Terms of Trade | What drives competitive populism in India? – Hindustan Times

Posted on April 14, 2022 by Danzig

Indias top bureaucrats are worried about political parties resorting to competitive populism and announcing fiscally unsustainable schemes to win votes in state elections. Reports suggest that they voiced these concerns to the Prime Minister in a meeting on April 2.

We did not need secretaries of the government of India to highlight the growing tendency towards competitive populism in India. Political parties are increasingly promising all sorts of things to voters from restoration of the old pension scheme for government employees to cash and two-wheelers for students who enter or finish college and free pilgrimage to senior citizens.

Is this new wave of competitive populism going to lead to a fiscal disaster in the country? Who exactly is responsible for this kind of behaviour? And can a political consensus be built to prevent such spending by state governments?

How big a problem is competitive populism in India?

This is not an easy question to answer. A state can spend money on providing free food over and above what the Public Distribution System (PDS) entitlements provide for, or it can spend money giving scooters to students who have entered college. There are enough examples of political parties making such promises in India.

And there is bipartisan support for this kind of politics. For example, both the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPI (M) led government in Kerala and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in Uttar Pradesh banked heavily on the free ration scheme in the elections held in 2021 and 2022. The Congress accused the BJP of copying its demand of giving free scooters to women students in the recently held Uttar Pradesh elections.

While a fiscal hawk will scoff at both kinds of spending, especially if the state is hard-pressed for resources, the actual economic impact of such programmes is likely to be quite different. Additional food entitlements are likely to generate tailwinds for aggregate demand as the recipient households will be able to spend the money they would have had to spend on food on other items. Such a scheme is also targeted towards the most needy. The same cannot be said about gifting scooters to students. That money would have had a better use somewhere else. Similarly, farm loan waivers are a sub-optimal use of money towards throwing palliatives at what is a structural problem and often at the cost of long-term spending in agriculture.

This qualitative difference in the effect of various populist schemes also underlines the pitfalls of reading too much into headline numbers on categories such as social service spending by state governments. Building a comprehensive quantitative and qualitative database of what and where exactly state governments are spending on populist schemes, and how it is affecting the macroeconomy and society is a project which can keep even a large think tank busy for the next couple of years.

What drives this political behaviour?

The lack of clarity on the second question is the biggest reason why some of these schemes have attracted economists who use randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to understand policy decisions and their impact in India.

While the RCT method has been duly recognised with a Nobel Prize to Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer in 2019, there is an illustrious list of economists who have spoken against the dangers of relying too much on RCTs to make large policy decisions. The short point is, economists, on their own, are unlikely to arrive at an agreement on the impact or efficacy of such policies.

This brings us to the question of why are politicians doing this? The clichd answer that they do not care about fiscal prudence will not suffice, because state governments have to adhere to a more stringent fiscal norm than the Centre in India. When read with the fact that states have been left with very little tax sovereignty after the roll-out of Goods and Services Tax (GST), this is an even more intriguing question.

At the risk of oversimplification, one can say that the best answer to this question was given by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a campaign speech during the recently held Uttar Pradesh elections. Speaking at a rally on February 20, Modi referred to a social media video, where an old woman was pledging loyalty to the BJP because she had tasted Modis salt (ration) and therefore wont ditch him. While this can sound like usual election rhetoric to some, political scientists have been arguing that the BJP has been making a concerted effort to centralise welfare delivery which also leads to greater attribution for giving these benefits to none other than the Prime Minister.

This extraordinary centralisation of power, not just institutionally but also within the BJP, implies that the voter is increasingly likely to attribute (that is, give credit for) the delivery of economic benefits to Modi rather than the state-level leader. This contrasts with much of the 2000s, where, after a spate of fiscal decentralisation, several state-level leaders built their reputations on the ability to deliver benefits Neelanjan Sircar, a senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research argued in a March 2021 Economic and Political Weekly article.

While Sircar argues that this process has also weakened the welfare credentials of chief ministers from the BJP and its allies too, and they will most likely look to establish their credentials not in welfare delivery but in Hindu mobilisation, it is not surprising that the anti-BJP parties have been trying to outdo the BJP by promising more populist schemes. Promises such as restoration of old pensions scheme and cash transfers by anti-BJP parties need to be seen in this light.

As is obvious, competitive populism by regional political forces is a last-ditch attempt to push back against the BJP which is the new national political hegemon in India. To meet such challenges, the BJP also indulges in competitive populism at the level of states, not to speak to decisions such as implementing PM-Kisan, which gives 6,000 to every farmer in India, from the Centre a decision taken after the BJP lost crucial state elections just before the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

Realpolitik suggests that regional parties are unlikely to prioritise long-term economic health over political survival. And that perhaps answers the third question.

Every Friday, HTs data and political economy editor, Roshan Kishore, combines his commitment to data and passion for qualitative analysis in a column for HT Premium, Terms of Trade. With a focus on one big number and one big issue, he will go behind the headlines to ask a question and address political economy issues and social puzzles facing contemporary India.

The views expressed are personal

Opinion | To Overcome the Republicans’ Culture War, Democrats Need to Punch Up, Not Down – POLITICO

Posted on April 14, 2022 by Danzig

A study by Way to Win, a network of progressive political donors that I helped start and which has moved over $200 million to grassroots efforts, media, candidates and research since 2018, found that in 2020, congressional Democrats spent three times more than Republicans on television ads touting bipartisanship. By contrast, Republicans went on offense, spending upwards of 10 times more than Democrats on ads with the words extremist and radical. The result? Democrats lost 12 seats in a cycle where they were projected to gain as many as 15. While Democrats handled the GOP with kid gloves, Republicans told a clear story with a clear villain, and it paid off.

The reason the Democratic Party keeps losing is not because some communities are speaking out against the violence they experience at the hands of the police or the immigration system. The reason Democrats lose is because they dont tell an effective story of who they are, what theyre up against and what they are fighting for. Democrats cant ignore the culture war being waged against them. But they need a different way to counter it. Whats needed is an inclusive populism that acknowledges how precarious life has become for far too many, even as those at the top are doing better than ever.

When Republicans go after Democrats as too woke, what theyre really doing is painting the party as too elite. Democrats, the GOP attack goes, are so far removed from the daily concerns of working people that they are more interested in virtue-signaling than kitchen table issues. And indeed, Republicans are hard at work to convey this message because they know its a winning one. Wokeness was cooked up by college professors, then boosted by corporations, states a strategy memo by the Republican Study Committee, which goes on to describe Democrats agenda as shaped entirely by corporate interests and radical, elite cultural mores.

This is cynical but savvy messaging, and it points to a real problem for Democrats. The partys biggest problem is not the effort to pursue racial justice, but the fact that Democrats are seen as and are out of touch with workers and people who are struggling to make ends meet.

Party leaders must confront this elitist image head-on. Instead of continuing down a path where Democrats address themselves to the mythical median voter, as some vocal pundits advise, while doing little to change the material conditions for the millions of Americans who are suffering, the party should embrace an inclusive style of populism that punches up at elites instead of down at activists. That means demanding the wealthy and corporations pay their fair share and the rules of the game get unrigged. Democrats can then emphasize what it is that ties us all together the fight for every individual to live a life with dignity.

This brand of populism appeals both to Democrats base of low wage workers and to many of the voters the party needs to persuade; it can serve as a bridge to grow the coalition. A recent Pew survey finds that 11 percent of the American public can be considered Populist Right, or voters who lean right on social issues but left on economics. Among this group, 75 percent think big corporations make too much profit, while over half think the federal government should raise taxes on households making more than $400,000 per year. This is a broadly popular agenda, and it should be the top priority of the Democratic Party. Some of President Joe Bidens domestic proposals would go a long way toward executing it, but hes been stymied too often by so-called centrists in his own party such as Rep. Josh Gottheimer and Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema.

Democrats can use this inclusive populist narrative to respond to voters top issue: inflation. As Lindsay Owens of Groundwork Collaborative has noted, corporate CEOs have repeatedly stated that they are using reports of inflation in some sectors of the economy as an excuse to raise prices on consumer goods. And Americans have an intuitive sense that they are being treated unfairly. According to a recent poll, three-quarters of Democrats and a majority of Republicans believe corporations are opportunistically raising prices under cover of inflation.

Democrats should also focus on issues that deliver concrete benefits to working Americans, and which motivate their voters to show up to the polls. Canceling student debt would disproportionately benefit Americans at the lower end of the economic scale; meanwhile failing to act will likely lead to a fall-off in turnout. According to a recent poll, 40 percent of Black voters and 37 percent of all Democratic voters say they might stay home in 2022 without debt cancellation.

The benefit of keeping the Democratic coalition united behind an inclusive, populist message was made crystal clear in Georgia in 2020. During the Georgia runoffs, where my organization supported grassroots groups such as the New Georgia Project, Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff presented a multiracial, multigenerational duo with a plan to send relief checks to families. Warnock and Ossoff did not shy away from naming villains and tagging their opponents as agents of corporate greed. At one point, Ossoff labeled the two Republican candidates, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, the Bonnie and Clyde of corruption in American politics.

The difference between the way these two Democrats ran compared to many others in the party was noteworthy. Democrats in Georgias high-stakes runoff election Tuesday are doing what their counterparts in other competitive Senate races didnt do: Theyre leaning in to a populist economic message, NBC News reported at the time. Today, Democrats have Warnock and Ossoff to thank for control of the Senate.

If Democrats want to succeed in November, they need to tell a story about how to secure broadly shared prosperity and justice for all. That requires calling out those who are working against this vision for the sake of private profit and personal gain not shunting aside some of the most vulnerable, and loyal, members of the party.

