The last Twitter round-up of the year 2020. I hesitate to call it the year from hell, since who knows what 2021 will be like. (Have I said before that I might be a pessimist?)
Let's see, where are we... We're a few days before Congress should be accepting the Electoral College results, but Republican monkeywrenchers are still plotting a coup after they had tried to take it to the Supreme Court earlier in the month. More than 3,000 people a day are dying from COVID, while the rollout of the newly available vaccine has been completely mishandled on the federal level (big surprise). A white man blew himself up in an RV in Nashville on Christmas morning but somehow he's not being called a suicide bomber, let alone a terrorist. Mulligan began executing prisoners and pardoning cronies. And Biden continued naming cabinet members and staffers, including a woman who dared to use the word "fuckers" to describe the Republican leadership in Congress. Plus the usual crises of climate change and white supremacy.
We got here by allowing ourselves to believe that freedom meant freedom from responsibility. We got here by believing the earth’s resources were our gift to exploit not our gift to the future. We got here by believing the pursuit of wealth made us better at everything.
Andy Slavitt
Y2K was 21 years ago. Looking back, I think the only thing we learned is that if a bunch people work really hard to stop a problem from happening, lots of other people will assume it was never really a problem.
Steve Lieber
Movie pitch: a society so technically advanced it can ascertain a virus' genetic sequence to reverse engineer a vaccine but so politically dysfunctional it can't figure out how to distribute it.
Ken Klippenstein
Big picture: The fear of demographic eclipse is eroding GOP attachment to democracy. In one recent national study, over 1/2 of GOP voters agreed “the traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it.”
Ronald Brownstein
The magnificent emerald swallowtail butterfly:
@StrangeAnimaIs
Too obvious to point out, but need to point out nonetheless: By the logic of Sen. Josh Hawley (Stanford BA, Yale JD, now Kraken DPhil), *every single* presidential election in US history should be contested, because in every one of them millions of people voted for candidate who didn’t win.
James Fallows
There’s no Planting Commission and I think there should be.
@StPaulBikeScum
Looking forward to hearing less about how 2020 is some random aberrant bad year as opposed to the manifestation of very predictable consequences of privileged choices that weigh only self, pleasure, and money
@happifydesign
Play: Observe children as they freely play with each other, and you’ll see the building blocks of social interaction developing right in front of you. Children learn how to share, cooperate, negotiate, and resolve conflicts by playing together.
G_Penalosa
Unemployment insurance claims are still more than 100k higher than the worst week of the Great Recession
Dean Baker
In 2016 you [Josh Hawley] were satisfied to tell 68 million Hillary voters that our voices didn’t matter! Different now that your side lost the Electoral College
Pat Fuller MA BsEd. @bannerite
Last time I'm saying this in 2020... weary and wary ARE NOT THE SAME WORD (and 'leery' is a third word)
@ebonyabsolutely
I forget who said “remember when “Chernobyl” came out in 2019 and everybody was gloating about how the US would never structurally mismanage a disaster of that scale”
@uhshanti
We're on track to let millions of doses of the vaccine just expire
Taylor Lorenz
We're living through:
1) Worst pandemic in modern history
2) Worst economy since Great Depression (maybe worse)
3) Worst hack of US govt ever
4) An attempted coup
5) A brewing civil war
6) A brewing foreign war
7) An admin serving organized crime
8) Led by a nuke-loving sociopath
Sarah Kendzior
Remember Tamir Rice. His life mattered:
@ISASaxonists
Public Transit:
daily passengers: 34 million
latest covid relief: $14 billion
$/passenger: $411.76
Airlines:
daily passengers: 2.9 million
latest covid relief: $15 billion
$/passenger: $5,172.41
12.5x more per daily user for airlines than transit. our priorities are messed up
@realkub
The nine most terrifying words in the English language: "I'm a Republican, please elect me to represent you."
@pattho
My pet peeve is having to enter account number and identifying number and then the first thing the person asks you for when they pick up is your account number. Drives me nuts.
Serafina
Why is the national guard not rolling through towns w a vaccine like they rolled down my street when there were #BLM protests?
Jess Cordova Kramer
There is nothing more pathetic (or embarrassing) than a Minnesotan with a confederate flag sticker on their car
Erin Maye Quade
Call about a black kid in the park with a gun, police shoot first ask questions later. Call about a white guy literally making bombs, police shrug and say there’s nothing they can do:
Adam Serwer
I find it curious why so many non-Native Americans will talk about when and where the Indigenous people of America came from, yet they never seem the least bit interested with their own peoples’ journey out of Africa to Europe to form whatever nation of people they descend from
Brett Chapman
Blows my mind that people don't question "needing" a car when that involves things like loans. A LOAN?! Like, I've crunched the numbers on different kinds of bus passes vs paying daily and that's nowhere near the level of a loan in terms of financial commitment. I get that car-dependency is real for many people, that once you're locked into that pyramid scheme, sometimes trying to get out is like trying to leave scientology. But a lot of car-dependency seems to be reluctance to even acknowledge--let alone question--the status quo.
@happifydesign
What I can’t stand most about the traditionalists is that they believe the teaching of English should be a static affair. “The Great Truths of Humanity passed down through the generations.” “A common grammar.” There is no room for revision or innovation. Or for the Rest of Us.
Ebony Elizabeth Thomas
If the canon is so great, why do you need to force people to read it?
Tiersa McQueen
In my opinion, a proper appreciation of the role of luck in human life is the secular equivalent of religious awakening.
David Roberts @drvolts
Rural Conservatives don't care that 40,000 people are shot to death annually, Urban Liberals don't care that 40,000 people are killed in car accidents annually--if either side has to accept a basic regulation to just make the operation of their devices safer.
Darrell Owens @IDoTheThinking
Right: Car Infrastructure
Middle: Car Infrastructure
Left: Peasant Infrastructure:
Brandon Lust @AmericanFietser
All legislation in the U.S. must be approved by one 78-year-old man in Kentucky, who was chosen by just slightly more than half the members of a legislative body where 12% of the U.S. population gets to elect 60% of the seats. Because, you know. Democracy.
Matthew Chapman @fawfulfan
It’s going to be so painful when after all this we go right back to underfunding public health.
