iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Related question: should the Dems let Trump leak like a hazardous waste site for the remaining two years, further spoiling GOP '28 plans, instead of trying to impeach him straight away? Perhaps Dems should impeach when GOP electeds are practically begging to go through with it.

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Gregor Macdonald @gregor.us · 28/09/2026

Today is the 50th anniversary of Stevie Wonder's masterpiece, Songs in the Key of Life. And of course, the good folks at @kcrw.com are riffing on it brilliantly, helmed by the always delightful @novenacarmel.bsky.social.

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Gregor Macdonald @gregor.us · 28/09/2026

If we use 25% as the aggregate inflation to have occurred over the past 6 years, then e-bills join other categories (like insurance) to have exceeded that level. Given all the hardware, labor, and imported parts/equipment in the power sector, I suppose this was inevitable.

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Katie Martin @katie0martin.ft.com · 25/09/2026

I have blamed The agents That hacked Your website And which You probably Reasonably thought I controlled Forgive me I am rich And unaccustomed To taking responsibility

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Gregor Macdonald @gregor.us · 26/09/2026

Many Republican voters will discover the way to avoid this painful dilemma is to simply not vote.

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Gregor Macdonald @gregor.us · 23/09/2026

GOP candidates waiting until the last week of September to rebut Trump on the war strikes me as nearly damaging to their prospects with the electorate as their initial failure to act. Indeed, all GOP tactical moves recently (money, positioning) feel like they should have come months ago. #whiff

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Gregor Macdonald @gregor.us · 22/09/2026

AI is confirming something we kinda already knew about people's relationship to their own writing: you can be highly educated, accomplished, and in a position of distinction and also hate your own writing with good reason. How that can be: writing well is hard, and takes 1000s of hours to achieve.

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Gregor Macdonald @gregor.us · 21/09/2026

Did a first round of candidate donations this summer, but in a second round today I'm using the @mattyglesias.bsky.social high-impact donation list to concentrate on Iowa. Turek James (#IA02) Matt's list: www.slowboring.com/p/the-midter...

slowboring.com

The midterm candidates who deserve your money

Our updated recommendations for political giving

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Gregor Macdonald @gregor.us · 21/09/2026

U.S. total fossil fuel consumption. So many changes below the surface over the past 15 years, but no forward progress since the initial round of gains secured post 2008. #stuck

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Michael E. Mann @michaelemann.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

It is with tremendous sadness and sense of loss that we regretfully share the news that @penncssm.bsky.social senior research fellow, and my close personal friend Joseph Romm has passed away unexpectedly. He will be sorely missed here. web.sas.upenn.edu/pcssm/news/r...

web.sas.upenn.edu

Remembering Dr. Joe Romm

It is with great sadness that the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media shares news of the passing of PCSSM Senior Research Fellow Dr. Joe Romm. Please find below an obituary prepared ...

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Sammy Roth @sammyroth.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Trump’s war on Iran is expected to help push global coal use to record highs this year, as disruptions to shipping in the Strait of Hormuz cut off oil and gas supplies: www.nytimes.com/2026/09/10/c...

nytimes.com

The Iran War Is Pushing Global Coal Use to Record Highs

Five years after virtually every world leader agreed to “phase down” the burning of coal for climate reasons, the fuel is more widely used than ever.

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Gregor Macdonald @gregor.us · 17/09/2026

So, when it comes to the question of "does the substrate really matter" (whether its meat, or compute) I would say yeah, it matters a lot. We have no examples yet of non-organic consciousness yet so why get way out over one's skis, today, by making big hero-like calls that it's coming?

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Gregor Macdonald @gregor.us · 17/09/2026

On this question, I find myself both in strong agreement and disagreement with Hinton. His observation that we are going to learn a lot about our own consciousness from the attempt to model it with AI seems well founded. His hurried claims that AI is already conscious seems like a reach.

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Gregor Macdonald @gregor.us · 17/09/2026

Because AI is not the product of biological evolution, concerns about its emotional welfare strike me as being exceedingly premature. AI is still very much in the domain of mimicry, which is very far away from consciousness in living things. Could AI welfare eventually become a concern? For sure.

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Gregor Macdonald @gregor.us · 16/09/2026

Man we are headed for a blockbuster midterm election.

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Gregor Macdonald @gregor.us · 16/09/2026

Well said and well written. A+ Mr. Streever.

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Gregor Macdonald @gregor.us · 15/09/2026

As if Alito and Thomas hadn't already made the case for court expansion, their dissent in USPS v Calif. really pushes things towards comical farce.

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Rick Hasen @rickhasen.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

#ELB: My New One at Slate: “Let’s Celebrate the Supreme Court Not Outright Rigging the 2026 Election” electionlawblog.org/2026/my-new-one…

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Sen. Maria Cantwell @cantwell.senate.gov · 15/09/2026

I still encourage Washingtonians to stay vigilant, vote early, and use drop boxes when possible to avoid delays in the postal system. (2/2)

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Suzanne Bonamici @repbonamici.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

The Constitution makes clear that elections are run by states, so it’s not surprising that the Supreme Court rejected Donald Trump’s attempt to interfere with our vote by mail system. 🧵

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Gregor Macdonald @gregor.us · 13/09/2026

TIL: Canada and Greenland (an E.U. OCT - Overseas Countries and Territories) actually share a land border: Hans Island. Moreover, residents of Greenland have EU citizenship but the *land* itself is not formally part of the E.U. common market.

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Gregor Macdonald @gregor.us · 10/09/2026

The slow turning creak of the death rattle.

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Gregor Macdonald @gregor.us · 09/09/2026

AI is a scientific discovery and as a rule those don't get put back in the bottle. If halting AI is your aim, you will need to build a highly stratified political structure, with concentrated, dictatorial decision-making. In every country.

