4 ms·

This is bad news for everyone (well, except the high priests of the LLMs / nascent Cthulhoid godlings), but it certainly makes the communities who've successful

This is bad news for everyone (well, except the high priests of the LLMs / nascent Cthulhoid godlings), but it certainly makes the communities who've successfully opposed data centers seem ever more justified in retrospect.

cucumber3732842 15d ago
>(well, except the high priests of the LLMs / nascent Cthulhoid godlings This is potentially good news for everyone who wants to do anything less dirty than a datacenter (logistics, cold chain, light manufacturing/assembly, etc) because they'll probably be able to get the precedent extended to them in the next decade or so. The people and communities that make money off that sort of stuff will probably do well. Most of that sort of industry is in poorer sections of states where the municipalities are constantly being hamstrung by their own state because the municipalities want to permit it but state rules make that hard. So there is potential for some good to come out of it.
- bayindirh 15d ago
  I mean, like this? https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/pfas-forever-chemicals-carpet-industry-georgia/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/pfas-forever-chem... "Great" news indeed.
- feoren 15d ago
  These exemptions are not granted based on logic or precedent. "Less dirty" has nothing to do with it. They're entirely based on open bribery. This will be granted to any industry that bribes the administration enough. What's the good news again?
- cyanydeez 15d ago
  oh! "This will benefit the 2%, while the 1% burns the earth to the ground" This is like Republicans claiming that they're doing everything for small businesses, when the reality is they're doing things for contract workers who more often are just being forced into contracts that wouldn't exist without the lax regulatory reality and are abused thereof. "This will benefit the little guy (assuming they survive their cancer diagnosis)"
  - pstuart 14d ago
    I just heard this last night: buried in the "support for small business" was the repeal (or effectively neuteringO of the Corporate Transparency Act's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2026/09/10/treasury-launder-money https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2026/09/10/treasury-launder-mon... That program had a simple ask of every corporation doing business in America: who really owns it? No more hiding of ill gotten gains and laundering through US real estate, etc (hint: anybody come to mind who might do a lot of that)?. They killed it. To "protect small businesses". The Trump Regime is pure corruption. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network
    - edoceo 14d ago
      And that reporting was a trivial ask for a small business and still not a burden for large business. Sales Tax handling is more of a burden on the business than this reporting was.
      - pstuart 14d ago
        I have zero doubt that it was done intentionally to help their "friends" launder money.
    - phil21 14d ago
      It was a stupid regulation to begin with. Any investigative agency already could trivially get this data through already existing means. All it did was make your 3 member condo association have to pay a lawyer $500/yr in compliance fees for utterly no benefit to anyone other than the compliance folks collecting their rent. Or take on personal criminal liability to file it yourself. Better not forget one random year or it’s a felony! Just like most of the rest of the AML/KYC creep after 9/11 it did absolutely nothing to go after anybody they say it did - it just made things harder on normal everyday people.
      - pstuart 14d ago
        [flagged]
- titzer 15d ago
  > Most of that sort of industry is in poorer sections of states where the municipalities are constantly being hamstrung by their own state Oh yes, the well-known path to riches by being a toxic dumping ground.
  - EA-3167 15d ago
    To be fair he didn't say who was getting rich, presumably the people making the deals, not the chumps left with the cleanup and the bill.
  - hogs_get_fat 14d ago
    I mean, yes? Are you aware of the history of the industrial revolution? There are plenty of major industrial powers with very clean industries who used to have very dirty industries in previous decades or centuries. I can't think of any nation at all that developed while maintaining a firm commitment to clean industry trough the process of industrialization (though, there are a few places that never industrialized and developed a service economy directly, especially tax havens and financial hubs).
- phil21 14d ago
  All that stuff is more dirty to the local community than your average datacenter. The vast majority of these these no one knows even exist until told. They are basically warehouses without loading docks not much traffic goes into or out of. Sure some horrible projects exist and are repeated over and over on social media, but they are the exception. Most folks working across the street from one of these facilities had no idea until they were told to care.
- UncleMeat 14d ago
  Why would there be precedent. Trump is running a spoils system. You don't obtain favor through reasoned argument. You obtain favor by making him like you personally.
  - bdangubic 14d ago
    he doesn’t have to like you at all, you just have to bring a large white envelope or a thumb drive to mar-a-largo and you good
topspin 15d ago
