Thought for Today

I just learned that farmers at farmers markets may be glad to acquire your used rubber band supply.

I have such a supply, which comes mostly from newspapers, though they seem to have stopped using them so much lately. I will have to remember this as a use for them.

A Better Mousetrap (or Brussels Sprout Trimmer)

It's one of those things most people (including me) have not thought about: how do you get a Brussels sprout off the stalk it grows on, especially when you grow a lot of them, as farmers do?

Did you even know they grow on a stalk?

Our local Hmong farmers of the Hmong American Farmers Association (HAFA) spend a lot of their time doing manual work with their families to prep their sprouts for farmers markets each weekend in the fall. Together, the families grow 30,000–40,000 pounds a year, according to the Star Tribune.

And how those sprouts get from stem to shopping bag will soon be changing, because engineering students at St. Thomas University have developed a prototype trimming machine that not only cuts the buds off, but sorts them by size as well.

The new machine can trim two stalks a minute,while keeping to food safety standards and being cheap to produce.

It seems like there's so little good news in the world sometimes. I thought I would take a second to celebrate this small thing that will make the lives of some hard-working people a bit better.


Photo by Shari L. Gross, Star Tribune

Brushmobile

One of the mysteries of modern America...


What is the purpose of this back-bumper brush? I can't imagine what it's for.

A Painting of Drawing

I have a thing for nice handmade signs. This one qualifies as handmade, but I assume it was made by an artist (aren't all employees of art supply stores artists?), so it's nicer than most:


It's funny that it's painted, since it's hanging above the aisle containing drawing supplies, but I imagine the maker was aware of that.

Well done, Blick Art Suppiles in Roseville, Minnesota.

This Day in Black History

You may have seen one of the many linked stories today on social media noting that the first Memorial Day remembrance was organized by formerly enslaved people in 1865 in Charleston, South Carolina, a fact that was conveniently lost to history, or suppressed.

Another bit of black history that is not widely known (at least by white Americans) from this date is that Ida B. Wells was driven from her home town of Memphis by white mobs, who had already killed three of her friends and destroyed her newspaper office.

Quoting the website for Ava DuVernay's film Thirteen, the friends, Tom Moss, Calvin McDowell, and Henry Stewart

were arrested for defending themselves against an attack on Moss' store [in March of 1892]. Moss was a highly respected figure in the black community, a postman as well as the owner of a grocery store. A white competitor, enraged that Moss had drawn away his black customers, hired some off-duty deputy sheriffs to destroy the store. Moss and his friends, not knowing the men were deputies, resisted. A gun battle broke out and several deputies were wounded. Moss, his two friends, and one hundred other black supporters were arrested.

Several nights later, masked vigilantes dragged Moss and his two friends from their cells, took them to a deserted railroad yard, and shot them to death. Enraged by their deaths, Wells lashed out at the refusal of Memphis police to arrest the well-known killers. She encouraged blacks to protest with boycotts of white-owned stores and public transportation.

This led Wells to look into lynchings, which until then she had thought happened only for heinous crimes. She found that rape was often claimed when relationships had been consensual. Wells wrote an editorial in her newspaper, the Memphis Free Speech, on May 25 that read,

"Nobody in this section of the community believes that old threadbare lie that Negro men rape white women. If Southern men are not careful, a conclusion might be reached which will be very damaging to the moral reputation of their women." The suggestion that white women would willingly have sexual relations with black men enraged white Memphis.

Wells was on her way to New York City when the reaction came:

Many white citizens of Memphis did not appreciate the implication that some of their women might prefer the company of black men, and the editor of the [white] newspaper declared that the "black wretch who had written that foul lie should be tied to a stake at the corner of Main and Madison Streets, a pair of tailor's shears used on him, and he should then be burned at the stake." (source)

A white mob attacked the Free Speech office on today's date, May 27, 1892, burning it and destroying the presses.

Wells never returned to Memphis, taking up residence in Chicago instead, where she will finally be remembered with a monument one of these days.
__

A past post that discusses some of her time in Chicago.


Wells (by then Wells-Barnett) with her four children in 1909. Photo from the Wikimedia Commons. 

Natural Aristocracy

I've been missing Pacific Standard magazine since it stopped its print publication. I see their tweets with articles and appreciate they're still doing the work, but it's not the same as sitting down with the magazine, at least for me.

But I did take the time to read this article, How overconfidence among the upper classes is hampering social mobility.

Middle class "people are socialized to differentiate themselves from others, to express what they think and feel, and to confidently express their ideas and opinions, even when they lack accurate knowledge..." while "working-class people are socialized to embrace the values of humility, authenticity, and knowing your place in the hierarchy."

As a result,

people who occupy a higher place in the socio-economic hierarchy often believe, without evidence, that they are more capable than their lower-class counterparts. Crucially, this overconfidence can be misinterpreted by prospective employers to indicate higher competence, giving middle- and upper-class people a significant advantage in terms of hiring and, presumably, promotion.

There's a big measure of Dunning-Kruger in this upper-class over-confidence, but it appears the incompetence never catches up with our clueless cousins, cusioned by their class (and other forms of) privilege.

Mural at CTUL

I wrote once before about CTUL (Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en Lucha) and showed some of the banners inside the building. A few years have passed, and now they have an impressive mural on the outside of the building as well:


First my pieced-together fisheye look at the whole thing...


...then some detail shots of the left side, showing women speaking into microphones, one emblazoned When We Fight We Win...


...to the center under the windows, with people in winter, hunkering down to lock arms in solidarity...


...to the right side, with pickets holding signs reading Strike for Our Lives and Fight for Our Lives.

It makes a statement on Chicago Avenue, and CTUL continues and expands its work.

All I Can Do Is Laugh

Sometimes, you just need to see a funny T-shirt.


It wouldn't work if the graphics weren't so great. A+ for use of black and white (and gray).

Amy Rice at the Birchwood Cafe

It's finally flower season, and there are flowers on the walls at the Birchwood Cafe as well.


The artist, Amy Rice, works with stencils and enamel spray paint, among other media.


She has big gardens, but she dreams even bigger, according to her artist statement: of being a flower farmer.


"I'm not satisfied anymore with a big garden; I want acres of stripes of living colors. I want my fields to be my canvas and flowers to be my paint."

Animals in a Hallway

There's one upside to wasting time waiting in a school hallway: you get to look at the student artwork. These animal were painted by first or second graders.


The red panda is the one that got my attention first.


The fox peeks in from the edge of the frame.


This one was labeled "Glimmering Gorilla."


A jaguar's contemplates its existence.


I love the tone-on-tone of the whites and grays, not to mention the purple background, on this mountain goat artwork.


The snow leopard will stay with me for a long time.

Ways to Change the Senate

From Doug Muder at The Weekly Sift... I was drawn by this section of his weekly round-up post, which was titled Without Protest. The first part was about the recently passed anti-abortion laws, and within that he made these points:

The apparent purpose of Alabama’s monstrous law is to make this very conservative Supreme Court reconsider the legal status of abortion.

It’s worth remembering how we come to have a Supreme Court majority that is far more conservative than the American people: The Republican Senate (elected mainly by small states, and representing a minority of voters) denied President Obama (who won his elections by margins of 53%-46% and 51%-47%) his constitutional right to appoint a moderate justice (Merrick Garland) in his final year in office. Instead, the last two extremely conservative justices (Gorsuch and Kavanaugh) have been appointed by a minority-elected president (Trump lost the popular vote 46%-48%, but won in the Electoral College) and approved by that same minority-elected Senate.

Republicans sometimes justify the power of the Senate and the Electoral College by saying it protects against the tyranny of the majority. But in this case it enables a tyranny of the minority, which is far worse. If our system respected the will of voters, the Court would have a solid center-left majority, and Roe would be safe.

A number of constitutional remedies have been proposed to make the Senate more democratic, but here’s a simpler approach: Outlaw gerrymandering (to make the House better reflect the voters) and then move the special powers of the Senate (approving nominees and treaties) to the more representative House. That also would require a constitutional amendment, but one that I believe would be easier to pass than a reapportionment of the Senate.

Disempowering the Senate would resemble the path taken in the United Kingdom: They’ve never eliminated their unrepresentative House of Lords, they’ve just taken away most of its powers.

