Why do we listen to Odd Lots? “Capitalists will lie to you,but they don’t lie to themselves" Its Charismatic Megafauna in “Cambrian explosion” that blew open “neoliberal hegemony” of economic discourse over the past decade Congrats Joe & Tracy! @tracyalloway.bsky.social nytimes.com/2025/08/03/b...

Ebola may have been spreading for months in the DRC before anyone recognized it. A new reconstruction suggests the outbreak was already widespread in the gold-mining town of Mongbwalu by January. It wasn’t officially declared until 15 May. Why did no-one raise the alarm? My story for @science.org 🧪

EXCLUSIVE: Congo’s Ebola epidemic started at least 4 months before it was detected

A remote mining town gripped by fear saw hundreds of suspected cases before the government declared an outbreak, report says

science.org

A U.S. government map of Africa mislabeled every country during a state department presentation at a ⁠global conference www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

“The world's best AI training data is sitting on a shelf. Books represent curated, peer-reviewed, domain-specific human knowledge, structured in a way no web crawl can replicate. Dense, edited, authoritative." www.404media.co/ai-companies...

AI Companies Are Buying Tons of Old Books Because They're Free of AI Slop

ISBNdb, a company that sources printed books for AI companies to turn into training data, tells clients “the optics problem is real.”

404media.co

Science magazine has named the seemingly unstoppable growth of renewable energy worldwide as the 2025 'Breakthrough of the Year'. A fantastic article if you like so many have been unaware of the speed and scale and the transformation of so many lives by the #SolarHockeyStickOfHope scim.ag/493Tpgx

Science’s 2025 Breakthrough of the Year: The unstoppable rise of renewable energy

Clean energy infrastructure is being deployed with unmatched scale and speed—and China is leading the way

scim.ag

It's worth stressing that the *magnitude* by which some of these records are being broken is nothing short of astonishing

Ed Hawkins@edhawkins.org · last mo.

Hotter and hotter and hotter www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

When reality surpasses fiction! Top: fictional forecast for August 2050, broadcast by French TV in 2014 to warn about the consequences of global warming. Bottom: Real French forecast for yesterday, June 22, 2026.

always fun when nikita just goes online and posts "of course the haters were exactly right about why twitter feels like sticking your head in a blender" xcancel.com/nikitabier/s...

One of Australia's most enduring political satires is not returning... yet. Sidenote: So good to see the Star Observer return to agenda-setting coverage that's relevant to our community and beyond <3 www.starobserver.com.au/artsentertai...

Pauline Pantsdown Will Only Return To Us In The Hour Of Our Greatest Need

With the sudden resurgence of Pauline Hanson and One Nation, everyone is asking if drag satire Pauline Pantsdown will return too.

starobserver.com.au

This is an outrageous story. A farmer donated 87 acres to a small Texas city on the condition it be used as a public park. Years later, the farmer has passed away, the city sold the land to a developer, and now it will be the site of a 135,000 square foot data center www.404media.co/a-farmer-don...

A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Massive Data Center Instead

In 1999, a farmer gave away 87 acres of land to a small Texas town to use as a park. The town sold to a data center developer for $10 million.

404media.co

Surprise not-everything-is-terrible news: While there is justifiable fear and frustration with the current Ebola response in East Africa, there are also some signs the world has learned some things. www.nytimes.com/2026/06/06/w...

The World Has Learned From the Last Ebola Outbreak, but Gaps Remain

nytimes.com

The May edition of the Open Newswire Monthly Wrap includes a special focus section on the ongoing #Ebola crisis, with global perspectives as well as vital reporting on the ground in the DR Congo. #Journalism #CreativeCommons #OpenJournalism

[sitting on the stoop of the powerhouse museum] Marc Newson... [takes long drag 🚬🚬🚬] haven't heard THAT name in a while...

Reuters@reuters.com · 2mo ago

Critics give Ferrari Luce EV a cool response, shares fall reut.rs/49pgNWZ

This time, in @statnews.com: I wrote about how the conversation around seed oils is hurting my patients. The #MAHA movement isn't just about vaccines anymore: my patients will pay the price for beef tallow and butter all the same. www.statnews.com/2026/05/22/s... #publichealth #seedoils

The seed oil panic is hurting my cardiac patients

“My patients are replacing olive oil with beef tallow, even if they don't tell me during cardiac rehab,” writes a clinical dietitian.

statnews.com

"We must avoid the 'Babel syndrome,' the idolatry of profit that sacrifices the weak, a uniformity that neutralizes differences, and the pretense that a single language — even a digital one — can translate everything, including the mystery of the person, into data and performance."

I’ll be damned. The Pulitzer board did it. Good on them

Bill Grueskin@bgrueskin.bsky.social · 4mo ago

This is a news peg for a previous plea, that the Pulitzer board award the Miami Herald's Julie Brown a special citation, having missed the chance to give her the investigative prize years ago. www.pulitzer.org/prize-winner...

The Open Newswire wrap is back for April, a month when trending topics ranged from the #Iran war to #datacenters. Featuring top reporting from @nysfocus.com, @mirrorindy.org, @atlatszo.hu, @mongabay.com and more — all free to republish! Subscribe here: www.opennewswire.org/newsletter/

Open Newswire monthly wrap: April

A back look at the standout topics and headlines on Open Newswire in April.

mailchi.mp

Something we need to make really clear is that there is no guarantee that fossil fuel crises end up as a net benefit for climate action, emissions reductions or even just simple technological growth ie - "The response is a choice" @ember-energy.org ember-energy.org/latest-insig...

important news:

“‘All I’m going to say is that I stand by my decision,’ she said… “Much of the audience at the board meeting broke into cheers and applause after her statement. Chants of ‘shame’ were heard as board members voted to fire her...” www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2026/...

Tenn. library director fired over refusal to move LGBTQ+ books to adult section

A county board near Nashville voted to dismiss Luanne James, who said she stands by her decision, in the latest clash in a national debate over access to books.

washingtonpost.com

I went on a journey to get Trump's personal cell phone number. It took me about five minutes. My piece on the media's new favorite Trump gimmick, and how the White House feels about the endless stream of "exclusive" 30 second phone interviews w/Trump www.semafor.com/article/03/1...

Exclusive: Why (and how) everyone is cold-calling the president

Plus, what happened when Semafor’s Max Tani gave him a ring.

semafor.com

SCOOP: Alabama might be the first state to ever ban new solar farms. Why? People are upset about a gigantic solar project that would power a Meta data center. Turns out when you tie solar to data centers, it can quickly become less popular!

How Meta Made Alabama So Mad It’s Threatening to Ban Solar

A proposed solar projected in a small, unincorporated town is gearing up to be a big problem for renewables in the state.

heatmap.news

Past fossil-fuel price spikes left import-dependent countries with two options: pay up or cut fuel use. Now there is an alternative in solar and batteries. I looked at recent examples in Europe, Pakistan, Cuba to glean what might happen with the war on Iran. 🎁🔗 www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

How Fossil Fuel Disruptions Lead to Booms in Solar and Batteries

Past oil crises forced countries to cut fuel use and pay high prices, but now falling prices of clean tech offer another solution.

bloomberg.com

"It's not artificial intelligence. It's African intelligence." Michael Geoffrey Asia, the secretary general of the Data Labelers Association in Kenya tells @jasonkoebler.bsky.social about the notoriously brutal and underpaid work of training AI. Watch now: www.youtube.com/watch?v=QH65...

The "AI revolution" in science is going so smoothly that my instititutional library is having to deploy multiple technical protection measures against "poorly behaved Gen AI crawling" just to maintain its timely service library.ed.ac.uk/research-sup...

by the end of this weekend my phone had learned "cablp" without autocorrecting it. please enjoy my trip report: defector.com/criss-angel-...

I Traveled 800 Miles To Eat Breakfast, Lunch, And Pizza At Criss Angel’s Breakfast, Lunch, And Pizza | Defector

When I was a very depressed British teenager, I had an unhealthy fascination with America. I found a way to love its contradictions, to explain away the obvious sins not by excusing them directly but ...

defector.com

WORLDWIDE release times for Relooted’s launch tomorrow!

1/ ProPublica collected handwritten letters in mid-January from children held at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, the same facility where 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos was taken. Hundreds of kids are still detained. We’ll let the children’s words speak for themselves. 🧵

I have a 30 minute oration about how Au defo laws shape everything you see and hear in this country's media landscape. If some organisation or group of organisations cannot use *Epstein plotting to weaponise Au defo law to kill inquiry into his wrongdoing* to push for reform, we have no hope.