iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Emily Grubert @gruberte.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

This is my students’ problem set this week

Emily Grubert @gruberte.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Like I don’t know anything really but the corn dynamics around here have seemed super weird — like way more standing (dead) corn than I usually see — and apparently diesel is so expensive some farms are just not harvesting

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Emily Grubert @gruberte.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Love seeing your posts and then seeing the projects in town :) thanks!

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Emily Grubert @gruberte.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

In case one of your limitations is the lineset or external unit for a heat pump: we have both a window mount heat pump and a wall pass through package unit that work fine for one room each

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Emily Grubert @gruberte.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

one of my most dearly held beliefs is that theoretical math is a humanities field. the fact that it happens to be a deeply beautiful, deeply human pursuit that is *also* axiomatically defined is why AI can murder it and never look back

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Emily Grubert @gruberte.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Thank you kindly. Splash pad hours are 10a-8p and are ambiguously seasonal but nominally the Memorial Day to Labor Day period is safe. The next town over is more liberal with its seasonality.

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Emily Grubert @gruberte.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

This hasn’t always been true etc etc there are exceptions etc etc but also…

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Emily Grubert @gruberte.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

To be more direct, it’s not that renewables are expensive — rather, they‘re less profitable, so the wealth transfers we as a country provide via subsidy etc. are to ensure that those low costs don’t fully get passed to people who use electricity

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Emily Grubert @gruberte.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Reading more and more arguments about renewable energy not being profitable in the context of also being a person who thinks public power is Good is really sharpening the point: renewables can generate a lot of consumer surplus (low energy costs!) but that’s bad for business so we won’t do it

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Emily Grubert @gruberte.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Gonna need you to bring me 2 golden apples and a cricket first there buddy

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Emily Grubert @gruberte.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I’ll also add that some people are realllll quick to assume that companies meet (usually voluntary) methane standards while also assuming state zero GHG laws aren’t feasible, both of which make additional O&G look better

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Kevin J. Kircher @kevinjkircher.com · 04/10/2026

Addendum: I mentioned think tanks a lot, but some academics will also likely release non-peer-reviewed analyses soon (if they haven't already). That these white papers come from people who work at universities doesn't make them more reliable or less susceptible to ideology-driven modeling choices.

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Emily Grubert @gruberte.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

See my love of facts is countered by deep introversion but somehow NPC mode is very comfortable lmao

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Emily Grubert @gruberte.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

half the people that go road tripping with me bring one of those docent head sets the second time and the rest never speak to me again

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Emily Grubert @gruberte.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

“Ah yeah, the eternal flame’s emergency shutoff does work but it doesn’t summon the fire department, so you might need another way to get a ladder delivered to your location”

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Emily Grubert @gruberte.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I’m like one of those characters that gets increasingly visible and brightly colored as you realize you need a niche local infrastructure fact to proceed

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Emily Grubert @gruberte.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I really didn’t expect to like being a town NPC so much. Talk to me and I’ll give you a fact about like, splash pad hours

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Damon Kiesow @kiesow.net · 03/10/2026

So “slop” is the negative externalities imposed on consumers by the imposition of synthetic communications by profit-seeking entities.

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Emily Grubert @gruberte.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

The absolute worst one I hear is that we need it to make sure marginalized kids in school are getting an adequate education the unspoken leap of “poor kids don’t need teachers“ is soooo grim

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Emily Grubert @gruberte.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

i remain so alarmed by all the discourse about how people can use AI to get good deals / fight wage theft / counteract extractive insurance practices that doesn’t acknowledge that — if you accept this works — the companies on the other side … also can use it to do the opposite?

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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 03/10/2026

The next five graphs are even less convincing, and the argumentation becomes even weaker. It was almost impossible for me to imagine how a seemingly intelligent person could have written it—but I found a secret clue buried in the text itself.

A.I. has the potential to enhance the way we live in the same way. It saved me and my colleague, Will McGrew, many hours of prowling the internet to research this essay. That left us with time to do other tasks.

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Emily Grubert @gruberte.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I'm ok with being a little slower and a little more expensive if I only need 1/10th (CDR) or idk, half (electricity) as much stuff

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Emily Grubert @gruberte.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

yeah, this is a huge issue in CDR as well and I think the main issue I have with it is that learning rates don't keep up with the expansion of manufacturing that's needed to supply the (now larger) demand

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Lily Mason @lilymasonphd.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

My new JOD piece arguing against the “cure polarization” approach to saving democracy.

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Dominique Baker @bakerdphd.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Writing something where I will be liberally citing @lilymasonphd.bsky.social's latest and realizing that I can't cite every single thing I would like to because then I'm just reprinting her work. So, I've gotta thread about it instead. muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl...

