BlueSky, March 2024

Looking through these March 2024 posts is a strange experience. They end with Trans Day of Visibility, which this year coincides with Easter Sunday, and the aftermath of the Key bridge collapse in Baltimore, but in the middle and later there are references to the mifepristone case, the Texas immigration case, the Trump immunity case... so many legal cases it's bewildering. There were the Oscars and the made up outrage over one short speech by a filmmaker named Glazer. And there was the reminder of New York's governor suddenly sending armed troops into the subways — remember that? Oh, and the State of the Union — that was in March, too. Sheesh.

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

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“Is it technically fascism?” “Is it technically rape?” “Is it technically genocide?” Remarkable the smug ease with which so many people have replaced moral inquiries with semantic ones.
Moira Donegan

It’s baffling to me that these same people know that hormones will cause irreversible changes to your body, but somehow they don’t grasp that no cis man would ever permanently alter his body to be woman-like just for something as arbitrary as winning a sports game. And before anyone is like “What if he’s transitioning to creep on women?” Again, no cis man would ever permanently alter his body for that. Why would a cis man go through the painstaking process of transition just to creep when he could get in a position of power over women much more easily?
@d1rtn4p.bsky.social

Mainstream narrative:


Tom Flood

I think one thing we have learned with absolute certainty since 2016: if the Antichrist ever shows up, the Evangelical Christians of the US will line up for the Mark of the Beast with the breathless, servile enthusiasm of Tesla bros lining up for that stupid truck.
Naomi Kritzer

if marriage was so great for women it would speak for itself. the fact that there's constant propaganda to convince us to marry says a lot.
Wagatwe Wanjuki

AI feels like a real mania, a genuine collective break from reality among the ruling class. They might as well be pouring billions of dollars into an attempt to replace all jobs and knowledge with a large bronze idol of Dagon.
Sean T. Collins

I think the reviving of union power has them scared shitless and AI is a near religious belief that computers will save them from unions
Joseph Fink @planetoffinks.bsky.social

Elon Musk uses sci-fi dreams like colonizing Mars to distract us his real business goals and how SpaceX has trampled workers’ rights and the environment to achieve them. If we ever hope to build a better future, we need to stop falling for false futures.
Paris Marx

Aberdeen, Mississippi is now home to a Giant Cross. It’s the 14th in the state. It cost $240,000. Everywhere you look, people say Mississippi is #49 or #50 in this or that. We're #1 in the number of crosses in just one state," said the constructor.
Hemant Mehta

The Cleveland Museum of Art has several very hi-resolution scans of William Morris textiles like this one, "Strawberry Thief":


Vic Thorstenson

Infrastructure is obviously the key to truly mass adoption [of eBikes], no question. Nobody is saying eBikes will broadly replace cars without major effort, what is being said is that more people can replace car trips with eBike trips than are. Vehicles [like F250s, Escalades, cybertrucks] have no place in denser urban areas anyway. Cars have a monopoly on mobility that traps us into thinking we can only replace them with modes that replicate everything they do. If you're going to wait for something that makes all mobility as easy as a car without their many downsides, you'll wait forever. Cars can't be replaced, only unbundled.
e.w. niedermeyer

The right-wing reaction to the Key Bridge really feels like a new front in unabashed racism (and yes, I know that’s saying a lot) in that Mayor Scott hasn’t said or done anything they take issue with, they’re just mad he’s Black.
@gonebabygone.bsky.social

Conservatism has always boiled down to "saw a black person and got mad," but they used to make a little more effort to disguise that.
@haredurer.bsky.social

if you're white and have never lived in the south you might not understand this. you cannot say "fuck the south" or "do we really need /southern state/?" without writing off Black folks.
@secretaboutbox.bsky.social

As a part of the first generation of victims of the US standardized testing regime, it is sad how right we were in the 90s when, as students, we opposed more standardized tests. It was a problem 30-plus years ago, as history has proven us more than right the regime has continued unaltered by facts.
BlackJew

sighing wearily and saying "they just had to make it political" every time a tv show or movie shows a hetero sex scene
Andie Sophia

EVs: The Expensive New Way to Turn Tires Into Lung Tissue:


Eric Roston

Joe Lieberman is why we don’t have Medicare at 55.
David M. Perry @lollardfish.bsky.social

today's antidote to impostor syndrome: you almost certainly could make better decisions than television executives
Timothy Burke @bubbaprog.ilovecitr.us

