Australia and New Zealand are getting a wide range of new content for Disney+ in August, including four new Disney+ Original movies such as The One And Only Ivan, Phineas & Ferb: Candace Against The Universe, Magic Camp and Howard plus an all-new Disney Channel Original Movie, Upside-Down Magic.

Barts not dead, but is the subject of a movie starring Gal Gadot. Homer is nearly killed by Krusty the Clown. Lisa seeks asylum in Canada and much, much more in The Simpsons Season 30.

Directed by Don Hahn (Beauty and the Beast), Howard is the untold story of Howard Ashman, the brilliant lyricist behind Disney classics like Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid and creator of musicals including Little Shop of Horrors. Featuring never-before-seen archival footage, personal films and photographs, as well as interviews with Howards friends and family, the film is an intimate look at the Disney Legends life, his creative drive, and the process behind the music. Spanning his childhood in Baltimore, to his formative years in New York, and his untimely death due to AIDS, Howard goes in-depth to explore his journey to become the lyricist behind some of the most beloved and well-known classic family films in the world.

Fozzie Bear has some big ideas for Muppets Now, and theres no time like the deadline to start pitching! Hes found a very tough audience in Scooter, who just wants to finish uploading the latest delivery. We see the very first episode of a game show that Pepe The King Prawn totally just made up. The Swedish Chef tries to cook a better mol sauce than his competitor, Danny Trejo. Dr. Bunsen Honeydew has replaced Beaker with a new smart assistant, and things get fired up. Miss Piggy and her guests, Taye Diggs and Linda Cardellini, show viewers how to work it out when they share the secret to staying healthy.

Viewers send in home-made videos capturing comical situations, mishaps and staged pranks. The studio audience votes for the funniest video, which wins attractive prizes.

Creative Director Ryan Meinerding brings Marvel characters to life through innovative design every day. Theres never a dull moment as Ryan creates the first looks of characters for Marvel Studios films including Iron Man, Spider-Man, Captain America and more. From initial sketches to special effects, Ryan oversees the process of bringing the next iteration of iconic characters to the screen.

Who says you cant be Goofy and organized at the same time? Not Amber or the Gubaney family, who connect to work on a Goofy-inspired craft. She will show them how to turn a simple item from the cupboard into a fun organizational tool thats sure to stand out. Meanwhile, the biggest challenge of all may be figuring out which Gubaney is the Goofiest!

When Buy N Large opens its first store in New York City, hungry customers get a taste of the future

Hosts Charlie Engelman and Carly Ciarrocchi dont have tickets to their favorite actress movie premiere, but somehow their friends do. Charlie and Carlys quest to get to the Alabama Cones premiere takes them on a fascinating journey to Dinosaur National Monument. There, they hatch a plan with a paleontologist to dig up the dough.

Joe, the new legal counsel for The Muppets, interrupts the scheduled delivery of Muppets Now to announce that all streaming content must be vetted by a focus group. Things go from bad to worse when Scooter meets up with the assigned test audience curmudgeonly critics Statler & Waldorf. The Swedish Chef collaborates with Chef Roy Choi as the two try to make a one-of-kind kalbi bowl. Dr. Bunsen Honeydew and his assistant, Beaker, enlist a Pizza Delivery Person (Al Madrigal) to explore velocity. Miss Piggy and her guests, Linda Cardellini and Taye Diggs, dig deep into the workings of a healthy relationship. Pepe The King Prawns unbelievable game show features new contestants, new challenges, new rules, and no planning at all

A young vampire girl faces the joys and trials of being the new kid in town when her family moves from Transylvania to Pennsylvania.

Petrolhead Shane Lynch is setting two teams of amateur mechanics a task of epic proportions; they have just four days to build monster machines that can out-perform a top-trump attribute of a supercar! Under the expert guidance of head-engineer Ralph Hosier, theyve got free reign in an automotive scrapyard to build their vehicles, before going head-to-head on the racetrack to see which performs best. Through the teams trials and tribulations, we will learn how supercars work, and learn just how hard it is to achieve perfection. From acceleration to braking, handling to grip, this is a true test of beauty vs beast. Scrapyard Supercar.

Manager of Broadcast Engineering at Disney Streaming Services, Pavan Billy Komkai explains the unique process of broadcasting live sports on ESPN+ for fans around the world. No matter the time of day or the location of the event, Disneys Streaming Services team provides viewers with high-quality coverage of diverse sporting events every day.

A group of misfit campers help a down-on-his-luck magician rediscover his love of magic in Disneys Magic Camp, a heartwarming comedy about finding joy and confidence in self-acceptance.

