Vermicular Particulars
Plus: Baristas fighting for their rights, someone is turning down the sun & The Gist List becomes a worm-appreciation newsletter.
Everywhere I look, I see worms in the news! After this newsletter where I talked about the comeback of screwworm, I can’t help but see belly-crawlers. Here’s a roundup of my favorite worm stories:
Brazilian Worm-resistant Super Cows: Brazil is breeding Zebu cows, which are heat and parasite-resistant (and about as handsome as Clark Kent himself).
Ice Worms: Scientists discovered tunnels and buildings under Greenland’s ice, remnants of the U.S. military’s Camp Century from the Cold War era. This was part of Project Iceworm—a secret U.S. plan to install nuclear missile launch sites beneath the Arctic ice.
Ear Worms: This Swedish rock band who you probably have never heard of (no, it’s not because you’re old) put out a No. 1 album on the Billboard 200.
Wormtail: Much like Peter Pettigrew waving his magic wand to see if he can make something disappear, Stephen Miller said the Trump administration is “actively looking at” suspending the writ of habeas corpus for migrants.
Brain Worms: An oldie but a goodie—with all this news about worms, it felt appropriate to revisit this NYT story about RFK’s brain worm.
Welcome to the Gist List—a news roundup, interesting things you should know, and my thoughts leading up to today’s podcast episode.
Here’s what’s on my mind:
👅 Do the haka on your own time.
😎 Apparently, it is possible to dim the sun.
✊ Fetterman on his staff’s “bizarre grudge.”
🪳 The courts become yet more Kafkaesque.
☕ Starbucks workers fight for their right to dress the way they want.
The Gist List
Three Maori MPs Face Suspension Over 'Intimidating' Haka (BBC)
It turns out that legislative proceedings are as exciting, if not more, in New Zealand. Last year, New Zealand MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke and her colleagues performed the haka to protest a bill that sought to redefine New Zealand’s founding document. Critics argued the bill would undermine Māori rights, undo decades of progress, and deepen racial divisions, and the bill sparked protests with over 40,000 gathering at Parliament.
Now, a committee is recommending that she and two of her colleagues should face suspension. The committee said the haka may have "intimidated" other members (that’s kind of the point of the haka), and the Māori Party called the move a “warning shot” and compared it to colonial punishment of indigenous resistance.
Who's Paying to Dim the Sun? We Should Know (Bloomberg)
If you ever went out into the sun after a night of partying and thought, “Why can’t someone turn that thing down?” There might now be a solution to it. Hundreds of millions of dollars are being poured into solar radiation modification (SRM) research as a way to combat the effects of climate change, and it is now a rapidly growing area of research and funding.
The only problem is the shady funding behind it. It’s mostly funded by tech billionaires, and the U.K. government is the single largest public funder, but some SRM organizations don’t disclose their funding to monitors, and over $1 million in donations are from anonymous sources. As far as the British government goes, they aren’t subject to FOIA requests, so it remains a black box. And naturally, when scientists aren’t transparent, conspiracy theories go wild.
Fetterman On Reported Health Concerns: Former Staffers Have A 'Bizarre Grudge' (The Hill)
Sen. John Fetterman would like to move on from the rumors that he is unfit to lead. Much like I opined last week, Fetterman believes that the concerns about his mental health from former aides are the result of “bizarre grudges,” possibly due to his support of Israel.
As Jaime Kirchick wrote in the Wall Street Journal:
Conflating Mr. Fetterman’s political evolution with his allegedly declining mental health (dressed up as concern for his well-being) is extremely cynical in light of the debate that ensued after he suffered a stroke during the 2022 Senate campaign. Mr. Fetterman took three months off to recuperate, and when he participated in a debate, his performance was disastrous—forgetting words, pausing for long periods and speaking awkwardly. In his opening statement he said, “Goodnight, everybody.” At the time, progressives castigated anyone who questioned Mr. Fetterman’s fitness for office as an “ableist.” Now, when he’s clearly improved, they claim he’s unfit to serve.
Trump's Sanctions on ICC Prosecutor Have Halted Tribunal's Work (AP)
In what seemed like the impossible feat of making international courts even slower, President Donald Trump imposed sanctions on Karim Khan, the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) chief prosecutor, after the court issued arrest warrants for Israeli leaders over alleged war crimes in Gaza. As a result, Khan lost access to his email and his bank accounts were frozen. These sanctions threaten anyone—and I mean anyone—who aids Khan, which has led NGOs and even Microsoft (which canceled Khan’s ICC email) to cut ties or limit cooperation.
What strikes me about this is that the International courts exist to very, VERY slowly come to a halt. This is why proceedings against Slobodan Milošević took seven years, and he died in prison. Love it or hate it, if Trump’s objective was to see the operation screech to a halt, he really outdid himself.
More Than 1,000 Starbucks Baristas Go on Strike to Protest New Dress Code (AP)
Starbucks announced this week that they are adopting a new dress code for store employees, and some baristas want you to know they did NOT study Metaphysical Puppetry of the New World and Andalusian Gender Studies just to be told what to wear! Over 1,000 Starbucks baristas at 75 stores went on strike this week to protest the new dress code. A shift supervisor in Hanover, Maryland, said, “Starbucks has lost its way. Instead of listening to baristas who make the Starbucks experience what it is, they are focused on all the wrong things, like implementing a restrictive new dress code.”
According to the union, less than 1% of baristas participated in the strike, and the strikes only mildly inconvenienced customers because some stores were closed for only under half an hour. Starbucks, telling them to get back to work, released a statement saying, “It would be more productive if the union would put the same effort into coming back to the table that they’re putting into protesting wearing black shirts to work.”
Yesterday on the show: Project 2025 Could Change Everything!
David Graham, author of The Project: How Project 2025 is Changing America, explains how Project 2025 seeks not smaller government, but a more obedient one—politicizing civil service, gutting regulation, and embedding a Trump-aligned worldview across federal agencies. He discusses how the authors blend sincere constitutional theory with radical institutional overhaul.
There’s more where that came from. Listen to The Gist, and upgrade to Pesca Plus for the ad-free version.
Have a story you want us to talk about or an opinion you want to share? Email us at thegist@mikepesca.com or share your thoughts in the comments. We might give you a shoutout in our next newsletter or on the air.
Today’s labor movement: blue haired they/them with septum ring and neck tatoo being persecuted by Tshirt requirement. Truly why workers fought for the right to organize. Pretty much the same as mine workers fighting to have air in the mines to breathe, for factories to not work people 20 hours a day on dangerous equipment. Starbucks is clearly the new Jungle as seen by Upton Sinclair. An injury to one’s identity not “feeling seen” is an injury to all. Solidarity forever.
“Dim the sun”? Have these people not seen Snowpiercer?