#who are just SO MAD at the covid catastrophizers

[elainemorisi]

a) if you would like to indulge in probably overblown panic about world events, do I have the spot on the internet for you

b) are people like, actually commonly incapable of seeing somebody say something they (observer) believes, to a somewhat informed degree, to be probably just catastrophizing and like... dismissing it?

[notfspurejam]

Mark Gatiss: It's staggering that local authorities are cutting the arts

OCT 9, 2023 BY GEMMA NETTLE

Mark Gatiss. Photo: Eivind Hansen

Mark Gatiss has said he is “staggered” to see local authorities cutting funding to the arts, labelling it “mad” when it is “such a huge part” of the economy.

The actor, writer and director was speaking at the UK Theatre Awards, where he was awarded Outstanding Contribution to British Theatre.

He said: “It’s a wonderful thing to be able to come here and celebrate and enjoy ourselves but equally it’s sending an important message to the industry at large.

“It’s desperate. I went to drama school with a grant from my local authority and all these things have gone.”

Most recently, Hampshire County Council has considered a 50% cut to arts funding due to budget shortfalls and has been urged to reconsider by the Hampshire Cultural Trust.

Meanwhile, arts organisations in Bristol are dealing with a funding delay that has gone without explanation since October last year.

...

Gatiss said he was shocked to see local authorities turning to the arts for their cuts.

“It always staggers me that it comes so low down on the [priority] list when the arts literally got us through Covid,” he said. “It’s been a battle like this for donkey’s years, but it seems particularly mad to me now that it is clearly obviously a huge part of the economy.

“If you stripped away every piece of tinsel from it and just go: ‘This makes a fucking shed-load of money’, that should be the strap line.”

Gatiss continued: “Newcastle announced a 100% cut in their arts funding [in 2012], and then they gave in and it was only about 75%, which is also catastrophic.

“It’s a soft option because they’re always relying on a network of parents and families who will go: ‘We need to give people a reminder that culture is vital.’”

Gatiss also expressed concern about cuts to arts in education, explaining that parents and teachers were having to take matters into their own hands.

He said he had heard of a teacher who, “of his own volition”, had started organising public speaking and drama classes for pupils who he thought needed it most.

He added: “They’re all blossoming, now they’ve joined a choir, they’ve been singing with the BBC singers, all these wonderful things.

“The trouble is [teachers are having to step in themselves] because there’s nothing in the school anymore. The problem is that the arts always feel like a soft option.”

On his win at the UK Theatre Awards, Gatiss said he was “very touched”.

“It’s very important and particularly through Covid to keep the message strong about it being an ecosystem,” he said.

“What people see in the West End is the culmination of many people’s careers reaching a high point. There’s nothing without that ecosystem and the evolution of those skills and talents.

“It’s like anything, if you starve these areas, they don’t grow.”

[newstfionline]

Sunday, April 14, 2024

Canada at risk of another catastrophic wildfire season, government warns (CBS News) Canadian officials on Wednesday warned the country could face another catastrophic wildfire season after last year’s historic fires. There were warmer-than-normal temperatures and widespread drought conditions across Canada this winter, officials disclosed. Weather outlooks indicate that Canada can expect higher-than-normal temperatures this spring and summer as well, setting the stage for wildfires. “With the heat and dryness across the country, we can expect that the wildfire season will start sooner and end later, and potentially be more explosive,” Canada Emergency Preparedness Minister Harjit Sajjan said at a press conference. Canada’s wildfire season typically runs from May through October. The country is home to about 9% of the world’s forests.

Suicide on the rise for young Americans (BBC) Suicide is now the second-leading cause of death among Americans under the age of 35, and it’s on a steady rise across generations. In 2000, 30,000 people died of suicide. In 2022, 50,000 did. My colleague Will Vernon visited North Carolina State University in Raleigh, which experienced 10 student suicides over the past two academic years. NC State has invested in counselling and is helping students to recognise signs of mental struggle among their classmates. “But there may be no warning signs”, said assistant vice-chancellor Justine Hollingshead. “Individuals don’t tell their family or friends, they don’t reach out to resources and they make that decision.” It’s also hard to tell exactly what’s behind that overarching trend. There are, however, many hypotheses. The Covid pandemic harmed “young people in terms of acquiring the social skills and tools that they need,” said Dr Christine Crawford, a psychiatrist. Josue Melendez, a suicide helpline operator, said many of his younger callers mentioned financial pressures as well.

Many say Biden and Trump did more harm than good, but for different reasons, AP-NORC poll shows (AP) There’s a reason why President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are spending so much time attacking each other—people don’t think either man has much to brag about when it comes to his own record. Americans generally think that while they were in the White House, both did more harm than good on key issues. But the two candidates have different weak spots. For Biden, it’s widespread unhappiness on two issues: the economy and immigration. Trump, meanwhile, faces an electorate where substantial shares think he harmed the country on a range of issues. A new poll from the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that more than half of U.S. adults think Biden’s presidency has hurt the country on cost of living and immigration, while nearly half think Trump’s presidency hurt the country on voting rights and election security, relations with foreign countries, abortion laws and climate change.

Russia Kazakhstan floods: High water levels swamp Orenburg houses (BBC) Floods in the Russian city of Orenburg have raised water levels to two metres above critical, leaving just the roofs of some houses showing. Levels in Orenburg are likely to peak on Friday, but floods are expected to spread through neighbouring regions over the coming days and weeks. Kazakhstan has also been badly affected, with 100,000 people evacuated from their homes in the last week. The flooding is being described as the worst to hit the region in 80 years. Last week, several rivers—including the Ural, Europe’s third-largest—burst their banks.

War or No War, Ukrainians Aren’t Giving Up Their Coffee (NYT) When Russian tanks first rolled into Ukraine more than two years ago, Artem Vradii was sure his business was bound to suffer. “Who would think about coffee in this situation?” thought Mr. Vradii, the co-founder of a Kyiv coffee roastery named Mad Heads. But over the next few days after the invasion began, he started receiving messages from Ukrainian soldiers. One asked for bags of ground coffee because he could not stand the energy drinks supplied by the army. Another simply requested beans: He had taken his own grinder to the front. The soldiers’ requests are just one facet of a little-known cornerstone of the Ukrainian lifestyle today: its vibrant coffee culture. Over the past decade, coffee shops have proliferated across Ukraine, in cities large and small. That is particularly true in Kyiv, the capital, where small coffee kiosks staffed by trained baristas serving tasty mochas for less than $2 have become a fixture of the streetscape.

174 people stranded in the air are rescued, almost a day after a fatal cable car accident in Turkey (AP) The last of 174 people stranded in cable cars high above a mountain in southern Turkey were brought to safety Saturday, nearly 23 hours after one pod hit a pole and burst open, killing one person and injuring seven when they plummeted to the rocks below. A total of 607 search and rescue personnel and 10 helicopters were involved, including teams from Turkey’s emergency response agency, AFAD, the Coast Guard, firefighting teams and mountain rescue teams from different parts of Turkey, officials said. Helicopters with night-vision capabilities had continued rescuing people throughout the night.

Christians Concerned by Rising Religious Nationalism in Nepal (Christianity Today) More than 15 years after Nepal officially became a secular democracy, the former Hindu monarchy may have a religious extremism problem, incited and aggravated by its closest neighbor. In an “alarming” development, Indian Hindutva ideology and politics have begun to spread throughout the country, as local experts and journalists report. This proliferation has resulted in a recent spate of attacks and restrictions on Christians reported within the country of 30 million. “The Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh (HSS) in Nepal is rapidly growing. Aiming to protect Hinduism, they degrade Christianity and badmouth us through social media and other sources,” said Kiran Thapa, who was arrested last month for praying for people in Kathmandu.

Myanmar Rebels Take Key Trading Town, but Counteroffensive Looms (NYT) Resistance forces seeking to oust Myanmar’s military regime captured a key trade town on the Thai border this week, one of their most significant gains since the junta seized power in a coup more than three years ago. But thousands of residents were fleeing on Friday as the regime’s troops prepared to mount a counteroffensive. The town, Myawaddy, which is now held by rebels belonging to the Karen ethnic group, is a hub for imports and exports, with $1 billion in trade last year. Its fall comes as resistance forces have seized dozens of towns and military outposts in recent months in border regions near China and Bangladesh. Rebel groups have also launched drones that hit the capital, Naypyidaw, and military bases when top junta generals were visiting. “A major border trade hub that serves as Myanmar’s gateway to mainland Southeast Asia has fallen to the resistance,” said Anthony Davis, a Bangkok-based security analyst with the Jane’s group of military publications. “This is huge.”

First European citizen jailed under HK security law (BBC) Joseph John, who holds a Hong Kong residency and is also known as Wong Kin-chung, was sentenced to five years in jail for “incitement to secession” after posting pro-independence and anti-China content on social media. Since its enactment in 2020, the controversial China-imposed National Security Law in Hong Kong has seen 174 people charged with national security crimes.

Stabbing in Sydney shopping center (AP) A man stabbed six people to death at a busy Sydney shopping center Saturday before he was fatally shot, police said. The suspect stabbed nine people at the Westfield Shopping Centre in Bondi Junction, which is in the city’s eastern suburbs, before a police inspector shot him after he turned and raised a knife, New South Wales Assistant Police Commissioner Anthony Cooke told reporters. Six of the victims and the suspect died, he said.

Israel hails 'success' in blocking Iran's unprecedented attack (AP) Israel on Sunday hailed its successful air defenses in the face of an unprecedented attack by Iran, saying it and its allies thwarted 99% of the more than 300 drones and missiles launched toward its territory. But regional tensions remain high, amid fears of further escalation in the event of a possible Israeli counter-strike. U.S. President Joe Biden said he would convene a meeting of the Group of Seven advanced democracies on Sunday “to coordinate a united diplomatic response to Iran’s brazen attack.” The language indicated that the Biden administration does not want Iran’s assault to spiral into a broader military conflict. Iran launched the attack in response to a strike widely blamed on Israel on an Iranian consular building in Syria earlier this month which killed two Iranian generals. Israel said Iran launched 170 drones, more than 30 cruise missiles and more than 120 ballistic missiles early Sunday. The two foes have for years been engaged in a shadow war marked by incidents like the Damascus strike. But Sunday’s assault, which set off air raid sirens across Israel, was the first time Iran has launched a direct military assault on Israel, despite decades of enmity.

West Bank sees some of its worst violence since war in Gaza began (AP) The Israeli-occupied West Bank saw some of its worst violence Saturday since the war in nearby Gaza began, as Israel’s army said the body of a missing Israeli teen was found after he was killed in a “terrorist attack” and witnesses said Israeli settlers attacked a number of communities. The Israeli military said dozens of people, Palestinians and Israelis, were injured in confrontations in several locations Saturday, with shots fired and rocks thrown. The disappearance of 14-year-old Binyamin Achimair sparked attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinian villages on Friday and Saturday. On Friday, Palestinian Jehad Abu Alia was killed and 25 others were wounded in the attack on al-Mughayyir village, Palestinian health officials said. Dozens of Israeli settlers returned to the village’s outskirts on Saturday, burning 12 homes and several cars. In the nearby village of Douma, Israeli settlers set fire to around 15 homes and 10 farms, the head of the local village council, Slieman Dawabsheh, told The Associated Press, saying he had been there. “The army came but unfortunately, the army were protecting the settlers,” he said, asserting that it fired tear gas and rubber bullets at Palestinians trying to confront and expel them.

A Crumbling Metro Reveals Failed Promise of China’s Billions in Africa (Bloomberg) Almost a decade ago, the light-rail system in Ethiopia’s bustling capital of Addis Ababa was hailed as a revolutionary solution to the city’s transportation woes. Envisioned as a project that would redefine urban transport, the system promised to sweep up to 60,000 passengers per hour along its tracks. Today it sits as a daily reminder of the broken promises of China-funded infrastructure investments that swept Africa in recent years. Frequent breakdowns, inadequate maintenance funding and operational constraints mean barely one-third of its 41 trains are operational, ferrying 55,000 passengers a day, a fraction of initial projections.

Trash Your Anger: Study Shows Discarding Written Rage Cools Tempers (Guardian) A study from the University of Nagoya shows that writing and discarding angry thoughts can alleviate feelings of anger. During the experiment by Nobuyuki Kawai, participants noted a decrease in anger after throwing away their written negative feedback. Keeping the written thoughts, in contrast, did not result in a reduction of anger, highlighting the importance of discarding them. Historical and contemporary anecdotes support the study’s findings, suggesting the act of destroying written anger can serve as a coping strategy. The findings, offering a simple anger management technique, were published in the journal Scientific Reports.

