The myth that AI data centers are using up all the water comes from some incorrect citations that have then swept through sensationalist and poorly fact-checked (looking at you Washington Post) news stories. One major contributor was Karen Hat's "Empire of AI" which overstated the usage by three orders of magnitude. (She did publicly correct that, but you can guess how many people are interested in the non-sensational numbers).

For proportion, California almond growers use 90x the fresh water of all US data centers combined.

Which is not to say that a data center can't still be a strain for some communities, but not in a more extraordinary way than e.g. the local university wanting to maintain a golf course.

But "AI IS SUCKING UP ALL THE WATER PEOPLE NEED TO SURVIVE!!!" is a wonderfully concrete - if completely false - complaint for people uneasy about the recent advances in technology to latch onto

So this has nothing to do with the building being a "data center" at all. The water used if for construction and it could just as well be a stadium or an apartment complex. But since people are talking about data centers using water we'll take any opportunity to jump in on that even if it's amplifying a misconception by mentioning it in adjacency to unrelated events.

Can you answer the question of why he would lie about either exactly? What is his sourced motivation? How does that stack against his incentive to not blithely throw away his career as an accomplished academic?

The actual explanation is much simpler. He is a world-reknown biologist, not a computer scientist or philosopher. He sounds dumb talking about what he is not an expert in.

You (I assume) have some developed expertise in the AI tooling. You (quite obviously) do not have any expertise in biology, or even the context of Dawkins statements you are alluding to, so you sound at least as dumb characterizing what he has said as "anti-trans crap."

The same IEA has warned repeatedly of the precarious position Europe has put themselves in with regard to fuel dependence. The Russian war on Ukraine and subsequent sanctions should have made that tangible but Europe just switched over to Gulf suppliers, exacerbating the present problem. In fact instead of reacting to increase domestic refining and reserves just last year Europe shut down 4 refineries (~400000 barrels per day) of capacity. It lets politicians pretend they are being green while actually just paying someone else to do the dirty work.

The US does all of its own refining and is able to send both crude and jet fuel to Europe to offset at least some of the deficit. The markets are rerouting and many of the global tankers (especially from Asia) are headed to the US to resupply, with the US set to almost double its exports. Unfortunately extra-crude doesn't help Europe's jet fuel problem much since they can't refine it.

... until it affects rich people.

People giving up their thinking abilities is nothing new.

What part of that fiction has any connection with the reality of the 1%?

The social media platforms would rather have it treated like an R rated movie that kids can't get into than simply not run ads or show content for people they aren't explicitly connected to on the platform.

Because most people would opt for that.

Imagine only seeing content from people you follow and who follow you back.

The British traded spice. They didn't use it.

Even if we want oil to be the currency we use to manipulate the world, us using it is a very silly way to go about it because it just makes us susceptible to manipulation.

We're supposed to want OTHER people to be dependent on oil and for US to control it.

Instead it's just us shooting ourselves in the foot constantly. We're supposed to be hoarding oil to drive up prices. Not consuming it.

- hosting child sexual abuse material and taking a year to remove it
- creating a means for sex traffickers to turn their victims into $$$
- providing a means to sell sexual content of others (e.g revenge porn) without consent

I've seen a lot of comments here in discussion to gig work where it's considered exploitive for Uber/Lyft to not provide health coverage and other benefits, minimum pay accounting for externalities like vehicle wear, etc. Does OF provide any of that?

They can certainly be "better" than other porn sites in ways (although the lack of any physically present third party seems like a major exploitation risk, per links above) but that isn't itself some moral achievement. The guy who peddles crack is doing less harm than the guy who peddles heroin but I don't think he's due for any citizenship awards.

And OF is absurdly profitable so if they really wanted to engage in a humanitarian mission to make porn "ethical" they have lots of financial buffer to combat exploitation. It's clearly not their objective.

Allow me to rephrase with exactly the same meaning, "The problem is customers could receive a $2 discount for coming in on the low-demand day." Are you sure that is... bad?

Stuff like this effectively winds up very economically progressive because people for whom that discount matters will go to the extra effort to get it and people with high-incomes won't care and will effectively subsidize the low price. What do you think that $2 coupon from the newspaper is doing? Setting up exactly the same $16.99 vs $14.99 price differential.

Conversely, consider on Saturday the person who absolutely needs the tomatoes to finish a dinner already in progress can pay the high-demand price and the person who was just thinking about things nice to keep stocked in the pantry can wait, vs pricing low so that the item is already out-of-stock from indifferent shoppers when that person who really needs it walks in.

It's easy to sell people a story in which price differentiation is a means of screwing them over but it is just as often to their direct benefit. People implicitly accept the good of this for things they already experience like coupons, but anything new sounds scary.

De Immenso et Innumerabilibus On the Infinite and the Countless By Giordano Bruno Of Nola

is essential reading. It sounds like 1950's sci fi.

Here is the actual story, transcription repeated from here:

So, no, contrary to your unsourced claim, it was based on (a) a specific incident (b) material concern about the implications of the specific incident (c) escalation through the chain of involved parties (d) without apparent direction by the "convicted felon president and war criminal in chief".

Also pretty clear from the anecdote how it is that DoD has sincere concerns with actual grounding. Debate over the legitimacy of those concerns, the ethicality of what they want the software to do, etc. would all be reasonable to discuss. But it really does help if you want to argue against something to start by properly understanding what you are debating.

They didn't exactly whittle down their options before settling on sending missiles and drones at the civilian populations in neutral neighbors. It was among the first things they started doing.

In fact, during the 12-Day War Israel took out their missile command so thoroughly that for a long time there was no one to launch missiles in retaliation. Iran learned from that and had given the IRGC members pre-determined launch orders so they could at independently. That means shooting missiles at everyone in the vicinity was their plan even before any operations started.

I think people struggle to grasp that when it's called a "terrorist regime" it's not name-calling, it's actually how Iran's insane theocratic leadership thinks. They kill their own people by the tens of thousands and don't bat an eye. They would legitimately struggle to answer why killing a few civilians next door for leverage should be considered an immoral act.

The fact this was ever a question is a farce.

We all pay for the gas in our cars to get to work. We pay for the electricity that runs our homes and computers.

Somehow, big tech thinks they can just mooch instead of paying for the batteries for their toys.

Crypto and AI should have launched a great leap forward in clean energy.

All the oligarchs care about is profit, not legacy.

I hate that I can't run MS Office on my cluster of headless Linux servers.