Humor
Systemic
Two , unbelievably hot temperatures rolled across Europe, AI & data centers become a greater problem, and crimes against humanity continue.
Last Week in Collapse: June 21-27, 2026
This is Last Week in Collapse, a weekly newsletter compiling some of the most important, timely, soul-crushing, ironic, amazing, or otherwise must-see/can’t-look-away moments in Collapse.
This is the 235th weekly newsletter. The June 14-20, 2026 edition is available if you missed it last week. These newsletters are also available (with images) every Sunday in your email inbox by signing up to . Last Week in Collapse has been around for 11 months longer than ChatGPT has been available.
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A on Wednesday, followed by a 7.5 quake soon after. The second shaking lasted for over a minute in some places, bringing buildings down around the epicenter, which was about 160 km (100 miles) west of Caracas (metro pop: 5M), although Caracas’ suburbs were also hard hit. and thousands injured, but observers say the real number of dead may stretch beyond 10,000. Almost 50,000 people are unaccounted for. , and , document some of the Collapsed structures and search efforts in the aftermath; or you can watch to see the damage writ large.
A vicious & unprecedented heat wave , leading to at least 40 drowning deaths in France, mostly among young people seeking relief from the heat. Temperatures across France and far beyond (104 °F); Paris , the , as did , Germany at 41.5 °C (106.7 °F) and and Luxeumbourg. Experts say just 50 years ago. And as bad as it is, .
London on Tuesday. One of Svalbard’s islands by over 9 °C, and the Barents Sea for this time of the year. Ireland on Thursday, while Canada in stations in its Arctic region. The state of Sinaloa in Mexico . Lake Powell is , and falling every hour.
on Antarctica’s mighty Thwaites Glacier (also the world’s widest glacier) profiles the rapid melt experienced since around 2000. Experts are concerned that the seawater surrounding the Thwaites is contributing to its melt, that the ice shelf fronting the Thwaites is unstable, that glacial fracturing is bad & accelerating, and that the overall situation is “going to lead to a rapid and catastrophic loss of ice from West Antarctica” towards the end of the century. If not sooner.
The of a Spanish-language on climate change and migration found the two loose phenomena not as directly linked as assumed—though the data was less than conclusive and fraught with complexities. Sudden, large-scale events like flooding and wildfires tended to drive more international migration when compared to the slow-burn processes like Drought, topsoil erosion, groundwater depletion, etc. Climate migration tends to start as internal displacement before proceeding to international, though other dynamics like state size, economy, languages, can complicate this. The researchers conclude “that research on climate change and migration has not yet achieved sufficient consensus, due to the relatively recent nature of the discussion, the scarcity of empirical research, and the difficulty to achieve dialogue between different disciplines.”
A on carbon sequestration emphasizes that dry air will reduce tree growth, perhaps by as much as 30%. In related news, the website , where I find many articles and studies for these weekly newsletters, is creeping towards limiting access to websites using AdBlockers. Additional pop-ups suggest that the website may be paywalled in the not-too-distance future.
The Himalayas are seeing in summers, carrying smog from India as far as Tibet. The confirms that heavy metals are also travelling in the pollution, spoiling the once untouched mountain glaciers. A in iScience proposes a new hierarchy of sustainability “under conditions of accelerating socio-ecological risk and political backsliding.”
Another discusses marine heat waves, which from “July 2023 to June 2024, global mean surface air temperatures met or exceeded 1.5 °C above the 1850–1900 pre-industrial baseline for 12 consecutive months—an unprecedented event in over 170 years of instrumental records….In a climate system fully stabilized at 1.5 °C global warming, the globally averaged surface ocean is projected to equilibrate near 1.06 °C above pre-industrial levels.” They also identified 201 marine “ecological impact events” during the 2023-2024 period, mostly in the second half of the year, 98% of which were associated with abnormally hot sea surface temperatures, and 52% which “involved mass mortality of marine taxa.”
As Typhoon Mekhhala moved past Japan, the government ; at least one person was killed by the storm. A , with winds measured in some places as 150kph, cut power to thousands of homes. Equatorial Pacific Ocean temps , from the nascent El Niño….far above, .
Part of Poland after moisture levels dropped below 10% in several forests. Boston is on record—for the first six months, anyway. India saw in Arunachal Pradesh kill one; a few others are still missing. Southern China and parts of Southeast Asia are break old records.
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Ebola cases in the DRC from the recent outbreak on Monday, with 254+ confirmed deaths. It is now the second-largest Ebola outbreak on record, and in the DRC somewhere. in a man who had recently left Africa; the case is the first outside of Africa since the outbreak popped off.
A U.S. Supreme Court against Monsanto concerning a popular cancer-causing pesticide. Iraq is unless the oil cartel raises its daily quota on oil extraction. Sri Lanka (pop: 23M) is that is causing 600+ cases each day, with over 50,000 cases nationwide since January.
Reports of some UK police based on massive data collection and AI yielded mixed results, but police are still turbocharging their surveillance state. Britain is also during their historic heat wave. And the UK is , pushing the price of building ever higher.
A hedge fund investor who bet smartly during the 2008-09 financial crisis is markets, anticipating a financial reckoning. Tech companies earlier in the week, which also from over $1.2T to a mere $946B. When SpaceX saw a massive selloff and revaluation on Monday, the corporation set a new record for the greatest one-day loss in stock market history: over $400B.
a bit since the announcement of an Iran-U.S. ceasefire, though daily transits are still far below their pre-War totals of ~120 per day. An explosion at Qatar's largest LNG facility—officially labeled an accident but almost certainly a consequence of Iran's attacks— and wounded at least 66.
