The Magician King Open Thread

by · September 4, 2011

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Erik Kain

Erik writes about video games at Forbes and politics at Mother Jones. He's the contributor of The League though he hasn't written much here lately. He can be found occasionally composing 140 character cultural analysis on Twitter.

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19 Responses

  1. Avatar Maribou
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    September 4, 2011 at 11:15 pm

    I loved it so much I’m considering recommending it to people without having them read the first one. Though there were some great *pieces* in the first one, so I sort of hate to do that. But I liked this one ever so much better.Report

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    • Avatar E.D. Kain in reply to Maribou
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      September 5, 2011 at 9:54 am

      I liked this one better also, but I don’t think anyone should skip the first one. Too much important back story if nothing else.

      Why did you like this one better?Report

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      • Avatar Maribou in reply to E.D. Kain
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        September 5, 2011 at 11:23 am

        In the case of the first one, I hated the last 100 pages or so, because I didn’t think he hit the mark he should’ve been aiming for in that segment (I don’t think you can subvert something properly if you can’t attain it). Also, all of the women suffered from “I have no plausible independent motivations” syndrome, some sooner, some later. Otherwise I would’ve loved it. It probably didn’t help that I didn’t realize there would be a sequel, and so I found the ending frustrating, but that was just the icing on the extreme-disillusionment cake.

        So in this one, I felt like the world-building lived up to the high expectations he set, the whole way through, and Julia and Poppy didn’t just exist as Quentin’s foils. Julia, especially, really rang true for me as a character. Which allowed me to appreciate all the great stuff that was also great in the first one. Like the wonderful way he communicates wildness, and the constant stream of questioning-authority-but-paying-homage allusions to mythologies old and new.Report

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      • Avatar Leah in reply to E.D. Kain
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        September 5, 2011 at 10:36 pm

        I liked the first one better. I found the worldbuilding of Brakebills and Brakebills South to be intoxicating in the first book, and I didn’t think the second book did as good a job following and expanding on that continuity. I’m not objecting the worldbuilding of Julia’s underworld, but Quentin’s experience of magic use, which didn’t feel as rich as in book one.Report

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        • Avatar Ryan Bonneville in reply to Leah
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          September 6, 2011 at 2:56 pm

          I tend to agree. The world building in the first book was excellent (although the advent of Harry Potter, The Magicians, and A Wise Man’s Fear all in the same era is kind of exhausting), whereas things felt a little slapdash here. People got to places because they needed to be there, and… that was that.

          I understand that the MacGuffin-y nature of the plot was (I think) intentional, but I’m not sure that forgives it. The plot of the book is about the consequences of Julia’s choices, Quentin’s journey to fix them, and then what comes after – and it largely doesn’t work. We are presented with these omnipotent-ish beings (and Julia is gratuitously raped by one), but they are ultimately tossed aside when Quentin turns some keys in a door.

          Maybe they’re not actually tossed aside, and it’s all a feint (given that there is obviously a third book coming), but it felt, as I said above, slapdash.Report

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          • Avatar E.D. Kain in reply to Ryan Bonneville
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            September 6, 2011 at 3:04 pm

            I didn’t feel like it was slapdash, actually. It all sort of fit into the ‘magic is going crazy’ story line. I also liked how the realization that Julia was responsible for that sort of dawned on us as we went along, though I do agree that the rape scene was gratuitous and unnecessary. Having her survive the attack would have been enough. Having her spared even, for no good reason, would have been senseless enough.

            Quentin’s story strikes me as one of atonement, and Julia’s as one of healing from profound loss. It was interesting that the two journeys occurred almost separate from one another, and without one another’s knowledge to some degree.

            I wish that more had been done with the seven keys. I’m not sure the gods were handled very well (the silvery beings anyways – Reynald the Fox was terrifying). I liked the dragon (reminded me of Wintermute from Neuromancer strangely enough).

