From Reddit, a reminder that different places have different environmental issues. Here's the Buriganga river going through Dhaka, Bangladesh, one of the mass of rivers that flow into the Bay of Bengal. A beautiful place with a lousy, corrupt government that has zero interest in providing services.

Looks like my contractor friend got it right. www.cnn.com/2026/07/31/p... The DOJ dropped all charges against the "vandals," admitting a "rushed and flawed installation process" with "overspraying and a failure of the coatings to bond" the primary results. Also failure to dry properly first.

𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗@charlescmann.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Asked a contractor pal about the $13M paint job peeling off the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. Him: I knew that was going to happen. Me: How? Him: You can't rush that kind of job. The pool bottom has to be really dry or it'll exude water. And you have to clean it like a mofo first...

An interesting first effort to evaluate the potential impact of AI on scientific research. "Enticing as it is to imagine that, by saving us time on mundane tasks, LLMs will provide us with more time to think deeply and develop projects completely, our results temper such hopes."

Carl T. Bergstrom@carlbergstrom.com · 2w ago

1. We—@eduede.bsky.social, @mjcrockett.bsky.social, Kevin Gross, and I—have a new preprint on the arXiv today, based on ideas that emerged during an @sfiscience.bsky.social workshop in November 2024: The unintended consequences of large language models as a labor-augmenting technology in science.

Stumbled across this floridly written summary of why every historian I know feels a bit queasy about SC Gwynne's "Empire of the Summer Moon."

Making $ Through Atrocious History: A Review of Empire of the Summer Moon

I have been teaching Native American history for almost twenty-five years now.

danielebolelli.substack.com

"We show that this [small slice of SW Amazonia] alone contains as many earthworks as previously estimated for the whole of Amazonia. We also propose that the total human population of the area in 100–300 AD was 1.25–3 million people. If similar results are found elsewhere in Amazonia..."

Over 20,000 precolonial earthworks in the Southwest Amazonia - Nature

Using canopy-penetrating LiDAR data, the northern part of southwestern Amazonia appears to contain as many earthworks as previously estimated for the whole of Amazonia.

nature.com

My sister, the public defender: "Hey, wouldn't it be funny if Congress saw the ludicrous surveillance and prosecutorial overreach here applied to one of their own class and decided it might be a bad idea to give the cops these powers? I know it's not going to happen, but let a girl have her dreams."

‘Preposterous’: Comey team attacks charges over alleged threat to Trump

FBI turned to convicted mafia killer to attempt to show ‘86-47’ could be a call for assassination.

politico.com

This so poignant for me. My late father-in-law had to stop driving at 93. We offered to take him wherever he needed, but he of course hated asking. A self-driving car could've restored his sense of autonomy. It sucks that he died before being able to have this.

Forget rideshare. How seniors are using Teslas for transportation

As Waymo and Tesla robotaxi services promise more rides for more cities, seniors are taking matters into their own hands and self-driving Teslas.

detroitnews.com

People say Trump has no real political convictions, but here it turns out he might have one, and it's idiotic. archive.is/4JkDr

Nice NYTimes piece on a German effort to catalogue the global microbiome. "Gut bacteria can acquire as many as 100 new genes per year on average." "Poyet and her team had found at least one microbe that gobbles up blood cholesterol... and turns it into coprostanol, which can be excreted in feces."

Our Bacteria Are Talking. We’ve Just Begun to Understand What They’re Saying. (Gift Article)

The human microbiome is essential to our health, but scientists still know very little about it. Two researchers set out to map this largely uncharted terrain.

nytimes.com

Well, here we are. A few minutes into this podcast, the guest--a well-known conservative intellectual--says "the exorcists I have talked to." He evidently has them (plural!) on his contact list. The exorcists are "very worried" about Tucker Carlson, 'cuz he lives in the "demon-rich" Maine woods.

Deleted a post because I misread the date and presented older news as something new. My apologies for the goof.

A side benefit of the fuss over the Odyssey movie is that people have been interviewing Homer translator Emily Wilson, who is unfailingly interesting on these matters. Her new talk with @dkthomp.bsky.social, who has the wit (all too rare among interviewers) to stay out of the way, is terrific.

What Is Lost When We Make 'The Odyssey' Modern

Christopher Nolan's 'Odyssey' is an extraordinary, modern epic. Homer's Odyssey is an even more extraordinarily strange one.

derekthompson.org

Just in case you were wondering if Habitat for Humanity would accept a donation of that leftover can of paint in your garage.

"As the war lingers, Trump has grown less confident that the U.S. and Iran can find a diplomatic solution to the conflict.... And he has told people he can break the Iranians’ will through an aggressive bombing campaign..." If this @wsj.com article is true, it sounds like a recipe for a long war.

Trump Is Losing Patience Over an Iran War With No Clear End in Sight

The president has grown skeptical of diplomacy and is in “revenge mode” against Tehran, according to a senior administration official.

wsj.com

I was raised in the Pacific Northwest and will consider its landscape the epitome of beauty until I die, but I have to say that these Adirondack lakes are really something in the early morning.

