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Howie Lutnick broke the weather
"capitalism as we know it ceases to be viable"
Brad Johnson
April 04, 2025
PRESENTED BY INTERNAL PARTNER MORALE
Giant tornado in Slayden, Mississippi, April 4th.
It’s so great that our federal government relies on private contractors! Like, for AI translation services for National Weather Service forecasts, which replaced “agency staff with foreign-language skills.”
Since 2023, the weather service has been using an AI firm called Lilt to translate public forecasts, including local storm warnings and advisories from the National Hurricane Center, a unit of the NWS, into Spanish and Chinese. Eventually, use of Lilt was expanded to include three other languages.
Bloomberg’s Lauren Rosenthal reports that billionaire sociopath and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick let the NWS contract with Lilt expire at midnight on Tuesday without a backup plan.
And that’s just the beginning of the Howie’s Schumer-approved shutdown, Rosenthal now reports:
The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency is poised to eliminate most websites tied to its research division under plans for the cancellation of a cloud web services contract, a move that could snarl operations at several labs.
A contract for the services across NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research — known as NOAA Research — has been targeted for “early termination,” according to internal documents seen by Bloomberg News. As a result, almost all external websites reliant on Amazon, Google and WordPress services are poised to vanish early Saturday morning in Washington, wiping the bulk of the unit’s work, which includes climate and environmental science research, from public view.
A termination of the cloud web services contract may also affect some operations at several labs housed within the research division, according to an internal memo, including the National Severe Storms Laboratory and the Earth Prediction Innovation Center, which uses cloud services to support a broad-based weather forecasting system.
Separately, NOAA is nearing the end of two short-term extensions to support N-Wave, the agency’s internet and national network service provider. N-Wave, which is known internally as “NOAA’s Network,” transports the agency’s forecasting data, connecting supercomputing facilities and data centers.
A five-day extension of engineering and technical support services is set to lapse on Saturday, according to an internal email that warns of “significant service disruptions” when the agreement expires. A separate five-day order to provide engineering support for N-Wave’s “campus services,” including local networks, Wi-Fi and security firewalls at NOAA facilities, is slated to expire on Monday.
Twenty-five Democratic members of Congress, led by Reps. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) and former television meteorologist Eric Sorensen (D-Ill.), sent a letter to the Trump regime yesterday challenging the planned administrative cuts to NOAA, even before this latest news.
While NOAA and NWS are still going concerns, their staff, even if they don’t have working toilets, are trying to protect us from the killer poisoned weather sweeping the nation.
At least ten people were killed in Tennessee, Missouri and Indiana by the many tornadoes that ripped up a swath from Oklahoma to Indiana in the past two days.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican climate denier who defines fracked gas as “clean energy,” said it was too early to know whether there were more deaths.
“The devastation is enormous. What’s most difficult about it is, you know that those are lives destroyed. In some cases, true life lost, but in other cases, everything people owned, up in trees.”
As of this writing, there are at least eight dead in western Tennessee, one man electrocuted by a downed power line in Indiana, and a local fire chief who died in Missouri.
Sadly, another very active day of severe weather is anticipated in spots that have been hit hard in previous days. This pattern will be slow to transition, not pushing east of Mississippi until SUNDAY. Hoping the day underperforms.
— Alex Cordero (@alexcorderowx.bsky.social)2025-04-04T08:27:58.579Z
Fossil-fueled global warming is breaking the global insurance industry. And once that sector crumbles, Allianz SE’s Günther Thallinger warns, “capitalism as we know it ceases to be viable.”
This afternoon at 4 pm, the student governments of Georgetown, Howard, American, George Washington, George Mason, and Temple are gathering to rally at the Department of Education with former Rep. Jamaal Bowman, free speech activist Mary Beth Tinker, and DC State Board of Education member LaJoy Johnson-Law.
And on Saturday, tens of thousands of Americans are converging on the Washington Monument for the Hands Off! mass rally. Speakers at the amphitheater at the Washington Monument begin at 11 am. The protest is being organized by a broad coalition, including the new 50-50-1 movement, Women’s March, MoveOn, and Indivisible, and is known—depending on who you ask—as Hands Off!, The People’s Veto Day, or Remove, Reverse, Reclaim.
On Saturday morning, there are multiple options before joining the mass rally:
A nonviolent direct action training starting at 9 am at All Souls Church
A die-in at the Heritage Foundation at 10 am
Interfaith gathering and sign-making at First Congregational United Church of Christ, 945 G Street NW at 10 am
A real sign at the American Bar Association spring meeting in DC (h/t @balancecraft.bsky.social)
— David Dayen (@ddayen.bsky.social)2025-04-04T15:30:30.213Z
Climate Action Today:
10 AM: U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia
Mennonite Church v. DHS Hearing4 PM: DC University Student Governments
Hands Off Our Schools
Climate Action Tomorrow:
12 PM: HANDS OFF!
Hands Off! People's Veto Day
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