• Oil giant Shell gets Friends of the Earth case overturned; will not be required to reduce emissions
• Sea levels set to rise permanently even if global warming is reversed (archived link)
• Bird flu begins its human spread, as health officials scramble to safeguard people and livestock (archived link)
• It’s not normal for the East Coast to be on fire (archived link)
• Fossil fuel rise drives planet closer to critical climate safety limit
• PFAS may be contaminating drinking water for up to 27% of Americans – study
• Fossil fuel CO₂ emissions increase again in 2024 (archived link)
• Nearly half of tropical coral species face extinction, report shows
• 2024 predicted to be first full year above 1.5°c of global warming (archived link)
• Growing pollution in Pakistan’s Punjab province has sickened 1.8M people in a month, officials say (archived link)
• Thousands flee as fourth major storm in a month hits Philippines (archived link)
Previously
Rape threats and other sexist posts are going viral after the election. It’s part of a pattern.
(archived link)
Well, these entities deserve each other. The problem is we really don’t deserve either of them. Trump spent a lot of his campaign touting a logistical nightmare of a policy that sounded a lot…
Being old, death gets my attention, so I read the obituaries. This is a collection of recent obits, mostly of people whose work touched my life, because I want to say thanks (or maybe give 'em a final fuck you).
There’ll be a roundup like this occasionally, until I’m on the list myself.
• Natasha Alexenko activist (archived link)
• Frank Auerbach artist (archived link)
• Kenneth Bronstein atheist
• Bruce Degen artist, The Magic School Bus
• Lou Donaldson sax man (archived link)
• Janey Godley comedian (archived link)
• Roy Haynes drummer (archived link)
• Ella Jenkins Singalong with Ella
• James Ledbetter media critic, Village Voice (archived link)
• Trevor Sorbie Dorothy Hamill's hairstylist (archived link)
• Paul Stephenson activist (archived link)
• Grant Ujifusa reparations for Japanese-Americans (archived link)
• Baltazar Ushca ice harvester (archived link)
• Andrew Young forgotten person (archived link)
Previously dead
The case against Backpage was built on lies, innuendo, and a willful misunderstanding of how the internet works. But that didn’t stop the government from destroying the company and its founde…
> ... the entire case against Backpage was a travesty of justice. The company actually worked closely with the feds (and even received commendations) to stop any actual human trafficking on their platform, but refused to help the feds go after consenting adult sex work. After that happened, a bunch of government actors turned on the company and falsely painted it as knowingly helping sex trafficking. ...
Newfoundland Memorial Univeristy team find white masses are likely material used to clean pipes in oil industry
• Arkansas cop gets four months in prison for sexually assaulting three children (archived link)
• Scandal-plagued sheriff wins another term in north Texas
• Guns, steroids and $1-million found in home of state trooper under investigation: report (archived link)
• For attempting suicide, Peoria Jail restrained man in a chair for five days (archived link)
• Tennessee Police Chief indicted on seven counts
• Federal jury awards $2.3M to man assaulted by police outside his home in 2017 (archived link)
• Chicago to pay $4.5m to settle 3 police misconduct cases (archived link)
• Hennepin County pays $3.4 million to settle lawsuit for wrongful death of jail inmate Lucas Bellamy
Previously
I prefer thinking of it as a post title that differs from the headline.
Trump urges support from Rick Scott, John Thune and John Cornyn for ‘recess appointments’ while US Senate is paused
Google Doodles have gone so far from cute into annoying that I have them blocked, but today's sounds like a doozy indeed.
• Earth on track for hottest year in recorded history, passing critical 1.5º warming threshold (archived link)
• A warming climate continues to ravage sea ice at both poles (archived link)
• Drought conditions cover a record swath of the U.S. (archived link)
• The world promised to tame methane, but emissions are still rising (archived link)
• Horrific details emerge of how victims died in Spain’s flash floods (archived link)
• Microplastics promote cloud formation, with likely effects on weather and climate
• Record air pollution hospitalizes hundreds in Pakistan (archived link)
• Warming seas wipe out Greece's mussel harvest (archived link)
• Toxic smog in Pakistan is so bad you can see it from space (archived link)
• Record global warming risks aggravating war and violence (archived link)
• White truffles, Italy's gold, menaced by climate change (archived link)
Previously
Bastian's journey offers lessons on grief, despair, and how to reshape the Nothing.
(archived link)
> ... All empires fall. It is up to us to imagine their alternatives. To live as though the future we are dreaming is already named. To be unafraid to answer its call in the dark, and come into a new world of our making. "And joy filled him from head to foot," writes Ende, when Bastian has finally realized his greatest wish is love. ...
A federal judge has overturned Illinois’ ban on semiautomatic weapons, leaning on recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings that strictly interpret the Second Amendment right to keep and bear firearms.
