Not to sound like a Luddite, but these AI data centers have gotten out of control. I live in Coweta County, Georgia. I've lived here for decades. In all that time, we've had zero data centers. At the current moment, there are plans to build five. I'm no statistics major, but that seems like a big increase.

The locals are not particularly happy about this sudden spurt of this particular kind of development. To be honest, the locals are rarely happy about any development that doesn't bring them a new restaurant, but they are very not particularly happy about this. Last weekend, people stood in line for hours at the park up the street from my house (on Jefferson Davis Parkway, if that gives you any idea of my county's usual politics) to sign a petition they hope will force their suddenly development-friendly elected officials to quit ignoring our torches and pitchforks and finally have a public referendum on the matter.

It's noteworthy that most of the land those data centers want was until recently zoned "Rural Conservation." For refence, the Coweta County Georgia Code of Ordinances Appendix A Article 7 defines a "rural conservation district" as... oh, hell, just read it:

The rural conservation district is intended to provide for agricultural land use, and low density single-family residential land use in an area of Coweta County shown on the future development map as the rural conservation area. Agricultural land uses include farming, forestry, horticulture, wholesale plant propagation, dairying, ranching, and equestrian activities. Rural residential land uses include rural homestead lots, and low density rural residential developments designed to preserve woodland and open land along Coweta's roadways, to preserve primary conservation land: river or stream corridor, areas of vulnerable groundwater recharge, floodplain, steep slopes, habitat of endangered species, archeological sites, cemeteries, and burial grounds, and to provide neighborhoods with their own private, yet common, recreation areas.

Does any of that sound like the place anyone was ever planning to put a resource-intensive information warehouse? But who doesn't want a shiny new water-guzzling, 800-acre data center next door to their low density single-family residence? And as for preserving river or stream corridors and areas of vulnerable groundwater, the developers themselves have asked for 1,010,000 gallons of water per day. If that sounds like a lot, that's because it is. It's 13% of the Coweta County Water & Sewerage Authority's current production ability for only five new businesses, which is the equivalent of all the existing CCWSA customers donating 33 of our gallons of water per day to our thirsty new AI overlords.

In defense of the Board of Commissioners, the data centers are promising that once they are up to speed, they'll pay an astonishing $176 million in property taxes. Considering that the county took in less than $76 million in property taxes in 2024, that also seems like a pretty big increase. Assuming the data centers are telling the truth — AI would never lie to us — that's a lot of money to turn down. Who needs equestrian activities when you can ask a computer to turn you into a cartoon character for a social media post? With all that money, at the very least the county will be able to afford to pay the CCWSA to find us some extra water somewhere. I hear the arctic is melting.*

*Superman Month Sidebar: Speaking of "our national water crisis," Eric Brockovich (heard of her?) has lately been crusading against data centers like these in large part because of their "substantial" water usage. Her 2020 book on the subject of is titled Superman's Not Coming, which is both disheartening and, I hate to say it, accurate.

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Question I didn't realize I was going to have to ask myself when I started a blog, #8326: If I post a picture of seashells spelling out that I don't want to pay federal taxes anymore so long as the money is going to be used to fund insurrections against my own democracy, is the FBI going to come knocking on my door?

Better to be safe than sorry. No picture. I can't afford lawyers.

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It's primary season in Georgia, and right now there are at least three (three!) leading Republican candidates for governor currently airing television commercials during every Jeopardy! commercial break vowing to get tough on the same issue. Not taxes. Not jobs. Not education. Not data centers or immigration or crime or polluted water or unaffordable housing or traffic congestion or gas prices. The issue they're worried about is "men" stealing trophies in women's sports.

Yes, I do live in a basement, and no, I don't have a daughter, but I still have to wonder if that's really the biggest issue facing Georgians today. Or ever, really. Outsports.com lists only five openly transgendered athletes playing for Georgia teams the past twenty years. Exactly zero of those were biological men who joined women's teams in search of fame and fortune. Zero examples would seem to make this a solution in search of a problem.

Even recognizing there were a couple of swim meets in the recent past where transgendered women stormed our borders and won (or, as in the case of Riley Gaines, placed fifth), this still doesn't seem to be a problem because A) the Georgia High School Association banned transgendered girls from playing as girls on high school teams in 2022, B) the NCAA banned the same at the college level in February 2025, and C) Georgia passed a state law ("The Riley Gaines Act") banning them from any event statewide in April 2025. It's not (yet) illegal to be transgendered in Georgia, but they better not try kicking any girls' balls.

So we ask the question: why are all these Republican governor candidates spending so much time and money decrying a vanishingly rare situation that is already triply illegal in the state they say they know enough about to run? I guess it's too much work to come up with a plan to address the ongoing homeless crisis or social media monopolies when you can just keep holding up your pitchfork and yelling "Won't somebody please think of the trans children?"

