@corynwolk
Geography PhD candidate at UD researching "critical minerals" (including military uses), climate change, industrial disasters, and toxic histories and presents. Philly's Oscar the Grouch of industrial pollution.
🚨New from @fieldnotes.co + @drilledmedia.bsky.social: Energy Transfer has deployed a decade-old astroturf group it secretly funds in a bid to stop @greenpeace.org from suing it in Europe for intimidation: fieldnotes.co/reporting/en...
This is New Englander (33? - 78) erasure
Displays advertised "AI-powered HVAC systems, self driving freight software and plastics 10,000 times thinner than hair. A leopard-spotted robot dog motored around the atrium of the university"
SEPTA's budget shortfall might add 70,000 hrs daily to people's commutes
www.inquirer.com/transportati...
"In his introduction McCormick noted just three investors in the crowd together had the power to make spending decisions on a collective $3 trillion in capital."
WOW, AWESOME! Can some of them fund SEPTA's $213 million deficit so PA's biggest public transportation system doesn't collapse?
"Both [PA Senator] McCormick, the former CEO of Bridgewater Associates, one of the world’s largest hedge funds, and his wife, Dina Powell McCormick, a board member at Meta and former Goldman Sachs partner, have an extensive network which they tapped into to arrange the summit and some of the deals."
"Why don't you like AI?"
They plan to build "several" fracked-gas-fired power plants in NEPA for Blackstone's "$25 billion investment to build data centers."
PA "is often cited as a prime location for the AI revolution given its abundant energy resources" aka fracking
share.inquirer.com/kWyBT0
Eyewitness video filmed on Monday, July 14 showed floodwater surging onto the platform of New York’s 28th Street Station as passengers watched from a train car.
Intense storms and heavy rainfall caused flooding across New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, with several flash flood warnings issued.
The 28th st station is built on top of an ancient stream that drains the slightly higher ground to the east. (1865 Viele map via davidrumsey.com)
Sunday’s record-setting storm [in Montreal] could repeat on Thursday
www.montrealgazette.com/news/weather...
NYC, tonight. Flash flooding has significantly affected the subway. This is the 28th Street station of the No. 1 train. The 1 is out, and the 2 and 3 trains are back in service with severe delays. E, F, M, and R trains are a mess too.
Oh, and do *not* drive. Stay home.
@cmu.edu students prepare for a visit from President Donald #Trump to their campus on July 15 for an "Energy & AI Summit" organized by Republican Pennsylvania Senator David McCormick that includes tech and fossil fuel execs.
Numerous #protests are scheduled to occur nearby throughout the day.
And I just deleted my post about the Apollo Affair since it seems like the truth is different and messier than what I wrote and definitely messier than what I should be writing a casual side note about. (Though I didn't realize that would sever this thread, oops.)
... like how federal agencies denied residents' concerns about the site for decades despite poor records of its contents and major allegations of corporate mismanagement, only to bring in security once they found "complex materials." Which makes practical sense in some ways, backwards in others.
I know the Apollo Affair is very controversial and not one I've spent a lot of time on, so if the most likely fate is the material *was* smuggled out, I welcome the correction! I'm mainly interested in the political differences between the material as exported and as domestic waste/pollution. ...
Yes--I was oversimplifying for character space and using "dumped" more figuratively (carelessly released to the environment) vs literally (intentionally disposed of in a discrete action). Though the latter definitely happened here w/ broader radioactive material.
journals.lww.com/health-physi...
Up until that point, USACE had insisted that residents were being alarmist. Then they were like "oh shit there IS plutonium and enriched uranium! Now those missing records are a bad thing instead of a good thing!" and the site contents became classified.
Again, the hazard communication failures are not just in red states/governments.
"The Army Corps of Engineers had to stop removal of the waste in May 2012 after crews discovered greater-than-expected quantities of what nuclear regulators called 'complex materials,' such as uranium and plutonium, at the site."
Cleanup is ongoing and >$500 mil.
www.post-gazette.com/local/region...
I've been in a FUSRAP and thorium/REE hazmat management rabbithole lately and it's amazing what you can do with no oversight! My current fav is Apollo, PA, where nuclear waste was buried "in accordance with [AEC] regulations" between a river and a neighborhood over an undermined former coal mine.
Homeland Security DHS account on X: Remember your Homeland's Heritage. New Life in a New Land - Morgan Weistling
The official DHS account is now tweeting about “your homeland’s heritage”
June 2025 saw:
• Wildfires across Canada
• 46 °C in Spain
• July 4th flash floods in Texas
• Record-breaking heat from Tokyo to Texas
And yet, climate coverage dropped 6% from May. And 28% from last June. 2/7
2004-2025 media coverage of climate change
Climate media coverage is falling off a cliff, just as the crisis accelerates.
And that’s not just bad for business, it’s dangerous for democracy. Let’s talk. 👇 1/7
Les précipitations rapides ont causé des inondations et des pannes de courant. #orage
What happened when Ida hit.
"Deatrick was reluctant to leave at first. 'How could it be as bad as last time?' he recalls asking, alluding to Tropical Storm Isaias, which had flooded the apartments the year before."
Management didn't help with emergency housing.
gridphilly.com/blog-home/20...
I saw the raging Schuylkill and helped muck out the Philadelphia Canoe Club just upriver after Hurricane Floyd in 1999 (when I was a kid), so it's always been beyond belief that anyone would choose to build or live basically *in* the river channel.
So...are we feeling lucky? Because we're playing an increasingly high-stakes game of roulette with the global climate, and the house odds are decidedly not in our favor.
So, in other words, our current policy trajectory would still yield essentially a doubling of the warming we've seen so far, with consequences far exceeding a doubling of those we've experienced to date.
And there's a big covert campaign going on to just continue to convince us that "nerd" is a real identity with real characteristics that somehow completely shields this field from any kind of accountability or even admittance of the fact that it is a deeply segregated labor force.
Just 10 days ago, 150 people with JVP Philly protested in and outside Day & Zimmermann's (major weapons supplier to Israel) Philly HQ and many were arrested. It got almost no media or other attention.
share.inquirer.com/YVGFqO
Only including English under languages and bolding it is so emblematic of these people. Knowing your prisoners' language is a luxury for the prisoners, not at all useful for anything else!
