Government investigations into California’s electricity shortage, ultimately determined to be caused by intentional market manipulations and capped retail electricity prices by the now infamous Enron Corporation, resulted in terabytes of information being collected by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. This included several extremely large databases, some of which had nearly 200 million rows of data, including Enron’s bidding and price processes, their trading and risk management systems, emails, audio recordings, and nearly 100,000 additional documents. That information has quietly disappeared, and not even its custodians seem to know why.

The Green Reaper, a Grim Reaper colored green and holding a flower, is the Department of Energy’s National Security Technologies Energy Program’s idea of how to communicate “sustainability goals, successes and best practices,” including “energy awareness and recycling programs,” to the community, and to small children specifically. Why anyone thought this was a good idea is much harder question to answer.

Before President Donald J. Trump even took office, the Department of Energy found itself rattled by the questions the administration was posing. In a survey that was widely reported on, the administration demanded to know everything from highest paid employees to who was involved in climate research.

These days the Hanford Nuclear Reservation has the dubious distinction of being the “most contaminated place in America,” with about 53 million gallons of toxic waste stored at the sprawling 586 square mile facility. While the recent tunnel collapse is the most severe incident yet at the site, inspection reports released by the Environmental Protection Agency through FOIA reveal a history of slow-burning decrepitude at the nuclear waste dump.

In the face of crisis, with more than 8,000 wildfires engulfing over 1.8 million acres of land and no significant rainfall for almost three months, then Texas Governor Rick Perry came upon an idea: prayer.