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Secret Squirrel's avatar

PSA: Very Serious readers should go see Tar - it is a tense but very funny psychological thriller about an artist having a nervous breakdown, done in the style of Stanley Kubrick. It isn't for everybody, but it is *not* a boring lecture about representation and cancel culture. If you liked Parasite you'd probably like it.

There *is* a cancel culture subplot. I think that the critics sense that the movie is very skeptical about the cancel culture phenomenon, that the critics agree with the movie's perspective, but that they can't bring themselves to say this in so many words. So they project their boring preoccupations onto the whole film. (They also miss that the way Tar talks in public is *extremely* pretentious: that is the joke! It's supposed to be funny).

I'll admit that this movie was basically made for me - an actually good film about classical music *and* basically all the characters are gay (including the men, pay attention).

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Alan Reynolds's avatar

CPI inflation fell to 1.9% in the second half from 10.7% in the first. The habitual use of year-to-year percentage changes is the same as adding 10.7 to 1.9 and dividing by two (6.3%), then claiming that was the pace of inflation a year end. The "shelter" estimates kept rising all year and even the Fed admits that was recording home sales and leases from a year earlier. So the 1.9% rate of inflation was overstated, closer to zero. https://www.cato.org/blog/inflation-fell-19-second-half-2022-107-first-1

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