Kerry Champion
@kerrychamp.bsky.social
Professional interest: applications of AI. Civic interest: rule of law and fight against authoritarianism.
US government map of Africa mislabels every country at global conference reut.rs/4x9eTCW
US government map of Africa mislabels every country at global conference
A U.S. government map of Africa mislabeled every country during a State Department presentation at a global conference taking place in Brazil this week, causing a stir among attendees who took screenshots and posted them online.
reut.rs
Trump’s media company today began selling early access to the president’s posts on Truth Social for up to $100k a month to financial institutions. I talked to former SEC lawyers, who see the service as a violation of insider trading laws. And a Wall Street executive, who told me:
"It's insane. I can say for myself and 200 of my friends in finance, we're not getting anywhere near this. In another administration, this would be considered criminal.”
Now, this is an informative, inspiring, and subtle read. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
The Most Iconic American Artwork Is the Hardest to See
The Statue of Liberty is caught between the sublime and the souvenir, our critic Jason Farago explains. Look again: She’s much stranger than you think.
nytimes.com
"You don't charge first and then figure it out. You get the information first and then charge. ...So it's a true embarrassment for Jeanine Pirro. It's a true embarrassment for DOJ. And they brought it on themselves."
And indeed, the main pullout: “The technologies are ready. The economics are favorable. The institutions exist. What the future of climate finance requires is not a new invention but an old one: the political will to match the scale of the problem.”
I wrote a thing for OPEC, well for the OPEC Fund's 50th Anniversary book. I have visions of MBS having it on his coffee table, stumbling upon page 165, and learning a thing or two about climate finance: gwagner.com/opec-finance
The future of climate finance
The trend is clear. So are the challenges. One key task is to de-risk capital investments to lower costs. This is where public climate finance must play…
gwagner.com
We never share what we think. We share where we sit. – Marunouchi Building, Tokyo
"They were careless people. They smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.” This man did incalculable damage, while 'carried away.'
NEW: Months after FCC Commissioner Olivia Trusty cast a decisive vote approving Paramount’s historic $8 billion merger with Skydance Media, she and a guest accepted Kennedy Center gala tickets from the company worth more than $12,000.
FCC Officials Took Pricey Gifts From Paramount as the Company Needed Approval for Billion-Dollar Deals
Accepting tickets to the Kennedy Center honors gala compromised the commissioners’ impartiality, ethics experts told ProPublica. FCC Chair Brendan Carr has been gifted at least $63,000 worth of ticket...
propublica.org
Reinventing the East India Company?
Jenny Cohn@jennycohn.bsky.social · 4w ago👀 Erick Brimen, CEO of Prospera—an aspiring “network state” backed by Thiel & Andreessen—will testify on 7/14 about “economic security zones,” the new buzzword promoted by Pax Silica, a global initiative led by Trump official Jacob Helberg, former advisor to Thiel’s Palantir. h/t @gilduran.com 1/
Ahead of England v Norway in the World Cup, enjoy this classic from my old pal Patrick Kidd in The Times
At some point we are going to have to reckon with what percentage of the Thought Leadership we get from this class of people is just drug addiction. Either a lot of credulous reporters have never listened to someone tooted out of their mind go on a monologue or they're afraid to call it out.
Richard Kadrey@richardkadrey.bsky.social · 4w agoThis from the guy who has to hire people to play his video games for him.
The U.S. used to send refugee officers around the world. Now, they're only going to South Africa, where the Trump administration has singularly focused U.S. refugee resettlement efforts on the country’s white population. www.notus.org/immigration/...
Trump Is Deploying Every U.S. Refugee Officer to Just One Country
Inside Trump's program to bring Afrikaners to the U.S.
notus.org
"Because we do not notice them, transgressions of physics reveal that our visual brain uses a simpler, reduced physics to understand the world." The Art of the Shadow: How Painters Have Gotten It Wrong for Centuries:
The Art of the Shadow: How Painters Have Gotten It Wrong for Centuries
The goal is not to expose the “slipups” of the masters but to understand the human brain.
thereader.mitpress.mit.edu
The American legal system is being abused in order to pander to the president's fantasies and make them seem real www.nytimes.com/2026/07/02/u...
Olympian Is Indicted After Arrest at Washington’s Reflecting Pool
nytimes.com
This was sent to me by one of the naturalists. Multiple whale breaches.
$2.5 BILLION. That’s how much the Trump Administration has now spent paying companies to cancel offshore wind projects that would have lowered your electric bill. Yes, you heard that right, they are PAYING to keep your energy bills high.
Trump Administration to Pay $765 Million to Cancel 4 More Wind Projects
nytimes.com
101 former judges have asked New York disciplinary authorities to investigate Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, alleging ethics violations tied to his conduct at DOJ. My latest: open.substack.com/pub/joycevan...
101 Former Judges Ask the New York Bar to Investigate Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche
Today, 101 former judges filed a complaint, asking the New York State Bar Attorney Grievance Commission to “initiate an investigation into Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche (Registration No.
open.substack.com
Apparently, there is a cafe in Shenzen’s biotech hub that gives you free coffee for a month if you publish in @nature.com or @science.org. ;-)
![Comic. [Winch arm with labels for “fusion capsule” and “plunger,” with string underneath with labels “recursive trucker’s hitch,” “Fout,” (at start of string) “n= number of layers,” and Fin (at end of string). Equation in box below: Mechanicaladvantage=FoutFin=13(2(2n+1)+1)≈234n. Below box: MA(1)=3:1; MA(5)=683:1 ; MA(20)=733,007,751,851:1 ; MA(50)=845,100,400,152,152,934,331,135,470,251:1 [caption] The international Atomic Energy Agency regulates the recursive trucker’s hitch, since the unlimited mechanical advantage it offers is powerful enough to ignite fusion.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:cz73r7iyiqn26upot4jtjdhk/bafkreialsv6bb34yzapxtdelgz4pd33xwfjbhngzvscpbm5f5j3o4x735u)
![Comic. [Person 1 with short hair on stage behind podium reading off paper while addressing audience. People are shown sitting in chairs while Person 2 with ponytail and Person 3 waving are walking toward stage.] PERSON 1: This year’s Nobel Prize in “calibrating your equipment carefully and not embarrassing yourself by publishing spurious results” goes to Dr. Adams and Dr. Smith, who did *not* announce the discovery of microbes on Titan. PERSON 3: Thank you, thank you.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:cz73r7iyiqn26upot4jtjdhk/bafkreihztdrvxjeyzmz6dmz3xb4vi6wiwwtge6fwdoxjcum5aptndv3kfm)
![Comic. [A person and a second person with a ponytail sitting at a table with a screen showing a soccer game behind them.] PERSON 1: They could be in trouble. Over the last 36 years, they’ve gone 0 for 2 when they’ve scored in the 37th minute to lead 2-1 against a team whose country comes before theirs alphabetically. [caption] I wish sports commentators hadn’t discovered p-hacking.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:cz73r7iyiqn26upot4jtjdhk/bafkreia7nj3d2xiski77uifyleeowddz6c24e5tgcxrk4jy5j6o3i2wryu)