Langkah Rajendra menggema di sepanjang koridor, cepat, tergesa, dan nyaris tanpa jeda. Udara siang yang lembab membuat napasnya memburu. Ponselnya masih menempel di telinga, tapi tak ada lagi suara dari seberang. Hanya isak yang sesekali pecah, lalu hening lagi.

“Sha…” suaranya melembut, nyaris bergetar, “aku udah di sini. Can you here me? Aku udah di sini, sayang.”

Pintu toilet terbuka perlahan. Aroma sabun dan lantai basah menyambutnya, tapi pandangannya langsung berhenti pada gadis di pojok ruangan. Nayyala duduk bersandar di dinding, tubuhnya gemetar hebat. Matanya merah, air matanya jatuh tanpa suara. Tangan kirinya memegang ponsel erat, seolah itu satu-satunya hal yang membuatnya tetap sadar.

Rajendra mendekat perlahan, menundukan dirinya agar sejajar dengan wajah Nayyala. Ia tak langsung bicara, hanya meraih jemari Nayyala yang dingin dan menggenggamnya perlahan. “Sha, please… take a breath first, sayang…” bisiknya lembut. “Pelan-pelan, ya? Bareng sama aku.”

Nayyala menatapnya samar, matanya basah dan bingung. “Dia di sini, Jen…” suaranya nyaris tak terdengar. “Aku liat dia… dia mau nyamperin aku—aku takut, Jen.”

Rajendra menariknya pelan ke dalam pelukannya, membiarkan kepala gadis itu bersandar di dadanya. “Nggak apa-apa,” ujarnya lirih, seolah membisikkan mantra. “Aku udah di sini, Sha. Gak ada yang bisa nyakitin kamu lagi.”

Tangannya mengusap pelan punggung Nayyala, mengatur ritme napasnya seirama, lembut, dan sabar. Setiap kali bahu Nayyala bergetar karena tangisnya, Rajendra hanya menunduk sedikit, menempelkan dagunya di atas kepala gadis itu, dan berbisik pelan “its okey sayang, you safe now.”

Hening sejenak. Hanya ada suara detak jam dinding dan helaan napas mereka berdua. Nayyala memejamkan mata, mencoba menelan sisa takut yang masih tersisa di dadanya.

Rajendra tetap di tempatnya, tak peduli waktu berjalan atau suara panitia yang memanggilnya lewat HT. Bagi Rajendra, dunianya saat itu cuma satu, gadis yang ada di pelukannya. Yang tangannya masih dingin, tapi perlahan mulai berhenti gemetar. Yang napasnya mulai teratur lagi setelah sekian lama tersengal karena panik.

Ia menatap wajah Nayyala, menyibak sedikit rambut yang menutupi pipinya, dan berbisik pelan, “Udah, Sha. Udah gak apa-apa. Kamu aman… im promise.” Suara itu terdengar seperti janji kecil, tapi bagi Nayyala, itu cukup untuk membuat dadanya sedikit lega. Karena dari semua hal yang pernah runtuh di hidupnya, satu hal yang selalu nyata adalah Rajendra, yang selalu datang tepat saat semuanya hampir hancur.

Langit pagi itu cerah, tapi entah kenapa udara terasa berat di dada Nayyala. Penggalan chat Lavanya yang memberitahunya bahwa Arlo sedang berada di kampus berhasil menguasai pikirannya. Pada langkah berikutnya, genggaman di ponselnya melemah. Dalam satu tarikan napas yang berat, trauma lama yang selama ini ia simpan rapat, tiba-tiba menyeruak tanpa permisi. Tangannya dingin, jantungnya berpacu cepat, dan napasnya mulai tak beraturan.

Nayyala mencoba berjalan cepat di koridor menuju aula, tapi baru beberapa langkah, pandangannya menangkap sosok itu, tinggi, tegap, dan terlalu familiar untuk salah. Arlo berjalan menghampirinya bersama sang Kakak tingkat Jericho.

Tatapan mereka bertemu sesaat, cukup lama untuk membuat dunia Nayyala runtuh lagi.

Detik berikutnya, ia berbalik, berlari ke arah lain. Nafasnya tersengal, matanya kabur oleh air mata yang mulai tumpah tanpa bisa dikendalikan. Toilet perempuan di dekat lobby menjadi tempat perlindungannya. Nayyala masuk terburu-buru, mengunci pintu, dan bersandar di baliknya. Tangan yang gemetar mencoba memegang ponsel untuk menghubungi siapapun, Nelendra, Manggala. Kaivan. Gasendra. Tapi tak satu pun menjawab. Suaranya pecah ketika napasnya mulai tercekat. Dunianya kembali terasa sempit, terlalu sempit untuk menampung semua rasa takut itu.

Di sisi lain, di aula utama, Rajendra menatap layar ponselnya yang kosong. Belum ada kabar dari Nayyala. Biasanya gadis itu selalu memberi tahu, sekadar, “udah otw, ya.” atau “aku udah di parkiran.” Tapi kali ini hening.

Rajendra berjalan keluar dari aula, menekan nomor Nayyala berulang-ulang menelponnya. Namun tidak dijawab. Raut wajahnya mulai berubah, tenangnya terkikis oleh rasa khawatir yang makin tumbuh.

Tangannya bergegas menelpon Nalendra. “Len, Nayya masih sama lo?”

Suara di seberang terdengar tenang seperti biasa, tapi jawaban itu justru membuat Rajendra membeku. “Kagak, udah gue drop di lobi. Dari lima belas menit yang lalu.”

Seketika darahnya terasa berhenti mengalir. Kalimat itu menyalakan semua alarm di kepalanya. “Oke thanks, Len.” Tutupnya

Disaat yang bersamaan “Rajen, you here me!”

Suara Manggala terdengar di HT khusus, dengan nada panik. Rajendra langsung menempelkan alat itu ke telinganya. “Kenapa, Gal?”

“Jen, kayanya Nayya ketemu Arlo. Gue sama yang lain gak bisa ngubungin Nayya, Jen. Nomornya aktif, tapi gak diangkat.”

Kalimat yang cukup singkat itu mampu membuat Rajendra langsung berlari. Tanpa pamit, tanpa menoleh. Langkahnya menggema di sepanjang koridor yang kini terasa terlalu panjang.

Panggilan demi panggilan ia tekan, entah sudah keberapa kali. Sampai akhirnya, di tengah napasnya yang memburu, sambungan itu tersambung. Hening. Lalu suara isak pelan terdengar dari seberang.

“Sha?” Rajendra menahan napas. “Kamu dimana, sayang? Maaf… aku telat. Boleh kasih tau aku kamu dimana?”

Suara Nayyala pecah, serak, penuh ketakutan yang ia tahan sejak tadi. “Aku di toilet utama… Jen, aku takut.” Cukup satu kalimat itu untuk membuat seluruh tubuh Rajendra menegang.

Tanpa berpikir lagi, ia berlari lebih kencang, menyusuri koridor dengan napas terengah, mata menatap lurus ke arah lobi utama kampus. Satu-satunya hal yang ada di pikirannya cuma satu menemukan Nayyala.

I caught myself in so many ways today, and I wanna start by giving myself credit for that. The latest thing I caught was wanting to ask for reassurance that E would not be going to random men for support now when I take an hour or two of space to regulate. I recognized that there isn’t a logical reason for me to expect that, and it would be an anxious attachment thing that’s unhealthy. In my mind the defense is “if she was to cheat, let her since that would let me know to end things, and I mentally detach myself from her. I then recognize that the thought is just me swinging the needle too far to the other side of being detached. Yes that thought would also keep me safe, but at the cost of genuine connection. Logically the more reasonable thought is recognizing that fear, labeling it as irrational and then giving myself the reassurance I need. I both trust E, and I also know that even in the worst case I will be ok. I am safe.

I talked with my therapist today, and I realized (with her help) that E getting therapy was a sign of her commitment to me. I was hoping to be able to talk to her today about that, but she shut down during the first topic that was much lighter and I didn’t even get to finish it. I fully get that she’s under a lot of stress and pressure right now, but it does suck that I asked her if she had capacity to talk about things, and she said yes and then just fully shut down immediately.

