In the 1960s and '70s, population apocalypse stories were popular. Movies like "Soylent Green" and books like "The Population Bomb" and "Ecoscience" provided dystopian views of the future, where science would fail and government would be forced to get drastic, with forced sterilization and abortion needed until the number of people got down to a limit farming could sustain.

That never happened. Progress did. Companies created new agricultural tools, herbicides were created that avoided resistance. Then we got GMOs. First in insulin, then they saved the papaya in Hawaii, and then we got common products like corn, soybean, and cotton. Food got more plentiful and more affordable.

Environmentalists and their media allies railed against progress every step of the way. One group even monetized that scaremongering. Non-GMO Project sells stickers for 70,000 products despite the number of actual GMO products being countable on your fingers. They claim their food is 'natural' despite including food made using mutagenesis while competitors of organic are "Frankenfood."

The Utopia they sell to wealthy elites just failed in Sri Lanka, which listened to White Saviors in foreign activists groups and abandoned common sense for the organic manufacturing process, and the US is also about to have higher costs for food due to supply chain shortages. Supply shortages that will lead to food shortages and higher costs like we'd have if we also adopted the organic food mantra.(1)

The signs are already there. The cost of generic glufosinate (Liberty) is up 300 percent while glyphosate(Roundup) is up about the same amount. It's not like farmers can switch to dicamba because a few farmers who applied it incorrectly got a whole new wave of regulations tacked onto it.(2) California, which practically has lobbyists for Environmental Working Group and others living in their Sacramento offices, even got it banned in the wilderness using a sympathetic San Francisco Court and the argument that the state did not do individual studies in dozens of different areas of California. 'Needs more testing' is a common refrain of anti-science activists. And it works when no science evidence is needed for a court decision.

Labor, supply shortages, distribution shortages, it was all avoidable but will take years to recover from, because weeds take years to kill. Farmers know that. Activists do not. The glib response from politicians and people who work in offices and spend too much time on Twitter is always some form of 'greedy companies need to pay more' but most farmers have contracts. They can't just tell grocery stores prices are going up 300% without members of Congress making them travel to DC to get yelled at while cameras are rolling. And 2 million farms are only companies in the strict sense of the word. They are instead family-owned farms whose only shareholders are members of the immediate family and an alarming number of them make just enough in profit to pay the taxes on their land.

What environmentalist would work if they paid 100 percent taxes on their income? Yet because their only tractor has been a keyboard playing Farming Simulator 2019 they can confidently tell farmers and companies supplying crop protection tools they need to do more with less.

We can hope this turns around but mismanagement by the Treasury Department, and Federal Reserve, and the White House to-date make the pro-science community hope they just get out of the way.

Companies, for their part, are trying to lock in raw materials now. They will still need trucks and boats to deliver products so that will be a bottleneck but they know they have to try something. Though critics will claim higher profits are a good thing, the same can be said for states that make more money in taxes when gas prices are high - the difference is that companies know a lot of demand means a company could come along and replace them. Just like politicians worry voters will do in November.

NOTES:

(1) Centralized control politicians are learning that economies are not knobs they can turn without impact. While it is great political theater to tell oil companies to cut supply - "or else" - telling them two months later they need to increase supply - or else - looks ridiculous. No CEO at any company is going to spend money on new plants when the party controlling both Congress and the White House summoned them to Washington, D.C. three times in four months to suggest they were going to jail if they didn't produce less oil. Such political theater costs House Oversight Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney (D-NY 12th District) nothing, she'll get 80 percent of the vote in her district because she'll brag about hating corporations - but it costs the public billions of dollars when she gets her way.

(2) California practically has lobbyists for Environmental Working Group and others living in their Sacramento offices and even got it banned in the wilderness - using a sympathetic San Francisco Court, the most overturned at the Supreme Court in the entire US - because the state did not do individual studies in dozens of different areas of California.

Read more from the original source:

Supply Chain Issues Are Creating A Food America Environmentalists Want - And That's Bad - Science 2.0

Earlier this month, the multimedia artist Jacolby Satterwhite was mingling at the Guggenheim Young Collectors Party. Hes perhaps best known for his maximalist 3D animations, and a preview of his latest video project was to be projected on the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed rotunda. Hed been doing final edits up until the event.

Its the biggest labor of love Ive had by far, he said. The magnitude and dynamism in the piece was a feat that I thought I couldnt handle.

Jacolby Satterwhite has a maximalist vision. Photo by Andreas Laszlo Konrath.

Pygmalions Ugly Season is Satterwhites 27-minute symbiotic companion to Ugly Season, the just-released album by Mike Hadreas, who performs and records under the moniker Perfume Genius. The collaboration grew out of mutual fandom; after the two were introduced and embarked on a yearlong phone relationship, the project germinated organically.

The video features the artist, Hadreas, and an all-male coterie in a metaverse-modern dance recital. What begins as ananimated queer fantasia segues into a live-action fire-escape throwdown. Far from MTV fodder, Satterwhites epic digital maelstrom pits crashing and careening utopian visions against a meditation on the human condition. As with his previous works, the video conjures a fever-dream universe that is as visually compelling as it is challenging to decipher.

Jacolby taps into pure chaos, says Hadreas. Theres a million competing ideas about the future, and then theres a lot about family, memory, and the pastall this stuff all at once. But in the end, its harmonious and elegant, even though there are so many elements.

On June 1, the night of the Guggenheim party, Hadreas was in the basement dressing area. He seemed calm before his performance. The day had been auspicious. Earlier, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs released their first song in nearly a decade, Spitting Off the Edge of the World, for which he had supplied guest vocals and a video cameo. But Perfume Genius has moved well past traditional indie-rock stylings. For his sixth album, he traded pop hooks for a compellingly weird amalgam of ambient, soul, dub, electronics, and stringsthe perfect experimental backdrop to inspire his collaborator.

Jacolbys animation and the way that he makes things is very physical and spiritual, Hadreas noted.

Later that night, Satterwhite was beaming as his dreamscape illuminated the room. Party guests danced beneath a towering image of a shirtless man cradling Hadreas as lava churned around them.

Satterwhite took a break from adapting the video into a longer, two-channel installation for next months Front International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art (opening July 16) to chat about the Perfume Genius project and other endeavors.

Pygmalions Ugly Season is a huge undertaking. Where will it live beyond YouTube?

I actually dont know. The concept of the piece is rooted to something Ive been working on for two years, Dawn, a public commission and artwork I did in Cleveland. I spent the lockdown commissioning drawings from homeless people, teachers, students, and essential workers in this Black neighborhood.

I would exchange Amazon and Netflix gift cards [with the public] for drawings. The prompt was, What is your prospect for utopia? I got a range that represented different ideals and capitalism, whether it was city infrastructure or Cadillacs and Rolexes. Some were rooted in family and motherhood. Some were poetry, some were philosophy. Some were about nature and pets. I kind of turned this city into Pygmalion during their darkest hour. I had to mediate: What is utopia for them?

The dancer Boy Radio cradles Mike Hadreas of Perfume Genius during filming of Jacolby Satterwhites Pygmalions Ugly Season. Photo by Bryan Ling, courtesy of Matador.

I took these drawings and I traced them for half a year, and built all the wonky objects you see in that video. It relates to Perfume Genius because Ugly Season lyrically promotes and investigates the same ideas, about utopianism and finding a partner and a man and idealizing him so much that he is unachievable.

There are themes that thread throughout the album: songs about health, the human body, and healing. The album is existential, experimental, and atmospheric, and it coincided with what I was doing. Our friendship thrives on the synchronicity of where we were going conceptually. I thought it would be interesting if the narratives and lyrics of Ugly Season were put into this world that I built.

The film begins with you seated, almost nude, before your body fades into symbols.

You see maps on my chakras, basically dissecting my body. The camera zooms into each chakra, and you are basically going into different portals of capitalist desire. At the end of the video, they shape me back to being whole, returning me to the secular space.

Are all of the visuals in your work representational, or are some things purely aesthetic?

Everything I do has meaning and purpose. Well, formalism comes first. Im a painter; I come from painting. You cant really communicate without knowing what shape, color, line, space, and light can do to achieve meaning. I make things by myself. Im working with lighting and rigging and rendering forms and coding things, so the gravitational liquids can fall on the surface in a convincing way. Or Im working with the way a light system can make fog and atmosphere and dust appear on a body while youre using the camera to create depth of field, and you have to use a certain kind of code to make the depth the field happen.

