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CURIOUSMINDS
A weekly serving of great articles we curate, and original content we produce. So, all you have to do is pick, read, watch and listen. |
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Issue #215 - FEBRUARY 2026
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Stories from Around the World that Affect Us All |
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Breaking: Washington Post guts Climate Team Clean energy dies in darkness. Courtesy of Jeff Bezos.
In 2022, executive editor Sally Buzbee announced a major expansion of the outlet’s climate coverage, calling global warming “perhaps the century’s biggest story.”“No story is more global than climate, and we are placing reporters across the country and the world to capture it as it unfolds. At the same time, we are reimagining climate journalism to be more visual and accessible, bringing on trusted voices and some of the world’s best visual journalists to tell stories in intimate, visceral ways that we hope will both inform and empower you,” she wrote.
The Washington Post produced some of America’s finest climate journalism over the last decade, aggressively covering President Trump’s regulatory rollbacks and winning a Pulitzer Prize for a series about Earth’s fastest-warming places. Alongside the New York Times and the Associated Press, I don’t think any U.S. news outlet published a greater volume of urgent, high-quality climate and clean energy coverage. Despite the existential danger to life on Earth everything changed on February 4 2026 at the Post as Bezos bent the knee to Trump.. Like many ultra-rich executives, Bezos seemingly decided appeasing Trump was more important than principle or morality. The Post sent layoff notices to at least 14 climate journalists, newsroom sources said, part of a massive round of cost-cutting that will see more than 300 journalists lose their jobs — about 30% of all employees at the Jeff Bezos-owned company.
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 Is Freedom in Thailand in Danger?
Human Rights Foundation(Human Rights)
The Human Rights Foundation says:
'From the dissolution of an opposition party to the ongoing imprisonment of dozens of activists for peaceful advocacy, restrictions on free expression are shaping the political landscape and silencing public discussion of fundamental human rights. Across the country, more than a thousand people have faced charges for their political expression, but conversations about reforming punitive laws are absent from public debate. Meanwhile, broader human rights issues, including Thailand’s role in transnational repression, remain largely overlooked. This election is a pivotal moment for political rights and civic freedoms — but meaningful debate is under threat. We remain committed to supporting democratic principles and fundamental rights in Thailand and will continue to monitor efforts to promote meaningful discussions. We call on Thailand to respect the right to freedom of expression, including the ability of political parties and citizens to freely debate legal and policy reforms.'
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 Trump's peace panel faces huge challenges in Gaza
BBC The list of names on the Panel will do little to dispel the criticism from some quarters that the US president's plan resembles, at its heart, a colonial solution imposed over the heads of the Palestinians. No Palestinian names are included on the two separate senior boards that have been officially unveiled. One is a "founding Executive Board", with a high-level focus on investment and diplomacy. The other, called the "Gaza Executive Board", is responsible for overseeing all on-the-ground work of yet another administrative group, the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG). That committee is made up of supposedly technocratic, apolitical Palestinians, led by Dr Ali Shaath, a civil engineer by training who's held ministerial positions in the Palestinian Authority. But of the seven members of the founding Executive Board, six are Americans - including US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other members of Trump's inner circle like his son-in-law Jared Kushner, and Steve Witkoff, who is US Special Envoy to the Middle East, but also a friend of the president and a fellow real estate developer. |
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Which approach to Venezuela is winning.
Rubio Wants Democracy, Trump Wants Oil
Since special forces snatched Nicolás Maduro and his wife from bed and bundled them into an American prison, it’s been a disorienting experience for Venezuelans. The dictator is gone, but the dictatorship is still there. For now, we know Delcy Rodríguez, Venezuela’s new and technically still “interim” president, will do pretty much anything to stay in power and keep Venezuela autocratic. As a blockbuster report in The Guardian revealed, Delcy more or less explicitly sold Maduro out to the gringos on January 3, pledging her cooperation with Trump ahead of the extraction operation. For Delcy, survival trumps everything, and if that means kowtowing to Trump, so be it.
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Quote of The Week
To be captivated by a woman is a daunting prospect. But the overpowering need to partner with another human being is so strong, that a man may sacrifice himself many times over in his search. And if he is not mindful, he may forget to connect with himself.
- James King -
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Top Stories from our favourite publications to stimulate your curious mind, |
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Authoritarianism is fueled by fossil fuel dollars
So, Paying attention to polluters may be one of the best ways to understand what’s currently happening in the United States.
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Beatitude: Poet John Keene’s Spell Against Despair
THE MARGINALIAN (Literature/Philosophy)
It helps to bless what is simply for being. It helps to thank everything for its unbidden everythingness. And still we need help — help holding on to the beauty amid the brutality, help stripping the armors of certainty to be complicated by contraction and more tenderly entire with one another, help seeing the variousness of the world more clearly in order to love it more deeply. |
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The Myth of the Police State
THE DIAL (Poiitics/Civil Rights)
There’s a little town in the scrub in South Africa — a full day’s drive from the country’s big cities — that has become perhaps the most scrutinized place on earth given its size. It is 3.5 square miles of suburban-style houses harboring about 3,000 people, a main drag, a municipal swimming pool, one gas station, and some small pecan farms. Nothing of consequence ever really happens there, a fact the townspeople take as a point of pride. That changelessness is the point. No people of color are allowed to live in the town, called Orania, a strange legacy of Apartheid. The name is a nod to the river that runs nearby — and to the Orange Free State, the apartheid-era designation for the province in which it lies. Orania’s founders established it in 1991, the year after South Africa’s best-known Black liberation leader (and future president), Nelson Mandela, was freed following 27 years in prison.
