Julio Torres' Fantasmas is very queer from Julia Fox as Mrs. Claus to Patti Harrison as a goldfish to an incredible — and very hot?? — customer service top off between Alexa Demie and Ziwe.

The post It’s Not Too Late To Watch the Best Show of the Year appeared first on Autostraddle.

In the turbulent final weeks of Joe Biden’s doomed reelection bid, as Democratic Party leaders coalesced in a full-throttle push to end the president’s campaign, several leading progressives made the surprising choice to go against the grain. “I will do all that I can to see that President Biden is re-elected,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) wrote in a New York Times guest op-ed…

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I’m not sure what California officials are expecting to happen here:

Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered California state officials on Thursday to begin dismantling thousands of homeless encampments, the nation’s most sweeping response to a recent Supreme Court ruling that gave governments greater authority to remove homeless people from their streets.

Homeless encampments have vexed California, where housing costs are among the nation’s highest, more than any other state. An estimated 180,000 people were homeless last year in California, and most of them were unsheltered. Unlike New York City, most jurisdictions in California do not guarantee a right to housing.

Mr. Newsom, a Democrat, called on state and local leaders to “humanely remove encampments from public spaces” in an urgent manner, prioritizing those that most threaten health and safety.

His executive order could divide Democratic local leaders in California, some of whom have already begun to clear encampments while others have denounced the decision from conservative justices as opening the door to inhumane measures to solve a complex crisis.

Where are they supposed to go? And it seems that municipalities that don’t want to clear encampments are rapidly going to find themselves swamped, which will force them to conform with Newsom’s policy.

The post How Is this Supposed to Work? appeared first on Lawyers, Guns & Money.

When starting a new television show, one of two impulses typically dominates. There's "I want to see something comforting." And then there's that reaction's darker, more danger-filled, and beautiful sibling: "I want to see some shit I've never seen." Scavengers Reign falls, quite gloriously, in the latter camp.Originally pitched to Adult Swim, given a shaded existence in the smoke of the rolling garbage fire over at Max, and now getting a bit of genuine sunlight thanks to its move to Netflix and much-deserved Emmy nod, the sci-fi series operates at multiple levels of frequently horrifying joy. But the most basic one is this: Sit down to watch one of its 12 extant episodes, and you're practically guaranteed to get at least one addition to your personal list of the most fucked-up things you've ever seen.Drawn in soft, gorgeous pastels that deliberately evoke the otherworldly landscapes of French sci-fi legend Moebius, Reign concerns itself with the crew of the Demeter, a space-cargo ship that has the ill fortune to suffer a catastrophic failure in the vicinity of the life-rich world of Vesta. And the thing about the Vestan flora and fauna—as the few survivors who make it to the ship's escape pods (while most of their comrades remain locked, semi-safe, in cryo sleep) quickly find out—is that they aren't unwelcoming to human life. Quite the opposite: The Vestan creatures are desperately eager to interface with humanity (as if they need us), whether that means feeding on us, growing inside us, or otherwise adapting us into their all-powerful biological compulsions and needs. You're going to be part of the system one way or another, Vesta asserts, with snapping teeth, subtle poisons, and slowly creeping tentacles. Adapt or be destroyed.It's the show's greatest selling point that it never makes this overwhelming obsession with adaptation, dependence, and the ugly/glorious things that happen at their intersection either academic or dry to watch. Vesta is, in point of fact, a decidedly wet world, whether you're watching a psychic scavenger force feed black, oily goo into the mouth of a human survivor, or the show's most adaptable pair, Sam and Ursula (Bob Stephenson and Sunita Mani), climb through a feeding tube/ovipositor to shelter from a lethal storm in the…womb?…of a sea-faring jellyfish-turtle-thing. (Descriptors get tricky when applied to as varied and fascinating an ecosystem as Vesta sports.) And that's before we get into the various outright predators and parasites who appear across the planet's landscapes, which periodically inject a bit of shockingly bright red into the show's otherwise soft palette with sudden gushes of arterial spray.We found ourselves wondering—while re-watching the show's single (and at present final) season on Netflix this week—if James Cameron has seen this shit. Scavengers Reign often feels like a reaction to Cameron's work. Its opening scenes, and the recurring reminder that "The Company" couldn't give two shits about its wayward employees, underline the bureaucratic and capitalistic indifference that gives such awful weight to the Alien franchise's blue-collar vision of space. Vesta, meanwhile, feels like a far more creative, visceral, and real version of Cameron's too-friendly paradise of Pandora. There is no easy "Our hair connects to their tails!" melding of different biologies here. Even the most beneficial symbiosis in this world comes with undercurrents of horror, the creation of something new requiring the loss of something old.None of which would work, we'd argue, if the show neglected its human element. It is to the credit of the series' writers, and especially its cast (which also includes Wunmi Mosaku, Alia Shawkat, and Ted Travelstead) that the survivors, while a bit thinly drawn, come across as real people in a terrifying, occasionally wondrous situation. One of the show's deeper aims is to demonstrate the way human beings already exist tangled up in systems: co-dependent relationships, guilt complexes, the larger social and financial structures that prey on us each in turn. (When the show introduces a new trio of characters fairly late into its run, it does such a good job of laying the groundwork that it's impossible not to see them as another form of invasive life, complete with its own unwritten laws and ruling hungers.) And without liking characters like hardened survivor Azi, or even an increasingly deranged martyr like Travelstead's Kamen, none of the beauty or the horror of those various biological or mental traps would sink its teeth into the show's viewership.This will, Eywa willing, continue to grow. Whether you think Scavengers Reign itself deserves or requires a second season—it ends on a note that could easily inspire one but also closes so many of its circles in a satisfying-enough manner as to not require it—it's something that deserves to be watched for what it already is. Which is like nothing else on TV at the moment: horrifying, warm, philosophical without being pretentious, occasionally funny, and above all creative. Its artists, writers, and performers have put an enormous effort into showing you things you've never seen before. Even when its animation looks inexpensive, it never once looks cheap. It has a new idea lurking around every corner, waiting to snare and fascinate you. If your brain is of the type to be fertile soil for it to plant its seeds in, it will do so aggressively and with gusto. We could potentially live without a second season, but we need this team to have more room to make television shows like this one, one way or another. Comfort is cheap, easy, safe. Scavengers Reign is the other thing.