            I think that the arc of Quentin’s hero story is not complete. I don’t think he has lost everything yet. I’m not sure if we’ve seen the end of the gods yet.Report

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        • Avatar E.D. Kain in reply to Leah
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          September 6, 2011 at 3:06 pm

          I also think the unsatisfying use of magic in this book was partly on purpose. I think these books are about the limitations of magic more than anything (except for in a good battle, perhaps, which was a nice moment). Magic is unwieldy and wild, and nobody – not Quentin or Julia or any other person – is capable of truly handling it.Report

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  2. Avatar Mike Schilling
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    September 5, 2011 at 11:52 am

    I haven’t read the book, but anything Erik posts about must be sexist filth full of rape and violence against women.Report

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  3. Avatar Andy L.
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    September 6, 2011 at 10:10 am

    I just finished reading the Magician King. I liked it and thought it was better than the first book, because the character was able to develop into a more mature Quentin. In the first book, I got tired of all the whining and self-loathing. As mentioned above, one thing about this book that did kind of bother me was the detailed account rape. The way it was written, set up, explained, was actually well done, but the subject matter is so . . . horrific that it was hard to read.

    I’m looking forward to the final book, which I suspect will be out next year.Report

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  4. Avatar DensityDuck
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    September 6, 2011 at 3:29 pm

    Whining and self-loathing, broken magic, rape?

    Stephen Donaldson is all “been there, done that, got six books out of it and four more on the way”.Report

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  5. Avatar Maribou
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    September 6, 2011 at 8:20 pm

    You know, I probably wouldn’t have written in that rape, but I didn’t think it was gratuitous. When they were listing off the traditional sorts of sacrifices made to gods, I noticed sexual rituals (which often had unwilling participants) were left out, and thought to myself “hm, I wonder why he did that”. Oh, because he wanted them to have not considered that part.

    There’s a lot of rape-by-the-gods in mythology (think Leda and the Swan, just for starters), and it seemed “in character” for these stories, which are always always talking about mythology old and new, and complicating it, and pointing out the ways in which it sucks, to have that happen as part of a calling-down-the-gods ritual. Reynard is a pretty nasty character in folklore, also.

    I figured it mostly bothered me because I was all het up from the Game of Thrones discussion on here, honestly, not because it was an unreasonable choice for the story.Report

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  6. Avatar Burt Likko
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    September 6, 2011 at 8:29 pm

    Two days the thread has been up; eight uses of the “r-word” in the comments.

    Is that all that fantasy books are about? Was Tolkein somehow deficient in establishing that the Nazgul were evil by not having the Witch King violently force himself upon Arwen?Report

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Coronablog

Playing the Coronavirus Odds
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Playing the Coronavirus Odds
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You've probably heard of the "If I get corona, I get corona" spring break partier, but in case you haven't, here he is:

I don't bring it up to criticize him. Others have done that and should do that. He's apologized. You can read his apology in the second half of that YouTube video.

I bring it up, instead, to make a confession. Early in this pandemic, my attitude was very much like his. When the virus was still "only" in Italy and China (i.e., when only a handful of cases had been documented in the U.S.), I chose to be dismissive. I heard that "only" a very low percentage of people actually died, and they were people unlike me. They were 60 years old or older (I'm 46), and they had existing cardiovascular, lung, or other conditions (to my knowledge, I have none of those). It's not that I bore the more vulnerable any ill-will. But the fact (if it is a fact) that I'm less vulnerable gave me a certain courage, if "courage" can be used to describe my reckless insouciance.

I didn't go partying on a beach with scores of my closest friends. Even before Sangamon's governor issued a shelter in place order, I (and my spouse) started being more cautious about going in public. One reason was I wanted to avoid being a vector for a disease that would kill someone else. Another reason, however, was convenience. Even in "normal" times, I'm not one for going out in public. A spring break beach party isn't something I'm temperamentally inclined to do. Even in my early twenties, that type of thing didn't appeal to me. That's not because I'm a better person. It's because I'm not wired that way.

Even now that I know better, I still hold what is probably an inordinate faith in the numbers game. Every day, Sangamon's department of public health releases the number of deaths and breaks them down by age and sex. I look them over and scan quickly, noting to myself that for the most part, the ages are 50 and over.

As I've tried to argue before, pretensions to courage and morality mix uncomfortably with felt security. I'm not much different from that spring break partier. The main difference is that he stated what I was thinking, and he was shamed publicly.

Photo credit: Gambling, by Joe Grassby. Creative commons license: Attribution NonCommercial 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC 2.0).

