Given recent events, Dry January not gonna happen

It’s a good thing Congress isn’t alive to see this

I'm off this week, but this is on my (and probably every NC journalists') story list for the new year: Duke E just filed its early site permit application with the NRC for potential new nukes at Belews Creek www.duke-energy.com/info/unindex...

Last few times I’ve been to Lakewood Social I’ve overheard couples working through their stuff. Same table each time. So if you’re having relationship issues, please proceed to Table N2

After decades of coal mining destroyed Pennsylvania’s waterways, fracking waste is adding a new kind of pollution.

True story: Today's my mom's b'day. She was born ~3 wks. early. Her dad (my grandpa) was a schoolteacher and didn't want to miss work for her birth, so demanded my grandma have her over the winter break -- via C Section If yr wondering what patriarchy looks like.

Not good. “If you don’t actually do the audits and find out where this stuff is actually going, if for no other reason than to keep the operators honest, it becomes very difficult to say with a straight face that you’re really effectively regulating this stuff. Because you just don’t know.”

A House legislative oversight hearing at the North Carolina General Assembly Wednesday devolved into shouting and book-throwing by the committee chairman. ncnewsline.com/2025/12/10/n... #ncpol

Yet *another* forever chemical to worry about: TFA In your house dust, water, refrigerants used in air conditioning and in cooling fluids at some data centers. insideclimatenews.org/news/1012202...

Another standing room only meeting vs a data center, this one in Stokes County

#journalists and #attorneys is anyone having trouble accessing the federal court system websites? Not just Pacer, but even the court webpages themselves

Opposition vs the Edgecombe County data center quite robust, one person calling for a moratorium No vote tonight though, on sale of county land to Energy Storage Solutions.

I haven’t been to therapy for 25 years but after spending *a lot* of November in Indiana caring for my mom among my highly chaotic, reactive and dysfunctional family … I’ll be making an appointment. And then write a memoir

Charlotte, your air is in big trouble, as in up to 940 tons of trouble @wfae.bsky.social insideclimatenews.org/news/2511202...

Traffic is so bad that I left Durham at 330 to get to Rocky Mount by 530. By 445 had not even made it to Wendell. Got off US 64 to go back to Durham and I’m still in Wake County after 2 hrs 44 minutes on the road

At my parents’ house and my mom has switched from Faux News/Newsmax to some YouTube show about Megan Markle. She’s obsessed w dissecting and judging Megan Markle.

I’m helping care for my mom in Indiana, and Fox/Newsmax is always on. Certainly has provided insight into how some people become brainwashed. Its an alternate universe that I can’t comprehend

The waste and mismanagement at ReBuild NC was so profligate, ran so deep that the state auditor couldn’t even sort it all out. Meanwhile hurricane survivors suffered for years insideclimatenews.org/news/1911202...

Asheboro has discharged a likely carcinogen 1,4-dioxane at levels of 651 ppb into the drinking water supply. That's 18,000+ times the EPA's health advisory goal. Yet NC's Enviro Mgmt Commission refuses to regulate it in surface water

It appears the new Enviro Mgmt Commissioner, scientist Ilona Jaspers, is not going to abide mansplaining from her colleagues. She's challenging a lot of their statements

Today’s estate sale find: 2 bottles of crude oil from the 1970s, 1 from Abu Dhabi

NC Supremes side w Big Ag over permit provisions that would have required groundwater monitoring for CAFOs in 100-yr floodplain, phosphorus loss, annual reporting insideclimatenews.org/news/0711202...

Great way to track how the Trump adm is faring in court on enviro issues. So far: 6 wins, 5 losses & 3 more a mixed ruling. This chart is regularly updated so stay tuned as the courts steer the future of the planet @mlavelle.bsky.social @peteraldhous.com insideclimatenews.org/news/0411202...

A grieving mother blames son’s death on shoddy building maintenance ncnewsline.com/2025/11/03/a... Story by @gchildress.bsky.social #ncpol #housing

A company with connections to the cryptocurrency industry is considering drilling for natural gas near the Deep River north of Sanford in Lee County. ncnewsline.com/2025/11/04/a... Story by @lisasorg.bsky.social/ @insideclimatenews.org #ncpol

A company with connections to the cryptocurrency industry is considering drilling for natural gas near the Deep River north of Sanford in Lee County, North Carolina.

