[burningion]

or... maybe there's something to people being skeptical of datacenters?

https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/musks-xai-opera...

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/06/elon-musk-xai-memph...

> In just 11 months since the company arrived in Memphis, xAI has become one of Shelby County’s largest emitters of smog-producing nitrogen oxides, according to calculations by environmental groups whose data has been reviewed by POLITICO’s E&E News. The plant is in an area whose air is already considered unhealthy due to smog.

Had this set the precedent of working with the community, and _not_ breaking the law, I think we'd be in a better place all around.

Similarly, Amazon tried to take the excess nuclear power, without paying back into the electrical grid infrastructure, and got denied in 2024:

https://www.utilitydive.com/news/ferc-interconnection-isa-ta...

and again in April of 2025:

https://www.ans.org/news/2025-04-16/article-6937/ferc-denies...

[DocTomoe]

Yeah, that politico article conveniently leaves out that the TVA - the local electricity provider - runs a methane-powered gas power plant literally 200 meters down the road (which replaced a much dirtier coal-burning power station at the same location), but somehow could not be bothered actually hooking their neighbours up to the grid.

[sorcerer-mar]

I presume they couldn't be bothered hooking their "neighbors" [0] up because the demand was too great, no...?

[0] "Neighbors" here means a datacenter primarily processing data for wealthy people outside of the community and their mega-companies, where the revenue from that processing primarily goes... also to wealthy people outside of the community and their mega-companies...

Edit: Ah yes, that is exactly the case [https://memphischamber.com/blog/press-release/xai-phase-one-...]. While xAI is fronting the cash, the entire upgrade will ultimately be paid for by taxpayers in the form of monthly rebates.