The story of how the LOTR movies got made is an under-rated miracle. Peter Jackson was a schlock horror indie dork with 1 serious movie on his resume (Heavenly Creatures) when he pitched the Lord of the Rings trilogy He pulled in insanely talented VFX artists by basically saying "hey, want to work on Lord of the Rings?" He made the trilogy on a comparative shoe-string budget (less than $100 million per movie). He was absolutely terrified of the movies crashing and burning so he kept close to the book (especially for the first movie). He thought "we need the existing fans to come, we have no hope of success without the fans". Everything came together for the LOTR movies, from tech advances to financing to the perfect actors. It was a project of love from the perfect director who was in love with his island home which just so happened to be the best spot on Earth to stand in for Middle Earth. If you believe in miracles, the LOTR movies were a miracle. Every perfect thing came together at the right moment with the right people.

Good product management resembles a good writing process In both cases, your job is to relentlessly cut scope only to what is essential

Buying SpaceX stock is what it must’ve felt like to get in on the Dutch East India co in 1602

Important to distinguish btwn non-firm interconnection (for bypassing grid constraints) vs. non-firm RA (for bypassing zonal or BA-wide gen constraints). The latter is what most deals have addressed to date and is what's most relevant for VPPs/distributed capacity, lots to come there. The former is what the USDOE/FERC ANOPR seeks to unlock at larger stage and represents significant white space.

It’s so cheap to generate docs and tickets and meeting agendas these days but completely counterproductive if the person behind it isn’t actually putting thought into the content Don’t make me read your AI slop if you won’t read and edit your own slop first

The true value of a liberal arts education all comes back to its algorithm for “learning how to learn” not remembering useless facts Most class structures have you read the great texts with a critical lens, write papers to formulate a strong perspective, then participate in seminar style discussions to debate the various perspectives Tried and true recipe for truly unpacking an idea It also helps for building strong perspectives in professional life My advice to new folks breaking into the industry is always to… 1. Do the readings (consume the highest signal blogs and pods) 2. Generate content (force yourself to create and put stuff out there), and 3. Debate ideas and learn from others (discuss the salient trends at happy hours and social media)

If you’re not following Utah, you haven’t been paying attention. Every conversation worth having about American innovation is happening here.

As Ted Lasso says: “Be a goldfish”

It’s possible recursive self-improvement is actually already here… It’s just materializing as the customized harness and context management system within vertical AI workflows rather than a technical breakthrough of the foundation models

Just saw a Ryan Gosling interview where he says he liked the story of Project Hail Mary because it has the message that the future isn't something to be feared, it's something to be figured out. And that's a message he wants his kids to hear. Awesome.

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We scored 4,195 data center sites across Indiana and Texas. Two very different markets. One is shrinking fast. January Data Center Site Analysis (first in a monthly series) → hubs.la/Q042FM5W0