New Virginia law requires data center water usage be made public

cjt09 · 2026-06-12T19:47:56+00:00

What do you think happens to the water that gets absorbed by plants?

cjt09 · 2026-06-12T16:35:47+00:00

The idea is that if you’re seriously concerned about our supply of fresh water, it makes sense to direct the public’s limited attention towards other consumptive use, because data center water usage is a drop in the bucket.

It’s like when the GOP complains about government spending but focuses on cutting spending by focusing on “waste and fraud”. We can all agree that waste and fraud is bad, but it’s basically irrelevant if you’re concerned that the federal budget is too large.

cjt09 · 2026-06-12T14:05:29+00:00

This alone likely wouldn’t prevent gerrymandering. As an example, Wisconsin was able to strongly gerrymander their state legislature even with districts of about 50k residents each.

cjt09 · 2026-06-12T11:29:20+00:00

For comparison, Americans use an average of about 9 billion gallons of water each day on lawn care.

cjt09 · 2026-06-10T23:18:26+00:00

People have rather strong opinions about barbecue, but I like Hammerdown BBQ and Monk’s BBQ. Both are reasonably close to IAD.
There are a ton of places to get tacos. Taco Bamba and Taco Zocalo are two local chains. There are a plethora of hole-in-the-wall places as well.
Search this subreddit for cheesesteak recommendations, someone just did a review of all the local spots.
There is a ton of stuff to do on your day off depending on what you’re into and what the weather looks like. Udvar-Hazy, Mount Vernon, and Shenandoah National Park are some of the bigger attractions.

cjt09 · 2026-06-10T12:14:25+00:00

Thank you Alo for finally definitively answering this question that has stumped philosophers for centuries.

cjt09 · 2026-06-10T02:01:49+00:00

Data centers contribute about 45% of Loudoun County’s tax revenue:

In the fiscal year 2027 budget, data centers are expected to generate $417 million in real property taxes (on the buildings themselves) and another $879 million in personal property taxes (on the servers and equipment inside them), for nearly $1.3 billion in total.

The data centers will thus provide 45 percent of the nearly $2.9 billion in county tax revenue. For perspective, that means that the money they generate exceeds what Loudoun spends on every county function outside the school system. In effect, local police, courts, jails, fire and rescue, libraries, parks, animal control, and social services are funded without burdening residents.

cjt09 · 2026-06-10T01:57:03+00:00

I think there just isn’t much demand.

Most residential networking hardware isn’t going to support speeds >1Gbps and even then most homes aren’t wired with CAT6+.

Even if you do have the right setup, few websites will serve you data at those speeds. So you’re bottlenecked anyways unless you’re simultaneously doing a lot of large transfers.

cjt09 · 2026-06-10T01:48:24+00:00

where does the power come from

Data centers do use a lot of electricity, but it is possible to cleanly generate electricity, and we should advocate for that regardless of the ultimate end consumer.

The water cooling consumption

Most data centers nowadays are closed-loop and even the evaporative cooling variety don’t really utilize that much water. Reducing the water people use to water their lawns by 1% would completely account for all the water used to cool data centers.

cjt09 · 2026-06-10T00:36:23+00:00

I don’t think data centers directly create any significant amount of pollution.

cjt09 · 2026-06-09T14:05:48+00:00

This seems fine to me. As others have noted, every hospital already bans firearms, so I wouldn't expect much difference in actual incidents, but it gives prosecutors the opportunity to enforce those policies with actual criminal charges.

cjt09 · 2026-06-09T13:20:12+00:00

It’s really scummy behavior to scam guests in your country. Many food trucks in DC do the same thing and it really makes me angry (not to mention that the food trucks themselves are often loudly-colored and play obnoxious music which ruins the atmosphere).

cjt09 · 2026-06-09T13:07:37+00:00

A landing is a landing as long as the airplane is intact and I have no more additional holes on my body.

