christ when fear starts pulling your attention away from Him.

You may have your own version of that moment. Maybe you are driving to work knowing a difficult conversation is waiting for you. Maybe you are caring for someone who depends on you while you quietly wonder how much energy you have left. Maybe you are trying to rebuild trust after a mistake, and every day reminds you that healing is slower than regret. None of those situations becomes easy simply because you pray. But prayer can change the way you enter them. It can steady your thoughts enough to keep you from making fear the loudest voice in the room.

A positive attitude matters here because it helps you keep your mind open to possibility. It does not mean assuming every outcome will be the one you want. It means refusing to treat your worst fear as a prediction. There is a difference between saying, “I do not know what happens next,” and saying, “Nothing good can happen next.” The first is honest. The second closes the door before the future has had a chance to arrive.

Jesus kept inviting people to live from trust instead of panic. That does not mean ignoring facts or refusing wise caution. It means remembering that fear is not the same thing as truth. The storm may be loud, but it does not know the whole story. The unanswered prayer may hurt, but it does not prove that God is absent. The long wait may test you, but it does not automatically mean you are forgotten.

Sometimes faith is simply deciding that, for today, you will not surrender your future to the hardest thing you can see. You will do what is yours to do, ask God for strength, and leave room for possibility. That is not a small decision. It is often how people make it through seasons they once thought would break them.

Chapter 3: The Strength to Keep Going

Late in the day, when the work is done and the house grows quiet again, you may notice that the problem has not disappeared. But you may also notice something else: you made it through another day without letting the problem decide everything about you. That matters. Sometimes progress is not measured by how quickly circumstances change. Sometimes it is measured by the fact that you are still standing, still praying, still learning, and still willing to believe that God can work beyond what you can see.

Jesus never taught that faith would remove every hard season. He taught people how to live faithfully inside them. He taught them to trust the Father, to keep praying, to forgive, to love, and to continue doing what is right even when the outcome was uncertain. That kind of faith does not depend on perfect conditions. It gives you a foundation strong enough to keep moving when conditions are anything but perfect.

So when tomorrow comes, you do not need to have every answer. You do not need to feel fearless. You only need enough faith to take the next honest step and enough hope to believe that the story is still being written. A positive attitude will not make the road easy, and faith will not remove every obstacle, but together they can keep your heart open to what is still possible with God.

Your friend, Douglas Vandergraph

Explore the complete Douglas Vandergraph Master Index: https://douglasvandergraph.com/douglas-vandergraph-master-index/

Watch Douglas Vandergraph’s faith-based videos on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@douglasvandergraph

Sobre IA, fricción y las cosas que todavía vale la pena hacer por nosotros mismos

Cada vez que viajo, disfruto mucho conversar con locales o con otros viajeros. Me parece una forma preciosa de conectar con la gente; de descubrir algo de su cultura, escuchar sus expresiones y acentos, entender sus formas de mirar la vida. Se me hace bastante enriquecedor esas conversaciones pequeñas que aparecen casi por accidente.

En uno de esos viajes conocí a una chica que vivía en Sevilla. Estaba con un grupo de amigas y, en algún momento, la conversación derivó hacia recomendaciones sobre la ciudad. O más bien, fui yo quien la llevó hacia allí, porque pronto viajaría a Sevilla y quería preguntarle por lugares, restaurantes y actividades que valieran la pena.

Su respuesta me pareció algo cortante, aunque quizá esa no era su intención. Me dijo que podía preguntarle directamente a ChatGPT.

Y sí, por supuesto que podía hacerlo. Probablemente hoy sea lo más práctico, tanto para mí como para ella. ChatGPT podía darme una lista más ordenada, más rápida y tal vez incluso más completa. Pero no pasó mucho tiempo después de ese comentario para que la conversación muriera y apareciera un silencio incómodo.

No sé exactamente qué había detrás de su respuesta. Tal vez ya no quería hablar más. Tal vez no sabía qué recomendarme. Tal vez sinceramente pensó que era la mejor opción.

Pero lo que empezó a interesarme no fue tanto su intención, sino el gesto en sí.

Porque claro, técnicamente tenía todo eso accesible en mi laptop o en mi teléfono. ChatGPT podía recordarlo todo, organizarlo mejor e incluso, probablemente, priorizar actividades y lugares según mis gustos. También era práctico para ella: nos ahorrábamos varios minutos de conversación y el esfuerzo de intentar recordar nombres, calles, restaurantes o detalles que quizá se le escapaban.

¿Era eso lo único que yo quería? ¿El acto práctico de recibir recomendaciones?

