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robinsonmeyer.bsky.social
Robinson Meyer
@robinsonmeyer.bsky.social
43K followers 1.1K following 3K posts
Founding executive editor of Heatmap News. Contributing Opinion writer for The New York Times. Cohost of the Shift Key podcast. 📍NYC
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robinsonmeyer.bsky.social
Straightforward confirmation from Angus King that the gang of eight made the deal out of earnest concern for the filibuster. www.pressherald.com/2025/11/13/w...
Q: OK, that sounds nice, but still, wouldn’t keeping the shutdown going have gotten you an even better deal? A: Actually, keeping it going could have tipped us into a real disaster. Don’t forget that Donald Trump’s position on this wasn’t to negotiate, but to end it — entirely on their terms — by pressuring the Senate Republicans to abolish the filibuster, thus eliminating Democratic leverage on this — or anything else — altogether. And I know that this was not an idle threat or negotiating ploy; he meant it and a growing number in the Republican caucus agreed. No filibuster and we’d be facing a nationwide abortion ban, voter suppression laws and, quite possibly, the elimination of the Affordable Care Act itself with no tool to stop it.
November 13, 2025 at 8:33 PM
robinsonmeyer.bsky.social
Spanberger-Sherill-Zohranism lives
Democrats are eventually going to wind up at some consensus around attacking corruption, empowering public finance, encouraging competition/price wars, and removing barriers to rapid and pro-social forms of construction. But there’s going to be a lot of shvitzing along the way. 3:53 PM · Jul 31, 2025 · 10.2K Views
November 5, 2025 at 3:07 AM
robinsonmeyer.bsky.social
I think a lot of them? It is the second of five recommendations from the most recent autopsy (I think it’s fair to say “Deciding to Win” is popularist)
October 28, 2025 at 9:08 PM
robinsonmeyer.bsky.social
I did not know the massive Hyundai EV plant in Georgia is driving subsequent local investment by other Korean suppliers, like seat manufacturers. That’s an encouraging sign. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/20/b...
The campus dwarfs everything in sight. The main two-lane road near the plant, dotted with mobile homes and handwritten signs advertising okra, has been renamed Hyundai Way. The grocery store, once a Piggly Wiggly, is now a Viet Huong Oriental Market. A staffing agency across the street advertises in English and Korean on its message board. It’s not just Ellabell that is being transformed. Across the region, factories are sprouting up as Hyundai’s suppliers and subsidiaries follow the South Korean automaker from Seoul. About 45 minutes northwest, in Candler County, another South Korean company called DAS Corporation is building a $35 million factory to make metal frames for automotive seats. Doowon Climate Control America, which makes heaters and air-conditioners for E.Vs, is building a $30 million plant in Candler County as well. Nate Collins, who grew up in Ellabell, had never traveled abroad before Hyundai hired him in 2023. Now he is about to take his third trip to South Korea to learn how to assemble the latest models. “I’ve been living in Ellabell, Georgia, all my life,” said Mr. Collins, who had worked at a gun factory and a bar before he became a “floater” installing parts on Hyundai’s assembly line. “When something like this comes to an area like this and makes a dramatic change, I love every moment of it.”
October 20, 2025 at 9:06 PM
robinsonmeyer.bsky.social
Are people still furious that there’s going to be a primary in Maine, or www.bangordailynews.com/2025/10/17/p...
Platner responded to a 2013 post on Reddit entitled “What is one question you have always wanted to ask someone of another race,” writing, “Why don’t black people tip?” He worked as a bartender at Tune Inn on Capitol Hill, where he was a guest bartender last month. “I work as a bartender and it always amazes me how solid this stereotype is,” he wrote. “Every now and again a black patron will leave a 15-20% tip, but usually it [is] between 0-5%. There’s got to be a reason behind it, what is it?” That same year, he also responded to a post about underwear designed to prevent sexual assault saying people should “take some responsibility for themselves and not get so f—-ked up they wind up having sex with someone they don’t mean to?”
