Twitter: May 2014

The month of May in the year 2014… minus a few days, I admit.

It ends (and therefore this post starts) with just a few reactions to the mass murder in Isla Vista, California. I can't write about it, and don't feel a need to because so much has been said. This was perhaps the best piece I read, because it deals with Elliott Rodger's racial identity, which I didn't see anywhere else. He wasn't only a deluded, misogynistic, pathetic loser, he was also a self-hating biracial child of divorce.

Men I follow are tweeting about sports right now. Women I follow are tweeting about rape culture and mass murder. See the problem?
By umair haque

“Men’s rights activist” is a bullshit euphemism. The term you’re looking for is “male supremacist.” And in this case, “terrorist.”
By Erin Kissane

Black guy shoots folks = thug. Brown guy shoots folks = terrorist. White guy guns down women = "nice kid with mental health issues."
By Van Jones

Imagine an America in which it is as easy, quick, and stigma-free to obtain mental health care as it is to buy a gun.
By Xeni Jardin

"Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them." - Margaret Atwood
By Audrey Watters

When people say, "Guns aren't the problem, mental illness is," reply, "They're both problems, and we're not addressing either of them."
By Andy Borowitz

The thing about "not all men" is that it evinces a mentality of "how can I avoid getting blamed for this", not "how can I put a stop to this."
By John S Costello

Calling the (non-Muslim) perpetrators of mass shootings "madmen" is a way to depoliticize and decontextualize their violence and its motives.
By Ali Abunimah

America sure does produce a lot of weirdo loners with easy access to guns who are not at all representative of a deeper cultural pathology.
By Jim Ray

Can we stop telling men they are owed sex and telling women that they owe it. Sex is something you engage in not something you dispense.
By Emily Heller

Started reading the #YesAllWomen tweets because I've got a daughter, but now I see I should be reading them because I've got two sons.
By Albert W Dubreuil

#notallmales RT @goodbirding Best alarm clock ever! Northern Cardinal male. 


By Chris Steller

And then the rest of my Twitter feed before that, including some comic relief:

So, the Pope is in Israel with an Imam and a Rabbi... If they don't walk into a bar, it's all been for nothing.
By Just me.

The memoir is inventing speech to suggest that which lies beyond speech. To truly render a single hour would require enormous effort.
By Joyce Carol Oates

See why I love punctuation? Because when it's gone...


By Jen Glover Konfrst

Shout out to the person with all the anti-government bumper stickers at this state park.
By Sporks Pantalones

Comment sections: Where reading comprehension goes to die.
By Tim Donovan

I know gun violence cannot be completely eliminated. I just wish the Right took it as seriously as the fear of two people without IDs voting.
By Pete Nicely

The letter E used to designate a failing grade until it was phased out by the '30s over fear of students interpreting it to mean: excellent.
By Men's Facts

Staring into the fire was the original looking at your phone
By Aparna Nancherla

Stop saying "backslash" when you mean regular slash. Grace period is over. Violators should lose web access.
By Baratunde Thurston

The "go to college" response to inequality is the "let them eat cake" policy prescription of the bridge to the 21st century.
By Mark Price

The House Science Committee has held more hearings on aliens than on climate change.
By David Fenton

To the person who did this, I salute you.


By Amanda

Minneapolis has been awarded the 2018 Super Bowl! And St. Paul has been awarded the 2018 Overflow Parking.
By Stephen Colbert

Why feel guilt when you can eat it.
By Aparna Nancherla

I'll find out right away if my kids ever start using drugs, BECAUSE THEY'LL JUST DROP THEM IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROOM, LIKE EVERYTHING ELSE.
By Greg Knauss

Googled "fish tank" — was not disappointed.


