Maybe it's just me, but I don't think US tariff and trade policy should depend on whether a TV ad hurts the president's fee-fees

It would be a shame if Trump’s hysterical reaction to this ad caused more people to watch it.

This is the ad Donald Trump woke up furious about. Would be a shame if it went viral.

If I seem more irritated than usual this morning it is because I've studied how widely shared powerlessness and uncertainty affects decision-making, especially when people feel like they have nothing left to lose.

Admire people with principles

“The serious reasons for wearing silly costumes to protests: laughtivism…infuses protest with photogenic mockery ‘dilemma actions’ [giving] the authorities lose-lose problems” economist.com/culture/2025/1…

“monetising the ecosystem services: the economic benefits that humanity gets free of charge from nature. For the Amazon these fall into three categories: the storage of billions of tonnes of carbon; the regulation of vast flows of water; and acting as a reservoir of biodiversity”

Sadly, this is the real Turing Test AI is now passing. Speaks poorly of humans that sycophancy is a great AI skill: AI Chatbots cheer users on, give them overly flattering feedback and adjust responses to echo their views…at the expense of accuracy.” nature.com/articles/d4158…

Positive tipping points are inspiring and wildly underappreciated and under-pursued. We need to reverse the negative tipping points of climate denialism and doomerism, and we need to do it fast. climateandcapitalmedia.com/key-climate-ti…

Q: Are you making money or serving the planet? A: Yes. Every other response is as wrong as they are insane, and all based on assumptions about ‘externalities’ that have never been true. “Walmart heir Lukas Walton’s $15bn bet on the environment” ft.com/content/f1a754…

We’ve arrived at a time where Jane Jacobs’ vision of a complex, dense, walkable urban form without freeways, high tech energy efficiency (eg LEDS), solar, batteries and nuclear power, amongst many things, have likely proved to have been good paths. History is a brutal schoolroom.

It’s wild how this whole industry just needed a little new demand to get innovative and muscular. We were all just fucking grinding in a drought for 15 years, gasping for drops of sustenance. Now people want our shit for the first time and it’s crazy. Let’s fucking go.

“carbon removal isn’t really going to take off unless governments bring their resources and regulations to bear…direct purchases, [subsidies], or getting polluters to pay…by folding carbon removal into market-based emissions reductions mechanisms…” technologyreview.com/2025/10/24/112…

“…even if more nations do provide money/laws to drive the business of durable carbon renewal forward, there are mounting concerns that a sector conceived as an alternative to dubious offset markets could increasingly come to replicate their problems” technologyreview.com/2025/10/24/112…

“dynamic portfolio-choice model in which brown assets are penalized in proportion to their carbon emissions, creating an explicit environmental wedge in expected returns….framework [links] climate risk and ambiguity to optimal asset allocation” spkl.io/6012Akbzy

Utilities thrive in the awful despair of their purchased local political control. Among the reasons ‘utility collapse’ is a real risk, an outcome utilities have brought upon themselves, is a growing, bipartisan call for more federal control. insideclimatenews.org/news/24102025/…

In a time of darkness in the season of lights, I am struck by the beauty of this poem. Around us are those who would blame others and move from too much anger and fear. And yet, it takes a few courageous voices and examples of the possible to create a sense of possibility; and

Trade speed for power to turn data centers into grid assets vs liabilities and everyone wins. “Aligned Data Centers will pay to build a 31-megawatt battery, an early example of how AI developers can move fast if they’re willing to be flexible” canarymedia.com/articles/batte…

“central banks have a mandate to consider whether climate change will have material impact and act accordingly” climateandcapitalmedia.com/central-banks-…

This was a terrific conversation: expert, specific, data driven, and as inspiring as it was sobering: “The AI race is really an electro-industrial race” podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ope…