Posts Tagged ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’
CoronaFRI!vus
* Why the Coronavirus Has Been So Successful. No other country has been this far into the pandemic and still had the number of cases growing at the rates the U.S. is seeing. Without Urgent Action, Coronavirus Could Overwhelm U.S., Estimates Say. I’m not saying we won’t get our hair mussed.
* David Harvey: Anti-Capitalist Politics in the Time of COVID-19. The Politics of the Pandemic. You and Your Boss Have the Same Interests Right Now. That Is a Once-In-A-Lifetime Opportunity. Sara Nelson Says People Are Ready for Solidarity. COVID-19 Emergency Tenant Protections. Homeless families occupy vacant homes in LA. Dealing With Coronavirus Requires Bold Action. The Democratic Leadership Won’t Take It.
* 9% of Working Americans (14 Million) So Far Have Been Laid Off As Result of Coronavirus; 1 in 4 Workers Have Had Their Hours Reduced; 2% Have Been Fired; 20% Have Postponed a Business Trip; Shock Waves Just Now Beginning to Ripple Through Once-Roaring US Economy. U.S. Jobless Claims Jump to Two-Year High Amid Closures. 2700% increase in unemployment claims in Ohio — midweek. [Calfornia] averages 2,000 unemployment applications a day. Two or three days ago, it received 40,000. On Tuesday, 80,000 applications were filed. JP Morgan is forecasting -14% RGDP growth in Q2. That’s so bad it isn’t even on the historical axis.
* So, It’s Bad. Free, Widespread Testing Is The Only Way America Goes Back to Normal. This Is How We Can Beat the Coronavirus. Coronavirus will radically alter the U.S. US sales of guns and ammunition soar amid coronavirus panic buying. The Stimulus Plan That We Need Now.
* Curb Your Enthusiasm: “The Virus.”
* I’m reminded somehow of the way you end a SimCity game by unleashing every disaster on your city as once. The Midwest Is Preparing To Get Hit With Major Floods During The Coronavirus Outbreak. How the Coronavirus Crisis May Hinder Efforts to Fight Wildfires. Locust crisis poses a danger to millions, forecasters warn. Earthquake in Utah. A Huge Chunk of Yellowstone Is Pulsing.
* Weeks Before Virus Panic, Intelligence Chairman Privately Raised Alarm, Sold Stocks. Senator Dumped Up to $1.7 Million of Stock After Reassuring Public About Coronavirus Preparedness.
* Coronavirus Is Speeding Up the Amazonification of the Planet. Amazon Workers Shut Down Warehouse After Employee Is Infected With Coronavirus. The tech execs who don’t agree with ‘soul-stealing’ coronavirus safety measures.
* Mitt Romney’s $1,000 Isn’t Our Universal Basic Income. Americans may see first round of checks from US government by April 6. I really should have known.
* Before Virus Outbreak, a Cascade of Warnings Went Unheeded. In Coronavirus Testing Ramp-Up, U.S. Called Private Sector in Late. How the CDC Botched Basic Science in Its Attempt to Make a Coronavirus Test. Don’t Let Trump Off the Hook.
* I had a lot of question about this, so perhaps it will be useful to you too: No, The World Health Organization Is Not Recommending Against Ibuprofen For Coronavirus Symptoms.
* The world’s fastest supercomputer identified chemicals that could stop coronavirus from spreading, a crucial step toward a treatment. Japanese flu drug ‘clearly effective’ in treating coronavirus, says China. Hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin as a treatment of COVID‐19: results of an open‐label non‐randomized clinical trial.
* “I’m Not An Epidemiologist But…”: The Rise Of The Coronavirus Influencers. This is certainly a problem but I became attuned to the reality of coronavirus precisely through these sorts of non-experts while Trump and the CDC were still lying to everyone. I haven’t seen anything better for learning true information about this crisis than Reddit’s upvote/downvote system.
* Today in the trolley problem. Today in the simulation argument. Today in career goals. Today in Star Trek Studies. Today in Watchmen fan fiction. Weird time.
* Rikers Island inmate has contracted coronavirus: officials. How coronavirus could explode at Riker’s Island. Reducing prison population protects us all from coronavirus.
* You Need Me to Have a Mask. ‘It Feels Like a War Zone’: Doctors and Nurses Plead for Masks on Social Media. A New York Doctor’s Coronavirus Warning: The Sky Is Falling. Simple math offers alarming answers.
