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622 lines
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<title>28 September, 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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<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>A Fine Economic Mess in the United Kingdom</strong> - With the pound hitting record lows, financial analysts are questioning the competence of Britain’s new government. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/a-fine-economic-mess-in-the-united-kingdom">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Pakistan’s Biblical Floods and the Case for Climate Reparations</strong> - Isn’t it time for rich nations to pay the communities that they have helped to drown? - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-a-warming-planet/pakistans-biblical-floods-and-the-case-for-climate-reparations">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Iran’s Ferocious Return to the Belligerent Policies of the Revolution’s Early Days</strong> - The country’s new President, Ebrahim Raisi, is cracking down on women, arming Russia, and playing hardball with the U.S. on nuclear diplomacy. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/irans-ferocious-return-to-the-belligerent-policies-of-the-revolutions-early-days">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>“Hurricane Maria Never Finished Leaving Us”: The Aftermath of Fiona in a Puerto Rican Town</strong> - “You’re seeing the most dramatic display of inequality,” a Puerto Rican teacher and independence activist said, after Hurricane Fiona. “It hurts.” - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/as-told-to/hurricane-maria-never-finished-leaving-us-the-aftermath-of-fiona-in-a-puerto-rican-town">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Andy Borowitz on Our Age of Ignorance</strong> - The writer and comedian talks with David Remnick about “the intellectual deterioration” of American politics, the subject of his latest book. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/politics-and-more/andy-borowitz-on-our-age-of-ignorance">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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<li><strong>Looking for a sense of belonging? Start with being a good guest.</strong> -
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<img alt="A cartoon of people gathering at a bar." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/DNGuCy6qaHRUJAg7VmThirWgU8A=/375x0:2626x1688/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/71424942/STORY_2_SET_2.0.jpg"/>
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Shanée Benjamin for Vox
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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Practical questions for creating community, according to Priya Parker.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="eozaB6">
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Even when times are normal, figuring out how to host — or attend — a gathering can be fraught. What do you wear? Who will be there? What will happen while you’re there? When will everyone go home?
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="JYE1Ez">
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And now the pandemic has thrown an extra wrench into things. Not just because people have varying levels of comfort and ability to gather; the disruption to our normal life patterns have left some of us feeling <a href="https://www.vox.com/even-better/23297099/introvert-party-socializing-energy">drained of our past ability to socialize</a> for days on end. Or we feel like we’ve forgotten the social scripts that governed our interactions. We’re all awkward.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="JO6ZDB">
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Yet gathering in some form is essential to our social, mental, and even physical health; humans aren’t meant to exist without community. Knowing this, I wanted to discuss the new art of gathering with Priya Parker, whose wonderful book <a href="https://go.skimresources.com?id=66960X1516588&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fbookshop.org%2Fbooks%2Fthe-art-of-gathering-how-we-meet-and-why-it-matters%2F9781594634932&xcust=Vox092722"><em>The Art of Gathering</em></a> challenges readers to think about what makes a gathering — a work event, a wedding, a pizza party, a rave — into a smashing success.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="uqAjbU">
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I talked to Parker by phone, asking about creating the practice of being an “artful gatherer” in our everyday lives. In a wide-ranging and challenging conversation, we discussed our ritual-starved culture, the importance of deciding what kind of community you want to be part of, and practical steps toward integrating (or reintegrating) gathering into our lives.
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Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="mOJPIt">
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<strong>What happened to us over the past few years?</strong>
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The pandemic was a social X-ray for many of us. Not out of choice, but seemingly overnight, all of our social patterning was completely interrupted. Who we interacted with, how we interacted with them, how often we interacted, what was the nature of the connection — all that was basically changed or stopped overnight.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1yCuOm">
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Because we couldn’t gather physically anymore, we began to have an emotional map or graph of desire, belonging, loss, regret, and also boredom. It’s almost like a quiz. What did I miss, and also who? What obligations do I feel relieved about not having to go to? What did I long for? Who did I long for? Who did I want to be with? At the deeper level, who am I, what is my work? Who do I want to spend time with? Who are my people? Are the people that are my people who I want to be my people? Rather than being on autopilot, we could diagnose who we actually are and what we actually want.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="S0V9Ch">
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What’s interesting is that as we “reenter” in different ways — whether it’s going to physical gatherings again or going back to an office or moving to a city and trying to figure out how to build community — people seem to be trying to be more intentional, both about who they’re spending time with and how.
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But we’re out of practice. Our social muscles have atrophied. I think people are pausing and practicing — practicing getting back out, thinking about what they want to attend, saying no, saying a full yes, sometimes hosting.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0QTs5g">
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The new art of gathering is <a href="https://www.priyaparker.com/art-of-gathering-newsletter/the-art-of-guesting">the art of<strong> “</strong>guesting.”</a> Guests can be a total drain on a gathering or a total energy boost. Most of us are guests more often than we’re hosts.
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<strong>How do you see that showing up in the way we think about our social interactions?</strong>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="cvaD8L">
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Recently I found myself talking about a “gathering diet.” People need to monitor their nutritional diets: what you take in, how much you are taking in, and in what form given your body type. When the internet came along, we started talking about information diets — whatever’s on my home screen, what I’m reading, how much time I spend on Instagram, what my sources are, what newsletters I choose to subscribe to. It’s about intent, about the individual trying to figure out a system that works from them. As we emerge from a pandemic in which gathering was taken from us, we’re starting to think about our gathering diet. What do I attend?
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That’s true in the workplace as well. How many meetings should any one person actually attend in a week, and why? What rises to the level of needing a meeting, and when do I just get to write at my desk and do the actual work? Is meeting the work, or does the work happen outside of the meeting? These are really important questions happening in a church, in a synagogue, in a mosque, in our museums, in our nonprofits. How often should we be meeting, and in what context?
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XhHZdB">
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So one tool or skill I can develop as a guest is deeply thinking about what I want to attend, and why, so that I’m building the community and building the life that I hope to have. What am I saying no to? And how do I say no in a way that is a respectful, connected no?
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="s1rEv8">
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<strong>You write about </strong><a href="https://www.priyaparker.com/art-of-gathering-newsletter/what-is-an-artful-gatherer"><strong>being an “artful gatherer”</strong></a><strong> — about it being a practice, not a personality trait. Suppose I’m someone who’s feeling a lack of community, and I want to move toward creating and also attending artful gatherings that start to help me find that community. What do I integrate into my life as part of that practice?</strong>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="hK0WVV">
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Communities are formed and shaped and also generate spontaneously at different moments around shared interests, shared values, shared passions. At some level I would advise you to not start with a form, saying “I need a community,” or “I need a gathering.” Communities can be terrible! Communities can be completely isolating.
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So I would first start by mapping it out: What are my interests? How do I actually want to spend my time? Would I want to spend more time outdoors? Am I yearning to strengthen or enrich my spiritual life? Do I want to spend more time reading? What are my questions? Am I trying to figure out how to co-parent equally with my partner when neither of us saw that model in our family? What are the questions that I have that I would love to answer with others?
