EXCLUSIVE: Inside Facebook’s secretive push to build Holland’s biggest data center
JANUARY 10, 2022 THE BIG STORY
Operation Tulip: Inside Facebook's secretive push to build Holland's biggest data center Ben Kothe / BuzzFeed News; Getty Images In the small Dutch town Zeewolde, local councilors voted 11–8 to rezone a swath of farming land and hand it to Facebook to build a "hyperscale" data center — without knowing that "Tulip," the mysterious entity they'd been negotiating with for two years, was Facebook. In fact, the councilors were among the last to know, finding out only after Facebook issued a press release revealing Tulip's true identity ahead of the vote.
Data centers are the cornerstone of cloud computing. They allow you to access Google Drive from anywhere in the world, upload photographs to Instagram, and stream Netflix. But data centers like the one Facebook proposed suck up enough energy to power a small town, use millions of gallons of water a day to cool their servers, and typically provide few jobs.
😷STAYING ON TOP OF THIS (PANDEMIC)
US COVID-19 cases are higher than they've ever been. Here's how that's changed best pandemic practices.
SNAPSHOTS Comedian Bob Saget of Full House fame has died at the age of 65. At the time of his death, Saget was on a stand-up tour that last stopped in Jacksonville, Florida.
At least 19 people have died and dozens are hospitalized in a "horrific" apartment fire in the Bronx. FDNY Commissioner Daniel Nigro said that the fire was caused by a malfunctioning electric space heater. Nine children are among the dead.
The three white men who chased and killed Ahmaud Arbery were sentenced to life in prison. "This wasn't a case of mistaken identity or mistaken fact," Arbery's mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, told the court. "They chose to target my son because they didn't want him in their community."
OVER 10,000
A Chinese immigrant who was brutally attacked has died of his injuries months later Bystanders watch as demonstrators march against anti-Asian violence through the streets on March 27, 2021, in the Queens borough of New York City. Stephanie Keith / Getty Images Yao Pan Ma, 61, had been collecting bottles and cans in East Harlem on April 23, 2021, when a man knocked him to the ground and repeatedly kicked him in the head. Since then, Ma had been in a coma and on a ventilator and was moved to hospice care in November, before dying of his injuries last month.
A 49-year-old man, Jarrod Powell, has been arrested and charged with attempted murder and assault as a hate crime. During a deposition, Powell claimed a "Korean" man and a "Japanese" guy had robbed him, but "did not provide any details relating to the description of the perpetrators of the alleged robbery other than that they were Asian," court records state.
NONFICTION, FICTION, AUTOFICTION
Books to get excited about this year Knopf, Jean-christian Bourcart / Getty Images Recitatif by Toni Morrison Morrison's only published short story is reissued here with an illuminating foreword by Zadie Smith. Recitatif centers on two girls of different races who are sent to a state shelter. Crucially, though, we are never told who is Black and who is white. Like much of Morrison's work, this story is a deceptively simple and intricate indictment of the ludicrousness of racism.
Vagabonds! by Eloghosa Osunde The book follows a disparate group of social outcasts getting by in the city of Lagos, even as the criminalization of homosexuality dampens their ability to live freely. Some characters are humans, others are spirits, others seem to shift between the two. In this inventive debut, Vagabonds! eschews strict realism for magical writing in both the literal and figurative sense.
Joan Is Okay by Weike Wang Joan is an extremely competent but somewhat antisocial thirtysomething working at a hospital in New York City. When her father dies of a stroke in China, she takes 48 hours off to attend the funeral and then is back to work. But a mandatory wellness break forces Joan to spend time with her mother and brother — and ultimately embark on a journey that illuminates the familial ruptures caused by immigrating.
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