Paris has been making politically charged hip-hop since he came on the scene, with The Devil Made Me Do It, in 1990. The title track addressed the country's systemic racism and was immediately banned by MTV for being "too controversial."

Since that auspicious debut, his ability to combine sleek, swinging grooves and densely packed, politically charged commentary has grown more powerful. His latest effort, Safe Space Invader, is another bracing collection, taking on the topics that are impacting Black life in the America of 2020police departments that are out of control, racism, gentrification, social and economic inequality, and white supremacy.

The first single, "Baby Man Hands," gets right to the heart of the matter, with a scathing putdown of the current occupant of the oval office that mixes caustic humor, biting realism and a hook "Baby Man Hands"sung by cartoon voices. The lyrics combine familiar catch phrases, such as "fine people on both sides" and "make America great," with a realistic look at the havoc the current president has created.

"There are plenty of quotes I could have used," Paris says. "When I was writing, they were just the most prominent examples. If you're a critic, he's the gift that keeps on giving. The sad part is, that while his words may be amusing for people unaffected by his inability to use correct sentence structure, his administration has put social progress and race relations back decades. He's like a 6-year-old with a lot of money. Nobody's ever told him, 'No!' He's a petulant child."

The record also includes "Nobody Move," a call for revolution that rides a thumping backbeat; "Somethin' Bout the West Coast," a look at the positive and negative sides of living a Black life in the San Francisco Bay Area, with a hint of Funkadelic in the hook; and "Press On," an uplifting tune that urges people to stay positive, despite the forces of oppression that can often seem overwhelming. The chorus takes flight with the help of Claytoven Richardson's harmony vocals and Katisse Buckingham's nimble flute.

Paris wrote, arranged, recorded and produced Safe Space Invader in his home studio, with the help of a few local artists. He started the album last summer, slowly creating all the beats and special musical effects.

"I was a studio rat for a long time. I've observed people working in studios since the late '80s. It was a trial-and-error apprenticeship. A lot of attention was paid to the music that came before me, and many early influences still impact my music. Funkadelic is a mainstay, as is Curtis Mayfield, Earth, Wind and Fire, and my hip-hop predecessors who actually rap. There are lots of people in hip-hop currently that don't actually rap; they chant and make noise. I don't look unfavorably on any of them, I just maintain my lane."

The record's music is always upbeat, with songs that pack decades of history and a lot of background information into lyrics that flow easily, without sounding pedantic. "If I want to get preached at, I go to a church," Paris says. "I always try to strike a conversational tone. That's what hip-hop isa conversation between the creator and the listener."

Paris begins the dialogue with the album title, a phrase that may seem to reference the current pandemic, although it has deeper, more troubling associations. "The alt-right has been using 'safe space invader' to insinuate that people concerned with social justice are fragile for years," Paris says. "My usage co-opts the phrase to dig at their fragility. Conservatives view people who really want to see social change as pussies, but conservatives are the biggest snowflakes in the world. They always reflexively protest anything we do and often collectively stand united, even against their best interest, simply to spite us. Using that phrase was a way for me to reappropriate it and use it to my advantage.

"The songs are a continuation of the thoughts I expressed on my last album, Pistol Politics. It was released in 2015, during an era where a lot of people were complacent, especially in the hip-hop community, because Obama was in office. This was despite the fact that he also furthered the ideals of imperialism. But right now, there's a clearly defined boogie man in the White House that adversely affects everybody that isn't rich, white and male. My message is easier to convey in 2020, but it's never changed."

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Bay Area rapper Paris returns with fire tracks for the masses - East Bay Express

People like McCusker, Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch and the N.S.C. expert Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman are the sort of civil servants Michael Lewis celebrated in his book about Trumps assault on the bureaucracy, The Fifth Risk, another of Lozadas favorites. They do due diligence, they adhere to protocol. Their truth is not postmodern. They do their jobs without fanfare; they do not turn their work into self-aggrandizing performance art. Their rigor is what makes our federal government legitimate and credible, despite its flaws.

Impeachment was a hard case. Trumps shenanigans were illegal, and definitely unseemly, but they didnt rise to the level of bipartisan horror necessary for a successful conviction. In the end, the Democrats probably did themselves more harm than good. But what Trump on Trial makes clear is that the Republican response was an all-out assault on regular order, expertise, law, diplomacy and the quotidian chores of holding a democracy together. I had forgotten how blatant it was. Elements of the Civil Service have decided that they, not the president, are really in charge, said Devin Nunes, the California Republican. Matt Gaetz, the Florida Republican, paraphrased what he thought was the Democrats message: We the elite, we the permanent Washington, we the smart folks, have decided that this is not acceptable conduct. Or, as Trump told one of his rallies, Were dealing with people that dont respect you. The Michigan Democrat Elissa Slotkin, a former intelligence analyst and senior Defense Department official, saw herself in civil servants like Yovanovitch and Vindman: Their life was her life. It was an ethos shared by her friends, especially the ones who had sworn an oath in the military. Slotkin went back to the nations founding documents: The framers had warned against the danger of Americas leaders soliciting foreign interference in the countrys internal affairs. Hadnt this president admitted to doing exactly that?

There could not be a more obvious example of Yuval Levins dialectic. The Republicans were all about What do I want? The Democrats worried, How should I act? The parties had traded their traditional places. The counterculture never died, Lozada writes of the alt-right movement, summarizing the views of the journalist Angela Nagle. It just switched sides. Transgression now lives on the right, dogmatism on the left. The Democrats have become traditionalists. The Republicans, a most illiberal group of libertarians, tear down the pillars of the temple. The former Trump adviser Steve Bannons nihilism is the spiritual heir to Abbie Hoffmans jolly anarchy in the 1960s. What losers and suckers the traditionalists were! To read Trump on Trial in the context of What Were We Thinking is to be scalded. The pain is excruciating.

Carlos Lozada is a book critic, not a policy wonk. He doesnt propose specific solutions to our current state of disgrace, but he does offer a vision of American stability being eviscerated by the publics need to be entertained. This reminded me of the dichotomy that Machiavelli posited in The Discourses: the contest between virt and ozio. Virt is the quality that keeps a republic strong: It is rigor and responsibility and intellectual achievement, albeit with a distressing tinge of militarism. Ozio is indolence; it is the laziness that overtakes a republic when it is not at war or in crisis. In America, we experienced 70 years of unprecedented peace and prosperity, without a perceived existential threat, from 1946 to 2016, a bacchanal of ozio. In the process, far too many of us lost the habits of citizenship. Truth became malleable. Morality became relative. Achievement became pass-fail and, more recently, just showing up. Rigor was for chumps. You didnt have to do anything to become famous, except be an influencer. And to be an influencer, you didnt need to train or study, although plastic surgery branding certainly helped. You didnt have to serve or sacrifice; that was for chumps, too. This was the America that elected Donald Trump president. What were we thinking? We werent. Critical thinking was just too hard and another episode of Duck Dynasty or Keeping Up With the Kardashians always beckoned.

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Does an Intellectual History of the Trump Era Exist? It Does Now - The New York Times

Alt-Tab is an often overlooked keyboard shortcut on Chrome OS that allows you to cycle recent applications without using a mouse. Despite the productivity potential, the Alt-Tab switcher is mediocre because it lacks interactivity. For example, you can't use the arrow keys or your cursor to select and launch recent applications, making them frustrating to access if they're placed towards the end. The developers at Google realize that the Alt-Tab experience can be better, so they tackled the interactivity issue head-on to help you quickly open your recent applications.

As spotted recently in the Dev channel, Chrome OS uses a combination of shortcuts and gestures to help you quickly launch recent applications in the Alt-Tab switcher. For instance, you can finally navigate using the left and right arrow keys or move your cursor to select and focus applications. Other small changes include adding a three-finger touchpad swipe to scrub applications and pressing the enter or space key to focus the application chosen. Here's how the new interactivity features work.

Selecting a recent application with your cursor is a notable addition that Chrome OS surprisingly didn't have until recently. While pressing the Alt and Tab keys and holding Alt down, you can move your cursor to any window you want to open and click it. It's incredibly useful if you're going to quickly select and focus an application without having to press buttons on your keyboard.

Did you know that Alt-Shift-Tab navigates the Alt-Tab switcher in reverse? I sure didn't. In contrast to Alt-Shift-Tab, the arrow keys are much easier to remember. The left arrow key navigates the switcher backward while the right arrow key moves the selection forward.

The Enter and Space keys aren't as handy as the other Alt-Tab improvements coming to Chrome OS, but they may help ease the learning curve. If you want to maximize a recent application you selected, you can either hit the Space or Enter key.

You can quickly scrub through running applications in the Alt-Tab switcher using three fingers on the trackpad, just like Chrome tabs. Three fingers to the left will move the selection backward while three fingers to the right will navigate forward. Despite the productivity potential, I feel that the trackpad gesture sensitivity is too weak to be practical. I often misselect windows when I try compensating for the lack of responsiveness. Also, there's a weird quirk where scrubbing windows with the trackpad gesture also affects Chrome tabs in the background, but I imagine this will be fixed in the future.

Adding interactivity to the Alt-Tab switcher makes a huge difference to my workflow. As a student, I often juggle through several Chrome windows at once while writing research documents for school. I was surprised I couldn't navigate the Alt-Tab switch using my cursor or the arrow keys like Windows. Because of the interactivity limitations, I never used this feature since it was not productive for my Chrome OS workflow.

There is still work that needs to be done for Alt-Tab to be a useful productivity tool. For example, I wish Chrome OS would offer a close button in the Alt-Tab switcher to close a recent application without focusing its window first. My Pixel Slate also struggles to maintain an acceptable framerate when I navigate several windows, especially when using the three-finger swipe gesture. But by far my biggest gripe with Alt-Tab on Chrome OS is the awful layout when more than three applications are opened.

It's a pain to cycle through multiple windows.

As you can see, the Alt-Tab switcher overflows past the right side of the screen. If you navigate past the third window, the switcher scrolls from the screen's right side. While it allows a larger window preview to be seen at a glance (thus making it easier to recognize), I cannot see my other windows, meaning I have to cycle through several applications before getting to the end. Google can easily fix this usability issue by exposing all of the active windows in the Alt-Tab switcher (similar to Windows).

I'm happy to see Google recognize the need to do something to improve the Alt-Tab switcher on Chrome OS. Despite their current shortcomings, these new interactive features are a solid improvement that will help speed up your window management workflow. They're currently live on the Chrome OS Dev channel and should soon roll out to the Beta and Stable channel.