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="OUSmzl">
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Remember, groups can have negative effects or positive effects. Gatherings can be good or they can be bad. Gatherings are tools. You can bring people together and people can still feel incredibly lonely and disconnected. Gatherings are not good in and of themselves. They’re tools. Communities are not good in and of themselves. They can be for good. They can be for bad. They can create an incredible sense of exclusion. These are all just forms.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="YukWRb">
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<strong>What does that look like, in practical terms?</strong>
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People may now realize they don’t want to be spending time in the ways that they were spending their time. Maybe it’s their behavior around alcohol, and they’ve realized, “If I don’t want to drink as much as I normally would, are there other activities that are less centered around alcohol? Oh, well those are actually different sets of friends.”
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A lot of the activities that people do together end up becoming cultures. That’s why rather than starting with “Who are my people?” a less intimidating form could be, “Who else is spending time in a way that I would like to spend time with?” And then you can judge any community starting out by thinking, “Do these people share common values? Do I feel welcome here?”
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="m4U5T9">
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I also think that if you have a need, there’s almost always people who share that need. And so hosting something is also a way to start meeting people. Sometimes hosting can be scary, so a very easy trick is co-host something. If you move to a place, meet a new neighbor or a parent at a school or a running buddy, or it’s just someone else who also realizes we need to meet people, that can be a way to do so.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="UyNeXL">
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<strong>Do you think there’s a role for ritual in becoming an artful gatherer?</strong>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xptJeJ">
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We are a ritual-starved nation. Even watching the pomp and circumstance around <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/23353803/queens-funeral-what-time-how-to-watch-elizabeth-ii-charles-iii">the death of Queen Elizabeth</a> — as controversial as that is, what you’re seeing is a 1,000-year-old tradition that has what I call a “meaningful order.” There’s a meaningful order to what happens when a monarch, a matriarch, a person with a specific role in society dies. What does the community rise to do? In the US — for all sorts of good historical reasons, and for the rights of the individual over the community — we have thrown out many of our rituals. But part of what makes a community is its rituals.
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One of the best definitions of ritual I have heard of is from <a href="https://jonathancook.us/">Jonathan Cook</a>, who said to me in an interview, “Ritual is nothing more than the transference of state from something to something.” So <a href="https://www.vox.com/even-better/23144784/why-rituals-not-routine">you can have an individual ritual</a>: your morning cup of coffee is a transition from night state to morning state. But the rituals you and I are talking about are collective rituals, which need to be witnessed for it to be a communal ritual. In this moment, particularly coming out of the pandemic, we are so starved for that.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FFy0Ek">
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We need ritual, and ritual can be as simple as marking a birthday, marking a first day of school, marking someone finally quitting that job that they hate, marking launching a creative project.
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Rituals are forms of meaning-making and witnessing, for communities to mark time and to share a spotlight on what matters to them. So they’re incredibly important for binding people together, for helping people locate their role and what is worthy of paying attention to. Perhaps it’s people coming back to the office for the first time — at the first in-person meeting when people come back, what do they actually do? If you’re moving, having a farewell, having a goodbye party. It can be totally casual. It could literally be a bowling party. None of these forms need to be formal. It’s just simply bringing people together to mark a moment that says, “This happened and now I’m passing through it.” With the pandemic, we have lost so much that without actually pausing to reflect and mark time, it can be an incredibly destabilizing time.
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<strong>Gathering right now to create these rituals or form communities can be tricky. People have different levels of comfort, or complicated feelings about gathering together. What are some practical things that someone could do to create a gathering that is nourishing for those who gather, and also take into account the power dynamic between host and guest, all with the goal of creating a sense of belonging?</strong>
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A gathering is a future moment in which you’re inviting somebody to attend something at the same time, at the same place, with other people, whether it’s virtually or in person, with a beginning, middle, or end. It’s a social contract.
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The opening salvo is your invitation. Gatherings don’t begin at the moment of entry. They begin at the moment that the guest discovers what I call the moment of discovery: The guest discovers they’re being invited to this housewarming or a bachelorette party or a transitioning ceremony or a graduation party. So first of all, the invitation is not just the carrier of logistics. It’s actually the first practical mechanism of meaning-making and orientation to your guests. Give your gathering a name. Is this a dinner party? Is this a mosh pit? Is this a rave? Is this a dance party? Names carry a lot of information that help people really decide, “How do I show up? Do I want to go to this thing? What is this thing?”
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Be sure to orient people. Particularly in a pandemic context, give context for who else is going to go. You don’t necessarily have to name people, but give people a sense: Is this a small event? Is this a large one? For different people, that gives them different levels of comfort for what they’re comfortable showing up to. And is it indoors? Is it outdoors?
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At this phase of the pandemic, respectful inviting is sharing what the gathering is and what the hosts are doing related to Covid. That could be an indoor dinner party where no one’s checking for vax cards. What’s helpful now, as people are living in multiple realities, is transparency, so that guests can make their own decisions.
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<strong>That seems like it would be good to keep in mind even if Covid wasn’t an issue!</strong>
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This is always true — the pandemic just made it more explicit — that however you are hosting, whether it’s indoor or outdoor, whether it’s free or pricey, whether it is one type of food or a selection, those are actually choices that are going to affect who can meaningfully participate. So No. 1, think a lot about the invitation.
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No. 2, size matters — for people’s comfort levels, whatever the gathering is. It gives people a sense of context so they can make that decision. But size also matters in terms of the vibe of the event. If you want a more intimate evening, don’t go above six people. Six people is wonderful for conversation; people can participate, and it’s harder to carry dead weight, since if one person is kind of checked out, everyone feels it. Eight to 12 is actually a much more complex gathering to have one conversation, but there’s a lot more choice in it. There’s more vibrancy. People may meet a few more people, right? There’s trade-offs to each of these numbers.
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Then finally, think about where you’re going to host this thing. Rooms come with scripts. So whether it’s a living room or a park or a public library or a graveyard, places come with scripts. Your place is a character. Choose it well.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="teECU1">
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<strong>So suppose someone really wants to be an artful gatherer going forward into this next phase of their life. What are some practical steps they can take to start off well?</strong>
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Dau2Fn">
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We’re in a transitional era. We’re all kind of baby lambs learning to walk again. And that’s okay. The people I think are finding their way are asking themselves questions like, “When I think about my actual week, or when I think about my free time, or when I think about how I work, how do I want to spend my time?”
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="qqVmFw">
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Second, mapping out, what do I want in friendship? Who were the people in my life, whether they’re present or were in my past, that felt like a really meaningful connection? What were the elements of that? Excavating a bit.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="OLL4ey">
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No. 3, what are my geographic patterns in my city or town? I live in a city. We often get very stuck in our rotations, in our patterning. The old joke in New York is you only know two neighborhoods, where you live and where you work, and that’s collapsed. So what are my geographic patterns?
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When I first moved to New York, my husband and I started these things called “I’m here” days, in part to just force ourselves to go to other neighborhoods. We would spend 12 hours in a neighborhood on foot with other people. It started to grow through word of mouth, through friends. Phones off, just explore a neighborhood on foot. The only rule was you had to come for all 12 hours and you couldn’t micro-coordinate with other people. Then you leave at the end of the night. I write about that in <em>The Art of Gathering</em>, and part of what that did is that it shifted our geographic sense of what kind of neighborhood person am I? Getting off of our routines can also be helpful.
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Fourth, try one experiment, one risk. Attend something, even virtually, that you might not normally attend. See if you make meaningful connection around common interest or common need. Volunteer. There’s a lot of ways to meet other people and it’s a common interest, so that there’s a sense of context about how you’re actually meeting.
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Finally, we are guests more often than we are hosts. So start getting curious as a guest. When are moments over the course of the gathering where you feel excited, where you feel engaged? When are moments you feel kind of bored or slightly excluded? And just notice, why is that happening? What’s the infrastructure of the gathering? Has the host welcomed people? Have they introduced people to each other? Just start observing, because once you start seeing what the mechanisms of gatherings that work are, you can’t unsee it, but you can practice it all the time.
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|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="OhofwF">
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<em>Hosting a gathering? For practical steps to being an artful gatherer from Parker and her team, download “</em><a href="https://www.priyaparker.com/the-new-rules-of-gathering">The New Rules of Gathering</a><em>,” a PDF workbook available at her website.</em>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Qw1kRL">
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<a href="http://www.vox.com/even-better"><em>Even Better</em></a><em> is here to offer deeply sourced, actionable advice for helping you live a better life. Do you have a question on money and work; friends, family, and community; or personal growth and health? Send us your question by filling out this </em><a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfiStGSlsWDBmglim7Dh1Y9Hy386rkeKGpfwF6BCjmgnZdqfQ/viewform"><em>form</em></a><em>. We might turn it into a story.</em>
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</p></li>
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<li><strong>Chips are the new oil. There are no reserves.</strong> -
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<figure>
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<img alt="Close-up of a computer chip circuit board with the word “Taiwan” visible as its point of manufacture." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/j0dX-N-H5jTu0hS4tHejLW0epPU=/195x0:3310x2336/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/71424822/GettyImages_184093059.0.jpg"/>
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<figcaption>
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Getty Images/iStockphoto
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</figure>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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Computer chips are ubiquitous, but they’re only made in a few places.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="uMQ8g4">
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In a single day, we interact with hundreds of computer chips, most no larger than a penny. These tiny circuits power everything from smartphones and laptops to medical devices and electric vehicles, and they’re largely responsible for our increasingly computerized lives. But in recent months, the world’s dependence on these chips has also put them at the center of mounting tensions between the United States and mainland China over Taiwan.
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Taiwan is located just 100 miles from China’s eastern coast, and it produces the vast majority of the advanced chips used in today’s electronics. The island is a democracy with its own government, and is home to more than 20 million people. Officials in Beijing, however, <a href="https://www.vox.com/2022/8/6/23294700/us-china-taiwan-pelosi-visit-protest">claim</a> Taiwan as part of China and have repeatedly threatened to invade and “reunify” the island with the mainland. The US does not <a href="https://www.vox.com/2022/7/26/23278113/drama-nancy-pelosi-taiwan-travel-plans-china-policy-biden-explained">officially recognize</a> Taiwan’s independence, though President Joe Biden has suggested that he would send American troops to defend the island against an invasion. As a result, there’s fear that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/29/technology/taiwan-chips.html">a blockade around Taiwan</a> could create a humanitarian and trade crisis, ultimately cutting off the world’s access to tons of critical technology.
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“If Taiwan chipmaking were to be knocked offline, there wouldn’t be enough capacity anywhere else in the world to make up for the loss,” explains Chris Miller, an international history professor at Tufts and the author of <em>Chip War</em>. “Even simple chips will become difficult to access, just because our demand outstrips supply.”
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="DNr2Q1">
|
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|
The world is so reliant on chips produced by Taiwan that they’ve become the new oil, according to Miller. Recent <a href="https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3188257/mainland-china-declares-military-drills-will-continue-around">military exercises</a> along the Taiwan Strait, the critical waterway that separates Taiwan and mainland China, have raised the possibility that China might eventually block exports out of the island, which would disrupt all sorts of technology production, though some experts say there are plenty of reasons to think that <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-08-09/a-us-china-war-over-taiwan-isn-t-happening-anytime-soon#xj4y7vzkg">a war won’t actually</a> happen. The chair of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, which makes nearly all of the world’s most advanced chips, has already warned that a war would leave its factories “<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/02/apple-chipmaker-tsmc-warns-taiwan-china-war-would-make-everybody-losers.html">not operable</a>.”
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zDzLga">
|
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|
The US is trying to get a few steps ahead of this scenario. Earlier this summer, Biden signed <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2022/7/27/23277664/chips-act-solve-chip-shortage-biden-manufacturing">the CHIPS and Science Act</a>, a massive package that invests tens of billions of dollars to build new semiconductor factories across the US. Other countries with a history of chip manufacturing, including South Korea, Japan, and some European Union member states, have started scaling up their production capacity, too. An Apple supplier even <a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/iphone-maker-foxconn-make-chips-india-with-vedanta-2022-02-14/">said</a> in February that it would start using semiconductors made in India, which is also developing its <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/26/how-india-is-trying-to-turn-itself-into-a-semiconductor-powerhouse.html">own chip industry</a>. Still, Miller argues that these efforts won’t be enough to dull the impact of a war — a war the US and Taiwan aren’t guaranteed to win.
|
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|
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|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="oHNq8N">
|
|||
|
|
As the past few years have painfully demonstrated, depending on a single region for critical supplies can backfire. Amid the war in Ukraine, Russia has cut off much of Europe’s access to gas, creating an energy crisis that has forced countries to <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-energy-u-turn-coal-instead-of-gas/a-62709160#:~:text=Germany's%20goal%20had%20been%20to,of%20Germany's%20overall%20energy%20mix.">restart coal plants</a> and abandon their renewable energy goals. In the early weeks of the Covid-19 pandemic, China — which was home to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/13/business/masks-china-coronavirus.html">half of the world’s mask</a> manufacturing capacity — limited exports of <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-export-restrictions-strand-medical-goods-u-s-needs-to-fight-coronavirus-state-department-says-11587031203">medical equipment</a>. And when the vaccine was first rolled out, the US and other rich nations prioritized inoculating their own citizens before sending supplies to <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/1/29/22253908/rich-countries-hoarding-covid-19-vaccines">other countries</a>.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CPu0US">
|
|||
|
|
As Russia’s war in Ukraine continues, the world is slowly transitioning away from oil. But the same isn’t true for chips, which will only become more critical as new technologies become more popular and require even more computing power. Electric vehicles, for example, require twice the number of chips used by traditional internal combustion vehicles, and the rise of 5G — the technology that could make remote surgeries and self-driving cars a reality — will create a surge in demand for semiconductors, too. That means the stakes are only getting higher.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XqGbuG">
|
|||
|
|
Recode spoke with Miller recently about the growing importance of chips in global politics. This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<h4 id="3FvswE">
|
|||
|
|
Rebecca Heilweil
|
|||
|
|
</h4>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="39bYMg">
|
|||
|
|
You argue that chips are the new oil. How ubiquitous are chips today, and to what extent do we depend on them in our daily lives?
