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A Beautiful Mix — Art & History …NMAAHC
Tag Archives: ~ Culture & History
A power plant for the Internet: our newest data center in Alabama
Every time you check your Gmail, search on Google for a nearby restaurant, or watch a YouTube video, a server whirs to life in one of our data centers.
Data centers are the engines of the Internet, bringing the power of the web to millions of people around the world. And as millions more people come online, our data centers are growing, too. We’ve recently expanded our data centers in Iowa, Georgia, Singapore and Belgium.
And today we’re announcing a new data center in Alabama—our 14th site globally.
This time, we’re doing something we’ve never done before: we’ll be building on the grounds of the Widows Creek coal power plant in Jackson County, which has been scheduled for shutdown. Data centers need a lot of infrastructure to run 24/7, and there’s a lot of potential in redeveloping large industrial sites like former coal power plants. Decades of investment shouldn’t go to waste just because a site has closed; we can repurpose existing electric and other infrastructure to make sure our data centers are reliably serving our users around the world.
At Widows Creek, we can use the plants’ many electric transmission lines to bring in lots of renewable energy to power our new data center. Thanks to an arrangement with Tennessee Valley Authority, our electric utility, we’ll be able to scout new renewable energy projects and work with TVA to bring the power onto their electrical grid. Ultimately, this contributes to our goal of being powered by 100% renewable energy.
In 2010, we were one of the first companies outside of the utility industry to buy large amounts of renewable energy. Since then, we’ve become the largest corporate renewable energy purchaser in the world (in fact we’ve bought the equivalent of over 1.5 percent of the installed wind power capacity in the U.S.). We’re glad to see this trend is catching on among other companies.
Of course, the cleanest energy is the energy you don’t use. Our Alabama data center will incorporate our state-of-the-art energy efficiency technologies. We’ve built our own super-efficient servers, invented more efficient ways to cool our data centers, and even used advanced machine learning to squeeze more out of every watt of power we consume. Compared to five years ago, we now get 3.5 times the computing power out of the same amount of energy.
Since the 1960s, Widows Creek has generated power for the region—now the site will be used to power Internet services and bring information to people around the world. We expect to begin construction early next year and look forward to bringing a Google data center to Alabama.
Source: Posted by Patrick Gammons, Senior Manager, Data Center Energy and Location Strategy
The SOS was right in front of our… my face. Yes, I felt the urgency to post this article back then. They were giving us info about what they were doing, telling voters the reality of how Data centers will impact our lives in America, and not necessarily in a good way. talk’bout naivete. sigh
The struggle for land, energy, water, and utilities will be felt in real time, with increased costs to constituents in ways no one wants but has no authority to regulate.
Will the negative impact on communities in America affect those who agreed to have a data center in their city, finally causing them to speak up and out against this astronomical amount
image of a data center is from the internet
Nativegrl77
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It’s 2026, we still can’t fix stupid … and Midterm Elections are just weeks away
Just another rant…
In 2015, I posted an article by George Heymont, “You can’t Fix Stupid,” from 2012. Sadly, it is still relevant. We have those leaning right in several industries; some voted into office at the local and state levels, others have seats in Congress and continue carpetbagging, voting against their own constituents, clearly acting out, doing the best they can to make sure certain types of people never get close to the highest office, lest we talk about how our first opportunity for a Woman at the helm in 2016 would have been if folks had turned out.
It’s now 2026-27, and the stupidity continues to spread … and the questions keep stackin
The thing that keeps coming to my mind is what the character of “Forrest Gump” says, “Stupid is as stupid does.” The fact is, voters have gotten a box of chocolates, like the character “Forrest Gump” says, “We never know what we are going to get,” which is not how a POTUS or a democratic republic should govern. When Republicans are in charge of Congress, they get on the airwaves and say whatever their base wants to hear, and then get on the floor of Congress to pass legislation with nasty riders that ultimately hurt our fellow Americans.
MAGA voters get that the job in Congress is all about disagreeing and debating, but few push back or demand that MAGARs stop setting up last-minute votes for bills or passing legislation knowing it will hurt constituents? When will they get that a Congress led by republicans, is always on the extreme right on most or all issues, and now they are in both chambers, who believe that most, if not all, legislation should be designed for the rich? After years of experiencing a MAGA Congress that cannot seem to debate and/or vote so that all Americans have a chance to prosper, and pushing for that trickle-down financial system, which doesn’t work. Nothing has changed. Their voters watched the House of Bush fail Americans; banks, folks like AIG, and hedge fund managers decided that their best business practices were acting in a good-faith effort that actually turned out to be for themselves.
If you’re listening, voters who sat on the sidelines helped guarantee that the ole’ Republican attitude, or Southern Strategy, is not only close, alive and well, but still very active with the new GOP trifecta in charge …
~ Nativegrl77
… just another rant
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August … a month full of historic events
just another rant …
August~
remember Katrina … remind folks what happened on the Gulf Coast as the people fled, some were forced out into the streets some died in the Katrina disaster trying to get out safely; while others faced excessive force violence and death
August 1, 1838 – Slavery was abolished in Jamaica. It had been introduced by Spanish settlers 300 years earlier in 1509.
August 2, 1776 – In Philadelphia, most of the 55-56 members of the Continental Congress signed the parchment copy of the Declaration of Independence.
August 3
1936 – Jesse Owens won the first of his four Olympic gold medals.
1943 – Gen. George S. Patton verbally abused and slapped a private. Later, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered him to apologize for the incident.