I wake up at 7:00 in the morning and I work from 8:30 or 9 at night, figuring out, How do I make this come together like a Hieronymus Bosch or Peter Paul Rubens or a Modernist painting? The biggest way to seduce and manipulate the viewer to enter your conceptual terrain is to be a master of color, light, and shape, and thats my thing. Im a colorist.

Your work also often relates to dance. Perfume Genius based this album after a dance project, and the two of you dance together in your collaboration. Can you tell us about the influence of dance?

Movement has been a large part of my practice for over a decadeoriginally it was because I had no one else to perform [in my videos]. I went to the University of Pennsylvania for my MFA after the Maryland Institute College of Art for undergrad. I studied painting, but started making video animation and experimental art after school. In a way, I entered it with a very back-door, experimental process. But I was a big art-history nerd and I have people I looked up to. My devices were regimented through late Modernist artists.

When it comes to dance, I was inspired by [the choreographers] Pina Bausch, William Forsythe, and Anne Teresa De Keersmakertheir Modernist movement styles and how they were able create interesting shapes compositionally for a still or a moving image. It felt like these movement styles were kind of object-oriented, and that allowed me to do my ownon a green screen with composite objects on top. I can actually do interesting time-based narratives with image composites and 3D animations. It was sort of about composition and interactivity.

I sent Mike [Hadreas] hours of footage of my movement. When we came together in person, I gave choreographic gestures. My instructions were open-ended, but there was a structure, because I knew what I wanted to animate.

Language is restricting and language has limits. Movement is universal, and can also act as a Rorschach test that leads to more open-ended narrative-building. It allows me to delve into visual abstractions that are iterative and constantly inventive.

Behind the scenes of Pygmalions Ugly Season, with Jacolby Satterwhite and Perfume Genius. Courtesy of Matador.

Its remarkable you did this project in such a short timeframe.

I was just wrapping up a painting show for MoMA PS1 and getting ready for my show at Lincoln Center. There was so much on my plate. We were shooting by February, while I was teaching at Yale and doing stuff at the University of California, Los Angeles.

But I squeezed in the time, and it was quite a muscular feat. I didnt leave the house, except occasionally, and I was crazy. It was very painful, but it was rewarding. I love what I do. It makes me really happy. Even though I might have depression spells about it, or anxiety, nothing feels better than executing something that pushes you forward.

Anxiety and depression are often part of the creative process.

The key to happiness is to have a mixture of dystopianism and utopianism, because its so relative. You dont understand light without having dark.

We all longed for utopia during the pandemic lockdowns. We needed escapism. Its why nightclubbing is so great.

But even nightclubbing is dystopian, in some regards, the politics within nightlife. Theres lots of glee and theres lots of transgression and self-destruction. Its sort of like Dantes Inferno: if the world was utopian, we wouldnt have a happiness index.

The Guggenheims rotunda became a screen for Satterwhites video. Courtesy of Matador.

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It Was a Feat I Thought I Couldnt Handle: Artist Jacolby Satterwhite Dissects His New Video Collaboration With Musician Perfume Genius - artnet News

The big screen debut of Marcel The Shell With Shoes On opened at $170K on six screens in New York and LA, the highest PSA of the weekend at $28,267 for the iconic lonely snail voiced by Jenny Slate.

The mock documentary about the loveable anthropomorphic mollusk hails from distributor A24, a distributor that manages to hit pay dirt more often than not, and is based on the popular YouTube series and illustrated kids book.

It takes at least 20 shells to have a community, Marcel says in the film. My cousin fell asleep in a pocket and thats why I dont like the saying, everything comes out in the wash.; Because sometimes it doesnt. He loves 60 Minutes because Leslie Stahl is absolutely fearless. Its a combination of stop-motion and traditional animation and live action with Slate, Isabella Rossellini, Rosa Salazar, Thomas Mann and Stahl.

Once part of a sprawling community of shells, Marcel and his grandmother now live alone as the sole survivors of a mysterious tragedy. When a documentary filmmaker discovers them amongst the clutter of his Airbnb, the short film he posts online brings Marcel millions of passionate fans, as well as unprecedented dangers and a new hope at finding his long-lost family.

The film by Dean Fleischer-Camp and Slate (100% with critics, 91% with audiences on Rotten Tomatoes) expands into five more top markets Austin, San Francisco. Chicago, Washington, D.C. and Boston next weekend and will be in the top ten July 8 with a slow platform rollout building throughout the summer.

Marcel grossed$169,606 (Fri. $82,188; Sat. $47,253; Sun. $40,165).

Also in specialty: Neon opened Beba to a debut of $5,428 in three locations in NY and LA for a PTA of $1,809. This is Rebeca Beba Huntts self-reflection on her upbringing in NYC and lingering generational trauma.

Flux Gourmet from IFC Midnight opened in 19 locations to $5,000 for a PTA of $263. The offbeat Berlin Film Festival Encounters feature by writer-director Peter Strickland follows a fictional culinary performance collective.

(IFC Films Official Competition with Antonio Banderas and Penelope Cruz grossed an estimated $50,250 on 26 screens in week two, up from four for a per-theater average of of $1,932 and a cume of $92,690.)

Utopias Facing Nolan, the documentary about Major League Baseball and Texas icon Nolan Ryan that premiered at SXSW and at the Texas Rangers stadium before a nationwide one-night-only special event in May with Fathom (that grossed $320K). Utopia played it on 69 screens Friday, primarily across TX, with support from AMC, Regal, Studio Movie Grill, LOOK and other exhibitors, taking in another estimated $40K for a cumulative gross to date of $366K to date. The film expands to more screens next week ahead of a PVOD release July 19.

Theres a bit of wide-release crush at the box office this weekend including Top Gun: Maverick, which passed $1 billion, and Elvis and The Black Phone strong. The good news for specialty is that the first two films are drawing the older demos that are key for arthouses.

JugJugg Jeeyo, a Hindi-language family comedy-drama directed by Raj Mehta, from Moviegoers Entertainment, grossed an estimated $725K at 318 theaters coming in at no. 7 at the North American box office.

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A24s Marcel The Shell With Shoes On Makes A Splash Specialty Box Office - Deadline

Gordon Ramsay is bringing his amazing hit US series Next Level Chef to ITV and theyare currently looking for chefs and home cooks to take part.

Not only would you feature on TV, but you could win a whopping 100,000 and a mentorship package.

The eight-part series, broadcasting in 2023, is set in an iconic TV studio like no other, with three unique kitchen spaces set across three storeys and almost 50ft high.

Each floor will test the contestants culinary creativity, agility, flare, and expertise, as they vie to progress to the Next Level.

From the top-level state-of-the-art kitchen utopia to the gloomy basement level scraps only surroundings, Next Level Chef will task its chefs to prove they can thrive in any environment.

(Studio Ramsay Global)

The contestants will be under the watchful eyes of the panel across all three floors as they battle it out to produce the most mouth-watering dishes and avoid elimination.

Casting is currently underway in a bid to find the UKs very best in cookery, from home chefs to social media stars, with budding chefs urged to apply on the website here.

Gordon Ramsay said: Next Level Chef is off the chart Next Level everything! A culinary competition that is epic on every level. From the size of the enormous structure to every challenge, every moment of jeopardy is huge.

I want to see our chefs, social media stars, home cooks whatever their level, whatever their experience, show me what they can do. Whether theyre at the top cooking in the dream kitchen with every gadget and the finest ingredients or in the middle kitchen, good equipment, good ingredients but nothing fancy or, and this is where it gets really interesting, down in the basement kitchen.

Super basic, minimal ingredients and left-over scraps then show me what youre really made of! Talent and tenacity will absolutely shine through, and someone will walk away with an equally Next Level prize, I cant wait to get started!

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Gordon Ramsay is looking for chefs for new ITV show find out how to apply - Lancashire Telegraph

In September of 1997, as a newly minted officer, the New York City Police Department handed me a Glock 19 and gave me the authority to carry it concealed on the citys streets. Born and raised in Brooklyn, it felt like an extraordinary privilege. In my rookie days, I would feel it on my hip and had to remind myself I was actually allowed to carry it. I needed it because I had promised to defend the lives of New Yorkers.

Since New York State passed the Sullivan Act in 1911, that was the bar for lawfully carrying a concealed weapon in New York City: a demonstrated need for it. Few people had one. So, in a city of more than 8 million people, only 3,000 private citizens are presently licensed to carry a concealed pistol in public. Anyone else is guilty of a felony. The signal this sends is clear: A heavily-armed society is a dangerous and unpredictable one, and it is the governments responsibility to regulate carrying guns in public.

