Exactly. Because don’t you see, all that voter suppression and gerrymandering has only made it harder for this (imaginary) conservative majority to vote the way God intended! Those damned liberals made all those conservative state governments enact voter suppression laws.
/S
Well, the implication from what’s being summarized is that democracy isn’t really the priority anyway.
Sometimes I think about how generally less stinky cities and freeways would be if even half the vehicles were EVs. I remember in law school how sick I would feel walking along this one busy 4 lane road next to campus.
(excerpt) New research using data derived from decades of analysis on how bottlenose dolphins communicate has found that mothers use a sort of “baby talk” that is distinct when communicating with offspring, compared to how they communicate with other adult dolphins.
Francis acknowledged that some in the crowd — there was Andres Serrano, of “Piss Christ” fame — sometimes use confrontation to make people think. But he said their aim was to find harmony and beauty.
What a great article. Thanks so much for sharing it! This part really jumped out at me…
The Pew Research Center reported in 2017 that the Great Recession of 2008 “triggered a sharp, prolonged decline in the wealth of American families, and an already large wealth gap between white households and black and Hispanic households widened further in its immediate aftermath.
…because of a recent report with examples of how AI has been used against BIPOC. It shows that this was by design (at 6:55) :
If their timing is unlucky and they buy just before a recession that throws them out of work, they can end up with an unsellable house valued at less than what they paid for it. Then the foreclosure sign goes up in their front yard. When a house is no longer an option, they endure the hell of competing to find an apartment—which might rent for as much as or more than the monthly payment on the mortgage they can’t get.
[Emphasis mine - that’s not always true as the link below explains, for many people it costs less money to rent than to buy.]
Foreclosures are increasing again, too. News about evictions tends to overlook that point:
This one has a chart that reflects just how bad things were during the Great Recession, and a significant percentage of people never recovered from that:
In the Housing Crisis topic, we’ve discussed increases in corporate and NIMBY attacks against existing lower-cost options like mobile/manufactured homes, tiny homes, and RVs. We’re seeing more progressive press outlets sounding the alarm, at the same time major outlets are fueling inter-generational divisions instead of following the money and identifying the real causes of the problem.
The exposure of systemic racism and other inequities is not only a concern because those cases are rarely redressed, but also because it’s proof of a well-established playbook that can be used against other marginalized groups:
African Americans and other minorities were not uninterested in obtaining homes and mortgages; the government actively blocked them from doing so.
I’m having a hard time thinking of Black communities created (despite all the hurdles set up by government, banking, and insurance organizations) that weren’t subsequently targeted for disruption or destruction by highways, parks/lakes, toxic waste/manufacturing plants, or supremacists (all separate links 
).
Yes, great article, but also as you seem to be saying, not a hopeful one. It also says,
Those policies have given us the nation we have today, in which tax benefits favor homeowners over renters, in which the automobile won out over public transportation, and in which cities and suburbs were divided instead of integrated, which made it nearly impossible to have equal opportunities in education, job prospects, health care, or public safety. Rothstein makes the argument that all government actions that have denied equal treatment of citizens violate the Fifth Amendment, and actions that treat African Americans as second-class citizens violate the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments. Therefore, he concludes, the United States has a constitutional obligation to reverse the effects of such actions. But, of course, we also live in a nation where the highest court is blind to history. And if today’s right-wing leaders get their way, the next generation of students will be too.
We just gotta fight back, same as ever of course.
Power concedes nothing without a demand.
Goofus and Gallant, managing behavioral expectations for over 70s years…
Archive version: https://archive.ph/tI1ky
With this interesting analysis:
Less immediately obvious are deeper shifts in the nature of childhood, and in adults’ conception of the ideal well-behaved child. For instance, the range of a child’s independence has shrunk considerably from Highlights’ early days. Goofus and Gallant ran amok in old strips, with little to no parental supervision. They completed errands on their own in 1955; they stayed out until the streetlights came on in 1965. As recently as 1990, Gallant simply left a note for his mom on the counter letting her know where he’d be, and peaced out. By today’s standards that feels more like Goofus behavior.
(excerpt) But, according to a recent study from Penn State University, curly hair is actually now believed to have been helpful to humans in regulating body temperature, and even minimized the need to sweat in order to stay cool. Additionally, hair texture, curly hair specifically, may have played a huge role in how the size of the human brain grew to its typical size over time.
Oh, I’ve got a good example to add: Bronzeville was the Harlem of Chicago. So the city decided to tear down a lot of the existing private properties and put up public housing there (similar to Cabrini Green and the Robert Taylor Homes). For 50 years, the neighborhood literally lost its name as well as its identity, becoming known for only crime, poverty, etc.
Once the city tore down those buildings, locals took the neighborhood back, as well as the name, and it is once again a thriving middle class Black neighborhood. But there’s a 50-year hole that will always be there in the history books.
