Twitter was full to the brim for a lot of the month with terrible stuff, but what else is new?
First, let’s wrap up the Brett Kavanaugh tweets, which I started on September 17. There has been a lot since then, mostly related to Christine Blasey Ford and Kavanaugh's second appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee:
They are going to give the power to cast the deciding vote to end affirmative action to a white man who benefited from a legacy admissions policy designed to help rich white kids get into college.On Mulligan and everything his administration is doing (or not doing):
Samuel Sinyangwe
Hi hello fellow men, we are statistically more likely to be sexually assaulted ourselves than to be falsely accused of sexual assault by a woman, and self-styled men's rights activists don't give a rat's behind about that because they're more anti-feminism than pro-human rights.
RevEricAtcheson
Conservatives: You just can't throw out unproven accusations at people like this, what happened to innocent until proven guilty?
Also conservatives: Obama is a Kenyan born Muslim who wiretapped Trump, and Hillary is a pedo child trafficker.
MrFilmkritik
People upset that Kavanaugh might be denied a lifetime appointment on the court due to the testimony of one witness will presumably be appalled to learn how often people are sentenced to death due to the testimony of one witness.
KSchultz3580
I still can't stop thinking about Dr. Ford saying over & over again in her testimony, "I just want to be helpful." Makes my chest tight, still. At any point in his testimony, did Kavanaugh express any devotion to service? Any sympathy for Ford or other victims? Any reverence for the position he's seeking? Any respect for law, or principles that transcend partisanship? Anything beyond an angry White Man Ego Defense?
David Roberts
Kavanaugh promises he'll practice an "original intent" interpretation of the constitution when he can't even engage in an honest "original intent" interpretation of his own yearbook.
Jeet Heer
Thank Heavens I have two daughters, otherwise I would be incapable of telling right from wrong for some reason.
scottmccloud
The most crazymaking thing about this hearing: Every Republican agrees Ford very likely was assaulted, but is misremembering the details. Memory is fallible. It happens. Zero of them are willing to extend that principle to Kavanaugh. It's as if only women's memories can fail.
Ezra Klein
I am so goddamned sick of a political system where no man can be too imperfect and no woman can be perfect enough.
The Hoarse Whisperer
The thing about the slut defense (it can't have been rape because she has willingly had other sex) is that it sees rape as a theft of sex rather than a violation of personhood.
leeflower
I still can’t quite wrap my mind around the fact that a 53-year-old man made this face in a job interview:
Eric Haywood
The aggression with which Kavanaugh keeps trying to suggest that everybody drinks the way he drinks is something I have only ever heard from someone who routinely drinks to excess.
Mark Harris
Why do we have a Supreme Court that, generation after generation, is overwhelmingly dominated by wealthy white men who overwhelmingly protect the property interests of other wealthy white men? At what point is this extreme inequity seen as disqualifying of the institution itself?
alwaystheself
Do not *ever* use the word lynching to describe anything except an actual lynching.
Being criticized =/= being lynched.
Being held accountable =/= being lynched.
Being slightly uncomfortable =/= being lynched.
Ebony Elizabeth
The party that demands that you pee in a cup to get food stamps for your sick kids won't even investigate a credible sexual assault charge for a guy who will be on the federal dole the rest of his life.
LOLGOP
If nothing else we probably need to retire the expression “sober as a judge” now.
matt blaze
Meet the Women for Kavanaugh:
Monica Klein
Optics: They're going through Ford's statements sentence by sentence trying to find inconsistencies. Thousands of documents about Kavanaugh's record still remain concealed from the public.
igorvolsky
Brock Turners grow up to be Brett Kavanaughs who make the rules for Brock Turners.
emrazz
So, tell me if I’ve got this right:
Men and boys being drunk means they are NOT responsible for their actions,
but
Women and girls being drunk means they ARE responsible for what others do to them?
Leah McElrath
Every single DNA test that any of us has taken and all of our genealogical research, proves that our elders and ancestors weren't just making it up for kicks and giggles. Powerful men today are entitled [as fuck] to women's bodies. What do people think they did when they had actual slaves?
Ebony Elizabeth
yes people who were dicks in high school can change. people who pull out their dicks and then later deny it when applying to be a lifetime arbiter of justice? not so much
Aparna Nancherla
It’s the year of our lord 2018 and men are still asking why women don’t report sexual assault while simultaneously not believing a single woman who does
Nathalie Baptiste
It goes like this:
Under 30: "He's so young, people make mistakes, don't ruin his life!"
30-50: "How could you do this to his family? Don't ruin his career!"
Over 50: "He's a sweet old man, I'm sure he was just joking. Don't ruin his life!"
You're welcome.
Jillian Edmonds
All the dudes who think every man is on the chopping block if we listen to assault allegations from the past are basing this on the ridiculous idea that women are dishonest liars who want to destroy men. That women are more dangerous to men than we are to them.
Elon James White
When Sonia Sotomayor was nominated, there was much talk of how her working-class Bronx background might inform her worldview today. But we seldom talk about wealth, whiteness or male privilege in the same way, as if they're cultures that shape people.
Emily Badger
I really do think multiple credible claims that someone spent their youth running with a crowd of privileged sociopaths drunkenly assaulting women should be enough to disqualify them from a lifetime appointment judging others and setting legal precedent for the entire nation.
Katie Mack @AstroKatie
White men demand that any behavior of theirs must be excused while everyone else is to be permanently discredited for any infraction, however small
Paul Thomas
“It is our job to make his pattern of revolting behavior clear, piece by painful piece.” –Brett Kavanaugh on why Pres. Clinton answer his graphic questions during the Starr Investigation. Should he not be held to his own standard? The Starr Investigation lasted 4 yrs.
Dana Gould
So not only did I find my 1987 calendar in my basement, I found the cache of 1970s letters I received from my favorite author, Vera Cleaver, which I have been looking for for YEARS. So thanks for that, Judge Kavanaugh.
