BlueSky, May 2024

As usual, my list for May is shorter than average. Even the first day of June was so busy I didn't have time to post about May until today. 

The month ended with Trump's conviction in New York, and started with the continued student protests and police (and other) attacks on them. There were Supreme Court cases counter to all logic, precedent, and morality, while Samuel Alito and his wife ran some flags up the flagpole to see who would salute, and Israel continued to rain down deadly attacks on Gaza. In pleasant news, the aurora borealis was visible just about everywhere north of the Equator, it seems, but I continued my lifetime streak of not seeing it.

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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Remember when the most important issue was civility in politics because restaurant workers politely decline to serve Sarah Sanders and now everyone targeted by Trump or his cronies needs private security  and we don’t talk about civility much anymore
Adam Serwer

Trump is also extremely guilty of his DC and FL crimes and the only thing preventing those convictions is a totally corrupt Republican judiciary
Grudgie the Whale

Sincere question...can felons have firearms? How about the secret codes to arsenals full of intercontinental firearms?
Dustin Debris @objectiveunlocked.bsky.social

trump motorcade:


Tom Tomorrow

Learn how to replace lead pipes and you'll have a job for life.
Bill Lindeke

I work 3.4 miles from home with a bus route that connects the two directly.
I missed the 4:25 pm bus so instead I’ll get home at 5:23.
Low frequency is what makes people hate transit.
Stinamo

Anyone who hits their children in 2024 are psychopaths. The data is in, corporal punishment is bad. It always has been. Scratch anyone who says "my parents hit me and I turned out fine" and you'll find an aggrieved adult who cannot feel empathy and is enraged when they run into people that have it.
Max’s Dad @djwyszynski.bsky.social

Two sitting justices of the Supreme Court are insurrectionists — or, most generously, married to them. Our system can do nothing about them because the people running it have insisted upon their own powerlessness. We’re not operating under a constitution; we’re trapped in a suicide pact.
Kaitlin Has Had Enough @gothamgirlblue.com

I find it odd when people say we should trust the climate to people who we can't trust to not do violence to living children today.
Dr. Elizabeth Sawin @bethsawin.bsky.social

Serious housing policy is one that gets lots of energy efficient homes built near where people want to live, and that is serious climate policy. Anything else is unserious and also, bad for the climate. Need to climate retrofit what we have and build way more new homes than you think. LFG.
Costa Samaras

the moment at which I found myself writing the phrase "legally killed child" I would at a minimum ask the editor to spike the story instead of having my name attached to it forever, and then I'd go take a long walk and contemplate every poor choice of mine that had led me to this point.
Kelsey Atherton

Military doctors have played a huge role in public health- figuring out how malnutrition, hygiene, and other health problems work. That's because often, military campaigns were the first time a government felt invested enough in their people's health to do science about it.
Sarah Taber

A decade ago, if you told somebody that 96% of new power plant capacity  coming online has zero emissions and that solar was by far the biggest source they would’ve laughed in your face. But that what we have now. This is nothing short of a clean energy revolution and the Biden Admin is driving it:


Costa Samaras

Op-ed pages could be better. It’s not obligatory they are structured as they are now. There are other ways. Short persuasive or explanatory essays are useful. A good part of media. But they have to be grounded in standards and the best truths we can access, with editors holding writers within such norms.
David M. Perry @lollardfish.bsky.social

“Barbecue” is slow-cooked meat. An afternoon of grilling hot dogs and hamburgers is a cookout. This is your last warning.
Radley Balko

Sorry, sometimes it's just...  Look, I'm literally someone who studies the occult and has done rituals to contact the dead and my mind is still blowing at the thought that we have people in high positions of the government pushing policy to literally set up a ritual to bring about the Apocalypse.
Ragnell

So much of US foreign policy in the Middle East makes sense when you realize a disproportionately influential Christian sect believes Israel is the material component in their Summon Jesus spell
Vivian Moira Valentine @itsviviactually.bsky.social

Texas’ GOP calls for an amendment to ensure Republicans always win statewide elections by requiring candidates to win a majority of counties. Texas has 254 counties. Half its population lives in just 7 of them. Trump won 232 of counties, but the 22 counties Biden won contain 58% of Texas residents
Stephen Wolf

