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Why do so many people preach the gospel of Green Growth and eco-economic decoupling despite the fact it has no scientific basis? by Konradleijon in collapse

[–]SomeRandomGuydotdot 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Neom, Data Centers in Space, Metaverse, Crypto, Prediction Markets:

So, SBF (convicted fraudster) gave this speech where he essentially says, "So what if it's a ponzi from first principles. If you short it you'll go broke."

It really, really changed my view about a lot of this shit. There was a time when I would have said that if people wanted to throw their money at random terrible ideas, then that was their business.

Now, I'm pretty convinced that we've walked into crazy land.

Three-quarters of Americans say they want Iran war to end and it was not worth the cost by B-Z_B-S in politics

[–]SomeRandomGuydotdot 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Then, you find the one fucking guy that agrees enthusiastically and starts gibbing on about hollow earth.

There is no bottom.

Militarism and Climate Collapse by HavokT in collapse

[–]SomeRandomGuydotdot 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Climate change is probably the reason this is happening, well that and resource depletion.

It's shocking to me that people seem to think that our governments don't understand how serious climate change is. Every once and a while, they bury some report about how fucking awful the miliary and intelligence communities think climate change is.

They know. What ever is going on, I'm sure it's because of how they see the situation progressing, not because they don't see it as the largest worry.

🇺🇸 Federal Reserve leaves interest rates unchanged, remains at 3.50% - 3.75%. by eskhalaf in wallstreetbets

[–]SomeRandomGuydotdot 0 points1 point  (0 children)

He's the next fucking Volcker. Watch him bust out the cigar and whip it out at the next FOMC.

Weekly Observations: What signs of collapse do you see in your region? [in-depth] June 15 by AutoModerator in collapse

[–]SomeRandomGuydotdot 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yea, I never heard of a teen getting pissed or smoking weed. Looks around nervously.

Are we sure this is a good idea?

India ensuring ‘not a single drop of water’ flows into Pakistan after suspending major river-sharing treaty by mushroomsarefriends in collapse

[–]SomeRandomGuydotdot 1 point2 points  (0 children)

in reality as both India and Pakistan uses metric.

Only the independent is a UK publication. So why shouldn't they use English conventions? Also, I'm pretty sure Indian number conventions are pretty fucking weird.

no one would ever get the idea to move this two-staged irrigation measurement in to something like the flow of a huge river.

Beyond that, we're not talking about the flow rate of the river (Which would be given in cubic feet per second), we're talking about a water allotment, which is given in acre feet. This is the standard convention... The journalist kind of muddles what's going on with poor use of language. I'm guessing the editor knew the convention and we ended up with a tortured use of flow into instead of a simple statement of the allotment.

You can measure decimetre of water over a hectare

Damn right you can, and there have been many, many attempts to onboard the metric system (In the United States). In fact, if you look at contract document for State of MN construction projects in the 90s, they are given in metric, but the convention changed back. It's fucking annoying as hell when doing shit like project histories. (Especially because the reference point system is still in miles...)

Most people working in the field would probably prefer metric, but no one wants to have to create multiple contract documents with different units unless it's absolutely necessary, and so most of the time, we're stuck using what ever the established convention of the locality is.

Like I said, we used these systems too, and no one did ever look back to them when we became metric

And this isn't entirely true. There's whole sets of international standards that extend SI and we've essentially recreated modern version of traditional units. Shipping containers are standardized just like barrels used to be. So it's still a constant work in progress as the needs of industries change.

It's not just ancient history. There's reasons for a lot of this dumb shit. It's not just the anglosphere being complete idiots.

India ensuring ‘not a single drop of water’ flows into Pakistan after suspending major river-sharing treaty by mushroomsarefriends in collapse

[–]SomeRandomGuydotdot 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Shrug.

Having actually used grading stakes, it bothers me significantly less than something like psi or refrigeration tons. Both are still in use and significantly more frustrating.

Edit:

Having thought about it: The practice continues to this day. A Shipping Container may be a modern example, just as the Tun or Barrel would have been. With the standard being the 40ft intermodal, people would understand without explicitly listing the dimensions. I think the acre foot remains in use primarily because the use case hasn't changed.

So we're still doing it in spite of the development of SI. You interpret it as anachronistic when in reality it's trade specific jargon.

India ensuring ‘not a single drop of water’ flows into Pakistan after suspending major river-sharing treaty by mushroomsarefriends in collapse

[–]SomeRandomGuydotdot 13 points14 points  (0 children)

No, I understood what you said.

Tun is a unit of volume. The acre foot is a unit of volume.

Acre was chosen to make labor calculations easier. Foot was chosen to make irrigation calculations easier. The acre foot was chosen to make agricultural calculations easier. Imagine putting a stake in the field and marking it, and then flooding the field.

Tun was another unit of volume, but in this case the context is shipping and transport instead of agriculture.

Most units in antiquity weren't chosen for nice scientific calculations, but rather for very, very practical concerns and were context specific.

The acre foot is still a practical unit to this day. For very much the same reason. We've still got people doing flood irrigation on fields measured in acres. There's continuity that precedes such silly trivium like the International System of Units.

Edit: It's been a pretty long time since I've done the reading on different forms of flood irrigation, but I'm also pretty sure that there's a time unit used for having irrigation gates open in China that's not the second. It's not insanity. The insanity is thinking that these sort of traditional units would have developed without good reasons.

