Politics
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On government intrusion and addiction.
To beat the opiate epidemic, we need strong communities. But prosecutors’ reliance on police informants destroys communities.
AA, addiction, Akhil Reed Amar, ants on the melon, Bill of Rights, constitution, Cor Urbis, creative writing, Daniel Dennett, death before dishonor, economics, emotion, evolution of emotion, exclusionary rule, FBI, Fourth Amendment, freedom of religion, game theory, Homo economicus, human evolution, jailhouse tattoos, Jeremy Waldron, mandatory minimums, mass incarceration, mosque, NA, opiate epidemic, poetry, poetry in jail, police, police informants, policing, prison, prisoners’ dilemma, privacy, protection, rats, recovery, repeated prisoners’ dilemma, rights, search, signaling, snooping, teaching writing in jail, tip, Virginia Adair, War on Drugs
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On isolation.
When a government tortures people on *your* behalf, do you share the blame? If so, what should you do?
addiction, ADX, Bruce Alexander, cetacean communication, confinement, constitutional rights, deprivation tank, dolphin, dolphin communication, dolphin hand job, drug abuse, false confessions, Harry Harlow, Hell is a Very Small Place, innocent until proven guilty, isolation tank, Jeanne Theoharis, Jesse Wilson, John C. Lilly, Juan Mendez, laboratory animals, LSD, Margaret Howe, memory, morphine, opiates, Rat Park, Ray McGovern, Richard Feynman, sensory deprivation, social isolation, solitary, solitary confinement, solitary watch, stimulus deprivation, sunlight, supermax, Syed Fahad Hashmi, teaching dolphins to talk, terrorism, torture, Torture of a Student, Voices from Solitary Confinement
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On driving.
If you know you’re safe from the police, why not zip along? Get where you’re going faster! But these small choices feed injustice.
america’s original sin, Bill of Rights, Black Lives Matter, Car Wars, City of Los Angeles v. Lyons, Civil forfeiture, constitutional law, cops, David Harris, Douglas Husak, driving, ESPN First Take, First Amendment, Fourth Amendment, Fourth Amendment’s Death on the Highway, illegal stops, impeding traffic, Indiana Prisoners’ Writing Workshop, injustice, institutional racism, jim wallis, Justice Marshall, Justice Sotomayor, marijuana, Mark Schlereth, mass incarceration, Michelle Alexander, Midwest Pages to Prisoners Project, minority rights, overcriminalization, Pages to Prisoners, paraphernalia, police, policing, quintet of hate machines, racial injustice, racism, Rikers, Second Amendment, segregation, solitary confinement, speed limits, Stephen A. Smith, Strieff dissent, Supreme Court, The Bail Trap, The New Jim Crow, transporting alcohol, Tyrone Tomlin, unreasonable search and seizure, Utah v. Strieff, war on cops, War on Drugs, white privilege, Whren v. United States
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On the Bush years, from the perspective of the 45th.
The great thing about the horrific Bush years is that now we know what to expect.
45, Ashcroft, ass-hat, Bush, Bush Chronicles, Donald Trump, Dubya, electoral college, Eliot Weinberger, George W. Bush, Ghostbusters II, Mark Danner, politics, Republicans, stealing representation, stealing votes, terrorism, Trump, U.S., United States, W, war on terror, What Could He Do, What Happened Here
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On preventing future crime.
Mass incarceration hurts all of us, even if we don’t know anyone locked away. It may have cost my mother-in-law her life.
A Visit from an Outsider, C. J. Chivers, Cathy O’Neil, jail, James Trent, Jason Chambers, judicial discretion, Leviathan, Lori Milks, mass incarceration, Michael Mueller-Smith, New Yorker, prison, prosecutorial discretion, PTSD, randomized study, recidivism, rehabilitation, Sam Siatta, Selma, sentencing reform, state violence, The Fighter, Thomas Hobbes, Weapons of Math Destruction
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On fear.
Activating the neurons behind fear makes mammals attack. And 45 campaigned on fear.
amygdala, Chicago, civil war, climate change, climate strife, Clinton, Comoli, Daesh, Donald Trump, fear, Functional mapping of the prosencephalic systems involved in organizing predatory behavior in rats, gene expression, immigrant ban, Integrated Control of Predatory Hunting by the Central Nucleus of the Amygdala, ISIL, ISIS, Ivan de Araujo, Laboratory Animal Welfare Act, laser-activated neurons, Manchurian candidate, mind control, prejudice, refugee ban, Restaurant Depot, retrovirus, Syria, terror, terrorism, terrorists, Trump, violence, violence against conspecifics, voluntary research participation, war, Wenfei Han
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On wasted ingenuity.
Everyone strives, but we force some to waste their efforts reinventing the wheel – or the water heater, or the piano, or…
Albany, Attica, automation, Blood in the Water, capitalism, childhood trauma, criminal justice, Deirdre N McCloskey, Demetrius Cunningham, economics, Growth Not Forced Equality Saves the Poor, Heather Anne Thompson, imprisonment, injustice, jail, Learning to Hear on a Cardboard Piano, Lori Milks, New Yorker, one sheet per day, poverty, prison, prison writing, punishment, punitive justice
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On Facebook and fake news.
Fake news is frustrating, but Facebook makes your brain worse *by design*.
Archaic Torso of Apollo, big ideas take time, boredom, branding, Brawndo, building a website, Cal Newport, climate change, distraction, Donald Trump, duping Facebook users, fabrication, Facebook, fake news, family band, faux-politically-conscious liberals, Franz Kafka, Google, Google ad dollars, holiday album, holiday record, Hotmail, Idiocracy, Indiana Prisoners’ Writing Workshop, irony, Johnny Fuerza, mass incarceration, Myspace, obsession with fame, Pages to Prisoners, persuasion, philosophy, Rainer Maria Rilke, Silicon Valley stole the election, social media, The Recognitions, the signature is worth more than the art, Twitter, undergraduate degrees, vegan, vegetarian, William Gaddis, Yahoo, you must change your life
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On pain.
Habitual drug use ruins lives. But the War on Drugs ends them.
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On districting, or how much your vote matters.
If our political representation doesn’t match the popular vote, it’s hard to swallow the lie that everyone is being treated equally.
Bill Bishop, clustering of like-minded people, David Daley, districting, gerrymander, gerrymandering, ideological isolation, political divisiveness, political obstruction, politics, proportion of representatives do not reflect popular vote, Ratf**ked, Ratfucked, redistricting, rigging the vote, subverting democracy, The Big Sort
Frank Brown Cloud 