The doorman fallacy. Coined by Rory Sutherland to refer to conspicuous jobs in a company which seemingly provide no value, but which “strips away the true complexity of what a doorman provides.” :
If that’s the entirety of the job, a technological solution can easily replace the doorman, reducing costs. However, this strips away the true complexity of what a doorman provides.
The role is multifaceted, with intangible functions that extend beyond just handling the door. Doormen help guests feel welcome, hail taxis, enhance security, discourage unwelcome behaviour, and offer personalised attention to regulars. Even the mere presence of a doorman elevates the prestige of a hotel or residence, boosting guests’ perception of quality.
When you ignore all these intangible benefits, it’s easy to argue the role can be automated. This is the doorman fallacy – removing a human role because technology can imitate its simplest function, while ignoring the layers of nuance, service and human presence that give the role its true value.
Preliminary estimates suggest that the European heatdome/heatwave has caused 20,000 premature deaths.
An EV expert surveys recent advances in EV battery technology. (YT) Lithium Iron Phosphate (LFP) is significantly cheaper, and all cars are switching. It’s been around for a while, but it is being scaled up. China’s LFP has significant overcapacity in LFP battery. There are some new battery technologies (Sodium-ion, Lithium Manganese-Rich (LMR)Lithium-Air), but LFP is still going to dominate over the next decade.
I have actually tuned in to several FIFA World Cup games this year. Fun and exciting.
Highly recommend Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies, a sleeper historical drama, starring Tom Hanks.
ROB REINER HAS A SURPRISE CAMEO! Surprised & Delighted to see Rob Reiner playing “George Washington” in a caustic political comedy sketch on Larry David’s new show. Have no fear. I predict within 24 hours it will be on YT and social media everywhere.
Becoming Human — a website that compiles information about the earth and the emergence of life and humanity on this planet. Related: The PBS Eons show, which is about the fossil record, paleontology and ultimately climate science. I am frighteningly ignorant about this subject despite my curiosity. Here’s a complete YT playlist. Sadly watching these episodes through the PBS app is awful because of the mandatory intros. (You would think that they would show only once or twice and never again, but no, for a 10 minute segment, you get 1 minute of promos). The YT playlist when played in a browser with an ad blocker is going to be less painful.
GENEVIEVE GUENTHER: What is more incompetent than pushing energy sources that underlie the high prices of food, electricity, housing, and health care? Coal, oil, and methane gas are expensive sources of energy whose pollution makes food scarcer, home insurance increasingly unaffordable, and collectively costs us $700 billion in health care bills annually. What was the point of the wars in Venezuela and Iran, but illegally securing oil reserves as payback for the American oil companies that gave him money during the campaign? What is more corrupt than the gutting of American science, once the jewel of the world, and destroying our capacity even to predict the weather for farmers, so that you can try to hide your lie that climate change is a “hoax”? What is more selfish and indeed criminal than knowingly destroying the only world we have for America’s children? (LInk). Guenther is a climate activist who wrote a great book (Language of Climate Politics) that combines climate science with rhetorical analysis.
Occasionally I go to FB just to see what the algo wants to suggest for me In the past minute I just scrolled past 3 Spice Girls vid shorts. Help, I can’t resist.
I used to be with ‘it’, but then they changed what ‘it’ was. Now what I’m with isn’t ‘it’ anymore and what’s ‘it’ seems weird and scary to me. It’ll happen to you! (This is a famous quote from the Simpsons by the Grandpa Simpson character)
Here are 2 compilations of Muppets acknowledging that they are puppets: (First, Second ). “A puppet is controlled by a person whereas I am an actual talking frog.” Here’s a fascinating video (YT) about the technical tricks Jim Henson did to make them do incredible things, like ride a bicycle.
NYT commenter about data centers: ” Data centers are not inherently toxic or irredeemably thirsty. The “water problem” is fundamentally an engineering choice dictated by local water pricing vs. local electricity pricing. When facilities are built with closed-loop systems or air-cooling, their direct local water impact drops close to zero. The friction occurs when large facilities rely on municipal drinking water and evaporative cooling in regions that lack the surplus water infrastructure to support them. So advocate for proper regulation of the construction of data centers. That is helpful. Opposing AI in general, based on water demands, is not well founded.”
Funny sitcom moments:
Frazier: I told Lilith she looked fat in the dress?
Norm: What is your punishment.
Frazier: I’m not getting any.
Norm: You got off easy.
Frazier: No, I’m not getting any.
Norm: You got off easy.
NETFLIX RECOMMENDATION: “Raise Hell: Life & Times of Molly Ivins” is a delightful look at this Texas journalist, columnist & humorist — and how such an odd bird arose in conservative Texas. I laughed and laughed and laughed the whole time (The answer is that she came from an extremely wealthy Houston family, attended Ivy League schools and could drink alchohol better than any (male) politician. I had the great privilege to see her talk at SXSW 2004 where she was hilarious! (More)
Philadelphia Story (1940). “Everyone had enormous fun on the movie. The days and nights were sweltering that summer of 1940, but nobody cared. Cary got along very well with Kate Hepburn. She enjoyed him pushing her through a doorway in one scene (so she fell over backward) so much that she had him do it to her over and over again. There was a scene in which she had to throw Cary out the door of a house, bag and baggage, and she did it so vigorously he fell over and was bruised. As he stood up, looking rueful, Kate said, “That’ll serve you right, Cary, for trying to be your own stuntman.” (Cameraman Joseph Ruttberg)(Here’s that lovely scene YT)
Today, it’s not just MAGA voices who demonize state institutions but also Silicon Valley libertarians. One of the leaders of the U.S. labor movement recalled to me a private conversation she had had in 2017 with Peter Thiel, the billionaire tech entrepreneur, venture capitalist and prominent libertarian thinker. For a while, she couldn’t understand why libertarians — or more broadly, radical free-market ideologues — were in such denial about climate change. But then it became clear: The climate crisis is not something even the wealthiest individuals or most powerful corporations can tackle on their own. It demands large-scale state intervention and international cooperation, which runs counter to their ideological rejection of collective governance and public regulation.
What I see now in the U.S. is a profound inability to discuss seriously how the state can serve the public good. This conversation is still ignored, even by mainstream media, or is considered extreme. Proposals for universal health care — common in many industrialized democracies globally — are framed by many as radical or unaffordable. Efforts to cancel student debt are portrayed not as social policy but as moral hazard.
…
… There is still so much to admire in the country: the openness, the scale, the energy. But many Americans seem to live in timelines that never quite align with the present: Silicon Valley gazes into an unknowable future, while MAGA supporters are locked in conversations about a mythical past that never truly existed.
