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HTML
532 lines
62 KiB
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<meta content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=yes" name="viewport"/>
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<title>20 April, 2022</title>
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<title>Daily-Dose</title><meta content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" name="viewport"/><link href="styles/simple.css" rel="stylesheet"/><link href="../styles/simple.css" rel="stylesheet"/><style>*{overflow-x:hidden;}</style><link href="https://unpkg.com/aos@2.3.1/dist/aos.css" rel="stylesheet"/><script src="https://unpkg.com/aos@2.3.1/dist/aos.js"></script></head>
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<body>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-down" id="daily-dose">Daily-Dose</h1>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-right" data-aos-anchor-placement="top-bottom" id="contents">Contents</h1>
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<ul>
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<li><a href="#from-new-yorker">From New Yorker</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-vox">From Vox</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-the-hindu-sports">From The Hindu: Sports</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-the-hindu-national-news">From The Hindu: National News</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-bbc-europe">From BBC: Europe</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-ars-technica">From Ars Technica</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</a></li>
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</ul>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-new-yorker">From New Yorker</h1>
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<ul>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Grim Journey of the Accused Brooklyn Subway Shooter</strong> - Frank James, the man charged with carrying out the Sunset Park attack, appears to have inhabited a world of conspiracy theories, grievance, and mental illness. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-grim-journey-of-the-accused-brooklyn-subway-shooter">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Siege of Chernihiv</strong> - For more than a month, the Russian military pummelled residents with bombing raids and missile fire, turning a locked-in Ukrainian city into an urban death trap. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/the-siege-of-chernihiv">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Case for an Immediate Energy Embargo on Russia</strong> - An aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky argues that halting the purchase of oil and gas is the surest way to stop Vladimir Putin’s military machine. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-case-for-an-immediate-energy-embargo-on-russia">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Subway in Our Collective Imagination, Before and After the Brooklyn Shooting</strong> - New York’s transit system is exceptional in its ability to reflect the crises and moods of the city. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-subway-in-our-collective-imagination-before-and-after-the-%20brooklyn-shooting">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Twitter Account That Collects Awkward, Amusing Writing</strong> - When writers strive for elegant variations of the same word, the anonymous Second Mentions account takes note. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/rabbit-holes/the-twitter-account-that-collects-awkward-amusing-writing">link</a></p></li>
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</ul>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-vox">From Vox</h1>
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<ul>
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<li><strong>Living in the shadow of school shootings has changed us. Movies about them have changed, too.</strong> -
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<figure>
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<img alt="Two teenaged girls lie on the couch, their heads together." src="https://cdn.vox-
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cdn.com/thumbor/vJup_AST6tQEa1sPAKs88voEpVc=/147x0:1107x720/1310x983/cdn.vox-
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cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/70770478/fallout.0.jpeg"/>
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<figcaption>
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Maddie Ziegler and Jenna Ortega star in <em>The Fallout</em>, about teens who survive a shooting at their school. | HBO
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</figcaption>
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</figure>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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The Fallout and Mass look at school shootings in a new way.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="AwgP8L">
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Columbine, in 1999, wasn’t the first American school shooting, but it’s the one that seems to loom the largest. Quickly afterward came the unrelenting attempts to retell the story, to make sense of it. To <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/4/20/15369442/columbine-anniversary-
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cassie-bernall-rachel-scott-martyrdom">turn the slain into folk heroes</a>. To find a way to explain what happened, and why, and then why it kept happening over and over again.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="yezikN">
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We’ve kept at that impossible task for well over 20 years. The Columbine generation are raising their own children now; we’re on our second generation of kids who live in that shadow. In the meantime, we’ve watched movies and TV shows about school shootings, and lived through them over and over again; they’re among the traumas of our age. And as shootings have grown from shocking to shockingly commonplace, the questions we’re trying to answer have changed, too; we’ve shifted from interrogating the shooters to understanding the survivors.
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</p>
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<aside id="zlbIbq">
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<div>
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</div>
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</aside>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="3ucOKc">
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Within a few years of Columbine, the quest for meaning had migrated from TV news screens to bigger ones. In 2002, Michael Moore’s documentary <em>Bowling for Columbine</em> premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won a special prize. In it, the filmmaker sought to explain the “why” of the violence. There are answers, sort of, statistics and stories about the prevalence of guns and gun culture in America. But there aren’t truly satisfactory explanations.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9AUc9u">
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A year later, Gus Van Sant, the director of <em>Good Will Hunting</em>, premiered his drama <em>Elephant</em> at the Cannes Film Festival. The film follows a small group of students at a fictional Portland high school over a few days before two boys, Alex (Alex Frost) and Eric (Eric Deulen), come to campus with automatic weapons and a plan to systematically murder their classmates and teachers. It won the Palme d’Or.
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</p>
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<aside id="WsumWl">
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</div>
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</aside>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ubGJiz">
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Van Sant had initially planned the project as a TV documentary about Columbine, then <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/2003-shades-of-columbine/">scrapped the idea</a> after executives were worried about showing violence on television. Unlike Moore, he didn’t want to explain why Columbine happened. He said he was instead “trying to get out more a poetic impression and sort of allow the audiences’ thoughts into that impression.”
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="IfGuFu">
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Watching <em>Elephant</em> almost 20 years later, that explanation — whatever Van Sant’s desires for his film — doesn’t fully hold up. <em>Elephant</em> can’t help play like a search for reasons, a dip into shooters’ psyches. The film hints at reasons: violent video games, lack of parental oversight, irritation with authority, sublimated homosexual desire. They are angry young men. They’re the reason <em>Elephant</em> exists.