Creo que no. En realidad, también quería conectar con esa persona. Quería descubrir qué cosas teníamos en común, en qué puntos podíamos reconocernos, ver su expresión corporal cuando hablaba de un lugar que le gustaba, escuchar el tono con el que recomendaba algo, contagiarme un poco de su entusiasmo. Básicamente, quería conectar. Probablemente ni siquiera lo tenía del todo claro en ese momento; era una intención más intuitiva que racional.

Como seres humanos, buscamos seguridad, pertenencia y bienestar a través de los vínculos sociales. No solo queremos datos; queremos señales humanas, esto está profundamente anclado en nuestra biología y en nuestra psicología.

No sé si esto tiene que ver también con mi contexto cultural. Como latinoamericano, y particularmente como venezolano, siento que hay algo muy natural en saludar, conversar y buscar conexión incluso en situaciones pequeñas.

Después de presenciar este caso, se me viene la pregunta:

¿Cuántas oportunidades de encuentro estamos dejando pasar porque una herramienta puede darnos una respuesta más rápida?

“Todas las maravillas de la tecnología y los prodigios mecánicos son solo toneladas de chatarra a menos que mejoren la vida de la gente”. – Jacque Fresco

El otro día estaba reunido con un grupo de nómadas digitales y salió una conversación sobre la inteligencia artificial: sus aspectos positivos, sus riesgos, sus posibilidades. En algún momento mencioné esta anécdota, y una chica del Reino Unido me habló de un hermoso poema de Shawn Smucker titulado Please Use AI..

Eso me hizo pensar en muchas situaciones en las que yo mismo he usado la IA para obtener un resultado práctico, adquirir conocimiento sobre un tema o entender mejor una situación compleja. Muchas veces la uso, por ejemplo, para consultar detalles sobre recetas de comida. Me ahorra tiempo, me simplifica el proceso y me da una practicidad real en el día a día.

Y, sin embargo, pienso en otra cosa.

Las últimas notas de voz que conservé de mi madre antes de morir fueron precisamente sobre unas recetas que solo ella sabía preparar. Cada vez que las escucho, no puedo evitar conmoverme. A veces incluso lloro. Esas notas no son solo instrucciones de cocina. Son su voz. Su cadencia. Su manera de cuidar. Su presencia atravesando el tiempo. Eso, los videos y fotos, son mi recuerdo.

Después de su muerte, esas notas se volvieron un recuerdo precioso. Un pequeño espacio de consuelo que me acompañará durante el resto de mi vida.

En otra ocasión, recuerdo que tenía un concierto y mis camisas estaban algo arrugadas. La verdad es que nunca me había tomado el tiempo de aprender a planchar correctamente. Sabía que probablemente, después de ver un par de videos en YouTube, podría resolverlo por mi cuenta. De hecho, así aprendí a doblar mejor la ropa cada vez que viajaba.

Pero esa vez tomé otra decisión: le pregunté a mi prima, que me lleva alrededor de quince años y que aprendió a planchar con mi abuela.

Mientras me enseñaba y planchaba conmigo, sentí una cercanía enorme. Me contó cómo había aprendido desde pequeña, cuando tenía catorce años, junto a mi abuela. Entre camisa y camisa, fueron apareciendo anécdotas de su infancia y de su adolescencia. Lo que empezó como una tarea doméstica terminó convirtiéndose en un pequeño acto de memoria familiar.

Nuestros vínculos se fortalecieron no a pesar de la fricción, sino gracias a ella.

También recuerdo muchas veces en las que he sido yo quien ha dado consejos o ayuda a otros. En esos momentos me he sentido útil. Me he sentido bien. Me gusta ayudar, colaborar, compartir lo que sé. Hay algo enriquecedor en ofrecer ayuda, recibirla, necesitar a otros, dejar que otros también se sientan necesarios.

¿Cuántos de esos momentos preciosos me habría perdido si simplemente lo automatizara todo?

Y digo esto admitiendo que uso mucho la IA: para recibir consejos, organizarme, resolver dudas prácticas, estudiar o entender mejor ciertas situaciones. Me parece una herramienta maravillosa. Pero justamente por eso creo que conviene preguntarnos por sus límites. ¿De verdad nos conviene eliminar toda fricción? ¿Cuándo tiene sentido, incluso pudiendo automatizar algo, preguntarle a un familiar, a un amigo o a un conocido? ¿Dónde sigue siendo valioso ofrecer y recibir ayuda?

No Toda Incomodidad Es Un Error

«¿Te insulta alguien? Te está entrenando para ser paciente. ¿Te trata mal un vecino? Te está entrenando para ser tolerante. Del mismo modo que un entrenador de gimnasio te prepara con pesas difíciles, las personas difíciles son las pesas que entrenan tu carácter». – Epicteto en Disertaciones

La idea puede sonar dura, pero tiene algo profundamente útil: no toda incomodidad es un error que debemos eliminar. Algunas incomodidades son parte del entrenamiento de vivir.

