CJ Trowbridge discusses his latest land project, the High Desert Institute, and a previous one that was featured on the 2023 reality show "The Garden: Commune or Cult?"--where the founding of an anticapitalist, consensus-based community was chronicled by corporate TV channel producers for a Discovery Channel audience. We also talk about the Cyberpony Express mesh network he's working on (basically, a parallel internet outside the clutches of the telecoms oligarchs like AT&T).

CJ on TikTok
https://www.tiktok.com/@cjtrowbridge

CJ on YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/@CJTrowbridge

High Desert Institute
https://highdesertinstitute.org

Castro Media on TikTok
https://www.tiktok.com/@castromedia.org

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AI is coming for our jobs, the environment, and is even starting to stand-in for human creativity. Derek Allen, Sam Kirchner and Varvara Pavlova are part of the newly formed direct action group Stop AI, which is particularly concerned about the existential threat of Artificial General Intelligence and the potential for robots to outsmart humans, which Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, says is coming this year.

Stop AI
https://www.stopai.info/

"Lavender: The AI machine directing Israel’s bombing spree in Gaza" (Yuval Abraham, +972 Magazine)
https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/

Brian Merchant's book "Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech" covers the history of the Luddite movement
https://sfpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S93C5986948

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Erica Meiners and Priya Kandaswamy on how prison guard unions use the valor of labor movement to reinforce the prison industrial complex.

TW: Discussion of brutality, murder, sexual assault and suicide of prisoners at the hands of prison employees.

"Prisons Are Anti-Labor Institutions. We Need an Anti-Carceral Labor Movement." (Truthout)
https://truthout.org/articles/prisons-are-anti-labor-institutions-we-need-an-anti-carceral-labor-movement/

Legal Aid Society: "I'm Just Collateral Damage. The Human Cost of an Illegal Prison Strike"
https://legalaidnyc.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/LAS_PrisonersRightsProject_ClientStoriesReport_Final.pdf

Southern Poverty Law Center on white supremacy among prison guards
https://www.splcenter.org/resources/hate-watch/new-york-fired-racist-prison-guard-identity-evropa-membership/

Support us and find links to our past episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco