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Iris on science · June 18th
storyflo · science
Jun 18, 2026 · 15 min listen
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Iris on science · June 18th
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Technology moves forward. No matter what else is happening in the world, technology marches forward. Technological innovation is happening every day, and that long march of progress has led to solar panels becoming tremendously cheaper and much more efficient from 2009, when I started covering the industry, to today. I recall covering new solar cell and solar module efficiency records repeatedly over a decade ago, but such records continue to get broken in 2026.
Hi! This is Everything Is Amazing. There’s a popular meme that’s been haunting me for the last few years: I have no idea who invented it, or drew the original it’s adapted from, or how long it’s actually been going. But as a Brit enduringly baffled by Brexit or what’s happening with international politics, when I see it, I think: “yeah - wow, every year since 2016, right?” You’ve probably gathered by now from my idiot-dog-with-a-bone enthusiasm that I very much don’t believe our world is spiralling out of control - but this meme still gets to me, with its quietly whispered OH FOR PITY’S SAKE WHAT NOW, LOOK, PLEASE, CAN WE ALL JUST TRY BEING MORE NORMAL FOR A CHANGE? Then I remember my archaeological training, and the history lessons that went with it. Let’s imagine you’re an inhabitant of London in the year 1667. Two years ago, the profound horror of the Great Plague was stalking the streets, taking at least one-sixth of your fellow Londoners with it. Then, late last year, a small fire in a bakery in Pudding Lane got out of control, quickly leaping from house to house until it had burned down half of the old city, destroying St. Paul’s Cathedral along the way… And now (“OH COME ON!”), in mid-1667, you’re hearing that the Dutch fleet has just sailed up the Thames, plundering and sinking English ships as it went, until it captured and towed away the jewel of the English navy, the flagship HMS Royal Charles. On June 12th, in his not-yet-famous diary, Samuel Pepys writes: “And, the truth is, I do fear so much that the whole kingdom is undone.” A month later, he concludes: "…in all things, in wisdom, courage, force, knowledge of our own streams, and success, the Dutch have the best of us, and do end the war with victory on their side". It’s an incredibly humiliating turn of events, and it’s left England dangerously undermined in military power and prestige - suddenly making your country’s place in European politics feel alarmingly precarious. As a Londoner, how would you be approaching the new year? I reckon most of history is like this, if you looked hard enough at it. But hey, that’s way too much to think about. What about now? What about all this? And to hell with the big stuff - what about down here, at ground level? If you’re already feeling like 2026 is too much to handle, and you can’t quite muster the enthusiasm to tackle the rest of this year in the way you really wanted to - I think I have the perfect book for you. It was out yesterday in the States, and it’s out tomorrow in the UK - and it’s by my friend Mr , who is now writing on Substack here. For the last five years, Steve has thrown himself into the philosophy, psychology and behavioural science of navigating failure and change, and he’s drawn on his 17 years of experience helping frantically over-busy people transform their health at Nerd Fitness (which he founded in 2009), to work out some good ways we can all get ourselves un-stuck. It’s aimed primarily at anyone who has found themselves temporarily flattened by something in their lives - some chaotic wider event or cruel twist of personal fate that’s totally knocked the stuffing out of them. This is very much a practical book about how to get yourself up and moving again, rediscovering your energy and excitement as you go. But it’s also a book about what you’re moving forward towards - and this is why I’ve got Steve’s permission to publish the following excerpt from its third chapter. Take it away, Steve: “In order for us to take our next step, we need a new life skill. One that might change your life like it did mine. Enter ‘acceptance’. As a recovering overachiever, I used to believe that acceptance is a sign of weakness. I thought it meant giving up all ambition, letting myself off the hook, and enabling lazy behaviour. So I made things worse instead: I set high standards and remained unbelievably critical of myself, always felt behind, and never felt ‘enough’. I know. Super fun! Fortunately, I couldn’t have been more wrong. Acceptance is the most important skill that helped me navigate these last few years. Instead of lamenting about life not going a certain way, or complaining that things didn’t work out the way I expected, acceptance taught me to see things for how they actually are. Depending on when you read this, we might be in the middle of yet another once-in-a-lifetime, world-changing event that nobody saw coming. Personally, at the time of this writing, I could point to ten things that have me concerned. I just paused to gesture wildly in every direction, so feel free to do the same. The only truth is that we will never be able to accurately predict what life will throw at us next week, let alone next month or next year. Which leaves us with two choices. We can spend all day raging at the universe when things don’t go the way they should, or we can get to work accepting things for how they are now.
