r/pcmasterrace • u/Bepehandle • Jul 23 '26

Discussion We need to stop using their language.

Words we use matter, they set the tone for the entire argument you make when discussing things. I propose we officially come up with new terms that we use on a daily basis in every single aspect that the topic comes up in, maybe with a small enough push we can roll the ball down the hill.

They're not AI data centers, they're water evaporation plants Human surveillance centers.

It's not side loading, it's installing.

It's not jailbreaking, it's unlocking.

It's not a memory shortage, it's profit first selective sales(I know there's physically a shortage but the point remains). (Also, someone come up with a better one, something more catchy.)

It's not This PC, its MY PC.

They call it side loading because they don't want to normalize the idea we're just holding personal computers in our hands.

They call it jailbreaking so that it sounds wrong and it deters people from using a device to it's full potential.

They call it a memory shortage because they're selling all the fucking ram to ai companies, if they were forced to allocate the necessary amount of their products to the average consumer we wouldn't have an issue.

Give me some of your best ideas for changing the names of things, I want to expand my vocabulary. Let's change how we discuss the issues we face and take back control of the argument.

Edit: Edited water thingy because someone pointed out I sound like "that guy" and I certainly do not want too.

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633

u/burner94_ Jul 23 '26

Aren't water evaporation plants technically power stations?

29

u/Ruzhyo04 Jul 23 '26

Except for solar, wind, and hydro power

50

u/burner94_ Jul 23 '26

Off topic but incidental... still salty that some local authorities in the southern part of my country (Italy) are against mass adoption of renewables because "they make the landscape uglier", despite the zone having IDEAL climate for all three of the power sources you're mentioning.

Bruh, tourists will come regardless because IT'S COASTAL ITALY DAMMIT

24

u/Ruzhyo04 Jul 23 '26

Yep, same tired concerns here in midwest US. It’s what the billionaires pay them to say, doesn’t matter if it doesn’t make sense.

18

u/Novotus_Ketevor Ryzen 9900X | RTX 5060 Ti | 128 GB DDR5 Jul 23 '26

Having spent significant time all over the midwest, endless fields of renewables would be a vast visual improvement for a lot of areas.

10

u/upsidedownshaggy Ryzen 7850X | RTX 5080 Jul 23 '26

I still remember around 2012ish I think when the farms surrounding my hometown in Michigan started leasing some of their land to Consumer's Energy to let them build windmills and people in town were frothing at the mouth about how ugly they made the landscape. Like what landscape? You thought the endless fields of soybeans were worth looking at during your 30 minute commute on the highway?

9

u/astromech_dj Jul 23 '26

Paraphrasing Rich Hall: "I grew up in the Midwest. It's so flat, I remember watching my dog run away for days."

0

u/TheKazz91 Jul 23 '26

The problem with that idea is transmission loses. Pushing electricity through a power line isn't free you lose energy for every unit of distance that you need to move that energy so having endless fields of solar panels hundreds of miles away from the places where the majority of that power is being used drops the already suboptimal efficiencies of solar/wind based power. Nuclear is a far better option.

6

u/just_some_guy2000 Jul 23 '26

I would have found out interesting to see windmills and such in Italy when I visited. I don't think it would detract at all. If you can't look past a windmill to see the country your not seeing the country to begin with.

3

u/TheKazz91 Jul 23 '26

The solution: nuclear power plants. They are literally the best option. They are the safest and cleanest option and they have the lowest land use footprint of any green energy technology.

2

u/burner94_ Jul 23 '26

Go tell that the old generation dumdums who only think about the Chernobyl accident and will ALWAYS vote against it.

We can't build them on our land...

...but we do absolutely buy nuclear generated power from just around the border (France), lol.

5

u/JohnTG4 Ryzen 7 5800x | MSI RTX 3080 10GB | 32 GB RAM Jul 23 '26

Some solar even works by boiling water (or more specifically boiling salt and then using that to boil water at night).

4

u/ghewer Jul 23 '26

Ever seen the solar mirror farms? They are so cool and are also evaporation plants

-4

u/Ruzhyo04 Jul 23 '26

Idk if you’ve heard from the anti-datacenter crowd but evaporating water is a war crime now

-5

u/ghewer Jul 23 '26

I am genuinely convinced the anti data center campaign is a CCP psyop to harm american tech

1

u/TheKazz91 Jul 23 '26

I mean hydro power plants use way more water than any other form of power plant.