Angie Schmitt
There is a lot to be said for the lifesaving power of competent governance, in a country the size of ours. This rollout is bullshit because our government is a nest of corrupt nepotists who can't manage math or spellcheck but think they're smarter than epidemiologists.
N. K. Jemisin
The wealthy and powerful spent decades and billions destroying government as a public good and eradicating trust between Americans. It’s no accident we have bought-off representatives, a violently divided citizenry, and a hapless infrastructure incapable of fighting a pandemic. If you want a way out of this cruel nightmare, start to loosen the grip of the obscenely wealthy on the apparatus of government and society. We’ve seen this can be done here and elsewhere. And it has to be done before they plunge us into yet another crisis.
Jared Yates Sexton
It seems to me that most plastic surgery looks bad, even "good" plastic surgery. Yet it remains a thriving industry. Is my perception of what looks attractive just that much different than other people?
@BRuddTweets
Used to wonder how the auto industry managed to convince people that sitting in an air conditioned pod, wiggling your ankle occasionally = masculine but moving yourself through sheer muscle/pedal power = weak until I realize we define masculinity by domination and violence, not actual strength.
Molly Tran @WalkingNPR
When you talk about a care vs violence spectrum, and it’s connected to feminine vs masculine. The way the minivan — a vehicle that centers care — has gone out of fashion for violent looking trucks
Angie Schmitt
The thing about Trump is that he is the shuffling, angry embodiment of the white and wealthy class that just joylessly accumulates wealth and power for no other purpose besides accumulating wealth and power while inflicting their own joylessness on the rest of the world. This is a dysfunctional cycle we’re in, this society destroyed by mindless wealth predators who have no vision of the future beyond dominance and accumulation and a total willingness to use any means, including gnashing fascism, to get to their own miserable end.
Jared Yates Sexton
The vaccine rollout is the American healthcare system: capable of developing incredible drugs when we turn the public money hose in the right direction, actively hostile to any idea of public health administration
Alex Yablon
So just to be clear: Trump’s cult base is running around carrying assault weapons, threatening a Civil War, begging for a military coup and his GOP Congress is engaging in Sedition bc they can’t accept the results of an election overwhelmingly lost … But, the left is “radical”
@TrinityResists
Normalcy bias is killing thousands of Americans. People assume that if restaurants and stores are open it’s safe. That if airports and other forms of mass transit were unsafe, they would be closed. People are operating based on how things SHOULD BE, and we have no hospital beds.
Andrew Wortman @AmoneyResists
If only there was an away to throw stuff and a somewhere else to take stuff from, this open-loop, endless-growth economy thing would probably work. And yet here we are, one planet, under the sun, indivisible, with feedback loops and consequences for all.
Dr. Elizabeth Sawin
"it's suicide, not a suicide BOMBER" The sheer number of people in my various timelines rationalizing why the Nashville bombing isn't terrorism is ... educational
Stonekettle
#ILoveThisStreet because you don’t have to look out for cars, there are bars with seating for as few as four people, and little touches like a hanging plant add so much when the spaces are small:
@whatshouldwood
One of my meta-takes on Trump and the Trump years is that all your critiques of him do not put HIM in a bad light-- he is what he is, has been from the world go, is incapable of being different. They are are damning indictments of US politics and culture. He reflects our dysfunction.
David Roberts @drvolts
wait, I *did* have Pompeiian snack bar on my 2020 BINGO card:
Chris Steller
Tfw when you constantly hear the radical left is dominating the media, universities, publishing, the world, but somehow you never seem to see any of them when you turn on the TV, go to work, read, or generally live life.
Sara Salem
South Dakota's political leadership says they are pro-life. The state lost a greater share of its nursing home residents to the coronavirus than any other state this fall.
Arielle Zionts
People will play lotto to take a one in a million chance in winning but won't wear a mask when one in a thousand hits the covid jackpot.
Proprietress
There's a myth that young people get anxious or depressed when people talk about the reality of the climate crisis.
My experience is the opposite. The worst part is denial, looking away, downplaying or spreading false hope saying ”we'll fix this” without taking sufficient action.
Greta Thunberg
When people talk about how shitty America’s infrastructure is they’re always like there is one small pothole in the new $800 million sprawl interchange, not elderly bus riders have to stand in the mud and rain next to a pole in the ground on a highway embankment.
Angie Schmitt
Ironically, if we shift money spent on new roads and regional transit - which often facilitates sprawl - to incentives to build infill affordable housing in existing neighbourhoods, we would link housing with making commutes a short walk.
Jennifer Keesmaat
The murder of George Floyd, or any other Black person, and the subsequent response should not be on a list of “cultural moments” or lists that include “Tiger King”. This is exactly what we mean by racism showing up in various ways:
Frederick Joseph
Do british people call their browser's "cookies", biscuits?
@Caseso1991
People aren’t going hungry because we cannot feed the poor. People are going hungry because we cannot satisfy the rich.
mohamad safa
it's always a lone wolf, never an estranged wolf from a violent heteropatriarchal capitalist pack
@dereckapurnell
People talking like there's going to be a breather, in which we can take stock, move on, or heal. There won't be. Next 2yrs will be a hail of RW lies, accusations, norm-crushing, and law-breaking, some from Trump, plenty not. We'll be sputtering and trying to keep up like always.
David Roberts @drvolts
If we just move on after Jan. 20, if we don’t confront both the criminality and the complicity of Trump and his regime, then America can’t really move on. This will be a festering wound of injustice that won’t heal.
Steven Beschloss
Something 2020 has made me realize: How many institutions are functionally inaccessible for disabled people most of the time. And how the technology to make them more accessible has existed for years. But most places chose not to use it.
@beingcindy
People who don’t want apartments near their single-family homes are wrong on a lot of levels but they are seriously underestimating how nice it is to have walkers about all day.
@drschweitzer
The printing cylinder for an IBM 5280 Punch Card, circa 1975:
Incunabula
Gun deaths. Traffic deaths. Sort of all about where we fall as a country on the care vs. violence spectrum.
Angie Schmitt
Adding the word “literacy” to the end of other words automatically makes them sound more important AND that a teacher is required to help learn said literacy. That’s me using my observation literacy.
