Another month has gone by, but at least it's my favorite (short) month, February. It started with the second impeachment trial, lived (and sometimes died) through the Texas freeze and energy crash, and ends with a return to despair about many larger topics: the climate crisis, white supremacy, the deterioration of the idea of democracy, and more. And meanwhile, the pandemic. Plus humor.
Maybe I don't need to mention this anymore, but the tweets continue to be in reverse chronological order without organization by topic (as they had been for many years). I'm also not setting the whole thing up as a blockquote, since that just makes it longer, but know that it is all a quote.
___
[As a Black woman] My experience with the medical establishment is why I want the vaccine as soon as possible. I don't believe I'll be treated with urgency if I contract COVID. I watched my grandmother die of pneumonia after they assumed it was heart failure for a full 24 hours in the hospital.
Alycia @alyciadotj
Simply put, a government that is not right now:
* shutting down fossil infrastructure including for private cars;
* removing all investment/subsidies in fossil industries;
* turning all their productive capacity towards:
** renewable energy production,
** sufficiency energy consumption (housing retrofit, public and low impact mobility, plant based diets ...),
** the care economy and
** fostering biodiversity
is an illegitimate government, acting against the interests of its population, and deserves to be exposed, confronted, and ultimately replaced. This can't be easy, but pursuing a polite but failed strategy of *appeal to power* doesn't seem to be the way to go either. End/
We need to fight them much more directly, by threatening their basis of legitimacy.
Prof Juju @JKSteinberger
This week Senator Ted Cruz screamed "freedom" on a stage [at CPAC] literally shaped like a Nazi symbol at a conference where attendees are worshipping a giant golden statue of Trump, and this is all just pretty normal now. Still trying to wrap my head around it, I guess.
Laura Bassett
I need to update my pie:
Lars Boelen
So if these folks are THIS mad about a toy [Mr. Potato Head] imagine how violent they are when encountering someone they perceive as Trans or Gender Non-Conforming.
@love_an_artist
fun fact: the 26 lane Katy Freeway has less passenger capacity than BART. Urban highways destroy cities and civic wealth, and should be replaced with mass transit
sam deutsch @samdman95
Perhaps the most dangerous misconception about the climate crisis is that we have to “lower” our emissions. Because that is far from enough. Our emissions have to stop if we are to stay below 1,5/2°C warming. That rules out most of today’s politics. Including airport expansions. The “lowering of emissions” is of course necessary but it is only the beginning of a fast process that must lead to a stop within a couple of decades. (Note that rich countries need to get down to zero emissions sooner than that, according to the Paris Agreement.) And then we need to get the emissions to minus by inventing new technologies, if we are to stay below 1,5 or 2°C of warming. The fact that we are speaking of “lowering” instead of stopping emissions is perhaps the greatest force behind business as usual.
Greta Thunberg (from late March, 2019, but it just showed up in my feed now)
There's no such thing as being both "a social liberal and fiscal conservative." Being fiscally conservative means cutting from social programs that aid the disadvantaged; they never cut from the military or corporate subsidies. Supporting social programs means investing in them.
@DanPriceSeattle
Golf is so weird. Huge swathes of landscape culled and privatised because men are too scared to just ask their friend if they want to go for a walk:
Tom Houslay
"We just have to, practically speaking, rebuild or retrofit every piece of the built environment on the planet." David Wallace Wells
Ezra Klein
So many feel-good stories are at their core “American citizens rising to fill void created by societal/government failures.”
Jake Tapper
I'm more and more convinced that dinosaurs never existed and were a late 19th century invention for the toy industry.
@mikesonn
Every garage is an ACU (accessory commercial unity) in a city that has decided humans/planet/community are more important than cars/fossil fuels/exploitation:
@happifydesign
taxes are weird this year the government says I owe 3 grand and I'm like you guys owe me my grandma.
Matt Somerstein
when we look back up on the pandemic in 10-20 years time, i think we're going to be absolutely astonished that throughout all of this pain, grief, and loneliness, our workplaces and educational institutions held us to exactly the same productivity standards as before
@ellieredpath
Understand this: The filibuster gives veto power to Mitch McConnell. And to the gun industry. And to the oil industry. For generations, racist senators used the filibuster to block anti-lynching laws and civil rights bills. It’s still blocking progress today. It’s got to go.
Elizabeth Warren
Jesus: It's basically impossible for a rich person to go to heaven.
Evangelical right: He could mean anything!
Jesus: [Says absolutely nothing about gay people or gender]
Evangelical right: NEVER HAS THE BIBLE BEEN CLEARER!
LOLGOP
When James Baldwin was asked, doesn't racism hurt Black people the most, he replied, "No. We are just dying the fastest."
Ekow N. Yankah
sick of characters taking off their glasses when shit gets real. that’s when you want your glasses the most
mike ginn
Seems weird that the Republicans can do whatever they want with 50 votes, but the Democrats need 60.
David Rothschild @DavMicRot
So 1 minute before killing someone in a hit and run, the attorney general of South Dakota was on his phone browsing a right-wing website full of conspiracy theories. This sounds like a plot from Fargo.
@davenewworld_2
Anytime you put up a sign telling people to pay attention to signs, you're doing it wrong:
@BillLindeke
Wild how the parliamentarian and the reconciliation process will let through things like Arctic drilling (2017) or the fever swamps “Restoring Americans' Healthcare Freedom Act” (the ACA-repeal-and-delay bill vetoed by Obama in 2016) but not things that help everyday workers.
Mike Konczal @rortybomb
Gonna electrify the federal fleet?
* Military agencies have largest number of federal vehicles (27%)
* Civilian side, DHS has most (8%)
* Most federal vehicles are trucks and tractor trailers (86%)
* Top state opportunity for electrifying fed fleet is CA
David Roberts @drvolts
Conservatives have convinced people that telling the truth is uncivil but lies are protected speech
Paul Thomas @plthomasEdD
It's telling that Marjorie Taylor-Greene thought that a poster denying the existence of trans people was an appropriate response to a pride flag. This is consistent among bigots: they see no difference in aggression between "we are proud" and "you don't or shouldn't exist"
Jess Zimmerman @j_zimms
If only there were some sacred text, one most people at CPAC claimed allegiance to, that very explicitly warns against making golden idols:
Jeet Heer
This blew my mind: if we kept early 1990s tax rates, Minnesota would have *12 Billion dollars more* every two years to invest in education, childcare, healthcare, livable wages, transit, clean energy and more. It’s time - and it’s totally possibly - to #FundOurFutures
Andrew Ulasich
$12B could put everyone inside the [Twin Cities] 494/694 beltway within 1/2 mile of bus rapid transit, provide that BRT at 5 minute intervals, electrify the metro bus system, expand suburban route hours, close operating gaps, and fully fund greater Minnesota bike/walk/transit plans with ~$3B in funds left over.
