Robinson Meyer
@robinsonmeyer.bsky.social
Founding executive editor of Heatmap News. Contributing Opinion writer for The New York Times. Cohost of the Shift Key podcast. 📍NYC
Pinned
Say ‘Guten Tag!’ to This New Kind of Geothermal Tech
Rob and Jesse catch up with Mark Fitzgerald, CEO of the closed-loop geothermal startup Eavor.
heatmap.news
There’s a lot of excitement about the growth of next-gen geothermal in the US.
But geothermal is *already* competing at price parity in Europe. On this week’s episode of Shift Key, @jessedjenkins.com and I chat with Mark Fitzgerald, the CEO of a geothermal firm that is now powering a German town:
But geothermal is *already* competing at price parity in Europe. On this week’s episode of Shift Key, @jessedjenkins.com and I chat with Mark Fitzgerald, the CEO of a geothermal firm that is now powering a German town:
Hawaii. Absolute scenes.
December 25, 2025 at 4:46 AM
Hawaii. Absolute scenes.
Reposted by Robinson Meyer
If you love Christmas music and that sort of vibe but are tired of listening to the same boring stuff, allow me to invite you to tune into @wxpnfm.bsky.social in Philadelphia where the great @djrobertdrake.bsky.social is starting his annual 24-hour marathon of appointment radio.
WATCH LIVE: It’s The Night Before with Robert Drake - WXPN | Vinyl At Heart
Join WXPN for the 33rd annual edition of The Night Before on XPN – a 24 hour takeover of the radio station every minute of Christmas Eve, December 24th. That’s right – Midnight to Midnight! If that wa...
xpn.org
December 24, 2025 at 5:12 AM
If you love Christmas music and that sort of vibe but are tired of listening to the same boring stuff, allow me to invite you to tune into @wxpnfm.bsky.social in Philadelphia where the great @djrobertdrake.bsky.social is starting his annual 24-hour marathon of appointment radio.
Reposted by Robinson Meyer
This NYT piece on the Trump Admin finally waking up to the critical importance of batteries & their supply chains is both maddening and vindicating.
Freezing DOE grants, the War on EVs, tariffs, and OBBBA have utterly wrecked our battery supply chain efforts.
🔌💡🔌🚗
www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...
Freezing DOE grants, the War on EVs, tariffs, and OBBBA have utterly wrecked our battery supply chain efforts.
🔌💡🔌🚗
www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...
The Pentagon and A.I. Giants Have a Weakness. Both Need China’s Batteries, Badly. | Nathaniel Horadam
There are some unfortunate but hard truths we need to grapple with if America is going to break free of China’s expanding #battery supply chain dominance, some of which are captured in this NYT piece ...
www.linkedin.com
December 23, 2025 at 8:45 PM
This NYT piece on the Trump Admin finally waking up to the critical importance of batteries & their supply chains is both maddening and vindicating.
Freezing DOE grants, the War on EVs, tariffs, and OBBBA have utterly wrecked our battery supply chain efforts.
🔌💡🔌🚗
www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...
Freezing DOE grants, the War on EVs, tariffs, and OBBBA have utterly wrecked our battery supply chain efforts.
🔌💡🔌🚗
www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...
Of course I know him. He’s me
December 23, 2025 at 8:59 PM
Of course I know him. He’s me
Reposted by Robinson Meyer
I just published Potato, a new pansharpening package. It aims to render certain kinds of satellite imagery more clearly and accurately than what’s for sale and on satellite maps today: github.com/celoyd/potato/
GitHub - celoyd/potato: A small pansharpening model
A small pansharpening model. Contribute to celoyd/potato development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com
December 23, 2025 at 7:39 PM
I just published Potato, a new pansharpening package. It aims to render certain kinds of satellite imagery more clearly and accurately than what’s for sale and on satellite maps today: github.com/celoyd/potato/
I’ll be on WNYC chatting with Brian Lehrer (with @jael.bsky.social!) in a few minutes to discuss 10 years of the Paris Agreement and the offshore wind freeze.
December 23, 2025 at 3:42 PM
I’ll be on WNYC chatting with Brian Lehrer (with @jael.bsky.social!) in a few minutes to discuss 10 years of the Paris Agreement and the offshore wind freeze.
