The excellent Richard Bookstaber has a new book out on 24th August 2026 called A Risk Manifesto: Decisions in the Face of Material Events (Palgrave).
His prior books The End of Theory (Princeton University Press, 2017) and A Demon Of Our Own Design (Wiley, 2007) are both invaluable.
https://t.co/nyQ5OkNC0H
Apple put $13 million into replacing a material aluminum smelters burn through every 25 days. The first batch of carbon-free aluminum went into a MacBook Pro. Global aluminum production is 73 million tons a year. Hall-Héroult has been the only way to make aluminum since 1886. It has two carbons: the electricity it pulls, and the anode that burns up in the cell. A 415 kg carbon block dissolves every 25 days. That's 1.5 tons of CO2 per ton of metal, before counting the power source. Replacing the carbon anode is one of the hardest materials-science problems in extractive metallurgy. It requires a material that survives 960°C molten cryolite for years without contaminating the metal. Parts per million of iron degrades the aluminum. The replacement is a cermet: nickel ferrite ceramic with a copper alloy binder. Alcoa worked on the materials science for four decades. Rio Tinto had the cell design. Apple brokered the partnership in 2018. Last November, Elysis ran a 450 kA cell at Alma, Quebec. The anode emitted oxygen instead of CO2. It lasted 30 times longer than carbon. The first new aluminum chemistry in 140 years.
The pain of those detained by Trump's cruel immigration policies is unimaginable. Today I met with some of the families of those being held in Delaney Hall.
These are not strangers they are people everybody knows. Some worked for FedEx, some cared for family members and are now missing graduations, and none of the relatives of the constituents we talked to have committed violent or serious crimes.
The families have waited for hours to visit with the detainees in the freezing cold and blistering heat, they are being forced to spend thousands on lawyers fees, and some of their loved ones are struggling with proper access medical care in this for-profit prison.
We have to end this nightmare that is tearing families apart and affecting communities across the country. I'll continue to fight to close Delaney Hall and end the Trump administration's chaotic and cruel policies.
Elias makes a distinction worth holding. There is a faction in pro-democracy circles that treats Trump's attacks on voting as mostly performative - messaging designed to suppress Democratic turnout through perceived futility rather than actual structural changes to election administration. Elias rejects that framing explicitly. He takes Trump's stated goal - controlling who stays on the voter rolls and who gets removed - literally and seriously.
The DOJ's 0-9 record is evidence the courts are taking it seriously too. So is the SAVE database ruling. So is the Maricopa County chaos with a July 21 primary starting this week. The question of whether voter suppression laws and database purges actually change election outcomes is not academic. Five of the judges who have already said no to the DOJ were put there by the same president who filed the cases. That is the system working. Barely. And with 21 cases still pending and appeals in every lost case, it is working under significant strain.
‼️SCOTUS rules Monsanto/Bayer can’t be sued for omitting a warning even if their herbicides do cause cancer. Even if the legal reasoning of the court is sound in this case, it’s a blatant travesty of justice. Congress and the President can fix this and we absolutely should.
You should know that if you get the measles, it will wipe out immunity to anything you had immunity to before you were infected, including any vaccinations
🚨 Republican Chairman David Johnson waterboarded his own 16-year-old daughter as punishment for not cleaning her room.
She told police she couldn't breathe for up to 30 seconds and feared for her life.
Picking up floating litter is a crime. Arranging seashells is a threat. Throwing a sandwich is a weapon. A rainbow painted on a sidewalk or flag can cause a meltdown. MAGAs are the biggest snowflakes on planet earth.
Let me be really clear about what just happened.
The head of the U.S. Postal Service sat in front of the United States Senate and said the quiet part loud: no voter list, no mail ballots. Full stop.
You don’t get to look away from this one.
This is a proposed rule. It’s being fought in court. But the fact that it was said — that a federal official openly threatened to withhold your ballot — that matters.
Your vote is yours. Not the administration’s. Not USPS’s. Yours.
Stay informed. Stay loud.
An attorney was punished for giving water to a client who went 30 hours without it at Adelanto ICE. Instead of fixing the issue, they banned her from face‑to‑face visits. GEO Group gets $142M a year to run this place. This is why we fight in L.T. v. ICE.
🚨BREAKING: Postmaster General David Steiner told senators that, under a new proposed rule, the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) will not deliver mail ballots unless states hand over their voter lists to the Trump administration https://t.co/WA59TUHa59
One billionaire family controls the bridge that carries 25% of all U.S.–Canada trade.
The good news? There's a brand new public bridge right next door (and Canada paid for the whole thing).
The bad news? Donald Trump won't let it open.
Here's the story:
For more than a decade, Michigan and Canada worked together to build a new public crossing right next to it — six lanes over the Detroit River, named for a Canadian-born Red Wings legend, built by thousands of union workers. Canada paid the entire bill. Michigan co-owns it. It's finished. It’s a shining example of international cooperation and collaboration, with a tremendous return for both sides: more jobs, faster trade, and lower costs.
So why isn't it open?
Because the Moroun family, who own the rival Ambassador Bridge just up the river, doesn’t want the competition. They spent years and tens of millions of dollars trying to stop any competing international crossing from being built or opening. They lost. So they went to the White House instead.
In January, Matthew Moroun gave $1 million to a pro-Trump super PAC. Then the billionaire called Trump's Commerce Secretary and, just hours later, Trump suddenly attacked the same publicly owned bridge he praised in his own first term and threatened to block it.
Then, the day before the June 12th ribbon-cutting, the opening was called off indefinitely.
It's corruption so flagrant it would be laughable if it weren't so damaging.
Trump is screwing over Michiganders for the interests of billionaires — holding a finished, publicly owned project hostage to protect one donor's toll booth.
So a finished bridge sits closed, Michiganders keep paying the higher tolls, cars and trucks cost more, and a billionaire family keeps its monopoly.
Mr. President: stop playing games. Open the damn bridge.
Woman impacted by MAGA abortion bans:
I noticed my Texas Senators are not present, so thank you for listening. I found out I was pregnant in July of 2021. We found out that our baby had a lethal genetic diagnosis. We were told that he would suffocate at his first breath. That diagnosis came 25 days after Texas's abortion ban went into effect. Because of that timing, my doctor was silenced. That ban turned every Texan into a potential bounty hunter. Any private citizen could sue anyone who aided and abetted an abortion. That resulted in an appointment where I was told that my baby was going to die, and my doctor could not give me the dignity of explaining all of my options.
Trump has turned the White House into a 24/7 corruption operation. This is a national crisis.
Trump thinks the public will stop paying attention.
So I went to the Senate floor to call his bluff. I told the ENTIRE STORY of his 500 days of corruption.
1/ Here it is - in one🧵