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A Clusterfark in Wisconsin
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A Clusterfark in Wisconsin
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wisconsin

What a mess.

Evers issued an executive order Monday afternoon — 18 hours before polls were set to open — to bar in-person voting as a massive shortage of poll workers prompted some election officials to reduce polling locations, including in Milwaukee which will have just five instead of 180.

But the state's highest court reinstated the election within hours, capping off nearly six hours of confusion as election officials told clerks to continue preparing for an election because they did not know whether the polls would open Tuesday.

A little over an hour later, the U.S. Supreme Court delivered a second blow to the Democratic governor by tightening limits on which absentee ballots can be counted. Under that 5-4 order, voters will have to mail back their absentee ballots by Tuesday, go to the polls that day or give up their opportunity to vote.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin are providing this story for free. For more coronavirus coverage, sign up for our daily newsletter. To support local journalism, consider subscribing to one of our publications.

On the ballot is the presidential primary, a referendum on a crime victims' rights and races for state Supreme Court and local offices across the state, including Milwaukee mayor and Milwaukee County executive.

Evers acknowledged as he issued the order that it could be thrown out but said he wanted to try everything he could to block in-person voting.
"It could end up in the Supreme Court yet today, but the bottom line is the people of Wisconsin, they don’t care about the fighting between Democrats and Republicans — they're scared," Evers said in an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel before issuing the order. "I'm standing up for them. I'm standing up for those people who are afraid and that's why I'm doing this."

Evers made his move four days after he said he had no legal authority to change the election. Republicans used the governor's own words against him as they took their case to the state Supreme Court.

The Legislature's Republican leaders called Evers' order an unconstitutional action.

"We continue to believe that citizens should be able to exercise their right to vote at the polls on election day, should they choose to do so," Fitzgerald and Vos said.

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Andrew Yang, Bringer of Pestilence
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Andrew Yang, Bringer of Pestilence
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[caption id="attachment_317656" align="aligncenter" width="720"]Andrew Yang 1 May 2018; Andrew Yang, Democratic Presidential Candidate on centre stage during day one of Collision 2018 at Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans. Photo by Stephen McCarthy/Collision via Sportsfile[/caption]

Where to even start...

Let's assume Yang didn't mean this as the malicious stupidity it could be taken as, because I don't think he did. Assuming the friend and conversation happened at all, the idea of doing "chicken pox party"-style herd immunity already has had disastrous results both in England where it was initial policy and more recently in Kentucky, where such a party lead to infections.

Just because veterans are praised -- deservedly -- for the sacrifices they make on behalf of all of us, and their willingness to do so, doesn't mean they should be sacrificial every time a sacrifice needs to be made. Especially when it would be a meaningless sacrifice at that.

Veterans have done enough of those kinds of missions, thank you very much.

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Hammers and Hangnails
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Hammers and Hangnails
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[caption id="" align="alignright" width="1024"]hangnail photo Photo by Teresa Trimm [/caption]

A couple weeks back our Saul DeGraw wrote a piece called Life Under Quarantine where he relayed some of his thoughts and observations about this weird time in which we live.

This was one of the comments:

This commenter wrote a whole chain of these remarks, and they were quite witty. They would have made for a marvelous standalone piece, scathing social commentary, one I would have praised to the skies. But the way they were presented, as comments on an individual author's article and in response to other commenters who chimed in to commiserate with the author, rankled me.

One of my personal pet peeves is when a person has a problem in this world, and ok maybe it's not the HUGEST problem ever, but it's irritating and painful to them, and someone chimes in to mock or correct them, telling them they don't have it that bad, that it could always be worse, yadda yadda yadda.

Now, this may surprise you since I write regularly about how terrible things were in the past and how we should look at our ancestors with more sympathy and understanding, and also that we who live in modern times should have a greater appreciation for the miraculous age in which we live. But those are observations in the general sense. Food for thought. Not a personal rebuke directed at any one person. When I write that type of article, I'm not intentionally coming out swinging against a specific individual.* I'm simply trying to provide historical and cultural perspective OVERALL, for people to think about or not as they so choose, instead of as a personal attack designed to embarrass someone.

I just find it rather unkind when people say "hey, I'm struggling right now" and the response is to pile on.

If you hit your thumb with a hammer, it hurts. It doesn't matter in that moment if there are people with thumb cancer or people born without thumbs or people whose thumbs are withering away from malnutrition in Outer Absurdistan. You still feel pain, great pain, even if you know that pain will go away in time, even if you know it's not literally the worst thing that has ever happened in human history. It hurts and people should respect that and provide comfort when their fellow human being is in pain, even if way down deep inside you don't think it's THAT big of a deal. And if you really can't provide comfort, if their complaints are so minor that you just can't even with that, then just walk away. Say nothing. Saying nothing is always an option. It is human nature to reach out to others when you're in pain, when you're scared, when you feel isolated, and that should not be an opening for some jerk to come in with another hammer and whack that thumb again.

Are there people out there who may be complaining a little TOO much sometimes? Sure. Should we all count our blessings way more than we do? Absolutely. I agree that there are many folks out there who are in dire need of a little perspective. But surely this perspective doesn't need to be in the form of a personal attack or a public rebuke - from which no one has ever learned anything from anyway. Personal attacks are made not to teach or inform, but to make the attacker feel a temporary frisson of pleasure at the expense of another, and I am of the opinion that personal attacks about people's coronavirus/quarantine anxiety are yet another pleasure we should probably forgo right now.

I think we can probably all agree the coronavirus quarantine is a lousy situation to find ourselves in, even if it is not the literally worst thing that has ever happened to a human being, even if the things we are mourning are as minor as the ability to purchase street tacos. And even a hangnail hurts. Complaining about small, relatable pains - hangnails and paper cuts and sunburns and mosquito bites and feeling awkward at parties and chomping down on the inside of our cheek really bad 17 times in a row - is one of those things that brings us together as human beings. We have all experienced pain, and loss, and fear, it sucks and it's part of the human condition to seek sympathy from others when we're hurting.

The last thing anyone needs right now is a big squeeze of lemon juice rubbed into their wounds.

*I admit I'm not perfect and have not always been a paragon of virtue on this site or on Twitter. Please respect me trying to do something positive here rather than take the opportunity to pedantically go back and screenshot things I've said that I probably shouldn't have. I admit I don't always live up to my lofty goals, but at least I have them.

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Seven Slices of DQ Life
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Seven Slices of DQ Life
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[caption id="attachment_328783" align="aligncenter" width="1024"]Quarantine US Navy Photo [Public Domain][/caption]

  1. Despite being divorced for more than three years now, I'm pretty happy about having kept that Costco membership. Toilet paper was never a worry for me.
  2. I've not worn my contact lenses in three weeks. It's amazing how dirty my glasses get with constant use every day. On the plus side, I haven't lost a pair of readers since all of this started.
  3. Comparing my bank statements with my current bank activity, I realize how much I was going out to eat, back in the BQ (Before Quarantine). This should probably be made into a durable lifestyle change and persist into the AQ (After Quarantine), rather than an interim adjustment for DQ (During Quarantine) purposes only.
  4. Joe Exotic is a piece of work, yo.
  5. I subscribe to Imperfect Produce, so that reduces my need to go to the store. I've been getting lots of citrus and getting myself some kind of citrus juice almost every morning. Fresh-squeezed juice tastes great. I probably can't blame just the citrus juice for my weight gain, though: I've got salty crunchy snacks and elastic-waistband sweat pants, and I'm quite willing to use both.
  6. One thing I wish were still open were the animal shelter. This would have been the perfect time to have adopted a dog, being home all the time.
  7. Thinking about all that juice and all those snacks, and my dwindling (but soon-to-be-replenished) supply of homebrew, I found an old jump rope in the basement. Rolled out my yoga mat in my upstairs home office, and now I'm starting to use it. Turns out, jumping rope is quite difficult and I really suck at it. Still, I hope this can persist into the AQ.
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Coronablog →

Ten Second News

Reality Comes and Brings the End for Bernie Sanders 2020
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Reality Comes and Brings the End for Bernie Sanders 2020
(71)

Bernie Sanders is ending his presidential campaign:

Truthfully, the outcome of this election has been settled since Super Tuesday, but some will be surprised he did not go on to the convention. No doubt the current coronavirus making such conventions highly questionable is among the reasons for Bernie to bow out now.