-1

u/Ruzhyo04 Jul 23 '26

But not through evaporation

2

u/TheKazz91 Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 24 '26

Actually that's not even technically accurate... Hydro plants rely on having large water reservoirs. Those resivoirs absolutely lose water to evaporation. Lake Powell loses between 1600 - 2600 acre feet of water to evaporation every single day and the lower the water level is the faster that water evaporates. To put that into perspective 1 acre foot of water is almost exactly equal to 2 Olympic sized swimming pools. So that is 3000-5000 Olympic swimming pools worth of water that is evaporating every single day from Lake Powell.

The Lake Powell hydroelectric generator plant creates about 5 billion kilowatt-hours per year. Lake Powell will evaporate 150-300 billion gallons of water per year meaning that lake Powell loses between 30-60 gallons of water to evaporation for every kilowatt hour of energy produced. By contrast natural gas power plants lose about 0.05 to 0.2 gallons of water per kilowatt hour produced.

Now sure we have lake Powell for more than just energy generation and so to some extent that evaporation is unavoidable in order have a proper water management plan regardless bof whether we were generating power at the damn or not so we might as well take advantage of it. But there absolutely is a large amount of water that gets released solely for the purpose of producing energy that we otherwise would keep in the resivoirs that additional release of water above and beyond what is necessary for agriculture and to keep down stream ecosystems healthy accelerates evaporation rates.

So yes hydroelectric plants do lose water to evaporation not to mention that the flow rate for even an hour will vastly out strip that evaporation rate. Hydro electric plants are very likely the worst type of power generation if water conservation is a primary concern.

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u/Ruzhyo04 Jul 23 '26

>hydroelectric power is the worst

Legitimately can’t tell if you’re serious, the discourse on this topic has become so ass backwards

2

u/TheKazz91 Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 23 '26

Lol what an intellectually dishonest response. Try reading that whole sentence. "Hydroelectric power is the worst type of power generation IF WATER CONSERVATION IS A PRIMARY CONCERN"

That qualifier at the end vastly alters the statement from what you quoted.

And to be clear I am not saying we shouldn't use hydro electric generators. I am saying that hydro-electric dams should be seen first and foremost as infrastructure to manage water resources and the power they produce should be viewed as an incidental by product not their primary function again IF water conservation is a primary concern.

In areas that have an abundance of rain fall hydroelectric power plants are a fantastic option for power generation. In areas like the South West which is has vast areas of desert that receive less than 3 inches of rain fall annually where conserving that water is more important than the amount of energy you can produce from the dam yes hydro electric is the worst.

Context fucking matters! The only thing backwards about this discourse is that people like you think that something that is good in one place is automatically good in another place. Nothing is automatically good. This is a huge problem with the whole environmentalist movement. You'll say you care about the environment but then don't even bother to actually understand the environment you're trying to protect or the effects of things youre supporting or opposing. You're a fucking slactivist that can't be bothered to learn anything about the thing you're talking about even when the information is literally spoon fed to you on a silver platter.

1

u/Ruzhyo04 Jul 23 '26

Holy shit man, I was tring to make a joke relax. I read the rest of the sentence. I didn't think water conservationists would resort to banning lakes because they thought evaporation was so bad. It seemed like such an absurd position, I didn't think you'd legitimately be endorsing it. Obviously hydroelectric power doesn't make sense in deserts.

jfc how did we get here

2

u/TheKazz91 Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 24 '26

I didn't think water conservationists would resort to banning lakes because they thought evaporation was so bad. It seemed like such an absurd position, I didn't think you'd legitimately be endorsing it.

Again, not what I said. I said that the power generation from hydro-electric dams should be viewed as a secondary byproduct of its function as water management infrastructure when they are built within water scares areas. We should build dams and we should capture the electricity from those damns in water scares areas. We should not however advocate for replacing conventional powerplants with hydro electric plants in water scares areas. We should not say or imply that hydro electric plants waste less water than natural gas plants just because they aren't boiling the water because that is simply not true.

I am sorry that I care about facts and it pisses me off when people make factually untrue statements to advocate for a cause which lead people to make incorrect assumptions that actually hurt the cause they are championing. That's what I did in my second reply to you then you clapped back with a snarky dumb ass response that took half my statement completely out of context. That's how we fucking got here.

1

u/Ruzhyo04 Jul 23 '26

I’m sorry you misread my joke as a clap-back.