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Designing Better Artefacts

@pmholling.bsky.social
42 followers 49 following 309 posts

Senior Lecturer in Aerospace Engineering, expert on uncertain decision making- Retweets are things I find interesting, but do not, always reflect my opinions.

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Reposted by Designing Better Artefacts
Jim Waterson @jim.londoncentric.media · 18/09/2026
I spend my week crossing london on a bike and increasingly that means cycling alongside Wayve/Waymo robotaxis. it’s uncomfortable. they give you so much space, don’t do a close pass while accelerating as lights go red. So unnerving if you cycle on assumption everyone’s mental and wants to kill you.
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Designing Better Artefacts @pmholling.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Linking to the original source. The key outtake from this is not the payments to the generators to curtail as that is basically a wash between balancing and CfD levy, but purchasing power twice to use it once. www.nao.org.uk/reports/upgr...
nao.org.uk
Upgrading the electricity transmission network - NAO report
Upgrades to the electricity grid are struggling to keep up with the government's Clean Power 2030 schedule risking higher consumer bills
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Designing Better Artefacts @pmholling.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
The final part in a well written series that explains the ‘design intent’ in the different parts of the electricity market. The unintended consequences of those dispirit choices interacting and maybe where we should look to fix things.
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Designing Better Artefacts @pmholling.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
What is looking borderline ridiculous going forward is that the technology in carbon concentration is now reaching the point that using the land for solar to create fully synthetic liquid HC fuels from solar generated electricity would use less land.
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Deth Veggie @dethveggie.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
www.theguardian.com/music/2026/a... RIP Frank Beard
theguardian.com
ZZ Top drummer Frank Beard dies aged 77
Tributes paid to ‘great friend and collaborator’ who played with band for 56 years and died in hospice care in Texas
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Doctor Memory @blank.org · 25/07/2026
“If something is worth doing, it’s even worth doing badly” is an underrated maxim. Nobody is keeping score. Nobody is handing out medals for executive function. (But they should.) Dishes washed half-assedly are still less dirty than when they started.
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Designing Better Artefacts @pmholling.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
Disposable BBQs – that brilliant combination of fleeing a wildfire while suffering from food poisoning.
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Designing Better Artefacts @pmholling.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
One of the big wins of smaller piston-prop operations transitioning to electric is in non-CO2 emissions. For example GA is currently one of the largest remaining sources of atmospheric lead pollution.
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Designing Better Artefacts @pmholling.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
Nearly 80% of domestic gas consumption (equates to about 65% of a typical households energy use) occurs between 1 October and 31 March. Gas prices hit very hard during that time. When you add in the typical electricity profile it’s roughly 76% of all energy use in that period.
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Reposted by Designing Better Artefacts
Tom Haddon @tomh-analyst.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
Another thing to note on this is, high gas prices up to now during the 'Iranian crisis' haven't been that big an issue for your average consumer because it was driving price cap during the summer months. Every day now it is impacting the formula for Oct-Dec which is high price x high volume period.
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Adam Bell @adambell.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
The second part of my series on the electricity wholesale market looks at the Contracts for Difference used to support renewables. open.substack.com/pub/unbalanc...
open.substack.com
A Rattling Between The Pylons
How the basis for the GB electricity wholesale market was undermined
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Adam Bell @adambell.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE WHOLESALE ELECTRICITY MARKET? For the past couple of months I've been talking to people across the sector in an effort to find new ways of cutting bills. /1 open.substack.com/pub/unbalanc...
open.substack.com
A Buzzing in the Wires
Something is badly wrong in the electricity market
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Tits McGee @scientits.bsky.social · 28/06/2026
‘Say yes and never do it’ Mel Brooks knew how to deal with the studios
You have some wonderful stories of basically getting away with stuff at the studios.

I’d learned one very simple trick: say yes. Simply say yes. Like Joseph E. Levine, on “The Producers,” said, “The curly-haired guy—he’s funny looking. Fire him.” He wanted me to fire Gene Wilder. And I said, “Yes, he’s gone. I’m firing him.” I never did. But he forgot. After the screening of “Blazing Saddles,” the head of Warner Bros. threw me into the manager’s office, gave me a legal pad and a pencil, and gave me maybe twenty notes. He would have changed “Blazing Saddles” from a daring, funny, crazy picture to a stultified, dull, dusty old Western. He said, “No farting.” I said, “It’s out.”That’s probably the most famous scene in the movie, the campfire scene.

I know. He said, “You can’t punch a horse.” I said, “You’ll never see it again.” I kept saying, “You’re absolutely right. It’s out!” Then, when he left, I crumpled up all his notes, and I tossed it in the wastepaper basket. And John Calley, who was running [production at] Warner Bros. at the time, said, “Good filing.” That was the end of it. You say yes, and you never do it.

That’s great advice for life.

It is. Don’t fight them. Don’t waste your time struggling with them and trying to make sense to them. They’ll never understand.
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Starfire’s Deranged Neocon Foreign Policy Podcast @irhottakes.bsky.social · 20/06/2026
I’m not too embarrassed that we are losing to Iran. It’s a big boy country with missiles and drones and so forth ran by stone cold killers. That’s NFL ball for you. I am a little embarrassed we are also losing to algae.
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Eleonora Alabrese @eleala.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
🧵 New working paper out today: "Measuring the Regional Economic Cost of Brexit: Evidence as of 2026" with @jacobedenhofer.bsky.social @trfetzer.com & Shizhuo Wang Here's what the data say about who paid the price in these 10 years from the referendum 1/…
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Designing Better Artefacts @pmholling.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
A good post by @samfr.bsky.social. It highlights a problem with all ranking systems in that since we rarely (likely never) can measure what we actually want any measure we used can ultimately be gamed. This is even before you hit Goodhart’s law and is tied in with Campbell’s
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Adam Bell @adambell.bsky.social · 06/06/2026
An excellent thread. One of the reasons for this switch has been the total abdication of the Treasury from its traditional role as the guardian of efficient tax policy. /1
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Rebecca Dell @rebeccawdell.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
While chatting with some friends, it occurred to me that other people could benefit from a summary understanding of what's going on in the oil and gas markets. Here are some little pictures to give you the big picture. 🧵
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Designing Better Artefacts @pmholling.bsky.social · 09/05/2026
One of the interesting things to watch with First Past the Post electoral systems is the Dictator feature (you can’t really say it is a flaw anymore as it has been known for so long. While it rarely comes into play in its true strict form it looks like it easily could have on Thursday 1/
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Designing Better Artefacts @pmholling.bsky.social · 09/05/2026
This is a ‘feature/flaw’ of first past the post. It very much suffers from both ‘the dictator’ and ‘irrelevant alternative’ problems. Other systems will fail on these or other points of impossibility, but FPTP is definitely a poster child for Arrow always winning.
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Sam Alvis @samalvis.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
Capping prices in a supply shock? Wouldn't this just pretend that we have as much oil and gas available as before Iran? Price caps can work in supply shocks when they're designed well 🧵1/9
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Sir Humphrey @pinstripedline.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
"I present you the Soviet Ballistic Missile Submarine Red October" - A line from a superb movie. In reality the CIA knew far more about the Soviet TYPHOON class from the mid 1970s than Clancy could have guessed. Thread on the CIA, Typhoons and spying on the Soviets...
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Designing Better Artefacts @pmholling.bsky.social · 03/05/2026
Yes, renewables have kept Spains prices from rising, yet, and will keep them lower than they would otherwise have been. However, the main reason that Spain’s electricity prices look so good right now is demand is low relative to renewable effective capacity
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Brynley Heaven @brynleyheaven.bsky.social · 26/04/2026
Lincolnshire Councillors unanimous in favour of solar farm and more sheep
bbc.co.uk
Solar farm plans near Stallingborough approved despite objections
Developers say the facility will provide enough electricity to power about 16,000 homes near Keelby.
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Robert Saunders @robertsaunders.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
Congratulations to @qmulsse.bsky.social PhD student, Ed Green, on publishing his first article! It's on the elected school boards that ran English and Welsh schools from 1870-1902. Here are three reasons why they're interesting..🧵. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
School Board Elections in England and Wales, 1870–1902: An Electoral Experiment?
The 1870 Elementary Education Act enabled the creation of school boards in England and Wales. Members were directly elected by the cumulative vote. This method gave each individual voter as many vote...
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Ed Porter @edporter.bsky.social · 02/04/2026
Great Britain. Battery revenues hit £70k/MW/year in March, driven almost entirely by Balancing Mechanism trading at £46k/MW/year. Gas price volatility from Middle East tensions created the spreads batteries exploit. Arbitrage between wholesale and BM is now the dominant strategy.
Chart: gb benchmark 1 revenue stack
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Designing Better Artefacts @pmholling.bsky.social · 27/03/2026
We all like being paid to consume electricity, but this just exemplifies that large scam thermal plants when coupled with intermittent energy sources are not particularly efficient outcomes. As Ed says, put batteries or other storage in and overall things work better.
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Designing Better Artefacts @pmholling.bsky.social · 21/03/2026
A couple of things on this. First it seems that the Octopus live energy in measures both real and reactive power. While this is strictly correct it procduces SPFs below the effective ones that customers are paying. The reason for this is domestic billing is done on real power only.
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Reposted by Designing Better Artefacts
Robin Wigglesworth @robinwigglesworth.ft.com · 19/03/2026
A reminder that hydrocarbons are uniquely “systemically inflationary”, because they are such a vital input into the production of *so many* other things. www.ft.com/content/a7db...
ft.com
Systemic inflation drivers (and what to do about them)
Is inflation truly only a macro phenomenon?
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Thomas House @tah-sci.com · 13/03/2026
Just a simple SVM classifier with RBF kernel trained on 700x15 characters in the "Chinese MNIST" dataset gets around 2/3 accuracy on 300x15 held back training points. With all the interest in deep learning, it's still extraordinary that a single-layer method that takes seconds to train does so well.
Confusion matrix for RBF SVM results on Chinese MNIST
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Ed Porter @edporter.bsky.social · 12/03/2026
Great Britain's 2026/27 T-1 Capacity Market auction cleared at £5/kW/yr, the lowest since 2020/21. This indicates strong competitiveness in the GB energy market. modoenergy.com/research/en/gb-capac…
Chart: The T-1 auction cleared at £5/kW/yr, the lowest price since 2020/21, with procured capacity close to the 7.3 GW maximum
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Designing Better Artefacts @pmholling.bsky.social · 12/03/2026
This is a massive drop on what the 2028/29 T-4 market cleared at.
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Designing Better Artefacts @pmholling.bsky.social · 10/03/2026
From Oliver Johnson over on Substack Zero tolerance open.substack.com/pub/bristoli...
open.substack.com
Zero tolerance
It's a gas, gas, gas
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Rob Delaney @robdelaney.bsky.social · 03/03/2026
Myself & the other comedians who did the Riyadh Comedy Festival are donating our fees to help get influencers under attack in Dubai back home to their influencer houses. I am sponsoring Braevyn McTaigg from Orlando, FL. 🫡🇺🇸🏝️
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Tom Haddon @tomh-analyst.bsky.social · 23/02/2026
I know standing charges is a hot topic but this is weird to focus on a business that *only* pay standing charges (it imports gas, generates electricity on site to get the CO2 and exports power). The whole point of TCR was to make businesses like this pay more! www.theguardian.com/business/202...
theguardian.com
‘It’s a ticking timebomb’: food producers sound alarm on rise in energy charges
Indoor growers warn April price jump will hinder sector’s competitiveness and drive up costs for consumers
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Designing Better Artefacts @pmholling.bsky.social · 15/01/2026
Not ascribing the following to @adambell.bsky.social, but this risks post facto judgement of a decision solely based on its outcome. This is a poor way to do things. It is impossible to make decisions using knowledge that can only be gained after the decision is made.
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Paul Byrne @theplanetaryguy.com · 30/12/2025
Open up this picture fully. Then look at the surface of Mars. Then look up to the top right. Spot Mars' moon Phobos high in the sky. Then notice the bright spot beside Phobos. That's Earth.
A forlorn landscape of layered rocks in the foreground, with hills fading into the background haze. At upper top right, a small crescent moon, and a bright star.
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Thomas House @tah-sci.com · 18/11/2025
I was just internal examiner for a passing PhD viva; it's one of the bits of my job I absolutely love. Someone's put a few years into really achieving at the high end of what humans do, and the viva works to get them to demonstrate mastery of that work over a few hours.
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Tom Haddon @tomh-analyst.bsky.social · 10/11/2025
UK front month gas prices are moving into year+ low territory. Not by much, granted, but the December contract (now front month) hasn't closed sub-80p/th since Feb-24 and sits at 79.8-ish now. Loads of regas capacity, plus loads of supply (and relatively low global competition) equals...
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depths of wikipedia @depthsofwikipedia.bsky.social · 27/10/2025
recently discovered that wikipedia volunteers have a hilariously high bar for what constitutes "unusual death"
Why Wikipedia editors have deleted entries from the “List of unusual deaths”:

“hippos are extremely dangerous and very aggressive and there is nothing unusual about hippos killing people”
“the man was working on the toilet, making his death inherently less strange than if he had been using it”
“no longer an unusual or unique occurrence” regarding impalement by beach umbrella
“being hit by multiple motorcycles in a race is not an unusual death”
“fatalities involving objects or animals being launched into oncoming traffic are considered commonplace” regarding a Canadian couple’s fatal collision with a “flying bear”
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Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 26/10/2025
This is a good example of the "very clear" rule of political interviews. When a politician says "I've been very clear" it always means they're wildly obfuscating. Never fails.
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Designing Better Artefacts @pmholling.bsky.social · 26/10/2025
The thread this is part of is worth a read, and generally everything said in it is correct. However, if the UK wants an explicitly codified constitution, and one that truly binds actions, then our current concept of parliamentary sovereignty likely has to change.
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Robert Saunders @robertsaunders.bsky.social · 23/10/2025
There is a serious, principled case for a codified constitution, for some of the reasons George sets out. But botching together a constitution to stop Farage - a constitution that could not command widespread support and that was widely seen as rigged - would deepen our problems, not resolve them.🧵
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Robin Wigglesworth @robinwigglesworth.ft.com · 19/09/2025
Quite possibly the nerdiest Lunch with the FT we've ever run, featuring the inelastic markets hypothesis, 'econophysics', the Black-Scholes model's weaknesses and several drive-by shootings of economists. www.ft.com/content/6f54...
ft.com
Investor Jean-Philippe Bouchaud: ‘The whole bull run is because of an influx of money’
The physicist and hedge fund manager on why the efficient markets theory is ‘all wrong’, economists with ‘mathematics envy’ — and what Camus can teach us about compromise
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Designing Better Artefacts @pmholling.bsky.social · 25/08/2025
I
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Thomas House @tah-sci.com · 15/08/2025
Everyone is different but here are some things I think are good general advice. >
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Designing Better Artefacts @pmholling.bsky.social · 09/08/2025
A great thread on why LLMs are really interesting, but much less than many claim they are.
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Elizabeth Tasker @elizabethtasker.bsky.social · 09/08/2025
This box contains a tiny grain that was never destined to be on Earth. Until we intervened.
A small black protective case with a handle sits flat on a table. There are three stickers on the box, one labelled ASRG for the Astromaterials Science Research Group at JAXA, an orange Hayabusa2 mission logo sticker, and another Hayabusa2 sticker showing an artist impression of the spacecraft.
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Stephen Jarvis @stephenjarvis.bsky.social · 23/07/2025
After a lengthy review the UK government recently decided not to pursue locational pricing reforms to the electricity wholesale markets. I figured I’d offer a retelling of this saga and a few thoughts of my own. Energy nerds were out in force for this debate too so other takes are welcome. (1/n)
ft.com
UK abandons zonal pricing plan for electricity
Ministers will instead explore less radical reforms such as how generators pay to access transmission network
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Designing Better Artefacts @pmholling.bsky.social · 13/06/2025
On this if the flight was at an airspeed of 175 knots, and the pilots inadvertently retracted the flaps from a higher setting, say Flaps 20, to Flaps 5 you would definitely get a transient downward acceleration, but you would be unlikely to stall the aircraft just doing that.
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