Patrick FitzGerald

Carbon & clean power

[Patrick FitzGerald @ptrckftzgrld]

The New National Parks Company

[Nan Ransohoff @nanransohoff]

New blog post: The third wave of American philanthropy

Hundreds of billions of dollars in new philanthropic capital will soon become liquid. The OpenAI Foundation holds 26% of OpenAI, worth about $220B at today’s valuation. Anthropic’s seven co-founders have pledged to give away 80% of their wealth and have instituted the most aggressive donor matching program for employees in tech history.

How much does this all add up to? And how meaningful is that in the context of philanthropy today?

I was doing some simple napkin math to wrap my head around the scale of what’s coming, and radicalized myself in the process. I had dramatically underappreciated the scale of the philanthropic capital that’s about to become available and the corresponding gap in talent and organizations that will be needed to make the most of it.

This piece aims to directionally sketch the scale of what’s coming, the gap in operational capacity needed to absorb it, and what we can do to fill it.

(Link to full post in reply)

[Patrick FitzGerald @ptrckftzgrld]

@SiliconSalvage When are you and @buccocapital hosting your next Barbie?

[Patrick FitzGerald @ptrckftzgrld]

@Keyes @ProgressIreland Huge distraction. Deploy what’s proven, cheap and scalable now. Get out of our own bloody way to do so.

[Patrick FitzGerald @ptrckftzgrld]

Bezos’ exchange with Shatner after his space flight was similar. Given a chance to share in a 90 year old’s wonder after touching space, Bezos turned away, and called for the bubbly.

[Mike Young @micyoung75]

Noah Hawley attended Jeff Bezos's private Campfire retreat in 2018. His wife broke her wrist. He told Bezos directly - not as complaint, just as human information from one husband and father to another. Bezos looked horrified, an aide materialized instantly, and he was whisked away.

No "I'm so sorry." No "do you need anything." Just escape.

Hawley's thesis in The Atlantic is not that the ultra-wealthy are evil. It is something more precise and more unsettling: that moral reasoning develops through consequences, and the environment of extreme wealth systematically removes consequences from a person's life. When you can buy your way out of any mistake, fire anyone who disagrees with you, and exist in a social circle entirely composed of people who need something from you - the basic mechanism by which humans learn that other people are real goes dark.

This is different from classic narcissism, which typically masks insecurity. What Hawley is describing is something rarer: a self-definition in which the individual has genuinely grown to the size of the universe and the universe has contracted to fit. Elon Musk calling empathy "the fundamental weakness of Western civilization." Trump asked about checks on his power saying the only thing that could stop him was his own morality. Peter Thiel concluding that freedom and democracy are incompatible.

These are not poses. They are the logical endpoint of a psychology shaped by years of operating in a world that never pushed back.

The Bezos encounter is the piece's sharpest detail because it is so small. He was not cruel. He was not contemptuous. He simply could not locate, in that moment, the impulse to respond like a person who understood that another person's wrist hurt.

[Patrick FitzGerald @ptrckftzgrld]

For all his Zen, Naval is some grifter

[Dave Nadig @DaveNadig]

@naval Pretty much the worst possible structure for a legally issued security in the U.S. Market: the non-traded Closed End Fund. Congratulations, you found the grift pile sitting right next to non-traded REITs and BDCs. Enjoy the 3% sales load!

[Patrick FitzGerald @ptrckftzgrld]

If compute supply lags demand growth, does AI become a scarce asset? Another point of leverage for capital over labour?

[Patrick FitzGerald @ptrckftzgrld]

@JigarShahDC Conclusion: AI becomes a scarce asset?

