Record heat + severe snow deficit resulting in record low snow cover is anything but surprising.

Gonna be fun when the natural cycle is already dipping into extreme drought, such that we are now erasing the one thing that can mitigate it.

The worst states by almost every measure are GOP run. AL, MS, OK just to drop a few. Dem states are significantly better off on average.

But our problem is, you note correctly, the binary choice we have. Bad actors on both sides know that they will be handed the reins when the other side inevitably fails at something.

Support Ranked Choice Voting so we can have true 3rd party candidates with a chance to win elections.

ask yourself how much pain red state MAGA needs to feel before we see a Nixonian level shift towards Democrats...for a generation.

That's a high high bar and we aren't anywhere close to it yet.

oh Comcast and friends will entirely pay the bribe to continue using shitty routers.

But the option to have a 'separate' router from the modem will certainly disappear.

quite a few will pa$$ the test.

Certainly an improvement but chip level backdoors still exist...and are even more likely built in China

the only secure windows is CE/ME/NT

That's a societal problem we haven't really solved yet. AI/DataCenters are using VAST amounts of energy and potable water...and aren't passing the full costs on to their users directly.

I'm in NoVA, Data center capital of the world, and we're seeing power bills jumping by 20-30% per year at this point. My usage hasn't changed...the only thing that has is the massive overbuild being done.

My house will have 14 data center complexes within 1/4 mile.

Doubles your productivity....probably increases the power/energy used by multiple orders of magnitude.

A comparison of power usage before and after would be interesting.

A fun game is asking people who their State level reps are.

A staggering percentage have no idea...and also wonder why laws get passed they don't like.

FTFY

*Traded Valuable Real Estate* - In Prince William County VA, they are pulling in $300 million more per year than they were just 10 years ago. Most County budgets don't get a new 20% in 10 years.

At macro scale there's some truth to that. But at ground level, public sentiment will almost always trail the action by multiple years.

And since these get built BEFORE that sentiment resonates with even a plurality, you're stuck with them.

Our County Board members are part-time and as of 2020, made $40K (now ~75K). These same members are receiving up to $200,000 EACH in political donations. Nice part time work if you can get it.

Oh and in the span of 10 years, the county receives $300 million annually in new tax revenue from the DCs. Money speaks really god damned loudly.

I live 600 ft from an Amazon DC in Northern VA. There will be FOURTEEN DC complexes within 1/4 mile of our development.

It ain't fun.

This Business Insider video has a really good example of the sound https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

One thing that makes this really hard is that sound waves, like water waves, bounce. During the last big snow, it changed the sound profile so much that I could literally feel my hardwood floor vibrate. Normally it's low end grunt noise but that was even lower.

Because of this, regulations need to 'over protect' residential areas, because literally every home will have a unique sound level. Unfortunately, that's going to be a hard sell against Million$ in DC political money.

And worse, *multiple* DCs nearby, the sound is additive. Two 50 db speakers produce more than 50 db in volume. If the ordinance is 55 and the additive is 57 - who do you blame? In a river, we measure each polluter at the source - So far, getting sound meters installed AT the DC property lines has been a no go.

aye matey! Lessons were definitely learned on one side of that transaction LOL