Our local college radio station was playing some good protest music this weekend, everything from Green Day to Woody Guthrie's "Tear the Fascists Down." The kids are alright, and we are going to win.

I've been trying to write something, entirely unsuccessfully, about sense of place and the geography of the city. This is a poor draft at that. People deserve to live somewhere defined in their mind by places that bring them joy, places anchored by people, connections, and fulfilling experiences.

In this commentary, Rick Haglund notes University of Michigan economists say Michigan’s income has lagged because the state hasn’t grown enough high-paying “knowledge economy” jobs. Without more educated, innovative work, Michigan risks falling behind and getting poorer compared with other states.

bsky.app/profile/judi... In Germany, people loved to think this could never happen again. But it never truly stopped. It remained in the dark, in the backdrop, unhealed. And now the thugs feel strong enough to come into the broad daylight again, revealing their broken egos, spreading their violence.

"PEACE ISN'T WHAT YOU ASK FOR WHEN THE BOOT IS ALREADY ON SOMEONE'S NECK. PEACE IS WHAT THE POWERFUL ASK FOR WHEN THEY DON'T WANT TO BE INTERRUPTED. UNITY ISN'T NEUTRAL. UNITY THAT REFUSES TO NAME VIOLENCE IS JUST LOYALTY TO THE ONES HOLDING THE WEAPONS. STOP USING SCRIPTURE LIKE CHLOROFORM."

Clement Seymour "Coxsone" Dodd AKA Sir Coxsone. Born OTD in 1932, Kingston, Jamaica. Died 4/5/2004, Kingston, Jamaica www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PPW...

We have our new Winter Snow Storm Rating System but for old times sake I thought I'd pull out the old "Griffin Scale" rating system I used 10 years ago. This storm is between a "6 Pack" and "Case of OV Splits." Buffalonians truly understand a storm's severity by how much beer you can drink.

Tips for my American friends. Remember, man is the warmest place to hide 😘

You may’ve seen coverage of a new report on the threat to national security from environmental collapse. A common response that’s got my goat is: “Look, it’s not just tree-hugging enviros saying this, it’s hard-nosed spooks!” A short thread on why this framing is bad history & bad politics🧵😡😉

Emergency declarations for the winter storm are pouring in… Again cannot emphasize enough how massive the geographic scope of this storm is and how that alone will complicate response efforts.

This lawsuit was filed the same day GM said it would stop making the Bolt EV.

This lawsuit was filed the same day GM said it would stop making the Bolt EV.

Exxon, Chevron, BP, Shell, and the American Petroleum Institute charged with conspiracy in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan today by the AG for raising costs and destroying the climate. www.freep.com/story/money/...

Today's webinar starts at 12:00 PM ET. Still time to register at the link below. We hope many of you will join us.

More thoughts about AI data centers: I used this quote in an old lecture on forest policy. It also applies to our current debates on AI/data centers. We frame the debates in technical terms: electricity, water, & land use. But these are proxies for the real, tougher issues, which are about values.

"[P]ositing technological innovation as a deus ex machina absolves us from the responsibility of a frontal confrontation with fossil capitalism—and capitalism itself."

I'll be representing @ipu-msu.bsky.social at the Midwest Energy Solutions Conference in Chicago next week. If anyone else is going and wants to meet up for a coffee or chat, let me know. #EnergySky 🔌💡

More thoughts about AI data centers: I used this quote in an old lecture on forest policy. It also applies to our current debates on AI/data centers. We frame the debates in technical terms: electricity, water, & land use. But these are proxies for the real, tougher issues, which are about values.

NEW: Friends, my shop @sehnetwork.bsky.social has released a new report WATER USE IN DATA CENTERS that reviews the available science and serves as an explainer for the various types of DC cooling systems. Written for frontline communities fighting all the secrecy and bullshit. www.sehn.org/water

I'll be representing @ipu-msu.bsky.social at the Midwest Energy Solutions Conference in Chicago next week. If anyone else is going and wants to meet up for a coffee or chat, let me know. #EnergySky 🔌💡

New publication out in #EcologicalEconomics ! Link to the paper: doi.org/10.1016/j.ec... You're part of an energy cooperative. Your community governs its own resources. It feels right. Then climate breakdown reminds you: the atmosphere doesn't care about municipal borders. 1/6

Our study takes this head-on. We argue polycentric governance offers a promising institutional direction: not top-down control, not fragmented localism, but coordination that strengthens community autonomy. 3/6

Save the dates! The MSU Institute of Public Utilities released its 2026 program dates. We provide continuing education programs for professionals in the utility sector, including regulators, consumer & environmental advocates, & industry staff. Details, registration, & a new website coming soon! 🔌💡

This dose of pessimism gets a lot right, but doesn’t quite get to the path out, which is hard but clear. 1/

Informative thread👇

NOAA Fisheries jobs are to be posted soon. New questions are now required to be answered by all applicants, see below www.fisheries.noaa.gov/careers-more...

