Kind of a shitty 48 hours here- Wednesday night I went in to feed Rosie, and as I was entering Maxwell shot through my legs like a bullet and attacked her. She’s fast as fuck and oddly enough has catlike reflexes and was never touched by him, but when I went to grab Maxwell the fucker bit the palm of my hand so hard it went to the bone. I let it bleed out then cleaned it under cold water, iced it a bit, and went to bed. Yesterday I could barely use my hand, but I just iced it and dealt with the pain, hoping I would not need to go to the doctor. Woke up this morning and it hurt like hell and was swollen, so I went in and got a prophylactic antibiotic.
Normally my standard practice is to let something bleed out, clean it, then just let my body do it’s thing, but I keep a close eye for any redness, excessive swelling, or heat and an itchy sensation, because those to me are the earlier indicators of an infection that come before the obvious stuff like a fever or streaking. Regardless, it was really swollen and painful without all those things, so I went in. They put me on augmentin and I swear to god in the eight hours since I took it, it has gotten less swollen. So not a prophylactic antibiotic at all. I did ice it and do my best to keep it elevated all day, so that had to help. And I took an edible about an hour ago and let me tell you, I feel no pain right now although I am craving ice cream.
The Republicans are so maddening, and what irritates me the most about the greasy palmed extremely online black nazi Mark Robinson is that other than the nazi shit and the peeping tom stuff, there’s nothing wrong with any of his kinks. If getting off on transgender porn gets your patriotic ass to full staff, you go, champ. My rule of thumb my entire life has been whatever you do in your bedroom is your thing just do me a solid and spare me the details. Even as a young Republican in the 80’s and early 90’s I never gave a fuck- my attitude was “they don’t want to fuck me” and “whatever.” You do you, if you will. Everyone has a kink. The hard part should be finding someone who shares it, not the rest of the bullshit we lay on people.
But this motherfucker goes out of his way to hurt people who don’t live their lives according to some arbitrary standard he doesn’t even follow. Not only is he attacking transgender and gay people and drag queens and everyone else all the time, but there will be a side effect to his liking transgender porn because it will be used as proof that there is something weird or wrong with transgender people because only a sick fuck like Robinson would like that. They’re gonna get hurt doubly because of this fucking asshole, and all they want to do is be themselves and figure their own lives out in a world already really dangerous or traumatic to anyone “different.”
Side note I remember a while back at homecoming someone asked me what my type was and I said “willing” and I think that may be my best fast response quip of all time and everyone got hysterical.
Speaking of homecoming, Joelle will be here in a couple weeks for… Homecoming. We had considered getting hitched here but I was kind of being a twat about things (I don’t want to get married in Bethany I have given this place enough of me) but she does, and then all the other bullshit happened (her mom being ill, her best friend getting early retired), so now it is off the books. We had thought about just going to California for a weekend at the end of November, but I don’t want to spend that kind of money when she needs a new fridge and all the bullshit here. As you can see, I have a lot of unresolved stuff bouncing around my head and have to sort things out. I need to just stop being a douchebag and say yes to whatever she wants to do when she wants to do it.
This entire section of this post is for me. Sometimes I need to say things out loud and make you motherfuckers bear witness so I don’t change my mind again. Like I did getting Lily. And becoming a Democrat. And quitting drinking. That’s just how I roll and you fools are here for the ride.
I see that R-Jud was champing at the bit to start posting, so here is a proper welcome to the front page. Fool.
This seems absolutely fucking bonkers to me:
Pennsylvania’s dormant Three Mile Island nuclear plant would be brought back to life to feed the voracious energy needs of Microsoft under an unprecedented deal announced Friday in which the tech giant would buy 100 percent of its power for 20 years.
The restart of Three Mile Island, the site of the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history, would mark a bold advance in the tech industry’s quest to find enough electric power to support its boom in artificial intelligence. The plant, which Pennsylvanians thought had closed for good in 2019 amid financial strain, would come back online by 2028 under the agreement, according to plant owner Constellation Energy.
If approved by regulators, Three Mile Island would provide Microsoft with the energy equivalent it takes to power 800,000 homes, or 835 megawatts. Never before has a U.S. nuclear plant come back into service after being decommissioned, and never before has all of a single commercial nuclear power plant’s output been allocated to a single customer.
There are so many layers to how bad this is (and fucking hell we are just skipping and jumping our way to becoming the batteries for the Synthients in the Matrix, aren’t we?), but chief of them has to be using old nuclear technology. I am all for nuclear energy, think we need to construct new plants, but not recommissioning an accident zone and definitely not so my facebook feed can be jammed with more fucking ai art.