Jennifer Mendelsohn
(SCENE: Silicon Valley, 2019)
Men: Someone should fix this accusation problem
Women: Men could stop raping
Men: I know! An app to disprove allegations with machine learning and the blockchain!
VCs: Here’s $100 million
Women: ...
Tony Webster
WHY DON’T WOMEN WHO WERE SEXUALLY ASSAULTED COME FORWARD SOONER SO WE CAN CALL THEM LIARS AND THREATEN THEM AT AN EARLIER DATE
OhNoSheTwitnt
6 out of 10 sexual assaults NEVER reported. Because reporting creates more abuse for women. False reports are very RARE. Shaming women for not reporting is ABUSE itself.
Paul Thomas
I’m hearing a lot of “so men are just supposed to be scared of women now?” I mean, if that’s what needs to happen for you to be cool to us, maybe. We’ve been scared of you for like six thousand years. You’ll get used to it after a while.
Whitney Cummings
Christine Blasey Ford is an intersectional cautionary tale for white lady Trump voters that you can’t vote for retrograde race politics w/o also voting for retrograde gender politics. They are natural bedfellows. MAGA wants to rollback Race *and* gender gains.
Brittney Cooper
Lying under oath to a Republican controlled senate is only investigated as a crime if the senate wants it to be investigated. Lying to an FBI agent is a crime that the FBI can pursue even if the Republican senate doesn’t want them to. Kavanaugh can’t risk talking to the FBI.
Lawrence O'Donnell
Maybe, just maybe, a "he said, she said" panel moderated by people who think the internet is tubes is not the best way to uncover what really happened here.
Nathan Hunstad
Let’s try living in a country where teenage girls can be less afraid of rape and teenage boys are much more afraid that committing sexual assault will always catch up with them one way or another.
Lawrence O'Donnell
Women: We live in a constant state of vigilance because men pose a constant threat to us, here are literally millions of corroborating stories.
Men: What a scary time for men this is.
Julius Goat
Lindsey Graham wants to know how Brett Kavanaugh's accuser, a college professor, paid for a $200 polygraph test. Lindsey Graham apparently doesn't want to know how Brett Kavanaugh paid for $200K in baseball tickets. Reveals a lot of what's wrong with our country and politics.
Adam Best
I don't speak out against sexual assault and harassment because I have a daughter. I speak out because I have a son. Fellas, it's on us.
Michael Skolnik
Spent a lot of time thinking about how mostly minority public schools teach kids how to get used to being policed and how elite private schools teach kids how to get used to getting away with just about anything
Adam Serwer
REPUBLICANS: who can be sure about what happened 36 years ago. ALSO REPUBLICANS: when the founding fathers put a comma in this sentence they meant we can have assault rifles
Ben Rosen
Women are only to be believed when they’re vouching for a man who’s been accused of sexual assault.
missmayn
by next month, 4 of 9 seats on the SCOTUS may be occupied by justices nominated by presidents who received fewer votes than their opponents. one of those justices will have attained his seat after an unprecedented blockade of the court. the other, after he perjured himself.
jbouie
Remember that Wilbur Ross has been accused of swindling business associates out of $120million and that Betsy DeVos' personal yacht is registered as a foreign vessel in order to avoid U.S. taxes. These people work in our government, but don't believe IN that government.A lot of tweets circle around the current state of our politics, including the upcoming election:
Bette Midler
What I love about this Cabinet is how each member represents a combination of evil, indifference, and privilege that’s unique to them
Adam Weinstein
Quite a graphic:
ian bremmer
“Caligulan” is of course hyperbolic but if a liberal politician consistently cheated on his wife with porn stars while bragging about sexual assaults I don’t think any conservative would object to pagan-emperor comparisons.
Ross Douthat
They [Puerto Ricans] won’t vote for us so their deaths didn’t happen. This is the entire worldview in a nutshell.
Chris Hayes
“In my defense, those 3000 people didn’t die during the uncontrollable act of God, they died during the long period after when I could have done something about it.”
Jess Dweck
A storm that *doesn't* kill many people initially, but then leads to thousands of people dying because of lack of water, electricity and medicine means the government was the killer.
Chris Hayes
It's reassuring to know that in a crisis the President would let me die and then pretend I didn't exist.
trtx84
Maybe you saw the news that the deficit is projected to reach over $1 trillion by the end of the next fiscal year. Here's what you probably didn't see in those stories: about $800 billion of that is directly attributable to tax cuts passed over the last two decades.
Michael Linden
Weird how "bad candidates" became like a Democrat thing after they nominated the first women POTUS candidate. But like not for Republicans after they nominated a probable rapist and arch sleazy con man with a bad rug. This is how patriarchy works. Everyone just accepts that idea
Angie Schmitt
The only President to have a worse first 20 months in office is William Henry Harrison. And that’s only because he spent 19 of them dead.
Mat Molina
When four Americans died in Benghazi because Republicans defunded embassy security, they blamed Hillary and started an investigation.
But when four Americans died in Niger, there were no calls for Trump to testify for 11 hours.
MrFilmkritik
Imagine if a woman president got on Twitter every morning to complain about people being mean and unfair to her. Weak. Hysterical. Shrill. Bitch. Unfit to lead.
OhNoSheTwitnt
People burning expensive Nike shoes because of a man who kneeled are proudly wearing cheap hats of a man who locks kids in cages
Alt Fed Employee
This new policy of questioning the legitimacy of birth certificates essentially makes Birtherism federal policy. Americans are being made stateless in their own country.
Ann Burroughs
Trump's Federal Transit Administration is trying to sabotage transit. @FTA_DOT has withheld $4 out of every $5 Congress has allocated for new transit projects over the last two years, @T4America reports.