The Five Eyes coalition—the United States, Australia, the UK, Canada, and New Zealand—is demanding that to prepare for (and prevent, if possible) a serious and dangerous cybersecurity exploit, caused by bad actors using super-advanced AI models to harm businesses and governments. The , rather short on details, posits that such a disaster may be coming faster than expected. “Frontier Al models are anticipated to exceed current industry expectations, fundamentally transforming both offensive and defensive cyber capabilities. The timeline is not years, it is months.”
A large study of Nepal’s kids found into malnutrition in the aftermath of large USAID cuts. in Australia, which was until recently the last continent untouched by bird flu. The Central African Republic after 24 people died from the bacterial infection.
The U.S. is to get them operational by the mid-2030s, in anticipating of huge needs from data centers and consumers. A on data centers worldwide found a supermajority of them are exposed to climate hazards which they help fuel through their rising energy demands. Meanwhile, about 4x in the past 5 years, and are expected to multiply another 6x by 2030—with the attendant energy & water crises in tow. You can’t drink AI….but dry.
"Approximately 54% of global data center capacity operates in markets facing elevated chronic heat or drought stress, while 79% is exposed to significant acute hazards such as flood, wind, or wildfire....climate risk remains underpriced….Acute hazards such as flooding, wind, and wildfire drive rapid system disruption. Physical damage or upstream grid failure can cascade across systems, forcing a shift to backup power, destabilizing cooling, and ultimately interrupting IT operations. These are system-level outages, not isolated component failures….The industry is concentrating some of its largest and fastest-growing hubs in some of the riskiest locations. Northern Virginia, Johor, and Marseille all sit in the highest exposure tier…" -selections from the report
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The nigh-ungovernable UK is for the 7th time in 10 years. Zimbabwe (pop: 17M) passed some and term of office. on the anniversary of the country’s deadly 2024 riots, in which at least 60 people were slain. that Israel has sent about fifty soldiers with Ethiopian heritage into intelligence positions inside Somaliland, since March.
Off-and-on through Johannesburg, South Africa, at times attacking foreigners, at other times intimidating them with a Zulu chant, “Mabahambe” (‘they must go’). European countries are of migrants to “return hubs” in……Rwanda and Uzbekistan, aiming for human deliveries there by 2027. Peru’s recent leftist candidate who narrowly lost the country’s presidential election , and blaming the right-wing winner of rigging votes from the diaspora abroad. Tanzania across the country, alleging that they posed a threat to national security.
Strict punishments are against government workers using smartphones. Observers say the new ban on smartphones presages a country-wide ban, but enforcement varies by province, city, and individual enforcers. Attackers on Monday in rural Nigeria. over India’s refusal to give Pakistan water through the Indus Waters Treaty.
South Korea’s military is smartly planning to from across its military to prepare them for the future present conflicts.
Sudan’s rebel opposition has in areas controlled by the RSF, which has its roots in the ethnic militia, the Janjaweed. The RSF are also , a city in south-central Sudan where of “mass atrocities” looming. Another
Ukraine's frontline city Kostyantynivka (pre-War pop: 67,000; current pop: ~2,500) by Russian forces. Its strategically positioned land is being contested, and would open up parts of the unoccupied Donbas region to more Russian conquest. President Putin is meanwhile to join its War against Ukraine. Yet the Americans say the War—for the time being, anyway. that new Russian soldiers arriving at the deep front lines have a life expectancy of about 30 minutes, before they’re killed by a drone. Ukraine on Wednesday, sending the peninsula’s cities into a power outage. Other Ukrainian strikes in Volgograd. Economic pains and discontent among Russian military elites to unseating Vladimir Putin—or so they say.
Another independent UN commission that Israel is committing a series of serious crimes, including starving the people of Gaza, committing torture, genocide, and crimes against humanity. Meanwhile, Israel in an underground base & within tunnels in southern Lebanon; other deadly operations are ongoing throughout the region. The Israeli defense minister has in southern Lebanon, regardless of whatever U.S.-Iran talks hash out.
Negotiations between the U.S. and Iran continued for another week, apparently not getting much closer to a proper agreement that could please both sides. Iran has by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) might be able to proceed at advanced stages of the talks, and the U.S. of Iran’s oil industry for 60 days. When near the Omani coast, and hit Bahrain, used for their drones and missiles. The mostly symbolic 50-48 in the U.S. Senate on Wednesday demanding that President Trump cease military operations against Iran had little impact. if the Iran War is up or down, if operations are waning or still escalating. And we’re not supposed to.
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Things to watch for next week include:
↠ across the American midwest for next week, stretching from South Carolina into South Dakota. Extreme temps, with the heat index expected at 115 °F (46 °C) in some places, may be felt even into the July 4th weekend.
↠ Tomorrow , the day after which Switzerland’s glaciers have lost all the snow & ice they accumulated over the winter. From now until the cold weather returns, every day represents additional loss of their ancient glaciers.
Select comments/threads from the subreddit last week suggest:
-This year’s El Niño is a long way from those 30 years ago. compares the two…and we’re still in the first month of El Niño.
-Collapse has landed, and the people—at least on Reddit—are aware of the reality. from , one of many in the past month, crowdsources some likely events coming in the next 5 years. The AI takeover and total erosion of trust, wet-bulb, breadbasket failure, biodiversity breakdown, and more. A from gets similar results.
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