Northern Virginia’s wary embrace of data centers could have major long-term impacts on both water consumption and wastewater treatment across the region, the Fairfax County Environmental Quality Advisory Council (EQAC) says in its annual report for 2024.
The 134-page document offers a status update and recommendations on environmental issues, including land use, air and water quality, transportation, waste management, climate change and ecological conservation.
A section on water supply and wastewater treatment, and how data centers could impact both, might raise eyebrows the highest among regional policymakers.
Data centers require large amounts of electricity to operate, and one option for addressing all the heat that’s produced as a byproduct is evaporative cooling, a ventilation system that utilizes water to cool the air.
In one scenario suggested in EQAC’s report, a major uptake of evaportive cooling by large new data centers in the region could require 70 million gallons of water per day — “almost doubling” the existing consumptive water use in the Potomac River basin.
Agencies that handle the D.C. region’s water flow would face the burden of making more water available at the outset and treating the residual amount that flows into wastewater treatment facilities.
Residue that is discharged from evaporative cooling systems has heavy concentrations of saline, known as “blowdown.” Levels of sodium are “already of some concern” in the 590-square-mile Occoquan River watershed, although less so in the Potomac River basin, the report notes.
The report makes three recommendations to the Board of Supervisors on addressing the potentially heavy water demands for data centers:
Consider ways of possibly cutting off water for data center use during periods of drought
Find ways to use recycled wastewater rather than fresh water for cooling
Set rules prohibiting the return of saline-laden water in areas served by the Occoquan Reservoir
Eventually, the Potomac River, like the mighty Colorado River, might be used up by the time it reaches Great Falls at Washington D.C., or merely a trickle of hyper saline water. That won't be bad for the environment at all, am I right?
Plans by Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta to build an AI data center in the US that runs on nuclear power were thwarted in part because a rare species of bee was discovered on land earmarked for the project, according to people familiar with the matter.
Zuckerberg had planned to strike a deal with an existing nuclear power plant operator to provide emissions-free electricity for a new data center supporting his artificial intelligence ambitions.
However, the potential deal faced multiple complications including environmental and regulatory challenges, these people said.
The discovery of the rare bee species on a location next to the plant where the data center was to be built would have complicated the project, Zuckerberg told a Meta all-hands meeting last week, according to two people familiar with the meeting.
The blow comes as rivals Amazon, Google, and Microsoft have all struck deals recently with nuclear power plant operators to fulfill rising energy demands from data centers as they race to train and maintain power-hungry AI models. One AI query consumes up to 10 times the energy of a standard Google search.
Meta is continuing to explore various deals for carbon-free energy, including nuclear, one of the people said. Meta declined to comment.
Nuclear is increasingly viewed as a way to get stable, round-the-clock power during the AI wars between Big Tech groups.
According to Financial Times, CEO Mark Zuckerberg informed Meta employees that the decision to halt the project stemmed in part from concerns surrounding the bee species. Although the specific type of bee has not been disclosed, the rusty patched bumblebee is the only type of bee in the continental U.S. that is protected under the Endangered Species Act.
While recent technological developments have enabled the desalination of
sea water to create "clean" water, the process is expensive and limited to
coastal areas. Some scientists have turned to Atmospheric Water Harvesting,
instead, using devices such as nets to collect dew or "harvest" water from
fog.
"Even in arid low-humidity regions, there is moisture
in the air that we could use for drinking water or irrigation purposes, but
harvesting it cost-efficiently requires advanced materials," Dr Samer Taha,
CEO at Atoco, tells Yahoo News. How does it work?
MOF-303
(the 'MOF' stands for metal-organic framework) is a material that was
designed with the help of AI, and is engineered at the nanoscale with a
highly complex atomic structure which helps to "trap" water molecules.
It’s
an "adsorbent" (as opposed to ‘absorbent’) which means it traps water on its
surface and has been designed to have a huge surface within a tiny area. Dr Taha
explains: "Known as reticular materials, these substances have surface areas
the size of football fields within a single gram of material, maximising
their ability to trap and release water molecules. It makes the
kind of water harvesting we see in Star Wars or Dune a reality, unlocking
access to water in areas suffering from drought or water scarcity."
Well, I certainly wouldn't mind if they extracted some water from our air in Slower Maryland's muggy summer.
A former Baltimore County athletics director was arrested after being caught using AI to frame a principal for making racist and antisemitic remarks.
According to the Baltimore Banner, Pikesville High School Principal Eric Eiswert was temporarily removed from his position after an audio clip surfaced appearing to show him making disparaging remarks about black students and the Jewish community. A police investigation found the clip was created using AI, the alleged work of embittered former athletic director Dazhon Darien, who was arrested.
Dazhon Darien
“The audio clip … had profound repercussions,” police wrote in charging documents, according to the outlet. “It not only led to Eiswert’s temporary removal from the school but also triggered a wave of hate-filled messages on social media and numerous calls to the school. The recording also caused significant disruptions for the PHS staff and students.”
Darien is also being charged with theft, retaliating against a witness, and stalking.
In January, an audio clip was published on the Instagram account murder_ink_bmore, appearing to show Eiswert saying that black students “couldn’t test their way out of a paper bag,” and that if he got “one more complaint from one more Jew in this community, I’m going to join the other side,” among other remarks. The post, made on an account with over 200,000 followers, garnered over 7,000 likes and gained the attention of the school.
Though Eiswert was briefly removed, authorities and AI experts soon began questioning the clip’s authenticity. In charging documents, police said that Darien had searched for OpenAI tools on the school’s network on several occasions. He was also connected to an email account that distributed the recording.
That certainly speaks of a level of tech savviness that I night not have expected from a Baltimore area jock.
Oliver Wiseman and Vinay Prasad at Freep, We’re Not Curing Cancer Here, Guys "Are leading scientists just making stuff up? Vinay Prasad breaks down the cancer research scandal."
A top cancer surgeon at Columbia University is under scrutiny after one of his research papers was retracted for containing suspect data. Twenty-six other studies by Dr. Sam S. Yoon, who conducted his research at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, have been flagged as suspicious by a British scientific sleuth called Sholto David. David raised the alarm after spotting the same images across different articles that described wholly different experiments. He has also found duplications and manipulated data in papers published by researchers at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston that have since been retracted.
This news shocked me: leading scientists at some of the most respected research centers in the world, working on the very important and well-funded fight against cancer are. . . making stuff up. That seems bad. Really bad. And it poses a lot of unsettling questions, like whether we can really trust medical research at all. But maybe I am missing something. In search of reassurance, I called up an expert: oncologist, UCSF professor, the author of more than 500 academic papers, and Free Press contributor Vinay Prasad.
Here’s an edited version of our conversation. (Spoiler alert: I was not reassured.)
Vinay, how worried should we be about the problem of fraud in cancer research?
Extremely worried. There’s something very unique about all these papers that allows people to find the fraud, and that is they report the raw data, in the form of images. Most papers, though, do not contain images. The data is all hidden. The researchers only provide a summary of the data. You have to worry how much fraud you’d find if everybody provided all the raw data. I suspect you’d find a gargantuan amount of fraud. This is merely the tip of the iceberg.
Most laymen like me assume all the data is transparent in medical research. You’re telling me that’s not how it works?
Scientific papers are like someone’s dating profile on an app. They’re picking what pictures to show you and what stories to tell you. You don’t get to see the whole library of photos on their phone. Researchers are only presenting a sliver of what they’ve actually done. And just like a dating app on your phone, everything is inaccurate. . . .
I've always thought fraud in all science is more common than we have seen documented. Why? The incentive is high in an era of publish or perish on steroids, and the scrutiny is low and hit and miss. Peer-review? Don't kid me. For the most part, reviewers look for obvious methodological flaws, grammatic mistakes, and rarely for deliberate deception. We all want to believe the manuscript before us is legitimate.
Right around the lunch hour on Friday, emergency personnel responded to a
report of a car crashing through the front of a building at 1241 N Coast
Highway in Newport, the site of Tan Republic, a local tanning salon. The
cause of the crash is unknown at this time, but the female driver of the
Toyota Camry was transported by ambulance to Samaritan Pacific Communities
Hospital in Newport. A woman inside the building
narrowly escaped injury. She was lying in a tanning bed just on the other
side of the wall when the car came crashing through, missing her by inches.
She was trapped inside the tanning room, however, and its door had to be
forced open to get her out. She was standing around afterward, shaken but
OK.
It’s being called a Sundance showdown. Pro-Palestine demonstrators protested
at the Sundance Film Festival on Sunday.