I try to avoid hyperbole when it comes to Trump policies, but this is absolutely frickin’ insane—on about eleventy different levels. Massive, systemic Fourth Amendment violations because … reasons.

Okay as someone who has been tear gassed in a confined space with no windows or protective gear as part of my job, this is absolutely jaw-droppingly dangerous. This is what you'd do in a self defence situation, where your life depended upon this action. This is nothing short of torture.

Please join the USSEE on January 23rd at 12pm EST for a free webinar with Keith Farnsworth. “Why Information is the Fundamental Factor of Production and What this Means for Us” Register for the zoom link 👇 it's free! acphs.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

The administration "can't just say 'national security,' file a secret report and call it a day, a lawyer for Dominion, which is building what's poised to be the largest offshore wind farm in the US, told a federal judge at a hearing on Friday www.npr.org/2026/01/21/n...

Texas power buildout in one picture: wind (green) laid the foundation, solar (yellow) is the new wave, and energy storage (purple) is clustering around load. This is the grid transition, mapped.

🧵 The Institute of Public Utilities at Michigan State University is excited to announce its 2026 program schedule! All programs are live, online, and held 10:00 AM – 4:30 PM ET each day. Program dates are in the next two posts. Stay tuned for more details about each program. #EnergySky 🔌💡1/3

The EPA says it will stop estimating the value of health benefits of reducing air pollution until it is “confident enough” in its models. But uncertainty doesn’t make an estimate useless. This is like ignoring weather forecasts because they might not be perfect 🙄

“One mile on a bike is a $.42 economic gain to society, one mile driving is a $.20 loss.” “Which means that Copenhagen, a city of 1.2 million people, saves $357 million a year on health costs because something like 80% of its population commutes by bike.” #CityMakingMath Some costs aren’t costs.

The world's largest EV, a battery electric catamaran ferry powered up it's water jet motors as part of it's harbor trials. 🧪🔌💡☀️💨💧🔋 www.autoevolution.com/news/earth-s...

As we keep electrifying marine transport ferrys will become floating battery energy storage systems (BESS) at utility scale. We could eventually see 100 MWh systems that when docked overnight provide significant grid services. Washington State Ferries is already planning for 15 MW interconnections.

In Washington State, environmentalists, union leaders, the power company, and other stakeholders negotiated in good faith to reach an agreement for a phased transition from coal to clean energy. Then Trump tried to blow it all up. @nytimes.com 1/

We hear it all the time: Since the turn of the 2010s, thanks to the rise of tech, the US has pulled ahead economically. This idea is everywhere from Washington to Davos—and it's paralyzing Europe But it's simply not true! Let's look at what's really happening, with charts🧵

Interesting article, but this quote gets to the reality: “The cost is gigantic...There have been attempts to bulk water transport [overseas]; none of them have been viable in any kind of way.”

I remember people talking about removing I-81 from downtown Syracuse when I lived there 20 years ago. It's an opportunity to knit the neighborhoods back together, alleviate congestion, and reduce pollution. It's exciting to see it finally happening.

Cheap gasoline, yes. Drill, baby, drill? Not so much. And electricity bills are going up, not down. n.pr/4qz3iKP

“The contemporary tendency ... is to base distribution on scarcity, which has vanished, and to compress our abundance into the overfed mouths of the middle and upper classes until they gag with superfluity. If democracy is to have breadth of meaning it is necessary to adjust this inequity.” —MLK

Dr. Gladys West, the pioneering mathematician whose work laid the foundation for modern GPS technology, has died. She was 95.

From Oxford Economics: "If the US carries out its threat and imposes an additional 25% tariff on European countries, and if there's like-for-like retaliation, it would lower US GDP by 1% relative to our baseline."

Americans need to read this, and they need to take it very seriously. Abandoning the liberal international order will make United Stated weaker, poorer, meaner, and less secure… in a world that will no longer accommodate the whims of Washington

If there's one empirical insight I'd want everyone to understand about American politics, it's this: America's problems are solved problems. Just not here. What would change if the US simply matched the average of 31 peer democracies? Not Denmark or Norway. Just the middle of the pack. 🧵

Both can be true: 1. Trump has not been very successful by traditional metrics of the presidency. 2. He's playing a different game and is trying to consolidate an authoritarian regime. Suggesting he's not having a big impact because he's not passing laws is a category error.