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Submitted at 09-20-2022, 04:23 PM by Mordant | |
7 Comments | |
A staggering total of 109 soldiers assigned to Fort Bragg died in 2020 and 2021. Dozens have lost their lives there to drug overdoses. Now, their families are demanding answers — and accountability… | |
Submitted at 09-20-2022, 04:11 PM by nocash | |
Submitted at 09-20-2022, 04:09 PM by nocash | |
Kiwi Farms announces that it has been hacked, tells users to expect their passwords, email addresses, and other data to leak. | |
Submitted at 09-20-2022, 01:44 PM by nocash | |
Submitted at 09-20-2022, 01:37 PM by nocash | |
Submitted at 09-20-2022, 01:37 PM by nocash | |
“Yes, we finally unloaded that piece of crap in Denmark we’ve been trying to sell for decades,” Shell’s Steve Lesher told California lobbyist Gavin McHugh last spring. “I wouldn’t put that in this GHG-sensitivity category. That was just a crappy facility.”
This exchange appears in a trove of emails and other materials recently made public by a House Oversight Committee investigation into oil industry greenwashing. And the “piece of crap in Denmark” Lesher refers to was probably a refinery in Fredericia owned by Shell’s Danish subsidiary, which was sold to Postlane Partners, a Connecticut-based private equity firm, in early 2021.
“GHG” stands for greenhouse gas, and Lesher’s email indicates he didn’t think selling the refinery would make the company more climate-friendly. But the company’s press release on the matter had a decidedly greener spin: “This exit supports our ambition to be a net-zero emissions energy business by 2050 or sooner, in step with society.”
Lesher’s email offers a window into one way multinational oil companies are trying to present themselves as engines of emissions reduction. Under pressure to cut greenhouse gases in line with “net-zero” targets and maintain their social license to operate—something Shell executives fret openly about in private emails—these companies have come up with a neat trick for making themselves look more climate-friendly: selling their worst-offending properties off to someone else.
Lesher’s email, sent in May, also mentioned another sale: Shell’s Deer Park refinery in Houston. That sale, Lesher wrote, is “further evidence that the company is divesting of most of the really energy intensive emitters.” As evidence, he named five other assets Shell purged from its books in the two years earlier. Particularly climate-friendly was Shell’s prior unloading of its Canadian oil sands business, “a big greenhouse gas headache with a lot of NGO opposition.”
“No one in the company has said this,” he continued, “but the pattern is pretty clear: if you’re a major greenhouse gas emitter, and particularly if you operate in a GHG-sensitive area like [California, Washington] or [Canada], your days in the Shell family are probably numbered.”
What happens to those facilities, though? Those emissions don’t just disappear. Often, they change hands to far less accountable and high-profile companies, usually private equity firms or smaller, privately held drillers, which are content to keep on spewing carbon, methane, and other pollutants into the atmosphere and surrounding communities.
In some cases, Shell is perfectly content to keep polluting. “The other pattern to notice,” Lesher wrote, “is where we DO own high GHG intensive things, it’s in areas where they aren’t that politically sensitive about such matters: China, Singapore, Malaysia, Louisiana.” In other words, the places where they can get away with it. | |
Submitted at 09-20-2022, 05:08 AM by sleeppoor | |
Flag football is among the fastest-growing sports in the United States, and the sport has been surging, particularly among girls and women in Latin America. | |
Submitted at 09-20-2022, 04:38 AM by sleeppoor | |
An excerpt from legendary tech reporter Douglas Rushkoff's latest book, "Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires." | |
Submitted at 09-20-2022, 12:23 AM by Forensic | |
A food company executive was arrested on a pair of charges after reportedly biting a man’s nose in a parking garage in Fayetteville on Saturday night. | |
Submitted at 09-20-2022, 12:20 AM by sleeppoor | |
Submitted at 09-19-2022, 05:32 PM by Disruptive Emotional-Support Pig | |
Oscar-winning director Woody Allen, who has been ostracized from most of Hollywood over renewed allegations of sexual abuse by his daughter, Dylan Farrow, says he’s done with movies. Allen, 86, announced in a new interview Saturday that he plans to retire from making films after his next one, his 50th. “My idea, in principle, is not to make more movies and focus on writing,” he told Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia. Little is known about the upcoming movie, “Wasp 22,” but it is a French-language flick with a local cast, set to begin shooting in Paris later this year. Allen compared it to “Match... | |
Submitted at 09-19-2022, 04:24 PM by Mordant | |
The Pentagon has ordered a sweeping audit of how it conducts clandestine information warfare after major social media companies identified and took offline fake accounts suspected of being run by the U.S. military in violation of the platforms’ rules.