"After more than a decade of austerity, British five-year-olds are a full centimeter shorter now than they were in 2010, and they are becoming significantly shorter than children in other countries." from What Has Happened to Britain? by Gary Younge
Nick Kapur

That quote is illustrative, but the real issue is that the UK has been pushed into a state where public services are ruined and people are starving and dying. It has been gradual enough, and ignored enough by the press, that we are not rioting in the streets, and so the Tories have won.
Jim Rossignol

if democrats manage to hold on to the white house, the senate and win back the house — a very tall order — they should make repealing the comstock act a first order of business
b-boy bouiebaisse @jbouie.bsky.social

What if we protected people, places, children, species, ocean circulations, rivers, grandparents (etc) and called *that* profit?
Dr. Elizabeth Sawin @bethsawin.bsky.social

psychiatrist wilhelm reich said that the family was the first cell of fascism and it sounds too radical until you read shit like this:

@zavisnoslozena.bsky.social

Breaking News: Donald Trump was handed a lifeline as a New York court lowered his bond to $175 million, while he appeals the $454 million judgment against him in his civil fraud case. Trump has 10 days to obtain the bond.
The New York Times

Layleen Polanco died in solitary confinement on Rikers Island because she couldn't afford $500 bail
Gillian Branstetter

I just know that if I owed the government nearly half a billion dollars they would not hesitate to storm into my apartment and take my TV, my books, my Nintendo, my cat, my plasma
Gillian Branstetter

2020 shook some white men in particular to their core. They've been doing everything in their power to rebalance ever since. I'm here to say that they will never find that balance again. That's over. LOL.
Prisonculture

The evidence is in that the current extractive economic system can't produce global wellbeing and thriving people and ecosystems.
Dr. Elizabeth Sawin @bethsawin.bsky.social

I dream that one day our sidewalks will be as wide as our trucks:


Tom Flood

During a church-hosted event, Charlie Kirk insisted that True Christians™ were required to vote for Republicans. Which is a hell of a way for Christian Nationalists to dismiss Black people without mentioning their race.
Hemant Mehta

To a certain extent the ideological core of MAGA is just the belief that *certain people* should be able to engage in wildly antisocial behavior with impunity, and this is not only acceptable but somehow praiseworthy.
Ned Resnikoff

The broader point is how much antisocial behavior is now embraced and coded as conservative and pro-social behavior is coded as left wing! They’ve decided that not being a gross weirdo is “woke.”
Chris Hayes

Hormonal birth control places reliable pregnancy prevention in women’s hands, unlocking their dignity, potential, and self-determination. It is as vital to human thriving as antibiotics. Attacks on it are attacks on women as citizens, workers, and social equals.
Moira Donegan

To paraphrase Jamelle Bouie, the way Rufo and his enablers work is by stipulating that any Black person in a position of authority must not belong there and then reasoning backward from that conclusion.
Ned Resnikoff

Trump’s remarks about liberal Jews are not new, but the entire point of them is to say, antisemitism against liberal Jews does not count as antisemitism, and so it is morally acceptable to engage in it.
Adam Serwer

It happened: I made the "turn off your car" hand signal to someone idling in front of the schoolyard and he turned off his car!


Madeleine Bonsma-Fisher

99 percent of disinfo/foreign influence problems on social media go away if users stick to their own follow feeds rather than an algorithm.
Chris Steller

it's a bit hard to convey how big of a deal [the Texas border/immigration decision is], but the most basic, most fundamental black letter law we have is that immigration is a federal matter. every reason to believe a court that issues this ruling is operating without any guardrails.
Joshua Erlich

Minnesota should open our northern border right? Apparently we get to do it state by state.
David M. Perry @lollardfish.bsky.social

Because my mind is a wondrous and unknowable thing, I woke up thinking about how Bill Kristol was instrumental in: defeating health care reform in the 90s, the rise of Sarah Palin and her proto-trumpian approach to politics, and promoting the unkillable myth of the "liberal media." His never Trump stuff is basically just about trying to defeat the monster he helped create the conditions for.
Tom Tomorrow

I'd honestly, truly like to get 50% of white folks to vote Democratic in November so that we can actually pull the country fwd. One out of every two. The fact that this hasn't happened in SIXTY YEARS is a huge, scary problem. It's not the rest of us who aren't on board with multiethnic democracy.
Ebony Elizabeth Thomas @ebonyteach.bsky.social

