It seems like April 2024 was a month of galloping into fascism, with Trump's New York trial as an important sideshow. The last 10 days or so have been consumed with escalating police violence against student demonstrators across the country, essentially declaring that they have no speech rights that I would have recognized five or 10 years ago. Meanwhile, people in Gaza continue to be killed outright or starved by Israel. And there was an eclipse.
Everything below the line is quoted from the attributed account and is in reverse chronological order, except some of the images, which I move up or down for better visual balance.
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This is a litmus test for liberalism and so many are failing with flying colors. A nonviolent protest against a brutal war violently suppressed with the help of some of the most prominent media and political figures in the country. History will not judge them harshly enough so let's start now.
Gillian Branstetter
Every single person promoting making more babies or having big families in this post-Dobbs reality is promoting great replacement theory. I don’t care who they are. There is no other reason to act like we are “short” on children or families.
Tressie @tressiemcphd.bsky.social
I've been saying for a while that the Republican project aims to undo the world the ACLU made--as they're trying to find a way to censor protesters, they're in court arguing to ban drag shows. The 20th-century reach of the First Amendment is as dangerous to their core mission as that of the 14th.
Gillian Branstetter
The AARP did the research, and the answer is clear: we need to legalize more forms of housing.
Graphic showing 80 percent of American households are not traditional nuclear families, yet 72 percent of homes cater to traditional nuclear families:
Neighbors for More Neighbors
The Tesla irony has always been that the company's owner is obsessed with a futuristic possibility of self-driving cars that is always 5 years away while a more mundane but far more impressive feat, widespread fast and easy EV charging network, was the company's true magical & breakthrough innovation.
Aaron W. Gordon
Our nation’s pundits will have you know that when young people arrive at the same opinion it is due to peer pressure and maybe TikTok, and the fact the pundits themselves all agree on this point is because each examined the question on the merits and just happened to arrive at identical conclusions.
Tim Carvell
Noncompliance is not violence. No amount of force is proportionate
Adam Miller @ajm6792.bsky.social
The more I think about it, the more it seems to me that part of what’s happening with these protests may be the release of a pent-up craving to exist in the physical world, to experience connection and autonomy and community and purpose in an unregulated, unmediated way.
Angus Johnston
The history of transgender medicine is the field was dominated by eugenicists and abusive quacks for much of the last century and the moment trans people had succeeded in throwing most of them out liberal media and conservative politicians said "now wait just a goddamn minute"
Gillian Branstetter
The brickwork on this window is arresting:
Janne K. Flisrand @jannefrommpls.bsky.social
Books. They are AWESOME. You purchase one, and you OWN IT. It's like, THERE right on your shelf. It doesn't require regular online patches. You don't need to be online to read it. Books fucking RULE.
David Bowman @dlbowman76.com
The biggest DARVO in trans issues by far is pretending that trans healthcare has been captured by "gender ideologues," when what's really been happening is the slow grueling process of removing the influence of weird abusers who shouldn't be practicing medicine on anyone
@tpwrtrmnky.bsky.social
The uncomfortable but important thing about the horrid and hateful words that have been exchanged at these protests is none, best I can tell, meet the high standard of actionable incitement, let alone justify the massive police presence
Gillian Branstetter
These are exactly the regional changes scientists projected to occur with global warming
Eric Roston
The worst aspects of capitalism were held back not by compunction but by friction, which tech has now smoothed out like an evil-smelling lube
Nick Douglas @toomuchnick.com
Could not say this better. Libertarianism wants to own all the natural resources at no cost and make people be friends despite their bad personalities.
Tressie @tressiemcphd.bsky.social
1977: let's replace all the dead elms with ash trees. They're disease resistant!
2017:
Steve Quick
Why should the Tesla and Twitter Boards appoint me to run both companies, besides adhering to their existing basic governance duties? I will:
- have no n*zis on the website
- make a cheap EV that looks like a 90s Honda Civic Hatchback
- put trains in the tunnels
- never twete
Anyway he’s bad
Costa Samaras
At the APTA conference, Portland's transit authority TriMet is showing that you can do beautiful, artistic wraps without covering the windows. People don't like to enter a room that they can't see into. It's why we have a glass walled conference rooms:
Jarrett Walker @humantransit.bsky.social
Universities are claiming they can manage tens of thousands of people (many drunk) moving across campus for sports and commencement, but they need a violent police response to 150 students peacefully camping on the quad.
