Clean energy for AI data centers?

While the good versus evil debate continues about artificial intelligence, one of its negative aspects is nearing a solution. That problem is the environmental impact of massive data centers that support AI. Traditional domestic power sources designed for our cities, are being tested when an AI data center moves in. The massive power requirements of these centers can overwhelm existing systems not to mention the impact on the local environement.

Nuclear power plants might be a consideration but they are massive systems that take a decade or more to build and they rely heavily on huge amounts of water for their cooling needs. These nuclear power systems have been in use since 1957 in the U.S.

A newly designed microreactor nuclear power system has been successfully tested, and it could provide the needed power without the drawbacks of traditional nuclear systems. The new designs are much safer, use Low-Enriched Uranium, are easy to build in a factory, can fit on a truck, and use near-zero water. These systems could be ready in the 2027-2030 timeframe.

While a single TRISCO-fueled microreactor is not large enough at 20-50 megawatts to power a large AI datacenter, they can be clustered to scale to the gigawatt needs of these power-hungry installations. This seems to be another area where AI may be replacing many menial jobs while creating other opportunities.

Welcome to the Kakistocracy

The Oxford English Dictionary recognizes roughly 171,000 words in the English language. The term kakistocracy refers to a system of government run by the worst, least qualified, or most unscrupulous citizens. It is not to be confused with kleptocracy which is a government ruled by thieves with a primary goal of stealing the state’s wealth. We also find oligarchy where the government is run by a small elite group of people determined by wealth or family ties. This is similar to plutocracy where all power is concentrated in the hands of the richest class.

So many words to choose from and all would fit POTUS 47 and his political dynasty of family members, misfits, cronies, and sycophants. Never in the 250 years of this great nation’s history has the world seen a more openly corrupt group. The door was first cracked open and then it was removed from its hinges by a corrupt Supreme Court operating under the written guidebook of Project 2025. Through that gaping hole paraded Donald John Trump and his band of merry thieves.

Even JD Vance mused that today, an event like Watergate might not even make the evening news. He argued that if the Watergate scandal happened today, it would be "like a 12-hour news story". He added, "The idea that it would have taken down a presidency is crazy". Vance blamed Nixon’s downfall on his favorite bogeyman, the “deep state”. It’s good to be able to explain everything with the nebulous conspiratorial term, “deep state”.

That Nixon tried to use the C.I.A. to block an F.B.I. investigation of the Watergate break-in of the DNC headquarters is seen by Vance as a big nothing burger. It the nation of Trumpistan, neither the C.I.A. nor the F.B.I. would be bothered as both are ultimately controlled by the president. Vance’s statement serves to only shine a spotlight on the corruption of this administration and how its corruption is accepted by the current GOP. It is business as usual.

Sadly, the current corruption is so common that the perpetrators feel secure in the fact that they can steal as much as they want and the presidential pardon pen can wipe the slate clean. The Trump sons are wheeling and dealing their little hearts out with investments, paid board appointments, and financial maneuvering in advance of high-level government decisions that benefit the companies with which they coincidentally have connections. It will take an army of accountants and lawyers to untangle and prosecute this mess while trying to get around the pardons we know will be coming.

Nothing is more telling than the ongoing disaster we are witnessing for our 250th birthday celebration. It was to have been a bipartisan, decentralized, nationwide grassroots set of events called America 250. Congress approved it and appropriated money for it. That plan has been co-opted by Donald Trump because it was too much about America and not enough about Trump. He has set about rebranding the bipartisan event to be more partisan. He has not only diverted the $100 million of congressional funding for the bipartisan America 250 for his use, but he has also taken their private donations as well.

So far, Freedom 250 has been a bust. Plagued by sparse crowds, state withdrawals, and performer cancellations, pavilions are empty, vendors are confused, and power outages have rained on Trump’s parade. He did manage to book Milli Vanilli. If you forgot, they were the 1998 German pop group who were plagued by scandal when it was discovered that they were lip syncing vocals sung by uncredited session artists. He almost had Vanilla Ice perform but the that performance was cancelled due to bad weather. With Trump’s affinity for his Immigration Customs Enforcement goon squad, I’m sure he was disappointed that he didn’t hear Robert Matthew Van Winkle sing his famous “Ice Ice Baby”.

Yes, Freedom 250 has begun like the destruction of the East Wing of the White House, the war in Iran debacle, the algae-laden reflection pool with peeling blue liner, a couple of failed New Jersey casinos, and a joy ride on Trump Shuttle rolled into one. We are on day 5 of this 16-day celebration. If anyone could screw up a birthday event with a $150 million budget, it’s Donny. Welcome to the kakistocracy.

America the Beautiful

As dysfunctional families go, our American family is rather typical. It is a chaotic mix of overlapping archetypes. We have the matriarchs, the patriarchs, the scapegoats, the enablers, the martyrs, the rebels, cynics and lost children, we have peacemakers, and the much-needed mascots for some comic relief. It is this hodgepodge of mismatched socks that make this country great despite its many flaws.

I will steal a quote I read recently, “If you want to hate America, watch the news. If you want to love America, drive across it.” This quote ended an editorial about the trials, tribulations, and observations of foreigners here for the FIFA World Cup. It started rather ominously as it mentioned the clash between our recent swing toward isolation where 19 countries faced an outright ban on travel and 20 others ran into pauses on visa applications. Over two dozen players, staff, and officials faced significant travel difficulties. There were the disappointed fans who had spent thousands of dollars for travel, hotels, and tickets, only to find their visas had been denied.

On the brighter side there were those who made it and found the beautiful America we have come to love. There were social media posts of amazement at our landscape, food trucks with fusion cuisine, Texas barbecue and steakhouse fries, Waffle House hash browns, and the wonderment of a Bass Pro Shop. One German fan posted after coming upon a Buc-ee’s, “DUDE LMAO THIS IS A GAS STATION.”

The overwhelming observation was that they were greeted with friendliness and generosity. I have made this same observation many times. I have driven across this country perhaps a dozen times. From Florida to California and back again via Mexico and Canada. Up and down the eastern seaboard from Miami to Nova Scotia. I’ve taken the southern route, northern route, and central route and driven in Hawaii and Alaska. I have been to all 50 states.

I am always amazed when I talk to people who may have otherwise traveled in Europe and Asia or elsewhere in the world, but who have not seen the bounty we have between our two oceans. I remember stopping in a small southern town restaurant for a late lunch and talking to a twenty-something waitress. She said that she had never been outside her hometown except to visit the Walmart in a slightly larger nearby town. She marveled when she saw our maps (this goes back a few years before GPS) and the route highlighted by AAA.

Yes, we need to look up from our everywhere-screens and smell the roses. If the lens through which you view this great country is just the summary of the evening news or the cacophony of disenchanted voices on social media, then I will understand your cynicism. I hope our 250th birthday celebration in just over a week will be cause to set aside our differences and just relish the moment.

When the fireworks light up the sky and the sounds of Stars and Stripes Forever ring out, the goosebumps on the arms of Republicans, Democrats, Independents, liberals, conservatives, and other fine Americans are of equal size. I leave you with a Rodney King quote from 1992, "Can we all just get along?"

Postscript: The accompanying image is a collection of images from a single vacation drive in 2009.

Pool Vandals

I know this president “rested his eyes” while in biology class, so I thought I would provide him with a quick update. You see, blaming an algae bloom on vandals is a bit like his claiming he contracted that venereal disease from a toilet seat. It just doesn’t pass the sniff test, if I can be so gross.

Algae have been a persistent and recurring issue in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool since it was completed in the early 1920s. The broad, shallow (6.75 million-gallon) basin features stagnant water and acts as an optimal biological incubator for rapid algae blooms when combined with Washington, D.C.'s hot summer weather and high levels of sunlight.

If Trump had stayed awake in that biology class or knew just a little about the field of water resources and environmental engineering, he might have realized it was time to consult with an expert. He might have known a simple “nano bubbler" would be overwhelmed because the pool's outdated and leaking infrastructure, pumps in warm, raw river water that is a constant source of nutrients for algae. This was not a “nano bubble” problem.

This same logical thinking would quickly debunk the Trump attempt to blame vandals for the delamination of the pool liner. No liberal Antifa commando (like Commando Bernie) entered the pool under the cover of darkness to cut a 275-foot slit in the pool liner. No newsman in a suit ruined your multi-million dollar no-bid project. No bicyclist stopping by for a look at the liner already documented to be floating in the algae, caused the liner to fail. It was a rushed inexperienced contractor who didn’t do the job properly.

I leave you with a line from Bob Dylan’s 1965 Subterranean Homesick Blues, “The pump don’t work ‘cause the vandals took the handle.” That line acts as a metaphor as it symbolizes societal decay, deliberate sabotage, and broken systems

MAGA, AMERICA’S BREXIT

Most know of Great Britain’s break with the European Union referred to as Brexit. One decade ago, Britain voted to leave the EU to go it alone. The exit took four years to implement. The chief architect of Brexit was Boris Johnson, Donald Trump’s doppelganger. A key motivation in this British effort was an attempt to better control immigration and manage its borders. A former Conservative prime minister from the 1990s recently summarized the result, “Brexit has left Britain poorer, weaker, and locked out of the richest free trade market in history.” It is estimated that, because of Brexit, the UK GDP is lower by around 7% costing each person about 3,300 pounds ($4,375) each year.

