Crystal 💎

A wheel-like visualization of bird feathers colored from wikipedia descriptions

It took me about three months to get here but...

Here's a 🪶 for (nearly) every species of bird, with colors extracted from wikipedia descriptions.

10,151 species.

#dataviz #birds #data

Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Reinvigorates America’s Beautiful Clean Coal Industry ACHIEVING AMERICAN ENERGY DOMINANCE: Today, President Donald J. Trump signed an Executive Order reinvigorating America’s beautiful clean coal industry.

It does not make economic sense to use coal to make a lot of power in many parts of the US, because renewables (and natural gas) are cheaper. This is just subsidized lung disease.
www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/...

No. 12-seed McNeese upsets 5-seed Clemson despite Will Wade’s link to NC State job Despite a late push by Clemson, McNeese claimed its first NCAA Tournament win since moving to Division I in 1972-73.

No matter where he’s coaching, Will Wade always seems to have something cooking.

On Thursday, it was an upset of fifth-seeded Clemson in the opening round of the NCAA Tournament.

More from @bfquinn.bsky.social:
www.nytimes.com/athletic/621...

"Energy bosses"

It is endlessly frustrating to hear how #PJM needs new gas because they can't rely on all the variable sources in their queue. Their *record* of variable generation as a percentage of load? A measly 24%. ERCOT is 76%. SPP is 90%. MISO is 44%. Come on PJM, you can do better!
#EnergySky

Commentary: California's rooftop solar infighting is a colossal waste of time This would be a great time for Gov. Gavin Newsom to meet the moment.

@sammyroth.bsky.social says the fighting over rooftop solar is a colossal waste of time. I disagree. If we are going to decarbonize California, we want people to adopt heat pumps and EV's - and they won't do that if rates continue to skyrocket. A 🧵

#EnergySky

www.latimes.com/environment/...

Cries in *cost shift*

Anyone wanna do a weird cars meet-up?
EV conversions, oddball EVs & weird & classic combustion cars etc. If your vehicle confuses people it's ideal!
We could just use an empty car park in Auckland for a couple of hours. Quality potatoes awarded to the weirdest car. Anyone keen?

Investors are betting on natural gas. If these demand projections aren’t just hot air, the energy resource fueling all this growth will be, so to speak. Where actually deploying new gas power is concerned, however, there’s a big problem: All major gas turbine manufacturers, slammed by massive order growth, now have backlogs for new turbine deliveries stretching out to 2029 or later. Energy news coverage has mentioned these potential project development delays sometimes in passing, sometimes not at all. But this looming mismatch between gas power demand and turbine supply is a real problem for the grid and everyone who depends on it.

Energy project developers, utilities, and investors have already started adjusting their gas buildout expectations and timelines. NextEra CEO John Ketchum stated in an earnings call that new gas projects “won’t be available at scale until 2030, and then only in certain pockets of the U.S.” That’s due not only to turbine queues, but also to an historically sluggish and increasingly expensive gas project development environment. “The country is starting from a standing start,” he added. “This is an industry that really hasn’t seen any active development or construction in years … all of that puts pressure on cost.” Even in Texas, where lawmakers created the Texas Energy Fund to provide $10 billion of concessional financing to new gas power plants, delays are biting developers’ balance sheets. Just last week, private developer Engie withdrew two loan applications for gas peaker plant projects due to “equipment procurement constraints.” There’s no other way to spin it — the turbines are the problem.

It’s safe to say that GE Vernova’s power division is riding high. The company’s investor materials suggest a heady growth trajectory. Gas turbine equipment orders rose 66% between 2023 and 2024, from 41 turbines to 68 turbines. Those 68 turbines represented about 20 gigawatts of capacity, double 2023’s order book. Developers reserved 9 gigawatts more of turbines; those reservations will turn into contracted production orders by 2026. At this point, 90% of GE Vernova’s total order volumes are in its backlog; for its power division, that represents almost $74 billion of equipment delivery and service contracts. The company plans to invest $300 million into its gas power business in the next two years. And CEO Scott Strazik is pitching investors on continued growth. “Given our expansion plans to produce 70 to 80 heavy-duty gas turbines per year beginning in the second half of 2026, up from 48 this year, we are positioning to meet this demand. We expect to grow our gas equipment backlog considerably in 2025, even as we ramp to ship approximately 20 gigawatts annually starting in 2027, and expect to remain at that level going forward,” he said on the company’s Q4 earnings call. That last sentence should give readers pause: GE Vernova has plans to build no more than 20 gigawatts of turbines per year, and developers that miss the cutoffs will just have to queue up for the next year’s order book. Why the limit? ... There are real limits to how much more GE Vernova can build, and how quickly.

Counting on new natural gas plants to power data centers and demand growth? Good luck getting those gas turbines! @heatmap.news with some critical reporting on how supply constraints will severely limit how many new gas power plants can be built before 2030 heatmap.news/ideas/natura...

