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Don’t look up water usage for other industries.
there are valid reasons for disagreeing with data centres, but if water usage is top of the list people really need to reevaluate their beef consumption
Chip fabs go brrrrrrrr
spoiler
People let the water just run the whole time they’re brushing their teeth?
i just rinse my toothbrush in the toilet bowl like a normal person
I grew up with this and after way too long I finally realized that it made no sense
we were on a private shallow well, with a septic tank. the water just goes back into the ground. it only cost us whatever sense of electricity it took to run the well pump.
I turn the water off because I go walk around while I brush my teeth, but like… it didn’t matter? (in my situation)
In those cases it more the rate of change than the quantity. Does water filter down into your aquifer fast enough to replace what you’re taking out? The problem is it can take years or decades to refill.
For a single case in an area with decent groundwater, not too big a deal because you can usually drill deeper (at a cost) and it’s more likely to be enough anyway. But it’s a much bigger deal when it’s everyone in an area
I mean, use a cup. Data centers aside, it’s fucking weird to leave the water running for 5 minutes while you brush.
A cup for what? I am so confused by this entire post. Why would I need water while brushing my teeth? A little bit before and after. But during? Theres no use for that. Do other people brush their teeth entirely differently than me?
Americans using sinks in movies have been confusing me throughout my entire life. They seem to open the faucet when they enter the bathroom and only turn it off if they leave. They leave it running when they brush their teeth, talk to someone or stare into the mirror.
Same thing with fridges. If they take something out or put something in, the fridge stays open, sometimes during entire conversations. I don’t understand it. Even if you don’t care about the wasted energy, it gets cold (US fridges are almost freezers) and leaving the door open for so long gives the killer enough time to stand behind it and scare you to death when it is eventually in your convenience to close it.
It’s real life too. I never understood it either but as an adult I’ve met too many people who really are that wasteful.
Maybe it’s all based on water availability where you grew up, or frugality of your household. I’ve met people who run water while shaving, I do so only to rinse the blade and my face, while my grandparents in a rural area where shocked that you wouldn’t limit it to a cup to swish your blade
A cup of water you filled befor to rinse your mouth after brushing.
I would guess that you “need the water while brushing” because they spit into the sink and to wash that away immediately instead of rinsing the sink and spit out toothpaste foam after finishing brushing.
Not something I do but I could imagine people being particular about it for some reason.
Do people spit multiple times throughout brushing? I wet my brush with a quick drop from the sink, brush my teeth, then turn the sink on to spit all the foam out at the end and rinse my toothbrush. And I don’t rinse my mouth, because I use fluoride toothpaste.
You aren’t supposed to rinse your mouth after brushing, so even that is bizarre.
I refuse to believe that anyone brushes their teeth for 5 straight minutes. No way you’re more than doubling the recommendation just for fun
My toothbrush counts 2 mins, good enough for me. I’ve lost a bunch of teeth to pregnancy, don’t need more than that.
I brush 8 minutes every night with 2 minutes each quadrant. Fuck cavities. Mornings are 4 minutes though.
This has to constitute over brushing which is also bad and leads to cavities
Also, be careful about damaging gums. You think cavities are bad? Wait until you hear about gum surgery!
That may be a widespread concern but misdirected. Sure maybe if you use a “firm” brush and brush too hard (why aren’t there standards ruling those out?)
However as someone who has had gum surgery and is approaching the next stage of gum issues, it has more to do with
- age
- not flossing
- sugary soda and treats.
All those shortcuts you take throughout life where you think you’re good since you didn’t have cavities, also cause continuous gum inflammation and gradual wear over time, more exposure under the skin to lasting damage. As you age the problems compound - there’s good reason it’s a stereotype for older people to have bad teeth or no teeth.
We really can’ t win against cavities, can we?
It’s a soft brush and my enamel’s still okay. I just don’t want cavities or plaque buildup so it’s my way of playing it safe.
I can’t comment on your habits and certainly the soft toothbrush is a great start. However this is a selling point for electric toothbrushes: they generally don’t let you brush too hard.