CDC: Measles cases this year (2,318) already surpass 2025 numbers (2,289)--and 2025 was the worst year for measles in decades. www.cdc.gov/measles/data...

I always feel guilty about enjoying mean book reviews, but this one about recent political books is a doozy--super-scathing on Vance's book, maybe cuz the writer edits a Catholic journal. This bit about Vance's constant invocation of Charlie Kirk made me laugh. www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...

Startling NYTimes graphic. The Trump ppl have charged 558 ppl w/ assaulting ICE agents. 463 cases have been resolved. Just 4 have been convicted at trial. 191 have been dismissed. 246 pleaded out, usually to lesser charges. Usually the gov't wins 90% of the time. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/18/u...

Very timely: the National Academies of Sciences has just released a 10-year update on its last report on "attribution science"--the effort to analyze how much climate change has on specific weather events. Timely especially because it has much relevance to the current awful wildfires in Canada. 1/4

The Science of Extreme Event Attribution — Which Analyzes Climate Change’s Influence on Specific Weather Events — Has Advanced, But Challenges Remain

A new report from the National Academies provides a comprehensive assessment of the current capabilities of extreme event attribution (EEA) — a scientific field that analyzes whether and to what exten...

nationalacademies.org

What's there to say about the history of the electric washing machine? Turns out, a whole lot. Join the estimable @vpostrel.skystack.xyz and me as we explore the world's most liberatory invention, the evolution of lice, female stunt reporters, my attempt to use a washboard, and other matters.

3000+-yr-old bristlecone pines, Great Basin National Park, Nevada.

Yep. When they didn't stick the landing with the attempted decapitation strike, they immediately reverted to "Whatev, we outnumber you so lol." Back to throwing farmboys at tanks. Not giving a shit about their actual soldiers is Russian policy. Remember the Kursk? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kursk_s...

Kursk submarine disaster - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Michael Scally@fizzvstheworld.bsky.social · 3w ago

I'd argue there was a plan... It'd just that it was a nostalgic "playing the hits" like overwhelming the opposition with sheer numbers of manpower... But much like with our current CHUDs in charge at the Pentagon, they fail to realize that it isn't the romanticized retellings of WW2 anymore...

Just saw that @alexiscoe.bsky.social noticed the oddity of the NYT report and has given some context.

The Scandal and the Scale

I was bleary-eyed on a delayed flight when I spotted a New York Times article about Kerri Greenidge, a historian of Black political life and memory.

alexiscoe.substack.com

𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗@charlescmann.bsky.social · 3w ago

This exasperatingly vague NYTimes article about the prizewinning historian Kerri Greenidge, who seems to have quietly lost her position at Tufts and had 2 books removed by publishers, is written as if the author knows a lot more than lawyers will let him say.

This exasperatingly vague NYTimes article about the prizewinning historian Kerri Greenidge, who seems to have quietly lost her position at Tufts and had 2 books removed by publishers, is written as if the author knows a lot more than lawyers will let him say.

Historian Kerri K. Greenidge and Her Book ‘The Grimkes’ Come Under Fire

Kerri K. Greenidge appeared to lose her professorship at Tufts University after scholars began scrutinizing her 2022 book, “The Grimkes,” which is no longer listed on its publisher’s website.

nytimes.com

Globalization FTW! Super-good Turkish coffee and snacks in a cafe in an early 20th-c. manse in downtown Salt Lake City.

Nice point from @robinsonmeyer.bsky.social: Big Tech's emissions are rising as the firms go all-in on AI (see chart). But the single biggest driver of their emissions isn't electricity use but construction--a reminder that the built env't remains a giant climate issue. heatmap.news/daily/google...

Hey, this NY Times piece by the excellent @kathleenduval.bsky.social on Mercy Warren, who helped ignite the idea of liberty in pre-revolutionary Boston, is quite terrific and well worth reading. I knew nothing about her and am now delighted to know a bit about her. Happy belated July 4! (Gift link)

The Patriot Housewife Whose Plays Helped Push America Toward Revolution (Gift Article)

For the 250th anniversary, The Times Magazine asked leading historians to profile founding-era Americans whose roles in the drama have been often overlooked.

nytimes.com

Firefly season in New England. A photo sent to me by a pal from a trail a couple miles from my home.

This @reason.com article is a fine rundown on the threats to free speech--especially political speech, which in the US is the most protected category--in both Europe and, increasingly, the US. Going out on a limb here, I'd say ppl should not be charged for posting stupid stuff about Russia or Gaza.

In Europe, just reposting Russian propaganda can land a blogger in jail

Don't assume this couldn't happen in America too.

reason.com

It is kind of funny, as @timothynoah.bsky.social notes, that the Trump people just denounced the Smithsonian's Natl Museum of American History for ignoring the Founders when this statue of George Washington is what you see when you walk into the building. timothynoah.substack.com/p/trumps-smi...