Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

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Much Sorry with Delays
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Your "identity"
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Thursday, June 18. 2026

Thursday morning links

 Math Is Epistemic Violence, Says Lady Academic


Gov. Shapiro Abandoning 30,000 Children as PA Democrats Push to Strip School Choice


 Talarico And Platner … Come On, Man


 Southern Poverty Law Center, America’s Leading Supporter of Racism


Some Traumas Are Forever - Saying so is part of the treatment.


 How many times have you heard that data centers are water hogs and are pushing up electricity costs? What if neither is true?


JD Vance Just Gave Jessica Tarlov a Patriotism Lesson She Won’t Forget


 Brussels is finishing its censorship machine


 Scottish People in the U.S. for the World Cup LOVE AMERICA


 Some Europeans Are Falling in Love With America. Others Are Yelling at Cruise Passengers

Posted by Bird Dog in Hot News & Misc. Short Subjects at 10:54 | Comments (9) | Trackbacks (0)

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My concern about data centers is not utilities, although that is an important issue. I wonder if expansion of data centers will make a surveillance state more likely.
#1 Frank on 2026-06-18 16:32 (Reply)
Math Is Epistemic Violence, Says Lady Academic

Translation: she got under 600 on the Math SAT. I was going to write "only 500." But not very good at math.

But she is brilliant at writing obfuscating prose.
#2 Gringo on 2026-06-18 21:55 (Reply)
Today's page loaded faster than I can ever remember.
#3 Jimmy on 2026-06-18 22:24 (Reply)
Mr Shapiro seemed to have working well for Pennsylvani before showing his true color as fellow looking to promote his own brand of socialism.

Pennsylvania needs to put him out, for good while embracing a moderate conservative to helm the wheel. There are far more moderates in Pennswood that are know. Check the cumberland valley for a guiding way of life where people live
#4 Tallywhagger on 2026-06-18 22:36 (Reply)
The data center article was very misleading, intentionally misleading. More water is used to grow watermelons than for data centers. I honestly do not know if that is true. But here is the important difference between these two water uses. If a farmer grows watermelons or any crop he is using non-potable. He is going to use that water to grow something anyway. It is a water source he has been using for years to generations. His farm is in an area that has lots of water. He isn't taking someone else's water. If a data center is built in your town it will have a very large pipe installed from the water main and most likely it will use so much water that your town will have to build another water treatment plant or expand the one they now have and that cost will be paid by every household. The article lied to you, in polite discourse it's called propaganda.

More than likely the company that intends to build a data center in your town and double your water and electricity costs will quietly cross the mayor's and the city council's palms with silver. They won't build a new water treatment plant or a new electricity generation plant but they will buy off your politicians. AND to make it all worse for the citizens your politicians will give the data plant a 10-20 year moratorium on property taxes. But wait! The new data center won't hire a single person from your town or city they will bring in a few dozen foreign H1B workers to run the facility. Wait! I didn't read that in the article!!!

For me the real issue; what are they really building? A little known fact about "super computers is they must be made super compact. They run in pico second timing and distance is a killer. You could fit a modern super computer in your garage, not the printers and other peripherals but the computer for sure. But a data center would/could be made up of many super computers and memory units, but even then you could fit all that in a large building. A typical data center is over a million sq/ft of usable space (not the footprint but the horizontal and vertical space where equipment can be installed. It does not need that much space and yet that is what they are building. Why? What aren't they telling us? They are lying to us (read the article), they are buying off politicians and bureaucrats, and they are building something that exceeds their claimed intent. Why not just be honest with us???
#5 OneGuy on 2026-06-18 23:23 (Reply)
OneGuy:

Much of what you say is true, and the article is complete garbage. But I spent the middle-and-late 1980's designing air conditioners and heat exchangers for cooling machine-tool controls, and later for liquid cooling for super-computers of the time. So I have a tiny, outdated set of experiences with current cooling technology.

The basic problem of data centers is how to get rid of the heat. These are far too energy-intensive to be able to use air-cooled systems (pin-fins on the processors, etc.) so they MUST be liquid-cooled. The liquid used is not typically water, or even treated water, but rather fairly sophisticated chemicals that are designed for enhanced heat transfer and thermal capacity, as well as low viscosity for the lowest possible pumping power. The heat transfer liquid is typically pumped through the servers picking up the heat as they go, and then pumped to a heat exchanger where they give up the heat.

It how that is done that is the crux of the matter. If they use a (relatively inefficient) air-cooled heat exchanger they will use almost ZERO water in their facility; only that for the building itself and the personnel. One problem is that they can never get the working fluid temperature below the ambient air temperature, and usually not even approach it by 10°F. If you put your data center in a hot environment that becomes a big problem.

On the other hand, if you use cooling towers that rely on the evaporative cooling of water you can get well below ambient temperatures for your working fluid. The problem with that is you are essentially "burning" water to cool your systems. Another issue is that the quality of the water must be very well controlled or you end up destroying the media inside the cooling towers. It actually works best in hot and dry environments, but hot and dry places (think of the American Southwest deserts) already have extreme water shortages.

In my opinion the various states should implement policies that require data centers to provide their own infrastructure. Power could be provided by small nuclear plants (SMR's - small modular reactors could play a role here). And they should be required to provide their own water sources...WITHOUT tapping already over-stressed aquifers. And why should they get any tax breaks? Taxpayers should NEVER be required to subsidize private enterprises like this.
#5.1 Blackwing1 on 2026-06-19 10:43 (Reply)
OneGuy: More water is used to grow watermelons than for data centers.

That is almost certainly true. Watermelons need a lot of water to grow. Some of it can be provided by rain, of course.

OneGuy: It is a water source he has been using for years to generations.

That is correct. The problem isn't global but local strain on resources. Data-centers are often built without regard to providing the resources required, especially electricity. Data-centers are becoming increasingly important, so proper planning is essential.

OneGuy: But a data center would/could be made up of many super computers and memory units, but even then you could fit all that in a large building.

We covered this before. Not "many", but thousands of parallel processing GPUs. That's because the computation just for training an AI model is on the order of 10^24 Flops. That doesn't include querying the model.

Blackwing1: In my opinion the various states should implement policies that require data centers to provide their own infrastructure.

Yes. It is quite possible for the United States to continue to lead in AI development while addressing concerns of people concerned about stresses on local communities and strained resources.
#5.2 Zachriel on 2026-06-19 11:35 (Reply)
QUOTE:
Data-centers are often built without regard to providing the resources required, especially electricity


Which ones where, specifically?
#5.2.1 Anon on 2026-06-21 13:17 (Reply)
" Math Is Epistemic Violence" This nonsense has been going on for years. Long ago, i read an article by some black so-called teachers of mathematics (arithmetic actually) that they couldn't teach arithmetic to black children because arithmetic was racist. Arithmetic is axiomatic, it's just based on rules you have to memorize. It's the same rules for everybody so it's not racist.
#6 Ray on 2026-06-19 19:02 (Reply)

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