How We Loved and Lost the Hot Girl Summer – The Swaddle

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When Megan Thee Stallion first coined the term Hot Girl Sh*t in her song Cash Shit which released in 2019, she could not have envisioned her lyric kickstarting the new crown mantra for the body positivity movement, or a cultural reset that actually made you feel good about yourself, summer or not. Hot Girl Summer is easier to visualize than describe, but Ill try anyway. In the words of Stallion herself, Its about women and men being unapologetically them, just having a good-ass time, hyping up their friends, doing you. You definitely have to be a person who can be the life of the party and just a bad bitch.

In the Summer of 2019, all it took was one tweet from her, to start a moment that reframed health, happiness, and self sufficiency as hot unapologetically. If you deconstruct the term, hot girl summer is a largely feminine-coded term, and owes its origin to black women.

In the cultural zeitgeist, Hot Girl Summer worked, even in countries where summer is a far away dream is because you dont have to go anywhere, nor put yourself in harms way, nor ponder extraterrestrial life to have a Hot Girl Summer. You focus on your earthbound self and what it means to live your best life, in your own skin, as per a Buzzfeed article. This phrase has now gained so much traction that Megan had to fight a two year long legal battle to trademark the term, and earn full ownership.

The internet then did to it what it does best memefication, and co-option. Soon enough, every brand joined the bandwagon of Hot Girl Summer, with Wendys declaring their lemonade to be the The Official Drink of Hot Girl Summer, and beauty brands such as Maybelline and Fenty Beauty adding their own twist to this momentum. Hot Girl Summer became the lifestyle choice not only in 2019, but the coming years as well.

But retail brands co-opting it as an attempt to ride the cultural wave had a damaging impact. It led to a conversation on brands appropriating black culture and lingo without treating black people fairly, as an article in Bitch Media notes. The cosmetic industry has not been kind to the black community, be it in terms of exclusion in skin shades, or hair products and Wendys also came under fire for acts of racism in the past. The article goes on to state, If you dont support Black women, give them access, and make them feel seen in the products youre peddling, then you shouldnt adopt their intraracial phrases to line your pockets.

Related on The Swaddle:

Why Retailers Rebranding as Woke Is Disingenuous

Hot girl summer was less an aesthetic and more a state of mind you dont have to be conventionally petite and skinny, you dont have to be a model, you dont even have to be a girl a hot girl is anybody that oozes confidence and charisma, and lives their truth. In her interview with Variety, Stallion lists the rules that embody a Hot Girl, You just have to be the life of the party, you have to be kind, you have to be confident and you have to like try to vote! But when brands adopted the phrase they turned it into its antithesis. It did, inevitably, become an aesthetic one that drew more attention to ones body than was otherwise warranted.

The past couple years have not been great, to put it mildly. Amidst the world burning (literally), political outrages, and a persistent threat for the unseen future, summer no longer represents or celebrates the joy of life, and Hot Girl Summer is one path to some much needed respite. Hot Girl Summer owes its genesis to not only Stallion, but also those who paved the road for her, such as the Riot grrrl movement, the Girl Power movement, Spice Girls, and third wave feminist politics.

Buzzfeed goes on to describe this vision as a means to inspire this kind of jaw-dropping awe of feminine agency without completely forgoing men if you dont want to. (Its more no boys needed than no boys allowed.)

Although this phrase has largely positive intonations, it became commodified under the aegis of body positivity, and nothing was the same again. Reclaiming body positivity is no new phenomenon, and despite the repetitive chants of Hot(ness) is a mindset, summer remains intrinsically linked to bikini bodies, summer shredding, and conventionally attractive body types perhaps even more so today, in the age of Ozempic. When brands co-opt this mantra to promote diet culture under the guise of fitness, the momentum of the movement shifts.

Michelle Carroll, in her fitness blog, speaks of how during the summer, advertising is directed at getting you ready for summer, through cosmetic procedures, cellulite-reducing creams, spray tans, gyms, fat-burners, laser hair removal. In essence, they control your environment. By surrounding your physical and virtual world with reminders that you still have work to do before you even dream of setting foot outside in the summer months, you are more likely to spend, spend, spend! Capitalism does not care for body image. These tactics get the brands their desired exposure, but ultimately contribute to a debilitating body image.

A study conducted by Scott Griffiths et al reported on the fluctuations seen in body image through the seasons. As hypothesized, in summer they observed peaks for body dissatisfaction alongside peaks in four proposed seasonal body image mechanisms: pressure from media advertisements, pressure from peers on social media, the feeling that ones body is on public display, and appearance comparisons.

The beauty and fashion industry ruthlessly capitalizes on our insecurities and anxieties, and at the end of the day, a movement targeted towards upliftment and inclusivity, ended up doing nothing but putting us down again. Hot Girl Summer was for everyone now, against the spirit of its origins, its back to residing in billboards and perfect Instagram ads.

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How We Loved and Lost the Hot Girl Summer - The Swaddle

The Totally Rockin’ History of Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem – Collider

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After so many years on our big and small screens, as well as in our hearts, the Muppets are part of the zeitgeist. You'd be hard-pressed to find a person, young or old, who doesn't know about Kermit, his complex relationship with Miss Piggy, or his long list of iconic felt friends. Why then is Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem so shrouded in obscurity? The band has appeared in every major incarnation of the Muppets, from the very beginning, but with the exception of fan-favorite Animal, very few know their names or history as the Muppet's house band.

Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem, or just "Electric Mayhem" as they're often known, is a rock band made up of resident musicians of the Muppet Theatre. The band is usually made up of lead singer and keyboardist Dr. Teeth, bassist Floyd Pepper, saxophonist Zoot, lead guitarist and singer Janice, drummer Animal, and trumpeter Lips. Now with the band starring in their own spin-off series on Disney+, here's everything you need to know before watching The Muppets Mayhem.

RELATED: 'The Muppets Mayhem' Review: Dr. Teeth and Company Are Ready to Rock

After the success of Sesame Street which began in 1969, Jim Henson and his company featured their Muppet characters in TV segments during the early '70s, namely on Saturday Night Live. This gave Henson a taste for a more adult brand of Muppet entertainment, which encouraged him to branch out while simultaneously continuing with his children's educational programming on Sesame Street. The Muppet Show would be aimed at an adult audience, focusing on sketch comedy, and began with a TV pilot titled, The Muppets Valentine Show. The 1974 half-hour special guest-starred Mia Farrow and reintroduced '50s and '60s Muppets such as Kermit and Rowlf to a new audience.

This was then followed up by another pilot, The Muppet Show: Sex and Violence in 1975, in which the Muppets parodied the rapid growth of sex and violence on TV. Sex and Violence marked the very first appearance of Electric Mayhem, including all its usual members sans Lips. The band's introduction doesn't get much more rock 'n' roll, but America wasn't ready for such a raunchy puppet show just yet. Although this was successful in rebranding the Muppets as more adult in content (something that has since been replicated in 2015's sitcom The Muppets and 2018's The Happytime Murders) it failed to get the show picked up by ABC or any other American broadcaster at the time.

The Electric Mayhem band members were designed by creator Jim Henson and his team, including Michael K. Firth, Bonnie Erickson, Don Sahlin, and Dave Goelz. Henson and Goelz were among the original Electric Mayhem performers, which also included Frank Oz and Richard Hunt. The band resembled and represented the idea of popular bands of the '70s as a whole, and Henson and his team even based individual band members on specific musicians of the time. In look, name and character, Dr. Teeth is inspired by the American singer-songwriter Malcolm John Rebennack Jr., better known as Dr. John. This six-time Grammy winner was a celebrated New Orleans blues, jazz, funk, and R&B musician until his death in 2019.

Dr. Teeth and his band are also partly inspired by Elton John, with Gato Barbieri serving as inspiration for saxophonist Zoot and Janice Joplin directly influencing the Muppet Janice in style and in name. Karen Falk, the Jim Henson Company's historian and archivist, stated, "At that time, Jim had a strong interest in the counter-culture movement (as evidenced by his experimental film Youth '68) and sought to reflect that in the composition of the band. One proposal from about 1970 says that the band would do songs like 'Sunshine' from Hair. In fact, they are all dressed to out-hair the Hair cast." Floyd Pepper was inspired by the Sgt. Pepper-era John Lennon, and Animal is based on The Who's Keith Moon, making Electric Mayhem the world's greatest supergroup in essence.

After ABC and all other American networks passed on both pilots, British ATV producer Lew Grade agreed to co-produce The Muppet Show with Henson, debuting the series in syndication in 1976. This marked the return of Electric Mayhem as well as the first appearance of several beloved Muppet icons such as Fozzie Bear, Gonzo, and even Miss Piggy. Needless to say, The Muppet Show was a major hit over its five-season run, growing in popularity as a vaudevillian sketch-variety show. In it, Electric Mayhem took on the role of the show's house band and occasionally the pit orchestra, even welcoming guest members such Don Knotts and Hal Linden to perform with them.

During The Muppets: Sex and Violence, one musician is seen among the band who never again played with Electric Mayhem. His name was Jim. Jim was a banjo player, designed to look like Muppets-creator Jim Henson, and was usually seen as part of his other band, The Country Trio. The trio, made up of Jim, Frank and Jerry were all modeled on their respective performers, and featured in various variety shows throughout the 1970s as well as The Muppet Show. Only one Muppet musician ever joined Electric Mayhem after its debut and managed to remain a permanent member to this day, though, and his name is Lips.

During The Muppet Show's fifth and final season, the band welcomed its trumpeter Lips, who was inspired by Louis Armstrong. Performer Steve Whitmire recalls, "I wanted to do this Louis Armstrong kind of voice and at that point and time, there was some question as to whether or not we would offend African American people by this white guy doing a black voice as a trumpet player." As a result, Lips was kept quiet for decades. Dave Goelz stated in 2013 that "Whitmire has been frustrated that for thirty years he hasnt really found a character hook for Lips the trumpet player." Goelz continued to state that a few months prior to the interview, Lips was required to state "but we don't have any instruments" and in a moment of clarity, Whitmire finally discovered Lips' character and way of speaking. "The character was born after 30-odd years in labor."

The Muppets went from strength to strength, branching off into multiple movies including The Muppet Movie, The Great Muppet Caper and The Muppets Take Manhattan throughout the '70s and '80s. In 1990, the band welcomed another short-lived member, during their appearance in The Muppets at Walt Disney World. Clifford first appeared the year prior, in The Jim Henson Hour where he was the bass player for Solid Foam. When playing with Electric Mayhem at Walt Disney World, Clifford took on the role of auxiliary percussionist. Clifford was a guest alongside Kermit on The Arsenio Hall Show to promote their most recent production, where he revealed he likes to be spanked and admitted that his career choices were to join either the Muppets or Milli Vanilli (with whom Clifford shares a resemblance). Although Clifford would not play with Electric Mayhem more than once, he went on to find success as the host of Muppets Tonight in 1996.

In 1992's The Muppet Christmas Carol Electric Mayhem played the role of the Fozziewig's Christmas party band, with Animal struggling to limit himself to slow Victorian-era music. They then appeared as the pirates' entertainment aboard the ship in 1996's Muppet Treasure Island and performed in the Poppyfields in 2005's The Muppets' Wizard of Oz. In the latter, they arrive late to perform backup for the Wicket Witch of the West as a result of their beaten-up tour bus, a common occurrence for Electric Mayhem's modes of transportation.

Speaking of buses, the band's 1966 International Harvester Loadstar Carpenter debuted in The Muppet Movie in 1979 and featured in that year's Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, solidifying its iconic status. It returned in 1999's Muppets From Space, having been updated from its classic '70s style to feature '90s appropriate CDs on the ceiling instead of 45s. After this, the original bus was auctioned on eBay for $50,000 along with a Brian Henson-signed letter of authenticity. A search was conducted by Disney in 2010 to find the original bus, so it could be featured in the 2011 movie The Muppets, but it was soon discovered to have been destroyed. A recreation was used for the reboot.

After the critical, commercial and awards success of The Muppets, ABC learned from its mistakes in the 1970s and produced an adult Muppets sitcom, this time in the workplace mock-documentary style of The Office and Parks and Recreation. It also harkened to 30 Rock in premise, as it featured the Muppets' behind-the-scenes life working on Miss Piggy's celebrity talk show. Electric Mayhem served as the show's band, and the series debuted their new wheels, a psychedelic Volkswagen Microbus. It's this new bus that features heavily in the marketing for their new Disney+ spin-off series The Muppets Mayhem, and serves as their primary mode of transport for a large portion of the new series.

After decades of being reliable supporting players in the Muppets universe, The Muppets Mayhem, which is now streaming on Disney+, finally puts the spotlight directly on the band. Current Dr. Teeth performer Bill Barretta is also a co-creator of the show, and Goelz, as he has done since the beginning, plays Zoot.

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The Totally Rockin' History of Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem - Collider

‘How to Blow Up a Pipeline’ director Daniel Goldhaber explains the … – The Real News Network

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The title alone ofHow to Blow Up a Pipelinehas raised its share of eyebrowsand drawn condemnations from right-wing critics. The film, based on anon-fiction book of the same nameby Andreas Malm, depicts a fictional attempt by a group of young climate activists to take action against the fossil fuel industry. But what is the political purpose driving the film adaptationand does it actually teach viewers how to blow up pipelines? Director Daniel Goldhaber joins TRNN contributor Anders Lee to explain the vision behind the film, the intervention it seeks to make, and what lessons it can offer in a world on fire.

Daniel Goldhaberis an American director, screenwriter, and producer whose most recent work isHow to Blow Up a Pipeline

Post-production: Jules Taylor

Anders Lee: Anders Lee here. Welcome to The Real News. The movie How to Blow Up a Pipeline tells the story of five young people, all affected by fossil capitalism in different ways, who take climate justice into their own hands with an active industrial sabotage. Inspired by a nonfiction book bearing the same name, How to Blow Up a Pipeline grapples with questions of desperation, of strategy, and the roles of both violence and art in social movements. To discuss these themes and more, Im speaking with the films director, Daniel Goldhaber.

All right, today were joined by Daniel Goldhaber, the director of How to Blow Up a Pipeline, which is now in theaters. Daniel, thank you for joining The Real News.

Daniel Goldhaber: Thank you so much for having me.

Anders Lee: You conceived of this movie with a few other people during the height of the pandemic when a lot of social movements, especially the climate movement, were overtaken by a sense of powerlessness. How did the pieces come together to make this movie happen out of that?

Daniel Goldhaber: Oh, thats a big question. It was a lot of pieces. It was having a really great team to work with across the board, really amazing collaborators from my co-filmmakers to our cast and to our crew, and also to our financiers, who really gave us the support to make this movie exactly the way that it needed to be made. So this was really a team effort from start to finish.

Anders Lee: And I know the title of the movie is also the title of a book, of course, by Andreas Malm, who you had an open line of communication with throughout the process of making a film. What was it specifically about this book that inspired you to make a movie about it? And are you aware of any other nonfiction theoretical polemics that have been turned into narrative films?

Daniel Goldhaber: I dont know of any others, but if somebody knows one, I would love to be able to answer the question with that knowledge. I think that theres a number of things about the book that are really inspirational. I think reading it, you get a sense of action and activity thats very exciting. I think, obviously, the title itself suggests an action on its own, and I think that thats also very exciting, because the book doesnt actually tell you how to blow a pipeline, but it suggests immediately a movie and a genre film in which you can actually get into the details. So I think it was that perfect fusion of subject matter, of some ideas that felt really valuable to explore, and then in concert with something that could also make for a really thrilling and fresh heist film.

Anders Lee: Right. And because you were in contact with Malm, which feels like a really interesting aspect of this, what was his reaction at first when you told him you wanted to make a movie out of this? And what was it like to work with him throughout the process?

Daniel Goldhaber: I think that he was maybe initially a little bit surprised, but I think only because you dont really write a manifesto like this and expect Hollywood to come knocking at your door. I think that Hollywood is not exactly known for its radical sympathies. But after, I think, he got over that initial surprise, I think he was very excited about it. I think that he understood the ways that the movie and the book were fundamentally different, but also the ways that the movie could help communicate his message on a broader cultural level.

Anders Lee: Now you are the son, I believe, of climatologists, and you previously had made a documentary about climate change.

Daniel Goldhaber: I just worked on one as an assistant.

Anders Lee: Okay.

Daniel Goldhaber: Yeah.

Anders Lee: But one of the characters in the film is also part of a crew. He does the boom mic, I believe. What do you see having now done a nonfiction and a narrative movie about some of the same subject matter? What do you see as the main differences, and what are those experiences like in how they differ?

Daniel Goldhaber: Documentary and narrative, I think, have very different ethical considerations that you have to have in mind when you do them. One of the things about making a narrative film is youre not toying with real peoples lives. You have a different contract with an audience. And also I think that you have the ability to sometimes Something that my editor, Dan, says is that documentaries can be very good at representing the world as it is now, but not necessarily very good at representing a world that could be. And I think that with Pipeline, we very much wanted to represent a world that could be, and were suggesting and exploring a specific hypothetical action.

