Short Circuits #12
Trivia wrap, Merch!, corporate offsite disasters and the Enron rebirth
October trivia wrap
At the end of October we hosted our third IRL trivia event. This one was a blockbuster crossover event with the Let Me Sum Up podcast crew, and featured energy-themed musical covers from the NEMchat Singers.
It was raucous, it was chaotic, there were costumes. There were low brow trivia questions and high concept art non-linear trivia story. We had a tonne of fun, and hope that you did too!
A huge thank you to everyone for coming along and supporting our crazy ideas, and to our co-hosts LMSU for creating a memorable evening.
Importantly, we donated $1,300 to the First Nations Clean Energy Network. Particularly proud of this so massive thank you to everyone for making it possible!
If you were there, and you managed to capture any good photos of the event, would you be kind enough to send them through please? In the chaos of the whole evening we forgot to take more than one decent photo 😬
Merch
You might have noticed us repping some shiny new merch at the trivia, and now you can too!
In time for Christmas, so you can rep the merch while arguing with your Sky News uncle about renewable subsidies/solar factories/climate “alarmism”/transmission easements/or whatever insane bullshit Tony Abbott said on Paul Murray Live.
There are four designs – Bernie Briquette1, Yelling at Clouds, Non-regulated Revenue and Classic (nothing on the back), available in a few different colours, all printed on high quality AS Color Classic tees – nice heavyweight cotton with a classic boxy design.
If a tee isn’t your thing, there’s also tea towels – why not show off your erudite knowledge of mid-century energy mascots to your dinner guests?
Buying a piece of merch helps us financially, emotionally and spiritually.
Merch can be purchased via the link on our Substack homepage, or directly here.
How not to meme
The Nationals have formally abandoned net zero, which means THE CLIMATE WARS ARE BACK BABYYYYYYY!2
What this means for the future of the Coalition and their electoral prospects is unclear, but what we can be sure of are absolute D grade memes from conservative senators with the comedic sensibilities of dried bird poop.
Exhibit A, this extremely low effort meme posted to Matt Canavan’s Facebook account.3
Our favourite coal-loving senator doesn’t understand the context of the original meme, nor does he understand joke setup and punchlines apparently.
However what is actually extremely funny is the comments section which turned up en masse to absolutely rinse him. Who said the internet was no longer any fun.
The compass is true
This video is old now – nearly 5 years – but it’s extremely value-aligned with the Short Circuits vibe. Even if you have seen it previously, it’s definitely worth a rewatch.
Woodside Energy had some kind of offsite, and decided to invite MusoMagic to help facilitate a team bonding activity. Corporate offsites veer into cultish behaviour at the best of times, and well, you can decide where this video sits on the megachurch to The Family continuum.
But what is MusoMagic? The man behind it is Adam Thompson, the frontman of Australian 1990s rock band Chocolate Starfish.4 Their highest charting single was a cover of You’re So Vain – including a music video which manages to bottle the essence of the mid-90s.
Anyway after his rock career he founded MusoMagic as “a group song writing platform that engages people of all ages and backgrounds in creative exploration and expression.”
Creative exploration indeed. It’s cringey as fuck, but also kind of a bop? Maybe people would be less upset at the North West Shelf extension if Woodside commissioned MusoMagic to make explainer videos.
Also, if your face muscles aren’t already tired from cringing, please enjoy this video of the Accor corporate offsite and their musical masterpiece Peopleology.
Power Station Rave
In what is one of the very few times this newsletter has been topical, SoLUNA is a house music festival being held at the White Bay Power Station in Sydney on 15 November. This weekend! 🚨
I don’t know who any of those artists are, but it looks like fun.
I’m too old to attend5 (also in the wrong state), but if anyone does go we’d love a correspondent piece on raving in a former power station.
Unhealthy Wind
Thanks to foreign correspondent Sam H. for filing this report of RFK Jr. – US Health and Human Services Secretary and weirdest uncle of all – directing the CDC to probe the potential harms of offshore wind farms.
Kennedy has met NIOSH [National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health] director John Howard about the issue and listed particular experts for Howard’s team to contact, Bloomberg reported.
All normal and very good. Definitely seems like something of high value the CDC should be investigating, and not, oh I don’t know, actual epidemics.
Enron 2.0
ICYMI someone bought the Enron trademark for USD $275 and relaunched the brand in December 2024, on the 23rd anniversary of the company’s bankruptcy filing. Iconic.
The trademark purchaser was The College Company LLC, the same pranksters behind the Birds Aren’t Real parody, which was a solid 4 years of committing to the bit.
At the beginning of this year Enron launched a merch store and produced a polished video promoting The Egg – an at-home micro-nuclear reactor.
An opportunistic and excellent parody indeed. Great Move. Well done Angus.
However the next bit is more curious – they applied for a retail licence in Texas… legit. On 14 January Enron applied for an Option 1 Retail Electric Provider licence in Texas.6
The submission listed a partnership with HGP Storage, a (real) BESS development company based in Texas, and the individual listed as the Vice President and Executive Manager of Enron Energy Texas LLC was the President of HGP Storage Greg Forero, a (real) individual with legit trading and operational experience at bluechip firms including TXU and Constellation. 🧐
“Charles Gaydos”, presumably Connor Gaydos the prankster from the video above, is listed as the President and CEO on the application form.
More interestingly Evan Caron, a founding partner of HGP Storage and serial entrepreneur, and Todd Mitty, an investor with merchant banking experience, were also listed on the application form.
What on earth just happened? Was this a clever play from a media savvy BESS developer to build an offtake book? Was this a clever stunt to phoenix the most disgraced name in energy into a successful new venture? Or was the whole thing a brain fart destined for failure?
We might never know – over the course of 6 months’ worth of back and forth, including providing more information as requested, the Public Utility Commission of Texas seems to have come to the view that the whole thing was a bit of a stunt and that the team lacked the experience to adequately run a wide-scale retail operation.
“Commission Staff recommended that Enron Energy’s presentation of itself is misleading and that granting the application would be inconsistent with consumer protection standards.”
On 22 August Enron preempted the matter and voluntarily withdrew their application without prejudice. This leaves the door open for another crack, whereas if the PUCT had dismissed their application with prejudice it would have shut the door permanently on Enron’s business dreams.
The relationship between Enron and HGP – whatever it actually was – also appears to have dissolved.
I really don’t know what to make of the whole thing. On the one hand someone went to a fair effort to follow the process, submitting multiple legal filings to establish an actual business selling electricity. On the other hand the Enron website is built on a Shopify backend and released edition 1 of The Enronomist in July announcing “100% more integrity!”
Anyway, if you’re curious, you can view the entire back and forth between Enron the PUCT here (geoblocked outside the US, for… reasons? 🤷♂️)
The Bernie tee comes in black, cardinal red or coal. How appropriate.
Who are we kidding, they were never truly over. It was an awkward ceasefire at best.
Technically they’re all low effort because the senator’s account posts multiple times a day, every day of the week. Guess there’s not a lot happening in the senate?
Not to be confused with Limp Bizkit’s 2000 album “Chocolate Starfish and the Hotdog Flavored Water”, which is the kind of crude double entendre which universally appeals to 13 year old boys. Super creepy album art, but it is full of bangers.
My nearly 5-old recently asked me when he would be 36, and then informed me that was soooo old and he would require a walking stick at that age. Cuts deep kid, cuts deep.
An Option 1 REP licence allows holders to sell electricity across the entirety of the state of Texas.