Coolcoolcoolcoolcool

It's just like MAGA, except it wants a more tolerant, egalitarian society, where everyone has healthcare and the material prerequisites of a life of dignity. I guess from the perspective of the theater critics in media, that difference is invisible.

For as long as I've been alive, the right wing in the US has been on a flywheel that only goes in one direction: more radical, toward "a patriarchal version of Christianity and an unapologetic ethnonationalism." The only thing that matters in politics right now is stopping these motherfuckers.

David Wallace-Wells often sounds to me like the only journalist living in the same world I'm living in.

Ranch dressing is in the discourse, so here's my ranch story. In the mid-'90s, I got a job as a short-order cook at a dumpy little bar in Bozeman, MT, called the Haufbrau. One of the tasks I was charged with was mixing the next day's batch of ranch dressing. This involved ...

"... between January 2024 and May 2026, at least 46 AI data center projects across the United States were publicly delayed or canceled following community opposition. The announced investment value of those blocked, withdrawn, or stalled projects totals $170 billion across 20 states."

Don't mean to brag, but ...

A very good articulation of what seems to me the very obvious point that, no, you shouldn't "bring AI into the classroom."

Just recorded an intensely nerdy discussion of utility regulation. My happy place.

The vast, vast majority of Americans were & are utterly unaffected by high levels of immigration. The "palpable sense of a national immigration crisis" was ginned up by right-wing media & a bunch of spineless, gormless dipshits in media & the Democratic Party went along with it.

Today on Volts: earlier this year, Arizona clean-energy activists rallied to beat Turning Point USA in a sleepy utility-board election. In November, there's a rematch, on a bigger stage: the statewide elections for Arizona public utility commission. Can the affordability message win in a red state?

It's difficult to imagine a more repellant human being, even as a fictional character. I don't think I could make one up.

Well here's an idea.

Rocketed through another David Nicholls book, loved it as much as the first, gonna keep going. Love when I find a new author who clicks.

One of the great themes of Our Era is right-wingers emerging from their media bubbles to try to grapple with the actual world & discovering that the world does not in any way conform to the fantasies they developed in those bubbles. Many such cases.

Good thread.

The National Historic Preservation Act has become, like many other well-meaning laws, a tool for NIMBYs to stop anything getting built. I'd kind of like to just nuke it but here are some more thoughtful, moderate reforms:

Went & spent some time on X today. Two things are true: 1. It's a brain-cooking machine full of nasty RW shit, pulling everyone there rightward. 2. The conversation around my subject, energy, is vastly more robust, varied, in-depth, & interesting than anything on this site. It's so depressing.

🤣

Yes… another Pike Place survey. 😅 But this one closes today & takes just 2 mins. The Pedestrian Pilot is delivering results—higher visitation, stronger sales, & a Market that works better for people. Help shape what comes next. Take Survey: sdotblog.seattle.gov/2026/06/01/m...

Some might ask whether this salad is still "healthy" once I've put bacon, cheese, dressing, and Fritos on it, and to them I would say, ssshhhhhh...

Philanthropic giving to climate change has doubled since 2020, but it's still overwhelmingly going to the US & Europe.

Interesting tool that breaks down electricity bills, shows you what the various charges are, what you're actually paying for, and which direction your total bill is going.

Meanwhile ...

The World Bank had adopted a target: 45% of all new funding should go to "climate beneficial" projects. The Trump administration bullied it into dropping the target.

A new WoodMac report finds that the Trump administration's refusal to issue lawful permits for renewable energy development is putting 92 gigawatts of energy and $121 billion worth of investment at risk. The same administration that says the need for power is a "national emergency."

Say goodbye to an independent FERC.

The co-founder of Quaise, an enhanced geothermal company that digs super-deep wells, recently gave a keynote talk claiming that "geothermal has potential to become the backbone of the world’s energy system." Worth a read/watch:

"An independent ICCT analysis found that as battery-pack costs fell from 2020 to 2025, prices of electric Class 8 tractors in the European Union fell by 32%… while prices for comparable big rigs in the United States rose by 27% (about $87,000)."

This editorial is full of blatant lies. Even for the thoroughly dishonest Seattle Times, it's absurd to call Bruce Harrell's extremely modest comp plan proposal a "city council" plot to chop down trees and kill orcas in the interest of growth at any cost. Also, people would STILL be able to appeal!

Not just electricity -- *total* energy.

Tonight made a full 16oz box of angel hair, sauce with a full stick of butter, two tins of anchovies, 10 cloves of garlic, two pints of cherry tomatoes, & one big bunch of kale ... and the 20yo and I ate the entire damn thing. [burp]

People across North America want to make World Cup pedestrian zones permanent. We should be doing this in Seattle too.

TMZ DC with perhaps the most brutal video from Trump's Great American State Fair, showing Dr. Oz on stage bragging to Dean Cain about how big the crowd is, only for the reporter to pan around and show absolutely nobody is there. Original post: x.com/i/status/207...

It's not about him, so

I don't know how to fix this but it's also an easy observation that very few on the left or in the Democratic party understand that the only way to reduce fossil fuel profits at scale is to YIMBY-max every city in the United States. Walkable/transit-oriented housing is the whole shebang.

I remember so distinctly in the early 2000s, watching the growth of RW media -- talk radio, Fox, a profusion of websites -- and thinking, "man, people who believe this deranged shit are going to get into positions of power some day! People should worry more about this! Maybe do something!" Sigh.

Home battery market getting more interesting ...

This is true in HVAC narrowly but it's also true more broadly. Fossil fuel techs are mature & supported by infrastructure that's been developed over a century. Electrotech is rapidly developing. A snapshot comparison is misleading -- pay attention to *trajectories*.

The San Francisco far left is fucking deranged. A scourge on the city and on progressivism generally.

I sometimes wonder what it would take to dislodge the core American myth (capitalist myth, I suppose) that "businesspeople" are uniquely pragmatic or sensible.

"The electricity grid is not an engineering problem with coordination problems attached. It is a coordination problem with engineering problems embedded in it."

Asshole.

Woke up this morning to the smell of Mrs. Volts baking strawberry banana bread. 😍 (It's just as good as it sounds.)

This is a great example of what's called "pluralistic ignorance" -- the phenomenon whereby most people share a particular view, but they *don't think other people share it*. In this case: most people are concerned about climate change but think others aren't.

The fun thing about progress in Washington state is that you have to fight like hell to get it through, and then you have to fight off billionaire-sponsored ballot initiatives trying to kill it every f'ing year.

In any sane, political climate, this sort of thing should lead to mea culpas by anyone who's been arguing that the effects of climate change have been overstated, and emergency summits by leaders looking for ways to avoid things getting even worse www.economist.com/science-and-... @economist.com

Lololol I was trying to think of why this author's name sounds familiar & then I remembered he was that insufferable dipshit who wrote this for Vox, literally one of the worst piece I've ever read in my life:

Nothing you see online these days is organic. Even when it's something that tickles you -- like all this content about World Cup visiting foreigners loving American french fries or whatever -- you still need to keep this in mind.

This is amazing work by @justineunderhill.bsky.social: "It turns out when people have to pay the true cost of suburban sprawl themselves, they don't think it's worth it." www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1G3...