Colin Kahl, the undersecretary of defense for policy, last week instructed the military commands that engage in psychological operations online to provide a full accounting of their activities by next month after the White House and some federal agencies expressed mounting concerns over the Defense Department’s attempted manipulation of audiences overseas, according to several defense and administration officials familiar with the matter.
The takedowns in recent years by Twitter and Facebook of more than 150 bogus personas and media sites created in the United States was disclosed last month by internet researchers Graphika and the Stanford Internet Observatory. While the researchers did not attribute the sham accounts to the U.S. military, two officials familiar with the matter said that U.S. Central Command is among those whose activities are facing scrutiny. Like others interviewed for this report, they spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military operations.
The researchers did not specify when the takedowns occurred, but those familiar with the matter said they were within the past two or three years. Some were recent, they said, and involved posts from the summer that advanced anti-Russia narratives citing the Kremlin’s “imperialist” war in Ukraine and warning of the conflict’s direct impact on Central Asian countries. Significantly, they found that the pretend personas — employing tactics used by countries such as Russia and China — did not gain much traction, and that overt accounts actually attracted more followers.
Centcom, headquartered in Tampa, has purview over military operations across 21 countries in the Middle East, North Africa and Central and South Asia. A spokesman declined to comment.
Air Force Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, said in a statement that the military’s information operations “support our national security priorities” and must be conducted in compliance with relevant laws and policies. “We are committed to enforcing those safeguards,” he said.
Spokespersons for Facebook and Twitter declined to comment. | |
Submitted at 09-19-2022, 03:45 PM by sleeppoor | |
Living in the nation’s largest cargo hub, thousands are exposed to high levels of diesel soot, which can contribute to heart disease, lung cancer and premature death.
Signs everywhere in Braceville, Illinois, say trains could come barreling through at 80 mph.
But workers at the Union Pacific intermodal terminal in Joliet can’t always unload freight that fast. So lately, said Braceville Mayor David Wright, trains have been screeching to a halt three or four days a week.
They’re stacked 20 feet high with shipping containers from China. Some stretch 3 miles through Braceville and the next town. Most stay for a short time, but Wright remembers one train that Union Pacific didn’t touch for more than 24 hours. Another lingered so long schoolkids crawled underneath to get home.
When asked about the yellow cranes Union Pacific just built to double unloading capacity at Joliet, Wright laughed.
“The railroads can’t manage what they’ve got coming now,” he said. “If they double, they’ll have trains backed up all the way to St. Louis.”
A town of 886 people, Braceville lies 60 miles southwest of Chicago where urban sprawl gives way to corn and soybeans.
