Dismal Scientist

Her/She. MA in Economics. Affordable Housing & Economic Consultant. Previously taught Statistics & Macroeconomics. Dabbled in Finance & Philosophy.

[Nora Barrows-Friedman @norabf]

Western academia stays silent

[Thomas Willett @ThomasWillett9]

I wonder if JK Rowling knows she’s become leader of a cult who stage homophobic/transphobic protests on the day a young trans girl’s murderers are sentenced to life in prison.

[Jacksepticeye @Jacksepticeye]

So many 0 year olds on this list is fucking heartbreaking. No one deserves this. Children especially don't deserve this. It's so incredibly sad

[Al Jazeera English @AJEnglish]

Here is a list of the names we know from the more than 11,500 Palestinian children killed during Israel’s continuing war on Gaza ⤵️

Know their names: https://t.co/l9T4EJlRKT

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

I rarely praise the Guardian but this is a extraordinary visual investigation of the sheer level of destruction in Gaza:
https://t.co/WkegK6bF5f

Absolutely crystal clear when you look through it that the objective is to render the place utterly inhabitable, and destroy Palestinian civil society. Places destroyed are homes, mosques, schools, hospitals, cemeteries, historical landmarks, supermarkets, etc. Everything that makes up a community.

Complete disconnect from the stated goal of fighting Hamas.

[Joel Jenkins @boganintel]

More bombs on Gaza than in Dresden WWII, more than the bombing of Hanoi in Vietnam war, more journalists killed than any conflict in recorded history, more dead civilians than 20 years in Afghanistan, more dead children than every global conflict since 2019.

Genocide.

[Ari Drennen @AriDrennen]

This is the kind of incident we will see over and over and over again when states pass laws that encourage people to police the gender of strangers. No girl, trans or not, should have to deal with a grown man foaming at the mouth about how she's actually a boy

[The Intellectualist @highbrow_nobrow]

This seems like a clear-cut case of defamation.

New York City councilman Yusuf Salaam was publicly exonerated.

[Sara Spector @Miriam2626]

As a former Texas border prosecutor who specialized in sexual assault of children I prosecuted no undocumented citizens for child or adult rape. I did prosecute five American youth ministers.

[Eman Abdelhadi @emanabdelhadi]

...even when a 6-year-old Palestinian was murdered 30 miles away, even when a Palestinian student was run over in Cali, even when 3 Palestinian students were shot in Vermont... even when students on our own campus have been doxxed and harassed.

[Eman Abdelhadi @emanabdelhadi]

I am, to my knowledge, the only Palestinian professor on UChicago's main campus. I woke up to this photo, after three months of being told this university is politically neutral. Never once has this admin asked after my safety or the safety of my students...

[Hank Green @hankgreen]

I think a harm of online activism is the "THIS IS ACTUALLY EASY" argument.

I've seen lots of folks indicate that a single billionaire could solve homelessness, or that there are 30x more houses than homeless people so we could just give them all houses.

These words are fantastic for activating people, but they are also lies.

The US government currently spends around 50B per year keeping people housed. States, of course, have their own budgets. If Bill Gates spent the same amount of money the US does just to keep people housed, he would be out of money in 3 years. I think that would be a great use of his money, but it would not be a permanent solution.

The statistics about there being more houses than homeless are just...fake. They rely on looking at extremely low estimates of homelessness (which are never used in any other context) and include normal vacancy rates (an apartment is counted as vacant even if it's only vacant for a month while the landlord is finding a new tenant.) In a country with 150,000,000 housing units, a 2% vacancy rate is three million units, which, yes, is greater than the homeless population. But a 2% vacancy rate is extremely low (and bad, because it means there's fewer available units than there are people looking to move, which drives the price of rent higher.)

Housing should not be an option in this country. It should be something we spend tons of money on. It should be a priority for every leader and every citizen. it should also be interfaced with in real, complex ways. And it should be remembered that the main way we solve the problem is BUILDING MORE HOUSING, which I find a whole lot of my peers in seemingly progressive spaces ARE ACTUALLY OPPOSED TO.

Sometimes they are opposed to it because they've heard stats that the problem is simple and could be solved very easily if only we would just decide to solve it, which is DOING REAL DAMAGE.

By telling the simplest version of the story, you can get people riled up, but what do you do with that once they're riled up if they were riled up by lies?

There are only two paths:

1. Tell them the truth...that everything they've been told is actually a lie and that the problem is actually hard. And, because the problem is both big and hard, tons of people are working very hard on it, and they should be grateful for (or even become) one of those people.

2. Keep lying until they are convinced that the problem does not exist because it is hard, it exists because people are evil.

Or, I guess, #3, people could just be angry and sad all the time, which is also not great for affecting real change.

I dunno...I'm aware that people aren't doing this because they want to create a problem, and often they believe the fake stats they are quoting, but I do not think it is doing more good than harm, and I would like to see folks doing less of it.

One thing that definitely does more good than harm is actually connecting to the complexity of an issue that is important to you. Do that...and see that there are many people working hard.

We do not have any big, easy problems. If we did, they'd be solved. I'm sorry, it's a bummer, but here we are.

[Bobby Kogan @BBKogan]

There would be an all hands on deck national freak out if 16 Democratic governors called to openly defy the Supreme Court

[David Austin Walsh @DavidAstinWalsh]

*sips coffee*

We need to talk about how a key element of both Israeli and Russian strategy is waiting it out until Trump is president again and he gives them both a complete carte blanche.

[johnny @notthechips]

if supreme court rulings can be disregarded, abortion clinics should resume operation in texas

[ellewasamistake @ellewasamistake]

Attributing works of art to a company instead of their workers is disingenuous and damaging, especially in an industry that is increasingly trying to replace artists with AI.

I don't want this discourse to set that precedent.

[Andrew Lawrence @ndrew_lawrence]

starting civil war ii over a states right right to drown children in a river with razor wire

[A Left-Wing Account ™️ @PushDemsLeft]

Then how do you explain this?

[Billy Binion @billybinion]

This story will fly under the radar. It shouldn't.

Houston tried to prosecute a woman for helping the homeless. And the state couldn't even impanel a jury, because the bulk of potential jurors saw the case for the insanity that it is.

This is why jury trials are essential: