return2ozma'A Big F*ck You to Big Tech': New Jersey Residents Defeat AI Data Center
HeyJoe
VicksVaporBBQrubSacramento (the state-side of it) is entertaining plans going in the opposite direction of New Jersey. A recent deal wants to let Meta in here on the promise: they’ll build some affordable housing, they’ll refurbish some old state buildings (for Meta use), and something for the local college. The reaction here is {bear looking sideways meme}.
Bets on where the surprise ai data center will be?
sacremento if they dont oppose this, they will se increased utility prices.
Imagine it… a SMUD+ subscription, pay extra to opt-out of more rolling blackouts.
Why the fuck are they putting Sac State housing in the Capitol Mall area??? It’s like 3 miles from the school… The light rail is nearby, but still, the Sac State Station is a few blocks from the edge of a pretty large campus.
Theory. Meta will pre fill-up their housings with overseas students\programmers. Try and get them to play snd spend their money in downtown.
High chance it flops. Rich kids live and go where they please. At he first sign of boredom, they’ll fiip, sublet, or AirB&B it just to not be in downtown.
Zuck: Let’s refire-up and overclock Rancho Seco.
“It’s time to build communities, not data centers,” said one local activist.
A wonderful motto.
1984This is going to be a huge thing going forward. They are investing hundreds of billions into Ai the coming year and part of that is building many huge data centers that will drive energy prices and water prices up almost certainly.
This is what bugs me about capitalism, they don’t keep to their corner, they basically stand back and look for the most opportunistic land and steal it from people that want nothing to do with capitalism.
I wish we could encapsulate all that in one region so it would become obvious it doesn’t make things better.
Funny thing is we used to use New Jersey for that.
Due to past industrial activity, New Jersey has more Superfund toxic waste sites than any other state in the union despite its small geographic size. By 2024, only 35 of New Jersey’s Superfund sites (out of about 150 that have been on the EPA’s list since the Superfund law was passed in 1980) have been cleaned up.[247]
In late 2023, a concern became public about PFAs (so-called “forever chemicals”) existing in the state’s water supplies.[248]
LucidlethargyEnergy prices in SoCal have literally doubled in the last year. It’s fucking insane how bad this utility is becoming. I can’t even imagine how much worse it can get with more data centers.
Henry
red_green_blackYeah how dare communities not allow AI Slop Mines that steal all the water and power not be in their community.
Not exactly. Princeton NJ and the surrounding areas are quite wealthy. The wealthy/elites have decided they don’t want their places polluted or to subsidize the costs of these data centers. It certainly wasn’t Newark and Camden that fought and won this.
Tangentially relevant: Benn Jordan posted a video about problems with Data Centers yesterday.
Datacenters Behaving Like Acoustic Weapons
God I love him! Just recommended his other recent video about anarchism and how to defeat surveillance and build mesh the other day!
What bugs me is that is really shouldn’t be legal for tech companies to just unilaterally decide that the local residents are going to subsidize their power costs.
But we’re in America, where every single douchy thing a capitalist can do will absolutely be done, and both of our ruling parties will just shrug and keep collecting their bribes in the interim.
Good on the people for waking up to this and fighting back.
It’s more that local authorities are offering incentives to big tech to bring in those data centers, ostensibly because they think it will benefit the area, but more likely because it is benefitting the local authorities personally through kickbacks or campaign donations.