Twitter, August 2017

The eighth month of 2017. As in all months since Trump Time began, it felt about six months long. I can’t tell you what it’s like, doing these Twitter round-ups — each time I’m yanked back to the previous weeks’ horribleness. When I compare these to my round-ups from two or three years ago, the difference is painful. Well, let’s get to it.

On Trump generally, his family, and his administration (including the Bannon and Gorka resignations):

So Trump's campaign was a moneymaking scam but he accidentally discovered Naziism was popular? That's the plot to The Producers.
Max Sparber‏

Someone had fun stocking shelves at Target:


Hannah King‏

If you feel you haven't been slapped in the face by this President yet, maybe you have become one of his hands.
Kyle Dargan‏ @Free_KGD

A Nazi resigned from the White House staff and it's like the fourth biggest story tonight.
Paul Musgrave

Trump is running the US just like the rest of his financial endeavors — into the ground while lining his pockets
Truthout‏

In Phoenix the President saluted a racist sheriff who is a convicted criminal and then trashed a war hero who has brain cancer.
Impeach Donald Trump‏

There's something inescapably odd about having a president who fundamentally doesn't care about policy outcomes.
Matthew Yglesias‏

Fascinating how Obama had to make sure he said he was the president of all Americans vs one who is openly supportive of just some.
Tanzina Vega‏

Part of the problem, and it's been one from the beginning, is that the dial only goes to 10. And after a while 10 starts to sound like 5.
Christopher Hayes‏

I swear, Trump's support could erode down to 3 people living in a bunker in Wyoming, and the New York Times would find them and pen a lengthy profile.
Tom Bonier

Robert Mercer, Dan Loeb, Peter Thiel — funding the GOP to spew racist hate in order to screw working people of all races. Follow the money.
Michael Kink‏

so i've railed against the disproven idea that economic fear = Trump base because I GREW UP POOR NOT HATING NOBODY and the MFs surrounding him ARE RICH soo. i don't even have it in me anymore to thread the links, poli sci analysis and exit polls but fyi whiteness elected him, not poor whiteness.
Sarah Smarsh‏

Bannon had Top Secret clearance for seven months. He now works for Robert Mercer, owner of a data-mining firm focused on swinging elections.
Pé Resists‏ @4everNeverTrump

I gotta laugh when people share that Hillary video, like "she warned us!" Guys, he called Mexicans rapists and said he'd ban Muslims. HE warned us.
amil‏

Since Sandy Hook:
• Americans killed by guns: 150,006
• Americans killed by refugees: 0

• Gun Bans: 0
• Refugee Bans: 3

Stop fear mongering.
Qasim Rashid, Esq. @MuslimIQ

It's very comforting, I'm sure, to blame hillbillies for this, but you should take a closer look at your own suburbs.
Sarah Jones @onesarahjones

A President with no diplomatic experience chose a Secretary of State with no diplomatic experience who chose not to hire anyone with diplomatic experience.
Chris Murphy

Cost to taxpayers for Secret Service for Trump's adult kids, ski vacations and biz trips alone: at least $30 million = 75 years of POTUS salary
Adam Khan‏ @Khanoisseur

Scary that people feel comfortable now that so many generals are in government positions. In other, wiser countries, people fear juntas
Achmed bin Goldberg‏ @mdp4202

Stephen Miller is 31 but he's much older in dog-whistle years:


maura quint

Stephen Miller reminds me that the people who keep bragging about the white race tend to be the ones who make you embarrassed for it.
John Fugelsang

2009: Obama’s a dummy who can’t talk without a teleprompter!
2017: After six months, Trump is paying attention in meetings. A true leader.
Dave Weigel

DONALD TRUMP is the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES and we're really supposed to believe mediocre white people aren't getting a fair shake
Emily‏ @emilydawnlove

The guy who called the White House "a real dump" lives in an apartment Liberace would be embarrassed to haunt.
shauna‏ @goldengateblond

Hurricane Harvey and the flooding in Houston:

The every person and family for themself nature of cars makes mass metro area evacuations their own disaster, and cities very wary to call for major evacuation. "Preppers" like to talk about owning "bug out" vehicles but really we need coordinated bus and train fleets to evacuate any kind of major metro city.
Gary Kavanagh‏ @GaryRidesBikes

The pure essence of conservatism is disdaining the federal government until you personally need it to bail your ass out.
Bae Talese‏ @elongreen

Old enough to remember when "papers, please" was what the bad guys in movies said.
Tom Tomorrow

Trump’s pardon of Joe Arpaio:

Arpaio represents the authoritarian country Trump wants. Abuse of citizens, fascistic power, unvarnished cruelty. It's philosophy in action.
Jared Yates Sexton

At least Arpaio didn't do anything seriously wrong like cross the border with his parents and no valid papers when he was nine years old.
Matthew Yglesias‏

Sheriff Joe Arpaio once arrested some reporters covering him and subpoenaed the IP addresses of the people who read their stories about him.
Freedom of the Press

I have witnessed a lot. But I did come back traumatized after seeing Arpaio's tent city. I could not believe this place existed in modern US.
Maria Hinojosa‏

If you ever doubted "law & order" was just code for encouraging police harassment of people of color, the Arpaio pardon should put that to rest.
Catherine Rampell

The President pardoned a man who kept immigrants in a concentration camp. Those are Arpaio’s words: CONCENTRATION CAMP
Jennifer de Guzman

Oh, yeah, Trump did a speech on Afghanistan. Remember that?

Paul Ryan on war in Afghanistan: No timelines. Spend until we win.
War on poverty: This has gone on too long. Can't sustain this spending.
Matt Fuller‏ @MEPFuller

When politicians start calling America "her," people die
Philip N Cohen‏ @familyunequal

There were many, many tweets about Charlottesville and its aftermath, including taking down Confederate statues

the kindest thing I can say is that "multiculturalism provoked racism" requires a historical illiteracy I can't begin to fathom
Jamelle Bouie

[There’s an] important difference between statues of people whose conduct and beliefs we would now criticise and statues put up specifically to glorify that conduct.
mary beard‏ @wmarybeard

Wild that in 8 years or so we went from people thinking "postracial" was a thing to regularly arguing with Klansmen on twitter
Vann R. Newkirk II‏ @fivefifths

A lot of folks like to invoke nonviolence — not as a philosophy they actually live — but just to police how people of color respond to violent oppression. If you’re really about nonviolence, you need to call upon the power structure to end systemic violence against communities of color. You should go stand on the front line the next time police or white supremacists face off with anti-racism protestors. Stand there in the spirit of nonviolence and place your body between the two factions. Nonviolence is a lifestyle, not a quote.
Bree Newsome

National "healing" at the expense of racial justice is what led to the building of Confederate monuments in the first place.
Chad Williams‏

If you're made uncomfortable by radical leftist militants on the streets, I have bad news about where your weekend came from
sick transit, gloria‏ @samknight1

White supremacy, along with those who advance it consciously or not, relies upon a fictionalized victimization. (And you falling for it.)
Jamil Smith

New York Times: Far-right groups are responsible for 12 times as many fatalities, 36 times as many injuries as far-left groups.
Kyle Griffin‏

Since we're talking about norms + power: the unique influence of POTUS could have huge consequences in unraveling post-civil rights norms about racism. What if fringe beliefs are tacitly endorsed by the White House, who is by definition the most mainstream political figure in the country? The consensus over those norms has always been fraught/tenuous, which is what i think so many people of color have always understood. And why, i think, people from marginalized groups see fights over 'political correctness' so differently — our full American-ness is provisional. ‘Why can't we debate the relative IQs of black people to white people?’ People don't get how fragile that post-civil rights movement consensus has always been.
Gene Demby‏

Privilege is saving confederacy statues because they're 'historic' but bulldozing through ancient sacred sites and artifacts for pipelines.
Ruth H. Hopkins‏