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<h4 id="EcB673">
|
|||
|
|
Chris Miller
|
|||
|
|
</h4>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="uqfUzk">
|
|||
|
|
Almost anything with an on-off switch today has a chip inside. That’s true not only for things like smartphones or computers, but also for dishwashers and microwaves and cars. As we put more computing power in all sorts of devices, that requires more chips to convert signals from the real world into digits that can be processed and remembered.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="KgSr59">
|
|||
|
|
The typical person in the US will end up touching several hundred chips a day. The typical person hardly ever sees a chip in their entire life unless they take apart a computer, but the reality is we touch them and rely on them more than ever before.
|
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|
|
</p>
|
|||
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|
<h4 id="E5tkcl">
|
|||
|
|
Rebecca Heilweil
|
|||
|
|
</h4>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gQWXH3">
|
|||
|
|
The computer chip was invented in the US. Taiwan now manufactures much of the world’s semiconductors and almost all of the advanced chips that governments are most interested in. How did that happen?
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
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|
<h4 id="kSFP5N">
|
|||
|
|
Chris Miller
|
|||
|
|
</h4>
|
|||
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="3WFIGA">
|
|||
|
|
Over the course of the past 50 years, but especially over the past couple of decades, the semiconductor supply chain has gotten much more specialized. So when the first chips were made by Texas Instruments, for example, or Fairchild Semiconductor in Silicon Valley, these companies did almost everything in-house. They designed chips. They produced them. They produced the machines that were needed to design chips.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="a6xmyu">
|
|||
|
|
As chips have gotten more complex — and as the engineering needed to produce ever more semiconductors has become more specialized — you had firms emerge that focus on a specific part of the production process. Japanese firms, for example, play a major role in chemicals. US firms are particularly influential in the design of chips, as well as the production of machine tools that produce chips.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="O4eKih">
|
|||
|
|
Taiwan has specialized in the manufacturing of chips themselves. Companies will take a design and send it to a Taiwanese firm for production. Contract manufacturing is not unique to chips, but several decades ago, the biggest Taiwanese chipmaker, TSMC, realized that there was a potentially huge market for contract and manufacturing services. It began investing very, very heavily in trying to attract customers from Silicon Valley and offered to produce chips for them. That combination of scale investment in R&D has proven just impossible to compete with.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
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|
<h4 id="cBreSv">
|
|||
|
|
Rebecca Heilweil
|
|||
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</h4>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7wZyJ3">
|
|||
|
|
So how does that play into the risks regarding China and the world’s supply of chips?
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
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<h4 id="CK67aO">
|
|||
|
|
Chris Miller
|
|||
|
|
</h4>
|
|||
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|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="fcbr2I">
|
|||
|
|
Today, Taiwan produces, depending on how you calculate, 90 percent of processor chips. In aggregate, Taiwan is one of the biggest producers of chips in the world, so companies like Apple, for example, rely fundamentally on TSMC to produce the chips that power iPhones, iPads, or PCs because no one else can produce the chips that they need. It’s not as though they have second sources in most cases. It’s TSMC or else, which means that they’re highly reliant on peace in the Taiwan Strait.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
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|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Dl6PWb">
|
|||
|
|
Over the past couple of years, as the military balance has shifted really dramatically in China’s direction, I think the assumption of peace going forward is being tested. The entire world economy would be dramatically hit if China were to attack Taiwan for a whole number of reasons, chips being just one of them. It’s easy to look at the biggest customers of TSMC and say the companies are most exposed — and maybe that’s true. But whether it’s autos or aviation or even chips in a dishwasher or microwave, many of these are also produced in Taiwan.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
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|
<h4 id="v9CTa5">
|
|||
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|
Rebecca Heilweil
|
|||
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|
</h4>
|
|||
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|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Fy5L9w">
|
|||
|
|
The recent CHIPS and Science package allocates tens of billions of dollars to produce more chips in the US partly because of the risks you’re talking about with China. Will that be enough for an American chip comeback?
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
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|
<h4 id="6A1R5x">
|
|||
|
|
Chris Miller
|
|||
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|
</h4>
|
|||
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="DkiECz">
|
|||
|
|
It’s certainly going to have an impact in terms of getting more leading-edge production of the most advanced processor memory chips in the US. But it’s not nearly enough to dramatically reduce our reliance on Taiwan.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2tNv8t">
|
|||
|
|
Part of the reason why there’s more concern today — justifiably — is that unlike in prior decades, it’s now much less clear who would win a war on the Taiwan Strait. Therefore, we’re now much less certain than we were in the past that China wouldn’t attack because it’d be too costly for China to do so. Now, that’s an open question.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
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|
<h4 id="j8Aap0">
|
|||
|
|
Rebecca Heilweil
|
|||
|
|
</h4>
|
|||
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|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="r6vOtQ">
|
|||
|
|
Is this risk set to get worse because of the rise of 5G and electric vehicles and other emerging technology? The world is going to need more chips in the coming years and decades.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<h4 id="qB6Qbr">
|
|||
|
|
Chris Miller
|
|||
|
|
</h4>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="kODbMT">
|
|||
|
|
Our reliance on Taiwan is not going to decrease. It will be a little bit less than it otherwise would have been thanks to the CHIPS Act, but the reality is we’re going to be dependent on Taiwan.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xlyGJy">
|
|||
|
|
The Chinese government is pouring many tens of billions of dollars — far more than CHIPS Act funding — into its own chip industry. Although the Chinese remain far behind the leading edge in terms of the technological level of chips they can produce, they’re going to vastly increase the capacity in producing what’s called lagging-edge chips: the types of chips you might find in a car or a consumer device. We’re going to continue to be reliant on chips from Taiwan, but also there’s a risk that we might rely more on chips from China in the future, too.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<h4 id="rPKSGm">
|
|||
|
|
Rebecca Heilweil
|
|||
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|
</h4>
|
|||
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|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FBRmlO">
|
|||
|
|
Chipmaking isn’t exactly the most environmentally friendly production process. How should we be thinking about the environmental impacts of chip manufacturing, especially as companies try to scale up?
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
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|
<h4 id="sum3ZA">
|
|||
|
|
Chris Miller
|
|||
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|
</h4>
|
|||
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5HXJLB">
|
|||
|
|
One of the factors that led to the shifting of chipmaking offshore of the US was actually that the US imposed stricter environmental rules over time. There are a lot of really toxic chemicals that you use in chipmaking, and mitigating that is expensive. The bigger challenge is electricity and water consumption, because chipmaking requires a ton of both. On top of that, the more chips you have, the more devices you have that require electricity as well.
|
|||
|
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</p>
|
|||
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|
<h4 id="AUJgED">
|
|||
|
|
Rebecca Heilweil
|
|||
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</h4>
|
|||
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="sIOK4A">
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For decades, we’ve seen chips getting more advanced. Is Moore’s Law — loosely, the idea that transistors’ chips will keep getting smaller and smaller, which allows chips to become more and more powerful over time — coming to an end? And what would that mean for the future of tech?
