Daily-Dose

Contents

• From New Yorker
• From Vox
• From The Hindu: Sports
• From The Hindu: National News
• From BBC: Europe
• From Ars Technica
• From Jokes Subreddit

From New Yorker

• Legal Scholars Are Shocked By Ginni Thomas’s “Stop the Steal” Texts - Several experts say that Thomas’s husband, the Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, must recuse himself from any case related to the 2020 election. - link

• The Day Foreign Journalists Felt Forced to Leave Moscow - After a meeting at the Russian Foreign Ministry, dozens of outlets moved their reporters out of the country. - link

• The Biden Official Who Pierced Putin’s “Sanction-Proof” Economy - In the run-up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Daleep Singh, a national-security adviser, searched for areas where “our strengths intersect with Russian vulnerability.” - link

• The Rewriting of Emily St. John Mandel - She became famous for a pandemic novel. But the crisis she’s interested in is change itself. - link

• A Cartoonist Makes Space for Grief - Anders Nilsen illustrates his attempts through the years to live with the death of his fiancée. - link

From Vox

• Spend April with Carmen Maria Machado’s haunting Her Body and Other Parties -

  

  The Vox Book Club’s April pick is a ferociously smart set of short stories that read like fairy tales for the 21st century.

  The Vox Book Club is linking to Bookshop.org to support local and independent booksellers.

  Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties is one of those books you just never stop thinking about. I haven’t been able to get it out of my head since I first picked it up five years ago — which is why it’s the Vox Book Club’s pick for April 2022.

  Eerie and unsettling, this short story collection has the dark beauty of an Angela Carter fairy tale and an animating force that’s all Machado’s own. In stories that riff on urban legends, dystopian fiction, and Law & Order: SVU, Machado returns again and again to the fleshy, porous, unbounded bodies of her heroines — and to all the other parties who feel entitled to them.

  Join the Vox Book Club as we spend April exploring Her Body and Other Parties. At the end of the month, we’ll meet Machado live on Zoom, and you can RSVP here. In the meantime, subscribe to the Vox Book Club newsletter to make sure you don’t miss anything.

  The full Vox Book Club schedule for April 2022

  Friday, April 15: Discussion post on Her Body and Other Parties published to Vox.com

  Thursday, April 28, 5 pm ET: Virtual live event with author Carmen Maria Machado. Reader questions are encouraged!

• How Black North Carolinians pay the price for the world’s cheap bacon -

  

  The meat industry’s environmental racism problem, explained.

  “The smell of money” — that’s what pork producers have long called the revolting odor of pig waste that permeates the air in eastern North Carolina, where hogs outnumber people by as much as 35 to 1. But to many Black, Latinx, and Indigenous residents who live near the state’s giant pig farms, the smell is more associated with nausea, anxiety, breathing problems, and racial discrimination.

  Industrial pork production exploded in eastern North Carolina in the late 1980s and early ’90s, as mega facilities that each house thousands of animals displaced small farms. Ever since, residents have been fighting for their rights to clean air, clean water, and a life free from the stench of the 10 billion gallons of waste the state’s 8.8 million pigs produce each year.

  In January, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) launched an investigation into a discrimination claim brought by an NGO representing several community groups. The inquiry seeks to answer whether or not the state’s environmental department racially discriminated against residents when permitting several hog factory farms to convert their waste into fuel.

  The EPA’s probe is the latest development in a decades-long battle in North Carolina against what residents affected by factory farm pollution say is a form of “environmental racism,” a term used to describe the disproportionate impacts of pollution — whether from agriculture or urban power plants — on communities of color.

  That fight faces an uphill climb. Big Meat is king in the state’s culture, politics, and economy. In 2020, North Carolina ranked second among states in pork production, third in turkey production, and fourth in chicken production. It supplies not just the US but the rest of the world — 25 percent of the state’s pork is exported to China, Mexico, Japan, Korea, and other countries. But that pork and poultry production — and the environmental impacts that result from it — are highly concentrated in poverty-stricken counties with high Black, Latinx, and Indigenous populations.