> except the high priests of the LLMs / nascent Cthulhoid godlings Let's not be this flippant about where the real pressure for this is coming from. Presidents and their appointees come and go. The people pushing the regulators[1] are not subject to US election cycles. It's important to know who they are when we aim our finely honed fingers, even if we find that these folks were formerly virtuous and mighty green energy advocates, because if your solution is merely different figureheads, all that will really change is the scale of the bribes. [1] https://www.datacentercoalition.org/members https://www.datacentercoalition.org/members
- EA-3167 15d ago
  It isn't flippant, it's just not exclusively focused on your target of choice.
- ForOldHack 15d ago
  > except the high priests of the LLMs / nascent Cthulhu-oid godlings... I did not say that, but is so obvious, like looking through a plate glass window. There is no pressure, its just a natural transition to the end of bipedal life.
- slg 14d ago
  >Presidents and their appointees come and go. The people pushing the regulators[1] are not subject to US election cycles. While true, it’s also true that presidents and their appointees can vary wildly in their susceptibility to those “people pushing”. Both sides might be bad, but one’s very obviously worse.
- deleted 14d ago
  [deleted]
aaron695 15d ago
[dead]
sigkill 15d ago
It also sustains the bubble for a bit longer. I'm genuinely curious/anxious to see when and how the bubble bursts. It could end up being something seemingly trivial or random and completely illogical that finally topples the jenga tower.
- bob1029 15d ago
  > the bubble > the jenga tower I am not so sure about these narratives anymore.
  - Ygg2 15d ago
    Both bubble and Jenga tower are examples of unstable systems that can persist for an unexpectedly long time.
    - hn993302 15d ago
      They're good analogies. It's possible to keep a Jenga tower going forever, just extremely difficult once it reaches the point of being all middle pieces.
      - pseudohadamard 14d ago
        Also easier if you can hold up bits of it with strings from the ceiling, which is what the EPA is doing for data centers here.
      - Fargren 14d ago
        It's certainly not possible to keep a Jenga Tower growing forever. For each floor you add you need to leave at least one piece in a lower floor. Eventually you run out of pieces. It's possible to "complete" a Jenga Tower, but at that point it has to stop growing.
        thfuran 14d ago
        But it doesn't, strictly speaking, have to stop going. The bottom floor could be removed and placed at the top.
vjulian 15d ago
This seems like yet another piece in a build up to a civil war. And those in governance know it.
- mitxela 14d ago
  Unlikely. Civil war happens when the elites are split into two or more disagreeing factions, which they aren't here.
dcosson 14d ago
Why is skipping public review bad news for everyone? Public review is a blight on the democratic process. Instead of having a set of democratically established laws and regulations that apply fairly to everyone, a small handful of noisy people with too much time on their hands can stop anyone they don't like from doing something that is perfectly legal. It's an incredibly dumb process and bypassing it is good, actually. It also has nothing at all to do with whether the environmental regulations themselves are being followed.
- nozzlegear 14d ago
  > Public review is a blight on the democratic process. Instead of having a set of democratically established laws and regulations that apply fairly to everyone, a small handful of noisy people with too much time on their hands can stop anyone they don't like from doing something that is perfectly legal. We're talking about data centers, which are deeply unpopular with just about everyone. It's laughable to suggest that skipping public review is a good thing here, because it's only going to result in data centers being sneakily approved contrary to the overwhelming desire of constituents. We can ruminate all day on whether public comments or public review is useful in the grand scheme, but the realpolitik of the situation is that – barring possession of a time machine to go back and elect different representation – it's one of the few levers that constituents have to prevent data centers from moving into their area. https://www.natesilver.net/p/why-does-everyone-hate-data-centers https://www.natesilver.net/p/why-does-everyone-hate-data-cen...
  - PKop 14d ago
    > which are deeply unpopular with just about everyone. Speak for yourself. Plenty of people support them. The technological progress and economic benefits they bring are good for our country. But are you always an opponent of democracy, or only when you pretend everyone is on your side on an issue?
    - bix6 14d ago
      https://news.gallup.com/poll/709772/americans-oppose-data-centers-area.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/709772/americans-oppose-data-ce... 70% opposition and people who strongly support (7%) continues to decrease. I guess that’s plenty in absolute numbers. But even the Iran war has more supporters than that.
brookst 14d ago
Pejoratives aside, it’s also bad news for AI companies. Anyone who knows the story of the US auto industry in the 1970’s and 1980’s knows how excessive government protection for an industry works out.
- simpaticoder 14d ago
  I don't know that story. Can you summarize?
  - coderenegade 14d ago
    They became lazy and uncompetitive, and were eventually overrun by Japanese imports. It's probably reasonable to say they never really recovered.
- mlindner 14d ago
  I would not class this as government protection. More just leveling the playing field.
kreelman 14d ago
Poor old America. I think you'll need to wait for the Orange Toddler to pass away before you can get anywhere with reinstating environmental checks and balances. Even then you'll need to contend with large corporations with buckets of money... and the Republican party...

cucumber3732842 15d ago

>(well, except the high priests of the LLMs / nascent Cthulhoid godlings This is potentially good news for everyone who wants to do anything less dirty than a datacenter (logistics, cold chain, light manufacturing/assembly, etc) because they'll probably be able to get the precedent extended to them in the next decade or so. The people and communities that make money off that sort of stuff will probably do well. Most of that sort of industry is in poorer sections of states where the municipalities are constantly being hamstrung by their own state because the municipalities want to permit it but state rules make that hard. So there is potential for some good to come out of it.

bayindirh 15d ago
I mean, like this? https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/pfas-forever-chemicals-carpet-industry-georgia/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/pfas-forever-chem... "Great" news indeed.
feoren 15d ago
These exemptions are not granted based on logic or precedent. "Less dirty" has nothing to do with it. They're entirely based on open bribery. This will be granted to any industry that bribes the administration enough. What's the good news again?
cyanydeez 15d ago
oh! "This will benefit the 2%, while the 1% burns the earth to the ground" This is like Republicans claiming that they're doing everything for small businesses, when the reality is they're doing things for contract workers who more often are just being forced into contracts that wouldn't exist without the lax regulatory reality and are abused thereof. "This will benefit the little guy (assuming they survive their cancer diagnosis)"
- pstuart 14d ago
  I just heard this last night: buried in the "support for small business" was the repeal (or effectively neuteringO of the Corporate Transparency Act's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2026/09/10/treasury-launder-money https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2026/09/10/treasury-launder-mon... That program had a simple ask of every corporation doing business in America: who really owns it? No more hiding of ill gotten gains and laundering through US real estate, etc (hint: anybody come to mind who might do a lot of that)?. They killed it. To "protect small businesses". The Trump Regime is pure corruption. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network
  - edoceo 14d ago
    And that reporting was a trivial ask for a small business and still not a burden for large business. Sales Tax handling is more of a burden on the business than this reporting was.
    - pstuart 14d ago
      I have zero doubt that it was done intentionally to help their "friends" launder money.
  - phil21 14d ago
    It was a stupid regulation to begin with. Any investigative agency already could trivially get this data through already existing means. All it did was make your 3 member condo association have to pay a lawyer $500/yr in compliance fees for utterly no benefit to anyone other than the compliance folks collecting their rent. Or take on personal criminal liability to file it yourself. Better not forget one random year or it’s a felony! Just like most of the rest of the AML/KYC creep after 9/11 it did absolutely nothing to go after anybody they say it did - it just made things harder on normal everyday people.
    - pstuart 14d ago
      [flagged]
titzer 15d ago
> Most of that sort of industry is in poorer sections of states where the municipalities are constantly being hamstrung by their own state Oh yes, the well-known path to riches by being a toxic dumping ground.
- EA-3167 15d ago
  To be fair he didn't say who was getting rich, presumably the people making the deals, not the chumps left with the cleanup and the bill.
- hogs_get_fat 14d ago
  I mean, yes? Are you aware of the history of the industrial revolution? There are plenty of major industrial powers with very clean industries who used to have very dirty industries in previous decades or centuries. I can't think of any nation at all that developed while maintaining a firm commitment to clean industry trough the process of industrialization (though, there are a few places that never industrialized and developed a service economy directly, especially tax havens and financial hubs).
phil21 14d ago
All that stuff is more dirty to the local community than your average datacenter. The vast majority of these these no one knows even exist until told. They are basically warehouses without loading docks not much traffic goes into or out of. Sure some horrible projects exist and are repeated over and over on social media, but they are the exception. Most folks working across the street from one of these facilities had no idea until they were told to care.
UncleMeat 14d ago
Why would there be precedent. Trump is running a spoils system. You don't obtain favor through reasoned argument. You obtain favor by making him like you personally.
- bdangubic 14d ago
  he doesn’t have to like you at all, you just have to bring a large white envelope or a thumb drive to mar-a-largo and you good

topspin 15d ago

> except the high priests of the LLMs / nascent Cthulhoid godlings Let's not be this flippant about where the real pressure for this is coming from. Presidents and their appointees come and go. The people pushing the regulators[1] are not subject to US election cycles. It's important to know who they are when we aim our finely honed fingers, even if we find that these folks were formerly virtuous and mighty green energy advocates, because if your solution is merely different figureheads, all that will really change is the scale of the bribes. [1] https://www.datacentercoalition.org/members https://www.datacentercoalition.org/members

