Kate Merlin

Opinion | There Is No Going Back The president’s opponents, whoever they are, cannot expect a return to the Constitution as it was.

Yeah so the Constitution isn’t really in effect right now

Day Six of the Trump-Musk Treasury Payments Crisis of 2025: “Treasury has been denying that they gave Marko write access, but I am looking at his access request right now” If you are a current or former career Bureau of the Fiscal Service Employee, especially if you’re a legacy IT programmer with years of experience and especially if you are a COBOL programmer currently...

NEW PIECE. I'm on Odd Lots. Paul Krugman endorsed my work this week yesterday. & more on Treasury's lying about read & write privileges "Treasury has been denying that they gave Marko write access, but I am looking at his access request right now" www.crisesnotes.com/day-six-of-t...

Germans think it was a Nazi salute. Historians think it was a “textbook” Nazi salute. NAZIS think it was a Nazi salute.

NYT: awkward hand gesture?

Elon Musk gave the Nazi salute (two, actually) at the inauguration. Media is dead silent.

Justice isn’t coming if we sit around quietly and wait for it to magically happen. We have to talk about it. We have to act on it, work for it.

DEI Isn’t Dying: These Companies Are Standing Strong Against 'Anti-Woke' Backlash in 2025 Despite pressure, many companies remain steadfast in their commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

✅ NEW by me:

Apple and Costco are not alone in taking a strong stand on diversity, equity & inclusion (DEI). The list of corporate giants pushing back on the 'anti-woke' #DEI backlash is growing in 2025.

www.thequeenzone.com/dei-isnt-dyi... via @thequeenzone.bsky.social

Bad take. Sorry if that offends you and you have to go vote for a Republican.

Also I think there’s real fear that Trump will turn the power of the US government against its own citizens. Maybe not thinking how their own cowardice makes that even more likely.

Geriatric “leadership” cut off the next gen of leaders at the knees. The right has a massive well-funded pipeline. Democrats eat their young for being too progressive.

Strict, joint and several, retroactive liability. There is a money trail to be followed. The scam of dumping old wells is literally called “the playbook.” Claw back that cash.

It’s infuriating that he thinks we don’t know. It’s outrageous he suggests it to be a nascent threat. Some people have been asking Dems to do more since Citizens United, or much farther back. Instead we have Pelosi trying to disembowel AOC

Japanese shipowner NYK has reached a deal with Eneos to buy conventional bunker fuel with attached carbon credits, or offsets. This will reduce NYK's net emissions in years to come. Under the agreement, Eneos will purchase carbon credits from 1PointFive, an initiative of Occidental Petroleum and BlackRock. Each credit represents an equivalent amount of carbon that 1PointFive removes from the atmosphere using direct air capture (DAC) technology and stores underground. Eneos will then sell the bunker fuel and the attached carbon credits to NYK. 1PointFive is building its first direct air capture plant in Ector County, Texas. It is designed to recover up to 500,000 tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere every year, and the company says that future plant designs will be able to capture twice as much. The captured gas will be pumped into stable, secure underground geologic formations for long-term storage. Prominent clients include Airbus, Shopify and airline ANA, and the startup expects lots of demand in the decades to come. The company's first DAC plant will begin operating in 2025, and the Eneos fuel delivery contract begins in 2028. The carbon credits from Eneos are part of NYK's plan to address the last hard-to-abate elements of its carbon footprint. It will focus first on maximum energy efficiency, then on transitioning to new green fuels like ammonia and methanol (and LNG). For the remaining emissions that cannot be eliminated, NYK will buy carbon offsets to achieve net-zero. It is the two companies' second major agreement this year. In July, NYK absorbed about 80 percent of Eneos' in-house shipping fleet, including 18 LPG carriers, 19 chemical and product tankers, 12 dry bulk carriers and a ship management company in Singapore. Eneos retained its crude oil tankers.

Whatever direct air capture is meant to be, or could be, this is unambiguously what it is becoming: a fossil fuel industry run factory creating single units of greenwashing to sell to the worst emitters

maritime-executive.com/article/nyk-...

Better to plant faster growing crops that can be used to replace trees for paper & cardboard. Industrial tree farming is also being sold as a climate offset, which sucks.

The fossil fuel industry itself is “hard to decarbonize.” Maybe the answer isn’t wasting precious time and money chasing a CCS fantasy, but changing our economy to end reliance on HTD materials

What a great opportunity to think about how it’s okay to be wrong sometimes! If you’re going to stop being an ally with people who challenge you, then the allyship wasn’t actually there in the first place.

Stop asking if he’s a rapist or a drunk. They know, and they don’t care. Ask questions that show how little he knows about military, geopolitical threats, leading a large organization, you know, DOING THE JOB. Are they willing to put America in real mortal peril over a culture war?

Loved this series. You won’t be disappointed.

Build it

We saw in Colorado, well pads that lost takeaway access were not shut in or plugged - mobile bitcoin mining facilities were brought in to justify continued production.

Hickenlooper drank fracking fluid, this stunt is so 2012.

I was with a group that had gotten a whistleblower about the Deepwater Horizon being badly constructed a year before the blowout. Sucks to be right, actually

The worst problem with politicians demanding a 95% confidence on climate science is that they didn’t consider what the 50/50 was, let alone “worst case”

I think the “smoking in bars” analogy worked really well. A LOT of complaints upfront, but now we would never consider going back.

I’m so sorry. I hope your loved ones are safe.

Fossil fuels & climate.
We are all inside a passenger plane that is almost out of fuel, and our pilots are not even looking for a runway to land on.
God help us all.

The right has become very effective at weaponizing progressive ideals against actual progress. Beware.

Trump team takes aim at crown jewel of US climate research A top aide to the president-elect wants tighter control over the National Climate Assessment.

The incoming Trump administration plans to target the National Climate Assessment so that it can't be used to defend regulations in court. Russ Vought, Trump's OMB pick, wants to personally approve a team of climate denialists to rewrite it. www.eenews.net/articles/tru...

And these shitty NIMBY suits give ALL environmental lawsuits a bad name, and an excuse to gut permitting review. This group is in some kind of nostalgia crusade, but throwing actually endangered places & species under the bus

Oh, and if someone says “oh look at Orion!” (and that is totally, 100% NOT Orion) just say, yeah, that’s awesome. Isn’t it beautiful.

Does everyone carry the story of the time they almost died? Will I someday have an even bigger story? I dunno. But I think: Go outside, look at the stars, drink some whiskey, touch someone, and feel happy today if you have a breath left in you.