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</p>
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<h4 id="mgUptM">
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Chris Miller
|
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</h4>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XguHFK">
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What we can say is that Moore’s Law faces cost pressures that it hasn’t faced in a long time. It’s got at least a half-decade, probably a decade, to run in terms of further transistors shrinkage before we hit real, potential physical limits as to how small transistors can get. But then in terms of how much computing power you can get out of the individual piece of silicon, there are things you can do besides shrinking transistors to get more computing.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="SAyE2R">
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There are all sorts of innovations in how you package chips together that will make them faster and more energy intensive, without necessarily relying solely on transistor shrinkage. Right now, there are so many people who have built up their careers and expertise around how to make silicon chips work really, really well.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="A4BW5y">
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There are a couple of places where you could say there’s change happening. The big cloud computing firms like Microsoft, Amazon, and Google are all designing their own chips now, which they hadn’t previously done. Because so much of computing today is hosted on Amazon’s or Google’s cloud, the reality is that now everyone is becoming a user in some way of Amazon chips or Google chips.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ty3UUg">
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The second shift that’s underway is electric vehicles. If you look at a Tesla, for example, they’ve got a lot of chips in the car and a lot of complicated, cutting-edge chips. We’re gonna see more and more cars with more and more cutting-edge chips, doing more and more things in the future.
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</p>
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<h4 id="dUyIgU">
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Rebecca Heilweil
|
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</h4>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FbiKcw">
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We keep hearing about semiconductors and technology in the news. What should people understand about this industry?
|
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</p>
|
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<h4 id="3p6uiJ">
|
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Chris Miller
|
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</h4>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="o7x3iu">
|
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Making chips is an extraordinary manufacturing process that requires lots and lots of really complicated machine tools to actually move atoms around in a way that lays out a billion or ten billion transistors on a chip. Most of us don’t think enough about the materiality of the manufacturing behind the digital world.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Yo74xZ">
|
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Some of the tooling here is really, really extraordinary and doesn’t fit into our mental model of how the digital world works. But in fact, the digital world works only because we’ve got this extraordinary control over the material world, at least as it relates to silica.
|
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="EiliLf">
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<em>This story was first published in the Recode newsletter. </em><a href="https://www.vox.com/pages/newsletters"><em>Sign up here</em></a><em> so you don’t miss the next one!</em>
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="sA6wfT">
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="33Ijfd">
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</p></li>
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<li><strong>Pop culture loves gender war stories. They leave something out.</strong> -
|
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<figure>
|
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<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/UQIEiuXkSOPlL7bxUtetlkmeEAE=/102x0:1183x811/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/71424814/dontworrydarling.0.jpg"/>
|
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<figcaption>
|
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Florence Pugh and Harry Styles star as a couple in a strange, 1950s-style suburban paradise in <em>Don’t Worry Darling.</em> | Warner Bros.
|
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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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Don’t Worry Darling and Barbarian want us to remember gender is scary.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ouvDcD">
|
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|
In most respects, the recent films <a href="https://www.polygon.com/reviews/23365915/dont-worry-darling-review-florence-pugh-harry-styles"><em>Don’t Worry Darling</em></a> and <a href="https://www.polygon.com/reviews/23342834/barbarian-review-horror-twists"><em>Barbarian</em></a> could not be more different.
|
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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="SnsJG7">
|
|||
|
|
<em>Darling</em>, directed by Olivia Wilde, is a glossy period piece, set in a 1950s desert town where nothing is quite what it seems. It has opulent production values, plenty of well-known stars, and a premise straight out of a <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/12/29/16804664/black-mirror-uss-callister-recap-season-4-review"><em>Black Mirror</em> episode</a>.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rXBdZz">
|
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<em>Barbarian</em>, directed by Zach Cregger, is a pitch-black horror-comedy, set in a modern-day Detroit that is riddled with maze-like tunnels running underneath the city. For much of its run time, it focuses on just two actors, and its production values are meant to enhance the level of grimy thrills at its core.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wysjgp">
|
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|
Yet in many ways, the two movies are in conversation about the same idea: Men are monsters, perhaps on some deep, essential level. In neither film does a man become a literal monster, unfurling into a giant bug-like creature or revealing himself as a vampire. In both films, men are just awful because they build systems that oppress women — literally in both cases, as it turns out. They can’t help it. It’s just who they are.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="IpXz9J">
|
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|
|
Especially in the wake of Me Too, people telling stories across a wide variety of media have turned their sights toward stories about the systemic oppression of women, often reimagined in a genre context. Indeed, in <em>Barbarian</em>, one character is the subject of rape accusations that could have easily been the focus of any number of Me Too scandals.
|
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|
</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="M8ZohG">
|
|||
|
|
As long as we’ve been telling stories, we’ve been telling stories about the fundamental differences between men and women. Yet the emotional tenor of these stories has unmistakably shifted in recent years. What might have been fodder for an observational comedy even 30 years ago is now grist for something grim and horrifying.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="iBc3tu">
|
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|
|
Even as we’re twisting these stories to make them darker, though, we struggle to open them up enough to encompass more complexity to gender than the scary movie equivalent of a “men drive like <em>this</em>, but women drive like <em>this</em>” joke. If we know gender is more complicated than a simple binary, why do so many of our stories still stubbornly fail to reflect that?
|
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|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<h3 id="XfJXyX">
|
|||
|
|
A brief taxonomy of gender essentialist storytelling
|
|||
|
|
</h3>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="KoAmmW">
|
|||
|
|
The “men are from Mars, and women are from Venus” plot has existed across all of storytelling history. These stories can be brilliant and thoughtful. They can expose things within society that would be harder to approach in the world of nonfiction.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Ty5VMD">
|
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|
|
Yet by their very nature, they traffic in gender essentialism, or the idea that there are certain things that are so inherent to being a man or a woman, so encoded in all of our biologies, that overcoming those qualities is all but impossible. What’s more, those biological qualities lead to fundamental differences in our personalities and temperaments. Men are like this, and women are like this, because our bodies make us so, and good luck changing <em>that</em>. For an incredibly outdated gender essentialist take, consider the infamous “sugar and spice and everything nice” descriptor of little girls and “snips and snails and puppy dog tails” descriptor of little boys from the nursery rhyme.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="51SgkU">
|
|||
|
|
“It becomes really easy to attribute causality to that. If a woman is late, that becomes, ‘Oh, just like a woman, taking too much time to get ready!’” says <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-society-sexualizes-us/id1081584611?i=1000580295957">Julia Serano</a>, a biologist and trans activist who has written such books as <em>Whipping Girl</em> and <em>Sexed Up</em>. “Or if someone’s competitive, it’s like, ‘You know men are competitive and aggressive,’ even though we know there are aggressive women and men who are late.”