For the past several days I've been helping to care for my mom in Indiana. (She broke her femur when her rambunctious dogs bowled her over) Now playing: Fox News on TV, barking dogs, & some kinda woo-woo shit on her iPad about "healing benefits" of structured water. They broke out this for my visit

Deep River Data wants to drill natural gas well near Sanford to power a data center. All company officials work in crypto, its main adviser used to work for Pat McCrory & is advocating for pro-crypto laws at legislature. But they say this won't be a cryptomine insideclimatenews.org/news/0111202...

On the cover of the December @theatlantic.com, I lay out some nightmare scenarios for the 2026 election. But you don't need hypotheticals to grasp what it might be like: Just look at North Carolina. www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/... #ncpol

Some day archeologists and oceanographers will find dozens of stoves & refrigerators on the seabed and wonder how we lived there. By my colleague @kileyprice.bsky.social insideclimatenews.org/news/2810202...

Asheboro pours a toxic chemical into the drinking water supply, does not play well with others & seems to have the municipal version of oppositional defiance disorder insideclimatenews.org/news/2710202...

"The toxicity of politics in DC clouds the optimism more than it does at the state level." Former EPA administrator Michael Regan is speaking pretty frankly about certain aspects of his tenure in the Biden administration and how it compared to his time at DEQ

"These actions by Asheboro are despicable." Folks at @usepa.bsky.social public hearing are beyond p*ssed about the city's discharge of 1,4-Dioxane, a likely carcinogen, into the drinking water supply.

Occupancy 68, plus or minus 47

The Trump administration just skirted normal channels for hiring directors of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences—during a hiring freeze—to appoint a scientist who calls JD Vance one of his “closest friends.”

Someone just approached me at the Alamance County rest stop and said, “excuse me ma’am but you look like my aunt and she’s been dead 30 years.” Presumably while her aunt was alive and not in her current state

Environmentalists are concerned about pollinating species in the pivotal desert borderland as a federally funded U.S.-Mexico border wall continues to expand.

A Short-Lived Win in a Never-Ending Fight Over Forever Chemicals ncnewsline.com/2025/10/13/a... #ncpol #PFAS @lisasorg.bsky.social @insideclimatenews.org

Estate sale find: Vintage dental kit

An EPA report found that the forever chemical PFNA interferes with human development and likely causes damage to the liver and male reproductive systems. The agency has sat on the report for months. “Scientifically, it was done,” said one scientist. By @fastlerner.bsky.social

Scientists found PFAS in fresh vegetables & fish, eggs & beer. Pine needles, honey & house dust. Landfills, compost and sewage sludge. 
Blood of horses. Blood of dogs. Their own blood. 
1st in a series re: NC's PFAS crisis under Trump @cleancapefear.bsky.social insideclimatenews.org/news/1210202...

Inside Climate News #Climate

This is a truly brilliant explanation of what it is like to live in these times.

When the @nytimes.com Connections constructor is a fan of Big Star's third album

Animal rights activists are calling upon local government and global conservation partners to intervene and find sanctuaries for mammals at a shuttered Canadian marine park.

In Charlotte today for a conference. Took No 21 bus downtown > Amtrak. The bus goes to places that serve the unhoused and very poor. I never felt unsafe. But as the bus passed skyscrapers occupied by the very rich I felt disconsolate about how little we care for people who have absolutely nothing

Bored National Guard Goes Door To Door Asking If Chicagoans Have Any Order They Need Restored https://theonion.com/bored-national-guard-goes-door-to-door-asking-if-chicagoans-have-any-order-they-need-restored/

My 7700-word story about PFAS has now been cut to a manageable (and readable) 5350. This is why writers need editors

North Carolina’s largest utility cites the Trump administration’s rollback of air pollution regulations and increases in power demand as factors in its proposed fuel mix. Story by @lisasorg.bsky.social @insideclimatenews.org #ncpol

More nukes, nat gas and coal --yes, you read that right, coal. No wind, less solar. If you're a greenhouse gas, you had a banner week. insideclimatenews.org/news/0210202...