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Google is improving the Alt-Tab switcher in Chrome OS, here's what you need to know - Android Police

By Blyth Crawford, for The Conversation

Just as the global death toll from COVID-19 reached 250,000 at the start of May this year, a short film emerged that hassince been calledthe first true hit conspiracy video of the COVID-19 era. Titled Plandemic, it featured a lengthy interview with thediscredited scientist Judy Mikovits, who falsely argued that the COVID death tolls were being exaggerated to pave the way for a large-scale vaccination programme.

Allegedly orchestrated by big pharma companies in conjunction with Bill Gates, this scheme would supposedly kill millions in the name of generating profit. The video was removed from Facebook and YouTube where it had been shared, but not before it was watched an estimated8 million times.

The perceived danger of an eventual vaccination programme has been one of the most concerning and far-reaching of coronavirus conspiracy narratives. But it has also been linked to attempts by the far right to exploit the pandemic to promote its extreme ideology.

Similar conspiracies are prevalent within far-right social media circles, but many of them degenerate intoovert antisemitism, with claims the virus is a hoax engineered by Jewish elites intent on implementing a vaccine either for profit or to eradicate the white race. Onejournalist warnedthat the Plandemic video may be the first step in introducing new audiences into the depths of the far-right abyss.

By playing on peoples health fears in such ways, the far right is hoping tonormalise its viewsand make those of the political mainstream seem inadequate when it comes to explaining or resolving the crisis. And its possible that the pandemic may be increasing public awareness of and even participation in extremist discourse.

Arecent reportfrom the United Nations Security Council warns that extreme right-wing groups and individuals in the US have sought to exploit the pandemic to radicalize, recruit, and inspire plots and attacks. This sentiment is echoed in anote from the Council of the European Union, which warns that it is highly likely right-wing extremists are now capitalising on the corona crisis more than on any other issue. It adds that this focus may have led to an expansion in target selection, with sites like hospitals being viewed as legitimate targets for large-scale attacks.

The far rights focus on coronavirus has been reflected across social media. Onerecent reportshowed that between January and April 2020, hundreds of thousands of far-right posts about coronavirus were made to public Facebook groups. Meanwhile, conspiratorial narratives relating to elites a staple of far-right discourse steadily increased from mid-March.

Similarly, far-right groups on the encrypted messaging app Telegram have set up a range of channels dedicated specifically to the discussion of coronavirus, often amplifying disinformation. In March, Telegram channels associated with white supremacy and racismattracted an influx of over 6,000 users, with one channel, dedicated to the discussion of coronavirus, growing its user base by 800%.

One of the key ways the far right is doing this is by taking advantage of the staggering extent of misinformation and conspiracy theories surrounding the virus. The plandemic narrative is one example, but there has also been asignificant risein social media activity relating to the QAnon conspiracy movement, which has alsoamplified misinformation about the pandemic.

A number of these conspiracies have also been influential within theReopen movement, which advocates for the lifting of lockdown restrictions. This momentum has been harnessed by some far-right actors, particularly the Proud Boys, an alt-right, pro-west fraternal organisation.

This group has historically attempted to market itself towards the Republican mainstream on platforms such as Facebook bydeliberately avoiding the use of overtly racist symbols. Now a number of Proud Boys have been spotted taking part in anti-lockdown protests, with the groups president, Enrique Tarrio, framing the Florida protests as the point where the battle for the 2020 election starts. This suggests he is using the protests as apropaganda opportunityfor his movement.

Indeed, the spirit of the protests accords closely with narratives being propagated by some more overtly extreme facets of the right, suggesting the Reopen movement has presented an opportunity to popularise extreme anti-state messaging. For example, one alt-right figure used his Telegram channel to paint the lockdown measures as a power grab by the state, and an orchestrated attempt to ensure citizens particularly men remain slaves to society and the government.

Perhaps one of the most concerning groups that appears to have been buoyed by similar narratives is theboogaloo movement, a loose online network of radical firearms activists that has been linked to several violent incidents across the US. It unites a widevariety of people, some of whom have attempted to associate with Black Lives Matter, and others with neo-Nazism, with a commitment to preserving their right to bear arms and a shared desire to incite a civil war in order to overthrow the government.

In place of a rigid political philosophy, the movements disparate followers are instead bound byin-jokes and memes. But some supporters have also demonstrated a propensity for violence, with several incidents this yearleading to arrests, and three alleged followers now facingterrorism charges.

This activity has been matched bynumerous online postsreferring to insurrectional violence relating to the coronavirus. And unrest related to pandemic restrictions appears to have significantly boosted the profile of the movement.

Researchhas shownthat the conspiracy theory that the US government is using the pandemic to restrict American citizens freedoms has been central in influencing calls for a civil war. Some Boogaloo supporters also believe that the pandemic and subsequent lockdown have helped raise awareness of their civil war narrative amongst wider populations.

The pandemic has certainly been fertile ground for far-right messaging, helping give new platforms to activists and movements. While it is impossible to predict the long-term effects of these events, the potential for the crisis to spread some elements of far-right ideology to more mainstream audiences cannot be ignored. Shifting those people away from these ideas may be as difficult as tackling the virus itself.

By Blyth Crawford, for The Conversation

Blyth Crawford PhD Candidate, Department of War Studies, Kings College London. Blyth Crawford is a Research Fellow at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR) based in the Department of War Studies at Kings College London.

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Coronavirus And Conspiracies: How The Far Right Is Exploiting The Pandemic - StopFake.org

Image description: Big Ben and the Palace of Westminster

Last Wednesday, following a deal at the eleventh hour, the governments latest renewal of the Coronavirus Act passed through the House of Commons. Pressure from backbench Conservative rebels forced Number 10 to make several concessions, including giving MPs a final vote on any new national lockdown. This was an important victory.

Many (rightly) criticise the government for its considerable missteps during the COVID crisis. However, we must also remain vigilant to ensure that, in meeting this momentous challenge, precedents are not set which put the health of a free and democratic society in jeopardy.

To be clear, before I garner accusations of Covidiocy, I am not suggesting a Lassiez-faire approach to the pandemic. It is right and proper that those in power take the necessary steps to protect public health. But in doing so, they must not be allowed to infringe on civil liberty any more than necessary.

We cannot sit idly by in the event the government uses this emergency to erase and undermine such checks and balances that exist on their power.

To do otherwise is to flirt with fascism. These concerns are, regrettably, founded in fact. It is already evident that our government is willing to play fast and loose with international law. Our prime minister has already been found by the Supreme Court to have misled the Queen into illegally proroguing parliament just last year. That such a man, and such a government, should now find themselves enjoying the awesome powers of the executive should raise alarm for all, regardless of party political preference.

In times of emergency, particularly on a scale such as this, it is natural that we expect our leaders to act. It is crucial though, that this action is subject to sufficient scrutiny. To allow this government to run rough-shot with legislation risks hard-won liberties. Obligations and expectations exist we much be upheld and respected regardless of circumstance. Of course, the greater discretionary powers now exercised by public authorities in England has been a necessary evil.

But in a country such as ours, which endows our leaders with the flexibility of an unwritten constitution, it is important to be fully aware of how these powers are obtained and exactly what their limitations are. For example, it is interesting, as LSE academic Andrew Blick points out, that the government chose not to rely on the statutory powers obtainable under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 when seeking to acquire regulatory authority.

Any increase to the presence or power of government is naturally controversial. A substantial degree of public trust is required, that those so empowered will exercise their new functions with diligence and responsibility, to prevent a breakdown of social order. Faced with an administration that has thus far spectacularly bungled and bodged their duties, it is all too easy to worry about how other abilities may be similarly misused.

Coming back to the issue of precedence, there is warranted concern over blurred lines between temporary and post-pandemic legislation. Giving evidence to the Constitution Committee, established to explore among other things the impact of the pandemic on the ability of parliament to scrutinise the government, Lord Ashton of Hyde raised exactly this point. The Conservative Chief Whip in the House of Lords commented: the lesson to be learned is that it is much better not to mix emergency and non-emergency provisions.

Clearly, there is a recognition in the Lords at least that long-term constitutional transformation inspired by pandemic necessities is intolerable. Once the committee concludes its evidence-gathering phase in November it will be most intriguing to learn what findings it reaches on these matters. Though an exact timescale will be dependent on observable medical realities, an expiry date to these powers must exist, at least in principle.

Backbench Conservative MPs, led by Sir Graham Brady, expressed concerns over a lack of accountability in the governments renewal of the Coronavirus Bill. These MPs, who allegedly numbered more than 80, were alarmed over the prospect of a parliament disenfranchised of the right to vote on key lockdown legislation. That so many were willing to rebels speaks to more than just Johnsons lack of control over an infamously disloyal Conservative party.

It exposes a distressing disinterest by this government in that same idealised parliamentary sovereignty that so many of its members had professed to champion. The deal reached between Brady and Leader of the Commons Jacob Rees-Mogg leaves much to be desired. One wonders whether such a stance will suffice. Faced with a second wave of rising cases, the renewal was undoubtedly necessary.

That it took a rebellion of this scale within the Conservative party to prevent what was essentially lockdown rule by decree raises the risk that civil liberty and the constitution might still be under threat.

A perspective of constitutional concern is by no means ideologically infallible.

One must always be mindful not to fall into an alt-right mindset of a ultra-libertarianism. This libert ou la mort attitude is both dangerous and dishonest. A challenge to lockdown rules brought by millionaire Simon Dolan for example, might not appear motivated by the best intentions to all. Importantly, the Supreme Court did not find in favour of this case. That such proceedings could be issued though is itself significant. Clearly, there is room to question in the context of the courtroom the legality of the measures our government has taken.

The proper process of law and order may serve to frustrate attempts by the executive to cease headlines with swift action, but it remains a necessary bulwark to authoritarianism. One does not need to slide into Farage-endorsed fantasy of COVID denialism to expect the government to respect and acknowledge constitutional restraints on its power. Abuses to original Coronavirus Act existed not just in theory.

As of July, over 50 people had been unlawfully prosecuted under this legislation, yet the government refused to even acknowledge the flaws in its emergency powers. Everyone wants to facilitate a quick end to this pandemic. The science is clear that doing this requires a sustained commitment across society to collective action that will mitigate contagion and reduce infection.