In this enchanting fantasy movie based on the New York Times bestselling childrens book, Nory and her best friend Reina enter the Sage Academy for Magical Studies, where Norys unconventional powers land her in a class for those with wonky, or upside-down, magic. Undaunted, Nory sets out to prove that that upside-down magic can be just as powerful as right-side-up.

Fun-loving pug puppies, brothers Bingo and Rolly, have thrill-seeking appetites that take them on exhilarating adventures in their neighborhood and around the globe. Whether helping their owner Bob or assisting a friend in need, the pugs motto is that life is more exciting with your best friend by your side. Each episode features two 11-minute stories that showcase Bingo and Rollys similarities and differences while demonstrating positive lessons about friendship, problem-solving, collaboration, creativity and adventure.

Nature Boom Time! is an educational show about nature and the environment produced by World By Charlie Productions and currently airing on Nat Geo WILD. The show follows Charlie, Kirby, and Patrick three perpetually enthusiastic best friends as they travel around the United States to learn about trees and what makes nature incredibly awesome. Science and history are explained with paper cutouts and goofy girl Casey back at headquarters!

Join Sam Peltz, a wildlife enthusiast, as she takes on a new wildlife challenge! See Sam get up close and personal with a kinkajou, giraffes, penguins, and more!

Learn some of the coolest facts about marine wildlife and the ocean as you join Scuba Sam on an aquatic journey and discover the wonders of the underwater world. Dive in as she teaches you about manta rays, nudibranchs, clownfish, jellyfish, and more so you can see for yourself why the ocean is such an amazing place for these creatures.

Ever wanted to journey into space? Wondered about the Milky Way or if aliens really exist? Then get Spaced Out! Learn about our universe through imagery taken from the Hubble Space Telescope, and see how it inspires our world and culture.

Ivan is a 400-pound silverback gorilla who shares a communal habitat in a suburban shopping mall with Stella the elephant and Bob the dog. He has few memories of the jungle where he was captured, but when a baby elephant named Ruby arrives, it touches something deep within him. Ruby is recently separated from her family in the wild, which causes him to question his life, where he comes from and where he ultimately wants to be.

To protect or enjoy? Hosts Carly and Charlie have two very different plans for the backyard and cannot come to an agreement. Carly thinks backyards are to be enjoyed, and Charlie thinks they should be protected. A visit with park rangers from Yellowstone National Park might just help settle Carly and Charlies debate.

Scooter wakes up in horror to discover his all-nighters have finally gotten the best of him, and he has only 30 minutes to upload Muppets Now. With the clock ticking and his eyelids drooping, Scooter enlists Animal to help him stay awake. Dr. Bunsen Honeydew and his assistant, Beaker, conduct a series of vibrational experiments with the help of a lonely, outdated computer. The Swedish Chef uncovers the secrets of Spaghetti Carbonara when staring down his competitor, Giuseppe Losavio. Miss Piggy sits down with Aubrey Plaza to conduct a fabulous one-on-one interview. Later, she looks out for number one as she focuses on self-care with guests Linda Cardellini and Taye Diggs.

As Senior Facilities Coordinator for Holiday Services, Heather Bartleson helps bring the holiday spirt to Disney. From parks, resorts, cruise lines and more, Bartleson works year-round to ensure the Holiday Services Team has everything they need to create holiday themed environments that immerse guests and create magical holiday moments.

Back to the Titanic documents the first manned dives to Titanic in nearly 15 years. New footage reveals fresh decay and sheds light on the ships future.

An epic journey revealing the real Mars, as youve never seen it before. Using data from orbiters and rovers to build accurate views of the red planet and uncover its secrets. On a single circuit of Mars from dawn to dusk, encounter monster volcanos, ancient lakes, alien ice-worlds and spacecraft crash sites. Explore humanitys Martian obsession, join the relentless search for life there, and hunt for a human home on the red planets surface.

Before man ruled the world, Earth was a land of giants. Count down the biggest beasts of their kind to ever roam the planet in this eye-opening special, and uncover the secret lives of these supersized species. From birds with plane-length wingspans, to dinosaurs rivalling a Boeing 737, this stunning CGI special goes in search of the truth behind these monsters, counting down the ten largest and most extraordinary finds. From handling the recently unearthed bones of a dinosaur far larger than previously known, to analysing the flight technique of a giant seven-metre bird uncover the unique adaptations that allowed each animal to thrive. Visual stunts and surprising size comparisons bring each beast vividly back to life in ever-increasing sizes. Get ready for a dramatic countdown of the most mind-blowing lost giants.

