Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Snowden St. @snowden.st · 1m

Meanwhile back in the US the “solution” for a lot of this is Just Some Goddamn Money. The systems for childcare (and paying childcare workers well, and paying parents money to raise kids) are invented! We just have a crumbum politics.

1

Snowden St. @snowden.st · 1m

I think “solutions” end up arising in the context of the technologies and policies around them. the 19th century urban/industrial growth presented novel challenges for workers and their children, in contrast to 14th century. The modern welfare system arose as a “solution” to industrialization.

1 1

Snowden St. @snowden.st · 12m

I mean this with zero condescension and with a whole lot of big-picture concern, but I think something that Facebook and Twitter unintentionally did was put essential social services in places where low-literacy people ran into a lot of high-literacy people and shenanigans.

1 6

Snowden St. @snowden.st · 16m

to people who read at a fifth or sixth grade level, Krang’s post has to hit so wild

grimm ☀️ @mugrimm.bsky.social · 1h

They literally think this tweet is real.

KRANG NELSON
@Krang TNelson
can't wait for November 4th when millions of antifa supersoldiers will behead all white parents and small business owners in the town square
10/27/17, 6:57 PM

2 11

Snowden St. @snowden.st · 26m

Fount.AI.n of Youth was right there, smh

5

Snowden St. @snowden.st · 37m

Doctorow’s book is very much a “horror” novel, with unveiling and escalatingly ugly revelations of inequality and cruelty, but he only “gets away” with it by having a verbose and anguished narrator float us through an uncaring and teeming and exploding carnival of a City.

1 4

Snowden St. @snowden.st · 40m

I think being an orphan in NYC in the 1870s was brutally hard, and definitely malformed and destroyed thousands and thousands of children. But I don’t know that many of the orphans would have seen it anymore than “life’s lot”. Our presumptions of what life “should” be are very very modern!

4 1 8

Snowden St. @snowden.st · 42m

One place where i politely depart from Aaron and others, however, is that I think we often project a lot of horror back into history that I’m not sure the ppl of the age would understand. Humanity has an incredible ability to adapt to its surroundings, or see things “as the way they are”.

1 1 12

Snowden St. @snowden.st · 45m

A good historical fiction glimpse at this age is in EL Doctorow’s “The Waterworks”, set in 1871.

Aaron van Dorn @aaronvandorn.bsky.social · 6h

3% of the population of NYC in 1870 was made of of homeless orphaned or abandoned children. We just don't have a mental model for what pre-1900 destitution looked like because it's too horrific for us to consider.

Aaron van Dorn @aaronvandorn.bsky.social · Jun 16

In the 1870s, there were 20,000-30,000 homeless, orphaned, and abandoned children in New York City each year. The population of New York in 1870 was 940k. 3% of the cities population were abandoned, homeless children. They didn't all make it.

1 4 29

Snowden St. @snowden.st · 1h

holy hell sal

2

Snowden St. @snowden.st · 1h

The Cubs? Pooping themselves? In the playoffs??

8

Reposted by Snowden St.

Snowden St. @snowden.st · 3d

This M’s-Kitties series is gonna put me in a blender, a wicker cabinet, fold me up like origami, tie me to the bedpost, the works

1 2 8

Snowden St. @snowden.st · 2h

Also, i think Portland's the smallest one he could go with, and in a region that 90% of the US dgaf about

Snowden St. @snowden.st · 11d

Portland is probably the smallest deep blue city with the reddest surrounding out-state of any option he was looking at.

2 7

Reposted by Snowden St.

Snowden St. @snowden.st · Oct 24

It’s our favorite time of year once again, master of horror John Carpenter

#NBA

John Carpenter Ponders Directing Again But Says The Most Important Things In His Life Are Video Games & The NBA.

Me, too, John. Me too.

4 31

Snowden St. @snowden.st · 2h

Gazing upon my cherished image to get ready for the NBA season

John Goddamn Carpenter tweeting "The Denver Nuggets are the NBA Champions!!! It's the first time in franchise history. Sensational!!!"

Perfect post, perfect man

1 5

Snowden St. @snowden.st · 2h

I remember trying to tell someone in Ann Arbor how *I* was taught to pronounce Nacogdoches, lol

1 1

Snowden St. @snowden.st · 2h

this one is dying out, unfortunately

Snowden St. @snowden.st · 25d

When people find out that old timer Coloradans pronounce the town of Pueblo as “pee-eh-blo”, people often ask “who the fuck would say that”, and the answer is

Sky Marchini @sky.skymarchini.net · 25d

Italian American culture is sticking additional vowel sounds into a single vowel

1 2

Snowden St. @snowden.st · 2h

Buena Vista

Merriam-Webster @merriam-webster.com · 2h

What’s the word where you’re from that, when pronounced exactly as it looks, identifies a tourist immediately?

1 3

Snowden St. @snowden.st · 2h

I think we can swing this with "more tax, less taxes" because if we adjust rates and close a few loopholes, we can afford to trim back a lot of picayune stuff!

1 1

Snowden St. @snowden.st · 2h

yeah, the selective examples being chosen for "kids are luxuries" is pretty dumb, and I've spent years in neighborhoods and spaces where kids actually *can* be luxury items. They're not very big!

1 5

Snowden St. @snowden.st · 2h

Do I want the public money to fund a gov't job to monitor lonely guinea pigs and have services to pair each one with a friend? As members of "my society"? Who can say??

Snowden St. @snowden.st · 2h

This is a good thread! As a childless man with a little bit of tax familiarity and also a near-psychedelic definition of what "I", "my society", and "my responsibilities" are: tax design is a choice, and the only point in tethering this tax payment to one's lack of child is p much "for show".

K. Chen @tznkai.bsky.social · 5h

Something I've found is that people respond to this idea very differently depending on if you put any effort into hiding you're doing this. Broadly speaking, childless people are fine paying taxes for public schools and not fine paying a childlessness tax even though they're basically the same thing

3

Snowden St. @snowden.st · 2h

right, and the "feel" is a key part of taxes, and goes into the design of them (in theory, not often in practice, etc). the benefits you outline are real and neither bound by household or paystub. but also: we have our goofy-ass school funding system because many ppl don't like the "feel" of it.

1 8

Snowden St. @snowden.st · 2h

taxes (for a currency issuer like the federal gov't) are good for two things: destroying excess wealth, and curbing unwanted behavior. if we need to fund more to support children (and we do!), we have plenty of ways to do it.

1 16

Snowden St. @snowden.st · 2h

This is a good thread! As a childless man with a little bit of tax familiarity and also a near-psychedelic definition of what "I", "my society", and "my responsibilities" are: tax design is a choice, and the only point in tethering this tax payment to one's lack of child is p much "for show".

K. Chen @tznkai.bsky.social · 5h

Something I've found is that people respond to this idea very differently depending on if you put any effort into hiding you're doing this. Broadly speaking, childless people are fine paying taxes for public schools and not fine paying a childlessness tax even though they're basically the same thing

William B. Fuckley @opinionhaver.bsky.social · 7h

My most controversial take on this is probably that while I think reproductive freedom should be sacrosanct, I don’t really have any problem with additional taxes on (high income) childless people. Someone gotta pay into the pensions!

5 2 36

Snowden St. @snowden.st · 3h

and I think even Rorty kinda came around to using quasi-religious frameworks for some of the transformative qualities we need, and should valorize. "redemption" is a loaded word, but maybe the best framework we have for self-transformation and overcoming the burden of past behavior.

2