  “This is home and I love it,” Carl Lewis, a Black barber in Bladen County, North Carolina, told me in an interview for The Smell of Money, a documentary I’m producing on the issue. Lewis’s barbershop is near a hog farm and “sprayfield,” where hog manure is discharged into the air over cropland via a machine that looks like a giant sprinkler. “But the hog farm over there,” he added, pointing toward the 12 metal buildings and three waste lagoons behind a patch of pine trees, “there’s flies, smell, trucks, noise. It’s really bothersome. I don’t think people have moved because most of us are poor and can’t afford to do that.”

  Courtesy of The Smell of Money/Shawn Bannon

  Impacts on communities like Lewis’s have been well documented since the 1990s and include everything from poisoned wells and diminished property values to shortened lifespans, as well as higher rates of physical and mental health problems for residents.

  “One of the most disturbing stories that I’ve heard people talk about is the sensation of actually feeling the spray, the fecal waste, raining down on them,” says Courtney Woods, an associate professor at the University of North Carolina School of Public Health, who has studied these effects. “They see it on their cars, on their homes … and outside of that, just feel outraged. There are associations with stress and anxiety that we have studies to demonstrate.”

  In the spring of 2020, massive Covid-19 outbreaks in meatpacking plants shined a spotlight on the daily hazards associated with killing and chopping hundreds to thousands of animals per day: cuts and amputations, dangerous chemical exposure, and repetitive stress injuries. Those hazards are borne by a predominately Black, Latinx, and immigrant workforce.

  But as North Carolina’s example shows, the meat industry’s harm to vulnerable communities starts long before the slaughter plant. Look further back in the supply chain, and it’s evident poor communities of color disproportionately pay the price for the world’s cheap bacon and chicken.

  How factory farms pollute the air and water (and how they get away with it)

Though meat’s contribution to the climate crisis is under increasing scrutiny, on-the-ground pollution caused by factory farms receives comparatively scant attention, even though about 12,700 premature deaths are caused in the US each year from animal agriculture air pollution alone — more deaths than those caused by coal-fired power plants, according to one recent study.

Waste from factory farms, or concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), is typically stored in massive, open-air pits or mounds, and then sprayed or spread over cropland as fertilizer. In theory, these systems are meant to recycle nutrients contained in the waste, like nitrogen and phosphorus, back into crops. But in practice, animal feces and urine regularly make their way off the farm and into the surrounding environment.

Poultry waste, a dry “litter” that looks like wood shavings mixed with excrement, blood, feathers, and feed, and is usually stored in big piles outdoors, can wash away in the rain or blow away in the wind. Pig waste pits often leak or overflow, especially during strong storms and North Carolina’s intense hurricane season.

Courtesy of Rick Dove/Waterkeeper Alliance

Pollution can lead to algal blooms — an overgrowth of algae that can produce toxins and deplete oxygen levels in waterways — as well as massive fish kills. Groundwater contamination is an especially concerning problem in rural areas where some residents drink well water and where accessing county lines that could provide untainted water costs money people often don’t have.

“We had wells, but the wells [were] contaminated from the hog farm,” says Delores Miller, a resident who lives just a few hundred feet from a hog CAFO lagoon and sprayfield in Duplin County, North Carolina. “The smell, you can’t hang your clothes out, you can’t do nothing in the yard, and we won’t even talk about the yellow flies.”

Courtesy of The Smell of Money/Shawn Bannon

Children who attend schools near CAFOs in North Carolina experience higher levels of asthma and wheezing compared to those who attend schools farther from CAFOs, and residents within one and a half miles of CAFOs report elevated blood pressure; eye, nose, and throat irritation; difficulty breathing; nausea; and chest tightness, problems that worsen as the odor worsens. One study found that eastern North Carolina residents who live near factory farms experience higher rates of asthma, anemia, kidney disease, infant mortality, and infections compared to rural residents who don’t live near CAFOs, even controlling for other factors like poverty.

