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.

9:04 – Mon 31 January 2022

Proudly ‘Made in Prison’: Italian co-ops hire inmates to make food and fashion from Open Democracy

Forty co-operatives supply the shop — called Freedhome — with goods produced by around 2,000 prisoners.

This is a great idea. I wish there was more of this in the United States, so that shipping wouldn’t be such a nightmare for me…

12:05 – Mon 31 January 2022

Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world.

Arthur Schopenhauer

9:01 – Tue 01 February 2022

The 13th Amendment’s fatal flaw created modern-day convict slavery from The Conversation

As scholars of slavery and the histories of African America, our research shows the 13th Amendment’s exception clause reinvented slave labor and involuntary servitude behind prison walls.

I generally assume that most people are already aware of the horrible carve-out in the Thirteenth Amendment—it’s one of the big reasons that prison abolitionists focus on, after all—but for those who aren’t (and there’s no shame in that; none of us are born with this knowledge), this is a solid introduction to the situation.

12:03 – Tue 01 February 2022

The development of an individual will invariably be in the direction of his ideal, and will partake largely of the nature and character of that ideal.

William H. Crogman

9:02 – Wed 02 February 2022

Voting Rights Will Be Dead Without Street Heat from Common Dreams

We won because people marched, demonstrated, and risked their lives to demand the right to vote.

I don’t always agree with Reverend Jackson, but this is a case where he’s completely correct. There are multiple ways to look at this problem, and most of them are useless. We could blame Manchin and Sinema for not voting the way most people wish they would, but that has accomplished nothing. We could blame the fifty Republican Senators who are openly opposed to voting rights, but they don’t care what anyone thinks as long as they get their donations. Some “innovators” have tried blaming the other Democrats for…not having enough seats in the Senate to overcome the filibuster, I guess; I don’t know, people blame Democrats for a lot of things that Democrats try to fix.

While none of those approaches have been effective, the population showing its resolve always works. Marches show the numbers behind a cause in a visceral way that voicemail messages don’t. A general strike slows money enough that everybody listens; I realize that I go to this well frequently, but it was only two years ago that all but the most authoritarian Republicans rushed to vote to send all Americans COVID-19 relief funds, because people refusing to go to work or shop terrified them. It was only after people started going back to their normal lives that they rethought their position.

12:02 – Wed 02 February 2022

We prove worthy of the privileges that we have not by paying anything back, but by paying it forward.

Cory Booker

9:03 – Thu 03 February 2022

Sales Soar for ‘Maus’ After Its Banning in Tennessee from Voice of America

Neither book was in the top 1,000 at the beginning of the week.

First, yes, absolutely go read Maus. While supplies are tight at the moment—not only did Tennessee make it known to a much larger audience, but Holocaust Memorial Day (for most of the world) is just over a week ago—you can order a copy just about anywhere.

Second, this is what censorship gets you, especially in a world where everybody is on the Internet. I’m half-surprised that teachers don’t forbid reading the books on their summer reading lists, rather than assigning them.

Finally, this is where we’re at. A Tennessee school board banned a comic book, primarily because they thought that a naked mouse was too “adult” for young teenagers to see. You’d think that the rodents in Tennessee creep around in tiny tuxedos and ball gowns. (And yet, they think that the people who don’t laugh at Holocaust jokes are “snowflakes.”)

12:04 – Thu 03 February 2022

Respect for woman, the much lauded chivalry of the Middle Ages, meant what I fear it still means to some men in our own day—respect for the elect few among whom they expect to consort.

Anna J. Cooper

9:05 – Fri 04 February 2022

No, payday lenders aren’t nice guys from Pluralistic

…they assumed that the state caps on payday loans under $100 were the same as the caps on larger loans.

It’s really amazing how much infrastructure is in place to make it more expensive to not have money.

12:01 – Fri 04 February 2022

It is from the blues that all that may be called American music derives its most distinctive characteristic.

James Weldon Johnson

Bonus

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

How the brain knows to take out the ‘trash’ from Futurity

Where and when the organelle is formed is important because pickup needs to be timed and coordinated. It has been a mystery how neurons coordinate this process.

I don’t have much to say about this beyond “it’s interesting.” You got 150 words on Maus, though, so it all evens out…

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