curated news excerpts & citations
… trying to ‘unbury the lede’
Gautam Naik, Olivia Raimonde @ Bloomberg: Wall Street Seeks Catastrophe Modelers and Weather Analysts
With risk comes opportunity. At least that’s the case for some of the biggest firms on Wall Street, who are searching for experts to help build out their insurance-linked securities desks.
Today’s newsletter goes into the recruiting process and why it pays to be able to model natural disasters. Plus, New York just got a huge influx of clean power, but it still needs more.
When Mitesh Parikh, a headhunter at UK recruiter Selby Jennings, started looking for an ILS modeler for a large US hedge fund this year, the pool of qualified candidates was disconcertingly small.
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It took a couple of months before Parikh was able to find the right candidate for his US hedge-fund client, whose identity he declined to disclose. The standard compensation package for such hires tends to be around $400,000 to $670,000, he said.
Matthew Gault @ 404 Media: A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Massive Data Center Instead
In 1999, a farmer gave away 87 acres of land to a small Texas city [Taylor] to use as a park. The city sold to a data center developer for $10 million.
Bill McKibben: Trying to imagine a working world
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Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – June 8, 2026
On June 8, 1789, Representative James Madison of Virginia stood up to address the House of Representatives in order to introduce a series of amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
…One of the amendments Madison proposed was especially dear to him. It was, as he told his colleagues, that “[t]he civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, or on any pretext, infringed.”
…The concerns about inequality behind the First Amendment are being illustrated right now in the twenty-first-century United States. Those concerns come from an unlikely direction.
On Thursday, June 4, 2026, Nick Mordowanec of Military dot com reported that under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the Department of Defense had removed about 180 faith traditions from its number of recognized religious faiths and belief systems. As John Ismay, Alexandra E. Petri, and Aimee Ortiz of the New York Times note, of the 31 religions still recognized by the Defense Department, 22 of them are Christian denominations.
Left off the new list of Christian faiths was the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints, whose members are commonly known as Mormons.
MAGA has worked to impose the ideology of evangelical religion on America. …
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)
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Paul Offit: Donald Trump recently issued two executive orders claiming that children in the United States are receiving too many vaccines.
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Jason Easley: Mike Johnson Has Surrendered His Power As Speaker Of The House To Trump
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According to two sources who spoke with NOTUS, Johnson has in several instances directed members seeking to bring legislation to the floor to obtain the administration’s approval first.
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Jennifer Rubin: How To Kill the Blanche Nomination
Former Attorney General Pam Bondi quickly proved herself to be the most legally ignorant, dishonest, and ethically challenged person ever to head the Justice Department. However, if her former deputy and now-Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche is nominated and confirmed for the permanent job, she by comparison would seem like one of giants who have held the post (e.g., Robert H. Jackson, Edward H. Levi).
Blanche, whom Donald Trump said last week he would nominate for attorney general, has presided over the shoddiest lawyering in the history of the DOJ, which has earned unprecedented denunciations of federal judges (for, among other things, defying court orders and making material misrepresentations to courts), Blanche has been the tip of the spear in Donald Trump’s weaponization of the Justice Department and government-wide corruption operation.
Making clear his first loyalty is to Trump (“I love you, Sir”), not to the Constitution, Blanche has been at the wheel of vindictive prosecutions against Trump enemies, …
…However, far and away the single most compelling reason — and potentially the most politically damaging — for denying him the job came from Bondi herself. Blanche’s central role in the Epstein files coverup, which Bondi confirmed, should make his nomination a nonstarter.
(Jennifer Rubin more…)
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John C. Moritz @ Austin American-Statesman: Ken Paxton defense lawyer backs Democrat James Talarico for Senate
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Thom Hartmann: Are Today’s “Evil, Heartless Bastards” Rebuilding the Confederacy?
How white nationalism, anti-immigrant fear mongering, and open racism are reviving the politics that once tore America apart…
…And one host we heard proudly proclaimed he was an “evil, heartless bastard” for his opposition to social programs that may help minorities, particularly Black Somalis and Puerto Ricans. Callers to his show proudly proclaimed that they, too, were “evil heartless bastards.”
(Thom Hartmann more…)
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Carlos Greaves: If Election Deniers Talked About Other Things The Way They Talk About Voter Fraud
“President Donald Trump accused California Democrats of “cheating” and “trying to steal” the elections from Republican candidates as the state continues to count votes in what may be a days or weeks-long process.” — TIME
Marriage
My wedding last weekend was ruined! On Wednesday, it was sunny. Thursday, also sunny. Friday, sunny. But then on Saturday? My wedding day? It started pouring.
There’s only one logical explanation for this — someone has invented a way to manipulate the weather in order to STEAL my husband. Rain is the only possible reason my fiancé would’ve left me at the altar. It had nothing to do with him finding out that I’ve been sleeping with his best man for the past six months. …
Education
Math is RIGGED. On yesterday’s exam, I wrote that 10 was 600% less than 60, and my teacher marked it wrong. Where does he get off thinking there’s only one “correct” way to calculate percentages? Isn’t it a little suspicious that the nerdy kids who study a lot always seem to get the best grades? …
Sports
I was watching the game the other night, and the Spurs were up by three with eight minutes left to play. Then, the Knicks went on a 15-2 run down the stretch to win the game.
