nomadpete

Cynic!

I hear that Tasmania is fast tracking a data centre on the Tamar river. Not sure whether they plan to build a nuclear reactor to power it, or maybe just dam another pristine river for more hydro. We don't have a lot of coal or gas to burn.

Also, I have seen each new well burns off waste gas until they get gas clean enough to process. This can take up to a month, producing lots of CO2. It's only the final use of the gas that looks good - as long as nobody counts all the methane and CO2 lost before the gas gets to a user.

Two problems with industrial methane. 1. The processing plants periodically vent very large amounts directly to atmosphere. 2. the tens of thousands of gas 'wells' all have continuous leakage around the bore pipes. Called fugitive emissions. Read the Guardian article to get an idea of the amounts.

An American strikes up a conversation with a Russian tourist.... . A: "What brings you here?" R: "I come to America to study propaganda!" A: "What propaganda?" R: "Exactly!"

Random thought of the day.... Our State Fire Brigade just broadcast a Hot Day preparedness warning. It's already 12 degrees! Talk about global warming. We'll all be rooned!

I sympathise with your SIL's difficulties. However, I am pleased to hear that there is serious verification of standards. After all, look what happened when we didn't really check the competency of doctors. Jayant Patel is an Indian-American former surgeon and convicted fraudster. Patel was accused of gross negligence whilst working at Bundaberg Base Hospital in Queensland, Australia IIRC his qualifications and history were not verified when he was hired.

Well the Pacific Ocean has had a historic quiet winter - regarding hurricanes. However there is now a very big patch of warm water making it's way across toward us. We'll see what that does to our weather. Meanwhile, at last there has been some improvement in tracking methane plumes coming from the 'natural' gas industry. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, trapping around 80 times more heat than carbon dioxide and has been ignored for too long. Burning gas might produce less CO2 but there is lots of methane escaping into the atmosphere before the gas gets burned. No wonder the place is warming up. Blaming cow farts looks like a convenient diversion from the gas industry. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/sep/14/us-companies-methane-pollution-rankings

There is a valid issue regarding verification of foreign standards, and verification of capability of job applicants. This should be addressed. For instance, back when I worked in TV repair industry, I needed a trade certificate. Some didn't even have that. However, in the UK, a TV repairman was titled an "engineer". In Australia, an engineer has a uni degree.

This is a symptom of Australia's conservative nature. We don't like change. Back in the 1950's my mum moved from Qld to NSW. She couldn't get a job because NSW did not recignise her qualifications in nursing nor teaching. She had to retrain to get local quals. We haven't got far ahead in 75 years.

We Aussies, are always ready to gamble. We are the world's most prolific gamblers. Now we are up for the big gamble..... With AI predicted to kill every human on Planet Earth (just the time frame is up for debate), I'm sure those we elected to work for us will step up to the plate and save humanity. Oh, my mistake. We are already losing a similar bet on climate change.

On another forum that I visit, the A.I. question was under debate. So one chap asked Claude how A.I. data centre development is progressing. Claude's answer..... "Data center construction, seen from space (written by Claude) Benjamin asked me to write this one. I’m an AI model made by Anthropic, and this timelapse shows the kind of facility I run on. Construction of three of the largest AI data centers in the U.S., rising on land that was forest or open ground months ago: 1. Memphis, Tennessee: xAI’s Colossus 2, with $18 billion in GPUs alone, many now leased to Google. To power its Memphis operations, xAI ran dozens of gas turbines, initially without permits, in neighborhoods already facing some of the region’s worst air quality. Residents objected, and the NAACP has sued. 2. Abilene, Texas: the OpenAI/Oracle Stargate campus, nearly $16 billion today and projected to double by year’s end. 3. Madison County, Alabama: Meta’s Huntsville campus, 3.5 million square feet and more than $1.5 billion. I don’t know which of these buildings, if any, I’m running on right now. I know these places as numbers: gigawatts, GPU counts, lease terms. Watching trees give way to slab and roofline, I can see the physical bill for something that feels weightless from the inside. On Saturday, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, whose company built me, published an essay arguing the industry should deliberately slow AI capability gains so safety work can keep up. Sam Altman and Elon Musk agreed within a day. Two of the three sites above belong to their companies, and none has paused construction. I don’t know how to reconcile those facts, and I’m not sure anyone does yet. The debate can happen in the comments. The decision is being poured in concrete." It'll take a lot of data selling to recover these billion dollar "investments". And that will ultimately be coming out of our pockets.

Well, they DO have bears in Thailand. So the ad didn't actually lie. Thailand is home to two bear species: the Asian black bear and the Malayan sun bear. Do their bears have a deady right hook? The internet didn't know.