Streetsblog USA
If you’re going to use the “two Americas” frame you should acknowledge that one wants to deport, shoot, ban, and disenfranchise much of the other, and that there is no corresponding appetite for the use of state violence from the other’s constituency.White supremacy, racism, and police brutality:
Adam Serwer
You know how people sleep in tents on sidewalks before Harry Potter and Star Wars releases? Let's do that for the mid-terms. We can even dress up as our favorite defenders of democracy.
Seyward Darby
I guess I understand the rhetorical mode of "keep it up, lib and we'll all support Trump" or "that's how you got Trump," but I wonder if the people who deploy it understand what it says about them.
Chris Hayes
Plan today to vote. Election Day is Tue, Nov. 6. Make work/school arrangements now. If you can, make arrangements to help others get to the fact that there are so many barriers to getting registered, staying registered, finding the time, finding the place, and getting transportation to the place, tells me that the people who extract money from us really, really would prefer the least powerful among us not to vote
Michelle Allison @fatnutritionist
Increasingly clear that white backlash is *the* story of American politics. Also increasingly clear that the political press has failed miserably to clearly identify it ... instead falling for ludicrous fictions like the notion the Tea Party was about "small government."
David Roberts
As Emerson said, there are only two political parties that matter, the party of the Past and the party of the Future. This has never been more true in America.
Alex Steffen
There‘s a land where politicians choose their voters by manipulating voting district boundaries, candidates can take office after losing, votes of citizens in unpopulated regions are given more weight than others, taxpaying citizens in some regions are not represented in govt, elites stand in short lines near home to vote but others travel far and face long lines, elections are on workdays, illegal efforts to suppress votes are rarely investigated, legal and illegal voter suppression efforts have led to low participation in elections, politicians can “de-register” voters for missing elections, humans aren’t the only ones who can advocate for candidates, the rich are permitted to influence elections with cash (often secretly), voter suppression efforts have contributed to low participation in elections, an elite was recently given probation for trying to vote twice for the leader, a non-elite was recently sentenced to 5 years in prison when she voted once against the leader without realizing she was barred from voting, many regions have no paper record of votes despite attempts to hack voting machines, legislators don’t support an agency charged with helping regions upgrade voting machines, half the members of a commission that enforces campaign laws oppose the commission’s mission, legislators impede efforts to investigate foreign election interference, the leader admitted he fired the govt’s top investigator for investigating his own campaign for suspected coordination with a foreign power, the leader has called for firing the replacement investigator, several associates of the leader have pleaded guilty as a result of the investigation, some legislators support the leader’s threats to fire the head of the replacement investigator’s agency, the leader has called for restrictions on freedom of speech, legislators who blocked an appointment to the nation’s high court for political reasons are decrying calls to delay the vote on a different nominee due to alleged criminal activity, a legislator recently distributed a fundraising request disguised as an official summons, and the leader and some legislators are calling for the prosecution of the leader’s vanquished political rival. The country in question insists that it’s an international champion and model for democracy. Weird, huh?
Walter Shaub
Besides Trump and his Republican Party everyone and everything is betting on a diverse future built on empathy and fairness. Citizens, leaders, corporations. Trumpism is a death cult worshipping a world that’s already past.
Jared Yates Sexton
“A quarter [25 percent] of Trump voters who never attend church describe being white as ‘very important’ to their identity; for the most frequent churchgoers voters, it was 9 percent.”
Matt Pearce
3 million mostly white Americans live in Wyoming, Montana and the Dakotas and they have 8 senators and 4 voting House members. 4 million mostly non-white Americans live in Puerto Rico and DC, and have zero Senators and zero voting House members.
David Sirota
Just sitting here thinking about Cuomo and how obscene it is that this country tolerates and celebrates white male supremacy so much that political dynasties (not that they should exist in the first place but.) are almost exclusively white and male, fathers and sons.
alwaystheself
The further we get into Trump’s presidency, the more I realize that lots of people are a lot more offended by how stupid and uncouth he is than by his evil policies...in hindsight, that was also probably true about George W Bush.
Patrick Fenelon
Labeling the market natural and the state unnatural is a convenient fiction for those wedded to the status quo
Jacobin
16% of America’s population currently controls 50% of the Senate. Small states are overrepresented and are whiter, older and more rural. This gives this population the power to determine what legislation passes. Enshrined in a Constitution harder than any other nation’s to amend.
Samuel Sinyangwe
There's a lot going on, I know. But yesterday DOJ issued subpoenas for millions of voter records in its hunt for voter fraud & implied it would take legal action against social media companies for stifling conservative voices. Both massive, massive breaks with ordinary behavior.
Matthew Miller
The right believe in a natural order built on 'traditional' values to explain why society is structured the way it is. Progressives believe inequality is systemic and can be alleviated if we work together to make better choices that benefit the whole of society.
Billy Bragg
The free flow of disingenuous trolling is important and necessary to a democracy. Unless we have people lying and making bad-faith arguments to foment hate and fear, how can we know we have selected the best lies and bad faith arguments upon which to base our policies?
Guy Branum
The problem with the word “segregation” is that it doesn’t name the group that enforces separation nor does it name the racial hierarchy. It would be more sociologically and politically accurate to speak of “white supremacist segregation” because that’s what it actually is.Sexism and misogyny:
alwaystheself
Linguist: Why is our field so white? Same linguist in response to a POC scholar talking about race and language: What you are talking about is not linguistics.
Nelson Flores
The idea that black people by definition cannot be “objective” on matters of race and racism, but that white people are neutral betrays the deep seated nature of the biases at work—and a fatal misunderstanding of how racism works.
ElleSeeAre
A Kickstarter so White people can buy each other copies of White Fragilty by Robin DiAngelo and actually read it.
advicepig
If u really listen to Serena critiques from white men, it’s driven by same kind visceral need for strict compliance by a Black woman that got Sandra Bland killed. It was about exerting power & control. That’s why Serena story is so symbolically important
ChuckModi
For some curriculum I am working on, I am reading about the “Cicero Race Riot” of 1951. And for the umpteenth time as a student of U.S. history, I am thinking, why are these episodes of white terrorism called “race riots”?
