August 2022 began with a focus on the Inflation Reduction Act, but shifted to the FBI and illegally held classified documents at Mar-a-Lago not long after. That meant there were lots of tweets about the Former Guy and his minions, unfortunately. Then at the end of the month, Biden announced plans for student loan cancellation, so it ended with many tweets explaining why that makes sense.
All mixed in with my usual topics: livable cities, transportation, white supremacy, climate change...
The tweets are in reverse chronological order (though I reserve the right to sometimes move timeless images up or down in the order for better visual balance), and everything below the line is a quote from the attributed source, even though I'm not using the block quote format.
____
Pakistan is still within its fair share of the safe planetary boundary for CO2 emissions. The global North countries, as a group, have overshot the boundary several times over, driving climate breakdown.
Jason Hickel
A rock-solid Republican House seat going to a Dem woman of color because Alaskans HATE SARAH PALIN JUST THAT MUCH is the kind of Wednesday evening electoral politics news I could get used to.
Angus Johnston @studentactivism
Any school that claims to have individualised learning for every child is lying. No teacher has the time nor resources to actually provide this.
The Realistic Teacher
I don’t know if it’s permanent, but this old awning being used as a bike rack at Milkweed is an awesome example of reuse (and a surprisingly good bike rack)!
Alex @mplsalex
There are more laws banning transgender girls from playing K-12 sports than there are transgender girls playing K-12 sports
Gillian Branstetter
I tried to take two 6th grade girls shopping and it's bleak they either look like 50 year olds in a prairie cult or like dancing on a bar with LeeAnn Rimes and they hated it too
Lyz Lenz
"In my neighbourhood, I want peace, quiet and greenery. In yours, I want asphalt, parking space and exclusivity for my car commute. Especially if you are poor"
@PhilipMarciniak
The only appropriate response to the climate catastrophe in Pakistan is to unconditionally cancel the country's external debts. These resources should be used to support people and ecosystems rather than to service foreign capital. It is a minimal first step toward reparations.
Jason Hickel
Let’s stop sleepwalking towards the destruction of our planet by climate change. Today, it is Pakistan. Tomorrow, it could be your country.
António Guterres
Based on recent events and projections, I am increasingly concerned that climate breakdown will exceed already-devastating consensus projections in almost every way. Given ongoing fossil fuel expansionism, now is the time to rebel, for future people and the future of our planet.
Peter Kalmus @ClimateHuman
Anecdotally, I'm convinced that most Americans drive only because they have to not because they want to.
Jerome Alexander Horne
Centrists see student loan cancellation as equalizing outcomes. Genuine centrist outrage over cancellation is about their core belief that equalizing outcomes is unfair to them personally.
Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd
The centrists are all about who the government shouldn’t help. The right is all about who the government should punish.
Brando Simeo Starkey
If you are middle class, they call you a champagne socialist
If you are working class, they say it's the politics of envy
If you wear leather shoes, they call you a hypocrite
If you don't, they call you a hippy.
Everyone, apparently, is disqualified from challenging the system.
Just for the record, I'm a cider environmentalist.
George Monbiot
has it occurred to thomas that he might be the problem:
@_janna_g
I feel like a bloody broken record – the Pakistan flood is the climate apartheid we have warned about for decades. The rich use their wealth to seek safety and leave the poor in the South to burn/drown. 1/3 of Pakistan is under water, 1000+ lives lost, homes, schools, hospitals and gone.
asad rehman @chilledasad100
If you ever doubt bullies are just cowards, GOP leaders have called Democrats every name under the sun, even accused them of killing babies...yet, 3 days(?) after being called "semi-fascists" they're still crying like a 5 year old who skinned their knee
Cliff Schecter
if it's "just a joke" then there's no need to fall apart when folks say it wasn't funny.
Franchesca Ramsey @chescaleigh
something I've been thinking a lot about with the student loan conversation is how a lot of the (college-educated) people angry about it keep acting like it was simply some voluntary decision of students, not something urged, recommended + promoted by the state in 1st grade
Rachel Cohen @rmc031
Looking at the NPR news timeline on crime, nothing about wage theft, polluting industries, cop crimes, landlord/eviction crimes, finance fraud but plenty about crimes that are the result of poverty - yet they don't even frame them that way.
@gabor4council
Do you know how many water pollution crimes there are in your city? The local news doesn't report on it every time a wealthy company dumps chemicals, just when someone shoplifts deodorant. The biased curation of anecdote affects which law violations we perceive as urgent.
Alec Karakatsanis @equalityAlec
White people argue *simultaneously* that dominantly white spaces are *not* white privilege ***and*** are fighting to maintain dominantly white spaces
Paul Thomas @plthomasEdD
The Titanic in comparison to a modern cruise ship:
A SLICE OF HISTORY
[The search at Mar-a-Lago] was not done by Biden, but the FBI. It was not a raid, but an approved search warrant, of which Trump was informed in advance. Trump is not on the ballot. So nothing in that tweet is actually true. When will Republicans just stop lying? It’s so tiring.
@CharlyGrace6 (replying to a tweet that read, "The Biden raid on Trump's home is election interference.")
Pretty sure centrists are just right-wingers who pretend not to be. I mean, when they're in tone police mode, you never hear of them telling a KKKer "damn man, chill. Think of other people around you!" But you tell a KKKer they're racist, and you will hear a centrist speak up.
ArdentSlacker
Headline in any honest newspaper would be "Senator Lindsey Graham says Trump supporters are lawless criminals."
Dean Baker
So the insurrectionist traitor says stop investigating and prosecuting me for insurrection and treason or else I’ll unleash a treasonous insurrection? Got it.
Tristan Snell
Pakistan's rainfall is 780% of normal, whatever normal means any more
Bill McKibben
The fact that we still have golf and we’re watering lawns used for nothing while we run out of water and no one has done or said a damn thing… this alone proves every single person in power is the enemy of the rest of us.
Lauren McKenzie @TheMcKenziest
I love how “barista” is the job conservatives bring up as a lazy slacker job when one shift at a moderately busy Starbucks would have them crouched between stacks of milk crates sobbing in the back room
Sarah York
Brilliant:
Harvey Freedenberg
I need someone to explain to me why it’s always “if you can’t pay rent, buy fewer lattes and avocado toasts” and not “if you can’t pay your employees a living wage, buy fewer yachts and real estate.”
Andrea Junker @Strandjunker
I don’t know who needs to hear this, but the bigger your vehicle, the greater responsibility you have toward other people on the road.
Tim Courtney
Biden is ‘tossing’ $300 billion at middle and working class people with student debt.
Trump ‘tossed’ $1.9 trillion, via unfunded tax cuts, at millionaires and billionaires.
Mehdi Hasan
Asia Janay Lavarello mishandled a document classified as “secret” and went to prison earlier this year. Trump stole “Top Secret,” “SCI” and “SAP” documents and concealed them from the government for more than a year. Yet, Trump has a tee time tomorrow. Notice any differences?
Glenn Kirschner
I say this as someone who grew up in the Northeast: I don't think people in the middle and western parts of the US realize the extent to which white kids growing up in the major Northeast cities are taught that Native Americans are people who *used* to exist.
Sam Bergman @violanorth
The U.S. locks up Black people 6 times the rate of South Africa at the height of Apartheid and all people 5 times the global average. The answer to our society becoming safer is not more prisons, it's building flourishing communities by meeting people's economic and social needs. Obscuring this simple fact is the role of almost every quotation by every cop and prosecutor in every news article on the topic.
Alec Karakatsanis @equalityAlec
Here's your reminder that the heavy association between Hawai'i and pineapples ("Hawaiian" pizza, etc) is racist, exploitive paradise propaganda. Pineapples are used to sell the fantasy of a tropical Hawaiian utopia to tourists. Factually, pineapples are native to South America.
oni ku’ulei @lmnhzd
If you intentionally organize society to run on scarcity, generosity becomes anti-social.
@cruciblr
“I paid off my student loans, where’s my 20K?”
In your home equity, Jan.
Yell in a War @jelenawoehr
26 years ago Bill Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, which instituted work requirements for welfare. He trotted out Lillie Harden as an example of a reformed “welfare queen.” She died in poverty in 2014. Her minimum wage job ultimately didn’t pan out and was unable to get financial assistance. In ’02, she suffered a stroke. Because Clinton ended a program that helped her, she no longer qualified for Medicaid and couldn’t afford a $450/month life-saving prescription. She died at 59.
eric @ericisaac
If you wonder why US university tuition is so high now compared to 50 years ago, it’s largely because universities used to be heavily subsidized by tax dollars. As with so many things, Boomers took the benefit, removed it for those that came after, then cry about ‘handouts.’
Dr Amanda Moehring @FlyBehaviour
The thing to remember about Trump is that it never ever turns out he had good intentions.
Michael Hobbes @RottenInDenmark
On basically any elected board, there are always topics that would be a distraction. But "I am running for the US Senate; my stance on abortion is that we shouldn't let it divide us" is a bullshit stance.
Naomi Kritzer
How is anyone not completely fed up with capitalism? The government invents this tech [COVID vaccines] with public money, but now private companies sue each other over the profits
@JoshuaPotash
Not sure if this is surprising or not: the total value of new cars sold in the US last year (~$600 billion) was roughly twice the value of new single family homes built (~$300 billion)
Brian Potter
Black Americans paid taxes during segregation for pools they weren't allowed to swim in, fountains they couldn't drink from and buses they had to ride in the back of. So...miss me with this "Why am I paying for school I didn't go to?" At least this is about uplift, not hate.
Leslie Streeter
Jennifer Mendelsohn @CleverTitleTK
Conservatives view misfortune as an act of moral failure. They literally cannot imagine it happening to them because they are Good People™.
A Hateful Mate
Turns out there are consequences when one of your chief policy platforms is "It should be illegal for anyone to learn from history"
Plummeting_sloth
Jesus's miracle of the loaves and fishes was a slap in the face to all the people who brought their own lunch.
gocart mozart @EdMix13
If you think the same people who got us into the climate crisis are going to get us out, then you don’t understand that climate change is a CRIME and not an ACCIDENT
Mary Annaïse Heglar
man you sure can see who would be arguing against free high school if it were the 1830’s
eve6
Also “amazing” how tax shelters for college savings don’t generate a lot of intense discussion about indirect costs on the (vast majority of people) who have no used for them
Scott Lemieux @LemieuxLGM
The mortgage interest deduction has cost ~$750B since 2010 and the vast majority of benefits go to households with incomes over $100k. But tell me again about how redistribution is bad.
Connor Ewing
The boomers double-dipped: they went to cheap college on the taxpayers’ dollar, and then refused to pay taxes for the next generation’s schooling. I consider loan forgiveness a payback to the youngs that got screwed by the defunding of public education
Prof Dynarski
Conservative Logic: Jesus was crucified so he would want everyone to be crucified
Paul Thomas @plthomasEdD
When it comes to raising taxes on people making more than $400k, Republicans will go, "How could you possibly raise taxes on THE MIDDLE CLASS!?" For student loans, they pivot to being like, "whoa-ho-ho, look at this handout to the wealthy!" (referring to a person making $90k)
Parker Molloy
Why is it that the party with literal Nazi flags at their rallies are calling the other party Nazis for COVID precautions?
Willy Lee @advicepig
There’s an odd strain of argument that doing things to help people is somehow nefarious or an illegitimate gift, rather than one of main goals of government.
Bharat Ramamurti
Alpha male – as in male who is in early access and is full of bugs
Kira Ezri @QueerKira
One of the fundamental dividing lines in life and in parenting styles and in politics is between: “I had it hard, so you should have it hard” and “I had it hard, so you shouldn’t have it hard.”
Anand Giridharadas @AnandWrites
Minneapolis-made stove:
Chris Steller
Seems like a good example of "racist infrastructure": US census tracts bisected by an interstate (~20% of all tracts) had ~2.5 extra pedestrian deaths from 2000–2020. Researchers: "These deaths occur disproportionately in Black communities."
David Zipper
I don’t trust a teacher to give my kid a book but I do trust them to hit them with a board….
Michan Connor
There’s actually a logic there if, as they do on the Right, you think of public schools as a disciplining system. “Education” to normalize unruly ideas and bodies.
Matt Gabriele @prof_gabriele
1968 Avg tuition: $300
1968 Avg salary: $7700
2022 Avg tuition: $11,000
2022 Avg salary: $52,000
If salaries increased at the same rate as tuition, then the average salary would be $282,300/year. If that sounds ludicrously high—then you get how ludicrously high $11K tuition is.
Qasim Rashid, Esq.
It speaks volumes to me that the majority of people I know who have paid off their student loans support debt forgiveness, while most of the critics I know never had any loans to pay off.
Tom Brennan @Brennanator
It takes a very special kind of mind to simultaneously believe that affordable gasoline is a god-given right, but affordable higher education is both blatant socialist indoctrination AND a grievous insult to people who paid too much for their own.
jabberwoCKY @CKYonwords
You know when the rooms are labeled with verbs it’s gonna be some of the worst floorplans you’ve ever seen:
Barstool NEOM @_Bad_Infinity
If you know a young person who wants to make a real difference in the world, and who is also worried about making a living, one piece of good advice might be:
*Consider becoming an electrician.*
Bill McKibben
Can't believe I grew up with a childhood full of "everybody gets a trophy" slander almost exclusively levied by people who fundamentally will not concede they lost anything at any point in their entire life.
Ben Collins @oneunderscore__
In the 20th century to "talk about the weather" was parlance for a polite non-controversial subject matter. Now commenting on why weather occurs as it does, our effect on it, and what we can personally do about it is a deeply political act. To mention these facts are too.
Extinction Rebellion
Why do I keep seeing “hot takes” challenging Biden to pardon Trump to heal the nation, but none suggesting Trump turn himself in and plead guilty to his crimes to heal the nation?
Nicole David @obbiecole
I really love these old fourplexes that are all over Lexington. Four family-sized three-bedroom units, all with balconies, one parking space per unit, doable on a typical 5,000 square foot lot. This should be the as-of-right baseline in all residential districts:
M. Nolan Gray
Amazing how much of the campaign against public education turns out to be the 'businessmen's crusade against the New Deal' just updated with new buzzwords
Jennifer Berkshire @BisforBerkshire
It was "woke" people who ended slavery, ended Jim Crow, passed Constitutional amendment guaranteeing women right to vote, passed the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts and fought for marriage equality. Now you get why the GOP hates people who are woke.
DeanObeidallah
Researchers at the University of Virginia just published a study finding that areas in America with high rates of enslavement in 1860 have high rates of gun ownership today. “In a post-Civil War South, the belief that guns were necessary for protection was driven by a flood of military weapons, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, and elite rhetoric that the government would not protect the interests of white southerners from newly freed Black people.”
Shannon Watts
Sad, and infuriatingly spot on, political art by Bill Bramhall of the NY Daily News:
David Cay Johnston
yea like men are always like “i would love it if the [cat-calling] situation were reversed”… no no let’s not reverse the situation. YOU imagine MEN, not women, doing that behavior to you. would you, as a man, want to hear vile, sexual things from another man? that’s what WE put up with.
@tartanfucker
A key benefit of the climate provisions in the IRA is they enable EPA to become a grant/funding agency to finance clean energy uptake, pollution reduction, industry methane remediation, home energy upgrades, state and community GHG programs and more. Rebranding: not just a regulator.
Jody Freeman
There have only been three justices in American history who were appointed by a president who lost the popular vote, and confirmed by a bloc of senators who represent less than half the country. All three of them sit on the Supreme Court right now.
@voxdotcom
Allen Weisselberg will do 100 DAYS in jail. He was convicted of 15 felonies, tax fraud, and stole millions of dollars. Kalief Browder spent 3 YEARS on Rikers island awaiting trial for allegedly stealing a backpack. He was never convicted. American justice in Black and white:
Bishop Talbert Swan
The militarization of policing has been an integral part of preparation for the implementation of authoritarian governance in putative democracies.
Leah McElrath
One of the problems with road safety is that many decision makers see safe crosswalks and bike lane protection as “amenities” instead of basic infrastructure.
@EngineerDustin
"for every self-protection homicide involving a firearm kept in the home, there were 1.3 accidental deaths, 4.6 criminal homicides, and 37 suicides.... homicide by firearm at the hands of spouses and intimate partners were sevenfold higher among cohabitants of handgun owners"
Max Kennerly
with conservatives it's, "sure they're making violent threats, but they're just words"
with kids in college it's, "right now they're getting charles murray uninvited, but is violence right around the corner?"
Scott Stahl
We've so heavily bought into this idea that home equity is the ladder to the middle class rather than an actual job with wages. If the only way to decent, comfortable living is to become a real estate speculator something's fucked with your labor market.
Darrell Owens @IDoTheThinking
The American west is suffering its worst drought in 1,200 years, Europe its worst in 500 years, and China its worst on record.
David Wallace-Wells
What happens when you cross youth sports parents with state-sponsored transphobia? Gender policing by sore losers:
Zinnia Jones @ZJemptv
You find out who's on team humanity and who's on team pocketbook when it's time to decide whether to tear out car infrastructure.
Mary Morse Marti
Drivers want to get home without any real or perceived delay. Cyclists want to get home alive. I'm tired of cities and Departments of Transportation pretending like these are equally valid concerns.
@jessiealene
This will sound unbelievable to most people. (Not to me!) A classic study from #Denmark followed 30,000 people of all ages for 15 years. Those who rode a bicycle to work were 40% less likely to die—of all causes—over the study period.
Taras Grescoe
The way some people talk about “the economy” you’d think it’s a rain god that needs human sacrifices
Aadita Chaudhury @ThylacineReport
We need more trees and quality green spaces. 3 30 300 Rule of An Urban Forester: can you see 3 trees from your window? Do you have over 30% tree canopy? Do you have a quality green space within 300 meters? Nature will be a top priority with Gil4Mayor.
Gil Penalosa
If you think you ‘need’ an SUV, a meat and dairy diet and to fly around the world, chances are you don’t know what ‘need’ means.
@ClimateDad77
This should not be a typical intersection:
Addison Del Mastro
Lesson from Paris in building bike infrastructure: Just build it. No multi-year studies. No perfection in design. Not even pilot projects. Just build, adapt, evolve.
@BrockRides
I just got solicited to answer a survey asking "where do you stand on current events," and I want to be absolutely clear that I am against them.
Ned Resnikoff
If we are concerned about kids making decisions they will regret that affect their mental health and potentially change their bodies, we should welcome gender-affirming care and ban minors from reading diet books.
Yell in a War @jelenawoehr
This just happened on my 25 mph residential street with a road-narrowing median and ADA compliant sidewalks. But tell me again why installing speed governors on our cars would be more dangerous than this:
streetsblogkea
Eliminate the words "planet" and "earth" from your climate communication challenge 2022: Climate change is going to cause escalating disruption, dislocation, and migration. It's going to exacerbate income inequality at every level. It's going to produce health, social, and economic damage in every major country. These are all more relevant to more people than "earth." "Saving the planet" can't possibly be literal — the planet will be just fine long after we die out — so it can only be symbolic, a kind of affective or identity-based signaling that immediately selects for the small class of self-identified environmentalists.
David Roberts @drvolts
Air pollution from car exhaust, wildfires and other sources kills over 300 Minneapolis and St. Paul residents annually, considerably more than the number of homicides.
Minnesota Reformer
A huge swath of the US will see temperatures occasionally reach 125°F by 2053, researchers predict:
Bloomberg Green @climate
Our society treats so much that is common sense — like land back — as radical. We need to make just and right non-radical.
Adam Miller @ajm6792
As a woman, I have never once in my life felt threatened by a trans or gay person.
But I feel threatened every day by straight male Republicans.
@TraceyDelaney
The FBI is corrupt and has done more harm than good. But do not fall for the Trump "defund the FBI" shtick. They don't want to get rid of the FBI for the good of the public. They want an FBI that will work as their personal stormtroopers and won't even pretend to seek justice.
Sarah Kendzior
The Pentagon budget has gone up $77 billion during the Biden administration. For that much, we could have:
- ended homelessness ($11.5 billion)
- created universal pre-k ($35 billion/year)
- paid off 50% of medical debt ($75 billion)
Instead, we have 800 military bases.
Drop The MIC
This quote from a Republican voter in Wyoming (population 581,000, with the same number of senators as California, population 39 million) is quite something:
Bill Grueskin
Washington DC has a population of 707k and has 0 Senators and 0 full voting members of Congress.
Meanwhile, Wyoming has 581k people (-126k less than DC) and has 2 US Senators and 1 full voting representative in the House. Yet, WY resident complain they don’t have a voice. DC is also 57% non-white, while Wyoming is 92% White. Maybe that what WY voters meant by the above? WY voters are something.
Eric Feigl-Ding @DrEricDing
We don’t own cars. They own us.
Brent Toderian
You can’t be a member in good standing of the Republican Party if you vocally oppose violent insurrection to overthrow our democracy. That’s where we’re at.
Ben Rhodes
if Dems worked the same way Stacey Abrams does, the democrats would win, everywhere.
Stephane Bergeron @Stephan41291711
The IRS will be adding 20–30K employees over the next 10 yrs. It will bring their staff back to 2013 levels. They include customer service, IT staff, etc. They won't be armed. GOP lies about this are leading belligerent idiots to threaten violence.
Joshua Holland
Allen Weisselberg — the Trump Org CFO — just got 5 mo prison for defrauding the American people hundreds of millions of dollars. Crystal Mason—a Black woman who filed a provisional ballet on advice of a poll worker—got 5 years prison even though her vote didn't count. This is America.
Qasim Rashid, Esq.
West Virginia has a higher gdp per capita than France
Analytic Valley Girl Chris @ChrisExpTheNews
France is obviously not as rich as America, but the fact [about West Virginia's GDP] is mostly embarrassing to the US. Look at what France can pull off with a per capita GDP as low as WV! Why is America not a much, much better place to live?
Ryan Briggs
It is absolutely wild that the Republican Party is positioning itself to steal the next federal election, right out in the open, and it's like a third-tier news story at best.
David Roberts @drvolts
The media should be reporting greenhouse gas emissions numbers with at least as much frequency as stock indices
Peter Kalmus @ClimateHuman
The reason republicans get so incredibly huffy when any of the tools of law enforcement are ever turned upon them is they think “criminals” as an inherent class of people (who they of course could never be part of) rather than a descriptor for someone who commits illegal acts.
William B. Fuckley @opinonhaver
This map blew my mind. Areas in brown denote the original pine forests of Michigan [and Wisconsin and Minnesota] from the 1881 census. Green is standing timber in 1895, only 14 years later. (!!!) Courtesy Archives of Michigan, Michigan History Center included in this feature:
Caroline Gottschalk Druschke @creekthinker
Mainstream Republicans' rhetoric is so perfectly calibrated to inspire political threats and violence that we should probably stop thinking of it as reckless or irresponsible and accept that it's their intent.
Joshua Holland
One thing I think about a lot: the exurban and rural places in which US conservatives live are utterly bereft of public spaces. Church attendance is declining. There are virtually no civic groups and associations left. These people live in *profoundly* alienating circumstances.
David Roberts @drvolts
US is a settler society built on a constitution based on genocide slavery and compulsory miseducation that’s led to a collapsing 2 party political system with a population who are largely clueless about collapsing global environmental and economic systems, MAGA is a social indicator!
Russ Diabo
Funny to me that people focus on Trump being a “thief” or a “criminal.” The majority of people you attach those labels to are just unfortunate souls trying to survive. Trump is something far, far worse than any of your neighbors who live outside the law, most of whom are harmless. As someone who has broken the law many times for the sake of justice, for the sake of survival, and occasionally, in years past, for the sake of recreation, I’m a criminal. Trump is a fascist with world-destroying potential who craves violence. Use better descriptors.
Puff the Magic Hater @MsKellyMHayes
> only white men feel safe biking
> only white men are seen riding bikes
> advocates request safe bike infra
> “bike infra only helps white men!”
> no safe bike infra gets built
> only white men feel safe biking
> repeat until u lose touch w reality
lesbian bike mayor of dc @sssabriiiinaaa
It’s time to ban cruise ships They are a terrible contributor to emissions and pollution. “We found out that pollution from the cruise ship industry is still massive, even despite that they claim newer vessels are clean and green.”
@cdbrzezinski
They are so obsessed with other people's sexual parts. What's up with that?
Lynne Jackier @YourNeighbor57
whoever named horseradish probably did not get to name another vegetable after that
Bris Angel @Cryptoterra
America doesn’t have a polarization problem. America has a GOP radicalization problem. Cover it that way.
Dave Pell
“So that’s it — after two and a half years of the pandemic — ‘so long, good luck’”?
CDC: “I don’t recall saying good luck”
meghan b. kelly
"Cars and driving contribute to the economy, unlike cyclists" is such a dumb sentiment. As if the ~$9K per year I save by not owning a car just evaporates. Like when I stopped paying for car insurance I would light a stack of dollar bills on fire for fun.
Ollie Oliver @Ollie_Cycles
After the Big Dig took 16 years of construction and $24.3 billion dollars to complete, the average Boston commuter spends 120 MORE hours a year in traffic since the project began. We still have to pay for this project until 2038! Highway projects are never worth it. Never.
Boston traffic entering highway tunnel to logan airport.
Hayden Clarkin @the_transit_guy
Mix things up by putting framed quotes meant for the kitchen into the bathroom:
Rachel Figueroa @Jewyorican
A third of the Supreme Court was appointed by a man who is being investigated by the FBI for violating the Espionage Act.
Ian Millhiser
A functional society does not have a shortage of teachers and nurses and an overabundance of police.
Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis
Whether it’s Republicans committing crimes, or Democrats attempting to prosecute Republicans for these crimes, both sides have a crime problem.
New York Times Pitchbot @DougJBalloon
Trump, now complaining about politicization of law enforcement, fired an FBI Director and Deputy Director and 2 Attorneys General for not doing his political bidding. He gave commutations or pardons to 7 GOP members of Congress and 5 of his campaign staff/political advisors.
Jacob T. Levy
There's just never going to be a moment when the GOP throws its hands up and says, enough with this guy.
Tom Tomorrow
rainwater was drinkable for a billion years but isn't anymore because a tiny minority of humans had teflon frying pans for 30 years
David Lee Parsons
your reminder that Reality Winner took one document and spent four years in prison. one document. four years. no negotiations
Jeff Tiedrich
The overcorrection from the Robert Moses era was creating so many layers of bureaucracy and "community engagement" that little gets built and central planning for major infrastructure projects becomes effectively impossible
Ross Barkan
Another way to look at it [the Robert Moses era]: The lessons from Jane Jacobs came to the wrong conclusion… It wasn’t that we needed layers of bureaucracy to stop bad things. We just needed to stop freeways thru cities, fast cars thru cities, aka, cars in cities don’t fit.
LindsayLovesBikes @LindsayJS
"No rainwater in the world is safe to drink" really feels like one of those headlines they show in a film's introduction to let you know things went wrong somewhere along the way.
@ElBartoArmy
It’s wild how “crime” is reflexively presented in the media as a problem for Democrats—against the backdrop of weekly instances of Republicans inspiring domestic terrorist plots, mass shootings, foiled kidnappings and assassinations, and literal coup attempts.
Sawyer Hackett
I like presidents who didn't do coups or sell nuclear secrets
Reconstructionist @un_a_valeable
We have tried so hard to warn politicians of the unfolding catastrophe. But they were mostly determined to ignore us. And now they're acting like it's a surprise.
Extinction Rebellion
I don't want self-driving cars and trips to Mars, I want a planet where we don't get headlines like "all the rain is now toxic"
@JoshuaPotash
When Americans complain about bureaucracy, the implicit argument is often that the government is inherently incapable of doing certain tasks well. But much of what we call "bureaucracy" is the friction generated by opportunities for private rentseeking in public functions. The lesson here is that we can often best eliminate the kind of bureaucracy people hate by *enhancing* state power. Empower civil servants to get stuff done and create clear lines of responsibility so that citizens can exercise meaningful oversight.
Ned Resnikoff
The U.S. government lost $0.528 billion on Solyndra. That same program made loans to Tesla, which is now worth $922 billion. So if even 1/1700 of Tesla's value is due to that government loan, then the Tesla success more than balances out the Solyndra loss.
Noah Smith @Noahpinion
Everyone deserves good, reliable, convenient transit options. Everyone deserves a walkable, bikeable neighborhood. Everyone deserves clean air. We shouldn't need an equity analysis and constant public hearings to achieve those outcomes. And, yes, I'm aware of the MASSIVE social and racial injustices that characterize the US. But the way to fight those injustices is not to turn every public service issue into a debate about who deserves it more. The way to do it is to create public services that work for everyone.
Yonah Freemark
Also there are different scales to problems. Environmental damage from mining is a serious issue! But it's not going to cause, say, the extinction of mankind, or wipe out all ocean life, etc.
Django Wexler
Why does my cat sit like this:
Ned Resnikoff
It’s amazing how those who have never expressed concern at the environmental and human cost of fossil fuel extraction and use feign outrage at alleged, transient, and often unnecessary costs of renewables.
James West
One of the most bizarre yet ubiquitous beliefs among people on the left is that any celebration, or any sign of happiness, will immediately demotivate everyone on their side. As though only relentless misery and failure can keep Democratic voters engaged. That's not how people work!
David Roberts @drvolts
Just a reminder that a lot of conservatives aren’t interested in the law being an equalizing force but actually believe it’s a tool for applying necessary discipline and control over people they consider lesser or dangerous.
Jared Yates Sexton
The IPCC has clearly stated since 2018 that the requirement for stopping the most catastrophic impacts of climate change is zero new fossil fuel developments. Neither time nor the atmosphere bend to political will
Amy Westervelt
You can always tell when the person organizing the meeting is on the East Coast, cause they never mention time zones
Mary Annaïse Heglar
“Between 2009 and 2019 the UK prosecuted 23 times more people for benefits offences than tax offences. This is despite the value of tax fraud being nine times higher than benefits fraud.”
Michael Hobbes @RottenInDenmark
Trump signed a law in 2018 making the removal of classified documents a felony.
@NotHoodlum
When people say the 2 parties are no different I say that’s not exactly true it’s more distinct than that. The 2 parties are different, the problem is their $ is the same.
D.A. Bullock @BullyCreative
I don't think so much attention should be given to fascists' temper tantrums. Trumpers losing their shit is a dog-bites-man story.
Joshua Holland
"If you lament their indecency, they'll just get more crude."
"If you call out their racism, they'll just get more racist."
"If you hold them accountable under the law, they'll just get more lawless."
"If you sanction their violence, they'll just get more violent."
It's no surprise that conservatives have used that kind of abuser logic for years — it's a useful permission structure. What's wild to me is how often other people outside of the right adopt and echo it. "Don't hold them accountable, you know how mad it makes them!"
David Roberts @drvolts
Dudes who had stay at home moms who waited on them their entire childhoods will be like “when I was little I was fending for myself because I’m a rugged individualist” because they see women’s domestic labor as a limitless resource and they take it for granted.
Angie Schmitt
Lot of strong opinions based on almost no information (evergreen tweet)
Tom Tomorrow
It's funny watching all these guys condemn the Mar-a-Lago raid when they're no doubt praying for Trump to be removed as a potential competitor in the 2024 primary. Strong Death of Stalin vibes.
Ned Resnikoff
THE LIBRARY, Jacob Lawrence, 1978:
Artists of Colour
After 6+ years of chanting "lock her up," the Republican Party is OUTRAGED that a search warrant approved by a magistrate judge was executed on the property of the former president, who left office after staging a failed coup and fomenting an insurrection.
Mark Joseph Stern @mjs_DC
The root of conservatism is narcissism — the accommodation of different revealed preferences by others feels like oppression because it implies that not everyone follows their own strictly defined worldview and preferences
TheOmniZaddy
I just don't know how you respond to people who feel oppressed by the existence of consumer choices for people who are not them
Adam Serwer
I have opened
the safe
that was in
your hideout
and which
you were probably
using
for crimes
Forgive me
I had a warrant
to search
all your shit
Jason Linkins @dceiver
For those keeping track: The GOP is now on record disparaging the US Capitol Police, the IRS, and the FBI. Big fans of teenage vigilantes and January 6 cop killers though.
Peter Manseau
The privileged want to zoom through "scary" places quickly, but also want to prevent "scary" people from coming into their places.
Aunt Eepha @EarthCog
If you convince people that black folks complaining about racism are just living in a victim's mentality, it's easy for every violence committed against the black person to be understood as simply an opportunistic complaint from a person who wants pity.
Pink Venom @kat_blaque
The rich have forgotten to be afraid of the poor.
liam cunningham
Whether it’s Democratic presidents emulating FDR, or Republican presidents emulating Adolf Hitler, both sides seem more than a little hung up on World War II.
New York Times Pitchbot @DougJBalloon
Every year as I try to figure this shit out [covering summer hours with kids] I am reminded that society is designed around a family ideal of one fully-available-to-employers man and one fully-available-to-children-and-husband-and-extended-family woman.
Dr. Betsy More
I need about $5k worth of permits and reviews to build a 10x10 shed, but trucks and SUV's can bloat up to this size, causing a measurable increase in deaths, and our entire regulatory apparatus just shrugs. The things we hyper-regulate in society really shows our priorities:
Jbutt @baronjutter
Not gonna dwell on this all day but: group psychology is key to reactionaries. You can do anything as long as "everybody does it." But if some people stop doing it (slavery, racist jokes, eating meat, whatever), it casts implicit judgment on those who still do. This is why, if you criticize anything a right-wing politician does, the inevitable response is "well Democrats did XYZ." In other words, they don't defend the act itself, they just say "everyone does it." They need to believe that; it's the whole permission structure.
David Roberts @drvolts
If you look at the GOP’s record it has nothing in terms of bettering life for anyone besides a slim and wealthy elite. Everything else is predicated on conspiracy theories and the construction of a violent, prejudiced system of control and punishment.
Jared Yates Sexton
"Would a world of electric cars be quieter?" Short answer: No. "At high speeds, there may not be much difference btw gas-powered cars and EVs/hybrids. That’s because [factors beyond engine noise] like tire and wind noise become louder as cars move faster."
David Zipper
Strip malls are really just parking lots with accessory commercial units attached...
Jonathan Berk @berkie1
If your dedication to "objective" measures leads you to absurd conclusions, consider that your approach may not be all that objective.
Michael Hobbes @RottenInDenmark
The Art Nouveau Majolikahaus from 1898 by Otto Wagner (1841-1918), Vienna, Austria. (Photo by Mariano de Angelis):
ArtNouveauDeco
i am begging *begging* people to understand that housing for all would do more to combat domestic violence than the police currently do.
mariah parker, phd @MariahforAthens
Pro-Trump Apparel Company Agrees to Pay Over $200K Fine for Ripping Out ‘Made in China’ Tags and Replacing Them With ‘Made in USA’ Tags
Mediaite
Every argument from the Right is some derivative of “they had it coming”
The Ghost of the Conscience of Conservatism @SenDirksen
Along with the caveat that “just desserts”doesn’t apply to negative consequences for them or their loved ones…
jason lockery @jlo751
In 2020, Senator Joni Ernst warned about the “heartbreaking” consequences of high insulin costs and called on lawmakers to “come together” to lower them. Ernst voted against the insulin copay cap today.
Dan Diamond
I don’t need to overcome my disability. You need to overcome your ableism.
Gregory Mansfield
Some people really find masks and the idea of 'freedom' of choice triggering, when the choices made remind them of the risks they face. Not all of us can afford to live in denial.
Dr. Deepti Gurdasani
Oh shit oh fuck I need help guys
@BradenIsBased
I can’t believe I live in a country where the 50 people representing half of the population think that 7.4 million people should have to stress over how to pay for a lifesaving medication that costs pennies to manufacture.
Emily Porter, M.D. @dremilyportermd
The entitled former Minneapolis city councilmember who didn’t distinguish themselves by demonstrating anything that helped us along the way but feels like they were anointed to always be in power regardless, is a true Mpls archetype.
D.A. Bullock @BullyCreative
I swear to God, the exact same people who think shoplifting a sandwich from Walgreens ought to carry the death penalty are losing their minds at the prospect of the IRS taking a closer look at their taxes
Armand Domalewski
Insulin costs so much in the United States because we have transitioned fully to a vampire-based economy, where the entire point is for about 500 people to become insanely rich bleeding out what was once the world's greatest middle class.
Alex Wild @Myrmecos
Inkjet printers — unintentionally good for the environment by being so horrible they get people to stop using printers.
@benhem612
It’s interesting that journalists routinely seek out suburban drivers for quotes about urban speed and red light cameras. They never ask 14 year old bus riders in the poor urban neighborhoods that stand to retain the most lives.
Greg Shill
US transportation policy has completely abandoned the harm principle. The choice to drive, especially large American vehicles, transfers substantial harms and risks onto non-drivers. Harms (certain) include noise, pollution and economic externalities. Risks include injury and death. If you think about when most transportation policy was written (40s-60s) and that the system was built to optimize the convenience of white men driving from segregated suburbs, through cities to office jobs, the gobsmacking disparities make sense. The model is obsolete. End it.
@bellachu10
We exist at all because we are stronger together. I believe in the transformative possibilities of our collective power. We're all we have, but we're all we need, and we're stronger than any power-hungry schmuck.
@bagofmoons
“Public safety” in US politics is code for the optics of poverty. As poverty becomes more visible (eg, more unhoused people), rich people feel unsafe regardless of real safety. Visibility of cops to criminalize/disappear poverty reassures, even as it compounds real unsafety.
Eric Reinhart
American Family Values means that we give affluent people a tax credit to adopt a baby, and we give the desperate pregnant woman a drop-off box to leave it in.
Tony Corsentino
We don't have a "car culture" in Winnipeg. We have a transportation system that makes getting around without a vehicle inconvenient, uncomfortable and often unsafe.
Mel Marginet @mmarginet
Opinion | We must learn to live with polio –Dr. Leanna Wen
New York Times Pitchbot @DougJBalloon
Random thought while falling asleep last night: the unremarked on (as far as I recall) racism of the protagonist of Single White Female insisting that any prospective roommate be white.
SimpleSimon @simon1972
If our democracy one day falls, there may be United States postage stamps that celebrate the attack and attempted coup d’etat of January 6, 2021.
Michael Beschloss
Last Friday, a driver killed my friend Supervisor @carmen4oxnard as she was crossing the street. Today, the police released that the driver used a 2020 GMC Sierra 2500. These machines make me sick:
Max Ghenis
As noted the GMC Sierra’s designer, “We spent a lot of time making sure that when you stand in front of this thing it looks like it's going to come get you.”
Yonah Freemark
The transportation portion of climate-changing emissions has grown by 54% since 1990, in part because people have been driving more and buying big pick-up trucks and SUVs. SHIFTING TO EVs IS NOT ENOUGH. Car dependency is the deeper problem.
Brent Toderian
Tax cuts for the rich lead to higher income inequality. But they do not have any significant effect on economic growth or unemployment. Evidence for 18 OECD countries over 1965-2015 in [a] new paper published in Socio-Economic Review.
Philipp Heimberger @heimbergecon
If you want to make the case that society should spend billions, cook the planet, pollute the air, tear out existing homes, and create new traffic bottlenecks elsewhere, so that a few people can enjoy the wonders of longer commutes, that’s a debate worth having. It is not the debate most Departments of Transportation or the road lobby want to have. Because it is one they’d be exceedingly unlikely to win.
Tony Dutzik @FrontierTony
Arkansas is building new prisons with covid funds.
@Tawanda46
dick cheney saying trump is evil is like brain cancer talking shit about lung cancer
Oliver Willis
No one should be in prison for weed. Everyone who plotted January 6 should be.
David Hogg
Crime is the result of a society's failure. So is homelessness. And until we are willing to do whatever it takes to ensure that EVERY PERSON gets to benefit from the society most of us benefit from, we don't have the right to complain about the symptoms of that failure. If you are unwilling to sacrifice in taxes, or vote for representation that ensures there are safety nets, then you better chalk up your fears of being robbed as the cost of your privilege and suck it up in silence
Andrew T. @ATLgaytheist
Plant dyes - all the colours achievable from leaf, flower and root within around a five mile radius. The red hot poker root was a gift from a friend on Skye but that’s only several miles across the water…
Rowena Dugdale @redrubyrose_
Keep in mind that there was never any claim that Hillary’s emails contained evidence of wrongdoing. Here we have what certainly appears to be a multi-agency cover-up of serious crimes.
Joshua Holland
"If crime and murders increase [under reform-minded, progressive prosecutors], the reform is to blame. If crime and murders increase under the most well-funded police departments and harshest DAs, they simply need more funding and to be even harsher": There's a similar double-standard with kids: If they act out again following a nonpunitive intervention, then "talking doesn't work. Time to get tough!" But if they act out again after being punished (quite common!), no one questions punishment itself; we should double down. Same, too, with systematic phonics instruction or drill-and-skill math: Alternative approaches are held to a far higher standard and blamed when they're not fully successful. But when traditional techniques fail, we're told to do them some more (or maybe tweak them a bit).
Alfie Kohn
it's very exhausting to see white people write articles about how it's "too late" to stop climate breakdown - too late for who??? Every single fraction of a degree of warming we prevent is lives saved - especially in the Global South. It's never too late.
Mikaela Loach
Feeling the sun so hot on your skin and realising its doing that to you from 93,000,000 miles away is always a bit of a moment
Pete Wharmby @commaficionado
Funny when people complain about ebikes and scooters and such as "toys for yuppies"—the only information really contained therein is that the critic lives in a segregated neighborhood. All sorts of people ride them in my neighborhood. Young, old, black, white, brown.
Paul E Williams
I honestly have never, ever seen any tech yuppies on rideshare scooters. It's always teenagers and poor older folks using them in Oakland. Tech yuppies usually drive EVs and yet theres little EV hate. Its just reactionary stuff about non-car mobility from motorists, nothing more.
Darrell Owens @IDoTheThinking
Understanding Catholicism as a fandom, more than anything, has really help me figure out what the hell is going on with America right now.
Luke Winkie
I just deeply believe that if elected officials tried to get around without a car on a regular basis that things would be dramatically different
Cassie Wilson
Believing that the profit motive will deliver a decarbonized economy despite [gestures at everything] is like believing that Earth was created 6,000 years ago despite the dinosaur fossils sitting right in front of our eyes.
Dr. Genevieve Guenther @DoctorVive
the mainstream media really needs to reflect on the way their amplification of right wing media bull shit keeps swinging elections. benghazi, ebola, her emails, "critical race theory" in the Virginia gov race...it happens cycle after cycle after cycle
Andrew Lawrence
Last night 7 people were shot during a mass shooting in Orlando and 8 people were shot during a mass shooting in Detroit but you might not have heard about it because it’s the sort of thing that happens every single day in America. It’s long past time we did something about that.
Andrew Weinstein
The truth is that CLIMATE CHANGE is actually the biggest imminent threat to the future health of urban water systems, NOT new neighbors or increasing density. This is true in Seattle and elsewhere.
Shirley Leung, PhD @shirleyswirley
How often do you see the reporting in rising police staff levels lead to reporting on how well they actually do the job? Are they objectively good at keeping EVERYONE safe? One could use a ton of data measurements to know the answer for certain.
D.A. Bullock @BullyCreative
If you're worried that it's too late to do anything about climate change and we should all just give up, I have great news for you: that day is not coming in your lifetime. As long as you have breath in your body, you will have work to do.
Mary Annaïse Heglar
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