Telling stories in the dark: How I became a writer

I didn’t grow up in the era before television, but I did grow up in a time when not everyone had one. TVs were sufficiently rare that those who had one were known to everyone else. When I was in grade school in the mid-1950s, only one family in our neighborhood of several hundred families had a TV. I remember asking permission on Saturday mornings to go over to their house to watch cartoons. Parental permission had to be granted, as I recall, because neither my mother nor father trusted the things. We didn’t have a TV, so they didn’t know what was being offered over the then-spotty, interference-filled airwaves. My brother and I assured them that Saturday morning shows were wholesome entertainment — Mickey Mouse, Pinky Lee, Howdy Doody and the like — but they didn’t always give the OK to go down a couple of streets to the apartment where the one family with a TV set.

“Don’t you have anything else to do?” my mother would ask. “Why don’t you go down to the creek and skip rocks or climb a tree? Get some exercise!”

“But Ma, it’s going to rain,” I would reply, hoping she wouldn’t look up from her ironing at the sun blazing outside.

“So read a book with your brother or go over to the Van Houts and tell ghost stories.”

See? That’s how I became a writer: Telling ghost stories in the Van Houts’ windowless basement in the dark. They were a Catholic family and they had eight kids, so even if you subtracted the youngest two who were still in diapers in a bassinet or a playpen, there was a built-in audience. The oldest Van Hout daughter, whose name was Buffy, was an excellent conjurer of scary stories in the dark. Truth be told, I had learned the skill of telling ghost stories from her at our previous duty assignment in Germany, where nobody had a television because there was only one channel, and we didn’t understand the language anyway.

While our parents were drinking cocktails or having a dinner party or at a dance at the officers’ club, Buffy and I were in charge of babysitting the kids. So with nothing else to do, we would put the youngest to bed and take the rest of them, plus a few others from the neighborhood who had become fans of our little ghost-story fests, down to the basement. We would gather everyone on the floor and light a single candle and put it in the middle of the circle of kids and turn out the lights. Then we would begin.

Buffy was good. She had a real talent for setting the scene of her story, usually in some scary locale like the deep, dark woods or an empty old house, or even a dark basement like the one where we were. She would lower her voice, and she used pauses between phrases and sentences to build suspense, and she somehow always came up with a truly frightening climax to her stories.

There was a competition between us. As I recall, whoever got the most kids to scream, especially if you could get them to cry, was the winner. I remember losing to Buffy a lot. She was so good at the dramatic effects, she easily scared the little kids into crying. But then I had an idea. I told her the little kids were too easy. We made a private agreement that to win, you had to scare the bigger kids, the ones our age or a year or two younger.

Admittedly, I ran something of a con on Buffy, getting her to agree to the new rules, because I had noticed that the bigger kids were getting harder to scare in the most predictable ways. They were less and less inclined to be afraid of a big monster or a terrifying twist at the end. I was gambling that I could scare them with stories that were about utterly normal everyday things in their lives, like going to sleep alone in a dark bedroom, or getting lost, or missing a parent who had gone away on a trip. We were Army kids, so all of us had that in common — our dads were constantly being called out on training maneuvers, or being sent TDY (temporary duty) to a special school for jungle warfare or winter training in Alaska, or even on what was called a “hardship tour” to places like Korea, where wives and children were not allowed to accompany soldiers on assignment.

I began to set my stories right there where we lived, in our duplexes or apartments, or walking home from school, or wandering away from a mother or father at the PX or commissary. I knew it could be just as scary to be lost, to be alone even for a few moments, as it could to face some imaginary monster.

I knew that kids could imagine themselves into terror if you just gave them a start. So I pushed. I would describe a completely ordinary kid’s bedroom, and I would leave out the suggestions of dark corners or closets with their doors cracked open. I would tell a story that put a kid in his or her bedroom on a normal night … except for what led up to turning off the light. The scary stuff happened before. You forgot to do your homework. Your teacher gave you a D you hadn’t told your parents about. You heard a siren in the distance and you heard someone start a car outside and drive away and then you didn’t hear anything at all, just silence. I got pretty good at describing physical sensations like a constricted throat, or night sweats. I’d never had night sweats and I figured none of the other kids had either, but they sounded terrifying. I described the sound of trickling water, then a drip-drip-drip, without saying where it came from. I didn’t have to use the word “flood” or “drowned.” I knew they would fill in the blanks.

I remember the first time I won. My own brother and Buffy’s sister, who were only a year younger than we were, freaked out. My brother ran upstairs from the basement. Buffy’s sister cried. I remember the thrill of seeming to have dropped the temperature in the room with my words. I wanted to do it again. And again. And again.

Our fathers were reassigned, so the ghost-story fests came to an end. I remember a few times when I was a teenager being invited over to girls’ houses for rec-room parties in the seventh or eighth grade, when all of us would stand or sit around awkwardly, holding desperately onto bottles of Coke and wondering what the hell we were supposed to do. Once I suggested breaking the ice by turning down the lights and promising that I would tell them a story. We were all so unsure of ourselves and it was strange and intriguing enough that they readily agreed. I made sure everyone was sitting together on the floor in a tight circle, just like we used to do at Buffy’s, and I began telling a story. It wasn’t self-consciously “scary,” but like the ones I told before, you didn’t know where it was going, and as the mystery deepened, it started to get to them. I saw a couple clutch each other, and then others were holding hands as I spun them into a place where it seemed only togetherness would protect them. It was the girl who gave the party who came up to me a week later at the teen club and thanked me. She and the boy she had cuddled against were going steady. One of the other girls in our circle was giving a rec room party the next weekend. Could I tell another story?

You betcha. I’ve been telling stories in the dark ever since.

If a satellite falls on your house, space law protects you — but space junk is a bigger problem

On May 8, 2021, a piece of space junk from a Chinese rocket fell uncontrolled back to Earth and landed in the Indian Ocean near the Maldives. A year ago, in May 2020, another Chinese rocket met the same fate when it plummeted out of control into the waters off the West African coast. No one knew when or where either of these pieces of space junk were going to hit, so it was a relief when neither crashed on land or injured anyone.

Space debris is any nonfunctional human-made object in space. As a professor of space and society focused on space governance, I’ve noticed that there are three questions the public always asks when falling space debris gets into the news. Could this have been prevented? What would have happened if there was damage? And how will new commercial companies be regulated as space activities and launches increase exponentially?

For space law to be effective, it needs to do three things. First, regulation must prevent as many dangerous situations from occurring as possible. Second, there needs to be a way to monitor and enforce compliance. And finally, laws need to lay out a framework for responsibility and liability if things do go wrong. So, how do current laws and treaties around space stack up? They do OK, but interestingly, looking at environmental law here on Earth may give some ideas on how to improve the current legal regime with respect to space debris.

What if a rocket landed on your house?

Imagine that, instead of landing in the ocean, the recent Chinese rocket crashed into your house while you were at work. What would current law allow you to do?

According to the 1967 Outer Space Treaty and 1972 Liability Convention – both adopted by the United Nations – this would be a government-to-government issue. The treaties declare that states are internationally responsible and liable for any damage caused by a spacecraft – even if the damage was caused by a private company from that state. According to these laws, your country wouldn’t even need to prove that someone had done something wrong if a space object or its component parts caused damage on the surface of the Earth or to normal aircraft in flight.

Basically, if a piece of space junk from China landed on your house, your own country’s government would make a claim for compensation through diplomatic channels and then pay you – if they chose to make the claim at all.

While the chances are slim to none that a broken satellite will land on your house, space debris has crashed onto land. In 1978, the Soviet Cosmos 954 satellite fell into a barren region of Canada’s Northwest Territories. When it crashed, it spread radioactive debris from its onboard nuclear reactor over a wide swath of land. A joint Canadian-American team began a cleanup effort that cost over CAD$14 million (US$11.5 million). The Canadians requested CAD$6 million from the Soviet Union, but the Soviets paid only CAD$3 million in the final settlement.

This was the first – and only – time the Liability Convention has been used when a spacecraft from one country has crashed in another. When the Liability Convention was put into use in this context, four governing norms emerged. Countries have a duty to: warn other governments about debris; provide any information they could about an impending crash; clean up any damage caused by the craft; and compensate your government for any injuries that might have resulted.

There have been other instances where space junk has crashed back to Earth – most notably when Skylab, a U.S. space station, fell and broke up over the Indian Ocean and uninhabited parts of Western Australia in 1979. A local government jokingly fined NASA AUS$400 (US$311) for littering – a fine that NASA ignored, though it was eventually paid by an American radio host in 2009. But despite this and other incidences, Canada remains the only country to put the Liability Convention to use.

However, if you owned a small orbiting satellite that got hit by a piece of space junk, you and your government would have to prove who was at fault. Currently, though, there is no globally coordinated space traffic management system. With tens of thousands of tracked pieces of debris in orbit – and multitudes of smaller, untrackable pieces, figuring out what destroyed your satellite would be a very difficult thing to do.

Space pollution is the bigger problem

Current space law has worked so far because the issues have been few and far between and have been dealt with diplomatically. As more and more spacecraft take flight, the risks to property or life will inevitably increase and the Liability Convention may get more use.

But risks to life and property are not the only concerns about a busy sky. While launch providers, satellite operators and insurance companies care about the problem of space debris for its effect on space operations, space sustainability advocates argue that the environment of space has value itself and faces a much greater risk of harm than individuals on Earth.

The mainstream view is that degrading the environment on Earth through pollution or mismanagement is bad because of its negative impact on the environment or living beings. The same is true for space, even if there is no clear direct victim or physical harm. In the Cosmos 954 settlement, the Canadians claimed that since the Soviet satellite deposited hazardous radioactive debris in Canadian territory, this constituted “damage to property” within the meaning of the Liability Convention. But, as Article 2 of the Outer Space Treaty declares that no state can own outer space or celestial bodies, it is not clear whether this interpretation would apply in the event of harm to objects in space. Space is shaping up to be a new frontier on which the tragedy of the commons can play out.

Removing from orbit existing large objects that could collide with one another would be a great place for governments to start. But if the United Nations or governments agreed on laws that define legal consequences for creating space debris in the first place and punishment for not following best practices, this could help mitigate future pollution of the space environment.

Such laws would not need to be invented from scratch. The 2007 United Nations Space Debris Mitigation guidelines already address the issue of debris prevention. While some countries have transferred these guidelines into national regulations, worldwide implementation is still pending, and there are no legal consequences for noncompliance.

The chances of a person being killed by a falling satellite are close to zero. On the off chance it does happen, current space law provides a pretty good framework for dealing with such an event. But just like during the early 20th century on Earth, current laws are focusing on the individual and ignoring the bigger picture of the environment – albeit a cold, dark and unfamiliar one. Adapting and enforcing space law so that it prevents and deters actors from polluting the space environment – and holds them accountable if they break these laws – could help avoid a trash-filled sky.

Timiebi Aganaba, Assistant Professor of Space and Society, Arizona State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

Andrew Yang and Eric Adams, leading Democrats in N.Y. mayor’s race, are backed by GOP billionaires

General elections in New York City have become almost an afterthought, and nearly everyone assumes that the winner of this month’s Democratic primary will be elected the city’s mayor later this year. It appears that billionaire hedge fund managers who have previously donated millions to conservative Republicans are now using their wealth to try to shape that Democratic primary to their liking — specifically, by blocking a progressive Democrat from becoming mayor of the nation’s largest city.

Former presidential also-ran Andrew Yang and Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, widely seen as the two leading candidates in the crowded New York race, have sometimes tried to claim progressive credentials, something of a necessity in the city’s current political climate. (Although outgoing Mayor Bill de Blasio has become a highly controversial figure, he was handily elected twice while strongly aligned with the progressive movement.)

But Yang and Adams have also attracted the financial backing of hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin, who spent more than $60 million to back Republicans in last year’s elections, and fellow hedge fund billionaire Dan Loeb, who has given tens of millions to Republican candidates and conservative PACs over the past decade. Yang has also gained the support of libertarian billionaire investor Jeff Yass, who has donated more than $25 million to Republicans and whose company was the main funder of a PAC that pushed the false claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from former President Donald Trump.

The three billionaires have a “history of funding the most extremist, racist, and anti-democratic forces within the Republican Party,” said a report from Our City, a progressive super PAC that opposes Yang and Adams.

The longtime investors appear to be hedging their bets in the city’s ranked-choice primary, where voters can rank up to five candidates in order of preference. But Yang and Adams’ progressive rivals, along with many activists, worry that the billionaire right-wingers are trying to buy power in a city where Republicans are virtually an endangered species.

“They’re not satisfied with just owning one candidate — they want two,” City Comptroller Scott Stringer, a mayoral candidate running to the left of Yang and Adams, warned last month.

Republicans are increasingly outnumbered in the Big Apple, winning just 27% of the vote in the last mayoral election, so in a sense it’s logical for GOP donors to seek out new and unlikely allies to continue to exert their influence.

“Within this primary is a fight between Democrats and Republicans,” Gabe Tobias, a former senior adviser to Justice Democrats and the executive director of Our City, said in an interview with Salon. “There are Democrats who are more progressive, and some others who are trying to put forward a progressive image because that’s what they have to do to win this election.” But in reality, he said, “if it were an open general election,” those pseudo-progressive candidates would likely align with Republicans.

Griffin, Loeb and Yass have each donated $500,000 to the pro-Yang Comeback PAC, which is run by Lis Smith, a top aide to former Democratic presidential contender (and now Transportation Secretary) Pete Buttigieg, Politico first reported. Griffin and Loeb gave the same amount to the pro-Adams Strong Leadership NYC PAC, which is run by Jenny Sedlis, a longtime charter school advocate.

Super PACs have become the vehicle of choice for wealthy donors to wield influence in politics in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, even as New York has rolled out a new public campaign financing program that provides matching funds to qualifying candidates in an effort to boost grassroots campaigns.

“Citizens United has created a terrible situation, with endless amounts of money pouring in from super-wealthy individuals to try and influence policy,” Susan Lerner, executive director of the good-government nonprofit Common Cause NY, said in an interview with Salon. “The Supreme Court has basically turned on the money spigot, and it’s simply bad for democracy.”

Super PACs are allowed to raise unlimited sums but are prohibited from directly coordinating with political campaigns. Yang and Adams have denied they had anything to do with the billionaire donations, but critics say the contributions undermine the two candidates’ appeals to the city’s growing progressive base.

“Where your money comes from matters just as much as having a lot of money,” Max Burns, a Democratic consultant and founder of Third Degree Strategies, said on Twitter. “When you’re in bed with snakes like Griffin, and willingly take his money, that says a lot about your values.”

Griffin, the founder and CEO of Citadel and one of the richest people in Illinois, recently bought a Manhattan penthouse for a record $240 million. He has largely supported Republicans, last year contributing $39 million to the Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC aligned with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and $15 million to the Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC affiliated with House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif. He previously contributed more than $1 million to Future 45, a pro-Trump super PAC. He has also occasionally donated to Democrats, notably including embattled New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a longtime foe of the state’s progressive wing.

