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Category Archives: Transhumanist

The Best Way to Handle Your Decline Is to Confront It Head On – The Atlantic

Posted: June 13, 2020 at 2:56 pm

Read: Your professional decline is coming (much) sooner than you think

The good news is that its possible to work on extinguishing the terror of this virtual death by borrowing from techniques used to vanquish the fear of physical death.

The fear of literal nonexistence through death is addressed by many philosophical and religious traditions. Many Buddhist monasteries in Southeast Asia, for example, display photos of corpses in various states of decomposition. This body, too, Buddhist monks learn in the Satipatthana Sutta to say about themselves as they look at the photos, such is its nature, such is its future, such its unavoidable fate.

Some monks engage in a meditation called maranasati (mindfulness of death), which consists of imagining nine states of ones own dead body:

At first, this seems strange and morbid. The objective, however, is to make death vivid in the mind of the meditator, and, through repetition, familiar. Psychologists call this process desensitization, in which repeated exposure to something repellent or frightening makes it seem ordinary, prosaic, and less scary.

Read: How happiness changes with age

Western research has tested the idea of death desensitization. In 2017, a team of researchers recruited volunteers to imagine that they were terminally ill or on death row, and then to write about the feelings they imagined they would have. The researchers then compared these thoughts with writings by those who were actually terminally ill or facing execution. The results, published in Psychological Science under the title Dying Is Unexpectedly Positive, were astounding: People imagining their deaths were three times as negative as those actually facing it. Death, it seems, is scarier when it is theoretical than when it is real.

Contemplating death can also inspire courage. There is an ancient Japanese story about a band of lawless samurai warriors notorious for terrorizing the local people. Every place they went, they brought destruction. One day they come to a Zen Buddhist monastery, intent on violence and plunder. The monks ran away in fear for their lives--all except the abbot, a man who had completely mastered the fear of his own death. He sat quietly in the lotus position as the warriors burst in. Approaching the abbot with his sword drawn, the samurai leader said, Dont you see that I am the sort of man who could run you through without batting an eye? Calmly, the master answered, Dont you see that I am a man who could be run through without batting an eye?

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Artificial eye with 3D retina developed for the first time – Advanced Science News

Posted: at 2:56 pm

Scientists at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology make artificial eye far better than anything current.

The biological eye is a highly complex organ, and people have spent decades trying to replicate this most delicate organ through technology. Existing prosthetic eyes fall short with low-resolutions and 2D flat image sensors.

Now, an international team of researchers at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) and the University of California, Berkley, have overcome this shortcoming by making, for the first time, a biomimetic prosthetic eye using a nanowire array that creates a hemispherical artifical retina. I.e., a 3D image sensor.

Publishing in Nature, (paywall) the team at HKUST showcase their Electrochemical Eye (EC-Eye). Whilst holding great promise in the field of robotics and for people with visual impairments, in perhaps more tantalizing future applications, the team believes their EC-Eye may actually offer sharper vision than a natural human eye, and include extra functions such as the ability to detect infrared radiation in darkness. This of course is stepping into the realm of transhumanism, and the ethical quagmire this entails. But apart from exciting fans of science fiction, the EC-Eye most certainly has more immediate promise for those whose natural vision is severely impaired.

The key to this new artificial eye is the nanowire array mentioned above. These nanowires are derived from perovskite solar cell technology, and are essentially individual nano-solar cells, and can therefore mimic biological photoreceptors found in the retina. These nanowires were then connected to a bundle of liquid-metal wires, serving as artificial nerves, which successfully channeled the light signals to a computer screen which showed what the nanowire array could see.

With electronic-to-nerve interfaces research already well under way, it is hoped that one day these nanowire retinas could be directly implanted and attached to the optic nerves of visually impaired patients. More astonishing still, is that this artificial retina is superior to a natural retina when it comes to the shortcomings that have arisen out of the evolution of the natural retina. All retinas have a blind spot, caused by the fact the bundles of optic nerves have to connect somewhere on the retina to transport information to the brain. This connection point on the retina has no space for photoreceptor cells, and is therefore a blind spot on the retina. Thankfully, your brain fills in the blanks of this blind spot so that people with healthy vision dont see it. However, the effects of this blind spot can be seen if you like to look up at the stars at night. Find a very dim star, and try to look at it directly; it becomes hard to see, but its easier to see if you instead look directly around it.

The EC-Eye does not have such a blind spot.

Furthermore, the nanowires are higher in density than the photoreceptor cells in the human retina. Therefore, in theory, the artificial retina can detect more light signals and therefore produce a higher image resolution than even the most healthy retinas of a human with twenty-twenty vision.

The advantages of an EC-Eye over a natural eye are also the fact that using different materials can enable the detection of a higher spectral range, potentially allowing people with such EC-Eye implants to see in the dark, if their artificial retina can detect infrared light.

However, the authors caution that this technology is still in its early stages.

I have always been a big fan of science fiction, said Prof. Zhiyong Fan of HKUST in a press release, and lead author of the study, and I believe many technologies featured in stories such as those of intergalactic travel, will one day become reality. However, regardless of image resolution, angle of views or user-friendliness, the current bionic eyes are still of no match to their natural human counterpart. A new technology to address these problems is in urgent need, and it gives me a strong motivation to start this unconventional project.

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How to go on holiday in a pandemic – The Economist

Posted: at 2:56 pm

Jun 12th 2020

by MARK O'CONNELL

This piece is from 1843, our sister magazine of ideas, lifestyle and culture.

IN APRIL I was supposed to be in New York for the American launch of my new book, whose subject, you may be amused to learn, is apocalyptic anxiety. Obviously I didnt go to New York. But I did have a book launch of sorts, in the form of a Zoom webinar hosted by the bookstore where the irl event had been scheduled to take place.

So one evening I sat in my living room in Dublin, while an editor I work with at an American magazine sat in his living room in Brooklyn, and we both drank our beers while having as free-flowing a conversation as the situation permitted. The event was deemed a success, given the circumstances. But it was hard not to experience a Zoom webinar as a somewhat flat and dispiriting substitute for a real gathering, in just the same way that everything these days seems a flat and dispiriting substitute for real life.

After the live-stream ended, I was sitting in front of my laptop with most of a beer to finish. I felt a nervous energy coursing through me but had nowhere to go. So I went onto Google Maps and parachuted into the exact location I should have been that evening using the little yellow flailing man that summons up Street View, Googles immersive photographic panoramas of the worlds roads.

All of a sudden I was on Flatbush Avenue. It was a bright summers day and there was traffic on the street school buses and delivery trucks, vans and yellow cabs. I could almost feel the heat coming off the pavement as I drifted insubstantially northward towards Prospect Park, ghosting through oncoming cars and ups trucks, idly looking out for a bar where we might have gone for drinks once the launch wound down.

