What a Data Center Actually Is Most people have a vague sense that “the cloud” lives somewhere physical — that […]
Why Data Centers Need So Much Water Servers generate heat constantly. Left unmanaged, that heat destroys hardware within minutes, so […]
The Numbers Have Stopped Making Sense For most of the history of the internet, data centers were a manageable part […]
The Permitting System Wasn’t Built for This Most zoning codes in America were written decades before anyone imagined a single […]
Beyond Water and Power: The Other Environmental Costs The water consumption covered in Essay #2 and the electricity demand covered in Essay #3 are […]
This Fight Is Bigger Than Any One Community What started as scattered, local objections to individual projects has become, in […]
From Anger to a Plan Essay #6 made the case that organized opposition works often enough to matter — nearly a […]
A Different Kind of Leverage Essay #7 covered the zoning, permitting, and political tactics that have stopped data centers outright. This […]
The Pitch vs. the Bill Every data center proposal arrives with the same basic pitch: jobs, tax revenue, economic development. […]
This Isn’t a Normal Tech Cycle Every essay in this series eventually circles back to the same root cause: the […]
You Have More Legal Standing Than You Think Throughout this series, we’ve referenced the permitting process, utility rate cases, and […]
It’s Not Just Microsoft and Google Anymore When most people picture who’s building a data center proposed near them, they […]
The Number That Gets Buried in the Press Release Every data center proposal arrives with a jobs number attached, and […]
The Technology to Fix This Already Exists This series has spent thirteen essays documenting the water, power, land, environmental, financial, […]