Corbin Hiar

A Black Friday promotion... sent on a Monday.

Sir, this is a Monday.

Amazon’s X-energy gets backing from Jane Street as investors bet big on nuclear Reactor developer closes fundraising round as markets expect atomic energy will power the AI boom

Nuclear reactor developer X-Energy closed a $700m funding round, bringing its total haul over the past 13 months to $1.4b, as it races to bring online a new reactor design and fulfill offtake agreements with Amazon, Dow etc. www.ft.com/content/59d9... 🔌💡

The longread from @karlmathiesen.bsky.social and me is based on confidential docs, public records and interviews with over three dozen scientists, investors, legal experts and others familiar with Stardust.

It also features a former UN climate advisor, Israeli nuclear physicists—and Ben Franklin.

The Strange and Totally Real Plan to Blot Out the Sun and Reverse Global Warming A 25-person startup is developing technology to block the sun and turn down the planet’s thermostat. The stakes are huge — and the company and its critics say regulations need to catch up.

NEW: A billionaire-backed global cooling startup is a few years away from potentially seeding the stratosphere with sunlight-reflecting particles.

This is the inside story of how Stardust is developing planet-altering tech that it hopes to sell to the US government. www.politico.com/news/magazin...

Meet the Republicans who killed solar subsidies — after using them POLITICO’s E&E News examined satellite imagery of more than 100 homes owned by Republican lawmakers to see if they have solar panels. Seven had rooftop arrays.

At least three Republican lawmakers took advantage of a decades-old rooftop solar credit that will end in January due to President Donald Trump’s megalaw, according to a review of property records and satellite imagery by POLITICO’s E&E News. www.politico.com/news/2025/11...

S&P 500 returns Nov 1-Oct 31 ahead of mid-term elections? Bad.

Avg -2.2%, median -3.5% (since 1962)

Lyft's 2016 projection vs Lyft's 2025 reality

How to lobby Trump with Swiss precision: gifts, gold and gab How the Swiss broke a diplomatic logjam on tariffs by arriving with tributes fit for a king.

How Switzerland lowered its tariffs: "The Swiss bar, given to Trump during the delegation's visit on Nov. 4, was stamped with 45 and 47 in homage to his presidential terms. It's worth a little more than $130,000." www.axios.com/2025/11/14/t...

Meet the Republicans who killed solar subsidies — after using them POLITICO’s E&E News examined satellite imagery of more than 100 homes owned by Republican lawmakers to see if they have solar panels. Seven had rooftop

“At least three Republican lawmakers took advantage of a decades-old rooftop solar credit that will end in January due to President Donald Trump’s megalaw, according to a review of property records and satellite imagery by POLITICO’s E&E News.”

Meet the Republicans who killed solar subsidies — after using them POLITICO’s E&E News examined satellite imagery of more than 100 homes owned by Republican lawmakers to see if they have solar panels. Seven had rooftop

NEW: At least three GOP lawmakers took advantage of a decades-old rooftop solar credit that'll expire in January due to Trump’s megalaw, E&E News has found.

They all support ending the perk that sliced thousands of dollars off the cost of installing their panels. www.eenews.net/articles/mee...

Trump’s H-1B Visa Crackdown to Accelerate Wall Street’s Expansion in India Investment banks are hiring finance specialists in hubs like Bengaluru and Hyderabad, a trend expected to accelerate after the H-1B crackdown.

NEW: Trump’s crackdown on immigrant work visas is spurring a Wall Street hiring boom … *in India.* www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

He beat the wrap.

Holland & Knight has now acknowledged that it began working for Stardust on Jan. 8.

The solar geoengineering startup's lobbying team includes former Rep. Ron Klein, a Democrat from Florida.
lda.senate.gov/filings/publ...

The US led the world to reach a huge climate deal. Then, it switched sides. Ten years after nations adopted the Paris Agreement, its objectives are in jeopardy amid rising climate pollution and a political backlash against clean energy.

Ten years after leaders adopted the landmark Paris climate agreement, it faces promise and peril. It doesn't help that one of its original advocates is now trying to tear it apart.
www.politico.com/news/2025/11...

E&E News: Geoengineering startup has been secretly lobbying Congress for months Stardust Solutions hired Holland & Knight, but the lobbying giant says it "inadvertently" failed to publicly disclose its work for the startup, as required by law.

Scoop: Stardust Solutions, a startup seeking U.S. government contracts to cool the planet, has quietly begun lobbying on Capitol Hill.

"We're informing members of Congress about our work and the need for appropriate and robust oversight," the CEO said. subscriber.politicopro.com/article/eene...

The fact that Democrats won both elections yesterday for the Georgia Public Service Commission is remarkable enough (no Democrat had won a non-federal statewide race in GA since 2006).

But both won by a margin of 63% to 37%. In Georgia.

results.sos.ga.gov/results/publ...

Why the for-profit race into solar geoengineering is bad for science and public trust Two scientists argue that the growing commercial efforts to counter climate change by reflecting away sunlight will thwart responsible research in the field.

In an op-ed for TR, @davidkeith.bsky.social & @danvisioni.bsky.social voice deep concerns about Stardust & other for-profits racing into solar geoengineering — and asserting claims that, they argue, the science doesn't support.

MAGA singles are looking for love in Washington. It’s a challenge. The politics of trying to find a partner in an overwhelmingly liberal city can be tricky: “My partner can’t think I’m a fascist. That’s crazy.”

“I felt like, being in conservative politics, there would be more, like, masculine men in the conservative movement,” said a 29 year-old Republican woman looking for love in DC. “And I find that a lot of them aren’t as masculine as I would have hoped.”
www.washingtonpost.com/style/power/...

AI Agents Are Terrible Freelance Workers A new benchmark measures how well AI agents can automate economically valuable chores. Human-level AI is still some ways off.

AI agents tried to do graphic design, video editing, game development, and administrative chores like scraping data. "Even the best could perform less than 3 percent of the work, earning $1,810 out of a possible $143,991," writes @willknight.bsky.social www.wired.com/story/ai-age...

The idea that Bowdoin College is one of many schools that have become "feckless workshops for leftist political orthodoxy" because it offers a degree in Africana studies is belied by the data. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/28/u...

Nearly all of the top major at Bowdoin are related to finance or science.

Meet the Senate aide with a $44,000 taxpayer-funded commute Sen. Roger Marshall’s chief of staff, Brent Robertson, has taken at least 26 trips to Washington from his home in central Virginia.

The chief of staff of Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kansas) lives in central Virginia, 190 miles from the Capitol.

Marshall has previously sponsored legislation to curtail federal employees' ability to work remotely.

"I'm against teleworking from home," he said last year. www.politico.com/news/2025/10...

On Oct. 15, the Post's editorial board heralded the military's push for a new generation of smaller nuclear reactors.

But it didn't note that Amazon owns a stake in small nuclear developer X-energy and that Bezos has invested in a Canadian venture pursuing nuclear fusion technology.

Never forget: In 2024, Trump claimed electric boats "can't go fast" and that their batteries pose risks to passengers.

"You know what I'd do if there was a shark or you get electrocuted?" he said in land-locked Las Vegas. "I'll take electrocution every single time. I'm not getting near the shark."

E&E News: Electric boat zips around DC, looking for customers A Swedish company showed off its hydrofoil technology on the Potomac River last week.

A Swedish electric boat maker is trying to break into the U.S. at a time of growing protectionism and waning support for clean tech, with a president who once warned that battery-powered vessels can electrocute passengers and expose them to shark attacks. subscriber.politicopro.com/article/eene...

Cat 5 (175 mph peak winds) Hurricane Melissa is just a few hours from making landfall in Jamaica as its strongest storm on record. Storm is stronger than Katrina (at peak) and the strongest ever recorded in Atlantic so late in the season.

More info: www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2025...

Russia’s Lukoil to sell off foreign assets as US sanctions bite Restrictions imposed by Washington will force the company to end its exports to European countries.

A former Lukoil executive said the move could see the company’s revenues and profits plummet by “about 30 percent,” as it is forced it to sell three refineries and around half of its roughly 5,000 petrol stations worldwide.

“Lukoil is finished,” they told POLITICO. www.politico.eu/article/russ...

"At first glance, it might look like the US has exited the climate fight. ... But don’t be confused: America is still in the arena; it’s just fighting for the other side."

“…a furloughed Labor Department employee in Texas said she had been going from room to room inside her home in a San Antonio suburb to see what she could sell to help make ends meet.” www.nytimes.com/2025/10/26/u... This is the facade of the Labor Department headquarters in D.C.:

👀 The AFGE, the largest union representing federal workers, is officially calling for the end of the shutdown:

“Unfortunately, shutdowns have become a recurring tactic in Washington. But there is no ‘winning’ a government shutdown,” AFGE’s president said
www.afge.org/article/its-...