A Farmer Arrested for Going 5 Seconds over His Time Limit at Data Center Meeting

106 pointsposted 13 hours ago
by spenvo

54 Comments

psidebot

13 hours ago

The article definitely misrepresents what's in the video. He wasn't arrested for speaking 5 seconds over. He was standing right in front of the councilors shuffling papers back and forth for nearly a minute while the crowd was screaming and clapping. Officers asked him to leave, then told him to leave multiple times he categorically refused, all while public order was progressively deteriorating.

firesteelrain

12 hours ago

Similarly my Sheriff said during COVID that he would not arrest people protesting once they enter a government building but would arrest anyone obstructing outside the Government building. This seems State specific. The man shouldn’t have been arrested.

cranky908canuck

12 hours ago

If you google "farmer name activist" the results light up like a christmas tree. (Where the actual name is substituted in, of course.)

Regardless of the merits of the actual issue being protested, presenting this as "poor innocent farmer arrested for going five seconds over" doesn't seem accurate.

I previously observed that of course getting arrested wasn't something he would have planned...

OTOH, given that this is the second time the "five seconds over" story has been posted to HN, seems like somebody is leveraging the 'Streisand Effect'.

rekabis

10 hours ago

Square brackets more clearly indicate that the word is both placeholder and a description of the kind of placeholder in question:

> If you google "farmer [name] activist"

shimman

12 hours ago

Oh I guess that makes it okay to arrest a person exercising their human rights. Wouldn't want to upset the "public order" (whose order are we talking about here because the public seems to be on the person's side).

gruez

12 hours ago

>Oh I guess that makes it okay to arrest a person exercising their human rights.

How do you think public hearings are supposed to work if you have hoards of hecklers exercising their "human rights" by disrupting the meeting?

edave64

12 hours ago

Does that somehow not make the headline misleading? Becase that's what that comment said, not that the arrest was ok and warranted.

Humorist2290

13 hours ago

From the Claremore City Council minutes [0] it does show the person mentioned in the article was a speaker, among a group of some 20 other members of the community. They also include the incredible claim

  Claremore Data Center will house the backbone of the internet and supports all the functions that occur on the internet.
The minutes mention that many of the council members were accused of not caring, but they do not mention the arrest. I'm not suggesting the story is false as much as highlighting that the city's minutes omit it.

0: https://claremore.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/02-17-2026-...

hdgvhicv

12 hours ago

So if it’s not built the internet wont exist?

mmooss

12 hours ago

> Claremore Data Center will house the backbone of the internet and supports all the functions that occur on the internet.

That's not incredible; many facilities do that. It doesn't say 'the entire backbone'; there are many pieces in many places, and if it does contain significant transit then it probably does support approximately "all the functions that occur on the internet."

If it's hosting systems building LLMs, than obviously the statement is false.

_russross

13 hours ago

I don't have a problem with data centers and would welcome one nearby if it was a good deal for the area. But I'd want binding contractual agreements about environmental guarantees and requirements for building out new renewable energy generating capacity of 100% or even 150% of what the data center itself needs (and not just outbidding buyers of existing grid capacity). Instead we are handing out regulation waivers and tax incentives and telling locals they don't matter.

helterskelter

13 hours ago

Problem is that there's always some poorer community, or one with more corrupt government officials, willing to allow a buildout for next to nothing. And when they plug into the grid the next county or state over you're electric rates are going up anyway.

sandcat_

12 hours ago

Eh, this is a bit fatalist. Every bit of pushback is a tax. If a company applies to build in X location but is threatening to move to Y location where it's cheaper, or they can get away with something, there's obviously a reason they'd prefer X. They wouldn't be arguing otherwise. So if they are "forced" to move to Y, that's a tax.

