"What and whom, in other words, is all this stuff actually for?" From @katearonoff.bsky.social: newrepublic.com/article/2089...

" In addition to concerns about rising electricity bills, air pollution, and noise, fights over data centers seem to be channeling deeper frustrations. What and whom, in other words, is all this stuff actually for?" newrepublic.com/article/2089...

I wrote about the debate around data center build-outs, whether AI is making life better right now and/or protecting US national security interests newrepublic.com/article/2089...

If no one is going to make Microsoft meet its carbon neutrality goals then why would they? heatmap.news/carbon-remov...

" If they’re gullible enough to fall for OpenAI’s progressive slop, they might as well start paying Sam Altman to build bridges too." newrepublic.com/article/2087...

I do not think that people who have millenarian fantasies about building god should have unilateral control over products that are very powerful, even dangerous, but certainly not gods newrepublic.com/article/2087...

Since the headline is a bit confusing, the NYT is reporting that on the same day we hit the girl's school in Minab, we also sent a missile full of tungsten steel pellets at a girl's volleyball tournament hundreds of miles away in Lamerd. Twenty one dead. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/29/w...

Markets are treating the war in Iran, and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, like they treat climate change: not totally ignoring it, but not acknowledging the full scale of the crisis, either newrepublic.com/article/2082...

This site is kind of annoying but at least I don’t have to see anyone retweeting the guy who tried to cancel Alison Roman positing that he has insider knowledge about US foreign policy

I wrote about Trump's jawboning and the increasingly large gap between how much oil costs right now and how much people who know a lot about oil think it should cost, given that the Strait of Hormuz has been closed for almost a month newrepublic.com/article/2081...

“‘The persecution is the point,’ said Rep. Abi Boatman, a Wichita Democrat and the only transgender member of the Legislature, who received the [Kansas Dept of Revenue] notice on Wednesday.” To underscore that: a Kansas state legislator is among those whose driver’s license will be voided. (🎁 link:)

Sure, but they have to make a scene based on this photo of him and May reading The New Republic.

Thing about hacking away at the Clean Air Act and lots of Clean Air Act enforcement is that Congress isn’t likely to return to New Deal State-ish legislation anytime soon, and that’s what makes the CAA so powerful. The people doing the hacking ofc know that

Spotted in Germany: a coal barge named Erasmus

Something I don’t get about the maximalist case for robotaxis as a godsend for road safety: AFAIK Uber and Lyft haven’t meaningfully driven down personal car ownership rates. Won‘t Waymo-type companies mostly be taking market share away from other ridesharing companies and public transit?

Would love to read something comparing the conversation about yuppies in the 80s w/ the politics and aesthetic preferences of the people now occupying relatively similar class positions, and that are translating into politics i.e., stockbrokers getting into pesto vs. VC guys doing red meat diets

Had been excited for @jewishcurrents.bsky.social to take on Marty Supreme and this doesn’t disappoint jewishcurrents.org/what-makes-m...

We‘ve gotta bring back union logos that look like this

A lot of the Detroit Auto Show is devoted to having people drive very large, expensive cars around places inside meant to evoke the idea of the outside

What is the climate corollary to Woke 2

Here is a recent video of ICE agents hitting someone with their car and laughing about it From @statuscoupnews.bsky.social

DHS tweeted this yesterday. Little more than 24 hours later, ICE agents just shot and killed a legal observer in Minneapolis.

ICE agent kills woman, DHS tells obvious, insane lies about it: defector.com/ice-agent-ki...

As with tariffs, and Broadway, Trump’s personal views on oil seem to have congealed sometime in the 1980s and are shellacked in place

The US produces >13 mn barrels of oil per day. Venezuela produces <1 million bpd There's a global oil glut i.e. lower prices. That's bad for US producers, who need higher prices to break even. Hard to imagine they're eager to make big new investments in an unstable place w/ decrepit infrastructure

Manifesting for 2026: Coen Brothers reunite for a Walter Reuther biopic

Seems like Dems could do pretty well capitalizing on anti-AI & data center backlash, but lots of party elites and pundit types have instead made it their mission to win back the tech billionaires who are embracing Trump

The Long Green Zone www.wsj.com/world/middle...

Wild how there are still lots of people arguing that asset-price inflation is the cure-all for everything from climate change to getting Democrats elected everywhere in perpetuity

Ford just announced that it's laying off all 1,600 people at its now-defunct battery plant joint venture with SK ON, where workers won a contested union election this fall. They're converting it to manufacture batteries for data centers www.wdrb.com/news/busines...

If people are getting checks from hyperscalers or sit on the boards of those companies then it's worth taking their claims about data center energy usage—and energy policy more generally—with a grain of salt

Feels like the US has spent the last 5+ years on the verge of some kind of secular moral revival that keeps getting channeled into weirdo lifestyle puritanism

There's a whole cottage industry of wonk-ish types claiming to have the skeleton key to communicating with the The Voters That Matter, who exclusively write impenetrable drivel

Helluva a rebrand for GM

🙂 newrepublic.com/article/2027...

This is a really interesting look at the knotty politics, economics, and communication challenges of climate policy, and also a good reminder that Joe Manchin has singlehandedly done more damage to America's future than any non-Republican human on the face of the Earth.

"[Climate change] hasn’t arrived all at once as some biblical apocalypse but as a creeping drain on rents, utility bills, and grocery prices." An excellent longer analysis from @katearonoff.bsky.social newrepublic.com/article/2027...

Climate change "hasn’t arrived all at once as some biblical apocalypse but as a creeping drain on rents, utility bills, and grocery prices." @katearonoff.bsky.social with a post-mortem on the IRA and the hopes it pinned on an elusive green capital coalition. newrepublic.com/article/2027...

Read this. By @katearonoff.bsky.social newrepublic.com/article/2027...

"The IRA’s survival was premised on the logic that a loose alignment of corporations would support climate policies in exchange for subsidies and convince Republicans to get on their side. That didn’t work" Top @katearonoff.bsky.social piece in @newrepublic.com -->>>

"The IRA’s survival was premised on the logic that a loose alignment of corporations would support climate policies in exchange for subsidies and convince Republicans to get on their side. That didn’t work." newrepublic.com/article/2027...

I spent months talking to many, many people for this long post-mortem of the Inflation Reduction Act: What forces were responsible for creating it, and how could it be gutted so unceremoniously? What might come next? No easy answers ofc but hopefully a bit of clarity newrepublic.com/article/2027...

This kind of thing is less fashionable than it used to be, but really worth looking into whether people saying an enormous amount of data center expansion will actually be good for climate and affordability have financial ties to people with a direct financial interest in data center expansion

Really looking forward to joining Corey Robin & Leah Aronowsky at @remarquenyu.bsky.social tomorrow afternoon to discuss/celebrate/gush over @alybatt.bsky.social's gorgeous and important new book FREE GIFTS RSVP here: nyu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

"Over the five-year span from 2019 Q4 to 2024 Q4, the average amount financed for new cars has increased 26.6%" www.milliman.com/en/insight/u...

A few days after the presidential election one year ago, we went to Fordham Road in the Bronx. It was a little different last week.