Racing Turtles

So it turns out that ChatGPT not only uses a ton shit of energy, but also a ton shit of water. This is according to a new study by a group of researchers from the University of Colorado Riverside and the University of Texas Arlington, Futurism reports.

Which sounds INSANE but also makes sense when you think of it. You know what happens to, for example, your computer when it’s doing a LOT of work and processing. You gotta cool those machines.

And what’s worrying about this is that water shortages are already an issue almost everywhere, and over this summer, and the next summers, will become more and more of a problem with the rising temperatures all over the world. So it’s important to have this in mind and share the info. Big part of how we ended up where we are with the climate crisis is that for a long time politicians KNEW about the science, but the large public didn’t have all the facts. We didn’t have access to it. KNOWING about things and sharing that info can be a real game-changer. Because then we know up to what point we, as individuals, can have effective actions in our daily lives and what we need to be asking our legislators for.

And with all the issues AI can pose, I think this is such an important argument to add to the conversation.

I often think issues like this are a result of “The Cloud,” and by that I mean the propagation of this notion that data and the internet exist out in the ether somewhere and not like...on someone else’s hard drives which are housed in hundreds and thousands of huge warehouses which require climate control.

Most humans already have a LOT of magical thinking about computers, and I really wish we spent more time teaching not just basic computing skills (how to navigate an interface), but basic INFRASTRUCTURE knowledge. When you think of it as chatting with Jeff Bezos’s huge garage full of nerd hardware, it’s easier to make the logical leap to say “hey i wonder what kind of resources it takes to keep all these hard drives from overheating...?”

What a frivolous waste. All of this just so capitalists can find a way to not pay artists. Fucking Christ.

Pretty clear proof that capitalist "efficiency" is a crock when they're dumping BILLIONS into a tech that costs multiple times what they'd pay a writer or visual designer for the same work, takes longer, needs more electricity and water, and STILL produces something laughably worse than what the person would. Makes it pretty obvious that what they care about isn't cost and isn't profit, but rather social dominance.

Something that fully healthy people don’t really seem to understand about chronic health issues is what running on an energy deficit is like long-term.  It’s more exhausting than you can possibly imagine if you haven’t experienced it.

How does that work? Well, it’s sort of like this. Everybody has a certain amount of energy.  When you’re healthy and well-rested, you feel pretty good.  There are artificial boosters that give you more energy, too.  You can do all sorts of stuff.

When you get tired, you can still do some stuff but you can’t do as much and what you can do might suffer from lack of energy. Except that’s essentially your every day existence with chronic health issues.  You go to sleep tired, and wake up tired–sometimes more tired!

Your energy levels rarely reach “full”–that is, there’s few points where you are in a “well rested” state where you feel pretty good and have “normal” levels of energy.  You’re *always* operating in “low battery” mode rather than being fully charged, and you drain *fast*.

This makes doing basic tasks much harder than need be–things that drain a little energy you notice a hell of a lot more when you’re already dead tired than when you’re well-rested.  Like how when your phone drops from 10% to 9% you notice more than from 100% to 99%.

You can do some stuff–but you have an upper limit of what you can do that’s a lot lower than other people. And functioning while running against a deficit at all times means a *lot* of careful, conservative planning to husband your strength for when you need it most.

It means sometimes spending 30 minutes deliberating what you should buy when you reach the store because you’re trying to guess “will I have the energy to prepare this food after shopping?  Will I later this week?”  You hedge your bets when you can.

It means skipping out on a lot of stuff you’d otherwise love to do because you just can’t be sure you’ll have the energy to do it without landing yourself in bed for the next 3 days by pushing yourself to collapse. It’s depressing. And it’s exhausting.

EDIT: This post is for people with physical AND mental health causes for their fatigue and exhaustion, by the way! I know there are posts that really are meant only for one or the other and it’s rude to hijack them, but if you find this resonates with you then you’re welcome to it regardless of the cause!

I find it ridiculous that we still use “Horsepower” as a unit of measurement in this day and age. It means nothing to me. I have no idea of how much power a horse has and I’m frankly terrified to even contemplate it. 

…I’m gonna guess a horse has about 1 horsepower.

and you would be wrong! they have about fifteen, at peak output.

Peak over a few seconds yes. Peak over a tenth of a second goes even higher. On small enough scales it will go much much higher.

If I get to look at a true peak power output of a ordinary piece of matter the answer is going to make nuclear bomb detonations look like sparks.

The peak output of a horse isn’t 15 horsepower, the peak output is a question of string theory or something and really isn’t about horses anymore.

Horses, on the other hand, at sustainable standard usage outputs are about one horsepower.

congratulations! you’ve made horses even more terrifying by suggesting they contain enough suppressed power to obliterate entire continents!

Dudes, this is utterly banal! Comeon E=mc^2; we’d all be fusion bombs if we could sublimate our matter instantly to energy but it’s kind of a difficult thing to do and that difficulty is what determines how “efficient”(ie productive) a particular clump of matter is as an energy source |:T

@manyblinkinglights: we all do and this is why the government would pursue shapeshifters for their area 51 collection underrated werewolf threat: risk of detonation

mbl I luv ur tags uwu uwu

ok listen as a kid i thought science had to be super rigorous 100% exact all the time but it turns out at high levels it is all approximations all the time, theres not really a point to this post i just want to spread awareness of something we have to do

the equation for force on a spring is pretty well known, kx^2 (quadratic, goes with the square of the distance). the graph looks like this

here comes part one of the bullshit: theres a mathematical technique called a taylor expansion where you can take any equation (as long as it doesnt do a few mathematically rude things) and turn it into a bunch of polynomials (a+bx+cx^2+dx^3), which makes things a lot mathematically simpler

part two of the bullshit: if you zoom in real small you can ignore most of the latter terms, so its basically just a x^2 equation

so basically if you draw any goddamn squiggle and zoom in REAL close it looks like a parabola and therefore any REALLY small thing acts like a spring

atoms in a molecule. bumps on a road. electrons in an atom (before you get to the nasty stuff). just now i was thinking about bubble wrap. a weight on a pendulum. probably, like, interpersonal relationships. its all springs. boing

OK I’m not a math or science person, just a humble word-fucker and snake of history, so I’m probably wrong about this but I feel like the above is really kind of obvious when you think about it for a few seconds.

Like:

[1]so could one say Energy is a Wave and Matter its Medium? Or I guess Waves transfer Energy but aren’t, themselves, Energy. So how do Waves relate to Work(Thermo: the transfer of energy due to external macro factors; Physics: Displacement with direction)? Do Waves do Work, or are they Work, or are they analogous to Work?

[2]which: is the parabola a waveform?? Or part of one??? Parabolas always remind me of sine-waves, so maybe this is some bizarre and inexplicable innate bias of mine talking |:T

Scientists figured out how to convert polluted air into clean energy

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