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It’s late in the evening on the last night of the month, so you know what that means: time for the 2nd GLoP of the month! In this installment, our intrepid pop culture guides walk us though weird mask rules, Foundation, Apple TV+ and the difficulties (for some) of finding new show, a very weird side effect of COVID and a possible breakthrough medication to treat it, the most unusual episode of the old Mission Impossible TV show, and the OZY Media story.
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The confusion may come because Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation” series has two beginnings.
The original Foundation Trilogy — Foundation, Foundation and Empire, Second Foundation — consists of stories written mostly in the 1940s.
Then, decades later, Asimov conceived the quixotic and much deplored goal of unifying the Foundation Trilogy, which takes place in a universe without robots, with his — hitherto entirely unrelated — robot stories and novels.
By the time he died, Asimov had expanded the trilogy to a nine-volume series, with two prequel novels, and four sequels.
Like most people who admired the original trilogy, I considered the new books as basically a travesty, so I’m not that familiar with them.
However, it does appear that the TV series is starting its projected 80-episode run by adapting the prequels, Prelude to Foundation and Forward the Foundation.
If JPod read the first volume of the original trilogy instead, that would explain why the book does not seem to resemble the TV episodes very much.
I forgot to add: given the glacial pace of the first three episodes, I find it hard to believe that the series will be able to hold an audience for 77 more hours. However, Apple has plenty of money to burn, so they may proceed regardless.
I figure I will go on watching until my free subscription runs out in a few weeks. Even if the shows best actors were eliminated at the end of the second episode!
N.B.: There actually are a couple of shows worth watching on Apple TV. For All Mankind envisions the ferocious space race that would have resulted, if the USSR had won the race to the Moon. Mythic Quest is a pointedly funny sitcom set behind the scenes at an online fantasy game with millions of subscribers.
I expect a lot of people – perhaps the greatest number – will wait until it’s all available, then binge the whole series over a long weekend or something.
yep. That will work. What could possibly go wrong? (insert bond villain laughter)
I’m fine qith our current republic. It was an ugly thing when it was birthed but it’s a working democracy now.
Or Fauci laughter, or Kamala laughter…
The correct term (in Southern California) for the anatomical region under discussion is “choda.” Didn’t know the meaning of the word until recently, and boy am I glad didn’t take up any of numerous invitations over the years to bite someone’s. Chodamine* would be the treatment.
If you’re the sort of person who micturates and defecates, the word is the “perineum.”
*side-effects include shortness of pants, high stool, and the inability to see Firesign Theatre references.
Vagymnasium. Where the balls play. Humour normally doesn’t travel well. That’s a possible translation for a joke in Portuguese.
We want to “rule” America?
And Republicans pounce, not seize. It’s true, because it’s in the newspapers.
You already have one.
So tax cuts for the rich is what I see. They are shouldering a huge burden now, so I assume a fair share would be less than what they are doing now.
Only an idiot could have written “making…large corporations pay their fair share.
Probably large corporations wrote that part themselves. Just like they help write regulations to make sure their competitors can’t compete.
Of course – That’s why Democrats want to remove the limitation on the SALT deduction, a tax benefit that goes predominantly to the wealthy.
At least they’re finally saying “Making” with regard to taxes, instead of the Obama-era “ask”.
I said a new slogan.
I would say “exclusively” to the wealthy.
Depends on how you define wealthy. It would help me slightly on the margins, and I’m certainly “well-off”, although not be any stretch of the imagination “wealthy”. I haven’t itemized deductions since the SALT limitations went through.
Presumably you think your State And Local Taxes should be lower, so a “need” for limiting the deductions isn’t your fault anyway.
Tennessee doesn’t have an income tax, so SALT doesn’t apply to me. We used to get to deduct a certain amount for sales taxes, but that was done away with, I assume at the behest of states with high income taxes.
I thought SALT applied to property taxes too, but I’ve never had cause to check.
It does. You can (well, could) deduct the total of state income tax and local property taxes as an itemized deduction. This was capped at $10,000 as part of the 2017 tax bill, but at the same time the standard deduction was doubled from $12,000 to $24,000 (Married filing jointly – numbers from memory, but I think they’re right, and the exact numbers don’t matter for the illustration that follows).
The thing that most people don’t grasp is that the value of itemized deductions is only in the amount that exceeds the standard deduction. If you’ve got a total of itemized deduction of $25,000, and the standard deduction is $24,000, you really only have the net value of the $1000 difference times your marginal tax rate, maybe $280.
That’s why restoring the unlimited SALT deduction is such a giveaway to people with really high incomes – they’re going to blow through the standard deduction threshold and exceed it by a lot, where as most middle/upper-middle income people won’t really see much benefit.
Yes, the SALT limitation is mostly about high-income people in high-tax states. Since the Left is about “tax the rich” you’d think they would be in favor of the limitation. That they aren’t, tells you their real interests.
Didn’t JPod break his ankle stepping down from a curb? And now he’ll be walking a dog several times a day?
Doesn’t sound smart.