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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

#531

Post by chrismcb »

gustavus wrote: post #498
chmod775 wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling that a park is stretching it, even if someone named it "park". That's a playground, some grass, and a parking space. Not something where you can enjoy a stroll for a couple hours. A city of ~20k doesn't have to go crazy here, but surely you can maintain something nicer (especially once you have that data center money!)

I recently moved from the inter-mountain West to the east and that is one thing that is fascinating to me is how differently the term park is used between the 2. Out west a couple of swing sets and a slide with a small patch of grass is considered a park whereas out east a park is multi acre wilderness with trees streams and miles of trails. It's just funny to me how even though it's the same country it's 2 totally d…

As someone who lived in the West my entire life, not many people would call a couple of swing sets and a slide a park. A playground maybe, but not a park. Now I believe the city would officially call it a park, but that doesn't make it a park.

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

#532

Post by protocolture »

zerobees wrote: post #441
protocolture wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So a city should tie its hands permanently because of a gift? Donations can now override city planning? Tired of paying property tax? Gift your house to the city with a deed that says they have to rent it back to you forever for $1 a year? Lets be clear, this wouldnt even be news if it wasnt for "Datacentre"

> Gift your house to the city with a deed that says they have to rent it back to you forever for $1 a year? What if I write a note saying that you need to pay me $10,000? That's not a contract, that's just a fever dream. But if you shake my hand and sign that piece of paper, that's a different story. The same applies here. If you get the city to agree (and they don't get raided by the FBI after that), then sure, they…

If the city used eminent domain to snatch it away from the farmer this wouldnt even be news.

If the farmer deeded it to someone else, like a neighbor, and said they could only use it to build a park, no one would expect that to apply once the government had yoinked it by eminent domain.

It follows then, that government entities really aren't bound by deeded restrictions. If you made them jump through some hoop, where they had to gift the land and then eminent domain it back, that would probably be more wasteful than just letting them do whatever they think is best.

The oddest outcome I can imagine is the government being able to compulsorily acquire other peoples property, but being permanently stuck with a fixed use asset that they cant do anything with that they actually own. Thats bonkers.

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

#533

Post by [deleted] »

Tostino wrote: post #504
andriy_koval wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> American police are much more inclined to escalate any violence instead of trying to de-escalate. American police inclined to do nothing, because it is locally hired and not paid/controlled by government.

Are you just being intentionally ignorant here? What are you even trying to convey?

[deleted]

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

#534

Post by marcus_holmes »

al_borland wrote: post #528
marcus_holmes wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think news outlets need to be run as a non-profit to remove the types of people with aspirations of wealth, instead of aspirations to report and inform the public, from the sector.

Usually rich folks buy newsrooms not to make a profit, but to control the narrative.

No journalist joins a newsroom to become rich. Famous, maybe, but not rich.

The business model used to be advertising, but the internet destroyed that model. And we don't have a replacement, while democracy doesn't work without someone holding the politicians to account.

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

#535

Post by Leonard_of_Q »

mlyle wrote: post #377
Leonard_of_Q wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tour guide could just give that answer to any such question. It'd be comparable to the answer given to someone who wants to know what that new railroad which was built where there used to be fields or forest is used for: people ride it to go somewhere, freight is passing over it going places. Having said this I do feel like these data centres should be built in such a way that waste heat is used in some way. Use…

Waste heat from power plants isn’t always useful because it is low grade heat… but it is still much, much, much better than the 35-60C water you could get from a data center.

That is what you use the heat pumps for, to transform what you call "low-grade heat" to... "higher-grade heat"?

The COP for a heat pump doing such a transformation can be very high, i.e. for a relatively low power input you get a lot of gain.

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

#536

Post by mikrotikker »

enaaem wrote: post #274

American zoning is weird. You can't walk to a grocery store, but you can walk to a data center.

As a new zealander walking to a grocery store sounds weird. I've lived in 7 houses some rural some urban and in none of them could I walk to a grocery store, so it's very weird to hear it exalted as some "standard" that America always fails in.

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

#537

Post by mikrotikker »

mc32 wrote: post #432
pesus wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 har…

If the things stop happening then the non profit will have to shut down destroying jobs

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

#538

Post by boricj »

Lerc wrote: post #460
soco wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Health insurance, unions, paid vacation... al in all I'd say not that bad.

also > two empires, three monarchies and a bunch of short-lived totalitarian regimes, coups and other major political events. Do you think you'd still have the Health insurance, unions, and paid vacation after another roll of the dice

I'm only pointing out that ever since the French revolution, we have a rich history of regime change (and also of strikes and demonstrations). Some were due to external factors (like the Vichy régime during WW2) and some were bloodless (like the end of the Fourth Republic).

Us rolling the dice whenever we have a major political crisis is a meme at this point, for better or for worse we're just not the kind of people to keep the same constitution around for 250 years.

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

#539

Post by bawolff »

wyre wrote: post #529
bawolff wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you put it that way, i disagree. A gift is a gift. Once you give it to someone its their's to do with as they please. A gift with strings is not a gift. This story is different though, the farmer sold the land for cheap in exchange for some conditions. This situation is more like going back on a contract.

Sure, a gift if a gift, but if I give you a gift and then you go off and sell it for $10mil you're a terrible friend.

If we are extending this metaphor, given the property passed through many hands, i feel like the equivalent would sort of be like giving a friend a gift, the friend eventually dies, their children sell it when dealing with the estate because they dont have use for the item.

That seems like a pretty normal thing to do.

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

#540

Post by protocolture »

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #415
protocolture wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So a city should tie its hands permanently because of a gift? Donations can now override city planning? Tired of paying property tax? Gift your house to the city with a deed that says they have to rent it back to you forever for $1 a year? Lets be clear, this wouldnt even be news if it wasnt for "Datacentre"

Yes. Society doesn't work if the government is above contract law. If the city can't abide by it's contracts it should not enter into them. Unlike abusive software TOSs the sale was/is not self executing/binding/changed after the fact. The city chose to enter into it with their eyes open.

But the government can unilaterally end other peoples contracts and forcibly acquire property. Why does it then follow that they must follow a contract that they could otherwise end just by giving it away and compulsorily acquiring it back?

Its like a pet bear that is allowed to eat from the floor but not when the meat is dangled over its nose.

Imagine a scenario where the government is building a rail line from A to B, and compulsorily acquires every piece of land on the route, but right smack dab in the middle is land they already own. You expect them to say "Well gosh dern we cant break that contract we signed guaranteeing that this would be a public urinal for the next 1000 years, after forcibly acquiring 10000 other parcels of land at gunpoint, cancel the project". Its entirely unrealistic to expect an entity that is designed to use its land to facilitate society, and can get whatever land it wants to think in terms of some random contract it can break completely legally in any other scenario.

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