Irish Electricity Goes Majority Solar

 From Greencollective

I think this 29% figure (1207MW out of ) is actually close to 50% of the electricity in Ireland.

In Ireland small scale solar is shown as a fall in demand. the metrics measure solar farms and small scale production is used on site or locally and not shown in the full supply figures only in demand reductions.

"Of the cumulative solar capacity, 1,322 MW comes from utility-scale solar plants and 727 MW from distributed microgeneration. Total mini-generation and small-scale commercial are also growing, at 74 MW and 53 MW respectively"

Total hidden: ~854 MW or 65% of the solar farms capacity. That means if farms were producing 1207 smaller were probably around 784MW. 

Total imports at the time were 966MW all from the UK. The UK at the time was 43.4% Solar so thats 419.24MW

To add these up
Irish grid-scale solar=1223
Solar-originated imports=419
Hidden Irish embedded solar=784
Total~2,426 MW
Demand at the time was 4101 MW. 
So 4101+784 hidden demand= 4855 MW
2426/4855=50%


Domestic solar is not as well maintained or situated as farms so them being 65% of farms is probably optimistic. But if they are less that also reduces the hidden demand they satisfy so the total % does not drop fast. 

We are not in May yet which means we have a month and a half of natural increases in solar radiation to come. Which will move the calculation to barely getting to 50% with some optimistic figures well past it if the weather is good.

The annual near 30% increase in solar means that the output of a good weekend day in 2026 becomes a weekday in 2027, becomes an ok day in 2028. At which points grid batteries become the most important way to reduce usage of fossil fuels. 

Ireland is the likely the worst country in the world for solar. Which means if we are reaching this point not everyone else is in a potentially better situation. 

2 climate bets: Results are in China and World Coal in 2025

 I made a bet early in 2025 that China would reduce its coal usage for electricity in 2025.

The bet is here and I blogged about it before here

A bet has been accepted between u/TrueCryptographer982 and u/cavedave for $10. That according to Ember Energy statistics China will create less electricity from coal in 2025 than it did in 2024. David taking the prediction that it will be less. And we can settle when the results are in.'

The Ember energy data can back with 

Year Coal_TWh

2024 5851.81

2025 5781.19

Which is a tiny reduction but still meets the bets wording.

The other side of the bet said they would not pay the bet and got abusive.

The other bet made was that Coal usage in the entire world for electricity would drop from the previous year in any year 2025-2026

This happened last year according to ember energy statistics.

They also have refused to pay for the bet so far.

It seems strange to me to me not to pay your bets. 

There are 11064 Cars in Luxembourg

I was in Luxembourg recently and saw 4 cars when I was there. Their registration plates were 1396, 1871, 2383 and 8852

This made me wonder if I could estimate the total number of cars in Luxembourg. 

This is the German Tank problem where the British in WW2 found some serial numbers on German tanks in north Africa and wanted to use those to guess how many tanks had been produced. If you are sure the serial number on tanks goes up by one each time and they started with number 1. Then if you have seen the highest number 100 in looking at 3 tanks of after looking at 50 you can have a better estimate to the highest number of tank made.  Also if you see a tank with number 1000 you know at least 1000 have been made. 

A formula to estimate the total number based on seeing k serial (registration) numbers where m is the highest number seen is the MVUE (Minimum Variance Unbiased Estimator) N ≈ m + (m/k − 1)

Which gives an estimate of 11064 total cars in Luxembourg.

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%) ' 

Indian GLP-1 generics prices in April 2026 have already dropped to below 40 euro a month.

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
 

We Didn't Start the Fire Graph

I made a graph of when people in "We didn't start the fire" were born, did the act referenced in the song and died. Because Bridget Bardot died people found it interesting that only three people. Chubby checker, Bob Dylan and Bernie Goetz remain alive of those mentioned in the song.

The reddit post of the graph got popular and it was picked up by a few online newspapers.

People Magazine, The Poke, the Express, fox news and extra.ie  and the Irish star

Bonus points for a tabloid including my argument about Popperian epistemology in their quotes.

There were a few weird things I found out in this process. 
None of the journalists messaged me. My handle was in the image and you can message the creator of a post on reddit but none did. The poke messaged me when I was one of their 25 funny tweets of the week 4 years ago, so not doing that now about an entire article is a change.