I opened another beer, and as the night deepened into early morning I found myself returning to places I remembered from previous trips to New York, places I would have revisited had I been there now. I wandered around the Meatpacking District, trying to find the spot where, on my first trip to the city 20 years ago, a friend and I, after leaving a party, happened across an abandoned sofa on a pier, which we sat on while smoking a joint and looking out over the Hudson river as the sun came up. I made my way towards Chelsea, but couldnt find the pier, and wasnt sure I would have recognised the place anyway, not without the abandoned sofa.

In the following days, I found myself returning to Google Street View, haunting the digitised landscape of my memory. It was an exercise in nostalgia, obviously, but it was something else too. I was entering a kind of crude, 3d rendering of the way the world used to be, open and accessible and alive. All those people out in their shirt sleeves, their faces algorithmically blurred but unmasked, all those cars and vans and trucks hustling people and goods from one place to another. In the next few days, when I should have been in New York, I kept returning at odd moments to the Street View version of the city, re-enacting walks I had once taken, exploring neighbourhoods I half-remembered from previous trips, wandering through the mists of memory.

It struck me that I was engaged in a pale online imitation of a habit I have cultivated when travelling. Whenever I return to somewhere I havent been to in years, it has long been my custom to return to places I have visited before and whose memory persists. Like all the best pleasures, my satisfaction is elevated by an element of shame. Isnt travel supposed to be about new things, new places, about annexing unexplored realms to the empire of personal experience? What a ridiculous thing to do, when you think about it, to return to Amsterdam or Los Angeles or Berlin or Milan and, instead of finding fresh parts of the city to encounter, to set a course straight for the one place you remember from the last time you were there.

YOU ARE NOT VISITING A PLACE YOU REMEMBER FROM YOUR PAST; YOU ARE VISITING THE PAST ITSELF AND A YOUNGER INCARNATION OF YOURSELF

When I was writing my first book, a non-fiction account of the transhumanist movement in Silicon Valley, I made a number of trips to San Francisco. I had spent some time there in my late teens and early 20s my grandmother was from there and I still had family in the city. Whenever I had time free from researching my book, I would hunt down the places I remembered from previous visits. Amoeba Records on Haight Street, the City Lights bookstore in Chinatown and the nearby Old Saint Marys Cathedral, which has a clock tower inscribed with a biblical quotation that had always haunted me: Son, Observe the Time and Fly from Evil.

The appeal of this has, in one sense, less to do with any special quality of the location per se than with the vertiginous thrill of time folding in on itself. You are not visiting a place you remember from your past; you are visiting the past itself and a younger incarnation of yourself. In another sense, though, the impulse to loiter in old haunts feeds off a tension inherent in travel between the desire to discover unpredictable and exciting things and the desire to take some ownership over a place to forge a connection between the foreign and the familiar.

One of the strangest aspects of life in our new viral reality is the relentless sameness of every day. Hardly a day goes by when I dont think at least once of Estragons line in Samuel Becketts Waiting for Godot: Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, its awful! In life, as in theatre, things happen in the form of people coming and going, and one of the great pleasures of travel is that it creates a sense of plot. Right now, like most of us, I am going nowhere. Not only can I not go to New York, I cant even go to the other side of Dublin. There is no coming, no going, no event of any kind.

But there is a sense in which I have, in fact, been able to travel. Within the five-kilometre radius around my home, to which I was confined for a number of weeks, I began consciously to explore an area I have lived in for most of my life. Taking advantage of the reduced traffic on Dublins roads, I cycled around the quietened landscape of the city.

I live close to Phoenix Park, a huge inner-city park with long tree-lined avenues, large wooded areas, lakes and wild deer. Before the virus struck, I had never ventured very far into it. I had gone there mostly to visit the zoo or one of the playgrounds with my kids, or for a brief run on one of its peripheral pathways. Now, almost every day, I cycle around the park, discovering regions of its sprawling interior Id previously left untouched. There are ponds and streams I had never seen before, paths I never knew existed, a large but unremarkable house I had not known Winston Churchill lived in as a child.

Recently, having read in the Irish Times about a small dolmen, a stone tomb that had been hidden away on the far side of the park since the Bronze Age, my family and I went in search of it and eventually found it in an area whose existence we were previously unaware of. Granted, it wasnt exactly the Ishtar Gate of Babylon. It was small enough for my children to sit on like a bench, and unremarkable enough that we would have passed by without noticing it had we not been looking out for it. But it was worth seeing, and the pleasure, in any case, was in finding it.

This strikes me as a strange inversion of my old compulsion, when travelling, to return to places remembered from previous visits. I have become something like a tourist in my own neighbourhood, finding the unexpected in the familiar. The place I live in feels uncannily new, the streets and buildings different now, as though I am seeing them for the first time. Sometimes it feels as though I am in a city I remember from a dream I thought Id forgotten. Maybe Ill miss that strangeness too, when the bustle returns.

I do miss the world beyond my radius: the old world, where I could visit foreign cities and retrace my steps to familiar places. But I have learned, in the meantime, to look for the foreign in the familiar. And I have learned that you dont have to go very far in order to find it. You dont even have to leave your neighbourhood.

Mark O'Connell is the author of Notes from an Apocalypse

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How to go on holiday in a pandemic - The Economist

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How Britain’s oldest universities are trying to protect humanity from risky A.I. – CNBC

Posted: May 29, 2020 at 1:12 am

University of Oxford

Oli Scarff/Getty Images

Oxford and Cambridge, the oldest universities in Britain and two of the oldest in the world, are keeping a watchful eye on the buzzy field of artificial intelligence (AI), which has been hailed as a technology that will bring about a new industrial revolution and change the world as we know it.

Over the last few years, each of the centuries-old institutions have pumped millions of pounds into researching the possible risks associated with machines of the future.

Clever algorithms can already outperform humans at certain tasks. For example, they can beat the best human players in the world at incredibly complex games like chess and Go, and they're able to spot cancerous tumors in a mammogram far quicker than a human clinician can. Machines can also tell the difference between a cat and a dog, or determine a random person's identity just by looking at a photo of their face. They can also translate languages, drive cars, and keep your home at the right temperature. But generally speaking, they're still nowhere near as smart as the average 7-year-old.

The main issue is that AI can't multitask. For example, a game-playing AI can't yet paint a picture. In other words, AI today is very "narrow" in its intelligence. However, computer scientists at the the likes of Google and Facebook are aiming to make AI more "general" in the years ahead, and that's got some big thinkers deeply concerned.

Nick Bostrom, a 47-year-old Swedish born philosopher and polymath, founded the Future of Humanity Institute (FHI) at the University of Oxford in 2005 to assess how dangerous AI and other potential threats might be to the human species.

In the main foyer of the institute, complex equations beyond most people's comprehension are scribbled on whiteboards next to words like "AI safety" and "AI governance." Pensive students from other departments pop in and out as they go about daily routines.

It's rare to get an interview with Bostrom, a transhumanist who believes that we can and should augment our bodies with technology to help eliminate ageing as a cause of death.

"I'm quite protective about research and thinking time so I'm kind of semi-allergic to scheduling too many meetings," he says.

Tall, skinny and clean shaven, Bostrom has riled some AI researchers with his openness to entertain the idea that one day in the not so distant future, machines will be the top dog on Earth. He doesn't go as far as to say when that day will be, but he thinks that it's potentially close enough for us to be worrying about it.

Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom is a polymath and the author of "Superintelligence."

The Future of Humanity Institute

If and when machines possess human-level artificial general intelligence, Bostrom thinks they could quickly go on to make themselves even smarter and become superintelligent. At this point, it's anyone's guess what happens next.

The optimist says the superintelligent machines will free up humans from work and allow them to live in some sort of utopia where there's an abundance of everything they could ever desire. The pessimist says they'll decide humans are no longer necessary and wipe them all out.Billionare Elon Musk, who has a complex relationship with AI researchers, recommended Bostrom's book "Superintelligence" on Twitter.

Bostrom's institute has been backed with roughly $20 million since its inception. Around $14 million of that coming from the Open Philanthropy Project, a San Francisco-headquartered research and grant-making foundation. The rest of the money has come from the likes of Musk and the European Research Council.

Located in an unassuming building down a winding road off Oxford's main shopping street, the institute is full of mathematicians, computer scientists, physicians, neuroscientists, philosophers, engineers and political scientists.

Eccentric thinkers from all over the world come here to have conversations over cups of tea about what might lie ahead. "A lot of people have some kind of polymath and they are often interested in more than one field," says Bostrom.

The FHI team has scaled from four people to about 60 people over the years. "In a year, or a year and a half, we will be approaching 100 (people)," says Bostrom. The culture at the institute is a blend of academia, start-up and NGO, according to Bostrom, who says it results in an "interesting creative space of possibilities" where there is "a sense of mission and urgency."

If AI somehow became much more powerful, there are three main ways in which it could end up causing harm, according to Bostrom. They are:

"Each of these categories is a plausible place where things could go wrong," says Bostrom.

With regards to machines turning against humans, Bostrom says that if AI becomes really powerful then "there's a potential risk from the AI itself that it does something different than anybody intended that could then be detrimental."

In terms of humans doing bad things to other humans with AI, there's already a precedent there as humans have used other technological discoveries for the purpose of war or oppression. Just look at the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, for example. Figuring out how to reduce the risk of this happening with AI is worthwhile, Bostrom says, adding that it's easier said than done.

I think there is now less need to emphasize primarily the downsides of AI.

Asked if he is more or less worried about the arrival of superintelligent machines than he was when his book was published in 2014, Bostrom says the timelines have contracted.

"I think progress has been faster than expected over the last six years with the whole deep learning revolution and everything," he says.

When Bostrom wrote the book, there weren't many people in the world seriously researching the potential dangers of AI. "Now there is this thriving small, but thriving field of AI safety work with a number of groups," he says.

While there's potential for things to go wrong, Bostrom says it's important to remember that there are exciting upsides to AI and he doesn't want to be viewed as the person predicting the end of the world.

"I think there is now less need to emphasize primarily the downsides of AI," he says, stressing that his views on AI are complex and multifaceted.

Bostrom says the aim of FHI is "to apply careful thinking to big picture questions for humanity." The institute is not just looking at the next year or the next 10 years, it's looking at everything in perpetuity.

"AI has been an interest since the beginning and for me, I mean, all the way back to the 90s," says Bostrom. "It is a big focus, you could say obsession almost."

The rise of technology is one of several plausible ways that could cause the "human condition" to change in Bostrom's view. AI is one of those technologies but there are groups at the FHI looking at biosecurity (viruses etc), molecular nanotechnology, surveillance tech, genetics, and biotech (human enhancement).

A scene from 'Ex Machina.'

Source: Universal Pictures | YouTube

When it comes to AI, the FHI has two groups; one does technical work on the AI alignment problem and the other looks at governance issuesthat will arise as machine intelligence becomes increasingly powerful.

The AI alignment group is developing algorithms and trying to figure out how to ensure complex intelligent systems behave as we intend them to behave. That involves aligning them with "human preferences," says Bostrom.

Roughly 66 miles away at the University of Cambridge, academics are also looking at threats to human existence, albeit through a slightly different lens.

Researchers at the Center for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER) are assessing biological weapons, pandemics, and, of course, AI.

We are dedicated to the study and mitigation of risks that could lead to human extinction or civilization collapse.

Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER)

"One of the most active areas of activities has been on AI," said CSER co-founder Lord Martin Rees from his sizable quarters at Trinity College in an earlier interview.

Rees, a renowned cosmologist and astrophysicist who was the president of the prestigious Royal Society from 2005 to 2010, is retired so his CSER role is voluntary, but he remains highly involved.

It's important that any algorithm deciding the fate of human beings can be explained to human beings, according to Rees. "If you are put in prison or deprived of your credit by some algorithm then you are entitled to have an explanation so you can understand. Of course, that's the problem at the moment because the remarkable thing about these algorithms like AlphaGo (Google DeepMind's Go-playing algorithm) is that the creators of the program don't understand how it actually operates. This is a genuine dilemma and they're aware of this."

The idea for CSER was conceived in the summer of 2011 during a conversation in the back of a Copenhagen cab between Cambridge academic Huw Price and Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn, whose donations account for 7-8% of the center's overall funding and equate to hundreds of thousands of pounds.

"I shared a taxi with a man who thought his chance of dying in an artificial intelligence-related accident was as high as that of heart disease or cancer," Price wrote of his taxi ride with Tallinn. "I'd never met anyone who regarded it as such a pressing cause for concern let alone anyone with their feet so firmly on the ground in the software business."

University of Cambridge

Geography Photos/UIG via Getty Images

CSER is studying how AI could be used in warfare, as well as analyzing some of the longer term concerns that people like Bostrom have written about. It is also looking at how AI can turbocharge climate science and agricultural food supply chains.

"We try to look at both the positives and negatives of the technology because our real aim is making the world more secure," says Sen higeartaigh, executive director at CSER and a former colleague of Bostrom's. higeartaigh, who holds a PhD in genomics from Trinity College Dublin, says CSER currently has three joint projects on the go with FHI.

External advisors include Bostrom and Musk, as well as other AI experts like Stuart Russell and DeepMind's Murray Shanahan. The late Stephen Hawking was also an advisor when he was alive.

