iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Ken Caldeira

David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Wtaf is this question my university just asked me about my project?

Does the project involve any work that could be interpreted as promoting DEIA, climate change research, or non-compliant to any Presidential Executive Orders?

Ken Caldeira @kencaldeira.com · 24/09/2026

When does the mainstream commercial media start using the word "traitors" to describe the Republicans who are undermining the long-term interests of the United States for their corrupt short-term gain? The venality of the Republicans is disgusting. The timidity of the Democrats is disappointing.

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ProPublica @propublica.org · 22/09/2026

Sen. Susan Collins helped steer millions in federal defense contracts to Navatek, whose CEO illegally funneled thousands of dollars to her campaign. The FBI sought to launch a probe and was eyeing Collins and other lawmakers. Then Trump gutted the unit in charge. THREAD 🧵

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Steve Rattner @steverattner.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

The labor share of economic output hit its lowest point on record in Q2 2026.

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Dr. Jonathan Foley @globalecoguy.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

The idea that "regenerative" grazing is a climate solution has really taken hold in some quarters. But the science is clear: It doesn't work. Methane and land-use emissions just overwhelm any soil carbon benefits. Here's a great piece by @nicholasdcarter.bsky.social drawdown.org/insights/eig...

drawdown.org

Eight reasons regenerative grazing can’t make beef climate-friendly

An influential regenerative grazing movement continues to grow. But here's why the science doesn't back up the purported climate benefits.

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Pam Herd @pamherd.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

The plan is paid for by taking child care supports away from low income parents (mothers), just as they're requiring these same families (women) to *work* to access Medicaid and SNAP. The real goal is to punish poor single mothers. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/21/u...

nytimes.com

White House Plan to Subsidize Stay-at-Home Parents Divides Conservatives

Some praise the idea championed by Vice President JD Vance to direct federal money to support traditional families, while others say it cuts against conservative principles.

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Pam Spaulding @pamspaulding.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

NEW: The Trump regime plans to "cripple the court by prohibiting it from conducting transactions in U.S. dollars, cutting it off from much of the global financial system" to protect war criminal Bibi. Marco Rubio’s view is "that the ICC poses a threat to American sovereignty." 🎁 t2m.co/ZmzD7to9

wsj.com

Exclusive | Trump Ramps Up Bid to Dismantle International Criminal Court

The U.S. administration is preparing sweeping sanctions that would cut the court off from much of the global financial system.

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Ken Caldeira @kencaldeira.com · 19/09/2026

The failure of the White House Press Corp to work together is an indictment of American journalism. If the President does not answer a question, every other reporter should follow up with the same question. Like the politicians, the press values personal advancement over the public good.

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Ken Caldeira @kencaldeira.com · 19/09/2026

Are the AI-end-timers the same people who were predicting for years about a technological singularity (and human immortality), or is this a new cohort? New bottles for old (and possibly correct) ideas? www.salon.com/2026/09/16/a... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technol... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sin...

salon.com

Are we in the AI end times? - Salon.com

Anxiety over the dangers of artificial "intelligence" says more about human nature than about the machines

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Ken Caldeira @kencaldeira.com · 17/09/2026

More threats from Donald Trump to destroy our economy if the Federal Reserve Bank does not do his bidding. "This month, the president threatened to halt a broad swath of trade if interest rates were not cut, a possibility he resurfaced on Wednesday." www.nytimes.com/2026/09/16/b...

nytimes.com

Trump’s Latest Threats Loom Over Fed’s Interest Rate Decision

This month, the president threatened to halt a broad swath of trade if interest rates were not cut, a possibility he resurfaced on Wednesday.

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Reposted by Ken Caldeira

Ken Caldeira @kencaldeira.com · 16/09/2026

Spammy political SMS fundraising messages are making SMS texts unusable. On Android, there is no way to set it to accept texts from contacts only. How much of this money is getting to the candidates and how much is going to consultants or is outright fraud? nonprofitnewsfeed.com/news/politic...

nonprofitnewsfeed.com

Political Fundraising Texts Have Become a Self-Licking Spam Machine - Nonprofit News Feed

A late-night fundraising text is rarely from the candidate. It is from a digital agency operating behind the scenes, using urgency, data co-ops, and legal loopholes to extract donations. Nonprofits sh...

