a map from 1918 showing the interurban network sprawling across Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio
One side obsession from my research into the 1920s is the extensive network of ELECTRIC trains that used to connect cities and towns across the central Midwest called the Interurban. We had this more than a hundred years ago. The things we had and the things we lost.
Instead, we bounce back and forth between administrations that are utterly beholden to it (like the current one) and ones that are less so, using one-off incentive packages to try to stimulate progress on the energy transition that are almost entirely implemented through the bloody tax code 10/
some things about becoming a parent are radicalizing in ways I expected - e.g being reminded viscerally how screwed we'd all be if childcare and other care work disappeared. but other things are radicalizing in ways I didn't - like experiencing constant spontaneous solidarity in ways big and small
Retirements of five "dilapidated and unreliable" coal plants are being delayed by Trump, costing utility consumers millions of dollars. Three are in Indiana, where Gov. Mike Braun (R) and PUC chair Andy Zay are raising alarms about rising utility bills.
NEW: Bureau of Reclamation announces it is diverting water from Flaming Gorge Reservoir to Lake Powell and reducing Powell's releases in response to a "historic drought"
"... potential for up to an additional 40% reduction to Hoover Dam’s hydropower generating capacity as early as this fall."
U.S. grid-battery production has gone from 0 in 2024 to 145 GWh/year by the end of 2026, enough to provide batteries to support all wind and solar in the U.S.
www.electronicdesign.com/technologies...
Solar manufacturing capacity is approx double demand. Same with wind nacelles and batteries.
The problem with Chinese manufacturing is not overcapacity!
It's UNDERDEMAND.
But how will it look as 2 x big fossil fuel supply shocks sink in?
“But people are feeling so much pressure from the costs!” Yes, and that’s a policy choice. The people making the policy are making a shit ton of money that could be going somewhere else.
I’m actually not that interested in oil price discourse but I do want to see more recognition that as a major oil producer, the US *benefits* from high oil prices. Our choice to let private interests vs the public own the oil — which is globally extremely unusual — means those profits are private.
when I'm in a good mood it's actually hilarious to me that Elsevier has inadvertently devised a better password manager evasion system than I think I could imagine if I tried
brought to you by another ::mumbles:: hours trying to log in so I can do free labor for a for-profit publisher
Climate policy and consumer protection update:
The Environmental Defense Fund is promoting a bill in California that would practically eliminate greenwashing liability for carbon-credit buyers.
They are also making the same arguments in court.
🚨🚨 Today, we’re launching “Stop Greed Build Green,” a strategic framework and agenda to confront the affordability crisis and the climate crisis together by putting working people in charge of the economy and the climate transition. (1/10)
I dream of a Prop 65-style requirement that every site with likely contaminated soil or groundwater to post a plain-language description of what likely caused it, and when. "There was a gas station here for 7 years 80 years ago and now you can't touch the dirt" would radicalize people.
Been on this particular trip many times, but it never gets less crazy: Every single site that has ever handled fossil fuels, ever, is toxic. You are surrounded by this legacy, you see it every day, and if we labelled even a fraction of it, it would blow the politics of energy transition wide open.
I'm not really an AI guy. I'm sure some AI guy out there will explain to me how I'm using all the wrong prompts and shit and really this would be working great if I was using the correct model etc. That might even be fair! But so far it's just a robot that lies all the time.
Deep solidarity to the FS. I particularly loved them for injecting a little whimsy to the federal research space. If you didn't know they call their research page "Treesearch," now you do.
Once again, it feels very strange to be making videogames with all this insane stuff is going on. Selfishly, I'd like world peace, not just for everyone else, but so that I can just, you know, enjoy my day and make nice things for nice people.
Armageddon is terrible, but our only other option was diversity trainings at work.
Don’t worry there’s gonna be an article 2 weeks from now saying how JD Vance was privately “uncomfortable with the president’s escalating rhetoric”
Philanthropic, mostly. I have to do ~more work to get ~$100k here as to get $1m in engineering, usually. SBE-type PhD programs usually don't require profs to grant fund the students, which lowers grant direct costs but also is part of why these programs are so vulnerable to uni budget cuts.
Hey all my engineering peers who keep saying NSF seems basically fine and you're pretty happy about it: fuck off
Yessss papa cha
🙏 thank you! And a happy Easter to you as well!
Hate papers are restorative, join usssss
I need better hobbies (do I?)
ugh the world is so heavy. and the fight is worth it, but takes so much. sometimes it feels irresponsible not to work on the highest value things but also: writing a paper about how LLMs suck ass even when we managed to get like, bleeding edge model performance feels so, so good.
This paper was designed as rage bait for me, an engineer and (qualitative) sociologist constantly battling the perception that qual work isn’t rigorous, in describing that LLMs failed a quantitative analysis task and therefore — WITH NO EVIDENCE — are good for qualitative analysis
If gas utilities didn't build geothermal networks, who could? Cities. They already dig holes and lay pipe, just like gas utilities, except cities do it for municipal water supply and sewage. They could hire the same HVAC subcontractors that gas utilities hire to install heat pumps in buildings.
In the summer of 2008 in the US gas peaked at an average of $4.11 a gallon. In 2026 dollars that is $6.24 a gallon. So even at $4 a gallon, gas today is cheaper than it was in 2008.
”ah yes, the difficult problem I’m trying to mitigate has just gotten much worse. The solution is to stop trying to mitigate it. I am a policy genius.”