Nathan Kalmoe
Police power in the U.S. EXCEEDS civilian control. And people who know better continue to pretend that this isn't true. IT IS.
Prisonculture
this week especially feels like the infrastructure of fascism flexing and that infrastructure is police and courts
Melissa Gira Grant
Sorry but a core organizing principle for inviting new people into movements is to meet them where they are, not make fun of them for suddenly realizing the world is unjust.
Sarah J. Jackson @sjjphd.bsky.social
Bookbinders have been using scrap paper in their bindings since the dawn of the book. 16th C printed works often have precious strips of old Medieval illustrated manuscripts buried in them. This formerly repaired 19th C Bible has a Winn-Dixie grocery bag:
Stori3d Past
The older I get the more I believe that we need to make autos of all sorts inconvenient. Less parking (especially free), higher penalties, more taxes, more stringent training, etc. As part that though we need to build places where car aren't required to live. That's the carrot to the stick.
Fancy Pants @farnaby.bsky.social
The student journalists covering the protests on their respective campuses have been consistently so much better than major national news publications. Wild to think how few jobs are available for those student journalists once they graduate.
Saeed Jones @theferocity.bsky.social
it’s weird to say in 2024, but i think a lot of people still haven’t really processed how violent American police really are. watching them do crowd control just once will shake any residual trust in them out of you
Peter @notalawyer.bsky.social
even though I was raised to not trust the cops and thought I'd been sufficiently radicalized by Ferguson and its aftermath, getting teargassed while they kept their backs to Patriot Prayer took it to a level I didn't know I had
acfoltzer
The main contention today from the conservative justices is that we should worry more about the harm/threat of politically-motivated prosecutions of ex-presidents than of presidents criminally abusing their power. It’s just an insanely naive, ahistorical understanding of how political power works.
Radley Balko
Isn't "it's legal if the president does it" their entire theory of how the US political system works?
Jonathan Gitlin @drgitlin.bsky.social
this to me is peak performance for urban design. setbacks, my ass (i’ll never zone for setbacks):
b-boy bouiebaisse @jbouie.bsky.social
It’s legal if a Republican president does it. And/or it’s illegal for anyone else to be president.
@xaiax.net
Roberts is concerned that the only protection against bad faith prosecutions of presidents is the good faith of prosecutors. He laments how easily grand juries indict. It’s touching how concerned the justices are about this stuff — but only when the target is the most powerful person in the world.
Radley Balko
The whole backlash against CRT, DEI, student protest, everything is a backlash to 2020. Black folks keep pointing this out and I keep asking everyone else to please see and say this
Sarah J. Jackson @sjjphd.bsky.social
i have not seen any mention of it but it sure seems like the authorities cracking down on student protesters are basically attempting to do what they wish they would have done in response to the george floyd protests
b-boy bouiebaisse @jbouie.bsky.social
Having meta debates about US college campus climates instead of grappling with the fact that there are no functional universities left in Gaza because of US money and weapons is so embarrassing when you think about it. Bunch of unserious people in the media class and US society in general.
@knilirabaj.bsky.social
“A nation driven to use the weapons of war upon its youth is a nation on the edge of chaos.” –The President’s Commission on Campus Unrest,” 1970.
Angus Johnston
anyway the most fatal of the constitution’s many fatal flaws is its reification of a strong form of federalism and the attendant idea that the “state” is a coherent political unit with some set of “rights” worth defending
b-boy bouiebaisse @jbouie.bsky.social
I would bet good money that across every platform, including lefty/progressive ones, articles about the campus protests are way outperforming traffic for articles about the war in Gaza itself.
Chris Hayes
Every time someone mentions Soros, I think about how the USA right-wing has 50 billionaires whose names we don't even know.
jędrek
If you think Elise Stefanik — or any other major figure in today’s Republican Party - is leading an honest fight against antisemitism, if you actually think that’s the Right’s political project, I must assume you are either incredibly uninformed and naive or simply full of shit.