Happy 30th birthday to this Kraft Mac & Cheese from someone else's cabinet:


Chris Steller

People will point to something and say “see voting doesn’t do anything” and it’s literally just the consequences of Republicans winning elections
Adam Serwer

how far away do you think we are from clarence thomas just openly arguing that the reconstruction amendments are unconstitutional?
b-boy bouiebaisse @jbouie.bsky.social

I used to think that calls to take the Supreme Court's operations back to the 18th century (no clerks, electricity, air conditioning, or separate building of their own) were implausible and unhelpful. I'm starting to think it's the most realistic near-term response to the Roberts Court's rulings.
Pyrito Hedron

yes, the colorblind constitution means that it is as unconstitutional to notice racism as it is to discriminate on the basis of race.
b-boy bouiebaisse @jbouie.bsky.social

The conservative justices’ position is that the constitution is colorblind and that’s why it’s ok to be racist.
Adam Serwer

a standard that says "you need to have smoking gun evidence to prove racial discrimination in voting" is a standard that would let much of the jim crow voting architecture undisturbed
b-boy bouiebaisse @jbouie.bsky.social

As everyone knows, the founders declared independence from England and established a radically different structure for our federal government rather than just copying Parliament because they loved the English system and wanted to be just like it. Or something.
David @crookedknight.bsky.social

can't forget that alito was on the board of an organization that was upset about the inclusion of blacks and women into princeton
b-boy bouiebaisse @jbouie.bsky.social

the media matters layoffs are a grim sign. it feels like every decent independent lefty media outlet is just going to get sued into the ground by right wingers. these developments always give the lie to the myth that the left is extensively funded by Soros et al. if it were true, you couldn’t litigate these outlets to death
Peter @notalawyer.bsky.social

Would be nice if there was a Parents for Public Libraries in the mold of Moms for Liberty.
Prisonculture

In 2021, the U.S. State Dept. gave a grant to help atheists who are persecuted in their countries. Republicans are STILL falsely claiming this amounts to an illegal promotion of atheism, and they're putting grant recipients' lives in danger.
Hemant Mehta

Pretty rich to see a DMV call kei trucks "unsafe vehicles" while happily registering F-250s:


David Zipper

(alito flies a nazi flag)
reply guys: ACKshully, the swastika is an ancient hindu symbol
Tom Tomorrow

Democracy Dies in Dorkness
Chris Steller

The list of ways that Newt Gingrich ruined everything is long, but killing the Office of Technology Assessment is an underappreciated entry
Monster Island

Bad thing #6437 about the US healthcare « system » is that at every turn it steals away our agency, and then when it inevitably fails us, demands we act urgently and with the utmost agency to look out for ourselves. Just total bullshit.
Tinman contra la caste @bcmfietser.bsky.social

FTX's spectacular implosion was less than two years ago, and since then the sweaty grifter energy of Silicon Valley has if anything gotten even more pungent
Ned Resnikoff

A presidential candidate has been in a criminal trial with several more looming over him, and he's posting videos about turning the country into a Reich, and one concern swing voters have is that he may never leave office. Normal stuff! In our very normal country!
Tom Tomorrow

THE REVOLUTION HAS BEGUN:


Uncle Duke @uncleduke1969.bsky.social

Idea: politicians and appointees should only own index funds rather than individual positions
Costa Samaras

hey msnbc you can stop putting james carville on tv, seriously it's ok
Tom Tomorrow

i don’t think my job [as a NYT columnist] is to pontificate about everything i have feelings about, i think my job is to help explain and contextualize things i know about.
b-boy bouiebaisse @jbouie.bsky.social

A core tenet of right-wing propaganda is that nothing is ever their fault. It can never be that anger is an understandable reaction to their cruel and unjust policies. Someone has to be brainwashing/funding/misleading the people who are angry at them.
Noamar Garciachomsky @kduffchicago.bsky.social

an entire country of boiled frogs
the 1st rule of Wife Club @cpi.bsky.social

conservatives came up with “Trump Derangement Syndrome” to describe liberals catastrophizing about Trump, but the real effect has been the opposite: complete nonchalance from the media at the various outrageous things he says and does
Peter @notalawyer.bsky.social

Russ Douthat spent years scolding gay people about the "morality" of marrying the person they love and now he is defending the murder of innocent children.   
Michael Hobbes

