Fire 'em back up. (Adobe) Every now and then something crosses my screen that stops me mid-scroll. This week it was an argument that coal fly ash might help break China’s chokehold on rare earth elements. It is not a bad though…
Grit. (Bakerconstruction.com) If you ever sit down with Dan Baker long enough, you realize the man doesn’t talk in clichés. He talks in lived experience. Everything he says comes from some job where his …
Follow the Line. Follow the Money. If you’ve been following the Type IL situation the last few years, you’ve heard every excuse under the sun about why Portland limestone cement suddenly became the “future” of American concr…
Pipe dream. (Adobe) Every once in a while, the cement industry drops a headline so painfully obvious you wonder if anyone has been awake for the last decade. This week’s gem? Europe is sounding the alarm that cement prices cou…
Progress. (Adobe) Dominion Energy just filed its 2025 Renewable Portfolio Standard plan with the Virginia State Corporation Commission. It’s their roadmap for meeting Virginia’s renewable energy mandates under the Clean Economy Act.If y…
Changing of the guard. (Adobe) Back in July, we covered the U.S. Department of Energy report A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate. It didn’t get nearly the attention it deserves. The report—…
A rare glimpse of the Creative Minds of Cement in their natural habitat - a castle. (OpenAI) It was a crisp autumn morning in late 2021 when the tolling of bells echoed through the vaulted halls of Castle Valkenhorst, perched high on a Euro…
Don’t worry, we’ll just dig our own—how hard can it be? For decades, we’ve been told that free trade keeps the world out of trouble. The logic was simple: if countries are busy buying, selling, and shipping each other’…
Somebody’s paying for all this concrete… hope it’s not my Xbox bill. (photo credit: Adobe) I ran across a couple of blog posts from Harris “Kuppy” Kupperman over at Praetorian Capital. The guy’s a veteran hedge …
Is NVIDIA an Astros fan? (Getty Images) Enron was the golden child. By 2000, it was the seventh largest company in America, worth more than sixty billion dollars. The business magazines loved them. Wall Street analysts couldn’t say enough goo…
Raising cane (Adobe). If you think groceries are expensive now, just wait—this winter they could double. Back in March, I wrote about McKinley’s tariffs and how history showed us exactly what happens when governments play with trade ba…
By Victor Gillam - https://pixels.com/featured/monroe-doctrine-1896-granger.html, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=82247860 I read an article from Doomberg, one of my favorite geopolitical writers, and it got me thinki…
Back in 2011, the cement industry told us portland-limestone cement (PLC) was no risk. The updated State of the Art Report 2024 walks that back. Now it admits PLC can have higher carbonation, chloride ingress, and admixture sensitivity—but don…
I don’t spend my days at the country club or hanging out in boardrooms. I’m a business development guy in concrete construction. That means I’m chasing projects, knocking on doors, and keeping our name out there. If I end up on a g…
The Department of Energy just released a report that probably isn’t getting the attention it deserves: A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate (July 2025). It was written by a group of respected scientists&…
Cement plant at Lime, Oregon (Credit: Middlebury College) The EPA is trying to roll back the 2009 Endangerment Finding for motor vehicles. I haven’t heard anyone else say it, but I think there’s a chance that move could spill over into …
The EPA is moving to roll back the 2009 Endangerment Finding — at least for motor vehicles — and with it, scrap the CO₂ limits that were supposed to tighten the screws on model years 2027 through 2032. If this happens, automakers…
Three Gorges Dam | Doomberg I was recently catching up on my favorite Substacker Doomberg's insightful piece titled "Five Dams in Tibet," discussing China's colossal Medog hydroelectric project. Scrolling through the comments, I stumbled upon a sta…
I had a guy working on my chainsaw the other day, and he starts talking about gasoline. He tells me that regular gas, the kind with ethanol blended in, is ruining small engines. Says the ethanol gets into the carburetor, gums things up, and …
The U.S. just took a big swing in the fight for supply chain independence. Through a $400 million investment, the Department of Defense became the largest shareholder in MP Materials, the only company mining rare earth elements in the Unite…
I’ve never been a flag-waving cheerleader for American imperialism. In fact, I used to be pretty disgusted with how we tried to run the world. But lately, I’ve changed my mind—not because we got better, but because I finall…
Fort Monroe, Virginia - Oldest Military Base | Source: Visit Hampton Virginia The latest spending bill—officially called the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act"—just landed, and while everyone's busy debating tax cuts and defense budgets, we'r…
Heat might help your schedule, but it’s hurting your concrete. We’ve said it before on the podcast, and after spending another hour with Bob Higgins, it’s worth repeating: hot weather pours don’t give you better concrete&mdas…
If you want to understand why energy is getting more expensive—and why industrial growth feels like it’s dragging through wet concrete—look at Colorado. What was once a solid energy-producing state has quietly become a case study …