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

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

#471

Post by strix_varius »

yonran wrote: post #426

On the one hand, the wishes of a donor should be respected to some degree. On the other hand, the government should be allowed to make the best use of land in its jurisdiction for the people who live there today, since “The earth belongs in usufruct to the living” and we should “preserve the soil of the country from being daily more & more absorbed in Mortmain” as Thomas Jefferson might say. Our land should not be bo…

If you can't trust your deeds to be respected then no rational actor would donate land. Instead the farmer would just have kept it.

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

#472

Post by josephg »

andrepd wrote: post #342
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 know that "French strikes" and "French setting fire to things" is a popular American trope, but things really don't work like that. If that were the case France would be a much better place than other European countries, and it really is not.

> "French setting fire to things" is a popular American trope, but things really don't work like that.

They worked like that when I was in Paris ~3 years ago! At the time, people were rioting over the retirement age changes. I walked around the city the day after the protests. The city smelled like burned plastic. There were burned out rubbish bins and the husks of melted lime bikes & scooters all over the place.

I've never seen anything like it.

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

#473

Post by niggischiggi »

ipaddr wrote: post #459
soco wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you trying to say the US are snitches? Or in any case, more snitches than the Europeans? More snitches than the ex-communists from the Eastern Europe?

Not snitches but paid government workers trying to get you to commit crimes and then you get arrested.

[flagged]

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

#474

Post by thin_carapace »

Lerc wrote: post #374
cyanydeez wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, it's interesting how we're not allowed to call for violence, eh.

The problem is that, while there are times when violent acts may bring about positive outcomes, it is extremely rare for those outcomes to be in the minds of those committing the acts. It is far more common for someone to commit violence as an expression of their anger, while rationalising that it is justified because they are aware of the arguments in favour of violence apply to whatever it is that they really want…

in no way does this truth imply that violence is an invalid response, merely that preconsideration is required to determine whether a violent act is morally just

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

#475

Post by no-name-here »

arjie wrote: post #43
helterskelter wrote: post #3

Wow they had the condition that the land be used as a park baked into the deed when they sold it to the city for $10, the city sold it, and when the family went to court their suit was dismissed. Now their home is worthless because nobody wants to live next to a data center. When are we going to hold local government officials accountable for bullshit like this? Send them to prison.

It was unclear from this summary but there are a few parties here: the original farmer A, the neighbouring family B, the city C, and the datacenter builder D. A sold to C with the deed restriction C sold to D without the restriction B tried to sue to stop D from building the datacenter, but B has no standing. Okay, that makes sense. It seems to me that A or C has standing, but not B. And depending on the way it's wri…

> deed restriction

Was there ever a deed restriction? The government says no, but they say there was something else which I don’t understand.

> In the notes about the grantee, the cash warranty deed states that the property was to be held in trust for future use as parkland by Williamson County, Texas. This was not a deed restriction.

The rest of the page doesn’t display properly on iOS. https://taylortx.gov/1293/Blueprint-Projects-Data-Center

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

#476

Post by thin_carapace »

snickerbockers wrote: post #428
pesus wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many of them, like Thiel and Ellison, are basically all but saying that sort of thing already. I'd give it under a year before one of them lets it slip.

Sam Altman already tried to counter the accusation that AI uses too much energy by complaining that raising children who can't contribute to the economy for the first 18 years of their life is more wasteful than building data centers.

I wish that there could be a normal world where people who want to cooperate don't have to deal with sociopaths and all the sociopaths could go live in another world to have fun and rape each other instead of raping normal people, it's a pity that humanity never evolved to handle globalism and it's a pity that life itself is selfishness codified

edit: all humans are psychopaths, sociopaths are merely the extreme end of the psychopathy scale

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

#477

Post by no-name-here »

DennisP wrote: post #389
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.

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.

> there is a deed restriction

Was there ever a deed restriction? The government says no, but they say there was something else which I don’t understand.

> In the notes about the grantee, the cash warranty deed states that the property was to be held in trust for future use as parkland by Williamson County, Texas. This was not a deed restriction.

The rest of the page doesn’t display properly on iOS. https://taylortx.gov/1293/Blueprint-Projects-Data-Center

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

#478

Post by no-name-here »

msisk6 wrote: post #462

Huh. I lived in Taylor about 6 years ago. It's your typical small Texas town about 30-minutes east of Austin. Very Texas. It's not the sort of thing I'd think would happen here. Small town folks talk. But with the huge new Samsung fab going up on one side of town, this datacenter on the other, and the unfathomable growth in this part of Texas; I guess things are a changing. Hopefully all the attention this is getting…

> the deed restrictions

Was there ever a deed restriction? The government says no, but they say there was something else which I don’t understand.

> In the notes about the grantee, the cash warranty deed states that the property was to be held in trust for future use as parkland by Williamson County, Texas. This was not a deed restriction.

The rest of the page doesn’t display properly on iOS. https://taylortx.gov/1293/Blueprint-Projects-Data-Center

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

#479

Post by bawolff »

Umm so if the deed had a legally binding condition on it, why is that condition being ignored? The article doesn't say what the rationale was. Was the condition not legally binding in texas? Is there some time limit on it? Something else? What is the legal excuse being used?

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

#480

Post by marcus_holmes »

al_borland wrote: post #360
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…

France is a much smaller country. When there is a mass protest in the US, it ends of being a bunch of smaller protests all over the country, which lacks the power of a single concentrated protest. These various satellite protests just end up being a minor nuisance, which don’t amount to much. The media in the US often ignores the protests they (or their owners) don’t agree with. This also weakens them significantly.…

Democracy needs real journalism to function. Having all the rich people own all the journalists isn't going to end well. We need to find a working business model for journalism that doesn't rely on rich folks.
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