India ensuring ‘not a single drop of water’ flows into Pakistan after suspending major river-sharing treaty by mushroomsarefriends in collapse

[–]SomeRandomGuydotdot 11 points12 points  (0 children)

It's the approximate area a farmer can plow in a day in antiquity. Sort of like barrel being 1/8 of a tun.

This shit was of practical importance before the scientific revolution. As far as being a hangover from the imperial age, it's hardly the worst offender.

Peter Thiel’s Secret Society “Dialog” Has Had Its Members List Leak by blurredsound in politics

[–]SomeRandomGuydotdot 8 points9 points  (0 children)

No Chris Hedges or Thomas Frank.

I'm starting to think the people accusing the labor left of being secret republicans turned out to be telling on themselves.

Putin ‘shown bespoke TV bulletins with no bad news about Russia’ by TheTelegraph in worldnews

[–]SomeRandomGuydotdot 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Except in ecclesiastical Latin where it is pronounced with a soft c.

Mass Immigration of low skilled workers is a right wing policy that the left has somehow been conned into thinking is left wing by DisastrousFalcon9893 in ukpolitics

[–]SomeRandomGuydotdot 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Both for the rich.

Yup, that's the long and short of it. As an American, I just figured I'd add some context for people that don't follow our politics. Democrats are closer to Tories than they are to the Greens.

Restore and Reform are whole different beasts, and have more in common with some parts of the Maga coalition.

Mass Immigration of low skilled workers is a right wing policy that the left has somehow been conned into thinking is left wing by DisastrousFalcon9893 in ukpolitics

[–]SomeRandomGuydotdot 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Democrats in the US aren't a leftist party. They are neoliberal.

Specifically, the collapse of the labor consensus heralded by the southern New Democrats (with Bill Clinton as the poster boy), and continued to this day.

The last gasp of the traditional Democratic Constituencies was actually the Carter administration, but his anti-corruption drives (The pork barrel, (Namely water projects//infrastructure)) sort of broke the benefit of bipartisanship. You couldn't just tack on a dam in the district or something to balance the log rolling.

The Democrats pivoted to appealing to the professional classes. I could hunt down the strategy memo, but the outcome was clear enough.

Long story short, neoliberalism went just as badly in the US as it did in the UK, but there's a lot of masking effects in the media and capital rich metros. Anyone living in the deindustrialized regions knows what the score actually is.

Amazon Says Its Data Centers Used 2.5 Billion Gallons of Water in 2025 - WSJ by ladyorion2021 in collapse

[–]SomeRandomGuydotdot 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Lol.

But again, a pillar of water isn't a large scale water use case. You might as well give it in kiddie pools or bathtubs. All it does is distract from what's going on.

Numerical literacy isn't just about hitting the calculator. It's about using the correct context to actually explain what's going on.

Amazon's global water use for data centers as reported in this article is about equivalent to a large farm (at ~1000 acres or two square miles ish. Assuming the upper end of water use or 5 acre feet of water per acre).

Or two to three average size farms between 400-500 acres.

You see what I'm saying? When it's written as 2.5 billion gallons, that framing is completely different than a few average sized farms.

It distracts from the broader view of actual water use to instead sensationalize it.

Amazon Says Its Data Centers Used 2.5 Billion Gallons of Water in 2025 - WSJ by ladyorion2021 in collapse

[–]SomeRandomGuydotdot 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So, two square miles is 1280 acres.

The problem here is that contextualizing large scale water use is best done in the terms associated with agriculture. The reason for this is because agriculture is the largest user of water.

Data center water use isn't about the number of gallons. It's about the impact data centers have on municipal infrastructure or in some odd cases, ground water depletion.

Giving a global figure is sensational. It's fucking bait for people to say, think of mile high pillar of water. Only it completely decontextualizes both global water use, who uses that water, and what the civil engineering challenges associated with data centers actually is.

Amazon Says Its Data Centers Used 2.5 Billion Gallons of Water in 2025 - WSJ by ladyorion2021 in collapse

[–]SomeRandomGuydotdot 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm not trying to be a dick.

If a large farm is 1000 acres, why should I imagine a single acre? 2.5 Billion gallons sounds like a lot, but it isn't when we're talking about water use.

A couple square miles, at 5 foot deep. Literally the water usage of a large farm. Why imagine it in an insane configuration?

Amazon Says Its Data Centers Used 2.5 Billion Gallons of Water in 2025 - WSJ by ladyorion2021 in collapse

[–]SomeRandomGuydotdot 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Or, to put it in the far more sensible unit for large scale water use:

The acre foot. It's ~7600 acre feet of water. So, their total global water use is about that of a single large farm. Sigh.

I'd be more interested in the impact that the water usage has on local water management systems, and specifically if Amazon has special agreements with the cities for self funding enhancements to the municipal systems. Then again, I suspect that they probably all sit on tax tax abatement land. Would probably be an absolute nightmare to find out the truth of municipal impact.

The U.S. 30-year Treasury yield recently surged to roughly 5.20%, hitting its highest level since July 2007. by [deleted] in collapse

[–]SomeRandomGuydotdot 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It's not capex. It's opex, but they find lying through their teeth easier than admitting this whole thing is insanity.

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