Absolutely, every government has a public responsibility to facilitate this. However, it remains right and proper that the essential components of a free democracy are upheld and defended throughout this crisis. No emergency should be abused by any government to fatally undermine civil liberties enshrined under constitutional law. We can but hope that recent rebellions give the government at least pause for thought before unleashing powers whose legacy may prove far more lasting than that of our current leadership.

Image credit: Parliament and Big Ben by Marcin Nowak

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Coronavirus and Constitutionalism The Oxford Student - Oxford Student

House District 11 is drawn as a Republican safe-path seat, but Republican incumbentCord Byrds side is keeping the stretch run newsy nonetheless.

Last week offered the latest example of how the incumbent, expected to waltz to reelection against Democrat Joshua Hicks, continues to flirt with the hard right.

Esther Byrd, the candidates wife who narrowly lost in a local race earlier this year, offered an unsolicited defense of the Proud Boys, a group of youngish men who bill themselves as western chauvinists.

PresidentDonald Trump, in a debate last week before his hospitalization over the weekend for COVID-19 complications, urged them to stand back and stand by when pressed to condemn the alt-right movement.

Mrs. Byrd, a staunch supporter of the President, claimed that many of them and their supporters have been thrown in FB Jail, a metaphorical lockdown preventing them from posting to Facebook for some period of time.

Why do you think Facebook is throwing people in FB Jail who share information about Proud Boys? (Side note: I must really have great friends cause a whole bunch have been locked up! ) I think its because theyve seen a drastic spike in searches and they are worried that people are educating themselves rather than blindly believing what MSM narrative. Anyone have a better theory?

The comments come months after Byrd made comments supportive of Q Anon after the couple was photographed on a boat flying a Q Anon flag. Mrs. Byrd asserted on Facebook that the Byrds were in the photograph.

Ironically, a day before Mrs. Byrd made her FB jail comments, the Hicks campaign called on Byrd to denounce both the Proud Boys and the Q Anon movement.

I condemn white supremacists and the QAnon conspiracy theory in the strongest of terms, and I call on Cord Byrd to do the same. Over the past five months, he has remained silent as the country has grappled with systemic racism, a rise in far-right extremist violence, and the spread of QAnon. That silence must end today.

Florida Politics reached out to Rep. Byrd and Mrs. Byrd over the weekend.

The legislator was mum while Mrs. Byrd would not address the matter on record, with the Byrds seemingly content with these associations with controversial entities of the right.

District 11 is a historically conservative redoubt in Northeast Florida, encompassing deep-red Nassau County and traditionally Republican beach communities in Duval.

It has been aneasy hold for the Republican Party, at least until now, with GOP voters comprising nearly 73,000 of the 137,000+ registered voters.

Byrd faced his toughest battle thus far in the 2016 GOP primary, defeating candidates who had more fundraising and establishment support, running to the right of what was a crowded field.

Since going to Tallahassee, he has burnished his right-wing bona fides, backing legislation banningsanctuary citiesand a version of anE-Verifyprogram, two movement conservative priorities.

While the demographics of the district play against Hicks, he has run a legitimate campaign, with fundraising and some endorsements that bode well for his future, if not in November, then the party at large.

Hicks, endorsed by former PresidentBarack Obama and current Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried last month, has raised nearly $75,000 through Sept. 18, according to records kept by the state Division of Elections. He had nearly $55,000 of that sum on hand at that time.

Byrd has roughly $88,000 in hard money, and another $27,000 in his 1845 political committee.

Byrd, despite having attained national visibility for policy moves, is ahead in the money race, but not by a margin consistent with the party registration edge.

Whether the election result reflects that or not is an open question. Neither side is circulating internal polling, and the district has not been publicly polled.

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In deep red HD 11, it's the Proud Boys and QAnon versus Barack Obama and Nikki Fried - Florida Politics

In support of re-election of Sue Errington as State Rep.

Sue Errington has a long history of public service, including board membership on various environmental, public policy, health, outreach, and womens organizations. She was elected to the Indiana House of Representatives in 2012, and previously served four years as an Indiana state senator.

I have found Sue Errington very responsive to my concerns for the children of this state, no matter how busy she was.

Childrens health initiatives, on which she collaborated, that were enacted into law included:

When Indiana privatized its welfare system, many people were initially denied necessary medical care and nutrition coverage. Sue Errington brought this to the attention of her colleagues, the governorand FSSA, and assisted constituents in navigating the system for resolution. When services for autism were not being reimbursed, and Riley, and St. Vincentsand private providers dropped autistic children on Medicaid, Sue took letters that my colleagues and I had written and used them to get action from the State Medicaid Department. Care was restored for these most vulnerable children.

For many years I have known Representative Errington as a person who genuinely cares about her constituents and the issues confronting their lives. She is a woman of integrity, who has dedicated her life to public service, and works hard for all of us in this community.

Anne Eliades

Muncie

Recently, a car drove slowly past our house, while the driver yelled, white lives matter.Weve overheard our neighbors talking (loudly) about the importance of white lives.I suspect both of these moments were prompted by our Black Lives Matter and Black Trans Lives Matter yard signs.

First, of course white lives matter.Im white and I matter to myself and a small group of lovely people.Most of my family is white and I love most of them.I also love Jane Austen, the supergroup Yes, and the show Letterkenny all super white.

I feel a topsy-turvy quality with this demand that I stand up for white lives. I dont see the president, despite his support from white lives folks, standing up for those lives. He mocks soldiers who died in war dont those lives matter?He ignores the bounty that Russia placed on (often white) U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. He "downplays"the dangers of COVID-19 dont those lives deserve protecting?He sues to end the Affordable Care Act, which gives healthcare to millions of whites.He sends teargassing troops against mostly white protestors; some of those white protestors have been killed.He ignores climate change, the biggest threat to white lives.

Police violence and systemic racism are part of our society; this breaks my heart and calls me to respond.Instead of being angry at my choices, consider who you support.If you support the president:why not value Black lives, and also: do you truly value white lives?

Jennifer Rice-Snow

Muncie

That Kevin Wingate ("Protesters are playing into Trump's hands") calls Trump the law and order" man aiding "local authorities in their efforts to stop the violence" is ironic, given Trumps corruption, fraud, adultery on an Olympian scale as well as his legitimizing right-wing violence through silence.

About those left-wing groups Wingate faults for street violence: Examine the pantheon of Trumps right-wing groups, fine people, in protests from Charlottesville to Kenosha Proud Boys, an anti-immigrant group;QAnon, a conspiracy-peddling group; Alt-Right; Boogaloo Boys; neo-Nazis; white supremacists; white Nationalists,all believing in racial superiority and brutal force governance.

I oppose the growing fascist authoritarianism of the Trump administration, mirroring that of Vlad and Xi. Perhaps Trumps fixation on and hate for a free press and the anti-fascists (Antifa) lies therein. Democracies die one law at a time. The Hatch Act, flouted by this administration, is one such law. Mussolini, a fascist, said, If you pluck a chicken one feather at a time, nobody notices. Let us not allow our democracy to be plucked by Trump.

Finally, my contempt for Trump isnt only his divisiveness and failure to demonstrate moral leadership, which are Olympian, but his serial lying and ignorance of geography, history, government, science, religion, the Constitution and more. He is unable even to read statements written for him: Yo-se-mites towering se-coy-as (Yosemites towering sequoias). Did you know that the 1917 flu ended WWII?

I welcome peaceful BLM demonstrations.Its time that police brutality against Black people be called out, dismantled.

Meanwhile, COVID-19 rages!

Julia K. Gouveia

Muncie

Letters to the Public Letter Box should be emailed to letters@muncie.gannett.com. You must include your name, address and a telephone number for verification. Letters that cannot be verified will not be used.

By submitting a letter, the writer grants The Star Press the right to publish, distribute, archive or use it in print, online or other format. Letters must be 250 words or fewer and will be edited for length, grammar, accuracy and clarity. Letters containing private solicitations; unfair criticism of private individuals, businesses or organizations; poetry or inappropriate language will not be used. Letters of more than 250 words may be rejected. In general, publication of letters from the same writer will be limited to once a quarter.

Anyone wishing to submit a guest column should contact Planning Editor Robin Gibson at rgibson@muncie.gannett.com at least a week in advance.

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Letters to the editor, Oct. 4 - The Star Press

Expect nearly every critic reviewing Netflix's The Haunting of Bly Manor to include an important caveat in their reviews: Mike Flanagan's follow-up to The Haunting of Hill House presents itself as a ghost story, but it's actually a love story. It's not that we're being collectively clever in our genre analysis; acharacter late in the series literally explains that it's a love story and not a ghost story, just one of several points at which Flanagan's confidence in his audience wavers.

Still a craftsman of the highest level and a sensitive observer of the underpinnings that make genre storytelling so resonant, Flanagan has taken one of the most elegantly simple and enigmatic of novellas and found a way to over-explain everything from plot mechanics to theme, producing a nine-episode season that's sensuous, spooky and evasive one moment and cumbersomely obvious the next. You may want to wallow in this evocative world, but probably not as much as Flanagan does, which ends up being a real problem for long stretches.

Credited as based on the work of Henry James, but much more specifically adapted from The Turn of the Screw, The Haunting of Bly Manor is constructed as a tale told after a night of drinking at a wedding rehearsal dinner.

The story takes us back to 1987 (because of Flanagan's interest in high-waisted denim and discomfort with cell phones, presumably), when Dani (Victoria Pedretti) goes to interview with British barrister Henry Wingrave (Henry Thomas) about a live-in job tutoring for his orphaned niece and nephew at his manor house in the country.

Henry wants to know the catch that would cause a young American to want to take on a glorified nanny gig far off the grid. Dani wants to know the catch that has caused Henry's job listing to be open for many months. She seems too good to be true. The job seems too good to be true. Don't worry, there are catches aplenty.

Driven by chef/valet/mustache-model Owen (Rahul Kohli), Dani arrives at the stately manor, one of those abodes that comes with a creepy rectory, a creepy pond and a creepy wing of the house that nobody's allowed into. She meets housekeeper Hannah (T'Nia Miller), gardener Jamie (Amelia Eve) and kids Miles (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth) and Flora (Amelie Bea Smith).

Miles, expelled from boarding school under mysterious circumstances, is generally creepy, but Flora hits some sort of brooding gothic trifecta: She's constantly talking to people who aren't there, she sleepwalks and she has an absurdly detailed dollhouse resembling Bly Manor and full of faceless poppets. Throw in that the kids' parents died under mysterious circumstances and their former nanny (Tahirah Sharif's Miss Jessel) died under even more mysterious circumstances and that's a lot of mysterious circumstances.

