Just Some Things
I liked Twitter. I was never a huge user. I had a couple tweets do decent numbers, and I interacted with some celebrities, but 90% of my time was passive scrolling. I got to learn from some experts, see celebrities try to be relatable, and watch normal people make fools of themselves. It was the best of the internet in one place.
It’s garbage now. Every note, however innocent, is met with fake outrage. There are bots everywhere. The algorithm shows you 80 people you’ve never heard of Retweeting the same story instead of giving you updates from the people you follow.
This is by design. Elon Musk bought Twitter because Right-Wing people were whining about computers being mean to them. The bots wanted to push COVID conspiracies to make money on the grift and Twitter turned it off. Musk bought the site, gutted moderation rules, and gave us this free-for-all bullshit. Now Musk says it’s worth ½ what he paid six months ago because advertisers don’t want to sell protein bars next to Anti-Jewish hate speech.
Paul Vallas is a piece of shit. He was a piece of shit before he ran for mayor. He was a piece of shit before he said he wanted stop-and-frisk, something that was banned in 2013 when federal courts ruled that it violated the civil rights of black people. He was a piece of shit before he lost for mayor in 2019 and when he lost for governor in 2014.
Paul Vallas was a piece of shit when he took over Chicago schools in the late 1990s and started punishing Black kids as a matter of policy. He took the same policies to Philadelphia and New Orleans. He wants to bring them back home as Mayor. He opens charter schools to syphon funds away from the community. He lets in the best and brightest, leaving everyone else in worse schools than before. If a kid makes a misstep in the charter, they’re out. No strike 1. No second chance. No understanding the needs of the community. It’s a perfect model to create soldiers, or prison guards, or police officers. Which is explicitly what his most recent schools do. I don’t care if he’s a Republican or if he lives outside the city. I don’t even care that his same charter model left Philly with a huge bill they can’t pay and is about to do the same to New Orleans. I care that his model puts at-risk kids in more harm. That makes him a piece of shit who shouldn’t be anywhere near elected office.
I can’t write something without talking about the police. Here in Chicago, it’s the focus of the election even though one of the candidates has “I Hurt Kids” listed under special skills on his resume. Paul Vallas said he wanted stop-and-frisk. He wants police at el stations. On corners. In front of grocery stores. Anywhere there’s a black person, there will be a police officer! Brandon Johnson said he wanted funds diverted to social programs but then got attacked and said that he won’t cut a dime to police. The current model, where police kill with impunity and saying it’s bad can lose you an election, doesn’t work.
I have an idea. The police budget in Chicago this year is $2 billion, including $85 million toward police misconduct lawsuits. Can they pay that? I can’t think of another place where your job budgets to pay for you fucking up so bad that they get sued. That doesn’t exist anywhere else. Doctors buy insurance. Make the police do that. If the police in some quiet town that treats their citizens respectfully wants to buy employment insurance, it might cost some small amount per month. If ol’ Three Percenter Johnny wants to get insurance for his job of messing with Black people, that might cost him. There are a lot of models that make sense. The one we use now ain’t one of them.
Starbucks is going through it. They had the CEO talking to Congress about how he was busting unions because he came up in public housing. About 300 stores voted to unionize but Starbucks isn’t negotiating with them. They’re just pretending those votes didn’t happen. Now they’re cutting hours until people lose benefits or just firing people trying to unionize new stores. It’s old-fashioned union busting. I’m surprised they didn’t call the “gun thugs”.
I’m no coffee connoisseur. You could tell me Starbucks is the world’s best coffee and I don’t know enough to tell you that you’re wrong. But I know that there’s probably something else pretty good nearby that sells some of the same drinks you get at Starbucks. Maybe they don’t have an app or every flavor you want, but they also don’t fire people who ask for a raise. They don’t also have a fake-tooth fool up on TV talking about how he worked so hard that he now gets to punish people trying to do the same.
Your friend Tucker is talking about DEI now. That’s the bad guy this week. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion; or the most basic, acceptable, inoffensive terms possible. Somebody said inclusion and Tucker started hyperventilating.
Revelio Labs did a study that showed that DEI roles at companies are being lost at 1.5X the rate of all other roles. 1/3 of those new jobs focused on helping companies become more inclusive and diverse are gone. So, slow those worries! The courts won’t protect Civil Rights and, after the firestorm of 2020, companies realized they don’t have to do anything either. There’s no meaningful push from anyone in charge of anything to improve on DEI initiatives. Tucker can still use it to drum up some anger, but he’s going to be searching out independent bookstores and weed shops for his scary stories.
