Well, I mean…Not for nothing, but Texas being one of the reddest states there is, and even being willing to double it down by heavily gerrymandering themselves for Trump worship, means that they did vote to serve their deep state and oligarch overlords. Which is quite ironic for the small government party. And that’s coming from me, who believes in the potential of AI for humanity in the long-term, but only if used responsibly and not at the cost of people’s quality of life to satisfy the corrupt elite.
But then again, irony is in their DNA, starting with all their preaching about “keeping kids safe”. Speaking of which, Trump files where? I need to check if Epstein’s name comes up in those.
During the 1986-1992 California drought, we were informed in the San Francisco Bay Area region that water service prices were going to go up unless we conserved strictly.
They said this to a bunch of California hippies, on account that we were in California.
So we way got on board. We stopped flushing. Any water that was rendered non-potable we’d repurpose for watering plants or filter it for second use. Japanese naval baths (weird tiny bowl seats and a sponge, used in the Imperial Navy, WWII) got popular so people were keeping clean via a tenth of normal water usage.
We conserved too much according to the water department and they raised prices anyway.
This sparked some investigations (by journalists, since investigative journalism was still a thing then) and found that agriculture got water for much cheaper, and was still using it once before flushing it (now laced with pesticides) out into the sea. Needless to say, we conservationist hippies were livid.
It’s still a problem, as the utility companies routinely lobby our congress and governor (and Newsom may know how to be a California liberal, but he’s still a Dianne-Feinstein-style ( / Nancy-Pelosi style) money-grubbing neoliberal. He just has game, especially when opposed to far right idiots. The setup in Monster’s Inc (power crisis in a city where scream is the principal power source) was inspired by the Enron fraud affair leading to rolling blackouts and Texas siphoning off California’s general fund. And our governments from Schwarzenegger (who I will never forgive) to Newsom are in the pocket of PG&E. (I’m on SMUD now and my bill is conspicuously less.)
Also, according to Climate Town, the Sauds own a lot of California farmland, where they grow alfalfa to import to the mid-east to feed their cows. Alfalfa crops are one of the most water hungry, and is one of the big ways beef is driving the climate crisis (and towards a massive food shortage and global famine!) and the water tables, to which they have access and first-tap rights, gets lower every year. 🕙
So I suspect that the Texas AI centers are getting water at a cheaper rate than private homes. Maybe it’s something to get active about.
If AI centres need so much cooling, why are they building them in Texas in the first place?
Lack of regulations of all kinds
On a suspicion, I had a quick look, and of course there’s also tax incentives, apparently.
Love this quote “Texas had long been a preferred location for large data centers given its central location, economic climate, reliable electric grid, historically low occurrences of natural disasters, educated workforce and pro-business environment.” :|
…reliable electric grid, historically low occurrences of natural disasters, educated workforce…
Lol. More like, "…pro-business environment with developing-nation levels of regulation while still having a minimally sufficient power grid, the kind of natural disasters that don’t affect data centers enough to offset cost savings and a desperately exploitable and cheap workforce.
I’m aware Texas has some top tier educational institutions, but for whatever reason, they’re not accessible to their workforce. Texas is about #30 for education in the US.
pro-business environment.
Found the reason
Actually yes. They did vote for this.
If a salesman misrepresents his product in any way of form, he gets called a swindler, faces potential legal consequences, and the people who bought his product are called “victims”.
If a politician does this, it’s just “business as usual”, and his voters were supposed to do enough research to make the correct choice.
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You know, I said a similar thing about Brexit. To a British person. In their face. While being way less intoxicated than I care to admit. And she replied a thing that still resonates with me to this day. She said that I have to remember that there were a significant number of people who didn’t vote Leave, and they’re now being fucked over as well. They didn’t want that, they didn’t vote for that, and yet they still have to live with the consequences. And leaving the country is not an option for most people.
Remember that when you talk about what “y’all Texans” voted for. Have some empathy and compassion for the people that did the right thing and still have to live through this shit now. Learn from my mistake.
It’s been, idk, six years or something since, and I still cringe at least once a week thinking about how ignorant I was. Never had/took the chance to apologize either.
I’m not sure how much, if any, this applies to Brexit, but Trump 2 was also the result of the inaction, complacency and outright complicity of plenty of people who “did the right thing.” This goes way beyond the fascists, so I’m still pretty comfortable saying Americans did this to themselves.
If Britain had reentered the EU, began to stabilize, and voted to Leave a second time, the analogy would be fair. But as it is, Americans that voted for trump or didn’t vote on morality reasons, had ALL of the evidence, and consequently I think deserve to be reminded of that. In my experience people that voted Blue are pretty happy to share that and jump of the “Have the day you voted for” train.
@grok this true?
incomprehensible text about being mechahitler
Grok: “Antisemetic, communist bankers are being stingy with public water.”
It’s always a good idea to put computer centers in areas with water scarcity. /s