The Leverhulme Center for the Future of Intelligence (CFI) was opened at Cambridge in 2016 and today it sits in the same building as CSER, a stone's throw from the punting boats on the River Cam. The building isn't the only thing the centers share staff overlap too and there's a lot of research that spans both departments.

Backed with over 10 million from the grant-making Leverhulme Foundation, the center is designed to support "innovative blue skies thinking," according to higeartaigh, its co-developer.

Was there really a need for another one of these research centers? higeartaigh thinks so. "It was becoming clear that there would be, as well as the technical opportunities and challenges, legal topics to explore, economic topics, social science topics," he says.

"How do we make sure that artificial intelligence benefits everyone in a global society? You look at issues like who's involved in the development process? Who is consulted? How does the governance work? How do we make sure that marginalized communities have a voice?"

The aim of CFI is to get computer scientists and machine-learning experts working hand in hand with people from policy, social science, risk and governance, ethics, culture, critical theory and so on. As a result, the center should be able to take a broad view of the range of opportunities and challenges that AI poses to societies.

"By bringing together people who think about these things from different angles, we're able to figure out what might be properly plausible scenarios that are worth trying to mitigate against," said higeartaigh.

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Everything coming to HBO Max in June 2020 – Mashable

Posted: at 1:11 am

All products featured here are independently selected by our editors and writers.If you buy something through links on our site, Mashable may earn an affiliate commission.By Alison Foreman2020-05-28 11:00:00 UTC

HBO Max may have just hit the market, but we already know what it's bringing next month.

In June 2020, the streaming service will offer tons of new movie titles like Titanic, Ad Astra, Doctor Sleep, Bridget Jones's Baby, A Cinderella Story, Speed Racer, The Bucket List, The Neverending Story, The Good Liar, Uncle Buck, When Harry Met Sally, and more.

As for TV, HBO Max will debut new seasons of Search Party, Doom Patrol, and Summer Camp Island alongside the series premieres of Perry Mason, Karma, I May Destroy You, and I'll Be Gone in the Dark. Plus, we'll get Seasons 1-24 of South Park and a standup special from Yvonne Orji.

Check out everything coming to HBO Max in June 2020.

After three painful years, Search Party is finally back. The dark comedy from Sarah-Violet Bliss, Charles Rogers, and Michael Showalter originally premiered on TBS in 2016 with its spectacular second season arriving in 2017. Now, it has been picked up for its third and fourth seasons at HBO Max so if you're new to the search party, now's the perfect time to catch up.

This satirical joyride follows Dory (Alia Shawkat) and her gaggle of entitled friends as they seek to solve the mysterious disappearance of Chantal Witherbottom. Stupidly funny and surprisingly tense, this series checks all the boxes and escalates in ways you can't imagine.

How to watch: Search Party Season 3 premieres June 25 on HBO Max.

A Cinderella Story (6/1)A Cinderella Story: Once Upon a Song (6/1)A Monster Calls (6/1)A Perfect World (6/1)Ad Astra (6/6)Adventures In Babysitting (6/1)Amelie (6/1)An American Werewolf in London (6/1)Another Cinderella Story (6/1)Bajo el mismo techo (aka Under the Same Roof) (6/19)Beautiful Girls (6/1)Black Beauty (6/1)Bridget Jones's Baby (6/1)Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn (6/19)Cabaret (6/1)Chicago (6/1)Clash Of The Titans (6/1)Cornfield Shipwreck (6/16)Cradle 2 the Grave (6/1)Crash (6/1)David Attenborough's Ant Mountain (6/16)David Attenbouroughs Light on Earth (6/16)DeBugged (6/16)Doctor Sleep (Directors Cut) (6/27)Doubt (6/1)Dragons & Damsels (6/16)Dreaming Of Joseph Lees (6/1)Drop Dead Gorgeous (6/1)Dune (6/1)Ebony: The Last Years of The Atlantic Slave Trade (6/16)El asesino de los caprichos (aka The Goya Murders) (6/12)Elf (6/1)Enter The Dragon (6/1)Entre Nos: The Winners (6/19)Far and Away (6/1)Final Destination (6/1)Final Destination 2 (6/1)Final Destination 3 (6/1)The Final Destination (6/1)Firewall (6/1)First Man (6/16)Flipped (6/1)Forces of Nature (6/1)Ford V. Ferrari (6/20)Frantic (6/1)From Dusk Til Dawn (6/1)Full Metal Jacket (6/1)Gente De Zona: En Letra De Otro (6/1)Going Nuts: Tales from Squirrel World (6/16)Hack the Moon: Unsung Heroes of Apollo (6/16)Hanna (6/1)Havana (6/1)He Got Game (6/1)Heaven Can Wait (6/1)Heidi (6/1)Hello Again (6/1)Hormigas (aka The Awakening of the Ants) (6/26)In Her Shoes (6/1)In Like Flint (6/1)Into the Lost Crystal Caves (6/16)It Takes Two (6/1)Jason Silva: Transhumanism (6/16)Juice (6/1)Knuckleball! (6/16)Leonardo: The Mystery of The Lost Portrait (6/16)License To Wed (6/1)Life (6/1)Lifeforce (6/1)Lights Out (6/1)Like Water For Chocolate (6/1)Looney Tunes: Back in Action (6/1)Love Jones (6/1)Lucy (6/1)Magic Mike (6/1)Mans First Friend (6/16)McCabe and Mrs. Miller (6/1)Misery (6/1)Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day (6/1)Mr. Wonderful (6/1)Must Love Dogs (6/1)My Dog Skip (6/1)Mystic River (6/1)New York Minute (6/1)Nights In Rodanthe (6/1)No Reservations (6/1)Ordinary People (6/1)Our Man Flint (6/1)Patch Adams (6/1)Pedro Capo: En Letra Otro (6/1)Penguin Central (6/16)Personal Best (6/1)Pompeii: Disaster Street (6/16)Presumed Innocent (6/1)Pyramids Builders: New Clues (6/16)Ray (6/1)Richie Rich (6/1)Rosewood (6/1)Rugrats Go Wild (6/1)Running on Empty (6/1)Scandalous: The Untold Story of the National Enquirer (6/16)Scanning the Pyramids (6/16)Secondhand Lions (6/1)She's The Man (6/1)Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (6/1)Space Cowboys (6/1)Speed Racer (6/1)Splendor in the Grass (6/1)Summer Catch (6/1)Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (6/1)Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 (6/1)Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3 (6/1)Tess (6/1)The American (6/1)The Bucket List (6/1)The Champ (6/1)The Daunting Fortress of Richard the Lionheart (6/16)The Fountain (6/1)The Good Liar (6/13)The Good Son (6/1)The Goonies (6/1)The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (6/1)The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (6/1)The Hunger (6/1)The Iron Giant (6/1)The Last Mimzy (6/1)The Losers (6/1)The Neverending Story (6/1)The Neverending Story II: The Next Chapter (6/1)The Parallax View (6/1)The Stepfather (6/1)The Time Traveler's Wife (6/1)The Woodstock Bus (6/16)Tim Burton's Corpse Bride (6/1)Titanic (6/1)TMNT (6/1)Torch Song Trilogy (6/1)Transhood (6/24)Tsunamis: Facing a Global Threat (6/16)Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie (6/1)Tweety's High-Flying Adventures (6/1)U-571 (6/1)U.S. Marshals (6/1)Unaccompanied Minors (6/1)Uncle Buck (6/1)Veronica Mars (6/1)Versailles Rediscovered: The Sun Kings Vanished Palace (6/16)Vitamania (6/16)Walking and Talking (6/1)We Are Marshall (6/1)Weird Science (6/1)Welcome to Chechnya (6/30)Whale Wisdom (6/16)When Harry Met Sally (6/1)Wild Wild West (6/1)Wonder (6/1)X-Men: First Class (6/1)Youve Got Mail (6/1)

4th & Forever: Muck City: Season 1 (6/1)Adventure Time Distant Lands: BMO (6/25)Age of Big Cats: Season 1 (6/16)Ancient Earth: Season 1 (6/16)Apocalypse: WWI: Season 1 (6/16)Big World in A Small Garden (6/16)Digits: Season 1 (6/16)Doom Patrol: Season 2 Premiere (6/25)Esme & Roy: Season 2A Premiere (6/25)Expedition: Black Sea Wrecks: Season 1 (6/16)#GeorgeWashington (6/16)HBO First Look: The King of Staten Island (6/4)Hurricane the Anatomy: Season 1 (6/16)I May Destroy You: Series Premiere (6/7)Ill Be Gone in the Dark: Docuseries Premiere (6/28)Infinity Train: Season 2 Premiere (6/10)Inside Carbonaro: Season 1 (6/2)Karma: Series Premiere (6/18)King: A Filmed Record Montgomery to Memphis (Part 1 & Part 2): Season 1 (6/16)Looney Tunes (Batch 2): Season 1 (6/16)Perry Mason: Limited Series Premiere (6/21)Popeye (Batch 2): Season 1 (6/16)Realm of the Volga: Season 1 (6/16)Sacred Spaces: Season 1 (6/16)Science vs. Terrorism: Season 1 (6/16)Search Party: Season 3 Premiere (6/25)Secret Life of Lakes: Season 1 (6/16)Secret Life Underground: Season 1 (6/16)Secrets of the Solar System: Season 1 (6/16)South Park: Seasons 1 - 23 (6/24)Space Probes!: Season 1 (6/16)Speed: Season 1 (6/16)Spies of War: Season 1 (6/16)Summer Camp Island: Season 2 Premiere (6/18)Tales of Nature: Season 1 (6/16)The Celts: Blood, Iron & Sacrifice: Season 1 (6/16)The History of Food: Season 1 (6/16)The Secret Lives of Big Cats: Season 1 (6/16)Viking Women: Season 1 (6/16)Yvonne Orji: Momma, I Made It! (6/6)

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In a fitting finale, "The Good Fight" makes the case for nipping Jeffrey Epstein whodunit in the bud – Salon

Posted: at 1:11 am

Call it kismet, if you like. Usually the circumstances inspiring that term's invocation are poetic and positive. Colored thusly, it might not seem right to apply the world to the circumstances surrounding the unintentional fourth season finale of "The Good Fight" because roduction had to halt on the drama when the pandemic sped up its nasty sweep across the country and the globe. In a pre-COVID-19 world, creators and showrunners Robert and Michelle King had scripted three more episodes that did not get shot.

But ending a conspiracy-driven season with "The Gang Discovers Who Killed Jeffrey Epstein," its seventh episode, is apt if not ideal. Circumstances forced this episode to transform from one of the series' fictionalized departures into a stranger-than-fiction real story into if not the last word on this arc a cliffhanger at least. And the coincidental timing of its debut is remarkable, arriving in the same week as the debut of "Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich" on Netflixand the"Who Killed Jeffrey Epstein?" special on ID.

The producers acknowledge these strange days and the crimes born from corrupt leadership in other ways, too. They replaced the drama's operatic theme with John Prine's "My Old Kentucky Home, Goodnight" to open the finale. They did the same with the sixth episode, featuring Fountains of Wayne's "Hey Julie." Both were tributes since Prine and Fountains of Wayne's Adam Schlesinger both died of complications linked to COVID-19.

Remember, though, that Reddick, Boseman & Lockhart partner Diane Lockhart (Christine Baranski) ushered us into this latest round of fictionalized adventures through the gateway of a nightmare her nightmare. The premiere dropped us into her dream of an alternate timeline in which Hillary Clinton won the 2016 presidential election, but #MeToo never happened. Diane, in her dream, was assigned to lead the firm's defense of Harvey Weinstein which, understandably, made her apoplectic.

Capping off this round, "The Good Fight" going down the conspiracy water slide surrounding Epstein's deathcreates a convenient if coincidental bookend. Two of the biggest stories within this era of women shedding light on the sexual abuses inflicted by powerful men are acknowledged in this fourth season.

The "gang's" services are retained by U.S. Attorney Wilbur Dincon (Adam Heller), who tasks the firm with hunting down the truth of how Epstein died in his jail cell last August while awaiting trial for sex trafficking charges, promising more work if they solve the case. The financier's official cause of death is suicide by hanging, but some believe he was killed.

Commence a wild airing of multiple conspiracy theories by way of a firm-wide tumble down some of the same conspiracy worm holes torn open on Reddit and 4chan, spearheaded by Liz (Audra McDonald). Some of them, and the evidence supporting them, were ginned up by the writers. But the kookiest details are connected to true stories.

One draws a connection between Epstein and Attorney General William Barr by way of a book written by Barr's father Donald titled "Space Relations," which is about child sexual slavery in space. The book actually exists.

Another branch of the path opens up by way of breaking down Epstein's obsession with transhumanism and seeding women with his DNA to create a "superior" breed of human, which also happens to be true.

The point of all this craziness, though, is to illustrate how efficiently evil works to distract the average person. While Liz and the associates are neck deep in digging through evidence, decoding odd messages ,and constructing an impressive crazy wall in the company's conference room, the other two name partners, Diane and Adrian (Delroy Lindo) are informed by their icy-blooded overlord Gavin Firth (John Larroquette) that they need to cut a fifth of their staff.

As for the season's core mystery, concerning a secret directive known as Memo 618 that renders the rich and powerful legally bulletproof, we don't get to the bottom of what the memo is or which entities are behind it. That will have to wait until the fifth season, whenever that airs. And when it does, the conspiracy's relevance and accompanying subtext will probably hold.

Part of the "to be continued" aspect of this storyline shows Julius Cain (Michael Boatman), a newly seated federal judge, being arrested on cooked-up charges after going to the Office of the Inspector General, hoping to blow the whistle on the memo's existence. Nearly everyone else is so glued to figuring out what really happened to Epstein that they barely notice the figurative guillotine being constructed in their midst, let alone dream their own heads might roll.

The episode title itself, "The Gang Discovers Who Killed Jeffrey Epstein," is intentionally misleading the gang doesn't get to the bottom of that mystery but not for lack of extreme effort. They do, however, come close to a shocking discovery when the firm's investigators Marissa (Sarah Steele) and Jay (Nyambi Nyambi) journeying by boat out to Epstein's exclusive island seeking the answer to who, or what a clue identified as "BUD" might be.

The answer, revealed after the duo gains entry to a locked room, is in part a "Citizen Kane" reference but in larger portion a shocking visual commentary on the extreme hubris of the excessively wealthy: "BUD" is the codename for the organ Epstein prized most, kept in cryogenic storage alongside his brain, making for one hell of a season-closing last look.

Amazing, and yet credible. Epstein was a pedophile and, by most accounts, an otherwise unremarkable human save for his connections, libertine privilege, bacchanals, and displays of opulence.

Whatwere we talking about again? Ah yes: distraction. These seven episode of "The Good Fight" illustrate the two tiers of the justice system as it truly exists. Memo 618 is a fictional device made to helpfully explain why men like Epstein and Weinstein and Donald Trump can shred legal norms and do as they please without consequence.

It's much handier for dramatic purposes to give systemic injustice a device to blame as opposed to simply showing the good guys losing over and over again for no other reason beyond the understanding that the judicial branch of government is too thoroughly corrupted for the little guy, or even the relatively well-off, to get a fair shot. And the problem is, the people who have access to power and a sizable bank account are generally fine with this arrangement.

Adrian, a man with a hush-hush invitation to run for president in his back pocket, drops in on attorney's team whirlwind to urge his people to not get caught up conspiracy theories. Law enforcement's failure to hold Epstein's accountable for his crimes, including allowing him to ignore his court-ordered 90-day check-ins like every other sexual predator must do, may simply be an example of government incompetence, he says.

Diane sees it differently. "We all have to obey the law," she says. "If we're told we have to check in with the police every 90 days, we do it. But certain people don't have to. They get special treatment."

She angrily adds, "That is America. That is not incompetence. It's a special f**king off-ramp for the well-connected."

Smartly the writers don't make Memo 618 the season's sole tension, which goes against the established case-of-the-week format; "The Good Fight" is still a CBS-branded procedural at the end of the day. Instead, the sinister Memo is a corporeal representation of the invisible forces whose knees are on our necks and the enabling structures keeping them in place. The season premiere presented itself as a lark and a diversionary ride into an alternate reality but beneath the cynical humor of Diane's twisted dreaming is an indictment of white feminism's enabling of predatory, exploitative patriarchal structures. As long as some people reap the rewards of appearing to achieve parity, that's enough.

But as the plot progresses, the fourth season demonstrates how the various levels of privilege granted to some Americans can be exploited to the detriment of all but the 1%. And this structural decay is made possible by the fact that, like so many in Epstein's inner circle, many of us choose to look the other way.

A desperate Diane asks Dincon, point-blank, what Memo 618 is. He asks her why, and she says, "Jeffrey Epstein's life was built on it."

"Then you have your answer," the U.S. Attorney replies before walking away.

Marissa observes in the finale's closing moments that in all the obsessing over what happened to Epstein, the team (and the audience by proxy) has lost perspective on what really matters in his story, the teenage girls he violated and the justice they're owed but may never receive. "We're chasing a whodunit in the middle of a tragedy," she says.

"The Good Fight" rages at this unfairness as its lights temporarily turn off, leaving its viewers much to contemplate about our part in this imbalance of society's scales. Hopefully that's what will stick with us as opposed to its diversionary tactic of a flashing a dead rapist's BUD.

All episodes of "The Good Fight" are currently streaming on CBS All Access.

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Fiction Turning Real: Writer Says Humans Could Replace Bodies Within 50 Years – International Business Times, Singapore Edition

Posted: May 24, 2020 at 3:41 pm

Near-Death Experience Facts

As the world is getting advanced every day, transhumanists believe that humans should artificially augment technology to the body, which will make us emerge as highly developed beings.

Now, Natasha Vita-More, Executive Director of Humanity+, formerly, the World Transhumanist Association has claimed that humans should upgrade their biology to enhance various capabilities.

Vita-More made these remarks while talking exclusively to Express.co.uk. During the talk, the transhumanist claimed that humans could even replace bodies within the next 50 years.

"As far as genetic engineering goes we've seen great work done with certain diseases like Tay-Sachs and sickle-cell anemia, certain cancers, certain diseases that handicap us. Other gene therapies are in the works and there still needs to be far more work in this area and I think most of us will be undergoing gene therapy as soon as it comes online as needed. Say 50 years from now I think we'll be looking at alternative bodies and we can see that really growing in the field of prosthetics," Vita-More told Express.co.uk.

Transhumanists like Vita-More believes that humans could extend their lifespan dramatically in the future due to advancements in technology. She believes that future humans could backup their memories and data in the coming years, as an insurance policy against death and grave injuries.

"I see uploading as a necessary technology for not only backing up the brain but as a means for us to go into different environments. We're currently in this physical/material world, this biosphere, there are other worlds yet to be explored just as we're looking at space exploration," added Vita-More.

A few months back, Professor David J Gunkel, an expert in robot ethics at Northern Illinois University in Chicago had suggested that future humans could be a mix of organics and technology. According to Gunkel, augmenting devices inside the body of people will become a common practice in the future, and it will help to enhance our physical and mental capabilities.

"At one time putting a pacemaker in your body would be considered weird by a lot of people and now it's just standard practice. As more of this technology becomes acceptable and accessible that line will move in the direction of permitting greater augmentation within our bodies and less of us will be concerned about it," said Gunkel.

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Whats Coming to HBO Max in June 2020 – Variety

Posted: at 3:41 pm

Before HBO Max even launches it goes live May 27 WarnerMedia is trying to lure new subscribers by revealing whats coming next month to the streamer.

The June lineup highlights on HBO Max include all 23 seasons of South Park, snapped up in a multiyear, $500 million-plus deal; James Camerons Oscar-winning Titanic; and the Adventure Time: Distant Lands special featuring lovable robot BMO.

