Listen To This Story

UN Chief Scolds Nations for Failing Climate Goals Ahead of COP30 Summit (Maria)

The author writes, “UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres tore into nations for their failure to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, as Brazil hosted world leaders for a summit ahead of the COP30 climate conference in the rainforest city of Belem. Scientists have confirmed the world is set to cross the 1.5 C warming threshold around 2030, risking extreme warming with irreversible consequences.”

‘New York City Has Fallen’: MAGA Responds to Zohran Mamdani’s Victory With a Racist Freak-Out (Sean)

From Wired: “MAGA influences, Republican lawmakers, and conspiracy theorists all responded to Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral victory in New York by pushing far-right anti-immigrant and Islamophobic rhetoric and claiming the city had fallen. Mamdani, who campaigned on progressive issues and identifies as a democratic socialist, will be the youngest New York mayor in over a century. … ‘The conventional wisdom would tell you that I am far from the perfect candidate,’ Mamdani said during his victory speech on Tuesday night. ‘I am young, despite my best efforts to grow older. I am Muslim. I am a democratic socialist. And most damning of all, I refuse to apologize for any of this.’ It is Mamdani’s embrace of New York’s immigrants and his own Muslim upbringing that most of the MAGAsphere fixated on, calling him everything from a ‘a third-world communist’ to a ‘Marxist’ and ‘a jihadi.’”

YouTube Quietly Erased More Than 700 Videos Documenting Israeli Human Rights Violations (Dana)

From The Intercept: “A documentary featuring mothers surviving Israel’s genocide in Gaza. A video investigation uncovering Israel’s role in the killing of a Palestinian American journalist. Another video revealing Israel’s destruction of Palestinian homes in the occupied West Bank. YouTube surreptitiously deleted all these videos in early October by wiping the accounts that posted them from its website, along with their channels’ archives. The accounts belonged to three prominent Palestinian human rights groups: Al-Haq, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights. The move came in response to a U.S. government campaign to stifle accountability for alleged Israeli war crimes against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.”

With Her Senators Criticizing Outburst, Mace to Sue Airport (Reader Jim)

The author writes, “South Carolina’s two senators have publicly criticized Rep. Nancy Mace after an airport outburst in which she berated and cursed officers. Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott both praised Charleston International Airport officers and distanced themselves from Mace’s conduct, the Hill reports. Both senators said in social media posts that they’ve always found officers at the airport to be professional and courteous. Mace, who’s running for governor of South Carolina, did not back down: She announced Wednesday that she’s suing the airport and American Airlines for defamation.”

The Plastic Inside Us: How Microplastics May Be Reshaping Our Bodies and Minds (Laura)

From The Guardian: “Microplastics have been found almost everywhere: in blood, placentas, lungs — even the human brain. One study estimated our cerebral organs alone may contain 5g of the stuff, or roughly a teaspoon. If true, plastic isn’t just wrapped around our food or woven into our clothes: it is lodged deep inside us. Now, researchers suspect these particles may also be meddling with our gut microbes. When Christian Pacher-Deutsch, a PhD student at the Center for Biomarker Research in Medicine and the Medical University of Graz in Austria. exposed gut bacteria from five healthy volunteers to five common microplastics, the bacterial populations shifted — along with the chemicals they produced. Some of these changes mirrored patterns linked to depression and colorectal cancer.”

Sex, Drugs, and the Conscious Brain: Francis Crick Beyond the Double Helix (Angelle)

From Nature: “Francis Crick has gone down in history as half of a double act with James Watson — a duo perhaps almost as iconic as the double-helix structure of DNA that they proposed. The pair were immortalized in Watson’s sensational 1968 book, The Double Helix, with Crick painted as garrulous and cerebral and Watson as gauche but driven. Watson had initially described his first draft as a novel, yet other published accounts of the discovery and the personalities involved have stuck closely to the script ever since. In a magisterial new biography, Crick, zoologist and historian Matthew Cobb revisits the double-helix breakthrough … [and] explores how Crick’s thinking, writing and interactions with others transcended that brilliant, yet contested, episode, revolutionizing molecular biology and influencing evolutionary and developmental biology, visual neuroscience and ideas about consciousness.”

Killer Whales Perfect a Ruthless Trick To Hunt Great White Sharks (Mili)

The author writes, “In the Gulf of California, a pod of orcas known as Moctezuma’s pod has developed a chillingly precise technique for hunting young great white sharks — flipping them upside down to paralyze and extract their nutrient-rich livers. The behavior, filmed and documented by marine biologists, reveals a level of intelligence and social learning that suggests cultural transmission of hunting tactics among orcas.”