Stephen Shankland

Mangrove Lithium’s New Process Could Change EV Battery Production A new lithium refining method uses electrochemistry to cut waste and energy use, easing a key bottleneck for electric vehicles.

Interesting work in lithium refining. Demo refinery set to make 1,000 tons of lithium hydroxide per year in British Columbia starting in the second half of the year. spectrum.ieee.org/mangrove-lit...

I set my alarm for 3 a.m. to photograph the blood moon (lunar eclipse) but alas, it clouded over. The good news is that my test shots from before I went to bed came out. An weirdly flat moon — no shadow contours except a smidgen at the lower left because the sun was directly behind me as I shot.

I knew Dario Gil from when I was covering quantum computers and he was at IBM Research. Our paths cross again.

The Man Who Stole Infinity | Quanta Magazine In an 1874 paper, Georg Cantor proved that there are different sizes of infinity and changed math forever. A trove of newly unearthed letters shows that it was also an act of plagiarism.

Georg Cantor, pioneer of the mathematical concept of infinity —and plagiarist. How many of us have heard of Richard Dedekind? www.quantamagazine.org/the-man-who-... #math

Incorrect: We haven't achieved first plasma yet.

From the fusion community on Reddit Explore this post and more from the fusion community

Today was Reddit AMA day with our Chief Science Officer and Co-founder Brandon Sorbom — lots of good questions and interesting answers. Tritium, supply chain, AI, magnets, plasmas, antennas... and of course tokamaks. www.reddit.com/r/fusion/com... #FusionEnergy

Screenshot of this text: While 1Password has grown substantially in value and capability, our pricing has remained largely unchanged for many years. To continue investing in innovation and the world-class security you expect, we’re updating pricing for Family plans, starting March 27, 2026. Current vs New Pricing: Current price: $59.88 USD / year New price: $71.88 USD / year

Dear 1Password: Just bite the bullet and say "Important: We’re increasing the cost of your subscription." Because we all know what "updating the cost" in the subject line will mean.

Also, aren't subscriptions supposed to pay for ongoing development and innovation?

Gripes aside, I like 1Password.

🟡 Semafor Energy: Lessons from four years of energy war | Semafor As the full-scale war in Ukraine moves into its fifth year, the country is forging a new energy system that’s both more secure and more sustainable.

"Russia ramped up its drone, missile, and artillery assaults, eventually carrying out at least 1,894 separate attacks on energy infrastructure between February 2022 and today." www.semafor.com/newsletter/0...

Summer Yue on X: "Nothing humbles you like telling your OpenClaw “confirm before acting” and watching it speedrun deleting your inbox. I couldn’t stop it from my phone. I had to RUN to my Mac mini like I was defusing a bomb. https://t.co/XAxyRwPJ5R" / X Nothing humbles you like telling your OpenClaw “confirm before acting” and watching it speedrun deleting your inbox. I couldn’t stop it from my phone. I had to RUN to my Mac mini like I was defusing a bomb. https://t.co/XAxyRwPJ5R

Teachable moment: OpenClaw starts nuking email inbox of AI safety & alignment director at Meta Superintelligence: x.com/summeryue0/s...

What they did:
x.com/summeryue0/s...

Semi-panicking to figure out how interrupt the process:
x.com/summeryue0/s...

Gained their trust:
x.com/summeryue0/s...

#AI

Screenshot of the following text: The fourth milestone uses Q because it indicates a foundational level of fusion capability. Primarily, it’s the core achievement that shows your physics approach, your machine, and your company have successfully built the foundation for a fusion power plant. But also, it’s widely accepted and understood in the fusion research community, measured by many fusion projects, published in many scientific papers, and spotlighted as a milestone in reports like the National Academy of Sciences’ Bringing Fusion to the U.S. Grid. Importantly, beyond the plasma itself, by making a plasma that’s Q>1 you’re in a serious regime, making a bunch of fusion power. It might not be enough to sell electricity or make money, but the plasma is starting to heat itself up and the power flows have a bunch of fusion energy in them where before they had little. You’re using fusion fuel, you’re making lots of energy, you’re dealing with neutrons and radiation.

We separate the foundational physics & machine challenges of Q>1 / milestone 4 from the plant challenges of net electricity / milestone 5.

Q>1 is monumental on its own; after that, net electricity is significant enough to warrant another milestone.

You'd prefer we combine those 2 steps into 1?

Note the second bullet point here about conversion inefficiency. Net electricity means you have enough fusion power to handle all these factors. If you can't handle all of that, you haven't reached net electricity / milestone 5. "An electricity meter tracks power usage at the plant boundary."

