megduff.com
Reporter for Chemical Watch News & Insights. Also a freelance climate journalist. Views and Bluesky nonsense my own.
she/her
signal: megduff.11
www.megduff.com
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As Anita Wolfe told me: “It comes down to how much is a life worth. You want more coal, but you don’t care about the coal miners and what’s happening to them.” 7/7
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In the meantime, compliance dates are looming for a new dust regulation, the MSHA silica rule, which lowers dust exposure limits in mines.
NIOSH researchers were working on tools that would make it easier for mines to comply. But they've already lost six months of research time. 6/7
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Most of that work has been paused since February due to travel and funding restrictions. It remains paused as researchers wait to hear if they will get their jobs back.
That may be decided by the case AFGE v. Trump, which alleges that the DOGE layoffs are unconstitutional. 5/7
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Those researchers had been working to get dust levels down in mines. They also work on massive mine cave-ins, lithium-ion battery explosions, gas well leaks, mine rescue training, and a whole host of other potentially life-saving projects. 4/7
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The judge in Wiley v. Kennedy said research to prevent black lung is legally required, but she stopped short of saying which researchers to call back.
Secretary Kennedy's response was to un-fire a director of mine research, but none of the hundreds of researchers who report to him. 3/7
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Coal miners and their advocates notched a win in Wiley v. Kennedy, restoring (at least for now) time-sensitive programs for coal miners with black lung -- a disease that still impacts thousands of miners each year.
But the researchers working to prevent the disease? They still face layoffs. 2/7
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Twelve of them! They got Zuck too
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Calling solar geoengineering a "solution" now establishes the conversation on totally unwarranted assumptions, as if we already knew whether it was going to work in a systemic way or not.
We do not know this yet.
6/n
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I think it really varies! Would definitely be interesting if some of them did change over time. I wouldn't be surprised!
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Right. Part of the hurt: cheap ground coffee brands mix more robusta into their blends when arabica prices go up. Now that cost cutting option won't work as well.
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wheeeee big congrats!!!
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See, I think there is a fine line between "not organized" and "all of the above." Mine are by size (for practical reasons), then read or not, then genre, then color / alpha / size depending on the state of the world and my most recent burst of procrasgimation. Completely chaotic, but... organized!
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The economist I spoke with refused to speculate on long term prices (good for him). Read to the end for someone who did!
In a dimly lit, coffee-scented room, Turkish coffee fortune teller Dr. Honeybrew read coffee's fortune for me. He prophesied chaos, but also shared a good omen to watch for...
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i look at this incoming government and all i can see is rape.