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532 lines
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<meta content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=yes" name="viewport"/>
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<title>14 July, 2023</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>Vermont’s Catastrophic Floods and the Spread of Unnatural Disasters</strong> - In parts of the Northeast, two months of rain fell in two days. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-a-warming-planet/vermonts-catastrophic-floods-and-the-spread-of-unnatural-disasters">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Instant Pot and the Miracle Kitchen Devices of Yesteryear</strong> - Preparing meals is a Sisyphean task, and anything that promises to make it faster, or easier, or better, or healthier, or more fun, is irresistible. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/afterword/the-instant-pot-and-the-miracle-kitchen-devices-of-yesteryear">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Is It Hot Enough Yet for Politicians to Take Real Action?</strong> - The latest record temperatures are driving, again precisely as scientists have predicted, a cascading series of disasters around the world. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/is-it-hot-enough-yet-for-politicians-to-take-real-action">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Sotol and the Making of the Next Big Drink</strong> - The Mexican spirit has been called the next mezcal. But its newfound popularity has brought problems, too. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-the-southwest/sotol-and-the-making-of-the-next-big-drink">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>What to Do with Climate Emotions</strong> - If the goal is to insure that the planet remains habitable, what is the right degree of panic, and how do you bear it? - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-a-warming-planet/what-to-do-with-climate-emotions">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>The scary question at the heart of the Mission: Impossible movies</strong> -
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<figure>
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<img alt="Tom Cruise, in a vest and nice pants, rides a motorcycle through the stone paths of a European city." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/U7e4XHwGv4zk5dV9EOUlfnKEgwY=/559x103:2493x1554/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72451730/micover.0.jpg"/>
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<figcaption>
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Tom Cruise defies death once again in the latest <em>Mission: Impossible</em> film. | Paramount Pictures
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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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In Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One, Tom Cruise once again leads a franchise that’s all about trickery, subterfuge, and the nature of reality itself.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XndFEd">
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In the very first scene of the very first <em>Mission: Impossible</em> film, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is interrogating a Russian guy. We don’t know it’s Hunt, though, because — in perhaps the most iconic running bit in the <em>M:I</em> universe — he’s wearing an extremely lifelike rubber mask. Two minutes into the scene, he walks over to the Russian, kills him, and then pulls off the mask, dramatically revealing the face of a slightly flushed and rumpled Cruise. (It’s hot under all that latex.)
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0APPxR">
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Shortly after that first reveal, the walls of the room fall outward into a warehouse, which makes for a bigger reveal: The whole scene was faked. Not only was the now-dead Russian hoodwinked, but the audience was tricked into believing their senses. For us, the moment is delightful; for the dead man, not so much.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ZM9pgH">
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That opening parry for <em>Mission: Impossible,</em> created and produced by Cruise as a spy-action franchise for himself, showed up in movie theaters in May 1996, with Brian De Palma (of <em>Carrie</em> and <em>Scarface</em>) in the director’s chair. Compared to the latest installment in the franchise, frequent Cruise collaborator Christopher McQuarrie’s <em>Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One</em>, the 1996 version is much sweatier, darker, and kind of erotic. (A Brian De Palma movie indeed.)
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</p>
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<figure class="e-image">
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<img alt="Cruise and Atwell appear to be hanging sideways in a train car." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/-7-7JkoFnl8W8kCl5bhaMRUw1P4=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24786675/mi3.jpg"/> <cite>Paramount Pictures</cite>
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<figcaption>
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Tom Cruise and Hayley Atwell in <em>Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One.</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="mGvPJf">
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The <a href="https://variety.com/lists/mission-impossible-mask-reveals-ranked/living-manifestation-of-destiny-mission-impossible-rogue-nation/">omnipresent unmaskings</a>, of which there have been at least 15 or 20 by now, are still a mainstay of the films. What’s so great about those reveals, in particular, is that you’re rarely actually expecting them. <em>Dead Reckoning Part One</em> plays with this a little, but for the most part, through all the films, any guy at any time could rip his face off and you’d still be like, “Wow, I did not see that coming.”
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Wp88yN">
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The new version is like its predecessors, employing a trope borrowed from the TV show that spawned the film: trickery around every corner, a sense that you can’t quite believe what you see. Dead people turn out to be not-dead people. Walls of rooms keep falling apart to reveal they’re constructed in some warehouse somewhere. Everyone could be a rogue agent or maybe not, and the movie sure isn’t going to wink at you about it till it’s good and ready.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="eWeR4j">
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That those twists and turns keep surprising us seven <a href="https://www.vox.com/movies">movies</a> in points to what’s truly delightful about the <em>Mission: Impossible</em> franchise, and what makes it, in my opinion, both the most inventive and the most satisfying long-running franchise in Hollywood. On one level, <em>M:I</em> is wonderful because the convoluted plots are pretty much beside the point; if they can be said to have a consistent theme, it is “Tom Cruise likes <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/30/movies/mission-impossible-fallout-stunts-tom-cruise.html">almost dying</a> on camera.”
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="hINrux">
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And yet once you’ve watched them all, you can detect a kind of meta-theme to the <em>M:I</em> movies. It stems from a simple moviegoing fact: Most of us believe that what we are seeing in a movie is how things actually happened in the world of the movie. It’s why a movie like <em>A Beautiful Mind</em> or <em>Big Fish</em> or <em>The Irishman</em> is so memorably affecting; we are trained to believe our narrators, and when it turns out that what we’ve been watching is not quite what actually happened, it’s thrilling. New meaning emerges from the mismatch.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CPY7HT">
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<em>Mission: Impossible</em> plays on this expectation, though there’s no specific perspectival narrator. The thrill comes from occasionally discovering that what we’ve been watching is an elaborate fake-out. Sleight of hand is everywhere. Don’t trust your senses, <em>Mission: Impossible</em> exhorts us — they’re easily manipulated.
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</p>
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<figure class="e-image">
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<img alt="Tom Cruise on a motorcycle suspended midair with mountains in the background." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/V84OtVtC3KhUSk2RWvkW2fa3TEo=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24786679/mi4.jpg"/> <cite>Paramount Pictures</cite>
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<figcaption>
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Oh, you better believe he’s actually riding that bike (though with a few more safety precautions).
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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="Cx6EEM">
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This is underlined, in another meta-heavy way, by what makes the films so distinctive: Cruise’s incredible, literally death-defying stunts, every film seeming to take them to a new level. He <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7s5KFbyBmrQ">climbs up sheer rock walls</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sjn3ELLcy2U">leaps across rooftops</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sCa7HA7Sgc">fights cliffside</a>, and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwzHLNn5kZc">hangs off the side of a flying Airbus A400M</a>. Each time a new <em>Mission: Impossible</em> movie is released, it’s accompanied with marketing material that mainly leans on explaining that yes, Tom Cruise did actually <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gj5LqGdQwQ4">climb the Burj Khalifa</a>. Personally I, and I suspect Cruise, will not be satisfied until Ethan Hunt is in outer space. (Oh, <a href="https://variety.com/2022/film/news/tom-cruise-space-movie-first-civilian-spacewalk-outside-of-space-station-1235399127/">he’s doing it</a>.)
