Politics
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On extraction.
The womb-suckers are trying to eat your children. Poke a soda straw into the future and sluuurp, away they go. Hopes and dreams, metabolized today into so many dollar bills. I spend a fair bit of time with drug dealers. Most are ethical people – they wanted to ingest drugs, and they knew some other people who…
45, alternative energy, ancient sunlight, anti-life, arctic drilling, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, arctic refuge, atmospheric science, big government Republicans, Bolsonaro, Brazil, carbon, carbon neutral, chemical energy, children, cigarettes, climate change, climate destabilization, CO2, coal, coal industry, combustion, diet for a healthy planet, Donald Trump, drill, drilling, drug dealers, eating the future, ethics, extraction, feedback loop, fossil fuels, future-eater, gasoline, global warming, gold mines, greenhouse gases, hamburgers, hydrocarbons, Jair Bolsonaro, laziness, lobbyists, meth, methamphetamines, national parks, natural wonders, nature, oil, oil subsidies, peril, petrolium, PotUS, pro-life, propaganda, rehab, renewable energy, routine, self-destructive behavior, selfishness, solar energy, solar power, starvation, starving future children, stored sunlight, Trump, vegan, Venus, wildlife refuge, womb sucker
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On alternate truths.
Sometimes the alternatives are jarring – you look and count a certain number, another person proffers a radically different amount. Surely one of you is mistaken. In the United States, there’s a rift between those who overestimate certain values (size of inauguration crowds, number of crimes committed by immigrants, votes cast by non-citizens, rates of…
45, almond milk, alternate truths, alternative facts, anarchy, animal welfare, capitalism, cashew milk, citizenship, civil liberties, crowd size, dairy industry, extremism, free market capitalism, government, government intervention, Henri Taijfel, overestimaters, political philosophy, politics, property rights, psych experiments, psychology, soy milk, Trump, underestimaters, us vs. them, vegan, veganism
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On intent.
Our criminal justice system routinely destroys lives after divining a person’s intent from actions. But now, suddenly, we need proof.
45, bankrupting the U.S. government, climate change, collusion, conspiracy, Donald Trump, falling tax receipts, handouts to billionaires, heroin, impeachment, inequality, intent to sell, interference in free elections, Is Trump a Russian agent, jail, kickbacks, mass incarceration, methamphetamine, political kickbacks, politics, possession with intent, PotUS, President Trump, proof, racial injustice, racist policing, Rikers, Russian agent, Russian collution, sabotage, soda straw, straw, Trump
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On gerrymandering (a prequel).
The U.S. Senate was designed to subvert democracy and allow a political minority to perpetrate great evil. The system is still working.
congressional districts, democracy, districting, gerrymander, gerrymandering, how much does your vote matter, Michigan 14th district, minority control, murder, rape, representative government, Senate, slavery, stealing representation, suppressing voting rights, the Senate was designed to suppress the vote, torture, U.S. constitution, U.S. politics, U.S. Senate, United States politics, vote, voter suppression, voting, voting rights
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On protest, the Supreme Court, and autocratic minority rule.
I was planning an essay on cell phones and surveillance. The central thesis was that our Supreme Court is a massively flawed institution. Many of our current Supreme Court justices are both willfully ignorant and opportunistically illogical. This set of people are not exceptionally knowledgeable, nor are they particularly clever. But we have given them…
45, changing demographics of the United States, detention centers, Donald Trump, free market, gerrymandering, hate machines, human migration, immigration, immigration detention centers, incarceration, Issac Bailey, migration, minority control, murder, My Brother Moochie, political power, PotUS, property rights, SCOTUS, Supreme Court, Supreme Court opinions, supressing influence, Trump, U.S. politics, United States, violence, wilful ignorance, wrenching apart families
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On Syria, and the complexity of causality.
Syria was in dire straits before the drought — climate change made a bad situation even worse.
Abdullah Al-Udhari, Abu Al-Ala Al-Ma’arri, Assads, Birds Through a Ceiling of Alabaster, civil war, climate change, climate instability, drought, extremism, food insecurity, George Wightman, global warming, ISIL, ISIS, jihad, Lindsey Hilsum, misogyny, oppression, paradise, plough, plow, poetry, protests, refugee, refugee crisis, Syria, Utopia, violence, War of All Against All, Yassin al-Haj Saleh
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On correspondence.
With vague mail policies, guards can sever people from the world … often those who need help most.
activism, beginning of life, biotech catalogs, books to prisoners, central dogma, church outreach, correspondence, DNA, DOC, drug blotters, drugs, enforcement, Evil Dave versus Regular Dave, filing cabinets, greeting cards, Indiana, Indiana Department of Corrections, Indiana DOC, Indiana Prisoners’ Writing Workshop, K2, LSD, mail, Midwest Pages to Prisoners Project, MWPP, plasmids, poetry, post cards, prison, prison guards, prison mail policy, prison poetry, RNA world, RNA world hypothesis, spice, suboxone, synthetic marijuana, undergrad research assistants, USPS, vague policies, War on Drugs
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On the Silk Road, Nick Bilton’s ‘American Kingpin,’ and the difference between being clever and being wise.
If someone is clever enough to build a billion-dollar website, should that person also get to decide who lives or dies?
addiction, American Kingpin, anarchist, anarchy, barter, clever, commissary, Dread Pirate Roberts, FBI, H, heroin, honey buns, intelligence, jail, jail bartering, jail economy, kinesthetic learners, libertarian, libertarianism, Nick Bilton, opiates, prison, property rights, Ross Ulbricht, spoons, The Silk Road, types of intelligence, Ulbricht, Variety Jones, violence, War on Drugs, wisdom, withdrawal
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On Liu Xiaobo, monster hunter.
“If you be good and grow strong, you can help your father fight the monsters.”
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On photographs not taken.
Most likely, you are being watched. If you spend any time in urban areas, you surely pass by numerous surveillance cameras each day. Recent advances in computational image analysis allow the movements of every person in a crowd to be tracked. Big Brother has hungry, hungry eyes. Worse, you’re probably collaborating with the invasion of…
4th Amendment, Barry Friedman, big brother, cell phones, cops, data mining, evidence, exclusionary rule, fire hydrants, Fourth Amendment, government search, GPS, incarceration, internet service providers, ISP, mass incarceration, photography, police, policing, Policing Without Permission, privacy, reasonable suspicion, search and seizure, smartphones, snooping, unreasonable search, Unwarranted
Frank Brown Cloud 