I’m usually arachnophobic, but once I had an orb weaver decide to live on the back of my work truck. Freaked me out at first, but I let it be. It would come out of it’s hiding spot at night to make its web across the truck, and I would watch it clean up in the morning before I left. Almost got it on my face a few times while doing overnight work. It stayed with me all summer, I could always find it hidden under a door seal or up on the ladder rack, tucked away.

It was nice almost having a pet. Then, one morning, I get ready to leave for work. The web was still up, tattered, and spider bro was nowhere to be seen…

My personal conspiracy theory is the AI companies are being used as a front for a new Manhattan Project for the surveillance dragnet. All those flock camera feeds gotta go somewhere. Imagine being able to look up who, what, where, and when (and infer why) for any person or place in the US, linking online interaction to physical places in near-real time.

Here’s who it’s being built for.

ETA: What I see happening over the next decade, the AI bubble ‘pops,’ government quietly absorbs the (by then) mostly complete facilities and hardware as part of the bailout, then news outlets go silent about data centers and ICE activity while we fall deeper into a fascist hellpit.

Imagine Hitler’s reign, but this time there will be no Anne Frank’s.