Today, we're launching our interactive North Star Data Center Policy Toolkit to stop, slow, and restrict the rapid expansion of US AI data centers. The toolkit and training series lay out affirmative local, state, and federal policies to protect communities: datacenters.ainowinstitute.org 🧵
The proliferation of hyperscale data centers is neither necessary nor inevitable. We cannot meet their energy demand and still have a livable planet. We should not try to meet their energy demand no matter how much of it is renewable energy.
Proof that data center development isn't inevitable!
Maine is poised to enact a moratorium on data center construction through 2027 while they assess the industry's impacts on the environment and electrical grid.
www.wsj.com/us-news/main...
Last week, in a unanimous vote, the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma banned AI data centers on their land. nativenewsonline.net/sovereignty/...
Southern Arizona just hit triple digit temperatures, breaking records for the earliest date ever. The previous record was April OF LAST YEAR!!!!!111111 The writing is melting off the wall!
www.azfamily.com/2026/03/18/a...
The new largest data center in Illinois has been approved by the Joliet City Council.
It will be the size of Central Park.
And use more than half as much electricity as the entire city of Chicago.
AUTHORS: March 30 is the deadline to file a claim for your part of the Anthropic settlement. Details and instructions here provided by @authorsguild.org.
We need Congressional investigations into civilian deaths caused by faulty AI, not luxury trips by Chuck Schumer-tied crypto & AI lobbyists.
This kind of nonsense from Democrats (in the middle of multiple crises!) is why I’m running for Congress. We need a real opposition party.
Greenwashing was… already a thing? Like we were ALREADY generating and consuming too much energy and companies. Now hyperscale data centers are making that MANY TIMES WORSE. And all they offer to explain their necessity are empty and meaningless marketing campaigns.
“I live near a data center and the AQI is routinely above 150. What do you suggest, Copilot.”
Data center broad band?
(I’ll see myself out)
my little all-women anti-data center group in northern colorado is deciding between two names: data center divas and data center bitches (complimentary)
An Oklahoma fire department turned down $250,000 from Google because they didn't want to betray public trust as Google tries to build a data center in their community.
The Rock Volunteer Fire Department chief got a standing ovation for speaking out against the data center.
ktul.com/news/local/r...
The data drops as Sen. Bernie Sanders calls for a moratorium on datacenter construction. 'We need to take a deep breath. We need to make sure that AI and robotics work for all of us, not just a handful of billionaires.'
If we fight them in our communities, we’re NIMBYs. If we go to another community and help them fight hyperscale data centers, we’re outside agitators. We don’t want them in our backyard or anyone else’s because we don’t accept them as inevitable or necessary. Not in anyone’s backyard!
If we fight them in our communities, we’re NIMBYs. If we go to another community and help them fight hyperscale data centers, we’re outside agitators. We don’t want them in our backyard or anyone else’s because we don’t accept them as inevitable or necessary. Not in anyone’s backyard!
“You can feel it rattling your eardrums,” Devan Jenkins, who lives in Memphis’ Whitehaven neighborhood, said while describing the sound of the turbines that power one of Elon Musk's xAI data centers. “It makes you feel like you're going insane.”
It takes a certain kind of…narcissistic nihilism to look across the country at people self-organizing against something that is generally a fairly good material symbol of the intangible class warfare that has alienated them and say, “what a silly distraction from what *really* matters.” And yet…
From Ohio: “What I want to say to other communities is this,” Hilliard resident Cathy Cowan Becker said. “If you’re approving a data center, you’re probably going to get a gas plant. And you will have no say. None.”
This dystopian future is here now.
"Emily, who NPR is only identifying by her first name because she fears retribution from the federal government, says she followed an ICE vehicle at a safe distance into a parking lot.
www.northcountrypublicradio.org/news/npr/nx-...
Tucson! Please contact the mayor and your city council member today and tell them to direct staff to fix these proposed data center regulations to make it impossible for a large-scale data center to be built here! nodesertdatacenter.com/the-audacity...
Read the replies from ppl talking about their and their neighbors’ electric bills.
“3-2: City council vote that could have stopped this”
County board of supervisors, but damn, how’d you know??
Rejection?! Must be nice! I'll have you know I can be *completely ignored* with dramatically less water and electricity usage than your average data center.
Switching to air-cooling is water intensive, but pushes water use off-site. For the same compute power they need more energy for cooling. Because so much of our energy in AZ comes from fracked gas, there are millions of gallons used to extract gas, and more at the plants for steam for turbines.
Jeez it’s a trade secret!! How are mom & pop megacorp data center developers supposed to compete if they tell us everything they put into the water???
Screenshot of a 3hr old post from the GW Hatchet: “BREAKING: GW sold its Virginia campus to Amazon Data Services, an Amazon subsidiary that manages the company's data centers, for $427 million on Friday. The deed, obtained by The Hatchet, authorizes ADS to develop the campus into a data or information technology center. STORY TK”
GW‘s student newspaper appears to have broken the story that the institution has sold a satellite campus to Amazon to be turned into a data center, which is just about chef’s kiss for the state of American higher education rn
Data center tax breaks are costing Phoenix $12 million dollars a year.
A new audit says Arizona’s tax breaks for data center developers are costing Phoenix taxpayers the same amount as the city is spending on arts and culture initiatives and environmental programs put together.