I think that, more specifically to the point of the problem of climate change, I think that there was a moment in which climate documentary was very valuable because there wasnt a lot of awareness. That had to be raised. And again, as the child of climate scientists and keenly plugged into just how much skepticism there has been about the movement. But I think were at the point now where, especially in a post-COVID moment, everybody on planet Earth more or less has been touched by climate change, that its critical to remember that [inaudible] is climate, and that whether or not there are holdouts in the denial category, that nevertheless, were in a place of needing to change the conversation from awareness to action. And I think that you cant really easily necessarily do that with a documentary, though Im sure that there are great docs being made today about some of the actions being taken by activists. I think that with this, we wanted to explore a hypothetical action.

Anders Lee: And it makes me think of An Inconvenient Truth thats being maybe the first wave of climate change in a cinematic way, which was, of course, came out in 2006. And do you think that a movie like How to Blow Up a Pipeline could have been made back then? Or is it unique to this zeitgeist we have in the early 2020s?

Daniel Goldhaber: I think it would just be different had it been made back then, and certainly the movie wouldve had to explain climate change to the audience. I think that one of the things that makes Pipeline a shift, or I think one of the things thats different about it in contrast to some films that have come before it is we dont really talk about Well, we do talk about the stakes of climate. We do talk about the impact of the oil and gas industry on peoples health, on peoples land, on peoples lives. But I think the movie accepts that you are aware of whats happening in the world around you. And I think that thats an assumption that, again, couldnt have really been made until a post-COVID moment.

Anders Lee: [Inaudible] spend much time debunking right-wing talking points, thats for sure.

Daniel Goldhaber: Yeah.

Anders Lee: Well, you mentioned criticism of the climate movement from the right, but it has also been criticized, perhaps unfairly, as being predominantly white, yet the cast in this movie is quite racially diverse. Im wondering if you view that casting as correcting certain tropes about environmentalists, or was it perhaps an aspirational way?

Daniel Goldhaber: In all honesty, all of these people in the film are based on real people in the climate movement or real people in our own lives that we were thinking about. I think that, obviously, there are racial divides and privilege divides in the climate movement, but in many ways those have been easing. I think, especially, its important to recognize that most people that have been most directly affected by climate disruption have been Black and Brown people, have been minority communities and poorer communities. Theyre the brunt.

The characters of Theo and Sochi were directly inspired by some Latina activists, Latina and Black activists in a community in Houston that we borrowed from a book called What Were Fighting For is Each Other by Wen Stevenson. But then you have the character, Michael, he is an Indigenous extremist, but certainly Indigenous people have been at the forefront of the climate and the environmental movement since time immemorial. And so I think that more than being a corrective, I think if its a corrective, its a corrective in trying to actually represent the diversity of the different kinds of people and experiences that have fed into the climate movement.

Anders Lee: Right. Well, something else that the characters really grapple with in the film is the term terrorist or terrorism. Certain radical scholars have argued that thats not a term people should use since it can be weaponized by the state. So its really interesting to see the characters having that same discussion. Do you agree with that assessment, or do you have an opinion on the term terrorist? Is it something that we should avoid or is it something that people who are engaged, perhaps, in industrial sabotage should take on?

Daniel Goldhaber: I dont really know if I have a clear opinion on that. Heres what I feel certain about. You have people who are being essentially turned into political prisoners of the US state using post-9/11 terrorism laws, terrorism enhancement laws that have allowed the government to charge people like Jessica Reznicek and Ruby Montoya with terrorism for poking holes in the Dakota Access pipeline before there was even oil running through it. I think that its more important to focus on the ways that the US government is using the word terrorist and the terrorism enhancement to brand people as somehow worse than criminals, or really, fundamentally, to suppress speech and dissent and to suppress a movement thats simply just trying to protect our ability to continue living on planet Earth.

And obviously, youre seeing an even greater escalation of that tactic in Cop City in Atlanta, where completely peaceful protestors are being charged with domestic terrorism enhancements for simply attending a completely non-violent, non-destructive rally. So the only evidence being proffered being that they have dirt on their shoes because other people potentially had burned tractors. So I think that its more important to focus on those human rights abuses. And I think that, ultimately, then when it comes to the nature of how activists engage, its about whats necessary for them to defend their own speech, right to protest, and right to justice. And so I think whatever gets us there is good.

And part of the reason I dont take a strict position is I think Ive just heard both sides and positions from the movement itself. Ive talked to people who believe that you do need to defang the word [and Ive] talked to people who bristle and worry about it, because if you embrace the label, you legitimize what the states using to criminalize your speech. So its a difficult thing to navigate, but I think, again, thats why its all the more important to have eyes on what the state is doing.

Anders Lee: Right. And do you see that escalating in the coming years as the environmental movement hopefully gets more serious about these sorts of things? Are you concerned about the blowback that we could see from the federal government classifying environmental climate activists as terrorists? And what measures do you think could be taken that we havent seen yet?

Daniel Goldhaber: Absolutely. Its not even abstract. Its here. You know what I mean, its already happening. Yeah.

Anders Lee: Well, again, one of the things I found really interesting about the movie is the characters working through these problems, many of which I know you discussed with Andreas Malm. One critique of his work revolves around the concept of the propaganda of the deed, that we need a mass movement and individual acts of violence or sabotage may not be what it takes to get us there, at least on their own. How did you reconcile that argument in making the film?

Daniel Goldhaber: Can you repeat? Im a little confused about exactly which two arguments Im reconciling there.

Anders Lee: The propaganda, the deed, so industrial sabotage, for instance, do you think that its a fair critique that may not galvanize a mass movement in the way that we need? Or is that something that you incorporated by thinking into the

Daniel Goldhaber: I see what youre saying. I think Andreas does not think that there is a silver bullet to climate change. And I think that ultimately what Andreas is The way I read the book and the text is essentially as a three-part argument. There has never been a social justice movement in history that is not engaged in the disruption of civil life, and generally speaking, the destruction of property and the sabotage of the state that the climate movement and the existential threat of the climate movement and the timeline of the climate movement is such that it requires some form of escalation of tactics in order to succeed based on the historical precedence that come before it.

And then I think he makes a bit of a novel jump, which is the reason why I think his took off where other similar arguments like this have maybe not, which is to say, well, whats the target? Because I think the problem is that when it comes to climate, its such a mass systemic problem that you cant point to one industry or government or leader or individual whos responsible. We all participate in it, some to a far greater and some a far lesser degree. But you consume, and if you exist in a contemporary capitalist, especially urban, life, you are participating in the destruction of the planet. So were asking this question: what do you do if you are going to engage in these historically precedented acts, what do you attack? Because I think that theres one thing about attacking the police station when youre suffering from police violence, that target makes sense. And I think that what the conclusion Malm drives is that we need to destroy the machines that are killing us.

And beyond that, theres no ethical justification for the continued existence of fossil fuel infrastructure. This question of why is it that destroying an oil pipeline is seen as an act of violence, but the oil pipeline that destroys so many lives is not seen as a violent piece of property. So thats the argument of the book as I read it. And I think that, ultimately, thats what weve translated into the film, is its a story about eight people who believe that the destruction of this oil pipeline is an act of self-defense.

But Malm is very aware in the book that what hes discussing is what a radical flank to the climate movement would look like and how it could be defensible. Whats great about a radical flank is it does not de-legitimize more mainstream efforts to then compromise with a state and a system in order to move forward. But I think that the point that hes making is that without some sort of radical flank effort, the mainstream movement will simply always lack the leverage to do whats necessary, especially when dealing with a problem and a social ill as abstract as climate disruption.

So I think that there are criticisms of that that are in the film itself. You have characters like Alicia and Sean and other characters who are pushing back and searching, questioning why theyre doing what theyre doing. But ultimately, I think that we are trying to simply present his argument through a dramatic structure.

Anders Lee: Another thing I found really effective is a motif throughout the movie of oil refineries that made it into the background at several points. And you mentioned fossil fuel infrastructure. Do you think its fair to say that the villain of the movie isnt a person or group of people, per se, but that infrastructure itself, and how did you go about conveying that?

Daniel Goldhaber: Yeah, I think that was part of the novelized structure that the movie suggests. And its even in the sound design. We have this exactingly realistic sound design, except for the fossil fuel infrastructure, which has this larger than life dystopian vibe. And thats a way in which I think the genre of the film also supports the thematic efforts of the film, that there is no individual bad guy, there is only the infrastructure. And I think that thats very, very helpful, because I think that one of the failures of the climate movement is trying to manifest the enemy as a person when there is no single individual. I have a great belief that people actually have a fairly strong sense of moral hypocrisy. And I think that when theyre presented with moral hypocrisy, especially when youre trying to change somebodys mind, it becomes impossible. And I think that thats one of the things about this thats compelling, is that in destroying a pipeline there is at the very [inaudible] moral purity to the act and its defensibility.

Anders Lee: Well, I dont want to give any spoilers, or I guess I shouldve just warned Spoiler alert But there is a pipeline that does get blown up in the movie, and I know you did not want to use CGI for this in particular. So what was it like to produce a massive explosion like that in real time?

Daniel Goldhaber: Extremely fun. Its a good time. I think that the funny thing is it was much harder to build the pipeline than it was to blow it up. I think thats the moral of the story. And so I think, in part, just because you need to blow something up that you can clean up, isnt going to produce shrapnel, that you can actually build affordably. You cant use screws. It has to hold up under New Mexico weather conditions and high winds and rains. That was a significant challenge. The blowing it up was the easy part.

Anders Lee: And I take it you were not running oil through this pipeline.

Daniel Goldhaber: Oh, of course not. It was made out of cardboard.

Anders Lee: And you mentioned the precautions you take. Specifically what did you do to make sure this wasnt causing deleterious effects to the environment where you filmed?

Daniel Goldhaber: We just cleaned up the trash. It wasnt any more polluting than that. It was cardboard and wood. Well, I think the cardboard, I believe, was recyclable.

Anders Lee: Well, Im particularly interested in that choice because, of course, now a lot of movies rely on CGI. Why was it important to you to actually use the real life pyrotechnics and not depend on animation with this?

Daniel Goldhaber: I think its because the movie is supposed to feel real. And I think that the provocation of the movie is its immediacy and its sense that its a possibility. And it was also, honestly, to some extent, a matter of price. We explored it. Also, we couldnt have afforded a strong CGI explosion that looked halfway decent. And there is CGI enhancement to the explosion itself. We had to do some cleanup work on it, but its about getting that real plate is the big thing.

Anders Lee: Yeah. Now, some people have described this as a heist movie, an eco-heist movie. I know you yourself have said that you are genre-agnostic, so I wont ask you to categorize the movie, but what were some of the cinematic influences that you drew from in making it?

Daniel Goldhaber: Oh, I would definitely say its a heist movie. I think Im a genre-agnostic when it comes to my own work, but this is definitely a heist film, very consciously. There were a lot of different influences that went into it though. On the heist side of things, Oceans Eleven, Thief, Charlie Varrick, and its corner case movies like Army of Shadows, the Jean-Pierre Melville film, which is not really a heist film, but hes a master of heist genre, and thats a similarly political movie that is actually secretly a heist film in its structure and in the way it moves.

We were also looking at movies like Zabriskie Point, [inaudible], Battle of Algiers, If a Tree Falls, Woman at War, Night Moves. And in some cases, like Night Moves, which is by a filmmaker who I adore, Kelly Reichardt. I think we were also looking at a bit of a tendency in movies about progressive movements and contemporary progressive movements to be tragedies and movies about failure. And I think thats something that was really important to us with this film was to conceptualize success.

Anders Lee: Right. Well, that brings me to my next question. Do you have an ideal audience for this picture? And if so, what kind of thinking or action do you hope that is inspired in them?

Daniel Goldhaber: I think that its art, so I think that art that tries to inspire a particular prescriptive thing is usually not very good art. I think that the goal is to provoke conversation and empathy. And in this case, I think its to present eight characters who believe that blowing up a pipeline is an act of self-defense. So maybe challenge audiences, what do you think about that, and how does that align with your If you believe that that is true, what does that mean for the way that you think about the climate movement, the way that you think about the nature of praxis? And I think that we hope that its a film that people can come to with wherever they are politically.

Anders Lee: Well, I think thats a great note to end on. Do you have any other projects or anything in the works?

Daniel Goldhaber: Im shooting my third film right now in New Orleans: Faces of Death, and very excited to bring it to the world. Its about content moderation and cycles of violence online.

Anders Lee: Right. Well, it will be on the lookout for that, but in the meantime, Daniel Goldhaber, thank you for joining us.

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'How to Blow Up a Pipeline' director Daniel Goldhaber explains the ... - The Real News Network

Yusha-Marie Sorzano’s Identity as an Immigrant and Black Woman … – Dance Magazine

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Even before she realized it, Yusha-Marie Sorzanos identity as an immigrant was the driving force behind her all-encompassing careerone that has ranged from company positions with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and Camille A. Brown & Dancers to guest artist spots and commercial work to choreographing, teaching and becoming the co-artistic director of Zeitgeist Dance Theatre.

I was really fortunate that when I immigrated to the States, my parents picked a neighborhood that had exposure to magnet-school systems, says Sorzano, whose formal dance training began at age 8, when her family moved from the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago to Miami. My parents didnt know anything about the arts in terms of it being a profession, but they always supported me. Sorzano embraced every style that came her way, including ballet, jazz and modern. Finding that common language of being able to speak fluently through movement probably comes from the code-switching that I had to do as an immigrant, she says.

As Sorzano gained more professional experience, her identity as an immigrant and as a Black woman continued to inform her work as a performer and, eventually, as a teacher and choreographer. I had worked with more male choreographers as a performer, and it didnt always occur to me that I also had a voice, Sorzano says of her start as a dancemaker. Doing BLACK GIRL: Linguistic Play with Camille A. Brown and having this brilliant Black woman be brave and say, I want to tell our stories, it also gave me additional confidence that we need more equitable representation on that stage. Camille would often say to us, Youre dancing it; I want to see you. That unlearning of the step and giving myself space to ask those questions of How would you do this, Yusha? What is your story? Thats an ongoing journey for me.

An Early Start:

I was still living in Trinidad, and there was a dance competition at my school. I remember being onstage and looking at these two students next to me who started doing the running man. I mimicked them and I won. My dad saw me onstage and said, This is you, this is who you are.

Making a Move:

I was going the route of classical ballet until I saw the Ailey company. When I saw them hit the stage, I was like, There I am! Thats where I need to go. And it just so happened that when I was applying to college, Ailey/Fordham was in their third year of the BFA program.

Turning Injury Into Inspiration:

When I ruptured my Achilles in 2017, it was a huge identity crisis, because who was I if I wasnt a performer anymore? And it was through that that I started to create. To All Our Ends was my first work that I felt really came out of my cultural experience, my identity.

Her Advice to Dancers:

A lot of us feel like we have to keep going, going, going. But that leads to burnout. Its not natural to be able to generate on that high of a level and expect that your voice is going to be cutting-edge and authentic. I think its important to remind dancersall of us, reallythat we need to slow down to make space for ourselves.

Dancing for the President:

I was performing with the Ailey company in DC, and Barack Obama had just become president. I remember walking to the backstage area at The Kennedy Center and seeing the metal detectors. After the curtain came down in the Yellow section in Revelations, the door opens, and here comes Barack Obama strolling through; I was just thinking, What is happening right now?

Guiding the Next Generation:

Teaching consistently gives me space to create and to guide. Ive taught everyone from five-year-olds to now teaching college students. I also teach many techniques, which has helped me to weave together my choreographic language.

Taking a Break:

Maybe its the upbringing I hadmy parents were not artistsbut when it comes time to disconnect, I am the opposite of dance. Its a podcast or films, I try to read, Im just the person who hangs out at the house.

Continuing the Work:

All of these things that weve been working on in terms of equity and inclusion, we have to then forge a new language that allows for us to create new words. Of course, theres a learning curve for all of us, but it should not fall to the people that have been othered to keep reminding people to do this work. This is an ongoing conversation, and we have to be comfortable with being uncomfortable, because it is uncomfortable work to address when something is inequitable, when its racist, when its sexist. Those things require consistent work, and I hope we can be brave.

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What do the British Royals and Cleopatra have in common? – msnNOW

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Provided by Firstpost What do the British Royals and Cleopatra have in common?

Two recent events illustrate a very peculiar dilemma facing the west. The first is a comment by a black actress who plays an aristocrat in the hit series Bridgerton. She commented that the line-up on the balcony after the coronation of King Charles and Queen Camilla was terribly white spurring a record number of racism complaints to Britains TV watch-dog. The second is the selection of a black actress to play the role of Cleopatra in another new web series.

In the first case, the comment of the actresson a TV panel covering the coronationeven drew an approving nod from a co-panellist who is a royal biographer. The illogicality of the statement clearly did not strike the other person, just the political correctness of it. Were the white people on the palace balconyanachronistic as they looked in their gaudy raimentduty-bound to find their life partners according to the diversity zeitgeist rather than their hearts?

Clearly the allusion was to the absence of Prince Harry and his wife Meghanwho, as has been cited all too often, is of mixed racefrom the balcony appearance. But the reason for the absence was not race at all. Besides, was their choice of each other a matter of fashion or passion? It could not possibly be the former; so why should the race of a prospective spouse for anyone (including royals) be a matter of concern if they happen to be of the same race?