I’m mostly just writing now to be able to vent and regulate myself. I think I suffer from success often, because I set the bar for a lot of things, and unfortunately I have that for comparison. For example, I’m a firm believer that if there’s a will there’s a way. I remember how badly I had to work for so many different things, like growing up unsocialized and isolated, and studying online different emotional topics to try to be normal. Or how I was willing to risk everything to get therapy. Or how badly I’ve had to fight against the condition that has caused one entire path of my family line to kill themselves. I know that there are definitely people out there that had to fight harder, but I sure as hell know there are plenty of people out there that have not fought hard enough. And I know that I’m being unreasonable in this, but when E doesn’t even give what I consider a good effort at therapy, it feels like I’m faced with either thinking that she simply does not care enough to put an effort, or to look down on her and just think that she is not capable the same way that I am. It almost feels like playing tennis doubles with someone, and it being something important. For me I’ve spent 100s of hours practicing tennis growing up, and now I am at a certain level that there is not a chance my partner could keep up with without having nearly as much practice. And then it’s the frustration that comes from being limited by someone else, in a way that I cannot necessarily control. And it feels frustrating, because it’s disproportionate the levels that we’re at. I don’t like thinking like this, because the next thought that comes to my head is that I am doomed to settle for someone who is way less competent than I am, or it is that I need to instead find someone that is more on my level. But both of those things are violently wrong, and I can immediately poke the logical holes in that. First of all, maybe this doubles match doesn’t matter that much. Second of all there’s way more than just this doubles match to a person. And also it’s not like I’m powerless, it’s unfair and way harder, but I can always both carry their share, and also carry the additional burden that comes from that. I can just get better, and that is something I can control. But I guess I kind of wish I didn’t have that as an option in a way. I wish I didn’t have to always be the one ahead.

I absolutely know that there are more than just these criteria, but honestly I kind of fall short when I try to think about more. But if you compare me and E together, I am more emotionally mature, I am I think physically more conventionally attractive, I am financially and career wise much more successful, I think I’m more thoughtful, and while she is absolutely way above average in a lot of those things, I think I beat her. And I fully know that it’s not a competition, and to me my answer whenever she asks me if that feeling affects me, I tell her how it’s not a competition and that I love her not for those things or criteria, but rather because of the connection that I have to her in other ways, like the shared interests we have or how she cares and is super sweet and all of these other very real things. But whenever I think about it in the lens of comparison, it feels bad because I think it’s a one sided blowout. It’d be easier if there was some give and take, like yes I carry more of the emotional burden but she carries more of the chores or housekeeping things. Or maybe I carry more of the financial burden, but she handles thoughtful things more like planning dates or activities. But it’s all mostly me. And I’m happy in the relationship, so incredibly so, but whenever I’m put in a situation where I’m hurt from her emotional shortcomings, it fucking sucks.

It almost feels like I always need to go through all these additional steps mentally and this extra effort to process and navigate this dance between two minds communication is, while she gets to stumble around it. It’s like understanding strategy and the game at a high level and then duping with someone who’s just holding w and playing death match. I like journaling because I don’t have to really explain these analogies that I get.

Let me do a CBT chart, I know it will help.

S: I was unable to voice my thoughts or feelings to E, and I was bitten for reaching out this time.

T: I just can’t speak to her, or be open about things without her shutting down.

F: I feel both hopeless and terrified like a child again, but then I also feel just shut off and cold, to protect myself.

B: I close off to her, and I harbor this resentment that will bottle up and come out.

T: She absolutely is capable of listening to me, just not always. She is not perfect, just like every other human. She is also under a LOT of other mental strain from the funeral, and being surrounded by family in Texas. I know how much being around family shuts me down, and also she is going through emotional withdrawals like I am from the distance.

F: I get why this happened, and there’s a reason and not a general pattern.

B: I regulate my emotions and I feel them resolve. I give her grace and patience.

God I need to do CBT more.

Pluribus Episode 8: Charm Offensive

See 100 Word reviews of previous episodes here

Responding to Carol's plea in episode eight, Zosia and the Others return to Albuquerque. The episode centers on Carol and Zosia's slow-burning love story. Carol’s urging of Zosia to use “I” statements felt like a clue. The sexual tension edged right up until the collective consciousness deduced Carol needed to get laid.

To me, Pluribus is an allegory of the AI debate. Manousos rejects all utility of the hive-mind, while Diabaté embraces its spoils. Carol shares Manousos’ moral outrage but is developing more nuanced, self-serving rules of engagement. This mirrors the camps lining up for the AI wars.

Watch it

#tv #Pluribus #SciFi #VinceGilligan #AppleTV #Television #100WordReview #Larrys100 #100DaysToOffload

The convergence of political influence and artificial intelligence development has accelerated beyond traditional lobbying into something more fundamental: a restructuring of how advanced technology is governed, funded, and deployed. When venture capitalist Marc Andreessen described the aftermath of Donald Trump's 2024 election victory as feeling “like a boot off the throat,” he wasn't simply celebrating regulatory relief. He was marking the moment when years of strategic political investment by Silicon Valley's AI elite began yielding tangible returns in the form of favourable policy, lucrative government contracts, and unprecedented influence over the regulatory frameworks that will govern humanity's most consequential technology.

What makes this moment distinctive is not merely that wealthy technologists have cultivated political relationships. Such arrangements have existed throughout the history of American capitalism, from the railroad barons of the nineteenth century to the telecommunications giants of the twentieth. Rather, the novelty lies in the concentration of influence around a technology whose development trajectory will fundamentally reshape economic structures, labour markets, information environments, and potentially the nature of intelligence itself. The stakes of AI governance extend far beyond ordinary industrial policy into questions about human autonomy, economic organisation, and the distribution of power in democratic societies.

The pattern emerging from the intersection of political capital and AI development reveals far more than opportunistic lobbying or routine industry influence. Instead, a systematic reshaping of competitive dynamics is underway, where proximity to political power increasingly determines which companies gain access to essential infrastructure, energy resources, and the regulatory latitude necessary to deploy frontier AI systems at scale. This transformation raises profound questions about whether AI governance will emerge from democratic deliberation or from backroom negotiations between political allies and tech oligarchs whose financial interests and ideological commitments have become deeply intertwined with governmental decision-making.

Financial Infrastructure of Political Influence

The scale of direct political investment by AI-adjacent figures in the 2024 election cycle represents an inflection point in Silicon Valley's relationship with formal political power. Elon Musk contributed more than $270 million to political groups supporting Donald Trump and Republican candidates, including approximately $75 million to his own America PAC, making him the largest single donor in the election according to analysis by the Washington Post and The Register. This investment secured Musk not merely access but authority: leadership of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a position from which he wields influence over the regulatory environment facing his AI startup xAI alongside his other ventures.

The DOGE role creates extraordinary conflicts of interest. Richard Schoenstein, vice chair of litigation practice at law firm Tarter Krinsky & Drogin, characterised Musk's dual role as businessman and Trump advisor a “dangerous combination.” Venture capitalist Reid Hoffman wrote in the Financial Times that Musk's direct ownership in xAI creates a “serious conflict of interest in terms of setting federal AI policies for all US companies.” These concerns materialised rapidly as xAI secured governmental contracts whilst Musk simultaneously held authority over efficiency initiatives affecting the entire technology sector.

Peter Thiel, co-founder of Palantir Technologies, took a different approach. Despite having donated a record $15 million to JD Vance's 2022 Ohio Senate race, Thiel announced he would not donate to any 2024 presidential campaigns, though he confirmed he would vote for Trump. Yet Thiel's influence manifests through networks rather than direct contributions. More than a dozen individuals with ties to Thiel's companies secured positions in the Trump administration, including Vice President JD Vance himself, whom Thiel introduced to Trump in 2021. Bloomberg documented how Clark Minor (who worked at Palantir for nearly 13 years) became Chief Information Officer at the Department of Health and Human Services (which holds contracts with Palantir), whilst Jim O'Neill (who described Thiel as his “patron”) was named acting director of the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.

Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, co-founders of Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), made their first presidential campaign donations in 2024, supporting Trump. Their firm donated $25 million to crypto-focused super PACs and backed “Leading The Future,” a super PAC reportedly armed with more than $100 million to ensure pro-AI electoral victories in the 2026 midterm elections, according to Gizmodo. The PAC's founding backers include OpenAI president Greg Brockman, Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, and AI search company Perplexity, creating a formidable coalition dedicated to opposing state-level AI regulation.

In podcast episodes following Trump's victory, Andreessen and Horowitz articulated fears that regulatory approaches to cryptocurrency might establish precedents for AI governance. Given a16z's substantial investments across AI companies, they viewed preventing regulatory frameworks as existential to their portfolio's value. David Sacks (a billionaire venture capitalist) secured appointment as both the White House's crypto and AI czar, giving the venture capital community direct representation in policy formation.

The return on these investments became visible almost immediately. Within months of Trump's inauguration, Palantir's stock surged more than 200% from the day before the election. The company secured more than $113 million in federal contracts since Trump took office, including an $800 million Pentagon deal, according to NPR. Michael McGrath, former chief executive of i2 (a data analytics firm competing with Palantir), observed that “having political connections and inroads with Peter Thiel and Elon Musk certainly helps them. It makes deals come faster without a lot of negotiation and pressure.”

