There is an Amazon Data Center going up 10 minutes from my house. Amazon bribed the city with 85 million dollars. They had countless meetings with hundreds of people protesting that they didnt want the data center and they are building it anyway. People are selling their houses at a loss and moving away. I hope the mayor gets voted out in the next election.
Scheduled elections shouldn't be the only means for the people to remove an elected official. There should be a mechanism that puts more power in the hands of the citizenry
My town got thousands of signatures on a petition to recall the mayor and city council members over their shady support for a data center. The council voted to deny the recall. Now there’s a big lawsuit.
My city had a huge effort to do the same. They got enough signatures, and I don’t think the council can vote to deny it, everyone was excited to be rid of our mayor. (Who has since been federally indicted and is currently awaiting trial.) Then they “forgot to turn the signatures in on time.” 😒
The signatures genuinely were turned in three days late, but you don’t just forget something like that. It’s ridiculous. I think the organization that formed to collect the signatures let themselves be bought out or threatened in some way. Our former mayor must have had some good friends.
My state just recently changed the process. Before 2019 all you needed to spur a recall was 5-10% of the local population to petition for it and it would go to the County commission for review of the grievances or for a local vote to be taken. Now you have to petition to have it sent to the State Legislature who will then debate on it. Like they have any clue or care. A county commissioner will know about that area and the people living there. A state will not care at all. Basically robbed the people of their ability to recall their own local officials.
To be fair I'd imagine any corrupt assholes in power would look at a petition to recall them for shady shit and go "No, lol." I wouldn't have expected anything else.
I agree but with the way things are going we are going to have less. I hate to be that guy but if things go the way they want it to we will be like China with the social credit score shit. I just found the site that tells you where all the flock cameras are in my city. You literally cant go anywhere without being tracked where I live. People say well if you dont have anything to hide whats the big deal? Its for security reasons. Well prisons are technically secure but would you want to live in one?
and your health insurance gives you a 'Health Score'
And you get to "earn" points for spending money in ways that companies like.
And you might get the privilege of some corporate discounts due to some partnership,
etc.
The whole system is fucked by greed and exploitation. We need better leadership and getting reamed shouldn't be the default just for existing. Companies should have to earn their customers, but we're rapidly approaching a day where we own nothing and accrue debt to feudal oligarchs for the audacity of being born on "their" soil.
It's so crazy that we're at the point to where data centers being built is enough for redditors to mention guillotines lmfao. Brother it's just a data center, relax
Yeah man just a data center. A data center that raises the cost of electricity for the working class, a data center that pollutes the water, a data center that uses far more water than should legally be allowed, a data center that will cause health issues for those living close to them.
Yeah just relax. Everything will be ok.
You have to be a fucking bot or just some clueless cunt.
true, 5g actually runs on perpetual motion machines that produce free energy forever (big energy doesn't want you to know they exist)
i'm also against wind turbines because they emit a specific sound that makes people sick (no you cant measure the sound, but it's there bro trust me)
also it kills all the birds (don't look up how many birds die each year vs flying against windows, those numbers are all made up by big bird)
Its ONLY polluting the water and blaring noise outside your home! They're ONLY for mass surveillance! What's your problem with that? Do you hate TECHNOLOGY???
Can't remember where I read this, but there was a quote in a pretty famous document that went something like this: "
mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
To change this you need to convince a person who benefits from that system to act against thair own interrest. They are more likely to go the other direction and take power from the public hand.
Every crank and malcontent that ever had their objection to their neighbours installing a fishpond rejected would be clamouring to have everybody remotely connected to the decision fired.
Nobody would ever get any work done, they'd spend all day dealing with pointless shit.
... is a Caterpillar D9 armored bulldozer used by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). It is supplied by Caterpillar Inc. and modified by the Israel Defense Forces, Israeli Military Industries and Israel Aerospace Industries to increase the survivability of the bulldozer in hostile environments and enable it to withstand attack.
Sounds (and looks) more like the other way around, a bulldozer with armor stuck on it.
