Logan Bowers

Yeah, SCL is winter-peaking, I think will become more so over time as homes add heat pumps.

I need to look at SCL’s IRP again, but I think their biggest problem was getting firm resources.

with batteries at $100/kWh and wholesale solar at $400/kW, you could buy 5 KW of solar and 15 kWh of batteries for the price of building 1 KW of this gas plant... and that’s before the cost of gas to keep the thing running

Also need to instill the concept of orders of magnitude. Million and billion are both “big” to people and roughly equivalent even though they differ by a factor of 1000.

Easily a top 2 Matts.

A graph of US imports form Taiwan and China showing imports from Taiwan reaching $300B annualized as imports form China sink to $250B annualized

Crazy milestone in the US trade data released today—America now imports more directly from Taiwan than from China for the first time since 1992

The trade war has cut US direct trade with China, and the AI boom has caused a surge in spending on Taiwanese-made semiconductors

Certainly in the top 3 worst Supreme Court decisions of all time. Probably shaved 10-20% off GDP to this day.

Price rolls that up pretty well when there’s inelastic supply. Price + construction quantity when there’s elastic supply.

Should owner-occupied vehicles be charged that too? A pigouvian tax seems appropriate for use of the commons.

Are you saying that AVs should be prohibited because they increase VMT?

The implication of your statement is that the non-safety factors are a negative since they reduce your enthusiasm.

What’s the conversion rate on dead kids before you’re convinced? At one dead child is it a wait-and-see but at 10 we do it?

It’s really easy to make these kinds of statements when ignoring the details of the actual tradeoffs.

Very true. Although I think Uber is the only one to have killed someone in the name of progress so far (it resulted in no progress).

I’ll support government plans to mitigate the negative side effects, provided they don’t hamper the adoption of a life-changing mobility and safety technology.

This is cool link. I need to dig in.

The pitch of Quaise is a microwave drill that vaporizes rock with RF energy and can go to any depth. It’s an emerging tech that unlocks geothermal anywhere.

We should be one of the first in line when the tech is ready in the 2030s.

So increased mobility for the elderly and disabled is a negative?

I think AVs have the opposite effect because you can regulate them to follow the speed limit and also the massive increase in traffic will cause everyone to be trapped in gridlock. We’ve known for years you can’t build your way out of traffic!

Plus side is biking becomes fastest mode in cities.

AVs are a substitute for driving your own vehicle, not replacing Uber.

How many can drivers is each dead child worth?

So many people die every year in car crashes. So tabling AVs is consigning more kids to grow up without their parents or mothers and fathers not coming home.

Waymo is demonstrably better than a human already.

This woman is a traitor

Innovative, to me, would be SCL courting Fervo and Quaise to build a geothermal steam plant in the city limits and selling process heat as well as electricity. It would be a game changing expansion of municipal energy services.

ERCOT (the grid operator/regulator) is doing amazing stuff and TX is deploying more renewables and batteries than CA by a huge margin while having muuuuch lower prices. Lots of utilities across the country employ variable pricing, SCL doesn’t.

The number of voters delivered by any given group rounds to zero in most circumstances. Their main levers are primary challenges with low turnout, highly motivated voters, and donor money.

Both are wildly anti-Democratic pressure points.

Name the infrastructure that’s lacking.

New construction is broadly built with better storm water management and has much higher energy efficiency. More people = more tax revenue per line-mile of road.

So what’s this unspecified missing “infrastructure”?

Managed turnover is stability!

Okay, but our water is amazing because of geography, not organizational.

Our electricity is cheap and clean for the same reason. SCL was innovative and visionary until the 60s but have been coasting (keeping the lights on tbf) since

We need a renaissance, not pretend they’re intrinsically winning

This one in particular I think is unavoidable and we need to embrace the cycle of life: all organizations and communities need to have a finite lifespan and eventually die. Otherwise, cancerous elements will always inevitably consume it.

It was ahistorical to remove the Velocipede parking in the first place, and this is righting a historic preservation crime.