Notices by Clive Thompson (clive@saturation.social)

Timothy Snyder argues that the immigrants and refugees being sent to the new US-based camps will -- if history is any guide -- be offered to US firms as slave labor

so it'll be up to us, and corporates, to say no

https://snyder.substack.com/p/concentration-camp-labor

I doubt folks around here need more explainers about the disastrous Supreme Court ruling that makes it essentially impossible for lower courts to overturn blatantly unconstitutional moves by the president

But this is clearest explanation I’ve seen: https://archive.is/S74FW

"Often the Dying Ask for a Map"

https://imagejournal.org/article/often-the-dying-ask-for-a-map/

There is nothing I love more than research finding that coffee is good for your health

in this case, a four-decade-long study of 50,000 women

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2025/06/16/coffee-healthy-aging-women/84225332007/

I always find this chart by Hannah Ritchie -- of Our World In Data -- deeply informative of how disjointed is our sense of personal risk

https://x.com/_HannahRitchie/status/1133703638432526337

A pediatrician reads the "Make America Healthy Again" report and discovers it is wildly contradictory

It spends pages meticulously documenting how corporations spend billions of dollars developing highly addictive ultra-processed foods and marketing them to children ...

... and how this has caused child illnesses and obesity to boom

It documents how other countries better regulate this

But then it says "the US shouldn't regulate things":
https://slate.com/technology/2025/06/rfk-jr-maha-report-kids-health-chronic-illness-medication.html

Behold the gorgeous line-art of Elise Ferguson

at first glance it looks highly regular

but go up close and you see very cool imperfections generated by her technique

Item #1 in my latest "Linkfest" newsletter, free to read and subscribe to here: https://buttondown.com/clivethompson/archive/linkfest-35-diasimocracy-four-loko-collectors-and/

Among the many dangerous things the Trump administration is doing ...

... this one's a doozy:

the executive order giving his political appointees the power to determine what are "correct" scientific findings, and "the power to 'discipline' anyone who violates the way the administration views science"

Gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/03/climate/executive-order-gold-standard-science.html?unlocked_article_code=1.MU8.OyDj.Zg9c1rftvl0c&smid=url-share

Trump pardoned a man who'd been convicted of tax cheating -- he withheld over $10 million from the paychecks of nurses, doctors and other employees, money that was intended to make their tax contributions ...

... and blew it on a $2 million yacht and shopping

he was caught, fined $4.4 million and given an 18-month jail term

then his mother attended a $1 million Trump dinner ...

... and soon after he was pardoned

Full story here: https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/trump-pardoned-tax-cheat-after-mother-attended-1-million-maga-dinner/

@kims This is the best thread on the internet today

okay you lucky people 🎲

it's time once again 🗓️

for "the opposite of doomscrolling"

my latest "Linkfest" newsletter just dropped 📬

Free to read and subscribe to here: https://buttondown.com/clivethompson/archive/linkfest-35-diasimocracy-four-loko-collectors-and/

This issue includes:

🤩 "diasimocracy"
📖 why sentences in English are getting shorter
🔊 the "Hebredian Hum"
🐻 what it's like to survive a grizzly attack
🕶️ the "millennial pause"
🦁 saving jaguars by paying for photos of them
🌲 wood that's stronger than steel
🦠 "prototaxites"

.... and much much more

Flock -- an automatic license-plate-reading service -- is adding tons of data sources ...

... so police could, upon scanning your license, get linked to tons more info about your life, relationships, etc

where did Flock get these additional sources of info?

they're using standard people-lookup tools and data brokers, but also ...

... info from *data breaches*

so great

@404mediaco has the story: https://www.404media.co/license-plate-reader-company-flock-is-building-a-massive-people-lookup-tool-leak-shows/

unpaywalled version: https://archive.is/GmuUk

USDA says it'll restore climate info to its web site after farmers and environmental groups sued

https://knightcolumbia.org/content/usda-reverses-course-commits-to-restore-purged-climate-webpages-in-response-to-farmers-lawsuit

I'll believe it when I see the pages restored, but provisionally this is good news

climate data gathered by federal agencies is crucial for farmers, insurers, airlines ... pretty much any industry that has to deal with the weather

#climate

New coinage just dropped, folks

"enshittogenic"

as in ...

... when the ecology of the online world loses crucial stabilizers, such that enshittification has not yet happened, but the conditions are ripe for it

@pluralistic on his new podcast series "Who Broke the Internet?"

https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/08/who-broke-the-internet/

This is an op-ed by a professor at West Point, describing the Trump/Hegseth crackdown on any sort of instruction that questions power ...

gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/08/opinion/west-point-trump-military.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Fk8.nAsH.FJBUeCyms015&smid=url-share

I highlighted this part here -- they just completely disbanded the sociology major

sociology and anthropology are really, really hated by Trump and his fellow travellers

they hate anything that seeks to examine the fabric of society

There's a new podcast series on the CBC by @pluralistic -- it's all about "who broke the internet?"

it's a blast -- the first ep is out, looking at google search, and I'm one of the folks Cory interviewed to talk about the heady early days of the 90s ... before things enshittified

check it out! https://www.cbc.ca/listen/cbc-podcasts/1353-the-naked-emperor/episode/16144078-dont-be-evil

"Conservatives *hate* complexity"

a superb post by @pluralistic that distills a core aspect of why right-wing ideas about how to manage things like the economy, immigration and our personal lives collide so rapidly with reality

key passage here, but do read the whole thing

https://pluralistic.net/2025/04/24/hermit-kingdom/

US border officials are so twitchy and paranoid that they detained and imprisoned two German teenagers ...

... even though they'd applied for -- and received -- their electronic approval for a five-week visit

Why were they detained? Because they hadn't booked accommodations for their full five weeks

they'd figured they'd travel around a bit and make decisions on the fly ... *like tourists do all the time, in most normal and free countries*

https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/german-tourists-deported-hawaii-cbp-b2736655.html

I"m finally getting around to watching Daredevil: Born Again ...

... and it's making me reflect again how much pop culture is basically fixated on "the chaotic, crime-ridden streets of NYC / [big-cities-in-general]" ...

it's as if the cultural imagination got completely frozen in the crime peak of the early 80s, and can't move on

man alive, crime in NYC today is -- in the real world -- lower than in much of the city's history, and lower than the national average

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_New_York_City

@lauren

I'm the same way -- I just type two dashes together, with a space before and after

I think it's a vestige of the fact that I first began doing word-processing using DOS software that was not yet WYSIWYG

no m-dash was possible -- two dashes was one's only alternative

the habit stuck