They don't even cover the lurking stranger (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) Dani keeps spotting on the property, the reasons why Henry won't visit the manor or the creepy creature with glowing eyes (straight out of Stephen King'sThe Outsider) that Dani keeps seeing in mirrors.

Flanagan's The Haunting of Hill House was one of the surprise pleasures of 2018, an expansion of Shirley Jackson's brief novel that somehow barely felt padded at 10 episodes. It was full of effective jump scares and marrow-rattling chills, anchored by a superb ensemble and a cleverly unfolding allegory about grief and addiction. Its peaks, especially the epic mid-season punch of "The Bent-Neck Lady" and "Two Storms," were almost unimaginably high.

The Haunting of Bly Manor achieves no comparable peaks plus Netflix prefers that we not discuss the season's standout, format-bending episode though the first few episodes establish their mood in methodical and involving fashion.

After directing the entirety of Hill House, Flanagan only starts Bly Manor behind the camera before passing off to a team of genre veterans including Ciaran Foy (Sinister 2), Yolanda Ramke & Ben Howling (Cargo) and E.L. Katz (Channel Zero). Flanagan establishes a familiar template of rich composition in which you can't take your eye off of any inch of the frame for fear that's the corner that might be passed through by a spectral figure or a subliminal flash of something malevolent.

The simmering mood is enhanced by the performances, especially Smith and Ainsworth, who are already doing mature variations on the familiar Spooky British Kid. And that's before the story evolves in a way that, as anybody who had to read the source material might still remember from junior high, becomes vastly more complicated. Smith is especially good, shifting between a chirpy child prone to pronouncing things "perfectly splendid!" and a figure haunted by events that emerge as the story progresses. (Flanagan and casting director Annie McCarthy also scored with the juvenile actors in Hill House.)

There are odd accent things going on with the older stars, from Henry Thomas and a familiar guest star Netflix oddly doesn't want spoiled going British to Jackson-Cohen's Shrek-adjacent brogue and even Pedretti, an American playing EXTRA American. But that doesn't mean the performances are bad.

Pedretti generates instant empathy, Kohli follows up his iZombie work with another likable turn, Jackson-Cohen gives off smoldering Big Bad Wolf vibes and Miller shines in the season's showcase acting episode, a fifth hour that kicks off an ultra-deliberate unfolding of who and what is haunting Bly Manor.

Flanagan and his writing team are working with the idea of possession, not just in the literal senses of ownership and demonic occupation, but in the sense that marriage is presented in romantic terms as the binding of souls. How much does falling in love mean surrendering your ideal of an individual self to become part of a collective couple and what is the line between that prospect being scary but exciting or just simply scary? And once you become committed to a future union, what happens to your solo past? What grounds you to who you are and what grounds places to their identities? How much is history rooted in facts and events and how much in memory, capricious as that might be?

There's a lot to chew on here and there would be even if Flanagan didn't spell everything out in exhausting detail over four exposition-heavy episodes. Part of why James' novella is still taught today is because almost everything that transpires is open to interpretation. So it can be as supernatural (or not) as you want, as rooted in Victorian Era sexual repression (or not) as you want, as nebulously unsettling or downright disturbing as you want.

Flanagan just comes right out and explains everything, including multiple episodes driven by flashback and backstory. As earnestly as the entire cast plays every beat, nothing is better for being over-explained. Even making a jumble of the timeline is a sorry substitute for leaving ambiguity in the text.

With four or five episodes of foundation-laying and four or five episodes of explanation, The Haunting of Bly Manor is a minimum of two or three episodes too long. For all its ramping up of tension, actual scares are almost completely absent. The performances and emotional stakes keep The Haunting of Bly Manor watchable despite that, but on those terms the season would have played better at six goosebump-filled episodes.

Cast: Victoria Pedretti, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Amelia Eve, T'Nia Miller, Rahul Kohli, Tahirah Sharif, Amelie Bea Smith, Benjamin Evan Ainsworth, Henry ThomasCreator: Mike Flanagan, from the novella by Henry JamesPremieres Friday, Oct. 9 on Netflix.

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'The Haunting of Bly Manor': TV Review - Hollywood Reporter

There are many villains in Gerard Bush and Christopher Renzs feature debut Antebellum, but none quite as vivid as Jena Malones nefarious plantation owner Elizabeth. A nasty piece of work in her own right, the character also emblematizes the forces of oppression that power the films narrative. Built upon a consciously convoluted timeline, complete with editing misdirection and a chopped-up storyline, Antebellum follows Janelle Mone as both successful modern author Veronica Henley and antebellum-era slave Eden, presenting the wholly different experiences of two Black women, until the film mashes them together in unpredictable ways.

Suffice to say that Veronica and Eden intersect (to get into deeper detail would spoil the film), and while they are bonded by a litany of shared problems, none feel as immediate as the evil Elizabeth. Its the kind of role that seems scary for a performer: Not only is shesuch a monster, but Antebellum also doesnt shy from inserting that monster into the current culture. The racist ideology of a late-18th century plantation mistress is here and now, and as terrifying as ever.

For Malone, who has been acting since she was a child and has resisted easy classifications as a performer, any fear is only a good thing. Ive never been the type of person to be really scared of characters that arent easy to bring to life, I guess, is the nicest way [to put it], Malone said in a recent interview with IndieWire. That whole spectrum of villain-hood, things that are not easy to like, not easy to understand, those things never terrified me.

Malone said she regards fear as existing on its own spectrum. On the larger end of the spectrum of fear, it sort of renders you immobile, it can debilitate your choices, and you dont really have much room to move, she said. The actress prefers to live where things are more exciting than scary, where she can really dig into her characters, which is how she felt about Antebellum.

I felt some weird obligation to step in there and be like, Now, lets just wait. Hold your horses. Lets see who this person is. Yes, theyre a villain, but lets see what motivates them. Lets see what scares them, lets see how generational trauma affects them as well,' the actress said. They interest me more than anything, because I feel like theres some sort of public duty of understanding those types of stories, because I think that they get pushed to the side of just, Well, thats a villain.'

She said it wasnt difficult to find inspiration for Elizabeth. Malone said that Renz and Bush gave her a few names of women that exist today that live in the sort of alt-right world of whatever, and I just started watching some interviews and getting to know more of their ideology. While she didnt cite her inspirations by name, she admits that she didnt have to get too far with it.

I found that every one minute I watched or read about, it became an amplification, and I felt like I had watched something for 10 hours, Malone said. I didnt do too much intense research, because oddly, you dont really have to research that type of person to be aware of who they are, because me, as a 35-year-old cis white woman has been affected by that type of person my entire life.

The filmmakers, Malone said, also outfitted her with nonfiction books about slave owners, but she boned up on her history by watching classic films about the era, including Gone with the Wind. Antebellum DP Pedro Luque Briozzo even shot portions of the film using lenses from Victor Flemings 1939 epic, itself recently the subject of controversy involving its depiction of slavery.

Re-watching really old films pre-sort of any giant social justice movement, but particularly since #MeToo its very hard for me now, Malone said. Its a completely different lens. So when I watched Gone with the Wind, I couldnt believe how racist and wildly sexist it was. It was a hard time.

She continued, I dont think I fully finished it, but I did sit with it, because I was like, I want to know about these sweeping shots that theyre talking about. Its shot incredibly, theres a lot of really beautiful things, theres some really beautiful acting. I understand it was a feat for its time, but it doesnt make it any less hard to watch, because of the championing of oppression that youre witnessing.

Malone said she also interrogated her personal experience and her own familys history to further craft Elizabeth. For her, it wasnt just necessary for the role, but for the greater reckoning that is taking hold in Hollywood and beyond.

If Im not using my generational knowledge of oppression, to be able to paint this portrait, my personal experience with that, then I might have been hired for the wrong reason, Malone said. I felt like it was important to bring that sort of personal understanding of it, because this is what we should be doing now. I need to portray my grandparents, my grandmother, and my great-great grandmother. Its going to be a lot of hard work, work thats not going to feel very nice, but its really necessary to break the cycle of systemic oppression and also generational trauma.

Lionsgate

A movie like Antebellum, she said, speaks to that need, and she hopes that audiences will be open to its messages. Whats interesting is the Black experience has never changed; its just our white awareness which is shifting, Malone said. Its really amazing to be presenting a film where white awareness is changing. The villain is a white supremacist. Youre openly cheering for harm to come to said white supremacist: Its that type of popcorn movie.

She expects that the film might be difficult for some white audiences, though not necessarily for the reasons most would expect upon hearing its plotline. Beyond its blunt messaging about the legacy of racism in Amerca, Antebellum offers another perspective on the Black experience that many white viewers might not be used to seeing on screen.

This is a hard film to kind of watch for white people, she said. Not like in like a, Oh, be fragile with me type of way, but I just dont think that people are used to seeing these types of characters. And to be fair, weve never really been given the opportunity to see the fullness of Black experience, just what it is to be Black and thriving. Janelle Mones character is so beautiful, and we get to see her home life and her love life and work life balance, having a career and girlfriends and sexuality. Theres nothing that this character doesnt get, which I think is really rare.

The film was set for a pre-pandemic theatrical release before Lionsgate moved it to premium VOD.Malone isnt worried that Antebellum wont find an audience.

The experience of seeing a film [in a theater] is so cool, but I just think that for me, the films that Ive been most touched by were never the films that [I saw in a theater], they were always the ones that I found in a closet, or rented at Blockbuster, or just found somehow, she said. Nothings perfect, so Im not too concerned. I feel like the shelf life of a film is eternal. It comes out, and people see it or not, but it lives on this golden shelf of filmmaking, and then anyone at anytime at any place can watch it.

Malone admits that telling people Im playing a white supremacist inevitably sparks a reaction, but she fixes on the power that can come from the film.

People would be like, Are you scared? Are you okay?' she said. That was kind of when I let the fear get into my throat a little bit, but now we are in this sort of amazing reckoning, this awakening, and there couldnt be a better time for this film to come out. Im not afraid at all.

Lionsgate will release Antebellum on VOD on Friday, September 18.

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Antebellum: Jena Malone Used the Alt-Right and Gone with the Wind to Inspire Her White Supremacist Villain - IndieWire

The British Hand has one deeply ineloquent goal: To get rid of Islam and those little BLM f---ers.

