Our verdict on Christopher Nolan's much-anticipated World War Two drama

Let’s start with the dark stuff. On Saturday night in San Francisco, after the second-to-last-ever Dead & Co. show, every single ATM near the ballpark was apparently out of cash, because people couldn’t stop buying balloons filled with nitrous oxide, huffing them on the street for just a few more seconds of feeling high. The bars nearby were overrun, quite literally, long after everyone should have been at home. People go down at shows—it happened right in front of us one night, the medics rushing in and carrying someone out. There are, not infrequently, overdoses. There is too much of everything, sometimes. “I’m at that point in a bender where beer isn’t really doing anything for me anymore,” I heard someone joke on day three of the three-show run.

It is not that easy to drink yourself to death, actually, which I know because I have watched a lot of people try, but I could imagine it happening to many people in the context of the long slide of years or decades spent following the band. I always think “There but for the grace of God go I,” and I really mean it. So many people are dead and gone, among them the Dead’s lead songwriter, guitarist, and singer Jerry Garcia, who was killed by his own addiction to heroin at the age of fifty-three. “Do you think of Jerry as a prophet or a saint?” my friend asked me on Sunday as we got ready for the last show ever. The mood was elegiac, though the fact of finality wasn’t really sinking in, which might be why we kept repeating it over and over. “I can’t believe it’s really the last one,” someone said, not for the first time. “What are we even going to do next summer?” my friend lamented. “Are we going to like … have to get really into Phish?” “We are NOT getting into Phish,” someone else insisted, though we all agreed we would probably go see Phish at Madison Square Garden in August.

We put on our last clean Dead T-shirts—we were all running low and trading with one another—and headed back to the ballpark. A few of us had decided last minute to upgrade our tickets so we could be on the floor. I had never been on the floor for a Dead & Co. show; we always don’t spend the extra money and regret it later, so this time, one last time, we were not going to make that mistake. I said I wanted to hear “Bertha,” and we got it, right away, and right away we knew that every single member of the band was completely on, locked in. Bobby, as my friend observed, was “really cooking.” Jeff Chimenti, Oteil Burbridge, Mickey Hart, also cooking. And Mayer—I have never seen him, perhaps, cook like that, leaning into every moment harder than I have ever seen him lean, and he always leans in hard, given that he is probably among other things one of the greatest living guitarists.

7 min read

Where can a lady get a dip around here?

Both Parson’s Pleasure and Dame’s Delight are two now-defunct bathing places, opposite of the land strip known as ‘Mesopotamia’, a term of Greek etymology meaning ‘land between two rivers’, which is also used to refer to an area between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates in modern-day Iraq.

This strip of land was purchased by the University of Oxford as part of an expansion of the University Parks, which occurred between 1860 and 1865. Before the early 1800s, Parson’s Pleasure, otherwise known as Paten’s Pleasure and Loggerhead in the 17th and 19th centuries respectively, was deemed by locals as an ‘open’ bathing place, available to all. However, it should be noted that throughout the duration of its operation, it was mostly used as a nude bathing place for men.

In 1865 wooden screens were erected to enclose Parson’s Pleasure as a result of a new footpath being introduced, linking South Parks Road to the parish of St. Clements, which would have increased the risk of indecency as the number of daily passers-by surged due to the footpath’s connection to the city. Though it was previously commercialised in the 1830s, Parson’s Pleasure became more and more select nearing the end of the 19th century, mostly due to its high entry fees. Though public access was considered, the bathing place was only open to members of the university and their families and friends between 1874 and 1890s. However, by the turn of the century it became widely used by the public, especially in the summer, partially propagated by the boating craze of the 1890s, when rollers were built at Parson’s Pleasure to facilitate pushing boats into the river Cherwell.

Here is a bit of news involving Democratic presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. that, unlike his antisemitic remarks and the unfortunate soundtrack during one of his appearances, didn’t exactly go viral. Earlier this week, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments in a case against a California law that was passed last year to prohibit physicians from spreading misinformation about Covid. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has been a key figure in the fight against this law. 

It’s not hard to see why this wasn’t exactly headline material. The pandemic officially ended in May, but Covid news fatigue set in long before that. Yet this particular case is worth paying attention to because the people who oppose California’s Covid misinformation law have expanded their areas of interest. Their efforts could lay the groundwork to give contrarian physicians broad authority to go rogue on all kinds of medical issues, from the administration of routine childhood vaccinations to reproductive health, gender-affirming care, and beyond.  