This is not the first time that one sector has overwhelmed Wall Street. In the 1800s, railroad companies' hunger for investment played a central role in the early development of the US stock market. By 1900, they represented more than 60 per cent of market value. "Artificial intelligence is the wave of the future right now, but a hundred years ago the wave of the future was rail companies. Then we had a wave of everybody buying electricity companies," " said Stern's Sylla.

Rail was a more dominant industry in 1900 than tech in 2025. I don't think rail is the right comparison for AI, though, as rail was built to be profitable (and was). AI is more like US Interstates, grossly over-subsidized and overbuilt and will distort the economy and society in ways we don't want.

I got laid off today, with the rest of 18F.

18F was an elite federal software shop. We made gov't websites work better, more efficiently for the American people. We saved taxpayers from getting screwed over by contractors. And were fired for it.

We made this website to tell our story:
18f.org

Water-power nexus

This is a cartogram map of the United States depicting land use by different categories. The map distorts state shapes to represent proportional land usage. Key land use types include cow pasture/range (covering much of the central U.S.), private and federal timberland in the Pacific Northwest, corporate timberland in the Southeast, and urban housing/commercial areas in the Northeast. Other categories include agriculture (livestock feed, wheat exports, ethanol/biodiesel, cotton), protected lands (national parks, federal wilderness, state parks), and infrastructure (railroads, airports, highways). Additional specialized land uses include wildfires, golf courses, Christmas tree farms, and maple syrup production.

I think about this map a lot.

www.bloomberg.com/graphics/201...

2025 will be a stomach-churning turning point for video games 2025 isn’t just GTA 6 and Switch 2

Out: Survive to '25

In: Exist by '26.

2002 PS2 DualShock 2 Lemon Yellow 🍋

The most important climate fight in the country right now is in Connecticut.

If the investor-owned utilities there succeed in their naked attempt to knock off their top regulator, the chilling effect on other PUC commissioners' willing to challenge utility capture nationally could be devastating.

Neat project 👍

Some quality CRT photos
It looks even better in real life. :)

BPA Expected to Lose About 6 Percent of Employees to OPM Buyout Offer, Could Lose 20 Percent of Staff The Bonneville Power Administration says about 200 of its employees, or about 6 percent of its workforce, have taken the U.S. Office of Personnel Management's (OPM) resignation offer, the federal

What you do before you sell an entity is reduce costs.

www.newsdata.com/clearing_up/...

My Bluesky timeline is about 80% doom and gloom right now. While it would be the responsible, grown-up thing to add my voice to the chorus, it also wouldn't actually help anything at this point

So forgive me for just being giddy about videogames. It's how I keep the demons at bay. And maybe you too

Which Coal Units Are Retiring, and Which Plants Will Continue Operating (Gift Article) Once the dominant source of energy in the United States, today, 401 coal units supply roughly 16 percent of the nation’s grid.

Can we pls give a shoutout to people like @brucenilles.bsky.social @billcorcoran.bsky.social @maryannehitt.bsky.social, Mike Brune, @hollybender.bsky.social and so many countless organizers who made this happen?
www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

The confluence of product, affordability, and government support in the Chinese EV market success story

A clam with a spring attached to the shell. The spring has a magnet placed above a sensor.

Hardly new info, but BSky should know:

Warsaw's water quality is monitored by eight clams with magnets attached to their shells. If contamination in the water causes the clams to close, the magnets trigger an alarm and shut off the city's water supply.
Thank you, little guardian molluscs.

🧪🌏🚰

a man in a black shirt is looking at a screen with a red background Alt: a man in a black shirt is looking at a screen with a red background

Worried about losing access to US federal data that may go off-line, or already is? You’re not alone—but duplication isn’t the answer.

Many ongoing efforts have already archived key datasets and many more are ongoing. Check out these existing resources and, if you can, support their work. 🧵

1. Utilities can charge residential customers for any and all costs to connect new big users like data centers, effectively using regular people's utility bills to subsidize big corporations.

China’s Ambitious Plan to Build the World’s Biggest Supergrid A massive expansion leads to the first ultrahigh-voltage AC-DC power grid

If you think #DeepSeek was a surprise, wait until you see what China's been doing with long-distance electricity transmission. #HVDC #UHVDC 🔌💡
Reporting by @pfairley.bsky.social for @ieeespectrum.bsky.social
spectrum.ieee.org/chinas-ambit...

In twenty years, I wonder what overt flaws in today's videogame aesthetics and design people will be intentionally recreating in retro tributes?

Indie stuff made with Unreal with too much bloom and dithering? Early raytracing with every possible surface made as mirror-reflective as possible?

Remember when we were arguing about the term "foundation models"? It feels like ages ago! With those base models culminating in DeepSeek v3 in Dec 2024, 2025 will likely be the year of LLM specialization!

Anyway, I will be writing about it more soon :).