[kabutone]

tiktok making me mad again

a lot of people have been saying “is xyz what it takes for you to care?? look at the suffering happening how could you not care!!” but like girl . that really is what it takes. palestine has been occupied for like 75 years but it took a genocide to really kickstart the free palestine movement (even though it did exist before oct 7).

BLM has been around for way longer before 2020 but it took multiple murders of black ppl by police for people to actually start to care. yes there are people that have been listening since before then, people that have been around since before these movements became so big, but it really does take generations of suffering and then it has to culminate in one big bloody, gory catastrophe to get people to care.

and i am watching yall ignore the millions of covid deaths! i’m asking YOU how you can turn a blind eye to SO MUCH SUFFERING. apparently it’s really easy. how much longer do we have to suffer until you care? how many more people must die before you do something? we reached the “tipping point” long ago and you’re going to your protests without masks.

i’m not asking everyone to dedicate their lives to doing everything for every cause. i’m only asking you to do what you can. cause when everyone does a little bit, it makes a big impact. everyone showing support for palestine is putting pressure on the government to call for a ceasefire (not a permanent one yet 🙄 but it’s something). this way, it’s not just the palestinians all by themselves, they have the support of millions. i’m still pissed that everyone seemed to give up on BLM before much effective change was made though. but yall refuse to mask!!! if everyone wore masks out, the BARE MINIMUM, imagine how many lives we could save.

the truth is covid is getting worse. the gov is trying to hide the deaths and long term damage the pandemic is doing, but you don’t see it even when it’s right in front of your face. we’ve been constantly suffering in silence for years and our pleas for help are consistently falling on deaf ears. it’s especially maddening when it’s people who claim to want to help, who want to do the right thing, and then refuse effective options for more performative and showy ones.

but i guess wearing a mask actually requires you to DO something. it’s easier to just make posts. you get to post a video of yourself doing poses, AND you get give yourself a pat on the back for making minuscule effort. that’s the extent that your care goes though. but to actually INCONVENIENCE yourself for a cause? ew!! yeah people are dying but… we can’t expect you to go out of your way in the slightest, it’s too much. so, you settle for telling people they’re horrible for not using a tiktok sound, because it’s so easy. it’s really a bad look when the most effort you’ll go to is less than the bare minimum and then you have the nerve to act like it’s the height of activism. it’s so frustrating for there to be better, more effective solutions and people go ‘umm… no…. i COULD help, and i know i said i wanted to, but actually i just wanna make posts and that’s it.’

and for the people that HAVE been doing actual work, like going to protests, donating e sims, contacting their reps, these are the people that are ACTUALLY living their politics and not just trying to look good online. and it’s working!! but i implore you to please please please consider the impact your actions. if you’re putting in effort, you’re someone that truly cares about helping people. just wearing a mask is not only an easy solution, but it’s highly effective. a lot of us feel hopeless bc individually, how do we help people suffering across the world? we can’t personally go help, so we can just do our best to get the government to listen and fucking stop killing people. it’s kinda hard to make a direct impact, but that’s why it’s so important that we have a LOT of people trying. it’s the same with every movement ever. but with masking you are directly helping the people around you, immediately. it’s low effort, but very very high impact. if you want real change to happen, invest in things that will make the biggest impact!!

anyway, kill the eugenicist in your head that tells you certain lives are disposable!!!!

[msvorderofoperations]

Shit Life Syndrome

I am in the midst of a crisis. Well, more so than usual as my life has been one slow motion catastrophe for the last year. To sum up: I was left holding the bag by a close friend that decided that he could no longer support me. I don't wish to divulge details but I did everything in my power to accommodate him on interpersonal, financial, logistical and emotional levels. It was not enough.

In the mad rush to get ready (though I don't know exactly how/when), I contracted COVID for the second time. While still isolating and recovering, I then had to start living on my own in a partially demolished space while I tried to get my feet under me. While that happened, I underwent surgery and it went literally as badly as it could. A week after the procedure, the incision tore open and became badly infected. I was all but bedridden for the next two months. As I was beginning to feel things take a turn for the better, my dad died. He was an utter piece of shit that I do not miss, but that he made zero plans for his death meant that the entire family was in disarray for weeks.

Literally the next day, I was told in no uncertain terms that I had to leave the space I had been living, even though I had been assured that I would always have a place until I found something permanent. I suppose that was a lie. I then had to scramble to try and get *anything* going for housing, while also having to rectify that I was now almost certainly afflicted with long COVID. As this happened, understandably (I hope) I got to a very low emotional state. I have flirted with suicidal ideation a number of times in my life, but it never gets very far. This time was different, and far worse. Just as I was in the worst throes of it, I had an epiphany. I have lived through worse, and come through the other side of it. All of these things that were weighing on me I have dealt with before, just never in such close proximity. I was not going to roll over to some amateur hour horseshit as being too sad. As has been said elsewhere, if hope cannot be found, spite can be a fine substitute.

Unfortunately, what is left unsaid is that spite is not infinite.

I have now been living in a tiny storage space with no more than a mattress, my clothes and my computer with my estranged sister and her deeply dysfunctional family for 3 months. I have been paying hundreds of dollars per month for the privilege, and do not have access to the homes amenities, and am still having to buy my own groceries. The only solace that I have is that I haven't had to move back in with my mom, who is bar none the worst of my abusers. But she lives close by and is constantly making things worse.

And to top all this off, to make this work I have had to move hours away from what few other supports I have in my life. I have not seen many of my friends in years owing to the pandemic, and to see any of them now takes at least two hours of traversal, a sizable portion of which is walking. This means that if I want to do anything I have to be prepared to lose 1 or 2 days just in the recovery.

This has also put enormous strain on my relationship with my girlfriend. She has been entirely understanding about all of this and has been an absolute paragon of love and support. She has also been working her ass off to try and make things happen wherever I cannot. I know that she is going to read this and worry, but I am going to reassure her and anyone else that happens to read this that I am not going to do anything drastic. I just desperately need to get these words out.

In watching a video by one of my favourite video-essayists, he has an aside on how COVID, and the ensuing health problems afterward delayed the very project that I was watching. For nearly a year. But having the video to work towards gave some structure and an end goal he could work towards even if he felt that he might not actually have anything useful to say. That his issues mirrored my own was discomforting, but that I didn't even have anything to work towards fully unmoored me.

Yes I have had the goal of finding a place to live, but nothing about that goal is concrete. I cannot any more definitively make a place to live happen by myself than I can will myself into being healthy. It is all down to blind, simple, clueless luck. We are in the midst of a generationally unique economic crisis which is inexorably tied to an almost entirely unprecedented housing disaster. I am of very little financial means currently, and for nearly everywhere that is not good enough.

And that's the real bitch of it! I'M ONE OF THE LUCKY ONES. I'm a white, cis-male passing person who has been able to find support within the social structures for disability available to me that precious few people will ever get access to. And for all that, it counts for nearly N O T H I N G. The monthly stipend for rent payments is utterly laughable, and it was already increased last year. Before that, it was even less. For years, bordering on a decade it was the Provincial governments opinion that $375 a month should be more than adequate. That has not ever been enough in my lifetime. And yes, I understand that elsewhere in the world It would be enough! But what isn't spoken about nearly often enough is that while Vancouver is highly celebrated for a great many things, all of that comes at the cost of some of the most extortionately high cost of living anywhere in the world. But I digress.

While feeling discomfited by the feelings brought up by this video essay, I turned to some of my comfort media. I am not unique in this, but frequently dour media has helped me get through tough emotional situations. This time however, did not. I was watching Chainsaw Man, and Denji's Shit Life felt all too familiar in tone, if not necessarily in details. And then I was hit with an intrusive thought of the absolute worst kind: when looking to narratives to comfort myself I fucked up because they were just that. Narratives. Stories. That actually have to meaningfully go somewhere. The real world does not enjoy that luxury.

For weeks unto months, I have been saying to myself and other that this won't last, that things will get better. But I don't know that. How many people in my situation or worse never pull themselves out of the mire they find themselves in? How many succumb each day to the elements, malnutrition, sickness, violence or plain unfortunate accidents? We tell each other that things have to get better because we believe that there is some narrative resolution to suffering. But for so many people, that never happens. One need only look to all the senseless deaths at the hands of the genocidal maniacs that are in power right now.

I don't have a useful way to end this. I am not going to beg for donations (seriously, I have to report any and all income and I could lose my benefits permanently if they don't like what they see), and I don't have any solutions or witticisms to ponder. Hell, I can count on one hand the number of people that will actually read this. I guess...just keep an ear out if you know anybody in the Greater Vancouver Regional District is looking for a roommate.

[brazenautomaton]

the more I think about this fucking “oopsie-whoopsie we made a fucky wucky, COVID was an aerosol this whole time and not droplets!” deal the angrier I get

this should be bigger news

this should be utterly catastrophic

you remember all those anti-lockdown protestors you sneered at and poured contempt on? the ones that I wasn’t sneering at but still thought were tragically misled?

they were fucking right

almost all of our draconian lockdown measures were meaningless and didn’t help. Six foot rule did nothing. Disinfecting surfaces did nothing. Masks did nothing because we were told to wear them in a way that didn’t work. 

The experts, marching in ideological lockstep, as proclaimed by the smuggest priesthood in history, fucked up catastrophically. You know what? If the experts are saying things that bluechecks feel good about? NEVER TRUST THEM EVER AGAIN. They fucked up almost as hard as it’s possible to fuck up and they did it because they weren’t checking if their model matched or was reflected by reality.

Do you people remember a year and change ago, when you were self-righteously angry about how people think that their selfish desire to go to the beach is going to kill people? Do you remember that? Do you remember how they were all supposedly “fascists”? Do you remember how any objection was shrieked down by people saying that this was to save lives and I can’t believe how heartless and sadistic you would be to want to let people DIE?

Do you remember how many times people talked about how masks don’t work and they were shrieked down as being insane fascist conspiracy theorists? When it turns out masks, as we were told to wear them, do not work?

Do you remember all the shaming and anger that went on when restaurants started to re-open their outdoor seating and that was going to kill people and it was proof of how evil capitalism was?

Do you remember this time last year, when anyone who wanted to spend the 4th of July with their family was a heartless murderous psychopath? When we could have said “Of course you can meet your friends and family, as long as you do it outside!”

Do you remember that up until the moment the George Floyd protests started, people who went outside for ANY REASON were heartless murderous psychopaths who should be shamed? Remember when they literally sent helicopters into the forest to track down and arrest people for hiking because it was breaking quarantine? Remember when they forbid churches from gathering religious services at all and you all fucking sneered at the stupid religious conservatives pretending they were persecuted? When oh no, turns out, we should have just said you have to hold church services outside, but oopsie-poopsie we chose the things that had us exerting power for the sake of exerting power and hurting people because they were too weak to make us stop!

And then the expert class proclaimed that protesting was okay, but only for BLM protests, and other protests would spread the virus? And they literally actually said that without exaggeration? And a whole fucking bunch of credentialed experts said that protesting was okay because racism is even worse than the virus and they literally actually said that without exaggeration? And then we were just supposed to forget it happened?

The saddest thing I ever heard in my life, I heard when I was in line to vote. It wasn’t political at all -- it was some old lady working at the polling station, happy to see another old lady. She said “Oh, I miss hugs, you know? I miss seeing people smile.” 

We have been under draconian lockdown rules that did not help and did not accomplish anything  People have killed themselves because of them. People were driven to so much despair and loneliness that they could no longer tolerate having to be alive. How many suicides is it worth, you motherfuckers? How mad were you over the prospect that not having draconian, depressing rules might kill someone, and how mad are you now that you know your shit made people kill themselves and all of it was for nothing?

The Anointed just sneered their way through everything and we all fell in line. Actual, literal tyranny happened in the name of the Greater Good, and it didn’t accomplish anything, and nobody is sorry, nobody is going to change, nobody is going to even acknowledge that it happened. They will sneer just as smugly now that all of their beliefs have changed AGAIN. 

I’m done. I’m fucking done. Experts can suck my balls, I don’t trust "expert consensus” any more. The final bridge is burned. The expert class cannot be trusted, and never ever ever ever ever should be again. Expertise has been officially devoured, and it will never come back, and the heat death of human civilization is even closer.

