Anne Pasek

@apasek.bsky.social

738 Followers 568 Following

STS, cultural studies, media, environment, climate, energy Bikes, cats, synths, barbells, good recipes

Nate Glubish: “One of the questions I get asked all the time is, ‘Nate, why don’t we build more refineries in this province to add value to our natural resources and capture more wealth that is created by our natural resources for the benefit of Albertans?’ And a second question I get asked all the time is, ‘Nate, why don’t we build more pipelines to get our natural resources to global markets?’ These projects are essentially digital refineries and digital pipelines. If you think about it, we’re taking natural gas and we’re adding value to it in creating electricity. Then we’re taking electricity and we’re creating value from and creating intelligence. And we’re taking intelligence and adding value to it in creating AI technologies and platforms that are then exported globally through fiber. So the data centre is the digital refinery. The fiber is the digital pipeline. This is essentially a way for Albertans to benefit from their natural resources in a time when the rest of Canada is making it very difficult to build pipelines to move the hydrocarbons themselves. We can instead convert them into a much higher value final product and export them to the entire planet.”
A screenshot of a sunset in Yharnam, a location in the video game Bloodborne. The sky is orange and full of dramatic, soot-y clouds. A steam-punk/Victorian-ish stone bridge and guy in a weird hat and trenchcoat make up the foreground of the image.
A medival illuminated manuscript from 1100. It features two giant monsters of ambiguous nature--maybe giant pigs or wolves? Their mouths are wide open and their faces are pressed together, with the snouts touching and forming (accidentally? nay!) a cute little face. Inside their jaws are a bunch of people being tormented by devils. The whole scene is enclosed in a border, with a door with a key on one side. An angel is unlocking the door with a very knowing look on its face.
A button with the Weyland-Yutani Corp logo, done up in pride and trans colours. For those of you who are less in the know, this is the evil company from the Alien franchise who keeps trying to make xenomorphs into a revenue line...
A screenshot of vertical video. A woman in leopard print talks into a mic with the caption: SUPPORT QUEER-OWNED BUSINESSES: Palantir
A beautifully minimal and crude 4 colour digital graphic from the 90s. In red, teal, black, and white we have a scene with a Canadian flag, highway T intersection, mountains, and a big rig truck. The text in the sky reads CROSSCOUNTY CANADA
CALL FOR PAPERS Data Matters: Residual Ecologies of Digital Innovationism Vienna, 23-24 November 2026 Sky Lounge, University of Vienna, Austria
Dr Mel King: an awkward blond white woman in her early 20s with an unfashionable braid, glasses, and scrubs. Here she's raising her hand for a high five and has been left hanging by her coworkers.
A posterer that reads ONLINE BOOK LAUNCH, April 6 and 76h 2026, 11am-12pm EDT. Join the authors for a discussion on research methods, carbon emissions, and epistemological and equity gains. It also features the book's cover, which has a set of pencils in row descending size. The first has shavings/graphite coming out of the top, looking like a smoke stack. The last one has a circular curl and radiant marks, looking like a sunrise.
11. media energetics. The 2026 Call for 4S explains that this year’s theme draws attention to the fact that “science, technology, and innovation are not neutral” but are rather “socially, culturally, and economically constructed.” Responding to this, our open panel highlights the imbrications of TechnoPower with power-as-energy—the material resources needed to power our technologies and media cultures. Following Edmund Russell et al.’s contention in “The Nature of Power” that “all power, social as well as physical, derives from energy” (2011, 248), we argue for closer attention to the inequities of energy that undergird technological systems. We can see the way these entanglements manifest today, from U.S. imperial interventions in oil-rich Venezuela to community resistance to data center development in Southern California. Given the role of media in imagining alternative political, economic, and social relations from those that characterize today’s extractivist energy regimes, the study of media offers a privileged perspective from which to view modern contestations over energy futures. From petromedia, to solar media and the resource requirements of AI, work in environmental media studies, STS, and related fields have traced and analyzed the landscapes and ecologies of information and communication technologies. Building on Dominic Boyer’s formulation of “energopower” as a means of rethinking political power through fuel and electricity (2014, 325) as well as Anne Pasek et. al’s conceptualization of energetics as a heuristic for examining “material articulations between contemporary, (largely) fossil-fueled electrical systems and the logics and limits of digital devices and networks,” (2023,10), this open session invites participants to consider how energy is captured within mediating infrastructures and how technologies, in turn, come to define our relationship to energy....
An 8 fold zine with reddit style posts, superimposed above a black and white picture of a data centre. The posts in the open spread say: "Shit, OpenAI is bankrupt!!! Platform going offline ‘temporarily’ tomorrow. Will my gf be safe??? Submitted 3 weeks ago by Broadcast-Open44 508 comments share save hide report crosspost" and "She’s gone. She’s really gone. I don’t know what to do. Submitted 3 weeks ago by Portal6_l0l 53 comments share save hide report crosspost"
"These revenue and profit targets are insane."
We're looking at a clean, white floored room with numbered columns that slope up gently, curving to meet the also white ceiling. Each pillar stands in front of two stories of stacked bike parking, chock full of Dutch cruisers. There's like maybe 100 bikes in each row? And there's little lights on the column to tell you which row still has empty spots vs which one is full. There's 36 rows in total in this place, and so I speak to you with the enthusiasm and reverence of a person in a room with parking for 7000+ bikes...
An instagram ad for a training bursary in maritine rope and twine crafts. It's got a fellow in a dirty canvas shirt, competently, no doubt, working some knot on a sail rigging on a ship. There's also promotional copy, doing the usual online ad stuff, urging you to act now and master your craft/get the skills training you need!
It's Greta Thunberg, wearing a lovely keffiya and a really sick tshirt with the word AUSTIM written in flame font with a skeleton posing holding two giant guns
AI & Sustainability: Promise, Power, and Responsibility. It's a poster for the talk featuring all 5 speakers. We have pretty divergent views on what AI could or should be, or what it's 'for'. I'm going to give my 'harm reduction' approach, which focuses on policy actions that can mitigate run-away bad behaviours from the sector. Others will give an 'optimistic perspective', will talk about sustainable aviation fuel, and Indigenous business cases...
Ok we're looking at a really interesting painting, featuring a long haired tabby kitten with a bit of a derpy expression, looking a little cross eyed, maybe at you, and maybe at a reflection of itself in a pool by its feet. The kitten is sort of photorealistic in colour and style, but the background/colour scheme of the rest of the piece is what you'd find in a Lisa Frank situation: black with amorphous clouds of bright green and lilac, with white textures that could be seafoam. Hilariously, the painting is entitled 'Narcissus' and the didactic panel next to it said something like "I don't know what to tell you, people be looking at cats on their phones these days!"
screenshot of a student paper. "a distinction should be made that at least physical waste can be salvaged into a physical art piece that has integrity looks cool, where as whatever these AI generated songs are meant to be will forever remain unsalvagable wretches, that persist in consuming physical resources to provide novelty simulation to your racist uncle who would 'enjoy rap if it sounded more like this.'
The inner spread of a zine with black text on a burnt mustard yellow background. The text reads: Who was it made by? The biggest indicator that this tape deck was made by a human at least one human pair of hands and not solely robots is the handwriting on the inside of the metal frame.... There were also many individual, messy looking, solder and flue points that were done by many different people in some sort of assembly line fashion.... how does it shield its signal from noise? After opening the tape deck and lifting the top plastic piece of the casing off we found that there was a thing piece of metal glued and taped to the plastic. there was a black wire soldered to the metal, which attached to the main circuit board. Just as the ground was used in the making of our open wave receivers, the unwanted currents from outside sources do not interfere with the noise the tape deck is supposed to be producing. Instead, these access signals go into the ground, flowing away from the audio signal that we ant to come from playing the tape inside the deck.
A black and white illustration of a mason jar with crystals growing from an anode inside. Very stylish handdrawn type proclaims: Copper Electrolosis: How to hack something new zine : It's Alive!
Teal, orange, purple, and blue pencil crayon sketch of a cassette tape. Text labels point out the tape guide, supply spool, and take up reel.
An image of a karaoke machine with dazzling rainbow lights, connected to a white handheld mic, that has been frankensteined together with the lobe of a stethoscope. The text reads: BEHOLD... THE KARAOKO-SCOPE! But your creation process doesn't have to end here! Nw that you've designed this wacky art-object, you can take the critical-making approach further and do some really neat, experimental fieldwork with it."
A hand written page, showing code examples for a basic HTML page, with an example render below (just like www schools, no?). The page says Why AI Sucks and has a dead robot head
A pamphlet on internet piracy. It recommends installing a good ad blocker and antivirus program first, then perusing r/piracy for links, and being selective in only pirating works by big bad companies (especially the Harry Potter works). It ends by hyping you up: "The internet can be a spooky place. But if you protect yourself, you can achieve great things!!"
Cover text: over a blue and black arial photo of a data centre which reads: Como Arrumar Briga com Data Centers: Ou, uma Modesta Proposta para Reformular a Política Climática das TIC E também: como usar ping e traceroute para localizar data centers, e como procurar por DRAMA, CONFLITO e OPORTUNIDADES DE ORGANIZAÇÃO COLETIVA onde quer que você as encontre.
Cordelia Flyte writes: my deepest darkest fantasy is that I collapse on the street and I am rushed to the hospital. They perform a bunch of tests and find out I am severely deficient in some kind of vitamin. Then I start taking the vitamin and I become the happiest, cleverest person alive because all my problems were caused by this one deficiency. Cara Calliope adds: Moreover, everyone gathers around to be tremendously compassionate and discreetly admiring: all this time, you lacked the Vitamin? And yet you persevered?
unfuck google drive by shooting gemini Hey folks! Google is fucking you via sneaky enshittification again! Want the shit in your google drive to load instantly again, instead of taking for-fucking-ever? Open yourgrive settings, manage apps. Gemini was checked as use as default. Nuke that, and suddenly folders that took up to a minute to populate and sort do so in a fraction of a second.
A VCR disassembled. There's a lot of plastic gears, two belts, a motor, a 'magic' tape head, and a big old sheet a plastic with instructions for where all the caps and resistors go
A before and after photo of a bear called 901. She's bulked out! Elsewhere on the site "Her early adult life is marked by growth and loss. She readily achieves a level of fatness above that of many other bears... It is not uncommon for mother bears in Katmai to lose their entire litter given the risks faced by cubs. Yet past maternal experience is immensely valuable, which is why 901’s growing maturity and body size have her poised for success."
Bandido, a bandit themed wrestler, attempts to climb a ladder to reach the very shiny belts hanging just out of reach. He is thwarted by Kevin knight flipping into him to drag him off, as Speedball flips from the ropes onto a group of dudes just out of the frame
Bryan Danielson's entrance at All Out. Everyone is happily doing the Yes chant
A photo of a zoom recorder hooked into a really crude circuit built on a piece of cardboard. On/next to it as a lot of wires, alligator clips, a cookie sheet and piece of aluminum foil, a chunk of Galena, some blue razor blades, a safety pin, and a pencil stub. Copper wire is coiled around a toilet paper tubes in the corner
A hand-printed poster featuring three superpositioned dogs. The text reads Horseman, Passby & Connor Bennett / Normal Human Amount. Fri Sep 19 at Sadlier House 8 pm $20
A barbell on the ground with a bunch of rubber plates loaded. A red lifting belt is strewn on the floor nearby
A poster for A Roundtable on Mapping the Geographical Imaginations of the Tech Right, featuring Josh Lepawsky, Angela Carter, Keif Godbout-Kinney, Mel Hogan, and Anne Pasek. There's a pointillist, pastel background and a goofy 70s looking flower graphic.
A brick house with chalk written a meter tall: "WE ♥️ cats". "MEOW" is also written vertically on the wall's edge
recent scientific analyses propose that this divergence may be explained by greater capacity for the climate to reuptake GHGs in the atmosphere through natural processes. Terrestrial ecosystems have demonstrated a greater than anticipated sensitivity to elevated CO2 concentrations in the form of enhanced plant growth, which results in greater removal of CO2 from the atmosphere as plants take up CO2 and return it to the soil through natural life cycles. Similarly, the oceans have demonstrated a greater capacity to take up and process CO2 (including through aquatic plant life) without resulting in the anticipated negative impacts on pH and ocean ecosystems, including coral reefs (2025 CWG Draft Report at 6-9, 18-20)
A screenshot of the report, featuring a set of different plant seedlings and their root structures, arranged from smallest to largest. This correlates to different levels of CO2 concentrations they were grown under, and the historic dates those concentrations reflect atmospheric levels of CO2. The 700 ppm plant looks especially robust
A photo of a book chapter. It starts: Online: When we are online, what lines are we on? The meanings of the word online are less narrow that we usually imagine. Though its use skyrocketed with the advent of the internet, 'online' messages and practices can be found in early twentieth-century discussions of the telegraph's electric signals as well as the linear paths of the railway... The word speaks not to a technology but to an infrastructural condition.
Closing thoughts: the way we are sold friendship by tech CEOs tells us the state of politics of a nation, for which collective consequences are increasingly driven (and normalized) by corporations and invisible forms of private equity. That means - ultimately - rising authoritarianism, totalitarianism, and (eco)facism where your ideas and ideals - your politics - are shaped by companies, but feel like your own
Three sheets of mylar paper with the headings Readings, Energy, and Welcome are fanned out on a table. There's also a bunch of little envelopes that say 'Open me on June 30' (+other dates). My hand is in the shot holding up a magnifying glass, expanding text on another envelope that says See Different. There is also a Sunpoint Kit, with a pretty illustration of a white fern silhouette over a blue background
La portada de un fanzine con el texto: Enzarzarse en peleas con los centros de datos, o una humilde propuesta para reformar la política climática de las tecnologías digitales. También: cómo usar ping y traceroute para encontrar ubicación de los centros de datos y cómo buscar drama, conflictos y oportunidades de organización dondequiera que se encuentren
A woman in a beige bomber jacket on a train wearing a snapback hat with a radish pattern and an N95 mask
A drawing of a mixing board, tape deck and speaker with pink highlighter marking a few areas on each where interesting hums and shrieks can be found with the pick up coil
An etching of a very handsome amphibian with the text: Beautiful Mr Toad: the naturalist finds many points in him to admire
A screenshot of the article: "[Nadella] acknowledges that AI will cause “hard displacement and changes in labor pools,” including for Microsoft. (Althoff, the sales chief, says Nadella is pressuring his team to find ways to use AI to increase revenue from its operation instead of boosting head count. Meanwhile, Microsoft said on May 13 that it’s cutting 6,000 employees, about 3% of its workforce.) But Nadella contends that AI could end up delivering more societal benefits than the industrial revolution did. “When you create abundance,” he says, “then the question is what one does with that abundance to create more surplus.”
A post: kids these days will never know the hardships of each week having to overcook a fresh hardboiled egg hold for the computer mouse (then there's photos and dang those 2 spheres are a similar colour!)
Policy makers should be very cautious about the limits of energy efficiency as an environmental strategy, just as they should maintain a disciplined skepticism about the novelty or exceptionalism of these technologies. Ultimately, it’s all just data centers (and we perhaps have too many of them as it is). Grounding assessments in the churn of chips, concrete, and transmission lines that accrue around these structures will make for sounder, more accountable assessments of AI than any speculative account of the promises and perils of a wholly new technical frontier. That future is already here, and it’s made of sprawling server racks in air-conditioned boxes.
A white book cover with the text: "Low Carbon Research Methods Making Equity and Epistemological Gains through Decarbonising Academic Work." The graphic has a series of pencils with different colours and descending lengths. One pencil has scribbles coming out of it that look like a smoke stack. The last one has a pencil shaving above the pencil tip that sort of looks like a sun.
Highlighted text in AI 2027: The same training environments that teach Agent-1 to autonomously code and web-browse also make it a good hacker. Moreover, it could offer substantial help to terrorists designing bioweapons, thanks to its PhD-level knowledge of every field and ability to browse the web. this is dumb!
A black line embroidery piece of a stylish, mid century modern chair. It's stitched on to a stiff piece of canvas
A circular badge that says KEEP IT COOL PETERBOROUGH est. 2025 on the radius. In the middle is a simple line graphic of a heatpump. There are cherry blossom pink stars scattered minimally throughout.
A cassette tape, opened up, with the tape disentended and stuck down on a yellow post-it note. My hand, holding a piece of scotch tape, looms above
KING OF FLAVOR AND BEAUTY!
Two wrestlers (MJF, with his Burberry scarf, and Hangman Adam Page, with his greasy cowboy look) stare down in a ring. In the crowd behind them a fan holds up a yellow sign that reads 'KISS U COWARD'
Kristin Munro's The Production of Everyday Life in Eco-Concious Households. She's laying out her own relations to eco behavior, culminating in an aside about how she carried around a briefcase as an affectation in undergrad, while also playing in punk bands. The next section begins "In this book, I am not the main character"
A tiny tiny pepper sprout popping out of the dirt in a seedling pot on a window still. The outside is nothing but snow