Big money and powerful interests have entirely rebranded drugs like cannabis, mushrooms, and ketamine in the 21st century.

Today, millions of Americans can buy their pot legally in places that resemble Apple Stores or take powerful psychoactive substances in plush therapeutic settings. Cocaine, however, has yet to see the kind of tech-fueled makeover that changed the public perception of those drugs—but these luxury products in my Instagram feed may just give it a glow-up.

Though you might not instantly see them as drug paraphernalia, on closer inspection, many of these products are offering to serve a need that no real person has ever had. Consider, for example, this video demonstrating use of a SLYD pouch, a small leather pocket with a magnetic clasp. The ad shows a person loading a small quantity of a powdered substance into the $39 pouch, and a caption exhorts the viewer: “Stop using that sketchy bag for your electrolytes.”

The visual comparison with a resealable plastic bag containing whitish electrolyte power should make it clear what is seemingly being suggested here. The custom inscription of the word “BAG,” common drug slang, on the leather sachet dispels any lingering uncertainty. Because while the world has never wanted for a convenient way to carry electrolytes around in one’s pocket, a miniature wallet for cocaine—or other powder drugs like ketamine and MDMA—does have some consumer appeal.

It turns out that such accessories are widely (albeit stealthily) marketed on Instagram. An online store called Magic Items sells its own take on the small magnetized leather pouch; it’s called a Wildcard, comes in various sizes priced from $60 to $100, and is stamped with the logo of a rabbit in a jester hat. The company’s Instagram page also features a demonstration with electrolyte powder, though some of the comments on the post give the game away: “Will a dog still be able to smell through it?” asked one prospective customer. Another post shows a Wildcard next to a plastic dime bag, advertising it as “anti clog” and “luxury,” whereas the more common means of carrying “electrolytes” is “hard to open” and “single use.”

“In 2022, something changed,” reads a page on Magic Items’ website explaining the invention of the Wildcard. “Everyone wanted to be out again—at parties, on rooftops, in the desert—feeling good with music thumping and friends nearby. The world was alive, and everything just wanted to work better. We all needed a water-tight container that was low profile and stylish, but there was no great option available.”

A similar brand, FattyPack, has drawn comments from Instagram users observing that its product is well-suited for holding drugs, and recently posted a demo on how to attach a key to the bag—a useful tool if you’re going to be scooping powder out of it.

The makers of the SLYD pouch did not respond to a request for comment. Via Instagram DM, a representative for Magic Items denied that the company is selling drug paraphernalia or promoting the use of illicit substances, both of which would violate Meta’s advertising policies and guidelines on restricted goods and services. “It is a multi-use bag for perishables,” the rep said of the Wildcard. In an Instagram DM, a FattyPack representative says: “Since we don’t promote our product for drug use, we’ve had zero issues with Meta ads. While some customers may use it that way, we leave that to individual interpretation.”

Meta spokesperson Erica Sackin tells WIRED that it is investigating a number of the brand accounts mentioned in this article. The company said it routinely conducts sweeps in order to crack down on users who violate their policies on illicit drugs.

The final stragglers testified on Wednesday in the Musk v. Altman trial. The witnesses generated few waves, aside from the revelation that Microsoft has so far spent over $100 billion on its partnership with OpenAI. Rather than focus on that, I wanted to bring you a candid observation that my colleague Maxwell Zeff and I can’t stop talking about after spending nearly three weeks watching the trial.

The courtroom is littered with butt cushions.

Several of the hard, wooden benches on the right side of US district Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers’ courtroom are reserved for OpenAI and Microsoft’s attorneys, executives, and other members of the defense. About 10 people, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and general counsel Che Chang, have benefitted from thick black cushions—the plushest of them from the brand Purple; $120 from Target—that spare their butts from hours of sitting. Some cushions have rounded corners, while others are square. On Wednesday, Chang even put one behind his back, a less common but not unprecedented move in the courtroom.

OpenAI President Greg Brockman and his wife, Anna, have watched a considerable portion of the trial—and have both been prolific users of pristine white pillows. Judging from the tags bursting from the seams, the pillows seem to be from the sleeping goods brand Coop, which sells a two pack of alternative down-filled throw pillows for $35.

On Wednesday, an OpenAI bodyguard carried a purple handbag into the courtroom, with a pillow for each of the Brockmans. Anna gave her husband just a minute to suffer in pillow-less oblivion before she discreetly passed one to him and then situated her own. I felt bad for OpenAI chief futurist Joshua Achiam, who later took Brockman’s seat but wasn’t left with either of the pillows. (Achiam eventually did obtain one of the more standard black cushions.)

OpenAI did not immediately respond to WIRED’s request for comment.

