February 2015 ends today. Not so many big topics dominating my Twitter feed as in other recent months.
There were a few about measles outbreaks and vaccine refusers:
America: where minorities, for good reason, fear their kids getting shot, and white people, for no reason, fear their kids getting shots.And just a few about the terrible shooting of three Muslim students in North Carolina:
By God
I look at the incredulity and anger the chattering class directs toward anti-vaxxers and I think, why is climate denial any different?
By David Roberts
If so many people believe vaccines cause autism, why can’t we spread rumors like “SUVs are bad for the environment” or “guns kill people?”
By Adam Isacson
I'm really $*%ing sick of the slut shaming that goes along with most mentions of Jenny McCarthy in vaccine advocacy. Stop it.
By Maggie Koerth-Baker
When you think about it, Hitler was also mad about there not being enough "parking spaces" for Germans.And just a couple about Brian Williams' and Bill O'Reilly's problems with the truth:
By Alex Pareene
If you kill three Muslims for parking space, how many Muslims would you kill for oil fields?
By Jamal Dajani
To be clear: I think responsibility for Chapel Hill murders lies with the person who did it, not those who share his beliefs: a good principle.
By Glenn Greenwald
So Brian Williams is ruined, yet every week Dr. Oz has a new "Eat pencil shavings to lose weight!" and we're all "Shhh the doctor's talking."There was a long tweet storm from David Rogers about the Netflix series House of Cards and how it's a bad cartoon about politics:
By Karen Kilgariff
The people gloating about it already knew Bill O'Reilly was a liar, and the people who need to know won't care.
By Joshua Lyman
I think the naive view of politics, on both left and right, is that someone is in control -- probably someone hidden, *secretly* in control. And thus, the best way to understand politics is to figure out who’s really running things — whose agenda really rules.And then the general run of topics like education, climate change, feminism, anti-racism... and fun, too.
But as I got closer to politics, started following it, talking to those involved, tracking results, I came to a different conclusion: Nobody’s in charge. Nobody is really running things. Nobody has the real, true, insider knowledge. Everyone is improvising, reacting, based on the same flawed, limited information available to anyone with an internet connection. The beast has no head.
This revelation is in many ways *far more terrifying* than the idea that there’s some secret, shadowy cabal in charge. At least in theory, one can expose a cabal, reach it, reason with it, influence it. But if NO one’s in charge, who do you talk to? How do you make change? Where are the levers, if not in the hands of some cabal?
In truth the U.S. political system, like any complex system, displays emergent properties with no simple causal chains or agents. Shit just happens.
This is not to say we can’t identify forces and people exerting particular kinds of influences on the system and hold them responsible. But the bracing truth is that no one is really uber-confident and in control like Frank Underwood.
Everyone’s winging it, in a fog of uncertainty, cross-cutting incentives and tribal loyalties. No one is rationally maximizing anything.
I side with [the show] Parks and Recreation. To me the proper response to the sheer absurdity of the human endeavor is more compassion and patience. Whereas House of Cards and the like foster our worst empirical and moral habits with regard to politics.
I'm contractually obligated to tweet a picture of this NO CUPCAKE PARKING sign every time I see it:
By Chris Steller
Thatcher, Reno, Hillary (all women whom I have no love lost for) are all called "things." Not women. And it bothers me to see feminists saying it. Because I will go to the mat for what I believe in, but you don't uphold feminism by deciding who's a woman.
By KillerMartinis
You don’t simply get to say you’re not a racist — or a sexist or a homophobe. It's an arudous, constant process of unlearning.
By Arash Daneshzadeh
"A lot of the sharing economy is about rebranding precarity as entrepreneurship." -- Molly Crabapple
By Paul Thomas
The federal government owns 28% of all U.S. land, including 85% of Nevada and 69% of Alaska:
By Sudeep Reddy
Data on [education] vouchers shows half are just free money for people who never had kids in public school.
By Mr. Purdy
Donald Trump is like if the comments section were a person.
By Laura
It is really sad that we teach boys to be ashamed of empathizing with girls, of thinking girls have worthwhile stories. Then we wonder why sexist attitudes are so hard to uproot. We tell boys from birth that girls get GIRL stuff, but boy stuff is for everyone. Girls get the same message: Stereotypical femininity is less than, other. Stereotypical masculinity is the norm from which women deviate. And that message is reinforced in everything from advertising to food packaging to entertainment media. We are saturated in it.
