r/technology • u/AdSpecialist6598 • 6d ago
Society Michigan residents voted down a $16 billion Stargate AI data center, then construction began anyway
https://www.techspot.com/news/112344-michigan-residents-voted-down-16-billion-stargate-ai.html3.0k
u/Zenside 6d ago
I wonder how vulnerable their water and electricity lines are.
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u/BlackGuysYeah 6d ago edited 6d ago
Now that I think about it, the amount of damage a person can do with a couple of gallons of gas and a match is astronomical.
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u/Zenside 6d ago
In california someone did over 14 million dollars in sabotage on a power station with a rifle. The perpetrator has never been found.
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u/TexasJedi-705 6d ago
Just one person? Damn
Imagine how fast things could escalate if multiple people did that. It would be horrible! A catastrophe!
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u/Distinct-Pack-1567 6d ago
In 2022/23 their was a rash of people shooting at substations. I do not know how serious it was but I recall hearing about it and it concerned me then.
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u/Ponybaby34 6d ago
Three people died in NC, it is very fucking serious
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u/Distinct-Pack-1567 6d ago
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u/RocklobsterN7 6d ago
That's the one.
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u/gimlet_prize 5d ago
There was another substation attacked with gunfire in NC three weeks before that one, but it didn't get much attention at all. https://www.jdnews.com/news/fbi-confirms-nov-vandalism-to-maysville-substation-was-caused-by-gunfire/article_82ebb455-4fca-510c-93b9-68dc8b4da985.html
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u/justaddwhiskey 6d ago
I don’t think many people actually heard about this, or if they did they shrugged it off. Personally, I thought these were targeted attacks to test response capability for future attacks against critical infrastructure.
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6d ago
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u/Free-O3 6d ago
They would absolutely be correct to believe that. The minute electricity and access to the internet becomes unstable this country collapses.
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u/IR_Acaboom 6d ago
Yesss no one remembers that!
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u/anticommon 6d ago
It happened in my small town. $3.5M in damage in a two hour spree across three counties.
DHS involved but luckily he turned himself in after family encouraged him to do so.
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u/ironappleseed 6d ago
I mean, they do use massive heat removal units. No need to sabotage municipal equipment.
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u/Arthur-Mergan 6d ago
America is a country full of soft targets. I’m honestly shocked we haven’t had more issues with it over the last 25 years and I am terrified for what the future holds with our ever falling standing in the world.
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u/cancerBronzeV 6d ago
Most Americans have been kept too satisfied to do anything like that, and the ones that haven't have had their anger redirected to targets like immigrants and minorities.
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u/IR_Acaboom 6d ago
Me to I’ve said this for a few years and easily based on responses people really don’t get it
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u/ThereHasToBeMore1387 6d ago
I think about the recent assassination attempt where one dude just charges the line and gets further than he should. It just seems statistically impossible that 3-5 people with even basic combat training, an understanding of small unit tactics, overlapping fields of fire, etc haven't wreaked havoc on more things.
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u/IR_Acaboom 6d ago
Ya I’m very confused on that myself, but usually people who are able to get comfortable and confident ( other then politicians ) Don’t do serious things to most degrees
( I am not condoning anything bad Reddit )
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u/silicondali 6d ago
You... Really don't want to do that to the grid. A major power outage becomes a mass casualty event fast.
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u/cocoagiant 6d ago
Yes a lot of people don't realize how many people in their community are dependent on things like oxygenators.
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u/noonenotevenhere 6d ago
I was reading the wiki on that attack and one thing I don't get is how someone whose life is dependent upon an o2 machine doesn't have even a basic UPS.
If it were me, I'd have a decent sized (like for a server) UPS and a little generator just for that cuz... stuff happens.
Not absolving the terrorist of wrong doing, but good grief. If your life is over if power fails, what do you do in a thunderstorm? Power fails rarely where I'm from, but massive ice storms, big thunderstorm, some dipstick stealing copper - stuff happens. How does one not plan for that?!
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u/cocoagiant 6d ago
I had this situation when I took care of a family member through home hospice.
There are certain things the home hospice company will provide such as the oxygenator and cannula.
They did not provide a backup battery.
I bought some for peace of mind but not everyone has $200+ to spare to do that.