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lBweIX">
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Why emphasize that he’s actually doing these stunts (albeit with cables and nets — you could never afford to insure the production otherwise) as the lynchpin of the <em>M:I</em> marketing? First, of course, because it is pretty badass. But the second reason is obvious: While action is a mainstay of American cinema, particularly in superhero movies, we all know they’re flying around on soundstages and are CGI’d within an inch of their lives. It’s all spectacle, but with no reality.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="AZ8AG1">
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With <em>Mission: Impossible</em>, however, our deceiving eyes don’t quite extend to the stunts. Yes, there are tricks of the camera and computer going on. But Tom Cruise is <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lsFs2615gw">actually driving a motorcycle off a cliff and then plummeting down</a>. That’s <em>real</em> — real enough to gasp and hold your breath and get a little shaky. It’s as much a mainstay of the movie as the mask trickery, and that subtle play with what we’re seeing, with the real and the unreal, suggests the movies might be doing this very much on purpose.
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</p>
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<figure class="e-image">
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<img alt="Image reads “spoilers below,” with a triangular sign bearing an exclamation point." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/uPQF4l3Wvpgo7pB7TTD6_3CasSQ=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8565937/spoilers_below.png"/>
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</figure>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="pKon1p">
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I’d already formed that thought and pitched it to my editor before going into <em>Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One</em>, and about 10 minutes in, I started silently fist-pumping. This movie’s Big Bad is something everyone calls “the Entity,” which is not a person, or even a shadowy cabal of persons, but an <a href="https://www.vox.com/2023/4/28/23702644/artificial-intelligence-machine-learning-technology">AI</a> that’s become sentient and is out to take down humanity.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="K59efk">
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There’s arguably a tad too much explanation about the Entity throughout the movie that bogs it down a little, but the irony is so bold you sort of have to respect it. At the same time that Hollywood’s <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/23700519/writers-strike-ai-2023-wga">workers are battling</a> to make sure their bosses don’t replace them with AI to cut costs and please shareholders, one of the summer’s biggest movies is about how AI wants to wipe us all out. It’s of a piece with recent blockbusters that are straightforwardly about how <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2020/1/29/21058521/hollywood-ai-deepfake-black-mirror-gemini-irishman-cinelytic">our digital doppelgangers</a> want to kill us, algorithms are <a href="https://www.vox.com/22576116/space-jam-2-review-new-legacy-lebron-algorithm">out to destroy originality</a>, and continually <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2023/5/25/23732860/indiana-jones-dial-destiny-review-cannes-harrison-ford">repurposing nostalgia IP is how a culture dies</a>. The call is coming from inside the house, et cetera.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="UrsQ2h">
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But the reason I loved the Entity plotline — which, like most of the characters, will clearly be developed and wrapped up in Part Two (due out next June) — so much is that it shows what <em>Mission: Impossible</em> has been about all along.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="u4LCoo">
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Thus the Entity’s greatest threat is its ability to change reality — well, in a manner of speaking. It’s not that the digital threat can change the physical bones of reality. The Entity’s danger to humanity lies chiefly in the fact that the world is fully networked, everyone passing currency and information and even warfare along digital pathways that a sentient AI would have no trouble hacking and manipulating. In a highly mediated world, where we encounter everything and everyone through screens, the way reality is represented to us suddenly becomes, effectively, reality. If a story or a myth is floated around the internet and people come to believe it, does it even really matter, in a practical matter, if it’s true? If, as in the 1964 film <em>Fail Safe</em>, a country’s government thinks it’s under attack and launches a missile back at the supposed aggressor who then counterattacks, how much does it matter to the civilians on the ground that there was never an attack in the first place?
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<div class="c-float-right">
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<aside id="STnNt7">
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<q>If a story or a myth is floated around the internet and people come to believe it, does it even really matter if it’s true?</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="GKxQnv">
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This is exactly what the humans of <em>Dead Reckoning</em> fear: that the entity will create reality by manipulating it, and we’ll just wipe ourselves out as a result. It’s a problem that humanity caused, of course, by getting itself so digitally intertwined and creating an AI in the first place. But now it’s out of our hands, and whoever controls it — if it can be controlled at all — is, in effect, God.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xj1wy6">
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All of which weaves seamlessly into the broader <em>Mission: Impossible</em> narrative. What’s impossible about these missions? They’re famously difficult to pull off, with death-defying stunts that require Hunt and his buddies to precisely understand their surroundings, down to the millimeter and the temperature and pull of gravity. It’s thrilling to watch, and thrilling to experience, for sure — but it’s a reality that waits for us. In the future, the way we trust our senses will be radically altered. You know, because you’ve felt it, too.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ILeJln">
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Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One <em>opens in theaters on July 13.</em>
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</p></li>
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<li><strong>Why aren’t we treating poverty like a major public health crisis?</strong> -
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<figure>
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<img alt="Protesters with signs gather on the Washington, DC, mall with the Washington Memorial obelisk in the background." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/s_yQFd-bMl4mWeGBSv6B1iJqc7A=/283x0:2950x2000/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72451667/150253614.0.jpg"/>
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<figcaption>
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A gathering from the 1968 Poor People’s March organized by Martin Luther King Jr. to demand economic aid to low-income communities across the US. | Arnold Sachs/AFP 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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Poverty contributes to hundreds of thousands of American deaths a year, a recent study finds.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7aOW1M">
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“We need a whole new scientific agenda on poverty and mortality,” said David Brady, a professor of public policy at the University of California Riverside, whose recent <a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/article-abstract/2804032">co-authored study aims to jump-start that agenda</a> by asking just how many Americans die from poverty each year.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="h3hv4t">
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It’s well established that <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1524839918755143">poverty is bad for your health</a>. But as a <a href="https://www.vox.com/public-health">public health</a> issue, the US knows less about the direct <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3134519/">link between poverty and death</a> than we know about, say, the link between smoking and death. Current estimates <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/fast_facts/diseases-and-death.html#:~:text=Smoking%20is%20the%20leading%20cause%20of%20preventable%20death.&text=Cigarette%20smoking%20is%20responsible%20for,resulting%20from%20secondhand%20smoke%20exposure.">suggest smoking kills 480,000</a> Americans per year. Obesity <a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/192032#:~:text=Conclusions%20The%20estimated%20number%20of,only%20nonsmokers%20and%20never%2Dsmokers.">kills 280,000</a>, and drug overdoses <a href="https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/trends-statistics/overdose-death-rates">claimed 106,000 American lives</a> in 2021. Together, risk factors and their mortality estimates help motivate public health campaigns and government-funded <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy/2023/3/30/23663064/narcan-overdose-fentanyl-drug-where-to-get">efforts to save lives</a>. But how many Americans does poverty actually kill? The question has received little attention compared to other mortality risks, and meanwhile, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/09/magazine/poverty-by-america-matthew-desmond.html">poverty remains prevalent across the country</a>.