By Bailey
It’s almost as if everything we intuitively take as simple and self-evident were actually a rich, complex product of conflicting perceptions
By Tim Carmody
We all want "more rigor" but what they really mean is just more worksheets/definitions/homework/exercises. Not rigor.
By Julie Golden
How re-districting can steal elections:
By Christiane
I’d bet money that lobbying for Keystone created more jobs than the pipeline itself would.
By David Roberts
Study by Daphne Bugental et al: People who "see themselves as lacking power are most likely to use coercive control tactics" with their kids.
By Alfie Kohn
The key problem with Walmart is that it systematically depends on the poverty of communities.
By Charles Marohn
This turtle has a cool algae mohawk! Other incredible turtles you won't believe exist:
By Strange Animals
Crazy idea: What if instead of delivering content to kids that we know they'll just forget, cuz all us adults did, we do something different?
By Sisyphus38
Let’s come together around our goals of moving the country in diametrically opposed directions. What could go wrong? "We want a 21st century social democracy." "Oh? We want a 19th century social darwinist economy run by theocrats." "Hey, let’s compromise!" I would love for the parties to come together. Come on over to modernity, cons! The water’s fine.
By David Roberts
Private sector things like defined-contribution pensions and even health insurance are a hell of a lot more convoluted than public versions.
By Matt Bruenig
This may not be politic to say, but I kind of think the Department of Homeland Security could vanish entirely w/ no deleterious effect on the country.
By David Roberts
By snipe ツ
"Downtown St. Paul has two of the nicest downtowns in America, unfortunately separated by the middle part.”
By William Lindeke
Hold still kid, I'm trying to wrap this curriculum around you.
By Sisyphus38
To paraphrase Dr Phil Goff at the Police Taskforce -- when there is no metric for trust there is no incentive to make it a goal of policing.
By WalterWKatz
Standardized tests are ruining our education system. Being defined by a few numbers is so anti-holistic learning.
By James Farnsworth
I believe in: kids' ability to lead their own learning, free play teaching much of what kids need, love and cooperation. People call me a cynic.
By Sisyphus38
There is nobody on earth who has exploited 9/11 more frequently, shamelessly and self-servingly than Rudy Giuliani.
By Glenn Greenwald
Well my phone's "airplane mode" turned out to be a big disappointment.
By Jemaine Clement
Yup. Why Fahrenheit is better than Celsius:
By Patrick Ruffini
Here's your friendly reminder that The Sound of Music is still one of only 4 Best Picture winners with a female protagonist.
By Zack Ford
Youth of color know that schools have more in common with military camps/prisons than with other institutions, hence their cultural mistrust.
By Arash Daneshzadeh
A woman over 65 is less likely to be cited as an expert in the media than a boy 13 to 18.
By Patricia Cohen
Appalling:
By Uplcchicago
What's the German word for when the snow melts and everywhere is a minefield of dog poop?
By Aaron Sarver
It's amazing how people want to make maiming or killing people with the legal right of way no more than an oopsie. [After a bus killed a pedestrian in Brooklyn.]
By Brooklyn Spoke
Chuck Todd said Kentucky Senate candidate Allison Lundegren Grimes's comment "disqualified" her, but Giuliani's comment "brings out worst in the press." Wow.
By Frank Conniff
Evil shoes:
By Halloween Costumes
"Scalability" of curriculum is a euphemism for homogenizing learning as profit-sharing with textbook corporations, in the name of efficiency.
By Arash Daneshzadeh
Cycling has predominantly been seen as for *radicals and recreation.* Time to normalize cycling as transportation.
By jennifer keesmaat
Elephant Hawk Moth:
By Strange Animals
"Do you feel pressured to write strong male characters?" asked no interviewer ever.
By Saladin Ahmed
We think it's very important for you to know a whole bunch of stuff that virtually all adults you know no longer know.
By Sisyphus38
Fifty Shades of Grey is romantic only because the guy is a billionaire. If he was living in a trailer it would be a Criminal Minds episode.
By emre
Too many people -- white, Black, and everybody else -- view MLK and Malcolm X as extreme opposites. People latch onto that false dichotomy and truly believe if they're just nicer (like MLK) racism will disappear.
By Angry Black Fangirl
Huge if true:
By Tom Hamilton
Very often... The outspoken women are painted as angry and bitter spirits. The outspoken men are praised as revolutionaries and heroes.
By solange knowles
“Negroes - Sweet and docile,
Meek, humble, and kind:
Beware the day
They change their mind.”
— Langston Hughes, Warning
By Hannah G.
"Truth about getting older:...fewer and fewer things to make fun of until finally there's nothing you're sure you'll never be." -J Offill
By Alfie Kohn
Given early brain development, it's concerning that babies have poverty rates 40% higher than teenagers.
By Michele S Parvensky
Everything is not about race. But those things that are ARE. --Rev. Dr. Renita Weems
By Brittney Cooper
Hate American poverty, militarism, imprisonment? You hate America. Hate American taxation, gun laws, welfare state? You love America.
By J.A. Myerson
"Children grow into the intellectual life around them" - Vygotsky:
By Neil Stephenson
It's ok not to love America, by the way. Loving human beings is about 100 million times more important, and the two often conflict.
By Saladin Ahmed
I figure Walmart is like a discount club (a la Costco) except we're all automatically signed up and pay via taxation.
By Leon Horsley
Is there a technical term for a group of cartoonists? Like, A Depression of Cartoonists, or An Unemployment of Cartoonists?
By davegolbitz
"When the Student is ready the Teacher will appear." WRONG!!! The Teacher is here...ready or not, we have a test to prepare for.
By Sisyphus38
We must change how we define "successful." It perpetuates our competitive consumerism culture and is toxic for all.
By Sisyphus38
My window faces the Griffith Observatory, so I get to watch the flashes of idiots who think their iPhone flash'll help them capture LA at night.
By Janine Brito
Moneyless classless stateless communities of humanity in creative, harmonious cooperation, this is horizontal harmony:
By Rafael
"What do you want to be when you grow up?" "An honest, brave, compassionate human being." "No…I mean, how do you want to sell your labor?"
By Existential Comics
Islamic State is probably best understood as part of a global, millennia-old cult of bullying, controlling, killer masculinity.
By Saladin Ahmed
The internet: Where people who have never tried feel perfectly justified lecturing best practices to those who do it every day.
By jayewells
Freire taught 300 illiterate workers how to read and write in 45 days by making connections and using vocabulary relevant to their lives.
By Nikhil Goyal
Why do people who think it would be easy to adjust to major climate change think it would be intolerably painful to adjust to costly energy?
By Mark A.R. Kleiman
See the massive bureaucracy for auto licenses? That is Auto Sprawl Subsidy.
By Free Public Transit
My frustration at the ridiculously high cost of daycare sits side-by-side with my deep feeling that daycare providers are underpaid.
By Maggie Koerth-Baker
He's an angry fellow:
By Halloween Costumes
So, Islamic fundamentalists are somehow simultaneously medieval, 'just like the Nazis,' and an unprecedented evil. Neat trick, that.
By Saladin Ahmed
Even the most outspoken woman you know is suppressing like 70% of what she really thinks because it's just not worth it.
By dolly m
I love the idea that AP American History is itself unpatriotic, because you can only love America if you know as little about it as possible.
By Red Durkin
I'm cultivating a theory that Myers-Briggs is just star signs for smug people who don't believe in astrology.
By Aimee Nichols
Government assistance to the poorest Americans declined dramatically between 1983 and 2004.
By Sean McElwee
New Study Finds Therapy, Antidepressants Equally Effective At Monetizing Depression [from the Onion].
By Ryan Dow
When you understand slavery you know we shouldn't be ashamed of what they did to us. They should be ashamed of what they did.
By Lurie Daniel Favors
A rare encounter of a baby gorilla and chimpanzee examining leaves at the Evaro Gorilla Orphanage in Gabon:
By Strange Animals
It took Lord Grantham two episodes to figure out his dog was dying. No wonder the British aristocracy fell. #DowntonAbbey
By Robert O. Simonson
I don't believe in nationalism; it gives a false sense of belief that you rightfully inherited that which was stolen.
By Sisyphus38
Is it ironic or hypocritical to teach kids about democracy and freedom while they have no choice but to sit and listen to it?
By Sisyphus38
The design of our streets must forgive the mistakes of the most vulnerable, not just the automobile driver.
By Charles Marohn
Let's pay women less, sexually harass them, punish them for being assertive and then tell 'em that there's a confidence gap holding them back!
By Chloe Angyal
We like Americans as heroes. Not as slave owners or brutal colonialists or criminal employers.
By Ira Socol
Calls for "accountability" empower those who use that term because it's applied to people down below. - L. McNeil
By Alfie Kohn
Then there is this guy who hasn't aged in 450 years. Life is so unfair:
By Dead Kid
"The test scores of 15-year-olds have nothing to do with the productivity of a nation." -- Diane Ravitch. My hero.
