Thread by @BrynnTannehill: The more I write about this, the more it becomes plain: if Biden loses, 2020 will be the last remotely free and fair election we have for de…
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Biden’s first day in office
https://twitter.com/RepsForBiden/status/1299363781408153602?s=20
ASSUMING HE WINS…
Republicans for Joe Biden (@RepsForBiden) Tweeted: What’s the first thing you want President Biden to do on the first say in office?
Good question, actually. Let’s see…
- End the Muslim travel ban
- End the policy that puts children in cages
- Start finding those kids’ parents (and tee up therapy/counseling for those kids and families)
- End the rest of Trump’s Executive Orders that actually had any effect
- Accept the resignations of/fire all Trump executive branch appointees (including federal prosecutors)
- Begin prep for Infrastructure Week (start looking for shovel-ready projects?)
- Begin assisting the various regional state efforts to combat covid
- Wear a stylish mask (black-on-black paisley or something, I dunno)
I might be modifying this list as time goes by.
… And, sure enough (based on other replies to that tweet):
- Rejoin Paris Climate Accord
- Rejoin WHO
- Submit TPP ratification to Congress
- Replace troops pulled out of Germany
- Begin discussions with Europe on enforcing Iran nuclear agreement
- Instruct DOJ, ATF to begin investigations of domestic terrorism and anti-government extremists
- Revoke Trump family security clearances (that’s a gimme, though, right?)
- Remove the barriers around Tinyman Square
- Fix the Rose Garden
- Begin discussions with China on ending tariffs
- End DOJ efforts to repeal ACA
- Nominate as many new Cabinet heads as he can (Day ONE)
Meaningless Facebook stats
https://twitter.com/surlybassey/status/1299193866944421889?s=20
Kaitlyn Greenidge (@surlybassey) Tweeted: Related, I was super depressed that Ben Sh*pir* is getting 52 million interactions on Facebook this month but then Buzzfeed told me a 19 yo cosplaying as sexy Willy Wonka doing WAP got 90 million views so who even knows what metric any of this is
Weirdness in math & science
Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem, in layperson’s language, which I phrase to myself as “there are truths which cannot be proven”: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-godels-theorem/
(That’s not say those unprovable truths aren’t completely trivial; but it IS to say that even the best, most pure math is not automatically going to get you all the way.)
Quantum tunneling, which I see as “the universe is not just a bunch of billiard balls bouncing around in a way that would be totally predictable if we had a big enough computer”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_tunnelling#:~:text=Quantum%20tunnelling%20or%20tunneling%20(US,flow)%20appearing%20inside%20the%20barrier.
Spooky action at a distance, which I phrase to myself as “there are no limitations. How is that even possible?”: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/02/spooky-action-at-a-distance/516201/
«Measure photon A to be vertically polarized, and photon B instantaneously becomes horizontally polarized, even though B’s state was unspecified a moment earlier and no signal has had time to travel between them. This is the “spooky action” that Einstein was famously skeptical about in his arguments against the completeness of quantum mechanics in the 1930s and ’40s.»
Einstein is famous for saying that he does not believe that God plays dice with the universe, but I think God does exactly that. It’s just that, if the dice don’t fall the way God thinks they should, science has absolutely nothing to say about the possibility of God altering the results. (Or even about God’s existence, for that matter.)
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
(As they say.)
On “the path to Weimar”
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1299003194509590528.html
History type guy:
Thread by @stcolumbia:
«So many people seem deeply invested in the idea that any form of street fighting or “paramilitarism” puts the US on the “path to Weimar,” which is neither an accurate description of how these things have operated in the US or in Weimar Germany.»
Yet another reason to defund the police
https://twitter.com/JordanUhl/status/1298535632306929664?s=20
Actually, probably yet another argument for “defund the police” apart from:
- They employ too many lunatics (or scared white people) who view a badge as clearance to just blaze away
- They don’t need to be doing social work
- They don’t show up in time for violet crimes, anyway (“when seconds count, the police are minutes away”)
- They’re not actually stopping violence during protests, since they just sort of stand aside when the gun-waving fascists show up
- You probably don’t need to be armed to do detective work or insurance claims adjustment
So now we have:
- When a violent perpetrator is right in front of them, they don’t actually do their jobs
«an unhinged cop shot jacob blake in the back several times for no reason with no recourse now tonight a psychotic militia cosplayer murdered someone in cold blood and the police just drove by. absolutely useless. they serve nobody but the elite & protect nothing but capital.»
On voting in the dictator
https://twitter.com/umairh/status/1298445561193025538?s=20
Given what’s happened in Britain, if Trump wins again, a TON of Political Science books will get completely rewritten, I think. In other countries.
❤️ (@umairh) Tweeted: guys as a survivor of authoritarianism I think you are in way deeper shit than you know, this bizarre RNC family business cult of hate is exactly how it happens. I mean *exactly*
Tweet from Noah Smith (@Noahpinion)
https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1298381487620780033?s=20
Random tweet from an interesting conversation.
Noah Smith 🐇 (@Noahpinion) Tweeted: «@lawnerdbarak West Virginia, the poorest U.S. state, has a higher median household income than Denmark.»
Also: holy moly, everybody picked Japan. Something’s wrong there (and by “there”, I don’t mean Japan.)
Trump Has Now Moved $2.3 Million Of Campaign-Donor Money Into His Private Business
«The president’s total haul—from his campaign, party and joint fundraising committees—now stands at more than $6.9 million.
Not a meaningless sum, even for a billionaire.»
Natalie Harp: Experts doubt Trump’s Right-to-Try law ‘saved her life’ – The Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/08/25/natalie-harp-bone-cancer-trump/
«“The problem is it’s a classic case of Trump demagoguery. It sounds good — cutting red tape and saving lives — but at the root of it there’s nothing there,” said Peter Lurie, former top official of the Food and Drug Administration, now president of the Center for Science in the Public Interest. “The FDA already had a process that approved more than 90 percent of people who wanted access to these drugs and treatments.”
The measure was originally pitched by a Phoenix-based libertarian think tank called the Goldwater Institute as a way to give terminally ill patients access to unapproved medications from pharmaceutical companies without being bogged down by FDA regulations. But since at least the 1970s, there had already been a way for patients to get access to such drugs. That pathway — called expanded use or compassionate use — is used by hundreds of people a year, and more than 90 percent of such requests are granted by the FDA, experts say.When seriously ill patients struggle to access unapproved drugs outside clinical trials, drug companies, not the FDA, are most often the main obstacle. But the law did not address that.»
