UC Berkeley Law creates new AI policy that bans AI for "conceptualizing, outlining, drafting, revising, translating, or editing any work submitted for credit" or exams because "thinking remains the sine qua non of good lawyering (and of a quality legal education)." That's what I'm talking about.

Every time I go into Market Garden and spend a cringe-worthy amount of money on a decent block of cheese, I realize that this take is absolutely correct.

The "batteries are just as bad as fossil fuels" stuff is so fucking stupid, so easy to refute with just a minute or two of rational thought, so *obviously* a piece of propaganda, that I just have no sympathy at all for people who fall for it. Gonna block everyone who drags it into my feed.

One of my political heuristics is if I'm hearing about the bond market, it's a bad sign.

There is no other way to net zero.

Nah, he actually worked on a program for Loblaws to lower prices.

People have a lot of trouble grasping just how many parking spaces you need to fill a subway station

All y’all getting @petebuttigieg.bsky.social’s bread bucks, I’m envious! - (Sidenote, I’m no bread truther, but certainly looks like Pete worked there at the time when this was all going down). www.vice.com/en/article/c...

A bicycle helmet is not designed to protect you from an impact with a car.

Well… keep telling people “it’s going to be super busy, with all these restrictions around the games, and not much else to do besides pay thousands of dollars to watch soccer” soooo regular people stay home at let the private jet squad play for a bit.

Reminder: If generative AI platforms & data centres were erased from the Earth…we’d be fine. They prop up nothing of essential value we can’t do ourselves.

Today is a bit of a historic day in the finance and oil trade press. First oilprice.com ran an article noting how "Utilities Are Betting Billions on a Technology That Could Become Obsolete" What is this technology that could become obsolete? Natural gas. 1/2

Today on Volts: Minnesota utility Xcel is installing small-scale batteries on commercial & industrial land. It may not sound like much, but @pierlafarge.bsky.social says it augurs a new chapter for the US grid, wherein storage will enable big new loads like data centers to reduce rates for everyone.

It's time to decide the true capital of Canadian urbanism, but wrong answers only style. Sound off however you feel like!

New: Berkeley is the first US city to require home sellers and buyers to replace gas furnaces/water heaters with heat pumps or make other green upgrades as a condition of sale. It's changing the local real estate market as sellers tout electrification. Free link. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Baffling that many US cities assign responsibility for sidewalks to the adjacent property owner. That’s just not how transportation infrastructure works at all. People walking places don’t teleport past vacant lots. Imagine doing the same thing with roads.

The world’s largest sand battery got through Finland’s harshest winter in years. 2,000 tonnes of sand, heated to 500-600°C by cheap power, feeding district heating in Pornainen. And it worked. Result from one install: oil down 100%, emissions down 70%. Industrial process heat is the real prize.

My 1999 self would weep at how totally broken the internet has become. AI slop, social media walled gardens that rot the brain, surveillance pricing and advertising, every single goddamn website has an endless cloudflare captcha loop before you get to read anything. Burn it all down.

You can’t run a negative balance on your oil account. Unlike other traded items where shares can be borrowed, or money printed out of thin air, you simply cannot wave your hands and make more oil appear in the system. I’m as all hyped up on the electric future as anyone, but this could be bad.

We have clear line-of-sight to the full depletion of all the oil stockpiles except the Chinese strategic reserves in an amount of time measured in weeks, which is probably the point at which oil prices will double or even more.

Been ruminating on this thread for a few days now… I don’t like its implications. The blue “supply” curve might not bounce back as quickly as forecast, and even if it does, we could be knee deep in energy quicksand by midsummer.

While chatting with some friends, it occurred to me that other people could benefit from a summary understanding of what's going on in the oil and gas markets. Here are some little pictures to give you the big picture. 🧵

Ban cars, sure. But first ban fireworks in the city.

Toronto police say a vehicle crashed into a fireworks store in Etobicoke, igniting a blaze that sent fireworks shooting into the air as crews battled the flames. READ MORE: www.chch.com/chch-news/ov...

If this were an ebike, Toronto would be outraged.

I just interviewed folks in Victoria who helped lead that city to one of the highest bike mode shares in North America. Their advice? "You need other strategies, but the bike lane network is 90% of what moved the mode share in Victoria."

Here’s another thing folks might not know, a truck does about 10,000 times the damage to a road than a car does. blog.ucs.org/dave-cooke/t...

Watch out for this in Canada too when provinces can’t fund highways with gas tax anymore.

Fred Flintstone likes to shame petrol engine car drivers. Acoustic cars give you exercise.

“acoustic cars”

I didn’t consider myself to be a religious person before reading this article. But it describes my religion in deep spiritual terms. notesontheentropyofform.substack.com/p/the-facili...