Latest posts
- Reading List 05/30/26May 30, 2026Brian Potter
A California chemical leak, weapons-grade plutonium for nuclear reactor startups, a startup that will clean your house to get robot training data, Blue Origin’s rocket explosion, and more.
- Where Are the Economies of Scale in Homebuilding?May 28, 2026Brian Potter
Over the last few months we’ve examined the extent of the construction industry’s productivity problem.
- Reading List 05/23/26May 23, 2026Brian Potter
Squatter removal services, Apple finding uses for defective chips, process heat use in California, the brewing Colorado River crisis, and more.
- The Rise of Build-to-Rent HousingMay 21, 2026Brian Potter
A major shift in the housing market in the last several years is the rapidly increasing popularity of “build-to-rent” homes — single-family homes that are built specifically for the purpose of being rented out.
- Reading List 05/16/26May 16, 2026Brian Potter
Tokyo’s cheap housing and expensive land, the House response to the Senate housing bill, an IED near an Alabama dam, Fervo’s IPO, and more.
- Reading List 05/09/2026May 09, 2026Brian Potter
Trapped buildings, in-home data centers, cardboard military drones, Brightline’s potential bankruptcy, and more.
- Reading List 05/02/2026May 02, 2026Brian Potter
Chilling effects in the build-to-rent sector, how fast could robot manufacturing scale up, PJM’s new interconnection queue, the backlash against battery storage, and more.
- How an Oil Refinery WorksApr 30, 2026Brian Potter
Though wind and solar continue to carve out larger and larger shares of world energy supply, the modern world still runs on petroleum, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
- Reading List 04/25/26Apr 25, 2026Brian Potter
Transformer steel manufacturing, textile engineering, bringing power plants online quickly, infrasound, and more.
- Construction Costs Rarely FallApr 23, 2026Brian Potter
Not long ago we looked at construction productivity trends for the US and for countries around the world. We found that in the U.S., and in most other large, wealthy countries, construction productivity is stagnant or declining. Unlike manufacturing and agriculture, or the economy overall, which generally show improving productivity over time, in the field of construction we find that productivity
- Reading List 04/18/2026Apr 18, 2026Brian Potter
A quadruped welding robot, the China Shock 2.0, transformer startups, China’s mysteriously moving satellites, and more.
- Reading List 04/11/2026Apr 11, 2026Brian Potter
Is the Strait of Hormuz open yet, building code cost benefit analysis, Intel joining Terafab, sponge cities, and more.
- Helium Is Hard to ReplaceApr 09, 2026Brian Potter
The war in Iran, and the subsequent closure of the Strait of Hormuz, has unfortunately made us all familiar with details of the petroleum supply chain that we could formerly happily ignore.
- Reading List 04/04/2026Apr 04, 2026Brian Potter
Aluminum disruptions, the EV rust belt, the ongoing transformer shortage, SpaceX’s IPO, and more
- Information and Technological EvolutionApr 02, 2026Brian Potter
I spend a lot of time reading about the nature of technological progress, and I’ve found that the literature on technology is somewhat uneven.
- Reading List 03/28/26Mar 28, 2026Brian Potter
Plastic price jumps, crypto-backed mortgages, a proposed AI data center pause, US battery manufacturing, and more.
- The Age of the AmplifierMar 27, 2026Brian Potter
As we’ve noted more than a few times before, for most of the 20th century AT&T’s Bell Labs was the premier industrial research lab in the US.
- Reading List 03/21/26Mar 21, 2026Brian Potter
Damage to the Ras Laffan LNG facility, housing bubble risks, North Korea’s naval production, Bezos’ $100 billion for manufacturing automation, and more.
- How Much Computing Power is in a Data Center?Mar 19, 2026Brian Potter
Every day there’s some new story about the enormous amounts of investment in building AI data centers.