Sam Rockwell
I truly believe that the people with heinous gender beliefs are a minority and clinging desperately to their last gasp of power, and cis people can really move the needle by being vocal in real-life conversations when someone says something bigoted or just plain ignorant.
bag of moons
67% of Americans support raising the minimum wage to $15 hour but it can be filibustered by 41 GOP senators representing just 21% of country. This is why we need to abolish it
Ari Berman
In a new opinion striking down the federal eviction moratorium, a Trump judge argues -- I shit you not -- that RENTING A HOME IS NOT AN ECONOMIC ACTIVITY!
Ian Millhiser
so tired of explaining the history of racism to the people who created it
Tao Leigh Goffe
Often wonder if the other italic caps are tired of J's shtick:
Craig Eliason
Weekly Reminder: It costs more to criminalize poverty and mental illness than to alleviate it.
Isaac Bryan @ib2_real
US capitalism wisely funds 2 political parties. When one goes too far serving employers at employees' expense, the other party can take over. Then when it goes too far, the reverse happens. For capitalism, "stability" = keeping others from disturbing this swing between the 2 parties.
Richard D. Wolff @profwolff
Why do some politicians think all journeys made on foot or bike are "recreational", while everyone in a car is on an essential trip? People take unnecessary trips in cars all the time.
Kyle Grochmal
Do you have any idea how traumatizing it is to be told that being trans is a threat to children when you were a child who was abused for being trans?
Sheryl Ring
Capitalist logic says minimum wage hurts small businesses because the original capitalist model for starting a small business was to kidnap people and force them and all of their descendants to work for free for generations
@BreeNewsome
A lot of people who are angry about the economic consequences of globalization forget about the ax of nuclear war that hung over all of our necks before neoliberalism, during the Cold War.
Joseph N. Cohen
Maybe I’m just different, but if President Biden told me to attack the Capitol, I wouldn’t attack the Capitol. I’d wonder what the hell was wrong with him.
Hamish Mitchell
This is a graph worth thinking about:
Philip Bump
“The world’s wealthy need cuts of over 90% of their carbon emissions, to get to their carbon fair share. The top-skew is so huge that the world’s richest 1 percent cause double the carbon burden of the poorest 50% combined (that’s 3.5 billion people).”
David Wallace-Wells
The majority of social science is about explaining the various "bad" behaviors of working class people, poor people, racialized people. But it's the normal behavior of rich people that could get us all killed.
Daniel Aldana Cohen
If I were designing a heavy delivery vehicle that had to roll through neighborhoods filled w/ kids/elderly, this is what I would come up with: A very low hood and a massive windshield, so the driver could see everything. More evidence that truck/SUV designers are sociopaths:
Matthew Lewis @mateosfo
White people cannot conceive of equality. They think the only alternative to white supremacy involves white subjugation to another group’s supremacy.
roshow
Worth noting: the Texas mess wasn't a "grid crisis." The grid did just fine distributing the power it had available. It was a *generation crisis* — thanks to inadequately weatherized natural gas production facilities and power plants, there just wasn't enough power to go around. The Texas grid certainly would have benefited from being bigger, from being connected to the other two US grids, but you would need a truly epic amount of line capacity to import enough power to cover that shortfall. Generation failure was the heart of the crisis.
David Roberts @drvolts
The president of the United States met virtually today with the prime minister of Canada and you might not have heard about it because no one was insulted and no international incidents took place. How great is that.
Andrew Weinstein @Weinsteinlaw
“62% of #Copenhagen residents are now commuting to work or school by bike — an increase from 52% in 2015 and 36% in 2012, when the City Council launched a 14-year-plan...there are more bikes (675,000) than people and 5X as many bikes as cars.” Via @latimes
Brent Toderian
I've heard anecdotally that some people who got super unemployment insurance this summer, got so much financial space from it, because it was more than they had ever earned before, they started businesses. Makes me think best way to improve economy is to VC working class. We're wasting $ on rich
@kar_nels
Hi, apartments *are* homes for families, and fuck you if you believe otherwise
@cafedujord
kind of a bummer to have been born at the very end of the Fuck Around century just to live the rest of my life in the Find Out century
@Merman_Melville
5 times larger than the entire United States Education budget. 17 times larger than NASA's entire budget. Almost half the entire US Defense Budget. What is it? The $310 billion US free parking subsidy. That’s how much free parking is really costing Americans. Via @FastCoImpact:
Brent Toderian
I am trying to remember the last day that the GOP was not doing something to undermine voting or democracy. I am not saying a day when they did something good, just a day when they did not try to do something awful.
Marc E. Elias
I’ve gotten to where whenever I see “partisan” I just automatically replace it with “racial” and the sentence starts to make sense
Kai Wright
One time Chris Hayes called the current GOP "the party of the boss's son." I might amend it to "boss's kid" — to make room for Meghan McCain, Sarah Sanders, Lynn Cheney, et al — but it strikes me as more profoundly true with every passing day. If you're a boss's kid, you have to make special effort *not* to be an entitled prick who believes your inherited advantages are deserved. But every feature of current right-wing politics is designed to *encourage* that mentality. It actively selects for the least self-aware boss's kids.
David Roberts @drvolts
I’ve joined in on roasting Ted Cruz for abandoning Texans for his sunny fun in Cancun, but let’s not lose sight of his abandonment of democracy and the rule of law when he participated in the Big Lie and helped incite a deadly insurrection.
Steven Beschloss
A key indicator of conservatism is focusing more about how wrongdoing is revealed than the wrongdoing itself.
Skane2600
Soy is one of the leading drivers of deforestation. People often think of soy milk, tofu and similar products. But these make up only 4% of soy consumption. More than three-quarters (77%) of global soy goes to animal feed. From our work on deforestation at Our World in Data:
Hannah Ritchie
Remember that we could fix America to have a representational multi racial democracy with the capacity to respond to the problems of the era and ... not enough democrats want to do that (and zero republicans, who are fully committed to white minority rule).
David M. Perry @Lollardfish
if ur over 5’11 sorry ur pronouns are fe/fi/fo/fum
@JvchiiClawz
Only 37% of white men consider themselves Democrats or lean Democrat. Why do I see so many of them dominating "liberal" political punditry?
chris evans @notcapnamerica
THIS extreme housing unaffordability is a very American/Anglo-issue. Turns out Capitalist countries pushing homeownership as a way to build wealth to compensate for declining wages *inherently* necessitates the haves (owners) to price out the have-nots:
Darrell Owens @IDoTheThinking
The notion that wealthy countries have "achieved" growth while poor countries "haven't" erases both colonial history and neo-colonial forms of power. In reality the former have grown rich by exploiting the latter, and they continue to do so.
Jason Hickel
Taylor Swift is older now than any of the Beatles were when they broke up. Enjoy your Sunday.
Dave Weigel
Accountancy is meant to be a profession that understands that conflicts of interest are a moral hazard. But just as doctors convince themselves they won't get addicted to their own painkillers, accountants talk themselves into believing that conflicts won't corrupt them.
Cory Doctorow
On this day [February 21] in 1804, the world's first steam-powered railway journey took place. Richard Trevithick's unnamed steam locomotive hauled a train along the tramway of the Penydarren ironworks, near Merthyr Tydfil in South Wales.
National Railway Museum
I've stumbled upon a conspiracy theory that claims Jim Morrison of The Doors was a CIA agent who faked his death in 1971 and became conservative blowhard Rush Limbaugh. So, yeah, I'm going to spend some extra time away from the internet today:
Nick Martin
You have to love this. President Biden is trying to control a pandemic, restore the economy, and save Texas from the incompetence of its Republican leadership, and the Republicans are yapping about his dogs' background.
Dean Baker
I've been told by white people that I talk about racism too much. I'm in my 50's and have never known a day without racism. So if they're tired of hearing about it, imagine how tired I am living in it. Just saying.
@Chris4Perkins
There is seriously no reason to build another lane mile for cars in urban areas. Let's see how many we can remove instead, and how fast we can do it.
Mary Morse Marti
There are more Biden voters in Texas (5.26M) than there are in New York state (5.23M). The "they voted for this" takes are bad on multiple levels, including the math.
Aaron Huertas
DC statehood is racial justice.
DC statehood is racial justice.
DC statehood is racial justice.
Stand Up America
How come Beto O'Rourke and AOC working to raise money for struggling Texans, many of whom didn't vote for Beto and think AOC is a she-witch, doesn't count as a UNITY story? How come the media isn't spinning it that way? How come "unity" can only mean "giving the GOP what it wants"?
Elie Mystal
Dangerous air quality is NOT caused by "light winds and poor atmospheric mixing." It's caused by cars, trucks, SUVs, industrial waste products and power generation. In other words, we cause foul air. Take a deep breath:
Mary Morse Marti
My parents are entirely dependent on others for basic activities of daily living, while insisting they're entirely self sufficient, which when you think about it, is only a difference in degree, not in kind, to everyone who lives in a society
James Medlock
People will delight in the misfortune of folks in Southern "red states" because they're "racist" and "backward" meanwhile they live in Former Sundown Town, Illinois outside of Redline County in a segregated school district on a street with an Indigenous name they mispronounce.
@Ryan_Ken_Acts
Anyone else realize Ted Cruz had no problem crossing a border to give his family a better life?
@tcburkejr
With drones, why isn't this another golden age of formation photography?
Chris Steller
GOP: Defect
Dems: cooperate
GOP: Defect
Dems: cooperate
GOP: Defect
Dems: fuck it, defect,.
Matt: OMG authoritarian much?
GOP: snicker
GOP: defect
Dems: cooperate
David M. Perry @Lollardfish
Biden and Vox.com-types deplore "Harvard grads" getting debt relief, but then the people they hire are from exactly those kinds of places! We select our ruling class from Harvard, but then kinda scoff at folks who wanted to join the club but didn't have the money upfront?
Ilyana Kuziemko
The path where nothing changes isn't actually a path that is available to us.
Dr. Elizabeth Sawin
The Ted Cruz Cancun story is a perfect illustration of how wealthy comfortable people are the last to have to face the consequences of climate change. They can afford to avoid suffering in the short term; no wonder they're not pushing for change that might affect their lifestyles
Katie Mack @AstroKatie
No amount of technology, short of a time machine, can make up for the time we have already wasted debating and delaying action on climate change. And any additional delay, no matter the reason, is very problematic.
Dr. Jonathan Foley @GlobalEcoGuy
Fox News and Fox Business lied about wind turbines and the Green New Deal being to blame for Texas' power outages 128 times in less than two days -- all, after the bogus claim had already been debunked
Lis Power
The disaster in Texas is the shape of greed. We are not prepared for climate change disasters. Period. And the only way forward is collectively and sustainably - that’s true when you build a grid, and it’s true for building our communities.
amisha patel @gulabjammin
Infrastructure is failing because a paradigm is failing. Pass it on.
Dr. Elizabeth Sawin
White Supremacist Tired After Long Day Of Interviews With Mainstream News Outlets:
The Onion
Ah, so the secret to Texas' low energy costs was essentially just "don't pay for insurance and hope for the best," interesting. Wonder if we can apeopley the lesson here to other sectors.
Alex Schieferdecker
Problems with the "cancel culture" discussion: The term is being used incorrectly to label simple free-market mechanics or basic accountability (actions have consequences). Often "cancel culture" is used to cover for protecting *white voices as authority*; this ignores that white voices are inhabiting spaces *not given to* minoritized voices (which aren't given the cover of "cancel culture"). Thus those claimed to be victims of "cancel culture" have in fact not been silenced (often have exaggerated platforms even) and the "cancel culture" mantra elevates them even more, expanding their space and further crowding out minoritized voices . And to emphasize, those who are never allowed those platforms remain "deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard" — the real consequences of being preemptively canceled.
Paul Thomas @plthomasEdD
A common problem cities have with “task forces” (on affordability, climate change etc) is the pressure to come up with new/original recommendations. In my experience, the REAL value of a task force is to create political energy to actually DO smart OBVIOUS things that will WORK.
Brent Toderian
I’m sick of innovation. The answer is buses, putting roofs over people’s heads, and paying people actual money (maybe for even just being alive, and definitely for doing literally any job)
Jamie Perkins
It just seems like our capacity to effectively prevent/manage disasters has been decreasing while the frequency/scale of disasters has been increasing. And folks in positions of public trust are either spreading disinfo or hoping "nobody coulda foreseen this" is somehow an excuse
Costa Samaras
We do a lot of work and spend a lot of money to just let cars continue to dominate our entire city. There's an easier and cheaper solution - we're just too chicken shit to push for real change that is actually safe and not theater.
@mikesonn
Neurotypicals read way too much into email sign-offs, babe I'm just trying to end the email.
@QueerlyAutistic
Limbaugh pioneered saying a bigoted or contemptible thing, but prefacing it with "Watch the liberals go nuts over this." People would indeed go nuts. Then he'd gloat over having predicted that some people dislike hearing bigoted and contemptible things. It was always a weird bit.
Radley Balko
And now it passes for conservative policy.
John Valentine @JohnLouisville
It's time to stop thinking about the world we live in as the "inevitable result of progress" and more as the consequence of decisions made by those willing to conquer, oppress, and kill anyone who disagreed with their astoundingly terrible, self-serving decisions. They want you to believe America is exceptional while Americans huddle against the freezing cold in the powerless dark, beg for money for healthcare online, go without clean drinking water, and sort through trash for food thrown out of massive chain grocery stores.
