Economic Man vs. Humanity: A Puppet Rap Battle

I just discovered this rap battle puppet video from Donut Economics, in which four characters debate the concept of Homo economicus.

As the accompanying text by Kate Raworth says,

Here’s the disturbing thing: research has found that merely studying Homo economicus can alter us. A study in Israel found that third-year economics students rated altruistic traits – such as helpfulness, honesty and loyalty – as being far less important than did their freshman equivalents. After taking a course in game theory (a study of strategy which assumes self-interest in its models), economics students in the US behaved more selfishly and expected others to do so too.

All that plus a catchy tune and lyrics. With puppets.

 

They Passed It!

The Senate passed the COVID relief bill. Though it doesn't include an increase in the minimum wage, it has many other good provisions. Obviously, the $1,400 direct payments and extension of unemployment insurance, but also support for small businesses, schools, public transit, and a lot more. Here are a couple of tweets that give some details.

For a working single mother of a 3-year-old who earns the minimum wage—just under $16,000 a year—the bill would provide up to $4,775 in direct benefits. For a family of four with one working parent and one who remains jobless due to child care constraints, benefits could total $12,460.
Steven Greenhouse @greenhousenyt

covid relief plan cuts child poverty in half, includes 1st amendment to the Affordable Care Act that limits healthcare costs to 8.5% of income and makes 150% poverty and below free [within ACA]
@RachelCoboltBlu

I’m happy that my bill with Senator Menendez to make any student loan forgiveness tax-free was included in the COVID relief bill. This clears the way for President Biden to Cancel Student Debt without burdening student borrowers with thousands of dollars in unexpected taxes.
Elizabeth Warren

And if $1.9 trillion seems like a lot of money (though it's just about the amount Republicans spent on tax cuts for wealthy Americans back during the Trump years), check this out:

Obviously $1.9 trillion is nothing to sneeze at. But I'll note the lifetime cost for the F-35 -- a plane that doesn't even fucking work -- is $1.7 trillion. And that has broad bipartisan support.
Jeet Heer

Thank you, Stacey Abrams and the New Georgia Project and everyone else who brought home those two Senate seats. Organizing is the answer, and keeping Republicans from suppressing the vote in the future.

(Oh, and also: very early in the morning after they had been in session all night, when some number of Republicans had left the chamber, Schumer got a cloture vote approved on Merrick Garland's nomination to be Attorney General, too. That means a final floor vote will be this week. (footage from CSPAN in this Twitter thread)

Undervalued, Now Gone

Minnesota ephemerist Gary Hornseth recently unearthed this matchbook (from the long-time Saint Paul institution, Minnesota Chemical) on eBay:

It ended up selling for $3.99 (plus $3.15 in shipping). 

Minnesota Chemical only recently sold its building and moved to a surburb somewhere, leaving behind a contaminated site for the purchasers and the state of Minnesota to clean up.

But they made a nice, though under-valued matchbook along the way.

The Word Has No Meaning

You may not have noticed this Supreme Court ruling yesterday. In it, the court ruled 5–3 (since the case was heard before Amy Coney Barrett joined) against a man named Clemente Pereida, who had hoped to be able to remain in the U.S. Instead, the ruling means he is ineligible, even though "he appealed to the attorney general to cancel his deportation because of the impact it would have on his son, a U.S. citizen, and the rest of his family."

Pereida, you see, was fined $100 in Nebraska 10 years ago under that state's law because he used a false Social Security number to work. He used that number to pay money into an account that he will get no benefit from. It was not theft, or anything violent. Legally, his crime is called "attempted criminal impersonation," but we all know what it is — it's trying to hold a job when you don't have the right papers, and as I said, the fine was $100, which tells you how seriously it's taken because big corporations (and farmers, and roofing companies) want to have low-wage workers to do their dirty, dangerous work.

But the five "conservatives" on the court ruled that Pereida's 10-year-old offense constituted what's known as "moral turpitude" and therefore made him "ineligible when he appealed to the attorney general to cancel his deportation because of the impact it would have on his son, a U.S. citizen, and the rest of his family." Furthermore, the justices ruled that it was on him instead of the government to show that it wasn't moral turpitude, as if that wasn't obvious on the face of things in his case.

Turpitude is defined as depravity, baseness, vileness, and shameful wickedness.

I can think of a lot of people who fall under the definition of moral turpitude (Jeffrey Epstein, Donald Trump, Bernie Madoff, among others) but a person who enters the country without documentation, supports his family by working for 25 years, and pays into the system without hope of getting anything back from it is not one of them.

And Now a Mostly Trivial Moment About Snow Plow Names

The Minnesota Department of Transportation just announced the results of its contest to name eight of its snowplows. They got tens of thousands of ideas for names, which the staff narrowed to 50. Those were put up for a vote, and 122,000 people cast ballots online.

There were a lot of good choices and I was in favor of the ones that had an extremely local meaning and usually were funny. For instance, I voted for one that's the Ojibwe word for snow, but that didn't win. Another loser I voted for: Road Carew. I also I voted for these winners: The Truck Formerly Known as Plow (which came in last among the top eight) and the third-place Duck Duck Orange Truck (see, if you aren't from here you might not even get that one). 

Other winners I didn't vote for that were local:

• Ope, Just Gonna Plow Right Past Ya because it seemed to be trying too hard. Though it's definitely locally oriented, or at least Midwestern. 
• F. Salt Fitzgerald because that guy has too many things named after him already. 
• Plow Bunyan... really? Do we need to name something else after that made-up man who is also claimed by Maine?

Then there are two. Two. Two trucks tamed after Star Wars characters, which is about as far from local as you can get: Snowbi Wan Kenobi and Darth Blader.

And none of those can top my biggest disappointment, which is the number-one finisher and the only name to get a vote from more than half of the voters: Plowy McPlowFace. 

Which goes to show you that there are a lot of people with a juvenile sense of humor and/or who don't go on the interweb very much. I like my jokes a bit fresher than a five-year-old ripoff of a British boat-naming contest.

The Party of Death

Now that the vaccines are giving us a glimpse of what may be the end of the pandemic, some states' governors are not only declaring their states completely open for all types of business, but dropping their mask mandates. Even though under 10% of their populations have been vaccinated. 

The rightly much-maligned marshmallow test seems appropriate in this case: how much more obvious can it be that you just have to wait a few more months? 

Maybe you can reopen some things as long as people are wearing masks, yes. Maybe you can reopen schools if you vaccinate all of the staff and improve the ventilation and require masks, yes. But you can't reopen everything with no masks and no attention to much of anything else, governors of Texas and Mississippi and who knows where else.

MSNBC showed this graph of excess deaths in Texas last night. The gray lines are the five years before 2020; the red lines are 2020 and the beginning of 2021:

As you can see, the years have generally had pretty similar levels of excess death, and 2020 started off the same way, but then it started trending upward, spiked up in July, settled a bit, then rose again in fall, hitting a new peak in January. In February 2021 it actually fell below the usual trend line.

Which you would think would be good news, but I guess Greg Abbott thinks more people need to die or something?

I feel so badly for the people of Texas and Mississippi, who will be hit by the effects of this right after (and still during their recovery from) the failure of their power and water infrastructure. The people of Jackson, Mississippi have been without water for three weeks now! And their governor thinks this lack of leadership is what he should be doing with his time. 

He hasn't called for a federal disaster declaration to get them financial help to repair their water system, though. Too many Black people in Jackson, it must be, and it's a "Democrat-run" city, after all.  

The Republican Party is the party of death. 

Dr. Seuss, a Cautionary Tale About His Tales

I heard the news this morning that the business that maintains Dr. Seuss's intellectual property will no longer publish six of his early books because they include racist imagery or words that are objectionable. 

The books are If I Ran the Zoo, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, McElligot’s Pool, On Beyond Zebra!, Scrambled Eggs Super! and The Cat’s Quizzer. I've never heard of those last two, but I know I read the first four as a child, possibly multiple times. I know there are additional critiques of at least The Cat in the Hat books (because the character is based in elements of minstrelsy).

I first saw the news of the six books in a Tweet thread from Maggie Koerth, who made a good point about the coverage she was seeing:

I wish stories like this would explain exactly what is wrong with these books. The zoo one, for instance, has caricatures of black people that look damn near inhuman out on display in the zoo. The eggs one has some caricatures of Asian people that are basically set up to look weird and have (white) children laugh and point at how weird they look. ...when people say “hey Dr Seuss had some racism issues and we are trying to figure out what to do with his books in light of that,” they aren’t talking about something innocuous or outside the scope of his children’s books.

