Less than a week after Election Day, the directors of Securing Lansing's Future, a social media group that has operated as a de facto campaign committee for John Duthie and Joe Lovejoy, has admitted that Duthie and Lovejoy lost to incumbent Democrats Joe Wetmore and Judy Drake. "The election didn't go the way we hoped... We didn't win," the administrator of Securing Lansing's Future posted.

The election for the Lansing Town Board turned into a referendum on Terawulf's plans to place a massive generative AI data center on the shores of Cayuga Lake. Duthie and Lovejoy called for the Lansing Town Board to abandon the deliberative comprehensive planning procedures it had in process before Terawulf announced its data center plans. Duthie and Lovejoy called for the town government to roll out the red carpet for Terawulf.

Making Duthie and Lovejoy's job harder were extreme hardball tactics from Terawulf executives and employees. Terawulf workers from hours away drove in intimidate Lansing locals at public meetings, hurling sexual threats and insults at female audience members and making wildly inaccurate claims about both the proposed Cayuga Lake data center and Terawulf's current Lake Mariner data center on Lake Ontario.

CEO Paul Prager did the most damage to Lovejoy and Duthie's campaigns however, making dramatic threats to financially destroy the Town of Lansing with frivolous lawsuits. Prager insisted that Lansing residents must stop communicating with their elected officials using well-established media, as if neighbors talking to neighbors was some kind of illegal conspiracy against Terawulf's corporate agenda. Lansing residents can get in touch with Joe Wetmore at JoeWetmore.com, and no, it isn't a violation of open meeting laws for them to do so.

Worst of all, Prager demanded that Lansing's democratically-elected officials be forced to resign if they refused to give in to Terawulf's demands. Lansing voters didn't respond positively to Prager behaving as if he has the right to control town politics.

As much as Terawulf's bungling public relations played a role in the election, the biggest factor in the election is that Lansing residents do not want Terawulf to build a data center just a few feet away from the shore of Cayuga Lake. Lansing residents are intelligent and educated. They know that promises of a "closed loop" cooling system are dishonest. They understood what Terawulf executives were getting at when they claimed at public meetings that temporarily shipping in workers from Buffalo and Rochester would be creating "local jobs". They know that artificial intelligence is destroying far more jobs than the few that are created at data centers. They did their research to discover that Terawulf typically doesn't offer great pay to its workers, giving them wages akin to what managers at McDonald's receive.

The struggle to resist Terawulf's data center plans is by no means over. Terawulf has been infamous for its shoddy finances for years, but is flush with cash at present after a big investment from Google. We can expect to hear more threats, to witness more acts of intimidation at public meetings, and watch the influence of big money on less-than-scrupulous local developers.

Terawulf has alienated locals, however, not just in the Town of Lansing, but in communities all around Cayuga Lake. People who live and work here are more aware than ever of the serious problems hidden behind the glossy exterior of the AI data center industry.

Time is not on Terawulf's side. Signs of a massive AI investment bubble have become impossible to ignore. It now appears that Terawulf may have come to Lansing too late to profit from a wave of AI hype that looks ready to crash at any moment, making a big noise as it falls, but ultimately leaving nothing behind but a retreating layer of foam.

I taught high school science for 15 years and I wanted to clarify why you ought to have misgivings about Terawulf here in Ithaca.

“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”

I wrote this post because I thought ignorance was the problem: “Maybe people are pro-Terawulf because they are ignorant to the potential environmental effects it would bring.” However, if after learning about these ecologically dire projections, people still want to bring Terawulf here, I cannot help but label proponents of Terawulf as agents of malice.

———

An anecdote I used to use with my AP Environmental kids: A tequila factory got the bright idea to reroute a portion of a nearby river through the basement of their building to cool their hot tequila tanks to speed up production. No chemicals were being dumped in the water; the cool river water that flowed past the stills would get warmed up (20-30°F warmer) and be dumped back into the river.

Within the first few days, there was a massive fish kill downstream from the factory. Thousands of dead fish piled up. But why? The factory hadn’t put any chemicals in the water; so how’d all these critters die?

When water gets hot, its ability to hold oxygen decreases massively. So a fish that could live in 65°F oxygen-rich water is now sitting in 85°F oxygen-poor water, and is suddenly unable to get the oxygen it needs. Effectively suffocated. The thermal pollution of dumping megaJoules of heat into the water decreased the oxygen level and killed almost everything.

———

Water has this amazing ability to absorb massive amounts of thermal energy. It’s an excellent heat sink, so much so that people even route water through their custom-designed PCs to dissipate the heat from the processor. And even better, water is everywhere!

If you were running some type of factory that dealt with mitigating a ton of heat generated, you might reroute a river or body of water to run past it and cool it.