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</p>
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<figure class="e-image">
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<pre><code> <img alt="A teenaged boy walks down a school hallway." src="https://cdn.vox-</code></pre>
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cdn.com/thumbor/wQcE4wHQLR9pstdrD72pHqNGoq8=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox- cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23398690/elephant.jpeg" /> <cite>HBO Films</cite>
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<figcaption>
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Gus Van Sant’s <em>Elephant</em> explores the moments leading up to a shooting at a fictional Portland high school in <em>Elephant.</em>
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</figcaption>
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</figure>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8Uzo2w">
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It’s interesting to hold up <em>Elephant</em>, which lingers for an excruciating period on the actual shooting event, against more recent films about school shootings. Megan Park’s film <em>The Fallout</em>, which is as much a teen drama as a movie “about” a shooting, may be the best. There are some similarities between the two. Both take the emotional lives of teenagers seriously and mostly keep parents and teachers out of frame. Both follow multiple characters. And both evoke the chilling sound of guns shooting in empty school corridors.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="J6pE8B">
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The early-aughts millennial teens in <em>Elephant</em> are caught unawares; when they see Alex and Eric crossing the school lawn with giant duffels loaded with weaponry, they’re not sure what’s going on. But a generation later in <em>The Fallout</em>, the shooting happens at the film’s start, and the teens know exactly what’s happening. They have been participating in active shooter drills since grade school. They’ve seen news of shootings on TV. They know about the Parkland kids, about what happened at Sandy Hook. They are getting shoved into a narrative they know all too well. Vada (Jenna Ortega) happens to be in the bathroom when it happens, and she takes refuge with Mia (Maddie Ziegler) and Quinton (Niles Fitch). The violence happens off-screen, while the trio huddles in a stall, trying to turn invisible while the unthinkable happens outside.
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</p>
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<div class="c-float-right">
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<aside id="2MHxmC">
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<q>We’ve shifted from interrogating the shooters to understanding the survivors</q>
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</aside>
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</div>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="VS63zH">
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But, they survive. And the film’s focus isn’t on why it happened. We barely learn anything about the shooters; they’re beside the point, for Vada as well as the film. The teens have taken for granted that shootings happen, all the time. Instead, they are asking why they survived, and how they can live in their altered reality.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Pvq1vr">
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<em>The Fallout</em> is terrific, and terrifically real. Teens seek refuge from their recurring nightmares and fears in ways that mark them out as individuals — in drugs, or in sex, or in throwing themselves into activism, or in simply losing their will to do much of anything. They’re funny kids with parents who are mostly doing their best. Their friendships are real. They’re smart and cool, though not nearly as grown-up as they think they are, and they’re living through something impossible. Unlike in <em>Elephant</em>, it’s them, the ones who didn’t commit heinous acts, who are the true focus.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Ae7bMc">
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But to contrast <em>The Fallout</em> and <em>Elephant</em> isn’t to say one is better than the other, or more ethical or correct. Looking at the two, it’s more clear that storytellers’ focus has shifted over time. Earlier films like <em>Elephant</em> or <em>Bowling for Columbine</em> focus on the shooters and their reasons — and so they tend to end at the shooting.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="K6KmKT">
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That’s also the narrative arc in Lynne Ramsay’s 2011 film <em>We Need To Talk About Kevin</em>, also a Cannes premiere, and — not insignificantly — based on Lionel Shriver’s novel, which was published in 2003. The film largely centers on Eva (Tilda Swinton), whose life has fallen apart in the wake of a school shooting, perpetrated by her son, Kevin (Ezra Miller). In a jagged and nonlinear way, we slowly come to understand that something is terribly wrong with Kevin, who exhibits profoundly antisocial behavior almost from birth, largely directed at his mother. He’s kind of a criminal mastermind, and when he’s arrested at his school, he shows no remorse at all.
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</p>
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<figure class="e-image">
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<img alt="A mother and her son sit across the table from one another in prison.
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He’s in prison clothing." src="https://cdn.vox-
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cdn.com/thumbor/VBtFWWrnJQx7U7IxCMiZDWowIbE=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-
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cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23398705/kevin.jpeg"/> <cite>Oscilloscope</cite>
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<figcaption>
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Tilda Swinton and Ezra Miller in <em>We Need to Talk About Kevin.</em>
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</figcaption>
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</figure>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="IuQP7J">
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<em>We Need to Talk About Kevin</em> is unusual in that he shoots with a crossbow, rather than a gun. But taking the question of gun violence out of the picture underlines the story’s main point: to see if there’s a way to pry open Kevin’s mind and get what’s going on in there. And the answer the movie gives is that there isn’t. It’s just darkness the whole way down.
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</p></li>
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</ul>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="yj0Vpx">
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What emerges from these early aughts attempts to understand shootings using the tools of cinema is a need to understand, in a way that ends up centering the shooter. Does that have an effect on viewers? Does it position the shooter as the true protagonist of the tale? And — perhaps most chillingly — is it possible that it makes the character, however heinous their deeds, sort of attractive to certain audiences?
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wbjALo">
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It’s impossible to say, and maybe even dangerous to posit. But as the months after Columbine showed — when <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/4/20/15369442/columbine-anniversary-cassie-bernall-rachel-scott-
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martyrdom">garbled stories grew into folk legends</a> that could end up hurting survivors further — that focus could be, at best counterproductive. And in the decades of school shootings since, survivors have found themselves processing their trauma in different ways, complicated by having to navigate those emotions with a still-developing brain. Meanwhile, we can offer all kinds of reasons that school shootings happen so frequently in America, including a prevalent gun culture and lack of mental health support. But those confront the symptoms, not the cause. We still don’t have real answers for the <em>why</em> of it all, the senseless violence, the unending tragedy, the thing that might make a young person want to do something so awful — the thing movies tried to figure out.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5xWJOW">
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So perhaps it’s unsurprising that filmmakers have been gradually turning in the direction <em>The Fallout</em> takes, focusing more on what happens next. We’ve all been living, to one degree or another, in the wake of school shootings, whether we’ve experienced them directly or not.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="RiNjA6">
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This isn’t easy to do well. Brady Corbet’s 2018 film <em>Vox Lux</em> leans hard into the skid, following a pop star who rises to fame after she survives a shooting at her school, then writes and performs a song about it and becomes a hit. She’s destroyed by adulthood, but whether it’s the trauma or the lifestyle or the fame or all of it, it’s hard to say — and the film seems a little too in love with its conceit to actually embody its goals.
