Nike (and Coke)

Nike is a strong voice against slave labor from 160 years ago, but lobbies on behalf of looking the other way when it concerns slave labor being used right now.

I wear Nikes because they fit my feet the best, but I am strongly considering giving up that particular brand.

Logging

Film: Mr Majestyk and first 25 minutes of The Mechanic 

Never been a huge Charles Bronson fan but the man deserves some credit for knowing exactly what he is. In his better films, he gives a lot of space for the villains to shine -- and in many ways, the villains are the more interesting characters in his films.

Logging

Film: The Guilty

Powerful. Only film I can reasonably compare to is Locke. I preferred this one.

Student Loan Forgiveness

One would be hard pressed to find a better example of creating perverse incentives.

From a caller on Dave Ramsey the other day: working college student taking on no debt and paying her way through school. She calls in asking whether it would be a good idea to quit her job and take out loans to continue paying for college because those debts might be forgiven by a Biden administration.

If you wanted to stop student loan debt as a problem, the first move would be to end the government subsidies for it.

Logging

TV: The Flight Attendant pilot

I'll pass.

Film: The Guilty

Watched the first 30 min. So far a great example of compelling drama done on a limited budget. The Danes are good at making movies.

Dead Skins

One of my Thanksgiving highlight was the Dead Skins crushing the Cowboys and Alex Smith, once again, covering the spread and leading his team to the division lead.

Twitter alight with Dwayne Haskins clips helping Smith up, demonstrating his respect for the man who has his job. It's a cliche at this point talking about Smith being comeback player of the year, but it's worth mentioning all sorts of NFL players from Patrick Mahomes to Adrian Peterson to all these past teammates constantly praising and wishing him well. 

The one exception, of course, is Colin Kaepernick. Radio silence. For the guy who made no bones about stepping aside and letting Kap become...Kap. Nada. 

To be expected. Because Kap only ever cared about one thing: that image in the mirror.

Snitches

Oregon Governor suggests neighbors call cops on those who aren't doing lockdown. 

And when the cops show up and something goes wrong, will she then call to defund the police?

It amazes me that the same people who who think the police are irredeemably corrupt and need to be defunded are the same people who ask them to enforce the smallest and most petty of infractions.

Thrown Out in PA

Walls caving in on Trump admin. Chris Christie calls legal case a national embarrassment. 

Logging

Film: No Way Out

I feel like I've seen this film before, and upon a rewatch I remember why I didn't remember it. 

Can anyone pull up a tally of the times Gene Hackman plays a powerful man who kills or otherwise commits a horrible act against a woman?

Side question: how many actors equally excel playing both a hero and a villain? Not that Hackman is the villain in this film, but...

TV: P Valley S1 e2-3

I quite enjoy the show. Preferable to Atlanta and the only reason I consider the show a comp is the African American perspective on the so called "dirty south." Someone could write a good paper on the two shows because they illustrate different dramatic impulses - ones I would broadly state as an emphasis on the melodramatic (P Vally) vs an emphasis on a specific visual sensibility (Atlanta). Not to say P Valley is not cinematic (it is), nor is it to say Atlanta is not dramatic (it is), but there are different aesthetics privileged in each show. Basically, P Valley feels mostly influenced by dramatists (creator is a playwright) and Atlanta is influenced by Sundance movies (even though Donald Glover is a comedian, I think).

I would guess Lynne Ramsey is an influence on the folks who create Atlanta whereas Aaron Sorkin is an influence on those who created P Valley -- if I had to guess. 

A Turn

For the first time since 9/11, I think the right wing has turned crazier than the left the wing of American politics. Quite an accomplishment folks.

Logging

TV: P Valley, ep 1

A strong, authentic portrayal of the Memphis strip club scene. Who knew we needed such a show, but such a show we have!

Surreal

So I'll cop to underestimating team Trump's stupidity and mendacity. This is a pretty surreal clip where his lawyer claims the "algorithm" switched votes from Trump to Biden, but that somehow all the voters who voted for Trump crashed the "algorithm" by voting for him so much, thus bringing the corruption to their attention.

Huh?

The irony is that there are probably true conspiracies such as the media covering up the Hunter Biden scandal and Pfizer and Moderna deliberately holding up the vaccine news -- but hey -- the actions of team Trump so far are making those conspiracies look rather wise.

