Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Kendall Dix

Dustin Bleizeffer @dbleizeffer.bsky.social · 1d

apnews.com/article/trum...
AP: Company bids less than a penny per ton in biggest US coal sale in over a decade

Company bids less than a penny per ton in biggest US coal sale in over a decade

A Navajo tribe-owned company has bid $186,000 to lease 167 million tons of coal on federal lands in southeastern Montana.

apnews.com

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Thea Riofrancos @triofrancos.bsky.social · 1d

Read my analysis here www.ft.com/content/6ff9... and reporting on Trilogy here www.ft.com/content/8951...

Trump’s resource nationalism is the worst of all worlds

Demand for rare earths is greatest in the clean energy sector that the US president is intent on dismantling

www.ft.com

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John Kostyack @kostyack.bsky.social · 1d

Nope, Energy Sec'y Wright, offshore winds in fact blow in winter. 1st year of operational data from NY's South Fork Wind project shows a 47% capacity factor in the year ending June 2025, with performance highest in the winter. Coal's avg capacity factor: 42%.

Wright says it’s not windy in winter. Data says otherwise.

Stats from South Fork Wind's first year undermine the Energy secretary's assertions that offshore turbines don't operate well in the winter.

www.eenews.net

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isaac @sevier.io · 1d

Working as designed. The grid has more or less been made into an engineering and financial system designed by salesmen to ensure they could use us to subsidize the costs of factories and businesses. Always one-way, never the other.

Nick Cunningham @nickcunningham.bsky.social · 1d

“By 2028, an average family in the region will be paying around $70 a month extra on their electricity bills because of forecasted data center growth”

I'm once again asking why ratepayers are subsidizing AI titans?

www.eenews.net/articles/dat...

Data center boom sparks sticker shock for PJM ratepayers

New analyses show that costs passed on to utility customers to guarantee future electricity demand are rising rapidly.

www.eenews.net

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The Oregonian @oregonian.com · 4d

Federal officer blasts chemical spray into vocal but nonviolent Portland protester, video shows

The interaction illustrates how federal law enforcement officers do use aggressive tactics against protesters who yell and needle officers but don’t appear to present clear physical threats.

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Aarón Cantú @aaroncantu.bsky.social · 6d

NEW INVESTIGATION

California predicts data centers will consume as much power as adding another LA to grid by 2030

A utility anticipates additional emissions equal to 21 gas plants

Some environmentalists see reducing gas power as “a lot less likely” due to AI capitalandmain.com/the-insatiab...

The Insatiable Energy Demands of Data Centers Could Increase Fossil Fuel Emissions in California

By 2030, the centers could consume the equivalent of adding another city the size of L.A. to the state’s power grid.

capitalandmain.com

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Kendall Dix @kendalldix.bsky.social · 8d

Not too many people are taking the energy transition seriously and not leaning into magical thinking or polemics. Thea is staking out a position that is neither primitivist nor ecomodernist, which is badly needed for our future climate plans

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Kendall Dix @kendalldix.bsky.social · 8d

This is really good.

The Baffler @thebaffler.com · 8d

In “Extraction,” @triofrancos.bsky.social examines the politics of lithium mining in South America—and the complexities of the energy transition. @materialistjew.bsky.social spoke with her about imperfect trade-offs and the nature of democracy.

Schrodinger’s Element | Ajay Singh Chaudhary

In her new book, Thea Riofrancos homes in on the extraction of lithium—and the thorny problem of an ecologically sound energy transition

thebaffler.com

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Peter Sterne @petersterne.com · 8d

It really does not get more explicit than Trump telling top active-duty military generals that they will need to participate in occupations of large cities run by his political opponents as part of his "war from within"

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 8d

Trump: "The ones that are run by radical left Democrats -- what they've done to San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles. They're very unsafe places & we're gonna straighten them out one by one. This is gonna be a major part for some people in this room. That's a war too. It's war from within"

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Marisa Kabas @marisakabas.bsky.social · 9d

Reminder that Miller once asked an admiral “When a boat full of migrants is in int’l waters, they aren’t protected by the U.S. Constitution, right?” When admiral said that’s technically true, but int’l law still applied, Miller replied: “why can’t we use a Predator drone to obliterate that boat?”

Stephen Miller takes leading role in strikes on alleged Venezuelan drug boats

Exclusive: Miller’s homeland security council has played a key part in coordinating operations, sources say

www.theguardian.com

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David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 9d

Lol

Tesla Bros Attempt Coast-to-Coast Trip in Self-Driving Mode, Crash Right Away

There’s an aura of failure lingering around Elon Musk and the Tesla brand right now. A stink of mediocrity. Maybe even the funk of impotence.

www.vice.com

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☠️deadward niedermurder☠️ @niedermeyer.online · 12d

Elon Musk went to Pedophile Island

www.politico.com/news/2025/09...

Musk, Bannon and Thiel named in new Epstein estate documents

The House Oversight Committee is continuing to release redacted materials in its ongoing Jeffrey Epstein investigation.

www.politico.com

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Till Eckert @tilleckert.com · 12d

1/ I’m Till Eckert, a ProPublica reporter. For the past 2 weeks, I’ve been going to the same NY immigration courthouse.