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</p>
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<figure class="e-image">
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<img alt="A man and a woman sit across from one
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another, weeping." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ssMVGZRnDTlS6WYhCNM7jRI-doY=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-
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cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22283956/50617298138_3fa467ba39_k.jpg"/> <cite>Ryan Jackson-Healy / Bleecker Street</cite>
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<figcaption>
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Jason Isaacs and Martha Plimpton in <em>Mass</em>.
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</figcaption>
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</figure>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="jSHaF5">
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Fran Kranz’s gentler and more devastating ensemble drama <em>Mass</em>, released last year, gets at something profound. It’s the story of four people who meet to talk years after a shooting: the parents (Jason Isaacs and Martha Plimpton) of a boy who died in a shooting, and the parents (Ann Dowd and Reed Birney) of the shooter. Their conversation is knotty and painful. Here, the parents are added to the ranks of the survivors, run ragged and devastated by the ways they’ve tried to respond, to understand how their own child could have been the shooter, or the shot.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8ERkgO">
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And as they stand in for the thousands of parents living through the same thing, they beckon the audience to live through their eyes, to understand the tangly and uncertain world they occupy. <em>Mass</em> ends with grace, maybe a little catharsis, but no answers or explanations. This is a mess that we are living through, one that can be confronted but requires courage.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="hhV1HR">
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Meanwhile, the kids try to keep living. The best moment in <em>The Fallout</em> comes right at the end, when Vada seems to have recovered just enough to “move on” from what happened. We think she’s got the tools to cope and keep living. But in the final moments, she picks up her phone to see a news alert about a shooting at a high school halfway across the country.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="cudFYX">
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And the last thing we hear is Vada’s breath as she has a panic attack. For the second generation of school shooting survivors, it’s never really over. The best the movies can do is try to capture that experience, let it linger, give space for grief to survivors, and make sure all of us understand.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="btVbHZ">
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The Fallout<em> is streaming on HBO Max. </em>Mass<em> is streaming on Hulu and available to rent on digital platforms.</em>
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</p>
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<ul>
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<li><strong>One Good Thing: Les Mis is here to complicate your joy</strong> -
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<figure>
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<img alt="The lit marquee for the Broadway show “Les Miserables.”" src="https://cdn.vox-
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cdn.com/thumbor/lOvgX03zON-Q-xdaFiWixf4W4jE=/304x0:5168x3648/1310x983/cdn.vox-
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cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/70770419/GettyImages_1230146639.0.jpg"/>
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<figcaption>
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Aaron Chown/PA Images via Getty Images
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</figcaption>
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</figure>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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Why sewer systems are the key to understanding Les Mis.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="87HQdw">
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<em>Do you hear the people sing? </em>
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</p>
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If you’re a former theater kid, a casual fan of French history, or any one of the millions of people who’ve seen any form of the <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/690152/longest-running-west-end-musicals-uk/">longest-running musical</a> in London’s West End, you probably just broke out into song.
|
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</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rJEL0Z">
|
|||
|
|
<em>Singing the songs of angry men, it is the music of a people who will not be slaves again.</em>
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gZamYO">
|
|||
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|
Once you start, you can’t stop.
|
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|
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</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0Etnrx">
|
|||
|
|
<em>I dreamed a dream in time gone by … </em>
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gHWkUk">
|
|||
|
|
<em>There, out in the darkness …</em>
|
|||
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</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
</ul>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="j3QSfC">
|
|||
|
|
There’s a song for every emotion: love, heartbreak, anger, despair. <em>Les Miserables</em>, the musical based on Victor Hugo’s sprawling <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/135/135-h/135-h.htm">19th-century novel about French revolutionaries</a>, has launched a million dreams and memes.
|
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</p>
|
|||
|
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<div id="zhKIlX">
|
|||
|
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<div class="tumblr-post">
|
|||
|
|
<a href="https://lesbianjolllly.tumblr.com/post/641000969486876672">https://lesbianjolllly.tumblr.com/post/641000969486876672</a>
|
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|
|
</div>
|
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</div>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="LdByfs">
|
|||
|
|
But whether you’re a superfan who wants to fight me about the novel’s 100-page Battle of Waterloo digression or whether Nick Jonas was well-cast as Marius in the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMZQXhg4MWQ">25th anniversary concert</a> (I’m down on Waterloo and up on Nick), or just sort of remember seeing the movie 10 years ago, <em>Les Miserables</em> is something that sticks with you. And that’s because it’s one of the few pieces of art that manages to capture basically everything about humanity.
|
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|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="yGyf80">
|
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|
The musical has, in many ways, overtaken the novel in the cultural imagination. The songs in <em>Les Mis</em> are so catchy that they become the be-all and end-all of the piece, something to be sung on road trips and, for many people, completely divorced from the story. But what gives those songs their gravitas are the themes of <em>Les Mis</em>: It’s fundamentally about misplaced justice and social inequality. The key to not taking the songs of <em>Les Mis</em> for granted is looking more closely at the book the musical is based on.
|
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|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="iYIrp2">
|
|||
|
|
My first job out of college was in economics research. I lived in Zambia and interviewed people about a sewer system that was supposed to be built in the next couple of months. The sewer system was planned for a “<a href="https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780190922481/obo-9780190922481-0008.xml">peri-urban</a>” neighborhood located in the space where the city met the countryside. Every month, they would wait for it to be built, and every month, it was not built. Every winter, because of the lack of a sewer system, the streets flood, and cholera sweeps through much of peri-urban Lusaka.
|
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|
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</p>
|
|||
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="v1EB1S">
|
|||
|
|
This doesn’t, at first, seem like it has to do with <em>Les Mis</em>. But as Victor Hugo, the author, wrote: “The history of men is reflected in the history of sewers.”