Also, like, when you report on a Controversy maybe actually include a description of what it is you’re calling “controversial.” Especially when it is not remotely hard to look up or explain. It’s not even vague, guys. It’s just uncomfortably racist. Take two sentences to say so. I assure you, white reporters, it is not Being Unobjective And Biased to say “that racist caricature sure is racist.”

 Another Twitter-famous account, Charlotte Clymer, posted a lengthy thread about the supposed banning of Seuss by the Loudon County (Virginia) school system. Turns out the schools there didn't ban the books, they just stopped promoting them on a day in March that promotes literacy. Clymer describes and links to a thorough study whose authors examined the entire Seuss library and found that while he had evolved in some ways, there were still questionable depictions in his later works:

Given the clear evidence that Dr. Seuss' kids books still used racist depictions--even if they're not obvious to white people like me--maybe continuing to tout them as the gold standard of anti-racism in early childhood education isn't the best way to go here?

So, Loudon County Public Schools kept the books, still display them, still allow kids to check them out, but simply don't want to hold them up as THE central gateway to childhood literacy because of demonstrable racist depictions. That seems... pretty damn reasonable?

Between Koerth's and Clymer's threads, there are a few comments in response that show images of some of the pages in question from the books, but not all. 

I remember the shock I felt when I brought out Curious George and Babar for the first time to read with Daughter Number Three-Point-One when she was much too young to understand or remember. The latter was not a series I had read as a child, but the George books were read to my first or second grade class. As I started to read them aloud close to 27 years ago now, I recognized how wrong they were: that it's hard to understand Curious George as anything but an analog for the slave trade and Babar…let me quote from this post called Colonialism for Kids:

“Histoire de Babar, le petit éléphant” was originally written in 1931 by Jean de Brunhoff. In this story, young Babar’s mother is killed by a hunter, he is abandoned by all of his forest friends, so he runs to the city where he is taken in by the Rich Lady. Babar is instantly enamored and becomes “civilized” under the instruction of the Rich Lady. Two of his elephant cousins, Arthur and Celeste, eventually run away from the forest to join Babar, who teaches them what he’s learned, and they too are now “civilized.”

Arthur and Celeste’s mothers soon follow and are angry at the children for running away. Babar decides he isn’t completely happy in the city. He misses the forest, he misses his friends, and he and his family ought to return. While they journey back, the King of the Elephants dies in the forest after accidentally eating a poisonous mushroom. The elephants are unsure of who to name as his successor, but then Babar pulls up, and the elephants know by the sight of him that he must be the new king. Babar marries his cousin Celeste, and she becomes queen. This first story ends with Babar and Celeste in a hot air balloon, ready to travel the world.

I remember the ugly feeling of understanding that those uncivilized elephants back in the village automatically recognized civilized Babar was their better, and therefore should be king. It went without saying in the narrative.

If you're wondering what I did at the time, well, I stopped reading and put the books away. DN3.1 was too young to discuss it with or even understand that I was stopping. 

The rest of the books in the two series may be more innocuous once their premises are established (I don't know, I never checked), but I couldn't get past these premises. There are too many other good books out there to waste time just because I had vague memories of a story from elementary school or because there were cute stuffed Babars.

As far as what to do about Dr. Seuss specifically, I plan to look through the books I have (none of the six titles listed above, as it happens) to look for his obvious weakness for orientalist stereotypes, among other possibilities, so I know what I have in my hands. I've heard mentions of things in Horton at least, and obviously there's the Cat in the Hat. But I don't know what else may be in there.

Rajie Cook and Symbol Signs

On Sunday morning we had a small snowstorm and somehow in the midst of that, my newspaper carriers failed to deliver the local papers but instead gifted me the New York Times. After I got over mourning my local news (and realizing I had access to the e-edition without jumping through any hoops), I happily read my ill-gotten paper gain.

The best thing I got from it was the extended obituary of designer Rajie Cook (known as Roger Cook during his design career), who recently died at age 90. I confess I did not know his name until now, but like you I know his work, which he did with his studio partner Don Shanosky. Together they designed the symbols we all know from highway signs (and many other signs) across the U.S. that have been in use since the mid-1970s. 

They were commissioned by the Department of Transportation to improve the symbols in the lead-up to the Bicentennial in 1976, which, as the Times put it, "was expected to draw a lot of foreign visitors who would need help navigating airports, historic sites and other public spaces."

Cook and Shanosky collected symbol systems already in use from around the world before proposing their first set in 1974. They worked with a team of designers from the USDoT and the American Institute of Graphic Arts to refine their proposed icons. 

(Click to enlarge)

The 1974 set included 34 symbols; I've chosen what I think are the most iconic ones. (I've personally redrawn almost all of these 10 before the days when you could find vector graphics of things posted online.)

The drinking fountain symbol (which is from the second set, done in 1979) got this kind of review and comments, according to Cook's notes:

• Figure: Lower body out of proportion with trunk
• Is arm necessary?
• Arm necessary to indicate that figure is not bowing.

Well, duh, of course the arm is needed.

Three other symbols from the 1979 set that I think have become particularly ubiquitous express the following concepts: no dogs (and again, what a nicely idealized dog!), litter disposal, and nursery (or maybe just anything about babies... like changing tables):

Cook and Shanosky's Symbol Signs, as the system is called, have become so natural in our world that we don't realize someone designed them and made them into a unified set. Yes, the design team was working from a range of symbol systems that already existed (there's quite a list on the Wikipedia page linked above), but they were often pretty disparate in terms of content. Figuring out which ideas needed to be expressed, how to express them with as few elements as possible, and all within a coherent visual style... well, that's an accomplishment.

Here's an example of a couple of older no-smoking symbols to make us all appreciate the beauty of the Symbol Signs no-smoking image:

(These symbols are from Henry Dreyfuss's Symbol Sourcebook, 1972.)

I particularly admire the way Cook and Shanosky rendered the smoke coming out of the cigarette in their version, but also the way they use the space inside the circle. The smoke is going up in the most prominent way, as if it's about to escape the circle. And the horizontal arrangement of the cigarette across the 45° angle of the prohibition bar is visually more dynamic than the X pattern created by the older symbol.

Rajie Cook retired in 1999 and spent his later years making sculptural assemblages, sometimes with themes dedicated to peace in Palestine — the homeland of his parents, who immigrated to the U.S. before he was born. His last name, Cook, was an Anglicization of a nickname that was given to his grandfather by Turkish occupiers. His fourth grade teacher later Americanized his first name into Roger, which he stuck with until late life, when he returned to using his birth name.

__

Here's an Atlas Obscura article on Symbol Sign.

Twitter in My Favorite (Short) Month, 2021

Another month has gone by, but at least it's my favorite (short) month, February. It started with the second impeachment trial, lived (and sometimes died) through the Texas freeze and energy crash, and ends with a return to despair about many larger topics: the climate crisis, white supremacy, the deterioration of the idea of democracy, and more. And meanwhile, the pandemic. Plus humor.

Maybe I don't need to mention this anymore, but the tweets continue to be in reverse chronological order without organization by topic (as they had been for many years). I'm also not setting the whole thing up as a blockquote, since that just makes it longer, but know that it is all a quote.

___

[As a Black woman] My experience with the medical establishment is why I want the vaccine as soon as possible. I don't believe I'll be treated with urgency if I contract COVID. I watched my grandmother die of pneumonia after they assumed it was heart failure for a full 24 hours in the hospital.
Alycia @alyciadotj

Simply put, a government that is not right now:
* shutting down fossil infrastructure including for private cars;
* removing all investment/subsidies in fossil industries;
* turning all their productive capacity towards:
**  renewable energy production,
**  sufficiency energy consumption (housing retrofit, public and low impact mobility, plant based diets ...),
**  the care economy and
**  fostering biodiversity
is an illegitimate government, acting against the interests of its population, and deserves to be exposed, confronted, and ultimately replaced. This can't be easy, but pursuing a polite but failed strategy of *appeal to power* doesn't seem to be the way to go either. End/
We need to fight them much more directly, by threatening their basis of legitimacy.
Prof Juju @JKSteinberger

This week Senator Ted Cruz screamed "freedom" on a stage [at CPAC] literally shaped like a Nazi symbol at a conference where attendees are worshipping a giant golden statue of Trump, and this is all just pretty normal now. Still trying to wrap my head around it, I guess.
Laura Bassett

I need to update my pie:


Lars Boelen

So if these folks are THIS mad about a toy [Mr. Potato Head] imagine how violent they are when encountering someone they perceive as Trans or Gender Non-Conforming.
@love_an_artist

fun fact: the 26 lane Katy Freeway has less passenger capacity than BART. Urban highways destroy cities and civic wealth, and should be replaced with mass transit
sam deutsch @samdman95