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Brady — alongside sociologist <a href="https://sociology.osu.edu/people/zheng.64">Hui Zheng</a> at Ohio State University and Ulrich Kohler, a professor of empirical social research at the University of Potsdam — <a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/article-abstract/2804032">published their study</a> in April in the <em>Journal of the American Medical Association</em>. Their results find poverty is <a href="https://news.ucr.edu/articles/2023/04/17/poverty-4th-greatest-cause-us-deaths">America’s fourth-leading risk factor for death</a>, behind only heart disease, cancer, and smoking. A single year of poverty, <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2023/3/10/23632910/poverty-official-supplemental-relative-absolute-measure-desmond">defined relatively</a> in the study as having less than 50 percent of the US median household income, is associated with 183,000 American deaths per year. Being in “cumulative poverty,” or 10 years or more of uninterrupted poverty, is associated with 295,000 annual deaths.
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Amelia Karraker, a health scientist administrator at the National Institute on Aging, explains that research has shown a variety of pathways that connect poverty and mortality. These range from neighborhood amenities and nutrition down to the impacts of stress on the body: “Being poor is really stressful, which we know from NIH-supported research has implications for what’s actually happening in the body at the cellular level, which ultimately impacts health and mortality,” she said.
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Crucially, that doesn’t mean you’ll find “poverty” written as the cause on anyone’s death certificate. Risk factors are only correlations that imply an association but not necessarily causation (although <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/31/health/cash-transfer-deaths-women.html?smid=tw-nytimesscience&smtyp=cur">new research found</a> that cash transfers to women in low- and middle-income countries cut mortality rates by 20 percent). But proving an association is a necessary step toward deciphering whether poverty might be more than an association. For example, <a href="https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/articles/spurious-correlations">there is an association</a> between the number of Nicolas Cage movies released and the number of people who drown in swimming pools that year. No one is arguing that we should dissuade Cage from releasing films in order to combat drowning. But there is also an association between <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/cancer/lung/basic_info/risk_factors.htm#:~:text=In%20the%20United%20States%2C%20cigarette,Many%20are%20poisons.">cigarette smoking and lung cancer</a>. Here, we do believe one causes the other, so we do try and dissuade people from smoking to combat lung cancer deaths.
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Arguing that poverty is more like the latter elevates the debate from a statistics squabble to one of literal life and death. “We just let all these people die from poverty each year,” Brady said. “What motivated me to think about it in comparison to homicide or other causes of death in America is that people would have to agree that poverty is important if it’s actually associated with anywhere near this quantity of death.”
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Without a number attached to the relationship, presenting poverty as a serious public health risk falls a little flat. “Poverty and mortality are tightly correlated” isn’t exactly as galvanizing a message as “poverty kills nearly 200,000 Americans a year.” But the key question is what it means to “die from poverty.” As a <a href="https://health.gov/healthypeople/priority-areas/social-determinants-health">social determinant of health</a>, the government already recognizes a direct line between economic conditions and health outcomes. Physicians are now going a step further, establishing a movement known as <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1876285921001558">anti-poverty medicine</a> that aims not only to identify poverty as a health risk but develop treatments. Attaching a death toll contributes a new data point — perhaps even a rallying point — to illuminate the ties between poverty and death, and just maybe, it will motivate a more urgent anti-poverty agenda on the grounds that it could save lives.
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Poverty is more than just another mortality risk
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Measured in relative terms, poverty in the US is <a href="https://confrontingpoverty.org/poverty-facts-and-myths/americas-poor-are-worse-off-than-elsewhere/#:~:text=Source%3A%20OECD%20Data%2C%202019.,country%20average%20of%2010.7%20percent.">significantly worse than in similarly wealthy countries</a>. Meanwhile, US citizens <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/09/america-mortality-life-expectancy-pandemic/671350/">face a higher mortality rate</a> at almost every age than residents of peer countries, and that disparity <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.04.05.22273393v4">is growing</a>. Even <a href="https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2022/demo/p60-277.html">according to the US Census Bureau’s supplemental poverty measure</a> (an approach that tries to blend relative methods with absolute ones, while accounting for government programs like SNAP benefits and tax credits), nearly 26 million Americans remained in poverty in 2021.
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Brady, Zheng, and Kohler analyzed data from 1997–2019, drawing from the <a href="https://psidonline.isr.umich.edu/">Panel Study of Income Dynamics</a> and the <a href="https://www.cnefdata.org/">Cross-National Equivalent File</a>. Since the data ends before the Covid-19 pandemic began, and poverty likely compounded the pandemic’s death toll, they believe their findings are conservative. In 2019, being in poverty was 10 times more of a mortality risk than murder, 4.7 times more than firearms, and 2.6 times as deadly as drug overdoses. And poor people die younger than others. Their mortality rates begin diverging from the rest around age 40, reaching a peak disparity near 70, and converging back with the rest around 90.
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The study used <a href="http://www.bandolier.org.uk/painres/download/whatis/COX_MODEL.pdf">a Cox model</a>, a type of statistical analysis commonly used in medical research to isolate the effects of a given variable (often particular drugs, but in this case, poverty) on how long patients survive. But no matter how you analyze it, singling out annual deaths across an entire country from a fuzzy cause like poverty is a statistical nightmare. It’s difficult to imagine how one could untangle all the confounding factors — like the reverse effect of how poor health also affects income — to deliver a plausible number.
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One of the few previous efforts came from a group of epidemiologists in 2011, who <a href="https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/full/10.2105/AJPH.2010.300086">estimated</a> poverty’s death toll at 133,000 per year. And while few prior studies aimed to directly estimate deaths attributable to social factors, there is a decades-long history of wrangling statistical complexities to frame poverty as an actual cause of death. Brady cited <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7560851/">a famous 1995 paper</a> by sociologists Bruce Link and Jo Phelan, making the case that over and above mere risk factors, social conditions like poverty should be seen as “fundamental causes of disease” that put you at risk of more proximate risks, like heart disease.<strong> </strong>
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Link and Phelan’s paper argued that if you break down a fundamental cause of disease into its more tractable causes of death, like breaking the mortality risks of poverty down into a cocktail of heart disease, lung cancer, and drug overdoses, fundamental causes like poverty get ousted from the picture. Treating individual risk factors alone leaves the underlying social condition intact, and it will continue putting people at risk of other risk factors.
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Rather than tracing all the different pathways that lead from poverty to mortality and focusing public health-inspired anti-poverty efforts on each one separately, Link and Phelan urged an approach that stays with poverty. “If we wish to alter the effects of these potent determinants of disease, we must do so by directly intervening in ways that change the social conditions themselves,” they write. Nearly three decades later, clinicians are putting these ideas into practice.
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Physicians are now prescribing anti-poverty as medicine
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While the use of social determinants of health as a framework is <a href="https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/social-determinants-health-gain-traction-unitedhealthcare-and-intermountain-build-new-programs">gaining significant traction</a> among physicians, companies, and <a href="https://www.who.int/health-topics/social-determinants-of-health#tab=tab_1">even the WHO</a>, Lucy Marcil, a pediatrician and associate director for economic mobility in the <a href="https://www.bmc.org/center-urban-child-and-healthy-family">Center for the Urban Child and Healthy Family</a> at Boston Medical Center, feels they don’t go far enough. She helped <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1876285921001558">coin the idea of anti-poverty medicine</a> in 2021. She explained that “anti-poverty medicine is one step further upstream to the root cause. Social determinants of health are important, but getting someone access to a food pantry doesn’t really address why they’re hungry in the first place.”
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“I started this work about a decade ago,” Marcil told Vox. “At the time, there was a lot of confusion when I would say that I try to get more people tax credits because it helps their health. Now it’s pretty well established at most major academic medical centers that trying to alleviate economic inequities is an important part of trying to promote health.”
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Putting a number on poverty’s death count could help build the case for anti-poverty programs embedded within systems of clinical care (like free tax preparation offered in health care systems that already have the community’s trust, an <a href="https://www.bmc.org/news/embedding-financial-services-trusted-settings-addresses-poverty-and-improves-health-equity">initiative Marcil pioneered</a>). “If I’m able to say to a funder or to a health system, ‘Look, it’s been published in a reputable journal that there are X number of deaths in our country every year due to poverty,’ I have a much stronger case for why they should pay for [anti-poverty] programs,” she said.
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But physicians can only go so far upstream of poverty. Even before the study positioned long-term poverty as a greater mortality risk than obesity or dementia, public health scholars had been arguing that <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9053836/">anti-poverty efforts</a> should play a central role in <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5507421/">a national agenda for public health</a>.
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A national anti-poverty agenda for public health
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Public health campaigns against poverty face a strange and difficult landscape. One thing Americans seem to dislike more than poverty is welfare. Although <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/329363/satisfaction-five-key-societal-issues-plummets.aspx">82 percent of Americans</a> reported dissatisfaction with efforts to reduce poverty and homelessness in a 2021 Gallup poll, <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2019/12/17/views-of-the-economic-system-and-social-safety-net/">only 40</a> percent in a 2019 Pew Research Center survey felt the government should provide more aid to those in need.
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Even after President Joe Biden’s temporary expansion to the child tax credit (CTC) <a href="https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/democrats/issue-briefs?id=CD9DF1DD-39AF-4F31-9401-B2687B593E59">nearly cut child poverty in half</a> and showed <a href="https://www.povertycenter.columbia.edu/publication/2021/expanded-child-tax-credit-impact-on-employment">no signs of fostering welfare dependence</a> among recipients, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/20/opinion/child-tax-credit-basic-income.html">critics were unmoved</a>. The policy expired at the end of 2021, <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/610831a16c95260dbd68934a/t/63732dd8efcf0e5c76aea26e/1668492763484/Child-Tax-Credit-Research-Roundup-One-Year-On-CPSP-2022.pdf">3.7 million American children</a> fell back into poverty, and we’ve yet to see the program return. Meanwhile, <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/04/america-mortality-rate-guns-health/673799/">as the Atlantic’s Derek Thompson</a> writes, “a typical American baby is about 1.8 times more likely to die in her first year than the average infant from a group of similarly rich countries,” and child poverty is a major risk factor <a href="https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/137/4/e20160339/81482/Poverty-and-Child-Health-in-the-United-States">in all manners of infant mortality</a>.
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At the federal level, another reason to quantify poverty’s death toll could be to add mortality estimates to the cost-benefit analyses that groups like the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) <a href="https://www.cbo.gov/cost-estimates">use to score policies and their impacts</a>. Telling Americans that the expanded CTC almost single-handedly reduced child poverty by half <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/12/child-tax-credit-democrats-inflation-postmaterialism/672543/">hasn’t yet proved compelling enough</a> to make the changes permanent. If the CBO were to include in their cost estimates that the expanded CTC would save a certain number of American lives per year, or conversely, that letting it expire would cost a certain number of American deaths, maybe the policy discourse would move more urgently.
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Finding strategies to help support policy implementation is crucial because, ultimately, treating poverty as a public health issue will require a stronger welfare state that benefits low-income Americans. “No country in the history of capitalist democracies has ever accomplished sustainably low poverty without an above-average welfare state,” Brady said. “And so until you get serious about expanding the welfare state in all its forms, you’re not serious about reducing poverty.”
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Relative to similarly rich countries, the US has high <a href="https://confrontingpoverty.org/poverty-facts-and-myths/americas-poor-are-worse-off-than-elsewhere/#:~:text=What%20we%20find%20is%20that,country%20average%20of%2010.7%20percent.">poverty rates</a>, high <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/653bbb26-8a22-4db3-b43d-c34a0b774303">mortality rates</a>, and a confusing welfare state. It has the <a href="https://www.aei.org/pethokoukis/us-second-biggest-welfare-state-world-whos/#:~:text=France%20remains%20at%20the%20top,partly%20outsourced%20to%20private%20markets.">second largest welfare state</a> in the world if you include things like subsidies for employer-based health insurance, tax-favored retirement accounts, and homeowner subsidies. These mostly <a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/358922-mortgage-interest-deduction-mostly-benefits-the-rich-end-it/">benefit those who are already well-off</a>.
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Instead, if you judge the American safety net based on the share of GDP spent on programs that benefit low-income citizens, it <a href="https://www.irp.wisc.edu/publications/dps/pdfs/dp138710.pdf">falls well below the average</a> among other rich nations.
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In other words, <a href="https://www.vox.com/22600143/poverty-us-covid-19-pandemic-stimulus-checks">poverty is a policy choice</a>, and the US has yet to choose otherwise. As the sociologist Matthew Desmond put it in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/16/opinion/poverty-abolition-united-states.html">his recent call for poverty abolitionism</a>, “Ending poverty in America will require both short- and long-term solutions: strategies that stem the bleeding now, alongside more enduring interventions that target the disease and don’t just treat the symptoms.”
