Recent posts

#1

Current Events / Re: Water

Last post by billy rubin - July 26, 2026, 11:59:44 AM

it was obamas fault

#2

Current Events / Water

Last post by Recusant - July 26, 2026, 05:35:17 AM

Plenty of science fiction has included the scarcity of water as a component of the imagined future. I'd go so far as to say that it's an established trope in dystopian fiction. With AI data centers slurping up outsized quantities of this vital resource, it seems we're going to get there one way or another. Industries aside from data centers also make ridiculous demands, and it's the local populations that deal with the consequences.

Corpus Christi, Texas is looking to come up against it fairly soon. It seems likely that their predicament won't be an isolated instance. Again with the interesting times. 

"'Tremendously Grave': The First US City Is on Track to Run Out of Water" | ScienceAlert

It seems inconceivable, even if you're aware of the perilous situation that the world's water supplies are in, but a developed coastal city in Texas that more than 300,000 people call home is now in serious danger of running out of water.

The city is Corpus Christi, and difficulties with water scarcity are now coming to a head after years of concerns over shortages.

There are multiple issues combining here, perhaps most importantly the arrival of major industrial developments, off the back of the unlocking of vast oil and gas reserves that came with the shale revolution.

One plastics chemical complex, built in 2022, uses as much water for cooling every day as all the Corpus Christi residents combined.

A planned seawater desalination plant, which was supposed to ease some of the pressure brought on by rising industrial water usage, never materialized, further compounding the problem of supply.

And then there's climate change: Texas has been hit by a series of historical droughts in recent years. It all adds up to a scarcity of water that life and businesses rely on.

"Corpus Christi has come as close to running out of water as practically any city in the United States," says Dylan Baddour, a journalist at Inside Climate News.

"They've rebounded a good bit since the beginning of this year, but they have about one year of water in storage right now, which would already be considered an emergency for any city."

While rainfall during 2026 has eased the pressure somewhat, reservoir levels are still precariously low, and it's not clear how much longer the situation can go on for.

The desalination plant plans haven't been completely abandoned.

There's still a proposal on the table to build a huge facility for removing salt and impurities from seawater, which would produce an estimated 378 million liters (100 million gallons) of water a day (twice as much as the biggest desalination plant currently in the US, in San Diego).

However, the plant has been discussed since 2017, and efforts to move forward with it are being caught up in red tape and questions over funding. The bill for the facility is reportedly in the region of $6 billion.

"There were years of fumbling around, of folks trying to get something on the books, other people seeking to stop it, and all the while, water was running out," says Arcelia Martin, also a journalist at Inside Climate News.

Other options being explored are groundwater wells drilled deep underground – already supplying 12 million gallons a day – but these solutions are also vulnerable to drought. Plans to use wastewater for industrial cooling purposes are also being explored, with supplies set to go online this year.

[. . .]

Emergency measures might include rolling 'water blackouts', where water is only available for some parts of the day, for example. However, that's not really a solution for industrial uses – these refineries and plants would have to be shut down, bringing subsequent knock-on effects on the economy and communities.

[Continues . . .]

#3

Pseudo-science, Conspiracy Theories, and Other Loads of Bull / Re: God, aliens and Nick Pope.

Last post by zorkan - July 25, 2026, 12:21:14 PM

For those who have already been abducted there is regression therapy.

https://awakenche.org/knowledge-base/hypnosis-and-regression-therapy-for-abductees/

Meanwhile, some suggestions from reports I've heard.

Don't play cards with the Reptilians.
They have a habit of shapeshifting to looking behind you as a fly.

Don't play chess with the Insectoids.
They might have slender bodies but it doesn't mean they have small brains.

Don't accept what seems like a good job from the Anunnaki.
They could enslave you in their gold mines.

#4

Religion / Re: Who Would Have Thought?

Last post by zorkan - July 25, 2026, 12:00:40 PM

No excuse whatsoever, but I did catch the end of brutal times in 1950's and 1960's.
Because of a health condition I did stay at places run by nuns and I had no reason to suspect they would harm a fly.
I think they were there because so many men had been killed in war.

#5

Religion / Re: Who Would Have Thought?

Last post by Recusant - July 24, 2026, 06:56:03 AM

Yeah, they say that now. Clearly their thinking was different previously. A cynic might point out that they were just as right then as they are now, Christianity being what it is.

#6

Pseudo-science, Conspiracy Theories, and Other Loads of Bull / Re: God, aliens and Nick Pope.

Last post by Recusant - July 24, 2026, 06:50:30 AM

Apparently he advises (last substantive response in the interview) that if an alien wants to make you its pet you should take up the offer. I suppose there are worse fates, and it would be an adventure. Adventures aren't always pleasant though.

#7

Science / Re: Tyrannosaurids and Other B...

Last post by Recusant - July 24, 2026, 05:44:19 AM

 

#8

Politics / Re: Duke of Bullshit: "The" Do...

Last post by Recusant - July 23, 2026, 04:38:35 PM

The despicable creep (convict president) and his shitbird administration have conjured a boogeyman to justify turning the security state apparatus on Americans. The Prarieland prosecutions were a test case, showing how a nascent fascist government can weaponize its mirage of a vast antifa organization through the criminal justice system. You handled some supposedly subversive zines? Thirty year prison sentence!

An expert of long experience in counterterrorism lays out the deeply dishonest basis of the Trump antifa boogeyman:

"The antifa terrorism threat the Trump administration describes does not exist" | The Conversation

The State Department on July 16, 2026, hosted what officials billed as a ministerial on the resurgence of left-wing political terrorism.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio invited representatives from more than 60 countries to Washington to hear an argument that many of them appear not to believe: that a transnational far-left terrorist movement called antifa threatens the democratic world. At the event, allies were asked to mobilize against that enemy despite nations like the Netherlands and Germany politely noting to their host that they cannot find evidence of any such group.

Some intelligence analysts have declined to brief on antifa at interagency meetings because they do not regard it as a serious counterterrorism threat.

As a terrorism scholar who spent a decade running the State Department office that designates terrorist organizations, I understand their confusion. The threat the administration describes does not exist in the form the administration describes it.

As I and others have written before, antifa is not a group. It is a movement and an ideology, a loose commitment to opposing fascism. In its most organized form, it amounts to scattered local collectives like Rose City Antifa in Portland, Oregon.

There is no membership roll, no command hierarchy and no funding structure. There is no leader of antifa – the Trump administration has not named one – and there is no record of deadly attacks attributed to a U.S.-based organization called antifa.

Groups like the Islamic State group and al-Qaida have killed tens of thousands of people and have a documented chain of command. Antifa does not. You cannot decapitate a movement with no head, and you cannot sanction an organization that does not exist.

As such, the Trump administration created one.

[Continues . . .]

#9

Pseudo-science, Conspiracy Theories, and Other Loads of Bull / Re: God, aliens and Nick Pope.

Last post by zorkan - July 23, 2026, 01:37:14 PM

Useful resource here for surviving alien abduction.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Take-Your-Leader-best-loved-astrophysicist/dp/1529997127

They might not be so bad.
In Star Trek all the aliens more or less looked like us and they spoke English.

#10

Religion / Re: Who Would Have Thought?

Last post by zorkan - July 23, 2026, 01:30:55 PM

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpwqnwrkd1go

Quote: The Bon Secours Sisters, who ran the institution, apologies after the commission of the investigation published its full findings, saying: "We did not live up to our Christianity."