Brexit has clear parallels with today’s conservative MAGA and America First anti-globalist movement, especially its focus on border control and restrictive immigration policies. A century has passed since the United States embraced strict isolationism in the 1920s and 1930s. That isolationist turn helped deepen the Great Depression, which lasted from 1929 to 1939 and brought mass unemployment, severe deflation, and thousands of bank failures. Protectionist tariffs further intensified the crisis by contributing to a collapse in international trade.

If you read that last paragraph and didn’t see history repeating itself under our conservative MAGA king Don, I think your Kool Aid needs a refill. It has been a century since an American isolationist resolve brought about catastrophe. That experiment with isolation ended with a world war and extreme sacrifices of blood and treasure. In the UK, their more modern isolationist effort has been by most estimates, a failure. Over half of Britons polled would like to undo Brexit and rejoin the EU.

Is it too late for America? Has the die been cast? Certainly, much damage has been done and some of it will take decades to repair. We will be paying the bill for this “administrative cock-up” to use an informal British phrase describing a bureaucratic blunder and gross mismanagement through systemic failure, disorganized process and avoidable mistakes with real-world impact. Trust the Brits to have a simple reference like “cock-up” for organizational disaster. They’ve certainly had some experience. America joins them and may have outdone them this time around.

Answering the question of “too late” we have the upcoming midterms where we can try to right the ship and stop taking on water. A democratic win in the House will slow the damage and a democratic majority in both houses will go a long way to getting the bilge pumps operational. None of which is to claim that Democrats have the answer, they just seem to do less damage.

It’s Time To Strike a Happy Medium

Somewhere between the typical government bureaucracy that bogs things down and, “everything is a national emergency,” lies the middle ground of where we should strive to be. The Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool debacle is a microcosm of what lies at the heart of a long-standing problem. No lives were lost in this one and the errant decisions didn’t cause global grief, but it typifies the knee-jerk reaction of a man with no experience in government.

While we would never ask a 35-year-old natural-born citizen of the United States who has lived here at least 14 years with no other skills or education to take over as CEO of a large business, those are the only qualifications needed to run the nation. It’s sort of a, “President Wanted, no experience necessary, will train” situation when it comes to selecting the Commander-in-Chief of the United States. We have higher job requirements for a child’s nanny than we demand of the person who must look out for over 340 million souls.

Running a business and running a government are two very different things. There is a reason why our government has RFIs and RFPs. Those are Request for Information and Request for Proposal. The former is where the government doesn’t have enough expertise to spell out the solution to a problem and asks those with such expertise to offer solutions. The government can then use those responses to develop a Request for Proposal so vendors can bid on the proposed project with clear specs. A qualified low bidder gets the requisition to satisfy the RFP.

Had the government used this normal process, their chances at a properly functioning reflecting pool would have been much better. Following established government policies and procedures might have avoided the war in Iran, tariffs might or might not have been implemented, the east wing of the White House might still be standing, and a proper plan and budget for a new ballroom might be on the horizon.

The conclusion here is that, perhaps we should move the limbo bar up a notch concerning the minimum qualifications to be president. Certainly, we need better restraints on what qualifies as a “national emergency.” Somewhere there is a happy medium.

Reflections

We've all had a good laugh at the expense of our Soylent Green Commander-in-Chief and his failed attempt to "fix" the Washington Monument Reflecting Pool. There is a technical explanation to why it failed. Had the president bothered to take the time (About 5 seconds of my time, your mileage may vary), he might have found out why his "I know a guy" solution might not work.

The ozone micro/nanobubblers struggle to keep up because the pool is an enormous, shallow, and sunlit body of water that is constantly fed by a century-old plumbing system. The technology cannot outpace the blooms due to several compounding factors:

Contaminated Supply Lines: When the system is turned on, stagnant, algae-filled water from the dormant, underground piping system gets pushed directly into the pool, introducing an explosive seed source.

Pool Thermodynamics: The pool is shallow, exposed to direct D.C. summer sunlight, and heavily absorbs heat. The darker "American flag blue" paint used in recent renovations makes the water noticeably warmer, which speeds up algae growth.

Scale and Demand: The pool holds over 6 million gallons of water. The nanobubblers work by creating oxidizing agents, but their capacity is continuously overwhelmed by the massive amount of organic material and nutrients present in the unfiltered river water.

Underlying Root Causes: Ozone bubbles are excellent at killing existing algae, but they do not remove the source nutrients (like phosphorus and nitrogen) that feed the algae in the first place, allowing new blooms to outpace the treatment.