Make faculty meetings spicy with one simple slide

A vibes-based commodity market is problematic

Schrödinger’s strait

Who is blockading whom

Not a great firefly showing in our yard due to the drought, but we have a few. Pardon my younger son’s collapsed goal; future footballer

Solar and wind technology were very inefficient in 1988 - nuclear was the main hope for clean energy at the time

Ad headline: nuclear energy, not foreign oil, is the best way to prevent electricity shortages. It’s an ad placed by the US Council for Energy Awareness. “Information about energy America can count on.”

Picked up an issue of Nat Geo from August 1988 at a Little Free Library down the street - check out this ad! Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

I love how Peter Magyar beating Orban is like someone named Peter American ran here and won

The case for doubling down on renewable energy in Texas as fuel prices continue to spike YouTube video by KVUE

I was on the local news explaining how renewable energy protects you from price shocks! I had to remove my glasses due to glare from my lights, apologies for the serious appearance youtu.be/wmoysr0rsG4?...

I still remember watching Challenger as a 4-year-old in daycare in Concord NH. I couldn’t watch this one but I’m glad everything worked out.

I read this as a Strait of Hormuz post and now I can’t unsee it

Relevant again- low-carbon energy insulates you from global price shocks

Depluralize a movie:

Return of the Jedus

Highlighted text from the proposed NSF budget: "Activities associated with S3P are not part of the infrastructure portfolio within the Directorate for Geosciences."

Highlighted text from the proposed NSF budget showing GEO directorate research infrastructure funds being cut by 49.7% from $1,020.61M to $492.62M.

If I am not mistaken, the S3P program, which is the successor to the US support for IODP, is now part of the GEO infrastructure package which is proposed to be cut overall by 49.7%. Not great.

It’s the University of Texas Toyota Mirai that they refuel up at Pickle

Spotted in the wild in Hyde Park

I’m going to get a dozen fact check requests tomorrow, aren’t I 😔

Gordon Conferences are a good antidote to this. Also in the marine geosciences we have a lot of workshops? Seems consistent with what I’m seeing in the comments

Why are you going to be tired tomorrow?

You’ll just have finished a 31-day march. *ducks*

Oil passed $100 a barrel, with prices expected to keep rising Oil prices go up faster than they come down, especially since the war has damaged oil infrastructure in the Middle East.

I was on @marketplace.org with pessimistic projections about oil prices if the hostilities continue. Maybe I’m wrong! But even now there’s months of high prices baked in. Will this accelerate the energy transition? www.marketplace.org/story/2026/0...

The Bab El-Mandeb and Strait of Hormuz have similar widths, but thanks to plate tectonics the former is getting wider while the latter is getting narrower.

The Iran War is Revealing the Messy Middle of Our Renewable Energy Transition

This is going to supplant Daniel Yergin’s article about The North Face as the motivation for my class this fall. What are we transitioning energy to? And why? Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2026/03/27/m...

I don’t gamble but I think it’s a sure bet some TACO jawboning will happen early Monday and we’ll have a rinse-and-repeat of this week, but maybe ending higher next Friday. But, remember @atrupar.com is off so anything is possible.

Y‘all know that if you google “Yankees vs Giants“ it shows you the score for free ?

Bumper sticker that says “horse denier” with a picture of a with a no-go symbol over it and the text “not real”

Meanwhile, in the parking garage at UT Austin

This is a big problem. Like I’ve been saying all along, US isn’t importing a lot from Middle East but this gets us where it hurts - impacting MX/VZ imports and refining.

As a geologist, again I posit that the closing of the Tethys Sea was the biggest mistake we made, and we’re still living with the consequences.

Shock to global oil market roughly 3 times bigger than 1970s crisis The war in Iran has cost the global oil supply roughly 15 million barrels a day, or 15%, so far. A shock that poses a “major, major threat” to the global economy, said Fatih Birol, the head of the the...

And yes, I was also on @marketplace.org talking about how this is worse than the 1970s energy crises. This is an historic moment & I’m glad to help put it in context. www.marketplace.org/story/2026/0...

The war with Iran and the surging price of oil The U.S. Israeli war with Iran has caused a major disruption to the global flow of oil. The price of crude has jumped to over $100 a barrel. But the question has been, is this a short-term problem or ...

Had a fun time talking to The Source on Texas Public Radio about *waves hands* all this oil market stuff. www.tpr.org/podcast/the-...

A red bluebonnet in our yard. Rare but not unheard of mutation.

Randomly got a redbonnet in our bluebonnet patch this year 🤷‍♂️