venning

Total operational water "footprint" of data centers in 2018: 5.13 * 10^8 m^3. Of that, indirect consumption through electricity generation: 3.83 * 10^8 m^3, or 74.7%. And indirect consumption related to water and wastewater utilities (non-electicity production): 4.50 * 10^5 m^3, or 0.09%.

The study then does a reasonable job of discussing the concerns of building data centers in water-stressed places.

This article seems to be another "didn't read the study, saw big number" thing.

I never stated that she infected others for 38 years. Being an asymptomatic carrier does not require continually infecting others, only that the carrier maintains the infection without showing symptoms. [1] Additionally, the NIH article isn't complete in listing likely infections, as evidenced by comparing it to the Wikipedia article. Nor does is state that she continued to infect others until her paralysis in 1932.

As for the 38 years, the Wikipedia article notes 1900 as the first known, likely infection of a family she worked for. Then, from the NIH article:

> A post mortem revealed that she shed Salmonella typhi bacteria from her gallstones ...

Her death (and, presumably, post mortem) was in 1938. "Bacterial shedding" [2] implies infection and, thus, being a carrier in 1938, though asymptomatic. I arrived at 38 years by considering her likely a carrier from 1900 to 1938.

No. VAT in Germany is not charged to American servicemen and women and dependants. This is covered under the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) [1]. One may also receive reimbursement of VAT paid on the economy, though that is subject to some restrictions at around €2500, I believe. There are specific rules on cars. The actual forms for receiving reimbursement are onerous enough that VAT forms aren't often used outside of major purchases.

I went to high school on an American military base in Germany in the 1990s. At least then, the major items of note were jeans and gasoline/diesel (though, I had a teenager's bias). Both were subject to significant taxation on the economy that Americans didn't need to pay on base. In practice, this meant there were some restrictions on how many jeans people could purchase at once, to prevent Americans from reselling them to the Germans. There were also special booklets that Americans could buy on base that had little tear-out pages; each page could be exchanged for a certain number of liters of fuel at, specifically, Esso gas stations on the economy. While fuel prices on base (the same rate as the booklets) were considerably more expensive than in the US, it was still far cheaper than off base.

Most of the goods available in stores on base were imported from the US [2]. All prices and payments were in dollars. We did not use pennies on the base, since they were too expensive to import. All bills/receipts were rounded to the nearest five cents [3].

I was told by a teacher at the time that the Rhine valley had "the single largest concentration of Americans outside of America." That specific area of US installations has grown in the intervening 20 years both due to the wind down of smaller Cold War-era bases scattered throughout Germany and due to the current conflicts the US is involved in, of which, most require US forces to deploy via Germany.

If "hundreds of thousands" means 500 thousand, then this is saying that 0.00027% of those plastic straws are found on coastlines.

I understand that there are problems with both of those statistics, but it still seems a bit odd to publish them like this (there are 13 words between those numbers).

Again, the "500 million" number is likely wrong (as OP references, [1]) and the "hundreds of thousands" number was probably the author taking a spitball at something that there aren't real statistics for, but they still chose to print it.

The animals breakdown (Chart B) contains 10 values, ranging from 1 Gt to 0.002 Gt. That's a difference of 500x. That's a bit hard to perceive in a one-dimensional chart.

The two-dimensionality of a Voronoi makes it easier to perceive, particularly in a small image (as is presented on a phone's screen), at least to me. I imagine this is mostly due to a 2D chart consuming far more physical pixels to convey the same information.

A stacked bar chart of the same information: [1]. Admittedly, I didn't take time sprucing up that chart, but I find it extremely hard to intuit from and can't even see the value for "wild birds".

Forgive me if I got some of that wrong, or if the system as a whole does not work like than anymore. Not exactly what was asked, but maybe helpful to someone.

> Those reservation holders must pay an additional $2,500 to turn their reservations into an order, at which point the original $1,000 deposit goes toward the overall payment for the car. Buyers can cancel their orders within three days for a full refund, the company confirmed, but after that their money is Tesla’s for good.