By Mitchell Robinson
Idea: A poorly run discount air carrier called JoanJett with terrible service. They would not give a damn about their bad reputation.
By Chris Steller
This may be TMI, but without my cleanroom gear on, my body would emit 100,000 particles a minute by just standing there. [Referring to his show How We Got to Now.]
By Steven Johnson
The U.S. lead in per capita GDP largely goes away on a per hour basis and subtracting waste in health care system.
By Dean Baker
The world is full of plausible sounding ideas that aren't true. Be forewarned.
By Josiah Neeley
Outstanding Academic Title 2014: "De-Testing and De-Grading Schools" (Peter Lang).
By Paul Thomas
While close reading fairy tales, a student said, "I notice being an ugly woman in a fairy tale automatically means you're bad."
By Jessica Lifshitz
A lizard that looks like a dragon:
By Strange Animals
This is the flaw of "respectability" politics. The opposite of a negative stereotype isn't a positive one. The opposite is complexity.
By jelani cobb
If your movement relies on the oppression of other marginalized groups, your movement is doomed to fail.
By Son of Baldwin
I tried to explain the growth mindset to the gifted class. They just stared and blinked, fearful of the idea that the "normals" could catch them.
By Sisyphus38
True story: my 11-year-old cannot believe people ate Campbell's Soup. He thought it was something Andy Warhol made up!
By Helaine Olen
The whole notion that Washington is "broken" is absurd - it's a well functioning machine that delivers riches and power to the rich and powerful.
By David Sirota
Today in unnecessarily gendered products: the Earth:
By Julien
With unbending certainty that data and tech would save our children, Gates Foundation's education wing accidentally fed teachers into a woodchipper.
By John Kuhn
Rich people get far more out of government than poor people. Far more.
By David Kaib
Keynes: "Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will work for the benefit of all."
By Nikhil Goyal
Almost every major patent concept from the 1930s was in chemistry. Today, all software.
By Derek Thompson
Impostor Syndrome is a small problem. Blowhard Syndrome is a big one.
By debcha
holy shit this perfect painting of a perfectly happy solitary woman single-handedly redeems all of western art:
By Mallory
Jails are warehouses for people too poor to make bail, and the seriously mentally ill who need treatment.
By Uplcchicago
The U.S. wants you to hate Muslims so they can kill them for oil because the U.S. elite has trillions of dollars locked in auto sprawl investment.
By Free Public Transit
"Last year, U.S. Special Operations forces conducted secret military missions in 133 countries." [citing The Nation]
By Nikhil Goyal
Nothing says "manly" like buying a truck because a commercial said a focus group said the guy with the truck was manly.
By Tom Tomorrow
The "Welcome to the best part of your day" line in the Taco Johns commercial is profoundly depressing
By Jim Hammerand
Beautiful Velvet Snail from Australia:
By Strange Animals
Stereotype Threat is my favorite California-based early 80s thrash band whose T-shirts are currently available at Target.
By Chris Steller
Hey, I just noticed something... Most of the kids that struggle in school are poor. Has anyone else noticed? Maybe there is a connection.
By Sisyphus38
The only way children are going to learn how to live in a democratic society is by practicing democracy.
By Nikhil Goyal
Kenji Ekuan, designer of the ubiquitous soy dispenser, died yesterday. Respect to people who make everyday things:
By Brendan Cormier
What does it mean if a high percentage of people I know hire math tutors for their kids? Why must they pay extra to pass math?
By Sisyphus38
Another point (apparently unknown to most policy experts) is that "fertility of the poor" is often just "fertility of young adults." Our child benefit discussion could greatly benefit from life-cycle income stuff here. You ain't depriving the poors, but rather the youngs.
By Matt Bruenig
As a share of the economy, the federal budget now spends 3X as much on seniors as kids. [citing the National Journal]
By Ronald Brownstein
When job openings go unfilled during a weak labor market, companies may be holding out for overly qualified candidates at cheap prices.
By Elise Gould
Baby wombats look a bit like old Kung Fu masters:
By Stevie
"Sanctioning someone with a mental health problem for being late for a meeting is like sanctioning someone with a broken leg for limping."
By Paul Lewis
It's odd that an industry that prizes college drop-outs and autodidacts also blames the lack of diversity on a lack of female and people of color STEM grads.