The second case is even more curious. The new web series portraying Cleopatra, the Ptolemaic queen of Egypt, as Black is not an artistic move like the Royal Shakespeare Companys 2023 production of Julius Caesar having Brutus played by a black woman. It is meant to be an assertion of fact and part of a political movement to reclaim history and historical figures for the race, especially female ones. Its a commendable purpose but uses questionable means.

The Ptolemy dynasty was founded in 305 BC by the Macedonian Ptolemy I Soter, a general and friend of Alexander the Great, and Cleopatra VII who died in 30 BC was its last monarch. He was obviously of Greek origin as indeed were his successorswho intermarried with siblings and other royal Greeks. Just because their kingdom was in Egypt did not make them of native African descent. Indeed, even the name Cleopatra is Greek, meaning beloved of her father.

But Jada Pinkett-Smith, the producer of Queen Cleopatra justified what is being called blackwashing thus: We dont often get to see or hear stories about black queens, and that was really important for me, as well as for my daughter, and just for my community to be able to know those stories because there are tons of them! There are indeed many blackindeed non-whitequeens. India too, is rediscovering her many forgotten Veeranganas but not by twisting facts.

A similar blackwashingfor a similar reclamation effortis being done to Queen Charlotte, the wife of Britains King George III, who was the subject of much gossip for her alleged black ancestry in the 18th century. The reasons offered have been distinctly feeble, including supposedly tell-tale facial features gleaned from just one of many portraits painted of her, but enough to prompt a new (US) web series on her now, with her being played by a black actress.

The intentions of both Queen Cleopatra and Queen Charlotte are very different from the series Bridgertonthe colour-agnostic portrayal of Regency era life in Britain. It does not assert that the aristocracy had black members but demonstrates that stories need not be told only through actors of one race. Hence there are Indians in that mix too. Nor is it the RSCs case that Brutus was a black female but rather that his traits and actions should not be seen as gender-specific.

But asserting that Cleopatra and Charlotte were actually blackand looked itis a willful distortion of history to pander to a particular section of society. On the contrary, it pushes a false narrative that actually turns energies away from the important task of identifying and bringing to the forefront the actual black queens forgotten or overlooked by historians. Besides Egypt, the African continent has had many great empireshow many of their queens have been found?

Nigerians, for instance, are proud of a feisty 16th queen named Amina of Zaria, who ruled for 34 years. Her exploits live on mainly through folk histories and accounts of foreigners. The similarity to our own 16th century queen Durgawatiwho also lives on as a legend among the Gondsis striking. But Durgawati finally became the focus of solid scholarly study; overlooked African queens like Amina deserve the same serious inquiry, not fickle Hollywood dalliances.

History and reality often become too unfashionable for some tastes. So an effort is on to change or gloss over facts. The west, in particular, is now leaning towards seeing every event through the prism of race, a practice made popular in and by the US. However, this leans only in one direction: blackwardsa bias that is definitely not unconscious. It makes political sense in the US as the white or European-descent population there now stands at just around 60 per cent.

The same does not apply to the UK, where an average of 87 per cent of the population is white, and when disaggregated into the four parts, it rises to above 96 per cent in Northern Ireland and above 95 per cent in Scotland and Wales. Englands London and Manchester have huge non-white populations while whites are now in a minority in Birmingham and Leicester. But the truth is, todays Britain remains largely white, so its King, Queen and the Royal Family are pretty much in synch.

But that militates against the fashionable self-image that woke Britons have of being a very (racially) diverse society. And the argument is illogically extended to imply that all families haveor should havemixed race links. Some now even go so far as to insinuate that white families and individuals are closet racists just because they have no mixed-race quotient. If so, then non-white families and individuals with no white links at all should also be deemed racist.

Just the fact of being white or non-white does not imbue anyone with specific characteristics or mindsets. Racism, however, is an ugly trait that some humans do possess. A feeling of superiority usually lies at the heart of it, and many racesnot just whiteexhibit facets of it. Its definition should not be broadened to taint everyone of a particular race simply because they happened to be born into it as is being attempted now, especially via terms like unconscious bias.

It is definitely a telling tale of our royally confused times that Charles, Camilla, Cleopatra and Charlotte find themselves pawns in the same game of racial roulette. Just as the British Royal Family cannot be railroaded into becoming some perceived mirror of modern Britain, appropriating historical figures on the plea of racial re-calibration deflects from real progress on that front. Weaponising race will only harden stands and ultimately defeat the purpose.

The author is a freelance writer. Views expressed are personal.

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What do the British Royals and Cleopatra have in common? - msnNOW

Paris of the East: 5 Cities That Remind Us of the French Capital – The Collector

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From Shanghai in the 1920s and 1930s to Beirut in the 1960s, a handful of cities have been compared to Paris. Whether in the architecture and streetscape, Parisian influences seemed to have found their way into every nook and cranny of these cities. Think magnificent Belle poque buildings and the array of elegant French-style cafes lining the streets of these cosmopolitan cities. The periods in which these cities were nicknamed Paris of the East were critical turning points in their history. Why did these places earn such a name for themselves and how have they proven themselves to be comparable to the iconic City of Light? This article delves into the history of Paris-influenced cities.

Famed American writer Ernest Hemingway once referred to the City of Light as a moveable feast. Later used as the title of his memoir on his life in 1920s Paris, the term has since immortalized Paris as a destination for dreamers and merrymakers. As Hemingway espoused, Paris is so captivating that the memories of it will stay with you even long after you have left the city. The same intensity of influence could be said of the following cities which embodied the zeitgeist of the French capital in their own ways and in their own time. Here are five cities that have been called the Paris of the East at one point or another.

Bucharest was known as the Paris of the East during the 1920s and the 1930s. However, it was the rapid urban developments in the second half of the 19th century that laid the solid foundations for Bucharests golden age. In the 1840s and 1850s, major urban development was underway as water supply networks were built concurrently with several other public works. The Great Fire of Bucharest in March 1847 also did much to necessitate more construction as the devastating inferno claimed over 2,000 buildings.

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During the Belle poque period, Bucharest was introduced to gas lighting, electricity, a horsecar tram system, and boulevards among other urban inventions. This coincided with the extensive construction of public infrastructure that borrowed heavily from French influences as Romanian architects returned home after graduating from the cole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Many of these Paris-inspired buildings could be found at the Calea Victoriei, a major avenue in central Bucharest. Apart from being home to iconic Beaux-Arts style buildings such as the Cantacuzino Palace, the CEC Palace, and the Central University Library of Bucharest, the Calea Victoriei is also a key tourist attraction and shopping district today.

On top of French-inspired architecture, a slice of Parisian life had made its way into Bucharest, especially during the turn of the 20th century. French was more widely spoken than any other language and the Romanian people were frequenting cafes and boutiques like their French counterparts. While the rest of Romania was still pastoral, Bucharest embraced the momentum of a busy, cosmopolitan city brimming with life and modernity. All over the city, there was no lack of cinemas, automobiles, and more importantly, people. By 1930, this Paris of the East was home to over 639,040 inhabitants, a stark increase from what was just 383,000 by the end of World War I. As war loomed over Europe from the late 1930s, the shine of Bucharest dimmed.

In what would be called a Century of Humiliation, the mid-19th century saw China embroiled in widespread socio-political unrest. As a result of its defeat in the First Opium War (18391842), the city of Shanghai was forced to open to foreign trade under the Treaty of Nanking. This turning point in the citys history saw several Western powers such as the United States, Britain, and France setting up foreign concessions which ran independent of Chinese law. Against the backdrop of Western influences, entertainment establishments such as nightclubs, cabarets, and brothels flourished, cementing Shanghais reputation as the Paris of the East.

At the same time, crime and vice marred the city that never slept, as gangs and triads battled for control. The Green Gang, under the leadership of mob boss Du Yuesheng, controlled the bulk of the citys criminal activities, focusing on gambling, sex work, and opium. In particular, opium flourished with the opening of the trading port and the presence of a different jurisdiction in the foreign concessions. At its height, the Green Gang was powerful enough to privately fund the careers of leading politicians such as Nationalist leader Chiang Kai Shek. Undoubtedly a cosmopolitan city that stood at the crossroads of influences, Shanghai in the 1930s was a great melting pot of cultures and people. While local Shanghailanders encountered and interacted with foreigners almost on a daily basis, Qipao-clad cabaret dancers were rubbing shoulders with gangsters disguised as businessmen and vice-versa. Nonetheless, as with their Bucharest counterparts, Shanghais golden age came to an end with the dawn of communist rule in 1949.

More affectionately known as the Paris of the Middle East, Beirut in the 1960s was at the height of its popularity among locals and tourists. Echoing a unique East-West fusion, Beiruts golden age ran from 1955 to 1975 until the outbreak of civil strife in Lebanon. Its reputation as a jet-set playground for the rich and famous took off in the 1950s. This was due to the sudden influx of capital which paved the way for more five-star hotels, nightclubs, and other tourist establishments. But French influences had long been entrenched in Lebanon following the Mandate for Syria and Lebanon (19231946) where the French administration took over the country.

The best example of a French-influenced landmark is the iconic Saint Georges Hotel, the brainchild of Parisian architect Auguste Perret and his mentee at the cole des Beaux-Arts, Antun Tabet. Built in 1934, the hotel was the place where high-profile people would congregate and socialize in the 1960s. Some of the biggest names in Hollywood like Marlon Brando and Elizabeth Taylor were spotted sipping cocktails and rubbing shoulders with politicians, tycoons, and even spies here.

Elsewhere in the city, French influences continued to spread. In the Hamra District, an intellectual caf society began to take root in the 1960s. Students, writers, artists, and poets deeply engaged in discussions on all things intellectual gathered in the dozens of Parisian-style cafes here. In the spirit of promoting knowledge and new ideas, the area was filled with bookshops, cinemas, boutiques, and fashion houses. Hamra was a cosmopolitan cultural hotspot during Beiruts golden age in the 1960s, until it, too, succumbed to the ravages of war in 1975.

Offering a little slice of Paris in India, Pondicherry is a city located in the southern part of the country. A French colony from the late 17th century up until 1954, Pondicherry was once known as the French Riviera of the East. The efforts of the French East India Company to develop Pondicherrys trade persisted, though it was at times disrupted by rivaling European powers such as the Portuguese, Dutch, and British. A typical divide-and-rule policy, the French colonial masters separated European inhabitants from the natives, creating the White Town and the Black Town respectively. As French culture overtook the city, French was the official language and was taught in schools, while French holidays were celebrated. The houses in the White Town were laid out in a grid pattern much like how it was in Paris.

Despite the heavy French influence, a unique blend of Franco-Indian culture emerged as a local community of Franco-Pondicherrians grew. This was most prevalent in the Creole cuisine in Pondicherry which demonstrated a special mix of Indian recipes and French cooking methods. Creole cuisine also incorporated influences from Vietnam which was once under French control. This cross-pollination was a result of the trade and movement of people in the region. Although Pondicherry and other French territories were handed over to India officially in November 1954, the spirit of French culture is very much alive today. On top of the many French-style colonial infrastructures, restaurants offering traditional Creole cuisine still stand in the White Town today. The residents of Pondicherry, too, continued the tradition of celebrating Bastille Day every July. A popular tourist attraction today, foreigners and locals alike visit Pondicherry for a taste of France from a bygone colonial era.

Historically, Vietnam has had a complicated relationship with France. Over 60 years of colonial rule had brought about exploitation, war, and hardship for the locals. During this period, French rule in Vietnam saw widespread attempts at Parisification, particularly in areas of urban planning in the capital city of Hanoi. As a result of French urbanization policies, the infrastructural styles in Hanoi borrowed heavily from their French counterparts. As opposed to the disorderly built environment which developed naturally prior to the colonial era, the French rulers envisioned a different kind of city. Like what French official Baron Haussmann did for the City of Light, urban planning in colonial Vietnam emphasized wider, neater paths, public squares, and tree-lined boulevards. Several landmarks in Hanoi bore resemblances to iconic ones in Paris. For example, the grandeur of the Hanoi Opera House which is nestled within the French Quarter takes inspiration from the Palais Garnier in Paris.

Overall, the grandiose built environment not only gave the city an air of Parisian romance and sensibilities but also carved its reputation as the Paris of the East during the French colonial period. While the locals were more than happy to remove French imperialism in 1954, there were few attempts to destroy French-style buildings in the city thereafter. This was said to be because the Vietnamese did genuinely feel that the French had done a good job where urban planning was concerned. The elegant architectural style continues to charm locals as several of the colonial-era buildings in Hanoi have since been converted into cafes, restaurants, and boutiques.

Throughout history, several other cities such as Baku, Manila, or Istanbul have had the reputation of being a Paris of the East. The five cities discussed in detail in this article are examples that are best remembered as such. Some of these examples were a result of direct French colonial rule, while others were mere vessels of French cultural influences. Nonetheless, a common thread in these examples points to the cosmopolitan nature of these cities during which they were referred to as Paris of the East. This bears testament to the fluid movement of people, ideas, cultures, and influences, reinforcing how globalization is not just a contemporary concept. Above all, it is proof that Paris is the epitome of French culture and remains in popular imagination a city that evokes timeless elegance, romance, and sensuality.

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Paris of the East: 5 Cities That Remind Us of the French Capital - The Collector

How Lenny Bruce Was Actually Canceled in the 1960s – Cracked.com

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Okay, 2023 comedians, we hear you. Many of you are living in mortal fear of that alarming, amorphous blob known as cancel culture. In the past year, weve heard about the existential threat to comedy as we know it from the likes of Joe Rogan, Jennifer Aniston, Cedric the Entertainer, Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock, Roseanne Barr, Kathy Griffin, Ricky Gervais, John Mulaney, Bill Maher, Howie Mandel, John Cleese, Marlon Wayans, Goldie Hawn, Jeff Dunham, Rowan Atkinson, Kevin Hart, Jerrod Carmichael, Rob Schneider Well, you get the idea.

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So far as weve seen, canceled comics like Chappelle suffer the consequences of cancelation by hosting Saturday Night Live and selling out the Hollywood Bowl. But back in the days of comedians like Lenny Bruce, cancelation meant something different. Canceling meant you might not work again. Canceling meant the club that employed you might close forever. In John Mulaneys recent Baby J special, he lamented that comedians need to be liked is a jail. For Bruce, actual jail was part of his comedy reality.

Bruce was one of the leaders of a movement that Time, not kindly, called sick comedy. What made it sick? Time didnt define the term, but used the slam to cover a new wave of comedians who were markedly different from those who had come before and from each other. What comics like Bruce, Mort Sahl and Jonathan Winters had in common was a hard turn away from the setup/punch-line cadence of comedians trained in the Catskills. Other than that, the comics couldnt have been more different. Sahl, armed with a V-neck sweater and newspaper, poked improvisational fun at the days politics and culture. Winters, a proto-Robin Williams, morphed into crazy characters, interacting with talk-show hosts in multiple personas.

And then there was Bruce, for whom the description of sick at least made some sense. If a topic was taboo, Bruce wanted to flood it with light, to flip a joke that exposed its hypocrisy. That meant riffing on all the subjects that made good upstanding citizens queasy homosexuality, drug use, politics, violence, organized religion, masturbation, guilt and shame. You know, the good stuff.His routines werent carefully written. He was the first stream-of-consciousness comedian I ever saw, comedian David Steinberg wrote in his book Inside Comedy. He was a revelation because he wasnt trying to be funny all the time. He was into the story, the way the character talked.

He was talking his personal truth, his personal view of the country, finding comedy in a much harsher way than, lets say, Will Rogers, Wayne Federman, author of The History of Stand-Up: From Mark Twain to Dave Chappelle, adds. Sure, Bruce was political, but I feel like it was more social comedy. He made fun of Jackie Kennedy after the assassination. He would talk about Eleanor Roosevelt's breasts. Bruce had a jazz-influenced speaking style, which thrilled hip audiences and bewildered the squares. His comedy was new, it was shocking, and to some, like the squares, it was sick indeed.

The niche Bruce carved for himself Americas foremost dirty comic was a boon and a curse. Yes, it made a guy famous, but it got him in a lot of hot water as well. Several communities wanted to cancel Bruce, with cancel meaning throwing him behind bars. It wasnt an isolated threat he was arrested for comedy thought crimes from Los Angeles to Chicago to New York City.

There were basically local laws, Federman tells me. Each community could have their own standards. Sometimes these laws were enforced, and sometimes they werent.When Bruce was in town, the laws were enforced more often.

The first time I got arrested for obscenity was in San Francisco, Bruce confessed in his celebrated autobiography How to Talk Dirty and Influence People. I used a 10-letter word onstage. Just a word in passing. Unfortunately, that passing word was cocksucker, and the local cops werent going to stand for it. Bruce made compelling arguments in court and the jury acquitted him, but now, other local authorities had pricked up their ears. If Bruce was coming to town, the cops wanted to make sure they heard what he had to say.

As such, Bruce kept racking up the arrests. There was the 1961 drug possession charge in Philadelphia, followed up two years later in West Hollywood when a young deputy took him in for using the word schmuck on stage. Its safe to assume that most of the audience didnt speak Yiddish, one reason those charges were dismissed. But it wouldnt be so easy in December 1962, when Bruce was hauled off the stage of the Gate of Horn club in Chicago. He was supposedly arrested on obscenity charges, but Variety reported,The prosecutor is at least equally concerned with Bruces indictments of organized religion as he is with the more obvious sexual content of the comics act.

He was a Jewish guy making fun of the Catholic Church, Federman explains. And now we had our first Catholic president. That was part of the zeitgeist of the time. In a heavily Catholic town like Chicago, with a predominantly Irish-Catholic police force, Bruce was asking for trouble with off-color jokes about the pope.

Also asking for trouble: A young George Carlin who, believe it or not, was in the Gate of Horn crowd that night in Chicago. When Carlin, along with the rest of the audience, was asked to show his ID to the cops, Carlin replied, I dont believe in ID. You know, just a smart-ass, Irish guy, a little drunk, who didnt like authority. Carlin got himself thrown in the back of the same squad car as Bruce, as he describes in this audio interview.

According to Bruce, prosecutors assembled an all-Catholic jury to hear his case. The opening argument doesnt contain a word about obscenity, the actual charge under which Bruce was arrested: You will hear the mockery of the church, not just any church, not just the Catholic Church, not just the Lutheran Church, but the church per se. The judge slapped the prosecution for making an immaterial accusation, but the damage was done and Bruce was sentenced to a year in jail. The Illinois Supreme Court upheld the ruling upon Bruces appeal. Eventually, the Supreme Court of the United States overturned the conviction only so Bruce could continue to get arrested.

The damage to his career led to more drug use, which led to more arrests. And then in April 1964, he got nabbed again by Greenwich Village undercover cops at the Cafe Au Go Go. Bruce didnt ride in the squad car alone the clubs owners were also arrested for permitting an obscene performance.

This latest trial got a lot of press and lasted for six long months. Bruce and Howard Solomon, the club owners, were both found guilty of obscenity. This really had a chilling effect, Federman says about Bruces ability to land new stand-up gigs. Other club bookers were saying things like, I dont want to get arrested. Clubs, as well as comics, were getting canceled. A month later, Bruce was sentenced to four months in a workhouse. He appealed and never served the time he died before his plea could be tried.

This is what true cancelation looks like. Not only was Bruce unable to book gigs amidst all his legal troubles, he couldnt even look for them. According to his official website, Variety refused to run Bruces desperate advertisement for work, a simple statement announcing Im available. The career spiral led to despair and a deepening drug problem, ultimately costing his life.

In many ways, Bruce paved the way for todays comedians, accustomed to saying whatever the bleep they want despite their social media gripes. Other comics call him St. Lenny, Federman says. Hes a martyr. Were still talking about the guy and his battles with these local governments. Those battles paved the way for Carlin and Richard Pryor, for HBO and its all-words-allowed comedy specials, and for all the profane, rebellious and blasphemous comics that followed, almost always safe from authority figures trying to ban their comedy sermons.

A postscript: If Bruce had a sick sense of humor, he likely would have laughed at his greatest legal irony. Thirty-nine years after his Greenwich Village obscenity conviction, Bruce was posthumously pardoned by New York Governor George Pataki. It was the first posthumous pardon in the states history, a declaration of New Yorks commitment to upholding the First Amendment.

Freedom of speech is one of the greatest American liberties, Pataki said in a statement. I hope this pardon serves as a reminder of the precious freedoms we are fighting to preserve as we continue to wage the war on terror.

So even Lenny Bruce wasnt canceled forever. But as The New York Times points out, Being dead, Mr. Bruce is not expected to reap any immediate benefit from the pardon.

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How Lenny Bruce Was Actually Canceled in the 1960s - Cracked.com

Michael J. Fox Looks Back on Hollywood Triumphs, Setbacks and Why Parkinsons Is the Gift That Keeps on Taking – Variety

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Michael J. Fox has been through hell, and not in the way youre thinking.

In the last few years, his mother died, his father-in-law died, and he had to put his beloved dog, Gus, a 120-pound mutt, to sleep after more than a decade of loyal companionship. And then there was an almost biblical series of health challenges, many of them indirectly related to his Parkinsons disease.

I broke this shoulder had it replaced. I broke this elbow. I broke this hand. I had an infection that almost cost me this finger. I broke my face. I broke this humerus, Fox says, pointing to each part of his fractured body, before concluding with a wry snort. And that sucked.

Thats to say nothing of the spinal surgery he underwent in 2018 to remove a tumor, a visit to the hospital completely independent of the falls he experiences more frequently as Parkinsons robs him of his balance. The whole thing left Fox feeling nearly as despondent as when he was first diagnosed with the disease in 1991 at the age of 29. In those days, he would retreat into his bathroom, get in the tub and ruminate with a bottle of wine or some vodka. Now sober for more than 30 years, he hasnt used booze as a shield for a long time.

But Fox says that as he grappled with these recent losses and medical setbacks, he felt a similar emptiness to that dark time when doctors first delivered the Parkinsons news. I have aides around me quite a bit of the time in case I fall, and that lack of privacy is hard to deal with, he says. I lost family members, I lost my dog, I lost freedom, I lost health. I hesitate to use the term depression, because Im not qualified to diagnose myself, but all the signs were there.

So how, I ask, was he able to shake it off? My family, he says. My family pulled me out.

And as we sit in Foxs Upper East Side office on a sweltering April afternoon, were surrounded by mementos and images from that rich family life. There are snapshots of Fox and his wife, Tracy Pollan, flanked by their four children on beaches and in backyards. Theres even a painting of Gus, staring back at us with soulful eyes. All of it vying for space with the Emmys, Golden Globes and honorary Oscar that Fox has accumulated for his work on sitcoms and movies, and for his advocacy for Parkinsons research. They are milestones on an improbable journey, one thats taken the 61-year-old from an obscure sliver of British Columbia to the height of Hollywood stardom, all while withstanding a devastating diagnosis when he should have been basking in that hard-won success. Through it all, Fox has been guided by an indomitable confidence an optimism, not that any problem can be easily overcome, but that there are reasons to be grateful for what life with all its chaotic convulsions has to offer.

Im still happy to join the day and be a part of things, he says. I just enjoy the little math problems of existence. I love waking up and figuring that stuff out and at the same time being with my family. My problem is I fall down. I trip over things and fall down and break things. And thats part of having this. But I hope that, and I feel that, I wont break as many bones tomorrow. So thats being optimistic.

There are signs of lifes inescapable progression around us too, as well as fresh reasons for hope. Just before Fox sits down, Im greeted by a new addition to his household, Blue, an Aussie Bernedoodle puppy fresh from her walk. (Shes not a dog shes a science experiment, Fox joked to Pollan when she revealed that Blue was a combination of Australian shepherd, Bernese mountain dog and poodle.) And Fox is feeling emboldened by a recent scientific breakthrough that can detect the disease at the molecular level before symptoms start appearing. That could, he says, lead to more proactive treatment and drug development. And then theres the reason that were meeting today, the upcoming release of Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie, a documentary from Oscar winner Davis Guggenheim that explores the actors life and serves as a reminder of his formidable gifts as a comic star. Guggenheim says that Fox refused to have any control over the finished film, which begins streaming on Apple TV+ on May 12, leaving the director with a single creative admonition.

The only thing he ever asked of me was no violins, Guggenheim says. He didnt want to make a pitiful, maudlin movie about a person with a condition.

Still steers clear of mawkishness, even as it offers an uplifting look at the triumph of one implacable spirit. But, of course, thats to be expected, and by now people around the world are intimately familiar with how Fox turned a potentially career-ending diagnosis into a rallying cry for awareness and action. Whats more unexpected is that Still also gives Fox his due as a performer, something that critics were often loath to do when he was a leading box office draw and TV idol. In clips from Family Ties and Spin City, or snippets of The Secret of My Success and Back to the Future, Fox is constantly in motion, making pratfalls, backflipping over beds, sliding over the hood of a DeLorean. All of it is augmented by a preternatural sense of timing. Hes almost balletic in his ability to land a joke.

I underestimated him as an actor, Guggenheim admits. And maybe until now the world has underestimated him. Hes super funny, but sometimes we fail to realize that humor and physical comedy is a craft worthy of awe. Seeing him move his body, he was graceful and swift and elegant. It seems effortless. And youd think he was trained in some fancy French school of movement, which of course he wasnt.

Castmates fondly recall Foxs gymnastic approach to comedy. He bounced around in all of his scenes, remembers Meredith Baxter, who played Foxs TV mom in Family Ties. Hed bound in the backdoor of the house, then hed bounce over to the fridge and pour some orange juice and then hed bounce again to answer the phone. He had so much energy.

That same spark is evident when Fox sits down to talk to me. His eyes pirouette as he comes up with a punchline or joke, springing to life when he ribs someone for moving his handkerchief so it will be more accessible on the table beside him. Now I need to get tested for COVID, he says with a laugh.

But Parkinsons has also taken a physical toll. Fox walks in a jerking, hesitant manner, willing himself not to stumble, and his hands tremble throughout much of our discussion, the left one making looping motions while the right one taps against the side of his chair. And then theres Foxs speech, which has also become more impaired in recent years. His words sometimes careen into each other, occasionally erupting into an imperceptible slur of consonants. For someone who was once so verbally dexterous, it must be endlessly frustrating.

I sometimes have a fleeting moment of disappointment when a really great joke comes out and lands flat because people cant understand what Im saying, Fox says. Its not like you can just repeat it. Its dead on arrival. But you find ways to navigate it.

It takes time for the medication that Fox uses when hes got an interview or a public event to have an effect. As he eases into the chair and begins to talk, his left leg moves spastically and his head ducks down toward his chest. Then after about five minutes of jerking motions, a calm washes over Fox, and his leg, at last, stops tremoring. Thats the pills kicking in, he says.

Still, the title of Guggenheims film, isnt just a sad nod to the ravages of Parkinsons and the way it consigns its sufferers to a lifetime of uncontrollable movement. It also alludes to the restlessness that characterized Foxs rise in the entertainment industry. The son of William Fox, a former Army sergeant turned police dispatcher, and Phyllis Fox, a payroll clerk, Fox was raised primarily in a suburb of Vancouver. An indifferent student, he started doing plays in school to meet girls, discovering he had a knack for performing. After landing a few TV roles in Canada (usually with the diminutive Fox playing much younger than his age), he was convinced that he had what it took to make it in Hollywood. So he dropped out of high school and moved to Los Angeles.

I knew I was more talented than a lot of people, says Fox. And I knew that if I wanted to be someone, I couldnt just sit on my parents porch and think, Boy, if I was only born in the States and my parents had money and werent living paycheck to paycheck, I could do something with my life.

It was rough. He had a few failed auditions Robert Redford flossed his teeth while Fox read for the role of the troubled son in Ordinary People. And the gigs he managed to land were few and largely forgettable. But Fox was guided by an unwavering confidence that allowed him to keep pushing forward. Decades later, he still thinks back to a revelation he had on the set of Midnight Madness, a little-seen 1980 Disney comedy that marked his feature film debut. I was sitting around with all these actors, and I remember thinking, Why is this going to work for me and not for them? he says. Its not that I wished them unhappiness or bad luck I wished them all the success in the world. But I knew I was going to make it. God knows why. I was living on the margins. I was 18 years old, with no money, no connections, literally dumpster diving for food.

Two years later, Fox landed his career-making role as Alex P. Keaton in NBCs Family Ties. The sitcom had an easily digestible premise hip parents, square kids one tailor-made for the conservative wave sweeping the nation. As a teenage Reaganite outfitted in a suit and armed with a briefcase, Foxs Keaton embodied the newfound spirit of conspicuous consumption. He quickly became the shows breakout star.

There are rare moments where an actor and role simply fit together perfectly, says Michael Gross, who played the patriarch of the Keaton clan. Michael just understood Alex intuitively and was so much fun that the writers moved instinctively towards him and gave him more and more to do.

Viewed from todays politically polarized vantage point, Family Ties, with its portrait of parents and children who can bridge any ideological divide in less than 30 minutes of airtime, seems utterly foreign. And it is. Even Fox thinks that his yuppie alter ego, Alex Keaton, would have abandoned the GOP long before Trump and the Jan. 6 attack changed the face of the party. He would have left, says Fox. I dont think Alex would even see Republican and Democrat now. Hed see normal people and crazy, fascist weirdos.

In its time, however, Family Ties and Fox were riding the zeitgeist. Yet what really catapulted Fox to the top of the A-list was Back to the Future, a science-fiction comedy about a 1980s high schooler named Marty McFly who finds himself thrown back in time to 1955. Fox was initially forced to pass on the film because of his commitment to the show. But when Eric Stoltz, the actor cast in the leading role, was fired from the production, director Robert Zemeckis and Family Ties showrunner Gary David Goldberg devised a plan that allowed Fox to shoot the sitcom during the day and then hustle to the Back to the Future set at night. Hed film there until 3 or 4 in the morning. In between, hed get two to three hours of sleep before a teamster would wake him up and the whole thing would start again. It was grueling, but Fox thinks it helped his performance.

I was running on adrenaline, admits Fox. I barely knew where I was, and I didnt really know what I was doing. That served the film because Martys supposed to be disoriented.

Christopher Lloyd, who played Doc Brown, the mad scientist who invents the time-traveling sports car that sends Marty back, says that Fox offered a missing ingredient. Eric Stoltz is a wonderful actor, but he lacked a certain comedic sense that is inherent in Michael, he says. Initially, I was worried because wed been shooting for six weeks, and it meant going back and redoing all my scenes. I thought I might not be as good. But Michael made me better.

Zemeckis agrees. Michael taught me things about comic timing. Wed have conversations, and hed go, You know, Bob, Ill get a much bigger laugh if I move three steps, pause, and then say the line. Back to the Future is a frothy adventure, but it also has some unexpected Oedipal undercurrents a risky touch for a popcorn flick. After all, when Marty travels back three decades to his hometown, he intersects with his teenage parents, only to find that his mother (Lea Thompson) is hellbent on getting in his pants.

Theres something about it that people still respond to because its so weird, Fox says. Not to be crude, but its a movie about almost fucking your mom and shes totally ready for it. Even at the time, I realized it was bizarre plus Lea was pretty cute.

Back to the Future was a mammoth, decade-bestriding blockbuster, becoming the highest-grossing movie of 1985 and launching a popular film franchise. Fox capitalized on that with a series of hits such as Teen Wolf and Secret of My Success that made him one of the hottest stars of the 1980s. Looking back, Fox believes he didnt handle fame well.

I was a jerk, he says. And theres some archival footage in Still where Fox grills the writers of Family Ties about one of their scripts, as well as a sequence where he peevishly asks to retake a scene that, he says, captures that jerkishness. You just want to slap me. You just want to go, Shut up, sit down, have a Diet Coke and relax and sit in the corner, Fox says.

Sure, he seems egotistical, but its still pretty mild misbehavior for a celebrity. No telephones are thrown, no crew members berated. Is it possible Fox is a little too hard on himself? For their part, Foxs co-stars dont remember many diva moments. I dont think he lorded it over us, says Baxter. At the same time, when someone gets all that attention and all that heat, its hard for it not to go to their head. You cant fault where that adulation takes you. But if you stay there, then you become insufferable.

Foxs good fortune ran out as the 1990s dawned. Family Ties went off the air after seven seasons, and Back to the Future concluded with two back-to-back sequels. Then Fox suffered a series of flops including Life With Mikey and For Love or Money, films as generic as their titles. And there were missed opportunities for instance, Fox turned down the future blockbuster Ghost. I didnt see how it would work, he says. It shows I can be an idiot too.

There was a reason why Fox was taking jobs for the payday and not the part. What the world didnt know was that he was processing his 1991 diagnosis of early onset Parkinsons, something that doctors warned him meant he had only 10 years left to work.

Its such a shitty disease, Fox says. I didnt want to think about it. I didnt want to deal with it. It didnt fit my story. I just shut down.

Hed always been a heavy drinker, but his alcohol abuse intensified as he looked for ways to numb the pain. As he writes in his memoir Lucky Man, and as Still depicts, he finally decided to give up booze when Pollan made it clear that she wasnt interested in raising kids with someone who was out of control.

Why did you drink? I ask. My friend Jennifer Grey had a great expression in her memoir, Fox explains. She wrote, My body cannot metabolize the excitement that I crave. And at that point, the same was true for me. I needed something some way to express myself and I used drinking.

In 1996, with his window of opportunity to work fading and his film career stalling, Fox returned to the format that made him a phenomenon, reteaming with Family Ties creator Goldberg on Spin City, a sitcom about the various wheeler-dealers orbiting an inept mayor. The show was a ratings hit and critics loved having Fox back in front of a studio audience. But as his Parkinsons worsened, producing the show became more complicated, often leading to long delays in taping. Some of the cast and crew suspected something was wrong, but they were offered various explanations, including that Fox had Lyme disease. A rare few were told the truth and sworn to secrecy.

We knew about it very early because we had to plan around it, but we kept it from everybody else, says Bill Lawrence, the co-creator of Spin City. Because Michael had to take meds to stop his tremors and they dont work instantly, Gary and I had to build around that in the schedule so we could wait to start until he was feeling up to it.

In 1998, Fox couldnt keep his illness under wraps any longer. For one thing, he says, paparazzi used to wait outside his apartment building, peppering him with questions about whether he had Parkinsons. He decided to share the news, sitting down for interviews with Barbara Walters and People. The magazine was supposed to come out on a Tuesday, but on the previous Friday, People went live with its story online, triggering a media frenzy.

I went online and initially I thought, What have I done? Fox says. My life is ruined, and I have little kids who are going to read this stuff. The New York tabloids had headlines about how my life was over. It was like, Oh, shit.

But as he processed the publics reaction, Fox started exploring Parkinsons chat rooms. On the internet, people who had the disease were sharing their hope that Foxs celebrity would draw attention to an illness that was seen as something that only happened to old people. Those misunderstandings and prejudices meant that Parkinsons was underfunded. Reading their messages, Fox saw an opportunity.

People were naked in their thirst for somebody to come and help, Fox says. So as much as sharing that news was an unburdening, it also became a re-burdening. It was, I dont know Foxs hand moves gently as if to grasp the right words an adjustment of my burden.

Still also refers to the inner peace Fox found after going public with his illness. Instead of serving as a coda, that declaration began a new phase in his life that was his most triumphant. Since launching the Michael J. Fox Foundation in 2000, he has helped raise more than $1 billion to fund Parkinsons research. At the same time, Fox has become a prolific writer, penning memoirs that are hilarious, heartbreaking and bracingly candid. (Everyone has one good book in them, he says. Ive written four.)

And though he officially retired from acting in 2020 because he was struggling to learn lines, Fox remained active in front of the camera for decades longer than doctors thought he would. Over the past 20 years, he returned to TV frequently as an OCD doctor on Scrubs, as a lawyer on The Good Wife, and as himself, facing off against Larry David on Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Ive won more awards and had more nominations since I announced my diagnosis, says Fox. It may be that people feel bad for me, but I prefer to look at it as an acknowledgment for continuing to have a legitimate career.

Guggenheim spent a year interviewing Fox for Still and observing him relaxing with Pollan and their children: Sam, 33; Aquinnah, 28; Schuyler, 28; and Esm, 21. He thinks that as horrible as Parkinsons is, the illness gave Fox a better sense of what really matters. Michael calls Parkinsons the gift that keeps on taking, and theres something to that, Guggenheim says. Because theres a clarity you get when you have this kind of horrible chronic diagnosis. Theres a kind of relentless degradation that comes with Parkinsons. But whats amazing about Michael is that all those falls and all those trips to the hospital could have turned him bitter. But, weirdly, its only made him more self-assured and openhearted.

Guggenheim is right. I witnessed the resilience and decency he describes firsthand. In fact, Im struck that the two times that I met with Fox, he made a point of standing up and walking toward me to shake my hand, despite the physical effort that requires. Theres something about that simple gesture that makes my throat catch. This, I thought at the time, is a really good guy.

Fox is very adroit at remaining upbeat and keeping things light during our time together. But watching him struggle to walk or control his wandering hands makes it clear how hard even the most mundane tasks are when you lose authority over your movements. I worry Im being too personal or too lurid, but theres something I want to ask Fox: How does Parkinsons change your relationship to your body?

Thats a good question, Fox assures me. I think about that all the time. Sometimes, he says, he will catch himself in a mirror and see his unsteady walk or think about his slurred speech. All these things together have become who I am and the way I present to the world, he says.

But, Fox admits, he also thinks about how the medication he takes to dull those symptoms gives him a false idea of what Parkinsons has done to him.

When I first sat down and started talking to you, I knew it was going to take a minute for the pills to kick in and then it was going to be OK, he tells me. But what I have to understand is that if I take the pills and I feel better, thats not real. If I dont take them and feel like shit thats real. So the better I feel, the less real it is.

For now, at least, there are plenty of reasons for Fox to feel proud of what hes accomplished and excited for whats to come. The release of Still will remind viewers of Foxs determination to emerge from any ordeal stronger in the broken places. And hes thrilled with the reaction to the film, which was greeted with glowing reviews and a standing ovation when it premiered at Sundance and screened at SXSW.

People think youre a hero, I tell Fox. And I sense that makes him uncomfortable, even if he understands it.

Its just a nice way of people letting me know they are moved by my acceptance of things and by the way that Ive tried to make a difference, he says. But no matter how much I sit here and talk to you about how Ive philosophically accepted it and taken its weight, Parkinsons is still kicking my ass. I wont win at this. I will lose.

But, Fox adds. Theres plenty to be gained in the loss.

Styling: Britt McCamey; Grooming:Kristan Serafino/Walter Schupfer/The Best Paste; Look 1 (dark crew neck sweater): Sweater: Saint Laurent knit; Look 2 (blue suede jacket): Jacket: Mr P; Look 3 (thumbs up): Jacket: Saint Laurent

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Michael J. Fox Looks Back on Hollywood Triumphs, Setbacks and Why Parkinsons Is the Gift That Keeps on Taking - Variety

8 solar powered watches that bring sustainable sunshine – British GQ

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When questioning the virtues and coolness of solar powered watches, picture this: imagine the feelgood factor of a vintage-grail chronograph or slim Cartier without worrying about the fragility of micro-mechanics, batteries or servicing?

Quartz is back on the cool list, but solar powered watches take it up a notch. Even the geekiest of watch lovers finds joy in an ever-accurate watch that doesnt need winding, despite the lack of cogs and hairsprings (nope, we dont know what they do either). Big dog brands like Seiko and TAG Heuer are finding the market for quartz rising, and are quietly taking a step or two up the sustainability ladder with great results.

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You might not have panels on your roof yet to stave off increased leccy bills, but your wrist is a great place to start. Here are some banging choices for added sustainability without losing the edge, depth rating or taste for fine watchmaking.

TAG Heuer has an instinctual feel for the wrist-zeitgeist, touching all bases fromConnected watches to mad carbon-fibre tourbillons and LAB-made diamond encrusted bad boys. Its legendaryAquaracer diver series now includes solar powered watches, and our fave is from the dark side. The stealth-fit steel case is aced by its bezel, where carbon fibre is fused with luminous material, emitting an eerily attractive green glow at night. On supple rubber, its a no-nonsense 200m depth rated diver, suave and tech-packed to boot.2,700. Atgoldsmiths.co.uk

An evocative name with a surprisingly easy-going nature thanks toSeikos superb Solar quartz movement. This is your choice for monochrome looks straight out of a 60s racing flick, with everyday wearability. Nothing beats the clean-cut look of a crisp panda dial, especially when framed inside a 39mm case.590. Atgoldsmiths.co.uk

Chunky with whopping big numbers on the divers bezel, this Promaster delivers the goods. Black might be slimming, but that aint going to shrink a 46mm case down to a shirt-cuff fit. Who cares though, when youre gazing into the toughest diving tool money can buy? While the Eco-Drive movement charges up in the sun, youve got time to psych yourself up for your next career as a dive instructor (optional). The 200m print on the dial means you can explore down in the depths, not just round the corner at the pub.399. Atgoldsmiths.co.uk

You dont need a degree in Architecture from Central Saint Martins to enjoy the crisp minimalism of the slim 38mm Junghans Max Bill Mega Solar. A dramatic name for an elegant watch, serving as a ruse to draw you into its quiet German Bauhaus design. The balanced dial graphics are cheered up by a slim font of eye-popping pink, matched by a vivid leather strap. Sunny as you like for1,075. Atjurawatches.co.uk

Chic rectangular pieces of French horology fromCartier will always give you the edge when caught in a cocktail party wrist-battle, just askRami Malek. The Solarbeat packs a Photovoltaic tech-punch (sounds sexy) letting the suns rays filter through the dial to keep you on time. In a sleek 33.7mm case with a mere 6.6mm thickness, were calling this kinda flex the future ofdress watches.2,940. Atcartier.com & goldsmiths.co.uk

Weve all bought into the digital reign ofCasio before, but theres equally stonking value in its Edifice range of unashamedly big tool watches. At 47mm, this 100m rated bargain is packed with functions and tangy satsuma-orange details. It works a charm with a scruffy tee for the summer as well as some ironic Im a billionaire but wear a cheap watch flex, because with a Casio any vibe is possible.199. Atjurawatches.co.uk

This reminder of the 90s is called the Arnie for a reason, and its not because of a thick Austrian accent. Far removed from AI making conversation, it sat on Arnold Alois Schwarzeneggers wrist inCommando andPredator. If that doesnt work as a pick-me-up in the morning, what will? Its battle-ready nature includes a multifunctional chronograph, a 200m depth rating and general gung-ho attitude in spades. 420. Atjurawatches.co.uk

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8 solar powered watches that bring sustainable sunshine - British GQ

What Podcast Made You Fall in Love With Podcasts? – Lifehacker

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In 2022, I spent 97 days and 20 hours listening to podcasts on Pocket Casts alone. (Add in time I listened on Spotify and other platforms and the total grows more shocking.) Im not sure how this is possible, or what it says about my social life, but here we are.

I know podcasts. I once had a podcast called Podcast Podcast and am nowthe host of Feed the Queue, both shows designed to help others find podcasts they love. I have a podcast newsletter and a podcast marketing newsletter. I have been a judge for the Signal Awards and the International Womens Podcast Awards and I am a member of The Podcast Academy. I teach classes about podcasting at Harvard and host panels at SXSW and Podcast Movement about how to grow their shows, and I founded a podcast marketing company. And, of course, I write about podcasts for you all right here.

What Im saying is, I know a lot about podcasts, and Ive listened to a ton of them. But there are more than three million podcasts out there, and one girl can only cover so much. I try to experiment with everythingindies, news, fiction, true-crime, comedy, sex, movies, food, and podcasts about digital security, bats, magicians, and even more niche podcasts (a few of which I wrote about here). I have written Lifehacker about podcasts that cover mental health, television, secrets, game shows, D&D, books, scams, and more.

My question for you, then, is what have I missed? Whats the show that made you fall in love with podcasts? (Also: Whats your favorite show right now? What podcast does everyone love that you cant stand?) Let me know in the commentsand to get the conversation going, here are three of my favorites.

On Lizzy Coopermans In Your Hands, Lizzy gives her listeners two options for what she will do next in her life. They vote their choice on her Instagram, and she does whatever wins. Its a literal choose-Lizzys-own-adventure. Lizzy is hilarious and brings on comedians and experts to help her listeners make a decision. Her life is literally in our hands, and our choices have been dictating some of her wildest adventures ever. Because of the show, Lizzy has gotten multiple piercings, become an L.A. tour guide for the TV show This Is Us, burned her journals, and created a workout that she does every day. Lizzys on pause for now, which means you have plenty of time to catch up on her wild adventures.

Every Monday through Friday on The Daily Zeitgeist, Jack OBrien and Miles Gray invite a comedian (or other cool person) onto the show to review whatever is in the zeitgeist that dayanything from the abortion ban to the newest Taco Bell menu item. The guys kick off the conversation with user-submitted comments and ask the guest to name something that is underrated, overrated, and something revealing from their Google search history before running through the weeks updates in politics, the coal gas study, UFOs, and more. Even on those dark days when the headlines make you want to crawl back into bed, Jack and Miles progressive takes will make you feel a little bit better about the state of the world. Plus, mini episodes come out in the evening to cover whats trending on Twitter, in case you still cant get enough. (I never can.)

Comedians George Civeris and Sam Taggart are unpacking straight culture one piece at a time with the aid of funny guests. Their conversations, which are about 75% wild tangents, are so off the wall that they go right past weird to totally genius. Whatever outrageous, tenuous ties they find between the topic of the day and queerness inevitably segue into quasi-philosophical conversations about gender. Think of it as academic comedy. Each show starts with a silly game segment that makes no sense (and nobody is allowed to ask questions about it), and George, Sam, and the guests end each episode with TRL-esque shoutouts. To steal from George and Sam, if this writeup doesnt make you want to listen to the show, then congratulations, you are probably gay.

Okay now its your turn to tell us: What podcasts do you love to listen to? Leave a comment below, and if we get enough recommendations, well round it up in a future Lifehacker post.

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What Podcast Made You Fall in Love With Podcasts? - Lifehacker

The Frierdiker Rebbe’s Battle Against the Board of Education – Anash.org – Good News

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No! That is our answer to the Board of Educations plan, a threat to every yeshivas existence. Read about the battle of the Frierdiker Rebbe against the New York Board of Education and read his words, which could have been said in 5783.

A Chassidisher Derher

No!

That is our undaunted, fearless answer, cried from the throats of people ready and willing for the ultimate self-sacrifice.

No!

That is our answer to the Board of Educations plan, a threat to every yeshivas existence. No! We do not accept this mandate. No! This mandate is wrong. No! The half-in and half-out current crop of Jewish leaders cannot lead our battle for Torah. No! The rabbonim and roshei yeshivos cannot entrust this battle to anyone else!!

No, no, and no!

We do not accept this mandate! We have never accepted it: not from the Romans, not from the Greeks, and not from the Russian Czars. We will not accept it from the Board of Education!

Who was the subject of these impassioned words? Was it a cry against the horrors of the Soviet Union? Against the wanton persecution of the dedicated, selfless teachers of the underground network of chadarim spearheaded by the Frierdiker Rebbe?

It sounds like it could have been written this year, in 5783, regarding our current situation, says one Crown Heights mechanech.

Actually, these powerful words were passionately spoken by the Frierdiker Rebbe in the year 5702 (1942). The location? Brooklyn, NY.

They were published in the Hakria VHakedusha periodical, at the behest of the Frierdiker Rebbe.

The Frierdiker Rebbes battle to preserve Yiddishkeit in the Soviet Union was renowned throughout the Jewish world. But this time, the battle defended against something far more insidious: efforts, well-intentioned or otherwise, to modernize the education of our children. Instead of following the hallowed approach forged over the millenia, there were those who felt that things must change to account for the new world. Let our children learn Torah, these activists declared, but let them also learn of science, of reason, of modern culture. It is time for us to fit in with the modern zeitgeist, and to become productive members of society.

This battle was not the first. This campaign of the Frierdiker Rebbe continued a long tradition of Chabad Rabbeim, who staunchly defended chinuch al taharas hakodesh, a pure Torah education without compromise, imbued with wholesome emunah. Indeed, the consequences of these battles reverberate to this very day.

From the Tzemach Tzedek and the Haskalah movement, to the Rebbe Rashab and the Chevra Mefitzei HaHaskalah, to the Frierdiker Rebbe and the New York Board of Education, our Rabbeim stood tall from generation to generation at the forefront of the battle for pure Jewish chinuch.

When the Frierdiker Rebbe arrived in New York from a Europe torn apart, his famous statement, America is nit andersh, that the Yiddishkeit of America is no different from that of der alter heim in Europe, was a shock to many. One of the early tests of this approach took place almost immediately upon his arrival.

Back in 5699 (1939), the New York Board of Education passed the following resolution: Voted, that private or parochial schools that operate with a program providing a session carried on in a foreign language during the forenoon, with only anafternoon session in English, be advised that such practice violates the compulsory education law

Nevertheless, the existing yeshivos of New York at the time which, though all offering secular education, reserved the morning hours for davening and study of Torah explained that such a change could not be implemented so suddenly.

The Board provided a year extension, and little more was heard of the matter until Adar 5702 (March 1942). The Educational Board reached out then to all existing yeshivos, noting that it appeared that a number of yeshivos had not complied with the above resolution and that hearings on the matter would soon commence.

The Frierdiker Rebbe was adamant that this regulation not be implemented. Using the possuk [regarding the mitzvah of challah] of Reishis arisosechem, (lit. the first of your dough), the Frierdiker Rebbe explained it by relating the word arisosechem to a word for bed, arisah. In other words, the first thing one should do upon arising from bed should be connected with Torah and Yiddishkeit.

In a letter to the head of Agudas Harabbonim, Reb Yisroel Rosenberg, the Frierdiker Rebbe described this law as, A terrifying and horrifying decree hovering over the heads of the Jewish people across the greater New York area

In the continuation of the letter, the Frierdiker Rebbe explained that aside from the demeaning lack of respect for kedushah that placing secular studies first conveys, allowing this law to pass [and thereby allowing the government a say over our religious studies] would utterly destroy the foundation of the New York yeshiva system, with unexpected and dire consequences.

The Frierdiker Rebbe goes on to point out that the operating committee, led by Reb Yitzchak Meir Bunim, was working hard and in the right direction, basing their position on American law itself, yet their approach was leading toward a path of compromise which should be unacceptable to the yeshivos. Instead, it should be explained to the members of the Board of Education that moving secular studies to the morning is completely impossible, and demanding this demeans our peoples religious feelings and, In every time and in every place, no one, not even those appointed by the government, has the right to demean the religious feelings of another, and certainly not in this free country; [certainly not] at a time when our brothers and sisters throughout the lands conquered by the Agagite [i.e. the Nazis] are being killed, slaughtered, and murdered with tremendous cruelty; [certainly not] at a time when tremendous danger hovers over the holiness of the land of our forefathers, may Hashem have mercy on it and on us; [certainly not] at a time when our Jewish brethren who live in this country place themselves in danger on the battlefields of land, sea and air

The Frierdiker Rebbe went on to ask that all Jews, no matter their group or party, should participate in thwarting this evil decree. Specifically, the Frierdiker Rebbe advised to arrange: 1. Mass, organized rallies with fiery, passionate speeches, 2. Public pamphlets in Yiddish and English about the matter, and 3. Well-explained articles in newspapers.

The Frierdiker Rebbe also wrote to Reb Eliezer Silver, one of the leaders of American Orthodoxy, and pushed for stronger action by the committee, while also asking Reb Nissan Telushkin to galvanize rabbonim to visit different shuls and thunder against the decree from the pulpit. That summer, the article in Hakriah Vihakdusha was published, with the ringing cry of the three Nos!

Reb Dovid Edelman was a bochur in 770 at that time. He later related how representatives of the Chassidim attempted to work things out with the Board of Education, to no avail. Finally, the Chassidim told the government officials, In 5687 (1927), the [Frierdiker] Rebbe was imprisoned in Russia for his work at establishing schools that the Soviet government didnt approve of.

The US Congress and President Hoover intervened and demanded that he be freed. Are you now going to arrest Rabbi Schneersohn and make America the laughingstock of the world?! The Russian government will publish the hypocrisy and irony of the matter. America demanded that we free him, and then two years after hes in America, America imprisons him for the same crime

Sure enough, the weight of public opinion and the arguments of the committees succeeded. In Tishrei 5703, the Hapardes journal reported that an agreement with the state educational board was reached for yeshivos to continue with limudei kodesh in the mornings.

A fascinating and timely article in this months Derher magazine explores this ongoing story in great detail, shedding light on this most important chapter of our heritage as Chabad Chassidim, in a tale that takes us from Lubavitch to Paris; from Eretz Yisroel to New York City.

Read the article in its entirety below, courtesy of A Chassidisher Derher.

Click here to download: https://derher.org/Chinuch

Join thousands of Anash families around the world and bring Derhers inspiration into your home every month with an annual subscription at http://www.derher.org/subscribe.

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The Frierdiker Rebbe's Battle Against the Board of Education - Anash.org - Good News

Night School, Class 4: ESG reshapes the boardroom – Financial Times

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This is an audio transcript of the Behind the Money podcast episode: Night School, Class 4: ESG reshapes the boardroom

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Peter Spiegel Welcome to Behind the Money Night School. Im Peter Spiegel. Im the US managing editor of the Financial Times. BTM Night School is a special series made in collaboration with Blinkist that will serve as a guide to the US economy in 2023. For tonights lesson...

Gillian Tett I think that most big companies today recognise they need to look at life beyond the balance sheet. But the question of how exactly you go about doing that is still being very hotly debated.

Peter Spiegel Were joined by Gillian Tett, founding editor of the Financial Timess Moral Money newsletter to talk ESG. Its become quite a buzzword for asset managers and public companies, but its not without controversy. Gillian will help us understand the future and the current fight over ESG.

Gillian, I will start with a very simple question. What exactly do we mean by ESG and how did it become an important part of the investment landscape?

Gillian Tett Well, ESG stands for environmental, social and governance issues, which sounds like yet another acronym that financiers love to invent. In practical terms, what it refers to is the idea that there is life beyond the balance sheet. And by that I mean that businesses historically, in line with the economist Milton Friedmans thinking, have tended to just focus on shareholders and profit and loss in a very narrow way. So what ESG is trying to do is look at all the other factors that businesses need to think about when they look at the risks in the world, like environmental issues, like social upheaval, like the idea that the governance inside the company may be so terrible that something could go wrong, et cetera, et cetera. So its really about trying to take a lateral view, a wider view of business, rather than the very narrow tunnel vision that dominated in the realm or the era of Milton Friedman.

Peter Spiegel So that sort of looking at a broader focus is, tends to be called stakeholder capitalism. So as you said, its not just shareholder, its stakeholder. So everyone who has a role in this. Is there evidence thus far that, do you think that ESG investing and stakeholder capitalism has had an impact on the US economy? I mean, are there signs that capital is flowing towards companies that are more environmentally or socially responsible?

Gillian Tett Well, I personally prefer to call it cleaner capitalism rather than stakeholder capitalism, because cleaner capitalism is both about trying to recognise the impact and role of the environment, but also thinking about sort of, you know, more transparent, decent forms of capitalism, much more widely in terms of the footprint on society. In terms of ESG metrics and performance in the initial wave of this movement some people claimed that ESG-friendly companies would be more resilient and have better returns. In practice, thats quite hard to prove either way. But what is clear is that they actually dont have worse returns than other companies. And more importantly, you are starting to see a wider dynamic where, because some companies are beginning to embrace these ideas, thats changing the wider landscape and expectations amongst investors and consumers and employees. And vice versa, those shifting social expectations are changing company behaviour as well.

So perhaps one tangible example of that is the American president Joe Bidens Inflation Reduction Act, which has emerged amid a recognition that there needs to be a lot more investment in green, renewable technologies. Thats something that some companies have been embracing for some time. But the very fact youve got the IRA coming down the tracks is actually accelerating the focus inside many corporate boardrooms.

Peter Spiegel You mentioned the Biden administration as a driver here, but one of the other earlier, I guess, players in this were the asset managers, particularly BlackRock, which is the biggest asset manager in the world. Let me ask you how important it is that some of these big financial services groups have been publicly advocating for ESG policies for several years now?

Gillian Tett Well, basically what BlackRock has done is to help put these issues centre-stage in many corporate boardrooms across America. And BlackRock itself has been channelling more capital towards ESG-friendly companies in parts of its portfolio. And I say a parts of its portfolio because this really relates to active investing, not passive investing. And of course, a lot of what BlackRock does is passive investing. But the fact that people like Larry Fink have been talking about these issues for a long time has not only helped to accelerate the movement and drive to measure these issues inside corporate balance sheets, which is absolutely critical. Its helped to enthuse an entire generation of younger financiers to train to understand these issues and get involved as well.

And most importantly, its made very clear to corporate boardrooms that if they ignore these issues completely, there could potentially be a cost in that groups like BlackRock may be less willing to fund them or invest in them. Now, theres now been a backlash against that on the American right. And so the situation has become more complicated. But whats very clear is even amid the backlash against what people like BlackRock have been doing and saying, there are very, very few corporate boards today that are ready to ignore these issues completely because for many of them theyve become part of a risk management toolkit that they feel they cant ignore or essentially suffer.

Peter Spiegel So you mentioned the backlash. I want to get to that. But before we get to that, I want to talk about other players in this field, because you mentioned the Biden administration. Weve talked about the asset managers. What are the other sort of groups out there, have been some central banks who have sort of wade in and tried to talk about the stress testing, based mostly banks and financial solutions for climate exposure, for instance. What impact have central banks had in some of this debate and in the cost of capital for, I guess, brown industries?

Gillian Tett Well, theres essentially two key ways that central banks have got involved. On the one hand, they have, in some occasions, particularly in Europe, said theyre gonna try and use their own massive investment pools and asset management policies to try to promote a green agenda. So thats really about trying to avoid investing central bank assets in dirty assets like oil and gas bonds and channel that money instead to cleaner assets. Now, thats quite controversial but its certainly one way that central banks can get involved.

The second way theyre doing this is to look across the financial sector and require the companies that they supervise to think about it in their accounts as well. Now, they can do that for ideological reasons if they think that its important to accelerate the green transition. They can also do it for straightforward risk management reasons because if you are, say, supervising banks in Florida, its kind of nuts if you dont take account of the fact that there could be more flooding in the future because of climate change. So there is a financial stability frame for this whole debate, which is being very actively discussed and picked up and central banks are getting better and better actually in monitoring this. And that in turn creates a feedback loop whereby that encourages banks themselves and the other institutions they supervise to get better at this as well.

Peter Spiegel All right. One last group I want to talk about before we get to the backlash, and you wrote quite a bit about this at the time, but the Business Roundtable weighed in saying that it wanted to rethink the way capitalism was done. Talk a bit about the Business Roundtable. Who are they? When they announced this shift, what impact has it had?

Gillian Tett Well, the Business Roundtable are basically Americas biggest companies. And when they came out and announced this shift, it was symbolically incredibly important because since 1970, when Milton Friedman wrote his role landmark essay about shareholder-first capitalism, the vast majority of business executives have been trained at business schools and other places to really absorb and adopt and apply the Friedman vision of the world. And the Business Roundtable tended to echo that too, really focusing on shareholders only.

So the fact that the BRT came out in the summer of 2019, is that actually there is also another way of looking at it, stakeholders was symbolically very important. But and thats a big but its very unclear the degree to which the CEOs who actually made this announcement really understood what it meant or had thought through all the implications. One indication of that is that subsequently a number of them have tried to, if not back down from this, but just try to perhaps water down some of the commitments, what they mean.

However, I dont see anybody on the corporate landscape right now who is saying that they want to return to Milton Friedmans vision of the world and just look at shareholders. So even though youre seeing some backlash against ESG right now, youre not seeing a return to the really narrow 1970s Milton Friedman vision, which raises the really big question of what next? I think that most big companies today recognise they need to look at life beyond the balance sheet, think about ways of making capitalism cleaner to make it more durable. But the question of how exactly you go about doing that is still being very hotly debated.

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Peter Spiegel Well, lets get to the debate right now because you flicked at this before, but this issue of the backlash and the numbers that people who are in this field right now... we just went over Americas biggest CEOs, central bankers, asset managers like BlackRock and Larry Fink. Those dont seem to be a list of leftwing radicals if you were to line them up. And yet, over the last six months or so, youve seen this backlash where Republicans in both Washington and in state capitals have attacked ESG as sort of, quote unquote, woke capitalism. Talk a bit about what their argument is and how influential theyve been.

Gillian Tett Well, its actually, there are two main reasons that have caused this big backlash right now. One is the energy crisis and the war in Ukraine, which has basically prompted a lot of politicians to say, actually, we cant afford to go too green too fast, or else ordinary people will suffer. And in many ways, thats entirely understandable. The second reason is that you have on the American right, this idea of, quote, woke capitalism has been very convenient for them. Its very easy to whip up a lot of, you know, feeling and protest around ideas that youre focusing too much on identity politics or things like that at the expense of hardcore, proper business. Thats very much the kind of line.

Now, what youre seeing happen is a lot of very powerful oil and gas companies and wealthy rightwing individuals funding very heavily these campaigns against ESG, both at the state level, where a number of state legislators in the rightwing states have been essentially passing measures to try and hobble ESG, but also at the federal level, where youve got a huge fight developing, or has developed around the Department of Labours rules, which essentially permit at the moment asset managers to incorporate ESG if they want.

Youre also seeing a huge battle around the Securities and Exchange Commission, which have proposed rules to try and bring the accounts into line with, say, the European system by encouraging companies to actually take note of ESG issues, particularly climate issues in their accounts. So you have this multipronged campaign from the American right against ESG.

But whats really striking is that although thats made some CEOs very reluctant to talk about these issues in public...I sometimes talk about the idea that the issue in the corporate world right now is green hushing people not wanting to talk about green issues not so much greenwashing. Although youve got a lot of green hushing going on, you are also seeing, for the most part, corporate boards very quietly moving ahead with some elements of the ESG agenda, even if theyre not talking about it. And very few are dropping it completely.

Peter Spiegel Well, let me ask you to follow up on that. I mean, do a little bit, if you dont mind, crystal balling. I mean, given what you were talking about, the Ukraine war, putting energy security maybe higher on the agenda perhaps than the green economy, and as you say, this sort of green hushing where corporate leaders dont want to talk about it anymore. Try to do a little bit of forward looking. Where do you think the ESG movement goes from here? Are we going to continue to see investment flowing more towards good corporate citizens, or are both of those factors slowing things down or even putting things in reverse?

Gillian Tett Well, I think youre going to see probably the ESG label used less and less because that is controversial. Some people think its too formulaic, some people dont like putting the E, the environmental issues, together with the S, the social factors. So those are all issues which are making the ESG label a bit more controversial. And thats even before you get to the rightwing backlash. But I dont think youre gonna see a return to Milton Friedman for three reasons.

One is that Milton Friedmans ideas about companies just focusing on shareholders and ignoring everything else came out of the time after World War Two when there was high public trust that governments could do things, and they were presumed to be the main people who had to fix environmental and social issues. Its radically different today. All of the surveys show that trust in government to actually do anything is much lower, if not rock-bottom low, than before. And as a result, the surveys also show that the publics looking to companies to actually try and address social issues. Secondly, youve got a real changed climate risk of trust in that people no longer trust authority figures as much as they used to. They trust the crowd. And if companies ignore the crowd and they do so at their peril, and if the crowd is changing their attitudes on issues like ESG, its very hard for the corporate board to just ignore that. Which leads me to the third point, which is we also live in a realm of radical transparency. I mean, when Milton Friedman developed his ideas in the 1970s, it was really hard for ordinary people to have the faintest idea of what was happening inside companies. Now you have websites like Glassdoor telling you whats really happening inside companies. Youve got, you know, employee chat rooms, youve got NGOs, youve got satellites, tracking company emissions, things like that. So any corporate board today has the ever-present threat of a reputational scandal exploding on their watch if they ignore this.

I dont know what form exactly this is gonna take, but its really striking that if you talk to corporate boards today, Ive yet to find a single one thats willing to say were totally ignoring climate change and those issues, for example.

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Peter Spiegel Let me round out our conversation by talking, as you said, ESG is not just E. Sometimes we talk mostly about environmental, but there is S and G. And lets talk about S and G at the end here. Social issues, because that is in many ways at the core of the backlash. And Im wondering whether the recent political polarisation over things like abortion and gun control has that complicated efforts of ESG advocates to get a consensus around what should be done?

Gillian Tett Well, the fact of the matter is that the social issues are usually viewed as part of a progressive agenda, but theres a quite wide range or spectrum of social issues. You know, one end of the spectrum view has racial justice and LGBT rights, which those in the right wing say that companies should not get involved in. You also got issues like abortion rights, which some progressive companies have taken a stand on. But again, thats controversial.

At the other end of the spectrum on the S are things like the idea that you shouldnt kill your employees on the job because of lack of safety standards. You shouldnt engage in sexual harassment. You know, you shouldnt be basically paying people such a terrible wage that they cant actually live on it. And those issues actually are often less controversial and embraced by some companies, which you would think would actually have a rightwing agenda. Because another way of framing whats going on is trying to build a picture of companies that arent ultra-exploitative of workers, but trying to actually nurture them and act as stewards of their workforce and stewards of their environment for a long-term future. And that type of vision is something that a number of conservatives can get behind. It might sound a bit paternalistic, but that is something which chimes quite well on the American right.

Peter Spiegel Lets wrap up by talking about G. And by governance we mean corporate governance. And this is not really an issue that is new to ESG. Weve had proxy advisers and other corporate watchdogs who have flagged some of these issues for some time. Has the ESG movement sort of accelerated that? Has it had an impact or are we still sort of in the same place where some companies do it better than others?

Gillian Tett Well, I think the G issue has been obviously around for a long time. And in some ways it sits a little bit oddly within the ESG complex because its really about the internal processes of a company and not about the companys footprint on the world around it or the impact of the world on the company. But another respect is actually critical to the whole concept, because if a company is run very badly with no transparency, no risk management, and just one mercurial, you know, CEO, then its likely to have a much worse footprint on the world than others and likely to essentially be ill-equipped to cope with a changing environment. So I think people in the ESG space are increasingly looking at the G and saying that companies need to be well-run, not, you know, treated like individual fiefdoms.

And another way of putting all this is to go back to Adam Smith, whos seen as the father of modern capitalism, and look at the fact that, you know, he wrote his book about the powers of free-market competition to drive progress and growth, The Wealth of Nations. But he also wrote a book called The Theory of Moral Sentiments about the fact that commerce and capitalism works best when you actually have a shared set of values and trust in society and where companies are run by people who feel they have skin in the game and a sense of responsibility in terms of building their businesses. Now, that sounds incredibly obvious. Its amazing how often that has been forgotten. But in many ways, that is part of the focus of G.

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Peter Spiegel Gillian, Im gonna put you on the spot here. If there are three takeaways that our listeners should get from this conversation when theyre thinking about ESG in the US economy, what would you put as the top three?

Gillian Tett Takeaway number one is that ESG these days is about risk management. Not really about a pious, do-gooding desire to change the world. Second big takeaway is that there is now a backlash against this, which is creating real headaches for corporate investors and corporate boards because anybody who wants a unified policy across America today, let alone across the Atlantic, finds it very hard, given the different attitudes to ESG. Three, in spite of this backlash, I dont think were going back to Milton Friedmans narrow vision of shareholder-only capitalism. But its still unclear exactly where we are going to now.

Peter Spiegel All right. Now Im really gonna put you on the spot. One big takeaway, again for our listeners, were just about to wrap up here, are thinking about ESG and they walk away. What would be the one thing you think they should keep in their mind?

Gillian Tett You ignore the zeitgeist, change at your peril.

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Peter Spiegel You can find Moral Money and more of Gillians writing on FT.com. This episode was done in collaboration with Blinkist. If you want to find more conversations on topics like this, check out the Blinkist app. This episode was produced by Zach St Louis. Topher Forhecz is our executive producer. Sound design by Breen Turner and Sam Giovinco. Cheryl Brumley is our global head of audio. Thanks for listening. Class dismissed.