Perhaps the most dangerous misconception about the climate crisis is that we have to “lower” our emissions. Because that is far from enough. Our emissions have to stop if we are to stay below 1,5/2°C warming. That rules out most of today’s politics. Including airport expansions. The “lowering of emissions” is of course necessary but it is only the beginning of a fast process that must lead to a stop within a couple of decades. (Note that rich countries need to get down to zero emissions sooner than that, according to the Paris Agreement.) And then we need to get the emissions to minus by inventing new technologies, if we are to stay below 1,5 or 2°C of warming. The fact that we are speaking of “lowering” instead of stopping emissions is perhaps the greatest force behind business as usual.
Greta Thunberg (from late March, 2019, but it just showed up in my feed now)

There's no such thing as being both "a social liberal and fiscal conservative." Being fiscally conservative means cutting from social programs that aid the disadvantaged; they never cut from the military or corporate subsidies. Supporting social programs means investing in them.
@DanPriceSeattle

Golf is so weird. Huge swathes of landscape culled and privatised because men are too scared to just ask their friend if they want to go for a walk:


Tom Houslay

"We just have to, practically speaking, rebuild or retrofit every piece of the built environment on the planet." David Wallace Wells
Ezra Klein

So many feel-good stories are at their core “American citizens rising to fill void created by societal/government failures.”
Jake Tapper

I'm more and more convinced that dinosaurs never existed and were a late 19th century invention for the toy industry.
@mikesonn

Every garage is an ACU (accessory commercial unity) in a city that has decided humans/planet/community are more important than cars/fossil fuels/exploitation:


@happifydesign

taxes are weird this year the government says I owe 3 grand and I'm like you guys owe me my grandma.
Matt Somerstein

when we look back up on the pandemic in 10-20 years time, i think we're going to be absolutely astonished that throughout all of this pain, grief, and loneliness, our workplaces and educational institutions held us to exactly the same productivity standards as before
@ellieredpath

Understand this: The filibuster gives veto power to Mitch McConnell. And to the gun industry. And to the oil industry. For generations, racist senators used the filibuster to block anti-lynching laws and civil rights bills. It’s still blocking progress today. It’s got to go.
Elizabeth Warren

Jesus: It's basically impossible for a rich person to go to heaven.
Evangelical right: He could mean anything!
Jesus: [Says absolutely nothing about gay people or gender]
Evangelical right: NEVER HAS THE BIBLE BEEN CLEARER!
LOLGOP

When James Baldwin was asked, doesn't racism hurt Black people the most, he replied, "No. We are just dying the fastest."
Ekow N. Yankah

sick of characters taking off their glasses when shit gets real. that’s when you want your glasses the most
mike ginn

Seems weird that the Republicans can do whatever they want with 50 votes, but the Democrats need 60.
David Rothschild @DavMicRot

So 1 minute before killing someone in a hit and run, the attorney general of South Dakota was on his phone browsing a right-wing website full of conspiracy theories. This sounds like a plot from Fargo.
@davenewworld_2

Anytime you put up a sign telling people to pay attention to signs, you're doing it wrong:


@BillLindeke

Wild how the parliamentarian and the reconciliation process will let through things like Arctic drilling (2017) or the fever swamps “Restoring Americans' Healthcare Freedom Act” (the ACA-repeal-and-delay bill vetoed by Obama in 2016) but not things that help everyday workers.
Mike Konczal @rortybomb

Gonna electrify the federal fleet?
* Military agencies have largest number of federal vehicles (27%)
* Civilian side, DHS has most (8%)
* Most federal vehicles are trucks and tractor trailers (86%)
* Top state opportunity for electrifying fed fleet is CA
David Roberts @drvolts

Conservatives have convinced people that telling the truth is uncivil but lies are protected speech
Paul Thomas @plthomasEdD

It's telling that Marjorie Taylor-Greene thought that a poster denying the existence of trans people was an appropriate response to a pride flag. This is consistent among bigots: they see no difference in aggression between "we are proud" and "you don't or shouldn't exist"
Jess Zimmerman @j_zimms

If only there were some sacred text, one most people at CPAC claimed allegiance to, that very explicitly warns against making golden idols:


Jeet Heer

This blew my mind: if we kept early 1990s tax rates, Minnesota would have *12 Billion dollars more* every two years to invest in education, childcare, healthcare, livable wages, transit, clean energy and more. It’s time - and it’s totally possibly - to #FundOurFutures
Andrew Ulasich

$12B could put everyone inside the [Twin Cities] 494/694 beltway within 1/2 mile of bus rapid transit, provide that BRT at 5 minute intervals, electrify the metro bus system, expand suburban route hours, close operating gaps, and fully fund greater Minnesota bike/walk/transit plans with ~$3B in funds left over.
Sam Rockwell

I truly believe that the people with heinous gender beliefs are a minority and clinging desperately to their last gasp of power, and cis people can really move the needle by being vocal in real-life conversations when someone says something bigoted or just plain ignorant.
bag of moons

67% of Americans support raising the minimum wage to $15 hour but it can be filibustered by 41 GOP senators representing just 21% of country. This is why we need to abolish it
Ari Berman

In a new opinion striking down the federal eviction moratorium, a Trump judge argues -- I shit you not -- that RENTING A HOME IS NOT AN ECONOMIC ACTIVITY!
Ian Millhiser

so tired of explaining the history of racism to the people who created it
Tao Leigh Goffe

Often wonder if the other italic caps are tired of J's shtick:


Craig Eliason

Weekly Reminder: It costs more to criminalize poverty and mental illness than to alleviate it.
Isaac Bryan @ib2_real

US capitalism wisely funds 2 political parties. When one goes too far serving employers at employees' expense, the other party can take over. Then when it goes too far, the reverse happens. For capitalism, "stability" = keeping others from disturbing this swing between the 2 parties.
Richard D. Wolff @profwolff

Why do some politicians think all journeys made on foot or bike are "recreational", while everyone in a car is on an essential trip? People take unnecessary trips in cars all the time.
Kyle Grochmal

Do you have any idea how traumatizing it is to be told that being trans is a threat to children when you were a child who was abused for being trans?
Sheryl Ring

Capitalist logic says minimum wage hurts small businesses because the original capitalist model for starting a small business was to kidnap people and force them and all of their descendants to work for free for generations
@BreeNewsome

A lot of people who are angry about the economic consequences of globalization forget about the ax of nuclear war that hung over all of our necks before neoliberalism, during the Cold War.
Joseph N. Cohen

Maybe I’m just different, but if President Biden told me to attack the Capitol, I wouldn’t attack the Capitol. I’d wonder what the hell was wrong with him.
Hamish Mitchell

This is a graph worth thinking about:


Philip Bump

“The world’s wealthy need cuts of over 90% of their carbon emissions, to get to their carbon fair share. The top-skew is so huge that the world’s richest 1 percent cause double the carbon burden of the poorest 50% combined (that’s 3.5 billion people).”
David Wallace-Wells

The majority of social science is about explaining the various "bad" behaviors of working class people, poor people, racialized people. But it's the normal behavior of rich people that could get us all killed.
Daniel Aldana Cohen

If I were designing a heavy delivery vehicle that had to roll through neighborhoods filled w/ kids/elderly, this is what I would come up with: A very low hood and a massive windshield, so the driver could see everything. More evidence that truck/SUV designers are sociopaths:


Matthew Lewis @mateosfo

White people cannot conceive of equality. They think the only alternative to white supremacy involves white subjugation to another group’s supremacy.
roshow

Worth noting: the Texas mess wasn't a "grid crisis." The grid did just fine distributing the power it had available. It was a *generation crisis* — thanks to inadequately weatherized natural gas production facilities and power plants, there just wasn't enough power to go around. The Texas grid certainly would have benefited from being bigger, from being connected to the other two US grids, but you would need a truly epic amount of line capacity to import enough power to cover that shortfall. Generation failure was the heart of the crisis.
David Roberts @drvolts

The president of the United States met virtually today with the prime minister of Canada and you might not have heard about it because no one was insulted and no international incidents took place. How great is that.
Andrew Weinstein @Weinsteinlaw

“62% of #Copenhagen residents are now commuting to work or school by bike — an increase from 52% in 2015 and 36% in 2012, when the City Council launched a 14-year-plan...there are more bikes (675,000) than people and 5X as many bikes as cars.” Via @latimes
Brent Toderian

I've heard anecdotally that some people who got super unemployment insurance this summer, got so much financial space from it, because it was more than they had ever earned before, they started businesses. Makes me think best way to improve economy is to VC working class. We're wasting $ on rich
@kar_nels

Hi, apartments *are* homes for families, and fuck you if you believe otherwise
@cafedujord

kind of a bummer to have been born at the very end of the Fuck Around century just to live the rest of my life in the Find Out century
@Merman_Melville

