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Hilbert and Hopper Have Gone Viral!

by TedFassbinder Posted on December 28, 2015

Mother Jones

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We can file this post under “personal indulgences,” but something funny happened to me over the weekend: my YouTube video of Hilbert and Hopper play-fighting went viral. Not Kardashian viral, mind you, but it’s had over 100,000 views.1

Why? Beats me. Apparently it somehow landed on Google’s trending list and took off from there. That’s what I gather from comments, anyway, which have been flooding my inbox because I can’t figure out how to get YouTube to stop sending me email every time someone leaves a comment on the video.2 Still, it’s been…educational. As bad as comments can get here, even the trolls are basically literate. They write in complete sentences and sometimes their insults are entertaining. But YouTube comments are crazy. A big portion were indecipherable (example: “that ending got me XD (slap!) did u.. oh…oh hell naw!”); some were concerned that this was a real fight and wanted to report me to the ASPCA; others were calling the former idiots and explaining that it was just mock fighting; others were outraged that this stupid video had somehow gone viral; and yet others were outraged by the clunky titles at the beginning. At least two people have outright stolen the video and reposted it on their own accounts.3

On the other hand, the guy who left the comment #CatLivesMatter was pretty clever.

Anyway, there you go: my first viral video. I’m so proud.

1This compares to about 20 or 30 for the average cat video I put up—though I notice that all of my videos are in the thousands after the breakout success of Ultimate Cat Fighting.

2I turned off the setting that sends email every time someone leaves a comment, but the emails keep on coming anyway.

3I would pretend to be outraged, but…you know.

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Hilbert and Hopper Have Gone Viral!

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Kids in Mexico block a development that would pave over a mangrove forest

by FreddyLininger Posted on November 15, 2015

A mangrove plant grows on a shore in Cancun. Reuters/Gerardo Garcia

Kids in Mexico block a development that would pave over a mangrove forest

By on 15 Nov 2015 8:08 amcommentsShare

When it comes to fighting environmental battles, low expectations are kind of the name of the game. So when a group of warm-hearted kids tries to stop a massive development project in the name of environmental protection, they ought to be met with immediate and soul-crushing failure, right?

But, as we’ve seen recently in Washington, the tide may be turning! As Quartz reports, a group of 113 youngsters in Mexico garnered a big win for their local community — and, you know, the air and water around them. They petitioned a judge to halt the pending destruction of 170 acres of mangrove forest in Cancún to build a mixed-use resort development, arguing that they have a constitutional right to a healthy environment. The judge apparently agreed that fancy new homes, shops, and a boardwalk didn’t quite fit that definition.

Mexico’s tourism development agency put this project in the works more than two decades ago, and if it doesn’t go forward, investors stand to lose something like $900 million, Quartz reports. But, as one four-year-old explained to Quartz, “If we cut everything down then we’re going to die. … Trees help us breathe.” That’s a compelling point — and makes it pretty hard to give a shit about those investors, $900 million or no.

Here’s Quartz with more on the unfolding drama:

The recent suit is the first filed in Mexico advocating for the collective rights of kids over corporate interests in order to protect the environment, said Carla Gil, the group’s lawyer, in an interview with Quartz. (Earlier this year, a group of children in the US filed a case using similar arguments to force the Obama administration to act on climate change.)

Antonella Vazquez, the mother of a plaintiff, says it’s important for children to raise their voices, even at the age of five, like her daughter did. For generations, Mexicans have had the defeatist attitude of “What for? Nothing is going to happen,” she tells Quartz.

Given the pace of development in Cancún, if her daughter doesn’t speak up, “there’s going to be nothing left for her,” she adds.

While a great success, this isn’t all puppies and rainbows. The judge also ordered the kids to pay a bond of $1.2 million to compensate developers, according to Quartz. To which the kids’ lawyers were like, “Uhhh, are you serious?” They’re arguing that that ruling shouldn’t apply to minors — because, you know, there’s simply no way they could have $1.2 million.

Fortunately, this is 2015 — so even if the kids do have to pay up, they’ll at least have access to the biggest piggy bank of all time: online crowdsourcing. If it comes down to it, environmentalists the world over — who have seen more than their fair share of disappointment — will surely be willing to shell out to help them.

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Kid environmentalists have derailed a $900 million development in a popular Mexican resort town

, Quartz.

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Kids in Mexico block a development that would pave over a mangrove forest

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How To Teach Your Kiddos To ‘Go Green’

by JeramyGfylqg Posted on October 30, 2015

earth911

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How To Teach Your Kiddos To ‘Go Green’

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Finally, Obama Denounces America’s Standardized Testing Obsession

by Lien92Bjigz Posted on October 26, 2015

Mother Jones

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Read more about the overloading of standardized tests.

On Saturday, the Obama administration announced that its push towards high-stakes standardized testing had gone too far and urged schools to limit tests to those that were meaningful indicators of progress. Specifically, the administration called for a cap so that no student would spend more than two percent of classroom time on standardized tests, and called on Congress to “reduce over-testing.”

“Learning is about so much more than filling in the right bubble,” the president said in a speech posted on the White House Facebook site.

The announcement represents a significant change in course for the Obama administration, which had been facing mounting bipartisan criticism for focusing too much on tests at the expense of a focus on creativity and critical thinking. According to a report by the Council of Great City Schools which reviewed the country’s 66 largest school districts, students are required to take about 112 standardized exams between kindergarten and 12th grade.

It’s unclear how much a two percent cap on tests will truly affect students; according to the Council of Great Schools report, the tests fall most heavily on eighth graders, who spend 20 to 25 hours, or about 2.3 percent of classroom time, on standardized tests. Furthermore, the announcement didn’t address the amount of time spent preparing for tests.

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If our kids had more free time at school, what would you want them to do with it? A) Learn to play a musical…

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Still, Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, called the announcement a victory. “The fixation on high-stakes testing hasn’t moved the needle on student achievement,” she said in a statement. “We need to get back to focusing on the whole child—teaching our kids how to build relationships, how to be resilient and how to think critically.”

Outgoing Education Secretary Arne Duncan acknowledged that “At the federal, state and local level, we have all supported policies that have contributed to the problem in implementation.” Duncan is meeting with Obama today to discuss how to limit redundant and low-quality testing.

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Finally, Obama Denounces America’s Standardized Testing Obsession

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IRS Turns Out to Be Big Bureaucracy, Not Terrorist Organization

by SimonStreeten Posted on October 24, 2015

Mother Jones

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Let’s check in on the latest in Obama administration tyranny and lawlessness. Hum de hum — oh, hey, look what’s buried on page A12 of my LA Times this morning. The Justice Department has finished its investigation into Lois Lerner and her reign of terror at the IRS against hardworking conservative activist groups:

Assistant Atty. Gen. Peter J. Kadzik, who is in charge of congressional relations, told House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) that “we are closing our investigation and will not seek any criminal charges.”

….“Not a single IRS employee reported any allegation, concern or suspicion that the handling of tax-exempt applications — or any other IRS function — was motivated by political bias, discriminatory intent, or corruption,” Kadzik said.

He said Justice had specifically absolved Lerner, who resigned over the allegations, of criminal liability, and found in fact that she was the first official to recognize the problem and to try and correct it.

Kadzik said that their investigation found evidence of mismanagement and institutional inertia, “But poor management is not a crime.” I guess that’s what they call this kind of organized oppression in Obama’s America.

Anyway, I urge everyone to consider this outcome when thinking about Hillary Clinton’s email server. Both are “scandals” pushed relentlessly by a right wing that’s infuriated over everything related to the Obama administration. Both had some surface plausibility. And both were kind of sexy.

But as usual with these kinds of things—Solyndra, Fast & Furious, Benghazi, Sharyl Attkisson’s computer, etc. etc.—there’s really nothing there. Sometimes some bad judgment, sometimes not even that. The fact that Republicans are outraged and have large megaphones to spread that outrage doesn’t change this and doesn’t justify 24/7 news coverage. So maybe a more temperate approach to these endlessly manufactured right-wing outrages would be appropriate. Just a thought.

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IRS Turns Out to Be Big Bureaucracy, Not Terrorist Organization

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Is Mitt Romney Mellowing on Obamacare?

by DTHRamon724778 Posted on October 23, 2015

Mother Jones

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Tom Stemberg, one of the cofounders of Staples, died today. His company was famously funded by Bain Capital, and Stemberg became good friends with Mitt Romney:

Romney recalled that shortly after he was elected, Mr. Stemberg asked him why he ran for governor. Romney said he wanted to help people, and Mr. Stemberg replied that if he really wanted to help, he should give everyone access to health care, which Romney said he hadn’t really considered before.

“Without Tom pushing it, I don’t think we would have had Romneycare,” Romney said. “Without Romneycare, I don’t think we would have Obamacare. So without Tom, a lot of people wouldn’t have health insurance.”

That sure doesn’t sound like a guy who’s a diehard opponent of Obamacare, does it? I wonder if a decade from now Romney will be taking credit for kickstarting national health care in the United States?

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Is Mitt Romney Mellowing on Obamacare?

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Friday Cat Blogging – 23 October 2015

by JohnieXiong6 Posted on October 23, 2015

Mother Jones

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In some Eastern religions, we are thought to be trapped in a long cycle of death and rebirth. When you die, you are reborn in another earthly body, moving ever upward as you build up positive karma in previous lives. Eventually, you break free and reach nirvana.

I think this is probably true, and the penultimate state before reaching nirvana is being a housecat that’s adopted by humans who mysteriously find themselves compelled to treat the cat as royalty. Proof below. Any being who can attain this much happiness, even for a few moments, obviously has no place to go next but nirvana.

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Friday Cat Blogging – 23 October 2015

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Of Course You Should Go Back in Time and Kill Hitler

by mr2ql Posted on October 23, 2015

Mother Jones

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For some reason, the New York Times Magazine decided to poll its readers to see if they’d be willing to go back in time and kill Adolf Hitler as a baby. Only 42 percent said yes.

