The day I am writing this our provincial government proudly announced^[1] that a hulking new Meta data centre was in development a short drive north of the city where I live.

How do you folks like your Facebook pokes now, huh? Sigh.

The processing complex as announced will consume as much energy as eight hundred thousand homes (essentially equivalent to the city itself) and sit atop a swath of land that is drawing analogies to “the area in numbers of municipal parks” or “so many golf courses in size.” Sigh.

And look, it was inevitable. Putting aside the obvious hate-slap political games being played locally by politicians hell-bent on subtly punishing anyone who voted against them, it is clearly economical to drop a giant heat-sink of a computational behemoth into the Canadian rural wilds close to ample energy supplies and where the temperatures eight months of the year will provide free cooling. In a vacuum of consideration for the ratcheting up of the human cost of all these centres it makes sense. Another sigh.

Not in my backyard, we chant, and no one is listening, not even if we post our objections directly to Instagram or Threads, or rally our cause through some Whatsapp channels.

For now, just a resolute: “sigh.”

I’m sure I’ll have more to say on this eventually.