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Microsoft using wetlands and native gardens to 'camouflage' data center sites by blending them into nature — critics blast the 'biomimicry' effort as 'lipstick on a pig' amid a 20-year gas power deal
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Sahwa reddthat.com throws_lemy@reddthat.com
Joined: 2023-07-04
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296   Original
Spice Hoarder lemmy.zip spicehoarder@lemmy.zip
Joined: 2025-06-29
#2 · Quote Reply

What the fuck am I looking at?

19
WhoIzDisIz lemmy.today WhoIzDisIz@lemmy.today
Joined: 2026-04-27
#3 · Quote Reply

What the fuck am I looking at?

Don't worry about it - all that green will be brown & dead before long.

6
DarkCloud lemmy.world DarkCloud@lemmy.world
Joined: 2024-05-19
#4 · Quote Reply

What the fuck am I looking at?

An insect house, with different sized holes/enclosures for various insects to try to live in.

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DarkCloud lemmy.world DarkCloud@lemmy.world
Joined: 2024-05-19
#5 · (edited) Quote Reply

I mean Microsoft is currently preferable to Google.

Microsoft:

Microsoft’s “biomimicry” program is reshaping the land around its data centers with restored wetlands and native gardens to help the buildings blend into local ecosystems at 20-plus sites, reports The Verge. Critics question the company’s motives after recent energy deals, such as a 20-year deal inked in June to buy power from a planned Chevron gas plant in West Texas. Public Citizen’s Texas director, Adrian Shelley, called the plan “basically lipstick on a pig.”

The Mount Pleasant site, home to Fairwater, which Microsoft calls the “world’s most powerful AI data center,” has 100 acres of prairie and forest in a Lamparek Creek restoration with the Root-Pike Watershed Initiative Network. Its executive director, Dave Giordano, told the outlet that Microsoft developed its stormwater ponds with forebays to retain sediment, one of a number of accommodations for the environment. “Not all data center companies are the same,” he said. It is a living example of the company’s answer to AI data center backlash.

Google:

As Finnish newspaper Kaleva reported last month, Google is under fire for clearing over 300 hectares — the equivalent of almost 500 football fields — for two new data centers in the northern part of the European nation without concluding the necessary environmental assessments.

Despite the assessments still being in progress, the tech giant’s contractors started clearing trees in the area months ago, raising the alarm bells at the Finnish Nature Conservation Association.

But it's ultimately leverage for killing the planet and making a destructive technology seem acceptable. We've seen "industrial parks". It's a bandaid on a heart attack.

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Zensate lemmy.world Zensate@lemmy.world
Joined: 2026-09-15
#6 · Quote Reply

It's at least something, but the noise will probably scare all the animals away anyway

5
barnacul lemmy.world barnacul@lemmy.world
Joined: 2025-03-07
#7 · Quote Reply

What the fuck am I looking at?

They spent $200 on some greenwashing to try and distract from the titanic gas burning plagiarism machine

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Boo! Haunted House! lemmy.world lemmyng@lemmy.world
Joined: 2025-03-16
#8 · Quote Reply

Can't believe Microsoft out here leaking Sonic Frontiers 2.

Cause this shit is straight up a zone you'd see in the games caused by Eggman's technofuckery.

3
fubarx lemmy.world fubarx@lemmy.world
Joined: 2024-06-07
#9 · Quote Reply

Biomimicry.

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green_goglin thelemmy.club green_goglin@thelemmy.club
Joined: 2026-02-08
#10 · Quote Reply

Microslop sloppin’ it up (not soapy tigglebitties)

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justsomeguy lemmy.world justsomeguy@lemmy.world
Joined: 2023-06-25
#11 · Quote Reply

What the fuck am I looking at?

Here's your new home bro.

7
nullspace lemmy.world nullspace@lemmy.world
Joined: 2026-06-05
#12 · Quote Reply

Here's your new home bro.

$950 a month, no utilities included.

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Gladaed feddit.org Gladaed@feddit.org
Joined: 2024-06-26
#13 · Quote Reply

If you cannot accept them doing good and reward them for the good there is no incentive to act good. Acting badly, covertly mustn't be the best way to do things.

1
prole lemmy.blahaj.zone prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
Joined: 2024-06-11
#14 · (edited) Quote Reply

If you cannot accept them doing good and reward them for the good there is no incentive to act good. Acting badly, covertly mustn't be the best way to do things.

Yeah no, that's not how regulation works. These aren't babies or dogs, we don't bribe them with "positive reinforcement." That does not work.

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Gladaed feddit.org Gladaed@feddit.org
Joined: 2024-06-26
#15 · Quote Reply

Yeah no, that's not how regulation works. These aren't babies or dogs, we don't bribe them with "positive reinforcement." That does not work.

But they are profit motivated companies. If they get hatred for doing good it is unprofitable to act good. Of course they aren't babies, but creating an environment in which dystopian companies farr best is... Unwise.

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mig lemmy.world mig@lemmy.world
Joined: 2023-07-01
#16 · Quote Reply

What the fuck am I looking at?

It looks like a security intercom/camera with bees attached.

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Spice Hoarder lemmy.zip spicehoarder@lemmy.zip
Joined: 2025-06-29
#17 · Quote Reply

It looks like a security intercom/camera with bees attached.

New anti-journalism device unlocked. Intercom with bees.

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dumnezero piefed.social dumnezero@piefed.social
Joined: 2024-11-27
#18 · Quote Reply

What the fuck am I looking at?

that's a bug hotel, lol. Build them! Don't let Microslop to you.

2
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