#Covid might not even be top 5 worst things in this decade

[nikkisticki]

Mostly correct, but at the same time I find there's a mistaken belief that holding any form of anger or hatred will corrupt you, which I think is technically true if you take it to it's natural extreme, but once again I have to make the argument of self-responsibility.

Anger is a very valuable tool when applied correctly (a lengthy topic I won't go into but if you learn to use your emotional bursts rationally it can be very useful in various ways), and it's appropriate to get mad at fools for being fools. I'm not speaking towards actively attacking them, obviously, but when it comes to my blog where I'm not in the process of trying to talk to these people and actively attempting to avoid them, I don't think it matters as much as the joy I feel stringing together a fun insult (Although as my sweet ferny friend has pointed out, my angle of attack was a bit ableist and not really against the substance of their flaws.)

I entirely agree that being hateful directly towards them is entirely pointless with few exceptions (If you're in a situation where someone isn't ever going to change, what you say only matters to those viewing the conversation that's opinion will be potentially up for change. In that case, there is value in lowering yourself to their level and responding to their lukewarm insults with some spicy retort once you've already given them the chance(s) to be civil in scenarios where onlookers would respond positively to that), because ultimately the only way you'll ever convince them of anything is to make them ask the questions themselves.

As I said, I think you're right, but people choose to believe the things they are told. I believe it's ultimately just as dehumanizing to consider them as simply being "unable to see the propaganda for what it is because of a lack of education and active malice towards them" as to call them a pile of spare parts.

There is value in peace, but it is better to be a warrior in a garden then a gardener in a war, and I'm telling you for sure that these people aren't going to de-radicalize. The best option we have for the future is that they spend their whole lives hating imaginary enemies so they don't have to change and then die quietly, having only harmed people psychologically with their words and actions.

Edit: Which, when you consider they elected the people currently doing massive damage to people on the basis of wanting them to do damage to those people, it sort of strikes me that it's already long past that point.

At the very least, making people hate bigots isn't a problem that I see as being as problematic as the bigots themselves.

You know Elon probably saw this and was super mad he still can't fire Halli.

[jesusonafrickinboat]

I posted 185 times in 2022

14 posts created (8%)

171 posts reblogged (92%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@heartrenderharrington

@smokeyrutilequartz

@therealpancakeo

@runaway-horses

@lo-brokeit

I tagged 161 of my posts in 2022

Only 13% of my posts had no tags

#stranger things - 32 posts

#stranger things s4 - 21 posts

#eddie munson - 19 posts

#tua - 17 posts

#steve harrington - 17 posts

#the umbrella academy - 15 posts

#steddie - 14 posts

#the sandman - 13 posts

#klaus hargreeves - 12 posts

#st4 - 12 posts

Longest Tag: 140 characters

#but yes! he's always been a himbo that loves his family! he just needed to be deconditioned from reggie's bs & reconditioned for socializing

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

ok but I wish Eddie would have zipped up his leather jacket cause leather is harder to chew through than like, a cotton t-shirt

16 notes - Posted July 2, 2022

#4

Umbrella Academy incorrect quotes via this generator

See the full post

41 notes - Posted March 15, 2022

#3

See the full post

44 notes - Posted June 26, 2022

#2

As someone who has post-viral disabilities/conditions, it absolutely INFURIATES me that, despite a mass rise in post-viral disabilities/conditions (aka long-covid), IT’S STILL NOT BEING RESEARCHED.

I had a virus in May 2016 (end of 8th grade), the symptoms of which (plus more as time went on) never went away. I was diagnosed with celiac disease in 2017, followed by POTS, fibromyalgia, CFS/ME, chronic pain, and more - none of which have a cure. (There are also several conditions that I’ve researched and am almost certain I have as a result of that virus over half a decade ago, but I’m still waiting to get appointments with those specialists.) Since being diagnosed, I have done various treatments/medications, had many appointments with specialists & physical therapists, and have done basically all I can to get better.

Now it’s 2022. It’s been 6 years since the virus and 5 years since the first diagnosis. Can I do more than I could in 2017? Absolutely! I don’t want to say that it will never get better, because it does - just slowly (and at a different pace for everyone). But I’m still NOWHERE near where I was before 2016, certainly not even close to what I might have been able to do now if the virus hadn’t happened. I had to switch to homeschool (away from my friends, though better for my physical and mental health) for 10th-12th grade. Last summer, I rode a bike for the first time since 2016, and I was still in pain afterwards. I’m finally at a place where I can start doing the things I used to be able to do or have missed out on (ex: making my own lunch, learning to drive, going to college), but it’s a very delicate balance. I’m at a place where some of these things are finally in sight (I won’t say in reach yet), and it’s frustrating to desperately want to do them and know I’m so close to being able to, but I still have to be really careful.

Because of my constellation of conditions, it has been incredibly difficult to improve my health. For example: one of the best ways to treat POTS is by exercising, but exercising also unfortunately triggers CFS/ME flare ups (due to post-exertional malaise), which in turn triggers chronic pain, etc. The worst part is that it’s nearly impossible to tell when you’ve overdone it in the moment, which means that after doing more rigorous exercise, I have to make sure I don’t schedule anything for the next 2-3 days in case of a flare up. I know I’m not the only one with complicated, contradictory, incredibly difficult co-morbidities, which is one reason why it takes so long to even start healing post-virus.

I’m upset that there are SO MANY people with long-covid that are receiving the same treatment myself and others have received in terms of our post-viral illnesses. I was hopeful that, even though the last thing I wanted was more people having to go through what I’ve been going through for 6 years, this rise in post-viral cases would have pushed more research into why it happens and how to cure (or at least better treat) the most common disabilities/conditions that it results in. 

Instead, like other post-viral illnesses, we’ve continued to see small, underfunded groups research the resulting individual conditions (CFS/ME, POTS, etc) without the funding to come together to research the co-morbidities as a whole, while the majority of the population (including medical professionals, news sources, the general population, etc) at best completely ignore and at worst utterly deny the existence of long-covid.

And I’m so tired.

300 notes - Posted June 3, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Can we talk about how the afterlife gets more and more colorful as Klaus becomes more and more in control of his powers? Cause that’s BRILLIANT filmmaking right there

11,878 notes - Posted June 25, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[defira85]

So

tw: covid, tw: death

It’s been a rough few months to say the least

My boss got covid back in May. By early August, it was pretty obvious he had long covid. Anyone who’s been following me for long enough knows that it’s a real small business - there’s him and me and our receptionist, and we’ve got one girl off-site doing admin stuff. He hasn’t been able to work for almost 8 weeks now, and there’s a point coming soon where he won’t be able to keep paying us all

I’ve been trying to keep spirits up as best I can and keep things running

Then I got covid

It was honestly not as horrific as I was scared of, and right up until the moment when I got the text confirming a positive test, I was convinced I didn’t have it. Which was weird, given how terrified I’ve been of it for the last 2 and a half years. Don’t get me wrong, it hasn’t been easy, but I’ve been convinced I was going to die, absolutely certain it was going to kill me. The fact that I got through the worst of it without needing to go to hospital is unfathomable to me

But it hasn’t been easy. It’s almost 5 weeks now and I’m still symptomatic. Nowhere near as bad as the first 2 weeks, but it’s not letting me go. I’m trying to stay positive (again) about avoiding long covid but with every day that passes and I’m still showing symptoms, things look a little bleaker. I might have to find a new job before the end of the year, how am I going to find a new job while I have long covid? when I already have fibro?

Last Friday morning, we got a phone call from Tom’s dad

His mum had a massive heart attack during the night and had been rushed to hospital. I won’t go into the particulars of everything that’s happened in the last week, but to summarise, she never woke up. We lost her on Wednesday. The woman who was more of a mother to me than my own mother for the last decade was just gone without warning. And because I’m still symptomatic even if I’m returning negative RATs, I wasn’t allowed into the hospital

I never got to see her again. I had to say goodbye over the phone

I haven’t cried since it happened. I think everything is just too much to cry right now. I know it’s coming, but everything just feels so surreal and comically over the top at how catastrophic life has gone off the rails so fast that I swing between numb and hysterical

I’m trying to stay positive about things because if I don’t try, I’m going to break. I’m holding on by the slimmest thread

So that’s been me

Its her birthday in 3 weeks

[pcttrailsidereader]

PCT Hikers Behaving Badly

I thought that I would reproduce a recent thread regarding the behavior of some PCT hikers.  It is a disturbing trend . . . the issue of entitlement is one that has long been present but, for the most part, very much the exception in the hiking community.  It would be a horrible shame if it were to become part of the PCT thru-hiker culture.

PCTA has received contacts from agency partners reporting that PCT hikers are being disrespectful (berating service industry people!) to people working along the trail.  This is disappointing. Can hikers address this bad behavior in your ranks?

The latest situation comes from Crater Lake. Just last week PCT hikers started testing positive for Covid-19 in the area.

Mask wearing is mandatory (with some noted exceptions) inside all federal buildings and outdoor venues where space is not possible, regardless of transmission rate—this is a National Park Service policy to protect the health and wellbeing of employees and visitors.

PCT hikers have been congregating around the Mazama Camper Store, not wearing masks, berating concessionaire staff at the store and the restaurant when they make them aware of the NPS masking requirements.

Because so many PCT hikers have exhibited rude and disrespectful behavior, the National Park Service will be increasing law enforcement presence to talk to PCT hikers about the issue; this is a waste of staff resources.

With the backing of the Park, hikers who do not wear masks when they’re required will be refused service at the store and the restaurant from here on out, and the employees at both businesses have been encouraged to contact the Park law enforcement if future problems arise.

Hiking the PCT is a privilege and all who do have the responsibility to Leave No Trace. It’s upsetting that some hikers would insult people working to serve you while you’re on the trail.

When we all started this season, we knew that COVID-19 could, and likely would, pose unique challenges for all of us—hikers and communities.   Please be respectful of and follow all local rules to protect yourself and the health of others.

Drauggib

I’m at wildwood in Seiad valley right now. While talking to the ladies working here they said that group of NOBOS were a bunch of “disrespectful fucks” and a bunch of them didn’t pay their bills and dashed. On top of that, they were arguing about having to take a shower to save $5 on their camping fee ($15 for a place to stay with a shower). It was so sad because she opted on a day that she would otherwise be closed and had been doing catering for someone’s funeral the day before. It was real emotional for her. I tried to pay for a meal that people didn’t pay and she refused saying it happens every year. It makes me angry because these people have been so nice to us. Taking advantage of this hospitality is disgusting. The people doing this need to keep the fuck off the trail.

BigVariation3

These pieces of garbage are the morons who ruin it for the rest of us.

I saw a thru hiker, in his 50s btw, yelling at a teenage girl working at a laundromat in Northern California. She was asking him to follow the rules posted on the wall. We thought we were going to have to step in and we apologized profusely when he stormed out.

Potential178

Unfortunately, no more so than anyone might be able to address the bad behavior of some random other patrons at a pub.

To impact the behavior of any individual, they have to give a shit about our opinion.  So long as they have any ranks of their own, people are pretty impervious.  One shitty hiker, maybe you can talk some sense into them.  Three or more together & they'll have none shits to give.

InsGadget6

Yeah, the group mentality is what really enables this. Going back decades, some of the worst experiences I've had with douchebag hikers have been groups. They just enable one another, and prevent individuals from undergoing the necessary amount of self-discovery and - realization needed to grow up.

vanlandlife

My husband was on trail this year. He said he never would have imagined people acting this way on trail.

The amount of disrespectful hikers we came in contact with was appalling. They take up all the camps as massive groups, get drunk in towns in said massive groups, get other hikers kicked out of small town FREE camp areas, and have shown entitled behavior. We literally saw hikers get kicked out of a free place to stay in Julian because one just could not follow the rules of no alcohol.

Guthook has become Yelp. Bad reviews for no WiFi. I mean for real?? Sorry you can’t update your IG. If you can’t call home you should have invested in a proper safety device that will let you do so from anywhere.

A few trail angels said some of these hikers this year don’t even speak to them when given rides. No thank you, no tip. They just bury themselves in each other or in their phone when they get service. Hiding drinks in the backseat when they were told not to. It’s truly sad.

Now….Not ALL hikers on the PCT are this way. Just SOME. But that some really stood out and made things harder for other hikers who have manners and respect for the trail, towns, and angels.

[newstfionline]

Friday, August 6, 2021

US plans to require COVID-19 shots for foreign travelers (AP) The Biden administration is taking the first steps toward requiring nearly all foreign visitors to the U.S. to be vaccinated for the coronavirus, a White House official said. The requirement would come as part of the administration’s phased approach to easing travel restrictions for foreign citizens to the country. No timeline has yet been determined, as interagency working groups study how and when to safely move toward resuming normal travel. Eventually all foreign citizens entering the country, with some limited exceptions, are expected to need to be vaccinated against COVID-19 to enter the U.S.

Big tech companies are at war with employees over remote work (Ars Technica) All across the United States, the leaders at large tech companies like Apple, Google, and Facebook are engaged in a delicate dance with thousands of employees who have recently become convinced that physically commuting to an office every day is an empty and unacceptable demand from their employers. The COVID-19 pandemic forced these companies to operate with mostly remote workforces for months straight. And since many of them are based in areas with relatively high vaccination rates, the calls to return to the physical office began to sound over the summer. But thousands of high-paid workers at these companies aren’t having it. Many of them don’t want to go back to the office full time, even if they’re willing to do so a few days a week. Workers are even pointing to how effective they were when fully remote and using that to question why they have to keep living in the expensive cities where these offices are located. Some tech leaders (like Twitter’s Jack Dorsey) agreed, or at least they saw the writing on the wall. They enacted permanent or semipermanent changes to their companies’ policies to make partial or even full-time remote work the norm. Others (like Apple’s Tim Cook) are working hard to find a way to get everyone back in their assigned seats as soon as is practical, despite organized resistance. In either case, the work cultures at tech companies that make everything from the iPhone to Google search are facing a major wave of transformation.

At least 10 dead as van carrying migrants crashes in Texas (AP) An overloaded van carrying 29 migrants crashed Wednesday on a remote South Texas highway, killing at least 10 people, including the driver, and injuring 20 others, authorities said. The crash happened shortly after 4 p.m. Wednesday on U.S. 281 in Encino, Texas, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) north of McAllen. A surge in migrants crossing the border illegally has brought about an uptick in the number of crashes involving vehicles jammed with migrants who pay large amounts to be smuggled into the country. The Dallas Morning News has reported that the recruitment of young drivers for the smuggling runs, combined with excessive speed and reckless driving by those youths, have led to horrific crashes.

Turkish wildfires are worst ever, Erdogan says, as power plant breached (Reuters) Turkey is battling the worst wildfires in its history, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday, as fires spread to a power station in the country’s southwest after reducing swathes of coastal forest to ashes. Fanned by high temperatures and a strong, dry wind, the fires have forced thousands of Turks and foreign tourists to flee homes and hotels near the Aegean and Mediterranean coasts. Eight people have died in the blazes since last week. Planes and dozens of helicopters have joined scores of emergency crews on the ground to battle the fires, but Erdogan’s government has faced criticism over the scale and speed of the response. In the last two weeks, fires in Turkey have burnt more than three times the area affected in an average year, a European fire agency said. Neighbouring countries have also battled blazes fanned by heatwaves and strong winds.

