Speaking of No Country for Old Men, I think the scene where Sheriff Ed Tom Bell and deputy go out to look at the massacred drug dealers is one of the best in film. These lines are so great:
Sheriff Ed Tom: “It sounded like these old boys died of natural causes.”
Deputy Wendell: “How’s that, Sheriff?”
Sheriff Ed Tom: “Natural to the line of work they was in.”
I can’t remember if those lines are in the book — been too long since I read it — but damn that is some dialogue writing there.
I wonder what the physical/physiological limits on transmissiblity are? Not just for Covid, but of any virus. I don’t have a good handle on if that could even be modeled. But it’s an interesting question. Measles is one of the most transmissible viruses known, with an R0 of around 15-18 depending on where you look.
Wonder if that’s near the hard limit?
“They’re doing this because they LIKE lockdowns” has led to innumerable bad takes for months; now it’s leading people to miss how angry vaccinated people are at unvaccinated for forcing a return to precautions on their behalf. Like, I’m legit worried about the level of rage.
— Benjy Sarlin (@BenjySarlin) August 10, 2021
I’m beyond rage at the deliberately unvaccinated and the anti-vaxxers. I could go ape on those motherfuckers in public and not feel an ounce of regret, so it’s right to be worried about that level of rage. I could handle going to jail for the delight of caving an anti-vaxxer’s face in.
However, I do think a lot of the blue state scoldy people do actually like lockdown — maybe not even lockdown itself, but the ritual and asceticism around it. And of course the opportunity to scold, castigate and admonish has a lot of value to them. If lockdown and masking goes away, they lose that source of great joy.
It’s a mess. And if it ain’t, it’ll do till the mess gets here.
Access to all the world’s knowledge is not worth being constantly under surveillance, and for a lot of people that is going to be the end state of the com revolution.
— Ian Welsh (@iwelsh) August 11, 2021
That does appear to be the case. What sf novel was that where everyone had cameras and/or surveillance devices in their very blood? Seems like we might actually go that far.
And by the way I actually wasn’t kidding the other day about how it’s likely that vendors will start screenshotting our screens every five seconds. Or just a continuous feed saved off somewhere. I think that’s very, very likely.
Can we go back?
The first ten on today’s playlist:
