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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

#361

Post by BryanBigs »

uxp100 wrote: post #344
vkou wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

99% of BLM protests were just people with cardboard signs. There's always the occasional anonymous asshole who might throw a rock at a window and run off, but that's the nature of any gathering of 100,000+ people. There will always be a turd. In the other 1%, the police decided on a policy of always picking a fight with crowd, every fucking day, until they ran out of gas.

There was a lot of arson at BLM protests, and plenty of people beaten in the street, some of whom were in no way asking for it. The majority of the violence probably was the cops though.

Watch any random sampling of body cam footage and you won't think the majority of violence was the cops. I'm amazed at the restraint honestly.

Now when I was a kid...getting thrown into a paddywagon while hammered after mouthing off to a cop was a right of passage.

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

#362

Post by jubilanti »

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 million Euros, that's a lot less than you think if you want to start even a small school and not run out of money in a few years.

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

#363

Post by pesus »

pixl97 wrote: post #327
snickerbockers wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whats really frustrating is how silicon valley fights tooth and nail to stop housing from being built in their community only to force these data centers onto everybody else's communities.

Just makes you wonder how many of the SV types are wanting to use AI as the final solution for the poor.

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.

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

#364

Post by mothballed »

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.

It's rarely acknowledged but a big reason why ATF and FBI toned things down after Waco is because McVeigh (he was there watching) directly retaliated causing nearly 1000 casualties of government employees. At that point they went to the current plan of just divide and conquer a single person at a time via surveillance of the targeted group after things quiet down rather than try to take on groups head on.

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

#365

Post by cowsandmilk »

enaaem wrote: post #274

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

The zoning for that lot would allow a grocery store. Not being able to walk to the grocery store isn’t a zoning issue in this case.

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

#366

Post by Leonard_of_Q »

snickerbockers wrote: post #298
ipdashc wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, you joke (I think?) but data center companies could genuinely at least open up for tours to try to appeal to the public, if public approval is apparently such a concern. It's funny that they haven't done it at all yet. Think nuclear power plants in the 60s or 70s, many of them were open for tours or school field trips or such to try to make them more appealing to the populace around them. I haven't heard of…

That won't work when your tour guide can't even answer questions about what the computers do because theyre all running VMs that are rented out on an ad-hoc basis.

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 it to heat structures, greenhouses, whatever. I used to live in a place where a large fraction of the block heating came from a nearby power plant with additional gas-fired heating for when the waste heat wasn't enough. The same can be done with waste heat from data centres by using heat pumps. This can work in colder climates and in the cooler seasons in moderate climates.

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

#367

Post by protocolture »

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.

Whats the problem here?

Farmer gives land to city.

City goes "We can have 10 million dollars AND a brand new data center, hot diggity"

City is enriched in both money AND services.

Thanks Mr Farmer.

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

#368

Post by boricj »

nicbou wrote: post #310
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…

Is the French government more responsive than those of neighbouring countries?

Probably because we have a well established history of regularly changing regimes. Since we overthrew royalty in 1789 we've had five republics, two empires, three monarchies and a bunch of short-lived totalitarian regimes, coups and other major political events.

If anything, the longevity of the Fifth Republic is starting to become unusual (only the Third Republic and the Ancien Régime have lasted longer). Maybe we're overdue to flip the table again as per tradition.

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

#369

Post by mystraline »

protocolture wrote: post #367
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.

Whats the problem here? Farmer gives land to city. City goes "We can have 10 million dollars AND a brand new data center, hot diggity" City is enriched in both money AND services. Thanks Mr Farmer.

No.

Farmer SELLS land (for $10) with a deed restriction that it is to be used for a public park.

Hand wavey timey wimey...

Deed restriction 'magically' goes away.

Gets sold for $10M.

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

#370

Post by BurningFrog »

josephg wrote: post #303
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.

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…

By what measure does it work for the French?

They have 8% unemployment, 30% less GDP per capita than the US, and many other problems.

Government by caving in to riots is not in general being responsive to the needs of the people.

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