@Sisyphus38
It's not the Gucci belt that's a barrier to economic stability for people now. It's not having a time machine to undo the impact of 5 generations of poverty. Even the best "rags to riches, by my bootstraps" stories have generational wealth hidden in them. Usually a friend's. Because here's the thing, rich people know the power of money. And the "A friend let me stay with him, helped me find investors, invested" part of the story? A rich person decided they wanted their friend to be rich too. They don't talk about it that way. But that's what happened
Mikki Kendall @Karnythia
If a thing includes white people it will probably have a white supremacy problem at some point.
@smullins3000
People who need guns "to protect their family" can't wear a mask to protect their family. Why is this?
@csd
under trump, no one says "merry christmas," we say "have as happy a holiday season as possible under the current circumstances"
@tomtomorrow
Wouldn't it be great if someone -- call them "media" perhaps -- would tell people like this who is responsible? It's not "Washington." It's not "Congress." It's Donald Trump and the GOP. All these people losing jobs, losing unemployment checks, losing homes, losing lives -- they're all going to blame "Washington" for this and become cynical about politics and vote for the next round of idiot populists. It's a doom loop the media is helping to fuel.
David Roberts @drvolts
I just hate that the USPS used to work like clockwork and now it doesn’t and like 90% of Americans are going to blame postal workers for it and not Republican politicians
Travis R. Eby
My brother just sent me this with the caption “Luke, I am your frother”:
Jennifer Mendelsohn @CleverTitleTK
America is a place where people are infinitely more suspicious about what the $1 they gave to an unhoused person will be used for than they are about the trillion dollars we give to "defense spending" every year.
Maximillian Alvarez
Selfish baby boomers refused to pay higher taxes to keep state college tuition where it was for them.
Bruce Bartlett
The backlash to 60s campus protest was basically white taxpayers looking at undergrad student cohorts at new-ish, expanded state university systems and seeing people who didn’t look like themselves. Phillips-Fein’s account of how the NYC fiscal crisis of the 70s played out within CUNY is paradigmatic. The university regents supported the logic of austerity because they saw new, non-traditional students at expanded campuses as lowering standards.
@Econ_Marshall
The darkly ironic thing about this is that the entire purpose of zoning was to separate residential areas from harmful industrial zones. But by making apartments illegal everywhere but next to highways, we've ended up maximizing the number of people exposed to pollution.
Michael Hobbes @RottenInDenmark
The way to really combat street racing, imo, would be to get it out of movies and tv, especially movies aimed at young men. We did it for smoking and it worked. We should do it for super dangerous driving too. Yeah we’re like training boys to kill themselves behind the wheel practically from birth. About 500 Americans are killed every year just in high speed chases by police. One third are innocent bystanders.
Angie Schmitt
...the explicit positive case for bigger checks is
1) Lower bureaucracy is good
2) Most importantly, policy need to shift away from the anti-welfare complex means testing mentality of Reagan/Clinton era
Chris Arnade
6. Understand there is no going back to normal. “Normal” was built on white supremacy and ecological collapse. We are living in a broken world. If you’re safe, financially secure and healthy you should try to help make it better.
@Liat_RO
Only the most Christian nations get together on Christmas Eve to discuss increasing aid during a pandemic and decide, "No."
Cody Johnston
57% of Americans say they changed their Thanksgiving plans due to COVID with White Americans being the most likely to not change their plans at all. Source: PEW
chris evans @notcapnamerica
Not sure which is more remarkable: That the President sees the pardon power as a way to reward his friends, or that the President has so many friends who need pardons.
Orin Kerr
If you have a goal of "eliminating air pollution" as I do, then you would not propose any combustion, which means no biofuels, no fossil fuels or biofuels with carbon capture, and no "renewable fuels" to replace fossils. If you include any of these, you do not have that goal.
Mark Z. Jacobson
The entitlement of thinking that empty pavement in front of you means you must cover it as fast as possible is astounding. I can not understand why operating a car makes so many people act so unreasonably.
@lisasoverino
Ivanka's children are probably the only Americans to ever have one grandpa pardoned by the other grandpa.
Daily Trix
Maybe a thread of low-waste me-made stuff? Like these twines I made out of fabric from fabric recycling:
@happifydesign
reminder: when Clinton pardoned Marc Rich it was a ***three month*** news story at NYT, where reporters and columnists couldn’t sleep at night they were so distraught
Eric Boehlert
Brandon Bernard killed no one and Trump ensured he was executed. Ed Gallagher, Matt Golsteyn, and Blackwater contractors murdered dozens of Afghan and Iraqi civilians (including children) and Trump ensured he pardoned them. This is what institutional white supremacy looks like in 2020.
Qasim Rashid, Esq.
Of the 65 pardons and commutations Trump granted before today, *60* went to people with personal or political ties to Trump. We are witnessing the inevitable conclusion of the most corrupt presidency in history.
Public Citizen
Planning economies around the wellbeing of people and nature rather than financial growth seems sensible, doesn't it?
Extinction Rebellion
60% of Chinese buses are now electric, up from 20% in 2015
Yonah Freemark
Republicans will vilify the left for being unpatriotic because they don't save a flag or whatever and then turn around and be like 'actually my true allegiance is to the state of arizona'
@zrizzletheman
Things that you always thought were really cute and nerdy but then if you stop and really think about it for five minutes has tons of disturbing societal implications I'll start ... NORAD tracking Santa.
Maggie Koerth @maggiekb1
“Environmentalism without class struggle is just gardening”. –Chico Mendes
Iola Ella
If you’re someone who believes that incarcerated people deserve covid, let me assure you that’s more of a reflection on the hatred that’s eating up your heart, than of those incarcerated.
Adnan Khan
The most amazing thing about the catastrophic US healthcare system is that the solution was invented long ago in other countries. It's like we're refusing to use wheels.
Jon Schwarz
Data is beautiful:
Vince Netz
Future historians will include the U.S. with other empires (like the Romans, British, etc.) that attempted to rule the world by force. Really good historians will document how American citizens were successfully socialized to pretend this wasn't true.
Alfie Kohn
Will a single Republican apologize for accusing Dems of engineering a massive nationwide conspiracy to steal the election? That seems even worse than calling them fuckers, doesn't it? But of course not. Rs lie, accuse, attack; Dems remain civil. That's our arrangement!