All I can say for sure is that it doesn't look like I'll be voting Republican this year. Again.

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The only downside to watching over two hundred hours of Olympic coverage in recent weeks is the constant bombardment of advertisements for the latest entry in the Georgia governor race, Rick Jackson. Apparently, he's a billionaire, and I only know that because A) he brags about it in his ads, and B) he bought ads in seemingly every possible commercial break. From someone who likes to remind us that he's a self-made billionaire, that doesn't seem like a very effective use of money.

The story of his by-his-bootstraps, up-from-foster-care wealth isn't the only thing I've learned from his commercials. He's also really into cutting taxes. A billionaire who doesn't want to pay taxes? How novel. I wonder if neither of us pays, which one comes out ahead?

To be fair, it seems everyone in the race wants to cut my taxes. Getting rid of income tax is a hot topic in Georgia politics right now. I say "right now," but it's a fact of life that no one ever wants to pay taxes. And, as an added bonus, if the state government doesn't have any money, then they don't have to worry that some of that money might be spent on people who "want to sit on your butt, binge watch Netflix, and scarf down Cheetos," to quote the Rick Jackson on my television. What kind of worthless scum likes watching movies and eating delicious snacks? Fuck those losers!

It would be disingenuous to call Rick Jackson an outsider in Georgia politics. He has long been a prominent (and deep-pocketed) donor to state and national Republicans. His late entry into this election indicates he doesn't think he's getting his money's worth from the current candidates. Though I'm no fan of his recent vow to become "Trump's favorite governor," I have read enough about Jackson to suspect he's probably a better human being than his vainglorious attempt to buy an election would indicate. It's nice to think that there are very fine people on both sides.

Therefore, I assume Jackson would be pleased to hear that many, many, many repeated viewings of his life story have already left an impact on my life. I'm so sick of his commercials that I have nicknamed the mute button on my remote the "Rick Jackson button."

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My father called this evening to tell me that he received an unsolicited group text in which recipients were invited to visit a URL where they can fill out documentation to apply to be paid $600 a month for having a Purel hand sanitizer advertising decal attached to their cars. He thought it might be an opportunity worth pursuing. Hey, free money!

Hopefully, dear reader, I don't have to tell you this is a scam. The FTC has been warning about it for years. If you don't trust the government, you can get the same warnings from both the BBB and AARP. Yet, obviously, the scam still works or the scammers wouldn't still be running it.

Now, my father is, in theory, an intelligent man. (In fact, he gets really angry if anyone dares to question that intelligence. I hate to admit it, but I am certainly a chip off that block.) So how is it he could fail to recognize all the red flags? It's not like he needs the money. (Seriously. I do his taxes.) I think he just wants something for nothing.

I mention all this not to denigrate my father. (That's just a bonus.) I mention it because I think it's the key to understanding why so many people, like my father, support that orange-faced fellow who accepted his party's nomination for president today. They don't care about the red flags like, say, his previous, well-documented attempt to subvert a federal election for his own personal benefit; they just want to believe him when he tells them he's going to give them something they want for free, like lower taxes and fewer colored people. While I wish those people could see the fallacy in where they've chosen to put their trust, I have to concede there's nothing you can say to someone to make them stop wanting the things they want.

I want free money, too. I guess I'm just jealous no one is offering to pay to put decals on my Jeep.

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The headline at Atlanta's Fox 5 was "Over 850 pounds of crystal meth found in Norcross storage unit." My first thought on reading the article was, "wow, that's a lot of drugs." My second thought was, "how do you dispose of that much meth?" The article didn't say, which if you ask me is a real indictment of the modern clickbait era of journalism.

Left to my own devices, I did what I usually do when I have a question: I googled it.^†

That was a mistake.

I only write this so that when I am arrested and the DA introduces into evidence my Google search history and social media feeds full of helpful instructions about what I should do with my stash when the cops inevitably come kicking in my door, I can say that it was all because I read a poorly reported news story.

(To save you the same trouble, let me report that the answer appears to be "mix it with bleach." I'm guessing a lot of bleach. I have not yet worked up the courage to google how to dispose of that.)

^† In addition to "how to dispose of crystal meth," these are some other actual Google searches I made in the last 2 weeks: "who likes licorice," "why am I paying 24% taxes," "life is not all sex and sun lamps," and "green lantern condoms." What can I say? I'm a curious guy.

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Taxes are due tomorrow, which means that many, many Americans are knee-deep in financial stress and frustration. Somehow, Atlanta's NPR station, 90.1 WABE, has selected this week for its spring membership drive. I'd say that's some terrible timing, but I guess WABE needs to pay taxes, too.

Sorry, NPR. I'm down about $5,000 right now. Will you take a rain check? Because Uncle Sam sure won't.

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The Washington Post, soon to be the property of Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos (you'd think if anyone knew that no one reads newspapers anymore, it'd be Bezos), reports that people are more more inclined to buy lottery tickets at stores that have previously sold winning tickets.