[Patrick FitzGerald @ptrckftzgrld]

The meta message from @anthropic’s relentless release cycles is that if every other software company were to become as AI-pilled as the anthropic teams are, then maybe they’d stand a chance…

[Ryan Mather @Flomerboy]

🧵 My tips for getting the best results out of Claude Design! I’m on the verticals team at Anthropic which means I serve 7 different products. Claude Design makes it possible!
1. Set up your design system and your core screens. An hour of setup and refinement here is worth it

[Ryan Mather @Flomerboy]

🧵 My tips for getting the best results out of Claude Design! I’m on the verticals team at Anthropic which means I serve 7 different products. Claude Design makes it possible!
1. Set up your design system and your core screens. An hour of setup and refinement here is worth it

[Patrick FitzGerald @ptrckftzgrld]

It’s some team tbf

Sport: Henry Shefflin
(10 All-Ireland hurling titles)

Arts & Culture: Maureen Kennelly
(Druid Theatre CEO; fmr Arts Council Director)

Justice: Caoilfhionn Gallagher KC
(Ireland's Special Rapporteur on Child Protection; Doughty Street Chambers)

Defence & Cybersecurity: Pat O'Connor
(Co-founder VRAI; 22-year veteran Irish Defence Forces; UN peacekeeping, Syria & Lebanon)

Agriculture & Food: Ray O Foghlu
(Co-founder, Hometree)

Education: Mike Feerick
(Founder Alison; world's first MOOC platform; 50 million learners)

Enterprise & Innovation: Brian Caulfield
(Chair Scale Ireland; Venture Partner, Molten Ventures)

Digital & Data: Anne O'Leary
(VP Meta EMEA; fmr CEO Vodafone Ireland)

Energy & Climate: Jim Barry
(fmr CIO BlackRock Alternatives; fmr CEO NTR)

Foreign Affairs & Diaspora: Loretta Brennan Glucksman
(Chair Emerita, The Ireland Funds)

Health: Mary Horgan
(Ireland's Chief Medical Officer; first female President of Royal College of Physicians of Ireland in 363 years)

Infrastructure & Transport: Jim Mintern
(CEO CRH; Ireland's largest company)

Housing & Planning: Michael Stanley
(CEO Cairn Homes; 12,000+ homes delivered)

Finance: Rachael Ingle
(CEO Aon Ireland; Chair of the NTMA)

Taoiseach: Feargal O'Rourke
(Chair of the IDA; fmr Managing Partner PwC Ireland)

[Patrick FitzGerald @ptrckftzgrld]

Fantasy football, Irish cabinet edition.

Picking up on @SineadOS1’s post, what would real leadership look like here?

My squad below - who’d I miss?

[Sinéad O’Sullivan @SineadOS1]

The enshittification of Ireland and the hollowing out of our institutions is the single largest threat to Irish civil society and prosperity.

In this damning piece, I'm going into more detail about the graph I posted yesterday: why it's happening in Ireland, why the way we're thinking about the protests is entirely wrong, and what this means for our collective governance. Link to the article is below!

[Patrick FitzGerald @ptrckftzgrld]

Fantasy football, Irish cabinet edition.

Off the back of this week's @SineadOS1 and @davidmcw's articles, been thinking about what real leadership could look like here.

Here's who I'd pick to reshape Ireland. Who'd I miss?

--

Sport: Henry Shefflin
(10 All-Ireland hurling titles)

Arts & Culture: Maureen Kennelly
(Druid Theatre CEO; fmr Arts Council Director)

Justice: Caoilfhionn Gallagher KC
(Ireland's Special Rapporteur on Child Protection; Doughty Street Chambers)

Defence & Cybersecurity: Pat O'Connor
(co-founder VRAI; Irish Defence Forces; UN peacekeeping, Syria & Lebanon)

Agriculture & Food: Ray O Foghlu
(co-founder, Hometree)

Education: Mike Feerick
(founder Alison; world's first MOOC platform; 50 million learners)

Enterprise & Innovation: Brian Caulfield
(Chair Scale Ireland; Venture Partner, Molten Ventures)

Digital & Data: Anne O'Leary
(VP Meta EMEA; fmr CEO Vodafone Ireland)

Energy & Climate: Jim Barry
(fmr CIO BlackRock Alternatives; fmr CEO NTR)

Foreign Affairs & Diaspora: Loretta Brennan Glucksman
(Chair Emerita, The Ireland Funds)

Health: Mary Horgan
(Ireland's Chief Medical Officer; first female President of Royal College of Physicians of Ireland in 363 years)

Infrastructure & Transport: Jim Mintern
(CEO CRH; Ireland's largest company)

Housing & Planning: Michael Stanley
(CEO Cairn Homes; 12,000+ homes delivered)

Finance: Rachael Ingle
(CEO Aon Ireland; Chair of the NTMA)

Taoiseach: Feargal O'Rourke
(Chair of the IDA; fmr Managing Partner PwC Ireland)

--

The talent is here, but the pipeline into public life and civic contribution simply isn't.