All is lost. See this? See the concept of dispassionate experts who can be trusted to convey matters of fact? It’s not imperiled, it is dead. You watched it be swallowed by shadow, hollowed out, filled with the writhing black mass of Popularity. You saw the concept of a common factual basis for beliefs die, right in front of your eyes, and you probably didn’t notice or care.

All is lost and Death is our only escape. Expertise is gone, expertise is devoured by popularity, and it will never, ever, ever, ever, ever come back. Ever. NO matter how you wish or how you try you will never, ever, ever again live in a world where you can trust facts conveyed to you by a third party. Entropy is irreversible and all consuming and all is lost and the heat death of human civilization is coming SOON.

[yanagibayashi]

here's the lowdown on how i feel about the twenty-five twenty-one ending: art should have the grace to not be punitive towards its audience for reading the signs set up by the creator and reading them well. the idea that life is sometimes punitive / youth is fleeting / the times force us into change as an abstract concept belies the fact that these punishments, short of natural catastrophe and illness, are usually the result of decisions and systems that are inflicted upon us by each other. forcing an agenda so ripe with moralism about Adulthood and Time and RealismTM onto a story regardless of its organic development beyond your pen is just not good writing.

why do we write stories? is it to reinforce an idea or is it to create a narrative that demonstrates this idea and does it in a coherent fashion? either way, what is the narrative purpose of mimicking a realism which is itself forcibly wrought? you can say that "life doesn't have to make sense", yes, sure, alright, but fiction does!!!! it really does have to!!!

also, on a personal note, i adored every single microsecond of this show up until the middle of episode 15. thereon out it just felt like the most abjectly didactic narrative, where the tonal shifts did not match the character development. all that love, all that communication, all that perseverance, all of hee-do's commitment to her career, all of it just dissipated with a whimper. i don't really even think its necessary for us, as viewers living through the real horror of covid, which cut short so many lives and so many dreams and relationships and friendships and ambitions and desires, to be so patronizingly reminded that life is transient and fickle and fleeting. i wont even apologize for feeling that bitterness as though we were owed a better story. moralistic fiction is like the most patronizing genre ever. it felt like being back in elementary school with an old teacher who used to tell kids not to cry after making them cry because "real life will not pay attention to you crying". buddy you are the real life! constantly, every single day, we have the choice to make a different decision.

literally, i am not even as mad about baekdo not working out as much as i am about the terribly shallow and dismaying arcs we see the friendships in this drama go through. yes, friendships do dissolve irl, but at the very least they could have done a show instead of doing a tell. time jumps are lazy writing! time jumps are just plain lazy writing! show the dissolution of a relationship by setting up the dissolution for the viewer to experience instead of narrativizing it like a whiplash for no sensible reason. show a friendship trailing away instead of telling it like a bad, cynical story at the funeral of a character no one cares about because no one ever saw him exist. show hee-do's interest in fencing waning instead of just a random conversation with her coach in the old school building! literally everyone died at the end of mr. sunshine but the plot made it all make sense because that's how the story was set up. what we get here, instead, is the viewer being flung out of the tone of the drama almost as though in punishment for having the audacity to believe that a healthy, supportive, communicative love would overcome the ordinary barriers of distance and "the times". if this was going to be a drama about how "the times" broke them apart, like, again, how mr. sunshine went, they shouldve set it up from the start instead of the bulk of the present-day scenes resembling a quasi-reply 1997/1994/1988 plot!

that's it. that's all. i am so done with this particular brand of creators who insist upon reinforcing the fact that life will disappoint you in a perfectly good story that seems to be leading up to the idea that sometimes life also won't. buddy, ok, tell a world living through covid times that life will disapppint us, but you don't have to! they don't even have to end up together!!! but just write a story that makes sense!!!!

[0l0x]

Anonymous asked:

I’ve read your rant, while I don’t agree with every you on everything I can agree with you on this one simple point. We. Are. Screwed! Everything from ramped climate change causing an increasing number of natural disasters which people are still in denial about for some reason? A worldwide pandemic and anti-science nut jobs who are helping it spread.

Political polorzation so bad the counties close to breaking into pieces. Ramped inflation and economic collapse that’s putting millions out of work. Nut job politicians who are so divorced from reality that they’ve started collecting alimony checks and are more concerned with spreading their dogmatic narrative of Red/Blue bad rather then actual solve the issues they caused!

And then theirs puritanical idiots bullying people for liking media created by less then perfect people. Nobody cares what bad thing the artist did, people need to seriously learn how to separate the art from the artist. Sorry for my own mini rant, just want to let you know your not alone in feeling frustrated at the world.

Thanks Anon. I know everything’s going to shit in a way that’s unique to this time period, but I do try to think back to WWII and imagine what people felt like then. They must have really thought the world was ending (and for many of them, it did). I try to be optimistic and weather the storm (literally...because climate change). I try to remember that we’re being blasted with catastrophic news 24/7 in ways that past generations were not, which makes everything seem way worse than it is.

But I also know that in this case, it really is as bad as the media says because I’m personally suffering the consequences of all the shit they’re talking about. My family and friends are suffering from it. I don’t know how anyone can say “climate change isn’t real” while they’re trapped indoors from wildfire smoke in an area that literally never had wildfires before 5 years ago. I don’t know how they can say “covid isn’t real” while their friends and  family are dying and getting wrecked by it. I don’t know how they can say “[group] is causing society to collapse” while actively acting like a violent shit head like they’re a Mad Max character. I don’t know how they can say “there’s no reason to be homeless, just pull yourself up by your bootstraps” while they themselves are being priced out of their fucking homes (and performing mental gymnastics to blame poor people for it somehow???)

I guess it’s a coping strategy for some people, but god does it make life miserable for the rest of us. 50% of the population was just NOT ready for the internet. They don’t have sufficient education or bullshit-detectors. I remember in the 90s when you’d only encounter insane people on really fringe websites that you had to dig for...now they’re absolutely everywhere, online and off, and it’s exhausting. Part of me is like “fine, let Covid rip through these morons” but I know that’s not right and it’s not that simple either.

TL;DR: back in the day, you’d encounter maybe 1-2 crazy conspiracy theorists in your lifetime. Now, literally half of my family (”coincidentally” the very under-educated half) believe livestock dewormer will cure viruses and the govt is injecting them with nanobots via vaccines. This is not normal. This is historical idiocy. I swear to god all the lead and abestos exposure over the last few decades destroyed the brains of an entire generation.

[eisforeidolon]

1/2 I remember when you used to do episode summaries/critiques & I have always liked them. Is there any chance you will be doing the last couple of eps? As a Dean fan who doesn't ship destiel who found it unsatisfying it is super frustrating seeing any and all negativity about the finale either be written off as ship wars, or see actual posts which started okay boil down to that in the end. I'd really like to hear your views on it INCLUDING the good. I thought I was prepared for this direction -

2/2 I thought I was prepared for them to kill everyone but the manner they chose to, the vagueness about any time skip, everything vague in an attempt to please more people, the obvious cost of COVID restrictions... all took the heart out of it and just left me feeling empty. Given the history of the show how are we supposed to take heaven as peace at face value for Dean 'my peace is helping people' Winchester? To me Sams life just looked sad -and it didn't celebrate their legacy at all :( 

************************************

The completionist in me really does still want to do it, so it’s possible.  However, the part of me that’s not a glutton for punishment keeps putting it off, because there’s so much about the back half of the season that was infuriating enough secondhand and almost nothing I’m really looking forward to. 

I also find it frustrating to see the vast majority of negative discussion revolving around the same old ship war crap, because my secondhand impression is that while I don’t think the underlying ideas are inherently bad, the execution of them in the episode was largely typical Dabbernatural - big punchy scenes barely strung together to make a coherent narrative and shallow as a flat surface - it all kind of falls apart if you think about it for more than a minute. 

I’m not mad about it in the abstract because I expected Dabb to produce something even worse.  Say a finale that still managed to be all about Jack or his Wayward Sue squad (which is what I suspect any kind of attempt to celebrate the Winchesters’ legacy would have turned into in his hands).  Both the Winchesters’ accepting death now and Dean being content in heaven for me feel completely arbitrary.  If they’d really leaned into that timeskip and made it clear years had passed with no major world ending catastrophes, I think it might have worked.  As it is, Jared can say he thinks it was years, but if you have to rely on actor commentary that just shows it’s not in the text.  Like, Chuck is no longer in power so suddenly the Winchesters have learned to let go, when supposedly them not being able to was what kept thwarting his plans all along?  Even putting aside how ridiculous it is to categorize ToddlerGod!Jack as a categorically awesome replacement, smells like arbitrary authorial fiat to me! 

Then there’s the whole issue where heaven is supposedly just Good Now.  There’s no motivation, no change, and just being able to interact with other souls supposedly makes up for that?  What if the souls you want to interact with don’t want to interact with you, or even if you love them there were fundamental conflicts between you?  That just magically disappears ... somehow?  If it’s something about the atmosphere of heaven that just makes everyone magically content, how is that compatible with the whole theme of fighting for free will?  Again, the word of the episode: arbitrary. 

Although I actually think having Sam’s life being sad was the right choice, even if it does make it a competition as to which Winchester’s end was worse.  If Sam had just gotten over it and moved on, it would have been even more similar to him leaving for college or hooking up with Amelia and just living in happy denial.  I.e. it would be even less different from previous times Dean was out of the picture for a while and feel even more ridiculously This Is The End Because The Show’s Over.  It would also feed even more into validating those that don’t like Sam reading it as Dean having to Learn A Lesson about letting Sam go (again) while Sam is just relieved Dean is not going to come back and make him feel guilty for moving on (again) and I don’t remotely think that’s the actual intent.  Which having some of the dialogue in Dean’s big speech involve tearing himself down to build Sam up while Sam just stands there mute is already doing enough for, thanks.  I also think focusing on Dean’s death and absence to such a degree keeps the narrative on the brother’s relationship together, rather than ultimately turning Dean into a prop for Sam’s story - which would have really bummed me out. 

The saving grace that I think makes it acceptable rather than a complete flop for me is leaning into what made the show go 15 seasons in the first place - J2′s chemistry and acting chops.  Even just having watched clips, I feel like the episode actually let them - and their characters - have moments to really shine for their own sake and it feels like it’s been too long since that was last true.

[letterboxd]

Chameleon.

For Japanuary, J-horror auteur Kiyoshi Kurosawa talks to Aaron Yap about upending genre expectations with his dreamy new travelogue To the Ends of the Earth, the unconscious connections between his films, and how it’s time for a proper evaluation of Robert Zemeckis.

Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s continued, uncontested position as a horror auteur isn’t unjustified. Emerging as a key voice in the J-horror boom of the late ’90s, Kurosawa hypnotized us with his chilly, haunting, atmospheric—and often apocalyptically tinged—visions of baffling serial killers, ghosts in machines, insidious doppelgangers and vengeful apparitions.

Bong Joon-ho once called Kurosawa’s 1997 mind-bender Cure one of the greatest films ever made. Pulse, his terrifyingly prophetic 2001 film, for my money—and many Letterboxd members’—might still be the creepiest of all contemporary horrors. “It is the only film I’ve ever seen in which every single shot feels genuinely haunted,” writes Connor.

Rarely behaving in a traditional scary-movie fashion, Kurosawa’s idiosyncratic horror films often test our expectations of genre, then deliver beyond those boundaries to probe his recurring themes: identity and isolation, humanity’s relationship to technology and nature, and deep-seated anxieties that nibble away at society’s crumbling fabric. Pulse, besides being an exercise in deftly crafted dread, is a great, telling, melancholy movie about the overwhelming loneliness of the digital age.

Yoko (Atsuko Maeda) and her travel show crew in ‘To the Ends of the Earth’.

However, the general focus on his horror “side” tends to eclipse a filmography that’s far richer and more versatile than he’s usually given credit for. Over the past two decades, we’ve seen him seem forge a thrillingly chameleonic, unpredictable path that’s included an ecological thriller (Charisma), an Ozu-esque family drama (Tokyo Sonata), a metaphysical romance (Journey to the Shore) and an alien invasion sci-fi (Before We Vanish). No one is really doing it like Kurosawa, and To the Ends of the Earth is arguably his most exciting and enigmatic left-turn yet.

To the Ends of the Earth is a commissioned piece to celebrate the diplomatic relations between Japan and the Central Asian republic of Uzbekistan, but that doesn’t diminish that it’s unmistakably a Kiyoshi Kurosawa film, not a tossed-off, exoticized, postcard-pretty travelogue. His signature languorous pacing, shrewdly slippery tonal calibration, and acute spatial sensitivity are at full bore, servicing a loosely plotted tale of TV travel show host Yoko (former J-pop singer Atsuko Maeda) and her crew attempting to complete shooting an episode in the Uzbekistan capital of Tashkent.

