Not that hard to believe IMO. Half support it, half are cowards, idk. Remember Uvalde? Law enforcement doesn’t attract our best or nicest.

Have lowkey started a growing Poshmark business.

I am concerned that the impetus to “build shit where we still can” under hostile conditions amongst the clean energy/climate community will disfigure the energy transition “movement” (nebulous as it is) beyond recognition and erase much progress made on equity/justice during the past 10 years.

ICE enthusiastically recruits guys who just want to hurt people.

Pulled out an old suit and found an office key in my pocket from a campus visit to the University of Chicago a few years ago, very hefty with the university insignia on it. I must’ve mistakenly forgot to return it to my hosts. Feels like a horcrux, should probably cast it into a volcano.

Awaiting the Fetterman ICE appreciation post and the Jeffries/Schumer word salad because we don't have an opposition party, we just have losers

Cool job alert: LPSC Policy Director / Senior Advisor Alliance for Affordable Energy $70,000 - $95,000 www.idealist.org/en/nonprofit...

At the end of 2025 I had the chance to teach state legislators about the importance of building more transmission, and we currently have some cool stuff on state leadership on permitting and tribal engagement I hope we can grow. Some momentum in "impactful energy work" space compared to 2025.

The whole conversation about how maybe Dems and the left should be a bit less hostile to fossil fuel companies is just another example of the professional class (e.g. big law and universities) capitulating to fascists because times are bad.

5. If we foreground people & place values (vs. bloodlessly framing them as "supply-side"), we can win. W/climate, this foreground brings people *into* the climate conservation & counters risk climate policy gets co-opted by financiers & engineers who view the world myopically & problematically.

This is well worth a read. But it's premised on a notion that gas is still good in the short term, everywhere. By Zeke's own analysis elsewhere, US electricity emissions haven't gone down at all since the dawn of frack boom. We also know that right now, methane leaks in the Permian average 9%.

It gives me a little boost that former students still stay in touch and reach out for letters of rec for grad school or other pursuits. They're still seeking to make a difference amidst all the shit and it reminds me to stop wallowing in despair.

Me: Can we get regime change? Mom: we have regime change at home. The regime change at home:

Pretty cool that Polis is the Fetterman of the West.

Modern medicine has gone too far. Fewer people should see 79.

The truth is the U.S. has always been an aggressive imperialist state but just went about it “politely” and adhered to a decorum that has been significantly eroded over the past decade and that makes centrists and mainstream Dems totally unable to respond with any kind of force/coherence.

Trump is doing petro-imperialism the right way. - Ezra Klein

Lost a lot of my hope/mojo/drive in 2025. Maybe it’ll come back in 2026.

Notable that there are no people in this image, just the type of Edenic landscape colonizers looked upon before initiating genocide and a symbol of petroculture (also not gonna read too much more into it because it’s probably lazy AI slop).

Our premium increased drastically (I have an ICHRA through work). Also, the telehealth policy cliff - failure of congress to renew policies that allowed telehealth visits to be covered - has meant greatly reduced hours for my spouse, a telehealth PA. 2026 looking tight.

2025 was a stressful, shitty year professionally but a pretty great year personally. Not sure what to do with that other than see it as evidence of the decoupling of my persona identity with work? 🤷‍♂️

Out of curiosity, I looked into the history of inevitability. It was first used as an adjective in the 15th century in Life it St. Katherine. The noun form was used 100 years later. Anyway, possibility has been around for longer. Take that with you into the new year. #academicsky #skystorians 🗃️

Dec. 27th in my town in Montana and it has rained most of the last month in the valley. Yesterday was like spring. Sometimes moving back here feels like going to be with a dying relative in hospice. Climate change sucks.

My annual end-of-year ask: can someone plz pay me a handsome (not egregious) sum of money to write books? Thx

My annual end-of-year ask: can someone plz pay me a handsome (not egregious) sum of money to write books? Thx

Supporting/respecting the oil and gas industry’s role in the energy transition and our decarbonization journey is only possible if you’re into white-hot pure technocracy and have completely dismissed the O/G industry’s historical and ongoing contributions to ethnonationalism/fascism/colonialism.

