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To Better Prepare for Extreme Weather, We Fired Everyone at NOAA and Replaced Them with a Guy Named Noah

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/to-better-prepare-for-extreme-weather-we-fi…
Created
Wed, 09/07/2025 - 03:00

“Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem slammed the ‘ancient system’ used to warn the public of potential weather threats — and vowed the Trump administration plans to ‘fix’ the technology… Sitting next to Gov. Greg Abbott, Noem was asked why the National Weather Service’s alerts about the heavy rainfall and flash flooding [in Texas] were ‘delayed,’ and said the situation was inherited.” — New York Post

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As Texas begins to recover from last week’s catastrophic flooding, the Trump administration would like to reassure Texans that Donald Trump is doing everything in his power to improve the National Weather Service’s outdated alert system. That’s why, as part of the DOGE cuts five months ago, we fired everyone at NOAA and replaced them with one guy named Noah.

Illness and Endless Wars

https://tomdispatch.com/illness-and-endless-wars/
Created
Tue, 08/07/2025 - 23:32

War kills in so many ways. These days, Americans are bombarded with images from Gaza and elsewhere of people or broken bodies being ferried on stretchers from the rubble of homes and hospitals, by rescue workers whose thin bodies and stricken faces suggest they are barely better off than those they’re helping. Social media and journalists make us eyewitnesses to emaciated children too weak to cry. And yet, compared with air raids that crush and bloody instantaneously, a slower disaster, more difficult to capture (especially given our made-for-TikTok attention spans), consists of the hours that many people in war zones spend wasting away from infectious diseases of one sort or another. Let me count a few of the ways. In... Read more

Source: Illness and Endless Wars appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

What happens to inflation when we put a price on carbon?

https://bankunderground.co.uk/2025/07/08/what-happens-to-inflation-when-we-put-…
Created
Tue, 08/07/2025 - 23:00
Hannah Copeland, Lennart Brandt, Natalie Burr and Boromeus Wanengkirtyo Emissions Trading Schemes (ETS) are an increasingly popular market-based policy to impose a price on carbon emissions (previously costless to the emitter) (World Bank Group (2025), DESNZ (2025)). With carbon prices expected to increase steadily, and sectoral coverage broadening, these schemes have gained the attention of … Continue reading What happens to inflation when we put a price on carbon? →

Sal from Blueberries for Sal Breaks Her Silence

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/sal-from-blueberries-for-sal-breaks-her-sil…
Created
Tue, 08/07/2025 - 22:00

Thank you for coming to my press conference.

Many people describe the Caldecott Honor–winning tome by Robert McCloskey, which recounts my harrowing tale, with words like “precious” and “adorable.”

Truth is, inadvertently switching places with a bear cub and almost being raised and/or eaten by a literal mama bear was a traumatizing experience for me, one which nobody seems to understand.

I can no longer bite my tongue, and I am here today to speak my truth.

I will now take your questions.

What specifically was I afraid of, that day after the baby bear and I accidentally switched places? Well, I feared that the bear mom might abscond with me into the wilds of Maine to raise me as her own, like Tarzan, but without the uncomfortable sensual subtext.

Why didn’t I just run in the other direction? Wow, way to victim blame. Ever heard of Stockholm syndrome?

Amid Trump’s calls to remove her as UN special rapporteur on Palestine, Varoufakis, Piketty, Gosh & another 7 economists praise Francesca Albanese’s report on the Economics of Genocide – ZETEO

https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/2025/07/08/amid-trumps-calls-to-remove-her-as-un…
Created
Tue, 08/07/2025 - 16:41

Yanis Varoufakis, Thomas Piketty, Nassim Taleb, Jayati Gosh, Michael Hudson,  Giuseppe Mastruzzo, Jomo Kwame Sundaram, Robert H. Wade, Christopher Cramer and Nidhi Srinivas co-sign the open letter below supporting Francesca Albanese amid US calls to remove her as the UN special rapporteur on Palestine History teaches us that economic interests have been key drivers and […]

The post Amid Trump’s calls to remove her as UN special rapporteur on Palestine, Varoufakis, Piketty, Gosh & another 7 economists praise Francesca Albanese’s report on the Economics of Genocide – ZETEO appeared first on Yanis Varoufakis.

The Grip of Power

https://www.monbiot.com/2025/07/08/the-grip-of-power/
Created
Tue, 08/07/2025 - 14:53
Cynical operators seek to divide rural and urban people. But what we want is fundamentally the same. By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 28th June 2025 Power hides by setting us against each other. This is never more true than in the countryside, where the impacts of an extreme concentration of ownership and control […]

Whatever happened to Romney Republicans?

https://crookedtimber.org/2025/07/08/whatever-happened-to-romney-republicans/
Created
Tue, 08/07/2025 - 14:16
Have they changed, or just become their worst selves While Trump is unpopular with a majority of Americans, his support among Republicans remains solid. That’s despite blatant corruption, fascist policies and a failure to deliver any of the economic benefits he promised. Faced with this depressing fact, the standard New York Times response has been […]

McSweeney’s Death Rattle

https://tribunemag.co.uk/2025/07/mcsweeneys-death-rattle/
Created
Tue, 08/07/2025 - 12:25

As the fallout from Labour’s debacle of a welfare bill reverberated around Westminster last week, it wasn’t just Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves who found themselves caught in the crosshairs: the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, also became a ‘lightning rod’ for Labour MPs’ anger. ‘Everyone’, an anonymous ‘Labour veteran’ told the Financial […]