Robinson Meyer

Our flâneur president is exploring the psychogeography of the White House in the context of its urban environment but go off

tevye in re the fiddler:

It’s more complicated than this, at least when it comes to metro coverage. The Post has tried local editions elsewhere before and quickly nixed them after running up losses not even Murdoch would tolerate.

My guess is this is another salvo in The Aggregation Wars between The Post and The Mail.

Closest thing tonally to who’s getting it “right” at the moment is probably coming from YouTube.

Traditional media has neither the business model nor the institutional culture for it; online-only, left-wing, and para-academic media outlets don’t have the deep pockets or the right attitude for it. It will require new teams and institutions.

New York Post to launch California Post newspaper in LA Los Angeles is home to the second-largest concentration of Post readers, per News Corp.

Conservative tabloids (and similar) will simply take over the role of setting local/national narratives until liberal owners step up with their own ruthlessly anti-jargon, “common sense”-focused competitors. Center-left legacy media is not positioned to compete here. www.axios.com/2025/08/04/n...

Why We’re Worried About Electricity Prices Podcast Episode · Shift Key with Robinson Meyer and Jesse Jenkins · 07/30/2025 · 1h 6m

Weekend listen: Electricity prices in the US are expected to go up. Why they will — growth in demand, Trump’s petty war on green energy, increased LNG exports — and what can be done about it, on Shift Key with @robinsonmeyer.bsky.social & @jessedjenkins.com podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/s...

One of the ways to understand the AI boom is that it’s turning software companies into light industrial firms. That means that regions recently dominated by IT and services — such as the Mid-Atlantic — are now undergoing a partial re-industrialization, too. www.eia.gov/todayinenerg...

The FBI Redacted Trump’s Name in the Epstein Files The bureau’s FOIA team tasked with conducting a final review of the records blacked out the names before higher-ups said last month that releasing the documents ‘would not be appropriate or warranted....

Breaking Bloomberg:

The FBI redacted Trump's name in the Epstein files.

"An FBI [Freedom of Information Act] team redacted Trump's name—and the names of other prominent public figures—from the documents, according to three people familiar with the matter."
www.bloomberg.com/news/newslet...

In the 1990s, Donna Lewis’s “I Love You Always Forever” was ubiquitous, inescapable, the sound of top 40. Then in the 2000s and 2010s you never heard it. You had to google a half-remembered snatch of lyrics just to confirm it was real. Now it gets played again. Much to consider.

Congrats Shannon!

A lot of folks still have 2000-2010s era power prices in their heads as “normal” with an expectation that we will return to “normal” at some point.

There are many reasons that isn’t true, but this is probably the biggest among them. We are in a new era of power prices.

definitely not a dig at philly!

The biggest shock of moving to NYC for me has been the generally high and sometimes exceptional quality of public service provision (augmented by a civic culture that still believes in, and pays for, the possibility of uplift)

4.1% NGDP growth in the 2010’s was like a 53-degree day in April. It’s not warm, but you’re not freezing. 4.1% NGDP growth in the middle of an AI boom is like having a blast furnace running in an otherwise unheated Minnesota house in winter — you’re grateful for the heat but screwed if it breaks.

We work hard to have a new episode consistently out every Wednesday — it’s so nice to know listeners appreciate it!

Thank you! We work hard for that consistency so I’m so glad to hear you appreciate it!

Why We’re Worried About Electricity Prices Rob and Jesse take stock of all the trends threatening to push up power bills.

NEW SHIFT KEY

From tariffs to an LNG boom to a backed-up turbine supply chain, virtually every trend in the power grid is pointing toward more constraints.

@jessedjenkins.com and I broke down about why we fear a potential power cost crisis:

Listen anywhere: shows.acast.com/65bac3af0334...

Glad to have had the chance to talk with @robinsonmeyer.bsky.social at @heatmap.news about the trends we are seeing in US clean energy investment since Trump office.

Read his article below. For more, check out our Trump + 6 month tracker and report at www.the-big-green-machine.com

The U.S. Clean Energy Manufacturing Boom Is Sputtering More than $30 billion of clean energy investments are now on ice since Trump took office, according to new data from Wellesley College’s Big Green Machine.

More than $30B in U.S. clean energy manufacturing investment has paused, canceled, or delayed in the six months since Trump took office, according to a new report

During the same period, only $3B in new investment has been announced

new from me, in @heatmap.news:
heatmap.news/economy/trum...

I’m struggling to come to terms — as, I suspect, many of us are — with a world where a scandal this New Jersey could happen in Texas.

Screenshot of Jesse Jenkins on The Ezra Klein Show with headline "Is Decarbonization Dead?"

Screenshot of Jane Flegal on The Ezra Klein Show with headline "Is Decarbonization Dead?"

Is decarbonization dead? @janeaflegal.bsky.social & I join Ezra Klein to talk through how Trump just shredded America's most ambitious climate policy, what survived, and where we go from here. Listen @nytimes.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/25/o...

Great reporting of late from @robinsonmeyer.bsky.social on electricity rate hikes. I found another very concrete example just now, in Missouri. A minimum 30% hike, and proportionally more for those at the lowest tiers of consumption.
Direct from the @halcyonai.bsky.social feed today...

What is less well understood is how poorly the United States is prepared to match this rise in electricity demand with an equivalent increase in supply. To some degree, American electricity prices are already rising: So far this year, utilities have received or requested permission to increase customers’ bills by $29 billion, according to a July report from PowerLines, a think tank and advocacy group. That’s a large number in its own right, and it’s more than twice as much as had been approved at this time last year. But when you look across the power system, virtually every trend is setting us up for electricity price spikes: The supply chain to build new natural gas power plants is backed up. Virtually all new utility-scale gas turbines are spoken for until the end of this decade, as Heatmap News covered in February. U.S. natural gas supplies will come under more strain in the next few years as fossil fuel companies export more of the fuel abroad. From 2024 to 2028, North America’s liquified natural gas export capacity is projected to double. Many of the key components to build more grid infrastructure — such as copper or steel — have surged in cost due to Trump’s tariffs and self-induced trade uncertainty. The federal government has become a less stable fiscal and financing partner for energy producers and distributors. On Wednesday, Energy Secretary Chris Wright killed a government loan guarantee for the Grain Belt Express transmission project. Why? “To ensure more responsible stewardship of taxpayer resources,” but also because President Trump asked him to.

It’s hard to find a trend in the electricity system right now that *doesn’t* point to near-term rate hikes if not a broad affordability crisis. That’s a serious problem for climate policy, but also the American economy writ large. I wrote about it: heatmap.news/politics/ele...

They should have Kenan record PSAs about THIS

The movement is growing bsky.app/profile/ndha...

“It is also worth noting that automakers are not clamoring for repeal of vehicle emission standards … there are other areas in which deregulatory efforts would be welcomed by the regulated community and would be more likely to unleash investment and innovation.”

The Newt Gingrich of Rome, honestly

Shift Key Summer School: How Sun and Wind Become Electricity Jesse teaches Rob all about where solar and wind energy come from.

We asked @jessedjenkins.com to teach a few lessons of his “Intro to Electricity” class for the pod. We call it SHIFT KEY SUMMER SCHOOL.

Today’s class: HOW WIND AND SOLAR BECOME ELECTRICITY

Listen for free at Heatmap: heatmap.news/podcast/shif...

Or wherever: shows.acast.com/65bac3af0334...

Yes! He’s seen as arguing for a narrow political outlook when he’s really trying to wrest a whole new way of seeing into view.