By Ⓘⓢⓐⓐⓒ
Branding used to mean burning an animal's flesh with a hot iron to claim it as your property. #business #metaphors #brands
By The Wordmonster
Suggestion: "Named" and "Naked" should be more than one letter apart.
By Chris Steller
If we look at the civil rights act of 1875 and its evisceration in 1883 it highlights exactly what we're dealing with now.
By jelani cobb
Our well-regulated militia:
By Ken Paulman
"Gay" is often a stand-in for "might think about me the way I think about women," which is a killing offense to some.
By Josh Jasper
Before Darwin, the idea was that blacks had "degenerated" as humans. After Darwin, the idea was they weren't highly evolved.
By Eric Kleefeld
Call it "Obamacare” and 85% oppose it. Call it "Insure Tennessee” and just 16% oppose it.
By Sahil Kapur
My 4-year-old son said the word prototype. When I asked him what it meant, he said "People are a prototype" and I was too scared to ask what he meant.
By Kristin M-F
You should have to go to a welfare office to collect the Mortgage Interest Deduction.
By Sean McElwee
The endless blacktop era is over. Cities can rebuild their streets in living color. Coenties Slip, Manhattan:
By Janette Sadik-Khan
In every field, students on RateMyProfessor are more likely to call men geniuses.
By Justin Wolfers
A life filled with drama indicates that a person is disconnected from purpose and meaningful goals. People with a purpose don't have time for drama.
By Life Advice
Amazing if really true: About 2/3 of rich Chinese already have emigrated or want to, mostly to North America.
By Charles C. Mann
Quick fact: George Wallace's "Segregation Forever" speech has 27 allusions to "God." He calls activist government "the very opposite of Christ."
By Ta-Nehisi Coates
Someone finally said it:
By President Mikayla
Our parents paid a quarter what we do for major milestones - college, housing, childbirth and care. I mean, come on. Who can compete?
By KillerMartinis
Do the most important academic journals know how obscure they really are? Do they know how important they could be without pay-walls?
By John Roman
Let's create an urban agenda that links sustainability with shared prosperity.
By jennifer keesmaat
Blaaarg. Living in this country is like being trapped on a high-tech submarine, forced to share the controls w/ poo-flinging toddlers. We can’t get out, they can’t get out, we can’t drive properly, they need warm milk and a f*cking nap.
By David Roberts
A non-tech alternative to self-driving cars is walkable cities. But those sound hard.
By Eric Gilbert
"This gay marriage thing has happened very quickly." - People who believe homosexuals were invented in 1997
By Guy Branum
"In the absence of disruptive, active leadership, all organizations evolve to maximize the short-term comfort of managers."
By David Roberts
This whole room of people is one Excel spreadsheet. Imagine all the middle-class unemployment Excel created:
By Benedict Evans
But he can't make time for global poverty? "1 in 4 Americans believe God helps decide who wins...the Super Bowl."
By Tom Zeller Jr.
We don't pay enough attention to how race/racism are made and re-made; wired very early, in the private realm, at home and amongst family.
By Sharon H Chang
What do people in Europe think when Prince says, "Act your age not your shoe size"?
By Chris Steller
The motive for "irregardless isn't a word" is same as "Kwanzaa is made-up." Sanctification of power.
By Ta-Nehisi Coates
It's funniest to me that the "not a word" brigade rarely takes on corporatespeak. Their focus is only everyday language.
By David Crockett
The worst thing about people who seek to uphold hierarchy is not they are upholding hierarchy. It's that they won't admit it.
By Ta-Nehisi Coates
Happy little heater:
By Halloween Costumes
I can't think of a more disingenuous, easily disproven, intellectually bankrupt way to grub for votes than Scott Walker's drug testing idiocy. I just really don't get hating poor people enough to be willing to embarrass yourself on a disproven program. There are not, I promise you, thousands of unfilled unskilled jobs, simply waiting for a sober awake person to waltz in and take them.
It's possible that maybe he can't read, though. Have we considered this? Anyone who can read knows how badly this went for Rick Scott. Like most of the people on food stamps aren't employed already. YOU CAN'T READ BASIC DATA. Don't come at us and call us dumb. We can read.
By KillerMartinis
Was gonna watch the film adaptation of The Hobbit but I didn't have time so I just read the book.
By Sean Thomason
The Andromeda Galaxy's actual size if it were brighter:
By Andrew Rader
Working on a laptop that's connected to the internet is like trying to write on a typewriter that's been welded to a circus.
By Andrew O'Neill
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