I work on EngineerSF helping companies scale through non-obvious methods. I share my updates and musings on startups, energy, and the macro here pseudorandomly whenever I have a fortress of thoug...
America is the king kong of markets and dwarfs the rest of the planet. It is the only game in town for scaled upward mobility. Everywhere you look, someone is calling for the next big American crash. The Big Short and Margin Call became popular. Everybody wants to be Michael Burry now. I've caught myself doing it too. People keep pointing at the 1970s, 1999, and 2008 as premonitions as if the…
When the semiconductor industry got access to the technology to reverse engineer chips, the quantity of new chip designs and output went up dramatically. I believe we are about to hit the same point in web and mobile applications but faster. In 2016 there was a slew of scraping and crawling tools. I believe there will be just as many tools that turn web and mobile applications into APIs. The…
Took my father to Palma a few months ago. Saturday March 7th, 2026, I got the call. ~2 weeks ago I was sprinting through an airport trying to get on a flight back to Houston because my dad might be paralyzed. That's a sentence you don't really rehearse for. I didn't fall apart—didn't do the dramatic movie-scene breakdown—I just got quiet. Started praying, started asking other people to pray, which…
Good twitter thread worth reading.
oilstorage.engineersf.com - put this together. Have a gander. tldr - Oil storage lowers the likelihood of long term elevated oil prices from geopolitical events. The bigger the buffer, the shorter the impact of conflicts. The game mechanics of oil price modulations have shifted drastically, I think we're in a world of refinery shortages as I outline here and as well there's strong technical…
My mind is racing.
Powell Industries ($POWL)) makes medium voltage bespoke switchgear and packaged power solutions and is HQ'd in Houston, has ~3k employees, and is ~80 years old. The Thesis I believe $POWL — and I've taken a position as such at $20 and then again at $350 — is set to become a $100B–$200B market cap company in 10–20 years in such an odd way. I might buy again at $750, fingers crossed. Has ballooned…
I figured America would have to cope with burgeoning infra, healthcare, defense, defense, and pension debt sometime in the next 5-15 years. After some deliberation and brainstorming, I think we can kick the can down the road by 25-50 years and we have plenty of pivots to fend off the future now. I put together a resource on why our investment hamster wheels runs better than any other country on…
My theory on this is that as a civilization, humans are experiencing the pains of a system of living introduced 137 years ago, that unless confronted, will topple the western way of life. We cannot advance our next generation unless we remove the care (healthcare and retirement) of our elderly back to the system of relying on sons and son in law(s) (in scenarios whereby a family has only…
This blog post was triggered by my theories on how the tyranny of taking care of elders will encroach upon every expense the state adds to the taxpayer, even our transport. TLDR We just witnessed history's largest social experiment — and it bombed spectacularly. For millennia, families cared for their own. Then we outsourced elder care to the state, promising freedom from obligation. The result?…
I'm in South London now for a few months. Politics - Vivek Ramaswamy will throw the Ohio election, a democrat will be governor. Full disclosure, I bet money on it on Kalshi. Energy - The EU will consume more natural gas per kwh than ever before with its new diesel phase outs. I bought some $POWL and DCA into $UAN as a speculation. Labor - The shortage of plumbers, electricians, and HVAC…
TLDR: American homeowners are overpaying $149 billion annually due to fraudulent property assessments, with 30-42% of their tax payments servicing old municipal debt instead of current services. Property tax consultant Mitch Vexler estimates the cumulative impact at $5 trillion in excess payments over decades³¹, as 3,143 counties manipulate property values to fund a $797 billion annual revenue…
TL;DR: The Construction Crisis Nobody's Talking About Black lives matter was Ground Zero for the contention between how onerous an underfunded pension police force can get and the local population. Ferguson, Missouri a city of 21,135 people — issued 32,975 arrest warrants for nonviolent offenses, mostly driving violations. The forces I discuss here can, have, and will continue to tear apart the…
Vehicles can be converted to run on compressed natural gas with relative ease. TLDR: The US has the world's largest natural gas reserves (24% of global production) and infrastructure, yet maintains the world's most restrictive CNG regulations, resulting in <0.1% market penetration while China operates 8.76 million CNG vehicles and India has 7.5 million. EPA certification costs $100,000+ per engine…