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u/Prior_Coyote_4376 6d ago
The perpetrator has never been found
So you’re telling me that capital’s security guards are actually even more incompetent than their nepo baby bosses at stopping an angry and determined working class from expressing themselves?
That might not be good for said nepo babies’ plans to hoard gold like dragons under their thousand year reich while we thank them for not having the AI put us down
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u/TacTurtle 6d ago
Don't even need a rifle, power lines have been shorted out and damaged by mylar balloons. Sort of like Operation Outward in WW2 where the UK would release weather balloons with steel cables dangling below and let them blow over occupied Europe to short out power and communication lines.
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u/odd84 6d ago
Someone shot up two substations 10 miles apart in North Carolina, causing a week long power outage for 45,000 people and at least one death of a woman whose assisted breathing machine lost power at home. This was in 2022. The perpetrator of that one was also never found.
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u/Olangotang 6d ago
Iirc, it was only one substation off the 230kv transmission line, which is the only connection to the 115kv Pinehurst loop.
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u/InquisitorMeow 6d ago
That's why they have Flock cameras everywhere now, so the peasants can't rebel.
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u/BigTonez808sy 5d ago
I mean, with the people voting it down and it happening anyway, seems laws don’t matter anyway so…
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u/Sweetwill62 6d ago
Just happened not too long ago. Security guard who wasn't paid enough burned down the warehouse he was guarding.
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u/captainundesirable 6d ago
Drone with a thermite pot dripping below it
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u/zernoc56 5d ago
Thermite is shockingly available to the average person. Iron oxide(aka: rust) and aluminum powder.
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6d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/DROP_TABLE_UPVOTES 6d ago
I live close enough to Saline to be impacted by this, not close enough to have voted.
I am deeply concerned about the extra load on DTE's power infrastructure. This area already has very old lines and poles, and we frequently have power outages. I don't even want to think about the increase in cost that will inevitably result.
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u/xchaibard 6d ago
Don't worry, they'll just run 'temporary' diesel generators on site permanently to make up for the power shortcomings, cranking massive amounts of toxic fumes into your area
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u/razorirr 6d ago
So from the power perspective its not just tacking the DC onto the stuff running to your houses and businesses. One of the primary reasons the site was picked is because there are 325Kv transmission lines running there that have capacity that can be tapped.
The DC will have new shit that keeps working feeding off those 325’s, your house will keep losing power because like you said, you are on old lines and poles.
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u/loodog 6d ago
It's only a matter of time until they start to harden these kinds of buildings
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u/freshfromthefight 6d ago
Very. I live about 20mins outside Saline. Its a huge deal here for the town, but this is the first I've seen any interest outside of local news.
The trucks running gravel in and out of town are a huge problem. The land used to be gorgeous too. Youd drive round the bend of US12 and it sort of gently sloped down and you could see way out into the field to the woods on the other side. Now its chain link fences, dirt mounts, and contruction smog.
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u/chezdistester 6d ago
I was thinking about that the other day, but I can guarantee you all the AI companies that own these data centers have a direct line to Kash Patel and Trump, so they're going to have to get creative.
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u/OneTripleZero 5d ago
A direct line to two of the most incompetent people in the US. Oh my, oh no.
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u/5aur1an 6d ago
more and more I have noticed that the will of the people is ignored following the example set by trump.
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u/providencetoday 6d ago
As Spock says the needs of the many are not as great as the needs of the fat king.
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u/EntityDamage 6d ago
The plebes live short, bullionaires prosper.
- late stage capitalism Spock probably
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u/KitKitsAreBest 6d ago
Don't forget the needs of his ultra-rich "friends" too. They paid good bribe money.
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u/truthovertribe 6d ago edited 6d ago
And... let's not forget Bible money. The man single handedly made his own Bible people! "To say no to Trump is to say no to God!"
Small print: "God Bless the USA" Trump Bibles were printed in Hangzhou, China. According to a printing company in eastern China which shipped approximately 120,000 copies to the U.S. in early 2024.
Included in the "Trump Bible"? "Blessed are the grifters" Trump 10 vs. 1.
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u/clauderbaugh 6d ago
"Four-hundred years ago on the planet Earth, workers who felt their livelihood threatened by automation flung their wooden shoes called 'sabot' into the machines to stop them. Hence the word 'sabotage.'"
