1. Mill, the newly-unstealthed food waste startup from the founder of Nest. this Catalyst podcast interview gives a good overview. or this Bloomberg profile. it’s a bin that dries & processes your food waste each night, promising to eliminate smells & significantly reduce volume. every few weeks you pour the material into a box, & ship it away via USPS. Mill then processes it & sells it to farms. customers pay a monthly subscription fee ($33). it’s a decent idea, although expensive. USPS shipping seems a bit clumsy, & i wonder if some ppl will just throw the mulch into their regular trash for convenience (maybe there’s a financial incentive for sending back your stuff?). food waste is probably the environmentalism area that i know & care about the least. the ppl who specialize in it seem kinda odd to me. i tend to view high levels of food waste as a symptom of food abundance, not really the worst problem in the world. but regardless, there are surely areas for improvement. maybe this is one small step. Mill’s market here probably isn’t huge, if its business case depends on customers caring about food waste as a social problem. for many ppl, garbage disposals work fine. but not everyone has a garbage disposal in their home (would be interesting to see numbers on this), and Mill can supposedly deal with items not traditionally compostable/garbage-disposaleable. & you can imagine them adding a commercial-scale product at some point.
2. Eli Dourado (formerly of Boom) on why congress (rather than just FAA) should legalize overland supersonic flight. seems compelling, let's do it
3. interesting post from United Launch Alliance president on why nuclear thermal propulsion for space travel is important for Mars & broader space travel. & you probably saw that NASA & DARPA are partnering on a new initiative here
4. fun list of high-speed VTOL companies the US Air Force is helping fund
5. excellent Knowledge Problem post on electricity prices & market power. further twisting the knife on that NYTimes piece from a few weeks ago
6. Hannah Ritchie on the material requirements of clean energy, vs the fossil fuel baseline. see also this thread summarizing a new paper on the topic
7. good opinion column arguing for climate change ppl to be pragmatic on the upcoming Farm Bill. explicitly frontloading climate rhetoric & policy isn’t always the best way to prioritize actual progress on climate change. higher productivity agriculture would have benefits across a range of domains, including GHG emissions. so just target that
8. also from Breakthrough, a long piece calling for a US Dept of Agriculture loan program to support innovation & productivity, modelled on the Dept of Energy's LPO. not my preferred method for boosting ag tech innovation, but not the worst idea
9. WSJ article on 3d printing. it has continued to incrementally improve through the hype collapse
10. good Financial Times piece on US shale oil & global market. high costs, flat production growth & investment, and investor demand for profits means we're no longer really the swing producer. this gives more pricing power back to OPEC. sad!
11. nice Brian Albrecht comments on non-compete bans. i'm undecided on this issue. i can see the elegant free-market case for why the ban is bad. Tyler Cowen posted about it here. his avoid-the-question federalist solution seems fine. regardless of the question of the ban, the object-level case against non-competes is strong, which is why it’s a tricky issue. there are tons of stories of abuse. & the args about Silicon Valley forming in part bc of CA’s free-flowing competitive labor environment in the absence of noncompetes is compelling. i take a dim view of intellectual “property” regulation. so i’m just conflicted
12. good news everyone! Oklo has submitted its plan to the NRC outlining its pre-application activities that will prepare it for submitting it's plan to the NRC for a nuclear fuel recycling facility. recall that Oklo's application for its actual microreactor got rejected last year. one could say it's kinda crazy to be spending time & money on this while their core product languishes. i doubt that fuel supply will be a major factor determining success or failure between SMR startups. on the other hand, you can see a certain logic here, where trying to progress on multiple fronts is wise. maybe the fuel recycling stuff moves faster than their reactor, providing a potential income stream selling to others
13. good Stratechery piece on Netflix’s business situation
14. a big pumped-hydro storage project in Wyoming continues its agonizing march through the regulatory thicket. hard to know how much pumped hydro would get deployed if approval were easier & faster. costs seem necessarily high without much prospect for learning-curve improvements, bc of how location-specific projects are. & the environmental challenges seem unavoidable: impacts from changing river dynamics are quite tangible & direct, unlike say land-use issues from wind & solar, irrational fear of nuclear, or air pollution from fossil fuels
