Jonathan Waterlow: The jokes always saved us: humour in the time of Stalin (AEON)
Ordinary people had little chance of keeping pace with the regime's paranoia. In 1932, when it was more risqué than dangerous to do so, a railway worker such as Pavel Gadalov could crack a simple joke about Fascism and Communism being two peas in a pod without facing serious repercussions; five years later, the same joke was reinterpreted as the tell-tale sign of a hidden enemy. He was sentenced to seven years in a forced-labour camp. This style of retroactive 'justice' is something we can recognise today, when the uncompromising desire to make the world a better place can turn a thoughtless Tweet from 10 years ago into a professional and social death sentence. This is a far cry from the horrors of the Gulag, but the underlying principle is eerily similar.
Mark Coker: Smashwords 2019 Year in Review and 2020 Preview
2019 was a pivotal year for Smashwords as prepared for our second decade in business. From the outside looking in, especially judging by the paucity of my blog posts this year, one might think things were quiet at Smashwords. The truth is anything but.
Mark Coker: 2020 Publishing Predictions: House of Indie on Fire (Smashwords)
I recall watching an interview earlier this year with Margaret Atwood discussing the prophetic insights of The Handmaid's Tale, first published 35 years ago. She said (and I'm paraphrasing) that although some would label her writing as speculative fiction, she really writes about things that are already happening. I get that. She calls attention to stuff hiding in plain sight that others should see too. My predictions are based on what I'm seeing.
Every episode of this 1960s TV series ended with "We now return control of your television set to you. Until next week at the same time, when the control voice will take you to _______( 3 Words )_______"
The Outer Limits is an American television series that was broadcast on ABC from September 16, 1963 to January 16, 1965 at 7:30 PM Eastern Time on Mondays. The series is often compared to The Twilight Zone, but with a greater emphasis on science fiction stories (rather than stories of fantasy or the supernatural matters). The Outer Limits is an anthology of self-contained episodes, sometimes with a plot twist at the end.
Each show would begin with either a cold open or a preview clip, followed by a "Control Voice" narration that was mainly run over visuals of an oscilloscope. Using an Orwellian theme of taking over your television, the earliest version of the narration ran as follows:
" There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. If we wish to make it louder, we will bring up the volume. If we wish to make it softer, we will tune it to a whisper. We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. We can roll the image, make it flutter. We can change the focus to a soft blur or sharpen it to crystal clarity. For the next hour, sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear. We repeat: there is nothing wrong with your television set. You are about to participate in a great adventure. You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to - The Outer Limits. "
A similar but shorter monologue caps each episode: We now return control of your television set to you. Until next week at the same time, when the control voice will take you to - The Outer Limits.
Source
Mark. was first, and correct, with:
The Outer Limits.
Randall wrote:
The Outer Limits
Alan J answered:
The Outer Limits.
mj said:
One of the best of the 60s
But far too thoughtful for the Age of Batman (Pow!) and Green Acres, The
Outer Limits had some thought provoking, well written, and beautifully
acted offerings on TV. And they didn't always have happy endings.
Stephen F responded:
The Outer Limits
Jon L replied:
That's The Twilight Zone.
Micki wrote:
The Outer Limits.
Mac Mac said:
The Outer Limits
zorch answered:
The Outer Limits.
Dave responded:
The Outer Limits. A series that aired on ABC (1963-1965), so naturally I never watched it because we lived out of range of the nearest ABC channel and apparently it wasn't syndicated.
Cal in Vermont replied:
The Outer Limits. Meh.
MarilynofTC said:
The television show was The Outer Limits. Loved watching it and the stories they came up with.
Roy, the Libtard Snowflake in Tyler, TX wrote:
Back in the '60s, we had only one television, so what we watched depended entirely on my parents' likes. So it wasn't until they bought our first color TV, and I got to move the old, unreliable black & white monstrosity down to the basement that I got to watch The Outer Limits. It never really made it into my top ten favorites, but looking back at clips from the program today, I can see current video technology being put to good use remaking some of the episodes.
Jim from CA, retired to ID, replied:
The Outer Limits
Kenn B responded:
The Outer Limits
Kevin K. in Washington, DC, said:
Imma guess "The Outer Limits".
Deborah wrote:
I'm going with "The Twilight Zone." My mom and I loved that show.
I start my Master Gardener training tomorrow. Four hours of training and learning every Friday for 16 weeks. Let's see how this goes.
John I from Hawai`i says,
The Outer Limits
Daniel in The City answered:
"The Outer Limits"
Dave in Tucson replied:
...will take you to The Outer Limits. Despite a few decent episodes (like the one where Barry Morse & Carroll O'Connor were a couple of space aliens who slow down time trying to prevent a murder) TOL always seemed to pale against the Twilight Zone.