5 times larger than the entire United States Education budget. 17 times larger than NASA's entire budget. Almost half the entire US Defense Budget. What is it? The $310 billion US free parking subsidy. That’s how much free parking is really costing Americans. Via @FastCoImpact:


Brent Toderian

I am trying to remember the last day that the GOP was not doing something to undermine voting or democracy. I am not saying a day when they did something good, just a day when they did not try to do something awful.
Marc E. Elias

I’ve gotten to where whenever I see “partisan” I just automatically replace it with “racial” and the sentence starts to make sense
Kai Wright

One time Chris Hayes called the current GOP "the party of the boss's son." I might amend it to "boss's kid" — to make room for Meghan McCain, Sarah Sanders, Lynn Cheney, et al — but it strikes me as more profoundly true with every passing day. If you're a boss's kid, you have to make special effort *not* to be an entitled prick who believes your inherited advantages are deserved. But every feature of current right-wing politics is designed to *encourage* that mentality. It actively selects for the least self-aware boss's kids.
David Roberts @drvolts

I’ve joined in on roasting Ted Cruz for abandoning Texans for his sunny fun in Cancun, but let’s not lose sight of his abandonment of democracy and the rule of law when he participated in the Big Lie and helped incite a deadly insurrection.
Steven Beschloss

A key indicator of conservatism is focusing more about how wrongdoing is revealed than the wrongdoing itself.
Skane2600

Soy is one of the leading drivers of deforestation. People often think of soy milk, tofu and similar products. But these make up only 4% of soy consumption. More than three-quarters (77%) of global soy goes to animal feed. From our work on deforestation at Our World in Data:


Hannah Ritchie

Remember that we could fix America to have a representational multi racial democracy with the capacity to respond to the problems of the era and ... not enough democrats want to do that (and zero republicans, who are fully committed to white minority rule).
David M. Perry @Lollardfish

if ur over 5’11 sorry ur pronouns are fe/fi/fo/fum
@JvchiiClawz

Only 37% of white men consider themselves Democrats or lean Democrat. Why do I see so many of them dominating "liberal" political punditry?
chris evans @notcapnamerica

THIS extreme housing unaffordability is a very American/Anglo-issue. Turns out Capitalist countries pushing homeownership as a way to build wealth to compensate for declining wages *inherently* necessitates the haves (owners) to price out the have-nots:


Darrell Owens @IDoTheThinking

The notion that wealthy countries have "achieved" growth while poor countries "haven't" erases both colonial history and neo-colonial forms of power. In reality the former have grown rich by exploiting the latter, and they continue to do so.
Jason Hickel

Taylor Swift is older now than any of the Beatles were when they broke up. Enjoy your Sunday.
Dave Weigel

Accountancy is meant to be a profession that understands that conflicts of interest are a moral hazard. But just as doctors convince themselves they won't get addicted to their own painkillers, accountants talk themselves into believing that conflicts won't corrupt them.
Cory Doctorow

On this day [February 21] in 1804, the world's first steam-powered railway journey took place. Richard Trevithick's unnamed steam locomotive hauled a train along the tramway of the Penydarren ironworks, near Merthyr Tydfil in South Wales.
National Railway Museum

I've stumbled upon a conspiracy theory that claims Jim Morrison of The Doors was a CIA agent who faked his death in 1971 and became conservative blowhard Rush Limbaugh. So, yeah, I'm going to spend some extra time away from the internet today:


Nick Martin

You have to love this. President Biden is trying to control a pandemic, restore the economy, and save Texas from the incompetence of its Republican leadership, and the Republicans are yapping about his dogs' background.
Dean Baker

I've been told by white people that I talk about racism too much. I'm in my 50's and have never known a day without racism. So if they're tired of hearing about it, imagine how tired I am living in it. Just saying.
@Chris4Perkins

There is seriously no reason to build another lane mile for cars in urban areas. Let's see how many we can remove instead, and how fast we can do it.
Mary Morse Marti

There are more Biden voters in Texas (5.26M) than there are in New York state (5.23M). The "they voted for this" takes are bad on multiple levels, including the math.
Aaron Huertas

DC statehood is racial justice.
DC statehood is racial justice.
DC statehood is racial justice.
Stand Up America

How come Beto O'Rourke and AOC working to raise money for struggling Texans, many of whom didn't vote for Beto and think AOC is a she-witch, doesn't count as a UNITY story? How come the media isn't spinning it that way? How come "unity" can only mean "giving the GOP what it wants"?
Elie Mystal

Dangerous air quality is NOT caused by "light winds and poor atmospheric mixing." It's caused by cars, trucks, SUVs, industrial waste products and power generation. In other words, we cause foul air. Take a deep breath:


Mary Morse Marti

My parents are entirely dependent on others for basic activities of daily living, while insisting they're entirely self sufficient, which when you think about it, is only a difference in degree, not in kind, to everyone who lives in a society
James Medlock

People will delight in the misfortune of folks in Southern "red states" because they're "racist" and "backward" meanwhile they live in Former Sundown Town, Illinois outside of Redline County in a segregated school district on a street with an Indigenous name they mispronounce.
@Ryan_Ken_Acts

Anyone else realize Ted Cruz had no problem crossing a border to give his family a better life?
@tcburkejr

With drones, why isn't this another golden age of formation photography?


Chris Steller

GOP: Defect
Dems: cooperate
GOP: Defect
Dems: cooperate
GOP: Defect
Dems: fuck it, defect,.
Matt: OMG authoritarian much?
GOP: snicker
GOP: defect
Dems: cooperate
David M. Perry @Lollardfish

Biden and Vox.com-types deplore "Harvard grads" getting debt relief, but then the people they hire are from exactly those kinds of places! We select our ruling class from Harvard, but then kinda scoff at folks who wanted to join the club but didn't have the money upfront?
Ilyana Kuziemko

The path where nothing changes isn't actually a path that is available to us.
Dr. Elizabeth Sawin

The Ted Cruz Cancun story is a perfect illustration of how wealthy comfortable people are the last to have to face the consequences of climate change. They can afford to avoid suffering in the short term; no wonder they're not pushing for change that might affect their lifestyles
Katie Mack @AstroKatie

No amount of technology, short of a time machine, can make up for the time we have already wasted debating and delaying action on climate change.  And any additional delay, no matter the reason, is very problematic.
Dr. Jonathan Foley @GlobalEcoGuy

Fox News and Fox Business lied about wind turbines and the Green New Deal being to blame for Texas' power outages 128 times in less than two days -- all, after the bogus claim had already been debunked

Lis Power

The disaster in Texas is the shape of greed.  We are not prepared for climate change disasters. Period.  And the only way forward is collectively and sustainably - that’s true when you build a grid, and it’s true for building our communities.
amisha patel @gulabjammin

Infrastructure is failing because a paradigm is failing. Pass it on.
Dr. Elizabeth Sawin

White Supremacist Tired After Long Day Of Interviews With Mainstream News Outlets:


The Onion

Ah, so the secret to Texas' low energy costs was essentially just "don't pay for insurance and hope for the best," interesting. Wonder if we can apeopley the lesson here to other sectors.
Alex Schieferdecker

Problems with the "cancel culture" discussion: The term is being used incorrectly to label simple free-market mechanics or basic accountability (actions have consequences). Often "cancel culture" is used to cover for protecting *white voices as authority*; this ignores that white voices are inhabiting spaces *not given to* minoritized voices (which aren't given the cover of "cancel culture"). Thus those claimed to be victims of "cancel culture" have in fact not been silenced (often have exaggerated platforms even) and the "cancel culture" mantra elevates them even more, expanding their space and further crowding out minoritized voices . And to emphasize, those who are never allowed those platforms remain "deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard" — the real consequences of being preemptively canceled.
Paul Thomas @plthomasEdD

A common problem cities have with “task forces” (on affordability, climate change etc) is the pressure to come up with new/original recommendations. In my experience, the REAL value of a task force is to create political energy to actually DO smart OBVIOUS things that will WORK.
Brent Toderian

I’m sick of innovation. The answer is buses, putting roofs over people’s heads, and paying people actual money (maybe for even just being alive, and definitely for doing literally any job)
Jamie Perkins

It just seems like our capacity to effectively prevent/manage disasters has been decreasing while the frequency/scale of disasters has been increasing. And folks in positions of public trust are either spreading disinfo or hoping "nobody coulda foreseen this" is somehow an excuse
Costa Samaras

We do a lot of work and spend a lot of money to just let cars continue to dominate our entire city. There's an easier and cheaper solution - we're just too chicken shit to push for real change that is actually safe and not theater.
@mikesonn