Though the social and environmental harms wrought by CAFOs are decades old at this point, existing anti- pollution laws provide little relief. The federal Clean Water Act requires the EPA to hold factory farms accountable, but the agency primarily regulates only the largest CAFOs (for hog farms, that’s CAFOs with more than 2,500 pigs over 55 pounds, or more than 10,000 pigs under 55 pounds). The EPA allows factory farms to use the problem-prone waste storage and disposal practices described above, and doesn’t require CAFOs to monitor the pollutants they release into waterways.

The EPA also leaves much of the enforcement for the regulations that are on the books to state governments, but state agencies often lack the resources or political will to monitor water pollution, and they seldom crack down on violators with any real force.

Air pollution from CAFOs is also largely unregulated; in 2005, the EPA entered into what environmental advocates call a sweetheart deal with thousands of CAFOs, agreeing not to enforce air pollution regulations as long as the meat industry paid for a study of the problem. The EPA planned to use the resulting data to complete an analysis of the industry’s role in air pollution and then begin enforcement. But nearly two decades later, it still hasn’t.

Environmental justice advocates say tight ties between the industry and legislators make progress difficult. “We have legislators that is so deep into the pockets of these dirty industries; they can’t get out, even if they wanted to,” says Naeema Muhammad, senior adviser for the North Carolina Environmental Justice Network.

Since 2000, meat companies, meat trade groups, and individuals linked to the meat industry have contributed more than $5.6 million to North Carolina candidates. The largest donors are the North Carolina Farm Bureau, the North Carolina Pork Council, and Smithfield Foods, which is owned by Chinese conglomerate WH Group. Several legislators are current or former farmers and have helped to pass pro-industry legislation and defended the industry in the press.

Former poultry farmer and North Carolina state Rep. Jimmy Dixon (R), who represents a region with the most densely concentrated CAFOs in the country, championed a bill aimed at preventing citizens from suing major meat companies over pollution, has led pro-industry rallies, and has dismissed residents’ concerns about the stench and nuisance of living near a hog CAFO as “exaggerations,” accusing them of being “recruited” by greedy lawyers.

The fight for environmental justice in North Carolina hog country

North Carolina’s pro-industry, hands-off regulatory environment is inseparable from the state’s history. Legacies of slavery, genocide, land theft, and racial discrimination have made it impossible for many North Carolinians to access the kind of political and economic power necessary to stop factory farms from moving into their neighborhoods — and from finding relief from the farms’ pollution.

One historical anecdote highlights how race was a defining factor in the pork industry’s trajectory in North Carolina. Although residents — including many Black, Latinx, and Indigenous people — had been calling for stricter regulation for years, a moratorium on new hog CAFOs passed in 1997 only after a state representative heard that one was slated to be built near a golf resort and wealthy white community in his district.

Craig Jones/Allsport via Getty Images

Existing CAFOs were grandfathered in, and to this day, factory farms are more common near low-income communities and communities of color. In some parts of North Carolina, there are 10 times more CAFOs in poor and nonwhite neighborhoods than in wealthier, whiter areas, even controlling for population density.

Public health researchers and community groups first applied the term “environmental racism” to this situation in 1996, when they found an astounding correlation between where formerly enslaved people had settled, known as “the Black Belt,” and the modern-day distribution of hog CAFOs in North Carolina. The name stuck, and it continues to resonate with residents who have always known that the distribution of these polluting facilities was not accidental.

Elsie Herring, whose willingness to speak out against the pork industry made her the symbol for this fight after a hog farm moved onto her family’s land in the 1980s, often described her battle as one for basic human and civil rights. (She died last year from a form of cancer that may be linked to air pollution.)

“I definitely think that environmental racism is a big part of this picture of what’s going on with the pork industry,” she told me. “Otherwise, why not put them next door to where they live? Of course poverty has something to do with it also, but there’s plenty of poor white people, and these facilities are not in their neighborhood.”

Courtesy of The Smell of Money/Shawn Bannon

“Eastern North Carolina is the dumping grounds for North Carolina,” says Muhammad. “We always say whatever white people don’t want in their backyards, come to eastern North Carolina, and we’ll show it to you, ‘cause it’s here.”

For the past three decades, residents like Herring have been engaged in a multi-front war, supported by a broad coalition of environmental and legal advocacy groups, public health researchers, and civil rights advocates. They’ve executed creative stunts like bringing gallons of hog feces to the governor’s mansion and setting up a mock hog farm — complete with functioning manure sprayers — on the state capitol grounds. They have pleaded with the industry directly, filed petitions, attended council meetings, lobbied legislators, testified before Congress, and even run for office against pro-industry politicians.

They’ve also filed federal Civil Rights Act complaints to the EPA, alleging that North Carolina’s environmental regulatory agency discriminates against communities of color by permitting CAFOs to pollute their air and drinking water (under the Civil Rights Act, no entity that receives federal funds may discriminate on the basis of race).

The most recent complaint, filed in January, argues that regulators are discriminating against communities of color by allowing some CAFOs to convert animal waste into fuel, a practice environmental justice advocates say worsens pollution by entrenching existing systems and subjecting communities to new gas pipelines and plants.

For years, North Carolina residents also hoped to find relief by suing the industry, but taking Big Meat to court is neither cheap nor easy. Financial barriers and intimidation from the industry directed at both law firms and would-be plaintiffs made this tactic inaccessible until residents finally found Mona Lisa Wallace, a gutsy lawyer from a small North Carolina town who was brave enough to take on a meat industry goliath.

In 2014, Wallace’s firm filed 26 nuisance lawsuits on behalf of a group of about 500 North Carolina residents — almost all people of color — against pork producer Murphy- Brown, which later became a subsidiary of Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest pork company. The suits detailed how the odor, noise, and health problems from air and water pollution made plaintiffs’ homes and land less livable and less valuable. The farmers themselves were not named in the lawsuits, as plaintiffs and their attorneys believed that farmers, too, are often victims of corporate agriculture’s exploitation.

Five of the lawsuits went to trial, and in each one, jurors unanimously sided with the residents. In total, the juries awarded residents $549,902,400, reduced to $97,880,000 due to a state cap on punitive damages — a cap that was put in place by industry-friendly lawmakers.

Smithfield appealed, but again, the federal appeals court sided with the plaintiffs, forcing the company to settle all remaining cases. The settlement amounts and other terms of the settlement are confidential, and in its press releases regarding its changes to animal waste disposal practices over the last several years, Smithfield has not stated that those changes are related to the settlement or required by it.

After the settlement announcement, plaintiff René Miller says conditions haven’t changed for her and her family. “That makes me feel good that we won,” she said. “But because we won, that don’t stop them from spraying [hog manure] on my house. So it’s still going on. I don’t go out my front door, and I stay in the house, keep the window closed. I still smell it.” Miller says she will use what she receives from the settlement to pay her medical bills.

In a statement regarding the company’s decision to settle, Smithfield spokesperson Keira Lombardo wrote, “These civil actions brought in North Carolina are part of a coordinated effort by plaintiffs’ attorneys and their allies aimed at dismantling our safe, reliable and modern system of food production. From the outset of these cases, we committed to vigorously defend agriculture and protect North Carolina’s farm families from this assault. Our support for America’s farmers does not end with this decision.”

Despite the win in the courts, while the lawsuits were ongoing, North Carolina’s legislature passed two retaliatory bills that tamp down on advocacy against CAFO pollution moving forward by making it extremely difficult to sue a major meat company for nuisance. “I think it’s horrific. I think it’s unconstitutional,” says Wallace. “And I think it’s sad that anyone would vote for a bill that treats people differently, that makes some people’s homes more precious than others’, just to protect the industry.”

Before the North Carolina cases, every state already had a “right to farm” law which protects agribusiness, to a degree, from similar lawsuits. But Big Meat was so spooked by its losses in North Carolina that it has lobbied legislatures in several ag-heavy states to strengthen those laws.

Today, pollution continues unabated in poor communities of color in the state and elsewhere. What’s needed, advocates say, is policy reform.

The EPA could do a lot more to hold CAFOs accountable for air and water pollution, according to Tarah Heinzen, legal director for the environmental nonprofit Food and Water Watch. “Its authorities under the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, and transparency laws remain largely untapped when it comes to CAFOs,” Heinzen says.