Screenshot of the article website. Title is: Polarization Is Not the Problem. Author is Lilliana Mason. Journal is the Journal of Democracy, Volume 37, Number 4, October 2026. From Johns Hopkins University Press.

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J. Mijin Cha @jmijin.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I’ll also add that continually trying to pass a permitting reform bill that ignores EJ concerns is deepening the divide in the movement every time it comes up. Maybe we should stop doing that.

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Erika Hall @erikahall.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

There's a lot of us.

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Emily Grubert @gruberte.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

echoing your thanks for the engagement here but yeah, I’m really struggling with why a vote in the lame duck period in particular — which seems to be what’s being signaled? — is desirable for clean energy people. I get that a few people leaving office ~might~ have secret pro-transition vibes, but…

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Danny Cullenward @ghgpolicy.org · 01/10/2026

Can anyone explain to me why a national permitting deal is best negotiated now, mere weeks from an election that is likely to reshape federal power? Let’s stipulate that a deal of some kind is necessary and good; my question is what about the situation makes now more desirable than, say, Q1 2027?

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Kevin J. Kircher @kevinjkircher.com · 30/09/2026

One thing to bear in mind about a federal permitting bill is that its mistakes would be essentially permanent - Dems could only reverse mistakes with a filibuster-proof 60-vote supermajority in the Senate. Repubs, on the other hand, could use captured courts to shave off bits their donors dislike.

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Emily Grubert @gruberte.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

We get this all.the.time with our arguments for nationalizing the fossil fuel industry for phase-out. At least in that case the argument is "Trump nationalizing this kind of stuff is already literally the status quo"

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Emily Grubert @gruberte.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

ngl this started because I was listening to chumbawamba but the actual non embarrassing credit goes to J & M here

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Emily Grubert @gruberte.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Oh hey, I have an Etsy sign about this

Etsy wooden sign reading “conducting a cost-benefit analysis is not an objective or uncontroversial calculation” —Siders 2019

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Emily Grubert @gruberte.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

My solar panels clicked over to 10000 kWh produced this year LIVE projected TO MY CLASS and I have never felt so cool (No one else noticed)

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Emily Grubert @gruberte.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

(Just to be clear I‘m not kidding about the bag)

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Emily Grubert @gruberte.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

This is the paper that embodies the thing I do where I walk around with a felt bag of coal labeled "Coal" that is full of coal and say ~beware~ big thanks to @jlappen1.bsky.social for leading and to @jmijin.bsky.social for continuing to be one of the most correct people about coal transitions

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Josh Lappen @jlappen1.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

This one's a cri de coeur from @gruberte.bsky.social, @jmijin.bsky.social, and I: The coal sector's decline has created strong empirical evidence about how energy transitions play out, but most decarb scholarship and policymaking ignore it. That has to change. www.tandfonline.com/eprint/DJ88Z...

tandfonline.com

How to Save the Energy Transition: What Coal Scholars Can See Coming, and What to Do About It

The energy transition requires rapid, coordinated retirement of essentially all fossil fuel infrastructure with careful attention to impacts on workers and affected communities. Experience with the...

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Emily Grubert @gruberte.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Yeah, this isn’t part of our professional licensure in the US and kind of emerges based on where you went to school (and as noted CivEs are much more into licensure than other disciplines in the US, even the ones with strong safety cultures during training)

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Emily Grubert @gruberte.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I have conversations all the time where I say something about focusing on people as part of my engineering practice and people are immediately like, oh, you're not an engineer anymore? No, bro. I have my stamp. And the fact that you asked me that makes me think you the one who isn't an engineer.

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Emily Grubert @gruberte.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

We (civil engineers) take this shit *extremely* seriously. My grumpiest, most disciplinary take is that I've always been deeply uncomfortable with CS calling itself "engineering" because -- individuals as exceptions, of course -- it does /not/ have a safety and ethics culture.

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Pookleblinky @pookleblinky.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

The ring's whole point is to remind you "People will die in incredible pain if I stop giving a fuck about even the small, boring details of what I do" Because you *can't* grandly think about systems if you can't fucking think in the first place.

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Pookleblinky @pookleblinky.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Reminder that in Canada upon becoming an engineer you get an iron ring made of a collapsed bridge, purposely designed to be uncomfortable, to remind you that your ethics demand you give a fuck even about the boring grudgework of such as double-checking your math. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Ring

en.wikipedia.org

Iron Ring - Wikipedia

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Emily Grubert @gruberte.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Oh man, thank *you.* just finished it and so appreciate your work. We’re writing a thing on corporate data right now and this fills a few evidentiary gaps I was hoping to strengthen, too.

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Emily Grubert @gruberte.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

In a room of 100+ engineers who ostensibly care about impact I was the only one* who knew what the knowledge deficit model is so I’d go so far as to say this is required reading for anyone who thinks information flows are objective and easy *or at least, who was willing to raise my hand

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