Our 8yo is getting pretty good at sketching…

I don’t mean to sound extreme, but I don’t think we should have torture camps for people with criminal records either.

Currently working professionally as a facilitator/convener in the energy and climate space which means I have to be “neutral” but maybe I should just fuck around and make it my life’s work to stop any and all data centers from existing, idk

I haven’t published anything in a bit and most of the stuff I had teed up at NREL died on the vine or became impossible because of Trump 2.0, when I had to switch to survival mode so the last two years feel unproductive and disappointing even though it was mostly out of my control.

What might be helpful is to effectively communicate to communities facing data center inundation what water theft under settler colonialism meant for Indigenous peoples in the Colorado River Basin or along the Missouri River in the early-to-mid 1900s.

60 minutes CECOT segment. Recorded through my browser. HD quality. Not phone. Spread it around. If you're press, it's yours. Go nuts. It's streaming on a Canadian website, but there is no telling for how long. www.filemail.com/d/wkcdttnacp...

bari weiss saw this and decided that she had to hide it from the american public

Our 8yo is getting pretty good at sketching…

If you’re an employee of CBS and show up to work tomorrow we can assume you’re cool with this.

Hi all! I’m opening up speaking slots for 2026, especially for universities, conferences, and orgs interested in just energy transitions, public institutions under pressure, and career pathways at the intersection of humanities/social sciences and energy policy. /1

Academic job market discourse on here is so frustrating. The issues are structural, requiring structural solutions. Can we stop fighting over the scraps of a failed system and start talking about what it would take to reverse these trends and change these institutions accordingly via policy?

It seems fairly simple: tie data centers to GOP and its techno-fascist delusions, enjoy an electoral landslide.

Not long now until the big beautiful day.

#energysky! I need your help! I'm looking to speak to HVAC installers and utility professionals in Long Island. From the passage of the IRA, to the cut back of many of the IRA clean energy tax credits in the OBBB, what is the narrative from the industry? How is it impacting them day-to-day? 🙏

Update on post-academic life. Whereas I used to aspire to be a thought-leader and publish all the things and secure all the grants, now I just want to do solid enough work to move the needle here and there regionally and otherwise go fishing and hang with my kids.

The thing about career transitions I keep forgetting is that there are some days when you feel like you’re the dumbest, stupidest person on the planet who has no business doing what you’re doing and that you should just give up and go sell insurance or something.

Saw some survey and interview data from rural communities with a pretty large sample size and there is a lot of antipathy toward AI and data centers across the political spectrum by default. Huge political opportunity there just waiting for Dems, but in no way confident they’ll take it.

Vehemently opposes data centers could be added here

If your argument is that your favored projects are unable to comply with longstanding, bedrock environmental protections, so we should get rid of those protections, let me suggest you consider a different argument.

I keep thinking about how data center developers will never enjoy the political and cultural capital of other large industries - coal, e.g. - because there’s no possible way to sell them as the economic lifeblood of the communities in which they’re sited.

Saw some survey and interview data from rural communities with a pretty large sample size and there is a lot of antipathy toward AI and data centers across the political spectrum by default. Huge political opportunity there just waiting for Dems, but in no way confident they’ll take it.

There are a lot of junior people looking to leaving NREL/NLR. The work they went there to do has dried up; rumors of big layoffs in the new year abound. If you’re hiring in the clean energy/climate space, please consider them. There are so many brilliant, driven people about to be displaced.

There are a lot of junior people looking to leaving NREL/NLR. The work they went there to do has dried up; rumors of big layoffs in the new year abound. If you’re hiring in the clean energy/climate space, please consider them. There are so many brilliant, driven people about to be displaced.

Confronting deep and existential burnout. Felt like I did a speed run of the last 12 years.