An earlier season
Check the Number
One number at a time: what people say about it, where it comes from, and what it leaves out.
Made with AI
- Play the film: No. 1 1.4% 0:43The empty-buildings check
The contract matters more than the forecast.
1.4% of data center space sat empty at the end of 2025, a record low. The film checks the bubble story against that number, and says what the number cannot promise.
- Play the film: No. 2 50 0:43The jobs number, said proudly
A town that knows both numbers can write a deal on the truth.
About 50 people run a typical data center once it is built. As many as 1,500 build it, over a year and a half.
- Play the film: No. 3 80.5¢ 0:49What the taxes did
It didn’t happen by accident. It happened in writing.
What Loudoun County, Virginia charges homeowners for each $100 of their home’s value. Ten years ago it was $1.145.
- Play the film: No. 4 38–46% 0:47True against us, said anyway
This number counts against us. It’s true anyway.
The share of a recent jump in capacity prices that the mid-Atlantic grid’s own monitor put on data centers, and the rate contract that answers it.
- Play the film: No. 5 0.26 mL 0:37The water-bottle teardown
Measured is different from guessed.
The water measured for one AI text prompt at the data center: about five drops. And what that small number leaves out, which is the water behind the electricity.
Made with AI: type on paper, and an AI voice · the numbers are real, and each has a sourceEvery number, sourced
As it was made
What has changed since
These films are shown as they were made, in the voice we used then. Each closes on a line we no longer use, and on a card that says “Paid for by the Build It Right Campaign”. Build It Right is an independent initiative, organizing as a nonprofit. Paid for so far by its founder, a private individual. No company, trade group or investor has given money.
The numbers have not changed. Each one is on the receipts with its source, and with what it leaves out.