1/. David Wallace-Wells with a question - what if this pandemic never ends?
Excellent article, if a little disturbing....
Photo: Federic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images
What if it never really ends, just recedes?
There are, at the moment, a number of encouraging signs about the near-term course of things: Caseloads and hospitalizations are falling dramatically, perhaps as a sign of seasonal effects turning a corner; vaccine deployment, while still suboptimal, is improved from a month ago; there has been good news about additional vaccines, with AstraZeneca (already approved in the U.K. but facing an FDA roadblock here) reporting fantastic results against severe disease; and vaccine shipments are said to on the way, with Novavax promising 100 million American doses by the spring.
2/. Bill Maher with a controversial "New Rules", about Christian Nationalism and Trump
supporters....he makes a lot of sense....
3/. And continuing along the same lines, Michelle Goldberg in the Times with a very good column about the fantasies the
extreme right wing has about the Clintons....
A clear indication that Marjorie Taylor Greene was more than a dabbler in QAnon was her 2018 endorsement of “Frazzledrip,” one of the most grotesque tendrils of the movement’s mythology. You “have to go down a number of rabbit holes to get that far,” said Mike Rothschild, whose book about QAnon, “The Storm Is Upon Us,” comes out later this year.
4/. The SNL cold open - good one, "What Still Works".....Kate McKinnon is wonderful! Seven minutes....
5/. A waitress at a fancy DC restaurant on Trumpies and how they acted and tipped for the four
years just gone.....fascinating...
One chilly morning early in the Trump administration, a guy with an unnervingly unpleasant countenance sat down in my section, ordered a green tea, and immediately started interrogating me about the caviar. While diners will prod you all day about the terroir of a white Burgundy or West Coast oyster, they don’t ask too many questions about caviar, maybe because the people who order it tend to represent cultures and/or generations that don’t expect service workers to pass daily food knowledge quizzes. Also, usually they’re on dates.
6/. Marjorie Taylor Greene?
7/. A time lapse of the Harmony of the Seas being built...2 minutes...
8/. Yes this is publicity for a new book, but sounds very true....Trump as a Russian asset....
Donald Trump was cultivated as a Russian asset over 40 years and proved so willing to parrot anti-western propaganda that there were celebrations in Moscow, a former KGB spy has told the Guardian.
Yuri Shvets, posted to Washington by the Soviet Union in the 1980s, compares the former US president to “the Cambridge five”, the British spy ring that passed secrets to Moscow during the second world war and early cold war.
9/. A little weird, but LOL funny - SNL with "Twins".....
I love this one! Four minutes....
10/. Interesting article about QAnon....
A U.S. flag attached to a QAnon symbol flies outside the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images
During a childhood of compulsory Catholic masses, hundreds upon hundreds of them, I perfected the art of retreating deep into an imagined world, such that I never did learn the liturgy. But this I remember: The Romans were ridiculous, objects of pity and derision — get with the program; this man is magic. Narratively, early doubters existed to make the rest of us feel superior in our belief. Ninety nine uniformed schoolgirls stared at the image of a spiked corpse and ate what we were told was his flesh. It was a beautiful thing to do.
11/. Tom Tomorrow on Gamestop....
12/. Paul Krugman with a good column - "The GOP is in a Doom Loop of Bizarro"..
Here’s what we know about American politics: The Republican Party is stuck, probably irreversibly, in a doom loop of bizarro. If the Trump-incited Capitol insurrection didn’t snap the party back to sanity — and it didn’t — nothing will.
13/. The Republican elites have made an ad [playing on Fox] attacking the Trump Republicans......interesting....
14/. An amusing [but a little painful] SNL short clip....John Krazinski is excellent and a great comic talent....three minutes....
15/. This is the coldest winter for many years - this story explains why.....
Rough winter weather is working its way across the United States, with bitterly cold air hitting the Northeast and snowstorms expected along the East Coast next week.
Forecasts predict Chicago can expect several inches of snow. Six to eight inches of snow could fall along the I-95 corridor from Washington through New York and up to Boston on Monday and Tuesday https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/30/climate/polar-vortex-weather-climate-change.html
16/. Weekend Update....three minutes of pretty good dry, funny jokes....
17/. I don't know about you but passwords drive me crazy....but there's an alternative...
M
odern life is the act of entering the third character of a long-dead family pet into an online form three times a week, getting it wrong, and speaking to a call-centre worker in India whose real name is almost certainly not Kenny, ad infinitum, until you die. Our ancestors lived short, brutish lives and died in childbirth, or were gored to death on the battlefield, but at least they didn’t have passwords, and that’s something.
18/. Weekend Update #2 - two amusing minutes....
19/. Nicolas Kristof with "A Letter To His Conservative Friends"...
YAMHILL, Ore. — This is an open letter to some of my old friends and neighbors who believe that Donald Trump won re-election, who think that face masks are for wimps and who fear that Democrats are plotting to seize their freedom.
Dear friends and neighbors,
Relax! We liberals aren’t plotting to round you up in “re-education camps.”
I was horrified when a couple of old friends here asked if they were in danger for having supported Donald Trump. I gently told them that they were in no peril — and I was stung that they felt greatly relieved to hear it.
20/. Good column on how Publix may seem like a decent company, but there's a dark
side too.....a deep Republican side....
It’s getting tougher, if not downright impossible, to walk into a Publix store in Florida without feeling repulsed by the company’s partisan politics.
The powers that be have turned grocery shopping at the popular chain into a necessary chore that feels oh so slimy (if you have a conscience, that is).
It’s not just about the titillating revelation that the Publix-generated wealth of a seditious heiress funded the Trump rally that turned into a deadly attempt at a coup d’état that put our democracy to the test.
21/. Pandemic game night - SNL, a topical and quite good three minutes....
22/. Carl Hiaasen on Ron DeSantis's hapless Covid response.....
Florida’s COVID vaccine rollout is more like a flaming ant farm, only less organized.
Day after day, millions of exasperated seniors armed with laptops, cell phones, iPads and tech-savvy grandchildren try to penetrate swamped local websites that fleetingly offer appointments.
Meanwhile, in the blue-sky parallel universe accessible only to the mind of Gov. Ron DeSantis, the state’s distribution networks are humming along like well-oiled machines. The only problem is a shortage of vaccines.
23/. "The Expanse" on Amazon is a great show, and this reviewer loves it....as do I!
Character driven sci-fi...
Today's lovely story.....very nice.....
Gate A-4 By Naomi Shihab Nye:
Wandering around the Albuquerque Airport Terminal, after learning my flight had been delayed four hours, I heard an announcement: “If anyone in the vicinity of Gate A-4 understands any Arabic, please come to the gate immediately.” Well— one pauses these days. Gate A-4 was my own gate. I went there.
An older woman in full traditional Palestinian embroidered dress, just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing. “Help,” said the flight agent. “Talk to her . What is her problem? We told her the flight was going to be late and she did this.”
I stooped to put my arm around the woman and spoke haltingly. “Shu-dow-a, shu-bid-uck, habibti? Stani schway, min fadlick, shu-bit-se-wee?” The minute she heard any words she knew, however poorly used, she stopped crying. She thought the flight had been cancelled entirely. She needed to be in El Paso for major medical treatment the next day. I said, “No, we’re fine, you’ll get there, just late, who is picking you up? Let’s call him.”
We called her son, I spoke with him in English. I told him I would stay with his mother till we got on the plane. She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just for the fun of it. Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while in Arabic and found out of course they had ten shared friends. Then I thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian poets I know and let them chat with her? This all took up two hours.
She was laughing a lot by then. Telling about her life, patting my knee, answering questions. She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool cookies— little powdered sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts— from her bag and was offering them to all the women at the gate. To my amazement, not a single traveler declined one. It was like a sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the mom from California, the lovely woman from Laredo— we were all covered with the same powdered sugar. And smiling. There is no better cookie.
Then the airline broke out free apple juice and two little girls from our flight ran around serving it and they were covered with powdered sugar too. And I noticed my new best friend— by now we were holding hands— had a potted plant poking out of her bag, some medicinal thing, with green furry leaves. Such an old country traveling tradition. Always carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.
And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and thought, This is the world I want to live in. The shared world. Not a single person in that gate— once the crying of confusion stopped— seemed apprehensive about any other person. They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women too.
This can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost.
Today's Stephen Wright jokes
Don't get too excited, but today is the deadpan comedian's 59th birthday.
1. It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to paint it.
2. I almost broke both my arms trying to hold open a revolving door for a woman.
3. I got a new dog. He’s a paranoid retriever. He brings back everything because he’s not sure what I threw him.
4. Every morning I get up and make instant coffee and I drink it so I have the energy to make real coffee.
5. Woke up this morning and folded my bed back into a couch. Almost broke both my arms cause it’s not that kind of bed.
6. I’m going to get a tattoo over my whole body of me but taller.
7. I went to a tourist information booth and said "tell me about some people who were here last year."
8. I’ve been getting into astronomy so I installed a skylight. The people who live above me are furious.
9. Why is it a penny for your thoughts but you have to put your two cents in? Somebody’s making a penny.
10. I broke a mirror in my house and I’m supposed to get seven years bad luck, but my lawyer thinks he can get me five.
11. When I get real real bored I like to drive downtown and get a great parking spot then sit in my car and count how many people ask me if I’m leaving.
12. I spilled spot remover on my dog and now he’s gone.
13. I’m writing a book. I have the page numbers done; now I just have to fill in the rest.
14. When we were driving over the border back into the United States, they asked me if I had any firearms. I said what do you need?
15. I've written several children's books ... Not on purpose.
16. I called the wrong number today. I said “Hello, is Joey there?” A woman answered and she said “yes he is.” And I said ‘can I speak to him please?’ She said ‘no, he can’t talk right now, he’s only two months old.” I said “alright, I’ll wait.”
17. I went to a place to eat. It said "breakfast at any time." So I ordered French Toast during the Renaissance.
18. We lived in a house that ran on static electricity. If we wanted to cook something, we had to take a sweater off real quick. If we wanted to run a blender we had to rub balloons on our heads.
19. I stayed up one night playing poker with Tarot cards. I got a full house and four people died.
20. I was Caesarean born. Can’t really tell, although whenever I leave a house I go through the window.
Today's positive thinking joke
Late in the night, he finally regained consciousness.
He was in the hospital, in terrible pain.
He found himself in the ICU with tubes in his mouth, needles and IV drips in
both arms, a breathing mask, wires monitoring every function, and a nurse
hovering over him. He realized that he was obviously in a life-threatening
situation.
The nurse gave him a serious, deep look, straight into his eyes, then spoke
to him slowly and clearly, enunciating each word and syllable, "You may not
feel anything from the waist down."
Somehow he managed to mumble in reply, "Can I feel your boobs, then?"
AND THAT, MY FRIEND, IS A POSITIVE ATTITUDE!!!