1981 – U.S. traffic controllers with PATCO, the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization, went on strike. They were fired just as U.S. President Reagan had warned.
1992 – The U.S. Senate voted to restrict and eventually end the testing of nuclear weapons.
2004 – NASA launched the spacecraft Messenger. The 6 1/2 year journey was planned to arrive at the planet Mercury in March 2011. On April 30, 2015, Messenger crashed into the surface of Mercury after sending back more than 270,000 pictures.
August 4, 1962 – Apartheid opponent Nelson Mandela was arrested by security police in South Africa. He was then tried and sentenced to five years in prison. In 1964, he was placed on trial for sabotage, high treason and conspiracy to overthrow the government and was sentenced to life in prison. A worldwide campaign to free him began in the 1980s and resulted in his release on February 11, 1990, at age 71 after 27 years in prison. In 1993, Mandela shared the Nobel Peace Prize with South Africa’s President F.W. de Klerk for their peaceful efforts to bring a nonracial democracy to South Africa. In April 1994, black South Africans voted for the first time in an election that brought Mandela the presidency of South Africa.
August 4, 1964 – Three young civil rights workers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, were found murdered and buried in an earthen dam outside Philadelphia, Mississippi. They had disappeared on June 21 after being detained by Neshoba County police on charges of speeding. They were participating in the Mississippi Summer Project organized by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to increase black voter registration. When their car was found burned on June 23, President Lyndon Johnson ordered the FBI to search for the men.
August 5, 1861 – President Abraham Lincoln signed into law the first Federal income tax, a 3 percent tax on incomes over $800, as an emergency wartime measure during the Civil War. However, the tax was never actually put into effect.
August 6, 1965 – The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson. The Act suspended literacy, knowledge and character tests designed to keep African Americans from voting in the South. It also authorized the appointment of Federal voting examiners and barred discriminatory poll taxes. The Act was renewed by Congress in 1975, 1984 and 1991.
August 6-10, 1787 – The Great Debate occurred during the Constitutional Convention. Outcomes included the establishment of a four-year term of office for the President, granting Congress the right to regulate foreign trade and interstate commerce, and the appointment of a committee to prepare a final draft of the Constitution.
August 9, 1974 – Effective at noon, Richard M. Nixon resigned the presidency as a result of the Watergate scandal. Nixon had appeared on television the night before and announced his decision to the American people. Facing possible impeachment by Congress, he became the only U.S. President ever to resign.
August 10, 1863 – The President meets with abolitionist Frederick Douglass who pushes for full equality for Union ‘Negro troops.’
August 11, 1841 – Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave, spoke before an audience in the North for the first time. During an anti-slavery convention on Nantucket Island, he gave a powerful, emotional account of his life as a slave. He was immediately asked to become a full-time lecturer for the Massachusetts Antislavery Society.
August 11-16, 1965 – Six days of riots began in the Watts area of Los Angeles, triggered by an incident between a white member of the California Highway Patrol and an African American motorist. Thirty-four deaths were reported and more than 3,000 people were arrested. Damage to property was listed at $40 million.
On August 14, 1862, Abraham Lincoln did something unprecedented in presidential history up to that point: he met with a small delegation of black leaders (all free: 5 black clergymen). But the meeting did not auger a decision to give African Americans a voice in government. In essence, Lincoln sought to lobby these men in essence to agree to a divorce. In other words, the President wanted to get black Americans behind his plan to colonize them abroad. –Source http://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln5/1:812?rgn=div1;singlegenre=All;sort=occur;subview=detail;type=simple;view=fulltext;q1=August+14
August 14, 1935 – President Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act establishing the system which guarantees pensions to those who retire at age 65. The Social Security system also aids states in providing financial aid to dependent children, the blind and others, as well as administering a system of unemployment insurance.
August 15, 1969 – Woodstock began in a field near Yasgur’s Farm at Bethel, New York. The three-day concert featured 24 rock bands and drew a crowd of more than 300,000 young people. The event came to symbolize the counter-culture movement of the 1960’s.
August 18, 1920 – The 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, granting women the right to vote.
August 24-
August 28, 1963 – The March on Washington occurred as over 250,000 persons attended a Civil Rights rally in Washington, D.C., at which Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. made his now-famous I Have a Dream speech.
August 28, 1955 The death of Emmett Till
August 29, 2005 Hurricane Katrina slams into Gulf Coast
August 30 1967 Thurgood Marshall confirmed as Supreme Court justice
1983 U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Guion S. Bluford becomes the first African American to travel into space when the space shuttle Challenger
August 31
Source: http://www.historyplace.com
~Nativegrl77
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1935 – FDR signs the Social Security Act
President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs into law the Social Security Act on August 14, 1935. Press photographers snapped pictures as FDR, flanked by ranking members of Congress, signed into law the historic act, which guaranteed an income for the unemployed and retirees. FDR commended Congress for what he considered to be a “patriotic” act.
Roosevelt had taken the helm of the country in 1932 in the midst of the Great Depression, the nation’s worst economic crisis. The Social Security Act (SSA) was in keeping with his other “New Deal” programs, including the establishment of the Works Progress Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps, which attempted to hoist America out of the Great Depression by putting Americans back to work.
In his public statement that day, FDR expressed concern for “young people [who] have come to wonder what would be their lot when they came to old age” as well as those who had employment but no job security. Although he acknowledged that “we can never insure one hundred percent of the population against one hundred percent of the hazards and vicissitudes of life,” he hoped the act would prevent senior citizens from ending up impoverished.
Source:
history.com
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