What We Learned About Trump, Pence, and the January 6th Mob - The third hearing on the attack on the Capitol revealed that the Proud Boys would have killed the Vice-President “if given the chance.” - link
Looking for Reasons to Be Hopeful About Gun Legislation - Canada initiates more real progress and, in this country, something would be better than nothing. - link
The Shameless Farce of Boris Johnson’s Attempt to Send Refugees to Rwanda - A plane was on the runway when the European Court of Human Rights interceded. Now Britain may leave the court. - link
Saeed Jones Reads Deborah Digges - The poet joins Kevin Young to read and discuss “The Wind Blows Through the Doors of My Heart,” by Deborah Digges, and his own poem “A Spell to Banish Grief.” - link
Dexter Filkins on the Rise of Ron DeSantis - Is DeSantis an heir to Trump’s legacy, or the former President’s strongest opponent in 2024? - link
From Vox
Labor exploitation, explained by Minions -
Free the Minions! | Kevin Winter/Getty Images
We can understand the entire history of the capitalist labor market through the Despicable Me franchise.
If someone asked you to describe the Minions, what would you say? Likely, you would detail their small yellow pill-shaped bodies, dressed in overalls and oversized goggles. Perhaps you would provide the context that the Minions are characters first introduced in the 2010 animated children’s movie Despicable Me, and that their purpose is to serve their villainous master Gru while providing comic relief to an otherwise disturbing if bizarre plot. (A man wants to steal the moon.)
You can say that they speak a language of gibberish punctuated by recognizable English words like “banana” (Minions love bananas) and “potato” and that their likenesses appear on everything from shampoo bottles to thongs. If you were generally an uncynical person, you might say that Minions are cute and people like them. If you were not, you might posit that they are agents of the capitalist machine, ready-made and endlessly merchandisable mascots that make the world’s destruction at the hands of mega-corporations seem adorable and fun.
As of this summer, you might also say that the Minions have very cool taste in music. In May, it was announced that the soundtrack for Minions: The Rise of Gru (out July 1) would feature covers of ’70s hits by contemporary cult favorites: Phoebe Bridgers covering the Carpenters, Tierra Whack on Santana. It’s not the only example of Minion street cred: menswear blog Hypebeast has cataloged their most recent fashion collabs, which include Japanese graphic artist VERDY, Brooklyn-based fragrance company Joya Studio, and Supergoop, plus previous collections with it-brands like BAPE and Away suitcases.
All of these pieces of merchandise are a blatant effort by Universal Pictures to convince adults — seemingly even adults without children who may already consider the Minions to be sort of subversive or ironically funny — to love and care about the Minions as much as children do already. Minions don’t need to be featured in streetwear collabs or on expensive sunscreen for their most fervent fans ( families) to buy tickets to see Minions 2. But Minions, above all, rely on a single principle: They must be everything, all the time — sort of like the economic system in which we live.
What are the Minions?
If you genuinely do not know what the Minions are, or would like to hear several fun facts about them, in 2015 my colleague Phil Edwards wrote 2,000 words on this very topic. The most interesting bit is that canonically, Minions have existed for at least 60 million years (the first Minions movie shows them serving a Tyrannosaurus rex), are all male (or have traditionally male-coded names), and are immortal (the same characters serve ancient Egyptian pharaohs, Dracula, and Napoleon). Most importantly, Minions are driven solely by their desire to serve a master villain, and become very depressed when they lack one.
Minions are the brainchildren of Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaud, the directors of the Despicable Me franchise, which includes three films (a fourth is slated to release in 2024), and two films centered exclusively on the Minions. Their design was inspired by the bright orange Oompa Loompas of the original Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory film, as well as the short, furry Jawas from Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope. Coffin and Renaud voice the Minions themselves and told the LA Times that the Minions are funny because they are, essentially, kids. “They lose their focus, they’re not very smart,” said Renaud.
What’s so great (and terrible) about the Minions?
The Minions as we know them today weren’t in the original script for 2010’s Despicable Me. “In the first film, they were depicted as this big army of muscular thugs doing the dirty work of the arch villain Gru and we quickly realized that they were very unappealing and made Gru a totally unsympathetic anti-hero,” Coffin told the Guardian in 2015. In order to make Gru seem charming, they made the Minions cute.
