CAHSR's Strongest Soldier
@emoscientist.bsky.social
suburban urbanist, cargo pants aficionado, UAW member, Georgist, YIMBY socialist, geoscientist, Inland Empire respecter, hydrogen hater, 🔰🚰🌹 they/them. Pro algae.
Talked to a few NASA scientist acquaintances today who said DOGE laid off 50-80% of their workforce in one swoop in 2025. "Basic science" has been rebranded to "administration priorities". A stunning loss of institutional knowledge.
South Carolina is now the first state in the nation for the Democratic Primary and this just ran in The State, the newspaper of Columbia, South Carolina. Come out to the rally and lobby day next week in Sac and help get our legislators to undo the cuts! actionnetwork.org/events/emerg...
your apartment, the sport of basketball, and the Republic of Korea are all social constructs. mere recognition of this fact does not actually make the question of whether you are standing in your own apartment, playing basketball, or a Korean national up in the air until settled by op ed editors
whenever someone tells you that it's simply impossible for police to be charged with misconduct or criminal charges, you can tell they're wrong because some cops do get charged regularly — when they are whistleblowers or reformers prosecutors are actually extremely eager to help drum them out!
Phil Lewis@phillewis.bsky.social · 5d agoProsecutors charged an LAPD officer with felony eavesdropping for making secret recordings of his colleagues’ racist, sexist and homophobic comments on the job
There's whole categories of discourse on here that only make sense if you assume "Donald Trump is not currently the president". A lot of people trying to escape the horrors and comforting themselves with old worn down discourse
It's nuts that this made the ballot but the leg killed UAW 4811's much broader and fairer science bond ballot measure. The CA initiative process is so broken
CalMatters@calmatters.org · 5d agoProposition 38 is written in a way that very likely excludes all but one institute in the entire state: the California Institute for Immunology and Immunotherapy, whose prominent donor and co-founder is the chief backer of the proposition. cal.news/4pPbZB3 📸 Leonard Ortiz
This Day in Labor History: July 31, 1905. Matumbi tribesman in German East Africa (today, mostly Tanzania, or Tanganyika as it was known then) marched on the trading post of Samanga, burning cotton fields and the trading post itself. This was the beginning of the Maji-Maji Rebellion!
Love to see an LA-area board openly disagree and democratically vote on things rather than rolling everything behind the scenes for a unanimous vote
Streetsblog L.A.@streetsblogla.bsky.social · 6d agoL.A. County cities reject appointment of pro-freeway Santa Clarita Republican Jason Gibbs to Metro board la.streetsblog.org/2026/07/30/s...
Ok so this lady says solar panels are getting built on "the most productive farmland" in her area. Which just ain't true at all. It ain't true here in NC either. Where I ALSO hear that talking point over & over again. Smells like astroturf! So let's get the dirt on solar farms & dirt ✨
David Roberts@volts.wtf · 6d agoI genuinely don't know what to do about this. In our diseased information environment, one MAGA-adjacent "influencer" can do more to shape public opinion than mountains of studies or facts. Where are the pro-clean-energy influencers to counter this shit?
Kind of an unsurprising consequence of climate change - which in Earth history is closely linked to changing vegetation. A lot of California is simply getting too hot and dry to sustain forests. One of the reasons I'm skeptical of afforestation being successful as a climate solution.
Sammy Roth@sammyroth.bsky.social · 6d agoCalifornia can’t replant its forests fast enough to keep up with wildfires calmatters.org/environment/... via @ra-becks.bsky.social
The left needs a candidate it can unite around in the 2028 primaries and AOC is the only real choice. Nobody else checks all of the boxes. Every other option is worse. If she doesn't run, it's a missed opportunity of historic proportions. www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/aoc-must-r...
AOC Must Run For President
History is calling. Sorry!
hamiltonnolan.com
There's a direct line between the War on Terror (and lack of accountability) and the civil rights abuses we're currently witnessing under Trump - ICE, DHS, foreign torture camps, terrorism charges... If you rightly oppose current democratic backsliding you should think critically about its roots.
