{"id":265908,"date":"2026-09-29T22:22:28","date_gmt":"2026-09-29T22:22:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2026\/09\/29\/what-happens-when-you-bring-an-anti-data-center-activist-to-a-data-after-dark-party\/"},"modified":"2026-09-29T22:22:28","modified_gmt":"2026-09-29T22:22:28","slug":"what-happens-when-you-bring-an-anti-data-center-activist-to-a-data-after-dark-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2026\/09\/29\/what-happens-when-you-bring-an-anti-data-center-activist-to-a-data-after-dark-party\/","title":{"rendered":"What Happens When You Bring an Anti-Data-Center Activist to a Data After Dark Party?"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

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When we enter PubKey, also known as the Bitcoin bar cofounded by crypto enthusiast Thomas Pacchia, we quickly realize that everyone is dressed much better than us, the men in crisp suits with baseball caps that say \u201cLet Data Reign\u201d and the women in slinky silk dresses and kitten heels.<\/p>\n

We walk past a DJ and a large screen playing an endless loop of Tony Stark, Ana de Armas as the platonic ideal of an AI girlfriend in Blade Runner 2049,<\/em> and stylized shots of blinking servers. On the dance floor, it\u2019s a ratio of six men to one woman. We duck into a side room\u2014a macho \u201cwhiskey bar\u201d with leather couches and a large American flag\u2014and strike up a conversation with Neeraja Deshpande\u2060, a conservative writer<\/a> who tells us she\u2019s concerned by what she sees as the prevailing national sentiment that \u201cgrowth and human flourishing are at odds with each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not just an imaginary thing that\u2019s happening,\u201d Frazier McCollum responds. She cites studies that show Maryland could face<\/a> rolling blackouts due to data center energy consumption; she\u2019s watched data centers crop up in the counties around her, and she\u2019s afraid that, if she doesn\u2019t fight these projects, her community won\u2019t have air conditioning, her schools won\u2019t have constant electricity.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I think that\u2019s a zero-sum vision of energy in general,\u201d Deshpande says. In her eyes, many of the concerns raised by anti-data-center activists are either overblown or solvable, and she points to nuclear reactors as a solution that would address energy issues without increasing emissions.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would oppose nuclear as well,\u201d Frazier McCollum retorts. Her and Deshpande are arguing on different grounds: Frazier McCollum cares about her immediate access to clean water, pollutant-free air, and affordable electricity, while Deshpande speaks in decades, forgiving the follies of today if they pave the way for future abundance.<\/p>\n

The conversation is respectful, but it\u2019s clear to me that there is a chasm between their points of view that won\u2019t be bridged today.<\/p>\n

At 10 p.m. it\u2019s time for speeches, which amount to little more than rally cries. One speaker who runs a pro-AI political firm blames the \u201cChinese\u201d for convincing us that AI is an energy-guzzling, bill-raising monster. Another speaker, Manhattan Institute fellow Daniel Di Martino, derides the \u201ccrazy\u201d and \u201cLuddite\u201d arguments against data centers, before reassuring the crowd that \u201cthe good guy with a gun beats the bad guy with a gun.\u201d<\/p>\n

Frazier McCollum raises her eyebrows as if to say, \u201cWould that make me the bad guy with the gun here?\u201d<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n

A protestor at the Data After Dark party.<\/p>\n

<\/span>Margaux MacColl<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Then a protester, a young man in a suit, bursts onto the stage and yells something about water usage. I can\u2019t hear him because everyone is already talking over the speeches anyway. But once the crowd registers it\u2019s a protester, they join together in a feral chant: \u201cUSA! USA! USA!\u201d The next speaker, Adam Thierer from the R Street Institute, says, \u201cWe know who doesn\u2019t believe in freedom. It\u2019s the kind of freaks who were just up here.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When we enter PubKey, also known as the Bitcoin bar cofounded by crypto enthusiast Thomas Pacchia, we quickly realize that everyone is dressed much better than us, the men in crisp suits with baseball caps that say \u201cLet Data Reign\u201d and the women in slinky silk dresses and kitten heels. We walk past a DJ […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":265909,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[13928],"class_list":{"0":"post-265908","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrity","8":"tag-a-billion-to-one"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=265908"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265908\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/265909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=265908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=265908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=265908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}