The Extraordinarily Bad Vibes of Data Centers

Vibe Coded has turned 1! It's hard to believe a year has gone by already, and in so many ways I feel like I'm just getting started. Thank you, my audience, for helping it grow, for all of the wonderful feedback I've received, and for the appreciable evidence that people care about the topics covered here. Speaking of which, today's topic is a whirlwind tour through just a few days of data center-related news that is truly shocking…and speaks to the reasons why fighting (and stopping!) the buildout of slop machine infrastructure has become a unifying force in American politics and beyond.

📢 Hosted by Jared White

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🎶 Theme music by Ben Elson

Links

• Episode 1: That Pesky AI Backlash Keeps Growing
• Google Admits It Missed Its Climate Goals — Again — Because of AI
• Amazon Is Spewing a Record Breaking Amount of Pollution to Power Its AI Data Centers
• Revealed: landmark Scottish AI project has no prospect of meeting renewables promise
• Meta data center water discharges suspended after contaminating the city's reclamation water supply with bacterium
• Data centers emitting more CO2 than thought: study
• Yeah, it's a problem (Mastodon)
• AI Data Centers Use Far More Water Than Most Tech Giants Report
• “I'm almost at the point where I hate data centers more than I hate the actual technology itself.” (Mastodon)