5 2021

December 6, 2021 Quite Likely Quite Linkly

Politics

New York’s system for appointing judges is a corrupt machine politics dominated shitshow and produces the results you’d expect: https://vulgarmarxism.substack.com/p/jay-jacobs-and-the-nassau-gop-conspired

We need to be ready to campaign to keep Hakeem Jeffries out of the Speaker of the House position after Pelosi retires. There’s a chance for a progressive to take power in the House for the first time in a long time (Jayapal?) and we can’t let the opportunity slip past us and a corrupt tool like Jeffries get entrenched: https://prospect.org/politics/succession-hakeem-jeffries-nancy-pelosi/

People who refuse to get vaccinated are idiots, but the real villains are the companies blocking a global expansion of vaccine production sufficient to vaccinate the billions of people who would like one but don’t have access yet: https://doctorow.medium.com/pandemic-of-the-unvaccinated-5844d6c37c9b

Encryption

WhatsApp and other corporate owned ‘encrypted’ messaging platforms hand your info right over when asked by governments they want to do business with: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20211201/16472848036/documents-shows-just-how-much-fbi-can-obtain-encrypted-communication-services.shtml

Meanwhile Signal literally doesn’t collect that information and can’t hand it over even when ordered to: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20211030/13250647849/california-prosecutors-are-still-trying-to-get-signal-to-hand-over-user-info-it-simply-doesnt-possess.shtml

Culture War

https://massivesci.com/articles/genetic-lottery-review-paige-harden-kevin-bird/

https://michaelhobbes.substack.com/p/students-self-censorship-lol

Growing up

https://gen.medium.com/give-me-slack-b4e88a007dbf

I usually follow Ross Barkan for his New York political takes but this is a very sweet article about sports, meritocracy and growing up in New York: https://rossbarkan.substack.com/p/life-on-the-courts

Quite Linkly 11/22 – 11/28 2021

November 28, 2021 Quite Likely Quite Linkly

Labor

https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/strike-wave

https://inthesetimes.com/article/union-busters-starbucks-labor-buffalo

Venezuela – big victory for Chavismo in Venezuela’s recent election, no serious claims of fraud, but of course the US government is still denying reality

https://orinocotribune.com/venezuela-chavismo-triumphs-electorally-despite-difficulties/

https://truthout.org/articles/socialists-secure-massive-victory-in-venezuelan-elections/

NYC

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/23/nyregion/affordable-housing-gowanus-soho.html

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/23/nyc-mayor-eric-adams-considers-hiring-goldman-sachs-exec-stephen-scherr.html

https://rossbarkan.substack.com/p/governor-bill-de-blasio

Conspiracy

Most fake news seems to originate from lies made up by cops: https://www.vice.com/en/article/epxn7a/weed-laced-with-fentanyl-scare-connecticut

Is there anything to the JFK assassination conspiracy theories/ Oliver Stone certainly seems to think so. I truly have no idea: https://jacobinmag.com/2021/11/oliver-stone-talks-to-jacobin-about-jfks-killing/

Culture War

https://www.slowboring.com/p/how-to-be-an-anti-racist

Really gets to the bottom of what’s gone wrong with Glenn Greenwald lately. Still a good journalist and a smart guy, but has really twisted himself in knots sucking up to Fox News so they’ll keep putting him on TV: https://eoinhiggins.substack.com/p/company-man-the-data-behind-glenn

https://i.redd.it/2ep54o37hd181.png — Got to rip that band-aid off now

Quite Linkly 11/15 – 11/21 2021

November 22, 2021 Quite Likely Quite Linkly

Quiet week of links today, have a happy Thanksgiving!

Monarchy is an abomination: https://jacobinmag.com/2021/11/princess-diana-kristen-stewart-british-royals-film

https://www.pacificresearch.org/los-angeles-is-gearing-up-to-ban-wood-frame-construction-renters-will-soon-pay-the-price/

https://thecolumn.substack.com/p/4-major-plot-holes-in-the-organized

Corporate diversity trainings are worse than useless in terms of reducing racism, but they do exactly the job they need to in terms of protecting corporations from anti-discrimination lawsuits: https://www.slowboring.com/p/how-to-be-an-anti-racist

Quite Linkly 11/8 – 11/14 2021

November 15, 2021 Quite Likely Quite Linkly

Hopeful Developments

Between the new nuclear renaissance and spectacular progress in renewable energy we are on the verge of a new golden age of cheap energy: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/09/business/rolls-royce-nuclear-power-uk.html

The lesson from this year’s elections is that to bring people out in off-off-years (or any other time) you have to give them something to vote for, not just count on them knowing you’re less monstrous than the other guys: https://jacobinmag.com/2021/11/november-2021-elections-socialist-progressives-wins

https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-oped-outdoor-dining-is-good-for-new-york-city-20211110-3thttddf65czneofg4nkwtsn3a-story.html

