Twitter Once Again, August 2018

August 2018, what can I say? All of the usual topics of discussion continue. Oh the humanity.

First, as almost always, there was the ongoing barn-fire-clusterfuck in Washington:

What do Bruce Ohr and Andy McCabe have in common? Trump has attacked both as biased players in the partisan "witch hunt" out to get him. Both also happen to be top experts in Russian organized crime and money laundering.
Vernon Loeb

Trump's Federal Transit Administration is trying to sabotage transit. It has withheld $4 out of every $5 Congress has allocated for new transit projects over the last two years.... This is not normal.
‏@StreetsblogUSA

Canceling pay raises after blowing a massive hole in the deficit to give billionaires a tax break definitely seems like a winning midterm strategy.
goldengateblond

The fact that Callista Gingrich is Ambassador to the Holy See is one of those things that should be treasured as a constant source of amazement but keeps getting washed away to the far back of the mind by the hourly torrent of atrocities.
Tom Scocca

This might sound crazy, but I’m starting to think that maybe people who are involved in tax evasion, bank fraud and money laundering should try to keep a low profile and not, you know, run for office.
ReformedBroker

Part of what’s so uniquely toxic about corruption is that it feeds a kind of cynicism (they’re all crooks!) that then makes corruption itself more permissible and common.
Chris Hayes

Please tell me how lying about a blowjob is an impeachable offense but directing your lawyer to break campaign finance laws is not.
Devin Duke

Sometimes I still can't get over the fact that one of our greatest Americans - a black man from humble origins who put himself through Harvard, won the Presidency and guided the country out of an awful recession - was replaced by a mediocre, racist white man who can barely spell.
Mikel Jollett

Unlike the amoral value-less libs, Republicans teach their kids that [checks notes] law enforcement is garbage and people who make deals are rats
Allahpundit

Republicans disallowed Obama from nominating a Supreme Court Justice because he was a *year* from his successor taking office. So what happens when your lawyer *accuses you of a federal crime* under oath in open court? Do you get a Justice then—or do we wait for more information?
Seth Abramson

When you take a step back it's pretty weird that the language of cop shows and mob movies — "flip" "squeeze" "rat" — are now just a normal part of the vocabulary of the daily White House news. I half expect Sarah Sanders at the podium at some point saying: "Paulie can do 5 five years standing on his head. A five year bid is nothin'"
Chris Hayes

I think people don’t really get how much of the current horrible political climate is a direct result of the religious right’s decades-long campaign of indoctrinating children since birth to reject science and seek political power. Many of the worst GOP pols are products of this.
Charles Johnson

"Nazism was a branch of socialism' has joined 'the Civil War was about states' rights' and 'it's about ethics in game journalism' as a tribal badge of vicious stupidity and bigotry. No-one spouting any of these deserves respect, time or airspace. Massive bad faith time sucks.
ccorbettauthor

Important stories got left out of the cable news cycle while the networks spent time talking about Omarosa:


Media Matters

“Truth isn’t truth” is pretty good. But this is still Giuliani’s best quote of all time:
“Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do.”
Radley Balko

It’s astounding how obsessed white Americans are with the idea North Koreans are especially “brainwashed” when they live in a country where people fly the US flag over donut shops, don’t believe in climate change and unquestioningly support military, prison and police expansion
hermit_hwarang

What dictators do:


Brent Toderian

The former head of the CIA just had his security clearance REVOKED simply because he CRITICIZED Trump. Meanwhile Trump’s son-in-law, who had over 100 contacts with foreign nationals that he DID NOT DISCLOSE, still has his security clearance. This is how dictatorships function.
Mikel Jollett

The excuse is "Donald Trump is a counter-puncher. If someone hits him, he hits back 10 times harder." You know who else uses that excuse? Every domestic abuser, murderer, child abuser who feels like he may have been disrespected.
Edan Clay

If Omarosa can sneak a tape recorder into the Situation Room then imagine what the Russians snuck into the Oval Office when Trump invited them in the day after he fired Comey. The place is probably bugged and Putin is probably listening to everything.
ProudResister

Everything about Space Force is dumb, but going with that name just because President Monosyllables ad libbed it is perfect. Let him rename the other branches. Navy, you’re now Boat Patrol. Air Force is Fly Fight. Army is Tank Bunch. Marines are Shooty Meanies
Mark Agee

Roger Stone always looks like the guy who stole the pyramids in the first mission of a Carmen Sandiego game:


Mike Drucker

Every hour of every day has been insane for more than two years straight. There will never be a way to explain it to anyone who isn't currently alive.
Amanda Guinzburg

Everyone spent years making fun of the humanities and this is how you end up with a generation that think fascism is left-wing and anarchy is right.
NormsRespecter

It’s sort of wild to watch some in the media *finally* be outraged by Trump’s rhetoric. When he was threatening every other group, they covered it as “news.” But now that he’s threatening the news folks it’s suddenly outrageous. All of his threats have always been dangerous.
deray

Trump is right—the economy is strong. He inherited a strong economy from Obama. But job growth has been slower in Trump's first 19 months than in Obama's last 19. And real hourly wage growth has been lower under Trump (0.3% vs. Obama's 0.8%)
Steven Greenhouse

Some advice:
* Stop interviewing Giuliani, Conway and other serial liars.
* Identify "pundits" who are under federal investigation or who served the Kremlin (Captuo, etc) as such. Or better, don't interview them either.
This isn't censorship. It's making responsible choices.
Sarah Kendzior


dwood_bucket

Which segues all too well into immigration:

This new policy of questioning the legitimacy of birth certificates essentially makes Birtherism federal policy. Americans are being made stateless in their own country.
@AnnBurroughs2

They've been coming after Americans for awhile. 45's Birther crusade was coming after an American. "Lock Her Up" was coming after an American. The GOP's voter suppression comes after Americans. Abandoning Puerto Rico comes after Americans. Poisoning Flint comes after Americans.
Carol Anderson (responding to a tweet about revoking passports of U.S. citizens)

The image of the "Good Immigrant" (e.g., "my grandparents came with nothing and worked hard...") is nothing more than a myth bigots use to deny others the very advantages they themselves enjoyed.
Matthew A. Sears

Trump and Faux News spent an entire week blaming all undocumented immigrants for the actions of one brown man who killed a young white woman. A mass killing by yet another white man, and Trump/Faux News are cowardly silent. These racist bastards are truly unAmerican.
Goss30Goss

The killer of Mollie Tibbetts killed one person, so Congress *must* act on border wall. Stephen Paddock killed 58 and wounded 851 in Las Vegas, but Congress *must not* act on guns, because Stephen Paddock was white. And the NRA paid you to look the other way. Understand now?
Mrs. Betty Bowers

If your response to one murder by an immigrant is to seal the borders, and your reaction to the tens of thousands of murders committed by white dudes is to shrug, you are a fucking racist.
sarahwhelmed

After mass shootings, the victims' families beg for sensible gun reform but Republicans say the tragedy shouldn't be politicized. After one immigrant commits a crime, Republicans politicize the victim's death despite the victim's family begging them not to.
JordanUhl

I first learned this a few weeks ago, and I still haven't lifted my jaw off the ground: "In 2012, Congress appropriated $18 billion for immigration enforcement. It spent $14 billion for all the other major criminal law-enforcement agencies combined."
stschrader1

If the horrific practices of the Trump administration shine a harsh light on the bad acts of previous administrations, that's a good thing — and can serve as a spur to a wholesale reexamination of immigration policy. Proceed as if the Trump administration is worse and more vicious than what came before and you'll usually be right — and when you're wrong, you'll have brought attention to something that's needed fixing since before they came to power.
studentactivism