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Opinion | To Overcome the Republicans' Culture War, Democrats Need to Punch Up, Not Down - POLITICO

The Struggle for the Soul of the GOP – The New Republic

Posted on April 14, 2022 by Danzig

By his wedding day, Continetti had established himself as one of the Rights rising stars. He had published two books and had just launched a new outlet, The Washington Free Beacon, backed by hedge-fund billionaire Paul Singer, and designed to serve as a conservative rejoinder to left-leaning websites like ThinkProgress. A presentable white guy with glasses and a full head of hairimagine if Chris Hayes had a Republican cousinContinetti was an ideal face for the respectable Right in the Obama era, a polite young man who happened to believe that fiscal responsibility entailed taking a meat cleaver to the welfare state. While Breitbart News was running a vertical on black crime, The Washington Free Beacon was earning praise from liberals for its commitment to breaking news. Continetti poked the establishment to get its attention, not to draw blood. I dont listen to talk radio, he told an interviewer. I listen to NPR. To liberals, the signals were clear. He was on the Right, sure, but he wasnt one of them.

And yet he could always be trusted to advance the conservative line with absolute sincerity. His second book, The Persecution of Sarah Palin, offered a prickly defense of an unpredictable and courageous politician in the grand American populist tradition. After the Tea Party made its debut, he celebrated the emergence of a grassroots movement devoted to self-reliance, fidelity, piety, industry, and responsibility. Continettis dreams of a populism fueled by entitlement reform had zero space for Occupy Wall Street. Inequalities of condition are a fact of life, he lectured as protesters were streaming to Zuccotti Park in 2011. Some people will always be poorer than others.

If one figure stood for Continettis ideal politician, it was Paul Ryan. A decade older than Continetti, Ryan was another clean-cut veteran of the conservative establishment. Continetti described him as the brains behind the Tea Party and called Ryans budget programincluding major reductions in government spending, tax cuts tilted toward the wealthy, and privatization of Medicarethe GOPs only ambitious and intellectually coherent policy response to a looming fiscal crisis. (Steve Bannon, who had a very different view of what fueled the Tea Party, called Ryan a limp-dick motherfucker who was born in a petri dish at the Heritage Foundation.) The details of Ryanism were politically toxic, but Continetti didnt worry about the polls. Ideas, even controversial ones, are not hindrances in politics but boosters, he wrote. They propel you to the top. When Ryan looked set to take over as speaker of the House in October 2015, Continetti saw it as a coming-of-age moment for the Rights next generation. Liberals are terrified of what these young conservatives might accomplish, he wrote. Liberals should be.

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The Struggle for the Soul of the GOP - The New Republic

MegaCon 2022 after parties rock out to hits of the 1990s and Mecha disco – Attractions Magazine

Posted on April 14, 2022 by Danzig

MegaCon sci-fi, horror and anime convention hits Orlando from May 19-22, 2022 and the geek-fest keeps going with two rockin after-parties.

Moshi Moshi Productions, the producers of the official MegaCon 2022 after parties, is throwing a 90s Toons Gone Wild party on Friday, May 20, and a Mecha Disco on Saturday, May 21.

90s Toons Gone Wild at the Rosen Plaza Hotels 3Nine poolside bar and events area features celebrity guest Dante Basco, best known as Rufio in the 1990 Stephen Spielberg movie, Hook, and for his extensive voice work, including Prince Zuko in Nickelodeons Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Enjoy the DJ led dance party, full bar, giveaways, and more. Cosplay is encouraged, but not required. The party takes place from 8 p.m.-2 a.m. Parking at the hotel is $5.

Discounted tickets are available for $15 through April 30 and $20 May 1-15. Full price general admission is $25 starting May 16, or $30 at the door.

VIP tickets ($450) include admission for four guests, hightop table with four chairs, one bottle of vodka, four craft mixers of your choice, no waiting in line, private VIP area, VIP badge, and entry into a VIP raffle with a prize worth $300. Ages 21 and up only, with photo ID.

Mecha Disco at Rosen Plaza Hotels executive ballroom celebrates its 12th year as what Moshi Moshi Productions calls the largest cosplay party in Florida. Dress up as a Mech, robot, cyberpunk, cyborg, or whatever gets your geek on.

The event includes 3 DJs, laser light show, dancing, multiple bars, a cosplay contest with $500 in cash and prizes, giveaways, photo ops, and more. The party takes place from 8 p.m.-2 a.m. with the cosplay contest at 12:30 a.m.

Discounted tickets are available for $25 through April 30 and $30 May 1-15. Full price general admission is $35 starting May 16, or $40 at the door. Parking at the hotel is $10.

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MegaCon 2022 after parties rock out to hits of the 1990s and Mecha disco - Attractions Magazine

‘Dual’ star Karen Gillan says ‘GotG Vol. 3’ is the end of the Guardians as we know them – Syfy

Posted on April 14, 2022 by Danzig

Karen Gillan has played Nebula, cyborg Daughter of Thanos in quite a few movies enough that the character has gone from villain, to reluctant ally, to a heroic Avenger, and we've seen an alternate timeline version that's bad to her robotic bones. It's been quite a ride for the Guardians of the Galaxy, but Gillan says James Gunn's upcoming third film, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, is "the end of a chapter" and will be "amazing and sad."

Speaking to SYFY WIRE to promote the upcoming indie sci-fi film Dual, where she plays a woman and her clone who must fight to the death, Gillan teased what she could about Nebula's next appearances. The character will next feature in the fourth Thor movie, Thor: Love and Thunder, as Chris Hemsworth's Thor was last seen hitching a ride with the Guardians.

"Thor is going to be so much fun," she says of the Taika Waititi-directed film, set to hit theaters on July 8. "It's going to be hilarious in that Taika brand of comedy that we all love."

After that, we'll perhaps see a festive Nebula in the Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, due this December on Disney+. ("Yay!" is all a giddy Gillan can say about that.) Then, on May 5, 2023, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 will mark the end of an era.

"We're kind of coming to the end of this chapter of the Guardians as we know it. So there's a bittersweet nostalgic feeling settling in, for sure, as we film it," Gillan says. "We're closing out a chapter so you have to come and watch us close that out. It's going to be amazing and sad."

Gillan's Endgame performance as Nebula is somewhat similar to Dual, which hits theaters on Friday. Gillan stars as Sarah, a depressed, seemingly unambitious woman who is diagnosed with a terminal disease. She opts to take advantage of a technology that creates a clone of herself so that her loved ones won't have to grieve when she's gone. However, upon making a miraculous recovery, Sarah must face her clone in a government-mandated duel to the death, as there can only be one Sarah walking around. With one year to train and spurred by the fact that her family seems to like this clone more than her, the original Sarah readies to face herself.

The film, which is quirky, darkly funny, and sad in equal measure, was written and directed by Riley Stearns (The Art of Self Defense) and features his trademark dialogue style. The characters all speak in a deliberate, artificial, and overly expository way. This intentional affect, while perhaps off-putting at first, gives the movie freedom to find odd comedy or tap unexpectedly raw emotional truths.

But, Gillan doesn't think there's too much of a comparison to be made between two (or four) characters, even though both Sarahs speak robotically and the Nebulas are robotic.

"I would say that Nebula's pretty different from these characters," she says. "I mean, Nebula's part robot, but I don't really see her as very robotic. I would say she's more kind of affected by her upbringing with Thanos and her sister than any part of her that's robotic."

However, Gillan's experience making the blockbuster of all blockbusters that was Endgame did give her some great experience that helped with Dual.

"It was kind of good prep because I knew exactly how I liked to operate when acting opposite myself. I knew that, for Dual, I wanted a really great actress to act opposite so that I could react off of her, rather than someone reading off the lines who is not an actor or looking at an X on a stick," Gillan says, praising Finnish actress Katariina Havukainen, who stood in for the "other" Sarah on the set. "So that was really great. I wouldn't have thought of that had I not had Endgame experience before."

Dual opens in theaters on April 15.

'Dual' star Karen Gillan says 'GotG Vol. 3' is the end of the Guardians as we know them - Syfy

Secret Reddit Theory Claims Cesaro Has Debuted In AEW Already (And You Didn’t Notice) – WhatCulture

Posted on April 14, 2022 by Danzig

WWE.com

With Mark Henry recently teasing that we may soon get a "Cesaro sighting" in AEW, could it actually be that the real-life Claudio Castagnoli has already appeared on AEW programming?

It admittedly sounds a little out there, but Reddit is currently debating whether the Swiss Cyborg has been hiding in plain sight on AEW TV for the past month or more.

Seemingly originating from the En Podd Om Wrestling podcast, this theory suggest that Claudio has been seen in All Elite Wrestling as a masked cameraman. Now, said masked-up cameraman has been visible across AEW content for a few weeks now, and this school of thought believes that at some point the fella will end up being revealed to be Cesaro.

This figure was notably seen during the fantastic CM Punk vs. Dax Harwood match on the 23 March episode of AEW Dynamite, and he can also be spotted as far back as this year's Revolution PPV.

Clearly the cameraman has a solid frame on him, isn't a stranger to the gym, and could well be a similar height to Claudio Castagnoli, but would AEW really debut the former WWE United States Champion in such a way? And if so, what would be the particular upside of having Castagnoli having opted to hide in front of our eyes? Of course, this could all also just simply be a cautious camera operator keeping themselves covered while the world still deals with a very real pandemic.

It does seem inevitable that the Swiss Superman will turn up in AEW at some point in the future, and it's ultimately up to you whether you believe or not that he's actually already #AllElite and has already been on our screens.

