Friend M. Wells

It’s hard lately not to feel a sense of perpetual loss. The Forest Service is being dismantled, emperor penguins are endangered, increasingly no one can read. These were all choices that could easily have been avoided. We could have built a really wonderful world.

In 1983, 75% of Costa Rica's forests were gone. Today it's a biodiversity haven - half the country is covered in trees. They abolished their army in 1948 and spent the money on schools, healthcare and forests. That bet changed everything for the better.

Wow @bigbendsentinel joining this initiative! Big deal for the Big Bend area. Congrats y'all

Trucking is heading for a seismic disruption with EV trucks—one that began in China, now sweeping the globe. Price parity is here, operating costs collapsing & fuel volatility accelerating the shift. Freight is next—once it flips, oil loses its backbone. abc.net.au/news/science/2…

The U.S. Forest Service has protected 193 million acres of American land for over a century. Hunters, hikers, farmers, and rural communities have counted on it across generations. Trump is gutting it. Regional offices and research stations are closing. The agency Teddy Roosevelt built, hollowed out weeks before wildfire season, to make more room for lumber lobbyists. Teddy Roosevelt is rolling in his grave. And Republicans in Congress are just watching it happen. newyorker.com/news/the-lede/…

This is how the LA Olympics local ticket presale felt:

When I served in the House during the first Trump administration, I passed legislation to protect Chaco Canyon for generations to come. Now, this 1,000-year-old sacred site is being targeted again. Here in the Senate, protecting Chaco’s cultural and environmental resources has remained a top priority. After passing this legislation in the House, I’ve reintroduced it in the Senate, and we’re fighting to permanently protect Chaco. This is about protecting a sacred landscape that has been central to the history and heritage of Pueblos and Tribes in New Mexico. Chaco Canyon is not for sale.

🦔A researcher invented a fake eye condition called bixonimania, uploaded two obviously fraudulent papers about it to an academic server, and watched major AI systems present it as real medicine within weeks. The fake papers thanked Starfleet Academy, cited funding from the Professor Sideshow Bob Foundation and the University of Fellowship of the Ring, and stated mid-paper that the entire thing was made up. Google's Gemini told users it was caused by blue light. Perplexity cited its prevalence at one in 90,000 people. ChatGPT advised users whether their symptoms matched. The fake research was then cited in a peer-reviewed journal that only retracted it after Nature contacted the publisher. My Take The researcher made the papers as obviously fake as possible on purpose. The AI systems didn't catch it. Neither did the human researchers who cited it in real journals, which means people are feeding AI-generated references into their work without reading what they're actually citing. I've covered the FDA using AI for drug review, the NYC hospital CEO ready to replace radiologists, and ChatGPT Health launching this year. All of that is happening in the same environment where a condition funded by a Simpsons character and endorsed by the crew of the Enterprise was being presented as emerging medical consensus. The people making these deployment decisions seem to believe the pipeline from research to AI to patient is more supervised than it actually is. This experiment suggests it isn't supervised much at all. Hedgie🤗 nature.com/articles/d4158…

For those who think the desert is "dead" and worth sacrificing to foreign mining ... this is just along ONE portion of the wash near my house. #SonoranDesert 1) Hedgehog #cactus 2) #Acacia 3) Sacred #Datura 4) iconic #saguaro and #ocotillo

I know you will find this hard to believe, but at least half of America totally missed Tuesday. They have no idea the rest of us spent the entire day like the rest of the world, watching a countdown clock. Don’t believe me, ask people about it.

LA has an insane variety of natural filming locations, from beaches to mountains to deserts, but it's missing one major category: the woods. There are very few places in the general LA area that believably pass for a forest...so Disney grew one in the middle of the desert. 🧵

Forget 65, America's new retirement age is 85, per Business Insider.

For a decade, Trump cast a reality-distorting power over nearly half the country. That power ceased to operate, first over Epstein, then over the Iran War. Hence today's outbursts by Trump and Melania, each pulling levers that no longer connect to any mechanism.

Magic Castle Update: Re-opening Friday Night! Recovery and repair teams have been working in shifts literally around the clock to get the club house back up and running after the fire. Today the work proved worthwhile as inspection from the city has been passed and the place is set to re-open in 25 hours. Tonight would’ve been founder Milt Larsen’s 95th birthday and we had a big celebration planned. The event will be shifted to Sunday night, just after the Annual General Meeting of the Academy of Magical Arts. LAFD and staff and recovery crews are legends!

So they are aware they’re wrong

this is the "stripping the copper wire" phase of looting and the residents are too stunned to do anything about it

There comes a point where the price of admission, price of parking, price of food becomes too much in the sports experience. I don’t know how it is in small towns but it’s reaching a point of no return for many in Los Angeles. Problem.

600 meetings were held by the Feds on the Roadless rule in 2001. Now in 2026, Trump's Forest Service aims to kill the Rule, and there are zero public meetings. So Oregon enviros are holding their own - & generating publicity & push back. opb.org/article/2026/0…

It was Van Gogh's letters that made me love and understand his art

The Trump Administration has opened a seven-day public comment period on a proposal to revoke federal protections around Chaco Culture National Historical Park, setting up a fast-moving fight over whether more than 336,000 acres of public land near … navajotimes.com/reznews/trump-…