CrowdStruck
a solid take on the Crowdstrike failure and how tech culture is the largest culprit to blame. Also a satisfying evisceration of Growth At All Costs and a warning sign of the future.

There are two reasons why Joe Biden needs to withdraw from the presidential race. One reason—the reason that gets the most attention within the Democratic Party—is that he appears likely to lose. The other reason is that he is legitimately too old to do the job for the next four years. In much of the post-debate panic about Biden, these issues get blended into one: He appears likely to lose, because he is too old. But it’s important to understand these as two distinct concerns. Glossing over that distinction is causing the left wing of the party, in particular, to flirt with a disaster.

Biden is polling badly and threatening to drag down Democratic Congressional candidates with him. That cold read of the polling is reportedly what spurred Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer other top Democrats to really begin the full court press to get Biden to drop out. The counterpoint from Team Biden ever since the debate has been: It’s early, the race is close, nobody really knows what will happen in November, we need to rally around Biden and win. There is at least some truth in this. Polls in July, fluctuating from news event to news event, do not necessarily predict the vote count in November. The debate was bad, but it could in theory recede into memory as more stuff continually happens to supersede it in voters’ minds. So much of the red and blue votes are already baked in and unchangeable that it is possible to make a somewhat plausible argument that forcing Biden out due to today’s polls is an overreaction, and the thing to do now is for the party to unite and throw everything into the campaign, because the danger of a new Trump administration is so extreme.

In fact, this is the calculation that Bernie Sanders and AOC, the leaders of the Democratic left, made: Biden is wounded and under attack but he is going to be the nominee and we can extract some good policy promises in exchange for giving him our support now. So, in the last week, AOC backed Biden and Bernie published an NYT op-ed urging everyone to unite around Biden and then Biden tacked left and came out for ending medical debt and national rent control and some other things. I can see why AOC and Bernie made this calculation, and I interpret it as a good faith attempt to seize a crisis in order to elevate the left’s political priorities. I think that it was a mistake on their part for two reasons. One is that Biden will lose and his promises will be worth nothing and we all would have been better served if they had used their political capital to help get Biden out of the race. But what I want to talk about here is the other reason, which is less discussed, but even more important in the long run.

The other reason is that rallying behind Biden now will force Democrats in general and the left in particular to lie to voters for the next four months. The lie they will be forced to tell voters is “Joe Biden is not too old to do this job for another four years.” That is both false and a necessary message to hammer home if they want a legitimate shot at getting Biden elected. Backing him therefore requires the sacrifice of something beyond political capital: credibility.