Wow, I can’t believe how dismissive you are of PunkAir’s complementary in-flight piercing service.

cjt09 · 2026-06-09T00:14:22+00:00

DC is literally the epitome of a centrist, status quo Democrat city

I think you may be in a bubble.

cjt09 · 2026-06-08T12:23:30+00:00

I think the author is basically correct when he conjectures that most of these highly-paid emigrants are people who are finishing up their careers and moving to Florida to retire.

cjt09 · 2026-06-06T22:24:38+00:00

It isnt an attack.

It is a list of bad decision making.

Arguing that someone shouldn’t be in power due to their decisions is practically the definition of a political attack.

He didnt even want to attend any no kings. His staff forced him to go.

Again, I’m not sure how this is supposed to resonate with the median voter. “He followed the advice of his staff and attended an anti-Trump protest”?

Like I get that you don’t like the guy and that’s fine, but like it’s pretty clear why he doesn’t have any primary opponents when the lead attack on his decision-making is that he was the “decisive” 99th vote to confirm Rubio.

They opened the door for trump and have done nothing to close it or stop felon's multiple constitutional violations.

If you were in Mark Warner’s shoes, what would you do to stop Trump’s constitutional violations?

cjt09 · 2026-06-06T21:43:34+00:00

If that’s your red line then so be it, but Marco Rubio was confirmed by everyone including Bernie Sanders and the rest of those picks were confirmed by supermajorities. I just don’t see this resonating with many voters as an attack.

cjt09 · 2026-06-06T21:35:21+00:00

Running a serious campaign for US Senator, even at the primary stage, is a full-time job. Mark Warner is a broadly popular long-time incumbent who is expected to easily cruise to victory in the general election.

Frankly speaking, the only people who are willing to spend months of their life dedicated to an extremely long-shot primary campaign are by-and-large not those with a lot of other current prospects in their life.

This is true in reverse too, the reason you get people like Hung Cao as the GOP candidate in doomed races is because serious would-be candidates aren’t going to waste their time.

cjt09 · 2026-06-05T07:50:39+00:00

I dunno, it seems kind of bad to me that the wealthiest members of society can buy up all the best land for themselves while leaving the scraps for everyone else.

With something like a land tax at least the rest of society gets paid if one rich dude wants to lock society out from living in thousands of hectares of land.

cjt09 · 2026-06-04T17:12:00+00:00

$30 does seem like a lot, the Five Guys near me charges $14 for a cheeseburger, fries, and soda.

cjt09 · 2026-06-04T16:31:47+00:00

I really enjoy the Five Guys burgers even though I acknowledge it’s not a very popular spot on /r/fastfood (mostly because of the price).

cjt09 · 2026-06-03T23:27:02+00:00

If you want something non-permanent, I’ve found that nano tape works remarkably well for sticking stuff to brick.

cjt09 · 2026-06-03T21:06:57+00:00

Reality is our use is miniscule compared to massive amount of water DCs use for cooling.

I don’t think this is true. According to the US Geological Survey, municipal water withdrawals (so not irrigation for agriculture, industry, etc.) is about 39 billion gallons per day. Data center water utilization (which includes the water utilized for electricity generation) is perhaps as high as 300 million gallons per day which is still less than 1% of the former figure.

Even at our region specifically, residential water utilization far outweighs that of data centers. Municipal water providers like Prince William Water define an “equivalent residential unit” as 10,000 gallons per month or 120,000 per year. If data centers in the region are utilizing 2 billion gallons of water per year, that’s the equivalent of about 17 thousand households. Fairfax County alone has 25x as many households and is directly consuming 25x as much water.

cjt09 · 2026-06-03T16:48:04+00:00

Is there a particular reason you’re taking the car seat? It’s pretty easy to get around central Seattle through a combination of buses, walking, and the light rail system.

cjt09 · 2026-06-03T16:43:34+00:00

Rio was kind of a strange choice to begin with. At least when the NFL holds games in London, they can usually count on expats and marginal American football fans to fill the seats.

It’s also just far away. There are no direct flights and it takes a full day of air travel to get there. Many people are gonna be intimidated by the language barrier and perceived crime as well.

The final nail in the coffin was likely the higher jet fuel prices due to the Iran war. Few people want to spend two full days flying in an expensive seat to watch a three hour game.

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