See also: working at unethical tech firms, fears over the rich leaving NYC, etc.

helterskelter

9 hours ago

Depends on what X is worth to them and how badly Y may want that data center. X may have better infrastructure, but Y is offering to build theirs out and waive taxes for ten years, so X has less room to negotiate.

mindslight

12 hours ago

The other problem is the rule of law is breaking down, so those contractual promises aren't really binding - rather the federal regime can always override any such restrictions with tales about energy policy or needing to compete with China (even as they squander our advantages on both). When you're one bribe away from being on the end of a vice signalling two minute hate, it's best to not give them a foothold in the first place.

saulpw

12 hours ago

Okay, and? Just because they'll find some other place to put it with worse terms, doesn't mean you should let them have it in their preferred location with bad terms.

helterskelter

12 hours ago

I don't disagree with you. I'm just pointing out that you can make all sorts of demands but you aren't in a very good position to negotiate, and you'll probably still have to pay higher rates even if you stonewall them. Basically, "I drink your milkshake." A lot of local govts would look at this and say "we might as well get some jobs out of this" and approve.

It's a good example of why we need some form of regulation to keep corrupt or incompetent local politicians from selling a community and potentially their neighbors down the river.

Haven880

4 hours ago

I have been to China for years. I can guarantee you this wouldn't happen in China. You have to have violence initiated to get arrested there. And yes, they do have limited protest (though not for LGBTQ reasons). Sounds very much America is the real CCP. The myth of freedom of speech. Myth.The land of the brave and free is for the super rich. The rest aren't any better than China.

JumpCrisscross

13 hours ago

Do we have a better source for this story? Ideally with updates?

philajan

13 hours ago

The local news includes the body cam video.

Summary: The farmer was asked to leave by an officer. The farmer acknowledges the request and then walks to the head table to start handing the members documents. He was asked again to leave a couple of more times replying with “On what grounds” and then comes the “…flat and final ‘Arrest him’” that the article mentions.

Some context was left out between the his three minutes to speak being up and the arrest.

IncreasePosts

12 hours ago

This reminds me of a kid in my college who got "tazed for not using his blinker", but what really happened is he got pulled over for not using his blinker, refused to give ID, refused to get out of the car to be arrested, and then fought the officer as he tried to pull him out of the car

mistrial9

12 hours ago

really? that reminds me of the county prosecuting attorney who brings up unrelated stories of people who are obviously guilty whenever anyone questions their motivation and attention to the law

ck2

12 hours ago

we're at the point in "democracy" where laws are weaponized against protestors

actually I guess civil rights experienced that first a century ago

but now it's been perfected and anticipated by the establishment

I really hope November is a shocking wake-up call but not holding my breath

If dems do not also get the Senate it's just going to be all hot air

thot_experiment

13 hours ago

No actual human fucking wants data centers. Every day I wake up and it feels we're moving closer to torches, pitchforks and guillotines.

bvcp

12 hours ago

Apart from water usage which can be solved by using recycled water or closed loop cooling i fail to see what all the hysteria is over. Communities dont own power production and if usage causes costs to increase then investment in more production will follow.

The level of vitriol i see in all countries over data centers is looking more and more as a proxy against ai.

You can really see how a terrawatt of ai compute in space will make alot of sense vs on earth.

thot_experiment

12 hours ago

They are also noisy, polluting, and first and foremost we should endeavor to respect the will of the people in a democracy. Of course on some level it is a proxy against AI, but more importantly it's a proxy against the stratification of society. The problem is the gap between rich and poor.

watwut

12 hours ago

> Communities dont own power production and if usage causes costs to increase then investment in more production will follow.

Years of higher electricity price is good reason to be against. The communities gain nothing from those data centers, so it is a bad deal.

And yes, AI industry made an extraordinary achievment in making themselves hated. 10/10 success of their own marketing and PR.

pokstad

13 hours ago

You’re posting on a website hosted in a data center. Lack of self awareness.

zzrrt

12 hours ago

The data center hosting this website is already built, unlike the ones people are fighting against.