By Don't Call Me Gaga

Explanations fail when we are unable to translate what we take for granted to an uninformed audience. It's all about perspective.
By Joe Shindelar

"A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars, it's where the rich use public transportation." —Mayor of Bogota, Colombia
By Quotes

HBO’s Silicon Valley finally portrayed a female tech founder -- who sleeps with programmers so they’ll write code for her. Fuck that show.
By Andy Baio

When drivers say that cyclists need to obey driving laws, they should be forced to spend a day driving behind a driver that actually does.
By Ed Kohler

Stupid question but these "millennials" everyone keeps talking about, they're thousand-year-olds, right?
By Jonathan Blake

I'd be ECSTATIC if someone took off their coat to reveal they were a stack of dogs the entire time.
By Janine Brito

Learning happens best with emotion, challenge, and the requisite support. --Kurt Hahn
By Kevin Long

3-D printing is sure to revolutionize how technologies are overhyped in the future.
By carlsewall

Doomsday preppers are guilty of wishful thinking; the world never ends when you want it to.
By Jamison

Dear Marco Rubio, While you're spouting off that I'm not real, your hometown is drowning. Love, Climate Change.
By The New Republic

New fave malapropism: self-defeating prophecy.
By Tim Shey

A moment of silence for all of the fictional mothers that had to die in the name of tragic back story and character development.
By Professor Snape

You can never have enough books.
By Nikhil Goyal

British word that has no equal in American English: knackered.
By daveweigel

Complaining that solar panels only convert 15% of sunlight into electricity is silly: coal power probably = .001 of original sunlight.
By Kees van der Leun

7th grade student not put in enriched English because he doesn't hand things in and his punctuation is poor. He's read War and Peace for fun. #school
By Sisyphus38

Cat and babby once synchronized nighttime yowls. Now they work in series. I fear they're learning. This may be my last entry. God help us.
By Erin Kissane

Neoliberal education reformers are trying to do something that seems virtually impossible: make schooling even more lifeless and oppressive.
By Nikhil Goyal

Even if you really believe in capitalism, most people are 1000x more productive when they're not freaking out about making rent.
By Joshua Eaton

There can NEVER be too many cop dramas according to the laws of TV physics.
By Janine Brito

The end of history, in one sign.


By Scott Smith

Remember boys: condoms are good, but the only way to 100% make sure you don't get a girl pregnant is to yell gross stuff at her from a car.
By Erin Gloria Ryan

Top 25 hedge funders took in $21 billion last year. That's 45% of the total income of The Bronx, home to 1.4 million people.
By Doug Henwood

Childhood is not a race to quickly read, write, and count. It's a time to develop at your own pace.
By Steven Singer

Standardized tests are also eternally preppable because they are such hugely artificial tasks. This isn't learning, it's indoctrination.
By Arash Daneshzadeh

We are destroying the biosphere just to benefit the 4.2% of the population who own cars.
By Free Public Transit

It's funny how people think that owning an instrument of killing is a transcendent right while making decisions about your own body isn't.
By Maury Compson

Paul Hawken: "At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present & calling it gross domestic product."
By John Cook

I feel like Gollum really ruined the word "precious" for the rest of us.
By Rainbow Rowell

UN Population Division estimates that 2014 will be the PEAK BIRTH YEAR with 139 million births being the highest ever.


By Hans Rosling

Person steps out of 5000-pound car with windows rolled up and music blaring to tell me I'm a danger to myself & others for wearing earbuds on a bike
By Matt Haughey

If God did decree that teaching a girl to read was a sin but kidnapping and selling her was not, why would you want anything to do with him?
By Sean Jones

Invest in women farmers, smallholders and nutrition, says @DaniNierenberg. Amen.
By Jonathan Foley

What a world! When comics like Louis C.K and Jon Stewart speak hard truths, and politicians speak with forked tongue.
By Diane Ravitch

"Ahistorical liberals — like most Americans — still believe that race invented racism, when in fact the reverse is true."
By David Kaib

We like teaching things that R right or wrong. It's easy to grade. That's why we like grammar, math, and content. They make us feel like experts.
By Sisyphus38