(Shutterstock/Shutterstock)

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled this bar was too high. Being armed with a gun in public is a constitutional right, they declared, and a person doesnt have to prove any special need, beyond a general need for self-defense, to exercise that right. The dangers of a city armed to the teeth with handguns were explicitly left out of the calculus.

There is evidence that the more guns a city has on its streets, the more shootings there will be, the more road rage incidents will turn deadly, the more guns will be stolen from cars and homes, the more people will commit suicide, and the more we will accidentally kill our own children.

To the court, this wasnt what mattered. With this ruling, people who are not specifically excluded for reasons of insanity or criminal history shall be permitted to carry concealed handguns on New York Citys streets if they want to. Apart from the toll this will take on our citys poorest and most vulnerable communities, it turns the NYPDs work environment on its head in a way that will make policing more confusing and dangerous for everyone.

There are four things New York City police officers are taught about guns from their first day in the academy: Legal guns on the street are a rare exception; any gun makes a situation more dangerous; your job is to take control of situations where a citizen is armed with a gun; and your mission is to keep guns off the street. This is why officers demand to see a persons hands to be sure there isnt a gun in play. If you think someone is armed, you draw down on them first, seize their pistol, and then sort it out. Its not that a person is armed and dangerous, but that armed is dangerous. For decades in New York City, believing that a person was armed with a gun in public offered police enough criminal suspicion to justify stopping and frisking them.

The first time I saw this thinking in action, I was in field training in the Bronx. As I filled out paperwork at the scene of a routine car accident, senior officers suddenly drew down on a motorist who had the barrel of a pistol barely visible below his shirt. It turned out the man was a city correction officer, he had just done a poor job of keeping his pistol concealed. The officers holstered and apologized, but the man understood what had happened and why: Once a situation became an armed encounter, New York City cops would act.

I never forgot that lesson. In a city like New York, the police were the bulwark against the gun violence that comes from an overly armed populace. As we relentlessly enforced the citys gun laws and watched the murder rate consistently sink, we felt like we were onto something. For all its size and complexity, New York City became remarkably safe for everyone because guns in public were so rare, with progress especially felt in communities of color.

The NYPD didnt pull this rationale out of thin air but took it from the Supreme Courts 1968 decision in Terry vs. Ohio. It set the precedent for how police relate to an armed populace. In affirming the courts decision to empower police to stop and investigate people who may be armed, Justice John Marshall Harlan wrote, If the State of Ohio were to provide that police officers could, on articulable suspicion less than probable cause, forcibly frisk and disarm persons thought to be carrying concealed weapons, I would have little doubt that action taken pursuant to such authority could be constitutionally reasonable. Concealed weapons create an immediate and severe danger to the public, and though that danger might not warrant routine general weapons checks, it could well warrant action on less than a probability. To Harlan, the simple presence of weapons out in public was the danger, not just unlicensed ones, and that gave police cause to investigate.

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One thing we can be sure of is that the citys police and attorneys are resourceful, and they will find ways to continue to regulate guns in public. The city may define sensitive places very broadly, to include so many prohibited public areas that legally carrying a gun becomes very impractical, for example though if they do, prepare for court challenges that may succeed.

Officers may continue to act on the presumption that armed is dangerous, even if lawful, and stop armed people to investigate. One of the biggest ironies is that todays Supreme Court, which has been more sympathetic to police officers than any in decades, may be inclined to support these approaches. The day of its concealed carry ruling, the court also ruled on Vega vs. Tekoh, a striking 6-3 decision that effectively concludes police have no constitutional duty to read people their Miranda rights. As New York City finds loopholes in the courts decision and empowers officers to use them, the cases that make it to the Supreme Court will be heard by a sympathetic ear.

But loopholes are still a far cry from the sensible law that kept New Yorkers comparatively safe for so long. If there is any sign that this decision put ideology ahead of public safety, it is that attorneys for the left-wing Bronx Defenders and the Brooklyn Defender Service filed briefs in support of the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, the right-wing plaintiffs in this case affiliated with the National Rifle Association. If liberal public defenders siding with the NRA strikes you as dogs and cats living together, you are not wrong. One saw an opportunity to put more guns on the street, and the other saw an opportunity to hamstring the police, both disregarding the public safety of the communities affected. As they say, the enemy of your enemy is your friend.

The rise in violence that accompanies a heavily armed city wont convince the ideologues on either side to change their views. For its part, the NRAs answer to gun violence will always be more guns. It is a perverse logic: If you are worried about other peoples guns, you should just get one yourself and be prepared to use it. Meanwhile, the Bronx and Brooklyn Defenders who filed their brief will always resist arrest and prosecution as part of the solution for gun violence. If gun violence rises, they will defend shooters from prosecution while gesturing toward a utopia where nobody uses guns or needs police because there is no reason to commit a crime. They will blame the government for not creating this world for people.

Stuck in the middle of all this, as usual, will be the poor, the vulnerable and the police, left to sort it out amongst themselves. With this ruling, the Supreme Court put its imprimatur on the public health and safety tragedy that continues to unfold in our major cities. Gun ownership rose dramatically in 2020, it was accompanied by historic increases in homicide, and the toll of these deaths were overwhelmingly borne by the nations minority communities. Now, New York Citys police, who know the danger of guns and who rely on the law to keep them off the streets, will be deprived of one of their most important tools.

I left policing at the end of 2019 and havent carried a gun since. Its not because I cant, but because I dont want to live in a place where I need to. Every developed nation that has taken New Yorks approach to gun control and kept firearm carry rates low are much safer places than the United States. People thrive in well-governed communities where few people carry guns in public and the law makes it clear that they are the exception rather than the rule. This idea, which is a reality in so many other countries, now seems as nave a fantasy as cities where everyone has guns so nobody dares use them, or nobody wants guns because they have everything else they need.

Del Pozo is a policing, public health and criminal justice researcher. He served in the NYPD for 19 years and for four years as chief of police of Burlington, Vt.

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How the court just hurt cops and the communities they serve - New York Daily News

SEE: Rent

There are still a few weeks left to catch Portland Center Stages production of the late Jonathan Larsons musical masterpiece. A terrific cast (including Kailey Rhodes, Ashley Song and Charles Grant) populates Larsons epic of love, loss and laughs in Lower Manhattans East Village. Portland Center Stage, 128 NW 11th Ave., 503-445-3700, pcs.org. 7:30 pm Wednesday and Friday, 2 and 7:30 pm Saturday-Sunday, 2 pm select Thursdays, through July 10. $25-$105.

PCS - Rent (Jingzi Zhao/Jingzi Zhao)

DRINK: Portland Craft Beer Festival

The festival that aims to bring as many Portland breweries together as possible in one place returns this week after a two-year hiatus. The event, established in 2015, kicked off what was then Oregon Craft Beer Month (it has since been moved to February), a busy time for festivals both big and small. PCBF managed to carve its own niche by showcasing only beer from producers within Portland city limits. This year, you can expect to find a handful of newly established breweries along with the celebrated beer/cider slushie machine. The Fields Park, 1099 NW Overton St., portlandcraftbeerfestival.com. Noon-10 pm Friday-Saturday, July 1-2. 21+. Noon-6 pm Sunday, July 3. All ages. $30 in advance includes a cup and 10 beer tickets; $40 at the gate.

GO: Waterfront Blues Festival

The largest celebration of blues, soul, funk and R&B west of the Mississippi is also back in full force following a scaled-back version in 2021. Now in its 35th year, the dance party will be held at its traditional venueWaterfront Park. Highlights include a lineup of Grammy Award-winning artists, food vendors (Horn of Africa, Bates BBQ & Burgers, Phils Bento Bar, Nicos Ice Cream), and adult beverage brands (Widmer, 10 Barrel, Union Wine). Dont miss the expanded artisan marketplace in between sets, then stick around for fireworks on the Fourth: The pyrotechnics are choreographed to a soundtrack of classic and new blues songs. Tom McCall Waterfront Park, 98 SW Naito Parkway, waterfrontbluesfest.com. 11 am-10:30 pm Friday-Monday, July 1-4. $35-$3,340.

DRINK: Cellar on the Road

Road trips became even more popular during the pandemic due to their relative safety. The American pastime is still going strong this summer, and now a Portland wine club packs its bags and hits the highway. Cellar 503 hosts a pop-up in Hood River out of a modern, redesigned camper where youll get pours straight from a window cut in the side of the vehicle. The selection of bottles changes daily, and winemakers from the Columbia River Gorge are scheduled to be on hand to meet guests. The rig will be parked in Ferments lot, so head to the brewery for dinner after your tasting. Ferment Brewing, 403 Portway Ave., Hood River, 503-897-8013, cellar503.com. 4-8 pm daily, through Friday, July 1. $10 for a flight of four wines, $8 for a glass.