If anything, this movie should really confirm him as a filmmaker of bold, fictive playfulness in a comparable register to Jacques Rivette, Olivier Assayas and Christian Petzold—something that 2013’s hour-long, similarly fish-out-of-water head-rush Seventh Code, also starring Maeda, hinted at. In To the Ends of the Earth, gentleness, compassion and dream-like bursts of song and fantasy percolate through a disquieting maze of displacement—cultural, artistic, gendered—and the result is an adventurous, unpindownable, thoroughly humanistic work of curiosity and imagination.

Some years ago you did a “double feature”-themed interview with the Belfort Entrevues Film Festival where you revealed the sources of inspiration for some of your films. What film, if any, was a chief influence for To the Ends of the Earth, and can you tell us in what way? Kiyoshi Kurosawa: When I make my work, I often consciously refer to films from the past, but that’s usually the case with genre films. For example, Cure was greatly inspired by The Silence of the Lambs. However, To the Ends of the Earth is not a genre movie, so I wasn’t consciously thinking of any specific films. However, the composition of the story, that the main character appears in every scene, is based on films by the Dardenne brothers. Viewing their films The Child and Two Days, One Night, it’s clear to see how the depiction of just one person can turn trivial incidents into something serious and suspenseful.

Atsuko Maeda and Kiyoshi Kurosawa on the set of ‘To the Ends of the Earth’.

Watching Bright Future, To the Ends of the Earth and Creepy back-to-back recently, I noticed several parallels and motifs which may or may not be intentional. For example, a jellyfish makes an appearance in a scene on TV in Creepy, or there’s a TV report of a blaze in To the Ends of the Earth that momentarily hints at a bigger natural catastrophe that echoes the jellyfish swarm in Bright Future, or other apocalyptic moments in your films like Charisma and Before We Vanish. Do you find that some of these motifs work on a subconscious level for you, or were some of them intentionally threaded in? It’s a very interesting point. Some of them were intentional and some were not at all. It’s true about jellyfish, they appear in both Bright Future and Creepy. However, this is the first time I’ve noticed. The endings of Charisma and Before We Vanish were already written in the script by necessity, so of course, it’s intentional. The depiction of the blaze on TV in To the Ends of the Earth was introduced to show something happening in Japan while the main character is taking a small adventure in Uzbekistan. I wanted to show that her boyfriend was in some kind of crisis there. While the fire on the TV is merely an accident, it does appear apocalyptic. I may have overdone that a bit. Perhaps some kind of unconscious thinking was at work.

That amusement park ride scene in To the Ends of the Earth has stayed with me in the way it suggests terror out of something seemingly mundane. What are some scenes from other films that have stayed with you? The amusement park ride scene wasn’t introduced to express terror. What I wanted to show was how crazy the assignment is and Yuko’s professionalism. She takes on the assignment without fear. This may have been a bit overdone as well. However, I thought that Atsuko Maeda, who didn’t hesitate to actually ride it three times, was a real professional. Apart from that, if I think about the movies that force people to experience horror, what comes to me are Roger Corman’s Pit and the Pendulum. Tobe Hooper’s The Funhouse, George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road. I also remembered the episode in Freddie Francis’s Torture Garden, where a grand piano has a will to kill people, which was great.

Your films tend to be very location-based; environments and spaces appear to play a significant part. The pandemic has been the ultimate test of our relationship with spaces and each other. How has the pandemic impacted you as a filmmaker, and are there themes and ideas that you are interested in exploring further as a result of Covid? As you pointed out, when I make a movie, I pay great attention to the location. The moment I find a good location, I feel that the script will be transformed into a movie. It is the moment when fiction and reality are fused. It’s hard to say anything though, I haven’t made a movie since the pandemic started. What I can say, at least, is that sitting in front of the computer at home is not cinematic at all. So far, I don’t feel that something new will be born from it. What should I do? After all, I feel that a movie can only be made by going out in the city with a camera after utilizing the best epidemic prevention system possible.

If you had to pick a film that’s a personal favorite, which would you pick, and why? It's too difficult a question. Japanese movies and foreign movies have different viewpoints. Also, there are completely different categories of movies [that] greatly influence me when I make films and the movies I saw when I was young that make me nostalgic. It’s impossible to choose just one. But, well, the one that comes to mind is Sam Peckinpah’s The Ballad of Cable Hogue, which is both nostalgic and heavily influential for me.

You’ve spoken about your fondness for American filmmakers like Tobe Hooper, Robert Aldrich, Steven Spielberg et al. Are there new, or more recent American filmmakers and films that have caught your attention or that you’re particularly excited by? I don’t know much about young American directors, but what I always care about is Alfonso Cuarón. Of course he is not a new, young filmmaker, but an auteur. Also, since this is a good opportunity, I’d like to mention Robert Zemeckis. He made such masterpieces as Cast Away and What Lies Beneath around 2000. For some reason, he has never been properly evaluated at all. For a time he was devoted to animation. However, he made a spectacular return to live-action films with Flight and continues to shoot unique masterpieces like Allied and Welcome to Marwen. Of course, not many people appreciate these works. However, he does not seem to care about public opinion at all and continues to boldly shoot new works. Perhaps Zemeckis is the American film director who makes the most authentic films today.

What are your movie-watching habits like? Do you continue to watch movies on physical media or prefer streaming these days? What was the last movie you saw in a theater? Basically, I like to watch movies at an ordinary movie theater in the city the most. When I can’t go to the movie theater, or even though I know the film is going to be boring but I have to watch a movie for business, I have no choice but to watch it on DVD or Blu-ray. Of course, I also use VOD once in a while. The last movie I saw in the theater, as of today, was the Japanese film The Voice in the Crime. I saw that just yesterday. I saw it with my wife at a cinema complex in Shinjuku, Tokyo. It was the latest work by the director who made the previous masterpiece Flying Colors, and I expected much from it. It was speedy and quite well done until the middle of the film, but by the ending, it was too boring. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a good movie.

What’s a memorable film-related moment from your childhood, perhaps something you experienced with family or friends, or a film that scared you or made you cry? The movies that my generation often watched growing up were mainly monster movies. The most unforgettable one was Matango. Like Godzilla and Mothra, it was directed by Ishirō Honda. I went to see this movie with my friends. It had a rather cute touch in the promotional materials depicting a mushroom with a monstrous appearance. However, the content was completely different from a normal monster movie. Shipwrecked survivors on an uninhabited island encounter monstrous mushroom creatures washed up on the shore. These are not unknown creatures such as Godzilla or Mothra, but the horrifying ending of a human being. The characters are being infected, changing one another into mushroom humans. All of us children trembled from the bottom of our hearts. In retrospect, the work is an extreme horror aiming along the same line as [Howard Hawks and] Christian Nyby’s The Thing from Another World. It was probably the first time I encountered horror which was not “to escape from destruction” but “when a human being becomes something not human”.

Is there a filmmaker or film you think about a lot that you don’t get to talk about much and would like to show some appreciation? I haven’t talked much about the Battles Without Honor and Humanity series directed by Kinji Fukasaku. I don’t know how well this series of Japanese movies is known abroad, but when I was a high-school student I saw this and quickly became a big fan. I’ve watched a variety of yakuza movies since then, and it’s safe to say that nothing beats this series. As the title suggests, the films depict a yakuza world without “Jingi” (yakuza’s moral code), and it was really humorous and exciting to see the betrayals and the destruction. After I saw this, all those traditional yakuza movies dominated by the strange ideology of “Jingi” looked like a childish fantasy.

Related content

The Japanuary Challenge 2021

Explore more J-horror, ’80s J-horror and ’90s J-horror

Follow Aaron on Letterboxd

‘To the Ends of the Earth’ is available for rental in the US via distributor KimStim. From February 5-25, Japan Society’s virtual cinema hosts ‘21st Century Japan: Films from 2001-2020’, featuring films from Hirokazu Kore-eda, Naomi Kawase and Takashi Miike, the online US premieres of Sion Sono’s ‘Red Post on Escher Street’ and Yukiko Mishima’s ‘Shape of Red’, plus a special focus on Kiyoshi Kurosawa (‘Bright Future’, ‘Journey to the Shore’, ‘Real’).

[killscreencinema]

Death Stranding (PS4)

The first week of quarantine, I lost my job.  It wasn’t COVID related, more like “I hated my job and my employers finally realized it” related.  So it was actually really good timing that I began this game while unemployed, as virtually delivering packages to people made me at least feel like I still had a job! 

Death Stranding, released by Hideo Kojima’s new independent studio in 2019, is set in a bleak, post-Apocalyptic future where the world of the living and the dead have converged in a catastrophic event called, well, the “death stranding”.  Dangerous phantoms, called “BTs”, roam the countryside, dragging anyone unlucky enough to encounter them into their world.  The only person who can stand up to them is a porter named Sam Bridges (Norman Reedus), who has a unique condition called DOOMS which allows him to sense a BTs presence (who are otherwise invisible to the naked eye).  Paired with a child bred to act as a link between the living and dead, called a  Bridge Baby, or BB, Sam can even see a BT, making him the only candidate who can possibly bring the world back together by traveling the wastelands of the former United States, delivering packages and connecting the surviving human cities via something called the “chiral network”.

So it’s basically a fucked up, but better, version of that Kevin Costner movie The Postman.

Also, if it seems like my story summary took longer than usual, welcome to the world of Hideo Kojima!  I tried my best to explain the story in a brief synopsis, but I still didn’t even scratch the surface of it.  For example, I didn’t even mention how Mads Mikkelson intermittently drags Sam to a battlefield-like purgatory so he can steal his BB; or how Sam’s mysterious connection to the BTs makes his bodily fluids deadly to them, so you will often use weaponry made from his piss, blood, and shit to fight them; or how his primary objective is to rescue an enigmatic woman named Amelie, who may or may not be the daughter of the recently deceased President of the United States, from terrorists who want to use Amelie to bring about the extinction of humanity.

This game is bananas, ya’ll... but in the best way.

I started this game with extremely low expectations, as it had been critically lambasted by most of the major gaming sites and YouTubers.  From the previews of the game I watched, it just seemed.... weird.  I didn’t understand what the hell I was looking at - Norman Reedus with a pod baby strapped to his chest, and a strange flappy doodad on his shoulder, while walking on a tar beach strewn about with dead whales?  What the fuck, Hideo?  Visually alone the game was such a stark (and I mean *stark*) departure from the Metal Gear games, so when I found out the gameplay was delivering packages, I became convinced that Hideo Kojima had done lost his goddamn mind. 

Turns out... and this should hardly come as a surprise... the man is a goddamn genius.

Truly brilliant art always offends and bewilders the senses at first because your mind doesn’t know how to cope with what its experiencing.  Watch any given David Lynch movie and you’ll see what I mean.  The human mind has trouble processing totally new information that has no frame of reference in memory or cultural awareness, which is why “weird” art initially repulses before it gains a following (and many great artists die in poverty before they are recognized for their genius).  Imagine introducing a peasant from the Middle Ages to a helicopter - they’d think it looks absolutely ridiculous, so when you tell them it can fly, just IMAGINE their incredulity. 

Anyway, I think that is why initial impressions of Death Stranding were so negative - it was a lot to take in for a lot of gamers used to being spoon fed repackaged versions of the same games but with different titles.  Even things that seem at first “original” have recognizable gaming mechanics that ease the player in.  I mean a game set in the apocalypse where the core gameplay is centralized on package delivery???   There’s nothing like this!  So your reaction is either going to be “This is brilliant” or, like the medieval peasant, “this is ridiculous”.

Mind you, I’m not saying if you don’t like this game, you’re as stupid as a medieval peasant.

I get why people would hate this game - it’s very different than a lot of games out there.  Death Stranding is bold and audacious in its storytelling and its gameplay.  It takes a lot of risks that most AAA publishers (like Konami for example) would balk at, which is why Kojima had to create his own company to make it.

