He Was Born in a Bell Jar

As a person who has cats, I understand the thinking behind this nativity scene in a bell jar... but still, isn't it symbolically just a bit odd?

A Cold Month of November Tweets

November 2017… one year since the election. I’m still in shock, honestly. Every day, I think of something akin to this Shaun King tweet:

I've said it many, many times, but shame on this nation for voting Donald Trump into office. It's a daily clusterfuck of offensive bigotry and downright incompetence. It's outrageous that he even ran. Even more ridiculous that he won.

That said, life on Twitter goes on, starting with some seasonal tweets, whether Thanksgiving, Christmas, or other — political or not:

From light to darkness, an American Horror Story:


@IrisRimon

Buy things you don't need, with money you don't have, to make an impression which won't last, on people you don't like... #BlackFriday
Joss Sheldon‏

In all fairness, we Brits probably don't do Thanksgiving because if we had to take a day off for the anniversary of us fucking over a native people and ruining their country we'd never have to go to work.
TechnicallyRon

Spice up a nativity scene at 88 mph:


Amy Berg‏ @bergopolis

I noticed there were some tweets about health care that were also seasonal, so here’s a transitional spot that combines both seasonal and health-care-related thoughts:

Nothing says Christian conservative and “Merry Christmas” like holding 9 million children hostage in order to punish 700,000 people living below the poverty level, so that hedge fund managers and real estate tycoons can buy another f’ing yacht.
The Baxter Bean‏

For the rest of my life I will never forget a 26 year old started a gofundme to get insulin, didn’t get the amount he needed and died rationing his not costly medicine. Just before Thanksgiving.
Dave Anthony‏

The best way to dramatically reduce both sexual harassment and partner violence is to make sure everyone has food, shelter, healthcare and what they need to survive not contingent on employment or romantic partnership
anne boyer‏

Free medicine for everyone financed by a middle class tax hike? Impossible! Corporate tax cut financed by a middle class tax hike? Passing the Senate next week, apparently!
Matthew Yglesias

Guns are not allowed in the U.S. Capitol and every congressman has Obamacare...in case you're wondering how these people really feel.
Mikel Jollett‏

And then there was the usual raft of Trump-related tweets… mostly about his behavior and tweets over the month:

Let's just say what happened: The President broadcasted a murder through his state-run media because he wanted his citizens to be more afraid of Muslims.
Hank Green

Telling white guys they're being attacked by "Muslim immigrants" when they're actually being attacked by other white guys sums up this entire administration.
Samuel Sinyangwe‏

Our President joked about "Pocahontas" in front of Navajo Code Talkers behind a portrait of Andrew Jackson. Where are all the people who said taking a knee was disrespectful to our military veterans? Are Native Americans not American enough?
Eugene Gu, MD

Since Trump is so uncontrollably, consistently racist in his remarks in public, one can only imagine how vile a mouth he has backstage #Pocahontas
Langdon Winner‏

Trump is doing more damage to US national security capacity than any foreign adversary could....which people should keep in mind when they wonder why Putin did what he did
Ben Rhodes

We don’t have a leader for a president. We have the personification of all of America’s ills.
Jared Yates Sexton‏

It seems increasingly clear that Trump's job is to incite an endless succession of personal and cultural feuds to draw the spotlight while exec agencies and GOP Congress advance an undiluted agenda of tax cuts for top, deregulation for business and spending cuts for lower income
Ronald Brownstein‏

when he tweets about North Korea it's pretty telling how everyone freaks out about supposed threat to US cities while ignoring, oh, all of Asia
Nicole Chung‏

I have a chrome extension that makes all of trump's tweets seem like they were written in crayon. This one is just a little too real for my taste:


sanjana‏ @riseuphes

Thank God we don’t have a female president. She’d be so emotionally volatile and obsessed with her appearance!
Jess Dweck‏ @TheDweck

If you want to understand the concept of normalization, just watch Trump contradict America’s intelligence and give aid to Putin and the resulting yawn from a country that’s already gotten used to this madness.
Jared Yates Sexton‏

Followed by tweets about Trump's appointees, their policies (including the tax bill), and his family members:

this entire tax thing — the process, the policy, all of it — is completely insane, will be a disaster, and has nothing to do with Trump. This would be happening under President Rubio.
slackbot‏ @pareene

This is insane. Not a single Republican voted against judicial nominee who never tried case, spent year as paranormal investigator & praised KKK.
Ari Berman

Can't make it up: The leading pick to run the Census Bureau is the author of a book called "Redistricting and Representation: Why Competitive Elections Are Bad for America.”
Blake Hounshell‏

Don’t ever let them say “we don’t have the money.” We do; we just keep spending it on handouts for the rich.
Rep. Keith Ellison‏

