January 25, 2017
As soon as today, reams of climate data used around the world will be taken down from the EPA website. / Reuters
“An amazed senior adviser recently pulled out his phone to show us a string of the emailed PDFs, all demanding response. It was like something from the early ’90s.” Trump’s media diet isn’t as interesting as how he responds, usually by taking notes in Sharpie and dictating tweets aloud. / Axios
“People in rural Nebraska are more progressive than they realize.” In less than a year, the Democratic Socialists of America has doubled its membership. / In These Times
Borders begin as fictions. They are performed. They are lines drawn in the sand, spaces that bend and break and make exceptions for certain kinds of bodies. / YouTube
“More than a month after Russia announced one of its biggest privatizations since the 1990s, selling a 19.5 percent stake in its giant oil company Rosneft, it still isn’t possible to determine from public records the full identities of those who bought it.” Extensive investigation into Russia’s sale of its oil gem reveals a Cayman-registered entity, the Italian central bank, ties to the Kremlin and Qatar—but no buyer. / Reuters
Opening today at Rome’s MACRO museum, “The Night Illuminates The Night” by photographer Rafael Y. Herman features big, bright pictures you’d never guess were shot in total darkness and contain no digital manipulation. / en.museomacro.org, The Creators Project
Norman Eisen and Richard Painter, former White House ethics lawyers under Obama and Bush, respectively, filed a lawsuit against Trump asking a federal court to rule that Trump has already broken the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause. / documentcloud.org, BuzzFeed
After Trump directed several federal agencies, including the EPA, HHS, USDA, and Interior Department, to freeze all communications, social media managers at various National Parks began tweeting out climate statistics and the like: The Times dismissed the outraged reaction online as “unrealistic,” but the order seems genuinely alarming, with anonymous career bureaucrats all but promising Politico that they will be working against Trump’s policies and leaking what they can to the press. / The New York Times, Politico
Columbia Law School launched a Climate Deregulation Tracker on Trump’s first day in office, so at least we have an idea of how badly the planet is about to get fucked. / columbiaclimatelaw.com
“We’re having a heart attack.” During Trump’s inauguration, hackers, librarians, and scientists at UCLA raced to download all of the government’s available climate data before it was deleted. / Quartz
“A story shared on social media that claims a Boston man lost his testicles in an explosion while trying to fill a scuba tank with marijuana smoke is false.” FYI. / AP