* Rural America Isn’t Ready for a Pandemic.
* This picture tells a story about America.
* As Cities Around the World Go on Lockdown, Victims of Domestic Violence Look for a Way Out.
* The COVID-19 Crisis and International Students. Colleges offering dorms as hospital overflow for virus cases. A Brief Letter to an Institution that Believes Extensions are the Accommodations We Need Right Now.
* ‘Panic-gogy’: Teaching Online Classes During The Coronavirus Pandemic. As Schools Look for Guidance, Educators Are Left Asking, ‘What?’ New Coronavirus Package Could Unravel Protections For Students With Disabilities. Is online school illegal? With schools closing from coronavirus, special education concerns give districts pause.
* GameStop claims it is ‘essential retail’ to remain open amid coronavirus shutdowns. It didn’t work.
* Minnesota and Vermont Just Classified Grocery Clerks as Emergency Workers.
* The Quiet Emptiness of a World under Coronavirus.
* The desire for public sex is, of course, nothing new. In his book Tell Me What You Want, sex researcher and Kinsey Institute fellow Justin Lehmiller found it was one of the seven most common fantasies, but the way people are having it in a coronavirus-ridden world definitely is. Now, instead of treating it as nothing more than a novel thrill to “spice things up,” some people are using it as an act of resistance against the virus-induced lockdowns that have squashed so many of the liberties we hold dear. Sex etiquette during the coronavirus.
* Kim Stanley Robinson releases a chapter from his latest novel, though weirdly it’s listed as “news.”
* I’m beginning to think you just can’t trust billionaires: When he joined the race last year, the billionaire said he would employ his campaign staff through the November election, even if he weren’t the nominee. But Bloomberg dropped out after a poor showing on Super Tuesday, and he has since fired staffers in multiple waves. His campaign had announced earlier in March that it would launch an independent expenditure group to take on Trump that would employ former campaign staffers in swing states.
* The Sanders worldview wins even as Bernie loses.
* You know it’s bad when politicians are leaving elected office to join the priesthood.
* A false accusation nightmare in the Times.
* Moffat leaving Doctor Who seemed like a good exit ramp for me, so I haven’t seen any of the new episodes — but wow, this latest retcon looks like a mess, as well as a pretty clear “find some way to tie this off and wrap it up” directive from the BBC.
* Rethinking the Apocalypse: An Indigenous Anti-Futurist Manifesto.
* Octavia Butler gave us a few rules for predicting the future.
* An “Extinction Event” for the Comic Shop or “Too Stupid to Quit, Too Dumb to Die”?
* The Ending of Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion, Revisited.
* Star Wars in ruins: The Most Problematic ‘Rise Of Skywalker’ Plot Twist Ruined Disney’s ‘Star Wars’ Trilogy. Disney has embarrassed itself issuing Episode 9 retcons but it really ought to explain why it’s being so elliptical about this one issue for no apparent reason.
* And Star Wars resurgent: The Mandalorian Casts Rosario Dawson as Ahsoka Tano.
* Because you demanded it: A new Disney Princess historical fiction series finds Belle in the French Revolution.
* And they were nearly almost done, too! I swear!
* Hey, it’s me, the first sign of civilization in a culture.
* Coming soon: The Collapsing Empire, Book 3. A Cixin Liu story collection. And some free coronavirus reading: Short Changes, a story collection by Adrian Tchaikovsky.
Sunday Links
* Breaking Bad *and* Curb Your Enthusiasm tonight. I’m in TV heaven.
* Former News of the World editor Rebekah Brooks was arrested Sunday in connection with British police investigations into phone hacking and police bribery, her spokesman told CNN. And there’s more: Ed Miliband has demanded the breakup of Rupert Murdoch’s UK media empire in a dramatic intervention in the row over phone hacking. UPDATE: And the head of Scotland Yard has now resigned.
* Class struggle: 11 states receive more in lottery revenues than they do in corporate taxes.
* Twitter Mona Lisa. Via zunguzungu’s always wonderful Sunday reading.
* Scadenfreudelicious: Sarah Palin hagiography The Undefeated currently has a 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
* Local color: Scenes from the pun contest at the Regulator Bookshop.