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1l10bI">
|
|||
|
|
These gender binary bromides take many forms and bounce through many genres. They range from dark, epic tales of horror to any given rom-com that insists there are certain ways men and women behave, such as <em>What Women Want</em> or <em>The Ugly Truth</em>. They include hugely acclaimed works of art and laughably simplistic views of what it means to be alive and have a gender (any gender). Any attempt to categorize them in broad strokes will necessarily leave some examples by the wayside.
|
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|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<figure class="e-image">
|
|||
|
|
<img alt="Agent 355 and Yorick (in a mask) look in concern at something just off-camera." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/wznSzO8VDY8v5CwW5qWB1FNh55o=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22873037/YTLM_105_017689.jpg"/> <cite>FX</cite>
|
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|
|
<figcaption>
|
|||
|
|
FX’s <em>Y: The Last Man</em> posited a world where nearly everyone with a Y chromosome died.
|
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|
|
</figcaption>
|
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|
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</figure>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MUFblU">
|
|||
|
|
In recent years, however, these stories have tended to fall into three major categories.
|
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|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NxMg2v">
|
|||
|
|
The first category is the gender apocalypse, which is a story where all the men on Earth or all the women on Earth die. Despite the subgenre’s recent resurgence, with works like the <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/22679725/y-the-last-man-hulu-fx-tv-comic-trans">2021 TV adaptation of <em>Y: The Last Man</em></a> and Sandra Newman’s 2022 novel <em>The Men</em> fitting into the category, it is a very old type of story. In her 1915 novel <em>Herland</em>, for instance, Charlotte Perkins Gilman imagined a valley where no men live and women reproduce asexually.
|
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|
|
</p>
|
|||
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="uGOT5O">
|
|||
|
|
This subgenre necessarily has to do some fancy footwork to avoid being overtly transphobic. In recent years, the stories that have bothered to worry about not being transphobic have accomplished that task by a focus on the kinds of biology we cannot see with the naked eye, as well as just how complicated that biology ultimately is. The TV adaptation of <em>Y</em>, for instance, posits the death of everyone with a Y chromosome, a category that includes nearly all trans women but also lots of seemingly cis women who were intersex and had XXY chromosomes without knowing it.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<aside id="Qt9muM">
|
|||
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<div>
|
|||
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|
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</div>
|
|||
|
|
</aside>
|
|||
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|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XgzJKA">
|
|||
|
|
The second category of these stories is the “scary man” story, in which an abusive man — or series of men — possesses almost supernatural powers. These stories sometimes take the form of <a href="https://www.vox.com/23086827/men-alex-garland-annihilation-eden-devs-machina">Alex Garland’s 2022 film <em>Men</em></a>, in which all men are the same horrible monster (played by one actor, Rory Kinnear). More often, however, they are about intimate, terrifying interactions between men and women, as in the 2022 horror film <em>Resurrection</em>, which follows a woman who comes back into contact with an abusive ex after almost 20 years. His hold over her seemingly still exists, and as she seems to fall back into his thrall, the viewer longs for her to escape, which she finally does, bloodily. (Without spoiling the film’s climax, <em>Resurrection</em> also takes some daring leaps in how it uses the imagery of pregnancy and childbirth to provoke horror.)
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
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<aside id="hdVnLf">
|
|||
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<div>
|
|||
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</div>
|
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|
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</aside>
|
|||
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|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9kOqAE">
|
|||
|
|
<em>Barbarian</em> largely exists within this space, though what makes it such a fun horror movie is how it gradually subverts audience expectations of the “scary man” story, while constantly reminding viewers of just how awful men can be. The story was born out of fear, specifically out of the book <em>The Gift of Fear</em>. As director Zach Cregger said to the <a href="https://bleedingcool.com/movies/barbarian-zach-cregger-discusses-that-scene-full-of-tiny-red-flags/"><em>Bloody Discussing Boo Crew</em> podcast</a>, reading it caused him to reconsider how often women in his life have to think about every interaction with a man in terms of red flags that might give them pause. Cregger said, “I just wanted to write a scene where I could load as many of those little tiny red flags into an interaction as possible. … I’ll make this guy really nice, but I will give him a ton of these little triggers.”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CcsGwu">
|
|||
|
|
The third category can be broadly defined as the “men just want to imprison women” story, which usually takes the form of a commentary on heterosexual marriage. A healthy overlap exists between this and the scary man story, but the imprisonment story tends to center on existential, rather than physical or emotional, violence. It is often commenting obliquely on the idea that men would rather strip all of women’s freedoms away than let women thrive, and that commentary can sometimes be as subtle as in the 2020 remake of <em>The Invisible Man</em>, in which a successful woman has her life eroded by her abusive, invisible husband, whose presence is always lurking, even after he’s suspected dead.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="IiNWOC">
|
|||
|
|
On the more explicit side of the scale, <em>Don’t Worry Darling</em> fits most of the tropes of this subgenre to a T. <strong>(Spoilers follow.)</strong> The film’s glossy, 1950s community is revealed to be a computer simulation, where men following a Jordan Peterson-esque guru played by Chris Pine have imprisoned unwilling women to be their subservient wives. These women’s minds are essentially wiped, but memories of their former lives sometimes disrupt their consciousnesses, leading to the film’s protagonist doing anything she can to find a way out of her digital prison.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lXgrsV">
|
|||
|
|
To be clear, some of the above stories are brilliant. <em>Resurrection</em>, for instance, has plenty to say about toxic and abusive dynamics that extend beyond the simplistic gender binary. Yet all of them have to be rooted in that binary to some degree. We know that gender is far more complicated than that binary, however. What happens when that knowledge bumps up against these stories?
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<h3 id="JX5rMr">
|
|||
|
|
Why we keep telling these stories — and why trans identities complicate them
|
|||
|
|
</h3>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vMon7M">
|
|||
|
|
If you are a storyteller, using a gender essentialist trope can also be an easy shortcut to helping an audience understand a character. We’re so steeped in stories that introducing a character who is coded as, say, a tomboy or a “strong woman” is a quick way to set audience expectations about what her story might be.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wsfsYW">
|
|||
|
|
“A lot of basic ideas that there are particular types of people, and especially that men are one way and women another, are a very simple way to make people understand what’s happening [in a story] without having to spell it out for them,” Serano says, “even though a lot of these ideas are not particularly good, helpful ideas and can be very stereotypical, problematic ideas.”
|
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|
|
</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="JkCzx2">
|
|||
|
|
Much of the first 20 minutes of <em>Barbarian</em> — before the real scares kick in — is taken up by a long conversation between a man and a woman, the scene Cregger says he filled with all those “red flags.” What’s notable about this scene, however, is the ways it might have been the first scene in a romantic comedy in the 1980s or 1990s. The two characters banter and flirt, with the man gradually wearing down the woman’s natural suspicions of him. There’s even a pretty irresistible “meet-cute,” as the two characters only meet because they’ve accidentally booked the same rental house at the same time.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<figure class="e-image">
|
|||
|
|
<img alt="A woman looks down a dark staircase into a shadowy basement." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/RngneEE1g6NE47HyvCAQyKgtvzc=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24059391/barbarian.jpg"/> <cite>Courtesy of 20th Century Studios</cite>
|
|||
|
|
<figcaption>
|
|||
|
|
Georgina Campbell stars in <em>Barbarian</em>, the kind of movie where there’s a scary basement.
