Brothers Judd Blog

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)

Technology

Energy

ECONOMICS TRUMPS IDEOLOGY:

Geothermal: Clean Energy for People Who Like to Drill: With AI creating insatiable demand for electricity, an old but clean source is getting a second look thanks to favorable politics and new extraction technology. It’s Landman for environmentalists. (Markos Kounalakis and Theo Jan Snoey, March 12, 2026, Washington Monthly)

This renewable energy technology, once considered a niche, has been revitalized by bipartisan politics, financial backing, and, especially, new drilling technology: Enhanced Geothermal Systems, or EGS. The technology is controversial because it involves fracking. EGS uses techniques from shale extraction—high-skill drilling, subsurface mapping, and controlled stimulation—to create permeability in hot, dry rock. This fluid circulation brings usable heat to the surface as electricity. It’s “fracking” for steam, not oil.

EGS is one of the few ways to harness the existing drilling economy—rigs, crews, geologists, completion services, everything you see on Landman—toward a clean product. To a polity split on renewables and Donald Trump’s administration fetishizing fossil fuels like coal and oil, geothermal’s politics are refreshingly weird: clean energy for people who like to drill. California’s oil-rich Kern County and the state’s Central Valley would gain from a geothermal buildout—in part, by using tapped-out oil wells to store thermal energy and in part by pivoting phased-out oil drilling labor and expertise.

Trump’s Department of the Interior has announced emergency permitting procedures to accelerate geothermal reviews on federal lands, tied to the president’s national energy emergency declaration. Whatever you think of MAGA, the administration’s backing of EGS is a win.

The purveyors of AI should pay for expanding geothermal—and increasingly they are. President Trump’s State of the Union address announced a “ratepayer protection pledge” that major tech players and hyperscalers are expected to sign. That could lower consumer prices, shift demand, and alter funding for other power projects. Unfortunately, there are scant details about the “pledge.” The administration’s plans often have, shall we say, an inability-to-execute problem. But the idea is right: User pays.

Technology

THE FULLNESS OF OUR POST-LABOR DAYS:

The Time Will Pass Anyway: Naomi Kanakia’s “What’s So Great About the Great Books?” (Henry Begler, Mar 13, 2026, A Good Hard Stare)


You don’t get much free time in this short life. Ten percent of your total span on earth, perhaps, depending on your job, family status, income, and other obligations. Competing for that limited chunk of hours is an endless array of activities, more options than have ever been available in human history: you could work your way chronologically through the entire history of filmed entertainment, you could learn an instrument, you could garden, you could juggle, you could cook elaborate meals, you could ingest Chinese research chemicals from the internet. How is one to choose?

Technology

IF IT TASTES LIKE BEEF, IT’S BEEF:

3D-printed chocolate and lab-grown meat tipped for our tables (Adam Vaughan, March 13 2026, the Times)

Meat cultivated in laboratories, long hailed as an ethical and greener alternative to animals reared on farms, should come much sooner. The FSA is undertaking risk assessments on two cultivated meat applications: a chicken product from the start-up Vital Meat and a duck alternative from Suprême SAS. Both are ultimately owned by the French firm Gourmey.

Scientists hope to complete safety evaluations for the lab-grown meat by February next year, paving the way for potential ministerial approval and products appearing on supermarket shelves.

Energy

THAT WAS EASY:

Trump’s Transportation Secretary Promises the ‘Future of Aviation’ With New eVTOL Program (Matt Novak, March 9, 2026, Gizmodo)


U.S. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy announced eight pilot projects to test Electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing vehicles (eVTOL) that’s scheduled to start across 26 states this summer.

Officially known as the Advanced Air Mobility and eVTOL Integration Pilot Program, the Department of Transportation says the futuristic vehicles “have the potential to generate new jobs, connect communities, and strengthen American leadership in aviation.”

Health

DIFFERENCE IS NOT DISORDER:

Autism study is my life’s work. The spectrum has lost all meaning (Madeleine Spence, March 07 2026, Times uk)

Now emeritus professor of cognitive development at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London, Frith, 84, is having second thoughts about the framework. “I think the spectrum has come to its collapse,” she says, over Zoom. Her cheerful and gentle manner feels incongruous with the gravity of the point she is making: Frith thinks that the autism spectrum is broken. That our approach is at best no longer relevant and at worst damaging. Not only that, she is also challenging a modern doctrine in science that values inclusivity as an end in itself.