Michelle in AZ responded:
The Outer Limits
Barbara, of Peppy Tech fame wrote:
The answer is "The Outer Limits."
Intro:
Ending:
DJ Useo said:
I'm of a mind that the answer is "The Twilight Zone". I'm fortunate in that I have the series on DVD.
Joe S answered:
The Outer Limits!!! Never got to see much of that show, liked what I saw.
Ed K took the day off.
Rosemary in Columbus took the day off.
Billy in Cypress U$A took the day off.
Harry M. took the day off.
George M. took the day off.
David of Moon Valley took the day off.
Gateway Mike took the day off.
Leo in Boise took the day off.
- pgw @ nor cal. took the day off.
Paul of Seattle took the day off.
Saskplanner took the day off.
Gary took the day off.
Doug in Albuquerque took the day off.
Peter W took the day off.
Brian S. took the day off.
Steve in Wonderful Sacramento, CA, took the day off.
Gene took the day off.
Tony K. took the day off.
Noel S. took the day off.
James of Alhambra took the day off.
BttbBob has returned to semi-retired status.
~~~~~
Song: "Long Distance Runner" from the album THE BACKUP PLAN
Artist: Adam Dunetz
Artist Location: Northampton, Massachusetts
Info: "The Backup Plan tells the (mostly) fictional story about how the places we find ourselves are not always the places we expected to be."
If you've been holding off on buying music on Bandcamp, listen to a few songs on this album - or listen to the entire album - and send Adam Dunetz a dollar. He's an excellent singer-songwriter who obviously isn't in it for the money.
Price: $1 (USD) for excellent 11-song album. You can't pay more for the album, but if you want to send him more money, the price of individual songs is $1 (USD) or more - you can pay $2 (USD) if you want to.
• When Orson Welles died, Joss Whedon, then a university student and later the creator of the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, was upset and drunk, and he complained, "This man had so much to say, and society conspired to keep him from saying it for so long." His then-girlfriend, a very intelligent woman, said, "It's interesting that you feel that way about him. I feel that way about the entire history of my entire gender!" By the way, Mr. Whedon wants his tombstone to say, "He was getting better." He says, "Whatever I do, I just want to get better at it."
• Opera singer Mary Garden was in the audience when a crazed man rushed on stage and tried to shoot Jean de Reszke, who was singing the part of Romeo in Gounod's Roméo and Juliet. Mr. de Reszke kept on singing as two stagehands grabbed the crazed gunman, disarmed him, and carried him off the stage. Later, Ms. Garden asked him, "Weren't you frightened at all, Jean? He might easily have fired that shot." He replied, "There was nothing I could do but hope that he would not fire. I hadn't a moment's fear."
Education
• When Langston Hughes, the famous African-American author, was in the 7th grade in Lawrence, Kansas, his teacher created a separate row of desks for her African-American students. Langston protested, shouting that she had created a Jim Crow row of desks. The protest was effective: The African-American students were soon seated among the white students. Mr. Hughes attended 8th grade at Central School in Lincoln, Illinois, where he became class poet. For the 8th grade graduation ceremony, which took place on 31 May 1916, he wrote a long poem that was very popular. Why? He explained later, "In the first half of the poem, I said that our school had the finest teachers that there ever were. And in the latter half, I said our class was the greatest class ever graduated." As you would expect, he valued education, and he attended Columbia University for one year. However, once he threw away a number of his books. While sailing to Africa as an employee on the freighter West Hesseltine in 1923, he threw away most of the books he had brought on board, saying, "It was like throwing a million bricks out of my heart" and that the books represented "all those things I wanted to throw away." Most of the books were college textbooks from Columbia. One book he did not throw away was a copy of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. He wrote, "I had no intention of throwing that one away."
• In 1960, Roy Lichtenstein started teaching at Douglass College (the women's college of Rutgers University). There he became friends with Rutgers art history teacher Allan Kaprow. In a conversation, Roy explained that he was using the paintings of Paul Cézanne to teach his students color. Allan saw a Double Bubble cartoon, and he told Roy, "You can't teach color from Cézanne; you can only teach it from something like this." Allan remembers, "He looked at me with the funniest grin on his face." Roy said, "Come with me." He then showed Allan one of his newest works: an abstract painting in which Donald Duck appeared. Soon Roy began to paint big paintings of cartoons, and soon he began to become famous.
