Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Meg Duff

Jameel Jaffer @jameeljaffer.bsky.social · 4d

It's a pretty big deal that the NYC Bar Association--one of the most prominent and respected bar associations in the country--is accusing the President of ordering the "unlawful summary execution," i.e. murder--of civilians in violation of US and international law. www.nycbar.org/press-releas...

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Meg Duff @megduff.com · 13d

More cities, NGOs, even HOAs are getting disaster insurance.

'Parametric' plans pay out at key triggers: hurricane hits cat 5, wildfire crosses line, etc.

Now, some of those plans are rewarding climate adaptation with big discounts.

with @jojofoshosho.bsky.social for @kneedeeptimes.bsky.social !

Joanna Thompson @jojofoshosho.bsky.social · 14d

The insurance industry is broken, especially in wildfire-prone states like California that have been hit hard by climate change. Could a community-based risk reduction model be the solution? Proud to have gotten to co-write this story for @kneedeeptimes.bsky.social with @megduff.com 🌎🧪

Insurance Innovations Reward Communities Reducing Climate Risk

Fires and floods are scaring insurance companies away from disaster zones, but communities are doing their part to improve outcomes.

www.kneedeeptimes.org

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Joanna Thompson @jojofoshosho.bsky.social · 14d

The insurance industry is broken, especially in wildfire-prone states like California that have been hit hard by climate change. Could a community-based risk reduction model be the solution? Proud to have gotten to co-write this story for @kneedeeptimes.bsky.social with @megduff.com 🌎🧪

Insurance Innovations Reward Communities Reducing Climate Risk

Fires and floods are scaring insurance companies away from disaster zones, but communities are doing their part to improve outcomes.

www.kneedeeptimes.org

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Reposted by Meg Duff

John Kostyack @kostyack.bsky.social · 22d

As global heating produces more wildfires, "Americans have increasingly been bombarded by toxic smoke." 41K people in the US now die from this smoke each year, "one of the most costly and important climate impacts.” www.washingtonpost.com/climate-envi...

See where wildfire smoke is getting worse in the U.S.

The past six summers have been the smokiest on record. New research shows that smoke could become the costliest consequence of climate change for Americans.

www.washingtonpost.com

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Robert E. (He/him) @robertemond.bsky.social · 23d

#ColorADay | #RedWed

“Memories of Autumn Past” alternate title “Roll Out the Red Carpet”

#Photography 📸
#WestCoastKin #PNW #Oregon
#PhotographersOfBluesky
#PhotographersUnited
#BlueskyPhotography
#ArtistsOfBluesky
#BlueskyArt #Landscape #Nature

Hundreds of red leaves form a carpet bellow the Japanese maple. Two red leaves cling to the otherwise bare tree. Photo by Robert Emond.

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Adam Sternbergh @sternbergh.bsky.social · 22d

reminder: Jimmy Kimmel is enough of a mensch that he devised a segment on which actors who are just short of having enough work to qualify for union healthcare come on his show and deliver a single line of dialogue

deadline.com/2024/07/jimm...

‘Jimmy Kimmel Live’ Once Again Aims To Help Working Actors Get Health Insurance With New Casting Notice

Jimmy Kimmel wants to help actors get health insurance with a new casting notice for his talk show

deadline.com

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Mary Dineen 📷 𓀡𓆀 @marysunshineisgone.bsky.social · 22d

A bee is here

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David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 23d

A new study led by @clairbarnes.bsky.social shows that human-caused global warming tripled heat wave deaths in European cities this summer to 24,400. These 16,500 people would still be alive if we weren't burning fossil fuels like there's no tomorrow.

Human-Caused Warming Tripled the Death Toll of European Heat Waves This Summer, New Report Shows - Inside Climate News

Public health researchers struggle to track the accelerating pace of global warming impacts.

insideclimatenews.org

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Reposted by Meg Duff

ali alkhatib @ali-alkhatib.com · Aug 11

hey just an FYI: we're not yet at the part where AI companies and the state are so closely intertwined that disclosing energy usage would constitute a threat to national security or some other such bullshit, making transparency into the environmental impact of data centers all but impossible

Prof. Bob Howarth @profbobhowarth.bsky.social · Aug 11

One study concluded 70% of increased electric cost across US due to AI data centers.
apnews.com/article/elec...

As electric bills rise, evidence mounts that data centers share blame. States feel pressure to act

Amid rising electric bills, states are under pressure to insulate regular household and business ratepayers from the costs of feeding Big Tech’s energy-hungry data centers.

apnews.com

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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · Aug 19

It bears repeating: choosing to double down and accelerate our burning of fossil fuels will kill off a substantial proportion of humanity

That is something we want to avoid - and can choose to avoid

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

‘A climate of unparalleled malevolence’: are we on our way to the sixth major mass extinction?

The long read: Churning quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere at the rate we are going could lead the planet to another Great Dying

www.theguardian.com

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Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · Aug 16

"Putin appears to have gained the upper hand...[He] was treated as an equal on U.S. soil, managed to sidestep any potential American sanctions for now and announced no battlefield concessions. Trump, who vowed...to end the war on his first day in office, failed to secure even a temporary cease-fire"

city trees @citytrees.bsky.social · Aug 16

Pretty brutal coverage of the Trump / Putin thing. Gift article
www.wsj.com/world/russia...

Trump Rolled Out the Red Carpet for Putin. He Got Little in Return.

The meeting between the U.S. president and the Russian leader didn’t appear to yield any breakthroughs.

www.wsj.com

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Mel Buer @melbuer.bsky.social · Aug 15

Eyeopening walkthrough of DC by this creator. If you aren’t in DC, worth a watch all the way to the end—

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Andrew Freedman @afreedma.bsky.social · Aug 13

Remarkably, NASA is looking for partners (wealthy individuals, philanthropic orgs, companies etc.) to keep crucial climate satellite missions like the Orbiting Carbon Observatory going. Whether they make such a deal before $$ runs out remains to be seen... www.cnn.com/2025/08/13/c...

The perfectly fine, already-paid-for satellites Trump wants to destroy in a fiery atmospheric reentry | CNN

NASA is planning to decommission premier satellite missions that gather information on planet-warming pollution and other climate vital signs beginning as soon as October, sources inside and outside o...

www.cnn.com

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Jack Tripper @chadstanton.blacksky.app · Aug 12

"“I ain’t ever bought no prostitutes. I ain’t never raped nobody. I ain’t never paid anybody off. None of that stuff,” said G, a resident from one of the photographed tents.

“He’s much more of a criminal than I am”"

streetsensemedia.org/article/home...

Donald Trump threatens to clear encampments in D.C.

With D.C.’s MPD now under federal control and the National Guard coming to D.C., the fate of people in encampments remains up in the air.

streetsensemedia.org

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Chris Cantwell @ifyoucantwell.bsky.social · Aug 12

This is a wonderful read.

Ryan North? But - he died... 30 years ago this very night!! @ryannorth.ca · Aug 12

This article was a supreme delight: grab a cup of tea, set aside 10 or 15 minutes, and enjoy this story about The Hardest Working Font in Manhattan.

aresluna.org/the-hardest-...

(via @ferociousj.bsky.social)

The hardest working font in Manhattan

A story of a 150-year-old font you have never heard of – and one you probably saw earlier today.

aresluna.org

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hannah gais @hannahgais.bsky.social · Aug 12

Once again, if you know anything about who is behind the DHS or ICE social media accounts, particularly on X, I'm very interested in talking to you. [email protected] or 334-315-8634 on Signal.

hannah gais @hannahgais.bsky.social · Aug 12

DHS is recruiting using a not-so-subtle reference to a 1978 book from white nationalist William Gayley Simpson, Which Way Western Man?

Simpson's book was released under an imprint associated with the National Alliance, founded by Turner Diaries author William Luther Pierce.