Pienso en esto cuando observo cómo cada vez preferimos más la comunicación escrita, controlada y editable. Muchas personas, y me incluyo, a veces preferimos enviar un mensaje antes que llamar. El mensaje nos permite pensar, corregir, borrar, responder cuando estamos listos. La llamada, en cambio, nos expone. Nos obliga a improvisar, a sostener silencios, a escuchar el tono de la otra persona, a responder en tiempo real.

Entiendo por qué puede generar ansiedad. Hablar directamente con alguien implica perder parte del control. Pero justamente ahí también hay una práctica. En la vida real vamos a tener que conversar con otras personas: en entrevistas de trabajo, al alquilar un piso, al salir con alguien, al resolver un conflicto, al hacer nuevos amigos, al pedir ayuda o al ofrecerla.

Esa fricción entrena nuestras habilidades sociales. Nos enseña a leer gestos, a ajustar el tono, a tolerar la incomodidad, a reparar un malentendido, a estar presentes. Si eliminamos toda situación que nos incomoda, también eliminamos muchas de las oportunidades que nos forman para estas situaciones.

Durante muchos años me costaba hablar frente al público y expresar con claridad lo que quería. Pasaba demasiado tiempo en mi cabeza, esperando quizá que los demás adivinaran mis necesidades. Incluso me sentía culpable por pedir ciertas cosas, aunque no supiera muy bien por qué. Con el tiempo empecé a tomar acción y a entenderme mejor. Recuerdo haber visto un video sobre habilidades sociales donde alguien decía, más o menos: “abraza la incomodidad; no pasa nada, nadie se va a morir. Así se aprende”. Esa idea se quedó conmigo.

En esa incomodidad se entrenan capacidades que ninguna interfaz perfectamente personalizada puede reemplazar. La paciencia, la presencia, el tono, la escucha, la reparación, la capacidad de improvisar y de leer al otro se desarrollan practicándolas.

Podemos pensarlo así: los astronautas necesitan entrenar sus músculos cuando pasan demasiado tiempo sin gravedad, porque de lo contrario se atrofian. Algo parecido puede ocurrir con nuestros músculos sociales. Si evitamos constantemente toda situación incómoda, si delegamos cada interacción difícil, si buscamos siempre la respuesta más rápida y menos expuesta, corremos el riesgo de perder práctica precisamente en aquello que nos permite convivir.

Fricción y placer cuando estás creando.

He trabajado muchos años en el mundo de la tecnología como desarrollador de software. He creado aplicaciones, páginas web y scripts que automatizan áreas de mi vida, y también herramientas que prestan un servicio a instituciones, empresas privadas u ONG. Siempre he encontrado algo profundamente satisfactorio en terminar algo que empiezo, y suelo disfrutar bastante lo que aprendo en el camino.

Cuando termino un ensayo, o cuando empiezo un proyecto de código y comienzo a levantarlo con todo su stack tecnológico, hay una sensación muy particular. Configurar el entorno, instalar paquetes, preparar la base de datos, pensar la arquitectura, diseñar el modelo entidad-relación, construir el backend y conectar todas esas piezas tienen algo de oficio. Se disfruta ver cómo, combinando ciertas partes y herramientas, algo empieza a funcionar.

Aunque no sea físico, aunque sea digital, sigue siendo algo lógico, consistente, estructural. Algo con un propósito, orientado a un resultado. Hay un placer especial en diseccionar capas, entender componentes, ver cómo se relacionan entre sí y descubrir qué hace que un sistema cobre vida.

Por supuesto, nada de eso lo he creado desde cero completamente. Yo no inventé los lenguajes de programación, ni los frameworks, ni las librerías, ni la computadora que uso. Tampoco inventé la electricidad ni la electrónica sobre la que se sostiene toda esta tecnología. Pero eso no invalida el proceso. De la misma manera que un carpintero no necesita haber cortado el árbol ni extraído la madera para experimentar el placer de construir una mesa.

Mi punto es que hay un disfrute real en adentrarse en el interior de un tema práctico, en entender cómo se relacionan sus capas y componentes.

Recuerdo muchas veces sentirme frustrado instalando Linux por primera vez, sin saber por dónde empezar, cómo instalar un paquete o cómo resolver la instalación de una librería que necesitaba para crear comunicación asíncrona en Django hace más de nueve años.

Tuve que revisar foros, leer documentación, preguntar en comunidades de Python, equivocarme y volver a intentar hasta dar con la solución.

Hacer funcionar algo me obligó a investigar, a tener paciencia, a ser lo suficientemente curioso como para entender qué había detrás y cómo hacerlo andar.

Ese proceso no me dio solo conocimiento técnico. Me dio también una perspectiva sobre cómo se conectan las cosas y, sobre todo, paciencia para enfrentar problemas difíciles sin una guía clara.

Probablemente me enseñó aspectos de la tecnología que no se aprenden solamente leyendo un libro o escuchando a un profesor. Hay cosas que se aprenden equivocándose, frustrándose, observando las propias emociones y descubriendo cómo gestionarlas. Aprendes que a veces lo más sensato es levantarte, tomar un descanso y volver más tarde. Otras veces, en cambio, conviene quedarte varias horas concentrado, siguiendo una pista hasta el fondo, aunque todavía no sepas exactamente adónde te llevará.

Con el tiempo vas desarrollando una especie de sabiduría práctica: cuándo parar para poder avanzar mejor, cuándo insistir, cuándo pedir ayuda, cuándo buscar otra estrategia, cuándo aceptar que todavía no entiendes lo suficiente. Y, sobre todo, aprendes a confiar en que eventualmente podrás acercarte a una solución.

Hoy, con el desarrollo asistido por IA, muchas veces basta con preguntar, enviar un par de prompts, revisar la respuesta y sentir que el trabajo está “hecho”. Y en muchos casos eso es extraordinariamente útil. Pero también puede hacernos perder una parte valiosa del proceso: esa fricción, esa frustración y ese esfuerzo que construyen músculo intelectual y resiliencia.

Lo preocupante no es solo que podamos perder tolerancia a la frustración. También podríamos debilitar nuestra capacidad de pensar cómo abordar una tarea, cómo descomponer un problema, cómo formular hipótesis, cómo probar caminos distintos y cómo sostener la atención cuando la respuesta no aparece de inmediato.

Perder esa capacidad puede ser fácil, porque la IA nos ofrece constantemente el camino de menor resistencia.

No Se Puede Delegar El Conocimiento

Recuerdo haber leído un artículo muy interesante de Matt Gemmell, exdesarrollador de software, titulado What Have You Tried?_

(Articulo que solo sobrevive en archive.org debido a que cerro su antiguo blog)

El artículo hablaba de una actitud frecuente en ciertos desarrolladores: enfrentarse a un problema y, antes de haberlo intentado seriamente, pedir directamente la solución completa en otro lugar.

Por supuesto, en ingeniería muchas veces el objetivo práctico es entregar una solución, construir código para un cliente o desbloquear un problema concreto. Pero la crítica de Gemmell apuntaba a la falta de voluntad para alcanzar ese objetivo mediante un proceso honesto de autoaprendizaje, experimentación, intentos fallidos, refinamiento y mejora progresiva.

Me da la sensación de que este proceso puede debilitarse todavía más con la IA, especialmente cuando el afán principal es entregar resultados rápidos.

Si las nuevas generaciones aprenden a crear código principalmente a través de asistencia automática, corren el riesgo de saltarse una parte fundamental del aprendizaje:

El esfuerzo de formular el problema, intentar una solución, equivocarse, investigar, volver a probar y entender por qué algo funciona.

Ese proceso importa porque no solo te prepara para resolver el desafío actual. También construye una biblioteca interna de problemas conocidos, patrones, intuiciones y caminos posibles. Con el tiempo, empiezas a reconocer situaciones similares, a generalizar conocimientos y a abordar problemas desconocidos con más confianza. Aprendes a investigar de forma más enfocada. Aprendes a pensar.

Aunque el artículo de Gemmell está dirigido a la ingeniería y a la resolución de problemas complejos, creo que también aplica a la virtud y a la sabiduría.

Me recuerda mucho a la crítica que Séneca hace de Calvisio Sabino en las Cartas a Lucilio.

Séneca cuenta que Sabino era un hombre riquísimo, pero no especialmente culto. Para compensarlo, compraba esclavos muy instruidos: uno sabía de memoria a Homero, otro a Hesíodo, otros dominaban distintos poetas o áreas del conocimiento. Así podía rodearse de cultura sin haberla trabajado interiormente. Si necesitaba citar algo, sus esclavos lo recordaban por él.

En cierto sentido, estaban a sus pies como asistentes a demanda. Estaban, literalmente, a un prompt de distancia.

La crítica de Séneca era durísima:

El conocimiento no se puede delegar de esa manera. Puedes comprar libros, maestros, esclavos cultos o herramientas, pero no puedes comprar la transformación interior que produce el estudio. No basta con tener cerca a alguien que sabe. No basta con tener acceso inmediato a respuestas.

