If LA developers are turning the former headquarters of Sunkist into housing, hoo boy does this California historian has some promotional image ideas for you!

“A report found 18,360 potential price-gouging cases after the fires, but enforcement has been minimal with only 12 lawsuits filed so far…price-gouging restrictions cap rent increases at 10%, yet some landlords raised rents by over 100% after the fires.” www.latimes.com/california/s...

At this point, life in the United States is like being trapped inside a Thomas Pynchon and Kurt Vonnegut version of Mad Libs.

“We all do what we do because we love it so much,” one communications employee said…. “And to now be like, we’re just here to open the visitor center and tell people what trails to hike and clean the bathrooms…We can’t share these places with people the way we used to, and it’s really upsetting.”

And so, with Bad Bunny and the Puerto Rican electricity crisis, the climate disaster finally made it into the Super Bowl. This is the kind of image that might show up in a history timeline or even a textbook someday.

Gift article. This is a great story about a neglected artistic legacy of the New Deal, the public art found in post offices across the US. Sadly, it’s also testament to the skill of a variety of WaPo employees who were just laid off.

Whenever somebody says “So you do environmental history? That must be a new niche subfield or something.” I tell them about this guy.

States eye oil companies for spiraling insurance costs: “In California, reliance on the state’s Fair plan has grown 500% in less than 10 years as major insurance companies have dropped policyholders, raising concerns that it could become too overextended.” www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

Should LA beaches become NPS national seashores? They have cultural, ecological, and historical significance. But what might it mean for access, resource management, development, or growing efforts to recognize histories of segregation and exclusion at LA beaches? www.latimes.com/california/s...

Upper and lower Colorado Basin states can’t agree, unpredictable court cases and cuts loom, and meanwhile “Lake Mead is now just 34% full, and Lake Powell 26%….The Rocky Mountain snowpack is at just 57% of average, one of the smallest in decades.”

Whenever tech companies claim it’s technological magic, it’s ALWAYS capital exploiting somebody’s labor.

Universities “acknowledge the informational, ethical, and environmental disaster of LLMs, their lack of connection to truth and reality, and the potential threat they pose to student learning, only to dismiss these concerns in the language of inevitability.” www.nacbs.org/post/the-ai-...

City papers once covered arts, books, film, sports, local, national and world news. It was not one of those things but ALL those things that made them so valuable. Watergate broke because a WaPo metro reporter was listening to the police scanner. In many cities, there’s no one listening anymore.

They were doing great reporting . . . which helps explain why they got laid off.

Bass has been criticized for her fire response, perhaps sometimes unfairly. The assumption was that this report was altered due to LAFD agency ass-covering. But if it happened because of the mayor, this bodes ill—for her, and for more effective future fire policy. www.latimes.com/california/s...

“Sochi manufactured 80% of its snow. When PyeongChang hosted, it needed to make 90% of its snow. By the time Beijing hosted in 2022, it was believed to have completely relied on artificial snow.” SLC in 2034? Maybe they can make it—or maybe they can truck it in. www.sltrib.com/news/environ...

As an example, here’s some historical perspective on winter 2025-2026 snowfall in Salt Lake City—a place that’s supposed to be hosting the Winter Olympics eight years from now:

Over a year after the fires, “more than 7 in 10 residents in Altadena and Pacific Palisades have not yet returned home. And among those who plan to rebuild their homes, only one in seven have actually started the process.” www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

This story of small struggling water companies in Altadena is a great example of how, as in so many things, Southern California relies on a patchwork of overlapping and sometimes competing entities, often small, usually underfunded, and incapable of coping with the scale of 21st century disasters.

“Emberpoint” could use tech to detect & combat fires? Great! But a utility responsible for starting megafires, AI tech supercharging climate change, a defense contractor and a giant mortgage lender all eyeing big wildfire profits? Disaster capitalism at its finest! www.latimes.com/business/sto...

As Colorado River Basin states squabble over water yet again, it’s almost like John Wesley Powell was onto something way back in 1878 when he warned how important it would be to carefully plan homesteading, agriculture, and development in the arid US West.

“The EPA said that it would no longer consider the cost to human health from two common air pollutants – but still weigh the cost paid by industry for regulatory compliance.” www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

Climate change poses threats to infrastructure worldwide. California’s iconic Highway 1 is a spectacularly scenic—and spectacularly expensive—example, testing the limits of preserving existing infrastructure in the face of shifting topography and climate conditions. www.latimes.com/california/s...

“We’re at a real breaking point … it’s consuming all our time … and it’s exhausting, having to fight for what should be a relatively straightforward transaction. The way they are treating people who have lost everything is literally inhuman.” www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

“The promises of lower electric bills, good jobs, and climate responsibility, she said, remind her of cigarette ads she saw decades ago touting the health benefits of smoking.”