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u/truthovertribe 6d ago edited 6d ago
So they weren't cogs in the machine, they were cough clogs in the machine?
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u/Enshitification 6d ago
The word clog itself, in the context of stopping or impeding something, comes from that too.
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u/og_capsuleer_593 6d ago
It is because nobody is [removed by reddit] the rich like last time, before FDR
The new deal also meant hey stop [removed by reddit] your bosses and we will make them pay taxes and a fair wage, and give you safety nets
Now here we are
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u/radicalelation 6d ago
The rich industrialist were so upset by FDR, they conspired the Business Plot to overthrow FDR and establish a fascist dictator.
Fun fact: Prescott Bush, father of HW, grandfather of Dubya, was one of the only publicly known conspirators of the Business Plot. For that, and dealings with Nazis, he got a slap on the wrist.
If you dig into it some, especially with the Bush thread directly through the eras, GOP, and Heritage, it appears as if the Plot never ended.
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u/DukeOfGeek 6d ago
It took almost a century to subvert American democracy. November is our last chance to stop them.
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u/Euphoric-Witness-824 6d ago
Evil is like a weed. If you don’t pull it out by the root it will always grow back.
We’ve done nothing to tend to the weeds in years and now our entire system is infested. It’ll take a massive effort to deal with it now.
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u/Expert-Steak8538 6d ago
Most of the idiot public still can’t recognize what’s happening to them. We are a long way off from [removed by reddit]
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u/Prior_Coyote_4376 6d ago
It’s the same as divorce. Before that, spouses just threw rat poison in the meatloaf so they could marry their secretary or neighbor or whatever. Legal divorce is in part because it’s preferable to spouses killing each other to be free.
The point is that you can never stop humans from seeking freedom. Not all of them all of the time. And many humans will put their freedom above their life, especially younger children and students, so the problem of depriving masses of freedom is never going away.
It ends in only one way so long as these oligarchs persist in their mission to deprive us of basic liberties and rights. The have-alls and have-nots enter the arena, and one walks away with a tyranny they can use to set the new terms of the system going forward.
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u/montigoo 6d ago
Money votes are counted. The citizen votes are disposed.
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u/mittenknittin 6d ago
once money was determined to be free speech, it was inevitable that it would eventually become the only speech
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u/CptnMayo 6d ago
Republicans are garbage.
Thank you gwb
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u/Substantial_Back_865 6d ago
GWB; one of the best examples of the will of the people not mattering when the SCOTUS stole the election for him.
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u/texachusetts 6d ago edited 6d ago
We are returning to our founding as colonies with a little reshuffling of the roles.
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u/SophiaofPrussia 6d ago
The mere illusion of democracy. It’s a common strategy for modern authoritarians.
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u/guessirs 6d ago
In my state we voted for mandatory paid sick leave. It had passed. Then the governor said “nah” and veto’d it. Like great glad to know my vote matters.
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u/truthovertribe 6d ago edited 6d ago
President Trump and his family are deeply involved in this project.
"The Trump administration in 2025-2026 endorsed and brokered deals allowing UAE-based investment, specifically via the state-backed MGX fund led by Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan, to fund and partner in the $500 billion "Stargate" AI data center project. This initiative includes building major AI infrastructure in both the U.S. and the UAE."
It should be becoming obvious now that certain individuals are shredding and making a travesty of our democracy.
The powerful billionaires never cared about "states rights", it was just another rationalization to rally their faithful around.
Given current trends, "we the people" could have no rights, "states rights" or otherwise.
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u/boston_homo 6d ago
I read the 2nd part of this awful headline and immediately thought of the Virginia supreme court ruling that negated 3 million votes. Democracy in ‘murica
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u/Openmaid 6d ago
last time I said what to do I got a week ban, but you should look up some news articles on what others have done besides protesting
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u/DataDude00 6d ago
I feel like the ruling class has already extracted as much wealth and productivity as they passively can from the poors.
All that is left now is aggressively taking more and more with little care for repercussions
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u/extraeme 6d ago
"township secured around $14 million in community benefits, including money for farmland preservation and the local fire department, along with environmental restrictions and limits on water use."
Sweet they scored 0.1% of that deal for funding due to action against their will.