The gameplay seems simplistic at first - deliver packages from point A to point B.  However, it’s a little more complicated than that.  For one, the key element of the game is item management and learning not to bite off more than you can chew.  Sam can only carry so many boxes, and the more you stack on top of him, the more difficult the journey will be, especially when crossing BT territory or bandits (called MULES) nipping at your heels.  You also have to take into account the rocky terrain, river crossings, and weather (oh, did I mention that rain in this game, referred to as “Time Fall”, can rapidly age items and people?).  The game is all about carefully choosing equipment you’ll think you will need, whether it be weapons, ladders (for climbing large cliff faces or crossing deep rivers or chasms), sprays for repairing damage to packages, or even a spare pair of boots in case the shoes you’re wearing wear out.  So to say that the game is “just delivering packages” greatly diminishes some of the nuance going on here.  Yes, there are lots of long stretches of just walking across a landscape to some of the most melancholy music ever assembled on a soundtrack, but I’d argue that having patience for those moments is part of the gameplay. 

The game can be frustrating, such as when Sam refuses to climb a ledge you KNOW is climbable, so he just trips and falls over instead.  The vehicles that you eventually unlock are some of the most goddamn frustrating vehicles in video game history.  At first, I figured it was because I would eventually unlock better modes of conveyance more adequately adapted to crossing rough terrain, but no - they all drive like shit.  Just getting the truck to drive up a hill without spinning out and rolling backwards can fray on one’s nerves.  It’s hard to discern how much of it is the vehicle and how much might be poor controls.

The story, as alluded to above, is ambitious at best and pretentiously bloated at worst.  However, if you’ve played any of the Metal Gear games, you know what you’re signing up for when it comes to high concept, over-indulgent story.  I would say that for the most part, Death Stranding’s story is coherent enough to enjoy, although there are long expository cut scenes that convolute the plot more than clear it up.  Fortunately, the characters are well developed enough, and are interesting enough, to keep you invested (a storytelling skill that is perhaps Kojima’s saving grace).  Also, the more dramatic beats of the story are impactful enough to still resonate, even if you’re not entirely sure what the fuck is going on.  It helps to have talent like Norman Reedus, Mads Mikkelson, and Lea Seydoux in the cast, whose performances bring the characters to life.  Sam in particular might have been an insufferable loner, were it not for Reedus’ gruff likeability that made him famous from Walking Dead. 

If you’ve avoided this game because, like me, you were convinced by bad reviews that it sucks, I would highly suggest that you reconsider.  It may not be as fun, or compelling, as a Metal Gear Solid game, but it’s an interesting departure and one worth experiencing.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Pluralistic: 21 Mar 2020 (Cool Tools, scientists predict cooperation, Don't Look for the Helpers, after the crisis, a people's bailout, judge vs unicorns, Marc Davis's Haunted Mansion)

Today's links

My appearance on Cool Tools: My favorite gadgets.

UK emergency science panel predicts mass altruism: Reality has a well-known collectivist bias.

Don't Look for the Helpers: The text version of my essay for the new Nightvale anxiety podcast.

After the crisis, a program for transformative change: Pandemic reveals the systems' failures, and what to do about them.

Pandemic stimulus, realpolitik edition: Stephanie Kelton and AOC on a people's bailout.

Beautiful judicial snark: "No, your unicorn trademark is not an emergency."

Marc Davis's Haunted Mansion: What if Marc Davis had sole control over the ride's design?

This day in history: 2005, 2010, 2015, 2019

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

My appearance on Cool Tools (permalink)

This week, I appear on the Cool Tools podcast to discuss my favorite, most indispensible gadgets and services and why I love them.

https://kk.org/cooltools/cory-doctorow-science-fiction-author/

My top picks were my Crkt Snap-Lock knife – a one-handed-opening, lightweight, super versatile pocket knife that I carry everywhere.

https://www.crkt.com/snap-lock.html

I also chose my Chinese OEM underwater MP3 player. I swim every day for my chronic pain maintenance and this is how I make it bearable, getting through 1-2 audiobooks/month.

https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00GWV6GUO/cooltoolsshow-20

My third choice was Libro.fm, the DRM-free, indie-bookseller friendly way to listen to audiobooks. Basically the same catalog as Audible, at the same price, the only difference being that buying from them supports neighborhood booksellers, not Amazon.

It was a really fun! @Frauenfelder and @kevin2kelly are super smart about gadgets.

Here's the MP3:

http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/7810/13374488/779800513-cool-tools-218-cory-doctorow.mp3

UK emergency science panel predicts mass altruism (permalink)

SAGE is the UK Government's Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies. This is their hour to shine.

They have just published a spectacular, plain-language set of technical reports on the pandemic.

https://www.gov.uk/government/groups/scientific-advisory-group-for-emergencies-sage-coronavirus-covid-19-response

This is the most interesting: "on risk of public disorder."

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/873736/08-spi-b-return-on-risk-of-public-disorder.pdf

The expert panel affirms the conclusions of Rebecca Solnit in her indispensable book "A Paradise Built in Hell," a closely researched history of disasters that finds that they are the moment in which people spring to the aid of their neighbors.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/10/05/a-paradise-built-in-hell

SAGE's expert panel on disasters: "large scale rioting is unlikely. It is rarely seen in these circumstances. Acts of altruism will predominate, and HMG could readily promote and guide these."

"Where public disorder occurs, it is usually triggered by perceptions about the Government's response, rather than the nature of the epidemic. A perception that Government response strategies are not effective in looking after the public may lead to an increase in tensions."

"Promote a sense of collectivism: All messaging should reinforce a sense of community, that 'we are all in this together.'"

For decades, Britain has been poisoned by Margaret Thatcher's sociopathic maxim, "There is no such thing as society."

It turns out that reality (and pandemics) has a well-known collectivist bias.

Don't Look for the Helpers (permalink)

I wrote a short essay about how I'm coping with The Current Situation for Our Plague Year, a new podcast from Joseph Fink of Welcome to Nightvale, called "Don't Look for the Helpers".

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/17/pluralistic-17-mar-2020/#ourplagueyear

Today, PM Press published the essay in a new digital collection, "All We Have Is Each Other."

https://www.pmpress.org/blog/category/blog/all-we-have-is-each-other/

"Assuming things will break down does not make you a dystopian. Engineers who design systems on the assumption that nothing could go wrong aren't utopians, they're idiots who kill people. 'Nothing could go wrong' is why there weren't enough lifeboats on the fucking Titanic."

"Every disaster ends with mutual aid. By definition. That's the only way a disaster can end: with people pulling together. If there's one lesson to take from Mad Max, it's that pulling apart only deepens the crisis, and the it will not end until we pull together."

"I've been telling stories of humanity rising to crisis for decades. Now I'm telling them to myself. I hope you'll keep that story in mind today, as plutocrats are seeking to weaponize narratives to turn our crisis into a self-serving catastrophe."

https://www.pmpress.org/blog/2020/03/19/dont-look-for-the-helpers-by-cory-doctorow/

After the crisis, a program for transformative change (permalink)

The Current Situation has revealed deep cracks in our system: replacing public transit with gig economy drivers who don't get health care or sick leave; the gig economy itself; the lethal inadequacy of private-sector broadband and private-sector health-care, and beyond.

The fact that we can simply abolish data-caps (without networks falling over) and the liquid ban (without planes blowing up) reveals that these supposed existential threats were, in fact, arbitrary, authoritarian, rent-seeking bullshit.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/14/masque-of-the-red-death/#security-theater

The people who've spent 40 years convincing us that we're just not free-marketing hard enough continue to insist that all of these problems are merely the result of not having fully dismantled the state (so much for "state capacity libertarianism"):

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-03-20/coronavirus-killed-the-progressive-left

They're licking their chops for a 2008-style reboot: eviscerating public services, immiserating workers, fattening plutes and dissolving regulatory safeguards.

It's a playbook developed by Milton Friedman: the scheme to have "ideas lying around" when crisis strikes.

But as Naomi Klein reminds us, the Shock Doctrine cuts both ways. The manifest failures of plutocracy in the Great Depression got us the New Deal and the "30 Glorious Years" of shared prosperity and growth.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/17/pluralistic-17-mar-2020/#disaster-socialism

We haven't been idle since 2008. We have "ideas lying around" too. Ideas for a just and resilient society that reorients human life around sustainable and just practices. Motherboard's editorial staff gives us a manifesto for that society, so that this crisis doesn't go to waste:

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wxekvw/the-world-after-coronavirus-healthcare-labor-climate-internet

Free and universal healthcare ("healthcare is a basic human right" -B. Sanders)

Abolish ICE and prisons ("ICE is now a public health hazard")

Protect and empower labor ("Without these protections, everyone's safety and health is put at risk")

A healthier climate ("If the 2008-09 financial crash is any indicator, carbon could shoot right back up as soon as the crisis is over")

Fast, accessible broadband ("Community owned/operated broadband networks, long demonized and even prohibited by law are looking better than ever")

Smash the surveillance state ("This pandemic mustn't be used to infringe on the civil liberties and privacy of millions")

Billionaire wealth ("They're sending people to work while jetting off to luxurious doomsday bunkers, getting Covid-19 tests while normal people can't, and also singing 'Imagine' from bucolic getaways.")

Public transit that works ("Congress is poised to prioritize bailing out airlines and the cruise industry before it takes a look at public transit")

The right to repair ("Right-to-repair has become a matter of life and death.")

Science for the people ("We were caught flat-footed by a fixation on 'innovation' and lack of public options")

The future will not be like the past. Whether it is worse or better is our choice to make. It is in our (well-scrubbed) hands.

(Image: Jolove55, CC BY)

Pandemic stimulus, realpolitik edition (permalink)

I've been thinking a lot about what a covid stimulus package could and should look like, and what the possible failure modes and transformative changes could be. Obviously, there's real risk of inflation if handled wrong, because production has halted, so more money could end up chasing fewer goods. That gets ugly quick.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/18/diy-tp/#covid-stimulus

Then there's the risk that we just infuse trillions of no-strings-attached dollars into the finance sector, who use it to make our society even more brittle and unstable by hollowing out reeling companies and grinding down brutalized workers.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/19/gb-whatsapp/#peoples-bailout

Writing about this stuff in public makes a lot of Twitter people with "investor" in their bios very, very angry. They want giant bailouts for the companies they own stocks in, not transformative change. They use the neolib tactic of throwing out a lot of jargon to instil a sense of your technical illiteracy. Complexity is a con-artist's go-to tactic, after all – it's why proposition bets are so complicated, so you can't do the odds in your head (see also: craps tables).

But not every economist believes that sociopathy is pareto optimal. Leading lights like Stephanie Kelton, the mother of Modern Monetary Theory, who can go toe-to-toe with oligarch-apologists from the Chicago School, explaining how public debt really works.

Kelton and AOC appeared on this week's Deconstructed podcast with Mehdi Hasan to discuss the true scale of the bailout that will be needed (far more than $1T) to get the economy working again. That number can come down (by lowering working peoples' outgoings through rent/mortgage/student loan holidays, etc). But the lesson of 2008 is that to be credible, stimulus must be transparent and aimed at the public good, not the donor-class.

https://theintercept.com/2020/03/20/deconstructed-podcast-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-coronavirus-economy/

https://dcs.megaphone.fm/FLM7803427023.mp3

Otherwise, Congress risks having its hands tied: it might inject an inadequate and corrupt stimulus that benefits its cronies, then be unable to follow that on with a people's bailout that would help us all.

AOC: "Look at this kind of trash pile of legislation the Republicans have just introduced. I've never seen such a thing in my life of, we're going to give the neediest people less. And we're going to give people who are you know, need help but don't need as much help more."

Kelton: "What people mean when they say, you know, oh, Senator Sanders, you want Medicare for All or you want to make public colleges and universities tuition free, you want to cancel student debt, how are you going to pay for it? Where is the money going to come from? What that means in beltway speak is how are you going to offset all of that spending with new revenue from somewhere else, or by spending less in defense or some other category, the budget?"

"When you do a piece of legislation that's 'paid for,' it means you're putting the 50 billion in and it goes to some parts of the economy, and you're taking 50 billion out of some other parts of the economy so that you're not deficit spending."

"We've been so badly educated to respond to deficits as something that's fiscally irresponsible, reckless. It isn't. The government is committing to dropping dollars into the economy without ripping them right back out again. It's exactly what we want them to do right now."