In his home state of Illinois, Griffin spent $20 million to try to kill tax increases for the rich in 2020, according to the Our City report, prompting a protest by the Service Employees International Union, which accused him of “hurtful, racist greed.”

Burns told Salon that while Griffin has donated to both Republicans and Democrats, the reason to feel “concern about those massive contributions is more about values than partisanship.”

“What Yang’s folks don’t see, or don’t want to see, is that the common denominator is Griffin (and megadonors like him) donate to candidates they’re confident will play ball,” Burns said in an email.

“Democrats can’t and shouldn’t ever be the people playing ball with the super-rich, they have enough people looking out for them in the GOP already. Either we’re the party trying to build a New York that works for everyone, or we’re a party at least partially under the sway of hedge fund tycoons whose interests are directly opposed to our values. But we can’t be both.”

Loeb, a former Democrat who left the party in 2010 over opposition to former President Barack Obama, has donated millions to the Congressional Leadership Fund, Senate Leadership Fund, the National Republican Congressional Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee. He gave $27 million to the conservative pro-LGBTQ American Unity PAC, which supported supposed Republican moderates like Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., according to Sludge. Loeb has also donated to Cuomo and various liberal causes, but has funded super PACs that attacked progressive lawmakers like Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., and Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., according to the Our City report.

Loeb is a longtime charter school advocate who served as chairman of the Success Academy Charter Schools network, which Sedlis co-founded. He stepped down in 2018 after accusing New York State Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, who is Black, of inflicting “more damage to people of color than anyone who has ever donned a hood” while raging against unions. Sedlis continued to defend Loeb as he came under fire for other racially charged comments and as Democrats and progressive groups faced calls to return his “tainted” cash.

The Success Academy network was ordered to pay $2.4 million in a disability discrimination judgment earlier this year after five Black students with learning and other disabilities alleged that one of the schools created a list of students it wanted to force out.

Yass, co-founder of the investment firm Susquehanna International Group, is a board member of the libertarian Cato Institute and the second-largest donor to Club for Growth Action, an anti-union super PAC that backs numerous Republicans who tried to overturn the election, including Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas and Josh Hawley, R-Mo. Yass also donated millions to a super PAC that backed the brief 2016 presidential campaign of Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and gave $8.6 million to the Protect Freedom PAC, which promoted “Stop the Steal” conspiracy theories after Trump’s election loss. Yass has since tried to distance himself from the false election claims, in the wake of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. Yass, who was a key backer of the Students First PAC, a group affiliated with former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ American Federation for Children, told Politico that he supports Yang because he supports charter schools and has criticized teacher unions.

“Andrew has a lot of libertarian leanings,” he told the outlet. “He is not quite a libertarian, to say the least, but he has those leanings.”

Tobias agreed that Yang’s proposals are tinged with libertarian ideology, noting that his universal basic income plan is a “darling of libertarians” because it would “give people small amounts of cash and then cut social programs.”

These longtime Republican donors target “people who they think will help them exercise the power that they want to have,” Tobias said. “If they think that’s going to be Democrats, they’ll donate,” with the goal of exercising power through a connection to a winning candidate.

“They really don’t care about anything but their own political power, and when that means aligning themselves with the most extreme far-right, racist, anti-democratic elements of the Republican Party, they’re more than happy to do that,” he continued. “That kind of influence to me is so anathema to anything that Democrats in New York City want, it’s preposterous.”

Yang and Adams have both said they have nothing to do with the donations or the super PACs, as required by law. But Tobias argued that the candidates’ refusal to denounce the support of billionaires who have funded the extremist wings of the far right amounts to “tacit acceptance” of their support.

These billionaires have framed their support around charter schools. Adams is a supporter of charters while Yang used his own money to help start a charter school in Manhattan. Yang has called for increasing the number of charter schools in the city and has criticized the teachers’ union for delaying school reopenings amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Charter schools, which are funded by the government but privately run, offer students an alternative to struggling public schools, especially in poorer areas, advocates say. But teacher unions have long opposed charter schools since they are largely not unionized, and have accused charter schools of manipulating admissions to cherrypick students who are most likely to do well while consigning the neediest students to underfunded and struggling public schools.

The national American Federation of Teachers and New York’s United Federation of Teachers have launched their own super PAC, NY4Kids, to support Stringer, the city comptroller, who has repeatedly railed against his opponents for being aligned with Republican megadonors.

These big GOP donors “are funding Eric Adams’ and Andrew Yang’s campaigns because they are determined to buy City Hall,” Stringer said in a statement last month, adding, “We can’t let anyone — whether they’re a Republican, a former Republican, or a corporate Democrat — undermine public education.”

Stringer’s backers at UFT are backing legislation to make charter schools more accountable and calling to roll back the 2017 Trump tax cuts and raise taxes on the ultra-wealthy to boost public school funding.

Stringer assailed Yang over his wealthy backers during a mayoral debate last Wednesday, noting that Yang’s own supporters have described him as an “empty vessel” who is devoid of government experience or policy views.

“I don’t think you’re an empty vessel,” Stringer quipped. “I think you’re a Republican.”

Stringer was referring to comments made by Bradley Tusk, a former aide to former Mayor Michael Bloomberg and disgraced former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich who has since made a fortune as a venture capitalist and adviser to companies like Uber.

Tusk helped recruit Yang into this year’s mayoral race and Yang’s top aides all work for his lobbying firm Tusk Strategies, according to City & State. Tusk Strategies is also registered to lobby on behalf of the tech firms Latch and Bird in front of the city that Yang would run if he wins, according to Sludge.

Tusk’s relationship with Yang highlights a growing problem, which Susan Lerner of Common Cause described as a “new class of influencers” who are a “hybrid between consultants and lobbyists” and “in essence, are setting themselves up to be a shadow government.”

In earlier political eras, she said, “Campaign consultants were campaign consultants and lobbyists were lobbyists and they were not some blending of the two. Typically, the people who worked on a campaign to elect an individual follow that individual into government and take a position in the administration,” thereby becoming “accountable to the people.” She is concerned that someone like Tusk, operating behind the scenes, “appears to want to set himself up as the shadow mayor.”

After media reports highlighted the glaring conflicts of interest in Tusk Strategies’ relationship with Yang, Tusk published a Medium essay vowing not to lobby Yang or his staff on issues that “intersect” with his business interests. He did not say the same about other people at his company. Tusk also vowed to disclose all interactions with the city and said no one from his firm would raise money for Yang if he is elected.

Tobias expressed skepticism over those promises, saying that Tusk and other super-wealthy supporters have “invested a lot of money, a lot of time because they want a candidate like Yang, who will do the things that they want to do,” he said. “It seems pretty clear-cut and they didn’t even deny that.”

Lerner said there is a dangerous lack of regulations surrounding this new version of backstage influence-peddling in politics: “Our regulatory system has to figure out how to deal with this so that there’s not a continuing threat of undue influence by people who are not accountable to the public.”

Progressives blast Biden’s infrastructure offer to GOP: “$2 trillion was already the compromise”

A potential progressive revolt is brewing over President Joe Biden’s compromise offer to Senate Republicans on infrastructure, a proposal that would leave in place the corporate tax rate established under the Trump administration and cut the original $2.2 trillion American Jobs Plan in half.

In a statement issued late Thursday after details of Biden’s new $1 trillion proposal began to emerge, Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) said that “if what we’ve read is true, I would have a very difficult time voting yes on this bill.”

“Two trillion dollars was already the compromise. President Biden can’t expect us to vote for an infrastructure deal dictated by the Republican Party,” Bowman added. “The crises we face are immense and urgent. We have an economic crisis, a climate crisis, and a racial injustice crisis. We have a historic opportunity to act, and history won’t judge us kindly if we let it pass us by.”

If what I’m reading is true, I would have a very hard time voting yes on this bill.

$2 trillion was already the compromise. @POTUS can’t expect us to vote for an infrastructure deal dictated by the Republican Party. https://t.co/rdStGkTktw

— Jamaal Bowman Ed.D. (@JamaalBowmanNY) June 3, 2021

Bowman was far from alone in voicing deep concerns over the president’s compromise offer to Republican negotiators, who have repeatedly shown they are unwilling to accept an infrastructure deal that includes significant spending on renewable energy, the social safety net, and other key progressive priorities.

“The pursuit of Republican votes cannot come at the expense of necessary, urgent, and popular investments,” the nearly 100-member Congressional Progressive Caucus tweeted Thursday. “For a just, equitable package that meets this moment, both physical and social infrastructure are essential. Progressives will not be forced to choose between them.”

As the Washington Post reported Thursday, Biden signaled during a closed-door meeting with the GOP’s top infrastructure negotiator that “he would be open to significant revisions on the size of his infrastructure package and how it would be paid for in order to win Republican support, outlining a plan for about $1 trillion in new spending financed through tax changes that do not appear to raise the top corporate rate.”

Instead of hiking the corporate tax rate to 28% as proposed in his original package, the president floated a new minimum corporate tax of 15% aimed at profitable companies that pay little to no federal taxes.

Morris Pearl of the Patriotic Millionaires, a progressive advocacy group pushing for higher taxes on the wealthy, said that “while we are generally supportive of tax minimums, the compromise the Biden administration is reportedly offering on corporate taxes is not good enough, full stop.”

“Americans overwhelmingly support raising corporate taxes, especially when used as a pay-for,” Pearl continued. “With a bipartisan majority of American voters backing him on this issue, President Biden must stand strong on all aspects of his plan to raise corporate taxes. Corporations and Republicans in Congress should not get to drive the debate on corporate taxes when they stand opposed to any increases at all.”

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki insisted Thursday that Biden hasn’t completely taken the 28% corporate tax rate off the table, but progressive lawmakers were nonetheless alarmed by the president’s apparent willingness to compromise on the proposed increase in a bid for Republican support.

“I disagree with the decision to remove the increase of the corporate tax rate from infrastructure discussions,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) told HuffPost. “The American people overwhelmingly support making corporations pay their fair share.”

Clinging to narrow majorities in the House and Senate, Democrats can’t afford to lose more than a handful of votes even if they succeed in winning over some Republican lawmakers by accepting a dramatically weakened infrastructure bill.

But it’s unclear whether Republican negotiators, led by Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), will agree to president’s latest offer. Last week, as Common Dreams reported, Capito outlined an infrastructure counterproposal that called for just $257 billion in new spending and omitted major investments in green energy and elder care.

We’ve seen this movie before.

Republicans will ask for concession after concession, and STILL not vote for the watered-down bill they demanded.

Let’s learn from history. It’s time for us to go big, bold, and on our own on infrastructure. Let’s deliver for the people.

— Pramila Jayapal (@PramilaJayapal) June 3, 2021

With Republicans expected to counter Biden’s latest proposal as early as Friday, progressives reiterated their demand that the president and congressional Democrats use their total control of the federal government to pursue an ambitious infrastructure package rather than appeasing the obstructionist minority party.

“One trillion dollars is a non-starter,” said Evan Weber, political director of the youth-led Sunrise Movement, which has demanded $10 trillion in infrastructure and green energy spending over the next decade. “The president should be meeting with the young people who elected him, not the party who is abetting the lie that he wasn’t duly elected. Are our futures negotiable?”

As infrastructure talks with the GOP have dragged on for weeks despite little discernible movement toward a bipartisan deal, progressive lawmakers have urged Democratic leaders to abandon the GOP and pursue a bold legislative package through reconciliation—an arcane process through which budget-related bills can pass with a simple-majority vote.

According to recent polling by Data for Progress, 58% of U.S. voters would support passage of the American Jobs Plan and the American Families Plan—Biden’s proposed $1.8 trillion safety net expansion—using budget reconciliation.

But Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), whose vote Democrats need to keep their slim Senate majority intact, indicated Thursday that he has no interest in pursuing an infrastructure bill with only Democratic support.

“Basically, we need to be bipartisan,” Manchin told NBC News.

In his statement Thursday, Bowman countered that “Republicans have given Democratic governance the middle finger since the day President Biden was inaugurated.”

“We can’t—and won’t—reward them by keeping Donald Trump’s corporate tax cuts in place and slashing our infrastructure package in half,” said Bowman. “No Republican vote in favor of an infrastructure package should supersede our mission: to build an America that works for the people, not for massive corporations. Getting Republicans on board is not necessary. Getting the American people back on their feet is.”

Trump frustrated ‘people just don’t care’ what he has to say anymore: Axios founder

Appearing on MSNBC early Friday morning, Axios founder Jim VandeHei explained that Donald Trump is both desperate and “frustrated” that he no longer has the reach he had when he was president, as evidenced by his shuttering of his blog.

Speaking with host Alicia Mendez, VandeHei said an Axios investigation showed that Trump’s blog commentaries on events of the day had little reach with news consumers.

According to the journalist, “people just don’t care” what Trump has to say.

“I think it’s definitely about his reach,” he explained. “He’s having a hard time getting through. In general, we’re seeing it with our own traffic at Axios, every media company is seeing: people are just not that interested in politics. People are no longer obsessed with what Donald Trump has to say.”

“It doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a massive following inside the Republican Party, but people just don’t care,” he continued. “He put out that statement yesterday in regards to China and [Dr. Anthony] Fauci and basically saying that the Chinese should pay the American people and the world $10 trillion, because in his words, they created the virus, and it just doesn’t get the bang for the buck that it used to for him.”

“He’s very frustrated,” VandeHei added. “Remember, he’s booted off of Facebook, he’s booted off of Twitter. You don’t really see him on TV that much and this is a guy who’s used to getting a lot of attention.”

Watch below via MSNBC:

Enough already with the “Tiger King” – Joe Exotic doesn’t deserve more attention or rehabilitation

A year after its aggressive 15 minutes of fame at the beginning of the pandemic, Netflix docuseries “Tiger King” is making a comeback, although it’s not exactly clear who’s asking for it. This week, Deadline reported new casting announcements for the Peacock series adaptation of the events depicted in “Tiger King,” and discussed throughout the “Joe Exotic” podcast on Wondery.

So far, the Peacock show in development will star John Cameron Mitchell as Joe Exotic himself along with Kate McKinnon as Carole Baskin, Exotic’s cat-sanctuary-owning “nemesis” whom Exotic accuses of killing her ex-husband — and plots to kill, himself. Joining in the fun (?) are Nat Wolff as Travis Maldonado, one of Exotic’s husbands; Sam Keely as John Finlay, another of Exotic’s husbands; most recently, Dennis Quaid as reporter Rick Kirkham; and others. McKinnon will also serve as an executive producer of the Peacock series.

And this is just one show in development to tell the story of Exotic’s wild life as an Oklahoma zoo owner and prolific tiger breeder, who also gets caught up in a number of crimes and conspiracies that landed him in prison in 2018. CBS Television Studios is also developing a series with Nicholas Cage to play Exotic, according to Variety.