Posted On:11th Apr 2022

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Secret Reddit Theory Claims Cesaro Has Debuted In AEW Already (And You Didn't Notice) - WhatCulture

Female-led start-up removes the bias from artificial technology in fashion – fashionunited.uk

Posted on April 14, 2022 by Danzig

Artificial Intelligence has been plagued by accusations of inaccuracy and of being a vehicle for racial profiling. Perpetuating the biases of its programmers, who are often young, white Silicon Valley males, the technology seemed to have become just another gatekeeper to prevent the already marginalized from being considered for jobs or advancing in the workplace. The algorithms are said to have significantly impacted racial and gender diversity in particular.

But one female-founded Toronto start-up operating in the fashion and beauty sector is betting on AI to help shape a fairer future. Halt AI co-founders, Amanda Cosco and Roya Sedigh who have extensive backgrounds in technology and fashion found they were regularly auditing algorithms for bias. And so the seed of Halt AI was sewn. FashionUnited speaks to Cosco about Halt AIs latest launch, the Diversity Analytics Dashboard, which provides detailed analytics on the diversity of over 500 fashion brands, influencers, and retailers.

Most of the stories you hear about AI are cyborg doom and gloom and kind of scary especially when it comes to facial recognition, says Cosco. But if we can use AI for good in order to improve diversity then its a pushback against that doom and gloom narrative.

They identified that most brands measured their diversity from a hiring perspective but were neglecting their marketing and original content so they decided to use their technology to offer brands a snapshot of what their social media and marketing looks like from the outside. This stoked brands interest. Brands were asking for contextual information, like how their efforts compared to other brands, explains Cosco. If they scored 7 out of 10 on race, well is that good?

This motivated the creation of a benchmark for companies which evaluated their performance not just alongside their peers but within the industry in general. Among other criteria, it measures six diversity dimensions race, age, gender, body-type, skin tone, and disability - for each brand across its Visual Content.

Pre-funding, and having received a number of grants from the Canadian government along with angel investment, Halt AIs clients currently include Fortune 500 companies. The founders began with fashion and beauty because both are industries with high impact particularly on women. Says Cosco, The technology is ready to scale into other industries, its just about building the brand reputation right now.

A handful of content auditing services already exist, such as the Geena Davis Institute which tracks gender representation in media and entertainment. But Cosco says they are expensive, not scalable and riddled with human error. What makes Halt unique is that we have an accuracy rate of over 90 percent and we can be quick, processing entire industries within weeks.

Only a year old, Halt AI data quickly confirmed that in luxury fashion, for instance, the industry is still very white, very young, with little representation with regards to disability, and while there is diversity in terms of race, the skin tone tends to remain light. Post BLM and the George Floyd murder, companies made a lot of promises and there has been a lot of attention on that community, but the disability community is next to be spotlit, says Cosco. Athletic brands like Nike perform very well in terms of diversity whereas its the usual suspects, like Chanel, that dont have a lot of diversity.

But Halt Ai is not about finger wagging. The quantitive analysis they carry out gives companies raw data so they can make decisions within their marketing. Right now Cosco believes there is an absence of insight which leaves brands with a huge blind spot.

With NDAs in place Cosco is limited in what she can say about specific clients but there are some general patterns she has observed. Brands are generally surprised by their lack of representation, particularly within disability, its probably something they just dont think about, she says. Were trying to build for them analysis so that they can track improvements over time to understand better, but helping them understand where they sit within the larger industry, telling them they are within the tenth percentile or ninetieth percentile has proved useful."

We want to become the global standard for measuring diversity across every industry so that we can provide a seal of approval, a threshold of diversity that is acceptable for advertising, says Cosco. Right now theres really nothing like that.

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Female-led start-up removes the bias from artificial technology in fashion - fashionunited.uk

Lynn Hershman Leeson Thinks It’s Time That Her Work Is Recognized – Hyperallergic

Posted on April 14, 2022 by Danzig

SAN FRANCISCO Lynn Hershman Leesons first solo exhibition at San Franciscos Altman Siegel includes an old-fashioned metal lunchbox with a ceramic mouth inside; a digital print of a cat crossed with a jellyfish; digital prints of cyborgs; and stamps that the artist made with her image on them and sent out because, in her own words, I wanted the government to cancel my face.

Lynn Hershman Leeson: About Face features collages, paintings, drawings, sculptures, and videos from the last five decades of Lynn Hershman Leesons career. Reflecting on how the show came about, the artist describes how she kept seeing faces as she looked through her collection of work over the years which makes sense, since so much of her work is about identity, along with other themes like erasure and time.

You know, its like Duchamp said, that if youre lucky you have three ideas in your lifetime. Theyre all the same idea but they look different, she said, laughing and adding that maybe she only has two ideas: [one] using technology like sound and censors, which is really where the AI in cyborgs comes from, and maybe the other one is about identity and loss of self and where the blur of reality ends and what makes something fiction.

This line blurring reality and fiction was the subject of one the artists most important bodies of work: a five-year series revolving around the creation of the fictional character of Roberta Breitmore. Starting in 1973, Hershman Leeson performed Roberta Breitmore going about her daily tasks, such as getting a drivers license and apartment, or putting an ad in the newspaper for a roommate. Ways of altering your face and erasing your identity come up again and again in the show, such as in Reconstructing Roberta (2005), where marks on her face show where she will be getting Botox, an eyelid lift, and a dermabrasian peel, among other alterations.

Walking through the exhibition before sitting down for an interview, Hershman Leeson pauses in front of a wax head with a wig, sensors, and a tape recorder.

This is a historic piece because its really the first media work anybody ever did, she said. You stand in front of it and if you listen, it talks to you. It was really about interaction and technology, but nobody had ever combined sound and interaction before, so nobody knew what it was.

This sculpture, Self Portrait as Another Person (1965), is from Hershman Leesons Breathing Machines series, which she made after developing respiratory problems while pregnant. The artist recorded her breathing and added the sound to the pieces, along with snippets of dialogue, like Whats your name? and I want to know all about you. Hershman Leeson submitted the piece to the Berkeley Art Museum at University of California, Berkeley in 1966 when invited to present work as part of a showcase of female artists. However, the Breathing Machines were met with such ire from the museums curator who, put off by the disconcerting, breathing, and interrogatory sculptures, told the artist that sound wasnt art that the show closed a day after its opening. Though extreme, it is an example of the resistance that Hershman Leesons work met for decades.

Now, after years of feeling ignored, Lynn Hershman Leeson is finally receiving attention from the art world, with her practice combining art, technology, and performance often called ahead of its time (The Artist is Prescient was the headline of a New York Times review of her show last year). Her 2010 documentary, !Women Art Revolution: A Secret History on 40 years of the feminist art movement was selected by MOMA as one of the best documentaries of the year. In 2014, the ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe in Germany mounted the first major retrospective of her work. Last year, she had her first solo museum exhibition at the New Museum in New York. And later this month, she will be presenting a new video at the Venice Biennial, Logic Paralyzes the Heart,(2022) about a 61-year-old cyborg.

Hershman Leeson thinks its about time, as she has been making and doing things such as exploring sensors, artificial intelligence, and cyborgs that no one else was making or doing for decades. For years, I couldnt show my work, I couldnt get a gallery, and people in New York wouldnt pay attention to me, she says. So I think I deserve it just for not giving up if nothing else.

Lynn Hershman Leeson: About Face continues at Altman Siegel (1150 25th Street, San Francisco, California) through April 23. The exhibition was organized by the gallery.

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Lynn Hershman Leeson Thinks It's Time That Her Work Is Recognized - Hyperallergic

The Flash: Mysterious Rumor Suggests 2023 Film Will Reveal Superman’s Status – The Illuminerdi

Posted on April 14, 2022 by Danzig

*Warning: The following article may contain potential spoilers for The Flash. Read at your own risk.*

It looks like Andy Muschiettis The Flash will retcon more than one element in the DCEU. We already know that Michael Keatons Batman will take over from Ben Afflecks Caped Crusader after the events of the film, as he will be starring in the HBO Max film Batgirl.

However, Batman isnt the only character that will be retconned after the end of the movie, which is currently set to release in theatres on June 23, 2023.

RELATED: AQUALAD: NEW HBO MAX SERIES IN WORKS WITH CHARLIZE THERON PRODUCING

According to a [now-deleted] tweet from scooper ViewerAnon, only The Flash (Ezra Miller), Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot), and Aquaman (Jason Momoa) will be the only heroes of the SnyderVerse left after the events of the movie. A post-credit scene will reportedly make it clear that Henry Cavills Superman no longer exists in the current DCEU timeline. In the scene, Barry Allen will apparently mention Superman to Aquaman, with the latter responding that he has no idea who Allen is referring to.

SPOILERS: Morbius Post-Credits Scen...x

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This naturally means that Sasha Calles Supergirl will take over the new DCEU, alongside Michael Keaton and Leslie Graces Batgirl, who will be introduced in the aforementioned HBO Max film. If The Flash was delayed to 2023, and Batgirls events are directly affected by that movie, expect the movie to also be delayed to next year.

There are rumblings, however, that Henry Cavill has reprised his role for The Flash as Superman, potentially in the timeline where General Zod (Michael Shannon) and Faora-Ul (Antje Traue) are. Both actors were confirmed to star in the film, per a press release from Warner Bros, but Cavills presence as the Man of Steel is pure speculation. It would be great to see him reprise his role once again, since the last time he played the character in a theatrical DCEU film, he had a CGI lip.

His performance wasnt as great as it was in the Zack Snyder films Man of Steel and Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, but the Snyder Cut salvaged his incredible work and brought the character to a terrific comeback during its climax.

