So I don't get into this kind of thing too often, but this strikes a chord with me personally, and I'm just sliiiggghhhtly incredibly pissed-off about it, on account of A. it affects people I know and love (who've been nudged out of their home in that low-key very-legal "we won't actually force anyone to sell their home (maybe) because we can just convince enough people to do so that we'll destroy a neighborhood in any case so everyone else will feel compelled to" way,) and B. while I haven't actually lived in northern Minnesota for a decade now, it remains my spiritual home wherever else life may take me. So buckle in for some slacktivism, I wanna get the word out.

Long story short, the community of Hermantown, MN has been targeted for a major construction project that was Very Definitely Not A Datacenter for many months now, and Very Definitely Has Nothing To Do With "AI" Hyperscalers Desperately Trying To Pretend They'll Be A Going Concern Real Soon Now By Promising To Spend Gobs Of Money Building A Million Of The Fucking Things. Minnesota Power has already started clearing a lot down the road from my family members' house for a generator substation, and...you remember all those Calvin & Hobbes strips with scenes of quiet environmental devastation? Yeah.

Turns out, quelle surprise, that it is in fact a datacenter, and it's being pushed on the community at the insistence of the Hermantown city council on behalf of a developer who is by sheer coincidence working for "a major Fortune 50 company," and we should all plug our ears and go "la la la" and pretend that a tube worm couldn't put this particular two and two together. So, on top of fucking up a small neighborhood and a tract of Northland marsh, they're doing it on behalf of the sociopathic vampire morons who are desperately trying to sucker in sociopathic vampire moron CEOs with the promise that they can (totally, we swear) obsolete everybody with a desk job and replace them with chatbots the way they decimated skilled labor with industrial automation last century, fuckin' HUZZAH.

The bright side is that A. everyone who isn't the city council hates this, and B. the lying morons fucked up and tried to get the permits for the project claiming that it'd be "light industrial" zoning - which, if you know anything about the power and water requirements for the average ChatGPT Hell Portal, is a lie so absurd and brazen that stepping into a Unitarian church would set fire to anyone who speaks it.

And once that came to light, folks filed suit to invalidate the environmental studies backing the permit, on the grounds that studies based on obvious lies are not usually indicative of reality, and in a frenzy of arglebargle noises, the developer in question has proposed a public meeting where they can attempt to assure people that everything is Fine, Actually.

So, just a friendly request here - if you know anyone in the greater Duluth area, or just anyone in the broader Minnesota - Wisconsin chunk of the U.S. who feels like having a fun time asking pointed questions of lying morons, would you please spread the word? The article announcing the meeting is here and this is probably a good place to watch for further details.

And, as a general public-service announcement, look out for your own community - these creeps are probably pulling the same shit anywhere else in the country where real estate & construction are cheap and know-nothing councilmen can be bought with a combination of bullshit not-even-technobabble, promises of Very Real And Likely Big Tax Revenue, and kickbacks DEFINITELY PROBABLY NOT ANY KIND OF ACTUAL KICKBACK SCHEME I'M SURE WE'RE ALL AWARE THESE ARE VERY GOOD AND HONEST PEOPLE OKAY.

Here's to the day we can tell every last one of them: "You're terminated, fucker."