Homeland Security
@DHSgov
Which way, American man?

http://JOIN.ICE.GOV

photo of uncle sam with his hat off at a crossroads with title "America Needs You, Join ICE Now"

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Andy Revkin 🌎 ✍🏼 🪕 ☮️ revkin.substack.com @revkin.bsky.social · Aug 3

Good Peter Baker article ⤴️ on Trump's brutish abuse of power in service of narrative. But words matter. When is a behavior an "echo" of something in the past, and when is it that thing incarnate?... 1/2

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Kevin J. CREATURE @kevinjkircher.com · Aug 3

Well done, New York! The state's building code now requires most new buildings to be all-electric. This makes good economic sense: It's cheaper to install a two-way heat pump to both heat and cool, vs a one-way AC plus a one-way furnace. Outgrowing indoor combustion also benefits climate and health.

Alison F. Takemura @alisontakemura.bsky.social · Jul 31

Electrifying news! New York is the first state to adopt an all-electric building code prohibiting fossil fuels in new construction. A federal district court judge recently upheld the law requiring the standard, slamming a prior judgement on gas bans. My latest: www.canarymedia.com/articles/car...

New York becomes first state to commit to all-electric new buildings

The state finalized rules ensuring most new edifices will install electric heat pumps and stoves instead of gas appliances, lowering costs and improving…

www.canarymedia.com

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Marisa Kabas @marisakabas.bsky.social · Jul 23

In the past when I sat down to write about Israel, I’ve had a moment where I take a deep breath and accept that, as a Jewish woman, it’s going to be difficult. This time, there was no such moment.

I wrote about the intentional starvation of Gaza by Israel/US, and the moral imperative to say enough:

Gaza is starving

Palestinians seeking food are being killed by the IDF. It's time for the entire world to say enough.

www.thehandbasket.co

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Democracy Now! @democracynow.org · Jul 21

Alex de Waal has worked on humanitarian causes across the globe for over 40 years.

“There is no case, over those four decades, of such minutely engineered, closely monitored, precisely designed mass starvation of a population as is happening in Gaza today.”

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Bony Skeletino 💀 @notalegalrecord.net · Jul 18

WGBH building in Boston today

View of the WGBH building in Boston with an electronic marquee reading “Local. Trusted. Defunded.”

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comfort foods @primpker.bsky.social · Jul 13

Pilot over the intercom: uhhhhhhh we are all just flesh. We exist so briefly.

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Jacob Bogage @jacobbogage.bsky.social · Jun 21

👀 Scoop: Trump and Republicans want USPS to sell off its brand new EVs and chargers.

That would mean literally **ripping up post office parking lots** to auction off assets with no private-sector value.

It’s buried in the Senate’s “One Big Beautiful Bill.”

www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...

The Senate’s version of Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill would see the General Services Administration take possession of the nearly 7,200 new postal EVs and associated infrastructure and put the assets up for auction. The proposal is unlikely to generate much revenue for the government; there is almost no private-sector interest in the mail trucks, and used EV charging equipment — built specifically for the Postal Service and already installed in postal facilities — generally cannot be resold.

“The funds realized by auctioning the vehicles and infrastructure would be negligible. Much of infrastructure is literally buried under parking lots, and there is no market for used charging equipment,” Peter Pastre, the Postal Service’s vice president for government relations and public policy, wrote to senators this month.

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Harms Committed @harmscommitted.com · Jun 18

"About a fifth of the coal miners in Central Appalachia have black lung."

"And from 1970 to 2016, more than 75,000 died."

"It comes down to how much is a life worth. You want more coal, but you don't care about the coal miners."
#WestVirginia #USA #Healthcare

A Coal Miner’s Daughter Takes on DOGE to Protect Miners’ Health

Since 1970, more than 75,000 miners have died of black lung disease. Now, researchers working to prevent those deaths get layoff notices.

capitalandmain.com

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Meg Duff @megduff.com · Jun 18

As Anita Wolfe told me: “It comes down to how much is a life worth. You want more coal, but you don’t care about the coal miners and what’s happening to them.” 7/7

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