A powerful taboo still holds: Few dare voice the idea that problems might be solved not by individuals or the market but collectively, through society and the state. The decline of local institutions — unions, public schools — is real. And while many I’ve met speak longingly of better days, they often can’t say when those days existed, only that they’re gone. It’s as if the ability to speak meaningfully about the present has been lost — making it harder to imagine a future grounded in real needs, shared purpose and equality.
(This great essay comes from The Dial, an online zine devoted to personal reporting from around the globe. )
On YouTube I’ve been watching this insane Australian spy-comedy called Danger 5. (View the Full Series here).
Two TV shows. Watched Season 1 of For All Mankind, which is some of the best TV I’ve seen in ages. (Really compelling stories and characters). The great thing about it is that it’s not really about NASA and the moon, but about personal dreams and political ambitions. Also Deadloch, which is a crazy Tasmanian detective mystery involving lots of lesbian characters. Outrageous, lots of plot twists and outrageous comedy, great characters and genuine surprises at the end. (Also, the plots are so convoluted, but I don’t care; I’m just there for the ride). Update: Season 2 of Deadloch was equally inspired and hairy. Season 2 of For All Mankind has become more conventional, less interesting.
30 minute vid reel (YT) of Ad Genius Joe Sedelmaier’s Funniest TV Commercials. (NYT Obituary)
I’m pretty amazed that a substantial amount of the Prairie Home Companion radio show is on Archive.org
Climate Scientist MICHAEL MANN on the American petro-state: “America has now become a petro-state, right up there with Saudi Arabia and Russia. And by that, I mean one of a handful of countries where our policies are almost entirely dictated by an entrenched fossil fuel industry. One can see the United States openly collaborating with Russia and Saudi Arabia to do everything they can to scuttle global climate action because it’s a threat to their business model. So Americans have to recognize—as uncomfortable as it is—that we are now a bad actor in this space. And by “we” I mean the administration that represents us internationally. There are many good folks in the US, obviously, who are very unhappy with the current regime and what they’re doing. But as far as the rest of the world is concerned, they look at the United States as a bad actor that they’re going to have to work around.
“Consequently, we’re going to see Europe and other countries take the lead in fighting climate change. We’re actually going to see China, of all things, taking far more leadership in this area than the United States. And that allows the Chinese leadership to present themselves as similarly taking the high road when it comes to human rights, its treatment of ethnic minorities like the Uyghurs, the surveillance state and all of their sort of hegemonic behavior in recent years. So it helps situate China as the true leader in the world, while it helps to diminish the standing of the United States to the rest of the world. …. It’s ironic, isn’t it, that an authoritarian regime like China might be best-situated to act on climate. But because of the top-down structure of their government, their leaders can decide “We’re going to do this” and make it happen. They don’t answer to fossil-fuel industry lobbyists in the way that politicians in the US do.
SUFFS (TONY-AWARD WINNING MUSICAL)ON YOUTUBE/PBS: (YouTube) This amazing/uplifting play retells the turbulent story about the women instrumental in leading protests to obtain woman’s right to vote in USA. Great music, great cast (starring Shaina Taub, who wrote the musical), it’s a moving & entertaining history lesson and raises question strikingly similar to those we face during the Trump era.
According to the PBS website, this musical is available for viewing ONLY in May-June, so watch it before it leaves! I admit being unaware of almost all the events described in this musical, including the reluctance of Woodrow Wilson to push for it.
The PBS streaming app regularly has award-winning plays and musicals: currently it has Kiss Me Kate, Top Hat, etc.
As wonderful as British actor Anthony Head (RIP) was in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, he was also terrific as the harsh and narrow-minded Uther Pendragon (father of King Arthur) in the amazing 2008 British series MERLIN. The stories and actors were all first-rate, and it’s streaming now on Amazon Prime. (In that first episode, Head’s character Uther Pendragon will make you want to hate him! — thanks to Head’s performance.
CORY DOCTOROW: “Dear Comrade Trump: On this, the occasion of your 80th birthday, I write to extend my sincere thanks for all the work you have done. After decades of deadlock, you have inspired the world to action! You have done more to de-dollarise the world than any American leader in history. Without you, there would be no way that Ethiopia would be revaluing its national debt in yuan. You have done more to end the global dependence on oil than any leader (except, perhaps, for Comrade Putin). Without you, there would be no way that India would be chucking out its gas hobs and replacing them with induction tops. And, of course, you have done more than any president in history to end American dominance over the internet. Without you, there would be no way the EU would be racing forward with projects such as Eurostack and European Digital Infrastructure Consortium, with whole nations ditching American tech exports like Microsoft Office 365 in favour of free, open, auditable, transparent alternatives running on servers within the EU’s borders. Comrade Trump, you are, at long last, ushering in the post-American world, and a grateful planet salutes you!
****
Siri Hustvedt: Dear Number 47. You’re ageing fast, Mr President, plagued by bruising, memory holes, verbal incoherence and unwelcome fits of sleep. Although plain to many of us who did not vote for you, your age and inevitable death have been invisible in the Magaverse.
Maga magic transformed your real, fat, old man’s body into the spectacular body of fascism, American style: bulletproof, muscle-bound, eternal. The many superhero costumes worn by your 6 January terrorists were testament to that pathetic fantasy of invulnerability, no doubt helped along by the very real carnage of a global pandemic….
…But time is inexorable, the citizens are restless, and your fantasy body is beginning to crack, just as your real body is showing the infirmities that come with 80 years of age.
****
Bill McKibben: On the occasion of your birthday: It was unnecessary to launch a cruel, ridiculous war to convince the world of the benefits of wind energy, solar energy and so on. But you do deserve one small gold trophy as electric vehicle salesman of the quarter. Enjoy.
But it doesn’t take into account the environmental movement which sometimes is embraced across the spectrum… and vilified by some pro-business types. I never fail to be surprised at the complete ignorance of most Americans about the subject of climate change.
(I have created a Climate Change Cheatsheet which gathers my favorite links. But by far the best source of information is the Climate Primer prepared by Kerry Emannuel and MIT.
NYT wrote about this viral tweet about NBA Championship between the NY Knicks and the San Antonio Spurs, and I gotta say: it’s brilliant!
(That’s a reference of course to the reservation scene (YT) which is still one of the most memorable and entertaining clips from Seinfeld: )
But many of us, if not most of us, with any savings parked in major stock indices (yours truly included) won’t have any choice. We’re going to end up investing in SpaceX whether we want to or not. That’s because the major indices have been rigged.
Normally, major stock indices have a waiting period before they plow their investors’ money into a newly formed company, in order to test whether that company is worth it. But SpaceX has lobbied index funds to change the rules.
