A Logo for the Ages

I usually gripe about logos, and, it seems, especially bank logos. So if I see one that's acceptable, I feel a responsibility to note it.

I had commented on a different bank logo just the day before: "Bank logos are so bad because they have nothing to symbolize. What does a bank do that you can make an image of?"

So I was pleasantly surprised to see one where the bank got around that problem by referring to its age and connection to the community. Even better, it then created a visually pleasing, attention-getting mark to convey that concept:

I'm less crazy about the font they chose for the name. Sans serif seems right, but edging toward the pseudo-futuristic is a bit off.

The bank's tag line is "Rooted in Things that Matter." It was originally founded in 1870 as Seneca Falls Savings Bank, a perfectly good name, really.

But there's only so much a bank can do -- when you get to the fine print, it sounds just about as inhuman as the next corporation:

In March 2000, [the bank] reorganized into the two-tier mutual holding company structure. As part of the reorganization, the bank became a wholly owned subsidiary of Seneca-Cayuga Bancorp, Inc., and Seneca-Cayuga Bancorp, Inc. became the wholly owned subsidiary of Seneca Falls Savings Bank, MHC. The same directors and certain officers who manage the bank manage Seneca-Cayuga Bancorp, Inc. and Seneca Falls Savings Bank, MHC. In 2012, the bank's name and the insurance agency's name were changed to Generations Bank and Generations Agency respectively.

Seen in Auburn, New York.

The Pleasure of Sign Hunting

We're on the road in Wisconsin this week, so it's an opportunity to see a bunch of new signs... which, to me, is almost as exciting as a beautiful vista would be to a more normal person.

In honor of this road trip, I'm starting a new category called Drive-by Shooting for the casual, roadside photos I tend to shoot when I'm in the car. (I've gone back to some of my past Out and About posts and recategorized them as Drive-by Shooting when appropriate.)


We were checking out the downtown of a smallish town called Stanley, a bit east of Eau Claire, when I happened upon this sign on the roof of a chiropractor's office. As a fan of both restroom door figures and diaper changing signs, I thought these refugees from the Men's and Women's Room were a funny bit of generica.

Then I saw the other sign for the same business, hanging under the eaves, just in front of the door.


???!!!! Somewhere between the first sign and the second, the generic mom had a baby! (Or maybe she bought a loaf of bread.) Is this what happens when you go to the chiropractor?


I really had no intention of singling out chiropractors, but a bit farther down the road in Steven's Point I had to stop the car again to get a picture of this sign.

The figures probably would have been enough to merit a drive-by shot -- the funky body shapes, combined with the threatening, huge sun shining like a red rubber ball just over the dad's head and the weird truncated shadows -- but when you add in the business name, I can't help but conclude this may be the funniest sign I have ever seen. (Perhaps the owners were inspired by Roald Dahl.)


Literally half a block from the Twits sign was this bank. Only in northern Wisconsin (at least, I hope it's only in northern Wisconsin) will you see a bank in a log cabin. Not one of us realized it was a bank.

I wonder if they have trouble attracting business... or if, possibly, half their customers started out by asking whether they had any vacancies for the night.


Beyond the architectural camouflage, I couldn't helping noticing the bank's painfully bad logo. Part of its problem is that it doesn't communicate the idea of "bank," but its execution is faulty for more reasons than that:

• It uses a really dated typeface (Clearface, popular in the late '70s)
• The type has been condensed beyond its original proportion, which is always somewhat awkward
  
• The capital P has been turned into an gawky giraffe that interacts with the word "the" too much (my daughter immediately read it off as "P the")
  
• The redundant use of a pine tree as the letter "i". (The designer must have missed the lesson where the teacher explained that it's naive for the picture to exactly mirror the words; it's more effective for the two to interact and let the viewer make closure.)
  
• The eagle over the pine tree... it feels like pandering to the assumed audience in a way that annoys me. There's just something about a log cabin bank, nestled in a bunch of strip malls that used to be forests or farm fields, exploiting a picture of an eagle to appeal to people who have built cabins and houses in areas that used to be woods and farm fields that doesn't sit right with me.

But I really do love Wisconsin. More later.

The Church of Money

What used to be known as Twin City Co-ops Federal Credit Union has been renamed "Spire." Now, I agree that the old name was too long and I imagine it caused the bank all sorts of problems with people thinking they weren't eligible to be a member. Fine. Rename it, I have no problem with that.

But the new name is pretty misguided, and the logo even more so. Check it out. What's the first thing that comes to mind when you see it? A Christian church, right? And even if you know it's a bank of some sort, you can't help thinking it's a Christian bank, like that one up in Elk River where they pray over you when you make a deposit.

To test the validity of my reaction to it, I asked a couple of preteens what type of business they thought the logo was for. "A church," they promptly answered. No prompting from me, I swear.

Did the credit union test this at all? Or just let the (probably in-house) graphics department do what they wanted? Or maybe it's the CEO's idea. Or a committee. Yeah, that's probably it.

To top it off, they came up with this amazingly inept slogan to accompany it:


One star, huh? Even if that star is supposed to be me, I can't get past the not-as-clever-as-the-writer-thinks-it-is diminutive star rating.

Sigh. And I'm going to have to look at this clueless stuff forever, since this is my bank.

Is It a Bank?

This may just be a reactionary, I-don't-like-change post, but I think there's a bit more to it than that. 

I have never been a fan of our local TCF Bank chain, given the politics of its long-time and well-known CEO. Its visual style was conservative, too — an odd bit of neocolonialism, but it was what it was. I mostly ignored it.

Here's a Google Street View image of the bank's East Lake Street location from some time in the recent past:

The one thing it had going for it was that it wasn't flashy.

Not too long ago, TCF was acquired or merged or whatever happens in the banking world with an out-of-state bank called Huntington. I have not paid any attention to this until today when I happened to see this same East Lake branch in its new Huntington branding:

As you can see, they have mostly added a lime green stripe along the cornice and a gray triangle over the door, plus the new name in a lit sign. But overall it looks completely improvised to me, and their color with the name and logo make me think of a test preparation business instead of a bank. (Test prep with a drive-through! What will they think of next.)

