My dearest mentor, Professor Joseph Fewsmith, unfortunately passed away this week. I wrote this little tribute with great pain. But no writing is enough to express my love and gratitude for Joe.

The @cornellaaup.bsky.social statement on Cornell's deal

"Franklin led the team that created what has been called 'arguably the most important photo ever taken,' the celebrated Photo 51, which revealed the helical structure of DNA. When the structure was published in 1953, however, Franklin... was not among the authors." The (male) authors won the Nobel.

Rosalind Franklin, 1920-1958 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalin...

For Caravanserai Volume 1 Issue 5, we've got capsule reviews! Here are three thoughtful reviews of (1) recent documentary The Perfect Neighbor, (2) 90s "tweegaze" album Copacetic, and (3) historical not-exactly-fiction novel Red Plenty. caravanseraiforum.substack.com/p/capsule-re...

A terawatt of solar panels and a terawatt hour of batteries every year. I like them apples.

"Global EV battery installations totaled 811.7 GWh from January to September" 👀👀 cnevpost.com/2025/11/05/g...

this is excellent maxread.substack.com/p/prediction...

we talk too much about the male loneliness crisis and not enough about the male suckerfication crisis maxread.substack.com/p/prediction...

it happened to me in real life: sanction (good) / sanction (bad) confusion. related, my kids would definitely "extralegally" meant extra + legally.

Cornell has reached an agreement with the federal government to restore our funding: statements.cornell.edu/2025/2025110...

*CHINA, EU SAID TO JOIN BRAZIL CARBON MARKET COALITION PROPOSAL

since chatgpt has coached another young person in a mental health crisis to their death, I am yet again tapping the sign

Hochul should cap off her generational 2025 run by firing Jay Jacobs

Literally the one place in the country where Democrats got their clock cleaned was in the home county of state chair who refused to endorse Mamdani and has generally overseen a string very poor democratic performances.

SPP (the Southwest Power Pool, serving the central Great Plains states) approved a new regional transmission plan with $8.6 billion in projects, including ~950 miles of ultra-high voltage 765 kV lines, and with estimated benefits 18X the costs www.spp.org/documents/75... More of this please! 🔌💡

feels like this was a core piece of the _primary_ campaign, but less so in the general.

It shouldn’t be forgotten that a big piece of Mamdani’s campaign was simply “cities are cool and lots of people enjoy living in them” which in and of itself dismantles alot of rightwing talking points

"The cost of all this success was a short, transitory burst of moderate inflation...& then the burst...stopped cold. It was over after the middle of 2022." "I characterize 2024 as...a worldwide failure to break the misinformation system..." All. Of. This. In re: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

yes google docs, i always want the word count on. why do i have to do this for every document every day?

Pregnancy became far more dangerous in Texas after the state banned abortion, according to our analysis, which found the sepsis rate for women hospitalized as they miscarried in the 2nd trimester shot up by more than 50%. (Published February)

The US is the world's largest oil and gas producer. Yet, "China is now making more money from exporting green technology than America makes from exporting fossil fuels."

NEW: The End of the Line: the centrepiece of Saudi Arabia’s Neom gigaproject - a 500m tall, 170km long wall-like building intended ultimately to house 9 million people - can’t get out of the ground, say more than 20 former Neom architects, engineers and senior executives. ig.ft.com/saudi-neom-l...

I can't wait

Cool. What would you call the other wing then? www.nytimes.com/2025/11/03/u...

my latest: i spent weeks investigating how frustrations about data centers were about to swallow american politics… …and then the 2025 election happened, proving the electoral impacts are already here. read and share my deep dive on the bipartisan AI techlash shaping our elections before our eyes!

always liked this slide

Chanos:

I just got a note from the power company saying that winter rates will be much much worse. So... Yeah.

Has anyone specifically tried to isolate the consumer pass through of de mimimis exemption changes? It’s a tall order given the measurement challenges but I suspect someone smarter than me can do it and it might tell us a lot about the bigger picture.

Australia has so much electricity from solar power that it is going to start offering free electricity to everyone for at least three hours during the day as the wholesale price of power goes negative electrek.co/2025/11/04/a...

Americans, you could have this.

[Goose meme] Ruin the workplace for who RUIN THE WORKPLACE FOR WHO, MOTHERFUCKER????

If you think a goose is going to use the word whom I encourage you to get to know a goose

Hahahhahaha

Honestly grateful to Douthat for this accessible distillation of this point of view. Going to be a great teaching tool that generates lots of conversation.

very lovely day in alexandria, va. this morning

Ross has done 1000x more than Tucker to normalize far right and get their talking points not only into GOP but into NYT.

People using the word "Chinese overcapacity" as if it's some kind of technical, objectively definable term should be challenged to define it *without* the word Chinese in front. "Overcapacity" usually refers to a condition that does NOT benefit the producer. It doesn't mean "doing well"

The implication of a lot of Trump admin action is that the US can never be good at green tech so it has to lock the world into its rent driven fossil resource economy. A really bleak view of American potential.

always important to consider the signaling effect of elections. one likely outcome of tuesday is to encourage the strongest candidates to throw their hats in the ring.

I wrote a whole dissertation and Jamelle just...posts it.

EBRD invests in 1 GW of solar, 1.3 GWh of storage in Uzbekistan #energysky -- via pv magazine global:

I'm hard-pressed to think of a non-Jewish Democratic politician who has spoken to Jews with more respect and empathy than Mamdani. The fact that many Jewish establishment orgs are going after him while staying relatively mum on resurgent Nazism is a disaster, both for American Jews and in general.

Named for the famous Arab historian, philosopher, and proto-sociologist Ibn Khalzon

we are changing the mario cuomo bridge back to the tappan zee

each of them represents one of the five elements: Fire, Metal, Air, Water, and Anti-Trust.

In case you missed it, Kerry Brown wrote a book that plagiarized Shelley Rigger’s classic book title. I, along with others who were asked to review Kerry’s manuscript, said verbatim to change the title. In the most tacky and unprofessional fashion, he stole her title anyway.

Seeing Like a Nate.

Love being well into my 40s, and decently capable at certain aspects of life, but still burning my mouth when I bite into a microwaveable burrito like 78% of the time