Take 30 seconds to send a quick email urging the city council to ban junk fees without any weakening amendments! actionnetwork.org/letters/ban-...

Somehow things in the US make more sense when you consider the legalization & expansion of sports betting as a key indicator

appears the US war apparatus is pivoting from general war crimes to a more openly genocidal strategy

Accepting tickets to the Kennedy Center honors gala compromises FCC commissioners’ impartiality, ethics experts told ProPublica. The agency’s chair, Brendan Carr, has been gifted at least $63,000 worth of tickets by CBS or its parent company.

I’m at a data center protest in Kenilworth, NJ, a town of around 8,500 people. More than 50 have turned out in the rain to protest a planned $1.8B AI data center nearby, joining 150+ similar protests around the country today. The issue has sparked massive local political engagement.

I appreciate people who share numbers on the many AI brand deals being pitched these days. They best explain the, ahem, strange bedfellows you see these days. When someone or some org suddenly starts sliding some normative-sounding claims about AI? Safe bet to wonder if it’s stealth sponcon

🎯 “An elite consensus that AI-assisted learning might be fine for hoi polloi but not for future leaders at the most selective institutions cannot be far-off now“ The coming class divide on AI: tech-free learning at elite institutions, AI-centered learning everywhere else.

Really good story here that highlights the role of labor unions in allowing workers to publicly debate whether they want to produce weapons, including for Israel. (As opposed to at-will non-union workers in the US, who just risk getting fired for dissenting speech) cc @sarahlazare.bsky.social

How many more summer days have to be stolen before we stop pretending this is natural? How many unprecedented disasters must be explained before the explanation is allowed to stick?

Yup. The public needs to get organized & local People's Assemblies in each state are a way to begin. Start collecting testimonies of ICE's impact in your state. Invite all who attend to get behind a campaign to fire everyone in ICE during the first week of any potential Dem presidency. Begin now.

Nearly half a million people in Arizona have already lost SNAP benefits. In Illinois, 150,000 have lost eligibility. They and the farmers who fed them, @danaka.bsky.social writes, will still be expected to finance a $1.5 trillion war budget.

This is how to speak to every single one of those sycophants.

Walking in our farm's rainforest with the melting heat of these days, I am filled with such inexpressible anger at what is being done to our once stable climate. The richest 1% are actively, knowingly, and uncaringly sabotaging the future for all of us, and for the rest of the planet's life.

Many areas including NY, WI and MI have extremely poor air quality due to wildfire smoke. While public health agencies advise people to stay indoors and avoid strenuous activity, farm workers are out working in these conditions. 1/

NEW: Unions in the U.S. and Canada are have filed unfair labor practice charges against Microsoft for allegedly mishandling its latest round of mass layoffs. CWA Canada president Carmel Smyth claims Microsoft "unlawfully" fired Bethesda Game Studios Montreal workers without notifying the union.

Signing some bookplates today…if you want some of your own, preorder from @bookpeople.com and make your dreams come true! bookpeople.com/book/9780063...

looks like he bounced around a clown car of violence work: National Guard, then US Army deployed in Afghanistan (Army would not release the details of his discharge) then Veterans Affairs police and a stint as a corrections officer

The thing that confuses me about this is that companies like Polymarket and Kalshi pretty clearly promote the idea that their markets are good judges of what will happen based on the idea that there may be people with some amount of inside information betting on the event.

GOOD NEWS: Katie Wilson's proposed Seattle Transit Measure renewal will be maintained as a full ten-year, 0.3% measure after amendments to water it down were defeated. The council is still deliberating on other amendments, but those were the big ones on deck today.

The latest Public Policy Institute of California poll of 1,578 adult Californians finds that 73% oppose the construction of data centers in their communities. cal.news/4feOTih 📸 Mario Tama

cc: Bob Kettle

Yet another Kalshi offering that serves no legitimate economic purpose. It's not possible to make a rational bet on this without material non-public information. It's a market solely for fraud by both regulators and corporate insiders, and everyone connected to it in any way should go to prison.

I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that the votes happening later this morning at the Seattle City Council will decide the future of transit in the city. The choice is expansion or stagnation.

To me, any Democrat who runs for President and doesn't begin by promising to fire everyone at ICE on week 1, cannot be taken seriously about anything else.

"Europe's booming solar fleet has saved €20 billion in gas imports since Iran war, finds new analysis" As oil and gas prices remain high due to the Iran war - solar power is cushioning the impact across Europe, investment needs to continue though. www.euronews.com/2026/07/16/s...

Announcing a photo contest where everyone wins a monetary prize less than we pay professionals for photographs.

Balcony solar is now legal in Maryland, FYI.

1. Fire all employees on week 1 of a Democratic administration. Everyone. No exceptions. 2. Start now to pull together state-based ICE People's Assemblies. Collect testimonies about impacts on your communities. Release reports by December 2028. 3. REPARATIONS for all ICE victims - $$ & citizenship

friends don't let friends "launch a substack" in 2026

Disputed Pasts Forgetting and Remembering the Dictatorship in Brazil by Cristina Buarque de Hollanda and José Szwako utpress.utexas.edu/9781477334072/

Got really carried away making my Pentiment layoff protest sign for the Irvine CWA rally outside Obsidian offices today 🥹 it was so nice to meet folks from more Microsoft units. You all put so much heart and passion and craft into making video games. You all deserve so much better.

I am not a climate scientist but when I was a kid the number of times we couldn’t go outside because of Canadian wildfire smoke was zero times

Clean clean clean hit—- and part of why the vote taking place was so important. It is very easy to just tell people: Haley Stevens voted against the majority of Democrats to send Israel more free money to buy bombs to kill kids.

I believe there is still a lot of things not yet determined and it is therefore not clear where things will end up, but there should be some humility on the part of those who said Palestine was just going to evaporate as an issue after Nov 2024.

The thing to understand about Starbucks' diminishing presence in Seattle is that Starbucks is no longer trying to be the best coffee company, they're trying (and by revenue, succeeding) to be the best fast-food company, and Seattle is a coffee shop town, not a fast-food town.

Substack is 100% doing another round of big cash payouts for reputation laundering. A fair number of people accepting that money aren't hurting for it so I'm not clear on why they're doing it. BTW, if you're still on Substack, why, but also, here's a resource to get off: leavesubstack.com

Bernie and AOC are pushing a much-needed federal data center moratorium. But their AI policies couldn’t be more different. Bernie’s AI policy responds to exaggerated industry narratives, while AOC is taking on the harms we’re seeing from their products. We need policy based on reality, not on hype.

"Somerville has lowered speed limits all over..., repainted and shortened crosswalks..., added new speed humps, fixed sidewalks, expanded its bike-lane network, installed new bus stops and bus lanes and stepped up ticketing for distracted driving" AND ITS WORKED www.governing.com/infrastructu...

someone tell serkis that middle-earth isn’t real and there aren’t actually white people in Arda

ICE has killed another person, this time by depriving him of life-sustaining medication for a known medical condition. Jesus Manuel Arenas-Silva was detained on Thursday. He was dead by Monday. Per @detentionwatchnetwork.org:

Neither of the teams going to the finals could beat Cape Verde in regulation time. 😄

Texas jails are holding over 7,000 people for ICE (on detainers). Worth pointing out that the "287(g)" funding does not include expenses for jails housing people for ICE. view.officeapps.live.com/op/view.aspx...

More than 100 wildfires are burning in Canada and winds are carrying the smoke southeast. https://to.pbs.org/4vsBnh7

BREAKING: The FCC signaled it will repeal the cap on ownership of TV stations, abolishing a limit that keeps owners from controlling stations in more than 39% of markets. This move will allow Nexstar, one of the largest owners of TV stations, to buy rival Tegna in a massive deal.

I'm assuming this is where all the Republicans who spent last election season pretending they suddenly cared about antitrust will step in to help protect labor, markets, and consumers from obvious merger harms

WOW! Katherine Clark criticizes the Massie amendment to withhold aid to Israel as "overly broad" BUT says she will vote yes because "We should not provide a blank check for military aid to any country that does not comply with U.S. law, interests, and values."

It’s so important to remind people that we can do good smart things that help and don’t hurt.

The CDC has confirmed 1,645 cases of the parasitic illness, though it is aware of more than 5,100 cases that still require further analysis to confirm they are cyclosporiasis.

Solar power provided a quarter of the European Union’s electricity for the first time in June 2026 Solar generated a record 52TWh of electricity during the month, accounting for 25% of EU power generation. www.energylivenews.com/2026/07/14/s...

A US court case against Israeli private investigator Amit Forlit could reveal who hired hackers to target climate critics of Exxon in 2016. The indictment alleges that a lobbying firm representing Exxon, likely DCI Group, hired Forlit to hack climate activists. 👀