The resurgence of Joe Exotic’s story is frustrating and annoying for a number of reasons, not the least of which include that we’ve all moved on from it already, and are exhausted by the entertainment industry’s obsession with trying to profit off the same, tired stories repeatedly. Then, of course, there’s the fact that Joe Exotic isn’t exactly a character worth coming back to, despite the sanitized Netflix portrayal of him. Exotic was, actually, an exploitative man who tried to have a woman killed, and is wildly racist by all accounts, treated as a sympathetic and goofy meme because of white privilege.

Rebecca Chaiklin, the creator of the show, told The Hollywood Reporter last year that Exotic “said things when we were filming that were very unsettling,” including a rant questioning why he couldn’t say the N-word, which didn’t make it into the show. In fact, much of Exotic’s racist tirades didn’t make it, because according to Chaiklin, “They didn’t have a context in the story.” In the same interview, she says, “Joe is a racist, I would say categorically.” And yet, somehow, this was deemed not relevant to a show about him and his life. Instead, the show’s creators deemed Exotic’s conspiracy theory that Baskin had killed her husband, without any evidence, worthy of extensive amounts of screentime.

Eric Goode, a co-director of “Tiger King,” told the Hollywood Reporter, “We had empathy for Joe, but Joe did a lot of horrible things. Joe committed some really serious crimes and Joe was not only cruel and inhumane to his animals, he was cruel to the people around him.” Goode added, “I think it’s very important for people to understand that Joe is an actor and he tells people what they want to hear.” In other words, Exotic wanted to be liked — and the show’s creators hid the worst parts of him and made that possible.

Joe Exotic wasn’t just an animal abuser, an unapologetic racist, and violent misogynist. He also reportedly and unsurprisingly wasn’t a great boss, paying workers less than $150 a week for more than 40 hours of work, according to one former worker who held a Reddit AMA on his experience last year. Most of Exotic’s employees lived in rundown trailers and often had to eat expired meat that was meant to feed the tigers, the former worker said.

Despite all of these inexcusable behaviors, throughout the nation’s brief, collective obsession with “Tiger King,” the Netflix series led many to find Exotic quirky, sympathetic, likable — a meme more so than an attempted killer. The power of viral shows and media to rehabilitate unsafe people in the cultural consciousness is dangerous and inexcusable. Yet, with even more Joe Exotic projects on the horizon, he’ll have even more chances at undeserved cultural rehabilitation.

As any reality show watcher can attest to, what we see on screens isn’t always the truth — more often than not, it isn’t. And as Chaiklin told the Hollywood Reporter, if the truth doesn’t “have a context in the story” (AKA, the warped narrative show creators want to project), then you won’t be seeing it.

Denying “1619 Project” founder’s tenure buys into so-called objectivity debate stifling free speech

Last month, the University of North Carolina failed to offer tenure to journalist Nikole-Hannah Jones, despite how the university’s Hussman School of Journalism and Media not only recommended Hannah-Jones for tenure, but also recently named her the Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism.

Recent reporting in the Washington Post this week has suggested UNC’s decision was impacted by donor Walter E. Hussman Jr., an Arkansas press magnate who has since denied involvement in the decision, but has said he expressed concerns about Hannah-Jones for not meeting his personal standards of “objectivity.”

The funny thing about predominantly white, male media institutions’ beloved “objectivity” is that concerns about it only ever seem to go one way. We only ever see women journalists or journalists of color questioned for being influenced and shaped by their lived experiences — we never question how whiteness or maleness shape the work and worldview of white male journalists, because their experience is treated as the default. And we never question how “objectivity,” centrism, and neutrality are political ideologies themselves — they reflect the inherently political decision to choose to say and do nothing about injustice and oppression, and therefore, empower it to continue.

Journalism’s primary goal, at the end of the day, is truth — not objectivity for the sake of old white men’s comfort.

“I haven’t said . . . ‘Do not hire Nikole Hannah-Jones,'” Hussman told North Carolina Policy Watch on Thursday, denying his role in UNC’s decision. “I never said, ‘If you hire Nikole Hannah-Jones it could affect our commitment to the university or our donation.’ I never said that. I basically said, ‘Look, here are my concerns. Once I express them, they’re totally up to you.'”

But Hussman expressed criticism of the “1619 Project,” the groundbreaking New York Times Magazine series from last year that examines the ongoing legacy of slavery in America, which Hannah-Jones oversaw, and won a Pulitzer for her written introduction to the series. In particular, he expressed concerns with the accuracy of the findings of the series’ Black journalists and historians.

The “1619 Project” has shined a light on the persistent socioeconomic impacts of slavery affecting Black youth and their communities to this day, despite how many white politicians and academic institutions would rather pretend slavery took place in the prehistoric era with dinosaurs, and have even tried to ban the “1619 Project” from schools.

NC Policy Watch reports that Hussman’s problems with Hannah-Jones primarily came from his “concern” over the “1619 Project,” and Hannah-Jones’ writing on reparations for Black Americans. According to Policy Watch, Hussman said he “was concerned about how Hannah-Jones’s work could clash with his vision for the school and what it teaches.”

Since UNC declined to offer Hannah-Jones a tenured position last month, Hannah-Jones released a statement saying that she had retained legal counsel to respond to the board’s “failure to consider and approve my application for tenure — despite the recommendation of the faculty, dean, provost and chancellor.” Hannah-Jones is represented by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Inc., Levy Ratner, P.C., and Ferguson Chambers & Sumter, P.A.

“I had no desire to bring turmoil or a political firestorm to the university that I love, but I am obligated to fight back against a wave of anti-democratic suppression that seeks to prohibit the free exchange of ideas, silence Black voices and chill free speech,” she said in her statement.

In the days after the snub from UNC, more than 200 academics, journalists, sports luminaries and thought leaders signed a letter in support of Hannah-Jones published by The Root. “The same anti-democratic thinking that blocked Hannah-Jones’ appointment at her alma mater has also fueled efforts in state and local legislatures to ban the teaching of histories of slavery and its legacies through the 1619 Project,” the letter states. “We call on all people of conscience to decry this growing wave of repression and to encourage a recommitment to the free exchange of ideas in our schools, workplaces, legislatures, and communities.”

Journalists are foremost human beings, with a wide and important range of lived experiences — their diversity of lived experiences insights enrich journalism, rather than harm it. Without pioneering Black women journalists like Hannah-Brown, we wouldn’t have had the “1619 Project” to shine a light on persistent, jarring racial inequities in this country. Journalists of color should be encouraged to challenge the deeply ingrained lies of white supremacy — not denied tenure for doing so.

How COVID-19 has worsened the lives of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s patients

Alicia Del Blanco — a 68-year-old retired French teacher from Madrid, Spain — had big plans. She was about to become a grandmother for the second time, was going to spend the summer in her house in Huelva, and join a daily therapy program specially designed for people with Alzheimer’s. Like all of us, her plans upended with the pandemic.

On March 14th, 2020, Spain entered a nearly three-month lockdown where residents were not allowed to leave their houses unless for medical emergencies or getting groceries. Then came the closures of Del Blanco’s favorite past times — theaters, restaurants, and musical venues — along with the restrictions on social gatherings and the discontinuation of her Alzheimer’s therapy program. Del Blanco struggled to comprehend the reason behind all these changes. While she was able to maintain her daily walks around Madrid’s largest park — El Retiro — after the lockdown ended, her accelerating cognitive decline became disturbingly noticeable to her husband, Armando Guerra.

“One day I asked [Del Blanco] to pour water in a glass,” Guerra said, “and realized that she no longer understood what a glass meant unless I pointed at it.” Her neurologist confirmed Guerra’s observations. Del Blanco’s cognitive decline in the last six months was equivalent to what was supposed to happen in two years. And hers was not the only case.

Researchers from Santa Maria University Hospital in Lleida, Spain, examined 40 patients with mild Alzheimer’s five weeks after the lockdown and compared their evaluations to the ones they did a month before the pandemic. They found that — following the lockdown — the patients showed a worsening of neuropsychiatric symptoms, including increased agitation, apathy, and aberrant motor activity.

A study published in January from Columbia University showed similar effects on Parkinson’s patients. To assess the impact of COVID-19 and social distancing, the researchers sent out a survey in May 2020 to the mailing lists of the Parkinson’s Foundation and Columbia University Parkinson’s Disease Center of Excellence asking the patients about their physical and social activities and their moods. Of the 1,342 responses they received, half of the patients reported a negative change in their symptoms, along with mood disturbances, such as deepened anxiety and depression.

According to Roy Alcalay — an associate professor of Neurology at Columbia University and the principal investigator of the study — these results were not surprising. “There’s no question that the lack of activity, the lack of services, and the emotional stress of not seeing the family take a toll,” he says, “and the toll for people with Parkinson’s is the progression of the motor symptoms.”

Alcalay plans on following up his study with a survey to be sent out to the same people a year after the pandemic to determine the long-term effects of COVID-19 on these patients. He also believes that more needs to be done to make sure that the patients are not permanently harmed any further.

The question for us doctors and policymakers is what can we do to ease the chronic effects of the pandemic for people with Parkinson’s,” Alcalay says. To him, the answer includes facilitating and improving telemedicine visits, promoting outdoor exercises, providing emotional and psychological assistance, and getting the patients vaccinated.

People with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s depend on daily socialization, therapy, and physical activity for their disease management. So, it is no surprise that increased stress, social isolation, and confinement during the pandemic would be especially destructive to them. A recent analysis done by researchers from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, shows, however, that the disruption of daily routines is not the only reason why COVID-19 has been so detrimental to these patients.

The analysis — which studied the electronic health records of 61.9 million patients in the US — found that people with dementia are twice as likely to get COVID-19 compared to patients without dementia even after adjusting for demographics and COVID-19 risk factors. This could explain the 16% increase in Alzheimer’s and dementia deaths observed in the U.S. alone since the beginning of the pandemic.

While the study does not say why these patients are more vulnerable, the researchers discuss two possible explanations. One is that — given the symptoms of the diseases, such as memory loss and motor impairment — the patients may not be able to comply with preventative behaviors for COVID-19, such as hand washing, wearing a mask, and social distancing. Another reason could be the patients’ damaged blood-brain barrier, which allows certain bacteria and viruses to access the brain more easily and make patients more susceptible to bacterial, viral, and fungal infection.

According to Alcalay, despite all its negative impact, the pandemic had one surprising change for the better — the uptick of patients and clinicians using telemedicine — which he hopes to be permanent. While in-person visits are still necessary for certain physical examinations, Alcalay thinks that there are several advantages to telemedicine, such as in the cases when a patient is disabled and cannot leave their house, or if they live in a different city from the best available doctor. “I don’t think [telemedicine] is gonna replace in-person care,” says Alcalay, “but it’s going to supplement it.”

The pandemic had a silver lining for Guerra and his wife as well. “This year taught me to prioritize what is really important in my life,” Guerra says. “Being with family and loved ones — no matter the circumstances — gives me the greatest joy.”

Big Oil is awash in rainbows for Pride Month

June is Pride Month, and Corporate America won’t let you forget it. Every year around strawberry season, social media is flooded with logos decked out in rainbow colors, a show of public support for the LGBTQ community. But those pretty logos are often accused of being a form of “rainbow-washing” — marketing spin that boosts a company’s social justice cred, with little substance behind it.

This week, the American Petroleum Institute hopped on the rainbow-colored bandwagon, adding the classic gradient to its logo on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. (The oil and gas industry’s biggest lobbying group isn’t keen on TikTok, apparently.) One corner of the Twitter universe was not having API’s change of look, with reactions ranging from the woozy face to the vomit face.

Before rainbow-washing, there was “greenwashing,” another form of marketing spin. It all started with some dirty towels in the 1980s. An environmentalist named Jay Westerveld coined the term after visiting Fiji, where he saw a note in a resort asking customers to pick up their towels to preserve the oceans and reefs (“help us help our environment!”). The irony struck Westerveld, who knew that the resort was expanding regardless of the environmental consequences. “I don’t think they really cared all that much about the coral reefs,” he later told the Guardian.

Soon after his trip to Fiji, Westerveld wrote an essay in 1986 about what he called “greenwashing” — a play on the “whitewash” metaphor for glossing over vices — and the term caught on quickly among environmentalists. Around the same time, Chevron put out commercials that resembled low-budget nature documentaries, showing a grizzly bear awakening from hibernation to a lush meadow that was once an oil exploration zone and a fox escaping from a coyote by jumping into an oil pipe, an apparent attempt to burnish the company’s environmental record. The campaign went on to win an Effie advertising award, as well as becoming the standard for greenwashing.

Over the years, the -washing suffix has been used to describe other corporate PR tactics. The 2010s brought “pinkwashing,” when some of the companies slapping pink ribbons on everything for breast cancer awareness were selling products linked to breast cancer. More recently, “woke-washing” has emerged as a catchall term to refer to brands trying to burnish their reputation with various social justice platitudes.

The oil and gas industry has been accused of all sorts of woke-washing, from Chevron putting out a Black Lives Matter statement to a Shell gas station adding an apostrophe to its logo, turning into She’ll for International Women’s Day. And API’s rainbow logo wasn’t the industry’s only foray into Pride Month. Chevron put out a tweet with the hashtag #ChevronPride, celebrating the 30 year anniversary of its PRIDE employee network: “To celebrate, we’re holding a series of joyful events that highlight intersectionality and honor our personal identities and experiences that make each one of us unique.” BP and Phillips 66also tweeted Pride statements.

LGBTQ workers in the oil and gas industry have reported harassment, and oil companies have taken measures to address discrimination (in Exxon’s case, implementing policies it once opposed). But even with high marks on the Human Rights Campaign’s corporate equality index, an attempt to judge companies’ LGBTQ policies, oil majors are getting called out for rainbow-washing. Chevron, for example, has funneled more than $6 million to PACs working to keep GOP leaders in Congress — many of whom have blocked legislation on climate change and LGBTQ rights. Last year, before the presidential election, Republicans voted to keep their 2016 platform, which diminishes the threat of climate change and also called for a ban on same-sex marriage.

Companies are increasingly feeling the need to show their support for progressive causes — but when people start poking into what’s happening behind the scenes, some of those rainbow logos lose their shine.

“Lisey’s Story” isn’t a horror tale as much as a cry to end it all sooner

Catatonia figures prominently in “Lisey’s Story” by way of the title character’s sister Amanda, who retreats so far within herself as to be unreachable by medical professionals and her family. What those reading Stephen King‘s 2006 novel know, and people watching his eight-episode adaptation see in rich detail, is that Amanda isn’t trapped within but has journeyed elsewhere.

To people in this realm, it looks like God has simply hit the pause button on this woman and left her there. Joan Allen plays Amanda, and freezes her stricken face as if she’s trying to say “Help me,” but gets ensnared in the opening breath on the H.