HBO Max, regularly priced at $14.99 per month (the same as HBO Now), will be available on multiple platforms and distributors through deals including with Apple, Google, Charter, Xbox, PlayStation, and AT&T/DirecTV. As of this writing, however, WarnerMedia has not locked in HBO Max deals with Comcast, Roku or Amazon.

New Max Originals this June include kids adventure competition series Karma, Season 3 of comedy Search Party and the second seasons of Doom Patrol, Esme & Roy and Summer Camp Island.

Movie highlights include Titanic, Veronica Mars, Magic Mike starring Channing Tatum, Chicago, Cabaret, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug and rom-coms Youve Got Mail and When Harry Met Sally.

New HBO original series launching in June will be also be available on HBO Max. Those include Perry Mason starring Matthew Rhys; I May Destroy You from EP and star Michaela Coel; and docuseries Ill Be Gone in the Dark. For Pride month, HBO documentaries debuting include Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn, Transhood and Welcome to Chechnya.

Movies coming to HBO (and HBO Max) include Ad Astra starring Brad Pitt, Ford v Ferrari, horror film Doctor Sleep and The Good Liar.

Thats in addition to the 10,000-odd hours of content available on HBO Max on the May 27 launch day. That includes the libraries of Friends; The Big Bang Theory; Doctor Who; Rick and Morty; The Boondocks; The Bachelor; Sesame Street; The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air; CW shows such as Batwoman, Nancy Drew, and Katy Keene; the first season of DCs Doom Patrol; The O.C.; Pretty Little Liars; and CNNs Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown.

In addition, at launch, HBO Max will feature a library of more than 2,000 feature films. Those include Crazy Rich Asians, A Star Is Born (2018), Aquaman, Joker, classics from Warner Bros. and the Criterion Collection, and 20 films from Studio Ghibli, including Spirited Away, Howls Moving Castle and My Neighbor Totoro.

Heres the full list of titles slated to hit HBO Max in June:

June 1:4th & Forever: Muck City, Season OneAdventures In Babysitting, 1987 (HBO)Amelie, 2001 (HBO)An American Werewolf in London, 1981 (HBO)The American, 2010 (HBO)Another Cinderella Story, 2008Beautiful Girls, 1996 (HBO)Black Beauty, 1994Bridget Joness Baby, 2016The Bucket List, 2007Cabaret, 1972The Champ, 1979Chicago, 2002A Cinderella Story, 2004A Cinderella Story: Once Upon a Song, 2011Clash Of The Titans, 2010Cradle 2 the Grave, 2003Crash, 2005 (Directors Cut) (HBO)Doubt, 2008 (HBO)Dreaming Of Joseph Lees, 1999 (HBO)Drop Dead Gorgeous, 1999Dune, 1984 (HBO)Elf, 2003Enter The Dragon, 1973Far and Away, 1992 (HBO)Final Destination, 2000Final Destination 2, 2003Final Destination 3, 2006The Final Destination, 2009Firewall, 2006Flipped, 2010Forces of Nature, 1999 (HBO)The Fountain, 2006 (HBO)Frantic, 1988From Dusk Til Dawn, 1996Full Metal Jacket, 1987Gente De Zona: En Letra De Otro, 2018 (HBO)The Good Son, 1993 (HBO)The Goonies, 1985Hanna, 2011 (HBO)Havana, 1990 (HBO)He Got Game, 1998 (HBO)Heaven Can Wait, 1978Heidi, 2006Hello Again, 1987 (HBO)The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, 2012The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, 2013The Hunger, 1983In Her Shoes, 2005 (HBO)In Like Flint, 1967 (HBO)The Iron Giant, 1999It Takes Two, 1995Juice, 1992The Last Mimzy, 2007License To Wed, 2007Life, 1999 (HBO)Lifeforce, 1985 (HBO)Lights Out, 2016 (HBO)Like Water For Chocolate, 1993 (HBO)Looney Tunes: Back in Action, 2003The Losers, 2010Love Jones, 1997Lucy, 2020 (HBO)Magic Mike, 2012McCabe and Mrs. Miller, 1971Misery, 1990Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, 2008 (HBO)A Monster Calls, 2016 (HBO)Mr. Wonderful, 1993 (HBO)Must Love Dogs, 2005My Dog Skip, 2000Mystic River, 2003The Neverending Story II: The Next Chapter, 1991The Neverending Story, 1984New York Minute, 2004Nights In Rodanthe, 2008No Reservations, 2007Ordinary People, 1980Our Man Flint, 1966 (HBO)The Parallax View, 1974Patch Adams, 1998 (HBO)A Perfect World, 1993Pedro Capo: En Letra Otro, 2017 (HBO)Personal Best, 1982Presumed Innocent, 1990Ray, 2004 (HBO)Richie Rich (Movie), 1994Rosewood, 1997Rugrats Go Wild, 2003Running on Empty, 1988Secondhand Lions, 2003Shes The Man, 2006 (HBO)Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, 2011 (HBO)Space Cowboys, 2000Speed Racer, 2008Splendor in the Grass, 1961The Stepfather, 1987 (HBO)Summer Catch, 2001Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, 1990Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2, 1991Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3, 1993Tess, 1980 (HBO)Tim Burtons Corpse Bride, 2005The Time Travelers Wife, 2009Titanic, 1997TMNT, 2007Torch Song Trilogy, 1988Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie, 1997 (HBO)Tweetys High-Flying Adventures, 2000U-571, 2000 (HBO)U.S. Marshals, 1998Unaccompanied Minors, 2006Uncle Buck, 1989 (HBO)Veronica Mars, 2014Walking and Talking, 1996 (HBO)We Are Marshall, 2006Weird Science, 1985 (HBO)When Harry Met Sally, 1989Wild Wild West, 1999Wonder, 2019 (HBO)X-Men: First Class, 2011 (HBO)Youve Got Mail, 1998

June 2:Inside Carbonaro, Season One (TruTV)

June 4:HBO First Look: The King of Staten Island (HBO)Were Here, Season Finale (HBO)

June 5:Betty, Season Finale (HBO)

June 6:Ad Astra, 2019 (HBO)Yvonne Orji: Momma, I Made It! (HBO)

June 7:I May Destroy You, Series Premiere (HBO)

June 10:Infinity Train, Season 2 Premiere

June 12:El Asesino de los Caprichos (The Goya Murders), 2020 (HBO)

June 13:The Good Liar, 2019 (HBO)

June 14:I Know This Much Is True, Limited Series Finale (HBO)Insecure, Season 4 Finale (HBO)