I don't believe I've heard anyone advocate this idea of moving the special powers to the House before, so that caught my attention. Combined with National Popular Vote laws passed by enough states and getting rid of the filibuster... it would make a difference.

I believe in protection of minorities (in all senses of the word) but I don't believe in minority rule.

Corporate Funding of the State Abortion Bans

Like many, I have been quietly and loudly freaking out about the current rapid and radical shift in a few states on the right to abortion, which is the right of people with uteruses to control their bodies as human beings.

I don't understand how anyone thinks that's debatable, let alone legislatable, in a country with religious freedom. You can decide for yourself not to have one, assuredly; you can try to convince others not to have one; but you cannot compel the use of someone's body to incubate the life of another person — just as you cannot compel donation of a kidney or even blood to save the life of a person who is already born. We get to choose when to donate a kidney, when to donate blood, when to gestate a fetus.

If you wonder who's been funding the people behind these recent legislative changes, Judd Legum has some information for you, posted in summary to Twitter earlier today and in full form on his online newsletter, Popular Information. This is the Twitter summary:

I scoured the campaign finance databases for the six states that have banned abortion this year. I looked for corporate contributions to the politicians leading the charge to pass abortion bans. Six companies stood out.

Let's take them one at a time:

1. ATT says the company makes "sure women at AT&T feel supported in everything they do." ATT donated $196,600 to politicians pushing abortion bans in six states.
2. Walmart says it's committed "to celebrating, developing and lifting up women around the world – both within the company and in the communities we serve." The company donated $57,700 to politicians pushing abortion bans across six states.
3. Pfizer says "investments in women’s health and gender equality must be prioritized to help create healthier communities worldwide." The company donated $53,650 to politicians pushing abortion bans in six states.
4. Eli Lilly says it is working to remove "any hidden barriers for women ...to pave the way for a more open, engaging and inclusive culture for everyone." The company donated $66,250 to politicians pushing abortion bans in five states.
5. CocaCola says there "is overwhelming evidence that achieving equality and empowerment for women...benefits them directly and [has] broader ripple effects that are good for society." The company donated $40,800 to politicians pushing abortion bans.
6. Aetna says women "are the largest consumer and workforce group. Women’s views on health care and health care services are critical to our success." The company donated $26,600 to politicians pushing abortion bans

NOTE: Info about corporate political donations SHOULD be very easy to get. But it's not. Much of the info is tucked away in arcane state databases. If you value accountability journalism, you can support it by subscribing to my newsletter.

I'll be notifying the couple of corporations on that list that I happen to patronize that I am unhappy about this. If you are also, I hope you will too.

A Magic Logo

This weekend I learned the school mascot for Minot High School is a Magician. And this is what their diploma covers looked like in the late 1960s:


What a charming little guy, peering into his crystal ball.

Crystallofolia

I just caught up on some bloggers I read who post infrequently, and hope you find this post from crystallofolia as soothing as I do. The writer/photographer is a local naturalist who usually turns her lens on her own yard. This is a sample:


She describes these poke milkweed flowers as "claw-like blooms."

There's more where that came from.

Right Limbs Not Working

I woke up at 1 a.m. this morning with pain in the front of my right lower leg, which I assumed was shin splints because I had run for a block or two on concrete earlier in the day wearing flat shoes. But then the pain got worse until I was almost gasping and I thought, Could it be something else, like a deep vein thrombosis? Or even if it was shin splints, should I put ice or heat on it? So out came the phone and Google. I read an article on shin splints for a few minutes and suddenly the pain disappeared.

That's when I realized it must have been a charley horse, only in an unusual spot (I have them in the backs of my calfs, never the front). Despite the location, the sudden disappearance seems definitive, since shin splints don't go away suddenly.

Then later in the day I had the second injection of the new shingles vaccine, and now my right shoulder is feeling about halfway to the charley horse feeling. At least, it doesn't want me to move it.

So that's all I've got for today. The right is no longer working.

(See what I did there?)

In Sync with Happify

My new favorite person on Twitter, @happifydesign, has been thinking challenging thoughts lately (and maybe has all along... I'm only a recent follower). Here's a short thread:

I watched Bill Nye and felt his frustration viscerally. For those actually and honestly and openly engaging with climate breakdown (or anything, really), I have infinite patience. For those who are playing the white man game of trying to trap me in some internal argument failure? I'm done playing.

The evidence is beyond what we need to act and my personal current point of interest is rapid culture/societal shift to protect all life on earth and reduce the magnitude of human suffering.

I don't want to argue minutiae -- I want to be an agent of change.

If you want to "be right" inasmuch as I'm not a walking encyclopedia of citations of the past two decades of research leading me to this point? I get that. It's f***ing hard to face this reality and somehow you feel safe if you can "prove" the messengers wrong on a technicality.

It's a bizarre literalism, like some sort of biblical fundamentalist game.

In case you missed it, here's the Bill Nye video Happify referred to.

Here's one thing to remember for those moments when someone tries to trap you, as Happify describes, in your inability to produce two decades of research on climate change. From Tom Randall of Bloomberg News:

This ExxonMobile chart from 1982 predicted that in 2019 our atmospheric CO2 level would reach about 415 parts per million, raising the global temperature roughly 0.9 degrees C.  The world crossed the 415 ppm threshold this week and broke 0.9 degrees C in 207.

I'd say that's a pretty accurate prediction for a hypothesis that's not based on anything.

Night on Bald Trash Can

It's a bit of a stretch, maybe, but when I saw this stack of booster seats at a restaurant recently...


...they seemed vaguely familiar....


That may not quite be it. But there's some evil character somewhere whose head is sitting on the trash container in that restaurant.

Ban Conversion "Therapy" in Minnesota

Irony is long dead in our current age, but if it lived, it would croak over the way Minnesota Senate Republicans are fretting about restricting the free speech of therapists whose juvenile clients "want" to change their same-sex attractions or reverse their "gender confusion." These are the same Minnesota Republicans who see no problem voting for bills that compel medical doctors to lie to patients seeking an abortion. That's where the irony comes in.

The context: The Minnesota House has passed a bill banning so-called conversion therapy for minors. The practice is already banned in 14 states. Senator Scott Dibble, D-Minneapolis, is the sponsor in the upper house, and he thought he had a deal to get it passed in the Senate as well, until it fell apart because of the actions of Republican Majority Leader Paul Gazelka.

Just after that happened, the Star Tribune ran this story about Gazelka's adult child, Genna, who is now 30 years old and identifies as bi-gender, having come out as a lesbian at age 15.

Read the whole story on the Strib site, but the short version is that as a teenager Genna was sent to Christian psychologist Marcus Bachmann for conversion (yes, the same Marcus Bachmann who's married to the infamous Michele Bachmann [you can find all of my past posts about her here]). If you google his name and the word "conversion," you'll find a bunch of articles, such as this one from the Nation.

In my opinion, Genna's parents should have been investigated for child abuse for subjecting their child to that trauma, but instead Paul Gazelka is now majority leader of our state senate.

All of this makes me think of the words of the poet Khalil Gibran, as filtered through the musical version by Sweet Honey in the Rock:

Your children are not your children
They are the sons and the daughters
Of life's longing for itself

They come through you but they are not from you
And though they are with you
They belong not to you

You can give them your love but not your thoughts
They have their own thoughts
They have their own thoughts

You can house their bodies but not their souls
For their souls dwell in the place of tomorrow
Which you cannot visit
Not even in your dreams.

You can strive to be like them
But you cannot make them just like you.
Strive to be like them,
But you cannot make them just like you.

One More Photo

And not only a photo, but another shadow photo:


It's spring... you can see it in the buds.

Keep It to Yourselves

A while ago, I saw that a long-adult, former fraternity brother named Jeremiah Crespo posted this to Twitter:

Fraternity Men account for 2% of the American population. Since 1825, that 2% has accounted for:
- 80% of Fortune 500 executives
- 76% of U.S. senators/congressmen
- 85% of Supreme Court justices

[Capitalization in the original.]

Crespo vaguely cited Cornell (University?) as the source. I'm not sure if he meant these results are from research done at Cornell or were compiled from the fraternities at Cornell. He concluded the tweet with this statement, as if it were a fact: "Greek life teaches, builds, and prepares its members to succeed."

Imagine posting that as a conclusion, rather than acknowledging that fraternities build lifelong networks of men (by definition) who know each other and hoard opportunities for each other and their descendants, who are often in the same fraternities. How unconscious do you have to be of your structural advantages to post something like this?

