“I wanted to read what my students had written. I’d been telling them all semester that writing was a gift humanity had made for itself, a way for us to know ourselves and each other across space and time.”
Beautiful piece by Peter Baker.
Anthropic's defiance of the Pentagon's A.I. orders was undeniably brave, a welcome contrast with Big Tech's general approach to the Trump admin. but the resistance folks shooting Claude to the top of the app charts need to understand that Anthropic is not very principled, and is not your friend:
Matt Schlapp has attempted to justify the killing of more than 100 young girls at an elementary school in southern Iran, by claiming they were saved from religious extremism. trib.al/mpzZynt
As Trump's DHS fights to pull local police onto its side, an immigrant’s safety largely depends on how much their community stands up for them.
By: @tylerfromtexas.bsky.social
inkstickmedia.com/how-trumps-d...
My take on the impact of climate change on Somalis in today’s @newrepublic.com article by @eshirin.bsky.social.
Persistent drought—made a hundred times more likely due to warming caused by fossil fuel emissions—is affecting Somali people’s decisions to either relocate internally or migrate across international borders. My latest for @thenewrepublic.bsky.social:
newrepublic.com/article/2072...
In late February, after reopening thousands of refugee claims in Minnesota, the White House said ICE agents would be empowered to detain legal refugees in the U.S. indefinitely for “aggressive rescreening.” trib.al/H9nHeqf
By me: Today marks 10 years since the assassination of Indigenous environmentalist Berta Cáceres, a rare leader whose death marked a before and after for many including me. Despite some justice, the extractive economic model and its criminal modus operandi continues apace.
drilled.media/news/berta
"Music is not created / It is always here / surrounding us / like the infinite particles that constitute life, it cannot be seen but can only be felt […] / Music with out the Musician is like life with out Allah / both in desperate need of a home / a body."
@longreads.com
"Malcolm’s poetics — his love of language and for his people, his gentleness and ability to speak to the truth of things for oppressed peoples across the continents — is what shaped and awakened his radical politics", writes Elham Shirin in, "In These Times". inthesetimes.com/article/poet...
And Malcolm's legacy—the spirit of which is visible in Black and brown poets across the world, shows the power of language to shape who people are, to imagine another world on her way, quietly breathing.
I discovered Brother Malcolm a long time ago, but his life, his words have gained a deeper resonance over time—especially now, in the midst of this American nightmare. Malcolm’s power, his path, his poetry, his gentleness—all lay bare the truth of things for oppressed people across the continents.
“I’m a real bug for poetry,” Malcolm wrote in prison. “When you think back over all of our past lives, only poetry could best fit into the vast emptiness created by man.” I explore the poetic sensibility of Malcolm X for @inthesetimes.com: inthesetimes.com/article/poet...
Malcolm X: “I’m a real bug for poetry.”
Elham Shirin traces the poets who shaped him—from prison reading and “Music” to the lyric power of his speeches—and the art his words set in motion across Black radical tradition and global solidarity.
“The American dream turns into the American nightmare as we start to look at what we’re doing to biodiversity and systems that we depend on as humans."
"The trauma I experienced taught me first-hand how acts of human violence cultivate isolation, shame and fear. It also taught me the value of a community in one’s healing. My friends and community gave back more than what others sought to take."
www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...
“Joy in ordinary things, in each other, in embodied life, and the language with which to value it, is essential to this resistance, which is resistance to dehumanisation.”
www.theguardian.com/news/ng-inte...
PT Vale Indonesia, operator of the country’s longest-running nickel mine, plans to expand as EV battery demand surges.
But in Sulawesi, farmers fear the move could swallow forests and farmlands rich in endemic wildlife.
Trump to speed permits for deep-sea mining in international waters reut.rs/3Zqekpy
A gift from @hollyhaworth.bsky.social on how to sustain our writing practices: open.substack.com/pub/earthspe...
Legislators in New York and Hawaiʻi are considering bills that allow their attorneys general to sue fossil fuel companies if climate-related disasters cause residents’ property insurance premiums to rise.
Aloha.
I can't stop thinking about anthropologist Michael Taussig's book about the terror of the rubber trade in Colombia. In it, he describes how colonizers wantonly tortured Putumayo workers, with violence becoming a culture in itself, for its own sake. Like it was a sunk cost they couldn't escape
"Behind the perfect peaches on social media feeds puppeteered by corporate algorithms are exploited farmworkers passing out from heatstroke...The question is whether those realities can coexist in our consciousness, or whether our fractured landscape will keep them separate."
Bernie Wagenblast, best known as the “please stand away from the closing doors” voice is the announcer for Mamdani’s inauguration.
"The arts remind us that none of the current truisms are absolutes—that there are other ways of living, existing, and being."
www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/art-...
Much of the ocean lies beyond national borders, where governance lagged as industry advanced.
Over two decades, Kristina Maria Gjerde helped turn scattered warnings into the 2023 High Seas Treaty, proving that protecting the high seas is built on law, coalitions, and patient institutional work.
One of the most significant climate lawsuits to date was filed against Shell last Thursday to mark the anniversary of Super Typhoon Odette, a catastrophic storm that hit the Philippines in 2021. I spoke to Trixy Elle, a survivor, for @drilledmedia.bsky.social.
Read about the case here:
New Jersey’s incoming governor hasn’t said whether she’ll maintain a state directive limiting cooperation between local law enforcement and federal immigration agents. Advocates want legislators to pass a bill enshrining this policy into law.