David Roberts @drvolts
A former Secretary of the Interior once proclaimed it his goal to “civilize or exterminate” Indigenous people. I’m a living testament to the failure of that horrific ideology. I’m here on the shoulders of my ancestors and all the people who have sacrificed.
Deb Haaland
Let’s not forget as we enter the week that the US Army felt it necessary to give on-the-record statement denying that it would participate in a coup this weekend. That’s not normal. And not something we should look past.
Garrett M. Graff @vermontgmg
The New York Times ran the martial law story on page 28 Sunday, but ran a Democrats in Disarray story on page 1. kinda says it all
Eric Boehlert
Kanye West received between $2 million and $5 million. Joel Osteen got $4.4 million. Tom Brady $960,855. Members of Congress were paid $130k to spend 9 months arguing about whether you deserve $600.
Grande Capo @VoLinxx
The best way to understand the Charlie Kirk phenomenon is that he is always hyperaware that dozens of far more charismatic and far, far crazier zoomer right-wing media personalities are constantly gunning for his market share.
Andrew Egger
The 74-year-old president of the United States wants to impose martial law because he’s not getting his way, but women are too emotional.
The Volatile Mermaid @OhNoSheTwitnt
Breonna Taylor:
kerry washington
Despite all the horrors of 2020 I somehow wasn’t emotionally prepared for seeing all the worst people in Washington get the vaccine first
Jess Dweck
HEARTWARMING STORY: A woman’s coworkers found out she was walking five miles to work because she didn’t have a car so the community came together to elect political leaders who would fund and maintain a safe and reliable transit system so she and others could get to work.
Dr Momifornia
I feel like bringing back manufacturing is this white whale. In the meantime we have an increasingly service based economy so maybe folks who work in that industry deserve more of our attention? What if instead of trying to bring back manufacturing we just paid service workers well? It's not like it was handed down by God that manufacturing work should be well paid and service work should not. The idea that manufacturing = well paying is outdated and not as simple as it seems. Depends on what good is being manufactured, local conditions etc. But if it isn't well paying (increasingly the case) it is worse than a service job in some ways. Harder, and more dangerous.
Angie Schmitt
Unions are what made manufacturing jobs pay well, not some inherent attribute of manufacturing. I wish that economic development policy focused on supporting unions, which have a track record of creating good jobs, instead of specific industries.
BelltownBelle
"The government can't tell ME what to do," say the same people who think an employer should be able to dictate everything from what you do in your free time to what color your hair can be to whether or not you have children
Kathryn Ivey
I don’t know how you explain the way Nancy Pelosi makes people freak out every time she says or does anything compared to her male near equivalent Chuck Schumer except sexism. Nancy Pelosi can’t do or say anything without it setting off a full day of furious dunking.
Angie Schmitt
I hope the Biden team takes from the made-up fracas over Dr Biden’s dissertation that there’s literally no way to earn the respect of people determined not to respect you. One stupid op-ed over a non-scandal has turned into a week-long online slugfest. Just imagine what’s going to happen *when there is anything to fight about*.
Paul Musgrave @profmusgrave
It's December 20th, that means it's just one month until unemployment, hunger, homelessness and coronavirus deaths become big news on Fox
Dean Baker
holy fucking shit, the president of the united states is up late at night plotting a military coup to overturn the election and I guess what I want to know is, why do we even have a 25th amendment if we're not going to use it on this fucking unhinged raving anti-American lunatic
Jeff Tiedrich
the generation who worked a part time job in the summer to pay for college is sending you $600 to live on
skáld @HoratioSkald
If you were to raise minimum wage by average national home prices in the US from 1981 to 2020, you have to make $49.37 an hour to be on par with a minimum wage worker 40 year ago.
dan rolle
The paradox of “operation warp speed” is that it’s actually a slower and later-developed vaccine delivery program than those of other advanced countries that don’t give action-movie names to bureaucratic endeavors
Doug Saunders
If each of those 600,000 ‘light’ trucks need 10 meters to park (2x5), 6000 kilometres/ 3750mi of road lane just to park! Imagine space moving... plus in N. America there are 10 parking spaces per car... increasing cars/trucks is insane. Make owner pay real cost. #ClimateChange!
G_Penalosa
I'm struggling to understand folks who ask, "Why would Covid-19 spread in bars but not in a Target?" I mean, who goes into Target, takes their mask off, and puts everything into their mouth?? Have people really never considered the differences between a Target and a bar?
Athena Hollins
$65k F-150: working class
$35k EV: elitist
$35K fishing boat: working class
$2k canoe: elitist
$8k ATV: Working class
$1k mountain bike: elitist
Free on-street parking spot for F-150: working class
Bike lane: elitist
Aaron Klemz
What’s Biden’s plan for stopping the radicalization of young white men into violent white supremacist, women-hating groups?
Phillipe Cunningham
Klan in 1984, endorsing Reagan, says that the GOP platform "reads as if it were written by a Klansman."
corey robin
Only in America is it considered *radical* to support healthcare, food security, shelter and education for all AND freedom from police brutality for all. We are a racist, classist, fascist mess.
@sairasameerarao
Jared Kushner set up a shell company with Lara Trump and Mike Pence’s nephew John Pence, raking in $617 million dollars. But let’s talk about Hunter Biden.
@NotHoodlum
Even I didn't have "Jared Kushner funnels half a billion dollars in campaign money to phony shell company run by Lara Trump and Mike Pence's nephew" on my 2020 batshit crazy bingo card
Palmer Report
US had 19% more deaths among people age 25-44 from March–July than historically. 12K more. "In fact, July appears to have been the deadliest month among this age group in modern American history." COVID is dangerous for all. We must stop saying otherwise.
Atul Gawande
The only genius Trump ever had was realizing that if you call somebody a fucker, you don’t apologize for it, you just keep calling them a fucker until the media finally gets bored of the outrage of it and just starts calling them a fucker, too. This would work on actual fuckers.
A.R. Moxon @JuliusGoat
The global North is responsible for 92% of total excess carbon dioxide emissions. Climate breakdown is colonial in character and ultimately requires an anti-colonial struggle in response:
Jason Hickel
What if public transit in your city provided excellent, enjoyable service — and was beautiful too?
Brent Toderian
I taught the affluent for 2 years.
I taught in minoritized and marginalized schools for 7 years.
Let me tell you, failure is manufactured.