WTF? I assume there are no time travel paradoxes involved here, nor any baroque inventions about how the world actually ends up worse without World War II. Science fiction nerds like me (and lots of you, I assume) love to natter on about stuff like this, but it really doesn’t seem like the NYTM’s thing. Basically, you get transported back to Hitler’s crib in 1889, you shoot him, and a few seconds later you return home. End of story. Would you do it?

I’m not an especially bloodthirsty guy, but hell yes, I’d do it. Sure, maybe World War II would happen anyway, though that’s hardly inevitable. Maybe the Holocaust too. But even a reasonable chance of stopping either one of them would be well worth the life of a baby who would otherwise grow up to be a monster. What am I missing here? I wouldn’t even hesitate.

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Of Course You Should Go Back in Time and Kill Hitler

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No, Poor People Don’t Inherit a Lot of Money

by JeromeBlackweld Posted on October 23, 2015

Mother Jones

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I had a doctor’s appointment this afternoon, so I missed the twilight session of the Benghazi hearing. When I got home, it was 8 pm on the East Coast….and the hearing was still going on. Yikes. I assume I didn’t miss anything, did I?

Anyway, while I was in the waiting room I was browsing The Corner and came across the graphic on the right. It struck me as peculiar. The bottom income quintile in America gets 43 percent of its wealth from inheritance? Even granting that these households don’t have much wealth to begin with, that really didn’t seem right.

There was a link to piece by Kevin Williamson that turned out to be two years old—which is something like two decades in blog years. Still, I was curious, and I had nothing else to do while I waited. So I clicked the link. Here’s what Williamson says:

For the top income quintile, gifts and inheritances amount to 13 percent of household wealth, according to research published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics….Meanwhile, inherited money makes up 43 percent of the wealth of the lowest income group and 31 percent for the second-lowest. In case our would-be class warriors are having trouble running the numbers here, that means that inherited money on net reduces wealth inequality in the United States.

This is pretty misleading. I tracked down the BLS report, and it turns out this 43 percent figure is only for those households that inherit anything in the first place. But as you might expect, a mere 17 percent of low-income households report any inheritance at all. If you average this wealth across all low-income households, inheritance accounts for about 7.4 percent of the wealth of the entire group. If you do the same thing for the top earners, inheritance accounts for about 4.9 percent of the wealth of the entire group.

So….7.4 percent vs. 4.9 percent. When you compare entire groups, which is the right way to do this, there’s not very much difference between the two. And in a practical sense, the difference is even more negligible. If you run out the numbers, the wealth of the bottom group increased from $56,000 to $63,000 per household. Big whoop. Conversely, the wealth of the top group increased from $7.2 million to $7.6 million. That’s a nice chunk of change. In a technical sense, the low-income group got a bigger percentage increase, and income inequality has been reduced. But in any normal human sense, $7,000 is such a tiny amount that it doesn’t matter. In a nutshell, rich people inherit a lot of money and poor people don’t.

I’m not really sure what the point of being misleading about this is, since Williamson’s main themes in the linked piece are (a) rich people don’t get most of their money from inheritance, and (b) rich people are mostly married and work a lot of hours. Those things are both true, and there’s no real reason to toss in the other stuff. All it does is provide grist for other people to make misleading graphics later on.

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No, Poor People Don’t Inherit a Lot of Money

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RushCard Locks Out the Poor From Their Money for Ninth Consecutive Day

by YettaBrumfield Posted on October 20, 2015

Mother Jones

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Yesterday I saw the blurb on the right at the New York Times. Russell Simmons. RushCard. On the blink for eight days. That sounds like a drag. I wonder what this is all about? Why haven’t I heard of it before now?

Jamelle Bouie explains:

RushCard, according to its website, is a prepaid debit card that lets users get paychecks up to two days in advance….It’s meant to solve the real problems that come with being unbanked or underbanked. In reality, however, it’s a trap. In exchange for early access to their money, users face a web of fees and charges.

….If RushCard were reliable, this might be a fair price for convenience. But it’s not. Beginning last week, thousands of people were locked out of their accounts following an alleged “technology transition” from the company. As Jia Tolentino notes for Jezebel, these are people with no access to cash outside of RushCard. It’s what they use to live their lives.

….This is a disaster, largely uncovered because of whom it affects.

Yep. If this were a problem with, say, American Airlines mileage awards, it would have gotten about as much attention as the Space Shuttle exploding or the Obamacare website melting down. That’s because lots of upper-middle-class folks use these miles, and so do lots of journalists. But RushCard is mostly used by the invisible poor. It turns out that RushCard’s problems have been big news for the past week in a few places that cater to either the hip hop community or looking out for the poor, but in the mainstream press it’s been mostly ignored. That’s probably because very few mainstream journalists either use RushCard or know a lot of people who do.

The rest of Bouie’s column is about postal banking, which you all know I’m sort of skeptical about. I suspect there are better answers to helping the unbanked. But as a comment on the press and the invisibility of the poor, this story deserves more attention.

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RushCard Locks Out the Poor From Their Money for Ninth Consecutive Day

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