An EPA spokesperson told me via email that the agency “has been working toward a comprehensive strategy to address CAFO air emissions” by developing “improved emission-estimating methodologies [and] gathering additional information about the magnitude of CAFO emissions and their control options.” It expects to release draft reports this summer.

The spokesperson also noted the EPA is evaluating various Clean Air Act regulatory tools that might be used to address air pollution and is working to correct for the injustices wrought by past policies “through active engagement with underserved communities,” with regional virtual workshops and national monthly calls, and by funding air monitoring.

The EPA is also hamstrung by Congress. For years, Congress’ annual spending bill that funds the government has included provisions that block the EPA from monitoring and regulating CAFO greenhouse gas emissions and manure management systems. This year’s spending bill, which was signed by President Joe Biden in March, included those provisions.

In February, the White House announced a new screening tool to identify communities harmed by pollution, though it’ll exclude race, a move that disappointed environmental justice advocates. The White House said that decision was made to prevent legal challenges, fearing it would be struck down by the Supreme Court.

“I won’t be happy until this industry makes some significant changes where no one has to live under these kinds of conditions, where we can’t just simply enjoy our God-given rights, our right to clean air and clean water, the right to eat safe food,” Herring told me about a year before she died. “All of these things are worth fighting for. We need young people to take up the fight to fight environmental racism and injustices because this is their future. This world will be theirs when we leave.”

Jamie Berger is a writer and the producer of the feature- length documentary, The Smell of Money. She was born and raised in North Carolina and is the chief of staff at Mercy For Animals.

• Morbius sucks the fun out of the vampire story -

  

  Jared Leto’s latest asks, “What if vampires just wanted to study all the time?”

  Over the last two very long years, nothing has been made more clear than the fact that the world we live in is devoid of constants. We know that the reality we say good night to when we go to bed could look drastically different — war, disease, climate change, death — by morning.

Yet somehow, against all odds, the Morbius trailer has endured.

Lurking before movies we actually pay to see in theaters, in between our favorite television shows, on our computers and in our phones pressed up against the YouTube videos we procrastinate with, the Morbius trailer has become an inevitability in many of our lives. This state of eternally “coming soon” was due to the numerous delays the movie has faced.

Originally, Morbius was supposed to premiere in July of 2020, but was moved to March 2021, and then to October 2021, and finally April 2022. If Morbius was a person you were supposed to have a date with who kept postponing, at this point you’d both agree to just forget the other existed.

But Morbius is not a person, it is a superhero movie about a “living vampire” from the Marvel comic books, currently owned and heavily invested in by Sony Pictures — the studio behind the current Spider-Man and Venom movies. And because of film rights and intellectual property, it’s much more difficult and expensive to disappear Morbius.

Directed by Daniel Espinosa and starring Jared Leto and his ageless face, Morbius asks the question: What if vampires weren’t fun? After 144 minutes of Morbius dimming the spark of my life force, I found the soulless answer.

From its very first moment, Morbius seems a lot more fun than it will ever turn out to be. Michael Morbius is a genius doctor who has assembled a team of unnamed characters to travel, by helicopter, to Costa Rica’s Cerro de la Muerte, which translates into English as “The Mountain of Death.” We do not get much more information on how much killing the mountain has done. However, we do learn that Morbius is trying to capture a bunch of vampire bats to take home with him to New York City. He slices his palm open, blood drips down, and thousands of bats come shooting out of the cave trying to lick his pale little hand.

It’s all egregiously silly when you start to realize that this is a never-ending stream of bats and that there’s no logical way that the swarm will all fit into Morbius’s tiny suitcase. Also, do vampire bats really swarm and frenzy like piranha? How is Morbius going to get through customs with literally tens of thousands of winged piranha? Does he have a plan to feed them? And if Morbius is apparently wealthy enough to go to Murder Mountain, Costa Rica, via private helicopter, why isn’t he outsourcing his bat problems? Doing things yourself is not a very smart or rich person thing to do.

