Texas data center behemoths have this all planned out

The Trib talks about how how much greenhouse gas emission would be caused by the plants, not that any climate change denialists running Tex-ass government actually care.

The story also notes that, even if built inside a city limits, with more restrictions, Big Tech companies with high-dollar lawyers will look for and find any and all loopholes in local government zoning and development ordinances.

This, on a site in Abilene:

In 2024, Stargate’s developers secured permission to operate 10 gas-powered turbines and 62 backup diesel generators through minor permits known as “permits by rule” and “standard permits.” Under the minor permits, Stargate’s fleet of turbines and generators are currently allowed to emit more than 1.6 million tons of greenhouse gases and 1,000 tons of combined harmful air pollutants every year. Despite being permitted for continuous use, Stargate’s developer, Crusoe, told Floodlight that the turbines will only be used for back up power. 

Widely understood to be used by low-level polluters across the country, these permits don’t require environmental studies, public notice or public comment periods, according to experts like Kathryn Guerra, who spent nearly four years at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality before joining the watchdog group Public Citizen. 

“Those lower level permits get granted very quickly and often without the public knowing,” Guerra said — and “that feels pretty intentional.”

But, it's not just them:

Since 2024, at least 38 data centers across Texas have received minor permits to operate on-site power sources, according to a Floodlight analysis. As a result, Texas regulators quietly sanctioned the use of more than 2,100 backup diesel generators across the state.

Activist residents, you need to get your city and county governments to close every loophole they can, and agree to not sign nondisclosure agreements. The story goes on to note that some of these companies — more than half, per the story — are finally calibrating their emissions, up to just 1/10 of a percent or so of tripwires for more stringent permitting.

Because what comes next is moving from minor permits after initial buildout to request for more major permits.  

We also, beyond the local level if their hands are tied, need to lean on TCEQ. And lean on the Lege to give TCEQ more staffing:

“The data center industry is expanding at a rate that is beyond the capability” of TCEQ to sufficiently regulate, Guerra said, adding that the agency’s enforcement backlog consists of more than 1,400 cases. 

“This past year, they were able to resolve 39 of those 1,400 cases. At that rate, it’s going to take them 35 years to resolve all of them,” she said. 

“Every single permit that this agency issues, in my opinion, is one more than they can effectively regulate,” she added.

Oh, I have no doubt, and that's even if the TCEQ WANTS TO regulate that much, itself an assumption. 

And, it notes that the people elected to oversee these governments, and the staff appointed to do much of the actual running thereof, are suckers for promises and so, all too willing to sign nondisclosure agreements. 

A related story talks about pushback against data centers in the Lufkin area. 

Why you shoud tell the National Park Foundation to fuck off when it asks for money

Its sponsorship and organization of Dear Leader's neoliberal-based celebration of the National Park Service's centennial was, is and should be reason enough. (I warned about that already in 2014. I also noted that NPS head Jonathan Jarvis wanted to extend the neoliberalism beyond the centennial.)

I also also noted that under Dementia Joe, the National Park Foundation massively increased its sellout.

If it isn't?

Its America 250 wing becoming a shell corporation for Trump's Freedom 250 is plenty more reason.

Public Notice and The Ringer both have good articles. 

I noted myself, just two months into Trump 2.0's term, that the NPF seemed to be going in the tank. 

Big Bend border wall update briefs

As CBP continues to schwaffle about any plans to put up a physical border wall in the Big Bend area, Forrest Wilder at the Monthly continues to wonder how much good it would do, especially an anti-vehicle version. 

At the Observer, Sam Karas agrees on the stupidity while warning all of us not to take any premature victory laps whenever we here claims that walls aren't going up in Big Bend. A very good point.

A historic Catholic chapel in Mission will not be cut off by border wall construction there; Team Trump had threatened eminent domain to take over the land. (Good thing it wasn't Mooslim; it would be crushed.) 

RIP Huckleberry J Butchmeup aka Lindsey Graham

The South Carolina Senator has died, reportedly after a brief and unexpected illness.

Note my addition of "reportedly." Do you really believe this? If so, I've got space at a straight-folks only nude beach in Charleston for sale. 

