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What Happened to Gun Culture - During the past three decades, it became one of the most dangerous elements of the right. How much of that can be blamed on the N.R.A.? - link
“Wokeness” Is Not the Problem - Some Democrats chastise the left for driving away moderate voters, but they fail to consider why their own base isn’t turning out in larger numbers. - link
The John Smiths of America - One was an internationally known expert in molecular biology; another was a miner who loved to play checkers. - link
Mike Mills’s latest film captures our past, our future, and our fleeting present.
My TikTok timeline keeps serving me a certain kind of video, probably because it knows I was born in 1983. It goes something like this: The onscreen text says, “getting ready for your friend’s garage party in 2001”; behind the text, a woman my age puts on an American Eagle tank top, then another tank top on top of that, followed by low-rise jeans, Ugg boots, and basically just everything we wore back then. Some song by Nelly or Avril Lavigne plays in the background.
Each video triggers a sensory flood and a visceral question: Were we ever so young? Yeah, we sure were. (I was 17.) We lived in a micro-age of Xangas and LiveJournals and AOL Instant Messenger. Back then, 2021 seemed like far-off fantasy, straight out of some work of science fiction.
TikTok’s teens, on the other hand, weren’t even born back then, and so the 2001 video feels like goofy, ancient history. Twenty years from now they’ll be in my seat, and the next generation will be chuckling at their own videos. And so the cycle goes.
Every generation is living in the previous one’s science-fiction future, and as the pace of technological development speeds up, so does that cycle. That’s something C’mon C’mon — Mike Mills’s beautiful, decidedly non-sci-fi new drama — understands and celebrates and finds ever so slightly melancholy.
The first clue is its images. C’mon C’mon is shot (by the legendary Robbie Ryan) in black and white, a choice with two effects that hook into the story. It recalls a past era, when more films were presented in grayscale — though films like this may be evidence it’s coming back, it’s a generation of filmmaking that’s gone. There’s a feeling of matching plaintiveness in this movie, too.
But it’s also oddly futuristic. The film is full of vast cityscapes, the kind you see when flying into town, all rendered in black and white. Denver, Los Angeles, New York, New Orleans — each gets its moment, and we linger, seeing the shapes of the buildings against the horizons, the cars moving neatly along the roadways. They’re testaments to boundless American optimism, the desire to build higher and stronger and bigger, the better to house everyone’s dreams. But in the hazy strangeness that accompanies a world seeped of color, they appear otherworldly, like something we’ve imagined but haven’t yet accomplished.
All of this fits the movie well. C’mon C’mon is about time passing, so slowly you can’t perceive it but so quickly that we often simply forget the details of our lives. This is familiar territory for Mills, particularly in his marvelous, colorful 2016 film 20th Century Women, which captures an entire century of American women by zooming in on one makeshift family. The new film, too, captures a brief moment in one family’s life but somehow, a little magically, stretches to past and future.
The vaguely futuristic city landscapes show up in C’mon C’mon because Johnny (Joaquin Phoenix), a radio journalist, is interested in the dreams of a younger generation and traveling across the country to talk to them. After a bad breakup, the loss of his mother, and a strained relationship with his sister Viv (Gaby Hoffman), he’s closed himself down to most everything except his work. And right now, his work is interviewing kids about the future.
Soon enough, he’ll acquire his own kid — a precocious nephew named Jesse, marvelously played by newcomer Woody Norman — and talk to him plenty, and that’s most of the movie. Johnny agrees to take care of Jesse because Viv needs to help her estranged partner, Jesse’s father Paul (Scoot McNairy), through a personal crisis. As Jesse and Johnny grow closer, their bond reveals to both of them something about themselves.
It’s a cliche of a tale — “wise kid teaches lessons to grown man” — but Mills sells it, largely thanks to Phoenix’s expertly calibrated performance as a capable, thoughtful, and vulnerable man who needs to be poked and prodded a little. I was moved, even a little verklempt.