There comes a time when every economy needs an Accountant. TLDR: The Hidden Government Takeover and How Venture Capitalists, Private Equity, and Hedge Fund Managers are Largely Glorified Gov't Contractors Side Note: Wrote this with Ai because there's a dizzying amount of memory lookups needed. Even if you're a member of the above, you're unavoidably seeking exit liquidity from public pension money…
I believed the USDA rural loan program was one of the last refuges for those at the bottom against a regime of new taxes, fees, and expenses coming to the American taxpayer. https://dailyyonder.com/analysis-trump-2026-budget-slashes-rural-housing-and-other-programs/2025/05/06/ USDA Programs Key USDA housing programs that would receive zero 2026 funding under the Trump budget include USDA Sec. 502…
Prelude: Coining MARC™ I’m coining a term: Mutually Assured Refining Capacity (MARC)™ . Unlike Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), which relies on nuclear deterrence, MARC™ binds nations through their dependence on scarce oil refineries. We can call it a working thesis, idea, or idea under development - the guard rails of energy flows, a primary way I evaluate geopolitics and its limits from time…
The data shows that America will simply be too old for war and manufacturing. Consider this. Arizona passed a new law and it was revolutionary in that it creates a streamlined pathway to licensure for America’s skilled workers by allowing them to apply their out-of-state training toward a similar license to work. Arizona achieved this with dual chambers of congress controlled by Republican.…
My latest obsession has been looking up median ages of countries. It's a whirlwind of a subject and my mind meanders while I write this. I am someone who for all practical purposes is always thinking about metrics, data, conditional probabilities, human behavior, energy, and how they intertwine in stochastic systems. Median age for the last decade wasn't on my mind as much, but now it's going…
tldr: There's a lot of bullshit going on right now about Lithium propulsion boats and planes, don't trust the energy return on investment or viability of its profitability...it's fundamentally a net negative energy return on investment. Edits* - there's a hacker news thread where I'm getting roasted by programmers, I'll survive. Profitable = productively profitable for the amount of PE or venture…
TLDR - There's going to be no return of manufacturing at any relevant scale without a fix in labor, construction, pension, currency, and tariff planning in the right order. There's a mismatch between US know how at the executive branch and relevant capabilities. I've written before on the major issue s, here I provide somewhat prescriptive solution to shutoff some of the bottlenecks to reshoring…
tldr: India advances as far as it can with poor property laws and limited energy production capacity and the metrics show it. Piyush Vedprakash Goyal (born 13 June 1964) is an Indian politician who is serving as Minister of Commerce and Industry since 2019. " What are India startups of today—we are focused on food delivery apps, turning unemployed youth into cheap labour so the rich can get their…
Forewarning: This post is the anti-Montauk blog post. Brace yourselves for extreme bias. I'm Texan and not from a Montauk-ian institution. There's this sense that those in VC and PE and Hedge Funds are foundational bootstrapping swashbuckling industrialists. Nothing could be further from the truth. In the words of my lacrosse coach, a bit of a drunkard who definitely seemed to partake in…
Good ole Corporate espionage. If they were this sloppy with unacceptable deplorable corporate espionage, then how sloppy were they with compliance in terms of money transmission and anti-money laundering initiatives? Have they moved money for people and companies doing shady things? It's a question worth asking. You can find posts about the malicious corporate espionage behavior here. I've used…
I think my accumulated portfolio above will outperform 95% of $250M or less VC, PE, and Hedge funds in the next 5 years in terms of risk, liquidity, and returns. I guesstimate a 7x on $TRAK in 5 years or less. repositrak.com I guesstimate a 3x on $PRTH in 5 years or less. prioritycommerce.com I guesstimate a 4x on $NGVC in 5 years or less. naturalgrocers.com Repositrak - $TRAK $TRAK - you can read…
There's dangerous rhetoric on the order of WMD being pushed as it relates to Iran. Iran does not want to shut down the Strait of Hormuz. You'll see a lot of American Dynamism Montauk Trustwad New Yorker VC types and people who complain about Qatar and its subversion of DC and hold other middle eastern flags over the US flag without any viable criticism. They are half wits, sell outs, and liars. I…
