Nearly 2,200 pulses of lightning strikes southern California coast

The record global warming streak of 2014-2016: a snowball’s chance in hell that this was natural – ImaGeo

The Greatest Heist You’ve Never Heard Of | Retro Report | The New York Times

The New York Times

Published on Jan 7, 2014

One night in 1971, files were stolen from an F.B.I. office near Philadelphia. They proved that the bureau was spying on thousands of Americans. The case was unsolved, until now.

Students Protest Yale’s Investments in Fossil Fuels, Puerto Rican Debt + Hampshi re College Students Stage Sit-In in Face of Closure Threat

Mar 06, 2019

At Yale University, 17 students were arrested by the school’s police Monday, after they occupied the investments office to demand Yale divest its nearly $30 billion endowment from fossil fuel companies and Puerto Rico’s debt. The student activists say that climate change worsens economic inequality, and that in the case of Puerto Rico, vulture funds holding the island’s debt are demanding repayment as many are still reeling from Hurricane Maria.

Mar 06, 2019

And in Massachusetts, students at Hampshire College have been staging a weeks-long sit-in in the president’s office, protesting what they fear may be the future shuttering of their school. In January, the president of Hampshire College announced they would seek to merge the school with a “strategic partner,” before laying off staff in the following weeks and announcing it would not be admitting a new class in the fall. This is a Hampshire College student with the group Hamp Rise Up, which has been organizing the protests.

Ola’i Wildeboar: “We’re fighting for transparency, better representation and an educational system that listens to us and actually serves our best interests. … It’s really tragic, the fact that schools like this are closing down so rapidly. And now that we’re here in the midst of this movement, I realize how important education is and how essential it is for these places to exist.”

Groundwater in 39 States Contaminated by Coal Ash Waste

Mar 05, 2019

In environmental news, a new report finds that coal waste from hundreds of coal-fired power plants around the country has contaminated groundwater in 39 states with unsafe amounts of toxic chemicals. In some cases, the dangerous toxic substances, including arsenic, lithium and mercury, have leached into local drinking water supplies. The lead author of the report by the Environmental Integrity Project and Earthjustice said, “At a time when the Trump EPA—now being run by a former coal lobbyist—is trying to roll back federal regulations on coal ash, these new data provide convincing evidence that we should be moving in the opposite direction.”

See related:

• Ex-Coal Lobbyist Andrew Wheeler Confirmed as EPA Administrator
• The Fox in Charge of the Henhouse: Activists Decry Trump’s EPA Pick, Coal Lobbyist Andrew Wheeler
• Trump Nominates Ex-Coal Lobbyist Andrew Wheeler as Permanent EPA Head
• “Shame On You!” Protesters Interrupt Trump Admin Promoting Coal & Fossil F uels at U.N. Climate Talks
• Trump Boasts of Repealing U.S. Environmental Regulations + Expanding Oil & Gas “Production”
• Ex-Koch Official Overseeing EPA Water Regulations
• Climate-Change Denier President Donald Trump Has Rolled Back Numerous Environmental Regulations During First Two Years in Office
• New EPA Rules Would Roll Back Regulations on Mercury & Other Toxins

Here’s what’s in your bottled water (Marketplace)

CBC News
Published on Apr 6, 2018

Ever wonder what’s lurking in your bottled water? Marketplace asked a lab to test five of the top-selling brands of bottled water in Canada, and microplastics were found in all of them. To read more: http://cbc.ca/1.4575045

US Is Killing More Civilians Than EVER In Afghanistan

The Ring of Fire

Published on Mar 6, 2019

According to new reports, the US hit a new milestone in 2018 by killing more civilians than ever in Afghanistan. The so-called “War on Terror” has actually been ramping up in recent years, with more and more bombs being dropped by the US in the Middle East, resulting in thousands of unnecessary deaths each year. We have no strategy to “win” this conflict, and we have no strategy on how to get out, which puts us in a deadly situation. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins discusses this.