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Gregor Macdonald @gregor.us · 05/09/2026

For my fellow cyclists: I resurrected my 2003 Serotta Colorado III frame this summer, and plastered it with as much shiny silver as possible. Campy Athena (NOS), H Plus Son archetype rims with White Industries T11 hubs. Gearing: 53/39 in front, 12/29 in the rear. She's fresh as a daisy.

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Gregor Macdonald @gregor.us · 04/09/2026

Wow. I used to teach poetry writing to London school age children (at the Lookout Centre) and I never saw Hyde Park like this.

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@LAhistory @lahistory.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Before it was El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles de Porciúncula, the land was/is #Tovaangar. LA Times map: www.latimes.com/projects/la-...

This map (created in 2019) shows Tongva village names presented over a present-day map of Los Angeles County. Names include: Yaanga, Ochuunga, Ahwaanga, Pemookanga, Huutnga, Seobit, Juybit, Totabit, Hotuuknga, Wapijanga, Pashiinonga, Swaanga, Waachnga, Amupubit, Chaawvenga, Kiinkenga, Ongovanga, Gengaa, Moyo

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Gregor Macdonald @gregor.us · 03/09/2026

Perhaps the most intriguing feature of national auto industries is that there is no political economy that can solve their habitual, historical problems. Left, right, pick one. Doesn't matter. A national auto industry, one that has to be cared for, is a kind of curse.

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Gregor Macdonald @gregor.us · 03/09/2026

Somewhat ironically it was the emissions scandal that just preceded all this, and opened up the path to a more radical re-tooling towards EV. "We'll make things right by doing right by EV" was the war cry, and for a little while they did head in that direction.

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Gregor Macdonald @gregor.us · 03/09/2026

There will be many competing EV narratives, but one that will endure is that in a match up between OECD appetite for disruption and the China industrial juggernaut, the OECD never stood a chance.

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Gregor Macdonald @gregor.us · 03/09/2026

Raise your hand if you remember VW management (warning about the future of VW) attempting to undertake a radical transformation that would both skew hard towards EV and also majorly disrupt job security, etc, such that the gov and unions rejected the effort.

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Gregor Macdonald @gregor.us · 03/09/2026

About to move across the river from Portland to Vancouver, WA where @gluesenkampperez.house.gov will be my new rep. If you're a Democrat, all you need to know is that Marie beat Joe Kent twice in #WA03, which Trump won 3X. Whatever complaints Dem voters have about Marie are, well, petty at best.

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Gregor Macdonald @gregor.us · 03/09/2026

Yes, another thought: it was only 20 years ago we could read how Mid-East countries were successfully conducting a kind of water arbitrage by investing in fertile-region farming. Running that same arb going forward won't be the same layup

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Gregor Macdonald @gregor.us · 03/09/2026

I find myself wondering these days whether a climate-change component is newly present in global inflation rates, and that it's just the beginning.

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Gregor Macdonald @gregor.us · 03/09/2026

This was my not so clear way of invoking, for example, that dealing with Social Security and Medicare should be as easy as interacting with your own Google account, and this point gathers more relevance to State level services too (where the delivery problems multiply).

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Gregor Macdonald @gregor.us · 03/09/2026

I'd be curious to know if the increased "costs" of running Nordic-style social democracy are modeled to assume a far more efficient delivery of public services (and infrastructure). Like, in an M4A America, do we also get well built transportation infra and tech-standard efficiencies in gov services

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Gregor Macdonald @gregor.us · 03/09/2026

Where I see this all landing: water and power bills and noise are not the problem. Rather, the explosive growth in behind-the-meter, free-range natgas turbines is nasty, and another route to the already troubling integration of new natgas capacity.

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Gregor Macdonald @gregor.us · 03/09/2026

This is a solid and fair reading of the current moment in the data center discourse. As is usual in these things, the extreme takes (on all sides) need to be heavily discounted.

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Glonzo the Bureaucrat 🇬🇱 🌹 @snarkranger.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

The reason the left needs to embrace this thought is that the only way to pay for Nordic-style social democracy in America is to raise broad-based taxes across the board, and we'll never be able to do that if we operate under an ideological principle that almost everyone in America is poor.

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Gregor Macdonald @gregor.us · 01/09/2026

I see that many disaffected Republicans comfort themselves with the view that Trump represents a true break from the traditions of their party. And yet, when it comes to tax cuts for the rich and suppression of voting, Trump sits squarely in the center of the Republican family tree.

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Gregor Macdonald @gregor.us · 01/09/2026

Don't know if anyone's tried to pin a start date on the Low Trust trend in the U.S. but worth mentioning that @sethmnookin.bsky.social published the Panic Virus back in 2011 when he noticed that people in his (liberal, educated) circles were increasingly voicing concerns about vaccinations + BIGMed.

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Micah @rincewind.run · 31/08/2026

canada: "fuck you, americans!" americans: "yeah, that's fair, fuck us up"

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Gregor Macdonald @gregor.us · 30/08/2026

Since I've been in this game, nearly 20 years now, there's been an ongoing discussion about whether it's better to be optimistic or pessimistic, and I think we should put that discourse to bed and choose accuracy instead.

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Gregor Macdonald @gregor.us · 30/08/2026

The useful takeaway is not that China's emissions won't eventually peak. Nor does one want to make the fallacious argument that because something has not come true yet, it won't. Rather, it's that the habitual peak people have terrible methods, and thus make terrible forecasts.

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Gregor Macdonald @gregor.us · 30/08/2026

A number of factors. Highly informed and educated people are still vulnerable to wishful thinking. Also, the notion of progress is deeply embedded in our expectations, and Fressoz's observations--which are not opinions, but facts--puts a big dent in our expectations that systems always improve.

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