Neurotypicals read way too much into email sign-offs, babe I'm just trying to end the email.
@QueerlyAutistic

Limbaugh pioneered saying a bigoted or contemptible thing, but prefacing it with "Watch the liberals go nuts over this." People would indeed go nuts. Then he'd gloat over having predicted that some people dislike hearing bigoted and contemptible things. It was always a weird bit.
Radley Balko

And now it passes for conservative policy.
John Valentine @JohnLouisville

It's time to stop thinking about the world we live in as the "inevitable result of progress" and more as the consequence of decisions made by those willing to conquer, oppress, and kill anyone who disagreed with their astoundingly terrible, self-serving decisions. They want you to believe America is exceptional while Americans huddle against the freezing cold in the powerless dark, beg for money for healthcare online, go without clean drinking water, and sort through trash for food thrown out of massive chain grocery stores.
Jared Yates Sexton

Another example of the brilliance of “we have no taxes!” Texas. This is the Texas/Arkansas border. Our state leaders laughed at them when they bought snowplows. So, on the left is the Texas side of the highway, on the right, the Arkansas side:


Kurt Eichenwald

After we finish educating all the Texans on how to survive the next few days, we will also have to teach them to form tenant’s unions because tons of these apartments are about to need severe mold remediation and renters here have approximately zero rights.
ashley fairbanks @ziibiing

Reminder: The Green New Deal is cheaper than a climate apocalypse.
Public Citizen

Run government like you need it to help people. Because that's what government is. Not a business.
Oliver Willis

“I’m not racist, I just really don’t want to address racism.”
@BreeNewsome

One sign of covid’s nastiness is the fact that the covid countermeasures basically eradicated the flu while covid still surged
Tom Gara

This is a good time to note that the electrical grid in Texas was deregulated, privatized, and removed from interconnected networks to avoid federal regulation and increase profits to a small number of wealthy individuals.
Bryan William Jones

Not always true, but, when characters in a contemporary novel don’t use contractions when they speak, I want to kick them individually into a lake
Julieanne Smolinski @BoobsRadley

"This didn’t seem like an armed insurrection. How many firearms were confiscated? How many shots were fired?” ⁦–Wisconsin’s Ron Johnson.⁩ Police recovered a dozen guns and enough live ammunition to shoot every member of Congress five times.
Shannon Watts

Black leaders who preach nonviolence and build multiracial coalitions while employing language about “saving the soul of America”, “uniting as brothers and sisters for common good” and “preserving democracy” will have thicker FBI files than white supremacists. Been like that from day 1. Literally all we have to do is be Black and gather in groups and it’s viewed as a threat. That’s a dynamic going back to the plantations. Hell, back to the ships.
@BreeNewsome

"Woke," like "PC" before it, means "being decent to people who are not you" and it is genuinely remarkable how many people are willing to go on record as being firmly opposed to such an endeavor.
Emily L. Hauser

If you ever see me on a motorcycle, it'll be this one:


Nnedi Okorafor, PhD

Suburban colonization happens when people move to suburbs, taking their political power with them from the place they leave
Phil Ritz

The mainstream media is not liberal. It is elite and coastal. There is a difference. And it centers the needs of establishment whiteness.
Farai Chideya

Funny how “playing the race card” means “a Black person pointed out the racial aspect of a situation” and never, say, "a white person benefitted from white privilege." White people have a race card and they play it all the time. Are y’all ready for that conversation?
@Toure

Have you ever heard any Republicans say they are concerned with making sure there exists a strong Democratic Party? I don’t think I’ve ever heard such a thing uttered in my lifetime. Democratic leaders say this about Republicans every month. How can the party that claims it’s going to pass John Lewis Voting Rights Act also support strengthening a party that’s been leading the attack on voting rights for a generation? GOP was focused on keeping people from voting long before Trump. It’s their top priority at state level
@BreeNewsome

US transport industry treats 55 seconds of delay in a car like an emergency we need to move heaven and earth to resolve. But a half hour or hour delay on a bus: expected. Not worth caring about.
Angie Schmitt

People “demanding” an end to lockdown. You’re arguing with a virus. If it gallops, unchecked, through the under 50s it will mutate. It’s a virus. Do you understand that it’s a virus? I’m not sure how you get through to people who are trying to negotiate with a virus.
Julia Raeside

The people who talk most about how rational they are — and how emotional you, their interlocutor, are clearly being (otherwise you'd see how right they are) — are not the most rational. Rather, their "rationalism" appears to be compensation for their emotional illiteracy. Whenever humans communicate, there are multiple channels being used. There's the straight, propositional meanings of the words, and then there's a whole other language of tone, implication, context cues, body language — social and emotional info being exchanged. Lots of smart young (especially white) men are highly trained in the former but completely untrained in the latter, in fact taught that the latter is feminine and suspect. They are, in a nutshell, emotionally illiterate. They're always "saying the wrong thing" in that latter language or failing to hear messages sent in that latter language. Their personal relationships suffer. And their response is to blame ... everyone else. To declare that second language illegitimate. To declare that ONLY propositional meanings that they consciously intend *count*.
A world built by Reason will not be ruled by a council of tech bros. It will be small-d democratic, messy, iterative, flawed, humble, biased toward compassion over judgment. That's what's effective in actual human affairs — i.e., that's what's rational!
David Roberts @drvolts

According to a study by the London School of Economics, 50 years worth of tax cuts contributed absolutely nothing to GDP growth and employment rates across 18 nations that tried 'trickle down economics', since the wealthiest hoard far more than they spend.
Paul Sweeney

I’d love to know exactly how he was treaded upon. Was the loan on his $70,000 truck given at 2.3% instead of 2.2%, which led to him believing the system is against him? Did his bull bars arrive on day 3 after he paid for 2-day shipping? Surely, the struggle must be real:


Don Kostelec

We keep getting studies showing that the central tenets of conservative ideology are complete vaporware and they're treated like footnotes rather than a huge story.
Michael Hobbes @RottenInDenmark

Perhaps it's unsurprising that a billionaire has no interest in structural and political change. But Bill Gates's belief that he can save the planet with technologies alone, while dissing popular movements and systemic transformation, is as naive as it is arrogant.
George Monbiot

“There is no such thing as a neutral educational process.” –Paulo Freire
@Sisyphus38

This is a truth of transport and planning policy that we don't acknowledge enough in the UK.  If we want public spaces to be better we need to give less of them over to storing cars
davidrelph

The following Republicans voted to convict Bill Clinton for lying about a blowjob but acquitted Donald Trump of inciting a deadly insurrection:
Blunt (MO)
Crapo (ID)
Graham (SC)
Grassley (IA)
Inhofe (OK)
McConnell (KY)
Moran (KS)
Portman (OH)
Shelby (AL)
Thune (SD)
Wicker (MS)
No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen

The plural of privilege is establishment.
Bill McKibben

Republicans who made Hillary Clinton testify for 11 hours on Benghazi 2 years after she was secretary of state now say you can’t impeach Trump 3 weeks after he left office
Ari Berman

All other things being equal, markets allocate capital to people who have capital, not people who have ideas that will make us all better off, and so the story [of meritocracy] begins to break down... But being born rich doesn't make you a good capital allocator, it makes you a useless parasite. Some might escape the prison of birth to parasitehood, but they don't have to - you can be Donald Trump, or Don Jr, and still amass millions.
Cory Doctorow

Thinking today about how we are none of us at our best and it’s so much easier to fracture community than to build it right now.
David M. Perry @Lollardfish

I wonder if I'll ever have an impeachment trial playing in the background while I work from home during a pandemic again
Chris Steller

Joni Mitchell wrote one of the greatest lines ever: “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone?”
@pattho

This is the “Viking cut” hairdo that neo-Nazis love. I can’t believe it ... no wait. Yes I can:


Malcolm Nance

If you say that you don’t allow emotions to influence your thinking, you’re actually saying that you have absolutely no awareness of all the ways your emotions influence your thinking
Helen Rosner

The only appropriate reaction to any of these chittering cowards the next time they try to lecture about duty or patriotism is to laugh in their faces.
Adam Serwer

Trump-based terrorism is coming. My guess is every one of those Republican Senator’s lives are in grave danger. Watch who Trump attacks personally. #BeWarned
Malcolm Nance

Maybe a bunch of 25-year-old white male slave owners were not the most brilliant systems designers to walk the planet. Maybe we should finally actually have that conversation. Maybe some of us have spent our lives engineering better governance structures and have some thoughts
@marcformarc

Sorry white people, now you know how we feel every time we think that some of you will not side with the oppressor. Feels really empty and shitty, doesn't it to think that maybe a couple of folks will get it. And they never do.
ProfB @AntheaButler

