curated news excerpts & citations
… trying to ‘unbury the lede’
Morgaan Sinclair, Ph.D.:
Earth has lost 12 trillion tons of ice in Antarctica and Greenland in less than 50 years.
Sea levels rose an inch. Every inch of sea level rise means 2-3 million more people get flooded at least once a year. Climate change since 2010 has accelerated the problem.
… Global warming causes intensified hurricanes, warped El Ninos (we’re having one right now), heat domes, melting ice and a subsequent loss of albedo (serious), and the collapse of ocean currents with the loss of salinity in the oceans because trillions of tons of water from melting glaciers diluted it. And it’s the loss of albedo that portends things much worse.
Definition: Albedo
Albedo is a measure of the percentage of sunlight that a surface reflects. Ice, being white, reflects a greater percentage of sunlight back out into space. Conversely, our dark blue ocean absorbs much of the light, which is turned into thermal energy that heats the oceans. A loss of albedo when an ice cap—say, the Arctic ice cap—melts, means that there is more dark blue water. The more ice that melts, the warmer the ocean, and the faster more ice melts. This can lead to exponential melting that can destroy even very large ice sheets. In the past, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) experienced exponential melting, and when it did, it completely dissolved in fewer than 10 years, adding 2.0 million to 2.9 million cubic kilometers of pure liquid freshwater into the ocean. This raised sea levels globally 5.8 to 8.0 meters—18 to 26 feet.
(Morgaan Sinclair, Ph.D. more…)
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Angel Bermudez, BBC News Mundo:
The case of the three Americans who reported torture in Venezuela, for which the Trump administration requested immunity for Delcy RodríguezEdgar José Marval claims he lived through hell for 123 days.
That was the time that elapsed between his arrest on August 19, 2023 by agents of the General Directorate of Military Counterintelligence (DGCIM) of Venezuela and his release on December 20 of that year.
That day, Marval regained his freedom along with 9 other Americans detained in Venezuela in an exchange in which the Joe Biden administration released Alex Saab, a Colombian businessman and key ally of then-Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
“I spent 120 days detained for being an American citizen, 120 days without showering, 120 days defecating and urinating on myself, 120 days of hunger,” Marval later wrote about his experience in a testimony he presented later to the UN Committee against Torture.
In August 2025, Marval, along with Jerrel Kenemore and Jason Saad—two other freed men—filed a civil lawsuit in Florida against Maduro and several members of his government, alleging that they had been kidnapped and tortured with the aim of being used as bargaining chips.
(Angel Bermudez, BBC News Mundo more…)
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Joyce Vance:
“My Patience Is at an End”: When Judges Won’t Take The Government’s Word For ItJosephine Walker @ Axios:
Kennedy Center demolition requires 30-day notice, judge rules
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Jennifer Rubin:
47 Days to the Midterms
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Emanuel Maiberg @ 404 Media:
I Hijacked a Real Artist’s Spotify with AI Music. It Was Disturbingly EasyA glaring loophole in digital music distribution makes it very easy to piggyback on the talent of real artists with AI generated music.
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James Eagle:
SpaceX drives America’s rocket surge
The really interesting rise, though, is China, which has rapidly increased its number of launches. The story in the US is also incredibly interesting. They are launching more satellites than ever, partly because of SpaceX and its Starlink programme, which has literally put tens of thousands of satellites in orbit to give the world high-quality, fast internet access even in the remotest of locations.
(James Eagle more…)
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Decoding Fox News:
Fox News and The Trump-A-FLOP-oozaA condensed overview of 39 hours of Fox News for the week ending 9/13/26
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Heather Cox Richardson:
Letters from an American – September 17, 2026In 1761, 55-year-old Benjamin Franklin attended the coronation of King George III and later wrote that he expected the young monarch’s reign would “be happy and truly glorious.” Fifteen years later, in 1776, he helped to draft and then signed the Declaration of Independence. An 81-year-old man in 1787, he urged his colleagues at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia to rally behind the new plan of government they had written.
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)
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
- 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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