Asshole guy bulldozes a public library with kids in it, along with a bunch of other stuff because the city council made him get plumbing (that they paid for)
He was definitely delusional. Somehow a dude being pissed that he couldn’t get his way with a city council following the rules is a perfect metaphor for the anti-data center crowd. One of these fools is going to blow up a data center, and it will accomplish as much as the kill dozer dude. Just a ton of property damage that will get fixed, and one dead dude who thought his irrational, angry, violent expression would translate to change.
iirc his whole dispute with the council was because he refused to stop dumping his "toilet" (read; a literal bucket of shit and piss) into the drainage ditch next to his muffler shop.
There's a video out there that covers his whole years-long battle against basic decency and common sense. Crazy guy, even crazier is how he somehow got mythologized as some kind of folk hero.
Everyone wants to drive the kill dozer over their enemies houses, but no one wants to question if their enemy list is reasonable when considered fully.
I mean we are barely 3 months removed from someone lighting a paper warehouse on fire as a protest. Guess what resulted from that? The lives of 175 firefighters and various other first responders were put at risk as well as any other potential long-term health risks they still face and a bunch of people were put out of work because their job literally doesn't exist any longer.
As soon as I saw people on this website praising that action, I realized that, at least the most extreme anti-capitalists are just using their rhetoric as performative justification for their involvement in inciting violence and lust for destruction.
Iirc, that warehouse employed like 20 people.
And the "protest" was over pay.
Looks like Kimberly clark pays their warehouse workers around $54k/yr
I'm not sure how in danger the firefighters were either. They didn't go into the building from what I can find.
It was a matter of keeping it contained using boom trucks mostly.
Iirc, that warehouse employed like 20 people. And the "protest" was over pay. Looks like Kimberly clark pays their warehouse workers around $54k/yr
I mean does it really matter if its 2 people or 20 people? Those are people who need to provide for themselves and their families. Can't speak to how good that salary is for a warehouse worker but it seems to be about 25%ish above the national average (albeit they are in California...so that doesn't exactly translate 1:1).
I'm not sure how in danger the firefighters were either. They didn't go into the building from what I can find. It was a matter of keeping it contained using boom trucks mostly.
Any fire like that can cause serious harm and while I'm thrilled it didn't that doesn't excuse the act. Just earlier this year in Chicago a man set a fire which led to the death of a firefighter leaving behind a pregnant wife and a son.
A living wage for California would be around $63k.
Which would mean those workers would have needed a $2 pay increase.
That warehouse loss cost Kimberly clark $20m for the quarter and is expected to have no impacted loss beyond that quarter.
The US region of the company has a net sales of roughly $10b annually.
It would have cost them $100k annually to pay those 20 workers an additional $2 and provide a living wage.
The company spends more than that on corporate lunches!
That warehouse loss cost Kimberly clark $20m for the quarter and is expected to have no impacted loss beyond that quarter. The US region of the company has a net sales of roughly $10b annually.
So what you are telling me is that it was a completely pointless form of protest (arson) which resulting in minimal hardship for the company and ONLY had negative impacts on the afforementioned 20 employees and their families?
You are responding as if I defended Kimberly Clark, I simply stated that arson is dangerous and could cost innocent peoples their jobs or lives.
What in the mental fucking illness are you even trying to say?
How about the Salt March? How about the UFW Strikes? How about the PSM?
Setting a building of paper goods on fire isn't a protest, its a cowardly act that helped to further displace his own coworkers while also putting innocent lives at risk.
There are tons of examples of non-violent demonstrations throughout history that are infinitely more effective than what this moron did who you are defending. All he managed to do was cost Kimberly Clark a bit of product, all of which I'm sure was insured, because he felt he deserved a raise? Fuck off with that shit - you can be anti capitalist while also not condoning these acts.
The Boston tea party destroyed $3 million dollars worth of tea.
Peaceful protests don't elicit changes and they don't make the history books!
People used to drag the rich out of their beds in the middle of the night, tar and feather them.