* And from Al Jazera: “Mass psychosis in the US: How Big Pharma got Americans hooked on anti-psychotic drugs.”
My Enthusiasm Cannot Be Curbed
I deeply admire Al Gore and I’m very sorry to hear about the dissolution of his marriage, but the fact remains Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 8 just got awesome.
Crazy Busy Today
Seriously busy day today—hardly able to catch my breath. In lieu of that, some links.
* It was an unexpectedly good day for the Communofascist wing of the Democratic Party, with Joe Sestak beating Arlen Specter, Mark Critz winning in PA-12, and Bill Halter forcing Blanche Lincoln into a run-off in Arkansas. That Richard Blumenthal has managed to completely shit the bed in Connecticut can wait perhaps for another night.
* The video of our most recent Polygraph event—John Bellamy Foster and Brett Clark discussing “the consumer trap—is now on iTunesU. The download should be free to everyone.
* A from-bad-to-worse update on the story of a seven-year-old Detroit girl killed by police officers during a no-knock raid: they may have been filming a reality show.
* Extreme weather videos in hailstorm and tornado flavors. Both links via MeFi.
* It’s pretty scary to think that a person without basic qualifications could fraudulently pilot jets for 13 years without being caught, but at the same time it’s actually fairly comforting that in all that time nothing bad happened.
* This Dark Knight / Toy Story 2 mashup is an instant classic of the genre.
* Raising academic dishonesty to the level of art.
* Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 8 will be set in New York. I am intrigued.
* Lenin’s Tomb on why neoliberalism persists.
* And preparing now for next year’s job market. And the next year’s. And the next year’s…
The end result is a bunch of fake action surrounding the fake reunion show, but it is really the real reunion, because they’re all back
The end result is a bunch of fake action surrounding the fake reunion show, but it is really the real reunion, because they’re all back.
Gawker tries to parse the various levels of the Seinfeld reunion taking place on this season of Curb Your Enthusiasm, not only the greatest thing currently on television but one of the single best things that has ever aired.
How Much Damage Can You Really Do?
When [Larry] David approached [Jerry] Seinfeld about a reunion plot on Curb in spring 2008, the comedian wasn’t terribly worried about mucking around with the legacy of his beloved nine-season show. “The idea of working with Larry was just too overwhelmingly appealing to me, and [Curb] is such a great show,” he says. “There was a little part of me that said, ‘Do we really want to tamper?’…But to hell with it. How much damage can you really do?”
Unhappy Monday Links
I have it on good authority that my friend Traxus was totally making fun of someone else in this post on blogging styles. That said, some unhappy Monday links.
* As you’ve probably already heard, Michael Jackson’s death has now been ruled a homicide. Let the feeding frenzy resume.
* Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. named a veteran federal prosecutor on Monday to examine abuse of prisoners held by the Central Intelligence Agency, after the Justice Department released a long-secret report showing interrogators choked a prisoner repeatedly and threatened to kill another detainee’s children. A good day for America (and for the rule of law). Hopefully this is the beginning and not the end.
* NJ-Gov: Christie’s lead has all but disappeared in the face of weeks of bad press. More from TPM.
* Elsewhere in New Jersey news UPDATE: from 1970: Foster parents denied right to adopt because the father is an atheist.
In an extraordinary decision, Judge Camarata denied the Burkes’ right to the child because of their lack of belief in a Supreme Being. Despite the Burkes’ “high moral and ethical standards,” he said, the New Jersey state constitution declares that “no person shall be deprived of the inestimable privilege of worshiping Almighty God in a manner agreeable to the dictates of his own conscience.” Despite Eleanor Katherine’s tender years, he continued, “the child should have the freedom to worship as she sees fit, and not be influenced by prospective parents who do not believe in a Supreme Being.”
People who love to tell New Atheists to sit down and shut up, take note.
* ‘How to Kill a City’: from an episode of Mad Men yesterday to the pages of the New York Times today. Via @mrtalbot.
* The Coin Flip: A Fundamentally Unfair Proposition.
* 12 Greenest Colleges and Universities, at Sustainablog. Vermont once again takes high honors.
* ‘Runaway consumerism explains the Fermi Paradox.’ (Via Ze.) This is actually an important plot point (with some nice twists) in a novel I’ve touted a few times here, Accelerando.
* And Fimoculous has your Curb Your Enthusiasm preview.