[logic88]

Totally! Somehow or other, when I watched the episode yesterday, I missed them. So cute. Of course, I love the animal ones. Like others, I wish they were 'forever', as I use 3 stamps a year but maybe I should buy some anyway to put with some other sheets I have saved.

ETA - Ok, where do you get them? I Googled, I went to USPS, and no findy. TIA

It is odd that the Post Office doesn't offer an Forever option for these branded stamps. I wonder if that's because of the accounting issue where they have to factor into future usage of Forever stamps?

 

[logic88]

Odd that ALS Connecticut didn't get their money yet.

'Much needed laugh': Danbury officially names 'John Oliver Memorial Sewer Plant'

Although Oliver's donations were contingent on the renaming, he has already donated to Danbury teachers' projects on Donors Chose, a crowdfunding site. Boughton said Oliver gave about $30,000 to the teachers, which is $5,000 more than he pledged.

The Connecticut Food Bank, which is supposed to receive $25,000, did not return a request for comment.

ALS Connecticut has not received its promised $5,000 yet.

"We are anxiously awaiting any news of his contribution to the chapter but have not at this point heard anything," said Sandy Tripodi, executive director.

 

[logic88]

'Last Week Tonight with John Oliver' host visits Danbury for sewage plant renaming

So now that hatchet has been buried, which city is Oliver going after next?

 

[logic88]

The Adam Driver bit over the past year was a bit odd but it's good to see that Driver was a pretty good sport about it. I guess Oliver never asked Driver to listen to or watch one of Driver's performances.

 

[logic88]

Looks like he's back in his white void.

Did Pringles ever respond?

 

[logic88]

Glad that he's back even though the subject matter for this week wasn't anything that interesting. (Since it's been 24-7 pandemic coverage for the last year.)

 

[logic88]

I disagree about the subject matter as it was all about why the number of new diseases have been increasing lately and what can be done about it.

I've been reading so much about pandemics that there wasn't any new information presented in the episode. Peter Daszak has been on TWiV several times. In fact because his TWiV interview wasn't released promptly, a new conspiracy theory about the origins of COVID arose.

 

[logic88]

I couldn't get through this week's episode. I just had to turn it off after 5 minutes into the main segment.

 

[logic88]

The Tucker Carlson story became more and more interesting to me as it went (although I have to admit, I knew very little about Tucker Carlson; going forward, I'm going to understand the stories about him that appear in the news a lot better). My first reaction was "Why on Earth is he wasting a segment on this human cesspool?!?" (a question he even asked himself early on), but it became worthwhile, I think.

My thought as well, at first. I don't give a rat's ass about Tucker. He's one of the most irritating talking heads on Fox. Every time I try to watch him (out of a desire to see how all sides view current issues), I get so pissed I have to change channels within a minute or two. If that long.

But...

This. I kept watching, and it became pretty interesting. I ended up watching the entire segment, and was rewarded at the end, with a dancing Tucker.

OK, I'll give it another shot but I hope I don't break anything when watching the entire segment.

 

[logic88]

Well if people had started eating better years back it might have helped some - at least with hospitalizations and deaths. But beginning to eat healthier now seems unlikely to make any significant short term improvement to your odds of avoiding or surviving COVID.

However I think there's some preliminary research suggesting that one reason COVID deaths aren't higher in Africa, even in areas with pretty poor use of masks, is that there's so much less obesity there than in Western Europe or the US.

Hmmm... I'll have to see if I can dig it up but I recently heard on an Economist podcast segment (maybe it was The Jab?) that the #1 predictor of bad outcomes with COVID is age. Obesity increases the risk slightly but it pales in comparison to age. They basically said that they'd rather be young and obese than old and fit, IIRC.

But then again, there's so much that's unknown with COVID that it's a mystery why some countries have done so well. The New Yorker had a long article on this recently.

Why Does the Pandemic Seem to Be Hitting Some Countries Harder Than Others?

Another possibility is neanderthal ancestry.

The major genetic risk factor for severe COVID-19 is inherited from Neanderthals | Nature

A genomic region associated with protection against severe COVID-19 is inherited from Neandertals

 

[logic88]

Maybe my Google Fu is not working this morning, but I find that the current National Debt is ~28T, yet LWT, kept showing the (not a) "clock' at ~12T.

That was archival news footage from when they had to add an additional digit to the clock. At the beginning of the segment, Oliver mentioned the $28T figure in his opening monologue.

 

[logic88]

Someone needs to watch the most recent LWT episode.

A Black softball player was forced to cut off her hair beads at a game: 'I feel humiliated' (WashPo article)

 

[logic88]

This past episode really annoyed me, as it just felt like a "me too" reaction to what so much of the press is saying. It's much more complex than just "Israelis killed "innocent Palestinian kids" which is the take that so much of the press has taken too. Sure Israel has defensive weapons and a highly trained military, so they shouldn't use it when Hammas sends missiles their way? Sorry John, you are far from an expert on this and maybe this complex issue is just more than about the "poor Palestinians" and the Israeli thugs, and you should leave it to the experts to handle.

I apologize if this got too political, but this to me is about John not really getting it and painting one side as the "bad guys" no matter how many times he prefaced it with "I don't pretend to understand this", or "Yes, Hammas has shot missiles into Israel too".

Oliver is never an expert on almost any of the subjects that he talks about on the show so if he "stayed in his lane", there would be no show.

His issue was about proportionality, IMO. Israel has the ability to pin point targets but they are destroying entire buildings to make a point. [Edit: Removed rest of post. Too political.]

 

[logic88]

But what if that one floor is where the leadership resides and is the central location where all of the missiles are launched from (which is quite possible, if not probable)? Then what? It's definitely a grey area. Not so easy to make that call is it?

I was listening to a NPR podcast segment and they were interviewing some analyst who said that the Israeli can pin point strikes so precisely that they once shot a missile through an open window to hit an apartment on the other side of the building. (Or at least that's how I recall the segment. I'll have to see if I can locate it again.)

 

[logic88]

Which might have been exactly what they did. But I would imagine that would probably destroy a building as well.

I'll try and track down the Al-Jazeera footage of the attack but from the stills that I saw, the size of the explosion didn't make it look like a precision strike.

 

[logic88]

Perhaps we heard the same thing? I recall, many years ago, of a story in which Israel sent a missile in an open office window to hit the wall behind the desk of the man they were targeting.

Could be. I listen to a lot of NPR segments so could be misremembering some details.

In any event, this topic is a bit radioactive so I'm just going to let it rest. I don't want to get this thread locked.

 

[logic88]

I still look forward to LWT episodes but I also generally watch most of these types of shows (Patriot Act, VICE, Frontline, etc.) even if they overlap in coverage as they all differ slightly in how they cover a subject.

 

[logic88]

Hmmm...John Oliver vs Russell Crowe was much more entertaining than John Oliver vs Cheerios.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1399458537781141505

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1400107620644450313

(But he tries to make up for it in the follow-ups...)

I get the feeling the Cheerios social media team didn't really think this one through.

 

[logic88]

I should go check if Cheerios went through with their additional donation since Oliver did tweet what was asked. In total, No Kid Hungry should get $150K, right?

 

[logic88]

I liked this week's episode on PACE. Probably because it was on a topic that I knew nothing about.