AI data centers face increasing complaints about inaudible but 'felt' infrasound — citizens complain high- and low-frequency sounds do not register on decibel meters but cause adverse health effects

He also has a huge backlog of music as The Flashbulb

He also makes some pretty cool music under the name The Flashbulb.

There's a steam plant for my local hospital about 300m from my house. When I'm in my basement trying to record drums, I can audibly hear when the plant is running. Super low, sub-50hz hum. It gets into all my mics.

Fortunately my bedroom is on the second floor of the house so the resonance doesn't keep me up at night.

Spend time at an interstate rest stop. The vibration can be intense.

You don't need a double-blind study to determine if acoustic emissions are the culprit. You just need to measure specifically for infrasound (and ultrasound, for that matter). It's an unusual form of pollution but very much measurable if you know to look for it.

Unlike the things you mentioned, infrasound is understood to be a thing these days and is sometimes considered in construction. It's not exactly witchcraft; most equipment (including decibel meters) just isn't built to account for very low frequencies.

If the data center does put out noise at very low frequencies that's probably some kind of unintended resonance that they'll have to stop. It might be as simple as slightly changing the RPMs of some cooling fans or installing sound proofing in specific places.

Infrasound isn't some fringe conspiracy theory, it's well-understood, and infrasound weapons are banned by the laws of warfare because they literally torture people to death and can cause internal bleeding.

The infrasound in this article is obviously less intense than a deliberately designed weapon, but it can still cause extreme discomfort, pain, illness, and stress.

It's very likely that she does have some sort of health problem and doctors weren't useful in finding it. It's very hard not to be superstitious in that situation

most of these are a psyop to make the real things sound phony

[citation needed]

I fully believe that at times infrasound can result in anxiety, nausea, etc. But, in 2026 so can reading the news. So can thinking that your health is being affected by a datacenter, resulting in you worrying and losing sleep.

This whole thing about the "resonant frequency of the eye" and that causing someone to hallucinate... that smells like utter BS. A much more likely explanation in a basement is carbon monoxide.

I don’t recall being asked to. The question was “Is there any research on this?” And I answered the question lol.

Now that you’ve been made aware of the research done on this you can go look it up. Just Google “Infrasound NIH” and I’m sure you’ll figure it out from there.

The article mentions 96 dB for 24 hours a day

He doesn't have any condition where he senses electromagnetic fields. It's a condition he made up entirely in response to how Jimmy violates Chuck's world view where Jimmy is inferior to Chuck. It started soon after Jimmy got a law degree, it got better when Jimmy worked under Chuck, because Chuck liked being his boss and controlling Jimmy's big case. It got worse when they had a falling out. It got way worse after Chicanery where Jimmy proved he can be a better lawyer.

If Chuck actually had an issue, how did he function as a successful lawyer for most of his life? When he had severe symptoms, it was all around his head, his ears rang, his eyes hurt, his head hurt, so how was a reflective liner in his jacket sufficient to protect him for a season or so? Why does he routinely only experience symptoms after being told about hidden electronics?

Lot cancers and not talking about your average powerlines.

Talking about lines like this. Been near these? You can literally hear the power going through the lines.

@Fredselfish@lemmy.world @NarrativeBear@lemmy.world care to explain yourselves?

That's right. Even if the person won the lawsuit it doesn't mean the science is true. It's one really frustrating thing about the legal system, sometimes people win lawsuits based on absolutely terrible BS science. A persuasive lawyer has to convince a jury that something is true, not convince a scientist who knows about that field.

just because one thing turned out not to be true, it doens't automatically mean you don't have to believe any other claims.

exactly. either the law applies only to The Poors, or it applies to everyone.
if the law applies to everyone, then it needs to be applied.
if you can't apply the law, maybe apply something else.

Absolutely. We are not beholden to the law and the obvious alternative is violence, which the poster is either being obtuse about, or really isn't serious about being part of a solution. History shows that violence has always been the answer.

Sure, that's why it takes the multitude with the fortitude to carry on with the "other" actions. It is inane to skirt around the violence option as it is ever present in our history, and has really been the only solution for radical changes or shift in policy.

Otherwise, where is your solution? Haranguing me for my silly take and nothing else to offer to the original petitioner?

I would have assumed: Make America Hate Again, as it rhymes.

The article alludes to it: "The United States does not lack flat, open land away from population centers on which to build data centers. However, AI hyperscalers prefer to locate their campuses near existing infrastructure so they don’t have to spend massive amounts of time and resources building everything from scratch."

It costs a lotta money to run electricity and water to the middle of nowhere.

Also, companies are doing research to specifically build in areas where they believe the local community is not politically empowered to prevent it from being built. This guy goes into some more depth at this timestamp: https://youtu.be/1CpVmPh3BDE?t=831

Except the ones who are supposed to be fighting back have spent the last few decades doing little else but loudly proclaiming how much more intelligent and capable they are than the Americans you’re describing.

Coward.

This whole blog seems extremely pro-AI and their entire site is full of articles supposedly debunking why data centers aren't actually bad after all...

This specific article has some pretty crazy conclusions about Benn Jordan's own double-blind study. They're saying it wasn't double blind because he might have noticed water shaking, but in the actual video he explicitly says he threw out any of the data points where he knew if the sound was on. The results seemed pretty conclusive to me.

The other thing is it talks a ton about wind turbine infrasound, and how dangerous levels are thousands of times louder. But the actual measured level of sound ARE thousands of times higher. Measurements have been taken at 96dB, which is significantly higher than the 50-75dB this article is referencing as safe. If the 96dB infrasound is loud enough to shake a glass of water as above, it's not "imperceptible" like the safe levels.

As with all loud sounds in general, exposure time is a factor. A brief burst above 100dB won't damage your hearing, but extended exposure will. I don't see why the same wouldn't apply to infrasound. All these studies are 72h or less of exposure, but there's people living next to these datacenters 24/7.

Personally I'm waiting for more research to be done. There's not enough data to be calling things fake or debunked here.

Writer pic is AI generated. It's arguments are invalid.

There is limited evidence in humans for the carcinogenicity of 50 Hz magnetic fields in relation to childhood leukaemia (from epidemiological studies). This is why IARC classified them in group 2B, as possibly carcinogenic to humans. This is from the website that funded the study against the "whack jobs".

If you mutate rats then they start training turtles ninja skills.

There is limited evidence in humans for the carcinogenicity of 50 Hz magnetic fields in relation to childhood leukaemia (from epidemiological studies). This is why IARC classified them in group 2B, as possibly carcinogenic to humans

but how could they make sure since it's a blind study? maybe they're only pretending to be blind.

Like how before microscopes bacteria couldn't hurt people!

Is this sarcasm? Sorry sarcasm detector broke.

Edit: Yes, it has to be. No one would think gamma rays are safe right? Right?

We will all be picking up the tab to shield these places in the future in the name of public health and safety. The hyperscalers won't pay when they can plead ignorance and have the tax payer pay to fix it for them. Problem with data centres is once they are online, changes are very slow. Any datacentre with five 9's or above will only allow small incremental change each year. While this is faster for single tenant datacentres, it won't be a quick fix.

Oh. I think i did a twitter