Gonna go ice my hand and watch the Boys, season 4. TTYL.
War for Ukraine Day 940: Today It Was Odesa’s Turn & Kharkiv Too
Trivia Man
It’s fine to have opinions, but I am like you – whatever my Mrs wants is fine with me. I just assume she has better judgement and I will roll with whatever it is.
Scuffletuffle
Why get married, aren’t things fine as they are?
different-church-lady
Cat bites are ferocious. So much bacteria. Had a friend who got hospitalized by her street-adoptee biting her.
TaMara
You know we have a cat expert as a commenter and guest poster, right. She might be able to help you with Maxwell and Lily’s integration.
And yes, cat bites are nasty, nasty, nasty. Glad you got the drugs.
zhena gogolia
I thought that when you “bled out,” it meant you died.
That said, cat bites can be very dangerous.
Princess
Take good care of that bite. Cat bites are dangerous — their mouths are full of anaerobic bacteria and their teeth inject it into you where it thrives. I ended up hospitalized for three days with a cat bite. I was told a guy who came in with the same thing right before me was going to lose his hand.
Scout211
I wonder why these words have not been included in the traditional wedding vows.
Sandia Blanca
@Scout211: That would save everyone a lot of heartache, wouldn’t it?
Melancholy Jaques
When my students asked me what kind of girls I liked when I was in high school. I said, “Any girl who paid any attention to me.” True fact.
piratedan
for me, its the absolute fucking idiocy that we get off the dime and go full throttle to getting the solar and wind spun up, improving the grid, replacing the technology and before we can even begin to see if its helped global warming, we have google and every other goddamn tech company sucking up all the juice and dumping MORE shit into the environment to give us something THAT NO ONE FUCKING WANTS, AI, which is intended to replace people who actually do work, so those that don;t can show stockholders how they’re making more money by fucking everything else up.
there are times when I wonder if we shouldn’t just fucking shoot people as an example to others.
pat
I admit I do not know about Rosie and Maxwell. How did they come to be such enemies?
eclare
@different-church-lady:
Both of my parents at some point have been to the ER for cat bites. The bites were not from strays, but they let their cats outside so the cats picked something up.
Good thing my dad went when he did, he came pretty close to getting the nickname “stumpy.”
eclare
@piratedan:
Not only the power, these technologies require huge amounts of water. Honestly that is a bigger concern to me than electricity.
Suzanne
An essential lesson of human relationships: pick your battles. Then pick fewer battles. Then even fewer than that.
Gin & Tonic
Take it from someone who has been married to the same person for nearly 48 years now – this is excellent advice.
Josie
John- Please keep a close eye on the bite. You may need more than one round of antibiotics. My son had to get two rounds to get rid of the infection. He was very sick.
Scout211
Doc Sardonic
I have come to the realization that successfull relationships revolve around the answers to these two questions.
1) Will me/you/us doing this make you happy?
2) If I do what you have requested will you shut the hell up?
Quaker in a Basement
You should do the gummy more often. This is the most we’ve heard from you in donkey’s years.
Also, good call on seeing the doctor. Cat bites can be serious.
Jacqueline Squid Onassis
This wouldn’t be an issue if there weren’t so many guys who are ashamed of being attracted to trans women. Or so many guys made to be ashamed of finding trans women so hot. This is one of the reasons that I think visibility is so important – the more of us you see, the more acceptable we are and the more acceptable being attracted to us is. This is especially true because there are so many drop dead gorgeous trans folks out there.
In any case, here’s hoping the nazi is such a drag on the NC GOP vote that the other, more dangerous nazi loses.
Timill
Being as we’re involved with cats, we keep tubes of mupirocin around for these occasions (as Marcia’s health is not wonderful), and so far we’ve been OK. You may want to see if you can get some prescribed.
Lyrebird
Hope the medicine and the ice do the trick!
And I agree – my horror about Lt Gov Robinson is about his horrible policy views, I am not interested in what he wrote on that site. And his supporters probably don’t care because they LIKE the hypocrisy and the fascist leanings. He seems much more like a horrible person and less like an alien being in a human suit than the GOP pres/vp ticket this year.
I am thankful that more and more people are publicly confirming “in your guts – you know he’s nuts” applies when Trump or Vance open their mouths.
Cole I am glad YOU are on the planet doing you and decrying them.
TBone
@eclare: there has GOT to be a better way to boil water for steam power than nuclear. Maybe some type of advanced geothermal? I don’t know why we can’t do something along those lines instead. The radioactive waste and all of the other (water!) drawbacks just make it seem so effn ridiculous to me.
