#I also haven't. like. drawn with this method in several months so it's a bit rusty but [shaky thumbs up]

[khytal]

waaaahhhhhh :(

(alternate version w/ blood:)

[truth-bound]

I would like to reblog this again and add a bit of a caveat that many many servers that aren't AI use the evaporative cooling method over air cooling. A large data center can use between 1 mil to 5 mil gallons of water in a day. This problem isn't unique to AI at all, though it can be exasperated.

A major issue is that companies that want to cut on costs have their servers in places where there is cheaper low carbon sources of power but inversely much less water. So in Arizona it is a huge issue that any data center can use up 10-50 million people's worth of water when they already are in a drought BUT there are plentiful solar farms for renewable power and wind farms as a back up. It would make sense as a company to choose to be somewhere with low cost renewable energy if one of your core values is minimizing environmental impact. Anyone could feel good using the more close to carbon neutral options for power and forget what else your build needs to function. Namely water.

For me in the American South East it would not be hard to use water and still be relatively low impact. It rains so so much here, the air is constantly humid, there are so many lakes and rivers just around. This is fine for a good majority of the internet that is in Virginia which has high rainfall but Northern California also hosts a good bit of the internet and that's a lot more unideal. California is known for being dry, and using up so much water in an area like that is scary. The industry uses a lot of water. It's a part of the deal, dealing with stuff that hot.

However, even though a big chunk of the internet is parsed through these servers it isn't as solely computational as generative AI is like ChatGPT.

Ya wanna know where ChatGPT is for example? Des Moines Register claims it is in Des Moines Iowa. Lets take a look at what that means. The servers, which are typical Microsoft style setups, use primarily evaporative cooling in the summer months. The servers opened some time around 2022. Iowa historically goes through extreme droughts however, according to KCCI Des Moines News, as of May 9th 2024 Iowa is no longer in an "extreme drought" since 2022. This sounds good but it goes on to state that there is still significant long term precipitation and groundwater deficits in Iowa, with 44% of the state in moderate to severe drought.

In a quote from Iowa Starting Line, the state climatologist Justin Glisan comments on how odd the drought is and says "It hasn't been coupled with intense heat for long periods of time. Now, of course, we've had heat waves through the last three and a half years, but we haven't seen extremely warm temperatures in spring and summer as we have in 1988 and 2012." This was October of 2023.

If the OpenAI and Microsoft servers were first built and operating in or around 2022 in West Des Moines then an easy correlation could be drawn that OpenAI's servers are directly causing a drought in Iowa. However, I noticed something else. The same article that says its an odd drought also says that there were no serious crop failures or widespread water restrictions. Then I went to look at the map of the drought in Iowa.

Interesting! Now if I had to guess I'd think that Des Moines would be in or close to the red zone.

Lets see...

Huh! It is in moderate to severe drought, but not the Extreme drought area. Its almost two full counties away. Its even closer to an "abnormally dry" area than the extreme area.

I am going to investigate this later, as my lunch break has just ended and I need to get back to work. I want to say that I have yet to come to a conclusion on this but it is fascinating to me.

Y'all I know that when so-called AI generates ridiculous results it's hilarious and I find it as funny as the next guy but I NEED y'all to remember that every single time an AI answer is generated it uses 5x as much energy as a conventional websearch and burns through 10 ml of water. FOR EVERY ANSWER. Each big llm is equal to 300,000 kiligrams of carbon dioxide emissions.

LLMs are killing the environment, and when we generate answers for the lolz we're still contributing to it.

Stop using it. Stop using it for a.n.y.t.h.i.n.g. We need to kill it.

Sources:

[hallmark-movie-fanatics]

Becca Tobin on Why Stephanie & Ben Are a 'Great Match' in 'Sister of the Bride'

By Meredith Jacobs Meredith Jacobs

Women can have it all — love and a career — and that's exactly what Stephanie is after in the newest Hallmark Channel rom-com, Sister of the Bride.

In Becca Tobin's latest movie with the network, she plays Stephanie, for whom everything seems to be falling into place when she's up for tenure and her boyfriend of six months, Ben (Ryan Rottman), proposes. Upon returning home to share the news of their engagement with her family, she learns that her sister, Tracy (Chelsea Gilson), is also newly engaged.

TV Insider spoke with Tobin about Sister of the Bride and what draws her to Hallmark films.

Can you start by talking about your character? Where is Stephanie personally and professionally when the movie begins?

Becca Tobin: Stephanie is on track to make tenure as an anthropology professor, and she is in a really exciting place in her career because she's one of the youngest in her field at the moment to be on track to doing that.

She is newly engaged to her boyfriend, and they hit a bit of a crossroads when he gets the opportunity of a lifetime for a job in Cambridge. The movie picks up in a place where they've just gotten engaged and he is up for this big job, so they're figuring out what comes next.

So, let's talk about Ben. Who is he and what makes him such a good match for Stephanie that getting engaged after six months is a no-brainer?

Ben is also a really career-driven man, and he's kind and loving, and after six months, Stephanie talks about how she's never felt this way about someone and even though it's quick, it felt special and different. We've all been in those situations before.

They have an incredible connection, and from the beginning of the movie, you really do root for them as a couple because they have a lot of similarities with the career stuff, and they obviously are very family-oriented and they want a family of their own one day. They're a great match, it's just sometimes timing is really complicated with relationships.

They haven't been dating too long, so are the challenges they face here the first real problems they've had in their relationship?

Yeah, they're probably the biggest problems they've faced in six months and they're pretty big problems, so they've been thrown into the fire off the bat.

How do the two of them work through conflict? Similar methods? Different ones?

They seem to deal with things similarly. At first, they both want to avoid and not really have to think about the different options because they're waiting to get the final verdict on the job, and then they get the final verdict and they both are too afraid to talk about it because they love each other so much that they are both very scared to lose each other by discussing it.

Ultimately, they communicate and they voice their really true, honest opinions and feelings about the issue and they come to a conclusion.

Can you talk about Stephanie's family? What are they like, especially in comparison to her, and how does she get along with each member?

Stephanie comes from a really, really tight family. She has a sister and her two parents, and they are all pretty similar, but Stephanie has definitely been the most impulsive of the family members. Her sister is an attorney, and she's been very rational her whole life, and Stephanie operates a little bit more from her heart. You can see that [her family has] dealt with this her whole life, and they love her and accept her for it, but that's definitely something that she does differently from the rest of the family.

How does Ben get along with Stephanie's family?

At first, there's a little bit of tension just because he's spending time with my family for the first time, and it's after a very quick engagement, so you can see that Stephanie's dad is hesitant. It's tense in the beginning, but Stephanie's sister and mom really do love Ben from the get-go, so it is a nice thing to see.

Can you compare the sisters' relationships? What do Stephanie and Ben admire about Tracy and Preston's relationship, and what do Tracy and Preston admire about Stephanie and Ben's?

Tracy and Preston have been together a lot longer, for several years before their engagement. They're just a little bit more of the planners, but I think that Stephanie and Ben's connection is just as deep. It's just a different kind, but I think each sister respects the other and sees that Preston is such a good match and Ben is such a good match, even though they're very different people.

You've now done two wedding movies and one Christmas movie now on Hallmark. Is there anything you'd like to tackle next on the network? Do you have anything else coming up?

Nothing's coming up, but I always have such a good time doing these movies, so I really have no preference. I would love to do another Christmas movie. I think that that's just such an incredible time of year for the network, and it's just such a fun to be a part of, so that would be awesome, but again, I would do any type of project with the network because I'm just such a big fan and it's always such an enjoyable experience.

(A Song for Christmas)

What draws you to these roles, where you know your character's going to have a happy ending?

I really like that you know with Hallmark, you're going to, most of the time, get that happy ending. We like seeing that, women, men, no matter where you come from or where you live or what your situation is, it's always really nice to sit down and immerse yourself in this world of Hallmark. I'm really drawn to these projects and these characters because it's always very positive and optimistic.

These roles are also really three-dimensional women. Stephanie, for instance, is a really family-oriented girl who wants a family of her own but also wants a really incredible career, and so that resonates with me a lot because that's pretty much who I am and all the women in my life. I like being able to represent that for women and be able to say, "you can have it all and it's okay to want it all."

Sister of the Bride, Movie Premiere, Saturday, June 29, 9/8c, Hallmark Channel

SOURCE:

https://www.tvinsider.com/789085/becca-tobin-sister-of-the-bride-hallmark-stephanie-ben/