Your mom’s ecological takes (He/Him)

Monday!! Also a great opportunity to say that I joined in Oct these brilliant and thoughtful folks at CCI as their Energy and Industrial Policy Manager!!! I’ve been using CCI’s work as my intellectual North Star for the last years, and

@Satvik_Pen Eh there’s a difference between feedstock and the energy needed to run those chemical reactions; the energy substitution is less complex than the feedstock substitution but still incredibly tough to do even w high excess electricity

This is one reason why China pursues high green electrification. Almost all industrial chem depending on petrochem can be substituted w non-oil processes. But it needs high capacity/throughput of electricity. If electricity can be turned renewable, the energy/oil bottleneck fades

LESS CHATGPT MORE LGBT!!!!!

@gonglei89 only if the U.S. and E.U. can muster the industrial policy architecture and state capacity to build it up... (have so many thoughts on how real this would be for besides China lol)

If this Iran War continues to drag on and escalate you couldn’t possible have created a better situation for green hydrogen to replace oil and gas as the primary generator of hydrocarbons for global industry.

Great points from @cplusci on why we should be challenging unconstrained AI data center energy demands instead of pretending that there are sustainable solutions to their profligate, rapidly expanding resource consumption

The chemical industry simply can’t turn plants off and on again, the design basis is to run at high utilization to make even a breakeven return.

no war, no ground invasion. @DataProgress in @playbookdc this AM.

What AI hawkers simply can't understand is: even if you put aside the stolen training data, unwanted integration, environmental impact, creation of low-trust culture, and dogshit output, they still talk and behave like fanatical tent preachers and no one wants to be around them.

Amen Some "lefties" sound like Clintonites from 1995: Let large corporations and Wall Street do as they wish, and they'll graciously allow us to soften the injustices on the back end through taxes and transfers

Majority of both Ds and Rs oppose new data centers in their community, and see it primarily as a benefit for tech companies and Wall Street. 4/

@BrusselerMel Cabbages.world?

Have been watching a lot of ig reals showing the preparation of oyakodon

@rk__upadhya @Matthuber78 Sources for Chinese examples?

The TVA had quite the impact on inspiring policies across Asia in the postwar era. Seems like every book I read about development in India or China, there is a section about how they visited and were impressed and inspired by TVA during and after WW2

There is a theory that data centers are just waiting to sign a cheque to fund huge grid projects we could not do otherwise (due to no social consensus BTW), if only we just give them some guarantees on speed/reliability. Are they really so price inelastic? I'm curious because it does fly in the face of every project I work on, where I find sophisticated operators keenly sensitive to the sticker price and the details of how it amounted to that. I obv need to request intros to these firms with unlimited $$$!! 😅 Don’t take my word for it btw, see this from the CEO of Fervo, an enhanced geothermal startup. I daresay he has more exposure to detailed price negotiations for large loads power offtake than most of us. We are not going to get realistic solutions by assuming a willingness to pay that does not actually exist and which does not seem to have been benchmarked to anything. A catch all for 'data centers' anyway does not make much sense given how varied the business models are around inference vs training vs cloud, smaller vs larger operators, co-located tenants vs single facility etc etc. All these players have very different cost sensitivities which makes a coordinated investment even harder.

sally rooney and javier bardem are proof the art/politics thing is pretty easy actually: make whatever work you think is interesting and when given the opportunity be principled and clear in the statements you make from the platform earned through that work

Dear god, Cuba is in total blackout now. The electrical grid collapsed

@bataille_chris Sure - i just don’t think military takeover is the main preferred approach of top Chinese political organs we should default to assuming

@kaLauntra I've had some odd responses to this post, which I thought was fairly clear, but obviously not. Of course China strategic goals are much broader & long term, & it doesn't collectively think the way US elite seems to reflexively believe. But absorption of Taiwan is as stated goal.

China just completed a purge of its military, which would make C&C difficult, but the US being distracted in the Persian Gulf could become a gift horse they just cannot ignore. Scary times. politico.com/news/2026/03/1…

Over 3.2 million Iranians displaced in the last two weeks. Over 800,000 Lebanese displaced in the last two weeks. Over 2 million Palestinians displaced in Gaza and the West Bank since October 7th. All in the service of one country and its genocidal, neocolonial project.

Ethical AI, nuanced war, mild covid and other 2026 oxymorons.

@BrusselerMel Wow

I started blossoms Shanghai and it is quite fun!

@mcmansionhell i truly believe lots of “regular” people like all kinds of interesting stuff but our whole take economy is lorded over by ivy league midwits working out the repressed knowledge that they are the least interesting people on the planet