After a judge issued a preliminary injunction against the law, RFK Jr. tweeted, “Huge win! This is not only a victory for California doctors, but for professionals and citizens around the world in this battle for freedom.”

To understand why, you need some context. In early 2022, California state assembly member Evan Low introduced AB 2098, a bill that would allow the state medical board to discipline doctors who promoted false information about Covid—say, by claiming that unproven treatments could cure or prevent the disease, or that the vaccines were dangerous. The bill garnered broad support from the healthcare sector, including from the California Medical Association, the state lobbying group that represents physicians. California governor Gavin Newsom signed it into law last September.

That level of support is remarkable since physicians don’t typically love being told that there are certain things they can’t say. But the law is quite specific in what it does and does not deem to be misinformation, as California physician Nick Sawyer recently pointed out in a MedPage Today op-ed:

In his signing statement, Newsom specified that the bill is “Narrowly tailored to apply only to those egregious instances in which a licensee is acting with malicious intent or clearly deviating from the required standard of care while interacting directly with a patient under their care.” He further added, “This bill does not apply to any speech outside of discussions directly related to Covid-19 treatment within a direct physician-patient relationship,” and that discussing emerging ideas or treatments, including risks and benefits, “does not constitute misinformation or disinformation under this bill’s criteria.”

Today, we’re back with another of our Patreon mini-series: GOAT farm! In this series, we picked our favourite XI for a chosen team or subject and today's episode really is THE big one. It's England since 1990!

Mr England himself, Marcus Speller, is joined by Jim Campbell for this one and beware… Jim has a midfield curveball. This is an episode you don't want to miss!

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Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel announced on Tuesday that charges have been filed against 16 residents of the state for their roles in a fake elector scheme following the 2020 election. All 16 have been charged with eight felony counts, including forgery and election law forgery. 

“The false electors’ actions undermined the public’s faith in the integrity of our elections and, we believe, also plainly violated the laws by which we administer our elections in Michigan,” Nessel said. The announcement comes just hours after Donald Trump revealed that he has received a target letter from Special Counsel Jack Smith related to his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. 

Today, @MIAttyGen @dananessel announced felony charges against 16 Michigan residents for their role in the alleged false electors scheme following the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Read more https://t.co/ODhkAQfXNP /1 pic.twitter.com/u5riNpTD5I

— Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel (@MIAttyGen) July 18, 2023

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won the election in Michigan by more than 150,000 votes. Trump and his allies worked to overturn the results of the election in the state, even though they hadn’t requested a recount.

Once upon a time, Senator Tim Scott from South Carolina condemned racism. Now, not so much. What happened?

The presidential hopeful might be finding it difficult to make headlines in an increasingly crowded Republican primary field, but he’s still hauling in crucial campaign cash. The latest figures, unveiled last week, disclosed that his campaign has accumulated $6.1 million from over 53,000 donors in the second quarter of this year—ensuring his eligibility for the debate stage, alongside frontrunner Donald Trump, should the former president show up. Scott is also spending big, hoping to sway early-voting Iowans with a recent $6 million ad campaign titled “Winning.” 

“The radical left is indoctrinating our children, teaching CRT instead of ABC,” Scott says in the video, a phrase that has become something of a campaign catchphrase.

As Scott burnishes his anti-woke credentials on the campaign trail to compete with the more established culture warriors of the far right, I decided to scrutinize his views on race and how they’ve evolved over the years. In this video, I juxtapose Scott’s responses to two racially fueled tragedies: the 2017 Charlottesville Unite the Right rally and the 2022 Buffalo Massacre. These events elicited two completely different responses from the only Black senator in the Republican caucus, which prompted me to ask: What the hell happened in between?

My analysis begins in 2010 when Scott clinched a resounding victory in the US House of Representatives election against Paul Thurmond, whose father, Strom, was a notorious racist figure in the 20th century. Scott’s ability to win in a majority-white district set his political career on an upward trajectory, making him, in some respects, the Republicans’ primary spokesperson on race, or what I describe as the party’s “default DEI Guy”. After the Charlottesville rally, Scott was explicit in acknowledging America’s racial issues. But I quickly noticed a striking shift in Scott’s narrative following the racial tensions triggered by the deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd in 2020. In an email newsletter following the 2022 Buffalo Massacre, Scott stated, “America isn’t a racist country.”