Courtesy of Sony

The actual explanation of his intentions with all these bats is a lot less entertaining — a letdown when you consider how campy this adventure is and how fun its cinematic cousins are.

After his bat procurement trip, Morbius’s fellow doctor and potential love interest Martine Bancroft (Adria Arjona) wants to know why he’s shunned the King of Sweden and the Nobel Prize, and why and how he managed to install a large glass pillar full of bats in the middle of their office.

With exposition, flashbacks, and monologue masquerading as a conversation, Morbius explains to her that he has a terminal blood disease (something she presumably knows since she has been working with him for a very long time) and that he’s turned down the highest medical prize in the world and snubbed Sweden’s king because he needs to do secret, presumably illegal bat research. He’s hoping to find a cure for his own blood disease, not only for himself but his childhood best friend Milo (Matt Smith).

Morbius thinks he can cure his condition by sequencing vampire bat DNA. He explains this by spending an extremely inappropriate length of time repeating the word “coagulants.” This monologue was presumably written to prove the character is Very Smart, but the overall effect is not unlike listening to someone try to get you to invest in cryptocurrency.

Bancroft, mind you, just wanted to scold her coworker for rejecting the Nobel Prize, but after the scintillating dissertation on coagulants, she seems really convinced that rejecting the once-in-a-lifetime prize was the right thing to do. She doesn’t follow up with any questions about who installed the giant bat-quarium in their office.

With the insinuation that human-bat DNA splicing is illegal in the US, Morbius explains to Milo and Bancroft, separately, that the experiment must be done in secrecy and in international waters. The international waters in question end up being a Panamanian cargo ship 12 miles off the coast of Long Island.

One would think that a man who has just brought tens of thousands of blood-sucking bats into the US and installed a bat sanctuary without his coworker noticing would be competent enough at keeping secrets, but maybe Morbius just wants to be extra careful. Obviously, one doesn’t win a Nobel Prize by being careless. Compared to the great lengths that Morbius went to to reach Costa Rica’s Cerro de la Muerte, a jaunty sprint to the waters just beyond Fire Island seems a little silly, comical even.

But the movie finds no humor in it.

In the bowels of the Panamanian cargo vessel, the experiment goes too well! The bat juice cures Morbius’s illness and somehow also gives him muscles and a tan. For a fleeting moment, Morbius looks like a sexy Jesus. Unfortunately, the bat potion also turns Morbius into a bloodthirsty bat-man, gnarling his fingers into huge claws, sharpening his face and nose into a snout, and twisting his mouth into a howling maw of fangs. In this form, he murders and exsanguinates his hired mercenaries on the rented Panamanian cargo ship.

No doubt, turning oneself into an horrendous- looking bat person who must consume fresh human blood is arguably the biggest oopsie that a Nobel Prize-winning doctor genius has ever committed.

Morbius’s gimmick is that Morbius is now essentially a vampire, but without any tether to existing mythology. He’s not bothered by daylight or garlic, nor does he have aversions to Catholic iconography. But he is biologically bound to blood-drinking.

If Morbius consumes blood, he can maintain his hot and sexy human form and possess superhuman strength and speed. Morbius also says the bat-juice has given him echolocation, which is depicted as being able to hear conversations from miles away. If he doesn’t consume blood, he turns into the uncontrollable, screeching creature, and becomes a danger to everyone around him.

I’m not sure I would attribute super strength or speed to bats, nor am I fully convinced that echolocation means being a really good eavesdropper (traditionally, it’s being able to use sound to identify the location of objects). That said, I’m not a chiropterologist, i.e., a scientist who studies bats, a term I had to Google. If the movie takes some generous liberties when it comes to bat physiology, sure, fine.

Morbius’s greater fault is that it cleaves away the vampire mythology without replacing that mythology with anything fun, new, or particularly interesting.

Vampire stories are compelling in part because they try to examine the wrinkles of human life — power, rage, horniness, sadness, nostalgia, love — to anchor the relatively abstract idea of eternity. The appeal of being sexy, rich, or powerful fades when you’re doing it all forever. A lot of vampire tales complicate the problem of taking on a fairly reprehensible form of being by ensuring their bloodsuckers are intoxicatingly charismatic. Without all his charm, Dracula would just be kind of gross and boring, a bigger, more annoying mosquito — not unlike Morbius.