It is this inclusivity, Frith says, that means “there is no longer a common denominator for all the individuals who are diagnosed as having ASD [autism spectrum disorder].

“The spectrum has become so accommodating that I fear that it has now been stretched so far that it has become meaningless and is no longer useful as a medical diagnosis.”

Robotics/AI

THE REAL WORLD:

This Absurdly Complex Star Destroyer Model May Be the Most Detailed Ever Created (Tom Hawking, March 5, 2026, Gizmodo)

The thing with real-life models—whether they’re for use in films or for sale as merchandise—is that there’s a fundamental limit on how complex they can get. I mean, you can’t ship a 172,340-piece Lego Star Destroyer set. (Although, if Lego ever did ship a 172,340-piece set, it would absolutely be a Star Destroyer, and a sector of the fandom would absolutely shell out for it.)

But anyway, the point is that the real world is constrained by considerations like supply, demand, manufacturing capacity, and, y’know, common sense. By contrast, a 3D model is really only constrained by the question of whether trying to render it might result in your computer catching fire. So long as your computer is powerful enough to handle them, models and projects can be arbitrarily large.

Robotics/AI

THAT WAS EASY:

AI and 3D printing help researchers create heat‑ and pressure‑resistant materials for aerospace and defense applications ( Houlong Zhuang & Vitor Rielli 4, 2026, The Conversation)

Our alternative approach uses reinforcement learning, a form of artificial intelligence best known for training computers to master games such as Go or chess.

Designing a new alloy is a bit like mixing ingredients for a recipe, but at the atomic level. Instead of planning moves on a board, the AI system explores thousands of possible alloy recipes – for example, different combinations of chemical elements. Even tiny changes in the ingredients can completely change how the final material behaves.

The AI evaluates each candidate virtually against multiple criteria, including strength at temperatures above 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit (1,000 degrees Celsius) and resistance to damage caused by reacting with oxygen at high heat, as well as weight, cost and, crucially, whether it can be reliably 3D-printed.

Technology

THE FUTURE ALWAYS HAPPENS FASTER THAN EXPECTED:

Australia launches 3D-printed, Mach 8 hypersonic missile from US soil (David Szondy, March 02, 2026, New Atlas)

DART AE is the world’s first hypersonic aircraft made entirely from high-temperature alloys using 3D printing. It is also powered by an air-breathing SPARTAN scramjet burning green hydrogen fuel.

According to Rocket Lab, the flight was conducted under the US Department of Defense’s Innovation Unit to validate the 3D-printing techniques, high-temperature materials and autonomous guidance systems under real-world hypersonic conditions. Telemetry from the flight will be compared to simulated digital models generated beforehand.

Energy

PITY THE POOR PETROPHILES:

The strikes on Iran show why quitting oil is more important than ever (Hussein Dia, March 1, 2026, The Conversation)

In 2015, India blocked Nepal’s oil imports, triggering chaos. In response, authorities encouraged the very rapid growth of electric vehicles. Oil imports have begun to fall.

More recently, the Russia–Ukraine war and US strikes on Venezuela and Iran have brought new focus on reducing oil imports and bolstering domestic energy security.

In oil-dependent Cuba, US pressure has slashed the supply of oil. Blackouts are common and cars stay put. In response, authorities and businesses are importing 34 times as many Chinese solar panels as they did a year ago.

It’s not ideology driving this shift – it’s necessity. Electric vehicle imports, too, are soaring. “Cuba may experience the fastest energy transition in the world,” a Cuban economist told The Economist.

Renewables are the only reliable energy source.

« Previous Page — Next Page »

You Missed

Energy

IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO OVERSTATE DEFLATIONARY PRESSURES:

Republican Liberty

IT IS THE UNIVERSALISM INHERENT IN LIBERTY…:

Energy

ECONOMICS TRUMPS IDEOLOGY:

Homocentric Universe

WE ARE ALL DESIGNIST:

Copyright © All rights reserved | Blogus by Themeansar.