"...so in The Dalles, there’s some additional data centers being built by Google, and the water consumption from those data centers, according to some recent reports, has nearly tripled in the last five years. Those data centers now consume more than a quarter of all of the water used in the city, which is kind of a wild statistic."
Science Friday: Understanding And Curbing Generative AI's Energy Consumption
The plant in the first photo may not look like much, but it's very special. It's tall western penstemon (Penstemon hesperius), which only grows in about a half dozen locations in the Portland, #Oregon/Vancouver, #^Washington area -- and nowhere else in the world. This pestemon was thought to have gone extinct in the late 20th century, but it's turned out to be surprisingly tough. Even so, P hesperius is on the federal endangered species list.
The clouds were broody but not seriously so. They had considered an evening storm, but upon reflection, broke up to allow the last light of the day to shine through.
And it was dramatic, and emotive, and peaceful -- a quiet and contemplative way to enter into the night.
Now that the So. Willamette Valley of #Oregon has some decent sunlight, I took my new Sigma 70-300 Macro Zoom out for another test.
These are Currant Flowers (native plant) growing in our front yard.
F/32 at 1/250th, ISO 3200, Canon 6DM2, shutter priority, pattern metering.
Interesting that so far the lens is overexposing everything up close in macro, this was 1 1/3 stops down from what the meter said. Only post processing was a touch of sharpening.
Oregon has been struggling with a shortage of public defenders, forcing some people facing charges to represent themselves in court. After the state legislature voted to re-criminalize the possession of small amounts of illegal drugs, advocates say the public defender shortage is bound to get worse. Read more from Axios.
"A woman living under the crawl space of an Airbnb that she cleaned... At what point can we say the American dream has become a nightmare?"
"It’s mathematically impossible to pull yourself out of homelessness without help... It’s not the moral failing of the people who are unhoused; it’s the moral failing of this country."
Julie Akins, senior housing director at AllCare Health, journalist, and former mayor of Ashland, #Oregon
I'm very glad to see farmers win the right to repair their tractors. It's a win for consumers against bogus #IP objections from manufacturers. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-64206913