From Angus yesterday:
Sunrise. Two of the villages rather polite ( and usually apolitical ) seventy year olds are heading off in their little red Volvo. He a retired professor of economics, she a designer of fabrics for Harrods. They’ve prepared a packed lunch and will be joining a protest against the building of a data centre in a village on the road to Edinburgh. Scotland is an ideal location for these things. It has lots of wind power and no shortage of water to fuel and cool the servers. This combination has attracted droves of resource hungry AI companies. What is only now becoming apparent ( and generating unhappiness ) is the size of these things. The one they’re protesting against will cover 60 hectares and be 12 metres high. That will dwarf the wee place.
12 meters is about 40 feet, and 60 hectares is 148 acres. So presumably it would be an approximately four-story building covering about 6-10 square city blocks, about 84 soccer fields. Why would anyone object?
Angus also mentions the cruise liners he and his wife can see from their garden in the evening:
We stand by the garden wall looking out over the sea as the Orkney bound cruise liners twinkle like gin palaces in the gloaming.
The whole world is changing fast
August 26, 2026