If you’re not using “firm” bristles and not brushing too hard, there’s very little chance that brushing too long is a problem
Have you considered actually asking a dentist, or even googling this online? “Nothings gone bad yet” isn’t really the endorsement you’re selling it as. If you only brushed once a day for 2 minutes, you’d probably also be “still okay”. Doesn’t make it a good idea.
Sounds borderline OCD lol
That seems excessive to me but do what you like. I don’t have the patience for that
I do like… 3-4 minutes.
I’ll get watching a video or something and might do it for longer than that. It’s probably really not good for my gums.
It’s very unlikely to be bad for your gums unless you’re brushing directly on them every time you brush. The main thing id be worried about is brushing off the enamel, but that generally only happens if you’re brushing way too hard with harsh bristles.
Brushing on the gums is what you’re supposed to do, because it’s the crease between the gums and teeth where plaque and food can accumulate.
Yeah I have a friend who has marks on her teeth from brushing 3x a day in high school with apparently hard bristles
You have to know that’s not typical, though, right?
The front fell off?
People keep the water running while brushing their teeth???
This one was so crazy to learn about as a kid, because I genuinely couldn’t believe people needed to be taught this.
You’d be surprised how ignorant some people are about things that should be common sense.
I lived most of my life near a huge river (it spans 3 countries) and when I wasted water, my mother beat the shit out of me.
Are you on Arrakis?! You’re recycling your pee, aren’t you? Tie your stillsuit boots in slip-fashion like Muad’dib.
This whole thread is blowing my mind. The Colorado River is drying up, using 26% of it’s water for alfalfa, largely for export, and here we are,
“Doesn’t everyone know to conserve that extra 1/2 gallon when brushing their teeth!?”
I never think about it in terms of conserving water. It’s just plain stupid to keep the water running when you don’t need it.
You don’t need water while brushing your teeth, do you? By your logic, why not keep the tap running all the time? I seriously don’t understand what you’re trying to say.
The reasoning I’ve heard from those who do, is to keep the sink clean. They have no answer to why not rinse the sink once at the end. I guess they don’t like seeing it during?
It’s not about conservation. It’s just, why have the water running when you brush your teeth? I wet the toothbrush, brush my teeth, then rise the toothbrush. What do you need water for while you’re brushing?
To attract beavers.
This whole thread is blowing my mind.
Probably not hard to blow given you’re apparently too fucking stupid to turn your wrist twice a day in a way a toddler can figure out and too fragile to not lash out about it when people are surprised.
This isn’t even a conservation thing; the sensible default is to turn off the water.
It’s the same as bringing back your shopping cart just FAR easier. I see it as a litmus test for people
97% of its water for agriculture in general. In deserts. Home water usage, all homes, including watering a lawn, use less than a percent.
About 52% of the Colorado River’s water is used for irrigated agriculture, while 18% is consumed in urban areas. The rest supports natural vegetation (19%) and evaporates from reservoirs (11%). No water reaches the ocean.
Looks like ag usage has dropped to 70-74%, been a couple of years since I read that stat.
https://www.usbr.gov/ColoradoRiverBasin/
https://www.worldatlas.com/rivers/who-actually-uses-colorado-river-water.html
Definitely not 52%.
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I brush my teeth while showering so yes
My wife does this and leaves her electric brush in the shower, and I knock it down every.single.time and it goes down very loudly and it’s extremely annoying. Those fuckers are heavy, and sometimes it smashes my foot.
Clean teeth shower gang ™️
Dozens of us!
Do you shower twice a day to brush your teeth enough?
As a shower brusher myself, I have two toothbrushes. A shower one, and a sink one for when the shower doesnt align with needing to brush my teeth.
Dentist said two minutes so I just do four minutes
Having grown up in the tropics, at times we’d be asked to conserve/ration water in drought, other times told to use as much as possible if catchments were getting too full. Really depended on El Nino / La Nina.