I have no personal experience with this condition, but from reading the first-hand accounts of those who have, slogging through eight hours King’s series probably counts as a vicarious somatic recreation. For about half of it I wondered why I wasn’t feeling anything and then, on the back four, I found myself wishing with all that is within me that it would end soon and quickly, praying for rescue and mercy all the while.

Generally this isn’t my experience with King’s books or with the best film adaptations of his work. TV shows based on his work are a little more hit or miss. I really wasn’t expecting this story to be a slow torture, since the novel is . . . fine . . . and being brought to life by a superior cast led by Julianne Moore, Clive Owen and a grubby, extortionately creepy Dane DeHaan.

The actors are is the topmost salvation of “Lisey’s Story” – the ones mentioned above, as well as a flinty Jennifer Jason Leigh, a King alumnus from “Dolores Claiborne” once again cast as the skeptic tired of cleaning up her family’s messes. She’s terrific, and it probably goes without saying that Moore’s work here is nothing short of arresting.

They’re not the problem. Instead, blame the collapse of “Lisey’s Story” on King himself.

King declared that the only way he would allow Lisey’s story to be adapted for the screen is if he wrote it.

King is also the man who published an 823-page version of “The Stand” only to come back later and declare, “You know what this needs? The equivalent of another book inside the existing one.”

Now, when you’re Stephen King you can do that. A person can also respect the energy behind that requirement given his personal connection to the story. But every writer needs an editor, especially King the screenwriter. Remember the entirely unnecessary epilogue to “The Stand” remake? He wrote that too.

The seed of “Lisey” was planted after a long hospital stay resulting from a bout of double pneumonia. Upon returning home he discovered his wife Tabitha had redecorated his study and, in the process, packed all of his things in boxes. Seeing his life’s work and effects reduced to several cubes gave him a haunting sense of what it would look like after he was actually gone. That makes Owen’s Scott Landon his stand-in.

“Lisey’s Story” unfurls over two timelines – three, if you count the long, exploratory flashbacks to Scott’s abusive childhood, where we meet his long-gone brother and violent father – as well as in this reality and an otherworldly dimension to which Scott travels through water and will.

In the main we ride with Moore’s Lisey as she’s coming to terms with widowhood following Scott’s untimely death. Concurrently we flashback to their courtship and marriage, from the earliest days when he was still an unknown through his success and international stardom.

Owen and Moore don’t exactly heat up the screen together, but Moore makes Lisey’s reaction to Scott’s strange bouts of cutting and bizarre explanations believable in the way one comprehends codependency.

In the present Lisey sorts the pain of her loss through a game of sorts that Scott leaves for her called a “Bool Hunt,” kind of a scavenger stroll from clue to clue that ends with a prize. What is a bool? It could be a wonderful treasure or entirely wrecking.

Discovering what lies in store for Lisey is delayed and complicated when a local professor (Ron Cephas Jones) darkly insists she hand over Scott’s unpublished work to his university and, for reasons no sane person can fathom, enlists DeHaan’s Jim, a Landon superfan (!) who he finds on the Internet (!!) to scare her into compliance.

All of this is occurring as Lisey’s sister Amanda slips into a catatonic episode following a self-harming incident discovered by their other sister Darla (Leigh). Lisey soon figures out that Amanda’s drift away from sanity may have something to do with Scott’s other reality. Admittedly Allen doesn’t get much to do in terms of a kinetic portrayal, but her distressed, ashen 100-yard stare adds an urgency to Lisey’s mission to get her back.

Much as it makes me cringe to say this about any actor, Moore is a master of incandescent suffering, and Lisey Stanton is little else but for most of the story. The story romances her anguish, or maybe cinematographer it’s the sentimental rosy golds and grays Darius Khondji surrounds her with, but it is transfixing.

This cuts the other way too when King avails himself of streaming’s lack of limitations when it comes to depicting torture. DeHaan has talent for waxing ghoulish, and the author and his director Pablo Larraín send him into a kind of violent overdrive – beatings, bone breaking, and worse. There’s an early scene where he pulls out a pizza cutter and rakes a strip through a pie he has with him, and we’re meant to see this as a warning instead of subtle foreshadowing.

But performances can only do so much to mitigate King’s exhaustive scripts and the stylized but spiritually chilled approach Larraín takes to directing pieces like this. Writing for readers has a cadence distinct from writing for the screen that eludes King here.

What sings on the page doesn’t necessarily translate smoothly or even well in direct, too-faithful adaptions, and here he chooses to tell us, and show us, and tell us some more instead of inviting our imagination to do some of the work.

Why provide, say, Scott with an efficient flashback montage revealing details of his dark background when you can devote nearly half of two separate episodes to it? On the one hand, this ensures that we know how deranged Scott’s father (played by Michael Pitt) was and spend time with his “bad” sibling. All it costs is a huge chomp out of the narrative’s momentum.

In the same way that “Jackie” falls victim to Larraín’s devotion to, shall we say, an elegant sense of remove, he never entirely immerses us in horror or submerge us in grief. It’s the opposite, actually. Instead of engrossed, I felt trapped.

What kept me watching, besides the requirements of my job, is the impressive humanity King instills in his work, even the bloodiest exploits. In “Lisey’s Story” it takes on a romantic wistful tone that’s singularly heartbreaking, and entirely appropriate when you remember that it’s an ode to marriage – his marriage, specifically, and the loving warmth he shares with his wife. But it’s also a rumination on loss and mourning.

“Grief is a bool hunt,” Lisey tells Dara in a moment of quiet, adding, “My prize is learning how to be alone, which is not much of a prize.” The obstacle to moving forward is supernatural in part; with King it usually is.

One salvation is that Boo’ya Moon is a surreal beauty – a florid, wild forest with a vast body of water at the center surrounded by a kind of amphitheater populated by scores of souls sitting quietly and staring into the horizon. It goes with out saying there’s a macabre beast romping around in all that magical nature waiting to confront somebody, sooner or later.

As is the case with all King-related TV shows and movies, though, his ardent fans will probably love “Lisey’s Story” for the same qualities that walled me off from it. Despite the overall drag and the numbing impenetrability of Larraín directing choices, King’s language holds similar power to what Scott ascribes to the Boo’ya Moon’s waters – in the right circumstances it can be healing, and it also fascinates.

But when the artist becomes too fascinated with himself the spirit of a work sags and dulls. That, unfortunately, is what has happened here. Near the end of the series episode closers that are supposed to play as cliffhangers come off as unnecessary extensions. In the finale King stacks enough endpoints on top of each other and keeps on going that after a point it starts to feel like the cinematic equivalent of medieval punishment – specifically the kind where the victim is slowly crushed to death by heavy stones. Truly an act of peine forte et dure.

Despite this, King also packs quotable lines into the story, too. Sadly the one that spoke directly to my beleaguered soul was Darla’s plea in the face of never-ending tedium: “I am be-e-e-e-gging you, I am begging you to stop this bulls**t.”

The first two episodes of “Lisey’s Story” premiere Friday, June 4 on Apple TV+.

Dark matter’s weirdness could be explained by a new, as-yet-unseen fundamental force

Dark matter makes up 27 percent of the universe’s total mass and energy — nearly five times more than “normal” matter that comprises planets and stars. True to its name, dark matter is hard to directly observe; yet astronomers are certain it exists because of the huge gravitational effect it has on galaxies and the stars that live within them.

So far, none of the efforts to figure out the nature of the particles that constitute dark matter have borne fruit. That’s because as far as anyone can tell, dark matter is extremely non-interacting: just as humans walk through a still room barely noticing the atmosphere that surrounds us, dark matter seems to barely ever touch, even faintly, the normal matter that it hovers around. It is bound to our world by gravity only, and only tugs on other things that also possess gravity.

Modern dark matter detectors — which, technically, haven’t definitively detected anything yet — operate on the principle that dark matter should, if one waits around long enough, eventually touch a piece of normal matter in such a way that we could briefly sense its ghostly signature. Yet such experiments continue to turn up empty, despite instrumentation growing increasingly sensitive.

That has led physicists to start asking other questions about dark matter. Is there something fundamental missing about our theories about how to interact with it? Or could it have properties different than we theorized?

Now, a new paper proposes a completely new theory that would explain so much of dark matter’s weirdness. What if dark matter was interacting with itself in ways besides gravitationally — yet via a fifth fundamental force, one as-yet-unknown?

According to the Standard Model of Particle Physics, the gold standard theory of forces and particles, there are four known forces in the universe. Two of them are quotidian and easily visible: gravity and the electromagnetic force. One of them, the strong force, binds atomic nuclei together; the last, the weak force, is implicated in certain types of radioactive decay.

Yet a new research paper in the Journal of High Energy Physics suggests that dark matter could be explained by a proposed fifth fundamental force.

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“We live in an ocean of dark matter, yet we know very little about what it could be,” said Flip Tanedo, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy and the senior author of the paper. “It is one of the most vexing known unknowns in nature. We know it exists, but we do not know how to look for it or why it hasn’t shown up where we expected it.”

The theory goes more or less like this: Much of the dark matter in the universe doesn’t behave like the particles we know and study. Perhaps these “invisible” particles interact with other, equally invisible particles in a way that causes them to stop acting like particles — hence, the difficulty observing them.

Notably, dark matter does seem to interact with itself — in ways besides gravitationally, and especially at close range. No one is sure how. This new theory could help explain that.

Of course, that question leads to another question: what are these invisible particles that dark matter is interacting with?

“The goal of my research program for the past two years is to extend the idea of dark matter ‘talking’ to dark forces,” Tanedo said. “Over the past decade, physicists have come to appreciate that, in addition to dark matter, hidden dark forces may govern dark matter’s interactions. These could completely rewrite the rules for how one ought to look for dark matter.”

Tanedo is proposing that these dark forces — potentially a so-called fifth force — operate when two dark matter particles are attracting or repelling each other. But there’s more to it than that, including a potential fourth dimension at play, too.

“Our ongoing research program at UCR [University of California, Riverside] is a further generalization of the dark force proposal,” he said. “Our observed universe has three dimensions of space. We propose that there may be a fourth dimension that only the dark forces know about. The extra dimension can explain why dark matter has hidden so well from our attempts to study it in a lab.”

In the world as we know it, length, width and depth constitute the three spatial dimensions. Time is often considered a dimension too, although it cannot be traversed in the same way. Many physics theories postulate that there are more dimensions that exist that aren’t directly accessible; famously, string theory requires the existence of many additional dimensions, albeit they would be “small” dimensions that particles wiggle in and out of, not traversable ones like the three that humans know and love.

“Since these conformal field theories were both intractable and unusual, they hadn’t really been systematically applied to dark matter,” Tanedo added. “Instead of using that language, we work with the holographic extra-dimensional theory.”

Tanedo argues that mathematical tricks, that don’t mimic the behavior of visible particles, could help researchers better understand what’s going on with dark matter. Hence, in Tanedo’s theory, the intensity of the hypothetical “dark” force would have an unusual relationship to distance. Both magnetism and gravity decrease exponentially as objects with those properties move together or apart; whereas the the force between dark matter particles would vary in a different way.

“For the gravitational force or electric force, when you double the distance between two particles you reduce the force by a factor of four,” Tanedo said. “A continuum force, on the other hand, is reduced by a factor of up to eight.” The dark force would constitute a continuum force, Tanedo says.

So, what is the feasibility of dark matter involving a fifth fundamental force?

“There are hints that dwarf galaxies have cores rather than cusps of dark matter — as would be the case if the dark matter particles were not interacting with each other (the premise of the standard cosmological model),” said Avi Loeb, the former chair of astronomy at Harvard University, in an email. “One way to get the needed cores is by allowing the dark matter particles to scatter off each other (but not off ordinary matter) with a relatively large cross-section, similar to that of the one of light with free electrons and protons.”

Loeb added that this specific research paper in question suggests a novel origin for dark matter interactions which “stems from a sector of mediating particles hidden in extra dimensions.”

“The interaction between dark matter particles depends on their separation in a way that is different from previous models in the standard three dimensional space,” Loeb said. “This innovative model can be tested with better astrophysical data.”

As Tanedo and his team further their research, identifying blind spots is a priority.

“My research program targets one of the assumptions we make about particle physics: that the interaction of particles is well-described by the exchange of more particles,” he said. “While that is true for ordinary matter, there’s no reason to assume that for dark matter. Their interactions could be described by a continuum of exchanged particles rather than just exchanging a single type of force particle.”

Details leak from highly anticipated U.S. government UFO report

U.S. intelligence officials reportedly found no evidence that the UFOs witnessed by Navy pilots in recent years were extraterrestrial in origin, though questions still remain about where the aircraft originated and how they appear to defy known laws of physics.

The overwhelming majority of unidentified aircraft seen by various military personnel were not related to any known U.S. government projects, the New York Times reported, citing senior officials who had reviewed a classified report acknowledging the sightings. The admission marks a sharp departure from the Pentagon’s previous attempts to stifle dialogue into the string of unexplained incidents.

The report, a declassified version of which is expected to be released to Congress later this month, details a total of over 120 sightings — many of which involve incomprehensible aircraft movements. In one instance, Navy pilots caught sight of an aircraft that looked like a spinning top hovering 30,000 feet high in the East Coast. The pilots claimed that the object, which could reach hypersonic speeds, had no identifiable source of propulsion.

In another, detailed in a recently leaked Navy video recorded in 2019, an unidentified object was seen flying above the water before vanishing into the ocean.

Perhaps the most striking sighting occurred back in 2004, when two former Navy pilots were dispatched to investigate “multiple anomalous aerial vehicles” off the coast of San Diego that plummeted 80,000 feet in less than a second. “It accelerated like nothing I’ve ever seen,” Commander David Fravor, who saw the vehicles, told the Times.

Christopher Mellon, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence in the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, said in an interview with NBC News that there was “a lot of continuity” between recent sightings and those of the past.

“What we’re seeing are a number of distinct and different things,” Mellon explained. “Sometimes we’re seeing a 50-foot object that can travel at hypersonic speeds and seemingly go into orbit or come down from altitudes of potentially above 100,000 feet.”

One official told the Times that some of the sightings could be attributed to Russian or Chinese military projects. Both countries have reportedly invested heavily in hypersonic technology — though the existence of such aircraft would suggest that their technology is far superior to anything the U.S. has developed in the field.

While the Pentagon has generally stayed mum on UFO sightings until quite recently, it has quietly been studying the phenomena for over a decade. Back in 2007 the Pentagon established the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, a project spearheaded by then-Sen. Harry Reid that reviewed unexplained radar data and video footage taken by Navy pilots and senior military officers.

The program shuttered in 2012 due to underfunding, though it was partially resurrected in 2017 under the auspices of a private group, called “To the Stars Academy,” co-founded by Tom DeLonge, the guitarist for pop-punk band Blink-182.

Pentagon watchers also believe that deep in the military bureaucracy something similar to the AATIP program may still exist today, albeit in a more informal manner.

Laura Loomer crashes Twitter CEO’s Bitcoin speech to protest “censorship” of conservatives

Far-right activist, anti-Muslim zealot and failed Republican congressional candidate Laura Loomer crashed the Bitcoin 2021 conference in the Miami area on Friday afternoon, where Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey was speaking to a crowd of cryptocurrency enthusiasts.

Minutes into Dorsey’s speech, Loomer interjected and began screaming at the Twitter chief.

“Censorship is a human rights violation! You are censoring people, you are interfering in elections,” Loomer yelled at Dorsey amid a loud and large crowd.

JUST IN – Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey heckled over censorship during an #Bitcoin event.pic.twitter.com/DmebShinG0

— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) June 4, 2021

Event security eventually moved in to remove Loomer from the venue.

Event security swiftly moved in to escort Loomer out… pic.twitter.com/HGAfXVNfqi

— Zachary Petrizzo (@ZTPetrizzo) June 4, 2021

After the incident, Loomer delivered her own account of events on Telegram. “I just stormed the stage of the Bitcoin2021 conference to confront Jack Dorsey about his hypocrisy regarding censorship and decentralization,” she wrote. “After I confronted him, I was removed from the conference. How can the King of Censorship and the tech tyrant himself possibly speak about decentralization and human rights? He’s a hypocrite.”

“Silencing millions of people is a human rights violation. Bitcoin is about freedom, which Jack Dorsey clearly doesn’t support,” Loomer added.

Loomer also said on Telegram that she had paid $900 for a conference ticket which yielded the seconds-long opportunity to heckle Dorsey. She then suggested that her followers should donate money to recoup her ticket cost.

Loomer didn’t return a Salon request for comment on Friday afternoon.

This isn’t the first time Loomer went public with her anger at Twitter and its CEO since being banned from the platform some years ago for a series of anti-Muslim tweets. In November of 2018, she handcuffed herself to the doors of Twitter’s headquarters in Manhattan. “Twitter is upholding sharia when they ban me for tweeting facts about sharia law,” Loomer stated at the time with an arm attached to one of the large front doors.

“After several hours of complaining about the cold, Loomer eventually requested to be removed from the door, and the handcuffs were severed with bolt cutters,” The Verge noted in a report. “She was escorted from the door to a car, and was not placed under arrest.”

Loomer was also recently banned from an up-and-coming app called Clubhouse for violating its “violence policy,” after an extremely brief appearance on the platform. In March, the far-right activist was also revealed to have supported the idea of a “white ethnostate” during a 2017 podcast appearance.

Candace Owens: If a Black woman can play Anne Boleyn, then a white man should play Obama

Last fall, UK broadcaster Channel 5 announced that Jodie Turner Smith, a Black woman and star in comedy-thriller “Queen & Slim,” would play Anne Boleyn, the second, doomed wife of Henry VIII, in an upcoming historical drama series called “Anne Boleyn.” Smith’s casting and her acting have been widely praised, but of course, that hasn’t stopped an onslaught of racist backlash in response to her playing a white, English queen from the 16th century.

This week, a new voice entered the chat on Smith’s casting, as conservative firebrand Candace Owens weighed in via tweet. “I’m actually totally fine with Jodie Turner playing the role of Anne Boleyn so long as the radical left promises to keep their mouth shut if in the future Henry Caville [sic] is selected to play Barack Obama and Rachel McAdams can play Michelle,” Owens wrote. “Not double standards- K?”

Owens, as usual, has remarkably missed the point, here, which is that people of color playing white historical figures or famous people isn’t the same thing as white people playing people of color. The former poses a meaningful challenge to white supremacist power structures, and helps begin to make up for years of entertainment industry whitewashing — the latter simply builds upon said entertainment industry whitewashing. Very different things.

It’s also worth noting historical dramas take liberties all the time with their portrayals of history, and historical figures’ appearances. Specific to the story of Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII, as Anita Singh points out in the Telegraph, Showtime’s “The Tudors” represented the aging, famously rotund, redheaded king as thin, handsome, and sensual, well into the later parts of his life, as he was played by then-30-something Jonathan Rhys Meyers. Yet, historical liberties that uphold whiteness and serve the white gaze don’t draw the same backlash about being true to history.

I’m actually totally fine with Jodie Turner playing the role of Anne Boleyn so long as the radical left promises to keep their mouth shut if in the future Henry Caville is selected to play Barack Obama and Rachel McAdams can play Michelle.

Not double standards- K? https://t.co/t1flg1az1w

— Candace Owens (@RealCandaceO) June 1, 2021

One thing we can agree with Owens on is that a movie starring Henry Cavill and Rachel McAdams as a loving married couple sounds like a great movie — just not playing the Obamas, please.

In a recent interview for Smith’s cover story with Glamour, the actor recounts ultimately not being surprised by racism she faced in being cast as the mother of Elizabeth I. “I did know it would be something that people felt very passionately about, either in a positive or a negative way, because Anne is a human in history who people feel very strongly about,” Smith said. “More than anything, I wanted to tell the human story at the center of all of this.”

And she’s right: Anne Boleyn is a well-known and oft-maligned historical figure, whose most famous historical fiction portrayals don’t exactly paint her in the best of lights. “The Other Boleyn Girl” and “Wolf Hall” — historical dramas based on popular novels — portray the queen as a cold, scheming homewrecker void of redeeming qualities. But the truth is, as Smith points out, Anne’s was ultimately a “human story,” one of a complicated woman who was certainly ambitious, and a passionate advocate for church reform and wealth redistribution. Anne was also a loving mother, something Smith told Glamour she could relate to, and Anne was eventually betrayed and killed by her own husband in one of the great tragedies of the long history of British queens.

Anne’s story has been told and reimagined dozens of times, including by Showtime in its sympathetic and critically acclaimed portrayal of her by Natalie Dormer on “The Tudors.” Pop culture references to the queen who lost her head are so frequent and popular that they’re even the subject of Susan Bordo’s 2013 feminist cultural study, “The Creation of Anne Boleyn.” But Smith’s performance as Anne in “Anne Boleyn” will mark the first time a non-white woman plays her onscreen — an exciting casting choice that arguably honors the late queen’s penchant for breaking with tradition, and being an “outsider” at the royal court.

Despite racist attacks and offensive comments like Owens’, Smith’s role in “Anne Boleyn” marks an exciting win for diversity in media. The first of the three-part series premiered on Channel 5 on Tuesday this week.

From Fleetwood Mac back to Crowded House, Neil Finn weighs in on the band’s open-hearted new album

Neil Finn‘s recording career dates back to the 1970s, and spans multiple seminal bands — New Zealand new wave iconoclasts Split Enz and pop-rock shapeshifters Crowded House — as well as projects with various family members and even solo work. In recent years, Finn also toured with Fleetwood Mac, which introduced him to people who perhaps weren’t familiar with his extensive catalog.

With the release of a new Crowded House album, “Dreamers Are Waiting” (June 4), Finn is starting yet another fresh musical chapter. That’s partly due to the band’s lineup: Finn and co-founding bassist Nick Seymour are joined by keyboardist Mitchell Froom — who contributed the iconic, solemn parts on the band’s enduring 1987 hit, “Don’t Dream It’s Over” — and Finn’s multi-instrumentalist sons, Elroy and Liam.

At heart, “Dreamers Are Waiting” preserves what’s always made Crowded House so beloved — Finn’s open-hearted vocals and lyrics, both of which are paired with timeless, gorgeous melodies — while adding a contemporary sheen. The album runs the sonic gamut from urgent surges (the string-laden social critique “Whatever You Want”) and cracked psych-rock (“Sweet Tooth,” which nods to the weirder corners of the Beatles’ White Album) to gorgeous, ’70s-pop-inspired ballads (“Real Life Woman”).

The album-closing highlight “Deeper Down,” meanwhile, exhibits Finn’s usual vulnerability and tenderness: “When you think it’s getting rough/On the surface high above/I’m always reaching out for love/A little deeper down.” And “Dreamers Are Waiting” is especially notable for its beautiful harmonies, courtesy of the Finn family; “Show Me The Way” in particular piles on frothy, dreamy vocal layers.

“The way that we sing together has got that familial ease,” Neil says. “And I have the same thing with my brother, Tim. It’s a joy to sing with your family. There’s just some intuitive thing about the way you round notes off, and the way you push and pull.”

On June 12, this interplay will be on display as the band streams “Crowded House: Live From The Island,” a concert filmed in Auckland, New Zealand, back in March. “The band was playing extremely well, and it was joyous,” Finn says. “You can sort of tell we’re having a good time. We’re going to be playing proper shows in the U.S., we hope, very soon. But in the meantime, it’ll give you an idea of where we’re at and what the show looks like.”

Salon caught up with Finn via Zoom on a recent weekday, around 10:30 a.m. his time. “I’ve been up for a few hours now,” he says. “But there’s still things to be done. Things to achieve in the day.” He touched on the process making “Dreamers Are Waiting,” how playing with Fleetwood Mac influenced the album, and how Elroy and Liam shaped Crowded House’s sound.

Crowded House went in to rehearse at Valentine Studio in Los Angeles and ended up tracking nearly half of the album. What was your cue that the music from those rehearsals was right for the record?

We had already rehearsed a little bit. We already knew there was a bunch of songs that we were playing really well. There’s a really strange timepiece of a studio that had been shut down for about 20 years. It’s got shag pile carpets on the wall, and not set up for modern digital recording at all; there’s an old tape machine. So we suspected that if we were playing well on the floor, that it would be worth recording everything. And there’s something about not having red light anxiety. We were just playing in a really unselfconscious way, and being recorded very well by David Boucher, our fantastic engineer.

We were surprised after a week or two in there that things were actually sounding much better than we could have hoped for. And we went into another studio, still a really nice old studio, but some of the stuff we tried to rerecord in there, we realized that actually what we did at Valentine has just got something; it’s got a spark. It feels like a real bonus when you get rhythm tracks you didn’t know you were getting. [Laughs.]

It’s the instinct — and if you can’t recreate it, then don’t force it. This is the first track; that’s when you’re at your most raw and it’s instinctual.

We were discovering what the band sounded like. It was a discovery, because it was a new lineup. We’d all played together, obviously, and we had an idea in our heads of that it was going to be good. But the first time you hear a playback of the band just playing naturally, and it’s really thrilling, there’s some energy about that that’s hard to deny — even if some of the details are less than perfect. It’s not as arranged as you might make it if you were really studying.

And then we had the chance to go and actually scrub it up in a really good way. We got locked down and we were in our little pods, and so we were able to look at it individually. Each person was looking at them and trying ideas out. Nick would send a tape over with a harp part or a timpani part, you know. He has no business belonging in those areas, but because he was on his own, he would try. And some of them were brilliant. A few of them didn’t make the grade. But it was a good opportunity, because we were separated and we had a bit more time, for people to be unabashed.

How did your lyrics for the record come together? Did you have some before the lockdown? Did they evolve during lockdown?

I had a few before lockdown. Some of them were written during the lockdown. My process has probably always been the same, really. I rely on things that arrive with the idea, and in many cases aren’t immediately apparent in terms of a clear narrative or anything. They have a sense of atmosphere, and I follow that as much as I can. They put you in a space, and they hopefully have a character. Each song has somebody that you can identify with, with feelings you can relate to. But beyond that, I am content to leave a lot of open doors.

Some of the lyrics are suggestive of the time we went through. But I was determined not to write a melancholy or maudlin record about isolation. I guess we had a pretty good situation going despite the time, so that would have been pretty inappropriate, actually, to write depressing songs. I wanted to make relatively up songs. But some of the songs are quite abstract. They’re impressionistic, I would say, if I was being kind. Occasionally nonsensical. But [they’re a] work in progress from beginning to end. I’m always changing the odd line right near the end. It’s always been the way.

In the rhythm tracks, some of the lyrics weren’t finished — I was channeling something, but albeit sort of slightly nonsensical. So in some cases, I spent weeks rewriting those lyrics to make them more formed and more clear. And then the last week, with a couple of songs in particular, I went back to the vocal I put down on the rhythm track, half of which was not making any sense, but it just sounds right. So who am I to argue, you know? This is like speaking in tongues or something.

It’s that instinct again. You’re like, “My first take was right — or my early take was the right one.”

Yeah. And it’s vulnerable, because you know there’s some skullduggery involved, and a little bit of wishful thinking about what the lyrics might be suggesting. But somehow, they just seem to suggest more when you leave them alone. They have more feeling attached, even if they don’t link from line to line.

As a writer, I find that when you labor over something, and then you step away, it was there all along; it was like right in front of you.

I think the craft, it’s the difference between the child and the adult. The child plays for the hell of it, and doesn’t think too much about where to place things on a page, if he’s drawing, or what metaphors to use or whether they’re appropriate or whatever. And then, luckily, as an adult, you do get a chance to edit those things. But you can never lose sight of the fact that the first outpouring has got something intrinsic about it you can’t lose, you can’t let go.

I like the idea that Liam and Elroy had time to develop their own sounds and approaches before they stepped into Crowded House; I found that very poignant. I saw an early Liam tour, and he was doing his one-man-band thing. He was just a force. How did the fact that they had their own influences shape the sound?

Well, it gave them the confidence in the rehearsal zone to bring ideas forward to speak up when something seemed corny. You need that process within a band; everyone needs to be able to speak freely. That’s what sets bands apart.

And also bring ideas that weren’t immediately obvious to me as a writer. Initially, sometimes there’s a rub. But that’s what lets light in to the idea. You construct something yourself, often you polish it to the point where it’s got no cracks in it. But I think it doesn’t let people in as easily. It’s like an edifice that you can admire from a distance. I think when other people put their touch into things. It allows other people to see into the heart of it somehow.

I feel like with Liam’s experience — and Elroy’s too; he’s been less visible as a performer, but he’s put a lot of years into writing and arranging. He’s very skilled and very creative. They came and brought a lot.

But they were also respectful and reverent towards the idea of Crowded House, because they grew up with it. They want it to be as excellent as they thought it was at our best. They saw us at our best. They want this band to be as good as they saw. So they were very much supportive of the process, but with the confidence of some experience now able to inform the process.

That’s such an interesting dynamic; that’s such a tightrope almost. That can be really intimidating them stepping in to the band, and especially if they did grow up with it.

Yeah, but I think we’ve made music in different contexts now quite a lot. So we’ve sorted some of that s**t out, as it were, and awkwardness of presenting an idea, or the awkwardness of saying you don’t like somebody’s idea.

I haven’t written with many people — my brother [Tim]; Liam; and now we’ve all written together in the context of this band. I take my hat off to people who walk into a room full of strangers and are able to think about writing a song. I find that really an intimidating thing in its own. But we’ve made music together, and we’ve crossed some of those bridges now. We’ve had the difficult days where you feel somebody is not getting it, you know. But there’s a great deal of love and appreciation for each other’s work. And, ultimately, that’s what counts.

