As discussed previously, Fridays host my weekly Twitter roundups. 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 and I notice. Most have not, or I don’t notice. 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.

9:01 – Mon 28 November 2022

Air pollution harms the brain and mental health, too — a large-scale analysis documents effects on brain regions associated with emotions from The Conversation

Some exposures that led to negative effects occurred in air pollution ranges that are currently considered “safe” by the Environmental Protection Agency’s standards.

Given the rate at which we’ve seen recent revelations on the substantial damage created by air pollution—compounding other issues, remember, because poorer and marginalized people have a higher likelihood of exposure to pollution, due to historical and continued redlining—I have to wonder what changed to allow us to see it all.

12:05 – Mon 28 November 2022

Among individuals, as among nations, respect for the rights of others is peace.

Benito Juárez

9:04 – Tue 29 November 2022

Tax prep services send sensitive financial info to Facebook from Pluralistic

Facebook claims that it doesn’t want this data and won’t use it, though the company has been previously caught violating fair finance laws by using finance data to discriminate against Black families.

Facebook, like Twitter, needs to abide by an FTC consent decree at the moment, so they’ll definitely say this, and store the data away for when the FTC lifts the decree. We need a serious antitrust movement to take these huge companies off the table.

12:04 – Tue 29 November 2022

I have strong sympathy for all women who have struggled and suffered.

Edmonia Lewis

9:05 – Wed 30 November 2022

More Republicans died than Democrats after COVID vaccines came out from Futurity

…excess death rates for Republicans were 1.6 percentage points higher than for Democrats. After April 2021, the gap widened to 10.6 percentage points.

I have two thoughts to point out, here.

First, I lay this at the feet of Republican politicians, not voters. When you constantly tell your constituents that only a loser would protect himself from a deadly disease, people will die.

Second, notice how this plays into Republican politics on the Federal level. By hollowing out the populations of their states, they have fewer constituents to please—as they take increasingly radical positions—but they can maintain their hold on the Senate, because a state with no population other than its political representation still gets two Senators and one Representative. Plus, they’ll blame the Democrats instead of taking responsibility, further radicalizing their remaining constituents.

Terrorist groups and street gangs routinely work this way. They’ll make themselves targets in densely populated areas to lure police into a destructive raid—or cause the damage themselves—then recruit the most hopeless survivors against their enemies.

12:03 – Wed 30 November 2022

The legislation of the government has been directed rather to the protection of the rights of money and property than to the best good of the citizen.

Susette La Flesche

9:02 – Thu 01 December 2022

Elon Musk May Not Be So Brilliant After All from OtherWords

Musk’s current Tesla CEO pay plan…the higher Tesla’s share price goes, the more new Tesla shares Musk gets.

Incidentally, a Twitter user calling themselves “CapitolHunters” pulled together a phenomenal thread on Musk’s shady past, full of phony degrees, undocumented immigration, junk science, and strong ties to pro-Apartheid activists. In a lot of ways, the world’s richest man has run the world’s most lucrative scam.

12:01 – Thu 01 December 2022

The good extend their loving care

To men, however mean or vile;

E’en base Chándálas’ dwellings share

Th’ impartial sunbeam’s silver smile.

Hitopadesa

9:03 – Fri 02 December 2022

The feminists who want Armenians and Azerbaijanis to forgive each other from openDemocracy

Samadzade is willing to risk demonstrating against Azerbaijani leader Ilham Aliev’s regime, despite the country’s history of imprisoning dissidents.

One thing that everybody around the world, by now, probably has reason to agree on: We shouldn’t hold the sins of a government against the sins of its people. We need to hold individual players accountable, when they’ve done something wrong, but if nothing else, the last decade feels like someone scripted it to drive home the point that the people living under a belligerent government need help, not threats. That goes for the parts of the United States that we don’t agree with, Russia, Ukraine, Iran, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and literally every other country and wannabe country in the world. Even Vatican City—the closest that I can think of to a country with a voluntary population—has a population that includes family members of workers, who didn’t make the decision to join the Swiss Guard or whatever job brought them there.

12:02 – Fri 02 December 2022

When morning silvers the dark firmament,

Why shrills the bird of dawning his lament?

It is to show in dawn’s bright looking-glass

How of thy careless life a night is spent.

Omar Khayyām

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.

With the US intervention, Kosovo and Serbia resolve the car license plate dispute from Global Voices

The government in Pristina argues that license plates predating the Kosovo’s 1999 war for independence from Serbia can no longer be valid.

I had never heard of this dispute, but it definitely makes sense that this sort of detail would provide an outlet for old ethnic animosities.

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