I found myself preoccupied by the segments where Johnny interviews children and teens, as well as how he captures his own thoughts about the day: He talks into the same microphone he points at the kids. He asks them questions, such as “When you think about the future, what do you think it will be like?” and “What makes you angry?” and “In the future, do you think families will be the same?” They tell him their answers, very seriously and thoughtfully. Then he goes back to his hotel and talks to himself about them through his recorder, preserving not just their voices but his own.
When you point a microphone or a camera at someone, you are implicitly telling them that they are important, at least in that moment. (One night, Johnny reads an excerpt from an essay by Cameraperson director Kirsten Johnson exploring just this point.) The kids he talks to are real kids — the DNA of a documentary floats around in this movie — and the answers they give are important. Documentarians frequently consult young people about the future or capture them in the act of celebrating the present, lending their perspectives the kind of weight most often afforded to talking heads on TV. What you hear in their conversations is not only their hopes for the future but also the future itself, when they may look back at themselves and wince or nod or wonder what happened to make them lose their idealism.
Recording someone is a way to stop time, capture a moment, and give it importance for a future generation. In the context of a relationship, that can be an act of affection. Johnny teaches Jesse how to use a microphone and a recorder, and tells him why he loves recording things — because you’re saving the minutiae of the present for the future. Later, both Jesse and Johnny record themselves for one another, and it’s a little bit of love — a way to say that the memories we made together matter, and we don’t want them to just slip away.
Because who knows what’s in Jesse’s future? He’s a kid in the age of the smartphone, where you can, if you have enough battery power, literally record everything you experience or see or hear in a day. If, when he’s Johnny’s age, he wants to be a radio journalist too, who knows what the contours of that work will be? Or what he’ll hear? Or what he’ll remember from watching his uncle work?
There’s a lot of wistful heart in C’mon C’mon, which ultimately aims to remind us that we’re only here on this earth a little while. We record ourselves as a bulwark against that recognition, while also knowing that it’s incumbent upon us to find a way to tell future generations what it was like to be us. TikTok videos of Ugg boots are one way to do it, and one that can prompt a cringe and a chuckle. But films like C’mon C’mon take the project a step further, an expression of the fact that no matter how shiny and sci-fi inflected the future seems, it will be here before we know it.
C’mon C’mon opens in theaters on November 19.
Jones, who claims he is innocent, will remain in prison for life in a case that attracted a crush of national attention. The state has yet to reckon with its history of horrific lethal injections.
In a dramatic, eleventh-hour move, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt (R) on Thursday granted clemency to Julius Jones mere hours before Jones was scheduled to be executed for the 1999 murder and carjacking of businessman Paul Howell. Jones, 41, had spent nearly 20 years on death row professing his innocence. Following a crush of national attention as athletes, activists, celebrities, and even fellow Republican lawmakers appealed loudly on Jones’s behalf, Stitt reduced Jones’s sentence to life in prison with no possibility of parole.
“After prayerful consideration and reviewing materials presented by all sides of this case, I have determined to commute Julius Jones’ sentence to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole,” the governor said in a statement released by his office.
In short: Stitt spared Jones’s life, but wants him incarcerated for the duration of it. That represents a different sort of death sentence. It also signals an incomplete victory for both sides of this case: Jones’s advocates are happy he’s alive, but lament his inability to now argue for release; Oklahoma Attorney General John O’Connor condemned the decision, saying in a statement that he is “greatly disappointed that after 22 years, four appeals, including the review of 13 appellate judges, the work of the investigators, prosecutors, jurors, and the trial judge have been set aside.”
The commutation was also only a partial acceptance of the recommendation earlier this month from the state’s Pardon and Parole Board that Jones be granted clemency and have the chance to be eligible for immediate parole. Members of the board cited doubts about the evidence in the case, which has been controversial from the start.
Jones has always maintained his innocence, arguing that he was not even present at the scene of the killing and that his defense made a number of mistakes. The late Oklahoma County prosecutor “Cowboy” Bob Macy, who first brought the case against Jones, had a sordid record that’s been the subject of much scrutiny from academics, the press, and a 2018 ABC documentary about the Jones case, The Last Defense.
