Lucy Bailey

Such beautiful #Lenticularis this morning over the north faces trilogy: Eiger (3967 m), Mönch (4110 m) and Jungfrau (4158 m) 😍🤍

Harbingers of the long warm front of storm #Floris, which is passing us by today! 🌬️

Webcam Niederhorn via @meteoschweiz.ch

The Lancet Countdown on health and plastics Plastics are a grave, growing, and under-recognised danger to human and planetary health. Plastics cause disease and death from infancy to old age and are responsible for health-related economic losse...

'Plastics are a grave, growing, and under-recognised danger to human and planetary health. Plastics cause disease and death from infancy to old age and are responsible for health-related economic losses exceeding US$1·5 trillion annually.'
www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

Plastics a ‘grave’ danger to health, scientists warn before UN talks Experts say materials are harmful ‘at every stage’ of human life, as diplomats hold talks on global treaty

Plastics a ‘grave’ danger to health, scientists warn before UN talks https://on.ft.com/3H803IM

World in $1.5tn ‘plastics crisis’ hitting health from infancy to old age, report warns Plastic production has increased more than 200 times since 1950 and hits health at every stage from extraction to disposal, says review in the Lancet Plastics are a “grave, growing and under-recognised danger” to human and planetary health, a new expert review has warned. The world is in a “plastics crisis”, it concluded, which is causing disease and death from infancy to old age and is responsible for at least $1.5tn (£1.1tn) a year in health-related damages. The driver of the crisis is a huge acceleration of plastic production, which has increased by more than 200 times since 1950 and is set to almost triple again to more than a billion tonnes a year by 2060. While plastic has many important uses, the most rapid increase has been in the production of single-use plastics, such as drinks bottles and fast-food containers. Continue reading...

World in $1.5tn ‘plastics crisis’ hitting health from infancy to old age, report warns

INC global plastics treaty social graphic

We’re in Geneva for the final round of plastics treaty negotiations—it could be our last chance to meet the plastics crisis with the urgency & ambition it demands.

We can't delay any further. We're calling for the strongest treaty possible to combat plastic pollution: bit.ly/451rlcZ #PlasticsTreaty

Don’t ever let anyone convince you that transitioning off fossil fuels means going back to Little House on the Prairie lifestyle. There are so many innovations, solutions, healthy ways to meet peoples’ needs. One small example: check out the world’s first solar train in Australia. lnkd.in/gtwaRqix

Duffy to announce nuclear reactor on the moon This is the first major agency effort by the interim NASA administrator, who is also the Transportation secretary and a former Fox News host.

EXCLUSIVE: Sean Duffy will announce expedited plans to build a nuclear reactor on the moon, his first major action as interim NASA administrator.

Fascinating work, but the story says nothing about the best way to eat them - what am I missing?

Nearly 4,000 NASA employees opt to leave agency through deferred resignation program The employees who have chosen to leave the agency amount to about 20% of NASA's workforce.

4,000 NASA workers are leaving through deferred resignation. "The cuts amount to an estimated 20% of NASA's workforce" www.npr.org/2025/07/26/n...

Starmer v Starmer: why is the former human rights lawyer so cautious about defending human rights? The long read: Many of his supporters hoped the prime minister would restore the UK’s commitment to international law. Yet Labour’s record over the past year has been curiously mixed

Excellent piece by @trillingual.bsky.social explaining why so many human rights champions were so hopeful when Starmer became Labour leader and so disappointed (and more) with his premiership. With insightful context - and I'm always here for the Gearty quotes!

www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Pleco dictionary entry for 产出, chan (third tone) chu (first tone). Verb, output. 少投入，多产出, shao touru, duo chanchu, produce more for less. Separate set of definitions from alternative dictionary source in Pleco: 1 to produce (graduates, breast milk, toxic waste, creative ideas etc) 2 output

To produce (graduates, breast milk, toxic waste, creative ideas etc)

The Sears Tower looking insanely creepy during a blackout, including the impression of a scary face topped by a crown of spikes. It looks like a giant humanoid evil robot or a demonic Minecraft creature.

"It's ok, honey. The Sears Tower experiencing a blackout won't hurt you!"

The Sears Tower experiencing a blackout:

Israel enforcing Gaza evacuations with grenade-firing drones Israeli soldiers tell +972 they deliberately target Palestinian civilians with drone strikes so others will ‘learn’ not to return.

The IDF reportedly uses Chinese commercial drones for its operations in Gaza:

“Soldiers most commonly use EVO drones, produced by the Chinese company Autel, which are primarily intended for photography. However, with a military-issued attachment, a hand grenade can be affixed to the drone”

When ICE Agents Are Waiting Outside the Courtroom An asylum seeker and her children face the terrifying new reality of immigration hearings.

Since the spring, federal agents have been patrolling government buildings in New York City, waiting to arrest migrants as soon as they step out of a courtroom, regardless of the status of their case.

That @bloomberg.com can have a headline “EU agrees to pay 15% tariff on most exports to US” shows just how far economic illiteracy has gone. And the months of economists explaining how tariffs work makes this extraordinary level of ignorance even more inexcusable.

Opinion | The Supreme Court Owes the Country Explanations for Its Big Decisions

Congratulations to Steve Vladeck and the indispensable one first for the shout out in today’s NY Times! @stevevladeck.bsky.social @nytopinion.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com/2025/07/28/o...

The image shows the 17th century painting “Landscape with Windmills near Haarlem” by the Dutch painter Jacob van Ruisdael.