For xAI, Musk's AI venture valued at $80 billion following its merger with X, political proximity translated into direct government integration. In early 2025, xAI signed an agreement with the General Services Administration enabling federal agencies to access its Grok AI chatbot through March 2027 at $0.42 per agency for 18 months, as reported by Newsweek. The arrangement raises significant questions about competitive procurement processes and whether governmental adoption of xAI products reflects technical merit or political favour.

The interconnected nature of these investments creates mutually reinforcing relationships. Musk's political capital benefits not only xAI but also Tesla (whose autonomous driving systems depend on AI), SpaceX (whose contracts with NASA and the Defence Department exceed billions of dollars), and Neuralink (whose brain-computer interfaces require regulatory approval). Similarly, Thiel's network encompasses Palantir, Anduril Industries, and numerous portfolio companies through Founders Fund, all positioned to benefit from favourable governmental relationships. This concentration means that political influence flows not merely to individual companies but to entire portfolios of interconnected ventures controlled by a small number of individuals.

The Regulatory Arbitrage Strategy

Political investment by AI companies cannot be understood solely as seeking favour. Rather, it represents a systematic strategy to reshape the regulatory landscape itself. The Trump administration's swift repeal of President Biden's October 2023 Executive Order on AI demonstrates how regulatory frameworks can be dismantled as rapidly as they're constructed when political winds shift.

Biden's executive order had established structured oversight including mandatory red-teaming for high-risk AI models, enhanced cybersecurity protocols, and requirements for advanced AI developers to submit safety results to the federal government. Trump's January 20, 2025 Executive Order 14148 rescinded these provisions entirely, replacing them with a framework “centred on deregulation and the promotion of AI innovation as a means of maintaining US global dominance,” as characterised by the American Psychological Association.

Trump's December 11, 2025 executive order explicitly pre-empts state-level AI regulation, attempting to establish a “single national framework” that prevents states from enforcing their own AI rules. White House crypto and AI czar David Sacks justified this federal intervention by arguing it would prevent a “patchwork of state regulations” that could impede innovation. Silicon Valley leaders like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman had consistently advocated for precisely this outcome, as CNN and NPR reported, despite legal questions about whether such federal pre-emption exceeds executive authority.

The lobbying infrastructure supporting this transformation expanded dramatically in 2024. OpenAI increased its federal lobbying expenditure nearly sevenfold, spending $1.76 million in 2024 compared to just $260,000 in 2023, according to MIT Technology Review. The company hired Chris Lehane (a political strategist from the Clinton White House who later helped Airbnb and Coinbase) as head of global affairs. Across the AI sector, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Cohere combined spent $2.71 million on federal lobbying in 2024. Meta led all tech companies with more than $24 million in lobbying expenditure.

Research by the RAND Corporation identified four primary channels through which AI companies attempt to influence policy: agenda-setting (advancing anti-regulation narratives), advocacy activities targeting legislators, influence in academia and research, and information management. Of seventeen experts interviewed, fifteen cited agenda-setting as the key mechanism. Congressional staffers told researchers that companies publicly strike cooperative tones on regulation whilst privately lobbying for “very permissive or voluntary regulations,” with one staffer noting: “Anytime you want to make a tech company do something mandatory, they're gonna push back on it.”

The asymmetry between public and private positions proves particularly significant. Companies frequently endorse broad principles of AI safety and responsibility in congressional testimony and public statements whilst simultaneously funding organisations that oppose specific regulatory proposals. This two-track strategy allows firms to cultivate reputations as responsible actors concerned with safety whilst effectively blocking measures that would impose binding constraints on their operations. The result is a regulatory environment shaped more by industry preferences than by independent assessment of public interests or technological risks.

Technical Differentiation as Political Strategy

The competition between frontier AI companies encompasses not merely model capabilities but fundamentally divergent approaches to alignment, safety, and transparency. These technical distinctions have become deeply politicised, with companies strategically positioning their approaches to appeal to different political constituencies and regulatory philosophies.

OpenAI's trajectory exemplifies this dynamic. Founded as a nonprofit research laboratory, the company restructured into a “capped profit” entity in 2019 to attract capital for compute-intensive model development. Microsoft's $10 billion investment in 2023 cemented OpenAI's position as the commercial leader in generative AI, but also marked its transformation from safety-focused research organisation to growth-oriented technology company. When Jan Leike (responsible for alignment and safety) and Ilya Sutskever (co-founder and former Chief Scientist) both departed in 2024 citing concerns that the company prioritised speed over safeguards, it signalled a fundamental shift. Leike's public statement upon leaving noted that “safety culture and processes have taken a backseat to shiny products” at OpenAI.

Anthropic, founded in 2021 by former OpenAI employees including Dario and Daniela Amodei, explicitly positioned itself as the safety-conscious alternative. Structured as a public benefit corporation with a Long-Term Benefit Trust designed to represent public interest, Anthropic developed “Constitutional AI” methods for aligning models with written ethical principles. The company secured $13 billion in funding at a $183 billion valuation by late 2024, driven substantially by enterprise customers seeking models with robust safety frameworks.

Joint safety evaluations conducted in summer 2025, where OpenAI and Anthropic tested each other's models, revealed substantive differences reflecting divergent training philosophies. According to findings published by both companies, Claude models produced fewer hallucinations but exhibited higher refusal rates. OpenAI's o3 and o4-mini models attempted answers more frequently, yielding more correct completions alongside more hallucinated responses. On jailbreaking resistance, OpenAI's reasoning models showed greater resistance to creative attacks compared to Claude systems.

These technical differences map onto political positioning. Anthropic's emphasis on safety appeals to constituencies concerned about AI risks, potentially positioning the company favourably should regulatory frameworks eventually mandate safety demonstrations. OpenAI's “iterative deployment” philosophy, emphasising learning from real-world engagement rather than laboratory testing, aligns with the deregulatory stance dominant in the current political environment.

Meta adopted a radically different strategy through its Llama series of open-source models, making frontier-adjacent capabilities freely available. Yet as research published in “The Economics of AI Foundation Models” notes, openness strategies are “rational, profit-maximising responses to a firm's specific competitive position” rather than philosophical commitments. By releasing models openly, Meta reduces the competitive advantage of OpenAI's proprietary systems whilst positioning itself as the infrastructure provider for a broader ecosystem of AI applications. The strategy simultaneously serves commercial objectives and cultivates political support from constituencies favouring open development.

xAI represents the most explicitly political technical positioning, with Elon Musk characterising competing models as censorious and politically biased, positioning Grok as the free-speech alternative. This framing transforms technical choices about content moderation and safety filters into cultural battleground issues, appealing to constituencies sceptical of mainstream technology companies whilst deflecting concerns about safety by casting them as ideological censorship. The strategy proves remarkably effective at generating engagement and political support even as questions about Grok's actual capabilities relative to competitors remain contested.

Google's DeepMind represents yet another positioning, emphasising scientific research credentials and long-term safety research alongside commercial deployment. The company's integration of AI capabilities across its product ecosystem (Search, Gmail, Workspace, Cloud) creates dependencies that transcend individual model comparisons, effectively bundling AI advancement with existing platform dominance. This approach faces less political scrutiny than pure-play AI companies despite Google's enormous market power, partly because AI represents one component of a diversified technology portfolio rather than the company's singular focus.

Infrastructure Politics and the Energy-Compute Nexus

Perhaps nowhere does the intersection of political capital and AI development manifest more concretely than in infrastructure policy. Training and deploying frontier AI models requires unprecedented computational resources, which in turn demand enormous energy supplies. The Bipartisan Policy Centre projects that by 2030, 25% of new domestic energy demand will derive from data centres, driven substantially by AI workloads. Current power-generating capacity proves insufficient; in major data centre regions, tech companies report that utilities are unable to provide electrical service for new facilities or are rationing power until transmission infrastructure completion.

In September 2024, Sam Altman joined leaders from Nvidia, Anthropic, and Google in visiting the White House to pitch the Biden administration on subsidising energy infrastructure as essential to US competitiveness in AI. Altman proposed constructing multiple five-gigawatt data centres, each consuming electricity equivalent to New York City's entire demand, according to CNBC. The pitch framed energy subsidisation as national security imperative rather than corporate welfare.

The Trump administration has proven even more amenable to this framing. The Department of Energy identified 16 potential sites on DOE lands “uniquely positioned for rapid data centre construction” and released a Request for Information on possible use of federal lands for AI infrastructure. DOE announced creation of an “AI data centre engagement team” to leverage programmes including loans, grants, tax credits, and technical assistance. Executive Order 14179 explicitly directs the Commerce Department to launch financial support initiatives for data centres requiring 100+ megawatts of new energy generation.

Federal permitting reform has been reoriented specifically toward AI data centres. Trump's executive order accelerates federal permitting by streamlining environmental reviews, expanding FAST-41 coverage, and promoting use of federal and contaminated lands for data centres. These provisions directly benefit companies with the political connections to navigate federal processes and the capital to invest in massive infrastructure, effectively creating higher barriers for smaller competitors whilst appearing to promote development broadly.

