A blog about societal, cultural, and civilizational collapse, and how to stave it off or survive it. Named after the legendary character "Crazy Eddie" in Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's "The Mote in God's Eye." Expect news and views about culture, politics, economics, technology, and science fiction.
I'm going to follow the advice to get a booster shot next week. That way, I can be a good example to my readers in addition to keeping myself healthy and safe.
How omicron has reframed the booster debate.
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Much of the messaging from authorities around Covid-19 booster shots has been confusing — and that’s partly because scientists themselves haven’t always agreed on who needs them. When many countries began to recommend boosters not just for the older and high-risk, but for all adults, they were essentially taking sides in a still-unresolved debate around that question: Why give an extra dose to healthy adults who are still very protected against severe Covid-19 cases from their original dose?
But since the omicron variant has emerged, many have changed their minds. To understand why, we talked to one formerly skeptical expert who scheduled her own booster shot based on what she learned about omicron. We spoke to her about what happens in your immune system when you get that third (or second) shot, and why it could be especially useful in stopping the spread of omicron.
That answered a lot of my questions. Today, I grade final exams. Tomorrow, I schedule my appointment for a booster shot. I hope my readers follow my example so we can speed up the end of the pandemic.
Good luck to Burnham on his two Grammy nominations for Best Song Written for Visual Media, which went to "All Eyes on Me" instead of "Comedy" — remember, electorates matter — and Best Music Film for "Inside." I don't think he'll win either, as he's contending with Emmy winner "Agatha All Along," Oscar nominee "Stand Up," and Oscar winner "Fight for You" in the first category and "American Utopia" and especially "Summer of Soul," which won six Critics Choice Documentary Awards and is my choice to win Documentary Feature at next year's Oscars [in the second category]. That's extremely tough competition.
The other nominees for Best Music Film at the Grammys are "Happier Than Ever: A Love Letter To Los Angeles" featuring Billie Eilish (I'm surprised "Billie Eilish: The World's a Little Blurry" with four Emmy nominations wasn't nominated instead, but "Happier Than Ever" is eligible for next year's Emmy Awards and may be a better film) and "Music, Money, Madness...Jimi Hendrix In Maui." I still think "Summer of Soul" is the favorite.
Before I continue discussing the documentary, I'm sharing SUMMER OF SOUL | Official Trailer from Searchlight Pictures, which is now Disney's prestige film division since it acquired it from Fox.
In his acclaimed debut as a filmmaker, Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson presents a powerful and transporting documentary—part music film, part historical record created around an epic event that celebrated Black history, culture and fashion. Over the course of six weeks in the summer of 1969, just one hundred miles south of Woodstock, The Harlem Cultural Festival was filmed in Mount Morris Park (now Marcus Garvey Park). The footage was never seen and largely forgotten–until now. SUMMER OF SOUL shines a light on the importance of history to our spiritual well-being and stands as a testament to the healing power of music during times of unrest, both past and present. The feature includes never-before-seen concert performances by Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, Sly & the Family Stone, Gladys Knight & the Pips, Mahalia Jackson, B.B. King, The 5th Dimension and more.
That really makes me want to watch the film. I'll show it to my wife, who loves Motown, to see if it makes her want to watch it with me. Yes, I'm praising a film based on its reputation, but I think it deserves its reputation. In addition to earning six Critics Choice Documentary Awards, Best Documentary Feature, Best First Documentary Feature, Best Editing for Joshua L. Pearson, Best Archival Documentary, Best Music Documentary, and Best Director for Questlove, and the Grammy nomination for Best Music Film, "Summer of Soul" has earned a special award from the American Film Institute, two nominations at the Black Reel Awards, six nominations from the Cinema Eye Honors Awards, two nominations at the Film Independent Spirit Awards, a nomination at the Gotham Independent Film Awards (it lost to "Flee," which tags it as strong competition), four nominations from the International Documentary Association, one nomination each from the PGA Awards and Satellite Awards, and won Best Documentary from the National Board of Review. Wow!
[T]he Documentary Branch of the Motion Picture Academy...deliberately do[es] not nominate documentaries that will earn votes from the entire academy as a whole that they don't agree [are] the very best. They also don't like documentaries made with archive footage. They also have political axes to grind.
The only prejudice that definitely applies is the second against archival documentaries, but I think it won't be enough to prevent its nomination, as it's very high quality, even if Questlove wasn't an established documentarian until now, and the film's politics work in its favor. Follow over the jump for two interviews of Questlove in which he discusses the film's political and social implications.
In the comments to 'SNL' opens with holiday greetings from Fauci and others, Liberty Felix linked to a video of Dr. Fauci discussing a universal flu vaccine. My response in the comments was "It's a good thing he was thinking like that. It made us better prepared for SARS-COV2, which isn't a flu." Vox uploaded Why we need a better flu shot yesterday, which allows me to give a better response that explains what a universal flu vaccine really is.