Speaking of, will Gay Trowdy, I mean Trey Gowdy, and Tim Scott be pallbearers? Named in the will?

And how fitting that Nancy Mace is interested in filling the seat. A walking big boob to be followed by a walking pair of big boobs, especially if there's a walking pair of boobs carrying the casket.

On the more serious side, Graham lied on behalf of Israel and Ukraine, and on behalf of himself, when he folded like a cheap suit to Trump after saying he wouldn't. That's doubly true, per AP's political obit story, after Jan. 6, 2021.

Meanwhile, the most laughable political obits will surely be the ones coming from Never Trumpers, like what Steve Schimdt penned. Know what, Steve? Had Havana Ted or Huck his own self gotten nominated in 2016, half of Trump 1.0's executive changes would still have been done, we would have gone largely down the same road on Israel as reality and even worse in Ukraine.

They're the hypocrites as much as Graham, as fellow "Three Amigos" per the AP story, John McCain and Joe Liberman, would be supporting Trump's war on Iran for the sake of Israel if alive today. Graham may not have been a personal piece of shit the way McCain was, per my takedown obit, but no, on geopolitics, he was not alone, other than the fold to Trump.  (I never did a takedown obit on Lieberman; today, digging up his carcass, stuffing it on an airplane and throwing it out over Gaza would be enough.)

That said, yes, dishonest, too. 

If he'd been more honest, maybe Dr. Jeebus H. Trump would have visited him just like McConnell. 

Meanwhile, for yesterday's conspiracy theory nutters on Shitter?

Yes, Russian President Vlad the Impaler Putin, learning from shooting Litvinenko with a Polonium-210 pellet, shot Lindsey Graham with digoxin. A more likely cause of heart-attack death would be Graham snorting too many lines of coke with Zelensky.

At least we know that some late-life fast-onset version of AIDS didn't kill him. Right? 

The reality is that he beat Mitch to the heart attack finish line. 

More cold water thrown on Elizabeth Loftus

I have repeatedly, for years, many more times than once, called out Elizabeth Loftus and her claims on child memory.

At that "many more" link, I first estimated that she may have made as much as $500,000 for her "expert witness" testimony in courtrooms. I also called her out for erecting what I called a stereotypically Freudian version of memory repression and using that as a strawman.

And, now, without her being named by name, it turns out that claims like hers are overblown. 

The two authors, a post-doc researcher and a professor of child psychology, both at University College London, did metadata type work on 49 studies covering almost 40,000 people.

This:

Over an average gap of two and a half years, people’s memories of maltreatment barely budged, supporting the case for using a single time-point assessment in both research and clinical practice. That said, we still don’t know whether this stability holds over longer stretches of time, so more research is needed.

Is the key.

So, unless there's a particular psychologist trying to ramp up their career with something like ritual satanic abuse claims, listen to the kids, just like listening to the women. 

The authors do introduce caveats, but these caveats still don't give carte blanche to Loftus-type claims:

That’s not to say memory is perfect. About one in five people did change their response over time. This shouldn’t be read as evidence that someone was lying, though. 

Memories can shift for all sorts of reasons, such as how someone comes to interpret what happened to them, ordinary quirks of memory, how comfortable someone feels disclosing sensitive information in a given setting, or simple human error. 

This is why any record of maltreatment disclosure, whether in research or in clinical practice, should also capture the context in which it was made. This may well shape how consistently that account holds up later.

There you are. 

Near the end, the pair has one more observation that pretty directly kneecaps Loftus:

Finally, we found that while adults’ memories of childhood maltreatment were very stable over time, young people’s memories of maltreatment were less stable and decreased over longer gaps between assessments.

Boom. 

I too talked to Mitch the Kentucky Turtle for 20 minutes

I am so going to MAGAts hell …

Plenty of people are claiming to have talked to the Kentucky Turtle for 20 minutes, I guess in some Pythonesque attempt to prove he’s not quite dead yet:

I am really going to MAGAts hell now.

Let’s start with the unreported people speaking with the Kentucky Turtle, if not for 20 minutes.

First: Dr. Jeebus H. Trump, of course.