There were about 100
protesters that marched halfway up Park City’s Main Street in the snow. There
was heavy police surveillance and a big media presence. Sundance attracts a
media spotlight every year in the film industry. Cameras and reporters are
everywhere.
One actress joined in with the protesters. Melissa
Barrera joined the crowd as they chanted, “from the river to the sea,
Palestine will be free.” The usual propaganda was spewed by the antisemitic
crowd, including criticism of Joe Biden, a.k.a.
Genocide Joe. . . . Barrera was at Sundance for a film,
“Your Monsters”. She has a history of being outspoken in her support of Palestine. She
advocates for a ceasefire in Gaza.
You have the right to speak your mind, but people have the right to listen and
remember. I suspect there are some Jews in Hollywood. Trending Politics, Madonna In Hot Water Legally
There are times when tardiness can cost you, and two angry Madonna fans are
going to court against the musician for just that reason. Court documents
revealed in a new report from TMZ show that Michael Fellows and Jonathan
Hadden have launched a lawsuit against both Madonna and concert organizer Live
Nation after the singer started a recent concert more than two hours late.
As
reported by
TMZ, Fellows and Hadden decided to express themselves through legal action after
shows they attended which were scheduled to begin at 8:30 p.m. did not start
until approximately 10:30 p.m. The two men filed the suit as a class action
alleging that the delayed starts constitute a “wanton exercise in false
advertising, negligent misrepresentation, and unfair and deceptive trade
practices.”
Both are seeking damages from Madonna and Live Nation
for all three nights that Madonna failed to make her advertised call time at
Barclays Center in Brooklyn, NY. However, potentially undercutting their case,
the men noted that the musician has a long and well-known history of failing
to start shows on time. The men consider their expensive ticket costs,
$155.90 and $292.50, as devalued by the late start of the 65-year-old “Queen
of Pop’s” performance. Despite a recent health scare that delayed her overall
tour by nearly a month, TMZ reported that the delays in question were in fact
due to sound issues, citing an unnamed source.
"It
turns out I was born with
congenital hip dysplasia
— and because of that, the cartilage in my hips is worn out," she shared,
adding that the "three doctors I've visited all recoiled when they saw my x
rays." Doctors have told her that because she has no cartilage left, her hips
are now "bone on bone."
"It's so bad, in fact, that doing one hip
at the time is pointless," the former America's Next Top Model judge
continued. "It would actually impede the healing and mobility. So. Had one
last vacation with old hips — and now it's time for some new ones." . .
. Porizkova's hip issues were caused by
developmental hip dysplasia. This is a condition in which the hip's ball and socket don't develop
properly from birth, leading to a range of issues, from a shallow socket to a
dislocated hip,
Dr. Jessica Hooper,
an orthopedic surgeon at Stanford Health Care, tells Yahoo Life. This
condition increases
the risk of arthritis at a younger age. The hip's cartilage wears away over time, resulting in bone-on-bone
contact.
Buffalo Bills fans have made it abundantly clear how they feel about Taylor
Swift.
On Sunday, Taylor Swift arrived at Highmark Stadium in
upstate New York to cheer on her boyfriend, Kansas City Chiefs tight end
Travis Kelce. But her arrival was greeted by vocal boo’s and catcalls from
Bills fans who didn’t appreciate her presence at the AFC playoff match.
Unfortunately
for Bills fans, their team narrowly lost to the Chiefs, 27 to 24.
As
she has for much of the current season, Taylor Swift hogged the media
spotlight during Sunday’s match, engaging in fan antics seemingly designed for
TV cameras.
Taylor
Swift
stalker David Crowe has been arrested for the third time since Saturday after
heading from court to her New York City townhouse within hours of a judge
imposing an order of protection against him.
Law enforcement
sources
say
Crowe, who had already been arraigned on counts of stalking and harassment, is
“aware of what he’s doing and he’s articulate” but remains “fixated on [Swift]
and cannot keep away from where she lives. We are doing all we can to protect
her.”
The singer may be the
author
of her own misfortune, having
supported
Democrat politicians such as Joe Biden, who advocate for so-called bail
reform, making it easier for suspected criminals to avoid detention and commit
further offenses pre-trial.
Bail reform in
New York, in particular, has “increased recidivism for people with substantial recent
criminal histories” — but
Biden
has downplayed the dangers. New York’s State Fiscal Year budget for 2019-2202,
passed on April 1, 2019, eliminated cash bail for a host of misdemeanor and
non-violent felony charges, including stalking.