Alarm over Jones’s planned execution had been mounting in part because officials on the state’s parole board have publicly questioned the state’s lethal injection process. One official said Wednesday about another case, “I don’t think that any humane society ought to be executing people that way until we figure out how to do it right.”
Stitt’s statement did not mention the controversies surrounding Oklahoma’s lethal injections or the fate of a slate of incarcerated individuals who remain scheduled to be executed.
Oklahoma, one of 27 states with the death penalty, has been among those with the highest number of executions since the US Supreme Court reaffirmed the legality of capital punishment in Gregg v. Georgia in 1976. After Oklahoma’s lethal injection drug protocols caused two grisly deaths and a last-minute pharmaceutical error was found before the execution of a man whose guilt was in doubt, a six-year moratorium on executions in the state was instated in 2015.
State prosecutors had pledged to continue the moratorium at least until a federal trial next year examined the constitutionality of Oklahoma’s execution practices. But the state recently began plowing ahead with the planned executions of several people in coming months, including Jones. The last man who died by lethal injection in Oklahoma, John Marion Grant, convulsed and vomited for several minutes following the administration of a sedative on October 28 — only heightening concerns about lethal injection practices.
No matter where the governor or anyone else stands on the question of capital punishment as a practice, questions about the drugs the state is continuing to use should have us asking: Does Oklahoma have any business executing people right now?
On July 28, 1999, businessman Paul Howell was shot to death outside his parents’ home in the predominantly white city of Edmond, Oklahoma, in front of his two young children. Howell’s GMC Suburban then went missing.
Julius Jones, a 19-year-old engineering student at the University of Oklahoma at the time of the killing, has maintained he is innocent since his arrest three days after the shooting. “As God is my witness, I was not involved in any way in the crimes that led to Howell being shot and killed,” Jones wrote in his clemency report. “I have spent the past 20 years on death row for a crime I did not commit, did not witness and was not at.”
Outspoken celebrity advocates for Jones over the years have included Cleveland Browns quarterback Baker Mayfield, who has advocated for Jones for years. He choked back tears this week when speaking about the case. Mayfield, who won a Heisman Trophy at the University of Oklahoma, told the press he’s “been trying to get the facts stated and the truth to be told for a while.”
Calls for mercy for Jones this week came from millions of online petitioners. Joining Mayfield in his advocacy for Jones were NBA players Trae Young, Blake Griffin, Russell Westbrook, and Buddy Hield, all of whom have Oklahoma ties. Along with Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott, they wrote letters to Stitt pleading for commutation. Other celebrities such as reality star and legal-system reform advocate Kim Kardashian used their platforms to bring attention to Jones’s plight.
So did five Republicans in the Oklahoma House of Representatives. Those lawmakers — Kevin McDugle, Garry Mize, Logan Phillips, Preston Stinson, and John Talley — released a joint statement last week asking Stitt to accept the parole board’s recommendation.
The Black Wall Street Times reported that former Trump White House communications official Mercedes Schlapp, along with her husband Matt, had been advocating for the same. “We are pleading, praying for the governor of Oklahoma to make the right decision,” Schlapp said last week.
There are many reasons Jones should be spared, his advocates have argued. Jones and his family have said that Jones was home that night, playing Monopoly with them and eating “spaghetti and cornbread.” That alibi wasn’t presented in court by his defense, which the family claims was incompetent. Prosecutors have said this is a “blatant falsehood,” and that Jones’s trial attorney never called the family to the witness stand because Jones repeatedly told his attorneys that he was not at home on the night of the murder.
The Innocence Project has called for Jones to be completely exonerated, arguing that there is “little doubt that racism was at play in Mr. Jones’s case.” Represent Justice, the nonprofit organization operating the site Justice For Julius, says the Jones family has claimed there was racial bias within the courtroom and racist intimidation from law enforcement — including an arresting officer and a juror who both allegedly directed the n-word at Jones.
The most significant allegation from the Jones camp is that they believe someone else committed the murder — someone who may have already admitted to it.
Trial transcripts show that witnesses identified Jones as the shooter and placed him within Howell’s stolen SUV. Howell’s daughter, Rachel — a young child sitting in the car when her father was shot — has also continued to insist that Jones was the killer. Jones, however, has said that Christopher Jordan, his former associate and co-defendant, committed the killing and later set him up by planting the murder weapon and a red bandana seen at the crime scene in the attic space above Jones’s bedroom. That’s where investigators found them both, and the bandana had Jones’s DNA on it.
It may also be incumbent upon the state to reexamine the evidence in Jones’s case solely because of the record of “Cowboy” Bob Macy, who first charged Jones with the crime in 1999. He secured at least 54 death sentences — more than any other individual prosecutor in the United States. However, courts have reversed nearly half of those sentences, and at least three of the people Macy sent to death row were later exonerated.
Macy claimed he was protecting the innocent. In 2001, he told the New York Times of the death penalty, “I feel like it makes my city, county and state a safer place for innocent people to live. And that’s why I embrace it, not because I get any enjoyment out of it.” According to a 2016 study by Harvard’s Fair Punishment Project, Macy once told a jury that sentencing a defendant to death was a “patriotic duty.”
That same Harvard study concluded that Macy engaged in “extreme prosecutorial misconduct,” including findings of inappropriate behavior in 18 of his cases. At least three of his capital convictions have been overturned. Many of his convictions relied on the testimony of police forensic scientist Joyce Gilchrist, who the FBI and Oklahoma Attorney General’s office later discovered had falsified evidence.
Even with the governor’s granting of clemency to Jones on Thursday, an urgent question remaining concerns the exceptional brutality of Oklahoma’s lethal injection protocols.
Before Clayton Lockett was executed by the state in 2014 for a murder conviction, his stepmother, LaDonna Hollins, wanted to know how it was going to happen. She said to reporters at the time, “I want to know, what mixture of drugs are you going to use now? Is this instant? Is this going to cause horrible pain?”
The sedative midazolam was administered to Lockett first, followed by a paralytic called vecuronium bromide. Then came potassium chloride, which was supposed to stop Lockett’s heart. His death, however, was not instantaneous. It took 40 agonizing minutes for Lockett to die.
Lockett woke up and tried to rise from his chair, even after he was declared unconscious with all three drugs in his system. Oklahoma Department of Corrections Director Robert Patton said at the time that Lockett’s vein failed, allowing the drugs to leak out into his system. The lethal injections hadn’t brought about the relatively silent death expected from such procedures. Lockett’s botched execution resulted in him dying of a heart attack.
Charles Warner, sentenced to death after he was convicted of killing an infant, stayed still in his seat after he received his injections in 2015, but his last words were “My body is on fire.” That same year, the state came within moments of killing Richard Glossip before prison officials discovered they had received the wrong injections from their supplier. The state knew this before the execution, yet the governor’s general counsel still said that stopping Glossip’s execution “would look bad for the state of Oklahoma.”
Then all executions halted in the state for six years, until John Marion Grant was put to death in October. The 60-year-old, sentenced in 1999 for the murder of prison cafeteria worker Gay Carter, began convulsing and vomiting following the midazolam injection, per the Associated Press, something observers said was unusual. One doctor characterized the dose Grant was given as “insane.” The state insisted that it carried out the execution “in accordance with Oklahoma Department of Corrections’ protocols and without complication.”
The latter part of that sentence — “without complication” — is surely in doubt. Oklahoma’s track record is giving authorities in the state, including some on the state parole board, pause as they consider the state’s unchanged drug protocol. Its constitutionality is still in question.
In a statement, Gov. Stitt’s office said that a 2016 election referendum had the effect of “constitutionalizing” the state’s death penalty. The governor’s office, citing the nonpartisan Death Penalty Information Center, argued that the referendum prevents state courts from declaring the death penalty cruel and unusual punishment or a violation of any provision of the state constitution.