Are you kidding me? Isn’t it odd how winning basketball teams always seem to come up with more points whenever they need them? Do you really expect me to believe that the Knicks won just because their best player, Jalen Brunson, is a three-time NBA all star? ..
Food
What do you mean this brisket will take 16 hours to cook? Since when do briskets take that long? …
Crime
What do you mean I can’t show up to this bank waving a shotgun around, wearing a mask over my face, telling everyone to get on the ground, and demanding that the teller open the safe so that I can count all of the bank’s money myself to make sure it’s all in there? …
Pedophilia
Release the Epstein Files? Nah, we’re good. We only care about transparency when it’s an outcome we don’t like.
Author’s Note
As a lifelong Spurs fan, it pained me to write that third beat, but it had to be done. Because, unlike election deniers, I don’t think every single thing that doesn’t go my way must be a conspiracy theory.
(Carlos Greaves more…)
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Stephen Feller @ UPI: Pope Leo draws 1M people in Madrid for open-air mass
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The mass, to celebrate the feast of Corpus Christi, was held in the Plaza de Cibeles and saw the Pontiff ride through the 1.2 million strong crowd that overflowed into nearby streets to the stage where he performed mass, …
(Stephen Feller @ UPI more…)Borenstein: Pope Leo Draws Crowd of 1.2 Million Without Hosting UFC Fight
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Anne Applebaum: Ukraine is Not Losing
And for Russia, that’s a huge defeat
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The drone interceptors are part of the explanation for a sudden, notable change in international perceptions of Ukraine.
(Anne Applebaum more…)
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Ken Klippenstein: U.S. Secretly Deployed Paratroopers to Israel
When the Pentagon announced that the 82nd Airborne was deploying to the Middle East in March, it concealed a key detail: some of the paratroopers were headed to Israel, as revealed in an Army deployment order I obtained.
A military source involved in war planning tells me the deployment is tied to new U.S.-Israeli joint contingency plans, completed since February, for seizing Kharg Island and carving out coastal territory inside Iran.
(Ken Klippenstein more…)
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James Eagle: Anthropic’s annualised revenue overtakes OpenAI
Anthropic is no longer just the cautious rival to OpenAI. The chart below shows its annualised revenue has jumped to about $45 billion, ahead of OpenAI’s estimated $30 billion. In AI, that is a stunning change in status.
The obvious reading is that enterprise demand has become the centre of the race. Claude may have less consumer fame than ChatGPT, but companies are paying for coding, workflow and model access where reliability counts.
Annualised revenue however is not profit, and partner-channel revenue can flatten the run-rate if it is shown gross. Still, investors will read this as proof that the AI race has more than one commercial winner.
(James Eagle more…)
Brockovich AI Data Center Reporting
resources tracking the “Andes” hantavirus outbreak
Apocalypse Early Warning System
Al Jazeera Death toll and injuries live tracker
ICE Accountability Project
Sergio Martínez-Beltrán, Ximena Bustillo, Jasmine Garsd @ NPR: Deaths of migrants in ICE custody hit record high under Trump
- April 16: Aled Damien Carbonell-Betancourt
- March 25: Jose Guadalupe Ramos-Solano
- March 16: Royer Perez-Jimenez
- March 14: Naseer Paktiawil
- February 25: Nurul Amin Shah Alam
April 1 – Jennifer Peltz and Jake Offenhartz @ AP: Death of a refugee left at a Buffalo doughnut shop by Border Patrol is ruled a homicide - January 24: Alex Pretti
- January 14: Heber Sanchaz Dominguez
- January 14: Victor Manuel Diaz
- January 9: Parady La
- January 7: Renée Good
- January 6: Luis Beltran Yanez-Cruz
- January 5: Luis Gustavo Nunez Caceres
- January 3: Geraldo Lunas Campos
- December 31, 2025: Keith Porter
Suffering Under President Obama
NACDL Criminal Case Tracker
Texas Tribune: A Walk for Peace: photos of Fort Worth monks’ journey to Washington
Walk for Peace – Dhammacetiya – The Ancient Sacred Buddhist Scripture Stupas
Margaret Chase Smith: Declaration of Conscience
NPR: January 6, 2021: A visual archive
Accountability Initiative ICE List
GriftMatrix
Trump Action Tracker
Timeline: Tracking the Trump Justice Department’s Anti-Voting Shift
Tracking the Lawsuits Against Trump’s Agenda
Trump Pardons Database
Project 2025 Tracker
DOGE Tracker
ProPublica: Elon Musk’s Demolition Crew
Wired: 6 Tools for Tracking the Trump Administration’s Attacks on Civil Liberties
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