Nearly every time, I see ICE agents arresting immigrants. Today, a woman was slammed to the ground after begging officials not to take her husband away.

Thread 👇

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Laura Bassett @lebassett.bsky.social · 15d

More than 1800 detainees are missing after the closure of Alligator Alcatraz. Their families and lawyers can’t find them and they’ve vanished from the ICE database. Feels like this should be a much bigger story www.miamiherald.com/news/local/i...

Hundreds of Alligator Alcatraz detainees drop off the grid after leaving site

As of the end of August, the whereabouts of two-thirds of more than 1,800 men detained at Alligator Alcatraz during the month of July could not be determined by the Miami Herald.

www.miamiherald.com

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Kendall Dix @kendalldix.bsky.social · 15d

My overly simplistic reading of this is that our constant exposure to industrial chemicals is giving us all cancer.

Shannon Osaka @shannonosaka.bsky.social · 15d

Breast, thyroid, and colon cancer rates are skyrocketing in young adults. Some of my colleagues break down the reasons why:

www.washingtonpost.com/health/inter...

This is an arrow plot showing how rates of cancer in young adults, aged 15 to 49, have changed over the past 20 years. Rates of breast, thyroid, and colon and rectum cancer have increased, while the rate of lung and bronchus cancer has decreased.

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Thea Riofrancos @triofrancos.bsky.social · 23d

In a world riven by inequality and devastated by climate + ecological crisis, what would it take for "green industrial policy" to empower the working class in Global North + South, and be truly green?

New @cplusc.bsky.social report by me and Isabel Estevez (1/3) t.co/78sQQe4d1g

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Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 23d

The free speech activist who built a list of professors he worked to get fired for their speech must be celebrated for his support of free speech, and anyone who quotes his speech accurately in context will be fired and/or face state punishment by the champions of free speech, do I have that right?

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Jeremy Wallace @jeremywallace.bsky.social · 23d

In May 2025, China installed 3 GW per day.

Conrad Hackett @conradhackett.bsky.social · 23d

Time for the world to install a gigawatt of solar power capacity
2004: A year
2010: ~ a month
2015: ~ a week
Now: A day
ourworldindata.org/data-insight... 🧪

Line chart showing that there's been a rapid escalation in how quickly the world installs a gigawatt of solar power capacity.

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Conrad Hackett @conradhackett.bsky.social · 23d

Time for the world to install a gigawatt of solar power capacity
2004: A year
2010: ~ a month
2015: ~ a week
Now: A day
ourworldindata.org/data-insight... 🧪

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Kevin J. CREATURE @kevinjkircher.com · 23d

I'm glad more people are thinking and talking about electricity affordability. As we do, I think it's worth pondering the fact that households typically pay around twice as much as industrial customers for a unit of electrical energy. How did this come to be? Does it have to be this way?

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Sharon @sharonk.bsky.social · 24d

korean reporting is nightmarish on the conditions Korean workers were contained in

Their waists and hands were tied together, forcing them to bend down and lick water to drink. The unscreened bathrooms contained only a single sheet to cover their lower bodies. Sunlight barely penetrated through a fist-sized hole, and they were only allowed access to the small yard for two hours. Detained by US immigration authorities for eight days, the workers and their families expressed shock, describing human rights violations and absurdities they could not have imagined as ordinary Koreans living in 2025.

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Matt Novak @paleofuture.bsky.social · 25d

Elon Musk spoke by video to Tommy Robinson's anti-immigrant rally in the UK today.

"You're in a fundamental situation here where, whether you choose violence or not, violence is coming to you," said Musk. "You either fight back or you die."

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Tony Dutzik @frontiertony.bsky.social · 25d

Climate/energy world has failed to process that much of the modeling that guided our decision making around the 2015 oil export ban for renewable tax credits trade-off turned out to be badly, disastrously wrong.

Kevin J. CREATURE @kevinjkircher.com · 25d

I think it's underappreciated that most policy support for clean energy under Obama came in exchange for lifting longstanding bipartisan limits on oil and gas exports. This enabled surging oil and gas production, methane emissions from which outweighed CO2 emission reductions from clean energy.

Graph of oil and gas exports from 1990 to 2025. They're both low until the Obama years, then rise sharply and continue to rise under Trump and Biden.

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Matt Novak @paleofuture.bsky.social · 25d

“This plan, the draft memo says, would allow the military to supplement law enforcement in cities such as New Orleans and Baton Rouge so long as Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican who has expressed support for the idea, asks the federal government for such assistance.”

Pentagon plan envisions 1,000 troops for Louisiana policing mission

Documents reviewed by The Post illustrate the Trump administration’s evolving strategy for sending the military into cities with Democratic majorities.

wapo.st

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Brendon Slotterback @bslotterback.bsky.social · 26d

Does anyone still care about hydrogen?

Globally, 75% of "low-carbon" hydrogen production is or will be electrolysis, while 25% is made from fossils. The US ratio is exactly flipped. Like in other areas, the US is pursuing an antiquated and dirty technology future while the world moves on.

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