Kelton's work on Modern Monetary Theory is transformative. Her lectures present both a powerful descriptive account of how money works in the economy and a prescriptive account of how we can use that knowledge to make a better, more prosperous world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WS9nP-BKa3M

She has a new book about this coming in June, The Deficit Myth. This would be a good time to pre-order it. These are scary times for writers with books about to come out (signed, I have three new books out in 2020).

https://stephaniekelton.com/book/

Beautiful judicial snark (permalink)

As Ken "Popehat" White is fond of reminding us, no one snarks quite like a federal judge. And despite being a Trump appointee, Steven C Seeger manages to rip off a couple zingers in this ruling.

http://loweringthebar.net/2020/03/unicorn-case-not-an-emergency.htm

At issue: Art Ask Agency is upset that someone is counterfeiting their unicorn-logo merch, such as this unicorn-scented candle:

https://artaskagency.com/our-licenses/anne-stokes/unicorn-candle/

But Illinois is in covid lockdown, so its case against a bunch of John Doe (alleged) counterfeiters is on hold. Their lawyer has sent a string of motions to the court asking for an emergency hearing so they can proceed, despite the fact that the court clerks are operating on reduced staff and only dealing with matters of the utmost urgency.

The judge is Not Impressed: "At worst, Defendant might sell a few more counterfeit products in the meantime. But Plaintiff makes no showing about anticipated loss of sales. One wonders if fake fantasy products are experiencing brisk sales at the moment."

The judge takes notice of the time a telephonic hearing would consume, "especially given the girth of the Plaintiff's filings."

"Plaintiff argues that it will suffer an 'irreparable injury' if this court does not put a stop to the infringing unicorns and knock-off elves."

"The world is facing a real emergency. Plaintiff is not."

(Image: Karen Neoh, CC BY)

Marc Davis's Haunted Mansion (permalink)

Along with Passport to Dreams Old and New, the Long Forgotten Blog is the best source of information on the history, design, and evolution of Disney theme-parks.

https://passport2dreams.blogspot.com/

But Long Forgotten focuses on a single ride, the glorious, brilliant Haunted Mansion.

The history of the Haunted Mansion was completely upended in late 2019, when Christopher Merritt published his "Marc Davis in His Own Words," a two-volume compendium of journals and interviews with the legendary Imagineer, who was Merritt's mentor.

https://books.disney.com/book/marc-davis-in-his-own-words/

This is probably the best book of Disney/theme-park history ever published, and that's no surprise, as Merritt has already written the definitive history of Knott's Berry Farm:

https://www.angelcitypress.com/collections/authors-christopher-merritt

And Pacific Ocean Park:

https://www.yesterland.com/pacificoceanpark.html

Merritt is an Imagineer, an artist, and a historian, who has direct, lifelong connections with the original Imagineering team. He has unparalleled access, inside knowledge and perspective. So yeah, that is a fucking great book.

Marc Davis was the best character designer in the original Imagineer cohort: he created the Country Bears, the Pirates, and the Haunted Mansion ghosts. He was a spectacular visual gag master, too. And he was one of the (many) legendary Imagineers who had a hand in designing the Haunted Mansion. That ride had so many different iterations, drafts, plans and schemes, and the final product is so wonderful in part because of their remnants.

But Davis actually designed a full-on Haunted Mansion attraction, from start to finish, and those plans are kicking around. Based on those, Long Forgotten has created a narrative account of what it would be like to tour "Marc Davis's Haunted Mansion."

https://longforgottenhauntedmansion.blogspot.com/2020/03/marc-daviss-haunted-mansion.htm

It's…interesting. Davis had some really fun ideas like meeting up with a talking bust (or raven).

And there are great gags (Davis designed the "three-part" stretching portraits, after all).

I mean. this would have been so freaking boss.

But the real meat is something called "The Most Dangerous Ghost":

"The final picture is perhaps behind black drapes which raise as the ghost host calls out attention to it. As the drapes part we see a painting that has everything in it except a figure. There is perhaps a vague image where the figure should be. The ghost host reacts in a frightened manner. He explains that this is terrible because this is the most dangerous ghost in the mansion. When he climbs out of his picture he mingles with the guests until he has turned one of them into a ghost. He describes the ghost's appearance and its omnipotent powers. He suggests again that everyone should stay in a tight group; this evil ghost loves to pick off stragglers. He suggests that the group be wary of sliding panels, gusts of cold air and etc."

Long Forgotten: "The MDG character undercuts the intellectually sloppy notion that all Davis cared about was making the HM funny."

LF goes on to make a good case that Davis wanted to incorporate many of Rolly Crump's gorgeous "Museum of the Weird" designs into his Mansion.

Davis's seance room seems to flirt with MDG some more: "The presence of the villain ghost makes itself felt and these older retired ghosts are frightened. Whatever we have used to indicate the nearness of the villain ghost would be repeated here."

Davis once planned for a Mansion filled with "working class ghosts" (carpenters, soldiers, boxers, etc). The only ones that survived were the coachmen in the graveyard sequence.

And his bride sequence was very explicit about wedding-night murders, culminating with MDG manifesting amid the guests: "He starts a wild mocking laugh. It clouds up outside. The curtains blow inward. It starts to rain along with thunder and lightning. "Outside we see a figure take form and it moves into the room. The rain comes into the room with the figure and a pool of water forms around its feet."

This is gorgeously scary, but as Long Forgotten points out, it has little re-play value (similar to Tomororwland's Alien Encounter): "The gag about the Ghost Host revealing himself as the Most Dangerous Ghost has the obvious disadvantage that it can surprise you only once. Pretty soon everyone knows the 'secret,' and as its usefulness as a genuine shock or scare tactic fades its status as pure camp inevitably increases."

That all said, "We learn what we should already know but sometimes forget: Marc Davis was never an imperious, one-man show. He was a team player. He interacted creatively with the work already done by previous Imagineers, displaying in this outline nothing but respect for what was good in what they had done."

This day in history (permalink)

#15yrsago Disney busts amateur Disneyland tour guide https://web.archive.org/web/20050323133504/http://jimhillmedia.com/mb/articles/showarticle.php?ID=1356

#10yrsago James Randi is gay http://archive.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/914-how-to-say-it.html

#5yrsago Windows 10 announcement: certified hardware can lock out competing OSes https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/03/windows-10-to-make-the-secure-boot-alt-os-lock-out-a-reality/

#1yrago Two arrested for hiding cameras in motel rooms and charging for access to livestreams https://edition.cnn.com/2019/03/20/asia/south-korea-hotel-spy-cam-intl/index.html

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources: Ok børge (https://twitter.com/forteller), Beyond the Beyond (http://www.wired.com/category/beyond_the_beyond/).

Currently writing: I've just finished rewrites on 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've also just completed "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 next.

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: The Masque of the Red Death and Punch Brothers Punch https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/03/16/the-masque-of-the-red-death-and-punch-brothers-punch/

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. https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250757531

"Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583

[quakerjoe]

But we’ve seen another marked strategic shift. Over the past few weeks, Trump started very pointedly attacking governors who have been aggressive in utilizing measures such as “shelter-in-place” orders to try to contain the spread of the coronavirus. While it had occasionally popped up in his briefings, it reached its apex on April 17 with a series of utterly bizarre tweets that called for three Democratic-controlled states to be “liberated,” a move that one think tank specializing in domestic terrorism fears could act as a dog whistle for right-wing attacks.

On paper, this shouldn’t have been as big a shock as it was. Trump has made a political career out of covering up for his own failures by trying to wage war on others and deflect the damage onto them. When candidates that he lustily endorses eventually lose, it’s because they simply weren’t MAGA enough, after all. So, by declaring verbal war on governors (even, in some cases, Republicans who are working to bend the curve), Trump hopes to lift himself up off of the canvas by dragging the governors down.

Is it working? The early evidence is in, and the answer is: nope, not so much.

First, let’s stipulate something right off the bat: Trump’s COVID-19 response has always drawn a shockingly mild, if not negative, reaction from American voters. This is especially true when you compare him to other global leaders. Even our neighbor to the north, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who just limped out of an underwhelming reelection bid for his party last year, finds himself with a job approval rating as it relates to COVID-19 in the low 60s. Trump’s national numbers, meanwhile, have been decidedly mediocre: of the over 150 polls on the COVID crisis that have been conducted nationally, Trump has been under 50 percent approval in nearly three-quarters of them.

In FiveThirtyEight’s tracking of national polls, the most recent polling average for Trump on COVID-19 has been trending underwater, with approval at a tick below 46% and disapproval just over 50%. These are bad numbers, so bad that the only global leader doing consistently worse in terms of public opinion than Trump is Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, whose actions amid this crisis have regressed from merely odd to extraordinarily disturbing.

Meanwhile, we here at Daily Kos Elections have been tracking how voters believe their states have responded to COVID-19, a response which, not surprisingly, has often been more proactive and, frankly, more coherent in most cases than the Trump administration. We can then compare how voters grade their state governments vs. the Trump administration

The trend was apparent from the get-go, and had changed very little over the first full month of the “safer at home” measures employed by most states. By a substantial margin, voters approved of the performance of their governors during the COVID-19 crisis over the Trump response, and often by an outsized margin.

Taking every poll in our database (which dates back to late March), governors find themselves with a net approval on COVID-19 of 69%, as opposed to just 24% who stand in opposition. As we see on the right, virtually every governor polled since March, in states as blue as California and as red as Wyoming, saw their COVID-19 approvals running well ahead of their 2016-2019 gubernatorial election margins. This was true even in swing states. Consider Roy Cooper of North Carolina, who narrowly won election in 2016 and whose COVID-19 approval rating has ranged from the 60s to the low 80s.

Meanwhile, in that same time frame, in those same states, President Trump’s approval has been slightly underwater on COVID-19, with approval at 46%, and disapproval at 49%. Again, remember that this is a cross-section of states, a group that included deep-red states like Wyoming, Alabama, and Oklahoma.

What’s worse for Trump: unlike most of the Governors (Cooper of North Carolina being a notable exception), he has to stand for reelection later this year. If you look at the diagram to the right (expertly done by our own Daniel Donner), you’ll see a LOT of data points that lie below the diagonal line. The simple translation? Trump’s approval, both on COVID-19 and in general, lies below his 2016 margin of victory in a number of pivotal states.

For a guy who won election in 2016 by drawing the political equivalent of an inside straight, these kinds of seismic shifts, even if they are smallish in terms of raw numbers, could be pivotal come Election Day 2020. We saw a rather shocking example of that in data released earlier this week in Ohio, a state Trump won rather easily in 2016, but a state where a.) his COVID-19 approval and fav/unfav numbers were slightly underwater in a Baldwin Wallace poll, and b.) after showing him up narrowly in the previous month’s polling, the same poll found him fractionally behind Joe Biden in a state that would be comparably low on the Biden target list.

Given the disparity graphically depicted above as well as Trump’s chronic insecurities, it is perhaps not surprising that he suddenly turned to a somewhat incoherent but very direct attack on the governors.

There have been a total of 17 polls in states that were in the field either during or after Trump’s “liberate!” tantrum. They have been in an cross-section of states (some states have been polled more than once), with seven polls emanating from Clinton 2016 states and 10 polls emanating from Trump 2016 states:

Florida (two polls)

Michigan (two polls)

Minnesota

North Carolina

New Hampshire

New Jersey

New York

New Mexico

Ohio

Pennsylvania (two polls)

Rhode Island

Texas

Washington

Wisconsin

So, has there been movement from the earlier polling? The short answer is: yes, but it might actually be marginally worse for the president than the governors he has taken to attacking with such gusto.

TIME PERIODTRUMP AVERAGE COVID-19 APPROVAL/DISAPPROVALGOVERNORS’ AVERAGE COVID-19 APPROVAL/DISAPPROVAL

3/20-4/1648/47 (net: +1)69/23 (net: +46)

4/16-PRESENT43/53 (net: -10)68/24 (net: +42)

It’s still early, and the sample size is relatively small (with just 17 polls). But you can see some legitimate movement here.

The slight erosion of gubernatorial approval numbers on COVID-19 is not surprising on two counts. For one thing, it is not unreasonable to assume that as these various “safer at home” lockdown orders move into their second month, there will be some attrition in support among those who have grown weary of quarantine. For another, now that Trump has set his sights on the governors and his acolytes are generating astroturf protests in state after state, it stands to reason that some MAGA all-stars took the cue and now view their Democratic governor not as a responsible leader, but the autocrat in charge of a state desperately needing liberation.

But what is more notable is the trajectory of the COVID-19 approval numbers for President Trump. His numbers, while never good, have reverted close to his consistently mediocre job approval numbers, and are clearly lower than they were earlier in the crisis.

There are any number of reasons why this shift might be taking place.