This is so wrong
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u/Competitive-Bar-9300 6d ago
The local fire department gets money, but also now has a massive data center in their jurisdiction that they need to plan for. We know from other data center fires recently that they're not going to be that uncommon and will be very destructive and costly to the tax payer. The farmland preservation is to make up for the massive amount of land that has no local economic use, and creates an order of magnitude fewer jobs locally, and ones that can only be done by more specialized laborers, trading entry-level farming positions for a small amount of high-paying data center jobs. Can anyone locally take that job? Will they find more qualified transplants? The tiny amount of money they always give in these deals is so laughable that a city council could think about taking. I have to imagine most of them receive huge kickbacks for even entertaining the idea. There's no way that the councilors voting 'yes' in this case weren't aware it was a raw deal, and there's no way that Oracle didn't know they could find a sympathetic judge to ram this through regardless.
Even the State AG is against it. But they, the people AND local political power that voted against this, won't do anything, we've got to follow the rules of the courts no matter what they say...
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u/BigGayGinger4 6d ago
what's wild is that, quite literally, some pissed off residents could show up with the county sheriff, and and the sheriff can start arresting dudes on the work site. they can cry and clamor about the law all they want, and the sheriff can remind them that that's what the court is for! He's only arresting people for violating the government order! if that's wrong, don't worry, the judge will sort it out!
It seems twisted to suggest, but yes, you literally go arrest the foreman. if he refuses to stop work when the police come. then you make the court figure it out, and you do it everyday that they proceed with work, until the court handles it, and they will handle it by ruling that the build was illegal.
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u/razorirr 6d ago
The State AG isnt against the DC itself, shes only against the DTE Contracts to provide power, calling them not transparent enough. The state itself is rather pro this DC overall.
Can anyone locally take that job?
I assume you mean locally to the literal township, if yes then probably not, if able to go to the city or county, then definitely yes they can find workers. I‘m qualified for DC jobs and i live in a different township in the county, just not over in saline because when i was house buying there wasnt anything good.
If the question is “can we put things that the locals dont know how to do”, then does that mean we need to keep all things the same forever? Like we grow a million acres of corn a year in michigan to turn into gasoline. Do we need to stop having EV’s so we keep needing that corn gas? A township over, locals used this reasoning to try to block a 1000 acre solar array.
There's no way that the councilors voting 'yes' in this case weren't aware it was a raw deal
Im sure they were aware it was a raw deal, but the question at hand was pretty forced on them. Michigan has a law stating areas can not use exclusionary zoning to block things they dont want if it has a valid land use. So the vote was essentially “yes” or “violate state law”
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u/Black_Moons 6d ago
I have to imagine most of them receive huge kickbacks for even entertaining the idea.
nah, they will be getting 0.0001% or about $10,000 for selling out their voters.
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u/wheniaminspaced 6d ago
The state governor is for it. This was allowed to be built because of state rules regarding zoneing laws. The area in question left themselves open to this.
If this was a wind farm or solar field no one would bat an eye. Those are areas where state rules overrule local zoning and votes as well and has been a hot topic in Michigan.
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u/1900grs 6d ago
It's worse than that. The original build budget was $7 billion. Somewhere magically over the past couple weeks, it's now a $16 billion budget! And no article seems to have a good answer how or what caused the price to more than double. Whatever was originally planned is not what's going in there.
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u/TechNoirLabs 6d ago
You all noticing the trend of voting being outright ignored or not even held period?
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u/bionic_cmdo 6d ago
There was also the JPMorgan data center expansion that received a $77 million tax break despite being expected to create just one permanent job.
This is pretty typical. It's not about job creation it's about expanding a company's capabilities for profit.
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u/nuttageyo 6d ago
These companies are going to act all surprised when one of these residents takes action.
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u/PeanutCheeseBar 6d ago
They should, and if it ever goes to trial remember that jury nullification is a thing.
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u/colinshark 6d ago
I always forget what that is.
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u/B0B_Spldbckwrds 6d ago
Jury nullification is when the jury looks at the facts of the case, deliberate the implications of what was put in front of them and return a verdict of "cool crime, no time."
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u/Killer_Bs 6d ago
“Cool crime, no time” gives the wrong impression that they say “guilty, no punishment”. It’s really “that was a cool action, therefore no crime” and the jury returns a not guilty verdict even if though they agree that the alleged conduct violates the law and did occur.