Pretty unconscious.

Between the Cheese and the Bread

You know how grocery merchandisers will put the salsa by the corn chips, or the pita bread by the hummus? Maybe they'll put a pile of caramel wrappers by the apples or some chocolate dipping sauce by the fresh strawberries.

They want to make it easy for shoppers to find the things they need, while upselling at the same time. Reminding us of the ways we can use two products together, and therefore spend more money.

Well, check out this combination I saw in a supermarket cheese department:


Yes, that's a triple basket of artisanal Prilosec, the over-the-counter acid reflux treatment. Yummy!

As seen at a Hy-Vee supermarket in Madison, Wis., in March.

Casting a Co-op

Photo #5:


This is another one of my shadow photos from the lobby at Hampden Park Co-op in Saint Paul. It's not often you get to see a reversed shadow on a dark floor. It almost looks fake, or like it's spray-painted with a stencil, but I swear it's a real shadow.

Concrete Carpet

Photo #4:


Lately I've been photographing shadows. This one, of the glass walls in a Metro Transit bus shelter on a Saint Paul sidewalk, looks like a hotel carpet to me.

Making Lemonade Out of Chalk

Photo #3:


I've shared the chalk art from The Naughty Greek once before. This ebullient image grabbed my attention.

Goldie Is Huge

Photo #2:


It's slightly frightening when you see a gopher head as tall as your body.

Photo Week

Photo #1 for the week:


(It's a busy week, so I'm going to be posting photos most of the next few days.)

The Paradox of the Pickup Truck

When I first saw this poster, it seemed intriguing and, at first — maybe — inspiring:


"The Paradox of Our Age," the heading reads. And then it goes on...

We have bigger houses, but smaller families;
more conveniences, but less time;
We have more degrees, but less sense;
more knowledge, but less judgement [sic];
more experts, but more problems;
more medicines, but less healthiness;
We have been all the way to the moon and back,
But have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbour.
We built more computers to hold more information to produce more copies than ever,
but have less communication;
We've become long on quantity and short on quality.
These are times of fast foods but slow digestion;
Tall men but short character;
Steep profits but shallow relationships.
It's a time when there is much in the window, but nothing in the room.

H.H. The XIV Dalai Lama

I confess I didn't read the whole thing then because the moment passed as I realized it was adhered to the side of this pickup truck:


Which meant the person who posted it doesn't have any idea what a paradox (or irony) is.

Oh. And by the way, a quick search of the title and the name Dalai Lama turns up a Snopes post that says he didn't write it (and neither did George Carlin, nor one of the survivors of Columbine). It's part of an essay by Bob Moorehead, the former pastor of Seattle’s Overlake Christian Church, so if it sounded kind of preachy... that's because it is.

Hazelnuts for the Rest of Us

This story from a recent Star Tribune combines many things I hope for in media: detailed information on something that's not widely known, knowledge from people who know what they're talking about, and a look at people who are attempting to solve some of our real problems in a world of climate crisis.

It tells of farmers and researchers who are working to develop a Minnesota-hardy, harvestable hazelnut with large enough nuts to be marketable. It gives a good idea of how hard that is to do. And it also makes it clear why it matters.

Perennial food crops, especially deep-rooted ones like hazelnuts, prevent soil runoff and need less fertilizer than the annuals we all expect as food crops, like corn and soybeans or even most vegetables. And they play well with others, too:

Hazelnuts can...be raised among other crops or wild grasses, offering acres of habitat for bumblebees and other key pollinators brought to the brink of extinction by intense use of pesticides and loss of grass, clovers and flowers.

Hardy hazelnuts have many potential uses as a crop:

With their high protein and oil contents, hazelnuts make for a better animal feed and biofuel ingredient than soybeans, and most soybeans grown in Minnesota end up in livestock troughs or ethanol. The high oil content makes them valuable for cooking oils and hand lotions.

That means the return to farmers could be substantial, once the bushes start producing nuts (which takes four years):

The [University of Minnesota] and [University of Wisconsin] estimated in 2017 that a fully mature hedgerow of hazelnuts would net between $3,400 and $4,200 an acre, with whole nuts at a market rate of $2 per pound.

The average net return over the last 10 years for soybeans in southern Minnesota is just under $71 an acre, according to the U’s Center for Farm Financial Management.

And there's one final advantage of hazelnuts compared to many other food crops:

Unlike almonds and most other crops grown in the United States, hazelnuts do not need pollinators. If butterflies and bees continue to die away, hazelnuts can survive — their catkins carried by the wind.

And while that's a sad possible reality, I'm glad these folks are thinking ahead enough, just in case.

Connecting to The Outsiders Through a Poem

The other day a friend and I were having a morning meeting in east sunlight and I commented on the light yellow green leaves just unfurling on the trees outside the window. She replied, "Nature's first green is gold."

To which I replied, "Her hardest hue to hold."

And then we recited the rest of the poem, sometimes taking turns on every other line:

Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Which, of course, is Robert Frost's "Nothing Gold Can Stay."

This friend and I are almost exactly the same age, and I asked, "Do you know that poem from S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders or just because you know the poem?" And it turned out she had never read The Outsiders, which was published when we were about 12 years old. She just loved the poem and memorized it.

But she picked up the book yesterday and read it, and I've been thinking about what that would be like as an adult vs. rereading it as an adult, having loved it as a young teen. I know I didn't see it the same way the last time I reread it a decade or so ago, but I did still like it (unlike, say, A Separate Peace, ugh). It was path-breaking in the young adult genre when it came out. I'm almost afraid to talk to her about what she thought of it.

But I will.


Some of the book's covers: The first edition, the 1970s paperback I bought as a teenager, and two that seem to be student designs. (Google image search reveals it's a popular book to use in design class assignments.) Most of the other real paperback covers are boring movie tie-ins.

Twitter, April 2019, a Day Late

Overwhelming as usual. Here goes.

On the 2020 Democratic presidential field:

Reminder that today's "far left" is basically FDR-era policies + race/class/gender diversity. I'm never sure which part they object to
Sarah Smarsh

Joe Biden is never going to have more % than he has now because he is only candidate guarantee to lose votes the more he talks.
@kar_nels

One wild and wacky editorial experiment I hope some publication tries someday would be ditching speculation about who voters may support entirely in favor of exclusively covering who the candidates are, what they've done, what their ideas are, and whether those ideas make sense.
Osita Nwanevu

If everybody stopped caveating their praise of Warren with “I don’t know that she can win, but...” it might be a lot easier for her to win.
Lila Byock

I'm glad people is finally realizing how ignorant they were thinking the media was just ignoring Hillary Clinton because she was a weak, untrustworthy and unlikable presidential candidate. Now with a field full of qualified women, they're dismissed for less qualified white men.
@MrDane1982

Biden has MORE baggage than Hillary Clinton had in 2016 and yet somehow wide swaths of Democratic voters are convinced he’s the only shot. FIRE ME INTO THE SUN
Alexis Goldstein

Not in his defense at all but it's worth clarifying what Biden is doing when he says he wishes he could have done something during the Thomas hearings. He means he wishes he could have done something without sacrificing his political fortunes. It's actually worse than just abdicating. He is saying that treating Anita Hill as a victim or even a trustworthy subject would have COST him something. And when faced with choosing right or choosing himself, he sacrificed Anita Hill. So it's not laziness. It's not even just craven careerism. It's predatory. And I'm not saying that's some brilliant insight. It's just getting lost in the jokes, I think. He's not being a dolt or even an ass. He is showing his fundamental moral framwork and we should listen.
Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom

When you say you don’t think the country would elect a woman you are part of the reason they might not. Stop entertaining sexism as legitimate behavior. Stop normalizing it. Stop making people feels like everyone else is doing it. Be honest about your biases and then stop it.
feminist next door @emrazz

CNN just said Biden is establishing himself as “the grown-up in the race.” How insulting for the fabulous women and people of color who are also running - a reminder of how political media is too male and too white.
Leta Hong Fincher

What did you, prosecutor-turned-politician, learn between then and now that makes you less likely to criminalize parents, something you once did but now say was a mistake?
Jacob Remes

