WRT small modular nuclear reactors, Jigar Shah has made the perhaps-obvious-in-retrospect point that essential to cost reductions is *repeatability* (which enables learning), and that smallness / modularity are not the only path to repetition. From February:
"At Vogtle ... Unit 4 came in at a 30% discount to Unit 3. So if you just built U…
Matt did an efficient job of taking down Andreessen's poorly drafted work. In contrast to his really excellent last several newsletters, each of which taught me something, this one did not grapple as insightfully with the underlying issues or, notably, with Andreessen as **venture capitalist**. Or with Noah Smith's work in this area. Or …
Wonderful post, thanks so much! Hope you'll keep beating this drum. Possibilities for extending it:
1. We could use a more exciting name than "carbon sequestration" (let alone "enhanced rock weatherization").
2. I think the WWII comparison is useful. We expect climate change to make much of populous west Asia uninhabitable via extreme heat…
Really enjoyed this essay. I think Matt should extend it in three ways:
1. There is a spectrum from misinformation-as-in-falsehoods through misinformation-as-in-wrong-synecdoche-for-complex systems. Thinking that Brown was murdered is the former; not understanding that Black folks have more opinions about policing that a desire for less r…