#even if most of the cool effects are just

[realcleverscience]

Respectfully, these concerns are exaggerated:

ChatGPT uses so much energy that the US is literally reversing course on coal and gas usage to make up for it. At this point, solar power is cheaper than building coal and gas. This is why 86% of new power sources created last year across the globe were renewable (irena.org). In addition, most major tech companies have committed to being 100% renewably powered. Lastly, how the US and other countries primarily source power is not determined by ai needs, or even the tech industry in general, but rather by politics. (e.g. The US just elected trump, who is likely to push for fossil fuel usage and stymie renewables growth. Other countries aren't so stupid.)

In Santa Clara, for example, data centers used 60% of the ENTIRE CITY'S electricity. This is in the heart of silicon valley, so naturally they have a disproportionately high number of data centers. This is not typical. also, how many of those data centers were for AI vs any other type of digital use, like bitcoin mining (which is actually a scourge), managing the huge online gaming industry, or even mundane internet stuff, like running the tumblr website.

ChatGPT uses 1-3 bottles of water for cooling for every query you put into it. This is FRESH WATER, which is evaporated and eventually mostly returns to the ocean, effectively removing a lot of it from our already dwindling fresh water supply on the planet. This is what I found: "10-50 queries consumes 500 millilitres of water" (oecd.ai), which is around half a bottle. Let's average it 30 queries for a half bottle = 1 query uses around ~17ml, or around [edit: 1.6%] of a bottle of water, or around 1% of OP's claim.

It also consumes 17 THOUSAND TIMES more electricity than the average American home. Again, this isn't really accurate. Part of the issue is that AIs use power in two distinct ways: Firstly, the training session. This is "teaching" the AI to work. It happens once, at the start, and is indeed pretty computational/energy intensive. e.g. GPT3 likely used over 1,000 MWh for it's training. But this is still equivalent to the energy usage of just 120 US homes. The second stage of AI is *using* the ai, asking it questions, etc. This part is MUCH less energy intensive, with query's requiring 0.3 - 1 Wh per query, depending on complexity. Assuming a query requires a full 1Wh, that means each query is equivalent to running a 100W lightbulb for 6 minutes. This is not a lot.

The AI boom wastes so much electricity that we are very immediately risking US cities having to have rolling blackouts just to keep up with the energy demands, as early as NEXT YEAR This article presents a potential concern, not a reality. They are worried about the pace of new power installations keeping up with AI demand. This is a fair concern, of course, but all it really says is that we need to ensure that we're growing our energy resources quickly. And again, whether this happens is not really about the AI but about political decisions. (Frankly, I'm more concerned about this with Trump in charge but I think other countries will be fine.)

Gen AI's water usage is projected to hit 6.6 BILLION meters cubed by 2027 This is a lot but it's also very small on a global scale. Consider that just the pistachio farmers in just California alone use 2.5 BILLION meters cubed of water each year. Beef production alone in the US alone uses over 100 BILLION m3 of water each year. So yes, 6.6B m3 is a lot - but it's also a tiny amount for what it offers in useful work. Lastly, and more important than all the previous points, is that the OP analysis is based on the status quo. It's projecting current requirements into the future. But tech is not static. It improves each year. Tech oligarchs are heavily incentivized to reduce their water and energy footprints for a variety of reasons, most importantly, that it saves them money. At the same time, the history of computing shows regular improvements in things like energy efficiency and computing efficiency. In other words, it makes sense to expect AI tech to be much more energy and water efficient as time goes on. And at the same time, things like total power available are growing with the growth of sustainable energy, battery tech, etc. What's more, AI is already being used to help us achieve these goals: To design more efficient computers, more efficient energy tech, and even for new techs, like water-from-air generators that unlike older versions based on condensers (like in AC unit), these new ones can provide water even in extremely dry conditions, while using very little energy. This may well solve the global water crisis in the coming years and make the 'data center water issue' into a truly non-issue. Or, let me quote the first article OP linked to: "Tom's Guide AI expert Ryan Morrison said of the new reports: "While it is true that there is a significant environmental impact from AI, largely driven by the massive compute requirements, it will become less of a problem as models get more efficient and custom chips take over from power-hungry GPUs... AI may well also be the solution to its own energy problem, as well as the wider energy problems facing society. As the technology improves it will be used to design more efficient compute and cooling systems that minimise the impact on the environment. The designing the path to net zero may require AI."