Plus Three Mile Island is too close to my home for comfort – it is just as close to where I live now as it was to where I lived in 1979 (my parents tried to hide their concern but we’d just seen The China Syndrome together). I could probably canoe down the Susquehanna to it from my house.
Anyone watching From Russia with Lev? Mind boggling.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_Russia_With_Lev
Colbert and Rachel
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iLFbPhLnMT0
Phein64
Jimmy Carr, a British stand-up comedian not to everyone’s taste, has a bit where he had asked the audience in Edinburgh what was the most important thing in a relationship, and the best answer:
“Consent.”
Ohio Mom
@pat: This is not Rosie the dog, who went to her great reward, this is a new cat who is crashing at Cole’s until her owner gets better. Maxwell apparently does not like sharing his space.
Honus
@Trivia Man: John: get married where your bride wants to get married. That is all.
Jackie
@Scout211:
Thanks for the genuine laugh!
And, I agree! That needs to be part of Cole’s vows to Joelle!😁
Lyrebird
@Lyrebird: [too late to edit what I said at 22]
I am not trying to boost Robinson. I don’t know who to think of as worse, though, him or the GOP leaders and media enablers who keep “sanewashing” Trmp then turning around all cconcerned oh dear oh will this pervy RWNJ be a drag on the slate that already has Trumpster Fire and Shady Vance on it!
bbleh
As to TMI, I have no idea what reactor technology they will be using, but it certainly won’t be the ones that kinda self-destructed, so I wouldn’t get TOO distracted by the all-too-predictable media frenzy. The ones that worry me are the OLD reactors — like DECADES old in some cases — STILL OPERATING. No question that, so far at least, the number of deaths due to more-widely-understood fossil-fuel-burning generators is MANY ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE more than any EVER caused by nuclear generators, but the low-probability-high-impact scenarios remain relevant, high-level nuclear waste is almost forever, and some of those old plants are … old!
All that said, concur with above comments that AI as presently instantiated is a terrible waste of power. (Less concerned about the water; it’s not really “used up,” just heated, but the power heats the water, and the warming is a problem.)
prostratedragon
[sigh] Just as I’m getting my periodic remindrr via Dr. Strangelove, thst thrre is nothing more terrifying than stupidity.
Jihn, keep an eye on that bite. Modern antibiotics still work, but sometimes it’s necessary to find the right one. Eat some ice cream.
Jackie
@Scout211: WHOA! That’s pretty awesome!
I hope they all took a knee in solidarity!
rikyrah
Take care of that bite, Cole 🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽
Prescott Cactus
TMI: The technology is old, but reliable. Sitting for 5 years is my problem. The restart procedures will be crazy. The corrosion in piping and valves widespread. Great if you got a union card in your pocket. A “bring a catchers mitt” job.
Mike E
Cole, I know you’re a new-ish cat person but to echo others on here…cat bites are septic as hell. Hopefully you’ll use a broom/shoed foot next time to separate them!
Stuart Frasier
@bbleh: The reactor that will be restarted at TMI is Unit 1, which was built from 1968-74. It’s not going to be a new reactor. Unit 2 is the one that melted down. It’s all a bit mysterious, as Unit 1 was running at a loss when it was shut down in 2019.
Jackie
@Jacqueline Squid Onassis: I saw a guy today who resembled Flip Wilson and started chuckling and wondering: How many GQPers of a certain age didn’t love Geraldine? “What you see is what you get!”
JaneE
John, please keep a close eye on your cat bite. I waited too long – 3 days – and wound up spending a week in the hospital on IV antibiotics. And 10 days of augmentin after I got out. That was a month ago and I still have slight swelling. Here’s hoping you got treatment in time to keep it from getting septic.
Pete Downunder
@Jackie: I always get the last word at home:
”Yes, dear”.
Trivia Man
@piratedan: Eat the rich? Start with one and see if the others change their ways.
Gloria DryGarden
@TaMara: I too know people who have stayed at the hospital for cat bites. IV antibiotics. I hope you heal.
It can be serious. What Jane said, listen to it.
Ken
The AI bubble shows every sign of bursting well before 2028 — at least, according to Ed Zitron and quite a few others — and if that happens, Microsoft may not need TMI. I wonder what their contract looks like, and whether they’ll have to pay for the plant even if they don’t need the electricity.
lowtechcyclist
@bbleh:
This. This is absolutely the wrong time in human history to be going in new directions that require massive quantities of energy.