Phineas and Ferb The Movie: Candace Against the Universe is an adventure story that tracks stepbrothers Phineas and Ferb as they set out across the galaxy to rescue their older sister Candace, who after being abducted by aliens, finds utopia in a far-off planet, free of pesky little brothers.

Charlie and Carly run a fruit-and-vegetable stand outside of headquarters, but lately, theyve been selling out of their crops faster than they can grow them. Carly has an idea to turn the garden into a farm, but they dont have enough space to grow everything they need outside. She takes Charlie on a trip to an indoor vertical farm in NYC to learn new possibilities of farming!

Chip the I.T. guy installs an upgrade to Scooters overtaxed computer just as Scooter is beginning to upload the latest episode of Muppets Now. Scooter must work fast to get everything in place before the hard reboot goes into effect. Miss Piggy takes a trip through the topic of travel with guests Linda Cardellini and Taye Diggs. Pepe The King Prawn makes up a new game show on the spot, and the contestants do their best to keep up. Uncle Deadly demonstrates the drama, disciplines, and danger of stage combat for Muppet fanboy, Walter. Dr. Bunsen Honeydew puts the pressure on his assistant, Beaker, with a hydraulic-press experiment that requires a personal touch

Step into Star Wars: Galaxys Edge with Walt Disney Imagineer & Creative Director Eric Baker as he helps create this new, exciting land. From traveling the globe in search of props to overseeing larger-than-life installations, Eric is constantly reimagining how to elevate the park guest experience so they are in awe each time they step into new lands and attractions.

What are you looking forward to watching on Disney+ in August?

Roger has been a Disney fan since he was a kid and this interest has grown over the years. He has visited Disney Parks around the globe and has a vast collection of Disney movies and collectibles. He is the owner of What's On Disney Plus & DisKingdom. Email: Roger@WhatsOnDisneyPlus.com Twitter: Twitter.com/RogPalmerUKFacebook: Facebook.com/rogpalmeruk

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What's Coming To Disney+ In August (Australia/New Zealand) - What's On Disney Plus

The 1975 have launched an online exhibition showcasing videos inspired by various tracks from Notes On A Conditional Form.

The Manchester group teamed up with director Ben Ditto to commission 14 artists, each tasked with creating a visual piece in response to a particular Notes cut.

Matty Healy and co. have been uploading the finished videos to their YouTube channel over the course of the past three months. Today (July 22) the band shared Lu Yangs interpretation of Playing On My Mind, which completed the series.

The participating artists worked across disciplines such as 3D modelling, AI, generative animation, motion-capture animation, performance and robotics to create their respective films. Continuing with the themes of The 1975s fourth album, the pieces explore technology, hope, love, anxiety and violence.

Fans can view the complete Artists Respond To NOACF exhibition here via the bands official website, or in the form of this YouTube playlist. Check out the post below to see the full list of contributors.

An official description of the project reads: Today, our lives are more screen-based, virtual and dematerialized than ever before. We hear so many dystopian forecasts about our technological future, but technology can also have a positive effect and we should learn to embrace its benefits and potential.

This online exhibition highlights some of those possibilities: how technology can create beauty and meaning, new forms of expression and new ways of experiencing culture.

Meanwhile, The 1975 recently announced their rescheduled European tour dates for 2021. The shows have been postponed twice due to the coronavirus crisis, and will now take place throughout February and March next year.

The band have also shared a new 2021 date for their huge London headline show in Finsbury Park, where they were set to be joined by Phoebe Bridgers,Pale WavesandBeabadoobee earlier this month.

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Immerse yourself in The 1975s new online exhibit for Notes On A Conditional Form - NME

The bedroom can feel like an inner sanctum, a personalhideout away from the public. Therefore, there seems to be a contradiction inbedroom pop becoming a new genre dominating worldwide media, rather thanremaining isolated in the private intimacy of the bedroom. As a result oftechnological convulsions and the surge of online platforms, bedroom pop hasultimately manifested the ideology that creating and producing music is easilyaccessible to all.

Clairo, Rex Orange County, Steve Lacy and Billie Eilish aresome of the most prominent avatars of bedroom pop, boasting millions of streamson platforms such as Spotify, YouTube and Soundcloud. Ironically, their successhas moved their music production out of the modesty of the bedroom, and into professionalstudios, arguably losing the intimacy and DIY appeal of a track madeindependently. Their success raises some fundamental questions: what definesbedroom pop? And is this terminology merely a launching point for future risingartists?

Bedroom pop is typically characterised by lo-fi, relaxedaesthetics and the imperfections of home produced, self-recorded tracks.Commonly associated with the soundscape of scratchy recordings are slightly outof tune guitars, muffled audio from laptop microphones and cheesy pre-set drummachine loops.