LadyOfSardines
Nothing about the US makes sense UNTIL one understands the extent to which our policy-making is driven by white supremacy. That's not some radical buzzword. That's not hyperbole. It's a specific set of cultural/political norms that needs to be smashed.
Guante
if Indigenous people aren’t leading decolonization it isn't decolonization
skiumtalx
It should go without saying, but: if a cop can break into your apartment, kill you, and get away with it *by accident*, some corrupt cops are going to figure out that you can do the same thing *on purpose*.
Michael T Sweeney
Make sure you instantaneously obey any screamed instructions from armed home invaders just in case they are cops
Popehat
Racism is so American that when you protest IT people think you're protesting America.
Mikel Jollett
Centuries of racism and sexism in Portugal (and every other nation, for that matter) don't produce "rotten apples". They produce systemic national and transnational problems. Your individualistic framing shows that you have no understanding of how history and socialization work.
alwaystheself
Just a reminder, bias often shows up as selective enforcement of rules/laws. Minorities/women treated according to the rules, Whites/men given a break, benefit of the doubt for the same behavior.
Jennifer Richeson
Amazing that there are still people who are more upset by the implication that their society is sexist or racist than they are upset by the actual sexism and racism.
alwaystheself
"I don't believe in equal opportunity offense because there isn't equal opportunity." Hari Kondabolu
Lauren Hudgins
Many of my students have already told me that they never studied the history or sociology of race/racism before my class. It's amazing and mind-blowing being the first person to teach another human being that our ideas about race are socially constructed, not essentially "real."
alwaystheself
Reconstruction-->KKK
Civil Rights Act-->Southern Strategy
Obama Elected-->Tea Party, MAGA
Long history of violent white backlash to perceived Black gains in America.
As the white share of the population continues to drop we can expect a rise in extremism. Gonna get worse.
Marcus H. Johnson
One reason why it's not worth your time trying to interview mendacious bigots is that they are necessarily bad conversations. You spend your whole time as the interviewer having to extemporaneously fact-check some jackass on IQ hereditarianism or whatever tf. They're all "The knockout game! Robert E. Lee hated slavery! The Protocols of the Elders of Zion!" And you, the interviewer, have to make sure you push back on each of those things before you move on to the next q. But of course, your racist interlocutor will push back on your push back, and on and on it goes until you're not really interviewing each other so much as performing a dramatization of a Reddit thread. Who wants to listen to/watch that shit? Again, it's just dumb and fake and pointless for a bunch of reasons that are less morally urgent than the fact that it is obviously dangerous.
GeeDee215
It's always white men who want to sit around and debate "ideas" like "who gets to be human?" because liberal, conservative, middle of the road, they know it's never THEIR humanity that will be "debated."
Kameron Hurley
Privilege is taking one man’s peaceful protest against brutality, twisting it into a lack of patriotism, doing nothing about brutality, and then burning your shoes over it.
emrazz
Bannon believes the US is a white person's country that ought to be run for the benefit of whites. That is less an "idea" than a basic premise, a building block. You either accept it or reject it. If you reject it, what is the point of further discussion?
David Roberts
‘White Supremacy’ isn’t up for debate. It is an evil ideology that has resulted in the slaughter, oppression and enslavement of countless human beings across the globe.
BerniceKing
Racism and fascism are life & death to the marginalized, while they are merely intellectual fodder for white elites.
Hari Kondabolu
Every woman I know has been storing anger for years in her body and it’s starting to feel like bees are going to pour out of all of our mouths at the same time.Climate change and sustainable cities:
eekshecried
One thing I can't stop thinking about lately is how heterosexual marriage benefits men and tends to harm women but it's culturally framed as something women want and men resist…. And even though men and women both spend more time with their kids than people did in the sixties, women spend around twice as much time with kids as men do. This is true even in households in which women are the breadwinners. In fact, men do FEWER chores when women earn more than them.
KHandozo
I don't want men to be allies. I want you to be traitors. I want you to be traitors to the system that violently holds you up at the expense of women. I want you to betray the silent pact that patriarchy makes with you to have your back so long as you don't make waves. Revolt.
Sidrah Ahmad
when women fly they're witches, when men fly they're superman.
Akilah Hughes
Women enjoying sex does not equal unwanted pregnancy and abortion. Men enjoying sex and having irresponsible ejaculations is what causes unwanted pregnancies and abortion.
designmom
Bigots introduce an idea that well-meaning people would reject in supertext ("Marginalized people are inferior") via subtext. "Women swept the awards? You can't tell me that's not misandry/affirmative action/identity politics!” Yes, still. Only bigots think that the minimal, recent progress that's been made is "enough." (Or "too much.") And this is a problem because y'all **keep listening to the bigots.** You say you aren't, but you are.
N. K. Jemisin
man, the things i could accomplish if i had the confidence of young white man who thought no one else had ever considered his questions before him.
yashwinacanter
Still waiting on U.S. citizens to realize their warm and fuzzy "American dream" has always been an apocalyptic genocidal nightmare for indigenous people...
alwaystheself
Wild that the "there aren't enough women and minorities to hire" myth continues to coexist alongside the "talented white men aren't getting jobs because they're only hiring for diversity" myth.
BoobsRadley
“Not all men are violent you dumb fucking cunt” is a phrase I think about a lot.
emrazz
The hilarious thing about the alt right is that their entire ideology revolves around the idea of systemic racial discrimination against white people happening at a civilization level. Yet they can't conceive of the idea that it might happen to other races
vexwerewolf
Germany is a wealthy country w generous social programs. The re-emergence of the far right despite that shows that it was never about economics. The same right wing phenomenon is happening across the west as a white fear response to immigration and rising numbers of minorities.
