Ireland's response to the Strait of Hormuz being closed

What do we do about a huge amount of energy no longer flowing out of the Strait of Hormuz?

"Households urged to cut fuel use as Ireland braces for oil crisis"

Walking, cycling, putting on a jumper and keeping the heat lower are good ideas but on a global scale they won't effect the price of energy. And even on the Irish scale won't delay problems by a lot.

We can conserve joules and we can produce more joules on the island. 

But can we expand our energy supply quickly? China added 93gw of solar in May last year. 2 days of that would mean whenever it was sunny Ireland would have a huge excess of power.

This week we had 1.5 gw of solar at some points. And with that's 6gw addition it would have been over all our electricity. They added a GW of wind a day that month so 2 days of those additions would also help a lot here.

Adding solar is not a simple as buying some panels and waiting for them to arrive. Solar farms are easier to add GW to the grid fast. Industialised solar farm rollout happens now. Sending people up on roofs is less watts per worker per day then large numbers of panels being put onto a field. 

For it to be useful in this crises I think the government could allow

All wind farms to have permission to add solar to them. Wind is strongest on winter nights and solar on summer days. Having both in one place using a wire that's already there doesn't lose you that much power. Solar and Wind combined has planning issues in Ireland, but thats one thing the government do control.

The government could also give solar planning permission to fields within  a few km of a substation. If that rule is too free focus on those near cities. Already sometimes we cannot move electricity from the west to Dublin often 

This crisis could end tomorrow and what I will suggest take some time to work. Also it could go on years and it will not help in a dark windless fortnight in January 2027. But having a few extra GWh put into the Irish grid regularly is no small improvement. I think we do that with some small changes to our planning rules. 

6 months ago would have been a better time to install shed loads of more solar and wind here. But the second best time is today.

Ireland's Second City

Cities around the world follow Zipf's law. The second city is a certain percentage smaller, third smaller again etc.

With Dublin at 592,713, Zipf (α=1) predicts the second city should be around 296,000. Belfast is actually 348,005 — about 17% larger than the law would predict

Cork at 222,333 (rank 3) fits pretty well — Zipf predicts ~197k.

Fake People Everywhere

Soon you will only trust people you know.  

I have been learning a fun programming language called Gleam. And I wanted to read a book on it. 
The one book on it I could find was by someone called Julian Lornfield. Who has written over a dozen books in 2025 each on a different topic in computers. Theres no photo of them on the internet other then this amazon author photo. No linkedin. No youtube talks at conferences etc.

So baring some major mistake by me this is a bot churning out AI written books. It could be a real person but one without the usual trail we leave. A fake author would be odd but not something that unusual in 2025.

But to take a step up from these checks. What happens when fake reviews, linkedin accounts and these things I checked are much easier? If there was a linkedin, lots of reviews, better spacing of the release dates and even videos of talks would I have been fooled? Probably.

Making a fake account involves making photos, passing captchas, sending text back and forth between some other bots and some real people. All this is easily doable now. 

AI LLM arguments focus on the abilities at the extreme. Writing a new math proof or acing some test. But what happens when they get really good at stuff designed for normal people to easily do. Gmail wants you to get an email account. Amazon wants you to leave reviews. Emergency services want you to ring when your house is on fire. 

When LLMs get good enough at these tasks that Social media, reviews, email inboxes get flooded you will not trust anyone in the digital space you do not personally know. They pretty much are already on Twitter and facebook but other digital locations are next. The cost of an llm for the same level of intelligence decreases 10 fold per year. So if it is too expensive to build up 100 bot reviewers today it will be 1/1000th the cost in 3 years. 

For online review sites this is probably fairly obvious. But I do not think the effects on offline services are considered yet. 
999 services or dentists are not designed for 100 bots that sound like people ringing them.
Politicians and newspapers are not expecting 100 physical letters what have all been written by different bots.

If we get 100 fake ads from what looks like our bank we are likely to get one just when we are having a problem and at our most confused moment believe them.

LLMs are smart enough now to create and operate online accounts including making phone calls. The price of this will drop orders of magnitudes in a few years. The online and especially the offline world is not set up for when this happens. 

 

Off Patent Ozempic and the Summer of 2026

I predicted in 2024 that 10% of us would 6kg of bodyweight this year. Here is how an even bigger effect might happen.

GLP-1 drugs start going off patent in India, China, Turkey, Canada, Brazil March 2026

Usually when drugs go off patent the price drops dramatically (32% in one year 80% in 8 years)

And as price drops people take more of something. I am not sure how much 'importing from India' sort of stuff will happen after March. But imagine the Brazilian, or Indian population get a side hustle of bringing in generic Ozempic. Loads of people take botox injections from beauticians and that seems pretty outside the usual medical system so something similar already happens. Even just dental and baldness trips to Turkey are a big thing getting weightloss jabs while there are another potential route.