Of course, there were comments on the current state of our politics and the media:

occasional reminder: the DC press Could. Not. Sleep. At. Night. knowing Obama might pass a bill without GOP support. today, the same DC press couldn't care less about the Trump Whitehouse going 10 months without a SINGLE Dem vote.
Eric Boehlert‏

Weird how the people who complain about virtue signaling also demand that we publicly salute the flag at football games.
Jason Ross‏

Richard Sackler, who made his fortune from OxyContin, has given grants from his foundation to the organization that served as the original source of the debunked claim that 3 million illegal immigrants voted in the last election.
Yashar Ali

Libertarians are just Nazis who don't want their neighbors to egg their houses.
@tressiemcphd

Fascism counts on you thinking people who notice fascism are suffering from hysteria.
Joy Reid‏

Chillingly apt: "If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy." – from David Frum's upcoming book Trumpocracy.
Steve Silberman‏

Above and beyond anything else about this New York Times [uncritical profile of an Ohio Nazi] thing: We already know that Nazis are people. We've covered the fact that Nazis are people. The people that Nazis want to kill are also people. That's what we seemingly haven't established yet.
Sady Doyle‏

It’s so weird how all these Ron Paul fans end up as Nazis
Jamie Kirchick

Future generations will look back on TV as the lead in the water pipes that slowly drove the Romans mad.
Kurt Vonnegut‏

Seriously, the fact that USA Today refers to Marshawn Lynch's protests of police violence as "antics" tells you something re: newsrooms. Especially when the "president" is being childish on Twitter all day, thirsting for attention of any kind because his life is empty of meaning.
Ed Baptist‏

So I guess you got what you wanted. Modernity got a slap in the face with your 1950s whip hand, amirite!? Yeah, you sure showed us. Enjoy the tax hikes and oil spills, and the “age of the alpha male!” or whatever. And good luck. When you lose your health care and Social Security disability benefits and your taxes go up so corporations and billionaires can hoard more stuff, just remember 65 million people tried to warn you. But you wanted your “wall” to keep Mexican immigrants out, and your Muslim ban, and your grievances stroked, apparently more than you wanted your health care and nursing home fees. Last November, 63 million of you voted to pretty much hand this country over to a few uber wealthy families and the religious far right. Well done.
Joy Reid

It is important that folks remember that Trump is not the boogeyman — the problems that the US is facing are systemic and entrenched for hundreds of years. He will be out of office soon one way or another — we will no longer be able to blame him. What will WE DO to make things better?
BigIndianGyasi‏

We're told that we have to understand young White men's economic and social rage in the US, UK and Europe... but what about non-White men's economic and social rage? The bottom literally fell out of the urban US economy in the 70s and 80s. Many young men fell into economic and social rage. The answer wasn't compassion and understanding. The answer was to ramp up the carceral state. What exactly are we supposed to understand now? In 2017? (Oh, I forgot. That's just thuggery. And terror. My bad.)
Ebony Elizabeth @Ebonyteach

Thanks to literally every other oppressed group on earth for saving white ladies from their own determination to self-immolate on the pyre of gross old dudes
Sady Doyle

Virginia: Where you can campaign as a "populist" while being a Koch-bankrolled namesake of a corporate lobby firm
David Sirota

The best Democratic counter to the surge of GOP white identity politics is more candidates of color and fewer performatively woke white ones.
Matthew Yglesias‏

Trump is incredibly inept, but don’t think for a second there aren’t people studying him in order to replicate what he’s done by accident. Our country’s vulnerabilities have been exposed when it comes to what we’ll accept. If someone with more principles and guile comes...
Jared Yates Sexton‏

The alt-right's "liberals pushed us to extreme positions by not making an effort to understand" is every abuser's "see what you made me do?"
Alex Andreou @sturdyAlex

This month we had the special joy of sexual predator Roy Moore specifically:

Today a Roy Moore spokesman publicly said women can never be believed without a corroborating witness.
Pat Thompson‏ @pattho

A man accused of felony sex crimes thinks he should be allowed to be US SENATOR while people convicted of lesser crimes shouldn’t even be allowed to vote.
Samuel Sinyangwe‏

How in the world did the strong on Russia, pro-family Republican Party become the pro-Putin, pro-men dating teenage girls party?
stuart stevens‏

Republicans hedging their bets on someone accused of child sexual abuse so they can pass a tax cut for corporations is worse than the worst liberal caricature of their party
Dan Pfeiffer‏

Fox News enabled then fired under pressure Roger Ailes and Bill O'Reilly and after all that Sean Hannity sits in that house and leads a discussion on how women lie about harassment. What a foul corporate sewer it is.
pourmecoffee