Marcus H. Johnson
This isn’t the bike lane network that Toronto could build with what it’ll cost to rebuild the Gardiner East [elevated highway]. It’s the network Toronto could build with just 2% of what it’ll cost to rebuild the Gardiner East. What could they spend the other 98% on?Education:
Brent Toderian
SUVs aren't really safer than cars, even for the occupants. They win in a head-on collision with a smaller car, but that's a small class of crashes. They take longer to stop and they are less maneuverable than cars, so they make it harder to avoid crashes in the first place. Keith Bradsher wrote in his book High and Mighty that car companies worked hard to create the idea that SUVs were safer than cars without actually outright saying it. Because that would have opened them up to liability for their poor safety performance.
Angie Schmitt
Trying to stop the production or sale of fossil fuel is like asking Niagara Falls to stop falling. It's the gravity, the demand, that controls fossil fuel. Stop the demand. Stop the waste. Cut cars! Stop sprawl.
Free Public Transit
“Consider this: in December 2016 when Copenhagen loudly declared to the world that bicycles out-numbered cars on its streets for the 1st time in decades, the same was already true in 202 different cities and towns across the Netherlands.” - @modacitylife
Brent Toderian
For 1000s of years the basic building block of cities was a narrow lot, zero side set-back, building rising 2 - 4 stories standing shoulder-to-shoulder in a row forming a continuous edge to the street-there are endless iterations of it-mansions to tenements. It's illegal to build:
Mateo_in_ATX
Getting hit by a car at 70km/h is like falling from the 6th floor. At 50km it's like the 3rd floor, at 30km like the 1st:
Brent Toderian
My wife asks, "Why don't registration costs increase for each car registered under the same name/family?"
Eric Saathoff
"We can't allow more density until we have better transit!"
"We can't have better transit until we have the density to support it!"
This is the self-reinforcing circular shell game of conservatism that creates gentrification and sprawl, pricing people into long car commutes.
lawrem_ebooks
Whenever it’s said that “speed wasn’t a factor” in a deadly crash, what they really mean is that the car involved wasn’t technically speeding. It presumes that the speed limit wasn’t too high to begin with. When it comes to death from collisions, speed is almost always a factor.
Brent Toderian
Literature review: $1 invested in "active cities" (walking & biking) yields roughly $13 in economic benefits.
David Roberts
This Teacher Was Taking Three Buses To Work, So Her Students Surprised Her With Better Public Transit Infrastructure.
Reductress
Cars — almost all with single occupants — are the most spatially inefficient means of moving people in the history of humankind. That’s what “congestion” is. Bikes, walking, scooters, and transit are far more efficient moving people in cities.
boyonabike62
The typical European car is parked 92% of the time. It spends 1/3rd of its driving time looking for parking. Its 5 seats only move 1.5 people. 86% of its fuel never reaches the wheels, and most of the energy that does, moves…
BrentToderian
Public transit can reduce traffic fatalities up to 40%. That alone would mean #freetransit would pay for itself.
Free Public Transit
"At minimum, approximately $81 billion per year is spent by the U.S. military protecting global oil supplies. This is approximately 16 percent of recent DoD base budgets…. Spread out over the 19.8 million barrels of oil consumed daily in the U.S. in 2017, the implicit subsidy for all petroleum consumers is approximately $11.25 per barrel of crude oil, or $0.28 per gallon."
David Roberts
"If the cement industry were a country, it would be the third largest emitter in the world.
"In 2015, it generated around 2.8bn tonnes of CO2, equivalent to 8% of the global total – a greater share...
Skeptical Science
Every car-share space in Vancouver replaces 20 personally owned vehicles taking up space in the city. So the exploding membership, in what was already North America’s leading car share city, is a really big deal.
Brent Toderian
This may look like a transit map, but it’s actually a map of typical walking times & distances in the walkable, car-free Spanish city of Pontevedra. A clever idea that every city should steal:
Brent Toderian
We have about twice as many pedestrians getting killed very year in the U.S. as people dying in fires. We have these agencies in every town working to prevent fire deaths -- thousands of employees nationwide. Pedestrians have like two people at America Walks. That's it.
Angie Schmitt
"The shift toward electric vehicles in Europe and Asia is bolstered by government subsidies and tax structures that few American politicians would consider. They include tough gas-guzzler penalties for pickups and SUVs."
William Lindeke
The iron law of climate change is: the less you did to cause it, the more likely you are to pay the price
Bill McKibben
How our street design is killing kids’ play: “yet in neighborhoods around the world, the way we design our streets sends a message, and it is very clear: cars, and not children, are the things we value the most.”
Brent Toderian
So this might be projection, but I think more people would engage w/ climate if the discussion were less science/atmosphere-focused & more focused on the massive, fraught, but quite fascinating social changes needed to cope with it. Less "parts per million," more Green New Deal.
David Roberts
‘In actuality, most pedestrians are much smarter than the dumb systems that are intended to control them — far smarter than signals, and even smarter than self-driving cars.’ Yes.
BicycleAdagio
Public space is the most limited thing in cities. We can use it for cars or we can use it for people.
Michael Clemson
Bikes take A LOT less space to park than cars. Imagine how much space it would take if these were cars? Utrecht's mobility is about space.
Brent Toderian
Too hilly. Too cold. Too hot. Too big. Too small. The only “too” that stops your city from being better for biking is too many cars.
Bicycle Lobby
"Copenhagen took away three percent of inner city parking every year. If you do it slowly enough, nobody notices." —Jan Gehl, @citiesforpeople
Taras Grescoe
“Hell is other people.” — Jean-Paul Sartre.
“Traffic is other people.” — every driver.
Brent Toderian
Pedestrians can only "dart out" from the perspective of the driver. Who, from their own perspective, "darts out" into traffic? Like I can't even imagine how you actually perform that if you were trying. Does anyone actually ever "dart" anywhere else in their lives except into traffic? I can't really think of any other circumstance where people go around "darting."