(archived link)
STEWARTSTOWN, PA—With Donald Trump decisively winning a second term as president, local sources reported this week that those tireless civil rights crusaders weren’t so smug now, were they? “This ought to shut up those self-satisfied supporters of civil rights for a while,” said Trump voter Henry Pl...
Rounding up endorsements from Dick and Liz Cheney, and Anthony Scaramucci, and Adam Kinzinger, and Alberto fucking Gonzales, while offering platitudes to the left, is not a path to victory for the Democratic Party.
But I don't think the party hierarchy cares about winning elections. They consistently offer only empty feel-good middle-of-the-road stuff which does not resonate with people who are actually suffering in this society and economy.
• Evangelical leaders celebrate Trump's victory as a prophecy fulfilled (archived link)
• Former CEO of evangelical get-out-the-vote group is arrested for kiddie porn (archived link)
• Texas church removes four elders over Trump-linked founder’s abuse of girl, 12, in 1980s
• Catholic high school teacher accused of sending nudes and having sex with student in office (archived link)
• "Bling Bishop" Lamor Whitehead sentenced to 9 years for defrauding Brooklyn congregants (archived link)
• Michigan pastor charged with child sex crime (archived link)
• Minnesota youth pastor pleads guilty to child sex charges
• Church of England covered up 'abhorrent' abuse, report finds
Being old, death gets my attention, so I read the obituaries. This is a collection of recent obits, mostly of people whose work touched my life, because I want to say thanks (or maybe give 'em a final fuck you).
There’ll be a roundup like this occasionally, until I’m on the list myself.
• Dorothy Allison author, Bastard Out of Carolina (archived link)
• Geoff Capes tough guy and parakeet breeder (archived link)
• Virginia Carter feminist physicist and advisor to Norman Lear
• Elwood Edwards "You've got mail!" (archived link)
• Jim Hoagland journalist, Washington Post (archived link)
• Shawna Hughes in county jail (archived link)
• Patricia Johanson artist (archived link)
• Linda LaFlamme rock'n'roller, It's a Beautiful Day (archived link)
• Bernard Marcus billionaire bastard (archived link)
• Murray McCory backpacks (archived link)
• Samantha Jo Moss forgotten person (archived link)
• Tyka Nelson sister
• Phyllis O’Donnell surfing champion (archived link)
• Ollie Olsen rock'n'roller, The Young Charlatans
• Alan Rachins actor, Dharma & Greg (archived link)
• Edward Ramos in county jail (archived link)
• Madeleine Riffaud French resistance (archived link)
• Murray Sinclair Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission
• Warren Washington climate scientist (archived link)
• Michael Whitfield forgotten person
• Richard Winfield free press activist (archived link)
Previously dead
It wasn’t the economy. It wasn’t inflation, or anything else. It was how people perceive those things, which points to one overpowering answer.
(archived link)
Found in a cremation cemetery in Belgium, the skeleton includes bones dating to the Neolithic period and a Roman-era skull, according to a new study
(archived link)
(archived link)
However bad you’re expecting it’ll be with Donald Trump as president again, it’ll be worse than you’re expecting.
Check me on this, but my recollection is that during Trump’s first term, things were (relatively) mild for a few years, but grew more and more horrendous as his term continued. After the midway point, there were nonstop jawdropping crudities and cruelties — another ghastly nomination, gawdawful statement, or a stupidity to top the previous day’s stupidities — every day.
It took him a while to warm up, because being president was something of a surprise, even to Trump. I’m sure he ran in 2016 just for the publicity, and winning caught him (and all of us) off guard. He was new at being Godzilla on the world stage, and it took some time for him to get the hang of it.
Now, though, he’s an experienced monster, with Project 2025 and a team of loyal suck-ups surrounding him from his first day, so everything’s going to be worse, lots worse, right from the start.
What outrages and obscenities can we expect from Trump?
Climate change: Trump will again pull America out of all climate change accords, and do all he can to bring us back to being powered by coal and perhaps whale oil. There will be no recovery from the damage he’s about to do, and it’ll finalize a perpetually hellish future for America and the world. Of course, we weren’t doing a fraction of what was needed even before Trump, so the looming climate catastrophe was bound to happen anyway, but Trump will make it happen sooner.
Abortion: Sorry, ladies. Your time of having almost-equal rights is at an end. Either by law or by a Supreme Court decision, abortion will be banned, in all 50 states. Women who have sex will be legally obligating themselves to give birth and raise a child. Many millions of women’s and children’s lives will be ruined, which is the intent. My suggestion is tubal ligations and vasectomies, and fast, before those options are also illegalized.
Israel will have carte blanche, even more than they’ve had in the past, to do anything without even the mildest statement of rebuke from American government. Best we can hope is for full evacuation of Gaza, but its utter annihilation, until there aren’t two bricks held together by mortar, is very much a possibility.