@bodega_gyro_ao
Humans have existed for 200,000 years.
Capitalism has existed for less than 500.
Modern policing has only existed for 100.
We can do things differently.
ashley fairbanks @ziibiing
Climate change is the most significant challenge humanity faces. We’ll make meaningful progress together by listening to every voice—from our youth and frontline communities to scientists and our workforce. I will be honored to be part of that work as EPA Administrator.
Michael Regan
I wish I could vote for the Democrats that Republicans tell me about.
Charles Dahan @dahancw
seriously where are my taco trucks on every corner and socialized medicine and "daycares overrun by lesbians" (a real thing once said to me by a phone banker that sadly remains, to my knowledge, unrealized)
Holly Anderson
It does seem like this hack of the federal government is maybe a little bit worse than Hillary’s emails but almost none of the “Hillary’s emails are a big deal” people really care about it. Its almost as if...
Marcus H. Johnson
The likes of O’Malley Dillions in Biden admin is exactly the clear-eyed take no prisoner persona that's needed to balance out Biden’s let’s unify and get along persona. Because they are about to face off against a bunch of ill-willed burn-the-house down obstructionists
@Biykend
"Communicators should help voters feel a complex of three specific emotions: *fear* of climate breakdown, *outrage* that powerful actors are blocking the passage of effective climate policy, and *desire* for a transformed global economy."
Steve Westlake
Lilac-breasted Roller arriving with all of the style. Tarangire National Park, Tanzania:
@birdturntable
I’d rather a president who surrounds himself with people who drop the F bomb in public than one who surrounds himself with people who use the N word in private.
The Volatile Mermaid @OhNoSheTwitnt
Pretty far outside of my (limited) areas of expertise, but the entire federal government getting hacked and no one knowing for 8 months seems pretty bad!
Chris Hayes
A lot of y'all just assume things are impossible because the rich white men in suits told you so
Bree Newsome Bass
Why is stealing a car a felony that'll get the helicopters harassing an entire city for days but assaulting someone with a car is totally legal, no questions asked?
@happifydesign
This week Native folks get to celebrate a team not using us as mascots, and finally having a Native at the top of the department with the largest say over our federal resources. What’s next? High speed internet? Access to clean drinking water? BIA schools without mold? Fancy.
ashley fairbanks @ziibiing
It has come to my attention that the people who were fine with forcibly separating children from their parents and have downplayed a pandemic that's killed over 300,000 Americans are upset at being called "fuckers."
Jacob Harris
Residents should have a say in where crosswalks go. This should not be controversial
Angie Schmitt
Just a reminder that when the Right is out of power they stress "fiscal conservatism" and obsess over any perceived breach of polite decorum. They ran up massive deficits and engaged in brutal, profane fascistic rhetoric. Stop giving any of this hypocritical nonsense air.
Jared Yates Sexton
The deepest irony of this whole “I’m a Republican so I only respect doctors who are medical doctors,” thing is that 300,000 Americans are dead because Republicans didn’t respect medical doctors.
Mikel Jollett
Only 8% of our Minneapolis police live in Minneapolis, the lowest % in the nation. I had a Minneapolis police officer tell me that BLM is a terrorist organization when he saw the Black Lives Matter sign in my yard! They hate our city, they hate our citizens and we PAY them!
@VivianMpls
Abolish the death penalty.
Abolish the electoral college.
Abolish ICE.
Ilhan Omar
GOP traded 300,000 American lives for 233 Trump judges. 307,000 Americans have now died from covid. That’s 1,317 dead Americans for every lifetime Trump judge Senate GOP confirmed. They’d rather pack the courts than save lives
Ari Berman
I’ve never taken vaccines for granted, exactly, but I think I never understood the emotional reality of a Syringe for a disease currently killing people, either. It was always background noise.
t.s. mendola
Maybe woodchuck could chuck wood if he shut the fuck up and deal with the task at hand
Bigfoot TheBigfoot
I think about how Covid is affecting my sons and their peers everyday. My feelings vacillate from guilt to anger to sadness. We talk to kids about values and integrity, and yet we're failing the next generation on so many levels. They deserve better.
Marie Roker-Jones
"My daughter is part of “Generation Covid,” or Gen C. It’s a generation that will not only be marked by the trauma of the disruption and death, but also by witnessing the total failures of adults...mostly I don’t know what to do."
David M. Perry @Lollardfish
There are literally still Trump flags flying on houses in my residential neighborhood that say F*ck Your Feelings and these people have the hypocritical nerve to be offended.
@BrandyFrakes
Lloyd's of London — responsible for 40% of global energy insurance - just announced it will restrict insurance for coal, oil and gas
Justin Guay
Pretty crazy Marco Rubio saw the incoming Deputy Chief of Staff’s interview in Glamour but never managed to see a single Trump tweet
Jason O. Gilbert
This whole talk of “unifying the nation” is very white centered right now. Unless the goal is explicitly about a commitment to multiracial democracy, there’s no unity. If it’s Biden appeasing GOP as they continue their racist effort to disenfranchise nonwhitepeopleppl, there’s no unity. This conversation is entirely about white America trying to reconcile with itself and has nothing to do with the interests and needs of those who’ve been most harmed by the past 4 years.
Bree Newsome Bass
I feel like the fact that after receiving classified briefings about COVID Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue downplayed the virus to the public and invested in BODY BAGS should have been a bigger a story.
The Volatile Mermaid @OhNoSheTwitnt
NEW: Questions about the veracity of the White House claim that Proud Boy Enrique Tarrio went on a public tour, and hadn't been invited. Turns out Tarrio has felonies, and convicted felons aren't allowed on tours unless senior staff intervene.
Roger Sollenberger
“The year Biden graduated from law school (‘68), the median cost of public college was $329 and the median salary was ~$10K— a 1:30 ratio. Today, the median cost of public college is $10,230 and the median salary is ~$51K — a 1:5 ratio” –Qasim Rashid
Alexis Goldstein
“Lower income countries” = nations pillaged by colonialism and imperialism
“Higher income countries” = the nations that pillage the lower income countries
Bree Newsome Bass
barack obama isn’t really an american. michelle obama isn’t really a woman. kamala harris isn’t really black. joe biden isn’t really a catholic. jill biden isn’t really a doctor. notice a trend? the entire game is take something core to someone’s identity and strip them of it.
kilgore trout @KT_So_It_Goes
I get most of my exercise these days from shaking my head in disbelief.
Thomas Meinhardt
One of the basic concepts in US urban planning is that people who live in apartments should be exposed to more noise, pollution, and traffic danger than people who own their own houses
Market Urbanism
The McConnell-Cornyn "liability protection" proposal is pretty radical. Not only would it block lawsuits over COVID exposure, it would make it just about impossible for OSHA to enforce basic workplace safety laws. They couldn't even dole out the tiny fines they've been doing.
Dave Jamieson
The red-headed tit from Central and East Asia (Photo: @joinus12345:
@StrangeAnimaIs
One extremely dismal conclusion I've come to is that the principles of good public policy run almost diametrically counter to human nature, and vice versa. This is why abstract policy discussions are so full of imaginary sky castles while real-world policymaking is such a relentlessly unsatisfying Rube Goldberg collection of compromises, half-measures, and perverse incentives. This is why people pine for enlightened monarchs. (Also futile, as all available monarchs are also human and thus subject to human nature.) Good policy sets goals and is agnostic toward means; real people want certainty about who will be affected. Good policy makes costs transparent; real people like their costs hidden. Good policy is stable and predictable over time; real people like to fiddle when they get power. Etc.
David Roberts @drvolts
Not usually bothered by much but seeing those fascist proud boys burn the BLM sign off a church's private property is textbook ku klux klan intimidation tactics. Nobody should shy away from the comparison.
Darrell Owens @IDoTheThinking
Its so funny that it is taken for granted as fine that op ed boards have complete misogynists on them but if you asked them to hire an actual feminist theorist everyone would claim the board had lost all sense of objectivity
Kaitlyn Greenidge @surlybassey
"avoid teleological metanarratives." Man, if I had a nickel for every time my dad told me that.
Tom McMillan @farmer_nerd
Chiropractors call themselves doctors and nobody says shit but god forbid a woman with an actual doctorate call herself a doctor.
The Volatile Mermaid @OhNoSheTwitnt
FYI these are the hard-core work trucks in Japan and much of Europe:
Martyn Schmoll
A study found 20 years after starting college, a typical Black borrower still owes 95% of their debt, while the typical white student has paid off 94% of their debt.
@voxdotcom
How big is Los Angeles County? Trump got 27 percent there AND it’s the county with the largest number of Trump votes.
Matthew Yglesias
My favorite classroom mug. Today is Monday. Off you go, brave souls:
Connie Schultz
So I’m confused here. They want credit for creating a vaccine for a phony pandemic? Pick one or the other please
Farhan Lalji
I’ve had enough with the “I can’t believe the GOP is NOW an anti-democracy party” takes from folks who played a direct role, was complicit, and/or ignored Republican efforts to suppress the Black vote over the years. You didn’t think voter suppression was anti-democracy?
Midwin Charles, Esq.
GOP is united and consistent in its commitment to white supremacy. Trump has been an ideological leader for a decade. Instead of liberals constantly asking where GOP stands, they need to ask how committed Dems are to racial and economic justice b/c that’s where the most waffling is.
Bree Newsome Bass
"I don't want the people who prepare the food I consume to be able to afford a basic standard of living" is a take that continues to make my knuckles itch. A fun retail/food service/every other minimum wage job fact. None of those jobs have ever been primarily held by teenagers. I know that's a popular myth but it was never true. Businesses rely on that lie to get away with underpayment of their adult employees
Mikki Kendall @Karnythia
Twice in the last 20 years Democrats have had to swallow and accede to a Presidential candidate taking office who get less votes than the Democratic candidate. Think we're seeing pretty clear evidence that if the roles had been reversed that...probably wouldn't have happened.
Chris Hayes
So. Like. Is there any penalty for participating in a coup while being a member of Congress?
@nevarro
If there are no lasting consequences for what Trump and a large part of the GOP are overtly trying to do, steal an election and destroy any semblance of democracy in the country, will the world ever take the American political system and notion of “rule of law” seriously again?
Brent Toderian
Let's be clear. The Supreme Court didn't dismiss the case because they're too dedicated to justice. Just like the GOP, they've done a calculation and know it's not worth the political capital. If this was closer or a possibility, both would hand this country over on a platter. This whole grift/coup has been a dry-run for someone much more competent and disciplined than Trump. The Right has shown a drooling willingness to support fascistic maneuvers and blatant authoritarianism. No election will ever be safe with these people.
Jared Yates Sexton
History final exam, Fall semester 2052: compare and contrast the political, cultural, and social effect of 3,000 deaths in New York City on September 11, 2001 in the United States to that of the 3,000 deaths every day in December of 2020.
Rick Perlstein
Kinda worried about all the people who have already forgotten this happened:
Mary Annaïse Heglar
King County apologizes for putting ads for natural gas on its buses; will remove them and ban fossil fuel ads going forward. (This is what people mean by "losing social license.")
David Roberts @drvolts
America's billionaires could give everybody in the country a $3,000 stimulus check and still be richer than they were before the pandemic. If that doesn't convince you we need a wealth tax, I don't know what will.
Robert Reich
I support local business. But I also realize there's an awful lot of business owners out there who voted for the same people who killed any chance of a real economic rescue bill, and then somehow wanted me to fix that by ordering to-go margaritas every other day.
Mike Caulfield @holden
Some of my foodie groups are sending very harsh memes around about how restaurants are suffering because we aren’t ordering enough takeout and I am tempted to do the math for them. In what world can takeout replace revenue for every struggling business and at what cost???
Tressie McMillan Cottom
For 20 years we've heard the parade of small business owners talk about how moderately higher taxes, better worker protections, and a stronger social safety net was creeping socialism, penalizing the job creators. My guess is that doomed us much more than lack of takeout.
Mike Caulfield @holden
Suburban Democrats (on Republicans): these people refuse to listen to experts or science, how are they so stupid
Suburban Democrats (on new housing): “experts” are just developer shills, all new housing should be no taller than 3 stories and at least 50% affordable
Jordan Grimes @cafedujord
There is a reason they can't say "Democratic" Party, they hate democracy.