June 16:#GeorgeWashington, 2017Age of Big Cats, Season OneAncient Earth, Season OneApocalypse: WWI, Season OneBig World in A Small Garden, 2016The Celts: Blood, Iron & Sacrifice, Season OneCornfield Shipwreck, 2019The Daunting Fortress of Richard the Lionheart, 2019David Attenboroughs Ant Mountain, 2016David Attenbouroughs Light on Earth, 2016DeBugged, 2018Digits, Season OneDragons & Damsels, 2019Ebony: The Last Years of The Atlantic Slave Trade, 2016Expedition: Black Sea Wrecks, Season OneFirst Man, 2017Going Nuts: Tales from Squirrel World, 2019Hack the Moon: Unsung Heroes of Apollo, 2019The History of Food, Season OneHurricane the Anatomy, Season One, 2018Into the Lost Crystal Caves, 2016Jason Silva: Transhumanism, 2016King: A Filmed Record Montgomery to Memphis (Part 1 & Part 2), Season OneKnuckleball!, 2019Leonardo: The Mystery of The Lost Portrait, 2018Looney Tunes (Batch 2) (6/22), Season OneMans First Friend, 2018Penguin Central, 2019Pompeii: Disaster Street, 2020Popeye (Batch 2) (6/22), Season OnePyramids Builders: New Clues, 2019Realm of the Volga, Season OneSacred Spaces, Season OneScandalous: The Untold Story of the National Enquirer, Documentary Premiere (CNN)Scanning the Pyramids, 2018Science vs. Terrorism, Season OneThe Secret Lives of Big Cats, Season OneSecret Life of Lakes, Season OneSecret Life Underground, Season OneSecrets of the Solar System, Season OneSpace Probes!, Season OneSpeed, Season OneSpies of War , Season OneTales of Nature, Season OneTsunamis: Facing a Global Threat, 2020Versailles Rediscovered: The Sun Kings Vanished Palace, 2019Viking Women, Season OneVitamania, 2018Whale Wisdom, 2019The Woodstock Bus, 2019

June 18:Summer Camp Island, Season 2 PremiereKarma, Series Premiere

June 19:Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn, Documentary Premiere (HBO)Entre Nos: The Winners (HBO)Bajo el Mismo Techo (Under the Same Roof), 2020 (HBO)

June 20:Ford V. Ferrari, 2020 (HBO)

June 21:Perry Mason, Limited Series Premiere (HBO)

June 22:Hard, Series Finale (HBO)

June 24:South Park, Seasons 1-23Transhood, Documentary Premiere (HBO)

June 25:Adventure Time Distant Lands: BMO, Special PremiereDoom Patrol, Season 2 PremiereEsme & Roy, Season 2A PremiereSearch Party, Season 3 Premiere

June 26:Hormigas (The Awakening of the Ants), 2020

June 27:Doctor Sleep (Directors Cut), 2020 (HBO)

June 28:Ill Be Gone in the Dark, Docuseries Premiere (HBO)

June 30:Welcome to Chechnya, Documentary Premiere (HBO)

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New Releases And Eshop Discounts Week 20 – N-Europe

Posted: May 14, 2020 at 4:51 pm

Posted 14 May 2020 at 14:35 by Dennis Tummers

Test your reflexes and rhythm feeling by dancing along with Hatsune Miku, the digital J-pop superstar.Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA Mega Mixis a rhythm game where you can play along to catchy J-pop songs using button, touch or movement input.

Ion Furyis a true blast from the past, as it runs on the ancient Build game engine, the same one that poweredDuke Nukem 3Dback in the days. This first person shooter is the prequel to the 2016 gameBombshelland once again you will take on the bad guys as Shelly "Bombshell" Harrison.

As always the full list of new games can be found on the bottom of this article, after the highlights for this week's new releases, pre-downloads and sales.

Highlights: New Game Releases

Highlights: New Pre-Loads

Highlights: Sales

Highlights: Permanent Price Drops

Download versions of packaged software

Nintendo Switch download software

Nintendo Switch downloadable content

Nintendo Switch demos

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New Releases And Eshop Discounts Week 20 - N-Europe

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Introducing When the Sparrow Falls, the Debut Novel From Neil Sharpson – tor.com

Posted: at 4:51 pm

Will Hinton, executive editor at Tor Books, has acquired North American rights to two books by debut novelist Neil Sharpson, from his agent Jennie Goloboy at the Donald Maass Literary Agency. The first book, When the Sparrow Falls, is scheduled for publication in spring 2021.

Part thriller, part literary science fiction, When the Sparrow Falls is an exploration of the coming AI revolution, transhumanism, totalitarianism, loss, and the problem of evil.

In the future, AI are everywhere. They are our employers, our employees, our friends, lovers and even our children. Over half the human race now lives online.

But in the Caspian Republic, the last true human beings have made their stand, and their repressive, one-party state is locked in perpetual cold war with the outside world.

The republic is thrown into chaos when the virulently anti-AI journalist Paulo Xirau is found dead in a bar. At his autopsy, the unthinkable is discovered: Xirau was AI.

Security Agent Nikolai South is given a seemingly mundane task; escorting Xiraus widow while she visits the Caspian Republic to identify her husbands remains. He is stunned to discover that the beautiful, reserved, Lily Xirau bears an unearthly resemblance to his wife, who has been dead for thirty years.

As Nikolai and Lily delve deeper into the circumstances surrounding Paulos death, trying desperately to avoid the attentions of the murderous Bureau of Party Security, a tentative friendship between the two begins to blossom. But when they discover Xiraus last secret South must choose between his loyalty to his country and his conscience.

Neil Sharpson said:

Ive been living in the Caspian Republic (whether as a play, screenplay or novel) for around nine years now and its almost impossible to believe that the journey is finally at an end. Its a story about one man trying to survive in a brutal regime who is given one final chance to make amends to the woman he let down. Im incredibly grateful to Will Hinton and the team at Tor for choosing this book, and to Jennie Goloboy, the best agent any writer could ask for. And most of all to my wife Aoife, who never doubted for a second, even when I did. And while its certainly not a place Id recommend moving to, I sincerely hope people enjoy their time in the Caspian Republic.

Will Hinton added:

It is a rare and joyous occasion to discover a debut novel brimming with this much talent, insight, poise and heart. The voice of Nikolai South is indelible and the world he brings us into is unforgettable, part Le Carr, part Philip K. Dick, and many layers besides. Sharpson asks questions, and gives a few answers, about what is gained and what is lost in the way we live in the 21st century that will keep me thinking for a long time. I cant wait for you to read it!

When the Sparrow Falls is scheduled for publication in spring 2021 by Tor in the US and by Rebellion in the UK.

Neil Sharpson lives in Dublin with his wife and their two children. Having written for theatre since his teens, Neil transitioned to writing novels in 2017, adapting his own play The Caspian Sea into When the Sparrow Falls.

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Introducing When the Sparrow Falls, the Debut Novel From Neil Sharpson - tor.com

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