It could be, as many have speculated, that Trump simply does worse when he is the center of attention (which might be the real reason why Trump very publicly mulled bagging his daily COVID-19 wankathons). I mean, it’s not often that someone in a position of national leadership has a moment of pure catastrophe in the way that Trump did last week with his … unique … suggestions about COVID-19 treatments. Trump can brag all he likes about how many people WATCH this daily dose of presidential wisdom (“better than The Bachelor!”). But it is quite obvious this constant attention is not earning him higher marks from the viewing public, whose estimation of his COVID-19 performance is sinking markedly.

A second explanation is that he has turned off moderates willing to give him a chance at the start of this crisis with his increasingly uneven and often incoherent public performances, as well as his combative approach to many state governors. After all poll after poll has shown that over a month into the crisis, voters are still very aware of the need for social distancing, and far more concerned about lifting measures too early as opposed to lifting them too late. Therefore, his “liberate!” rant last week might have lost him significant yardage with a persuadable audience.

If you break down some of the polling data by ideological group, the results are striking. In a poll released Monday by Siena in hard-hit New York, we see that Trump’s COVID-19 approvals have diminished substantially over the past month, from a 41/56 approval spread in March to just 34/65 now. But the main driver of that has not been partisan Democrats tired of Trump’s sniping. Indeed, their numbers couldn’t drop much more than they had, with Trump’s disapproval inching up from 79% to 83%. Where the dramatic shifts occurred were among independents (where disapproval of Trump’s COVID-19 response jumped from 52% to 66%) and, perhaps most notably, among Republicans (where disapproval of Trump’s COVID-19 response almost doubled from 15% to 27%).

Another plausible explanation is that it’s entirely possible that relying on a small network of partisans and extremists in his own White House, coupled with binge-watching Fox News, combined to give Trump an errant view of the landscape. After all, his rants against the governors were no doubt predicated on a belief that he could make the voters mad at them, rather than being mad at him. But look at the data.

Trump specifically attacked the governors of three states in his “liberate” tweets: Michigan, Minnesota, and Virginia. While we don’t have fresh data in Virginia, we can see that, in polls taken since the tweetfest, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz is polling at 70% job approval, while Trump languishes at 40% in a state he nearly won in 2016. Meanwhile, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who has arguably been the biggest and most consistent target of abuse from the president, had a statewide job approval of 63%, while Trump trailed far behind at 47%, in a poll conducted on behalf of … wait for it … Fox News.

Taken as a whole, the data indicates that we are, as we have been since the start of this crisis, largely relying on our governors for solutions to help the citizenry, and largely rolling our eyes at the enfant terrible who occupies the White House. Which, given the kind of assistance that the federal government could be providing with competent leadership, is a huge net loss for the country. But it also could prove to be a huge net loss for Trump politically as the 2020 election year heads into the summer.

Read More

[clexa--warrior]

Hey, Have You Heard About This Coronavirus Thing? Crazy Shit, Right? (Ferret/Shower Cap)

History texts depicting this period will read like deranged Choose Your Adventure books written by sadists; no matter how frantically you flip backwards, you just can’t seem to find the page when you still had the option to vote for the really smart lady with the email server. Anyway, join me for a quick news round-up, it won’t take long, and when we’re done, I give you permission to run away to join a roving Thai monkey street gang.

(As always, find this post WITH nifty news links here: http://showercapblog.com/hey-have-you-heard-about-this-coronavirus-thing-crazy-shit-right/)

For those of you just waking up from a Rip Van Winkle nap, the United States is facing a massive, coast-to-coast, health crisis, whose tragic consequences have exploded exponentially because our Idiot Manchild President really believed, in that churning campground septic tank he calls a mind, that protecting his personal approval ratings by understating the problem was more important than the health and safety of the American public. I don’t know what you can call that but murder. On the one hand, it’s weird to say “wow, the President murdered a bunch Americans through boneheaded, unforgivably selfish, neglect,” but we already saw him get away with precisely that crime in Puerto Rico, so here we are.

Now, I have come to expect malice from the federal government under Hairplug Himmler, but sometimes their capacity for raw, senseless, evil still shocks me. This is my way of saying that, until they got fucking caught, the Department of, and Someone Should Slap the Word Out of Their Filthy Mouths, Justice attempted to remove CDC fliers offering potentially life-saving information regarding the coronavirus from...immigration courtrooms. My God. What a small but potent horror. Feels like the work of an ambitious intern in Stephen Miller’s office, doesn’t it? Trying to impress the boss? Just a sinister little trick, to spread a little more pain, a little more misery, a little more death in an already vulnerable, and whatta-coincidence-nonwhite, community? Fuck these awful, awful, people.

It seems President Liposuction Clinic Dumpster has been calling up leading Taliban terrorists on a secret U.S. kill-or-capture list, presumably to trade tips n’ tricks on how to undermine the USA at home and abroad. Now, negotiating with these murderous dirtbags is a big diplomacy no-no (and of course Donnie Dotard got rolled anyway) but in all honestly, if I had access to a secret kill list contact sheet, I’d probably give in to the temptation to make some prank calls. “Is your refrigerator running? Yeah? Are you sure it’s not a FLEET OF DRONES ABOVE YOU RIGHT NOW?”

For Jeff Sessions, the wages of sin turned out to be a faceful of Trump-branded fecal matter, as the Candycorn Skidmark, whose campaign Ol’ Beauregard embraced way back before fascism was cool in conservative circles, endorsed his opponent in the coming Alabama Senate runoff. How must it feel to have been the very fellow who flipped the switch on the Rube Goldberg/Mousetrap Board Game device that destroyed America, and to watch the machine work its destructive magic for years, only to realize it’s also got one special crotch punt in store for just you personally. I’d feel bad for Bilbo Bigot, if it he weren’t, y’know, one of the very worst people alive.

Alex Jones got arrested for drunk driving, and, upon his release, got right back to work selling...sigh...selling some bullshit toothpaste that he’s telling the rubes magically cures the coronavirus. Authorities are cracking down on Jones and fellow charlatan Jim Bakker over their odious snake oil peddling enterprises, but I don’t know what’s more shocking and disappointing to me, that there are such vile fuckwads in the world, who seek to profit off the fear of the misinformed during times of crisis, or that said fuckwads have so many blind, willing, disciples?

Speaking of fuckwads, Ron Johnson seems to have backed down, for now at any rate, from his quest to stage a show trial for Hunter Biden in the U.S Senate. And that’s awesome and all, but never forget how ready, how eager, RoJo has been, to corruptly manipulate the vast powers of the government for his democracy-stomping Turdlord’s political benefit. Ron is the kind of fellow you’d have found stamping documents outside trains bound for Dachau.

But yeah, I suppose the big story is still that coronavirus thing. Great choice on evolution’s part, the way symptoms don’t necessarily manifest right away, so we can spread that shit around without knowing we’re even infected. Anyway, I made sure to thoroughly disinfect tonight’s blog before posting, and medical professionals inform me that though the virus can linger on plastic and metal surfaces for as long as days, it cannot survive on a poo joke, so please rest easy, knowing you can safely consume this content in comfort. Unless you're reading it next to somebody with the coronavirus, but that's on you, kid.

The Shart Administration has actually slowed progress in this crucial fight, by classifying high-level coronavirus meetings, because they’re more worried about congressional oversight of their crimes n’ fuckups than they are about OUR LIVES, and y’know what, I do believe I’ll be voting Democrat this November.

And of course, many conservatives are more concerned with blaming the virus on the Chinese than preventing its spread; by gum, there’s no need to abandon yer principles, even when your ineptitude is getting countless folks sick and/or killed! “We may be a cabal of dangerously incompetent assclowns, but let none forget that we are also RACIST assclowns!”

With the stock market finally catching up to the rest of the world in noticing a pudding-brained twit had inexplicably been placed in charge of the most powerful nation in history, Pumpkin Spice Pol Pot oozed into the Oval Office for a prime time speech, and if his goal was “fuck up the entire world as much as humanly possible in ten short minutes,” then he succeeded beyond his wildest imaginings.

It was a speech that completely failed to reassure, instead reminding the world that this drooling manbaby, this bathtub drain hair clog in an ill-fitting suit, truly is President of the Entire United Fucking States, and not only is he light years out of his element but he’s probably spending most of his time practicing his “the world is ending, you have to go out with me now” phone call to Salma Hayek rather than pursuing desperately-needed solutions.

Despite being on teleprompter, with the text of the fucking speech right fucking in front of him, Dorito Mussolini somehow managed to catastrophically misrepresent his own administration’s policies, dropping one more cartoon anvil on the stock market’s already-throughly-bludgeoned ballsack. This is, of course, on top of nonsensical non-solutions like banning travel from Europe, when the virus had already had weeks to spread throughout the country thanks to presidential bungling and neglect.

For 73 years, this cretin has somehow never encountered a problem he couldn’t lie, buy, or bully his way out of, but COVID-19 doesn’t care how much money your daddy gave you, little man. And may I say, on behalf of the thousands who are about to become sick, fuck you. Fuck you eternally with a rusty shovel, for daring to take on such an important job without the skills, temperament, or character to execute its duties. Asshole.

In contrast, Smilin’ Joe Biden gave a speech of his own; calm, collected, solemn, and filled with concrete steps to address the problems facing the nation. And America collectively went, “Oh right, it’s actually highly abnormal to have a gibbering, rectum-mouthed, dolt for a President, and we can actually have a decent, competent, one again! Soon!” It was like leadership porn. I got aroused.

Meanwhile, our already-hopelessly-overmatched Golf Cheat in Chief is multitasking, lobbing missiles at Iran-backed militias in Iraq. I’m just hoping the buttons on his desk are clearly labeled, y’know? Or at least that there’s somebody hanging around who can tackle him before he bombs Seattle and launches 500 respirators at Tehran.

So, um, in the midst of this once-in-generation shitstorm, I guess Sarah Palin dressed up in a bear suit to perform “Baby Got Back” on a reality television program. I’m not a religious person, honestly, but I’m increasingly open to the idea that there is a God, and that s/he’s been on a meth bender since mid-2016.

Social distancing is the zany new anti-dance craze sweeping the nation as we all do our damndest to not get sick and die! As a result, public gatherings are getting called off left and right. March Madness, MLB, NBA, PGA, SXSW, Broadway...personally, I don’t think I fully appreciated the scope of this crisis until I saw the XFL shut down their season. Like, are we even America anymore without one billionaire’s sad attempt to reboot his once-failed vanity project?

As sensible organizations all over the world made painful but obviously necessary sacrifices to, y’know, slow the spread of a deadly disease and save lives, naturally the Velveeta Vulgarian was among the last holdouts, canceling his precious hate rallies only grudgingly, because the safety of even his own fervent base is secondary to the sugar rush of their rageful cheers, filling, if only for a moment, that empty space within him where most people have a soul.

Now more than ever, I am brimming over with gratitude that we took the House back in 2018. Thank god there’s a little leadership, a little accountability, a little common frickin’ sense in Washington now. And thank god for Katie Porter, one of the standouts in a freshman class packed with absolute ass-kickers, cornering the CDC chief into exercising his legal authority to make coronavirus testing free for every American. Imagine if Kevin McCarthy were running the House right now. He’d be fleeing from reporters, in mismatched loafers, trying to sell the public on a bill bailing out nothing but Trump University and Marm-a-Lago.

Well, the Emperor of Hemorrhoids finally buckled and declared (acknowledged) a state of emergency over the coronavirus, which is admittedly a pleasant change from his previous “do everything I possibly can to help the fucker spread” position. We’re still woefully behind, and god only knows how deeply the virus has penetrated while the doddering old bastard diddled and dawdled, but the good news is, the President of the United States finally moved his bloated ass out of the road so we can get to work cleaning up his mess, which is, I suppose, as close to an act of kindness as he’s come in his entire misspent, treacherous, life.

In the middle of today’s press conference, Vice President Mike Pants paused to give Boss Turdworm a rhetorical handjob seemingly designed to last through an entire 14-day quarantine. Jeeeeesus. Mikey Hairshirt was a man once. Not much of one, to be certain, but at least he didn’t have to worry about the possibility of bored schoolchildren pouring salt on him, which would of course prove swiftly fatal in his current state.

A reporter asked Government Cheese Goebbels, “Hey, if you’re not too busy fellating yourself over fucking up slightly less than you’ve been fucking up for weeks, why the fuck did you close down the pandemic office, you nation-wrecking clod?” and he whinged that the question was “nasty,” before reiterating his refusal to take responsibility for the things that are, objectively, his fault. I truly do not understand how this trembling coward’s approval rating isn’t 0%

So Nancy Pelosi spent the week trying to hammer out an emergency bill with Steve Mnuchin, but Republicans naturally balked at many necessary measures. It’s a tricky spot for the GOP; they can’t risk the mass-extermination of the underpaid labor/consumer force that keeps their donor class filthy rich, but doing anything to improve working folks’ lives is just instinctually anathematic to them. But at the time of posting, it does appear as though a deal has been reached, let’s hope no spray-tanned morons fuck it up, right?