Claire Cottrill, also known as Clairo, exemplifies thebeauty of simplicity and the appeal of DIY ethos. Her music video accompanying PrettyGirl was created on a laptop webcam, taking under thirty minutes to create.The singer has a youthful, naive persona as she nonchalantly lip-syncs to thelyrics. While the video is reminiscent of homemade videos created on Video Starin Year 8, Pretty Girl has accumulated 51 million views on YouTube. Clairosearly music, such as her EP Diary 001 (2018),is the epitome ofbedroom pop; the rudimentary synths and sweet-like-candy vocals encapsulate theraw honesty and naivety this new wave is about.

However, the simplicity of bedroom pop should not beunderestimated. Some of the genres viral gems have been down to itssimplicity, suggesting anyone with a laptop can become an internet success. Twenty-year-oldBeabadoobees first hit was from the off chance of uploading her first songever written to Bandcamp on a whim in 2017. Yet it has now crystallised intopopularity on TikTok, racking up over 39 million streams on Spotify, and 500million streams of the remix. Coffee finds appeal in its delicate aesthetic,alluding to the listener that theyre in a nostalgic and romantic love story.The track consists of four soft guitar chords, lightly strummed alongside Beasethereal voice, who sings so softly that its almost a whisper. The varyingtempo throughout the song opposes the judging ticking of a studio metronome, themuffled dialogue at the end perpetuating the colloquiality of a home recording.

Though as with Clairo, Beabadoobee and many other bedroom pop creators, finding success on the internet provides the opportunities of record label signings, debut album contracts and ultimately, a chance in a professional studio. Clairos debut album, Immunity (2019), is sonically cohesive in maintaining the intimacy of soft vocals and confessional, personal lyrics throughout. However, it is clear her sound is broadening, as her use of professional equipment becomes increasingly apparent; low quality sounding audio has been replaced with high tech microphones, and cheesy pre-set drum loops have been replaced with professional drummers. Equally, Beabadoobees signing to Dirty Hit has allowed her to stray away from the early days of acoustic guitars. Her most recent EP, Space Cadet (2019), finds a new sonic solar system similar to indie rock, with roaring electric guitars, punchier vocals and drums powerful enough to mosh to. With more ambitious production, should we still classify these artists under the category of bedroom pop?

Unlike most genres, bedroom pop cannot truly be identified by its sound. In fact, artists that fall under this category do not have to share a similar sound at all. Bedroom pop may vary from sounding similar to indie folk, teenage heartthrob tracks to 808 hi-hats of R&B, or even a fusion of both. The main appeal of using software such as Logic Pro X, GarageBand or Ableton Live is that the possible outcomes are endless.Bedroom pop, therefore, has recently been identifiable more as a community rather than a particular soundscape. One of the strongest appeals that remains for bedroom pop is individualism. Artists of this community prioritise the ideology of independence and authenticity, ensuring it permeates throughout their records. Whats important is that the initial writing process of lyrics and chords remains where it started: in the bedroom. Taking these ideas into the studio merely enhances their capabilities as musicians.

Bedroom pop is a refreshing antidote to the mass corporate mainstream pop churned out on the radio. Rather than music created with corporate success, streaming algorithms, or a mainstream audience in mind, bedroom pop finds comfort in its raw honesty, and its expressive freedom.

Image: Original image of beabadoobee by john

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The beauty of bedroom pop - Cherwell Online

The NBA Bubble life is still unknown to a lot of fans and JaVale McGee and Matisse Thybule are doing their best to provide a sneak peek to the fans.

The NBA was suspended on 11 March due to the Coronavirus pandemic. Since then players have found new ways to beat the boring time of lockdown and used it to create something new. Some players like Nikola Jokic and Rajon Rondo have used the lockdown period to get back in perfect shape for the restart.While a few others like JaVale McGee and Matisse Thybulle have worked on their video making skills and are putting it to good use during their NBA Bubble stay.

Read More: Kobe Bryants Dad auctions off gifted 1999/2000 Lakers Championship ring; doesnt get desired amount

The rookie guard for the Philadelphia 76ers is using his camera skills to show basketball fans the unseen videos from inside the bubble. The 23-year-old is producing high-quality videos for the fans revealing how life inside the bubble really is.

From a trip on the team bus to the airplane to the facility where players are tested for the coronavirus, Thybulle is covering it all. He is also providing fans with glimpses from the 76ers practice, and tours of hotel and rooms in which the staff and the players are living.

Matisse was skeptical about the presentation of videos

In an interview, Matisse said I knew there would be a ton of buzz about basketball starting up and that this was something that people would be interested in, But in my mind, Im like, Am I going to be able to present it to them in a way thats actually entertaining?