15. Bloomberg piece on the kludge that is the renewable fuel standard. seems they are adding credit eligibility for electricity produced from biogas. the article frames this as bad bc it excludes wind/solar. i see their point, although wind & solar are not really lacking in subsidies at this point. mostly it's just a funny example of how transitioning to EVs will cause lots of incoherence in policy, bc govt won't adjust fast enough to prevent zombie programs. i'm largely on board with standard criticisms of the ethanol mandate: it's a silly use of cropland, has net-positive carbon emissions etc. there is some resilience value in preserving spare ag capacity that can be rapidly switched over to food production, but it’s a pretty speculative benefit. when it comes to bioenergy though, i'm fairly supportive. it’s true that some bioenergy is quite bad (air pollution, land use), although there's wide variation here. but renewable natural gas seems like a not-terrible way to incrementally reduce carbon intensity & increase energy supply while utilizing existing gas infrastructure. ppl say gas is a "bridge fuel" as we wait to develop/deploy more/better/cheaper clean energy & all-electric systems. biogas can plausibly help "bridge the last mile of the bridge", to mix metaphors. some environmentalists oppose new gas infrastructure, which is stupid but politically easier than building clean replacement capacity (for various reasons). luckily i don't think this has been or will be all that successful. but a consequence of this failure is that the issue of stranded fossil assets probably will be extremely real in coming decades. there are many proposed solutions, but biogas is one attractive option. it’s technologically more mature than say, hydrogen/ammonia/methanol or thermal geogrids, likely simpler than financial securitization approaches
16. short podcast interview with Eric Berger on SpaceX, NASA, general US space
17. Alex Trembath on gas stoves. widely shared, and pretty good. only marginally related to the topic of the piece, but when i ponder indoor air pollution right after reading about Mill & thinking about indoor smells, i can't help synthesize a bit & consider other aspects of a more general issue of indoor environmental quality. within air quality there are other big pieces involving HVAC & dust (for heating, radiative electric or geothermal is best), carbon dioxide levels (no idea if there are solutions beyond just opening windows), pathogen control (maybe far-UVC?), micromaterial offgassing/degradation (plastics etc.. no consumer tech solution here that i know of). then you have other things like light, sound etc. i find this all interesting & underrated. but it’s not the most important health issue in the world. i am not motivated by the desire to create the world's most environmentally sublime bugman hikikomori pod. at the end of the day it matters because it's a small part of the broader, long-term project of creating sustainable closed ecosystems for space travel
18. MIT Tech Review profile about organ replacement biotech. growing genetically-customized organs in pigs, 3d-printed organs etc
19. interesting look at Zenon, a Dutch company pursuing stationary storage with a chemistry that's heavier than standard lithium ion, but has other appealing characteristics. i continue to be fascinated by how the market is adapting to battery scarcity by making efficient tradeoffs on different performance margins. textbook invisible hand behaviour
20. also Noon, a new long duration (multiday/100+ hr) storage tech entrant using carbon oxidation. plausible competitor to Form, but way less far along in the commercialization & deployment journey
21. Guardian report on rainforest carbon offsets being bullshit. i for one am shocked (not actually). with every new report like this, the case for direct air capture or similar highly-measurable/certain carbon removal techniques improves
22. from Bloomberg, a longish piece on fake meat not living up to its hype (Beyond Meat, Impossible Burger etc). it discusses how these highly processed products probably aren't much healthier than normal meat. i agree, and would go much further and say they're very obviously much less healthy. imo normal meat won't truly be threatened until you have molecularly-identical lab-grown meat with the same nutritional profile. & that is proving to be more technologically difficult than many ppl assumed (myself included). but i'm still optimistic that we’ll eventually get there, & animal agriculture will get crushed. on price competition certainly, but also probably on other competitive dimensions too, like food novelty, other supply chain characteristics, environmental externalities etc. but it might take a long time
23. darkly incisive Economist column comparing bottom-up market adaptation to Britain's public service dysfunctions to similar dynamics in the Soviet Union
24. Sam Hammond piece on govt scope vs scale, kludgeocracy, the left-NGO complex & conservative ideology generally. nothing new if you're familiar with Niskanen or Hammond's work, but worth sharing
25. also from Niskanen, Gabriella Rodriguez with a good post on Jones Act reform. you are probably familiar with the basics of the problem, but the suggestions for reform here seem promising. i wouldn't lose sleep over a full-scale repeal, but the argument for preserving the industrial policy goal of domestic shipping protection isn't totally crazy
26. enjoyed this commentary on Matt Yglesias’ success. i agree that relentless posting is very effective at building up followers etc, & stopping has big costs (oops)
27. agonizingly long, but this Richard Hanania defense of mainstream media was decent. i agree with the main points, & would add that ideally you construct a highly diverse, adversarial/error-correcting information feed that includes "mainstream media" but also many other sources. this allows you to get the benefits of mainstream media while also hedging against its biases & blind spots
28. Intercalation Station has a great 2022 summary post, covering the big stories in the battery market. if you really want to max out your battery content, Volta Foundation released their massive 2022 battery report, which Intercalation Station helped with. see highlights here
29. a new saltwater flow battery startup. seems cool. the more the merrier
30. biting op-ed about crime on Minneapolis public transit. came across my radar bc i grew up there & know the author. but it’s a widespread issue in many US cities. totally infuriating
31. some incremental progress on Native American water rights & tribes’ ability to participate in markets