|
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|
|
</p>
|
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|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="UiAkqA">
|
|||
|
|
<em>Les Mis</em> is set in 19th-century peri-urban Paris, which is completely removed from the reality of many upper-middle-class Americans, and so is easy to think of as only a musical set piece for romantic and revolutionary songs. But this setting looks a lot like many peri-urban areas today. The “justice” system that puts Jean Valjean, one of the characters at the center of the story, in prison for 19 years for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his family looks uncomfortably like modern America.
|
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|
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</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Gc2ehV">
|
|||
|
|
At the end of <em>Les Miserables</em>, Valjean has a confrontation with his former pursuer, the cop Javert, who has no sense of mercy, in the Paris sewers.
|
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|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="bxc7Qq">
|
|||
|
|
In this part of<em> Les Miserables</em>, the book, Hugo goes on a massive digression about the sewer systems of Paris: their history, their present, and the possibility for social progress and hygiene through their cleaning.
|
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|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="mbxA7h">
|
|||
|
|
This is what Hugo is dealing with in the book: inequality, injustice, and what happens when you have a massive urban and peri-urban environment where people are going hungry. He digs into how it’s really bad when people don’t have functional sewer systems and they are driven to revolution. He explicitly states this in his original epigraph!
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<blockquote>
|
|||
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8yDBfS">
|
|||
|
|
“As long as social damnation exists, through laws and customs, artificially creating hell at the heart of civilisation and muddying a destiny that is divine with human calamity; as long as the three problems of the century — man’s debasement through the proletariat, woman’s demoralisation through hunger, the wasting of the child through darkness — are not resolved; as long as social suffocation is possible in certain areas; in other words, and to take an even broader view, as long as ignorance and misery exist in this world, books like the one you are about to read are, perhaps, not entirely useless.”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
</blockquote>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="pjNVk4">
|
|||
|
|
Social novels provide a map of the conditions that drive people to revolution and force people to look at the worst parts of the society we create. But, as this <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/jul/12/saturdayreviewsfeatres.guardianreview">review</a> of the book says, Hugo’s own words above provide a limited vision of what his book does. Literature does what economics cannot: It provides not only policy prescriptions that allow more people to live, but provides the reasons for living.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="sHTdmZ">
|
|||
|
|
The musical might not quite get across the social gravity of the novel, but it gets across the human part well, showing through music and dance the infinite range of human experience. The combination of what people remember — catchy songs — and what people forget — serious social commentary — is what makes <em>Les Mis</em> so brilliant.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<div id="9XqToC">
|
|||
|
|
<div style="width: 100%; height: 0; padding-bottom: 56.25%;">
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
</div>
|
|||
|
|
</div>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ghRD26">
|
|||
|
|
The reason the revolutionaries in <em>Les Mis</em> are fighting and Hugo is writing is 1) for things like better sewer systems or social programs, and 2) because of the options these sewer systems provide to live. Eponine should be worried about <a href="https://twitter.com/AlexPetrovnia/status/1485451839256543234">cholera</a>; Eponine also sings a song that anyone, anywhere who has experienced unrequited love can understand. <em>Les Mis</em> starts with an exploration of an unjust justice system and provides an answer in the mercy of the Bishop and the life of Jean Valjean.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8w5UTv">
|
|||
|
|
That’s the genius of good art; it’s the genius of <em>Les Mis</em>. The memes are good. The singing is great, and the jokes, and all that, because that is what makes us human. It’s not here to kill your joy because joy is what makes us human — it’s here to complicate it. It says there is poverty, there is hunger, and it makes us inhuman to ignore it and not work toward social progress. And yet, there is joy, there is love, and there is beauty and forgiveness and mercy.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="aAj3t1">
|
|||
|
|
Ultimately, we want a world where humans are thriving. This is a world with functional sewer systems and a world with singing. <em>Les Miserables</em>, in all its forms, gives us a vision for both.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="j8A63e">
|
|||
|
|
<em>You can read </em>Les Miserables<em> </em><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/135/135-h/135-h.htm"><em>for free here</em></a>. <em>For more recommendations from the world of culture, check out the </em><a href="https://www.vox.com/one-good-thing"><em>One Good Thing</em></a><em> archives.</em>
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="kwMMKt">
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="PQ6rPw">
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<ul>
|
|||
|
|
<li><strong>What it would take to make us love our jobs again</strong> -
|
|||
|
|
<figure>
|
|||
|
|
<img alt="An illustration of a scene in which workers such as servers and grocery store workers are
|
|||
|
|
enjoying their work and labor appears to be rewarding, rather than draining." src="https://cdn.vox-
|
|||
|
|
cdn.com/thumbor/rkdPjJIb66asYDioxQx8i47zEAk=/350x0:2450x1575/1310x983/cdn.vox-
|
|||
|
|
cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/70735923/20220405_Vox.0.jpg"/>
|
|||
|
|
<figcaption>
|
|||
|
|
Mojo Wang for Vox
|
|||
|
|
</figcaption>
|
|||
|
|
</figure>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
|||
|
|
Recognizing that many of us find purpose in what we do is a good start.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<div class="c-float- left">
|
|||
|
|
<figure class="e-image">
|
|||
|
|
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-
|
|||
|
|
cdn.com/thumbor/YYgW4HsU995yniG4Y5QuEoQvF0Y=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-
|
|||
|
|
cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/21899595/VOX_The_Highlight_Box_Logo_Horizontal.png"/>
|
|||
|
|
</figure>
|
|||
|
|
</div>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CEAwkx">
|
|||
|
|
<em>Part of the </em><a href="https://www.vox.com/features/23013380/work-is-broken-can-we-fix-
|
|||
|
|
it"><em><strong>Future of Work issue</strong></em></a><em> of </em><a href="https://www.vox.com/the-
|
|||
|
|
highlight"><em><strong>The Highlight</strong></em></a><em>, our home for ambitious stories that explain our world.</em>
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="OBWhmy">
|
|||
|
|
Laurel Coates had been working for two years at a grocery store in Oakland, California, when the pandemic began. She took voluntary medical leave out of concern for vulnerable relatives and received unemployment insurance payments.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5qSZZl">
|
|||
|
|
She was in good financial shape, but she eventually found that she missed the work. “I need the social interaction,” she said recently. “I was creating projects at home. I was just finding myself reading the news, and my anxiety level was getting crazy.”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="B55uBq">
|
|||
|
|
A year later, after vaccines became widely available, she returned to the job. “Going back to work helped my mental state, seeing my friends and even customers,” she said. Now, she works 30 hours a week and takes satisfaction in writing a perfect produce order, the soothing task of stacking apples, and the help she can offer. “It’s pretty simple,” she said of her job. “You’re able to have these little interactions with people, and help them find their little jar of chili flakes.”