Instead of using his new muscles to take thirst traps, bench press cars, or even fight crime, Morbius piously uses these gifts to study aggressively. Imagine being so scorchingly beautiful and strong, and just wanting to research for all eternity. Couldn’t be me.

He dictates all his symptoms into a recording device. He writes all of his findings into a notebook. He uses a stopwatch to time how long he can last before needing to consume blood — the artificial blood Morbius invented keeps him sustained, but organic, free-range human blood makes him stronger. Without any explanation, Morbius’s preferred method of blood consumption is shotgunning bags of blood like someone intent on obliterating their brain cells with cheap beer, another moment that would be funny in any movie other than Morbius.

At the same time, Milo sees his bestie’s glow-up and bat-fueled fitness journey and wants in.

Milo doesn’t want to die. Milo also wants to be hot. Milo, furthermore, wants to drink tequila and live deliciously. Milo is honestly a lot more fun, if rooted in impulsiveness, which results in the murders of finance bros and cops (if the movie were the slightest bit aware of who it was skewering, I would call this satire). Milo’s rising body count puts the city on alert for a “vampire murderer” which seems hilariously redundant, but nonetheless puts Morbius in the uncomfortable position of asserting his innocence and dispatching his fanged friend.

With a lack of humor and deadly exposition, Morbius propels itself into an absolutely wild third act, perhaps the unintentionally silliest finish I’ve seen this year.

Because the movie squanders so much time setting up coagulants, international waters, and bat DNA, Morbius must defeat his childhood best friend and share an erotically violent kiss with his doctor lover in rapid succession to wrap this entire thing up. The five minutes or so in which this all happens borders on psychotic; I found myself hollering an obscene and inhuman hoot — a gurgling death rattle from the last vestiges of my sanity.

Primed by the culmination of two years of Morbius trailers or spending the better part of an hour and a half watching Jared Leto slurp down blood bags like a college freshman, I could not believe Morbius was really all wrapping up like this. But deep down I knew this couldn’t actually be the end of Morbius because superhero franchises, like vampires, never really die. It dawned on me that there’s probably going to be a sequel, or some tie-in; that this horrendous thing was maybe just really the beginning. Soon enough, we may find ourselves haunted by another trailer.

From The Hindu: Sports

• IPL 2022: MI vs RR | Return of Suryakumar Yadav boosts Mumbai’s prospects against Rajasthan - The two teams head into the game at the DY Patil Stadium on the back of contrasting starts to the 15th edition of the tournament.

• IPL 2022: GT vs DC | Delhi Capitals test awaits Gujarat Titans - Both Gujarat and Delhi started their campaign in the 15th edition of the lucrative league with wins

• Russia World Cup chief serious about UEFA Euro in 2028 or 2032 hosting bids - Russian clubs and national teams have been suspended from FIFA and UEFA competitions for invading Ukraine

• China says Asian Games venues have been completed - All 56 competition venues for the Asian Games and Asian Para Games, including for e-sports which makes its debut in Asian games, have been completed

• Serie A: Inter Milan receive 100% stadium capacity boast for ‘Derby D’italia’ against Juventus - Derby d’Italia or Derby of Italy between Inter Milan vs Juventus will be one of the first matches to be played in front of a full house in Italy since March 2020

From The Hindu: National News

• IAF’s Suryakiran aerobatic team to paint the skies today -

• Andhra Pradesh: Jagan’s lack of administrative ability exposed, says Manohar - Untimely taxes, power tariff hike prove this, says JSP leader

• TSRTC Ugadi offer -

• Andhra Pradesh: Leopard dies in a territory fight with tiger in Nallamala - Forest officials find carcass during routine patrolling

• CPI(M), CPI on the same page on liquor policy: Kodiyeri - ‘CPI has not issued any statement against the policy’

From BBC: Europe

• War in Ukraine: Russia accuses Ukraine of attacking oil depot - Russia claims a Ukrainian helicopter raid set fuel tanks ablaze in Belgorod, a Russian city.