Checking around just a bit, I see that their preferred look is more like this:

Which at least makes more sense. 

But I guess we're stuck with these ugly retrofits for a while.

 

A New Lutheran Social Service Logo

Lutheran Social Services has a new logo. And what do you know, it's a major improvement over their old one!

Before:


Boring, if readable, type (Palatino... very desktop-publishing-1987-looking). Colors that seem to evoke the old Norwest Bank identity (it's a Minnesota thing, sorry if it doesn't resonate for you). And that symbol... what is it? Someone playing ultimate frisbee?

After:


The now bolder, sans serif type is still readable (and better for social media and web uses). The colors have a lot more pop. And the designers have made a clever LS interaction that combines to make a heart with a burning flame atop, referring to classic Christian iconography without looking stodgy.

A+ for LSS!

Signs from the Road

Heading back to Minnesota today, passing miles of cornfields and too much Generica. But here are a few things that caught my attention, for one reason or another.


Wow. How's this for a nonsensical business name? I think it's a play on Quaker State -- Pennsylvania's nickname -- which is also the name of a motor oil, and thus the lube... but did anyone consider the fact that it's pretty unappetizing?

Good to know that its a registered trademark, though. I'll be sure not to infringe upon it.


Also seen in Erie, Pennsylvania. That is one great logo, hey? I always say, a handshake says it all when it comes to business imagery.


Watch out, or that mean electricity monster will zap you when you aren't expecting it!


A new brand of SUV, I guess.


Shouldn't it be Park 'n' Eat?


Not as bad as Roasted Baby Vegetables, but ewwww, just the same.

Something Else Is Rotten in Canton, Ohio

I don't know what it is about this place (which I haven't mentioned in quite a while), but ProPublica had a big story today about a nest of health-care scammers based in and around the northeastern Ohio city of Canton. 

Liberty HealthShare isn't health insurance, but it's not the kind of Christian mutual aid group it purports to be, either. From ProPublica's research, it sounds like it's a get-rich-fairly-quick racket for a connected group of friends and family. 

And it's connected to CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Coalition, too, because... of course it is. Their logo was just behind Donald Trump's right elbow while he was hugging the American flag in that infamous stunt.

Liberty and "health plans" like it are a loophole in the Affordable Care Act, enacted with the help of Iowa's Chuck Grassley. They counted as coverage when there was a coverage mandate, even though too often they will not cover your health costs, as many of their "members" have found out in their time of need.

Meanwhile, the scammers have gotten rich off the monthly payments their dupes made in good faith. And the company claims that much of the money it takes in is not revenue because the money is "under the control of its members." In reality, the company is keeping two sets of books, according to ProPublica.

ProPublica talked to hundreds of members and former members with complaints against the company. The Ohio Attorney General's office has heard complaints from people in 44 states. 

The Massachusetts insurance board has published findings showing that Liberty spends 56¢ for every dollar it takes in from members; the ACA requires insurers to spend at least 80¢ of every dollar. Liberty — since it is not classified as insurance, and has a religious exemption — is not bound by that rule.

And then there's the part about the bank they've bought in the Ozarks. Don't miss that.

Summer, All a-Twitter

Another July, and Twitter is still here. Though I hear they may start filtering our feeds, similar to Facebook, based on some mysterious algorithm that figures out what you're interested in.

Regular readers of my best-of-Twitter posts may note a bunch here from a new source named Jamie Kilstein, a male feminist vegan atheist comedian. He has a podcast called Citizen Radio.

I noticed that several of this month's tweets are about the Hobby Lobby Supreme Court case:

Is it illegal for me to ask what religion a corporation is during a job interview?
By Mat Honan

An illustrated guide to American personhood:


By Sarah Baker

It's almost as if the linkage between employment and health care is a fundamentally terrible idea.
By Tom Tomorrow

You know, I *did* have this sneaky feeling that making a basic human right dependent on market/employer whims was kinda iffy.
By Blake Stacey

Reminder: It's 2014 and still conservatives are all fussy pants that women can suppress our own ovulation like it belongs to us.
By Amanda Marcotte 

I wonder how many corporations would object to paying for female contraception if they had to pay for maternity leave...
By Jason Sweeney

Still waiting for a corporation to have a religious objection to paying so little that their employees have to live off food stamps.
By Pete Nicely

Keep your filthy hands off my guns while I decide what you can & can't do with your uterus.
By Sarah Silverman 

Am always intrigued when Rush Limbaugh, married like 20 times & childless, says how birth control is just for hos.
By Josh Marshall Also faved by: Jen Deaderick

If a business’ owners want religious protection, they should lose all corporate/LLC protections and isolations, as the company is personal.
By Marco Arment

And others are about the child refugee build-up at our southern border:

BREAKING: Nation of immigrants who fled persecution persecutes immigrants fleeing persecution, irony surrenders to stupidity
By Rex Huppke 

The Statue of Liberty, traditionally the symbol of Protecting The Homeland from immigrants:


By David Roth

Nothing shows your pride in America more than standing at the border and screaming at people who want to be Americans.
By Frank Conniff

God, grant me the serenity to yell at immigrant children, the courage to still say I'm a Christian, and the ignorance to not get the irony.
By Rex Huppke

But otherwise, no major patterns, other than my usual topics, strewn throughout:

An English teacher discussing homophones on a school's website was fired for "promoting a gay agenda." Really.
By Hemant Mehta

Attn Business Insider, that's not his "torso":


By Rob Beschizza

There's something vaguely terrifying about a grown man wearing overalls. If only one side is buttoned, the end is near.
By Aparna Nancherla

If they put Shirley Chisholm on the $20 I would cash out my bank account in $20s and roll around in them.
By Sarah Jaffe

It's still strikes me as really weird that we debate how to seriously cut poverty as if no one else has figured it out.
By Matt Bruenig

Here is a cool monster from a medieval map if you needed that today. It is a “sea-pig.” (via smithsonianmag.com)


By mapzen

Markets structurally impoverish the disabled, elderly, young, families with children -- the constant churn of those it unemploys.
By Matt Bruenig

Is it inevitable that with age, even smart people start saying things that are okay, but slightly, weirdly, out of touch? Don't answer that.
By Monika Bauerlein