On May 1, for example, the Nasdaq 100 implemented a new “fast entry” rule that will include companies among the top 40 most highly valued companies — which will almost certainly include SpaceX.
Presto! A big chunk of Americans’ retirement savings and pensions (as well as university endowments) will automatically be tied to SpaceX’s market value. At the same time, all that automatic infusion of investment will artificially jack up the value of SpaceX, at least in the short term.
But here’s the real kicker. SpaceX insiders — such as Musk and, reportedly, senior Trump officials — will be able to sell their shares sooner than is usually the case with an IPO, because that’s the way the IPO has been organized. Which means they can enjoy the stocks’ upward tide as the major indices force millions of investors to buy it, and then they can exit SpaceX before the tide goes out.
From a reddit thread about Movie conventions which spoil the scene for you:
In war films any time someone says what they going to do when they go home, they always die.
When picking up a gun it makes clicky clicky sounds, even when the real gun just doesn’t.
Background actors dancing to obviously zero music and trying to do it as quietly as possible while the scene is going on.
People parking 30+ yards away from where they need to go. Just pull up to the damn house, meet up, murder site, etc.
Day for night
This may not apply, but every movie needs to have a scene to address why there is no cell service
Cars having no rear view mirror or headrests on seats.
I like watching people type becuase they aren’t actually typing. Or texting.
Wilhelm scream. I wish no one had ever told me about it
A sound designer told me that he often added the sound of crickets in post for a night shot when there was extraneous noise occurring during a scene. From that point I noticed a lot of crickets during night scenes.
The office ladies podcast busted the “grocery bag” deal – bags of groceries are usually lighter than they’d be in real life, especially the classic paper bad with things sticking out the top – which often includes a baguette and carrot greens
I probably will write something about Trump’s attack on Iran. I have lots of opinions, none of which are that interesting or well-informed or important. More later.
The acclaimed Iranian director is interviewed on the Daily Show (note: through a translator). Offers perspective of what it is like to try to make movies in a country that forbids him from doing so. (I haven’t seen JUST AN ACCIDENT, but hope to do so in the next week or so). (YT, 20 minutes)
The 1990s TV comedy show provides alternate endings to Gone with the Wind. (YT)
“Donald Trump said he was going after criminals. He said he was going after people who were dangerous to Americans. Well, how is it that these two young men were good enough to perform at the United States Capitol at the invitation of their congresswoman? They were safe enough to tour the White House. And yet, the Trump administration has them sitting in a prison.” (Congressman Joaquin Castro about the detention of two prize-winning teenage mariachi musicians, whose family had applied lawfully on an asylum claim and were arrested when they were required to do a routine check in with ICE). Souce NYT.
PRO PUBLICA REPORT: In 2025 Trump officials dismantled a program to help the US military avoid civilian casualties. “Dismantling the fledgling harm-reduction effort, defense analysts say, is among several ways the Trump administration has reorganized national security around two principles: more aggression, less accountability.”
QUOTE: “Iran was able to advance its nuclear programme to the point where it was before the 12 Day War last June not because of the JCPOA, but because President Trump withdrew the United States from the JCPOA,” (Laura Rockwood, disarmament expert and former IAEA official). (From Factcheck.org’s analysis).
I spent a good hour reading and re-reading the Wiki article about JCPOA and reminded just how senseless Trump’s withdrawal was. Actually though I think a lot of Republicans and even some Dems deserve blame for not passing a law approving of it. Charlie Rose had two excellent interviews with Iranians about the Iran nuclear deal (here and here)
Here’s a brilliant staging by Jerome Robbins of the opening number (YT) (“Comedy Tonight”) to a Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Roman Forum. Bonus: It’s sung by Jason Alexander). The whole YT channel is replete with classic clips of Broadway numbers, often by the original performers.
Related: Here’s the Hello number from the Book of Mormon (YT)(original cast).
2025 presentation by Mark Z. Jacobson about the hows and why’s of transitioning to Wind Water and Solar (WWS). (YT, 40 minutes long, start at minute 4:30) In one slide, Jacobson estimated based on current trends the year at which each country will achieve a 100% WWS solution. Shockingly, the expected date for USA was the slowest and longest (2148) while China was expected to achieve it in 2048. (These estimates were based on pre-2025 data before Trump even had taken office). Jacobson estimates that the cost for USA to transition 100% to WWS by 2050 was about $6 trillion, but that is dwarfed by the extra cost of Business-As-Usual and the social cost of fossil fuels. The energy-cost-savings payback time to make the WWS transition was 6 years, while the social cost payback (savings resulting from improved mortality from air pollution) was only about 1 year. Startling, fascinating analysis.
BILL MCKIBBEN: “If you’ve been to any of the No Kings protests that have happened so far, you’ll see a lot of people with hairlines like mine, which is to say, scant. People of all kinds are outraged by what’s happening in the country right now, but older people have a particular role to play here…. There have been plenty of presidents in my lifetime I didn’t much like or didn’t agree with politically, but there’s never been any that I thought were fascist, and I think that that’s very clear what we’re now starting to deal with in this country.”
Actually I was at a No Kings protest earlier today.
Today, I heard GOP Senator Lankford say on TV that Iran has been attacking Americans for 47 years, so I asked Gemini AI to compare and contrast the scope and severity of Iranian attacks against USA with American attacks on Iran. Here’s a summary — and the actual verbatim answer here.
When some Trump supporter commented on my photo saying that I was ignoring Sleepy Joe’s inflation (a canard, not important now), I replied: “Wow, over the last decade you have explicitly approved of a lawless lying racist tax cheat as president, and the best you could come up with is that “gee, sometimes inflation can be bad”!? Or do you genuinely believe that there is value in ignoring depravity?” And that was my polite response!
RE: “Executive Orders.” I heard this on an Amicus legal podcast discussion with Dahlia Lithwick: “Margaret Sullivan has a good piece today, just sort of saying, ‘Every time we treat his executive orders as though they’re the law, we fall into the same trap. We report on these as though these things are the law.’ They’re not. I call them letters to Santa. They’re utterly devoid of meaning.” Source (In the same podcast Lithwick and Preet Bharara later ponder this comparison further, agreeing that the “letters to Santa” certainly have real world effects, but these letters to Santa could be called “both law and not law at the same time.” )
Legal scholar and podcaster Dahlia Lithwick said this on a podcast about presidential executive orders: “Margaret Sullivan has a good piece today, just sort of saying, ‘Every time we treat his executive orders as though they’re the law, we fall into the same trap. We report on these as though these things are the law.’ They’re not. I call them letters to Santa. They’re utterly devoid of meaning.”
Happy to see that Virginia passed the National Popular vote compact. As a Texas liberal, I would be elated if enough states voted to adopt it, and I don’t think support for this necessarily cuts along traditional partisan lines. After all, there are conservatives in Illinois and California who don’t have a voice in presidential election. The website advocating it has a comprehensive FAQ addressing many common concerns.
Here’s a profile of an incredible 49 year old artist who died recently
Will Tavlin does a deep dive into how Netflix’s ascendancy has changed the movie industry. Among the complaints is that screenplay writers have too much dialogue explaining obvious plot points so the watcher who is barely paying attention can follow it.
About a month ago, I predicted to someone that Venezuela would be Trump’s Iraq War. There are some differences. For one thing, Venezuela had a presidential election where the presumed winner was never allowed to assume that office. (Hopefully Machado and Gonzales will be able to assist in this transition). Also, the political power of petroleum interests is substantially weaker than it was in 2003. Finally, Trump has much lower international legitimacy than George W. Bush had in 2003. Even if Trump acted honorably in this case, the international community will treat Trump’s words and actions as both dishonest and corrupt. Maybe a President Biden or a President Harris or even a President Haley might have been able to convince the world that this military intervention would restore democracy and benefit the world, it is doubtful that anyone would believe a U.S. president who lies about even the most stupid of things. Nobody will or should believe that Trump/Rubio/Hegseth will play a constructive role in restoring democracy and justice in Venezuela. Instead the rest of the world will be wondering about what corrupt deals Trump made with opposition leaders to further Trump’s private autocratic interests.
(When I said that Trump had lower international legitimacy than George W. Bush did in 2003, that’s saying a lot because most of the world opposed Bush’s 2003 intervention. Sure, oil interests (Halliburton, etc.) was driving that narrative, but at least Paul Bremer and Colin Powell and even Bush himself could “talk the talk” about democracy, freedom, etc. I doubt that Secretary of State Rubio could even do that..)
ELECTORAL-VOTE has compiled a useful (but very long) reference to all the wrong or criminal actions by the lawless lying racist tax-cheat.
What strikes me today is that many Venezuelans are probably happy to have Americans intervene in their country. They have suffered greatly under Maduro and would welcome outside assistance and investment. But unlike Bush’s flawed intervention in Iraq (where Bush still sent lots of economic assistance to restore civil society and rebuild infrastructure), I expect the Trump Administration to send absolutely nothing. Trump is probably the stingiest man alive; as a businessmen, Trump took pride in shortchanging vendors whenever possible; as a politician, Trump took pride in dismantling foreign aid programs and funding for education, science and health care. What happens when Venezuelans realize that the US government under Trump will do absolutely nothing to help rebuild Venezuelan civil society (other than to help American companies buy land and take advantage of the country’s natural resources)? Perhaps V’s neighbors will deliver this kind of assistance; perhaps EU or China will step in. Perhaps nobody will step in, and Venezuela’s society will continue to deteriorate. Regardless, it seems inevitable that Venezuelans will view U.S. actions towards its country with a combination of disillusionment and anger.
The fixation on “wokeness,” however, obscures a much larger and more consequential transformation reshaping the humanities at Harvard and elsewhere. The most serious pressure on Western history—and on the humanities more broadly—comes not from ideological capture, but from the economic priorities of academic institutions.
Over the past decade, student demand for the humanities has cratered. Nationally, the share of undergraduates majoring in humanities disciplines has fallen by roughly 25 percent between 2012 and 2020. The number of English majors declined by about one-third between 2013 and 2023. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, humanities degrees fell from 16.8 percent of all bachelor’s degrees in 2010-11 to 12.8 percent in 2020-21—a sharp contraction both in absolute terms and as a share of overall enrollment.
Harvard has not been immune. As of 2022, just seven percent of Harvard freshmen intended to concentrate in the humanities, down from 20 percent in 2012. (Because Harvard must be different, it calls majors “concentrations.”) That figure stood at 30 percent in the 1970s. Harvard’s history department has felt these pressures especially acutely: its number of concentrators plunged by 50 percent between 2011 and 2020.
“I do not understand why you would mass-pardon people who assaulted police officers. I don’t get it. I never will.” (SPECIAL PROSECUTOR JACK SMITH about Trump’s action to mass-pardon 1500 convicted criminals, 33 of which have committed additional crimes — including murder, sexual assault, burglary, aggravated kidnapping, stalking, making terrorist threats) (Source. Also this).
TRULY SHOCKING. An NBC report about the Minneapolis shooting mentioned that last year Trump cancelled Biden’s 2022 executive order to require that federal law enforcement officers wear body cameras. I looked it up — it’s true and horrifying. It’s now clear that the Trump Administration is restricting the gathering of evidence about encounters with federal officers so that citizens must accept unquestioningly whatever version of the truth that these officers provide.
SIGN ON BONUSES FOR ICE?! Wow, did not know that the federal government was using US tax money to pay up to $50,000 as a sign on bonus for people who join ICE. I wonder how much of a sign on bonus you need to offer these people to persuade them not to shoot law-abiding citizens. Update: It looks like the bonus is paid in $10,000 installments over several years(source).
“What my mom taught me, basically, was who, what, where, when, and how. She also taught me that everyone has a story–you just have to find it. And, most importantly, she taught me that it’s the interviewer’s job to make the interviewee excited to be there.”
Michael Barrett on Elaine May’s 1971 movie, A New Leaf starring herself and Walter Matthau. It was originally a 3 hour movie significantly cut by the studio (eventually resulting in a lawsuit which May lost). Despite this, it was beloved by critics and audiences aslike. Barrett asks:
It’s fair to ask: would a woman executive have tolerated a three-hour comedy? And what about the males who turn in overlong cuts? If Mike Nichols had turned in a three-hour version of The Graduate, it would have been taken away from him. It seems more likely, in this and other films she directed, that May belongs to that list of otherwise male creative geniuses who naturally clash with the commercial system, including Erich Von Stroheim, Orson Welles and Otto Preminger. Rather than demean May’s abilities, such a view pays her a higher compliment when assessing her career as a director, as opposed to a woman director.
Recently it was pointed out to me that David Bowie played Pontius Pilate in Scorcese’s Last Temptation of Christ. Here is that chilling scene where he appeared (YT)
The Guardian: British Grandmother on tourist visa locked up for 6 weeks after husband’s work visa had expired. In unrelated news, the “US saw 4.5m fewer visits from international travellers in 2025; visits from Canada were down by more than 22%, from Germany by more than 11% and from the UK by 15%. The World Travel & Tourism Council, the global body representing the industry, estimated that the decline in international tourism last year cost the US $12.5bn in lost revenue.
