Family in NavBar. Philosophy in the links. Chaos in data centers

BAIR Necessities.

Fun fact. The navigation bar on the blog starts with the letters BAIR – inspired by my sister Dr. Mary Bair and my brother in law Dr. David Bair, both subscribers to my newsletter.

In honor of BAIR, I have written FOUR additional blog posts this week!! Click on the links below to take a look.

Books - that I just bought, and I will be reading this month. Let me know if you want a detailed book review.

AI Art - the link features a new music video that I created for a daily challenge, plus my look with a newsboy cap, and also my logo is getting featured again in a fantastic music video

Investing - Why I'll be starting to invest in Bitcoin and how my investing decisions are often impulsive based on subconscious "theta wave" dreaming.

Reflections - Sweet and Sour debates about AI and job replacement. In college, I have won debates speaking on both sides of the argument, and here I try this in a blog post. Do you like this format?

DataCenter Power Consumption:

Tech companies, which are racing to build data centers to power new A.I. models and create “superintelligence,” or A.I. with power that exceeds the human brain, claim they are working to shrink their environmental footprint.

Paywall-free link to New York Times article on energy usage.

The AI boom isn't just happening in Silicon Valley—it's going global, and communities worldwide are paying the price. Tech giants like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon are building massive data centers everywhere from Mexico to Ireland to Chile, and the results are pretty grim: blackouts, water shortages, and infrastructure buckling under the strain. In central Mexico, a Microsoft data center showed up, and suddenly, residents are stitching up kids by flashlight, losing refrigerated medicine during outages, and watching their water supplies dry up. Meanwhile, governments are so desperate for that sweet tech investment that they're handing out tax breaks and signing NDAs to keep the whole operation hushed.

The pushback is real, though. Ireland, which used to roll out the red carpet for Big Tech, now has activists blocking data center projects and warning that a third of the country's electricity will soon go to keeping servers cool. Environmental groups coordinate across borders, sharing tactics from Spain to France to Chile. But here's the thing—by 2035, data centers globally will use as much electricity as all of India. Companies promise they're responsible, recycling water, and generating power. Still, when Mexican officials call blackouts and water shortages "happy problems" for progress, you know we've got a serious reckoning coming about who pays the real cost of our AI ambitions.

How a former News executive uses AI:

Aunindyo Chakravarty, a 53-year-old former NDTV executive, has completely transformed his life using AI tools, claiming they've made him "five to six times more productive." He spends about $85/month on ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Perplexity Pro—cutting back on restaurants and streaming services to afford it—and he's not messing around with how he uses them. He built a custom ChatGPT model that digests eight newspapers daily into 10-15 themed summaries with exact citations. When he's too busy to read, he feeds that summary into Google's free NotebookLM to generate an AI podcast he can listen to instead. AI cuts his archival work by 50-60% for deep research, though he stresses that you need to ask specific, creative questions to get genuinely valuable insights rather than generic stuff.

But it goes way beyond work. Chakravarty uploads entire books to ChatGPT and uses voice mode to quiz himself on the content, ensuring he actually learns the material instead of just skimming.

He even uses it every day, creating recipes from random leftover vegetables and learning cooking techniques. His message is pretty straightforward: AI isn't going anywhere, and people of all ages need to master these tools now to stay competitive in a job market that's being completely upended. He's betting his entire post-TV career on AI literacy, and judging by his productivity gains, it seems to be paying off.

3 Classic Philosophy books:

Once again, these random topics interested me this week and led me to explore the rabbit holes. Please don't forget to explore links you find interesting, because I'll use the blog analytics to guide me towards what content to write in future blog posts.

I found Google Analytics unhelpful because it shows many bots are scanning the blog site. The Ghost platform's own analytics are better because they show which newsletters were opened and which links were clicked on.