Deeper Listening | Jan 2026

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Neil Zusman. Deeper Listening | Feb 2026: Gasfract — slowed observational study. (5:37) HD video; 4K master available on request.

Neil Zusman. Out Walking | Jan 2026: Gasfract — realtime source. (1:51) HD video; 4K master available on request.

Out Walking | Jan 2026: Gasfract

6 minutes read time.

January begins with a glitch carousel of videos dissolving to the lake landscape.

The night-lit snowscapes look like stars.

Gasfract.

Water and skies. A log on an ice floe near the lake shore.

In the studio behind me hangs Stiller’s drawing of my feet.

Red fruit in winter.

The crossing of a branch.

Birds on the ice edge.

A gloved hand traces the curve of an icy orb, snow and ice held in suspension. It reminds me of a control bar for the frozen land.

January becomes an archive of suspended motion. Glitches, ice, Gasfract, red fruit, and the studio drawing hold their place without becoming still life. The lake is frozen, but the image keeps moving. The dissolve lets the frozen month reveal its hidden motion.

The realtime source passes through these winter fragments quickly. In the slowed version, each one lingers long enough to become part of the month’s structure: the lake landscape, the night snow, the ice floe, the red fruit, the branch, the birds, the orb of ice, the hand.

What looks frozen is not motionless. January holds movement inside the pause.

I sign my name at the end with golden triangles.

I was walking in a meadow, the source of a small brook, when the sun at last, just before setting, after a cold, gray day, reached a clear stratum in the horizon, and the softest, brightest morning sunlight fell on the dry grass and on the stems of the trees in the opposite horizon and on the leaves of the shrub oaks on the hillside, while our shadows stretched long over the meadow eastward, as if we were the only motes in its beams. It was such a light as we could not have imagined a moment before… this was not a solitary phenomenon, never to happen again, but that it would happen forever and ever, an infinite number of evenings, and cheer and reassure the latest child that walked there, it was more glorious still.
Henry David Thoreau. Walking. As published in Atlantic Monthly, 1862.

January ice, frozen edges, glitches, red fruit, and suspended motion sit beside a national language of acceleration—AI buildout, auto manufacturing, coal preservation, regulatory rollback, and withdrawal from climate governance. Guardian’s January reporting keeps returning to what official speed leaves behind: air, water, climate law, public health, household bills, and accountability.

EPA / Lee Zeldin

EPA frames January as proof of first-year delivery: environmental wins, affordable energy, consumer choice, auto-industry revival, cooperative federalism, animal-testing reform, data-center readiness, and regulatory correction. The agency presents environmental protection as compatible with coal preservation, AI infrastructure, deregulation, and economic growth.

Emphasis

Five hundred claimed environmental wins during Trump’s first year back
Coal plants and baseload energy framed as reliability and affordability
Auto policy framed as consumer choice and American manufacturing
AI and data centers framed as national infrastructure priorities
Animal-testing reduction framed as science and health reform
State flexibility under cooperative federalism

Key rhetoric

“Environmental wins”
“Great American Comeback”
“Consumer choice”
“Affordable baseload power”
“Cooperative federalism”
“AI capital of the world”

Foregrounded

EPA foregrounds measurable accomplishments, economic growth, lower costs, industry coordination, state authority, vehicle choice, power reliability, and a claim that deregulation can still fulfill the agency’s statutory mission.

Minimized or absent

The cumulative climate consequences of fossil-fuel dependence, the public-health cost of weakened pollution standards, the political meaning of leaving international climate agreements, and the risk that “flexibility” may become reduced oversight.

Guardian / Dharna Noor

Noor’s January reporting, with Oliver Milman and Aliya Uteuova where relevant, frames the month as a public reckoning over climate retreat, fossil-fuel influence, industry lobbying, rising household energy costs, and an EPA accused of prioritizing business over public health.

Emphasis

Withdrawal from the UNFCCC and Paris climate agreement
Legal questions around abandoning climate treaties
Fossil-fuel liability shields and climate-accountability lawsuits
Auto-industry influence over climate rollbacks
Energy bills rising despite promises of lower costs
EPA rollbacks affecting air, water, chemicals, and climate rules

Key rhetoric

Withdraw
Rollback
Shield
Lobby
Harm
Expose

Foregrounded

Guardian coverage foregrounds consequences: treaty withdrawal, weakened climate governance, industry protection, household energy burdens, public-health risk, air and water protections, and the legal tools communities may need to hold polluters accountable.

Minimized or absent

Official claims of “wins,” “choice,” and “affordability” are not treated as neutral descriptions. They are placed beside legal uncertainty, fossil-fuel power, rising costs, and the possibility that EPA’s mission is being redirected away from public protection.

The deeper contrast

EPA presents January as a first-year victory lap: the agency is delivering environmental wins, defending affordable power, supporting auto jobs, preparing for AI infrastructure, and restoring state authority. The Guardian frames the same month as a test of public accountability: climate treaties are abandoned, fossil-fuel liability is shielded, industry influence is investigated, household energy costs rise, and EPA’s public health mission is called into question.