Jared Yates Sexton
Another example of the brilliance of “we have no taxes!” Texas. This is the Texas/Arkansas border. Our state leaders laughed at them when they bought snowplows. So, on the left is the Texas side of the highway, on the right, the Arkansas side:
Kurt Eichenwald
After we finish educating all the Texans on how to survive the next few days, we will also have to teach them to form tenant’s unions because tons of these apartments are about to need severe mold remediation and renters here have approximately zero rights.
ashley fairbanks @ziibiing
Reminder: The Green New Deal is cheaper than a climate apocalypse.
Public Citizen
Run government like you need it to help people. Because that's what government is. Not a business.
Oliver Willis
“I’m not racist, I just really don’t want to address racism.”
@BreeNewsome
One sign of covid’s nastiness is the fact that the covid countermeasures basically eradicated the flu while covid still surged
Tom Gara
This is a good time to note that the electrical grid in Texas was deregulated, privatized, and removed from interconnected networks to avoid federal regulation and increase profits to a small number of wealthy individuals.
Bryan William Jones
Not always true, but, when characters in a contemporary novel don’t use contractions when they speak, I want to kick them individually into a lake
Julieanne Smolinski @BoobsRadley
"This didn’t seem like an armed insurrection. How many firearms were confiscated? How many shots were fired?” –Wisconsin’s Ron Johnson. Police recovered a dozen guns and enough live ammunition to shoot every member of Congress five times.
Shannon Watts
Black leaders who preach nonviolence and build multiracial coalitions while employing language about “saving the soul of America”, “uniting as brothers and sisters for common good” and “preserving democracy” will have thicker FBI files than white supremacists. Been like that from day 1. Literally all we have to do is be Black and gather in groups and it’s viewed as a threat. That’s a dynamic going back to the plantations. Hell, back to the ships.
@BreeNewsome
"Woke," like "PC" before it, means "being decent to people who are not you" and it is genuinely remarkable how many people are willing to go on record as being firmly opposed to such an endeavor.
Emily L. Hauser
If you ever see me on a motorcycle, it'll be this one:
Nnedi Okorafor, PhD
Suburban colonization happens when people move to suburbs, taking their political power with them from the place they leave
Phil Ritz
The mainstream media is not liberal. It is elite and coastal. There is a difference. And it centers the needs of establishment whiteness.
Farai Chideya
Funny how “playing the race card” means “a Black person pointed out the racial aspect of a situation” and never, say, "a white person benefitted from white privilege." White people have a race card and they play it all the time. Are y’all ready for that conversation?
@Toure
Have you ever heard any Republicans say they are concerned with making sure there exists a strong Democratic Party? I don’t think I’ve ever heard such a thing uttered in my lifetime. Democratic leaders say this about Republicans every month. How can the party that claims it’s going to pass John Lewis Voting Rights Act also support strengthening a party that’s been leading the attack on voting rights for a generation? GOP was focused on keeping people from voting long before Trump. It’s their top priority at state level
@BreeNewsome
US transport industry treats 55 seconds of delay in a car like an emergency we need to move heaven and earth to resolve. But a half hour or hour delay on a bus: expected. Not worth caring about.
Angie Schmitt
People “demanding” an end to lockdown. You’re arguing with a virus. If it gallops, unchecked, through the under 50s it will mutate. It’s a virus. Do you understand that it’s a virus? I’m not sure how you get through to people who are trying to negotiate with a virus.
Julia Raeside
The people who talk most about how rational they are — and how emotional you, their interlocutor, are clearly being (otherwise you'd see how right they are) — are not the most rational. Rather, their "rationalism" appears to be compensation for their emotional illiteracy. Whenever humans communicate, there are multiple channels being used. There's the straight, propositional meanings of the words, and then there's a whole other language of tone, implication, context cues, body language — social and emotional info being exchanged. Lots of smart young (especially white) men are highly trained in the former but completely untrained in the latter, in fact taught that the latter is feminine and suspect. They are, in a nutshell, emotionally illiterate. They're always "saying the wrong thing" in that latter language or failing to hear messages sent in that latter language. Their personal relationships suffer. And their response is to blame ... everyone else. To declare that second language illegitimate. To declare that ONLY propositional meanings that they consciously intend *count*.
A world built by Reason will not be ruled by a council of tech bros. It will be small-d democratic, messy, iterative, flawed, humble, biased toward compassion over judgment. That's what's effective in actual human affairs — i.e., that's what's rational!
David Roberts @drvolts
According to a study by the London School of Economics, 50 years worth of tax cuts contributed absolutely nothing to GDP growth and employment rates across 18 nations that tried 'trickle down economics', since the wealthiest hoard far more than they spend.
Paul Sweeney
I’d love to know exactly how he was treaded upon. Was the loan on his $70,000 truck given at 2.3% instead of 2.2%, which led to him believing the system is against him? Did his bull bars arrive on day 3 after he paid for 2-day shipping? Surely, the struggle must be real:
Don Kostelec
We keep getting studies showing that the central tenets of conservative ideology are complete vaporware and they're treated like footnotes rather than a huge story.
Michael Hobbes @RottenInDenmark
Perhaps it's unsurprising that a billionaire has no interest in structural and political change. But Bill Gates's belief that he can save the planet with technologies alone, while dissing popular movements and systemic transformation, is as naive as it is arrogant.
George Monbiot
“There is no such thing as a neutral educational process.” –Paulo Freire
@Sisyphus38
This is a truth of transport and planning policy that we don't acknowledge enough in the UK. If we want public spaces to be better we need to give less of them over to storing cars
davidrelph
The following Republicans voted to convict Bill Clinton for lying about a blowjob but acquitted Donald Trump of inciting a deadly insurrection:
Blunt (MO)
Crapo (ID)
Graham (SC)
Grassley (IA)
Inhofe (OK)
McConnell (KY)
Moran (KS)
Portman (OH)
Shelby (AL)
Thune (SD)
Wicker (MS)
No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen
The plural of privilege is establishment.
Bill McKibben
Republicans who made Hillary Clinton testify for 11 hours on Benghazi 2 years after she was secretary of state now say you can’t impeach Trump 3 weeks after he left office
Ari Berman
All other things being equal, markets allocate capital to people who have capital, not people who have ideas that will make us all better off, and so the story [of meritocracy] begins to break down... But being born rich doesn't make you a good capital allocator, it makes you a useless parasite. Some might escape the prison of birth to parasitehood, but they don't have to - you can be Donald Trump, or Don Jr, and still amass millions.
Cory Doctorow
Thinking today about how we are none of us at our best and it’s so much easier to fracture community than to build it right now.
David M. Perry @Lollardfish
I wonder if I'll ever have an impeachment trial playing in the background while I work from home during a pandemic again
Chris Steller
Joni Mitchell wrote one of the greatest lines ever: “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone?”
