Google is spending $70 billion this year on artificial intelligence (AI) data centers although experts are terrified the AI bubble will burst. What also can't be ignored is Google's sci-fi-looking data center in the fields off South High Street, not far past 270 and next to the casino – a data center that just recently came online.

The AI gamble could tank the economy and marginalize an entire generation, as all of these types of bubbles have done before. A lot of money is going in and no one has much of a clue what could come out.

Ironic is how Google's 500-acre Far South Side data center was built on a former "snake-oil farm" owned by Dr. Samuel B. Hartman, who grew grapes for a "medicine" known as Peruna during the early 1900s. He claimed it was a miracle cure for congestion, but the only miracle was the "buzz" it offered. Nearly a third of each bottle was ethanol.

At one time it was also the largest cattle farm in Ohio, but Columbus is long past being a "cowtown." It's now a massive "data center farm." The region ranks second in the nation for hyperscale facilities (data centers) run by Google, Amazon, and Meta.

Senate Bill 293 is a harmful voting bill that would do away with the four-day grace period for postmarked ballots arriving after election day. The bill also contains a grab bag of unfunded provisions including citizenship verification and data checks that will drastically increase the number of provisional ballots, and place a burden on elections officials.

If the bill is signed into law, mail ballots will have to arrive by 7:30pm on election day or they won’t be counted. That will result in thousands of legally cast ballots being left uncounted because of delays in the US postal service!

Tell Governor DeWine to veto the bill. When he signed another voter suppression bill in 2023, DeWine said Ohio’s elections were already good and didn’t need more changes:"I believe with the enactment of the new election integrity provisions in House Bill 458, this matter should be settled, and I do not expect to see any further statutory changes to Ohio voting procedures while I am Governor."

“Kill them all!”

You have a problem with that? What are you, some kind of unmanly wimp? Pete Hegseth spits in your face.

Let me catch my breath, calm myself, wipe my face. The cutting edge is raw. A hundred deaths, a thousand deaths, quickly turn into “collateral damage.” But the killing of two desperate men, clinging to the wreckage of their boat in the Caribbean – their boat that has just been bombed – rips open the abstraction of military public relations. They’re just ordinary human beings – like you, like me, like our parents and our children – rather than . . . uh, narco-terrorists. And suddenly this new war the Trump administration has launched is more than just a videogame. Hey, Pete, this is not keeping us safe!

Over Thanksgiving, when you were enjoying some downtime with your family and friends, AEP pulled a fast one.

During a routine review of the administrative rules about rooftop solar, AEP filed a comment at 4:30 p.m. on the day before Thanksgiving asking the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio for new rules that would significantly raise costs for people with solar panels.

The way this would happen is through a process called net metering. Under net metering, AEP gives a customer credit when their solar panels put more electricity onto the grid than the customer is using.