"X suspended several accounts that posted the faked images of Ms. Swift,
but the images were shared on other social media platforms and continued to
spread despite those companies’ efforts to remove them.... Researchers now
fear that deepfakes are becoming a powerful disinformation force, enabling
everyday internet users to create nonconsensual nude images or embarrassing
portrayals of political candidates."
I'm having trouble getting upset about this. Prior to AI this could be, and was done by artists, or even clever photoshop users. People got upset, but the legal ramifications were minor at best. I've seen a few sketchy AI images of actresses on FB, so this was not shocking.
Rachel Zegler shared that she believes The Hunger Games novels by Suzanne
Collins were the first stories depicting a young woman as anti-establishment
and anti-government.
In a pre-recorded promotional video for the
upcoming The Hunger Games: Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes Rachel Zegler said,
“The Hunger Games kind of started that era of like Divergent and
Shadowhunters.”
She elaborated, “You know, it was like, she was
really, Suzanne was the first to write this young woman who was
anti-establishment, anti-government, and really standing up for what’s right
in a really unconventional way without an era of sweetness. There was nothing
cordial about her either. She was very rough around the edges. And it was
amazing to read that.”
As for Zegler’s comments about Collins being the first person to write about
young women being anti-government and anti-establishment, George Lucas might
like to have a word given Princess Leia clearly was anti-government and
anti-establishment in Star Wars.
One can even look at real
historical figures as well and point to how absurd the comment is. St. Joan of
Arc, the patron saint of France, led French forces against England as well as
the Burgundians. She would eventually be captured by the Burgundians, turned
over to the English, and martyred.
While
the specifics about Sainte-Marie’s background varied as they appeared in
articles and other materials over the years — The Fifth Estate found news
clippings referring to her as Algonquin, Mi’kmaq and Cree — eventually her
accepted (and authorized) biography was that she was born in 1941 on Cree land
in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan and removed from her birth family and
adopted by a white American family, the Sainte-Maries, as part of a government
policy known as the Sixties Scoop. Later, as a young adult, she reconnected
with the Cree people and was adopted by descendants of Chief Piapot according
to Cree ways.
But The Fifth Estate unearthed Sainte-Marie’s purported birth certificate,
which states that she was born in 1941 in Stoneham, Massachusetts, to Albert
and Winifred Santamaria — her supposed adoptive parents, who are listed as
white. Although a representative for Sainte-Marie told the program that
adopted children in Massachusetts were commonly issued new birth certificates
with their adoptive parents’ names, Leo traveled to Stoneham to verify
Sainte-Marie’s documentation, which appears to have been filed at the time of
her birth and not later.
“It doesn’t appear that she was adopted in
any way, shape or form,” Stoneham town clerk Maria Sagarino told Leo.
The decay of doom loopian proportions
continues apace in San Francisco where even actress Julia Roberts wants to get
the hell out of town. Roberts had to take half a million dollars less for her
1912, five-story, 6,315 square-foot Presidio Heights home with stunning Golden
Gate Bridge views.
She listed her house on October 8 for $11.8
million, and sold it for $11.3 in fewer than 30 days, according to
SF Gate.
She bought it in 2020.
Scarlett Johansson has officially taken legal action after an artificial
intelligence app called Lisa AI: 90s Yearbook & Avatar used the actress’
face and voice in an advertisement.
According to
Variety, the 22-second clip, which has since been deleted from the internet, first
appeared on X (formerly Twitter) on Saturday
using an old clip of Johansson, 38, during a behind-the-scenes look at her film “Black Widow.”
“What’s
up, guys? It’s Scarlett and I want you to come with me,” the “Avengers” star
says before the clip transitions to a group of AI-generated pictures that
resemble the star “It’s not limited to avatars only,” a voiceover
continues, sounding very similar to Johansson. “You can also create images
with texts and even your AI videos. I think you shouldn’t miss it ”
According
to the outlet, the advertisement also features a disclaimer that states the ad
features “images produced by Lisa AI. It has nothing to do with this person.”
Grammy Award-winning singer and songwriter Sheryl Crow says she is “really
scared” of artificial intelligence (AI) being used in the entertainment
industry.
The “All I Wanna Do” singer appeared on NBC’s The
Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on November 2 and discussed one of the
tracks on her latest album, Evolution, in which she expresses her worries
that AI will seriously hurt music.
