Notices by Chris Adams (acdha@thepit.social), page 2

Weird, I thought the governor’s ban on talking about it already solved #Florida’s climate change problems:

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/weather/article288581099.html

@goatsarah I have mine set to use bike directions by default, which has inspired both disbelief and also amazement that travel times are shorter.

@rsynnott @LauraLangdon @mekkaokereke @bluejekyll In general, anytime you find something in the U.S. which seems counterproductive but you can't easily explain why we put up with it, assuming it's due to racism is a safe bet.

American suburbs grew after WWII but especially after key court cases found that white people had to share city infrastructure. Those suburbs were designed prevent walking & transit which was increasingly identified with being poor/brown.

https://kinder.rice.edu/urbanedge/racism-has-shaped-public-transit-and-its-riddled-inequities

@mekkaokereke @rsynnott @SteveClough @LauraLangdon @bluejekyll I note the degree to which it’s still normal to lie about the causes of the civil war. Textbooks will have vague things about states’ rights but if you look at what the secessionists wrote in their declarations or constitutions it’s quite explicit and if quoted (“hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the Institution of Slavery”) almost certainly would not pass a textbook review committee without heavy protest.

@mekkaokereke @noyes @sepdroid @bluejekyll @Npars01 seconding this. As a middle-aged white guy some of the things people feel safe saying around me is 🤯 – it’s definitely not just wannabe klansmen.

There’s been an entire industry pushing scary story for decades (Fox is not unique in this regard) and with that kind of priming it’s easy to dredge up fear which will take a conscious effort of rationality to dismiss.

@bluejekyll @mekkaokereke racism is going to make climate change so hard to deal with – so many people are massively invested in suburbs which are barely sustainable (if at all) but are convinced that transit or infill density will bring hordes of Them (the more liberal will unconvincingly say homeless). It seems more than coincidental that all of the macho-decorated truck/SUV sales boomed as white people started openly talking about needing to run over “dangerous” protesters to get home.

@cstross @dan @mekkaokereke yeah, I’d only accept that if the vehicle was equipped with an automatic braking system which can’t be disabled and the manufacturer accepts all liability. Until that’s technically possible, we have to assume average SUV driver behavior.