October 17, 2025 at 5:57 PM
robinsonmeyer.bsky.social
Who cares about self-IDing as a communist, the real news in the Platner CNN story is that he was against building transmission to import zero-carbon electricity into Maine www.cnn.com/2025/10/16/p...
In one Reddit post in 2021 about Maine’s vote to block a power-transmission project between the US and Canada, Platner responded sharply to a commenter from Canada questioning the result. “I have to ask, and I do mean this is the most charitable of ways, but are you retarded?” Platner wrote. “We shouldn’t have the eat the pain because you c*nts and Massachusetts couldn’t act like adults. F**k off and die, leave Maine out of your capitalist fantasies.” The project had been a political flashpoint in Maine, where nearly 60 percent of voters opposed it in a 2021 referendum, with critics arguing it would cut through undeveloped forestland, offer little benefit to Maine residents and primarily serve to transmit electricity from Canada to Massachusetts. Platner repeatedly used the word “retarded” to insult other Reddit users, including in one deleted comment that began, “I don’t want to be excessively insulting here … but are you retarded?”
October 16, 2025 at 2:02 PM
robinsonmeyer.bsky.social
hero. www.theringer.com/2025/10/13/m...
ARIANA GRANDE: How does it feel to be so fucking iconic? DIANE KEATON: I don't exactly understand what that means but it's very kind of you to say. Can you explain to me how I'm iconic? What is that?
October 13, 2025 at 3:08 PM
robinsonmeyer.bsky.social
Ubisoft: I will not forgive. I will not forget. And I *will* buy this video game when you revive it in 2029 www.gamefile.news/p/scoop-ubis...
The new game would have brought the history-spanning series to one of its most modern settings: The American Civil War and, moreso, the Reconstruction period that followed in the 1860s and 1870s. In this Reconstruction-era Assassin’s Creed, gamers would play as a Black man who had been formerly enslaved in the South and moved west to start a new life. Recruited by the series’ Assassins, he would return to the South to fight for justice in a conflict that would, among other things, see him confront the emergence of the Ku Klux Klan. That’s according to interviews with five current and former Ubisoft employees who spoke to Game File on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the project. (Ubisoft did not respond to a request for comment for this story.) The people were enthusiastic about the game but were also frustrated by its cancellation, which they perceived as Ubisoft bowing to controversy.
October 9, 2025 at 3:59 PM
robinsonmeyer.bsky.social
from @jeremywallace.bsky.social’s new essay at @heatmap.news, on China’s new UN climate pledge: heatmap.news/ideas/china-...
The new pledge — known in UN jargon as a nationally determined contribution, or NDC — reveals a disconnect between the government’s official position and the optimistic discourse that now surrounds China’s clean energy sector. China today is described as the world’s first electrostate; it stands at the vanguard of the solar and EV revolution, some say, ready to remake the world order against a coalition of petrostate dinosaurs. The NDC makes it obvious that the Chinese government does not yet view itself in such a fashion. China might look like an adult, but it more closely resembles a gangly teenager who is still getting used to their body after a growth spurt. As the analyst Kingsmill Bond recently put it on Heatmap’s podcast Shift Key, Chinese clean tech manufacturers have unlocked a cleaner and cheaper path to economic development. It isn’t yet clear that China is brave enough to commit to it. If China is the adult in the room, in other words, we’re screwed.
October 9, 2025 at 2:32 PM
robinsonmeyer.bsky.social
It’s interesting to see the regional breakdown of where folks are struggling with electricity costs in our new polling. Everyone is having some pain, but the Northeast and West leap out. heatmap.news/energy/elect...
Bar chart titled “Where High Power Prices Are Hitting Hardest.” Shows how much impact rising electricity prices have had on household finances by region. Percent saying “a lot or a decent amount”: Northeast 63%, West 61%, South 56%, Midwest 52%. Percent saying “a little bit or none at all”: Midwest 43%, South 41%, West 36%, Northeast 33%. The Northeast and West report the highest share experiencing significant financial impact from higher power prices, while the Midwest reports the lowest. Based on a poll of 3,741 American registered voters conducted Aug 22–29, 2025
October 1, 2025 at 5:09 PM
robinsonmeyer.bsky.social
Is the Mass Mutual logo the Medici family seal?
Mass mutual logo with five balls Medici family seal with five balls
October 1, 2025 at 1:00 AM
robinsonmeyer.bsky.social
One of my big questions is whether Chinese solar is as key to its energy vision as EVs are — or whether what’s happening in China is “just” ongoing electrification, and EVs are as happy to run on coal as on solar. Here is how @kingsmillbond.bsky.social replied: heatmap.news/podcast/shif...
Robinson Meyer: How do we know this is a true solar, battery, EV-led revolution — with the full electrotech, the full beautiful, zero-carbon electrotech stack — and not just the continued march of electrification, which is as happy to accept energy from giant coal plants as it is to accept energy from solar panels. Kingsmill Bond: It is always fun to debate this, but the point I think you nearly said — countries don’t have solar, but they do have coal — that’s the whole point. Everyone’s got lots of solar today. Unless you’re talking about mine mouth coal and existing assets, solar also beats coal. And that’s why we are spending $400 billion a year on expanding our solar and $40 billion a year, whatever it is, on expanding coal in a very small number of locations. This coal pathway to development was the China path up to 2000, but they’ve kind of opened up a new pathway that other countries can now take. The classic example now is India, which is clearly taking a very different pathway to that taken by China 20 or 25 years ago. And incidentally, it’s a similar story in the transport market. Certainly until recently — and indeed, even now for those who haven’t got the memo — are still forecasting that the emerging markets will follow the U.S. development path and have 16 barrels of oil per person per day of demand. But actually, China’s peaked at two and is already falling, and you’re going to see other countries following that path simply because it’s a lot cheaper. Whether or not this was by genius or design or luck, but the Chinese happened to have stumbled into a very, very successful path of finding a cheaper energy source — or a better mousetrap, as it were. I think that that’s what’s now happening across the emerging markets. If I may make one other point, let us not forget that the emerging markets are going down this path very quickly. And to give you a couple of stats on this, the classic one is the fact that from our calculations, two thirds of the emerging markets, by design, already have a higher share of solar in their electricity system than the United States, which is astonishing given that the United States is a global leader in so many other respects. In terms of electrification, it’s a quarter of the emerging markets, also, ahead of the U.S. — or Europe, actually, for that matter. And so we are seeing here that the emerging markets are going down a new path, which was not expected. And if you contrast that with the internet, for example — after 2000, internet was a pretty clear, standard graph of the U.S. leads and then Japan follows — and Western Europe, and then China, and then the other markets. But this time around, these folks are streaming into these technologies much earlier than expected.
September 26, 2025 at 2:32 PM
robinsonmeyer.bsky.social
bart simpson saying: "Now the Dutch are scoring off me. Oh, that is it.”
September 19, 2025 at 6:41 PM
robinsonmeyer.bsky.social
Three things can be true:
1. Becket made many enemies over the years, even pope disagreed with him
2. There was no govt collusion here, let alone anarchic Church overreach of Stephen era
3. HM Henry asking “will no one rid him of this meddlesome priest” unhelpful because makes look like govt threat
tweet from Ilya Shapiro @ishapiro Three things can be true: 1. Kimmel was losing money for the network/affiliates so ABC seized on this to oust him. 2. There was thus no govt coercion here, let alone the tech-govt collusion of the Biden years. 3. FCC statements were unhelpful because makes it look like threat of govt action for bad viewpoints.
September 18, 2025 at 5:53 PM
robinsonmeyer.bsky.social
A lot of Republicans — and some independents — believe the Trump administration’s claim that renewables are responsible for rising power bills.

But independents are far more likely to blame tariffs, the AI data center buildout, and Trump himself.

From our new poll: heatmap.news/politics/hea...