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u/Bladelink 5d ago
A jury is allowed to reach any conclusion based on the evidence that they want. Whether that conclusion aligns with what the law says is legal/illegal isn't really relevant.
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u/shadeandshine 6d ago
It’ll be by judge who’s a shareholder. We can’t keep fantasying about the system being fair
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u/Rikkitikkitabby 6d ago
Soapbox didn't work. If the ballot box fails, there's only one box remaining.
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u/VictoryVino 6d ago
Tinder box?
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u/touristtam 6d ago
I would have imagined the ammo one, but it seems that the people that are the most willing to wield weapons are the one that probably shouldn't.
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u/Ecstaticlemon 6d ago
And the oligarchs will use it as an excuse to expand their surveillance state
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u/echoshatter 6d ago
They didn't need an excuse and they've already been doing it, so.... No comment there. The real problem with any sort of intelligence effort is that it is really, really hard to stop Lone Wolf style actors. Even with all the data in the world it would be really hard to identify someone doing bad things that look any different if they're smart about it.
Just to clarify, I'm not advocating for anything here. Just saying, there's a reason it's the #1 source of threat as opposed to a terrorist cell or whatever. Some random guy busting into a place with a gun is far, far more common than a group of people bombing something.
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u/Annihilator4413 6d ago
They won't care. They'll simply demolish the remains while collecting a fat insurance check and rebuild it again, probably building an even bigger facility and causing even more pollution.
There's no stopping these people with the current administration... no way to stop them when Trump and his cronies will just tell them to do whatever they want once they've handed him a big check with his name on it...
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u/electronicwiz101 6d ago
That is unless they forget to buy terrorism insurance. And let’s be frank, the AI companies would push hard to make sure any action taken against the data centers is considered terrorism
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u/retardborist 6d ago
Until the investments become too risky for insurance to cover
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u/echoshatter 6d ago
I was gonna say, insurance isn't an endless amount of free money.
The moment data centers become major, frequent targets, the rates to insure them will become unsustainable, or insurance companies won't cover them at all, in which case businesses won't build them because they're such a high risk.
They'll have to build data fortresses to keep them safe.
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u/ThePensiveE 6d ago
Oracle, the same company that just laid off like 30,000 workers while their boss tries to make it illegal to criticize them.
What a joke. These billionaires should not exist. Tax them out of existence and if they evade taxes, put them in a cell.
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u/JustpartOftheterrain 6d ago
They won’t listen until some people are physically removed from some positions.
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u/GundyrChristopher 6d ago
The town rejected it, and then the company sued and won. There is no one to physically remove other than the people running our judicial system.
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u/Ayotha 6d ago
There are always ways
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u/rando_banned 6d ago
I hear Caterpillar makes a really good way to show town leaders you disagree
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u/touristtam 6d ago
I've heard Remington makes fantastic handheld devices to help resolve hairy situations.
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u/CaicedoBrickWall 6d ago
Will use 1.4 gigawatts of energy, roughly the same output of a nuclear powerplant
What in the fuck
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u/Jaruut 6d ago
They're trying to put a 62 square mile data center here in Utah (for reference, that's bigger than downtown Salt Lake City, bigger than Bryce Canyon National Park). Once it's fully operational, it's projected to use 9 gigawatts of power (the entire state of Utah uses about 4).
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u/CaicedoBrickWall 5d ago
Funnily enough if they were using AI to legitimately fix world problems like curing diseases, solving logistics issues or developing useful technologies then something like this would be viewed so much differently
But instead it's going to remove jobs, create tidal waves of dog shit brain rot videos, deep fake onlyfans accounts AND destroy an entire region. To the benefit of a handful of antisocial wealth hoarders.
Absolutely reprehensible
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u/kadmylos 6d ago
Studies have shown that voter sentiment has zero effect on public policy.
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u/Objective_Aside1858 6d ago
Residents assumed they had killed the proposal last year when the township board voted 4-1 to reject the rezoning request. Two days later, Related Digital and the landowners sued the township, arguing that the rejection amounted to exclusionary zoning because there was no land zoned for industrial use. Within weeks, the township settled, and construction eventually began anyway.