|
|||
|
|
</figcaption>
|
|||
|
|
</figure>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="znOYaF">
|
|||
|
|
Horror and comedy are closely interrelated genres, since they both aim to provoke intense, gut-level emotional responses. Yet scratch off the surface of almost any of the premises above and you’ll find something that might have been a comedy in the late 20th century, whether a romantic comedy or a “gender role reversal” comedy like <em>Three Men and a Baby</em> or <em>Working Girl</em>, films where men take on a task stereotypically assigned to women or vice versa. For instance, <em>Resurrection</em>’s story of a bad ex-boyfriend returning to make the protagonist’s life worse could have easily become a rom-com for a Julia Roberts or a Meg Ryan.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="nXeSWI">
|
|||
|
|
Even as the comedic gender essentialist tales of the late 20th century rode high at the box office and in the public consciousness, they were being subverted, too. Plenty of mainstream stories of the era, especially in the world of horror, undercut America’s gender assumptions. (See also: <em>The Silence of the Lambs.</em>)
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="BqGawa">
|
|||
|
|
Online, however, that gender essentialism was being reflected and refracted in the form of free online fiction aimed at trans women and seeming cis men questioning their gender. In these stories, most published in the 1990s and 2000s and collected on online fiction archives like Fictionmania, “men” were often imprisoned in worlds where they were forced to perform femininity for the benefit of captors who possessed absolute power over them. (At times, <em>Don’t Worry Darling</em> seems like an adaptation of those stories.)
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="UGMcK8">
|
|||
|
|
Almost all of these stories trafficked in the same baked-in sexism inherent to the other gender essentialist takes of the era. In their bones, however, they displayed the ways in which transness complicates the gender essentialist narratives of that era and our own. Once you accept that the gender binary is something that can be escaped, you have to get a lot more creative with your gender essentialist narratives.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
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|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="UiEfSA">
|
|||
|
|
Most of the tiny handful of stories featuring trans people focus on what are sometimes called “binary” trans women or trans men. Binary trans people are assigned one sex at birth, but their gender identity strongly correlates with societal expectations surrounding the other. Stories will often present them as, in essence, just another man or woman, the better to continue using the gender binary as a storytelling device.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="6M9gO4">
|
|||
|
|
But inherent to transness is the idea that gender is simultaneously knowable and malleable. You can be aware you are a woman and have the world perceive you as a man, but you can also eschew gender entirely and find the world insisting you fit into its preconceived notions. These ideas immediately complicate a gender essentialist narrative.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ndHCg2">
|
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Serano says that the second you start trying to account for the diversity of trans experiences, which could include butch trans women or nonbinary people or agender people or any number of other folks, these presentations of transness fall flat. Just as storytellers have ingrained senses of who men and women are, they have ingrained senses of who trans people are, which are difficult to challenge.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="s6RXIw">
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“The way in which actual trans people subvert typical ideas about gender comes from the diversity of our experiences and our expressions of gender. In real life, that does subvert the idea that men are one way and women another,” she said. “But the way in which trans characters can be deployed within any given movie, TV show, or book can be used in a lot of different ways that might not resonate with trans people or be reflective of their diversity.”
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="c7petM">
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Thus, the people telling stories that actually complicate our gender essentialist tales are often trans people themselves. One such writer is Gretchen Felker-Martin, whose horror <a href="https://bookshop.org/books/manhunt-9781250794642/9781250794642">novel <em>Manhunt</em></a> published earlier this year. The horror title explores a world where every human with a certain level of testosterone in their body turns into a slavering, ravenous monster. Already, Felker-Martin’s scenario is trans-inclusive, albeit in a horrific way. “A certain level of testosterone” leaves room for lots of people, including cis men, trans women who have yet to begin hormone treatments, some trans men, and even some cis women, such as those who have <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/basics/pcos.html">PCOS</a>. It’s a gender apocalypse, but it’s one that acknowledges that what we think of as “gender” is complicated and messy and imperfect.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XuNCcQ">
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“The way men are raised is often destructive to themselves and everyone around them, but that’s in large part due to their cultural dominance,” Felker-Martin says. “There are always women who’ve been on the margins of that or who have even been in positions of power, who will happily and without a flicker of conscience step right into it. The organizations that shape public life in America — the police, the military, the Pentagon — these are already places where women hold powerful offices. We only need to spend a day watching them to know what they’re like when they have that kind of power.”
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="3lmTNz">
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What’s most exciting and unnerving about <em>Manhunt</em>, however, is the way its real villains are <a href="https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/9/5/20840101/terfs-radical-feminists-gender-critical">TERFs</a>, who want nothing more than to destroy the trans women who continue to suppress their testosterone levels via medical intervention. Felker-Martin says that’s key to her vision of a world where “all the men” are gone (even though they aren’t; one of her POV characters is a trans man, for instance).
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2HXJ0k">
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The gender apocalypse subgenre “enables many women to act out this fantasy where suddenly they can stop being armchair quarterbacks and show they’re just as capable of ruling the world as any man is, that they would do better and fix all the problems,” Felker-Martin says. “White women love to sit around and imagine what we would do if we had any social power. But the reason this genre has come under such intense scrutiny is because in America, white women do have a lot of social power now.”
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</p>
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<h3 id="A9uzFn">
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The secure status quo of the patriarchy drives many of these stories — and much of our lives
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</h3>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="VwCIJv">
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One notable quality of <em>Don’t Worry Darling</em> is how intersectional it thinks it is, all the while not being particularly intersectional at all. Its world is full of women of color, but within the film’s premise, their oppression is de facto the same as that of the white lady heroine. It reduces its one prominent Black woman character, played by Kiki Layne, <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/dont-worry-darling-review-drama_n_632b200ce4b0387bc70429be">to a plot device</a>, a clue to help the white hero figure out what’s going on. Similarly, queer women don’t seem to exist at all within the movie’s narrowly defined gender rubric.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="fKE7R0">
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No story can successfully tackle all forms of oppression at once, nor should it have to. <em>Don’t Worry Darling</em> has chosen to put all of its chips on structural misogyny. This choice would feel less blinkered, however, if the movie so much as feinted toward understanding that those other forms of oppression exist. <em>Don’t Worry Darling</em>’s struggles in this regard nod toward a problem with the vast majority of gender essentialist stories: They are written with a limited view of women’s oppression, one that predominantly applies to white, straight, cis women.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2HKasK">
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Serano thinks the recurrence of this storytelling trope might stem from “cultural feminism,” a name given by critics to a tendency within second-wave feminism (which existed in the 1960s and 1970s and was instrumental in breaking down many of the walls keeping women out of existing power structures). Cultural feminism posited that the patriarchy stemmed inherently from men, who were horrible and oppressive, while women were their nurturing opposites.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="IrhXgw">
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“Women can be just as horrible as men in certain situations or contexts,” Serano says. “Cultural feminism was really a very white feminism. Obviously, whether it’s white supremacy or colonialism, white women have benefited from oppressive structures.”