|
|||
|
|
</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
</ul>
|
|||
|
|
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="qszOVj"/>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CyyerN">
|
|||
|
|
We often begin to understand things only after they break down. Your furnace fails, or your marriage does, and you suddenly have to address elementary questions. This is why, in addition to being a worldwide catastrophe, the pandemic has been a large-scale philosophical experiment. It shook up our lives and forced us to ask why we travel, why we go to school, why we touch each other.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="C5Z47h">
|
|||
|
|
American working life suffered its greatest breakdown since at least the Great Depression. Now, offices are reopening even as quit rates are near record highs and <a href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf">millions of workers</a> remain out of the labor force. But the questions raised by mass layoffs, remote work, and the risks borne by front-line workers remain unsettled: What good is work? How should it fit into our lives?
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="eokKaZ">
|
|||
|
|
There is a surprising skepticism toward work in the US today — surprising because Americans have for centuries valued hard work and identified themselves with their jobs. From Ben Franklin’s “time is money” to pre-pandemic hustle culture, Americans have viewed work as essential to human value. Now, the “antiwork” movement — most visible on the <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/">r/antiwork</a> and <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/WorkReform/">r/workreform</a> <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3vwjw/inside-the-
|
|||
|
|
online-movement-to-end-work-antiwork-sub-reddit">Reddit forums</a>, where people discuss abstruse Marxist philosophy and celebrate workers who tell off their petty bosses — has grown more prominent as the labor market churns. Some opinion- makers are staking claim to “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/15/magazine/anti-ambition-age.html">anti- ambition</a>,” a cold-eyed view of work as little more than an economic transaction: no more doing what you love, no more turning work into a religion.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="fwCxAS">
|
|||
|
|
I find this skepticism encouraging. For years, I have <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/09/23/opinion/covid-return-to-work-rto.html">written about</a> the bad bargain work has become in the United States, with workers often enduring insecurity, crummy wages, and <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520344075/">burnout</a>. Alongside writers like David Graeber, Miya Tokumitsu, and Jenny Odell, I have <a href="https://hedgehogreview.com/issues/the-evening-of-life/articles/when-work-and-meaning-
|
|||
|
|
part-ways">argued</a> that work is so miserable, we ought to reimagine our society so that we can live decent lives while doing as little of it as possible — ideally, none at all.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CPXqpF">
|
|||
|
|
But when I listen to Coates talk about her job, or when I consider work’s role in my own life, I think there’s something about it that’s worth saving: the social, psychological, and moral structure that, at its best, work can provide us.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="IPKEXn">
|
|||
|
|
An automated, post-work utopia is worth striving toward. There’s no telling, however, when such a dream might be realized; we currently have neither the civic institutions nor the cultural values to have a leisure society. And in the meantime, most adults, myself included, have to earn money and depend on others’ labor.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CYSH9y">
|
|||
|
|
Many critics of American work culture are not in a position to change federal or corporate policy. They can, however, provide the vision and energy to push for change. To do so, they will need to reckon with what people get out of their work, figure out ways to preserve the good while eliminating the bad, and ultimately envision a society in which people can get those benefits, both material and moral, by other means.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="HboU8v"/>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="4E9HUk">
|
|||
|
|
Coates’s coworker Joey Fry has worked for the grocery chain for 20 years. “I always thought about my job as just money and separated it from a passion,” he told me. His true passion is making ceramic art. He works 35 hours a week at the store and earns “just barely enough” to support himself.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="kliobH">
|
|||
|
|
Money is the most obvious thing people want from work, and so higher wages must be at the center of any effort to make work better, with some sort of basic income a feature of the postwork world. People, however, also work in pursuit of more abstract goods, such as meaning or purpose. That is not just a luxury for elite workers. Although workers without a college degree put more importance on salary and security when making career decisions than workers with degrees do, as the sociologist <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520303232/the-trouble-with-passion">Erin Cech</a> has found, there is no difference in the value workers place on finding meaningful work.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="IOxBVa">
|
|||
|
|
Stocking shelves may not be Fry’s passion, but over the course of our conversation, he kept bringing up social and ethical aspects of his job at the grocery store. “There has to be some integrity behind my job,” he said. “I find it there.” He enjoys the physical nature of the work, and he likes the fact that he works in his neighborhood. “I want to go to work, doing something that’s good for the community, providing food,” he said.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="orn1EA">
|
|||
|
|
Covid-19 posed a moral challenge to Fry. When the pandemic arrived and shelves emptied of toilet paper and pasta, Fry, who is 39, stayed on the job out of a sense of duty. “A lot of my coworkers chose to not work,” he said. “I just didn’t feel like I had any good reason not to.” He noted that he could have made more money on unemployment. “But I thought I would get bored, and I thought it was the right thing to do,” Fry said. The store was “struggling,” he added. “I felt like they needed me there.”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gtm1gp">
|
|||
|
|
Work is a social arrangement. It mediates countless relationships, both casual and intimate. Go to the tailor often enough, and you’ll become part of each other’s lives, sharing jokes and complaints about the weather or, where I live, the Dallas Cowboys. I still miss the regulars at the restaurant where I worked many years ago. Even at a workplace with high employee turnover, Fry has made friendships that have lasted for two decades. Or as Coates put it, “We all have our work wives.” Sometimes, a coworker becomes your actual wife. One of mine did.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="LWi3p6">
|
|||
|
|
The tight weave between work and society is why it’s so worrisome that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/01/business/customer-service-pandemic-rage.html">customers’ angry outbursts</a> at retail, restaurant, and airline workers have become more common lately. Both Coates and Fry said that customers not masking — even in an area like the East Bay, where vaccination and masking rates were high — were a source of stress.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MzL1PR">
|
|||
|
|
Still, not even a pandemic can erase societal goodwill altogether. Fry said some customers expressed genuine appreciation for his work. “There was a super sweet couple,” he recalled, “that stopped by every morning and thanked every single person who worked there.”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="9qG8ps"/>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="imGbpI">
|
|||
|
|
Even as the antiwork counterculture grows, so do calls to “get back to work.” Conservative politicians have been saying this all along, but now President Joe Biden has joined the chorus, saying in his <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-
|
|||
|
|
room/speeches-remarks/2022/03/01/remarks-of-president-joe-biden-state-of-the-union-address-as-delivered/">State of the Union</a> address this year, “It’s time for Americans to get back to work and fill our great downtowns again.”
|
|||
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="uuOkhP">
|
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|
Looming large in such arguments are the supposed perils of idleness. The political economist <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-underside-of-the-great-resignation-labor-participation-rate-workforce-men-
|
|||
|
|
employment-pay-jobs-welfare-ubi-11642777828?mod=article_inline">Nicholas Eberstadt told the Wall Street Journal</a>’s Mene Ukueberuwa in January that working-age adults who chose to stay out of the workforce were inviting a “fundamentally degrading” purposelessness into their lives. Out-of-work men, Eberstadt’s research suggests, spend their time not in contributing to their communities but in front of screens: watching TV, playing video games. “By and large,” Eberstadt said, “nonworking men don’t ‘do’ civil society.” Work is their main link to it, and when it’s severed, they become more <a href="https://aeon.co/essays/what-does-it-mean-to-be-a-man-in-the-age-of-austerity">isolated and despondent</a>.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Vh1N65">
|
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|
I have to admit, I know firsthand what Eberstadt is talking about. After I burned out and quit my dream job as a college professor in Pennsylvania, I followed my wife’s career to Texas and decided I would try freelance writing. The work felt very lonely. She went off to work, and I stayed home, ostensibly to write, with nothing to anchor my time. Ideas and words — and thus money, too — came to me slowly. I spent a lot of time lying on the couch. I was the sort of person Eberstadt is talking about. Even as I was writing about the problem with relying on work for your life’s meaning, it became clear I needed a job.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="BwnwYv">
|
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|
After a year and a half, I returned to a familiar place: the classroom. I’m now a part-time writing instructor at the nearest university, a 30-minute walk from my house. The 10 or 12 hours a week I spend on teaching don’t earn me much money, and they cause me mild stress during grading periods, but I also get back many intangible benefits. Students are counting on me to show up at a specific place and time and teach them. That schedule gives shape to my days. In class, I exercise skills I spent decades building. When I go to meetings of my program, I feel like I am part of a worthy enterprise. I’ve made friends with a few colleagues. I can walk across campus and know I belong there. And if anyone asks what work I do, I have a straightforward answer.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ymIRl4">
|
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|
|
Coates’s anxiety and my boredom pose a challenge to antiwork advocates. True, with less work, everyone would be free to structure their lives however they wanted, but in fact, few people are good at that. I certainly am not. I’m much less happy in summers, when I don’t have the routine and obligation of classes to focus my time and effort.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FarNFA">
|
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|
|
One reason work has so much power to shape our lives is that adults lack alternative social structures. Work is just the default mode of engaging with society for anyone who’s out of school, especially if they are not caring for young children. This helps explain why, prior to the pandemic, many retirees who didn’t need the money <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/30/health/unretirement-work-seniors.html">went back to work</a> anyway. Habits of social engagement built up over decades do not disappear on your 65th birthday.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2aDzu3">
|
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|
|
The antiwork vision may seem far-fetched, but it has never really been given a chance. Early in the pandemic, some people glimpsed a postwork society because the $600-a-week unemployment supplements meant they could support their families without work. Because everything else shut down, however, there were limited opportunities to create new institutions that could order our time and effort. It’s no surprise, then, that 70 percent of remote workers reported <a href="https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/news/hr-news/pages/remote-employees-are-working-longer-than-before.aspx">working on the weekends</a> in 2020, or that 45 percent reported working more than they did before. What else was there to do?
|
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</p>
|
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<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="XJJUOl"/>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="KxuH9A">
|
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|
|
It’s true that work can contribute the structure and resources people need to live satisfying lives. But how big a role does work need to play? Can’t we get what we need from work without it dominating our lives?
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="PNyrzy">
|
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|
|
If the most obvious benefit of work is money, then the most obvious cost is time. Or, to put it another way, work costs us our lives. This is why work that feels pointless or pays too little is such an insult. “We tend to speak of our <em>having</em> a limited amount of time,” writes Oliver Burkeman in his book, <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374159122/fourthousandweeks"><em>4,000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals</em></a>. “But it might make more sense … to say that we <em>are</em> a limited amount of time.” If our lives are time, then understanding how the costs and benefits of work play out over time is the key to figuring out how work ought to fit into our lives.
