My dad got sick of my adolescent music choices and bought me a copy of Led Zeppelin II

The actual act and ritual of the public hearing is often required by law, so I would expect this issue to go away. But we can be clear about how input will be used, what the parameters are for making a decision, etc.

Good thoughts on planning and public outreach here.

Also good for agencies to be clear with the public about the purpose of the meeting - is it to ask about X? Or is it to inform about a decision or a proposal?

Would be into this

Would get rid of the silly height exaggeration on rosters, too.

Exactly. There’s just too much stuff.

I’m glad we’ve aged out of all the other baby gear to bring along.

It’s also one of the big potential time variances: I gotta check the car seat bag, and lots of airlines won’t let me self-tag it at the kiosk; I need to flag down an agent, wait longer in the bag drop line, etc.

the “doing anything requiring specialized equipment” part cuts hard against travel with kids in the car seat age.

From the pics community on Reddit: This is the ceiling of the smoking room at Washington-Dulles airport. Explore this post and more from the pics community

www.reddit.com/r/pics/s/7rf...

Dulles used to have smoking rooms by the C-gates; the ceiling tiles were stained brown

Great photos here.

Yes. Flying with other people’s money makes a huge difference.

One person’s “time wasted at the airport” is another person’s peace of mind.

…as a way to reduce neuroticism!

“It’s good to be less neurotic about things” is good advice, but getting there by saying you ought to miss a few flights is absolutely nuts

No traffic, no need for schools… noise, grid capacity, and local disturbances from backup generators seem to be the big issues.

But they generate far more local tax revenue than the comparable light industry uses

Thanks for that. Interesting read.

I don’t think they make sense as a big redevelopment play, but they’ve always been there in downtowns.

I used to work in a downtown DC building that was 3 floors of servers

I’d note there *could* be a real fiscal benefit with local tax revenues, but the habit of framing any such benefit in terms of “jobs” works against that.

Loudoun Co, VA is pretty explicit in their messaging: these things are lowering your taxes: www.loudoun.gov/6188/Data-Ce...

Good Q; I’d assume it’s just a land rush and they’re trying to find anything that works.

Yeah.

The local elected support is a key thing to understand: these things generate massive tax revenues and require relatively little fiscal support.

The issue is the externalities- which gets back to the basic land use planning dynamics. And (unfortunately) the same historic trends.

And lastly, maybe this is from me living in the DC area for so long (where data centers have long been a NoVa staple) but the demand for them isn’t just about AI; we have everything “in the cloud” now.

They’re the physical manifestation of the internet.

The electricity demand is also a real issue, but again: if we’re going to decarbonize the economy and electrify everything, we’re going to face the same kind of issue for all sorts of things

This is another reason the data center backlash is fascinating to me:

The real local harms and nuisances matter, but opposing them in terms of general opposition to AI or corporations is doomed to fail

And then have the timeline serve up economic investment in “US railroads” topping out at nearly 10% of GDP…

bsky.app/profile/bria...

It’s always amazing to look at maps like this…

The news story keeps crashing on me

Seems important to note this was a ruling by a hearing examiner, overturning the bureaucrats, based on a legal challenge.

ELECTRO-LINER

Yeah, like i said, just trying to find a way to pay for their new bridges and interchanges.

You could see a different version of this (and alt history) where they still build the bypass bridge, but use tolling to manage congestion on the central, downtown span and to fund the bypass.