• Gerard Depardieu: Kremlin responds to actor’s Putin criticism - The French-born actor had accused the Russian president of “crazy, unacceptable excesses” in Ukraine.

• Ukraine war: Russian troops leave Chernobyl, Ukraine says - Ukraine’s state nuclear company says Russian soldiers have left the former nuclear power plant.

• Ukraine war: Russia blocks buses heading to Mariupol, says Ukraine - Russia has blocked 45 buses heading to the city to rescue civilians, says Ukraine’s deputy prime minister.

• Meeting with Pope a ‘stepping stone’ towards reconciliation - A Canadian indigenous delegation is seeking an apology over the church’s role in residential schools.

From Ars Technica

• Intel Core i3-12100 and i5-12400 review: Fast, affordable, and hard to criticize - Cheaper CPUs are getting competitive again after a couple of dry years. - link

• Rocket Report: SpaceX to do “right” by OneWeb, ESA looks at backup launch plans - “Investors deserve the protections they receive from traditional IPOs.” - link

• Increased smoke pollution on the horizon for Pacific Northwest - If we do nothing, parts of the US will see a tripling in wildfire smoke pollution. - link

• Apple rushes out patches for two 0-days threatening iOS and macOS users - With 5 0-days this year, Apple is on track to meet or break its 2021 tally of 12. - link

• Confirmed: Avalanche is likeliest explanation for tragic Dyatlov Pass incident - Findings from latest field expeditions support hypothesis proposed last year. - link

From Jokes Subreddit

• A wife asks her programmer husband to go to the store -

  ‘Can you go down to the store, and get a gallon of milk, and if they have eggs, get 6.’

  Later on he returns home and she looks at his purchases and says ‘Why the fuck do you have 6 gallons of milk?’

  He responded ‘They had eggs.’

  submitted by /u/Candy_Pixel
  [link] [comments]

• an old man walks into a jewelry store with a young blonde lady -

  The clerk immediately thinks he is being taken advantage of due to the age difference. She says to the clerk “Show me an expensive ring.” The clerk looks over at the old man and he gives a head nod. The clerk pulls out a ring and tells her “this one is $50,000 dollars.” She says its nice but I want something nicer. Once again he looks at the old man and gets another head nod. “This is one of our finest rings it costs over $300,000.” She says “I love it ill take it!” The old man writes a check for the ring. The clerk says due to the dollar value it will take 3 days for the check to clear, please come back Monday morning to pick up the ring."

  On Monday morning the man returns to the store by himself. The clerk says “sir unfortunately the check did not go thru due to insignificant funds.” The man says “oh I know it was never gonna clear. I just wanted to come in and tell you about my weekend!”

  submitted by /u/PurpleKey4885
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• An elderly man living alone in Manchester wanted to plant his annual tomato garden, but it was very difficult work, since the ground was hard. -

  His only son, Paul, who used to help him, was in prison (strange ways) . The old man wrote a letter to his son and described his predicament:

  Dear Paul,

  I am feeling pretty sad, because it looks like I won’t be able to plant my tomato garden this year. I’m just getting too old to be digging up a garden plot. I know if you were here my troubles would be over.. I know you would be happy to dig the plot for me, like in the old days.

  Love, Dad

  A few days later he received a letter from his son.

  Dear Dad,

  Don’t dig up that garden. That’s where the bodies are buried.

  Love,

  Paul.

  At 4 a.m. the next morning, CID officers and local police arrived and dug up the entire area without finding any bodies. They apologized to the old man and left. That same day the old man received another letter from his son.

  Dear Dad,

  Go ahead and plant the tomatoes now. That’s the best I could do under the circumstances.

  submitted by /u/Informal-Talk9487
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• The holy month of Ramadan starts today. For all my Muslim friends who are observing Ramadan… -

  ..Lunch is on me.

  submitted by /u/porichoygupto
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• Joe Biden had a meeting with the Cabinet today -

  He also spoke to the bookcase and argued with the desk.

  submitted by /u/Maxwe4
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