Are you assuming that our ARC power plant will, like SPARC, have a short pulse followed by a long pause?

SPARC is not a power plant and it doesn't have a blanket. ARC will. The blanket's purpose is to cool the machine, breed tritium, and supply heat for the steam turbine.

Fifth step on the path to fusion energy: Net electricity | The Tokamak Times It’s time to write about the fifth milestone to fusion: generating net electricity. That means producing, collecting, and controlling enough energy that it could be sold onto the power grid.

For a look at our thinking about measuring Q, check this blog post from our CEO (a plasma physicist): blog.cfs.energy/fourth-step-...

For a look at what comes next, check this blog post on net electricity: blog.cfs.energy/fifth-step-o...

Snouters, dinosauroids, and other animals that never were Speculative evolution explores the strange paths natural selection might have taken — and what that means for humans.

I loved the book After Man by Dougal Dixon when I was a kid. Never knew about snouters though! bigthink.com/history-soci...

Pricey blockbuster GLP-1s are costing users — and most of the rest of us, too — Harvard Gazette Health insurers are passing along cost for coverage in form of higher rates across the board, policy researcher says

“If you look at the change in your health insurance premium this year over last year, about 30 percent of that is GLP-1s." –Luca Maini, assistant professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School.

How much do insurers get back from better health outcomes?

news.harvard.edu/gazette/stor...

Q>1

Q>1

Tokamak.

Screenshot of site to test JPEG XL image format support. Image sizes: JXL 359kB, WebP 435kB, JPEG 538kB, PNG 2275kB (though PNG has higher SSIM score; it's lossless)

Woo hoo! JPEG XL image support is in the new Chrome v145: www.phoronix.com/news/Chrome-...

I had to enable via a flag: chrome://flags/#enable-jxl-image-format

You can test support here: jpegxl.info/resources/jp...

#JPEGXL #web #Chrome #photography

Executive summary – Electricity 2026 – Analysis - IEA Electricity 2026 - Analysis and key findings. A report by the International Energy Agency.

"Electricity demand growth in advanced economies is accelerating again after 15 years of stagnation... electricity is a major energy input to some of the most dynamic drivers of global economies, such as AI, data centres, and advanced manufacturing." www.iea.org/reports/elec...

This jumped out at me, too, during the halftime show. It took me a few seconds to realize why there were linemen working on power poles.

A great-horned owl with mottled feathers, a black beak, yellow eyes, and prominent "ears" perches on a horizontal oak tree branch with out-of-focus green leaves behind it.

As if on cue just ahead of Superb Owl Sunday, a great horned owl hooted nearby just after sundown at the end of yesterday's hike in Wildcat Canyon Regional Park near Richmond, California. Took me a few minutes to find it in the trees. Quite a specimen! #superbowl #birds 🐦

I gotta say, it's pretty gnarly.

Lunar Energy raises $232 million to scale home battery deployments and AI-powered VPP software to meet surging demand for affordable electricity Oversubscribed Series D financing of $102 million led by B Capital and Prelude Ventures follows a previously unannounced $130 million Series C led by...

A home battery company I had my eye on back in my journalism days. Lunar Energy raised $233M. www.lunarenergy.com/blog/news/lu...

Commercial or community perhaps -- a big field of them

On my shuttle ride west of Boston last week, I drove past a lot of solar panels still covered with snow on Friday.

The pre-dawn yellow sky reflects on the upper part of a glass skyscraper.

A pathway through the snow, lit yellow by streetlights, cuts between rows of snow-topped houses that are still dark before the sun rises.

The tops of two skyscrapers at night, one thin and dark and the other broader, brighter, and topped with arched structures.

Late Friday night / early Saturday morning in Boston, still with a lot of snow on the ground.
#photography #architecture #Boston

Best Latin name ever

Love those guys, miss those guys

a screenshot of Zoom's mobile app in safe driving mode, which disables video

Annoying when Zoom mobile app goes into safe driving mode while I'm out walking the dog. A lot of work has gone into turning phone/watch accelerometer data into activity tracking. Maybe Zoom can adopt some of that? #UI #algorithms

A screenshot from MacOS shows a somewhat transparent System Settings search box on top of other user interface elements

I'm not as full of hatred for Liquid Glass as some folks, but I haven't encountered anything about it that fills me with delight, and I don't like this transparent UI one bit. Also, oversaturated MacOS app icons are garishly awful and I don't like faux blurring. Guess it's time to dig into settings.