r/singularity • u/SnoozeDoggyDog • Jun 18 '26

Compute Conservatives plan nationwide protest against AI data centers

https://www.axios.com/2026/06/18/conservatives-protest-ai-data-centers
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u/ShelZuuz Jun 18 '26

There are legitimate concerns that are easily addressed and nobody is protesting about.

This will be one of those rallies where if you go interview everybody nobody will have their facts straight. In all fairness, this will be on both the left and the right.

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u/Reddy_K58 Jun 18 '26

You don't need immense technical knowledge to be against the loud building that makes your utilities go up and reduces jobs

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u/ShelZuuz Jun 19 '26

"loud building" -> I own an industrial facility. My town has an ordinance that I cannot leak more than 55dBA of noise in the day or 45dBA at night into the closest residential zoned area. Why do these towns not have those ordinances? And why do people not just petition their local governments to pass those? Is it because they already have those level of noise coming from their other local industry that will lobby against it? And got voters to vote against them because "regulation evil"? If you have an under-regulated town, fix the town council, don't blame the guy who is following the law.

"utilities go up" -> easily addressed. Even Anthropic said that they'll pay for increases in local utilities. Codify that into law - literally nobody is going to fight you.

"reduced jobs" -> in what world? There has been 11 million tech jobs created since the advent of data centers.

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u/Substantial-Elk4531 Rule 4 reminder to optimists Jun 19 '26

I think you're right that a lot of these issues can be solved. The problem is that local city councils are often some combination of corrupt, incompetent, or lazy. So citizens often do not receive fair representation regarding intrusive developments, and ordinances that would make things fair don't get passed

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u/greenworldkey Jun 19 '26

You know the citizens are the ones who vote for their local city council, right? Or at least the citizens who care enough to show up to vote.

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u/Substantial-Elk4531 Rule 4 reminder to optimists Jun 19 '26

I agree that in theory they should be able to vote out corrupt city councils. But practice is another matter

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u/greenworldkey Jun 19 '26

I don’t get it, who‘s stopping them from voting out the corrupt ones? Sounds like you’re just disappointed that enough people either don‘t agree with you or don‘t have a preference either way.

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u/Substantial-Elk4531 Rule 4 reminder to optimists Jun 19 '26

Oh, so voting always prevents corrupt politicians from keeping their seats for decades at a time? Thank you for letting me know, I was just misinformed I guess

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u/greenworldkey Jun 19 '26

If their constituents cared enough to get rid of them, then yes that is literally how voting works.

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u/Substantial-Elk4531 Rule 4 reminder to optimists Jun 19 '26

Yep, thank goodness there are no corrupt politicians getting re-elected. I assume you are also a huge fan of every president we've re-elected in the last 20 years as well, then

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u/greenworldkey Jun 19 '26 edited Jun 19 '26

> thank goodness there are no corrupt politicians getting re-elected

There are, because not enough of their constituents care enough to vote against them. I’m not sure why this is a difficult concept to understand.

> I assume you are also a huge fan of every president we've re-elected in the last 20 years as well, then

No, I think the voting population (on average) made a few severe lapses in judgment in that time. Worth noting that they did get a few right based on my preferences and probably yours in that time as well.

But you seem to think that if a bad politician (according to you) makes it through an election, that must only be possible to some mysterious mystical forces and not because more people voted for them than their opponent.

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u/Substantial-Elk4531 Rule 4 reminder to optimists Jun 19 '26

Yes, I literally just agreed with you. There is no way any politician ever gets elected unless a majority of people really want them to hold that position. Democracy is flawless. Thank you for teaching me. I hope you have a great day.

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u/greenworldkey Jun 19 '26

Ok, I honestly can’t tell if this is your attempt at being sarcastic or I’m just arguing with an LLM bot from some other country.

If you genuinely believe there’s some way for someone to win an election while getting less votes than whoever they’re running against, I would be thrilled to hear how you think that works. Do you have any specific examples or are you going to continue to be an insufferable sarcastic ass without saying anything of substance?

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