The Trump admin has started to realize batteries are an important general purpose technology. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/23/c...
December 23, 2025 at 3:01 PM
The Trump admin has started to realize batteries are an important general purpose technology. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/23/c...
Reposted by Robinson Meyer
Not to downplay the ideological valence here, but this also smacks of the classic “editor who makes unnecessary last-minute changes/requests to seem like they’re doing something” trope.
Bari Weiss spiked the CECOT story because she wanted to have Stephen Miller included and demanded to control the language 60 Minutes used to describe the men who were brutally tortured after being sent to El Salvador without due process.
December 22, 2025 at 4:28 AM
Not to downplay the ideological valence here, but this also smacks of the classic “editor who makes unnecessary last-minute changes/requests to seem like they’re doing something” trope.
Fundamentally think you cannot do the “brave truth teller” schtick if you’re pulling a 60 Minutes segment because you couldn’t get a WH sound bite. Reminiscent of the Kimmel overreach.
December 22, 2025 at 4:02 AM
Fundamentally think you cannot do the “brave truth teller” schtick if you’re pulling a 60 Minutes segment because you couldn’t get a WH sound bite. Reminiscent of the Kimmel overreach.
Reposted by Robinson Meyer
All of these links went to promotion of this story earlier today. All these links are dead now — that's how thoroughly they've scrubbed this.
December 21, 2025 at 10:57 PM
All of these links went to promotion of this story earlier today. All these links are dead now — that's how thoroughly they've scrubbed this.
Was thinking that this was the first time I’ve seen news break on Bluesky hours before it got to X (and ultimately @mattyglesias.bsky.social just had to screenshot it).
Interesting, they lost so may transit nerds over on X that they’ve been reduced to screenshotting Bluesky posts
December 21, 2025 at 9:29 PM
Was thinking that this was the first time I’ve seen news break on Bluesky hours before it got to X (and ultimately @mattyglesias.bsky.social just had to screenshot it).
Appreciate the rare chance to deploy an earnest “Eppur si muove!”
We know — from first principles — that LLMs can only create AI slop.
Why do people keep needing empirical tests?
Why do people keep needing empirical tests?
The intractability proof (a.k.a. Ingenia theorem) implies that any attempts to scale up AI-by-Learning to situations of real-world, human-level complexity will consume an astronomical amount of resources (see Box 1 for an explanation). 13/n
December 21, 2025 at 5:38 PM
Appreciate the rare chance to deploy an earnest “Eppur si muove!”
Funny how much the city has already cleared out. Who would’ve thought that timing Christmas/Jan 1 to Thursday would produce the longest possible winter break?
December 21, 2025 at 5:30 PM
Funny how much the city has already cleared out. Who would’ve thought that timing Christmas/Jan 1 to Thursday would produce the longest possible winter break?
“My change of mind in 2025 is that democracy, far from being the natural twin of capitalism, has to watch it like a hawk… The problem is the attitude that business instils in people: that everyone is negotiable, that a so-called extremist must just be bluffing.” www.ft.com/content/36c2...
When business and democracy don’t mix
Liberals were wrong to assume the two ideas are natural twins
www.ft.com
December 19, 2025 at 7:14 PM
“My change of mind in 2025 is that democracy, far from being the natural twin of capitalism, has to watch it like a hawk… The problem is the attitude that business instils in people: that everyone is negotiable, that a so-called extremist must just be bluffing.” www.ft.com/content/36c2...
Not to be a turd in the punch bowl but I do think the fact that a large share of Zoomers go to work alone in their apartments/homes — just as a chunk of them went to school alone in their apartments/homes — might be contributing to why their political views are becoming so … anomalous.
December 19, 2025 at 7:11 PM
Not to be a turd in the punch bowl but I do think the fact that a large share of Zoomers go to work alone in their apartments/homes — just as a chunk of them went to school alone in their apartments/homes — might be contributing to why their political views are becoming so … anomalous.
Reposted by Robinson Meyer
Reposted by Robinson Meyer
New @cfr.org a short version of my recent report on US auto policy: "Compete, Don't Retreat" Protection is necessary now but shouldn't last forever. If we wait too long, we could be shut out of the world's largest manfg sector. www.cfr.org/expert-brief...