Maybe once we’ve fully decarbonized our energy sources, sure. But in the meantime, if we’re going to restart TMI, let’s do so to reduce fossil fuel usage by 835 megawatts per year, rather than doing it because some lords of IT need that much power to fuel some new speculative bullshit they’ve come up with. Not to mention, coming on the heels of bitcoin mining, this is doubly stupid.
Citizen Dave
There is a plan to restart the Palisades nuclear unit in Michigan in 2025. This data center/AI crap has overwhelmed my job. I am also quite skeptical of how big it will be, partly because they are just now realizing they have to pay for new capacity and energy. It’s not free, motherhubbers. They’re now known as hyperscalers: google, meta, Microsoft, amazon.
John Cole
Everyone I know cat bites are serious that is why I went to the doctor and got antibiotics!
Prescott Cactus
Pay no attention to that other unit, which didn’t operate safely and reliably for decades. Hubris.
zhena gogolia
I think a consensus is developing here that cat bites are bad. 🐈😄💜
Freemark
As I can look out my window and see the four cooling towers I would have to agree. Even though that second reactor ran from early 80’s ’til its decommissioning because it was too expensive to upkeep.
Thinking about it I’m surprised Reagan didn’t negotiate behind the scenes to get the second reactor to melt down to make Carter look bad.
Scout211
Excellent voting news from Arizona!
BR
I couple videos from a guy who was a two time Trump voter who says the debate changed his mind:
https://www.tiktok.com/@thatguyyu/video/7415379913433271582
https://www.tiktok.com/@thatguyyu/video/7413860662968929566
Jackie
@John Cole: That’s why I haven’t joined the chorus lecturing you about cat bites.😸
Gloria DryGarden
@Prescott Cactus: corrosion in piping and valves…
the nuclear power plants are built by humans, construction crews, laborers. There a margin of error possible; we’ve heard of of shoddy work being done, corners cut, safety compromised. I’m not mostly happy about nuclear power. They say it’s clean. But jeez, when something goes wrong…
WaterGirl
We should have the asked-for Woke not Weird car magnets at some point tomorrow. Here’s the peace sign version.
Gloria DryGarden
@WaterGirl: that is beautiful. Quite perfect.
Jackie
@WaterGirl: Oooh! I like that one!!!
Freemark
@Ken: Well then it can be used for mining Bitcoin instead. Problem solved because we all know that bitcoin isn’t a bubble like AI. /s
Gloria DryGarden
@BR: heartening
WaterGirl
@WaterGirl: Cafe Press being Cafe Press, they automatically offer the design on all sorts of things.
Buttons, okay, sure, some people may want buttons.
Wall clock, um, no.
How about the thong? Honest-to-god, beth says that’s there. She had hidden it before i looked.
Golf balls with woke not weird!
Beer glasses! Key rings! Baby bibs!
okay, I’ll stop now.
WaterGirl
@Jackie: There will be three versions of woke not weird.
Peace sign (only one you can see right now)
Pride
Raised fist.
Urza
Having indirect insight on the decision for the nuclear, there isn’t enough power to go around for our new AI overlords. Or water. That should scare everyone because the profit motive on it is going undo what little good work there was to save the environment. And its not economical to slap down solar panels and windmills everywhere yet. Probably still need the nuclear even if it was.
Between AI and crypto mining the chances of humanity not killing itself keep shrinking even without the gestating fascism everywhere.
As the AI mostly only knows what humans know, at least for the kind eating all the power, its not going to come up with new info to get us out of the problem
Reactor 1 shutdown because it wasn’t economical anymore, apparently Microsoft is changing that equation. I would have preferred the power at least be used nearby instead of being sent 100+miles away. Not like farmland and river water isn’t cheap in the area for building datacenters.
Freemark
@bbleh: Pretty sure they will still be using the same 5 decades old technology or else it wouldn’t be a ‘restart’.
Gloria DryGarden
@WaterGirl: GOLF BALLS that say woke not weird.
Giggling
WaterGirl
@Freemark:
That’s reassuring. //
Kay
Jay
@Scuffletuffle:
There are a ton of legal protections and advantages that come with being married, rather than partners or roomates.
CaseyL
@John Cole:
OK, OK, I won’t repeat what everyone is saying about cat bites :)
About Three Mile Island… hearing Gates wants to use it to power AI is the first sane thing I’ve heard about powering AI.
Yes, we are all old enough (or most of us are) to remember the amost-meltdown. But, FFS, the White Boi Billionaire Club is absolutely intent on siccing AI on us all, and so far re-activating a nuclear power plant is the only thing on offer to power the useless crap that won’t erase every bit of progress we’ve made on reducing our carbon footprint.
So I am in favor of the idea, simply because it’s less awful than the alternatives.