In movies and TV shows, if anyone kills a toddler that's like the laziest way to show that they're irredeemable and evil beyond belief. In real life, ICE killed a toddler, and people are arguing that the toddler deserved it for coming here without papers.
Chinchillazllla

And then to racism, white supremacy, and police brutality:

Much more than immigration (though it was huge), white voters told me they got very upset about Black Lives Matter having the nerve to protest when there was this fancily-educated black family in the White House, and that Obama didn't fix racism, so they voted for Trump.
nhannahjones

You think you can love your black child although you are anti-black. You're wrong.
Tressie McMillan Cottom

Whenever we talk police accountability, folk inevitability retort, “It’s not all officers who abuse authority” and/or “There are good officers out there.” It’s true. There ARE good officers: the officers speak out against officers who abuse their authority. That’s the criteria.
BigIndianGyasi

white nationalists say they want a world full of unitary ethnostates in which everybody goes "home" and stays there, and they're doing it by championing the cause of white farmers in Africa.
chris hooks

Where my Venn diagram at about folks who say “even ONE death caused by an ILLEGAL is too many” and folks who scoff at the number of unarmed black people killed by police each year
Asawin Suebsaeng

"Local control in the history of land use is synonymous with the generation of exclusivity"... There's nothing that unites (white) America more than keeping "those people" out of your neighborhood.
William Lindeke

I've said this various ways before, but dominant religion in US is actually white supremacy. What many call Christianity is arguably a perversion of faith begun in 1st century AD. Teachings of Christ were supplanted w/ new form of idolatry as Europeans remade God in their own image.
Bree Newsome

So you’re telling me Fox News can keep these women straight but manages to confuse Patti LaBelle with Aretha Franklin. I think we all know what that’s about:


Kaz Weida

even if you swallow this bullshit about Robert E. Lee being anti-slavery, then how is "he only joined the pro-slavery terrorist revolt because he valued loyalty to his pro-slavery state" redemptive and not a massive, fatal character flaw
Simon Maloy

Cops accused of domestic violence get 50 percent more excessive force complaints, @invinst reports.
Block Club Chicago

Choosing silence is a waste of your privilege — privilege that could be used to call attention, hold people to account, and actually walk your talk. “I don’t want to rock the boat” = “I want to hold on to my privilege.” Spend your privilege. You didn’t earn it, so give it a way.
Brittany Packnett

White media obsesses over the n-word like a magic talisman as if calling for the state execution of innocent young men isn’t enough proof of Trump’s racism. Why do they talk about a tape instead of documented attacks on the Central Park 5? Because they can monetize a tape.
Anil Dash

pride in whiteness is pride in slavery. pride in racial terrorism. pride in subjugation. pride in lynching and legal frameworks of discrimination. pride in domination carried out by the sword and the gun. pride in genocide. above all it is celebration of violence.
chick_in_kiev

one tactic of COINTELPRO that i feel isn't really brought up enough is that the FBI planted agents within the KKK not to undermine it, but to actively use the KKK as a tool to terrorize communists, black activists, etc.
bell_shakur

The only “white culture” is white supremacy. If you want to talk about English culture or French culture or Spanish culture or German culture or some American spin on those European roots, go for it, but the only thing that bonds all white people together is racism.
LuxAlptraum

How white people in this country react when a black guy expresses his political opinion:


NetSematary

Cops are a fucking religion. No matter how much evidence you present that the police, as an apparatus, violently enforce white supremacy by harassing, terrorizing and killing marginalized people every day, their fans will still say "I still believe they mostly do good." Belief...
MsKellyMHayes

Racist talking-points are not quaint and absurd. They are alive and dangerous. We have to treat them that way. As journalists, citing actual experts on racism, who can give a precise account of the history and operation of these ideas, is essential. Sometimes it feels like we report on American racism like we report on some sudden spree killer. We quote a random neighbor: "He seemed normal! Never saw it coming!" We need to pull the police reports on the history of violence. Quote the experts who were tracking all the signs.
Lois Beckett

We meet to stop framing racism as offense and start to frame it as abuse. This really not about hurt feelings. This is about heath, psychological and economic abuse. We need to move away from the feelings discourse. The hurt feelings discourse is what allows right wing fools to run the right to offend argument. You may have a right to offend but sure have no right to abuse. Abuse is violence. Abuse has long terms consequences. Offence is short lived. Offence is about sensibilities. Racism is not, it is about our right to health and mental heath. It is about our right to safety and dignity. It is about our right to freedom from psychological violence. Trust me being offended is the least of people of color’s concern. No one gives a shit about being offended. POC are being harmed. Harmed not offended. Reframe shit.
Guilaine Kinouani

"40% of respondents didn't think Native Americans existed anymore.” This. This is why we need media representation.
Lucas Brown Eyes

NPR is telling on itself by presenting Black Lives Matter as the ideological “other side” to white nationalists like Jason Kessler. Sadly, many in the mainstream media still view black people asking for equality and freedom from police brutality as radical or extreme.
Karen Attiah

We are for SURE not supposed to be scientists who study race or racism. The number of colleagues who have said, “You should study gender. You could be more objective” could fill...most psychology departments.
Phillip Atiba Goff

I (just don't) understand how "allyship" has become an industry for members of dominator groups to center themselves and accumulate resources without ANY required, documented and enforced accountability to minority groups whatsoever.
Crystal Marie Fleming

apparently a bunch of people genuinely believe that once americans found out what was going on in birmingham in 1963 they were horrified by it. they weren’t. they overwhelmingly said they thought the blacks deserved it.
kulturalmarx

I hope that all of you who see the lengths that journalists, pundits, politicians and ordinary people go to, in order to excuse or explain away racism, helps you understand the heavy lift we have as civil rights lawyers in the courtroom.
Sherrilyn Ifill

since Jesse Owens and Joe Louis this country has used the black athlete to suggest that democracy and opportunity exist, even in a segregated society. that we are not as racist as we seem, because Jesse won 4, Wilma won 3. See Serena. Look at LeBron. Trump ends that charade.
loumoore12

Black fatherhood is the original, “But Chicago’s Black-on-Black crime...”
Phillip Atiba Goff

A thought exercise: look at the birth circumstances, schooling, life opportunities and inherited wealth of Lebron James and 45 and tell me which of those men can say they’re self made.
jelani cobb

Feels like we’d be a whole lot healthier as a nation if we’d stop giving the “dog bites man” racism air time and start covering the consequences of the dog bites. I don’t think it’s newsworthy that 45 insulted Don Lemon and LeBron. The facts are settled that he is a racist liar. When he does something racist and/or lies, that is not in itself news.
Phillip Atiba Goff

“Talking about race without considering power is like talking about history without considering time.”
Andrew Hume

calling someone “white” will be considered a slur the day it also affects a white person’s ability to do literally anything at all, have a nice day
Scaachi

The erasure of blacks and people of color in classic (and historical) U.S. cinema has contributed mightily to the myth that we were not here and do not belong.
Tananarive Due

The funniest example of white fragility I've ever encountered was when I was explaining the concept of white fragility to a white man (at his request) and he replied, "But why does it have to be called WHITE fragility? Why can't it just be called ‘fragility?’”
Ijeoma Oluo

My god, someone saying "white people" is not racism, it's removing your perceived neutrality as a white person and that feels bad to you.
rhea butcher

I sometimes get direct messages from white women saying they admire me and they wish they could speak up publicly against racism. Why on Earth can't you? Do you think I'm somehow magically able to handle all the abuse? Women of color don't need your admiration. We need your action.
soniagupta504

Let's take a break with some thoughts on climate change and sustainable cities:

personal opinion: I don't think relatively privileged people living in the core of the planet-killing empire get to decide if we're collectively doomed or not.
ayacharlatan

Been saying it for a while: one of the less heralded benefits of electrifying city bus fleets will be in the absence of diesel noise and stink. Imagine a relatively quiet city with fresh, breathable air!
David Roberts