There’s less of a father-son dynamic in rehearsals than some people might imagine. It’s more a shared thing. And Nick is fantastic; he knows them really well. He’s like an uncle, but he’s also like a really good friend. The humor hasn’t changed. I think within every band, that’s a really important thing that doesn’t get talked about that much. But the humor within a band, it really informs the music.

It’s not to say the music’s funny. But a little bit of pizzazz that comes from the cheeky side of people’s personalities, that they’re able to indulge with each other, really improves a band. I mean, the Beatles were the obvious example of a band that had humor to the forefront. Not that you heard all the time or often in the music, but it always had an underpinning.

It can defuse things, too, when you have that little element.

I think it would be a really awful thing to be in a group of people who didn’t get on and had to tour the world together. We’ve always had a good time in and around touring. Not all the time. But if we hadn’t, I don’t think we would have survived some of the tours we were on. You’re able to subvert whatever situation you find yourself in, because your humor gets you through.

I’ve never understood when there are bands where the people hate each other. I’m like, “How do you even do that?” It never made sense to me.

All that time spent together — it must be really hard. Yeah. I mean, it was mind-boggling to think of the years that Fleetwood Mac spent not happy with being together. And to that extent, though, you’ve got to really admire and hand it to them for their endurance and their willingness to see the prize, you know, the band and the songs and all that stuff. I’ve got a lot of respect for that. But I also find it mind-boggling that they were able to keep it together.

I saw Fleetwood Mac a couple times before I saw them with you. And there was an exuberance, and a real lightness on stage, at this show. I think part of it is because the band is so popular in America now with younger generations. It blows my mind that kids are snapping up copies of “Rumours.” But, yeah, I really enjoyed the show with you. It was a different experience.

I’m really happy that the band all had a really fun time on tour. There was a joy there that, for whatever reason, with the lineup and the crew and everything, there was a really good sense of community. I’m really happy and proud to be part of that.

The magic and chemistry of the band prior to my arrival is undeniable, so it’s nothing’s ever going to ever going to take the place of that. But I’m just happy that we added a chapter to the history that was, for the participants and the audience, really joyous.

That’s exactly it. People talk about lineup changes — geez, Mick Fleetwood started the band, but they’ve had so many lineup changes over the years. It’s not out of the ordinary.

It’s not out of the ordinary at all. It’s just par for the course with that band. To see John [McVie] cavorting out of his spot on a few occasions, and over to the BVs, doing a little dance and stuff, that doesn’t happen that often. It’s such a good feeling to know that you are part of some peak experience for a guy that’s been around doing this for a long time now.

And Mick still has that joy too. It’s so undeniable.

He’s the torch bearer, the flag bearer. I’m sure everyone really does know how important Mick is to the whole Fleetwood Mac story. But, really, without Mick — I don’t know if they would have got to “Rumours.” Without Mick’s energy and enthusiasm, that band could have ended up on the heap at some point. He’s extraordinary, and his energy for it, even now, it’s just mind-boggling.

You went right from Fleetwood Mac into Crowded House rehearsals. As a musician, what differences did you sense? What changes and influences did you bring?

It was a great thing to do. Because often when I come off the road, whatever thing we’re doing, for about a week, when you get home, you’ve taken a lot of information in, so it’s a really creative time, but often you don’t have the opportunity to turn it into anything. You wander the house, kind of going out of your mind, you know. [Laughs.]

So it was really great to go straight into rehearsal. I had this buzzy energy from that and [was] able to work on new music. The one thing we hadn’t been doing was working on anything new for the last two years. So [there was] a lot of energy and a lot of motivation there. And I don’t know directly whether I was thinking along the lines of this song or that song that I’d enjoy playing in the other band. It was more to do with serving the song and working to bring ideas forward that seem to be outgoing.

I think I wanted the music to be outgoing and not introspective. Fleetwood Mac have done plenty of introspective music, but the stuff that gets played on stage is all the outgoing stuff. And I really enjoyed that, having a set that’s just bangers, really, one after the other. And I’m not saying that this record has turned into an album of pop bangers in any obvious way. But it’s more outgoing than it might have been, and certainly than some of our recent records were.

Liam and Elroy bring such interesting and different perspectives too. Modern indie rock to my ears always sounds like it has a ’70s influence, weirdly enough. I don’t know if that’s actually true. But when you hear a song, you’re like, “Oh, that’s a modern song.” And I hear that a lot in their voices. They have good dynamic control, in a sense.

Both within and without the family, they’ve grown up and we’ve in many cases gravitated towards the same kind of music. There are some variances, but some of the same things resonate from generation to generation, as we were talking about before with Fleetwood Mac.

Songs and atmospheres — some of them remain timeless. Some of them are locked into a certain time, which is interesting, isn’t it? In some cases it’s production styles that lock songs into certain times. But you’re always very grateful 30 years on to find that a song gets played maybe in a modern miniseries or like over the end titles of a film or something in it, and it just totally resonates as if it was written yesterday.

Even though modern record-making is seemingly, in a way, out of my sphere – I can’t really relate to the way that modern records are made — there’s still songs that are played on piano and voice that hit the same markets, hit the same young people in the same ways. I’m just grateful there’s a few things that I can still relate to out there that mean something. [Laughs]

And it means nostalgia has a different feeling these days. I don’t feel like you’re treading dangerous water as much embracing — what do they call it? What’s the word — heritage? The idea of your heritage being a sort of slightly down vibe thing, where you’re just touring off . . . I mean, it can be sometimes, touring off the back of pure nostalgia.

But especially because we’ve got new music coming through and we’ve reinvigorated the lineup, I think, [this] added creative possibilities. It feels like all of the legacy of what we have is just really here and now and really helping us. It’s remaining contemporary somehow.

Does Trump really believe he’ll be “reinstated” in August? TrumpWorld is a confused mess

On Thursday afternoon, a new report in the National Review, longtime voice of the mainstream conservative movement, The National Review, confirmed much of what we’d heard from previous Twitter “reporting” by Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: Donald Trump apparently believes that come August, he will be “reinstated” as commander in chief.

Haberman broke the supposed news on Tuesday, tweeting that “Trump has been telling several people he’s in contact with that he expects he will be reinstated by August.”

Trump has been telling a number of people he’s in contact with that he expects he will get reinstated by August (no that isn’t how it works but simply sharing the information). https://t.co/kaXSXKnpF0

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) June 1, 2021

In a Thursday afternoon article titled, “Maggie Haberman is right,” National Review reporter and columnist Charles Cooke confirmed Trump’s thinking. Apparently the ex-president also thinks that former Sens. David Perdue and Martha McSally, both defeated by Democrats in the last cycle, will also be back in office after “audits” in Georgia and Arizona (respectively) have completed.

“I can attest, from speaking to an array of different sources, that Donald Trump does indeed believe quite genuinely that he — along with former senators David Perdue and Martha McSally — will be ‘reinstated’ to office this summer after ‘audits’ of the 2020 elections in Arizona, Georgia, and a handful of other states have been completed,” Cooke wrote. “I can attest, too, that Trump is trying hard to recruit journalists, politicians, and other influential figures to promulgate this belief — not as a fundraising tool or an infantile bit of trolling or a trial balloon, but as a fact.”

While Cooke, addressing a largely conservative audience, appears convinced that Trump believe the bonkers August hypothesis, which likely stems from MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, many in right-wing circles remain very much split on the theory.

The Daily Beast reported that Lindell believes he is behind the idea that is now planted inside Trump’s head. “If Trump is saying August, that is probably because he heard me say it publicly,” Lindell told Daily Beast reporters Will Sommer and Asawin Suebsaeng on Wednesday.

When reached for comment on this story, the bedding magnate declined to discuss the issue directly, telling this reporter, “You don’t exist in my world! You’re a terrible, horrible journalist!” Lindell would not comment on the nature of conversations he may or may not have had with Trump, but in a media appearance on Thursday evening, doubled down on his belief that Trump will be back in the White House by the end of August.

While some pundits have been willing to give Lindell’s fantastical theories plenty of air, including right-wing operative Roger Stone and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, others aboard the Trump train are pushing back, eager to convey the impression they’re still tethered to reality.

“Nobody’s more MAGA or PRO TRUMP than I am and this “TRUMP thinks he’s gonna be president in August” is BS. No one thinks this. It’s Hysterical Democrats running around trying to come up with a New Pretext to cancel Trump supporters,” Newsmax TV host Greg Kelly tweeted. “SHUT UP.”

Similarly, right-wing radio host and former Trump adviser Sebastian Gorka has been pouring cold water on Lindell’s claims of voter fraud, even though he hawks Lindell’s products on the air.

Gorka, who hawks Mike Lindell’s MyPillows but tosses cold water on his voter fraud theories, is now talking about blocking ultra-MAGA callers numbers with whom he doesn’t agree.

— Zachary Petrizzo (@ZTPetrizzo) June 3, 2021

On Thursday evening, Jenna Ellis, who was one of Trump’s many legal advisers during his attempt to reverse his election defeat, appeared frustrated over Lindell’s claims. “Mike Lindell should go back to law school … for the first time,” Ellis tweeted.

Respectfully, Mike Lindell should go back to law school… for the first time. #WarRoom

— Jenna Ellis (@JennaEllisEsq) June 3, 2021

In Cooke’s National Review article, he writes:

The scale of Trump’s delusion is quite startling. This is not merely an eccentric interpretation of the facts or an interesting foible, nor is it an irrelevant example of anguished post-presidency chatter. It is a rejection of reality, a rejection of law, and, ultimately, a rejection of the entire system of American government.

He concluded by stating the obvious: “There is no Reinstatement Clause within the United States Constitution. Hell, there is nothing even approximating a Reinstatement Clause within the United States Constitution.”

In a Friday morning interview on the right-wing cable network Newsmax, Trump adviser Jason Miller claimed that the stories about Trump believing in a magical August reinstatement are “not true.” Perhaps that settles it?

.@JasonMillerinDC debunks Trump saying he’ll be ‘reinstated by August.’

“It’s not true.” https://t.co/VlT7z8drtO pic.twitter.com/9f4wlzYl5O

— Newsmax (@newsmax) June 4, 2021

“We are trying to cancel Coca-Cola”: North Carolina county bans vending machines over politics

A North Carolina county approved a measure banning the use of any and all Coca-Cola machines in office buildings following the soda company’s sharp rebuke of Georgia’s anti-voting law passed back in March.

“The left wing in America, they defund, they boycott, they cancel, they tear down statues – all sorts of egregious actions,” Eddie Harris, the longest-serving commissioner of Surry County, told WXII in an interview. “The expectation from them is the opposing political side will cower in the corner and we’re supposed to accept that and it’s supposed to be ok. And it’s not ok.”

Harris specifically took aim at Coca-Cola CEO James Quincy for spreading “corporate political commentary favoring the Democratic party.”

“Our Board felt that was the best way to take a stand and express our disappointment in Coca-Cola’s actions, which are not representative of most views of our citizens,” Harris wrote to the CEO. “Our Board hopes that other organizations across the country are taking similar stances against Coca-Cola and sincerely wishes that future marketing efforts and comments emanating from your company are more considerate of all your customers’ viewpoints.”

He continued: “Michael Jordan once said ‘Republicans buy sneakers too’ when asked why he didn’t make public comments about politics. Citizens of Surry County and across America are growing increasingly tired of large multinational corporations and their CEOs pushing an increasingly intolerant, bigoted, left-wing, divisive political agenda on its customers.”

So, Harris concluded, “we are trying to cancel Coca-Cola.”

Coca-Cola’s Quincy, who personally condemned the Georgia bill months ago, rebutted Harris’ remarks. “Let me be crystal clear and unequivocal, this legislation is unacceptable, it is a step backward and it does not promote principles we have stood for in Georgia, around broad access to voting, around voter convenience, about ensuring election integrity, and this is frankly just a step backwards.”

While the county is populated by approximately 73,000 residents, it’s not entirely clear how many vending machines are scattered throughout the area. The vending machines also have yet to be officially removed from any office buildings, according to WXII.

Coca-Cola Consolidated, the largest independent bottler of Coca-Cola in the U.S., said that the company has reached out to county officials to arrange a meeting.

The county ban is part of a broader wave of conservative backlash against companies and individuals who signaled any opposition to Georgia’s anti-voting bill.

At the time of the bill’s passage, progressives demurred the measure as an egregious attempt to stifle the voting power of racial minorities, calling on companies to divest from and boycott the state of Georgia. When Major League Baseball promptly announced that it would be pulling its 2021 All-Star game from Atlanta, conservative politicians and pundits widely accused Corporate America of adopting a “woke” agenda despite having donated heavily to state and federal Republicans in the last election cycle.

Facebook bans Trump for two years, as social media giant changes controversial moderation rules

Former President Donald Trump’s ban from the social media site Facebook will last at least two years, the company announced on Friday.

The news puts a more concrete timeline on the ex-president’s suspension from the company’s services, which was instituted following the Jan. 6 insurrection over, in the company’s words, a “risk of ongoing violence” that could be caused by his posts.

Trump will be eligible to apply for reinstatement in 2023.

“Given the gravity of the circumstances that led to Mr. Trump’s suspension, we believe his actions constituted a severe violation of our rules which merit the highest penalty available under the new enforcement protocols,” Nick Clegg, Facebook’s vice president of global affairs, wrote in a blog post.

“When the suspension is eventually lifted, there will be a strict set of rapidly escalating sanctions that will be triggered if Mr. Trump commits further violations in future, up to and including permanent removal of his pages and accounts,” he added.

A graph accompanying the statement outlines “heightened penalties for public figures during times of civil unrest and ongoing violence,” including suspensions of one month, six months, one year and two years.

It was the latest in a string of high-profile headlines the social media giant’s moderation policies made this week. Facebook also reportedly plans to end a controversial policy that shields politicians and public officials from the same rules that apply to the site’s other users. It’s a move that could have massive ramifications for politics around the world.

Accordingly, Facebook may be looking at crackdowns on several world leaders, including Trump pals Jair Bolsonaro, the president of Brazil, and Narendra Modi, the prime minister of India. The politicians have been criticized for sharing misinformation on the platform.

Both policy changes come after a scathing critique of the company’s often opaque moderation rules from “The Oversight Board,” an independent group created by Facebook to review its content policies. Though last month’s ruling affirmed the company’s decision to ban Trump, it blasted the indefinite nature and foggy reasoning behind the move. Further, it criticized Facebook’s carve-out that treats content posted by public figures as different from everyone else.

Giving in to those suggestions represents a stunning change of course for Facebook. Founder Mark Zuckerberg has maintained for years that the company should not police speech by politicians.

Twitter made a similar shift back in January when it permanently banned Trump from his favorite and most effective platform. The former president has since started, and subsequently shuttered, a blog in which he shared tweet-length thoughts seemingly intended to be shared on social media. Both Facebook and Twitter engaged in a Sisyphean game of whac-a-mole to scrub any copy-and-pasting of the posts from their sites.

In a statement to The New York Times, Trump said Facebook’s Friday ruling was “an insult to the record-setting 75M people, plus many others, who voted for us in the 2020 Rigged Presidential Election.” He also added that the company should not be allowed to continue “censoring and silencing” him.

Tom Hanks calls out our whitewashed education and entertainment, citing Tulsa massace erasure

Days after the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa race massacre, in which mobs of white supremacists attacked and burned down the homes and businesses of Black residents in the Greenwood District in Tulsa, actor Tom Hanks published an op ed in the New York Times on the erasure of this shameful history from most American schools’ curricula.

Hanks said he hadn’t even learned about the tragic historical event until relatively recently, for all his time spent learning about history in school and watching historical entertainment.

“For all my study, I never read a page of any school history book about how, in 1921, a mob of white people burned down a place called Black Wall Street, killed as many as 300 of its Black citizens and displaced thousands of Black Americans who lived in Tulsa,” Hanks wrote. “My experience was common: History was mostly written by white people about white people like me, while the history of Black people — including the horrors of Tulsa — was too often left out.”

And, Hanks wrote, it’s not just the Tulsa massacre. History textbooks and historically based fiction entertainment have failed to depict the prevalence of white supremacist mob violence against Black people in general, and how it was widely condoned, and even celebrated, by government officials.

“Many students like me were told that the lynching of Black Americans was tragic but not that these public murders were commonplace and often lauded by local papers and law enforcement,” Hanks wrote. “Our predominantly white schools didn’t teach it, our mass appeal works of historical fiction didn’t enlighten us, and my chosen industry didn’t take on the subject in films and shows until recently.”

According to Hanks, this erasure of the Tulsa massacre and widespread anti-Black violence was about “placing white feelings over Black experience — literally Black lives in this case,” and upholding “the status quo.”

The legendary actor is right — lightening and omitting the truth about America’s extensive history of racist violence has deep implications. Failing to teach about everything from Indigenous genocide, to segregation, to Japanese internment in World War II, allows our country to never reckon with the darkest moments of its past, or do the work to repair and not repeat harm in the present. This erasure also breeds complacency to ongoing justice, today, from those who never have to face the truth.

Hanks may not work in education, but he is a powerful fixture in the entertainment industry. In his op ed, he demands that “historically based fiction entertainment must portray the burden of racism in our nation for the sake of the art form’s claims to verisimilitude and authenticity.”

And he makes another important point. For all right-wing politicians’ complaints about coddling American youth, by pushing back on the inclusion of anti-racist curricula in schools, they’re the ones prioritizing young people’s comfort — comfort that Hanks points out students must give up to truly learn and reflect. “Should our schools now teach the truth about Tulsa? Yes, and they should also stop the battle to whitewash curriculums to avoid discomfort for students,” Hanks wrote. “America’s history is messy but knowing that makes us a wiser and stronger people.”

There’s nothing “delusional” about Donald Trump’s conspiracy theories. They are working

“Delusion.” “Off the chart bonkers.” “Insane.” “Objectively nuts.” These are some of the terms that pundits — both on the left and on the right — are using to describe Donald Trump’s reported belief that he will be “reinstated” as president in August, a belief that is tied to the growing enthusiasm in QAnon circles for a Myanmar-style coup d’état.

It’s a comforting story: that Trump is a doddering fool who is lost in a pathetic fantasy. After all, there is no process to “reinstate” a former president. Moreover, the people who Trump is clearly getting this idea from are total kooks like his former lawyer Sidney Powell and pillow salesman Mike Lindell. And Trump himself is the “inject bleach” guy, no one’s model for rigorous empirical thinking.

Unfortunately, this is one of those situations where it’s unwise to underestimate Donald Trump.

It’s true, of course, that there is no pathway (outside of a true military coup, which Trump is almost certainly not up to organizing) that would oust Joe Biden and install Trump in the White House within three months. But after all of this time, one would hope that U.S. punditry would grasp the fact that Trump’s conspiracy theories are often not so much literal as they are aspirational.

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Trump uses wild conjecture to project images of what he wants the world to look like, and passively allows his minions — whether they are close to him, like Rudy Giuliani, or worship him from afar, like the Capital rioters — to self-direct the actions they will take in order to make his fantasy a reality.

As I note in today’s Standing Room Only newsletter, Trump loves the “will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?” style of giving orders, where he just puts a wish out into the world and hopes other people will pick up what he’s putting down. As his former lawyer Michael Cohen famously noted in his testimony before the House before he went to prison for crimes committed on Trump’s behalf, “He doesn’t give you questions, he doesn’t give you orders. He speaks in a code.” It’s a strategy that shields Trump from consequences while his self-directed minions, like Cohen or Giuliani or the Capitol rioters, take the fall. It also means less work for Trump.

So, no, Trump isn’t going to be reinstated. But he probably doesn’t actually think he will be. (His fellow conspiracy theorists like Sidney Powell will also, when the chips are down, admit that they don’t really believe all the crazy crap they say.) But the purpose of floating that he could be reinstated is not to express a sincerely held belief so much as it is to send a message to his followers and, even more disturbingly, to GOP leadership: He wishes them to ramp up their already alarming attacks on democracy. Trump has already been successful at turning his false claims that the election was stolen from him into a litmus test for Republican politicians. Now he’s upping the ante, using the mainstream media to amplify his message that it’s time to start getting even more aggressive in the fight to end American democracy.

The most immediate goals expressed in Trump’s conspiracy theories are often not achievable, but in the mere act of setting a marker with conspiracy theories, Trump often moves the needle closer to his goal of outright fascism. We saw how this played out with the January 6 insurrection. Trump fixated for weeks on a conspiracy theory that held that Vice President Mike Pence could simply deny Congress the right to count electoral votes and that doing so would magically result in Trump getting a second term. On its surface, this conspiracy theory was delusional. Pence didn’t hold that power, and even if he did, the Constitution orders that the person sworn in is not the guy who lost the election, but the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi.

So while Trump failed at his literal goal of staying in the White House, by every other measure, the January 6 insurrection he incited was a wild success. To be sure, there were a few shaky days right after it happened where many Republican leaders seemed angry with Trump. Soon, however, they fell in line in supporting Trump, covering up for his insurrection, and punishing any Republican leaders who continued to believe that attempting to overthrow the U.S. government is a bad thing to do. And then they weaponized the Big Lie Trump used to incite the insurrection in order to justify state-level assaults on voting rights and fair elections.

Republican leaders “agree with the underlying ideological claim of the rioters, which is that Democratic electoral victories should not be recognized,” Adam Serwer writes in a piece titled “The Capitol Rioters Won” for the Atlantic. Now “the Republican Party has focused on the long-term project of engineering the electorate to preserve its hold on power.”

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One of the most common misconceptions about conspiracy theories is that they are sincere expressions of belief. Sometimes that’s true, but just as often, conspiracy theories are better understood functionally, not literally. They are tools that conspiracy theorists use to further their larger goals. It’s irrelevant whether Trump “believes” that he could have kept power by stopping the electoral vote count on January 6 or that he’ll be reinstated in August. What matters is how he uses these conspiracy theories, to promote the ideological belief that a multi-racial democracy is bad, that a white conservative minority deserves to rule over the majority, and that any means necessary to make that happen are on the table.

That is why, as I explained Thursday, Trump doesn’t just believe that he’ll be “reinstated” in August. If it was merely a belief, he could play golf all day, content that the Secret Service will show up soon to whisk him off to his rightful place in the White House on the appointed date. But instead, as the National Review’s Charles C.W. Cooke — himself a hardcore conservative, if one who is a little more reality-bound than most — wrote, “Trump is trying hard to recruit journalists, politicians, and other influential figures to promulgate this belief.” It’s not a passive expression of belief, but an instrument that Trump is using to manipulate the media, his followers, and the Republican party.

This particular conspiracy theory has a twofold function. The first and most obvious is to keep pushing the Republican party towards fascism. But of course, they’re already going there, so probably didn’t need more of a push from Trump. The second, and perhaps more important to Trump himself, is that the conspiracy theory keeps him at the center of this story. As Axios founder Jim VandeHei said on MSNBC Friday morning, Trump is “frustrated” and “having a hard time getting through” because “people are no longer obsessed with what Donald Trump has to say.”

It’s definitely possible that Republicans will use Trump’s Big Lie to build up all this anti-democratic infrastructure — voter suppression laws, gerrymandering, laws that make it easy to throw out elections that Democrats win — and that politicians other than Trump will be the main beneficiaries. There are almost three years until Republicans can vote in a presidential primary, and a lot can happen in that time. Trump’s emergence as the next nominee is not guaranteed, as much as it may seem to be right now. And so the GOP may be set up to steal the next presidential election, but for someone who isn’t Trump. This new conspiracy theory helps reinscribe the notion that Trump is the only path forward for the GOP, that his ascendance is preordained, and that Republicans better not even consider thinking about running someone with less baggage or better hair.

So no, I don’t think Trump believes he’ll be reinstated in August. I don’t think Trump really believes anything, not in the way that most people hold beliefs at least. He has a purely instrumentalized view of the world: “Beliefs” aren’t sincerely held, but just another tool to manipulate others. He never asks himself “is this true?” so much as “what will it get me to say this?” And when it comes to this particular conspiracy theory, the answer may sadly be “quite a lot.”

Check out the trailer for the poignant new Anthony Bourdain documentary “Roadrunner”

“One minute I was standing next to a deep-fryer. The next, I was watching the sunset over the Sahara,” the late chef, author and TV host Anthony Bourdain once quipped. “What am I doing here?”

A new documentary from Academy Award-winning filmmaker Morgan Neville — “Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain” — will explore the answer to Bourdain’s question, illuminating how a once-anonymous chef became a world-renowned cultural icon.

In the official trailer, which was released on Thursday, archival footage shows Bourdain being recognized around the globe by fellow culinary professionals, by residents and tourists in the places he visited and even by construction workers idling on a New York street corner.

At a certain point in Bourdain’s career — following the release of his book “Kitchen Confidential” and the premiere of his long-running show “No Reservations” — it seemed like everyone knew the chef and his philosophy to “be a traveler — not a tourist.” Using food as a lens, Bourdain inspired countless people to explore beyond their comfort zones in a way that sparked empathy and a true sense of joy.

Through intimate interviews with those closest to Bourdain, “Roadrunner” gets to the heart of what underpinned Bourdain’s own seemingly insatiable appetite for adventure, as well as his struggles with mental health and depression. He died by suicide in 2018 at the age of 61.

“He was like, ‘Life is about finding a cliff worth jumping off of,'” one source recalled.

Another said, “He was always rushing to get out of the scene — to go somewhere next even if he had nowhere to go.”

As “Queens of the Stone Age” frontman Josh Homme told Bourdain in an episode of “No Reservations” that aired in 2011, “Nothing feels better than going home, and nothing feels better than leaving home — the bittersweet curse.”

Neville has experience as a documentary filmmaker covering figures whose legacies are seemingly larger than life. His 2018 documentary (“Won’t You Be My Neighbor?“) examined the mythos of Fred Rogers, the beloved host of the popular children’s TV show “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.”

“Roadrunner” will premiere in theaters on July 16. You can view the trailer below via YouTube:

11 best apples for apple pies (and tarts and galettes)

So you want to make apple pie. But which apples are the pie-friendliest? Here, Rowan Jacobsen — a James Beard Award-winner and the author of Apples of Uncommon Character — breaks down the best varieties. Better pies, right this way.

Lucky us. We are in the Second Golden Age of the Apple, with more great new varieties appearing in markets than we’ve seen in decades. But lost amid the snap-crackle-pop of the produce aisle is a sad little secret: Not all apples are cut out for baking.

For that, we have to hearken back to the First Golden Age of the Apple, the 1700s and 1800s, when more than 7,000 varieties graced American farms, many of them selected specifically for their pie prowess. Although these varieties are hard to find in supermarkets, they are increasingly common at farmers markets, farmstands, and pick-your-own orchards. Combine them with some tricks our ancestors knew well (use several varieties for maximum interest; mix sweet and tart, firm and goopy; and work some leaf lard into the crust), and prepare for pie perfection.

Here are 11 of the best apples for apple pie.

1. Esopus Spitzenberg
“Who would put into a pie any apple but Spitzenberg, that had that?” wrote the famed minister Henry Ward Beecher in 1862. A century and a half later, the question stands. Widely considered the most flavorful apple America has ever produced, the pride of New York’s Hudson Valley pushes both sweetness and tartness to an extreme, and infuses your pie with notes of lychee and roses.

2. Bramley’s Seedling
Too often Americans make their pies with nothing but overly hard apples, which slide away from each other as soon as your fork strikes. The Brits have long understood that you need some glue to hold the thing together, and for more than 200 years their go-to glue has been Bramley’s Seedling. The huge, green, very tart apples look like unripe grapefruits in the tree, but when cooked they melt into a thick pulp that works wonders when combined with a firmer apple. (Honorable Mention: McIntosh or Cortland.)

3. Gravenstein
Love it or leave it. Some people think this treasure of Sonoma County (where you can still find the Gravenstein Apple Fair every August) is too soft for pie, but others believe its unmistakable berry-apple fragrance is the very harbinger of fall. Pick them early for pie.

More: Here are the tools you’ll need to bake the perfect apple pie.

4. Belle de Boskoop
This tart and snappy Dutch belle is plump and rustic, with a hint of acidity that mellows in the oven. It will win you over in pies, crisps, and strudel, where the firmness is divine and the zippy edge keeps things lively. (Honorable Mention: Any starchy russet, such as Golden Russet, Roxbury Russet, Ashmead’s Kernel, or Zabergau Reinette.)

5. Northern Spy
Your grandmother may well have insisted on Northern Spy for her pies. And she was right. This early-1800s star is one of the few apples that can stand alone in pies. Bright and lively, firm yet tender-skinned, it’s experiencing a well-deserved resurgence as a new generation of bakers discovers that no other apple can match its bag of tricks.

6. Pink Lady
Not all modern apples fall flat in pies. Pink Lady is super-crisp when eaten fresh and nearly as crisp in pies, where its rosy hue and sweet-tart balance work wonders. No peeling, please.

7. Granny Smith
Green-skinned Granny Smith apples are juicy and firm, with a puckery-tart taste. Because they’re available year-round, they’re a reliable back-pocket baking apple for the contemporary home cook. (Worth noting: They make a fantastic apple cake, too.)

8. Golden Delicious
Golden Delicious apples have a sunny, nearly-neon color and a balanced flavor, wonderful for baking. Note: They do tend to soften more than sturdier varieties, like a Pink Lady or Granny Smith, but this makes them great for mixing and matching with other apples.

9. Honeycrisp
This 20th-century apple variety is super sweet and super crisp (hence the name). Food52’s Baking Consultant at Large Erin McDowell loves using Honeycrisp apples in her Cider Caramel Apple Pie because they “hold up very well in baking, resulting in a filling that’s tender but still has a little bite.”

10. Jonagold
Another 20th-century apple variety. This one is a mix of Jonathan and Golden Delicious apples, with a sweet-tart flavor and buttery-yellow flesh. It stands up well when baked — and not just in pie, either. Food52 co-founder Merrill Stubbs loves using Jonagolds for homemade Apple Chips.

11. Braeburn
Braeburn apples look like a sunset, with orange-yellow tie-dye skin. Their intense citrusy-spicy flavor makes them perfect for pairing with other apple varieties or using in big-personality recipes — like Brown Butter & Chedder Apple Pie, or this stunner from Alice Medrich where apples are steeped in a cardamom-lime syrup.

Now, let’s get baking. Here are three stellar pie recipes to get started:

Cider Caramel Apple Pie

While most apple pies use white or brown sugar, this one goes one step further: Start with a quart of apple cider and cook it down into a syrupy caramel sauce.

Sausage & Apple Pie

Not all apple pies have to be sweet. This savory recipe, with pork sausage and a cheddar cheese crust, is perfect for dinner.

Epic Single Crust Apple Pie

Half the crust, twice the fun. If lattice-work worries you, then look no further. This open-faced pie lets the apples get roasty, toasty, and concentrated in flavor.

Additional ideas from the editors:

Brown Butter & Cheddar Apple Pie

While you’d expect ingredients like brown butter and cheddar to pull focus from the apples, in this pie they only work to enhance. Both bring a nuttiness that complements the apples’ sweetness, and without the distraction of the typical cinnamon-nutmeg-ginger spicing, the apples are able to shine.

Apple Pie Tart

Can’t decide between a pie and a tart? Call this dessert Hannah Montana, because it brings the best of both worlds. All jokes aside, this tart features a buttery cinnamon-tinged crust full of a gooey, brandy-spiked apple pie filling and is absolutely delicious.

Mixed Apple Pie With Hazelnut Crumb Crust & Maple Cream

In this recipe you’re encouraged to mix and match with apple varieties, so run wild with your newfound fruit knowledge. Toasted hazelnuts, oats, and cinnamon make the crust more akin to a spiced oatmeal cookie than a butter-crust (sign us up!). Paired with tender baked apples and maple-kissed whipped cream, this pie is all we need to round out an evening.

Open-Faced Deep Dish Apple Pie

This deep-dish apple pie is as American as, well, you know the saying. We love this recipe because it’s got all our favorite apple pie elements in one: a walnut and warm spice-based crumble topping and a buttery, flaky crust. It’s also dialed back in terms of sweetness, which lets the apple flavors and nutty undertones really come through.

Easy Apple Galette

If baking is not your area of expertise but you still find yourself craving apple pie, galettes should be your go-to. They’re freeform, single-crust, and the goal is “rustic,” which we all know really just means it doesn’t have to look pretty. This recipe is as simple as it gets, and as easy as pie — nay, galette!

For more apple facts, apple recipes, and great writing, pick up a copy of Rowan’s book, Apples of Uncommon Character.

10 chicken coop ideas for your feathered friends

For the past few years, I’ve been telling anyone who would listen that, when I bought a house, the first thing I’d do would be to get chickens. True to my word, I closed on my house in February of this year, and come March, I was the proud owner of 12 adorable baby chicks. However, buying chickens is the easy part — building them a coop proved to be much more of a challenge, taking way more time (and money) than I ever anticipated.

On one hand, building a home for your chickens really isn’t that hard — they don’t need a ton of space, and there are lots of DIY tutorials on how you can build one from scratch or upcycle a shed and other existing structure into a coop. That said, there are a lot of little things to think about as you go, including where your coop will be placed, how big it needs to be, how you’ll keep predators out, and so on. I learned a lot of this on the fly, so I’m passing on my top tips in hope that you’ll be a little more informed as you jump into chicken ownership.

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The big things to consider when building a chicken coop

It’s easy to get fixated on how you want your chicken coop to look — because aesthetics — but first and foremost, the structure needs to be functional and secure for your babies. These are four of the most important things to think about before you start building.

Location

First things first, you have to decide where to place your chicken coop. It’s not rocket science, but there are some factors you’ll want to take into account when selecting a location. Your coop should be placed on level ground with good drainage — aka a place where water won’t puddle during rainstorms — and you’ll typically want it fairly close to your house so you can keep an eye on your flock. (This also saves you from having to trek too far in the winter to tend to your birds.)

Indoor and outdoor space

The ideal size of a chicken coop will depend on how many birds you have, so yes, you’ll need to know how many chickens you’re getting in advance. A widely accepted rule of thumb is that you want at least 3 square feet of space inside your coop for every chicken, as well as 10 inches of perching space per bird. You’ll also need one nesting box for every four or five chickens — don’t worry too much about these, though, as they can easily be created using recycled material like milk crates.

And that’s just the indoor space! There’s also the matter of creating an appropriately sized run — an enclosed outdoor area — for your feathered friends. Most people recommend a minimum of 10 square feet per chicken, but a larger space will make for happier chickens. If you’re planning to let your chickens free range, like I do, you can get away with a smaller run or no run at all. (I like having one just so I can keep them contained when needed, like when we’re mowing the lawn.)

Chicken math

Any chicken owner will warn you about “chicken math,” a very real and unexpected phenomenon that comes along with owning these adorable birds. In short, chickens tend to multiply — as soon as you have a few, you’re going to want more. You’ll see a cool breed that you simply have to have, or one of your hens will get broody, so you get her a few eggs to sit on. Before you know it, your flock has doubled in size. If I could go back and do it all again, I would definitely opt for a larger coop, because I’m pretty much maxed out on the number of chickens I can comfortably house . . . but I want more!

Predators

Another major consideration when building a coop is how you’re going to keep predators out. No matter where you live, there will be animals who want to hurt your chickens, whether it’s raccoons, snakes, foxes, or just neighborhood dogs. Proper predator-proofing is essential to keeping your flock safe and avoiding heartbreak.

For this reason, your run should have a roof to keep out birds of prey, and you’ll want to bury an “apron” of wire around the coop to prevent animals from digging in. It’s also important to secure your coop with two-step locks — raccoons are smart little buggers and can typically figure out simple latches. Hardware cloth is recommended for the sides of your run (I made the mistake of using chicken wire, which is too weak to deter most predators), and any windows or vents should have screens.

I could go on for days about all the little things I learned while building our chicken coop, but those are the biggest things to consider as you plan your new friends’ home.

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Chicken coop ideas for all skill levels

Chicken coops come in all sorts of shapes, sizes, and styles, and whether you’re a whiz with power tools or have never held a hammer before, there’s something out there that will suit your needs.

My Farmhouse-Style Coop

I’m definitely biased, but this chicken coop is pretty great. If you haven’t guessed, it’s the one that I built for my own little flock. You can get the plans for just $18 on Etsy (there are actually two sizes to choose from), and they’re extremely thorough and easy to follow, even for beginners. You’ll need a basic set of power tools to build it, and I love that it can be customized to suit your style.

A Teeny, Elevated Coop

https://www.instagram.com/p/COlx_R6syZO/

If you’re planning on having only a few chickens, this style of compact, elevated coop is a great choice. It will keep your birds safely off the ground at night, and they can usually be moved around your yard as needed.

Coop On Wheels!

https://www.instagram.com/p/CMkVaWfBSwG/

When planning my coop, I actually toyed with the idea of mounting it on wheels like this one. The benefits of having a portable coop are that you can move it as the seasons change and give your chickens fresh grass to scratch and eat.

A Modern Luxury Coop

https://www.instagram.com/p/CNSttldHZK8/

If you’re feeling really fancy, this coop is essentially a miniature house for your chickens, complete with pristine landscaping. I took a peek at some of the other photos on this Instagram account, and they actually tiled the interior to make it easier to clean — smart!

A Pretty Pastel Coop

How precious is the color scheme of this little coop? The cheery pink shutters and doors are a sweet touch to an otherwise simple build, and I love the sliding door and big glass windows, too. Plus, it’s small enough that it would be fairly easy (and affordable) to create.

A Rustic Barnwood Building

https://www.instagram.com/p/B23x7j-gKOf/

I love that this coop isn’t perfectly finished — that’s what makes it so charming! It has a rustic, homey vibe that’s dressed up with simple accents like a light fixture and hanging plant.

Rooftop Garden

This chicken coop does double duty as a raised bed where you can grow all sorts of vegetables and herbs. The best part? It’s a premade design that you can buy from Williams Sonoma — it even comes with white-glove delivery, so they’ll assemble it for you.

A Spacious Coop With A Dual-Section Interior

https://www.instagram.com/p/CF5osLGHFA1/

This design is sooo smart, and I’m honestly jealous I didn’t think of it. The coop has a spacious, full-height interior that’s sectioned off into two areas: one for the chickens, and one for storing food and other supplies. It’s got to be incredibly handy to have everything you need right inside the coop!

A One-Of-A-Kind Tardis Coop

https://www.instagram.com/p/CMQaaWOAn1k/

The sky’s the limit when it comes to building a coop, and here’s proof that you can truly get as creative as you want. This couple built their coop to resemble the Tardis time machine from Doctor Who! They even have a blog post detailing how they did it, in case you’re interested.

An Adorable A-Frame

For those with a small flock, something like this A-frame coop would work perfectly. It’s quick, easy, and inexpensive to build, and if you look closely, you’ll see there’s a handle on one side that lets you lift the roof up for easy cleaning.

Democrats choose failure: Can the filibuster survive a summer of threats?

I think we all knew on some level that the grand plans of the new Democratic administration and Congress were going to be tough sledding. After all, the Democrats’ congressional majority is about as slim as it can be and the Republican Party has dissolved into mass hysteria and cynical obstructionism. It is not a recipe for easy legislative accomplishment. Considering all of that, it was a good sign that the Democrats were able to get the COVID relief package done quickly and money flowing into the deeply distressed economy on party-line votes. But Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has now pulled his caucus together and any slim hope of bipartisan cooperation has evaporated.

This is not Donald Trump’s doing. He has certainly turned the GOP into a cult organized around his Big Lie, but obstructing Democratic initiatives, even those that they previously championed, has been standard Republican policy for decades now. Ever since the 90s, at least, they have operated under a rule that to allow Democrats even a very slight claim to bipartisanship is to be avoided at all costs. Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson’s 2005 book “Off Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy” skillfully deconstructed how they managed to accomplish this. Republicans have been at this for a while — and the Democrats have never successfully countered it unless they had a huge majority. (Even then, Democrats go to extreme lengths to avoid the filibuster, as we saw with the tortured passage of Obamacare.)

In fact, there have always been a few Democrats in both chambers of Congress, but most crucially in the Senate, who actually enabled this obstruction by arguing that they were above petty partisanship and would ensure the integrity of the system by being personally independent of all this unpleasant party politicking. Some of you may recall the painful process of trying to pass legislation back in the ’90s when you had diva Democrats like David Boren, D-OK, and Bob Kerrey, D-NE, whom you could always count on to be “wavering” over some detail that could blow up the bill. Later, during the Obama years, we had similarly annoying grandstanders like Ben Nelson, D-NE, and Blanche Lincoln, D-AR, gumming up the works over and over again. In the end, they were always pawns of the cunning Republicans who understand the utility of raw partisan power and aren’t afraid to use it.

But you will notice that the four I mentioned all came from red states that sometimes were willing to send a certain kind of Democrat to Washington — the conservative kind. This was happening as the old order, which had previously produced northeastern liberal Republicans and Southern conservative Democrats, was breaking down rather dramatically. As the long process of realignment of the two parties finally settled when the old guard leftovers from the 1960s and 70s finally retired, the fundamental problem with the U.S. Senate became clear: There are simply more rural, conservative, small population states than there are urban, liberal large population states and under the rules that govern that chamber, they essentially have veto power over everything. And that is often true even when the liberal, urban, large state party has a majority because the only way they can get one is if some of those conservative states elect conservative Democrats to the Senate.

Today, there are fewer of those than there used to be. And with shifting politics in places like Georgia and Virginia, Democrats have managed to change the dynamic and vote less flamboyantly “maverick” senators into office. But that doesn’t mean they don’t exist anymore, as we are currently observing with the intense focus on West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin and Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema, who are playing that familiar role in the current Congress.

But today, the stakes are much higher than they’ve ever been.

Republicans have completely lost even the small attachment they may have once had to our Constitution and our democratic system and are engaged in what can only be described as a slow-moving insurrection, one which I would say actually began in November of 2016. They are leveraging the power Donald Trump’s Big Lie has over the GOP base to institutionalize their minority rule through undemocratic subversion of the electoral system and nullification of Democratic votes. Unless the current Democratic Divas agree to eliminate the filibuster, an archaic relic of Jim Crow that was never contemplated by the Constitution, they are very likely to get away with it.

Democratic Party leadership, including President Biden, seem to finally have understood this and they appear to be attempting to cajole and pressure these holdouts. Biden subtly called out Manchin and Sinema in a speech this week and is “negotiating” with Shelly Moore Capito, the Republican senator from Manchin’s state, over the infrastructure bill which he almost certainly realizes by now will not garner the 10 GOP votes necessary to kill the filibuster. This indicates that it’s really kabuki theatre at this point and he’s really negotiating with Manchin to get him to agree to vote for the bill through reconciliation, which only takes 50 votes. (As of Thursday night, Manchin still says no-go to reconciliation.)

Beyond that, the Daily Beast reported on Thursday that Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., is planning to bring up a slew of bills during the month of June —including S1, the For The People voting rights bill — all of which will fail due to GOP filibusters. Democrats openly admit they are trying to illustrate in living color that the Republicans are intent upon blocking all legislation which they hope will lead the stubborn holdouts to agree to some kind of filibuster reform.

But let’s not kid ourselves. It’s also possible they want to clear the decks of legislation that more than few Democratic senators don’t really want to pass but also don’t want to have to vote against, which would not be all that surprising. It’s clear that some of the bills they plan to bring up on topics such as LGBTQ rights and gun safety are already non-starters with Manchin so they may not even get to 50. This wouldn’t be the first time the Democrats ostentatiously showed off their impotence in a vain attempt to gain conservative votes and please big-money donors.

Whatever happens, I think we have to agree that we have a fundamental, probably insoluble problem and it goes beyond the filibuster.

Our federalist system that gives Wyoming the same number of senators as California simply doesn’t work in an age of partisan polarization, particularly when one of the parties is batshit insane and its party establishment is willing to win by any means necessary. Getting rid of the filibuster is absolutely necessary for the survival of our democracy. But it isn’t a panacea and I don’t see any way to fix the rest of it unless the Republicans come to their senses. What are the odds of that happening?