Florida is the only state that elects public defenders.
Radley Balko

MAGA once villainized Colin Kaepernick for quietly taking a knee during the national anthem to protest police brutality. They've since turned the flag, anthem, and pledge into a cultish celebration of a mass riot in which rioters beat and threatened to kill police officers.
Radley Balko

My friend Andy Singer at his best:


Dan Marshall

"You want to talk about the language of tyrants and dictators? Rule number one is to call your opponents scum, nonhuman, subhuman. This is what we're openly hearing from Trump." –Susan Glasser
Greg Sargent

Uber and Lyft are really out here like “don’t make me hurt you, why do you make me do this to you” and folks are mad at the city of Minneapolis for trying to enforce minimum wage, not Uber or Lyft, or Metro Transit, or the way we fund transit, or however the cab industry died.
Erica M @ericamauter.bsky.social

Watching Trump hold rallies where he incites violence after January 6th WHILE OUT ON BAIL is like watching bin Laden teach a flight school after 9/11.
@lolgop.bsky.social

is it dreadfully impolite to suggest that the corrupt bribe-taking justice married to a literal insurrectionist should fucking resign
Tom Tomorrow

James Buchanan was a terrible president, but stopping the Mormons from forming a theocracy in the American West was a legit accomplishment of his administration.
The Alternate Historian

Wild how license plates are just totally optional now.
@mplsalex.bsky.social

How would you cover an election if one of the candidates doesn't believe in elections?
Eric Roston

Entire article is dedicated to low prosecution rates but doesn't once mention DC's abysmal clearance rates. Crime is way more complex than this but if we're doing criminal justice stats this seems more relevant. To prosecute crimes you have to solve them! It would be silly to say that DAs have zero effect on crime rates, but they're the last link in a chain that involves a huge range of political, economic and systemic inputs. An entire academic field is dedicated to explaining crime rates, why are these pundits so allergic to reading stuff
Michael Hobbes

if you think about it the Canterbury Tales were the first cinematic universe team up
austin @aparker.io

A specifically Zürich brick style, from a long-ago but not-that-long-ago time uses blond bricks with red accents:


Janne K. Flisrand @jannefrommpls.bsky.social

Every conspiracy theorist eventually ends up at antisemitism. Every tech bro ends up reinventing eugenics but this time it’s good!
David M. Perry @lollardfish.bsky.social

Banning TikTok (when what you really need is algorithmic transparency and data privacy laws across the board) is like banning Satanic Ritual Abuse but never getting around to making murder illegal.
Maggie Koerth

A study has found that US fossil-energy methane emissions are fully triple those assumed by the government.
Dr. Genevieve Guenther @doctorvive.bsky.social

New study links car tires to cardiovascular disease: People with high levels of microplastics in their blood were more likely to have a stroke or heart attack. Biggest source of US microplastic pollution: Tire breakdown
David Zipper

Why are Americans feeling so insecure in an economy that appears solid on paper? Maybe it's because the government created a robust safety net in the pandemic that materially improved their lives and then abruptly dismantled it.
Bryce Covert

Thinking about what it means for the far-right to champion a "national divorce" at the same time they want to make it harder to get an actual divorce, and how their vision of self-determination--both as a state and as a person--is the freedom to deny it to others
Gillian Branstetter

The very concept of “pre-existing conditions” as something not covered by insurance, and therefore solely the patient’s responsibility is immoral and as close an example of institutional cruelty as I can provide. Just fucking evil.
@shengokai.bsky.social

The 5th Circuit grants a Texas father the right to deny his daughter access to birth control, holding that Title X does not override parents' "right to consent to their teenagers’ obtaining contraceptives" under state law.
Joshua J. Friedman

how it started / how it's going:


Eric Roston

Two tidbits:
- The father suing says his daughters have never tried and have no intention of trying to get contraceptives from a title x clinic, but somehow the case still has standing
- His lawyer is the architect of SB 8–Texas' abortion ban
Caitlin VH @cvh.bsky.social

I call Elon Musk's social media platform "X" because I want to remind people that Twitter is gone. We can't make it "ours" again by calling it Twitter. It was never a public space, which is why one edgelord billionaire could kill it. Beware of privately owned spaces that masquerade as town squares.
Annalee Newitz

It’s fascinating how to avoid the appearance of bias, the special counsels appointed to investigate Trump had to be Republicans. And to avoid the appearance of bias, the special counsels appointed to investigate Biden . . . also had to be Republicans.
Radley Balko