I found a few of the authors of articles email addresses. This is hard now as how to contact a journalist now seems to be hidden. I messaged them a new version of the graph with some fixes in case they want to use that one instead, but none replied.

A fair few of the Articles using my picture I can't see as they are geo-blocked. It is a bit odd that they can take something I made and not talk to me and not let me see they thing they made from it.

and

and

My silly picture is not important. But on a bigger scale huge numbers of silly pictures and jokes have made the internet fun for the last several decades. And in my experience when one of these was yours in the past some amount of credit came back to you. It didn't pay any bills or anything. But it did feel in some way that you putting in an effort was recognised and at least part of a very large group of people making silly stuff to entertain people. If the incentives are now one way, where a news organisation can use something and you can't even see it that seems like the general internet bargain has become skewed. 

Where Britain invaded in an Anamaniacs Song Dance

An Irish woman named Emma invented an the Animaniacs song listing the Countries of the World and jumped whenever a country that hasn't been invaded by Britain is mentioned.

Her video is here 

Below is the lyrics with the countries she jumps for marked in RED.

United States, Canada, Mexico, Panama
Haiti, Jamaica, Peru,
Republic Dominican, Cuba, Carribean
Greenland, El Salvador too.
Puerto Rico, Columbia, Venezuela
Honduras, Guyana, and still,
Guatemala, Bolivia, then Argentina
And Ecuador, Chile, Brazil.
Costa Rica, Belize, Nicaragua, Bermuda
Bahamas, Tobago, San Juan,
Paraguay, Uruguay, Surinam
And French Guiana, Barbados, and Guam.

Norway, and Sweden, and Iceland, and Finland
And Germany now one piece,
Switzerland, Austria, Czechoslovakia
Italy, Turkey, and Greece.
Poland, Romania, Scotland, Albania
Ireland, Russia, Oman,
Bulgaria, Saudi Arabia
Hungary, Cyprus, Iraq, and Iran.
There's Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan
Both Yemens, Kuwait, and Bahrain,
The Netherlands, Luxembourg, Belgium, and Portugal
France, England, Denmark, and Spain.

India, Pakistan, Burma, Afghanistan
Thailand, Nepal, and Bhutan,
Kampuchea, Malaysia, then Bangladesh (Asia)
And China, Korea, Japan.
Mongolia, Laos, and Tibet, Indonesia
The Philippine Islands, Taiwan,
Sri Lanka, New Guinea, Sumatra, New Zealand
Then Borneo, and Vietnam.
Tunisia, Morocco, Uganda, Angola
Zimbabwe, Djibouti, Botswana,
Mozambique, Zambia, Swaziland, Gambia
Guinea, Algeria, Ghana.

Burundi, Lesotho, and Malawi, Togo
The Spanish Sahara is gone,
Niger, Nigeria, Chad, and Liberia
Egypt, Benin, and Gabon.
Tanzania, Somalia, Kenya, and Mali
Sierra Leone, and Algiers,
Dahomey, Namibia, Senegal, Libya
Cameroon, Congo, Zaire.
Ethiopia, Guinea-Bissau, Madagascar
Rwanda, Mahore, and Cayman,
Hong Kong, Abu Dhabi, Qatar, Yugoslavia...
Crete, Mauritania
Then Transylviania,
Monaco, Liechtenstein
Malta, and Palestine,
Fiji, Australia, Sudan.

list of not invaded places. All these sorts of things are arguable as the borders of countries and such change over time.Not in the song but not invaded are Andora, Belarus, Central African Republic, Ivory Coast, Kyrgyzstan, Marshall Islands, Sao Tome and Principe,  Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Vatican City

The 40-tool limit in Tools of AI

Theres a rule of thumb in AI agents where they should only be able to call 40 apis. After that confusion between different systems becomes a problem. Cursor has a hard limit of 40 in its MCP setup for example.

This i think could be a cognitive limit (like Dunbars number). The documentary The Price of Everything describes how Stefan Edlis an art collector only collects 40 artists (and 200 works of art). And how a hedge fund manager says that 40 is the limit on the number of stocks an analyst can follow.

It could be that there is a 40 limit on the number of complex things you can track and possible 200 individual abilities is the limit.