It’s weird turning on all the water in your house and sitting down to watch TV. Though I have had it happen before where the dam was being purged a bit, everyone was running water, so the river the dam water normally drains into had risen above and spilled into the drainways and it started coming back up through the bath and sinks 🤣
I grew up near a massive river back home. So I get that, but my issue is with those who live in a controlled water supplies and just sit there brushing their teeth while the water is running. It just feels wrong to me. Hell, I go as far as turning off the water literally when I move the dish I just washed from the sink to the dish washer when I wash my dishes. I do that with every single dish. It literally feels physically wrong to me. 😂
That’s wild, thanks for sharing! 💜
I will admit that I do. However, in my defense, I hear music coming from the faucet while it is on and I like to jam to hallucinatory music while I brush. My brain just makes whatever it wants to hear from any white noise source but water from the tap in the bathroom produces the best results.
😂 this got me
Sounds like mild schizophrenia…
Is it schizophrenia if we are all in agreement?
Can you change the genre by varying the flow rate?
Not reliably, I tend to hear metal or jazz and I think that correlates with the amount of noise in the white noise. It’s more like a slower flow makes less noise so I hear less music or none at all. It’s gotta be saying Ssshhhhhh or I don’t hear squat.
That’s really interesting. Is there a name for it that you know of?
Audio pareidolia is the phenomenon where your brain perceives familiar sounds, such as words or music, in random noise, like the hum of a fan or running water. This occurs because your brain is wired to recognize patterns, even in ambiguous auditory stimuli.
Too many hallucinogens in my youth? I hear music in the shower too. Anywhere where a white noise is the dominant sound my brain just starts making shit up. I get the same deal staring at static on an old tv. I start seeing patterns in the chaos.
Ha, this happens to me when I’m high. I love how odd sounds can be turned into music in that state.
Sub conscious pattern recognition is what tripping is all about. It’s nice to know I’m not the only one who has experienced this.
I have done so my entire life, water has been cheap here, and I currently don’t pay for water used in my apartment, I have a utility bill, but water is included and I only pay a fixed amount every month for the utilities in my apartment.
I realize it is wasteful when I think about it, but in general I don’t think about it.
With all due respect, this is such a narrow and selfish way of thinking. Allow me to say, it’s really shitty. What a shame.
And this is why I often hesitate to add an oposing viewpoint to discussions online.
I am getting downvoted and called out despite simply answering the question.
And I absolutely disagree with you on calling it narrow and selfish, thoughtless would be the truth.
I also disagree with calling it “shitty”, for the most part of my life Sweden has not had a drought, no one has been denied access to water due to my actions.
So this is also thoughtlessness.
Now the drought situation in Sweden is changing, and I am keeping track of it, so far I have not yet heard about there being risks of drinking water shortages, if that changes, I will change my behavoir. Until that time I will do what I always do when I am working to change something, I’ll work with it slowly and change behavoirs at a resonable pace.
Yeah and let me disagree with you both
- it is unnecessarily wasteful
- but it’s just a drop in a bucket
- you have no personal incentive to use less water
For me the keyword is “unnecessarily “: it never occurred to me to waste water like that. But it’s really not much and I wasted more water in other ways.
Perhaps we need more expensive water so there is personal incentive to use less
But… Why? You just stand there and watch the water run uselessly for 2 straight minutes while you brush your teeth???
Its calming like a mini waterfall. You can sense yourself as an ultra rich for a brief moment. Mental satisfaction is totally worth the price
I would find the sound annoying
No, I brush my teeth.
I don’t understand this consumerism mindset.
I guess that’s why temu is so popular. Consume and waste because you can, not because you need. Just to tell yourself that you’re doing great in life.
Eh, fair I guess, I just don’t see any weird with this, granted I live in Sweden where water is abundant so my frame of reference is different.
Cleaning our drinking water is quite a complicated process. I think it’s pointless to just waste all that energy because you can afford to. And with seasonal droughts becoming more and more common in Europe…
Here in Sweden we seldom carry water when out camping in our inland, there is so much clean water comming out of the ground that it is unneeded.
This is changing, but still mostly accurate.
Unfortunately, there’s more to clean water than just the source.
Waste water needs to be cleaned in a complicated multi step process
We were talking about drinking water, not waste treatment. Two very different processes.
Lol cleaning drinking water in countries like Sweden is not complicated or energy intensive.
Ever wondered what happens with the waste water?
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Could you perhaps make a habit of thinking about it from now on?
I promise you this, if I remember, I will think about it and try to better myself.
