True. The situation for both off-gassing and plastic recycling is rather bleak.
Sorry for being vague; I was only referring to economically valuable minerals used in electric batteries.
Aqua Metals has previously said they'll be able to reuse battery quality graphite (from batteries) as well (vs releasing it as CO2). But my recent scan of their progress wasn't very encouraging.
Learning more about Redwood Recycling stack is on my to do list.
You reminded me: David Roberts' often states that a hurdle for electrification and decarbonization projects is connecting them to "slow capital". Stuff like residential, community, solar, battery, heat pumps, appliances, ground source heat, yadda yadda.
I gather that there's plenty of "slow capital" perfectly happy with low risk long term modest returns. But these projects are too small to be worth the effort. Probably something about transaction costs.
My impression is there's an opportunity to bundle up these projects for the larger/largest investors. Biden's IRA created a "green bank" (RIP); maybe that was its intended function.
You're smart about money and finance, so you can probably explain what Roberts is talking about (to noobs like me).
1) the dearth of new (novel) training data. Hence the mad scramble to hoover up, buy, steal, any potentially plausible new sources.
2) diminishing returns of embiggening compute clusters for training LLMs and size of their foundation models.
(As you know) You're referring to Wright's Law aka experience learning curve.
So there's a tension.
Some concerns that we're nearing the ceiling for training.
While the cost of applications using foundation models (implementing inference engines) is decreasing.
Someone smarter than me will have to provide the slopes of the (misc) learning curves.
I was not aware of (or had forgotten) the term "Wright's law" [1], but that indeed is what I was thinking of. It looks like some may use the term "learning curve" to refer to the same idea (efficiency gains that follow investment); the Wikipedia page on "Learning curve" [2] includes references to Wright.
The purpose of RRO assumes majoritarianism while ensuring the minority is heard.
As you know, there are light weight versions, for boards and committees. But nothing I'd advocate for product development.
> the most effective organizations
As a fellow recovering activist, you might be interested in Vincent Bevins' If We Burn. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_We_Burn Connected some dots for me. Things I experienced but wasn't smart enough to sus and articulate.
I agree there is more than one way to look at it. There are good points to RRO but I think the legalism drives away a "silent majority" [1] of people who out of their background or temperament are particularly repelled by it.
Over the long term I've seen the governance of organizations like my food co-op be quite complex and not what I thought when things were going on. For instance we had a conflict that boiled for years which looked like a conflict over the vision of the organization but in retrospect it really was the bad personality of the manager because that manager left and went to run Borders [2] and had the same problems over there whereas the conflicting camps reconciled pretty quickly when that manager was out.
But there really are tensions over professionalism, vanguardism, and such that we'll be arguing about for a really long time. The asymmetry between the left and right wings is also interesting -- I think left wing organizations have an unhealthy tendency towards centralization because fundraising is more difficult and you get the "membership organization" model that inevitably fails because of the issues pointed out in [3] [4] vs many right wing millionaires that fund parallel right wing causes that compete in a healthy way and always stay on mission because they can be defunded when they go off mission.
In 2026 I have a new commitment to activism but Jacobin magazine would rip into my approach as being radically apolitical but I think that is what is needed in 2026.
[1] 20 years ago I didn't think I'd be talking like Nixon...
[2] Personally I am not inclined to blame individuals, plus that manager had allies, which is why it took me so long to see it
Thanks for recommending Exit, Voice, and Loyalty. It's a good compliment to The Logic of Collective Action.
Sad I'm just now learning of it.
--
I've used Jacobin (and such) to reveal my blindspots. Criticisms, from the left, have helped me clarify, understand, and articulate my own positions and beliefs.
As for being apolitical, well... My primary motivator is to "increase the peace" (for brevity's sake). And partisanship hasn't helped much.
FWIW, you might enjoy David Roberts' recent interview with Samuel Bagg.
They explain and articulate some of what I've experienced trying to (re)build relationships with friends and family (with opposing views). Micro dose validation of some stuff I've intuited (this decade past) was a nice dopamine hit.
Like you, I'm focusing my "political" and "activism" energy on building community, doing things. And trying to disengage from the never-ending partisan food fights.
I've used the group coordination technology of democracy in the workplace. It was both awesome and burdensome.
Awesome, because social cognition and personal empowerment are force multipliers.
Burdensome, because change is hard, empowerment means accountability, some people would rather complain than contribute.
I'd never advocate leaderless, flatness, whatever pseudo anarchist mumbo-jumbo. Doesn't work. Tyranny of Structurelessness, If We Burn, and all that.
I threaded the needle by creating an org chart comprised of well defined roles. And (most) every team member served in (most) every role, over time. So the person serving in the QA/Test role dutifully executed the QA/Test playbook. And next release they might represent the Engr, TechSupp, etc role.
Otherwise known as cross training, but with better support and culture.
YMMV, obv. Different efforts require different structures. There's a cornucopia of group decision making tools, skills, techs. Use what works best for the task and context at hand.
--
I'm very intrigued by how Oxide Computers is running things. Just from their podcasts, radically open seems like it's working for them.
For a brief window of time our consensus for decarbonization extended all the way to (the most) popular media.
reply