What I find so inspiring about Elizabeth Warren is that while so many clamor for attention with vague talking points, she rolls up her sleeves and says, “Guys, I have a PLAN.” And that’s the country I want to live in: one in which a brilliant person with a plan gets to lead.
Mikel Jollett

Two things can be true:
1) it is exciting and a sign of great progress that an openly gay candidate can run for president and be given the star treatment by media
2) Pete Buttigieg is under-qualified for the presidency and has a huge blind spot on race-related issues
@TheStagmania

I don't agree with Warren on 100% of issues, but it seems clear to me that she's the only candidate in the race who could actually bring deep and positive change to our economic and government system. So to me, being a Warren stan is a no-brainer.
Noah Smith

So have you all noticed the praise heaped on Pete B for his “realism” about coal jobs not coming back? Am I living in an alternate universe or did Hillary not say the same thing and get pilloried by the media?
Susan Bordo

I am so tired of men with ideas being held above women with answers.
Jessica Ellis @baddestmamajama

Media: I like this Pete he reminds me of me
Media: Let's cover Pete
Media: Let's not cover the former mayor of San Antonio/cabinet secretary, governor of washington, governor of colorado, or any of the women
Media: [waits]
Media: Name recognition soaring for Pete! Dark! Horse! Dark! Horse!
David M. Perry @Lollardfish

What Pete Buttigieg shows is that you can poll at 2% but if a bunch of centrist pundits like you, they will make coverage and a candidacy for you. If you are polling at 2% and have ideas these pundits don't like, they'll use your polling numbers as an excuse to ignore or belittle you
Mr. LV426

If Mayor Pete were as progressive as he thinks he is he would use his (white male) platform to amplify women and women of color candidates. White male liberalism always seems to stop right before giving up any power.
Matthew Salesses

Warren is electric in person and connects with crowds like this every day yet she rarely gets the slobbering “charisma” coverage that seems to be reserved for her colleagues who are more... what’s the word?... male.
Adam Jentleson

On Mulligan and his administration:

Mick Mulvaney says the $22 trillion debt “does not appear to be holding us back.” This is the same Mick Mulvaney who said pre-Trump that the debt was such an urgent threat it was better to default on US obligations than lift the borrowing limit.
Sahil Kapur

Gorsuch 2017: "I do not know why we would look to the experience of other countries rather than to our own."
Gorsuch 2019: "Virtually every English-speaking country and a great many others besides ask this question in their censuses."
Peter Baker

Yikes, Trump's Federal Reserve pick Stephen Moore enthusiastically supports child labor & having 11- and 12-year-olds work. “I’m a radical on this,” Moore said. “I’d get rid of a lot of these child labor laws. I want people starting to work at 11, 12.” Someone should ask Stephen Moore exactly what work he thinks 11- and 12-year-olds should do. Coal mining? Working in auto plants? Picking up garbage? Cleaning houses? Picking vegetables in the hot sun? Working in Walmart?
Steven Greenhouse

Trump says he is opposed to White House aides testifying to Congress. Unless the witness agrees Trump can’t stop them without a court order, which would be unprecedented and doubtful. He can’t gag his former aides, and it is criminal to threaten them.
John Dean
The president of the United States lies pretty much every time he opens his mouth, and that ought to be a headline story every goddamn day. That it's seen merely as an area for fact-checkers is not good enough.
The Rude Pundit

It’s hard to express how transgressive Barr/Rosenstein’s decision on obstruction was. So contrary to the weight of the evidence that I haven’t seen one former prosecutor defend its merits. So contrary to the purpose of the special counsel and so personally unethical...
@nycsouthpaw

EVERY state should pass a law requiring presidential candidates to release the last five years of their tax returns if they want to be on the ballot. If Donald Trump wants to keep his name off, fine.
rolandsmartin

Started laughing maniacally for a moment recalling the momentous scandal that was Bill Clinton hopping onto Loretta Lynch's plane for a chat.
Chris Hayes

Republicans will question a person’s patriotism if they don’t wear the right pin but won’t say a word about a president courting foreign interference.
Jared Yates Sexton

Data show that Trump is packing the Federal District and Circuit Courts with almost homogeneously white, male ideologues - who now have lifetime appointments.
~90%+ are white.
~9% are Asian.
~1% are Hispanic or Black.
~80% are male.
This is a big problem.
@DemWrite

It just occurred to me that there’s no way Trump read the Mueller Report and somebody probably threw together a summary with pictures for him that he didn’t read either.
Jared Yates Sexton

If you ever turn on cable news or read the major newspapers and see how they treat an abnormality like Trump as perfectly normal, you can easily understand how Hitler happened. When the lead guy is whacked the normalcy bias kicks in and the worst becomes mundane.
Oliver Willis

Trump wanted to fulfill campaign promise to "Lock Her Up." Tried 3xs to pressure Sessions into prosecuting Clinton. Episodes are unique because they show Trump going on offensive to target a rival. No president since Nixon is known to have attempted this.
Michael S. Schmidt (New York Times reporter)

“The country needs a check against a bad-behaving or lawbreaking president. But the Constitution already provides that check. If the president does something dastardly, the impeachment process is available.” — Justice Brett Kavanaugh, 2009.
Laurence Tribe

If Democrats don't aggressively fight on Mueller and accountability, things won't go back to "normal." The modern GOP is a shark -- always swimming forward, always attacking. Democratss can't avoid the fight; for once they should just f'ing fight it.
David Roberts

Impeach Trump and make the Republicans go on live television, in front of the world, in spite of all the evidence, and pledge their loyalty to a criminal administration.
Jared Yates Sexton

The line of "If we impeach, Trumps base will be energized" I have a news flash for you, anyone supporting Trump on Good Friday 2019 is a racist or racist sympathizer and racists are always energized. Stop being scared.
Danny @danzu72

I once indicted, tried and convicted a guy on obstruction for asking his ex-girlfriend to leave town until his trial was over (she didn’t). Compare that to what the President of the United States did.
Elie Honig

Still can’t get over this revelation: Not only did Trump order Don McGahn to order Rosenstein to fire Mueller, but then he ordered him to write a statement denying that he ever asked him to do so.
Robert Reich

Any objective read of the mueller report portrays a president who systematically lied, misled, is ethically and morally challenged, tried to interfere in an investigation, asked others to interfere, and sought to serve only himself.
Matthew Dowd

If the president of the United States is telling government officials to break the law and offering them pardons to do it, but that’s somehow not impeachable, then what on earth is impeachable
Mark Follman

In case you don’t follow closely, what this person is (accurately) pointing out is that Donald Trump is purging his administration of all Senate-approved appointees, replacing with so-called “acting” officials, who have NOT been Senate approved. It’s an anti-constitutional consolidation of power.
Evan Handler

Hmmm. I’m old enough to remember when Bill Clinton talking with AG Lynch about grandkids on the tarmac tainted the entire investigation on HRC. But now we don’t need to know if AG discussed an investigation *with the subject himself*??? OK.
Asha Rangappa

Coming to believe that Barr letter is to Mueller report as the Dr. Harold Bornstein letter was to Trump's actual health
David Frum

If you repeat Trump's lies, you get the attention of people who support Trump and you get the attention of those who hate him. This clickbait/hateclick industry is proven, and it wins no matter what even as it erodes public trust.
Jared Yates Sexton

It's a mistake to say the Founders meant to prevent a Donald Trump from becoming president. They designed our government specifically to be run by and for the wealthy. The mistake they made was in thinking that the wealthy were inherently more talented or more capable.
Jared Yates Sexton

I have a lot of feels for the Secret Service detail [at Mara-Lago]. This is a classic situation: the security team hemmed in by unreasonable requests from 'the business' and then blamed for failures. The root cause analysis is that the Presidency shouldn't be a for-profit enterprise.
Alex Stamos

If Donald Trump doesn’t convince you unchecked greed and rampant ambition corrupts a person completely and makes them totally miserable, I don’t know what will.
Jared Yates Sexton

The next president won’t have to just run a vast array of federal departments. They’ll have to entirely rebuild them. Overnight. A typical president has to fill 9,000 jobs upon arrival. The next president will have to rebuild entire bureaus. Rebuild entire organizations.
The Hoarse Whisperer

On the president's actions against Ilhan Omar:

Of course Republicans are hypocrites but it’s striking to me that *Democrats* who were eager to condemn Ilhan Omar’s “tropes” won’t say that Trump has anything to do with the fact that two different synagogues have been shot up by right-wingers spouting “great replacement” stuff.
Matthew Yglesias

