Data centers:

I don't like the expansion of AI data centers. I do think it's a bubble, they're not building out for capacity (I doubt current OpenAI/Anthropic/Coreweave/etc. usage even gets to half of current capacity) and I think the people pushing this bubble are lying to us about what it's for (there isn't enough software or 5-titty anime cat girl animation or even mass surveillance software being produced to justify this insane build-out).

There is a lot of anit-data center stuff out there. This is where things get confusing, because I know real people in this field.

I have a buddy who does massive facility contracts. He's been in the new Google buildouts in Georgia/Alabama. They do consume a lot of water, but most of it goes back to the city, and a lot of it is closed loop. He went on about the glycol, air cooling and towers, and he talked about carpet factories he'd planned build-outs for use more water and flush more waste water than the AI data centers.

I did push back on some things that he acknowledged: there is a lot of evaporation even in these "closed loops," and if you evaporate a gigaliter of water, it leaves your watershed. That floats 300 miles away and does devastate farms.

He did acknowledge power and noise were big concerns, but claims the water thing is misrepresented.

Oddly though, he' said the water doesn't run into the racks. I was like, "Yea they do. Supermicro and nvidia make racks that have a column of in/out water ports." He's literally been at a new 2026 Google buildout and said the actual racks were still air cooled.

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Last night I was talking to a friend about this. Two older people at the bars, looked into their 50s, decided to chime in. One was an electrician. His wife said their son worked in building out these data centers and she's been in a Meta data center and how it was completely silent; you could hear a pin drop.

I did get them to acknowledge eminent domain by Georgia Power was an issue. The guy was like "they can still use the land" .. no they can't. Powerlines get sprayed by herbicide. It's not an easement, they take all the land and split your property. The couple acknowledged this wasn't good.

The couple really pushed back on the noise thing, a lot. But I've seen so many videos about the noise; people holding up meters in videos where you can hear the constant drone! .. I've never been in a hyperscaler or Amazon data center ... but I have been in a ton of smaller data centers. They're all loud. I mean, you can still talk over it. It's white noise, but it's not silent. It's kinda nice if you have to work in them for a few hours. Air conditioned and chill. But any more than 4 hours and I'd get cold, agitated and just want the fucking thing to work so I could go back to my desk.

But to their credit, the guy said he had been in the data centers with the water racks. He didn't know they were mostly Supermicro and he didn't know the names of the specific nvidia units, but he claimed he had seen them. He said if one unit goes bad, the remove the entire rack and replace it. Maybe these racks really are quiet?

I also didn't ask the woman what the noise levels were outside the data center. If it's silent inside but horrible a quarter mile out, that's bad for everyone in the community.

The couple actually started by injecting themselves in our conversation, but then paid their tab and moved to a table. I don't know if I challenged their views or they just didn't want to continue. It was weird.

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Now I really want to take a few days off and drive to some of these sites. I want to know if the noise is really as bad as what I've seen on the YouToobs.

Everyone is really heated about this stuff. That couple and other friends I have have a vested interest in protecting data center build-outs because it's a lot of money for them. Another buddy who sells transformers is making a killing on sales commissions.

I wonder what the true reality is over these things.


thank you for listening to my TEDx talk.