Angie Schmitt
100+ people died today from car use in U.S. alone (not to mention millions more from particulates & C02), yet some are saying e-scooters and the like should not exist because 'someone might die'
Paul Steely White
Climate chaos is a national security threat. Climate denial is unpatriotic.
Alex Steffen
Re: No one carpooling anymore. One thing about American culture is when we make more money, we use it to isolate ourselves sometimes. That can make us unhappy. Suicide rates lower among POC/lower income. One reason is hardships force more community reliance.
Angie Schmitt
Say it with me:
- We need to lower *all* greenhouse gas emissions, not just CO2
- Not all CO2 emissions come from energy use
- Not all energy use is in form of electricity
So it’s great to get renewable electricity! But that’s only 25% of the problem.
Dr. Jonathan Foley
Who made this? This is correct:
Kristin Miller
Just a reminder:
A bus crash is news because it is highly unusual.
A car crash is not news because they happen every day.
NeverSassyLaura
Whatever else you believe, if you think the government should, in urban places:
• Use zoning to shield single family homes from adjacent multifamily uses
• Favor private automobiles at the expense of more sustainable transportation
...you're a conservative.
lawrem_ebooks
Sorry but there is nothing courageous about divesting from fossil fuels while your city maintains mandatory parking minimums, car-centric streets, and parking placards for hundreds of thousands of insiders.
Streetsblog New York
It’s actually remarkable that we still fall for the sales pitch that cars equal freedom. There’s nothing free about the lack of choice that comes from car dependancy. And building our city-regions around cars is the most costly thing we can do. Does that sound “free” to you?
Brent Toderian
To accommodate the insatiable hunger for regional car capacity, it’s frighteningly easy to wreck the very things in your city that are worth going to, & the walkable urban neighbourhoods that are the real solutions to car congestion:
Brent Toderian
The only historic thing historic districts don’t attempt to preserve is historic walkability and car-free/lite living. We just get segregation and the lack of ADA infra. Abolish historic districts; only protect individual buildings of historic significance.
Zachary Wefel
"There's no such thing as car culture. There are just places where cars are the only choice." –Jarrett Walker
Brent Toderian
“Jaywalking” =$232 fine
Fines for driving over speed limit:
10+mph =$76
14+mph =$128
traffic signals typically give 4-10 seconds for a person to ”legally” enter a crosswalk
System designers penalize walking over driving = not #VisionZero #Enforcement
Bill Schultheiss
All the language we use #bancars, "car dependent" is sorta dated now that everyone mostly drives SUVs. I actually feel like the people still driving cars are sorta the good guys at this point. Especially compared to this.
Angie Schmitt
Preserving parking lots and parking spaces is climate change denial.
riotpedestrian
This is the most unAmerican/commie of my views: Garages and yards suck. Don't get me started on garages. Weird little houses for junk piles. I don't even want a car, much less a house for my car.
Angie Schmitt
sometimes you see something and it just leaves you speechless:
Colin J. Carlson
1.2 million people/year, 3.4K a day, are killed world-wide in traffic crashes, with another 20-50 million a year seriously injured. Via @WHO
Brent Toderian
Pro-bike lane group: we'd like to not die.
Anti-bike lane group: your life doesn't matter compared to parking.
Let's come to a compromise, everyone! Maybe our lives can matter on Sundays and Tuesdays?
Andres4Seattle
Consumption-based footprinting: "If the US were held responsible for all the pollution worldwide that resulted from manufacturing the cars, clothing and other goods that [we] use, the nation’s carbon dioxide emissions would be 14% bigger"
Alex Steffen
Urbanism:
“Democracies are often too stingy in spending money for public purposes, for its citizens feel that the money is theirs. Monarchies and tyrannies can be generous, because they dip their hands freely into other people’s pockets.”
–Lewis Mumford, The City in History
Lou Miranda
Many Americans find it easier to imagine in detail a zombie apocalypse than a future in which they don't own cars.
Alex Steffen
Before choosing bottled water over tap water, remember it takes more than 10X the water that a bottle of water holds to make the plastic bottle and transport the water. And that’s before considering the fuel & greenhouse gases, the 1,000-year bottle life, and how much we’re paying for water.
Brent Toderian
Transportation surveys don’t include options for how to preserve driving or increase usage for the same reasons health researchers don’t ask how they can increase smoking: it makes you sick, and runs a high risk of killing you.
Zachary Wefel
If people bike even when faced with streets that aren’t bike-friendly, expect even more bikes once you make it safer. More bikes means fewer car trips, less climate change, less congestion, less space for parking cars, easier on your city/county/state/federal road system.
Lou Miranda
I’ve said it a million times but if parking and traffic are the constant concern, it isn’t housing or business that are the problem, it’s cars.
“Sorry, you can’t live here. See, I currently can park in front of my house with my garage is full of crap and well, there’s a small % chance that I’d have to park a couple houses away. I’m sure you’ll figure something out.”
“Oof, you want to add more cars - I mean people, no I mean cars - near me? I can get to work in 12 min right now, there’s a small % chance that it’ll take me 13 min instead. I can’t stand by and have my way of life attacked like this.”
mikesonn
A Tesla Model X has 503 horsepower worth of juice and gets 90mpge. My ebike has 1.2 horsepower and gets 1,500mpge. Both get me to work in 18 minutes. We can do better than just electrifying unsustainable autocentric land use.
Zachary Shaner
It's amazing how many discussions of education turn to discussions of eating, as in: "But you have to make your kids eat their vegetables, don't you?" And it's like, "Nope. You really do not have to do that." ;)Income inequality and the failings of capitalism:
Carol Black
me: hey do you think you could hire more than one psychiatrist for the 40,000 people enrolled here
my university: fuck you we're building a football stadium
tanklesbian
Most articles (that appear in Education Week and daily newspapers) about research findings and recommended practices related to schooling should be required to include this caveat: "Phrases such as 'higher achievement,' 'positive outcomes,' and 'better results' refer only to standardized test scores. These are poor indicators of intellectual proficiency and primarily measure socioeconomic status or the extent of students' training in test-taking skills.”