New research finds just one season of drought can reduce the carbon dioxide absorption ability of the world's biggest rainforest—the Amazon—for years to come.
Pacific Standard

What size of land would be required to supply the aviation industry with the sufficient amount of biojetfuel, should a biofuel revolution take place?
Six times the area of all the fields in the world. That is, 68 percent of the total land area on Earth.
Anna-Lotta Jadinge

It’s simple. Oil companies need to be seized by the state and all of their profits held against future damages caused to the Earth. Those who knew should be jailed for crimes against humanity. And none of that is hyperbole.
daveanthony

"By overemphasizing level of service [of cars], we justify expensive, overbuilt streets that are dangerously inhospitable to people - just so folks who use the least efficient form of transportation (single-occupancy cars) won’t be inconvenienced during peak travel times.”
Nate Hood

When I talk about ecosocialism, it's not just for fun. What we need to do is not compatible with our currently dominant social, political, and economic system. We are talking about an urgent radical re-think of how we do -- everything -- in order to preserve human civilization.
Eric Holthaus


@saunieindiego

This is huge. U.S. opinion survey by Yale shows that 70% of adults believe that environmental protection is more important than growth. Even in the deep south.
Jason Hickel

"Today's consumers deserve the lowest possible prices, even if it means visiting enormous suffering on future generations." This (sociopathic) position is basically the default for around 98% of Republicans and, oh, call it north of 50% of Dems.
David Roberts

As climate change accelerates, you're going to see more framing of arguments over allocation of resources as prioritizing humans or the environment. Most of the time, that's either a false framing that seeks short-term remedy instead of a long-term solution or some fossil fuel scam
Jeff VanderMeer

Thinking the climate crisis is about the weather profoundly limits one's ability to understand the threat it poses for widespread systemic disruption—food shortages, refugees, war, economic turbulence, political upheavals—in just the next few decades.
Alex Steffen

"Simply reducing global PM2.5 air pollution to levels recommended by the World Health Organization would be the equivalent of globally eradicating breast and lung cancer in terms of life spans."
Tim Kovach

Want less climate change? Deal with cars. Less local air pollution? Deal with cars. More livable, healthy cities? Deal with cars. Less stress, less isolation, more sociability? Deal with cars.
David Roberts

One of things I like most about e-Scooters is how quickly they have happened. We become used to the SUPER SLOW DECADES LONG pace of change in urban transportation and forget that stuff can actually happen quickly.
William Lindeke

Copenhagen became a great biking city, for the most part, by just taking the curb lane and making it the bike lane. It’s not super fancy or expensive:


Queen Anne Greenways

Using mostly empty cars for nearly every trip is probably the most dangerous and energy intensive transportation system we could possibly devise. Then when a relatively safe and efficient alternative -- scooters -- comes along, our first instinct is to wonder "is it safe?"
Streetsblog USA

Transportation is the core climate challenge now. We can't tackle climate without a massive drop in the number of cars, and the complete elimination of gas-burning cars. That makes EVs important, but building compact communities and transit fundamental:

Alex Steffen

It's kinda amazing that Limes & Birds [scooters] come along and now everyone cares about unobstructed sidewalks. Hey, whatever gets them to pay attention... Maybe now we can get some movement on cars blocking all the things.
Father Sonn

Next time a boomer suggests millennials are "entitled," ask if they would pay even a dollar to park somewhere they're accustomed to parking for free.
lawrem_ebooks

i'm increasingly convinced racism is the main reason we don't have nice, dense urban spaces and good public transportation in the US. once you see it, you can't unsee it.
Peter Krupa

Stop hectoring cyclists to wear helmets.
Start building cycling infrastructure.
PS. Infrastructure isn't made of paint:


CyclistBartek

Always worth asking what a particular future vision/hype cycle is trying to do. What does pushing driverless cars over smarter public transport do? Props up car manufacturers, pushes convenience of wealthy elite over sustainability & broader accessibility.
Lydia Nicholas

Basically, fracking is a method of polluting water that generates some climate change as a byproduct.
Bill McKibben

I have a suggestion. How about reporters stop asking whether or not political leaders “believe” in climate change and start asking if they understand it instead.
Turnip2020

All imagined futures lacking recognition of anthropogenic climate-change will increasingly seem absurdly shortsighted. Virtually the entire genre will be seen to have utterly missed the single most important thing we were doing with technology.
William Gibson

“Jaywalking.” Invented by the car industry to steal urban land from the rest of us.
Invoked by violent cops as an excuse to beat the crap out of people of color.
We should totally legalize jaywalking.
mateosfo

Is the focus on wide street widths by fire officials actually putting lives at greater risk by making streets less safe? “The dimensions of streets & blocks have wide impacts on people's lives every day—not just on the rare occasions when a fire occurs.”
Brent Toderian

🎶Semis don't belong on surface streets with bikes and pedestrians🎶
balcom_holly

Harold is pro-density #mpls2040:


Chris Steller

If being a city planner and a daily cyclist makes one a "biased bike advocate", then every planner and engineer who drives daily is a biased automobile advocate.
CompletedStreet

The future's not about driverless cars. It's about carless drivers: in other words, cyclists, pedestrians, straphangers.
Taras Grescoe

"Guinness World Records has confirmed that a team of Duke University undergraduates designed and built the most fuel-efficient prototype vehicle in history. Powered by a hydrogen fuel cell, their car gets a whopping 14,537 miles per gallon equivalent."
David Roberts

A very difficult set of conversations need to be had about how to make disruptive climate action accelerate rapidly enough to not only stave off the unparalleled intergenerational injustice of planetary collapse, but distribute widespread sustainable prosperity along the way.
Alex Steffen

You can’t spell “carbon” without “car.”
Bicycle Lobby

I used to think ecological collapse would destroy capitalism and then I learned about disaster capitalism Now I think at the End of All Things there will be two Wall Street trading supercomputers tossing coffin stocks back and forth like a baseball on an empty slag planet
Shayan

Instead of a big "infrastructure" spending spree, which would mostly be sprawl highways we don't need, we should use the popularity of a federal construction stimulus to build affordable housing in walkable areas so that we need less highways and new drainpipes, etc.
Angie Schmitt

I fear I've really underestimated the role of intellectual laziness in the cultural responses to climate change—it's simply a lot less work, cognitively, to believe that nothing can be done to stop the planetary crisis than to engage the complexity of climate solutions at speed.
Alex Steffen

Americans vote for racism and then wonder why there's no buses...
Free Public Transit

We live in an era of gerontocratic nihilism and magical thinking.
Alex Steffen

“While wealthy white liberals are discussing climate change as something that will hurt their children’s children, low-income communities are already living with the consequences...”
NYpoet

We talk about the “last mile” for commuters getting to/from work—what about the last mile (or 5) for delivery? Why have these giant Fedex/UPS/Amazon delivery trucks tearing up and down our local streets, beating up our infrastructure?
TheNewLou

Much trouble is caused these days by mistaking highly temporary artifacts of the 20th century oil, coal and gas booms as somehow essential to nature of prosperity. Even more trouble is caused by conservative tribal identification with those artifacts as symbols of a golden age. Remember: one day — not too long from now — people will look at the American suburbs as we look at pictures of old factories belching the filth and smog of Victorian London.
Alex Steffen

One advantage of the cargo bike is that drivers can see it’s big and would damage their car if they hit it and drive accordingly. Which is a really damning comment on humanity.
ajm6792

To ensure civilizational stability, the age of fossil fuels must end. Period. Now. Anything less than a rapid phase-out of the global fossil fuel industry is unacceptable. Sounds dramatic, but it's really just math. You can't negotiate with forest fires and melting ice sheets.
Eric Holthaus