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Ken Caldeira @kencaldeira.com · 16/09/2026

nonprofitnewsfeed.com

Political Fundraising Texts Have Become a Self-Licking Spam Machine - Nonprofit News Feed

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Ken Caldeira @kencaldeira.com · 14/09/2026

The people who placed people in these cages should be put in prison. The same goes for the people who approved construction of these cages, authorized payments, etc. The detainees were accused of civil violations only. They were not accused of any crime. Only criminals treat people this way.

Images released in a report by the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general’s office show small metal enclosures that were referred to as “calming areas.”Credit...U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Office of the Inspector General

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/14/us/alligator-alcatraz-dhs-inspector-general.html

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Ken Caldeira @kencaldeira.com · 12/09/2026

Kings in ancient Mesopotamia made statements to the effect that a central role of government is to protect the less powerful against abuse by the more powerful. We have lost that understanding of government. Urukagina (Uruinimgina), 2350 BCE. Ur-Nammu, 2100 BCE. Hammarubi, 1750 BCE.

In the prologue, Hammurabi claims to have been granted his rule by the gods "to prevent the strong from oppressing the weak".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Hammurabi

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Ken Caldeira @kencaldeira.com · 11/09/2026

What could The New York Times possibly mean by this headline? Maybe it got cut off and they meant "moving on to become a fascist dictatorship"? Maybe instead of “moving on" they meant to write "sinking under"? www.nytimes.com/2026/09/10/u...

nytimes.com

25 Years After 9/11, Trump Personifies a Nation Moving On

The president has de-emphasized and shifted the war on terrorism at a time when fear of foreign attack has receded into the background of American life.

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Ken Caldeira @kencaldeira.com · 09/09/2026

Cool map of real time carbon intensity of electricity use. (Unknown why they chose Mercator projection as the default map.) Not sure of the value added by near-real time values, but it is fun and cool. app.electricitymaps.com/map/live/fif...

Map of carbon intensity of electricity use showing high carbon intensity in parts of the western US, Mongolia, etc, and low use in France, the nordic countries, etc.

https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/live/fifteen_minutes

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Ken Caldeira @kencaldeira.com · 05/09/2026

US is alone in voting to use a Mercator projection instead of an equal-area projection. (Trump loves that big Greenland.) Next thing is we are going to want to use inches, feet and miles, and degrees Farenheit. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

bbc.co.uk

UN votes to adopt new world map to reflect Africa's true size

The Togo-sponsored resolution was backed by 164 nations - with the US as the only nation to vote against it.

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Ken Caldeira @kencaldeira.com · 04/09/2026

Satire meets reality. www.theguardian.com/us-news/live...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheeseface

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Reposted by Ken Caldeira

The Intercept @theintercept.com · 31/08/2026

The Trump administration designated an Italian antifascist webhosting service as a terrorist organization. It could affect an anarchist radio show in Asheville, a blog documenting attacks “crisis pregnancy centers,” and the Seattle Anarchist Bookfair. theintercept.com/2026/08/28/t...

theintercept.com

Trump Goes After Anonymous Email Provider in Italy. The Real Target Is Free Speech in the U.S.

Trump designated a collective that provides anonymous email services as a foreign “terrorist” group. It could curtail free speech in the U.S.

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Reposted by Ken Caldeira

ClimateFran @climatefran.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

I'm excited to begin my sabbatical at @casbsstanford.bsky.social . We're only one day in and already had tons of exciting conversations with other fellows. Looking forward to a year of seminars, lunches and some productive research.

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Reposted by Ken Caldeira

Matt Novak @paleofuture.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

This is pretty fucking wild. I had assumed in a worst case scenario he would target blue zip codes and toss ballots based on technicalities but this is even worse than I imagined.

Not only is this system astonishingly untested, USPS has simultaneously implemented an
impracticable zero percent failure rate.
13 When ballots are submitted to USPS in large-volume
batches, if any one ballot in the batch cannot be verified against the Portal, all ballots in that
batch will be rejected. For example, if a state election official brings a batch of 10,000 ballots to
USPS and USPS is unable to match just one of those ballots against the Portal – because, for
example, someone has recently changed their name after marriage or they’ve moved – then
USPS would refuse to mail the remaining 9,999 ballots as well. As the whistleblower notes,

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Reposted by Ken Caldeira

Taniel @taniel.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Big news this morning is a whistleblower files a complaint that USPS has been illegally preparing to implement Trump’s executive order against mail voting in defiance of court orders: www.nytimes.com/2026/09/01/u...

nytimes.com

Whistle-Blower Says USPS Is Secretly Proceeding on Trump’s Mail Voting Plan Before Midterms

A report detailed “grave concerns” that a new system being rushed into use by the U.S. Postal Service could imperil millions of mail ballots ahead of the midterm elections.

