Author Archives: Danny Silverman

The Hard Lessons of Dianne Feinstein’s Encounter with the Young Green New Deal Activists

“Politics as usual” does not matter when the fate of the world is on the line. You either believe it or you don’t. If you do, you recognize the need for radical action:

[I]n the case of the environment, the opponent is not the Chamber of Commerce. The opponent is physics, and physics doesn’t negotiate. It’s not moved by appeals to centrist moderation, or explanations about the filibuster. And it has set a firm time limit. Scientists have told us what we must do and by when, and so legislators must do all they can to match those targets.

No offense to Feinstein, but she is 85 years old – she won’t have to live through the consequences. But her grandchildren will. Or, put another way:

Geeking Out

Version Nine

Welcome back. When I started blogging in 2001, there was no Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. Now there are all those things and more, and yet the vast social media empire seems more and more insidious and evil with every passing scandal.

There is a place for personal media, privately owned, distinct and disconnected. So I’ve embarked on another upgrade and redesign of this venerable blog, featuring a fresh new look and the latest is WordPress hypermedia magic behind the scenes.

For fun I whipped up a data visualization, and the change in posting habits over time is dramatic.

Graph of posts over time
Graph of posts over time. A live version of this graph now lives at the bottom of the homepage.

First I took a job that heavily discouraged blogging, then I shifted more fully to Facebook and other social media platforms. I find myself using those platforms less and less, in line with the shifting habits of my friends and family.

Yet I have thoughts! So many thoughts, just asking to be written down and broadcast to the indifferent world! So my goal for 2019 is to reverse this trend. I will post more here, and less those other places. With any luck this won’t be a repeat of 2014.

And so, welcome back.

★★★★★
Review

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

I have heard nothing but good things about this movie and couldn’t wait to finally see it. It lived up to all expectations. The animation, the story telling, the humor, the emotions — brilliantly constructed. This is the first superhero movie I’ve seen in ages that felt fresh and new. Even in places where it was formulaic there were new twists and interpretations. As soon as it was over I wanted to go back and see it again.

At two degrees, the melting of the Arctic ice sheets will pass a tipping point of collapse, flooding dozens of the world’s major cities this century — and threatening, over many centuries, to elevate sea level as much as 200 feet. At that amount of warming, it is estimated, global GDP, per capita, will be cut by 13 percent. Four hundred million more people will suffer from water scarcity, and even in the northern latitudes heat waves will kill thousands each summer. It will be worse in the planet’s equatorial band. In India, where many cities now numbering in the many millions would become unliveably hot, there would be 32 times as many extreme heat waves, each lasting five times as long and exposing, in total, 93 times more people. This is two degrees — practically speaking, our absolute best-case climate scenario.

David Wallace-Wells, “UN Says Climate Genocide Is Coming. It’s Actually Worse Than That”

I’ve read a dozen articles about this, this one most clearly lays out what it means that the new IPCC report, so dramatic and concerning, is still presenting what is effectively a best case scenario. The reality will be even worse.

In 1787, after the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin was asked by a woman on the street outside Independence Hall, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” Franklin answered, “A republic, if you can keep it.” That response has been on my mind a lot lately. The contingency of it. How fragile our experiment in self-government is. And, when viewed against the sweep of human history, how fleeting. Democracy may be our birthright as Americans, but it’s not something we can ever take for granted. Every generation has to fight for it, has to push us closer to that more perfect union. That time has come again.

Hillary Clinton

Faux Art

I picked up the sport coat for $5 at Goodwill a few hours before the soiree.

Six years ago some creative friends held a home art show.  I was invited to participate, but lacked any works of artistic merit to present.  So instead I whipped up some — let’s call it meta art? — in the form of an absurdly pretentious photo exhibit.  The photos came from a then-recent trip to Scandinavia I had taken with my friend Kevin (and I’m sure he is going to be thrilled that I’m posting this…).  The text was generated with the help of a site called the Arty Bollocks Generator.  The outfit was assembled at Goodwill for a few bucks.

In honor of the sixth anniversary of the debut, here is my “art” reformatted to fit your screen…

Continue reading “Faux Art”

Checking in on the climate

I keep reading more and more grim climate-related stories and wanting to post them here, but what’s the point?  Curious, I searched this blog and discovered my first mention of climate change was in 2004, and my next was a yer later when the previous Republican administration of George W. Bush was reducing emission standards and claiming the the science was not settled.

Fourteen years on, history keeps repeating itself.  Meanwhile, California suffers the largest wildfires in history.  The world is experiencing an unprecedented global heatwave.  And now discussion focuses on the idea that we may be entering a dreaded climate “feedback loop” with possible unchecked warming of 8 degrees and future sea level rise of 300 feet or more.

It’s a recipe for immense global suffering, massive loss of life, possibly the extinction of humanity.  The only hope, if there is any chance left of fending off complete disaster, is a coming together of world governments to enact sweeping reforms.  We seem further away from this today than ever before.  But hey, San Francisco is banning plastic straws.

What is heartbreaking is how close we came 40 years ago to warding off the oncoming disaster.  We will have plenty of time to reckon with our failures as a civilization while we become part of the waves of mass migration.  But hey, at least Elon has his rockets, so maybe a few of us will end up on Mars!

Travel

Costa Rica (2018)

The Maintex sales incentive trip for 2018 took place in May in the Guanacaste region of Costa Rica.  I was previously in this region with my family back in 2007. That previous trip involved long car rides across the countryside and lots of sightseeing – this one was based at an all-inclusive resort and was focused primarily on relaxation.  The area was beautiful, the resort sprawling, and the experience decidedly different.

Continue reading “Costa Rica (2018)”

You can fact check and fact check and fact check these claims and it won’t matter that they are false. And the fact that nobody in this administration even bothers to coordinate their cover stories at this point reflects just how pointless it is to fact check them anyhow. It’s an interactive game of choose your own logic, law, facts, and victims, but every single version of this story ends with screaming children in cages, sleeping under foil blankets as strangers change their diapers.

Dahlia Lithwick, “How the Trump administration is defending its indefensible child separation policy“

I am in debt, but I am not alone. Debt is a millstone that weighs down more than three-quarters of Americans. It can determine whether we are able to run for office, to launch a business, to quit a job we hate. But it should not—and cannot—be a disqualification for ambition.

Stacy Abrams

Stacy Abrams is the Democratic candidate for governor of Georgia. She is facing controversy following the release of financial disclosures that show she holds $200,000 in unpaid taxes, student loans, and credit card debt.