Zoe Rose

Today is a good day to be extremely cool to your Iranian colleagues.

Related, I have never regretted doing lifeline accidental counsellor training. Didn’t today that’s for damn sure.

Guess what I speak Spanish

It says some scientists have worked out how to turn plastic waste into acetic acid (the vinegar bit of vinegar)

Which is dope

O sea, maravilloso!

Wife here, can confirm suspiciously unrenovated 1970s house background is exactly what it looks like.

We bought those chairs off fb marketplace though. And fwiw that’s my grandma’s table, most likely from the 80s?

*final scene of Fight Club gif*

Came across the phrase "cognitive DDOS" to describe our present culture.

Understood instantly what it meant.

…don’t think you two will agree about LLMs though, fair dues.

Because you have both liked this post - @folletto.bsky.social meet @pagingdrpaige.bsky.social , Tamsin, Erin. You are in different disciplines (international law in Aus and product development in UK) but you both have a very similar approach to sociology and research.

Anyone iirc. If you’re above a certain age it’s free but shingles hurts at any age. There is a $$ and a $$$ private shot, the $$$ one lasts forever.

Me too I am vaccinated to the hilt!

Jabs are like pokemon to me

Genuinely don’t understand why people are buying cars that have $$$$$$$ fuel when cars that have $ fuel are available

Even if the ev doesn’t suit you perfectly they are *so cheap
to run* it’s insane

Way to go!

No cancer no shingles, this is the ursine way 🐻

Australia! It will cost you about $600 to get the shot as an adult. That’s for ‘shringix’, which is $$$ but will last you the rest of your life.

As my pharmacist said when he handed me the powder, ‘are you brave of heart?’

Be brave of heart, get the shot!

We’re talking about different things. And I won’t be managing your feelings for you today.

That’s all from me, have a great day.

I’m not following you. Can you clarify?

^ bingo

Oh me too, it was not remotely fun to write *however* I also think that's actually a really real thing.

And mining!! The water use in mining is astronomical! Never gets mentioned!

3/ nullified too.

If I was trying to pull a full Machiavelli on trying to get social licence for data centres in Australia, I would spend every cent of budget on convincing activists that the biggest problem with data centres was water. Every single cent.

2/ potential of large scale cooling systems, the idea that invention and improvement will stop where it began - water - seems shortsighted. Tbh it also seems like a way of making objections look a bit silly: if the objection to data centres is based in water and that gets nullified, the objection is

Oh absolutely, I don’t think any thoughtful person would or should be surprised by a world-eating corporation trying to keep doing a profitable thing that shifts damage away from them onto the social & environmental context they operate in. Given the maturity and growth /1

Somewhere extremely deep in my mentions there’s a guy…

It’s pretty clear that no Australian political party capable of forming government wants to fund universities at baseline let alone above it, so no I do not think Australia will be innovating in this space or any other area of design &/or engineering any time soon.

Nah

note, after I wrote this a genuinely helpful guy got in touch and told me that data centres are already moving away from water cooling, iirc the AWS data centres in Australia already don't use water cooling. The water thing is a furphy, there are really good objections but that isn't one

A big idea for a big country: Could Australia become a regional data hub? Flat land, safe politics, strict laws: Scott Farquhar says we could export data infrastructure. The snag? Cooling it without draining rivers.

Huh.

This article was actually pretty well-researched (by me, it's me, I wrote it, I just forgot that I did a good job).

Data centres! Did you know you don't have to hate them? It's true! www.themandarin.com.au/297302-could...

Plot twist at end, let's fund unis properly

cc @ketanjoshi.co

A big idea for a big country: Could Australia become a regional data hub? Flat land, safe politics, strict laws: Scott Farquhar says we could export data infrastructure. The snag? Cooling it without draining rivers.

www.themandarin.com.au/297302-could...

This is a funny one - not all data centres are actually water-cooled. I literally wrote an article about this and a data centre guy (helpfully!) got in touch to say water isn't actually as big a deal as we think, iirc AWS' data centres in Australia aren't water-cooled at all.

Hard agree *and*

What if data centres in remediated mine areas?

They're already environmentally derelict and have infrastructure in place, just saying