I see that I haven't yet referred to April as the cruelest month in any of my Twitter summaries. Well, it's finally time. We've been below average temperature for about 28 days, with winds breaking records on many of those days. It has rained a fair amount (which is generally good after last year's drought, but still). And that's not even talking about the news.
This month had way too much about Elon Musk and Twitter itself. There were IPCC reports and Earth Day. The Right carried on with book banning, teacher suppression, and legalized oppression of trans (and LGBT+ generally) people, all part of their organized backlash. The Russian war on Ukraine and covid continued. And not enough is being done to shore up democracy.
As always, everything below the line is quoted from the Twitter account that is attributed.
_________
These May flowers better be fucking fantastic.
Andrea Mokros
It's like James Fallows is always saying: US news consumers are interested in *governance* — what governmentt is actually doing to make lives better — but White House journos focus almost entirely on *politics* — who's up, who's down. The White House Correspondents Dinner seems like a celebration of that, which, yuck.
David Roberts @drvolts
Based on her pose, imagine if she had to live with subtraction. Or, horror of horrors, long division:
David Cay Johnston
Is it just me or is giving a shit about people considered far left now?
CHOOSY @CH005Y
On Monday, Philip Bump reported that Fox anchor Sean Hannity asked Trump's then-chief of staff Mark Meadows for instructions on Election Day 2020 and dutifully replied "Yes sir On it" after receiving them.
Matthew Sheffield (from April 29...the entire thread!)
Everyone needs to stop staying "we still have time" on the climate crisis. It's absolutely not too late to act, but it is ALSO true that we are out of time. We are already deep in the crisis. Now what we're fighting for is to stop it from getting too much worse. #EndFossilFuels
Peter Kalmus @ClimateHuman
The fact that right-wingers are attacking suicide hotlines for "talking to kids without their parents' knowledge" just goes to show that the biggest threat to LGBTQ+ kids isn't any of the groups being painted as "groomers." It's parents.
@infinite_scream
“Lack of choice is mistaken for demand.” Indeed:
Robin Richardson @CanadaRobin
Republicans
Party of censorship
Party of denying people rights
Party of punching down
Paul Thomas @plthomasEdD
0% of students in my discussion sections had ever heard of Abu Ghraib, for those of you wondering about public memory of such things.
Gary Alexander
In 90% of America it is easier to widen 10 miles of freeway than it is to build 1 mile of protected bikeway. Discuss.
Warren J. Wells
“The climate crisis is not at bottom a beef between two camps of people. It’s a beef between human beings and physics. And since physics is implacable, we would be well-advised to meet its dictates.”
Bill McKibben
I beat cancer. If they suddenly find a cure for cancer now, I’m gonna be so mad! This tweet is about student loans.
Aaron Fullerton
This blows my mind. The patience and creativity at work to make that little yellow plant turn into basically a whole greengrocers is amazing. I'm glad it was never entrusted to me to continue the development of the cauliflower:
Pete Wharmby @commaficionado
Billionaires be like “the extreme far left is taking over” when the “extreme far left” in the US is “medicine shouldn’t bankrupt you,” “wages should cover rent,” and “maybe it’s bad that Wall St companies profit off mass surveillance, manufactured housing crises, and caging people”
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Whenever drivers complain about cyclists in Minneapolis, ask them the last time a cyclist killed someone vs the last time a driver killed someone. We just passed the 50th anniversary of the last time a cyclist killed someone.
Ed Kohler
In a world of Elon Musk, be a Dolly Parton:
We Will Not Go Back @ItsMeLynnisse
"Raise the minimum wage? But how will my Big Macs stay cheap?" In 2009, the price of a Big Mac in the United States was $3.58. Today, a Big Mac costs $5.81—a 62.29% increase.
Federal minimum wage in 2009? $7.25.
Federal minimum wage in 2022? $7.25.
Kalina Newman
You know what slows buses down? CARS and the infrastructure needed to support them.
Amity Foster
If enforcing gender norms requires a constant state of surveillance and censorship then they probably aren't as biological or innate as you think they are
Gillian Branstetter
Fascinating that the people so concerned about Twitter's "public square" (owned by a for-profit, private company, not at all a public square) generally grouse about the taxes needed to support the local library.
Anne Ward
Hundreds of billions in PPP loans have been forgiven, including for big corporations. Republicans had NO issue. But the moment it seems like President Biden might forgive some student loans to help younger Americans and our economy, Republicans are screaming about “handouts.”
No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen
more than 1 in 10 people on the planet are living through a heat wave made stronger and more likely by climate change and i can only find three news articles that mention fossil fuels
Ajit Niranjan
You know how in the corporate media Earth breakdown is just one story competing against thousands of other stories, and usually not very well? This is what media failure looks like.
Peter Kalmus @ClimateHuman
Trans people are not a threat to your kids. Transphobes, who want some kind of genital inspections to be mandatory for participation in children's sports, are a threat to your children.
@infinite_scream
Like, I’ve been receiving mob harassment and worse from angry men ever since I began writing about feminism. So has every other woman and non-binary person I know who writes about politics. This has NEVER been treated seriously as a free speech issue.
Laurie Penny @PennyRed
Is it conceivable that Tesla’s stock value might be inflated?
Josh Marshall
Someone on this very website once pointed out that the cartoon image of ghosts were inspired by bodies wrapped in death shrouds and Caspar never looked quite the same to me again
Tom Tomorrow
I think we'll look back on the last decade as a time when social media gave previously marginalized groups the ability to speak directly to elites and, as a result, elites lost their minds.