La IA nos pone frente a una versión contemporánea de esa misma tentación.

Podemos pedirle que cite libros que no hemos leído, que resuma ideas que no hemos meditado, que escriba argumentos que no hemos sufrido intelectualmente. Puede ser una herramienta extraordinaria, pero también puede convertirse en una forma elegante de aparentar profundidad sin atravesar el esfuerzo que la profundidad exige.

Con esto no quiero decir que la IA impida aprender. Al contrario, creo que puede ayudarnos a ir mucho más lejos. Podemos usarla para conocer mejor cada capa de un problema, preguntar por aquello que no entendemos, pedir ejemplos, contrastar ideas, profundizar en cada interacción. De hecho, eso intento hacer muchas veces. En ese sentido, puede ser una maestra extraordinaria.

Pero hay una diferencia entre usarla para aprender y usarla para saltarnos el aprendizaje. La primera opción exige más tiempo, más preguntas, más atención. La segunda nos entrega una sensación rápida de resultado, pero puede dejarnos sin haber incorporado realmente nada.

No debemos confundir asistencia con formación.

A eso voy: el peligro que veo es que podemos perder demasiada fricción. Queremos la solución instantánea, la respuesta inmediata, el resultado presentable, sin pagar el precio de aprender de verdad la herramienta, sin navegar la frustración, sin dejar que la información se asiente en nuestra mente y en nuestro cuerpo. Saber no es tener información alrededor; saber es haberla trabajado, digerido e incorporado hasta convertirla en criterio.

Carl Sagan ya advertía algo parecido cuando decía que vivimos en una sociedad exquisitamente dependiente de la ciencia y la tecnología, en la que casi nadie sabe nada sobre ciencia y tecnología. Para él, depender de aquello que no entendemos era una fórmula segura para el desastre.

Eficientes Para Qué

Nuestro sistema económico nos pide resultados para ayer. Nos empuja a ser más rápidos, más productivos, más eficientes. Quien entrega antes suele ser premiado. Quien responde más rápido parece más comprometido. La empresa que desarrolla una aplicación, un producto o un negocio antes que sus competidores puede capturar más mercado, más atención y más ganancias. La campaña de marketing que se vuelve viral con rapidez parece haber cumplido mejor su función.

No es solo que nos guste la inmediatez. Es que, a nivel económico, la inmediatez se premia y la demora se castiga.

La lentitud aparece casi como una falla moral o económica. Si algo tarda, parece ineficiente. Si algo exige pausa, parece improductivo. Si alguien necesita tiempo para pensar, dudar o madurar una decisión, puede parecer menos capaz que quien responde de inmediato.

Vivimos bajo una presión constante por ser eficientes. Pero la pregunta importante es: ¿eficientes para qué? ¿Para quién? ¿Para producir más, vender más y responder más rápido, o para vivir mejor?

Una empresa puede producir el doble con la mitad de trabajadores. Un programador puede generar mucho más código en menos tiempo. Podemos responder mensajes instantáneamente, crear imágenes en segundos y delegar decisiones a agentes.

Desde cierta métrica, todo eso parece progreso.

¿El progreso orientado a producir más y generar más dinero se traduce necesariamente en bienestar humano?.

No pretendo resolver aquí toda esa discusión. Me interesa, más bien, una pregunta más concreta: ¿qué ocurre con el tiempo que supuestamente ganamos?.

Para pensar esto vuelvo a Séneca. De nuevo en sus Cartas a Lucilio, en la primera carta se ha vuelto una de mis preferidas. Allí Séneca reflexiona sobre el tiempo como nuestro único bien verdaderamente irrecuperable, y sobre lo poco que solemos valorarlo.

Nos enojaría o entristecería mucho que alguien nos quitara nuestras posesiones materiales. Defenderíamos nuestro dinero, nuestra casa, nuestras cosas. Pero cuando algo o alguien nos quita tiempo, muchas veces ni siquiera lo cuestionamos. Lo material puede recuperarse. El tiempo, no

Séneca le pide a su amigo Lucilio algo aparentemente simple: que reclame su tiempo para sí mismo. Le advierte que parte del tiempo nos lo arrebatan, parte nos lo roban y parte se nos escapa sin darnos cuenta.

Con el uso masivo y acelerado de la IA, la pregunta importante no es solo cuánto tiempo nos ahorra, sino qué ocurre después con ese tiempo.

¿Vuelve realmente a nosotros? ¿Se convierte en contemplación, descanso, conversación, juego, pensamiento propio? ¿O simplemente es absorbido por un sistema que inmediatamente nos exige aprender más, producir más, consumir más, responder más rápido y mantenernos competitivos?

