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@petersagal.bsky.social Profile picture
@petersagal.bsky.social
@petersagal
Host of @WaitWait on @NPR. Author of "The Incomplete Book of Running" and "The Book of Vice" For speaking engagements: https://t.co/YuV5fDJ3fh
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Aug 21, 2023 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
It’s not nuts. LA is in a floodplain, with historically intense but brief seasonal rains. The LA River, once a mostly dry arroyo, was built intentionally to do just this and channel flood water to the sea. Otherwise, a lot of LA would be uninhabitable. NB: #Actually, LA is, at least naturally, mostly uninhabitable. Too little rainfall and no aquifers. That’s why it didn’t boom until the city fathers, led by a former mayor named Fred Eaton and William Mulholland, stole all the water from the Owens Valley 100s of miles north.
Jun 19, 2023 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
1) A day late but: for many years in the mid-2010s, Father’s Day was hard for me, and I would tweet out a message to everyone else in the same boat, those estranged or alienated from their children, or their fathers, by their own choice or not. You were, and are, not alone. 2) Due to extraordinary and underserved fortune, I have been given a second chance at life. But I still carry scars, and I still think of all of those for whom Father’s Day (or any family holiday) brings only grief.
May 7, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Here’s conservative former federal judge J Harvie Wilkinson III on Heller vs DC, which for the *first time in American history* read an individual right to own firearms into the 2A.

virginialawreview.org/wp-content/upl… Written in 2009 Image
May 6, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I don’t do much fake Constitutional scholarship in here anymore, but:

1) The people who adopted the 2A have been dead for 200+ yrs and we have no more obligation to accept their views on arms than we do their views of bodily humours… 2) The reading of the 2A to protect the individual right to bear arms is about 15 years old and if you think that is set in stone for all time, beyond any ability to undo, I’d like you to meet my friend, Roe V Wade, and…
May 4, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
For reasons that will be obvious, I've been thinking about an essay by Terry Dobson in the book, "Aikido and the New Warrior." It's too good to paraphrase or summarize, so I will post the whole thing in this thread. Worth the 5 min it takes to read. Image Image
Mar 27, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
It's great. Reveals how much plain avarice was behind it. Was puzzled by this quote from a council member in a NC town with an AR-15 factory:

“If Nike moved here, I wouldn’t want them here because their politics are so different. I’d want them packing and to send them north."

Nike is woke?
Nov 15, 2022 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
I'm very late to the ANDOR bandwagon, but it's terrific... and here's my theory as to why (at least through 5 eps, no spoilers!)

STAR WARS (that's what I call it) was a kid's movie, and so, for the most part were all its sequels and prequels. Even when some complexity was attempted (trade routes disputes?) they abided by kid's movie rules: Good and Evil are teams, not adjectives; violence is bloodless, death is not real (Force ghosts!), and, of course, love but no sex.
Nov 11, 2022 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
1) An elegy/tribute thread to this hellsite.

Even with all the trolls and Nazis and replyguys and liars, this has been a place where anybody with something to say could reach anyone willing to hear it.

Or, needing to hear it, as I just found out via DM. 2) At the very end of 2019, I posted this thread, reflecting on the decade about to end. I hadn't planned to, I was just thinking about the date and started typing.

Nov 10, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
I have a theory as to why we haven’t heard — yet — any loud accusations of voter fraud from the candidates who ran on voter fraud, and lost, such as Mastriano and Bolduc.

It’s because lying a lot harder to do than it seems. These are all well funded major party candidates. They have election professionals working for them and have monitored the vote down to the precinct. They have all been told how they lost, and why, and where.
Oct 5, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I watched “The Karate Kid” this week for the first time — what can I say, I must have been busy in the 80s — and what I found most impressive about it is that Pat Morita was, when it was filmed, 6 years younger than I am now.
Sep 17, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Many people know about the St Louis, the ship filled with Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany who were refused entry to the US, and sent back to Europe, where almost 300 of them were eventually murdered.

But there’s an another aspect to the story… encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/art… The Nazis, who were in 1939 trying to force all Jews to leave Germany through terror and dispossession (this was before they decided to just kill all of them) wanted to show the hypocrisy of the rest of the world’s condemnation. “See? You don’t want them either.”
Aug 25, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Today, Matt Schlapp, a man who -- as far as I know -- has never done anything for children other than work to force women to bear them, attacked @KFILE, a man who has raised millions to help cure the kind of pediatric cancers that took his baby daughter. If you are annoyed as I am, join me in supporting @TeamBeansFund. This fall, Andrew will be leading a team to raise money by running the New York Marathon. Chip in!

danafarber.jimmyfund.org/site/TR?fr_id=…
Aug 24, 2022 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Time for a serious thread! I’ve been thinking a lot lately about a line from “Chernobyl,” specifically: “Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid." In the context of the show, it’s about how you can lie all you want and as long as you can about the safety of a RBMK model nuclear reactor, but eventually, under the right (wrong) circumstances, it’s going to blow up. But it’s a powerful idea with lots of applications.
Jul 28, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Unsurprisingly, I have more thoughts on this. (A second 🧵) Without exception, the founders of these third parties begin by decrying how the two main parties have become “too extreme.” And it’s true, they both have moved away from the center, though not *nearly* to the same degree.
Jul 28, 2022 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
And, one more time, here’s why it will (a thread):

Let’s put aside the standard fake equivalencies of the “far left” and “far right” and talk civics.

—

Opinion | Most third parties have failed. Here's why our Forward Party won't. - The Washington Post washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/… I don’t know that the founders condemned a “two party system” but they didn’t care for “factions.” Nonetheless, the Government they designed almost instantly called parties into being, as an inevitable result of its structure.
Jul 27, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
This is all true, but there's an aspect of it that Jon doesn't touch on... a pol refusing to talk to the "mainstream media," ie, actual journalists, only succeeds when enough people (an electoral majority) don't trust the mainstream media. In the world of (say) 1990, a pol HAS to talk to the legit press because they know their constituents read it. So if the @washingtonpost has a tough story on a staffer (as they did in re: DeSantis) you can't just ignore it.
Jul 7, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
This AM, ran again to downtown HP. Talked to two older men. One was heading to the parade but his grandson asked for pancakes so they decided to go late. One was watching the parade directly underneath the shooter, so they were out of the line of fire. He said, “I’ve been going to that parade for 40 years. I never will again.”

Downtown remains cordoned off. Sidewalks on west side are where the news crews have set up. Thought of “Camp OJ.”
Jul 6, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Realizing, that like people from Uvalde and Newtown, I no longer live in a town. I live in an event. I also, as you may know, was quite near the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. After that attack, almost everybody there swore that we’d come back, make sure the SOBs who had done it wouldn’t take it from us. And we did! The 2014 marathon was both heavily guarded and triumphant.
Jul 4, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Good morning. An hour ago I was jogging with my 18 month son through this parade route. We’re fine. Happy 4th of July
Jul 2, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Most of the reaction to Dobbs has really been about Roe, that is, how great or awful it is that it’s been overturned.

But we need to start analyzing Dobbs itself, and I don’t think it will look good. Here’s a start. washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/… Another criticism. Let’s stipulate that Dobbs is correct about Roe, in that it’s poorly reasoned.

But is there a right to an abortion via, say, equal protection? Other lines of cases regarding bodily autonomy? Dobbs dismisses that with a paragraph.
May 31, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
My God, Hillary got to the jurors, too. HOW DEEP DOES THIS GO? Thanks to @emptywheel and @charlie_savage among others for keeping tabs on this lunatic case, and condolences to The Federalist.