32. Matt Bruenig arguing for universal healthcare coverage for pregnancy. boosting Elizabeth Bruenig’s previous take on this, & prompted by some pro-life leaders endorsing the idea in a (paywalled) Compact Mag piece. JD Vance expressed support too. as a philosophical matter i support universal healthcare coverage more broadly. but i’m pragmatic & have a deep appreciation for markets & government failure. so this kind of incrementalist move appeals. i like how there are multiple justifications, spanning the ideological spectrum
33. Squad Mobility, a little golf cart aiming to run on just the solar panels in its roof. idk, would assume you'd need to plug it in at least some of the time. but i'm bullish on PV-integrated surfaces. limited mobility uses like this are promising, but also traditional EVs. having some extra juice from rooftop solar can reduce charging needs, extend range, & provide limited functionality in emergency situations. & of course as i say every month, i think/hope wireless charging & beaming will emerge to supplement a lot of these things
34. Eric Levitz print interview with Michael Pettis about China. mostly a rehash of Trade Wars Are Class Wars, but still good. the framework is a bit of a meme at this point— it's succinct & compelling because it largely involves first-principles analysis with macro accounting identities. but super-simplistic models have utility, & the added public choice component about entrenched interests is good. so just some good stuff to chew on
35. nice FT piece on Apple's China supply chain dependency, casting doubts on its ability to shift quickly to other places like India or Vietnam
36. some pure US politics links to close it out. here’s UVA Crystal Ball’s initial 2024 senate ratings. here’s the Predictit page for 2024 president. and here’s a good Split Ticket post about poor Republican senate candidate quality in 2022’s midterms
books
Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest for North America by Pekka Hämäläinen. history of the European colonization, making the case that USA didn't fully gain control over a huge chunk of western territory until railroads, telegrams & bridges allowed the army to finally achieve hegemony (last holdouts were the Lakota in the north & Comanche in the south). this is presented as a critique of conventional narratives that implicitly or implicity frame USA’s victory as inevitable. it was decent. most of the book is military history, & it’s incredible how blood-soaked US history is. just constant war. i agree with the critiques from both Tyler Cowen (review here) & Santi Ruiz (review here). as a side-note, i have posted many times about how i find history boring & epistemologically unsound, compared to more social-sciency stuff that simplifies more & explicitly aims to identify & test causal mechanisms. nevertheless i keep regularly slogging through long-ass history books, to see if my preferences change. i can confirm once again that they have not. i’m interested in native american issues wrt current policy, & there were some interesting facts & details in this book. but at the end of the day it was a chore to read
The Other Divide: Polarization and Disengagement in American Politics by Yanna Krupnikov & John Barry Ryan. academic political science book, arguing that the psychological & behavioral divide between super-engaged politics fanatics & normal ppl is underrated vs the "standard" divide of ideology/partisanship. reading these books is always somewhat painful, largely due to writing conventions that place constant citations in-line with the text, and repetitively summarizing each chapter. but i enjoy keeping up with the field, & this book was pretty good. as someone fairly bananapilled, i can't say i'm deeply confident in the methodology (very reliant on survey data) or that the argument is super important. but it's clearly true that politics is heavily shaped by media & social media, which heavily overrepresents insane politics freaks. and this has all kinds of mostly-bad consequences
Rosewater by Tade Thompson. scifi novel set in near-future Nigeria, involving an alien intelligence that’s granted some people psychic powers. kinda boring. i found the fictional worldbuilding to be kinda weird & jumbled, & the humor flat. i’m not a literary connoisseur but found the writing dull. there are two more books in the trilogy, i will pass
I think you underestimate the food waste and air quality issues.
For food waste, it isn't so much an 'over-production' issue as much as resource recycling. Every atom of every non-carbon/hydrogen/oxygen element that is exported out in nutritious food needs to be replaced for eventually yields go down. Nitrogen can be fixed by legumes and minerals are slowly released from bedrock, but neither are fast enough for continual production, thus most agriculture needs lots of inputs. Now, you can get that synthetically (which also brings a carbon/energy cost) or we could be better at capturing the food waste that we produce. I don't think many want to lower food production (increasing risk of famine) but rather capture and utilize a waste stream that is already being produced. For example, Maryland (my state!) just passed a law requiring any organization that produces over two tons of food waste per week to capture and (commercially) compost it, thus producing a massive amount of fertile organic material for our agricultural industry. I'll also note that this comment merely notes the chemical 'accounting' of compost and not the numerous biological benefits. Link for the MD stuff: https://mde.maryland.gov/programs/land/recyclingandoperationsprogram/pages/foodscraps.aspx
For air-quality, I will shamelessly plug (sorry) my recent newsletter on air-quality. Even small improvements in education, productivity, and health could have profound effects as those all affect and influence one another, giving a compounding effect. Even if their aren't HUGE effects, it is clear that at minimum it would pay for itself. https://thecounterpoint.substack.com/p/pandemic-lesson-3-we-need-an-air
Love these updates!