That they are adorable is precisely what makes the Minions so charming, and also so insidious. With clown-like slapstick comedy and clumsiness, the Minions allow children to see themselves in the characters, and allow adults to fawn over them. The LA Times recounted in 2013 that when Illumination Studio CEO Chris Meledandri showed them to Japanese animators, they praised them as “kawaii;” the fact they speak in mostly unintelligible gibberish allows them to translate seamlessly across international borders.
Yet the Minions are, at their core, servants of evil, both on screen and online. In a 2015 piece for The Awl called “How Minions Destroyed the Internet,” Brian Feldman argues that by being the platonic ideal of a franchise mascot — palatable, recognizable blank slates that can be made to do or say whatever we want — they have become the perfect meme. “Minions have been engineered to be everything and nothing at once,” he writes. Therefore, nearly any meme can feature a Minion and it would make sense.
Over the course of the 2010s, Minions have become synonymous with a certain kind of meme in particular: the “Facebook mom meme,” referring to the pithy, sometimes misspelled and deep-fried images that say things like “I don’t care what you think of me! Unless you think i’m awesome, in which case you are right. Carry on…” or “Putting your phone away and paying attention to those talking to you? there is an app for that- It’s called RESPECT.” A Business Insider article from the same year titled “Teens on Facebook are begging their moms to stop posting bizarre cartoon memes that make no sense” details the fallout of this phenomenon.
The absurdity of the Minions exists in the physical world too, drawing on the surreal, uncanny quality of the memes: People have created Minions 5K races, Minions Tic Tacs, Minions lingerie, Minions pumpkins, a Minions crochet men’s thong, and so many others that one Vice reporter tried to live a whole weekend off of Minions products alone.
What do the Minions have to do with capitalism?
By being everything at once — you can find Minions memes where the Minions are gay and proud and Minions memes where the Minions hate gay people — Minions are the purest expression of capitalism, which exalts growth and expansion at the cost of any clear standards of morality or logic. The great irony, however, is that the Minions are, first and foremost, laborers: the very class most heavily exploited in capitalist systems.
This is the thrust of what may be my favorite academic article of all time, scholar Justyna Szklarczyk’s “Beautiful Exploitation. Notes on the Un-Free Minions.” The piece, which is translated from Polish, includes sentences such as “The working-class uniform clings to the Minion body” and “The bright yellow skin of the Minions makes it impossible for them to reject or abandon their class identity,” and makes the case that the Minions embody the ideal workforce and are exploited by it.
“They are standardized, highly interchangeable, and desperate for any job they can find,” writes Szklarczyk. “they neither bleed nor break, they do not require healthcare, they are tireless, unaffected by growth or aging, they remain unchanging and unchangingly ready to work.”
Their exploitation comes at the hands, she argues, not only of their master Gru but also of Universal Pictures. By being portrayed as the unruly proletariat, the film casts Minions as foolish and infantile creatures who are only able to actualize themselves under capitalism: Serving a master who belongs to the “transnational jet-set” of billionaire-coded villains who own private jets and live in palaces is the only way they seem to achieve happiness. Meanwhile, the film suggests that the Minion’s freedom from these masters is “precluded by the ostensibly limited cognitive capabilities of the working classes. Thus, the toil of the nascent subject is ultimately ridiculed.”
It might be possible to argue that by exemplifying the effects of capitalism, the Despicable Me franchise is actually producing anti-capitalist commentary. Szklarczyk doesn’t buy this, though: Because Gru is ultimately a good master to the Minions, the films fail as critiques of the system, and in fact condition children to live in an unequal world. “In such a world, those failing to side with Gru are considered misled, mistaken, or plainly wrong,” she writes.
This is, in short, how capitalism packages and sells itself: Those who are incapable of accepting the free market as an adorable, beautiful playground where everyone gets to feel happy and self-actualized are simply too stupid and childish to reap its benefits. It is not a mystery as to why the Minions’ most staunch critics are culturally aware left-leaning young people, people who might find them aesthetically creepy or cringe but metaphorically standing for something much more sinister.
Thus, there is only one solution: We must free the Minions, just as we must free ourselves.