COVID Test

Spent 2.5 hours waiting for COVID test today. Our local, state, and national governments continue to fail us. We've had six months knowing that testing will be critical (even with a vaccine) and we can't manage to either a) have capacity to test large groups or b) a rapid, in home test.

COME ON!

Logging

TV Miniseries: Queen's Gambit

Finale was cheesy but I suppose emotionally effective.

First tv show I haven't turn off in awhile. 

I want to be more enthusiastic.

I didn't love the actress.

I am playing chess against a computer app for fun now.

Pretty Good Barometer

From Nassim Taleb.

“For I have a single definition of success: you look in the mirror every evening, and wonder if you disappoint the person you were at 18, right before the age when people start getting corrupted by life. Let him or her be the only judge; not your reputation, not your wealth, not your standing in the community, not the decorations on your lapel. If you do not feel ashamed, you are successful. All other definitions of success are modern constructions; fragile modern constructions.”

Logging

TV: Queens Gambit ep1-2 

I'm into it so far. I preferred the younger, 9-year actress though.

The chess scenes are well done. And women characters incredible. Let this be evidence against the fact that we need women to write women characters, etc.

Herd Immunity

Folks were wrong. 

I'd say the situation in the last month speaks for itself.

Logging

Film: The Perfect Weapon

HBO doc about cyber weapons. I'm so stupid, I think the solution is to take anything of great value offline and to make it function by analog or paper.

Comments Section

What percent of comment sections are written by Russian troll farms? My guess is 45%.

When I read the comment section, I almost cannot fathom these people function in everyday society. Who writes these things? Who reads them? Are these people insane?

So In Other Words, Trump Was Right

When he said in the debate we were rounding the corner with the virus. 

Minneapolis

Might bring in outside police officers to help with shortage. 

I wonder why.

No Comment

By "disappointed" Governor Newsom when folks flocked to the beaches on 4th of July.

Chapelle SNL

To me, the most incisive part his mention of Chapelle Show reairing on Netflix and HBO Max and he's not getting a penny. 

Note: Netflix is ground zero for woke causes - donating 10 million to the failed reinstatement of affirmative action in CA and by some insider accounts, is becoming a fanatical environment within the walls of their offices. The other place who is cashing in on wokeness: Nike.

A bet: if a corporation is loudly promoting wokeness with their mouth, I'd watch their hands - their probably stealing money from labor and/or others who deserve it. 

CBS Commits To 50% Diversity

Now do the executive suite.

Male Breadwinner Norms

Confusing and mixed signals. I love this "scientific observation:"

in heterosexual couples, women prefer to be married to a man who makes more than them.

Any rational person would prefer to be married to someone who makes more than them.

Hooray

Pfizer vaccine 90% effective. 

I'd take it right now. Damn the torpedoes.

Good advice here.

In seriousness, the expected value of delaying getting sick just went way, way, way up.

Note the folks behind the vaccine are Turkish immigrants to Germany. Perhaps the Chinese ought to take note - Uighers are basically Turks and perhaps they would have created the vaccine if they integrated those folks into their community as opposed to locking them up in concentration camps.

Just a thought!

ALSO NOTE: Recall during 9/11 times there was a lot of "what has the Muslim world ever created? How many Jewish vs. Muslim Nobel Prizes" type of racist rhetoric going around. Nothing could be a greater "heal" between the reasonables should it be some Muslim scientists (albeit those who immigrated to the West) who solve the 'rona.

Ouch

On student loan forgiveness. 

But student loans are mostly owed by the bureaucratic class, and they make public policy.

And also finance a liberal industry: higher education. 

Could It Be

Tyler Cowen on winners and losers of the election.

American democracy: Maybe this one is premature, but so far the U.S. has held a closely contested election under pandemic conditions. Turnout was much higher than usual, and so far there hasn’t been much election-related violence. Could it be that the system really works?

My prediction: things will muddle on, cities will be governed worse, COVID will surge, but there will be a vaccine soon that many won't trust, the progressives will continue to be an annoyance on local issues. My biggest hope is that people on all sides will complain less and build more, but I doubt it will happen.  

Pleased?

