this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2024

106 points (93.4% liked)

News

22595 readers

4053 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil

Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.

2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.

Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.

3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.

Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.

4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.

Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.

5. Only recent news is allowed.

Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.

6. All posts must be news articles.

No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.

7. No duplicate posts.

If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.

8. Misinformation is prohibited.

Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.

9. No link shorteners.

The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.

10. Don't copy entire article in your post body

For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

106

Inside the 'Nightmare' Health Crisis of a Texas Bitcoin Town (time.com)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

29 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Over the course of several months in 2024, TIME spoke to more than 40 people in the Granbury area who reported a medical ailment that they believe is connected to the arrival of the Bitcoin mine: hypertension, heart palpitations, chest pain, vertigo, tinnitus, migraines, panic attacks. At least 10 people went to urgent care or the emergency room with these symptoms. The development of large-scale Bitcoin mines and data centers is quite new, and most of them are housed in extremely remote places. There have been no major medical studies on the impacts of living near one. But there is an increasing body of scientific studies linking prolonged exposure to noise pollution with cardiovascular damage.

top 29 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] [email protected] 55 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Yeah, fuck the Crypto Bros and all, but the noise is the only documented trigger here. I can believe that exposure to constant, loud noise can cause health issues, but the rest of it reads like a copy-paste about the dangers of 5G cell towers. I find it hard to believe that noise can cause ear infections, or cause plants to die.

Its fashionable to blame the crypto bros for everything, because they are insufferable twats. But the real blame lies with the State that lets businesses generate noise with impunity.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 month ago (1 children)

rest of it reads like a copy-paste about the dangers of 5G cell towers

I was just about to say boo-hoo, a dog gone bald, but 85 decibels measured from outside your window is brutal. There's a reason these farms are mostly built in the middle of the desert, on the oil fields, or near a dam, with no residential housing nearby.

Yeah, every medical emergency in town will be blamed on Mara from now on, but I'm not even mad. They've got themselves into this mess. For those who don't know, they've built their entire marketing on being compliant with regulations :D

The whole thing is awfully similar to the wind turbine controversy. The reasonable people spend years assuring the public that the windmills are not going to kill them, and then somebody comes up and says "Great! We're gonna build our windfarm right next to these houses".

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Except wind farms don't emit noise. I work around them. You can just go into a field right under a huge windmill and take a nap, they're fully silent within our hearing range

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It's not about what they do, it's about what people think they do! :D

go into a field right under a huge windmill

Must be nice to see them go up-close. I must add that to my bucket list.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

They're super cool! You have no idea how big they really are. The blades are the length of perhaps four or five semi trucks. Absolutely massive.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Some of it is definitely silly, but if it is outputting ultrasound, it very well could be causing health issues.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8954895/

I've certainly heard cooling fans output loud high pitched whines, so it wouldn't shock me to hear that they were putting out loud ultrasonic whines.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Ultrasound falls off quickly and is very easily blocked by obstructions. Bitcoin didn't invent ultrasound, or computers either, for that matter. Even if it had an effect, then we'd see people dropping dead in electronics stores.

[–] mindbleach 1 points 1 month ago

I can drink a glass of water, so nobody ever drowns.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago

Well, if this were plausible, you would expect to hear a lot more complaints from people who live and work near datacenters. But we don't, so I think it's pretty easy to conclude that these computers aren't emitting ultrasound, or if they are that it isn't the source of the issue.

Do you know how loud ultrasound has to be just to travel a few meters through the air? People would basically have to be living inside the datacenter even if these things were converting half their energy input into deliberately generating ultrasound.

[–] mindbleach 1 points 1 month ago

but the rest of it reads like a copy-paste about the dangers of 5G cell towers.

Because those cranks were cribbing from the real impact of long-term sensory stress... like living somewhere with constant noxious fumes, or having a goddamn hair dryer in your ear 24/7.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 month ago

While this is easy to dismiss as "crypto bros being themselves" it's worth mentioning that this is run by Marathon Energy who owns the power plant that the mining boxes were built to surround. This isn't just "crypto bros" but a multinational oil and energy company that opted to skip a data center building and used conex boxes with turbo fans. The fans output jet engine 90+ decibels.

The real story is that Marathon used their fossil fuel lobby to push through Bitcoin laws that limit any restrictions, so even if the town wanted to they would need to compete with a leading fossil fuel provider, and no municipality has that kind of money. Major corporate interests are jumping on this opportunity and limiting their opposition early.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Bitcoin mining industry is urgently trying to push bills through state legislatures, including in Indiana and Missouri, which would exempt Bitcoin mines from local zoning or noise ordinances. In May, Oklahoma governor Kevin Stitt signed a “Bitcoin Rights” bill to protect miners and prevent any future attempts to ban the industry.

All you need to know. Treasonous motherfuckers throwing their own countrymen under the bus for lobby money.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Gotta love how money makes you exempt from any common-sense pollution regulation. To be fair, I'd be pretty sick too if there was an air siren next to my house going off 24/7.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

I live near a hospital. The ambulance sirens get pretty stressful on a busy day.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

Yes, but something something fiat currency!

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

People talk so much about how *latest technology* is killing them, like wind turbines, cell phones, etc. Meanwhile cars are literally killing hundreds of people every day and we don't do anything about it.