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Noah Smith 🐇 Profile picture
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7 Dec, 7 tweets, 1 min read
This message was brought to you by Exxon and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Seriously, we are about to see an unholy alliance of oil-industry-supporting conservatives and zoomer2boomer "leftists" to denounce electric cars. The oil companies will very rapidly learn to phrase their arguments in terms of the horrors of mining.
Oh and there will also be an unholy alliance of fossil fuel interests, faux "environmentalists", and local-control NIMBYs to block solar plants all across the country. This is already happening.
Exxon-backed astroturfed groups will run TV ads showing black-and-white photos of poor exploited miners destroying the rain forests to line Elon Musk's pockets, while others show ominous rows of solar panels on the sand dunes behind your house
"Why shouldn't local communities control their open space?", Nathan J. Robinson will whine, while some NGO guy from Sweden piously intones that the the only real way to stop global warming is degrowth
Greg Abbott will awkwardly say nice things about the Sunrise movement as they occupy Democratic congressional offices demanding bans on battery material imports. "You know, I can't believe I'm saying this, but these leftists are on to something," Tucker will sneer.
I should really stop writing this thread before I give these people too many ideas huh 😅

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More from @Noahpinion

Noah Smith 🐇 Profile picture
6 Dec
Why do some progressives insist on using the word "Latinx" when 40% of Hispanics find the word offensive?

Is it OK to call a group by a name that offends a large percentage of them?

In other contexts, don't we call that a "racial slur"?

politico.com/news/2021/12/0…
Yes, a few people like and use Latinx.

But the assumption that these people represent a vanguard, and that society will eventually progress in the direction of that vanguard, needs to be sternly interrogated.
Personally, I don't care if people say "Latinx" or not. It's not a term that's ever used to describe me, so I have no dog in that fight. But I try to not describe people of other races using terms that are offensive to them. That's just common decency, in my opinion.
Read 5 tweets
Noah Smith 🐇 Profile picture
5 Dec
22,000 retweets and yet there's a suspended monorail in Memphis, Tennessee.

Why spend 15 seconds googling when you can just impose your simplistic politics onto every video you see
Monorails in Japan aren't even very useful trains. People make fun of them. The useful good trains are JR trains, subways, and corporate commuter rail. If you want examples of how Japan does trains better, show videos of those.
Read 4 tweets
Noah Smith 🐇 Profile picture
5 Dec
Today a Chinese friend of mine told me that her family members in China give her a hard time about living in an "enemy country".
In fact, she said that people she knows back in China frequently discuss how the U.S. is an "enemy", and talk of war is not unusual.
I have no idea how typical this is, or even whether it's accurate, but thought I'd share the anecdote.

I was pretty startled. I told her that most Americans, being an insular and self-absorbed people, rarely think about China or any foreign country.
Read 4 tweets
Noah Smith 🐇 Profile picture
3 Dec
I do think the "unelected judges making decisions" line will be useful for Dems, just as it was useful for the GOP after Roe.

But I think the language of "we don't live in a democracy" delegitimizes the government and is bad.
The fact is, if we don't live in a democracy, then we need to overthrow the government.

But the Left just isn't going to overthrow the U.S. government. If anyone does that, it'll be the Right.
This is just another case of liberals LARPing as if they're revolutionary, when in fact they're largely the institution. This is not the 70s. SCOTUS is an aberration; most institutions in this country are solidly liberal now.
Read 5 tweets
Noah Smith 🐇 Profile picture
3 Dec
Now we know why Americans like Korean stuff so much...we share the same values!
Source:

visualcapitalist.com/cp/which-count…
Also note that although there are some regional effects visible here, almost all of this is just per capita GDP. As countries get richer their values almost always change in very very predictable ways, no matter what region they're a part of.
Read 4 tweets
Noah Smith 🐇 Profile picture
2 Dec
The George Floyd protests were not a civil war.

It's important to remember this fact, because remembering it may help us avoid an *actual* civil war in 2024-5.

(Subscribers only.)

noahpinion.substack.com/p/the-george-f…
I spent hours today going through the details of every single one of the 25 killings associated with the Floyd protests, and concluded that maybe half of them could be construed as violence between pro-BLM and anti-BLM people.
That half includes all killings of cops (of which there were none, though one retired ex-cop was killed during a robbery), and killings by cops (of which there were four).
Read 8 tweets

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