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For starters, the US could revive the expanded CTC and make it permanent, or even combine it with the earned income tax credit into a universal child allowance that would <a href="https://d12t4t5x3vyizu.cloudfront.net/tlaib.house.gov/uploads/2023/04/End-Child-Poverty-One-Pager.pdf">cut child poverty by 64 percent</a>, and reduce deep child poverty by 70 percent (child poverty is one of the <a href="https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2017/09/12/who-was-in-poverty-in-2016/">largest contributing factors</a> to overall poverty in America). “The biggest movers in the welfare state are pensions and health care, so invest in those as anti-poverty policy,” Brady recommends. <a href="https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/economy-budget/281213-universal-pensions-a-progressive-alternative-to-retirement/">Universal pensions</a> and extending “<a href="https://www.niskanencenter.org/wp-content/uploads/old_uploads/2019/06/Final_Universal-Catastrophic-Coverage.pdf">catastrophic coverage” health care to all</a> are a few options. The US could also directly <a href="https://www.vox.com/2014/5/30/5764096/homeless-shelter-housing-help-solutions">provide homes</a> for the more than <a href="https://www.usich.gov/fsp/state-of-homelessness">1 million Americans</a> who experience homelessness in the course of a year.
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If it wanted to go big, it could implement a guaranteed income pegged to the poverty line that would eliminate poverty outright, <a href="https://kirwaninstitute.osu.edu/sites/default/files/Guaranteed%20Income%20for%20the%2021st%20Century.pdf">like the 2021 proposal</a> from scholars at the New School’s Institute on Race and Political Economy. They estimate such a plan would cost $876 billion per year (that’s on par with the annual cost of Medicare, which sat <a href="https://www.cms.gov/research-statistics-data-and-systems/statistics-trends-and-reports/nationalhealthexpenddata/nhe-fact-sheet#:~:text=Historical%20NHE%2C%202021%3A&text=Medicare%20spending%20grew%208.4%25%20to,28%20percent%20of%20total%20NHE.">around $900 billion</a> in 2021). Meanwhile, one 2018 estimate places the annual cost of childhood poverty alone at <a href="https://academic.oup.com/swr/article-abstract/42/2/73/4956930?redirectedFrom=fulltext&login=false">$1.03 trillion per year</a>.
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“A federal policy with a universal cash transfer could be relatively adequate on its own if there weren’t barriers to receiving it,” Marcil said. But she’s seen firsthand how the implementation of <a href="https://www.vox.com/social-policy">social policy</a> often means jumping through administrative hoops and abominably complex paperwork, with the result that the aid often fails to reach the most vulnerable populations. In her clinic, they help patients who have just given birth apply for Massachusetts’ paid parental leave program.
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Otherwise, Marcil estimates only one-third of those eligible successfully navigate the bureaucratic gauntlet to claim the benefits. Most of those who get left out are low-income Americans on Medicaid who identify as Black or Hispanic. “In my experience,” Marcil said, “most social policies are written in ways that make it challenging for those who have been historically marginalized to access them.”
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While big-picture death toll estimates may help bolster the overall motivation for anti-poverty medicine, Marcil argues that data on specific interventions is also crucial to justify the expenditure against the array of alternatives. “Because then you can go to a policymaker and say, ‘Look, someone got paid leave, and they were less likely to show up in the emergency room than this other family who didn’t get paid leave,’” she said. “So it would save Medicaid money to help poor people get access to paid parental leave.”
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NSVXEU">
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Objections to a new agenda on poverty and mortality will range from moral (unconditional aid <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/02/opinion/child-allowance-credit-romney.html">undermines the American work ethic</a>) to budgetary (how do you choose between giving nurses a raise or funding an on-site food pantry for food-insecure patients?). But as Brady’s new paper helps establish, the scope of the problem is vast, as is the cost — in terms of American lives — of continuing to treat symptoms of poverty while skimping on treatment for the fundamental cause.
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</p>
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<ul>
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<li><strong>TV and movie sets used to be messy. What happened?</strong> -
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<figure>
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<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/TG-s4z_9XLr_-krVh9z1OuEsohc=/106x0:995x667/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72451604/Torn_Between_Two_Lovers.0.jpeg"/>
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<figcaption>
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The living room of <em>Modern Family</em>, where nary a mess appears. | ABC
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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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From Jerry’s apartment to Lucifer’s penthouse, TV sets keep getting neater and neater.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="S2rUMW">
|
|||
|
|
Once upon a time, TV houses were cluttered. They weren’t necessarily messy, but there was stuff in the homes of our TV friends. Jerry left cereal boxes out on the counter on <em>Seinfeld</em>. Monica let dishes dry on the rack next to her sink on <em>Friends</em>. Newspapers festooned the living room floor of the Connor house on <em>Roseanne</em>.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="UVW8Fb">
|
|||
|
|
Lately, though, all those messes seem to have vanished from my TV screen. Ted Lasso always seems to have his throw pillows arranged just so. The Pritchett-Dunphy-Tucker clan of <em>Modern Family</em> never seem to wash their dishes, but they don’t seem to ever have dirty dishes, either: they’re always simply in a state of gleaming readiness. I truly can’t remember the last time I saw a stray power cord onscreen.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8jR4Fz">
|
|||
|
|
“Nowadays movie and <a href="https://www.vox.com/tv">tv</a> home interiors look like they double as the set for a lysol commercial,” <a href="https://filmnoirsbian.tumblr.com/post/647255664904798208/set-designers-stop-forgetting-the-clutter">complained a tumblr post in 2021</a>. “like who lives here?? Mr. Clean??”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="BP23nc">
|
|||
|
|
The complaint felt, to me, intuitively true as soon as I saw it. I had a gut sense that I had emerged from an era of warmly messy TV sets and into a time when all TV sets at all times look as though a real estate agent has just breezed through to get the home staged to sell at an open house.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<figure class="e-image">
|
|||
|
|
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/zl2CM47U6g7L5v6oO7lJ7zCD-JM=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24780000/Screenshot_2023_07_05_at_4.56.44_PM.png"/> <cite>CBS</cite>
|
|||
|
|
<figcaption>
|
|||
|
|
Ted’s kitchen on <em>How I Met Your Mother</em> sees frequent messes. (That’s Marshall’s foot there on the bottom left by the fridge — he just proposed to Lilly and she knocked him over with joy.)
|
|||
|
|
</figcaption>
|
|||
|
|
</figure>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xWPqPV">
|
|||
|
|
But I could also so easily think of exceptions to the idea of the trend. The <em>Euphoria</em> kids, after all, live in the midst of mess! Surely <em>Girls</em> was recent enough to count, and it was pretty grungy. And when I called up production designers to see if they thought there was something to this idea, they were disappointingly uncertain.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="HNcVsG">
|
|||
|
|
“I had not heard of this till you set all this up!” said Nelson Coates, president of the Art Directors Guild. “I think it just kind of depends on the type of show.” He allowed that certainly <em>The Morning Show</em>, on which he works as a production designer, has a remarkably uncluttered set, but that was a character choice: “These people have meticulously controlled lives.”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="mTeFuJ">
|
|||
|
|
At the same time, every production designer I spoke to also had highly robust theories for why they thought set mess might have vanished, even if they weren’t entirely sure it had. It had something to do with budgets, or with social media, or with organizing shows, they told me.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="eNhuwM">
|
|||
|
|
I was left with two questions to investigate: Has the mess level on sets actually changed over time? If it has, why has it?