A primary function of the car is to maintain a protective cocoon of private space as the user moves through the public realm. The car ensures that the user never has to meet or mix with strangers. By degrading public space the car degrades democracy.
Naparstek

Hey political journalists -- science reporters have been dealing with fake information and whether to cover conspiracies for a long time! See: anti-vax, climate change, etc. Maybe y'all should compare notes?
Rose Eveleth

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VisionZeroCA

New study finds that pollution from US manufacturing fell 60% between 1990 and 2008 — but *not* because dirty industries moved overseas or because output fell (output actually went up). It was mainly due to environmental regulations and cleaner technology.
brad plumer

Driving the freeway route through the city saves me three whole minutes! Totally worth $100s of millions every few years and the past destruction of black communities.
Matty Lang

New study by engineering researchers who studied the eye movements of motorists: More than half of drivers don't look for cyclists and pedestrians before turning right
Pflax1

Deaths on the roads in Canada 5.2 per 100,000 resident.
Deaths on the roads in the USA: 11.6 per 100,000 residents.
William Lindeke

A lot of North Americans want to live way out on a big parcel of rural land — but they still want the county to provide the comforts and services of city life for free, too.
Strong Towns

There is a default lack of sympathy for pedestrians when they are killed or hurt. It is pathological.
Angie Schmitt

Everyone makes errors in judgement sometimes. But pedestrians have very strong incentives to avoid getting hit by cars. This whole idea that they are nuts or reckless or whatever is just to protect the status quo where lots of them get killed and we pretend it's fine. Actually, YOU ARE NOT VERY GOOD AT JUDGING PEOPLE'S BEHAVIOR FROM BEHIND THE WHEEL OF A FAST MOVING VEHICLE. Pedestrians are okay. People can take their anecdotes about what they once saw a pedestrian do (jump into traffic) and fuck right off. I see drivers texting while traveling 30mph+ in giant SUVs every day. And yet they get to be the default "rational actors" with other people's necks on the line?
Angie Schmitt

Ralph Nader's view of safety drove the design of straight, wide lanes, free of potential obstacles that have ruined streets in our cities and towns.
Sean Roche

Dutch teens are among the healthiest and happiest on earth, with the lowest rates of obesity and antidepressant usage in the world. Dutch teens also cycle—on average—an astonishing 2,000 km. each year.
modacitylife

Should we geo-engineer Earth’s atmosphere to reduce climate change? Here is one of the better metaphors you will ever see, from a UC Berkeley agricultural economist:


yayitsrob

The history of traffic laws is just a history of driving laws. In a hypothetical city with no cars, we would need very little laws because pedestrian and bike traffic is largely self-regulating.
riotpedestrian

Contrary to popular opinion, The U.S. is preparing for climate change. That's what increased surveillance and border militarization are for.
SydneyAzari

Serious question. has anyone ever seen a news account of a pedestrian death where the driver, on her own, cops to being momentarily inattentive and then looks up, sees pedestrian, but it's too late?
Angie Schmitt

You, a Dept. of Transportation: *designates two lanes of parking on nearly every city street*
Me: Can we put dedicated bus lanes on 1% of the city's streets?
D.O.T.: Too radical! Not politically feasible! Let's study it for 10 years!
Eric Fidler

We basically have two tiers in our transportation system. A lavishly funded fully comprehensive first tier system for drivers -- right down to the free parking spot at the end. A dangerous, incomplete and underfunded second-tier system for everyone else:


Streetsblog USA

There are like 5 strollers on one car on the green line train I'm on. Don't tell me that having a car is a prerequisite to being a parent. Public transit is for everyone.
Noah Hansen

"The U.S. is a bit obsessed with freedom. There’s two kinds of freedom: 'freedom to' and 'freedom from.' There’s freedom to drive fast. And there’s freedom from death and injury on the roads."
Streetsblog USA

TO SUMMARIZE:
How To KILL Your Main Street:
✅ Widen the street for cars
✅ Spend tons of money you don’t have
✅ Tear down historic buildings
✅ Make it uncomfortable to walk
✅ Add zero bike accommodations
Nate Hood

Here's the biggest problem with explaining the need for climate action with carbon budgets: In my experience, many people react to them as if they are the budget we get to "spend" before we are going to be forced to act on climate.
Alex Steffen

One of those things where we’ve made enormous progress but almost no one knows about it: diesel bus emissions:


Felix Salmon

Building our lives around cars causes climate chaos.
Alex Steffen

What’s the full cost of this 5 km #Vancouver commute?
Driving costs society $2.78.
Riding the bus costs society 38¢.
Biking saves society 75¢.
Walking saves society $1.08.
So who’s REALLY paying their way?
Brent Toderian

"Transit costs visible money, cars cost hidden money. That's part of why transit [seems] so expensive, because we haven't really costed out the alternatives."
AwsHenry

Ordinary citizens rarely change their behavior for environmental reasons, even something as toxic as climate change. It’s government’s role to make it easier, faster, & more comfortable to use low- or no-carbon transportation options like buses, transit, biking, and walking.
TheNewLou

At Strong Towns, we're actually not anti-car at all — we just realize that when the cities where we live are *exclusively* built around moving huge vehicles at high speeds, it makes us all poorer.
Strong Towns

"Officials at the city of Copenhagen were one of the first to document this phenomenon. In 2012, they produced a report (which showed that) one kilometre cycled produced a $0.26 economic gain to society; one kilometre driven cost society $0.14." A difference of $0.40 per km.
anotherJon

Single-family homeowners: “My house is worth $1.5m but it’s paper wealth, doesn’t mean I’m rich or should pay more taxes.”
Me: “Ok I guess you’ll be fine then with this plan that might modestly lower paper home values to make housing more affordable.”
Single-family owners: [rage, pitchforks, etc.]
BrianBicycles

Why do we say we’re closing a street? This looks open to me:


Tim Querengesser

One of many ways our thinking has failed to keep up with fast-moving reality: Very few people grasp the magnitude of national policy interventions we would now need for a policy-focused attempt to keep warming below 2ºC. The intervention demanded is outside the Overton window.
Alex Steffen

"Here's my new idea-"
"That's a bus."
"Okay, how about this-"
"That's also a bus."
"This one?"
"That's the concept of having roommates."
"What about this?"
"That's called batch cooking."
"Okay, but THIS one-"
"That's a bus again."
Alice Nuttall

Having more than one child is environmentally irresponsible & one shouldn’t get additional tax breaks for doing so. People who argue against cordon pricing for urban roads on equity grounds are full of shit, and most likely drive on a daily basis. If everyone would just steal a cone from a construction site & drop it in the street the world would be a better place.
rightlegpegged

If socialists have to answer for the various, real problems that have plagued self-described socialist countries in every interview then capitalists should at minimum have to answer for the looming destruction of human civilization via climate change.
Kate Aronoff

“Placemaking is about turning a neighborhood or city from a place you can’t wait to get through into one you never want to leave.” —Fred Kent
Taras Grescoe

I pay $2.75 for 12 sq ft on Muni. And now I'll rightly pay SF a 1.5% tax to share a ride with others. But I get 600 sq ft of public street free while driving my own car, and store it on public land rent free. Uber and Lyft reveal the underlying problem
Jeffrey Tumlin

“The point of cities is a multiplicity of choice.” - Jane Jacobs
Mike Lydon

driving in a car is so incredibly dangerous and we all have MINIMAL training and also choose to distract ourselves with other things as we careen around at 60 miles an hour.
laaaaaaaaani

You know that “inconvenience” where transit doesn’t come right to your front door, your parking isn’t right at your destination so you have to walk the difference, that kind of thing? That’s active living, and it’s a good thing when it’s designed into your day.
Brent Toderian

