Plumbers. Cooling these facilities takes vast amounts of plumbing work. And it's also typically some of the highest skilled plumbing needed outside of refinery and other manufacturing plant work. When you have 50 giant chillers running 24x7 at least one is undergoing some form of maintenance at any given time.

Probably overlapping with the above, but HVAC technicians. Again, the scale of these facilities means constant work being available as you are operating at miniature city sized installations.

Security guards of course. Not really material though. I've noticed more armed guards than before, with at least two on duty 24x7. As these places get more controversial, I imagine this sort of staffing will increase.

On-site (IT) technicians. For facilities these sizes, you will be staffing it 24x7 and have a large enough crew to get basic refresh projects done. Hard to really estimate this, but in the dozens of full time labor for these giant projects. Think folks who can pull cable, troubleshoot basic hardware, swap drives/bad RAM sticks, etc. For the larger refresh projects contractors typically get flown in during a surge so on-site staffing is relatively minimal, but very few facilities are operating "lights out".

Then you have facility management - highly skilled positions that know how to operate all the electric/mechanical and cooling equipment during emergencies. Every facility I've worked in is staffed by a crew of around half a dozen of these folks or so, with the top tier subject matter experts being flown in during critical emergencies. These are the guys generally coordinating all the contract labor above.

Probably a couple mid-tier network engineers and higher skilled sysadmin types as well depending on who is operating it. Everyone loves to pretend these are highly automated and copy/paste facilities hyperscalers are just perfect at executing - but there is a lot of "dirty" hands-on work to be done since that stuff is not nearly as perfect as advertised and often requires hands-on problem solving and on the spot hacks to get stuff going. As anywhere, how the sausage gets made is a lot uglier than the marketing.

Once you get out of the highly competent hyperscalers, the above numbers go way up. Enterprise datacenter operators are going to need far more on-site labor due to simply not being great at this sort of work. The stories I hear of some current builds are rather humorous in how many people it's taking to get stuff working - basically solving what should be automated via manual processes.

It's not a lot of jobs, but for these huge 100's of Megawatt facilities the low-end is probably in the 100+ range of FTE equivalent labor after construction is completed. Everyone but security and the basic "remote hands" type employees would be in the $100k+ salary range.

And you only need stupid designs like tiny natural gas turbines on-site because NIMBY and lack of investment for a couple generations on the power infrastructure side. I find it difficult to be very sympathetic to our society on this issue, since I've been following it far before AI Datacenters became the thing to rage about. It was coming for us either way.

> There are many, many others... You obviously do not live near ones, I live in Northern VA virtually surrounded by data centers and electricity costs are just part of the problem...

I have lived near ones. Not datacenter alley scale, but nowhere in the world is at that level where you live. I had zero issues with them, and no one visiting even knew they existed. I've certainly seen horrible designs that should not have been permitted or built where they are, but a 500k sqft facility in the middle of 50 acres is just... not an issue to live near.

> Or it could have been a lot less obnoxious residential use with parks and shit...

Sure. Building a datacenter in the middle of a residential area is a bit silly. But we're not talking about that here. At some point you need industry to actually build things, and as industry goes this is about as light and least impactful to the local environment as it gets.

Most folks near them do not even know they exist. Plus you typically put them in the middle of a field with berms around them, or in a light industrial park. Not across the street from homes.

Trucking traffic creates far more noise pollution. HVAC fans spinning at optimal speed simply are not a problem for the vast majority of facilities.

Generators running during a power outage? Sure. But those typically are relatively rare events. Testing each month for an hour is just not a material complaint to me.

This is really the only legitimate complaint that has any basis in reality.

But "region" is doing a lot of work here. This is typically a multi-state sized region. There are local congestion charges in some places, but overall it doesn't matter a whole lot to your electric bill if a large consumer goes in 200 miles away or across the road from you.

If it goes in across the road your local community gets the benefit of having about the least obnoxious industrial use of land possible. After construction there is very little truck traffic (e.g. much less wear and tear on local roads than a trucking terminal or manufacturing plant), and effectively is a giant office building in terms of impact on it's surroundings. In fact, until recently most of the datacenters were built in suburban office and light industrial parks and no one was the wiser.

There are legitimate complaints to be made about "datacenters" that also co-locate a natural gas or diesel power plant. But those complaints are towards building a power plant across the street, not a datacenter.