Using Instagram and Telegram, a multi-platform messaging service where secret chats are protected by end-to-end encryption and self-destruct timers, the neo-Nazi group has been able to spread their message and make threats, like a recent plan, shared with its more than 1,000 followers, to attack the Dover coast where every Muslim and refugee has been given safety.

Their poster boys are Anders Breivik, who murdered 77 people in Norway in 2011, and Brenton Tarrant, who last year massacred 51 worshippers at mosques in New Zealand. One member has even named his pet hamster after Tarrant.

Because the leader of the British Hand, I should have said, is 15 years old.

Instagram may have shut down this Derby schoolboys account at the weekend, but the British Hands official account has been shut down before, only to pop up again in different guises.

Theres a growing appetitefor online neo-Nazi hate, you see, and - according to a new report by anti-fascism campaigners, Hope Not Hate - many of those being groomed for the white supremacist cause are as young as 12. The reports revelations are shocking, but not surprising. Why is that? Is it because over the past year, weve seen a growing number of similar cases in the news?

The 17-year-old boy jailed back in January after being found guilty of planning a neo-Nazi terrorist attack in Durham; 23-year-old Alice Cutter, from West Yorkshire, jailed in June after posing for a Miss Hitler competition run by the banned group, National Action; the 13-year-old who casually told another Telegram group that he wanted gays to kill themselves.

After all, we know that these neo-Nazi groups overlap with similar online organisations using the same secret language to promote hate against the LGBT community and women.

We know that hate breeds hate. Or is it because many parents have secretly glimpsed a watered-down version of that hate and intolerance in their own children?

Because of the generation of baby Breitbarts - named after the online alt-Right news network that helped propel co-founder Steve Bannon into Donald Trumps White House - that is rising up against a censorship they feel has been imposed upon them at school, college and university, where PC dogma now often threatens to eclipse traditional subjects; at home, with their ferociously liberal parents; and in a mainstream media that seems to want them to admit their unconscious bias and atone for the sin of being born white and privileged by self-flagellating ad infinitum?

Clamp your hand over someones mouth every time they speak, and what finally emerges is a howl of rage. Ive been privy to some of those whispered conversations among parents, and heard mothers and fathers express their horror at the casual racisms and sexisms that are suddenly deemed acceptable both in verbal and online chats among the young.

Pick them up on it, and youre branded an SJW (social justice warrior), says one mother. Because that, for them, is now an insult.

Through her work discussing gender equality, sexual violence and consent in British schools, the feminist author Laura Bates says she has started to experience fierce and angry resistance over the past two years from boys. Especially white ones, she wrote earlier this month; they claimed they were the real victims in society, refusing to believe accusations of rape from women, repeating false statistics, and refusing to accept the facts. They already knew, she points out, that feminazis are out to destroy men.

These vicious baby Breitbart ideologies arent excusable, but they are explainable, and as a knee-jerk reaction to the illiberal liberalism the young as well as the old have felt increasingly imprisoned by, this is all depressingly predictable.

For years, I have derided woke culture in this column and with friends, because the idea that Baby, Its Cold Outside promotes date rape, that non-Chinese people shouldnt be allowed to cook Chinese food and that being obese is healthy was laughable to me. But over the past few months the laughter has stopped. The readers who write to me dont see any humour in the word women being banned and replaced by people who menstruate.

None of my friends were amused by news reports earlier this month that a cheese shop in Paris was vandalised by militant vegan activists, who spray-painted the words farmers = rapists across its window. These extreme, intolerant stances arent funny, but dangerous.

Theyre the reason Trump is not only in office but, at a rally in Nevada on Saturday, assured his supporters that he would negotiate a third term in the White House in 2024 because hes entitled to it. Theyre the reason extreme Right-wing hate is springing up like poisonous weeds online, and young people are seeing value in that poison.

Theyre also the reason Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsays brilliant new book, Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything About Race, Gender and Identity and Why This Harms Everybody, became an immediate bestseller when it was published in the US last month.

Because by arguing that bad ideas cannot be defeated by being repressed, but instead need to be engaged and defeated within the marketplace of ideas, so that they may die a natural death and be rightly recognised as defunct, the authors have summed up everything thats wrong with extreme wokery. Its just another brand of hate.

Read Celia Walden every Monday at telegraph.co.uk, from 7pm

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Is 'wokism' creating an army of alt-Right teens? If so, the results will be terrifying - Telegraph.co.uk

The Proud Boys, an alt-right group, will potentially hold a rally in West Philadelphia this weekend, drawing concerns from the area's City Councilwoman and triggering planned counter-protests.

A digital flyer circulating online is advertising that the "Philadelphia Proud Boys" will gather at Clark Park at 43rd Street and Baltimore Avenue at 1 p.m. on Saturday. There is no contact information listed on the flyer.

The group, according to the digital flyer, called on All Patriots to gather in the belly of the beat to demand an end to Antifa Terrorism."

The flyer contained no phone numbers, emails or other contact information. The Philadelphia Proud Boys group did not immediately return an email seeking comment.

Councilwoman Jamie Gauthier, who represents District 3 where the park is located, said in a tweet that her office has received a high volume of calls for a rally in Clark Park on Saturday being promoted by a known white nationalist hate group, but did not mention the group.

Gauthier said the group selected the location and time in order to maximize tensions and create a spectacle. She condemned the unnamed organization and its "plans to bring this outright hatred to West Philly.

Guathier called on residents in her district to remain safe and peaceful.

Responding to this hate group with force only gives them legitimacy and power, Guathier said.

City spokeswoman Kelly Cofrancisco said the Kenney administration is aware of the gathering.

The Philadelphia police will provide additional officers from its civil affairs unit and other resources to the area in "preparation for possible protest activity," Cofrancisco said.

The Proud Boys are self-described Western chauvinists group and identified as a general hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Although the group denies any connection to the racist alt-right, they regularly spout white nationalist memes, maintain affiliations with known extremists, and are known for anti-Muslim and misogynistic rhetoric, according to the Souther Poverty Law Center.

Antifa is described as a broad, community-based movement composed of individuals organizing against racial and economic injustice by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Those who identify as Antifa represent a large spectrum of the political left.

Counter-protests are planned to confront the potential Proud Boys rally, says Daryle Lamont Jenkins, founder of the anti-facist organization One Peoples Project.

Jenkins said he was helping to organize a counter-rally made up of West Philadelphia residents and self-identified members of antifa, short for anti-fascist, on Saturday.

Jenkins, of New Brunswick, New Jersey, said counter-protesters were looking to peacefully protest and speak out against the hate-mongering of the Proud Boys and hate politics.

I dont think theyre going to get the fight that they want because no one wants that fight in their neighborhood, Jenkins said. Nobody thats coming to this rally is looking for that.

Additional unaffiliated groups and organizations were expected to join Saturdays counter-protests too, Jenkins said.

Its gotten bigger than us which is what we expected, Jenkins said, adding, This neighborhood is a cross-section of Philadelphia, to be honest, and theyre all coming out.

The Food Trust pushed back the hours of its weekly farmers market at Clark Park on Saturday to 9 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. "in anticipation of a known hate groups planned rally," according to a social media posting from the nonprofit.

The park has served as the monthly location for the Uhuru Flea Market for more than a dozen years. Uhurus fall book fair also was planned for Saturday, but was relocated due to the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Tiffany Murphy, coordinator for Uhuru Flea Markets, said she heard about the potential rally and believed it was a scare tactic aimed at intimidating the Black community.

Theyre putting themselves forth with the hope that we, as the Black community, will not continue to organize, will not continue to speak against oppression, will not continue to speak against inequities, Murphy said. But it's just not going to happen.

Jenkins said members of the Philadelphia Proud Boys were advertising this months rally on social media and online messaging boards for the past two weeks but questioned whether that the Proud Boys will actually show up.

Jenkins noted another group calling itself Italian American Patriots has reportedly planned to hold a rally at Clark Park around 11 a.m. before the anticipated Proud Boys gathering. He was not sure if the groups were affiliated.

The Proud Boys have been spotted at rallies in Philadelphia in recent months. A group of self-identified Proud Boys mingled with Philadelphia police officers inside the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5s headquarters after a visit from Vice President Mike Pence, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer. The police union maintained it had not invited them.

Continued here:

Proud Boys reportedly planning rally in West Philadelphia this weekend - The Philadelphia Tribune

All of which goes to show just how powerful invisible poster shorthand can be the design choices, colour schemes and typefaces that make us subliminally categorise a film as something we might like, or not, long before we discover anything about it. The design of the Cuties image invokes those grim pre-pubescent beauty pageants, but also contemporary dance films such as the Step Up series, in which the dancers physicality and, lets be honest, bodies are a major part of the draw.

These in turn hark back to the promotional imagery for 1980s classics such as Dirty Dancing, Flashdance and Footloose: its a way of stirring up a certain longstanding craving in prospective viewers, and then suggesting this new film can satisfy it. (Again, you can see where the yuck sensation comes from.) There are similar trends all over the marketplace: orange and blue colour schemes for stylish action films; large, red, jolly fonts for wacky lowbrow comedies; couples leaning against each other for rom-coms with a battle-of-the-sexes element; two people on a bench for a twist-of-fate romance; a hero (or anti-hero) with his back turned to the camera for blockbuster grit; and so on.

In early 2013, Peter Stricklands experimental horror film Berberian Sound Studio was released on DVD and Blu-ray with two different covers. One was on the Artificial Eye arthouse label, which reflected the tone of the film perfectly with unsettling, Man Ray-like imagery of star Toby Joness head being deconstructed to reveal a staring woman inside. The other was for Asda, which positioned it as a kind of Saw knock-off: a black and white image of a screaming girl, no sign of Jones at all beyond a pair of disembodied eyes, the title in a blood-splattered industrial carnage-style font, and the tagline Terror inhabits the scream.

Original post:

What the Cuties controversy teaches Hollywood - get the poster right - Telegraph.co.uk

For four years, my family has been great friends with the family next door. Their kids are the same age as ours, I became close with the mother, our husbands even work together. But during quarantine, my friend started sharing conspiracy theories about the trafficking of children. She believes PizzaGate is real and that Hollywood celebrities sacrifice children to drink their blood. Ive tried to explain the alt-right origins of QAnon falsehoods. Still, in every conversation, she says something like, I wont shop at Wayfair. They traffic children inside storage units. Ive asked her nicely to stop talking about conspiracy theories with me, but she wont. How do we move on from this?