So, in short: Yes, AI does have intense energy and water requirements. And yes, this will require sensible gov't policy to avoid problems. (and yes, I expect trump to do poorly on this.) And yes, we should all be paying attention and demanding good policy. However, the concerns have been overblown, presenting without context, generally ignore the regular gains in this field, and ignore how the 'problem', ai, is already proving itself part of the solution.

Idgaf if you don't want to write essays for school. I don't care if you don't want to write corporate emails yourself. I don't care if you can't draw well, I don't care if you can't write well, I don't care if you just really really want to talk to your favorite fictional character but don't want to RP with a real person because you have social anxiety or whatever

If you're still regularly using generative ai, chatgpt or midjourney or character.ai or literally whatever the fuck, im personally blaming you when my utility prices start going up.

[talenlee]

4e: The Pinball Wizard

Back in the heydays of the 4th edition community being a community that all met on a single forum and shared a common lexicon and all that, there were phrases, truisms, slang and tropes we recognised and used to speed our way through conversations. This was true of 3rd edition too, since the community was actually, broadly speaking, the same thing, but that community kind of uprooted itself and moved on to other places, while the 4th edition remnant seems to have not really coalesced in a subsequent form. We don’t really have a 1d4chan or Brilliant Gameologists or deeply intimidating Pathfinder Subreddit as places to scare people off, and instead it’s stuff like…

Well, this blog post might get shared on the subreddit. Hi reddit! I like you even if we don’t agree about Blackguards!

Anyway, thing is, there are things that now have no meaning except their place in 4th edition conversations, and are functionally un-googleable because they’re very generic ways of just using words, or maybe, were named after something else. Back in City of Heroes there was a powerful supergroup known as the Green Machine, that was entirely team-buffing healers that refused to heal, and that’s not a term you can search for meaningfully. Another group that existed and that shares its title with today’s subject was a group of kinetics, where everyone could use powers to make everyone else fire off at super speed, showing you don’t need good powers if you can fire off your best powers every second.

They called themselves the Pinball Wizards, and now, if you go look for what that means in 4th edition D&D you kinda find nothing.

Here’s the story of one of the more distinct power level errata of D&D 4th edition, where in 2011, a single sweeping change to the way the rules worked destroyed a strategy and in the process brought something ridiculous down to merely really good.

This build was a combination of two basic parts, which were well and strictly defined under 4th edition rules. The first is zones. A zone is an effect, made by a power with the ‘zone’ keyword so you knew where to look for it, that looks at that area for some reason. Some zones are used for things like a healing aura, or a space that a character can move around in freely, but very commonly, a zone is used to represent an effect that’s bad that lasts. This can be a bunch of falling shards of glass, a cloud of toxic venom that hovers in a space, or a ground teeming with sharp, jagged vines on thorns.

Zones are extremely cool, make no mistake, and they tend to fall into the toolkit of the Controller. Controllers want to deprive enemies of actions, and zones are a great way to give enemies a bad choice: Stay in an area to do something they want to do, or spend actions getting out of it. Since zones do a good job of representing effects like rings of fire, or clouds of poison, or raining ice, it’s stuff that hits the wizardy feeling of editions past.

The other part of this is forced movement. 4th edition had a family of these effects known by their more specific names of push pull slide, but these are ways to change where enemies are positioned and everyone who complains about fighters in 4th edition is usually complaining about these and they are cowards. These effects show up everywhere, but undeniably, if you’re looking at the people who will do the most of them, you want controllers.

The build that worked out of this was known as the Pinball Wizard. You played a Wizard who used one of a number of long-lasting powers that created a zone that did something dangerous when someone entered it. Then you used your other powers to slide something in and out of that zone over and over again. Wizards got more than a few powers that did slides, and they got access to items and feats that improved their slides. You could use a slide effect to turn two squares of slide movement (and we’re talking like, 4-8 squares for builds that are trying) into like, 40 damage.

At level 2, when tanks are happy to have 40 hit points.

Anyway, you might be thinking the sensible solution is to make it so that these zone powers are limited in how often they can have their effect – and it kinda makes sense, narratively, in the context of the world, right? Like, an enemy or person isn’t going to breathe more if they run back and forth through a poison cloud.