In conclusion, I am sick of typing the word “coronavirus,” and you are sick of reading it, so let’s let’s all retreat to our quarantines for the weekend, okay? Enjoy the solitude! Read that novel you bought back in college! Watch that 425-minute Russian film set in a fish cannery! Hey, you can even peruse the archives at showercapblog.com if you feel like reliving just how the fuck it all came to this! Anyway, if you don’t hear from me for a bit, fear not, I’m turning production of this blog over to Jared Kushner, I’m sure he’ll figure it out.

[coronavirusvaccineliveupdat-blog]

Staying Positive in Corona Times and V for Vaccine?

It sounds mind boggling that solitary three months back the old world despite everything existed and approached its ways, aside from a little zone in China. From that point forward it's been a huge battle to remain positive, bolted up. During this time the world has figured out how to find out valuable minimal about the undetectable trespasser. It's one of the most puzzling foes mankind has ever experienced. Nothing is thought about its essential nature; why its destructiveness is so factor; why it chooses a few nations furiously and why it's misleadingly kind to other people. Regardless, we simply don't have the foggiest idea what might be its future course-even in nations that have apparently defeated its attack. China, the inception of the assault, and now in obvious control following a 76-day lockdown, fears a bounce back. A few specialists even say there is no assurance that a restored individual creates invulnerability to re-contamination. Be that as it may, we should remain positive and live on trust.

 The conduct of individual people frustrates us a great deal. For what reason wouldn't they be able to comprehend lockdown is essentially to spare their lives by making them remain at home safe and to break the chain of contamination outside? For what reason wouldn't they be able to comprehend that lockdown must be an impermanent measure just to purchase time and get ready for the most exceedingly awful, in the event that it comes? However, no! They need all their lost advantages and joys in a rush; they need to join their companions for the every day jabber: they need their preferred dishes, desserts, cakes at any expense. They even assault specialists, attendants and the authorization specialists who are out there at extraordinary hazard just to secure their lives. But, maybe, for the gigantic human catastrophe including a large number of abandoned transient laborers in India the vast majority of these individuals are genuinely wealthy: have homes, employments, cash and chances to telecommute or participate in other inventive exercises. Be that as it may, no! They continue purchasing basics, substantially more than the family unit prerequisites, only for the opportunity to go out over and over. In India, there have been across the board infringement of social separating and different standards in different pieces of different states. The executioner infection may very well hide round the corner to gain by such human imprudences. Yet, we should remain positive and energize however many others as would be prudent to remain positive. Quality family time is one resource for consider upon for all us hard workers.

The eccentrics of the infection causes one more obstacle: it doesn't permit our brains to free our fixation on it and spotlight on other profitable things. We continue tuning in to the news and updates, what the specialists state and following its effect the world over. Be that as it may, we should in any case attempt our best to occupy our psyches and remain positive. Day by day exercises and meetings of contemplation are fundamental for this as morning or night strolls are likewise restricted.

The monetary harm COVID-19 has just authorized and the approaching danger of an outright ruin is another significant worry that has been torturing our psyches consistently. Various figures are being made about negative development rates in many nations of the world. Indeed, negative rates can be switched once the recuperation procedure begins. Yet, recuperation can be made just when the executioner infection leaves us or is completely controlled. It's been said that by September, 2020 Coronavirus will disappear while it's additionally been said that throughout the winter it might return, increasingly destructive. Alarming considerations must not be permitted to create cynicism in us; we should remain positive seeking after the best.

Monetary explanation is the main impetus for leaving lockdowns eventually of time, sooner consistently the better. Nonetheless, an exit can't be through and through; it must be executed in a staged way. India has begun this procedure of backing out controls in protected and most secure zones. What's more, here, we feel startled and appalled perceiving how our kindred people respond to this. Like the eruption of froth from an uncorked Champaign bottle they surge out of homes in euphoric madness to break standards all over. Increasingly horrible contemplations creep in. This is just an incomplete facilitating of checks with the lockdown is still in power. What might occur after a full exit? In the wake of living through the abhorrences Italy is thinking about a full exit; in the event that they're fruitful thank sky for that. For an overpopulated nation like India how might the legislatures guarantee social removing: in the rambling ghettos where a solitary latrine is shared by hundreds and 8-10 individuals live in 10/10 ft squeezed apartments; in the stuffed nearby trains, metro rail transports, still unfit to take into account the flooding swarms in many urban areas; in the blocked workplaces; in film corridors, shopping centers, lodgings bars; in commercial centers and in hot most loved open spots? It's accepted, it could require at any rate a half year of recognition of protections in typical conditions or till the infection becomes lethargic whichever is prior. Presently, if the business foundations are approached to guarantee seating on exacting social removing rules how might they keep on being reasonable in business? The created nations might not have a considerable lot of such constraints, however the propensities and way of life impulses of individuals there can bargain the recognition of protections too.

 We, the individuals, must understand that no one but we can make this fight against Coronavirus fruitful; the specialists can just guide us for that regular target. The onus in on us, thus we should endeavor, put forth most extreme attempts and push ahead carefully, yet emphatically. What's more, there is the last key to progress for us all: a COVID-19 antibody. US President Trump said the immunization will be accomplished by end of this current year. On the off chance that we don't feel option to pass by Trump, thinking about the entirety of his grandiose or odd articulations or logical inconsistencies and his definitive political decision urgency, we can without much of a stretch take comfort in the various activities going on decisively over the world for which world pioneers have demonstrated solidarity by raising a reserve of over $8 billion, completely supported by World Health Organization. A couple of them, the ones in UK, Germany and India, have guaranteed a market-prepared immunization by September, 2020. Along these lines, time is still with us, and expectation isn't running out. It's even more motivation to remain on positive and inhale a similarly irresistible quality of idealism around us. For More Details, Visit us:  covid-19 vaccine latest update

Top 10 COVID-19 Vaccines Under Development

covid 19 vaccine development tracker

vaccine tracker for covid 19

Full list Of Current COVID-19 Vaccines

COVID-19 Impact on Vaccines & Drugs Market

Financial market trends for pharmaceutical companies

[uk-news-talking-politics]

The failure of Cummings' British culture war

By Chaminda Jayanetti

They were meant to be good at this. That was the whole point of them. Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings didn't have much to commend them, but having their finger on the pulse of the public was meant to be their one special skill.

Instead Tory MPs are being deluged with furious letters and emails from voters - often Tory voters, Leave voters - furious that the prime minister's henchman was allowed to swan across the country when people were locked in their homes and their loved ones died alone.

How have they got it so wrong?

The category error made by this government's advisers, supporters and indeed its critics was to mistake Britain for America.

Yes, there is a values divide in British (not just English) society - particularly on immigration and sovereignty, and to a lesser degree on law and order and political correctness.

Cummings and Johnson exploited these divisions to win the EU referendum and then channelled that support towards hard Brexit, pitching a 'them and us' narrative which saw some of the richest people in the country deride others as the elite.

This worked for two reasons. First, it told a lot of instinctively eurosceptic, anti-immigration voters that they could have what they wanted. Second, it created caricatures of Remainers that these voters not only could not identify with, but actively identified against: Guardian-reading liberals in expensive Islington townhouses (the sort Cummings lives in), politically correct student activists who'd find all your jokes offensive, and the whispered smearing of London as a city that is not truly English - meaning, bluntly, not truly white.

What none of it involved was God.

There are three pillars to America's culture wars: 'freedom', racism, and religion. America's mad mutation of personal freedom into a 'Live Free or Die' creed of gun rights and hating 'the state' goes well beyond Britain's understanding of civil liberties. Racism, while ever-present here, does not run as wide nor as deep as it does in the States.

But the role of religion is the biggest contrast. The tens of millions of Americans who believe that abortion is murder, homosexuality is evil and sinners will burn in hell are wedded to such stances in a way unimaginable in contemporary Britain's secular politics.

Factor in the enormously influential Fox News, whose commitment to fake news makes the Sun look like the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and it is easy to see why such voters turn out each election to back a Republican party that promises to uphold Biblical bigotry and bog standard racism no matter what - even if the candidate is a serial philanderer like Donald Trump, and even when that party's other policies threaten their homes and health.

White religious conservatives are bound to the Republicans by God. That creates a bond of trust that is similarly fervent on any issue - be it on guns, tax, the media, anything. Give them a man who'll endorse their every last prejudice, and they will believe whatever he says and forgive whatever he does.

No such dynamic exists in Britain. Nothing even comes close.

That is why coronavirus became a culture war in America but not the UK. In the US, Fox News, the Republican right and the demented end of the internet combined to cast the pandemic, lockdown and vaccines as vast conspiracies to a cult like audience.

But in Britain, older voters - Boris' base - were the most supportive of lockdown before Johnson backed it. The anti-lockdown movement promoted by conspiracists, Spectator columnists and Nigel Farage was a pathetic embarrassment. Opposition to lockdown never rose much beyond ten per cent of the public.

More recently, the relative national unity behind the government collapsed even before the Cummings scandal broke, as its blatant mishandling of the pandemic cost it the support of Labour voters. Again, this was not a culture war or values divide. It was about trust. Yes, Leave voters voted Tory because they trusted Johnson to deliver Brexit. He was their guy - they gave him more leeway, more benefit of the doubt. But the trust they placed in him over the pandemic was not about the Brexit divide, because the pandemic is not about the Brexit divide.

That bond of trust is now fraying rapidly, hacked by the twin blades of a catastrophic death toll and an adviser and prime minister who are treating the public like fools.

Cummings' defence was the display of someone who as a child might have scribbled out the word 'truth' from his first dictionary. Even if his trip to Durham were morally excusable, his subsequent jolly to Barnard Castle patently was not. It was blatant and unnecessary flouting of the rules, even accepting his implausible stated reason.

He was able to state that reason in a time and manner of his choosing, with the full backing of the prime minister, in front of the nation. Those brusquely arrested and charged by police for infringing the lockdown rules over the last two months enjoyed rather less leeway. It is just another inequality in a crisis defined by inequalities.

For all the lies and bad faith on show, some will be persuaded by it - primarily those who want to be. Others will feel it's time to move on. After all, if Johnson wants him to stay then what else can be done? He's given his side, what use is there in dragging this out? Let the government focus on dealing with the pandemic.

But the Cummings episode is not an aberration. It is not some deviation from the Tories' norm. It is the Tories' norm.

Secrecy, incompetence, dishonesty and detachment from reality have marked the government’s entire, shambolic, world-trailing handling of the pandemic. They rarely publish the scientific advice they claim to base their decisions on. They whip out targets to draw attention from their failings, then fail to meet those targets, then lie about the failures. They created a catastrophe in care homes and then simply denied it to our faces.

The Tories, in one guise or another, have spent a decade in government without knowing or understanding what it is they are governing, dismissing swathes of lower-profile public services as 'bureaucrats' or 'public sector waste'. Thus their response to the pandemic paid little attention to public health infrastructure, cut council leaders out of discussions, and treated care homes as a dumping ground to clear NHS beds for new covid inpatients - as we now see, with catastrophic results.

And why would a government led by a pampered faux-aristocrat advised by an angry cosplaying philosopher king with a family castle have any idea that care workers inhabit a world where they can't afford to take time off sick?

The government will attempt to move on and get back to the job in hand. There is no reason to believe that will make things better. A faulty engine will go on sputtering. A malfunctioning printer will keep chewing up paper. Cummings is one of the many malfunctions in Britain's government, and a key one at that. When he operates, things go wrong. That is the norm we would return to.

And what millions of people will continue to see - with no need for a half hour drive - is a government lying in order to retrospectively move the goalposts to protect an unelected adviser. A government that does not care about the truth, does not care about fairness, and does not care that setting fire to its own guidance risks undermining key public health messages that are meant to save lives.

Johnson will throw everything, including the country's safety, under the bus to save his key strategist. Because his only strategy is to bang a culture war drum pitting the masses against a nebulous 'elite' that somehow comprises anyone who disagrees with him.

But in shielding Cummings, he is showing millions of his own voters that he and his adviser are the elite, for whom the rules are purely advisory.

It is the rest of us, with no private woodland or family castles, who are all in it together.