The science behind how thick a plate of stainless steel needs to be stop a 9mm round has been settled for over 100 years. Reporters could’ve fact checked this the moment Musk made the claim [for the cybertruck]. If 2mm of metal could stop a bullet, WW2 would’ve been fought in plate armor.
dell cameron

The sooner we accept that modern journalism is simply a hyper-aggressive form of mass marketing, the quicker we can move beyond feigning shock that reporters don't fact check a fucking thing their masters tell them to report
Matt Ellison @mattinwonderland.bsky.social

Apartheid Clyde should be made to eat every one of these ridiculous rusting toasters on wheels
@michaelwhiteshoes.bsky.social

the Glazer stuff should be another reminder to activists: there's really nothing you can say in support of Palestinians that won't be misconstrued and twisted. your words matter, but don't waste your time trying to placate bad faith actors
Peter @notalawyer.bsky.social

Aside from lying about Glazer's quote, it's telling that these people just keep repeating "but Hamas is bad!" in response to the mass murder of thousands of people who aren't Hamas
Michael Hobbes

Except for the fact that they require a license from the state to operate, a loan from a major financial institution to purchase, insurance to shield users from the cost of their harms, and can be used to collect and share driver data without their full consent, cars represent freedom, baby!
The War on Cars

Setting aside Claremont, SACR is so fascinating because their rhetoric is all "we the Christian fathers of our land must secure the future of our children against the secular hordes" and their execution is "we printed out these homophobic stickers to hand out at a pride festival in  Boise, Idaho"
Gillian Branstetter

Local angle: Minnesota is the only state completely in the 10-degrees plus range:


Chris Steller

What [the Gates Foundation] did to education will go down as a 20th century smash-and-grab of epic proportions…
Tressie @tressiemcphd.bsky.social

I lost my last academic job just as the MOOC wars were beginning and good lard this whole thing has been a terrible waste of everything
Matthew R Francis @bowlerhatscience.org

The biggest impact [of MOOCs] was reshuffling already thin resources and in most cases hollowing out organizational structures for teaching and learning. But that won’t be the lesson anyone learns.
Tressie @tressiemcphd.bsky.social

stop appointing stupid motherfuckers as university trustees. university trustees should be people who understand universities and love them
David M. Perry @lollardfish.bsky.social

Katie Britt is a US Senator. Doesn't that mean she's not a housewife by definition? Senator is a demanding, high-powered job outside the house. Or has the reality TV franchise changed the meaning to the point that "housewife" now simply means "married woman who is home sometimes," AKA "wife"?
Nicholas Grossman

READ: “Policies to help people walk and cycle such as low-traffic neighbourhoods can create public health benefits as much as 100 times greater than the cost of the schemes, a long-term study has concluded.” AND the benefits continue to grow even higher over time.
Brent Toderian

Cool how if you want to install an ADA-mandated elevator inside a subway station you have to do years of community input and environmental reviews justifying it, but if you want to fill the same subway station with guys holding M16s doing constitutionally-dubious searches its just "i've got a hunch":


Michael Tae Sweeney

If one group of people are outraged by mass suffering and another group is not then I don't think it's the former group that's being brainwashed
Gillian Branstetter

The U.S. doesn't know how to address any social problems outside of criminalization. And criminalization actually doesn't address the roots of any social problems. So here we are with a massive criminalized population and even more social problems.
Prisonculture

The only streets that don’t need bike facilities are those that are already calm enough to comfortably bike on. It was a mistake to build a transportation system that excludes certain modes of transportation as the default
Adam Miller @ajm6792.bsky.social

I feel like a weakness of the [Midtown] Greenway or other bike infrastructure that avoids commercial areas is that they make impulse stopping and shopping impossible - something that biking is uniquely good for. Something to consider as people say that Bryant Ave is a good enough way for folks to shop Lyndale. Personally, I only go to stores by bike that I have mapped out and prepared for, since so much infrastructure is hostile to people not in cars. Maybe it’d be good if it were easier for people to explore, and safely navigate commercial areas not in a vehicle!
@mplsalex.bsky.social

As a pedestrian when I was walking I used to stop in places randomly, it is fun to explore new spots. I always used to scope out a new spot on bus route but that was when I knew the next bus would come in 20-25 minutes, can't do that anymore when next bus is an hour away.
quick13

