> SpaceX's datacenter in Memphis used gas turbines to rapidly deploy Colossus before the grid could be upgraded, which resulted in an increase in local air emissions that was technically illegal.
To put a finer and much-angrier point on how this connects to the backlash:
1. Traditionally, Americans have been protected from certain kinds of harm by certain federal laws. Where present, these laws take priority (supremacy clause) over state laws. (i.e. The Clean Air Act.)
2. Due to certain people of one party controlling the federal government today, American communities are no longer getting justice under those laws. This is because the facility-owners (i.e. xAI and Elon Musk) are capable of bribing the federal government into ignoring or impeding the law. (i.e. no help from the EPA, while the DoJ claims the facility has a "national security" exception to pollute.)
3. Since communities are robbed of normal protection from federal laws, they must instead try to use other measures like state/local laws.
4. Due the different responsibility-areas of state/federal laws, this often means preventing the facility from being begun at all, as opposed to focused limits on what happens during construction and operation.
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TLDR: Corrupt crooks have sabotaged the normal careful legal-compromise route, so they are partly to blame when American communities seek hard-line measures instead.
You’re spreading misinformation. The CAA requirements applies to “stationary gas turbines.” There was an ambiguity as to whether “stationary” applies to mobile gas turbines.
After the Memphis kerfuffle, the Trump EPA clarified the rule to cover temporary mobile gas turbines: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/07/16/2026-14...
Do you have proof that people are bribing the federal government to ignore federal law?
That seems like quite the accusation and I haven't heard anything about that.
The memphis datacenter? Do you have a context limit of under 30 tokens or something?
Can you expound? I've heard nothing of any bribery around the Memphis data center.
I mean a bribe is rarely publicly announced I would guess. Therefore Occam's razor reasoning is valid mental model.
A bribe is in fact, so rare, that I'd assume one would have at least a bit of evidence to present that accusation.
Or is this one of those, "I don't like that person, so I'll just make stuff up" things?
It's whatever you need it to be.
The corollary would be that, in all likelihood, bribes are documented as rare because you are incentivized to ensure that a bribe is never made public. Has Memphis done this before? Is this strange behavior to allow such a construction project to move forward while harming its residents then slow-rolling solutions?
Either way, this is a forum and not Academic Decathlon.
> Do you have proof that people are bribing the federal government to ignore federal law?
Why does there have to be an actual exchange?
“For my friends everything, for my enemies the law.” — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Óscar_R._Benavides#Later_life
My intent is to highlight that unless you have evidence of corruption, accusing people of bribery is just slander by another name.
I hold our politicians in no high regard, but I do hold myself to some standard in that I won't accuse someone of corrupt conduct unless I actually have evidence.
The point being, it's laughable to slander someone else's morality while you lie to posture your own.
Didn't Elon's DOGE gut the very institutions that would have held him to account?
“The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
The evidence of corruption is blatant and obvious, a recent notable example has to do with a pool and its failure to be painted appropriately to the tune of $millions.
There are also immeasurable examples of campaign finance law violations (or “Hollywood accounting”) to effectively “legally bribe” politicians.
It’s zero stretch of the imagination that if the politicians are this blatant with what we can see with our own eyes, that there is significantly more sinister activities that happen in the “darkness.”
The corruption of the Federal (and many local) Government has become so blatant and in the open that it has become nearly impossible to trust that it isn’t corrupt to its core.
So sure, stand on a high horse and demand evidence for every statement as society is actively crumbling in front of you.
The problem with “high road” mentality here is that it is not followed by those who are dragging us down, and the bar of needing to provide evidence beyond a reasonable doubt takes such high levels of effort to achieve, that it is impossible to counteract the blatant corruption with the same velocity.
It’s the paradox of tolerance, generalized.
Not making the argument of whether or not it's corruption, but the DOJ sought to provide a legal exemption for the XAI datacenter:
https://apnews.com/article/musk-xai-data-center-memphis-poll...
It's public record that Elon Musk personally spent $100M on the Trump campaign. Elon Musk is now using that political influence. While this may not meet the elements of Bribery under US Code, it clears the bar for an opinion on the Orange Site.
You can't just call the party you disagree with corrupt.
You can't just call corruption disagreement.
Are you saying the Trump administration isn't corrupt?
Not this Memphis issue, general corruption.
Their net worth alone argues against this just being a character assassination.
You can't just call grifting and fascism disagreement.