@pattho
This is the “Viking cut” hairdo that neo-Nazis love. I can’t believe it ... no wait. Yes I can:
Malcolm Nance
If you say that you don’t allow emotions to influence your thinking, you’re actually saying that you have absolutely no awareness of all the ways your emotions influence your thinking
Helen Rosner
The only appropriate reaction to any of these chittering cowards the next time they try to lecture about duty or patriotism is to laugh in their faces.
Adam Serwer
Trump-based terrorism is coming. My guess is every one of those Republican Senator’s lives are in grave danger. Watch who Trump attacks personally. #BeWarned
Malcolm Nance
Maybe a bunch of 25-year-old white male slave owners were not the most brilliant systems designers to walk the planet. Maybe we should finally actually have that conversation. Maybe some of us have spent our lives engineering better governance structures and have some thoughts
@marcformarc
Sorry white people, now you know how we feel every time we think that some of you will not side with the oppressor. Feels really empty and shitty, doesn't it to think that maybe a couple of folks will get it. And they never do.
ProfB @AntheaButler
This is why I'm neither a Democrat nor a Republican.... One side is a front business for a white nationalist terrorist organization and the other doesn't feel threatened enough by white nationalists to actually wield power to make our multicultural democracy sustainable
Dr. Jason Johnson
First brand-name insurrection in history:
Pat Bagley
Across the country, every day, the petty tyrants of America's local gentry hire and fire people, promote or don't promote them, for arbitrary sexist and racist reasons. These ubiquitous miniature "cancellations" don't get any press or any notice. No one writes op-eds about them.
David Roberts @drvolts
One thing we know for SURE — building and widening highways ALWAYS succeeds in helping sell more cars, gas and suburban sprawl; burning more public budgets; and increasing greenhouse gas emissions. So if THOSE are your goals, it’s the perfect thing to do. Just don’t expect it to reduce traffic.
Brent Toderian
Conservatives: "at-will employment should be the law of the land"
Conservatives after someone gets fired for being a bigot: "no not like that"
Robert Evans @IwriteOK
They are so eager to conflate violently racist beliefs with simply “being conservative” then wonder why people think conservatism is about being violently racist
@rMeredithc
Trump has always been a sociopath, but only as a candidate did he discover that he had a mob at his disposal which would put into action his dark desires...and he loved it. Jan. 6th was a logical result:
Alan Mills @alan_uplc
It is the mark of an unserious mind to think that cryptocurrency is a solution to any serious problem.
Scott Shapiro
Black people are trying to break free of a 500+ year global system that is built on our enslavement and reducing us to dehumanized property for the exploitation of every imperialist nation. Please find a way to fight for liberation for all people without furthering anti-Blackness. Our struggle is older than the existence of the United States of America. Please commit to studying more about the struggle for Black liberation before making impulsive comparisons between movements. Much of the impulse to compare everything and every struggle against oppression to the experience of Black people is because everyone operates with the assumption that Black people must always occupy the lowest tier of society. If we seem to be rising in any way, it’s viewed as disruption. The simple statement “Black lives matter” itself was so disruptive to a global consciousness steeped in colonialism and anti-Blackness that it has been appropriated, commodified and repurposed in a myriad ways. This is also an extension of the thing-ification of Black lives and people.
@BreeNewsome
While the USPS has had its thumb up its ass for decades, Amazon went from an idea — "hey let's get electric delivery vans!" — to vehicles designed, built, and on the street in *one year*. To be clear: this is in no way USPS's fault. The agency, like most, has been under relentless assault by Republicans for years and has been saddled with absurd pension obligations. Just saying: speed is possible, if we want it.
David Roberts @drvolts
The U.S. is a total outlier on vehicle ownership. Even compared to Canada:
Angie Schmitt
“Can we change Republican minds?” is not the relevant question. The relevant question is, “how do we prevent Republicans from completely overthrowing free and fair elections and installing a fascist government as is clearly their intent?”
@BreeNewsome
It is a key thing I do wish Americans understood—many of the urban things they like in European cities come in part from social welfare regimes that enable people to be less frantic about owning property and defending its value than Americans are.
@drschweitzer
Californians are "symbolically liberal, but operationally conservative." Which means they're American.
Pete Saunders
You know what would really help me as a business owner? Universal health care. The money we pay to subsidize employee health care is astronomical and grows every year. I'll happily pay higher taxes to cut out health insurance companies that make $40 billion a year in profit.
@DanPriceSeattle
It’s weird that we have a whole political party that believes regulations are an excessive burden on business, but our system of private health insurance is not
Adam Miller @ajm6792
Mitt Romney went from the Republican nominee for president to almost being murdered by Republican voters in eight years. I don't know what to say about that, but that's what happened.
Thor Benson
what strikes me is that people aren't getting the sympathy they need. usually when someone close to you dies, there aren't a million other people going through the same thing at the same time. like there isn't enough sympathy to go around. grief has become mundane in a way.
Imani Gandy @AngryBlackLady
After resigning last month, Customs and Border Protection’s acting chief has joined FAIR, an SPLC-designated hate group
Ken Klippenstein
Jennifer Daryl Slack
I need someone to explain to me as a millennial how Reaganism happened because I don’t get it. Was it because there were a lot of people who didn’t have memories of life before the New Deal so they really thought the prosperity of 50s and 60s were just magical Americanism?
@BreeNewsome
There was malaise because of the stagnant economy and intractable Iran hostage situation. Then Reagan put everything on a credit card and started a dangerous and virulent foreign policy and arms race.
Green Asteroid
Everyone believed that the prosperity was due to American Exceptionalism as opposed to the rest of the industrialized world being in ashes after a world war.
Amy Vernon
Commas are important:
John Kovalic @muskrat_john
The economic failure of the 70s, the gas crisis, and the feeling that middle America was losing its grip on a fast changing society (feminism, gay rights, civil rights), created a reflexive backlash, wherein Reagan resembled the good old days purely based on his cinematic roles.
Melissa Ulto @miixxy
I think he happened because Carter (who I loved then and even more now) was a post-Watergate aberration in the GOP's harnessing of racism. Coupled with coopting of anti-choice and anti-communist tough guy, he gave working class whites a reason to vote their hate and fear.
bill cozzo
An FCC study found that the cheapest way to provide broadband nationally is for the government to simply do it themselves. We’ve spent north of $56 billion failing to do something that we could have done correctly for $40 billion.
Waldo Jaquith
Capitalism is based on free, mutual agreements. The worker agrees to do whatever the capitalist says so they can pay rent and not starve, and the capitalist agrees to generate enormous profit off their work. Freedom.
Existential Comics
His ban from Twitter remains the only consequence Trump has ever faced in his entire life.
Patrick S. Tomlinson @stealthygeek
[Trump] really thought the plot was going to work. Very few people understand this. He didn't call off the dogs because he thought he was succeeding in a real coup
Abraham Lincoln, Antifascist @SurrealALincoln
GOP plans to target Democrats as "socialists" in the 1912, I mean 1928, I mean 1944, I mean 1956, I mean 1980, I mean 1996, I mean 2010, I mean 2022 elections
GOP Plans to Target Democrats as ‘Socialists’
David Dayen
Why is it considered a moral failing for Black people to be poor yet poverty is used as a justification for every shitty thing a white person does?
@ducgummybuns
It continues to amaze that these people were willing to kill, and potentially spend years in prison, for a ridiculous, obvious grifter like that scumbag Donald Trump. Jebus.
Joshua Holland
"We cannot make a revolution that eradicates all forms of oppression unless we figure out how to work in coalition with people who are not our mirror images," Barbara Smith tells Janet Mock.
Out Magazine
A Copenhagen video camera study shows that less than 5% of people on bikes break traffic laws while riding, yet 66% of people do so when driving. And if you REALLY want even more on bikes to obey laws, build protected bike infrastructure.
Brent Toderian
The stock market is just the marshmallow test for adults.
Ashley Mayer
Me: This man is going to sleep. What is he wearing?
Student: PJs.
Me: Yeah, and can you say the long word for that?
S: Peeeee jaaaayyyyys.
Speech Autist
Listening to the #ImpeachmentTrial, and all this stuff about 'this is america' or 'this is not america' is wearing. Man, we don't know who tf america is.
Amity Foster
Stop writing about the economic anxiety of people who flew to DC in their private jets. Start writing about the ideology that is fueling their radicalism.
Ilhan Omar
More Staceys. Fewer Karens.
Jennifer Mendelsohn @CleverTitleTK
Keep in mind that when Trump was saying he could only lose if the election was rigged, he was trailing by 6-10 points in the national polling averages and had NEVER led in even a single high-quality poll.
Joshua Holland
Trump supporters and qanon have their root in a deep seated misogyny and their favorite target is Hillary Clinton. Never underestimate the massive power of hatred of women who don’t know their place.
@TinaDuryea
Kissing canopy, winter edition. Also the best decision Winnipeg ever made (100 years ago) putting a treed boulevard between the sidewalk and every street:
Neil Loewen
Every gun death in the US is a policy choice.
Hannah Lichtsinn, MD @DoctorLix
This is the core of the GOP lie. "If Democrats just did things the right way, we'd totally be on board" It's not true. It's never been true. There is no "Right way" as long as GOP agenda isn't being followed. It's an abuser's lie.
Absurdistwords
Big Tech, to users: "your privacy is important to us"
Big Tech, to SCOTUS: well, actually, privacy violations are unimportant, a user whose privacy is violated shouldn't even have legal standing
Don Marti
This second impeachment reminds me of whenever the KKK was brought to trial. Never mattered how much evidence was presented. Didn’t matter if the man admitted to the crime. He was ALWAYS acquitted bc the judge and jury were Klan too.
Jenn Budd
The way the rulers are handling climate changes helps me to realize no one has been an adult for very long. just were born in contexts laid down over millennia then time flew and you are old and people think you have perspective.
@BuildSoil
Teachers unions are actually pretty good pretty much all the time and you hate them because propaganda is effective. And when they aren’t good ... the powers they are fighting are ALWAYS worse.
David M. Perry @Lollardfish
If they don’t convict Trump, it doesn’t mean that he’s innocent. It means that the entire Republican Party is guilty.
@TravisAllen02
New Harvard research on fossil-fuel deaths finds they've been underestimated. Researchers now think "exposure to particulate matter from fossil fuel emissions accounted for 18 percent of total global deaths in 2018 — a little less than 1 out of 5."
David Roberts @drvolts
After folks gathered for the 1963 March on Washington, white conservatives used that gathering to malign Black people for decades because of litter supposedly left on the Mall. Trump led an actual coup attempt that killed people. Republicans can shove their "move on" rhetoric.
Leah McElrath
Folks use “lynch mob” incorrectly all the time. Survivors of your decades of rape/sexual assaults, finally coming forward is NOT a lynch mob. Them thousands of people on Jan 6th tho? Oh yes.
Reagan Gomez
Oh look, a guy calling the cops pigs while literally holding a Blue Lives Matter banner...
Chris Hayes
“Language is the sound of culture.” @dribram on Zora’s use of dialect in her work.
Leslie Pitterson
Key Question: Would the January 6 assault on Congress have happened (and would 5 people have died) if President Trump had conceded and congratulated president elect Biden after all the networks and state officials declared Biden the winner? Everybody knows the answer.
walter dellinger
In September 1969 House voted 338 to 70 to pass constitutional amendment abolishing Electoral College. It was filibustered by 3 segregationist southern senators. 34 senators who killed bill represented just 27 percent of population.
Ari Berman
What evolutionary advantage did whining give us as humans? Also, why is that the only language my 3.5-year-old knows now?
@mikesonn
There's a vaccine for the 8.7 million deaths caused each year by air pollution from fossil fuels. That vaccine is called solar panels and wind turbines
Bill McKibben
the point is that if you watched the ad and it didn't feel Christian to you (and white. and colonial), and thus excluding non-Christians (like me, an old secular Jew) ... that says something about your perceptions rather than something about the ad. Cause it isn't subtle.
David M. Perry @Lollardfish
I'm constantly struck by how common it is to judge colleges (and private K-12 schools) not by the quality of the education they offer but by the number of apeopleicants they manage to avoid admitting. Say it with me: "Selectivity and quality are completely different things"
Alfie Kohn
Just a reminder that Intuit and HR Block make money by charging for a service that should be free. The government could easily provide a comparable service at no charge. These companies have purchased the complicity of Congress - and they have enough $ left for Super Bowl ads.
Binyamin Appelbaum
States that added the most wind power in 2020: Texas, Wyoming, Oklahoma. In other words, our fossil fuel states are moving faster to clean energy than others, because renewable power is cheap. These states can also help point the way to workforce transition.
Russ Stark
They could just give the $2,000 checks to everyone and then tax millionaires. They could actually just do that. It's a thing that could be done. But we're all expected to think this is really complicated, even though it's not.
David Sirota
Sure, let's make sure *everyone* pays their "fair share," we can start by banning free street parking, everywhere.
Jaron @Comradephate
a thing I've picked up on from talking with car owners is that they *really* resent the cost of insurance and gas, and sometimes extrapolate this to a feeling that it's unfair that some people don't have those costs
@ManishEarth
Handy translation guide:
“Cyclists need to pay their fair share”= I do not understand how roads are funded or what causes road damage
“Roads are for cars” = I do not understand history and am unable to imagine a future that differs in any way from the present 1/n
“We need to crack down on cyclists running stop signs!” = I do not understand what actually causes serious traffic crashes
“Cyclists are just a bunch of elitists” = I am unable to google how much a bike costs and how much a car costs or to understand why not everyone can drive
“Bike lanes cause congestion” = I do not believe geometry exists
@Momifornia1
This chart is a handy aid to show how damaging bicycles are to the road:
@minus_marci
Just stating for the record I'll happily support road use tariffs that scale with the fourth power of weight per axle. Also fines for speeding proportional to kinetic energy.