America’s debt load:


By Demos_Org

Play With It As It Lays. #DogMovies.
By Frank Conniff

Poor kids need democratic schooling the most because they're often the ones confined in the most regimented, authoritarian environments.
By Nikhil Goyal

Segregation within school is at least as much of a problem as segregation by school. Aggregate number's hide this.
By Adam Holman

"Whiteness is the original identity politics. And, worse still, it was militarized identity politics." – Gerald Horne
By Greg Carr

"The redemptive power of _______" is a phrase usually applied to things that don't work for me.
By Chris Steller

We should question the sacrosanct nature of college, but also acknowledge that alternatives to college aren't attainable for low-income.
By Nikhil Goyal

I hate hipsters. Their smug faces, their vegan diet, tiny feet and sawdust bedding. No wait, I meant hamsters.
By Athena Scalzi

I look forward to the day when motorists have to roll down the window and push a button...


By Highchair Kings

"I admire anybody who has the guts to write anything at all." – E. B. White
By Jon Winokur

My mind boggles at the amount of effort spent on the technical solution of a CMS [content management system, used on websites] when content and people problems are virtually ignored.
By Mark Boulton

When will they make a movie about a bunch of cool dudes having one last adventure before settling down? Come on, Hollywood!
By jamiekilstein

We went directly from "gays destroy society" (actually still in TX GOP platform) to "waaa stop oppressing me" without pausing at "I'm sorry."
By Josh Barro

In 2013 Cook County [Chicago] spent $500M on prisons and $1.9M on violence prevention. What if we reversed those numbers?
By Emily McGinley

Good thing the USA has "In God We Trust" on their money, otherwise I might think they were some greedy, selfish, corrupt jerks.
By almightygod

ITS NOT ABOUT LACK OF WATER. IT'S ABOUT RICH MOTHERFUCKERS TAKING WATER FROM POOR PEOPLE TO MAKE A HEARTLESS POINT. JESUS.
By jamiekilstein

Who benefits from getting society to believe the sky is falling?
By Sisyphus38

It's sad to live in a country where you dread important cases going to the Supreme Court.
By jamiekilstein

Unclear on the concept:


By Stacey Burns

"People talking about traditional marriage between a man & a woman usually also mean the woman should be submissive." Quoting #citizenradio
By Faith Beauchemin

I have an alert set up for when we all stop capitalizing the Web.
By Chris Steller

The idea that we can't have legitimate critiques of elected officials we support is absurd.
By Brittney Cooper

Before you marry a person you should first make them use a computer with slow internet to see who they really are.
By Bill Murray

People often forget that when Milton Glaser designed the “I ❤ NY” logo, he also gave birth to the whole idea of using “I ❤ for anything.
By Nick Sherman

Cooking pasta when suddenly, Cookie Monster:


By Halloween Costumes 

I hate when adults call kids lazy. It means that the kid doesn’t want to do what you want him to do but would rather do what he wants to do.
By Sisyphus38

I really wish Star Trek hadn't skipped over the part about how Earth became a peaceful planet. That seems like useful information right now.
By pourmecoffee

It’s very important that the department stores of the world keep fat people looking frumpy. So you can spot us in a crowd.
By Rainbow Rowell

New female Thor to be paid less than male Thor. Reports already suggest she is "bossy" and displays "God-like" arrogance.
By Wajahat Ali

You think people are pissed about a black Captain America & female Thor, wait until they realize Superman was an undocumented immigrant baby
By Steve Marmel

Here's what happens if you wash and blow-dry a cow.


By Matt Owen

It's weird that when it comes to the idea of Love Thy Neighbor, many Conservative Christians want a religious exemption.
By Frank Conniff

Since I ride a bike I keep getting told to OBEY ALL TRAFFIC LAWS, but when I do that in the car it pisses people off. Super confusing.
By Ken Paulman

Used to be afraid of Jehovah's Witnesses talking to me about Jesus & God, now afraid of foodies talking to me about cast iron pans and chili.
By Rich Lowtax Kyanka

If you get in arguments about the atrocities happening in Gaza feel free to use me as your "Jewish Friend."
By jamiekilstein

Talking about charter schools without talking about selection bias is just talking.
By Patrick Steele

Are political reporters legally required to use the term "partisan wrangling" in every article they write?
By Jonathan Blake

"Each of us values what we read differently. Rubrics depend on the pretense that all readers can or should agree." – Maja Wilson
By Alfie Kohn

I get chain mail and chain letters mixed up.
By Chris Steller

Efficiency is bullshit. Efficiency is the demand of an industrial system wanting us to bend humanity to the demand of money and machine
By Audrey Watters

Whenever writing seems too hard, I remember that Black Beauty managed to write his autobiography, and he didn't even have hands.
By M. Molly Backes

One more time: Jails and prisons ARE inherently violent. They ARE violence.
By Prison Culture

If I found out Michael Bay was going to make a 3D Calvin and Hobbes movie I think that's when I would stop joking and actually hunt him down.
By jamiekilstein

Asking Dick and Liz Cheney about public policy is like asking Jenny McCarthy about vaccines.
By Josh Barro

Problem: Daughter got totally gendered toys for her birthday. Solution: teach her to disassemble them.