I don’t believe in making unrealistic promises
“in between brush strokes”? As in keep turning it on and off while brushing?
Yeah, what?
>apply toothpaste
>wet brush
>brush teeth
>free style the water tapI always had a discussion with my ex about the order. You and I apply toothpaste first, then water. She would apply water first, then the toothpaste, so it wouldnt rinse away. Glad to see more fellow toothpaste-firsters.
You shouldn’t wet the brush at all, the toothpaste is supposed to mix with your spit. Water will make it have less fluoride.
Bro really out here rawdogging his toothbrush.
Yeah, I do the same thing. It doesn’t really make that much of a difference, but you definitely don’t need water until you want to rinse out your mouth.
I thought that technically you werent supposed to rinse after brushing?
I always say “fuck the man” and rinse after… but, I dont think you are supposed to.
I don’t rinse out my mouth either, just spit out the foam. Rinsing just gets rid of the fluoride (and xylitol.)
But I wanna wash my brush a little bit before using it
That’s fair, it did take me ages to get used to not doing it
Hope you don’t flush with the lid open ☹️
Never, but do you think a quick rinse would get rid of poopoo bacteria? :D
This presumes that data centers offer no value in return.
When in fact, they return negative value.
It’s always the externalities. They return positive value to a few owners while negative value to the communities they’re inflicted on. And given that ai is almost certainly a bubble, who cleans up after it pops
No value to you maybe. The rich keep getting richer
Won’t you think of the ad delivery system? And what about the profiling? Eventually, governments we’ll be able to pluck rabble rousers off social media to quell the public from rioting.
High value, just not for any of us.
You say on a Linode hosted server
Stop the disingenous techbro “but you already use datacenters/yet you live in society, curious” excuse. We are talking about hyperscaler datacenters here.
We know that the cloud uses datacenters, but they are far smaller and use less energy. Almost all new datacenters being build or being projected are huge hyperscaler datacenters, which uses a lot more water and energy than any of our previous ones.
And most importantly they are planned for sustainable value
The difference now is a mad rush to add many more in a very short while, overwhelming power and water and appropriate sites. And that it’s likely a bubble, so many of that mad rush is likely to be abandoned in a few years
I mean I don’t think data center will add anything good to where they are built, but usually they have a closed cooling loop and do not need water to cool.
Of course construction, concrete and so on needs water.
Just to get some more knowledge out there
You don’t know what your talking about, most data centers use evaporative cooling, not a closed loop with a radiator.
Huh, I just looked it up and apparently (according to CNET) 44% of data centers use closed loop. That’s still not most, but it is more than I expected.
Tbh, I still think water use is a red herring. The electricity use absolutely bonkers.
I totally agree that water use is a distraction. For sure it’s a concern but mandating closed loop/recycling should solve that reasonably and not be blocking.
Similar with noise pollution. Apparently it’s there more that I’d expect but it seems simplest just to put noise limits
Other ways datacenter sprawl externalizes their cost to everyone else are harder to address - which ought to be blocked. We need to be more concerned with air pollution, electricity prices, and building ever more “dead mall” blight.
The water use is a distraction. These companies pumped so much money into grabbing onto the counter narrative and controlling it. There went with “the water use! AI is so bad it needs to be regulated (away from the plebs)!” Meanwhile they are sucking up the world’s compute and hoarding AI for themselves which is the real and actual problem.
Go look for yourself. They are running it out of berkley where that lesswrong dude has a big campus thing.
I didn’t look it up and got the info from YouTube and people online and so on. And I thought it was more than that.
They usually don’t have a closed cooling loop that’s the whole fucking problem
I wouldn’t go that far. There’s a lot of problems from power use to environmental impact, to community impact, to land use, to job losses, to plagiarism, ans so much more.
Even Sesame Street was putting out PSAs about this.
1kg of flesh requires 15.000L water, if you cared about water use you wouldn’t eat animals.
this doesn’t sound right
You say this yet you are made of flesh. Curious.
You speak the truth!
I eat ass. And I don’t use a fork and knife. I just get in there like a caveman.
You don’t care about the environment
Bruh and you are one of those annoying vegans that do nothing but tell everybody how terrible meat is.
