As he’s running for Pennsylvania’s open U.S. Senate seat, Mehmet Ozcurrently has something that few candidates have: the campaign trail all to himself.
Every new summer TV series has to fight to get attention. The Jan. 6 hearings had more challenges than most.
There was public exhaustion and media jadedness over a story that’s been in the news for a year and a half. There was the MAGA echo chamber that has primed a huge chunk of America to reject, sight unseen, any accusation against former President Donald J. Trump.
Texas is increasingly a horror show: a place where the rights of women, LGBTQ people, and people of color are under attack, along with voting and public education, while Republican officials set the conditions for more and more gun violence. It’s in line with the movement of the Republican Party nationwide, but everything is faster, harder, crueler. And, CNN reports in an eye-opening deep dive, much of it is coming from two billionaire donors who have relentlessly pushed Texas Republicans to the right, enabled by a Texas law allowing unlimited contributions to state-level candidates.
The idea that Trump is harming himself is passed off as an undeniable fact. And it is almost certainly true that Trump’s election conspiracies are harmful to the interests of the Republican Party. People loyal to the party are trying very hard to convince Trump that it is also harmful to him. And yet, if you think carefully about it, Trump seems to be wise to ignore the advice pouring in from his party.
Now what? After the heatwaves stretching across the planet, Europe on fire, London burning, YACW — yet another Covid wave — our societies in profound disrepair, extremists and lunatics on the march, animals fleeing the killing temperatures towards the poles 16 feet per day, inflation spiking, harvests failing, water running dry. You might rightly be wondering. What’s the plan?
I have some bad news, and I have some worse news.
The plan is there is no plan. Now comes “learning to live with” the apocalypse.
If you’re a longtime TK reader, or reading this in a language that isn’t English, welcome. You’re reading “America This Week,” designed to recap the last week in American news, with a nod to the subtle insanities of our commercial media system.
It’s intended as an alternative to the algorithmic filters that normally list the “big news” of the week for you. Those usually say more about what the platforms have guessed about your interests and demographic status than they do about what’s happening. For instance, Twitter apparently believes I’m an aging ex-hipster Dad of semi-Asian descent with thoughts of expatriating (wait, that’s almost all true), pushing this “trending” news my way: How the first Asian American Miss Texas is changing what it means to be a pageant queen, Americans who can’t afford homes are moving to Europe instead, Photos Of Chris Hemsworth's Daughter On The Set Of 'Thor' Are Too Adorable For Words and TikTok’s Retirement House Shows You’re Never Too Old To Be An Influencer. Meanwhile, virtually every American in the last few weeks read a version of the story, Sex of Khloe Kardashian and Tristan Thompson’s 2nd Baby Revealed.
When last we saw Ryan Gosling on the big screen, he was staring up sadly at the moon in First Man. (Later in the film, he stood on the moon and stared sadly at Earth.) Gosling was in one of his saturnine phases back then, quiet and recessive in both First Man and Blade Runner 2049. (As he was in earlier years, in Drive and The Place Beyond the Pines and more.) Those performances were a far cry from the arch snap, the animated vigor, that had given life to some of his early, career-boosting roles.
Netflix finally got some good news last week — sort of — after a long stretch of the bad kind. In its latest earnings call, the streaming giant announced that it had lost almost one million American subscribers over the second quarter of 2022. How is this good news? Because the company had previously projected it would lose two million.
Andrew Garfield as Jeb Pyre in Under the Banner of Heaven. Photograph: Michelle Faye/FXW
· * Gardening Rule: When weeding, the best way to make sure you are
removing a weed and not a valuable plant is to pull on it. If it comes out of the ground easily, it is a valuable plant.
· * The easiest way to find something lost around the house is to buy a replacement.
· * There are two kinds of pedestrians: the quick and the dead.
· * Health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.
· * Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing.
· * Whenever I feel blue, I start breathing again.
· * In the 60's, people took acid to make the world weird. Now the world is weird and people take Prozac to make it normal.
· * How is it one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?
· * If Jimmy cracks corn and no one cares, why is there a song about him?
· * If electricity comes from electrons, does morality come from morons?
· * Did you ever notice that when you blow in a dog's face, he gets mad at you, but when you take him on a car ride, he sticks his head out the window?
· * Does pushing the elevator button more than once make it arrive faster?
Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them you're a mile away and you have their shoes.
Is he yours?
