Maybe the NPS could just CLOSE DVNP during the hottest months? You can drive through, but no stops.

Glorious rain indeed!

I think we're beginning to see from these data centers that we can't reap the benefits (and perils) of AI without overloading the planet.

How about a constitutional amendment establishing congressional term limits?
That would help reduce the number of geriatrics that take up space in both houses.
I know it’s wishful thinking. I doubt 75% of the states could agree on anything.-

Another note on the queerness of the Olympics: NBC's broadcast of the opening ceremonies suspiciously chose to feature advertising breaks and interviews with athletes instead of dance performances on the floating disco floor as well as the queerest thing the Olympics has done since Greco-Roman wrestling: a musical performance by a semi-nude blue-painted Dionysian figure on a silver platter of flowers.

I happened to be watching one of the international broadcasts and caught it in real time, but was crushed to learn that no one in the US got to see this.

So I spent the last day or so making a side-by-side comparison of the US broadcast vs what was seen internationally. I uploaded it to the Internet Archive this morning.

https://archive.org/details/olympic-blue-man-4

Data centers in general and compute as a whole is becoming a huge green house gas / CO2 contributor. Semiconductor manufacturing is potentially even bigger and powered by non-renewable energy. It's a victory (for the planet) that hydroelectric renewable energy is powering datacenters.

Just a gentle reminder that we get 1/3 of our power from natural gas so imagine how much worse this will get as the legislature continues to push toward removing natural gas as an option. Unless and until people are ready to consider nuclear power, removing other energy sources is foolish and will result in deaths.

@4:

Well, that Dionysian tableau must have been seen somewhere in the U.S., because the MAGAts and fundie nut-jobs haven't been able to shut up about how a scene clearly depicting a Greek god was somehow "mocking" their White Jeezus by apparently vaguely resembling Da Vinci's "The Last Supper." I guess anytime you put a bunch of people in a row behind a long table you're showing your contempt for their god or whatever - unless you swap out Jeezus for Trump; that's okie-dokie.

American christians have a terminal case of main character syndrome. They think everything is about them and their silly little book of stories.

I'm not a sportsball person, but even I could see that the ball handling on the last goal was amazing.

I also can't help but smile at how Spanish-language futbol commentators seem to be chosen based on how long they can hold GOOOOOOOOOOOOOL!

That's interesting about grant PUD. They have been tinkering in small nuclear generation, and the word "nuclear" is even being whispered in certain circles in Seattle.

@7: i was watching and I didn't see the blue satyr - i just saw the tableau of drag queens and the dj with a halo, then the catwalk portion started.

I think @4 is correct - without the blue satyr, you could mistake that for a da vinci last supper parody. I did, but I DGAF, either, so it never occured to me that christian nutjobs would take offense.

7: It was a deliberately provocative opening for which the organizers have already issued apologies. Entertaining, but not the expected celebratory themes of international athletic competition.

@12 "not the expected celebratory themes of international athletic competition"

What, rampant jingoism and an ambiguous cartoon mascot?

They recreated a painting celebrating Ancient Greek themes in European art for the most canonically gay event in world history the world’s gayest, European-artiest city. It couldn’t possibly be more on-theme.

If anyone’s got their expectations crossed it’s the christians who seek offense and signs of the end times in everything they see. They are easily the most coddled people on earth. It's just good manners to say "sorry if we offended you" after the fact but there is absolutely nothing inherently wrong or out of place about the presentation itself.

The opening ceremony “controversy”, as COMTE @5 notes, just shows the hypocrisy of these MAGA christians (I won’t capitalize the “c” to show who really is important to them). Some display that maybe? could? be interpreted as “The Last Supper”? BLASPHEMY! But showing Trump in the Last Supper? Trump being personally anointed by Christ himself? Perfectly fine.

Sorry, COMTE @7.

@15- no one seems to recall the part in Brave New World where the fascists converted all the crosses to “T”. Their reasoning was different but the parallel is striking.

And @11 it should ALWAYS occur to us that Christian nutjobs will take offense. They’re like the scorpion stinging the swimming frog -it’s in their nature.

Speaking of mocking The Last Supper:

https://youtu.be/THa3RLTT9PA?feature=shared

I watch Olympic swimming and diving events, so I can hear American jock TV commenters enthuse about "smooth entry."

Another day, another exciting piece of news out of Israel. The good news is that the Israeli military police actually arrested 9 or 10 soldiers accused of raping a Palestinian detainee at one of their interrogation bases. Yay, accountability! Like real civilized countries do!

The bad news is that the local IDF soldiers at the base tried to prevent military police from arresting the soldiers. The Justice Minister was "shocked" that the accused soldiers were arrested as if they were dangerous criminals. A number of right wing members of the Knesset and their supporters tried to storm the base as well as the one where the soldiers were being held.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jul/29/israeli-inquest-into-alleged-abuse-of-palestinian-detainees-sparks-far-right-fury

At least in the US, Congresscritters had the decency to pretend to be outraged at the abuses occurring at Abu Ghraib. In Israel, a substantial minority not only is not surprised at sexual abuse of detainees, but supports it.

For the record (because it seems I have to do this every time) I do not support rapists of any flavor, whether they be state-sanctioned or not, Hamas or Israel. I would like all of them brought to justice in a court of law. I have no illusions that Hamas will try their abusers (though it's possible a successor government might). I hope that Israel will actually follow through and charge theirs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdQ9B1Hg5pE

And people wonder why I'm an atheist. Here are my top four reasons:
1. MAGAts
2. RWNJs
3. KKKorporate RepubliKKKan billionaires out to own everyone and everything.
4. Too much in modern religion has lapsed into nothing but hypocritical KKKorporate bullshit.

All four promote violence, hatred, fear, racism, sexism, and corruption.

In all my life I have yet to find a religious faith that equally values, respects, and recognizes the human rights and body autonomy of women and girls as well as men and boys. Currently there are over 8.5 billion people on this dying planet, and too many countries stubbornly see women and girls only as subservient baby machines forced to give birth like farm animals. This has led to my skepticism about religion, period---especially in regards to bibles. They were written and translated by men, entirely for men, obviously meant to trick and trap women.
Read any part of a King James, Gideon's, or other bible and you'll find repeated patterns of the most shameful misogyny and systematic racism. Any and all incredible accomplishments exclusively praise men, akin to the Heritage Foundation. Any happening or event less than desirable and a poor woman gets raped, beaten, desecrated, devalued, stoned, and / or burned at the stake. And we're supposed to rejoice? Not I.
Christmas is technically all about the gang rape of a married woman forced to give birth under the most primitive of conditions. Meanwhile, her lawfully wedded husband is supposed to click heels and be awed over a "savior" fathered by someone else. Why should I believe in this when bibles describe women and girls as chattel?
Largely thanks to reasons 1, 2, and 3 religion offers me nothing good, and rarely ever has.
I would SO love to be proven wrong.

By the way, my brother is also an atheist. He and I have yet to be struck by lightning.

Some utility recently sold a nuclear-powered data center to Amazon. I'm not cheering.

And responding to an AI prompt consumes 20x the electricity needed to answer a simple Google query.

Biden could have been working on term limits in January 2021. Instead he was focused on his second term.

@24 He didn't have the political winds at his back on court reform until the SCOTUS ruling on presidential immunity. Dobbs wasn't great, but it wasn't establishing a monarchy.

Plus you might remember a few kinda important things going on in government during the first part of 2021.

The constitutional amendment to end lifetime appointments for justices will never happen, just like DC will never become a state, and the electoral college will always remain. Sorry.

re server farms etc sucking up
all the Juice -- E WA's got
Tonnes of Sun -- use it
to pump the water up
(and Service Big Tech)
in the Daytime and
generate electricity
at night. oh: make
Them supply the
Infrastructure
whilst we the
PEEPS OWN
that Money-
making ma-
Chine.

6 apparent doesn't remember the WPPSS debacle, or that nuclear is still by far the most expensive energy option today.

Or recognise that "natural" gas, AKA methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than C02 -the accumlation of which is why the wests and Canada are burning prolifically year after year.

@28 Methane is indeed a very potent greenhouse gas- 25-30 times worse. But it exists, in landfills, in petroleum fields, in anaerobic digestors at sewage treatment plants. Using it productively is far better than just releasing it.

@26,

Yup, the impetus for making desperately needed changes to the system is entirely reliant upon gaining support for them from the same shitheads who benefit and enjoy a great deal of exploitative power from that same system in the first place. Good times.

@28 nuclear has come a long way since those days but there are only two options here. Either invest in nuclear or start rationing. You will never generate enough power with hydro, wind, solar to meet our current needs much less what we need if you remove natural gas. How many people will die if you start using random blackouts because the system is overloaded? That’s the reality of where we are headed.

@25 yes he did, everyone was mad about McConnell stealing an appointment from Obama. Even court packing was being discussed during election season. Biden was just too focused on "reaching across the aisle" and "restoring dignity to institutions" to do what cried out to be done.

That and Dem leadership is too weak to corral the fringes of their caucus like Manchin and Sinema (that or they prefer not to fix things lest they no longer be able to use them to drum up support every 4 years)

@26 Reform that "will never happen" becomes a lot more likely when Republicans see it as a way of blocking Democrats. It was Roosevelt winning a fourth term that convinced Republicans we needed presidential term limits. I could imagine a Democratic sweep that would give them the majorities needed to expand the Court to 13 justices, one for each circuit as it used to be. Democrats appointing four young justices that could easily keep a liberal majority on the court for 40 years would be just the thing to convince Republicans that we need term limits on the court, with a vacancy every two years, as their only chance of ever getting a majority on the court again.

“Sheriff’s deputy Sean Grayson, one of the responding officers, threatened Massey and then shot her in the face after she allegedly ‘rebuked’ Grayson.”

surely
they’re
not gonna
Defund this
poor guy, are they?

it’ll likely make it
Impossible to hire
Sociopaths as Po-po
& they’ll Never be able to
Stop Crime in America again

--source: Po-po
Unions everywhere

@31 We don't have 30 years to build new nuclear plants and cut greenhouse gas emissions:

"The evidence is clear: the time for action is now. We can halve emissions by 2030.

Without immediate and deep emissions reductions across all sectors, limiting global warming to 1.5°C is beyond reach. However, there is increasing evidence of climate action, said scientists in the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report released today.

Since 2010, there have been sustained decreases of up to 85% in the costs of solar and wind energy, and batteries. An increasing range of policies and laws have enhanced energy efficiency, reduced rates of deforestation and accelerated the deployment of renewable energy.

“We are at a crossroads. The decisions we make now can secure a liveable future. We have the tools and know-how required to limit warming,” said IPCC Chair Hoesung Lee. “I am encouraged by climate action being taken in many countries. There are policies, regulations and market instruments that are proving effective. If these are scaled up and applied more widely and equitably, they can support deep emissions reductions and stimulate innovation.”

https://www.ipcc.ch/2022/04/04/ipcc-ar6-wgiii-pressrelease/

@29 Methane is 80 times worse than CO2 for climate over 20 years. Cutting methane emissions (like in stopping fracking and eating less beef) is the best way to fight climate change at the moment:

Global methane emissions rising at fastest rate in decades, scientists warn

Researchers call for immediate action to reduce methane emissions and avert dangerous escalation in climate crisis
Oliver Milman

Global emissions of methane, a powerful planet-heating gas, are “rising rapidly” at the fastest rate in decades, requiring immediate action to help avert a dangerous escalation in the climate crisis, a new study has warned.

Methane emissions are responsible for half of the global heating already experienced, have been climbing significantly since around 2006 and will continue to grow throughout the rest of the 2020s unless new steps are taken to curb this pollution, concludes the new paper. The research is authored by more than a dozen scientists from around the world and published on Tuesday.[...]

Methane comes from the drilling and processing of oil, gas and coal, with a boom in fracking causing a rash of new gas projects this century. The gas is also emitted from livestock, primarily through the burps of cows, and increased animal agriculture, as well as to a lesser degree expanding rice production, has contributed.[..]

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jul/30/methane-emissions-study

not to mention the destruction
of aquifers by frackers' injecting
whatever they Please underground

Profiteers'll chase
fossil fuels till
there's No
Tomorrow

even if it
Kills us

and them.

@37 "Profiteers'll chase
fossil fuels till
there's No
Tomorrow"

Indeed Kristo, they will not stop unless we elect politicians that will stop them. We are facing climate breakdown and the collapse of ecosystems as shown by the 6th great extinction that we are undergoing. The cult of perpetual growth on a finite planet is nothing more than a death cult at this point in time of human civilization. The well being of future generations is at stake