Fine, he’s irritated, especially since the ever-churning internet has allowed the transphobic label to live on and on and on. Is it fair? Maybe not completely, to some. But he spends what feels like an awful lot of time lashing out at the trans community. Given that is a group of people who have suffered, and continue to suffer, more than other marginalized groups, Chappelle comes across as defensive and mean, even as he is talking about the need for empathy.
My second conclusion: In the course of the show, his act becomes, well, unfunny. As I watched, I wanted him to move on and cover other topics. He’s just obsessed.
“This will not be the last title that causes some of you to wonder if you can still love Netflix. I sincerely hope that you can,” wrote Sarandos in his memo.
Love Netflix? Hardly. And Chappelle might want to give it a rest, too. Thankfully then, I am stoked for the second season of “Bridgerton,” from Shonda Rhimes.
Climate change online
New machine-learning research published in the journal Nature Climate Change knitted together 100,000 studies of weather and revealed what we already knew: Climate change has affected most of the world, as much as 85 percent of the global population. Just in the United States, according to troubling data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, nearly one in three lives somewhere where a climate disaster has occurred.
The changing climate is obviously a calamity for humanity, but it’s also become an investing opportunity. According to Pitchbook: “So far in 2021, global investors have already closed as many climate-focused funds as were raised during the previous five years combined. … The flood of capital has led to a remarkable first half of the year for V.C.-backed climate tech companies, which have raised more than $14.2 billion worldwide — 88 percent of the total for all of 2020.”
In late 2019, in a piece for The Times, I wrote that the world’s first trillionaire would be a climate change technologist. It was more a hopeful guess than a reality, but I stand by that prediction.