Rochester Town Meeting 2019

ORCA Media
Published on Mar 6, 2019

Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture: Johan Huizinga

2014 Reprint of 1955 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition. Not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. In “Homo Ludens,” the classic evaluation of play that has become a “must-read” for those in game design, Dutch philosopher Johan Huizinga defines play as the central activity in flourishing societies. Like civilization, play requires structure and participants willing to create within limits. Starting with Plato, Huizinga traces the contribution of “Homo Ludens,” or “Man the player” through Medieval Times, the Renaissance, and into our modern civilization. Huizinga defines play against a rich theoretical background, using cross-cultural examples from the humanities, business, and politics. “Homo Ludens” defines play for generations to come.

See related:

• Johan Huizinga

How Do Americans Eat Differently Than 100 Years Ago And How Does This Affect Our Health?

The Real Truth About Health
Published on Mar 6, 2019

Lecture by McKay Jenkins author of Food Fight: GMOs and the Future of the American Diet

• Staying Healthy in a Toxic World, The Harzardous Substances that American’s Eat, Breathe and Touch Everyday.

Do you know what chemicals are in your shampoo? How about your cosmetics? Do you know what’s in the plastic water bottles you drink from, or the weed killer in your garage, or your children’s pajamas? If you’re like most of us, the answer is probably no. But you also probably figured that most of these products were safe, and that someone—the manufacturers, the government—was looking out for you. The truth might surprise you.

After experiencing a health scare of his own, journalist McKay Jenkins set out to discover the truth about toxic chemicals, our alarming levels of exposure, and our government’s utter failure to regulate them effectively. Mckay Jenkins reveals how dangerous, and how common, toxins are in the most ordinary things, and in the most familiar of places.

McKay Jenkins has been writing about people and the natural world for 25 years. His most recent book, Poison Spring (Bloomsbury, 2014), co-written with E.G. Vallianatos, has been called a jaw-dropping expose of the catastrophic collusion between the Environmental Protection Agency [EPA] and the chemical industry.(Booklist, starred review) He is also the author of What’s Gotten Into Us: Staying Healthy in a Toxic World (Random House, 2011), which chronicles his investigation into the myriad synthetic chemicals we encounter in our daily lives, and the growing body of evidence about the harm these chemicals do to our bodies and the environment. Jenkins holds degrees from Amherst, Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism, and Princeton, where he received a PhD in English. A former staff writer for the Atlanta Constitution, he has also written for Outside, Orion, The New Republic, and many other publications. Jenkins is currently the Cornelius Tilghman Professor of English, Journalism and Environmental Humanities at the University of Delaware, where he has won the Excellence in Teaching Award.

“In the past few years, scientists have become increasingly worried about the growing presence of synthetic chemicals in our bodies, and in our environment — and the connection these chemicals may have to cancer, hormonal imbalances, and many other diseases. These are not just the toxins leaking out of industrial dumps — they are the chemicals leaking into us from the products we use every day: from cosmetics, cookware, and the fabric in our upholstery; from pharmaceuticals in our drinking water and the pesticides we spray on our lawns. I learned this the hard way. A few years ago, I discovered a surprise in my abdomen: a tumor the size of a baseball. An hour before I was to enter the operating room, researchers asked if I had ever been exposed to toxic chemicals. In my life, I asked?

This seemed like an odd question. What kind of chemicals do you mean? The researchers began reading from a list, which turned out to be very long. Some things I had heard of, many others I had not. Formaldehyde? Weed killers? Glues? Dry cleaning fluids? Detergents? Lacquers? Flame retardants? Plastic meat wrap? Plastic meat wrap? Clearly, what I knew about my chemical exposure history was pretty vague. I decided to search for clues. My new book, What’s Gotten Into Us: Staying Healthy in a Toxic World, takes a clear-eyed look at the ways everyday things may be making us sick, and shows how we can protect ourselves by making wiser, healthier choices.

It examines the way products are made and regulated (or, typically, not regulated); the way synthetic chemicals enter our bodies, and the latest research about what this chemical “body burden” may be doing to our health. It looks at our shopping habits, our drinking water, and our lawn care, and it ponders the ways advertising and marketing have blinded us to some pretty obvious problems.”

Food-matters,