Ukraine will see the complete cessation of US weaponry and funding after Trump takes office on January 20, 2025, and sanctions against Russia will be lifted, so you might as well erase Ukraine from your world maps.
Regulation of big business, which has always been vapors anyway, will completely vanish. There will be no more of those very rare days when you’ve read that some corporation is being sued by a government agency. How quaint.
Those are the certainties, but by the nature of Trump, there’ll be surprises, so there’s really no knowing what else to expect. His Supreme Court has granted Trump unprecedented “presidential immunity,” so dang near anything goes.
Perhaps the ACLU will be banned. Perhaps transgender Americans will be stripped of citizenship until they resume their birth genders. Perhaps Yellowstone will become FritoLay Yellowstone Park. Everything previously unthinkable is now possible.
During his 2024 campaign, Trump spoke of deporting all immigrants, sending the military to guard the border with Mexico, ending the Department of Education, locking up his opponents, shutting down anti-MAGA (i.e., mainstream) media, imposing crippling tariffs, sending the National Guard into American cities to round up the homeless, pardoning all 1/6/2021 insurrectionists … and more, much more that I’ve forgotten.
For each of these items, if he’s successful, the ramifications will be dreadful, but there are two hopeful things to remember.
First and most obviously, Trump is a bullshit artist, always happy to lie. Much of what he’s promised, he has no intention of even trying. (How’s that wall coming, Donald?)
Second, many or most of the outrageous things he will attempt are blatantly illegal, so there’ll be lawsuits. In at least some of these cases, lower courts will rule against the Emperor’s atrocities, and even the fully owned Supreme Court might balk on lesser items, if only to retain credibility for ruling in Trump’s favor on the major items.
Still being optimistic, it’s too early in the fascism for Trump to order judges removed from the bench or executed. That’ll come later.
But he’s already stacked the courts, and the stacking will continue and get worse. Republicans will control the Senate, so every heinous judicial nominee will be confirmed, meaning the courts will block him less and less often, over the coming years.
What’s worst to me is knowing that there won’t be an “after.” Trump will abrogate the 22nd Amendment and become President for Life. When he dies we’ll have President J D Vance, who’s every bit as evil but much smarter, younger, and worse in every way.
If elections are still allowed, they’ll be sham elections, with full cooperation from the Democrats, since they won’t nominate anyone who could actually win.
In closing, I should mention that this collection of cynicism and despair was written off the top of my head, without consulting any experts’ articles on what Trump is planning. The coming reality, then, will certainly be much, much worse than what I’ve predicted.
Absolutely. Anything worth seeing on such platforms will leak out and be found elsewhere. I certainly didn't find this on Twitter or Instagram or Facebook.
Yup, beyond scary, it's terrifying.
Social media presents an array of worrisome problems, with (so far as I can see) only worrisome solutions. Children's access isn't even the #1 issue, for me — it's social media's Musky ability to flood the world with lies and hate at levels never seen in human history.
And there's no solution that's not worrisome, but democracy can't survive with an intentionally misinformed electorate.
Most people don’t give a shit about politics. They hear some rich fuckwad say “Mexicans are stealing your jobs” and “Haitians are eating chihuahuas” and “The schools are changing Timmys into Tinas,” and it’s oh my god they gotta vote for Trump. It’s not intellectual, it’s reptilian.
How do we get through to them, all the victims who <i>know</i> they’re victims, but never figure out who’s victimizing them? That’s the insolvable riddle-me-this-Batman.
I see the problem, but don't see a solution in this Aussie strategy. An age-ban probably makes social media more attractive to a 5- 10- or 15-year-old, and anyway, any bright kid can get around it, and share their get-around with all their friends.
Thanks.
It's fitting, since behind the scenes, the US has always manufactured banana republics.
If you can’t have your way, let the world burn… Gotcha.
That is literally the rationale for lots of people. I've heard it spoken verbatim, and heck, when I was young and stupid, I said it myself. It'll hasten the collapse and move us more quickly toward a glorious new future!
Homeless people are people. When I say that, though, the response is usually, "Yeah, but...".
Why is this potentially deadly tech even allowed, without NTSB testing?
It was 'mike' when I was a kid, and I know it's 'mic' now but I'm old and stubborn and I've always resisted it. By the ordinary rules of phonics, 'mic' should be the first syllable of that burger place with piss-yellow arches.
Giuliani is clearly mentally gone, and gone further day by day.
The invented crime of 'jaywalking' has always been a kickback to automakers.
Exactly. So the issue of genocide in Gaza is effectively moot in the 2024 election. Both sides are pro-genocide, so decide your vote on other issues. Trump, of course, is better on exactly none of the issues.
Doug Holland @lemmy.world Old, large, cranky. Gotta go to the bathroom. Also, that picture isn't me. www.itsdougholland.com