Many a link-baiting slideshow and BuzzFeed post have been using animated GIFS, the moving images assembled from videos, sequences of photos or original animations.
But how did the initially cheesy, early computer and Internet age animation trick using a file format become the au courant method for obsessing over celebrities and being web-ready shorthand for expressing emotions? SXSW has the answer: According to the GIF artists and writers in “The Economy of the GIF,” you can blame your phone and microblogging platform Tumblr.
The GIF lineage goes something like this: they were first used in website banners and as quickie animations in those quaint AOL disc days of the Internet — and then Flash animation came along. Remember when websites resembled the futuristic, highly-interactive interfaces of science fiction films? With those slick drop-down menus and fancy moving ads? That was Flash.
Flash still exists, but with Apple and its iPhone (which famously does not support Flash-based animations or videos), web designers and animators and branding gurus had to rethink their media strategies. Suddenly, entire websites were rendered unreadable on phones and other mobile screens.
So as Flash fell out of fashion, simpler web designs prevailed and led to a GIF renaissance of sorts — because GIFs will still display on phones and tablets and other magic, mini computer devices. And it helps that social networking sites and phone web browsers have made using the Internet much more photo-centric (hence, Tumblr).
Plus, GIFs, says writer Lindsey Weber (who’s done some GIF work for BuzzFeed and New York magazine) are better representations of how we consume the Internet in 2013.
“[GIFs] span this space between photos and videos,” Weber says. “The GIF takes the best parts of a photo and the best parts of a video and puts them together. It’s just a better way to ingest that.”
And they’ve become so wildly popular, argues artist Jimmy Repeat (who’s GIFed for MTV in the past), they’ve become a new art form all in themselves.
“GIF is the new medium because it’s more of a challenge than a static image,” he says.
Perhaps their greatest claim to legitimacy is their looming legal precedent: Weber says GIF-related lawsuits and copyright cases are just around the bend — she’s come up against all kinds of rights issues with the GIFs she worked with.
But for now, there’s still plenty of GIF fun to be had. Just go on Tumblr and get lost for days.
Under the Sun
Texas' annual solar power expected to eclipse coal for the first time
Solar power promises to shine even brighter in Texas this year. A new forecast from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) indicates that for the first time, annual power generation from utility-scale solar will surpass annual power generation from coal across the territory covered by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT).
Solar generation is expected to reach 78 billion kilowatt-hours in 2026 in the ERCOT grid, compared with 60 billion kilowatt-hours for coal, the EIA forecast says. The ERCOT grid supplies power to about 90 percent of Texas.
“Utility-scale solar generation has been increasing steadily in ERCOT as solar capacity additions help meet rapid electricity demand growth,” the forecast says.
Although natural gas remains the dominant source of electricity generation in ERCOT, accounting for an average 44 percent of electricity generation from 2021 to 2025, solar’s share of the generation mix rose from four percent to 12 percent. During the same period, coal’s share dropped from 19 percent to 13 percent.
EIA predicts about 40 percent of U.S. solar capacity, or 14 billion kilowatt-hours, added in 2026 will come from Texas.
Although EIA expects annual solar generation to exceed annual coal generation in 2026, solar surpassed coal in ERCOT on a monthly basis for the first time in March 2025, when solar generation totaled 4.33 billion kilowatt-hours and coal’s totaled 4.16 billion kilowatt-hours. Solar generation continued to exceed that of coal until August of that year.
“In 2026, we estimate that solar exceeded coal for the first time in March, and we forecast generation from solar installations in ERCOT will continue to exceed that from coal until December, when coal generation exceeds solar,” says EIA. “We expect solar generation to exceed that of coal for every month in 2027 except January and December.”
For 2027, EIA forecasts annual solar generation of 99 billion kilowatt-hours in the ERCOT grid, compared with 66 billion kilowatt-hours of annual coal generation.
In April, ERCOT projected almost 368 billion kilowatt-hours of demand in ERCOT’s territory by 2032. ERCOT’s all-time peak demand hit 85.5 billion kilowatt-hours in August 2023.
“Texas is experiencing exceptional growth and development, which is reshaping how large load demand is identified, verified, and incorporated into long-term planning,” ERCOT President and CEO Pablo Vegas said. “As a result of a changing landscape, we believe this forecast to be higher than expected … load growth.”
---
This article first appeared on our sister site, EnergyCapitalHTX.