Sri Lanka’s financial problems (Foreign Policy) Sri Lanka is threatening to become South Asia’s economic weak link. It’s mired in a severe debt crisis, and its budget deficit exceeded 11 percent of GDP during the last fiscal year, which ended in March. The country’s foreign reserves can only pay for three months of imports, prompting Colombo to cut back on many foreign imports, including turmeric, a staple product. Fitch Ratings has warned default is a real possibility. Sri Lanka’s woes stem in great part from a floundering tourism sector. Tourism typically accounts for at least 5 percent of GDP, and some estimates even put the figure at 12.5 percent. The sector’s troubles began before the coronavirus pandemic, when suicide bombers killed at least 290 people in churches and hotels in April 2019, keeping visitors away. But the pandemic still dealt a giant blow. A 2021 assessment found tourist arrivals between January and April fell nearly 100 percent from the same period in 2020.

Australia to spend $813M to address Indigenous disadvantage (AP) Australia’s government on Thursday pledged 1.1 billion Australian dollars ($813 million) to address Indigenous disadvantage, including compensation to thousands of mixed-race children who were taken from their families over decades. The AU$378.6 million ($279.7 million) to be used to compensate the so-called Stolen Generations by 2026 is the most expensive component of the package aimed at boosting Indigenous living standards in Australia. Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the compensation was a recognition of the harm caused by forced removal of children from families.

Israel launches airstrikes on Lebanon in response to rockets (AP) Israel on Thursday escalated its response to rocket attacks this week by launching rare airstrikes on Lebanon, the army said. The army said in a statement that jets struck the launch sites from which rockets had been fired over the previous day, as well as an additional target used to attack Israel in the past. The IDF blamed the state of Lebanon for the shelling and warned “against further attempts to harm Israeli civilians and Israel’s sovereignty.” The overnight airstrikes were a marked escalation at a politically sensitive time. Israel’s new eight-party governing coalition is trying to keep peace under a fragile cease fire that ended an 11-day war with Hamas’ militant rulers in Gaza in May.

‘Winning a medal doesn’t make him Jewish’ (Washington Post) When gymnast Artem Dolgopyat stepped off the podium as only the second Israeli to win an Olympic gold medal, he triggered one of Israel’s many cultural tripwires: It quickly emerged that the country’s newest sports hero is banned from marrying his fiancee here because he is not considered Jewish enough by the rabbis who control Israel’s marriage law. Immediately after Dolgopyat took top honors in the men’s floor exercise, his mother took the chance to complain that Israeli religious law is keeping her engaged 24-year-old son from tying the knot because only his father’s side of the family is Jewish. Marriage law is tightly controlled by Israel’s Chief Rabbinate. And for generations, couples who are of mixed religions—or who are atheists, gay or inadequately Jewish—have been forced to marry outside the country. Dolgopyat’s training schedule has made that impossible, said his mother, Angela Bilan. “I want grandchildren,” Bilan said Sunday in an interview with Israeli radio.

Talking to strangers (Atlantic) A hefty body of research has found that an overwhelmingly strong predictor of happiness and well-being is the quality of a person’s social relationships. But most of those studies have looked at only close ties: family, friends, co-workers. In the past decade and a half, professors have begun to wonder if interacting with strangers could be good for us too: not as a replacement for close relationships, but as a complement to them. The results of that research have been striking. Again and again, studies have shown that talking with strangers can make us happier, more connected to our communities, mentally sharper, healthier, less lonely, and more trustful and optimistic.

But tanks make such handy snowplows... (BBC) A German retiree was fined nearly $300,000 by local authorities on Tuesday following the discovery of a World War-II era tank in his basement along with other items of the period, including a flak cannon and multiple machine guns. The Panther tank was removed from the man’s property in 2015, a job that took 20 soldiers almost nine hours to complete. The unnamed 84-year-old might have been able to hold on to his tank and the rest of his collection—which must now be donated to a museum within two years, according to Tuesday’s ruling—had he kept it a better secret. “He was chugging around in that thing during the snow catastrophe in 1978,” Heikendorf Mayor Alexander Orth told reporters.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Pluralistic: 12 Mar 2020 (No health care for part-time TSA screeners, Akil Augustine on Radicalized, Wendell Potter rebuts Joe Biden, best Covid-19 explainer, Boeing's self-inflicted wounds, EU Right to Repair, virtual classrooms)

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@doctorow

Pluralistic: 12 Mar 2020

TSA boss doubles down on taking away health care from part-time screeners: They're touching your junk with diseased hands.

Akil Augustine on Radicalized: My book's Canada Reads champion lays out the case for Radicalized.

A former top Cigna exec rebuts Joe Biden's healthcare FUD: Wendell Potter is the prodigal corporate villain.

Ars Technica's Covid-19 explainer is the best resource on the pandemic: Beth Mole has outdone herself.

Boeing is even worse at financial engineering than they are at aircraft engineering: The $43B they incinerated through stock buybacks would sure come in handy about now.

Senate Republicans kill emergency sick leave during pandemic: Sick leave is cheaper than pandemics, but pandemics generate cost-plus contracts for the donor class.

The EU's new Right to Repair rules finally come for electronics: Snoods cocked at Apple and other US Big Tech monopolists.

How to run a virtual classroom: Masterclass from the 14-year-old Stanford Online High School.

This day in history: 2010, 2015, 2019

Colophon: Recent publications, current writing projects, upcoming appearances, current reading

TSA boss doubles down on taking away health care from part-time screeners (permalink)

TSA agents handles the personal belongings and touch the bodies of millions of fliers. Part time agents don't get health-insurance. If they think they might have Covid-19, they might not be able to afford to seek care.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/11/politics/tsa-health-care-part-time/index.html

TSA chief David Pekoske told Congress that the Trump administration's decision to take away health-care from part time TSA employees was a good one: "I have no intention of restoring health care coverage for part-time workers. I think that was a good decision."

About 100 TSA agents have been sent home after it was believed they came into contact with Covid-19. The TSA will not try to track down passengers who also might have come into contact with sick people.

Akil Augustine on Radicalized (permalink)

My book Radicalized is a finalist for the Canada Reads national book prize. Each of the five finalists is defended by a Canadian celeb: my champion is the amazing and articulate Akil Augustine.

Akil just appeared on the @CBC's Canada Reads podcast to give us a preview of his defense, which he will field during several nights of nationally televised debates next week.

http://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1708600899815/

He did an OUTSTANDING job! Here's the MP3:

https://cbc.mc.tritondigital.com/CBC_CNDAREADS_P/media/cndareads-3NLwEPaV-20200309.mp3

A former top Cigna exec rebuts Joe Biden's healthcare FUD (permalink)

In a recent and important essay, Maria Farrell wrote about the road-to-Damascus conversions that ex-techies are having in which they recant the damaging product design work they did and begin to campaign against their former employers.

https://conversationalist.org/2020/03/05/the-prodigal-techbro/

Farrell noted that these techies had missed an important step in their transformation from venal attention mercenaries to noble attention freedom-fighters: they had yet to hit bottom, to truly repent their earlier sins.

They skipped like stones over the waters of privilege, and never sank, unlike so many of their victims.

Contrast those journeys with that of Wendell Potter, the former Cigna exec turned whistleblower, who has devoted decades of his life to revealing dirty tricks and lies. Potter campaigns tirelessly – and shrewdly – for Medicare for All, and is always at pains to point out that the anti-M4A talking points his adversaries parrots were all developed by him, when he was on the wrong side of history.

Take this thread, rebutting Joe Biden's FUD about M4A, delivered in the midst of a pandemic that has been worsened by the 77 million un- and underinsured people who can't get care or screening and disproportionately work in food-service and cleaning.

https://twitter.com/wendellpotter/status/1237438497218105344

As Potter points out, Biden's assertion that M4A costs $35T is just a lie. Once you factor in the savings of not paying for private healthcare, M4A SAVES at least $450B/year.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(19)33019-3/fulltext

Biden's plan to cap premiums on a public option at 8.5% of your income is more than double what M4A would cost you. The corporate plans Biden lionizes shackle good workers to bad employers, and put millions at risk of having their care arbitrarily withdrawn or limited. And, of course, private care doesn't cover much. Surprise bills, deductibles, co-pays, out-of-pockets… Our plan – a blue-chip employer's top-of-the-line Cigna plan – costs us $24K/year.

We're rationing our family's health care because in addition to the $20K/year we're paying out of pocket, Cigna refused to cover a pain procedure that my doc – the most-cited pain doc working in California, who runs a major university pain clinic – says I would benefit from. That procedure might let me get a good night's sleep for the first time in 15 years and allow me to live a more normal, pain-free life. But because Cigna won't cover it, it would cost $55K, which we do not have. So I'm foregoing it.

Ars Technica's Covid-19 explainer is the best resource on the pandemic (permalink)

I've been reading Beth Mole's outstanding science journalism for many years and I've always admired it, but even by the high standards of a Beth Mole explainer, this soup-to-nuts Covid-19 explainer is just spectacularly good work.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/03/dont-panic-the-comprehensive-ars-technica-guide-to-the-coronavirus/

Mole's calm and comprehensive coverage relies on the most reliable sources and turns the results of our best evidence-based studies into a coherent narrative, from the disease's origins to its spread to its symptoms to its resolution.

Just this symptom-by-symptom breakdown was enormously informative and filled in a huge gap that I had previously mentally signposted as "flu-like".

According to data from nearly 56,000 laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 patients in China, the rundown of common symptoms went as follows:

88 percent had a fever

68 percent had a dry cough

38 percent had fatigue

33 percent coughed up phlegm

19 percent had shortness of breath

15 percent had joint or muscle pain

14 percent had a sore throat

14 percent headache

11 percent had chills

5 percent had nausea or vomiting

5 percent had nasal congestion

4 percent had diarrhea

Less than one percent coughed up blood or blood-stained mucus

Less than one percent had watery eyes

The sections on transmission, self-protection, and care during a social distancing lockdown or quarantine are likewise levelheaded, clear and informative.

This is a tab you should just keep open in your browser, IOW. Mole's updating frequently, too.

Boeing is even worse at financial engineering than they are at aircraft engineering (permalink)

Boeing is experiencing a potentially terminal slump. Between losses due to its 737 Max scandal (a self-inflicted injury), and the dropoff in travel during the pandemic, it has had to draw down its entire line of credit and institute a hiring freeze.

https://wolfstreet.com/2020/03/11/boeing-crashes-as-43-billion-in-past-share-buybacks-turn-into-existential-threat

Obviously, Boeing can't be blamed for the pandemic.

But you know what is absolutely the company's fault? Its financial engineering.

Since 2013, Boeing squandered $43 billion on stock buybacks, whose sole purpose was to goose its share-price.

As Wolf Richter writes, Boeing, this "master of financial engineering – instead of aircraft engineering – blew, wasted, and incinerated $43.4 billion on buying back its own shares."

The company just had to borrow $13.825B. Its shares are down 46% since March 2019.

The entire company – a jewel of American industry – might not survive, because it focused on short-term enrichment of shareholders, rather than safe aircraft or financial prudence.

Reality has a well-known anti-capitalist bias, part MMMLVII.

Senate Republicans kill emergency sick leave during pandemic (permalink)

Senate Republicans have killed emergency sick leave legislation, a move that will force millions of low-waged cleaning and food-service workers to choose between homelessness and potentially spreading Covid-19.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/coronavirus-paid-sick-leave-us-republicans-block-senate-bill-new-york-washington-a9395821.htm

The GOP says that paid sick leave will endanger the fragile bottom lines of employers and also that the feds have no money to pay for such a thing – despite finding it easy to blow $2.3 trillion on tax-cuts for the super-rich.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/28/tax-cuts-trump-gop-analysis-430781

They also found $20 BILLION in the senate's sofa cushions to give to the Pentagon, an agency whose auditor found more than a trillion dollars in off-the-books transactions in its financial records.

https://www.defensenews.com/congress/2019/12/19/pentagon-finally-gets-its-2020-budget-from-congress/

Refusing to help poor Americans stay fed and sheltered isn't just cruel, it's lethally reckless, and it demonstrates the moral hazard of oligarchic capitalism. Subsidizing sick-leave would merely afford survival to millions of Americans, after all.

Whereas the crisis that this will produce – a pandemic that is made worse and longer – will cost billions more, but that money will go to the donor-class, the Beltway Bandits whose cost-plus, no-bid contracts will transfer even more money from the poor to the wealthy.

It's disaster capitalism at its worst. The Senate GOP is dooming you and everyone you love to the risk of disease and death because preventing that risk would help millions of poor people, whereas creating the risk helps a handful of ultrarich people.

The EU's new Right to Repair rules finally come for electronics (permalink)

The EU Commission's latest "Circular Economy Action Plan" has enormous significance for Right to Repair and electronics.

https://ec.europa.eu/environment/circular-economy/pdf/new_circular_economy_action_plan.pdf

In addition to a host of eminently sensible, long overdue measures (bans on single use items and the destruction of unsold goods), there's a renewed emphasis on electronics, through the "Circular Electronics Initiative".

https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/11/european-lawmakers-propose-a-right-to-repair-for-mobiles-and-laptops/

The initiative mandates that components be reusable, repairable, and upgradable, and requires long-term software support to keep IoT devices useful for longer. These mandates – also long overdue – show that the EU is finally willing to ignore the priorities of Apple and other US Big Tech companies in favour of Europeans' rights to the long-term enjoyment of their property and the right not to drown in e-waste).

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/08/ghost-flights/#eurighttorepair

How to run a virtual classroom (permalink)

For 14 years, Stanford Online High School has been running fully virtual classrooms, with continuous, ongoing improvements in their tech and methods. They've just published a new guide to "the essential steps for preparing to teach online in a short period of time." They're also conducting a series of webinars on the subject.

https://ohs.stanford.edu/how

(I just realized that I've got a decade-old mail rule that autodeletes anything containing the word "webinar" that I probably need to turn off now that the term is being used by people other than hustling spammy grifters)

This day in history (permalink)

#10yrsago Leaked UK record industry memo sets out plans for breaking copyright https://craphound.com/BPDigitalEconomyBillweeklyminutes.pdf

#5yrsago Portland cops charge homeless woman with theft for charging her phone https://news.streetroots.org/2015/03/06/homeless-phone-charging-thief-wanted-security

#5yrsago How Harper's "anti-terror" bill ends privacy in Canada http://www.michaelgeist.ca/2015/03/why-the-anti-terrorism-bill-is-really-an-anti-privacy-bill-bill-c-51s-evisceration-of-government-privacy/

#5yrsago RIP, Terry Pratchett https://web.archive.org/web/20150312202353/http://www.pjsmprints.com/

#1yrago Security researcher reveals grotesque vulnerabilities in "Yelp-for-MAGA" app and its snowflake owner calls in the FBI

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources: Slashdot (https://slashdot.org), Naked Capitalism (https://nakedcapitalism.com/).