It's effectively as "free" of a tax base as you can get, assuming you don't negotiate stupid local tax abatements - which I suppose is a large caveat. Those should be simply outright illegal for everyone though, I don't see that as a datacenter specific thing. It also does effectively employ a few dozen to few hundred local tradesmen through the lifecycle of such a facility - since at these scales there is constant electric and plumbing work to be done. Usually the highest paid and highly skilled of such type of work. Many (most?) places are even using union labor for these bits.

The power problem exists broadly though. We spent a few generations not building out anything of material size and we are reaping what we have sewn. It was coming for us either way - datacenter AI bubble just brought it forward a some odd number of years. Just look at how hard it is to get a wind farm project off the ground due to NIMBY - both for the wind farm itself, and the 200 mile transmission line you might need to build to the closest major load centers. Effectively impossible.

Power costs are a concern, but it doesn't matter if it's across the street from me or 100 miles away on the same PJM interconnect. In the end it likely would strengthen the local grid where I live.

Water usage is just overblown social media rage bait for the most part in most locations at least. So long as it's not a stupid ridiculous design go for it.

The only thing I'd rage against are tax credits. But I'd be strongly against those no matter the project going in. The only public money spent should be on adding traffic lights or improving road access if needed, and I'd want to see that being justified.

This assumes an actual datacenter. Not one with a co-located power plant. These are different things.

Many folks lived near datacenters and had utterly no clue or care until they were told to be mad about it. I'd point them out to visitors or when traveling to family and they'd never have known the difference otherwise. It's effectively living next to an office park.

I think it's more that the impact of all these constant string of "crises" ends up having very little impact on the average American's lifestyle. Groceries a bit more expensive, gas higher, rent continues to creep up. Some giant incomprehensible national debt number gets higher. Those all suck and people complain about them - but they are complaining about them in packed bars while they drink $7 beers and eat $30 burgers and fries.

You can only yell so many times that the world is ending before people tune it out since their day to day lives are largely unchanged. Just look at the focus on complaining about almost irrelevant things like the price of eggs or whatever totally irrelevant culture war topic of the day. It's societal bike shedding.

I am firmly of the belief (and have been for quite some time) that the "average" middle class American is going to need severe pain - as in widespread great depression level pain - before anything really changes at all at the ground level. Americans have simply become so used to living the lifestyle being part of an insulated hegemonic superpower empire that they have taken that for granted as how things generally will always be no matter what happens. There is zero consideration for the amount of sheer effort, will, and constant vigilance it took to build and maintain such a state of being.

Or put another way: Inertia is a hell of a drug.

It’s the thing I prefer. Don’t like chocolate or really other sweet things in general. Even full sugar soda is far too sugary for me, outside of some niche drinks out of Europe.

The available scientific evidence on fake sugars tends to skew towards “fairly safe, but not entirely so” until you get into observational studies as mentioned in the article. The few everyone loves to continually cite that show otherwise are using mouse or rat models with some absurd 10x safe daily ingestion rates to show what amounts to rather mild impacts.

There really is nothing like an ice cold Diet Coke for me after working hard in the back yard in the summer heat. Or something to sip on during horrible corporate meetings.

I’ve also wore a glucose monitor for fun, and it in no way impacts blood sugar levels - one of the leading bro science hot takes. I definitely can see how it can be involved in habits though and trigger mental signals to overindulge in other substances during and after consumption. Having one certainly begets the impulse to have another I need to watch out for.

I did pick up a (black) coffee habit to reduce consumption a bit, but I’m not convinced that’s any healthier.

If you are going to be drinking 6 cans of soda a day, then diet soda is going to be better for you based on all available evidence today. By a large margin.

Drinking zero cans of soda is quite obviously better than either of those options.

Those who tend to indulge in large amounts of these substances typically have other unhealthy eating (and other) habits so good luck figuring out causation here.

I lost 100lbs coming from close to morbid obesity. Diet soda is the single vice I refuse to give up for mental health reasons. Of all the vices (eating, drinking, substances, etc.) I had before, this seems like the least concerning. Some people don't need that mental blowoff valve, but if I'm going to maintain the rest of my healthy habits I've found I require such a thing.

As price per coin goes up, more folks will find mining profitable and invest in mining operations. Difficulty goes up until it's no longer attractive for anyone to add to the global hash rate.

As price per coin goes down, less of those operations are profitable and fewer new people will find it to be a good investment. Difficulty stays the same or goes down. Due to capital expenses, difficulty is more sticky in the downward direction than upwards.