This column was first published in The Goods newsletter. Sign up here so you don’t miss the next one, plus get newsletter exclusives.
Yes, you should test for Covid before going to a gathering -
Getty Images
Covid isn’t over, so you should still test before group events.
Among the tried-and-true mitigation efforts, like masking and ventilation, testing remains essential, regardless of vaccination status, particularly if you plan on gathering in any capacity. (While risk of infection is much lower for outdoor events, testing is important regardless of whether your party is inside or outside.)
“Testing really, really matters,” says Abraar Karan, an infectious disease physician and researcher at Stanford University. “The problem is, as time goes on and people are more fatigued, they may not think that it matters.” Testing fatigue can materialize during large events like concerts, Karan says, primarily because you’re not as likely to see other attendees again. It’s highly unlikely you’d ever know if other concertgoers got sick.
After years of postponed vacations and celebrations, Karan says people may be hesitant to test themselves before these significant events out of fear they may have to skip the occasion if they test positive. Add in the potential cost for tests and logistical hurdles in even finding a testing center and it’s no surprise folks might skip this precaution altogether. However, the ignorance-is-bliss mindset causes more harm than good since there is an extremely high likelihood of transmission should an unknowingly infectious person attend a party.
Testing before a gathering is quick, low-cost, and relatively accessible compared to during the omicron surge of 2021 and early 2022. Here’s what to keep in mind about testing if you’re attending or hosting a party this summer.
For guests
If you’re swabbing before a bash, test as close to the start of the event as possible, Karan says. This involves some planning, as testing is no longer free for people without insurance — costing anywhere from $100 to $200 for PCR tests and $10 to $40 for rapid tests — and some testing locations have shuttered. Because PCR tests take longer to process (and you have a higher likelihood of getting exposed to Covid in the interim between getting the test and the event itself), Karan recommends partygoers use rapid antigen tests. “Antigen tests are very good at detecting if you have transmission potential, especially early in your infection,” he says.
If you have been exposed to someone with Covid-19, you should ideally test multiple times in the week before your event. “That’s how you’ll really pick up an infection and stop spread,” Karan says.
As disappointing as it may be, if you get a positive result on your pre-party test, do not attend the gathering. Tell your host you’ve tested positive for Covid-19 and you’ll have to miss the event but you’ll celebrate with them once you’ve recovered. “You have to be willing to say, ‘I’m not going,’ and that’s the trouble that we have,” says Donald Yealy, chief medical officer at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. “We noticed that people, either with symptoms or occasionally when they’re positive, still want to try to have that social contact. And that just means that you become a spreader.”
While testing before a party can help you feel confident you won’t spread Covid to other attendees, your single negative test won’t have a major impact on spread if no one else at the event has tested. In cases where hosts aren’t requiring guests to test beforehand, or if you’re unsure of the protocol, check the community’s Covid-19 level online and make the best decision based on personal risk assessment, says David Souleles, the director of the Covid-19 response team at the University of California Irvine.
For example, if the county where your cousin’s indoor baby shower is held has a high level of transmission, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends wearing masks indoors in public regardless of vaccination status and improving ventilation (which you likely have very little control over). For immunocompromised or high-risk people, the CDC recommends wearing an N95 or KN95 respirator and talking to your doctor about treatments like oral antivirals.
“If you are vaccinated and boosted and are not at high risk, you may choose to test yourself and attend the event, and then test again three to five days following the event. You may also decide that you want to mask while attending the event even if your host is not requiring masking,” Souleles says. “If you are someone who is at higher risk for serious disease, or live with or are frequently around someone who is at higher risk, you might decide to pass on a particular event in order to reduce your risk.”
For hosts
Party hosts have the power to dictate Covid protocols at their event. Should you require a negative Covid test from your guests before the event, it’s up to you to decide how to verify guests’ results, Souleles says. While most party-throwers are probably comfortable with an honor system, trusting their guests have indeed tested and would stay home if they’re positive, others may want to ask attendees to show a photo with a timestamp of their negative test. Another option, Souleles says, is to provide rapid tests for guests to take upon arrival — though, depending on how big your party is, this can get expensive if you’re paying $10 for a single test.
