Hasan Minhaj on the opioid drug crisis

It is hard to be funny when you are talking about the massive destruction that is being caused by the indiscriminate use of pain-killing drugs, and Minhaj’s episode of Patriot Act on this topic is only sporadically funny. It seemed like he felt obliged to throw in some jokes since his is technically a comedy show, but his heart was not really in it, especially since he has known people who succumbed to early deaths due to these highly potent drugs like fentanyl, where even a tiny amount can kill you and many users are not even aware that the drugs they are taking contain fentanyl mixed in.
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Really good deep fake of Tom Cruise

Actor Bill Hader is known for his impressions of famous people, a skill he used to good effect when he used to be a cast member of Saturday Night Live. In a recent TV interview he recounted meetings with Tom Cruise and Seth Rogan and did impressions of them. Someone took that video and whenever Hader did an impression, did a deep fake to make him actually look like the person he was impersonating.

The transitions are so smooth as to be uncanny. It is really well done and also deeply disturbing at the potential to dupe people.

What Brexit meant in practice was never clear

Faux journalist Jonathan Pie points out that in the 2016 Brexit referendum, while the choice between Remain and Leave seemed straightforward enough, in practice only one position, the Remain one, was well-defined because that kept the status quo. What Leave meant was never quite thought through and this led to Leave voters being able to project onto it all their frustrations with the status quo and with Europe, resulting in the current mess where there is a real possibility of a breakup of the UK, something that I doubt few Leave voters seriously wanted.

John Oliver on Boris Johnson

While we in the US are depressed at the thought of having such a blatantly racist president, let us spare a thought for our friends across the Atlantic in the UK who also have a nasty piece of work in their new prime minister Boris Johnson. The ‘special relationship’ between the US and the UK was always more of a meaningless slogan than reflecting a genuine reality, but it may be true for just these two unprincipled individuals who seem to be made for each other.

The one advantage that people in the UK have over us is that it is always possible that the government will collapse leading to new elections and a new prime minister, while we are stuck with this president at least until January 2021.

John Oliver delivers the bad news about Johnson. (Language advisory)