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Goodguy  1d ago (text post)   Edited 23hr ago   7065 thread views

Midterms Megathread

Cause otherwise midterms discussion will be scattered around a bunch of separate Culture War thread posts. And it's nice to have more off-the-cuff rapid reactions in a dedicated megathread.

The first thing I've noticed so far: if the exit polls are correct, Americans are very pessimistic about AI.

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Opposition to data centers comes from a few sources.

  1. The median voter doesn’t know what a data center is.
  2. They do know they’re related to AI and Big Tech, which they don’t trust at all, and in fact expect to actively fuck over normal people at any and every opportunity.
  3. Data centers don’t provide local jobs in any meaningful amount (as opposed to e.g. a factory).
  4. There really have been cases of data centers being forced upon communities in obnoxious and disruptive ways, it’s not an idle threat.
  5. People do know that data centers use tons of electricity, and they really do not want their electric bills to explode. The tech companies say they’re going to power it themselves, but nobody trusts that to really happen, because of point 2.

Points 1 and 2 are the critical ones imo, and are supported by 3, 4, and 5.

Powering it themselves means bolting lines of jumbo jet engines outside the data center, of course people don't want to have that anywhere near them.

Are you volunteering to live next to the line of140 dB jet engines running at full bore 24/7 that's been soundproofed to the maximum allowable volume while spewing exhaust?

Well, they could always power it with a nice, clean, quiet nuclear reactor… right?

Yes, well after someone invents a time machine and and builds a few 7 years ago.

If any of the nuclear companies could stop futzing around and get cracking, sure.

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