In the event you or another partygoer later tests positive and informs you, tell other guests as soon as you can, Yealy advises. Don’t tell the rest of the guest list who came down with Covid, but say, “I just wanted to let you know we had a guest who tested positive.” This way, guests can make a timely, informed decision about testing and whether to isolate.
For everyone
In addition to swabbing prior to an event, Souleles says everyone should test again three to five days following the gathering just to be safe. If you’re traveling to a wedding and are extending your stay following the nuptials, pack a few rapid tests to take with you so you don’t have to scour local pharmacies for tests, Souleles recommends.
If you do test positive days after the party, again, tell your host or guests as soon as possible, Yealy says. “You won’t know the medical conditions and the risks for a serious version of Covid-19 of all the other people you came in contact with,” Yealy says. “The kind thing to do is to just let them know so that each individual can assess how worried do I need to be about that.”
While the process of informing your network can be “really tough psychologically,” Karan says, the sooner those around you are aware they’ve been exposed, the more likely they are to isolate and test and hopefully prevent further spread.
Testing is only one aspect of mounting a solid defense against Covid-19. When you can’t be sure if other party-, wedding-, or concertgoers have taken the same precautions as you, rely on other mitigating efforts, Yealy says: vaccination, masking while indoors or at crowded events, and improving ventilation. “Do the simple things,” Yealy says, “and do them well.”
Even Better 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 form. We might turn it into a story.
Should you keep abortion pills at home, just in case? -
Demonstrators in front of the Supreme Court show and then take abortion medication, to make a statement about how safe and available they believe the pills are, in December 2021. | Jacquelyn Martin/AP
With Roe on the brink, more experts are talking about advance provision of mifepristone and misoprostol.
Medication abortion, or taking a combination of the drugs mifepristone and misoprostol, is an increasingly common method for ending pregnancies in the United States. Reasons vary and overlap: Some women lack access to in-person abortion clinics; others prefer to end pregnancies in the comfort of their own home. Others seek out the pills because they cost far less than surgical abortion.
With more in-person clinics shuttering and a Supreme Court that’s threatening to overturn Roe v. Wade, a small but growing number of reproductive expertshave been encouraging discussion of an idea called “advance provision” — or, more colloquially, stocking up on abortion pills in case one needs them later.
It’s an idea that has merit: Mifepristone has a shelf life of about five years, misoprostol about two, and both drugs work better the earlier in a pregnancy you take them. In states that are ramping up abortion restrictions, there’s often a race against the clock to access care. In Texas, for example, if you don’t realize until eight weeks in that you’re pregnant — which could be only a couple of weeks after a missed period— you would have already passed the state’s new legal deadline for obtaining abortion pills. But if you had already stored them in your home, or your friend or neighbor had, then you’d be able to take them.
In a 2018 nationally representative survey of women ages 18 to 49,44 percent expressed support for advance provision, and 22 percent said they were personally interested in it. Those who had previously had a medication abortion and those who reported facing greater barriers to reproductive health care were more likely to support the idea.
Data on these kinds of abortions — often called “self-managed” or “self-administered” — are harder to track. Research published in 2020 estimated that 7 percent of women will self-manage an abortion in their lifetime, though this was calculated with the assumption that Roe was still in place. New Guttmacher data published last week on US abortion incidence found there were 8 percent more abortions in 2020 than in 2017, but self-managed abortions are excluded from this count.
“We know there are thousands of self-managed abortions that we aren’t capturing,” Rachel Jones, a Guttmacher research scientist, told Vox. “If the Supreme Court overturns Roe, and abortion becomes illegal in 26 states and people can’t travel to another state, then self-managed is going to be the only other option they have for an abortion.”
Talking more frankly about self-managed abortion goes against longstanding American cultural norms. For years US reproductive rights groups stressed that the decision to end a pregnancy “was made between a woman and her doctor.” Internationally, where abortion has been more heavily criminalized, there is less pressure to involve medical professionals. It was in the legally restrictive context of Brazil in the late 1980s that women first pioneered the use of misoprostol to self-manage their abortions.
Rebecca Gomperts, the Dutch physician who in 2018 founded Aid Access to deliver abortion pills to US patients, has been one of the most vocal advocates for advance provision, and began offering it as an option to people in all 50 states last fall. Costs for the pills range from $110 to $150, with a sliding scale for those who lack funds. Recently, in Politico, Gomperts encouraged doctors to begin prescribing mifepristone and misoprostol to those who are not pregnant, so they have the medication available if they need it later.