• Dancers very seldom see a dance from the audience's point of view, as when they learn a dance, they watch demonstrations from the rear. According to Peter Martins, "Dancers are always shocked when they see for the first time ballets they have danced in for years from the audience's view." Also according to professional dancers, they always suffer from aches and pains as a result of their profession. Rudolph Nureyev once told Mr. Martins, "If I don't ache and pain, I don't know I'm alive." By the way, Mr. Martins once choreographed a piece that he wanted to title Giardino di Scarlatti, but he changed the title to Sonate di Scarlatti when George Balanchine suggested that "Giardino" sounded like the name of an Italian restaurant.
CBS begins the night with a FRESH'Hawaii Five-0', followed by a FRESH'Magnum PU', then a FRESH'Blue Bloods'.
On a RERUNStephen Colbert (from 11/22/19) are Daniel Craig and Lena Waithe.
On a RERUNJames Corden, OBE, (from 9/10/19) are Kris Jenner, James Van Der Beek, and half• alive.
NBC starts the night with a RERUN'Ellen's Game Of Games', followed by 'Dateline'.
On a RERUNJimmy Fallon (from 11/19/19) are Chadwick Boseman, Evan Rachel Wood, David Byrne, and a performance by the Broadway cast of "David Byrne's American Utopia".
On a RERUNSeth Meyers (from 11/20/19) are Adam Driver, Jonathan Groff, and Hozier.
On a RERUNLilly Singh (from 11/26/19) are Esther Povitsky and Brenda Song.
ABC opens the night with a RERUN'American Housewife', followed by a RERUN'Fresh Off The Boat', then '20/20'.
On a RERUNJimmy Kimmel (from 12/19/19) are Margot Robbie, Gov. John Kasich, and White Reaper.
The CW offers a RERUN'Penn & Teller: Fool Us', followed by a RERUN'Whose Line Is It Anyway?', then another RERUN'Whose Line Is It Anyway?'.
Faux fills the night with FRESH'WWE Friday Night SmackDown'.
MY recycles an old 'CSI: Miami', followed by another old 'CSI: Miami'.
A&E has 'Live PD', followed by a FRESH'Live PD: Rewind', then a FRESH'Live PD'.
AMC offers the movie 'Ghostbusters II', followed by the movie 'Night At The Museum: Battle Of The Smithsonian', then the movie 'Ace Ventura: Pet Detective'.
BBC -
[12:00AM] STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - The Best of Both Worlds (Part 2)
[1:00AM] STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - Redemption (Part 1)
[2:00AM] STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - Redemption (Part 2)
[3:00AM] STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - Cause and Effect
[4:00AM] STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - All Good Things... (Part 1)
[5:00AM] STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - All Good Things... (Part 2)
[6:00AM] MONTY PYTHON'S FLYING CIRCUS - SEASON 1 - EPISODE 8-Full Frontal Nudity
[6:15AM] MONTY PYTHON'S FLYING CIRCUS - SEASON 1 - EPISODE 9-The Ant, An Introduction
[6:30AM] MONTY PYTHON'S FLYING CIRCUS - Light Entertainment War
[7:15AM] DOCTOR WHO - New Earth
[8:20AM] DOCTOR WHO - Tooth and Claw
[9:25AM] DOCTOR WHO - School Reunion
[10:30AM] DOCTOR WHO - The Girl In The Fireplace
[11:35AM] DOCTOR WHO - Rise Of The Cybermen-Part 1.
[12:40PM] DOCTOR WHO - The Age Of Steel-Part 2.
[1:45PM] DOCTOR WHO - The Idiot's Lantern
[2:50PM] DOCTOR WHO - The Impossible Planet-Part 1.
[3:55PM] DOCTOR WHO - The Satan Pit-Part 2.
[5:00PM] PLANES, TRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES (1987)
[7:00PM] MONTY PYTHON'S LIFE OF BRIAN (1979)
[9:00PM] MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL (1975)
[11:00PM] THE GRAHAM NORTON SHOW
[12:00AM] MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL (1975)
[2:00AM] MONTY PYTHON'S LIFE OF BRIAN (1979)
[4:00AM] PLANES, TRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES (1987) - (ALL TIMES EST)
Bravo has 'Below Deck', another 'Below Deck', followed by the movie 'Sex & The City'.