Now, I don’t want to sound naive here. National electoral politics comes with a certain level of lying built into it. For example Senators sometimes have to say things like “my friend and colleague, Ted Cruz,” when they would really prefer to say “this guy is a piece of shit.” Such niceties are sometimes necessary for the smooth exercise of power. (Writers are on the opposite end of this spectrum—we can speak honestly, but we have no power.) We’re not talking about little white lies like that though. We’re talking about lying about the fundamental ability of our candidate for president to do the job of president. That is a big lie. Asserting it as a fact makes us liars. And lying to voters is something that makes voters cynical and dismissive of all political messaging and, ultimately, receptive to a guy like Donald Trump, who gives the appearance of “telling it like it is.” Credibility, a reputation for honesty, is a priceless thing in the cynical world of politics. Sacrificing it is a mistake.

I’m less concerned about the honesty of, you know the median Democratic senator (most of whom lie constantly) than I am about the honesty of the politicians that I consider to be representing the truth in politics. I have left wing political beliefs because I believe that they are true. Bernie Sanders and AOC are among the few major national politicians who I believe speak the truth (mostly, within reason) about what America faces and what America needs. Even if they are making a well-intentioned effort to get helpful laws passed by backing Biden right now, I don’t think they have fully thought through what they would be giving up to do so. Trump had his own Big Lie, and now they would have one of their own too. It erodes the trust in the left and makes us just another group of lying politicians. The left has never had a majority in the Democratic Party, but we have had the moral high ground. Part of the reason is that we are more honest. Consider the price of sacrificing that.

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It is not possible to square this circle. It is not possible to be completely honest with voters and also to successfully sell Joe Biden. If you want to see what trying to square the circle looks like in practice, all you have to do is watch Bernie Sanders—a guy who wants to be honest!—struggle to do so in his interview with The New Yorker yesterday:

NYer: I watched President Biden with Lester Holt Monday night, and I watched him on “360 with Speedy Morman,” and he is definitely getting out there more than he was the night after the debate. But just to be honest, Senator, I mean, the guy has trouble completing a single sentence.

Bernie: He does… I’m not aware that anyone thinks that Joe Biden is the best candidate in the history of the world, or that he’s an ideal candidate, and nobody will argue with you that he has a . . . [trails off] He admitted it. Sometimes he gets confused about names. You’re right—sometimes he doesn’t put three sentences together. It is true. But the reality of the moment is, in my view, he is the best candidate the Democrats have for a variety of reasons, and trying, in an unprecedented way, to take him off the ticket would do a lot more harm than good.

Wow, great endorsement. Do you see the problem here? There is an unbridgeable gap between telling the truth about Joe Biden and saying things that might motivate enough Americans to vote for Joe Biden. You can see above Bernie’s attempt to do both, which comes out as “This guy is too old to complete a sentence, I don’t even like his old ass, but we’re stuck with him, and we need to beat the other guy, so let’s go.” Does this sound like a winning message to you? Is this the message that is going to drive the voter turnout in swing states necessary for Joe Biden to defeat Trump? Is this the type of messaging that is going to turn around the existing high level of unpopularity that Biden has, and catapult him to higher popularity, on the road to victory? No it is not. This is saying “He’s too old, yeah, but the other guy is worse.” This statement may be true, but it is not the slogan of a winner.

So you know that if the Democrats stick with Biden, they will instead have to forge ahead with a stronger message. They will have to try to convince Americans that Joe Biden—who is obviously a fragile and rapidly aging man, who followed up his disastrous debate performance with a string of speeches and interviews in which he could not even successfully read text off a Teleprompter, and who cannot even advocate for his own newly adopted good leftist policies because he is incapable of clearly communicating them to the public—is just fine. Good to go for four more years. They will have to push that message, because the only alternative is a sure loss. All of Biden’s supporters in the party will be enlisted to push that message. And everyone in America will see all of the Democrats pushing this obvious lie about this man who is too old to hide the fact that he is too old, and the argument from the left that Republicans are the ones who lie and we are the ones who tell the truth will lose whatever validity it had in the minds of much of the country.

Bernie and AOC made a bad call on this one. Now we have to hope that the cutthroat centrists can push Biden out, and save the left from this trap that could fuck up our credibility for years to come.

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• Previously: The Hole at the Heart of the Democratic Party; The End of Liberal Institutionalism; The Left Is Not Joe Biden’s Problem. Joe Biden Is.

• For Defector this week, I went to Philly and wrote about Boots Ennis, the next great Philly fighter. He is the real deal.

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