Stills will have to do for now. These videos are as dystopian as it gets for the initial phases of this kind of militarization:


@brainnotonyet.bsky.social


DaveAnthony

The anti-affirmative action backlash says to Black America a number of things, including:
--What's mine is mine.
--What you fought for is mine, too.
--What you earned and never received? That's for me.
--You don't deserve any of it.
--By the way, why do you people always complain?
It's maddening.
Ebony Elizabeth Thomas @ebonyteach.bsky.social

We need a response that is commensurate with the problem. Everything else is just noise. If the institutions tasked with defending the democratic order can’t or simply won’t muster the strength and energy for such an adequate response, democracy and civil rights will perish.
Thomas Zimmer

Justice would’ve looked like Donny being removed from office immediately after 1/6, DQ’d from running again, and all the members of Congress who aided and abetted him removed from office as well. Instead we have…this.
Kelly McGonigal

The whole "if you report my horrible behavior, I am a victim" movement is a sight behold. I saw someone post the content of one of the AZ GOP hate bills (without comment) and GOP voters came out of the woodwork to say that Dems are "demonizing" Republicans.
JZS @jzsamm.bsky.social

Maybe things like health and journalism are not best left to the profit motive?
Dr. Elizabeth Sawin @bethsawin.bsky.social

Since the constitution didn't specifically mention Trump by name, they concluded it didn't apply to him. Genius.
Fred Huddlestun

I mean, there’s no historical evidence of a deeply rooted tradition of prosecuting Donald Trump in the 1700s or in English common law, so . . .
Radley Balko

Normie low-information voters do not believe that Trump tried to steal it because if he had, why wasn't he punished? Why isn't he in jail? And they're not wrong to believe this!
Michael Tae Sweeney

It's been clear for 25 years, but today really underscored that the only consistent principle among the court's conservative judges is the desire for conservative outcomes. Federalism, originalism, textualism -- they're all just a means to an end, readily abandoned when inconvenient.
Radley Balko

The Electoral College
Impeachment (x2)
The 14th Amendment
State and Federal criminal courts
All designed by the framers of our constitution to prevent a corrupt populist insurrectionist cleptocrat from seizing power.
All rendered moot by cowards and quislings.
Dan Marshall

Climate change looks like more of your paycheck to manage risk and less for nutritious food, healthy activities, education, recreation, and fun. Climate change looks like record fossil fuel company profits at the same time.
Dr. Elizabeth Sawin @bethsawin.bsky.social

Despite hearing concerns about "traffic and parking" whenever any sort of development is discussed, a huge number of our streets in St. Paul look like some version of this. We waste so much space and money on oversized streets, which aren't even nearly as bad as many modern suburbs!


Pedaling Professor

Somehow it never occurred to me that a major campaign issue for one of the national parties of the United States in 2024 would be general opposition to a triumph of modern medicine that saves something like 4 million lives worldwide every year and dramatically reduces childhood mortality.
Katie Mack @astrokatie.com

I don’t know enough about AI to have an informed opinion on whether it could kill us all some day, but putting the data centers that run a possible existential threat in the desert and paying to cool them while climate change rages feels like “owning the libs”-ing our way to our own demise.
Radley Balko

“What’s with kids these days and all this gender nonsense?” asks a guy who got thrown out of his parents’ house for a weekend in 1971 because he let his hair grow past his collar.
Jared Yates Sexton

"Mr. Trump’s current lead over Mr. Biden is built with a significant number of voters who believe he is a criminal." Something has gone deeply, deeply wrong with America.
Dr. Genevieve Guenther @doctorvive.bsky.social

It's time to believe that which we know. The earth is finite and doesn't belong to us. No group of people is superior to any other, nor people to nature. Everything is connected (literally not metaphorically) by flows of mater and energy. This isn't (only) spirituality, it's also chemistry, biology, and physics. A society in contravention of these truths can't exist without doing harm, and can't last for long (in any span of time relevant to the earth). Whenever someone smugly declares that THEIR spot on earth will be spared from climate change a whiteboard covered with feedback loops pops up in my head and a jingle starts humming: ripples, non-linearities, migration, supply chains, novel pathogens, and resulting political instabilities. I don't wish anyone ill, and we all need our comforts of imagined futures, but when you start describing your imagined life of ease while most others are less fortunate I can't help but think you've drawn the boundaries of your mental models a wee bit too narrowly.
Dr. Elizabeth Sawin @bethsawin.bsky.social