IFC -
[6:00A] The Skeleton Twins
[8:00A] Here Comes the Boom
[10:30A] K-9
[1:00P] Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls
[3:00P] That '70s Show
[3:30P] That '70s Show
[4:00P] That '70s Show
[4:30P] That '70s Show
[5:00P] That '70s Show
[5:30P] That '70s Show
[6:00P] Two and a Half Men
[6:30P] Two and a Half Men
[7:00P] Two and a Half Men
[7:30P] Two and a Half Men
[8:00P] Two and a Half Men
[8:30P] Two and a Half Men
[9:00P] Two and a Half Men
[9:30P] Two and a Half Men
[10:00P] Two and a Half Men
[10:30P] Two and a Half Men
[11:00P] Two and a Half Men
[11:30P] Two and a Half Men
[12:00A] Two and a Half Men
[12:30A] Two and a Half Men
[1:00A] That '70s Show
[1:30A] That '70s Show
[2:00A] That '70s Show
[2:30A] That '70s Show
[3:00A] That '70s Show
[3:30A] That '70s Show
[4:00A] Monty Python's Flying Circus
[4:30A] Monty Python's Flying Circus
[5:15A] Monty Python's Flying Circus (ALL TIMES EST)
Sundance -
[6:30am] The Andy Griffith Show
[7:05am] The Andy Griffith Show
[7:40am] The Andy Griffith Show
[8:15am] The Andy Griffith Show
[8:50am] The Andy Griffith Show
[9:25am] The Andy Griffith Show
[10:00am] The Andy Griffith Show
[10:30am] The Andy Griffith Show
[11:00am] Cold Blooded: The Clutter Family Murders
[1:00pm] Law & Order
[2:00pm] Law & Order
[3:00pm] Law & Order
[4:00pm] Law & Order
[5:00pm] Law & Order
[6:00pm] Law & Order
[7:00pm] Law & Order
[8:00pm] Law & Order
[9:00pm] Law & Order
[10:00pm] Law & Order
[11:00pm] Law & Order
[12:00am] Law & Order
[1:00am] Law & Order
[2:00am] Law & Order
[3:00am] The Andy Griffith Show
[3:35am] The Andy Griffith Show
[4:10am] The Andy Griffith Show
[4:45am] The Andy Griffith Show
[5:20am] The Andy Griffith Show
[5:55am] The Andy Griffith Show (ALL TIMES EST)
Ron Howard didn't pull any punches in a New Year's Day tweet blasting President Donald Trump (R-Grifter).
On Wednesday, the famed director responded to a number of tweets about his political views, including a question asking why many Hollywood stars view Trump negatively.
"In the entertainment industry many who have known/worked w/ Trump think that while his reality show was fun and ran a long time, he's a self-serving, dishonest, morally bankrupt ego maniac who doesn't care about anything or anyone but his Fame & bank account & is hustling the US," Howard, 65, said.
The Academy Award-winning director also responded to a handful of replies to his tweet, including one where he said the first vote he ever cast was in 1972 for Republican president Richard Nixon.
"Star Wars" actor Mark Hamill used his first tweets of 2020 to reveal the "common sense question" that every American must currently consider about the impeachment of President Donald Trump (R-Crooked) over the Ukraine scandal.
Namely, "why would an innocent man bar witnesses who could exonerate him" from testifying in the Senate's impeachment trial, asked Hamill.
?#Duh," he captioned the post.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is refusing to allow key witnesses, including former national security adviser John Bolton, to testify in Trump's trial because he sees it "as an opening for uncertainty," reported The New York Times.
Hamill, a frequent critic of the president, earlier advised his 3.5 million followers on Twitter to "buckle-up for 2020: the make-or-break year in which our country either reclaims normalcy or doubles down on the crazy."
Dr. Stacy L. Smith and the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative have wasted no time in the new year when it comes to keeping tabs on diversity in Hollywood. On Tuesday morning, they released a new research brief that revealed 10.6% of the directors of 2019's top movies were women. This marks a watershed moment as it is the highest percentage of female directors in the top films in 13 years. Still, 10.6% is a considerably low number that could afford to be higher - a lot higher.
Nonetheless, the movement of the needle should be celebrated. The study examined the presence of female directors working across the 1,300 top-grossing films from 2007 to 2019. The findings found that 12 women each directed one of the 100 top films in 2019. While the overall percentage of female directors across the 13-year time frame remains 4.8%, 2019's number was the highest across the years examined.
"This is the first time we have seen a shift in hiring practices for female film directors in 13 years," said Smith. "One notable reason for this jump in 2019 was that Universal Pictures had 5 films with women directors at the helm in the top 100 movies. Yet there is still much more progress needed to reach parity for women behind the camera."
It also shed some light on the percentage of directors from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups and looks specifically at women of color working as directors. Female director representation may be the highest it's been in 13 years, but the number of women of color is still low. The percentage of underrepresented directors reached 16.8% in 2019, a dip from last year's high of 21.4%. Four women of color helmed a top 100 movie in 2019.
