I appreciate movie reviews that give it good and hard.

“Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” — 2+ Hours of My Life I’ll Never Get Back
2/1/23 | Marty Fierro

To note that the latest Disney/Marvel Studios woke Phase Four installment, “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” is a waste of time is an insult to wastes of time.

This tiresome flick aspires to be a waste of time.

Disney/Marvel had a decision to make when the actor who originally played the Black Panther — the likable but mediocre Chadwick Boseman — died in real life: either drop the BP franchise entirely, or bull ahead with a politically-correct sequel, composed of forgettable secondary characters from the first film. Guess which way they went.

There’s a lot of furious fighting between black- and brown-skinned (or is it blue? Who cares?) warriors. Sticks figure prominently in these battles, how exciting.

Not even the introduction of new Marvel character Namor the Sub-Mariner helps. Disney/Marvel tweaked the character to have Mayan/Aztec/Incan pre-Colombian roots, which I suppose is a sop to that racial group.

An hour + into this turkey and I was looking longingly at the exit doors. Of my own home.

There are no spoiler warnings here, and no plot spoilers, as spoilers imply some level of interest in the movie’s plot.

Not even the one mid-end-credits vignette, where hints of coming developments in future Marvel films are usually aired, is worthwhile. Just another yawn in a long series of yawns. Wak-yawn-da Forever.

You’ve got better things to waste your time on — like trying to catch your right thumb with your right hand — than watching this movie.

Inside New York’s Migrant Hotels: A Once-Trendy Manhattan Hotel Has Become a Wild “Free-For-All” of Sex, Drugs and Violence
Hotair | 02/01/2023 | Jazz Shaw

As you may recall, one part of New York City’s brilliant plan to deal with the flood of illegal migrants being shipped to the Big Apple from our open southern border was to commandeer some of the city’s pricey hotels (at taxpayer expense) and convert them into “temporary” shelters. Two of the businesses appropriated in this fashion are the once-elegant Row NYC in Manhattan and the Watson Hotel in Hell’s Kitchen. I say “once-elegant” because investigative reporters have been touring both of these establishments and finding that they are no longer recognizable. One worker at Row NYC has spilled the beans to reporters, describing a scene of “total chaos,” where hallways are filled with waste and a non-stop “free-for-all” of sex, drugs, and violence is taking place. The lack of planning that went into this housing project is evident and the migrants are becoming violent in many cases. (NY Post)

Row NYC worker Felipe Rodriguez — who told The Post earlier this month that migrants were throwing away “tons” of prepared food at the hotel — said the facility has now descended into “total chaos.

“Chaos, total chaos,” Rodriguez told “Fox & Friends” when asked to describe conditions at the hotel. “There’s no accountability.”

The hotel employee, Felipe Rodriguez, makes it clear that there is almost no supervision or control being exercised by municipal workers. The city simply rounded up the migrants, dumped them off at the hotel, and left the staff to deal with the situation. Predictably, that has proved to be an impossible task and one that the employees were never intended to perform.

The migrants aren’t paying to stay there, so most of them clearly don’t care about trying to maintain their rooms, take out the trash, or anything else. They can’t be evicted because the City has a law forbidding their removal unless they are to be deported or sent to a different facility. Fights and sexual assaults have been reported and all of the food waste and human waste is attracting rats.

…

Also, this is no longer looking like a “temporary” housing situation, particularly at the Watson Hotel. A new migrant housing facility was recently established in Brooklyn, but when municipal workers attempted to move the migrants there from the Watson, a large number of them simply refused to go, preferring to stay at the formerly swanky address.

What did the Mayor and the City Council think was going to happen when they launched this project? This chaos was completely predictable. 

Pfizer Loses $43 Billion in Worst Month Since 2009
LA Daily News | February 1, 2023 | Bre Bradham

Shares of Pfizer suffered their biggest monthly decline since 2009 in January as investors anticipated a troubled path ahead for the drugmaker’s Covid products.

The stock has slumped 15% this month, erasing $43 billion in market value. In its earnings report on Tuesday, Pfizer presented a weaker-than-estimated sales outlook for its Covid vaccine and pill, and its shares fluctuated.

I thought they had their profits mandated in the military and civil service. With 10% for the big guy.