This is why I'm neither a Democrat nor a Republican.... One side is a front business for a white nationalist terrorist organization and the other doesn't feel threatened enough by white nationalists to actually wield power to make our multicultural democracy sustainable
Dr. Jason Johnson

First brand-name insurrection in history:


Pat Bagley

Across the country, every day, the petty tyrants of America's local gentry hire and fire people, promote or don't promote them, for arbitrary sexist and racist reasons. These ubiquitous miniature "cancellations" don't get any press or any notice. No one writes op-eds about them.
David Roberts @drvolts

One thing we know for SURE — building and widening highways ALWAYS succeeds in helping sell more cars, gas and suburban sprawl; burning more public budgets; and increasing greenhouse gas emissions. So if THOSE are your goals, it’s the perfect thing to do. Just don’t expect it to reduce traffic.
Brent Toderian

Conservatives: "at-will employment should be the law of the land"
Conservatives after someone gets fired for being a bigot: "no not like that"
Robert Evans @IwriteOK

They are so eager to conflate violently racist beliefs with simply “being conservative” then wonder why people think conservatism is about being violently racist
@rMeredithc

Trump has always been a sociopath, but only as a candidate did he discover that he had a mob at his disposal which would put into action his dark desires...and he loved it. Jan. 6th was a logical result:


Alan Mills @alan_uplc

It is the mark of an unserious mind to think that cryptocurrency is a solution to any serious problem.
Scott Shapiro

Black people are trying to break free of a 500+ year global system that is built on our enslavement and reducing us to dehumanized property for the exploitation of every imperialist nation. Please find a way to fight for liberation for all people without furthering anti-Blackness. Our struggle is older than the existence of the United States of America. Please commit to studying more about the struggle for Black liberation before making impulsive comparisons between movements. Much of the impulse to compare everything and every struggle against oppression to the experience of Black people is because everyone operates with the assumption that Black people must always occupy the lowest tier of society. If we seem to be rising in any way, it’s viewed as disruption. The simple statement “Black lives matter” itself was so disruptive to a global consciousness steeped in colonialism and anti-Blackness that it has been appropriated, commodified and repurposed in a myriad ways. This is also an extension of the thing-ification of Black lives and people.
@BreeNewsome

While the USPS has had its thumb up its ass for decades, Amazon went from an idea — "hey let's get electric delivery vans!" — to vehicles designed, built, and on the street in *one year*. To be clear: this is in no way USPS's fault. The agency, like most, has been under relentless assault by Republicans for years and has been saddled with absurd pension obligations. Just saying: speed is possible, if we want it.
David Roberts @drvolts

The U.S. is a total outlier on vehicle ownership. Even compared to Canada:

Angie Schmitt

“Can we change Republican minds?” is not the relevant question. The relevant question is, “how do we prevent Republicans from completely overthrowing free and fair elections and installing a fascist government as is clearly their intent?”
@BreeNewsome

It is a key thing I do wish Americans understood—many of the urban things they like in European cities come in part from social welfare regimes that enable people to be less frantic about owning property and defending its value than Americans are.
@drschweitzer

Californians are "symbolically liberal, but operationally conservative." Which means they're American.
Pete Saunders

You know what would really help me as a business owner? Universal health care. The money we pay to subsidize employee health care is astronomical and grows every year. I'll happily pay higher taxes to cut out health insurance companies that make $40 billion a year in profit.
@DanPriceSeattle

It’s weird that we have a whole political party that believes regulations are an excessive burden on business, but our system of private health insurance is not
Adam Miller @ajm6792

Mitt Romney went from the Republican nominee for president to almost being murdered by Republican voters in eight years. I don't know what to say about that, but that's what happened.
Thor Benson

what strikes me is that people aren't getting the sympathy they need. usually when someone close to you dies, there aren't a million other people going through the same thing at the same time. like there isn't enough sympathy to go around. grief has become mundane in a way.
Imani Gandy @AngryBlackLady

After resigning last month, Customs and Border Protection’s acting chief has joined FAIR, an SPLC-designated hate group
Ken Klippenstein

The republican party is NOT the law and order party. It is the “our law, our order party.”
Jennifer Daryl Slack

I need someone to explain to me as a millennial how Reaganism happened because I don’t get it. Was it because there were a lot of people who didn’t have memories of life before the New Deal so they really thought the prosperity of 50s and 60s were just magical Americanism?
@BreeNewsome

There was malaise because of the stagnant economy and intractable Iran hostage situation. Then Reagan put everything on a credit card and started a dangerous  and virulent foreign policy and arms race.
Green Asteroid

Everyone believed that the prosperity was due to American Exceptionalism as opposed to the rest of the industrialized world being in ashes after a world war.
Amy Vernon

Commas are important:


John Kovalic @muskrat_john

The economic failure of the 70s, the gas crisis, and the feeling that middle America was losing its grip on a fast changing society (feminism, gay rights, civil rights), created a reflexive backlash, wherein Reagan resembled the good old days purely based on his cinematic roles.
Melissa Ulto @miixxy

I think he happened because Carter (who I loved then and even more now) was a post-Watergate aberration in the GOP's harnessing of racism. Coupled with coopting of anti-choice and anti-communist tough guy, he gave working class whites a reason to vote their hate and fear.
bill cozzo

An FCC study found that the cheapest way to provide broadband nationally is for the government to simply do it themselves. We’ve spent north of $56 billion failing to do something that we could have done correctly for $40 billion.
Waldo Jaquith

Capitalism is based on free, mutual agreements. The worker agrees to do whatever the capitalist says so they can pay rent and not starve, and the capitalist agrees to generate enormous profit off their work. Freedom.
Existential Comics

His ban from Twitter remains the only consequence Trump has ever faced in his entire life.
Patrick S. Tomlinson @stealthygeek

[Trump] really thought the plot was going to work. Very few people understand this. He didn't call off the dogs because he thought he was succeeding in a real coup
Abraham Lincoln, Antifascist @SurrealALincoln

GOP plans to target Democrats as "socialists" in the 1912, I mean 1928, I mean 1944, I mean 1956, I mean 1980, I mean 1996, I mean 2010, I mean 2022 elections
GOP Plans to Target Democrats as ‘Socialists’
David Dayen

Why is it considered a moral failing for Black people to be poor yet poverty is used as a justification for every shitty thing a white person does?
@ducgummybuns

It continues to amaze that these people were willing to kill, and potentially spend years in prison, for a ridiculous, obvious grifter like that scumbag Donald Trump. Jebus.
Joshua Holland

"We cannot make a revolution that eradicates all forms of oppression unless we figure out how to work in coalition with people who are not our mirror images," Barbara Smith tells Janet Mock.
Out Magazine

A Copenhagen video camera study shows that less than 5% of people on bikes break traffic laws while riding, yet 66% of people do so when driving. And if you REALLY want even more on bikes to obey laws, build protected bike infrastructure.
Brent Toderian

The stock market is just the marshmallow test for adults.
Ashley Mayer

Me: This man is going to sleep. What is he wearing?
Student: PJs.
Me: Yeah, and can you say the long word for that?
S: Peeeee jaaaayyyyys.
Speech Autist

Listening to the #ImpeachmentTrial, and all this stuff about 'this is america' or 'this is not america' is wearing.  Man, we don't know who tf america is.
Amity Foster

Stop writing about the economic anxiety of people who flew to DC in their private jets. Start writing about the ideology that is fueling their radicalism.
Ilhan Omar

More Staceys. Fewer Karens.
Jennifer Mendelsohn @CleverTitleTK

Keep in mind that when Trump was saying he could only lose if the election was rigged, he was trailing by 6-10 points in the national polling averages and had NEVER led in even a single high-quality poll.
Joshua Holland

Trump supporters and qanon have their root in a deep seated misogyny and their favorite target is Hillary Clinton. Never underestimate the massive power of hatred of women who don’t know their place.
@TinaDuryea

Kissing canopy, winter edition. Also the best decision Winnipeg ever made (100 years ago) putting a treed boulevard between the sidewalk and every street:


Neil Loewen

Every gun death in the US is a policy choice.
Hannah Lichtsinn, MD @DoctorLix

This is the core of the GOP lie. "If Democrats just did things the right way, we'd totally be on board" It's not true. It's never been true.  There is no "Right way" as long as GOP agenda isn't being followed. It's an abuser's lie.
Absurdistwords

Big Tech, to users: "your privacy is important to us"
Big Tech, to SCOTUS: well, actually, privacy violations are unimportant, a user whose privacy is violated shouldn't even have legal standing
Don Marti

This second impeachment reminds me of whenever the KKK was brought to trial. Never mattered how much evidence was presented. Didn’t matter if the man admitted to the crime. He was ALWAYS acquitted bc the judge and jury were Klan too.
Jenn Budd

