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.

9:03 – Mon 07 March 2022

‘Yes, He Would’: Fiona Hill on Putin and Nukes from Politico

It’s not that we should be intimidated and scared. That’s exactly what he wants us to be.

Among the interesting points that Hill makes is her comment that World War III has been fought for many years, not in a conspiratorial way, but because the globalized world that we all benefit from means that just about every military action has immediate and global consequences. What remains to be seen is whether we can bring it to a close without losing hundreds of millions of lives.

However, you’ll notice that the solution revolves around something that I’ve mentioned more than once: Everybody that we would currently hate to see win a world war fund themselves primarily by oil money, suggesting an obvious way to push for peace.

12:02 – Mon 07 March 2022

Far away in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead.

Louisa May Alcott

9:04 – Tue 08 March 2022

The tech industry talks about boosting diversity, but research shows little improvement from The Conversation

…minimal increases in diversity in their professional labor force, primarily driven by small increases in the employment of Asian men and Asian women…

It’s not nearly ready to go, but I’ve been working on a post on an adjacent topic, about how companies talk about how “you can’t improve what you don’t measure,” then refuse to measure anything about their hiring process beyond “butts in seats.”

12:05 – Tue 08 March 2022

The reins of government have been so long slackened, that I fear the people will not quietly submit to those restraints which are necessary for the peace and security of the community.

Abagail Adams

I’m not saying that Adams is definitely talking about the trucker protests—where truckers suddenly have enough savings to take weeks off, after decades of barely eking out a living, because they’re afraid to get vaccinated—but…

9:05 – Wed 09 March 2022

Let’s Recall What Exactly Paul Manafort and Rudy Giuliani Were Doing in Ukraine from ProPublica

According to the Senate report, Manafort met Kilimnik twice in person while working on the Trump campaign, messaged with him electronically and shared “sensitive campaign polling data” with him.

As Fiona Hill mentions in the Monday article, this invasion has been in the works for many years, with the Trump campaign at the center of it. In addition to these shady business dealings, don’t forget Trump’s “perfect call” with Zelenskyy trying to extort information by stopping promised military aid or the administration’s constant attempts to weaken and undermine NATO.

12:03 – Wed 09 March 2022

To live is so startling, it leaves but little room for other occupations.

Emily Dickinson

9:02 – Thu 10 March 2022

Ukraine’s war unleashes flood of racism by media and politicians against Arab war victims from Global Voices

As thousands took the life-threatening journey of crossing the Mediterranean Sea to reach Europe and start over, European countries have set up laws, policies, and barriers to stop them from entering their countries…

What’s interesting to me is how this incident has laid thoroughly bare the situation in corporate media. What I mean is that there is the kernel of the idea of good reporting in these statements; the public could probably have benefited from journalists saying something like “we have tended to focus our attentions on the violence among non-white populations, so many white viewers might find it jarring to see victims of war that look like them. It’s jarring to us. We will try to do better in the future.”

That’s not what any of them are saying, though. The “liberal media” (ha!) is saying that, in their eyes, war is supposed to be something that happens among brown people, and that being able to identify with victims is a new experience for them.

12:01 – Thu 10 March 2022

It does not matter much whom we live with in this world, but it matters a great deal whom we dream of.

Willa Cather

9:01 – Fri 11 March 2022

GOP Hostility to Ketanji Brown Jackson Goes Beyond Hypocrisy from OtherWords

When a party thwarts that right…they negate the Supreme Court’s legitimacy.

There isn’t anything particularly new to this article, but it does keep attention on the simple fact that the Republican Party is now openly opposed to democracy, especially if any of the people that the government is for, of, and by happen to be Black.

12:04 – Fri 11 March 2022

Any time while I was a slave, if one minute’s freedom had been offered to me, and I had been told that I must die at the end of that minute, I would have taken it—just to stand one minute on God’s earth a free woman—I would.

Elizabeth Freeman

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.

DNA from ancient African foragers indicates cultural change from Futurity

Researchers long assumed that major changes in the archaeological record about 50,000 years ago reflected a shift in social networks and maybe even changes in population size. However, such hypotheses have remained difficult to test.

I’m admittedly not convinced that social systems are connected to DNA, but this is still remarkable research.

The Single-Legged Stool of the Horseshoe Left’s Apology for Putin from emptywheel

For years, Putin has portrayed any popular uprising for democracy as a CIA plot, a claim that many anti-imperialists championed, thereby denying those calling for democracy any agency.

Especially if you read the Entropy Arbitrage newsletter, you might think that I hammer too hard on this concern about left-wing support for fascists, as long as they’re not Western. However, I’m convinced that it’s one of the most important forces in Western politics, certainly a factor in how we ended up with fascists as heads of Western governments.

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