I was driving home when I heard the most stunningly stupid piece on NPR. Well, the most stunningly stupid comment.
As everything does these days, it involves data centers and AI.
More to the point it involves water in Kansas. And the water that the data center uses that the area can scarcely afford. And, stop me if you’ve heard this before, the locals are not happy about it.
The response from the data center company?
Well actually, the amount of water that the data center uses is a lot less than the farmers.
My mouth dropped open.
Did I hear what I just thought I heard?
I had and they went on extolling the decreased water usage by the data centers than the farmers.
I hollered at the radio “YOU CAN’T EAT DATA, YOU MORONS!!!”
Yes, the three exclamation points are justified.
These are the farmers that grow the food that America is, you know, dependent on.
Because a girl’s gotta eat.
Not only that, we all have to eat. And you can’t eat data.
Where I grew up they were threatening to build a casino over very important lowland that was used for cow grazing.
The stink the area raised was massive. Kind of like the data center brouhaha we are having now.
The slogan was Cows Not Casinos and it was successful.
Massively successful. There were bumper stickers and signs everywhere. And the publicity was immense. There were even collectible cow statues in prominent places, like above the local raceway sign and in the town square. Overall, the push to kick the cows off their grazing land was very successful. Perhaps we need something like that now.
Food Not Data Centers.
Dispatches from the Evening Shift 