Oklahoma moved forward last month with executing Grant, the first to die by lethal injection in the state since 2015, after the US Supreme Court voted 5-3 to lift temporary stays on his execution and that of another man: Julius Jones.
Even with Stitt’s announcement Thursday that he had granted Jones clemency, there is another thing to reevaluate: Oklahoma’s methods for killing its incarcerated defendants on death row. Including Thursday’s proclamation, Stitt has not given any recent public statements indicating he’ll do so.
The sparing of Jones’s life brings relief to his supporters, but not satisfaction. For every other person who remains on Oklahoma’s death row, the same specter still looms: the violent, potentially unconstitutional manner in which the state intends to bring about their deaths.
A new study found improving public transportation makes it easier for people to make it to their doctor appointments.
We don’t commonly think of public transportation as part of health care policy, though the people who work in public health know it’s important. But maybe we should, according to a new study focused on the opening of a light-rail line in the Twin Cities.
A group of researchers from the Urban Institute, Harvard Medical School, Mass General, and the University of Minnesota studied what happened to no-show outpatient appointments at a major health system when the Green Line opened in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area in 2014, connecting those two cities’ downtowns. The new Metro line was more reliable — less susceptible to traffic jams or bad weather — and ran more frequently than the buses that had previously covered the same route.
By looking at data from before the rail line’s opening and differentiating between patients who lived near the new transportation service versus those who did not in order to establish a baseline, the authors were able to isolate the effect of the Metro line. The impact they found was significant, much more than previous studies that had attempted to measure the effects of transportation on patients’ behavior.
They found a meaningful reduction in the number of no-show appointments among patients who lived near the Green Line, with the no-show rate dropping by 4.5 percent compared to the baseline. The effect was particularly profound for Medicaid patients, who saw their no-show rate decline by 9.5 percent compared to the baseline.
The researchers also found an increase in same-day appointments for patients and clinics located near the new rail line, indicating the expanded transportation options also made it easier for people to get urgent or otherwise unplanned medical care.
Why does this improvement in attendance matter? Patients get more reliable care, which can help head off bigger health problems down the road, and providers don’t end up with a bunch of empty slots that could have been filled by other patients.
Here is how the researchers explained the significance of their findings, published in the journal Health Services Research:
Even a small decrease in no-shows benefits both patients and providers. For patients, completing appointments improves care continuity and avoids potentially harmful lapses in screening and treatment. This may be especially true for patients with chronic illness, who are also more likely to experience transportation barriers. Outpatient care can help chronically ill patients access appropriate medications, achieve better disease control, and avoid future emergency department use or hospitalizations associated with their conditions. For providers, fewer no-shows increases revenue and reduces scheduling inefficiencies.
Their study also serves as a corrective to some of the prior research on this subject. Previous studies had tried to detect any effect resulting from a mass transportation strike or the offer of ride-sharing services specifically to patients.
Neither had found much of an impact. But the first was more than 20 years old and the second dealt with a sample size of fewer than 2,000 patients.
The data set analyzed in this new study covered more than 3.5 million appointments and 370,000 unique patients. The effect they found was meaningful, especially for low-income patients (disproportionately people of color) for whom structural obstacles to health care, including transportation options, have been profound.
“By documenting a decrease in no-show appointments and an increase in same-day appointments following a public transportation expansion — especially for low-income individuals — we provide important new evidence on the importance of adequate public transportation to achieve equity in access to care,” the authors state in their conclusion.
The bipartisan infrastructure bill, now signed into law by President Joe Biden, will pump nearly $40 billion into local public transit — a nice down payment, but not enough to fundamentally change the trajectory of the US’s ailing public transit system, according to experts.
The Build Back Better Act being debated in Congress right now would provide some additional funding for public transit. But it won’t be nearly enough to address the estimated $176 billion backlog of repairs and improvements that civil engineers believe currently exists in the United States.
