Even the New York Times in November 2020 raised an eyebrow at Tim Walz's "extraordinary step of banning people from different households from meeting indoors or outdoors, even though evidence has consistently shown the outdoors to be relatively safe."
reason.com/2024/08/22/par… Tim Walz's Covid record includes but is not limited to school closures, indoor (and some outdoor) mask mandates, unsupported-by-science outdoor dining bans, the jailing of defiantly open bar owners, a state of emergency that lasted 474 days, misspent relief funds, and an infamous tipline for ratting out Minnesotans for gathering in overly large numbers by a lake.
reason.com/2024/08/22/par…

Since @Reason is one of the "ten riskiest online news outlets," according to a "disinformation" tracker that receives funding from the State Dept., you might want to put on protective gear before reading this one.
reason.com/2023/02/14/glo… "the site publishes no information regarding authorship"

I mean sure, unless you count BYLINES, you absolute maroons.
reason.com/people/matt-we…

"During our lengthy conversation, Yarvin argued that the eventual fall of US democracy could be 'fundamentally joyous and peaceful.'”

vox.com/policy-and-pol… "Moving forward in the state of emergency, Yarvin told Anton the new government should then take 'direct control over all law enforcement authorities,' federalize the National Guard, and effectively create a national police force that absorbs local bodies."

4-hour flight delay? No more baseball on TV? Really? Well, time to strap on some Chardonnay (like a man), tune out the slurring business calls around me, and talk about how one’s allergy to certain topics can paradoxically produce bursts of interest in same. Today’s topic: Dudes. Not long after 9/11, I fell into proximity with some Men’s Rights activists. You can predict what happened next—I ran screaming for the exits. Their eyes were a bit too wild, their edges too rough, their bitterness palpable, their issues often inscrutable, hard to believe.

So, today's a big day for @wethefifth. We've moved our whole operation & archive over to @SubstackInc, released our first Members Only episode, started the avalanche of new content. Why are we doing this? Above all, because Substack protects free speech: wethefifth.substack.com/p/why-the-fift… There are vanishingly few media operations or facilitators out there that take as a core value expanding the spaces for people to talk and debate and laugh freely. I've been fortunate enough to work for one the past two decades: @Reason. Substack is on that very short list.

It has come indirectly to my attention that people are dismayed I used the phrase “apocalyptic troll” to describe columnist Max Boot. It is a jarringly ungenerous descriptor, I admit. So I’d like to defend it, since I do try to take language seriously. 1/X reason.com/2022/04/14/gat… Let’s start with “apocalyptic.” In the same paragraph I used that descriptor, I quoted (and linked to) Boot asserting that, “For democracy to survive, we need more content moderation, not less." It is my contention that that is not only apocalyptic, it is self-evidently so.

So, 31 years ago today, the debut issue of the first post-communist independent English-language newspaper in the former East Bloc appeared on Prague newsstands. It was five of us from UCSB’s fab @dailynexus, one brilliant Czech 18-year-old econ dropout, and assorted weirdos. 1/x Early ‘90s Prague was obviously a blast, as you can read in my recent @Reason feature, but it was also fraught with conflicts that have direct relevance to our current moment, all played out without benefit of knowing how things would work out in the end.
reason.com/2021/11/13/the…

Yesterday’s blowout school board recall in San Francisco was a far more interesting and resonant event than I was able to convey in this morning’s writeup. National implications, sure, but also plenty of glorious, only-in-SF specifics. Let's make a thread!
reason.com/2022/02/16/san… First of all, successful school board recalls, even in today’s political climate, are exceptionally rare. Only 23 states have the recall mechanism, and even though 2021 saw a record-shattering number of recall efforts (92), only 1 was successful.
reason.com/2022/01/28/wil…

Don't know how it all got started, but there's a clip being shared widely today of former MSNBC host @MHarrisPerry stating controversially in an April 2013 promo that, "we have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents." I was around then.... 1/x I think MHP was wrong about that. I’m not telling her that right now, I told her back then, in real time, as the first critic she brought on, days later, to explain why that rubbed people the wrong way. Here’s a clip and transcript.
msnbc.com/melissa-harris…
nbcnews.com/id/wbna51543915

Vaccine passports for domestic flights would require the creation of a national medical database, which holds ominous civil libertarian implications. All for a policy that would likely have a marginal public health impact. So yeah, it'll probably happen. reason.com/2021/12/28/fau… If you think through the cost-benefit of airline vax passports for more than five seconds, the drawbacks start becoming obvious, as @christianbrits noted in October. reason.com/2021/10/05/cou…

One of the first questions that should have been asked, but wasn't, when the Treasury Dept. last month said it had a great new scheme for the IRS to collect $700 billion the next decade, is: What happened to Obama's 2009 scheme to collect $210 billion? reason.com/2021/06/09/bid… Answer, 5 months later: Silicon Valley/Chamber o' Commerce wasn't having most of it:

"The Obama administration has shelved a plan to raise more than $200 billion in new taxes on multinational companies following a blitz of complaints from businesses."

wsj.com/articles/SB125…

It was a hard question for Kamala Harris to answer, too:

https://twitter.com/ChoiceMediatv/status/1362390283711885312

Initially, it was not a hard answer for CDC Director Rochelle Walensky to answer. cnbc.com/2021/02/03/cdc…

Yes, that “Reality Czar” idea in the NYT was mockworthy. Still, those ideas are bouncing around among the people who have more power these days, so let’s work through them one by one. reason.com/2021/02/03/no-… 1) Truth & Reconciliation Commission? Those are found almost exclusively in countries that have suddenly transitioned from authoritarianism, with brand new laws, and an urgent need to deal with past crimes, property appropriation, & massive civil service change. This ain’t that.

Yes, Biden has been walking back and re-editing his open-the-schools-within-100-days vow ever since he first said it. axios.com/biden-100-day-… I wrote a week ago about "the fundamental untenability of his—and teachers unions'—position." Namely, that they're reopeners rhetorically (in order to sound responsive to FURIOUS parents), but where it counts they're just pumping out money with no strings. reason.com/2021/01/26/sch…

I grew up listening to the best radio in the world. Chick Hearn, Vin Scully, Dick Enberg, Jim Healey, Gary Owens, Jim Ladd, Machine Gun Kelly, Rodney on the ROQ, Dr. Demento. The one guy who probably broadened my horizons more than any other? Larry King. He had this show syndicated on the Mutual Broadcasting System, came pretty late on weeknights in SoCal. I just got my brand spanking new digital clock radio--my most prized possession, by far--and this show, man, it went on for like 100 hours EVERY NIGHT.

When Hank Aaron came up to the big leagues in 1954 at age 20, the stolen base was pretty dead as a weapon. A great athlete and smart ballplayer, he stole just 20 bases his first 6 seasons. Then Maury Wills came along, and he was all, "Really?" Then averaged 22 SB from 1960-68. Hank Aaron hit 77 triples his first 10 years in the bigs (1954-63).

Since 1964, only 46 players have hit more than 77 triples in their entire careers. Not Barry Larkin, not Ryne Sandberg, not Mickey Rivers.

A point worth elaborating: "decisions about hiring and firing are rarely as simple as they appear to outside observers with an ax to grind, so there may well be more going on here—though the statement from Taylor seems to eliminate much of that ambiguity"
reason.com/2021/01/22/nis… In my experience, outsiders (including journalists) describing personnel decisions of which I have tangible knowledge of almost always get it significantly wrong, due to the routine asymmetry of candor between parties who have a career-altering disagreement. That's important!

Let’s put more things in the world, says I. So without further ado, here’s the best first-draft playlist I could rummage from music that was first revealed in December 1989. Two mega-hits, followed by weird instrumentals, alt-stuff, topped by epic metal.
open.spotify.com/playlist/67BIx… Thus ends Phase 1 of this collaborative Twitter exercise, in which you, the big people, helped me go month by month through that revolutionary political and musical year, making playlists, and learning a bunch of stuff. Thank you! Raw material for great editorial content to come.

OK, we could all use a pointless distraction, so:

Here’s my playlist composed of notable musicks that were first released in November 1989. From Morrissey to Crispin Glover, Robert Earl Keen to Queen Latifah, and just so, so much punk rock. [1/x]
open.spotify.com/playlist/1BjVM… To recap, I’ve been marching through each month of that revolutionary and musically interesting year. Will become a podcast series soon.

You can hear me talking about it while spinning discs w/ my old pal @dougiegyro on Prague’s legendary Radio 1:
mixcloud.com/douglasa/radio…

Some quotes from my interview yesterday with @RepMeijer, the young anti-war vet and Republican who succeeded @justinamash in Congress. reason.com/2021/01/08/ama… "Some of my colleagues in Congress, they share responsibility for that. Many of them were fundraising off of this Stop the Steal grift. I don't understand how you can look in the mirror and go to sleep at night without that weighing on your conscience, I fundamentally do not.”

Almost tried to tell this whimsical dream/music/childrearing story on the last @wethefifth Patreon episode, but it was too boring and I was too, ah, sleepy. But! That’s why we have Twitter. So, here’s how @KenLayne unknowingly turned my 5-year-old into a @JasonIsbell fan. Do you know how your dream-brain has weird augmented/invented geographies that you keep coming back to? And also, how you keep some musical acts at bay that you just KNOW you will eventually like once you actually listen to them? So these intersected for me a few nights back.