The videos have gone viral in no time as his youtube channel has 220k subscribers and the vlogs are also doing a decent job over the internet.

Read More: NBA Scrimmage Schedule Televised: Fox Sports to telecast Orlando Magic and Miami Heat Scrimmages

NBA Bubble life videos: Vlogger JaVale McGee

Los Angeles Lakers center JaVale McGee has also followed the footsteps of Matisse by uploading videos showing hotels in which Lakers are staying.

He has also filmed Lakers practice and has interviewed his fellow players and staff during the practice session. His youtube channel has garnered over 250k subscribers.

In the bubble, media is restricted to some places but the players have the freedom to move anywhere and this has been used by players to make their quarantine period interesting for themselves as well as for the fans.

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NBA Bubble life videos: Lakers' JaVale McGee and Sixers' Matisse Thybulle release inside videos of the... - The Sportsrush

Image: Instagram/Rhea Chakraborty

"U b*tch commit suicide otherwise I will send someone to kill you."

"We will make you regret opening your comment section."

"You are a 2 rupee woman."

This is what some faceless people hurled at some women on social media in the past week. Ghastly, pathetic, frustrating, and so much more than the vocabulary can conjure up, but what about it! This is "normal", "People say things", "Ignore them", and "Don't give any importance to them".Right?!

Actor Rhea Chakraborty is recently in the eye of the social storm. The reason: many if you ask the netizens. The death of her boyfriend Sushant Singh Rajput is, in some crooked way, linked to her and their past relationship.

People attacking Rhea after her boyfriend committed suicide, with possible reasons of mental health issues and depression, need to understand that they are not supporting his cause or helping drive the conversation around the issue at all. Instead, they are just pushing another person into a dark room, as they believed Sushant to be in. In which world is that justified? If you're a troll, don't even try.

Why? Because "trolls don't care about the person," says Dr Shefali Batra, Senior Consultant Psychiatrist and Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapist. "What they are concerned about is the pain and the emotional response that they arouse in somebody. That's their reward. If one doesn't care about their comments, they find someone else to disturb," she explains.

Image:123RF

And it's not just Rhea. Swara Bhasker's posts on social media define what trolling truly is. Anything that woman says is met with scorn, criticism and a reminder about her masturbation scene from a movie. (What's wrong with a masturbation scene anyway, but that debate is for later!)

As we talk about trolling, our minds can't help but wonder why the nature of every troll is so patriarchal irrespective of the gender. If a man is being attacked online, trolls go after abusing his mother/sister/wife/daughter of rape. In a women's case, online or real-world, abuse has always been easier. Just demean her, add a few body-negative comments; if she's still talking, throw in a rape threat or two. The trolling here is done.

Image:123RF

Abusive remarks about rape threat or acid attack are not casual, but the way they are casually thrown around in the digital space is shocking. And this is a punishable offence under Indian Penal Code (IPC) Sections 294, 504, 506, 509 and Sec 67 of the IT Act. Under which YouTuber Shubham Mishra was booked by Vadodara City Police last week for uploading an abusive, threatening video against comedian Agrima Joshua.

According to the "Troll Patrol India," a report by Amnesty International in 2020 found that women politicians in India face a shocking scale of abuse on Twitter. It also discovered that women are targeted with abuse online not just for their opinions - but also for various identities, such as gender, religion, caste, and marital status. Disturbing, but not surprising.

"Social media only amplifies existing social structures and biases. Thanks to the anonymity the politically incorrect instincts get freehand on expression. We are a largely male society and wired for patriarchy in chauvinism. Trolling patterns and trolling victims online (and offline) closely replicate the demographic," says Sahil Siddiqui, who spearheaded the campaign Give Subtitles To Suicide for Suicide Prevention India Foundation for WHO's Gatekeeper Program.

But, on a human level, one asks what makes other people so cruel in disguise. "What powers the troll is the reaction that they arouse in people. The reward is the mayhem they create. While some of them could be narcissists, psychopaths, and sociopaths; their motivation is going back for more and more reaction that they arouse in people," explains Dr Batra.

In a male-dominated world, women are perceived as someone who can be easily oppressed, and women are the natural targets, Vijal Sejpal, founder of iThrive counselling and holistic development centre further explains. Trolling is a fight for power and control. It's deceptive and disruptive behaviour and is focused on deliberately provoking and upsetting somebody.