RELATED: FANTASTIC BEASTS: THE SECRETS OF DUMBLEDORE FINAL TRAILER AHEAD OF 4/15 RELEASE

The Flash is directed by Andy Muschietti, with a script written by Christina Hodson. It will star Ezra Miller, Ron Livingston, Michael Keaton, Kiersey Clemons, Michael Shannon, Antje Traue, Sasha Calle, Ben Affleck, Maribel Verd, and Temuera Morrison. Ezra Millers future as The Flash is in limbo after their arrest in Hawaii, following a physical confrontation with customers at a karaoke bar. The actor had reportedly been kicked out of numerous bars months before their arrest.

After Miller was granted bail, a couple filed a restraining order against them, who then was accused of assault. Warner Bros. responded to their arrest, by putting the actors future projects on hold, which include their role in the Fantastic Beasts franchise as Credence Barebone, and in the DCEU, during an emergency meeting. Miller will next appear in Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, a movie already embroiled in a slew of controversies, which releases in theatres Friday.

What do you think? Should Henry Cavill reprise his role as Superman in The Flash? Is he the greatest iteration of the Man of Steel on the big screen? Let us know in the comments below and be sure to discuss about it on Twitter!

KEEP READING: POWER RANGERS 30TH ANNIVERSARY SEASON: DAVID YOST SET TO RETURN

Source: ComicBookMovie

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The Flash: Mysterious Rumor Suggests 2023 Film Will Reveal Superman's Status - The Illuminerdi

Here are the games coming to Xbox next week – OnMSFT.com

Posted on April 14, 2022 by Danzig

Spring is in full swing, and the Xbox titles keep coming. A total of 8 games are set to release on Xbox consoles next week from April 11-15.

This brand new platformer is old school in the purest sense. In it, your only objective is to evade the many foes and obstacles thrown your way.

This 2D shooter features a blend of Metal Slug-style action and metroidvania exploration, presented with an 80s action flick aesthetic. The game has players switching between four characters with unique abilities to blast the giant robots, cyborg ninjas, and horrible hybrid creates that come their way.

Another side-scrolling platform shooter, you play as a robot resurrected from the scrap heap on a mission to save planet DC-128b. Just as the game's title implies, you'll have to scavenge for new bodily attachments for your cyborg if you want to prevail. Shoot, loot, attach, repeat.

A relaxing jigsaw puzzle game with minimalist hand-drawn art centered around you guessed it cats and animals.

A point-and-click hidden object puzzle adventure game set in the 1950s, in which players assume the role of a paranormal investigator on a quest to find his friend Helen a young reporter who has gone missing in the strange and mysterious town of Serpent Creek.

In this retro-inspired shooter (you'll definitely see Mega Man influences here) you take on the role of Battle Kid as he infiltrates an ancient high-tech fortress to stop a super-mech from being unleashed on the island and its denizens.

This title combined elements of the dating sim and the farming sim. In it, you will endeavor to raise and sell your crops while spending time with the local girls in your pursuit of true love.

The protagonist of the action-adventure is a boy with a prosthetic face. With the help of his friends and a handheld gaming device that can communicate with the dead, he will get to the bottom of a series of murders being committed in his small, sleepy town.

While there aren't any AAA titles scheduled to be released next week, it is still a pretty solid lineup overall. Especially if you are a fan of indie games. These games are playable on Xbox One and Series X/S.

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Here are the games coming to Xbox next week - OnMSFT.com

Ed Harris Walks Tall on Criterion for Our Home Video Pick of the Week – Film School Rejects

Posted on April 14, 2022 by Danzig

Walker [Criterion Collection]

What is it? A crazy true story about the time an American was the dictator of Nicaragua.

Why see it? Some stories are too bonkers to believe, and the subject of Alex Coxs 1987 masterpiece is one such historical footnote. William Walker was an educated man turned mercenary in the 19th century whose move into Nicaragua saw him take control of the country for several months. He had American support, at first, but his antics revealed a highly unstable man heading toward implosion. Ed Harris is a charismatic wonder here headlining a terrific ensemble delivering a surprisingly creative and funny movie. Cox takes an increasingly anachronistic approach ensuring big laughs and sly observations along the way. Its a subversive gem, and the extras included on the new Criterion disc are filled with more insight and thoughts. Pick this one up, people!

[Extras: Commentary, documentary, featurette, short films]

What is it? Two brothers bond over bicycle racing and medical conditions.

Why see it? The first of Warner Archives two Kevin Costner releases is a fine sports drama that manages some emotion and minor thrills alongside its race sequences. Costner plays older brother to David Grant, and the pair find some compelling drama in their family dynamics and situation. Rae Dawn Chong and Alexandra Paul join as love interests and are given more to do than expected. John Badhams direction is solid throughout but shines during the race sequences which find energy and danger along the scenic route.

[Extras: None]

What is it? Five college graduates come of age in 1971.

Why see it? Warner Archives second Kevin Costner release is his first feature collaboration with director Kevin Reynolds (Waterworld, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves). Its an affecting, humorous coming of age tale set at the tail end of the Vietnam War that follows five friends on a road trip towards adulthood. Costner plays the de facto leader of the group which includes Judd Nelson, and together they laugh, fight, and discover whats really important in life. Reynolds infuses the character piece with fun beats including some impressive airplane/helicopter action and an impromptu wedding. Its a good one about a simpler time.

[Extras: None]

What is it? A social worker discovers a shocking truth.

Why see it? Daily life is filled with so many transgressions, big and small, that many are often allowed to fade into obscurity. This film highlights one that demands attention the UK government began a program in the late 40s shipping orphans to Australia for a better life, but many of the kids were told their parents were dead while the parents were told their child was in a good home but wasnt publicly acknowledged until 2010. Upon arrival in Australia the children entered foster care, and many were abused at the hands of a religious home. Its a powerful watch with a pair of strong supporting turns by Hugo Weaving and David Wenham.

[Extras: Featurette, interviews]

What is it? Part Man, Part Machine, All Cop.

Why see it? Paul Verhoevens 1987 masterpiece targets corporate shenanigans in a world thats constantly for sale (ie the real world). A cop is gunned down, one of many, and the company currently running Detroits police department turns him into a cyborg product. Of course, you cant keep a good cop down, and soon hes rebelling against his masters while also targeting criminals left and right. Big action, big laughs, and lots of bloody squibs make for a fantastically entertaining satire that never gets old. Heres hoping no one ever tried to remake it.

[Extras: 4K restoration of theatrical and directors cuts, commentaries, interviews, featurettes, deleted scenes]

What is it? Never trust a magician.

Why see it? The third standalone Spider-Man film under Marvels guidance is arguably its best yet despite a fairly stupid finale. The ending cant tank the film, though, as the movie delivers real heart and emotional weight along the way. Doctor Strange tries to help young Peter and instead sets in motion a messed up chain of events by opening a rift into the metaverse. The highlight here is the arrival of two past Spider-Men, and both bring laughs, depth, and rich character to the proceedings. The disc has the usual generic extras typical of the MCU releases, but honestly the movie itself is worth the pickup.

[Extras: Bloopers, featurettes]

What is it? A man jumps bodies every twelve hours.

Why see it? South Korean genre cinema is always worth watching, and this recent gem is a great example why. A man wakes after a car crash, but its not his reflection in the mirror. Twelve hours later he jumps into another body, and so it goes as he finds himself in a race against time to discover who he is and why hes leaping from person to person. Throw in some terrific action sequences, and this becomes a terrifically entertaining watch delivering big thrills, emotion, and philosophical observations.

[Extras: Featurette]

What is it? A scientist creates life with deadly consequences.

Why see it? The conceit here was well-intentioned give Mary Shelley the same recognition afforded Bram Stoker but the execution leaves a lot to be desired. Kenneth Branagh stars and directs, and the film is a surprising slog that feels like an exaggerated costume drama. The pieces dont work, the casting is off (including Robert De Niros turn as the monster), and we never really feel the intended epic nature of it all. Arrows new 4K restoration is fine and retains the grain of the original.

[Extras: New 4K restoration, commentary, interviews, documentary, featurette, 2K restoration of the very first screen adaptation of Frankenstein]

What is it? A killer stalks Los Angeles during the countdown to New Years.

Why see it? As far as holiday-themed slashers go, this one makes good use of its holiday of choice even if the resulting film is pretty standard. There are some engaging beats here as the film plays fast and loose with its killer someones calling threats, someone else is killing women, and 80s stalwart Grant Cramer is acting all kinds of weird. Its probably played a bit too straightforward for its own good, but its an entertaining enough tale for genre fans as a handful of surprises and diversions keep viewers on their toes until the end.

[Extras: New 2K master, commentary, making of]

What is it? A giant octopus terrorizes a coastal town.

Why see it? As far as Jaws knockoffs go, you really cant dismiss one that opens with a baby in a stroller being the first victim. Director Ovidio Assonitis keeps things PG-rated, like its inspiration, and brings in the expected characters like an expert, officials who dont listen to warnings, and others. Its silly stuff with mostly bland kills, but we get some exciting sequences too as the octopus attacks boats. One shot showing the aftermath of an attack during a race is pretty fantastic. Add in a stellar Steve Cipriani score, and youve got a fun time at the exploitation cinema.

[Extras: None]

What is it? Ten films from the 80s!

Why see it? Mill Creeks 4-disc set collects ten wholly unrelated films from the 80s, and as youd expect, some are better than others. The highlights here include Roxanne, The New Kids, Band of the Hand, Little Nikita, Suspect, and Blue Thunder. Less appealing are the likes of Like Father Like Son, Vice Versa make it a body swap double feature! Punchline, and Whos Harry Crumb? This would lean towards a buy recommend if the films featured any extras, but theyre all barebones.

[Extras: None]

What is it? Ten films from the 90s!

Why see it? Like the release above, Mill Creeks collection of ten arbitrary films from the 90s comes on four discs and with zero extras. The good ones here include White Palace, Donnie Brasco, The Freshman, Anaconda, and I Know What you Did Last Summer. The lesser titles are Housesitter, The Matchmaker, One True Thing, The Deep End of the Ocean, and The Devils Own.

[Extras: None]

Also out this week:

The Abominable Dr. Phibes/Dr. Phibes Rises Again [KL Studio Classics], CMon CMon, Chucky Season One, Fabian: Going to the Dogs, Last Looks, Warhunt

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Ed Harris Walks Tall on Criterion for Our Home Video Pick of the Week - Film School Rejects

Forget The Closeouts, Pay Attention To These Deserving Pan Champs Instead – FloGrappling

Posted on April 14, 2022 by Danzig

Now the dust has settled on Pans I've had time to reflect on the events of the second-most important event on the IBJJF calendar.

I'll save my thoughts on the closeouts for another day as I feel it's more important to focus on the champions who actually competed for their gold medals. Below, Ive listed nine standouts who particularly impressed me. Not only did they rise to the top of the podium but they did so in a way that left an impression.

There is a pervasive (and unfortunate) mentality among many jiu-jitsu competitors who believe that winning is all that matters, and they seem satisfied in doing the absolute minimum possible to get their hand raised. Thats not how legacies are created. When you think of the greatest champs in the history of our sport, they didnt make their names by stalling their way to an advantage win.

The names on this list are good examples of the kind of competitors who will help take the sport of jiu-jitsu in the right direction. They fought the hardest, did everything possible to secure a decisive victory and put on a show of athleticism and technique in the process. These are the kind of athletes we love to watch, and deserve the most attention.

Middleweight champ Tainan Dalpra Of Art Of Jiu-Jitsu, one of the best pound-for-pound black belts in the world and a World and Pan champion in 2021, is following up his incredible rookie year with a strong start to the season. There doesnt seem to be anybody standing in his way, and the gap between him and the rest of the middleweight division only seems to be growing.

Even with his precision technique he still has room to improve, as hes only 21 years of age and in his second year as a black belt. Tainan is the only male black belt who could feasibly win the IBJJF Grand Slam, as he is the only name to have won gold at both IBJJF majors so far this season (gold medals at the European Championships in Rome and now the Pan Championships in Florida). No word yet on whether he would compete at the Brazilian Nationals in May, but he is very much the favorite to win once again at Worlds in June.

Watch:

Tainan Dalpra def Roberto Jimenez via triangle | watch here

Tainan Dalpra def Eduardo Carvalho via choke from the back (2:21) | watch here

Tainan Dalpra def Ronaldo Junior via points (2-0) | watch here

Middleweight: Tainan Dalpra def Jeferson Guaresi via points (3-0) | watch here

Its rare to see a cross-collar choke from mount in the black belt divisions these days, and even less so in a final of a major tournament like Pans. Dream Art's Anna Rodrigues submitted 2018 world champ Amanda Monteiro of GF Team in the final, earning her second major title of the season. Rodrigues won gold at the IBJJF Euros earlier this year, and is now one of the few remaining names who could potentially win the IBJJF Grand Slam.

Watch:

Anna Rodrigues def Amanda Monteiro via collar choke from mount (9:02) | watch here

Who couldnt be impressed by the performance of Roberto "Cyborg" Abreu? The last time Cyborg won a Pan Championship gold medal was way back in 2008. Now 41 years of age and taking on men 15-20 years younger than himself, he faced opponents who probably hadnt even started jiu-jitsu when he got his black belt. He beat three GF Team heavy hitters in a row: Wallace Costa in the quarterfinal, Davi Cabral in the semifinal and Gutemberg Pereira in the final. He didnt concede a single sweep or takedown in the process, maintained a lead in every match and ended the tournament without getting scored on once.

Watch:

Roberto "Cyborg" Abreu def Gutemberg Pereira via score (2-0) | watch here

Checkmat's Nathalie Ribeiro (aka "Tata") had an entertaining finals match with the scrappy Ffion Davies but it was her semifinal against Janaina Maia of Gracie Humaita that particularly stands out. Ribeiro aggravated a knee injury just seconds into the match and it looked like she may not be able to continue but after a brief moment she shook it off and went to war in a thriller that went the full 10 minutes. That was followed by another physical encounter with her friendly rival Davies. Ribeiro used her flexible spider guard to counter the go-forward game of her opponent and ultimately reverse position, winning via points.

Watch:

Nathalie Ribeiro def Ffion Davies via points (2-0) | watch here

Taking the gold medal in the lightweight division with a calculated and powerful performance, Johnatha Alves beat Andy Murasaki of Atos in the final 2-0. After an intense and ice-cold stare down, the Art Of Jiu-Jitsu black belt came out fast and scored early and kept the pressure on his opponent throughout. Alves three matches leading into the final all ended via submission; he finished Eduardo Roque in his opener, Daniel Aquino in the quarterfinal and Natan Cheung in the semifinal. That gave Alves his third IBJJF Pan gold medal as a black belt in three consecutive years.

Watch:

Johnatha Alves def Andy Murasaki (2-0) | watch here

The sole European to claim a gold medal at the 2022 IBJJF Pans, Maria Malyjasiak scored one of the most impressive submissions of the tournament with a chokeaplata against Izadora Cristina Silva of Dream Art in the medium-heavyweight final. The chokeaplata is the name given to a collar choke scored from an omoplata position, and Malyjasiak really gave no opportunity for her opponent to even get in the game as she came out fast and aggressive, deftly transitioning from a triangle to the omoplata position before sinking in the match-ending choke.

Watch:

Maria Malyjasiak vs Izadora Cristina Silva via choke-o-plata | watch here

The light-featherweight champion Meyram Maquine of Dream Art went into the division as the number 2 seed and proved why he is among the divisions top competitors with wins against Diogo Reis, Kevin Carrasco and Lucas Pinheiro to claim the gold medal. Pinheiro looked like a beast in this tournament, manhandling his opponents and submitting the extremely tough Hiago George with an ankle lock in the semifinal, but Meyram imposed his game on Pinheiro and did what nobody else could do by putting him in bad positions, outscoring him 7-2.

Watch:

Meyram Alves def Lucas Pinheiro via points (7-2) | watch here

The heavyweight division between Melissa Cueto of Alliance and Maggie Grindatti of Fight Sports was a tough physical match with both athletes fighting through adversity and physical pain. Grindatti came into the match with a serious elbow injury from ADCC Trials the previous week and was in effect competing with one arm, while Cueto took an errant blow to the face that caused her eye to swell with a large hematoma. Cueto was able to get the back of Grindatti and find a choke in the final 60 seconds of a knock-down, drag-out encounter. An incredible showing from both in a very exciting final.

Watch:

Melissa Cueto def Maggie Grindatti via choke (9:22) | watch here

Queen of the roosterweights, Mayssa Bastos of Unity Jiu-Jitsu continues her dominance over the division. Her final against Lavinia Barbosa of Checkmat was a showcase of top pressure and demonstrates that you dont need to be big to be a heavy top player. Bastos is one of the few black belts still in the running for a grand slam following golds at Euros and now Pans.

Watch:

Mayssa Bastos def Lavinia Barbosa via points (9-0) | watch here

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Forget The Closeouts, Pay Attention To These Deserving Pan Champs Instead - FloGrappling

OnPolitics: Will GOP Rep. Kevin McCarthy be the next House Speaker? – USA TODAY

Posted on April 14, 2022 by Danzig

Happy hump day, OnPolitics readers.

More on the two suspects accused of impersonating law enforcement agents: A federal magistrate Tuesday rejected prosecutors' request to detainArian Taherzadeh and Haider Ali, who were arrested last week for offering personal gifts, including rent-free apartments, to at least two members of the Secret Service.

The two allegedly posed as federal law enforcement agents to gain access to the agency, butU.S. Magistrate G.Michael Harvey questioned theirability to follow through on the lavish gifts.

Harvey also said there is no evidence thatTaherzadeh, 40, and Ali, 35, tried to infiltrate the Secret Service or posed a risk to national security.

"There has been no showing that national security information has been compromised," he ruled.

The suspects were scheduled for releaseWednesday morning forproper placement in home confinement with family members.Assistant U.S. Attorney Joshua Rothstein said the government would possibly appeal Harvey's ruling.

Defense lawyers argued for release of alleged impersonators: Attorneys representingTaherzadeh and Ali said prosecutors had spun"the wildestconspiracy theories imaginable"bygrossly exaggeratingclaims against their clients.

It's Amy and Chelsey with today's top stories out of Washington.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., is treading a thin line between the moderate and far right wings of his party in an attempt to climb the ladder to House speaker, a role currently occupied by political opponent and fellow representative fromCalifornia, Democrat Nancy Pelosi.

But maintaining a balance between the conservatives who attend white nationalist rallies, the traditionalists weary of RINOaccusations ("Republicans In Name Only") and the few House Republicans who have publicly denounced former President Donald Trump will prove tricky.

A GOP House majority could ensure McCarthy the role he's openly coveted for so long, but heavy opposition from one Republican faction toward another could hurt the party's chances during the November midterm elections.

"If he tries to silence the crazies, they will turn against him, possibly denying him a majority in the House vote on the speakership," said Jack Pitney, a government professor at Claremont McKenna College in California. "If he doesn't try to silence the crazies, the party will suffer reputational damage, and non-crazy Republicans will start looking for another leader."

If Republicans triumph in November, experts say McCarthy has a good chance at the speaker role.