By having parameters,

my life is a lot easier.

- Which parameters?

- Well, 200 works, 40 artists.

-I mentioned that to a very important hedge fund guy about

five, six years ago, he smiled.

He says, "That's interesting.

My analysts can only follow

about 40 stocks."

Climate Bets on Coal

 I have made two bets on climate recently. 

I believe coal usage for electricity by China will be lower in 2025 than it was in 2024. Using Ember Energy as a data source. And I will take a $10 bet on that at 50:50 odds.

and one on world coal usage. I think this year 2025 will have lower coal usage for electricity in the entire world than 2024. But if any of the years coming up do I will win this bet. 

I am not sure on these bets. I just calculated now 
The percentage change in coal generation from 2024 to 2025 is: -0.72% but a lot can change in the remaining months.

Silvermines Hydroelectric Energy Storage Project versus batteries

Pumped storage is cool. We have too much energy at night and not enough at peak times. So saving some electricity up is a good idea. 

One such scheme is €650m hydroelectric energy storage which will be able to store as much as 296 Megawatts (MW), with a daily storage capacity up to 2,175MWh of electricity. And employee 50 people long term.

It is just in the process of getting planning permission now. So it probably wont we operating for 7 years based on experiences elsewhere. 

Pumped storage has advantages of batteries. It doesn't go on fire. And the turbines last about 50 years not the 15-20 that batteries last. The initial infrastructure costs are high but once built it is cheap.

But just on the face of it how much would a battery version of the Silvermines project cost?

Technology	€/kW (power)	€/kWh (energy)	Notes
Pumped storage hydro (PSH)	~2,000–3,000 €/kW	~100–200 €/kWh	Civil-heavy, very site-dependent; long life (80–100y). Costs stable for decades.
Lithium-ion (utility scale, LFP)	~400–600 €/kW	~80–120 €/kWh	Costs have fallen ~90% since 2010; China auctions hit <€50/kWh module-only. Life ~15–20y, ~6,000 cycles.
Iron-air (Form Energy target)	~1,700–2,400 €/kW	~20–30 €/kWh	Still pre-commercial; very cheap energy, but low efficiency (~60%) and expensive per kW install (slower response). Life ~30y.

Iron-air batteries are inefficient and not widely used yet but they do get around the fire issue that worries people with lithium ion batteries. Lithium batteries have had a long term trend of more than halving in price every 5 years. 

It looks to me that at the moment pumped storage and batteries are about equal. Given how batteries keep getting cheaper though it is probably the case that by the time the Silvermines project completes they will seem to be the better option.

The best Worlde Words for the Lazy

 If you pick early words in wordle that have a lot of the commonly used letters you are likely to get to the correct word guess faster.

But say you were lazy and want to use the same 2 or 3 words all the time and then look at what letters hit or nearly hit to find the next word to guess. 

the best pair of words is 'raise' and 'clout' which leaves an expected remaining 5.1 words that could be the answer given what letters hit and near hit.
And the best 3 words are raise clout nymph which leaves 1.75 words on average that could still match the patters you will have seen.

If you want to be super lazy the best 4 words are 

These won't be as good as Crane followed by optimal picking of the next word given pattersnt hat were hit. But it will be pretty close and good for the lazy.

Grid Batteries could pay for themselves in 18 months in Ireland

I think grid batteries could pay for themselves in 18 months in Ireland. In January I calculated this as taking 3 years. 

Solar in May and June were enough here that it caused a bigger drop in wholesale price than usual during the day. You can see this as electricity prices drop below night time prices during the afternoons now.

This means that if you have a cheap enough battery it is economically feasible to buy at night and sell at 7am. And buy again at 2pm and sell at 8pm.

The recently set record-low tender price of €44 per kWh of battery storage, a one-kilowatt-hour battery following the May–June 2025 Irish spot-price spread would recoup its capital cost in  about 16 months on a gross basis, or  about 18 months after allowing for 90% round-trip efficiency. 

This is buying every night at 3am. Selling at 7am.
Buying again at 2pm and selling at 8pm. Losing 10% each time.
If you were clever and you could predict the best time that day to buy and sell for that day. Not just a do this everyday at this time strategy. These correct predictions would increase this profit. and reduces the payback time to 13 months including round trip losses. 

