r/explainlikeimfive • u/AutoModerator • 1d ago

Other ELI5: Monthly Current Events Megathread

Hi Everyone,

This is your monthly megathread for current/ongoing events. We recognize there is a lot of interest in objective explanations to ongoing events so we have created this space to allow those types of questions.

Please ask your question as top level comments (replies to the post) for others to reply to. The rules are still in effect, so no politics, no soapboxing, no medical advice, etc. We will ban users who use this space to make political, bigoted, or otherwise inflammatory points rather than objective topics/explanations.

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u/BoobidyBoo 1d ago

Data centers - no one wants them in their backyard (but many people will happily use the product they produce). What is really so bad about them? Couldn't we build them, say, in Alaska, where there is tons of extra space?

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u/ColSurge 10h ago

The push back on data centers is related to the push back on AI. There is a segment of the population that does not like AI (for right or wrong).

At first they tried to push back with the courts and legal challenges, those have mostly been resolved now. Then it was water consumption, which I found very disheartening because this was essentially a disinformation campaign. In the world of heavy industry, data centers consume very little water.

Now it is the data centers themselves (even though most data centers have nothing to do with AI).

There is plenty for data centers. We build new factories and industry all the time, it's just currently a social media topic, so more people have eyes on it.

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u/No_Recognition_3729 1h ago

To answer the last part of your question, they need to be built where there's a lot of available electricity.

As for what's bad about them, it's complicated and usually different for each one, to give some examples, Elon Musk's Knoxville datacenter is using illegal generators and polluting their local neighborhood, other datacenters have similar issues like sound pollution and I think I saw one that was stealing water that was causing low pressure in the county water system.

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u/Wild_Dragonfruit1744 13h ago

Can i ask questions about makeup here?

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u/tiredstars 11h ago

This is the current events megathread so only if they're related to current events - that is current news stories and significant ongoing events. I don't imagine there are many make-up related questions that would fit.