Dave Levitan
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davelevitan.bsky.social
Dave Levitan
@davelevitan.bsky.social
78K followers 850 following 11K posts
Journalist, looking for next thing. Bylines all over the place.
Book: NOT A SCIENTIST: How politicians mistake, misrepresent, and utterly mangle science (WW Norton).
Signal: @davelevitan.26
www.davelevitan.com
Sign up: www.gravityisgone.com
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davelevitan.bsky.social
Progressive groups yes but also a lot of the federal employees involved with all this

www.gravityisgone.com/a-slap-in-th...
"Nobody is better at turning victory into defeat than Chuck Schumer," said the NIH staffer. "After Tuesday I started to have hope again for... the first time since Schumer caved the first time. So much for that, I got nearly a week of not being hideously depressed." Another federal employee said Schumer and Durbin must resign. "What just happened in the Senate was a betrayal. We are governed by cowards all around," they said. "We civil servants organized to help our colleagues face the hardship of the shutdown, we put up with the pain and our only request was to not be betrayed like this. Trade our pain, make it count."
November 11, 2025 at 2:46 AM
davelevitan.bsky.social
Deandre Hunter just did something extremely rude to Josh Giddey

#NBAsky
November 9, 2025 at 2:51 AM
davelevitan.bsky.social
Here’s how FEMA describes its National Disaster and Emergency Management University. But if you click on those links you get… FEMA.

training.fema.gov

Volunteers and others may have little or no access to required trainings right now, though individual states may be offering them. Fun.
National Disaster and Emergency Management University The National Disaster and Emergency. Management University_(NDEMU), formerly known as the Emergency Management Institute (EMI), is the premier institution for emergency management training and education in the United States. NDEMU offers professional development and training programs to enhance the abilities of officials at federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial levels, as well as members of volunteer organizations and the private sector, to minimize the impact of disasters.
November 8, 2025 at 11:53 PM
davelevitan.bsky.social
lol they changed this, only the correction they appended is lying about it — it was NOT just the subheading, it was the text itself as well, which they also changed
Call this good-ish news. Slower emissions growth means the arc of temperature increase has curved downward over the past 10 years. If countries stick to current policies, the global average temperature is projected to rise by 2.5 to 2.9 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. That’s a significant improvement from where we were 10 years ago: In 2015, scientific models said we were on track to increase the global average temperature by up to 3.8 degrees Celsius. Correction: Nov. 7, 2025 Because of an editing error, a section headline in an earlier version of this article misstated the trajectory of global emissions. They are rising more slowly than they once were. They are not declining.
November 7, 2025 at 6:50 PM
davelevitan.bsky.social
Uh. No they haven't?

www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
1. [highlight] Emissions have come down, [/highlight] but there’s still far to go. Call this good-ish news. Lower emissions mean the arc of temperature increase has curved downward over the past 10 years. If countries stick to current policies, the global average temperature is projected to rise by 2.5 to 2.9 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. That’s a significant improvement from where we were 10 years ago: In 2015, scientific models said we were on track to increase the global average temperature by up to 3.8 degrees Celsius. Chart titled "Global CO2 emissions from energy combustion and industrial processes and their annual change, 1900-2023" showing a steadily increasing curve, including since 2015 to 2024, with a downward pandemic blip in 2020 Figure from recent UN emissions gap report showing 2024's record-setting emissions of 57.7 gigatons of greenhouse gas equivalents, the highest in history
November 7, 2025 at 1:54 PM
davelevitan.bsky.social
I don’t know how Fincher did it but he cast the physical embodiment of the 70s for a ten second role in Zodiac
A guy with bad teeth, dark hair, wild eyes, wearing a brown leather jacket, in front of some electrical infrastructure outside. He looks like every 70s Al Pacino character mushed together in a meat grinder and made 35% sweatier.
November 7, 2025 at 1:10 AM
davelevitan.bsky.social
I know they're just doing it to everything, and they don't like science, and so on, but gutting NASA remains insane. Everyone likes NASA.

