Utah can't tell businesses that service the country (or the world) how to do anything in this regard. You can't demand a list of the VPN exit nodes, because no VPN would ever give you that, and if they're outside of your jurisdiction, how could you possibly enforce it (assuming you got the Feds to agree with your law regulating interstate/international commerce now). You can't tell websites to only accept residential traffic, for the same reasons.

The internet sorta fucks states rights (in a good way).

Tech people talking about tech trends spilling outside of tech always gets a bit ivory tower to me...

Remember VR? Remember how Oculus was going to revolutionize visual interface and change gaming forever? Remember how their acquisition by Meta was the beginning of the Metaverse? Because middle-aged couple from rural Missouri probably doesn't.

What? The art is not "improving" it's "different". Also, as slop output increases, the models train on more slop. GIGO doesn't seem like it can fix itself if you just robot-centipede it.

Why so many hit pieces? Because public sentiment and media protectionism align. Your original post seems to be arguing a "wag-the-dog situation", when this is more of a "arm the insurgents" situation imo. Why are there so many people upset about AI data centers when data centers have been around for decades? Idk, go look at the buildout rate and tell me if you notice anything in the trend line changing around the time of AI rollout. And it's not just burning fossil fuels, they also require tons of construction and water usage.

And again, some people just hate AI. Full Stop. There is nothing good about it to those people. Hell, I barely think the internet was a net good, so trying to tell me that AI is anything other than a capitalist fever dream to finally replace knowledge workers is going to be a hard sell. This isn't because I'm technologically illiterate or incapable of critically reading an article. Also, plenty of people are using the data centers as radicalizing topic to get people to...stop using fossil fuels to generate electricity.

Your stated thesis was "the better explanation is that the media is out to kill AI/Data centers" and I think misunderstanding how little people outside the tech world actually want AI (you're not alone obviously, it's why we're in this bubble in the first place).

I don't think people need to be convinced that "this job-stealing robot that makes trash and accelerates climate destruction faster than the internet was already doing" by hit pieces, plenty of us are just proud Luddites (now if you want to talk about hit pieces, that's a movement that got decimated by bad PR)

It's the equivalent of calling a white guy a honkey in 2026 - cringe and not going to get the reaction you hope for unless doing it comedically.

Racial profiling for one. Also "citizen" and "natural born citizen" getting treated differently for another.

Negative partisanship is the major driver in most politics because, again, the State fails to provide for the citizens, without fail, in every system, if it would infringe upon the ability of the State to amass/maintain power. It's easier to say "at least I'm not that guy" as you trample on the populous, so we agree that everyone loves a scapegoat. I can do plenty of nuance, but you started at generalizations and I was refuting that first as that's all I have to go on here.

Some counter theories: People have fewer kids not because they drink less, but because children are extremely expensive, wage growth has been stagnant, women make up a larger share of the workplace (and don't want to lose their spot), and birth control is more readily available.

People are lonely because: women are capable of larger roles in the workforce and it's upended social expectations, therapy has caused people to avoid others that they deep destructive/negative in their lives, technology has caused us all to be alienated, or society has shifted but culture hasn't caught up to these changes (assuming they're lonely at all and not just experiencing the same existence previous generations did but now with constant news cycles and the ability to tap into 24/7 feeds of people having fun).

(is this the level of discourse we're going for here?)

But your comparison is wrong, because you can...elect to not use the service. You could pay less for less coverage (so like, buying food without paying for a delivery fee because you don't need the convenience). Also, the individual mandate was killed (sucking funding out of the whole program), so you could opt out of the service entirely.

Nobody is forcing you to have insurance (at a federal level).

See the difference there?

If you can't pay the wage you're required to then the whole house of cards starts coming down because now you can't create a large enough network to meet demand, which shrinks demand, which increases costs, which makes it accessible to fewer and fewer high paid consumers.

Like a lot of capitalism "it's better than starving to death in the streets" is the appeal of the job and nothing more. Anything else is a paid message brought to you by UberDoorHub.

IDK, maybe I'm a mushbrain but it seems like if someone said they're the chairman of the board, and you told them to their face "well it's not like you run the company..." they'd finish their drink and go talk to someone else for the rest of the night.