I would hardly call myself a world traveler, but I have enough experience in Eastern Europe to know that it’s easy for travelers to mess up on visa regulations. The rules are often confusing and opaque. Once I relied on the English language portion of the Slovak embassy as a reference to that country’s visa policies. Apparently, the rules had changed, but the Slovakian government had not bothered to update the English-language portions of their website. Too bad, foreigners! (That one day delay it caused to my trip still makes me angry 20 years later — I curse the Slovakian government still!)
In the case of the British grandmother, she didn’t have any problems understanding the language. But it often can be difficult to decipher the visa rules even if you do know the language — especially if the foreign government is doing everything to trip up foreign visitors.
HILARY’S SPEECH (reposted verbatim by satirist Andy Borowitz) makes clear what a mockery the GOP subpoena of her was.
As Secretary of State, I appointed a former federal prosecutor, Lou CdeBaca, to ramp up our global antitrafficking efforts. I oversaw nearly 170 anti-trafficking programs in 70 nations and directly pressed foreign leaders to crack down on trafficking networks in their countries. Every year we published a global report to shine a light on abuses. The findings of those reports triggered sanctions on countries failing to make progress, so they became a powerful diplomatic tool to drive concrete action.
I insisted that the United States be included in the report for the first time ever in 2011. Because we must hold ourselves not just to the same standard as the rest of the world but to an even higher one. Sex trafficking and modern slavery should have no place in America. None.
Infuriatingly, the Trump Administration gutted the Trafficking in Persons Office at the State Department, cutting more than 70 percent of the career civil and foreign service experts who worked so hard to prevent trafficking crimes. The annual trafficking report, required by law, was delayed for months. The message from the Trump Administration to the American people and the world could not be clearer: combatting human trafficking is no longer an American priority under the Trump White House.
This contains my random/unclassifiable links found about politics, pop culture, etc. See also: my bio page and music reviews. By the way, blogging will be light in November because of my 1965 Project.
The Curious Case of Kacyee Nicole by Mimi Lamarre about a controversy about whether a young person with cancer is actually the person she says she was. The article talks about John Halcyon Styn , a nice and colorful man whom I talked to several times at South by Southwest.
I suggest that we could take a big step forward by distinguishing free speech from just access. Access to the general public, granted by institutions like television networks, newspapers, magazines, and university lectures, is a finite resource. Justice requires that, like any finite good, institutional access should be apportioned based on merit and on what benefits the community as a whole….
The invincibly ignorant and the intellectual huckster have every right to express their opinions, but their right to free speech is not the right to an audience.
Here’s a compilation of John Lennon’s recorded statements about the Beatles and the breakup. (YT) Here’s another compilation of Paul’s statements (YT)
Here’s a terrific behind-the-scenes video about the making of the Once More with Feeling episode of Buffy. (YT) That episode is absolute magic.
In a weekend with an ongoing war and several mass shootings, it seems almost irresponsible to point to the murder of a celebrity couple. Rob Reiner was one of a kind. He was great in my favorite show, “All in the Family” and he was recently interviewed by Ted Danson on his “Where Everybody Knows Your Name” podcast about his movie career, AIIF, Spinal Tap, his family, etc. (also on YouTube). It’s a must listen!
DREW CAREY SHOW ON YOUTUBE: I have been waiting 20 years to rewatch one of my favorite shows (which didn’t make it onto DVD or streaming for various copyright reasons). Now though, every single episode is on Youtube — plus there are some great discussions about making the show.
It seems strange to focus on Ukraine on Christmas Day, but this harrowing report about Russia’s bombing on the port city of Odesa (a UNESCO World Heritage Site) is a grim reminder that the people who suffer the consequences are those least able to flee to somewhere safer. The Internet says that the current temperature of Odesa is -7C (20 F), and in my own city of Houston, the temperature is 26C (80 F), and kids are actually swimming in the neighborhood swimming pool (on Christmas!) One can only hope that the new year will bring positive changes.
Three personal notes. First, the Facebook suspension continues. From what I read, it could take months to get restored. It doesn’t affect me, but I think a lot of people upload photos there and don’t store them elsewhere. So a ban could be devastating. Update: It got reinstated 4 weeks later.
Second, I am happy to report putting together a table/spreadsheet of reviews I have written about music albums. I created a Google Form for inputting data, but the raw spreadsheet was so hard to read and search through that I rarely consulted it. I didn’t even realize that I had accidentally written 20+ reviews multiple times. I never had the time to look into how to create a read-only table that was user-friendly. I even included several tabs offering different ways to sort data.
I have a backlog of technical tasks to work on. Frankly, if this Facebook ban lasts more than a month, I’m going to have to email Facebook friends to let them know what is going on. What a pain.
Third, I have started a new series called “Political Pulse.” I really haven’t posted anything substantive about politics on my blog (aside from the usual linkdumps), but I feel that it’s useful to include unvarnished snapshots of my feelings towards current politics.
I eventually cancelled my Washington Post subscription. Their reporting was really good, but in the last year or so the editorial pages is overrun with conservative viewpoints, and of course WP failed to endorse Kamala Harris. The main thing about the subscription I enjoyed was having access to their book review archive. I will miss that.
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If you think science and public health are expensive, try ignorance and pandemics. (NYT commenter on an article about CDC and Kennedy).
(M)odels that were run for longer, to 2300 and 2500. … show the tipping point that makes an Amoc shutdown inevitable is likely to be passed within a few decades, but that the collapse itself may not happen until 50 to 100 years later.
The research found that if carbon emissions continued to rise, 70% of the model runs led to collapse, while an intermediate level of emissions resulted in collapse in 37% of the models. Even in the case of low future emissions, an Amoc shutdown happened in 25% of the models….
The new results are “quite shocking, because I used to say that the chance of Amoc collapsing as a result of global warming was less than 10%”, said Prof Stefan Rahmstorf, at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, who was part of the study team. “Now even in a low-emission scenario, sticking to the Paris agreement, it looks like it may be more like 25%.
“These numbers are not very certain, but we are talking about a matter of risk assessment where even a 10% chance of an Amoc collapse would be far too high. We found that the tipping point where the shutdown becomes inevitable is probably in the next 10 to 20 years or so. That is quite a shocking finding as well and why we have to act really fast in cutting down emissions.”
I haven’t done it in a while, but maybe I will try to use an RSS reader again.
Comment I posted in response to a review of Wizard of Oz remake in Los Vegas’s The Sphere:
It’s important to remind everyone that the Wizard of Oz movie would have normally gone into the public domain in 2015 — were it not for the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act, which extended copyright ownership of all works in the USA by 20 years. A movie like Wizard of Oz properly should belong in the public domain already, and it should be easier for people to repurpose and recontextualize the work, as the Sphere people have done. That’s the entire point of the public domain — to provide artistic elements for people in the future to play with. Sure, when that happens, it’s a different work and should be treated as such. Frankly, I’m grateful that the corporation owning the movie copyright allowed this reworking to occur, but just imagine what other works might have been created if the copyright were allowed to expire in 2015 (as originally intended).