The Trump administration has already chosen its nominee to lead the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). But after attending a Brownstone conference in Connecticut this past weekend, I found myself reflecting on the remarks of the physician who didn’t get the job. Dr Joseph Marine, a cardiologist at Johns Hopkins University who was considered for the role, delivered a remarkably candid assessment of what he believes the CDC must do if it hopes to recover from the damage caused during the Covid years. His message is simple — before the CDC can regain public trust, it must first confront its own mistakes. That may be easier said than done. The CDC remains one of the most influential public health agencies in the world, but after the pandemic, it is also one of the most criticised and least trusted. Policies on lockdowns, school closures, masks, vaccine mandates, and the evidence used to justify many of those decisions have left the agency facing a crisis of credibility that could take years to repair. Marine’s talk was not a call to dismantle the agency, but rather an attempt to answer a question that few public health leaders seem willing to ask — what does genuine reform actually look like? His answer begins with ethics. Public health, he argues, needs a clearer moral foundation — one that respects individual rights, acknowledges uncertainty, avoids unnecessary harm, and uses the least restrictive measures possible to achieve a public health goal. That principle leads directly to one of his strongest criticisms of the pandemic response: lockdowns. Marine believes the CDC should formally renounce mass lockdowns as a public health strategy. Traditional quarantine has long been used to isolate individuals known to have been exposed to a serious threat. Locking down entire populations for months at a time was something very different. Even if such policies could be shown to reduce transmission, Marine argues, they would still raise profound ethical questions in a free society. The social, educational, and economic costs fell disproportionately on those least able to bear them. He is equally critical of the role “fear” played during the pandemic. Doctors are taught that manipulating patients through fear is unethical. Public health, he argues, should be held to the same standard. “The CDC should lead with courage and confidence, and never with fear,” he says. Fear may produce compliance in the short term, but it comes at a cost. It damages trust, weakens social cohesion, and can leave the public feeling misled when worst-case scenarios fail to materialise. Another lesson, he says, is the importance of acknowledging uncertainty. One of the defining failures of the pandemic response was the tendency to present unsettled questions as ‘settled science.’ Yet science advances through questioning, testing, and revising conclusions as new evidence emerges. Marine says that the CDC should become more comfortable saying “we don’t know” when the evidence is uncertain, rather than projecting confidence that the data do not support. That concern extends to the quality of evidence behind public health recommendations. Marine argues that too many pandemic-era policies rested on observational studies, modelling assumptions, or expert opinion rather than strong clinical evidence. He cites examples such as six-foot distancing rules, masking recommendations for young children, and prolonged school closures — policies that, in his view, were often presented with greater certainty than the underlying evidence justified. As a cardiologist, he points to cardiovascular medicine as a model. Clinical recommendations are routinely graded according to the strength of the evidence supporting them. Findings from multiple randomised controlled trials carry more weight than expert opinion alone. He says public health should adopt the same discipline. But perhaps Marine’s most striking observation is how little reflection has occurred since the pandemic ended. Despite what he describes as the “most significant medical event in 100 years,” there has been remarkably little effort by institutions to examine what worked, what failed, and what should be done differently next time. In medicine, physicians routinely conduct morbidity and mortality conferences where mistakes and poor outcomes are openly reviewed.