Common excuses for fascism
Germany: Bread costs wheelbarrows of cash
Japan: Obeying emperor god-king
USA: A feminist critiqued my video game
Scott Westerfeld

Statues honor people. You literally look up to them. Removing them doesn't "erase the past." It means we reprioritize who and what we value.
Mark Harris

A chunk of lead in the shape of a bearded guy on a horse isn't history.
Seth Masket @smotus

My favorite Civil War era monuments are the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments.
David Tanenhaus‏

If these confederate statues actually made Americans aware of history then wouldn't Americans actually know something about slavery?
Accumulation of Data‏ @eparillon

Let’s see the people arguing we need to better appreciate our history start marching for better funding of public education.
Eric Schneiderman

re: "erasing history" - I don't know anyone who wants Confederate monuments gone who doesn't also want *more* public education about slavery
Wesley Lowery‏

if this is what happens when the statues go down, imagine when people actually try to start enforcing equal rights
Vann R. Newkirk II‏ @fivefifths

Serving in Congress, I walk past a dozen statues of men who wanted to keep my ancestors in chains. Think about that.
Rep. Barbara Lee

The same people protecting 20th century confederate monuments were trashing the Statue of Liberty poem LAST WEEK for being added later.
Scott Rising‏

if you leave nazis alone, they will kill you
if you leave antifa alone, they will play pokemon go and eat nutella
artdecaderoo

Dunno what the long-run effects will be, but it's remarkable how Charlottesville has thrown far-right activists into disarray. Was the threat of becoming famous under their real names all it took?
Josh Barro‏

Let us be clear. Putting the statues up in the first place was "sanitizing history." What's going on now is fumigating history.
Charles P. Pierce

A lot of y'all don't care enough about history to study it. You're just offended by people of color challenging the dominant narrative
Bree Newsome‏

Here's what Paraguayans did with a statue of dictator Alfredo Stroessner (1954-89). It's an interesting compromise:


Laurence Blair‏ @LABlair1492

Hilarious that the same people that tell my black ass "slavery was a long time ago, get over it" cry over confederate statues being torn down
Darth Kriss‏ @insanityreport

There is no first amendment when the 2nd amendment allows men with rifles to stand outside your place of worship to terrify you.
David M. Perry‏ @Lollardfish

GOP (now): Liberals are trying to erase history
GOP (earlier): Public schools must teach that dinosaurs were killed by Obamacare
Daniel Lin‏ @danwlin

There was nothing right about the monuments being erected in the first place, so the only right way to remove them is immediately
Bree Newsome

This graphic (via @emayfarris) shows how late most Confederate monuments were put up. Again, note the timing: the Jim Crow and civil rights eras:


Kevin M. Kruse‏

No, see, the racist general statues are just there to help us remember the past, that's why all holocaust memorials are statues of Hitler.
Pixelated Boat‏

The crux of the issue is really racism as a system (policies and practices) but it manifests in proxy battles re: anthems, flags and statues. Oppression: domination of one group of people for the benefit of another group of people. Some of y'all think oppression is having your feelings hurt
Bree Newsome‏

It starts in kindergarten. Approximately 125,000 kids go to public schools named for confederates.
Rebecca Klein‏ @rklein90

The biggest indictment of the way we teach American history is that people can look at Charlottesviille and say "This is not who we are."
jelani cobb

21st-century Nazis choosing white polo shirts as their uniform is a detail I wish I as a writer had come up with.
Saladin Ahmed‏

Madison Square Garden, 1939. Worth remembering:


ian bremmer‏

The American Nazis fighting so hard to preserve a statue of Robert E Lee are absolutely correct about what it symbolizes.
Christopher Hayes‏

Christians sold this country to Nazis for a few Supreme Court justices. It's unforgivable.
Kathryn Brightbill

If you’re more concerned with policing how people respond to 100s of years of racist violence than with racial oppression itself right now, please sit down. I'm so tired of folk who are silent on this topic at any time other than when they have a comment on how folks should respond to oppression.
Bree Newsome‏