Hugo nominators! My story "Unauthorized Bread" is eligible in the Novella category and you can read it free on Ars Technica: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/

Upcoming appearances:

Museums and the Web: March 31-April 4 2020, Los Angeles. https://mw20.museweb.net/

Currently writing: I'm rewriting a short story, "The Canadian Miracle," for MIT Tech Review. It's a story set in the world of my next novel, "The Lost Cause," a post-GND novel about truth and reconciliation. I'm also working on "Baby Twitter," a piece of design fiction also set in The Lost Cause's prehistory, for a British think-tank. I'm getting geared up to start work on the novel afterwards.

Currently reading: Just started Lauren Beukes's forthcoming Afterland: it's Y the Last Man plus plus, and two chapters in, it's amazeballs. Last month, I finished Andrea Bernstein's "American Oligarchs"; it's a magnificent history of the Kushner and Trump families, showing how they cheated, stole and lied their way into power. I'm getting really into Anna Weiner's memoir about tech, "Uncanny Valley." I just loaded Matt Stoller's "Goliath" onto my underwater MP3 player and I'm listening to it as I swim laps.

Latest podcast: A Lever Without a Fulcrum Is Just a Stick https://archive.org/download/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_330/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_330_-_A_Lever_Without_a_Fulcrum_Is_Just_a_Stick.mp3

Upcoming books: "Poesy the Monster Slayer" (Jul 2020), a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Pre-order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627?utm_source=socialmedia&utm_medium=socialpost&utm_term=na-poesycorypreorder&utm_content=na-preorder-buynow&utm_campaign=9781626723627

(we're having a launch for it in Burbank on July 11 at Dark Delicacies and you can get me AND Poesy to sign it and Dark Del will ship it to the monster kids in your life in time for the release date).

"Attack Surface": The third Little Brother book, Oct 20, 2020.

"Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a very special, s00per s33kr1t intro.

[patriotsnet]

Can Republicans Take Back The House

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/can-republicans-take-back-the-house/

Can Republicans Take Back The House

The Gop Has Yet To Land A Single Top Recruit To Run For The Senate Anywhere In The Country

Representative Kevin McCarthy discusses if Republicans can take back the House in 2020

The surest way that Republicans can stop whatever legislative agenda President Biden has in mind after the 2022 midterm elections is to win a majority in the US Senate.

Even more than the House, a simple majority in the Senate could let Republicans gum up everything from gun control legislation to Supreme Court nominations.

On paper, it seems easy enough. Republicans need to win just a single seat in order to flip the 50-50 Senate and possibilities for doing so are all over the map. Given that midterm elections often benefit the party out of power, and Democrats control two out of three levers of the federal government, Republicans wouldnât be overly optimistic in assuming Mitch McConnell might soon rule the Senate again.

But here is the thing about the GOPâs chances: At this early stage, they are having problems getting good candidates to sign up. And while the historical trends look good for Republicans you canât win something with nothing.

Republicans have yet to land a single top recruit to run for the Senate anywhere in the country â even in places where they have an opportunity to flip a seat â and a good candidate could make all the difference.

In Nevada, Republicans are pinning their hopes on getting former state attorney general Adam Laxalt in the race to challenge Masto, who won in 2016 by just 3 percentage points. So far, Laxalt has not announced plans to run and he comes with baggage: he lost a bid for governor in 2018.

House Republicans Voice Optimism On Winning Back The House Following Special Election Victories

Coming on the heels of two special election wins, House Republicans are feeling a new sense of optimism about their odds of taking back control of the lower chamber, with National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Tom EmmerThomas Earl EmmerCrypto industry seeks to build momentum after losing Senate fightTrump-backed Mike Carey wins GOP primary in Ohio special electionJuan Williams: Biden’s child tax credit is a game-changerMORE saying he feels the House is more than just in play.;

While independent political forecasters have largely projected that Republicans face a steep uphill climb to win back the majority citing the number of retirements, the number of seats that flipped in the midterms and the fact that Democrats have a cash advantage top GOP lawmakers say Rep. Mike Garcia’s victory over Democrat Christy Smith in a competitive swing district indicates political analysts may be underestimating the partys momentum.;

The Garcia election in Los Angeles I think was a wake-up call to all the skeptics out there that in the middle of all of these difficult challenges, a Republican just flipped a seat in the suburbs of L.A., and that hasnt been done in 22 years, House Minority Whip Steve ScaliseStephen Joseph ScaliseLouisiana delegation asks for additional relief funding after IdaFEMA has funds to cover disasters for nowWatch live: Scalise holds news conference on Afghanistan MORE told The Hill.;

Al Weaver contributed.

Gerrymandering Texas Could Help Republicans Take Back The House In 2022

HOUSTON Fort Bend County was a sleepy suburban outpost of Houston when KP George arrived in the late 1990s, dominated by conservative politics and represented in Congress by Republican Party star Tom DeLay.

Twenty years later, the areas population has more than doubled in size, driven by fast-growing Asian, Latino and Black communities that in 2019 helped elect George an immigrant from southern India as Fort Bends first non-white county judge.

The wave of left-leaning voters that elevated George and other Democrats to local office in recent years may also help the area land a new congressional district. Texas gained two House seats in the 2020 U.S. Census, driven by a population boom in the Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan regions, among other parts of the state.

But the Republican-controlled state legislature will be in charge of drawing the new districts, leaving Democrats on the sidelines, worried they may not benefit from the regions changing demographics.

You feel like youre not being counted, George said. My county is benefitting from people like me. But when it comes to the seat at the table , we dont have it.

Redistricting is a byzantine process that plays out behind closed doors, but the stakes are high. New congressional and state legislative lines will remain in place for the next decade, giving the parties that benefit most from redistricting considerable clout in policymaking and upcoming elections.

Also Check: Who Won The House Republicans Or Democrats

Democrats And Republicans Vote Straight In Line With Their Parties

Every Republican voted no Wednesday as the Democratic-led U.S. House passed the $1.9 trillion legislation. No Senate Republican voted for the bill when it;came before that chamber;Saturday.

During weeks of debate,;Republicans said the bulk of the spending would go;to an array of items unrelated to COVID-19 from Amtrak railroad service to arts and humanities programs.

Former President Donald Trump issued a short statement after the bill’s passage Wednesday, taking credit for development of COVID-19 vaccines in what could be a glimpse into Republican talking points.;

If I wasnt President, you wouldnt be getting that beautiful shot for 5 years, at best, and probably wouldnt be getting it at all. I hope everyone remembers! Trump said.

The bill; to Americans, extends unemployment benefits, addresses child poverty and health care programs;and speeds up programs to supply COVID-19 vaccinations and school reopenings; all items Democrats frequently tout.

Chris Taylor, a spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said “the;American people will remember that House Republicans voted against cutting childhood poverty in half” and “getting stimulus checks into the hands of struggling Americans,” among;other benefits.

“House Republicans left American families out to dry,” he said. “The people won’t forget that.”;

Its Not All Bad News For Democrats

While it was unquestionably a good night for Republicans, Democrats still held onto most of the seats they won in 2018 and will continue to be the majority party in the House. Thats in part because they retained most of the suburban districts they picked up in 2018.

Of the 233 seats that Democrats held coming into the election,2 186 of them were in districts that were predominantly or partly suburban in nature, according to density categorizations by Bloombergs CityLab. Thus far, Democrats have lost seven of those seats, but they captured one GOP-held suburban seat around Atlanta. And thanks to redistricting, theyve also won two formerly Republican seats around Greensboro and Raleigh in North Carolina, which reflect the partys strength in more populous areas.

Because of their relative success in the suburbs, Democrats kept many seats in places President Trump won in 2016. Coming into the election, Democrats held 30 seats in districts Trump carried in 2016, and they wouldve lost their majority if theyd lost more than half of them . But theyve won 18 of them so far and picked up one from the GOP . In fact, more than half of Republicans gains have come in seats representing places that Trump won by a pretty sizable margin in 2016. Well have to wait a bit before data can tell us how congressional districts voted in 2020,3 but for now it seems many Republican gains were made by picking off the lowest-hanging fruit.

Don’t Miss: What Is The Principle Of Republicanism

The Justice Department Puts States On Notice About Election Audits And Voting Changes

“If they’re going to try to rely on rigging this game, because they don’t have a plan for the future and they can’t talk to the voters about their ideas and their vision, well, I think that makes me proud to be a Democrat.”

Maloney also posits that GOP turnout will be depressed in an election that doesn’t feature former President Donald Trump himself.

“There’s no evidence that this toxic Trump message will motivate voters without Trump on the ballot,” he says. “If the other side is making one big mistake, I think that might be it, which is a doubling down on this toxic Trump message of division and anger and racism and yet there’s no evidence they can pull out voters with the message without the messenger.”

He points to Texas Republican Jake Ellzey as a recent example. Ellzey was sworn in to the House on Friday, days after winning a special election that saw him defeat a Trump-backed candidate.

Maloney underscores: “It seems like the Trump endorsement’s not what it used to be.”

Here are more highlights from his conversation with NPR’s Susan Davis.

On polarization in Congress:

On the Republican Party:

On his own reelection in 2022:

I Do Not Buy That A Social Media Ban Hurts Trumps 2024 Aspirations: Nate Silver

sarah: Yeah, Democrats might not have their worst Senate map in 2022, but it will by no means be easy, and how they fare will have a lot to do with the national environment. And as we touched on earlier, Bidens overall approval rating will also make a big difference in Democrats midterm chances.

nrakich: Yeah, if the national environment is even a bit Republican-leaning, that could be enough to allow solid Republican recruits to flip even Nevada and New Hampshire. And then it wouldnt even matter if Democrats win Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

One thing is for sure, though whichever party wins the Senate will have only a narrow majority, so I think were stuck in this era of moderates like Sens. Joe Manchin and Lisa Murkowski controlling every bills fate for at least a while longer.;

sarah: Lets talk about big picture strategy, then, and where that leaves us moving forward. Its still early and far too easy to prescribe election narratives that arent grounded in anything, but one gambit the Republican Party seems to be making at this point is that attacking the Democratic Party for being too progressive or woke will help them win.

What do we make of that playbook headed into 2022? Likewise, as the party in charge, what are Democrats planning for?

With that being said, the GOPs strategies could still gin up turnout among its base, in particular, but its hard to separate that from general dissatisfaction with Biden.

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Rising Violent Crime Is Likely To Present A Political Challenge For Democrats In 2022

But there are roadblocks to fully enacting Democrats’ agenda. Their thin majorities in both chambers of Congress mean nearly all Democrats have to get on board with every agenda item in order to push through major legislative priorities. And without adjusting or eliminating the legislative filibuster in the Senate, Democrats need 10 Republicans to join them for various legislation a near-impossible task.

Will 2022 Be A Good Year For Republicans

Can the GOP take back the House? Kevin McCarthy weighs in

A FiveThirtyEight Chat

Welcome to FiveThirtyEights politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

sarah : Were still more than a year away from the 2022 midterm elections, which means it will be a while before we should take those general election polls too seriously. But with a number of elections underway in 2021, not to mention a number of special elections, its worth kicking off the conversation around what we do and dont know about Republicans and Democrats odds headed into the midterms.

Lets start big picture. The longstanding conventional wisdom is that midterm elections generally go well for the party thats not in the White House. Case in point: Since 1946, the presidents party has lost, on average, 27 House seats.

What are our initial thoughts? Is the starting assumption that Republicans should have a good year in 2022?

alex : Yes, and heres why: 2022 will be the first federal election after the House map are redrawn. And because Democrats fell short of their 2020 expectations in state legislative races, Republicans have the opportunity to redraw congressional maps that are much more clearly in their favor. On top of that, Republicans are already campaigning on the cost and magnitude of President Bidens policy plans to inspire a backlash from voters.

geoffrey.skelley :Simply put, as that chart above shows, the expectation is that Democrats, as the party in the White House, will lose seats in the House.;

nrakich : What they said!

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Possible 2010 Or 2014 Midterm Repeat

Big bets on policy also don’t necessarily pay off at the ballot box, a lesson Democrats learned a decade ago when they passed the Affordable Care Act. President Barack Obama’s domestic policy achievement also helped decimate congressional Democratic majorities in the 2010 and 2014 midterm elections.

It’s just one reason why Republicans feel good about their chances in 2022, along with structural advantages like the redistricting process, where House districts are redrawn every decade to reflect population changes. Republicans control the process in more states and are better positioned to gain seats.

“This deck is already stacked, because they’ve been gerrymandering these districts,” Maloney says. “And now they’re trying to do even more of it and add to that with these Jim Crow-style voter suppression laws throughout the country.”

He maintains that efforts among Republican-led state legislatures to enact more voting restrictions show the party has a losing policy hand for the midterm elections.

Jim Jordan: Biden Has Not Done One Thing Right Gop Will Take Back House In 2022

OPINION: This article contains commentary which reflects the authors opinion

Ohio GOP Rep. Jim Jordan says that Joe Biden has not done one thing right and that he thinks Bidens incompetence will cost Democrats next year.

During an interview on FNCs FOX News Primetime, Jordan said Republicans will take back control of the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2022 midterm elections.Guest host Tammy Bruce said, What is your message to the American people as we deal with the unfolding disaster of the Biden administration?Jorden said, Well, yeah, defend anyone who gets attacked. These people running for school board because they

Read the rest of this story here: conservativebrief.com

With that said, our content may be reproduced and distributed as long as it has a link to the original source and the author is credited prominently. We dont mind you using our content as long as you help out by giving us credit with a prominent link. If you feel like giving us a tip for the content, we will not object!

JD Rucker EIC

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Republicans Winning Money Race As They Seek To Take Over House In 2022

By Alex Rogers and Manu Raju, CNN

The National Republican Congressional Committee announced Wednesday that it had raised $45.4 million in the second quarter of 2021, the most it has ever raised in three months of a non-election year, as Republicans seek to take over the House in 2022.

This story has been updated with additional developments Wednesday.

Republicans Are Well Positioned To Take The House In 2022

Although we dont yet know the winners of some House races, we can already look ahead to the 2022 midterms and see a fairly straightforward path for the GOP to capture the House. Midterm elections historically go well for the party thats not in the White House, and the out-of-power party is especially likely to do well in the House, since every seat is up for election .

Since the end of World War II, the presidential party has lost an average of 27 House seats in midterm elections, as the chart below shows. No matter how many seats Democrats end up with after 2020s election at this point, they will probably end up somewhere in the low 220s a loss of that magnitude would easily be enough for Republicans to retake the House.

The recent history of midterms in a Democratic presidents first term seems especially promising for the GOP, too. Following Bill Clintons election in 1992, Democrats lost more than 50 seats in 1994, and after Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008, Democrats lost more than 60 seats.