Trolls are known to have a low level of empathy, guilt or responsibility for their actions; and have higher levels of sadism. "It is obvious enjoyment in causing physical and psychological pain to others, for apparently no other gain except for the fact that they like to hurt people. It's a very atypical form of social reward in which the reward is inflicting pain. In a twisted way, trolls have cognitive empathy, which means they understand the mind of the other person and exploit this awareness to make the other person feel bad," Dr Batra states.

Trolling is, for lack of a better/worse word, ridiculous, but for women, it is way more than just vicious. It is scary, demented and consequential. In a country, where the pathos of women safety can't be talked about enough and where one woman is raped every 15 minutes (no kidding, check out NCRB's 2018 report), no threat can be taken lightly. And that's the advantage these trolls have over our peace of mind. It throws you off, and makes you think of every conversation you've had with people around you, make you re-check every social media update, and also makes you feel like going inside a room and to make no contact with the world.

If we need a solution to fix the larger picture, we need to focus on the problem areas. We need to talk to the youth. We need to drive a conversation, as early as possible to talk about women's issues, mental health and social media.

Also Read: #FeminaCares: Mental Health Is IMPORTANT, And We Need To Acknowledge It

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Trolls And Patriarchy Are More Linked Than You Think - Femina

When the COVID-19 pandemic began to seriously affect everyday life earlier this year, museums and galleries that were forced to close responded by moving their collections online, creating viewing rooms for digital visitors. (In Hyde Park, the Museum of Science and Industry launched a website with science resources and activities for children to try at home.)

But several arts spaces have also taken up a different challenge, aiming to show work that responds to life under lockdown, in which our ordinary interactions with one another have become overwhelmingly virtual. Thats the aim of Another Idea, an exhibition at the University of Chicagos Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry thats been running since June 1.

The Gray Center doesnt usually put together large exhibitions its more of a forum for artists and academics to discuss and engage with one anothers work, with public programming like Gray Sound, an experimental music series started in 2019. But Another Idea, which closes at the end of July, was organized in response to the sudden shift that took place with the onset of the pandemic.

It came out of some observations on our part, and some conversations with UChicago Arts, thinking about how to approach moving things online, said Mike Schuh, assistant director of fellowships and operations at the Gray Center, who organized the exhibit with curator Zachary Cahill. Theres a lot of artists working today and going back throughout the 20th century whose work is malleable enough that it's well-suited for a web-based exhibition.

The short introductory paragraph to Another Idea notes that its artworks are inherently ephemeral. That may seem surprising for those who worry about the permanence of information online but as the writer and critic Kate Wagner recently pointed out, the disappearance of old websites, especially popular ones, often leads to a significant loss of data, as if a smallish Library of Alexandria has been burned to the ground.

On a smaller scale, Devin T. Mayss Taxidermy illustrates this point: the page for Mays on the Gray Center website currently displays eight links to expired or deleted Craigslist postings. The hint to their contents comes in the text of the now-defunct URL, which are all some variant on chicago-used-usa-flag-free-delivery. (By the time this has gone to press, of course, it is possible that a ninth, extant link has appeared, in which case a reader of the Herald may soon find themselves the owner of an American flag.)

As the persistence of Mayss hyperlinks show, even something that disappears can leave a trace thats true for other works in Another Idea, too, albeit in less tangible ways. Take the two pieces by British artist Liam Gillick, which instruct the viewer to perform some task, such as: Using a pipe and cable detector locate all the cables and metalwork hidden below the surface of a chosen wall. Loosely mark their location using a yellow pencil.

He doesnt really care how much time you spend with a work in a place. He's much more interested in its lingering effects maybe two weeks later, you stumble across something in your life. The work comes back to haunt you that way, said Schuh. It's really intended to to generate a residue from the experience that isn't so much about a kind of specific time-and-space engagement.

As with Gillicks piece, the mood of engagement is often collaborative, encouraging the visitor to the show to participate somehow in it. Zarouhie Abdalians work, for instance, presents a series of seven etudes, described as prose scores for any willing performers.

The most recent focuses on BlackRock, the international investment company that, according to its own website, manages $6.47 trillion in assets. Abdalian directs willing performers to research the companys investments and contrast it with the social good that might be done if that money were used to hire workers at the wage of $15 an hour. Outside the location of the BlackRock office nearest to you, make a public demonstration of your findings, it concludes.

One of the earlier etudes, State Portrait, has already been performed by another artist, Dena Beard. In Beards video, which is posted on the Gray Center website, she produces documentation from a protest in Oakland, Cal., on June 3. At one point, Beards camera, tilted upwards at the tops of tall buildings, pans around an intersection as a speaker tells a crowd, We cant sit back and watch our babies, our men, our peoples bodies lying lifelessly in the street at the hands of the police.