If the Very Troubled Republicans need something to do, they could defund Kobach's voter suppression commission. That'd be a start.
Charles P. Pierce‏

Trump can't say "Nazism has no place in this country" because Nazism has a place in his office.
Lauren Morrill

The President's ambiguity in this moment serves one purpose: to signal positively to the white supremacists whose support he enjoys.
Evan McMullin

It matters very much whether you treat this as caused by a few people or if you understand that it is structural and endemic to the U.S.
SuperLeft2017‏ @prisonculture

The US has always had white supremacist mobs. We haven't always had an attorney general who idolizes the confederacy or neo-Nazis in the White House.
Sarah Kendzior

There are consequences to decades of lying to white men that blacks & women get special treatment, cheat the system, vote illegally.
Jamison Foser‏

Only 8 months into the Trump Presidency and we are on the brink of nuclear war and Nazis are in streets of an American city. Seems about right.
Dan Pfeiffer‏

Many people feel it's uncouth/unseemly to be open about your politics. Look, I get it. But know what's way more uncouth? White supremacy. Extremist movements have always counted on the silence and acquiescence of others to get away with it. Don't be silent. Don't acquiesce.
Celeste Ng @pronounced_ing

White people need to stop with the "This isn't America" rhetoric. This is America and Black People have been shouting this from the rooftops.
@LeslieMac

They are chanting 'we will not be replaced.'
Replaced as ... what?
I'll tell you.
Replaced as the only voice in public discussions.
Replaced as the only bodies in the public arena.
Replaced as the only life that matters.
THIS is 'white people' oppression:
We used to be the only voice. Now we hold the only microphone.
Julius Goat‏

The backlash of electing Barack Obama has been evident for years and we ignored it. State houses, governorships are trying to turn the clock back.
mdj20000‏

The whole point of the "White Genocide" meme is to frame white supremacy as some sort of defensive maneuver.
Jesse Singal‏

Trump’s threats to nuke North Korea (remember that day or two? fun times):

This glitch in the matrix brought to you by CNN's lack of interest in finding a single Korean expert to discuss the N. Korean crisis:


Jeff Yang‏ @originalspin

Analysts are trying to work out what happens to markets in the event of an all-out nuclear war.
Wall Street Journal

Threatening nuclear war on Twitter feels like a terms of service violation.
Pablo S. Torre‏

Mr. Fire and Fury himself: Don Jung-Un


Langdon Winner‏

Trump made threats to an enemy country to make himself feel big. Good thing we didn't elect that lady with her volatile lady-emotions.
@OhNoSheTwitnt

OK so if I understand this, dark skinned immigrants are an existential threat to the United States but nuclear war is no big deal.
Tom Tomorrow‏


I look at this tweet and wonder why, as the world may be ending, he can't put spaces after commas yet puts two spaces after a period:


Pat Thompson‏ @pattho

Racism and white supremacy generally, including policing:

“White identity politics" is the strong nuclear force of the GOP coalition, what binds together its ideologically disparate component parts.
Gene Demby‏

"Alt right" — people who have not thought very deeply about politics and society end up believing their skin color is supremely important.
Langdon Winner‏

the kindest thing I can say is that "multiculturalism provoked racism" requires a historical illiteracy I can't begin to fathom
Jamelle Bouie

white people: medieval england never heard of Africa or people of color!!
medieval england: *has lions and leopards all over their heraldic shit*
Anne Thériault

Though Black and white kids commit offenses at similar rates, there are just 13 white kids incarcerated in all of New Jersey.
Ryan P. Haygood‏

People need to get that this is not all police.
AND
Police need to get that this isn't remotely the first time.
Both. At the same time.
Phillip Atiba Goff‏ (commenting on the outing of an Oklahoma police chief as an active white supremacist)

I'm so ready to go past using these artificial ideas – race, nationality – to identify ourselves. But we're not there yet. A few more lifetimes.
BigIndianGyasi

"If only you people had been better chattel, needed nothing while we used you and gone away quietly after, none of this would've happened!"
Ebony Elizabeth‏