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Ken Caldeira @kencaldeira.com · 31/08/2026

How much of the opposition to new large AI data center derives from insecurity about losing access to well-paying meaningful work? My understanding is that data centers have lower carbon-emissions per unit GDP than the economy as a whole. Of course, they should not use the sky as a CO2 waste dump.

Jenny Kane, Associated Press file
An Amazon Web Services data center is seen on Aug. 22, 2024, in Boardman, Ore.
https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/5420210-data-centers-power-demand-ai/

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Ken Caldeira @kencaldeira.com · 31/08/2026

If Trump really wanted to make America great again, a good place to start would have been restoring marginal income tax rates on top earners to what they were before Reagan started handing our country over to the super wealthy. www.forbes.com/sites/niallm...

Chart showing highest marginal tax rate reached 92% in 1942, was about 90% to 1963 and exceed 69% before Reagan.

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Ken Caldeira @kencaldeira.com · 31/08/2026

The Republicans can get away with this only because journalists let them get away with this. Other journalists could boycott this event (and then learn to follow up on unanswered questions from other journalists). They need to learn to work together. apnews.com/article/g20-...

apnews.com

US Treasury blocks certain journalists from G20 meeting in North Carolina

The U.S. Treasury Department is preventing certain journalists from covering a finance meeting among the world’s most powerful countries.

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Reposted by Ken Caldeira

Mark Jacob @markjacob.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Trump’s "Justice" Department sent election monitors into Wyoming polling places, where they tried to ask voters questions and inspect voting machines. Even the governor of Wyoming – one of the most Republican states – was alarmed. They're trying to take over our elections so they can steal them.

nytimes.com

Wyoming Governor Objects to ‘Very Odd’ D.O.J. Election Monitoring (Gift Article)

Governor Mark Gordon, a Republican, said he was concerned by the behavior of election observers who visited a polling station in Cheyenne.

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Anna Kramer @annackramer.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

SCOOP: Trump officials are pressuring the National Park Service to find a way to give a small piece of Yosemite to a private developer. The land would be used for a road, to give the developer rare private access to the heart of the park.

notus.org

Trump’s Quietly Working to Give Part of Yosemite to a Private Developer

The National Park Service is under pressure to make an unprecedented deal that cedes a quarter-mile strip of the park.

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Ken Caldeira @kencaldeira.com · 27/08/2026

Adaptation to climate change doesn't mean that everyone will be as well off as if there was no climate change. It means that people won't be as bad off as if there was no adaptation. We can choose to prevent more climate change. We cannot choose not to adapt to climate change.

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Reposted by Ken Caldeira

Molly Jong-Fast @mollyjongfast.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Are we ever going to find out what happened to mitch McConnell

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Ken Caldeira @kencaldeira.com · 26/08/2026

Some areas in most urgent need of aid are not getting aid because it is too dangerous to operate in the area, or there is too little functioning civil society to help effectively. Aid resources typically go to where they can produce the highest social ROI, not where they are needed most.

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Reposted by Ken Caldeira

Bucks County Beacon @buckscountybeacon.com · 26/08/2026

Pennsylvania Reports First 2 Measles Deaths in the US This Year, Both People Unvaccinated | "There’s real-life consequences to scaring people and not relying on actual doctors and actual medical professionals to provide unbiased information to parents..." said @governor.pa.gov.

buckscountybeacon.com

Pennsylvania Reports First 2 Measles Deaths in the US This Year, Both People Unvaccinated - Bucks County Beacon

"There’s real-life consequences to scaring people and not relying on actual doctors and actual medical professionals to provide unbiased information to parents so that we can make reasonable decisions...

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Ken Caldeira @kencaldeira.com · 25/08/2026

"This paper explores how immigration policy affects residential construction and home prices. [W]e show that increased immigration enforcement reduces homebuilding and drives up new construction prices." papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

6. Conclusion
We document that immigration policy has important first-order supply-side impacts on homebuilding and home prices. Increasing immigration enforcement leads to: (i) reductions in residential construction, (ii) increases in the price of new construction, (iii) little overall impact on existing stock house prices, but meaningful underlying variation by a given tract’s share of undocumented residents.

