Marianne sifting sand

Former Documentarian | Former TV Story Producer | Former Scientist | Current Lyme Host | Current #pwME

[Kelly @broadwaybabyto]

Everyone who stopped masking the moment they were told it was “safe” helped contribute to these ugly laws.

Disabled and vulnerable people tried to warn you.

We begged for solidarity.

We needed to normalize masking to ensure it wasn’t criminalized.

[PACO @PacoOnPause]

It's not that people can't understand. It's that if they do, then it's incompatible with how they want to live their life. So they are stuck hoping that it's not true and that this won't affect them.

[🌸Bibi🌸♿ @BibiBlossoms]

Happy Disability Pride Month to all the disabled baddies out there!! I hope this month (and year) will be filled with accommodations and support!

[Briana Mills, LMFT ♿️🏳️‍🌈🍉 @theBrianaMills]

July is Disability Pride Month. This month, all I want is for non-disabled people to care about us. I want them to not only know this month exists, but to want us in society. Disabled people have been begging to be included in the world since the beginning. Please listen to us.

[Krystal Ball @krystalball]

Part of the left populist/DSA rise is the way the Epstein files laid bare class dynamics. How can you really believe trans people or immigrants are the biggest problem when you see billionaires conspiring to self deal, war profiteer, and manipulate national governments?

[Mac @GoodPoliticGuy]

We need a Zohran in every city in the U.S.

[trash jones @jzux]

congress: americans do not deserve healthcare

also congress: sorry that was just my 4-month paid depression vacation

[ꪝe @_wej01]

Hi... Norwegian here.

When a woman finds out she’s pregnant, here’s what happens:

She calls her GP or midwife.
Appointment within a week.

7 check-ups across the pregnancy.
Two ultrasounds included.
All antenatal care is 100% free.

The birth itself is also free.
After the birth: A year of paid leave.
Then daycare at $124/month.

No insurance.
No denied claims.
No bill.

Just a system that says: we’ve got you..

[Briana Mills, LMFT ♿️🏳️‍🌈🍉 @theBrianaMills]

You can’t fight fascism without disability justice. Fascism creates more disability, which then sees us as replaceable and our deaths as excusable. You can’t fight for humanity without fighting for disabled people.

[Democracy Now! @democracynow]

What's a "reverse centaur"? Science writer and AI critic Cory Doctorow explains.

[Dylan Park-Pettiford @dyllyp]

11 stars for the Confederate states instead of 13 stars for the original colonies is a detail most Americans won’t notice because of our public school system.

[David Sirota @davidsirota]

Zohran using his public office to actually do things he promised must be genuinely bewildering & terrifying to Democratic politicians, consultants, pundits & donors who’ve spent 40 years making excuses for their party almost never fulfilling promises when Dems have been in power.

[Irishrygirl @irishrygirl]

Where have we heard “if you don’t test, you won’t have new cases” before?

[Taylor Lorenz @TaylorLorenz]

It’s devastating how little people are talking about this

[Ryan Grim @ryangrim]

There are a lot of billionaires on this app who are obviously quite adept at making money, yet pretend they don't understand finance when it comes to the topic of a wealth tax.

It's impossible! It's too complicated! We'd love to do it but it's unworkable!

This is silly. Our financial industry has figured out how to turn the most abstract concepts into concrete financial products that can be traded in markets. We can obviously do this.

Let's say we have an annual 1% wealth tax. It could easily work like this:

Your shares in SpaceX or whatever are locked up and illiquid? Fine, just pay with 1% of those shares. No need to sell. You can easily create a financial product that is tied to those shares. Billionaires say they are afraid that they will have to pay a wealth tax on their assets and then their asset prices will go down, and they'll have paid a tax on wealth they no longer have. Fair enough! Just pay the tax with the shares themselves. If the price goes down, the government eats it, and you're no worse off.

What about an asset like a Picasso? Easy. You create a derivative product that is worth 1% of your Picasso when it is eventually sold. Before it's sold, the government can sell that product into a market and exchange it for cash, or hold it. What the govt would obviously do is create Billionaire Asset Backed Securities and sell them as financial products just like we do with mortgage-backed securities or any other asset-backed securities. Derivatives are not new.

The current problem we have is that billionaires own way too many assets in terms of homes and everything else. Because those assets themselves produce new income, they have to then buy more assets with that new income, which increases their price and endlessly crowds out the ability of normal people to own anything ever. That's why they tell you you will own nothing and be happy. They're certain of the former, don't care about the latter.

If regular people are ever going to get back into owning homes or other assets, billionaires cannot continue hoarding them all.

Quite obviously, a wealth tax is quite workable. The problem is billionaires just don't like it.

[Taylor Lorenz @TaylorLorenz]

As @DeepHumor said, everyone needs to realize that every company and government around the world wants to harvest as much info from you as possible. And these “child safety” laws only mandate that they collect even more

[Marianne sifting sand @321centralpark]

@32Sfc46582 It does defy imagination! I feel for you. I couldn’t be with my mother when she died. ❤️

[g. @GeauxGabrielle]

This is where the COVID relief money went by the way.

When Biden declared the pandemic over, he allowed states to use BILLIONS of dollars of public health funds meant for the protection of children and the elderly to then be used by the prisons and jails and to build more

[Prof. Carl Sagan @ProfCarlSagan]

Civilization must learn to think long-term. Not because the future is abstract. Because the future is where the consequences arrive.

A civilization can become brilliant and still remain childish. It can split the atom, alter the atmosphere, build machines that think, send spacecraft beyond the planets and still make decisions as if only tomorrow morning matters.

Science gives us power across time.

A nuclear weapon does not only affect the moment it explodes. Carbon dioxide does not vanish when the political debate moves on. A spacecraft leaving Earth may outlast every nation that built it. A bad idea, repeated long enough, can damage public reason for generations.

This is why skepticism matters.

Not just to win arguments. Not just to debunk nonsense.

But to slow civilization down long enough to ask:

What follows from this?

Who pays the cost?

What evidence do we have?

What are we pretending not to know?

Long-term thinking is humility applied to time.

It means admitting that we are not only citizens of the present. We are ancestors in preparation.

The stars teach scale.

Science teaches consequence.

And a mature civilization must learn both.

[Mike Hoerger, PhD MSCR MBA @michael_hoerger]

As a psychologist, what concerns me is that SARS-CoV-2 reinfections in perpetuity are damaging children (cognitive dysfunction, worsening health, bereavement, lower achievement). It's too painful for people to own that, so they'll blame tech & give away privacy in the process.