Our existence has been dividing this country since the beginning. How dare we exist.
Bethany C. Morrow‏

"After controlling for racism we didn't find racism anymore!"
Keep It Surly‏ @surlyurbanist

Again: "white supremacy" isn't just dudes in swastikas. It's the idea that white people should wield a society's political/cultural power. That's not some nut job; it's been the U.S.'s operating premise for almost its entire existence. It's in the country's source code. It's so baked in that you can get to all sorts of broadly white supremacist outcomes without any openly expressed animus.
Gene Demby

I'll give up identity politics when you stop trying to kill people for their identities.
Sydette‏ @Blackamazon

A black man in St. Louis is nearly twice as likely to be killed by police as the average American is of being killed by *anyone.*
Samuel Sinyangwe

The founder of Planned Parenthood may have been racist. Folks think Black people should hate Planned Parenthood. The founders of the US owned slaves. Same folks want Black people to to move on. If the idea is that Black people should hate anything with racist origins, we might as well accept that black folks gon' hate MOST things.
Ra'sclat Al Ghul‏ @Felonious_munk

Texas prisons ban books by Langston Hughes and Richard Wright but those by Adolf Hitler and David Duke perfectly fine.
Christopher Petrella‏

My pro blackness is not anti-white. It is heard that way because pro-whiteness is rooted in anti-blackness.
IAmJabali‏

The Navajo nation is over 25,000 miles wide yet there are only 13 grocery stores and three hospitals.
lilnativeboy

One of the many society-altering consequences of the Civil Rights Movement is that it created powerful new taboos against public racism. and it's hard to overstate just how much those new norms created space for black people to function and move in public. Of COURSE it didn't convert all or most white people and of course there was backlash. But white people’s feelings weren't the most important stakes. The stakes were the liberation of people of color.
Gene Demby‏

I find the idea of a non-racist policing and prison system in the US to be the height of utopian thinking.
David Kaib‏

The only "racist bone" some people seem to be able to recognize:


Pat Thompson‏ @pattho

When they say "We need to unite!" they mean, "YOU need to assimilate!" We make them uncomfortable by being. They think it's violence. To them, whether we deal with racism or not is irrelevant. The real question is, why do we have to *talk* about it so much? These are the people who believe the guilt they feel about the oppression of Black folks is something we're doing to them, making them feel.
Ashley C. Ford‏ @iSmashFizzle

Ironically "the bad side of town" is usually the most integrated. Upper class enclaves are racism/classism actualized.
ultramilkplus

Please stop saying "racially charged." It almost always takes the place of "racist," which is a word fewer people should be afraid to say.
Phillip Atiba Goff

As writers from W.E.B. DuBois to Jamelle Bouie have argued, white Americans have a tangible, material interest in white supremacy. Compare Ta-Nehisi Coates: “We think of racism as a disease of the heart... but the most damaging element has always been a disease of the wallet.” No amount of moral medicine — twitter call-outs, scalding op-eds, honest conversations about race — can cure that disease of the wallet. What we need is a politics that creates a material interest greater than the one white supremacy can offer. We need to make anti-racism pay.
Matt Karp

The comparison of white supremacists (whites are master race) to Black Lives Matter (stop murdering black people) is absurd and slanderous
Judd Legum‏

Enslaved Africans who were kidnapped, forced here against their will, stripped of nationality and denied humanity are not immigrants. Acknowledge this.
Bree Newsome

Mike Brown taught me that people who never ever EVER trust the government will always trust it 100% any time another unarmed black man gets shot.
John Fugelsang

The same folks who called 18-year-old Mike Brown a 'thug' said 56-year-old Greg Gianforte was a "patriot" after he body slammed a reporter.
Keith Boykin

The reason straight white dudes can't see how a diverse team would solve problems differently is exactly why you need a diverse team.
Laurie Voss‏ @seldo

Some days I just imagine what it would be like to live in a world that assumes I am smart and competent as I am. And then I cry.
@tressiemcphd

If you can understand and internalize that race is not biologically real but rather is a power structure, you're halfway to being free
Bree Newsome

