Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center

404media.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

431–440 of 574 posts

Re: A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center

#431

Post by hackernulls »

smoe wrote: post #323
josephg wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw a clip the other day of an American comedian doing crowd work in Paris. He asked the audience what America should do, and the French said - something like - they should punch the police more and light things on fire. To me that sounds crazy! But, I can see how it works for the French. They protest all the time, and the government is very responsive to the needs of the people. Much more so than the American gove…

I don't know how effective the French protests are, since I haven't lived in Europe for a while. But even as a Swiss, at least judging from TV, protests in the U.S. generally seem very tame. Not advocating punching the police as a default, but in my opinion, protests need to be disruptive if they're going to get anyone's attention at all. I don't really see what a few people standing on the sidewalk with cardboard si…

[dead]

Re: A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center

#432

Post by mc32 »

pesus wrote: post #355
ramgine wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American police are much more inclined to escalate any violence instead of trying to de-escalate.

And if there isn't violence, the police tend to escalate things and make it violent. I suspect this works to prevent/neuter any serious protests so long as the potential protestors still have something to lose, and in America there is very little in the way of a safety net, so living conditions would have to (continue to?) deteriorate quite a bit before protests started heading in a French direction.

I don't know if you know, but quite a few European countries are known to send police or "state" confederates into protests to give authorities an excuse to Escalate. You also see lots more water cannons being used over there.

In Paris the burning and destruction typically happens in the outer "boroughs" of the city -usually by disaffected groups -sometimes they happen to be disenfranchised- though typically they harm the older generation's property and that generation typically frowns upon the destruction.

Of course, in the US, we've had organizations who on paper are for justice and redress being found to foment agitation. It's a total corruption of their mandate. We had an "anti-hate" group paying hate groups to "do things"[1].

[1]https://www.congress.gov/119/meeting/house/119311/witnesses/...

Re: A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center

#433

Post by nicechianti »

zug_zug wrote: post #279

It's exhausting that the "solution" to problems like this is getting tens or hundreds of thousands of citizens stressed until enough public attention gives some small chance of redress. I'm not calling for violence, but if we can't get these things fixed in court there has to be a more effect and more forceful avenue for protest than venting on internet forums.

[dead]

Re: A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center

#434

Post by pezezin »

jubilanti wrote: post #362
ionwake wrote: post #289

Rumour was an old lady donated posthumously alot of money she had saved up her whole life, to build a university at Estepona in Spain. After she died they never built it. The town remains pretty much the same as it always was. Last time I was there they had replaced the red marble promenade that was cracked on the beach with some sort of rubber playground cement, and for some reason that I can only put down to malice…

For the median worker in a small town in Spain, an entire life savings of scrimping and saving could still be only a fraction of what it would take to build one lecture hall. Might not even pay for a single year of salaries, operations, and expenses. Put a million Euros into an endowment, and at 5% annual returns, that's 50,000 Euros, enough to hire maybe one person to run and teach everything. Even if it was 10 mill…

It depends on how rich the old lady was. In my hometown (Cáceres, also in Spain) an old rich lady left a whole palace to the city, which is now a museum, and a lot of money to start a cultural foundation.

Re: A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center

#435

Post by taeric »

malfist wrote: post #351
taeric wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? This depends entirely on where you are. And for far more people, I would expect they can far more easily walk to a grocery store than they can any sort of industrial thing.

I have two grocery stores within 5 miles of me. Both paths to the grocery store take me by an Amazon warehouse before I arrive at the grocery

I have no doubt such locations exist. I would not at all present this as a common outcome in the US. Certainly not due to zoning.

Re: A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center

#436

Post by iteria »

spicyusername wrote: post #306

$10 gift became $10M for city government, with $30M tax expected over next decade I mean... pretty easy to see why... I think if the city tried to communicate what that money is going to be used for, perhaps it'd be slightly more palatable. Or perhaps the pitchforks are already out, and it wouldn't.

The problem is that these things often don't manifest. There's a massive data centers near me. Supposedly we're supposed to get all this blah blah blah. Well, the data center "accidentally" didn't pay for several months of water to the point where the local cost of water went up what what they thought was a shortfall until they realized nope, we were just stolen from. And no way could we fine them for this total accident of not paying their massive water bill for several months. They're put business partners. Somehow.

Also, I've had more black outs since the data center has been active than I've ever experienced. I'm sure these things are unrelated. Along with the increased cost of electricity. And I'm on the other side of town from the data center. The locals nearby complain about more.

I still don't know what supposed benefit I got from it being here. We already had a well funded government before the data center was here.

I think this situation is why many are so anti-data center. The city gets the cash from the land sell and they get some temporary industry from the construction and then it's just a drain on the area.

Re: A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center

#437

Post by bumby »

WarmWash wrote: post #427
bumby wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well gee, to start France has higher healthcare quality/access, higher life expectancy, much lower treatable mortality, better work-life balance (less hours worked, more guaranteed leave), lower wealth inequality, higher voter turnout (indicative of less apathy or less efforts to disenfranchise), among others. One of the problems with just using economic metrics is it seems to confuse the fact that the economy is sup…

All these things become meaningless when you cross the ~50th income percentile. Besides work/life balance, the US gets much better as you earn more, and frankly high earners are generally less concerned with time off work too. Also why the US enjoyed ~30 years of European brain drain, those benefits are much less enticing when you are the one paying more and getting less.

Median US income is $45k. Almost 18% of US household income goes to healthcare costs. So you’re saying healthcare access/quality, time off, and mortality are moot once you make $23/hr? Color me skeptical.

Re: A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center

#438

Post by toast0 »

bumby wrote: post #393
DennisP wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution here might be the appeals court, since there is a deed restriction. The city agreed to it when they paid $10 for the land. The article mentions that Texas courts tend to be pretty serious about enforcing deed restrictions.

That property was transferred multiple times after the farmer gave it away. I can’t tell if that save deed restriction followed those sales

I went through the deeds the other night. The first transfer from Bland to Texas Parks and Rec Foundation had a restriction to be held in trust for a city park (or for parkland or something). The transfer from tp&r to williamson county park foundation only said to be held in trust. The transfer from the park foundation to the city didn't mention it.

I don't know enough about texas real estate law to know if the restriction would tend to follow or not. I also don't know if the city would have done title research to have seen the restriction, so they may not have knowingly violated it (which may or may not matter; and maybe they should have known).

Also, fwiw, the 'one month later' sale reported in the article was more like a few months later, in case you date restrict deed searches.

Re: A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center

#439

Post by jimbob45 »

segmondy wrote: post #357
ramgine wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American police are much more inclined to escalate any violence instead of trying to de-escalate.

Only because the people don't fight back. If they know that folks would fight back, they would behave themselves in the most polite and proper ways you won't believe.

Haha have you never watched COPS? I’ve seen tamer UFC fights than some COPS episodes.

Re: A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center

#440

Post by d_burfoot »

The people of the town decided they'd rather have $10M and $3M/year instead of some random extra parkland. That money is significant for a small, non-wealthy Texas town.

Also, there is already a park right to the west of the residential section shown in the map, called Fannie Robinson park.

https://shorturl.at/jbWuw

Post reply on HN