Benjamin Root

Benjamin Root

@weathergod.bsky.social

437

Posts

Senior Scientific Programmer at AER. Python guru. Matplotlib developer
Mastodon: https://fosstodon.org/@WeatherGod
GitHub: https://github.com/WeatherGod
LinkdIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjamin-v-root/
Was https://twitter.com/weather_god
(he/him)

Posts Replies Media

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A local church here in Salem, Oregon just contacted me and asked me to give a presentation on Project 2025. This is why the Trump campaign and the GOP is trying so hard to distance itself from this document produced by people in the vanguard of their movement.

On Chris Hayes podcast with Jamelle Bouie they talked about a possible reason for optimism: Project 2025 seems to have deeply penetrated TikTok. Anecdotally, my 15 yr old mentioned to me all the counselors she works with at camp have been talking about it and what rights they’re worried about losing

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popular gun youtuber who dresses up in waffen ss uniforms totally nonpolitically

This popular gun YouTuber posted a very convincing and sympathetic video explaining why he's so upset that Trump's would-be assassin was wearing one of his t-shirts. But it seems he also quietly just removed this hat from his online merch store. (h/t Reddit)

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The “magic of the marketplace” fails here: “power outages cost energy corporations very little money — maybe a few days’ revenue. Hardening energy infrastructure, on the other hand, is very expensive and entirely paid for by the energy corporations. This cuts into their profits and stock price.”

Why is the Texas grid in such bad shape? My latest on The Climate Brink www.theclimatebrink....

Why is the Texas grid in such bad shape?www.theclimatebrink.com A lesson in free markets and the failure of our elected leaders

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They are really like this. Once I said that I think kids should learn the proper terms for their anatomy and some Glem Greenwald/Libs of Tik Tok followers emailed me employer to try to get me fired

According to Project 2025, which is the heart of Trump's campaign and platform, if you teach or talk about the existence of LGBTQ people then you are a sex offender and should be imprisoned.

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My latest for @thenation.com looks at the death of an incarcerated woman at the Central CA Women's Facility during a week of ~110 degree temperatures & the lack of heat mitigation efforts throughout the nation's 2nd largest prison: www.thenation.com/article/soci...

The Scorching Temperatures Are Turning Prison Cells Into Furnaceswww.thenation.com As the death toll due to extreme heat rises, incarcerated people are concerned that their cells could become their coffins.

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God the Republicans are always breaking promises and dashing hopes. First the taco trucks on every corner and now this.

9 days before the assassination attempt, Lee Greenwood (who partners with Trump on a $60 Bible) told a 4th of July crowd undocumented immigrants are coming to kill them.

Groups call out Lee Greenwood's 'hateful speech' at Albany 4th of July concertdemocratherald.com He said: "The only thing we hope for is that we can stop illegal immigration. Because the people who are coming through are coming through to kill you."

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Reporting from Milwaukee: tonight at day 2 of Trump’s coronation, the evening’s theme — with the crowd hooting and smiling along — was just a deluge of gore, blood in the streets, xenophobic scapegoating, terror, unstoppable bloodshed (unless we elect Trump!)… www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...

Trump’s RNC Revels in Graphic Demonization of Migrantswww.rollingstone.com The Republican National Convention's "Make America Safe Again" night was rife with fear-mongering over undocumented immigrants.

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It’s not just you. Here’s where this summer really has been the worst

It’s not just you. Here’s where this summer really has been the worst | CNNcnn.it Heat is normal during the summer, but this year’s has been anything but, and halfway through the season’s hottest month it’s clear this one is for the record books.

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Striking new images show members of one of the world’s most isolated Indigenous tribes emerging from the rainforest in a remote part of the Peruvian Amazon, close to where several logging companies have been granted concessions.

A rarely seen Amazon tribe emerges from rainforest as loggers move inwapo.st Footage shows the isolated Mashco Piro tribe just miles from where logging companies have been granted concessions in the Peruvian Amazon.

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I’m going to start with the absolutely jaw-dropping news that The New York Times deceptively edited a quote to make it appear that JD Vance opposes a national abortion ban. — @jessicavalenti.bsky.social

GOP Platform Author Admits There's a National Banjessica.substack.com 7.16.24

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Breaking news: President Biden is finalizing plans to endorse major changes to the Supreme Court in the coming weeks, including proposals for legislation to establish term limits for the justices and an enforceable ethics code, according to two people briefed on the plans.

Biden set to announce support for major Supreme Court changeswww.washingtonpost.com The president has discussed the plans with constitutional scholars and members of Congress in recent weeks.

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Honestly I'd like to turn this proposal on its head, where I pay the public to help me get this fucking model code to work.

They have such winning ideas like “why don’t we charge people who want to know if that tornado is gonna hit their house.”

The MAGA Plan to End Free Weather Reportswww.theatlantic.com Project 2025 would all but dissolve the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

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also and I feel like I buried the lede here: it calls for the people who CREATE queer media to be imprisoned. That'd be people like me. Or any other queer creator you love. Any queen who's been on drag race. Chappel Roan. Janelle Monae. Anyone who's made a piece of queer media. Imprisoned.

Psst: Project 2025 is terrifying for a lot of reasons but also because on page 5 it calls for teachers and librarians who grant access to books that are maligned as pornography (which just means anything LGBTQ) to be registered as sex offenders. Pass it on.

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Spiers filed this essay a week before that but does not regret one word of it.

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Among other too-fast responses after the shooting, we noticed that Real Clear Politics did some quick stealth-editing: (RCP did not respond to a request for an explanation.) www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/...

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Unhoused person slain at national gathering of political party tied to Supreme Court justices who just criminalized living unhoused.

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel confirms that a Columbus, Ohio, police officer detailed to the RNC shot and killed a homeless Black man (earlier reported to be in his early 20s) more than half a mile from the RNC arena. The man was known by the nickname Jehovah and took care of a pit bull named Isis.

Ohio police officer shoots, kills person in Milwaukee outside of RNC perimeter, sources saywww.jsonline.com The man killed by Ohio officers near the RNC on Tuesday was well-known in the neighborhood, several witnesses told the Journal Sentinel.

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I'm getting fed up with people who are already giving up IN JULY

every day I feel like I'm losing my mind as people look at a statistically tied race where one guy is a felon with deeply unpopular positions who ALREADY LOST THIS EXACT RACE and are like "he is 100% for sure going to win"

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Secret Service arrested a Florida man yesterday for threatening Joe Biden's life on Twitter. He was earlier interviewed by USSS for telling staff at a mental-health facility where he was a patient that he wanted to "slit [Biden's] throat" (via Seamus Hughes) storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

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Evacuations have been ordered for residents of Nashville, Illinois, with county emergency officials warning that the dam for the city’s reservoir could rupture at any moment.

Residents of small Illinois city ordered to evacuate amid warnings that dam could burst under once-in-a-century rainfall | CNNcnn.it Evacuations have been ordered for residents in Nashville, Illinois, with county emergency officials warning that the dam for the city’s reservoir could breach at any moment.

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Existing Trump supporters—including political reporters privately in sympathy with him—obviously experienced a powerful galvanizing emotion from the failed assassination attempt. They assumed that emotional experience would be widespread, but so far the polling doesn’t bear that out.

"In the national Morning Consult poll of 2,045 registered voters, taken Monday, Trump leads President Joe Biden 46 percent to 45 percent. The poll has a margin of error of two percentage points." www.rawstory.com/trump-pollin...

Surprise: Trump did not get polling boost after shootingwww.rawstory.com Following the failed assassination attempt on Saturday, former President Donald Trump did not see a polling boost, in the first presidential survey taken since the event.In the national Morning Consul...

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Federal prosecutors have begun moving to drop charges accusing Jan. 6 defendants of obstructing Congress’s confirmation of the 2020 presidential election results, offering plea deals after the Supreme Court restricted the government’s use of that count.

U.S. begins dropping Jan. 6 obstruction charges against Proud Boys, otherswapo.st The Supreme Court’s June ruling narrowing use of an obstruction charge for Jan. 6 defendants is leading to misdemeanor plea deals for some Capitol riot defendants.

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Worth emphasizing that the very theme of night 2 of the RNC is a lie. Crime is down since Biden took office and we are no longer quarantining at home amid mass death. America is far safer now than it was in January 2021.

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It is impressive that Trump is so willing to renounce one of the few good things his first-term administration did. www.axios.com/2024/07/16/t...

Trump echoes Kennedy's vaccine conspiracies in leaked phone callwww.axios.com Kennedy apologized to Trump for the leaked video.

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Fact Checker by Glenn Kessler: Speakers make false or misleading claims about border crossings, gas prices, tax cuts, the relative wealth of young Americans and Easter Sunday. Here’s a guide to 13 claims that caught our attention.

Analysis | Fact-checking Day 1 of the 2024 Republican National Conventionwww.washingtonpost.com Speakers make false or misleading claims about border crossings, gas prices, tax cuts, the relative wealth of young Americans and Easter Sunday.

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This is of course hateful rhetoric but I can't get past how, if you say or believe such a thing, then your brain is obviously made up entirely of soggy farts.

In 2022, Vance unleashed an unhinged theory on Tucker Carlson's show that his Dem opponent was planning on "flooding America with illegal aliens and then using American tax dollars to fund gender reassignment surgeries for those aliens" www.advocate.com/news/2022/11...

GOP Senate Hopeful Says Dems Want to Turn Immigrants Transgenderwww.advocate.com Ohio Senate candidate J.D. Vance, the author of Hillbilly Elegy, says that Democrats are bringing "illegal immigrants" to the U.S. to turn them trans.

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Amazon’s annual Prime Day sales event, which starts Tuesday, has been a “major cause” of warehouse worker injuries, finds a year-long Senate investigation into workplace safety at Amazon, released by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

Amazon Prime Day causes workplace injuries, Senate probe findswww.washingtonpost.com The Senate HELP Committee probe found that the company’s annual Prime Day sales event, which takes place this week, is “a major cause of injuries” for the workers.

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What I admire about Republicans is their moral courage

You can’t make this up

So, apparently the National Anthem just got assassinated tonight?

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BRING OUT THE... HEAD OF LETTUCE! 🥬

Like a harbinger of doom, Liz Truss has arrived at the RNC.

See, you tried to make it sound like it would be a lot of fun or maybe informative and enlightening, but no... no it wouldn't.

The first night of the RNC kicks off with speeches from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Sen. Tim Scott and more. Watch and follow live updates.

RNC kicks off just days after Trump assassination attempt | CNN Politicswww.cnn.com The 2024 Republican National Convention kicks off Monday in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, two days after the assassination attempt on Donald Trump. Follow here for the latest live news updates, analysis and m...