curated news excerpts & citations
… trying to ‘unbury the lede’
Andrew Fountain @ Conversation:
300 glaciers have disappeared from the American West since the mid‑20th century
From an airplane, most of the glaciers of the Rocky Mountain West look like small patches of white nestled into rugged landscape where the topography folds. The white is the snow cover, and lower down you can see the gray-blue bare ice.
In the middle of the 20th century, over 1,450 glaciers could be found in the contiguous U.S. Together, they covered 217 square miles (562 square kilometers) in six western states. Today, a comprehensive review my colleagues and I just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows their total area has shrunk by 35% and they are still shrinking, perhaps faster.
Bill McKibben:
Making the Decent the Enemy of the Desperate
Iain Boekhoff, Michael McKee, Arielle Schwartz @ Bloomberg:
Coal’s Revival Is Dividing Canada’s Energy Heartland Over Environmental Concerns
…
Nearly 60 years after this site closed, locals are once again pinning their hopes for an economic revival on this windswept mountainside. Northback Holdings Corp., a division of Australian billionaire Gina Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting Pty., is working to reopen the former mine.
This is Hancock’s second attempt after an earlier application was rejected by a joint federal and provincial review panel in 2021 over concerns about the impact on the nearby water ecosystem. …
(Iain Boekhoff, Michael McKee, Arielle Schwartz @ Bloomberg more…)
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Dean Blundell:
Trump’s Billion Dollar Russian Payday Only Cashes If Ukraine Surrenders. Now You Know Why He’s Threatening KyivJay Kuo:
Trump gave Russia the green light to sell diesel fuel again to bring down prices. But the math isn’t mathing, raising questions about his real motives.Hans Christensen:
Cruel, Yet IneffectivePutin and Trump tried to upend Europe with another ‘Oval Office’ style ambush on Ukraine, Zelensky and the united front against Russia. The diesel deal is cruel but ineffective against united force.
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Timothy Noah @ TNR:
Why Did DOGE Exist? Now We Know.Turns out, Elon Musk’s pimply minions didn’t actually want to cut government spending. They wanted to get a piece of it for themselves.
… The budget deficit, whose size was the reason to cut government spending, increased by 12 percent to $2 trillion.Some of that increased spending is the result of DOGE cuts. …
Ann E. Marimow @ NY Times:
Supreme Court to Review Dispute Over Access to DOGE Records
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Adam Kinzinger:
The GOP Tried to Smear Talarico. They Ended Up Smearing Millions of Americans Instead.A fake story about a mental hospital told every struggling American the same thing: keep it to yourself.
(Adam Kinzinger more…)
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Heather Cox Richardson:
Letters from an American – October 13, 2026This afternoon, the President of the United States posted two videos of lions and tigers attacking humans.
Either he has entirely lost it, or he is desperate for a distraction, or both.
It turns out the attacks on Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico were probably an attempt to get ahead of yet another damaging story about Trump’s hand-picked Republican Texas Senate candidate, Ken Paxton. …
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)
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Mary Geddry:
Chanting “USA” While a Woman Was Beaten
Jennifer Rubin:
‘I Regret’Jeff Tiedrich:
Racist imbecile depletes National Strategic Reserve of RacismAndrew Day @ American Conservative:
America’s top diplomat treated Persian civilization as an inherent enemy
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Howard Yu:
the “ghost share”: how much of what gets built in America can be attributed to the foreign-bornOn October 8th, the US awarded its highest medals in science and technology. There were six recipients. Five were foreign-born.
(Howard Yu more…)
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MetaFilter:
String Theory for Computers“Unfortunately, I did not find a faster Fourier transform. Instead,l I found the rot that develops inside applied mathematical theory when formalism becomes so detached from reality that a “breakthrough” is nothing more than an artifact of mathematicians not being able to properly specify the rules of their games in natural language.”
The orange website is not impressed, but I’d give more credence to the author – he did not drink the kool-aid and can write.
ICE Detention Expansion Tracker
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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