Super weird how white moderates always denounce black protesters for shutting down the light rail/highways/roads but never show the same outrage when the MN state legislature shuts down our transit funding. One lasts a few minutes, the other will destroy our whole system.
dat_briguy

All housing is subsidized, but for every $1 we subsidize urban homes, we subsidize suburban homes $6.95, says Neil Lovitt,
Brent Toderian

The problem with buses is cars.
mattdpearce

How hot/humid can it get? At 100% humidity and 35C (95F) a fit human, resting in shade, with ventilation will die within 6 hours; also at higher temperatures with lower humidity. Unrelenting Heat and Humidity will soon make regions UNINHABITABLE.
Paul Beckwith

On sexism, misogyny, and toxic masculinity:

Women's careers are hurt more by having babies than men's are for sexually assaulting coworkers.
Ally Maynard

Once you have been taught to dismiss your own emotions, it is a simple step to dismiss those of others.
Roger Vaillancourt

It's more important for men to get a "second chance" than for women to get a first chance. That's basically what all of this boils down to.
Jess Zimmerman

Ladies! Have you considered carrying a gun while running? How about running in a full flak suit? Why not cover yourself in knives before leaving the house? People will suggest that women roll to work in an iron lung before they'll tell men to not harass anybody.
andi zeisler

Men, it is 100% YOUR responsibility to educate other men on how not to be toxic. Toxic men don't listen to women/enbies. That's part of WHY they're toxic. So good men, don't tell women you're a good man. Tell other men how to be good men.
Rosalarian

Women: men are trash.
Men: how dare you call me trash you fucking whore this is why you’re single get back in the kitchen what is your future man supposed to eat I’m not sorry that you were abused by all the men in your life reply to my DM even though you’re not even my type fatty.
snxhxs

male tinder bios, a glossary of terms:
old-fashioned: misogynist
entrepreneur: unemployed
rakish: sleeps around
sapiosexual: pretentious liar
adventures: unplanned hikes
gentleman: race, gender, and social values that are 200 years out of date
megsauce

Imagine for a second Donald Trump or Elon Musk behaving the way they do but they're a woman. But it's almost not possible.
Angie Schmitt

Doing my makeup on the train this morning and a random man told me he likes women to have a more natural look. I told him I like men to have a more silent look.
AmyAbroad

Hillary Clinton is 71 and people tell her to knit.
Nancy Pelosi is 78 and people are telling her to go away.
Mitt Romney is 71, they want him in the Senate.
Bernie Sanders is 77, they want him to run in 2020.
It’s almost as if there's some sort of pattern.
MrFilmkritik

Alright let’s do this on toxic masculinity:

• Rating people (by attractiveness) on a scale of 1-10. It’s weird. I have never met a woman who does this.
• “Real Man” narratives. i.e. “a real man does x/doesn’t y.” Manhood is not an elite club. All men are part of manhood and masculinity whether you approve of them are not.
• Saying you’re just not good at remembering things like birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, etc. Dude we’re not good at it either, that’s why we write it down.
• Offering advice before empathy. In order to trust your advice people need to know that you know where they’re coming from. Skipping over their feelings makes them feel dismissed.
• Participating in the objectification of women. This is big: if you talk with your buddies about a woman in a way that you wouldn’t let them talk about your partner: you are assigning value to a woman based on her relationship to you and not her humanity.
• Your opinions on makeup. Unless you’re wearing it, I don’t want to hear it.
• Absolutely all misinformation/stereotypes/ickyness about menstruation. Y’all make poop jokes all the freaking time. People menstruate, deal with it.

Erynn Brook

MALE WRITERS: stop sending me books in which men are motivated by a woman's rape. Your inability to come up with a backstory for your male character that doesn't hinge on sexual violence committed against a female character IS A PROBLEM YOU SHOULD PERHAPS EXAMINE CLOSELY.
laurenspieller

The massive increase in incarcerated women has been caused by pretrial detention. 60% of all women in jail RIGHT NOW are legally innocent - this is unconscionable.
RVA Bail Fund

I just read an article claiming that women shouldn't protest being exposed to a flasher's penis because it's "kink shaming." The competition is tight, but we might have found the worst hot take of 2018.
ClaireShrugged

There were just a few on education:

This data refutes a widespread (and ignorant) belief in schooling that Black families “don’t value education.” Instead, what most educators value (signing forms, checking homework, room parents, etc.) is not a valid measure of importance of education for Black parents and families.
mdawriter

There is a huge problem when teachers are on food stamps and the secretary of education owns a $40 million yacht.
irishrygirl

There is no reason — other than sheer human greed — that public education should be a divisive "wedge" issue. Any effort to privatize the democratic public trust of universal education is driven only by motivation to make money off our children. It is wrong and must stop now.
pastors4txkids

And rather more on wage theft, income inequality, and the logic of capitalism generally:

Imagine if all the time, energy, and resources we’ve only been giving to politicians was put into setting up systems of mutual aid and democratic institutions? We’re stuck looking up at a select few and hoping they’ll enact radical change instead of reorganizing where we’re at.
Black Socialists of America

i work weekends, night shift at amazon. a few months ago amazon changed our shift start time from midnight to 11:30 PM. then they cut our weekend pay because technically our shift starts on friday 11:30 instead of saturday at midnight. that's how much amazon "cares".
cyanbreak

The whole "paid protester" narrative is a response perfectly indicative of a late-stage capitalist society: one full of people who literally can't comprehend why people would take action without the incentive of gaining wealth or power. It's actually really sad.
Ella Fassler

Living on the margins of society means you are watching others have power. It also means that when the revolution comes, the powerful people ARE SURROUNDED.
Hari Kondabolu

In 1965, CEO-pay to worker pay was 20-to-1.
In 1989, it was 58-to-1.
Last year, it was 270-to-1.
ABC News

hey remember when the panama papers came out and revealed that all the rich people in the world are part of enormous criminal conspiracy to dodge taxes and hoard stolen wealth in offshore accounts and literally nothing happened
ColsBols

Reading the book on the history of the CIA has kind of reoriented me into a very clear understanding that, the world as we know it, is the result of trillions of dollars spent undermining every left-leaning government of the last 70 years. Literally, every one.
Kaimandante

One weird thing about democracy, a system which relies upon consumer media to shape discourse, is that critiques stop being trenchant when they seem boring. Like, "military-industrial complex" is still a 100% correct analysis of a huge problem but we consider it some old 70s shit.
Vincent Bevins

Sign in Woodstock:


PatcohenNYT

When people say ‘low skill workers’ or ‘low skill jobs’ referring to service workers, hear a person who has never relied on those jobs speaking out of turn. Those are low *credentialed* jobs - not low skill. Hear the classism at play.
yerbasuena

I think part of the issue is that people grow up seeing adults struggle as employees in very low-paid roles and are not aware that employees can make a whole hell of a lot of money. They believe the solution is entrepreneurship, not equitable wages.
Asia Chloe Brown

For years, politicians kept taxes on the rich low by paying gov’t workers in pensions (for future payment) while not fully funding pensions. Now they are due, but rich + politicians say: cut pensions. Capitalism’s injustice yet again.
Richard D. Wolff

White people get $50k checks from their elderly grandparents. Black people are buying their elderly grandparents groceries. This is the wealth gap.
general gee

*Someone trips and falls down stairs in Cuba*
Centrist: "Communism's death toll has risen once again!"
*Millions around the world starve to death every year as food and resources are stolen and hoarded by capitalists*
Centrist: "Well, they should've learned to code or whatever"
SaltyAlaskan

The Koch brothers well funded, well planned, decades long "libertarian" campaign has produced a USA bitterly divided and with no shared sense of the common good. That's what they wanted and what we've got. (What nice people.)
Langdon Winner