"McCarthy has strong support because he is a prolific fundraiser and has tremendous depth on policy," said Alice Stewart, who served as the chief spokeswoman for former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabees 2016 presidential campaign. "The wildcard is the new incoming GOP member class, who could be campaigning on an anti-establishment, non-vote for McCarthy, platform. If that were to happen, anything's possible."

Want this news roundup in your inbox every night?Sign up for/the OnPolitics newsletterhere.

President Joe Biden called Russia's attack on Ukraine a "genocide" on Tuesday while talking with reporters before heading back to the White House from Iowa.

The statement comes after Russian President Vladimir Putin said peace talks had reached a "dead end" and Russian troops will not leave Ukraine until the Kremlin's goals are accomplished.

Its become clearer and clearer that Putin is trying to wipe out the idea of being Ukrainian, Biden said.

Death count rises: Over 10,000 civilians have been killed in city of Mariupol since the beginning of the invasion in February, Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boychenko said Monday.That number could reach more than 20,000 in Mariupol alone, according to Boychenko.

How do you prove genocide? Harold Hongju Koh, an international law professor at Yale Law School, told USA TODAY that in order to prove genocide, there has to be a high level of intent.

"The tricky part of it which is relevant to the President's statement yesterday is if I kill one person, that's homicide," he said. "If I kill that person with the intent to destroy every person of that persons ethnic group, then it could be a part of genocide, but you don't know."

Leading the league: San Francisco Giants' Alyssa Nakken becomes the first female coach on the field for a Major League Baseball game. Check out more coverage of this seasonfrom USA TODAY's Sports team.-- Amy and Chelsey

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OnPolitics: Will GOP Rep. Kevin McCarthy be the next House Speaker? - USA TODAY

Ukraine war: the key role played by volunteer militias on both sides of the conflict – The Conversation

Posted on April 14, 2022 by Danzig

One of the features of modern warfare is the role played by non-state militias, and Ukraine is no exception. Reporting of the war has highlighted the role of the Wagner Group on the Russian side, for instance. This 6,000 strong mercenary force, which is usually based in Africa and recently saw action in the Sahel, is believed to be funded by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a businessman with close links to Vladimir Putin.

About 1,000 Wagner Group fighters have been drafted in as part of the invasion. It was reported at the end of March that members of the group had been tasked with finding and assassinating the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky.

Alongside the Wagner Group, Moscow has also drafted in militia volunteers from both Chechnya and Syria to reinforce the Russian army ahead of assaults on key strategic areas in Ukraine. On the other side, Ukraine has relied heavily upon established militias such as the Azov Battalion, as well as newly formed civilian militias, to repel Russian armed forces.

Militias are armed non-state groups that are usually recruited from the civilian population to support state security forces, primarily during times of emergency. These para-militarised, quasi-institutional groups strengthen both the quantity and sometimes the quality of the states military capability.

Governments often contract militia groups to conduct operations against armed rebel organisations during counterinsurgency warfare. In Colombia, the Bogota government enlisted the support of right-wing paramilitary groups often trained by the US in its war against Farc and other left-wing insurgent groups. Militias have also been used by governments as a protector against internal threats, such as threats of coups from other state actors, including the military.

Depending on how close the militia is to the government, the state may provide weapons, resources, training and intelligence to the group. In other cases, a state will delegate power to a militia to conduct military operations on its behalf.

Militias have also often been used by states in inter-state warfare, so their use in the war in Ukraine is unsurprising. What is surprising is the role these militias are playing in the conflict. Militias deployed by Russia are tightly controlled, recruited, directed and resourced by Russias government and armed forces. On the Ukrainian side, the state-militia relationship is more ambiguous and fluid, with the Kyiv government not always securing direct control over pro-Ukrainian militias that can be deemed semi-independent or independent armed actors.

In early March, it emerged that Russia had contracted the Chechen Kadyrov militia to conduct specific operations in Ukraine, including a plot to kill President Zelensky. The deployment of the militia by Russia was also viewed as a form of psychological warfare in that it was designed to instil fear and terror into the minds of both the Ukrainian armed forces and the civilian population, given the brutality associated with the Kadyrov militia in past conflicts. Russian forces have also begun recruiting volunteers from pro-Assad militias involved in the Syrian civil war. It is believed these militias are already in Russia awaiting deployment to Ukraine.

As for the Wagner Group unlike other militias deployed by Russia it has been heavily involved in pursuing Russias foreign policy objectives in both Africa and the Middle East, and with proficiency and tactical efficiency. The group is highly professional and operates almost like a special forces organisation.

Pro-Ukrainian militias, meanwhile, tend to be more autonomous than their Russian counterparts, and have successfully used guerrilla-style tactics to repel vastly superior Russian tank and troop columns.

The Azov Battalion is the most prominent of Ukraines non-state militias. It has cooperated with the official Ukrainian armed forces and has been partly co-opted into the national guard, albeit it has retained its identity and semi-autonomous independence. The militia was formed in 2014 in response to pro-Russian separatist rebels operating in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. It is believed to be a far-right organisation that emerged from a far-right political movement, Svoboda, designed to promote white nationalist, anti-immigrant politics.

A vast array of other smaller, pro-Ukrainian militias are also engaged in combat against Russian ground forces, including the Dnipro Battalion, funded by Ukranian banking tycoon, Ihor Kolomoisky.

Meanwhile, the Ukrainian government has armed large sections of the civilian population, in effect creating a mass-mobilised pro-government militia. These citizens have also engaged Russian units in hit-and-run attacks with small arms and Molotov cocktails. The civilian militia has helped in preparing urban defences in Ukrainian cities against possible Russian advances.

The fighting looks set to shift towards the eastern regions of Ukraine, after the failure of Russian forces to take Kyiv in the first part of the war. The Donbas has been a focus for fighting by pro-Russian separatists since 2014 and has the biggest concentration of Russian speakers.

If the conflict shifts eastwards towards the Donbas region, then so too will the militias already embroiled in the conflict. Human rights abuses have been committed by militias here in the past. Away from the urban centres of Kyiv and Kharkiv, oversight of these militias by regular armed forces on both sides may become more limited.

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Ukraine war: the key role played by volunteer militias on both sides of the conflict - The Conversation

What Ayn Rand’s "Atlas Shrugged" Teaches Us About the Insufficiency of Good Intentions | Art Carden – Foundation for Economic Education

Posted on April 14, 2022 by Danzig

The search for the Great American Novel should have ended in 1957 when a Russian immigrant named Ayn Rand publishedAtlas Shrugged. Arresting in its breadth, depth, and style,Atlas Shruggedis a manifesto on politics, philosophy, and economics wrapped up in a compelling narrative featuring larger-than-life (and smaller-than-life) characters.

Atlas Shruggedhas shaped the worldview of many devotees of liberty, and it surged in popularity in the wake of the recent financial crisis since it became clear that the government's response to crisis and recession would not be to learn from its mistakes and recede but to expand its reach.

I first readAtlas Shruggedduring my fourth year of graduate school. On one hand, I wish I had read it much earlier. On the other, I feel like I appreciate it on a much deeper level than I would have had I read it in high school or college.Atlas Shruggedis my favorite novel for two reasons.

Atlas Shruggedhas shaped the worldview of many devotees of liberty, and it surged in popularity in the wake of the recent financial crisis.

The first is its treatment of human potential.Atlas Shruggedis a brilliant exposition of the things that are made possible by the rational, thinking human mind. A lot of things that we take for granted are the product of free markets harnessing the power of free minds. Something as mundane as a hot cup of coffee, for example, embodies innumerable decisions by innumerable people, each with their own specialized knowledge. We see what happens throughout the book when people are unshackled and allowed to pursue their own goals. Production increases. Lives are saved. Life is meaningful.

The second reason is its exploration of how a society disintegrates when we deny human nature. The great tragedy I see throughoutAtlasis the tragedy of what might have been. The producers are destroyed, and their destroyers continue to be oblivious to their destruction. One of the most important principles of economics is that we rarely if ever take account of the unseen, unintended consequences of policies and actions. In several places throughout the book, Rand explores how an "emergency directive" to help someone in one part of the country leads to the ruin or suicide of a bankrupt entrepreneur in another part of the country. The book is an extended lesson in what happens when we focus only on what we see.

Production is the outpouring of the human mind.

Atlas Shruggedconfronts its reader with a difficult and uncomfortable set of moral questions. Production is the outpouring of the human mind. The mind responds to the problems presented by the physical and material environment, but without the application of intelligence, no production is possible. Life, if one would call it that, would be nasty, brutish, and short.

The most interesting moral question occurring to me as I read it concerns the unintended consequences of supposedly good intentions. The idea that we should serve one another and that we should practice love and charity is appealing (as a Christian, I think them obligatory), but these principles are often applied in an almost strictly superficial sense.

Reprinted from Forbes.

See more here:

What Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" Teaches Us About the Insufficiency of Good Intentions | Art Carden - Foundation for Economic Education

In The Midst Of Election Night Success, There Are Concerns For November – Wisconsin Right Now

Posted on April 14, 2022 by Danzig

By: Paris Procopis

The Spring election cycle proved to be a resounding red wave for Wisconsin Conservatives. April 6th, 2022 could go down in history as the moment when Wisconsin turned the tide against the draconian Left-wing, WOKE indoctrination of our public schools and local governments.

While we should be elated, its time for a reality check.

Yes, ordinary people engaged, ran for office, and fought back. Southeast Wisconsin elected a Conservative to the State Court of Appeals and even saw Kenosha County elect their first woman and Republican County Executive, ever.

We saw cities like Cedarburg, Brookfield, New Berlin, Menomonee Falls, and Waukesha rip their school boards right out of the very clutches of the WOKE left, and in most cases, it wasnt even close.

