I'm from Nevada, another state that people presume is all desert. (Really, it's all mountains.)

The only part of Texas I've driven is between Austin and S Antonio. It was perhaps the least-beautiful wilderness I've driven through. It really did just feel like desert and billboards - like if Walmart was a highway.

But I also presume Texas marketing itself as a less-regulated alternative (e.g. to California) is why it's easy to imagine Texas wanting infrastructure that Maine might not.

Folks have been conditioned to consider the deserts of West Texas, especially the Permian Basin, to be wastelands with no redeeming value.

Personally, while it isn't my favorite landscape or even my favorite desert landscape, I still think it is a landscape with intrinsic value and beauty.

Yeah, sorry that wasn't intended as a slight to Texas. Texas just does have a lot of barren landscape where datacenters wouldn't offend as much. I modified it to make that clear. Also, energy is playing a role here.

I've driven through all of Texas twice, and had to spend time in Austin and Houston for work, but never had to live there, so I'd like to think I'm informed without being biased.

Besides the heavily oak covered hill country west of Austin it's pretty much the ugliest landscape in the country. I will admit the west Texas desert is less ugly than the desert of southern Arizona/eastern California, but north/east Texas is the flattest, least interesting part of the Mississippi basin (Nebraska/Kansas/Oklahoma are similarly meh but you don't have the insane humidity).

Because it's Republican, obviously.

yes but they likely won't build datacenters by destroying national parks would they?

What beautiful part do you live in?

or…have you never been?