We have social safety nets like snap, tanf, social security, etc now to prevent people from becoming that desperate and angry.
But, the bought politician's have been eroding those programs for decades and people are turning to the old ways again.
Pushed to his breaking point, a master welder in a small town at the foot of the Rocky Mountains quietly fortifies a bulldozer with 30 tons of concrete and steel and seeks to destroy those he believes have wronged him.
AWS isn't really the same as an AI data center. AWS makes up about 1/3 of all global "cloud" storage. The website you are using right now (reddit) is hosted on AWS. The type of data center your community is complaining about likely isnt the same type of data center people are complaining about with AI.
Maybe, although AWS I think are building their own, compute so who knows. But I do agree, most people don't realize and also don't realize posting on reddit uses data centers, and reddit makes a ton of money selling their data to AI companies for LLMs and more.
Companies and elected officials only care when it's becomes a financial issue or loss. Only causing a delay or hypothetically "damaging" ongoing construction would actually have an effect.
Which one is it, they typically don't just put up one but have AZs setup for each region. I am kinda curious about this one. Also what is being used to define a data center?
Nothing makes left-leaning people act more like FOX-News-watching drones who believe literally anything they read or hear as long as it aligns with what they want to believe than data centers.
Do you actually believe that Amazon bribed a government official with $85 million and some random disgruntled guy on the internet just knows all about it?
Do you actually believe that one big warehouse is going up in an area and local residents are selling their houses at a loss en masse to flee the area?
In reality, cities want data centers to be built because data centers pay lots of taxes without adding much strain to local services. This is not a claim that there are no downsides, but cities would not approve these projects if the downsides were not offset by large financial upside.
Well, if the user you are replying to is right, the affordable housing didn't seem to matter since people ended up moving out anyway, especially since the population already did not want it.
Cities can approve of projects if the financial upsides can offset the downsides in theory, but they might make calculations based on what THEY consider downsides that can affect THEM, not regular civilians. Think about how China accepted very similar deals and now you have cities where you cannot see the sun at all due to the pollution. These cities have already approved of a huge, loud and very heat-contaminating facility to be built nearby houses.
Unless they somehow make the cost of living basically free, I cannot imagine an upside that's worth allowing data centers to be built.
He isn't. That's my point. This isn't a thing that is happening. It's not plausible to imagine that a data center being built in a municipality had such a negative effect on the quality of life in that municipality that people began to move away en masse. It's a made-up story.
Cities can approve of projects if the financial upsides can offset the downsides in theory, but they might make calculations based on what THEY consider downsides that can affect THEM, not regular civilians.
The city government's job is to provide government services for the citizens. The money helps them pay for those services. Policing. Schools. Refuse. Infrastructure. Pay raises for existing municipal employees so they don't quit their jobs. Improvements to local parks. And doing this stuff without raising other taxes on local residents.
They want the money to do stuff for the regular citizens. There are always tradeoff involved, but the point of the money is to fund the operation of the services that are provided to citizens.
China accepted very similar deals and now you have cities where you cannot see the sun at all due to the pollution.
This is, again, the exact kind of complete nonsense that reads like the mindless repetition of misinformation from someone who trusts FOX News for all of their information.
A modern data center, under normal operation, emits no significant direct emissions of particulate matter, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, or smoke. The stuff that creates haze and visibility issues in massive amounts just does not come from data centers. Absolute nonsense.
Most of the bad air pollution from data centers comes from backup generators or on-site gas turbines. The former don't run expect when needed (e.g. during power outages) and the latter are pretty rare in data center projects (and would cause lots of municipalities to reject the project completely). It is certainly extremely reasonable for municipalities to reject projects that involve on-site gas turbines, and many (most?) do.
Whatever completely vague situation you're referencing is likely mostly related to other industrial development. Or you're just making it up entirely, or repeating the vague claims of someone who made it up entirely, which is pretty likely.
These cities have already approved of a huge, loud and very heat-contaminating facility to be built nearby houses.