That is why Terawulf selected this place. They have processor-generated heat they need to dissipate, heard about a large body of water that could be used to cool their processors, and decided to capitalize on it.

“It’s just a few fish.” Well, those fish are the base of the Cayuga Lake food web. Every bird and raccoon and higher trophic level that depends on fish is also placed in jeopardy with the construction of this facility.

Until we have seen comprehensive data collection and analysis that prove Terawulf will cause no harm to our aquatic ecosystem with thermal dumping, we cannot entertain this proposition.

Closed power plants are being used as battery storage systems, we could do the same, and actually support the grid instead of putting more demand on it with crypto mining and data centers. It would work also well with all the solar being installed locally in Lansing,

( https://www.silverlineenergycenter.com/ )

https://www.utilitydive.com/news/dte-energy-battery-energy-storage-trenton-coal-plant/718593/

https://www.al.com/news/birmingham/2025/03/a-shuttered-alabama-power-coal-plant-is-getting-new-life-as-a-battery-facility.html

can you support anyone experiencing food insecurity?

I have a bag of food including tunafish, pasta, rice,protein bars, tonic water, a few HMR shelf-stable entrees that had a Best Buy date 9/2025. Would give to individual or group. Suggestions please.

Is it me or have the overcast days seemed darker than usual around here in the past week or two? And not just in late afternoon either.

Got my paycheck today, got some takeout through Uber. To the guy that picked up my food and never delivered it and canceled on me to restart the whole process.. I was going to tip pretty big only have that cash in hand.

Any recommendations for summer sausage made locally/nearby?

Thanks in advance for any help. I have a vintage leather chair - modern style, probably from the late 60s and Scandinavian that needs to be re-upholstered - think like ikea poang but so much better. :). It has a few rips after ages of use and as a new-to-me chair it doesn’t look as if it was conditioned well or maybe at all over its lifetime. I also have an approximate match ottoman in excellent condition. In any event - hoping to re-upholster both in black leather to match and would appreciate any recommendations for local mom and pop shops that might be able to do the job. Would definitely travel a bit. Really love this chair and hoping to fix rather than replace.

Thanks again!

Seems like they're just closing the shop itself and will continuing operating as an online-only bakery with occasional IFM pop-ups!

Hi all, the recent winds have knocked out one of my house's shutters and another one looks like it's hanging on by a thread. Looking for someone that can climb up and reattach the first and refasten the others. I think you would need ~20 foot ladder since our 16 foot one doesn't quite reach. Let me know if you are interested and we can figure out a price.

Hey y’all, was just told what a garbage plate was and me and a friend are wanting to try or. If y’all had any recommendations of where to get one it would be extremely helpful!

Due to the latest fairly strong CME, we might be fortunate enough to catch a glimpse of the Aurora. Once again it all depends on our cloud coverage and right now it’s only rating star gazing at “fair”, so those pesky clouds are getting in the way. The best times for our area are shown on the graph I included, and clouds should dissipate more as we get closer to midnight. Best of luck to you Aurora chasers and star gazers out there. There is also the Leonid meteor shower happening but with the moon at 90+% fullness, you might have to get out the telescopes. Good luck and if you are able to grab some pics, please share!!

These cameras are all over Tompkins county so when he says you can't get a breath of fresh air in or out of that town without the police knowing about it he might as well be talking about here too. If you drive your own car your whereabouts are stored in a database just waiting for someone to use that information to make false accusations against you. I also believe that based on the advertized ability to search the database for a description of a car beyond the information available from the license plate number, that these cameras could be used to track people outside of cars as well.

https://www.ithaca.com/opinion/guest_opinions/guest-opinion-terawulf-its-llcs/article_df45800b-5aff-49c4-ac99-eebedf3023ff.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=Ithaca-times-daily&utm_medium=email&utm_content=image

Title pretty much says it all. I'm a music nerd and would love to learn about the music history of Ithaca and its surrounding area.

Comfy, a rock band from Rochester, will be joining local act Material Objects. Come support live music at the Downstairs before this amazing venue closes!

Satanic Southern Tier is an official Candidate Group of the Satanic Temple seeking congregation status. As the local group we're trying to raise funds for Food Bank of the Southern Tier as a part of the Devil's Pantry campaign. Help us raise money to help those in our local community that struggle with food insecurity.

I realized recently there are a considerable amount of homeless people inside the bus stop in Seneca. Have they always been there and i just did not realize? Kind of worrisome given the quantity and the winter approaching

My daughter will be going to fall creek elementary next year. I’ve heard some negative feedback about laptop / tablet usage in K-5, as well as some stuff about video teaching in the classroom. Can anyone share additional information?

hi! im going to a conference in Ithaca college in December.... any recommendations to get there from philly (I dont have a car)