FRIEND

For years, Ive advised readers to talk it out. Whether its the mundane absence of a thank-you note or the highly charged presence of a Confederate flag, a calm and humble approach one friend to another is nearly always worth it. We may not persuade anyone in this dangerous age of so-called alternative facts, but were truly sunk when we stop trying.

You say youve tried (and failed) to disabuse your friend about QAnon and its lurid stories of blood lust and child trafficking. So, try listening. Ask her to walk you through the proof of her allegations. Perhaps you can help her see (gently) that she believes these dangerous lies because she wants to not because she has any evidence for them.

Now, Ill be the first to admit that persuading your friend is unlikely; the ideas she has clung to reflect a distinct lack of interest in seeking out factual information. And youre not in charge of her beliefs. If you dont make progress with her (or with her husband, if that feels appropriate), back away from the friendship for now. Trying to salvage a relationship is worth it. Battering your head against a brick wall is not.

Before the pandemic, we had a housekeeper come to our apartment twice a month. Weve continued to pay her because it felt cruel to cut her income while ours stayed the same. But now it seems as if Ill be working remotely for good. To burn off nervous energy, I clean the apartment every day. Its never been cleaner! And I would feel uncomfortable having the housekeeper here, while I work and my kids go to school remotely. At what point should I stop paying her?

DAD

Ive been touched (and surprised, frankly) by the many readers whove reported paying their housekeepers, landscapers and babysitters through the pandemic, even though they were unable to work. (Youd be surprised, too, if you got as many letters as I do from people who fume about splitting checks when the other guy orders an extra glass of wine.)

I applaud your generosity. Going forward, give your housekeeper plenty of notice if she believes shes coming back to work for you. Call her and tell her youre planning to clean your apartment yourself, but you dont want to leave her in the lurch. Depending on her workload and your relationship, consider paying her for another month or two while she tries to replace your gig.

I write short stories. Many of them are personal and based on real-life experiences. Ive been publishing in literary journals for over a decade, confident that 99 percent of my acquaintances will never read a word. But now, a collection of my stories is being published as a book. The publisher has excerpted a revealing story about an ex on the books web page. This increases the chance that my ex and others will become aware of what Ive written. Should I give the people involved a heads up?

ANONYMOUS

Congratulations on your book! If I understand correctly, youve been publishing fictionalized memoir for years and have no regrets about it. If youre like many writers, in fact, your work is urgent and important to you. So, who cares if the books web page makes it (slightly) more likely to be seen by those whove inspired you?

Writing is your art! Youre welcome to show advance copies to anyone you like. But if you havent for the last 10 years, why start now? Do you think Anna Wintours former assistant gave her a heads up before she published The Devil Wears Prada?

Is it OK to tell white people they are not native? I follow the Twitter account of a white woman who calls herself a native Oaklander. But it is the Ohlone people who are native to Oakland, and this woman claims no ties to the Ohlone. Wouldnt it be better to say, born and raised in Oakland, without the appropriation?

MEGAN

Being careful about the words we use to describe racial and ethnic groups is important. The term Native American became popular in the 20th century; Native and Indigenous have also grown in usage and should be deployed according to a persons or groups preferences.

Lowercase native, a centuries-old descriptor of people or plants that hail from a particular place, only refers to geography. So while I understand what youre saying, I think there are bigger battles to fight.

For help with your awkward situation, send a question to SocialQ@nytimes.com, to Philip Galanes on Facebook or @SocialQPhilip on Twitter.

Originally posted here:

What Can I Say to the QAnon Mom Next Door? - The New York Times

Just as the global death toll from COVID-19 reached 250,000 at the start of May this year, a short film emerged that has since been called the first true hit conspiracy video of the COVID-19 era. Titled Plandemic, it featured a lengthy interview with the discredited scientist Judy Mikovits, who falsely argued that the COVID death tolls were being exaggerated to pave the way for a large-scale vaccination programme.

Allegedly orchestrated by big pharma companies in conjunction with Bill Gates, this scheme would supposedly kill millions in the name of generating profit. The video was removed from Facebook and YouTube where it had been shared, but not before it was watched an estimated 8 million times.

The perceived danger of an eventual vaccination programme has been one of the most concerning and far-reaching of coronavirus conspiracy narratives. But it has also been linked to attempts by the far right to exploit the pandemic to promote its extreme ideology.

Similar conspiracies are prevalent within far-right social media circles, but many of them degenerate into overt antisemitism, with claims the virus is a hoax engineered by Jewish elites intent on implementing a vaccine either for profit or to eradicate the white race. One journalist warned that the Plandemic video may be the first step in introducing new audiences into the depths of the far-right abyss.

By playing on peoples health fears in such ways, the far right is hoping to normalise its views and make those of the political mainstream seem inadequate when it comes to explaining or resolving the crisis. And its possible that the pandemic may be increasing public awareness of and even participation in extremist discourse.

A recent report from the United Nations Security Council warns that extreme right-wing groups and individuals in the US have sought to exploit the pandemic to radicalize, recruit, and inspire plots and attacks. This sentiment is echoed in a note from the Council of the European Union, which warns that it is highly likely right-wing extremists are now capitalising on the corona crisis more than on any other issue. It adds that this focus may have led to an expansion in target selection, with sites like hospitals being viewed as legitimate targets for large-scale attacks.

The far rights focus on coronavirus has been reflected across social media. One recent report showed that between January and April 2020, hundreds of thousands of far-right posts about coronavirus were made to public Facebook groups. Meanwhile, conspiratorial narratives relating to elites a staple of far-right discourse steadily increased from mid-March.

Similarly, far-right groups on the encrypted messaging app Telegram have set up a range of channels dedicated specifically to the discussion of coronavirus, often amplifying disinformation. In March, Telegram channels associated with white supremacy and racism attracted an influx of over 6,000 users, with one channel, dedicated to the discussion of coronavirus, growing its user base by 800%.

One of the key ways the far right is doing this is by taking advantage of the staggering extent of misinformation and conspiracy theories surrounding the virus. The plandemic narrative is one example, but there has also been a significant rise in social media activity relating to the QAnon conspiracy movement, which has also amplified misinformation about the pandemic.

A number of these conspiracies have also been influential within the Reopen movement, which advocates for the lifting of lockdown restrictions. This momentum has been harnessed by some far-right actors, particularly the Proud Boys, an alt-right, pro-west fraternal organisation.

This group has historically attempted to market itself towards the Republican mainstream on platforms such as Facebook by deliberately avoiding the use of overtly racist symbols. Now a number of Proud Boys have been spotted taking part in anti-lockdown protests, with the groups president, Enrique Tarrio, framing the Florida protests as the point where the battle for the 2020 election starts. This suggests he is using the protests as a propaganda opportunity for his movement.

Indeed, the spirit of the protests accords closely with narratives being propagated by some more overtly extreme facets of the right, suggesting the Reopen movement has presented an opportunity to popularise extreme anti-state messaging. For example, one alt-right figure used his Telegram channel to paint the lockdown measures as a power grab by the state, and an orchestrated attempt to ensure citizens particularly men - remain slaves to society and the government.

Perhaps one of the most concerning groups that appears to have been buoyed by similar narratives is the boogaloo movement, a loose online network of radical firearms activists that has been linked to several violent incidents across the US. It unites a wide variety of people, some of whom have attempted to associate with Black Lives Matter, and others with neo-Nazism, with a commitment to preserving their right to bear arms and a shared desire to incite a civil war in order to overthrow the government.

In place of a rigid political philosophy, the movements disparate followers are instead bound by in-jokes and memes. But some supporters have also demonstrated a propensity for violence, with several incidents this year leading to arrests, and three alleged followers now facing terrorism charges.

This activity has been matched by numerous online posts referring to insurrectional violence relating to the coronavirus. And unrest related to pandemic restrictions appears to have significantly boosted the profile of the movement.

Research has shown that the conspiracy theory that the US government is using the pandemic to restrict American citizens freedoms has been central in influencing calls for a civil war. Some Boogaloo supporters also believe that the pandemic and subsequent lockdown have helped raise awareness of their civil war narrative amongst wider populations.

The pandemic has certainly been fertile ground for far-right messaging, helping give new platforms to activists and movements. While it is impossible to predict the long-term effects of these events, the potential for the crisis to spread some elements of far-right ideology to more mainstream audiences cannot be ignored. Shifting those people away from these ideas may be as difficult as tackling the virus itself.

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Coronavirus and conspiracies: how the far right is exploiting the pandemic - The Conversation UK

We Must Stand Against Ignorance

Dear Editor,

It is with much dismay that I came to Town Hall last Thursday to be greeted by an angry group of protesters without masks led by Diana Ploss, a member of Our Fellow America First Patriots and supporter of alt right groups. She and her followers occupied two corners of the four way stop intersection with a larger group of anti-racism protesters near their site. Diana Ploss may be remembered as the conservative WSMN radio talk show host and staunch backer of T in the White House, who lost her job a mere two days after posting a video of herself spewing racist comments at a group of predominantly Hispanic workers right outside her now-former workplace in Nashua, N.H. After receiving over 12,000 petition signatures, WSMN fired Ploss stating We at WSMN value freedom of speech, freedom of expression and assembly, and We will not tolerate discrimination, racism or hatred.

Ploss and her followers have decided to make Winthrop their home every Thursday from 2 4 p.m. at the Town Hall intersection after leaving a protest against Gov. Charlie Bakers at his home in Swampscott. This protest seems to be against the Covid-19 restrictions enacted to keep Massachusetts residents safe and healthy; a concept alien to the alt-right.

I am asking for a statement and show of support against this group by our town officials and residents. We must display a major show of support for the brave students, town residents and visitors who displayed signs, gave chants and clearly projected the message Hate Has No Home Here while wearing masks and following social distancing guidelines. We ask that you show up on Thursday to clearly send the message that we reject racism and all of its ugly ramifications. Bring a sign and spread the word to citizens of Winthrop who clearly want to unify, not divide. Silence is complicity. We can do more, we will do more.

Sylvia & Maxwell Whiting

On the Demonstration

Dear Editor,

Many residents witnessed Diana Ploss of Our Fellow America First Patriots at Metcalf Square (Town Hall) on Thursday, Sept. 3. She and her colleagues came, without masks and did not social distance, to spread their message of fear, division and hate. Winthrop Police intervention was needed to contain the Ploss group from physical engagement with the Winthrop Black Lives Matter group.

Ploss is the former far right radio talk host of WSMN, Nashua, NH , who video taped herself shouting at a group of primarily Hispanic landscapers telling them to speak English.