A universal flu vaccine is closer than you think.
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The flu vaccine is something many of us take for granted. Every year, starting in the early fall, “free flu shot available” signs start to line pharmacies and clinics – and yet in the US, only around half the population actually gets the vaccine. When talking about the flu, many equate it to a terrible cold, inconvenient at worst. But annual strains of influenza are estimated to cause hundreds of thousands of deaths worldwide. The reality is, we’ve been living with influenza for so long that we often forget just how dangerous it can be.
The reason we need an annual vaccine for the flu is that it’s particularly prone to changing. That ability to mutate is also what makes it particularly good at causing pandemic-level threats. The last four global pandemics before Covid-19 were caused by an influenza virus. Experts warn that another one is inevitable and that our seasonal flu vaccine isn’t going to stop it.
For 80 years, the way we research and make our annual flu vaccine has remained the same. It’s a costly and timely process that involves predictions and chicken eggs. The result is a seasonal flu vaccine that’s certainly good enough, but we can do better. And now researchers are closer than ever to something new - something like a flu vaccine that remains effective year after year, regardless of the strain. Something that could stop an outbreak before it starts; something like a universal flu vaccine.
America is in the midst of another COVID-19 surge. This weekend, America reached a grim milestone: 800,000 dead from COVID-19. One in 100 older Americans have lost their lives to the virus, with the majority of those being over 65. But many younger people seem to be throwing caution to the wind. In New York and San Francisco, thousands took to the streets for the annual pub crawl known as SantaCon, which was cancelled last year.
It doesn't surprise me that Inside Edition, a syndicated infotainment newsmagazine that is not the hardest news source, framed its report in terms of the pandemic's effects on entertainment. Just the same, Americans care about their entertainment, the core of the report was serious news, and the video description is the most informative I found, so it leads.
The WHO warned that the omicron variant is spreading at a higher rate than any previous variants and Dr. Simone Wildes discusses the concerns.
I'm going to follow the advice to get a booster shot next week. That way, I can be a good example to my readers in addition to keeping myself healthy and safe. When that happens, I hope my readers follow it.
Her rise to pop stardom was swift and definitive: it started on Jan. 8, when Rodrigo, already a Disney actor with an audience, released her first single, “Drivers License,” a torch song that took off on TikTok and stirred up theories about who inspired it. By Jan. 23, she became the youngest solo artist ever to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, where her song stayed for eight weeks.
Any questions about whether Rodrigo could repeat the success of “Drivers License” were put to rest when she released Sour on May 21. The album, scruffier than the symmetrical, beat-driven music that tends to dominate pop culture, announced her as a serious artist. With moody, confessional lyrics that added chapters to the story told in “Drivers License,” Sour offered something we needed after more than a year of unending distress: an outlet for anger and permission to cry. Hailed by critics, it also continued Rodrigo’s streak of smashing records: with approximately 385 million streams, Sour became Spotify’s most popular release by a female artist in its first week.
After dropping her music in pandemic-era isolation, Rodrigo sang at multiple awards shows, earned seven Grammy nominations—including Best New Artist, and Song, Record and Album of the Year—and was revealed to have the most-streamed album and song of the year around the world on Spotify. Somewhere along the way, she even appeared at the White House with President Joe Biden to encourage young people to get vaccinated. And on Dec. 6, she announced a 41-city tour for 2022.
I am glad Rodrigo is using her star power to help fight the pandemic.
Rodrigo's seven Grammy nominations include Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best Pop Solo Performance for "Drivers License," Album of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Album for "Sour," Best Music Video for "Good 4 U," and Best New Artist. To celebrate Rodrigo's honor and nominations, I'm embedding her Grammy-nominated video, Olivia Rodrigo - good 4 u (Official Video).
Music video by Olivia Rodrigo performing good 4 u.
I know this is as much a character as it is her, but after watching this video, I don't think I want to piss her off.
I close this post and the series as whole with Rodrigo's cover.
As the Greatest of All Time (GOAT) in a sport that captivates the globe every four years, Biles is all about control. Her life is dedicated to micromanaging every possible element—her diet, her training, her sleep—that goes into performing, so when the lights are brightest, and the stakes highest, little is left to chance. But for Biles, control isn’t just about winning; it can be the difference between life and death. She now has four skills named after her, each a breathtaking combination of daring flips and twists. Avoiding disaster requires a constant, firm grip on mental acuity.
After a five-year legal battle, USA Gymnastics, the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee and their insurance companies reached a settlement with the victims of former physician Larry Nassar. The settlement — totaling $380 million — is one of the largest ever awarded in a sexual abuse case. John Yang reports.