The Institute for Progress proposed establishing “Special Compute Zones” where the federal government would coordinate construction of AI clusters exceeding five gigawatts through strategic partnerships with top AI labs, with government financing next-generation power plants. This proposal, which explicitly envisions government picking winners, represents an extreme version of the public-private convergence already underway.

The environmental implications of this infrastructure expansion remain largely absent from political discourse despite their significance. Data centres already consume approximately 1-1.5% of global electricity, with AI workloads driving rapid growth. The water requirements for cooling these facilities place additional strain on local resources, particularly in regions already experiencing water stress. Yet political debates about AI infrastructure focus almost exclusively on competitiveness and national security, treating environmental costs as externalities to be absorbed rather than factors to be weighed against purported benefits. This framing serves the interests of companies seeking infrastructure subsidies whilst obscuring the distributional consequences of AI development.

Governance Capture and the Concentration of AI Power

The systematic pattern of political investment, regulatory influence, and infrastructure access produces a form of governance that operates parallel to democratic institutions whilst claiming to serve national interests. Quinn Slobodian, professor of international history at Boston University, characterised the current situation of ties between industry and government as “unprecedented in the modern era.”

Palantir Technologies exemplifies how companies can become simultaneously government contractor, policy influencer, and infrastructure provider in ways that blur distinctions between public and private power. Founded with early backing from In-Q-Tel (the CIA's venture arm), Palantir built its business on government contracts with agencies including the FBI, NSA, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE alone has spent more than $200 million on Palantir contracts. The Department of Defence awarded Palantir billion-dollar contracts for battlefield intelligence and AI-driven analysis.

Palantir's Gotham platform, marketed as an “operating system for global decision making,” enables governments to integrate disparate data sources with AI-driven analysis predicting patterns and movements. The fundamental concern lies not in the capabilities but in their opacity: because Gotham is proprietary, neither the public nor elected officials can examine how its algorithms weigh data or why they highlight certain connections. Yet the conclusions generated can produce life-altering consequences (inclusion on deportation lists, identification as security risks), with mistakes or biases scaling rapidly across many people.

The revolving door between Palantir and government agencies intensified following Trump's 2024 victory. The company secured a contract with the Federal Housing Finance Agency in May 2025 to establish an “AI-powered Crime Detection Unit” at Fannie Mae. In December 2024, Palantir joined with Anduril Industries (backed by Thiel's Founders Fund) to form a consortium including SpaceX, OpenAI, Scale AI, and Saronic Technologies challenging traditional defence contractors.

This consortium model represents a new form of political-industrial complex. Rather than established defence contractors cultivating relationships with the Pentagon over decades, a network of ideologically aligned technology companies led by politically connected founders now positions itself as the future of American defence and intelligence. These companies share investors, board members, and political patrons in a densely connected graph where business relationships and political allegiances reinforce each other.

The effective altruism movement's influence on AI governance represents another dimension of this capture. According to Politico reporting, an anonymous biosecurity researcher described EA-linked funders as “an epic infiltration” of policy circles, with “a small army of adherents to 'effective altruism' having descended on the nation's capital and dominating how the White House, Congress and think tanks approach the technology.” EA-affiliated organisations drafted key policy proposals including the federal Responsible Advanced Artificial Intelligence Act and California's Senate Bill 1047, both emphasising long-term existential risks over near-term harms like bias, privacy violations, and labour displacement. Critics note that focusing on existential risk allows companies to position themselves as responsible actors concerned with humanity's future whilst continuing rapid commercialisation with minimal accountability for current impacts.

The Geopolitical Framing and Its Discontents

Nearly every justification for deregulation, infrastructure subsidisation, and concentrated AI development invokes competition with China. This framing proves rhetorically powerful because it positions commercial interests as national security imperatives, casting regulatory caution as geopolitical liability. Chris Lehane (OpenAI's head of global affairs) explicitly deployed this strategy, arguing that “if the US doesn't lead the way in AI, an autocratic nation like China will.”

The China framing contains elements of truth alongside strategic distortion. China has invested heavily in AI, with projections exceeding 10 trillion yuan ($1.4 trillion) in technology investment by 2030. Yet US private sector AI investment vastly exceeds Chinese private investment; in 2024, US private AI investment reached approximately $109.1 billion (nearly twelve times China's $9.3 billion), according to research comparing the US-China AI gap. Five US companies alone (Meta, Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, Oracle) are expected to spend more than $450 billion in aggregate AI-specific capital expenditures in 2026.

The competitive framing serves primarily to discipline domestic regulatory debates. By casting AI governance as zero-sum geopolitical competition, industry advocates reframe democratic oversight as strategic vulnerability. This rhetorical move positions anyone advocating for stronger AI regulation as inadvertently serving Chinese interests by handicapping American companies. The logic mirrors earlier arguments against environmental regulation, labour standards, or financial oversight.

Recent policy developments complicate this narrative. President Trump's December 8 announcement that the US would allow Nvidia to sell powerful H200 chips to China seemingly contradicts years of export controls designed to prevent Chinese AI advancement, suggesting the relationship between AI policy and geopolitical strategy remains contested even within administrations ostensibly committed to technological rivalry.

Alternative Governance Models and Democratic Deficits

The concentration of AI governance authority in politically connected companies operating with minimal oversight represents one potential future, but not an inevitable one. The European Union's AI Act establishes comprehensive regulation with classification systems, conformity assessments, and enforcement mechanisms, despite intense lobbying by OpenAI and other companies. Time magazine reported that OpenAI successfully lobbied to remove language suggesting general-purpose AI systems should be considered inherently high risk, demonstrating that even relatively assertive regulatory frameworks remain vulnerable to industry influence.

Research institutions focused on AI safety independent of major labs provide another potential check. The Centre for AI Safety published research on “circuit breakers” preventing dangerous AI behaviours (requiring 20,000 attempts to jailbreak protected models) and developed the Weapons of Mass Destruction Proxy Benchmark measuring hazardous knowledge in biosecurity, cybersecurity, and chemical security.

The fundamental democratic deficit lies in the absence of mechanisms through which publics meaningfully shape AI development priorities, safety standards, or deployment conditions. The technologies reshaping labour markets, information environments, and social relationships emerge from companies accountable primarily to investors and increasingly to political patrons rather than to citizens affected by their choices. When governance occurs through private negotiations between tech oligarchs and political allies, the public's role reduces to retrospectively experiencing consequences of decisions made elsewhere.

Whilst industry influence on regulation has long existed, the current configuration involves direct insertion of industry leaders into governmental decision-making (Musk leading DOGE), governmental adoption of industry products without competitive procurement (xAI's Grok agreement), and systematic dismantling of nascent oversight frameworks replaced by industry-designed alternatives. This represents not merely regulatory capture but governance convergence, where distinctions between regulator and regulated dissolve.

Reshaping Competitive Dynamics Beyond Markets

The intertwining of political capital, financial investment, and AI infrastructure around particular companies fundamentally alters competitive dynamics in ways extending far beyond traditional market competition. In conventional markets, companies compete primarily on product quality, pricing, and customer service. In the emerging AI landscape, competitive advantage increasingly derives from political proximity, with winners determined partly by whose technologies receive governmental adoption, whose infrastructure needs receive subsidisation, and whose regulatory preferences become policy.

This creates what economists term “political rent-seeking” as a core competitive strategy. Palantir's stock surge following Trump's election reflects not sudden technical breakthroughs but investor recognition that political alignment translates into contract access. xAI's rapid governmental integration reflects not superior capabilities relative to competitors but Musk's position in the administration.

For newer entrants and smaller competitors, these dynamics raise formidable barriers. If regulatory frameworks favour incumbents, if infrastructure subsidies flow to connected players, and if government procurement privileges politically aligned firms, then competitive dynamics reward political investment over technical innovation.

The international implications prove equally significant. If American AI governance emerges from negotiations between tech oligarchs and political patrons rather than democratic deliberation, it undermines claims that the US model represents values-aligned technology versus authoritarian Chinese alternatives. Countries observing US AI politics may rationally conclude that American “leadership” means subordinating their own governance preferences to the commercial interests of US-based companies with privileged access to American political power.

The consolidation of AI infrastructure around politically connected companies also concentrates future capabilities in ways that may prove difficult to reverse. If a handful of companies control the computational resources, energy infrastructure, and governmental relationships necessary for frontier AI development, then path dependencies develop where these companies' early advantages compound over time. Alternative approaches to AI development, safety, or governance become increasingly difficult to pursue as the resource advantages of incumbents grow.