In Waukesha County, the WisRed initiative led by Terry Dittrich and Chris Slinker won over 150 of their 173 endorsed races.

All this success last night and things look amazing for the November elections. Right?

WRONG!

We reclaimed what was ours, we did not gain anywhere new, except in Kenosha.

There remains a dismal cloud of failure over Milwaukee County by producing some of the worst numbers in the state.

While WisRed and the Waukesha GOP surely set the standard for success, the Milwaukee County GOP showed us the precise recipe for failure. The county party did nearly NOTHING to recruit, engage with, and help local candidates.

Sure, there were some shining moments when the city of West Allis shot down another boondoggle school referendum, and at the county level, incumbent Milwaukee County Supervisor, Patti Logsdon, won but came dangerously close to losing.

The Milwaukee County GOP barely sent out one email and made one Facebook post on who to vote forand there were only eight people on that list, eight!

Obviously, Bob Donovan was at the top of that list, but barely got any help from the Milwaukee County GOP. They donated $1500, thats all. In a real campaign, the local party would have provided the infrastructure for the campaign, like the Democrats did with Chevy Johnson.

This was a squandered opportunity to find new or disgruntled voters, especially in the City of Milwaukee where crime is running rampant and people are longing for leadership.

At the county level, Patti Logsdon, the only conservative on the Milwaukee County Board, was begging for help with her campaign. She got nothing. To make things worse, they didnt say a word about Deanna Alexanders write-in campaign.

The City of Wauwatosa saw significant losses to several WOKE candidates, and in some cases, it was very close. Even a little bit of help from the Milwaukee County GOP could have helped tip the scales in several races.

I lay these losses directly at the feet of the Milwaukee County GOPs feckless leader, County Chairman, David Karst.

In a conversation I had with some prominent people, I mentioned I was writing this op-ed talking about David Karst, and their response was LITERALLY, Who is David Karst?

That speaks volumes.

Sadly, this is not even close in comparison to the Who is John Galt? of Atlas Shrugged fame.

You see, losing is nothing new to David Karst, he has a long history of doing nothing and snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Last night was just the icing on the cake.

In a nutshell, the Milwaukee County GOP has no infrastructure to recruit local candidates, raise money, assist campaigns with volunteers, or even coach them on what to do. To make things worse, the Milwaukee County GOP office on S. 108th St in West Allis is only open from 11 am to 2 pm on Wednesday and Saturday, if you are lucky.

For years now, the state party has refused to hold David Karst accountable for his lack of leadership and failure to help the Get out the vote in Milwaukee County. Not once have they pushed David Karst to resign.

This is not without precedent, the state party has gotten involved when they forced then St. Croix GOP Chairman, John Kraft, out of his position after he casually told his Facebook friends to prepare for war with the left, a few days after January 6. He was a very active Chairman and had the largest Trump rallies in the state. The state party turned his board against him, and he was forced to resign.

But in the case of David Karst, we got crickets, saying they do not interfere at the county level.

The state GOP literally went after an active GOP member because they were afraid of bad news coverage, yet they allowed a consistently incompetent Chairman to continue in the most populated county in the state.

To add salt to the many wounds, David Karst now wants a promotion. He is running for State Assembly in a newly drawn district. With his lack of progress, he is surely undeserving of it.

Years ago, Conservatives like Scott Walker and David Clarke could win the entire county, and now we barely get over 30%. For comparison, on election night in 2020, Trump only got about 31%.

The reality is if we do not get 38% or better in Milwaukee County, WE LOSE! End of story. David Karst remaining will likely cost us 2022 and maybe even 2024. We must get more votes out of Milwaukee County if the Republican Gubernatorial candidate and Sen. Johnson are to win.

There is more to being a county chairman than just having a fancy title and getting to sit at the head table at Lincoln Day dinners. There is real work required and with hard work come victories. Just look at Waukesha County, they work hard and win.

David Karst must resign and be immediately replaced before its too late. We have too much at stake and with republicans like Karst, who needs Democrats?

Ask yourself this, what would John Galt do?

See the article here:

In The Midst Of Election Night Success, There Are Concerns For November - Wisconsin Right Now

Elon Musk says humans could eventually download their brains into robots and Grimes thinks Jeff Bezos would do it – CNBC

Posted on April 14, 2022 by Danzig

Elon Musk says a lot of seemingly fantastical things. For example: The billionaire Tesla and SpaceX CEO seems to believe that humans will eventually be able to live forever, by downloading their brains into robots.

"I think it is possible," Musk, 50, recently told Insider. "Yes, we could download the things that we believe make ourselves so unique. Now, of course, if you're not in that body anymore, that is definitely going to be a difference, but as far as preserving our memories, our personality, I think we could do that."

By Musk's account, such technology will be a gradual evolution from today's forms of computer memory. "Our memories are stored in our phones and computers with pictures and video," he said. "Computers and phones amplify our ability to communicate, enabling us to do things that would have been considered magical ... We've already amplified our human brains massively with computers."

The concept of prolonging human life by downloading consciousnesses into synthetic bodies has been a fixture of science-fiction for decades, with the 1964 sci-fi novel "Dune" terming such beings as "cymeks." Some experts today believe that "mind uploading" technology could, in fact, be feasible one day but the timeline is incredibly unclear.

In a 2019 Wall Street Journal essay, Michael S.A. Graziano, a psychology and neuroscience professor at Princeton University, wrote that mind uploading would require two pieces of technology: an artificial brain, and a scan of a person's brain that could "measure exactly how its neurons are connected to each other, to be able to copy that pattern in the artificial brain."

Creating the artificial brain, Graziano noted, would be relatively straightforward. "But to upload a human brain, we probably want a scanner that doesn't kill the subject, and we would need it to scan about a hundred million times as many details," he wrote. "That technology doesn't yet exist. The most wildly optimistic predictions place mind uploading within a few decades, but I would not be surprised if it took centuries."

One of Musk's current start-up ventures, Neuralink, is working to develop "brain-machine interfaces" that in Musk's own words could one day allow people to "store your memories as a backup, and restore the memories." But speaking with Insider, Musk emphasized that his company's current goals are much more immediately practical.

"Neuralink in the short term is just about solving brain injuries, spinal injuries and that kind of thing," he said. "So for many years, Neuralink's products will just be helpful to someone who has lost the use of their arms or legs or has just a traumatic brain injury of some kind."

Notably, Musk himself doesn't seem to want to live forever nor does he endorse the idea for anyone else. "I don't think we should try to have people live for a really long time," he said. "That would cause asphyxiation of society because the truth is, most people don't change their mind. They just die. So if they don't die, we will be stuck with old ideas and society wouldn't advance."

If mind uploading does become possible within the relatively near future, there's some speculation in the Musk household as to who'd want to try it: In a recent interview with Vanity Fair, Musk's co-parent and ex-partner Grimes identified Amazon and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos as someone who "is gonna be a cymek."

Bezos, 58, has not publicly expressed any interest in such technology, though he does have a track record of investing in longevity and anti-aging research. He did not immediately respond to CNBC Make It's request for comment.

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Elon Musk says humans could eventually download their brains into robots and Grimes thinks Jeff Bezos would do it - CNBC

Order VII Rule 11 CPC | Existence Of Cause Of Action Cannot Be Equated With Merits Of Suit Filed: Delhi… – Live Law – Indian Legal News

Posted on April 14, 2022 by Danzig

The Delhi High Court has observed that existence of the cause of action cannot be equated with the merits of the suit filed.

Justice Asha Menon was dealing with an application moved under Order VII Rule 11 read with sec. 151 of CPC on behalf of the defendants in a suit seeking rejection of the plaint.

The suit was filed for recovery of a sum of Rs.5 crores, by the plaintiff, daughter-in-law of the defendants. Her case was that the defendants had, by their words and actions, including a press-conference addressed by them, openly accused her of being guilty of and conniving and conspiring to have her husband murdered.

On account of the wide publicity of the said statement, including in the print media, the plaintiff had submitted that her reputation had been shattered and being a businesswoman, was also maligned through wrongful impressions being created not only with the general public, but also with her business associates.

The defendants, on the other hand, had contended that the plaint did not disclose any cause of action and since the defendants had only one thought in their mind, which was the apprehension of the true murderer of their one and only son and that malice could not be attributed to them and therefore, the plaint was liable to be rejected.

It was argued by the applicants/ defendants that the Court had no jurisdiction to try the suit, as the cause of action had not arisen in Delhi and that the interview was given in Faridabad, Haryana. It was also argued that no details of the URLs were given and in any case, the uploading of the video was never done at the instance of the defendants.

On the other hand, it was argued on behalf of the plaintiff that the Court had jurisdiction vested in it under sec. 19 and 20 of the CPC. It was also submitted that the plaintiff resided in Delhi and the impact on her reputation was suffered by her at Delhi, as a consequence of the statements of the defendants.

Noting that the application sought rejection alone, the Court said:

"In the circumstances, considering that the nature of relief under both provisions are different from each other, this Court deems it appropriate to consider the instant application only as one under Order VII Rule 11 CPC i.e., whether or not the suit has to be rejected on any of the grounds mentioned thereunder."

The Court was of the view that in cases, the Apex Court and the High Courts have held that while dealing with an application under Order VII Rule 11 CPC, the court can only consider the averments in the plaint and documents relied upon by the plaintiff. However, the stand of the defendant is irrelevant.

"If, on a demurer, a cause of action is disclosed or the averments appear to be such that none of the grounds under Order VII Rule 11 CPC are found applicable, there can be no question of the rejection of the plaint," the Court said.