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Ken Caldeira @kencaldeira.com · 24/08/2026

Where does the atmosphere get the potential energy available to drive winds? Condensation of water vapor above the western tropical Pacific heats relatively warm air, and radiation to space cools relatively cold air near the poles. (1/2) ciunit.org/publications...

Where the energy that drives the winds is generated. Two sources dominate — latent heat release in the tropics, especially over the western tropical Pacific, and radiative cooling in the polar regions.
Figure 3 from Ahbe and Caldeira (2017), Journal of Climate 30, 2089-2101.

https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/30/6/jcli-d-15-0614.1.xml

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Ken Caldeira @kencaldeira.com · 24/08/2026

The United States government has always engaged in extrajudicial killings (aka murder), but at least there was some sense of shame. The Republican regime actively seeks to be seen as lethal, brutal, and cruel -- fascists who cannot rely on the consent of the people. abcnews.com/Internationa...

abcnews.com

After killing hundreds in boat strikes, US military expands campaign on land in Latin America

The Trump administration says it is seeking to expand its lethal campaign of bombing boats off Latin America’s Caribbean and Pacific coasts onto land

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Ryan Katz-Rosene, PhD @ryankatzrosene.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

And we have a new all-time record warm *absolute* temperature for the oceans, according to ERA5 (which goes back to 1940): August 21st likely marked the warmest Sea Surface Temperatures have been for the entire Holocene period. Should be major news!

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🍁🇨🇦Team Canada Forever🇨🇦🍁 @teamcanadaforever.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

“America isn't the way it is because he's president. He's president because America is the way it is” — David Cochrane CBC Power and Politics

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Ken Caldeira @kencaldeira.com · 23/08/2026

What could possibly go wrong?

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Ken Caldeira @kencaldeira.com · 22/08/2026

Some positive climate news. Work that Ian McKay and I did 5 years ago is coming to fruition. We helped create contrails.org and they and others have succeeded in generating some real movement on contrail avoidance -- a major test over the North Atlantic. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

CORRESPONDENCE
18 May 2021

Contrails: tweaking flight altitude could be a climate win

By Ken Caldeira & Ian McKay

By our calculation, preventing most of the damaging impact of aircraft vapour trails (contrails) on climate would cost less than US$1 billion per year and the net value of the benefit could be more than 1,000 times that. We know of no comparable climate investment with a similarly high likelihood of success.

Contrails account for roughly 2% of global warming because they cause cirrus clouds to trap outgoing infrared radiation. The flights responsible are typically within 1,000 metres of trajectories that are much less damaging to the atmosphere, so planes routed to higher or lower altitudes would burn less than 0.1% more fuel (R. Teoh et al. Environ. Sci. Technol. 54, 2941–2950; 2020).

The warming effect of the extra emissions is likely to be more than offset by the reduction in vapour-trail formation (see B. Kärcher Nature Commun. 9, 1824; 2018). Furthermore, any drop in altitude would be insufficient to affect health costs from particulate matter and noise on the ground.

Addressing climate change could cost as much as US$100 trillion (D. P. van Vuuren et al. Nature Clim. Change 10, 329–334; 2020). Abating even 1% of this cheaply could therefore represent a trillion-dollar economic opportunity.

Nature 593, 341 (2021)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-01339-7
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01339-7

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David Roberts @volts.wtf · 21/08/2026

Read this account of a family -- green card-holding, valid, permanent residents of the US -- kidnapped by ICE, separated, and held in degrading concentration camps for 9 months and counting.

thenation.com

One Woman’s Message From the Hell of ICE Detention

My husband, son, and I have been locked up for months—despite being permanent residents with no criminal record. It is an unendurable, unending nightmare.

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Ken Caldeira @kencaldeira.com · 21/08/2026

I can acknowledge using AI to help edit a paper, but I can't "admit" it because "admission" involves doing something wrong. I have advised people I am working with to have AI summarize their papers prior to submission, to make sure main points are clear. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

theguardian.com

UC Berkeley professor admits to using AI to edit op-ed on students’ math skills

Zvezdelina Stankova says she used AI to ‘help edit’ an article about some of her students being ‘five to eight years’ behind

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