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="KoVvub">
|
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Some of the goods of work increase with the length of the workday. Most notably, this is true of earnings for most workers. But with most other goods, you don’t get more as you work more. In fact, many of the social and psychological benefits come from having a job rather than putting in long hours. That is, you have an answer to the “What do you do?” question even if you only work a few hours a week. You don’t get a better answer with more hours. You don’t get more of the feeling that people are counting on you, that you are contributing to society. You probably don’t make more friends.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="QyjAsU">
|
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And at some point, you stop getting the benefit of a schedule to your time, because you have less and less time when you aren’t at work. Your <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/1348-9585.12190">productivity slows</a>, too, past 40 or 50 hours a week. Meanwhile, stress rises with time spent working. A <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0236931">Korean study</a> found that younger workers’ risk of stress, depression, and suicidal thoughts dramatically increased when they worked longer than a standard schedule.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="i8l3CB">
|
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|
For workers to reap the social, moral, and even spiritual goods US culture promises them, and to avoid the drawbacks, they certainly should be able to cap their hours at 40 per week, and ideally would be working somewhat fewer. That isn’t realistic for many people unless wages increase accordingly. For this reason, shorter-hours policies — like California Democratic Rep. Mark Takano’s proposed <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/4-day-work-week-law-california-congressman-mark-takano-author-2022-1">four-day workweek bill</a>, which would require overtime pay after 32 hours — need to be coupled with higher-wage policies.
|
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</p>
|
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<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="iRISYU"/>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="L7nmvn">
|
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Higher wages and shorter hours: The way to tame work is almost too obvious.
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="StaHbQ">
|
|||
|
|
Yet in the context of US history, it’s revolutionary. Real wages have been flat <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-
|
|||
|
|
decades/">for decades</a>. And the standard workweek hasn’t changed in 85 years. Average working hours in the US have declined slightly since 1980, but not nearly as fast as they have in <a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ac/Annual_working_time_in_OECD.svg">economic peer countries</a> like Canada, France, or Japan.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0dDgMk">
|
|||
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|
We will also need policy to break the vicious cycle between work and social alternatives to it: If everyone is working, then there’s no time to build civic institutions like social clubs or activist groups, but if there are no civic institutions, you may as well keep working. As <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-1/sunday-closing-laws">Sunday-closing laws</a> have relaxed in the US, there is no longer any common time free from work, no period when you can count on others to be available to get together and build social connections. Free time is a human right, argues the political scientist <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691163451/free-time">Julie Rose</a>. It’s a necessary condition for attaining the other rights, like freedom of association, expression, and worship, that liberal democracies are meant to guarantee. And so time away from work and weekly restrictions on commerce should be protected by law.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="JyHqNp">
|
|||
|
|
But policy alone will not solve the problem of work. Culture needs to change, too, and antiwork advocates can push for it to happen. They have the vision and can encourage the building of institutions that will provide an off- ramp from our total work society. We need to make time away from work appealing not just as the absence of toil but as a mode of flourishing and fulfilling our human needs for camaraderie, moral growth, and purpose. That may be the only way we’ll convince people like Nicholas Eberstadt that those who opt out of the labor market, even if they aren’t caring for children or others, are making a positive, worthy choice. That will require foregrounding models of activity and civic engagement — retirees, student activists, disabled people, members of religious orders —that don’t put work at the center. If the antiwork movement can emphasize the positive appeal of not-work, then employers will feel pressure to improve work in turn, if they’re going to lure us back.
|
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</p>
|
|||
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="a0orl0">
|
|||
|
|
Both Laurel Coates and Joey Fry told me they wished they were paid more, but they also said they appreciated the limits on their work, and how they never have to take their work home with them. “My philosophy is, it’s okay to be a little settled,” Fry said. “I’m 70 percent happy at my job most of the time.”
|
|||
|
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</p>
|
|||
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wRFMsH">
|
|||
|
|
And when it’s over, it’s over. A good job is one you can leave at the end of a shift and then get started doing something better.
|
|||
|
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</p>
|
|||
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="41z7QD">
|
|||
|
|
<em>Jonathan Malesic is the author of </em>The End of Burnout: Why Work Drains Us and How to Build Better Lives. <em>He is a former sushi chef and parking attendant. </em>
|
|||
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</p>
|
|||
|
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<div>
|
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<div id="b9ESWp">
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<div>
|
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</div>
|
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</div>
|
|||
|
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</div>
|
|||
|
|
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-the-hindu-sports">From The Hindu: Sports</h1>
|
|||
|
|
<ul>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Blazing Bay shines</strong> -</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>IPL 2022 | Mumbai Indians face Chennai Super Kings in battle to save IPL elimination</strong> - If Mumbai have to chase or set up a big total, then captain will have to do the bulk of scoring.</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Former Bangladesh left-arm spinner Mosharraf Hossain dies at 40</strong> - Hossain was suffering from brain cancer, which was diagnosed in March 2019</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>IPL 2022 | Mumbai Indians eyeing ‘collective effort’ to get off the mark: Unadkat</strong> - Jaydev Unadkat said MI hasn't been able to deliver as a unit</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Virat Kohli is overcooked, needs a break: Ravi Shastri</strong> - ‘He needs a break because he has got 6-7 years of cricket left in him and you don’t want to lose that with a fried brain’</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
</ul>
|
|||
|
|
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-the-hindu-national-news">From The Hindu: National News</h1>
|
|||
|
|
<ul>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Six dead in road accident near Hunsur</strong> -</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Row over shop rooms rocks Corpn Council</strong> - Evict occupant of rooms, demand councillors</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Gadkari urged to convert SH-07 into National Highway</strong> - Traffic load justifies demand, says Minister Narayana Gowda</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Rahul Gandhi sowing seeds of hatred, alleges Union Minister Anurag Thakur</strong> - BJP leader responds to Congress leader’s allegation that govt was demolishing constitutional values</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Andhra Pradesh: police launch ‘face wash’ programme to prevent road accidents</strong> - The drive is taken up between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m. on all stretches in Eluru district</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
</ul>
|
|||
|
|
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-bbc-europe">From BBC: Europe</h1>
|
|||
|
|