All of a sudden we have the phrase "teenage women" being used in Alabama, when it's all too common for of-age women to be referred to as "girls."
Pat Thompson‏ @pattho

To any sane person who’s worked in journalism, the idea that the Washington Post would conspire to fabricate a story like [the Roy Moore story] is plainly ridiculous. But an unsettling number of Americans now seem to find it plausible.
Julian Sanchez‏ @normative

You can defend child molesters or you can have “family values,” but you can’t do both.
Susie Meister

Roy Moore's entire career is built around his belief that he should his impose his personal morals on other Americans, which means his personal morals are what he's running on.
LOLGOP‏

So who had "Using Mary and Joseph to downplay allegations of pedophila" in their office "what will make 2017 unbearable" pool?
John Pfaff‏


Doug Jones prosecuted KKK members for bombing a Black church. As judge, Moore argued a confessed child rapist could use child's sexual history as defense. But Moore is the one who's "tough on crime"?
Bree Newsome‏

Funny how the party which worried so much about their daughters' safety in the bathrooms is now going on the record to defend pedophilia…
William LeGate‏

Shaming someone who waited to report assault is probably the reason they waited in the first place. They knew some asshole like you would find a way to be dismissive
Cacje‏ @Ebony_musings

To recap FOX:
39 year old Don Jr is "a good kid."
36 year old Kushner is too young looking to have done anything illegal.
29 year old Papdopoulos made a youthful mistake.
14 year old Leigh Corfman is a consenting adult.
Liz Gumbinner @Mom101

Followed by sexism, misogyny, and “metoo” (beyond Roy Moore):

Most men are so fragile they’d crack open like eggs if there was a recurring pattern of someone stealing their sandwich. But women, every day, probably right in the trenches with you, are enduring a constant onslaught of coworkers’ inappropriate shit.
Spanish California‏ @_danilo


Can't stop thinking about how Matt Lauer made $25 million a year while 23,000 U.S. journalists have lost their jobs since 2007.
Mike Rosenberg‏

I noticed the mainstream media and GOP go back to Clinton but never back to Clarence Thomas and the cruel treatment of Anita Hill by white Democrats and GOP men. Ms. Hill was skewered for telling the truth.
daphne barconey‏ @deebarc1

The Franken situation has taught me that if you come out publicly as a victim, you're looking for fame and attention. But if you come out anonymously to avoid fame and attention, you don't count. Gotta love that gordian knot.
Ana Mardoll‏

Take it from a bitch in management AND talent. There is no abusive, misogynist, sociopathic "genius" out there that CAN'T be replaced by an equally creative person who is not a living trash fire.
Iron Spike‏

I don't want to be "very special," I want to be taken seriously as a full human being. Men who think women are "very special" are not those who take us seriously or treat us equally.
Kate Tuttle‏ @katekilla

I sometimes wonder if our party lines are merely organized around those who consciously experience trauma and its effects, and those who negate/perpetuate trauma by identifying with the aggressor.
Martha Crawford LCSW‏ @shrinkthinks

The "why women aren't funny" statement Hitchens made years ago is coming into focus that it isn't that we aren't funny — it's that men lack an ability to see life through our experience, and lack the empathy to want to try. In other words, they don't get the joke and never wanted to.
JEN KIRKMAN

I would just like to affirm how exceptionally painful it was to, like, SMELL the violent misogyny coming off certain media dudes during a woman's run for President, get called crazy for noticing or reacting to it, and finally, to get confirmation now, when it's too late to help.
Sady Doyle

A message to men about consent that billions of women have said billions of times. Consent is not:
• optional
• assumed
• permanent
• possible from a minor
• gained via abuse of power
Stop pretending you don’t understand consent. Just stop.
Qasim Rashid, Esq.‏ @MuslimIQ

One of the toughest parts of this fall has been realizing that so many male colleagues assumed our careers didn't take off like theirs because we were less talented.
Amy Sullivan‏

Newsflash: it is not uncommon for a woman to be polite even in uncomfortable situations. That is not a romantic overture, nor does it indicate any degree of interest. It is called not making a scene. We’ve been trained in it (basically) since birth.
Emily Ochsenschlager‏ @NPREmily

every time a man tells me to stop whining about feminism, i feel like saying "you first"
Aparna Nancherla

the "Pence rule" is not the opposite of predatory behavior. if you think the only way to avoid sexually harassing women is to not be around women, that speaks volumes as to how you view women.
JuanPa @jpbrammer

imagine if women were like “we can’t stop kicking men in the dick” and when men got upset women were like “that’s what you get for being alone with us”
marisa kabas‏

"I don't recall sexually assaulting her," is a sign of admission that they've done it so many times that it's all a normalized blur to them.
Stacey Patton‏