This wrongly assumes the all months are sunny like May and June were so spread persists year-round and excludes maintenance, inverter, and degradation costs. But also there is a lot of free electricity you would not have to buy at the wholesale price. ''2024's wind dispatch down rate is 14%'' means 14% of the time (usually winter nights) the electricity has no price and is not put onto the grid. Storing that, at your wind farm, and selling it in the morning is higher profit than our May/June calculations. Which would offset some of the lower profit from the lower solar then.

This is a rough calculation using Chinese battery prices but still it looks like a battery asset with a long lifespan is paid off in 2-3 years.

Code for this analysis is here

Solar has been doubling every 3 years for a long time. This graph might give some idea of what 2026 and 2027 will look like. The higher the peaks and troughs the higher the profit in storing the power.

An analysis of the last 365 days assuming knowing the perfect time to buy and sell electricity gives enough profit to pay for the battery at the Chinese tender prices. 

Period analysed: 2024-07-03 → 2025-07-03 (365 complete days)

Total profit: €45.01 per 1 kWh

Lido in the micro nation of Pimlico

I watched passport to Pimlico. A 1949 fantasy about the ability to buy fruit, clothes etc without rationing.

The post war labor government that introduced the NHS kept strict reasons and export controls. The film is effectively wish fulfilment about these being removed.

The 19 families in the besieged nation, in the bombers out ruins off Post WW2 London, build an outdoor swimming pool. Something Dublin can't do now

Euclid, Fermat, and the 65537 Reasons We Have Never Drawn Their Last Shape

 1. Straight Edge and Compass Euclidean Constructions

From the time of ancient Greece, geometers have been fascinated by what can be built using only two tools: a compass and a straightedge. These "Euclidean constructions" formed the foundation of classical geometry. You can copy a line segment, bisect an angle, draw perpendiculars Euclid's Elements are full of constructions and theorems that are built from these two tools.

But some polygons cannot be drawn this way. A regular 7-gon is impossible. Why? Because the set of constructible polygons is tied deeply to number theory, to Fermat primes.

2. Fermat Primes and Drawing Them

A Fermat prime is a prime number of the form

Only five such primes are known: 3, 5, 17, 257, 65537

Carl Friedrich Gauss at age 19 by proved that a regular polygon with sides is constructible if and only if is a product of a power of 2 and distinct Fermat primes. This means a regular 65537-gon is theoretically constructible.

One mathematician actually attempted to do it. Johann Gustav Hermes spent over a decade and 200 pages , detailing how to construct a 65537-gon using Euclidean methods in Ueber die Teilung des Kreises in 65537 gleiche Teile  in 1894. 

3. The 65537-gon

If you tried to actually draw a 65537-gon on a circle the size of the Earth (with of 6,371 km), each side would be approximately 611 meters long. Which means on a flat lake one side of the 65537-gon would not follow the earth's curvature by 3cm. A 65537-gon would be 3cm per 611 meter side off being a perfect circle. 

No one has ever made a by hand 65537-gon because it would just be too involved. though Hermes did spend ten years working out how it could be done in principle.

A 65537-gon (not a circle)

4. A Machine to Draw It for Us?

Could we build a machine that uses only a compass and a straightedge, like Euclid himself? Plotters could draw the 65537-gon by calculating angles and coordinates, but Euclid has famously tough lawyers and anyone making his shape not using his methods is likely to be mired in law suits

Such a Euclid Geometry machine would have to:

• Set distances using a mechanical compass

• Draw arcs

• Align a straightedge through marked points

• Draw straight lines with a pen

• Combine these steps tens of thousands of times

It would follow the ancient Greek rules of construction.

This would be rock hard to make and not practically useful. It would involve, aligning a  ruler through two points. Resetting a compass to exactly the distance between two previous marks, which is mechanically fiddly. Detecting intersections and points on paper. All of this is simple for Ancient Greek humans but not for machines.

And yet, it would be beautiful. It would make visible not just the result of geometric thinking, but the process. A Euclid-bot wouldn’t just draw geometry it would demonstrate it.

There are cool online geometry tools but something about plotters and physical drawing things still appeals. Maybe it would be possible to make a ruler and compass wielding machine that could finally draw the 65537 sides of the last Polygon.