Here in the fake, gay and retarded United States of ‘Murica, there are lots of questions that we aren’t supposed to ask of our ruling class overlords elected servant leaders but one of the biggest ones is this:
How does (whatever they are doing now) improve the lives of the current American people?
It really covers a lot of territory. Why do we give billions in “aid” to Israel, a nation with a per capita GDP of nearly $70,000, putting it in the top 15 in the world and higher than nations like Germany and the U.K.? Why do judges allow violent criminals to walk free after a slap on the wrist when everyone knows they will reoffend? Why do we spend a trillion dollars a year on “defense” when our flagship aircraft carrier can be disabled when some dirty skivvies catch fire? Why do we hire more and more employees to “teach” fewer students, spending more money and getting worse results or at best no change?
All of these questions and thousands more just like them never ask how this benefits Americans, because of course as my readers know that is never a concern and in fact if a policy harms the people currently living here that is a bonus.
The current example of this are “data centers” which have become a major flashpoint.
There is one being proposed nearby in Fort Wayne for Google and the public backlash has been pretty fierce. This is actually an expansion of an existing site and I believe this is where it is going in…
Closer look….
The arrows are pointing to “Adams Ditch” and according to a recent story this drainage ditch would be impacted: Google data center’s third phase under environmental review
According to the application, the expansion would directly affect nearby waterways and wetlands. The most significant changes affect Adams Ditch, where about 3,415 feet of stream would be relocated for new construction. An additional 68 feet of stream that runs into Doctor Ditch would be temporarily disturbed during the installation of a sanitary sewer line.
About 0.84 acres of forested wetland would be impacted and converted into an herbaceous wetland following construction.
In total, developers plan to place roughly 5,000 cubic yards, or about 417 dump truck loads of soil, into streams and wetlands as part of the buildout.
Now if you owned that land and were farming it, and you wanted to monkey around with the wetlands and the drainage ditch? They would arrest you, lock you up and throw away the key. Google? They get the blessing of the local government.
The actual address is 5801 Adams Center Road….
…and that is around the corner a bit…
The whole thing is set on 858 acres of what is currently farm ground.
These things use an enormous amount of water and electricity but we are being told that in fact this data center will save water and save consumers on their electric bills!
Why I&M says data centers will lower your bill
Typically, as demand for something goes up, so does the price. But as Indiana data centers begin to demand historic levels of electricity, Indiana Michigan Power (I&M) says prices for current customers will go down.
How?
“It is a lot like threading the needle,” explained Steve Baker, I&M President and COO, to WANE 15 on Friday. “We’re trying to balance cost, we’re trying to balance reliability. We have a grid to operate.”
Somehow I&M will need to generate a LOT more electricity….
I&M will need to generate more than double the electricity it has before, but not, Baker says, too far ahead of demand.
….but that will actually lower my bill. Currently around 1/3 of my total electric bill from I&M is a slew of bullshit fees and charges that don’t actually have anything to do with my usage. With the need to generate double the electricity, I am supposed to believe that will lower my bill?
If you believe that, bridge for sale, located in Brooklyn, etc.
Another local story reports that a similar data center in Council Bluffs, Iowa uses 1.33 billion gallons of freshwater annually, the equivalent of 6 1/2 golf courses. Now of course the water used doesn’t vanish just like the water used to cool nuclear reactors doesn’t vanish, but if memory serves from my geology class in college it does require a lot longer to replenish an aquifer than it does to drain it. Granted we have plenty of water around here, lots of rivers and we get a bunch of rain most years like this one where it has rained a ton already this spring but it still takes a long time for water to filter back down especially in a place with heavy clay soil like we have here.
As an aside much of the country greedily looks to the Midwest because we are sitting on the Great Lakes that combined contain 90% of the surface freshwater in the United States. As states in the Southwest keep adding millions of people without adequate freshwater, I am sure they are trying to figure out how to transport freshwater from the Great Lakes to the Southwest so there is more water so they can wash their low riders in the barrio and transplants to Arizona can have the same green yards they used to have when they lived in the Midwest.
Back to the main question.
These data centers are a major issue, they have come up repeatedly in Casey Putsch’s likely Quixotic quest to defeat Vivek Ramaswamy. That is almost certainly not going to happen because Ramalamadingdong has the blessing of Trump and also J.D. Vance who named one of his sons Vivek in a nod to Ramaswamy.
