Denise Joines

trying to make the american west resilient to climate change while having a great time living.

[Denise Joines @denisejoines]

@EFprocycling Always rooting for EF! Vamos Carapaz!

[Denise Joines @denisejoines]

@antmccrossan Thanks for your (reasonably!) calm and informative commentating on the Dauphine! Q: do UCI regs require 3 ambulances to follow every race? What happens when one has to take a rider to hospital? Do the have to call in another ambulance so they always have three? Thx!

[Denise Joines @denisejoines]

@antmccrossan Thanks for your consistently great commentary during the Volta - both about what's happening during the race, and the really interesting off-the-course bits that give such great color and texture to the race and the riders. You're the best!

[Denise Joines @denisejoines]

@HerrDwyer @gcntweet @GcnRacing Noooooooooooooooooooo

[Denise Joines @denisejoines]

@gcntweet Nooooooooooooooooo

[Denise Joines @denisejoines]

@thriftycars hey what’s going on at Seatac? Your blue chip counter is closed and the line is an hour long. When will you open the blue chip counter? This is a bad look for you.

[CALL TO ACTIVISM @CalltoActivism]

A British writer penned the best description of Donald Trump I’ve ever read:

“Why do some British people not like Donald Trump?”

A few things spring to mind. Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem. For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace – all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed. So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief.

Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing – not once, ever. I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility – for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman. But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is – his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty.

Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers. And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults – he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness.

There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It’s all surface. Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront. Well, we don’t. We see it as having no inner world, no soul. And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist. Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that. He’s not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat. He’s more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege.

And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully. That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead. There are unspoken rules to this stuff – the Queensberry rules of basic decency – and he breaks them all. He punches downwards – which a gentleman should, would, could never do – and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless – and he kicks them when they are down.

So the fact that a significant minority – perhaps a third – of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think ‘Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy’ is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that:

• Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and mostly are.

• You don’t need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man.

This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss. After all, it’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum. God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid. He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart. In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws – he would make a Trump.

And a remorseful Doctor Frankenstein would clutch out big clumpfuls of hair and scream in anguish: ‘My God… what… have… I… created?' If being a twat was a TV show, Trump would be the boxed set.”

-Nate White

[Denise Joines @denisejoines]

@wsferries Any better estimate for when interisland will resume?

[Sandi Bachom 📹 @sandibachom]

Thank you so much for sharing my video. This was the first one I did with him where I asked when did he know he had to do something. It was Trump's first day in office when he went to the CIA https://t.co/cg6bUjsraG

[Denise Joines @denisejoines]

@antmccrossan and @nicholasroche Thank for your extraordinary commentary/analysis during this fantastic tour. Our crew watched every moment and are grateful to you! A request: next year, give us a few moments w/o commentary just to hear the sounds of the tour a few times a day.

[Denise Joines @denisejoines]

@SeattleParks Fabulous!! Thanks Seattle Parks! It will be fantastic to see how the beavers in Carkeek help clean the creek’s water and create more resilient habitat for more species. So great.

[Denise Joines @denisejoines]

@antmccrossan Looks like the fines go mostly to UCI: "But not all the money goes to the UCI, some penalties are paid to the national federation of the race in question or to the licence holder’s national federation; but the others go to the UCI." https://t.co/sEavwpCBNr

[Qasim Rashid, Esq. @QasimRashid]

Worker: I can't live on $7.25/hr

GOP: So go to college

W: I can't afford $100K tuition

GOP: Take out loans

W: I can't afford to pay these at 8% interest

GOP: No one forced you to go to college

W: But you just said—

Billionaire: I NEED MORE MONEY!

GOP: Here's a $2T Tax Cut

[Denise Joines @denisejoines]

@antmccrossan are the organizers and riders concerned about the unrest in France occurring right now?

[jamie @gnuman1979]

Outstanding.

[Denise Joines @denisejoines]

@Sammy_Roth @latimes Solar should first go on developed infrastructure, like parking lots. New law in France requires this. Why not in the US? Public land AKA nature has no economic value, even though it is priceless. We are shooting ourselves in the foot.

[Denise Joines @denisejoines]

@jeffgoodell Also: why it’s smoky.

[Denise Joines @denisejoines]

@brandicarlile @RollingStone The Joke should be #1. ❤️❤️🌈

[Denise Joines @denisejoines]

@brandicarlile She feels it and expresses it so deeply. What an unbelievable gift to be in her presence and experience that depth with her.

[David Wallace-Wells @dwallacewells]

“Industrial logging in Canada causes a net release of more than 80 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year – equivalent to the emissions from all of Canada’s oil sands operations.”
https://t.co/Yn6iBiGPAl