Giants are “Big”…really

It's Odin's day . . .

Apropos of Odin as the wisest and most powerful (in Norse mythology): Today in 1935, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law. Heather Cox Richardson provides an excellent historical overview in her Letters From An American.

Talk about “big” . . .

When we search Google, stream a movie or shop online, the computing power necessary to accomplish those internet-based tasks probably isn’t front of mind. But all our digital actions require massive warehouses full of servers to process and store an ever-expanding universe of data. More of these large data centers are being proposed and built across the world.

Massive warehouses full of servers produce a lot of heat, meaning more energy and water are needed to keep those facilities cool. For example, last year Google’s data centers in The Dalles, Oregon, accounted for more than a quarter of the city’s water use.

As investments in AI technologies increase, so does the construction of more data centers to continue feeding and training the data- and power-hungry systems. Pacific Gas & Electric told investors this year that it has received more than two dozen applications for new data centers, which would use 3.5 gigawatts of power in total. That’s the output of three new nuclear reactors, enough to power nearly 5 million homes. And that's just in California.

How Big?

... “Soooooo big!” – The Witch, describing the giant, in Sondheim's Into the Woods. According to her, it was all about “the beans.” (Bernedette Peters in the original cast).

It's only absurd

when I try to make sense of it.

Memories link to the origins

of the Universe.

Small as I am –

dust mot in a unbeam

from a mid sized star

in a mid sized solar system

in an infinitely large universe –

nonetheless, would I make

each moment holy.

We are made quite

enough.

— jab