Disgusted to see this beautiful landscape ruined by wind turbines.

« La classe politique déserte l’écologie au moment même où celle-ci s’installe dans le quotidien des Français » TRIBUNE. La stratégie de désertion de l’écologie, qui intervient alors que les effets du dérèglement climatique sont de plus en plus concrets dans le quotidien des Français, pourrait se retourner cont...

La stratégie de désertion de l’écologie, qui intervient alors que les effets du dérèglement climatique sont de plus en plus concrets dans le quotidien des Français, pourrait se retourner contre les élites, juge Arnaud Gilles, spécialiste des politiques environmentales

www.lemonde.fr/idees/articl...

Public media has been defunded. Your support keeps journalists on the ground, lifts unheard voices, and connects communities.

Help us plan for what’s next. Make a monthly gift today. Stand with public media: n.pr/458sOhq

After 7 Decades of Measurements From a Peak in Hawaii, Trump’s Budget Would End Them

Trump is closing all four climate observatory stations in Alaska, Hawaii, American Samoa, and Antartica. Because you can't have high CO2 levels if you don't *measure* CO2 levels.

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Exclusive: Trump's funding cut stalls water projects, increasing risks for millions The Trump administration's decision to slash nearly all U.S. foreign aid has left dozens of water and sanitation projects half-finished across the globe, creating new hazards for some of the people they were designed to benefit, Reuters has found.

A story from my world. USAID funds were committed by Congress to support providing safe #water and sanitation to millions of people.
Trump and the GOP eliminated those funds. People will die as a result.

www.reuters.com/world/us/tru...

‘Keeping us hooked on fossil fuels’: how can we negotiate with autocracies on the climate crisis? The bulk of global greenhouse gas emissions come from countries that are not democratic, and many big oil and gas exporters are also authoritarian

Another superb article by the Guardian's brilliant Environment Editor @fionaharvey.bsky.social

" ‘Keeping us hooked on fossil fuels’: how can we negotiate with autocracies on the climate crisis?"

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

ait Borsay: "Do you think climate change exists?" Andrea: "I've said for a long time, we need to ditch net zero and actually focus on economic growth. A million percent." Kait: "But then how do you tackle climate change? And do you believe that climate change exists?" Andrea: "Do I believe that climate change exists? No." Kait: "Okay. So you are not a believer in climate, you know, despite rising global temperatures, melting glaciers, rising sea levels, despite all of that evidence?" Andrea: "It depends. It depends what evidence you look at.... I think it's a way to actually make money." Kait: "Okay. But you don't believe climate change exists. And so that's why there is no need for net zero, in your opinion." Andrea: "Absolutely. And I think it's harming industry. I think it's a money making racket where certain businesses and individuals are making money out of it."

Reform mayor Andrea Jenkyns tells Times Radio that she doesn’t believe climate change exists, and that it’s just a “racket” for some people to make money. If Reform win the next election, the UK could become a very different place quite quickly.

How Trump’s anti-immigrant policies could collapse the US food industry - visualized The president is threatening to deport essential farm workers, grocery clerks and food delivery drivers. But without them, shelves could go empty and prices could soar

By me and the super-talented Ritia Liu
How Trump’s anti-immigrant policies could collapse the US food industry - visualized
www.theguardian.com/environment/...

UK-EU relations: alignment by stealth - UK in a changing Europe Coinciding with the publication of the thirteenth edition of the UK-EU Divergence Tracker, Joël Reland explains some of the reports key findings. He argues that the scale of alignment by the UK with E...

New blog summing up the findings of the divergence tracker ukandeu.ac.uk/uk-eu-relati...

"On the vast majority of issues, the UK and EU are [now] partners before they are competitors... the Brexit imperative for the UK to demonstrate its regulatory independence... appears dead in the water."

Disruptors: Inside Russia’s Balkan Training Camps for Moldovan ‘Destabilisation’ A joint investigation by BIRN and Moldovan CU SENS sheds new light on the training camps run by Russian operatives in Bosnia and Serbia that Chisinau says were used to train Moldovans in destabilisati...

Russians linked to Wagner trained people in paramilitary camps in Bosnia and Serbia to disrupt the Moldovan elections, learning "how to organise mass riots and how to provoke the police into a violent reaction”

balkaninsight.com/2025/07/15/d...

Are you a parent with a baby that needs a little polish? I do gentle, natural replacement—in accordance with a long tradition of færie child-snatching. I will take your human child and leave behind a waxy-skinned changeling that seems to fade from existence when viewed in your peripheral vision.

Class is in Session: Class Actions with Steve Vladeck 📚 A recording from Steve Vladeck and Katie Phang's live video

One of the biggest questions about #SCOTUS’s birthright citizenship ruling is how viable class actions will be as an alternative—in challenging the citizenship EO specifically, and Trump policies in general.

To tee up the issue, @katiephang.bsky.social and I did a 30-minute primer on class actions:

SCOTUS never intervened when federal judges issued nationwide injunctions while Biden was president. Not once.

They’ve repeatedly stepped in for Trump. Today, they cleared the way for him to fire tens of thousands of federal workers, overruling lower courts that said he couldn’t without Congress.

Norman Tebbit, former Tory cabinet minister, dies at 94 Tebbit was MP for Epping and Chingford, made peer in 1992 and was one of Margaret Thatcher’s most loyal supporters

Norman Tebbit, the former Conservative cabinet minister and one of Margaret Thatcher’s most loyal supporters, has died at the age of 94.

www.theguardian.com/politics/202...