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Originally posted here:

Night School, Class 4: ESG reshapes the boardroom - Financial Times

Decline of the CPI – The Statesman

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Politics, Hiren Mukherjee, the renowned CPI parliamentarian of yesteryear and a regular contributor to The Statesman, once wrote, fundamentally speaking, calls for passion in its pursuit. And passion, in Latin and Roman languages, has for its first meaning suffering which none in true political life should wish to escape.

Yes, it was passion welded onto ideology that drew a large number of bright young intellectuals to the fold of the Communist Party of India from the 1940s onwards. They were inspired by the concept of revolution, more concretely, by the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, to serve the cause of the toiling community.

Moreover, the dynamic leadership of P.C. Joshi gave a fillip to their embracing the red umbrella. It is the same passion or zeal that in 1950 compelled a bunch of Indian communists at Cambridge who wanted to contribute to the Telengana antiRazakar and peasant upheaval. Back home, rampant hooliganism with political support and unbridled police atrocities caused panic in the minds of the common people.

Nehru at that time was visiting England. The Indian communists at Cambridge had planned to pour a bucket of tar with feathers on Indian High Commissioner V.K. Krishna Menon.

Rajani Palme Dutt, the leader of the British Communist Party, did not like the idea and an alternative plan was chalked out. Thus, the party members stood in front of the High Commission in London with placards Fascist Nehru and his faithful servant V.K. Krishna Menon. Ironically however, it is the Communist Party of India that sided with Nehru for his non-aligned policy and during the 1962 Sino-Indian conflict. In 1975, the party supported the notorious Emergency declared by Indira Gandhi.

Many inside the party lamented the decision. Bhupesh Gupta, a remarkable orator and one of the leading CPI leaders of that time who was very close to Indira, abandoned her in protest. Over the decades the CPIs fluctuations in fortunes are in harmony with its contradictions regarding its ideological stance vis-vis parliamentary democracy, nationalistic approach, foreign relations, organizational structure and a host of other issues.

Nearing one hundred years of its existence, the CPI, once the largest Opposition party, has dwindled into a regional one as per the recent declaration by the Election Commission of India. Ahead of the 2024 parliamentary polls, the Election Commission withdrew the national party status of CPI along with that of a few other parties.

With only two parliamentary seats in its kitty, it is a poor fall of a party that was once recognised among communist nations across the globe and held in high esteem not only by the prime minister and his ruling party, but also by people cutting across the political and ideological divide.

Founded in 1925, the CPI was given the national party status in 1989, but the honour was withdrawn following its lacklustre performance in the last assembly elections in West Bengal and Odisha. It is to be noted that to earn a national party status, a political outfit has to be recognised as state party in four states and have at least two members in the respective legislative assemblies according to the Election Symbols (Reservation and Allotment) order, 1968. But in spite of the brilliant profiles and great performances in the legislature of many of its elected members, the CPIs growth has never been spectacular.

Decades of simmering tensions and factional infighting have been largely responsible for this. As India got her independence in 1947, differences cropped up regarding how to adjust to the changed scenario. P.C. Joshi, the then party secretary, was of the opinion that Indias independence was a great achievement, yet B.T. Ranadive and his supporters considered it a sham. For a long time the CPI considered Nehru to be a puppet of the US and British imperialism and a votary of capitalism.

When relations between Nehru and Soviet Union improved, a section of the party sought cooperation with the Congress and the PM. The leader of this group was S.A. Dange whose role by that time was being fiercely criticised by members belonging to the opponent faction. The feud worsened in 1962 when the Sino-Indian war broke out. Danges opponents in CPI, who did not criticise Chinese action, were thrown into jail.

When these leaders came out of jail, they refused to accept Danges leadership. The Sino-Soviet split created further turmoil inside the party. While one group opted for the Chinese line the other settled for the Soviet.

Added to this was the personality-oriented factionalism that became the outfits undoing. Before the split, the leftists inside the party included B.T. Ranadive, A.K. Gopalan, Promode Dasgupta and M. Basavapunnaiah while the Rightists were led by Dange and Joshi.

There was also a centrist group comprising leaders like Ajoy Ghosh, Jyoti Basu, Bhupesh Gupta and E.M.S. Namboodiripad. The cold war between Ranadive and Dange or between Dange and Namboodiripad did not allow the party to take any unified decision regarding many ideological and organisational issues. Joshi, Mohit Sen and Dange, the chief leaders of the United Communist Party of India (UCPI), wanted to steadfastly ally with the Congress for the national revolution.

All these leaders were either expelled from the party or they themselves left before any action could be initiated against them. Mohit Sen, in his autobiography A Traveller and the Road regrets: In India and other democratic countries, our crimes did not reach the level of communists in Soviet Union and China. But we were unjust, including to ourselves. What did some of us not do to try to destroy P. C. Joshi and S. A. Dange?

Under Ranadives stewardship, the communists organised mass struggles during the Telengana and Tebhaga movement eschewing the hitherto-followed tactical line of legal battles nurtured by the moderate Joshi. Ranadive favoured the new party line of mass upsurge and democratic revolution through class struggle.

The crisis came to a head in 1964 when the party was divided into two and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) was born. As the CPI was divested of the National Party status, one leader, Binoy Biswam, tweeted: National recognition is of course important from a technical point of view. CPIs recognition is in the hearts of the toiling masses. It is built up with the blood, sweat and tears of the fighting people.

The party will intensify its battle for democracy, secularism and socialism. However, talking of left ideology or making vows is one thing, but reaching out to people or running a government to implement peoples agenda is another.

Today the CPI as well as other communist parties are left searching for reasons for their disconnect with once steadfast allies the youth, farmers and the working class. This may have to do partly with the retreat of communism across the globe. Adjusting to the zeitgeist of free market economy and identity-based politics in the country has proved a tough challenge for the organisation. There is also a leadership crisis in the party.

Although the CPI has been in electoral politics for decades, it has failed miserably in forming or running a government successfully in any state leave alone the Centre. In West Bengal, it has been in power for more than three decades, but only as an ally of the fiercely dominant CPI (M). In 1957, when the CPI got a historic electoral victory in Kerala, it became the first communist party in the world to win an election.

Yet within five years of that victory, the party had fragmented beyond recognition. The Namboodiripad government in Kerala was torn by internal discord. Not only that, in reaction to a serious food crisis and issues over education and land, violence erupted as communist cadres took to arms to quell peoples protests.

Nehru finally dismissed the government in 1959 citing the deteriorating law and order condition in the state. In the following election, the communists lost two-thirds of their seats.

Though the CPI never performed enough to form government at the Centre or even the states, its illustrious legacy is largely due to the enviable profiles of its parliamentarians or leading comrades. Dange, Joshi, Hiren Mukherjee, Bhupesh Gupta, Indrajit Gupta, Ila Mitra, Gita Mukherjee and many other stalwarts of the now dwindling party are truly memorable characters in independent Indias political history. Most of them were highly educated and their lives were marked by honesty, dignity and high ethical standards.

They were respected even by their political opponents for their integrity of character and lofty ideals. The only thing most of the communists of the 1930s and 1940s had, as Mohit Sen reminisced, was the party no income, no home, no family. They were proud of the party even when they left the outfit or were expelled.

It is a far cry from the political scenario of todays India where changing floors or affiliations is like changing everyday garments and where people are used to seeing politicians and ministers engaged in large-scale corruption, hooliganism and many nefarious activities.

But as of now, we are not sure whether the grand old party will ever stage a comeback or pale into complete insignificance. Be that as it may, countrymen will continue to cherish the glorious legacy of high thinking and plain living, of fair speech and decent conduct, left behind by a great number of towering personalities belonging to this Left party.

(The writer, a Ph D in English, teaches at the Government-sponsored Sailendra Sircar Vidyalaya, Kolkata. The views are personal.)

Originally posted here:

Decline of the CPI - The Statesman

Why I Paid the Neighbor Kid $10 for a Simple Task, Even Though … – Foundation for Economic Education

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A mom in the neighborhood recently made trouble. Macroeconomic trouble. Here is a way to spot such trouble, and how to help nurture the goodness in our economic way of life.

A few months back her boy went door to door, confidently introducing himself, explaining his purpose, and handing us a detailed flier: Twelve-year-old boy willing to work. He was trying to earn money to go to sailing school. I was impressed. My wife was impressed. We told our kids to be impressed.

There is virtue in hard work and initiative, and such virtue is doubled when it involves tweens and teens. I commend the boy and the momboth of whom were complete strangers to me.

But then things turned bad. Not with the boyhe was great. I called him to bring our empty trash cans back up to the house one day when we would be out of town. I promised him ten dollars upon my return. He was thrilled and he performed the task with what I imagine was great alacrity. Never have my trash cans been so well brought up to the house.

Things turned bad when I got the text from Mom: It was an easy task. No need to pay.

I concede that the task was easy and ten dollars was very generous. Heck, I probably could have negotiated the boy down to five dollars! That he actually had a reservation wage of zero was both remarkable and a missed opportunity to avoid transgressing child labor laws.

I also readily concede that charity and neighborliness are lovely and important. But this was something else. The moms sequitur was easy;ergo, freean analogue to the more familiar hard;ergo, expensive. In this, she had slipped into economic (and moral) reasoning that is everywhere in society and everywhere dangerous. Economists call it thelabor theory of value.

In simple terms, the theory states that the amount of hard labor put into a product or service is what determines its value (and price). The harder the work, the more value generated, and thus the more the worker should be remunerated. Sounds innocent enough.

Indeed, so easily does such logic enter into the brain that it is deeply embedded in our moral sensibility. It is the intuition telling us that the hard work and commitment of teachers ought to be better remunerated. It is the impulse telling us that the per-throw, per-word, per-hour, and per-post earnings of, respectively,athletes,actors,CEOsandInstagram personalitiesis unjustly high.

The mom clearly calculated the effort of the boy and was embarrassed that the effort did not align with the remuneration. She wanted the boy to learn the value of hard work. What was there to learn in this easy-money situation? Maybe something unseemly.

I saw the learning opportunity differently. His mom and I were going to wrestle for the soul of this child and for the future of our economic order.

Value, as most economists recognize since themarginal revolutionof the late nineteenth century, is not actually determined by calculating the number of hours of production. Rather, value is determined by the customerby how much the customer appreciates the product relative toavailability. Value is inherently subjective.

In what will be known as the trash can debacle of 2023, I clearly and dearly valued trash can service. Trash cans on the curb would signal absence and invite neer-do-wells to break in and steal my lovely tchotchkes and shiny baubles. I would have paid twenty dollars. Geesh, maybe more!

The boy got lucky by my conundrum. But this luck was not without merit. He was an entrepreneur. He came up with the idea, developed excellent flyers, and then built up the courage to go door-to-door and look complete strangers in the eye and make an impression. He also had to remember that between prealgebra and LEGOs he had to retrieve trash cans in the cold. Heck, he was probably anxious about it for days!

The labor theory of value errs by directing us to calculate the most visible. But there was much more benefit to me than could be gleaned in the easy movement of empty objects. And much more went into moving those empty objects than walking the twenty yards to my house. As Roman philosopher Seneca (and renowned football coach and plagiarist Vince Lombardi) stated, Luck is when opportunity meets preparation.

Thus my moral contribution to this childs upbringing: Your value is in your whole person, not in just your labor. Your ideas will have value in todays society. Your gumption will have value. Your character too. Figure out what the world appreciates. You will earn well and improve the lot of others.

Adam Smith saw morality in such wealth-seeking spirit. The twelve-year-old boy was mybutcher or brewer or bakerthat day. He did not offer me services out of a charitable spirit, but rather out of a selfish spirit to get to sailing school. And that is ok. Look at the outcome, not the intention. Heeffectivelyprovided me alms (or what economists call consumer surplus).

Smith was born three hundred years ago this year. His kind of moral thinking threatened the monopoly of political and spiritual leaders of his time. It does the same today.Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezwould like you to think that we often exchange money for the alienated souls of laborers.Pope Francisinsists that labor transactions are win-lose events between haves and have-nots.

My exchange with the boy says otherwise. In markets, we exchange wants for provisions, needs for fulfillments, and dreams for realizations. We are all have-nots becoming haves, and haves providing to have-nots.

In the end, I paid the boy and did not preach. The morality of the market is often learned simply by participating in it.

If the boy and I continue to do business together this year, we will both be better off. Moreover, to ensure continued transactions, he will likely keep himself upstanding and I will likely avoid being a boor and a brute (this article notwithstanding).

This upcoming year my neighborhood will experience a demonstration of Smithsinvisible handas well as Montesquieusdoux commerce. It is a demonstration replicated over and over across free societiesone where diverse strangers meet, solve each others disparate problems, and behave in ways that lend totolerance, democracy, peace, and trust.

Such a society is a cause worth donating to. So find that neighborhood kid willing to work, and make sure to pay. You will be nurturing themiraculous sentimentthat trade has its virtues. In doing so, you will be paying it forward for all of us.

This Mises Institute article was republished with permission.

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Why I Paid the Neighbor Kid $10 for a Simple Task, Even Though ... - Foundation for Economic Education

Debunking the Myth That Minimum Wage Laws Are ‘Progressive … – Foundation for Economic Education

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The minimum wage is a sort of litmus test. And not only for economists. For social justice advocates, too.

Forget, for a moment, the economics of it. In essence, minimum wage legislation imposes compulsory unemployment on the poor, the unskilled, racial minorities, the young, the physically and even more so the mentally handicappedthe very people all men of good will most want to help. Before the advent of this law, the unemployment rate for white middle-aged people and black teens was just about the same. Now, the latter are unemployed at quadruple the rate of the former.

For the moment lets just discuss the ethics and logic of the minimum wage. I now make you an offer: come work for me: you can wash my car, clean my house, etc. Ill pay you $3 per hour. If I were serious about this offer, I could go to jail for making it. If you accepted it, you would also be breaking the law, but you would not get more than a slap on the wrist, since the judge would think I was exploiting you. Did I violate anyones rights? Did I violate your rights by making you this offer? Hardly.

As we should know from pure logic alone that an offer of employment such as I am now making to you, theoretically (I do not welcome being arrested), cannot help but improve your economic welfare. It is a proposal of an option you simply did not have before I made it. If you reject it, you are no worse off than you otherwise would have been. If you accept it, this job necessarily benefits you, at least ex ante (looking ahead), since, presumably, you had no better alternative than this one. I am your benefactor, not your exploiter.

Now for the economics of it. Some people believe the minimum wage is like a floor; raise it, and pay scales rise, particularly those at the lower end of the economic pyramid. If this were so, why be so modest as to want to raise it, only, to $15 per hour. Why not $1,500 hourly? Then, we would all be rich! We could stop all foreign aid to poor countries. We might just tell them, instead, to install a minimum wage decree at a high level.

No, the minimum wage is more like a barrier over which you have to jump in order to get a job in the first place and then keep it. The higher this hurdle, the harder it is for you to jump over it. Let us return to my offer to you at $3 per hour. Suppose you are very unskilled. Your productivity, the amount of revenue you can add to my bottom line, is only $3 per hour. If I hire you at $15, Ill lose $12 per hour. Thus, I wont hire you if I want to maximize profits. If I do so anyway, I will risk bankruptcy. Which is better for you: no wage at all, zero, nada, with this law in place? Or $3 per hour, with no such enactment? Clearly, $3 per hour is better than nothing.

Here are three objections to the foregoing. First, if you were totally unemployed, you might be eligible for welfare; if employed at a low wage, likely not. So the minimum wage, at least with a welfare program, is a benefit to the poor. True enough. But, here, we are not holding fast to ceteris paribus (all else equal) conditions. If we want to clearly see the economic effects of this regulation, we have to hold all else constant. Assume, either, no welfare at all, or, an equal amount of such payments whether on the job or not. Then, we can see clearly that something is better than nothing, and, also, that something plus a welfare payment is greater than nothing plus the same welfare payment.

Second, there is the claim of monopsony, which is a single buyer of labor, or, oligopsony, a situation in which there are only a few employers. This is a divisive concept within the dismal science (economics), which we need not discuss here. But one thing is clear: this applies, if it does at all, only to firms which employ highly skilled workers. For example, the NBA, the NFL, MLB and other such sports teams; to doctors, engineers, lawyers, computer experts, with very narrow specialized skills which can be utilized only by one or a very few companies. But these people earn vast multiples of the $15 per hour many are pushing for. Thus, this objection is not even relevant to our present discussion.

Third, several economists have not been able to find the unemployment effects implied by this directive in their econometric studies. Response: they should look a little harder, probe a bit deeper. They have not done their full homework.

The minimum wage law should not be raised, it should not remain constant, it should not be lowered. It should be ended, forthwith, and salt sowed where once it stood. Its proponents may have good intentions, but in practice it is a malicious attack on the least of us.

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Debunking the Myth That Minimum Wage Laws Are 'Progressive ... - Foundation for Economic Education

America’s ‘Atlas Shrugged’ Moment Has Already Arrived, New IRS … – Foundation for Economic Education

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Last September, billionaire Ken Griffin announced he was pulling up stakes and moving Citadelhis gigantic hedge fundfrom Chicago to Miami.

