Politics Board Book, TV or Movie Recommendation Thread

In Mesopotamia, my understanding is that beer was typically drunk from a large communal vessel through straws that could be a few feet long. I believe there eventually were some individual vessels, but I'm gonna have to read the book to be sure.

 

This was very good from Rachel even the ‘Hollywood ending.
From “Russia With Lev” the full movie. (About 90 mins)

Watch From Russia with Lev on @nbc
https://nbc.app.link/wtcI86DLcNb

 

I saw My Old Ass yesterday afternoon and was an emotional wreck for the rest of the day. Great Film!

 

For Cormac Mccarthy fans https://www.vanityfair.com/style/story/cormac-mccarthy-secret-muse-exclusive?

 

This might be a fine edition to your book collection here.

 

Heard this during the commute, thought I would share.
https://www.kqed.org/forum/2010101908885/kurt-gray-explores-the-psychology-of-outrage

 

I've just listened to John Lithgow read from the book by Timothy Snider "On Tyranny" written in 2017. Seems like he knows what he's on about. We're seeing it now. Quite a reading by Lithgow but it does have a script you can read instead.
Well worth a few minutes of your time.



https://snyder.substack.com/p/twenty-lessons-read-by-john-lithgow

Just a sidebar here. We're trying to do our bit in organizing our peaceful demonstrations every Saturday at the main junction of our small coastal town Florence Oregon. Mrs Scouse has spent time and money making signs for those who don't have one.
Word of mouth is mostly how we get people. We started with about a dozen but last Sat. We had 50.

It's become louder from drivers passing with the horn blowing and calls of encouragement. We do have some opposition calls. The favorite seems to be, and I have no idea why. F**K Biden. !!!

 

The Black Book book by Middleton A. Harris

This was an 8th birthday gift to me from a couple who were friends of my parents. They attended a few curriculum development summers together. I've read it more times than I can recall. Stories, photos, some will disturb you if you don't live it daily.

 

This was excellent and thorough.

 

My buddy on Gastropod https://gastropod.com/do-we-really-have-beer-to-thank-for-the-first-writing-and-cities/

 

Red Scare: Blacklists, McCarthyism, and The Makings of Modern America a pretty well written history of the middle of the 20th century by Clay Risen focusing on America's conservatives losing their shit over the direction the country wanted to go. To be sure, there were some people in the government who were spying for or otherwise aiding the Soviet Union. And both of them got arrested and sent to jail. And there were communists acting under Soviet orders infiltrating the labor movement. And they generally got purged by the labor unions themselves. A good passage:

By the spring of 1950 McCarthy was a front page fixture, and would remain that way for four years. IN history he has gone down as a monster, so extreme in his willingness to tell Big Lie after Big Lie that he has become synonymous with the Red Scare itself. He is at the same time remembered as an aberration, a wild man, a singular cause of America's temporary national hysteria. But while he was certainly the best-know of the red-baiters, he was in fact a symptom of the era, not its cause. And if he shouted more loudly and crudely than others, in substance he did not say anything that virulent red-baiters like HUAC's John Rankin or J. Parnell Thomas had not already been saying for years. He was the era's uncomfortable id and the locus in the network of politicians, activists, columnists and true believers who made the Red Scare possible. His significance lay in his unique ability to braid the two strands of the Red Scare -- the culture war and the politics of Cold War security -- into a single cord.

The timeliest part of the book is that it basically shows that, just as "McCarthyism" was an embodiment of one ugly aspect of American life that has never not been present in the post Civil War era (if not even before), so to with Trumpism.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sly_Lives!_(aka_The_Burden_of_Black_Genius)

Really, really great film. Entertaining, no surprise, but it's also insightful, amazing, and with a heavy dose of pathos as the years and the trends and the acts (many inspired by him/them) roll on.

Related, if you have not seen Summer of Soul, get thee to a streaming service pronto

 

The main problem with Summer of Soul is that it's not like a 10 episode series.

 

In the spirit of the un-rep, I non-recommend Mountainhead.

It's painful to watch, and as somebody on Reddit(?) said, Steve Carell is miscast. Full disclosure I have not finished it, and may not, since it's all shit with no smirk. It recaps tech-bros more than it satirizes or ridicules them and there's enough of that in real life.

IMHO

 

Are they're any decent movies out there that feature women who aren't Ninjas, Navy Seals or Martial Arts Experts. I'm not implying that the Bro films are much different!

 

Some recent ones I dug:

All We Imagine as Light
My Old Ass
Seed of the Sacred Fig