Dan Zimmerman @N3OX
Leftists want a fair, democratic and sustainable economy. Capitalism inherently and systematically delivers the opposite. If your long-term vision doesn’t include replacing capitalism with something better, either you’re not a leftist or you don’t understand capitalism.
Arash Kolahi
It’s actually not necessary to keep bringing up BLM, a 9-year-old protest movement against structural racism, when discussing the 1/6 attack on the Capitol and the violence of white supremacy that has existed since the founding of this nation.
@BreeNewsome
Everyone knows that telling people "relax" always has the opposite effect, therefore we can assume that anyone telling you "relax" intends to rile you up, right? We all know this, yes?
@AnnaVolodova
Ugh. I’m in a car forum where everyone is trying to figure out how they can get television to play on their dash while they’re driving. Sadly it’s possible. Thanks, NHTSA. These are all grown ups too (it’s a minivan forum). This is the open secret about those big dashes. Soon everyone’s going to be watching tv while they drive even though their cars still require constant monitoring.
Angie Schmitt
It is a relief to wake up each morning and not be terrified the occupant of the White House got into a mood and started a war on a whim.
Leah McElrath
The shamelessness of Republicans on the Sunday shows is a sight to behold. You got hundreds of thousands of Americans killed and then helped a deadly attack on the Capitol to stop the peaceful transfer of power! And it’s all “well, shucks why are Democrats so divisive?” They damn near destroyed the goddamn country. Unprecedented death and destruction and misery and mourning. Absent some apology and honesty nothing they have to say is worth anything at all at all at all.
Chris Hayes
Free Speech Warriors tell us they are defending the powerful racist men on principle, to defend speech for everyone, but never actually get around to the latter.
David M. Perry @Lollardfish
Native mascots don’t seem like a big deal to you because you’ve been conditioned to think of NDNs as subhuman savages instead of human beings. it’s been proven they have lasting mental health effects and if you don’t join in on demanding change, it never will. we can’t do it alone
@thedoophus
After all has been said and done, it emerges that just three House Republicans — Katko, Upton and Kinzinger — accepted Biden’s election win, voted to impeach Trump, and voted to punish Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Hugo Lowell
No one likes to talk about it: For the lower half of its populace the US already qualifies as a "Failed Society.
Langdon Winner
According to a study by the London School of Economics, 50 years worth of tax cuts contributed absolutely nothing to boost the GDP and employment rates across 18 nations that tried trickle down economics since the wealthy hoard far more than they spend.
50 years of tax cuts for the rich failed to trickle down, economics study says
Tax cuts for the wealthy didn't boost the economies of the U.S. and 17 other countries — but they did worsen income inequality.
Greg Fish
It really would be fun to see the counterfactual where libraries are proposed for the first time today. Would we end up with means-tested entrance fees or just refundable tax credits for book purchases. Maybe a SNAP-B benefit for book vouchers?
James Medlock
To paraphrase Enrique Peñalosa: A plowed and salted cycle track is a symbol that a child on a $30 bicycle is equally important as an adult inside a $30,000 car:
@modacitylife
“Consequence Culture” is a much more accurate phrase.
Keith Edwards
If no one else reminds you today, you’re living through a major traumatic event in modern history, without any support from government, expected to pretend everything’s fine every day. You’re searching for purpose in a time where it’s tough to find any. You’re doing great.
@grandson
“By early February, more people are killed with guns in the US than are killed with guns in other high-income countries in a year. America has a gun death rate 11 times that of those countries and each shooting has a ripeoplee effect.”
Shannon Watts
Ayn Rand is useful because she’s one of the few thinkers who is the completely wrong. You don’t have to spend time separating wheat from chaff. Just go in thinking “the opposite of this is correct” and you can gain some real insights.
matt christman @cushbomb
STUDY: Drivers of luxury cars found to give pedestrians the right of way 3x less than those driving less expensive vehicles; 4x more likely to cut off other drivers. Call it the "Audi Effect."
Taras Grescoe
67% of Americans support raising minimum wage to $15 hour but it can be filibustered by 41 GOP senators representing just 21% of country. This is why the Senate is deeply broken
Ari Berman
My claim to fame is hating the people everyone else hates 12-15 years earlier.
Naomi Klein (referring to Larry Summers)
i get confused when christians brag about missionary work, like babe, being a colonizer should embarrass you.
@florencequinne
The thing that should embarrass them is taking money from charity and spending what would be a year's salary for the people you claim to be there to help just to fly there. When you could have just sent the money and paid a local to do the work.
@KevinBRoss4 (referring to m
“Democrats have to be as aggressive in expanding voting rights as Republicans are in suppressing voting rights.” –Ari Berman
Amanda Litman
A single-family house converted into 8 units is good for housing affordability. An apartment building converted to a single family house is bad for housing affordability. Shockingly, a lot of people get this backwards.
@BRuddTweets
Talk to me about billionaire philanthropy once they're paying their fair share in taxes. Until then billionaire philanthropy is tax evasion dressed up as PR.
Qasim Rashid, Esq.
Teaching is about taking things apart; writing is about putting things together. –Toni Morrison
tamara k. nopper
Tesla paying employees to bike and take transit to work because driving doesn’t scale efficiently (electric doesn’t solve this!) is *chef’s kiss*
Gordon Padelford @GordonOfSeattle
Final jobs scorecard under Don Trump is grim:
David Rothschild
Technically the Senate is split 50-50, but not in reality. Democratic senators represent 41 million more people than Republican senators. 41 million is no small number in a population of 238 million.
Jennifer Daryl Slack
In a blinded name-swap experiment, black female high school students were significantly less likely to be recommended for AP Calculus compared to other students with identical academic credentials. Important new paper from @DaniaFrancis.
Jason Sheltzer
Republicans Accuse Ocasio-Cortez Of Not Being Anywhere Near Place They Told Capitol Mob She Would Be
The Onion
I was told “stop crying, or I’ll really give you something to cry about” by a father who had been physically abused as a child. Amazing how much conservatives feel like bad parents.
Lorraine Berry @BerryFLW
The 81 million who voted for President Biden are being asked to unify with people who advocate lynching, white nationalism and sedition to negate the votes of nonwhite people. Not “advocated,” but who unapologetically stand by those things still. I don’t see how that works.