“Abortion pills are something that, actually, you cannot die from,” she said. “There’s no way that you can overdose on it. And what we know from research is that you don’t need to do an ultrasound for a medical abortion.”
The idea of getting medication in advance of need is nothing new. Doctors also used to commonly prescribe emergency contraception to women before it became available over the counter.
Right now large mainstream abortion rights groups are mostlystaying quiet on advance provision, leaving lesser-known organizations like Aid Access and Plan C to try to get out the word. (NARAL and Guttmacher declined to comment, and Planned Parenthood did not return requests for comment.)
Aid Access and Forward Midwifery are among the few groups currently offering US patients the option to order pills in advance, though Elisa Wells, co-director of Plan C, said she knows others are considering it. “I was just having a conversation with a provider in Montana,” she told me. “We believe it will become more common. Sometimes we call it the ‘just in case’ plan, because unplanned pregnancy is so common.”
It’s a safe option for most patients
When it comes to safely ending pregnancies, medication abortion is over 95 percent successful, according to Guttmacher. Less than 0.4 percent of patients require hospitalization. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has also affirmed medication abortion as a safe method to terminate pregnancy, one with very low risk of complications.
Research published earlier this year in the medical journal Lancet found self-managed abortions specifically to be very effective, and with high rates of patient satisfaction.
Gomperts also urges more attention on misoprostol-only abortions, which are common internationally. The drug can be easier for women to access since misoprostol is less tightly regulated; it’s used for other ailments including stomach ulcers and managing miscarriages, and is sold over the counter in many countries.
While medication abortion is a safe option for almost everyone with an early pregnancy, the pills are not recommended for people who take blood thinners, who have bleeding disorders, or who are at high risk of ectopic pregnancies. (Ultrasounds are recommended for those in this latter category.)
Still, one upside of advance provision — and medication abortion generally — is the greater number of people who could potentially provide the pills, including primary care doctors. Another upside is that it could be easier to share pills with those who need the medication quickly but lack access to it. Research suggests the drugs are best taken within the first 10 to 12 weeks of a pregnancy.
Paying attention to legal risks and criminalization
Outside of groups that exploit international law like Aid Access, advance provision is unlikely to be a legal option in every state. Some states, for example, require patients to get ultrasounds before a provider can give them abortion pills. Other states are cracking down on abortion pills themselves.
While few states currently ban self-managed abortion outright, many have existing laws that overzealous prosecutors could use to go after women, like fetal homicide statutes. “I am concerned that if people stockpile, without knowing the legal risks or how to cover their digital footprints, they could be subject to criminalization,” said Renee Bracey Sherman, founder of the abortion storytelling group We Testify.
The National Right to Life Foundation also released model legislation in mid-June that encourages states to criminalize those who “aid or abet” illegal abortions, including those who provide instructions over the phone or internet about self-managed methods.
Even in states with fewer legal concerns, advance provision won’t be the right option for everyone. “It’s a potentially high cost for a patient that is unlikely to be covered by insurance,” said Daniel Grossman, a physician and a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of California San Francisco. Not everyone can afford to spend $150 to have a backup method available, and some people will still need or prefer in-person clinic care.
It hasn’t gone mainstream, yet
In the days following the leaked draft of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, telehealth abortion providers reported spikes in internet searches and pill orders. Still, most Americans lack familiarity with not only abortion medication but also the few groups that currently provide the pills in advance. Some activists say leaders and more well-resourced organizations should do more to promote self-managed abortion as an option.
Grossman told Vox that he believes more people should ask their primary care and reproductive health providers if they’d be open to prescribing or giving them abortion pills to store for later use. “Even if the doctor doesn’t want to, I think it’s worth just sparking a conversation with them and get their provider thinking,” he said. Grossman previously told Jezebel he’s found it challenging to get other researchers and health care providers to give advance provision the attention it deserves.
“We have ibuprofen in case of a headache, cough syrup in case of a cold, and Plan B in case of a broken condom,” said Bracey Sherman of We Testify. “It’s already normal for other health care and we should normalize it for abortion.”