Cellar 503 (Courtesy of Cellar 503)

WATCH: Demolition Man

It would take an infinite amount of revisionist film-bro logic to argue that Demolition Man is good. Yet somehow, director Marco Brambillas brain-dead 1993 film about Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes fouling up a futuristic utopia manages to be delightful and endearing in its stupidity. Highlights include Sandra Bullock (as a perky police officer) and Stallone chowing down on a rat burger. Clinton Street Theater, 2522 SE Clinton St., 971-808-3331, cstpdx.com. 7 pm Friday, July 1. $8.

Demolition Man (Warner Bros.)

WATCH: The Lady Eve

In 1941, screwball mastermind Preston Sturges pitted Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda against each other in one of the zaniest (if not the zaniest) romantic comedies in Hollywood history. Per the title, the film has fun with its quasi-biblical inspiration, but by the end, it descends into sheer, mind-twisting madness. Hollywood Theatre, 4122 NE Sandy Blvd., 503-493-1128, hollywoodtheatre.org. 2:30 pm Saturday-Sunday, July 2-3. $7.

The Lady Eve (Turner Classic Movies)

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What To Do in Portland June 29-July 5, 2022 - Willamette Week

Speaking to the founders of Nashiks Utopia Farmstay, husband and wife duo Adwait and Uttara Kher, one learns a lot. They both worked in the hospitality industry and met when employed at the Taj. They were also both working as models, with Uttara being crowned Miss India World in 1982. But what stands out most, even during the Zoom interview, is the couples warmth as they shared details about their work with this writer.

Its with this familiarity and curiosity that they greet each new visitor to their farm stay, located five minutes away from the Sula Vineyards, Nashik, it is flanked by the Gangapur Lake and the Sahyadri mountains on the other.

Leaving the harsh weather and concrete jungles of Mumbai, the couple had first moved to Nashik to raise their daughters Saiyami and Saunskruti in a small town amid nature. The mountains, treks and especially the waterfalls during the monsoons are factors that gravitated me away from Mumbai, says Adwait. They soon opened three restaurants in Nashik Aangan, Tandoor and The Bombay Talkies.

Much later, they started work on the farm stay and opened Utopia Farmstay in February 2018.

Adwait spent months visiting nearby villages on his motorcycle to learn about rural architecture and then spent two months planning out the project before starting work. But they soon ran into their biggest challenge. They were using black cotton soil, which expands during the monsoon and contracts during summers, leading to a pull and push to the construction every time, and requires a solid foundation to stand. Because of this, no architect was willing to take on the project. That was motivating enough for me to do it myself, he says, about the property thats still standing strong.

Besides being the 2-acre propertys architect, Adwait also served as a carpenter, working with one other professional to build all the furniture.

With every aspect from the foundation stone to the bricks and from the soil to the interiors, this farm stay is built with the intention of being as eco-friendly as possible. We have a basaltic rock foundation and have used fly ash bricks. Weve used very little cement and our plaster is a cow dung recipe of the past, says Adwait.

Fly ash bricks dont erode the topsoil and need lesser cement and water for binding. Compared to cement bricks, theyre also less prone to breakage and therefore create lesser waste. These bricks also absorb less heat which keeps the room cool, so carbon-emitting ACs are not a necessity. Using only a negligible amount of poisonous latex-oil paints, rooms have primarily been coated with a mix of cow dung and mud, an age-old, sustainable technique. Also, the building boasts only mud tiles and none of the ceramic tiles that require high kiln temperatures with higher carbon footprints.

Used Bisleri bottles wrapped in gunny sacks are supplemented as lampshades. The property also boasts old, reclaimed pieces like windows (jharokhas) sourced from Adwaits travels over the past 30 years. He collected these from Rajasthan, Cochin, Maharashtra, and more. Weve been collecting a lot of stuff from all over the country which we could incorporate into our designs, he says.

Theres a well for the farm and a bore well for drinking and bathing water. The grey water from the farm stay is used in the fields. The farm stay also runs on solar power. Everything is as eco-friendly as possible and we intend on keeping it that way, says Adwait.

The farm itself grows a variety of vegetables and fruits that are harvested and fed to the guests, including onions, garlic, bananas, coconuts, mangos, drumsticks, and spinach, among others. Right now, part of the farm is blooming with sunflowers that were planted primarily to attract birds.

Today, over 42 species of birds flutter around the property and the sunflowers give about 100 litres of sunflower oil. I will use it for food because I do the cooking at the farm stay. We will also sell the cold-pressed sunflower oil, says Uttara.

All of this is aided by the fact that the couple has been longtime crusaders for the environment, from filing PILs to clean the Godavari to making sure trees arent being cut down around Nashik. We managed to save nearly 3,000 trees from being cut down because they were randomly cutting trees to widen roads, says Uttara.

On their farm stay, which charges between Rs 5,000 and Rs 7,000 per night, Uttara and Adwait offer a variety of activities, including yoga workshops and clay moulding classes. Adwait teaches carpentry workshops, leads monsoon treks and hikes, walks around the property, and organises architectural appreciation walks and old city walks of Nashik.

Enjoying these pleasures is an eclectic and wide-ranging bunch of guests. There are small children from big cities whove never seen vegetables growing on trees, so we teach them a bit of gardening, says Uttara with a laugh.

One of their guest, a 72-year-old, wanted to go running, and they pointed him to the 2-kilometre distance to Sula. He was an ultra-marathoner who was once a scientist at NASA. Another guest was working on electromagnets at CERN, Switzerland.

Its so life-enriching to talk to these guests from across the globe, says Adwait. Theres always a nice mix of people that they meet in the evenings in the common area, says the couple who doesnt live on the property but visits often. They exchange ideas with people from different walks of life and learn new things every day. People who stay in farm stays or homestays are people who dont like the 5-star culture, says Uttara. When they come to us they dont have their guard up. Theyre just simple people, she adds.

Most of the guests are now like family to the couple. They keep in touch and receive regular updates about the big moments in the lives of their former guests. Its been a nice experience for us, adds Uttara.

As the couple continue their journey of constant growth and innovation, theyre now looking at ways of teaching and inspiring villagers to imitate their model and earn better incomes. And with their sustainable model, one wouldnt mind if several more homestays bloomed across the country.

Location: Nashik, MaharashtraBeds and baths: Four cottage suites, each with two bedrooms and two bathroomsSize: 2 acresTime it took to build: Seven months

Learn more about Utopia Farmstay on their website.

Edited by Yoshita Rao

See the article here:

Mumbai Couple Use Traditional Knowledge to Build Eco-friendly Farm Stay of Dreams - The Better India

22/06/2022

Imagine a broad movement of European citizens entirely committed in making our living spaces more beautiful, liveable and climate proof. It would not be a dream, as this is already happening around you.

Launched by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in her 2020 State of the Union speech, New European Bauhaus (NEB) is a creative and interdisciplinary initiative that connects theEuropean Green Dealto peoples living spaces and experiences.

Brussels and many other locations across the continent hosted NEB to celebrate all the vibrant ideas and projects that shaped this second year of the initiative. This includes the ceremony awarding the 2022 NEB Prizes.

As noted by Elisa Ferreira, Commissioner for Cohesion and Reforms, during the awards ceremony that Europeans enthusiasm for the NEB initiative this year could be measured by the 1100 applications received, with finalists hailing from all the EU member countries.

Faced with the challenge of reinventing modes of production, lifestyles and public spaces that are fit for the climate crisis, the NEB represents the heart and soul of the European Green Deal.

It translates the European Green Deal into a tangible, positive experience in which all Europeans can participate and progress together. The NEB, in this sense, is a way to connect with European citizens and invite them to share their vision of the future.

In fact, the initiative is co-designed with citizens, professionals and organisations across the EU. It is about positive change and building a sustainable, inclusive and beautiful future.

Appealing values

This set of values appeals to the many organisations that applied for the NEB prizes. For instance, representatives from the Robida Collective said: We fully recognise ourselves and our project in the three core topics of the New European Bauhaus the idea of beauty beyond functionality, with ethical dimensions; the idea of sustainability, which goes beyond the mere materiality, but also questions our lifestyles and our idea of future; and, last but not least, the idea of togetherness, inclusivity and community, the goal of building projects, ideas and commitments together, beyond individualism.

The Robida collective won a prize for bringing forward an innovative approach in revitalising the abandoned village of Topol/Topolove, on the border between Italy and Slovenia, by living in it as if it were one house.