The way the rulers are handling climate changes helps me to realize no one has been an adult for very long. just were born in contexts laid down over millennia then time flew and you are old and people think you have perspective.
@BuildSoil

Teachers unions are actually pretty good pretty much all the time and you hate them because propaganda is effective. And when they aren’t good ... the powers they are fighting are ALWAYS worse.
David M. Perry @Lollardfish

If they don’t convict Trump, it doesn’t mean that he’s innocent. It means that the entire Republican Party is guilty.
@TravisAllen02

New Harvard research on fossil-fuel deaths finds they've been underestimated. Researchers now think "exposure to particulate matter from fossil fuel emissions accounted for 18 percent of total global deaths in 2018  — a little less than 1 out of 5."
David Roberts @drvolts

After folks gathered for the 1963 March on Washington, white conservatives used that gathering to malign Black people for decades because of litter supposedly left on the Mall. Trump led an actual coup attempt that killed people. Republicans can shove their "move on" rhetoric.
Leah McElrath

Folks use “lynch mob” incorrectly all the time. Survivors of your decades of rape/sexual assaults, finally coming forward is NOT a lynch mob. Them thousands of people on Jan 6th tho? Oh yes.
Reagan Gomez

Oh look, a guy calling the cops pigs while literally holding a Blue Lives Matter banner...
Chris Hayes

“Language is the sound of culture.” @dribram on Zora’s use of dialect in her work.
Leslie Pitterson

Key Question: Would the January 6 assault on Congress have happened (and would 5 people have died) if President Trump had conceded and congratulated president elect Biden after all the networks and state officials declared Biden the winner? Everybody knows the answer.
walter dellinger

In September 1969 House voted 338 to 70 to pass constitutional amendment abolishing Electoral College. It was filibustered by 3 segregationist southern senators. 34 senators who killed bill represented just 27 percent of population.
Ari Berman

What evolutionary advantage did whining give us as humans? Also, why is that the only language my 3.5-year-old knows now?
@mikesonn

There's a vaccine for the 8.7 million deaths caused each year by air pollution from fossil fuels. That vaccine is called solar panels and wind turbines
Bill McKibben

the point is that if you watched the ad and it didn't feel Christian to you (and white. and colonial), and thus excluding non-Christians (like me, an old secular Jew) ... that says something about your perceptions rather than something about the ad. Cause it isn't subtle.
David M. Perry @Lollardfish

I'm constantly struck by how common it is to judge colleges (and private K-12 schools) not by the quality of the education they offer but by the number of apeopleicants they manage to avoid admitting. Say it with me: "Selectivity and quality are completely different things"
Alfie Kohn

Just a reminder that Intuit and HR Block make money by charging for a service that should be free. The government could easily provide a comparable service at no charge. These companies have purchased the complicity of Congress - and they have enough $ left for Super Bowl ads.
Binyamin Appelbaum

States that added the most wind power in 2020: Texas, Wyoming, Oklahoma. In other words, our fossil fuel states are moving faster to clean energy than others, because renewable power is cheap. These states can also help point the way to workforce transition.
Russ Stark

They could just give the $2,000 checks to everyone and then tax millionaires. They could actually just do that. It's a thing that could be done. But we're all expected to think this is really complicated, even though it's not.
David Sirota

Sure, let's make sure *everyone* pays their "fair share," we can start by banning free street parking, everywhere.
Jaron @Comradephate

a thing I've picked up on from talking with car owners is that they *really* resent the cost of insurance and gas, and sometimes extrapolate this to a feeling that it's unfair that some people don't have those costs
@ManishEarth

Handy translation guide:
“Cyclists need to pay their fair share”= I do not understand how roads are funded or what causes road damage
“Roads are for cars” = I do not understand history and am unable to imagine a future that differs in any way from the present  1/n
“We need to crack down on cyclists running stop signs!” = I do not understand what actually causes serious traffic crashes
“Cyclists are just a bunch of elitists” = I am unable to google how much a bike costs and how much a car costs or to understand why not everyone can drive
“Bike lanes cause congestion” = I do not believe geometry exists
@Momifornia1

This chart is a handy aid to show how damaging bicycles are to the road:


@minus_marci

Just stating for the record I'll happily support road use tariffs that scale with the fourth power of weight per axle. Also fines for speeding proportional to kinetic energy.
Dan Zimmerman @N3OX

Leftists want a fair, democratic and sustainable economy. Capitalism inherently and systematically delivers the opposite. If your long-term vision doesn’t include replacing capitalism with something better, either you’re not a leftist or you don’t understand capitalism.
Arash Kolahi

It’s actually not necessary to keep bringing up BLM, a 9-year-old protest movement against structural racism, when discussing the 1/6 attack on the Capitol and the violence of white supremacy that has existed since the founding of this nation.
@BreeNewsome

Everyone knows that telling people "relax" always has the opposite effect, therefore we can assume that anyone telling you "relax" intends to rile you up, right? We all know this, yes?
@AnnaVolodova

Ugh. I’m in a car forum where everyone is trying to figure out how they can get television to play on their dash while they’re driving. Sadly it’s possible. Thanks, NHTSA. These are all grown ups too (it’s a minivan forum). This is the open secret about those big dashes. Soon everyone’s going to be watching tv while they drive even though their cars still require constant monitoring.
Angie Schmitt

It is a relief to wake up each morning and not be terrified the occupant of the White House got into a mood and started a war on a whim.
Leah McElrath

The shamelessness of Republicans on the Sunday shows is a sight to behold. You got hundreds of thousands of Americans killed and then helped a deadly attack on the Capitol to stop the peaceful transfer of power! And it’s all “well, shucks why are Democrats so divisive?” They damn near destroyed the goddamn country. Unprecedented death and destruction and misery and mourning. Absent some apology and honesty nothing they have to say is worth anything at all at all at all.
Chris Hayes

Free Speech Warriors tell us they are defending the powerful racist men on principle, to defend speech for everyone, but never actually get around to the latter.
David M. Perry @Lollardfish

Native mascots don’t seem like a big deal to you because you’ve been conditioned to think of NDNs as subhuman savages instead of human beings. it’s been proven they have lasting mental health effects and if you don’t join in on demanding change, it never will. we can’t do it alone
@thedoophus

After all has been said and done, it emerges that just three House Republicans — Katko, Upton and Kinzinger — accepted Biden’s election win, voted to impeach Trump, and voted to punish Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Hugo Lowell

No one likes to talk about it: For the lower half of its populace the US already qualifies as a "Failed Society.
Langdon Winner

According to a study by the London School of Economics, 50 years worth of tax cuts contributed absolutely nothing to boost the GDP and employment rates across 18 nations that tried trickle down economics since the wealthy hoard far more than they spend.
50 years of tax cuts for the rich failed to trickle down, economics study says
Tax cuts for the wealthy didn't boost the economies of the U.S. and 17 other countries — but they did worsen income inequality.
Greg Fish

It really would be fun to see the counterfactual where libraries are proposed for the first time today. Would we end up with means-tested entrance fees or just refundable tax credits for book purchases. Maybe a SNAP-B benefit for book vouchers?
James Medlock

To paraphrase Enrique Peñalosa: A plowed and salted cycle track is a symbol that a child on a $30 bicycle is equally important as an adult inside a $30,000 car:


@modacitylife

“Consequence Culture” is a much more accurate phrase.
Keith Edwards

If no one else reminds you today, you’re living through a major traumatic event in modern history, without any support from government, expected to pretend everything’s fine every day. You’re searching for purpose in a time where it’s tough to find any. You’re doing great.
@grandson

“By early February, more people are killed with guns in the US than are killed with guns in other high-income countries in a year. America has a gun death rate 11 times that of those countries and each shooting has a ripeoplee effect.”
Shannon Watts

Ayn Rand is useful because she’s one of the few thinkers who is the completely wrong. You don’t have to spend time separating wheat from chaff. Just go in thinking “the opposite of this is correct” and you can gain some real insights.
matt christman @cushbomb

STUDY: Drivers of luxury cars found to give pedestrians the right of way 3x less than those driving less expensive vehicles; 4x more likely to cut off other drivers. Call it the "Audi Effect."
Taras Grescoe

67% of Americans support raising minimum wage to $15 hour but it can be filibustered by 41 GOP senators representing just 21% of country. This is why the Senate is deeply broken
Ari Berman

My claim to fame is hating the people everyone else hates 12-15 years earlier.
Naomi Klein (referring to Larry Summers)

i get confused when christians brag about missionary work, like babe, being a colonizer should embarrass you.
@florencequinne

The thing that should embarrass them is taking money from charity and spending what would be a year's salary for the people you claim to be there to help just to fly there. When you could have just sent the money and paid a local to do the work.
@KevinBRoss4 (referring to m

“Democrats have to be as aggressive in expanding voting rights as Republicans are in suppressing voting rights.” –Ari Berman
Amanda Litman

A single-family house converted into 8 units is good for housing affordability. An apartment building converted to a single family house is bad for housing affordability. Shockingly, a lot of people get this backwards.
@BRuddTweets

Talk to me about billionaire philanthropy once they're paying their fair share in taxes. Until then billionaire philanthropy is tax evasion dressed up as PR.
Qasim Rashid, Esq.