May this be at least a down payment on justice for Biles, the rest of the USA Gymnastics team, and all the others abused by Nassar.
I plan on finishing this series tomorrow with Olivia Rodrigo as Entertainer of the Year. In the meantime, here is Biles' cover as Athlete of the year.
I think Time Magazine's choices for Heroes of the Year, Athlete of the Year, and Entertainer of the Year are all worthy of attention. Now that Time has uploaded the video for Heroes of the Year, I plan on sharing that next as a pandemic update. Stay tuned.
For those of us lucky enough to live in wealthy countries with access to these top-shelf vaccines, it has made all the difference. The miracle workers behind the COVID-19 vaccines are the TIME Heroes of the Year not only because they gave the world a defense against a pathogen, but also because the manner of that astonishing achievement guards more than our health: they channeled their ambitions to the common good, talked to one another and trusted in facts.
Stay tuned for posts about the Athlete and Entertainer of the Year. In the meantime, here is the cover featuring the vaccine scientists, heroes of the year.
Person of the Year is a marker of influence, and few individuals have had more influence than Musk on life on Earth, and potentially life off Earth too. In 2021, Musk emerged not just as the world's richest person but also as perhaps the richest example of a massive shift in our society.
The video surprised me pleasantly by both praising and criticizing Musk; he deserves both. On the one hand, I consider him to be a fellow Crazy Eddie by trying to save humanity, or at least civilization, by promoting sustainable energy and space colonization. On the other, I think his level of wealth accumulation is not good for society. At least he's doing something interesting and generally useful with his money instead of just consuming conspicuously. That would be worse.
Edward Felsenthal, editor-in-chief of TIME, joins TODAY live to reveal the magazine’s pick for its 2021 Person of the Year: Elon Musk. “He is reshaping life on Earth and possibly off Earth as well,” Felsenthal says. “He really speaks to the moment we’re in.”
I think Time Magazine's choices for Heroes of the Year, Athlete of the Year, and Entertainer of the Year are all worthy of attention. Now that Time has uploaded the video for Heroes of the Year, I plan on sharing that next as a pandemic update. Stay tuned.
In the meantime, I'm sharing Musk's Person of the Year cover.
Dr. Anthony Fauci (Kate McKinnon) delivers a special holiday message about the Omicron variant with help from members of the CDC (Cecily Strong, Aidy Bryant, Kyle Mooney, Pete Davidson, Mikey Day, Melissa Villaseñor, Heidi Gardner, Ego Nwodim, Bowen Yang, Andrew Dismukes, Sarah Sherman).
"SNL" is always timely, so making fun of the Omicronvariant as the latest development of the pandemic is exactly what I expect. Speaking about what I expect, I don't expect much from Marjorie Taylor Green. She wouldn't know what communism is if the ghost of Karl Marx swatted her on the butt with "The Communist Manifesto."
Weekend Update anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che tackle the week's biggest news, like Biden announcing a diplomatic boycott of Beijing's Winter Olympics.
While I've ignored Smollett's false police report until now, the results of his trial alone qualify this post as the Sunday entertainment feature. I'd rather point to the pandemic and Olympics news in this segment as reasons I included it.
Weekend Update anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che tackle the week's biggest news, like a study revealing cats would be classified as psychopaths if they were humans.
As someone who has kept cats since I was eight, I can agree with that assessment of their personalities. That doesn't mean that I love my cat any less. As for the Oreo wine, it reminds me of these comments to Ta-ta, Tulsi, as Gabbard gives up:
Infidel753: Gaack! If there are any two things that don't go together, it's chocolate and alcohol.
Me: [T]hat's a matter of taste. I guess that means you're not a fan of Creme de Cacao.
This episode has a lot more holiday content, which I plan on saving for a future entry. Better yet, there will be another episode this Saturday, which should provide even more. Two bonus "SNL" holiday entries? That's one of the advantages to being an environmentalist who conserves his resources!
Rachel Maddow reports on the Senate adding raising the debt ceiling to the existing list of exceptions to the filibuster rule, and wonders why, if it's as simple as that, they have not added an exception for voting rights.
Probably because votingrights are not the emergency that hitting the debtceiling would be, even though they're a critical chronic issue with our democracy and because, as I wrote nine years ago and repeated the day before yesterday, that the GOP is "an authoritarian movement" and "an undead party in a democratic system." They see no need to expand and protect voting rights for everyone. As long as they prevent a majority of the U.S. Senate from supporting such an exception, it will never pass. Sigh.
Enough reality. Stay tuned for the Sunday entertainment feature. In the meantime, here's a meme for today's post.