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="DmIq0S">
|
|||
|
|
I was going to have to delve into the data to figure it out.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<figure class="e-image">
|
|||
|
|
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/8RyZh9JGaXtSZ9hWZkxwPrcU4Cw=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24779996/Screenshot_2023_07_05_at_4.18.11_PM.png"/> <cite>NBC</cite>
|
|||
|
|
<figcaption>
|
|||
|
|
Monica’s kitchen on <em>Friends</em> is rigorously organized, but there are plenty of cleaning implements and power cords stored in clear sight. Even the lid on the blender is slightly askew.
|
|||
|
|
</figcaption>
|
|||
|
|
</figure>
|
|||
|
|
<h3 id="k2uSN6">
|
|||
|
|
Set mess by the numbers
|
|||
|
|
</h3>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vugPw7">
|
|||
|
|
Sadly, I could not get Vox to fund a full PhD on this issue, so I limited myself to looking at 30 TV shows, 10 each from the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s. To avoid cherry-picking examples, I pulled them all from <a href="https://www.imdb.com/search/title/?sort=num_votes,desc&title_type=tv_series">IMDb’s list of the most popular TV shows of all time</a>.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="jvqUPr">
|
|||
|
|
I picked the most popular shows from each decade that abided by certain rules. They had to be American (so no <em>Sherlock</em>), live-action (no <em>Avatar</em>), set in the present day (no <em>Young Sheldon</em>), and include at least one domestic space among the principal sets (bye-bye, <em>ER</em>). Shows that span multiple decades are included in the decade where they were most part of the zeitgeist (<em>Seinfeld</em> premiered in 1989 and <em>Friends</em> ended in 2004, but I put them both in the 1990s). This judgment call admittedly gets a little fuzzy when it comes to shows like <em>It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia</em> (premiered in 2005 and still going), but at the end of the day, this whole project depends on judgment calls.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="4r5whK">
|
|||
|
|
I evaluated each set according to its standard levels of messiness. Lots of shows have episodes in which a space gets briefly messy for story reasons and is then cleaned again, but those don’t count for the purposes of this project. Instead, we are looking at each set in its baseline state. To evaluate the messiness of that baseline state, I designed a seven-point rubric:
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<figure class="e-image">
|
|||
|
|
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/wThCSTmzK28AkAQeER3TTCVqEKY=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24779951/SetMess_1.jpg"/> <cite>Constance Grady/Vox</cite>
|
|||
|
|
<figcaption>
|
|||
|
|
A seven-point rubric for ranking sets from least to most messy.
|
|||
|
|
</figcaption>
|
|||
|
|
</figure>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="axJdIs">
|
|||
|
|
As I moved through the decades, I found that overall, sets tend to hover around the 3-4 range: fairly tidy, but a little bit of clutter here and there.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<figure class="e-image">
|
|||
|
|
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/kDhydN7jfbmt4VcDa6KDtvEbz2k=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24779966/SetMess_2.jpg"/> <cite>Constance Grady/Vox</cite>
|
|||
|
|
</figure>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xSzqTY">
|
|||
|
|
Each decade has its outliers in either direction. In the 1990s, Geoffrey keeps the Banks mansion of <em>The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air</em> staged to sell at all times. In the 2000s, the <em>Always Sunny </em>guys have apartments littered with crumbs and mildewed towels.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<figure class="e-image">
|
|||
|
|
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/QI5Z_UJVUxhr-TutRBa7PVigkIg=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24779967/SetMess_3.jpg"/> <cite>Constance Grady/Vox</cite>
|
|||
|
|
</figure>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ZfefBg">
|
|||
|
|
Over the past decade, though, something changes. Where previous decades favored 3 and 4 levels of mess, in the 2010s, we start to see an overabundance of 2s.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="EdDeuV">
|
|||
|
|
Those <em>Modern Family</em> houses have done away with household maintenance. The Underwoods of <em>House of Cards</em> have no time for power cords. The <em>Suits</em> lawyers live in pristine palaces.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<figure class="e-image">
|
|||
|
|
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/6eqkpggmJuMLz5hczHEcYGZI0Rs=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24779973/SetMess_4.jpg"/> <cite>Constance Grady/Vox</cite>
|
|||
|
|
<figcaption>
|
|||
|
|
Set mess of the 2010s.
|
|||
|
|
</figcaption>
|
|||
|
|
</figure>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="biIX6s">
|
|||
|
|
In most cases, there’s a character reason for the lack of mess. It makes just as much sense for the Underwoods’ house to be spotless on <em>House of Cards</em> as it does for the Banks mansion to be spotless on <em>Fresh Prince of Bel-Air</em>: They’re wealthy; they have people to handle mess for them. Matt Murdock on <em>Daredevil</em> is blind and surely doesn’t want to have clutter lying around where he’ll trip over it. Lucifer on <em>Lucifer</em> is the devil and has an aesthetic to maintain.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7TGSZO">
|
|||
|
|
All the same, it does seem as though a lot more characters of the 2010s have decided to keep their homes spotless than did the characters of the 1990s. It looks like the set mess did go away.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rnljLE">
|
|||
|
|
So what happened?
