Twitter, May 2023

It's a good thing the early part of May is always light on me noticing tweets, because the end of the month clearly wasn't. There was more outrage about Clarence Thomas, the killing of Jordan Neely on a New York subway, and the "negotiation" over the debt ceiling hostage-taking by Republicans, among my usual other topics.

All of the tweets below the line are quoted from the attributed account, and are in reverse chronological order that I saw them, except some of the images, which I move up and down in the list a bit for better visual balance.

___

The right question isn't "how much will the IRA cost?" It is, "Will the IRA spur enough investment to hit our climate and energy security goals?" The recent evidence is shockingly optimistic. But we shouldn't take success for granted. More work to do...
Brian Deese

Since 2012, members of the Sackler family [owners of Purdue Pharma] have donated over $10 million to the Federalist Society, the group rigging the courts in favor of extreme right-wing conservatives and corporate interests. It’s not a justice system if it’s also an auction.
Melanie D'Arrigo

these two trucks have the same bed length:


@coolbutstinky

'these days you can't tell who's in cahoots / cuz now the KKK wear three-piece suits'
I heard this Chuck D line for the first time in like 30 years the other day and it's depressing af to realize things have more or less moved *backwards* since then
Saladin Ahmed

Not a coincidence that the same states that are privatizing schools are also rolling back child labor protections. Thanks @EconomicPolicy for the helpful explanation
Jennifer Berkshire @BisforBerkshire

House Republicans get $79 per day for meals and incidentals. Poor people get $2 per meal under SNAP. Republicans want to cut $2 for the poor while pocketing nearly 40 times as much for their own meals.  Sound fair to you?
Ritchie Torres

Fun fact: In a single flight Bill Gates' private jet emits more carbon than your car during your entire lifetime.
Dr. Eli David

The asymmetry in American politics is really astounding. Democrats get hounded by media and centrists and opponents about whether they'll govern in a bipartisan fashion, and conservatives are out here promising tribunals
Dante Atkins

Elevating patriotism over humanistic values looks the same everywhere; its dark side is just harder to miss when the flag waving is done in, say, Russia or China (vs. here). Thoreau: “I am a citizen of the world first, and of this country only at a later and more convenient hour”
Alfie Kohn

How trickle down actually works…


@jilevin

Anyone who tells you they’re going to fix ‘traffic chaos’ without telling you how they’re going to reduce single-occupant car trips by creating alternative options for getting around, incentivizing people to choose them, and improving land use, is lying to you.
Gil Meslin

The attack on Amanda Gorman's historic work proves it: DeSantis and Moms for Liberty want to create an America where it's easier for a white supremacist to ban a book than it is for a Black child to read a poem.
The Daily Edge

What people don’t seem to understand is that I won’t “debate” other people’s right to exist.  There’s no “dialogue” with those who have already decided to hate an entire group of people based on their gender identity. No. I am not obliged to give your bigotry a platform.
RevDaniel

I'm honestly impressed with how well the right controls the narrative in this country. Church after church has grooming and rape scandals and liberal media barely talks about it, and instead chases whatever baseless allegations right wing media makes with the most limp rebuttals.
Darrell Owens @IDoTheThinking

lol imagine designing an enormous public destination so that it’s illegal and dangerous to walk to


Rich Mintz

So do I have this right? The deeply concerned about morality conservatives are just roving through kids clothing sections inspecting every crotch of every swimsuit? Worried about groomers, no doubt?
David M. Perry @Lollardfish

People heard “the personal is the political” one time and took that to mean every personal grievance is an indication of systemic oppression.
David Roberts
@drvolts

Republicans are threatening to blow up the global economy if the US doesn't make it easier for rich people to cheat on their taxes and more difficult for poor people to access basic assistance. How many Americans know this? How many would even believe you if you told them?
Cora Harrington @lingerie_addict

i don't think straight people understand that queer people celebrating pride in the US this year are up against a growing crowd whose response is "we will kill you." pride might be a party to you, or a festival, or whatever, but for queer people it's celebrating life in the face of death.
@jon_speaks_

The terror of discovering that hippos aren't fat:


@KennethCrooker1

Took 40 years to acknowledge "A Nation at Risk" was politically skewed, flawed, and essentially gaslighting. I likely won't be here for that reckoning for the Science of Reading movement but it is exactly the same misguided template for the crisis/miracle reform approach to politicizing schools
Paul Thomas @plthomasEdD

Society: Women only have worth if they’re hot/sexy.
Society: Ugh. Women are dressing too hot/sexy.
Aubrey Hirsch

American carnage anniversaries: Isla Vista massacre, May 23, 2014. Uvalde massacre, May 24, 2022. George Floyd murdered, May 25, 2020.
Rebecca Solnit

Rural America that needs to transport things.are buying efficient small pickup trucks while Suburban America that doesn't need to transport anything but their frail egos are buying tanks with cargo beds empty 99% of the time.
Darrell Owens @IDoTheThinking

This is the kind of person President Ron DeSantis says he'll consider pardoning. That's all you need to know.


Rick Wilson

It's a complex world out there (the climate)
It's a complex world around here (the economy, our organizations, our relationships)
It's a complex world in here (our nervous systems, our microbiome, our endocrine systems).
More humility less certainty.
More humility less certainty.
Dr. Elizabeth Sawin @bethsawin

Russia's presence in Kyrgyzstan is very strong these days — colossal repressions against civil society and media being pushed by Muscovy. So much rests on Ukraine winning this war, and not only for Ukrainians.
Tamara Krawchenko

I have located estimates of the population of undocumented immigrants in the United States over time, illustrating Republicans' point about Biden’s border crisis.


Justin Wolfers

It’s hard to overstate how bad US DOTs are at safety. American roads have been the leading cause of child death, by far, for decades. We have the worst safety record among G7 nations and are getting *worse*. We don’t need to reinvent safety. We just need to copy proven solutions.
@bellachu10

“Without the Bush tax cuts, their extensions, and the Trump tax cuts, debt would be declining as a percent of GDP forever.” –BBKogan
Senate Budget Committee

It's wild how terrible beef is — for land, for forests, for water, for climate, for human health, for social and economic equity ... it's just theatrically omni-terrible, an utter scourge, and yet we don't talk about it and don't do anything about it. No larger point. It's just wild.
David Roberts @drvolts



Argie @Arodmatos

When I watch Donald Trump speaking in front of crowds, I always process these raucous scenes through the lens of childhood. Those people cheer on this tyrant because he symbolizes the father whose love and approval they longed for but never had.
@DrStaceyPatton

Craving authoritarian rule is an emotionally regressed state. It is the civil equivalent of choosing to remain in an infantilized state in relation to one’s parents. In contrast, self-governance requires maturity and a willingness to accept responsibility for your own life.
Leah McElrath

The right has a real problem, which is that the people who rise to the top these days are (by necessity) just super, super *weird*, which puts a crimp in the whole "I'd like to get a beer with him" likeability school of campaigning.
David Roberts @drvolts

I literally cannot understand why people just accept the notion that kids are supposed to be *productive*
my secret identity @H1story_7eacher

It is unfair to compare a modern pickup truck to a tank because the M1 Abrams battle tank has better forward visibility and is less likely to run over our kids than a street legal consumer truck.


@dannyman

Texas legislators are trying to get the Ten Commandments posted in every grade school classroom, which is ... f'ing insane, for all the obvious reasons, but it also raises something I've thought about a lot, which is what a bizarre document the Ten Commandments is. I mean, if you were sitting down to list moral precepts to live by, would you choose these? Do Texas school kids need to be exhorted not to covet their neighbors's slaves or animals? Just imagine you're a modern kid, connected to all the internet with your phone, being handed this list of medieval cult rules by your teachers. WTF would you even make of it? And finally, let's just take note of the fact that US Christians willfully and theatrically violate almost all these commandments, constantly, but are obsessed with prohibitions on homosexuality and abortion that *are never mentioned in the Bible*.
David Roberts @drvolts

We already know the Debt Ceiling Hostage Crisis will end with a reduction of the social safety net and with victories for the wealthy. It’s time we recognize everything is rigged in their favor and that the only way to win is to stop playing their games.
Jared Yates Sexton

an old communist i know who used to be a medical technician once told me about a strike at the hospital where he worked. the staff continued to provide patient care but refused to submit any billing documentation
@raiawrites

Daguerreotype view of Dakota tipis and the John H. Stevens House (later relocated to Minnehaha Falls) on ground that would later become the Gateway District of (downtown) Minneapolis, Minnesota. c. 1852–1855, by Tallmadge Elwell:


Marlena Myles @ThisIsMarlena

Just as the Civil War has been wrongly taught to us as "North vs. South," (North didn't secede), today, we're fed story about partisan politics. In truth, we are witnessing this same fascist faction attack our freedoms, families and futures.
Anat Shenker-Osorio @anatosaurus

There’s a common thread linking the decline in humanities majors, Hollywood paying its writers pennies and the tech world wanting all writers and painters to be replaced by machines. We’ve entirely forgotten how essential the arts and literature are to a healthy society.
@SketchesbyBoze

“As scientists, your real job should be to make great discoveries and share them with the world.” — Jonathan Foley @GlobalEcoGuy
@kdrtoros

Trans Teen Hatches Nefarious Plot To Undergo Years Of Medical Treatments And Counseling To Win At Swimming


The Onion

As fascism rises, one of the great threats to flourishing human life are the journalists whose “reporting” suggests there aren’t enough armed government surveillance agents. Look at the headline for Houston’s record $1 billion police budget.
Alec Karakatsanis @equalityAlec

You only think that "cis" is a slur because you use "trans" that way.
@InkMasterbator

I'm gonna start to say "I'm really disappointed by all the empty cars I see parked on the street; they're never moving." Because that makes as much sense as "tired of seeing half empty buses."
amityf

Noise is a secret destroyer of productivity. It is secret because it impacts cognition, not effort, so we don’t notice, but a 10db noise increase (from a dishwasher to a vacuum) lowers productivity by 5%. Noise is also greater in poorer neighborhoods...
Ethan Mollick

So true:


David Cay Johnston

For all the amazing discoveries of ancient DNA, the biggest WTF for me was when I learned genetics had revealed recently that the "ancient scourge" of smallpox was very likely a modern disease--that what hit Mexico in 1519 was sorta new for Europeans, too.
@CharlesCMann

"Democracy depends on people feeling safe...If they don’t, because it’s ruled by intimidation and threats of violence, they won’t be able to participate as citizens. It’s what extremists want: Abolish democracy through violence, coercion, and harassment." —Tom Zimmer
Alfie Kohn

Unclear why DeSantis' name isn't synonymous with pervert.
Darrell Owens @IDoTheThinking

The GOP are putting the entire world economy at risk in order to ensure the rich have more and the poor have less. It is that simple. It is that indecent. If many of those who suffer along the way are people of color and women they know their base will love it, it's a bonus.
David Rothkopf

Mifepristone is safer than Tylenol. OTC birth control (the Opill) is safer than Tylenol. Numerous drugs for reproductive health are safer than Tylenol but are more tightly regulated. Why? Hint, it has nothing to do with safety and everything to do w/ controlling our bodies.
Rachel O’Leary Carmona

The Middle School teacher told a class in front of me that a leading cause of death for their age group was injuries from biking. I looked at the CDC data...44 deaths from all-terrain vehicles, 7 from biking.
Megan Ramey @BIKABOUT

This:


Angie Hallman

With pedestrian deaths in the U.S. at their highest point in four decades, advocates and urban residents across the nation are urging lawmakers to break from car culture.
The Associated Press

As we further reduce our artistic practices to a compilation of all things algorithmically poised we reduce our capacity as a species for creativity. The fundamental truth of humanity is a nebulous, unknowable thing that only Art can glimpse. A.I. limits our conception of life.
Molly McGhee

In America when a poor black mentally ill man yells on a subway train, the press and conservatives jump through hoops to justify his killing. But if a guy stalks a school bus stop with an AR-15, the press will “both sides” it and conservatives see a hero.
David Menschel @davidminpdx

As a non-believer, it is hard to fathom how much, evidence-free, faith gets to influence our politics without question. I completely, totally, support your right to believe that but you don’t get to make everyone else say or act like they do too. Everyone gets their own beliefs. Anything else is antithetical to the America experiment
Adam Miller @ajm6792

It’s astonishing a sky train line at full capacity carries the same number of people as this Ontario road.


@EastonLSmith

If the press, as Amanpour says, has not figured out how to grapple with T$ump., I have a solution. Just imagine he’s a black man saying the things that he does and he’d be dispatched summarily. Yep.
@AntheaButler

If there's one thing I know for certain about the future from every sci-fi and outer space movie and TV series, it's that money will be called "credits."
Frank Conniff

"This has never happened," said Dr. Ryan Marino, a toxicologist and emergency room physician who studies addiction at Case Western Reserve University. "There has never been an overdose through skin contact or accidentally inhaling fentanyl." (Quote from an NPR story.)
Julie Luchetta

Well I don’t know whom to believe, a doctor and specialist, or the most gullible police officers on earth
Norm Charlatan

The Dutch don't cycle because their country is flatter, milder, or morally superior to the rest of the world. It's because they invest €30 per person each year building a network of 35,000 km. of separated lanes and 55,000 km of traffic-calmed streets.
Melissa & Chris Bruntlett @modacitylife

I’m not great at math but I’m starting to connect the dots here:


BUDDYHEAD

attempts to use disability to support anti-bike/walking policies are based on two ideas: 1) disabled who can drive are so important that everything must be arranged around them but 2) disabled people who can walk but not drive have no interests worthy of consideration.
mlewyn

Almost every reporter in America, without evidence, frames articles in ways that suggest cash bail policies reduce crime. Today, after reviewing the evidence, a court concluded that CASH BAIL IS CRIMINOGENIC. Cash bail *increases crime.
David Menschel @davidminpdx

Black people grow up around other races and somehow we manage to still sound like ourselves and be ourselves but everyone nonBlack gotta wear us like a costume and be a walking stereotype. Okay.
miss church girl @123itsmeMary

Almost half the car trips in U.S. cities are three miles long or less. That’s a lot of car trips that don’t need to be car trips.
Brent Toderian

Humans doing the hard jobs on minimum wage while the robots write poetry and paint is not the future I wanted
Karl Sharro @KarlreMarks

American policing in a nutshell, personnel costs are up 15%, crime up 28%, and clearances and total arrests are somehow down...


@BusinessmanLego

The craziest thing about the US and guns: gun owners overwhelmingly cite "protection" as the reason to have a gun and yet having a gun demonstrably puts everyone in the household at *greater risk*. We make ourselves less secure in the name of security. The successful use of a gun for personal protection from attack or home invasion is so vanishingly rare you can barely see it in the statistics, yet accidental shootings & suicides are ubiquitous. Why don't these facts affect the debate?
David Roberts @drvolts

What if each time the NYT decided to endorse a public lynching, an orca whale would fall out of the sky and crush the section editor? Can we say for certain that this wouldn't improve the world significantly?
@xianb8

Notable left-wing firebrands at the The Wall Street Journal suggesting that corporate price gouging is driving inflation:


Brooke Harrington

I think EV enthusiasts should acknowledge that EVs already have lots of big money behind them. They are basically inevitable. But better land use is *not* inevitable and will likely be opposed by many powerful interests that are fine with EVs.
David Roberts @drvolts

it’s pretty weird being in japan and seeing incredible public transit, safe streets, high speed rail, and almost zero gun violence. and then remembering that the US has almost double the GDP/capita. our bad outcomes (like 8 year shorter life spans) are entirely a policy choice
@sam_d_1995

This should be on every front page: "Air pollution from U.S. oil and natural gas production causes roughly $77 billion in health impacts nationwide every year, while also contributing to thousands of early deaths and health flare-ups, a new study finds."
Jamie Henn @jamieclimate

In a world full of stroads, be a street:


Strong Towns

for those people who suggest concentrating intensification along transport corridors: Many people, myself included, would rather live in an apartment next to a big park than a busy road. Different people value different amenities, which is why we need *widespread* upzoning.
@StuartBDonovan

Whatever the definition of woman is, I know it is strong enough and loving enough to include trans people.
Leigh Finke

It's time to understand that the battle isn't just to win the next election. You can't win EVERY election. There are too many variables. Also, the fascist fever isn't breaking. The battle is to stop the coup. That means changing the institutions to make the coup impossible. That means BIG STRUCTURAL CHANGE, even if it feels a bit destabilizing. It means expanding the court, adding states, ditching blue slips, killing the filibuster, invoking the 14th, adding requirements for police hiring, and honestly talking about what the GOP is doing. Is it a risk? Of course. But it's NOT AS BIG AS RISK AS THINKING YOU CAN WIN ENOUGH ELECTIONS UNTIL THE FEVER PASSES. That sounds nice, but it is stupid. The fever isn't going to "pass" with these people, and you'll eventually lose an election.
David Atkins

Sometimes it’s hard to comprehend how purposefully cruel Minneapolis can be. This public space is locked away from everyone, just in case an unhoused person might find refuge here:


@mplsalex

Worried about Trump? I’ll make it worse. Man who created Federalist Society, Leonard Leo, has $2b and is focused on changing elections. Funding org dedicated to “independent state legislature” theory states can overturn pop vote. 6 SCOTUS judges are Fed Society. It’s just starting
stuart stevens

“There are ways to cover Donald Trump. In fact, there are ways to interview him...that don't involve a live platform with hundreds of his whooping, cheering super fans, ritualistically humiliating your host and network," says Chris Hayes on the CNN town hall.
All In with Chris Hayes

“What the town hall really revealed is how committed the establishment media and the Republican party are to normalizing a political leader who has provably glorified violence against our American institutions and his political opposition. “
Tim Miller

There is simply no way CNN can feign ignorance about the fact that they set up a sexual assault victim to be targeted and attacked on national television a day after the verdict. People were sounding the alarm about this exact scenario. They let it happen anyway without a plan.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Classic of the genre:


matt levinson

It’s cool to read the biography of basically any self-made person prior to 1980 and get to the part where they arrive in the big city and rent a cheap room in a boarding house/residence hotel for a few dollars a week, a form of housing that basically doesn’t exist anymore.
pigeon enjoyer @DolphinMossad

I'm going to keep saying this until it breaks through: the NYPD is treating Daniel Penny, killer of Jordan Neely, like one of their own. They didn't release his name, let him walk free, and now they're attacking protests with a violence not seen consistently since June 2020.
@JoshuaPHilll

US death count in wars:
Vietnam War 1955-75: 58,281
Korean War 1950-53: 36,516
Iraq War 2003-11: 4,614
Afghanistan War 2001-21: 2,402
US gun deaths 2019-21: 133,759
51 years of war: 101,813 deaths
3 years of US gun deaths: 133,759
@EricG1247

And to lay it out once more for the cheap seats: fossil fuel producers should NOT be at the table because they are bad-faith actors who have lied to the public and policymakers about climate change for 50 years — and they are STILL doing everything they can to block fossil fuel phase-out.
Dr. Genevieve Guenther @DoctorVive

Lemme fix that headline:
Why Business Networking Continues to Rely on an Activity That Has Been Historically Inaccessible to Women, People of Color, and Poor People - And Why That’s a Problem


Sonya Dreizler

BREAKING: A Florida judge has ruled that the Bible must be banned along with other books Ron DeSantis has banned because of how much murder, incest, rape, genocide, and violence is featured in the Old Testament.
The Halfway Post

One of the reasons why politics attracts a disproportionate number of narcissists/sociopaths is because politics evolved from a profession that attempted to solve problems/help people into a profession (politics) that has morphed into the toxic love-child of reality TV and professional wrestling.
Nick Carmody

Parking is free rent for cars, mandated by law. car culture prioritizes the placement of cars over human beings.
Athena Hollins

"Metropolitan Houston has 30 parking spaces for each of its over six million residents, using a land area nearly 10 times the size of Paris."
David Roberts @drvolts

If America has a 25 times higher gun homicide rate than peer nations because we're uniquely more mentally ill, addicted, and evil than other humans, isn't that actually an argument for keeping guns away from most Americans?
Shannon Watts

while i was deep in grief, i was researching brain waves and one thing i learned is that during severe depression/grief, we experience theta waves (which usually occur only before deep sleep) while we are awake. we literally sleepwalk through life due to sadness. just wild.
sarah rose etter

We have a new record low for coal's share of power generation in the US—it made up just 13.4% of total electricity in April, below the previous record low of 14.4% set in April 2020. Wind and Solar made up 20.3% of total electricity, just under the record of 21% set last year:


Joey Politano

Conservatives always love to talk about one city Chicago when entire states like Texas basically have weekly mass shooting massacres as Greg Abbott basically eliminates any restrictions on acquiring guns.
Darrell Owens @IDoTheThinking

Your periodic reminder that Clarence Thomas used to smear his own sister as a shiftless, welfare-dependent layabout in speeches to his Heritage Foundation pals, and when reporters tracked her down, his story turned out to be extremely fake.
Jay Willis

So much of what’s wrong in the world is about racism and cars only that it is beyond frustrating. Neither phenomenon should be hard to see but people are super invested in denying both
Adam Miller @ajm6792

"You can kill anyone making a scene in a public space if you're personally uncomfortable" is a hell of a stance from the same people who've been throwing tantrums in Target over its masking policies for the last three years.
Kevin M. Kruse

“Kids are jumping out the windows of burning buildings, falling to their deaths. And we think the problem is that they're jumping.” — Tommy Orange
@theferocity

"I was afraid" or "I feared for my life" have for centuries justified all sorts of brutality against, and death of, black men.
Ida Bae Wells @nhannahjones

Clarence Thomas has often chafed against what he calls White liberals patronizing Black people. What could be more patronizing than having a White benefactor to buy your mama’s house and pay your child’s school tuition, which said billionaire justified as helping kids “at risk.”
Tera Hunter

When your son’s school tells the kids to come school dressed up as kings and queens to mark the coronation. Sometimes you just to remind everyone of the original royalty. #AfricanRoyalty:


Marcus Ryder MBE

mentally ill homeless people are downstream of a dozen policy issues that conservatives don't give a shit about. they won't fund mental health services or housing, but as soon as they see a human being directly affected by those choices they think it should be legal to murder him. for all the talk by reactionaries about this issue, they can't actually articulate a policy problem beyond "get these people away from me" because they don't have a framework for understanding structural problems at all
@The_Law_Boy

I think the thing that irks me the most about this latest Thomas corruption thing is that the people most vociferously defending him getting somebody else to pay his kid's tuition are the same people who want to deny kids who DON'T know Harlan Crow a school lunch.
Elie Mystal

There is so much unprocessed trauma swirling around this country.
David Roberts @drvolts

Love that the GOP is based on the idea that helping people is destructive and riddled through with ulterior motives and schemes, but every one of them is like, “Listen, can’t a billionaire pay for everything for his Supreme Court Justice friend and ask nothing in return?”
Jared Yates Sexton @JYSexton

The phrase “liveable city” is used so often it has lost almost all meaning. But to us, it’s a place where everyone feels welcome using the public realm; regardless of age, ability, ethnicity or income—not just those with the physical and financial means to operate a private car:


Melissa & Chris Bruntlett @modacitylife

Kevin McCarthy has quietly implemented a plan that now allows Members to get reimbursed by the government for their rent, utilities and meals in DC.
Ron Filipkowski

This just in: professors have always thought their current students are more ignorant than the previous ones.
Nick Covington

TIL:
TIL
Umair Irfan

* When you hear "fintech," think "unlicensed bank": "...with a computer."
Yogi Hendlin

"All cruelty springs from weakness." –Seneca
Jessica Karjala

New report details how the public is lavishly subsidizing the private-jet travel of rich people, responsible for a wildly disproportionate amount of carbon emissions. "The median net worth of a full and fractional private jet owner is $190M and $140M respectively. They represent 0.0008% of the global population. The jet owning oligarchy is overwhelmingly male, over the age of 50, and concentrated in banking, finance, and real estate."
David Roberts @drvolts

We have roads that look like this all over North America, yet we keep building new ones. Make it make sense.


Strong Towns

On a day of hot takes, I think my spiciest offering is that most grading and reporting practices are  educational malpractice. For a profession that claims to be evidence-based, it's run by an antique 19th century grading system that nobody can touch or the power goes out.
Nick Covington

Hospitals have legal teams that will go to extremes to prevent malpractice suits from going to trial. Why can't those same legal teams fight for doctors who have broken unjust laws to help their patients?
S.I. Rosenbaum

More immigration would help with many of America’s biggest challenges:
1. Inflation
2. CHIPS Act execution
3. Long-term fiscal crisis
Alec Stapp

I have yet to see a photo of #AnnaMayWong with slanted eyes, but apparently that is how Barbie sees Asian American eyes:


@RichLeePhD

Vouchers allow those on the right to attack our secular democracy in two ways at once: diverting public $ to private enterprises (thus weakening the public sphere) and demolishing the wall between church and state (since 3/4 of all private-school students attend religious schools).
Alfie Kohn

A judge says San Francisco's Marriott Hotel illegally kept about $9 million in more than five years of banquet "service charges" that its customers reasonably understood to be tips for food servers.
San Francisco Chronicle

"Vouchers that permit a child to go to a school perceived to be good destroy the notion that all our schools must be commonly good." –John Goodlad
Alfie Kohn

In 1970 the American middle class received 62% of the country’s aggregate income; today it’s 42%. The top 1% now owns 32% of our nation’s wealth, and the bottom 50% owns 3%. America has never been so disdainful of its workers:


Scott Galloway @profgalloway

Note that nobody is taking about criminal charges for this corporation that stole from its working-class employees. I’ve represented dozens, maybe hundreds of poor people who have spent time — sometimes weeks or months — in a cage for stealing necessity items.
Peter Calloway

There’s the “freedom” to own a car and travel great distances with speed and protection from the elements. Then there’s the “freedom” to live without car insurance, maintenance fees, gas, parking, tickets, traffic, and the constant threat of crashes. “Freedom” is perspective.
Strong Towns

BREAKING: Harlan Crow and his family's average yearly political contributions went up 862% after Citizens United was decided in 2010. Who provided a deciding vote for that case? Justice Clarence Thomas, a "family friend" they showered with luxury travel and gifts for 20+ years.
Americans For Tax Fairness

I've never had a parking or speeding ticket in my entire life and I drove a box truck 500+ miles 5 days a week through tiny rural towns with cops that would ticket you for just "looking funny," for years. It really isn't that hard to not drive like a sociopath.  
Car Helmets

Why are they called "eggplants"? Because they used to look like this. We hope this doesn't mess up your emoji game:


Merriam-Webster

Again and again, we are the shithole nation. We are the Moloch-worshipping, gunlusting freaks who would trade the sanity, dignity and safety of our entire society for a chance to fondle and fire handguns. The civilized world has addressed this. Not us. We wallow in an abattoir.
David Simon @AoDespair

NEW: A Texas man firing an AR-15 in his front yard killed five people in a neighboring home after they asked him to stop shooting because a baby was sleeping. Police said all were shot execution-style; the youngest victim was 8-years-old.
Shannon Watts

am curious what the term “free thinker” means. I usually see it in bios that also have something about being a Christian and/or about loving their country. It seems ironic. “I assimilated into the culture I was born into and will think freely within the confines of my box.”
@sisyphus38

When asked to draw their trip to school, children who walk to school drew a more vibrant picture than those driven in a car. Every student should have the option to walk or bike to school in a safe manner, full stop. (via Margrit Stamm)


Hayden Clarkin @the_transit_guy

We should bring back full-service community schools.
Naomi Kritzer