Michael Hobbes @RottenInDenmark
For perspective, if you somehow made $200,000 every single DAY from Columbus' landing in 1492 until now, you still wouldn't have the $44 billion to buy Twitter. It's pretty gross.
Jesse Case
People really in particular love to make Black people "activists" whether we want to be or not and that's because they can't envision a world where Black struggle isn't the narrative we are forced to carry due to white supremacy.
Aja Barber
been thinking about this one a lot lately:
Tommy Siegel
The NSA found out that Reality Winner leaked documents about Russia meddling in U.S. elections on behalf of Donald Trump on 5-30-17. Reality Winner was arrested on 6-3 and convicted on 8-23. We found out Trump stole 15 boxes of classified docs on 2-7 and he still walks free.
Secret Agent Number Six @DesignationSix
Gendered language almost always involves a diminution of western culture's female traits and I hate it. When I fix your planet do not call me a shero.
Mary Morse Marti
The amount Elon Musk just paid for Twitter ($44 billion) is nearly equal to Biden’s proposed climate budget ($44.9 billion), in case anyone's wondering how seriously we’re taking the climate crisis
Stephen Semler
If Elon Musk one day takes all the men who have defended him online to a ballgame and calls them sport, I will take back my claim that they did it for nothing.
Anand Giridharadas
Cats are hilarious cause one minute, they really be thinking they're apex predators, and the next they wanna get in your lap like a baby
Mary Annaïse Heglar
one thing about the Amazon Labor Union is that, while they’re undertaking a huge struggle with immensely high stakes, they’re also having a great time and love one another. people may underrate the importance of that but they shouldn’t
Alex Press
Hot take: The next 3-5 years are going to be enormously important for organizing on climate and all the urgent justice issues we face. Communities exist on Twitter that have taken years to form. We don't have time to move to a different platform.
Eric Holthaus
Was wearing a mask outside pumping gas and a woman about my age looked at me with disgust and said ‘You don’t need to wear masks anymore, especially outside.”
To which I replied “It’s part of my bail conditions.”
She left. Quickly.
Cindy Wilinski @crwequine
Libelloides macaronius. (Photo: Sebaho):
Weird Animals
Elon Musk is trying to buy the conversation.
Peter Thiel is trying to buy a dictatorship.
Jeff Bezos is trying to buy the marketplace.
Mark Zuckerberg is trying to buy our minds.
Taxing the rich isn't just about helping the poor. It's about stopping them from owning everything.
David Atkins
The deadly heat this week in India and Pakistan should dominate the news everywhere. It's a horrifying event in its own right — and a glimpse of what is likely to become routine.
George Monbiot
elon musk is an inventor. he invented a new definition of the word inventor which is guy that buys things and says he invented them
@Eve6
Can Elon Musk buy and destroy Fox News instead?
Jack Cocchiarella
Elon Musk's absolute commitment to making himself universally reviled is the only impressive thing about him.
Rebecca Orchant @SMcPickles
Twitter's cultural cachet is partly purchased by the fact that non-partisan journalists, scholars, and writers treat it as a viable arena to dedicate their attention. Without them, this place becomes something more like Reddit or Parler.
Joseph N. Cohen
IM SORRY BUT AGEISM IS LIKE A 50 YEAR OLD WOMAN WONT BE HIRED FOR A FRONT DESK POSITION OVER A 20 SOMETHING NOT AN 88 YEAR OLD WANTING TO MAKE LAWS LIKE A FICTITIOUS DEMENTED PRINCE
Liz Harvey
It’s wild how Covid has killed a million people in this country, and our government and the rich used it to facilitate the greatest upward transfer of wealth in history, and instead of being furious about that people are angry at masks.
@JoshuaPotash
Hill I will die on: Places like CalState and CUNY are more important educational institutions than Stanford and Harvard, and I wish media coverage of higher ed would even slightly reflect this.
Iian Smythe
School integration is easily one of the most mistaught aspects of Black history. Not just decades of activism that preceded Brown v. Board—but the racist aftermath with respect to decimating the Black teaching corps and all-Black school climates that loved on/uplifted Black kids.
melinda d. anderson @mdawriter
I learnt quite recently that magnolias are pollinated by beetles and not
bees because they evolved before bees. The number of gems that nature
has in store for us to discover is amazing:
Ash Jogalekar @curiouswavefn
Here we are in Lima, Ohio, continuing the proud American tradition of naming towns after international cities but not preserving the pronunciation.
@ianrbuck
The real badness of [Jonathan Haidt's Atlantic article on the effect of social media] is how it facilitates ignorance of the real causes of democratic rot. The phrase “social media” appears 45 times. “Facebook” appears 20 times. In contrast, “Republican” appears 8 times, “Democrat/Democratic” 4 times. “Racist” or “racism” 4 times. “Fox News” appears once. Once! But only in passing, in the “of course there were bad things before social media” section, and only in reference to what Fox News did in the 1990s, nothing about e.g. Tucker Carlson’s extremely contemporary mainstreaming of white nationalism.
Neil Stenhouse
I wonder a bit about the state of our society when self-immolation as a tragic and terrifying ultimate act of protest has almost entirely lost its power. In the last few years, there have been several cases in the US and they barely receive a mention. I’m glad that we don’t want to glamorize or glorify suicide. At the same time, what does it say when we can simply ignore the issues people are willing to die for?
@EmilyGorcenski
100% of people who are now suddenly asking you why you're still masked up are white, even if the person *being* asked is also white. this is white culture in its base form: mockingly disrespectful of other people's physical and metaphorical boundaries, regardless of their ethnicity
@Needle_of_Arya
Call student debt what it is — a poverty tax.
The Debt Collective @StrikeDebt
Today, I salute the yellow crayons. Because they offer a radiant splash of sunshine—in spite of petulant weather conditions:
Dr. SunWolf @WordWhispers
The key to understanding the American right is that, since the 1930s, they have consistently understood communism, socialism, and liberalism to be basically the same thing.
@DavidAstinWalsh
Watch out for "climate moderates" — they'll get us all killed. We're out of time for incremental solutions we need to switch to emergency mode
Peter Kalmus @ClimateHuman
Local unions, often independent from ossified national ones, may finally be ending the long Reagan presidency.
Anand Giridharadas
Randomized control trial of 2,500 men in Chicago finds MASSIVE reductions in gun violence produced by community-based violence prevention program. Safety measurably improved for participants and the community. The whole program cost only 1% of what the city spends on policing.
Samuel Sinyangwe
Investing in violence prevention works! University of Chicago study of Chicago-based anti-violence program shows there are ways to tamp down violence among members of the city’s most endangered populations w/o arresting them or throwing them in jail.
Voting Mom, JD
As long as journalism is treated purely as a market product, its values and standards will decline and misinformation will flourish, because *consumers want misinformation* and markets exist to meet consumer demands.... We "want" sober, accurate journalism, politicians who respect one another and debate in good faith, and healthy social trust. We also "want" to click on that wicked twitter burn that we haven't verified.... we all get how this applies to individuals — there's endless literature on how to bulk up/support your executive function, to better serve your long-term goals. We understand *discipline* as important to personal success. But it's equally true collectively, socially. We deploy institutions, practices, and norms to bulk up our collective [executive function], because we also understand (or used to) that *collective discipline* is required for long-term collective success. (Side note: this is precisely why Adam Smith, the vaunted saint of market theory, was insistent that market capitalism could only work in the context of a culture with strong moral norms and governing institutions. Otherwise it's self-destructive bacchanal.) ...back to journalism. It turns out that what consumers want, in the [the first] sense, is outrage and provocation and identity reinforcement — not accuracy or perspective. Insofar as journalism is a capitalist competition for attention, that's what will win in the end. Of course, in the [other] sense, consumers also want accuracy and perspective! But getting those requires some executive function.... Here's the problem, though: unrestrained capitalism provides no means to assert that executive function. If market logic is the only logic, any outlet that attempts to impose executive function will lose eyeballs to a competitor that happily serves up bullshit outrage. Journalism needs some collective executive function. Capitalism is hostile to collective (and individual!) executive function. So it must be located outside of capitalism.
David Roberts @drvolts (the original thread is much longer)
Anyone whose definition of "neighborhood character" is "less change, fewer people and higher property values, enforced thru zoning" is not looking for good governance — they're treating the city as an HOA with armed police. No part of that deserves respect, much less deference.
Alex Steffen
It’s Earth Day, and yes, you can actually do something to protect the planet from climate change. Embracing a plant-rich diet could help. Plant proteins, even if processed into imitation burgers, have a much smaller climate, water, and land impact than animal-based meat:
Vox
We don’t need Earth Day we need global Earth Rebellion
Peter Kalmus @ClimateHuman
Just so we're clear.. once abortion is banned, they're gonna expand the definition of abortion.... yall know that right
Sophia @fairylilymyth
The Internet plus Boomer combination hasn’t worked out, guys.
Joe Kearns
hard not to wake up feeling sick basically every morning now. the goalposts are moving so quickly on acceptance of trans people. americans who by and large would have had a “who cares” attitude just 5 years ago are getting radicalized so so fast. very scary moment we are in
largest rodent @capybaroness
As a reminder, the only thing Disney said is that they were going to cease giving money to politicians who support homophobic laws. Florida's lt governor said Disney's special district would be restored if they reverse course. Is there a reason we're not calling this extortion?
Timothy Burke @bubbaprog
Children today are living through global war, pandemic, and a climate crisis. Yet instead of attending to their unique mental and academic needs learning needs, politicians have resorted to banning math textbooks and cutting funding from vulnerable districts.
@SelenaCarrion
South Korea deaths from recent omicron wave are trending down. Yes it took a toll. But the lives the saved in the first two years stay saved. What they accomplished cannot be taken away:
Vincent Rajkumar
Imagine that Donald Trump had murdered someone on 5th Avenue (as he advertised) and we all saw it. Then the media just reported on Trump as a normal politician, rather than a known murderer. That is where we are now. Donald Trump tried to stage a coup to remain in power after he lost an election. We all saw it, yet the media acts like he is just a normal politician.
Dean Baker
Minnesota has warmed by 3 degrees Fahrenheit since 1895, with winters warming much faster than summers, according to state environmental regulators. The state is also becoming much wetter and more flood-prone.
Star Tribune
Musk's twitter bid is the perfect encapsulation of the right's disingenuous arguments about free speech. Parler and Gab were supposedly free of the Woke Mob but failed. Why? MAGA doesn't care about speech they want access to different kinds of people they can harass
Dr. Jason Johnson
If you hate the idea of having to wear a mask on an airplane against your will, wait until you hear about having to carry an unwanted pregnancy inside your body on an airplane against your will.
Aubrey Hirsch
What is Nextdoor but the digital version of the White Citizens’ Council?
Lisa Coatlicue
It's amazing how many people think that "freedom" consists of designating a "pissing end" and a "non-pissing end" in a public pool, then inviting those of us who are piss-averse to swim in the latter.
Cory Doctorow
Liberals are losing the education battle because they haven’t yet grasped what it’s over. “This is an attack on public education itself!” they cry, as if this will shame fascists. And fascists simply nod and say “Yes, yes it is.”
Jeff Sharlet
That's the undertone of this student loan conversation, really: "bunch of ingrates." There's an unreasonable expectation here in the United States that anyone from the margins who is "doing well" or at least not actively suffering (that you know of) should be "grateful." This expectation of gratitude invalidates the hard work and sacrifice that got us here.
Ebony Elizabeth Thomas @Ebonyteach
I’m excited to submit my art to the next @MN_350 transit justice zine — the bi pride electric bus from St. Paul:
Mitra Jalali
For decades, the right complained about "bias" in journalism. Then they got the chance to establish their very own news network, and they established ... Fox. You'd think that would have settled it! Clearly they were not seeking, and did not value, straight, unbiased news! They whine about unfair news and then establish Fox. They whine about free speech, but any time they get control (see any red state or religious school), they suppress dissent. They whine about "judicial activism" and nominate hyper-ideologues who legislate through shadow dockets. They invoke neutral procedural principles as a way of tying their opponents — who really DO give a shit about principle -- in knots. It's gaslighting. In practice, they heed only one principle: that which serves the conservative tribe is good; that which doesn't is bad.
David Roberts @drvolts
new paper on the Earned Income Tax Credit finds that an additional $1k of after-tax income decreases instances of domestic violence by nearly 10%, severity by 21%
kalena thomhave
my sincere hope is for everyone complaining about Joe Biden not fixing all their problems to find some Senate campaigns to work on. if you want Joe Biden to fix your problems, give him a U.S. Senate who will help him.
Florida Chris @chrislongview
Indigenous people have the highest crude COVID-19 mortality rates nationwide. The CDC notes that our deaths are often undercounted and the latest research suggests our true mortality rate could be 34% higher. On paper, 1 in 224 Indigenous people in the U.S. have died from COVID.
CeeJay Yellow Hawk @AdriftAlchemist
It’s strange and sad to already know what my last tweet on this platform will say, no matter what happens between now and then. I’m sorry I didn’t accomplish more.
Brent Toderian
Just a friendly reminder that modesty, in the Bible, is almost exclusively in reference to flaunting wealth. Even when clothes are mentioned, contextually it is still about flaunting wealth. The Western church has sexualized the Biblical principle of modesty.
Kyle J. Howard (historical theologian)
"freedom" that is aggressively antithetical to any idea of community or what you might owe to another person is not "freedom." it's a toddler who needs to be reprimanded. The fact that the majority of this country has always believed "freedom" to mean "I get to do whatever I wish to someone with less power than me"
Kaitlyn Greenidge @surlybassey
Turns out the American dream is actually just “take up a lot of space”
@urbaniconoclasm
“It feels like we’re on a hamster wheel going nowhere. We’re disregarded in all of the big decisions, we’re not respected as professionals in our field, we’re micromanaged all the time—we just want to teach.”
Bruce Weaver @zimafl
Removing our shoes as a security measure while turning the planes into CovidAir™️ is a perfect encapsulation of American decline.
@BreeNewsome
“We only elected 50 democrats in the senate, and we still can’t pass progressive legislation — i’m not voting for democrats anymore”
and
“we only built a couple new apartment buildings and rents are still rising — we must stop building housing”
are the two most frustrating takes
@sam_d_1995
THE ROLE OF GOVERNMENT as explained by NextDoor
1. It's OUTRAGEOUS that I have to ask for PERMISSION and PAY to cut down a tree on my own property! OVERREACH!!!
2. It's OUTRAGEOUS that they're letting that developer cut down trees to build rat cage apartments! DO YOUR JOB!!!
Next door in Silicon Valley
Do you know how bad you have to be at science to think that a mask does not block a virus but does block oxygen and carbon dioxide?
T. Ryan Gregory
Such kindness, such decency. Such humanity:
@enrich1212
My latest. "Our transportation system is an inequality generator, sucking up dollars from lower- and middle-income families, small businesses and local communities and spraying them at not just big oil but also big banks, big insurance and big auto."
Anne Lutz Fernandez
Can we (by which I mostly mean journalists) stop using the term "culture wars" in reference to attacks on human rights? The sides here aren't "cultures." They are people who have fundamental rights vs. people who are attempting to block access to those rights.
Emily Willingham
"Free speech," like a "free market," is impossible — not just empirically impossible but *conceptually* impossible. Shared rules, shared restraints, make it possible for everyone to speak. Without them, the powerful dominate and less powerful have no freedom at all. The illusion of absolute freedom — in markets or the "marketplace of ideas" — only makes sense to those in a position of cultural power. After all, if all shared rules and restraints were removed, *they* would be fine. They would still have all the speech they wanted. So the debate about "free speech" is always, inherently, a red herring. It's not an actual position. In reality, everyone is implicitly or explicitly arguing about *where to put the rules and constraints* — where to draw the lines, what to allow and what to prohibit.
David Roberts @drvolts
What I find most remarkable about this is that the other causes of death have mild variations but mostly stay stable. So for all the people who try to compare COVID to X cause, it’s like, ok but aggregate risk of death by other causes doesn’t surge wildly.
@brooketorious
Pretty remarkable graphic. Aside from a brief period last summer, COVID has been one of the top three causes of death for Americans since March of 2020:
Michael Hobbes @RottenInDenmark
Opinion | If Jesus had been armed, the crucifixion could have been avoided.
New York Times Pitchbot @DougJBalloon
A strong majority of Americans favor strengthening discussions of race and sexuality in schools. Editors are so afraid of the murderous agenda of the minority view that they only allow their headlines to say opinions are “divided.”
anildash (linking an AP story with a poll)
Effective moderation is not inherently in conflict with free speech. It is required for people to feel free to speak. Anyone who doesn't get this has a high school stoner level grasp of societal issues and has never spent 5 min working on trust and safety.
Samidh
Elon Musk fired pro-union Tesla workers and was disciplined by the NLRB for violating workers’ right to organize. He silences workers in his factory every day, but we’re sure he’d be a champion for free speech if he owned Twitter.
More Perfect Union
at face value, Penguin Random House is an absolutely insane name for a company that sells anything
Michael Wheaton @wheaton3000
More NYC households own a bike than a car, yet bike lanes make up less than 1% of our street space. Millions rely on bus service, yet we dedicate less than 1% of our streets to buses. 96% of New Yorkers walk to and from transit, yet sidewalks make up just 22.7% of our streets.
Transportation Alternatives
Inequity! PARKED cars take up 24.6% of NYC’s streets. More homes have bicycles than cars, but, bike spaces is less than 1% of street space! Similar inequity in most non-European cities. This inequity must stop, now. Build citywide SAFE bike lanes
Penalosa_G
using woke as a pejorative has become such a useful identifier for stupid people I should avoid
Karl Bode
Friends, Musk/Twitter headlines are all variants of ‘what will Elon do?’ It’s a signal of how lost we are. We obsess over one man and his whims because we don’t yet have the democratic rule of law needed to govern our information spaces. Without law power is dangerous.
Shoshana Zuboff
What if — instead of misery and stress — our transportation networks could actually bring us joy?
#Utrecht:
Melissa and Chris Bruntlett @modacitylife
Shouldn't over 1,000 scientists risking arrest to save the planet be a bigger news story than Elon Musk trying to buy Twitter?
Peter Kalmus @ClimateHuman
I vividly remember the night Reagan won election in 1980. We were standing outside a bar on 106th Street and Broadway trying to take in the bizarre reality that a second rate movie actor had been elected president. We had no idea it would be such a turning point in US history. I'm pretty sure that today, 42 years later, we still do not realize just how much damage was unleashed by the election of Reagan--economically, socially, and politically. In fact, I'm pretty sure the negative consequences are still compounding and cascading.
David Rothkopf
In San Diego, city officials are taking bikes away from unhoused people and destroying them. Imagining any other mode of transport being demolished like this.
Peter Flax
If Elon Musk can afford to buy Twitter, he can afford to pay his fair share in taxes on his wealth gains every year, not just when he decides he feels like it.
Americans For Tax Fairness
I dunno. It seems obvious to me that if Trump and the Republicans can do what they did for 4 years and then have a plausible chance of *being elected to do it again*, something very basic is broken.
David Roberts @drvolts
The rich need to start paying big-time to stop the Earth breakdown that they primarily have caused
Peter Kalmus @ClimateHuman
The anti-abortion crowd simply believes that there is nothing wrong with trying to legislate morality even when their scientific "facts" are alternative facts AND the mother's life is in danger. They believe that outdated ways of viewing reality through nothing but some pious, patriarchal traditional "Christian" lens is what they are called to do, perhaps by God "himself"
Nefarious Secularist @Schoollluminati
There is no conversation to be had about public safety or law and order until we address how police are murdering people at a rate that rivals mass shootings. How is the cop armed with a taser, a gun, a backup unit, a camera, a walkie-talkie and the entire state apparatus more afraid than the unarmed Black individual who doesn’t even know why they are being stopped or yelled at by a cop?
@BreeNewsome
While many experts argue that cities are more energy-efficient than suburban or rural communities, our latest poll finds that most Americans believe the opposite. 75% of Americans believe it's better for the environment if houses are built farther apart:
YouGov America
"I'll change when everyone else does" doesn't cut it anymore. In the past two years we've learned how to forego any semblance of normalcy to protect each other's health. We've learned how to be anti-racist to protect Black lives. We can also learn to protect the future.
Eric Holthaus
They might have spotted all the red flags but they were too busy pretending they don’t see color.
@AaronSundance
An important statement, on the windows of the Institute for the Future, to bear in mind during these days of the Extinction Rebellion UK:
Rob Hopkins
Local control is often framed as democratic but Jerusalem Demsas makes a great point: requiring some working class mom to understand what minimum lot sizes is at a 7pm meeting isn't democratic at all.
Darrell Owens @IDoTheThinking
The disconnect between our individual responsibility as agents of change
in an interconnected society rife with inequality and socialized harm
and... sheer comfort and joy during an era of chaos has probably never
been higher. This is what climate dystopia feels like.
Eric Holthaus
Calling pedestrians (etc) "vulnerable road users" is like calling songbirds "cat food": sometimes accurate, but always misleading.
Peter Norton
W.E.B. Du Bois said, “We should measure the prosperity of a nation not by the number of millionaires but by the absence of poverty, the prevalence of health, the efficiency of the public schools, and the number of people who can and do read worthwhile books.” I love this man.
tamara k. nopper
If the NYPD were an army, it would be one of the largest in the world. It has offices in 11 foreign cities. It has six submarine drones. If it can't stop an attack in its own city's subway system, it's not because of a lack of funding.
Gravel Institute
Good morning. This is your daily reminder that urban highways don’t work. Never have, never will.
Alex Burns
For the $4.1 billion in subsidies that cities spent on Amazon facilities over the last 10 years, we could have built 672 new locally owned grocery stores. These stores could have been sited in underserved rural and urban communities, and linked to local farms and food producers.
Stacy Mitchell
I love that billionaire Howard Schultz is roving around the country, weeping and raging because some 25 year olds would like to have slightly less shitty lives.
Adrian @blagojevism
Just so we’re clear, Republican-controlled states aren’t just spontaneously passing the same bills capitalizing on conspiracy theories. It’s an orchestrated campaign by think tanks funded by incredibly wealthy people who want to destroy public education and further their agenda.
Jared Yates Sexton
The shift from blaming teen pregnancy on the girls to blaming it on the people trying to prevent it has been dizzying in its total stupidity. Meanwhile the grown men preying on teens are being allowed free reign with no barriers. Some states want to bring back child brides
Mikki Kendall @Karnythia
Your periodic reminder that this was the headline a week ago today but
you may not have read it because an actor slapped another actor at an
awards show:
Eric Holthaus
If plastics was a country, it would be the 5th largest emitter of greenhouse gasses. Fossil fuels that are made into plastic account for 14% of oil use. Continuing production means we are increasing global heat to exceed 1.5°c limit.
Joyce Gwokyalya
Is a book *really* that amazing if someone has to force you to read it, go through it with you to tell you how awesome it is, and then you have to take a test regurgitating those answers back to them to “prove” you now understand it’s meaningfulness?
Rachel Miller @MillerUnschool
The literal future of humanity, page 3 today, out of the paper tomorrow. The biggest media failure in history. #ClimateCrisis #ClimateEmergency
Brent Toderian
The "economy" is our material relationship with each other and with the rest of the living world. We have to decide whether we want that relationship to be based on extraction and exploitation, or on reciprocity and care.
Jason Hickel
When we are all dead, killed by jellyfish who got good and sick of our shit, all that will remain is a massive pit full of gifts-that-have-words-on-them. It will tell the story of who we were — a race that extinguished itself for a ritual exchange of unwanted gifts.
Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd
Remember: capitalism is working perfectly: You're supposed to be exhausted and worried you'll lose your income and die penniless. It makes it easier to treat you like shit and pay you less. If you're worrying about the bills, you're not focusing on tearing down this unfair system.
TheLuckyHeron
To all of the women coming to my office understandably enraged that nobody told them their vaginas could fall out from having babies: I am so sorry that for so long the patriarchy was scared of what you would do with that information.
Jocelyn J. Fitzgerald MD
It is some very effective marketing that has convinced so many of us that getting off of fossil fuels is a sacrifice as opposed to a money-saving, peace-promoting, water-protecting, health-improving, technological leap forward.
Dr. Elizabeth Sawin
Incredible:
James Jackson @derJamesJackson
“If you or anyone you know needs assistance self-managing a miscarriage or abortion, please call the Miscarriage + Abortion Hotline at (833) 246-2632 for confidential medical support or the Repro Legal Helpline at (844) 868-2812 for confidential legal information and advice.”
Renee Bracey Sherman
"there can be no livable future in a police state. The fact that there are funds for police riot gear, but not for clean energy is a clear choice, and one we can scarcely afford anymore." — @MaryHeglar for Real Hot Take
Adam Powers
Anyway what I mean to say is this is all fucked up. Insurance should cover abortion and miscarriage the same way it covers pregnancy but of course, this country can’t support women making their own choices about their own bodies unless it results in a baby.
Lucy Huber @clhubes
Amazon: We love our workers!
Also Amazon: don’t talk about unions, fairness, diversity, or bathrooms.
Rachel O’Leary Carmona
The map details plans for expansion that the New York Subway had in 1920. Everything in red was planned to be built in the next twenty-five years (by 1945)! The advent of the automobile brought it to a halt. It makes my heart hurt!
Erik Bottcher
As a woman, I feel there are only two medical experiences
"jesus you're dying, why didn't you come in sooner"
and
"why are you wasting our time with this?"
for the same symptoms
Summer Brennan
Just learned that if you get officially diagnosed for your autism they can deny you any surgeries they want, even live saving ones, on the basis of whether you’re “mentally capable” enough. And now knowing that, I don’t wanna hear shit from people against self diagnosing
@ajthedonut
It’s extraordinary how many people defend widespread automobile dependence by arguing that it benefits poor people, seniors, children, and people with disabilities - the groups who are least likely to have the option of owning/driving automobiles.
Rik Adamski
"All I maintain is that on this earth there are pestilences and there are victims, and it's up to us, so far as possible, not to join forces with the pestilences. That may sound simple to the point of childishness; I can't judge if it's simple, but I know it's true." —Camus, 1948.
modschow
@AmyRuff16
Perhaps the reason so many people don't feel like laws or expectations of basic decency apply to the rich is because our laws and expectations of basic decency don't apply to the rich.
BlueCerealEducation
Seems clear that the trump family won’t stop doing election crimes until someone holds them legally responsible
Molly Jong-Fast
“In 2020, per capita murder rates were 40% higher in states won by Donald Trump than those won by Joe Biden according to a report from Third Way, a Washington think tank." @gilduran76 writes on GOP tough on crime myth
Jim Kessler @ThirdWayKessler
Every Republican or Alt-Righter whatever making groomer insults should have their harddrives checked by law enforcement immediately because there's a 100% chance they're projecting and every time it comes out.
Darrell Owens @IDoTheThinking
Municipal elected officials should have to get around as a household without the use of a car in their city for at least two work weeks out of every year. Has anyone ever officially tried to organize an annual national or global 2-week “Leaders Go CarFree” Event where all municipal elected leaders, chief engineers, chief city planners, provincial/state leaders etc are challenged to simultaneously have their households go car-free?
Brent Toderian
"Pedophile" doesn’t attempt to justify the unequal distribution of status, privileges, or resources. The right doesn’t want to make pedophiles “second class citizens.” It wants to put them to death. It regards their existence as an intolerable threat to society's most vulnerable. If you believe your adversaries are a gang of pedophiles, normal transactional politics is unlikely to proceed. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine how democratic governance can be sustained when a large part of the electorate believes that their enemies should be put to death.
bearistotle @gnrosenberg
Basic IPCC formula, in order:
1) build massive amounts of (now cheap) sun and wind
2) Electrify everything to run on it
3) Conservation and efficiency
4) Research the hell out of the last hard stuff (planes, cement, etc)
5) Stop cutting down trees for cows (or anything else)
Emily Raboteau
People are not poor because they do not know things, but because of systematic violations to their rights and the structural violence of systems that are about enclosures, dispossession, displacement, exploitation, and destruction of peoples and their landscapes. 10/
Isabel Rodríguez @ecomentario
"Individuals can't do anything about climate change" has become the rallying cry of wealthy individuals who can do huge amounts about climate change.
Dr Adam Levy @ClimateAdam
Schools are picking up the tab for poverty, addiction, violence, trauma, and abuse, etc. while also having to meet demands for educational achievement. Is it any wonder then so-called "failing schools" fall in line with zip code and household wealth? We spend a lot of money on school because we expect it to solve the social ills we refuse to address before they reach the schoolhouse door. What we call "education spending" is disproportionately an entire network of public services for underserved families and kids.
Nick Covington
I don't think most Americans appreciate how much the Supreme Court is going to reorder law and American society in the next 15 months (that is, by the end of the term next year in June). Guns, abortion, affirmative action is just the start.
Rick Hasen
BREAKING: Russian forces have seized control of a television studio,... in New York City:
Roshan Rinaldi
When 2022 happens there is going to be a lot of postgame David Shor style hot takes from moderate whites blaming every person of color from AOC to Will Smith. In reality, if Democrats get beat, it will be because Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema wouldn't let Democrats govern.
Elie Mystal
Elon Musk bought a seat on the Twitter board, Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post, Bill Gates has given over $300 million to media outlets. Actual free speech and democracy are not compatible with this level of wealth.
@JoshuaPotash
[A teacher letting students know that gay people exist is] almost the opposite of grooming. Like [a person who calls that grooming] is mad about young people finding out their sexuality is their own because he thinks sexuality should be imposed on you by people and institutions.
Fake Greek Grill
What would a city-wide plan and zoning look like that truly reflected the fact that we have less than a decade to fundamentally transform the land-use, density, building design, transportation and urban green in our cities to successfully mitigate the worst of the climate crisis?
Brent Toderian
In case you missed it today, as Republicans rapidly become the party of "anyone who disagrees with us is a pedophile," Tennessee Republicans are pushing a bill that would allow child marriage as long as it's a heterosexual one
Laura Bassett
"Estimates of future CO2 emissions from existing fossil fuel infrastructures already exceed remaining cumulative net CO2 emissions in pathways limiting warming to 1.5°C with no or limited overshoot."
David Roberts @drvolts
Gay teacher mentioning his husband at work: Groomer.
Adult man marrying an adolescent girl so he can sexually abuse and control her with impunity: traditional values.
Jill Filipovic
Lovely example of intensification, or gentle density, from Antwerpen, Belgium. HT @michael_diamant:
Jennifer Keesmaat
"Pedestrians are 50% more likely to die if hit by a pickup truck or SUV compared with a car, mostly due to the raised grille of the vehicle, which leads to more injuries to the head, neck, and torso."
Beth Osborne
A powerful point here: One DC Metro line has the same capacity as an 18-lane freeway.
Brandon wants more neighbors @BRuddTweets
The planet has existed for eons. The fossil fuel industry for a little more than a century. Yet, our government treats the fossil fuel industry as the necessity and the planet like a "nice-to-have."
Mary Annaïse Heglar
During WWII the speed limit was 35 mph and you had to present the coupon book and only the attendant could tear out the coupon with your license plate on it. Hard to cheat, you also needed a coupon to buy recap tires. Fines could be $10,000!
@AlwaysThinkHow
I'm getting a case of whiplash from all the hypocrisy and irony flying by me this week. So let me get this straight: 47 Senate Republicans don't want to vote for KBJ because she's supposedly "soft on pedophiles," but the TN GOP wants to legalize marrying adults with children.
@Needle_of_Arya
Watching that Prince video [of him as a child in 1970] made me think about the all the AAVE speaking baby geniuses who are overlooked for not fitting into the “smart” image of this society, and also thankful for those educators who *do* see and nurture them.
Imani Perry
The latest climate report says we have 3 years to avoid climate disaster. Meanwhile Amazon is banning words like "union" and "restroom," and the government is raising police and military budgets. The powerful will police collapse before they prevent it; we have to save ourselves.
@JoshuaPotash
Sweden's Twitter account for COVID stats @COVIDSweden hasn't been updated for a while, so we turn to @OurWorldInData which shows Sweden's staggeringly high death rate per million here: 
@BreezieLT
Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and Justice Amy Coney Barrett were all members of George W. Bush’s legal team to prevent the recount in Florida in 2000 that gave Bush the Electoral College.
Brandon Savage
Today's IPCC report is like a 17 chapter indictment of how incrementalism won't save us.
Alexandria Villaseñor
People want to pretend that stagnant wages and inflation are just naturally occurring phenomenon instead of an active and conscious push to further consolidate wealth by entities who don’t care what the consequences are. We’re moving through the consequences of unfettered wealth consolidation. When there’s this much inequality and hoarding of resources the only thing to do is capture governments and so dominate the economy that radicalization and suffering explode. The rise of authoritarianism is a consequence of wealth consolidation, hoarding of resources, weaponized inequality, and resulting radicalization. Demagogues hoarding the wealth use the prejudices and hatred of the people they’re exploiting to further their own interests.
Jared Yates Sexton
Urban density is what prevents people from sprawling all over the countryside and destroying nature. "The environment" doesn't mean "my front yard."
Noah Smith
“Vladimir Putin’s soldiers never tied *me* up and shot me in the head.” - Tucker Carlson tonight, probably
Natalia Antonova
We're surrounded by decades of failure to take the steps demanded to make an orderly transition possible. Folks assume that if many leaders insist it remains the only option, they must know something we don't. "Quit mistaking open cowardice for a secret plan." –Sarah Kendzior
Alex Steffen
Our design goal should be: make dangerous behavior HARD and safe behavior EASY. This also reduces the need to rely on law enforcement, which saves money AND prevents potentially deadly encounters with police for Black and Brown people. 13/
Smart Growth America
What age is appropriate to come out as Heterosexual?
RazzLi
I never want to hear the word ‘overpopulation’ again. I’m tired of this for decades, ever since I was a child, for people deflecting attention from over-consumption and waste to blame non-white people for being born at all. It’s colonial white supremacist logic and ecofascism.
Farhana Sultana, Ph.D.
Decades ago, our cities traded “public place” for car space. It was an awful trade, a big part of the most consequential mistake we’ve ever made in cities. But it’s not unfixable. We just have to decide to trade it back. That’s the key —ending the excuses, deciding, and then doing.
Brent Toderian
“Climate activists are sometimes depicted as dangerous radicals. But the truly dangerous radicals are the countries that are increasing the production of fossil fuels. Investing in new fossil fuels infrastructure is moral and economic madness." –UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres
Patrick Lee
American streets are all corridors with no living rooms. Imagine building a house that way:
Queen Anne Greenways
Of course, if Trump got back in office there wouldn't be any inflation because he would fire anyone at the Bureau of Labor Statistics who reported inflation. And all the Republicans would say that's just fine. Does anyone think Trump would hesitate to fire people at the Bureau of Labor Statistics who don't give him the numbers he wants?
Dean Baker
When White "Moderates" Stay Home or Vote 3rd Party, Our Government Gets Ceded to the Racist GOP. This Fact Hasn’t Changed in ~60 YEARS. #Evergreen #WhyINeverBerned #VoteStraightTicketD #DontGetFooledAgain
PropaneJane™
I'm increasingly feeling like we are going to need a covert operations wing of the environmental movement like in Ministry For the Future, because people aren't taking this seriously at all.
@Ansible42
See, it’s only Cancel Culture if it comes from the liberal region. Otherwise, it’s only Sparkling Dissent.
Colonel Fairfax @wmsnedden
If you actually care about child victims of sexual abuse, one of the worst things you can do is turn very serious words like “pedophile” and “groomer” into empty partisan insults.
Nicholas Grossman
I know these things are complicated but I do think there would be slightly less war if we could somehow have a system where the cost of cleaning up and rebuilding everything you destroyed was withdrawn from your country's treasury in real time.
Sam Bergman @violanorth
Fun fact – police unions are NOT unions. They just call themselves one.
Leslie Mac
I actually don’t think the issue is that we need more jobs. Part of the problem is that too much of our survival is tied to employment. There will never be 100% employment and we never do what is necessary to ensure safety and stability for ppl who are unable to work
@BreeNewsome
Workers earning a living wage and good benefits isn't some radical position. I'll never, ever understand the logic as anything other than evil.
Ebony Elizabeth Thomas @Ebonyteach
A single Tesla battery weighing 1,000 pounds requires extracting and processing some 500,000 pounds of materials. At this rate, over the next thirty years we will need to mine more mineral ores than humans have extracted over the last 70,000 years. #GreenEnergy
John Lee Pettimore
Republicans: Soft on Russia. Tough on diabetics:
Rep. Eric Swalwell
The world is not addicted to plastic. People don't buy products in plastic packages because they just can't get enough plastic, they buy them because there's no other choice. Corporations are addicted to plastic, and governments are addicted to not regulating corporations.
Mary Gillis @living_marble
40% of teen pregnancies in 15-year-old girls involve a fathering man who is 20-29. It is never lost on me that the conversations surrounding teen pregnancy are always about the promiscuity of teenage girls and not the violence of older men
gaslightning mcqueen @kachowgirl
People are exposed to tons of fantasy police shows and movies but aren’t taught the actual history of policing.
@BreeNewsome
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