If two New Hampshire men aren't a match for the Devil, we might as well give the country back to the Indians. -Stephen Vincent Benet (1898-1943)
Renewables outpace fossil fuels despite US policy shift: IEA (Laurent Thomet and Catherine Hours, 11/12/25, AFP)
Renewable energy is still expanding faster than fossil fuels around the world despite policy changes in the United States, with oil demand possibly peaking “around 2030”, the International Energy Agency said Wednesday.
Economics trumps ideology.
Gone Fishin’: Could two famous rivermen really have met their end while grappling giant fish in a Kansas river? (Eric McHenry, November 6, 2025, American Scholar)
Commercial fishing on the Kaw was a viable profession not only because of the size and abundance of the fish but also because of the now-illegal methods used to harvest them: Abe and Jake were both known to drag giant nets, sometimes trapping 300 pounds’ worth of carp, buffalo, and catfish in a single outing. More daringly, they would dive for their quarry: They’d swim to the base of the dam, or under the wooden floor of an old flour mill, feel around for a big cat, snag it with a gaff hook, and wrestle it to the surface. One summer day in 1902, according to the Lawrence Weekly World, Abe hauled in catfish of 35, 60, and 104 pounds “by diving and stabbing them.”
If that sounds life-endangering, it was. Around Lawrence, it’s generally been understood that either Abe or Jake (or maybe both) died that way—drowned in pursuit of a bewhiskered leviathan. I’ve been hearing versions of this tale for years. Some folks say that the drowned man was never seen again; others, that he washed up on a sandbar downriver, still locked in a death embrace with the big one that didn’t get away. Fascinated by this story and bemused by its fishiness, I decided to take my own deep dive.
When Christians Follow Nietzsche: Enthusiasm for Nietzsche’s ideal of human excellence and vitality has given rise to calls for manly Christian warriors to flex their superiority. (John Ehrett, November 7, 2025, Plough)
Nietzsche’s critique of Christianity is implicitly grounded in the argument that there is a human goodness that is not the Goodness that is God. Just how is this other-than-divine goodness exemplified?
Nietzsche offers one answer: within the ideal human body, the material manifestation of human perfection. The creative instincts of his Übermensch require a fit vessel, a genetically superior specimen. There is a reason Rand’s heroes were always so aestheticized. While Nietzsche himself resisted racialized interpretations of his thought, his intellectual heirs have not been so restrained. In recent years, few have pushed Nietzsche’s logic to its terminus as boldly as the Yale-trained political philosopher Costin Alamariu, better known as the pseudonymous online provocateur Bronze Age Pervert. For Alamariu, genetic-supremacist politics is not merely an extension of Nietzsche’s thought; it is the dark core of Western philosophy itself. As Alamariu would have it, philosophy begins not in wonder but in eugenics.
This reality, Alamariu argues, was violently suppressed by generations of Greek philosophers, from Plato on, who feared the consequences of revealing the fact of biological political determinism to the masses. This means that the entire tradition of Western thought, the whole “Platonic-Socratic tradition,” was based on a lie, “born in an act of rhetorical obfuscation and conservative cowardice.”
Is this true to Nietzsche’s vision? It’s hard to see why not. Alamariu consciously identifies himself as Nietzsche’s successor, stressing that he is “trying to explain some of the implications of the work of Nietzsche for a world in which he is still the only prophet, and will remain so for some centuries.” And indeed, in Alamariu’s work, the logic of vitalism comes to full flower. For all its veneration of superior human specimens, vitalism ultimately subverts any sense of human exceptionalism, leaving – quite properly – only nature. Where Nietzsche left off, Alamariu simply finishes the job: Ecce simio. Behold the ape.
To address just one aspect of this excellent essay, it seems awfully queer that these guys who believe so fiercely in Darwinism are also such enthusiasts for cosmetic surgery and performance enhancing drugs.
Nondelegation Without Chaos : As the Supreme Court works to restore the separation of powers, it should seek a return to the Framers’ vision rather than an outright revolution. (John O. McGinnis, 11/03/25, Law & Liberty)
The Framers recognized that the legislative power was the most important of all the powers delegated in the Constitution, because it was the only federal authority that could directly affect their domestic liberty. Legislative power—prescribing rules that bind private conduct—belongs only to Congress, and for good reasons. That assignment channels lawmaking through a deliberative, laborious, publicly accountable process. Justice Neil Gorsuch’s dissent in Gundy v. United States articulates this structure crisply: Congress must make the policy decisions; the executive may “fill up the details” or find facts that trigger rules Congress has created. That is the Constitution’s path to stable rules, fair notice, and political accountability.
