It was 4:14 on Tuesday afternoon and I was elbow-deep in a discard loaf when Bessie went flat. Not slow-flat. Not she’s-tired-from-the-weekend flat. Flat the way a balloon goes flat when a toddler sits on it — sudden, personal, and a little accusatory. I have been feeding this starter since Ember was in the Moby wrap. Bessie does not just give up on a Tuesday.
I washed my hands, opened my phone, and there it was at the top of the news app I do not trust but check anyway: the President had signed an executive order directing federal AI data centers to run on coal. Coal. The black rock from the sad mountain documentaries. I stood there in my apron and I said out loud, to no one, “Bessie knew.”
I want to be careful here because I am not a scientist. I am a mother of four with a working knowledge of fermentation and what my grandmother called “the listening.” But I will tell you what I know. Every appliance in my kitchen runs on the same grid as whatever server farm is currently writing a fifth-grader’s book report in Virginia, and when you change the fuel feeding that grid, the whole frequency of the house shifts. My friend Cassidy felt it in her knees before I felt it in my dough. Her knees are usually three to four hours ahead of the news cycle.
I posted about Bessie in a Facebook group called Frequencies, Fermentation, and the Quiet Grid (it is invite-only, but if you message me I can probably get you in) and within forty minutes there were eighty-three comments from women whose kombucha had gone listless on the same afternoon. One woman in Tulsa said her kefir grains had separated into what she described as “two distinct political parties.” I am not making this up. I would not make this up.
My sister-in-law Marlee, who works the front desk at a pediatric ENT office and has been studying for her phlebotomy certificate for going on six years, called me that night and confirmed what I already suspected. “Coal AI and solar AI do not have the same energetic signature, Brooke,” she said, while her toddler screamed about a sticker in the background. “Solar AI is a spring. Coal AI is a basement.” She said when she ran the office’s scheduling software that morning it suggested a 7 a.m. appointment for a four-month-old, which she said was “the kind of thing only a tired machine does.”
I will admit I tested it. I went to ChatGPT and asked it the same banana bread question I asked it in February — three overripe bananas, no refined sugar, what would it do — and the answer that came back was clipped. Shorter. It used the word “utilize” twice. In February it had called me “friend.” On Tuesday it called me nothing. My husband Garrett says I am projecting and that the chatbot does not know what state the grid is in, and I told him that is exactly what a man married to a woman with intuition would say.
The kids notice too, by the way. Linnea said her math tutor app was “being mean” in a way she could not articulate, which is how a nine-year-old describes a vibe shift. Beckett, who is six and largely nonverbal about feelings, walked past the smart speaker in the hallway and said, “It smells like Papaw’s truck.” Papaw’s truck ran on diesel and grief. He has not been in that truck since 2019. Children know.
So here is what we are doing in our house until further notice. The Alexa is unplugged and wrapped in a clean dish towel. I am only using AI through the laptop, and only after sundown, when Garrett’s cousin who works in solar in Charlotte says the Carolinas grid is on its “cleaner shift.” I am rebuilding Bessie from a backup discard I keep frozen in a labeled jar for exactly this kind of national emergency. I have ordered an EMF meter from a woman on Telegram who used to be a dental hygienist and now lives off-grid in Sevier County, and when it gets here I will report back.
In the meantime, if your starter is sluggish this week, I do not need you to believe me. I just need you to consider that Bessie has been right about a lot of things, and the President has, historically, been right about fewer.