In 2011, Wizards released an update to the compendium that added that rules information to every single damaging zone power in the game, with a note of the when, and an article explaining why they did it. It was a perfectly reasonable rules update made through a digital system they had and realistically speaking, the only thing to mourn is that there’s now no good reason to ever let a player get away with this use of these powers together, because it’s pretty silly.

The system that was left after this change was obviously a better system. It had a clear, specific template that it could use thereafter and while it did lose some edge cases, it was implemented thoroughly and comprehensively in a way 3rd edition almost never managed to execute. This was because of a central control system, the compendium, but it also spoke to a problem that a game normally about disconnecting and engaging with a very material play space was going to have to confront head-on.

Basically: This kind of errata existed in the rules, sure, and if you download a rules compendium, every power that can be changed mentions the 2011 change. But the books don’t. The books still have the rules change and to learn how the game works, you have to know it. Or you have to use a digital compendium, which presents a new problem for a game that is meant to work with paper and dice.

These were inevitable evolutions of technology and they interest me because they kinda present problems and solutions at scale. The actual problem of a wizard stacking a bunch of redundant effects together to kick an enemy through the boundary of their zones as a single incident was not a meaningful problem to a table. If it’s a problem, it’s a problem that has an administrative option to work with – the Dungeonmaster can look at it, and decide it’s too good and talk to the players about it. That problem is solvable almost instantly if everyone in the group and game has a good relationship and respects the DM.

But if you made the game, you don’t have a problem that can be solved on the spot. You have a problem of all the players, in a communal space, who bring it up and ask if it makes sense and consult with one another and now you have the problem that looks like at scale your product has a flaw and you need to address it to make that flaw not look like you don’t know what you’re talking about. Oh, what makes a good game is important here, it isn’t not important.

It is neither a good thing nor a bad thing.

It is a thing that few games get, not really, unless they’re very big, and trying to do a lot. It’s barely something that even the next tier down of games need to care about. Errata happens, people care about making the books better. But most people don’t have a comprehensive central database where they can update all the powers that use a particular wording.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

[elrielffs]

I love how antis try to downplay the Lightsinger theory because besides the fact that they have made theories out of LESS evidence then there is for Gwyn=Lighsinger, we know they don't like it cause it poo poos on their ship BC interactions and "mates".

They also say that it's misogynistic cause it's blaming Gwyn for Azriel's behavior...it's not blaming Gwyn for Azriel's behavior, it's explaining Azriel's behavior.

Azriel was acting weird. The whole thing was weird. We ask, why? Antis will say it's because Gwyn is his mate (which has been disproven because it's been shown over and over that he does not react like a mate would/should instinctively), others posit the Lightsinger theory and most people I see say this don't think Gwyn is evil or even doing it knowingly. (She could be but I don't think Gwyn is just for TEh EVAls, if she was doing it knowingly, I think it would be because she felt she had no choice)

Besides, which sounds better? Azriel just really be fucking stupid and dumb and passing on a necklace he got for another woman (which he didn't even specify Gwyn, Clotho did) and thinking that's A okay and smiling about it which seems really OOC....

or

Something funky, power wise going on to make him act that way.

I know which one I'd rather read about as a love interest.

Edit: Also like to add that idk/idc how much Gwyn's Lightsinger abilities will effect Elriel (if it's only this once instance, okay or if it's part of some bigger plan of Koschei's, okay), I think it would just add a lot to Gwyn's character and be really cool in general.

[hikarielizabethbloom]

I just asked you bc i saw some Celebrimbor/Sauron fans in your post, ofc not you, being kind of hypocrite with Haladriels and their ship in how the Hal/Saul/Gal is toxic but the Cel/Sau is not. and i find that kind of ironic and i wanted your opinion about it know you are a multi stan.

Oh, okay. This is a serious question���one can never be too sure these days. I apologize if I came across as a bit harsh; that wasn't my intention. Or maybe it was, only because I thought you were being a troll.

What I said is true: my experience with silvergifting fans has been positive. They are some of the nicest people on this app. However, I don’t know your experiences, and I’m sorry if some of them have been rude to you. Bad apples exist everywhere.

I should also admit that my only negative trop experience with shippers involved a few (though most are really cool) haladriel fans. I hope you find the irony in that!