This is an approach that imagines a different future for younger generations and a different destiny for rural mountain places which are continuously losing inhabitants but also imagining lives away from cities, but without renouncing on being contemporary.

Critical role for cohesion policy

EU cohesion policy will play a crucial role in making a reality the core values of the New European Bauhaus initiative through concrete investments co-funded by the EU at the local level.

In an ongoing effort to mainstream the guiding principles of the NEB for the 2021-2027 funding period, the European Commission will facilitate the embedment of the initiative in cohesion policy programmes and in innovative actions.

It is in this spirit and in line with the principle of inclusivity that the European Commission launched the NEB Prizes. The competition invites European citizens, organisations, public authorities and private firms to pitch their ideas, visions, innovations and established projects that already enshrine the guiding principles of the NEB.

This way, the Prizes set out to showcase the ideas in development at the grassroots level, to shape and materialise the vision of the NEB. However, the Prizes also show to administrators and policymakers that innovative projects already exist and the NEB is not just a utopia.

Challenges and solutions

Our society is facing unprecedented challenges. Disruptive and innovative projects need support, resources and backing from private capital.

For this purpose, DG Regio is committed to assisting managing authorities in setting up financial instruments to support NEB projects and leverage private resources. These measures, aimed at facilitating access to support and at assessing the projects viability, will match the NEB territorial development model financial instrument.

New initiatives connected to the NEB will not stop there, as the second half of 2022 will entail the first call of the European Urban Initiative dedicated to the New European Bauhaus, the first of many yearly calls for projects that will test new solutions to urban challenges.

The call will provide EUR 20 million to 4-5 municipalities over 50,000 inhabitants, financing infrastructure elements contributing to the New European Bauhaus projects.

Moreover, DG REGIO has recently closed the call Support to New European Bauhaus Local Initiatives addressed at municipalities below 100,000 inhabitants. Up to 20 municipalities will receive expert support to develop their proposals of New European Bauhaus projects. Based on their experience, a Toolkit will be created to promote the knowledge on how to prepare the NEB-like investments.

Inspiration and commitment

Such concrete steps that take inspiration from the visionary NEB initiative and the Prizes in particular, mark the Commissions commitment to the core principles of this initiative.

Alexandra Mitsotaki, President of World Human Forum, noted that the NEB has an added value not only in the framework of the climate policy agenda, but in its opening up the narrow technocratic approach to tackle the crises ahead by kick starting a bottom-up social and cultural movement.

The festival, which assembled all the NEB prize finalists, represented the opportunity to celebrate and display all the innovative ideas that are already circulating throughout the EU.

Connecting with grassroots organisations

More importantly still, the NEB is an example of how to connect policies with grassroots organisations, and finding the laser beam between government and bottom-up approach as stated by Jan Vermuelen, designer for the winning project De Korenbloem.

The projects were divided in four categories: Reconnecting with nature; Regaining a sense of belonging; Prioritising the places and people that need it the most; and Shaping a circular industrial ecosystem and supporting life-cycle thinking. In each category, the prizes would go to completed projects and to young (under 30 years old) rising stars.

An expert jury was tasked with selecting 16 winners and runner-ups, while, in the spirit of openness that characterises the NEB, two additional winners were selected by the peoples vote.

Among the projects participating in the Prize ceremony, many revolved around the idea of restructuring, re-appropriating, refurbishing public spaces through people-centred approaches.

Others looked for ways to strike a balance between human activity and the environment while using resources ethically. Many other initiatives focused on citizen participation, promoted social cohesion, learning and training or challenged the current system of excessive consumption by finding innovative ways to upscale, recycle and repurpose waste.

Initiating a wider change

Mariya Gabriel, Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth, highlighted the transformative power of rethinking what surrounds us, telling the audience that the places we live in shape us and their physical transformation holds the power to initiate wider change, and this is an opportunity to rethink the purpose of a place.

The representative for Zero Waste Lab, the winning project for the category Shaping a circular industrial ecosystem and supporting life-cycle thinking, quickly echoed the Commissioners words by saying the worst kind of waste is wasted opportunity, which sums up two of the overarching themes of the festival.

The evaluation of the projects verified that the submissions were enriching, in being inspired by art and culture or responding to needs beyond functionality, sustainable, in harmony with nature and the environment, and inclusive, and hence conducive of dialogue across cultures, disciplines, genders and ages.

In her closing remarks, Commissioner Ferreira thanked all the contestants for giving shape to their ideas and said: Your projects, your ideas and the embodiment of our values are the proof and inspiration that the excellence we celebrate in Brussels today can be replicated all across Europe, all across our regions and villages and that can be called a cultural movement and thats what we are achieving all together.

The Commissioner added: We all know that the green and digital transition implies a profound change to our economies and to our life you example shows that this is possible, and that this transformation is in fact already happening.

Shared responsibility

What emerged at the prize ceremony through the words of the speakers and many of the winners acceptance speeches is a sense of shared responsibility and collective commitment in collaborating for the same ideals and triggering structural changes.

The representative of the project Gardens of the future, winner of the popular vote said Gardens of the future is planting seeds to grow a new mind-set of how life should be experienced from now on and still we have a lot of way to go towards healing. Healing the planet and healing ourselves. And I think New Bauhaus is here, to speed up the process, and we will do this together.

For many contestants, the NEB Prizes meant acknowledging and rewarding those people and communities that act locally to address global challenges, and showing that local realities and issues can be exemplary.

Between the inspirational ideas brought on stage by participants and the Commissions commitment to a just response to climate change, the NEB is becoming a network of dedicated citizens, innovators and local communities dreaming of and acting for a sustainable, beautiful, inclusive future. In short, the NEB is mutating from an initiative into a real movement.

Visit the NEB website for a summary of winner and runner-up projects link

Continue reading here:

New European Bauhaus Festival and Prizes 2022: a showcase of European ingenuity - European Commission

Neil Inskip

Growth capital investor BGF has led on deals with a total enterprise value of 450m in the North West in six months.

In the same period, BGF's North West team has achieved a stand-out run of exits which has seen 150m of capital returned from 72minvested.

Highlights include the sale of Liverpool-based Sentric to Swiss music fintech company, Utopia Music, PTSG's acquisition of NSS, and CurrentBody's sale to eComplete.

This is in addition to the outstanding exit of Kids Planet, having accelerated the nursery group's rollout from 17 to more than 80 sites during its investment period. BGF also retained minority stakes in Kids Planet and Utopia Music as it continues as a long-term partner to both companies.

The firm completed a total 42m of investment in growing businesses based in the North West in six months. These entrepreneur-led companies span several sectors including tech, manufacturing, professional services, healthcare and training, and are based across all corners of the region.

The North West team backed apprenticeship training provider, Apprentify, with a 5m investment to execute an ambitious buy and build strategy in the apprenticeship and adult education market.

Wigan-headquartered manufacturer, Evolution Aqua, received a 12m BGF investment to capitalise on growth opportunities in core markets and drive international expansion.

Alongside Gresham House Ventures, BGF also announced a 10m investment into Panthera Biosciences to further grow its network of dedicated clinical trial sites across the UK and Western Europe.

The combined EV across these investments and exits at the time of completion reached 450m.

Neil Inskip, head of BGF in the North West and Midlands, said: "We consistently meet quality business owners in the region looking to scale their businesses and work towards long-term growth and a successful exit. Our recent run of investments has unlocked opportunities for innovation and product development, international and vertical market expansion, investment in tech and talent, as well as boosting balance sheets for management teams looking to capitalise on growth opportunities such as M&A.

"Alongside positive new investments, were also seeing a strong performance across our portfolio in the region as we continue to work with management teams to deliver growth. Weve experienced an exceptional period of returns from recent exits in the region, which is testament to the strength of the businesses we back in the North West and BGFs investment model."

Continue reading here:

BGF's North West team leads on deals with an EV of 450m - Insider Media

Business leaders are very excited about the Metaverse.

Media speculation and vendor hype have whipped them into a frenzy of anticipation over an immersive digital utopia that does not yet exist. Luminaries like Mark Zuckerberg, Eric Schmidt and Satya Nadella are promising a complete transformation of digital experience and unprecedented opportunities for those who get on board.

In response, executives are scrambling to secure their place, spending over US$120 Billion in Metaverse-related ventures in the first half of 2022 alone. This mad rush puts technical leaders in a difficult position. They are being tasked with preparing the enterprise to participate in and profit from something that has yet to be fully defined, much less realised.