Every other white person claims to know somebody whose job was "stolen" by a person of color. Wasn't their job. But they sure felt entitled to it. Meanwhile *every* visible person of color and woman gets told they don't deserve... anything. THAT is the point of anti-Affirmative Action rhetoric/law. To reinforce the notion that white men, mediocre or not, should get everything.
N. K. Jemisin

Something I keep coming coming back to is how much difference it makes that white people operate in mostly white spaces all the time. We know most white people have no non-white intimate friends, so the only black or latinx voices they hear can be dismissed as "angry." They (we) also don't get to observe low-level, day-to-day discrimination. Seeing the stand-out police murders or unreconstructed bigotry that make the news contributes to the few-bad-apples theory of modern racism. Most whites don't see daily, low-level cop behavior - the body language, tone of voice, rough-but-not-tragic handling. Just so, whites don't observe enough subtly discriminatory interactions in stores, schools, &c., to see the pattern. And since recognizing the pattern implicates us, we're already predisposed not to.
Objection!‏ @RSGAT

Not many White folks really know just how much of a head start we have simply because we were born White. We've been given the ultimate "hand-out"
@thel0rdbyr0n

So, how is racism explained to school children who haven't experienced it? By example, through the most egregious offenders. An image of a KKK marcher hurting a black person, or through the images of a small child going to school, as she suffers taunts. "She's like me. Like that one time I got bullied. They bullied Ruby Bridges the same way." A spark of empathy in that idea. But look at it. White kids get taught, and learn, that racism and oppression are "this one-time extraordinary thing," through examples. And also learn that this behavior is transgressive and bullying. But they don't see, or get taught, that bigger picture. And thus, this idea gets planted. Racism is a thing of the past exclusive to extraordinary bullies, and is strictly individual. So, even the kindest person, once they hold these ideas, they can get turned around. "Give it a generation, the racists will die off."
@effdot

I don't like RACISTS. And they're fairly easy to identify because they think calling out racism equates to hating white people.
Bree Newsome

"My family never owned slaves.” No, they leveraged anti-Blackness so they could become white in America too. And you reap the rewards. Half of you are at schools that paid bills by selling slaves so skip the "No one in my family ever had anything to do with slavery" lies. "My family came here with nothing.” Actually they came here with some goods, their freedom, & rights to be protected by the law of the land. “Well Black people get free college and housing and jobs because of it.” No. No we don't. Those are literally lies your parents told you.
Mikki Kendall‏ @Karnythia

Whites: Affirmative action cheats Asians! Grades matter most.
Whites [after Asians out-test them]: ok but let's consider the ~intangibles~
Mark Tseng-Putterman‏

There are few greater injustices than the fact that white people are allowed to know so little and still control so much.
Jamilah Lemieux

White people did not college degree or code their way to greater generational wealth; state and federal policies did that.
Gene Demby‏

Thinking about how in alt-history, if you want white supremacists to win, people just accept that shit. But if you want oppressed and colonized groups to escape, survive or thrive? People want you to come up with some big elaborate reason why. This is a sign of white supremacy. That an audience can easily accept a world ruled by white people with little to no explanation but needs you to come up with an intense, detailed and perfect reasoning for why people of color might survive at all, let alone be in charge.
@Naamenism

On sexism and misogyny:

Fantastic (and enormously depressing) talk from Francesca Tripodi on deletion of attempts to redress the gender gap in Wikipedia content: Women who meet criteria for notability are twice as likely to be nominated for deletion as men who meet the same criteria.
Christine Slaughter‏

WOMAN: can I have a raise
MAN: *fires her*
OTHER MEN: the problem is, women don't ask
Alice Goldfuss‏


Can you imagine how much interesting work we could be doing without our fixation on fortifying gender roles and binaries? I FUCKING CAN.
Erin Kissane‏

On sustainable cities and climate change:

Get a city that treats bikes/pedestrians like they do a drive-thru.
Father Sonn‏ @mikesonn