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<figure class="e-image">
|
|||
|
|
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/53a54g8vP4szp6rXoHMXtuH46GI=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24780007/Screenshot_2023_07_05_at_4.15.45_PM.png"/> <cite>ABC</cite>
|
|||
|
|
<figcaption>
|
|||
|
|
Aside from an akimbo Phil on the floor, the Dunphy kitchen of <em>Modern Family</em> does not seem to have a crumb out of place.
|
|||
|
|
</figcaption>
|
|||
|
|
</figure>
|
|||
|
|
<h3 id="ssvZKK">
|
|||
|
|
Where did the mess go?
|
|||
|
|
</h3>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="R4vnpZ">
|
|||
|
|
Few of the production designers I talked to for this story were positive that sets were less messy than they used to be. All of them, though, had a lot of ideas why they might be less messy if they were.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="LimRDL">
|
|||
|
|
Sara K. White, a production designer working on <em>Swarm</em>, theorizes that the digitization of everything has cut down on the amount of media that production designers can use on their sets.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="tGZve6">
|
|||
|
|
“The volume of physical items that we have in our home is slightly reduced, given the fact that most media is encountered in a digital space,” White says. “So we don’t have big stereos with stacks and stacks of records or CDs or tapes, or stacks of magazines or newspapers around in a home. That’s not a day-to-day part of most people’s lives at this point.”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ua3o8B">
|
|||
|
|
White says that one of her favorite parts of the job is finding little details in the space that can say a lot about someone’s character: “Maybe they’re the kind of character that leaves out either a half-read book or half-eaten sandwich, or maybe there’s a tissue that someone sneezed into that’s on the bedside table,” she says.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XJA5Bu">
|
|||
|
|
Finding those details has gotten more difficult as life moves into the cloud. “I think it’s challenging, and it’s something that I talk with other production designers about,” she says: “creating a space that really has the stuff of life and a tangibility of life, given the fact that we would be really anachronistic if we just put stacks of media around a home, typically.”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="buouqj">
|
|||
|
|
Jeff Mann, a production designer who worked on <em>Mr. and Mrs. Smith</em> and <em>Tropic Thunder</em>, thinks that our cultural defaults on domestic messiness have switched. “Having something be more austere was a choice in the ’90s that you made to tell a story about a certain person,” Mann says. “I feel like it’s maybe shifted, that having a space feel cluttered or lived-in is a way that you are able to say something about a character these days.”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="eN2mcB">
|
|||
|
|
In the 1990s, the exceptionally pristine Banks mansion spoke to the family’s extreme wealth all the more compared to Jerry Seinfeld’s workaday apartment. Today, the crumb-strewn apartments of <em>Always Sunny</em> speak to the characters’ dirtbaggery all the more next to the showroom-like <em>Modern Family</em> homes.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="f0zyDI">
|
|||
|
|
Mann also thinks the aspirational display of social media might be a force behind the disappearance of mess. “People are in acceptance [of the new normal] because of being bombarded with imagery that something can look like a showroom or adjacent to a showroom and still be lived in, because they’re being told that that’s where somebody lives, and that it’s aspirational, right?” he says.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ZaSBDR">
|
|||
|
|
Audiences aren’t the only ones whose ideas about what homes should look like are shaped by social media. Directors are looking at interior design on social media, too. White says she’s found that, post-<a href="https://www.vox.com/pinterest">Pinterest</a>, directors are a lot more interested in figuring out what the interior of a set should look like than they used to be.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="HDryEC">
|
|||
|
|
“It’s really attainable now to go on a site like Pinterest and do a Google Image search and get a bunch of responses back and potentially feel well-rounded — and potentially <em>be</em> well-rounded — in what a visual environment is,” she says. “And that can push what the ultimate look and feel of a space and a film or TV project is.”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="VjKpvO">
|
|||
|
|
In addition to living in the age of Pinterest and <a href="https://www.vox.com/instagram-news">Instagram</a>, we’re also living in the golden age of home improvement and <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/21516647/home-edit-netflix-cant-even-anne-helen-petersen-audre-lorde-cancer-diaries-self-care-pandemic">organizing TV shows</a>.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="JF0XwX">
|
|||
|
|
“There’s the <a href="https://www.vox.com/reality-tv">reality TV</a> world where people are buying something and then they’re staging it, and folks are seeing that represented,” says Coates. “That then cross-pollinates into the culture via designers trying to reflect what people are actually doing.”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="HHmJ2Q">
|
|||
|
|
There’s also the fact that dressing a set with extra mess costs time and money.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XcdU0T">
|
|||
|
|
“With the volume of shows that are being produced, there’s less prep time,” Coates adds. “As such, there may not be the ability to do that last layer of life on top of things.”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Z9U7x9">
|
|||
|
|
“These shows are scheduled within an inch of their lives,” says Mann. “A lot of them are location-driven, and a lot of them don’t have the time or resources to add the layers that an art decorator or designer would want to add. Nobody thinks that that scene is important enough to justify paying for a prep day.”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="fH7Iu2">
|
|||
|
|
The aesthetic impact of the disappearing set mess is exacerbated by a corresponding shift in interior design trends. Shows made in the 1990s had more visual clutter in addition to actual clutter. Their sets were frequently decorated in mismatched shades of dark wood, with lots of loud, clashing patterns in the wallpapers and upholstery. They looked, in fact, less like the height of 1990s fashion and more like the 1970s.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CNm9rn">
|
|||
|
|
White says production designers clung to the 1970s as long as they possibly could.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="j9aVK4">
|
|||
|
|
“When I started, even 12 or 13 years ago,” says White, “there was this leaning toward pulling things from the ’70s and ’80s that still had a lot of that texture, especially in the independent film space. If you go back and you watch early 2000s films, you’re like, ‘What is this, the ’70s?’ It’s because that lived-in texture was so appealing. And it was realistic. There were certain pockets of the world that still really had that. There still are, but as that became less and less realistic, there was an overall mourning.”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="PquN2j">
|
|||
|
|
Coates notes that just as designs in the real world influence what set decorating looks like, set designs influence what real-world decorating looks like. “People look at you. They look at <em>Modern Family</em> and look at the shows that have happened as a result of that. Those looks start influencing how people also are living their lives, which then influences how people are representing contemporary life.”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gQIsUc">
|
|||
|
|
Eventually, it will all trickle on down to the next generation.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Tp7zK1">
|
|||
|
|
“I was watching <em>Mean Streets</em> [from 1973] when I was starting to come up,” says White. “Like, I’m not sure that’s the film that everyone is necessarily watching, if they’re just starting out in production design these days. Touchstones shift as the eras shift. In 10 or 20 years, what we’re creating now will become a touchstone. It’ll be interesting to see.”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="fWKLq8">
|
|||
|
|
Production designers of the future, I beg of you: As you begin to recreate the homes of the 2010s for your dark satirical looks back at the <a href="https://www.vox.com/trump-administration">Trump administration</a> and the end of pre-pandemic America and so on, think of me and remember. We did still have bottles of dish soap next to our sinks.