How is it that men, who commit 99% of sex crimes and 90% of over-all crime, killing, and atrocities on Earth are able to convince people in this day and age that women are the liars when they are brave enough to report a sex crime committed against them?
Edan Clay

If we’re being honest — and I feel like this crosses race and class lines — male culture tries to make boys/men feel fucked up for NOT being harassers. that’s how warped this shit is. it’s hardcore indoctrination and we get it CONSTANTLY from the time we are little. that’s not any kind of excuse, just a reminder of what needs to be rooted out.
Saladin Ahmed

every time a female comedian succeeds, we still get "are women funny?" 7+ pervs in the past month and not one piece called "are men monsters?"
Aparna Nancherla‏

My husband just casually asked me why our daughter’s clothes never have pockets and I’m not quite sure he expected the passionate, angry feminist reply I gave him.
Jacki Antonovich‏

If true. If true. If true. All these men have opinions on my marriage and your uterus, sight unseen. But hand them a story told by a dozen women and suddenly it's the riddle of the goddamn sphinx.
Mark Harris‏

Next time in the same old gender pay gap debate someone says women choose lower paying jobs, remember these sexual harassment stories
Philip N Cohen @familyunequal

God, I could really get used to this strange new world of Men Experiencing Consequences.
Iron Spike

dang mankind is obsessed with respecting imaginary boundaries (countries) and disrespecting real ones (other peoples' bodies)
Aparna Nancherla‏

I am so angry about what has been taken from us, and the freedoms denied us by the toxic will of men. I am angry and I am exhausted. It's not just me. So many of the women I know are reeling emotionally. Our bodies are physically reacting to the anger and exhaustion we can't fully express in words.
Ashley C. Ford‏ @iSmashFizzle

stop mourning the work that's been tainted by shitty men and start mourning the work we lost from the people they targeted
Caroline Framke‏

Our current sex harassment discussion is woefully class-skewed. Too much about actresses and not enough about hotel housekeepers.
Barbara Ehrenreich‏

Walking through Heathrow airport, looking at royal pictures on the walls, reminds me how latent sexism can be. They were both 5’10’:








Chris Markesky‏ @keskvox

People think "believe black Women" means we are always right. It means "assume we are rational". That's all I will say about that.
@tressiemcphd

always worth examining if your negative feelings about another woman were originally shaped by a man who stood to gain from keeping u apart.
Jessica Blankenship‏ @blanketboat

Read a comment this morning stating that Maker culture is 80% male and had to laugh. Only if you discount the millions of women sewing, knitting, weaving, and more. But oh right, they're just "crafters." That artificial distinction enrages me.
Kris Howard

“It’s no wonder so many men deride and degrade gossip: It’s our most effective armor against their abuses.” — @annehelen
Gene Demby‏

I would just like to point out how hard it is for women not to hate men.
calamity jane‏ @gabsthehuman

I only flagged a few on the net neutrality decision at the FCC:

It should also be mentioned that the direct cost of Internet transit bandwidth is trivial today. Well under $0.50/month per Megabit now, and peering bits can be nearly free. ISPs spend VASTLY more money just billing their customers than they do on Internet bandwidth.
Jim Troutman‏

Nationalize the internet. We paid to develop it. We dropped 400 billion for infrastructure that the companies never completed and just kept. Why the fuck should private companies restrict it? Fuck them. Nationalize it.
Dave Anthony‏

Of course, a handful of megasites could ensure Net Neutrality remains with trivial effort. If Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter went silent for three days with a simple explanation splash page, people would lose their minds. But they don’t seem to care anymore.
Catherynne Valente‏

But as usual, there are quite a number about racism and white supremacy:

Georgetown researchers found that black girls are perceived as sexually mature from the age of 5. Important study on how America overall perceives, degrades & sexualizes these girls.
Lauren Wolfe‏

Say it with me: The words "liberal" and "racist" are not antonyms.
Crystal Marie Fleming‏ @alwaystheself

In 1845, Charleston, South Carolina, founded a professional police force in order to “prevent the growth of an organized colored community.” Destroying communities of color is not the result of policing gone bad but of policing achieving its goals.
Av Gutman‏

When Malia Obama cuts off an elephant's tail and sells our country out to the Russians call me.
Jeremy Newberger‏

Maybe when the president talks about "crime" he's not actually talking about crime, but something else entirely.
Chris Hayes

I feel like racism is better discussed as something to be 'dismantled' than 'solved.'
David Kaib‏

James Baldwin was right. White Americans have been massively lied to about the true nature of this nation for centuries. It's a sin and a shame.
Ebony Elizabeth‏ @Ebonyteach

The best example of the fleeting commitment of white Americans to the actual idea of meritocracy is their reaction when people of color win against white competition. Hank Aaron? Death threats. Obama? Birtherism. South Asian kids win the spelling bee? Online racist trolling.
jelani cobb