Americans live in thrall to beliefs that the optimal level of public infrastructure spending is zero but also that everything should work.
Paul Musgrave

City design can alleviate, or produce, stress. Designing for people, not cars, is a shift towards human happiness.
jennifer keesmaat‏

When it comes to housing policy, "density" and "multifamily" is race.
Abraham Gutman

Cycling "the last mile" to transit is cheaper, healthier, climate friendlier and takes up way less space than driving
Christine Laurence‏

If you drive a car into New York City, you are taking way more than your fair share of space. Too bad you aren't charged a fair price.
Jarrett Walker‏ @humantransit

Boomers are mad we don't want the junk they spent our future on.
GonzoHacker‏

If you live in the city and oppose new apartments in your neighborhood, you're the climate problem. If you advocate for more parking, you're the problem. If bike lanes anger you, you're the problem.
Adam Miller‏ @ajm6792

Local government doesn't lack efficiency, it lacks resiliency, which is the opposite of efficiency.
Strong Towns‏

Park in the street a block away? Hell no! Too far!
Park in a lot that's two blocks long? Ooh, convenient!
@atsneed

Peoria has twice as much pavement as it has buildings, and those buildings are worth 24x as much as the pavement.
Strong Towns‏

"The great weakness of bus routes is their relatively low cost; it's too easy to trade frequent service for wide coverage."
William Lindeke‏

Without oil money, the GOP would not be strong. Without the GOP, Nazis would not be bold. Without liberal leafy suburbs, oil would not have money.
Free Public Transit‏


Of course removing car parking will be a death sentence to businesses...


21st Century City‏ @urbanthoughts11

Why US CO2 emissions fell:
33% - coal to gas
22% - wind and solar
30% - reduced power and fuel use
15% - transport efficiency
Michael Gerrard‏

Cute children [in Syria] die so Americans can go to the cheeseburger window in their SUV.
Free Public Transit

Conservatives: $1 billion on a transit project is a boondoggle
Also conservatives: $3 billion giveaway to Foxconn is good business
Matt Eckholm‏ @VacantLuxuries

Our 600-page climate report in one tweet:
It's real
It's us
It's serious
And the window of time to prevent dangerous impacts is closing fast
Katharine Hayhoe

My neighbors: No new businesses!!
Also my neighbors: wait, our taxes are going up?!?!?
KJ‏ @kyjlue

Cars are much more than carbon emitters. They promote sprawl and growth, generating demand for more consumer products.
Free Public Transit‏

Study supports safety in numbers hypothesis: More bike/walk traffic related to lower crash risk for each person walking/bicycling.
Barb Chamberlain‏

Is it time to revive Henry George's Land-Value Tax?


ARCHITECT Magazine‏

And, as always at the end, the best of the rest:

I really wish more news outlets provided space where we could hear from out-of-touch privileged white men.
Molly Priesmeyer‏

Here's the thing, we face two tyrannies: Trump, and big corporate monopolies trying to govern us. We can and must fight both.
Zephyr Teachout‏

I heard a thing on a podcast this weekend, how Americans are really good at acute compassion, but pretty bad at chronic empathy.
Sigrid Ellis‏

25% of Americans now live in states with automatic voter registration. Illinois became 10th state to adopt yesterday.
Ari Berman‏

Please don't argue with trolls. They don't even believe what they are saying. They just want to discourage and disgust.
Free Public Transit‏

Open letter to Autocorrect: I almost never want to say "dies." I almost always mean to type "does."
Chris Steller‏

raise your hand if you grew up in a small town treating magazines like treasure because they showed a larger world and placed it in your grasp
Isaac Fitzgerald‏

80 years of science fiction and not a single story predicted we'd use our phones as flashlights.
Paul Mather‏

"Biggest fake ever perpetrated is that what children like, and need, is big yards. What children like are other children."—Kenneth T. Jackson
Taras Grescoe‏

People call "political" anything they dislike, don't agree with — their own views appear "right" and thus "not political" — this is lazy
Paul Thomas‏

