This is the sort of talk that goes in the speech bubble for a fat pig with a top hat in a 1950s political cartoon.
How embarrassing for this community that this gets ranked so high.
How embarrassing for this community that this gets ranked so high.
I just checked, and it turns out, so are you
I'm also not cynically and deceptively lumping "data centers" into the same category as "day care, or apartment buildings, or coffee shops." Think of the children! Think of the hipsters!!
You, on the other hand, are scandalized by the idea that public comment processes might be deleterious. Since this is an extremely normal thing for political participants to complain about in 2025-2026, my most natural conclusion is that you don't really do much work in politics (especially local politics), and that you don't share many of my premises. That being the case, it's perhaps better that we not waste time trying to convince each other of things.
In any case, your original comment is just a rabble-rousing rant with no practical call to action. "We should all be shifting to a mode where we more openly impeach" the public comment process? Oh, OK. Well, we won't be, and you'll only paint yourself as a villain in the public eye by saying things like this.
I oppose public comment processes for the same reason that everybody working in permitting reform --- especially for housing --- does, and I'm relating an extremely normal take that you've managed to be scandalized by, presumably because you don't really pay attention to housing policy. That's fine! Nobody said you had to! But it's weird to get all het up about it then.
You work directly in AI: https://sockpuppet.org/blog/2026/09/25/what-even-is-an-os-no...
> I'm relating an extremely normal take that you've managed to be scandalized by
It's extremely normal, and yet I'm not the only one giving you pushback. So maybe not as normal as you think?
> I oppose public comment processes for the same reason that everybody working in permitting reform --- especially for housing --- does
This article is about data centers specifically, but you've made it about All The Things Together, wrapped in a rant about the public comment process. You're saying that people don't see the "abstract upside of new development" and veto it for bad or selfish reasons. I'm saying that data center construction is a categorically different type of new development that has far fewer "abstract upsides" than the other things you listed and sees widespread pushback beyond the usual NIMBY crowd. The things you dislike about the public comment process simply do not generalize to this tempest of a situation.
You are relaying NIMBY talking points (down to "you have a vested interest in shutting down public comment", which is a first-ballot hall-of-famer), because you're so negatively polarized against data centers. It's a weird thing to be proud of.
But now that I think about it, I think either definition supports my criticism of your use of the term as a generic net for "you're wrong", like all the traditional one-worders in social/political arguments.
Especially in times like this, where everybody is more rabid than ever to kill the voices of the others, and people seem less able than ever to imagine or respect experiences and perspectives outside their own mindspace of "this is how the everything should work".
Every system we come up with to apply justice to some instance we are familiar with has the potential to apply injustice to instances we are not familiar with. We have to make those tradeoffs sometimes, but we need to understand the tradeoff we're making, and not get caught up in the idea that we are simply correct and people who disagree are one big unified enemy entity.