Not to turn slight avgeek on you, but giant flying boats were soooo cool
Tom MacDonald
@tscmacdonald.bsky.social
Energy & decarbonisation by way of physical chemistry and spin stuff. Sometimes folk music and dance.
Opening with an argument that Britain's energy privatisation drove i) a slowing of capital (re)investment, leading to ii) falling productivity and increasing prices as the market reorganised around a higher cost of private capital (go build that low capex/high opex gas!)
Tom MacDonald @tscmacdonald.bsky.social · 2w agoReally excited for @arthurdowning.bsky.social's new book on the political-economic history of electricity in Britain: industrial development, municipal supply, nationalisation and privatisation, from pioneering growth to today's crises. I've been reading Arthur's work for a while - well worth a look
Really excited for @arthurdowning.bsky.social's new book on the political-economic history of electricity in Britain: industrial development, municipal supply, nationalisation and privatisation, from pioneering growth to today's crises. I've been reading Arthur's work for a while - well worth a look
Wishful thinking as policy. - It's not obvious that this is actually true, especially with gas reservation policies pushing down local pipeline gas prices. - Hyperscalers aren't *that* sensitive to power cost. Building gas wins on speed to power, but once built expect little urgency to replace it.
Matthew Spillane @spillanemj.bsky.social · 2w agoCountdown until Ablo offers a subsidy to bridge this gap
www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08... Looks like Albo's spiked Bowen's modest efforts to ensure data centre energy supply comes from new renewables rather than existing fossil generation. A principled commitment to not making the minimally adequate an enemy of abject retreat, I suppose...
Albanese's rare concession in the energy wars is revealing
As is so often the case in Australia, the politics came down to a fight over energy.
abc.net.au
Great, great piece today on the challenges of building new wind generation in Australia: www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08... Key pics to me are below. Costs have ~doubled while the market value of wind energy has fallen. Lots of heavy-handed public support needed to push past this barrier, I think.
.. I certainly knew we were not on track for ISP projections (and the 82% RE target for 2030) - but have to say was rather shocked by how much behind the eight ball we really are 😬🥲 (based on the latest generator information data from AEMO)
Some great charts here. My understanding is that "demand flexibility" for data centres basically begins and ends with behind-the-meter batteries - better than nothing, of course, but the data centres themselves are right up there alongside hospitals for lack-of-interest in voluntarily turning down.
Ketan Joshi@ketanjoshi.co · 4w agoThe tech industry constantly talks about its ability to "flex" data centres in response to demand pressures, but this Aus grid operator report shows that they simply don't actually do that So AEMO assumes demand flex from them is zero megawatts in their forecasts www.aemo.com.au/consultation...
Can't say I followed Sussan Ley's political career all that closely, but genuinely enjoyed this piece on her post-politics pivot to Greyhound bus travel writer: www.afr.com//politics/fe...
As a Dawkins-reading teen, the conservative argument that there could be no morality without organised religion was clearly ridiculous - today it still *feels* wrong, but at the same time it's really hard to point to actually-existing examples of social morality without a religious foundation.
The Fig Economy@figgityfigs.bsky.social · last mo.I’m not a religious person so I don’t mean this in a sectarian way but it’s really bad not that church attendance has declined, but that nothing that predisposes people to think about morality and the common good has replaced it.
Strongly recommend this one, on the very real challenge of understanding (and pricing!) the economic structures AI may bring into being.
Christian Odendahl@codendahl.bsky.social · last mo.Very good @robarmstrong.bsky.social column on the economic structure of the AI industry. The most important question in markets at the moment, and as he says, it’s a hard question. www.ft.com/content/c167...
Amazing: "Queensland dissented from this Communique" .. federation is working well then www.energy.gov.au/energy-and-c...
On this: what's happening with online social formation in the AI era? The ones I'm in are either web1.0 diaspora relics or focused on singular niche special interests - how are communities of practice or interest forming today as the thermal noise of open platforms continues to rise?
Tom MacDonald @tscmacdonald.bsky.social · 2mo agoAt the same time what is the success of Discord if not a desire to build walled communities, share a patch of virtual ground between a comprehensible number of individuals, and keep the sea of dross mostly outside?