Wells, from Plan C, said the historical restrictions placed on abortion have likely made some groups and individuals more reticent to talk about advance provision. “I think there’s probably a lot of fear about not wanting to break any rules,” she said.
Another factor limiting discussion, Wells suggested, is the way abortion has been heavily medicalized in the US, to the point where people believe the drugs have to be or are best administered by a medical professional. Attitudes are different internationally, she said.
“We have become so invested in saying that we need to have safe abortions and that doctors and clinicians and the clinics can provide that,” Wells said. “Clinicians have done a wonderful job, and we have to have all these different types of care options available, but [self-managed abortions] can be a bit of a threatening message to that whole system.”
From The Hindu: Sports
India women eye fresh start against Sri Lanka in 1st T20 - The Indian team, for the first time, will be without the legendary Mithali Raj, who hung up her boots earlier this month after an illustrious 23-year-old career
Big Bash League to have IPL-style draft system to pick foreign players - Cricket Australian said that though the new draft is designed to attract the best available foreign players to the Big Bash League, the objective is to give BBL a more competitive edge in the international market
Washington Sundar likely to debut for Lancashire county this season - India national team player Washington Sundar, who joined Lancashire, could become the second Indian to feature in the county season after Cheteshwar Pujara
Carlos Tévez appointed coach of Rosario Central weeks after retirement as player - Former Manchester United and City striker Carlos Tevez has signed a 12-month contract with Argentine club Rosario Central, his first coaching stint since announcing his retirement from playing
Indian football | AIFF spent ₹16 lakh on astrology agency for men’s team: Insider - AIFF splurged ₹16 lakh for an astrologer to “motivate” the national men’s team, which confirmed its berth in the 24-team AFC Asian Cup Final
From The Hindu: National News
India reports 86% fall in cases since 2015, 79% reduction in deaths due to Malaria - Malaria in India is perceived as a poor man's disease, thus receiving low priority in the public health agenda.
Man gets five years RI for sexually assaulting minor girl -
Andhra Pradesh: Girls outperform boys in Intermediate examinations - 68% girls and 54% boys clear the second year examination
Maharashtra political crisis | how the numbers stand - As the members of Shiv Sena rebel, the future of the Maha Vikas Aghadi remains uncertain. We look at the numbers ruling the political turmoil in Maharashtra.
Throwing light on the importance of mushrooms - Kerala State Biodiversity Board offering certificate course on fruiting bodies
From BBC: Europe
Half Russian separatist force dead or wounded - UK - UK military intelligence believes the Donetsk militia in occupied Ukraine has lost 55% of its force.
Saudi crown prince visits Turkey for first time since Khashoggi murder - President Erdogan and Crown Prince Mohammed want to repair ties damaged by Jamal Khashoggi’s killing.
Plan to reverse European Court Rwanda rulings - Ministers could ignore injunctions on asylum seekers set by European judges, under new proposals.
Kaliningrad: Russia warns Lithuania of consequences over rail transit blockade - Lithuania banned the transit of some goods to Russia’s Kaliningrad region over EU sanctions.
Ukraine refugees: UK set to admit lone teenagers after rule change - A rule change will mean UK visas for some young people after months in limbo, the BBC understands.
From Ars Technica
COVID rebounds: Immune responses may be reignited by cleanup of viral scraps - Small NIH study offers “encouraging” news for concerns about Paxlovid. - link
A brief history of (unintentionally) unbeatable games - KOTOR II on Switch isn’t the first game that players literally couldn’t finish. - link
Mega says it can’t decrypt your files. New POC exploit shows otherwise - Fundamental flaws uncovered in Mega’s encryption scheme show service can read your data. - link
Lawsuit: Tesla broke US law by not providing 60-day notice before mass layoff - Laid-off Tesla workers say WARN Act violation means Tesla owes them for back pay. - link
Lenovo ThinkStation P360 Ultra crams 16 CPU cores and a GPU into a tiny desktop - Dedicated Nvidia RTX A5000 GPUs, 12th-gen Intel CPUs, and up to 128GB of DDR5. - link
From Jokes Subreddit
What is a Pirate’s favorite letter? -
The one from the General Manager telling him he’s been traded to the Mets.