"Race is the modality in which class is lived." –Stuart Hall
Nikhil Goyal‏

Wow! My mother, a reference librarian, once told me of a book about the history racism in U.S. armed forces. The Library of Congress categorized it as fiction. They reclassify our stories when they are uncomfortable with them.
Phillip Atiba Goff‏

clearly, asking Americans to reckon w race is a politically disastrous mission, it's also a crucial mission; we're otherwise locked in a spiral of incoherent historical narratives and terminal dissonance
@justincharity

Black & brown people killed by cops for shit like having a broken taillight. White dudes: "Pretty sure they deserved it." 3 white dudes lose their jobs for sexually abusing multiple people. White dudes: "THIS IS INJUSTICE! THIS IS A WITCH HUNT! WE'RE BEING TARGETED!"
Ijeoma Oluo‏

Outcome of the Freddie Gray case demonstrates once again police are allowed to detain anyone for any reason and kill that person while in custody
Bree Newsome‏

I feel the major problem with running against racism as a political strategy is that racism is actually quite popular.
@theshrillest

more convinced than ever that we need to teach kids less about the civil war and more about the experience of chattel slavery.
Jamelle Bouie‏

It's odd to realize the relative sanity of the sustainable cities, clean energy, and climate change tweets:

an ounce of solar panels is cheaper than a pound of seawalls.
Adam Browning‏

First Mexico City, now London readies ban on new parking spaces. If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. If you find yourself with too much traffic, stop building more parking.
Janette Sadik-Khan‏

# of traffic lanes has big impact on walk safety:


Our Streets Mpls‏

"A person with a one-hour drive to work must earn 40% more to be as satisfied as someone who walks. Shifting from a long commute to a short walk would make a single person as happy as if s/he had found a new love."
Mark Abraham‏ @urbandata

The goal of transit systems isn't to turn a profit. Just like the goal of schools isn't to turn a profit, even though they, too, add enormous value to society.
jennifer keesmaat

Babies born in areas with mountain top coal removal had 181 percent increased risk of heart defects. In contrast, babies born to mothers who smoke have only a 30 percent increased risk. The issues associated with coal, go far beyond burning it as fuel.
@KendraWrites

If you've watched cities evolve over any period of time, it becomes apparent that wealthy suburbs have disproportionate and undemocratic influence on urban policy.
@mateosfo

David Levinson proposed an urban design principle: "No street should carry more than four lanes of private vehicle traffic in a city. No more than two of those lanes should go in the same direction. Most streets should be three, two, or one lane wide.”
Sabre23t‏

Neighborhood character is how you treat your neighbors, not how your house looks. St Paul is lacking.
Father Sonn @mikesonn

Winter isn’t an argument against bike lanes. It’s an argument for protected bike lanes.
@DaleCalkins

People tend to adapt and “figure it out” if they want to go someplace that doesn’t have abundant parking. Conversely, people also tend to “de-adapt,” and consume as much parking as is available if the zoning codes require it. Take your pick.
Strong Towns‏

In Singapore watching people use indoor and outdoor commercial areas, totally different people and behavior. Indoor malls segregate; street level integrates.
G_Penalosa‏

I am becoming convinced that autonomous vehicles are designed to solve the problem of "I live in a wealthy suburb but have a horrible car commute and don't want to drive anymore but also hate trains and buses."
@mateosfo

"a familiar Catch-22 for designated side-street bike routes around the country: If the route goes where you want to go, it’s probably got too many cars to be a low-stress bike route. If it’s pleasantly low-traffic, it probably doesn’t go where you need."
@reubencollins

Paris is defined as much by its cafes and bakeries as it is by the Eiffel Tower. Grandiosity, in the absence of granularity, has never made a city great. And it never will.
Rik Adamski‏

Driving past blocks of historic buildings in Detroit, broken-up by kitschy fast-food joints set far back from the street, surrounded by parking. History will judge the late 20th Century harshly for what it did to the form and function of our cities.
Jason Segedy‏ @thestile1972

We’ve structured our economy around the principles of the Suburban Experiment, an approach to growth that provides lots of short-term rewards at the expense of our long-term strength and resiliency. It's time to change that model.
Strong Towns‏

Terrorism gets the headlines but it's people driving cars that's really killing and wounding people, on a global scale. Will we design our cities differently? It's a matter of life and death. From The Economist’s Safe Cities Index:


jennifer keesmaat

What if you overstayed your parking meter by $2.50 and a police officer came and put you in handcuffs and took you to jail? You'd be outraged. That's what we do basically with transit riders and fare evasion, for whatever reason.
Angie Schmitt‏ @schmangee

