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What do 463 million gallons of water look like? Such volumes are often accounted for in units of Olympic-size swimming pools, as if an Olympic-size swimming pool is a known quantity encountered on a regular basis. If you’re curious, 463 million gallons of water is 701 Olympic-size swimming pools. 701-and-a-half, actually. What feats of athleticism are possible in a half-size Olympic swimming pool? Would the superlative one be awarded half a Gold Medal? I’m having trouble imagining all this.
I’m also having trouble imagining what a skipped shower feels like. Sure, you’d feel a bit grimy, probably. But let me give you the full context: According to a few articles I read this morning, Texas residents are being asked to take shorter showers, or to forgo one here and there, due to drought. Meanwhile, these articles grumble, a pair of San Antonio data centers guzzled down 463 million gallons of water in both 2023 and 2024 and, as opposed to flesh-and-blood residents (fleshies, the Machines call them derogatorily1), are not being asked to scrimp on H20.
So I guess what I’m having trouble imagining here is the sort of person, any person, much less a Texan who’d receive such a request and, in an act of patriotism to the algocracy, skip their morning shower. Surcharges probably go a long way on this front. Honestly, I’m having trouble imagining a drought, too. I’ve lived through plenty, but I can’t recall one having a real impact on my daily affairs. I’m having trouble imagining a data center, even. My mind veers into sci-fi: an imposing warehouse containing labyrinthine, blinking rows of slate fiberglass interconnected by a plexus of wires in a mechanical echo of a giant human brain. That’s what I picture, anyway.
I’m having trouble imagining water, a Texan’s would-be shower water, water older than life itself, water that’s seen ‘em come and seen ‘em go, being directed to a data center in San Antonio to keep the giant mechanical brain from overheating as it manically satisfies prompts that read like fevered mutterings on a deathbed: create a video of a kangaroo politely boarding a Delta flight lifelike real realistic create an image of big-breasted anime girl pink hair large chest swinging a katana boobs thick legs slim waist bouncy chest write a poem about the water that cools you down.
That these machines can “imagine,” and that they need water, reminds me of discussions on what qualifies something as alive. I think of viruses. Life is a philosophical question, which is to say there aren’t satisfying answers. According to the specific video I watched on the subject, viruses are what’s called obligate intracellular parasites (OIP). In particle form, viruses don’t satisfy our requirements to meet the definition of life. It’s once the OIP commandeers a cell that things get interesting. The infected cell is alive, but now a completely different entity, co-opted by an alien agenda.
“How does something dead take over something that’s alive?” asks a fleshy in the comments.
The kids, as they’re often called (though here defined as anyone who makes liberal use of their front-facing phone camera), are saying “unalive.” You’re mostly likely to encounter “unalive” in TikToks and Instagram reels, but you’ll sometimes see it in text form on social media. The neologism takes the place of “kill,” “murder,” or, most typically, “suicide.” I find “unalive” many times more unsettling than any of these words. Hearing it makes me want to “Kermit sewer slide,” as “the kids” also “say,” in Algorese.
“Unalive” joins an ever-expanding vernacular of twee euphemisms: “seggs” and “shmex2;” “mascara,” which somehow means “sexual assault” or “dick;” “grape,” in place of “rape.” Some of the sentences these words allow for are certainly unprecedented in the tradition of language. I saw someone discuss, in all earnestness, the terrible history of “the Grape of Nanking.” My instinct to all this is revulsion. It feels like reading a pop-up book about the Rwandan genocide. Pardon, the Rwandan mass unaliving. Inappropriate. Condescending.
Still, I’m interested in words, so I’m interested in “unalive.” I want to study it under a microscope and see what I see, its flagella and cytoskeleton and such. Words, all words, but especially new words aren’t so dissimilar from pathogens. They spread invisibly as if through contagion.