This connection to current events is on display, too, in Cauleen Smiths COVID Manifesto, which consists of a series of messages written on yellow lined paper, with a new piece at the beginning of each week. Over the course of the exhibition, the texts transition from reflections on life under lockdown (I do love seeing my students faces on the Zoom) to exhortations in favor of prison abolition (Everybody everybody out of jail NOW).

Some of the works were originally conceived for physical shows, and reworked for an online presentation. Food Situation for a Patriotic Banquet, an installation by the Spanish artist Antoni Miralda, consists of a table laid out with eight trays of cooked rice, colored and arranged to resemble the flags of power countries in the 1970s, including Germany, China, the United States, and Switzerland. The rice gradually decomposes over the time its on display.

Originally proposed in 1972, the piece didnt actually show until 2010. For Another Idea, Miralda will submit 61 photographs in total, uploading a new one each day that the virtual exhibition continues. Taken from a 2015 installation of the show, the images include his initial sketches of the work, a photo of a woman ironing a tablecloth at the installation space, and scientific-looking close-ups of the rice grains, fuzzy with mold.

A handful of the virtual pieces, meanwhile, were created for earlier iterations of the internet. Susan Hillers Dream Screens was first launched in 1996 neatly laid out, it allows the viewer to click around on the screen, changing its color along some hidden gradient while a robotic-sounding voice recites a monologue about dreaming.

I'm watching a man who has an amazing psychic power to somehow generate dreams that everyone can see. Works by several famous modernist artists turn into dream sequences in his mind, it begins. On an accompanying page of resources, Hiller, who passed away last year, writes that the text is largely based on loose recollections of films shes seen, each with the word dream in the title. The page also contains a color map, a list of hues used in the piece (Antwerp red to chrysocolla, a shade of turquoise), as well as an extensive bibliography of Hillers sources.

That site provides a lot of sort of supporting information, and gives you a peek into her research. At the same time, the way in which she presents it is still relatively obfuscating, said Schuh. It just leaves you with questions, which is really what you want to have, and have them sort of remain with you. I kept thinking about me sitting here with this piece in my house, and someone else doing the same exact thing. And so that's both this shared thing, and sort of also all my own.

Another Idea runs through July 31. Visitgraycenter.uchicago.edu/projects/another-idea.

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With 'Another Idea,' Gray Center steps into virtual programming during the pandemic - Hyde Park Herald

Ihsahn appears to be teasing new music, with the Emperor vocalist and guitarist uploading a short audio clip to his Instagram page.

The only piece of information to go along with the clip is the date July 17 this coming Friday. This could indicate a new track or his new five-track EP which would follow Telemark which was released in February this year.

Speaking previously with Prog, Ihsahn said that while Telemark represented his heavier side, the as-yet-untitled companion EP would show his more progressive side.

He said: The plan is to follow up this EP with its aesthetic and musical counterpart, wherein I can distil all those more progressive, experimental and mellow elements of my music.

Ultimately, its all a means for me to get some of those ideas out of my system, giving myself space before I delve into the next album.

Last month, Ihsahn revealed that he and Matt Heafywere continuing to work on theTrivium frontmans long-awaited Mrityu project while in lockdown.

He said: Me and Matt Heafy have been tracking some killer vocals.The current situation prevents us from travelling, but with this technology, it is almost like were in the same studio.

Matt is absolutely killing it and were making great progress every session.

The project first came to light eight years ago when Heafy was looking to explore his love of black metal.

Responding to Ihsahn's latest Instagram post, Heafy posted a row of 'mind-blown' emojis.

Originally posted here:

Ihsahn teases new music and hints it's coming later this week - Louder

In these times, theres a lot of ways to communicate with friends and family. From Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, iMessage, and so much more, there are no shortages of ways to talk to people.

But riding the momentum of Microsoft Teams in the enterprise and business space, Microsoft recently brought Teams over to the consumer world to enter the fray of messaging platforms. The company envisions Teams as not only something you can use for work, but also for friends and family.

With a beta of these features recently making their way over to the iOS version of the Microsoft Teams app, I thought Id try it out. I really had my doubts, but after a week of using Teams consumer features, I loved it. Heres my story.

Much like signing up for WhatsApp or other services, setting up Teams for consumer was quite easy. For most people who arent already using Microsoft Teams in their work and are trying Teams for the first time this will be an important step. Luckily, Microsoft makes it simple.

Since I already use Teams for work at OnMSFT, I simply went into the hamburger menu, and under accounts and orgs, signed in with my personal Microsoft Account then confirmed my phone number. I also opted to sync my contacts, too, as I wanted to see if anyone else was using Teams. I was then good to go.