Maybe I'm just a contrarian but I'm pleased with this overall election outcome. To echo some of Andrew Sullivan's thoughts:

What this election shows is that leftists cannot bully voters into abandoning core principles of liberal democracy, and they can’t buy their submission either.

Won't be bullied, won't be bought. 

Sounds like America to me. 

Elaboration

Re: On The Rocks

Sophia Coppola should've hired a writer she likes to do 1 pass at the script to juice up Rashida Jones's nothing character. Any main conflict in a film that could've been resolved by an easy, simple conversation is bound to suck.

A sad, big nothing burger.

And People Wonder Why 70 Mil People Voted For Trump

Johnny Depp axed from WB acting gig for UK judgement.

For liberal progressive folks who feel the system is screwed up, they sure put a lot of faith in specious parts of it.

A Lot of Whining and Blaming

Is going around America today. All I can do is less of it myself. Or try. But this is pretty spot on.

Public health experts have told us that:

1. We citizens have to lock down many of our schools and sometimes jobs.

2. We citizens have to significantly change many of our commercial and retail and travel habits.

3. We citizens have to significantly limit or cut off many of our contacts with other human beings.

At the same time, they also are saying that:

4. “We public health experts do not have to come up with a way of approving a vaccine and simultaneously continuing to conduct our other clinical trials.”

And they wonder why people do not have greater faith in science.

Logging

Film: Paddington 2

Very good for what it is. 

Race

The Latinx problem. 

Yglesias isn’t claiming that the use of this word is causing people to vote Trump. He calls it a “symptom” of a broader problem with how the intersectional left addresses racial issues. As he puts it, there’s a “tendency to privilege academic concepts and linguistic innovations in addressing social justice concerns.”  

And 

To put it simply, woke white progressives are more racially sensitive than a lot of minorities.

Because the only minorities white progressives hang with are an angry, misrepresentative, academic sort. What could solve the issue is a little more actual, on the ground interaction and co-problem solving (like playing sports, being neighbors, or working together), but I don't see that happening on a large enough scale to matter. 

Logging

Film: On The Rocks

Bad

TV: Mandalorian S2 E1

Good 

Yep

Back in June & july, progressives went through a sort of euphoria in which they imagined all the violence to be a righteous expression of social justice rage. Then as the months passed, it became clear that the main effect was higher crime, more covid, wrecked infrastructure...

— Jonathan Kay (@jonkay) November 4, 2020

Whereas the rest of us saw it exactly for what it was when it was happening. Sort of an underlying theme with progressivism.

The Left

On the Left's defeat. 

So please, Democrats, look in the mirror and show a little humility. You're not nearly as self-evidently wonderful or widely loved as you'd like to believe. You are not destined to prevail anywhere. You share a country with a large group of people who hate your guts, and who aren't going to submit to your rule or go along with your giddy plans to remake the nation in your image. It's time to start acting like you understand this implacable fact and all it implies about the limits of your power and the parameters of the possible.

They won't. 

Uhhh...Yeahh...

Insert emoji of pointing to myself. 

At a certain point one would think we have to admit that there is simply a large swathe of the population, including a substantial fraction of non-white people, who do not buy into progressive intellectuals’ conception of what racism is. https://t.co/iZJOUEgoLC

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) November 4, 2020

Strange Election Outcome

In local LA politics, progressives are winning major seats, including on my city counsel and the LA district attorney race. But...in the California propositions, we see a proper libertarian outcome and total resistance to loony leftist politics.

And the we have maybe the weirdest element of all - a tightly contested Presidential election with highest minority support for a Republican candidate since 1960 who progressives routinely call a racist.

I do love this country.

Lamar

I've only seen Lamar Jackson play twice. Both were playoff losses. And I was not impressed either time. The first game I thought was the worst game I've ever seen a QB play. But I read the news. I get he's special. But color me the least surprised person in the world that NFL defenses have figured out how to defend against a running QB. I mean do really have to go through this same repetitive story again and again and again? Michael Vick, Tim Tebow, Colin Kaepernick, and now Lamar Jackson. Isn't the story the exact same each and every time? The new offense starts hot. Lasts 1-1.5 years this way. You hear talk about a revolution in the position. Then they cool once coordinators get enough tape on them. Is something new gonna happen this time? 

At Least Hitler...

Is it possible for sentence beginning with the above words to be good?