|
|||
|
|
</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
</ul>
|
|||
|
|
<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>Golden Neil and Fidato please</strong> -</p></li>
|
|||
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<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Win My Luv, Kalamitsi and Marzgovel impress</strong> -</p></li>
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<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Asian Athletics Championships | Tajinderpal Singh Toor defends shot put title, but limps out of competition</strong> - The Asian record holder Toor threw the iron ball to a distance of 20.23m in his second throw; Saberi Mehdi (19.98m) of Iran and Ivan Ivanov (19.87m) of Kazakhstan took the silver and bronze respectively.</p></li>
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<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>BCCI advocates for ICC strategic fund boost, gets 72% increase in revenue share</strong> - India’s revamped revenue share, as expected, got a stamp of approval at the ICC Board in Durban, which means they stand to gain about 72%.</p></li>
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<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>This is just the start, will try to take it far from here: Jaiswal</strong> - 21-year-old Yashasvi Jaiswal lived up to the expectations with a record-breaking century on debut</p></li>
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</ul>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-the-hindu-national-news">From The Hindu: National News</h1>
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<ul>
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<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>P.C. Jabin Science College gets A++ grade</strong> -</p></li>
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<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Man lays mud road with his own money in Yadahalli village of Hunsagi taluk</strong> -</p></li>
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<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Here are the big stories from Karnataka today</strong> - Welcome to the Karnataka Today newsletter, your guide from The Hindu on the major news stories to follow today. Curated and written by Nalme Nachiyar.</p></li>
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<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Agri & allied sector contribution to GDP can further rise by strengthening marketing; FPOs are key: Amit Shah</strong> - Addressing a conclave here, the Minister said agriculture can become a profitable venture if modern technology and marketing methods are adopted.</p></li>
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<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Minister inaugurates milk producers society for women in Udhagamandalam</strong> -</p></li>
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</ul>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-bbc-europe">From BBC: Europe</h1>
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<ul>
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<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Europe heatwave: Extreme heat leads to Greece Acropolis closure</strong> - The country’s most popular tourist attraction will stay closed between noon and 5pm in the 40C-plus heat.</p></li>
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<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>In pictures: Cerberus heatwave hits parts of Europe</strong> - People in countries including Italy and Spain are struggling to cope with soaring temperatures.</p></li>
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<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Wagner head Prigozhin rejected offer to join Russia’s army - Putin</strong> - The leader of June’s aborted mutiny did not want his mercenaries to become a regular unit, President Putin says.</p></li>
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<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Arman Soldin: Journalist killed in Ukraine given top French honour</strong> - Video journalist Arman Soldin was killed in a rocket attack close to Bakhmut in May.</p></li>
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<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Illegal Migration Bill: Jenrick sees no more compromises on migration bill</strong> - The government hopes to pass the Illegal Migration Bill before the summer recess.</p></li>
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</ul>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-ars-technica">From Ars Technica</h1>
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<ul>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Why AI detectors think the US Constitution was written by AI</strong> - Can AI writing detectors be trusted? We dig into the theory behind them. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1932658">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Rocket Report: Rocket Lab’s next step in reuse, Blue Origin engine explodes</strong> - ULA’s CEO says engine explosions are “relatively routine” early in production. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1953624">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Senate just lobbed a tactical nuke at NASA’s Mars Sample Return program</strong> - “The Committee has significant concerns about the technical challenges.” - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1953815">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Apple introduces offline Maps—but how does it compare with Google Maps?</strong> - Comparing offline modes between Apple Maps and Google Maps is a tight contest. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1953389">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>How a cloud flaw gave Chinese spies a key to Microsoft’s kingdom</strong> - Hackers stole a cryptographic key that let them forge user identities and slip past defenses. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1953648">link</a></p></li>
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</ul>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</h1>
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<ul>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A burglar breaks into a home and holds the husband and wife hostage..</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
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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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At gunpoint, he forces the two to sit on chairs and ties them to the chairs. The burglar slowly and methodically begins stealing from the house.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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The burglar has taken everything of value, and is ready to leave while the homeowners are still bound to their chairs. Suddenly, the man yells at the burglar,
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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“Please untie her, please, let her go!”
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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The burglar responds,
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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“No, I’m not untying either of you so that the authorities get notified as late as possible. Don’t worry, your neighbours will soon wonder why your lights are still on throughout the night and check in on you long before you succumb to dehydration”
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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The man yet again pleads,
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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“Please, just untie her, I’ll do anything!”
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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The burglar once again explains his reasoning,
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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“I need to get away with this crime, I’m sorry, I can’t leave anything up to chance.”
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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The man shuffles his chair towards the burglar, in a state of mania, exclaims,
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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“I’m begging you man, just let her go, she won’t call the cops, I promise!”
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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The burglar, still unwilling to budge, did find it quite touching how much his hostage cared about his wife.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
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“Wow,” he said “You must really love your wife to beg me to untie her so desperately”
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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“No,” The man replied, in a state of frenzy “My wife will be home in 15 minutes”
|
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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/HelpingHandsUs"> /u/HelpingHandsUs </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/14ywusf/a_burglar_breaks_into_a_home_and_holds_the/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/14ywusf/a_burglar_breaks_into_a_home_and_holds_the/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
|
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|
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>One day, God asked Adam how things were going with Eve.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
|
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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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One day, God asked Adam how things were going with Eve.<br/> Adam: Pretty good, I guess.<br/> God: You seem to be holding back. Do you have any questions?<br/> Adam: Well, why did you make her so much more beautiful than me?<br/> God: So you would enjoy looking at her.<br/> Adam: And why did you make her skin so much softer than mine?<br/> God: So you would enjoy touching her.<br/> Adam: And why did you make her smell so much better than me?<br/> God: So you would want to be around her all the time. You see, Adam, I made Eve just for you, to make you happy.<br/> Adam: Then why did you make her so stupid?<br/> God: Well Adam, if I had made her any smarter, she never would have slept with a guy like you.
|
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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/Gerry1of1"> /u/Gerry1of1 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/14yxoug/one_day_god_asked_adam_how_things_were_going_with/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/14yxoug/one_day_god_asked_adam_how_things_were_going_with/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
|
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Where do pirates get their hooks?</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
|
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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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The second hand store.
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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/shaggie42069"> /u/shaggie42069 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/14z9sjl/where_do_pirates_get_their_hooks/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/14z9sjl/where_do_pirates_get_their_hooks/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
|
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|
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>My Chinese wife never understands what I want when I say “69”. It’s getting really frustrating.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
|
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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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On the other hand, I do like beef with broccoli in sweet and sour sauce.
|
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</p>
|
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</div>
|
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<!-- SC_ON -->
|
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|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/HBNTrader"> /u/HBNTrader </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/14z1myv/my_chinese_wife_never_understands_what_i_want/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/14z1myv/my_chinese_wife_never_understands_what_i_want/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
|
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|
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>It hurts me to say this…</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
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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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I have a sore throat.
|
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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/Longlang"> /u/Longlang </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/14z34vx/it_hurts_me_to_say_this/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/14z34vx/it_hurts_me_to_say_this/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
|
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</ul>
|
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