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A Million Roman Candles
Book 6 - Chapter 1 - False Alarm
He was trapped, and there was no way out of the raging fire. The siren blared, deafening everyone within earshot, as the fire-engine screeched to a halt outside the front door. It was one o’clock in the morning, and Alfie stumbled out of bed looking for the mobile phone. He was sure he left it in the toilet when he came home late last night. When he staggered to the fridge to get some iced water, there it was rattling around in an open biscuit tin.
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Ending the Demonic Pipeline
Most of us belong in the first of two groups, struggling to survive. We try to be good for our short time on this earth, try to tell our families we care before we throw ourselves onto society’s bed of nails and bleed so they can eat. We struggle sometimes; doing the right thing isn’t always easy. We follow the basics: don’t murder people, don’t abuse them, don’t covet, steal, etc. We have shame. We feel love. But there’s a second group of people, much smaller and much more evil, that are currently in far too many positions of power around the world. They crave power, and they hold onto it by dividing us, abusing us, and getting many of us to blame the victims.
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South Korea's Gyeongsangbuk-do province
GOOGLE ARTS & CULTURE) (Travel)
Take a short tour of South Korea's North Gyeongsang province and its UNESCO World Heritage sites. Hwang Hye-sung's Lifelong Mission to Bring Royal Cuisine Back to Life Find out about the life and achievements of Hwang Hye-sung, a holder of important intangible cultural property, who maintained and passed on the tradition of Korean royal cuisine..
There's so much more to discover in this publication.
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UPGRADE to PAID
CURIOUSMINDS content and opinions contain important information curated from reliable sources. We rely on reader support to keep it FREE. We want it to reach as many people as possible. If you value what we do and would like to help us sustain it, please consider a small monthly or annual contribution. Contributing subscribers get full access to all James King Publications including archives of CURIOUSMINDS, and a valuable BONUS: FREE ebook versions of all James King’s published books.Click - View them at Amazon · Donate via the - Choose a subscription plan - page. If you are not a subscriber already - Go to the Welcome page |
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James King Blog offers valuable resources for students of Arts and Humanities. Particularly those interested in Environments, Literature, Performing Arts, Visual Art, Philosophy, Travel, and Human Rights. The articles provide insights into complex interactions between humans and their environments, and the ethical and moral dimensions of environmental issues. The Blog is relevant to students of all ages and those who are just fascinated by the Arts and Humanities. |
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 Human Rights vs Civil Rights – Important to Know the DifferenceHuman rights vs civil rights can be a confusing and contentious issue. Human rights and civil rights are terms often used interchangeably. But they have distinct characteristics and origins and should not be confused. They are not the same. |
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FREE BOOKS223 Mystery, Thriller, & Suspense FreebiesThese Promos Close 25 and 28 FebruaryThriller authors join forces in joint promotion campaigns to introduce themselves to readers. You can download as many books as you like.
I hope you find plenty to entertain you. CLICK THE BANNERS TO VIEW THE PROMOS - AND GRAB AS MANY BOOKS AS YOU WANT |
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A MILLION ROMAN CANDLES - FROM - ALFIE GOES TO THAILAND - SERIES
Like a butterfly, Alfie finds himself, fragile and delicate, flitting around, looking for a soft place to land and settle down. The constant nightmares have become real, and now the ghost of Nin is haunting him. A deep sadness washes over him, and with a heart heavier than the leaden skies that came with the day, he takes the decision. He will not give up on Thailand. He will go on a journey of recovery. A journey that leaves him with no options. He buckles up and drives away, with no plan, just an open heart and an empty mind, a man with no identity other than for official purposes. Just when he thinks he has succeeded, and his journey is over, a shocking event and a quirk of fate take him to a place he could never have imagined existed. Will he recover, or he will end up as another statistic of abuse?
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THE KENRIGHT CHRONICLES - SERIES
The Kenright Chronicles is a psychological thriller series. Jack Kenright, a young investment banker gets involved in an international art swindle. which cripples his business and threatens his life and his family. He ends up a recluse, working for the FBI undercover and exposes massive corruption in the gambling world. |
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My Struggle 1By Karl Ove Knausgaard
Karl Ove Knausgaard's six-volume memoir My Struggle . . . has catapulted the Norwegian writer into the rarefied company of such authors as James Joyce, Marcel Proust and Henry Miller. "What makes his book extraordinary is not what happens, which couldn't be more familiar or ordinary. It's that Knausgaard aims to capture the unending blizzard of feelings, objects, people and situations that make up a life. At the same time, like Proust—the inevitable point of comparison—he hopes to shape all this stuff into a form that gives his experience a larger meaning." —NPR |
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My Struggle 2By Karl Ove Knausgaard
"Knausgaard has written one of those books so aesthetically forceful as to be revolutionary." —The Paris Review
In the second installment of Karl Ove Knausgaard's monumental six-volume masterpiece, the character Karl Ove Knausgaard moves to Stockholm, where, having left his wife, he leads a solitary existence. He strikes up a deep friendship with another exiled Norwegian, a Nietzschean intellectual and boxing fanatic named Geir. He also tracks down Linda, whom he met at a writers' workshop a few years earlier and who fascinated him deeply.
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Substack - Creative Xellence -
Join us at Creative Xellence where we are building a home for James King's Poetry, Short Stories and serialised Novels. Subscribe for Free and you will be notified of new content and recieve the Newsletter.
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Medium
At Medium we curate high value informative articles related to A&H from major publishers and authoratative sources. And we publish a smattering of selected articles from James King Blog and articles written by James King for Medium Publications.
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