Alexander C. Kaufman (kaufman)

New feature in Heatmap News: Last week, Department of Energy announced GE Vernova Hitachi Nuclear Energy and Holtec International as last week's winners of the $800 million contest for funding to deploy the country's first third-generation small modular reactor. I couldn't help but wonder, what happened to NuScale Power? Just a few years ago, NuScale was *the* SMR play, so much so that the company nabbed $SMR as its stock ticker when it IPO'd. When I wrote my first-ever big feature on SMRs back in 2022, I profiled Holtec because the company had experience in manufacturing and seemed like an unconventional, under-discussed subject. When I interviewed a former Holtec employee, the worker cast doubt that the company's SMR-300 would ever be deployed. Instead, the ex-employee said, it would build someone else's reactors at its power plant sites. “NuScale is at the front of the line right now,” they told me. “It’s more realistic to bet your horses on that.” What a difference a few years makes. https://heatmap.news/energy/nuscale-stock?next_url=%2Fenergy%2Fnuscale-stock

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GM Farcaster. In this morning's edition of Heatmap News AM: 1. Washington State's floods trigger an evacuation order for 100,000 residents. 2. With his economic approval rating plunging, President Trump insists China isn't beating us on building new electricity generation. 3. Rivian bets on self-driving cars. 4. The House passes a trio of permitting reform bills. 5. The EU announces a two-pronged strategy to fix its grid. PLUS: Scientists just discovered a new frog species, a tiny little orange guy, deep in the Brazilian mountains. https://heatmap.news/am/washington-flooding

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This is an interesting piece about YouTube creators finding themselves on the precipice of having to take journalistic ethics a little more seriously: https://www.niemanlab.org/2025/12/journalism-will-become-the-center-of-gravity-for-youtubes-next-era/ I have seen this happening with some of my favorite channels already. Definitely a positive trend.

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This is very cool. I know journalists aren't as natural a fit here as we are on X or Bluesky. So I'm especially grateful to all of you who have shown such an earnest curiosity about my work, engaged in good-faith debates, and offered me some real old-school internet friendship since I joined here earlier this year. It's made me feel welcome, and made me look forward to logging on to Farcaster.

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Charlie Kirk usually showed up on my social media feeds in videos where he confronted college students who vehemently disagreed with him, engaging in debate that — whether you felt it was in good faith or not — did often demonstrate opposing views of real issues in this country, albeit from a heavily partisan perspective. More recently I saw videos of him going head to head with right-wing antisemites, whose arguments about Jews controlling everything Kirk ripped apart. Seeing that helped me appreciate where he stood in broader right-wing political discourse — a populist, no doubt, but not one so craven as to abandon his principles to go to the furthest extremes his audience may go. His death is a tragedy. The photos of him with his kids made my stomach drop, and the videos of his shooting are going to haunt me for a long time. His death is an ominous sign of worsening political violence, a disease afflicting both sides of the spectrum. Consider the Palestinian child murdered in Chicago, and the Jews assassinated in D.C. and flamethrowered in Colorado. Recall the Democratic lawmakers killed in June in Minnesota, the assault on Nancy Pelosi’s husband, the attempted kidnapping of Gretchen Whitmer. Think about all the incidents of drivers plowing into protesters in the street. We cannot sustain a democracy if people who peacefully gather to express their views and try to persuade others fear assassination. All that does is push evermore political discourse onto the social media platforms where vile extremism thrives. I pray those in power who knew and loved Kirk will honor the best part of his legacy by resisting the urge to carry out revenge or quash dissenting speech.

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Exciting news: I have recruited an excellent journalist to join us here on Farcaster. He’s a literal Pulitzer Prize winner, a business journalist, the editor of a prominent publication and a Substacker. He’s also a math genius and an entertainment nerd who wrote one of my favorite books on the cultural export economy. He’s also really interested in crypto and learning more about the diversity of the community of people who invest in it. I’ll let him announce himself formally but trust me when I say you’ll be thanking me later for getting him on the platform.

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Got an absolute unit of an oyster mushroom from the Mennonites at the farmers market yesterday.

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