Sam Workman

I am what I am! Thanks Giles.

In our corner of Appalachia, apple brandy is just as important historically as corn liquor. Take a look at "Old EP" for some history and public policy. And if you are interested in WV politics, policy, culture, and lifestyle, you can do no better than the Weakly.

The Daily West Virginia Weakly: October 16, 2025 Kanawha school vaccine case, MARL opposition, 'No Kings' rallies and a West Virginia cocktail recipe

This week's cocktail is quite an honor. The West Virginia Weakly asked me to pen a recipe and write for their paper and for the Mountain State Apple Harvest Festival in Martinsburg, WV today. Thanks to my good friend @gilessnyder.bsky.social. #cocktails

open.substack.com/pub/wvweakly...

Yeah, it's unreal how often we are sold the unparalled thinking an algorithm can do, and then it can't just parse a date. And sometimes, seemingly, because it doesn't "want" to.

The benefit of AI is getting something usable with good prompt/question structure. If AI is going to act like like the dim person you interact with on the daily, what's the point? If I want to explain something 50 times and have someone do whatever they want anyway, I'd ask another human.

Good discussion of strategy in the Senate and the underlying dynamics making it possible. Worth the read.

A Taste Test of Cheap Lagers Nearly Divided the Office — but One Beer United Us An argument between Food & Wine editors over Miller High Life vs. Coors Banquet led us to taste test 20 popular North American Lagers, sight unseen, evaluating them for flavor, finish, and overall enj...

Agree with best Light Beer, Best American Beer, and best Mexican Lager. Really should have a malt liquor category on here given the targeted atmosphere. Colt 45 or Mickeys?

www.foodandwine.com/best-north-a...

If anyone wonders about the milk washed version, here it is... #cocktails 🍸🍹

Investor-owned utilities could spend $1.1T between 2025 and 2029: EEI U.S electricity generation rose 3% in 2024 “and is expected to rise for the foreseeable future,” the Edison Electric Institute said Tuesday.

This would all be coming onto your electric bills, plus a regulated rate of return.
www.utilitydive.com/news/investo...

To your point. The organizational reforms underway are replacing a traditional structure with a corporate structure. For most places, there has to be a strategic shift in behavior that unions and colleagues should be mentoring and proffering. Saying this isn't right is just not helpful anymore.

In the realm of domestic policy (bread and butter), this is a really big issue, even in energy producing states. 💡🔌 🏛️

The point about D's not figuring out messaging is spot on - I think it's worth considering media consolidation as allowing national messages to be both more uniform and to penetrate more deeply at the local level than in the past. And structurally, this is an asymmetric advantage for R's. 2/2

This is an excellent read. One party, at least for now, understands much better how to channel and wield raw power. 1/2

1. Breaded wings
2. There Will Be Blood
3. Strawberry Fields Forever

So strange.

Yeah - needed stronger peer review.

We Tested 7 Ways to Cook Bacon — Only One Gave a Perfectly Even Crisp We put bacon to the test to find the easiest, cleanest, and most reliable method for cooking — no flipping, no splatter, and minimal cleanup required. Surprisingly, frying was not the winner.

The science we need.
www.foodandwine.com/best-way-to-...

I'm definitely an outcast on Seinfeld - except for a few, specific episodes, I never thought Seinfeld was funny. Just didn't get it. I think if you grew up where I did, the lines just didn't land.

Depends on how much you like brandy, but start with 1 oz and 1 oz Bourbon. You can adjust as you like - even trading brandy for bourbon works well. I would go fo apple brandy and not Calvados (it's aromas compete too much with the banana and ginger).

Samuel Workman, Ph.D. - Without Faculty This week's cocktail "celebrates" the future of higher education, where our Supreme Overloads usher in the bright era of AI. Fall brings the harvest and whis...

This week's cocktail "celebrates" the future of higher education, where our Supreme Overloads usher in the bright era of #AI. Fall brings the harvest and whiskey. Darker times and darker spirits. Time to tip one. #cocktails 🍸🍹

samuelworkman.owlstown.net/posts/4593-w...

Hegseth sucks. The Qataris suck. But we aren’t giving Qatar an airbase in Idaho. It’s building dorms etc. at an existing base to train them on F-15s we sold them, just like Singapore already has there. Common arrangement we have with lots of countries. This one was already being planned under Biden.

"Protecting humanity from A.I. thus falls to overwhelmed nonprofits." 👀

Far past the time to equally resource mitigation and response. Prevention is looking more and more like a knat in the rear view.

Linking variation in water democracy to system performance on the human right to water Nature Water - Access to safe, affordable and accessible drinking water is influenced by various socioeconomic factors. A survey of a large number of California water systems shows how different...

This article is an amazing reconceptualization of rural water capacities! First-authored by an awesome colleague of mine! www.nature.com/articles/s44...

I've mentioned this to a couple of reporters recently without the data at hand. But, yep.

Agreed. Bad look.

FYI, if you try to measure the strength of civil society (what Hahrie, Milan, and I call civic opportunity in our 2023 Nature Human Behaviour paper), you may want to consider using our org-, county-, and ZIP code-level datasets published in Scientific Data: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Data centers are THE problem for the energy sector for the next couple of decades. Their has been great work around the water-energy nexus, but data centers make the systems much more complex, interdependent, and hence, fragile. 💡🔌 🏛️ WV

Ouch. 🥃

Quickest way to build capacity. For coal producers without sun, lots of discussion around geothermal. 💡🔌 WV