If Democrats had added five to 10 seats this year, they could have survived a 20-seat loss in the midterms. Instead, Republicans will probably need to win fewer than 10 seats to gain a slender majority in 2022.

Recommended Reading: Who Was The Leader Of The Radical Republicans

Top Republicans Think Taking Back House And Senate Would Force Biden To Center

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says if Republicans can win back control of Congress in the 2022 midterms, it would force President Joe Biden into a political corner.

Speaking at an event in his home state of Kentucky, McConnell says Americans will have a big decision to make come midterms when control of the House and Senate will be up for grabs.

Do they really want a moderate administration or not? If the House and Senate were to return to Republican hands that doesnt mean nothing will get done, McConnell said.

What I want you to know is if I become majority leader again its not for stopping everything. Its for stopping the worst. Its for stopping things that fundamentally push the country into a direction that at least my party feels is not a good idea for the country. I could make sure Biden makes his promise to be a moderate, he added.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell suggested Monday that he would block a Supreme Court nominee in 2024 if Republicans regain control of the Senate after the 2022 midterm elections.

— USA TODAY

One of the things McConnell would be guaranteed to block from Biden would be a Supreme Court nomination, much like he did with former President Barack Obama and his last nominee, Merrick Garland.;

The Democrats hold a slim lead of nine seats in the House with all 435 seats up for grabs.

[undertheinfluencerd]

A Timeline Of Scarlett Johansson’s Disney Lawsuit, So Far

For more than a decade, Scarlett Johansson had a close relationship with Disney. As a founding member of the MCU’s Avengers, Johansson was part of some of the studio’s greatest triumphs, culminating with 2019’s mega-event Avengers: Endgame.

RELATED: 5 Ways Black Widow Is Scarlett Johansson’s Best Role (& 5 Better Alternatives)

Things took a turn for the worst when, on July 29, 2021, Johansson filed a lawsuit against Disney, claiming Black Widow‘s simultaneous release in theaters and Disney+ was a breach of her contract. Disney issued a direct response, and the fight now seems to be going all the way to court. Hollywood now awaits to see how the situation develops, but one thing is for sure: if Johansson wins, Tinseltown will never be the same.

10 July 9: Black Widow Premieres In Cinemas And Disney+

After multiple delays, Black Widow finally premiered on July 9, 2021. The movie debuted simultaneously on cinemas and Disney+, grossing $219 million worldwide, including $80 million at the domestic box office. Disney also provided streaming numbers, declaring the movie grossed $60 million on premier access.

For all terms and purposes, that was an excellent debut for the movie. In fact, Black Widow had the largest opening of the pandemic era, surpassing F9‘s $70 million.

9 July 29: Scarlett Johansson Sues Disney

Things took a turn on July 29, when Scarlett Johansson filed a lawsuit against Disney. In the documents, Johansson alleged that the simultaneous release on cinemas and Disney+ breached a stipulation on her contract that guaranteed a traditional theatrical release for Black Widow.

Furthermore, Johansson’s complaint said that Disney’s release strategy cost her millions of dollars in backend compensation. The lawsuit took Hollywood by storm, and it wouldn’t be long before Disney issued a statement of their own.

8 July 29: Disney Fires Back At Scarlett Johansson

On the same day, Disney fired back at Johansson. In a statement, a Disney spokesperson claimed that “There is no merit whatsoever to this filing. The lawsuit is especially sad and distressing in its callous disregard for the horrific and prolonged global effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

In a mover that would later prove controversial, the studio also revealed Johansson’s salary for Black Widow. The statement also claimed that “the release of Black Widow on Disney+ has significantly enhanced (Johansson’s) ability to earn additional compensation on top of the $20M she has received to date.” Disney’s response attracted significant criticism from insiders within the industry and audiences alike.

7 July 30: Scarlet Johansson’s Agent Slams Disney’s Response

By July 30, the scandal was raging. CAA’s co-chairman and Johansson’s agent, Bryan Lourd, issued a statement supporting the actress and slamming Disney. “(The Walt Disney Company has) shamelessly and falsely accused Ms. Johansson of being insensitive to the global COVID pandemic, in an attempt to make her appear to be someone they and I know she isn’t.”

RELATED: Scarlett Johansson’s 10 Most Iconic Roles, Ranked From Most Action-Packed To Most Dramatic

Lourd goes on to talk about Johansson’s journey throughout the MCU, stating that the nine movies she made with the studio “earned Disney and its shareholders billions.” Lourd ended his statement by saying that “Disney’s direct attack on her character and all else they implied is beneath the company that many of us in the creative community have worked with successfully for decades.”

6 July 30: Reports Claim Kevin Feige Is Angry At Disney

It wasn’t long before Kevin Feige’s name made its way to the discourse. According to former Hollywood Reporter editor Matt Belloni, the architect behind the MCU was “p*ssed.” In his blog What I’m Hearing…, Belloni stated that Feige was reportedly “angry and embarrassed” over Disney’s handling of the situation.

Belloni also explained that Feige “lobbied Disney against the day-and-date plan for Black Widow, preferring the big screen exclusivity and not wanting to upset his talent.” Furthermore, Belloni noted Feige’s relevance to the studio, even going so far as to call him “Disney’s most important employee.” Indeed, Feige has raked in billions for Disney, making him one of the most successful producers ever.

5 July 30: Reports Claim Emma Stone Is Considering Suing Disney Over Cruella’s Release

Just when audiences thought things couldn’t get any worse, Screenrant reported that Emma Stone was considering a lawsuit of her own over the hybrid release of Cruella. The movie, which told the origin story of one of cinema’s most iconic villains, premiered on May 28, grossing $21.4 million.

In his exclusive newsletter What I’m Hearing…, former THR editor Matt Belloni claimed that Stone was “weighing her options.” Belloni went on to claim that Johansson had tremendous support from fellow artists. As of August 2021, Stone has yet to file a lawsuit; if she does, it could mean the end for Disney’s premier access model.

4 July 30: Several Female-Led Hollywood Groups Accuse Disney Of “Gendered Attack” Against Scarlett Johansson

July 30 would turn out to be a crucial day for the situation. After Disney’s less than appropriate initial response, many were quick to condemn the Mouse House. In a joint issue, three major female-led Hollywood groups–TIME’S UP, Women in Film, Los Angeles, and ReFrame–called Disney’s response ” a gendered character attack.”

The statement claimed that, while the organizations took no position in the litigation between Johansson and Disney, they stood “firmly against Disney’s recent statement, which attempts to characterize Johansson as insensitive or selfish for defending her contractual business rights.”

3 August 2: Reports Claim Bob Iger Is “Mortified” By Scarlett Johansson’s Lawsuit

Bob Iger stepped down as CEO of the Walt Disney Company on February 20, 2020. Bob Chapek took on the mantle, and while the transition was supposedly easy, rumors soon arose of friction between the two men. In an August 2 article, The Wrap goes so far as to claim that “It’s an open secret in Hollywood that Disney Executive Chairman Bob Iger and CEO Bob Chapek have been estranged for months.”

RELATED: Disney+’s 10 Best Original Shows, Ranked By IMDB

The Wrap‘s Sharon Waxman claims that Iger is “mortified” over the situation. Moreover, a Disney insider claimed that Iger “either intentionally allowed Chapek to shoot himself in the foot… by failing to step in and negotiate an alternative to a lawsuit, or that he is so disconnected from his successor that he was not in the loop to step in as he usually would.”

2 August 6: SAG-Aftra Says Disney “Should Be Ashamed”

SAG-Aftra’s president Gabrielle Carteris weighed in on the situation on August 6. On behalf of the actors union, Carteris stated that “Disney should be ashamed of themselves for resorting to tired tactics of gender-shaming and bullying.”

Carteris went on to claim that “actors must be compensated for their work according to their contracts.” To finish her statement, Carteris added that SAG-Aftra is “deeply concerned by the gendered tone of Disney’s criticism of Ms. Johansson.”

1 Now: An Uncertain Future For Hollywood

Almost two weeks after Johansson first filed the lawsuit, the situation doesn’t seem to be close to ending. If anything, things are getting messier, and neither side seems willing to back down. More and more industry insiders are talking about the conflict, like producer Jason Blum, who recently said that Johansson “is really brave” and “is fighting for all of talent.”

In an August 4 report, THR‘s Kim Masters writes that streaming might bring the end to “massive backend deals,” which might prompt other stars to join Johansson’s fight. And what about Disney? The company that built its brand on wholesome happiness suffered a heavy blow from this situation. Many believe the lawsuit tarnished Disney’s reputation–and might even open a Pandora’s Box that the Mouse will struggle to close.

NEXT: The 10 Highest Grossing Actors Of The 2010s, Ranked According To Box Office Mojo

[eagle-eyez]

Shortly after the COVID-19 lockdown began, I found myself all alone in my Mumbai apartment. My roommates had all left, for some reason or the other, and it was just me. The first couple of weeks were easy, I was living my best life and channeling my inner Kevin McAllister with gleeful abandon, eating ice-cream in the middle of the day with not a care in the world. The next couple of weeks, however, were... difficult. There was a point at which my little 2BHK abode, which, on usual days, felt stifling and small, started to seem infinite. The walls began to loom over me, and the walk from the front door to my kitchen felt like a marathon.

I was slowly beginning to succumb to a strange brand of melancholy, the kind that only something like a global pandemic can bring about. In my desperation to exit this sinking quicksand feeling, I tried all sorts of distractions. I watched films that everyone had raved about, television shows that frequently featured on "Top 10 shows to watch if you're not an uncultured swine" lists, even going so far as to — and I shudder to say this out loud — listen to a podcast or two. None of that really worked, and my salvation would finally come whilst trawling through the bargain bin offers on the PlayStation store, in the shape of F1 2019.

Prior to this point, I'd never played an F1 game before, despite being an on-again, off-again fan of the actual sport. Also, my utter incompetence when it comes to racing games might have something to do with why I'd never dipped my toes into Codemasters' decades-long series. In fact, just minutes after booting up F1 2019, I was ready to quit. I was expecting a light, carefree racing experience, but instead, what I got was an ultra-serious, simulator-esque ordeal, with all manners of strange buttons and technical jargon being thrown my way. Despite this initial reluctance, I persevered, and over the next month or so, I obsessively played my way through pretty much everything the game had to offer, and in the process, somehow managed to stave off the lockdown blues (Just to make it clear, I'm not advocating for F1 2019 to replace any of the tools you would use to improve your mental health, please try therapy, it works wonders).

So of course, a year later, when the opportunity came to review the successor to the game that got me through the first few months of the pandemic, I lunged at it with both hands. After having played it for a week or so, I've come to the realisation that despite having sunk many, many hours of my life into this game, I have somehow not gotten any better. I might actually be worse at it than I was a year ago. The game, on the other hand, has improved significantly.

Gameplay and Graphics

While the gameplay of F1 2021 is not massively different from its predecessors, there are a few noteworthy additions that make it a more appealing and polished game than those that came before it. Chief among those is the addition of Braking Point, a "Drive to Survive"-inspired game mode that attempts to throw back the curtain and expose the seedy underbelly of a sport that features 20 millionaires driving around in circles really fast. We'll talk about Braking Point in detail a little later, but F1 2021 is not all about huge updates and big overhauls.

There have also been a number of smaller, more subtle improvements. For an inept hand like myself, the assists, in particular, were one improvement that stood out to me almost immediately. Having little green and red arrows to tell you when to brake and when to accelerate away is really useful, and while these features have been a part of the F1 series for a while now, you do have a slightly larger degree of control over them now.

The game also integrates the DualSense controller's ability to adjust the tension in the trigger buttons, but if you didn't know that before you started playing, you might not realise it at all. In fact, I only remembered that the game was supposed to use adaptive triggers when I was re-watching a teaser trailer that had come out in the build-up to the game's release. Turns out, there are different levels of sensitivity that you can apply to the triggers, and the effects of the default level are not very noticeable. Once I had amped it up a little, I really felt a lot of feedback from the controls, and it made racing a lot more enjoyable by adding a heightened level of tactile interaction.

When it comes to the graphics, there's been a marked improvement in quality, though I suspect that might have more to do with the capabilities of the PlayStation 5 than it has to do with the game itself. Opting to race in rainy conditions will dramatically transform the visuals, with the almost photorealistic soaked asphalt, crunchy gravel and overcast skies really adding to the immersive quality of the experience. In contrast, when racing on circuits like Bahrain, the swirling sand and bright, oppressive sunlight really replicate what it's like to be at that particular track, so much so that while playing the game, I was overcome with nostalgia, thinking back to when a 10-year-old me got a chance to watch the F1 at the Bahrain International Circuit.

Braking Point - The Star Attraction

In Braking Point, F1's new story-focused mode, you're given the opportunity to relive the experience of being a pimply lad in your 20s, trying to make it in a big bad world, through the lens of one Aiden Jackson. Jackson is a strong favourite to win the F2 title, and your first race as Aiden Jackson is the championship-winning season finale that propels you to a seat in Formula 1. Soon after, you're forced to come to grips with the fact that it's not all stars and sunshine in the big leagues, and that underneath the bells and whistles, there's a viciously competitive system that's out to get you.

Among the chief antagonists of this story are your vaguely older teammate Casper Akkerman (really, he could be either 28 or 50) who despises you for being a young hotshot talent, and a very charismatic rival Devon Butler, who just seems to appear out of thin air at the very worst moments possible to sow seeds of doubt in your mind.

Now, there's nothing particularly new or interesting about this storyline in and of itself. It does seem like a slightly plagiarised reincarnation of the Alex Hunter story from FIFA games of the past, even featuring almost identical motivations for the primary character and the antagonists. How it does improve on that, though, is in the execution.

Each character is fleshed out to just the right point, where we neither skim over their reasons for doing what they do, nor dive into their past in exhaustive detail. The interactions between characters, especially those told through the cutscenes, are all paced well, and at no point does the story feel like it's dragging. The only character whose backstory I wasn't fully satisfied with was Akkerman, whose past exploits on the circuit are mentioned only in passing, but it's not something that hampered my enjoyment of the story.

Speaking of Akkerman, another gameplay feature that I really enjoyed was that Braking Point allowed you to race as Akkerman in some races that had were more meaningful to his storyline than they perhaps were to the protagonist. This truly gives players an ability to walk a mile in someone else's shoes, and adds a further level of nuance to this story. It gives a sense of authenticity to the world that the game is trying to bring to your television screens.

This world is also expanded upon by little touches like the mails you get in your inbox, as well as a social media feed of sorts that you can view on your virtual phone. Some of these are quite intriguing, and often form little side stories of their own, over the course of several emails. A significant portion of the story is also told through the medium of telephones, with Aiden being constantly plagued by his mum and team liaison/mediator Brian Doyle.

I do have a couple of gripes about Braking Point. To begin with, since the cutscenes are so visually appealing and well-written, there are occasions outside the cutscenes in which the characters look a little like they've been possessed by a demon, with deadpan expressions and eyes that are cold and calculating. Now, if there's a murder mystery side plot in the pipeline, this is more than acceptable, but otherwise, it just takes away from the overall polish of the game. Secondly, Braking Point is short, even for a novice like me who needs four or five attempts to complete every race.