On a YT clip about the 1990s show A Different World, one commenter wrote, “It was September 1992. It was a weekday night my freshman year at college and my roommate, a friend, and I were watching this show when I spoke up and said “We are a bunch of young college students living in a dorm watching a TV show about young college students living in a dorm.”
Sourcewatch page about Turning Point USA, the organization that slain conservative leader Charlie Kirk ran. That group is amply funded by Koch, Donor Trust, etc. The wiki article about Charlie Kirk gives a rundown of his controversial positions. I’m sure that many will whitewash Kirk’s extreme positions, but he was involved in Professor Watchlist, climate change denialism, the Great Replacement theory, COVID misinformation and in initial organization of “stop the steal” Jan 6 protests. (He wasn’t involved on Jan 6, but had helped arrange buses to send students there; he even testified at the Jan 6 hearings about his role). Propublica and others have reported on wrongdoing at Turning Point, but this had little to do with Kirk — even though he drew a handsome salary from the organization.
I have nothing against proselytizing, but it seems that organizations like Turning Point funnel lots of conservative money into funding a blowhard to go around campuses to spread the gospel of conservatism. There is no real equivalent funding source on the liberal side; not even George Soros of Bill Gates are funding proselytizing missions. If anything, the liberal side funds speakers who are actually qualified to talk about certain subjects.
Also, it’s worth asking whether public debates result in meaningful discussion or are just ways to allow certain rhetorically-skilled people to knock down people who aren’t really that schooled in argumentation. One technique that Kirk uses is to note a contradiction in the other side and keep hammering it and then to go off on Gish gallops while the other side is too polite or diffident to stand up.
I’ve been fascinated by this Cambridge debate between Charlie Kirk and Tilly Middlehurst (YT). Here’s a discussion between a Cambridge debate coach and Middlehurst about how she did it (YT). First, it’s a great discussion about how to handle blowhards.
Here’s a 13 minute discussion by Roshan Salgado D’Arcy of the climate change misinformation that Charlie Kirk spread in public debates about climate change (YT). The speaker is a climate scientist, and he made this video 4 years ago. Says a commenter, ” one lesson … from watching those kinds of “debates” is to never try and counter argue someone at a podium when the audience is behind them. You can be overwhelmingly correct and you will still lose.”
It’s probably no surprise to anyone that fossil fuel interests funded Mr. Kirk’s foundation. Emily Atkin wrote about that (btw, her climate change substack is a must).
To address the YouTube comment cited above. I guess public debates are not a bad idea per se as long as you have two people who have knowledge or experience about the subject. In these walk-up-and-ask-question public debates, Kirk and his crew control the setting and what kind of people participate. It seems more like a venue for Kirk to land his talking points and Gotchas which seem to impress the easily impressed.
ROBERT REDFORD ON THE TWILIGHT ZONE. (It was great — no exhilarating! — to watch the 1962 episode, NOTHING IN THE DARK (Season 3, Ep. 16) where Robert Redford plays a wounded officer which an old woman treats suspiciously. Uncommonly good acting; Gladys Cooper was a stage and movie veteran whose first movie was in 1913 (and had been in Rebecca (1940) and My Fair Lady (1964). It’s amazing that Robert Redford had continued making movies 111 years after Cooper’s first movie.
To my delight, I realize that Cooper had been in two other Twilight Zone episodes, including the equally haunting Night Call (1964).
Gisela Salim-Peyer on the similarities between US autocracy and Venezuelan autocracy:
The word autocracy conjures images of police officers violently crushing protests and dissidents going to prison for their ideals. Those things do happen, but for many people, the experience is more passive: Living through the rise of a dictatorship just means inhabiting a space that is gradually shrinking. There’s no point in resisting, not at first. You just make do with whatever breathing room you still have—until you lose that too…. There is a lag in time between the abstract threat of authoritarianism and its concrete realization, between hoping that your fears are mere paranoia and seeing them fulfilled.
Louis CK on why people don’t appreciate technological progress (YT)
Did you know the TV show Lost had a (legitimate) epilogue which never was aired? (YT) Blows my mind too (and actually it’s terrific in its own way). Also, the two Lost writers did a wonderful spoof of alternate endings on Jimmy Kimmel (YT). Really well done. I love the cast of that show.
Reality Chex is a news aggregator site run by one woman Marie Burns. I’ve been following her site for over a decade. She personally summarizes all the big stories from major news sources — as well as major substacks (Heather Cox Richardson, etc) and social media. Added bonus: gifted article URLs to the premium news sites!
NEWS SITES I LIKE This is Not Cool is a climate change & energy blog run by videographer Peter Sinclair. A decade ago he made incredibly informative vids about climate change & climate change denials. This blog contains the latest news & video reporting about climate change, with lots of interviews.
Guardian (voluntary $60) is a special category unto itself. It asks for a $60 donation, but doesn’t put anything behind a paywall. Reporting & commentary is generally first rate. (who knows?!)
NEWS SITES I LIKE. The CNN Lite text-only is a great place to read full CNN stories without ads or multimedia. (PS, NPR also has a lite text-only site as well).
NEWS SITES I LIKE. Electoral-vote has daily news and commentary by two California professors, with reader questions and commentary on the weekend. Initially it focused on election news, but now it covers all aspects of national politics and the Trump legacy. BTW, the site looks atrocious on mobile devices; there is another link specifically for mobile readers.
NEWS SITES I LIKE David Corn is a journalist & author whose substack includes lots of interesting reports & commentary. I generally avoid following reporters on social media, but DC’s bluesky feed always has interesting stories & commentary. (He also has an Our Land newsletter which has a free trial. But even after it expires, it still sends regular commentary via email twice week.
NEWS SITES I LIKE Deceleration is a blog/newsletter run by Marisol Cortez. She is a San Antonio journalist/intellectual/writer who focuses on environmental and social justice stories which affect Texas.
NEWS SITES I LIKE Atlantic Council provides commentary about foreign policy issues (including outstanding analysis about Ukraine). It’s a newsletter, and you can choose the countries or topics which interest you. Voila! You will receive articles via email.
NEWS SITES I LIKE Sri Preston Kulkarni is a foreign policy expert who ran for Congress (and lost) in my congressional district. In his Seeking a Better Future Substack he writes eloquently about the latest political events. FUN FACT: Sri is the son of Venkatesh Kulkarni who was a distinguished Indian-American novelist who taught at Rice University in Houston.