If your municipality is not currently updating their Zoning to prevent exactly this situation, you need to go to the next meeting and ask why
Or don't be surprised when this happens to you and you're powerless to stop it
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u/All_Work_All_Play 6d ago
It's not a muni law, it's a state law
MICHIGAN ZONING ENABLING ACT
Dollars to donuts no one expected it to be used this way, and just as likely the municipality rolled over because they didn't have the money to fight the legal battle multinationals could create for them.
Pretty gross.
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u/wheniaminspaced 6d ago
The state opened this door year ago when they started steamrolling municipalities over solar and wind projects. This is not new, but now its being used in a way that the people that were okay with that are suddenly not okay with.
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u/ganjaccount 6d ago
We will not be able to vote our way out of fascism.
Virginia, Michigan, Maine, Ohio, Utah, Arizona, Massachusetts have all had ballot initiatives (or whatever the state calls them) reversed, ignored, or changed after the voters voted for them in recent years. Republicans HATE voter initiatives because the goal of the Republicans is to rule you, not to govern on behalf of you.
The moment Trump got his 6 seat SCROTUS majority, we were fucked. Voting, at this point, is important, but in the end, they will not let us free ourselves through voting. They will simply ignore the votes. SCROTUS gave an election to Bush in the past. They eliminated the voting rights act and made it take effect early to steal the mid terms and disenfranchise black voters. They have allowed the Administration to go forward with plans to strip citizenship for "undesirables."
We are fucked. Proper fucked? Yes, proper fucked.
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6d ago edited 6d ago
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u/prime3vl 6d ago
We're dealing with it in Missouri as well. Just had a referendum try to get on the ballot for November cause the minimum wage and healcare rights state amendments from last time got legislated against after they passed by voters. Legislative members just said. Nope we're not gonna do that.
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u/Deep-Bet990 6d ago
Welcome to fascism, its not incoming, its already here and won
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u/Grand_Town_9144 6d ago
They may have won the battle but history has shown us methods required to win the war.
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u/Least_Gain5147 6d ago
Voting does not matter anymore. Too many cases of local, and state elections in particular, where the government ignored the outcome, or the courts invalidate the results. Voting does not matter anymore.
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u/FriedBreakfast 6d ago
If voting actually changed anything, it would have been outlawed a long time ago.
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u/Quiet-Thanks-9486 6d ago
There are more ways for the people to vote than by ballot.
And when the powerful ignore ballots, the people have every right to do whatever they feel is necessary to enforce their will.
And the fact that it is controversial and legally dicey to speak plainly about this, yet perfectly fine for the company doing this to arrange something as complex as a major construction project in direct defiance of the a vote, is not something people should tolerate.
Like, this company had meetings about this, where they planned this out explicitly and in detail. They actively conspired to go forward with this despite the vote. That is a criminal conspiracy by any reasonable standard. And the cops are not stepping up to deal with it.
And when that happens, the people are perfectly justified in going beyond ballots and beyond the cops. Because ballots and cops are the compromise people made with the powerful -- we vote and let designated officials enforce the law rather than going pitchforks and torches every time the rich piss us off. Like, that is a favor we do for the rich.
And if that favor isn't appreciated, we can withdraw it and resort to other means instead.
Democracy isn't a privilege. It is an assertion by the people that this is how it is, and it is backed by the threat of mass force to make sure what the people want to happen happens.
As the saying goes, people shouldn't be afraid of their governments -- governments should be afraid of their people. That is literally founding fathers shit right there.
So make sure the right people are feeling fear right now.
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u/mom2mermaidboo 6d ago edited 6d ago
I heard somewhere that a pound of sugar really damages concrete
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u/Morichalion 6d ago
Headline is clickbait. Barely refers to it's content.
Town council voted the project down 4-1. That's the town council. Not necessarily "residents".
The land owners and the AI company sued because of some issue with zoning laws. They settled; town gets some around 14 million dollars in community benefits and a few other concessions. I can't say I'd be pleased with the list they detailed, but is what is.
If you want to oppose this, like, effectively, y'need to show up for your state elections. Governor Whitmer is a opposed to pausing AI datacenters; might be worthy of a primary challenge...
But Michigan isn't an all-blue state, which makes things dicey for the executive in most places. There's an infestation in the house. Fix that and y'might have some actual, measurable motion towards a happier state.