By Don Neufeld

Gazans seem to have a lot of grit and persistence to withstand this stuff every few months. Bet their test scores are through the roof.
By Matt Bruenig

We're giving $8 million a day to Israel to help the occupation while people in Detroit are getting their water turned off.
By Dawud Walid

In a world where graphic design is crime one brave frog stuck in white cube in the fog zone won't forget his passion:


By AD

When you use data to study people, ask "who gains power with this info?" If it's not the people whose data you are using, there's a problem.
By Hilary Mason

Seriously though, Hollywood is never more committed to non-traditional casting than when it's picking Northern Europeans for bible epics.
By AdamSerwer

"The emotional, sexual and psychological stereotyping of females begins when the doctor says, 'It's a girl.'" — Shirley Chisholm
By The Crisis Magazine

I don't believe in broad statements.
By Chris Steller

"Why buy a cow if you get the milk for free?" the man asked. "I'm not for sale," growled the cow. The man screamed as a talking cow ate him.
By Julieanne Smolinski

They told me I couldn't have a pet dinosaur. They LIED:



By Erin Schmalfeld

One way that power factions train people to submit is to make them so jaded they say "this doesn't surprise us" for every abuse.
By Glenn Greenwald

$400 billion for warplanes. There's no financial crisis in the US. We simply care more about killing brown people than we do anything else.
By Saladin Ahmed

When you concentrate on my many weaknesses, I will too, and I will become that story.
By Sisyphus38

Being a lady means realizing that, if you went back in time to meet your heroes, a lot of them would probably try to grope you.
By Maggie Koerth-Baker

I am embarrassed at some of the opinions I held 10 years ago. I wonder if I will think the same 10 years from now.
By Sisyphus38

Never liked the term “nonfiction." The truth should have its own word, and not be shackled to its antonym.
By Neil deGrasse Tyson

Neither standards nor testing nor weakening tenure address the opportunity gap; these are red herrings unlike equity in funding & class size.
By leonie haimson

Tweets about food stamps are fun to read because a lot of them are impossible, e.g. people claiming someone used food stamps at McDonalds.
By Matt Bruenig

Good food stamp critics are also clairvoyant -- they know people's intentions and home life details.
By David Kaib

Thanking God for sparing you in a natural disaster is like sending a thank-you note to a serial killer for stabbing the family next door.
By Mrs. Betty Bowers

Something has gone very wrong if we'll pay $5 for a greeting card, $3 for gift wrap, but resent paying more than $2.99 for a book.
By John Connolly

"We need to invade the Middle East to get those women back their rights! ...Just not equal pay, birth control and a say in their bodies!"
By jamiekilstein

"We show grace to the institutions of systemic sin while condemning the individual sinner. It should be the other way around."
By Craig Greenfield

We need less hackathons, more apprenticeships. Less bootcamps, more classes. Less rockstars, more mentors. Develop people instead of product.
By Jordan Rinke

If you want great public schools, start with children and work UPWARD. Instead, our policy makers start with corporations and work DOWNWARD.
By Mark Naison

YOU are likely a WORKER, and thus, it is in YOUR best interest for EVERY WORKER to have the RIGHTS you want for yourself.
By Paul Thomas

If a type designer is staring a little too intently at your chest, you're probably wearing a shirt with their font on it.
By Process Type Foundry

"Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within." —James Baldwin
By Paul Thomas

Someone found Godzilla in Michigan:


By Halloween Costumes

Look at it this way, if there were no hypocrites there would be no cartoonists.
By Mathew Paust

FACT: In recent study, majority of white grads found a job through friends/family. 68% of black grads found it on their own.
By ColorLines.com

This generation is bad because they spend too much time on their phones, unlike the Good Generation that fire-hosed black people.
By Alaina Grey

He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.
By Socrates

Ha!


By Marcus Brigstocke

How to ruin a book: Step 1) Assigned Reading. Step 2) Chapter Questions. Step 3) Vocabulary.
By Paul Pichurski

I think the Melissa Harris Perry Show is the only news show whose idea of covering women's issues isn't shopping tips or keeping-your-hubby-in-line segments.
By jamiekilstein

It's almost crazy to think that before Twitter, all of this nonsense stayed in people's heads.
By Chris Rock

Twitter, March 2024

The topics on Twitter/X in March were similar to those on BlueSky, with a bit more about Palestine and the State of the Union. Overall, there were more tweets than there were posts on BlueSky, I'm sorry to say. Which means there's still more content in my feed there, or I'm spending more time there, or both. Some of these people are in both places, though they post more to Twitter. Most are not on BlueSky, however. Most of my local people have switched, and some significant non-local people, but there's clearly a large base of stubborn holdouts trying to work around the Nazi-in-chief.

Everything below the line is quoted from the attributed account, and is in reverse chronological order, except the images, which I move up or down for better visual balance.

____

Why do TV interviewers let newsmakers get away with dodging questions by saying they’re “not focused on that”? Why don’t the interviewers say, “Well, get focused on it please because you’re on TV and I’m asking the questions”?
@MarkJacob16

A fun fact for everyone saying Trump isn’t smart enough to be a dictator: he doesn’t have to be. He’s an instinctual authoritarian serving as a figurehead for wealthy, antidemocratic oligarchs who have systematically undermined the government and society for a half century.
Jared Yates Sexton

Western nations will destabilize an entire country to gain access to its natural resources and then their   scholars will turn around and write books about how the exploited country is suffering from a “resource curse.” No, sir, your country is the curse.
Marius Kothor, Ph.D.

Leto II on his way to greet Duncan Idaho 23:


@pyrameadhead

Indicator species can help observers identify if an ecosystem is healthy or not. Children on bikes are the indicator species for healthy urban environments.
@CriticalMassAKL

“Congestion” is just a phenomenon that happens when they rent out space on the road for less than its equilibrium price. Kinda like how in the USSR they would fix bread prices too low, so people had to queue up for hours to bid for food instead of bidding up the price with money.
Will Fedder

Dionne Warwick, upset with misogyny in rap lyrics, once set up a meeting with Snoop Dogg and Suge Knight at her home, where she demanded that they call her a “bitch” to her face. Snoop Dogg later said, “I believe we got out-gangstered that day.”
@fasc1nate

Funny how the Supreme Court was able to resolve the issue of Trump's ballot access very quickly, but it takes such a long time to create Congressional districts that comply with the constitution.
Dean Baker

The fietstrommel (“bicycle drum”) has become a standard feature of the Rotterdam streetscape, with over 1,000 installed across the city. It plays a critical role in their mobility system, offering residents a secure and sheltered place to park their bike for about €5 per month:


Melissa & Chris Bruntlett @modacitylife

Brian Pritchard, the first vice chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, who has long pushed Trump’s so-called “big lie” that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, has been ordered to pay a fine for having illegally voted nine times.
PoliticsVideoChannel

So why does [Pritchard] pay a fine, and the Black woman in TX who mistakenly voted once while in probation gets five years in prison?
Pam Keith, Esq.

