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 toOn Mulligan and his administration:
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
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.On the president's actions against Ilhan Omar:
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
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.Racism, white supremacy, and police brutality:
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
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.For the first time I can recall, there was a cluster about the criminal "justice" system...
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
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?...but fewer than usual, lately, about sexism and misogyny (if you don't count ones related to the Democratic candidates):
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
Elon Musk: *Is CEO of SpaceX, Tesla*The climate crisis and livable cities:
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
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?Immigration:
@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
Whenever people say there is no room in this country I suspect they have never traveled because there is a lot of roomHealth care:
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
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 medicineEducation:
@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
Study finds "surprisingly large" beneficial effects of a culturally relevant high-school curriculum.Income inequality and the need for economic transformation:
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
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.And finally, the best of the rest:
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
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
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