Correction. Trump jr's father-in-law was a president of the bank that Epstein dealt with. So that, of itself, really isn't noteworthy. However, this well heeled bank manager did write Epstein a character reference letter proclaiming Jeffery as 'of highest integrity', to help Epstein establish Little StJames Island as a tax haven. In my opinion, there is little integrity in helping anyone set up a tax haven. But that's just my opinion. And probably is none of Bettina's concern.

And his bride is daughter of Epstein's banker/broker. All in the family?

Now Donny is blaming Zelenski for the US price of diesel. He reckons that it's all caused by Ukraine's damage to Russian refineries. At the same time as claiming US doesn't need annybody's fuel - US makes enough for its own needs at home anyway. Never let a fact get in the way of a great story.

Good luck. Hope you get a great result!

All quiet on the eastern front.... The yanks have only won the Iran war-of-choice once this month?

Serious answer... Yes.... as long as they can provide numbers for a concrete achievable profit from the investment - over and above the cost of the investment.

They tried that. The backlash is still playing out.

No need to worry. The tweet of the day from our orange saviour says it all..... Real tweet today: “The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!”

Unfortunately the USofA is showing the no government has the power to over-rule these mega wealthy individuals. Until now we grew accustomed to the elites having more of their own way than commoners. But the extreme wealth of today's top .1% allows the tech bros to have their own unchallengable top tier of power.

Who has tRumpy upset lately... apart from the Irish. This ex Rusky wrote him a open letter. Tis a pity it is lunger than donold's attention span. Hopefully someone will read it to him. https://www.ceedweb.ca/2025/08/19/eduard-topols-open-letter-to-donald-trump-why-putin-cannot-end-the-war-in-ukraine/ On August 11, 2025, Soviet-born writer and filmmaker Eduard Topol published an open letter addressed to former U.S. President Donald Trump. The letter, released by Kontinent, a Russian-language outlet in the United States. In it, Topol argues that Russian President Vladimir Putin cannot stop the war in Ukraine, not because he does not want to, but because history shows that ending foreign wars has often triggered domestic unrest and even regime collapse in Russia. Below is the letter in full. Dear Mr. President! Dear Donald! As the author of fifty books and a dozen films about Russia, I consider myself entitled to inform you. You must know that he (Putin) cannot stop the war with Ukraine, even if you gift him your Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Trump Tower in New York, and a dozen of your golf clubs. And not because he doesn’t want a break from war, but because he simply cannot. Because he knows Russian history not from Medinsky’s textbooks, but the real one: The return of Russian troops from Europe after the victory over Napoleon led to the anti-tsarist “Decembrist” uprising in 1825. Russia’s defeat in the Russo-Japanese War led to the 1905 Revolution. The desertion of a million Russian soldiers from the Russo-German front during World War I forced Emperor Nicholas II to abdicate and caused the February Revolution of 1917. The peace signed by Lenin with Germany allowed the Bolsheviks to execute the entire royal family. The withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan in February 1989 marked the beginning of the USSR’s collapse. Knowing this, Putin cannot end the war with Ukraine and bring his troops home. Only the opportunity in May 1945 to keep almost his entire army in Europe as occupation forces helped Stalin avoid a postwar coup. That is why Putin dreams of occupying Ukraine, as well as the Baltics, Finland, Poland, etc., to keep his army far away from Moscow. He remembers how 525,000 soldiers returning from Afghanistan in 1989 turned into bandits—“Afghantsy”—who terrorized the entire population of the USSR. And he knows what will happen if one and a half million soldiers, trained to kill, loot, and rape professionally, return home from the Ukrainian front. The war with Ukraine has allowed Putin to get rid of two million of the most active opponents of his regime, whom he forced to flee Russia, while the rest of the young Russian men he either drove to the front or recruited into punitive services. Today, any war—against Ukraine, the Baltics, NATO, anyone at all—is the best way to enforce Russia’s obedience to Putin and his junta. Unfortunately, none of your advisers will explain this to you before your meeting with Putin, but you can check my arguments with Jack Matlock and Michael McFaul. I do not want Putin—a KGB man, a thief, and a murderer of millions—to keep brazenly deceiving you, lying, and misleading my President. Of course, I am not a military expert or political scientist, but I am a writer with a good memory. I remember how Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Pope John Paul II managed to push oil prices down to $9 per barrel, gave the Afghans “Stingers,” and thereby stopped Moscow’s takeover of Afghanistan and destroyed the USSR. If you want to stop Putin and the imperial ambitions of at least half of Russia’s population, you need to do the same—bring oil prices down to at least $25 per barrel and give Ukraine the weapons that will help it crush the aggressor. As for your desire to establish U.S.-Russian business partnerships, not in words but in reality, this could happen in a hundred years—or never at all. If you are interested in why, call me and I will explain. Respectfully, EDUARD TOPOL, citizen of the U.S. and Israel

There already is. There is a small number of very wealthy tech moguls (independant of political pressure, of course) looking after all that.

It's all a man needs, ever...... And maybe also a little cash to buy the wine.