How does Japan have:
-quiet low-traffic neighborhoods
-eyes (and plants) on the street
-walkable, high density areas w/ detached single-family homes
-bustling, cozy commercial strips
-no street parking
It's the narrow streets! Here are some stats to keep in mind: In the US, a typical residential street is 50 feet wide. In Japan, even the *new* streets are 16 feet wide on average. And as late as 1990, half of all Japanese lived on streets that were less than 12 feet wide!


Henry Grabar

I live in a dystopia where, on the issue of holding insurrectionists to account, Liz Cheney would have made a better attorney general than Merrick Garland
Mehdi Hasan

Statistics say 94% of abortions occur in the first trimester. Some think this means we should be fine with a national ban at 15 weeks, but I see it very differently. This tells me that those who will be most harmed are those with severe pregnancy complications later in pregnancy
Ponygirl923

I'm  trying to read Project 2025 without dozing off so as not to miss gems like, "require completion of the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) — the military entrance examination — by all students in schools that receive federal funding."
Rick Perlstein

Ozempic can be produced for less than $5 a month, a new study found, but Danish company Novo Nordisk charges Americans $968.52.
Steven Dennis

I sent my cousin
the school teacher
an article with the headline
“Kids missing more school
since the pandemic”
and asked if she
was seeing something similar  
to which she replied by noting
that “since” is an odd way
of spelling “because of.”
Plague Poems

BREAKING: California State Bar recommends that John Eastman be disbarred.
Anna Bower

MAGAs are labeling DEI as "Didn't Earn It," which is wild because in reality, generating historic wealth through 2 billion acres of stolen land from Native Americans, enslaving Black people for 300 years, banning Asian immigration until 1965, and banning women from financial access…
Qasim Rashid, Esq.

As tech companies like Apple, Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft grew to become some of the most valuable companies in the world, the U.S. lost a third of its newspapers and two-thirds of its newspaper journalists. They cannot be replaced with AI.
The Brookings Institution

At Supreme Court today, I spoke with 9 reporters. Only 1 had heard of Leonard Leo. The still invisible man behind Dobbs, mifepristone ban, gun violence, etc. And reporters still clueless.
@Thcarter5

"the four ages of white innocence":


Conrad Barwa

One of the most consistently popular policy proposals, across parties, is raising taxes on the rich. Yet one of America's two political parties is devoted, above all else, to reducing taxes on the rich. And that's the party most Americans trust more on the economy. If you have an explanation other than ignorance, I'd like to hear it.
David Roberts @drvolts

I have this crazy idea that news outlets with the means can report the news instead of finding an ideologically balanced set of analysts to comment on it
David Dayen

Conservative racism is so ingrained that there is NO social problem they won't blame on Black and brown folks: now they claim the Baltimore bridge incident was because of DEI. No evidence. No logic. But they say it anyway because they hate folks of color just that much
Tim Wise @timjacobwise

Conservatives are going after EPA's new tailpipe standards based on the nebulous "Major Questions Doctrine," which holds that right-wing judges can strike down any law or regulation that gives them bad feels.
David Roberts @drvolts

The survey found that while 42% of adults attended a religious service almost every week between 2000 and 2003, that number has dropped to 30% today.
The Thinking Atheist

In Louisiana, 18-year-olds can now carry a concealed weapon with no permits or training. That should help bring down the state's murder rate, which is the second highest in the nation.
David Roberts @drvolts

Fascinating how Republicans started hating democracy the moment you got caught trying to steal it.
@hearinladotcom

Just a complete failure of a news organization:


@TWLadyGrey

Once upon a time someone mocked McNeil Lehrer News Hour's inane evenhandedness thus: "Now over to Pol Pot for a positive view of genocide." In other words, there's a difference between being neutral and being neutered.
Rebecca Solnit

I think the key [to NBC's Ronna McDaniel hire] is understanding that the people who run the corporations who own the journalism outlets do not give even the tiniest shit about journalistic values.
David Roberts @drvolts

But, can we just pause here to say that it's ridiculous that SCOTUS is very worried about doctors being "forced" to perform abortions (they're not) but don't care about [checks notes] WOMEN BEING FORCED TO BRING A PREGNANCY TO TERM AGAINST THEIR WILL.
Elie Mystal

Is AI truly some brave new thing? Or is it just all the old human problems — theft, exploitation, pollution, monopoly — cloaked in a new hoodie?
The.Ink, from Anand Giridharadas @AnandWrites

The fact that the two top killers of kids (guns, car crashes) are largely attributable to an unwillingness to regulate adult’s toys is just fucking exhausting.
Alex Hallowell

the climate crisis has revealed that many “environmentalists” are actually just preservationists who care about protecting the status quo over everything else, even if the status quo means higher carbon emissions
@sam_d_1995

"Indian Land For Sale" US Department of the Interior advertisement, 1911. Birds of a colonial feather flock together:


@SpiritofLenin

The wife of James Ho, one of the circuit judges who banned mifepristone last year, took multiple payments from the group that brought it to court.
The Daily Beast

Back when ethics rules were written, women didn't usually work outside the home or have a bank account, so the idea of bribing a man's wife didn't make any sense. But now that seems to be the tactic of choice to have plausible deniability. They need to update the rules.
Daniel Feldman

"I don't want everybody to vote." –Paul Weyrich (1942-2008):


1. Weyrich coined the term 'Moral Majority' with Jerry Falwell in 1979.  
2. He co-founded the Heritage Foundation, ALEC, and the Center for National Policy.
3. He remains virtually unknown…
The Intellectualist @highbrow_nobrow

Enshittification is relentless. The collapse of the restraints that penalized tech companies who abused their users - competition, regulation, interoperability and their own workers' consciences - has inculcated every tech boss with an incurable enshittification imperative. Rather than focusing on improving the platforms, we should be *evacuating* them.
Cory Doctorow

"Renters don't deserve any special privileges. If the prevailing market price of housing in their neighborhood goes up, they can pay it or move. That's just life." –Usually someone with a 30-year mortgage and a fixed monthly payment
Daniel Herriges @DanielStrTowns

when you think about a LOT of the guns flooding the streets are from gun thefts from 2nd amendment gun lusters leaving guns in their cars cuz they MUST carry, because they are scared of the guns flooding the streets, its all such quintessential American idiocracy.
D.A. Bullock @BullyCreative