82% of people in 13 countries want 100% renewable energy [survey result, link given].
Mark Z. Jacobson‏

Uber wants to fly over cities; Elon Musk wants to drill under them. Or we could just invest in fixing them and getting rid of the dumb cars that clog them up.
Lloyd Alter‏

"Right On Red appears to be about the 5th highest cause of deaths and injuries of pedestrians in Minnesota."
William Lindeke‏

The CDC estimates the cost of fatal car crashes at $99 billion, or ~$500 for every licensed driver in the US.
Devon Zuegel‏

I’m sick of people complaining how unsightly bikeshare is. You know what’s ugly? Cars. People just park them wherever. All over town.
experimentgirl‏

“Large-scale problems don't require large-scale solutions; they require small-scale solutions within a large-scale framework.” –David Flemming
dan burgess‏ @dansolo

Cemeteries are such a problematic urban land use and I can't believe we're doing nothing about it.
Tony Webster‏

Just your occasional reminder that a baby born today is likely to live to see 2100. In 2017, planning for 2100 is not hubris, it's common intergenerational decency.
Alex Steffen

Why aren’t we acting on climate change? It’s simple: the power of corporate lobbying.
Rob Hopkins‏ @robintransition

Can we just hire Russian hackers to convince us to act on climate change?
Jon Foley @GlobalEcoGuy

driving and meat are the first things that have to go. buying green energy in the suburbs won’t cut it
wire mother‏ @supportdrone

Climate change will make the world's refugee crisis much worse. Tens of millions by 2030, up to 1 billion by 2050.
Eric Holthaus (replying to a tweet that recorded more than 65M refugees and displaced people around the world currently)

#realstpaul:


Ken Paulman‏

With a few about education:

If the good people of the United States of America learned -- and more importantly, *retained* — information through lectures, 45 wouldn't be President.
Ebony Elizabeth‏ @Ebonyteach

Irony: teaching mindfulness in schools that constantly talk about preparing for the future.
@Sisyphus38

Studying science fairs. Depressingly, most really aren't fairs at all but contests; the point is to triumph over other budding scientists. Discovery is framed as just a means to the end of winning.
Alfie Kohn‏

The underlying toxic premise of school: "You're only good enough if you're better than other people."
Carol Black‏

Percent of the donor class who think the government should make sure that everyone who wants to go to college can do so: 28%. General public? 78%.
Mark Huelsman‏

Schools normalize sorting. So a segment of children internalize disposability. As adults, hierarchy is consequently reinforced and accepted.
Arash Daneshzadeh‏

...on guns and mass shootings:

Don’t ask if solution is arming Americans everywhere. Ask who profits from arming everyone. Ask lawmakers if they take NRA money.
Shannon Watts

Why not just ban guns and when people are upset about it, just send them thoughts and prayers?
Erica Buist


Theses days, "foiled" means only four people were murdered:


Pat Thompson‏ @pattho

Lol at white men who say we need lots of guns to keep us free from tyranny. Bruh, white men with lots of guns ARE tyranny.
@heidiheilig

Say it with me: I utterly reject the death of expertise. I will fight for evidence-based decision making. I value knowledge and experience.
Jacquelyn Gill‏

The entire tech world is gonna be gobsmacked when they finally realize the solution is to take more time and think about people more.
Alan Cooper‏

Why even have a government if it won’t regulate the market to preserve human rights?
@doctorflopsy

Using people who can’t vote to give people who can vote extra representation in the census is what the 3/5 Compromise was about
Arthur Chu‏ (responding to a tweet about how incarcerated inmates can't vote, but do count in the census and are used to gerrymander the states)

... and about wealth and income inequality:

Journalists should stop using the term "business-friendly" when what they really mean is "anti-worker."
Jonathan Cohn‏

I’ve said this before, but today is a good day to remember that what you have largely results from the arbitrary nature of birth & circumstance. None of us inherently *deserve* what we have.
@ClintSmithIII

The cost to New York City to jail a homeless person for a year is over $30,000. Providing the same person a Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher at fair market rent would cost $18,000 a year. Criminalizing homelessness is not only immoral but also expensive and inefficient.
@abgutman

I guess this confirms that the biggest fucking thieves are the goddamn people in charge:


Christmas Sam‏ @CollectableCat

For the "I worked full-time to put myself through school" crowd. In 1980, it would take a month to earn a year's public U. tuition working for min wage. Today, tuition at same school = 48 wks of min wage work.
John Warner‏ @biblioracle

It's the paradox of end-stage capitalism: Every megacorp wants poorly compensated employees and wealthy customers, casually forgetting that means their consumers are inevitably someone else's badly paid workforce.
Iron Spike‏

It’s extremely offensive for rich people to tell the unemployed/underemployed they should move across the country to find work. Everyone makes their career based on their social network, especially the rich.
Marshall Steinbaum‏ @Econ_Marshall

My take is: all 30 Under 30 lists should include disclosure of parental assets
Helen Rosner

Man, I could go my whole life without any more point-scoring about racism vs economic anxiety like they aren't twinned in the working class. Precarity and hardship makes people worse and makes them waaaaay more vulnerable to propaganda.
Erin Kissane‏

Ok, so we have an epidemic of opioid abuse. Time to look at the underlying epidemic of pain, often caused by years of unrelenting labor.
Barbara Ehrenreich‏

Then finally, the best of the rest:

"Prevention and rehabilitation is so much cheaper than incarceration. It costs more to imprison a young person than to send them to college. Let’s try sending people to college. Let’s try getting people jobs." –Elizabeth Hinton
Center for Bioethics‏ @HMSbioethics

…there was [not] a huge increase in crime in the ’60s; what there was is lots of federal money to improve reporting of arrests. Measure of crime is actually measure of arrests. – Elizabeth Hinton
Alan Mills‏ @alan_uplc

There is no race. We are not rats. We don’t have to compete. There is no barrel. We are not crabs. We can work together and get further than we could alone. We need each other. We need each other. We need each other. We need each other. We need each other. We need...
BigIndianGyasi‏

Silvio Berlusconi looks increasingly like a Max Headroom that someone has sat on:


Rob Hopkins‏ @robintransition

honestly I’d trust the vote of most folks who’ve been through the prison system more than I would the vote of the average American
Saladin Ahmed

Twitter is rotting my brain from the inside yet it feels like the only thing fast enough to track the massive changes happening in the culture on an hourly basis.
Matt Pearce

i open browser tabs like i'm assembling an army, an army of unread articles
Aparna Nancherla

I hate the term “soft” science fiction. Hard SF is a very specific (and very small) sub-genre of SF. The rest of it is not “soft” it’s just... science fiction.
dongwon‏

Individualism:


Ryan Dow‏

Apropos of nothing, it crossed my mind that the very first words of the very first fan at the very first science fiction convention were probably, "It's not as good as it used to be."
Steven Brust‏

I'm not anti-adoption, which I have to say, for some reason, all the time. I do think we could do a much better job acknowledging how complicated it is.
Nicole Chung

If I talked about married people's lives the way they often talk to me about mine, they would call me a monster. "Still got those kids? And the same guy? Don't worry - something will come along and free you...maybe a giant hawk!"
Eliza Skinner‏

I put a heating pad out for the neighborhood cats. I think they like it:


@AwwwwCats

The most embarrassing thing about Americans is how many of us assume anyone with an English accent is smart.
Josh Barro‏

Enough with using “tribal” as a shorthand term for myopic selfish groupthink. Tribes, actual tribes, are generous, supportive and nourishing.
Kat - Indig/Nation‏ @rasberet

Dear America: They do not "hate you for your freedom." They hate you for your tyranny. Also, the bombs.
Werner Twertzog‏

Onion angry faces:


Faces in Things‏

In Minnesota we don’t say “excuse me.” We say “ope” which directly translates to “oh excuse me kind sir/lady, I did not mean to bump into you, please accept my apology as I am a fellow midwesterner and meant you no harm”. Isn’t that amazing?
Sam Rossini‏

In 2016, the NFL earned $14 billion in revenue. Billion with a b. There shouldn’t be a single volunteer for the Super Bowl.
Kara Lynum‏

Being in structural opposition to the status quo because of one’s identity, however, is quite different from being consciously and actively opposed to the status quo because one is a radical and understands how the system works. – Barbara Smith, 1993
tamara k. nopper‏

Jesus's moral philosophy, if taken seriously, is absolutely antithetical to (small-c) conservatism. It is anathema to every form of social and economic privilege. It is corrosive to every form of prejudice and discrimination. It is intrinsically hostile to almost *every* form of socioeconomic status quo, as status quos always reflect embedded advantage. Taking "love everyone" seriously — not in pious Sunday prayers, but as a way to arrange socioeconomic institutions — would lead to a degree of political radicalism that would make today's white evangelical Christians faint right in their Big Gulps.
David Roberts

Christians as a % in the USA:
1996: 65%
2006: 54%
2016: 43%
This is a remarkable change - more than 1% drop each year identifying as Christian. The pro-GOP “Moral Majority” may have helped Republicans, but at the expense of majority-Christian status in the USA
Lee Drake‏

Of all the forms of braindead whataboutism, "you say you're tolerant but you're intolerant of my intolerance!" is the plug dumbest.
David Roberts

If you really want to be an advocate, consider an actual under-served community, instead of, you know, the devil.
Aparna Nancherla‏