Dean Baker
Always keep in mind that the Supreme Court justices fine with executing a man who was an accessory to a murder as a very young man, who has worked tirelessly to rehabilitate himself, are the most ardently “pro-life.”
Norman Ornstein
We’ve let over 1,670 incarcerated people die from COVID. In Texas, 80% of those people hadn’t even been convicted.
ashley fairbanks @ziibiing
"During the Middle Ages, a few children were eaten by wolves in Europe. In our time, in any given month, more children are killed by cars than were killed by wolves all through the Middle Ages. What's shocking is that we think it's normal." —Enrique Penalosa
Taras Grescoe
These executions were a conscious choice. Barr, presumably with Trump’s approval, ordered them. They didn’t have to. This isn’t some required duty they had no choice but to carry out. They made executing people a priority. They made it their legacy. They’re proud of it.
Radley Balko
At this point I think the elite want an all out clash in the streets with their militarized police forces so they can abandon the democratic project altogether under the guise of maintaining order. They display no real interest in relieving suffering, only preserving their power.
Bree Newsome Bass
The USA is trying its damndest to push people over the edge.
William C. @williamcson
Anyone who says addressing climate change is “too expensive” is just parroting nonsense from special interests that profit off our destruction.
Dr. Jonathan Foley @GlobalEcoGuy
Very convenient for all of these Republicans to sign a joint confession that they are loyal to Trump, not the United States.
Garry Kasparov
I hope someone is keeping a comprehensive record of the lawyers who are party to this crap. No honest person should ever hire these scum for anything -- let Trump use them as defense lawyers in all the lawsuits he's facing. (Of course, Trump will never pay them.)
Dean Baker
"monopoly is mistaken as a policy issue when in fact it represents an existential question of whether we are actually a democracy." - @AnandWrites
George Carothers
I've been advocating for shared mobility since 2002. No one should bear the personal or planetary costs of a dangerous, filthy and expensive transportation system built for private cars.
Mary Morse Marti
"In 2020, human-made mass reached about 1.1 teratonnes, exceeding overall global biomass. The amount of plastic alone is greater in mass than all land animals and marine creatures combined."
Jason Hickel
Mushroom House in Akebono kodomo-no-mori park, Hanno, Saitama, Japan. Photo: yui.kubo:
Cory Doctorow
More than 3,000 people dead in a single day, leaders of a political party actively working to overthrow by an election (or silently standing by), and millions of children already trapped in poverty losing months of schooling that will be so hard to get back. This is where we are. It’s hard, for myself included, to sometimes grasp the magnitude of everything happening right now. You wake up and just try to make it through each day, try to make sure your family is safe. But these are truly frightening times and we won’t fully know the consequences for years
Clint Smith
Spain spends 75% less than the USA on health expenditures, and yet they have a life expectancy that's a full 5 years longer. That's the power of universal public healthcare.
Jason Hickel
The only cops who’ve actually been defunded are the ones who monitor crimes by rich people.
Max Berger (commenting on the fact that the IRS budget has been halved since 1992)
Two independent studies have drawn the same conclusions: billions of dollars in surplus military equipment that have been transferred by the federal government to thousands of U.S. police departments have not reduced crime or increased officer safety.
ABC News
Paul Hawken was right: we have an economy that steals the future, sells it in the present, and calls it GDP.
Alex Steffen
Cedar Rapids Union Station, demolished 1961 and replaced with two parking garages:
@BenKaplanPhoto
None of us were in the room when they decided that 2°C was "safe," and none of the people who made that decision will be alive in 30 years.
Dr. Genevieve Guenther
“Nearly everything in the Arctic, from ice and snow to human activity, is changing so quickly that there is no reason to think that in 30 years much of anything will be as it is today."
NYT Climate
The allure of hydrogen is great; it packs three times as much energy per kilogram as kerosene, the current standard aviation fuel
The Economist
If there is one thing I wish motorists and car-infrastructure designers would understand, it's that when you see this sign, it's just an inconvenience because you're forced to slow down. When I see it, I'm told my literal life is not valued and very much at risk:
@Neomischa
Trump government promised 300 million doses of vaccine by end of 2020. Companies will actually ship only 30 million. ountries in decline operate this way: scarcity worsened by official lying, wasted preparations, planning mistakes. Policy failures multiply.
Richard D. Wolff
We’ve really had the same handful of people running things in this country for roughly two generations now and we need to weigh that fact against the reality of our current conditions. They have run us into the ground. Change doesn’t happen overnight but there has to be a change.
Bree Newsome Bass
I still remember that proposed (but instantly withdrawn) 40-story(?) building at the site of the running store on 5th off Hennepin in Downtown MPLS.
@Neomischa
Replacing the words "the economy" with "rich people's yacht money"
-How can we respond to COVID without sacrificing rich people's yacht money?
-Saving the environment sounds nice but what about rich people's yacht money?
-Medicare for all would destroy rich people's yacht money
Lillie Franks @onyxaminedlife
Your taxes aren’t high because of schools or healthcare or food stamps. Your taxes are high because of rich people who game the system so they don’t have to pay their fair share.
mohamad safa
Re decarbonizing transportation, we can’t ask every suburb in America to write their own playbook. We need the federal government to be a leader here, tell governments what is expected and then hold out $$ for them to do it.
Angie Schmidt
Limiting police overtime should be a top priority for everyone who wants to improve public safety. Police working more increases fatigue and increases misconduct. We limit trucker, pilot, and doctor hours, why not police?
Zachary Wefel
Boys are only easier to raise than girls because you’re outsourcing your parenting to the women they’ll date in the future.
Dr. Jacquelyn Gill
almightygod
If we’re calling people “diversity hires” then I would like to also coin the term “homogeneity hire”: A person who is hired, not because they were the best, but because they were the same. Used in a sentence: “Mike hired another Mike - he’s probably a homogeneity hire
braveen kumar
Still tripping that dude just quit working entirely (the little work he was doing before) after taking the L in the election. Like he is the living embodiment of all the pathological insidious racial imagination white folks dream about Black people, and they love him for it.
D.A. Bullock
“The number of people currently serving a life sentence is greater than the entire prison population in 1970.” Mass incarceration is a cancer, and it’s killing people.
Dyjuan Tatro
The number of people currently serving a life sentence is greater than the entire prison population in 1970. If you oppose the death penalty, you must also stand against death by incarceration.