“He laid hands on the young boy on his head and said to him, “Talya koum!” (which means “Little boy, I say to you, get up!”). Immediately the boy looked as he was starting to raise up from the hospital bed and began to slide out of the hospital bed as if to walk around (he was twelve years old). At this they were completely astonished. He gave strict orders not to let anyone know about this, and told them to give him something to eat.”

Next, Elaine Chao:

“Xi says hello and he’s going to let us name a Chinese merchant vessel after you. Oh, I have to go back to China. We’re negotiating a new trade deal. Don’t you like that I got people to stop worrying about you by saying that I didn’t need to come back here originally?”

Rand Paul:

“I wanted to thank you for your inspirational leadership as the senior senator from Kentucky and how I can’t wait to take over.”

Thomas Massie:

“Mitch, if only I could have gotten you to be a real fake anti-MAGAt. I’ll run for your seat after you’re dead.”

Gov. Andy Beshear:

“As a cojones-free Democrat, I of course can’t say who I will choose to fill your seat if you should die and need a short-term successor, because I can’t do that, because I couldn’t stop your fellow Republicans from removing that power from me.”

Kim Davis:

“Is it true that you were secretly homosexual? Maybe God punished you in advance with polio. Oh, if I were in power, I wouldn’t sign your death certificate. Besides, you married a non-Merikkkan woman.”

John Marshall Roberts:

“Thanks for all your help with the Supreme Court. If you’ve committed any potential crimes, or want to commit any actual crimes before you die, we’ll fix it for you with a special ruling.”

Alison Lundergan Grimes (pronounced Alice in Wonderland Crimes):

“I am glad to have represented military ConservaDems losing races to Republicans by falling to you in 2014. I’m sad that I can’t lose again to a great patriot like you.”

Scott Jennings:

“It’s me sir, Scott Jennings, not the Jeopardy guy. But I’m sure you’ll inspire lots of Jeopardy rounds in the future.”

Bagger Vance:

“There’s nothing I can say beyond what our lord and savior Donald John the Evangelist Trump has already said.”

Buck Dharma:

“Don’t fear the reaper. Let Juliet Elaine fix you up with some Chinese fentanyl.”

The Socratic Gadfly:

“Back up, everybody.

“Sorry, Buck, the Mitch bot’s hardware is frozen again. He can’t break on through to the other side right now. He’s frozen so stiff he can’t become a frozen stiff.”

(Opens Chao’s purse, looks. Finds a vial. Opens it.)

“This shit, Buck? Xi ripped her off. Fentanyl with a 98 percent sugar cut. I’d get out of that shipping deal, too, if not too late, Elaine.

“As for you, Bagger? There’s nothing you can say, period.

“As for you, Kim Davis? Go thou and do likewise.

“Where did Grimes go? Oh, she disappeared? And Beshear with her? Shock me.

“John Marshall Roberts? If only I could get all of America’s non-duopoly voters to elect me, I’d play Andy Jackson to your Marshall.

“Rand Paul, return that squirrel hair to its rightful squirrel. Massie, ditto with the better-groomed squirrel hair.

(Yanks.)

“Shit, really, that’s real hair? Squirrel hair might be better.”

==

“Folks, I’m not a doctor, and I don’t play one on TV. I also don’t play either a doctor, a Jeebus pretendian, or a bald-faced, semi-bald-headed liar on social media.

(Glares at Jeebus H. Trump.)

“All of you are the problem, including Alison Wonderland and Andy Pasture from the left hand of the duopoly.

==

(Hears a moaning whisper. Bends his head near Mitch’s mouth.)

“No, I don’t know the frequency, and stop calling me Kenneth.”

(Hears another moaning whisper.)

“Yes, Trump’s still here. And Vance.”

(Another soft moaning whisper.)

“Actually, your sin is worse than the sin against the Holy Ghost.”

(A murmuring whimper whisper.)

“The United States of America is dying like you are. Your sin is to be part and parcel of making it a failing state.”

==

(Hears the remaining people in the room all getting louder and louder, topped by Trump’s brief, then breathless, bellows.)

“Who am I? Mark Twain talked about my uncle and I.”