“It’s been so disturbing to
me,” the singer told Fallon as she described her recent brush with the
technology.
“I did a session the other day, and this young
songwriter had this incredible song, but she needed a guy to sing on it so
that she could pitch it to male singers in Nashville,” Crow explained.
She
went on to say that her associate “Paid $5, put in John Mayer’s name, and
she played it for me. There’s no way you could tell the difference, and it
just blew my mind. And it didn’t just sound like him,” she said adding that
even Mayer’s “inflections” came through with the recording.
“This
is what AI can do, and it really scared me.”
The streets of a tranquil Florida neighborhood temporarily became an F1 racetrack on Wednesday after hosting a wild street race.
The race went horribly wrong after a one man lost control of his vintage Dodge Challenger and crashed it into a canal.
The whole incident was captured on CCTV thanks to a surveillance camera located on the porch of a local resident.
In the clip, the man appears to lose complete control of the car, skids across a patch of lawn before crashing into a palm tree which somehow catapulted into the adjacent canal. Fortunately, the car narrowly missed a resident who was taking a stroll in the area.
The man was racing a Mercedes at reckless speeds before crashing his car.
The Challenger smashed into the canal, making a huge splash before slowly sinking to the bottom. The driver struggled to escape the vehicle and fortunately was rescued by a passerby who dived in and pulled him out.
He's lucky it was a nice flexible palm tree. Now, if that had been a big Live Oak, he'd probably have been killed.
Matt Vespa at Town Hall gives kudos to Matt Taibbi in Progressive Reporter Highlights the Gross Hypocrisy Surrounding the
Pentagon Leaker. Matt himself at Racket, The Press is Now Also the Police "As fallout from the Discord leak continues, the undisguised
partnerships of media, intelligence, and law enforcement come into more
painful relief. . . It’s nuts. Reporters are supposed to be interested
in everything and listen to information without judgment, like doctors, yet
the whole industry is working itself into a moral frenzy because a bunch of
overgrown Minecraft enthusiasts were privately passing around a few truths
like a joint." Liz Wolfe at Reason,
Ax Government Funding for NPR, "NPR is no Xinhua, but Elon Musk is correct that it doesn't need government
subsidies." Add to that taxing the shit out of it. Sharyl Attkisson@SharylAttkisson, " UPDATE on my computer intrusion lawsuit vs. the govt. A hearing
on some procedural disputes was held today in NY Southern District. We won
across the board. · CBS must produce the intruded-upon computer hard drive
they've been withholding by April 27. · CBS must make a good faith review and
identify any and all communications between CBS and govt. and/or Congress that
took place discussing Sharyl Attkisson and the computer intrusions by May 5.
(There's an interesting story behind those communications that we learned
about for the first time in recent depositions.) Small victories in such an
uphill battle are appreciated! Thanks to my attorney and 4th amendment
advocates on both left and right who are supporting the case.
https://gofund.me/9ec5bb15 No press
advocates ever helped or expressed any interest. Odd. Maybe not, but they
should be ashamed of themselves."
Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald "We've spoken with 2 major law firms in Nashville who said they'd send
retainer letters to represent us suing FBI and the Nashville PD to obtain the
manifesto of the Nashville shooter, only to back out at the last second. The
political pressures are intense. We should see it."
As a 3rd grade teacher, I often talk about Jesus with my students, they are
so excited to hear about my faith. They point to the cross on wall and ask
me about the resurrection.
Some have gotten baptized in the sink,
as long as they don’t tell their parents. It’s our secret.
Many didn’t get the sarcasm and took Carpe Donktum’s claims with the utmost
seriousness. One down-the-line Leftist activist with “#WearAMask,
#Vaccinate,
#MyBodyMyChoice” in her Twitter biotweeted: “Holy crap! This teacher is baptizing kids in her classroom sink, ‘as
long as they don’t tell their parents’!” Another
fumed
at Carpe: “Shut up you lying turd. Separation of church and state exists
because of people like you who brainwash and abuse children. You shouldn’t
have your job and you should lose your children if you have any.” Others
tagged the ACLU, trying to get Carpe fired from his alleged job, and
far-Left Star Trek actor George Takei, trying to make Carpe the focus of a
more general cancellation.
At the James G. Martin Center One Cheer for Free Speech on Campus "A professor wants to protect speech, but also to keep students from being “harmed.” Nobody is harmed by speech. But the left likes to claim to be for their own purposes.
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