Dissent is the world's most underrated form of optimism.
Barry Crimmins

I'm no constitutional scholar, but was the intent of the Framers of the 2nd amendment really to put death in the hands of any yahoo with a few bucks in his pocket and a need to feel powerful?
Alfie Kohn‏

Japan (at its actual latitude and size, as compared to the eastern U.S.:


Jason Segedy‏ @thestile1972

How to improve voting:
• Automatic + Election Day Registration
• Restore Voting Rights Act
• End gerrymandering
• Overturn Citizens United
Ari Berman‏

Demanding debate is a key strategy of those who are essentially wrong - see how "let's debate" has poisoned the discussion about evolution
Paul Thomas‏ @plthomasEdD

The most vacuous, commonly misused word in English is "we." As in "We must never again..." (Who is the "we" you're talking about?)
Langdon Winner‏

Immigration is fiscally a net positive, reduces crime, and promotes growth. Without it, population shrinks and we are Japan: homogeneous and gray.
Marty Manley

True last week... true this week:


Sheppard Seed Co‏

We Three Darths

Following up on yesterday's question about the Alessi nativity scene, this from Twitter:



Proof that it can, indeed, always get worse.

Baby Jesus as Billy Idol

Ask anyone -- I have just about no religious sentimentality left in my body. But the Alessi nativity set I saw at the Walker Art Center today made even me raise an eyebrow:


Here's a much better close-up of the figures from a website where the same set is on sale:


Would anyone who believes in the Christ story actually buy this to display as part of their faith? Not anyone I know. Who is the market for this set?

I wonder if there are Alessi stations of the cross. I sure hope not.

Five from an Antique Store

Looking back, here are a few photos I never managed to post. These were taken at the Missouri Mouse antique store in Saint Paul last year around this time.

As I review the items I captured that day, I realize once again that I have a weakness for Victoriana:




Yes, that book is about the Henry Stanley of Livingstone and Stanley. In looking him up, I found that his exploration enabled the murderous occupation of the Congo by Leopold II of Belgium. He's also the person who came up with the all-too-ubiquitous term "dark continent" to describe Africa.

There are also 20th century items. I think I included this spatter gun because I had no idea what it was:


The tag reads "ink spatter gun" and on the side it says Use With Spatter Ink. I gather, from a brief look around the interweb, that it may have been for spattering ink onto fabric? But it's not very clear.

The purpose of this King Koil mattress company clock (klock?) is a lot clearer:


King Koil was based in Saint Paul, so the clock has valuable local cachet. The company got its name from a naming contest in the 1930s, which was won by Era Bell Thompson of North Dakota. When she arrived on the train in Minnesota to collect her $25 prize, the company's owners were surprised to find that she was a 13-year-old Black girl. They gave her the money but didn't do the publicity they had planned, much to their shame. Thompson later went on to a career in journalism and was an editor at Ebony magazine.

The last item from the store is probably my favorite:


These lightable nativity figures approach life size. Their faces (especially those of Mary and Joseph) are not well-painted, and their cloak colors are cartoonish. To top it off, each of the hand-written tags says its particular version of "Joseph Blow Mold." Yes, I know it means they're blow molds, and this one is Joseph, but Joseph Blow Mold just strikes me as really funny.

Keeping Warm with Some Tweets

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

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

And a few more comments on the weather:

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

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

Old Man Winter:


By Halloween Costumes

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

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

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

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

how's it goin?


By Emergency Cute Stuff

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


By Andrew VandenBossche

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Heaven:


By Phil Dokas

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


By Warren

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I think this stapler was in Spirited Away:


By Halloween Costumes

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

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

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


By Jason Elsom

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

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

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

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

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


By banksy

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

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

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

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

By David Schneider

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

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

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

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


By Bike Lobby

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

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

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

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

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


By Kathy Sierra


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

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

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

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


By Judd Legum

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


By crystal good

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

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

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

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

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


By Lauren Laverne on 6

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

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

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

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

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

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


By Call me Ishmael

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

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

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

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

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

Sketch of Como Conservatory Sloth & Shutterbugs:


By Avidor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


By Paul Irish [kind of like miniature golf]


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

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


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

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

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

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

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?


By Halloween Costumes

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

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

Brains are terrible things.
By Rainbow Rowell

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

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

How drastically a needle changes after reuse:

By Microscopic Images

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

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

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

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


By Eric Berger

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

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

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

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

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

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


By Science Porn

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

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

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

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

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

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


By Arthur Charpentier

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

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

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

Why do Americans assume clams are happy?
By Ishaan Tharoor

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

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

And, finally, one for my nativity scene collection:

Nativity scene, or two T-Rexes fighting over a watermelon?
By Jon G