Subscribe
Sign in
Home
Essays
Reading Lists
THE ORIGINS OF EFFICIENCY
Archive
About
Latest
Top
Discussions
Reading List 05/02/2026
Chilling effects in the build-to-rent sector, how fast could robot manufacturing scale up, PJM’s new interconnection queue, the backlash against battery…
5 hrs ago
•
Brian Potter
70
2
April 2026
How an Oil Refinery Works
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…
Apr 30
•
Brian Potter
260
3
13
Reading List 04/25/26
Transformer steel manufacturing, textile engineering, bringing power plants online quickly, infrasound, and more.
Apr 25
•
Brian Potter
47
1
Construction Costs Rarely Fall
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…
Apr 23
•
Brian Potter
157
15
13
Reading List 04/18/2026
A quadruped welding robot, the China Shock 2.0, transformer startups, China’s mysteriously moving satellites, and more.
Apr 18
•
Brian Potter
102
1
1
Reading List 04/11/2026
Is the Strait of Hormuz open yet, building code cost benefit analysis, Intel joining Terafab, sponge cities, and more.
Apr 11
•
Brian Potter
119
3
4
Helium Is Hard to Replace
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…
Apr 9
•
Brian Potter
284
42
24
Reading List 04/04/2026
Aluminum disruptions, the EV rust belt, the ongoing transformer shortage, SpaceX’s IPO, and more
Apr 4
•
Brian Potter
118
2
Information and Technological Evolution
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.
Apr 2
•
Brian Potter
155
21
11
March 2026
Reading List 03/28/26
Plastic price jumps, crypto-backed mortgages, a proposed AI data center pause, US battery manufacturing, and more.
Mar 28
•
Brian Potter
96
1
2
The Age of the Amplifier
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.
Mar 27
•
Brian Potter
195
8
9
Reading List 03/21/26
Damage to the Ras Laffan LNG facility, housing bubble risks, North Korea’s naval production, Bezos’ $100 billion for manufacturing automation, and more.
Mar 21
•
Brian Potter
90
1
2
This site requires JavaScript to run correctly. Please
turn on JavaScript
or unblock scripts