Stop and think about that for a minute. The people who are willing to give someone their money in the hopes of collecting something for nothing think that they will have better odds playing at a place where someone else already won even though the concept is easily disproven by empirical data. Yeah, that sounds about right.

It seems that we should be able to exploit this information. American hate paying income taxes; recent polls indicate that at least half of all Americans think their taxes are too high. But lottery jackpots frequently approach $100 million, 10 times the lifetime earnings of the average American. Obviously, many of these same malcontents who have a problem paying the government have no problem throwing away their earnings on empty dreams. (The odds of winning a Mega Millions jackpot is about 1 in 175 million. Being struck by lighting is 1 in 500 thousand.)

Maybe the IRS, which is desperate to recover its good name (ha!) after treating Tea Partiers like Wesley Snipes for the past few years, should consider just telling the people that if they give the government some of their money, they might just get a multi-million dollar tax return next year. The winner will be so pleased to win, he probably won't even care that he'll have to pay half his winnings back to the government.

The best part of this plan is that once there is a winner, everyone else will willingly come back year after year to keep giving the IRS more and more of their money. You're welcome, IRS.

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The IRS has apparently found a way to raise money without actually raising taxes. I don't know what the IRS calls this process, but the common term for it is extortion.

I just received in the mail a letter from the IRS dated August 13, 2012. The letter is essentially a bill for "unpaid taxes" in the amount of $19.28. I already wrote the IRS one check back in April, but it seems that wasn't enough. Somehow, the IRS suspects that I have money I haven't given them yet. I knew those traffic cameras were up to no good!

The letter doesn't say why I owe an additional $19.28, or how they came to the calculation that I owed an additional $19.28. It just says, "If you don't pay $19.28 by August 23, 2012, interest will increase and additional penalties may apply. If you don't pay your tax debt, we have the right to seize ('levy') your property." Why bother with the carrot when you already have a stick, huh, IRS?

And here's the point: I'm going to pay it. Sure, I could write the IRS and ask why they are hassling me for a sawbuck, but I'm not going to. That would take more time than it will take me to earn an additional $20 to pay this bill. Therein lies the genius of their plan.

If they sent this letter to the supposed half of the United States population that filed income tax returns in 2012, everyone would pay it just to not be bothered taking the time and effort to challenge it. The IRS would add a windfall of $3 billion to its coffers. While that may not be enough to pay for Obamacare or whittle down the U.S.'s bloated deficit, $3 billion will still buy the Pentagon at least a couple of hammers.

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In one panel of one of the several stories in last week's anniversary edition of Action Comics #900 (!), Superman announced his plan to renounce his American citizenship in order to truly be a hero for the world. Superman spoketh, and thusly the internet exploded:

Google Images search result for "superman citizenship" on May 1, 2011.

In the story, Superman explains that his American citizenship has become a liability as it gives rogue nations an excuse to blame the citizens of America for Superman's actions against their tyranny. Superman expresses the belief that surrendering his U.S. citizenship will make his work to save us from ourselves easier. This was deemed newsworthy by many, many news organizations that you would really think had better things to do.

A case could perhaps be made against publisher DC Comics' agenda for Superman's citizenship status -- the controversy has already resulted in reports of media-frenzied sales increases, and rumor has it that this story written by David Goyer is laying groundwork not for future comic book stories, but the planned Man of Steel movie written by David Goyer -- but most people seemed to focus their ire at Superman himself. The argument mainly boiled down to "you're either with us or you're against us." There might be some truth to that, but if I have to pick a side, I pick Superman's.

Personally, I don't see how surrendering his American citizenship is supposed to aid Superman against Iran or Libya or whatever other country hates the United States this afternoon. It's a pretty good chance that they are going to hate Superman whether or not he says he stands for the American Way, because those countries also hate truth and justice.

Even if Superman is being naive, I don't think that makes him the bad guy here. For one thing, what difference does it make if Superman even has American citizenship? What right do we Americans have to be jealous girlfriends and scream, "keep your hands off off our man, you bitch," to the rest of the world?

Superman was born on a distant planet and is the definition of "illegal alien." He has no income and pays no taxes. Superman doesn't vote or sit for jury duty. Are we planning on telling Superman that he's not allowed to enter our borders to help us against tornadoes, forest fires, or super-villains because he's not a U.S. citizen? Wouldn't that make us the same as the tyrants that Superman is trying to fight?

Besides, while Superman is publicly expatriating, Clark Kent is not. Some will call that hypocritical, but remember that Superman isn't surrendering citizenship because he has a problem with America. This is a political, public relations ploy by a non-existent alter-ego, not a comment on American politics (which Superman is above, figuratively and literally). Mild-mannered Clark Kent will remain as American as apple pie. That's good enough for me.

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