Dot plot titled “Americans Agree About Some Drivers of Electricity Inflation.” Shows percent of U.S. registered voters (Democrats in blue, Independents in gray, Republicans in red) who blame each cause “a lot” or “a little” for rising electricity prices. Highest agreement across all parties: state government (around 85–90%), more demand for electricity (80–85%), and utilities (about 75–80%). Oil and gas industry: Democrats blame more (about 70%), Republicans less (about 55%). Extreme weather: Democrats ~70%, Independents ~60, Republicans ~50. Data centers and grid investments: moderate across all (50–65%). Tariffs: low overall (~35–40%). Strong partisan divergence: Democrats blame Trump and Republicans (~60%) far more than Republicans do (~15), while Republicans blame Biden and Democrats (~70%) more than Democrats do (~15). Renewables also split: Republicans ~60%, Democrats ~20.
September 16, 2025 at 5:35 PM
robinsonmeyer.bsky.social
Electricity prices are increasing twice as fast as inflation. Who do Americans blame for that?

The answer isn’t — yet — President Trump.

We have exclusive new polling showing that voters are more likely to blame state govts, utilities, & rising energy demand.

heatmap.news/politics/hea...
Bar chart titled “Who Do Americans Blame for Rising Electricity Prices?” Survey of 3,741 registered voters, Aug 22–29, 2025. Respondents were asked how much they blame various factors: “A lot,” “A little,” or “Not at all.” Top factors most blamed a lot: more demand for electricity overall (48% a lot, 40% a little, 12% not at all), electricity utilities (46/40/14), state government (46/41/13), and the oil and gas industry (40/35/25). Political blame is more divided: Biden and Democrats (38/24/37), Trump and Republicans (37/22/41). Other causes: extreme weather (35/39/26), tariffs (34/26/40), new data centers (28/43/28), renewable energy industry (27/37/37), and investments into the electric grid (26/48/26). Overall, demand, utilities, and state government top the list, while renewables, data centers, and grid investments are least blamed.
September 16, 2025 at 5:32 PM
robinsonmeyer.bsky.social
yeah sure ok that would do it www.stereogum.com/2322894/zach...
The country bros are fighting! Zach Bryan, the Oklahoman singer-songwriter who is known to have a little bit of a temper, made a surprise appearance at his home state’s Born & Raised Festival over the weekend to perform his recent single “Madeline” with its collaborator Gabriella Rose. In that song, Bryan sings: “Are you back with that boy again that deserves a broken jaw?” After singing that line at Born & Raised, Bryan yelled out Gavin Adcock’s name.
September 15, 2025 at 9:02 PM
robinsonmeyer.bsky.social
For The Argument, I wrote about how the theory of attention that underpinned the iPhone failed, and what we should do about it: www.theargumentmag.com/p/youre-bein...
What stands out now, though, is the product demo. In a series of fluid gestures, Jobs starts listening to a track by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, gets a call from another Apple executive, picks up the call, and — while still on the call — goes over to his Photos app, finds and emails a photo to the executive, and then looks at movie tickets. Of course, much of this was technologically impressive at the time, including the fact that you could do anything without dropping the call. But the point, too, is one about productivity, effectiveness, and the type of life that the iPhone will enable. The message is not only that the iPhone will be useful, but that its interface will enable intentional consideration, decision, and action. Because you can see, even more clearly with the distance, the theory of attention that underpinned the iPhone: that with these calm and capable devices in our pockets, we would ourselves become calmer and more capable. That we would master what cognitive scientists call executive functioning — the ability to mentally plan, organize our working memory, and achieve our goals. That with these conscientiously designed devices in our pockets, we would ourselves become more conscientious. And you can see, too, what Jobs is really doing: He is using his phone. He is engaging in the default resting activity that will soon preoccupy Americans in living rooms and elevators, doctors’ offices and toilets. You can see how this idyll of attention became one of the great promises of American business — how it changed millions of lives and birthed dozens of subfields — and how it was completely and totally wrong. Nearly 20 years have passed since that speech. It is time to take drastic action.
