> Power though? Still a problem.

I've long suspected that monied interests are seeding social media with weak arguments about water as a distraction, and people mindlessly re-share that as part of their identity. Then the other half can come along and "correct" them while the main issue of power is forgotten. Social media gets engagement, and capital gets its data centers.

It's the same tired pattern we've seen for a long time now in politics, and they keep rolling it out because it works.

Just like xAI was regulated to not run more than 15 gas turbines? US lets companies get away with breaking things and punishes wrongdoing at most with a fine that's less than the money that was made by breaking the rules, so US regulations sort of don't matter.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/15/elon-musk...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_(data_center)

This is also all the sabotage the saboteurs have volunteered to tell you about. If your opsec has allowed sabotage to happen, it’s prudent to assume there’s other sabotage you don’t know about.

> my vendor sends me junk

Indeed. A single bad review of a product from a user, if justified, can build the impetus to destroy a product. Three bad reviews probably will.

Insurance costs too can be affected.

That's right, which is why saboteurs need to be dealt with on the harshest terms.

> now have to add security so it doesn't happen a second time

You assume that that cost is going to be borne by the corporation building the facility and not by the general public through lobbying to protect construction sites from mischief (mischief in the legal sense, which in many countries is an indictable offence).

In most democracies, private security generally has to defer to the police for anything that involves actual violence beyond detaining people until the police show up. From that point on, it's up to the police and the courts to deal with the matter.

> the overall attractiveness of building a datacenter in the region go down.

There are two directions this idea can go:

- a reduction in the rule of law by normalizing the idea that it is OK for citizens to damage otherwise legal and permitted construction - insurance costs go up for everyone because the country's government has demonstrated that protection of private property is not one of its priorities.

- an increased police presence / crackdown against protesters. The region remains a competitive venue.

If a country demonstrates the first option, this in turn leaves the corporation with two options:

- move on to a jurisdiction that does respect private property using the police

- move on to a jurisdiction where private security has more latitude to "deal with" protesters

The most likely bottom line impact that this will have, from my perspective: insurance premiums will go up a bit and everything else will stay pretty much the same. Most democratic countries will step in and protect property owners (yay property, sales, and income tax). Governments and courts don't generally look too favourably on protestors who do actual physical damage to people and companies going about their lawful business.

But delaying the opening probably means that the decommissioning date is also pushed back. The total life span is probably unchanged.

> and doesn't change anything

It does change people that don't know about your cause against it, quite reliably as long as activism results go.

For climate change, everybody probably heard about it, so yeah.

I think XR would prefer your solution as well. Still I can understand young people’s frustration when we after years and years of knowing about climate change do so little and so few laws of this type are enacted.

But I agree that their strategy is lacking. It would probably be easier to get people in general to support it if it didn’t affect them directly, sadly.

I think fossil fuel taxes are a great idea, but if one consumer, data centers, should pay it, shouldn't all consumers (private car owners) pay it too? That's the only way we'll be able to make good decisions about what types of fossil fuels are useful (i.e. more good than harm) and which are pointless luxuries.

> Personally I think data centers should pay a 100% fossil fuel tax. Markets respond to incentives.

Yes, by changing the incentives to align with their desires.

I guarantee if a politician had a serious chance of introducing something like this that record breaking amounts of money would be poured into even a primary election these days to stop them.

Data centers should just pay anything really. They get massive tax breaks, eat up huge swathes of industrial zoned land, and piss off anyone nearby. And for what? 3 permanent jobs and a penny worth of tax revenue.

"high concentration vinegar"? You mean acetic acid? You'd have to be nuts to carry balloons of concentrated acetic acid.

This is a nonsensical, stupid and fruitless symbolic act. Why should someone be crippled, blinded or killed by their foolishness?

TrueAnon Rule #23, "Always Disavow"

> feel better about themselves by doing “something”.

"The real friends are the clicks and attention you receive along the way."

Yet here we are talking about the environmental impact of Microsoft data centres in NL. We wouldn’t otherwise be.

Roadway gluing is designed to sway public opinion -> change politics -> affect the corporations.

This is designed to... affect the corporations. (Swaying public opinion could be seen as a secondary effect.)

I also realize it's not that simple. They probably didn't affect Microsoft here, rather a construction company, who are now calling their insurance company? Or the construction company is eating the cost for the damage, because it's deemed that the site wasn't adequately secured?

Yeah people will hear about this and subscribe to chatgpt pro in spite.

You have to be special to think this is comparable to paint throwing on works of art or blocking public roads. Everyone outside tech hates AI.

I suppose if you're one of the people that live near where it would be built it might be worth sabotaging it if only to go another week without the incessant hum and brown, filthy tap water.

I mean bribes can be good.

Sure you can build a data center near me, if your going to fund a new swimming pool and library with the taxes you pay. Also I get reduced local taxes? Even better!

Infrastructure building would be a whole lot easier, if people could directly tie it to tangible benefits.

Oh FFS no it isn't chinese propaganda or whatever, people are just fed up with slop

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Demeaning people who are trying to improve the world is pathetic.

Many of the mentally ill AI people on X supported the ICE executions in Minneapolis.

Prior to industrialization everyone was broke and people regularly starved.

If the loom smashers had their way, we'd still be dirt farmers living in abject poverty.

Yesterday I watched Bernadette Banner visit a Loom Museum and try them out for herself. A few takeaways:

1. Looms were a serious physical workout, and could honestly be hard on one's body

2. The mechanical looms they operated were pre-electric, pre-industrial, but still incredibly complex and amazingly fast compared to previous iterations

3. The operators of looms, living in abject poverty, took these jobs so that they could eat and support their families, and incidentally became the top experts on weaving cloth during their lifetimes, which all basically collapsed when looms were automated and mechanized.

> child labour and dangerous working conditions

I don't think these ideas are as toxic to the current political climate as you think they are. We're probably just a few short years away from the current generation of right-wing populists integrating ideas like "children are useless eaters that are your property to command, make them give back from all that you gave to them" and "work safety and environmental regulations are an emasculating evil, real men want to breathe poison and take risks" right into the core of their platforms.

Ah yes, the majority of people obviously don't know about climate change!

It's far grimmer to realise that people know, they just don't think we have an acceptable answer yet.

I'm not willing to accept any climate action, if it means I can't go on holiday abroad or it makes my life meaningfully more expensive etc.

It's selfish, but we need to solve it in a way that makes people globally richer.

(This is one of the great things about renewables coming down in price)

You think they did math on this? No, all he did was have a tantrum where they got attention to themselves and patted themselves on the bat for doing something.

They didn't think through the ecological results of someone scraping off the destroyed concrete and pouring more.

Did the Data Center get canceled? If not, then no it is not ruined and instead what's going to happen? Is someone's going to scrape up a whole bunch of that concrete releasing a whole bunch of carbon dioxide and then someone's going to pour down some more concrete which will increase the CO2 in the atmosphere.

Microsoft does tonnes of dumb stuff that decreases its profit. Renaming Microsoft Office to Microsoft 365 Copilot, for example. As long as it has plenty of profit left, it doesn't really care. It would only care if the amount of lost profit became existential, reaffirming GP.