<ul>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Ukraine war: Kyiv’s allies pledge more weapons to help win war</strong> - Leaders agree to send artillery and other weapons as Russia launches a fresh offensive in eastern Ukraine.</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Ukraine war: Dramatic images appear to show sinking Russian warship Moskva</strong> - Russia says the Moskva sank after an explosion of ammunition, but Ukrainians say they hit it with missiles.</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>French-Moroccan Muslim: ‘I feel freer in the UK than France’</strong> - Farida was born and raised in France, but she previously lived in the UK for 12 years.</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Emmanuel Macron: From political outsider to president</strong> - Emmanuel Macron was dismissed as an outsider five years ago. Now, he faces a new challenge: his own record.</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>French election: Far-right Le Pen’s long quest for power in France</strong> - Marine Le Pen has taken France’s National Rally to within touching distance of the presidency.</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
</ul>
|
|||
|
|
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-ars-technica">From Ars Technica</h1>
|
|||
|
|
<ul>
|
|||
|
|
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Garmin’s latest fitness tracker meets stiff competition with an empty bag of tricks</strong> - The new basic fitness tracker hasn’t progressed much, while Fitbits have. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1849301">link</a></p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>BMW’s 2023 7 Series will come with battery-electric or V8 power</strong> - A theater screen and recliner transform the backseat experience. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1849141">link</a></p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Not quite Le Mans: 24-hour race won by molecule that traveled 1 micron</strong> - A gold-plated racetrack and fuel from a scanning tunneling microscope. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1849226">link</a></p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Lithium costs a lot of money—so why aren’t we recycling lithium batteries?</strong> - The nascent recycling industry needs to economically deconstruct lots of formats. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1849183">link</a></p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Amazon is hiring to build an “advanced” and “magical” AR/VR product</strong> - Job listings revealed some details about Amazon’s XR ambitions. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1849069">link</a></p></li>
|
|||
|
|
</ul>
|
|||
|
|
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</h1>
|
|||
|
|
<ul>
|
|||
|
|
<li><strong>I’m sick and tired of this “everybody wins” mentality kids have these days.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
|
|||
|
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<div class="md">
|
|||
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
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Seriously, they never exercise, lie in bed 12 hours a day, and sit down far more often than they stand up. And they still get atrophy.
|
|||
|
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</p>
|
|||
|
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</div>
|
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<!-- SC_ON -->
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/JADW27"> /u/JADW27 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/u7jfll/im_sick_and_tired_of_this_everybody_wins/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/u7jfll/im_sick_and_tired_of_this_everybody_wins/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li><strong>A chicken farmer goes into a bar, takes a seat next to a woman, and orders a glass of champagne.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
|
|||
|
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<div class="md">
|
|||
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
|||
|
|
The woman perks up and says, “How about that? I just ordered a glass of champagne, too!”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
|||
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|
He turns to her and says,
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
|||
|
|
“What a coincidence. This is a special day for me, I’m celebrating.”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
|||
|
|
“This is a special day for me, too, and I’m also celebrating,” says the woman.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
|||
|
|
“What a coincidence,” says the man. They clink glasses and he asks, “What are you celebrating?”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
|||
|
|
“My husband and I have been trying to have a child. Today, my gynecologist told me I’m pregnant!”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
|||
|
|
“What a coincidence,” says the man. “I’m a chicken farmer. For years all my hens were infertile, but today they’re finally fertile.”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
|||
|
|
“That’s great,” says the woman. “How did your chickens become fertile?”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
|||
|
|
“I switched cocks,” he replies.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
|||
|
|
“What a coincidence,” she said.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
</div>
|
|||
|
|
<!-- SC_ON -->
|
|||
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/YZXFILE"> /u/YZXFILE </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/u7lg4v/a_chicken_farmer_goes_into_a_bar_takes_a_seat/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/u7lg4v/a_chicken_farmer_goes_into_a_bar_takes_a_seat/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
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<li><strong>I threw my wife a suprise bukkake party</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
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Everyone came. You should have seen her face.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Jackaware69"> /u/Jackaware69 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/u7exeu/i_threw_my_wife_a_suprise_bukkake_party/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/u7exeu/i_threw_my_wife_a_suprise_bukkake_party/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
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<li><strong>Joe rented an apartment and went to the lobby to put his name on his mailbox</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
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While there, an attractive young lady came out of the apartment next to the mailboxes wearing a robe.
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Joe smiled at the young woman and she started a conversation with him. As they talked, her robe slipped open, and it was obvious that she had nothing else on. Poor Joe broke out into a sweat trying to maintain eye contact.
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</p>
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After a few minutes, she placed her hand on his arm and said, “Let’s go to my apartment. I hear someone coming.”
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</p>
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He followed her into her flat. She closed the door and leaned against it, allowing her robe to fall off. Now completely naked, she purred at him, “What would you say is my best feature?”
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</p>
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Flustered and embarrassed, Joe finally squeaked, “It’s got to be your ears!”
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Astounded and a little hurt she asked, “My ears? Look at these breasts—they are full and 100% natural! I work out every day! Look at my skin—no blemishes anywhere! How can you feel that the best part of my body is my ears?!”
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</p>
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Clearing his throat, Joe stammered, “Outside, when you said you heard someone coming?”
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</p>
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“Yes.”
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</p>
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“Well, that was me.”
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/violetbeard"> /u/violetbeard </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/u7t4b3/joe_rented_an_apartment_and_went_to_the_lobby_to/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/u7t4b3/joe_rented_an_apartment_and_went_to_the_lobby_to/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
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<li><strong>What do you call a beauty pageant for still-borns?</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
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Little Miss Carriage
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</p>
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</div>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/mxtch98"> /u/mxtch98 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/u7sg5e/what_do_you_call_a_beauty_pageant_for_stillborns/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/u7sg5e/what_do_you_call_a_beauty_pageant_for_stillborns/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
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</ul>
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