Thomas Zimmer
all those weird mccarthyist hearings with the university presidents and now the clambering to send the national guard to columbia....... why are we larping the 1950s
sarah jeong
the world is on fire and if I didn't make dumb jokes about it I'd be catatonic
Tom Tomorrow
For the record I am for free speech, against crackdowns on free speech, against the war, against the occupation, and also against antisemitism and glorifying Hamas—it is possible
Sarah Posner
"Using a middle-of-the-road scenario for economic growth, this translates to an economic hit of $38 trillion."
Bill Lindeke
Something I said elseweb, when someone defended using LLM-generated nonsense for inspiration: "Humans are *very good* at getting inspiration from random bits of nonsense. We don't have to use the annual electric consumption of a small nation to produce janky entrails to read meaning into."
Achronal Art
Each missile could fund two Fulbright grants, which kick off lifetimes of international exchange and goodwill (and employment and study) which state department people agree give more peacemaking bang per buck than anything else the US does. Make scholarships not wars!
Ada Palmer
According to USDOT, the annual cost of car ownership rose 44% from 2017 to 2023 (inflation-adjusted). Hard to see how this is sustainable, either for carmakers or for Americans.
David Zipper
It’s wild to watch the Times wrap itself in the First Amendment when it comes to doxxing jurors. They protect the identities of sources all the time to shield them from mild professional consequences!
Ned Resnikoff
A "Small government" is one that tells you how to live your day to day life but doesn't tell factory owners to stop polluting water supplies and maiming their employees
TrexPushups
Small government is one that just goes after the little people
Dumbstash @dnlmsstch.bsky.social
The frequently asserted conservative belief that liberals grow up in bubbles and aren't exposed to conservative ideas and so need to be forced to be exposed to conservative ideas is so far removed from reality it's insulting.
Michael Tae Sweeney @mtsw.bsky.social
One thing we should import from the brits: the term "sex pest."
Helen Kennedy
Man. A lot of these universities that hid behind DEI efforts as a means of avoiding backlash, scrutiny, and lawsuits, sure are scrapping them before the GOP even pressures them the tiniest bit. It’s almost like they were never sincere in the first place.
Jared Yates Sexton
Traditional gender roles are simply natural, that’s why we must dedicate all of our energy to enforcing them with an iron fist
Hexagonal
Focus on the Family is what happens when you give a hate crime offices and a mailing address.
@thatsodd.bsky.social
Now when I see a story about an industry being wrecked or something people loved/liked/needed getting destroyed or majorly degraded, I do a search for the phrase "private equity" and bingo, 80% of the time, there it is. Private equity. It's looting businesses into failure, the end.
Mo Ryan
Chris Rufo is Just Some Guy and the only reason to put his opinions in the newspaper is if you agree with him
@swolecialism.bsky.social
US citizens have paid nearly a billion dollars since 2018 simply to replenish the sand lost to storms and "erosion" (aka sea level rise) in Florida — quite aside from the billions in Federal disaster relief they've also given the state:
Dr. Genevieve Guenther @doctorvive.bsky.social
teach the kids humanities so they know who sisyphus is
Madison Condon
Whew that was a long winter, thank god it was the last one
Ben Collins
One thing AI has in common with crypto is that boosters are well aware the primary use cases are both illegal and immoral; they don't care but can't say so in public.
Django Wexler
Ostriches are so weird. They're like centaurs, except the human part is a snake, and the horse part is a giant turbo-chicken.
Chris McLaren
one thing you'll notice about this poll is that trump is basically at the same ceiling of support that he's had since 2016 while biden still has room to expand. seems to me that the country has a decidedly anti-maga majority of 51 to 52 percent and the question is whether the anti-trump candidate can consolidate them:
b-boy bouiebaisse @jbouie.bsky.social
When "tech" meant faster computers and smaller phones, it was exciting, you wanted to know what they were going to come up with next. Now it's a bunch of assholes trying to figure out new ways to charge you a subscription to look at the shittiest ads you can imagine
Ian Boudreau
remember like 15 years ago when companies started selling "hoverboards" that were actually just regular electric scooters that caught on fire all the time? and every company started pushing "hoverboards" and they all sucked until they exploded and people stopped buying them? well a.i. is different.
