Daughter Number Three: Keeping Warm with Some Tweets

January, oh, what a January. I have to remind myself it's actually a pretty typical winter here...for 1988. On that note, here's the first tweet of January:

A giant system of smug Midwesterners boasting that no one else knows how to handle cold weather has descended on the U.S.
By aterkel

And a few more comments on the weather:

Don't worry. It will be even colder Monday. They say cold enough to throw newborn babies in the air and watch them be born again.
By Molly Priesmeyer

Cardinals in the winter time are just amazing.
By William Lindeke

Old Man Winter:

By Halloween Costumes

Special note: that snow face looks like the outline of Minnesota.

Then all the rest of my usual subjects, plus timely topics like the Macintosh 30th anniversary, West Virginia's poisoned water, and just a little about New Jersey bridges and Justin Bieber.

Of all the things a person could know, we have figured out what everyone needs to know: we call it curriculum. BONUS: It's easy to grade.
By mpljr (Sisyphus38)

Millions of people have access to #freetransit. It is a sensible policy, not an "experiment." Heating the earth 2 degrees is an experiment.
By Free Public Transit

how's it goin?

By Emergency Cute Stuff

People realize that women receiving less income because they bear children is sort of the definition of a sexist economic structure, right?
By Matt Bruenig

In feminism, if we want to create loving community, we have to talk, not assume.
By Latoya Peterson

Can't we promote the value of manufacturing and the skilled trades without denigrating the utility of a liberal arts education?
By Yoni Appelbaum

In 2010, 6.9% of Art History majors and 10.6% of manufacturing workers were unemployed. Median earnings were about the same.
By Yoni Appelbaum

We've quit calling them anecdotes and we call them "artisanal data" now.
By Matt Wells

Infighting is a belittling, dismissive word generally applied to women. For men, it is "vigorous debate."
By Roxane Gay

All that is surreal and horrifying about marketing is contained in this image:

By Andrew VandenBossche

There’s a special place in hell for people who jump around the Jeopardy board willy-nilly.
By evelyn pollins

Paranoia is a surplus of belief in organized malevolence. Its opposite, equally tragic, is a surplus of belief in the government's goodness.
By Teju Cole

People have been walking for over 100,000 years. Now cars make walking unsafe. And #freetransit is called an experiment?
By Free Public Transit

"Break you in half like a boy" is a weird thing to say because, among other things, it's not societally acceptable to break boys in half.
By Tim Murphy

Things made in U.S. prisons are stamped "Made in the United States."
By Chuck Creekmur

I'm glad I wasn't a cool kid because have you met a cool kid? Yuck
By Aparna Nancherla

Harvard Dropouts: Pete Seeger, Bonnie Raitt, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg. Harvard Grad: Ted Kacyznski, #QED
By Peter Sagal

The oil industry cannot tolerate a drop in demand. So let's have #freetransit and crash them now while there is still oil left.
By Free Public Transit

I think a lot more blues musicians would be happier if they stopped dating devil women what done them wrong in the city.
By Hampton Yount

Heaven:

By Phil Dokas

Telling a little girl, "He's mean to you because he likes you" should be followed up with "and stay as far away from him as possible."
By Dwayne Rodgers

I have found that keeping it weird in adulthood makes me happy and helps people I don't want to interact/work with avoid me.
By Erin Kissane

When unengaged children perform poorly on meaningless tests we take away their arts programs and give them another math class. #fail
By enrique baloyra

Must get beyond the myth that if we tax the rich they're going to go sulk in the corner and stop trying to get richer.
By Alan Eggleston

If we want to encourage strong confident thinkers who can solve problems and create a better future, then let them work with any content they want.
By mpljr (Sisyphus38)

Mac 128K Fun Fact! The entire available memory space on the original Mac is about equal to two icons in Mac OS X Mavericks.
By Chris Espinosa

Half the people on the Internet today: "I loved that original Mac." The other half: "Damn, you're old."
By Dave Pell

