Does urbanization create less diverse environments? The answer is surprisingly complex. My latest post looks at research on how urbanization can generate biodiversity. open.substack.com/pub/courtney...
We gave Amazon a $17.5 BILLION tax break last year.
Meta got $13.7 BILLION.
Citigroup didn't pay a penny—we gave them a tax REFUND.
Those tax breaks didn't do anything to create jobs, let alone save them.
We have got to stop with the corporate tax giveaways.
Forest bathing is a popular way to improve well-being by connecting with nature. Can we feel this connection right where we are, in the built environment? My latest essay for The Nature We Make on Substack. open.substack.com/pub/courtney...
I’ve been thinking about the materials we live with, where they come from, and how they transform us and the larger world. My latest Substack post is a meditation on asphalt as physical and social connective tissue. open.substack.com/pub/courtney...
Check out this discussion about my new book with Anthem Press, "Climate Change and the Future of Boston," with Dr. Miranda Melcher on the New Books Network podcast. @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social newbooksnetwork.com/climate-chan...
@atls.city !set US-MA-Boston
Next meetup in just under a week! Come join us at Remnant Brewing for a beer and civic tech buddies 🍻🤓🖥️
Second, or subsequent, at least.
Fantastic overview of the atmosphere and the power it affords people. This will be my go to piece for people going forward.
It's algorithmically distributed instead of reflecting any human benefits and interests."
#Polycrisis #AutomationEverywhere
RE: https://mastodon.social/@bruces/115920895763670482
Time to read the 2026 edition of "State of the World". I've been doing this for most of its existence, going back to the very early aughts.
Two years ago, Biden and Harris championed and almost every Senate Democrat voted for a bill to ramp up ICE detention capacity and militarize the border.
I'm glad that Senate Dems are voting NO on DHS funding, but they need to also not entrench violent carceral system when they win.
My 7 year-old’s poster for the #FOSDEM26 Boston watch party I’m helping organize for this coming Saturday, January 31 #fosdem #boston #BostonWatchParty #dorchester
they're executing moms and nurses in the street. they're using preschoolers as bait. they're stealing people's dads and grandmas and children. they're tear gassing babies. they're staking out schools. there is no remedy but abolition. any proposal that doesn't start there is an act of violence.
Great turnout at the Solidarity Rally with Minnesota Walk Out! In Boston
#cities #nature #climatechange #urbanplanning #environment
https://substack.com/home/post/p-182747654
How does the urban environment really work? We often divide cities into built “gray” infrastructure and natural “green” spaces, but thinking this way can obscure the bigger picture. In this post for The Nature We Make, I explore how both green and gray parts of cities cycle carbon dioxide.
The Nature We Make Logo with link: substack.tnwm.net.
I’m launching a new Substack newsletter, The Nature We Make, https://substack.tnwm.net . It's grown out of many years studying and writing about urban nature, which has convinced me that we need spaces to encourage connection to the natural world, even within the built environment.
The fact that right-wingers always think that left-wing protesters are being paid should make you start wondering how much of that is simply projection.
The reactionary centrist logic is simple: if the left does something bad it’s the left’s fault, and if the right does something bad, it’s also the left’s fault for making them do it. It’s a simple formula and once you see it every one of their arguments is the same
Strong data privacy protections are critical to protecting communities from ICE.
The MA Senate passed a data privacy bill in the fall. The House needs to take action. #mapoli
A reminder that the US killed 80 people in Venezuela, and it would be nice if the US media cared enough to think that the life of a grandmother in Caracas whose building is destroyed by a US bomb matters as much as the life of a person in the US.
I'm pleased to announce a FOSDEM Watch Party in Dorchester, MA on January 31, at 0900. Details below:
smokesignal.events/did:plc:pqerwmnouevyltxy...
#events #fosdem #fosdem2026
A view of the main entrance to First Parish Dorchester from the main path. The Church building is painted white and the steeple is prominent. There’s a trace amount of snow on the ground, and the sky is partly cloudy.
One of my leitmotifs: a view of First Parish Dorchester atop Meeting House Hill #boston #dorchester #silentsunday
The naked piers of the former Long Island Bridge from Quincy
A frozen stump on the beach at Thompson Island
Approaching downtown Boston from the sea
Some scenes from a (very cold) visit to Thompson Island in Boston harbor on New Year’s Day #boston #newyear #newyear2026
“The point of modern propaganda isn't only to misinform or push an agenda.
It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth.”
- Garry Kasparov
Still managing public forms, data, and cases in separate systems?
Fulcimus’ Codect brings them together — online sign-ups, case tracking, and data reporting, all in one platform.
One login. One platform. Endless clarity.
#GovTech #DataWarehousing #CaseManagement #Fulcimus
I want you to understand what it is like to live in Chicago during this time. Every day my phone buzzes. It is a neighborhood group: four people were kidnapped at the corner drugstore. A friend a mile away sends a Slack message: she was at the scene when masked men assaulted and abducted two people on the street. A plumber working on my pipes is distraught, and I find out that two of his employees were kidnapped that morning. A week later it happens again. An email arrives. Agents with guns have chased a teacher into the school where she works. They did not have a warrant. They dragged her away, ignoring her and her colleagues’ pleas to show proof of her documentation. That evening I stand a few feet from the parents of Rayito de Sol and listen to them describe, with anguish, how good Ms. Diana was to their children. What it is like to have strangers with guns traumatize your kids. For a teacher to hide a three-year-old child for fear they might be killed. How their relatives will no longer leave the house. I hear the pain and fury in their voices, and I wonder who will be next. Understand what it is to pray in Chicago.
“I want you to understand what it is like to live in Chicago during this time.”
aphyr.com/posts/397-i-...