Stephen Shankland

@stshank.bsky.social

Head of Content at Commonwealth Fusion Systems, a company commercializing fusion energy: clean, safe, affordable, secure. Former science and technology journalist. Bird nerd. Assigned to the Conehead clique as a teenager.

A bright red bird with a thick bill and raised crest on its head perches on a branch with blurred green tree leaves behind it.

A white concrete wall with a vertical line of box-shaped protrusions, each oriented slightly differently to point a single location out of the frame to the right.

A suburban hillside scene at night with a crescent moon, its shadowed side embraced by its bright side, with a bright dot of Venus nearby.

An orca calf surfaces for air, showing its snout, white eyepatch, and dorsal fin.

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Beyond seeking to reduce emissions, the push is part of efforts to court younger consumers who, Simmons noted, were put off by the environmental impact of eating meat as well as concerns surrounding animal welfare. “I could take you to a farm in Kansas right now with 10,000 dairy cows that will be climate neutral by the end of the decade,” he said.

A Hudsonian whimbrel landing on Alisomar Beach, Pacific Grove, west of Monterey, California.

screenshot with the headline: "Trump administration to pay French company $1B to drop U.S. offshore wind leases"

An avocet with feet and wings outstretched comes in for a water landing.

Three quail with geometric patterns and ridiculous but adorable (IMO) plumes on their heads perch on an oak tree branch.

A rectangle of solar panels reflects a dusk sky with a pale orange to blue gradient. Behind are hills dotted with the lights of houses and streets. A few conifer trees are silhouetted against a bright sunset-lit sky.

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While 1Password has grown substantially in value and capability, our pricing has remained largely unchanged for many years. To continue investing in innovation and the world-class security you expect, we’re updating pricing for Family plans, starting March 27, 2026.
Current vs New Pricing:
Current price: $59.88 USD / year
New price: $71.88 USD / year

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The fourth milestone uses Q because it indicates a foundational level of fusion capability. Primarily, it’s the core achievement that shows your physics approach, your machine, and your company have successfully built the foundation for a fusion power plant. But also, it’s widely accepted and understood in the fusion research community, measured by many fusion projects, published in many scientific papers, and spotlighted as a milestone in reports like the National Academy of Sciences’ Bringing Fusion to the U.S. Grid.

Importantly, beyond the plasma itself, by making a plasma that’s Q>1 you’re in a serious regime, making a bunch of fusion power. It might not be enough to sell electricity or make money, but the plasma is starting to heat itself up and the power flows have a bunch of fusion energy in them where before they had little. You’re using fusion fuel, you’re making lots of energy, you’re dealing with neutrons and radiation.

Screenshot of site to test JPEG XL image format support. Image sizes: JXL 359kB, WebP 435kB, JPEG 538kB, PNG 2275kB (though PNG has higher SSIM score; it's lossless)

A great-horned owl with mottled feathers, a black beak, yellow eyes, and prominent "ears" perches on a horizontal oak tree branch with out-of-focus green leaves behind it.

The pre-dawn yellow sky reflects on the upper part of a glass skyscraper.

a screenshot of Zoom's mobile app in safe driving mode, which disables video

A screenshot from MacOS shows a somewhat transparent System Settings search box on top of other user interface elements

The grid layout of the Toronto area revealed by thousands of streetlights as viewed looking down from a plane, with rural areas and Lake Ontario much darker.

Screenshot of a weather forecast showing 8 or more inches of snow expected across a huge swath of the USA in coming days

Screenshot of an angle guessing game. The first guess of 60° utterly wrong but later guesses converging on the correct answer of 304°.

A gray-brown bird with a white eyestripe perched among tree twigs, looking upward with its beak open as it sings.

A German shepherd on a sandy beach with small waves, fur wet from playing fetch in the ocean.

A black and white bird of prey with a yellow eye flying in front of a hazy blue sky.

A sharp-shinned hawk on the ground extends its wings to cloak a scrub jay it caught and holds with its talons.

A woodpecker clings to a vertical part of a juniper tree, looking over its shoulder. Its underside is visible, with black-spotted breast and orange tailfeathers.

A hawk with yellow eyes and a sharp yellow and black beak stares straight into the camera. Its breast is covered with buff-colored feathers with brown oval patterning.

pink pre-sunrise clouds over dark blue mountains

A black raven standing in some short vegetation croaks with its bill open and its neck feathers ruffed.

A German shedder stands belly deep in the clear waters of Lake Tahoe, surrounded by a cluster of round boulders, with the water shifting gradually from sandy colored to pale aqua as it gets deeper.

A jumbled pattern of columnar snow crystals, their tips illuminated by sunlight

A dialog box for enabling Gemini AI features on Google Chrome asking for permission to share web page contents with Google "for more relevant answers."

$Pressing threats and longer term hazards are elevating energy to a core issue of economic and national security. Energy is at the heart of today’s geopolitical tensions, with traditional risks to fuel supply now accompanied by restrictions affecting supplies of critical minerals. The electricity sector – so essential to modern economies – is also increasingly vulnerable to cyber, operational and weather-related hazards. Decisions taken by energy policy makers will be crucial to address these risks, but they do so against a complex backdrop: Geopolitical fragility coexists with subdued oil prices. Ongoing conflicts and instability sit alongside oil market balances showing a large surplus of supply over demand. Countries are prioritising energy security and affordability but are reaching for different levers to achieve them. Some, including many fuel-importing countries, lean towards renewables and efficiency as solutions. Others focus more on ensuring ample supplies of traditional fuels. There are fractures in the international system and uncertainties over the outlook for trade, but energy trade is more important than ever. Abundant supplies of oil, solar panels, batteries and, before long, liquefied natural gas (LNG) create strong incentives for producers to seek out international markets. There is less momentum than before behind national and international efforts to reduce emissions, yet climate risks are rising. 2024 was the hottest year on record and the first in which global temperatures exceeded 1.5 degrees Celsius (°C) above pre-industrial levels.$