Reconfiguring the Politics of Technological Power

The selective investment patterns of political figures and networks in specific AI companies signal a broader transformation in how technological development intersects with political power. Several factors converge to enable this reconfiguration. First, the immense capital requirements for frontier AI development concentrate power among firms with access to patient capital. Second, the geopolitical framing of AI competition creates permission structures for policies that would otherwise face greater political resistance. Third, the technical complexity of AI systems creates information asymmetries where companies possess far greater understanding of capabilities and risks than regulators.

Fourth, and perhaps most significantly, the effective absence of organised constituencies advocating for alternative AI governance approaches leaves the field to industry and its allies. Labour organisations remain fractured in responses to AI-driven automation, civil liberties groups focus on specific applications rather than systemic governance, and academic researchers often depend on industry funding or access. This creates a political vacuum where industry preferences face minimal organised opposition.

The question facing democratic societies extends beyond whether particular companies or technologies prevail. Rather, it concerns whether publics retain meaningful agency over technologies reshaping economic structures, information environments, and social relations. The current trajectory suggests a future where AI governance emerges from negotiations among political and economic elites with deeply intertwined interests, whilst publics experience consequences of decisions made without their meaningful participation.

Breaking this trajectory requires not merely better regulation but reconstructing the relationships between technological development, political power, and democratic authority. This demands new institutional forms enabling public participation in shaping AI priorities, funding mechanisms for AI research independent of commercial imperatives, and political constituencies capable of challenging the presumption that corporate interests align with public goods. Whether such reconstruction proves possible in an era of concentrated wealth and political influence remains democracy's defining question as artificial intelligence becomes infrastructure.

The coalescence of political capital around specific AI companies represents a test case for whether democratic governance can reassert authority over technological development or whether politics has become merely another domain where economic power translates into control. The outcome of this contest will determine not merely which companies dominate AI markets, but whether the development of humanity's most powerful technologies occurs through democratic deliberation or oligarchic negotiation.

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References & Sources

• How Elon Musk's $130 million investment in Trump's victory could reap a huge payoff
• Musk-linked contributions to Trump total $270M
• Elon Musk's budget-cutter role creates dangerous conflicts of interest
• Elon Musk's Grok AI Inks Deal With Trump Admin
• Trump's victory will benefit Elon Musk and xAI
• AI companies upped their federal lobbying spend in 2024
• OpenAI has upped its lobbying efforts nearly seven-fold
• How Palantir is mapping the nation's data
• How Palantir is rising in the Trump era
• Palantir and Accenture Federal Services Join Forces
• OpenAI and Anthropic alignment evaluation exercise
• Findings from Pilot Anthropic-OpenAI Alignment Exercise
• AI Governance through Markets
• Peter Thiel's network infiltrating Trump's White House
• Peter Thiel's Allies in Trump's Government
• OpenAI is under pressure as Google, Anthropic gain ground
• From OpenAI to Anthropic: who's leading on AI governance?
• Frontier Model Competition Is Wide Open
• OpenAI Grapples with Losses, Competition, Internal Turmoil
• Trump rescinds Biden executive order in AI regulatory overhaul
• Trump signs executive order to block state AI regulations
• Trump AI executive order may not be legal
• Trump signs order for single national AI regulation standard
• Strategic Federal Actions to Strengthen AI and Energy Infrastructure
• DOE Announces Actions to Enhance AI Leadership
• Build AI in America: Anthropic Energy Report
• Compute in America: A Policy Playbook
• How OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's lobbying power tamed Washington
• OpenAI Lobbied EU to Water Down AI Regulation
• Marc Andreessen-Backed Super-PAC Fighting State AI Regulations
• Andreessen Horowitz founders plan to donate to pro-Trump PACs
• Crypto Won Big in 2024. AI Is Angling to Do the Same in 2026
• AI and policy leaders debate web of effective altruism
• US-China AI Gap: 2025 Analysis
• AI Industrial Policy: US and China Geoeconomic Battlefield
• Managing Industry Influence in US AI Policy
• Centre for AI Safety 2024 Year in Review

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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

In Summary: * The day started VERY early for me. I was standing at the curb well before sun up, hauling tall trash bags out of my big brown trash bin before the trash truck came to collect it. I was worried that I might have mistakenly thrown away something I shouldn't have. Now I get to go through each of those bags again, very carefully, and look for an old photo album of the wife. Better safe than sorry, ya' know.

Prayers, etc.: * My daily prayers

Health Metrics: * bw= 227.19 lbs. * bp= 168/100 (61)

Exercise: * kegel pelvic floor exercise, half squats, calf raises, wall push-ups

Diet: * 06:20 – 1 pb&j sandwich * 09:35 – 1 cheese & seafood salad sandwich * 12:30 – bowl of home made chicken noodle soup * 15:40 – 1 fresh apple * 19:00 – ½ Wendy's Junior Cheeseburger, chicken tenders, 1 chocolate milkshake

Activities, Chores, etc.: * 04:00 – listen to local news talk radio * 04:40 – bank accounts activity monitored * 05:00 – pull trash for resorting * 05:45 -read, pray, follow news reports from various sources, surf the socials * 10:00 – start my weekly laundry * 14:00 – finished folding the last of the laundry * 15:00 – listening to The Jack Riccardi Show * 16:00 – tuned in to The Flagship Station for IU Sports ahead of tonight's NCAA men's basketball game between the Siena Saints and the Indiana Hoosiers...and the Hoosiers win 81 to 60. * 19:00 – watch old game shows and eat dinner at home with Sylvia * 19:30 – time now to wrap up the night prayers, listen to relaxing music, and quietly read my way to bedtime.

Chess: * 14:55 – moved n all pending CC games

The first thing I did was download the ISO image for Ubuntu 24.04.3 LTS. Then I used balenaEtcher to create a bootable USB drive. I got an error when doing this on Windows 11, and after some searching, I found that the solution was to run balenaEtcher as Administrator for the image to work. Even then, I still got another error, I don’t remember exactly what it was. In the end, I switched to Rufus to create the bootable USB, and that worked.

I managed to create the bootable USB and installed Ubuntu on my old ASUS VivoBook Pro laptop. All the hardware worked out of the box, which was great. Even the NVIDIA graphics card was recognized and installed automatically.

So far, I've tested:

• Wi-Fi/Sound/keyboard/mouse/monitor: no issues at all
• Bluetooth: worked well with Jabra Evolve headphones
• Firefox Browser: perfect
• Standard Notes: I installed the app and it works beautifully
• Nirvana: web based and works perfectly as a PWA app
• Steam: installed it and played Banished. It ran even better than on Windows, with more options to adjust zoom, scale, and font sizes
• Deezer: installed an app and listened to music with my headphones
• Calibre: successfully installed for e-book management. I still need to explore using it to open library e-books shared in the Adobe Digital Editions .acsm format. The internet suggests this is possible with some plugins
• LibreOffice / OnlyOffice: great alternatives to the Microsoft suite, it will be easy to switch
• pCloud: created a free account to test it out (seems pretty good!)
• MEGA: created a free account to test it out (didn’t like it that much, for some reason)

Things that I tried but did not work:

• Installing Dropbox and getting it to integrate with Nautilus (did not work at all!)
• Setting up GNOME Online Accounts for OneDrive: I kept getting an error saying the service could not connect
• Installing the MEGA application on Linux: nothing happened, and it didn’t work out

Things I want to test:

• Plugging in my Kobo to see if Calibre recognizes it (I forgot to test this)
• Dropbox: I still have a Dropbox account, and it was the first option that came to mind to replace OneDrive. I read that Linux support is good, but on my first attempt I couldn’t get the native app working. I’ll revisit this
• pCloud Drive: this seems like another solid alternative to OneDrive. I tested it on Windows, and it worked great; now I want to see how well it integrates with Linux
• Discord: there’s a Linux app available. I still need to try it
• Lenovo Universal Dock: I have a ThinkPad dock that I use to connect my monitor and peripherals to my other laptop. I expect it to work with Linux on my ThinkPad X1, but I also want to see if I can get it working with the ASUS laptop. The internet seems to agree that it should work, but I still have to figure it out.
• Emails in Mozilla Thunderbird
• I started with Ubuntu, but I'm intrigued to at least try out Linux Mint. I am not sure if I liked the GNOME desktop environment. It could be because I didn't actually do any customization. Something to explore.

Something I want to do first, before I continue more testing

• The ASUS laptop I'm using to test Linux has a 256GB SSD + 1TB HDD. I made the mistake of installing Ubuntu on the HDD, instead of the SSD, so Ubuntu didn't feel that smooth, it's a bit sluggish (still better than Windows 10, tho). So before I continue any explorations, I will start over and do a full reinstallation on the SSD.

