collapse of the old society

Here’s why you should never, ever drink the rain.

While precipitation has become less acidic, a growing body of evidence suggests that it’s now full of many other pollutants that pose a risk to public health, including microplastics. And unlike the compounds that cause acid rain, these pollutants are almost impossible to get rid of.

Over time, these modern-era substances — which famously take decades to millennia to degrade — have leached into the environment, reaching every corner of the planet, no matter how tall or deep. Microplastics, PFAS, and some other compounds, such as pesticides, are now so widespread

They’re so common, in fact, that they’re even found in the rain.

Donald Trump has spent the week dizzyingly going back and forth on everything from tariffs to Russia to supporting veterans to Elon Musk. It's been a week of 180-degree-turned-360-degree turns causing confusion and chaos. Grant breaks down the biggest flip-flops, what they mean, and what to know next Grant also talks to Cory Doctorow, the inventor of the word "Enshitification," journalist, author, and activist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (link below) to talk all about what enshitification is and how it applies to the US government now.

Only seven countries met the World Health Organization’s guidelines for tiny toxic particles known as PM2.5 last year, according to analysis from the Swiss air quality technology company IQAir.

Australia, New Zealand and Estonia were among the handful of countries with a yearly average of no more than 5µg of PM2.5 per cubic metre, along with Iceland and some small island states.

Trump’s executive order stripped agencies of their independence by making them directly accountable to a part of the presidency: the office of management and budget (OMB). The OMB is led by Russell Vought, founder of the rightwing Center for Renewing America (CRA) thinktank and one of the primary authors of the Project 2025 plan for an authoritarian takeover of government.

An indie animated film from Latvia with no humans or dialogue might be the best climate movie of the year.

'GreenFakes' is a series of investigations by Mediapart, based on internal documents obtained by Climate Whistleblowers from Biotope, a leading French ecological auditing firm, that shows how various firms used “biodiversity action plans” to give an ecological veneer to the destruction of the environment for financial gain.

Observing what is currently happening in the US has led me down the Network State rabbit hole. The linked video is a great place to start if you're not already aware of these ideas.

Unfortunately these concepts seem to be cosied up to modern fascism/monarchism, but I do wonder if this is genuinely the likeliest alternative to modern day capitalism. Yanis Varoufakis' idea of technofeudalism seems like another way of viewing this.

Could greener, more altruistic network states co-exist with money and power hungry billionaire-led communities? Or would their greed and ambition be detrimental to the efforts of those trying to save the natural earth?

“The brazen hypocrisy staggers the mind. Disney, which commands a market cap larger than the GDP of many nations, can't find the courage to even wait for court challenges? Meta, which regularly boasts its power to connect billions, suddenly can't muster the strength to defend its own policies and users? These aren't businesses making tough choices – they're paper empires run by moral cowards—simpering, whimpering, and weak.”

In three weeks, Trump has undermined a core pillar of American governance, sparking a constitutional crisis.

And yet, the most terrifying part? Donald Trump, the supposed strongman at the heart of it all, is oblivious. He has no grand ideological project beyond his own power. He does not understand the system being built around him, nor the fact that his own presidency is merely a vehicle for forces that see him as a useful, temporary battering ram against democracy.

But those around him? They understand perfectly.

A new study has found a dramatic increase in levels of microplastics and nanoplastics (MNPs) in human brains in recent years.

MNPs have previously been detected in human lungs, intestine, bone marrow and placenta. In the new study, researchers took one tissue sample from the brain, kidney and liver of 80 people autopsied in 2016 and 2024. They also sampled the brains of 12 people who died with Alzheimer’s or dementia within that period.

The researchers found that brain and liver samples from 2024 had considerably higher MNP concentrations compared with those in 2016. Brain samples showed a 50% increase during the eight years.

• 'Dr. Phil' embeds with ICE in Chicago
• Trump administration deputizes DOJ agencies for immigration enforcement
• ICE makes arrests in Arizona, Puerto Rico

Even average use of nitrogen fertilisers cut flower numbers fivefold and halved pollinating insects

Earthquakes that occurred near an oil extraction site in Surrey, UK, in 2018 and 2019 had been put down to coincidence, but a new analysis with an updated look at the geology of the area suggests the seismic events may indeed have been linked to drilling

Archived link of the article

A recent study found that wildfire retardants contain high levels of toxic heavy metals, prompting concerns about public health.