#StupidSuez@diplomatofnight.com · last wk.A lot of liberal foreign policy thinkers on here remain totally and intentionally obtuse about what their preferred party and their ideology has wrought in the Middle East and how thoroughly their unconditional support for Israel has discredited them
A lot of liberal foreign policy thinkers on here remain totally and intentionally obtuse about what their preferred party and their ideology has wrought in the Middle East and how thoroughly their unconditional support for Israel has discredited them
Pax American was 8ish years in the 90s and 2000 itself, with one good deed in Bosnia, that apparently outweighs the past 26 years of what we inhabit letting the National Id drive entirely.
The reason NYC's consolidation of surrounding jurisdictions into one big city government was never copied was because *it worked* and the wealthy realized that municipal fragmentation served their interests much better bsky.app/profile/ones...
#1 Shoup Fan@oneshoup.bsky.social · last wk.It’s interesting that this was basically never copied even though it was part of a wave of progressive reforms in the 19th century. I guess no city was large enough before the wave of changes that made places want to split and not consolidate in the 20th century
"Covering an area the size of Britain, Western Sahara is designated as a “non-self-governing territory” by the United Nations and remains on its official list of territories still awaiting decolonization." Eoghan Gilmartin for @africaisacountry1.bsky.social africasacountry.com/2026/07/odys...
Odyssey to Africa’s last colony
Backed by Moroccan state subsidies, Christopher Nolan’s decision to film The Odyssey in occupied Western Sahara is the latest and highest-profile chapter in a five-decade campaign to normalize colonia...
africasacountry.com
Wild to see what trains we've gained/lost on Amtrak since the 90s
Transit costs and transit disinvestment are the same problem. Highways* get in-house engineers, streamlined review and land acquisition, and consistent funding while transit gets none of that. It's expensive to be poor. *In California, ymmv by state
amb@amb.fyi · last wk.remarkable how it's consensus within all realms of transportation academic/professional/political pundit spaces that transit projects cost too much and how rarely it's coupled with "we spend orders of magnitude more on highways which also suffer from exorbitant cost overruns and consultant grift"
NEW | California just reached a world-first solar milestone Over HALF (51%) of electricity generation across the whole month of May came from solar power. Battery storage is the big difference maker, enabling California to push the share of solar generation to this level.
ICE needs to be annihilated.
Adam Sawyer@adamjst.bsky.social · last wk.“If immigration hadn't picked up my brother, my sister-in-law would still be alive, and the children wouldn't be going through this sorrow,” he said. “Unfortunately, immigration — the [U.S.] government — doesn't see that. It makes no difference to them.” www.stlpr.org/law-order/20...
Trump is stealing from Blue states twice; first by withholding federal funding, and second by hiking up tariffs that suppress any willingness to support local sales taxes to make up for his thievery
One might think that Nazi crimes and palaeontology never overlapped, and yet... Have you ever wondered what happened to tens of palaeontologists & geologists in the Nazi-occupied Poland? How academics helped to bring down the fascist regime. And a curious story of Schindler-equivalent in geology. 🧵
One of tens murdered include Irena A Dąbkowska, a geologist & paleobotanist specialising in peat. During war she ran underground radio, served Home Army & saved life of fellow Jewish botanist Karolina Lubliner-Mianowska (who survived the war & thrived later as a Hydrogeology director)
It sometimes feels like culture is dying, and I worry that people are not only replacing social interaction but art, music, even TV and video games with scrolling and gambling
Catherina Gioino@catgioino.bsky.social · last wk.I wrote about how much Americans wagered on sports betting in 2025 and how it’s more than they spent on movies, art, museums and music combined. Read my article @fortunemagazine.bsky.social fortune.com/2026/07/26/g...
I don't know how you look at everything Trump's been doing to mess with the election and think anything other than that he's trying to rig it. But whether he will succeed is a different matter, as Bob Kuttner reports. prospect.org/2026/07/28/t...
Yes, Trump Will Attempt a Coup - The American Prospect
If we are vigilant, he won’t pull it off.
prospect.org
Are we comfortably numb with police violence? The brutal cop killing of Corey Ruiz in Madison, Wisc. sparked local protest but only muted outrage on the national level. Despite falling crime, cops gun down more Americans than ever Where's the outrage? My new column www.inquirer.com/opinion/core...
Corey Ruiz police killing reveals an America numb to violence | Will Bunch
Police killings like the death of Madison’s Corey Ruiz, caught on gruesome video, are rising, but public outrage is not.
inquirer.com