Even so, certain Metaverse enabling components are available. Platforms for immersive streaming are available for collaborating in a shared virtual space. Design tools for creating three-dimensional and even immersive environments are now within the financial and skill level reach of even casual content creators.

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User experience hardware, such as VR headsets and haptic gloves, is moving from gaming curiosity to business necessity. Each of these tools and the emerging standards they are based on can be used now to prepare and position the enterprise to take full advantage of the fully realised metaverse as it emerges. If done well, these efforts can actually help the metaverse come into existence.

The idea of the metaverse originated with science fiction author Neil Stephenson in his 1992 novel Snow Crash where it is an all-encompassing, immersive, virtual environment. In this fictional world, people use avatars to interact with the metaverse to work, play and commit various cyber-crimes.

Much like the internet of today, in the novel, if a business wants to thrive or an individual wants to interact with society in any way, a presence in the metaverse is mandatory. This is not the metaverse we have today. Nor is it likely to be the metaverse to come.

Gartner defines the Metaverse as a collective virtual shared space, created by the convergence of virtually enhanced physical and digital reality. The metaverse is persistent; providing enhanced immersive experiences. This definition introduces subtle but important features often missed when considering the Metaverse.

First, the Metaverse is not necessarily a fully immersive, virtual reality environment. Rather it consists of both enhanced physical and digital reality. While some experiences may indeed be fully synthetic, immersive virtual reality experiences, others may simply overlay digital information on the users current physical environment as viewed through Metaverse-enabled glasses or goggles.

Secondly, the Metaverse is a collective space, not a single monolithic environment. It will consist of numerous, perhaps even innumerous, independent but interoperable applications and experiences. The Metaverse itself will be a diverse ecosystem encompassing all of these enhanced-experience applications which can be thought of asmetaspheres. These experiences should be able to interact more or less seamlessly across both hardware and software platforms. While the Metaverse itself may not yet exist in its fully realised form, a wide variety of metaspheres are already in place and delivering value.

What is a metasphere?

A metasphere is simply an application that exhibits the characteristics of the Metaverse, but largely in isolation. Realised use cases range from fully immersive training routines to unintrusive process instructions projected into the lenses of safety glasses.

These applications are being realised with both industrial and consumer-grade tools. While larger enterprises often develop their own solutions in-house, system integrators and software development firms are emerging in this space to create custom metaspheres for companies without sufficient resources or expertise to go it alone. The metaspheres currently being utilized all fall into one of three categories: augmented reality, mixed reality, and virtual reality.

Numerous manifestations of all three types of metasphere are already in production use across a wide variety of companies and industries. Some use cases are more successful than others. Public facing, consumer-oriented applications, in particular, continue to struggle.

Among the most spectacular failures was a fully VR concert of the pop band Foo Fighters hosted by Meta, the rebranded Facebook parent. The much-hyped concert intended for Meta Quest 2 VR gear owners succumbed to a plethora of technical issues. Of the 61,000 registered attendees, only 13,000 were able to access any portion of the event. Those that were able to view at least some of the concert were savage in their reviews of the experience. As one technology writer commented, Metas Horizon Worlds platform fumbles at the first hurdle.

While not all public-facing metaverse ventures fail to the extent of the Foo Fighters concert, they are without exception difficult, expensive, and risky to stage. In addition, outside of gaming and promotion few practical and monetisable, consumer-oriented use cases have been identified, much less implemented and deployed. In time, such use cases and consumer metaspheres will emerge, mature, and converge into a fully realised metaverse. We just arent there yet.

So where are Metaverse technologies bringing value? Within the walls, virtual or otherwise, of the enterprise. Companies are preparing for the Metaverse by exploring how these tools can benefit their employees, their operations and ultimately their bottom line.

Creating internally facing metaspheres has many advantages over attempting to field public-facing services. First and foremost, the enterprise is a controlled environment. Even when leveraging services hosted outside the enterprise data centre, you control who has access, when and to what extent.

Most of the failures with public-facing metaspheres involve scalability and capacity issues with services, such as the Foo Fighters concert, being overwhelmed and crashing. Keeping the metasphere in-house allows you to throttle demand and scale computational resources as necessary and as desired to achieve your goal.

Employees are also somewhat of a captive audience. You can select a specific pool of users to provide a particular metasphere that will benefit both them and the enterprise. You can have those users test various approaches to a solution and provide feedback in a way that is not possible with the public. This has the added advantage of keeping your mistakes and failures out of public view while you gain competence and expertise in what is decidedly a new discipline using new technologies.

This experimentation is perhaps the biggest benefit of starting with internally facing metaspheres. It allows you to learn both the tools and how they can most effectively be applied and to do so at the enterprises own pace. While the market sorts out how to monetize public Metaverse offerings, internal metaspheres can provide immediate, practical benefits to the enterprise and potentially identify services that can indeed be made public and monetised.

As more and more of these repurposed metaspheres emerge, they will converge and coalesce. From this network of interconnected and interoperable metaspheres, the Metaverse proper will emerge. But this can only happen if the use cases are selected wisely and implemented properly.

See more here:

To build the metaverse start creating metaspheres - Metaverse - Digital Nation - Digital Nation

Tucker Carlson: Politicians created inflation

Fox News host Tucker Carlson weighs in on the state of the American economy and inflation as he says companies pay for women to travel and get abortions on 'Tucker Carlson Tonight.'

NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!

We're coming to you all week from Brazil. You may not have noticed we didn't actually but Brazil is the last significant country in the Western Hemisphere that has a pro-American government. And in a lot of ways, Brazil isn't that different from the United States. It's an enormous place, bigger landmass than the continental U.S., huge population, beautiful, rich in natural resources and suddenly, like the United States over the last 15 years, Brazil has found itself dangerously dependent on China.

So, what exactly are the Chinese government's aims here in Brazil, and why isn't the Biden administration doing anything to stop the Chinese military from establishing a threatening new beachhead in our hemisphere? They seem to be abetting it. What is that exactly? We're investigating all of it for a brand-new documentary we're making now.

We'll have it for you soon, but one of the reasons that so few people in the United States noticed that China is colonizing formerly independent country so close to our shores is that we have, as they used to say, problems of our own here in the United States the American economy, primarily, which is in real trouble right now, and it's not something we can fix with a cleverly crafted bailout, as we've done before.

The problem here isn't that a few reckless quants on Wall Street did crazy things with credit default swaps. The problem feels deeper than that. It feels systemic, and you see it in what you buy, everything. The prices of everything are shooting beyond reach for a lot of people in the United States. That would include energy, food, durable goods, housing, education, credit, all of it is a lot more expensive than it was just recently. Why? Why has median rent in Manhattan jumped by 25% in a single year? Why is your grocery bill going up by hundreds of dollars a month? Why can't you afford to fill your car anymore?

JESSE WATTERS CALLS OUT LIBERAL MEDIA OVER ABORTION PROTEST COVERAGE: 'THEY WON'T TELL THE TRUTH'

Those are fair questions. It's not like we've run out of the commodities we need. The United States has a lot of them. It's a continental country. It stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific. So we've got plenty of room for housing. We've got more than enough oil and gas within our own borders to be completely energy independent with some left over.

We've got more fertile farmland than any country on the planet. Food should be cheap. So, the problem is definitely not our resources. Our resources in the United States are abundant. The problem is our leaders. The things you need are too expensive to buy because politicians created inflation, and they did it for a simple reason. They'd racked up so much debt, buying votes and enriching themselves and their families because they had no choice but to weaken the U.S. dollar in order to make the payments on the loans they took out. It's that simple. And then once inflation arrived, ideologues in the Biden administration immediately understood how it could be used.

So, since you can no longer afford to drive your car, you will have no choice but to accept their green energy scams and that means their donors who run those scams will get richer, and they will get control over the US economy. So, everyone wins except you. It's perfect. None of it happened by accident. This is a manufactured disaster. Now, in a normal country, few leaders would dare to pull off something this brazen and destructive. They'd be afraid to. They would be to be flirting with revolution. It'd be too risky. And the people who run our country are fully aware of the risks, and they're very worried about it.

WISCONSIN GOVERNOR ANNOUNCES CHALLENGE TO STATES LAW BANNING ABORTION IN WAKE OF ROE RULING

If you're wondering why they're hyperventilating about January 6th, that's why. They seem afraid, because they are afraid. To them, a crowd of angry people at the Capitol looks a lot like a foretaste of things to come. That's exactly why they're so desperate to take your guns away. It's why they're screaming at you about trans rights and systemic racism and the all-encompassing evil of the president of faraway Russia. Huh? Why are they talking about these things? It seems confusing at first. What does any of that have to do with our actual problems here and improving your life?