Ron DeSantis is failing when it comes to grassroots fundraising. The situation has gotten so bad that it’s possible the Florida governor might actually be losing money when it comes to courting small-dollar donors.

DeSantis’ team has tried to spin the situation as a positive. In a New York Times piece last week, his advisers argued that the campaign was making a strategic decision to avoid alienating rank-and-file supporters with the sorts of fake promises and alarmist or misleading email blasts that have become hallmarks of political fundraising. That strategy may be commendable, but it doesn’t seem to be working.

It’s hard to say exactly how many small donors DeSantis has—the definition of “small donor” is generally someone who gives less than $200, and campaigns aren’t required to say how many donors of that size they have or how much each of those donors gave. Campaigns simply have to report to the Federal Election Commission the total amount raised from all those small donors, combined. According to filings from DeSantis’ campaign on Saturday, the answer is: not much.

To be precise, it was $2,867,814.98, or about 15 percent of DeSantis’ overall fundraising haul for the second quarter of 2023. It’s hard to draw a comparison directly to Donald Trump’s second quarter numbers, because the former president utilized several complex fundraising vehicles. But Trump has previously broken records for a presidential candidate’s small-dollar fundraising—GOP small donors like him. Even Joe Biden, who has made little effort with grassroots contributors so far, raised $5.3 million from small donors.

While DeSantis’ grand total from all donations, including large ones—$19.7 million—isn’t terrible, the roughly $2.9 million he raised specifically from small donors comes with some red flags. First, it appears to be costing DeSantis a lot to raise that rather paltry sum. According to the same federal filings, his campaign spent:

We went to the lot. The lot, my younger brother observed—he was a first-time Dead & Co. show attendee—was “literally just a parking lot.” In fact it was a parking lot adjacent to the Port of San Francisco and near the SFPD headquarters, where I used to go for press conferences when I was a crime reporter. It was a vast parking lot, not far from the stadium where the second-to-last Dead & Co. show was going to start in two hours, and it was full of Deadheads.

The lot is the scene outside every show, known colloquially as Shakedown Street. It’s more or less an open-air drug market, that phrase that gets thrown around a lot to describe other parts of San Francisco; it is also the locus of the vestiges of real hippie culture. There is nothing like it anywhere else. There are vans that have been on the road for months, vans painted with psychedelic mushrooms, vans covered in stickers that say “Make America Grateful Again” and “Thank you Bobby.” People sell T-shirts, an endless array of T-shirts in every imaginable version of tie-dye. People sell quesadillas. People sell nitrous oxide—lots of it; in fact, the unmistakable hiss of nitrous and the constant popping of balloons is one of the most disconcerting features of being outside a Dead show. People sell funny hats. People sell, confusingly, a lot of rocks. I saw a sign next to a big box of rocks that said BUY 1 GET 1 FREE.

Being on the lot is basically just about wandering around and looking at stuff, so that’s what we did. One of my friends wanted to get a new Online Ceramics Dead T-shirt; another one wanted to buy a tiny ceramic mushroom to hold during the concert. My brother and I weaved in and out of some stalls, looking at shirts and stickers that said things like “Not like other girls” and “5-8-1977 was an inside job.”

“There was this apple last night that I was eating and I couldn’t stop eating it, I even ground up the seeds and then I think I was worried that I had arsenic in my body, so I got a bit disturbed during ‘Space,’ ” I heard one guy telling his friend, bent over a camping stove where he was frying some onions and nursing a beer.

It’s FINALLY HERE! The World Cup starts on Thursday, and Upfront has all the info you need ahead of the biggest women’s football tournament in history.

In Part One, Chloe and Rachel look at England’s chances and whether they can find their attacking rhythm in time. We also check in on Ireland’s hopes, wonder if Sam Kerr can fire the Aussies to glory and assess the reigning Olympic champions Canada. Join them for part two tomorrow on the Upfront feed featuring the USWNT, Brazil and some European hopefuls!

Subscribe to Upfront here for three episodes a week throughout the Women's World Cup. Follow Upfront on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube!

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