I am suggesting not to show up for any Ploss Thursdays. She and her group continue to come to Metcalf Square. Do not provide the audience Ploss and her group so crave.

Some of us thought that presenting 3-4 times the number of peaceful counter demonstrators bearing Hate Has No Home Here would send a message to Ploss to stay out of Winthrop. However, it appears she will be back.

It is my opinion to ignore any future Ploss staging to fan her flames of hate, racism, and division. Absence and silence can be deafening. Winthrop Police are needed elsewhere to serve and protect.

If you have concerns about human rights in town call 617-846-1852;1034 or email contact person Denise Quist at [emailprotected]

Donna Segreti Reilly

No On Mail in Voting

Dear Editor,

Mail in voting is a really bad idea. It opens the door for massive and easy ballot tampering. In spite of specious reassurances that mail in voting is simple and accurate the facts are far different.

-Franklin, Ma discovers 3000 uncounted votes that the Town Clerk locked in her vault this past week. Town Clerk resigns.

-Plymouth, MA: 800 ballots were mishandled in May

-Paterson, NJ: 3190 election ballots were rejected, about 19% of the mail-in ballots for the May 12 election in Paterson

-Virginia: Half a million incorrect absentee ballot applications sent out In 2018

-Nevada: Election Officials announce that 63,000 names in its voter registration records were found to be inactive 2019

-California reports it is trying to remove over 5 million inactive voters from its records.

-NY primary in June 2020 resulted in massive problems and it took months to count ballots. According to NY Democrat Suraj Patel, 30% of the mail-in votes were likely rejected.

-People are even reporting their pets or deceased relatives are receiving ballots

-Multiple criminal convictions for voter fraud including a man in NH just being arrested for voting twice in the same election; one time as a man and one time as a woman!

Now they are trying to desensitize us to the fact that we may not have results for weeks or months after Election Day! This is unacceptable! Election Day voting has worked pretty good for hundreds of years, and we know on election night who the winners and losers are.

We are all now accustomed safely dealing with any presumed Covid concerns. Lets not pull this country farther apart by feuding over election logistics, ballot handling shenanigans and questionable election outcomes. No mail in voting assures free and fair elections!

Respectfully,

Paul Caruccio- Chairman WRTC

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Letters to the Editor - Winthrop Transcript

Hari Kunzru lives in Brooklyn with his wife, the novelist Katie Kitamura, and their two small children. He received a 1.25m advance for his first novel, The Impressionist (2002), while Booker Prize-winning novelist Aravind Adiga recently said: The book I wish Id written? Whatever Hari Kunzru is publishing next.

Life, then, appears to have been relatively kind to Kunzru. So why did he feel the need to delve into the cesspit of the alt-right for his latest novel, Red Pill? I wanted to write a book about privacy and surveillance initially, then I got a residency in Berlin, he says. I was in Wannsee, which is a sleepy suburb. Theres a lake and its not the hipster Berlin of Mitte or Kreuzberg. It was the middle of winter, so it was kind of bleak, dead.

On the other side of the lake, visible from my desk, was the Wannsee Conference house, where they plotted the Final Solution. It became clear I had to set something in Berlin, then it got wrapped up with the alt-right. Ive been online since 1992 and Ive always dug around in the subcultures of the internet. Ive developed this understanding of the intellectual currents of the extreme right, which you wouldnt do unless you were a hobbyist lurker in these spaces.

Why was he lurking there?

I always felt like it was an early warning system, says Kunzru. If I paid attention to what was coming from that direction, I would know about it in time and I would have some ability to respond to it and protect myself or my family. Ive always been, I guess, a mildly paranoid person.

Like Kunzru, after receiving a prestigious writing fellowship, the unnamed narrator of Red Pill arrives in Wannsee from New York. The fictional character struggles to accomplish anything, however. He doesnt work on the book he has proposed to write but instead masturbates, takes long walks, talks to the cleaner and binge-watches Blue Lives, a violent cop show with which he gradually becomes obsessed.

At a party, he meets the creator of Blue Lives and begins to suspect that this man is red-pilling his viewers turning them toward a nihilistic, alt-rightworldview.

Can Kunzru explain what red pill means?

It comes from the film The Matrix, where Keanu Reeves is offered a choice between a blue pill and a red pill. If he takes the blue pill, everything will remain the same, but if he takes the red pill, he will see the world as it really is.

The idea of the red pill is that the scales will fall from your eyes and, more recently, that became a metaphor among the far right. Essentially, its the idea of someone having a new and very, very bleak view of the world presented to them, as though they are Alice falling down the rabbit hole.

Men worry that if they show their emotions, women will go: Oh no, youre awful, incompetent and useless

The narrator who falls down the rabbit hole in Red Pill shares many details of Kunzrus biography he is a writer with an English mother and an Indian father who studied at Columbia University before taking up a residency at a Berlin academic institution. Is Kunzru just messing with the reader by including all of this?

I wasnt trying to be particularly tricksy, he says. I was flirting with trying an auto-fictional thing but then Im not really wired up for that. It was just the simplest solution to a set of problems, to give him the furniture of my biography.

In spite of its humour, Red Pill is a depressing book, not least because the narrator considers suicide.

Im sorry! says Kunzru, laughing. Im always sorting something for myself, partly, when Im writing a book and I cant deny that Ive been in quite a bad place for a few years. The world has been drifting into a terrible future and one of my ways of dealing with that is to write this novel.

Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments by Saidiya Hartman

It is fantastic, really amazing. Shes a historian and its non-fiction, but shes using a very daring literary mode.

Ive got a little pile, as we all have. Im going to read a Clarice Lispector novel, I cant remember which one Ive decided on.

Does he not feel any responsibility to give the reader a good time?

For me, humour and bleakness exist very close together.

The plot of Red Pill is reliant on the narrator being unable to return home to his wife from Berlin, even though remaining there is clearly making him ill.

He is so ashamed and I wanted to go into this aspect of masculinity, which is about bottling things up. I think this is a true thing about straight relationships: men worry that if they show women their emotions, women will say: Oh no, youre awful, you are incompetent and useless! I want a man who can actually deal.

In doing that, men underestimate womens understanding and tolerance, because women are used to dealing with each other as human beings rather than as these kind of Greek statues that men believe they have to be all the time.

Red Pill is out now (Scribner, 14.99)

Link:

Hari Kunzru on his new novel Red Pill: 'The world has been drifting into a terrible future' - iNews

Before 2020, drawing a connection betweenGone with the Wind and the alt-right would seem flimsy at best. But not only did that already happen in our headlines, its happening in Gerard Bush and Christopher Renzs horror filmAntebellum. The upcoming psychological horror thriller from the first-time feature directors imagines a world where the pre-Civil War South and the present are intertwined. And the ones bringing those worlds together areJena Malone andJack Hustons characters Elizabeth and Captain Jasper, respectively. The unquestionable villains of the film, Elizabeth and Jasper are both a representation of the Antebellum South and current-day white supremacist movements like the alt-right, both of which Malone and Huston drew inspiration from while getting into the roles.

It felt so important [to show] the crumbling facade of how racist and backwards Gone with the Wind really is, and just allowing that film to sort of be regurgitated into this higher, more elevated like a completely different purpose, Malone told /Film in a Zoom interview ahead of the VOD release of Antebellum.

This is a magnifying glass on our history, and we need to own up to it, we need to face it, and we need to talk about it, added Huston.

Read our interview with Jena Malone and Jack Huston below.

When the two of you when you first read the script by Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz, what was your reaction?

Malone: Well as an audience member, I was blown away because they were able to sort of pull the proverbial rug out from underneath me on a continual basis. As a mother, I felt like my heart was sort of getting pulled out and examined. I felt like there was a lot of cathartic wound work like simultaneously trying to understand social justice, why uplifting the Black experience was really incredible. And just beyond anything I felt like it felt so important [to show] the crumbling facade of how racist and backwards Gone with the Wind really is, and just allowing that film to sort of be regurgitated into this higher, more elevated like a completely different purpose. I mean the fact that they also even reformatted the lenses that Gone with the Wind was shot on, thats what this film was shot on. I mean, everything was so purposeful. And first time directors, I have a soft spot for. To see their vision coming to life, and how they learn that vernacular, its really cool.

Huston: Its so true. Its one of those scripts you read, and youre sort of bowled over because youre not expecting it. Its unexpected every time and it truly deeply affected me. I had a pretty, pretty overwhelming reaction. And then when I got on the phone with Gerard, I sort of got very emotional, and then got very serious and went through all these different stages. But then it was a very easy decision. It was a very hard, and a very easy decision; hard because you knew you had to embody somebody who was sort of the amalgamation of all of the worst nightmares of our history, of who we are and what weve done. But at the same time, the responsibility far outweighed that, because we were telling a story that was so important. People might say that the movie is very shocking, is very brutal, is very harsh. But you know the scariest part was when I read accounts of slaves, of the conditions they lived in, of the things that happened to certain people. I mean, we couldnt even put half of the things in the movie, and thats whats scary. This is a magnifying glass on our history, and we need to own up to it, we need to face it, and we need to talk about it. You know, voice, one people.

You guys of course play the villains of the piece, and we cant talk about your characters without talking about how they reflect on current-day movements and the troubling resurgence in racism that has risen to the surface since the 2016 election. Can you guys talk about that and the parallel that was drawn with your characters?

Malone: Whats interesting about that is the literal historical lines between pre-police brutality, even pre-police, was slave catchers. I mean, this was a real thing, this was what preceded our modern-day police department. And before that, what was before slave catcher? An enslaved person catcher. It was the slave owner. The enslaved person owner, that was the person who had full jurisdiction over the dehumanization of another physical body. Basically, the torture, the trauma, the great rituals built around their humiliation. I mean, thats how the country was founded. Its deeply built into every invisible legislative government, every rule. Even just within the history books that will be taught, that would have been taught to my son, had he entered first grade, it would have been the same sight type of erasing whitewashed history. But its so beautiful, seeing how we can wake up from that, because it is a delusion, its like the white supremacy delusion. Its an indoctrination. There is change and there is movement out of that. And I think that what this film bridges so beautifully is the sort of deep ties between history and the present, and how those are the things that need to be examined for new roads to be built.