Joy-Ann Reid
Means-testing against 2019 income for a plague that started in 2020 is such obvious cruelty. It really lays bare the cruelty of all means testing, and every single so called "liberal" that advocates for it.
@PlanetofFinks
I can’t get over the fact that we’re still planning to use 2019 income to determine if you need a stimulus check, like 2020 never happened? Just send people money and tax it back later if you have to ffs it’s not hard.
@mplsalex
Still can't stop thinking about how the Trump administration executed 13 people in the final months of his term. More federal executions than the previous 67 years combined. It was a level of depravity that I'm still struggling to wrap my head around.
Clint Smith
“Politicians are still saying ‘my job is to make food cheaper for you’, no matter how toxic it is from a planetary or human health perspective. We must stop arguing that we have to subsidise the food system for the poor and instead bring them out of poverty.”
Ricardo J Salvador @cadwego
One year into a marathon pretendathon that stay at home moms are a typical family type. And that childcare isn't real work with important consequences.
Angie Schmitt
The GOP gave casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson a $670,000,000 tax cut (yes that says six hundred seventy million dollars). But we need to means-test $2000 pandemic relief checks because some people who get them might not need them? Got it.
Evan Sutton
80% of new vehicle sales are light trucks (including SUVs). It was ~50% as recently as 2015. Obvious implications for traffic safety (pedestrian deaths) but says something more about the state of US psyche. It’s not like everyone is hauling lots of things or people. #ArmsRace
David M. Levinson @trnsprtst
Look, this whole Marjorie Taylor Greene situation bores me. This is who Republicans have been the entire time, and it’s not interesting or disturbing that it manifested in her. But as long as we keep pretending the GOP has to “make a choice,” we can forget that they already did.
@GothamGirlBlue
We’re watching the Republican Party split into two factions:
1. White nationalists
2. White nationalists with merch.
Michael Harriot
#SomethingBeautiful - Japan Archive - Kyoto shibainu cookie window display, October 2019:
Tony Cava
The most votes in Republican presidential election history were earned by a racist birther who was openly ignorant on every issue under the sun. They're not going back.
Oliver Willis
really can't overstate the ubiquity of execution/hanging/violence in memes and rhetoric among the right-wing folks who are Extremely Online. Just a central trope everywhere you look.
Chris Hayes
CNN and MSNBC are covering the tribute to a Capitol Police officer who was murdered in the line of duty and who lies in honor at the Capitol tonight, but Fox News is busy sneering at Fauci.
Kevin M. Kruse
Really need NYC pols to figure out that in NYC transportation, the "choices" are not morally equivalent: someone else's choice to drive = dead cyclists and pedestrians, delayed transit riders, toxins in lungs, crushing congestion, honking, violence.
@citycyclops
It’s funny how much I get called a beta male soy boy by people who need a gun to feel like a man.
David Hogg
AOC isn't going to read your comments minimizing her trauma and saying she's looking for attention. But all of the people in your life who have experienced trauma and want to know who around them is "safe" and reliable sure will!
Alyssa Leader @alittleleader
Why isn't Johnson and Johnson just "Johnson"? It's not the Mayo, Mayo and Mayo Clinic.
Chris Steller
Paraphrasing David Graeber, there are no markets without states and no states without markets. If you want to get rid of one, you have to get rid of the other.
Isabel Rodríguez @ecomentario
No Pipeline Anywhere Ever | Landon Sheely | 2016:
Cory Doctorow
When you hear the phrase "free market," you probably think of "a market that is free from regulation" but that's the opposite of the phrase's original meaning! Adam Smith used the term to describe a market that was free from "economic rents" - money earned by owning things, rather than doing things. Smith recognized that markets attract parasites - "rentiers" - who seek to drain wealth by "investing" rather than building and doing. Which meant that, in the absence of muscular state intervention, markets would become less and less free - more and more dependent on the whims of rentiers who used money to breed money by creating toll-barriers between parts of the productive economy.
Cory Doctorow
A study has found that the job with the highest mortality rate from COVID-19 is line cook. All the arguments about re-opening indoor or outdoor dining should take this into account.
Jane McGonigal @avantgame
So - remind me again? If the groundhog is wearing a mask it’s 12 more months of plague and if not it’s a Republican Congressional Representative and it’s still 12 more months of plague?
@StPaulBikeScum (on February 2, obviously)
We lost nearly a year of our lives. We've been living a Groundhog Day existence for eleven months now. Largely because the former president was a malevolent sociopath.
@tomtomorrow
who made this:
Nicky Woolf
Be honest about the true ownership cost of cars. A well-maintained vehicle can last for 20 years. Insurance gets cheaper. Depreciation disappears. At some point it's only about 3 grand/year unless you enjoy a major mechanical failure. However, during the first years you pay through the nose while your car's resale value plummets. And your bill for for roads, heath insurance (car pollution makes people very sick), car storage, terrible communities and a climate crisis will dog you forever.
Mary Morse Marti
Imagine being a journalist who has ascended to the heights of political coverage and is now reporting from the White House press room. And caring about process and personalities, rather than the way that the policies being promulgated shape American lives.
David M. Perry @Lollardfish
As long as people see a financial incentive to being cruel and racist and misogynistic and fascistic and in destroying shared society they’re going to take it and it’s going to continue to cost us lives and valuable, precious time.
Jared Yates Sexton
Arguments that attempt to defend the filibuster on the merits sound dumber and dumber to me. It's difficult for me to believe they're offered in good faith. I like to approach arguments for the filibuster this way: imagine we *didn't* have it and someone was trying to persuade you to implement it. "You're passing too much legislation! The majority keeps getting what it wants! The interests of small states are being trampled!"
David Roberts @drvolts
If you are a governmental body and require people to print out a pdf, sign in, and then scan it back, you are creating barriers to participation. Make the form e-signable, at the very least!
Amity Foster
Jon Adams @citycyclops
Seems to me lots of people, mostly but not exclusively conservatives, mistake pluralism for moral relativism.
David Roberts @drvolts
The fact that Taylor Greene *also* inherited a building construction business from her dad is just too perfect.
Chris Hayes
A global survey of oil and gas transmission pipelines found $1 trillion-with-a-T in stranded-asset risk. The US is leading the world in pipeline capacity expansion, and thus leading the world in stranded-asset risk.
David Roberts @drvolts
By 2040, 30% of the population will elect 70% of the Senate! Can our current system survive this huge population shift? Should it? Can it still pretend to be democratic?
Alan Mills @alan_uplc
Political reporters need to be rebranded as government reporters, covering problems and who's trying to solve them instead of which party is winning today's messaging war.
Dan Froomkin/PressWatchers.org @froomkin
Seems like a good day for a reminder that in any other year, hundreds of giddy children from across Washington, DC would be sledding at the Capitol building all day today. They can't because the grounds are closed to the public following a domestic terror attack:
Elliot Williams
No comments:
Post a Comment