was reading another article about this where their head of Americas said "Vitol's long history of working on complex energy deals requiring agile operations, finance and logistics is a testament to its expertise." and realized that in my head I was just hearing FCPA reading each item in his list

I worry people do not understand how USD1 (Trump's stablecoin) makes it easy for people to bribe him in a plausibly deniable way. Let's take the MGX-Binance investment as an example and walk through it:

theicct.org/why-evs-are-... Containing one of my favorite charts, showing that just fuel production - not counting burning the actual fuel! - for an internal combustion car is about as dirty as entirely powering a battery electric vehicle.

Transmission discourse is usually: "Build more lines = cheaper + cleaner." This great new paper by @knittelmit.bsky.social and others is spicier: The big tradeoff is cost vs. extreme weather reliability, where interconnection is an insurance policy.

I wish to nominate the scary mermaid statue in Colorado Springs

year of the boardgame and pizza oven-powered hangout (as every year should be tbh)

new office reading chair has a regular interloper

in some ways this feels like the year where people forgot that batteries consume energy batteries aren’t generators, if you work to excise zero fuel cost generation from the future system but keep battery support you’re just having them arbitrage between thermal efficiencies for 15% more gen 🔌💡

got through Oathbringer, Warbreaker, Dawnshard, and Rhythm of War in the last 12 or so days, suddenly there aren't many more Cosmere books left The Lost Metal is next and then Wind and Truth hit the other, smaller, recent books after those, and then a couple years of waiting

Do you wish you could spend New Years reading 6 newly filed briefs about federal/state responsibilities over resource adequacy? Do you also want to learn why DOE's orders keeping coal plants open are very illegal? OK, this is for you - statepowerproject.org/challenges-t...

has anyone done the math on that generator that got shipped from PJM to ERCOT? pretty funny to skip these capacity revenues in order to jump into a market (for now) getting squeezed by solar and batteries (I think this happened, unless it was a dream)

imagine filing a project in PJM, then having to wait years before they even look at it while they triage a broken process, only to find out at the end of your wait that you're now competing with the wealthiest companies in the world for a high-voltage transformer must really suck

Marty Supreme absolutely whips

the inability of public intellectuals in energy to quit the platform owned and shaped by someone who took public pride in condemning the most vulnerable people on earth to death (this year!!!) does not leave me inspired for the future

can’t say that’s a Bears ending I would have expected 😆

it was fun to swing between python and GIS to build a little map workflow off of census data that we can use for anything now tools from different eras of my life, but they've never stopped being useful (just wish I remembered more remote sensing, I think that knowledge has departed my brain)

www.cnn.com/2025/12/18/b... "Trump Media and Technology Group Thursday announced a surprise merger with TAE Technologies, in an all-stock deal valued at more than $6 billion that would create one of the first publicly traded fusion companies."

potentially a concerning partial downside decoupling of gas and electricity inflation i.e., when the price of gas goes up, so does electricity, when the price of gas goes down, well, electricity isn't really 🔌💡 www.gridstatus.io/insights/311...

Stop me if you’re heard this one before: the PJM capacity auction cleared at the cap 🔌💡 www.gridstatus.io/insights/310...

“During the past decade, Twitter, now known as X, had an outsized and frankly grotesque hold on the journalism business,” Jay Caspian Kang writes. “This past year, the fever broke.” Read about five major trends in media this year. newyorkermag.visitlink.me/WDXUiw

Planned obsolescence, but for nuclear reactors 🔌💡 “Last Energy’s … reactor isn’t designed to be serviced … permanently encasing each core in 1,000 tons of steel… The reactors will arrive on site fueled with six years’ worth of uranium.” techcrunch.com/2025/12/16/n....

Rockets-Nuggets is definitely appointment viewing this season

some thoughts on Ford's pivot away from EVs and into batteries 🔌💡 www.gridstatus.io/insights/308...

Had 75+ friends, neighbors, countrymen come through today for cookies and glögg

We made ~1500 cookies over the past few weeks, now to let the kitchenaid rest and recover

can't always trust the google maps label 🤣

An unseasonably cold snap in December pushed HQ’s system near its limit, forcing it to issue two Level 2 alerts. Bad timing: peak demand hit right as turbines were down for maintenance. Often-overlooked factor that kept the lights on: power imports. Might become recurrent. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

Is the video serious? // Yes the video is serious

who is Insull now? “He would soon have to suffer through the painful unfolding of the Great Depression, which would rewrite the final chapters of his legend. His reputation as an American hero was smashed along with the nation's dream of endless prosperity” Not the best to have multiple options

In case the theme is unclear

the Renwick remains undefeated

Occasionally something from X bubbles up and it’s like “yeah, sure is rotten over there” but seeing a months long sort of buildup of elite consensus against birthright citizenship is such a disgusting betrayal of a core piece of what *can* be good about America that it sort of makes me feel sick

rtc+b cutover starts in 10 minutes, let's see what breaks! (hopefully nothing)

your redactions will not stop me (with the help of free+open satellite imagery) (also, it's nice when the existing line only cuts through a small corner of the project county, that helps too)

happened to be there a bit over 15 years ago

Reorganizing books across our house based on personal vibes, and I feel like we can’t be the only ones who had this progression over the course of childhood to young adult

Read about economic conditions in Reserve Bank Districts in the #BeigeBook: (1/2) www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypoli...

contemplating a double feature for tomorrow night

February 9th of this year vs today absolutely insane, glad I built a new PC to start the year instead of end it

The “real estate investors” posting about new 765kV backbones on LinkedIn and clearly understanding, well, not a single lick of anything associated with what they’re trying to say are maybe the best example of how frothy power is right now.

Three Days of the Condor *with* an in-person intro from James Grady, the author of the book it was based on. It’s so cool being able to walk to this theater

I spent 5 years looking at NYISO ops daily, pulled up interchange with HQ on a call recently and was shocked - completely different from what I remembered I still have hope that CHPE can ease pressure on Central-East by backing off flows coming into Edic-Marcy from the north, but we'll see! 🔌💡

is Uruguay just terrible? not sure I can reckon with the US up 4 goals against a South American team before half

An interesting thing about IL and coal is that only WY has more recoverable at operating mines, but IL's production is less than PA, which has ~half the coal, and only 30% more than KY, which has ~22% of IL's reserves in terms of demonstrated reserve base, IL has nearly double WY (only MT has more)

Chicago Trib on teenage anti-ICE activists: "If I get the opportunity to fight like this for the rest of my life, I would be totally OK with that." The future of our country depends, in part, upon whether the Democratic Party does or does not have space for young people like that. archive.ph/qsazc

Appreciate when a hawk swings by to reward me for doing yard work #birds

On Pennsylvania leaving RGGI 🔌💡 and on a personal note, wow prices are a lot higher than the five years I was doing market monitoring for RGGI www.gridstatus.io/insights/281...

What started as a normal, unplanned outage may leave Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) without 1.25 GW of nuclear generation for an extended period of time 🔌💡 Read more at Grid Status Insights: www.gridstatus.io/insights/280...