@heathermyt
Is the moral of Beowulf (2007) that men are just too stupid to live? Because that's what it feels like.
Maggie Koerth @maggiekb1
Covid has taught me three things:
1. Our economy collapses as soon as it stops selling useless stuff to over indebted people
2. It is perfectly possible to reduce pollution
3. The lowest paid people in the country are essential to its functioning
@kheti_thegreat
Interesting how state DOTs have no problem using state authority to eminent domain seize houses and businesses to make highways wider, but NEVER use that authority to secure a little strip of grass between yards in the suburbs so people can actually walk to the store.
Angie Schmitt
Satan and company are working feverishly to build a whole new circle of Hell to house Erik Prince, Betsy DeVos, and their entire extended family.
almightygod
The Supreme Court is turning "religious freedom into religious privilege....[It] suffers from the same Christian-fragility disease as we are seeing in Trump’s base—as though Christianity is what’s under attack when others are asking for equal treatment”
Alfie Kohn
Trump has literally gone from talking about Hunter Biden to talking about pardoning all his own children.
Nick Merlino
The confidence that economists have that they are experts in others' fields is revealingly ironic
Adam Miller @ajm6792
MAGA thought process: We must punish evil China for sending this horrible virus that is just the common cold and we don't need masks but Trump was a hero for wearing one that one time and God bless him for inventing the miraculous vaccine we're not going to take.
Patrick W. Watson
At the March 31 briefing, the White House listed as “goals” 100,000 to 240,000 deaths. We are now at 276,000.
Windsor Mann
Well that's a statistic:
Nathan Howard
Bikes and pedestrians are banned from using interstates and even from some suburban arterial streets. It’s not radical to imagine banning drivers from using local streets.
Joshua Davis
you know when they say "the customer is always right" that doesn't mean you the customer are literally right, it means you have enough money to make people who are poorer than you pretend you have the right to demand stuff so that you can pretend you are actually rich.
Malka Older @m_older
Pretty sad how much people have been conditioned to believe that not getting crushed by costs of healthcare, housing, education, and low wages is either “radical left politics” or “nice but unrealistic”
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
If nothing else, this pandemic has made it abundantly clear there is no tragedy, no human suffering, no amount of preventable anguish that could convince the Right or corporations to slow the rate of profit even the most minute amount.
Jared Yates Sexton
Great writing was done post gamergate/alt-right movement about how the "gateway drug" to revanchist movements is always misogyny. The easiest target to teach an adolescent male to hate are the women who "deny" them, and if you can do that you can teach them to hate anything
Gabriel Maier
my theory is that post-adolescent hotepery is animated by the same contrarian bullshit that turns white boys into insufferable Ayn Rand-ophiles
Gene Demby @GeeDee215
Copenhagen in the winter. Get the point?:
Brent Toderian
The American obsession with comfortability is killing the planet.
Adam Linder
First we tell them they may not talk, walk, eat, or read unless told to. We tell them how to spend their time in OUR class and what they are to be thinking about.
@Sisyphus38
Teach me about racism, they say. But DO NOT:
- hurt my feelings
- make me upset
- talk about violence
- allude to my privileges
- use language I'm unfamiliar with
- be too academic, too bold, or too well-spoken
- and never, ever, ever contradict what I already believe in
DrawntoIntellect
No one who works for a university should make more than, let’s say, five times the median salary. Yes that includes presidents and football coaches. Yes that includes custodial and food service (even if you contract out). Salaries aren’t the only problem ... but they aren’t not a problem. Go work somewhere else you plutocratic fucks
David M. Perry @Lollardfish
I would like an HHS Secretary who thinks Medicaid is good. The bar is so, so low.
Sara Luterman
The pandemic has really revealed how strongly our culture has come to associate “vacation” with travel, leaving so many people completely unable to relax in their own space.
Mary Annaïse Heglar
We are literally forgetting what courage means, as a society. It should center societal good, not the powerful. So normalize re-individualizing the word "hero/ine." Normalize elevating ppl for their SINGULAR bravery and strength of will. And stop caping for collective cowards.
N. K. Jemisin
Cars are the real skyways of the streets. (I'm subtweeting some Daytons here)
@happifydesign
We reorganized half of the federal government after 2,977 people died in one day in 2001.
Matt Ford
Copenhagen will replace a busy street in the city center, with a park. Or is it a forest? I love it, either way. Should be done by 2022:
Mikkel Selsøe
Nobody is coming for your dead white people books.
Nobody is stopping you from your love of classic white canon.
Y'all are all about FREEDOM OF SPEECH until somebody steps on your faves.
Literally all we said was don't force kids to read YOUR classics. Give them choice.
Ellen Oh Hell No
In Baltimore after the 2015 Freddie Gray riots, police abolished themselves from violent neighborhoods -- stopped patrolling, stopped responding to calls, reduced enforcement. In response crime and homicide skyrocketed, a cycle that is playing out this year in dozens of cities.
Lee Fang
"Police stopped doing their jobs after being threatened with accountability" is not the pro-police argument you think it is.
Michael Hobbes @RottenInDenmark
If you want to do eco-socialist urban greenspace, this is how you do it. Not by blocking housing for some tiny community garden few will use, but by replacing fossil fuel guzzlers' streets with parks (and you can have a garden or two for the hobbyists).
Darrell Owens @IDoTheThinking
“The President wants to issue blanket pardons to all of his children,” is not a sentence that is uttered in a functioning democracy.
Mikel Jollett
Sometimes a school's odd, archaic mascot coexists uneasily with its lofty, empty slogans...
Alfie Kohn
Being “moderate” when it comes to social justice issues is the position of privileged people who feel they may lose something. No one who is oppressed wants their freedom and equality piecemeal over centuries.
Hari Kondabolu
In old pictures, pre-car Buffalo had as much foot traffic and vibrancy as much of modern Manhattan. The reason your medium-sized US city today is more boring and less amenitized than NYC today is not because NYC is inherently better, but b/c 20th century policymakers ruined your city
Alex Armlovich
These three happy gentlemen can’t wait to hold up the new closet organizer:
Faces in Things
Thinking about others and wishing them well is prayer — a personal meditation that makes us feel good. Real sacredness is found in working for solutions.
Mary Morse Marti
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