@makeitunclear.bsky.social
This to me is the core of the bad faith. If they're really so worried about kids getting surgeries before they know whether they're "really" trans, they should be *encouraging* social transition! Test out a new haircut, pronouns and clothes for a few weeks and see how it feels.
Michael Hobbes
This exactly! Trans people don’t want more trans people. Trans people just want the trans kids to be safe and comfortable, the cis kids to be safe and comfortable, and everyone to be allowed to explore themselves. But to transphobes, the only acceptable put some is fewer trans people.
Crystal Frasier @amazonchique.bsky.social
"We have got to stop calling LLMs AI," a friend said this weekend. A proposal is below:
Naomi Kritzer
Despite the outcry, Duke University still plans to close its huge herbarium, because it doesn't want to spend $25 million to repair the collection's building. Duke's endowment was $11.6 billion as of 2022; it is also the primary beneficiary (32%) of the independent $3.69 billion Duke Endowment.
Charles C. Mann
It is funny to me (darkly funny, but funny) that we sit on a speeding, living spaceship, kept in balance by Earth Intelligence, and folks are out there getting rich off of ideas like AI and space ships to Mars.
Dr. Elizabeth Sawin @bethsawin.bsky.social
i think it's basic journalistic integrity that if the billionaire fascist you're interviewing wishes you not to use a certain word to describe their business, that you do the exact fucking opposite.
@merthyr1831.bsky.social
One of the tiny annoying things about my life is that I have to be charming and gracious to people deliberately being an asshole to me. It’s rarely worth it to give them the satisfaction of goading me, so i don’t. But jeez it’s annoying. Why even be good at cursing if I can never do it?!!
Tressie @tressiemcphd.bsky.social
Society challenge: act like you live on a planet floating in the vastness of space every day not just eclipse day.
Dr. Elizabeth Sawin @bethsawin.bsky.social
Duncan da Husky
The conservative habit to describe every mild inconvenience in terms of mass murder is genuinely very offensive, also.
Joshua Foust
Congrat's to Alden Global Capital [private equity] for putting an end to 460+ combined years of Minnesota newspapering after only two years of ownership
Chris Steller
Just Build Trains, Insulate Houses, And Live Closer To Each Other would not solve *all* of our climate problems, but it would make solving all the other ones much easier. Repeating as much gets very tiring sometimes.
Jordan Carlson
My favorite thing about earthquakes is how fake tectonic plate theory sounded up until like the 1950s. We split atoms before we understood why the Earth would suddenly start throwing shit at us
Gillian Branstetter
I guess I’m slow, but I just realized we invaded Iraq (on top of the other stuff), because they weren’t sure they could get to something they could call “victory” in Afghanistan
Adam Miller @ajm6792.bsky.social
It’s funny how 10 years of marketing and habit have inured me to how ridiculous US apps’ names are but I can watch a British TV show casually refer to a food delivery as “a Deliveroo” and think, “That’s ridiculous, it sounds like something a child would say, call it something normal like GrubHub.”
Tim Carvell
Really interesting to see how the economy has changed in 30 years. One thing that's very clear: instead of manufacturing things we inflate healthcare costs. This chart is from Visual Capitalist (and I did not see any notes about it being inflation adjusted):
Kevin Gallatin
One of the core principles in stopping the spread of fascism is not to obey in advance but I think we need to talk more about not obeying ever even under threat
Sarah J. Jackson @sjjphd.bsky.social
I want to cure death just to bring back Barbara Ehrenreich because I'm pretty sure she'd unhinge her jaw and swallow Jonathan Haidt whole
Gillian Branstetter
every major AI innovation always turning out to just be "some guy secretly doing it", undefeated
Joseph Fink @planetoffinks.bsky.social
It's remarkable how swiftly "anti-white racism" went from a David Duke talking point to a mainstream position within the GOP
Gillian Branstetter
This is where the counter-majoritarian elements of the US political system are a real boon to an American fascism. What's held the US fascist tradition in check since WWII has been a) the gatekeeping function of the mainstream media and b) the gatekeeping function of our political parties. The GOP has become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Trumpism, and the technological changes of the past 2 decades have almost entirely eliminated the historical gatekeeping function of the press. So we are living in an era we might call "Springtime for Hitler-wannabes."
Seth Cotlar
Fascism is already here; it's just unevenly distributed.
Gillian Branstetter
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