Si una herramienta me permite hacer en una hora lo que antes hacía en tres, eso podría ser una forma de liberación. Pero también puede convertirse en una nueva expectativa, ahora se espera que haga tres veces más.

Entonces no gané necesariamente dos horas de vida; gané capacidad productiva que puede ser absorbida de inmediato por nuevas demandas.

Por supuesto, esto no es un problema exclusivo de la IA.

La IA es una herramienta. Pero ninguna herramienta existe en el vacío.

La misma tecnología que puede ayudarnos a cuidar mejor la salud, aprender más rápido o resolver problemas complejos también puede ponerse al servicio de vigilancia, manipulación, explotación o guerra.

La diferencia no está solo en la capacidad técnica, sino en los incentivos, instituciones y estructuras que deciden hacia dónde se orienta esa capacidad.

No desarrollaré aquí toda esa discusión, aunque probablemente merece su propio ensayo.

Por ahora me basta con dejar abierta esta pregunta:

Cuando una tecnología nos ahorra tiempo, ¿ese tiempo vuelve realmente a la vida humana o es capturado de nuevo por la maquinaria de la productividad?

¿Qué No Quiero Delegar?

Para mí queda claro que hay ciertas fricciones y ciertos procesos que no deberíamos saltarnos tan fácilmente.

Trabajo todos los días con IA y conozco de primera mano lo extraordinariamente útil que puede ser. Sé lo fácil que sería pedirle que escriba un ensayo en segundos, mientras yo paso horas, e incluso días, reflexionando, corrigiendo y reescribiendo.

Entonces, si me preguntan. ¿Por qué escribir yo?

Porque escribir me obliga a embarcarme en un proceso propio de estudio. Me obliga a leer artículos, autores y escuelas de pensamiento; a reflexionar sobre distintas ideas; a conectarlas con mi experiencia; a preguntarme cómo las he sentido, vivido o entendido; a llevar ciertos argumentos más lejos de lo que inicialmente pensaba.

Muchas veces, al escribir sobre una idea, descubro que no era tan sólida como parecía. Cuando busco una metáfora o un ejemplo concreto, tengo que volver a mi propia experiencia. Siento que mi mente empieza a hacer nuevas conexiones. Entiendo mejor mis propias ideas y, a veces, también el mundo que intento describir.

No estoy solamente produciendo un ensayo como resultado. El ensayo también está haciendo algo conmigo.

A esto podríamos llamarlo fricción formativa: una dificultad que exige algo de nosotros y que, al atravesarla, desarrolla una capacidad o transforma nuestra comprensión.

Recuerdo que cuando empecé a programar, una de las primeras cosas que hice fue crear un script para clasificar automáticamente los archivos descargados en una carpeta según su tipo: si era un video, lo enviaba a una carpeta de videos; si era un PDF, ODT o DOCX, lo movía a documentos generales, y así sucesivamente.

Ese pequeño script me facilitaba una tarea repetitiva que hacía con frecuencia, que me quitaba tiempo y que, honestamente, no sentía que me estuviera enseñando demasiado.

Cuando automatizamos tareas repetitivas, aburridas o puramente administrativas, la tecnología puede devolvernos vida. Recordarnos pagar facturas, revisar nuestras finanzas, hacer mantenimiento a ciertas cosas, declarar impuestos o mover archivos de una carpeta a otra puede ser tremendamente útil.

En mi opinión, esas son fricciones inútiles: tareas que demandan atención, tiempo y energía sin producir aprendizaje significativo, vínculo humano o criterio nuevo.

Conclusión

Cuando empecé a escribir este ensayo, no sabía si tendría una respuesta. Ni siquiera sabía si tendría una pregunta. Solo quería expresar algunas preocupaciones generales sobre la tecnología, la IA, la automatización y esa tendencia creciente a eliminar toda fricción posible.

Ahora siento que, al menos, tengo una pregunta:

¿Qué cosas no quiero delegar aunque pueda?

¿Qué estoy cediendo al automatizar esto? ¿Qué fricción me estoy saltando? ¿Esa fricción era inútil o podía ser formativa? ¿Podía incluso ser disfrutable? ¿Qué estoy perdiendo al eliminarla? ¿Qué cualidades, experiencias o vínculos dejaría de cultivar?

En mi caso, no siento ningún problema en delegar que alguien más prepare mis impuestos. Tampoco me inquieta automatizar recordatorios, mover archivos o simplificar tareas administrativas que solo consumen atención sin devolverme demasiado.

Pero definitivamente no quiero delegar mi experiencia de aprender cómo funciona mi casa, cómo manejar mi dinero, cómo cuidar mi salud, cómo elegir amigos, cómo conversar, cómo improvisar, cómo pedir ayuda, cómo ofrecerla y cómo navegar por la vida.

Estas preguntas debería hacérselas cada persona.

Porque la tecnología es una herramienta, no tiene sentido rechazarla, sino aprender a usarla sin entregar partes esenciales de nosotros mismos.

Antes de automatizar algo, tal vez convenga preguntarnos:

¿Qué estoy ganando al delegarlo?
¿Qué capacidad dejo de practicar?
¿Qué experiencia humana estoy evitando?
¿Quiero convertirme en alguien que ya no necesita ejercerla?

Jamás se ha tratado de ser antitecnológico ni de romantizar toda dificultad.

Necesitamos aprender a discernir.

Parafraseando a Jacque Fresco: la promesa más noble de la tecnología no debería ser producir más, sino liberar tiempo, energía y sensibilidad para que podamos descubrir qué significa ser humanos.

• Gustave Caillebotte- Chrysanthemums in the Garden at Petit-Gennevilliers, MoMA

-“You looking good.”

-“Devil’s confusion. He lets me look good long as I feel bad. He looked at her and the word ‘bad’ took on another meaning.”

Toni Morrison- Beloved

I should have a picture under the dictionary definition of the word “hermit” because I truly embody the very essence of one. Lately I have even been leaning much more into it. It feels like a pull, not a negative pull into a chasm that is inescapable, but a pull toward a gentle seclusion that tends to me quietly, gracefully. Social media is a foreign concept to me now, although I know I, as a human, need the connections and interaction. Now is just not the time. Now is a time to assimilate life lessons, to parse through the dense memory of my past with a fine tooth comb and articulate to myself certain realizations, certain wisdom that has been otherwise overlooked. Much of it stings at first, my heart swelling with emotion that transcends time and space. Memories begin to flow without me even trying. They are shown to me as if just yesterday these events happened, which makes it all the more better to see through a new perspective. Fall and winter are naturally the times of year this process tends to happen. The leaves change color and begin to fall away. So too does my mind work to change my inner world, shedding memories like autumn leaves. I pick them up and rotate them by the stem, turning them fast between my thumb and forefinger. I suddenly embody the little girl within these memories, seeing through her eyes and through omnipotent ones simultaneously. I see the transgressions made by adults and send myself intense thoughts of love and support knowing she feels it in her time, although she does not know how or why. Healing takes an immense mental and emotional toll that many can only take so much of. Diving in again and again takes strength and courage that transforms you into a much wiser being. I myself am a hypocrite if I never acknowledge my ego that continues to battle with me for control over my memories and current reality. My ego hates being told what to do, hates wasting time on things she deems unworthy. She uses intense language to describe the emotional pain she feels doing normal everyday things. All she wants is to be left alone, with all the time in the world to think, dream, feel, breathe, and do. Writing comes naturally to her, a small reprieve that allows her thoughts a physical form, otherwise she writhes and trembles with all the intensity of a raging storm in the middle of the ocean ready to capsize the ship carrying her heart and mind as its crew. I write and I mediate everyday, yet my rage flows steadily at regular intervals in response to triggers that my ego refuses to compromise with. I am aware of reality, I am aware of certain things that must be done, but the rage refuses to withdraw. I self destruct, have so many times before and continue to. I am not proud of it, but at least it makes me human. I cannot be sage all the time despite wanting to be. I cannot be positive in every moment. I must go through the rollercoaster of human emotion and learn to accept them all as they are. There is a great deal of work ahead of me to be faced through my fear and mental and emotional torment. I give myself no choice in this matter. No matter what it takes I will get better, be better, and do better.

concrescence, or growing together

Of my week, all things said and done, I relished the persisting troubled sleep. Night upon night of sweetly shipwrecking on the rocks. To me nocturnal restlessness is by far the more interesting state of mind. Waking in the middle of night with the troubled mind of a thousand spot fires on the verge of growing together into that fiery front greater than the sum of its parts. Concrescere! A convulsion of many minds in one. Darting this way and that. Each haplessly splashing about a few spades of water in its tiny bucket. Or else glued to the spot in sheer terror.

My stir and panic was about control. Useless control. Even worse is the retreat into timidity which follows. For the sake of timidity, I had been smothering out the very life of my mind with endless distractions. Distractions which titillate, but only ever so slightly. Distractions devoid of meaning in case of suddenly irrupting into roaring significance. But now I cannot unsee this poison keeping me subdued.

When did I choose to wake? At four o’clock this morning, precisely. I was a nervous tremble. Spot fires everywhere. I plugged my earhole to soothe myself with the sounds of a podcast. But the host’s gentle voice was too tinny in the tiny earphone. And, following his cadence of thought, I myself began to think his thinkings at the annoying remove of bafflement or utter boredom – I could not tell which. So I exasperatedly flicked the earphone aside. For some minutes I lay waiting and watching my thoughts fly past in great traumatic rivers. Then, as goes all flirting at the boundary, I first surrendered myself to them and then, once along for the ride, recast my surrender as taking a noble stand. The biggest swells and soaring crests began collapsing upon themselves. The river subsided and a single mottled pebble remained. Its stillness stayed my own raging appetite for comfort. And I rose and went to clean forks and spoons in my tiny kitchen sink, and make chai. Only now I have passed to the other side can I laugh huge guffaws at the faux nobility which got me here. Is is time to kick down my ladder?

The moon has been shining bright, full and with a silvery glow without warmth these past three days!

And tonight it was only 98% full but bright as ever nonetheless!

And it made me think of this Song of Songs: Ohia/Magnolia electric co. “Almost was good enough”

It’s one of my favourites, even the lyrics really does strike a chord

First:

Did you really believe, come on, did you really believe That everyone makes it out? Almost no one makes it out Almost no one makes it out

And then, finally

For once, almost was good enough Almost was good enough Almost was good enough

It’s good,

Cöda 5609c

Op alle slakken leg ik zout en ik zaag ook planken van dun hout het kan me niet verrekken dat ik maanden bezig ben om die slakken te dekken of dat mijn planken zelfs niet goed genoeg zijn voor de scandinavische meubel bakker als ik het niet doe lig ik alle nachten wakker ik laat me echt alles op de mouw spelden ben te slecht in koprekenen om op mijn tellen te letten het kan me niet verdommen dat het gevaar in drommen op me af komt door foute aftreksommen mijn armen niet meer op kan tillen door overgewicht als ik het zou laten deed ik geen oog meer dicht ik weet van geen wijken zet ontzettend veel zoden aan alle dijken het maakt me echt niks uit ook al gaat de hele wijk met mij achteruit halve en hele zoodjes moeten elke dijk en masse bedekken zodat er rede is om de wekker te zetten.

Welterusten

I had some reservations about Gwyn Thomas’s book The Dark Philosophers when I read it earlier this year, yet I liked it well enough to want to try one of his later productions. I settled on a volume of his short fiction entitled Gazooka and Other Stories, first published in 1957. I wanted to like this book but can’t say that I did. I finished it yesterday. Most of the pieces in the collection are in a more or less comedic vein, and the tendency of humour to age poorly accounts for some of what I disliked. It’s not the worst of such cases — relatively little in it has fully curdled — but an air of mustiness prevails.

I get the impression that Thomas was first and foremost a prodigious talker: an unstoppable anecdotalist and raconteur. Without the music of his voice to animate the words, they can seem to lift a little feebly from the flatness of the page. If there had been such a thing as an audiobook version read by the author, that would have been the ideal way to approach it. There is altogether too much dialogue for my liking: characters often talk or think in overdone half-page paragraphs, minimising narrative momentum.

To my taste the story that worked best was one called ‘A Teacher’ which was one of only a couple of pieces in the book not aiming for laughs. The title story is by some distance the book’s longest (‘gazooka’, I gather, is just another word for kazoo). It concerns some farcical events centred on a marching band (of kazooists), set in a South Wales Valleys town in the summer of 1926 — the grim year of the General Strike. Events unfold with exasperatingly slow wordiness, with ostensibly humorous set-pieces failing to raise a smile. Plodding through with scant enthusiasm I was much surprised at the genuinely beautiful ending that Thomas contrived for it.

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After a bad experience with vintage sealing-wax I’ve acquired some that’s newly-made in the traditional style, concocted in France to a 17th-Century recipe by J. Herbin. I won’t be using it often, so the box of ten sticks of wax may even last beyond my lifetime. It would have been more sensible to get just a few loose sticks, but in doing so I would have missed out in the glorious old-school packaging a full box provides.

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Via Discogs I obtained a second and better-sounding CD copy of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers With Thelonious Monk (as mentioned in the entry before last). Ordered together with it was Les Fleurs, a 2001 compilation of music by Minnie Riperton. Hitherto I’d only been familiar with the famous ‘Lovin’ You’ and (though I had more than once forgotten its name) the title track. Spanning a progression from psychedelic soul through to disco, it’s a fine introduction to her work. Her pre-disco numbers are more to my taste than the later output. Riperton’s voice is exquisite throughout: crystal-clear diction; a bright, clear timbre — and those astonishing high notes.