A new route for plant nutrient delivery Carnegie Mellon
How a bird started a fire at a California solar farm Los Angeles Times 🙁
As Democrats prep for debate in Florida, a 17,000-acre fire burns in the Everglades Grist 🙁
Great Pacific garbage patch: giant plastic trap put to sea again Guardian (David L)
Water
Scientists map huge undersea fresh-water aquifer off US Northeast PhysOrg (Chuck L)
Desalination plants are here, but they’re not solving the water crisis yet Grist
Ancient Peruvian engineering could help solve modern water shortages ars technica
The flying saddle: Would you give it a try? SFGate. Chuck L: “Why not give all passengers an industrial strength tranquilizer and lay them out straight and stack them like sardines?”
The ENIAC Programmers: how women invented modern programming and were then written out of the history books Boing Boing (Chuck L)
China?
Why China fell out of love with New York property Financial Times
China wants FedEx to explain why Huawei package was not shipped to US Fox (Kevin W)
China winning new Cold War on the Mekong Asia Times
GNI-per-head rankings: The sad stories of Greece and Italy Bruegel
Brexit
Boris Johnson does speak to Steve Bannon, says Nigel Farage Guardian (vlade)
Britain’s top jobs still in hands of private school elite, study finds Guardian (Kevin W)
Lloyds freezes 8,000 offshore bank accounts after money laundering crackdown Independent
New Cold War
Syraqistan
New US sanctions on Iran target supreme leader BBC
At U.N., Iran says atmosphere not right for U.S. talks, U.S. pushes diplomacy Reuters
Iran Says New U.S. Sanctions Mean Diplomatic Path Closed ‘Forever’ Bloomberg
Trump Seeks ‘Coalition Of The Willing’ Against Iran Moon of Alabama
Most Democratic Candidates Still Afraid to Criticize Israel’s Violations of Palestinian Rights LobeLog
Trump warns Iran of ’obliteration like you’ve never seen before’ Politico. Resilc: “Iran has 81 million people. 1 million stay to send us troops home in body bags, the other 8 million head to the EU.”
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
NSA dares students to break the cyber code, and then recruits them Federal News Network (Chuck L)
Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs unveils its high-tech ‘city-within-a-city’ plan for Toronto The Verge. Kill me now.
Learning from Baltimore’s disaster, Florida city will pay criminals $600,000 to get free of ransomware attack Boing Boing (resilc)
Imperial Collapse Watch
CIA Seeking More Impunity ConsortiumNews
Trump Transition
Trump Muses Privately About Ending Postwar Japan Defense Pact Bloomberg
How on God’s green earth did Clarence Thomas just write an opinion on race and jury trials that was well to the right (or was it?) of Brett Kavanaugh, John Roberts, Samuel Alito, and even Neil Gorsuch? Corey Robin (UserFriendly)
2020
For Joe Biden, Friendship Is Magic Nation (resilc)
Joe Biden Is Bad At Politics Huffington Post (UserFriendly)
Breaking Down Elizabeth Warren’s Proposal For Banning Private Prisons Shadowproof (UserFriendly)
Hidden oil spill: New study contradicts owner’s claims Associated Press (David L)
Gunz
Florida woman jailed for handing husband’s guns to cops BBC (resilc)
The Insanity in Oregon Is a Glimpse of Our Very Dark Future Esquire
Our Famously Free Press
NY Times admits it sends stories to US government for approval before publication Grayzone (Chuck L)
I Shouldn’t Have to Publish This in The New York Times New York Times (David L)
Forget China – it’s America’s own economic system that’s broken Guardian (David L)
Direct Primary Care Clinic In Sartell Cuts Out The Middle Man CBS Minnesota
Ex-chair of FCC broadband committee gets five years in prison for fraud ars technica
Class Warfare
THREAD: Today I went to the public library for the first time in a long time. A woman came up to me and asked me to help her with the computer so she could apply for a custodial job. She had gone to the organization she wanted to work at, and was told to apply online.
— Lisa Kaplan (@lisackaplan) June 24, 2019
Do Prisons Make Us Safer? Scientific American (Robert M)
Antidote du jour (Wat). Speaking of cats expecting something…:
And a bonus:
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.