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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   2087 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 23, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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To what extent is anti-data center pushing big tech into further GOP alignment?

BTW why so much hate for data centers specifically? Is it just "those folks make tons of money and don't give any to us, we must hate them" or is there more to it? I mean yes, they consume electricity/water/space/whatever, so do many industrial sites and nobody (excepting hippie Gaia lovers which are entirely different crowd) cares. Is it just a new fashionable thing to hate or is there anything deeper here? As big industry projects go, they seem to be far from the worst - they don't smell, barely pollute, don't look egregiously bad (in fact, if we ever manage to get away from endless brutalism, they can look as good as one wants) and can be, as I understand, located on the shittiest terrain ever without a problem. Why are they the devil exactly?

It's AI hate. In my experience, the anti-DC crowd try to weasel out of their position when you ask about (say) streaming video data centers, those somehow being different and fine.

Come on, there's 1-2 orders of magnitude (size, power, ect.) between one of those and an AI cluster.

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