Huston: I think when I read it I knew this was going to be an important film. I just didnt know quite so how important this film was going to be. Its amazing how that sort of transpired. And that, first, going through the pandemic then obviously George Floyd leading to the mass protests, and you know, injustice that has been delivered for hundreds of years. And its come to a boiling point. And this film embodies that message, and that feeling that enough hate, you know, enough. You know, anger, hatred, this bigotry, this systemic racism that sort of surrounds us in our courts, in our schools, at work, police, healthcare, everywhere we look, this exists. Its present. Its the pas,t its present, and it will be the future. And its sometimes it takes art art can be a platform for expression and art is free to express. And this, in its truest sense is that; it does tie beauty and horror, its painting a very honest, truthful, and bleak picture of the world we live in and the world that we will continue to live in unless we start discussing this crap.

So there have been a lot of films that, like Get Out for example, which this film has all sorts of ties to, that speak to that the Black Lives Matter movement and issues of racism that are resurging. What do you think Antebellum specifically adds to the conversation?

Malone: I think its that bridge work that maybe I was talking about before about bridges lead you towards something, and it sort of helps you understand the journey of how you got there and why were there and how much hard work, it was necessary to build something between the two. And I think that no film has really ever addressed how deeply. We are still living in a lot of ways, in the sort of Antebellum South, and how there was the delusion, and sort of self-protection system that was built at that time its the same system that were using today. So I think that its a hard thing to comprehend, because you want to trust, you want to believe, you want to think that your vote matters and, you know, you vote in great politicians and its going to change things. But really its the structure that has to change. And I think that how this film, through entertainment and almost this sort of superhero story of this Black woman, can get us there is just incredible. You know, Ive never seen a film like it. And I think thats why its just so important that its seen right now, and thats why were putting it out into your phones, and into your computers, and in your televisions and, you know, homemade projectors that youve taped on the wall, because if its not seen right now, this was the moment that it was made for. Its the time, and Im really excited to see it enter into the collective.

Huston: Yeah, I mean Jena said it best. Other films have addressed racism, but they havent addressed our past and shone a light in such a way. And theres a great line that when we read the script, the first thing was a quote from William Faulkner, which I think opens the film, which said the past is not dead, its not even past. I think those words have never felt so true. Isnt that amazing? That were 400 years on right now and were sitting here talking, looking out of our windows and seeing the outcry around the world. Im just sort of stunned and baffled, and confused and confounded that this is the world today. This is the world we live in. And we need a movie to show history. And do we want to be on the right or wrong side of it?

***

Antebellum hits VOD on September 18, 2020.

See original here:

'Antebellum' Villains Jena Malone and Jack Huston on Drawing Inspiration From 'Gone With the Wind' and the Alt-Right [Interview] - /FILM

A Waterford priest has criticised as selfish the behaviour of Catholics who demand Communion on the tongue despite Covid-19 restrictions.

Fr Liam Power, former communications officer with the diocese of Waterford and Lismore, said such people did not seem to respect the danger this represented to others and were a cause of very serious embarrassment for priests, many of whom are elderly.

While the number making such demands was not huge, reports were fairly consistent from parishes across the country, he said. It was also the case that people involved were not open to negotiation.

Fr Power referred to an incident in a Waterford church recently.

One member of the congregation crossed from one section of the church, climbing over a barrier separating the two pods of 50, and then demanded Holy Communion on the tongue.

The priest refused.

It was an embarrassing situation as the congregation witnessed this stand-off during a most sacred moment of the service. When challenged afterwards, the person refuted the constitutionality of the Covid-19 regulations, inferring that the right to religious liberty was being undermined.

A similar incident happened involving an elderly priest with underlying health issues. He too refused.

In neither of these incidents was any concern shown by the protesters for the health and safety of others. Priests and other communicants could have been exposed to Covid infection, Fr Power said.

More generally, he referred to the aggression of such people and their growth across the Catholic world, with a seeming determination to undermine Vatican II and remove Pope Francis. Its the first time in my lifetime I ever heard of a campaign to remove a Pope from within the Church. Its very unsettling for Catholics, he said.

He agreed with those who felt that attention given to such ultra-right groups by Church authorities in Ireland as elsewhere was now reaping a bitter whirlwind.

Fr Power recalled how, when Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin attended Eid celebrations in Croke Park last July, he was met with screaming protestors, his car surrounded and banged on, and people shouting traitor and other abuse.

There was also the recent torrent of abuse hurled at Fr Stephen Farragher, parish priest of Ballyhaunis in Co Mayo, during protests at his decision to allow two members of the Muslim community to say the final blessing and prayer at a Sunday ceremony in the church.

The blessing was planned to show solidarity with frontline workers and to pray for the eradication of Covid-19.

It was the case that such people also oppose vaccines and refuse to wear masks and they wantonly contravene other HSE guidelines, he said.

Their toxic politico-religious cocktail was symptomatic of what is happening on a more global level, particularly in the USA.

Extreme alt-right media groups claiming total fidelity to the Catholic church (such as Church Militant, Lifesite News, Breitbart and the most influential of all Catholic media, EWTN), are unabashedly partisan in their support for extreme right wing politics, Fr Power said.

Where Irelands Catholic bishops were concerned, Fr Power felt that in their attempt to accommodate the alt-right Catholics the hierarchy need to appreciate the political implications of extreme views which, in my opinion, serve to undermine the pontificate of Pope Francis.

There must be limits to appeasement.

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Catholics demanding Communion on the tongue a threat to public health, says priest - The Irish Times

Tesa Aragones is the new chief marketing officer of Discord.

Tesa Aragones is hoping to use her past experience fostering communities in the photography and fitness worlds to now do the same for Discords growing social network.

Aragones, who left her role as the chief marketing officer of VSCO to become the new CMO of Discord last week, is now leading marketing for the San Francisco-based platform that allows people to chat in private conversations using video and chat features. And while its long known for being used by gamers since its founding in 2015, that categorization is quickly changingespecially during the current era of social distancing.

Building community within a platform is something Aragones is familiar with, having created Nikes digital training community along with the brands first iPhone app and winning a variety of patents for various projects. And at VSCO, she focused her efforts on the apps aesthetically minded photographers and videographers.

One of the things that I find so intriguing about the brand is that its youthful like a VSCO, but it also gets a lot of energy from youth-culture in the same way that Nike does, she says. But I really connected with the mission around creating belonging. I love brands that have strong communities, and as a storyteller, some of the best brand storytelling is always inspired by the people that we serve. So when you have a brand (like Discord) that has so much community, Im really looking forward to digging into that.

Discordwhich announced a $100-million fundraising in June and is now valued at $3.5 billionhas continued to grow in terms of users and usage. The company says it now has more than 100 million monthly active users, with people spending 4 billion minutes in conversations each day across 6.7 million communities. While the San Francisco-based firm has long been known as a place for gamers to communicate with each other, the company has been trying to scale and diversify. Much of the momentum has been this year, especially as people look for new ways to communicate with friends and family during the pandemic. According to Aragones, Discords user base has grown by about 50% since February, and the company now says 30% of people use the platform for reasons other than gaming. (Of total users, 76% are outside of North America.)

The company is also looking to continue to clean up its history of being a place for hate. After its founding in 2015, the company became known for its alt-right users when white supremacists used the platform to orchestrate a summer of protests in Charlottesville, Virginia. It also saw the number of user complaints over various abuse and policy violations double during the first half of 2020, according to Discords most recent transparency report. To help address the issue, more than 15% of Discords 250 employees now work on issues related to increasing trust and safety. The company also recently hired its first chief legal officer.

Discord isnt the only new social network with audio as a key component. Others include Clubhouse, which has a closed membership model popular with the venture capital crowd. Twitter has also been testing audio tweets, but so far usage on that platform hasnt gained too much traction.

The new funding should help fuel Discords growth and allow it to invest more in marketing initiatives. Right now, there are 30 people on the marketing team, and it plans to hire more. But first, Aragones says she wants to spend time talking to the platforms millions of communities and users to see what trends might emerge.

The consumers, they define it as how they want to interact with us, she says. So what a college kid might say about how Discord is helping them to connect to their community may be different than creators. I feel like this is an exciting time for innovation. Weve been raising funds to feed into whats next for our consumers and what theyre interested in.

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After Building Community At Nike And VSCO, Discords New CMO Wants To Help More Than Just Gamers Connect During Isolation - Forbes

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Shipping as an industry, as vital part of global economy, wasnt ever under such a threat of catastrophic proportions. Highly effective, cheap and affordable shipping is soon to become extinct, to be replaced with highly monopolized, ineffective and very, very costly shipping, which will dramatically boost costs of everything, from power to food and consumer goods, and therefore, reduce living standards of all the people all around the world.Heres the major, basic, principal difference between us Climate Change deniers; pandemic deniers; NWO agenda deniers; nationalists; alt-right or whatever; and them all the scum which collude with globalist agenda, be this scum shipping elite, or trash scientists, or whoring medics, or useful idiots. We unlike them, dont scare others with oncoming disasters false prophecies (based on trash science), dont demand immediate actions in forms of more bans, more restrictions, less consumption, worse food, unaffordable electricity, unaffordable natural food like meat or dairy, bigger taxes, heavier fines and stricter penalties We dont want new sustainable green normal, habitable for elites only. Our goal is quite the opposite maximum deregulation of everything, everywhere, on all levels; curbing corrupt governments already unlimited power; dismantling of all or nearly all, international bodies, starting with UN, and thoroughful investigation of all their activities, past and present. We dont need funds, grants, and billionaire suckers charities we dont need any financing on public account or whoever account. We dont need NGOs, foundations, alliances on the contrary, we want shipping to be disinfected from existing ones. We want freedom of speech and discussions, were against censorship, were against the dictatorship of legislative and law enforcement bodies, puppets of globalist elites, were against monopolies in any form, from multinational shipping giants to trade unions and media.In unbelievably short time, in months, global economy, be it freed from globalists New World Order and uncontrolled governments, will thrive, providing us with much higher living standards, and most importantly, making us free.We want people to wake up, to look around, to stop drugging themselves by mainstream poison. I know that many people agree with me, but why stay silent? You want to make your opinions and thoughts public? You want to speak out against scumbags, whore ruining shipping? Im not just open to it, Im eager for your opinion. I earn enough money to live on, and to run MB. I dont ask for financial support, Im asking for another kind of support for opinions, analysis, facts, figures, statistics. Youre afraid of consequences? You dont have to be, it will be anonymous if you want to. Invite, involve like-minded people you know, and there are many of them. Ill publish it all.Voice yourself, openly or anonymously, Im waiting for honest industry insiders, sick of whats going on joint the fight!

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Shipping insiders invited to join the fight - Maritime Bulletin