Fully agree with this, and it's thinking that can't come to Australia soon enough. Electricity decarb is our best deal overall but does have costs - it's entirely counterproductive to levy those costs on electricity usage rather than almost anywhere else.
Jan Rosenow@janrosenow.bsky.social · 2mo agoZero VAT on electricity in the UK from October. The real story isn’t the £45 off bills, it’s the gas-electricity price gap. We’ve loaded taxes onto electricity while gas gets off lighter, which discourages heat pumps. Cutting VAT narrows that gap.
The curious thing about discussions of rising antisemitism in the English speaking world is how they are detached from any recognition of the ubiquity of vociferous Islamophobia www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
Why has Britain’s oldest political magazine become such a rabid cheerleader for Islamophobia? | Nesrine Malik
A report on the Spectator’s coverage of Muslims makes for grim reading. Conservatism is now focused on this minority to the exclusion of everything else, says Guardian columnist Nesrine Malik
theguardian.com
Enjoyed reading today's release of CSIRO GenCost: lots of good content, and most importantly it has the honesty to state that decarbonising *will* increase power costs somewhat but that those costs are modest and obviously worthwhile. Hopefully AEMO can find the same clarity one day...
Broadly agree with Possum here - these principles are good ones, and if we can apply them effectively without cooking the planning process I think the country will benefit. I'm perhaps less confident that the Commonwealth has the power or capability to force it, though. Hopefully I'm wrong!
Possum@pollytics.bsky.social · 2mo agoData centres will have to provide their own renewable and firming power, preferably being net exporters to the grid - good. Creators get content protection - good. Efficiency standards for water and no free infrastructure ride - good. Location requirements - good.
noticing an increasingly common phenomenon of people online who hate their torment nexus ass propietary software but for some reason refuse to even entertain the idea of learning to use a non-torment alternative.
Quarterly Battery (discharging) Energy high record for NEM (1,038.8 GWh) — up 32.9% from previous record
Literally me on holiday the other week:
Tyrell Corp Testing Lead@professormusgrave.bsky.social · 2mo agoHuh
"this drone flies fast and autonomously scouts a large area to, uhhhhh, locate and assist hikers" - as seen on many student projects, turns out it's not quite *always* disingenuous bullshit
Guardian Australia@australia.theguardian.com · 2mo agoHikers lost in Kosciuszko national park rescued within five hours by AI drone
Aus energy Christmas! AEMO's 2026 ISP releases today, our national energy plan for the future. Important to remember: • This is a plan, not a prediction. It won't happen without the right incentives. • Govt policy wishes are input constraints, regardless of likelihood www.aemo.com.au/-/media/file...
Great piece here from Os, making a strong argument that public fears of multiculturalism are effectively a misdiagnosis of the root causes behind a broader collapse of societal institutions and participatory democracy.
Osmond Chiu (赵明佑)@redrabbleroz.bsky.social · 3mo agoI wrote a piece for @news.abc.net.au about the false dichotomy of the multicultural vs monocultural debate & how it misses the deeper concerns that we are an increasingly atomised, disconnected country www.abc.net.au/religion/cur... #auspol
Really interesting argument here that the US's climate nihilism follows a shift in capital's political influence from finance to tech. That's a uniquely US-specific phenomenon, and goes some way to explaining why the UK or Australia don't seem to be following the US's path.
JW Mason@jwmason.bsky.social · 3mo agoWell no, I think there's been a real change. I think that a decade ago there was a lot of elite support for decarbonization. I think part of this change is a shift from finance to tech as the center of gravity.
Because the thing is, you can't have normal democratic politics except without climate policy. A major push to decarbonize is where any rational, minimally accountable government is going to land in the 21st century. If that's not where you want to end up, then you need a different kind of politics.
An idea I've been playing with for a while is that one of the core elements of the political economy of Trumpism is that a critical mass of the US capitalist class decided that decarbonization was not worth the costs to them.
Albert Pinto@70sbachchan.bsky.social · 3mo agogood lord Honda is writing off ALL its EV manufacturing investments in NORTH AMERICA! Ohio, US - gone Ontario, Canada - gone. Cancelling its EV lineup of Honda 0 SUV, the Honda 0 Saloon and the Acura RSX. www.automotivemanufacturingsolutions.com/strategy/hon...