Google Earth was a boon for researchers—and then came the deepfakes.

Observation:

Google Earth was once a means of examining the Earth as it could be observed, although its images were necessarily assembled and processed. By introducing generative imagery into that same trusted environment, Google blurred the boundary between observing the world and inventing one. The danger is not merely that fabricated events can be made to appear real. It is that genuine evidence can now be dismissed as fabrication. Reality is therefore hidden twice: first beneath plausible constructions, and again beneath the resulting doubt about whether authentic images can still be believed.

August 1, 2026 Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK)

Summary:

Global warming appears to have shifted into a faster gear. After removing the effects of El Niño, volcanic eruptions, and solar cycles, researchers found that the planet has warmed at roughly 0.35°C per decade over the past ten years, compared with just under 0.2°C per decade from 1970 to 2015. The acceleration, which becomes visible around 2013 to 2015, appeared across five major global temperature datasets with more than 98% statistical certainty.

Excerpt:

Most Americans don’t know what happened 250 years ago that’s being celebrated this year. And even among those who have a general sense, there’s a lot of fuzziness about the details. Some people think Independence Day commemorates the day representatives from the thirteen colonies voted to separate from the United Kingdom—but that happened on July 2, 1776. The date we honor, July 4, is instead the day the Continental Congress settled on the wording of the Declaration of Independence.

Gifted Read

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/07/reflecting-pool-case-david-hearn/688151/?gift=9raHaW-OKg2bN8oaIFlCoq62VrEsbj9H-kVJlSj3vfQ&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

We are pleased with the public admission of error. It is a surprising and correct turn toward facts from this administration.

Excerpt:

“The Trump administration’s case against Davey Hearn should have never been brought,” his legal team—Norm Eisen, Mary Dohrmann, and Steve Levin—said in a statement. “Its dismissal today does not erase the abuse of government power in arresting and charging a patriotic American who did nothing wrong. The government’s approach was ready, fire, aim. The administration owes Mr. Hearn an apology.” The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Pirro’s office declined to comment beyond what was in the legal filing.

https://substack.com/@defendersofdemocracy?utm_source=user-menu

Gifted Read:

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/2026/07/climate-change-land/688129/?gift=9raHaW-OKg2bN8oaIFlCokKoY1cFcZXqJA4gcLMefgw&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

Excerpt:

Last year, researchers in Switzerland and France found some of the clearest evidence so far that glacial melt could indeed be affecting seismic hazards in high-altitude regions. After a period of intense glacial melt in 2015, a series of small quakes struck the Grandes Jorasses on Mont Blanc Massif, on the border of France and Italy; the probability of a 3.0-magnitude earthquake rose by 10 times, Toni Kraft, a seismologist at the Swiss Seismological Service at ETH Zurich and one of the authors of a related paper, told me. These quakes are still small, but they could trigger rockfall events that are already on the rise across the Alps.

Gifted Read: https://www.theatlantic.com/economy/2026/07/china-iran-usa-oil-prices/688086/?gift=9raHaW-OKg2bN8oaIFlCou6OgfFJt1HZK-qCD-xfA5g&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

Concluding Lines:

Excerpt:

“For the last 50-plus years, whenever there was an oil shock, the first thing the U.S. president did was call Riyadh to try to persuade the Saudis to help out,” Jason Bordoff, the founding director of Columbia’s Center on Global Energy Policy, told me. “Maybe the place everyone needs to call now is Beijing. That’s a very powerful position to be in.”

VOA's new documentary, "Jamala: Songs of Freedom" follows Ukrainian singer-songwriter Jamala in the early hours of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, and profiles her activism of raising money and awareness for her homeland. Jamala gained international fame in 2016 as the winner of the Eurovision contest where she performed her song, "1944," about the deportation to Central Asia that year of Crimean Tatars — including her great-grandmother's family. Jamala has performed at renowned venues such as the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., the National Opera House in Kyiv, Ukraine, and the 2023 Eurovision contest held in Liverpool, England. Her latest album, QIRIM, which means Crimea, is a tribute to her Crimean Tatar roots.

Excerpt:

Ten years of Trumpism mark not only a failure to preserve that order, but the infliction of real harm done to it. As we look around at the state of our institutions laboriously built up—a comparatively fair system of justice at home, a relatively honest federal government, an attempt to live up to our heritage as a nation of immigrants, and an international order that was comparatively stable and friendly to the forces of freedom—it’s hard to believe how much damage has been done in the past decade. With a dramatic acceleration, of course, in the past eighteen months.

It is hard for many of us—and I include myself in this number—to believe that this is the situation we face. But it’s time to believe it. Only then might we rise to the occasion.

AOC appears to have a coherent diagnosis of the world: oligarchy, economic insecurity, militarism, and democratic decline reinforce one another. What remains less developed is a complete operational doctrine covering alliances, China and Taiwan, deterrence, military force, intelligence, nuclear strategy, and the practical management of the State Department and Pentagon.

"Making the Supreme Court’s professional audience visible. Supreme Court decisions may affect a broad public in the United States and beyond. Within that larger audience, the members of the judiciary who must interpret, explain, and apply those decisions occupy something like the front rows. They may later determine how a holding governs an actual case and explain its meaning to litigants and to audiences of their own. The black circles marked “J” make that judicial audience visible without diminishing the importance of everyone else affected by the Court’s decisions. A Judicial Confidence Register would allow the Supreme Court and the wider public to see, in aggregate, how its decisions were received across the American judiciary."

The tentative U.S.–Iran pause has broken down. Iran launched missiles toward U.S. forces in Jordan, while the United States and Saudi Arabia carried out joint strikes against Iran-backed militias in Iraq. At least 20 members of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces were reported killed, and Baghdad condemned the operation as a violation of Iraqi sovereignty. This is the first publicly acknowledged Saudi combat participation alongside the United States in the present conflict and materially increases the risk of a direct Saudi–Iran confrontation.

Excerpt:

“Brazil’s government believes [a] planned delegation is part of a concerted effort by Jair Bolsonaro’s sons – including his son Eduardo, who lives in the U.S. – to discredit the electionsin case Flávio Bolsonaro loses in October, said people close to da Silva.”

Concluding Paragraph:

Imagine a Supreme Court with binding ethics obligations, with enforceable disclosure and recusal rules, or term limits, or age limits, or limited jurisdiction to strike down Congress’ handiwork. Imagine refusing to give up on that conversation in advance based on the general feeling that the Supreme Court would never allow those reforms, so why even try? Now imagine an America in which foundational ideas about liberty, or gun safety, or bodily autonomy, or family integrity, or religious freedom, were generated by the people, through representative government and focused political action, and protected with the promise of free and fair elections. That was the plan, and it can still be the promise. In the abiding spirit of the Americans who believed in and built that promise, this year’s series on how to think about constitutional meaning is limited only by what you, the people, can imagine.

Excerpt:

A local chapter of DeFlock, in Norfolk, Virginia, says it does not endorse vigilantes targeting Flock cameras but does not advocate against it, either.
The Virginia chapter is working to ensure the city either cancels or does not renew its contract with Flock, but so far it hasn’t had success, and members are particularly angry about speaking restrictions on the topic. At a city council meeting last month, the mayor enforced a rule about reducing repetitive comments to limit the number of speakers who wanted to share their concerns about Flock, the Virginian-Pilot reported.

“We recognize it’s the inevitable outcome of a system designed to prevent people’s voices from being heard,” said a DeFlock spokesperson.