A lot to unpack here:


Chris Steller

There is nothing I love more than wandering aimlessly through a city I don’t know.
Tom Flood

A baby born when Combat Rock was released would be older now than the oldest Beatles were (or would have been) when Combat Rock was released.
Chris Steller

My offer is this: I will run Tesla and:
- release a hot hatchback EV
- provide a free Tesla e-bike with every purchase
- zero cringe, antisemitic, and racist posts
- increase favs and RTs by 23% by Q4 2024
Costa Samaras

You know this planet with auroras and eclipses? It has orchids, grass snakes and mangoes too. Rainbow trout and diatoms and self-organizing college students and star fish. What are the odds of it all and how about a just and equitable economy and then living lives of awestruck peace?
Dr. Elizabeth Sawin @bethsawin.bsky.social

Today I learned from the NYT history quiz that the idea government should provide pensions to seniors, the precursor to Social Security, was called "delusional" when it was first proposed. Don't let them shame you! Keep talking.
Dr. Genevieve Guenther @doctorvive.bsky.social

The cool thing about A.I. is that it doesn't work but it does eat up enormous resources in order to not work.
Tom Tomorrow

AURORA BOREALIS IS THE SPIN-ART OF THE SKIES


Chris Steller

Because the tech media largely created a fawning unitary genius bubble for dudes who bought a scratch off and stumbled into a unicorn cash machine instead of sometimes reporting “bad thing is actually bad”, these dudes are incredulous when normies look at bad things they do and say, ‘wow that’s bad’
Costa Samaras

FLOTUS sounds like an international art movement of the 1960s loosely linked to the Situationists and conceptual or site-specific art.
Chris Steller

Are you STILL being told there just isn’t enough space on your streets to make them enjoyable for walking, biking, transit or simple civic life? The REAL “capacity” of streets is fundamentally about our PRIORITIES. Are streets for cars, or for everyone?
Brent Toderian

It’s 2024. Why are we allowing any packaging that isn’t recyclable or compostable?
Adam Miller @ajm6792.bsky.social

Said this before but climate and environment reporters are some of the most careful and diligent professionals out there and it seems like political reporters call random phone numbers and ask how are the vibes out there
Costa Samaras

Post-Kent State, administrators moved away from crackdowns, students won new direct roles in governance, and lowering the voting age made electoral and lobbying work as a tool of campus activism possible. You get the PIRGS, the National Student Lobby and US Student Association and a bunch of statewide student associations and newly autonomous (or nearly) campus student governments. So student organizing doesn't disappear, but mass arrests and police violence are scaled way back, and rallies and takeovers become one tactic among many. Since the 1990s, admins and politicians have rolled back the student power gains of the 1970s, rendering the tactics of the 1960s more salient again, and the cost to the admins of repression of protest is lower. And so here we are.
Angus Johnston

Wow Peggy Noonan and Michael Powell both report that they went to Columbia and the protesters didn't want to talk to them, this definitely reveals something about somebody
Tom Scocca

It makes sense you don't know what you are doing, because these times have never existed before and you've never been you in these times before. Just hold fast to your values and to your vision of justice and well-being.
Dr. Elizabeth Sawin @bethsawin.bsky.social

Wear bright clothing:


Tom Flood

New York Times: Donald is a criminal who wants to brutalize millions but doesnt that just make you want to fuck him even more?
comfortably_dumb @comfortablybumd.bsky.social

cops are all excited to bust out the military gear because they dream of open war against citizens. they want to be the army of empire against a people’s rebellion. it’s what american police were created to do and they can’t wait for it
@clueless.bsky.social

Watching people grow more overtly authoritarian and root for the spilling of young people’s blood is among the most disturbing things I’ve seen in a long, long time. These are trying times. I’m still optimistic democracy and basic dignity will win out, but god almighty.
Jared Yates Sexton

“Do not let, much less call for, your students to get beat down by the state” is the lowest of bars for university leadership to clear. Duty of care. University leadership everywhere has a duty of care for all of the students in their charge. A duty of care. Say it to yourself while walking if needed. They, we, should show up every day with that mission. By unleashing state violence on students, they are showing they can’t adhere to that mission.
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 glass-walled conference rooms:


Jarrett Walker @humantransit.bsky.social