Sunday, October 1, 2023

Twitter, September 2023

Looking back over these tweets, September was a month about the climate crisis, the democracy crisis, Trump's legal morass, and Republicans attempting to distract from all of that. The month ended with Republicans in Congress once again holding the government hostage, only to relent at the last second to allow another 45 days of operation, and with New York City inundated with 8" of rain (at the same time we were having 90° weather in Minnesota... kind of unusual on September 30). 

I can't believe that list didn't include what Tommy Tuberville has been doing in the Senate or the latest news of Clarence Thomas's ongoing history of outrageous behaviors. There's just too much and those two things only got a few tweets, when they might "normally" (whatever that means) be major topics. I also didn't mention the UAW strike or the Republicans' "impeachment" inquiry...

Everything below the line is quoted from the attributed account, and is in reverse chronological order — except some of the images, which I sometimes move up or down for better visual balance.

 ___

44% of women in prison have bipolar disorder; 11% have schizophrenia. Why are states locking up so many women rather than finding ways to get them the healthcare they need?


Prison Policy Init.

The default lazy answer to every problem is tiresome. NYC and US cities are not decaying because of cops and corporations; visit a modern city abroad please. US infrastructure sucks because Congress doesn't fund it and permitting is obstructed locally. If you wanna see where Congress' priorities are, look at agriculture subsidies and corporations. The Senate's Republicans are openly hostile to improving American cities over culture war shit and have been for decades.
Darrell Owens @IDoTheThinking

My favorite legal writer, Elie Mystal, profiles [in The Nation] the influential Trump-appointed appellate judge (and Clarence Thomas protégé) James Ho, who writes his opinions as if "Andrew Dice Clay took a constitutional law course at the Vatican."
Alfie Kohn

This should be legal to build in every neighborhood:


Strong Towns

If you blame this shutdown on “Congress” and not “House Republicans,” journalist is the wrong job for you.
Ian Millhiser

It’s way past time people start realizing the richest people on the planet despise democracy, are in control of historically powerful surveillance hubs that determine discourse and spread of information, and their predecessors hopped in bed with fascists with hardly a worry.
Jared Yates Sexton

We either flood the streets with climate activists, or the climate crisis floods our streets with increasingly devastating storms.
Dr. Lucky Tran

Putting aside the current staffing issues and frequency, I think we could address a lot of the issues with our Minneapolis/St. Paul Green Line with signal priority and other fixes that would allow 8-10 minute headways.
Evan Roberts

For the price of letting 10 cops continuously violate New Yorkers' rights, we could have installed 2,615 bioswales. 2,615 of them would be able to collect over 196 MILLION gallons of water and keep it from flooding our streets, subways, and homes. Letting NYC flood is a policy choice:


@notchrisvolpe

Injustice makes the rules and courage breaks them.
Ursula K. Le Guin bot

seriously, why does the media treat it as perfectly normal that a guy who was recently president, and wants to be president again, says things that are certifiably crazy? Is this affirmative action for old white men who are the children of billionaires?
Dean Baker

41% of French population is in favour of a proposal to limit everyone to 4 flights in their entire life. 59% of 18–24 year-olds agree. 2 return flights. Not per year: per life.
Stanley Pignal

“All evidence shows that a loving marriage is the greatest engine of modern society.” Sir, that’s fossil fuels. Like, not to kill your romance. But that’s oil, sir. Oil.
Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd

While placing patients in restraints is an overall rare phenomenon, Black patients are 31% more likely to be placed in restraints that white patients. For many Black health professionals, in terms of what we have witnessed, this comes as little surprise.
uché blackstock, md

“For the first time, it is possible for water, produced by sunlight, to be even cheaper than tap water,” says Lenan Zhang, a research scientist in MIT’s Device Research Laboratory.
David Wallace-Wells

NYC 3 months apart. The climate crisis will manifest in hundreds of ways and we need to be ready:


Xiye Bastida

Congratulations to the New Yorkers who voted Republicans into the House of Representatives to combat crime and wound up potentially defunding FEMA relief for their own city's massive flooding.
Mark Joseph Stern @mjs_DC

The City of Atlanta just doxxed 116,000 people who signed the #StopCopCity petition. After the City Council directed the clerk to redact personal information, instead the clerk published all of it online––and we know the clerk has been taking orders from Andre Dickens [major of Atlanta].
@micahinATL

All the guys on my Facebook who were really into crypto mining and NFTs a couple of years ago are now starting "world first" AI businesses. It's fascinating. They should be studied in a lab. The masculine version of jumping from Tupperware to Thermomix to essential oils.
Alice Clarke @Alicedkc

I am sadly no longer easily shocked by the extent to which we’ve destroyed Earth and our environment - but this headline managed to shock me anyway: “Japanese scientists find microplastics are present in CLOUDS.” Naturally, “When microplastics reach the upper atmosphere and are exposed to ultraviolet radiation from sunlight, they degrade, contributing to greenhouse gasses.” That’s just to make terrible matters worse, as only Big Oil can.
Assaad Razzouk

Everyone complaining about mass transit costing too much to build needs to take a look at highways. This 4-lane road connecting two low-density exurbs in the Bay Area [Vallejo and Marin] will cost TEN FIGURES to rebuild. That's hundreds of miles of bus rapid transit and Dutch-style bike lanes!


Sukrit Ganesh

Moms for Liberty wants private donors to pay to feed hungry children. But wants taxpayers to pay private school tuition for kids who are already there.
@joshcowenMSU

The Washington Post calls Gen. Milley “polarizing” because he tried to prevent Trump and his fascist gang from endangering our national security. What a bunch of both-sides bullshit.
@MarkJacob16

I imagine Eisenhower was also considered polarizing by nazis
@burlinghoffras1

A huge problem with Marxism is how inevitable it finds revolution, leading a whole class of political observers to be constantly anticipating a magical revolution that just never comes.
@BearCurd

I’m only a few tiptoes into a tenure-track job in African American Studies. My name and email are freshly on the website, which means I’m now the target of occasional anti-Black emails and we have to have someone filter out horrible messages to our department listserv. I was told to expect to hand over my work emails, as conservative lawfirms attack race/ethnicity-based departments in public record requests to invoke fear/power. We are targeted and surveilled, which is unsurprising yet unsettling. Check on your Black Studies departments y’all.
Jessica Lee Stovall


Nnedi Okorafor

one of the wildest societal shifts happening right now is that marriage has always been optional for men, and now it’s also optional for women. and some people are *upset* about this.
@emilykmay

A pretty good indication of the weakness of Democrats in controlling the media narrative is that there’s an aggressively GOP-aligned Supreme Court justice waist-deep in nonstop corruption scandals and somehow the GOP has made more noise about the fact a Dem senator wears hoodies.
Will Stancil

In the decades to come, the debate will be why people of our time spent so much money on car infrastructure when all the scientific evidence demonstrates how terrible it is for society and human thriving.
@dromomania_mpls

I hear we’re talking about  offensive clothing in Congress:


Jenn Billinson, PhD @jrbillin

If we trusted Anita Hill, we wouldn’t be here. And we can never say that enough.
Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis

“This is going to sound wild to anyone who lives in the US, but for any two-story rowhouse in Tokyo, the owner can by right operate a bar, a restaurant, a boutique, a small workshop on the ground floor — even in the most residentially zoned sections of the city.”
Brice Maryman, PLA @bmaryman

Minnesota Republicans be like: "I think our two biggest issues as a party should be keeping children hungry and making sure cops can choke them. I propose we spend our entire remaining budget of two dollars and fifty-seven cents on pushing these positions."
@PolarJohan15

If you want to reduce crime...do things that REDUCE CRIME...people over 50 who have served more than 5 years have a recidivism rate of UNDER 1%. At the same time, every day someone stays in prison they cost the state more and any benefit evaporates
Joshua B. Hoe

Costs of going car free = $4,833/year, compared to $12k/year to own a car over the life of the 6 year car loan. Estimate includes $ of e-cargo bike + public transit + ride share + occasional car rental + bike repairs. Even after the loan is paid off, this alternative is less!
Travis Norvell @pedalingpastor

I think the potential of unilateral geoengineering moves — including by a private entity — to trigger events that lead to war is underappreciated.
Alex Steffen


Extinction Rebellion Global

The new Pro Publica revelations about Clarence Thomas [and the Koch brothers] are the most shocking yet. He wasn't just taking cash from right-wing billionaires, he was helping them raise it – all in the sacred cause of blocking environmental regulations
Bill McKibben

does it freak anyone else out how normalized speeding is? the average driver thinks a person doing 90+ on the highway is safer than a bike rider treating a stop as yield
ben fryback

Taxing the rich is not about taking "their" money. It is about curtailing their command over *our* collective labour and resources so we can redirect *our* productive capacities away from serving elite accumulation and toward what we know is necessary for well-being and ecology.
Jason Hickel

It's quite an amazing feat of social engineering to convince so many people that the burden of car ownership is synonymous with freedom.
FuckCars

A lot of “old soul” people are just neurodivergent. I’m really starting to believe that.
@themultiplemom

I'm not a reading expert, but it's clear to me that the evidence for "Science pf Reading" is much weaker than the evidence for adequate school funding. And yet "reformers" demand SOR be implemented immediately (whatever that means) while funding reforms need more study so we don't "waste" money. Golly, you'd almost think the reformers were using SOR - and "choice" and "accountability" and teacher merit pay and so on — as an excuse to not raise taxes on the very wealthy so schools could have adequate funding...
Jersey Jazzman

the best apology is changed behavior.
@livewithnoregrt

People say this is a one party town, but there's actually two ideologies in Minneapolis:
• people who believe potholes are caused by an extreme freeze thaw cycle worsened by climate change
• people who believe potholes are caused by spending too much on white paint for bike lanes
@WedgeLIVE

securing your desired username on a new app is the closest millennials and zoomers will get to owning land
@notsofiacoppola

The [David Brooks airport meal cost controversy] is actually a good example for why so many are so angry about the economy. A few companies get contracts to serve food at airports, and use their power to charge passengers through the nose. People feel like ripped off chumps. This dynamic plays out across the economy in different ways. Corporate landlords charging a fee for the privilege of paying rent online.  Indecipherable cell phone contracts. Random health insurance denials. It's all a reminder that corporations have power, and you do not.
Helaine Olen

Manchin kneecapped and hamstrung Biden in 1000 ways, but politics and media being what they are, he's just going to fade into the background now and Biden is going to have to answer for the results.
David Roberts @drvolts


Cory Doctorow

A teacher in South Carolina was reported by her students for teaching Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me. The students explained that the book made them ashamed to be White, violating a clause forbidding teachers from making students “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish,…
philip lewis

Whiteness, the construct, doesn't allow shame. If you are white and feel shame at learning history, you are having a human reaction to an inhumane thing, but they want to legislate human concern out of you. That shame is a fork in the road and they want you on a certain path.
@bardsbesidebars

I remember reading The Diary of Anne Frank and Hiroshima in school. They made me feel uncomfortable because that’s a normal human response to seeing people suffer. The idea that white children are entitled to be shielded from facts in order to avoid “discomfort” is laughable.
chris evans @notcapnamerica

Push for change, but remember our strategic messaging — don't focus on climate, but the advantages to be had from the transition. Every organisation has to adapt to a post-carbon world, and those who do so quickest will have a great advantage. Make the 'business case'.
Dr Charlie Gardner

The *actual* weird thing is how this country tries to pretend that everyone in urban areas should get around like they live in the country. That's weird! That's really weird!
Courtney Milan

FACT: Joe Manchin has expressed more concern about John Fetterman’s wardrobe than the 5 million kids who were sent into poverty last year because Manchin opposed extending the expanded Child Tax
Judd Legum

US cities:
we don't need to build protected bike lanes
we don't need to connect  bike network
we don't need to put bike lanes on arterials where we limit multifamily housing & shops
gee everyone is still driving. why aren't we getting anywhere close to meeting climate goals?
Mike Eliason @holz_bau

The pile of things I have to read is now starting to bend space-time around it, but there's this new book that just came out...


ErrantScience

We live in a low trust, anti-social society with a large population of paranoid lunatics with guns as neighbors.
Darrell Owens @IDoTheThinking

Who is “much better served” by placing apartments on busy, polluted arterials? Surely not the people living in them.
@MaxOnTwitter

Very succinct critique of American planning — local US land use regulations are almost entirely about minimizing the impacts of growth on single-family home owner-occupiers at the expense of the quality of life for multifamily home renters and owner-occupiers.
@TribTowerViews

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
George Monbiot

Some fear being labelled a hypocrite, but own the label. It's not possible to exist in the modern world without having a negative impact, and they are not arguing in good faith. They'll use any excuse to discredit you, so ignore them.
Dr Charlie Gardner

The awesome blue Christmas tree worm!


Weird Animals

About 500k people are locked up in the U.S. pre-conviction.
David Kaib

One way of reckoning with the enormity of this figure is to note that the United States today has more than twice as many people in jail awaiting trial than it had in all of its prisons in 1970
Dan Berger

Black people in the depths of Jim Crow invent yet another iconic and world-imitated American art form (Rock and Roll) and a white man [Jann Wenner] decides that only White men can be the masters of it. This is the psychology of white racism. We see this in the academy as well. It’s sick.
Dr. Trevon D Logan

Here is the 1 fact to know about “small” voucher programs. They never ever stay small. That’s because the point is not to give kids with needs a voucher. The point is to Defund Public Education by giving vouchers to all.
Carol Corbett Burris

AI-created image from the phrase, “Jesus flipping over the tables in the temple”:


@RickLeeJames

Biblical literalism FTW
Leah McElrath

People who shelve books by color, how do you ever find a specific book again or are you just not really ever trying to find a book again
Heidi @laflaneuse

Can't stop looking at this picture of a new Royal Caribbean cruise ship. My son just described it as 'human lasagne'. Absolutely my idea of hell:


Heidi Stephens

Luxury cruises are punctured garbage bins on water
• 47 cruise ships emit 10 times more sulphur dioxide in European waters (2017 data) than all of Europe’s 260m cars combined
• That's just 1 of 3 air pollutants discharged from the ships’ smokestacks
And it gets worse
Assaad Razzouk

An element of academia which continues to floor me is that three people in a department can teach the same amount of classes, but one person makes 100k+, another makes 45k, and another makes 18k...and students have zero awareness of this difference.
Dr. Jessie Male


Ben Collins

In Helsinki, automatic traffic cameras reduced speeding by 56%. Many, many studies show similar findings.
David Zipper

Good morning with good news: US coal production peaked in 2008 and is falling more than 50% from the peak to ~1955 levels!
1.171 billion tons in 2008
984 million tons in 2013
756 million tons in 2018
~600 million tons in 2023
~480 million tons in 2024
1955 was 490,000,000 tons!
John Raymond Hanger

I'm sorry, but if I'm a freaking US Senator and I make calculations about how to vote based on whether the supporters of the leader of my party might kill me or my family, then I'd probably do some soul searching about the party I've chosen.
Seth Cotlar

This is a great meme for this platform:


Nnedi Okorafor

Historic headline: “World at beginning of end of fossil fuel era”, says global energy agency which was an oil and gas propaganda outlet (now reformed) — but still too conservative on clean energy forecasts: must mean we are at peak fossil fuels already: 12 Sep 2023.
Assaad Razzouk

Being the best transit system in the US is like being the healthiest patient at the hospice care.
Jean de l'entrecôte @de_entrecote

I worry the “Biden is old” coverage is starting to take on the same character as the 2016 But Her Emails coverage — find something that is genuinely suboptimal about the Democratic candidate, and dwell on it endlessly to “balance” coverage of the criminal in charge of the GOP. As a general rule, I think the political press is at its worst when it covers a story that 1) involves a matter that is of genuine concern to reasonable people; and 2) isn't a big deal when compared to other issues of superseding importance.
Ian Millhiser

When men discover that misogyny is real and bad because they have a daughter now, I always wonder how their wives feel about that.
Jessica Price @Delafina777

The advantage conservatives have is that their elected representatives can say utterly bonkers things and the media goes, "Well, that's ol' MTG"... meanwhile every Democrat on the planet is raked over the coals about their stance on what some Assistant Professor posted on Insta.
Dmitry Grozoubinski @DmitryOpines

Tell the truth, Europeans. You enjoy the splendor of work-life balance as OG colonizers. It’s blood money from slavery. Your free healthcare (for the non-disabled), parental leave, and economic stability wouldn’t exist w/o your exploitation of my and other West African nations.
Ola Ojewumi @Olas_Truth

“In the past half century, by investing in transit and allowing development, Tokyo added more housing units than the total number in NYC. It remained affordable by becoming the world’s largest city. It has become the largest city by remaining affordable.”
Ben Furnas


@BikeBikeYYC

System justification at work: people remain weirdly, persistently blind to the ongoing carnage produced by cars but are drawn like moths to flame to *novel* kinds of risks, even if they are objectively tiny in comparison.
David Roberts @drvolts

Love that every GOP candidate is just openly calling for either outright war against Mexico or invasions with special forces and nobody in the media has so much as batted an eye or pushed back.
Jared Yates Sexton

The very first person jailed (1842) for being. Public charge was a Black employee whose employer had him arrested for suspicion of being a slave. No “owner” claimed him (because he was free), so the jail sold him (to a Chicago politician).
Alan Mills


Bill Nemacheck

All this wanking on about precisely calibrating climate messages when the basic state of affairs is the same today as it was last year, 5 years ago, 10 years ago: the general public is not nearly scared enough and does not appreciate the level of action required to reduce the risk. But a comparatively tiny, unrepresentative slice of the most engaged activists might be a little *too* scared, so we need 50000 columns from centrists scolding them and telling them to calm down.
David Roberts @drvolts

People who want to pick and choose which students they teach should maybe not teach in a public school.
Alix Smith @staralixstar42

I wish people would call Christian and Islamic traditions "folklore" in the way that people use the word "folklore" to talk about my culture's spiritual beliefs.
Nnedi Okorafor


@6pounddog

The criminalization of mutual aid activities in the #StopCopCity campaign of course brings to mind FBI and local law enforcement attacks on the Black Panther Party's breakfast program. Criminalizing mutual aid is part of political repression.
dean spade

Some might find a tiny contradiction in the view that Russia is a very nice country and why would anyone oppose it and if anyone does there will be nuclear war so be nice to nice Russia.
Rebecca Solnit

We heavily regulate every minute detail of our historic urban neighborhoods... except one:


Jonathan Berk @berkie1

"We're not all going to ride bikes." Correct, which is why some people are advocating for improved bus and train service alongside safe bike infrastructure
@FullLaneFemme

I just wanna know if male journalists have women who constantly email them to tell them about articles they should read on topics they've written about. Like, I just wanna know. Because I'm guessing no.
Lyz Lenz @lyzl

The French banning religious clothing is so dumb. Ban proselytizing, state religions, tax exemption for religious commercial activity, gender discrimination, youth marriage, circumcision and corporal punishment, but let people come to their senses free from state interference.
Mary Morse Marti

Self-Driving Tesla Regurgitates Pedestrian to Feed Offspring:


SAN JOSE, CA—As part of an effort to nurture and raise its young, a self-driving Tesla regurgitated a pedestrian carcass to feed its offspring, sources confirmed Wednesday.
The Onion

Perhaps the most important general fact to understand about climate change is how it's not remotely correlated to population, but rather, the absurdly wasteful, energy-intensive lifestyles of a small portion of the human race. At the top of the waste pile: Car-oriented sprawl.
Matthew Lewis @mateosfo

We tend to think of cars as the default mode of transport for everyone. The reality is, less than 15% of the global population own a car. That means over 85% percent of the world lives carfree.
@TimFWelch

I went into a Walgreens and there were just two employees working in a 10,000 square foot store. Not a criminologist, but I think this might be a greater driver of retail theft than some city council member tweeting "Defund the police."
Stan Oklobdzija @stan_okl

Cars are too damn big and drivers are too damn reckless. A big SUV rode my bumper then flew around me in a school zone, where the speed limit is 15mph. I just really hate our car culture.
@BeckMac4

“Canadian wildfires have this year burned a land area larger than 104 of the world’s 195 countries. The CO2 released by them so far is estimated to be 1.5 billion tons—more than the total emissions of more than 100 of the world’s countries combined.”
David Wallace-Wells

The replacements for fossil fuels are cheaper, better, cleaner — and improving all the time. That's why you see Big Oil digging in, spreading nonsense and denial. They know they can't win on a level playing field, especially when environmental and social damages are considered.
Dr. Jonathan Foley @GlobalEcoGuy

1 new drinking fountain for every new EV charging station, or your city is "climate adapting" for the car industry.
@jdavey_2

On the left: Parking for 70 cars. On the right: Parking for 1,000 bikes.
On the left: People who spend $5-10k a year maintaining their car. On the right: People who have $5-10k extra to spend every year.
US cities and retailers cater to the people on the left. Explains a lot!


Matthew Lewis @mateosfo

IMO, liberal cosmopolitan values are basically correct and we should try to persuade Americans to support them.
David Roberts @drvolts

Hard work is not why White people have the most wealth in this country. Exploiting Black people’s labor is why.
Allison Wiltz Psy.M. @queenie4rmnola

As we've long expected, the State of Georgia today issued a RICO indictment against 60+ activists and others in their latest attempt at shutting down the right to protest in Atlanta. Three Solidarity Fund organizers are included in this indictment.
Atlanta Solidarity Fund

They're explicitly naming "collectivism, mutualism/mutual aid, and social solidarity" as fundamental elements of a criminal conspiracy. This is horrifying and a sign of just how far the state is willing to go to repress any and all resistance.
Interrupting Criminalization

People worked hard, for decades, to carve out some degree of safety on US streets for pedestrians, bicyclists and children. A mix of street design, law enforcement and public awareness...  it was working. That's been allowed fall apart in the last few years, to deadly effect.
Alex Steffen

it's genuinely insane how the GOP has only won the popular vote in a single presidential election since 1988
@un_a_valeable

Different variation on the same theme:


Alfie Kohn

If a Democrat was doing what Tuberville was doing for liberal reasons, it would be the end of the Democratic Party as a major political organization for 20 years. We all know this, right?
@IRHotTakes

Shocking statistic: In the last decade, two passengers have been killed in accidents on US commercial airlines. Over the same period, more than 365,000 Americans have been killed by cars...
Kate Fefelova

The majority that supports public schools is probably going to let the minority destroy them, just because the minority is more vigorous and active and the majority takes the status quo for granted and doesn't take the threat seriously. A familiar story!
David Roberts @drvolts

motorists: cars aren't going anywhere
climate change: wanna bet? [video of cars floating away]
Mike Eliason @holz_bau

Surprising absolutely no one, the moral panic over COVID learning loss is not leading to calls for better-resourced public schools, but for a resurrection of No Child Left Behind and the full suite of education reform meddling, from mass teacher firings to school takeovers.
Will Stancil

wildfires, heat domes, and deluges. oh me. we should probably aim to curb emissions sooner rather than later.another way to think about this...
wildfires in greece so far in 2023 have wiped out GDP increase from 2022.
turns out climate change will force degrowth whether you want it or not
Mike Eliason @holz_bau

Am I the only one worrying about 2028? Even assuming Biden wins in 2024, the tendency of the electorate to want to alternate Ds with Rs is a danger to everything.
@pattho

Incredibly, more money will be deployed on solar in 2023 than oil:

Science Is Strategic

52 new cycle paths built this summer in paris. seattle couldn't complete one.
Mike Eliason @holz_bau

Trans liberation means full inclusion, full stop. And at the end of the day, there aren’t actually that many celebrity voices saying yes, when asked about the issue of inclusion. When asked, be a yes. Fully.
Leigh Finke

Must be a huge coincidence that all these white, wealthy people publishing op-eds in major newspapers think the problem is that schools aren’t teaching enough courses laundering and lauding white, wealthy people.
Jared Yates Sexton

Moderates want to claim the mantle of abolitionist teaching (precisely how absurd the violence, expense and ineffectiveness of policing is, and how we could do much better) as their own common sense, then declare "abolish" or "defund" as radical concept. talk about dissonance
D.A. Bullock @BullyCreative

St.Vitus Cathedral, Prague by Josef Sudek. 1928. Sudek (1896–1976) lost his right arm in WW1 and then decided to train as a photographer — using a large format camera. Among artists he was known as The Poet of Prague:


Ewan Morrison

Sears going from constructing the tallest building in world history to only having a dozen stores left in the span of only 50 years is a saga worth studying in the history books imo
@north0fnorth

Walking down [Atlanta's] Peachtree Street during DragonCon, and wondering why we design highways for peak events and sidewalks for average ones.
Tejas Kotak

Your periodic reminder that "we're a republic, not a democracy" means "Republicans are entitled to govern even if voters prefer Democrats"
Scott Lemieux

It’s a bit of a paradox that liberals have a disproportionate trust in authority but don’t tend to be authoritarian while conservatives tend to be authoritarian but have an extreme distrust of authority.
Leah McElrath

Which is it, are public schools underperforming failure traps or are they "the most effective tool of indoctrination"? The reactionary mythos requires them to be both: “By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.”
Nick Covington @CovingtonEDU

Police shoot and kill Black Americans at twice a rate than white Americans. In the past 12 months, police shot and killed 1,013 people. In 2022, police shot and killed a record number of people, more than 3 a day. It’s so bad the WaPo has a tracker:


Dyjuan Tatro

it turns out if you ride your bike hard enough on rough enough trails, you can rip a maxi pad clean in half. I feel like I just won some kind of strong man competition
Michelle Allison @fatnutritionist

It’s so funny that the right wing narrative about the labor market (“none of these snowflakes want to work anymore”) is only actually true about cops
James Medlock @jdcmedlock

Every shift away from space-hogging cars—regardless of fuel source—creates new opportunities to vegetate streets and intersections. De-paving is an effective tool in the fight against climate change; improving carbon absorption, heat mitigation, rain retention, and biodiversity:


Melissa & Chris Bruntlett @modacitylife

People seem to not get AVs will massively increase VMT especially 0 traveler VMT (seen mostly now in deadheading taxi/Uber/livery drivers.) This means you’re going to need a lot of new road or congestion pricing. It’s not going to solve the space issue.
Nilo Cobau

- When you see attacks on batteries and renewables, without the comparison to the much larger problems of fossil fuels, know that this a talking point of Big Oil.
- They want to slow down the energy transition, and are using this to blow smoke in our eyes.
- Don’t fall for it.
Dr. Jonathan Foley @GlobalEcoGuy

The boss who decries their loss of freedom because of minimum wage laws is not a hypocrite, they think their power over others is what freedom demands.
David Kaib

26 years since the greatest retraction:


@SpiceBoyJoey

Accidentally made homemade pepper spray cooking dinner ;-;
trees @tornadosw

Thinking about how Mike Pence responded to the recent shooter (who killed himself) by hyping the death penalty, and how the GOP is responding to drug overdoses by trying to bomb Mexico, and how reactionaries know nothing, have nothing to offer, but escalating repression and violence.
David Roberts @drvolts

NEW: A 5-year Belgian study shows the BIG impact of increasing vehicle weight on road deaths and injuries. When a person on a bike or walking is hit by a pick-up, the risk of serious injury increases by 90% compared to a car. The risk of death goes up by 200%.
Brent Toderian

IMPORTANT: “Cars kill Americans at insanely high rates, killing 43,000 Americans in 2021, a number that has, almost unbelievably, increased by nearly a third in the last decade while our peer countries have decreased their car fatalities.” Via @voxdotcom:


Brent Toderian

There is no rage quite like trying to do work that meets the magnitude of the climate crisis in a world that will do anything to ignore how dire things really are.
Jamie Alexander @jabeckx

SRO stands for Student Resource Officer. The resources they are offering are choke holds and restricted airways on children. Apparently, that's all they got for you in resources, so with this law [that disallows choke holds] they are bouncing.
D.A. Bullock @BullyCreative

Most existing "environmental review" laws were written in the 1970's after we destroyed our cities with highways and fossil fuels. Those same laws now entrench that status quo by making it extremely difficult to build sustainable transit and infrastructure. We need NEPA reform.
@sam_d_1995

It was the hottest August in Miami's history, by a big margin. It set new monthly records of temperature and heat index. In fact, the monthly average heat index exceeded 105°F, just as it did in July, for the first time.
Brian McNoldy



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