Abstracting the Earth Notes on oilfields, exploration geophysics, and abstraction in the mid-20th century

phases.substack.com/p/abstractin... i put up some bullshit ‼️

no thanks i’ll pass

The Price-Value Discrepancy in Marx's Capital and Its Relevance for Understanding Oil, Part II The Result of Variations in the Organic Composition of Capital on the Transfer of Value through Exchange

phases.substack.com/p/the-price-... part 2 mostly just reading labban on OCC and uneven value transfer, with particular attention to what he calls the 'negative territoriality' of extractive industries/primary production

The Price-Value Discrepancy in Marx's Capital and Its Relevance for Understanding Oil, Part I Notes on The Transformation Problem

phases.substack.com/p/the-price-... Part 1 of 3 posts on price, value, and oil. this part is just about getting the transformation problem out of the way

oh no he deleted lol but it was this

god forbid we act purposively and make real decisions about which technological pathways we ought to pursue, rather than let every harebrained VC wet his beak bullshitting some $5 billion DAC scam in texas

tooze is technically wrong but spiritually correct re: wind/solar/batteries. conversely his opps are technically deceptive (at best) and spiritually dead

AI Data Center Development in Frackland By Way of a Brief History of Failed Attempts to Regionalize the Natural Gas Commodity Chain

phases.substack.com/p/ai-data-ce... some head-clearing on our dismal situation in Appalachia

it’s just kind of insane to me to be in the midst of the fed govt clawing back green subsidies, remanding renewables permits, and ofc the AI Menace and be like soying over a marginal increases in solar power on the texas grid lol. like brother what is going on in your brain rn

Note on the Industrialization of Animal Metabolisms Or the primacy of human labor in the critique of political economy

phases.substack.com/p/note-on-th... also a brief thing on the industrialization of animal metabolisms from marx’s POV

sorry a repost i know but im also writing a brief thing about the infrastructural geography and associated constraints of Appalachian gas that prospective AI development is now trying to exploit. up soon

Prices, Value, and Oil - Revisiting the Negative WTI Price Crash Or, what is a Yuányóu Bǎo?

phases.substack.com/p/copy-price... i'm still doing this bullshit if you even care

i think it’s a result of his training/reference points, but yea. he wants to say this is a problem of capitalism, attributes the “transitionist narrative” as the ideology of 21st c capitalism, and explicitly wants to write an economic history, but all limited bc he is over-committed to symbiosis

that's a very good point! i'm not sure where it is coming from re: fressoz, as his primary influences seem to be historians of tech. but i think 'metabolism' is likewise plagued with the same sort of static reading inherited from early sociology

Symbiosis and Conflict Summarizing and commenting on Jean-Baptiste Fressoz's More and More and More: An All-Consuming History of Energy (2024)

bluesky update: some thoughts on fressoz's new book, which offers a thesis i have identified with for a long time now. hearing someone else say it provides a generative opportunity for critique/self-critique phases.substack.com/p/symbiosis-...

let’s go

oh no what's happening

i get liking teams and rooting for them but having a sports team you like lose ruin your day or really caring about a rivalry to the point that it makes you actually angry is soooo soy

forgot to take the trash out before i left town #stinky

business idea: gas station where they treat you like a race car driver and have like five guys run out to you. one guy would fill up your tank obviously but not sure what the other 4 would do yet

thanksgiving food sucks ass i wish i was eating MAPO TOFU

sometimes thanksgiving day convo gets so counterrevolutionary you just gotta hit unc with the fluoride stare 😶😂

this year i’m thankful for bluesky! 🦃 who’s with me?

great to see all the yimby cretins slither over here and frame things like cumulative impact assessments and community engagement as cumbersome red tape. the irony is these things DO streamline development by providing public pressure with a formal release valve to delegitimize any further dissent

whoops correction water obstruction/encroachment permits (chapter 105)

i regularly attend oil and gas industry events and they always roll out a guy from EPA or one of its state-level equivalents to talk about 'permitting reform'. PA's DEP is already working on outsourcing all air quality permit review to a pool of """"3rd-party"""" industry consultants

again & again, the energy sector demonstrates how irrational the private property regime is as basis for efficient utility-scale land-based projects and w/o fail we have industry plants and other dimwits misidentifying the impasse. if you want a transition, it's gotta be a public work. no other way

interconnection queue backlog is not primarily a regulatory problem it is a problem of profitability and of leasing. loosening permit reqs is not going to disincentivize behind-the-meter generation distributed via long-term power purchase agreements, which is the major driver of renewable buildout

But yeah on the permitting reform front specifically—I’d really encourage people to adopt a “profit maximizing” vs “cost minimizing” lens before making claims that ceding a bunch of power to fossil interests is “worth it,” even if you don’t care about the many, many other issues

i usually don't like fried tofu in ramen but theirs is really good