September 12, 2025 at 6:42 PM
robinsonmeyer.bsky.social
Oh NO
Square profile picture New York Post @nypost I accidentally ate an AirPod — with no choice but to let it pass naturally https://trib.al/i16BPJY
September 11, 2025 at 8:24 PM
robinsonmeyer.bsky.social
I quoted this exact line in my thread (see screenshot). Literally this exact line. Saito sees Trump as doing “degrowth capitalism,” which he understands as oxymoronic because degrowth under capitalism is just a recession. But Saito also clearly sees Trump as primitively grasping toward “degrowth.”
September 9, 2025 at 3:12 PM
robinsonmeyer.bsky.social
I did read the whole article, and I screenshotted this exact passage in my thread. I *quoted* this passage in my thread!
Robinson Meyer ‪@robinsonmeyer.bsky.social‬ 3/ Kohei cites Oren Cass repeatedly, proving that even modern philosophers are still downstream of Online. Kohei adds that he sees Trump as a “degrowth capitalism,” which he sees as inherently contradictory.
September 9, 2025 at 3:09 PM
robinsonmeyer.bsky.social
3/ Kohei cites Oren Cass repeatedly, proving that even modern philosophers are still downstream of Online. Kohei adds that he sees Trump as a “degrowth capitalism,” which he sees as inherently contradictory.
In fact, the head of the conservative think tank American Compass Oren Cass passionately justifies them. He said in an interview that the past decades of offshoring, i.e. the relocation of operating activities abroad, and deindustrialization in favor of cheap, efficient production must now be replaced by reindustrialization that takes the value of a strong domestic industrial economy seriously. It is not possible to produce cheap products and offer good jobs at the same time. Cass therefore argues that Americans should be willing to pay more for more expensive TVs made in the USA, even if they are "not quite as big as they would otherwise be". Many conservatives are also upset about this merger. The author and podcaster Noah Rothman argued in the conservative-right-wing libertarian magazine "National Review" that Trump and his supporters would only adopt the left-wing anti-growth idea because they also believed that "economic growth ... is at the expense of low-income Americans". Why are customs duties necessary? Cass answers: To bring the economy back to the US, to create better local jobs and to reduce the excessive import of cheap goods from China. His argument for Trump's tariffs does indeed have some parallels to the left-wing criticism of growth. Fast fashion, cheap electric cars and cheap toys are bad for the people of the United States. The quality of life increases if the products are local, organic and handmade. Product reviews are purely editorial and independent. Via the so-called affiliate links above, we usually receive a commission from the dealer when purchasing. More information here It is also not unfounded when MAGA supporters complain that oligarchs in New York and California in particular have benefited from digitization, while the majority of Americans struggle daily to make ends meet somehow. However, Trump is a pathological manifestation of the desire for more drastic change. Pathological, because Trump's anti-growth strategy is implemented within capitalism, that is, it remains a "degrowth capitalism". This is an oxymoron, because capitalism is a system of infinite accumulation.
September 8, 2025 at 3:51 PM
robinsonmeyer.bsky.social
2/ They were wrong. First of all, I would never mock, jest, or jape. Second, the Japanese philosopher Kohei Saito — the world’s leading advocate for “degrowth communism” — wrote in Der Spiegel earlier this year that he, too, sees Trump as a soft degrowther. www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/s...
Trump could help tame capitalism A guest post by Kohei Saito The rejection of growth was long considered the idea of the left. Now the MAGA movement has discovered them for itself. Trump's economic shock policy could lead to a new kind of better economy. 05/17/25, 8:41 PM • from DER SPIEGEL 21/2025 However, the desire for an ecological revolution quickly faded, which led, among other things, to a tragic exceeding of the 1.5-degree target of the Paris Agreement. In addition, the world was gripped by a wave of right-wing populism. That is why one must ask oneself today: Is degrowth, i.e. the negation of growth, extinct? Perhaps something completely unexpected is happening again: Because US President Donald Trump is enacing degrowth with his tariffs - without probably having intended it. In an interview the other day, he said: "You don't need 35 dolls. You can have two, three, four and save a lot of money. We don't have to feed the beast." Trump thus dares to confront US capitalism with the core of communism. Even democrats like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would not have dared to do so. The story always repeats itself twice, the first time as a tragedy, the second time as a farce, as Marx said.