One may have to raise one's cerebral atrophy, to raise that sweet nectar of pension money via VCs, I've often thrown pot shots at the Kurzwelian CS neuroscientist self-proclaimed polymath physicist types. "Great you trustwad, you know physics and math and CS, but you know nothing of chemistry, biology, geology, energy, and materials and the analog realities of the world." In no uncertain terms, if…
Designing and Launching a Smart Modular Power Distribution Unit for High Performance Compute Whitfield Systems Note: This post is a detour from the normal. Been wrangling on tech in O&G gas with my friends Reggie and Amir for a good bit and we designed a new type of PDU so I can’t help but talk about it and in advance warning to readers, you may find this post a bit drier than my normal stuff. It…
TLDR: The USDA Rural loan program may be a last refuge and upward mobility token available to the masses against the backdrop of a hostile tax regime coming to a locale near you. We're at a point in time where western countries have onerous pension, infrastructure, and healthcare taxpayer debt per capita and this issue is unlikely to get resolved anytime soon. Greater than 50% of US GDP will…
I've gotten a lot of messages asking how I predicted there would be many assassinations. I've always denoted that historically when the middle eastern faction of powers are disrupted, that assassinations multiply. History doesn't repeat itself, but it certainly has tempo and rhythm. Look at my timestamps. I fully believe there's going to be a lot more assassinations, helicopter accidents, and…
My old spot on Twin Peaks. Over the years many of you have seen me write about how onerous pension, infrastructure, and healthcare debt per taxpayer became a wrecking ball to humanity and particularly so for locales with a lot of it. California is a great example. Browse CalMatters and TruthInAccounting for endless data points. There's A TON of people in tech who want to fix California, but…
I guesstimate that commercial office property taxes make up a 5% to 15% chunk of a locale's tax revenue. It's something worthy of discussion. For example, the decline in office values is projected to cost the District of Columbia $464 million in combined tax revenue over the next three fiscal years. Similarly, San Francisco could lose $150 million to $200 million annually by 2028, about 5-6…
A photo from 2021. Bankside. I'm tempted to publish more often and write more often, so I will. I love it when all of you respond with thoughts and commentary, so thank you to those of you who have. I've been shocked at the growth in subscribers. I'm in London now. I had a 1.5 hour chat with a Moroccan London black cab driver. Here's what the black cab looks like. When I was younger, I wanted to…
The food here is awful, the view is amazing - a UNESCO world heritage site. I grabbed my water for 10 minutes and headed back to my laptop. - Spain has a severe water shortage unlikely to be fixed anytime soon. I haven't had much time to write as I've been deep on some optimization problems for work. TLDR: Water shortages are proliferating because soil depletion accelerates under a carbon…
I'm writing here from Spain. Sitting here sipping tea while thinking about Fusion. TLDR: Mankind won't spend hundreds of billions for a ~10%-20% gain in specific energy over a fission plant, removing radioactive isotopes from lithium reactor jackets is onerous, and dispatch & transmission of energy always have costs. A lot of friends ask me "Will fusion save us?" The answer is quite a simple no,…
I got way more subscribers than I expected doing this. I've been work-cationing in Europe for the past 6 weeks spending a few weeks with my business partner here in Lisbon and also spending time in Spain. Lisboa, Portugal Next up on the plate in the next 4-8 weeks, I'll be writing about: Why Fusion is Irrelevant and Unlikely What the World's Transformer Shortage Means for Natural Gas Water…
TLDR: American Dynamism or American reshoring isn’t coming to a city near you at any level of real big scale. Taken from google images - from A16Z's marketing materials. I’ll keep updating this post with more reference data as it arrives. There’s been much ado about American Dynamism’s announcement with numerous videos and blog posts and much fanfare on twitter.…
This post was originally written here and got bookmarked over 500 times, way more than I expected. For the engineers who wanna build physical things at a large scale in the USA (not using pension money or gov't or VC money)/ ie - being resourceful, here's some brouhaha for ya...... For everyone else, this will put you to sleep........ I have had the privilege of working with squadrons of…
Kumar’s Natural Gas Sector Bull Thesis Disclosure: My gambles here from least risky to most risky were $FCG, $UAN, and $TELL. I now believe the nat gas bull thesis is strong, but I believe picking the winners is harder now and the thesis is now mainstream. This is not investment advice. "In short, China 1000x'd the number of compressed natural gas vehicles in their country in 15 years. They rely…