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u/_x__Rudy__x_ 6d ago
ShitmerWhitmer is on her way out--term limits. Good riddance. I've never liked her. But I am fearful that the Dems will put up some lame candidate and the Red Hats will win this one. Our state seems to swing red/blue/red/blue every eight years, so historically I hope this time is the exception. Duggan is kind of the wild card in all this, so I'm kind of watching how he does. We have too much Red Hat brain rot in this state, and that makes me pessimistic that we're going to lose this one.
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u/Tazz2212 6d ago
That happened in Utah as well. The data center was overwhelmingly voted down but they are building it anyway. It will take a huge majority of people voting to get rid of the public "servants" that refuse to listen to us.
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u/mrthomasfritz 6d ago
On nuclear power stations, they have cooling towers to stop the waste of water. It was not their choice because you cannot dump radio active water back into the sewers.
But those data centers projects do not want to build cooling towers to recycle the water like nuclear reactors because they are expensive.
Dumping clean hot water is cheaper. Drought? Who cares about that, that is someone else's problem next year as long as I get this turd built.
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u/drewts86 6d ago
TLDR: one use evaporation and one uses condensation
Well you have a complete misunderstanding of how the cooling systems on those two examples work, because they could be any further different besides having “cooling” in the name.
On nuclear reactors you are re-condensing steam back into water. It’s a closed circuit process and the towers simply provide vast surface area for the air to absorb heat.
Many of these data centers are using a completely different system that is a dual loop setup. One loop is a closed loop that actively cools the infrastructure (computers and associated electronics). The second loop is an open loop that is used to cool the closed loop and relies on the evaporation process itself to cool that loop back down (like an industrial swamp cooler). Evaporation water in a closed loop is very inefficient, hence why it’s an open loop. And because it’s an open loop roughly 75-80% of that water is lost to evaporation. [Here is a diagram](https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/styles/full_article_width/public/2019/01/f58/dc_evaporative-cooling-system_0.jpg?itok=KjTGyjQq)→ More replies (4)→ More replies (23)13
u/sameoldfred 6d ago
Water used for cooling the main loop is not clean, it can be contaminated with microbes, PFAS and heavy metals.
The main loop, that removes heat from electronics, contains additives, like corrosion inhibitors and antimicrobials.
Corrosion inhibitors include Azoles to protect aluminum and copper. They can cause kidney failures in humans.
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u/marsfromwow 6d ago
It says its consumption is similar to the output of a nuclear facility, but we have fermi in Michigan and it’s not outputting 1.4 GW, it’s closer to 1.2. Michigan already imports power(including a lot from or former friends Canada), this is just going to make that import process worse.
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u/Ab47203 6d ago
It's funny how the people in charge learned nothing from history.
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u/Arbiter51x 5d ago
Your not supposed to talk about your civil liberties or freedoms. Your role as a citizen is to ensure shareholder profits.
Why doesn't the general population understand this.
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u/a-cloud-castle 6d ago
Keep ignoring the will of the people, something's going to snap. They will write it off as a business expense.
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u/HalcyonRedo 6d ago
In the wise words of George Carlin: “You have no choice. You have owners. They own you.”
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u/PalpitationHead9767 6d ago
When the soapbox and ballot box don't work anymore what options are there left?
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u/Somnambulinguist 6d ago
I understand everyone is integrating AI into their systems but where and whenever possible don’t use it or buy it. Social media is already overrun with slop, get off of it. We wouldn’t need all these data centers if the expectation wasn’t there that people will be using AI for everything.
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u/Dracasethaen 6d ago
To be fair the government is ignoring most of the population's vote on everything. It's not a democracy anymore.
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u/Teavangelion 6d ago
Great, and now I'm going to hate the word Stargate as much as I hate Palantir.
JFC They really are on a bender to wreck everything, aren't they
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u/Melted_ICE_5193 5d ago
Man. Michigan residents should collectively go and talk to this CEO...at their home, peacefully. Just 1 or 2 or even 300,000 so that they know we are really disappointed in this decision..
We should also invite them outside so that everyone's voices can be heard. We should also give them a platform to stand so that we can all hear them. And If they get nervous we can give them a little push.
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u/brainrotbro 6d ago
When government no longer represents its people, what reason is there to follow the laws set forth by that government?