As discussed previously, this is my weekly Twitter roundup. Note that tweets of articles generally include header images from the articles, which are not included here unless they happen to be available under a free license. Most are not. But I now add most of my commentary here, where I’m not 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 15 February 2021

Repeat COVID-19 testing could save lives and money from Futurity

For communities with moderate transmission rates, the model suggests testing everyone every two weeks and isolating positive cases for one week.

It’s really infuriating that we’re still trying to nibble around the edges of the pandemic, instead of just shutting down the country for a month and paying to make that work. One time, across the board, and the virus is effectively dead. This is a reasonable attempt to find some optimal “sweet spot,” but we wouldn’t need it if officials took this seriously months ago.

12:03 – Mon 15 February 2021

America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because We the People have remained faithful to the ideals of our forebearers, and true to our founding documents. So it has been. So it must be with this generation of Americans.

Barack Obama

9:03 – Tue 16 February 2021

Corporate Concentration in the US Food System Makes Food More Expensive and Less Accessible from Common Dreams

In 2020 Christopher Lischewski, the former president and CEO of Bumblebee Foods, was convicted of conspiracy to fix prices of canned tuna.

Through most of the twentieth century, monopoly positions were usually granted to utilities in exchange for forcing them to extend equal service to all parts of the country. Deregulation (by Republicans) has increased the number of industries where areas effectively live with monopolies, but that market position doesn’t come with any responsibility to serve the community.

12:04 – Tue 16 February 2021

…apprehend that they have in common with all other men a natural and unalienable Right to that freedom which the Great Parent of the Universe hath bestowed equally on all mankind and which they have never forfeited by any compact or agreement whatever…

Prince Hall

9:04 – Wed 17 February 2021

Amazon Hired Koch-Backed Anti-Union Consultant to Fight Alabama Warehouse Organizing from The Intercept

…to help persuade Amazon’s Alabama employees not to join the…RWDSU, a union that is affiliated with the United Food and Commercial Workers…

Speaking of monopolies, one of the places where they put in the most effort is driving down wages, because they know full well that you can’t get a billion dollars—let alone a trillion dollars—without exploiting large numbers of people.

12:05 – Wed 17 February 2021

Liberty trains for liberty. Responsibility is the first step in responsibility.

W. E. B. Du Bois

9:02 – Thu 18 February 2021

She Lived Through the Capitol Attack. Now This GOP Staffer Is Calling Out Her Friends’ Conspiracies. from VICE News

No, the election wasn’t stolen by Democrats. No, the Capitol rioters weren’t a false flag operation. No, QAnon isn’t real.

It’s worth pointing out that, not long ago, Congressional aides were asked to sign a letter to the Senate calling for Donald Trump’s impeachment. Not a single Republican aide was willing to put their name to it. So, I need to question how serious this aide is.

12:01 – Thu 18 February 2021

Wherever there is arbitrary rule, there must be necessity, on the part of the dominant classes, superiority be assumed. To assume superiority, is to deny the equality of others.

Martin Delany

9:05 – Fri 19 February 2021

Public option in Biden plan could change the face of US health care from The Conversation

By essentially price-setting and thereby benchmarking payments for the great majority of health services, the government would become the Sam’s Club of health care, which would drive prices down.

I wonder what happened to all those people, claiming to be progressives, who screamed that Biden had some corporate-run health care plan. You’d think that they might be applauding this, instead of…whatever they’re doing.

12:02 – Fri 19 February 2021

Evil communication corrupts good manners. I hope to live to hear that good communication corrects bad manners.

Benjamin Banneker

Bonus

Because it accidentally became a tradition early on in the life of the blog, here’s a sixth article that didn’t fit into the week, but too weird to not mention.

The Far-Right Has Deep Roots in New York Comedy from VICE

…a constellation of online and offline spaces catering to comics and comedy fans with an interest in “transgressive” speech in the 2000s and 2010s—spaces with a track-record of incubating hateful rhetoric…

I’d argue that a lot of comedy has this same profile, whether it’s painted as “just speaking truth” (even though it’s clearly not the truth), a reaction to society moving too fast, or some level of (alleged) irony. Consider someone like George Carlin, who was brilliant and obviously cared about making the world a better place, but so much of his act was a warning to withdraw from institutions and to introduce false equivalencies between people who want progress and people who want to return to the nineteenth century.

Turkey reins in social media—one platform at a time from Global Voices

The law came as swiftly as the detentions of social media users allegedly behind the insults.

This is almost surely a sign of the sort of action that we narrowly averted in this country, but also what we might need to deal with if the far-right continues to hold power.

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