Sunday, July 13, 2025

The Texas floods weren't caused by cloud seeding

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Sunday, July 13, 2025

Image Credits: Jim Vondruska / Getty Images

Cloud seeding, which has been around since the 1950s, is a technique that helps increase precipitation from clouds by spraying small particles, usually made of silver iodide, into clouds to help create ice crystals.

In Texas, some people are blaming this technique for the devastating floods; a startup called Rainmaker was cloud seeding in the area a few days before the storms hit. But the data doesn't back the accusation up.

"It's just a complete conspiracy theory. Somebody is looking for somebody to blame," Bob Rauber, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Illinois, told climate reporter Tim De Chant. In fact, if Rainmaker influenced the storm, it was so tiny that it would "barely have been a rounding error," Tim writes. But in reality, it didn't.

Check out more of what we're reading this weekend.

Weekend news and opinion

Image Credits: Tesla

Tesla is about to open its first showroom in Mumbai and could start deliveries as early as August. The company even created an account for its India location on X. But India could be challenging for a number of reasons.

AI coding tools like Cursor might not make experienced devs more efficient, at least according to a new study by the nonprofit AI research group METR. "Surprisingly, we find that allowing AI actually increases completion time by 19% — developers are slower when using AI tooling," the researchers said. But be careful not to draw any strong conclusions from this study.

What else we're reading 🦸‍♂️

Are you going to see the Superman reboot this weekend? I certainly am; not to brag, but I was Superman three years in a row when I was a kid.

However, I'm a little skeptical that they'll do it right. I want a reboot of Christopher Reeve's Superman, not something new! NPR's review gives me a bit of hope.

Regardless, Krypto is in it, which automatically makes it Oscar-worthy in my book.