HW product managing. Liberty posting. High-tech x high-life writing at Happy Future: https://xitter.gq/t.co/G88uixwxvY
Joined February 2010
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New blog post: The New Artillery Shell Factory is a Dud. Following up on 155mm artillery shell production challenges, the new details about the UAPL in Mesquite, TX make for a great case study on risk-taking in the factory. roblh.substack.com/p/the-new…
Rob L'Heureux retweeted
this is all I heard, sorry your Your Holiness ☘️
This is interesting for the vibes, but Panasonic Toughbooks exist from Japan? Also, Qualcomm chips? In a laptop? To run all those ARM apps the military depends on? Weird choices all around.
I view this as an opportunity for organizations that can build clear standards with escalating difficulty. Some people crave the structure, others just don't know how to get started. But they exist, they desperately want it, and they want to be around other people who want it.
We have already seen a defection from the traditional WASP elite idea that it was an elite duty to hold the population to high educational standards, for the betterment of the entirety of society. This has led to stupidity. AI will make it worse.
I predict that High IQ well off functional people will form communities to protect themselves from sloppification, while everyone degenerates into this numb, sterile mass of jellyfishness. A Snow Crash-like scenario.
And the "well intentioned" will clap like seals, supporting the lowering of standards, much like what we've seen for the last decades, which will affect the masses and not already privileged the most.
Rob L'Heureux retweeted
I visited Wurster Hall at UC Berkeley today. It was designed by, and currently houses, the architecture faculty.
The UC Berkeley website notes that "Wurster is often voted Berkeley's ugliest building."
I visited because I was curious about whether it would in person seem as unattractive as it does in photos. And, in short: it does. It's gaunt, austere, and filmed in grime. On an elysian campus, it stands out for its bleak hostility. It reminds me of the German submarine base in Bordeaux.
The UC Berkeley page agrees that it was never designed to be attractive, quoting the curator of their design archives: “Wurster and his handpicked architects didn’t want anything romantic, or sentimental — they hated the idea of ‘making pretty buildings. They wanted a serious building.”
I guess we have to concede success relative to their stated goals, but it does make one wonder what it all says about architecture as a discipline.
Making new cities feels like a litmus test for liberty. Very excited for Esmerelda.
Thymos is an animating spirit for the US, but maybe not the way Sec. Rubio meant. Achilles was the greek embodiment of thymos. When his role was edited out of Nolan's Odseey, so were his most famous lines:
"Don't try to console me about death, glorious Odysseus. I would rather be bound to the soil, working as a hired hand for another, for some man with no land of his own and little to live on, than be king over all the dead who have perished."
Thymos and American Foreign Policy open.substack.com/pub/persua…
For PMs, AI coding is like having a domesticated SWE, roughly the difference between a horse that's nice to everyone and popular on Instagram and one that bites, kicks, and bucks everyone. They're both going to require resources and shit everywhere, but at least one is pleasant.
Rob L'Heureux retweeted
Turning on my soviet Tesla roadster clone's thrusters and watching as the hydrazine exhaust melts every pedestrian around me
"I will complain to the EU!" being both something to be mocked and kinda effective is perfect. Great story from China Talk. chinatalk.media/p/workers-of…
Don't ask how the game went, just assume I'm really good at it.
Think you can coach a game better than an NFL Head Coach?
Prove it with my new app.
Nfl2mindrill.com
Rob L'Heureux retweeted
This is a meaningful shift in the term’s definition
New quality productive forces (NQPF) has been Beijing’s shorthand for growth beyond property since 2023. The new document defines the term, making total factor productivity the core benchmark. Traditional industry counts. Duplicate local investment does not. Blind investment gets accountability.
source: buff.ly/u0U9ILO
Rob L'Heureux retweeted
Transformer prices continue rising, from $7/kVA in 2014-22, to $10/kVA in 2024, $12/kVa in 2025 and $13/kVA in 2026, based on trade data. Some sources quote $30-35/kVA for new 50-100MVA units in Europe.
I applaud the sentiment. I recently did a big electrification project at my house, including solar and a Powerwall 3. Having energy independence is great, VPPs are even better. It's great tech.
My only hesitation here is there is no substitute for lots of power.
Rob L'Heureux retweeted
There's a degrowther meme that making it easier to build new clean energy, mobility, etc.. doesn't work, because it just adds to the global energy pie. That the only thing that works is directly limiting the supply of fossil.
This is false on the merits, as Zeke explains with real data below.
It's also close to a practical impossibility, and politicially counterproductive:
1. Fossil supply (especially for oil and coal, a bit less so for gas) is effectively unlimited and geographically diverse, with much of it coming from countries that depend on it for their primary income. Stop oil drilling in the US, and you'll get more in other places. It's whack-a-mole.
2. The only lasting way to reduce emissions is to reduce *demand* for fossil fuels, by making clean energy, transport, and industry cheaper and better options. Scaling cleantech does this. Removing permitting barriers helps clean energy more than fossil energy.
3. If you put too many barriers in place for using fossil fuels, without making it possible to build clean alternatives, the price of energy goes up. Voters hate that. You get a backlash. Price of living is a much more politically salient issue than climate. I say this as a climate activists for the last 15 years.
The only scalable and lasting way to reduce fossil fuels emissions is to make the clean alternative, cheaper, better, and at least as easy to build.
Permitting reform in the US does that. If you want to win on climate, this is an essential.
Heard lots of claims like this. Utilities can only raise their own profits if they can raise their rate base. So they deny data center requests to pay out of their own pocket.
This poll shows Americans think growth is good, building heavy industry is good, yet growing electricity demand is bad (!)
Open the schools.
IMO it does show that electricity has an image problem. Highlights how important it is to keep emphasizing more electricity != more climate change. @JessePeltan and @ramez are leading the way.