Lior Hamovitz

He Alone Tracked Leaky Oil Wells in National Parks. He Was Let Go.

Forrest Smith, the only National Park Service engineer cleaning up abandoned oil and gas wells, lost his contract, leaving 93 orphaned wells on park lands unmanaged. These leaking wells release methane and toxins, threatening human health and the environment.

So, I hate to be this guy, but as the director of Yale’s new program on attribution science (!?), uh, most of the commentary on Bluesky about Hurricane Melissa and climate change has been… not quite right

The Andrew formerly known as prince.

Audre Lorde warned against techno-utopianism. “Sometimes we drug ourselves with dreams of new ideas. The head will save us. The brain alone will set us free. But there are no new ideas . . . to save us,” Lorde said, “only old and forgotten ones . . . along with the renewed courage to try them out.”

expected research expenses 🤝 the maximum amount the foundation is offering

I won't apologize for my use of Avril Lavigne references in professional emails

The politics of texting with my sister to deliberate what to write in the family groupchat

Lines are being pulled straight from the VEEP script left and right

Trump Opens Pristine Alaska Wilderness to Drilling in Long-Running Feud

The Trump administration will allow oil & gas drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, an unspoiled expanse of 1.56 m acres that sits atop billions of barrels of oil and is a critical wildlife habitat for polar bears, caribou, & migratory birds. #Alaska www.nytimes.com/2025/10/23/c...

September 2025 was the third warmest on record in the Berkeley Earth dataset. But this downplays how anomalous it was; without 2023 and 2024 this year would have been well above any prior records and well above the long-term trend:

Millionaire Tax That Inspired Mamdani Fuels $5.7 Billion Haul in Massachusetts A millionaire levy in Massachusetts that New York City mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani holds up as a model for taxing the rich has generated $3 billion more in revenue than expected without forcing...

"In the two years since the state started charging a 4% surtax on incomes over $1 million, the effort has created a $5.7 billion windfall, with the surplus being used to fund bridge repairs, bolster literacy programs and address the transportation system’s budget deficit."

Taxing the rich works!

This is terrific!

How global warming is turning forests into fuel for wildfires Last year, an area larger than India was lost to wildfires worldwide.

From Australia to the Amazon: How climate change is turning forests into firestorms

Last year, an area larger than India was lost to wildfires worldwide

Wildfires are becoming more frequent, larger and more destructive across the globe
www.euronews.com/green/2025/1...

now there's an idea!

been getting crazy side-eye from her today

Over/under on whether Trump’s strip-mall Versailles ballroom meets security standards?

Lower-Income Americans Are Missing Car Payments

One of the less discussed harms of car-centric planning is that it imposes a serious financial burden on working families. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/20/b...

A few people in colonial costumes complaining about immigrants was novel to NYT editors. Their friends don't do that. A running narrative would be exciting, especially after Obama won big.

Millions rallying against Trump's authoritarian abuses? Bor-ring. NYT editors have heard that argument before.

In fact, yes, I will be asking my friends "did you girlboss too close to the sun?" on a daily basis

Desperately need to go on a late morning date at the Capital One Café

‘I love Hitler’: Leaked messages expose Young Republicans’ racist chat Thousands of private messages reveal young GOP leaders joking about gas chambers, slavery and rape.

EXCLUSIVE: Thousands of leaked messages show leaders of Young Republican groups joking about gas chambers, slavery and rape in a private Telegram chat.

Inside rising GOP leaders’ racist chats — obtained by POLITICO and spanning more than 7 months👇

A miracle they’re still alive. Elated for their families. Can’t help but think of all the hostages who would have also come home two years ago had Netanyahu chosen his own people over his thirst for war.

Planet’s first catastrophic climate tipping point reached, report says, with coral reefs facing ‘widespread dieback’ Unless global heating is reduced to 1.2C ‘as fast as possible’, warm water coral reefs will not remain ‘at any meaningful scale’, a report by 160 scientists from 23 countries warns

This is very sad, but also not surprising. The science has warned for a long time, including in IPCC reports, that even modest levels of global warming will devastate virtually all coral reefs.
www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Graphic showing a polar stereographic map of October 2024 Arctic sea ice concentration anomalies with anomalies from -50% in red shading to +50% in blue shading. More areas are below normal than above normal.

Substantial losses of #Arctic sea ice concentration are found in October. The largest declining trends extend from parts of the East Siberian Sea to the Chukchi Sea.

Sea ice concentration = fraction of ice-cover. More info on recent Arctic climate: doi.org/10.1175/BAMS...

Sunday morning, working on my doctoral prospectus, convincing myself I can execute a 10-year-minimum project in less than 3 years.

WATCH: ProPublica obtained records from the Department of Agriculture that detail the 94 million pounds of food, down to the number of eggs, that never reached food banks because of the Trump administration’s cuts to The Emergency Food Assistance Program.

➡️ Read more: https://propub.li/4odsKnn

Do you ever get angry at a snack for being so delicious?

need Prime Day but for my rent

The “dual state” theory was invented to describe Nazis. The Supreme Court could take us there. Authoritarianism—but make it look like the rule of law.

“The reality is that the court is adjusting the law to make place for arbitrary power.”

To understand the Supreme Court's role in Trump's authoritarian project, I turned to the idea of a dual state: an authoritarian regime that keeps up a facade of normalcy

www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

Just remembered the university continued charging us rent for dorms during the months we were all away due to COVID lockdowns (2020) and now I'm sad again