The Windy City was out of control, he told Bloomberg, something that dawned on him after a colleague made a coffee run and was robbed by a thief who put a gun to his head.

Its no secret that Griffins exit is part of a much larger migration taking place across America.

Data show that several populous blue statesCalifornia, New York, and Illinois among themhave been losing population and companies for years. In 2021 Forbes wrote about leftugees fleeing blue states for red ones. A few years before that, a headline in The Hill touched on the great exodus out of America's blue cities.

New IRS data, however, show the speed with which blue states are losing taxpayersand their adjusted gross income (AGI)is increasing. A recent Wall Street Journal analysis found that more than 100,000 people left Illinois in 2021, taking with them some $11 billion in AGI, nearly double its 2019 total. For New York it was $24.5 billion, an increase of more than 150 percent from 2019. California, meanwhile, saw its AGI loss ($29 billion) more than triple since 2019.

That people are migrating from these states is important. But who is migrating is equally important, and the data paint a bleak picture for these states. Taxpayers giving up on the Prairie State and the Empire State made about $35,000 more per year than new arrivals. For Florida, the data are even more stark. The average income for a new arrival to the Sunshine State was roughly $150,000more than double those leaving.

In other words, the geese with the golden eggs are flying away, writes economist Daniel Mitchell, referring to the IRS data.

Needless to say, these data do not bode well for the future of these states. But not everyone is concerned.

The Atlantic accepts the reality that a major migration is underway, one that undercuts the conventional wisdom that Democratic states are the future, but rejects the idea that they are dying.

New York City isnt some dystopian wasteland where no one can see their future, writes Jerusalem Demsas.

Demsas may be right, but its hard to deny there is a dystopian character to what were witnessing in many major US citiesincluding surging crime, failing schools, and social unrest.

Yet there are reasons to believe these problems are going to get worse, not better. Losing wealth-creators and affluent workers doesnt just affect the economic landscape. It also affects the political landscape.

In a recent WSJ op-ed, Allysia Finley pointed out this primarily works to the political benefit of public sector unions and welfare activists.

Cities are losing the voters who keep their leaders from going off the rails, Finley writes, noting that Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot was defeated by mayor-elect Brandon Johnson, who ran to her left.

Johnsons margin of victory was relatively thin, some 20,000 votes. Thats a fraction of the 175,000 people who left Cook County from 2020-2022, Finley points out, and it stands to reason that these are the very people the city needs to get back on the rails.

One can see the cyclical nature of this phenomenon. As cities and blue states become more confiscatory and hostile to property rights, they drive out wealthier people and wealth creators. And as prosperous people leave, the politics become more confiscatory and hostile to property rights. And the cycle continues.

Theres something very Randian in this phenomenon. After all, the basic plot of Atlas Shrugged involves a small group of industrialists living in a dystopian future in which they struggle to keep their businesses afloat while fighting against an oppressive government and mooching politicians. Eventually they say to hell with it and walk away, taking with them their wealth, creativity, and innovations.

This is very similar to what were witnessing, except that were not talking about just a few rich industrialists like Dagny Taggart and Hank Rearden (two of the heroes of Atlas Shrugged). Its not just the Ken Griffins who are leaving, but hundreds of thousands of wealth creators who are voting with their feet, and opting for greener pastures of opportunity.

This is a more realistic version of Atlas Shrugged. The novel was in many ways an epic mystery, Agatha Christie meets Cecil B. DeMille. People are disappearing, and we dont know why. As Taggart and Rearden struggle (and eventually form a love affair), we keep hearing about some mysterious figure: John Galt.

Eventually we of course learn that Galt is a disgruntled visionary and entrepreneur, and hes inviting the best and brightest in society to join him in abandoning the looters and leaving them to their own fate. He explains why in a long speech near the end of the novel, which touches on Rands philosophy of voluntaryism, individualism, and capitalism.

All the men who have vanished, the men you hated, yet dreaded to lose, it is I who have taken them away from you. Do not attempt to find us. We do not choose to be found. Do not cry that it is our duty to serve you. We do not recognize such duty. Do not cry that you need us. We do not consider need a claim. Do not cry that you own us. You don't. Do not beg us to return. We are on strike, we, the men of the mind. We are on strike against self-immolation.

Its good story-telling, but its not exactly believable. What were witnessing, however, is: a mass movement of people who are tired of having the fruits of their labor seized to fund increasingly dysfunctional government systems.

We often forget that entrepreneurship is the lifeblood of an economy. Societies without it wither away. And many of these states and cities have become hostile to entrepreneurship and wealth creation.

I dont put companies here in New York anymoreor California, Shark Tank entrepreneur Kevin OLeary recently told CNN. Those states are uninvestable. The policy here is insane. The taxes are too high.

As Griffins exit from Chicago shows, its not just high taxes that are driving people out of cities.

There are other costsmoral, social, and culturalwhen you create communities that spurn property rights and celebrate looting.

IRS data only tell us so much. If you want to better understand those costs, pick up Atlas Shrugged.

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America's 'Atlas Shrugged' Moment Has Already Arrived, New IRS ... - Foundation for Economic Education

What Garbage Collection Rates Can Teach Us about Affordable … – Foundation for Economic Education

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Some problems are perplexing and complicated, with solutions evading the wisest among us.

The need for affordable housing is not one of those issues. The causes and cures are not complicated. They evade us only because somewhere between kindergarten and college graduation, we never learned basic economics.

Often, one avoidable and seemingly-unrelated problem can inform the solution to another. Take your garbage, for example. It should interest you to know that if you live in Montana, garbage isnt very affordableits disposal, that is. Depending on where you live, you are probably paying for gold-plated garbage trucks (figuratively speaking) owned by companies that earn net profits two to four times higher than their counterparts in other states.

Economics 101: When demand is high (lots of garbage to dispose of), and supply is low (an artificial scarcity of trash haulers to choose from,) you will pay far more for those emptied garbage cans than you would if market entry was unrestricted and garbage collectors competed fiercely for your consumer dollars. I say artificial because scarcity is NOT an indigenous creature of the free market. Its a mutant beast conceived of by protectionist politicians who make monopolies out of special interests. Such is the case in Montana.

For the second session in a row, legislation has been introducedHB 191to repeal the state requirement that new garbage collection services must first be approved by the Public Service Commission and issued a Certificate of Convenience and Necessity through a long, drawn-out and financially back-breaking process. Finishing this absurd legal obstacle course is almost impossible. The result: government-created monopolies that can charge pretty much anything they want. Maybe this year, legislators will discover their consciences and backbones, and repeal this anti-consumer, anti-freedom statute.

How does this lesson inform us about the scarcity of adequate, affordable housing in many Montana communities? The answer is in two sentences. Freedom works. Government intervention and control does not.

The first approach produces an abundance of supply at a price most consumers can afford. The second produces shortages, unserved consumers, and dramatically inflated prices. Too often, local governments have chosen the second course, and desperate, economically ill-educated consumers clamor for more of the same.

The town of Bozeman is a classic example, where we suffer from decades of increasingly-restrictive zoning laws, property use ordinances, city and county land use planning, contractor fees, and skyrocketing property taxes to pay for the skyrocketing cost of local government. All of these measures have the ultimate effect of constricting supply and driving up building costs, which in turn renders rental prices and home ownership out of the reach of many would-be residents and families. Add to that the inflation created by out-of-control federal spending, and the situation becomes truly bleak.

So what has been the local response of the economically illiterate that tweaks the sympathetic ears of city commissioners? The formation of a so-called tenants union that demands the banning of Airbnbs and VRBOs and using city housing funds to subsidize existing short-term rentals into long-term leases. In other words, taking over peoples property rights and destroying the local jobs their enterprises create. Power to the people! Its eerily reminiscent of the film Doctor Zhivago, where the Red Army took over Zhivagos family home and divided the rooms among the deserving proletariat.

But perhaps a more modern solution is to just require Certificates of Convenience and Necessity for every new dwelling thats allowed to be built in our communities. Then the tenants unions and the city planners can enjoy total government control. Brilliant!

Do you see a pattern here? Do you see any similarities between the Marxist-socialist thinking that socialized a garbage industry, creating scarcity and high prices, and the Marxist-socialist thinking that socializes housing and creates scarcity and high prices in the shelter we seek?

If you dont, read Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt, and youll begin to figure it out. Freedom and free markets work. Top-down government control never does. Trust freedom.

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The Difference Between Public Libraries and Public Schools – Foundation for Economic Education

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Plans for the Boston Public Library, the nations second-oldest public library, were approved in 1852, the same year Massachusetts passed the countrys first compulsory schooling law. Both public libraries and public schools are funded through taxation and both are free to access, but the similarities end there. The main difference between public libraries and public schools is the level of coercion and state power that public schooling wields.

Libraries are open and available for anyone to access. You can quickly sign up for a library card if you want borrowing privileges, but you dont have to. You can come and go freely, spend time in whatever library sections most interest you, ignore ones that dont, and leave when you want. You can ask for help and support from a librarian if you choose. You can participate in a class that the library offers or access one of the librarys many online resources, but those are all optional. You may not always like a librarys programming, but you dont have to participate in anything you dont want to. If you dont like your neighborhood library, you can freely visit one in another neighborhood or another town. You mix daily with a wide assortment of people of all ages and backgrounds at your library, reflecting the diversity of your community. Aside from the public levy, everything is voluntary.

Moreover, you dont ever have to step foot in a library and still have access to books and resources through bookstores and online retailers. Your library has no control over what your local bookstore sells, and the library system cant dictate rules to Amazon.

Parents are required to register their children for school under a legal threat of force, and the ages at which a child must attend school are lengthening.

Public schools, which are more aptly called government schools because of the force associated with them, are nothing like public libraries. Parents are required to register their children for school under a legal threat of force, and the ages at which a child must attend school are lengthening. Parents can choose to homeschool or enroll their child in a private school, but in most states, homeschooling and private schools are regulated by the state under compulsory schooling statutes. Education is controlled by the state, even for non-public entities that receive no public money.

This is akin to your public library monitoring the books that Barnes & Noble sells, but it goes well beyond that. In each state, young people are required to meet certain attendance thresholds in terms of hours of classroom learning. It would be like the library system mandating that you visit your libraryassigned to you based on your zip code a certain number of days and hours each year, or, alternatively, visit Barnes & Noble for those same number of days and hours with a report to the state to prove it. While youre at your library or bookstore, you are also required to learn about specific subjects whether you want to or not. And there may be a test.

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If the public library system had the same power as the public schooling system, there would be far fewer private booksellers. When you are required by law to receive library services for a certain number of hours per year, you will likely go with the free option rather than paying to receive your mandatory library services at Barnes & Noble, which would charge a fee. Indeed, this happened with mandatory schooling.

Most of us would never tolerate a level of coercion and state power associated with public libraries that we routinely accept with public schools.In his bookSchooled to Order, historian David Nasaw explains that as government schooling became compulsory in Massachusetts, the number of private schools in the state dropped from 1,308 in 1840 to only 350 by 1880.[1]Similar trends occurred in other states as they enacted compulsory schooling laws, with private school enrollment subsequently plummeting. Its hard to compete with free and compulsory.

Most of us would never tolerate a level of coercion and state power associated with public libraries that we routinely accept with public schools and education more broadly. As back-to-school time nears, its worth celebrating the many ways that public libraries facilitate non-coercive, self-directed learning for all members of the community and questioning why we would ever want our children to learn in spaces where force, not freedom, prevails.

[1]Nasaw, David.Schooled to Order: A Social History of Schooling in the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979, p. 83.

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The Difference Between Public Libraries and Public Schools - Foundation for Economic Education

Recognizing Hard Truths about America’s History With Slavery … – Foundation for Economic Education

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Slavery is always and everywhere an unconscionable stain, an egregious error, a monstrous outrage, a mortal sin. Every human possesses a natural right to be his own master, so long as he does not deny that same right to others.

Most people take that truism for granted today but it wasnt the governing rule of the past. Few people who have ever lived on this planet were truly free; most were either outright slaves or were serfs or subjects who lived in constant fear of tyrants. In world history, freedom is the exception, and mostly a recent one.

Writing in National Review, Rich Lowry points out,

Slavery knew no bounds of color or creed. During one period, from 1500 to 1700, there were more white European slaves held captive on the Barbary Coast than slaves sent from West Africa to the Atlantic world, according to Gordon [referring to Stewart Gordon and his bookShackles of Iron: Slavery Beyond the Atlantic].

Some people use Black History Month as an occasion to skewer America for slavery. The more extreme among them stoke racial divisions to score political points or line their pockets. To be sure, America is not a perfect country, nor is any one of the other 196.

The fact that slavery was so commonplace throughout the world does not whitewash the slavery that was perpetrated by anybody, including Americans. But slavery isnota uniquely American characteristic.

The process of ending legalized human bondage wasnt a flip of a light switch, on one moment and off in an effortless second. We had to work at it, long and hard. Ideas and customs had to change first before policy changed, and thats the way progress always happens. Along the way, an appalling number of black and white Americans paid the ultimate price to get rid of slavery, and even then, the struggle against Jim Crow persisted for decades.

In hindsight, its easy in the smug comfort of our 21st century blessings to frown on the Founders for not freeing everybody in one fell swoop. But none of us even knows whether, if he had been born in, say, 1700, he would have mustered the courage to fight for anybodys freedom.

Americas Founders proclaimed the revolutionary principle that all men are created equal. Some were more consistent in the application of that principle than others. They compromised for the sake of union but many of them knew that the intellectual seeds they planted would eventually end slavery, one way or the other. To the argument that they didnt abolish slavery at the Founding, Thomas G. West in his Vindicating the Founders responded,

[T]hey limited and eventually outlawed the importation of slaves from abroad; they abolished slavery in a majority of the original states; they forbade the expansion of slavery into areas where it had not been previously permitted; they made laws regulating slavery more humane; individual owners in most states freed slaves in large numbersFreedom was secured for the large majority of Americans, and important actions were undertaken in the service of freedom for the rest.

Why was unity so important? even though it delayed slaverys extinction, asks Rob Natelson of Colorados Independence Institute. Because the probable result ofdisunionwould be never-ending war on the American continent. (See his essay for elaboration.)

The world progressed from acceptance and ubiquity of chattel slavery in the 18th century to near-universal abolition a century later. That remains one of the most remarkable transformations in history. The spirit of the Declaration of Independence and the sacrifices of millions of people of all colors played a mighty role in that metamorphosis.

If we are to assess slavery and its abolition accurately, we must see them in their fullest historical and cultural contexts. We ought to avoid the temptation to assume that everything about slaverys history is clear-cut andpardon the double meaningblack and white. That means recognizing some uncomfortable facts that too often are swept under the rug.

Example: It wasnt only whites who possessed black slaves in early America. Free black people owned fellow blacks in every one of the 13 original states and later in almost every other state. As late as 1830, according to Harvard historian Henry Louis Gates, 3,776 free American blacks owned 12,907 slaves. Moreover, in 1860, Native American tribes owned some 8,000 black slaves; the Cherokee Indians alone possessed about 4,600.

In my next article, I will provide a collection of additional facts about slavery that are often overlooked in the ongoing examination of this deplorable institution.

Presentism Imperils our Future by Distorting Our Past by Lawrence W. Reed

John Woolman: The Conscientious Quaker Who Paved the Way for the Abolitionist Movement by Lawrence W. Reed

Did Black People Own Slaves? by Henry Louis Gates

Defending the Constitution: Why the Founders Couldnt Abolish Slavery by Rob Natelson

Five Things They Dont Tell You About Slavery by Rich Lowry

1619 and the Narrative of Despair by Allen C. Guelzo

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Tiny Bitcoin Miner Plays The Lottery – Hackaday

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Usually when we think of Bitcoin miners, we imagine huge facilities of server racks doing nothing but essentially wasting energy, all for the chance that one of those computers amongst the rows will stumble upon the correct set of numbers to get rewarded with imaginary money. The idea being that the more computers, the more chances to win. But just buying one lottery ticket is the only thing technically required to win, at least in theory. And [Data Slayer] is putting this theory to the test with this Bitcoin miner built around a single Raspberry Pi.

This tiny Raspberry Pi Zero does get a little bit of support from an Ant Miner, a USB peripheral which is optimized to run the SHA256 hashing algorithm and solve the complex mathematical operations needed to win the round of Bitcoin mining. Typically a large number of these would be arrayed together to provide more chances at winning (or earning, to use the term generously) Bitcoin but theres no reason other than extreme statistical improbability that a single one cant work on its own. The only other thing needed to get this setup working is to give the Pi all of the configuration information it needs such as wallet information and pool information.

This type of miner isnt novel by any means, and in fact its a style of mining cryptocurrency called lottery mining where contributing to a pool is omitted in favor of attempting to solve the entire block by pure random chance alone in the hopes that if its solved, the entire reward will be claimed by that device alone. In the case of this device, the current hash rate calculated when it was contributing to a pool means that when lottery mining, it has about a one-in-two-billion chance of winning. Thats essentially zero, which is basically the same chance of winning a lottery that pays out actual usable currency.

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Tiny Bitcoin Miner Plays The Lottery - Hackaday