A Smarter U.S. Response to China’s Electric Vehicle Revolution
If the United States waits too long to respond more fully and constructively, it could become an isolated island of gas-powered vehicles in an electric vehicle world driven by China.
www.cfr.org
December 19, 2025 at 4:23 PM
New @cfr.org a short version of my recent report on US auto policy: "Compete, Don't Retreat" Protection is necessary now but shouldn't last forever. If we wait too long, we could be shut out of the world's largest manfg sector. www.cfr.org/expert-brief...
I think there’s a broad hunger for this kind of shift and journalists/writers/podcasters should evangelize it aggressively. And we should say that it doesn’t need to be total: You don’t need a print newspaper to tone down the algorithm’s role in your life. mattdpearce.substack.com/p/four-big-t...
December 19, 2025 at 4:19 PM
I think there’s a broad hunger for this kind of shift and journalists/writers/podcasters should evangelize it aggressively. And we should say that it doesn’t need to be total: You don’t need a print newspaper to tone down the algorithm’s role in your life. mattdpearce.substack.com/p/four-big-t...
Reposted by Robinson Meyer
This piece aligns with what I’ve heard from the teachers I know: the phone ban is working phenomenally well. So glad NY did this.
People say you’re driving a moral panic, that you’re blocking good regulation, that there’s no point in resisting. And then you enforce a phone ban and miracles happen (qualitatively): nymag.com/intelligence...
How the Phone Ban Saved High School
Since the bell-to-bell device lockup, teens in New York have rediscovered the simple pleasures of conversation, board games, and poker.
nymag.com
December 19, 2025 at 3:57 PM
This piece aligns with what I’ve heard from the teachers I know: the phone ban is working phenomenally well. So glad NY did this.
Reposted by Robinson Meyer
I asked my high school senior about this, now in year 2 of no phones. He affirmed that kids are playing cards games at lunch instead of being on their phones. Makes my heart happy.
December 19, 2025 at 3:41 PM
I asked my high school senior about this, now in year 2 of no phones. He affirmed that kids are playing cards games at lunch instead of being on their phones. Makes my heart happy.
Reposted by Robinson Meyer
Also this week, there's a nice story over in Saint Paul about the benefits of getting phones out of high schools.
www.minnpost.com/education/20...
www.minnpost.com/education/20...
December 19, 2025 at 2:03 PM
Also this week, there's a nice story over in Saint Paul about the benefits of getting phones out of high schools.
www.minnpost.com/education/20...
www.minnpost.com/education/20...
The power sector is so cool. $1 trillion industry, and you call up someone who just spent months studying how customer rates work in one state, and they’ll warn you (accurately) that they’re not an expert on the topic.
December 18, 2025 at 11:17 PM
The power sector is so cool. $1 trillion industry, and you call up someone who just spent months studying how customer rates work in one state, and they’ll warn you (accurately) that they’re not an expert on the topic.
This is a fantastic Keith Bradsher piece on China’s most cutting edge products, including flying taxis and car-sized lunch delivery robots. It crystallizes for me how much the *key* underlying hard-tech innovation is battery production. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
China's Clean Energy Push is Powering Flying Taxis, Food Delivery Drones and Bullet Trains
China’s experiments in clean energy can feel like living in the future. Even when things don’t quite work.
www.nytimes.com
December 18, 2025 at 6:11 PM
This is a fantastic Keith Bradsher piece on China’s most cutting edge products, including flying taxis and car-sized lunch delivery robots. It crystallizes for me how much the *key* underlying hard-tech innovation is battery production. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
Reposted by Robinson Meyer
My qualms about Ken Burns' American Revolution series, which strangely fails to explain what made the Revolution revolutionary.
washingtonmonthly.com/2025/12/18/w...
washingtonmonthly.com/2025/12/18/w...
What’s Wrong with The American Revolution by Ken Burns
Ken Burns’s latest PBS series is long on muskets and bayonets, but the history of the American Revolution remains strangely understated.
washingtonmonthly.com
December 18, 2025 at 11:43 AM
My qualms about Ken Burns' American Revolution series, which strangely fails to explain what made the Revolution revolutionary.
washingtonmonthly.com/2025/12/18/w...
washingtonmonthly.com/2025/12/18/w...