There are lots of reasons to invest more money in public transit. But here is one more: It makes it easier for people, particularly those living in marginalized communities, to get to their doctor. Look at what happened in Minnesota.
AB de Villiers retires from all forms of cricket - The 37-year-old made the announcement on Twitter, bringing an end to a career of 17 years.
Rafiq apologises for his anti-Semitic messages in 2011 - Rafiq is seen making disparaging comments about an unnamed Jewish person in the screenshots shared
Tim Paine steps down as Australia test cricket captain after texting scandal - “It’s an incredibly difficult decision, but the right one for me, my family, and cricket,” said Tim Paine.
Ocon welcomes Zhou, sees Piastri on the F1 grid before long - Zhou is second to Piastri in the F2 standings but the 20-year-old Australian will be Alpine’s reserve next season without racing
Can cricket fandom be conflated with patriotism? - A responsible media and public would not turn cricket into something that is more than a sport
Rajeeve: ₹3,600-cr. investment commitments in six months - Industries Minister says focus is on ease of doing business realistically
New tree species named after Muthuvar tribe - ‘Cryptocarya muthuvariana’ spotted in Edamalakkudy
Scindia urges States, UTs to cut tax on jet fuel - With the current tax structure on ATF, “you cannot have a robust civil aviation sector. I am very clear on that,” the Civil Aviation Minister said
BTS 2021: Beyond Bengaluru Startup Grid launched, 40 startups already on board - Aim is to take 5,000 startups to growth clusters across Karnataka
BTS 2021: Taiwan seeks collaboration with Indians for research on cyber security - Session on ‘Cyber Security and Related Research Applications’ at Bengaluru Tech Summit 2021 on November 18
Austria to go into full lockdown as Covid surges - As well as Monday’s lockdown, the chancellor says vaccinations will be compulsory from February.
Poland border crisis: Camp empty as migrants move to warehouse - Thousands of people from the Middle East have been trying to get into the EU via Belarus for months.
Belarus migrant crisis: British army engineers to help at Polish border - About 150 army engineers are to help reinforce the EU border after migrants tried to enter from Belarus.
Serious EU intent to fix Northern Ireland border row, says Irish PM - But Micheál Martin says he is “frustrated” post-Brexit talks are hindering UK-EU relationships.
Why France’s Zemmour is dredging up World War Two - The TV pundit is a likely presidential candidate but his views on wartime history are controversial.
Rocket Report: Clipper to fly on used Falcon boosters, BE-4 may slip further - It says something that NASA is entrusting a hugely valuable mission to used rockets. - link
New study debunks controversial 2015 fossil find: It’s not a four-limbed snake after all - Its anatomy is consistent with that of extinct marine lizards known as dolichosaurs. - link
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Hubble update: One camera back, more to come - Still uncertain of why it misbehaved, controllers are cautiously restoring service. - link
The best smartwatches for every type of user - We tested smartwatches of every stripe, shape, and price to find the best options for you. - link
She found him standing naked, with a hard-on. “That’s not a clock!” she shouted.
“It is,” he replied. “It just needs two hands and a face on it.”
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The gorilla runs up behind the lion, grabs on, and has his way with him. The gorilla then takes off running, with the very angry lion on his heels. As they run through the jungle, the gorilla gets a bit of a lead, and sees a British safari camp ahead. The gorilla enters the camp, grabs some khakis that are hung out to dry, and puts on pants, a shirt, and a hat. He sits on a chair by the campfire and grabs a copy of the local paper, pretending to read, to hide his face. The lion enters the campsite and lets out a huge roar. He yells, “did anyone see a gorilla run through here?” The gorilla, in full disguise, calls out, “you mean the one that fucked the lion up the ass?” The lion exclaims, “oh my god! It’s in the paper already?”
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The pupils because they dilate.
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Every time I ask someone they say “it’s private.”
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“Yes, there was”
answers the Grandpa and patted the grandson’s head.
“Grandpa, is it true that it had absolutely no consequences?”
“Yes, absolutely”
answered the Grandpa, and patted the grandson’s other head.
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