Well, none of it has anything to do with improving your life and that's the point. They're hoping that if they keep screaming at you, you'll be too bewildered and too off-balance to notice what is happening to the country around you, much less able to fight back against it. And just to make sure you're too bewildered to act as they scream, they shift the blame from themselves to you. So, they're now pronouncing you guilty for the crimes that they committed. You've watched this happen with the economy.

First, they told you that inflation wasn't real. "You're imagining that," but you weren't. So, then they explain that actually inflation is happening, but it's a good thing because you deserve it. You deserve to pay more for the things you buy. Why? Because your expectations were way too high. You pampered first-world Karen. You expected to eat meat for dinner and take an annual vacation on commercial airliners that departed on time. What were you thinking? You expected to fill your tank or buy a sheet of plywood for less than 75 bucks. Huh? Talk about out of whack. You expected to be able to send your children to the public schools you pay for with the expectation they might learn something. You thought you could load your car in the Safeway parking lot with groceries you could afford without being shot to death by armed robbers.

BECERRA UNVEILS BIDEN HHS ABORTION 'ACTION PLAN,' RIPS 'UNCONSCIONABLE' SUPREME COURT RULING ON ROE V. WADE

You imagined you could live in a country that resembled the place you grew up in, where people spoke English and didn't throw trash out the window or smoked fentanyl on the sidewalk. But it turns out, Mr. or Mrs. America, you expected too much, and that's your fault. In Nigeria, all of this is normal, so stop whining and eat your bugs. Bloomberg News actually wrote a column on this. Their recommendation was, if you want to save money, let your dog die. Seriously, they really said that, and they meant it too. But apparently you didn't get the message. You love your dog.

So, now they've gone further than that. Now they're telling you that you cannot have the one thing that most people want more than anything else, the one thing that biological instinct drives all of us to want and that's children. The most reliable source of meaning and joy in human existence, a family, is now out of reach for the American middle class, and you should accept that is inevitable. In fact, you should embrace it. Our economy can no longer support your family. Sorry. Actually, that's wrong. They're not saying sorry. They wouldn't think of apologizing for that or anything else. What they want to do is force you to reset your unrealistic expectations and that's what MSNBC did all this weekend. Watch.

KATY TUR: What does it cost to have a baby? On your body, on your livelihood, and not just you, but your states in this country?

ONE MORE BLOCKBUSTER SUPREME COURT DECISION COULD STILL BE COMING EVEN AFTER FRIDAY'S ABORTION RULING

JO LING KENT, NBC REPORTER:Many economists and social scientists are telling us that the economic consequences of abortion restrictions are devastating for both individuals and wider society. According to the Institute for Women's Policy Research, at the national level, state level abortion restrictions cost $105 billion per year because basically it reduces the labor force participation rate, how many people are in the workforce, and drives down earning power.

So, it turns out many economists and social scientists have concluded that having kids is selfish and way too expensive and that's your fault. So, dial back your expectations of ever having a family. Thanks for telling us, MSNBC and Jo Kent. Notice that no one in MSNBC ever blames the powerful for where we are. Apparently, the US government had no role in "reducing the labor force participation rate, say by shutting down the entire U.S. economy and firing anyone who didn't get their vax or turning cities into war zones or devaluing the U.S. dollar. None of that actually happened. It's not their fault. Wall Street and the Fed are blameless. The problem is you. The problem is that you selfishly want to have children, and children are bad for GDP." All the big corporations now agree on that. They're all now against human reproduction. Watch, Jo Kent, explain more.

JO LING KENT, NBC REPORTER: But the other important financial question is if the birthing parent is able to travel and if they work for the right company and are seeking an abortion, more individuals we're seeing are going to need to rely on their employer, right, for that financial support to carry that out. Now, for example, Dick's Sporting Goods is now telling us they're promising $4,000 for any employee or family member on their insurance plan to access an abortion and there's a long list of companies that are doing the same thing. You've got Levi's and Starbucks, Yelp, JPMorgan and many others, but the point here is, Katie, is that these benefits are provided because these companies are willing to do it, not just because of their philosophy as a corporation, but because it makes financial sense for them.

REPUBLICAN SENATORS INTRODUCE PRO-LIFE RESOLUTION CELEBRATING SUPREME COURT ABORTION CASE: 'HISTORIC VICTORY'

Dick's Sporting Goods will pay you $4,000 to abort your baby. How great is that? How great is Dick's Sporting Goods? You're going to have a baby, and now they're giving you four grand, not two and as Jo Kent just told us, that makes financial sense for corporate America. Well, yes, it does. Thanks, MSNBC. We lost our calculator and couldn't do the math on that. It turns out the companies have done the math and they'd rather pay female employees $4,000 for every abortion they have. That's cheaper than footing the bill for, say, parental leave or adding new dependents on the company health care plan. Babies are expensive. It's a lot cheaper to get rid of them, has concluded the H.R. Department of Dick's Sporting Goods, but keep in mind, this is a highly progressive movement. When you have to bribe employees not to have their own family, what you're really doing is liberating them and if you doubt that, here's corporate America's spokesman Andrew Ross Sorkin of CNBC with the message once more.

ANDREW ROSS SORKIN:The real challenge is going to be for the smaller companies that can't afford to do this and for the employees of those companies that are unable to get access that way and so there's going to be a tale of two worlds. If you work for a Fortune 500 company in America today, you very well may get this type of health care as a benefit. Smaller companies may not, and I asked the question over the weekend to a lot of executives and CEOs about this, would you leave the state? Would you leave those states where those trigger laws are in effect? And the answer is no. The view is that this is, dare I say, a cost of doing business and I was, I have to admit, disappointed that there was nobody that I spoke to over the weekend who said, you know what, we have a moral issue about this.

Yeah, it's very disappointing that all companies aren't paying their employees to abort their children. It's a sign of love, really, because when you love someone, your main concern is if they never reproduce, that they never create more human beings just like them. That's a sign of love. So according to Andrew Ross Sorkin, corporations (and this is not ghoulish or creepy so settle down, chuck, back to your gag reflex) corporations in states that outlaw abortions are unethical. The CEOs of those companies are immoral because they're not paying for enough abortion. Andrew Ross Sorkin judges them. You know who he doesn't judge his friend, Janet Yellen.

INFLATION 'POLICY ERRORS OF THE 1970S ECHO IN OUR TIMES,' FINANCIAL TIMES COLUMNIST WARNS

Now, Janet Yellen isn't blameless. She lied to Americans for years about the inflation that she created. She single-handedly destroyed our economy more than any other single American, but that's not a problem for Andrew Ross Sorkin. It's not like she wasn't paying for employees abortions and we're quoting, "You know, if you're Janet Yellen, she's in a political job and they wanted to run the economy a little hot." That's what Sorkin said recently and by running it a little hot, he meant destroy it and make the U.S. dollar worthless. Just a little mistake. It's not a big deal. It's not immoral. Making you poor was a mistake and don't worry, Janet Yellen has never even considered apologizing for it. No. What she's telling you is now that you're poor, shut up and abort your child because times are tough and you've got to get back to work. There's a war going on. Do your duty.

JANET YELLEN: I believe that eliminating the right of women to make decisions about when and whether to have children would have very damaging effects on the economy and would set women back decades.

Yeah, very damaging to the economy, having all those children, all that new life. This is the America that Janet Yellen has created with the help of her friends in the media. So, you can't afford to get married or buy a house or have children, much less raise them yourself in a two-parent family on a single income, as every generation of Americans did for hundreds of years in this country, but for you, none of that is possible. Only private equity people, people like Janet Yellen, Andrew Ross Sorkin can afford normal families now, but for you, things are very different for you. Life is low paid, thrown work at some soulless digital company punctuated only by brunch on the weekends and Netflix and white wine at night forever until you die alone with no descendants to remember you.

HILLARY CLINTON POST ASSERTING AN ABORTION SHOULDN'T BE HARDER TO OBTAIN THAN A GUN DECLARED DUMBEST TWEET

FILE PHOTO: Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen attends the House Financial Services Committee hearing in Washington, U.S., September 30, 2021. (Al Drago/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo)

Does the prospect of that fill you with joy? Does it make you a little anxious? If it makes you feel anxious, no problem because we have Xanax. Also, we've legalized weed so you can consider yourself liberated. What we just described is not an overstatement. That is the life that millions of college-educated young people in this country are living right now and are facing for the foreseeable future, which is to say forever, but our leaders don't seem concerned in the least about it.

They don't detect a spiritual crisis in America or a lack of inherent meaning. Suicide spike. They have no idea why. They don't want to know. They don't even notice the dramatic drop in birth rates in America, which you think they would care about since they run the country and that's the clearest sign of societal health. If people aren't reproducing, maybe something's wrong, but no, it doesn't bother them. In fact, they're for it. Don't have kids and if you do make certain they can't reproduce themselves. Why don't you go ahead and chemically castrate them? That's what they're now telling you. Watch the admiral.

RACHEL LEVINE, ASSISTANT HEALTH SECRETARY: Gender-affirming care is life-saving, medically necessary, age-appropriate, and a critical tool for health care providers. As a pediatrician, when it comes to making sure kids are healthy and happy, I know how important care that affirmed someone's true identity can be.

ANDREW ROSS SORKIN: JANET YELLEN, FED 'GOT IT WRONG' ON INFLATION, WERE 'A LITTLE POLITICAL' IN THEIR RESPONSE

So you made the mistake of having children, your own family, but there is something you can do. You can make sure you never have grandchildren. You can pump your children full of farmer-derived poison that make certain they can never reproduce and you should, because that's life-affirming care.

So, why are they telling you this? Well, simple. The more atomized and unhappy American society becomes, the easier it is for them to control. Fewer marriages and babies and family-owned homes means more ruthless and dissatisfied people. It means an entire nation of desperately unhappy grad students. Sandy Cortez could become the queen of a country like that. So, bring it on: more solitude, less human connection, less meaning, fewer babies. That's what they want, obviously. Here's what they don't want. They don't want more Christie Pauls. This weekend, Christie Paul announced that she's quitting her job because family is more important than serving corporate America. Here she is.

ECONOMIC EXPERT ARGUES FED IS RESPONSIBLE FOR CURBING INFLATION: 'THEY NEED TO GET THEIR ACT TOGETHER'

CHRISTI PAUL: I just could not be who I needed to be for my family is what it really came down to. I was tired of being tired, and I told him, "Look, let's be honest, the work we do is important. The work you do is important. Wherever you go, whatever you do every day, it's important work, but at the end of the day, somebody is going to sit in this seat and I'm going to leave and the show will go on as it should, but nobody else is going to be my kid's mom, and nobody else is going to be my husband's wife or my parents' children and I need to be fully, fully present there."

Nobody else is going to be your kids, mom. Have you noticed her immigration levels recently when bringing people in to be your kids mom? And by the way, shouldn't she be working for Facebook? Do your duty. That's we're telling young people, we're telling them we're not going to do a thing to make it easier for you to have your own children or your own family because families are for the rich and the poor. Families are for the tech tycoons now. They've got a ton of kids and for the Haitians huddled underneath the bridges at the border in south Texas, they've got a ton of kids, too, but for you, a middle-class American, sorry, your deepest desires are far beyond reach.

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Citibank will pay you not to reproduce so you can remain alone in your cube and if you're not fortunate enough to work at Citibank, Sandy Cortez will step in and for the first time in her life, build something. In this case, you build government-funded abortion camps on federal land just to make sure you never have to experience the burden of holding your own baby or being unconditionally loved by your own children. You're liberated now. Let's celebrate with brunch.

You have to wonder how long before Democrats sponsor legislation to distribute free cats to young people in the cities, placebos to replace the families they can no longer have. That's coming along with SSRIs in the water supply. You don't have to think too much about it. We're finally getting to see what their utopia looks like. Hope you feel better.

Tucker Carlson currently serves as the host of FOX News Channels (FNC) Tucker Carlson Tonight (weekdays 8PM/ET). He joined the network in 2009 as a contributor.

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Tucker Carlson: The problem is not with our resources, but our leaders - Fox News

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Hulk, Iron Fist and Spider-Man artist and creator of The One %,Kaare Andrews returns to the AWA comic book E-Ratic, for a new volume, now part of the AWA shared universe of superhero stories, including The Resistance, Moths,Knighted, andThe Joneses We also get a new Lesser Evils comic, Ginn #1 by Ian Grody, Justin Fair and Yishan Li, which I am not sure what will happen to this after Bill Jemas' departure. All in the AWA September 2022 solicits and solicitations.

E RATIC RECHARGED #1 CVR A ANDREWSAWAJUL221319JUL221320 E RATIC RECHARGED #1 CVR B DEODATO JR 3.99(W) Kaare Andrews (A / CA) Kaare AndrewsRecharge complete! The teenage hero with superpowers that only work for ten minutes a day is back to save the world again as he navigates even more pressing perils: young love, bullies, a broken family and the gauntlet that is high school. This time, young Oliver Leif is teamed with a barbarian princess who claims to be from another dimension. Spinning fromthe pages of The Resistance, E-Ratic combines electric action, teen drama, and pure comics fun.In Shops: Sep 07, 2022SRP: 3.99

GINN (LESSER EVIL) #1AWAJUL221327(W) Ian Grody, Justin Fair (A) Yishan Li (CA) Jonathon BartlettAfter his master sets him free, a hard-drinking, foul mouthed genie spirals into an existential crisis, until he falls for a human who works for the Make a Wish Foundation-and for once in eons-finds meaning. However, when his former master has a change of heart, and threatens to put the hurt on Ginn's girl, unless Ginn recommits to serving him-our troubled genie has to make an impossible choiceIn Shops: Sep 28, 2022SRP: 3.99

SACRAMENT #2 (MR)AWAJUL221321(W) Peter Milligan (A / CA) Marcelo FrusinThe Exorcist meets Alien in this sci-fi/horror story. In the year 3000, Mankind abandoned Earth and fled into outer space. Now, a disgraced priest, called into action to perform an exorcism on a remote space colony, is about to discover that no matter how far you run, you can't escape your demons, and the Devil is, in fact, real.In Shops: Sep 14, 2022SRP: 3.99

ABSOLUTION #3 (MR)AWAJUL221322(W) Peter Milligan (A) Lee Loughridge (A / CA) Mike DeodatoNina Ryan was a hired killer who brought nothing but pain and suffering to the world. Now, she has a month to prove that she can change. A month to make up for her crimes and find absolution, or the bombs that have been implanted in her head will explode, killing her instantly. As her journey of atonement is live-streamed to a fickle public, Nina is about todiscover that the road to redemption might be splattered with blood.In Shops: Sep 21, 2022SRP: 3.99

DEVILS HIGHWAY VOL 2 #5 (OF 5) (MR)AWAJUL221323(W) Ben Percy (A) Brent Schoonover, Nick Filardi (CA) B. SchoonoverA truck stacked with bodies is discovered along the US/Canada border, and Sharon Harrow and Quentin Skinner are on the case. Their mission: figure out how all of these corpses are connected. And when they uncover the terrifying truth, they will unearth a murder syndicate that has infiltrated the walls of the very institutions meant to protect us. Now our heroes areon the run-hunted by law enforcement and the trucking community-framed for crimes they didn't commit. In this actionconclusion, Sharon comes face-to-face with her most powerful adversary yetIn Shops: Sep 28, 2022SRP: 3.99

NEW THINK #4 (OF 5) CVR A RAHZAAH (MR)AWAJUL221324JUL221325 NEW THINK #4 (OF 5) CVR B CHOI (MR) 3.99(W) Gregg Hurwitz (A) Keron Grant (CA) RahzzahThis Black Mirror-style anthology examines the rapid proliferation of technology, the cultural and political polarization of the country, and the technocrats that have driven us to such extremes of thought that we need to present the present as somethingfuturistic. In this issue, people throughout history dream of a better tomorrow, filled with life-saving medicine,instant communication, and methods of travel that bring humanity closer together. Surely a world with such wonders should be a utopia. Right?In Shops: Sep 28, 2022SRP: 3.99

HIT ME TP VOL 01 (MR)AWAJUL221326(W) Christa Faust (A) Priscilla Petraites, Marco Lesko (CA) Jeff DekalA high-octane crime thriller from Christa Faust (Bad Mother, Redemption) and Priscilla Petraites (Chariot). Lulu has a very unique profession. When she is witness to the execution of one of her regular clients, she escapes into the night with a briefcase filled with diamonds and a pack of killers on her trail. Navigating the dark underbelly of decaying, early-90's Atlantic City, one step ahead of her pursuers, Lulu must call upon every one of her street-born instincts and underworld connections in what will be the longest and possibly last night of her lifeIn Shops: Sep 14, 2022SRP: 9.99

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Kaare Andrews Returns To E-Ratic In AWA September 2022 Solicits - Bleeding Cool News