Banished on Linux

Note: I wrote and published this post on Linux 🙂

#linux #tech

Depuis quelques semaines avant qu’Amazon décide de tirer un trait sur la série “Wheel of Time”, j’avais décidé de proposer une adaptation du monde de Robert Jordan en jeu de rôles. L’équipe de Geek Fabula avait fait un actual play dans cet univers, ce qui avait bien évidemment fait écho à une période importante pour moi où je jouais la campagne Prophecies of the Dragon toutes les semaines avec des amis dont certains sont décédés aujourd’hui. Qu’importe le passé, l’univers de la Roue du Temps a cette capacité de mêler le côté martial et royaliste des univers médiévaux au mélange des cultures beaucoup plus contemporains, et la série a encore poussé d’autres crans dans la représentativité et l’inclusivité (pour le meilleur ou pour le pire). Il fait partie de ces univers qui utilisent le surnaturel à petites doses en s’appuyant sur les intrigues très humaines de nations en déroute.

Un monde où chacun ne peut compter que sur ces ressources est un monde où les compétences valent plus que le hasard. J’avais d’abord opté pour le système engrenages qui a de nombreuses qualités pour motoriser la Roue du Temps : il donne autant d’importance au social et au mental qu’au physique, il s’appuie largement sur les compétences mais aussi sur des particularités uniques (les traits), il est simple mais avec beaucoup de sous-systèmes en option.

Mais depuis que j’ai découvert le système de Damien Coltice, auteur de Zombiology qui a repris le d100 pour proposer avec un système moderne, j’ai envie de l’utiliser dans de nombreux contextes. Et le système de stress, associé à la gestion des émotions et des blessures psychologique, se prête tout autant à du survival horror qu’à un monde fantastique où une divinité maléfique serait en train de corrompre les esprits et les créatures. De plus, l’organisation de la création de personnage en formations se plie également fort bien à un schéma origines + métier + aventure. C’est donc acté, je réécris petit à petit tout mon texte pour motoriser la Roue du Temps avec le système de Zombiology. L’auteur nous a promis un vrai nom pour son avènement en licence libre. Pour l’instant je l’appelle Adrénaline.

Error Found Will Update and Repost

GO HOOSIERS!

I'm tuned in to The Flagship Station for IU Sports ahead of tonight's NCAA men's basketball game between the Siena Saints and the Indiana Hoosiers. The plan is to stay with this station and listen to the call of the game.

And the adventure continues.

There is a question that does not shout. It does not demand attention. It does not arrive dramatically. It waits quietly, often unnoticed, sitting beneath the surface of our daily thoughts, shaping far more than we realize. That question is this: who is living rent-free in your head right now?

Not who you talk to every day. Not who texts you. Not who still occupies space in your schedule. The question goes deeper than that. It asks who occupies your internal world. Who has access to your thoughts when you are tired. Who speaks the loudest when things go wrong. Who shows up uninvited in moments of silence. Because the truth most people never confront is that the people and ideas shaping their lives most powerfully are often not physically present at all.

Many people walk through life believing they are reacting to circumstances, when in reality they are responding to internal tenants they never consciously allowed to move in. Old voices. Old judgments. Old wounds. Old fears. Past failures. Past disappointments. The mind, when left unguarded, becomes a place where history quietly repeats itself. Not because God desires it, but because attention was never reclaimed.

This is not about self-help. It is not about positive thinking. It is not about pretending pain did not happen. It is about authority. It is about ownership. It is about understanding that your mind is not neutral territory. It is not an empty field. It is contested ground. Scripture makes this clear when it tells us to take thoughts captive, to renew the mind, to guard the heart, to fix our focus. None of those commands exist without reason. God would not repeatedly instruct us to manage our inner life if it were inconsequential. The emphasis exists because the inner life determines everything else.

Many believers struggle not because they lack faith, but because their minds are overcrowded. They are spiritually sincere yet mentally exhausted. They pray, but they replay old conversations. They worship, but they rehearse old wounds. They read Scripture, but they still hear the voice of someone who once told them they were not enough. Faith is present, but peace is absent. Not because God has failed, but because the space meant for God has been quietly occupied by something else.

A person can be forgiven and still mentally present. A season can be over and still influential. A failure can be redeemed and still rehearsed. Time alone does not evict thoughts. Silence does not remove them. Distance does not erase them. Only intention does. Only truth does. Only replacement does. This is why people can change environments and still feel the same inside. The address changed, but the occupants did not.

The phrase “living rent-free” is revealing because it exposes imbalance. Rent implies exchange. It implies value given for space taken. When someone or something occupies your thoughts without contributing life, growth, peace, or truth, that imbalance eventually costs you. It costs energy. It costs clarity. It costs confidence. It costs joy. It costs momentum. Over time, people begin to confuse this cost with reality itself. They begin to believe life is heavy by nature, when in truth their mind has simply been overrun by tenants who were never meant to stay.

Some of these tenants arrived through trauma. Some through words spoken carelessly. Some through repeated disappointment. Some through comparison. Some through failure. Some through fear. Some through shame. Some through religion that emphasized performance over grace. Some through authority figures who misused their influence. The source may vary, but the result is the same. The mind becomes a place of constant negotiation rather than rest. Thoughts are no longer evaluated; they are assumed. Voices are no longer questioned; they are accepted as truth.

This is why many people struggle to hear God clearly. Not because God is silent, but because the mind is loud. Not because the Spirit is absent, but because the space is crowded. Not because Scripture is ineffective, but because it is competing with voices that have been rehearsed far longer. The mind learns repetition. Whatever is repeated becomes familiar. Whatever is familiar begins to feel true, even when it is not.

There is a reason Scripture places such emphasis on meditation, and it is not accidental. We become what we repeatedly think about. Attention is not passive. Attention is formative. Whatever you give sustained focus to begins shaping your identity. If fear receives that focus, fear grows. If bitterness receives it, bitterness deepens. If shame receives it, shame strengthens. If someone else’s opinion receives it, their authority increases. Attention is the currency that pays rent. And many people are unknowingly financing the very things that are keeping them stuck.

This is where faith becomes practical rather than abstract. Belief is not only about what you affirm verbally. It is about what you allow mentally. It is entirely possible to profess trust in God while functionally trusting old narratives more. This happens when past experiences are given more mental space than present truth. The mind becomes anchored backward rather than forward. Life continues, but growth slows. Movement happens, but freedom does not.

The most subtle danger of unexamined thoughts is not that they feel harmful. It is that they feel normal. When a thought has lived in the mind long enough, it stops being questioned. It becomes background noise. It becomes “just how I am.” It becomes identity rather than intrusion. At that point, eviction feels uncomfortable, not because the tenant is good, but because familiarity has replaced discernment.

Jesus spoke often about freedom, but freedom was never only external. He healed bodies, but He also confronted thought patterns. He forgave sins, but He also challenged assumptions. He did not only change circumstances; He changed understanding. The transformation He offered was comprehensive. It included the mind. This is why following Him always involved reorientation. Repentance itself means to change the mind. To turn. To think differently. To see differently. To interpret reality through a new lens.

Many people misunderstand repentance as behavior correction alone. In reality, behavior follows belief, and belief follows thought. Change the thought, and behavior follows naturally. Leave the thought untouched, and behavior eventually returns. This is why cycles repeat. This is why patterns persist. This is why some prayers seem unanswered, not because God is unwilling, but because the mind remains unrenewed.

The mind will always default to its strongest voice. That voice is not always the loudest. Often it is the oldest. The first voice that defined you. The first voice that wounded you. The first voice that introduced doubt. Unless confronted, that voice continues to operate quietly, influencing decisions long after its origin has been forgotten. This is why some people sabotage good opportunities. This is why some people struggle to receive love. This is why some people feel uneasy when peace arrives. Peace feels unfamiliar because chaos lived there longer.

God never intended your mind to be a place of constant tension. Conviction, yes. Growth, yes. Reflection, yes. But not torment. Not obsession. Not endless replay. Not internal accusation. Scripture is clear that accusation is not God’s language. Condemnation is not His voice. Fear is not His tool. When those things dominate, something else is speaking.

The enemy does not need to destroy you if he can distract you. He does not need to remove your faith if he can redirect your focus. He does not need to steal your future if he can keep you mentally anchored to the past. A single unresolved thought, left unchecked, can shape years of behavior. This is why spiritual maturity involves mental discipline. Not suppression. Not denial. Discernment.

To discern means to distinguish. To recognize what belongs and what does not. To separate truth from familiarity. To identify intruders even when they feel comfortable. Many believers assume that if a thought feels natural, it must be valid. Scripture never supports that assumption. The heart can deceive. The mind can mislead. Truth must be learned, not assumed.

This is where ownership begins. Your mind is not public property. It is not a communal space for every voice that passes through your life. It is entrusted to you. You are responsible for what you allow to stay. You are not responsible for what enters briefly. Thoughts come and go. Memories surface. Feelings arise. That is human. But what remains is a choice. What settles is a decision. What becomes dominant is intentional, whether consciously or not.