There is of course some marginal price action in between where there is in theory selling pressure from miners when it's less profitable to mine (to fund operational expenses and debt), but I don't think it's super material to the overall market volume these days.

But instead of our grandparents and great grandparents general idea of investing in the future of their societies, we’ve decided to stop doing that and add up all the debt possible to pass down to future generations.

It is quite depressing to think about.

Basically political bike shedding so elected officials could avoid making any hard or controversial decisions that would have a material impact but maybe upset some folks due to raising taxes or reducing spending.

The time to build your community is now, before things get so bad every helpless individual is looking for a group to save them.

As witnessed by the US inability to build anything for a generation or two. It’s all NIMBY (or worse) all the time.

Anti-anything is fighting a nearly unwinnable asymmetric political fight these days. Eventually times will get hard enough where this flips, but we are nowhere close to that yet.

It's slightly cheaper for me to use telehealth vs. billing through my insurance. The downside is it doesn't go towards my deductible of course.

The stuff you are describing are entire supply chains of a sort where you want a GLP-1 or perhaps a few other things like TRT. Those you are signing up for the drug itself, which happens to include the prescription part with it.

Telehealth can be used for any old medication you want. It removes the permission slip part of the process and replaces it with a payment gateway. If you have $75-150 you can just click some buttons and have a prescription for nearly anything you want at most a day later. This includes antibiotics, ADHD meds (getting harder on these), certain benzos, etc.

HIMS/HERS/etc. and their smaller ilk are super popular, but they are the tip of the iceberg.

Telehealth providers can certainly work with compounding pharmacies but not necessarily. If you are looking to get a prescription for Diazapam you are going to be getting that sent to your local Walgreens or whatnot.

I am a super introvert and know at least half a dozen folks with such issues, more if you include my close friend group.

Any place that has a lot of physically active people stressing their limits a bit is going to have a lot of injured folks over a decent period of time. And of course it gets talked about quite a lot, since it limits performance and ability.

My trainer knows I have a chronic shoulder issue, and an adductor issue at the moment I'm working through that we need to avoid stressing too much. The few other folks who tend to work out around my schedule know of this, and I know of theirs.

Not very uncommon really.

You're totally missing the point thought. The prescription hurdle effectively does not exist. It's just a paywall.

You pay your $100, get a 3 minute call with a NP/PA/whomever, and basically the robot writes you a prescription for whatever you want. The point is you pay and you get the prescription. Patient safety has nothing to do with anything.

They basically operate as a "pay for a prescription" service.

Figure out what drug you want, google the drug name and telehealth. You will be marketed in a wink wink sort of manner over how easy it is to get them, just hours away! Then if you are not a total idiot, you answer certain questions in the right manner on the intake form, the doctor (usually NP/PA or similar for most things) will quickly run through that and expect you to answer correctly - perhaps guide you a bit if you don't.

5 minutes later you have a prescription in the web portal and it's sent to your pharmacy of choice.

It really shows how the whole "permission slip" program is BS. I've used these services a couple times vs. my normal doctor just to save time and expense of an office visit. If I can click some buttons, have a call 30 minutes later, and be on my way to the pharmacy for $50 it's sometimes the path I take now vs. traditional route.

Someone used to the traditional doctor/patient relationship thing and prescriptions being "holy" would be shocked at how easy and gamed it all is.

I'm very on the fence over BPC-157/TB500, I really want to see some actual clinical trials ran on it. I have a feeling the effects are overstated, but I also have had a number of "insider" conversations where I know these and other compounds are very much being utilized in pro athlete injury recovery programs. Those athletes certainly are getting state of the art medical care via traditional sources, plus elite level physio therapy - so it's hard to say if the illicit injury recovery drugs are doing much or not.

I agree with more or less everything but this one.

I would modify it.

People don't want change? Nah, people like change when it is obvious to them that the change is good for them personally.

You can introduce a change that would be great for the organization and customers, but totally eliminate the current project a team has been working on unsuccessfully for years. You will be shot down no matter how good your idea is. And many times, there is no way to turn it into a "win" for the team that you need to win over to your side due to politics.

So shooting down ideas - for that team - is indeed a skill. A self-preservation skill. I've seen teams able to employ this skill for nearly a decade where it was obvious to any outside observer there were numerous ideas that would eliminate their need to exist altogether.

I know I’d be completely uninterested in such an investment pitch. It would work better as a charity ask for me.