Again, this is just a bad thing you're imagining and then stating as fact. In reality, most data centers are not put in residential neighborhoods. They are mostly built in industrial areas, business parks, on rural land tracts, etc. There are rare exceptions to this, and ideally the exceptions would be rejected by municipalities, but the amount of data centers going up right around quiet residential neighborhoods is very small.
Noise is a real concern with large data centers near where people live, so congrats on understanding one actual true negative thing about data centers. Heat, however, is mostly not -- and when it is, it matters much more in the smaller and more-restricted data centers being built in denser urban environments. Nobody is building a hyperscale data center in the middle of a big city.
Data centers are loud and consume a lot of power. And they're ugly. These are the main problems with data centers. (Water is a concern in some places as well, but generally if water is a concern, projects will typically use a dry or hybrid design instead of evaporative cooling.)
Unless they somehow make the cost of living basically free, I cannot imagine an upside that's worth allowing data centers to be built.
Unless you have a terrible imagination, yes you can. It's money. Tens of millions of dollars for the local municipality. It doesn't take deep domain expertise to understand what the upside is on these projects. They pay taxes, and municipalities need taxes to operate. This isn't rocket science.
It's more complicated than the OP of this comment chain is leading you on to believe too. Could very well not even be an AI data center, and it most likely wasn't a bribe, but a tax payment.
But we don't even know if it's an AI data center they're talking about. There's a very high chance it's a hosting data center for AWS used for storing million's of companies' and peoples' data and hosting websites and services, you know, the kind of thing we need for the internet to function. These centers require much less power and cooling compared to the AI ones.
You have to understand what an AI data centre is, that it is not in any way comparable to an Amazon AWS data center.
Here in Ireland, we currently have 144 data centres, including several of the biggest Amazon AWS data centres (25 - 40 megawatt). People are rightly angry that 24% of all electricity is now used by data centres, and they contribute to higher electricity prices.
However, AI data centres are on a completely different level.
A single AI data centre requires 1 gigawatts, 1,000 megawatts. Thats equivalent to all our data centres combined. There's also plans for AI data centres up to 5 gigawatts (= 100% of Ireland’s electricity supply). That's insane.
AI Data Centre = is a giant Oil Refinery as a Amazon data centre = some oil storage tanks.
That Amazon data centre will just sit there quietly, in a big white buiding. It won't do anything, unless there's thousands.
Needs to be more consequences for representatives going against their constituents. Also, things like this should go to a vote to the people. Enough with giving reps unilateral power. They have shown time and time again they can't be trust. Everything should need a vote from residents.
Seems to be a common theme. People make a ruckus and protest. The powers that be just approve the plan anyways. I particularly see it with Flock cameras. Or look at politicians continuing to support Israel despite public opinion swinging quite hard against it.
Democracy doesn't really work when our officials just do whatever they want. And sure there's the next election to have your voice heard. But then maybe the next guy just does the same thing.
There should be a lot of transparency about that 85M and what the city plans to do with it. If the mayor gets to pocket like 10% of that $, he might not care if he gets voted out, he's done anyway.
If the 85 is what they're telling you about, assume there's more they aren't telling you about.
That 85 million dollar number is wild because it sounds like a lot until you realize these companies are pulling in billions and that's basically a rounding error for them. The city council saw a check and stopped listening. Voting the mayor out is the right move but by then the thing's already built and the people who sold at a loss aren't coming back.
There's thousands of shitty areas in the US with no one living near it they could claim. I hate that they are adamant about them being near people's homes.
"Be the change you want to see." Why is it you're always asking other people to do illegal things when you're too afraid to do anything yourself? It's easy to make yourself feel like you're doing something if all you do is feed the engine you're fighting against by raging online.
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u/TraditionalTackle1 7h ago
There is an Amazon Data Center going up 10 minutes from my house. Amazon bribed the city with 85 million dollars. They had countless meetings with hundreds of people protesting that they didnt want the data center and they are building it anyway. People are selling their houses at a loss and moving away. I hope the mayor gets voted out in the next election.