Alfie Kohn
New ACLU report: Millions of students in the U.S. attend schools staffed with police officers but no counselor, social worker, or nurse.
Shannon Watts
Harvard just raised $9.62 billion “gifts” from 153,000 households. They all got “gifts” in return (tax write-offs so governments get less for what they do). Harvard says gifts will help it improve the world. Harvard expects applause...And whew, finally, the best of the rest
Richard D. Wolff
Collective bargaining by unions is the alternative to formal strikes. Formal strikes are the alternative to wildcat strikes. Wildcat strikes are the alternative to literally invading the manor houses and then eating the rich.
Eric Kleefeld
Late stage predatory capitalism and climate change, most likely?
JKSteinberger
There is something fascinating about how our age of earthly inequity, rage and climate risk makes some very privileged people want to flee and spend precious resources in space.
Anand Giridharadas
Something else that did NOT recover after the capitalist crash of 2008: Americans have many fewer children (4.8 million fewer than demographers expected based on 2007 trends). Cant afford them? Their prospects too grim? Young people too depressed, worried?
Richard D. Wolff
Every worker deserves a living wage. Anything less is a form of exploitation. It's ridiculous to pay people less than the cost of living & then ask why poverty & income inequality are persistent issues. There should be a limit to the pay gap that exists between highest and lowest paid employees, especially at these large, multi-billion dollar corporations.
Bree Newsome
Amazon made $5.6 billion in 2017 and paid no federal income taxes.
Haymarket Books
The hardest point to grasp about alcohol:
Most drinkers drink in moderation, doing no harm and suffering no harm.
But the small minority (less than 1/5 of drinkers) who consume to excess account for 80% of the volume and an even larger share of the damage.
And the damage is enormous.
So "I drink, and it's no problem for me" isn't an argument against the severity of the alcohol problem.
And the alcohol industries can't afford to really support moderation in drinking: their revenue flow depends on immoderate drinking.
Mark A.R. Kleiman
The reason we don’t have universal healthcare is the same reason gofundmes for medical care and accessibility are so popular. America likes to pick and choose those they think deserves help, and that often doesn’t include black people, POCs or the poor.
Imani_Barbarin
Yikes. This recent occupational health study found that a 1% decrease in the unionization rate equates to a 5% increase in worker fatalities.
Dave Jamieson, LLC
Median household income grew 1.8% in 2017, a slowdown from the 3.2% increase in 2016 and 5.2% increase in 2015. This slowdown is not what working families need!
Heidi Shierholz
French economist Thomas Piketty said the "most striking" finding regarding America is that, since 1980, "the rise of national income going to the top 1% mirrors the fall of the bottom 50%.” The income share for the bottom 50% plunged from 20% to 12%:
Steven Greenhouse
if a modern newspaper were to write about the girl in this photo the headline would read: HEARTWARMING: this little girl works 18 hours a day so her disabled mother doesn’t starve
Tesseraconteur (commenting on a Lewis Hine photo of a child standing by textile mill equipment)
Socialism means more vacations every socialist should say that all the time
Kate Aronoff
No one needs a billion dollars
No one should have a billion dollars
Anyone who has a billion dollars is a thief
Remi Kanazi
Labor Day wish: Please, no more talk of companies “giving” people jobs. In reality, the gift relationship goes in the opposite direction. Workers give their blood, sweat and tears, sometimes their lives, and in return companies pay them the minimum they can get away with.
Barbara Ehrenreich
The three richest Americans Bezos, Buffett, and Gates hold more wealth than 50 percent of the US population or 160 million people put together! That’s not a functional, free enterprise system. It’s a failure of policy to design markets that value the dignity of work.
Ro Khanna
8 guys in this country have more money than 4 billion people combined, but yeah the mom buying groceries with food stamps is the problem
Mat Molina
Imagine if all the time, energy, and resources we’ve only been giving to politicians was put into setting up systems of mutual aid and democratic institutions? We’re stuck looking up at a select few and hoping they’ll enact radical change instead of reorganizing where we’re at.
Black Socialists of America
Nothing shows off stunted social and emotional development like an adult who is still all puffed up about what college they went to
Andy Richter
Sarchasm - the intellectual gap between the person who makes a sarcastic joke and those who don't get it.
Dave Walters
“The only recognizable feature of hope is action.” —Grace Paley
Alexis Goldstein
New data this morning.
Last year American police left unsolved:
40% of murders
65% of rapes
Yet they found the resources to make:
1,632,921 drug arrests, including
599,282 arrests for marijuana possession
David Menschel
TUESDAY. Your skin is replaced a thousand times during your life. Your face is an amusement park for mites. Your brain gives off more electricity than all the phones in the world. YOU ARE A MOSTLY-IMMORTAL LIGHTNING ELEMENTAL COVERED IN HAPPY BUGS YOU CAN DO ANYTHING so get to it
Chuck Wendig
It’s Cruel to Thank God After Surviving a Tragedy
Hemant Mehta
"There are some stupid mistakes that only very smart people make, and one of them is the notion that a sensible argument seriously presented can compete with a really good piece of theatre."
jay smooth
My theory for a long time: access to digital mapping on smartphones has been an agent of gentrification and displacement and shifted the balance of power dramatically in some communities.
David Eads
If the point of having a society *isn't* to care for each other, to ease suffering and realize each life's potential, literally what is the point? To hoard wealth? To build empires on other people's throats? Life is brief, nothing lasts. Wealth and empires are pointless violence. It will all be consumed by the sun. The question is not how can we make our mark, because it can't last and a mark alone is pointless, but how can we make meaning, ease suffering, be of service, express care, and sweeten our collective existence? Even temporarily, that matters. I live in a society that prioritizes violently subjugating and/or neglecting whole groups of people over taking care of all our basic needs, collectively, because violent subjugation and neglect makes a handful of folks feel superior and of historic consequence. Fuck all of that.