September 8, 2025 at 3:47 PM
robinsonmeyer.bsky.social
1/ When I wrote “Here Comes Degrowth Donald” in March, some critics retorted that Trump wasn’t actually doing degrowth. They accused me of trying to mock degrowtherism by associating it with Trumpism.
POLITICS Here Comes Degrowth Donald Mr. President, your commitment to radical climate and economic policy really does astound me. ROBINSON MEYER • MARCH 27, 2025 Dear Mr. Trump, What can I say? You astound me. You enthrall me. I am, in short, very impressed! Why? Well, earlier this month, I sent you an open letter in which I confessed that I finally understood your secret plan. It’s true, I wrote, that you campaigned as a scourge of climate activists. You publicly called global warming a “hoax,” a “scam,” and something that you “don’t believe.” Sure, that’s what you said. But, as I wrote in my letter, you have governed very differently. You are clearly terrified of climate change. Because upon being handed the reins of power, you have executed the extreme environmentalist playbook to a T. You imposed a 10% tax on Canadian crude oil — which is the dirtiest and most carbon-intensive oil burned by Americans. You levied new fees on single-family-home building materials, putting an end to suburban sprawl. You even threatened to tax cars. In short, you seemed to declare war on the dirty, polluting, carbon-choked American way of life. Yet even as I sent that letter, I still had doubts. I even added a note of warning. I said that you are a much more radical environmentalist than I am — that while I want to see carbon emissions fall, I would never take the kind of extreme actions you are.
September 8, 2025 at 3:41 PM
robinsonmeyer.bsky.social
Why can you breathe Earth’s atmosphere?

The answer isn’t that the Amazon rainforest is producing excess oxygen on the surface. (It’s not.) It’s that fossil fuels exist. I didn’t understand this at all before reading @peterbrannen.bsky.social’s new book. heatmap.news/podcast/shif...
Robinson Meyer: Why do we have a surplus of oxygen in the air in the first place? It was, for me, also something I did not understand at all before I read the book. Peter Brannen: So there’s this common trope that two out of the next three breaths you have is from phytoplankton the ocean, or a quarter of it is from the Amazon alive today. And there’s a sense in which that’s true because oxygen and CO2 are being exchanged very quickly in the biosphere. But there is something like 800 times more oxygen in the air than can be produced by the entire biosphere. And all of the oxygen that’s produced by the rainforest, say — the rainforest is a living system where everything else is consuming that organic matter and feeding off of it. And it’s kind of a wash — just as much oxygen is created by the trees as is consumed by the bugs and fungi and jaguars and all the things that are living in the rainforest that are feeding off those plants and respiring that plant matter back to things like CO2 and water. So on a net scale it’s a wash. So that gets you a planet with close to zero oxygen, and instead we have this absurd abundance of this thing that wants to react with everything. And the only way you can do that is if, say, you imagine a tree and when it dies, rather than being decomposed by fungi and beetles and on and on, that tree suddenly gets buried in sediment and falls into the crust and becomes part of the rock record, and the oxygen it made in life is not used in its own destruction. And by shielding that tree in the earth, you leave this surplus of oxygen in the air. And over all of Earth history, as a vanishingly small amount of this organic matter, things like plants and algae, do make it into the rock record, they leave an equivalent gift of oxygen in the air as a surplus. We are more familiar with plant matter in the crust where it’s economically exploitable — we call those fossil fuels. So in a weird way, the fact that me and you can breathe — I don’t think a lot of people attribute that to the fact that there’s fossil fuels in the ground. Luckily most, you know, quote-unquote fossil fuels are very diffuse in mudstones, and they’re not economically exploitable. And we’re never going to run out of oxygen by burning fossil fuels because, you know, we worry about CO2 going up in parts per million and oxygens in whole percent. So, you know, it is true that for every molecule of CO2 we burn we’re bringing down oxygen by an equivalent amount, it’s just not that concerning. But yeah, there is this astounding way of reframing, of looking at the world where the plant surface is breathable only because of what’s happened in the rocks beneath it.
September 3, 2025 at 4:24 PM