I get it but people like you are just annoying as hell
To be fair, meat and AI have a lot in common. They’re useless and they make us unhealthy.
Yeah dude, food is “useless”
I mean, you’re taking 10kg of plant food and turning it into 1kg of meat food. That seems useless to Me, it seems like throwing away food, but maybe your math looks different.
Cow feed isn’t fit for human consumption so your entire argument here is flawed
You mean corn? People eat corn. You don’t have to grind it all up into a fibrous slop with zero safety regulations, you can just cook it safely.
Soy, too!
I just don’t like the hypocrisy.
I don’t like distraction from a topic.
Which was clearly not related to eating meat.
Given your vote count, seems I’m not alone.
Congrats on being annoying?
Hope you contribute something, somewhere, someday.gl.
It was about water use, so it’s on topic.
Top kek #1 troll ytmnd.
If I eat people, it actually saves water.
While their marketing slogan of “eat the rich” is very good, it should be noted that it is not recommended as a sustained diet, as they are very often quite high in fats and full of preservatives and bad chemicals
I always wondered how lizard would taste.
I’m pretty sure a more useful measure of this is calories per unit of water than straight weight/mass. Which tbf is a metric meat will probably still be less efficient by.
There’s also like multiple factors of this, if you’re growing meat at industrial scale then you are farming crops specifically to feed the cattle so its doubly wasteful; but not everything is like beef, goats grazing on mountains where you can’t plant crops easily can feed a family with minimal labor, and they produce more than just meat. Ideally you wouldnt be raising cattle for just the meat.
Soy yields roughly 2,12 calories per liter of water, whereas flesh yields about 0,16 calories per liter of water.
Your other comments are more about animal agriculture and not about water usage (which is what this post is about) but to address all of your arguments I will say that I think it is wrong to cage, impregnate and kill others for the simple fact that they experience the world just like you and me in all the ways that matter to whether it’s ethical to be inflicting these things on them.
Right, what are your thoughts on hunting wild game?
I think my comment already covers that
I think it’s wrong to […] kill others
Wrong because why would we have a permit to kill (wild) animals?
… What?
Not the OP, but in my opinion we don’t have any rights to kill animals, whether wild or not.
Lmao. If I eat a kg of delicious flesh a week that’s only 15L?
Way better than I thought, tbh. Plus what about if I go in the woods and sustainably hunt an invasive species? I’ve helped the natural environment, and ethically sourced 200lbs of meat.
what about if I kill invasive species
Humans are an invasive species so that’s not the qualifier that justifies killing someone.
Historically it has always been very common to kill invasive humans.
Historically it’s been common to enslave humans so I don’t think whether something is common means it’s ethical.
Sorry, a species introduced by humans that’s turned out to be an ecological disaster.
Any thoughts on the morality there?
I feel like if you’d argue to make an invasive species less fertile I could maybe agree but you seem to be arguing to kill them with the ulterior motive of eating their corpse.
Yes, get rid of humans.
Fortunately we’ll wipe ourselves out of existence in the not too distant future.
Why don’t you start right now?
I think we have already started as a species. However, offing oneself is a lazy, fatalistic solution one should not recommend to anyone. Instead I’d suggest trying to find more peace and love in the universe and live happily ever after.
But while I’m brushing my teeth
And having so much fun
I never let the water run
No
No
I never let the water run
Barney
Where you live it is difficult to get water. Probably because idiots built there. It has nothing to do with hyperscaler megacorps consuming your country like the capitalist doctrine mandates.
Oh fun take. Enjoy paying the repairs for sewage issues. Sorry the water has to flow. Spend four times you pay a year for water to repair your shit drain and then tell me about conservation.
Do you not wash your hands?
I do. And I grow trees. And trees like to break pipes. It’s also a house made in the 60s. The city is very corrupt and doesn’t fix shit on their end. And “it’s a drought” but we will continue to build “affordable” housing. So 6 grand later water still barely drains.
What kind of faucet do you have where this is an issue?
A very corrupt place. The water bill is more than my electric… but hey build more useless shit. At least the data center got put off… for now.
What the fuck are you talking about lmao
Some y’all living in Dune.
You’ll die early when the water wars begin
