1/I'm so exasperated by the idea that low immigration produces social and cultural cohesion that I'm going to write a thread about how nuts this idea is.
When was the foreign-born population at an all-time low?
The 1960s and 1970s.
How cohesive were they?
2/In a single 18-month period between 1971 and 1972, there were about FIVE terrorist bombings in America EVERY SINGLE GODDAMN DAY.
10/To this day, conservatives refer to "the 60s", meaning the late 60s, as a shorthand for the fracturing and fragmenting of American culture.
That was precisely when the foreign-born population was at its all-time low point!!
11/Every single person on the right who claims that a high foreign-born population produces social and cultural discord needs to reckon with the fact that our greatest period of discord since the Civil War came at a time when we had record low numbers of immigrants.
12/If someone tells you immigration produces social discord, throw 1967-1972 right in their face.
(end)
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
1/Here's something a lot of people I talk to don't understand about Japanese urbanism, and why Japanese cities are so special.
2/Japanese cities feel different than big, dense cities elsewhere -- NYC, London, and Paris, but also other Asian cities like Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Singapore.
There are many reasons for this, but today I'll focus on one: Zakkyo buildings.
3/When many people think of "mixed-use development", they think of stores on the first floor, apartments on the higher floors. This is sometimes called "shop-top housing" or "over-store apartments".
This is how most cities in the world do mixed-use development.
1/Here's something I've been wondering about recently: How did the U.S. miss the battery revolution?
With every other technological revolution, we anticipated it well in advance, and as a result we were the first -- or one of the first -- to take advantage of it.
2/The U.S. invented the computer, the internet, and modern AI. On all three of those, we were (or are) the leading nation. We talked ad infinitum about the benefits of those digital technologies long before they became a reality, allowing us to shape their eventual use.
3/We did the Human Genome Project. We invented mRNA vaccines. We did most of the research that drove down the costs of solar power. Jimmy Carter put solar panels on the White House more than 30 years before it became economical.
Russia's empire is a nested hierarchy. At the center is Moscow. Under them are mid-tier Russian cities and rural areas, then subject peoples like the Buryats, Sakha, and these African folks.
The closer you are to the center, the less fighting you do, and the more money you get.
In fact, the circles of Russian hierarchy don't stop at Moscow. There are privileged subgroups of Muscovites, then more privileged groups inside that circle, all the way up to the Tsar himself.
The principle still holds: Closer to the center = less fighting, more money.
The advantage of this organizational structure is that the more power you have, the less likely you are to ever suffer negative consequences from adverse shocks or bad decisions. All the losses from failed wars, bad economic decisions, etc. get taken by the less powerful.
In fact, it's not law even now. This executive order is (sadly) AGAINST the law and will probably be struck down, because our asylum law says we can't discriminate against asylum claimants for crossing the border illegally. That law needs to be changed by Congress.
The problem is that the U.S. is a party to the 1967 UN Convention on the Status of Refugees, which says that your asylum system can't discriminate against people for being in the country illegally. We wrote our domestic law to comply with that treaty.
The non-discrimination provision is obviously stupid, so what we need to do is flout the 1967 UN Convention on the Status of Refugees, and simply amend our domestic law to say "You can't claim asylum if you crossed illegally". But this would require an act of Congress.
About 8% of students have participated in the protests on one side or the other. That's a substantial number, but less than the 21% who joined BLM protests in May/June 2020 (and the latter were pretty much all on one side of the issue).