Jackie
I think Robinson truly intimidates and scares the shit out of TCFG! I’m guessing Robinson has info on him; why else not unendorse him?
TCFG pulled his endorsement on Mo Brooks, so it’s not a refuse to admit he was wrong sort of thing.
Mai Naem mobile
Cole, be careful with the cat bite. I had a coworker who ended up needing IV antibiotics due to a cat bite.
Urza
@Ken: Personally hoping in 2025 after businesses are off the free trial period they all realize the AI isn’t doing enough to justify the cost.
BR
@Gloria DryGarden:
This is other video from this guy is somehow peak undecided voter warming to Harris. It begins with “my duck passed away and I’m in a bit of a mood”:
https://www.tiktok.com/@thatguyyu/video/7414290849971834143
Prescott Cactus
@Gloria DryGarden:
The work completed by humans is pretty regulated and safe. The only reactor problems (accidents) were caused by the sharp pencils in the control room.
Think what kind of work would be required to start a car that sat for 5 years. Then multiply the complexites of a nuke plant vs a car.
For the record, I was in the construction biz and my last 24 years were all nuclear. Feel free to ask me anything.
H.E.Wolf
In 1979, I was on the same dormitory floor as one of the editors of the college newspaper, who arm-twisted me into interviewing some guy at the city utility company. The topic was nuclear power plant safety (there were 1 or 2 active in-state at the time).
City utility guy rattled off all the safety P.R., and I quoted him verbatim in the article. Which was published, as fate would have it, the same week as the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant accident.
It was with great satisfaction that I sent him a copy of the published article.
He didn’t acknowledge its receipt.
Urza
@Jackie: Why unendorse the perfect black republican candidate? Its everything they want and a smidge of being able to pretend they aren’t racist. Certainly hasn’t done anything worse than hair fuhrer so implicitly calling him bad opens doors they shouldn’t on accountability.
Urza
@TBone: No easy geothermal power on the East Coast which is where its needed. Ocean turbines maybe. Not sure why windmills aren’t be being setup on farmland and solar everywhere they can but those dont do 300+ MW very easily.
Jackie
@WaterGirl: Raised fist might be intriguing. IF it doesn’t make one think of Hawley and J6.
Prescott Cactus
Water for nukes: The plant uses about 65 million gallons of treated wastewater every day — more than 23 billion gallons a year — to generate electricity. These figures are for the plant in Arizona, Palo Verde. It has three reactors, so you can divide by 3 for a one unit plant.
I guess Arizona doesn’t need water for anything else…
@H.E.Wolf: Timing is everything !
kalakal
Back in the day when I was a Chem Eng student I went through the report Carter had commissioned on TMI. What struck me was how much of it was operator error and abyssmal control system design. The initial problem was a PORV (Pressure Operated Relief Valve) jamming open which should have been no biggie. Incredibly the indicators and warnings were on the back of the control panel so the operators didn’t know about the stuck valve. The reactor fortunately SCRAMed itself really fast but everything the operators ( and the instructions from the owners) did for the next few hours was scary wrong
Jackie
@Urza: If Robinson’s so perfect, why is he uninvited to appear at TCFG’s NC rally tomorrow?
Urza
@Jackie: Bad PR. Whats not to like about a black nazi who wants to own slaves from a MAGA perspective?
TBone
@Urza: I remain hopeful.
https://news.mit.edu/2022/quaise-energy-geothermal-0628
Prescott Cactus
@TBone:
“Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not.”
― George Bernard Shaw
Urza
@TBone: As much as i want fusion to work there is nothing about the recent ‘breakthroughs’ that is anywhere near viable. They keep ignoring all the energy from outside to get it started to produce the anemic amount of output when the articles get written. It will obviously need outside power to start, but until it can easily make up that amount and start supplying significant power to the grid its not ready. 10-15 years of tech advancements before thats remotely feasible.
Jay
The key issue with nuclear power is not the plant failures.
It is the upstream and down stream costs, Uranium City has not been remediated and it never will be, and it has been over 80 years. The waste will have to be safely stored for centuries.
Those costs are never included in the costing of nuclear power.
Sister Golden Bear
Yep, I’m sure FTFNYT already working on a story about how trans people are secretly Nazi sympathizers, and we’ll see the dirt bag left start “just asking questions.” Thanks for calling it out.
Hope you heal quickly.
ETA: This is also an example about how the cis men who are genuinely attracted to trans women (not as fetish objects, but as people) also get fucked over by transphobia.
