They are a demonstrably effective repellent of bad ideas. You don’t even need to use them! Just wheel them into an area and watch the parasites scamper away.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Does the guillotine even need to be real? Was that one real? I’d be kind of surprised if it was.
@Raging Bee, I doubt the pictured guillotine is real since there is no bucket to catch the head.
Seems a little extreme, even for Oregon.
It’s a miniature, toy guillotine. It’s too small, it wouldn’t have enough weight or momentum to chop through a neck.
Although it is true that that CEO’s neck is long and slender, and he might feel personally at risk from even a toy. Pencilnecks beware!
Where is the bucket for the head? If they don’t catch the head, the children might start playing kickball with it, like they do in those documentary movies.
And if you use it, that’s very naughty. Finger shake, then go on your way with a lesson well taught you scamp!
I’ve been following this AI data center in Salem closely.
.1. From what I’ve heard, several hundred Salem residents showed up and they were all pretty angry. At one point, they cornered the Verrus people, the police intervened, and they left under police escort.
.2. This data center was negotiated in secret between Verrus the company and the Salem city planners with signed Nondisclosure Agreements. The Salem city council didn’t know and probably even the governor of the state or Oregon didn’t know. The residents didn’t know either.
The secrecy and then this giant AI data center appears out of nowhere by a California company no one ever heard of really didn’t go over well.
.3. The next meeting was a few days ago.
The Salem city council enacted a moratorium by unanimous vote.
This doesn’t stop the data center but it will slow it down.
There is a lot wrong with this whole planning process but under the Oregon planning laws, if the company follows the rules, it is going to be hard to stop the center.
Verrus is going to try to beat up the Oregon state government, the city of Salem, and the residents of Salem into hosting an unwanted AI data center. They aren’t even pretending to care if anyone wants their data center or not.
Nobody tell the large local population of tweakers about all the copper and precious metals to be found in data centers! It would be terrible if the place got stripped for scrap metal on a nightly basis! Just terrible.
The big problem here isn’t data centers per se.
I’m probably accessing a data center somewhere just to write and post this comment on the internet.
AI data centers are different from the data centers we have now.
.1. Each rack of processors use 5-10 times more electricity than a data center.
The power consumption density is much higher
.2. This means they need a massive cooling system.
They usually use flowing water and AI data centers can use huge quantities of water.
And, water is getting scarce in most of the USA.
Even Oregon is in a drought situation right now.
.3. They also use massive amounts of electricity.
In some cases it can be hundreds of megawatts.
The Verrus AI center in Salem is planning to have its own power substation and banks of batteries for backup.
.4. AI centers can also be noisy, unlike traditional data centers.
I’m not sure why that is but people report that they make a low frequency hum that never stops.
So this is the issue.
AI data centers consume huge amounts of water and electricty while returning few benefits to the communities. In a lot of cases, they don’t even pay much in taxes since they are eligible for all sorts of economic development tax breaks.
and
AI data centers are an act of economic violence against a community. They should be afraid of facing their intended victims.
@4
Here I think pencil neck geeks is better. That’s a derisive term from pro wrestler Freddie Blassie.
@7
Oregon doesn’t have open meeting requirements that would make the entire deal illegal? California at least pays lip service to such.
https://mps110.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/guillotine-from-purp.png
@My #11
A friend wanted to make a small tabletop HO railroad back in the 70’s. I knew a little bit about construction, track laying, etc. He knew nothing, making me the expert. We started with a simple oval. He wanted scenery, a river and some hills. So we cut a section out of the plywood to make the “river” and put a bridge over it. We crumpled up newspaper to make the support base for paper mache hills with a tunnel through them. I dubbed them the Freddie Blassie bridge over Pencilneck Creek, and the Otis Chandler Mountains (the publisher of the LA Times which we used to make them).
They do and they don’t.
Apparently, in the early planning stages, the public meeting laws don’t apply.
And it is legal for the city planning staff to just sign Nondisclosure Agreements with corporations and plan a giant AI data center without the elected government of the city of Salem even knowing about it.
The Salem City Council didn’t even know about this data center until the first public hearings.
They were appalled and passed an unanimous motion that maybe the city planning staff might want to think their Nondisclosure policy for data centers.
They also have since unanimously passed a Moratorium motion for AI data centers.
There really should be an investigation about how the largest project in the city’s history, at $5.1 billion, got negotiated without any elected officials knowing about it. Even the state governor seems to have been left out of the planning and Salem is the state capital.
As someone said on social media, “if the data center fails, do they have to give back the bribes and kickbacks?” There is no evidence so far that money changed hands here but you know, it is not impossible either.
Normally I’d be leery of unsecured potential energy. From the slack rope draped over the top without a pulley, it’s clearly not functional, even in miniature.
Reminds me of the Jan 6 gallows, which had a spool in place of noose windings.
Very different US connotations.
/Wow, that was unfair. The Jan 6 gallows was SO crappy.
/With the contrast in mind, I did a double take at the town’s name. Turned out the data center meeting was in Salem, Oregon, not Massachusetts.
Salem, Oregon: the city which Omelas was named after, by reading a “Salem O” sign backward. And this is backward with respect to Omelas; here, it’s an entire community suffering for one person, rather than one person suffering for the entire community.
Symbolic death threats are just dandy when it comes to CEOs, is the message I am getting.
—
Steve @17, who is this one person for whom the entire community is suffering?
(An imaginary one, apparently)
Another guillotine-related story, this one from the UK. The leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, Zack Polanski, recently got into a bit of PR trouble becaue he posted on his social media (Instagram I think) an image made up of 20 photos of a party event which a member had sent him. One of the photos showed a party member who was wearing a t-shirt with an image of a guillotine, and the words “We’re Only Making Plans for Nigel” – a song title from years ago, but in contemporary terms, taken as a reference to Nigel Farage. Farage screamed for the police to investigate Polanski for incitement to murder. Polanski took the post down, saying he hadn’t noticed the photo, but refused to apologise to Farage. (Hypocrite Farage has of course on numerous occasions used violent rhetoric against migrants and minorities.) The police, naturally, decided no action was warranted.
Does anyone remember log splitters? I’m certain they still make them.
They would not only be gruesome in their head-taking, but they would have the added benefit of being somewhat slower.
@ ^ fishy : yes, used log splitters regularly both at work and hired for chopping, well splitting, up firewood.
My inner horror writer has also wondered about that too.