As the Netherlands gears up for a snap parliamentary election on October 29, less than halfway through parliament's usual four-year term following the collapse of the ruling coalition, the likelihood of another win for the country's far-right Party for Freedom (PVV) is mounting. An outright win is next to impossible. The Netherlands has always had a coalition government formed by a minimum of two parties due to its proportional representation electoral system, under which seats in parliament are awarded to parties in proportion to the number of votes they win. It then partnered with three other far-right parties - the Farmer-Citizen Movement (BBB), New Social Contract (NSC), and the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) - to form a coalition government. But in June, PVV made a dramatic exit from the coalition government over a disagreement on immigration policy.

In this episode of Uncanny Valley, we discuss the economics and environmental impacts of energy-hungry data centers and whether these facilities are sustainable in the age of AI. The Stargate AI data center in Abilene, Texas.Photo-Illustration: WIRED Staff; Getty Images Tech giants have been investing hundreds of billions of dollars into AI data centers just this year alone. But as the deals pile up, so have the concerns around their viability and sustainability. Michael Calore and senior correspondent Lauren Goode sit down with senior writer Molly Taft to discuss how these energy hungry facilities actually work, the different industry interests at stake, and whether it'll all come crumbling down. The AI Industry's Scaling Obsession Is Headed for a Cliff by Will Knight OpenAI's Blockbuster AMD Deal Is a Bet on Near-Limitless Demand for AI by Will Knight How Much Energy Does AI Use? The People Who Know Aren't Saying by Molly Taft Write to us at uncannyvalley@wired.com. You can always listen to this week's podcast through the audio player on this page, but if you want to subscribe for free to get every episode, here's how: If you're on an iPhone or iPad, open the app called Podcasts, or just tap this link. Note: This is an automated transcript, which may contain errors. It's so nice to be back in studio with you again, because our schedules were not aligning for the past few weeks. But the stars and the moon have aligned now, and here we are once again. Lauren Goode: Here we are. And I'm sure all of our listeners have just been sitting here wondering, "When are Lauren and Mike getting back together? When is the band getting back together?"

What we enjoy about generative A.I. may also be its ultimate limitation: we want to see ourselves. During the past few weeks, I've seen a proliferation of A.I.-generated video in my social-media feeds and group texts. The more impressive--or, at least, more personalized--of these have been the work of Sora 2, the updated version of OpenAI's video-generation platform, which the company released on an invitation-only basis at the end of September. This iteration of Sora comes with a socially networked app, and it appears to be much better at integrating you and your friends, say, into a stock scene. What this means is that, when you open up Sora 2, you'll likely see a video of someone you know winning a Nobel Prize, getting drafted into the N.B.A., or flying a bomber plane in the Second World War.

Sign up to receive it in your inbox. Aside from a temporary love, or a new friend, you could easily stumble upon fabulous stage shows that were presented with such seriousness, often, that you wondered if--while watching the amazing Duelling Bankheads, for instance, or so many people who got up so brilliantly as Stevie Nicks on the Night of 1000 Stevies--you were high on the entertainment, or on dancing with your chosen community, or just amazed by what New York had to offer by way of creativity. Looking back, I can see that, for me at least, it was the combination of all three elements together that gave such hope about Manhattan's ability to foster noncommercial glamour, and to support young performers who were trying things out and seeing what stuck. Richard Move as Martha Graham. The shows I loved the most were at Jackie 60, spearheaded by the irreplaceable Chi Chi Valenti and Johnny Dynell, the resident d.j.

As the Trump Administration tries to rescue symbols of the Lost Cause, an exhibition in Los Angeles, led by Kara Walker, finds meaning in their desecration. Kara Walker's "Unmanned Drone" (2023) transforms a Stonewall Jackson statue. The first thing you see is a horse's ass, protruding, upside down, from the thorax of a monster. A man's arm descends from the beast's stomach, his gloved hand clutching the blade of a fallen sabre. Every part of the work comes from a statue of the Confederate general Stonewall Jackson that was removed from Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2021.

Next week, five teens from Palestine will head to Panama to compete in one of the world's largest youth robotics competitions. To win--and then teach STEM to their peers displaced by the Israel-Hamas war. For the entirety of the past year, as the teenage roboticists of Team Palestine have been working on their latest project, their homeland has been engulfed in Israel's war with Hamas . Earlier this month, that all changed. With a fragile ceasefire in place, Israeli forces began to pull back from parts of Gaza, and the teens put the final touches on the project they hope will bring them victory: a robot that can maneuver through a series of simulated challenges based on the effects of climate change.

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Not long into his new documentary, Oobah Butler tells the cofounder of his newly minted company, Drops, that they should create a piece of luxury luggage that "looks like a bomb" and will sell for $200,000. Immediately, I'm thinking his quest to get £1 million in 90 days might have come to an early end. Butler is a British prankster documentarian who is known for his stunts, like managing to get Amazon to sell its drivers' urine as energy drinks or creating a fake restaurant called the Shed and gaming TripAdvisor to make it the top-rated London restaurant on the platform. His latest documentary, made for the UK's Channel 4, is called How I Made £1 Million in 90 Days Set in London and New York, it takes on the worlds of startups, venture capital, crypto, and what ultimately comes across as a lot of bullshitting, in the name of striking it rich quick. Butler opens the film by saying, as someone who didn't grow up with money and isn't particularly motivated by it, he's fascinated by the fact that people "idolize" wealthy entrepreneurs.

Two federal judges acknowledged AI-generated court orders contained serious errors, prompting calls from Sen. Chuck Grassley for stronger judicial artificial intelligence policies.

The'Surge' of Troops May Not Come to San Francisco, but the City Is Ready Anyway San Francisco is preparing for federal law enforcement's invasion of the Bay Area, whether it happens or not. Citizens protesting the threat of federal troop deployments in the San Francisco Bay Area held a rally on Thursday at SF City Hall. After months of deployments by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the National Guard across American cities, federal agents have been preparing to descend into San Francisco . Local resistance groups have been coordinating with activists in other cities across the country that have been besieged by federal law enforcement. Thousands of volunteers, coordinating through Signal group chats, Zoom calls, and social media posts, planned protests and spread the word that federal troops are on their way to San Francisco.