"Ladies and gentlemen, I've looked into the future and you will not believe this shit":


Super 70s Sports‏

"Talented" is a weird way to describe generals. "Competent", maybe, or "experienced." But "talented"? I don't care if they can sing or draw.
Tom Tomorrow‏

Report: 70% of private schools students are white; 78% of schools they attend are religious.
Jennifer Berkshire‏

This is very lovely. It's a map of Pakistan showing the embroidery techniques of its regions:


Saima Mir‏

Picard morality tip: The moment you consider yourself morally superior to someone due to your genetics is the moment you prove you are not.
Picard Tips‏

FWIW, I've worked with reporters and they are mostly TRULY GOOD PEOPLE. They're people who get paid very little to find and share the truth. There were plenty of reporters I didn't even like who I'd still describe as very ethical and committed to justice and fairness. When I left newspaper journalism for advertising, I was actually shocked by how Not Very Concerned about ethics the rest of the world is.
Rainbow Rowell‏

Any sufficiently determined librarian is indistinguishable from magic.
John Overholt‏

People who defend hate speech think it's merely offending us or making us feel bad. Nah, son. It literally seeks to erase us, and it does. When you defend hate speech as mere free speech, you're arguing that the humanity of your fellow citizens is literally debatable.
Billy, Just Billy‏ @BillyArmagh

Though far from perfect, a hospital is often one of the more racially and culturally integrated places in a community. I love that.
Mark Reid, MD‏ @medicalaxioms

For anyone curious, here's what Six Grandfathers looked like before they defiled it by carving a bunch of old white men into it


@TheAriDee

Freedom is not only the absence of oppression but it is also the presence of justice and joy.
deray mckesson

Question millions are asking (but not economists): How rich would Bill Gates be without patent/copyright monopolies? It's great economists are finally noticing rich get all the money, too bad so few of them ever think about why.
Dean Baker‏

The extent to which Republicans lawmakers simply do not believe in equal access to the ballot should be a bigger deal than it is.
Jamelle Bouie

It is possible and necessary to defend science without romanticizing its history. Eugenics was developed by scientists after all.
Nelson Flores‏

When someone talks about the Deep State they either mean public servants with years of experience, or the concept of checks and balances.
Crommunist‏

Overheard, full-grown adult male: "Banana Republic?? That's not a thing. That's not a saying! That's a f*cking store."
Molly Priesmeyer

Politicians shouldn't be ridiculed if they evolve on issues. I want someone to lead who can look at data and make informed decisions.
Father Sonn‏ @mikesonn

Wanted a toothbrush, got a cyberpunk future:


E.Saxey‏

McDonalds in the airport food court boasts "hand-cracked eggs." One shudders to think of the alternatives.

Nalo Hopkinson‏

Because the Supreme Court gutted the VRA, there were 868 fewer places to vote in 2016.
Courtney Fuller‏

Christians are more than twice as likely to blame a person’s poverty on lack of effort.
Religion News‏

Funny how the same people shrieking about putting America First are simultaneously attacking its most treasured symbols and institutions.
Sulome Anderson

Percentage of Americans "proud" that Trump is the President: 26% (CNN)
Percentage of Americans who think the Sun orbits the Earth: 26% (NSF)
Seth Abramson

Cis people tend to see transition as an identity change because THEY have to "change" the pronouns they've been using for the person. But that doesn't mean the trans person views their transition as a change from Being A to Being B. When we treat cisness and unqueerness as a default that people "change" from in order to "become" new things, we entrench the problem. It isn't right to load trans and queer folk down with the fantasy you had for them. We are who we are. We aren't a fantasy.
Ana Mardoll‏

the richer the parents the older the cutoff for calling their sons good boys
the megarich can call their sons good boy until the sons are 50
@morninggloria

I know I shouldn't be laughing but I am:


Saira Khan‏ @sairakh

Rich people believe that, if they were poor people, they would be rich.
Sandra Newman‏

Libraries aren't just about books. They are almost the only public space we have left which don't like our wallets more than us.
Matt Haig