Many people wait for emotional healing to happen passively, as though time alone will resolve what repetition has reinforced. Healing requires participation. It requires awareness. It requires interruption. It requires replacing lies with truth consistently, not occasionally. Freedom is not achieved by wishing different thoughts away. It is achieved by confronting them and choosing differently.

The mind must be taught what belongs there. Just as a home reflects its owner, the mind reflects its steward. When truth is consistently introduced, lies lose their authority. When Scripture is repeatedly internalized, other voices grow quiet. When God’s perspective becomes familiar, old narratives begin to feel foreign. This does not happen instantly, but it happens inevitably when intention is sustained.

The question, then, is not whether thoughts will attempt to occupy space. They will. The question is whether you will allow them to stay without challenge. Whether you will continue paying rent with your attention, your energy, your peace, and your future. Whether you will continue hosting voices that never helped you grow.

This is not about perfection. It is about direction. It is about choosing who gets access. It is about reclaiming authority over the inner life. Because until the mind is reclaimed, the life will always feel partially occupied.

The transformation God offers does not begin in circumstances. It begins in clarity. It begins in awareness. It begins with a question that refuses to be ignored.

Who is living rent-free in your head right now?

And more importantly, why are they still there?

What most people never realize is that the mind does not rebel loudly. It drifts quietly. It concedes space subtly. It hands over influence gradually. Rarely does someone wake up one morning and consciously decide to let fear dominate their thinking. Rarely does someone deliberately invite shame to shape their identity. It happens incrementally, through repetition, through neglect, through unchallenged assumptions. Over time, the mind adapts to what it repeatedly hosts, and the unfamiliar begins to feel threatening, even when it is healthy.

This is why peace can feel uncomfortable to someone who has lived in mental survival mode for years. When the mind has been conditioned to tension, stillness feels foreign. When anxiety has been rehearsed long enough, calm feels suspicious. When self-criticism has been normalized, grace feels undeserved. The mind does not automatically trust what is good. It trusts what is familiar. And familiarity is not the same as truth.

Spiritual renewal, then, is not about suppressing thoughts. It is about retraining attention. It is about learning to pause long enough to evaluate what has been assumed. It is about interrupting internal monologues that were never questioned. The moment a person begins to examine their thoughts instead of obeying them, authority begins to shift. Awareness itself is disruptive to false power.

Scripture consistently places responsibility for the inner life on the believer, not as a burden, but as an invitation. Renewal of the mind is described not as an optional upgrade, but as a necessary transformation. Without it, spiritual growth remains limited. Without it, faith becomes compartmentalized. Without it, people believe truth intellectually while living as though lies still govern them.

This is where many sincere believers feel frustrated. They know what Scripture says, yet their internal experience contradicts it. They know God is faithful, yet they feel uncertain. They know they are forgiven, yet they feel condemned. They know they are called, yet they feel inadequate. The disconnect is not a lack of belief. It is a lack of mental alignment. Truth has been accepted, but it has not been installed deeply enough to replace what was already there.

Replacement is the key word. The mind cannot simply be emptied. When something leaves, something else must take its place. Jesus made this clear when He spoke about unclean spirits leaving and returning to find a space swept but empty. Emptiness invites reoccupation. Freedom requires filling. This is why temporary relief without truth never lasts. Something always comes back to occupy the space.

Replacing destructive thought patterns with God’s truth is not a one-time event. It is a practice. It is daily. It is intentional. It is often quiet and unseen. It happens when a person notices a familiar thought arise and chooses not to follow it. It happens when Scripture is recalled deliberately instead of passively. It happens when a person refuses to rehearse an old narrative, even though it feels natural to do so.

At first, this feels unnatural. The mind resists change. It prefers efficiency, and familiarity is efficient. Challenging thoughts requires effort. Redirecting attention requires discipline. But what feels unnatural at first becomes familiar with repetition. Over time, truth gains traction. Over time, lies lose credibility. Over time, the internal environment shifts.

This is why Scripture emphasizes meditation, not as mysticism, but as focus. Meditation is simply sustained attention. Whatever receives sustained attention becomes dominant. When attention is consistently directed toward God’s perspective, His voice becomes familiar. When His voice becomes familiar, other voices lose authority. Not because they vanish, but because they are recognized for what they are.

Many people assume that spiritual maturity means no longer having negative thoughts. That is not maturity. Maturity is recognizing them quickly and responding differently. Maturity is not the absence of temptation, but the presence of discernment. It is the ability to say, “This thought does not belong here,” without panic or shame.

There is an important distinction between thoughts that pass through the mind and thoughts that settle there. Passing thoughts are part of being human. Settled thoughts shape identity. The problem is not that a fearful thought appears. The problem is when it is allowed to unpack, rearrange, and take residence. The same is true of bitterness, insecurity, comparison, and regret. They are not dangerous because they appear. They are dangerous because they are hosted.

Hosting is an act of agreement. It is not always conscious, but it is real. When a thought is replayed, it is reinforced. When it is rehearsed, it is strengthened. When it is defended, it is protected. Over time, it becomes integrated into self-understanding. At that point, removing it feels like losing part of oneself, even though it was never meant to belong.

This is where identity must be re-centered. Identity is not discovered by introspection alone. It is revealed by God. When people attempt to define themselves primarily by experience, trauma, success, failure, or opinion, identity becomes fragile. It shifts with circumstances. It depends on validation. It reacts to rejection. God offers a different foundation. Identity rooted in Him is stable because it is not negotiated with the past.

Many of the voices living rent-free in people’s minds gained access during moments of vulnerability. They arrived when defenses were low. They arrived during grief, disappointment, loss, or confusion. They arrived at moments when explanation was absent and meaning was sought elsewhere. In those moments, the mind reaches for interpretation. If God’s truth is not actively present, something else fills the gap.

This does not make a person weak. It makes them human. But remaining unaware of these occupants keeps a person stuck. Awareness is not condemnation. It is the beginning of freedom. Once a person can identify what has been influencing them, they can begin to choose differently.

Spiritual authority is exercised first internally. Before resisting external pressure, the inner world must be ordered. Before standing firm publicly, clarity must be established privately. This is why Jesus often withdrew to quiet places. Not because He lacked strength, but because alignment mattered. Stillness was not escape; it was calibration.

Many people attempt to solve mental unrest by adding more noise. More content. More activity. More distraction. But noise does not resolve intrusion. It masks it temporarily. Silence, on the other hand, reveals what has been living there all along. This is why silence can feel uncomfortable at first. It exposes occupants that distraction kept hidden.

When a person begins to practice intentional focus, something shifts. Old thoughts lose their automatic power. Familiar reactions slow down. Emotional triggers weaken. The mind becomes less reactive and more responsive. This is not emotional suppression. It is clarity. It is strength.

The future God invites you into requires mental space. New growth cannot occur in an overcrowded mind. New vision cannot be sustained when old fears dominate attention. New peace cannot settle where old narratives are constantly rehearsed. Renewal is not punishment for past thinking. It is preparation for what comes next.

This is why eviction is necessary. Not aggressive, not dramatic, but firm. It is the quiet, consistent refusal to entertain thoughts that do not align with truth. It is the decision to stop paying rent with attention. It is the willingness to feel discomfort as familiarity is replaced. It is the commitment to steward the mind as carefully as one would steward a sacred space.

God does not ask for perfection in this process. He asks for participation. He does not require instant transformation. He invites daily alignment. Grace covers the process, but responsibility guides it. The Spirit empowers, but the believer chooses.

Over time, the inner atmosphere changes. Peace becomes familiar. Truth becomes reflexive. Old voices grow faint. Not because they were shouted down, but because they were starved of attention. New habits of thought form. New reflexes develop. The mind becomes a place of rest rather than resistance.

Eventually, the question that once exposed imbalance becomes confirmation of growth. Who is living rent-free in your head? Increasingly, the answer becomes simpler. God’s truth. God’s promises. God’s perspective. Not perfectly. Not constantly. But predominantly. Enough to change direction. Enough to produce fruit.

This is the quiet work of renewal. It does not announce itself. It does not seek recognition. It simply reshapes a life from the inside out. And once the mind is reclaimed, the rest follows naturally.

The mind was never meant to be a boarding house for old wounds. It was meant to be a dwelling place for truth. When that order is restored, peace is no longer chased. It is inhabited.

And that is where freedom begins.

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This year, I find myself in an unusual circumstance. I don't necessarily have that holiday spirit but I've got ... something. I might even put up a tree this year.

As a consequence of my uncharacteristic mood, please enjoy this holiday stroll through old favorites and new ones too.