NEWS SITES I LIKE . Clive Thompson is a tech reporter & geek who digs up the most amazing things. He drops a lot of cool things on his Mastodon account and every few weeks or so he publishes a summary of his favorite links on his Linkfest — which is really fun to read!
NEWS SITE I LIKE . I used to like BoingBoing for my unusual/geek news until it went behind a paywall. Still haven’t found an adequate replacement even though Cory Doctorow’s feeds are everywhere. Metafilter is a geek link-sharing site which was really cool 20 years ago, but it’s still semi-cool. PS, there is a $5 fee to become a member, but you can just lurk — as I have done for a long time. For other link sharing/commentary, check out HackerNews , and Slashdot) and certain subreddits.
Paywalled journalism. Slate.com (120$), Vox.com ($40), Atlantic Monthly $80), New Republic ($20) are all excellent, but pricey. I mean, how many premium news & commentary services do you really need (i.e., can you afford?). NYT is still essential reading, but who the hell knows what the annual cost is– there are so many opportunities to get discounts — especially when you call their customer service line to cancel.
Other people on Substack, etc. Worth mentioning that almost all of them have active bluesky feeds.
Heather Cox Richardson. (BS) Believe it or not, I have not subscribed to her substack yet, but her pieces are linked to so often that I feel as though I already do.
FACEBOOK CLASS ACTION SUIT: FYI, the privacy class action suit has concluded and payments for people who signed up for one will start going out in August 2025. https://facebookuserprivacysettlement.com/
In this 8 minute comedy sketch, an Australian comedy writer asks two comedians to read aloud sight unseen from an absurd cop drama script. Lots of hilarity and surprises. Perpetrated by Australian comedy writer Rob Hunter. (YT) Hunter is selling vids of some of his Late O’Clock comedy shows on Gumroad . But there are generous clips from the shows on YT. (YT) Rob Hunter was on the writing team of Rosehaven for Season 5, making an already great sitcom to be greater. Here’s a YT playlist of episodes from Season 4 and Season 5. (YT) I note with horror that the series is impossible to stream in the US. I was able to watch Season 1-3 on the rare times they were on streaming. Comedian Celia Pacquola is the star of the show, but the characters are all great. The two main people select their favorite show moments. (YT)
QUOTE: “If this is how they treat someone with a title and a national platform, imagine how undocumented members of our communities — without cameras or microphones — are being treated when no one is watching. This is not just an abuse of power; it is a reflection of an administration increasingly comfortable with authoritarian tactics.” (Congresswoman Nanette Barragán from California about the handcuffing of Senator Padilla).
Sri Kulkarni about the “threat” of undocumented workers:
It would be reasonable to assume, based on how many stories about cartels and gangs we see, that murders by undocumented people are a huge problem, right? Well, according to DHS, the total number of homicides (including manslaughter) by undocumented people last year was 29. (Not 29,000 murders. 29 total homicides in all of America.) To put that into perspective, there were more murders (31) in Kristi Noem’s home state of South Dakota (pop. 924,000) than there were by illegal immigrants in a country of 340 million people. Dakotans are more dangerous than undocumented people. Overall, illegal immigrants commit FEWER crimes than US citizens, so you are probably safer around them than they are around you. (Sri Kulkarni Facebook post).
Wait — what? Did Trump just declare war against Iran? Did he just indicate that he was thinking of assisting in the assassination of Iran’s supreme leader? Trump’s ill-considered tweets reveal the sheer depth of incompetence of our public diplomacy and the sort of kingly powers that Trump likes to believe that he has.
I, a private U.S. citizen, call for the unconditional surrender of the Israeli government until it discloses 100% of its hidden nuclear weapony and agrees to be subject to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and to IAEA monitoring.
PBS SCIENCE VID ON HOUSTON WEATHER. (YT) Wow, I am blown away that PBS is producing top-quality education vids on earth science and global warming. Well-spent tax dollars! This one is about Houston’s 2017 and how the urban topologies of megacities like Houston amplify weather events. I can’t wait to watch the other vids from the PBS Terra series.
QUOTE: “Things aren’t just getting worse. They’re getting worse faster… We’re actively moving in the wrong direction in a critical period of time that we would need to meet our most ambitious climate goals. Some reports, there’s a silver lining. I don’t think there really is one in this one.” (AP Report on 2025 IGCC report). Here are key messages from the 2024 data and an outstanding infographic poster (PDF) from the 2024 report
EPISTEMIC CLOSURE. 1)Trump has been duped many many times before becoming president and after he became president, i.e., “Obama is a Muslim,” “Climate Change is a Hoax,” “Election was stolen,” etc. 2)Trump values absolute loyalty over expertise or science. He simply refuses to believe experts whenever they contradict his naive notions of reality. In fact, in the face of criticism, Trump makes it a point to double down on his mistaken beliefs and denigrate the views of experts so that he (and his flock) can feel superior to those experts. Then he surrounds himself with YES MEN who reinforce his biases and ignorance. 4)The modus operandi of Trump has been to create crises out of his paranoid beliefs, and then to “solve” them by trying some simplistic “brute force” solution. During these times, it is vital not to rely on Trump’s version of reality and instead use news sources that are completely independent of Trump’s corrosive ambit.
RIP Bill Moyers. Besides his politics and his early work organizing the Peace Corps, Texan Bill Moyers was always one of the best interviewers ever. (I’ve been collecting books of his interview transcripts). He always had provocative questions and unusual guests. Here’s an interview he did in the 1980s with philosopher Martha Nussbaum (who gave a lecture at Trinity at about the same time).(YT) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWfK1E4L–c
LOCKING THE INNOCENT: Out of the 59,000 people detained by ICE this year, 47% lack a criminal record and fewer than 30% have ever been convicted of crimes. (source)
Israel’s secret nuclear weapon program has been common knowledge among people who follow foreign policy, and yet no U.S. president — famously, not even Obama in a press conference when asked by Helen Thomas — had ever brought it up publicly. Yet politicians and critics on all sides have raised the issue of Iran’s nuclear proliferation repeatedly. But Iran has generally cooperated with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and for a while has been allowing IAEA monitoring. Why the double standard? During this week’s discussion on CNN/MSNBC, I almost never heard experts or commentators even mention Israel’s nuclear program, and barely in online media (except here: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/17/world/middleeast/israel-nuclear-weapons.html ) .
If Israel says it has the pre-emptive right to attack Iran to degrade its nuclear weapons program (and the U.S. Government explicitly reaffirms this rationale), isn’t Israel basically conceding that other states have the pre-emptive right to attack Israel to degrade its own secret nuclear weapon program?
