Tweet from Yuval Abraham: "A group of settlers just lynched Hamdan Ballal, co director of our film no other land. They beat him and he has injuries in his head and stomach, bleeding. Soldiers invaded the ambulance he called, and took him. No sign of him since."

BREAKING: Yuval Abraham, co-director of Oscar-winning documentary "No Other Land," says Israeli settlers beat his co-director Hamdan Ballal, injuring his head and stomach — and then Israeli soldiers invaded the ambulance he was in and seized him.

Ballal's whereabouts are now unknown.

The Hegseth message goes on to state, "Waiting a few weeks or a month does not fundamentally change the calculus. 2 immediate risks on waiting: 1) this leaks, and we look indecisive; 2) Israel takes an action first - or Gaza cease fire falls apart - and we don't get to start this on our own terms. We can manage both. We are prepared to execute, and if I had final go or no go vote, I believe we should. This [is] not about the Houthis. I see it as two things: 1) Restoring Freedom of Navigation, a core national interest; and 2) Reestablish deterrence, which Biden Gratered. But, we can easily pause. And if we do, I will do all we can to enforce 100% OPSEC"_ operations scurity. It welcome other thoughts:

“I will do all we can to enforce 100% OPSEC,” the Secretary of Defense declared as he discussed sensitive military operations with senior White House officials in a group chat to which the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic magazine had been mistakenly added.

Wildest story I’ve read in a goodly while. Armando Iannucci himself could never.

The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat about upcoming military strikes in Yemen. I didn’t think it could be real. Then the bombs started falling.

WHAT

www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...

Drilled website documents section

So far the documents from the investigations into climate disinformation seem to be online still, but if they're taken down (as the first ones were), we've got them available for you at Drilled:
1st round: drilled.media/documents/5e...
2024: drilled.media/documents/82...

HAARP and Spain's Valencia floods: debunking the myths - BBC Trending, BBC World Service When Valencia was hit by flash floods in October 2024, social media was awash with spurious claims that “HAARP” was to blame for the extreme weather. For th...

When extreme weather hits, misinformation often follows. Flash floods in Valencia, Spain, sparked baseless claims that "HAARP" was responsible.

@bbcmarcosilva.bsky.social explores the origins of these claims & how misinformation can undermine climate action.

The Covering Climate Now Journalism Awards — Covering Climate Now Entry submissions are OPEN for the 2025 Covering Climate Now Journalism Awards. This is the fifth year for our annual awards program, and every year we’re amazed by the quality and variety of work ent...

🥁 It's that time of year again... We know you've all been waiting for it... Submissions are OPEN for the 2025 Covering Climate Now Journalism Awards! 🎉

I've thrown together a Starter Pack for the climate crisis-info crisis overlap. Lots of members from @caadcoalition.bsky.social, so do give them a follow.

It's a work in progress, @ me if you'd like to be included!

🧪 🔌 💡

(@davidrvetter.bsky.social ask and ye shall receive...)

go.bsky.app/J3783tF

It's so cool how quickly this filled up. Update your follows and click follow all!

Women VS Disinfo!

A huge selection of expert researchers, fact checkers, journalists, debunkers, science communicators, academics, vloggers, etc. of all things Disinfo / Conspiracy

go.bsky.app/FFCjgks

Trump: "We don't want windmills in this country. We're putting an order on it. I've already sort of done it. We don't want windmills ... you know what else people don't like? Those massive solar fields."

NEW DATA:

📈German electricity generation from renewable energy reached record share of 62.7% in 2024.

📉Since 2014, CO2 emissions from electricity generation have halved.

a graphic showing a linear relationship between emissions of co2 and the warming of earth, projected out also into various scenarios

"every fraction of a degree matters" is true as hell. In the same way that releasing CO2 hurts people and planet, avoiding its release saves us from potential harm

This isn't some saccharine 'hopeful' message: it's the hard, inarguable physical reality.

www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/w...

