Introducing: Command+F
The/another ultimate daily reading list
Command/Ctrl + F is an invaluable tool for locating specific information in large documents. It’s the digital equivalent of using a high-powered magnet to find a needle in a haystack.
In the same way, it’s my aim to aggregate the best and most important content I find each day for this series, saving time and energy for engaged and curious — yet busy — readers.
When it comes to how often I’ll publish these posts, “daily,” may be a bit of a stretch … but it will be almost everyday.
Additionally, I intend to do a weekly (probably posted on Sundays) “This Week in Climate Change” post to recap all the important climate news of the previous week (since it’s the single biggest issue of our generation, and all).
Feel free to suggest stories, interviews, etc. in the comments. Medium also has this cool function that lets you highlight text so you can comment directly on specific passages.
Format:
- Post/link/video/whatever
- Excerpt/quote
- Thoughts
Trump and related
Snyder is a historian at Yale who wrote a book about how Nazi Germany and the Holocaust relate to climate change. This interview about it is REALLY good.
7. Stand out. Someone has to. It is easy, in words and deeds, to follow along. It can feel strange to do or say something different. But without that unease, there is no freedom. And the moment you set an example, the spell of the status quo is broken, and others will follow.
“The Green Party scam to fill up their coffers by asking for impossible recounts is now being joined by the badly defeated & demoralized Dems,” he tweeted, adding, “Nothing will change.” But here, Trump undermined himself. If Democrats worry the votes were miscounted, and the president-elect believes that millions of people voted fraudulently, then it’s clear we need a recount to restore faith in the outcome of the election…
[A] lot of weird things Trump says later prove to emerged in the pro-Trump, conspiracy theory-corners of the internet. The problem with Trump isn’t the lies he tells as much as it’s the information he chooses to believe.
Our president-elect is almost literally your weird, absurdly racist uncle that STILL forwards you batshit conspiracy emails.
This is a little dated (Nov. 22) but highlights some good instances of Trump contradicting himself. Even though it’s par for the course, we can’t stop calling out inconsistencies and outright lies wherever they arise.
By Derek Black, the son of Stormfront founder and super white supremacist Don Black:
The wave of violence and vile language that has risen since the election is only one immediate piece of evidence that this campaign’s reckless assertion of white identity comes at a huge cost. More and more people are being forced to recognize now what I learned early: Our country is susceptible to some of our worst instincts when the message is packaged correctly…
Most of Mr. Trump’s supporters did not intend to attack our most vulnerable citizens. But with him in office we have a duty to protect those who are threatened by this administration and to win over those who don’t recognize the impact of their vote. Even those on the furthest extreme of the white nationalist spectrum don’t recognize themselves doing harm — I know that because it was easy for me, too, to deny it…
I never would have begun my own conversations without first experiencing clear and passionate outrage to what I believed from those I interacted with. Now is the time for me to pass on that outrage by clearly and unremittingly denouncing the people who used a wave of white anger to take the White House.
What makes Chomsky’s perspective refreshing is that its so original. His points on a conflict with Russia are great.
International
Now more than ever, it’s crucial that Americans understand how the TPP was really defeated. An organized and educated public can take on concentrated wealth and power and win. With four years of new battles ahead of us, this is a story we must commit to memory, and a lesson we must take to heart.
On (the) Media
If readers had the opportunity to visit the site, it would have become instantly apparent that this group of ostensible experts far more resembles amateur peddlers of primitive, shallow propagandistic clichés than serious, substantive analysis and expertise; that it has a blatant, demonstrable bias in promoting NATO’s narrative about the world; and that it is engaging in extremely dubious McCarthyite tactics about a wide range of critics and dissenters…
this blacklisting group of anonymous cowards — putative experts in the pages of the Washington Post — is actively pushing for Western governments to take punitive measures against the Russian government and is speaking and smearing from an extreme ideological framework that the Post concealed from its readers.
This touches on a fear of mine that I have yet to fully articulate: that in our crusade against “fake news,” we’ll inadvertently lock legitimate voices of dissent out of our news feeds (or, put another way, consciousnesses). As this perfectly illustrates, the legacy press are far from perfect themselves, and to ignore information simply because it doesn’t come from a large institution is naive in its own way.
Virginia
OK this one is bizarre, hilarious, infuriating and depressing all at the same time.. and it also includes two of my favorite student activist friends.
This is an excerpt of an op-ed from Ian Ware, who is a student at UVa. The kind-of-goofy picture is Drew Shannon, who goes to UMW. The Tea Party people/person that posted it (to make fun of) fucked that up. So it’s hilarious that they’re talking shit about the wrong coddled, participation trophy-having millennial because they don’t know how to correctly use the Internet. Stereotypes abound.
This is the original op-ed (in WaPo!!!), and here’s the sad part: it’s all about feeling unsafe and the university’s failure to address a spate of hate crime-y things after the election.
But after I went home for clean clothes to find an anti-gay hate message written on my door, right next to a set of stickers spelling out “Vote 4 Hillary,” my couch-surfing took on new urgency. I was no longer searching for comfort from my peers — I was trying to preserve a sense of safety…
A Star of David and the word “Juden” were spray-painted on an apartment complex popular with students; Muslim students in a residential college noted for its progressive population came home to “Terrorist” written outside their door; several officers in the university police force used the public announcement system on their police car to blast pro-Trump statements at students walking home after the results of the election became clear.
Thirteen protesters were sentenced to five days in jail on Monday for illegally blocking traffic on Interstate 95 in Richmond during a Black Lives Matter protest on July 18.
All 13 demonstrators pleaded guilty Monday afternoon in Richmond General District Court as part of a plea agreement in which they’ll serve five days in jail for impeding the flow of traffic. As part of the agreement, charges of being pedestrians on a highway were at least temporarily dropped.
Note: If you enjoy anything in this post, especially if its from an article, please click the link — even if you don’t (intend to) read the whole thing — to at least give the author/source the page view.