It's pointless buying your dog a camera, they said. He'll never be able to operate it, they said:

By Warren

You can claim any power structure is a meritocracy, just by defining "merit" as the ability to thrive in that power structure.
By Keegan McAllister A

Pope Francis said the internet is "a gift from God." Sounds like somebody hasn't scrolled down to the comments section yet.
By Stephen Colbert

I mean, you KNOW you're a mammal. But you never really FEEL it until you have a baby and then have to milk yourself 4 times a day.
By Maggie Koerth-Baker

TED and Medium have merged to form TEDIUM.
By Phillip Bowden

The Man With Whom You Are About To Shake Hands Scuffs His Feet On The Carpet. What Happens Next Will Shock You.
By Matthew Baldwin

Justin Bieber arrested for DUI. In other news, all of West Virginia is drinking poison water and your government spies on your every move.
By Josh Centers

Bieber is evidence that maybe we’re building the wrong damn fence.
By Daniel Foster

I think this stapler was in Spirited Away:

By Halloween Costumes

Idea: Mason jars that you use as Mason jars.
By Chris Steller

"In the media, white people debate whether race matters, rich people debate whether poverty matters, and men debate whether gender matters."
By corey robin

If a pedestrian dies, the pedestrian is blamed. If a bicyclist dies, the bicyclist is blamed. If a motorist dies, the road needs to be widened.
By Walk Farce

By Jason Elsom

I bet a tough part of fielding calls at a poison control center is not finishing most of your sentences with "...you unbelievable dumbass."
By Julieanne Smolinski

I accidentally disrupted when I meant to innovate, and now my iterations won’t be transformative, but merely upend existing paradigms. Damn.
By Paul Fidalgo

"How much would it cost me to make an app with you?" "The same as a car." "What kind of car?" "Exactly!"
By András Velvárt

Our Internet went out tonight & I wrote 4,000 words ... Thank God those two things are unrelated & there are no painful conclusions to draw.
By Rainbow Rowell

Will there ever be a time when talking on a hands-free cellphone setup in public will not make you look like a crazy person? I hope not.
By evelyn pollins

By banksy

I'm sure the 85 people who hold half the world's wealth are absolutely the people you'd want to have that power.
By Caitlin Moran

People who get that rich are invariably gentle-souled humanitarians keeping "an eye out" for everyone else.
By Caitlin Moran

Found a good quotation for my dissertation: “History is a tale told about the past in the present for present purposes.”
By Andrew Joseph Pegoda

Good to see Monopoly have updated some of their rules for 2013. (by @hennell and me):

By David Schneider

The fatal flaw in the quantified-self movement is that better data does not entail better decision-making—because humans.
By Erika Hall

Obama sending openly gay athletes to Sochi. Putin offering permanent asylum to Snowden. This new cold war is way more fun than the last one.
By Ben Adida

“Insulation of the body is much more energy-efficient than insulation of the space in which this body finds itself."
By Frank Chimero

When all the oil runs out this is going to be one hell of a bike lane:

By Bike Lobby

If terrorists poisoned the West Virginia water supply the right wing would be ready for war. But it was a company, so what the hey.
By Harold

Do we really believe schools plagued with violence & drugs can be fixed only with more tightly aligned instruction & rigorous tests?
By Adam Holman

Las Vegas is what would happen if a spam filter came to life.
By Megan Amram

Having millions and millions of people thinking independently would generate a lot of ideas. Let's make um think about the same things instead.
By mpljr (Sisyphus38)

"I saw the best minds of my generation..."

By Kathy Sierra

Republicans say the solution to poverty is marriage. Trump, Rush and Gingrich have had ten between them and look how rich they are.
By Pete Nicely

66 million Americans toil in low-wage service jobs, how about some Service Industry Innovation Institutes & a strategy to upgrade those jobs.
By Richard Florida

Old people who can fix cars, make clothes and build furniture think young people are good at technology because they can click on a picture.
By L Johnston

Black fathers are more involved in their children's care than white fathers, according to a CDC study:

By Judd Legum

“Have your people talk to my people.” ← The original cure to racism.
By Aparna Nancherla

Decided to stop watching Obama's speech, because I'm not in the mood to listen to more bullshit this morning.
By Nikhil Goyal

"Unpurposeful & random as they may appear, sidewalk contacts are the small change from which a city's wealth of public life grows." —Jane Jacobs
By Taras Grescoe

The fact that "get it in writing" is a lesson that has to keep being repeated is a testament to how much we really want to trust each other.
By Craig Eliason

Oil investment since 2000, up 300%, production up 12%. See a problem?
By Free Public Transit

My iPhone beats swords into ploughshares, auto-replaces "weaponized" with "sea ponies."
By Maggie Koerth-Baker

I live in Charleston, WV. We have been without WATER for 6 days. The ban has lifted -- but would YOU drink this?

By crystal good

Frustration is when +300K friends and neighbors are without water and the media is obsessed with that time an NJ bridge partially closed.
By Justin McElroy

Too bad we can't pay attention to climate change and ignore 2016 primaries, rather than the other way around.
By Tom Tomorrow

People overestimate the likelihood they will suddenly or eventually become rich, and underestimate the odds that they'll become poorer.
By LoremIpsum

Never trust someone who was a student body president.
By Matt Bruenig

So close to the truth it actually hurts (via @Philippa_Perry):

By Lauren Laverne on 6

Let's just resolve this now: "doge" is pronounced with a "g" that sounds like the "g" in "GIF."
By Nelson Elhage

"The killing underscored the debate about when to use smartphones in public." YES, LET'S DEBATE PHONES. NOT GUNS.
By Lindy West [commenting on a recent shooting in a Florida theater]

When someone is shot in cold blood over texting, & NYT thinks the issue is smart phones, safe to say we've gone completely nuts as a country
By billmon

Peak poverty maybe 75% at worst Great Depression. Compare to 16% or so at worst Great Recession. That's the effect of the welfare state.
By Stephen Pimpare

When someone from personnel refers to you as a 'resource,' call them an 'overhead.'
By Miles Forrest

Malcolm X: best exemplar of the #Horatio #Alger myth, yet he terrifies perpetrators of that myth:

By Call me Ishmael

If you were aware of how much wisdom you don't have in Youth, you'd moan about it just as Old People do of their aging bodies.
By Neil deGrasse Tyson

Helping people *get ahead* is literally a reference to *positional* advantage, which tells us nothing about overall poverty reduction.
By Matt Bruenig

Some 90% of the world’s total data were created in the past two years.
By Project Syndicate

I know we all just need to get over grammar misuse, but saying “_____ and I” when you should say “_____ and me” is killing me, guys. UUUGGGHHH.
By evelyn pollins

Don't let the discussion about #publictransit fares be about budgets. Make it about ending welfare for cars.
By Free Public Transit

Sketch of Como Conservatory Sloth & Shutterbugs:

By Avidor

And, across cultures, I certainly don't think **telling women what to wear** **so they won't be oppressed anymore** has any validity.
By Erin Matson

If I have this right, a "life hack" is anything not involving a piece of high tech equipment? #formerlyknownaseverything
By Chris Steller

Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them? — Abraham Lincoln
By Reg Saddler

Prolly gonna reach out to a few people today and then circle back with some others.
By Rob Baedeker

Typical: The Target hackers meant to get 40 million people's charge card information and they ended up with 70 million.
By Chris Steller

Only 40% of a car's pollution comes from driving. From Green Capitalism: The God That Failed.
By Free Public Transit

So what? Chris Christie caused a traffic jam to get revenge! I cause natural disasters because gays gross me out so much (and I'm perfect).
By almightygod

Seeing someone reading a book you love is actually seeing a book recommending someone. #soulmates
By Billy Porter

By Paul Irish [kind of like miniature golf]

What does our country want? Individual thinkers who stand up and question injustice... or compliant procedure followers who work and show grit?
By mpljr (Sisyphus38)

Tweet 1: ‘You deserve anxiety you stupid motherfucker!’ Tweet 2: ‘Sorry. We thought you were John Stossel.’
By Scott Stossel [if you haven't read the excerpt of Scott Stossel's book My Age of Anxiety, be prepared]

If you ever feel low, remember at least you're not a loose subscription card in a magazine.
By Aparna Nancherla

Do we honestly expect people to stand up for their rights when we indoctrinate them, through school, to just accept their plight?
By mpljr (Sisyphus38)

Geoengineering schemes that reflect sunlight are dangerous and crazy. Like sticking your feet in ice to treat 3rd degree burns on your head.
By Jonathan Foley

Love the idea that we can blithely re-engineer solar radiation, but altering our energy mix to lower carbon is hippie talk.
By Eric Lind

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?

By Halloween Costumes

I think, when you're worried about something, and you keep going to your friends for reassurance, and you can't get ENOUGH reassurance ...
By Rainbow Rowell

... what you're really hoping for is that someone will say, "Yes, this situation is as bad as you fear. DESPAIR! DESPAIR WILDLY!"
By Rainbow Rowell

Brains are terrible things.
By Rainbow Rowell

I love watching the religious-Republican extremists try to distance themselves from the Pope because he’s reminding them what Jesus said.
By Marco Arment

The word "fuck" is uttered 508 times in 3 hours during "The Wolf of Wall Street" so save ten bucks by watching me assemble an Ikea bookshelf.
By Kenzo

How drastically a needle changes after reuse:

By Microscopic Images

Married men earning a PhD see a 15% salary boost over single men. Analogous married women? A 23% drop.
By Tom Zeller Jr.

Why are we all so terrified of creating schools that kids might actually enjoy?
By JosieHolford

I feel like the people who took medical advice from Jenny McCarthy were probably going to make severe parenting mistakes anyway.
By Devin Faraci

Really interesting. RT @bswud: How far a child is allowed to walk on their own, then vs. now:

By Eric Berger

People who starved to death under communism were killed by communism. People who starved to death under capitalism were probably just lazy.
By Henry Krinkle

Re: global warming and the cold weather: "Liberals keep telling me the Titanic is sinking but my side of the ship is 500 feet in the air."
By Pinkerton

GOP just needs blacks to stop voting and women to stop controlling their bodies and then we'll finally have a democracy.
By Frank Conniff

Why does every recipe lie about how long it takes to roast potatoes?
By Atrios

We should have a convenient name for startups that have more dogs on their about page than they have people of color.
By Anil Dash

You can believe global warming exists despite snowstorm if I can believe evolution exists despite Duck Dynasty.
By Frank Conniff

By Science Porn

Whistleblowers Struggle to Meet 100 Percent Likeability Requirement.
By Chris Steller

We want every kid to have a 'personalized' education as long as all kids learn exactly the same thing and are tested exactly the same way.
By Adam Holman

“Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.” — Cicero, 106-43 BC
By Karianne T. Brevik

America was founded on the double standard: A bunch of slave owners wanting to be free. — George Carlin.By George Carlin RIP

If you mention your Ph.D. in your Twitter display name, or pretty much anywhere other than your CV, you are almost certainly insufferable.
By Josh Barro

"Europe vs. the United States. Sunlight in hours per year" (small typo, green is 1600-1800):

By Arthur Charpentier

Let's take a moment to thank Barbara and David Mikkelson, who created Snopes in 1995 and run it to this day.
By Erika Hall

Here's an idea. How about we stop fixating on unity as a precursor to social change and get on with it.
By Laurie Penny

When people claim that school needs to "teach kids how to learn," do they really mean "train kids how to be successful at school"?
By mpljr (Sisyphus38)

Why do Americans assume clams are happy?
By Ishaan Tharoor

"It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages." — Henry Ford
By Amanda Lannert

I don't mean to be an armchair critic, but this armchair is terrible.
By Ben Greenman