All posts tagged: Center

Man at City Council Meeting Makes Devastating Case Against Proposed Local Data Center

Man at City Council Meeting Makes Devastating Case Against Proposed Local Data Center

Published by José Betancourt

Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech The growing anger over the AI industry’s obsession with building massive and resource-intensive data centers across the country is as palpable than ever. A recent survey by the Pew Research Center highlighted widespread public concern over the facilities’ environmental harms, effects on home energy costs, and the quality of life of nearby residents. These concerns do seem justified. Experts have found that data centers can spike local electricity prices, generate copious amounts of greenhouse gases, and place a major strain on freshwater resources. Now, a self-described content creator and digital artist named Will Hollingsworth who spoke up during a city council meeting in Ravenna, Ohio — a small town of 11,000 residents — is turning heads with his passionate argument against data centers. The council’s chambers became overwhelmed with a crowd of almost 100 people during the April 10 meeting, which hosted a debate over a proposed 12-month moratorium on data center construction in the area inspired by …

Madison Air Pulls Off Biggest U.S. Industrial IPO Since 1999 As Data Center Cooling Theme Heats Up

Madison Air Pulls Off Biggest U.S. Industrial IPO Since 1999 As Data Center Cooling Theme Heats Up

Published by Jenni Sidey

Madison Air Solutions surged 18% in its IPO on Thursday after raising $2.23 billion, pulling off the largest U.S. industrial IPO in nearly three decades. Shares closed at $31.75, signaling strong investor appetite for an industrial name tied to the AI infrastructure buildout. The Chicago-based company designs and manufactures ventilation, filtration, and cooling systems for data centers, semiconductor manufacturing facilities, life sciences buildings, and commercial buildings. Most importantly, investors care about MAIR because it sells liquid, hybrid, and air-cooling equipment for data centers, tying it directly to the AI buildout boom.  Data centers account for roughly 20% of MAIR’s business. The company operates 30 brands and generated $3.34 billion in 2025 revenue, up from $2.62 billion a year earlier, though net income declined to $124 million from $236 million. Like many industrials operating in the US, it faces pressure from President Trump’s tariffs, with imported metals adding more than $51 million in costs last year.  On Thursday, MAIR closed at $31.75, up from its $27 offering price, giving the company a $15.5 billion. In premakret …

Walker Art Center Sever Ties with Restaurant over QR Code Controversy

Walker Art Center Sever Ties with Restaurant over QR Code Controversy

Published by José Betancourt

Cardamom, a beloved restaurant at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, is no more following a controversial decision by the eatery to lay off its front-of-house workers and institute a QR code ordering system. The museum said on Thursday that such a move “does not align with our core values.” “We are committed to creating a welcoming environment for all of our guests at the Walker,” director Mary Ceruti said in a statement. “While we do not oversee the restaurant in our museum, our vision has always been to have a full-service dining option within the Walker to complement the museum experience.” Related Articles She said that the museum leadership was “caught by surprise” by the layoffs, and that the Walker and Cardamom had “decided to part ways.” Operated by chef Daniel del Prado, Cardamom has been open at the Walker since 2021. For its part, the restaurant said the decision to lay off 16 hosts and servers was motivated by shifts impacting its industry. “The restaurant was never profitable,” a Cardamom spokesperson told a …

NAACP Sues Elon Over His Noxious AI Data Center

NAACP Sues Elon Over His Noxious AI Data Center

Published by José Betancourt

Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech Elon Musk may have yet another day in court, at least if the NAACP has anything to say about it. The oldest civil rights organization in the United States has named Elon Musk’s AI company, xAI, in a new lawsuit, alleging that the turbines powering its “Colossus” data center violate the Clean Air Act of 1970. For months, xAI has used 27 unpermitted gas turbines — each about the size of a bus — to power the data center used to run the chatbot Grok. The practice has had horrible consequences for the Black, working class neighborhood where the turbines are located, whose residents are stuck breathing xAI’s noxious exhaust. According to the Guardian, the Mississippi lawsuit seeks to force xAI to stop using the turbines without permits, plus civil penalties to cover legal fees. On top of spewing nitrogen dioxide, a gas that causes irreversible respiratory damage over time, the turbines emit a horrendous sound that’s made …

My Front-Row Seat to the Kennedy Center Implosion

My Front-Row Seat to the Kennedy Center Implosion

Published by José Betancourt

On the day I was laid off from the Kennedy Center, I felt a little like Dolley Madison saving the Stuart portrait of Washington before the British sacked the capital. I was the staffer in charge of the artworks in the building. A crucial difference is that my institution, unlike the White House in 1814, had been on fire for months. About a year elapsed between the moment President Trump took over the Kennedy Center in early 2025 and his declaration this past February that he’d decided to shut down the nation’s cultural center for two years. In between, we had seen artist cancellations, shrinking audiences, firings of old staffers and influxes of new ones—a lot of drama, just not onstage. The date Trump announced for the closure was July 4, the country’s 250th birthday, an event that I had been hired to help commemorate as the institution’s first curator of visual arts and special programming. Though staffers had been assured that we’d have our jobs until July, I was one of dozens of people …

Orbán’s defeat gives me hope for center right – POLITICO

Orbán’s defeat gives me hope for center right – POLITICO

Published by Sam Flores

“You only need to look at Hungary, look at what’s happened to Orbán, to Fidesz. I think that if you’re unable to deliver growth, whatever your ideology is, it will lose,” she added. Badenoch’s Conservative Party slumped to its worst-ever result in the 2024 U.K. general election after 14 years in power, and is struggling to regain ground as Nigel Farage’s populist right-wing Reform UK surges in the polls. Vincenzo Alex But Badenoch said the rise of Magyar, who she described as “very much of the right, in some places even tougher,” shows traditional center-right economics and ideology is “reasserting itself.” Complacency has been “eating at the heart of all of Western Europe,” Badenoch said, describing it as “Europe’s biggest disease.” She singled out former German Chancellor Angela Merkel for particular criticism. “I think there was a lot of complacency. That invitation to a million Syrian migrants to Germany was one of the reasons why people became more skeptical about the European Union project. It was one the triggers for Brexit,” she added. Source link

AI data center startup Fluidstack in talks for B round at B valuation months after hitting .5B, says report

AI data center startup Fluidstack in talks for $1B round at $18B valuation months after hitting $7.5B, says report

Published by skeptic

Fluidstack, a startup that builds specialized data centers for AI companies, is in talks to raise a $1 billion round at an $18 billion valuation, potentially led by Jane Street, Bloomberg reports. Should this deal come to fruition, it would more than double Fluidstack’s valuation in a matter of months. In December, the company was reportedly raising around $700 million at a $7.5 billion valuation, sources told Bloomberg at the time, although it didn’t formally announce the close of that round. That round was said to be led by Situational Awareness, an AGI-focused fund founded by former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner, and backed by Stripe’s Collison brothers, former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, and the AI investor and entrepreneur Daniel Gross. Talks were apparently still ongoing for this round in February, at least with Google, which was considering kicking in $100 million to the round, The Wall Street Journal reported. There’s good reason for the hype over Fluidstack. In November, Anthropic announced that it had signed a $50 billion deal with the startup to build data …

Restaurant Inside Walker Art Center Lays Off Staff, Adopts QR Codes

Restaurant Inside Walker Art Center Lays Off Staff, Adopts QR Codes

Published by José Betancourt

The restaurant inside the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis is eliminating its front-of-house staff and replacing traditional service with QR-code ordering. Cardamom, the museum’s in-house restaurant operated by DDP Restaurant Group, will shift to a counter-service model this week, with customers ordering via their phones rather than through servers. Sixteen hosts and servers are being laid off as part of the transition, though kitchen staff and bartenders will remain, according to reporting by MPR News.  Related Articles The company framed the change as a long-considered business decision tied to uneven traffic and rising costs. Because Cardamom’s crowds fluctuate with museum programming and seasons, staffing has often been inconsistent. Workers either cut early on slow days or stretched thin during peak hours, a spokesperson told MPR.  Workers and labor advocates tell a different story. Some employees said the layoffs felt abrupt, and at least one suggested they were retaliatory, pointing to recent organizing efforts. Others noted that shifting to a QR-based system would likely reduce tip income, which can make up a significant share of front-of-house pay.  …

At a concert in Budapest, anti-Orbán sentiments take center stage ahead of election : NPR

At a concert in Budapest, anti-Orbán sentiments take center stage ahead of election : NPR

Published by Sam Flores

At a concert in Budapest, musicians and concertgoers express criticism of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s leadership. ROB SCHMITZ, HOST: This week in the Hungarian capital of Budapest, crowds gathered for a concert. (SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING) UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTIST: (Singing in non-English language). SCHMITZ: But this is no ordinary concert. The event is called Rendszerbont Nagykoncert – loosely translated, the concert for tearing down the system. And there are thousands of people here in Heroes’ Square in Central Budapest, all here to say no to Viktor Orbán, who’s been in power for 16 straight years. They hope to see him lose power in nationwide elections on Sunday. (SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING) UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTIST: (Singing in non-English language). UNIDENTIFIED EMCEE: (Non-English language spoken). SCHMITZ: “We’re not tearing down walls nor each other,” the concert’s emcee shouts. “We’re tearing down the system.” (SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING) UNIDENTIFIED EMCEE: (Non-English language spoken). SCHMITZ: A few days ago, I got the chance to interview one of the acts ahead of the concert, a Hungarian heavy metal band …

Obama Presidential Center Announces Final Cohort of Commissions

Obama Presidential Center Announces Final Cohort of Commissions

Published by Jenni Sidey

The forthcoming Obama Presidential Center in Chicago has announced the final round of artist commissions that will decorate its campus in the Windy City’s South Side when it opens in June. The latest set of commissions will be realized by Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, Jeffrey Gibson, Rashid Johnson, Hugo McCloud, Martin Puryear, Lorna Simpson, and Norman Teague. Several of the works will be directly about Barack and Michelle Obama. Crosby will make a portrait of the former president and first lady, that will incorporate “archival imagery, family albums, historical ephemera, and cultural touchstones,” according to a release. It will be on display in the Main Hall. Gibson has created a suite of 17 prints that reference political buttons from the Obama campaigns. Related Articles Campos-Pons’s Still Holding the Scent of Flowers is a mixed-media installation that will be placed near the museum’s Oval Office exhibit, and it will re-create the now destroyed White House Rose Garden. McCloud’s Hidden Reflection will go in the private dining room and illustrate different locations that are important …