Israel’s secret nuclear weapon program has been common knowledge among people who follow foreign policy, and yet no U.S. president — famously, not even Obama in a press conference when asked by Helen Thomas — had ever brought it up publicly. Yet politicians and critics on all sides have raised the issue of Iran’s nuclear proliferation repeatedly. But Iran has generally cooperated with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and for a while has been allowing IAEA monitoring. Israel has done none of these things.
Here’s my list of top 10 movies (in alphabetical order) for the 21st century which I submitted to the New York Times. Below these ten are some OTHER MOVIES which I also found to be remarkable and noteworthy:
AI — Stephen Spielberg (2001)
Big Short — Adam McKay (2015)
Downfall — Oliver Hirschbiegel (2004)
Europa Report – Sebastián Cordero (2013)
Fourteen — Dan Sallitt (2019)
Frances Ha — Noah Baumbach (2012)
Happy-Go-Lucky – Mike Leigh (2008)
Monsters — Gareth Edwards(2010)
Primer — Shane Carruth (2004)
Travelers and Magicians — Khyentse Norbu (2003)
************OTHER MOVIES****************
Avé — Konstantin Bojanov (2011)
Brooklyn — John Crowley (2015)
Flatland — Ladd Ehlinger Jr (2007)
Founder — John Lee Hancock (2016)
I’m Still Here — Walter Salles (2024)
It Follows — David Robert Mitchell (2014)
Junebug – Phil Morrison (2005)
Man From Earth — Richard Schenkman (2007)
Napoleon Dynamite — Jared Hess (2004)
Problemista – Julio Torres (2023)
Tetris — Jon Baird (2023)
I actually have about 20 other titles to mention. Here is some commentary. Europa Report is the most pro-science movie I have ever seen; it’s about the drive and sacrifices people will do for the sake of science. It makes me emotional whenever I think of it. Monsters is a beautiful masterpiece about alienation (and alien nations). Downfall is an engrossing story about true believers of a failed ideology. Travelers and Magicians has a wonderful surreal and fairy tale quality. It is totally unexpected and very beautiful and Buddhist. Frances Ha is utterly whimsical and silly and about the futility of artistic pursuits. Big Short is a great study in irony, outrage and satire. Fourteen is a quiet tragedy about losing people to addictions. Happy-go-lucky is a story about hope and resiliency and not being dragged down by the world’s problems. Primer is a great allegory about the follies and paradoxes of technological innovation. Founder is an all-American story about the ugly side of American business.
MCDONALD’S IN KIEV. Delighted to read this article about how the fast food joint is taking over Ukraine (& maybe horrified?!) I remember visiting the first McD in Kiev in January 6, 1998 — a few months after it had opened. It was located in probably the busiest place in Kiev across from the main train station. Even though I barely spoke Russian/Ukraine, I confidently said my order to the cashier, “Big Mac Menu — Тут!” — it was one of the busiest most remarkable McD’s I’d ever seen..
I assume that many have already seen this amazing music vid with Saoirse Ronan, but it’s absolutely great (with the Talking Heads note that “We LOVE what this video is NOT—it’s not literal, creepy, bloody, physically violent or obvious.” (YT)
Spoof of How I met Your Mother (YT) The kids are sick of being strung along with this story.
if you took a dementia test and thought it was an IQ test you failed both the dementia test and the IQ test. (BSKY by Sal Gentile) (Referring to Trump’s ludicrous statement, “”AOC — look. I think she’s very nice. But she’s very low IQ, and we really don’t need low IQ. Between her and Crockett, we’re gonna give ’em both an IQ test to see who comes out best. I took a real test at Walter Reed medical center and I aced it. Now it’s time for them to take a test.”)
US GOVERNMENT HATES TOURISTS. Here’s a case of an Irish citizen visiting his girlfriend on a 90 day tourist visa and staying 3 extra days because of a serious medical issue. After being mixed up in a police action, ICE took custody of the tourist and imprisoned him for 100 days. Says his American-born girlfriend, ” “It’s not an option for him to come here and I don’t want to be in America anymore.”
Even more shocking, there are cases of U.S. citizens being wrongly captured by ICE. This one was wrongly incarcerated for 3 days.
In response to Trump’s posting of a stupid/offensive AI-generated video of Obama getting arrested, satirist Andy Borowitz writes an appropriate fake response.
Trump’s accusations against Obama, but let’s not forget that Trump was one of the earliest ones who hyped the “Obama is not American” conspiracy theory. For more than 5 years (2011-2016), Trump repeated the untrue charge that Obama wasn’t a U.S. citizen; doing so only increased Trump’s popularity among conservatives. Now that Trump is democratically elected and his administration has enormous financial resources to investigate/hype whatever stupid things he wants to, Trump has potential to sow distrust in the US justice system that has already found him guilty or liable of tax fraud, falsifying business records and sexual assault.
Right-wing propaganda is the result of decline of commercial journalism,Karl Bode writes.
Netflix Recommendation: PERNILLE is a wonderful Norwegian-language family dramedy about an overworked divorced social worker who has to manage both her child welfare cases and the ordinary dramas of her complicated family (BTW, her two daughters are hilarious). You the viewer are thrown into all this chaos and have the opportunity to share the grief, surprise, laughter and love. Gosh, it almost makes me want to move to Norway tomorrow.
Among the many wonderful things about the show is the killer soundtrack — a mixture of Europop and occasionally American songs. Here’s the 60s hit You’ll Never walk alone by Gerry and the Pacemakers (YT) Also, the intro briefly samples a famous cover version of You Don’t Own Me by Australian Saygrace( YT)
DOGS ENJOYING HAUTE CUISINE. The next time your favorite Italian restaurant is already booked up, here’s the reason why. (YT) At first glance the Chocodogger vids seemed to be AI, but no, it’s just elaborately staged nonsense. Here’s a lobster dinner (YT).
REACTIONS TO TRUMP-ZELENSKY PRESS CONFERENCE: 1. Trump surrounds himself with a lot of “YES MEN” journalists who parrot his talking points. 2. Trump never loses an opportunity to insult Biden or people who disagree with him. 3. Trump can get distracted by all sorts of irrelevant issues. He totally lacks focus. 4. Trump has an exaggerated sense of his power and his presidential record. Trump’s ludicrous statements raise the question of whether he is afflicted by “confabulation” (something at least Biden never seemed to have done).
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“I decided this morning about the difference between movies and documentaries. A movie is where a woman gets attacked by a monster and men come and save her. A documentary is where a woman gets attacked by a monster and then makes that monster pay $83 million.” (E. Jean Carroll on agreeing to have a documentary made about her life).
Journalist report about how power providers are expanding their capacity to meet demand of AI companies — and passing on these expansion costs to consumers. (YT)