Career

The career mode allows you to play either as a racer (Driver mode), or as a racer/owner/manager (My Team mode) who juggles the responsibilities of being the man in charge in addition to having to race every weekend. You can play the career mode all by yourself, or, if you have a very, very patient friend, which I do not, you can play it in CO-OP mode, which allows you and your friend to play as teammates or rivals.

When you play the "My Team" version of career mode, you're given a much larger degree of control over the team, and you can dictate proceedings according to your wishes. I found it quite entertaining, both in terms of story and gameplay, and I got a real kick out of acting like the big boss man. It was a little daunting, however, and required a fair bit of googling on my part to understand the progression systems involved in levelling up your engines and gearboxes. Of course, I admittedly have a very superficial knowledge of such things, and someone who is more aware of the inner workings of the sport will likely love the technical side of it.

That's not me though. I'm no geek. I'm fast, I'm furious, and I live to race baby. Hmm, I feel like the 'baby' was a bit too much, but my point stands. I wasn't interested in the makeup of the car or in having to decide what gearbox I was going to use, I just want to smoke fools on the track, and playing the "Driver" mode is perfect for that. You can pick from any team on the F1 and F2 grids, and then compete over the course of a season, or even half a season, if you want. I started out with an F2 side, and found that the journey towards qualifying for the Formula 1 was pretty engaging.

Multiplayer

There are a number of ways in which you can experience the joy of multiplayer racing, from online sessions to local split-screen races. The online races work well enough, but it took me very long to find players to race against, with wait times of over five minutes on some occasions. Perhaps some of that can be attributed to this still being a very new game, and it will likely improve in due time. I also prefer racing with collisions turned off so that other racers are not tangible entities that can make physical contact with me. I personally feel like it's much less chaotic, and ensures you don't fly off the tracks/have your front wing fall off every time you hit someone, but it does also make the race a teeny tiny bit less entertaining.

The multiplayer mode in which I had the most fun, however, was the local split-screen multiplayer, in which you can face off against someone sitting right next to you. Over the course of the past week, my brother and I have waged war on several occasions, and I have emerged victorious on almost every occasion (I let him win one time out of the goodness of my heart).

Grand Prix/Time Trial

These two modes are essentially the most barebones modes available, and they allow players to quickly jump into action whenever they so desire, cutting out any and all semblance of story or plot. They're great for learning how the game works, and challenging yourself to better your previous performances time and time again, should you be so inclined. With the time trial mode, you can also experience every track that the game has to offer without having to complete all of them first.

TL;DR: F1 2021 is a must-have for fans of the genre, as it builds upon an already robust series with numerous upgrades. If you're looking for a more fun, light-hearted racing experience, however, this is probably not for you.

Game reviewed on PlayStation 5. Review code provided by the publisher.

source https://www.firstpost.com/tech/gaming/f1-2021-review-a-near-perfect-blend-of-significant-innovation-and-subtle-improvement-9828141.html

[orbemnews]

One Thing America Might Buy With All the Spending? Less Inequality. The coronavirus pandemic has threatened to rapidly expand yawning gaps between the rich and the poor, throwing lower-earning service workers out of jobs, costing them income, and limiting their ability to build wealth. But by betting on big government spending to pull the economy back from the brink, United States policymakers could limit that fallout. The $1.9 trillion economic aid package President Biden signed into law last month includes a wide range of programs with the potential to help poor and middle-class Americans to supplement lost income and save money going forward. That includes monthly payments to parents, relief for renters and help with student loans. Now, the administration is rolling out additional plans that would go even further, including a $2.3 trillion infrastructure package and about $1.5 trillion in spending and tax credits to support the labor force by investing in child care, paid leave, universal prekindergarten and free community college. The measures are explicitly meant to help left-behind workers and communities of color who have faced systemic racism and entrenched disadvantages — and they would be funded, in part, by taxes on the rich. Forecasters predict that the government spending — even just what has been passed so far — will fuel what could be the fastest annual economic growth in a generation this year and next, as the country recovers and the economy reopens from the Covid-19 pandemic. By jump-starting the economy from the bottom and middle, the response could make sure the pandemic rebound is more equitable than it would be without a proactive government response, analysts said. That’s a big change from the wake of the 2007 to 2009 recession. Back then, Congress and the White House passed an $800 billion stimulus bill, which many researchers have concluded did not do enough to fill the hole the recession left in economic activity. Lawmakers instead relied on the Federal Reserve’s cheap-money policies to coax the United States’ economy back from the brink. What ensued was a halting recovery marked by climbing wealth inequality as workers struggled to find jobs while the stock market soared. “Monetary policy is a very aggregated policy tool — it’s a very important economic policy tool, but it’s at a very aggregated level — whereas fiscal policy can be more targeted,” said Cecilia Rouse, who chairs the White House Council of Economic Advisers. In the pandemic crisis, which disproportionately hurt women of all races and men of color, she said, “If we tailor the relief to those who are most affected, we are going to be addressing racial and ethnic gaps.” From its first days, the pandemic set the stage for a K-shaped economy, one in which the rich worked from home without much income disruption as poorer people struggled. Workers in low-paying service jobs were far more likely to lose jobs, and among racial groups, Black people have experienced a much slower labor market rebound than their white counterparts. Globally, the downturn probably put 50 million people who otherwise would have qualified as middle class into lower income levels, based on one recent Pew Research analysis. But data suggest the U.S. policy response — including relief legislation that passed under the Trump administration last year — has helped to mitigate the pain. “The CARES Act to the American Rescue plan have helped to support more households than I would have imagined,” Charles Evans, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, told reporters during a call earlier this month, referring to the early 2020 and early 2021 pandemic relief packages. Wealth has recovered nearly across the board after slumping early last year, foreclosures have remained low, and household consumption has been shored up by repeated stimulus checks. While the era has been fraught with uncertainty and people have slipped through the cracks, this downturn looks very different for poorer Americans than the post-financial crisis period. That recession ended in 2009, and America’s wealthiest households recovered precrisis wealth levels by 2012, while it took until 2017 for the poorest to do the same. The government’s policy response is driving the difference. In the 2010s, Republicans cited deficit worries and curtailed spending early, at a time when the economy remained far from healed after the worst downturn since the Great Depression. Interest rates were already near-zero and not offering much of an economic boost, so the Fed engaged in several rounds of large-scale bond purchases to try to bolster the economy. The Fed policies did help. But low rates and massive bond buying bolster the economy slowly, and by first boosting prices on financial assets, which rich households are much more likely to own. As companies access cheap capital to expand and hire, the workers who get those new jobs have more money to spend, and a happy cycle unfolds. By 2019, that prosperous loop had kicked into gear and unemployment had dropped to half-century lows. Black and Hispanic as well as less-educated workers were working in greater numbers, and wages at the bottom of the income distribution had begun to steadily climb. Poverty fell, and there were reasons to hope that if that had continued, income inequality — the gap between how much the poor and the rich earn each year — might soon decline. Lower income inequality could, in theory, lead to lower wealth inequality over time, as households have the wherewithal save more evenly. But getting there took nearly a decade and when the pandemic hit in 2020, it almost certainly disrupted the trend. The data are released on a lag. As those divergent trends between labor and capital played out, the rich rebuilt their savings — which are heavily invested in stocks and businesses — much faster. Poorer households eventually reaped benefits as the years wore on and people landed jobs. The bottom half of America’s wealth holders ended up better off than they had been before the crisis, but farther behind the rich. At the start of 2007, the bottom half of the wealth distribution held 2.1 percent of the nation’s riches, compared to 29.7 percent for the top 1 percent. By the start of 2020, the bottom half had 1.8 percent, while the top 1 percent held 31 percent. Researchers debate whether monetary policy actually worsens wealth divides in the long run — especially since there’s the hairy question of what would have happened had the Fed not acted — but monetary policymakers generally agree that their policies can’t stop a pre-existing trend toward ever-worse wealth inequality. By offering a more targeted boost from the very start of the recovery, fiscal policy can. Or, at a minimum, it can prevent wealth gaps from deepening so much. Monetary policy “is naturally trickle-down,” said Joseph Stiglitz, an economist at Columbia and Nobel laureate. “Fiscal policy can work from the bottom and middle up.” That’s what the Biden administration is gambling on. Paired with packages from December and last April, Congress’s recent package will bring the amount of economic relied that Congress has approved during the pandemic to more than $5 trillion. That dwarfs the amount spent in the last recovery. The legislation is a mosaic of tax credits, stimulus checks and small business support that could leave families at the lower end of the income and savings distribution with more money in the bank and, if its provisions work as advertised, with a better chance of getting back to work early in the recovery. There is no guarantee Mr. Biden’s broader economic proposals, totaling about $4 trillion, will clear a narrowly divided Congress. Republicans have balked at his plans and this week offered a counterproposal on infrastructure that is only a fraction the size of what Mr. Biden wants to spend. A bipartisan group of House moderates is pushing the president to finance infrastructure spending through an increased gas tax or something similar, which hits the poor harder than the rich. Still, the president’s new proposals could have long-term impacts, working to retool workers’ skills and lift communities of color in hopes of putting the economy on more equal footing. The president is set to outline his so-called American Family Plan, which is focused on the work force, before his first address to a joint session of Congress next week. While details have yet to be finalized, programs like universal prekindergarten, expanded subsidies for child care and a national paid leave program would be paid for partly by raising taxes on investors and rich Americans. That could also affect the wealth distribution, shuffling savings from the rich to the poor. The plan, which must win support in a Congress where Democrats have just a narrow margin, would raise the top marginal income tax rate to 39.6 percent from 37 percent, and raise taxes on capital gains — the proceeds of selling an asset, like a stock — for people making more than $1 million to 39.6 percent from 20 percent. Counting in an Obamacare-related tax, the taxes they pay on profits would rise above 43 percent. The new policies won’t necessarily cut wealth inequality, which has been on an inexorable upward march for decades, but they could keep poorer households from falling behind by as much as they would have otherwise. Betting big on fiscal policy to return the economy to strength is a gamble. If the economy overheats, as some prominent economists have warned it could, the Fed might have to rapidly lift interest rates to cool things down. Rapid adjustments have historically caused recessions, which consistently throw vulnerable groups out of jobs first. But administration officials have repeatedly said the bigger risk is underdoing it, leaving millions on the labor market’s sidelines to struggle through another tepid recovery. And they say the spending provisions in both the rescue package and the infrastructure could help to fix longstanding divides along racial and gender lines. “We think of investment in racial equity, and equity in general, as good policy, period, and integral to all the work we do,” Catherine Lhamon, a deputy director of the Domestic Policy Council, said in an interview. Source link Orbem News #America #buy #Inequality #Spending

[junker-town]

Dwayne Haskins failed Washington, but they failed him too

Photo by Will Newton/Getty Images

Haskins has a lot of growing up to do, but that doesn’t mean we get to label him.

There is no excusing Dwayne Haskins’ actions off the football field this season. There are few things dumber than partying, without a mask, with a bunch of strangers, in the middle of a pandemic. It put himself, his team, and the entire league at risk — including individuals far beyond his personal bubble, including the family and friends of people in the NFL. Haskins was punished, and rightfully so, being fined $40,000 for the incident.

In light of his release Monday there has been a concerted effort by some to re-write Haskins’ story to make him fit the classic narrative of “the bust.” An odious title reserved for players whose arrival in the NFL was so unceremonious they not only squandered their talent, but hurt the team they played for in the process. There’s no doubt that cutting Haskins now hurts the Washington Football Team, but the idea that Haskins can be safely branded a “bust” ignores a huge part of this scenario: He was drafted by the wrong team, at the wrong time, into the wrong situation.

The idea of rookie quarterbacks making an impact in the NFL immediately was preposterous a decade ago. Even bad teams would select a quarterback and have them ride them bench for at least a season until the game slowed down for them, and they got a better feeling for how the NFL works. In recent years things have changed. College offenses have become as complex as their NFL counterparts, maybe more so, while coaches, entering the league from college backgrounds are bringing their offenses to the pros. This has the effect of making the league more rookie-friendly than ever for quarterbacks, but it’s also warped expectations.

Despite Haskins’ astounding 50 touchdown season at Ohio State, analysts still realized he would need time and development to become an effective pro. This wasn’t a player ready to step in immediately and make an impact, which is why the prospect of him going to a quarterback-needy team was scary for his future. Haskins needed a team who had the time to let him really develop. Even his scouting report on NFL.com reflected this.

“Haskins is still very early in his journey and is prone to misreading coverage and stalling in getting through his progressions. [...] His athletic limitations could keep him pocket-bound, but he has the arm talent, confidence and pocket savvy to become a good NFL starter if he’s protected and given the time to develop early on.”

This was known before he was ever drafted. It’s why Haskins fell to the No. 15 pick in the 2019 draft instead of being a Top 5. Everybody knew that whoever selected Haskins would need to be patient, and willing to invest the time in developing him. This was a pick for upside, for the future, not for the present. Good teams knew that.

But Washington wasn’t a good team, and they certainly weren’t the right team for Haskins. Ever a case of the left hand not knowing what the right was doing, Dan Snyder reportedly pushed for Haskins to start quickly to generate buzz, while then-coach Jay Gruden resisted, saying the quarterback needed time to develop. In fact, Gruden never wanted Haskins in the first place, which is believed to be a key fracture in the front office relationship the team had.

Assuming they have the talent, there are three things a young quarterback needs to succeed in the NFL:

Support.

Consistency.

Time.

Haskins didn’t have the support of his coach, or the talent around him. The team was in a state of flux. The owner wasn’t willing to give him time to develop. Then you throw on a coaching staff change and it amplified every issue. This doesn’t mean that Haskins is a star, waiting for some team to snatch him up. There’s still every chance that he just might not have it, like countless players before him, but it’s just too early to say with any certainty.

There are two universal truths in this situation: Firstly, that Haskins’ actions throughout this season when it came to how to dealt with Covid were selfish, stupid, and dumb. The secondly is that Washington was the worst place for him to go, because they weren’t prepared or willing to invest what a young, upside passer like Haskins needed to succeed.

When it comes to on-field performance we’ve seen this go both ways. Sure, he might flame out like Johnny Manziel, or he could turn it all around like Ryan Tannehill.

The future of Haskins’ career is in his own hands. It’s likely that some team who liked him in the draft in 2019 will roll the dice and sign him. From there it will be on Haskins to mature, both on and off the field, and correct the mistakes he’s made. Haskins was set up for failure well before his actions undercut his own career. He has plenty of growing up to do, but there are a lot of people to blame for when a first round pick can’t even make it through his second season.

[bomberlandia]

Anatomy of the Bombers’ Lost Season

Heading into the 2020 season, the Bombers had two main areas they wanted to see progress in: Hitting the scoreboard more and tightening up on defence. Playing finals wasn’t a guarantee but no-one would have been surprised if Essendon made them. But the concern was: could the Bombers actually win a final if they made it?