Politics

https://newrepublic.com/article/164314/democrats-labor-local-organizing-midterms

https://jacobinmag.com/2021/11/communist-mayor-recoleta-daniel-jadue-gabriel-boric-chilean-president-elections-interview/

Fingers crossed Build Back Better manages to get across the finished line in some diminished form, but it may well just die now that the rest of the progressive caucus has abandoned the squad and given up their leverage by delinking it from the Infrastructure bill: https://jacobinmag.com/2021/11/the-squad-bipartisan-infrastructure-bill-congress-vote-progressives

Debunkings

Nicotine vaporizers eliminate the health risks of cigarettes but for some reason prohibitionists go after them at least as hard: https://clivebates.com/prohibitionists-at-work-how-the-who-damages-public-health-through-hostility-to-tobacco-harm-reduction/

https://cepr.net/the-media-discover-real-wages/

Culture War

Some good stuff here about testing in schools, though marred by Ygelsias trying to blame everything on Teacher Unions: https://www.slowboring.com/p/critical-race-theory-and-actual-education

https://www.slowboring.com/p/crt-school

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/11/critical-race-theory-crt-schools-liberals-equity-consultants.html

Quite Linkly 11/1 – 11/7 2021

November 7, 2021December 7, 2021 Quite Likely Blog post, Quite Linkly

NYC

The war on cars continues! https://www.timeout.com/newyork/news/downtown-brooklyn-is-going-car-free-102821

But the cars are fighting back: https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2021/11/02/asking-for-a-friend-is-citi-bike-being-held-hostage-by-dot-fear-of-inconveniencing-drivers/

Fuck the NYPD: https://theappeal.org/nypd-special-victims-rape-investigation/

The second largest strike in America is going on at Columbia right now: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/11/columbia-university-student-worker-union-strike.html

Culture War – is America experiencing a woke cultural revolution or just a moral panic about changing social values? Opinions differ.

https://grossman.arcdigital.media/p/no-america-is-not-experiencing-a

https://www.vox.com/vox-conversations-podcast/2021/11/2/22728801/vox-conversations-john-mcwhorter-woke-racism

https://theweek.com/politics/1006801/operatic-disdain-for-white-people-is-bad-politics

Past & Future

Wild article about Monica Lewinsky’s time in front of a grand jury in 1998, pairs well with the latest season of American Crime Story: https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/politics/092298clinton-monica.html

The man is coming for your porn! https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/what-is-the-future-of-porn

Every city and state government in America would be wise to set up its own in-house bank: https://truthout.org/articles/public-banking-has-the-potential-to-truly-revolutionize-our-economy/

Foreign Lands

https://jacobinmag.com/2021/11/labour-party-left-corbynism-covid-19-response-proportional-representation-voting-contradiction/

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/11/08/early-civilizations-had-it-all-figured-out-the-dawn-of-everything

https://mondoweiss.net/2021/11/apartheids-spiritual-devastation-is-theme-of-nyt-israel-travelogue-that-uses-the-a-word-only-once/

Quite Linkly 10/25 – 10/31 2021

November 1, 2021 Quite Likely Quite Linkly

Labor – another big week for workers!

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/democrats-fines-union-busting_n_617c3e56e4b03072d704467e?dp8

https://wolfstreet.com/2021/10/29/employers-forced-to-raise-wages-by-most-in-at-least-20-years-whole-power-balance-has-changed/

https://onlabor.org/the-strike-wave-may-be-coming-nonunion-workers-have-been-the-ones-stirring-the-waters/

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/10/kaiser-permanente-strike-health-care-nurses-decades

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/survey-shows-broad-support-for-worker-strikes_n_6177044ce4b010d933149892?h02

Technology

This bill that’s slowly working its way through the EU lawmaking process is an unbelievable disaster, basically mandating automated filters to scan everything that gets put on the internet and delete it if it violates copyright or violates other EU policy. Just another reason to abolish bans on filesharing – as long as those bans exist enforcing them is used as justification to take away our freedom: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/10/europes-digital-services-act-collision-course-human-rights-0

https://gizmodo.com/we-just-got-the-right-to-repair-in-theory-1847948848

https://www.theverge.com/22734645/apple-macbook-pro-2021-ports-magsafe-touch-bar-usb-c-future

The clean energy future is not just going to be good because it reduces climate change, but because energy will be much cheaper and more abundant than it is now. Energy availability is one of the top determinants of people’s standard of living so this will be an incredibly great development in ways that are hard to imagine in our current energy-strapped society: https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/clean-energy/the-unstoppably-good-news-about-clean-energy

Politics

By far the top priority for political leadership needs to be demand management. So far the pandemic stimulus has done a much better job of that than the response to the last economic crisis. But we need MORE, passing the Reconciliation and Infrastructure will give a nice extra blast of stimulus: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/10/bidenomics-inflation-approval-rating.html

A few parts of the Biden executive branch are surprisingly good, including the NLRB and FTC: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/lina-khan-ftc-profile.html

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/conor-lamb-manchin/

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/10/buffalo-mayor-race-india-walton-byron-brown.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/biden-pope-francis-meeting/2021/10/23/354b1d5c-3290-11ec-a1e5-07223c50280a_story.html

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/commentisfree/2021/oct/23/judith-butler-gender-ideology-backlash

NYC

https://gothamist.com/news/complaints-uncollected-trash-quadruple-after-nyc-launches-new-covid-vaccine-mandate

https://rossbarkan.substack.com/p/no-one-really-knows-what-eric-adams

“Man restraining trade” – sculpture outside the FTC

Quite Linkly 10/18 – 10/24

October 24, 2021 Quite Likely Blog post, Quite Linkly

New York

https://gothamist.com/news/nyc-tried-to-remove-nypd-from-911-mental-health-emergenciesbut-its-had-little-success

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/21/technology/amazon-workers-union-staten-island.html

https://www.marijuanamoment.net/new-york-employers-cant-drug-test-most-workers-for-marijuana-state-announces/

https://pedestrianobservations.com/2021/10/17/quick-update-on-where-we-are-on-new-york-costs/

Moral Panics

https://michaelhobbes.substack.com/p/moral-panic-journalism

https://prospect.org/economy/great-american-ammunition-conspiracy/

Strike Wave

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/19/america-strike-wave-john-deere-iatse

Quite Linkly 10/11 – 10/17 2021 – STRIKE WAVE EDITION

October 19, 2021 Quite Likely Blog post, Quite Linkly

This week’s special on Quite Linkly – Union news!

The Teamsters may be about to have an internal political revolution by insurgents who want to turn them back into a fighting union: https://inthesetimes.com/article/teamsters-for-a-democratic-union-election-union

Strikes! Strikes! Strikes! https://jacobinmag.com/2021/10/american-workers-labor-militancy-covid-19-strike-unions/

College unions: https://theintercept.com/2021/10/17/bates-college-union-student-censorship/

Mississippi unions: https://inthesetimes.com/article/organizing-the-south-mississippi-labor-unions-aflcio-rwdsu-southern-civil-rights-racism

Korean unions: https://labornotes.org/blogs/2021/10/real-life-auto-strike-behind-runaway-netflix-hit-squid-game

Dollar General unions: https://inthesetimes.com/article/dollar-general-workers-store-connecticut-union-campaign

NYC

https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/long-crisis-holtzman/

https://pedestrianobservations.com/2021/10/17/quick-update-on-where-we-are-on-new-york-costs/

https://jacobinmag.com/2021/10/keir-starmer-socialists-labour-party-conference-uk/

True Crime

https://www.gawker.com/culture/true-crime-is-rotting-our-brains

Quite Linkly 10/3-10/10 2021

October 11, 2021 Quite Likely Blog post

Life Advice

Don’t go to grad school in the humanities: https://acoup.blog/2021/10/01/collections-so-you-want-to-go-to-grad-school-in-the-academic-humanities/

Switch to Signal: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/millions-flock-to-signal-as-facebook-whatsapp-suffer-outage/ar-AAP8OSD

https://jacobinmag.com/2021/10/keir-starmer-socialists-labour-party-conference-uk/

Interesting article giving the steelman of the Starmerite “must destroy the left at any cost” political strategy. The long and short of it is that British institutions are so powerful and so desperate to crush the left that Starmer may have a point that he’ll only be allowed to win if he makes sure that there’s never a chance for the Labour left to take power again: https://mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2021/10/are-there-good-reasons-why-starmer.html

Media

Read this article and then go check out out American Crime Story: Impeachment, which is great. https://www.vox.com/culture/22672346/monica-lewinsky-bill-clinton-impeachment-american-crime-story

https://theweek.com/business/1005721/a-new-model-for-modest-middle-class-journalism

Europe

https://jacobinmag.com/2021/10/pablo-iglesias-spain-far-right-franco-podemos-vox-state

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/05/business/germany-economy.html

Labor

https://jacobinmag.com/2021/10/teamsters-tdu-convention-reform-amazon-election-ups/

The best way to support your favorite college football team is to support the players unionizing: https://inthesetimes.com/article/college-football-players-union-labor-nlrb-cfbpa

Legislation

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/10/democrats-must-raise-the-debt-limit-to-a-quadrillion-dollars.html

Renewable Energy