You don't need to ask why American journalism is broken when major media companies pay $300,000 per year contracts for opinion voices like Ronna McDaniel and $200 per article for fact-based freelance journalism.
Max Burns

Despite decades of scientific research, guess what you’ll never see catch on in edu-fads?
The science of poverty
The science of racism
What really impacts achievement the most.
Paul Thomas @plthomasEdD

Raising transit fares for low-carbon-footprint travelers who on average make $36k a year instead of raising gas taxes for wealthier and higher footprint drivers is precisely why California constantly fails its climate goals. The incompetent East Bay.
Darrell Owens @IDoTheThinking

last month NBC News laid off about a 100 journalists. today, they found the money to pay Ronna Romney McDaniel.
Eric Schultz


yurts & casseroles @Christin612

There is, on an enormous scale, white fear of living in a more plural and egalitarian country for which one was not trained or prepared. There is a fear, however irrational, of being treated the way your ancestors once treated others.
The.Ink, from Anand Giridharadas @AnandWrites

paris builds more car-free spaces in ONE MONTH than seattle has built in more than 2 decades. wow.
Mike Eliason @holz_bau

Bodies are delicate, life is fragile, cars are horribly dangerous weapons, and it's impossible to both prioritize human life and also prioritize cars. There is no hedging. Can't have it both ways. Leaders need to choose weapons or life and be held accountable to their choice.
@anniefryman

Want fewer traffic jams? Don't force everyone onto the same road. When there's only one way to get anywhere, traffic jams happen even with relatively low population densities. But streets on a grid pattern offer many ways to get from point A to point B:


Strong Towns

A big chunk of all vehicle miles traveled in America is families taking their kids to youth sports.
Joe Weisenthal @TheStalwart

Trump says people in the US illegally are "KILLING" Social Security and Medicare. But Social Security's own actuary has said unauthorized workers are a net benefit to the program's trust fund — they pay into it and aren't eligible for benefits.
Sahil Kapur

We actually kind of scam illegal immigrants into paying for the retirement benefits of old people who want to deport them.
Sir Humphrey @bdquinn

I didn't think I could hate private planes more, but lo! It turns out that they represent 7% of flights handled by the FAA but contribute just 0.6% of the taxes in the fund that maintains aviation safety. Fucking freeloaders!
Dr. Genevieve Guenther @DoctorVive

Every two minutes, Greenland loses a million tons of ice.
David Wallace-Wells

This is what the 30 million tonnes of ice that Greenland loses every hour looks like, if it were positioned next to the Eiffel tower before melting:


@LeonSimons8

Sports in 2014: We can't ever put a team in Las Vegas, just the idea of being *near* gambling is a bridge too far for us.
Sports in 2024: Using promo code "ADDICT", you can now wager the deed to your parents' house on our games through our official league app.
Velodus

Did you know that 3 million Americans spread across 7 states are likely to decide the 2024 election? Just 1 percent of the nation. These folks, who probably are disengaged from politics, will decide the fate of the US.
David Corn

When visiting New York in the 90's, Benjamin Netanyahu used to sleep in Jared Kushner's childhood bedroom. This was reported by the NYT in 2017 and it seems relevant to any reporting on Kushner's poisonous views about Palestine.
Naomi Klein

Not so long from now it’s going to become completely clear how arrogant we’ve been to believe that we could “adapt” to the Climate Crisis, and how “climate adaptation” helped enable our continued inaction around the most important need in human history, Climate Change MITIGATION.
Brent Toderian

We know how to make streets safer but don't want to do it because we just want to let people drive fast:


@BethOsborneT4A

Jared Kushner says Gaza’s ‘waterfront property could be very valuable.' This is the GOP alternative to Biden on Gaza in November. Sheesh.
Mehdi Hasan

DARPA selected us to further develop the concept of building a moon-based railroad network that would transport humans, supplies and resources for commercial ventures.
Northrop Grumman

I can't even take a train directly from Indianapolis to St. Louis, but yeah, this is being talked about.
American Fietser

One underlying theme of all rewards and punishments is power: Those who have it use them to control those who don't. Another, less obvious premise is mistrust: To rely on bribes or threats is to assume the recipients will respond only to extrinsic inducements. Note that defenders of behavior control also tend to demand direct, explicit instruction. Makes sense because that, too, is rooted in distrust - in this case, of kids as learners. This sour cynicism is then rationalized as realism; those who demur are dismissed as Romantics.
Alfie Kohn

Biodiversity loss and climate change are not information deficit problems, and will not be solved by ever more precise data about where and how fast they are happening:


Dr Charlie Gardner

1,000 (One thousand) Americans have been killed in car accidents or by drivers and thousands more have been severely injured for life during the last 7 days media has gone nuts about Boeing plane parts.
Darrell Owens @IDoTheThinking

The implicit ideology of zoning is that neighborhoods are static: once built, their basic physical character should never change. Once in a while you see someone make it explicit. Real cities can't operate this way. Communities' needs evolve, and so must the built environment. Zoning, to be clear, is not in any legal sense a promise that what is disallowed now will always be disallowed. Changing zoning is not a breach of contract. But lots of property owners FEEL like it is.
Daniel Herriges @DanielStrTowns

swiss cities basel, geneva. and zurich could all fit inside spokane, washington with 20 square miles to spare. our planning is inefficient:


push the needle

The outrage at the thought of migrants hurting white women comes from the *migrants* part of it, not the *hurting* part of it. The outrage derives from the fact that people on the very bottom of the social hierarchy are claiming spoils they are not due. That's the violation. In other words, the message is, "THEY are presuming to exercise power over OUR white women!" It's the same sense of violation they feel when black people are given slots in top universities or positions of power in the coporate world -- the people beneath us are getting our stuff!
David Roberts @drvolts

To get people to embrace violence, fill them with existential dread- the fear that it's the Leader or the abyss. This is an incitement to violence speech. Trump is a propaganda machine devoted to destroying America.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat

The George Orwellian Party... (GOP) (From The Buffalo News):