Gift article. My Rustbelt-in-the-Sunbelt hometown of Birmingham and its suburb Bessemer have declined for decades. AL bent over backwards for developers and ignored environmental concerns. But even here, a data center the size of 18 Walmarts gives politicians pause. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/25/u...

Gift article. George Washington owned slaves? Labor in the textile mills of New England was hard? Climate change is real? The National Park Service doesn’t think Americans can handle historical reality. Seems dubious. But the people running the NPS certainly can’t. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/23/c...

This is who the Whittier neighborhood in Minneapolis is named for

“There has been very little snow in low-elevation and mid-elevation areas this winter — a symptom of climate change, as warmer temperatures push average snowlines higher….’That is the classic global warming mountain snowpack signature.’” www.latimes.com/environment/...

“Research published last year found that the stretching of the polar vortex…is contributing to extreme weather in the US and that global heating, counterintuitively, could be playing a role in accelerating this process.”

In Altadena, the Palisades, and other recent fire disasters, there was one thing many fire victims had in common: they were unable to drive themselves out. In Katrina, there was no plan to help people without cars evacuate. With planning, public transit can literally be a lifesaver.

In addition to the photo below, the Philadelphia Inquirer article linked in this post link includes all the removed historical information panels: bsky.app/profile/loga...

Information about George Washington and slavery removed at the President’s House Site, Philadelphia. Washington profited from slavery, but also worried about it, and what it portended for the future survival of the US. **A slaveowner** could think about it more complexly than these people can.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh

“Allowing larger houses to be built on the island…would raise taxes, making it harder for Gullah Geechee people to continue living on Sapelo, and potentially changing the island’s cultural and environmental landscape forever.” www.theguardian.com/news/2026/ja...

The “database…directly linked carbon emissions from the world’s biggest fossil fuel companies to dozens of deadly heatwaves that otherwise would have been virtually impossible. [It attributed] trillions of dollars in economic losses related to extreme heat to individual fossil fuel companies.”

Does Trump want Greenland because: The Mercator projection makes it look big? He can’t be a truly “great” US president until he takes land from Indigenous people? Weird techbros want to make it a cryptostate? Or (this one’s real) He can stop some of the world’s most important climate science?

“Southern California plant and animal life has long been adapted to fire. Though, in their recovery they face new challenges including [invasive plants], climate change, repeated fires and the phenomenon of car exhaust unhelpfully fertilizing plants.” laist.com/news/climate...

Organizing session for 2026 conference of the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association at UNLV, July 29-31. Seeking perspectives on current and historical academic freedom issues at US universities, and efforts to control or restrict curriculum or faculty and student speech. 1/2

“Previous wildfires, like the 2023 Maui fire, have shown that disaster recovery exacerbates existing inequities, with spikes in housing prices, underinsurance and bureaucratic delays pushing survivors out of their communities… “climate gentrification.” www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...

On the anniversary of his death, here’s one of my favorite remembrances of David Lynch—as an artist, as an Angeleno, and as someone whose work became part of so many people’s lives. Sadly, its author is no longer with us either. kalebhorton.ghost.io/death-is-jus...

“And so silence becomes another negative feedback loop of climate change. Climate conversations…can help break the self-defeating cycle. If the media won’t do its job, then we all need to become environmental storytellers, each in our own way sharing tales of the climate changes we are witnessing.”

Fascinating how political movements hostile to avoiding climate disaster are a result of the encroaching climate disaster’s increasing costs for voters. And the corporations that say it’s too expensive to avoid climate change are perfectly happy to let it make things too expensive for you already.

In 2024, forests worldwide burned at a scale equal to the total area of England. In the last 24 years, an area the size of Mongolia burned, and in a warming world that rate is accelerating. www.theguardian.com/world/ng-int...

I hope this home is preserved in a way that allows the public to enjoy it. LA’s greatest architecture is mostly its houses, and Julius Shulman’s photography made this one an icon of LA, California, and the sunny technofuturist optimism of the postwar United States. www.latimes.com/travel/story...

As a rule, nobody pays much attention to us historians. But when they do, it’s likely to be bad.

Climate change-driven heat waves and urban heat islands pose dangers for humans, and dire peril for wildlife too, including thousands of bats killed by heat in a Melbourne park: www.theguardian.com/environment/...

My hometown river, even if it hasn’t been my geographic home in a long time, is the Cahaba.

Gift article. Just remember, the life and health of you and your loved ones is always less important than the money some company could be making, and having to calculate for your continued existence is a nuisance. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/12/c...

Gift article. Just remember, the life and health of you and your loved ones is always less important than the money some company could be making, and having to calculate for your continued existence is a nuisance. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/12/c...