I'll grant the general public may not understand enough that they already rely on "datacenters", but there are reasonable arguments against gigawatt buildouts for AI, while still using technologies that run in datacenters in general.

thot_experiment

12 hours ago

This website is hosted on a single server. I was being hyperbolic sure, but we don't need the number of data centers we have by a huge margin, the primary reason they exist is because building software that runs on people's computers is not compatible with greedmaxxing.

mindslight

12 hours ago

First, this is just the standard "You're criticizing X, yet you use X. Checkmate" trope.

Second, there is an obvious difference in scale here which you're ignoring.

Third, a website that can run on a pair of servers doesn't actually need to be, and the world would be better off if fewer were.

victorbjorklund

13 hours ago

I kind of like having access to internet.

hdgvhicv

12 hours ago

Which you have without this data center being built.

victorbjorklund

10 hours ago

Oh I’m sure. But the comment I replied to talked about data centers in general not a particular data center. In general I like the internet. I assume you too in general like the existence of the internet.

IncreasePosts

13 hours ago

No human wants data centers but lots of humans want to use services provided by data centers.

JumpCrisscross

13 hours ago

Also, towns can craft datacenter deals that produce public benefits. It’s expensive fixed infrastructure within their taxing jurisdiction.

teeray

13 hours ago

The intersection of users and neighbors of AI data centers is probably much smaller than you think.

alex0015

12 hours ago

I can imagine a situation where this is true, like if it was used by some company to train an internal model or a model that never got released.

But even assuming the data center was only used for AI model training, more or less everyone who uses any electronics now either uses generative AI directly themselves or uses services whose employees use generative AI at work to create those services. AI is extremely popular and widespread now among many large and diverse groups of people.

watwut

12 hours ago

Per polls, ai is pretty hated. And the distaste is growing with growing use.

A lot of ai usage is forced and unwanted. People dont perceive it as source of greatness, but as source of slop, cheap low quality and enshittification and crutially, existential threat.

alex0015

12 hours ago

Sure, people might not like AI by some narrow definition or choose not to use it themselves. But roughly every single service they consume or interact with is downstream of AI at some level now. The demand isn't just for chatbot usage and hasn't been for a long time.

watwut

11 hours ago

That does not make ai "extremely popular". Instead, it is source of anger. That is what I called "forced to use AI".

patrick451

13 hours ago

The boom in datacenter construction is driven mostly by the AI boom and most of us are sick everything AI too. We don't want to read AI slop, watch AI videos, talk AI customer service or visit a vibe coded website.

binary132

12 hours ago

Don’t forget getting targeted for scams by slopbots on forums and chat platforms

JumpCrisscross

13 hours ago

> Every day I wake up and it feels we're moving closer to torches, pitchforks and guillotines

The billionaires who are consolidating control over the media and social media would want nothing more.

thot_experiment

12 hours ago

Billionaires are providing much less value than we would have if random kids who lost the birth lottery were empowered to reach their potential to help society. We should not allow them to exist.

Avicebron

12 hours ago

You keep saying this, care to explain?

JumpCrisscross

12 hours ago

I feel like I’ve just said this once, but sure.

Plenty of prominent billionaires have openly aligned with authoritarian over fairly-elected government. The fact that the media and social media properties they control promote divisive, pitchfork-y content doesn’t strike me as a coincidence.

In a violent revolution, even if successful, based on historic pattern, those billionaires would concentrate economic and political power. It was the fact pattern in the French Revolution. It’s been true for every post-WWII revolution too. It will probably get more and more true and people and assets become more and more mobile. The only exceptions were the pre-WWII Communist revolutions; that pattern ended with jet travel.

mc32

13 hours ago

What goons!

It doesn't matter what side is the one in the right, people will take sides against goonish and thuggish behavior. That can grow into a stupid PR disaster. Why would they do this? Are they that stupid or hire stupid people for enforcement?

rolph

13 hours ago

technokarenism ?

josefritzishere

13 hours ago

That is some seriously authoritarian behavior. That board should be removed, and I think jailed. The intent to deprive people of basic civil rights is felonious.