May 29th. Bioshock Trilogy. Switch. I will be returning to Rapture!
Category: blog
General blog posts.
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"This coronavirus reminds us that we belong to the material world."
George Monbiot on the Covid-19 wake-up call:
…this could be the moment when we begin to see ourselves, once more, as governed by biology and physics, and dependent on a habitable planet. Never again should we listen to the liars and the deniers. Never again should we allow a comforting falsehood to trounce a painful truth. No longer can we afford to be dominated by those who put money ahead of life. This coronavirus reminds us that we belong to the material world.
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Boris “seemed to have totally lost the plot”
Jim Crace excellent political sketch on Boris and the boys’ performance:
It’s not just Boris Johnson’s fundamental lack of plausibility that is the problem. At Thursday evening’s daily Downing Street press conference, he seemed to have totally lost the plot. After a few days of trying to do “serious face” he had reverted to his default end-of-the-pier-show act; the Archie Rice who could no longer even entertain himself. Back were all the familiar smirks, knowing nods and third-rate gags. He sounded tonally deaf, totally at odds with the mood of the nation. When the country wants a man of substance, we get a man of straw.
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Why we’ve not had more female Robins
Knowledgeable piece about Robin and – correctly – asking why there are so few female Robins:
Why we’ve not had more female Robins – or better served ones – is a symptom of a much wider problem. Of the 11 writers announced as contributing to DC’s upcoming anniversary issue for Robin, only two are women: Devin Grayson and Amy Wolfram. Between January and March last year, women accounted for 16% of the credits on comics released by DC; of writers, only 13% were women. The studio celebrated 80 years of Batman last year, but in that time not a single woman has been at the helm of Batman or Detective Comics. Aside from Grayson’s work on Nightwing and Gotham Knights, no female writer has ever written a Batman series. Given how many women are working on Batgirl, Catwoman and Batwoman, it would seem they are restricted to writing female heroes.
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“If the government wants schools to stay open, we need far more support”
Heartfelt piece by headteacher Jules White in today’s Guardian
Schools need more cleaners to complete regular hygiene work and deep cleans if there is a short-term closure. So give us access to agencies who must prioritise schools… Sats tests in primary schools should be abandoned in the current circumstances. We must also consider children of real disadvantage: schools are often their place of sanctuary and constancy…. Urgent help is required for children who have to deal with disability. Schools need emergency resources to help these most vulnerable young people, and now.
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“a dangerous British trait”
It is a dangerous British trait to fall obediently into line behind those in power when things are uncertain. When the chips are down, a class system redux kicks in. The laws of the hierarchy must be observed. It is a sort of tyranny of politeness and deference that suspends judgment.
I’ve certainly heard and read some very odd justifications for the British government’s approach to tackling the virus. I’m not convinced “Wash your hands and carry on” is going to do anything to delay the spread of the virus.
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“opportunity to build a more robust society”
“As the coronavirus spiders across the planet, I’ve been thinking about the illness as a very expensive stress test for the global order — an acute, out-of-nowhere shock that is putting pressure on societies at their weakest points. Some nations, like Iran and perhaps Italy, are teetering under the threat; others, like South Korea, are showing remarkable resilience. The best ones will greet the crisis as an opportunity to build a more robust society, even better prepared for a future unseen danger. The worst will treat it as a temporary annoyance, refusing to consider deeper fixes even if they somehow stagger through this crisis.
… What we’re learning is that our society might be far more brittle than we had once imagined. The virus has laid bare our greatest vulnerability: We’ve got the world’s biggest economy and the world’s strongest military, but it turns out we might have built the entire edifice upon layers and layers of unaccounted-for risk, because we forgot to assign a value to the true measure of a nation’s success — the well-being of its population.”
I’m less optimistic. I think countries like Britain and America will “stagger” through this pandemic, congratulate ourselves for surviving despite the odds and then have a justification for another decade or more of austerity and further cuts to public services.
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Grinding to a Halt
Educational Inequality. Fiona Miller in The Guardian:
The process of narrowing gaps in educational attainment due to class background is grinding to a halt and will now take 560 years to close, according to the Education Policy Institute
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DC’s Three Jokers is coming: Healing right, healing wrong, and surviving.
“It goes back to the beginning when Batman first encountered the Joker, but it’s also The Killing Joke and A Death in the Family that speak to the book and that we’re building off emotionally,” Johns says. “Barbara and Jason have gone through so much, as has Bruce, and it’s really focused on healing, on scars and wounds and what that does to somebody. If you suffer some trauma, you don’t just get over with it and move on with your life, it changes who you are. Sometimes it changes you for the better, sometimes it changes you for the worse. You can heal right, and you can heal wrong. That’s really what the book’s about: Healing right, healing wrong, and surviving.”