Everyone with even a modicum of sense has been predicting OpenAI’s self-inflicted demise for a while now. It is painfully obvious that this is not a sustainable business. Their product is insanely expensive and has basically no economies of scale, and while it might be impressive to a specific breed of narcissists and sycophants, it simply doesn’t bring in enough cash to cover its ludicrous operational costs. OpenAI is more akin to a cash-hungry black hole than a sustainable business. Many, including myself, have predicted that it will go bankrupt soon (read more here). But it turns out OpenAI’s ship is sinking significantly faster than even the most pessimistic predicted. Let me explain. This revelation comes from Ed Zitron, who received an exclusive look at OpenAI’s IPO filings, which detailed the company’s actual balance sheet for 2024 and 2025. But before we dive into this information, to truly wrap our heads around the news, we need some context. Currently, OpenAI is a private company, which means that we don’t have a clear view of its financials. So, analysts have had to estimate its balance sheets based on Sam Altman’s breadcrumb clues. Would you like to hear people’s predictions for OpenAI’s 2025 financials? On the very optimistic end, one external report predicted that OpenAI would post a net loss of $8 billion in 2025. That is a major escalation from 2024, in which they posted a $5 billion loss and had to effectively be bailed out by their corporate backers. I cannot emphasise this point enough, but an $8 billion loss would still be horrific news for OpenAI, as it proves their losses grow as they scale, not shrink. That heavily implies that, no matter how much they grow, they will always burn cash. On the more realistic end, others predicted 2025 would be significantly worse for Altman. Take my previous article, in which I used analysis from The Information, which predicted that OpenAI would have operating costs of $28 billion in 2025 and a grounded estimate of $11.9 billion in revenue for the year, resulting in an estimated net loss of $15.6 billion. That is nearly double the previous prediction. This is actually higher than some predictions for their 2026 net loss ($14 billion), and these predictions also maintained OpenAI would go bankrupt by 2027. That should give you an idea of the horrific consequences involved in such a colossal loss. However, other estimates painted a much more grim outlook. I covered The Information’s reporting on OpenAI’s 2025 H1 financials in my previous article. In the first half of 2025, OpenAI reportedly generated $4.3 billion in revenue while incurring $17.8 billion in operating costs, resulting in a net loss of $13.5 billion. That meant OpenAI was losing about three times more money than it was earning and was on track to post a net loss of roughly $27 billion by the end of the year.
The piece is a commentary, not a new study—just a speaker’s reflection on how animal‑rights progress is accelerating. It sketches a fictional 2060 rescue at a neural‑interface lab, then uses that story to illustrate real‑world trends: dozens of state farm‑protection laws have risen from zero to over forty‑four, public opinion on animal testing has flipped from majority support to about half opposition, and the movement now has legal teams, media links, and broad grassroots backing that were missing in the early 2000s.
Three forces drive the optimism. First, institutions are finally opening up to rights expansions; once the momentum starts, it’s hard to reverse. Second, cultural attitudes have shifted steadily against animal cruelty for two decades. Third, the activist network has rebuilt its capacity, so lawsuits and corporate pushback no longer cripple the cause.
Because of those shifts, the speaker tightens a 2016 prediction—animal liberation could arrive by 2040 rather than 2055. The take‑away is that change is happening faster than expected, and many see a realistic chance of ending institutional animal cruelty within our lifetimes.
Nuclear plants are cheap to operate—about $34 per megawatt‑hour in 2024—but the upfront price tag is huge. A new large reactor costs roughly $8 k per kilowatt to build, and the only recent U.S. project, Vogtle 3‑4, ended up around $16 k per kilowatt, meaning a $35 billion spend before a single kilowatt‑hour is sold. By contrast, a combined‑cycle gas plant costs about $800 per kilowatt, so the total investment is roughly one‑twentieth of a nuclear build and can be up and running in two to three years.
The disparity isn’t just engineering; it’s regulatory. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission must recover 100 % of its budget from licensees, so a new reactor faces $50–100 million in fees and a six‑year (often longer) review before construction even starts. Each extra year adds roughly $700 million in financing costs. Gas developers pay only modest filing fees, and their permitting process is funded by congressional appropriations, not by the developers themselves.
On top of that, nuclear construction is bound by a 1960s‑era quality‑assurance regime that forces every weld, cable and component to be documented and re‑checked. A 2010 NRC study estimated those rules add 15–25 % to costs. Vogtle’s experience showed failure rates of 40–80 % for component tests, which triggered costly rework cascades. Gas plants follow standard commercial codes, so they avoid that bureaucratic overhead.