EA-3167 15d ago
It isn't flippant, it's just not exclusively focused on your target of choice.
ForOldHack 15d ago
> except the high priests of the LLMs / nascent Cthulhu-oid godlings... I did not say that, but is so obvious, like looking through a plate glass window. There is no pressure, its just a natural transition to the end of bipedal life.
slg 14d ago
>Presidents and their appointees come and go. The people pushing the regulators[1] are not subject to US election cycles. While true, it’s also true that presidents and their appointees can vary wildly in their susceptibility to those “people pushing”. Both sides might be bad, but one’s very obviously worse.
deleted 14d ago
[deleted]

aaron695 15d ago

[dead]

sigkill 15d ago

It also sustains the bubble for a bit longer. I'm genuinely curious/anxious to see when and how the bubble bursts. It could end up being something seemingly trivial or random and completely illogical that finally topples the jenga tower.

bob1029 15d ago
> the bubble > the jenga tower I am not so sure about these narratives anymore.
- Ygg2 15d ago
  Both bubble and Jenga tower are examples of unstable systems that can persist for an unexpectedly long time.
  - hn993302 15d ago
    They're good analogies. It's possible to keep a Jenga tower going forever, just extremely difficult once it reaches the point of being all middle pieces.
    - pseudohadamard 14d ago
      Also easier if you can hold up bits of it with strings from the ceiling, which is what the EPA is doing for data centers here.
    - Fargren 14d ago
      It's certainly not possible to keep a Jenga Tower growing forever. For each floor you add you need to leave at least one piece in a lower floor. Eventually you run out of pieces. It's possible to "complete" a Jenga Tower, but at that point it has to stop growing.
      - thfuran 14d ago
        But it doesn't, strictly speaking, have to stop going. The bottom floor could be removed and placed at the top.

vjulian 15d ago

This seems like yet another piece in a build up to a civil war. And those in governance know it.

mitxela 14d ago
Unlikely. Civil war happens when the elites are split into two or more disagreeing factions, which they aren't here.

dcosson 14d ago

Why is skipping public review bad news for everyone? Public review is a blight on the democratic process. Instead of having a set of democratically established laws and regulations that apply fairly to everyone, a small handful of noisy people with too much time on their hands can stop anyone they don't like from doing something that is perfectly legal. It's an incredibly dumb process and bypassing it is good, actually. It also has nothing at all to do with whether the environmental regulations themselves are being followed.

nozzlegear 14d ago
> Public review is a blight on the democratic process. Instead of having a set of democratically established laws and regulations that apply fairly to everyone, a small handful of noisy people with too much time on their hands can stop anyone they don't like from doing something that is perfectly legal. We're talking about data centers, which are deeply unpopular with just about everyone. It's laughable to suggest that skipping public review is a good thing here, because it's only going to result in data centers being sneakily approved contrary to the overwhelming desire of constituents. We can ruminate all day on whether public comments or public review is useful in the grand scheme, but the realpolitik of the situation is that – barring possession of a time machine to go back and elect different representation – it's one of the few levers that constituents have to prevent data centers from moving into their area. https://www.natesilver.net/p/why-does-everyone-hate-data-centers https://www.natesilver.net/p/why-does-everyone-hate-data-cen...
- PKop 14d ago
  > which are deeply unpopular with just about everyone. Speak for yourself. Plenty of people support them. The technological progress and economic benefits they bring are good for our country. But are you always an opponent of democracy, or only when you pretend everyone is on your side on an issue?
  - bix6 14d ago
    https://news.gallup.com/poll/709772/americans-oppose-data-centers-area.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/709772/americans-oppose-data-ce... 70% opposition and people who strongly support (7%) continues to decrease. I guess that’s plenty in absolute numbers. But even the Iran war has more supporters than that.

brookst 14d ago

Pejoratives aside, it’s also bad news for AI companies. Anyone who knows the story of the US auto industry in the 1970’s and 1980’s knows how excessive government protection for an industry works out.

simpaticoder 14d ago
I don't know that story. Can you summarize?
- coderenegade 14d ago
  They became lazy and uncompetitive, and were eventually overrun by Japanese imports. It's probably reasonable to say they never really recovered.
mlindner 14d ago
I would not class this as government protection. More just leveling the playing field.

kreelman 14d ago

Poor old America. I think you'll need to wait for the Orange Toddler to pass away before you can get anywhere with reinstating environmental checks and balances. Even then you'll need to contend with large corporations with buckets of money... and the Republican party...