Fusion Hype and Other Things

Hi Friends,

This was a busy week. It was my last week at work for the year (I’m on vacation for the next two weeks!), and I was on-call. I had lots of cleaning and errands to do because we wanted to leave the apartment in good shape. It’s nice to come back to a clean, tidy apartment after a long trip. The alternative stresses me out.

Luckily my on-call rotation at work is pretty light, but I didn’t do myself any favors by also trying to make significant progress on my main project while fielding tickets. I’ll set those expectations better during my next rotation.

Given all that, I didn’t get up to much outside of work and errands. I’d have liked to read more and spend more time on my Carbon Post blog, but some weeks it just isn’t going to happen. Consistency in the long run is what’s important. Every week can’t be perfect.

That said, I didn’t do nothing. I finished or mostly finished taking notes for my breakdown of the Climeworks sorbent patent. It’s pretty remarkable that you can just find on the internet such a detailed breakdown of one of the core technologies behind a company like this. There is a decent amount of jargon and chemistry, but overall the language is pretty accessible. Some cool things I learned:

• The sorbent is made from cellulose nanofibers, which means the material is regrowable!
• When explaining the preparation of liquid solutions, they consistently reference this type of laboratory-grade blender called an Ultra-Turrax. I looked it up and found the most amazing/cringe commercial advertising it.

I caught up on the latest Economist magazine. My work pays for a subscription and I like reading about macro-econ stuff. Most of the news is about inflation, China’s zero-covid policy, how gas prices are being affected by the war in Ukraine.

I was excited to hear about the nuclear fusion breakthrough from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. I think most of the sensational coverage was overselling the immediate impact this will have: it doesn’t really put widespread commercial fusion any closer than existing estimates. But it is certainly an encouraging milestone on the way to clean, limitless energy 🙂

One of my goals for the new year is to get better at cooking. I want to expand my recipe vocabulary (is that a thing?), and have a more instinctive feel for what to make and how to make it. This week at my parents’ house I’m perusing their cookbook library for yummy veggie recipes.

That’s about all I’ve got this week. I hope you are enjoying some downtime as 2022 comes to a close!

Stay safe, and see you next week ❤️