In these days of Zoom meetings, I have seen people exploit the Zoom feature that allows you to use their stock backgrounds and also allows you to create your own to create the most exotic and even bizarre backgrounds. I myself, being the old fuddy-duddy that I am, use just the boring but real background of my living room.
It is a common tactic of people who like to spread false information but seek to avoid taking responsibility for their statements to disingenuously say they are ‘just asking questions’.
While much attention is focused on income inequality in the US, a much more glaring discrepancy exists with wealth. On average, the average Black person has just 13% of the wealth of the average white person. This is because most people’s wealth is tied up in their homes but for the longest time, Black families were denied access to buying homes due to racist polices. such as real estate covenants that prohibited the sale of homes to them, that were aided by federal, state, and local governments. As a result, they could not build up their assets and pass them on to their children, which is how much wealth is accumulated.
John Oliver looked at this situation and points out that when it comes to this particular issue, the individual cases of harm done to Black people is quite clear, with some of the victims still alive, which makes the remedy of reparations to right the wrongs, also clear.
There are all manner of political shenanigans going on in Texas as Republicans try to legislate even more restrictive voting practices. Most Democratic members of the state legislature left the state to prevent a quorum and the governor Greg Abbott has threatened to arrest them if they return. Yes, this is what democracy has come to.
One reason that Texas has become such a focus is that Joe Biden narrowed the gap in that state even though he lost it to Trump. The margin was the smallest in 24 years. Republicans seem to fear that if Democrats start winning Texas, they will have a lock on the electoral college, and they are pulling out all the stops to prevent that outcome.
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John Oliver shows us some of the amazing things this species can do.
Long time readers of this blog know of my partiality to the detective story, especially of the British variety made famous by Agatha Christie and a host of other writers. No one would claim that they represent serious literature. They are utterly formulaic and do not aspire to great literary heights. They are the book equivalent of comfort food, where the pleasure comes from the familiarity, where you know what to expect and always get it. We readers know all the faults of the genre and love it anyway.
In a long essay, Breanna Rennix describes the formula.
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Also, just make stuff up.
(WuMo)
It should be obvious that all the birds that we see are actually robotic devices used by the government to spy on us.