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</p>
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<figure class="e-image">
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<img alt="Two women, played by Kiki Layne and Florence Pugh, mirror each other’s dance moves in a mirror." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/xGyzGYiCyRHoDMSrtDlITgX4jws=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24059400/dwdkikilayne.jpg"/> <cite>Warner Bros.</cite>
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<figcaption>
|
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Kiki Layne’s character in <em>Don’t Worry Darling</em> is reduced to a plot device.
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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="SYOQZ9">
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We know intuitively that not all men are oppressive and not all women are nurturing, even if the patriarchal structures we exist within might say otherwise. Thus, cultural feminism is on the wane within larger feminist theory. However, a story where one group of people is inherently bad and another inherently good is a great place from which to tell stories. Thus, people who write fiction of all sorts keep going to this well again and again and again, simply because it offers a feel-good pop feminism and a way to comment on the issues of the day without having to really delve into them.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0WR8te">
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Stories thrive in a status quo. The status quo provides a secure place from which a story can build, and most stories end in a way that reasserts the status quo, with a few changes made to a character who exists within it. Within our own society, the patriarchy is the status quo, and as such, there’s a security to it that can feel unsettling even if you hate the ways you are oppressed by it. Within such a rigid system, we all know intuitively where we stand.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="KBJywA">
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Thinking up a new system is really hard, which is perhaps why most gender essentialist tales simply put new coats of paint on the patriarchy while pretending to expose it. Thinking about the ways these stories might shift and change if they allowed for the full diversity of gender experiences that trans identities reveal to us can be exciting. It can also reveal just how wedded we are to old ideas and how threatening new systems can be as they struggle to be born.
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</p></li>
|
|||
|
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</ul>
|
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<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-the-hindu-sports">From The Hindu: Sports</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>FIFA honours Chhetri for his achievements, releases three-episode series on his life and career</strong> - Chhetri is third in the list for active footballers with most international goals with 84 strikes to his name, behind Cristiano Ronaldo (117) and Lionel Messi (90)</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>Rain forces cancellation of races</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>Forest Flame excels</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>Karman, Ramkumar, Balaji, Kadhe command best price for TPL</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>Suryakumar equals career-best second position in ICC T20I rankings</strong> - Suryakumar now has 801 rating points after smashing a match-winning 69 off 36 deliveries in the third match against Australia</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>Gold cards launched three days after Dasara inaugural</strong> - Each card is priced at ₹4,999 and available only online; stakeholders wanted the cards to be launched one month earlier to promote Dasara among domestic and international travelers</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>PFI ban: CRPF personnel deployed at RSS office in Aluva</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>World Rabies Day observed in Alappuzha</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>Cabinet okays ₹10,000 crore for redeveloping New Delhi, Ahmedabad and Mumbai's CSMT railway stations</strong> - Railway stations in New Delhi, Ahmedabad and Mumbai will be connected on both sides of railway tracks, Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said</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>Centre has done nothing for wavers: Harish</strong> - Chinta Prabhakar takes charge as HDC chairman</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>Nord Stream leaks: Sabotage to blame, says EU</strong> - Seismologists said there were underwater blasts before the leaks emerged near a Danish island.</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>Bank of England steps in to calm markets</strong> - The Bank says it will buy government bonds to prevent a “material risk to UK financial stability”.</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>Avicii’s family sell music rights to Abba company</strong> - The star’s music will be looked after by Pophouse, which also runs the Abba Voyage shows in London.</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>Italian elections: Meloni gets to work on picking right-wing government</strong> - The leader of the far-right Brothers of Italy has kept out of sight since winning the election.</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>Japan says Russia ‘blindfolded and restrained’ its consul in Vladivostok</strong> - Tokyo demands an apology after one its diplomats is accused of spying in Russia’s Far East.</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>We interviewed Linux OS through an AI bot to discover its secrets</strong> - In the world’s first operating system interview, Linux tells all about Windows, Torvalds, and its favorite distro. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1884615">link</a></p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Logitech finally makes a wireless mechanical keyboard with a true Mac layout</strong> - A nice gesture toward Mac users, but a full layout, switch options would be even better. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1884775">link</a></p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Unusual Ebola strain kills 23 in Uganda; no vaccines, treatments available</strong> - The Sudan species of Ebolavirus has a fatality rate between 41% and 100%. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1885102">link</a></p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Better than JPEG? Researcher discovers that Stable Diffusion can compress images</strong> - Lossy compression bypasses text-to-image portions of Stable Diffusion with interesting results. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1882929">link</a></p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Apple no longer replacing entire iPad mini 6 just to swap the battery</strong> - With this one model, you may actually get your iPad back, new battery and all. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1884794">link</a></p></li>
|
|||
|
|
</ul>
|
|||
|
|
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</h1>
|
|||
|
|
<ul>
|
|||
|
|
<li><strong>Christians, Muslims, and Jews are always fighting,</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
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|||
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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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but Hindus never have any beef.
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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/Old_Arrival_2493"> /u/Old_Arrival_2493 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/xpzkqj/christians_muslims_and_jews_are_always_fighting/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/xpzkqj/christians_muslims_and_jews_are_always_fighting/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li><strong>Anyone know where a guy can find someone to hang out with, maybe have a few beers with, talk to, and kinda just enjoy spending time with?</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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Asking for a friend.
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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/dr94__"> /u/dr94__ </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/xq4rpw/anyone_know_where_a_guy_can_find_someone_to_hang/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/xq4rpw/anyone_know_where_a_guy_can_find_someone_to_hang/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li><strong>So I threw a surprise bukkake-party for my wife…</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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She was so excited everyone came! You should’ve seen her face!
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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/Madshibs"> /u/Madshibs </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/xplwy7/so_i_threw_a_surprise_bukkakeparty_for_my_wife/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/xplwy7/so_i_threw_a_surprise_bukkakeparty_for_my_wife/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
|
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<li><strong>Anakin Skywalker walks into a Taco Bell, and is shocked to find his master Yoda behind the counter</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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He asks what the Jedi master is doing there, to which he replies “Pay well, Jedi council does not. Work two jobs, I must.” Fair enough, thinks Anakin. He orders his food, and reaches into his pocket to pay, when Yoda asks, “A beverage, would you like with that?” “Ok,” says Anakin, “what do you recommend?” “Good, the Baja Blast is. Buy one you should,” answers the Jedi master. Not willing to trust the tastes of someone who ate nothing but foraged vegetables for centuries, Anakin asks if he can taste the drink first before he decides. At that, Yoda grunts, shaking his head in disapproval. “Dew, or Dew not,” he huffs, “There is no try.”
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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/froqmouth"> /u/froqmouth </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/xq0dhg/anakin_skywalker_walks_into_a_taco_bell_and_is/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/xq0dhg/anakin_skywalker_walks_into_a_taco_bell_and_is/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
|
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<li><strong>Henry Winkler was flying from New York to LA</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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Henry Winkler was flying from New York to LA when an airplane stewardess approached him. She asked “Would you like some headphones?”Henry smiled and replied, “Of course My Dear, by the way, it’s pronounced Fonz.”
|
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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/jericko"> /u/jericko </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/xpk0ja/henry_winkler_was_flying_from_new_york_to_la/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/xpk0ja/henry_winkler_was_flying_from_new_york_to_la/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
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</ul>
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