Teaching is about taking things apart; writing is about putting things together. –Toni Morrison
tamara k. nopper

Tesla paying employees to bike and take transit to work because driving doesn’t scale efficiently (electric doesn’t solve this!) is *chef’s kiss*
Gordon Padelford @GordonOfSeattle

Final jobs scorecard under Don Trump is grim:


David Rothschild

Technically the Senate is split 50-50, but not in reality. Democratic senators represent 41 million more people than Republican senators. 41 million is no small number in a population of 238 million.
Jennifer Daryl Slack

In a blinded name-swap experiment, black female high school students were significantly less likely to be recommended for AP Calculus compared to other students with identical academic credentials. Important new paper from @DaniaFrancis.
Jason Sheltzer

Republicans Accuse Ocasio-Cortez Of Not Being Anywhere Near Place They Told Capitol Mob She Would Be
The Onion

I was told “stop crying, or I’ll really give you something to cry about” by a father who had been physically abused as a child. Amazing how much conservatives feel like bad parents.
Lorraine Berry @BerryFLW

The 81 million who voted for President Biden are being asked to unify with people who advocate lynching, white nationalism and sedition to negate the votes of nonwhite people. Not “advocated,” but who unapologetically stand by those things still. I don’t see how that works.
Joy-Ann Reid

Means-testing against 2019 income for a plague that started in 2020 is such obvious cruelty. It really lays bare the cruelty of all means testing, and every single so called "liberal" that advocates for it.
@PlanetofFinks

I can’t get over the fact that we’re still planning to use 2019 income to determine if you need a stimulus check, like 2020 never happened? Just send people money and tax it back later if you have to ffs it’s not hard.
@mplsalex

Still can't stop thinking about how the Trump administration executed 13 people in the final months of his term. More federal executions than the previous 67 years combined. It was a level of depravity that I'm still struggling to wrap my head around.
Clint Smith

“Politicians are still saying ‘my job is to make food cheaper for you’, no matter how toxic it is from a planetary or human health perspective. We must stop arguing that we have to subsidise the food system for the poor and instead bring them out of poverty.”
Ricardo J Salvador @cadwego

One year into a marathon pretendathon that stay at home moms are a typical family type. And that childcare isn't real work with important consequences.
Angie Schmitt

The GOP gave casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson a $670,000,000 tax cut (yes that says six hundred seventy million dollars). But we need to means-test $2000 pandemic relief checks because some people who get them might not need them? Got it.
Evan Sutton

80% of new vehicle sales are light trucks (including SUVs). It was ~50% as recently as 2015. Obvious implications for traffic safety (pedestrian deaths) but says something more about the state of US psyche. It’s not like everyone is hauling lots of things or people. #ArmsRace
David M. Levinson @trnsprtst

Look, this whole Marjorie Taylor Greene situation bores me. This is who Republicans have been the entire time, and it’s not interesting or disturbing that it manifested in her. But as long as we keep pretending the GOP has to “make a choice,” we can forget that they already did.
@GothamGirlBlue

We’re watching the Republican Party split into two factions:
1. White nationalists
2. White nationalists with merch.
Michael Harriot

#SomethingBeautiful - Japan Archive - Kyoto shibainu cookie window display, October 2019:


Tony Cava

The most votes in Republican presidential election history were earned by a racist birther who was openly ignorant on every issue under the sun. They're not going back.
Oliver Willis

really can't overstate the ubiquity of execution/hanging/violence in memes and rhetoric among the right-wing folks who are Extremely Online. Just a central trope everywhere you look.
Chris Hayes

CNN and MSNBC are covering the tribute to a Capitol Police officer who was murdered in the line of duty and who lies in honor at the Capitol tonight, but Fox News is busy sneering at Fauci.
Kevin M. Kruse

Really need NYC pols to figure out that in NYC transportation, the "choices" are not morally equivalent: someone else's choice to drive = dead cyclists and pedestrians, delayed transit riders, toxins in lungs, crushing congestion, honking, violence.
@citycyclops

It’s funny how much I get called a beta male soy boy by people who need a gun to feel like a man.
David Hogg

AOC isn't going to read your comments minimizing her trauma and saying she's looking for attention. But all of the people in your life who have experienced trauma and want to know who around them is "safe" and reliable sure will!
Alyssa Leader @alittleleader

Why isn't Johnson and Johnson just "Johnson"? It's not the Mayo, Mayo and Mayo Clinic.
Chris Steller

Paraphrasing David Graeber, there are no markets without states and no states without markets. If you want to get rid of one, you have to get rid of the other.
Isabel Rodríguez @ecomentario

No Pipeline Anywhere Ever | Landon Sheely | 2016:


Cory Doctorow

When you hear the phrase "free market," you probably think of "a market that is free from regulation" but that's the opposite of the phrase's original meaning! Adam Smith used the term to describe a market that was free from "economic rents" - money earned by owning things, rather than doing things. Smith recognized that markets attract parasites - "rentiers" - who seek to drain wealth by "investing" rather than building and doing. Which meant that, in the absence of muscular state  intervention, markets would become less and less free - more and more dependent on the whims of rentiers who used money to breed money by creating toll-barriers between parts of the productive economy.
Cory Doctorow

A study has found that the job with the highest mortality rate from COVID-19 is line cook. All the arguments about re-opening indoor or outdoor dining should take this into account.
Jane McGonigal @avantgame

So - remind me again? If the groundhog is wearing a mask it’s 12 more months of plague and if not it’s a Republican Congressional Representative and it’s still 12 more months of plague?
@StPaulBikeScum (on February 2, obviously)

We lost nearly a year of our lives. We've been living a Groundhog Day existence for eleven months now. Largely because the former president was a malevolent sociopath.
@tomtomorrow

who made this:


Nicky Woolf

Be honest about the true ownership cost of cars. A well-maintained vehicle can last for 20 years. Insurance gets cheaper. Depreciation disappears. At some point it's only about 3 grand/year unless you enjoy a major mechanical failure. However, during the first years you pay through the nose while your car's resale value plummets. And your bill for for roads, heath insurance (car pollution makes people very sick), car storage, terrible communities and a climate crisis will dog you forever.
Mary Morse Marti

Imagine being a journalist who has ascended to the heights of political coverage and is now reporting from the White House press room. And caring about process and personalities, rather than the way that the policies being promulgated shape American lives.
David M. Perry @Lollardfish

As long as people see a financial incentive to being cruel and racist and misogynistic and fascistic and in destroying shared society they’re going to take it and it’s going to continue to cost us lives and valuable, precious time.
Jared Yates Sexton

Arguments that attempt to defend the filibuster on the merits sound dumber and dumber to me. It's difficult for me to believe they're offered in good faith. I like to approach arguments for the filibuster this way: imagine we *didn't* have it and someone was trying to persuade you to implement it. "You're passing too much legislation! The majority keeps getting what it wants! The interests of small states are being trampled!"
David Roberts @drvolts

If you are a governmental body and require people to print out a pdf, sign in, and then scan it back, you are creating barriers to participation.  Make the form e-signable, at the very least!
Amity Foster

Jon Adams @citycyclops

Seems to me lots of people, mostly but not exclusively conservatives, mistake pluralism for moral relativism.
David Roberts @drvolts

The fact that Taylor Greene *also* inherited a building construction business from her dad is just too perfect.
Chris Hayes

A global survey of oil and gas transmission pipelines found $1 trillion-with-a-T in stranded-asset risk. The US is leading the world in pipeline capacity expansion, and thus leading the world in stranded-asset risk.
David Roberts @drvolts

By 2040, 30% of the population will elect 70% of the Senate! Can our current system survive this huge population shift? Should it? Can it still pretend to be democratic?
Alan Mills @alan_uplc

Political reporters need to be rebranded as government reporters, covering problems and who's trying to solve them instead of which party is winning today's messaging war.
Dan Froomkin/PressWatchers.org @froomkin

Seems like a good day for a reminder that in any other year, hundreds of giddy children from across Washington, DC would be sledding at the Capitol building all day today. They can't because the grounds are closed to the public following a domestic terror attack:


Elliot Williams