Reflecting Pools

Just a short newsletter this week, full of links to others' writing – apologies.

Ideologies:

Fred Turner argues in The Baffler that the California Ideology, as articulated by Richard Barbrook and Andrew Cameron in their famous 1995 essay, is no longer central to Silicon Valley hegemony.

Instead, Turner contends, it’s now the Texan Ideology:

Today, the hippies have aged out of the computer industry entirely, the yuppies are retired, and high-tech entrepreneurs like Musk are leaving California for Texas. The world of digital technology has changed too. In the 1990s, everyone from modem makers to software developers was focused on building the global network. Connection was the order of the day. Today, the World Wide Web is in place, our computers are in our pockets, and the smart money bets on turning the data we generate into patterns that can be sold to the highest bidder. The global system of connection built out in the 1990s has turned the social world into a resource for the oldest form of capitalism, extraction.

For that kind of work Texas makes an ideal home. Built early on from the profits of cattle ranching and slave-picked cotton, propelled to national prominence by the oil booms of the early twentieth century, Texas has long been synonymous with turning natural and human resources into money. Its promoters have been expert, too, in turning cowboys and oilmen into emblems of American masculinity and celebrating a muscular Christianity. From its earliest days as part of Mexico, when the Mexican government required settlers to convert to Catholicism, extraction has been entwined with religion and racial politics. In the 1920s and 1930s, fundamentalist Christian radio echoed across the state. In 1953, Reverend Billy Graham staged a revival that filled the Cotton Bowl with seventy-five thousand Texans. Since the 1950s, Southern Baptists, whose conservatism has increased over the decades, have dominated the state’s religious scene. Today, they and right-wing members of other denominations help organize and fund the state’s politics.

Because conservative Christianity is so tightly woven into the state’s political culture, Musk and his fellow California exiles find themselves confronting a new ideological fusion, a blend of neoliberal economic policies and Christian-nationalist cultural ambition, rooted in the state’s long history of resource extraction and at ease with racism and misogyny.

This shift could have major ramifications on the shape of education and education technology. Indeed, Texas already wields a great deal of influence in dictating the contents of K-12 textbooks used throughout the US, bending both science and history to suit conservative Christian politics. Layer some technology – "the knowledge industry" – and automated decision-making on top of that, and I think it spells real trouble.

Indeed, if the Californian Ideology, with its privileging of libertarianism, neoliberalism, and radical individualism, has been the hallmark of the last few decades – with incredibly negative implications for both public schools and for public school students, let’s be honest – what will the Texan Ideology bring?What will it bring, particularly as the tech industry and tech billionaires so clearly are eager to force us all into a world of AI, surveillance, extraction, and ideological control?

“New Documents Detail Nine-Figure, Silicon Valley–Funded Abundance Movement” by Dylan Gyauch-Lewis in The American Prospect

“Leak Exposes Members of Peter Thiel’s Secretive ‘Dialog’ Society” by Dell Cameron and Yulia Almazova in Wired

Literacies:

“AI opposition isn’t the product of a lack of ‘literacy’” by Paris Marx

“What Was ‘Digital Literacy’?” by Timothy Burke

“Why ‘Book-Shaming’ Won’t Solve the Children’s Literacy Crisis” by Jessica Winter in The New Yorker

From Jason Koebbler of 404 Media: “It Is Trivially Easy to Use Reddit to Manipulate AI Search, Research Suggests.”

Policy Treatments:

“Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school,” Reuters reports.

Following Australia’s recent policy, the UK has moved to ban children under age 16 from social media. The usual suspects say -- with a straight face! -- that this spells “doom” for everyone’s privacy and freedom of expression online. But don’t worry, British kids will still get plenty of technological indoctrination as Prime Minister Starmer has promised to roll out AI tutors for almost half a million poor children “to close the attainment gap.” So kids still get to sit in front of screens all day -- cool, cool -- and as this version of behavioral engineering is “AI,” it’s definitely for their own good.

Trump continues to gut the Department of Education, shifting oversight of civil rights issues to the DOJ (LOL) and of special education to HHS (WTF).

Engineering Minds:

“AI Is Not Conscious, But It Is Becoming Our Unconscious,” writes L. M. Sacasas.

From Greg Toppo, in The 74: “Young People Turn to AI to Be ‘Their Real, Unfiltered Selves’.”

Finances:

“OpenAI Losses Increased Nearly 8X in 2025, With Spending Hitting $34 Billion,” Ed Zitron reports.

Anytime someone tries to tell you that “we just can’t afford” to do something in education – make tuition free or make classes smaller or put more teachers in special education classrooms or provide real, material resources for families – you are welcome to point to this whole “AI” tomfoolery and ask why we think we can afford that.

Today’s bird is the American coot, a bird that many online sources say is sometimes mistaken for a duck. I mean, maybe. Until you see their feet, that is. A coot’s feet are bizarre: with these weird, sort of scaly, long yellow-green toes. Other websites say they look like chickens, and you have to wonder if some people have even seen birds before? American coots can also be distinguished by their white bills and foreheads and by that little reddish brown spot between their eyes. They live near water, preferably fresh- thank you very much; and their diet is made up primarily of algae. (Anyone know of any algae-infested pools?) Despite their goofy appearance, the birds are apparently quite hostile. Figures.

Thanks for reading Second Breakfast. I'll be back on Monday with more to say about everything. Really. I'm just not feelin' it today.