I watched A Very English Scandal with High Grant and I highly recommend. There’s nothing particularly English about the events it portrays, as we are seeing with the raging scandal in the Catholic Church but Hugh Grant is great in the mini-series. Now that he’s no longer pretty – and boy, has he aged! – he gets to play serious roles where he can display his acting talent.

Finally, somebody on the Left is waking up and saying something smart:

The nation is the only “imagined community,” as Benedict Anderson put, where everything from mass transit to health care to wealth distribution to a green economy can find traction.

The NYTimes doesn’t let me link to its pieces because that’s how the stupid app works. If you want the whole article, Google-search the quote.

After sifting through mountains of inane leftist chatter about inclusions, diversities z safe passages, and UBIs, I finally find somebody who has something of value to say. This is very heartening.

In recent decades, progressive forces in the United States have split between two positions, both of which surrender a robust and hopeful sense of national citizenship. On one track can be found a cosmopolitan economic elite that embrace a multicultural world order shaped largely by the politics of corporate globalization. On the other track are radical critics of the racism and imperialism of the American state who often support local community and transnational solidarity but maintain a deep cynicism, even despair, about the American project. Both groups have abdicated the national story to their shared political enemies.

Exactly! And that’s why the Left can win any battle except the ones that concern the economics. This is why it’s been defeated, time and again, on everything that has to do with money. This is a movement that can bring us gay marriage (and yay for that, it’s an enormous and wonderful achievement that makes me happy every time I think about it) but can’t bring even the tiniest victory over the neoliberal economic forces.

If all you do is dismantle obstacles in the way of liquid capital, of course the capital will win.

If you ever wondered why the Left is do good at winning ideological battles but is so impotent on the economy, here’s your answer.

This is how desperate companies are to retain workers:

A Minneapolis marketing company recently made tweaks to its employee benefits this summer, ranging from conventional to unusual. It gave workers a larger commuter stipend, as well as a reason to avoid the office altogether: “fur-ternity leave,” or the ability to work from home for a week to welcome new dogs or cats.

Of course, it’s a certain kind of workers. This is a creative industry where personal idiosyncrasies are in high demand.