Robinson Meyer

The Grid Survived The Storm. Now Comes The Cold. With historic lows projected for the next two weeks — and more snow potentially on the way — the big strain may be yet to come.

the grid by and large survived the storm — what issues we had were poles and wires, not load shedding — but now the grid has to face a week of very low temperatures, which means persistent high demand heatmap.news/energy/winte...

Whimsical, all powerful, biggest wife guy in the universe, aloof from human problems and possibly time itself — these are the traits I value in a digital companion

lPatrick Collison @patrickc It's going to be tough for startups when all the Lord of the Rings names are taken and the only thing left is something like Bombadil AI.

Honestly I would use Bombadil AI. I would not pay for it however

Theories about the horrendous Washington Post rumors/news:
* Bezos is gambling his public reputation can’t fall any further.
* He doesn’t think the public will care and/or he thinks the current faction in power might reward him.
* Total abdication from the sector because of AI?

Isn’t it just great?

I do know it — it’s used in middle and high school history textbooks to illustrate manifest destiny. Usually in the 1840s but sometimes you also get it in a discussion of the Turner thesis.

A guy named Starbuck is playing second fiddle to an obsessive and loquacious leader? Now I’ve seen everything.

That’s fair. I guess I figure (maybe wrongly?) Free Solo + Tiktok will have already filtered some of that out. Was more surprised to see some X folks say that that all of the interest in the livestream was macabre when that wasn’t my experience at all.

Too much to argue that between Mamdani’s groomsman look and Carney’s three-piece suits, we’re seeing a more formal fashion sensibility grounded in self-restraint take shape?

Man, the default tone on X is now so pseudo-counterintuitive and engagement-brained that people are finding a way to feel bad about the Alex Honnold climb.

Instagram Create an account or log in to Instagram - Share what you're into with the people who get you.

Nice Zohran video about NYC snow management, he’s clearly just explaining city SOP but effective nonetheless: www.instagram.com/reel/DT6R_8Z... (or non-vertical youtube link: youtu.be/S8ePP7N6hQ0?...)

What Progressives Want to Know About Abundance Off Twitter/X, the concerns are about boundaries, business, omnicauses, and what complements liberal priorities versus what replaces them.

“When I encounter Abundance in Washington, D.C., I’m never sure which of these two I’m going to get. It takes time and cognitive work to figure out which is which… A movement driven by magazine writers and academics will find it difficult to police the boundaries of what’s included and excluded.”

What Progressives Want to Know About Abundance Off Twitter/X, the concerns are about boundaries, business, omnicauses, and what complements liberal priorities versus what replaces them.

“If Abundance means YIMBYism, building more housing and preempting exclusionary local zoning, I am 100 percent a supporter and encourage people to contribute. If Abundance means e/acc, letting tech and AI rip across every domain regardless of consequences, I am not in favor…”

Congrats!

The Chevy Bolt Is Already Dead. Again. 2017 – 2023 ... and 2027.

GM has already killed the new Chevy Bolt… and it’s revamping its Kansas factory to make internal combustion cars, @andrewmoseman.bsky.social writes: heatmap.news/electric-veh...

Coalie when it’s 1890 and you have to build an urban power plant:

Went back and checked my work though, since you asked. I think my pre-Jan 20 ’25 assessments hold up fine. As for whether I failed to account for pre-2025 “centrist” predictions or not, that just was not the goal of the piece — it was limited to Burgum’s words. Thanks for reading as always.

I responded 10 hours ago! bsky.app/profile/robi...

Opinion | In Case of Blizzard, Do Nothing (Published 2016)

One of my all-time favorite op-eds: “One doesn’t pretend to do battle against a blizzard. You submit. Surrender. Hunker down. A snowstorm rewards indolence and punishes the go-getters, which is only one of the many reasons it’s the best natural disaster there is.” www.nytimes.com/2016/01/23/o...

A man's suit lapel with two pins on it. One is the DOJ seal, the other is in the shape of a thumbs-up and says "Trump" on it.

A billionaire known as “Bitcoin Jesus” was under indictment for massive criminal tax fraud and very likely going to prison.

Then, he hired a “Friend of Trump” and the criminal charges disappeared.

How did they do it? Avi Asher-Schapiro and I spent months getting the inside story.

The grimness of US history should encourage us. Yes, people used to send lynching postcards. And other people saw that, worked towards building a more just society anyway, and succeeded beyond anyone's wildest imagination. There's more work to be done. What's our excuse for choosing despair instead?

OK not to be that guy, but I've stood on this very hill and stayed about 20 feet from where the CNN reporter is. There are *always* ice bergs on that beach.

This isn't a rugged Greenlandic locale, it's the heart of Old Nuuk, which is the quaint and bougie part of the city where mostly Dane lives.

Interesting observation. I know what you mean… I‘ll think about whether I agree.

No, the subtext of the piece is that when politicians state their principles and values, it is worth criticizing them when they infringe on those values, even if those commitments were BS from the beginning.

Musk’s Chatbot Flooded X With Millions of Sexualized Images in Days, New Estimates Show

We set out to determine how many images of women and girls Grok created during its nudifying spree. What we found was “industrial-scale abuse,” experts said. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/22/t...

Germany’s Military Recruitment Drive Has a Gen Z Problem In a shift from the 20th century’s postwar pacifism, today’s generational split over the military is more about economics than politics.

“News about the new military service sent tens of thousands of school-age demonstrators into the streets. A frequent refrain: Why should they sacrifice for a state that channels a quarter of its federal budget into pension payments to the old?” www.wsj.com/world/europe...

This is interesting because it's kind of the exact dynamic of sports media over the last 20 years. A bunch of newer blogger/amateur/enthusiast types are more sensationalist about forecasts and models and the old guard believe it's totally irresponsible.

Why America’s Climate Emissions Surged in 2025 | Shift Key with Robinson Meyer and Jesse Jenkins Rob talks through Rhodium Groups’s latest emissions report with climate and energy director Ben King.

NEW SHIFT KEY

Why America’s Climate Emissions Surged in 2025

In an ominous sign, US GHG pollution grew faster than GDP last year. I spoke to @rhg.com’s Ben King about why, and what it says about the US economy — and whether Trump or AI is more to blame.

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

a screenshot of an X.com post from US Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, which depicts a map of North America and shows flight times from Anchorage, AK, to Washington, DC, and from Washington, DC, to Nuuk, Greenland. The map is labeled "The New Interior."

Now, Burgum is a light-hearted guy, and obviously, we’re meant to chuckle. It’s a joke. Alaska and Washington, D.C., are part of the “old interior,” but Greenland’s capital, Nuuk, is the “new interior” — future American territory. Burgum defended himself on Fox News last Thursday. “Who knew that posting a factual map of Alaska and Greenland would be triggering to those folks who do not fully understand the importance of Greenland and the strategic nature of protecting the United States of America?” he said. Burgum is wrong. His map was not factual: Greenland is not part of the American interior; it is part of Denmark. To describe it as the “interior” of America should humiliate Burgum’s liberty-loving soul. But what we can tell from this tweet is that Burgum is mentally preparing himself for a terrible betrayal of the values and ideas he once celebrated. What would that betrayal be? Nothing less than the open theft of Greenlanders’ most fundamental freedoms. On Fox, Burgum said that Trump wanted to “buy” Greenland — but this is such a twisting and abrasing of the truth as to make a patriot yelp. Trump desires Greenland by any means, and he is willing to use the military to bully Denmark and the Greenlandic people into selling their sovereignty. This is not friendly commerce between two equals, as a free market requires, but rather petty and corrupt gangsterism. Trump is shoving a gun in Denmark’s face, muttering, We can do this the easy way or the hard way. Burgum claims to see nothing wrong with this degeneracy.

He should. Less than two years ago, Burgum praised the Constitution and “the historic and aspirational vision presented by our Founding Fathers.” That cohort’s insight — the reason we remember its members now, despite their flaws — was that the most fundamental political freedom is political self-determination. “All men are, by nature, equal and free,” wrote James Wilson, one of only six men to sign both the Declaration and the Constitution. “No one has a right to any authority over another without his consent: all lawful government is founded on the consent of those who are subject to it.” Yet Burgum would help establish Trump’s authority over more than 55,000 Greenlanders without their consent and over their objections — a government that would reek of illegality from its birthpangs. And Burgum would be its midwife. The Office of Insular Affairs, which he oversees as part of the Interior Department, manages America’s territories and freely associated states, such as Puerto Rico and Palau. Greenland could soon fall under its purview, too. Burgum could easily become Greenland’s colonial governor, its federal subjugator. All lawful government is founded on the consent of those who are subject to it. I have been to Greenland. It is an austere and beautiful country, home to a population of independent and freedom-loving people who want to prosper, raise their families, farm, hunt, thrive, and flourish. It should sound familiar: Greenlanders are not so far from Burgum’s old North Dakota constituents.

Either Burgum will now see the resemblance and desist from Trump’s corrupt attack on liberty, democracy, and the principle of self-government itself — either he will block it, delay it, never defend it in public or in private, and never joke about the wicked betrayal of an ally again — either he will review and revise the resignation letter in his desk drawer — either he will, in other words, act as a free man, or he should stop lying to Americans about his love of freedom and admit that he now believes instead that might makes right — that Donald Trump’s word is law, or close enough to it — and clarify for us, at last, that he has already become one of the president’s moral degenerates. “Ronald Reagan famously told us, ‘Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction,’” an earlier version of Doug Burgum once told us. It was 2024, and he was running for president, addressing Republicans in Florida. His political prospects had never looked better. Burgum paused for a second. He wanted the audience to think about the quote — to stick with Reagan’s words. “Sometimes people remember that [line],” he said, “but they forget the second part of the quote, and I think it’s the most important: ‘Freedom must be fought for and protected, or we’ll spend our later years telling our grandchildren what it was like when America was free.’” To fight and protect freedom — what would such an act demand of Doug Burgum in this moment, when a president is threatening America’s neighbors and trying to impose the very definition of unfreedom on its friends? Burgum was a thoughtful politician once: an independent and heterodox leader who loved liberty and wanted to see Americans flourish. Will he now do his duty to America and the world? Or will he push the country and its imperial subjects — no longer free citizens — into an unfreedom that will aggrieve and impoverish us well into our grandchildren’s lives. The choice is his. He has his freedom, now let him use it.

I wrote about US Interior Secretary Burgum, who has praised freedom and liberty his whole career, and who recently said Greenland would become “the New Interior”: heatmap.news/politics/dou...

Yes!