The Republican leadership that targets Rep Ilhan Omar and the Democratic leadership that doesn’t know how to respond to Islamaphobia makes it clear to me that these people don’t have any Muslim friends.
Hari Kondabolu

When I was a child, it was Japanese Americans who were vilified as the enemy after Pearl Harbor. No one stood up for us, and 120,000 of us were sent to internment camps. I swore that I'd dedicate my life to ensure this never happens again in America. #IStandWithIlhanOmar
George Takei

Here’s something you all should know. No one loves this country more than @IlhanMN. She actually believes it can be a better place, and works every single day to make that happen. That’s not something you can say about most politicians. #IStandWithIlhan
K. Davis Senseman

Just a morbid note: if the right keeps pushing and pushing and DOES get Omar (or someone else) killed, it won't spark some big collective break or wake-up moment. The right will just gaslight and dodge accountability and the media will both-sides it.
David Roberts

The president is trying to get a member of Congress killed because she’s a Muslim and vocally opposed to authoritarianism across the globe. Literally that simple, and that horrifying.
Henry Kraemer

Racism, white supremacy, and police brutality:

If this is the first and only case of an unarmed citizen being killed by police that you’ve believed is unjustified and worthy of murder charges, you are racist. Recognize it. Work on it. You don’t have to stay that way.
Abby Honold (responding to the guilty verdict in the Mohammed Noor trial, which I discussed a few days ago)

"I want people to internalize the fact that slavery – the act of enslaving people and being enslaved – is not and will never actually be sexy in history and it shouldn’t be sexy in fiction. "
@stichomancery

Vancouver sidewalk:


Dr. Jennifer Berdahl

you can’t call them “lone wolves” when they all hang out in the same chatrooms, listen to the same bullshit youtubers and podcasters, use the same weapons and attack the same groups of people.
@kylieisntfunny

Twitter needs to remove every white supremacist account, then note who complains about it and remove them too.
@TeaPainUSA

Robert E. Lee owned 200 slaves (which he famously tortured) then led a rebellion to extend slavery which killed 620,000 people. Saying you're not a racist, you just love Robert E. Lee is like saying you're not an antisemite, you just love Hitler.
Mikel Jollett

Robert E. Lee was dragged according to the sensibilities of his own era — unless you’re saying that 4 million enslaved black people’s view of bondage didn’t count.
jelani cobb

The largest prison in the US is named "Angola," after the plantation that it used to be (before slavery was abolished). That plantation was named "Angola" after the country in Africa, which is where most of the slaves on the plantation had come from. Let's spell that out: there is a county in Louisiana where only *three-fifths* of the population is eligible to vote, because the rest are incarcerated prisoners (disproportionately Black).
@chimeracoder

It is 2019 and white people still stare when I enter the hotel restaurant, a memoir
Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom

Expecting whole groups of humans to be super humans and perfect citizens (in an obvious capitalist and ableist way) before we grant them basic human rights is not tolerance or progressiveness. It’s bigotry dressed as bienfaisance.
Guilaine Kinouani

The only thing that should follow “i’m not racist, but...” is “I do live in a system of institutionalized racism that I absorb and actively benefit from”
Aparna Nancherla

Like I said, slaveowners were the *only* people ever compensated for slavery and formerly enslaved people tried to get reparations but were denied by the very government that allowed their enslavement.
Ida Bae Wells @nhannahjones

If you don’t overtly stand against white supremacy you stand with it.
David Hogg

What’s amazing about Fox News’ “3 Mexican Countries” SNAFU is that it exemplifies perfectly how the Far Right sees the world. Just an outrageously ignorant perspective where other people’s are interchangeable and there’s no need to consider them or their well-being. This and Trump’s “shithole countries” debacle are just two of many instances where bald-faced white supremacy is ever more obvious and undeniable in discourse. The fact that white supremacy isn’t one of the largest discussions everyday in this country is a terrible indictment.
Jared Yates Sexton

For the first time I can recall, there was a cluster about the criminal "justice" system...

One of the biggest problems with the American criminal justice system is our focus on punishment and punishment alone. What if we understood that committing a serious crime may mean a temporary curtailing of certain liberties, but the bigger goal is a safe, cohesive society?
Jill Filipovic

Tonya McDowell, a homeless Black woman in Connecticut, was sentenced to 5 years in prison for "grand larceny" when she was found to have sent her son to school in the wrong district. She wanted him to have a better shot at education, prosecutors called it a $15,000 theft.
@andraydomise

if you have so many prisoners that you have to deny them the right to vote because they would significantly impact election results, the main substantive problem is that you live in a police state
@buffalocialism

The use of “rapists and murderers” as an easy stand-in for “incarcerated people” illustrates something profound about the racial divide in how people are personally touched by mass incarceration, who has known and loved someone who’s been locked up and who has not.
wikipedia brown @eveewing

My mother spent 33 years as a court stenographer in Manhattan criminal court. In 1992, we walked into a restaurant and she made us walk right out, since one of the prosecutors for the Central Park 5 case was eating there. Their innocence was not a mystery at 100 Centre St.
Jason Stanley @jasonintrator

Rudy making his name and reputation building an enormous carceral dragnet for poor people of color and ending his career making excuses for a rich lawless heir really too perfect. Law and order.
Chris Hayes

...but fewer than usual, lately, about sexism and misogyny (if you don't count ones related to the Democratic candidates):

Elon Musk: *Is CEO of SpaceX, Tesla*
People: "Elon made electric cars! Elon's taking us to Mars! Elon, Elon, Elon!"
Katie Bouman: *Invents an algorithm to see black holes, leads the team that executes it*
People: "hold up I mean it was a team effort, why does she get the praise?"
@backslash

Just an evening reminder that jewelry was a traditional gift demanded by women not because we’re frivolous magpies but because we weren’t permitted to have bank accounts in many times and places and needed shit we could sell for cash in a pinch.
Olivia Waite

This:


Chicago Taskforce

I don’t think it’s actually that surprising when you remember that hookup culture panic was about *women* having too much sex while decline of sex panic is about *men* having too little.
Julia Carrie Wong

Apr 1
David Brooks left his wife and children to marry the research assistant he was fucking while they worked on a book about personal morality, so maybe don't listen to his takes on appropriate physical behavior at work.
mugrimm @unabanned

"Women are told they're shopaholics, when they earn & spend less than men, while African Americas find themselves lectured on sneaker purchases and not, say, housing discrimination & its role in the low net worth of minority households." –Helaine Olen
Paychecks & Balances

It takes women 15 months to earn what men brought home last year.
It takes Native women 20 months.
It takes black women 21 months.
It takes Latina women 23 months.
When we disinvest from healthcare, education, housing and labor protections, women suffer.
Ilhan Omar

Social norms have not changed. We NEVER liked you touching us without our permission. So please stop convincing yourself that it’s a new world. It’s the same world, I just don’t have to lose a job for telling you to get your hands off me.
@AllanaHarkin

There are 2.91 million waiters and waitresses in America, and issues like tip theft by employers are very real. We'll never hear about them though, because unlike coal miners they don't evoke bygone white masculinity.
@agraybee

The climate crisis and livable cities:

It isn't that I walk to save the environment. It's that I don't drive because I don't want to destroy it. I am not choosing an environmental good by being car-free. I'm avoiding an active environmental harm. What I'm doing is neutral. You're not necessarily making good relationship choices when you don't beat your partner. You're just not making a bad one?
@happifydesign

Some people argue it's not worth putting a shelter at every bus stop because some have low ridership. I don't care. It's not okay to put ANY bus riders in dangerous or humiliating or exhausting situations to save money, especially so little money. We spend $1 billion on single interchanges in the US to shave 80 seconds off a suburban commute for people in climate controlled vehicles. Nobody's ever sweating the cost. Because of their status.
Angie Schmitt

World War 2/climate change analogies are inadequate because in World War 2 we only had to fight Nazis, and today we have to fight climate change AND Nazis.
Eric Roston

By my count, this is the 8th “hundred year flood” in my hometown in 26 years. This is what a climate emergency looks like.
@StinaMo