Prescott Cactus
@Jay:
Another cost that neither the utility nor the end user, in this case Microsoft pay for, is insurance. It would be a catastrophic policy that no consortium of insurance companies could handle. So we all pay because Uncle Sam is the insurer of last resort.
Urza
@Jay: The cost of most things is obscured. Eat at any restaurant and the drinks are massive markups even accounting for refills, whereas the food might actually be a small loss for them that they make up with the high profit items. 25 years ago a Wendy’s soda used to cost a nickel to the company but a dollar or more to the customer, same general markup applies now even with the inflation.
American food is obscured behind all the weirdness of the Farm Bill. Oil. All sorts of other things that cost us somewhere else that no one thinks about and complains about. If the real price was shown no one would buy much beyond food.
My current personal conundrum is how businesses treat capital expenditures as different from labor even when the labor hours end up costing more than what a new capex spend to fix the problem would be, yes including all the tax implications.
Gloria DryGarden
@Urza: they tried ocean turbines in the bay of fundy, in Eastport, Maine.
My dad took me to see the site. It failed, I’m not sure why.
Gloria DryGarden
@kalakal: human error compounded by poor design, by humans.
bluefoot
Re TMI, I am tempted to make a Pepsi Syndrome joke. More seriously though, I hate all the bullshit to which ML/AI is being applied. Its energy needs don’t really justify it.
cat bites are no joke, I hope it resolves soon!
Jay
@Gloria DryGarden:
It is very much a moonshot, so many things can go wrong and there can be major environmental consequences.
https://fundyforce.ca/
So far, wave generators have been the most successful at harnessing energy from the sea.
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@zhena gogolia: to quote Captain America, if you killed, walk it off.
worst cat bite of my life was when my Puffy tried (like Maxwell) to get at a cat I was fostering for a month or so because her human was couch surfing in between permanent situations. Glad you got that looked after, cat bites & scratches cat carry serious infections.
Urza
@Gloria DryGarden: Not sure that one, but most things like that are experimental.
Soprano2
@TaMara: My new cat has bitten me twice since I’ve had her. I think I did something that scared her, because most of the time she’s not like that. I cleaned the bites with lots of hydrogen peroxide and watched the wounds carefully both times. So far I’ve had no problems but I think the bites were pretty superficial. My mom had a problem with a deep cat scratch and ended up at the doctor, so I know these things can be serious.
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@piratedan: oh we do. Just the wrong people, like school children.
Jackie
@Soprano2: That’s what I do. I encourage the bleeding to help flush the wound, then follow with copious amounts of peroxide. Then pay close attention, in case.
H.E.Wolf
;-)
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Please go get the cat bite treated. My wife volunteers at a low-cost, cat spay/neuter clinic. She got bit on a knuckle and spent the night in the hospital only because she had the sense to go in. One of the techs there about a year later waited 24 hours and she was then off work for 4 months and is still going thru PT to get full range of motion back in her hand.
ETA: Okay, I know see you did that. Good. Also too, the “Electricity Uber Alles” crowd forgets the magic electrons need to come from somewhere and nukes as a source is beyond dumb. Of course if I were king, crypto would be banned, that would help.
wjca
@Ken: “The AI bubble shows every sign of bursting well before 2028 — at least, according to Ed Zitron and quite a few others — and if that happens, Microsoft may not need TMI. I wonder what their contract looks like, and whether they’ll have to pay for the plant even if they don’t need the electricity.”
Microsoft is probably too big to fail, even if they are locked in to paying for the full length of the contract. (And if the owners of TMI don’t have a guaranteed payment written into the contract, they are nuts.) But when (not if) the AI bubble bursts, there are going to be an awful lot of companies with expensive dinosaurs on their hands.
RevRick
@Ken: AI and crypto currencies are huge electricity sucks, and you really have to wonder how much value they add to our lives, if any. My wife and I have been watching a series of lectures on Climate Change solutions on the Great Courses + streaming service. The last one related to decarbonizing the manufacturing of steel and cement, which are huge producers of carbon dioxide.
Anyway, the irony of this series is, in view of the deal between Microsoft and TMI, is that Bill Gates offers the opening and closing narrations.
Bill frequently makes note of the fact that if we are to achieve zero net CO2 by 2050, we will need to reduce the Green premium to as little as possible. I would say to him that here’s a chance, Bill, to put your money where your mouth is by selling the electricity generated by TMI at the average cost to consumers, instead of the folly of AI.
John, I appreciate your using us as your accountability partner. It raises all of us up.
If you need a preacher to perform the wedding, I’m available. Just $200+ travel and lodging. Oh, and food.
H.E.Wolf
The funny thing is that a year or so after I wrote the article on nuclear-plant safety, I got a temp job at City Utility.
I worked for a third-party contractor that had been hired to archive and index a huge collection of in-house documents, including safety violations at the active nuclear plant elsewhere in the state.
The safety violations ran the gamut from serious (“inspector walked through checkpoint with gun in his sock, was not stopped or checked”; “hole in perimeter fence allowed inspector to reach in and unlock security gate”)…
…to mundane (“secretarial worker leaned down from her chair to pick up a dropped pencil, and supervisor stepped backward onto her hand”).
In the “how to prevent this in future” section, on that last incident: “Supervisor should look where he’s going.”
There was a whole character- and relationship-focused novel to be written, based on that single incident report. :-)
TBone
@Prescott Cactus: 💙
Urza
@wjca: It is guaranteed payment for the power, though not sure if there’s any stipulation on how much. The AI investments are eating into the profits from AI but not causing problems. If the investments stop it mostly just hurts on expected future earnings for the money already spent. Given the future AI investments not made its more a question of timing. The $60billion stock buyback might get scaled back if something happens. Not really sure the purpose of that given the market cap and no good way to guarantee staying on top.
Noskilz
Here’s hoping your hand makes a speedy recovery.
While I do kind of dread what happens when the AI bubble pops, it cannot happen too soon for me.
sab
@Princess: Me too. I ignored a cat bite for eight hours and ended up in the hospital for three days after hand surgery. My hand recovered but I still have the scars fifteen years later.
Urza
@RevRick: Not that it matters, but Bill doesn’t make Microsoft decisions. Hasn’t for almost 2 decades now. Other than being a major shareholder and voting in the board. Wasn’t the greatest human being at any point, but at least he got out of the game of trying to stay the worlds richest and actually spends time giving back.
TBone
@Urza: this is not about fusion. It is about advanced geothermal.
…
…
WaterGirl
@Jackie: I chose a female fist with nail polish. You’ll have to let me know what you think.
Prescott Cactus
@H.E.Wolf:
I took classes to get a cert in OSHA safety and rather than work with a tool belt or a clipboard, I was the safety man for 2.5 refueling outages. Regrets, I had a million. What a headache and the adult supervision was horrid. Needless to say the .5 was my last job as a safety man.
Prescott Cactus
@TBone:
Almost 12.5 miles. I hope they Jules Verne on their payroll.
TBone
@Prescott Cactus: we got to the moon. We’re gonna get a better way to boil water too!
Fire in the hole!
SW
Are cat bites serious?
NotMax
Whirlwind weekend in the Big Apple, wedding in Central Park shouldn’t be horrendously expensive. Would be ultra-cool if Judge Merchan or Engoron could somehow be inveigled into performing the ceremony.
And I am confident jackals would pitch in with enough marriage moolah to cover bringing along your parents and a couple of relatives/guests on her side.
;)
H.E.Wolf
@Prescott Cactus:
Sympathies. I’m surprised you had only a million regrets!
NotMax
@TBone
Reminded of the slow building to edge of your seat tension movie Crack in the World.
Available for streaming on Hoopla, on Tubi and on Plex.
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@NotMax: fun idea! The ultimate jackal NYC meetup!
But how are you going to get Engoron??
NotMax
Friendly tip: On the day of the ceremony leave the tie-dyed overalls in the closet.
:)
NotMax
@Chacal Charles Calthrop
The old fashioned way — write him a letter.
As dey sez in Brooklyn, “It couldn’t hoit.”
;)
Llelldorin
This is one of the shittiest things about getting older.
At 20
Brain: OK, body, you got injured. Heal up!
Body: On it, boss!
At my current age
Brain: OK, body, you got injured. Heal up!
Body: Oh, fuck you and the horse you rode in on. How ’bout you stop getting me injured, huh, brain?
TBone
@NotMax: 😂
TBone
@NotMax: wow! Dana Andrews too! I just rewatched Dr. Strangelove, so surreal was my evening mood – now Hearts and Minds (Viet Nam) is on TCM and the mood is back to real.
Gloria DryGarden
@H.E.Wolf: awaiting your next book, then.
Gloria DryGarden
@TBone: 😂👏🏻
Jackie
@WaterGirl: Will do!😊
Jackie
@SW:
Absolutely! And cat scratches can be, too. You have to pay attention and monitor. Always. But. I love my cats, regardless 😻
karen marie
@JaneE: You poor thing! My previous cat bit me on the hand but good at the vet once. They told me to go straight to urgent care. I pooh-poohed them. An hour after I got home, I turned around and went to urgent care. I was astonished at how fast my hand swelled, and the pain was excruciating.