Adam Zyglis

I wonder if anyone told Merrick Garland that it is his job to make sure Trump does not steal the election by preventing people from voting or keeping their votes from counting.
Dean Baker

The kinds of metrics that bossware gathers might be useful to workers, but only if the workers get to decide when, whether and how to share that data with other people.
Cory Doctorow

If Trump were to issue some statement on Truth Social  that "someone might be a bad person, but don't waste time harassing them, we'll beat them in the election," the threats would stop immediately.
Dean Baker

Boeing used to be run by engineers. Hospitals used to be run by doctors. Universities used to be run by professors. There is a bloated  corporate class sucking the lifeblood out of every institution in this country. The stuff going on with Boeing has been happening in every industry for a long time. All of the skilled individuals who actually *do* the job are understaffed and overworked while the administrative class of MBA vampires with email and PowerPoint jobs continues to grow.
@DiabolicalSpuds

At Chiefs parade and rally, 12 people pulled guns, 6 open fired. The farce of Missouri’s approach to guns. Lots of armed people with Stand Your Ground rights didn’t stop a mass shooting, it propelled it. Repealed purchaser licensing facilitates gun trafficking
Daniel W. Webster

Every US city has a beloved historic district that's basically just: the completely normal pre-zoning neighborhood we didn't destroy in the 1950s. (And that's thoroughly illegal to build today):


M. Nolan Gray

Does Musk need to turn the X logo into a swastika for everyone to get the picture, or can we all just "be here now"?
@gilduran76

So Fani Willis was basically put on trial for $3500 of vacation expenses. But Clarence Thomas likely received MILLIONS of dollars in free travel. Where's the trial for Thomas?
Tristan Snell

Ironically, a contemporary Palestinian, particularly in the West Bank and Galilee, is likely to have more Israelite ancestry than a contemporary diaspora Jew.
Mouin Rabbani

A Missouri family of four making $40,000 a year can’t qualify for free/reduced lunch. A Missouri family of four making $166,500 a year can qualify for free/reduced private tuition.
Jess Piper @piper4missouri

Confidence in "the press" declines linearly with getting your news from social media. Multi-causal, but one cause is online news commentary is overwhelmingly antagonistic ("'they' are wrong, I am right"), so everybody likes their news, which tells them to distrust The News
Derek Thompson

Prior to the development of COVID vaccines, the virus killed Democrats and Republicans equally. But after vaccines became available, overwhelmingly red counties had much higher COVID death rates than dark Blue counties. This didn’t have to happen:


Jonathan Reiner @JReinerMD

In the eyes of the media, BIDEN is running for president, a job that requires extraordinary acuity, insight, scrupulousness, and patriotism. But Trump is running for Clown President, a job that requires being the biggest goof in the room. And that’s the standard each is held to.
Will Stancil

I once met a highway engineer who now works in airport system planning. He said moving to aviation was eye-opening:
"It's zero tolerance with safety."
"Yeah, we have Vision Zero for planes."
"Think how wasteful it is!"
I think this says a lot about highway engineering culture.
@ryan_hassett

I think a lot about divisions among democrats, and to me the core issue is not police, trans rights, Israel. The fracture turns on who recognizes corporate power as the force behind economic inequality, hunger, climate change, and who lets corporations write their talking points.
@mrotzie

All of a sudden, the entire news industry is ONLY using passive voice, like:
“Today, reproductive rights have been overturned while affirmative action and DEI policies are being dismantled, as more than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza.”
We can see what you’re doing.
Michael Harriot

A report commissioned to show low traffic neighborhoods are unpopular concludes they're popular. It’s just a few shouty people on the internet and a culture war which is not working:


Bob From Accounts

Let’s ban TikTok, say politicians who let Uber write laws for them.
@mrotzie

Around two-thirds of all Dutch children walk or cycle to school, preventing an estimated one million car journeys across the country each morning. That’s much less strain on their streets, their wallets, and their lives; simply by enabling safe and active travel in their cities.
Melissa & Chris Bruntlett @modacitylife

25,000+ people showing up to vote for Nikki Haley in the Republican primary in Georgia, a week after she dropped out, in a state decided in 2020 by fewer than 12,000 votes
Edward-Isaac Dovere

As long as what happens at the level of the pedestrian is remarkable you can create a remarkable city. Too many cities obsess about their skyline and forget about the street. I can’t even remember what this building looked like but this entrance is truly memorable. #SanFrancisco:


Jennifer Keesmaat

In 5 months Israel has killed more children in a strip of land the size of Philadelphia than all conflicts worldwide did in the past 4 years combined. Destroying a population from its roots.
Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur

Trump and Walt Nauta are criminals. A criminal who could be president because he owns the judge. There is no way he gets elected after America hears the evidence in this case and he is convicted. But Judge Cannon won’t let that happen.
Ron Filipkowski

Trump misspelled Laken Riley's name, autographed the picture, and then smiled broadly while holding a photo of a murdered woman.
James Surowiecki

If you are attracted to rationalism (as I am!), your primary obligation is not rudeness or insensitivity to group dynamics (you probably already have that covered) but ***humility***. You should be aware, at all times, that you too are probably falling short of True Reason. If you truly take that humility on board, then you take a different perspective on how to make human affairs and societies more rational. The answer is *not* for a handful of bros to train themselves to be Übermenschen, super-reasoners, and then lecture the rest of us. You realize no individual reasoner (or special group of "rationalists") is ever going to be reliable over the long-term. We're all human. The only hope is inscribing the practices and values of truth-finding into institutions that transcend any set of individuals.
David Roberts @drvolts

What real rationalism looks like - actively wanting others to poke holes in your assertions and regular self-examination for logical mistakes. If being questioned angers you, you might not be rational.
@DavidGrinberg13

There's actually a phrase for people who believe in the opposite of Diversity, equity, and inclusion. The phrase also perfectly explains why anyone would automatically equate "diversity" with "unqualified" or support a status quo system that continues to perpetuate inequality:


Michael Harriot

Worth remembering that it was Donald Trump's choice to delay the investigations at every step so that the trials are being held in an election year. Typical of Trump, he blames his opponents for his own actions.
Dean Baker

Strange how the wealthy use their resources to take over communication spaces and destroy competitors in order to increase profits and aren’t interested in funding education or journalism, which would stand as checks on their power.
Jared Yates Sexton

Behind every progressive policy lies a single moral value: empathy, together with the responsibility and strength to act on that empathy. Never forget “responsibility and strength,” because there is no true empathy without them.
George Lakoff

It likely comes as no surprise that Canadians love their cars, but did you know that men own more vehicles than women and are twice as likely than women to drive?
Women in Urbanism Canada

A detailed, 5-year longitudinal study looks closely at reforms meant to encourage walking and biking in London. Health benefits outweighed costs by 10 to 1. For the most intensive interventions — Low Traffic Neighborhoods — it was 50:1 or even *200:1*.
David Roberts @drvolts

Fuck:


David Elfstrom

This is only the beginning, kids. We haven't even seen what the really serious trouble looks like yet. #discontinuity
Alex Steffen

The war on cars is funny war where one side has casualties, while the other side whines about the war being unfair to them
Giulio Mattioli

“Planning is a complex and politically charged activity...Yet amongst all this complexity, one moral is clear: the more planning focuses on the car, the worse the results for children”.
Alice Ferguson @aliceplayingout

When someone says, "I don't want to interrupt...", that means he or she has decided to interrupt.
Similarly, I've come to realize, "Well, that sounds nice in theory..." actually means "I don't even like the theory."
Alfie Kohn

An affordable electric version of this would be a wildly popular work truck and would cut lots of transportation GHGs:


Costa Samaras

It’s a damning thing that so many of our problems are tied to the dominance of corporate monopolies and in political discourse it’s almost completely ignored or intentionally covered up.
Jared Yates Sexton

Biden spoke [at the State of the Union] with an energy and vigor unbecoming in a man of his age.
New York Times Pitchbot @DougJBalloon

I would be much more psychologically reassured by libraries being open on Sunday than by military goons rifling through my backpack
Emily Nussbaum

List of things Republicans won't cheer for during tonight's State of the Union address:
- Women's political power
- Cutting $3 trillion from the deficit
- No wealthy person should pay a lower tax rate than a teacher or a nurse.
- Clean drinking water to prevent brain damage in children
Grant Stern

Much of the opposition to DEI is based on the premise that a Black person with any measure of power or authority will automatically treat white people like white people with power have historically treated Black people.
Michael Harriot

We have too many cultural narratives of suffering, overcoming, enduring
We celebrate them
We can’t even imagine a gentle world where people thrive in peace and comfort
Not even for children or the elderly or the sick
Paul Thomas @plthomasEdD

One of the most horrifying graphics ever:


Dr. Kyla Bennett, PEER @bennettpeer

Migrants always seem to wait until 8 months before a presidential election before collectively deciding to “invade.” Curious.
Imani Gandy @AngryBlackLady

A strange thing: When people come around to a belief activists have been saying, and trying to get them to say, then activists yell at them for not getting there sooner. You converted someone! Pour them a welcome drink. Pour yourself one, too. Claim successes! Then back to work.
The.Ink, from Anand Giridharadas @AnandWrites

Cons: “you can’t change your gender, that’s biologically impossible.” Also cons: “god used a piece of a man’s rib bone and created woman. This is a true story that definitely happened.”
@TheSotaSwede

New: The jury trial for the six Nevada "fake electors" has been pushed back to Jan. 13 of next year. It was originally set to start next week. There will be a hearing on April 22 on motions from the defendants to dismiss the felony charges against them.
Eric Neugeboren

Big picture: it still boggles my mind that Clarence Thomas participated in the 14th Amendment case & will apparently do so in the presidential immunity appeal too and that there hasn't been sustained outrage over this.
@JoyceWhiteVance

In Norway and Finland, two of the coldest European countries, the majority of households now heat their home with a heat pump.
Sam Hamels

An investigation into New York City's notorious trash problem discovers the underlying obstacle to putting up dumpsters is... parking. It's easier to let people pile trash bags on sidewalks that feed rats and vermin than to take some of NYC's 3 million curb spots from drivers:


Miriam Pinski @mirijulip

Why are things expensive?
4 companies control 55% to 85% of the meat market.
4 airlines control 80% of air travel.
3 companies control 92% of the soda market.
3 companies control 73% of the cereal market...
Eric Garcia @EricG1247

Electric cars won’t get rid of traffic
Hybrid cars won’t get rid of traffic
Autonomous cars won’t get rid of traffic
Only having a multimodal city will get rid of traffic
Michael Schneider

So much of Trump's support is just loser men who think being a lunatic who makes offensive jokes is masculine
Darrell Owens @IDoTheThinking

31 charges under the Espionage Act. That's what the case with Judge Cannon involves. Trump keeps pretending he's being prosecuted for violating the Presidential Records Act. He's being prosecuted for being a traitor to the US and the media need to start saying so. It is espionage.
Denise Wheeler

This image:


@benphillips76

Al-Shifa doctor offers to share "all relevant documentation" of the [first] Flour Massacre with journalists -- "including x-rays and medical reports". If subsequent media reports make no reference to such documentation, it's because they didn't want to know.
JamieSW @jsternweiner

The carbon bubble is going to suddenly burst one day, fossil fuel investors are going to lose huge amounts of money, and they are going to complain about how much of a surprise it is. It will not be a surprise, but they aren't listening
Dr Charlie Gardner

Cars are like a gas in that they will expand to fill up all the urban space you give them.
Max Dubler

I'm realizing that things like cleaning and chores are not distractions keeping you from the important stuff, the are the basis and material of the important stuff
BUILD SOIL; Plant Chestnuts!

Study shows that liberals like a variety of popular culture and do not dislike conservative pop culture, with tastes rooted in demographics. Conservatives like a narrower range of pop culture & dislike culture of Black and urban liberals, with tastes more rooted in ideology
Matt Grossmann

Well:


@princesleeper

One thing I'll never get my head around is why hard-working immigrants who pay their taxes are seen as some sort of problem, but billionaires who use the labour and infrastructure of a country to expand their wealth and still don't pay any tax are worshiped like economic heroes...
Stu Cameron @stucam7771