But stalled trains don’t just afflict Braceville farmers. They’ve been clogging up all 18 intermodal terminals that dot Chicago’s suburbs and its inner city. | |
Submitted at 09-19-2022, 03:40 PM by sleeppoor | |
The Virginia Board of Education agreed to license a controversial candidate for superintendent in Spotsylvania County with no experience in education and a history of incendiary social media posts,…
(Combine this with the Youngkin assault on trans kids and we have ourselves a god damn coup of GQP scum within Virginia's educational system) | |
Submitted at 09-19-2022, 11:09 AM by read a tv | |
The revamped rules explicitly state that students must only use bathrooms and locker rooms associated with the sex assigned to them at birth. Similar restrictions apply to sports and other activities. | |
Submitted at 09-19-2022, 11:07 AM by read a tv | |
A woman in police custody in Weld County was seriously injured Friday night when the patrol vehicle she had been placed in — which was parked on railroad tracks — was struck by a train. | |
Submitted at 09-19-2022, 02:42 AM by Wreckard | |
The 900 page, mostly redacted file says that police pulled Seals over at the request of FBI | |
Submitted at 09-19-2022, 02:01 AM by sleeppoor | |
Submitted at 09-19-2022, 01:23 AM by A Fistful Of Double Downs | |
Submitted at 09-19-2022, 01:19 AM by Nibbles | |

A staggering total of 109 soldiers assigned to Fort Bragg died in 2020 and 2021. Dozens have lost their lives there to drug overdoses. Now, their families are demanding answers — and accountability…
Kiwi Farms announces that it has been hacked, tells users to expect their passwords, email addresses, and other data to leak.
“Yes, we finally unloaded that piece of crap in Denmark we’ve been trying to sell for decades,” Shell’s Steve Lesher told California lobbyist Gavin McHugh last spring. “I wouldn’t put that in this GHG-sensitivity category. That was just a crappy facility.”
This exchange appears in a trove of emails and other materials recently made public by a House Oversight Committee investigation into oil industry greenwashing. And the “piece of crap in Denmark” Lesher refers to was probably a refinery in Fredericia owned by Shell’s Danish subsidiary, which was sold to Postlane Partners, a Connecticut-based private equity firm, in early 2021.
“GHG” stands for greenhouse gas, and Lesher’s email indicates he didn’t think selling the refinery would make the company more climate-friendly. But the company’s press release on the matter had a decidedly greener spin: “This exit supports our ambition to be a net-zero emissions energy business by 2050 or sooner, in step with society.”
Lesher’s email offers a window into one way multinational oil companies are trying to present themselves as engines of emissions reduction. Under pressure to cut greenhouse gases in line with “net-zero” targets and maintain their social license to operate—something Shell executives fret openly about in private emails—these companies have come up with a neat trick for making themselves look more climate-friendly: selling their worst-offending properties off to someone else.
Lesher’s email, sent in May, also mentioned another sale: Shell’s Deer Park refinery in Houston. That sale, Lesher wrote, is “further evidence that the company is divesting of most of the really energy intensive emitters.” As evidence, he named five other assets Shell purged from its books in the two years earlier. Particularly climate-friendly was Shell’s prior unloading of its Canadian oil sands business, “a big greenhouse gas headache with a lot of NGO opposition.”
“No one in the company has said this,” he continued, “but the pattern is pretty clear: if you’re a major greenhouse gas emitter, and particularly if you operate in a GHG-sensitive area like [California, Washington] or [Canada], your days in the Shell family are probably numbered.”
What happens to those facilities, though? Those emissions don’t just disappear. Often, they change hands to far less accountable and high-profile companies, usually private equity firms or smaller, privately held drillers, which are content to keep on spewing carbon, methane, and other pollutants into the atmosphere and surrounding communities.
In some cases, Shell is perfectly content to keep polluting. “The other pattern to notice,” Lesher wrote, “is where we DO own high GHG intensive things, it’s in areas where they aren’t that politically sensitive about such matters: China, Singapore, Malaysia, Louisiana.” In other words, the places where they can get away with it.
Flag football is among the fastest-growing sports in the United States, and the sport has been surging, particularly among girls and women in Latin America.
An excerpt from legendary tech reporter Douglas Rushkoff's latest book, "Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires."
A food company executive was arrested on a pair of charges after reportedly biting a man’s nose in a parking garage in Fayetteville on Saturday night.