[🎁]

wapo.st/4qQiMus
Pew Research chart titled "Large majorities of Americans see the National Park Service, U.S. Postal Service and NASA favorably" with NASA in third place among agencies with 12% unfavorable, 67% favorable, and 20% not sure for a net fav of +55, behind the National Park Service and the USPS
November 6, 2025 at 11:01 PM
davelevitan.bsky.social
Still from the end of 12 Angry Men when Lee Cobb is hunched over crying as he repeats “not guilty”
November 6, 2025 at 7:48 PM
davelevitan.bsky.social
When you absolutely hate someone else grabbing the spotlight for a minute
Still from the video of someone passing out at an Oval Office event, there are lots of people gathered around the guy on the ground and some staffers shooing the press out and Trump is just standing stone-faced at his desk not paying attention to the drama next to him
November 6, 2025 at 5:55 PM
davelevitan.bsky.social
Good afternoon
Tesco the golden retriever in closeup lying on a couch with her head on some blankets. She is sleepy but looking up at the camera.
November 5, 2025 at 9:07 PM
davelevitan.bsky.social
Lovely cursive script reading "Deep Thoughts" by Jack Handey over a pleasant beach scene
November 5, 2025 at 4:27 PM
davelevitan.bsky.social
The number of infuriating quotes from decades-old climate reports that maintain prominent perches inside my brain is distressing.

Anyway, read more about 60 years of failure, and please subscribe:

www.gravityisgone.com/this-whole-t...
The blame, throughout appendix Y4, was put squarely on its proper target: "We can conclude with fair assurance that at the present time, fossil fuels are the only source of CO2 being added to the ocean-atmosphere-biosphere system." It even offered estimates of the excess carbon that might be added in the future based on recoverable reserves of coal, oil, and gas — and we have found a lot more of the stuff since then. I think, more often than is healthy, about a line from yet another decades-old climate change report, from EPA authors in 1983: [highlight] gradually and therefore less expensively if energy policies were adopted now rather than several decades later." [/highlight]
November 5, 2025 at 3:25 PM
davelevitan.bsky.social
Back then they knew a lot less about climate sensitivity and other specifics, but they did know warming was on its way. They were a bit off on how fast we would get there, though.

www.gravityisgone.com/this-whole-t...
They estimated that a 25-percent increase in atmospheric CO2 "compared to the amount present during the 19th century" could yield a temperature increase between 0.6° Celsius and 4.0° C (1.1° F to 7.2° F). They guessed that milestone would arrive around the turn of the century — they were wrong. In November 1965, the concentration of atmospheric CO2 had risen from that pre-industrial level of about 280 parts-per-million to 319 ppm; it crossed 350 ppm, that 25 percent threshold, in 1988. Today it sits at 425 ppm, more than 50 percent higher than before humans got busy burning things.
November 5, 2025 at 3:01 PM
davelevitan.bsky.social
lol fuck entirely off
ANALYSIS For Dick Cheney, a Journey From Champion of War to Voice of Resistance
November 5, 2025 at 3:09 AM
davelevitan.bsky.social
Urgewald's latest Global Oil & Gas Exit List, released today, found that 96% of all oil and gas companies are still "exploring or developing new resources." Companies have spent north of $60 billion/yr on exploration over the last 3 years. Anyway, happy COP30 next week.

