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BUCKNACKT'S SORDID TAWDRY BLOG We should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive & well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate, bier or wein in hand, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WHOO-HOO, WHAT A RIDE!!!!!!"
28 June 2026
VERSE AND VOICE FROM SOJOURNERS 22JUN26
Spanberger encourages water conservation during drought, while data centers use millions of gallons a day 25JUN26
GOING into our second year of drought there is no justification for mandated water use restrictions and / or increasing water and sewage fees for Virginia residential customers while Virginia data centers are using on average four ( 4 ) million gallons of water daily. Too much of the additional strain on utilities from data centers has been imposed on Virginia's citizens, who's water and electric bills haven't increased with the increase in data centers in our Commonwealth? Corporations paid for enough votes in our legislature in Richmond, with the blatant support of Gov spangerger ( at what price one wonders ), for the tax break on equipment for data centers to be extended. Since they have this tax break mandate the older data centers should spend the money to switch their cooling systems from fresh drinking water to reclaimed water or pay higher fees for the fresh drinking water they use. Depending on the state of the drought as the year progresses and data center cooling needs some of them may have to shut down some servers ( server brownout ) to reduce the amount of water they use. Remember, Virginia is a Commonwealth NOT a corporatewealth, and we the people have reached our limit on our elected officials kow-towing to bezos, zuckerberg, musk and the rest of their lot. Thankfully spanberger can't run for re-election, but the Virginia Assembly would do well to remember this. From ABC8 WRIC.....
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RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) — Most of the Commonwealth is under a drought warning, and Governor Abigail Spanberger has encouraged residents to conserve water where they can. But with Virginia being the data center capital of the world, the amount of water used to keep them running is raising eyebrows.
According to the Sierra Club Virginia Chapter, a Virginia data center uses an average of four million gallons of water a day. The average person uses around 90 gallons a day, so it can be frustrating to hear politicians asking you to cut down on showers or watering the lawn when the data center next door is using much more.
The machines at data centers create a lot of heat and run 24/7 so the water is used to keep equipment cool.
Ron Murchek, an Executive General Adjuster with Sedgwick and data center expert, said companies predominantly use fresh drinking water at their data center, but newer ones are starting to use what’s called reclaimed water.
“Maybe water that they have captured in nearby ponds, rainwater they’ve captured from their own property, their roofs,” Murchek said. “They’re really using a lot of reclaimed water for sewage treatment plants.”
The hope is this water can be used up to five times before it evaporates.
But the problem is older centers that use fresh drinking water would have to pay an unappealing price to switch to the more environmentally friendly option.
“A lot of that really comes down to just dollars and cents,” he said. “If the building wasn’t constructed to use renewable sources, there’s significant costs involved to move to that type of a repurpose of the water.”
Murchek said it’s time for companies to make it more of a priority.
“There’s a lot of planning that has to change,” he said. “We can no longer just look at the sky for a storm. We really need to look at our resource availability. These data centers need to remain reliable neighbors to everyone in Virginia. Sustainability, disaster recovery must go hand in hand.”
27 June 2026
He Is British, Mysterious and Has Outlasted 5 Prime Ministers: Meet ‘Hot Podium Guy.’ 23JUN26
THIS is hysterical!!! From the New York Times.....
Meet Tobias Gough, also known as the “hot podium guy” who sends the internet into a meltdown each time he’s spotted setting up the lectern before a British prime minister announces their resignation.He Is British, Mysterious and Has Outlasted 5 Prime Ministers: Meet ‘Hot Podium Guy.’
In England, over the last few years, when a lectern has appeared outside the black door of 10 Downing Street, the office and official residence of the prime minister in London, it has typically been an indicator of one of four things.
It could be that the prime minister is about to resign, call a general election or address the nation. Or it means the internet is likely to be reacquainted with the so-called hot podium guy, a dashing sound engineer who has been tasked with setting up the lectern and microphones for these momentous events. (Although, grammatically speaking, or at least according to The New York Times’s stylebook, he should be referred to as the hot lectern guy.) In Britain’s political merry-go-round of the last decade, the mysterious heartthrob has been a welcome distraction and an enduring presence.
He appeared again on Monday, when Keir Starmer resigned from his post. The man, Tobias Gough, a 42-year-old sound engineer with MGi London, first caught the public’s attention in 2019, while setting up the lectern when Theresa May, then the prime minister, stepped down. Almost overnight, he became a social media sensation. Some pointed out his muscular arms, while others said, despite not hearing much from him, that they trusted him over May to successfully broker Brexit, Britain’s complicated exit from the European Union.
In the years since, prime ministers have come and gone, while Gough, in his uniform black T-shirt, has outlasted them all. Pictures and videos of him carrying the lectern and testing its microphones have become something of a harbinger of significant political news.
Users online have praised Gough for his reliability; some joke that he seems to be more consistent than the leaders of the country and has one of the most stable jobs in a sluggish economy.
Katie Glass, a columnist at The Times of London, called him “the one reliable man in politics” in a recent article, also describing him as a cross between “a choirboy and a Chippendale.”
“It’s an innate part of the British psyche not to take anything too seriously, so we love finding the comedy in serious things,” she explained in an email. And given that Britain has just lost its sixth prime minister in a decade, “coming together over a self-knowingly ridiculous obsession with ‘Hot Podium Guy’ has provided us all with a silly, sexy distraction from thinking about our country imploding.”
It is telling, she added, that the nation is also similarly obsessed with Larry, the tabby cat of 10 Downing Street, known officially as the chief mouser to the Cabinet Office.
During the BBC’s morning broadcast ahead of the resignation of Starmer on Monday, two of the network’s presenters, Jon Kay and Henry Zeffman, discussed Gough’s recurring appearances.
“This guy here — I’ve seen him come out and do the testing of the microphones umpteen times over the last few years,” Kay told Zeffman, while gesturing over at Gough, busy doing his job. “He probably never thought that when he got that job that he would be doing it quite so regularly.”
“I think he’s known on the internet as hot podium guy,” Zeffman responded.
Gough did not respond to requests for comment, and the Downing Street press office declined to comment. But in 2019, in an interview with The Daily Mail, Gough expressed his bemusement about all of the attention and chalked the internet’s obsession up to “great lighting.”
“The sun must have been at the right angle,” he added.
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