Those jingle bells

Image by Bianca Van Dijk from Pixabay

I've never been so much of a Grinch but I'm not really into Christmas. I've only got so much patience for holiday music. Music gets stuck in my head easily and getting Little Drummer Boy stuck in my head even once is intolerable. It might be surprising to hear that I'm kind of grooving to the Worst Christmas playlist by the Effin Birds creator. Some of the songs in it are old favorites. Some are cynical cash grabs. Some are well-intentioned but flawed attempts. I'm not going to say which I think Christopher Lee's heavy metal Christmas album. After a few hearty laughs, I still enjoyed his rendition of Silent Night.

Some of the best holiday music written in the past century has close ties to Holiday Specials. Somehow, Christmas doesn't seem like Christmas without Vince Guaraldi's A Charlie Brown Christmas or the music from How The Grinch Stole Christmas! While Boris Karloff's You're A Mean One, Mr. Grinch is a crowd-pleaser, I think Welcome Christmas is the real musical star of the original Grinch special.

Tis the season

I don't usually say so unprompted but my favorite Christmas movie is Gremlins. It really is a Christmas movie. It's not quite cynical but it's also not really the kind of thing a major Christmas enjoyer would recognize as a Christmas movie.

It's A Wonderful Life is my runner up. A movie that's not really so much about Christmas as it is about working class communities supporting each other in the face of the real villain of the Holidays: obscenely wealthy guys.

Over the past few years, I've watched some new Christmas movies and some that aren't quite new but are new to me.

A Christmas Story and Silent Night, Deadly Night are two of the latter. I've heard a lot about A Christmas Story over the years. The reality wasn't anything like what I'd imagined. I try to go into movies knowing as little as possible. Basically everything I had heard was about the protagonist being told he would shoot his eye out if he got a BB gun for Christmas. That was a part of the story but it was really more a series of vignettes based on stories written by Jean Shepherd about his own life. It's not a bad movie but, kind of like my experience with The Goonies, I had to have been there (at the time the movie was in its heyday or at a similar time in my own life). I really wasn't so it's not for me.

Silent Night, Deadly Night is a horror movie. More particularly, it's a slasher horror movie. It's thematically a Christmas movie in that it takes place around Christmas and the slasher is dressed up in a Santa Costume. There were a curious number of lies told about the movie when it first came out. Santa is, for sure, not murdering people in that movie. Some very respected reviewers gave it nonsensically bad reviews. Is it high art? No. It doesn't need to be, though.

Three movies that are actually pretty new and Christmas related are: Anne and the Apocalypse, 8-Bit Christmas, and Happiest Season.

Anne and the Apocalypse is a zombie Christmas musical. The songs were great. The stories were great. The way they were combined ... someone needed to have seen a few more musicals before taking a pass at this. The leads give really understated performances in the songs themselves which is ... distracting if you've seen more than one musical. Still, it's a great zombie movie, a pretty good musical, and it's got some Christmas in it too. If that sounds fun to you, give it a shot.

8-Bit Christmas is a 80s nostalgia piece that's kind of cashing in on the 80s nostalgia we see in places like Stranger Things. It also tells a very Goonies like story of a group of kids in the 80s getting up to an adventure around Christmas. While it is banking on a certain type of nostalgia, it never gets distracted from the point: telling a good story. How cheesy and underwhelming the NES would be today is absolutely an element of the enjoyment of the movie. It's a great way of reminding us adults that the stuff we were obsessed with was pretty cringey too when were that age. It won't join my yearly roundup but I think it's worth a watch.

Happiest Season is something I've been after for a long time: A cheesy budget holiday movie for queer folks instead of specifically for people who are telling themselves they are impossibly straight. Clea DuVall directs and co-wrote the screenplay. Kristen Stewart and Mackenzie Davis play partners who are this close to getting married but one of them is in the closet. Daniel Levy plays a familiar role for him but his character has a much healthier perspective than in Schitt's Creek. The story beats are familiar but it's a fresh take and not just because many of the characters are queer. Saying more would be a spoiler. This was exactly what I wanted it to be and some times that's the exact right thing.

Wrapping this up

I've got guesses about what has me in a holiday mood. That's more a topic for me and my diary, though. At least for once, I can be a little less of a bah humbug about the whole thing. If you've stuck it out this far, thanks for joining me. Merry Christmas, you old savings and loan!

Oh, and hey, I did end up putting up that tree.

Speaking of the season, I have a guest blog about another point of winter nostalgia which will go live on Long and Short Reviews on Boxing Day.

Support the author

I've got two books out in the Vay Ideal series. It's a science fiction adventure series built around an eclectic assortment of travelers who find themselves running an independent ship. I'd love it if you'd check them out. While you can buy them on Amazon, the cover links will take you to a landing page which will let you choose any one of several other stores also.

#Christmas #Nostalgia #movie #music

JOURNAL 22décembre 2025

Après le service on est venues discuter avec les clients. Ils étaient curieux de savoir nos liens de parenté, ce qu’on faisait en dehors etc. On a parlé de la France forcément, de mon travail, de l'activité de A au ministère? Ils sont intéressés par ce qui se passe en Ukraine, tout ça, bref trois heures ! On sort du onsen la nuit est magnifique, plus un nuage ici, on voit toutes les étoiles de l'univers c’est fantastique, ça m´hypnotise. Notre chambre est à l'écart mais elle est belle, les tatami sentent bon et c’est bien chauffé par le sol.

I am enjoying my time off

There’s no snow, but a thin layer of frost is covering the land, giving the fields the impression of a badly shaped princess cake, were the marzipan brownish yellow instead of green.

The sun shines brightly however, and today the moon sickle was thin like on the flag of some Muslim country, and the sky was pink and purple

And pure white smoke rose from chimneys of the factories as we passed them in our 2015 volvo, which with it’s diesel engine, social democratic red colours, and inside coated with dog fur felt like an accidental statement compared to the teslas and polestars crowding the treacherous roads, slick with ice.

And in my heart I felt OK

Aaaand the last MVP feature is implemented. Today I've added a photo upload for each entry. The user can add 5 images to each entry and can choose one main photo, which is then displayed on the entry list. And the user can remove the images as well.

This gives the app a nice personal touch. I hope that I don't reach any limits soon with this in Supabase. I never used the file storage before. It's a bit exciting; there are a lot of first times in this project. 😀

👋

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80 of #100DaysToOffload
#log #AdventOfProgress
Thoughts?

Beginnings require only observation, from there, slow or fast, motion comes as does the day.

8:50 am sat WET

Today comes, not with a bang, but persistent intention to be drunk with life.

We are staying with friends for a few days in Porto, Portugal.

The apartment building isn’t attractive. Built in the last 15 years, it is blocky and devoid of visual interest. An absolute contrast to the care and ornament of the old city.

The interior of the apartment is warm and welcoming though. Very large rooms. a stark contrast to what I am used to. Warm wood floors, and in the living room, a floating rock wall. On the wall are tiny sea urchin shells and life sized Indian honey bees crafted from metal. The shells gathered from walks on the beach here; the insect effigies acquired from artisans in India, where our friends lived for five years.

Our room, when I wake at 8:30a is pitch black. Here they have incredible steel shutters that close to protect against storms, break-in AND light when completely closed. My body is alive and excited to tell me it is morning and time for life, but from a photon’s perspective, this is a closed book. I may as well be lost between galaxies— but even then, I’d have starlight.

Darkness

This place is utterly dark!

In this living womb, it is a space of rest and imagination. And my mind travels far away from here to familiar smells and faces, indulging where reality prevents. It brings a smile and glow to me that only I can see. Even angels could not peer into this moment that is wholly mine in which to bask.

The dark be damned! In this moment, I become my own brilliant day star, power med by thoughts of another.

But, fantasy cannot sustain a life—only occasionally supercharge it.

Peeling my form from the bed, I stumble to tend to the needs my aging body demands first thing in the morning. Finally fully awake, I step out onto the deck to greet the day.

Outside

The sky is not glorious, but the bakery below is always a welcome sight. And smell.

A woman in a gunmetal puffy coat with little tennis shoes saves out of Snopoas, the little restaurant/bakery I can see, and scoot-runs to a little silver car with black wheels, no hub caps, two door hatch back. She must have been cold, people don’t dash off and then just sit there for 90 more seconds. He is probably fiddling with his phone while she savors the wash of hot coffee.

As they zip away, i notice an older couple have come out to walk their dog. It is a large German shepherd whom they have proved a wheelchair for. The dog walked tiredly on jots front legs while dragging its useless hind legs as they dangle from the contraption.

No doubt they love the dog, but it seems selfish to let it suffer this way. It is a dog. I love dogs, but they are not designed for an existence beyond their 10 or 15 years.

The kind thing would be to put it down and rehome a new dog. 😔

It’s kind of sad. I think they may have replaced the affection they had for a child, with this dog.

I turn to shower and dress. The beach is calling to me.

And so I must go.