Michelle Allison @fatnutritionist
Amazing that we don't judge current law by the same standards we judge reforms. What if media went as INSANE about every failure of our system of incarceration or every recidivist crime CAUSED by "Tough On Crime" laws, like they do whenever there is reform (drumming up fear)?
Joshua B. Hoe
Curiosity fuels creativity, reduces confirmation bias, and prevents stereotyping. But the more we emphasize efficiency, the less curious people become. To promote a culture of curiosity, make time to ask "What if?" and "How might we?"
Adam Grant
Today I learned that cacti have, in effect, CO2 "batteries" to store the gas from night time so they don't have to open their pores when it's hot/sunny.
pattho
Any technology which relies on the existence of, or attempts to create a, global, unique identity is oppressive by design. Stop" innovating" oppressive structures.
Sarah Jamie Lewis
Margaret Thatcher said there's no such thing as society, just individuals and their families. One of the reasons some people find it hard to absorb the evidence that #depression has deep social causes is that we have internalised Thatcher's message.
Johann Hari
Periodic reminder: many of your students were never taught Roman numerals, so if the text you've assigned uses them for chapter numbers or acts/scenes, you'll have to teach them before they can do the readings you've assigned.
TheMedievalDrK
I'm half "Speak it into existence" and half "Shut up don't jinx it."
Issa Rae
Retweet this if your retirement plan is basically “Civilization will probably crumble before I’m 65 and money will be meaningless anyway.”
Sean Kent
Working 30hrs/week, the average incarcerated worker would make over $11,000 more per year if paid minimum wage. This amounts to about $10,000,000,000 denied to the incarcerated workforce each year.
Samuel Sinyangwe
Technology peaked in 2003 when you could fit your record collection on one device but that device didn't yet spy on you or retrain your brain to be a needy bundle of anxieties.
timescanner
I don't spend any time on Reddit, and every time someone I know mentions something they found on Reddit, I feel completely validated. I'm sure there's cool stuff, but it seems a bit like panning for gold in a chemical toilet.
syntaxjunkie
What makes a person funny is complex but I've always thought empathy is universal to all genuinely funny people.....which explains why angry conservative males aren't funny...well, not intentionally.
SeanBradbery
Don’t tell me about a “united” feeling after 9/11. It was shaky and crappy. You couldn’t play John fucking Lennon on the radio or you weren’t a “patriot.” Fuck that word. We were being manipulated into buying plastic flags and duct tape for our windows. POC were targeted and killed.
Neko Case
since 9/11, we have spent more than $2.8 trillion on counter terrorism efforts, fighting the invisible enemy worldwide, during that time, muslim extremists killed 100 american citizens.
the police killed 9000
the opioid epidemic killed 20,000 just last year
hasanthehun
You never realize how big a traffic signal is until you see a guy carrying one:
John Croman
How much of your understanding of freedom depends on what you can get away with doing to someone less powerful than you?
surlybassey
It's astounding how some people still ask "how they're supposed to explain homosexuality or transgender people to their kids" as if they haven't spent months of Sundays explaining to their kids how an old man built a gigantic floating zoo more or less by himself.
Bilal Dardai
It has been said that a 4-year-old laughs 300 times a day, and a 40-year-old laughs only 4. Why is this? One way we can increase our laughter as we age is to do things that make us giddy--even childhood things like hula hooping, swinging on swings, telling jokes, skipping.
Beth Frates, MD
“A good science fiction story should be able to predict not the automobile but the traffic jam.” – Frederik Pohl
Eugene Wei
My client walked out of Rikers Island today after a jury acquitted him of all charges. He waited in jail for his trial for 3 years. He lost his job and missed his son’s first 3 birthdays simply because he couldn’t afford bail. He’s not unique - THIS IS OUR SYSTEM.
Michael Bloch
Just a reminder that "the moral high ground" is a fictional land that only women and people of color are required to find
lyz lenz
I hate the word “classy.” Being “upper class” doesn’t automatically mean you have elegance, grace and sophistication...just like being poor doesn’t mean you lack those things.
Hari Kondabolu
I think the pressure to give solutions is often a desire for premature absolution. A rigged society is a crime scene, and it is just as important to unravel the whodunit as to move forward.
Anand Giridharadas
A "free thinker" is usually, ironically, someone who thinks the ideas that they've thoughtlessly absorbed from their culture were generated spontaneously in their mind on account of their genius. Serious thinking means knowing where you got your ideas from.
Existential Comics
'Stop looking at your phone' is the new cheer up love. What's wrong with looking at your phone? I have £500 worth of computer in my pocket containing all my friends & the sum of human knowledge but I'm supposed to prefer what, small talk with random johnnies?
Mhairi McFarlane
There is something very troubling when the actual world in front of our eyes is deemed too boring and in need of 'augmenting.’
Rob Hopkins
People are getting rid of their Nikes? Can we make Colin Kaepernick the new face of the AR-15 too?
Matt Fernandez
Debate between credible people with evidence-based positions is healthy. Debate that includes people who are not credible and have baseless arguments is always a failure of ideas.
Paul Thomas
Ran into your boyfriend at the grocery store:
logicbutton
The "marketplace of ideas" is a great phrase, because just like the real marketplace, which ideas get promoted are based solely on what benefits the people who own the medium of exchange, rather than being based any on merit or competition among equals.
Existential Comics
hey, did you know that anxiety can manifest with physical symptoms such as asthma/respiratory issues or hives? this is something I didn’t know and I recently have learned!
eveewing
Skepticism is too often confused with cynicism. A skeptic thinks and doubts and, in so doing, affirms a vision of the way things ought to be. A cynic affirms nothing, takes no action, and ends up helping to perpetuate an objectionable status quo
Alfie Kohn
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