To be honest, I don't agree with using the adjective "toxic" that many fans use on this app. In my opinion, a toxic relationship requires two toxic individuals. I would describe both ships as abusive. However, that doesn't stop me from shipping them. Not at all.

I’m not overly focused on endgame or canon. I enjoy many relationships that aren’t canon or endgame, and some aren't even intended to be. I can appreciate endgame toxic relationships, but it really depends on the show (not trop). But, when abuse is involved, I prefer that the victim stays as far as possible from the abuser and finds happiness with someone who treats them right, even if that makes me a bad shipper. 😂

In my opinion, the show effectively highlights the abusive nature of all the relationships involving Sauron.

[indiestsnake]

“Absolute power, but only for a moment…”

“Pure godhood. Transcendence of the being.”

“In the name of Duality, for this war’s end, and polarity’s destruction…”

“BURN!!!”

Perspective practice with Duality that quite literally spiraled into messing with brushes. And writing poetry.

Late Startober Day Five- Transcendence I suppose :P

[cent-scratchnsniff]

something bad did indeed happen to that man. spent abt 25 minutes trying to find a better picture of that one (1) offical piece with his eyes open that wasnt compressed or tiny

[halfdeadwallfly]

[musubiki]

does coco ever bring up the kidnapping to tease taffy?

I DIDNT THINK ABOUT THAT BUT IT WOULD BE AMAZING IF SHE DID!!!!!!!!!!! taffy says anything along the lines of "dont do that" and she goes "or what? gonna kidnap me?"

(bonus points for the rare times where taffy doesnt back down and gives her A Look™️ and says "Maybe." and cocos brain short circuits for a second)

[sometimeswritingsometimesdying]

i've had a vision of aiden and black magic by little mix and now i'm knee deep in a modern magic au where aiden sells cheesy love potions by being hot (it's a scam)

[pallases]

quite pleasantly surprised by wicked movie but i Will say we were robbed of elphaba leaning in close to glinda saying “come with me to the emerald city” followed by glinda’s “i’ve always wanted to see the emerald city” while looking deep into her eyes arms around her shoulders twirling elphaba’s hair

[anghraine]

I honestly feel a lot better about having posted anything at AO3, even things I won't finish, and there's something that warms my heart about posting fic for The Borgias in 2024.

I was actually deciding between two different WIPs to represent that "phase" between my undergrad years and grad school. The other one was the prologue to a Legend of Korra/Star Wars fusion in which Noatak/Amon is Korra's father and this is revealed in S1 (I think it was going to be Tarrlok who figures it out first, lol) and it actually affects the plot and it isn't just the LOK canon plot with minor adjustments—the fusion with SW was meant to be more than vague I-am-your-father inspiration. In any case, I only ever wrote the prologue about the Noatak/Senna quasi-romance that led to Korra's existence and never even got to the sheer comedy of Korra as Tarrlok's niece :(

But the Juan and Lucrezia as dysfunctional twins one-shot is closer to being a whole fic (in a side-story way) and I did like being able to add one more to my Borgias oeuvre—and getting at least some part of that AU on AO3 after all the time I spent on it!

[lucalicatteart]

-- Poorly Constructed Enchanted Tool --

A small tool carved from a fruit tree seed. Energy to power the enchantment has seemingly run-out long ago, and the method of recharging is unknown - but, based on the appearance, it's very likely that this was once used for detecting magic. Usually, looking through the glass center would highlight areas of higher magical energy concentration present in the viewer's environment, even if they were otherwise obscured to the naked eye. While this form of enchantment itself is highly advanced, the craftsmanship of the item is far less neat or complex than what might be typically seen in similar devices. It may have been made as part of training/practice, or as a hasty replacement for a previous tool that had broken.

[calico-kiwi]

sometimes dreams are insightful. like the time i had a dream where i fell asleep on the shoulder of my former best friend and realized it was because i missed hugging her.

sometimes they’re stupid though and mean absolutely nothing. like the one i just had about a weird marionette doll and her frankenstein like husband having to flee their adams family style house to some random italian countryside to escape the police while trying to figure out how to be parents to their newborn child

[sysig]

Bad time of it, all things considered (Patreon)

[pup-pee]

my father telling me how scared he was when i ran away from the house but i cant express how scared i was 2 b in the house

hey, whats up w/that?

[fragmentedblade]

I called it, Ruan Mei is deranged and shady as hell