So, now that Feel the Bern part 2 has gone the way of part 1, what say you?

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Carnage: 6.6 Million in Initial Jobless Claims, 10 Million Two Week Total
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Carnage: 6.6 Million in Initial Jobless Claims, 10 Million Two Week Total
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It's become something of a joke when economic numbers come out with the ubiquitous “unexpected” tag, but the data starting to come in on the economic toll of the COVID-19 virus and subsequent social shut-down was expected to be bad, and indeed is off the charts.

The torrent of Americans filing for unemployment insurance continued last week as more than 6.6 million new claims were filed, the Labor Department reported Thursday. That brings to 10 million the total Americans who filed over the past two weeks.

Economists surveyed by Dow Jones estimated 3.1 million, a week after 3.3 million filings in the first wave of what has been a record-shattering swelling of the jobless ranks. The previous week’s total was revised higher by 24,000.

On an unadjusted basis, the total was 5.8 million, a number that some economists consider more relevant as seasonal adjustments are less relevant due to the unusual impact the coronavirus-induced shutdown has had on the U.S. economy.

The 4-week moving average, which smooths fluctuations, was 2.054 million, up 327,250 from aw eek ago and the highest since Jan. 14, 2017.

Before the coronavirus shut down major parts of the U.S. economy, the highest week for claims was 695,000 in 1982. The Great Recession high was 665,000 in March 2009.

However, the sudden stop as the government has instituted social distancing policies caused a cascade of joblessness unlike anything the nation has ever seen.

Those at the lower end of the wage scale have been especially hard-hit during a crisis that has seen businesses either cut staff outright or at best freeze any new hiring until there’s more visibility about how efforts to contain the coronavirus will work.

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New Bob Dylan Song
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New Bob Dylan Song
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[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NbQkyvbw18]

For the first time in 8 years, Bob Dylan has released new music. "Murder Most Foul" is a 17-minute epic that starts as a graphic retelling of the Kennedy assassination, but then turns into a sprawling take on culture in the Sixties and beyond.

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Senate Leaders, President Trump Reach Deal for $2 Trillion Stimulus Package
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Senate Leaders, President Trump Reach Deal for $2 Trillion Stimulus Package
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The US Senate gaveled out of session in the early morning hours of Wednesday, announcing what Senator Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called "largest rescue package in American history" was finally ready.

Senate leaders and the Trump administration reached agreement early Wednesday on a $2 trillion stimulus package to rescue the economy from the coronavirus assault, setting the stage for swift passage of the massive legislation through both chambers of Congress.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) announced the breakthrough on the Senate floor around 1:30 a.m., after a long day of talks with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and other administration officials.

“At last we have a deal,” McConnell said. “After days of intense discussion, the Senate has reached a bipartisan agreement on a historic relief package for this pandemic. ... I’m thrilled that we’re finally going to deliver for the country that has been waiting for us to step up.”

“Help is on the way, big help and quick help,” Schumer said. “We’re going to take up and pass this package to care for those who are now caring for us, and help carry millions of Americans through these dark economic times.”

The agreement capped five straight days of intensive negotiations that occasionally descended into partisan warfare as the nation’s economy reeled from the deadly pandemic, with schools and businesses closed, mass layoffs slamming the workforce and tens of thousands falling ill.

The legislation, unprecedented in its size and scope, aims to flood the economy with capital by sending $1,200 checks to many Americans, creating a $367 billion loan program for small businesses and setting up a $500 billion fund for industries, cities and states.

Other provisions include a massive boost to unemployment insurance, $150 billion for state and local stimulus funds and $130 billion for hospitals.

McConnell said the Senate would pass the legislation later Wednesday. With the House out of session, action there could take longer, depending on whether lawmakers can agree to pass the bill by “unanimous consent,” which would require agreement from all members of the chamber.

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Class Action Being Filed Against Airbnb On Behalf Of Airbnb Hosts
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Class Action Being Filed Against Airbnb On Behalf Of Airbnb Hosts
(62)

Airbnb recently changed its cancellation policy in light of the Coronavirus. It allowed all of the people cancelling their trips to just cancel and get their money refunded.

This pushed 100% of the Covid-19 losses onto hosts.

(Featured image is "classroom 2nd fl" by cayoup. Used under creative commons license.)

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