Sitting here now after a 6-10-1 year it’s going to be riveting to see how the next few weeks play out with trades, who stays, who leaves, and to see how the club handles the external pressure throughout pre-season. If, internally, they can stick together, that’s surely a good sign that their culture is on the right path. If they don’t, it will make life hard to be as successful as they can be in 2021 if they are fractured.  

For the record: for a team that believed they could hit the scoreboard more this year, and defend, they’ve gone backwards. In 2020 the Bombers averaged 55 points per game, and gave up 69 points per game. Offensively that made them the 14th best attack in the AFL. In 2019, they were ranked 13th, ninth in 2018 and third in 2017. Defensively, they were the third worst in 2020, and between 2017 -2019 they have hovered around being the seventh and eighth worst team.

“The Essendon playing group have been through two massive transitions in my short time at the football club,” said outgoing head coach John Worsfold. “I also believe really strongly in these young men I know so well. I respect there will be those who don’t share my confidence. The future will reveal the reality.”

Right now all eyes are on Essendon and what the future brings. This year felt like halted progress and fell well short of what their best can look like. There’s talent on their list.  But most of this season was hard to watch, like a sputtering motor that never really got going.

Essendon started the new year with 15 players undergoing postseason surgery and then injuries sprouted everywhere. Dyson Heppell. Cale Hooker. Orazio Fantasia. Patrick Ambrose. Joe Daniher was months away from joining the team.  Tall forward James Stewart hadn’t played since R11, 2018. New recruits Tom Cutler and Jacob Townsend  arrived with a wait-and-see feeling. Aging defensive duo Hooker and Hurley were 31 and 30 respectively. There were more questions than answers for the Bombers.

Even with a 5-2 start no-one was convinced that this was the year the Bombers won their first final in 16 years. They scraped home against the Dockers by a goal after leading by 26 at three-quarter time. They beat a rebuilding Swans team by the same margin. They lost to the Blues by one point but were outgunned, with Carlton putting up 17 scoring shots to 11. The Collingwood win was impressive but then they limped to a 14-point win over a fairly weak Roos unit. Throughout the cluster of the early games there were warning signs the Bombers had problems, going through periods where pressure fell away, lost momentum and made mistakes that cost them goals. The good was short-lived and electrifying. The bad was agonizing to watch.

In between all of those games, Conor McKenna had a false positive COVID-19 test which suspended the Bombers-Demons match and sent football media into meltdown. Jake Stringer went down with syndesmosis after leading the Bombers to an uplifting win over Collingwood. And the global pandemic hit, forcing the round two restart to kick off June 11. But that’s as good as it got for the Bombers. From their last 10 games they netted just one more win against another rebuilding team, the Hawks – and that win took a miracle comeback from 36 points down at half time.

*

This year was meant to be a foot forward. It was believed widley that the Bombers had enough good working parts to play finals football and potentially win a final. But it didn’t go as planned. The Bombers lacked consistency. They ambitiously tried to take on a new game plan. The lack of forward personnel made kicking goals harder than it should’ve been – inside their 50 became a disaster zone. And while the backline stood strong under intense pressure and repeat entries, they just weren’t able to withstand the volume of entries for long periods. But never did the Bombers look like a real contender or threat.

The numbers from this year help explain Essendon’s story. They were ranked 17th for contested ball, which is a gap they still haven’t filled – and vowed to – since the 2017 Elimination Final loss to the Swans. Not since Jobe Watson and tagger Heath Hocking has Essendon had bulk inside the contest. Kyle Langford is still maturing but was used in the forward line a lot more this year because of injuries. It’s clear they are missing some grunt and midfield depth and a guy that can rip open a game in three centre bounces.

Without a host of marking targets for large periods of the year – Daniher, Stewart, Hooker, Laverde – the Bombers were ranked 14th for marks. This was highlighted in the final game of the season against Melbourne, with the Demons owning a 117-79 statline. The Bombers were ranked 16th for hitouts which makes sense when you consider they were blooding a young Sam Draper fresh off an ACL ailment. And they were ranked fourth for clangers: If you watched the Bombers this year you would have seen simple mistakes under pressure that emerged into opposition goals.

In the hard fought losses the Bombers showed grit. They lost to the Blues by one, Giants by four, they drew with the Suns, lost to the Tigers by 12, Eagles by 15, and Demons by 19. But the common thread in most of these losses, they failed to score more than 10 goals which makes winning games that much harder without scoreboard pressure. Even when those games were hanging in the balance, something would fail – a 50m metre penalty goal, an errant handball goal, a kick down the line turned over by an intercept mark –  which was usually followed by a period of opposition dominance. It was like players were watching on trapped inside a glass box. And this is why they ended up with six wins this year: they weren’t good enough for long enough and went long periods just hanging in games.

Xavier Campbell said at the Crichton Medal: “We want to deliver our members the 17th premiership. We are committed to doing that as quickly as we can,” he said. “An uprising is defined as an act of resistance or rebellion, a revolt. Within this team, our players and staff, you can feel there is an uprising.”

The thing about what Campbell said is that the Bombers aren’t horrible. They’re not perennial wooden spooners. But they aren’t Richmond or Geelong. They don’t have forwards that kick 70-goal seasons. They haven’t won a final for almost two decades. They don’t get let off the hook for their 2020 season. They need to prove that they can be elite and match it with the Top Eight teams. They have talented individuals but they need to evolve into a talented team.

The Bombers didn’t get a whole lot out of Tom Cutler, nor Jacob Townsend this year. Cutler looked like he found it hard to get himself in the play. Townsend will be a better fit with a fully functionally forwardline – not the no.2 option. Guys like Clarke, Guelfi, Laverde, Redman all have another year to prove their worth. And then there’s the off-season trade chaos where Daniher, Fantasia and Saad could walk. It’s still early to know what the team is going to look like in 2021 or how many gaps might need filling. Rutten and Dodoro probably don’t know what that looks like either right now.

I felt there were a lot of actual reasons why the Bombers backfired this year – transition, injuries, new game plan, playing away from Melbourne, limited training etc. Yada, yada. Yes. We’ve heard all this ad nauseam. But the wolves are out for the Bombers. People keep saying the team isn’t feared, the midfield can’t compete, they lack passion and the club is drowning in mediocrity. The answer: all those things have defined the club since Sheedy was shown the door some 14 years ago and now it’s all being exposed. Since the supplements saga the Bombers have been playing catch up and have looked off-beat and a step behind the rest of the AFL.

Come next year with a full list, a whole pre-season under Rutten, and those actual reasons for not performing will start to sound like really poor excuses. And maybe they already do sound like excuses to some. But patience from the Bomber faithful is gone. Rutten and Campbell need to move the dial next year. They need to make the hard decisions between now and Round One to make sure the Bombers don’t have a repeat of 2020.

[newstechreviews]

Imagine Massachusetts on fire, literally the entire state engulfed in flames. That is how much land has already been ravaged—at least 5 million acres—in the wildfires of California, Washington and Oregon. Put another way, in just a few weeks these fires have burned as much land as was destroyed by a decade of using napalm and Agent Orange during the Vietnam War. With temperatures over 100°F, toxic air now blankets tens of millions of people, power outages have afflicted vast regions, and dozens have already died from the blazes. Air quality in West Coast cities has ranked among the world’s worst, with Portland’s air at points being almost three times more unhealthy than in notoriously polluted cities like New Delhi. The scenes of red skies out of America’s West have an unreal quality to them, as if they come from a different planet. In a sense they do—they are portents of the future.

There are many proximate reasons for these forest fires—fireworks, campfires, a stray spark—but there is one large cause that is blindingly clear: human actions that have led to climate change. To put it simply, the world is getting hotter, and that means that forests get drier. A yearslong drought, which ended in 2017, killed 163 million trees in California—and that deadwood proved to be the kindling for this year’s devastation. A scientific study led by Stanford, released in April, found that California’s five worst wildfires—whether measured by deaths, destruction or size—all occurred during 2017 and 2018. And we can be sure of one thing: it’s going to get worse. Temperatures continue to rise, drought conditions are worsening, and the combined effect of all these forces will multiply to create cascading crises in the years to come.

Cascades, in which small sparks cause great conflagrations, are happening all around us. Think of COVID-19, which began with a viral speck that was likely lodged in a bat somewhere in China—and is now a raging global pandemic. While viruses have been around forever, they mostly originate in animals and, when they jumped to humans, remained largely local. But over the past few decades, many viruses have gone global, causing widespread epidemics—SARS, MERS, Ebola, Zika and now the novel coronavirus. In a recent essay in the scientific journal Cell, the country’s top infectious—disease expert, Anthony Fauci, and one of his colleagues, David Morens, warn that we “have reached a tipping point that forecasts the inevitability of an acceleration of disease emergencies.” In other words, get ready for more pandemics. The fundamental reason behind this acceleration, they argue, is human action—the ever increasing scope and pace of development.

Damon Winter—The New York Times/Redux. A housing development on the edge of undeveloped desert in Cathedral City, Calif., on April 3, 2015, during the state’s punishing drought.

We have created a world in overdrive. People are living longer, producing and consuming more, inhabiting larger spaces, consuming more energy, and generating more waste and greenhouse gas emissions. The pace has accelerated dramatically in the past few decades. Just one example: a 2019 U.N. report, compiled by 145 experts from 50 countries, concluded that “nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history.” It noted that 75% of all land has been “severely altered” by human actions, as has 66% of the world’s marine environments. Ecosystems are collapsing, and biodiversity is disappearing. As many as 1 million plant and animal species (of 8 million total) are threatened with extinction, some within a few decades. All these strains and imbalances produce dangers—some that can be foreseen, and others that cannot.

The pandemic, for its part, can be thought of as nature’s revenge. The way we live now is practically an invitation for animal viruses to infect humans. Why do diseases seem to be jumping from animals to humans at a faster pace in recent decades? As cities expand, they bring humans closer and closer to the habitat of wild animals, making it more likely that virus in a bat could be transmitted to a pig or a pangolin and then to humans. Developing countries are modernizing so quickly that they effectively inhabit several different centuries at the same time. In Wuhan and other such cities, China has built an advanced, technologically sophisticated-economy—but in the shadows of the skyscrapers are wildlife markets full of exotic animals, a perfect cauldron for animal-to-human viral transfer. And the people who live in these places are more mobile than ever before, quickly spreading information, goods, services—and disease.

Our destruction of natural habitats may also be to blame. Some scientists believe that as humans extend civilization into nature—building roads, clearing land, constructing factories, excavating mines—we are increasing the odds that animals will pass diseases to us. COVID-19 appears to have originated in bats, which are hosts to many other viruses, including rabies and Ebola. Bats used to live farther from humans. But as we encroached on their habitats, their diseases increasingly became our diseases. “We are doing things every day that make pandemics more likely,” said Peter Daszak, an eminent disease ecologist. “We need to understand, this is not just nature. It is what we are doing to nature.”

As economic development moves faster and reaches more people, we are taking ever greater risks, often without even realizing it. Think about meat consumption. As people get richer, they eat more meat. When this happens globally, the effect is staggering: about 80 billion animals are slaughtered for meat every year around the world. (And that doesn’t even count fish.) But supplying this enormous demand comes at great cost to the environment and our health. Animal products provide only 18% of calories worldwide yet take up 80% of the earth’s farmland. Meanwhile, meat is now produced on a vast scale with animals packed together in gruesome conditions. Most livestock—an estimated 99% in America, 74% around the world—comes from factory farms. (Organically farmed, grass-fed meat is a luxury product.) These massive operations serve as petri dishes for powerful viruses. “Selection for specific genes in farmed animals (for desirable traits like large chicken breasts) has made these animals almost genetically identical,” Vox journalist Sigal Samuel explains. “That means that a virus can easily spread from animal to animal without encountering any genetic variants that might stop it in its tracks. As it rips through a flock or herd, the virus can grow even more virulent.” The lack of genetic diversity removes the “immunological firebreaks.”

Sebastián Liste—NOOR for TIME. A slaughterhouse in the Brazilian state of Rondônia in February 2019. The company boasted an expansion would allow a cow to be killed every eight seconds at the facility.

Americans should know better. The country has experienced several ecological disasters, most notably the 1930s Dust Bowl. The event is seared in the American imagination. The bitter tale of desperate Dust Bowl migrants inspired John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath—describing the plight of people who could be called America’s first climate refugees. And it is a story of human actions causing a natural reaction.

The Great Plains are the semiarid places east of the Rocky Mountains and west of the Mississippi River. The wind blows fast over these lands, sometimes scarily so. Over centuries, probably millennia, nature’s solution was to grow grass that held the loose topsoil in place. But by the late 19th century, as the pioneers headed west, lured by promises of fertile farmland, they tilled the prairies, turning the grassy plains into wheat fields. The farmers felled trees that served as windbreaks, and turned the soil over and over, until there was no grass and the topsoil had been reduced to a thin, loose layer just covering the hard land beneath.

Then came bad weather. Starting in 1930, the region was hit by four waves of drought. With the drought came winds—ferocious gales that blew off the entire layer of topsoil with a force that few humans had seen before and kicked up dust storms that blackened the sky. By 1934, the topsoil covering 100 million acres of land had blown away. The heat intensified the suffering—1934 was the nation’s hottest year on record until 1998. Thousands died and millions fled. The farmers left behind were plunged into a decade of poverty.

We are tempting fate similarly every day. We are now watching the effects of climate change on almost every part of the natural environment. It is bringing a warmer climate to more of the world, thus creating more hospitable conditions for disease. It is also turning more land into desert—23 hectares every minute, by the U.N.’s estimate. In 2010, Luc Gnacadja, who headed the organization’s effort to combat desertification, called it “the greatest environmental challenge of our time,” warning that “the top 20 centimeters of soil is all that stands between us and extinction.” Thirty-eight percent of the earth’s surface is at risk of desertification. Some of it is caused less by global climate change than by something more easily preventable: the overextraction of water from the ground. One of the world’s most crucial water sources is the Ogallala Aquifer, which sprawls through the Great Plains and supplies about a third of the groundwater used to irrigate American farms. This seemingly bottomless well is in fact being emptied by agribusiness so fast that it is on track to shrivel by 70% in less than 50 years. If the aquifer ran dry, it would take 6,000 years for rainfall to refill it.

Travis Heying—Wichita Eagle/Tribune News Service/Getty Images. An irrigation pivot sprays water onto a young corn crop in Grant County, Kans., in 2015.

You may say that this is not new. Human beings have been altering natural processes ever since they learned how to make fire. The changes picked up speed with the invention of the wheel, the plow and, most dramatically, the steam engine. But they intensified, particularly in the 20th century and in the past few decades. The number of people on the planet has risen fivefold since 1900, while the average life span has doubled. The increase in life span goes “beyond the scope of what had ever been shaped by natural selection,” explained Joshua Lederberg, the biologist who won the Nobel Prize at age 33 for his work on bacterial genetics. In a brilliant, haunting speech in 1989 at a virology conference in Washington, D.C., Lederberg argued that we have changed our biological trajectory so much that “contemporary man is a man-made species.”