gogel.org/sites/defaul...
Companies plan to bring new fields totaling 256 billion barrels of oil and gas equivalent (bboe) into production in the near future.1 This means the industry is planning 33% more short-term expansion today than it was in 2021 — the year the International Energy Agency (IEA) stated that no new oil and gas fields are necessary to meet oil and gas demand in a 1.5°C world Oil and gas companies are pouring tens of billions of dollars into searching for new reserves. Each year the industry spends around 75 times more on exploration than governments have currently pledged to the UN Loss and Damage Fund. The fund is meant to help countries already suffering from climate disasters. On average, companies on GOGEL spent US $60.3 billion annually on exploration over the past three years.
November 4, 2025 at 9:30 PM
davelevitan.bsky.social
Still from Step Brothers where Seth Rogen is smelling John C. Reilly's fart. Granted he says he smells/tastes "onions and ketchup" but close enough.
November 4, 2025 at 3:54 PM
davelevitan.bsky.social
mm hm

www.msnbc.com/msnbc/news/t...
'If it was anybody else, we'd arrest him tomorrow,' Justice Department aide said of Trump A handful of documents found by the FBI at Mar-a-Lago were so sensitive that even a senior Justice Department official didn't have authorization to see them. This story is adapted from the forthcoming book by Leonnig and Davis, "Injustice: How Politics and Fear Vanquished America's Justice Department," which will be published Nov. 4 by Penguin Press.
November 4, 2025 at 3:05 AM
davelevitan.bsky.social
bsky post reading "Reporter: You slammed Biden, saying he didn’t even know who he was pardoning. On 60 Minutes, Trump admitted he didn’t know he pardoned a crypto billionaire convicted of money laundering Johnson: I don’t know anything about it. I didn't see the interview"
November 3, 2025 at 10:07 PM
davelevitan.bsky.social
Headline: “The first ‘space hotel’ plans to open in 2027”
November 3, 2025 at 4:26 AM
davelevitan.bsky.social
Anyway, more in here about what storms like this will do to poor countries over the longer term, read/share/subscribe/etc

www.gravityisgone.com/the-long-tai...
Meanwhile, authorities in the Caribbean are still counting the dead — at least 28 in Jamaica, and 30 in Haiti, with more likely. But while the acute phase of the hurricane is still ongoing, the media attention will really ignore what happens afterward: in recent years, a growing body of research has demonstrated that hits from tropical cyclones leave more than just damaged rooftops in their wake, in fact raising mortality rates through a likely wide variety of mechanisms for years. And much of that research has taken place in countries that have significant structural and other advantages over the poorer parts of the Caribbean.
November 2, 2025 at 8:03 PM
davelevitan.bsky.social
A few hours later and as far as I can tell the deadly hurricane is entirely off all three home pages

www.gravityisgone.com/the-long-tai...
A few days after Hurricane Melissa screamed ashore with 185-mph winds in Jamaica, it might feel like American media, at least, has already moved on. On Sunday morning, you need to scroll past dozens of stories ("The Mystery Lady in the Governor’s Palace? Maybe a Ghost, He Says") on the New York Times homepage to find a mention; it is absent entirely from the Washington Post's and the Wall Street Journal's.
November 2, 2025 at 8:00 PM
davelevitan.bsky.social
Good morning
Tesco the golden retriever lies on a wood floor asleep, with sunlight streaming in on her
November 2, 2025 at 4:09 PM
davelevitan.bsky.social
Off the top of my head, in terms of degrees of separation I managed to get from myself to *Jimi Hendrix* in "three hops," this is a WILD assertion to make

www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...
Several lawmakers said Thursday that the Pentagon relayed that it did not need to know the identities of those being targeted in the attacks, or if those killed had been trafficking drugs. “What they told us is they have to show a connection to a designated terrorist organization or their affiliate, and as long as they can show that connection, they believe they are authorized to strike,” Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-California) said in an interview. But such connections could be as much as “three hops away” from a known drug trafficker, Jacobs told reporters after the briefing.
November 1, 2025 at 10:00 PM
davelevitan.bsky.social
This is from last year but it's important
Tesco the golden retriever wearing a blue and white flight attendant (??) costume, sitting on a porch with some halloween decorations behind her.
October 31, 2025 at 8:17 PM
davelevitan.bsky.social
Everyone say hello to my new friend
A very thin small snake on a sidewalk A closeup of the tiny snake’s head, looking up at me
October 31, 2025 at 12:54 AM