One longtime technology lawyer told WIRED that using cushions or pillows isn’t exactly “customary,” but noted, “it’s not totally out of left field.” Personally, he said, he has never seen lawyers use pillows or cushions during his trials, but then again, he’s “never been involved in a trial that has lasted as many days as that one.”

The core litigators in this case sit in comparatively luxurious leather chairs, though a couple do show signs of fraying, so maybe the padding isn’t as robust as it appears.

My last time in this courtroom for an hours-long stretch was in 2021, covering portions of the Epic Games v. Apple trial. But capacity was limited back then because of Covid concerns, so I had plenty of room to stretch out. This time around, the courtroom has been filled nearly to its maximum capacity—about 150 people—including bench seats for up to 90.

I thought about bringing my own cushion roughly an hour into my first day of the trial at the end of April, because, well, these benches are deeply uncomfortable. But I didn’t want to come off as weak. None of the other two dozen or so reporters regularly in attendance—including one who is pregnant—seemed to bring cushions, at least, initially. So I went through a run of six days with my bottom and back getting sorer by the minute.

Last week, after a particularly brutal morning, I finally decided to bring in some help. I couldn’t find the well-padded seat cushion meant for stadium bleachers, so I settled for a “cooling” cushion passed out at the steaming-hot outdoor venues at the Tokyo Olympics. About two seconds into using it on Wednesday morning for the first time, I ruled it counterproductive. It was too small and too thin to offer any relief. My back got particularly stressed when furiously typing notes about the Musk-inspired jackass trophy, which reportedly once had its own pillow.

Four hours in, I gave up on the pillow entirely. But I noticed one New York Times reporter who eventually caved, as well as the courtroom artist—who has a particularly colorful cushion—remained seated on their pillows. Maybe I’ll find a better remedy for next week, when Gonzalez Rogers will hear arguments about potential penalties.

Maxwell Zeff contributed to this report.

This is an edition of Maxwell Zeff’s Model Behavior newsletter. Read previous newsletters here.

Building AI sustainably seems like a pipe dream as tech giants that previously made promises to cut emissions have been racing to build out massive data centers powered by fossil fuels.

The rush to build out AI at all costs has been reinforced by the Trump administration, which is also rolling back environmental protections.

Despite these headwinds, Sasha Luccioni, an AI sustainability researcher, thinks that demand for more transparency in AI, from both businesses and individuals, is higher than ever from the customer side.

Luccioni has become a leader in trying to create more transparency about AI’s emissions and environmental impacts in her four years at Hugging Face, an AI company, including pioneering a leaderboard documenting the energy efficiency of open-source AI models. She has also been an outspoken critic of major AI companies that, she says, are deliberately withholding energy and sustainability information from the public.

Now, she’s starting Sustainable AI Group, a new venture with former Salesforce sustainability chief Boris Gamazaychikov. They’ll focus on helping companies answer, among other things, “what are the levers that we can play with in order to make agents slightly less bad?” Luccioni is also interested in sussing out the energy needs of different types of AI tools, such as speech-to-text translation, or photo-to-video—an area that’s she says has so far been understudied.

Luccioni sat down exclusively with WIRED to talk about the demand for sustainable AI, and what exactly she wants to see from Big Tech.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

WIRED: I hear a lot from individual people who are worried about the environment and AI use, but I don’t hear as much from companies thinking about this. What have you heard specifically from folks who are working with AI in their business and what are they worried about?

Sasha Luccioni: First of all, they are getting a lot of employee pressure—and board pressure, director pressure, like, “you need to be quantifying this.” Their employees are like, “You’re forcing us to use Copilot—how does it affect our ESG goals?”

For most companies, AI has become a core part of their business offering. In that case, they have to understand the risks. They have to understand where models are running. They can’t continue to use models where they don’t even know the location of the data centers, or the grid they’re connected to. They have to know what the supply chain emissions are, transportation emissions, all these different things.

It’s not about not using AI. I think we’re past that. It’s choosing the right models, for example, or sending the signal that energy source matters, so customers are willing to pay a little bit more for data centers that are powered by renewable energy. There are ways of doing it, and it’s a matter of finding the believers in the right places.

I’d also imagine that for global companies, the sustainability situation is very different than in the US, right? The US government might not give a shit about this, but other governments certainly do.

In Europe, they have the EU AI Act. Sustainability has been a pretty big part of that since the beginning. They put a bunch of clauses in there, and now the first reporting initiatives are coming out.

Even Asia is trying to be more transparent. The International Energy Agency has been doing these reports [on AI and energy use]. I was talking to them and they were like, other countries realize that the IEA gets their numbers from the countries, and the countries don’t have these numbers for data centers specifically. They can’t make future-looking choices, because they need the numbers to know, “OK, well that means we need X capacity, in the next five years,” or whatever. [Some countries] have started pushing back on the data center builders.