Lederberg called human beings’ continued economic and scientific advancement “the greatest threat to every other plant and animal species, as we crowd them out in our own quest for lebensraum.” “A few vermin aside,” he added, “Homo sapiens has undisputed dominion.” But he pointed out that we do have one real competitor—the virus—and in the end, it could win. “Many people find it difficult to accommodate to the reality that nature is far from benign; at least it has no special sentiment for the welfare of the human vs. other species.” Lederberg reminded the audience of the fate that befell rabbits in Australia in the 1950s, when the myxoma virus was unleashed upon them as a population—control measure. Eventually, rabbits achieved herd immunity, but only after the virus had killed over 99% of those infected in the first outbreaks. He concluded his speech with a grim image: “I would … question whether human society could survive left on the beach with only a few percent of survivors. Could they function at any level of culture higher than that of the rabbits? And if reduced to that, would we compete very well with kangaroos?

This is a gloomy compendium of threats. And given the unstable nature of our international system, it may seem that our world is terribly fragile. It is not. Another way to read human history is to recognize just how tough we are. We have gone through extraordinary change at breathtaking pace. We have seen ice ages and plagues, world wars and revolutions, and yet we have survived and flourished. In his writings, Joshua Lederberg acknowledged that nature usually seeks an equilibrium that favors mutual survival of the virus and the host—after all, if the human dies, so does the parasite.

Human beings and our societies are amazingly innovative and resourceful. This planet is awe-inspiringly resilient. But we have to recognize the ever greater risks we are taking and act to mitigate them. Modern human development has occurred on a scale and at a speed with no precedent. The global system that we are living in is open and dynamic, which means it has few buffers. That produces great benefits but also vulnerabilities. We have to adjust to the reality of ever increasing instability—now.

Joe Raedle—Getty Images. The aftermath of Hurricane Michael, which made a devastating landfall as a Category 5 hurricane near Mexico Beach, Fla., in October 2018.

We are not doomed. The point of sounding the alarm is to call people to action. The question is, what kind of action? There are those, on the right and the left, who want to stop other countries from growing economically and shut down our open world. But should we tell the poorest billion in the world that they cannot escape poverty? Should we close ourselves off from the outside world and seek stability in national fortresses? Should we try to slow down technology, or the global movement of goods and services? Even if we wanted to do any of this, we would not be able to arrest these powerful forces. We could not persuade billions of people to stop trying to raise their standards of living. We could not prevent human beings from connecting with one another. We could not stop technological innovation. What we can do is be far more conscious of the risks we face, prepare for the dangers and equip our societies to be resilient. They should be able not only to withstand shocks and backlashes, but also learn from them. Nassim Nicholas Taleb suggests that we create systems that are “anti-fragile,” which are even better than resilient ones. They actually gain strength through chaos and crises.

We know what to do. After the Dust Bowl, scientists quickly understood what had happened. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Administration produced a short movie to explain it to the country, The Plow That Broke the Plains. Government agencies taught farmers how to prevent soil erosion. The Administration provided massive aid to farmers, established the Soil Conservation Service and placed 140 million acres of federal grasslands under protection. In the past three-quarters of a century, there has been no second Dust Bowl, despite extreme weather.

“Outbreaks are inevitable, but pandemics are optional,” says Larry Brilliant, the American physician who helped eradicate smallpox 45 years ago. What he means is that we may not be able to change the natural occurrences that produce disease in the first place, but through preparation, early action and intelligent responses, we can quickly flatten its trajectory. In fact, the eradication of smallpox is a story that is only partly about science and mostly about extraordinary cooperation between rival superpowers and impressive execution across the globe.

Similarly, climate change is happening, and we cannot stop it completely. But we can mitigate the scale of change and avert its most harmful effects through aggressive and intelligent policies. It will not be cheap. To address it seriously we would need to start by enacting a carbon tax, which would send the market the right price signal and raise the revenue needed to fund new technologies and simultaneously adapt to the already altered planet. As for economic development, there are hundreds of ways we could approach the process differently, retaining traditional ingredients like growth, openness and innovation while putting new emphasis on others like security, resilience and anti-fragility. We can make different trade-offs, forgo some efficiencies and dynamism in some areas, and spend more money to make our societies prepared. The costs of prevention and preparation are minuscule compared with the economic losses caused by an ineffective response to a crisis. More fundamentally, building in resilience creates stability of the most important kind, emotional stability. Human beings will not embrace openness and change for long if they constantly fear that they will be wiped out in the next calamity.

And what about preventing the next pandemic? Again, we need to balance dynamism with safety. Much attention has focused on wet markets where live animals are slaughtered and sold, but these cannot simply be shut down. In many countries, especially in Africa and Asia, they provide fresh food for people who don’t own refrigerators. (In China, they account for 73% of all fresh vegetables and meat sold.) These markets should be better regulated, but they pose limited risks when they do not sell wild animals like bats, civets and pangolins. It is that exotic trade that must be outlawed. Similarly, getting the world to stop eating meat may be impossible, but promoting healthier diets—with less meat—would be good for humans and the planet. And factory farming can be re-engineered to be much safer, and far less cruel to animals. Most urgently, countries need strong public-health systems, and those systems need to communicate, learn from and cooperate with one another. You cannot defeat a global disease with local responses.

Marcio Jose Sanchez—AP. Firefighter Ricardo Gomez, part of a San Benito Monterey Cal Fire crew, sets a controlled burn with a drip torch while fighting the Creek Fire in Shaver Lake, Calif., on Sept. 6, 2020.

So too California can’t stop climate change or wildfires alone. But, like America after the Dust Bowl, it can learn from its policy mistakes, using controlled burns to clear out underbrush and practicing sustainable construction. Unfortunately, earlier this month it took a step in the wrong direction when lawmakers killed a reform bill that would have allowed denser housing development. Without new action, single-family homes will keep sprawling outward into the forest, expanding the human footprint and making future destructive fires inevitable. Rather than subsidizing settlements on the coastline and in forests and deserts, governments should encourage housing in safe and more sustainable areas. We have to recognize that the way we are living, eating and consuming energy are all having an impact on the planet—and increasingly it is reacting.

Human beings have been developing their societies at an extraordinary pace, expanding in every realm at unprecedented speed. It is as if we have built the fastest race car ever imagined and are driving it through unknown, unmarked terrain. But we never bothered to equip the car with airbags. We didn’t get insurance. We have not even put on our seat belts. The engine runs hot. Parts overheat and sometimes even catch fire. There have been some crashes, each one a bit worse than the last. So we douse the vehicle, tune up the suspension, repair the bodywork and resolve to do better. But we race on, and soon we are going faster and faster, into newer and rougher terrain. It’s getting very risky out there. It’s time to install those airbags and buy some insurance. And above all, it’s time to buckle up.

This essay is adapted from TEN LESSONS FOR A POST-PANDEMIC WORLD. Copyright (c) 2020 by Fareed Zakaria. Published by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.

[weekendwarriorblog]

Why I’m Going to see Tenet in Connecticut

Hi there! I think the title of this blog post is pretty self-explanatory, but I want to make sure that this doesn’t mean that I’m explaining my decision to justify it to anyone who happens to be reading this or to try to convince you to do something as potentially irresponsible, crazy or unsafe. Far from it. I just know that there’s gonna be someone out there who starts attacking me or ridiculing me or otherwise just because I made this decision... or more likely, everyone on #FilmTwitter will just ignore me like they always do.

Warning: Part of this post goes into RANT LEVEL ORANGE. It was written free-form with no editing as with some of my 30 Minute Experiments. I won’t be taking questions.

If you have been reading what I’ve been writing on this blog over the past five months then you already know how I feel about New York Governor Cuomo and his dismissive nature about reopening movie theaters despite feeling it’s safe enough to open schools, gyms, museums, resume high contact sports and all sorts of other things that people enjoy. But movies? It’s not even that he’s gone on a rant about high risk it is like some of my colleagues (who obviously know so much better than scientists, experts, and I dunno... people who studied contact tracing and the spread of COVID to be more informed about these things). No, he just didn’t mention movie theaters at all... well, actually, twice. Once was when he was announcing counties of New York opening in Phase 4, supposedly the final phase of the phased reopening, when he mentioned that movie theaters wouldn’t reopen but again a few weeks ago when directly asked about the press.

No, movie theaters aren’t open in New York City or New York State despite having the lowest infection rate in the country. I mean, even California has started to figure things out and the majority of that state still has 6 - 8% infection rate. It’s in the midst of the pandemic and doesn’t have it in its rear view mirror.

So yes, one of the reasons I’m going to CT to see Tenet is as a big middle finger to Governor Cuomo and also in some ways to Mayor DiBlasio for not standing up to him. Every other decision Cuomo has made -- schools, gyms, etc -- he’s allowed it to be at the discretion of the counties or in the case of NYC, it should be the mayor, but he continually feels like he needs to punish ALL of New York City residents cause of a “few bad eggs.” (Wait, wasn’t that Chainsmokers concert on Long Island where all your rich friends hang out, Gov?)

But enough about Cuomo. Yes, part of my decision to see Tenet in a movie theater as soon as possible is selfish, because I have been waiting for it for a long time, and so I’ve been anxious to see it. And I know that if I try to wait until Cuomo gets his stick out of  his butt, one of these sites is gonna spoil something in a headline or someone is gonna make a casual tweet spoiling something, and yes, that would ruin my enjoyment of the whole mystery behind the movie. I was able to get through opening weekend of Avengers: Endgame without spoiling stuff, but I won’t be so lucky twice.

And yes, my selfishness is probably as much about having to sit at my computer watching movies for the last five months. I mean, I’m sitting at my computer so much during the course of the day, that I’ve had to shut it down and turn on the TV and watch whatever’s on. I’ve really gotten into the ABC summer game shows. Every once in a while, I’ll get a Vimeo screener that I can watch on my TV and I can maybe try to focus in a way I can’t when my laptop is open and there’s so many distractions. But I miss distraction-free movie watching. 

Even one of my most-anticipated movies of the year -- not Tenet, but Disney’s Mulan -- I’ve had to watch on my computer screen just last night and about halfway through, I just couldn’t do it anymore. I was enjoying the movie and you’ll see from my review(s) that I kind of love it, but it’s just not the same experience of shutting off the rest of the world and just sitting in a theater enjoying a movie. The funny thing is that in the ‘90s (and even now) I’m way more into music and I’m not even THINKING about when I might be able to see a concert again. I have a lot of tickets for 2021 shows that were once 2020 shows.

So yeah, getting out of my apartment, going to a theater, and just sitting in there for 2 to 3 hours to get away from the world? I’ll take my risks that with a 1 in 100 chance of encountering anyone in a state with a sub-1% infection rate, the 30 people in my theater aren’t all hacking up COVID into the air via “aerosoles.” (I’m seriously ready to spit in the face of the next person who cites aerosoles, and fortunately, it will just mean a gob of spit on my laptop screen that I’ll have to clean off.I won’t have to spend the 30 minutes sanitizing it like they’re doing at most movie theaters since I’m the only person who touches the thing... there’s an obvious joke to make here. I’ll resist because I’m already deemed “toxic” by someone whose name won’t be mentioned.)

But there’s a lot more to me watching Tenet than me revisiting my punk roots or being selfish. I mean, if i had to watch it on a screener, I probably would but I know that I just won’t enjoy it as much. 

Last week, I spoke out about the public shaming and attacks being made against anyone who felt that they want to return to movie theaters, and especially against Warner Bros. and Christopher Nolan for not offering the movie in drive-ins or sending screeners to critics in movie theaters-less areas. I won’t get into that again, except to say that Nolan did not shoot anyone 7 times in the back. He made a movie and he gave people a choice: “You either decide that it’s safe enough to go to a movie theater to watch it or you don’t see it, and you wait until you’re comfortable or it’s on HBO Max or whatever.” 

You were given a choice. In fact, you’re ALWAYS given a choice... except when a governor decides that he’s going to make the decisions for you by keeping movie theaters closed even after all his speeches about “reopening the valve,” “phased reopenings,” etc. He did an amazing job getting New York out of the things but now he’s being just as political and egoistic as Trump. When you can just write executive orders to get your way, why bother with everyone else that we’ve elected for the State Senate and Assembly? Are they just sitting at home twiddling their thumbs? Have they been secretly furloughed? No, a few of them have spoken up including a few in Albany itself... but I ...  won’t steal Peter David’s schtick by digressing...

I’ve already had people yelling at me about my stance on this with everything from “You might kill others” (sure, if I actually have COVID and don’t wear a mask or social distance) to “think of the poor movie theater employees”... oh, you mean the ones who have been out of work and have no income and even less with the pandemic unemployment being cut off? Okay, let’s get to them because more of my decision is about them than myself. 

I was mostly unemployed when COVID hit and I would be struggling if I didn’t get UI (unemployment insurance) but I can only imagine what some of the people who work at theaters are going through. I mean, my local theater the Metrograph, I absolutely love the staff there. They are fucking top-notch and the way that theater is run should be a blueprint for EVERY SINGLE ARTHOUSE THEATER IN THE COUNTRY. Sure, they’re all insanely young and good looking but they’re also truly nice and good people, still eager and excited about the world and not quite as cynical as we get once we turn 30.

But this isn’t just about the youngsters, no. I want to talk about another regular theater I go to called the Village 7 in the East Village. This used to be the WORST THEATER IN THE CITY (and that’s saying something). I mean, every time I went there in the early ‘00s as a film critic was a horrible experience. The place was dirty, poorly maintained and it was a disaster. They’ve since renovated and remodeled and it’s actually a really nice and comfortable place to see a movie to the point where I’ve started going there more than the Kips Bay theater which is about 20 minutes further North by bus. But the important thing about mentioning Village 7 is that if you go there during the week, there are two elderly ladies, one at concessions and one taking tickets. I have to say that both are probably in their 60s... and (I’m not making this up) THEY’VE BOTH BEEN THERE FOR 3 DECADES!! They are lifers who stuck through the theater’s worst and came out the other side with jobs and now 5 1/2 months after COVID hit, I have no idea how they’re doing either physically, health-wise or financially without having jobs. Who knows if they’re being taken care of and whether they’ll be back if/when the movie theater reopens.

So my decision is just as much about the theater workers, many who actually like their job and try to do a good job, because there are a lot of them despite all the disparaging comments about theater workers by many of my friends and colleagues.

To me, it really hurts seeing some people I genuinely and truly like, and even some of my closest and dearest friends, taking this opportunity to stand on a soapbox and rail against movie theaters reopening and movies like Tenet in particularly just because... let’s face it.... THEY’RE SCARED. 