The Court said that a perusal of the application revealed the frivolous nature of the application. It added that while claiming that the plaint did not disclose a cause of action, the defendants pleaded justification, lack of malice, privilege, freedom of speech and fair comment, as the grounds for rejection.

"Clearly, these are the defences that are normally raised by defendants to a suit for damages on account of defamatory and slanderous words having been allegedly used by the defendants. The contentions that the plaintiff has not justified how she has claimed Rs.5 crores, is again extraneous to the determination of whether the plaint is to be rejected," the Court said.

It added "The existence of the cause of action cannot be equated with the merits of the suit filed. It will be only after trial and on evidence produced that it could be determined whether the defendants were justified in making the statements they did to the media, whether there was any privilege involved in it and whether the plaintiff was entitled to damages of at least Rs.5 crores, as claimed. These are all questions of fact and require evidence to be adduced during trial."

Accordingly, the application was dismissed with costs of Rs.10,000.

Case Title: MANSI GUPTA v. PREM AMAR & ANR

Citation: 2022 LiveLaw (Del) 304

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Order VII Rule 11 CPC | Existence Of Cause Of Action Cannot Be Equated With Merits Of Suit Filed: Delhi... - Live Law - Indian Legal News

Selena Gomez has switched off from the internet. If only we all had that privilege – iNews

Posted on April 14, 2022 by Danzig

Could you get by without using the internet for four and a half years? Thats exactly what singer and actress Selena Gomez has done in a bid to improve her mental health and she told Good Morning America that going offline had changed her life completely.

While she helps her team to produce the promotional pictures and videos regularly shared on her Twitter, Instagram and other social media feeds, the 29 year old isnt the one actually uploading the content to her millions of followers. I am happier, I am more present, I connect more with people, she said. It makes me feel normal.

Ms Gomez has spoken extensively about the relationship between her social media usage and her mental wellbeing, recalling feeling like an addict when she became Instagrams most followed user in 2016. At one point Instagram became my whole world, and it was really dangerous, she told InStyle magazine in January. Taking a break from social media was the best decision that Ive ever made for my mental health The unnecessary hate and comparisons went away once I put my phone down.

So, should we ordinary people follow in Ms Gomezs footsteps step away from the internet? Its one thing to ditch social media and Im sure we can all agree that creating and following a more considered, balanced approach to accessing apps and platforms is no bad thing.

Ditching the web at large, however, is a far more nuanced and complicated prospect. The increasing digitisation of our society means that everything from paying a gas bill and taxing your car to plotting a route to a friends house and even making a phone call are at the mercy of your internet connection. Actively opting out of using the internet becomes a matter of privilege.

Ms Gomez multi-millionaire status has allowed her to take the social out of social media, handing over the passwords to her accounts so she can continue to leverage her colossal fame while keeping the trolls at bay. The fact shes still the second most-followed woman on Instagram (behind cosmetics billionnaire Kylie Jenner) suggests its entirely possible to maintain a significant web profile to promote various projects by way of a dedicated team without being exposed to the cruel comments, hate mail and rape or death threats. While other A-listers Benedict Cumberbatch, Scarlett Johansson and Kate Winslet, among others, opt out of social media entirely, Ms Gomez has created a kind of halfway house that meets both her financial and health needs, but relies upon others to properly function.

It goes without saying that this is fundamentally different to how the rest of us without beauty deals and films to publicise use the likes of Instagram, TikTok and Twitter, but even the concept of a digital detox requires having a device and connectivity to choose to disconnect from.

The UKs digital divide has worsened over the past two years of Covid restrictions, with poorer families significantly less likely to have working broadband connections in their homes. Around 1.1m households, equating to five per cent of the population, are struggling to afford broadband, according to a recent report from Ofcom. Meanwhile, telecoms giants plans to move all 29m UK homes to a new digital phone system that works over the internet have been sullied by tales of pensioners left without phone lines. Digital exclusion is a major threat to wider societal equality in the UK, so witnessing companies like Facebook championing the metaverse as the next great frontier when schoolchildren are struggling to complete their homework feels particularly grating.

Consequently, its worth bearing in mind that while deleting all social accounts will undoubtedly make some, including Ms Gomez, feel infinitely better when it comes to prioritising their mental health and wellbeing, many other people benefit from the strong sense of community that sharing and entertainment platforms (or wider internet access generally) can simultaneously engender.

Internet access will continue to grow in importance as we edge further towards web 3.0, and greater resources and initiatives are needed both to help those in the UK feeling underprepared and to connect the families without the connectivity they desperately need to learn, work and live. Its crucial that people who feel that social media is having a detrimental effect on their mental health are allowed to switch off and for those living in digital exclusion to be able to switch on in the first place.

Rhiannon Williams is a technology journalist

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Selena Gomez has switched off from the internet. If only we all had that privilege - iNews

The Five Easiest Ways to Take a Complete Backup of Your Mac – Lifehacker

Posted on April 14, 2022 by Danzig

Photo: Kaspars Grinvalds (Shutterstock)

No one wants to be the person who accidentally spills coffee on their MacBook and ends up losing all their data. The laptop can be easily replaced, but if you dont have a backup, you face the uninviting prospect of permanent data loss. Luckily, backing up your Mac right now is effortless and cheap, and there are multiple ways to get it done.

Before you start, a few things to keep in mind: While one backup is better than none, its a good idea to store at least two copies of your computers data in different locations. This could be as simple as backing up your entire computer to an external hard drive and saving all your photos on a cloud storage service. That way, the data thats most important to you is saved in two locations, so if one of the backups gets corrupted or lost, you have a second copy to fall back on.

Secondly, there is a difference between cloud sync services and true backup services. A sync service, such as iCloud or Google Drive, isnt always the best choiceif you accidentally delete a file from your computer, it gets deleted from the servers of sync services too, putting you at risk of losing it forever. The better choice is a dedicated online backup service provider.

Here are five of the easiestbackup solutions for your Mac, with the best options listed first.

Time Machine ships with macOS, and its the most convenient backup solution for most people. You can get started by going to System Preferences > Time Machine and selecting a backup disk. This can be a second hard drive on your computer, an external hard disk, or even an SD card or a pen drive. Or choose a more expensive, robust solution like NAS (network-attached storage).

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Time Machine takes an hourly backup of your computer every day and retains a daily backup for each day of the month. If your computer crashes, you should be able to pick the most recent backup, or an older version if you wish to. This feature works best when the backup disk is permanently connected to your computer, so you should buy a good external drive to store Time Machine backups.

For most people, an external hard disk is good enough, but it gets inconvenient to permanently block off a USB port, especially on MacBooks that might only have two open slots, so consider a network-connected hard drive such as the WD My Cloud Home. It costs around $160 for 2TB but provides a huge advantage for the money: As long as its plugged in and connected to the same wifi network as your computer, itll keep storing your Time Machine backups automatically.

If youre looking for a more advanced solution, a dedicated network-attached storage device is an option. These devices can be paired with a dedicated hard disk to back up all the devices in your house, and often can run apps allowing you to stream stored media or act as a web server. Many people use a NAS with double-digit terabytes of hard drive space as a home server to access all their data. If you only need to back up one computer, an NAS is obviously overkill.

Time Machine is great for most people, but its biggest problem is that its slow. If you want a faster backup solution, consider using a dedicated backup app such as SuperDuper! ($30) or Carbon Copy Cloner ($40). Both apps offer a free trial to let you check out features without committing.

With these apps, creating your backups take much less time, and youll also be able to create bootable copies of your computer. That ways if your machine crashes and you cant even boot into the system, you can plug in your backup hard disk to your computer and use it to boot the computer, making the recovery process a lot faster.

Your next option is an online backup service such as Backblaze or Carbonite. Both cost less than $10 a month and offer a complete online backup of your computer. If your computer dies, you can download files off their servers or request your data be copied to a hard disk and shipped to you. This courier service is available on both Backblaze and Carbonite, but with different terms and conditions, so be sure to check out the fine print before signing up.

Online backup services are ideally offsite backup solutions, as in case of a disastrous event such as a hurricane or a forest fire, keeping your backups inside your house could be catastrophic. If your data is valuable to you, a secondary offsite backup is essential.

If you try to download all your data from one of these services, it could take a lot of time, depending on your internet speeds and the server loads at the backup services data center. Thats why its not ideal to use an online backup service as your primary backup option. However, its still a better choice than no backup at all.

You can back up most of the files stored on your Mac to iCloud. This feature, like Time Machine, is built into macOS. You can turn it on by going to System Preferences > Apple ID > iCloud and checking all the options in the right pane.

This setting will start syncing your Macs files to your iCloud account, but dont consider it a substitute for a true backup service. If you delete files on your Mac, theyre also deleted on iCloud, which isnt always what you want from a backup service. iCloud can also be frustratingly slow at times, even if your internet speed is fast. You may be able to recover large files quickly, but smaller ones may take forever to download. This unreliability, coupled with iClouds measly 5GB of free storage space, makes it hard to recommend as a primary backup solution.

You can also use the computer backup features provided by cloud storage services such as OneDrive and Google Drive. This works best if youre already paying for cloud storage and want an online copy of your data. OneDrive and Google Drive are also sync services, so you should be doubly sure about deleting anything synced to these services.

The backup apps designed by these cloud storage providers often clunky and slow. If thats getting to you, Arq Backup ($50) is a faster alternative. It can back up your data to multiple cloud storage services and even external hard disks or your NAS. To address privacy concerns, the app encrypts your data before uploading it to cloud storage services.

The only negative of using Arq Backup is that youll need to use the app to restore your backups. If the app isnt installed on the computer youre trying to restore (or it wont boot, so you cant open the app), you wont be able to restore your data.

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The Five Easiest Ways to Take a Complete Backup of Your Mac - Lifehacker

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