curated news excerpts & citations
… trying to ‘unbury the lede’
Rebecca Solnit:
Letter from a Hot Planet
I’ve gotten tough or resilient or case-hardened to the ugly things I read up on daily …
But then there’s the ocean.
…
I’ve also often said that the only true borders on earth are between land and water …
…
While I read constantly about climate, including climate disasters of heat, flood, drought, fire, of destroyed places and human deaths, somehow the stories about what we’re doing to the sea disturb me most of all. …
Much of the excess heat we’ve produced by burning fossil fuels has been taken up by the oceans, as if shouldering the burden for us, but it has made them too acidic and then too hot. …
For a couple of decades, Ocean Beach has also been the place I go with one of my closest friends when he returns to this city he used to live in. …
… on the walk with Sam we saw a dead bird and then another and then another and another and then a tiny dead dolphin with its eyes pecked out, a dead sea lion, and another bird corpse and another. There must’ve been a dozen on our long walk along with the dolphin. That was not normal.
They were murres. The local CBS affiliate put it this way: “Visitors to Bay Area beaches are starting to see a disturbing sight: dead and dying seabirds. They’re called murres, and wildlife rescuers are scrambling to try to save them as they fall victim to a rapidly warming ocean. The birds, which resemble tiny penguins, are starving because the water has warmed, increasing the metabolism of predator fish, making them hungrier. That puts them in competition with the murres who can dive to depths of 300 feet to hunt.” The ocean is a fine-tuned orchestra of processes organic and inorganic, and the temperature changes are devastating, turning its symphonies into discord and destruction. I go to the coast, in a sense, to go for peace; to find the casualties of a war there was distressing.
It gets worse: the Guardian reports, “Climate change is driving a gray whale “catastrophic mortality event” in the Pacific Ocean as melting sea ice depletes food sources and the animals starve, environmental groups warn. …
(Rebecca Solnit more…)
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Dean Blundell:
Trump Announces His Own AI Platform Will Take Over The American Government.… Donald Trump stood on a stage this morning next to Tony Robbins and told 340 million Americans that the one they should trust with their passports, their veterans’ benefits and their tax questions is … America.gov
Steven Sinofsky:
Government(s) Controlling AI Sounds Safer, But…There’s a history of the US government controlling technology coupled with abuse of that technology, and this pattern is demonstrated by encryption and cryptography technology.
Daily Skrape:
America Finally Solves Education by Removing the Education Part
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David Cay Johnston:
“Trump has fantasized about murdering people since he was a young man.”
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Thom Tillis:
“I hate it. I tell you, it feels like Viktor Orbán talking to the Hungarian people. There’s no place for that sort of thing.”
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Peter Oborne, Talal Hangari @ Zeteo:
The Board of Peace Is an Abject Failure, and Palestinians Are Paying the Price
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Daily Skrape:
Big Tech Launches Revolutionary New Spam Filter: Democracy, But Only the Emails We Like
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Marcy Wheeler:
filing asks Judge Cannon to please put the rules for her gag order on the Jack Smith report in writing
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Heather Cox Richardson:
Letters from an American – September 29, 2026The scene that unfolded today at a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee was a snapshot of politics in the U.S. today. …
…In June 2023 a grand jury indicted Trump on 37 “felony violations of our national security laws” and “participating in a conspiracy to obstruct justice,” in his retention of classified documents. Charged alongside Trump was his aide Walt Nauta, who is now the director of Oval Office operations. In December, after Trump was reelected, Smith dropped Trump from the case because of the long-standing position of the Department of Justice that a sitting president cannot be prosecuted. Judge Aileen Cannon, the Trump appointee overseeing the case, has blocked the release of Smith’s report, although it is standard for a special counsel to release a final report.
It is the other case that was the focus of today’s Senate hearing.
…The case can be resumed once Trump is no longer president.
…Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) figured it out. Schmitt was accusing Smith of being in Atlanta at an Atlanta Hawks game, where he could hypothetically have met up with Willis and Wade. In reality, he was in Maryland at a game in which Maryland played the University of Iowa: the Hawkeyes.
Klobuchar addressed Schmitt: “Could it then be that University of Iowa’s the Hawkeyes, could that be it, and maybe before we show this kind of thing…that might be the confusion over the names of the team but perhaps you should’ve looked at it more carefully….”
Schmitt exploded, accusing her of “trying to rehabilitate the witness.” And yet, newscasters who reviewed tapes of the games found Smith in the stands at the Maryland game.
“You had the teams wrong, sir,” Klobuchar told Schmitt.
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)Brian Allen:
Republicans Hauled Jack Smith Before the Senate. He Put Trump’s Alleged Crimes Back Under Oath.
MAGA Senator Humiliated After Jack Smith Perjury Trap Backfires Over Basketball Mix-Up
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Katelyn Jetelina @ Your Local Epidemiologist:
Flu is here early. Plus Covid, mosquitoes, and more.
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James Eagle:
Three companies worth more than 45 years of tech IPOs
(James Eagle more…)
A field guide to claims
Last Days in Two Nations
Climate.us
formerly Climate.gov
Climate Solutions Explorer
Have I Been Flocked?
Brockovich AI Data Center Reporting
resources tracking the “Andes” hantavirus outbreak
Apocalypse Early Warning System
Al Jazeera Death toll and injuries live tracker
Mike Ludwig @ truthout: ICE Says 51 People Died in Custody Under Trump. Experts Say That’s an Undercount.
ICE Accountability Project
Sergio Martínez-Beltrán, Ximena Bustillo, Jasmine Garsd @ NPR: Deaths of migrants in ICE custody hit record high under Trump
- September 18: Carlos Josue Marchena Marchena
- August 31: Pierre Damas Bel
- August 1: Edwin Lopez-Cornejo
- July 19: Jose Chajon-Raxon
- July 14: Juan Jairo Coronilla Duran
- July 13: Joan Sebastian Guerrero
- July 7: Lorenzo Salgado Araujo
- June 4: Mamuka Artmeladze
- 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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