I thought I remember having this discussion here a while back. I am surprised John didn’t know you don’t fuck around with cat bites, you go straight to the doctor. A cat bite is a whole other can of worms worse than your average wound.
karen marie
@Jackie: Yeah, but he waited. That can make a lot of difference. Having been bit myself, were it to happen again I’d be at the doctor so fast I’d be a blur.
karen marie
@NotMax: “Irrational fear.” Doesn’t seem irrational to me.
Thanks for the recommendation!
Ruckus
I’ve been on this site for a long time and this is not the first time that I’ve seen a post very much like this one. Can’t remember when I saw the last one but this reminds me of a few other very similar posts.
Change the names and pretty much everything else could be used almost word for word. But then our politics often repeats at least the general concept over and over. See, we’ve had shitty politics and politicians over my decades at a pretty regular pace. At one point I thought that the rethuglican party was the cause. And it still may be. Seems like every so often the shittiest rethuglican comes along and we go through the same bullshit – again.
Ruckus
@Llelldorin:
You ARE getting older. That beats my cousin who made 6 months.
Some of us think life will be the same or similar over lifetimes – but it often isn’t even close. I was born in the first half of the previous century and I’ve had good days and not so good days, IOW a normal life. I’m now the oldest in my extended family and am missing my cousin’s funeral, and he’s not the oldest in his family. All parents of the extended family are long gone, my siblings are all gone, my cousin just passed and I have been the oldest in the extended family for over 6 months. Life is often good, sometimes great and sometimes not so much. Still, I have a long ways to go and my plan is to hang around at least long enough so I can get to be the oldest in 2 generations.
We always need a goal.
NotMax
@Ruckus
Whereas Dolt 45 needs a gaol.
//
JustRuss
If it makes you feel any better Cole, I found a nest of yellow jackets while doing yardwork today. Fuckers stung me five times.
Kayla Rudbek
@Llelldorin: the really annoying thing is when your body injures itself in your sleep. I wake up from sleep with calf cramps from time to time.
slightly_peeved
@Urza:
The other problem they have is that even if LLMs were doing enough to justify the price, which they aren’t, the valuations for AI are based on OpenAI taking over whole industries, not just creating assistants. Especially ones you can’t trust. And investors are starting to notice: https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2024/08/07/is-the-ai-bubble-about-to-burst/
Betty
@bbleh: My question is do we even know what the actual damage was from the accident? I lived within the 10 mile radius and never felt we were given complete information. My firm represented some of the operators and their stories about the operation were not comforting.
Chris T.
@TBone:
The hot water / steam that comes out of geothermal systems is loaded with dissolved minerals. It’s messy. (This doesn’t mean it’s necessarily bad, just that it’s not all that easy. Solar photovoltaic is by far the least messy and easiest, it’s just “non-dispatchable”—meaning, it produces energy when the Sun feels like doing its thing, not necessarily when you want it to—and relatively diffuse.)
Doug R
@Ken: Good news then, relatively clean power during cloudy calm days .
Geminid
@Chris T.: The Department of Energy is teaming up with both universities and private companies to develop geothermal energy. The idea is to accelerate this technology similarly to how Obama’s DOE fostered the development of batteries. These geothermal systems are still in their developmental and trial stages, but it is a very active field with a lot of reporting from engineering and scientific media sites as well as more general ones.
Some of the geothermal wells are closed systems that recycle surface water through the steam and condensation phases, so the qualities of the water 2 miles down is not a factor. But there’s at least one projected geothermal system near California’s Salton Sea intended to both generate electricity and produce lithium from the hot brine below.
It looks like we’ll start seeing utility scale deployment of geothermal energy by the end of this and much more in the next decade
Ella in New Mexico
@pat: unfortunately, bringing a somewhat traumatized female into a house with two settled very sweet males can backfire.
this happened to us a couple years ago when we brought in a young female who had been abandoned and are two otherwise adorable kitties started fighting back at her when she would hiss at them. Pretty soon it became an all out war, and I mean a pissing hissingspitting war that never ended. We had to separate them when I took a job in another city. I brought her with me and she’s the sweetest thing ever but anytime they have to come back together again it’s a freaking nightmare in our house.
MazeDancer
People die from cat bites.
I have been to the ER for one. Where I was informed I was an idiot for thinking I could go without antibiotics. .They didn’t say “idiot”. But I could tell.
So glad you got the drugs.
Want to join the throngs supporting your insight on how to achieve happiness.
JBWoodford
@Timill: Same here. My physician didn’t argue the point when I told them we have cats.