Crypto mining. (The miners don't end up with black lung, but it's plenty hazardous to your mental health.)

I know next to nothing about crypto currency, other than that a lot of folks think it's going to make them rich; it attracts a lot of dreamers, schemers, and flakes; investing in it is inherently risky; and, things will likely shake out and it'll be a big finance thang in the future that ain't none of us going to be able to fully escape.

I also know that running the crypto show requires a shit ton (technical term) of datacenter computing power. 

And now I know that crypto datacenters also make a shit ton (technical term) noise.

If I lived near Poor House Mountain in North Carolina, I would have already known that. 

Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, powerful computers perform the complex computations needed to “mine,” or create, digital currencies. And those noise-generating computers are kept cool by huge fans.

“It’s like living on top of Niagara Falls,” said Mike Lugiewicz, whose home lies less than 100 yards from the mine.

“When it’s at its worst, it’s like sitting on the tarmac with a jet engine in front of you. But the jet never leaves. The jet never takes off. It’s just annoying. It’s just constant annoyance,” he said. (Source: Washington Post)

Top of Niagara Falls, you say? That's a lot o' noise.

While the name Poor House Mountain, and the location (Appalachia), might give the impression that this is some poverty holler full of hillbillies and moonshiners, it's

actually a lovely residential area, full of townhouses and condos. And the area is beautiful - woods, mountains. 

But it's now, thanks to crypto mining, plenty noisy.

Kurt Fristrup, a former Park Service scientist who studied noise impacts on rural environments, compared the noise near Lugiewicz’s home to living close to a very busy road without normal pulses in traffic.

Imagine “45 sedans traveling close together nonstop on a three-lane road at 35 miles per hour,” Fristrup said. 

I'm a city girl, so I'm used to a lot of noise. Ambulance sirens, fire engines, garbage trucks that show up outside my window as early at 6 a.m. Traffic sounds. People-loud-talking-on-the-streets noise. Sometimes I hear helicopters. Sometimes I hear planes. Sometimes I hear music from concerts on The Common or the Hatch Shell. 

I'm also occasionally assaulted by the wine-fueled gabfests held by the people who're renting the VRBO next door and, on a fine summer night, are inclined to hang out on the back porch holding a wine-fueled gabfest. The other noises I can live with. The gabfest. Oy! If they run much after 1 a.m., I have on occasion opened my window and pretty-pleased the wine-fueled gabfesters to take their wine-fueled gabfest inside. 

But I'm not used to a constant thrum of noise. I'd hope I'd get used to it, and it would just be background, white noise. But maybe not. Certainly a lot of the people living on Poor House Mountain haven't gotten used to it. 

Lugiewicz is moving up the mountain, nearly out of hearing of the data center hum-a-thon. 

A retired Army officer with PTSD moved to the area for the quiet he's no longer getting. Cicadas are one thing; datacenter noise, another. There goes the peaceful retirement he earned. 

And a Philadelphia woman who moved there after surviving a traumatic car crash. The noise, she claims, is ruining her life. 

Crypto mining datacenters are popping up all over the place, mostly in areas that are sparsely populated and where there's a lot of power to be had. Many are in places like Poor House Mountain, NC.

How awful for folks who moved there to get away from it all, only to have a noisy crypto datacenter pop up next door.

Just as happy to live in an area where they're not apt to pop up.

I know that the effluent from paper mills can make the surrounding areas smell pretty awful, but I bet it's a lot quieter out in Dalton, Massachusetts, living in the shadow of the Crane mill that prints the paper that US currency is printed on!