Public Service Announcement: For those of us in the United States, Election Day comes on Tuesday. Early voting turnout has grown over past years, suggesting that polling places will have their hands full on the actual day. If you haven’t already voted, make a plan. Specifically, if your state has early voting, take care of it this weekend; you won’t regret taking advantage of the process. If you can’t do that, bring food, water, and something to occupy your time on Tuesday, just in case. 🇺🇸

As discussed previously, this is my weekly Twitter roundup. Note that tweets of articles generally include header images from the articles, which I don’t include here unless their creators happen to have released them for use under a free license. Most have not. But I now add most of my commentary here, where I don’t feel restricted by the message length.

diagrams showing the division of the day and of the week

I also don’t generally attach pictures to posts with quotations.

9:03 – Mon 31 October 2022

Lack of food spiked 25% when Child Tax Credit expired from Futurity

The findings also indicate that the expiration of the CTC exacerbates racial and economic inequities in consistent access to adequate and healthy food.

I admittedly love the shocked and amazed reactions to this story as it progresses, as if something feels counter-intuitive about the premise that giving poor people money makes them less poor, and stopping before they can build wealth makes them poor again. I also find it a massive shame that we pretend that we need to experiment with millions of lives to figure this out, but I’ll grudgingly accept that if we can finally implement systems that bring people out of poverty instead of punishing them for it in hopes that it convinces them to fix the economy themselves.

12:03 – Mon 31 October 2022

I want my people to stay with me here. All the dead men will come to life again. Their spirits will come to their bodies again. We must wait here in the homes of our fathers and be ready to meet them in the bosom of our mother.

Smohalla

9:05 – Tue 01 November 2022

One of the last Ladino language speakers in Bosnia, Moris Albahari, passed away from Global Voices

Bosnian media also described him as “the guardian of the Haggidah,” a famous medieval collection of Jewish regulations and traditions.

Embarrassingly, I keep forgetting that Europe has endangered languages of its own, especially among Jewish communities.

12:04 – Tue 01 November 2022

I cannot think we are useless or Usen would not have created us. He created all tribes of men and certainly had a righteous purpose in creating each.

Geronimo

9:04 – Wed 02 November 2022

Building subsidized low-income housing actually lifts property values in a neighborhood, contradicting NIMBY concerns from The Conversation

Building two more developments increased prices by a total of 3 additional percentage points, on average, within a quarter-mile and 4 percentage points over the next quarter-mile.

Again, we see that government spending on poor people improves the economy. Government spending on rich people makes the economy worse. Maybe economy-oriented voters should keep that in mind, rather than insisting on abstract theories with no empirical evidence…

12:02 – Wed 02 November 2022

My reason teaches me that land cannot be sold. The Great Spirit gave it to his children to live upon and cultivate as far as necessary for their subsistence, and so long as they occupy and cultivate it they have the right to the soil.

Black Hawk

9:02 – Thu 03 November 2022

Uline’s billions fund voter suppression from Pluralistic

They’re also big donors to the American Principles Project and its anti “transgender ideology” attack ads, which also target abortion and “critical race theory.”

Above, I mention that spending money on poor people works better than spending money on rich people. Here, we learn that spending money on rich people funds fascist insurrections. It feels like we could build useful policies around this…

12:01 – Thu 03 November 2022

The elements and majestic forces in nature, Lightning, Wind, Water, Fire, and Frost, were regarded with awe as spiritual powers, but always secondary and intermediate in character.

Charles Eastman

9:01 – Fri 04 November 2022

GOP Ads Cry “Crime!” But Homicides Are Actually Falling from OtherWords

What about the fact that states that voted for Trump in 2020 had murder rates 40 percent higher than those won by Joe Biden?

For decades, Republicans have used “crime” as a dog-whistle for the existence of non-white people. They never care about the actual crime rate, and in fact, their policies routinely increase crime, by depriving people of options and collecting them where they can learn from career criminals.

I claim that they do this intentionally. Their oppressive policies only make sense if we imagine mobs of people wishing us harm, so they create the mirage of it, and then support policies that make that image true.

12:05 – Fri 04 November 2022

Grown men may learn from very little children, for the hearts of little children are pure, and, therefore, the Great Spirit may show to them many things which older people miss.

Black Elk

Bonus

Because it accidentally became a tradition early on in the life of the blog, I drop any additional articles that didn’t fit into the one-article-per-day week, but too weird or important to not mention, here.

Neo-Nazis, Antisemites, and the N-Word: Twitter Just Hours Under Elon Musk from VICE News

Many of the earlier tweets have been deleted and some of the accounts suspended, indicating that Twitter’s moderation policies remain in place.

I see two takeaways, here.

First, regardless of the reality or his desires, Musk’s mob of fans think of him as racist and fascist.

Second, for at least the immediate future, Musk will need to play nice. He’ll probably take some petty actions that’ll backfire, but if he doesn’t like the assessment of his fans or the kind of scrutiny that tends to bring, he’ll need to watch his step.

Also, we shouldn’t pretend that Jack Dorsey had the good of humanity in mind, when he ran things.

The White House’s ‘AI Bill of Rights’ outlines five principles to make artificial intelligence safer, more transparent and less discriminatory from The Conversation

The first two principles aim to address the safety and effectiveness of AI systems as well as the major risk of AI furthering discrimination.

I don’t know if this will do what it needs to do, but we certainly need something in this space setting limits on these processes.

Credits: Header image is Circular diagrams showing the division of the day and of the week from a manuscript drafted during the Carolingian Dynasty.