Oscar-winning director Woody Allen, who has been ostracized from most of Hollywood over renewed allegations of sexual abuse by his daughter, Dylan Farrow, says he’s done with movies. Allen, 86, announced in a new interview Saturday that he plans to retire from making films after his next one, his 50th. “My idea, in principle, is not to make more movies and focus on writing,” he told Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia. Little is known about the upcoming movie, “Wasp 22,” but it is a French-language flick with a local cast, set to begin shooting in Paris later this year. Allen compared it to “Match...
The Pentagon has ordered a sweeping audit of how it conducts clandestine information warfare after major social media companies identified and took offline fake accounts suspected of being run by the U.S. military in violation of the platforms’ rules.
Colin Kahl, the undersecretary of defense for policy, last week instructed the military commands that engage in psychological operations online to provide a full accounting of their activities by next month after the White House and some federal agencies expressed mounting concerns over the Defense Department’s attempted manipulation of audiences overseas, according to several defense and administration officials familiar with the matter.
The takedowns in recent years by Twitter and Facebook of more than 150 bogus personas and media sites created in the United States was disclosed last month by internet researchers Graphika and the Stanford Internet Observatory. While the researchers did not attribute the sham accounts to the U.S. military, two officials familiar with the matter said that U.S. Central Command is among those whose activities are facing scrutiny. Like others interviewed for this report, they spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military operations.
The researchers did not specify when the takedowns occurred, but those familiar with the matter said they were within the past two or three years. Some were recent, they said, and involved posts from the summer that advanced anti-Russia narratives citing the Kremlin’s “imperialist” war in Ukraine and warning of the conflict’s direct impact on Central Asian countries. Significantly, they found that the pretend personas — employing tactics used by countries such as Russia and China — did not gain much traction, and that overt accounts actually attracted more followers.
Centcom, headquartered in Tampa, has purview over military operations across 21 countries in the Middle East, North Africa and Central and South Asia. A spokesman declined to comment.
Air Force Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, said in a statement that the military’s information operations “support our national security priorities” and must be conducted in compliance with relevant laws and policies. “We are committed to enforcing those safeguards,” he said.
Spokespersons for Facebook and Twitter declined to comment.
Living in the nation’s largest cargo hub, thousands are exposed to high levels of diesel soot, which can contribute to heart disease, lung cancer and premature death.
Signs everywhere in Braceville, Illinois, say trains could come barreling through at 80 mph.
But workers at the Union Pacific intermodal terminal in Joliet can’t always unload freight that fast. So lately, said Braceville Mayor David Wright, trains have been screeching to a halt three or four days a week.
They’re stacked 20 feet high with shipping containers from China. Some stretch 3 miles through Braceville and the next town. Most stay for a short time, but Wright remembers one train that Union Pacific didn’t touch for more than 24 hours. Another lingered so long schoolkids crawled underneath to get home.
When asked about the yellow cranes Union Pacific just built to double unloading capacity at Joliet, Wright laughed.
“The railroads can’t manage what they’ve got coming now,” he said. “If they double, they’ll have trains backed up all the way to St. Louis.”
A town of 886 people, Braceville lies 60 miles southwest of Chicago where urban sprawl gives way to corn and soybeans.
But stalled trains don’t just afflict Braceville farmers. They’ve been clogging up all 18 intermodal terminals that dot Chicago’s suburbs and its inner city.
The Virginia Board of Education agreed to license a controversial candidate for superintendent in Spotsylvania County with no experience in education and a history of incendiary social media posts,…
(Combine this with the Youngkin assault on trans kids and we have ourselves a god damn coup of GQP scum within Virginia's educational system)
The revamped rules explicitly state that students must only use bathrooms and locker rooms associated with the sex assigned to them at birth. Similar restrictions apply to sports and other activities.
A woman in police custody in Weld County was seriously injured Friday night when the patrol vehicle she had been placed in — which was parked on railroad tracks — was struck by a train.
The 900 page, mostly redacted file says that police pulled Seals over at the request of FBI