iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Sorry it’s late and I’m very very hungry and tired. But the alt text on this photo is “Councilwoman Janet Kilpatrick debriefs with representatives of Starwood Digital Ventures after New Castle County’s vote on the data center ordinance, which has a loophole for Starwood’s project to be unregulated.”

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This is a question I cannot answer at nearly 11pm and after 5 hours of a county council meeting

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Hi Janet, you’ll have to let me know how your after party goes

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The Starwood people are here. Maybe they are taking Kilpatrick out for some wining and dining. She’s earned it.

I’m unsure why the sitting County Council President asked members of the public to come and physically accost a sitting Councilperson, on the floor of council chambers, but here we are.

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One last bit of excitement — Council President Williams-Johns yelled into the microphone as everyone was walking out, “Can I get some security please? Can I get some union guys to come get this man out of my face?” She was exchanging words with Caneco, and said how she was sick of him.

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And with that, the ordinance passes. No retroactivity, no water protections, and no protections against infrasound. The real work now begins.

I think we have about 20-30 minutes more of public comment to go, and then the vote. This was part of my public comment, and aside from the fact that apparently “puppeted” isn’t a word, I’m glad I gave it. The gentleman I mentioned shook my hand and told me “thank you” when I stepped down.

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We are in the final public comment period, and then all signals point to the ordinance passing (without retroactivity). The signal is that Smiley said he’d vote for it. We’ll see if he keeps to his word.

Councilman Smiley said he’s ready to support Sheldon’s amendment & support the ordinance, but that might change if he has to listen to too many more comments. I’m unsure if that was a dig against Caneco (who’s been talking almost as much as Kilpatrick) or against people here to give public comment.

After spending over an hour defending her floor amendment, Kilpatrick withdrew it. I don’t know if she was genuinely confused or was aiming to waste time and tire people out. But either way, there went an hour of everyone’s time in this room, because she is here for herself and not working people.

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This room holds the fractures in our communities in stark relief. Mockery, hatred, derision — all fomented by billionaires pitting us against each other in contrived “choices” between the supposed only two options.

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There’s a retired union worker giving public comment. He’s sharing his struggles after being betrayed by a large corporation who promised steady union jobs and then went back on that promise. And there is a lot of murmurs around me mocking him. This is the most devastating part of all of this.

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Kilpatrick also doesn’t understand the difference between historically typical-scale data centers and hyper scale data centers. She’s mad that no one cared about data centers before the one just recently proposed, that would consume possibly as much or more electricity than the entire state.

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She spent 20 minutes explaining how she doesn’t understand the ordinance as currently introduced. She’s had 7 months to work to understand this. It seems like negligence to come to the final meeting and say you don’t understand the ordinance being voted on.

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She just introduced an amendment and said her reason for it is because someone sent her a post that said something about retroactivity. She read the post just now. No citation or source was given. So I guess we are taking random social media posts as fact in this governmental decision.

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