curated news excerpts & citations

Morgaan Sinclair, Ph.D.: Venezuela: It’s the Oil, Folks. Like it was with Trump Wanting Canada.

Venezuela has 10x more oil reserves than Saudi Arabia. They’ll be wanting a piece, too.
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Dispatch: The 19th-Century Influencer Who Invented Thanksgiving

How Sarah Josepha Hale used fashion, fiction, and sheer persistence to give America its beloved holiday.
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By the time Lincoln read her letter in September 1863, the country was exhausted. Gettysburg had ended two months earlier with unimaginable casualties. Families were fractured, states were bitterly divided, and the very idea of a United States felt fragile. Hale’s proposal arrived not as a domestic nicety but as a cultural intervention—a way to call a bleeding nation to the same table, if only for a day. In a world where families were split by battle lines, the image of a shared feast—of turkey, pies, and a moment of gratitude—offered unity where politics could not.

In October 1863, Lincoln issued a proclamation establishing a national day of Thanksgiving. Lincoln’s own language echoed Hale’s persuasive vision: He called the nation to give thanks “with one heart and one voice,” inviting citizens in every corner of the Union—including those “at sea” and “sojourning in foreign lands”—to pause together. He urged Americans not only to offer gratitude but also to “commend to [God’s] tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers” in the war, and to implore divine help “to heal the wounds of the nation.” In the middle of brutal civil strife, Lincoln took up Hale’s idea that gratitude to God and for each other could be a form of national repair.
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James Eagle: The US lags badly on emissions trading coverage

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Germany and Austria now cover more than 75% of their emissions under trading systems. South Korea is above 50% and China has passed 40% with a national market that continues to expand. Even the wider EU average sits at 33%. These systems matter because they put a real price on pollution and create incentives for cleaner technology which is why so many countries treat them as the backbone of their climate strategy.

The United States by contrast covers only 7% of its emissions. That is not due to a lack of innovation or economic capacity. It reflects decades of political division inconsistent federal action and a heavy reliance on state level policies. The result is a fragmented system that does not match the scale of the challenge or the ambition seen elsewhere.
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Steven Beschloss: Abraham Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Proclamation

On October 3, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation. He soberly acknowledged that he was doing so “in the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity.” And he reflected on “the lamentable civil strife in which we are engaged” leading to the many “who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers.”

But despite his honest depiction of our nation’s tragedy, America’s 16th president was also able to see beyond it. He described “the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies” and asked Americans to look ahead and “expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.” (He had signed the final Emancipation Proclamation nine months earlier.)

On that October day, Lincoln proclaimed that Americans should “set apart and observe the last Thursday of November…as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise.” In what reads like a prayer, he concluded with his hope for “the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it…to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union.”

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Raven Nightshade: Deportation on the Rich Man’s Runway

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Their vans crept down the road: a death-march of the American Dream.

Why I Was There

Because silence is complicity.

Because witnessing is the smallest possible act of courage in a country addicted to looking away.

Because our relatives have stood here before, on this exact land, swallowed by the same machine of American cruelty.
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We like to pretend these things happen in the shadows.

They don’t.

They happen right next to us at the airport where we pick up loved ones, at the hangar where the rich store their toys, at the same gates where the American Dream pretends it can be reached with enough hard work and TSA-approved liquids.

Yesterday, I watched that dream die again.

And the worst part?

Most people will never know.

Many people will never care.

But some of us will remember. Some of us will speak.

Because someone has to.
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James Eagle: The AI infrastructure boom is here, but will it last

What this chart shows is how imports of data centre equipment have jumped dramatically, while other equipment imports have risen more modestly.

This explosive growth represents just another way to understand the infrastructure demands of artificial intelligence. While the dotcom bubble saw steady increases in tech infrastructure, today’s AI revolution is driving imports at nearly twice the historical rate. The gap between data centre equipment and other imports has never been wider, reflecting the extraordinary computing power required to train and run large language models. Unlike previous tech cycles, this isn’t just about connectivity or storage. It’s about raw processing capability on a scale we’ve never seen before.

Is this infrastructure buildout sustainable, or are we witnessing the early stages of overcapacity?
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Aaron Parnas: Major MAGA Accounts on Twitter Exposed as Foreign Actors

… A new transparency feature on Twitter is revealing that many loud, “patriotic” voices in the MAGA ecosystem aren’t actually located in the United States at all. Instead, a surprising number are operating from places like Russia, Nigeria, India, Thailand, and other countries.
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The tool, called “about this account,” became available to users on Friday. It shows key information about any profile, including where the account is based, when it was created, how often its username has changed, and how the X app was originally downloaded. Within hours of its launch, users began uncovering major right-wing accounts that appear to have misrepresented their origins.

I have reviewed dozens of accounts, and it confirmed long-held suspicions that some of the most aggressive MAGA voices were actually foreign-run. The tool has now exposed that many of the accounts pushing some of the most prominent MAGA propaganda are actually simply foreign actors. As a result, what you have is an ecosystem on Twitter where Republican politicians in the United States, including the President of the United States, are unknowingly sharing foreign propaganda.
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Bloomberg: Six takeaways from two weeks in the rainforest

• The fossil fuel gap is still too wide
• Adaptation has jumped up the agenda
• Trade and critical minerals are climate issues, too
• Political freedom makes a COP comeback
• Forests got money — but not make-or-break support
• The US makes its absence felt

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Jennifer Rubin: Another Undaunted City

Charlotte defends democracy and decency

North Carolina was Donald Trump’s past week’s site for a violent, chaotic, wasteful, and abusive invasion of Custom and Border Patrol agents. Beginning in Charlotte and quickly spreading to other cities, the operations have not focused on the “worst of the worst” as Donald Trump and his Homeland Security thugs falsely claim.

Once again, horrifying scenes have played out of immigrants and U.S. citizens alike being snared by masked agents in unmarked cars. “Eyewitness accounts and video circulated online show federal agents in tactical gear detaining people at locations across the city, including storefronts and public spaces,” Newsweek reported. “In one incident, members of a church congregation in east Charlotte said masked agents entered a yard where congregants were working and detained a man.”

The video is of an arrest of a Honduran-born U.S. citizen, Willy Aceituno, during which his car window was smashed and he was shoved to the ground, went viral. Aceituno said he voted for Trump but now concedes, “It was the worst decision of my life.” He was later released.

In response to the mayhem, state and city officials—as did those in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Portland—have risen to the occasion. In concert with magnificent displays of peaceful protest and community solidarity, state and local officials have been sending a powerful message that they are prepared to defend their neighbors against the predation of an unhinged, racist autocrat and his underlings.
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Bulwark: What If the Most Dangerous Man in the Administration Isn’t Donald Trump?

Yesterday the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—the nonpartisan agency whose work has long been the global gold-standard for health science—made a change to the section of its website on the nonexistent link between autism and vaccines. The CDC went from stating that “vaccines do not cause autism” to saying that:

• The claim “vaccines do not cause autism” is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.
• Studies supporting a link have been ignored by health authorities.

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But the even bigger story is that the U.S. government is no longer a reliable source of information. The consequences of this corruption will ripple through American society for years.
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