Civil engineers just want to build big concrete things. We have to do the hard political work of deciding what we actually value infrastructure wise. It’s not an across the board “crisis.” Their organization is the worst. Of all the things they could legit call a crisis roads-wise ... 40k annual deaths, lack of accessibility everywhere, super dangerous conditions for pedestrians ... they seize on this BS about rush hour highway congestion in major cities.
Angie Schmitt

Game of Thrones is clearly fantasy because the leaders try to deal with the existential threat to humanity first
@TheDweck

We know that the world’s poorest contribute the least to global CO2 emissions. On the contrary, the top 10% of consumers (largely in the global north) make up about 50% of global carbon emissions.
Earth Strike International

If the climate policy you're after is "sensible" or "practical", you're advocating for extinction and genocide. I'm sorry, I don't make the rules:


Eric Holthaus

Driver entitlement: I would like to drive as fast as I want, anywhere I want, have cheap gas forever and free abundant parking at my destination.
Bicyclist entitlement: I would like to not die.
Anthony Ryan @printtemps

Designing unhealthy places didn’t happen by accident. We deliberately designed ordinary activity out of everyday city life when we started designing primarily for cars. Achieving the opposite, healthy cities and healthy communities, needs a powerful and equally deliberate rethink.
Brent Toderian

"The bicycle is the most efficient machine ever created. Converting calories into gas, a bicycle gets the equivalent of three thousand miles per gallon." —Bill Strickland
Taras Grescoe

Greenland's ice sheet is melting 6x faster than it was in the 1980s, and the meltwater is directly raising sea levels, according to a new study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
NBC News

Exactly zero downtowns, worldwide, are vibrant because they’re easy to drive to from the burbs. Literally. Seriously. Not one. It’s 2019 and people are still trying to pretend that downtown will be vibrant if we just gut it enough that it’s easy to drive and park there. How stupid are these people?
Adam Miller @ajm6792

New Banksy art appeared at the Marble Arch site of Extinction Rebellion last night: "From this moment despair ends and tactics begin. Despair is the infantile disorder of the revolutionaries of everyday life." Quote from Raoul Vaneigem's The Revolution of Everyday Life, 1967:


Extinction Rebellion

In awe of @GretaThunberg: “You don’t listen to the science because you are only interested in solutions that will enable you to carry on like before...And those answers don’t exist anymore. Because you did not act in time.”
Silvio Marcacci

Nothing about the Climate Catastrophe is convenient. But it's time for us to choose which inconveniences we'd rather endure. I know which boat I'd rather be on:


@meganjherbert

This is really the only way to tackle transport emissions:
#1. Reduce vehicle trips in cities as much as possible
#2. Everyone else goes to EVs
Angie Schmitt

‘Don’t jail the canaries’:


Extinction Rebellion

I've heard two smart people within the last 7 days remind audiences that a car is a car is a car, no matter how it's fueled or whether it has a driver. Single occupancy vehicles chew infrastructure. Transit, walk, bike = true efficiency.
@MaryMorseMarti

Right across from the coffee shop there's an intersection. And a semi truck just had to stop, wait for a left-turning car to back up before proceeding. Engineers see this kind of thing as a big problem. But semis moving very slowly & cautiously through urban intersections is 100%.
Angie Schmitt

Spot the difference:
A Badly Behaved Bicycle Rider: Simply annoying.*
A Badly Behaved Car Driver: Completely deadly:


* With incredibly rare exceptions.
Taras Grescoe

Deeply sad about Notre Dame, but shocked at the hypocrisy of humanity. We destroy over 150 acres of rainforest every minute and do not give it a second thought, yet fall into mourning at the loss of a building.
Bella Lack

People complain cyclists are few in winter, so why cater to them. There are NO golfers for half the year, why dedicate places for golfers who can't even pay for the cost of the course let alone for the land.
@kar_nels

Just please understand - your car is a killer. Whether or not it’s a mistake, or an accident, or whoever fault it is - cars kill people. Cars always kill people. Be responsible. Take care. Be watchful for the vulnerable. We are losing too many people.
@rawales2

My hot take on the Mueller Report is that we have 12 years to start rapidly decarbonizing the world's economy
Brian L Kahn

How people perceive the benefits of freeways has a lot to do with where they live. For many suburban commuters, they are often viewed as the beneficent hand of government at work. For many urban residents, they are often viewed as the despotic hand of government at work.
Jason Segedy

Public investment
Wasteful subsidy:

Chris Oliver @CyclingSurgeon

I was a kid with asthma. A few times a year, my parents would discuss between themselves if and when I needed to go into the ER, as they pressed their ears to my back listening to my breathing. Part of why I choose not to drive. Kids deserve clean transportation.
@happifydesign

Still think drivers pay their way and people on bikes are “getting a free ride?” If commuters had to pay for their impact on society, drivers would pay 87 cents/km. People on bikes would GET 25 cents/km. Commuting by bike saves society money.
Brent Toderian

Drivers: I saw a bike go through a red light!
Also drivers: I’m against red light cameras because they are an infringement on my constitutional blah blah blah...
@BarmanNYC

What's "wholly unacceptable" is not fare-beaters but that people store their cars for free on public streets. That's the real "services theft." Let's change the laws so that's illegal or very expensive and make public transportation free or very cheap.
curtisfox

How to get people out of their cars and into public transit? Auckland did it, by creating a really, really good bus network for very little money. Citywide network + frequency. Not magic; action.
G_Penalosa

How many people are being sexually harassed or assaulted in Ubers and Lyfts? We don't know because the companies don't disclose that. But a CNN investigation found there has been 120 reported rapes in Ubers or Lyfts over the last four years. With taxis, at least, with taxi regulations, we have a transparent system where these are reported, tracked. In addition, taxi drivers have greater rights as employees, for example to sue for sexual harassment, hostile work environment. Even so only about 3 percent of NYC taxi drivers are female, which may be due to the sexual harassment female professional drivers are often subject to.
Angie Schmitt

Key point: carbon footprint of the 1% vs the 99% is not actually very different for meat consumption, but wildly, hugely, orders-of-magnitude different for air travel
Leo Murray @crisortunity

The thing with Extinction Rebellion is that its demands are really only that the government live up to its existing Climate Change commitments. It is essentially saying: Make good on your promises. How, unless you had vested interests in the contrary, could you oppose that?
Patrick Galey

A lot of transportation decisions are explicitly moral. And the key tension is journey times/convenience vs. harmful outcomes for certain people. We see this with road diets, speed limits etc. that pit driver speed (to some extent) in tension with physical safety, especially for vulnerable people.
Angie Schmitt

"...cars present a simple problem of geometry. The space required to accommodate citizens traveling in private vehicles, in parking and roads, leaves less and less for other uses of the city."
Doug Gordon @BrooklynSpoke

Since I’m asked this CONSTANTLY, once & for all, if your city-region is REALLY concerned about “solving car congestion,” u need a combination of smart land-use, inviting walking/biking/transit infrastructure, and a pricing mechanism for driving high enough to get people to change.
Brent Toderian

Can’t afford bike lanes but then...


Linds Mpls

No more front license plates in Ohio; this may allow more hit-skips, pedestrian deaths and other scofflaw behavior. But it was ruining the aesthetics of cars and dealers don’t like drilling holes. Glad we finally got our priorities straight.
Harvey Miller @MobileHarv

One nuclear power plant takes 10-19 yrs from planning to operation, costs 4-5x & emits 9-37x CO2 as a new solar or onshore wind farm & has weapons, meltdown, waste & mining risk.
Mark Z. Jacobson

In the best cities, people have a multitude of choices. If your city is designed so that you are forced to drive, not much choice. If housing is cheaper on the edge due to hidden subsidies (that everyone pays for), not a great choice. Distorted pricing leads to distorted choices.
Jennifer Keesmaat

At this stage of global warming, we're like a person with a cancer where the survival rate with optimal treatment is 85%, who decides not to get any treatment because it's expensive.
Sandra Newman

1.2 million people a year, 3.4K a day, are killed world-wide in traffic crashes, with another 20-50 million a year seriously injured. Imagine if we considered that important, and reconsidered our mobility, land-use, street design, traffic speeds, etc. As of 2018, the number of annual road traffic deaths has actually reached 1.35 million. Road traffic injuries are now the leading global killer of people aged 5-29 years.
Brent Toderian

“They found that both men and women associated doing something good for the environment with being “more feminine.” And when men’s gender identity was threatened, they tried to reassert their masculinity through environmentally damaging choices.”
Kyle Griffin

Americans have such Stockholm Syndrome with cars. Cars are killing ever-more people and choking the life out of our planet. Yet many otherwise left-leaning Americans' reaction to affordable housing is "BUT WHERE WILL ALL THE CARS GO?" As though cars are inevitable and not a choice.
Henry Kraemer

"Driving 70 instead of 65 saves a driver at best 6½ minutes on a 100-mile trip," says IIHS's Chuck Farmer. "Before raising speed limits, state lawmakers should consider whether that potential time savings is worth the additional risk to lives."
@IIHS_autosafety

Once we end the era of the car, we'll have all these strange, haunting, brutalist places to explore. I confess, I love complicated highway overpasses. They're such strange, evocative places. Organic and yet so devoid of life. Like the skeletons of long-dead beasts:


@NeverSassyLaura

Journalists of the world: the point of the Green New Deal, or any serious climate policy, is to completely decarbonize the US economy by mid-century. If a GOP policy doesn't do that, it's not an "alternative" to the GND. [sets to auto-retweet every day forever]
David Roberts

Congestion pricing is already ubiquitous in US: hotels cost more on weekends, movies are cheaper in the afternoon, pizza is cheaper on Tuesdays, Disneyland costs more on the summer. It's not a weird stretch or an infringement on freedom to apply this to our transportation system
Jon Larsen @stretchtraffic

Steve Sack is great, but there's a hundreds of better comics by Andy Singer about Climate Change:


Ken Avidor

Cities don’t need to build safe bike infra for the brave. They need to build it for moments like this:


Mitchell Reardon

At this stage of global warming, we're like a person with a cancer where the survival rate with optimal treatment is 85%, who decides not to get any treatment because it's expensive.
Sandra Newman @sannewman

One of the joys of walking in the city: hidden design details that are revealed only at the pace of walking. #Melbourne:


Jennifer Keesmaat

I honestly believe that living in single-family homes and driving everywhere increases anti-social attitudes and behaviors. We've practically designed our physical environments to *crush or prevent* pro-social attitudes and behaviors. And if you look back at American history, why have we done this, not just in land use but in economic policy, social policy, etc etc.? Racism. This country's origin in racial violence has shaped everything that came after in ways that I *still* find myself underestimating. Millions of people have convinced themselves that the morons on Fox News are right about a scientific question and *all the world's science academies* are wrong. MILLIONS! Just as a raw propaganda victory, it's pretty impressive.
David Roberts

Science: "Second hand smoke is seriously bad for you."
Cities: "We have no choice but to ban smoking in public."
Science: "Second hand exhaust fumes are seriously bad for you."
Cities: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Lee Markosian @peternocturnal

A police analysis found that distracted driving is responsible for the deaths of most New Jersey crash victims. But do roads designed for driver error encourage us to feel a little too safe zoning out behind the wheel? (Spoiler: yep.)
Strong Towns

So much of the "how would that work without a car?" goes away with super basic stuff like corner stores and slightly smaller yards.
Chandler Diffee

People will feel like cars are necessary if you continue to build places that are at car scale. 5 miles to the supermarket, 5 miles to school and 100 feet to cross the street aren't an environment built for anything the size of a human being.
Michael T Sweeney

A key part of the Republican strategy on climate change is to periodically send up a flare that some kind of cooperation is possible. They know this puts "moderate" Dems in heat, willing and eager to weaken their own ambitions. It's always a lie.
David Roberts

We really shouldn’t allow semi trucks this big inside the city:


@wbbbmr

It's seriously perverse that those who choose to drive are considered a protected class who must be granted privileged and gratis access to the public right of way while those who take transit or walk or bike are considered nuance interlopers
Michael T Sweeney

Immigration:

Whenever people say there is no room in this country I suspect they have never traveled because there is a lot of room
roxane gay

Being an immigration lawyer in the age of Donald Trump is like that episode of Battlestar Galactica where Cylons attack every 33 minutes.
R. Andrew Free @ImmCivilRights

The face of just following orders:


Anand Giridharadas

Trump is married to a woman who broke our immigration laws. Trump's companies broke our immigration laws. People fleeing for their children's lives to seek asylum are following our immigration laws. So at least we're done pretending this about laws.
LOLGOP

Population per square kilometer: Singapore 7,916; Netherlands 509; UK 273; Germany 237; USA 36. Yep, looks like we can't fit in another soul.
John Cassidy

Health care:

Medicare For All? No thanks, I don't want to pay for other people's health care. I like private insurance, where I pay for other people's health care AND for the salaries of bloodsucking middlemen whose entire purpose is telling me No when I need medicine
@InternetHippo

Fun fact: the country of Bhutan is one of the poorest in the world with a GDP per capita of just $3,215. Despite this, the government has offered universal healthcare since 1975, and their life expectancy has gone from 38.9 to 68. Remember this next time the GOP says we can't afford it.
@williamlegate

“We are asking for basic human rights to be made whole and real in the United States. There is nothing un-American about it. Having access to health care is not a leftist idea. It’s a human idea.” — @staceyabrams
Barbara Lee

According to most health insurance companies, teeth are luxury bones that I must pay more to continue enjoying
Dan Sheehan

Only thing crazier than how big the defense budget? The fact the amount America overpay for health care due to our insane health prices is equal to TWICE the entire defense budget. Hospitals can teach the defense industry a thing about ripping the public off.
@JonWalkerDC

We really need to discuss how parents will chose bigger houses with backyards, buy bigger “safer” vehicles, drive kids anywhere for organized activities, all to “give our kids a better life,” all the while contributing to the same Climate Change that is sabotaging their future.
Brent Toderian

So let me get this straight: Americans on Medicaid should be forced to work in order to receive basic health care, but the most profitable corporations should pay nothing in federal taxes — and actually receive a tax refund. This twisted logic is undermining America.
Robert Reich

People: Don't use automated traffic enforcement! Simultaneously redesign every street and intersection in America! Me: Okay, good idea. Until then, camera-based traffic enforcement.
Angie Schmitt

Education:

Study finds "surprisingly large" beneficial effects of a culturally relevant high-school curriculum.
Alfie Kohn

US capitalism vs public schools: Teachers’ average wages per week fell (1996-2018) from $1,216 to $ 1,195, as other college grads’ wages rose from $1,454 to $1,777. (wages adjusted for inflation).
Richard D. Wolff

More choice through charters and vouchers has long been the tool states use to distract from the fact that they aren’t willing to adequately fund public education. Don’t believe it? Look at this data from @SchlFinance101:


Ed Law Blog @DerekWBlack

I don’t understand why kids are asked to share, but no one forces adults to. Why do we expect better behavior from children than we do from adults?
@TammyPalyo21

The obsession with “Kindergarten readiness” is insane. We’re stealing childhood away and making public education one long college entrance operation.
@tiersaj

Why does engagement drop as students age?


Stella Pollard

Because the older a child gets the less eager they are to please or blindly acquiesce to random authority figures.
Mother Bae I @tiersaj

PSA: If you are a musician, professional athlete, actor, celebrity, or politician, and you're thinking about opening a charter school, just don't. Want to help? Pay your damn taxes and support public schools.
Mitchell Robinson

Income inequality and the need for economic transformation:

I need everyone who has not been on food stamps as an adult to shut up about what SNAP needs to do to motivate people to get off benefits. People are motivated, they are also poor. Policies that normalize trying to starve them and their dependents are inherently evil.
Mikki Kendall @Karnythia

If you are middle class, they call you a champagne socialist
If you are working class, they say it's the politics of envy
If you wear leather shoes, they call you a hypocrite
If you don't, they call you a hippy.
Everyone, apparently, is disqualified from challenging the system.
GeorgeMonbiot

"Every $1 increase in a state’s minimum wage was associated with a 1.9% decrease in its annual suicide rate, the researchers calculated... 'This study reminds us that political decisions can make the difference between life and death.'"
HawaiiFightFor15

This is a truly staggering fact: Wall Street bonuses totaled $27.5 billion last year, which is more 3 times the combined annual earnings of *all* American workers employed full-time at the federal minimum wage. We can, and must, raise the minimum wage and tax the rich.
Robert Reich