While I cannot fully defend the originalist case for limiting the delegation doctrine here, my frequent co-author, Michael Rappaport, does so in “A Two-Tiered and Categorical Approach to the Nondelegation Doctrine,” proposing a two-tier framework. For domestic regulation of private rights—most of the stuff of administrative law—he proposes a categorical bar on delegating policymaking discretion. In contrast, he proposes a more lenient standard where history and structure counsel executive flexibility, as in appropriations, foreign and military affairs, and territorial governance. He grounds the strict rule for domestic regulatory affairs in text, history, and structure—especially the private/public rights distinction and James Madison’s insistence that laws provide details, definitions, and rules. The executive in the strict tier is limited to genuine interpretation, fact-finding, and application. On this view, the current doctrine abdicates Congress’s duty precisely where liberty most requires legislative judgment.
This AI Aced Hurricane Season in 2025. Here’s What That Means (Ellyn Lapointe, November 9, 2025, Gizmodo)
Though Google DeepMind’s Weather Lab only began releasing forecasts in June, it was by far the best model for predicting hurricane track and intensity this season, according to a preliminary analysis by Brian McNoldy, a meteorologist and senior researcher at the University of Miami. Meanwhile, America’s flagship weather model—the Global Forecast System—was the worst performing.
There’s a $10 Trillion Antidote to Trump’s Climate Backlash (Laura Millan, November 4, 2025, Bloomberg)
Annual energy transition investment surpassed $2 trillion for the first time in 2024, more than double the rate in 2020, according to research by BloombergNEF examining the deployment of net zero-aligned technologies and infrastructure.
Investment between 2014 and last year totalled $10.3 trillion, though the scope of the analysis has been widened since 2020 to capture additional categories. Spending on renewable energy alone hit a record in the first half, jumping 10% on the same period a year earlier.
Additions of clean power generation like solar and wind farms are finally beginning to catch accelerating demand for electricity, meaning carbon dioxide emissions from the energy sector — the most significant man-made contributor to global warming — may have peaked last year and already be in decline, BNEF analysis suggests. That outlook could be challenged, however, if forecasts of continued stronger-than-anticipated demand for coal, oil and gas prove correct.Road transport emissions are on track to peak around 2029, and one in every four passenger vehicles sold this year will be a plug-in hybrid, a range-extended electric, or fully electric, the BNEF data shows. China, the source of almost 30% of all global emissions, has potentially already begun to lower its climate footprint from this year, after pollution growth slowed to less than 1% in 2024.
In a new assessment ahead of COP30 negotiations that begin Nov. 10, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change made its first ever forecast for total global emissions to decline, projecting a 10% reduction from 2019 levels by 2035.
Election Day Was a Win for the Climate (Sophie Hurwitz, 11/08/25, MoJo)
In races from New York to Georgia to Washington, voters backed funding renewables, reining in energy costs, and building out mass transit—and the people promising to deliver those policies. On the whole, the results suggest Americans are pushing back against President Donald Trump’s efforts to roll back climate action.
“This election was a decisive rejection of the Trump Administration’s ban on clean energy, multimillion-dollar taxpayer bailouts for expensive dirtier energy sources like coal, and other ineffective proposals that will make costs go even higher,” Sara Schreiber of the League of Conservation Voters said in a statement.
The Founders Would Abhor Trump’s Domestic Deployments: And the notion that courts can’t review his National Guard decisions is baseless. (Philip Allen Lacovara, Nov 07, 2025, The Bulwark)
The Founders would be appalled. They fought a revolution against a king who sent his troops against them to enforce his laws. That experience was fresh in their minds when they adopted a Constitution that says that Congress alone has the power “to provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions.”
The president argues that it is appropriate for him to use the military “to execute the laws.” He also contends that the courts have no authority even to consider the legitimacy of his decision to summon National Guard troops and send them into American cities for what he deems law enforcement.
Neither position has constitutional support.
Conservative Supreme Court justices appear skeptical of Trump’s sweeping unilateral tariffs (LINDSAY WHITEHURST, November 5, 2025, AP)
Three conservative justices raised questions about whether an emergency law gives Trump near-limitless power to set and change duties on imports, with potentially trillion-dollar implications for the global economy.
Don’t Tell Donald Trump, but Texas Is Deep Into Wind and Solar Power (Arcelia Martin, 11/05/25, MoJo)
Solar power has generated 45 terrawatt hours of electricity so far this year—50 percent more than the same period in 2024 and nearly four times more than the same period in 2021.
The availability of solar generation in ERCOT also has reduced the need for gas-fired generation during midday hours, according to the EIA. This energy production comes despite attempts by some Texas lawmakers earlier this year to restrict renewable development across the state.
For Dennis Wamsted, an energy analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, ERCOT’s growing share of renewables shows that it’s the preferred resource type when an energy market is open, like Texas’ deregulated market.
“People are going to build solar and wind, and now battery storage, essentially as quickly as they possibly can,” Wamsted said. “It’s economic—it is what customers want.”