I said from the very beginning of this pandemic that the worst thing that one can fear is fear itself. I didn’t make up those words. They were uttered by possibly one of the country’s greatest Presidents who had to come into office in the middle of  one of the country’s worst financial crises with a second and more blood world war about a decade on the horizon still. But he was right, and i know this from experience. The worst thing you can do for anyone at this point in the pandemic (especially if you live in New York) is to still be cowering at home and boosting the media’s fear-mongering and pushing an anti-movie-theater narrative, as if you think that will save lives. (The funniest moment in the last couple weeks is when one critic claimed that they were railing against my pro-movie-theater-reopening stance because they cared and were worried about ME. Yeah, right, dude. We have never had a conversation outside of a junket and not even in the past few years. What a laugh.)

I don’t want to be cold or callous about this but my central TENET (har har) has always been that everyone should be allowed to do what they want and believe what they want AS LONG AS THEY DON’T HURT OTHERS. And that means everything from physical harm to emotional and mental distress by the type of piling on we’ve seen now that we’re well into the Cancel Culture Generation. I already have good friends giving me virtual side-eye for my stance and my decision, completely disregarding all the things I know about the spread of COVID that comes straight from Johns Hopkins. I watch a lot of news and a lot of political press conferences and few of them ever mention some of these things, downplaying them in favor of the constant “Wear a Mask! Wear a Mask! Wear a Mask!” that most of us already are doing. 

We follow Cuomo’s orders and do what he tells us to do, and then he reneges and doesn’t do what he said he would do... reopen safely. This doesn’t mean keeping movie theaters, often a haven for New Yorkers in summer not just to escape the oppression of everything that’s going on in our city but also the oppressive heat.

You see, #FilmTwitterElite, some of us don’t have cars, because we don’t need them or we can’t afford them. Some of us don’t have AC for the same reason.  Heck, some of us (like myself) don’t even have a partner or significant other or children to keep us company. Some of us aren’t invited by their so-called friends to do Zoom watch parties every weekend.  Some of us haven’t seen a single friend, acquaintance or colleague in person for 5 1/2 months, and have started having meaningful conversations with the guy at the bodega. (His name is Salach, and he’s awesome. Whenever I didn’t feel like going out or get out of bed, I can call them up, and he knows my number, my name and even my order. I try to stop by once a week to check in on him because they stayed opened EVERY SINGLE DAY during the pandemic. I worry that it’s wearing down on him.)

So don’t fucking tell me that I don’t care about the theatre employees, you fucking #FilmTwitterElite hypocrites. I bet you don’t know the name of a single employee at your local movie theater. I made an effort to learn every name of anyone who worked at the Metrograph, and I call them by their name, and even talk to them about movies when they’re not busy working. (Granted, some of the names have escaped me after not seeing them for six months but I do hope they’re being taken care of.) That’s all I have to say. On Monday afternoon, I’m getting on a subway for the first time in almost six months, and then I’m getting on an MTA train (first time in a couple years I think) and going to Bridgeport. I’m being met by one of my long-time movie colleagues, one who I actually like and respect as a person immensely, which let me tell you, is a VERY small group, so that will be another first in nearly six months.

I have a ticket to an IMAX theater in Milford, CT with four empty seats next to me, and I’ll be wearing my mask during the entire experience although yes, I probably will get popcorn if it’s available because while I’m not a big popcorn eater, I want the full experience, since God knows how long I’ll have to wait for New York movie theaters to get the okay. (I’ll wash my hands between the train ride and digging into the popcorn.)

I’ve gotten a lot better at watching screeners than I was in March, but that doesn’t mean the experience of watching screeners has gotten better. No, far from it. And boy, it will be an absolute JOY to watch a movie that doesn’t have my name and/or Email address emblazoned in the middle of it. I know who I am. I’m the guy who is trying to get the movie business and especially the theatrical aspect of it back in whatever way I possibly can. 

If I end up getting sick from the experience than fuck me. You all were right. But I will be getting tested on Tuesday and I’ll go back to my near-quarantine from the last 5 months to make sure I’m not spreading anything to anyone who might get someone else sick. No one wants that. I don’t want that. Christopher Nolan doesn’t want that, and I’m guessing no one at Warner Bros, AMC and all the other theater chains want that. They all just want the world to make an effort to get back to some semblance of normalcy in a safe way, and you can’t do that by cowering at home or flaunting your ability to go to drive-ins.

If I sound angry, it’s because I am, but more I’m just disappointed... in my friends, in my colleagues and even in movie writers who I don’t even know but I know for a fact that they’ve made a nice living thanks to the movies, the people who make them but more importantly, the people who plunk down their money every week to WATCH them in theaters. The people who don’t have screener links handed to them on a silver platter whenever they want them. The people who don’t have cars or AC or even a lot of money but still feel the need to use the little money they have to go to the movies every once in a while to escape this absolutely horrible world we’re living in right now. Why would you make the situation worse for them by shaming them and soapboxing? Seriously...

[sunshineweb]

Owning Stocks is a Long-Term Project

Here is some stuff I am reading and thinking about this weekend…

Book I’m Reading – Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (ZAMM) is the autobiography of American writer and philosopher Robert Pirsig, wherein he chronicles his motorcycle journey across the country with his son. It is however much more than just an adventure tale. Through his journey, Pirsig explains his philosophy on life, creating a manifesto through motorcycle maintenance.

There are many lessons to be learned from this book, but a handful of persist throughout the story that can help reshape your perspective. Like, here is what Pirsig writes on how we lose so much time on unnecessary affairs that we move swiftly past what is really important –

We’re in such a hurry most of the time we never get much chance to talk. The result is a kind of endless day-to-day shallowness, a monotony that leaves a person wondering years later where all the time went and sorry that it’s all gone.

Then, here is Pirsig’s idea of how to fix the world –

The place to improve the world is first in one’s own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there. Other people can talk about how to expand the destiny of mankind. I just want to talk about how to fix a motorcycle.

One of the most beautiful lessons I take from the books is the idea of enjoying the journey instead of just waiting for the destination. As Pirsig writes –

Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without desire. The reality of your own nature should determine the speed. If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion. Then, when you are no longer thinking ahead, each footstep isn’t just a means to an an end but a unique event in itself. This leaf has jagged edges. This rock looks loose. From this place the snow is less visible, even though closer. These are things you should notice anyway. To live only for some future goal is shallow. It’s the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top. Here’s where things grow.

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Nobody wants to look back on their life and say, “Wow, I sure wish I experienced more, but at least I’m rich!” In today’s world, we often equate monetary success with concrete success. But for Pirsig, it’s all about the quality of your success that matters. And quite honestly, that sounds a lot better than just living a rich but ultimately unfulfilled life.

ZAMM is a beautiful book. Read it when you can.

Idea I’m Thinking – Owning Stocks is a Long-Term Project In the long journey of the stock of a high-quality business, the daily short-term jumps – or volatility as they call it in business news – that makes people nervous are “non-events.” Annie Duke writes in her brilliant book Thinking in Bets –

In our decision-making lives, we aren’t that good at taking this kind of perspective – at accessing the past and future to get a better view of how any given moment might fit into the scope of time. It just feels how it feels in the moment and we react to it.…We make a long-term stock investment because we want it to appreciate over years or decades. Yet there we are, watching a downward tick over a few minutes, consumed by imagining the worst. What’s the volume? Is it heavier than usual? Better check the news stories. Better check the message boards to find out what rumors are circulating.

Even noted psychologist Daniel Kahneman agrees –

If owning stocks is a long-term project for you, following their changes constantly is a very, very bad idea. It’s the worst possible thing you can do, because people are so sensitive to short-term losses. If you count your money every day, you’ll be miserable.

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Thoughts I’m Meditating On

There is nothing like losing all you have in the world for teaching you what not to do. And when you know what not to do in order not to lose money, you begin to learn what to do in order to win.

~ Jesse Livermore

When you understand that nobody wants to read your shit, your mind becomes powerfully concentrated. You begin to understand that writing/reading is, above all, a transaction. The reader donates his time and attention, which are supremely valuable commodities. In return, you the writer must give him something worthy of his gift to you.

~ Steven Pressfield

Video I’m Watching – Enjoy Yourself It’s a beautiful little video! Just watch it, and enjoy yourself!

Articles I’m Reading

Warren Buffett Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting Transcript 2020 (Rev)

Covid-19-Induced Need Versus Greed Decisions (Mint)

Value Failed Because It Was Expensive (Distillate Capital)

Inside the Biggest Oil Meltdown in History (Institutional Investor)

What Have We Learned Here? (Collaborative Fund)

Why Most Post-Pandemic Predictions Will Be Totally Wrong (Medium)

This Version of Warren Buffett (The Reformed Broker)

Speculative Booms (Investor Amnesia)

If Charlie Munger Didn’t Quit When He Was Divorced, Broke, and Burying His 9 Year Old Son, You Have No Excuse (Joshua Kennon)

Bad Arguments and How to Avoid Them (Farnam Street)

Wizards of Dalal Street: How to Build A Crisis-Proof Portfolio? (CNBC)

A Question for You When times are difficult, we find it hard to recognize our good decisions, and our wins, from the past. However, acknowledging them as we move into the future empowers us to seek out ideas, people and experiences that set us up for success.

Ask yourself – Looking back over the last 5 years, where did I go right?

* * * That’s about it from me for today.

If you liked this post, please share with others on WhatsApp, Twitter, or just email them the link to this post.

Enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think.

With respect, — Vishal

The post Owning Stocks is a Long-Term Project appeared first on Safal Niveshak.

Owning Stocks is a Long-Term Project published first on https://mbploans.tumblr.com/

[zenruption]

7 Carpet and Upholstery Tips to Keep Your Home Squeaky Clean

by James Prathap

Keeping your house safe and germ-free entails regular cleaning. Besides getting rid of dust, dirt, and grime, cleaning also banishes pests such as mosquitoes, moths, bedbugs, and disease-causing microorganisms.

With the emergence of the fast-spreading SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, cleaning has become even more crucial for helping maintain health at home.

Like other pathogens, this virus strain can thrive for days on specific surfaces in your home. Of course, how long it will survive depends on the type of surface in question. Factors like humidity, temperature, and the porosity of surfaces also affect its infectious lifespan.

For most viruses, cold and dry places are the most hospitable environment. And while fabrics used for upholstery and carpets are less hospitable to the SARS-COV-2 virus compared to steel, plastic, and other solid surfaces, the use of air-conditioning may change that.

Considering the speed at which the virus spreads, knowing the proper way to clean carpets and upholstery is imperative. Of course, there’s also pet hair, dirt, grime, stains, and all sorts of stuff you have to get rid of, as well.

So, roll up your sleeves for these seven textile cleaning tips experienced homeowners and fabric experts swear by:

Remove anything that can be removed

Before you can start banishing pathogens, dirt, and pests, you must first do something about the furniture. Before deep cleaning your carpet, move furniture, appliances, and everything else placed on it first.

Clearing the area allows for more thorough cleaning, as it lets you get even to the nooks and crannies you don’t normally see every day.

For pieces that cannot be relocated, protect them from damage by putting plastic covering underneath the legs. This should prevent rusting on the metal frames and staining on the wood varnish when the carpet is soaked during disinfection.

2. Vacuum thoroughly

The next thing you need to do when cleaning a carpet is to vacuum it thoroughly. This should be done before disinfection and after you clear the area of furniture.

Vacuuming can help remove dirt, dust, and soil, but only if you do it properly.

Pass the vacuum over every square foot of the area slowly to make sure all the dirt, dust, and other debris are picked up from the carpet fibers. You also need to adjust the frequency of vacuuming from weekly to daily for areas with higher traffic.

Vacuum behind and underneath furniture that cannot be removed. Lift these up, if possible.

For best results, vacuum before and after you dust an area to ensure that no debris catches on to the carpet from cleaning the windows and other parts of the house.

3. Run a lint roller over it

Besides dirt, crud, crumbs, and other debris, you also need to get rid of hair from your carpeted flooring. If you feel that your vacuum isn’t catching them all, it may be high time for you to bring out the lint roller.

With some elbow grease and a lint roller bigger than what you use on your clothes, you should be able to solve your hairy floor problem. Of course, the time it takes to cover the entire area will depend on the type of carpet you have. In some cases, you may not need more than five minutes to do this task.

4. Use a squeegee for pet hair

Besides your own hair on the carpet, you might also experience a bit of trouble removing pet hair from the cushions, sofa, and other upholstered furniture. In some cases, lint rollers may not be as effective if you live with a shedding pet.

If this is the case, what you need is a squeegee.

While this cleaning tool is originally made to get rid of gunk on windows and glass surfaces, it is actually a great tool for dislodging short pet hair.

To use, start by watering the squeegee. Then use it on your sofa as you normally would on a window. Once the pet hairs are gathered in a pile, remove them and throw them away.

5. Rub, don’t blot

When you see dirt, your instinct would probably tell you to rub it away immediately. But this is actually counterproductive when it comes to carpets and upholstery.

Unlike your shoes or the dishes, staining can persist on sheets and other fabrics when you rub it. This is especially true for high-density carpets. The worst part is that you will not only fail to remove it, but you might make matters worse by spreading and working the stain into the fibers of the carpet when you rub.

Instead, blot stains away using a clean cloth or a sponge. With the pressure applied during blotting, the stain is absorbed into your cleaning material. This can be done regardless of the type of cleaning product you use.

You should also pay attention to the direction as you blot the area in. Make sure you blot inward to prevent the stain from spreading further out from the spot that’s already affected.

6. Iron out stains

Spilled your favorite wine on your carpet? Expect it to be a pain to remove.

That is, unless you have the collective knowledge and willpower of homeowners in your arsenal. After years and years of dealing with stains, some people have been able to devise an effective way to get rid of wine or other stains using items you probably already have at home.

Below are three steps you can follow when removing stains:

Start by vacuuming the stained area to remove solid particles. This should allow you to focus on the stain later on.

Next, treat the affected area with a three-to-one water-and-vinegar mixture. Let it work its way into the fabric for about five minutes.

Then, place a cleaning cloth or towel on top of the area and use a heated iron on it. The heat and pressure would cause the stain to transfer onto the towel and away from the textile.

7. Use the right disinfectant

Disinfecting and cleaning are two entirely different processes. While the latter gets rid of visible dirt and grime, the former ensures that the space is free of harmful microorganisms that cannot be seen by the naked eye.

When choosing a disinfectant, factor in the type of viruses you intend to banish.

For the SARS-CoV-2 virus, be sure to use products that have been approved to be effective against the pathogen. Besides verifying with the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) N List, you can also check the product label if it is effective against human coronaviruses.

Of course, buying the right product is only half of it. You also need to use it correctly. And in order to do that, you must follow the instructions indicated in the product packaging.

Clear away dirt and germs

Getting rid of dirt and germs from carpets and other fabrics is different from the process done on solid surfaces. If you follow the tips listed in this article, you should be able to succeed in keeping your home squeaky clean and safe from the threat of COVID-19.

AUTHOR BIO

James Prathap is the General Manager at NGC Nafees, one of the leading distributors of wallpapers, floorings, and fabrics in the Middle East and South Asia. Formed three decades ago, the business also offers high-quality panoramics, coordinated fabrics, and creative stickers for residential and commercial projects.