NEW ANALYSIS:

Right-leaning UK newspaper editorials have relentlessly attacked energy secretary Ed Miliband since last year's election, calling him "hysterical", a "madman" & "demented"

The papers have also published a record number of editorials opposing climate action…
1/2

View of London in the dawn light. The foreground is wreathed in a dusty blue-grey, fading into defiant orange where the sun rises behind the skyline.

View of London bathed in dawn light. The London Eye, Big Ben and Houses of Parliament are framed hazily in the skyline, with smoke billowing from chimneys in the foreground.

London really is giving full Mary Poppins this morning.

Panorama of London’s skyline bathed in the glow of a winter dawn. In relief against the horizon you can see famous landmarks including The Shard, St Paul’s and the Walkie Talkie. A nearly cloudless sky bleeds from gold into a fragile, perfect blue.

A city awakes.

In case you’re interested in the weeds of how bad this is,

this is a redline version of Meta’s formerly Hateful SPEECH now Hateful CONDUCT rule.

How do you make good journalism succeed on platforms that reward the qualities of MrBeast videos? You do not, as we’ve found. The news content that performs well on social media is increasingly further-removed from the standards valued by traditional newsrooms

The dynamics between journalism, social media content creation, and the media industry are not as simple as people make them out to be (journalists can influence, influencers can do journalism), but one thing for certain is that traditional media orgs cannot be saved by becoming influencers

Over the past 4–5 years, Facebook has sunset tools (chiefly CrowdTangle) used by researchers and journalists, made data difficult and expensive to get, and iced out academics studying disinformation.

Now, it's shutting down the fact checking on its platform.

*nods emphatically* bsky.app/profile/nina...

PS fact checks don’t suppress speech, fact checks are actually MORE SPEECH. /end

Let’s be clear—the fact checkers have not “been” politically biased as Zuck suggests, but have been *perceived as such* because of politically motivated efforts to smear them, one that Zuck is now participating in and capitulating to. 1/

“Those laws assume that commercial/PR pressures would force most large companies to stick by their policies and enforce them. They were written to avoid legal pitfalls around explicitly requiring moderation of legal content. But with political cover in the US, platforms are calling their bluff.”

As a colleague observed:

“It’s also a way of simplifying regulatory compliance - i.e. with the way the DSA requires large platforms to consistently and effectively enforce their Terms of Service (as a means to tackle 'legal but harmful' content). If you gut your terms they are easier to enforce”…

The Infinite Reach of Joel Kaplan, Facebook’s Man in Washington How one man came to rule political speech on Facebook, command one of the largest lobbies in DC, and guide Zuck through disaster—and straight into it.

It’s also vital to note that Nick Clegg has been replaced by Joel Kaplan as Meta’s President of Global Affairs.

This @wired.com profile of Kaplan from 2022 is a dystopian masterpiece and a must-read for anyone working in the field of online harms, politics or climate.

www.wired.com/story/facebo...

I know we’ve become numbed by each new crisis on social media, each capitulation from Silicon Valley to bad faith actors. Even so, this Zuck statement is a disaster.

Watch it in full to understand what’s at stake and how regulation like the DSA is in real jeopardy.

www.facebook.com/watch/?v=152...

I read the full piece - felt that people hyper-conscious about their privacy (including for reasons of professional safety) would still prefer to know about this feature / consider opting out.

🚨 OPSEC ALERT 🚨

Thanks to @byrontau.bsky.social (via my brother) for flagging this - details on how to deactivate/opt out on all iOS devices can be found under the tagged post.

@eff.org

Apple opts everyone into having their Photos analyzed by AI Homomorphic-based Enhanced Visual Search is so privacy-preserving, iPhone giant activated it without asking

Apple has opted iOS and MacOS users into an AI photo scanning feature which tries to extract landmarks from your photos called Enhanced Visual Search by default with little notice.
www.theregister.com/2025/01/03/a...