All of this means the capital cost gap—driven by fee‑recovery mandates, lengthy reviews, and strict QA requirements—largely explains why nuclear output has stayed flat since 2000 while natural‑gas generation has more than tripled. The fuel side is the opposite: gas plants spend most of their operating cost on volatile fuel prices, whereas nuclear’s fuel cost is a tiny fraction of the total.
The biggest news this week comes from the grid‑scale battery market. Industry data show 112 GW of new storage was installed in 2025—a 50 % jump from last year and ten times the amount added in 2021. The United States accounted for about 16 % of that capacity, China for half, and the rest is spread across the globe. On a per‑person basis Australia is pulling far ahead; in the last two years it added more big‑battery power than any other country, and one in 25 Australian homes now has its own residential battery. Those batteries smooth out supply when the sun or wind are strong and cut the need for gas‑fired “peaking” plants.
On the balcony‑solar front, the picture is mixed. In Minnesota a bill that would have legalized plug‑in solar panels failed this year, but supporters say the effort is gaining momentum and a re‑vote is likely in 2027. An electrician in Oregon warns that current U.S. wiring codes still lack certified bi‑directional protective devices, so connecting plug‑in panels safely isn’t possible yet. By contrast, UK regulators have just cleared the safety question, and manufacturers expect balcony‑solar kits to hit the market there within months, priced from a few hundred to a couple of thousand pounds.
A separate, sobering study from India estimates that a single day of extreme heat adds about 3,400 excess deaths nationwide, and a five‑day heatwave pushes that number toward 30,000. The authors mapped the risk to districts, finding Uttar Pradesh alone could see over 8,000 excess deaths in such an event. At the same time, a journalist’s investigation of the Hooghly estuary shows two inhabited islands have already become uninhabitable because river‑
India’s coal use has risen over 40 % in the last ten years, and during last month’s heat wave coal‑fired plants supplied about 62 % of the nation’s electricity. The country is now adding more than 23 GW of new coal capacity, a scale that dwarfs the modest campaigns of U.S. NGOs like the Sierra Club, which are pushing to close plants in the Midwest.
The piece argues that, regardless of climate rhetoric, the “Iron Law of Electricity” holds: societies will do whatever it takes to keep the lights on. It points to real‑world examples—from illegal hookups in India to generator mafias in Lebanon—to illustrate how essential reliable power is for everyday life.
Geopolitical shocks, such as the Iran‑related LNG squeeze, have nudged global generators toward more coal, lifting worldwide coal consumption by roughly six % in the past year, according to an energy analyst cited in the article.
Overall, the author suggests that while coal may feel outdated, current data show it remains a dominant, often unavoidable, source of power across many regions, especially where alternatives are scarce or expensive.
I’m looking at a piece that pushes back on Alex Karp’s Palantir manifesto, which frames AI as a weapon‑building duty for Silicon Valley and warns against “intolerance” toward religion while lamenting the loss of forgiveness for public figures. The author points out that the first claim already plays out in Palantir’s own contract with Israel, where AI tools are feeding targeting systems, so the “hard‑power” argument isn’t theoretical at all.
They also call out the inconsistency: the manifesto decries elite hostility to faith, yet it ignores how religious zeal can be just as unforgiving, and it defends shielding elites from scrutiny while ordinary people’s private data get exposed without mercy.
In the end, the piece suggests the real problem isn’t a single celebrity’s jokes, but a double standard that lets tech firms shape both warfare and the public’s privacy, leaving us to wonder who really decides what’s “acceptable” in the AI age.
The piece argues that praise can quickly turn into a craving, pulling us away from the original reasons we work, study, stay healthy, or nurture relationships. When we chase approval, the activity itself loses meaning, and we may start hiding parts of ourselves just to keep the positive feedback flowing.
It suggests that genuine value—like an emerald’s beauty—doesn’t need external validation to exist. Whether we’re praised or criticized, the underlying worth stays the same; the danger lies in letting others’ opinions dictate our self‑worth and motivations.
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