The first ten on today’s playlist:

Violation review – a brutal and brilliant debut.

I agree that Madeleine Sims-Fewer gave a remarkable performance, but I don’t agree with the “brilliant” description. This movie sabotaged itself by its own worst tendencies. Too much of it is a disconnected pastiche of genre tropes interspersed with absolutely brilliant moments. I think with a re-edit this film could be improved greatly, though I doubt the lack lies with the editor: I am sure Gabriella Wallace did exactly what the directors asked her to, but it was just not right for this film.

That said, this film does some unique and very disarming things, and it’s worth watching because there aren’t many movies like this one. It’s a dirty little dark star of dread and dismay. Despite the fact that I don’t think the work was completely successful, its brilliant moments combined with Sims-Fewer’s performance make this one to watch for its virtues while ignoring its sins.

literally, my thought designing this party was “i love rationalists, but i dont wanna go to another party where they just talk about stuff like global trade. i’m gonna try to design a situation where there’s no possible way they will talk about global trade” https://t.co/YUUlNUa77P

— Aella (@Aella_Girl) March 27, 2021

Naked prudes are still prudes; can’t change a culture by just altering an external facet. It’s much harder and takes far longer than that.

People are in general much more boring than they were in the 1980s and early 1990s (and I understand even more the case in the 1970s, but I wasn’t old enough). Part of that is the difference in the cohort I was around. Upper middle class people are just more humdrum and uninteresting in general, but part of it is real deep cultural change, and quite a lot of it.

No need for such conspiracies

First, it looks like you’re not going to be naturally immune from an infection forever

Second, governments and citizens will line up for voluntary vaccinations https://t.co/0mRWBCk1eh

— Trishank Karthik Kuppusamy (@trishankkarthik) March 28, 2021

Lord, people understand almost nothing about anything.

The vaccines actually provoke a better immune response than the virus itself and probably provide longer-lasting immunity too!

The Coronavirus Variants Don’t Seem to Be Highly Variable So Far. SARS-CoV-2 may be settling into a limited set of mutations.

That’s good news. My guess is that the variants won’t amount to much in the grand scheme of things.

US only: cases will rise some through mid-April though hospitalization and deaths will decline, with no Mega-Surge of Doom, and then all will start decreasing greatly due to vaccination and seasonality. Booster shots will need to be taken every year with risk of re-infection increasing in those with weaker immune systems significantly after that time.

Around December, there will be a small surge due to seasonality and the anti-vaxxers. Eventually, after 3-4 years or so, there will only be small flare-ups.