[Patrick FitzGerald @ptrckftzgrld]

Smash and grab.

[Sinéad O’Sullivan @SineadOS1]

Life expectancy measures wealth and demographics, not health infrastructure which is in here. Ireland has the highest bed occupancy in the OECD, 43% fewer beds than the EU average, 900,000 on waiting lists, and 75% of GP lists closed to new patients. Education attainment is high yes, but 35,000 of those graduates emigrated last year because they can't afford to live here. The graph measures what the state builds and delivers, not outcomes that succeed despite it.

[Patrick FitzGerald @ptrckftzgrld]

I've built a carbon markets database from 10 registries covering 500k transactions, 1.5b retired credits, and 340m forward commitments.

Then I modelled the carbon footprint of 10 GW of data centre demand (the scale SoftBank is planning for a single installation in Ohio) powered by open-cycle gas over a 25-year lifecycle.

Same number. ~1.5 billion tonnes. The emissions equivalent of every carbon credit ever retired over nearly 20 years.

I keep coming back to the same questions:

If this is the scale of power demand that's coming (and the global pipeline is north of 100 GW) isn't decarbonising power the single most impactful thing we can do?

And to stay relevant, how can carbon scale from a hobbyist pursuit to an industry of real global consequence?

I'm opening 10 free licences to the data platform for investor, buyer, and developer clients. The DC modeller's open to all - feedback welcome.

[Patrick FitzGerald @ptrckftzgrld]

Absolutely essential reading for anyone with an interest in Ireland and how, despite mind-bending cash inflows, we live in a state of institutional poverty.

Thanks Sinéad for caring so much, and writing so clearly.

[Sinéad O’Sullivan @SineadOS1]

The enshittification of Ireland and the hollowing out of our institutions is the single largest threat to Irish civil society and prosperity.

In this damning piece, I'm going into more detail about the graph I posted yesterday: why it's happening in Ireland, why the way we're thinking about the protests is entirely wrong, and what this means for our collective governance. Link to the article is below!

[Patrick FitzGerald @ptrckftzgrld]

@dessie_martin No doubt on the latter! We may disagree on the other points

[Patrick FitzGerald @ptrckftzgrld]

@dessie_martin Hiding in plain sight... https://t.co/UIghoZsGQu

[Patrick FitzGerald @ptrckftzgrld]

On Reddit, Ireland would be on the HENRY forums trying to work out how to keep the salary up while renovating a crumbling old house

[Sinéad O’Sullivan @SineadOS1]

The protests in Ireland are not about just fuel! They are about the distance between Ireland on this graph and every other modern and developed economy. Ireland is second wealthiest but gets waaaaay less than any other country for that wealth. By a golden mile.

That visual gap in this graph? That’s what people are protesting. It’s a lack of infrastructure and the everyday enshittification of services, the economy, and the additional difficulty of trying to live, relative to peers in any other country. It also highlights why people don’t get uniformly listened to! - because there is no government architecture to engage meaningfully across this huge gap.

That gap is a three hour drive to work in traffic, a 14 month wait for an MRI, buses that don’t arrive, trains that don’t exist, schools that have no places for your kids, houses that are unaffordable, pubs that close before midnight, €12 sandwiches, expensive fuel.

People feel this gap, even if they can’t explain it precisely. And that builds into resentment, and ultimately protest. Fuel just happened to be the next thing that could be pointed to, today.

[Patrick FitzGerald @ptrckftzgrld]

This is an outstanding expression of what it feels like to live here. We remain a poor country, and are not on a path to that upper quadrant. Why? A culture of selfishness and extraction based on our history of poverty (cute whoorism)? A lack of political courage, of accountability, and national politicians happily mired in the bin collection route?