Instead of “Millenials are living at home with their parents even after college” try “Baby Boomers have failed to build a society that allows their children to earn a living wage.”
Fledgeling Feminist


Humans of Late Capitalism

Rightists say “no income if able-bodied don’t work.” But in capitalism, big incomes (rent, dividends, capital gains, interest) go to owners who need not and often do not work. Extreme hypocrisy of rightist ideology.
Richard D. Wolff

Every study from a right wing think tank has three basic conclusions:
-Situation X isn't as bad as you think and we have some convoluted math to prove it
-Insofar as anything is bad, it's a direct result of your attempts to make the world better
-The solution is to lower taxes
Luke Savage

And then, at last, there were the best of the rest:

"Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez can't hang with intellectual heavyweights in Congress," says political party that elevated Sarah Palin, Chuck Grassley, Michelle Bachmann, Herman Cain, Mike Huckabee and Donald Trump.
Brandon Friedman

Why are democratic candidates being asked if they are socialists? I have yet to hear a Republican being questioned about whether he or she is a fascist.
JJohnsonLaw

People who say things like "Oh, having a different opinion is a THOUGHT CRIME NOW, HUH?" are never referring to opinions on, like, agriculture regulation. It's always just "Why can't I be racist and sexist without people calling me out for being racist and sexist? UNFAIR!"
andi zeisler

In a free society you don't fear being murdered everywhere you go, you trust elections will be fair, you aren't constantly threatened for telling the truth, and you aren't held hostage by the wealthy.
Jared Yates Sexton

Every good person I know has imposter syndrome and every bad person I know takes credit for everything.
Todd Kenreck

The people asking if a 9-year-old kid can even know that he is gay should be asking how the other 9-year-olds already know to bully him for coming out.
Ivan Coyote

Let’s get married and have kids so instead of using our years of education to change the world we can be butlers to tiny people who won’t stop screaming at us.
Dad and Buried

My final hot take on the issue: Liberals love the imagined version of McCain in their heads because it allows them the fantasy there is a respectable party within the GOP they could work with. It helps them delay the reality their conservative friends and family are complicit.
BraveArcanine

An analysis of 62 mass shootings over 30-year span found that the majority of gunmen targeted places with which they had a personal connection, and “not a single case includes evidence that the killer chose to target a place because it banned guns.”
igorvolsky

When certain people whine “Comics/science fiction/games/etc are about escapism, not politics!” what they really mean is escapism FOR THEM. Because it’s REALLY hard to enjoy things repeating the same oppressive crap you’re trying to escape in the 1st place. Finding escapism easily? That’s privilege.
GeekMelange

You know why "everything" tastes like chicken? It isn't everything, it's just all the animals that have dinosaurs as ancestors. Technically they all taste like dinosaur.
grumpymartian

When you complain about “political correctness” you reveal that you believe social progress is a polite sham. That we’re all hiding an inner shitlord who’s aching to get out and “tell it like it is.”
themeganpurdy

The words 'font' (as in typeface) and 'fondue' come from exactly the same root; they both mean 'a melting'.
qikipedia

Evolution did not design us to form true beliefs or to be happy.
David Roberts

Malabar giant squirrels are, native to India, are twice as large as your standard eastern grey squirrel, with bodies that span 3 feet, or 90 centimeters, from head to tail. They’re also gorgeously technicolored, with fur that ranges from brown and orange to maroon and purple:


Atlas Obscura

Anytime I start to get down on Minnesota as a state and culture, I just remember how we rejected the cynical anti-democratic Voter ID bill back in 2012, and I feel proud again.
William Lindeke

A summary definition of "whiggish history": "Hey, things are pretty good for ME! and people like ME!, so that means all of history has progressed to this point, to advantage ME!, and that's clearly good and will clearly continue!"*
*Given the choice, all would want to be ME!
Matthew A. Sears

It is a truth universally acknowledged that you will never sound less intelligent than when you’re trying to compliment an author you *really like* face to face
emteehall

Turn it upside down and it’s a slug on a unicycle:


Tim Post

This is the most succinct definition of Bitcoin: imagine if keeping your car idling 24/7 produced solved Sudokus you could trade for heroin —@Theophite
iglvzx

Also... Aretha had 2 children by the time she was 14 years old, dropped out of high school her sophomore year and made it through alcoholism and domestic violence. Genius often (usually) doesn’t look like they say it does. It’s so much vaster and more beautiful than the image.
Imani Perry

Usually when people use the term "elites" I think it's bullshit. But newspaper editorial boards, an unrepresentative group of well-to-do media executives, handing down unsigned opinions week after week like they're voice of God makes even me resentful of their power.
Angie Schmitt

Newspaper editorial boards but with random people plucked out of low income jobs and neighborhoods.
Angie Schmitt

Ha!


Sisyphus

"ffs," he ligatured.
Ride Theory

I found this map on Twitter recently. It shows what the United States looks like when you blackout the counties in which a majority of voters did not cast a vote in 2016:


John Stoehr

“Home-cooked meals” are only “the cheapest” if you devalue the labor it takes to make them.
jennygadget

Why is this a knee-jerk reaction these days? Mom lets 5th grader walk to school -- three crossing guards along the way -- and people think SHE is crazy-dangerous. We have been trained to see EVERY BIT of childhood independence as perilous.
FreeRangeKids

Justice requires:
Ending cash bail
Discovery reform
Marijuana legalization
Police transparency and accountability
Parole reform
Speedy trials
Meaningful representation
We have to stop caging people without process or fairness. New York should lead the country.
Zephyr Teachout

Goes without saying, but canvassing apartment buildings this weekend was a helpful reminder: Landlords don’t give a damn about democracy, and benefit from insulating massive numbers of voters.
timothy_neil

Why is it that Stacey Abrams is coming under attack for her student loan debt while everyone nods politely over Brett Kavanaugh going $200k into debt from baseball season tickets and country club dues?
Brian Fallon

To all my non-disabled followers please spread this message. Ambulatory wheelchair users exist just because someone uses a wheelchair doesn’t mean they can’t walk or move. Wheelchairs are mobility aids and they are used for so many different reasons! Disability is not a binary.
BlondeHistorian

That reminds me of the infuriating habit of radio ads saying "backslash" in URLs. It's a forward-slash, you dinks, why are you adding a syllable to slash to make it wrong when it would be less work to be right?
Jake Nelson

I love when people go "ewwwww" to vegan food. What's missing, the feces? pus? parasites? cartilage? cholesterol? blood? dyed/coagulated breast milk? assholes/eyes/ lips? Did i miss anything? What? lol. Just goes to show how brainwashed and conditioned people are.
Vej_Gee

It's weird that people interpret the moral of The Pied Piper story as "Don't trust strangers" when really it's "Always pay freelancers.”
meagantrott

If “rents have shot up and homelessness is booming” is the way we’re describing every single major city, it means we should stop listening to the people who’ve been here for a generation overseeing this dumpster fire.
sammymoss425

Did you know that, in 1972, a CBC radio host held a contest to choose a Canadian national simile (à la “as American as apple pie”), and the winner they chose was “as Canadian as possible under the circumstances.” I love that so much. I love Canada.
ifihadlegs

Something that blows my mind: The downtown Dayton's store is 1.2 million square feet. That was just one department store! Now there's only 961,000 square feet of retail space total in all of downtown (Colliers Minneapolis data)
mspbjHalter

Composition of the Fox News audience, 2018-to-date, total day: 94% White, 3% Hispanic, 2% Asian, 1% Black
Brian Stelter

It will never fail to amaze me that America is willing to pay for an imaginary Space Force in an imaginary Space War but thinks free healthcare for all is absolute madness.
Emma Kennedy

HUGE plot hole in reality: every person carries around a device with access to the totality of human knowledge and yet people are constantly wrong about everything.
austinyorski

If you want to fight authoritarian populism, stop insisting that the world is getting worse and worse. New Pew poll: "Those who view populist parties favorably are more likely to say life is worse today than it was 50 years ago."
Steven Pinker

The Russia That American Conservatives Love Does Not Exist: No gun rights in Russia; abortion 2x as frequent as it is favored birth control method; no religious liberty as Russian Orthodox Church functions as state favorite. The reality.
ManWithaHat

Introducing a rare example of the architectural movement, Muppet Brutalism:


TheProfRog

"It's a machine full of blood and it moves it under her skin in tubes until it reaches up to her brain." Boy ... uh ... the heart is really kind of creepy when described by a 4-year-old.
Maggie Koerth-Baker

I've noticed that 90% of the people who call themselves anarchists presume they will be in charge of the anarchy.
iowahawkblog

People don't have a strong intuitive sense of how much bigger 1 billion is than 1 million. 1 million seconds is about 11 days. 1 billion seconds is about 31.5 years.
Paul Franz

“The swing voter is not red to blue. The swing voter is nonvoter to voter. That’s our swing voter.” –Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Hamilton Nolan

The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was to convince the world that the civic application of human kindness was, in fact, a vice known as "political correctness."
Stephen McGann

I love it when historians say famous intellectuals like Tesla, Kant, Newton, Beethoven, and Nietzsche were "dedicated bachelors" who "likely died a virgin". Um...they weren't losers who couldn't ask out a woman, they were gay. Well, except for Nietzsche. He was a loser virgin.
Existential Comics

Make voting a right. Enfranchise all citizens. Period. On parole, on probation, in prison, on death row. Everyone should have the right to vote. (In two states you can already vote when you're in prison. It's not a fantasy.)
studentactivism

Folks who think Nazis were leftist 'cuz there's "socialist" in the name must get really confused by "buffalo wings."
e1ais

new data shows 75% of college faculty “fired, resigned or denied promotion” due to political speech in 2017 were politically left. Note New York Times coverage of campus free speech during roughly the same time period focused on threats to conservative speech 7 to 1.
Adam H. Johnson

My social anxiety doesn't mean I don't like people, it just means every time I meet someone new the stakes feel REALLY high in a way that isn't comfortable for me or them.
iSmashFizzle

This seems like a big deal: The recidivism rate has dropped by 25 percent over the last 7 years.
Radley Balko

DOC: It's your kids, Marty. Something gotta be done about your kids!
MARTY: What's wrong?
DOC: Your daughter's a terf and your son's an incel.
MARTY: Wha-?
DOC: ON TWITTER MARTY.
MARTY: Twi-?
DOC: THE MICRO-BLOGGING SITE!
#BackToTheFuture2018
bechillcomedian

Part of the reason why I used "spouse" and "partner" for a decade before I got married [is] I wanted people to be unsure, and ideally assume incorrectly. It reveals people's biases to themselves, a first step in eliminating them.
Janne K. Flisrand

It's not that all religious people are predators. It's that predators will gravitate towards environments where maleness and authority are not to be questioned and shame can be leveraged.
Quinn Cummings

The genes of sweet potatoes reveal that there was contact between Australasia and the Americas at least 500 years before Columbus. What is even cooler? You can also show this voyage across the Pacific just by plotting local names of the crop on a map.
Botanygeek

If someone asked you on a date and said, “You’re free to reject me, but if you do, I’ll set you on fire,” we would call that abusive, and recommend a restraining order. Why do Christians think it’s a good thing for God to be a sadist?
SbethCaplin

Can we just agree, societies that take care of and create opportunities for everyone, including majority accommodations for minorities and differences, are best and happiest places, for everyone. Not caring encourages mean, callous, selfish behavior, not precusors to happiness.
kar_nels

How to Sell a Product

I know I'm not the person these marketing and packaging people had in mind. But I still get to comment:


I can't begin to figure out why someone thinks this is funny or a good way to market a product. The Snickers package isn't iconic enough (especially Almond Snickers) to replace the product name with something else, and this particular word just leaves me shaking my head.

Yada yada, it's nihilistic and anti-consumerist, aren't we cool, eat more of this!

Nope.

When Red Becomes Blue

You know those election maps of the U.S. that show the red/blue split by county, and it looks like a sea of red?

And then you see the version that shows the split with the counties scaled by population, and it looks much more blue, and you remember... land can't vote?

Here's what Minnesota looks like in those two versions:




These images come from the Twitter account of Aaron Booth. Thanks for doing the work, Aaron.

The Wrong Kind of Outlier

It's been a while since I made a good old-fashioned health care post. So for today, here's a single graph from the book Factfulness by the late Hans Rosling, with Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Rönnlund:


Orientation: The bubbles represent countries, with the sizes scaled to represent each country's population. Life expectancy is graphed up the Y axis, so you can see it ranges from a few outliers below 50 years to well over 80 years. Health care spending as a percent of GDP for each country is across the X axis. The U.S. — outlier of outliers — spends at least 40 percent more than the next-highest-spending countries, yet has a lower level of life-expectancy than several dozen countries, some of which spend well under half what we spend.

I recommend Factfulness highly. It's charmingly written and based on deep knowledge not just of global data but direct reporting from the field, all over the world. It overlaps with work on cognitive biases to show how our brains help fool us (and allow us to be manipulated) into thinking things are worse than they are.

This graph is not representative of its content: it's mostly about how worldwide statistics show things are better, on average, almost everywhere. Health care in the U.S. is not one of those things, however.

A few quotes from the book:

I don't tell you not to worry. I tell you to worry about the right things (page 241).

Look for causes, not villains. Look for systems, not heroes (page 222).

Be cautious about generalizing from Level 4 ["developed" world] experiences to the rest of the world. Especially if it leads you to the conclusion that other people are idiots (pages 160–161).

I am...not advocating looking away from the terrible problems in the world. I am saying that things can be both bad and better (page 71).... I see no conflict between celebrating...progress and continuing to fight for more (page 70).

Alongside all the other improvements, our surveillance of suffering has improved tremendously. This improved reporting is itself a sign of human progress, but it creates the impression of the exact opposite (page 67).

I want people, when they realize they have been wrong about the world, to feel not embarrassment, but that childlike sense of wonder, inspiration, and curiosity that I remember from the circus, and that I still get every time I discover I have been wrong: "Wow, how is that even possible?" (page 17).

Do yourself a favor and read this book, which summarizes succinctly Rosling's and Gap Minder's work.

McCain in That 2008 Moment

So John McCain died yesterday, and many people are discussing his life and career, the good and the bad.

I have been most drawn to writing about that moment during the 2008 campaign when he defended Obama to a racist woman at an open forum. Defend he did, but the way he did it didn't sit right, either. This set of tweets sums it up:


I agree with Sam Husseini in this exchange, but I also have some empathy for how hard it is for anyone to contest the underlying assumptions of a person in a single sentence during an exchange like this.

Another Twitter user, Jonathan Katz, posted a thread that gets at this on a deeper level:

That time when McCain confronted the woman who said she couldn't trust Obama because he's an "Arab" may be the most tellingly fucked up moment in American politics in the last 20 years.

If you look back, McCain was in a town hall that apparently had a number of racist white people who kept saying that they were scared of Obama taking power. He clearly was struggling to convince them to vote for him by choice, not out of fear of a black president.

A lot of people have focused on the fact that McCain responded to the woman's statement that Obama was "an Arab" by saying "No ma'am, he's a decent family man, citizen" as evidence of McCain's racism or Islamophobia. But I think it's actually both better and worse than that.

What the woman actually said was: “I can’t trust Obama. I have read about him, and he’s not? Um. He’s an Arab. He's not--”

Like most of us when we speak casually, she was speaking disjointedly and relying on implication. She was also imprecise about her racist conspiracy theory.

The word she kept skipping over after "he's not" was probably either "an American" or "a citizen." The idea is that being a Muslim of color ("Arab," to her) precludes being an American. This was batshit for two reasons: It's nativist bullshit. And of course, Obama isn't Muslim!

The thing that I think is better than some people give it credit for is that McCain answered more what she meant than what she said. Her point was that Obama isn't "one of us" and that he's bad. And he's basically just saying, no, that's not true.

Even Vox got this wrong in trying to remember him [McCain] tonight. They transcribed his quote as saying "he's not [an Arab]." But he didn't say that. He responded to "he's not" with "he's not." As in, "he's not whatever bad thing you think he is."

The thing that was tellingly WORSE than people gave it credit for, I think, is that it revealed how deeply embedded in American thinking that woman's racism was. Even people who disagreed with her -- even McCain -- knew EXACTLY what she meant.

And this connects directly to the rise of Trump. Our national conversation depends on an agreed upon set of facts and assumptions. And that moment, and the applause it still gets, reveal the extent to which even the nonbigots are still relying on extremely bigoted assumptions.

When people who hate Trump, who deplore the Nazis, who care about truth, etc, etc, still tacitly assume with their profiles and arguments that white heartland voters are the "real Americans," that brown people essentially don't belong, that black people are essentially dangerous and on and on, they are ultimately ceding the argument to people like the woman in red.

And that really is what McCain did in that moment. He said she was wrong on the facts, but didn't challenge her assumptions. And that's a big part of how we got where we are today.

Challenging the underlying assumptions (assuming you're aware of them!) is really hard, especially in the moment of conversation. Even harder if you're holding a microphone in front of an audience, as you have been for days during a campaign. I know I would suck at it.

So I cut McCain some slack in this instance, but still see it as Katz has said: a symptom of a much bigger structural problem in our country.

A Visual Primer on SNAP Benefits

In case you ever need a visual primer to share about SNAP (what many people still call "food stamps"), here's a handy, accessible one from City Lab.

It looks like this...


…full of good info.

Dave Roberts on Luck

It's no surprise that I love Dave Roberts of Vox. His usual beat is climate change and energy, but he occasionally veers off into the books of Lloyd Alexander or understanding what motivates Trump-supporters.

This week he wrote about the role of luck in success, and I love him even more.
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Here's a past post of mine on the role of luck.

The Man Who Made Bleeding Heart into an Insult

Long before there was the supposedly insulting label "social justice warrior," there was "bleeding-heart liberal."

Sarah Laskow, writing for Atlas Obscura, revealed the origins of that term.

Westbrook Pegler was extremely good at calling people names. Particularly politicians. In his syndicated newspaper column, he called Franklin D. Roosevelt “Moosejaw” and “momma’s boy.” Truman was “a thin-lipped hater.”

Pegler was a bit of hater himself. He didn’t like the labor movement, Communists, fascists, Jews, and perhaps most of all, liberals. In one 1938 column, he coined a term for liberals that would eventually come to define conservative scorn for the left. Pegler was the first writer to refer to liberals as “bleeding hearts.” The context for this then-novel insult? A bill before Congress that aimed to curb lynching....

Pegler first used “bleeding heart” in a column castigating liberals in Washington for their focus on “a bill to provide penalties for lynchings.” Pegler wasn’t for lynchings, per se, but he argued that they were no longer a problem the federal government should solve: there had only been eight lynchings in 1937, he wrote, and “it is obvious that the evil is being cured by local processes.” The bill, he thought, was being “used as a political bait in crowded northern Negro centers.” ...

Pegler was apparently pleased enough with this use of “bleeding heart” that he kept it up. He later wrote of “professional bleeding hearts” who advocated for “collective medicine” after a woman couldn’t find a doctor to help her through labor, and lobbed the insult of “bleeding heart Bourn” at a rival, left-leaning columnist. By 1940, he had condensed the phrase down to “bleeding-heart humanitarians” and “bleeding-heart liberals.”

Pegler’s usage did not immediately catch on, though. (Perhaps that’s because he went on to become so right-wing that he was asked to leave the John Birch Society.)....

“Bleeding heart” was revived in a political context in 1954, by another infamous right-winger, Joe McCarthy, who called Edward R. Murrow one of the “extreme Left Wing bleeding-heart elements of television and radio.”

So that's the company this particular phrase has kept: anti-lynching laws, access to health care, anti-McCarthyism. All causes I am happy to associate with and that were part of what I used to think was the U.S. consensus position.

Pegler's success in making up names for people he didn't like sounds an awful lot like another current political figure. Except no one thought to run Pegler for president of the United States.

Prison Strike

Because it's not getting enough national news coverage, for today I'm reprinting a Twitter thread on the three-day-old national prisoners' strike, by Robyn Pennachia, a freelance journalist.

So we're three days into the largest prison strike in U.S. history. Now, the prisoners are asking for a lot of very important things, having to do with shitty conditions and institutional racism. But their primary focus is LABOR and how little they get paid.

Partly because it's modern-day slavery, but also because it affects everything else.

You see, back in the ’90s, a conservative lobbyist group *representing business interests,* the American Legislative Exchange Council, took a real big interest in criminal justice legislation and started pushing for a number of changes to the system.

The first two they pushed for were Three Strikes laws and Truth in Sentencing laws (aka no parole). Both of these laws, as we know, lead to the U.S. having the largest prison population in the United States.

But why was this lobbied for by an organization representing BUSINESSES?

Because they were also pushing for another law — a law that would allow private businesses to use prison labor. Previously, this was not allowed. Prison labor was relegated to labor for the state, only — thus, printing license plates.

They were also required to be paid the prevailing wage in the state for their labor, minus room and board in states that charge inmates room and board.

Because of ALEC's Prison Industries Act, this is no longer the case.

It's now set up so that rather than going to room and board, prisons are allowed to garnish wages and put that money into "private sector prison industry expansion accounts." That $$$ is then used to attract more businesses and reimburse prisons for the "cost" of prison labor.

So basically, what ALEC did was...

STEP ONE: Increase the amount of prisoners in the system
STEP TWO: Make it harder to get out of prison
STEP THREE: PROFIT!!!

Were we to eliminate the ability of private prisons and businesses to profit off of what is essentially free labor, the "demand" for more prisoners would go down. The "need" for shitty policies that send and keep people in prison, would go down.

THAT is why it is important.

While we're on it, here are some big companies that currently use prison labor: Whole Foods, AT&T, McDonalds, Victoria's Secret, BP, Aramark, and Walmart.

 Here are a few news stories about the strike:

• The Guardian
• Democracy Now!
• NewsOne

Bullbars: Safety for Me, Not Thee

This SUV has what's called a bullbar, grill guard, or push bumper on its front:


They were first common on police SUVs but it seems as though everywhere I look these days, civilian vehicles have them also. I know that's probably at least partly because I'm newly aware of them, but still.

Why do people think they need these?

The point is to protect your front bumper at the cost of everyone else's safety, especially pedestrians. Because of their height, SUVs are already more dangerous to pedestrians than cars, and these things make them even more deadly. As the Argus Leader story linked above says,

Barry Wellar, a retired University of Ottawa professor who often testifies as an expert witness in transportation safety cases, said little research has been done on the safety impact to pedestrians and cyclists regarding bull bars. What does exist suggests pedestrians' chances of surviving a collision are cut in half when bull bars are involved.

“They’re head high for a kid. They can take the bull bar right in the head,” he said. “And they’re absolutely killer for cyclists or pedestrians. It’s serious trouble.”

I can't help feeling that the people who buy these for their vehicles are afraid of the world and this is their chance to armor themselves and feel slightly safer. But that's not a good enough reason to endanger other people the way these things do.