When asked why we “need” all of these data centers, most answers revolved around “competing with China”. If we don’t build infinity data centers, China will! Are you saying you want the godless ChiComs to win? What are you, some kinda libtard commie?
What do you and I get from these data centers? I guess the racist AI memes are pretty fun as I have no artistic skill of my own. I use Grok on occasion not because I get information I can’t find anywhere else but because it saves me a few minutes and a few clicks. You get AI instead of a person in a lot of customer service settings and that is why the other day when my Sam’s Club delivery was missing a case of Pepsi minicans I ordered for an Amish family, and I contacted Sam’s and was quickly told I would get a refund for the $15 I was charged but then I got the email saying I was refunded for a three dollar bag of lemons instead. Progress!
A lot of jobs are going to be replaced by AI, and I am sure it will go as great as my Sam’s refund and the fact that AI almost never can spell something correctly in an image even when I spell it out in the prompt.
It is the latest evolution in replacing American workers. Call centers used to be located here but then it was cheaper to outsource them to barely literate pajeets in India and now it is cheaper to have AI respond instead of pajeets. As a result we are taking over 800 acres of farm ground out of production, replacing it with an AI data center, trashing a wetland and rerouting a drainage ditch, all so we can get AI slop. The data center in Fort Wayne will employ what, 50-75 employees? Of those I assume most will be H1B visa workers, adding a gaggle of little pajeets to the local schools.
Perhaps I am wrong, it has happened before. I admit I don’t know that much about data centers and a lot of my opposition is because the worst people in the world seem to support them. Maybe there really is a compelling reason to build these enormous data centers that eat up a ton of water, burn through crazy amounts of electricity and generate enormous levels of heat. Good thing we moved from “global warming” to “climate change”!
I suspect there is not really a case for these data centers. People don’t seem very excited about them and it goes beyond NIMBY. Most Americans are pretty concerned about AI and want it regulated and the Orange Man responded with an executive order trying to prevent states from regulating AI: Trump signs executive order to block state AI regulations
Look at that fuck Ted Cruz grinning while Trump signs an order that ought to upset any “Constitutional conservative”….
Most of the regulations being proposed have to do with privacy which seems reasonable.
When it comes to these data centers and the AI boom that definitely is not an artificial bubble, the question as always is Cui bono? Who benefits? Like everything else being done in our name, it seems very unlikely that the American people benefit in any way.
We are a nation of sheep, run by wolves, and owned by pigs. – H/T to WRSA.
First off, “AI” as it is currently being called isn’t Artificial Intelligence. It’s an algorithm that mimics intelligence by combining a lot of compute power with a library of data and a library of how humans talk. The companies actually hope to be the ones that create a sentient AI because, I’m not lying, they hope it will be so much smarter than we are that it can find solutions to the current mess we are in before a civilizational collapse.
The government is on board because that much computing power allows the LLMs to sort through the mountains of data they are collecting on everyone, map out all of the connections, and make predictions based on behavior. This is foundational to a new and improved control grid where dissidents can be targeted more effectively and politicians will know more about what words they need to use to garner political support.
It boils down to the elites want it and we are going to pay for it.
Florida AI server farm applications–specifically drawing from the Biscayne Aquifer–are being assessed by S. Florida commissioners.
Seems that the farms are so massively water intensive that when they draw water from the aquifer by the billions of gallons (at a huge reduced rate/gallon as compared to MY water usage) the deficit is so dramatic that an equal volume of salt water enters the aquifer and mixes with the fresh water; this eventuates in brackish–and useless–water for human use in the near-term. It will, IMO, cause at least S. Florida to become uninhabitable.
Scandinavian tech firms already have proven that “closed loop” (waterless) cooling systems are fully capable of solving the problem. But, those systems are more expensive than stealing water and using it in evaporative coolers.
Guess which system the Florida commissioners will require?
[Decision is still pending].
But I can SMELL the STINK of the PAYOFFS to the resource board as I type.
If these data centers requires so much water, they should locate them right on the banks of the oceans where they will have ample water.
Salt?
So what, deal with it.
As TAKEAHARDLOOK, above said, that’s what they expect the citizenry to do, deal with it.
The politicians voting favorably on these things need to be strangled in their beds.
Question: Why are all these data centers necessary?
Answer: They are huge databases of all things people and the gov’t will have instant access in all ways for formulating criminal cases against citizens that do not conform on cue, ie., Minority Report.
You and I will have better access to recipes and kitty pictures.
Stop asking who benefits, the real question is who gets fucked. 3 guesses and the first 2 don’t count.