Consulting, Acoustics. ASA, INCE Emeritus, ASCAP. Relax with my bestselling soundtrack (thousands do) at https://xitter.twitterapi.xyz/t.co/NSMuRYryHs.
Brunswick, ME
Joined September 2010
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A central tenet of the Soundscape concept is that humans immersed in sonic environments are objective measuring instruments (New Experts), whose reports and descriptions must be taken seriously and quantified by technical measurements. -Wade Bray, 2012.
acoustics.org/pressroom/http…
Robert Rand retweeted
It’s their world. Not ours.
Filmed off Bay Head, NJ today.
🎥 credit: Anthony Marino @CapeMayWhale
How big are data centers today See attached article. And: Now and going forward, noise controls to be good acoustic neighbors are readily available and timetested over decades of industrial noise abatement.
How big are the data centers today?
Today, there are only 14 data centers on Earth that are bigger than 250MW. For context, 250MW is a single Siemens SST-800 steam turbine.
So whilst the press talk this capex cycle up a lot, so far this is not much energy that is flowing to compute. Not yet.
There are only a handful of big data centers operating today, but there are a lot more big data centers being built right now.
The wave of big new data centers coming online still hasn’t hit. Frontier models are still training on sub-GW machines.
If you build cooling towers, it’s quite possible to build a single terrestrial facility that can emit 5GW of heat. Nobody has done that yet, but it’s theoretically possible (although maybe not politically).
The largest data center is more valuable than 2x data centers that are half its size, because a larger machine can more easily train and output the frontier.
AI is heavy industry.
Whoever can build the largest coherent synchronous machine, should be able to train the most powerful model.
Building such a facility, now the supply chain is tight, takes 5-7 years. There are a limited number of sites capable of hosting a GW scale data center… all of those sites are now bought up.
Many countries do not have a single site capable of hosting a GW scale machine.
Now the shape of AI can vary wildly, you can have many small models, a sort of swarm of AI, all running on lots of little compute machines. Or you could have one giant coherent machine that hosts a single giant super intelligence.
Inference can be a distributed swarm or a consolidated deity, or something in between.
But these things are not the same, they have strengths and weaknesses, they serve different applications better or worse.
Humanity is going to build it all.
But different organisations already have distinct trajectories and strategies for what they want to do, there is much more diversity in the market and the economy than people think. There are also myriad unserved gaps.
Humanity is going to build it all.
Good to see species thriving in those beautiful waters.
The offshore wind industry's relentless sonar operations over weeks and months. A toll dismissed by NOAA and BOEM.
The Jersey Shore has seen whales and dolphins thriving in our waters since the departure of Industrial energy giant Orsted in 2023.
@RobertKennedyJr @POTUS
Unfortunately most policymakers have no engineering background or experience. They will have no answers. Policy these days largely runs on feelings.
No matter how they try to spin it, or how much they dismiss it, there’s nothing “clean” about widespread industrial noise pollution.
Robert Rand retweeted
This is a diesel pile hammer doing exactly what it's built for, driving a concrete pile into the ground right beside a bridge going up.
It works like a diesel engine with one giant piston. A crane lifts the ram, fuel gets injected, and the ram drops. On the way down it squeezes the air and fuel until the mixture gets hot enough to ignite, with no spark plug. As the ram lands, the mixture goes off, the blast shoves the pile further down, and the ram gets thrown back up to fall again. It keeps cycling until the crew shuts it off or it runs out of fuel.
The catch is soft ground. The pile pushing back is what bounces the ram up, so in soft soil crews start with a smaller hammer and a shorter stroke. And these hammers have an old reputation for smoke and noise, which you can see in the clip.
They come in sizes from about 3,500 lb to over 100,000 lb, and they carry their own fuel instead of needing an external power supply. That's why you see them on remote sites and in all kinds of soil.
🎥 Source: draaa2748
Robert Rand retweeted
Scott Adams: "Be useful ... it doesn't sometimes work, it works every time!"
What a treat to hear this old interview from 2015 (with Tim Ferriss). Thanks to @theoliverxp for unearthing it.
The best life advice, ever.
A story about sleep deprivation due to noise… with a good ending.
Being a good acoustic neighbor isn’t hard. It just takes awareness and good will.
Encontré una nota en el ascensor que mencionaba el número de mi apartamento.
«Al residente del 414: deje de prender la lavadora todas las noches cerca de las 2 de la madrugada. Lleva más de cuatro meses ocurriendo».
Vivo solo. Únicamente lavo mi ropa los fines de semana, al mediodía. Además, me voy a dormir puntualmente a las 11 pm.
Llamé a la administración. Me informaron que la denuncia venía del apartamento 314, justo debajo del mío.
«¿Quiere hablar directamente con esa persona?», me preguntaron.
Esa misma noche, en vez de llevarle un regalo, llamé al timbre con cierta molestia.
Me abrió una mujer de aproximadamente mi edad. Se le notaba el cansancio en sus profundas ojeras oscuras.
Le expliqué que no utilizaba la lavadora. Sin decir una palabra, sacó su teléfono y reprodujo una grabación.
La fecha era el día anterior. La hora: 2:03 a. m.
Un zumbido grave.
Un golpe seco.
Una breve pausa y otro golpe.
«Entonces, ¿qué es esto?».
Diesel subs in littorals waters are hard to detect. Add widespread broadband and pulsating noise pollution from offshore wind turbines, triple tough to detect, even, unable to detect. This isn't hard to figure out. Now. Blue state governors and NGOs fighting viciously for more offshore turbines aren't stupid. They have college or law degrees or both.
The deductive conclusion is that they WANT to degrade national security.
cc @saveLBIorg @GreenOceansRI @LinowesLisa @mtkblb
ディーゼル潜水艦が空気中の酸素を必要としながらも、水中を隠密に進む兵器として存在し続ける最大の利点は、原子力潜水艦に比べて圧倒的に「静粛性」に優れ、浅い海での待ち伏せや防衛において最強の隠密性を発揮できる点にあります。
一見、酸素を求めて定期的に浮上（またはスノーケル航行）しなければならないのは致命的な弱点（矛盾）に見えますが、それを補って余りある独自の強みを持っています。
主な利点を記します。
1. 「完全な沈黙」を作れる（原子力潜水艦との最大の違い）
• ディーゼル艦の強み: 水中に潜航している間は、エンジンを完全に停止し、バッテリー（蓄電池）の電力だけで稼働します。このとき、艦内から発生する機械音はほぼ「ゼロ」になり、海の雑音に完全に溶け込むことができます。
• 原子力艦の弱み: 原子力潜水艦は酸素を必要とせず半永久的に潜航できますが、原子炉を冷却し続けるための「冷却ポンプ」を24時間止めることができません。そのため、どうしても常に一定の稼働音（低周波音）が発生してしまいます。
潜水艦の戦いは「相手より先に音で察知した方が勝つ」世界です。バッテリーでじっと潜むディーゼル潜水艦は、現代の最新技術をもってしても探知が極めて困難な「海の幽霊」になります。
2. 浅い海（沿岸部）での圧倒的な優位性
• 待ち伏せ特化: 日本の周辺海域のように、島が多く海が比較的浅い沿岸部では、大型の原子力潜水艦は小回りが利かず、その巨体やわずかな駆動音で居場所を突き止められやすくなります。
• 地形の利用: 小型で圧倒的に静かなディーゼル潜水艦は、海底の地形に紛れてじっと「待ち伏せ」をすることに適しており、防衛戦においては最強のコスパと能力を誇ります。
3. 圧倒的なコストパフォーマンスと運用のしやすさ
• 建造・維持費の安さ: 原子力潜水艦は非常に高額で、退役後の原子炉処理にも莫大な費用がかかります。ディーゼル艦はそれに比べてはるかに安価に製造・維持できます。
• 技術的ハードルの低さ: 原子力技術を持たない国や、非核政策を掲げる国（日本など）でも、高度な通常動力型（ディーゼル＋高性能バッテリー）潜水艦を運用することで、一級品の抑止力を持つことができます。
Robert Rand retweeted
I'm happy to repeat this: human brains are coded for survival; fear is one of the strongest persuasion tools; but people will fear the thing that's the most *immediate* threat.
"I can't pay the electric bill" is more immediate than "socialism is going to slowly destroy you."
Do you think "clean energy" politicians and lobbyists care about you or endangered whales?
There's nothing "clean" about widespread industrial noise pollution.
Not in my backyard shouldn’t mean you’re ok if offshore wind garbage is placed in someone else’s.
Protect Our Coast New Jersey will oppose wildlife killing offshore wind projects, be they 10 miles from shore, or 100 or even a thousand. We fundamentally disagree with and will never support groups that want to “move ‘em out.”
Just because you can’t see them from your beach house doesn’t make them a good idea anywhere else.
Robert Rand retweeted
Offshore wind supporters may see renewed momentum following this week's elections. But make no mistake: Atlantic Shores is far from a done deal.
Save LBI continues fighting on multiple fronts:
• Our letter to Governor Sherrill urges her to recognize the project's serious impacts on LBI.
• Our lawsuit seeks critical habitat protections for the endangered North Atlantic right whale.
• Atlantic Shores' EPA air permit remains under reconsideration following our successful challenge.
• Its federal Construction & Operations Plan was remanded, and we are pressing for further action.
• Multiple other lawsuits remain active, challenging noise impacts, state approvals and Army Corps permitting.
• We are also challenging Empire Wind and opposing federal legislation that threatens environmental protections and judicial review.
We continue pursuing additional legal and policy actions.
The fight is far from over. Stay engaged!
From a noise standpoint, the data center hysteria is just that. Hysteria. Standard industrial noise control engineering used for decades can be applied directly to all the noise sources in data centers and render them innocuous or inaudible.
Noisy data centers are noisy simply because they have not applied noise control engineering to be good acoustic neighbors. It’s a simple as that.
The root of all evil with respect to high electricity costs is the climate hoax, and its evil twins wind and solar. Data center hysteria just exposed it.
washingtonpost.com/climate-e…
Robert Rand retweeted
Civilization collapses when the takers overwhelm the makers. Democracy provides the means by which that imbalance can become law, and eventually dismantle the very institutions established to constrain it.
Robert Rand retweeted
The time is long overdue for @NOAAFisheries to conduct a long term scientific study into the causes behind cetacean deaths. Rather than ceding conclusions that mass casualties among whales and dolphins are caused by ship strikes and entanglements with fishing gear, it is critical to uncover all causal links to those outcomes.
We shouldn’t make the same mistake of “trusting the science,” when the scientists are bought and paid for by the climate industry. For far too long, the federal government has allowed the fox to guard the hen house. By continuing to deny links between cetacean deaths and offshore wind activity, the Feds have allowed a dangerous industry to gain a foothold in an unspoiled space.
We welcome any serious, peer-reviewed scientific inquiry that begins with an open mind—not with the predetermined assumption that offshore wind industrialization is harmless. To our knowledge, no such unbiased, comprehensive inquiry has ever been conducted. Meanwhile, hundreds of whales and dolphins have been sacrificed at the altar of climate change.
All models are wrong. Some are useful.
The offshore wind models are just wrong.
Reference: Syed, A. H., Hannesdóttir, Á., and Mann, J.: Dynamic response and loads analysis of a large offshore wind turbine under low-frequency wind fluctuations, Wind Energ. Sci., 11, 3321–3336, doi.org/10.5194/wes-11-3321-…, 2026.
Offshore wind turbines are being worn down by slow ocean gusts that engineers never thought to measure share.google/V57oo8sFw9rzWSe…
@robertwrand @LinowesLisa @Barbarajdurkin @saveLBIorg @njcoast_protect @pwrhungry
Robert Rand retweeted
A young humpback whale was feeding off Avalon, New Jersey yesterday, just 300 yards from shore.
These majestic marine mammals go where the bunker go, which put them in harm’s way when industrial construction is underway.
We are incredibly grateful to people like Congressman Jeff Van Drew who took a stand against building colossal energy facilities in fragile marine habitat.
And we look forward to seeing that Congressman elect Zack Mullock keeps his pledge to oppose the devastating offshore wind scam.
Thank you @CapeMayWhale for another memorable trip yesterday following Whale Safe guidelines.
@Congressman_JVD
