2026-01-21 19:29:00
He hear global warming and it seems like a monolithic thing that is far away from where we live. However, you can see and feel the changes locally. For the New York Times, Harry Stevens and Eric Niiler show the change based on your selected region.
As is usually case with temperature data, there is noise between individual points, but an overall trend points upwards.
2026-01-21 16:37:00
You probably don’t need me to tell you this, but recent data suggests that the planet is still getting hotter. The Economist shows the shifts with a heatmap:
The past 11 years are the warmest since records began, with the past three top of the leader-board. Hottest of the lot was 2024, which coincided with a strong Niño—a pattern of winds and ocean currents that nudges the thermometer upwards—combined with a peak of the 11-year solar cycle when the sun shines brightest. But in 2025 El Niño tailed off, to be replaced by its opposite pattern, La Niña, and the sun—only a minor part of the story in any case—began to dim. That 2025 was cooler than its predecessor was thus no surprise. But as La Niña years go, it was sweltering: the hottest yet.
Tags: climate change, Economist, global warming
2026-01-21 06:13:15
With a surprise to nobody, Kyle Cheney for Politico:
Two members of Elon Musk’s DOGE team working at the Social Security Administration were secretly in touch with an advocacy group seeking to “overturn election results in certain states,” and one signed an agreement that may have involved using Social Security data to match state voter rolls, the Justice Department revealed in newly disclosed court papers.
Elizabeth Shapiro, a top Justice Department official, said SSA referred both DOGE employees for potential violations of the Hatch Act, which bars government employees from using their official positions for political purposes.
Tags: DOGE, Politico, privacy, Social Security Administration
2026-01-21 02:32:36
For the Wall Street Journal, Tom Fairless reports on research from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy:
By analyzing $4 trillion of shipments between January 2024 and November 2025, the Kiel Institute researchers found that foreign exporters absorbed only about 4% of the burden of last year’s U.S. tariff increases by lowering their prices, while American consumers and importers absorbed 96%.
The tariffs had a significant effect on trade volumes: Facing higher U.S. tariffs, Indian exporters maintained their prices but reduced the volume of shipments to the U.S. by 18%-24% relative to the European Union, Canada and Australia, the report found.
Rather than acting as a tax on foreign producers, the tariffs functioned as a consumption tax on Americans, the report said.
Not ideal.
Find the full Kiel report here.
Tags: economy, tariff, Wall Street Journal
2026-01-20 18:17:57
In his song “We Didn’t Start the Fire”, Billy Joel makes 119 historical references from his life at the time. Of those, 57 of them are people, and as the internet likes to remind us, the number of those on the list who are still alive approaches zero with time.
With the passing of Brigitte Bardot at the end of 2025, the count is down to three. These are the timelines of everyone on the list.
2026-01-16 20:37:36
In some counties, vaccination rates increased after the pandemic, which got them past the recommended level of protection. Many more counties decreased their rates though. The Washington Post made an interactive map to see where your county stands.
I’m into the lede map that makes the decreasing counties fall into the depths below the rest of the country.
Tags: school, vaccination, Washington Post
