Today's Liberal News

More Jails Became Death Traps in 2022 Amid Lack of Mental Healthcare, Housing, Bail Reform Backlash

In 2022, more jails in the United States became death traps, as people faced inhumane conditions in overcrowded facilities amid a lack of mental healthcare, housing and backlash against bail reform. Most of those who died were incarcerated pretrial, and activists say this number is heavily underreported. From New York City to Houston, Texas, jail deaths have reached their highest levels in decades.

RIP Pelé: Afro-Brazilian Soccer Icon Overcame Racism & Poverty to Be Ambassador for Beautiful Game

Brazil has begun three days of national mourning to mark the death of the global soccer icon Pelé at the age of 82. Born Edson Arantes do Nascimento, Pelé was a poor Afro-Brazilian who led the Brazilian national soccer team to its first World Cup title in 1958 at just 17 years old, and ultimately two more times in later years — more than any other player in history.

GOP House sets agenda for first few weeks, and yes, it’s ridiculous

Incoming House Majority Leader Steve Scalise sent a letter Friday to the Republican conference outlining the agenda for the first few weeks of the session of the Republicans’ tiny new majority. That is, if they can actually get a speaker elected, because they can’t do any business at all until that’s accomplished.

Ukraine update: Pass the smelling salts! The Tankies lost it over Zelenskyy’s Washington visit

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It’s been a while since we checked in with the tankies, which is a shame, because it’s always so much fun when we do. You can find previous editions here, here, and here.

For the uninitiated, a “tankie” is someone who believes that imperialism is bad, and only the United States can be imperialist. Furthermore, all of the world’s problems can be blamed on said American imperialism.

Final note—Musicians who passed in 2022: Part Two

As we come to the end of 2022, we remember the people who have moved through the door of life and into our collective memories. Musicians, composers, and singers are among the many groups of people that deserve a moment of remembrance as they frequently put into feeling what we cannot express simply through words or pictures or hugs.

Below I will list some of the names of musicians who passed away in 2022.

I hated these 10 films more than any others in 2022. How about you?

We can’t really acknowledge 2022’s film successes unless we point out there have also been some god-awful failures in cinema this year. These movies are deserving of Razzies, and make you feel as though you wasted precious life even putting eyeballs toward the screen. In some cases, the film can start out with a good, sometimes great, premise—and just go wrong.

The Mind-Boggling Grandeur of White Noise

Only now, in this moment in Hollywood, would an adaptation of Don DeLillo’s award-winning novel White Noise by the indie darling Noah Baumbach be funded like a blockbuster. After all, the film isn’t going to make any real money—even though it’s been playing in a few theaters for more than a month, it had its wide release yesterday on Netflix. But for years, the streamer has financed many a master filmmaker’s risky passion project.

Rethinking the European Conquest of Native Americans

When the term Indian appears in the Declaration of Independence, it is used to refer to “savage” outsiders employed by the British as a way of keeping the colonists down. Eleven years later, in the U.S. Constitution, the Indigenous peoples of North America are presented  differently: as separate entities with which the federal government must negotiate.

Partying Feels Different Now

Parties were never on my mind more than when I wasn’t attending any. I avoided them for a couple of years, and my interest sharpened as a result. Parties were a very notable casualty of the beginning years of the coronavirus pandemic, though, it must be said, they were a pretty trifling one. Compared with the more than 1 million American lives lost, the lack of parties felt like something that was not worth grieving or complaining about.

Hollywood’s Love Affair With Fictional Languages

For big fans of James Cameron’s Avatar, the 13-year wait between the original and this year’s sequel probably felt near interminable. But die-hard fans might have counted with a bit more agony and say it’s actually been vomrra zìsìt, or “15 years.”I’m not implying that Avatar rots the brain. Rather, the blue-skinned Na’vi people, who inhabit the planet Pandora in Cameron’s universe, have four digits per hand.

What Gen Z Knows About Stephen Sondheim

“I love Company!” was not a sentence I expected to hear this semester. Well, not a sentence I expected to hear from an undergraduate during a seminar on the American musical. In the class I was teaching at Portland State University, I’d anticipated #Hamilfans, enthusiasts for Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical, kids who loved Dear Evan Hansen—appreciation for anything that had debuted to acclaim during my students’ lifetimes.