Housekeeping!

Updates, paid subscriptions, etc.

Hey everyone!

It’s been a while since I’ve let you guys know what I’ve been up to. Running my (free!) daily energy newsletter, Grid Brief, eats up a lot of my time. But I’ve been missing writing here. So, I’m hoping to do that more often.

But before I get into that, here are a few things from this week:

1. Marshall Kosloff invited me onto The Realignment to talk about nuclear, the grid, our cultural malaise, and more. You can watch/listen to it here:

2. I published a review of How to Blow Up a Pipeline for Compact subscribers. Here’s the first paragraph: “How to Blow Up a Pipeline is a taut thriller about a group of highly motivated stupid people who decide to do something dangerous. The film, and its protagonists, are inspired by the Swedish left-wing academic Andreas Malm’s 2021 nonfiction manifesto of the same title, which calls on climate activists to abandon nonviolent protest in favor of violence and sabotage. In the book as in the movie, blowing up a pipeline is supposed to do two things: discourage investors and reveal that Big Fossil can be put out of business … somehow. Perhaps unintentionally, the movie reveals a great deal about the dark heart of climate extremism.”

3. ICYMI Juan David Rojas and I had a really fun and informative conversation about AMLO, Pemex, and Mexico’s future. Give it a listen:

   AMLO and Pemex ft. Juan David Rojas

Onto future plans for this Substack!

I think what I like about Substack is that its UI feels like Livejournal, a now defunct diary/blogging site I used as a teenager. It was there that I learned to write for an audience (my friends) a few times a week. I won’t bore you with the mundane details of my life like I did there. I couldn’t even if I wanted to—a salutary effect of aging is finding yourself less interesting. But I do want to write more for you guys.

Some of that will be more housekeeping stuff like this and some of it will be essays like the recent Problem With Counting Bodies. The podcast will, of course, continue to come out weekly.

Several of you have opted to pay for a subscription. I didn’t have that feature turned on, but I’ve now enabled it. My instincts as a millennial who grew up in the heyday of free internet content disinclines me towards paywalling content. Maybe one day when my audience is big enough I’ll do that. But for now, you can, if you’d like, financially support this Substack’s free, accessible output.

So, what can you expect going forward, writing-wise? I have a few essay ideas on energy hierarchies and Homer’s Iliad, profiles of people who’ve impacted American energy history, and some thoughts on technology, expertise, and democracy.

I hope to get to these when I can and inform you all of appearances/publications that appear elsewhere more often.

Thanks so much for subscribing!