Protecting Australia’s Biodiversity Is Getting Personal
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Protecting Australia’s Biodiversity Is Getting Personal (Maria)
The author writes, “Gifting land for conservation and leaving environmental bequests in personal wills are part of a quiet but rapidly growing environmental revolution in Australia — motivated by individual efforts to address the climate and biodiversity crisis. Australia now boasts one of the largest networks of privately protected and managed areas in the world, with gifted land now covering over 10M hectares.”
Thomson Reuters Shareholders Demand Investigation Into ICE Contracts (Sean)
From 404 Media: “On Wednesday shareholders in Thomson Reuters demanded the company’s board launch an investigation into whether its products have contributed to human rights violations, specifically with regards to Thomson Reuters’ ongoing sale of peoples’ personal data to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Thomson Reuters sells access to the CLEAR investigative database, which can include peoples’ names, addresses, car registration information, Social Security numbers, and details on someone’s ethnicity. 404 Media has repeatedly shown how CLEAR is integrated with ICE tools, including one ICE uses to find neighborhoods to target.”
US Government Agrees to $1.25 Million Settlement in Michael Flynn Suit (DonkeyHotey)
From Lawfare: “The United States government agreed to pay $1.25 million to Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser, to settle a lawsuit in which he claimed he was maliciously prosecuted for lying to federal investigators, according to the full text of the March 2026 settlement agreement obtained by Lawfare. The settlement resolves a 2023 civil suit in which Flynn alleged that he was wrongfully prosecuted for making false statements to federal agents investigating links between Russia and Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. He had sought $50 million in damages — a claim that drew scrutiny given that he had twice pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI before receiving a presidential pardon from Trump in November 2020.”
The United States Is Destroying Itself (Reader Jim)
The author writes, “The United States is being murdered, and it’s an inside job. Every department, every branch, every bureau and function of the federal government is being fatally corrupted or altogether dismantled or disabled. All this is common knowledge, but because it dribbles out in news stories about this specific incident or department, the reports never adequately describe an administration sabotaging the functioning of the federal government and also trashing the global economy, international alliances and relationships, and the national and global environment in ways that will have downstream consequences for decades and perhaps, especially when it comes to climate, centuries.”
America’s Capital of ‘Super-Commuters’ Is in California. Now Many Are Hitting a Crisis Point (Reader Steve)
From the San Francisco Chronicle: “Many mornings, stuck in gridlock along Interstate 580, Luis Pedraza watches wind turbines spin over rolling green hills and wonders: Is this grueling drive still worth it? In September, the first-generation college grad landed his dream job at major accounting firm Ernst & Young’s San Francisco office. There was just one problem. Eager to stay with his widowed mother and help with rent, Pedraza felt he needed to keep living at the family’s mobile home — in Stockton. Now grappling with round-trip commutes that run 180 miles and four-plus hours, the 28-year-old auditor is one of San Joaquin County’s roughly 30,000 “super-commuters” who trek at least 90 minutes into work. But it’s not just all the time in traffic that has him second-guessing his life decisions.”
2 Supermassive Black Holes May Collide 100 Years From Now — And Earth Would Feel It (Dana)
The author writes, “Astronomers may have discovered an extreme pair of light-spewing black holes that are spiraling toward an enormous collision — the effects of which could be felt in the next century. Using decades of radio telescope observations, the astronomers studied an ultrabright object that was previously thought to be a blazar — a glowing core of a galaxy usually powered by a black hole — some 500 million light-years from our solar system. The observations revealed a hidden jet of energy that suggests the intensely bright object is actually two black holes on the verge of colliding, perhaps less than 100 years from now.”