Like any drug, not everyone reacts well to these so some will try them and give them up. But what happens if a larger percentage suddenly starts taking them? Grocery spending on snacks goes down a lot. 6% reduction in total spend but most of that focused on the unhealthier foods.

But there is one effect that jumps out. Booze 

About half of booze is consumed by alcoholics or borderline alcoholics. Theres evidence that these drugs roughly half alcohol consumption in this group. If heavy drinkers take up Ozempic in a big way that will lead to a huge drop in alcohol sales. 

If the price of these drugs drops a lot the savings on alcohol will make up a significant chunk of the costs of the drug itself for this group. For example at 160 euro a month in Ireland. At 6 euro a pint in a pub here that add up to under a pint a day currently. If going off patent drops that drug price a lot these drugs could save a lot of money for heavy drinkers.

Younger people already drink less than their parents did at their age. And average drinking amounts have been falling for a quarter of a century. 

Combine the effects and its possible to imagine a huge swath of pubs closing fairly rapidly. A large cohort of the best customers reducing drinking rapidly. And general social trends showing this won't pick up in the future. Could make irelands pub culture disappear quite fast.

edit: March 31st 2026 'Sun Pharmaceutical, one of the top generics manufacturers in the world, on Saturday launched a generic semaglutide for as low as 750 rupees ($8) for a weekly injection,' that is a saving money as consumption falls price as in reduction of consumption of treats and booze would pay $8 a week. 'Snacks and soda took the brunt of reduced spending by consumers after GLP-1 treatment: snacks and confectionary (-52%), prepared baked goods (-47%), soda/sugary beverages (-28%), alcoholic beverages (-17%) ' 

Jevon's Paradox and AI

 In 1865, the English economist William Stanley Jevons observed that technological improvements that increased the efficiency of coal use led to the increased consumption of coal.  

As something gets more efficient more not less of it is used. This is going to happen to software. If a developer can produce more features and products witht he help of AI that will increase the demand for developers not reduce it.

Someone can reasonably ask but what if an AI is more efficient at all the aspects of making software. Designing specifications, testing the UX with customers, Unit testing, creating the backend code, the UI code, the security testing etc. Then the economics law of comparative advantage comes into play. Even if someone is better than me at everything we still produce more if I concentrate on the area they are less better than me at.

This does get into tricky areas as Moores law and software improvements means that as soon as software gets better than us at a a task it gets vastly better than us pretty soon afterward. The most recent stockfish 18 is about elo 4000. In 100 games the worlds best players would not even get one draw against it. Competitions between people and computers used to happen until fairly recently.

Henry Ford II: Walter, how are you going to get those robots to pay your union dues?

Walter Reuther: Henry, how are you going to get them to buy your cars?

St Brigid and Fair Division

 In Cogitosus’s Life of St Brigid the Virgin translation Liam de Paor St Brigid does a fair division into 3 equal parts. The algorithm used is not explained.

"[She divides a silver dish exactly into three]

Her miracles are great, but this one is especially admired.
Three lepers came, asking for alms of any kind, and she gave them a
silver dish. So that this would not cause discord and contention among
them when they came to share it out, she spoke to a certain person expert in

the weighing of gold and silver, and asked him to divide it among them in
three parts of equal weight. When he began to excuse himself, pointing
out that there was no way he could divide it up so that the three parts would
weigh exactly the same, the most blessed Brigid herself took the silver dish
and struck it against a stone, breaking it into three parts as she had wished.
Marvellous to tell, when the three parts were tested on the scales, not one
part was found to be heavier or lighter by a breath than any other. So the three
poor people left with their gift and there was no cause for envy or grudging
between them."

Gantt Chart Visualisations

I remember hearing years ago that real cheeseburgers could only happen after industrialisation, greenhouses and freezing as the ingredients. On the impracticality of a cheeseburger. This is also a tale of Malthusian constraints for example you would have killed cattle after they fattened over the summer. You could kill them anytime but hunger was so common the best time was nearly always picked. And because of that rennet to make cheese was only practically available then also.

I made a graph for cheeseburgers and put it on reddit where people shouted at me. We do not realise the time constraints (and malthusian ones) on food until very recently. And I think a Gantt chart is a good way to show them. That and just making a visualisation out of a Gantt chart I thought was an interesting idea.

If you know of someone else who made a visualisation out of a Gantt chart let me know as I doubt it is a new idea.

I also made one of Club Sandwiches and I think thats also an interesting story about nature and our food. The code and data are here