'We need to transform housing politics': Treating homes as hyper-financialized objects for speculation has caused the crisis, 'real estate is attacking housing' says professor David J. Madden, London School of Economics
David Hulchanski

honestly can’t get over the idea that 18-year-olds are supposed to be able to “afford” any kind of college in any capacity. that’s a nonsensical idea and we don’t have to pretend it makes sense. it’s “if your parents aren’t rich, well, sorry!” but rephrased
Amanda Mull

sometimes,I ask my students what they would do if they didn't have to worry about money or loan debt. in almost every case, the very idea is inconceivable. I tell you, truly, a key purpose of debt is to hobble imagination and foreclose possibility. this isn't freedom.
Patrick Blanchfield

Billionaires: My taxes must be low! Government must regulate as little as possible! I don’t care if that means social problems multiply!
Also billionaires: OMG, that’s so sad we have these problems government can’t fix. Allow me to step in and take over.
Anand Giridharadas

you know who doesn’t have student debt, specifically? me, because of inherited wealth. let me tell you: it’s good and the world would be better if everyone had this option.
@RubyGraceLevine

Earth Day reminds us markets always count selectively and partially. Dominant capitalists didn't and don't count environmental costs of their firms so market price-driven transactions ignore them. Few get rich, most don't, and the environment deteriorates for all. We need system change.
Richard D. Wolff

Food stamp access during childhood is linked to an 18% increase in high school completion rates.
Bloomberg Opinion

How much is a billion dollars? About $1300 a day since Jesus was born.
Joseph N. Cohen

Since 1985, the average Wall Street bonus has increased 1,000%, from $13,970 to $153,700. If the $7.25 minimum wage had increased at that rate—it would be $33.51 today. Wall Street Billionaires have caused multiple economic collapses. Minimum wage increases have caused zero.
Qasim Rashid, Esq.

Before capitalism (slavery, feudalism, etc.), conservatives assumed and/or insisted that what existed would last forever, be “the end of history.” Although never true, conservatives assume/insist on the same today.
Richard D. Wolff

The risk of UBI is that we have parasites at the bottom of society who harmlessly collect income and don't do much. The REALITY of global corporate capitalism is that we have parasites at the TOP of society who run the whole system, and the planet, into the ground.
Michael O. Church

And finally, the best of the rest:

Some of the best advice I’ve ever been given: “don’t take criticism from people you wouldn’t ever go to for advice”
Abby Honold

Amazon is squeezing vendors for ad buys and sellers for fees, and using the funds to subsidize 1-day shipping, which will expand its dominance, enabling it to further squeeze vendors and sellers… Antitrust used to limit cross-subsidies and predatory pricing.
Stacy Mitchell

Is that diagram… accurate??


Mark Lisseman

All that time people spent trying not to say Voldemort's name and nobody ever thought to just start referring to him as Mort. Or even Morty.
Charlie Jane Anders

"these damn millennials want their tiny co-living spaces with ping pong tables and artisan coffee when they could do as i did and simply buy a single family house near their job for $180,000 in inflation adjusted dollars" is like the attitude 50% of boomers have on this
Michael T Sweeney

There's this thing that certain people LOVE to do where they make factual statements that carry fraught implications, then deny any responsibility for unpacking, or acknowledging, those implications.
Angus Johnston @studentactivism

Don't kill caterpillars for eating your plants and then complain that you never see any butterflies in your garden. Because all I want to do is smack you upside the head.
Jeff VanderMeer

You know what is disrespectful to the American Flag? The Confederate Flag.
@NYinLA2121

Two young women, two standards of justice.
Maria Butina: Sentenced to 18 months for failing to register as a Russian Agent influencing GOP officials.
Reality Winner: 5 years for notifying journalists to a Russian attempt to hack voting software vendors during the 2016 election.


The Sparrow Project

The puritanical fear that someone, somewhere is getting away with something robs us of so much of the richness and comfort of society.
Alexandra Erin

it's stupid when godzilla is in America because america doesn't have cities. what's he gonna do, knock down the three blocks that actually have tall buildings and then walk 20 miles to kick over a ramada inn? who cares
@eedrk

Arguing that you’d prefer arming teachers — so that they can kill your angst-filled teen when he brings your unsecured firearms to school — over safely storing your weapons doesn’t make you a patriot. It makes you a sh*tty parent.
Scott Charles

That feeling of Notre Dame burning down is the same feeling Natives feel since 1492. That is 526 years; 365 days a year, 24/7. WE’RE STILL BEGGING TO PROTECT OUR SACRED SITES.
Emilio Reyes

"Cats are not a native species anywhere. It's a domesticated species...If cats go outside, they are an unnatural component to an ecosystem."
Pacific Standard

In the early 1960s, California’s population was 15 million and we built 250K-300K homes/year. Today, California’s population is 40 million and we build 80K homes/year. So our population nearly tripled while housing production dropped by over 2/3. And people wonder why housing is so expensive.
Scott Wiener

Wondering how many of the people who get hysterical about “sharia law” have read the book of Leviticus lately.
Ben Ehrenreich

"I don't know anything about politics or who believes what or who has actually done what, but I'm gonna write a whole book about how annoying I find it for other people to care." That's like Douchebag Mt. Rushmore material.
David Roberts

It's always better to confront and deal in reality because living in denial alters nothing. Ignoring the reality that we're spiraling further toward fascism and [accelerated] genocide will spare you from nothing except the opportunity to do something about it.
Bree Newsome Bass

Republicans claim they’re the party of security and fiscal conservatism but support a president in a foreign adversary’s pocket and run up massive deficits. They’re for limited government while championing an all-powerful executive. Their only actual goal is power and enrichment. People let the GOP define themselves based on tested rhetoric designed to obfuscate their actual behavior. Democrats and media repeat this garbage like it’s branding. Challenge these blatant hypocrisies. Don’t just gift them rhetorical immunity. Republicans should never be allowed to claim any of this without challenge. They’re not for national security. They’re not for “traditional family values,” whatever that means anyway. And they’re not for fiscal conservatism or limited government unless the other side is in power.
Jared Yates Sexton

I’ve accidentally set up push notifications for the BBC science magazine and it’s like being followed about by an inquisitive but annoying child:


James Colley

All people are animals and none of them are less than human
Adam Miller @ajm6792

If I am not constantly told how great I am I get angry because even though I am omnipotent and omniscient I am emotionally insecure.
@TheTweetOfGod

Fox News is the television embodiment of yelling fire in a crowded theater. It destabilizes society, is intentionally destructive, and endangers lives.
Jared Yates Sexton

If we had public water fountains, then maybe people would be able to stay hydrated and it’d less obvious when they pee on the street because we have no public restrooms.
@happifydesign

i swear to god if someone proposed the public library system today a chorus of pragmatic brain geniuses would pop out of the woodwork like 'books aren't free you know. computers cost money'
sara no h @boneysoups

I love that the word “efficiency” is not monosyllabic - and that the word “monosyllabic” is five syllables.
Gian D'Oh

As far as I can tell, the only domestic terrorist in recent memory who wasn't a major Trump supporter was the Pittsburgh shooter who had been a Trump supporter but eventually decided Trump wans't anti-Semitic enough.
Josh Marshall

I always come back to the words of my late friend Donald Suggs. "The drag queens of Stonewall are no better off today but they made the world safe for Gay Republicans. People who make change are not the ones who benefit from it."
sarah schulman

Northern Cardinal and Cornelian Cherry blossoms in Central Park:


Manhattan Bird Alert @BirdCentralPark

Hard to remember sometimes the sheer volume of mental downtime we used to get on a regular daily basis before smartphones ended it all forever. Bathrooms, elevators, waiting rooms, lines, laying in bed... that shit added up & all ended at once. Anyway, I’m sure we’ll all be fine.
Sonar Jose

A new paper provides an overview of the level of child mortality before modernity. "Using data drawn from a wide range of geographic locations, cultures, and times, we estimate that … approximately 47.5% of children failed to survive to puberty."
Max Roser

my strongest skill as a software engineer is my willingness to interrupt an entire meeting to announce “I have no fucking idea what those words mean, please explain." there are *always* other folks who pipe up about being confused once someone else admits it first
@devilherdue

Say what you will about Italy but they dragged Mussolini's ass through the streets and strung him up. Jefferson Davis's birthday is a public holiday in two US states.
Michael T Sweeney

Do devil advocates ever...wait for someone to ask them to advocate for the devil? Like, is that a thing?
Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom