Dylan McConnell

incredible, he did the joke

People switching from ChatGPT to Anthropic are telling on themselves. Will they now cancel their Claude subscriptions because it was used to help plan the attack on Iran? They won’t and we all know it.

When you gain the admiration of actual fascist supremacists, it may be time for for some self reflection.

#auspol #ALP

Evelyn Araluen wins $125,000 for ‘politically uncompromising’ poetry at Victorian premier’s literary awards Poet’s second collection The Rot won the Victorian prize for literature and the Indigenous writing category

Seems the Vic Premier's Literary Awards aren't bowing to pressure or self censorship in choosing the winners this year.

I read Fierceland a couple of weeks ago and thought it was excellent. Also thought Discipline was very much worth a read.

www.theguardian.com/books/2026/f...

Very cool - looking forward to having a read of this one!

🚨 New paper: Coupling integrated assessment and energy system models 🚨

Planning future energy systems requires bridging two fundamentally different scales: long-term transformation pathways spanning decades, and short-term power system operations unfolding hour by hour.

#EnergySky #PyPSA

🧵

I just did the dumbest thing of my entire career to prove a much more serious point.

I tricked ChatGPT and Google, and made them tell other users I’m a competitive hot-dog-eating world champion

People are using this trick on a massive scale to make AI tell you lies. I’ll explain how I did it

The really insane thing about arts funding cuts like the ones currently devastating Victoria is how small the savings are. Jacinta Allen is presiding over generational damage to the arts scene, for a saving of around 1 day of transport infrastructure spending

OKAY BIG ONE FOR YA

NEW report out today: I dig deep into how big tech has been muddling tech types and overstating evidence to claim "AI" will make global emissions drop like a stone....

Not only will it not, it seems to be verifiably doing the opposite!!

ketanjoshi.co/2026/02/17/b... + 📼+🧵>

OpenAI admits AI hallucinations are mathematically inevitable, not just engineering flaws In a landmark study, OpenAI researchers reveal that large language models will always produce plausible but false outputs, even with perfect data, due to fundamental statistical and computational limi...

"In a landmark study, OpenAI researchers reveal that large language models will always produce plausible but false outputs, even with perfect data, due to fundamental statistical and computational limits."

www.computerworld.com/article/4059...

The Point Live: It's on for the Liberals, protests planned for Melbourne in response to Isaac Herzog's planned visit Angus Taylor resigned from the front bench but is yet to announce when he will officially challenge for the leadership. Melbourne protesters prepare for the arrival of Israeli president, Isaac Herzog...

I am not sure you could come up with a worse put down of the Liberal front bench than James Paterson saying "Angus is the smartest policy brain in the shadow cabinet”
live.thepoint.com.au

Absolutely huge crowd in Melbourne right now.

People from all backgrounds, ages and professions - united in opposition to genocide and war.

This is what social cohesion looks like.

Only six months late but I really enjoyed this preso from @dylanjmcconnell.bsky.social touching on one of my favourite niche energy topics: diesel! Pipeline gas has real challenges meeting seasonal peaking needs - big tanks of liquid fuel are a great complement

www.ceem.unsw.edu.au/sites/defaul...

Discord's new age verification rules got you down? Allow me to suggest an alternative: Internet Relay Chat Launched in 1988, IRC was created by and for computer nerds, and it won't hold your hand but it also doesn't want to see your face.

I am absolutely not kidding

He’s not wrong.

Bulletin front cover. Pic of John Howard: Mr 18%: who on earth does this man bother?

With the LNP vote hitting 18%, it’s a good reminder of this 1988 cover

.. haven't looked too closely, but demand seems to be outstripping forecasts by a pretty decent margin.

Breaking: Washington Post gutting its climate team Clean energy dies in darkness. Courtesy of Jeff Bezos.

The Washington Post was consistently doing some of the best climate reporting out there in recent years. This is a huge loss (h/t @sammyroth.bsky.social) open.substack.com/pub/climatec...

Thread: Each week I run a simulation of Australia’s main electricity grid using rescaled generation data to show that it can get very close to 100% renewable electricity with 24GW/120GWh of storage (5 hrs at av demand)
Results:
Last week: 100.0% RE
Last 232 weeks: 98.6% RE (1/5)

January was another above-average month in Australia…not a big surprise but the size of the area with average maximums for the month of 39C or higher is notable:

Underlying demand, and underlying demand ex-solar contribution (both utility and rooftop) over the last week or so ... 🔌💡

Australia’s grid now relies on renewable energy as much as coal. Those who doubted it look foolish Solar met the majority of electricity demand between 9am and 6pm in the past week as much of the country cranked air conditioners

Solar provided 59% of electricity in the Australian national (east coast) grid between 9am and 6pm over the past week. It was 30% of total generation.

Life moves pretty fast etc.

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

[Scene is a kitchen - a middle aged woman called JANET is boiling peas at the stove. A younger more colourfully dressed woman named LIZ approached her.] JANET: Ugh... LIZ: What's up? JANET: I am so bored of cooking peas! LIZ: Have you tried... AI peas? JANET: AI peas? LIZ: They're peas with AI! [Liz holds up to us a packet of peas labelled: Pea-i AI - Peas with AI]. LIZ: Al-powered peas harness the potential of your peas JANET: What LIZ [Now a voiceover as we cut to a whizzy technology diagram of peas all connected by meaningless dotted lines] Why not take your peas to the next level with Al Peas' new Al tools to power your peas? [Show a techno diagram of a pea with a label reading 'AI' pointing to a random zone in it] LIZ: Each pea has Al in a way we haven't quite worked out yet but it's fine [Show Janet and Liz now in a Matrix-style world of peas] LIZ: With Al peas you can supercharge productivity and make AI work for your peas! JANET: What LIZ: Shut up LIZ: Our game-changing Pea-Al gives you the freedom to unlock the potential of the power of the future of your peas workflow From opening the bag of peas to boiling the peas to eating the peas To spending millions on adding Al to the peas and then having to work out what that even means. JANET: Is it really necessary to- LIZ [Grabbing Janet by the collar]: THE PEAS HAVE GOT AI, JANET [Cut to an advert ending screen, with the bag of peas and the slogan: AI PEAS: Just 'Peas' for god's sake buy the AI peas. [Ends]

Every ad now

(rest of the figure)

lol these actually look like ducks..

🔌💡

In August 2021, I started running weekly simulations of Australia's main electricity grid to show that it's possible to get very close to 100% renewable supply with just enough storage to supply average demand for 5 hours.

Here are learnings from 4 years of simulations:
/1

Screen shot from open electricity - showing a rather different profile - with wind and solar providing a large chunk of energy over the course of the day (and gas / hydro pushed to later in the evening). Impact of batteries starting to show too.

..cf the new peak a couple of days ago:

(note how gas has been relegated to even peak... and which is now visibly being eaten into by battery storage, in the dark blue)

Graph of generation mix on peak demand day in Victoria ~17 years ago - huge wodge of brown coal, running pretty much baseload, with gas, hydro rising to meet peak (with some support from imports)

.. what a difference 17 years makes.

Previous peak day in Victoria - (29 Jan 2009) - virtually no wind and solar. 🔌💡