They're just awful to live near; the folks that are clamoring for more cheap tokens should try moving in next door to the token factory.
They probably would be awful to have a house next to, but which if the hyperscale data center proposals are near residential areas? The really large data centers have to go into areas with a lot of land and utility connections. These are usually zoned commercial or industrial already.
Most Americans say "not in my backyard" to AI data centers
171–180 of 327 posts
Re: Most Americans say "not in my backyard" to AI data centers
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know what agenda you're going with, but it isn't reality. They're destroying water tables. I'll leave this link here for you to read if you're brave enough to step outside your Captain Planet cartoon narrative and have an actual look at the water consumption problem. https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2025-ai-impacts-data-cent... Or if you prefer; a much deeper non-vibecoded, scientific source with lots of ci…
Why am I supposed to take a janky-ass web visualization, completely devoid of citations as far as I can tell, and which was, itself, almost certainly vibecoded, at face value, as a valid argument? I love how you went from posting links to articles to make arguments for you, to then editing your comment to link to a $250 book that I should buy and read, so it can make your argument for you.
I'm starting to think you don't actually love the things you claim to love? But yes, several communities are having trouble with these things. Here's one: https://lakelandgazette.info/news/2026/07/05/meta-data-cente... and here's another: https://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/2026/03/amazon-wil...
Re: Most Americans say "not in my backyard" to AI data centers
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There were no plans to build data centers in their small town and no reason to consider it at all You have to be fair on this though. The time to ban something is before they start talking about doing it, not after. Being ahead of the game is never a bad thing, especially when small towns are so easily exploited due to income and infrastructure. They just can't afford long legal battles.
The interesting thing about the anecdote wasn't the timing. It was that there was no reason to build a data center there but they felt compelled to make it their top priority. > especially when small towns are so easily exploited due to income and infrastructure. Small, remote towns without electricity or data connections are not easily exploited for data centers.
Are we really expecting small town residents to have sophisticated enough prediction powers to know if a bigco company might target their town for a data center build? What's the cost of a false negative vs. a false positive for them? Better safe than sorry applies in spades here.
Re: Most Americans say "not in my backyard" to AI data centers
#174I would flip my bitch switch if a datacenter was stood up near me, where I could hear it. I am on 5 acres in rural Michigan surrounded by peace and quiet. I specifically came here for this reason. At the same time, I understand that we need datacenters. And tbh, Michigan is under-served in this space (ex, most of my queries thru the Cloudflare network have to go to Chicago first), and I wish we had more. But not clos…
>Also thoughts of mine recently: why are we not doing subterranean datacenters, why are we not doing tall/skinny skyscraper like datacenters (versus enormous sprawling warehouse-style).
It's cheaper this way.
Re: Most Americans say "not in my backyard" to AI data centers
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
I suspect the Nabisco plant in Chicago pulls about ~12 million therms worth of natural gas, at 30kwh per therm, that's pretty significant.
You "suspect", but your suspicion comes with a unit of energy, which simply does not make sense in the context. The rest of us are talking about effect.
Shrug
You asked about energy usage; but I have no idea as to how that bakery's natural gas usage affects the people surrounding it.
The smell of freshly baked fig newtons might offset the possible increased cost of gas-per-cubic-foot.
Re: Most Americans say "not in my backyard" to AI data centers
#176I think this is because the demand is so extreme for datacenters now that companies are building them in a manner that disrupts the environment around them. The newer ones are using on-site generators that are insanely loud and require multiples more power than datacenters have historically needed. For a rack with traditional servers with just RAM/CPU/Drives, 5kW is sufficient in most cases. When you have racks that…
I don't think the average person actually knows anything concrete about them. They're a proxy for peoples' sense of powerlessness about what's going on around them. Skyrocketing electricity prices, the sense that elected officials aren't looking out for their interests, job losses, etc. They're a convenient proxy for many disparate concerns because they represent all of those things in one way or another.
I think there's truth to what you're saying but I also think there's truth to what people are experiencing and perceiving.
A highly power and/or water consumptive data center being installed in a town or city is pretty much a perfect embodiment of people's frustrations. It consumes tons of power and/or water and therefore drives up utility costs for the locals or pollutes the air with diesel exhaust. And it doesn't create jobs so it's just frankly some rich cabal of capitalists getting richer while people's lives continue to feel materially worse. I can't think of a better embodiment of the sort of confluence of crumminess that seems to be underway.
Re: Most Americans say "not in my backyard" to AI data centers
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I don't want to live in a concrete honeycomb in the middle of a loud city. Yes, this is the crux. Loud, smelly, concrete cities suck. And you’re right that density alone would lead to this. What we’d ideally want is cities that can be dense without being loud, smelly, and dangerous. These cities exist: Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Zurich, Utrecht, Freiburg, etc. We can’t do this in the US because we can’t remove the sour…
Can you really think of no other problems in addition to cars?
I know I kicked off this discussion, but I have also bemoaned many times about the anti-car people being quasi religious in their anti-worship of cars. They talk about it like missionaries talk about jesus.
Re: Most Americans say "not in my backyard" to AI data centers
#178Simple, make it legally required that all new datacenters being built by is built in the literal backyard of the primary residence of the children of the Csuites of said .
Everyone should be in support of this idea.
Everyone else gets to be free from datacenter pollution, and the Csuites get their datacenters.
Win win.
Re: Most Americans say "not in my backyard" to AI data centers
#179No one ever cared about DCs before now. I think there’s a lot of social media influence from nation state competitors going on to try and slow SOTA development in the US. Ironically, There’s enough issues with the DC buildout going on that even with 100% public opinion support it would still be significantly delayed. The behind the meter power generation isn’t going well. There’s only so many gas fired turbines on th…
The US nationalized tik tok so the chinese couldn't influence people anymore. Apparently that didn't work?
Re: Most Americans say "not in my backyard" to AI data centers
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
Refusing to acknowledge sources is pathetic. The information directly refutes your cartoonish take on the problem if you're brave enough to pull yourself into reality.
Trust the Experts who have done Studies and written Papers in Committees their objective view of reality not to mention their morality is superior to yours yadda yadda heard it all before
How could you have heard it all before if you've never bothered to look at the information?