A record 500-plus young pianists, nearly half from Asia, applied to take part in the 2020 edition of Poland's prestigious Chopin competition, its organisers said Thursday.
Winning the event, which began in 1927 and is held every five years in the Polish capital, is seen as a ticket to playing the greatest venues in the world. It is reserved for pianists between the ages of 16 and 30.
More than 100 of the applicants for the 18th edition come from China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, the Warsaw-based Fryderyk Chopin Institute told AFP.
There were also strong representations from Japan, with more than 90 applicants, and Poland, with more than 60.
Thirty-five of the individuals are South Korean, just like the winner of the last edition, Cho Seong-Jin.
Over 200 members of Congress have signed their names onto an effort to overturn two key abortion protections in the United States, marking the latest attempt by the GOP to take down the longstanding right.
The list includes 39 Republicans hailing from red states, most of which Donald Trump (R-Lying Hypocrite) carried in 2016 in a surprise victory that has allowed him to appoint two new conservative justices to the Supreme Court. Another 168 politicians in the House have also signed, including two Democrats.
In the letter, the members call for a revisiting of Roe v Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision establishing the right to an abortion, and, "if appropriate", to overrule the protection.
The letter comes as the Supreme Court considers a challenge to a Louisiana state law known as the "Unsafe Abortion Protection Act" that would require abortion providers to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals, which supporters say would help assist with the "continuity of care" should an emergency arise.
In their amicus brief, the nearly 40 Republicans who signed their names to support the Louisiana law suggested that it illustrates that the American right to an abortion is unworkable.
Pharmaceutical giants celebrated the dawn of 2020 in the best way they know how: jacking up the prices of drugs for people in the U.S. that need them.
According to a report by Reuters, research by analysts at 3 Axis Advisors shows that firms including Pfizer Inc., GlaxoSmithKline PLC, Sanofi SA, Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., Gilead Sciences Inc., and Biogen Inc. have collectively raised U.S. prices on 250 drugs since the ball dropped on New Year's Eve. The median price increase is around five percent, Reuters wrote, while few of the drugs had price increases of 10 percent or more.
Thousands of drugs saw price increases last year, according to analysis by Rx Savings Solutions, which found a 10.5 percent average increase across 3,400 separate medications (that's over five times the rate of inflation). Insurers and patients often avoid paying the full list prices of medication due to negotiated deals between manufacturers and buyers, though that's far from certain to cover the costs, especially for the uninsured, those on insurance that refuses to cover certain drugs, or those on plans that increasingly charge percentage-based coinsurance instead of copays for prescriptions. (As Consumer Reports reported last year, insurers often calculate the percentage based on the list price of the drug rather than the negotiated price.)
A Kaiser Family Foundation survey last year found that 29 percent of respondents had failed to take prescriptions as directed by medical personnel in the prior 12 months due to cost issues. As Reuters noted, the U.S.'s market pricing model for drugs means that they cost far more than in other nations with more government control (which has also made the U.S. the pharmaceutical industry's single most lucrative nation).
Consolidation in the industry has also fueled price increases because acquisitions can allow manufacturers to add new patent-protected drugs to their offerings as old patents expire. Manufacturers have tried to deflect the blame by saying the real issue is middlemen like pharmacy benefit managers, which handle price negotiations, and that after rebates and discounts net prices aren't going up at the same rates that list prices are.
"'Trump money' is what we call it,' Missouri farmer Robert Henry told NPR of the taxpayer-funded subsidies sent to him and other farmers by the Department of Agriculture.
Farm subsidies have now hit a 14-year high after the USDA sent out payments of approximately $16 billion in aid in 2019 and $12 billion in 2018. The two-year total of $28 billion paid to American farmers tops the auto-industry bailout following the 2008 financial crisis by billions.
The other key differences between the auto bailout and the recent farm subsidies, NPR points out, are the lack of debate surrounding the payoffs and the fact that they were not authorized by Congress. Considering it can be argued this is a self-inflicted wound caused by the president, and at an enormous cost to taxpayers, one would think the subsidies would be more controversial. The unprecedented payments are mostly compensation for losses incurred from Trump's tariff war with China, which has triggered crops to fall in value.
But Trump is paying off those affected by his decisions, effectively buying their silence. "The sector that is hurt the most, and which would normally complain, all of a sudden it's assuaged by these payments. To me, that's a problem," the USDA's former chief economist Joe Glauber told NPR.
NPR goes on to report that, according to studies from independent economists, the government is subsidizing farmers by almost double their losses from "actual harm suffered from the trade war," with larger farms reaping the biggest rewards - which, again, are coming from taxpayers.
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