Coincidently, an old college friend of mine (who now lives in Kazakhstan) was already using Teams consumer features. After I synced my contacts, I noticed that her name and number showed up when I went to create a list of messages in the chat. My colleague at OnMSFT also showed up too, and we used the app to talk instead of our usual method of communication, WhatsApp, and iMessage. I spoke to both these people on Teams throughout my week with the app thus far, and it is still ongoing.

I even convinced my mother to give Teams a try. As a first-time Teams user, she found the setup process quick and easy. She clicked the Sign up for free button, signed up with her phone number, confirmed it, added a profile picture, synced her contacts, and was good to go!

Just like Teams for business and enterprise, the core experience of Teams consumer features is the chat experience. As someone who is quite used to messaging on WhatsApp and iMessage, I must say this is where Teams consumer experience is just as good.

In the chat, you not only can send out text messages, but you also can record and send voice audio messages. This is a feature that has been present in iMessage and WhatsApp for quite some time, and its something that I am glad made its way to consumer Teams, too. After all, there are situations where written words are not right.

Another thing I liked about the chat experience is how similar it is to WhatsApp. The locations for the user interface are almost exactly the same. A plus icon to the left of the compose box to send files and GIFS, or location. Theres also a camera to the right to quick-send a photo, and then the microphone to record audio.

Composing messages, meanwhile, is the same as WhatsApp. If you opted to sync contacts, youll see everyone with Teams appear under the compose box. You can also add someone to a group chat without them already having Teams. Just tap their phone number, and add them. Theyll be sent an invite link via text to download and join Teams.

The same goes for a chat, too. If you want to chat with someone on Teams who doesnt yet have the app, just tap their number and theyll be sent a unique link to join the later. (This is possible in WhatsApp, but the recipient of the invite wont be able to automatically join the group chat or the chat you had for them.)

As my mother told me when she tried it out, most people will feel right at home when using Teams. Theres not much learning curve to using it. In my one week so far, chatting with my colleague and friend has been as natural as it is on WhatsApp and other apps. Not to mention, the emoji reactions (which arent on Whatsapp) have made for some funny moments and some more prolonged conversations between myself and my friends.

But there are some advanced features in chat that can only be found in Teams. This includes a formatter to bold, italics, and underline things in your messages. Theres also the ability to @mention someone to get their attention (outside of a group chat) or use the Task and the Safe features. Keep in mind, WhatsApp doesnt support these, which is why I will dive deeper into these next.

Asides from chat, another thing that makes Teams consumer unique is the Dashboard. From here, youre able to use Teams for consumer features to your advantage. Theres a lot to get into, including the Safe, location sharing, uploading files, and more. As a summary, though: the dashboard is essentially a hub, showing you all the things that happened within a chat or group chat.

Ill start first by talking about location sharing. This was one of the features Microsoft spoke a lot about when it first unveiled Teams for consumers. Just go to a chat, then tap the Dashboard, then choose Share location. Youll be able to share the location for 30 mins, 1 day, or always on. If your contact is also sharing location, you even can pull up a map to see a comparison of where you are in comparison to each other. You can stop sharing at any time with a Stop Sharingbutton in the UI.

Alas, the point is the person in the chat will be able to see exactly where you are. I used this with my mother to show her where I was when I left the home one day, but its a feature I think will be useful for families, and keeping kids safe. Say, a kid leaving school, etc. Its not exactly exclusive, though, as WhatsApp has the same exact feature, though, as do iPhones with the Find My app.

But what is exclusive to Teams is the Safe. Setting this up is simple, as youll need to enter a PIN (and store an encryption key for it on your MSA.) Youll then need to grant your contact access to your safe, and theyll be able to access it in real-time (or vice versa, too.) This is a great way to share information like passwords, passports, memberships, and more. Once you share your safe, the contact will be able to access it, too, and add content. I used it with my mother to share step by step instructions on how to do things in Teams and to give her the WiFi password. This is quite nifty, and Safe is even locked behind FaceID or TouchID for extra security. I have yet to see something like this on other messaging platforms, and its really Teams big potential.

Then there are the other features. You can create a shared calendar so you and contact can plan an event. You also can create a shared task. This one was useful for me and my mother, as I left her a grocery list, and she was able to check things off as she went to the store. Meanwhile, as I was home and was able to see the things she picked up from the store as she checked it off the list. Again, something that can be useful for families and giving children tasks or chores to do.

Finally, there is the ability to upload files. If you and the person youre sharing the file with both share or have a Microsoft 365 subscription, you can edit and co-edit the documents together by viewing the file in Teams, and then opening it through the Office app. This is great, as it combines the power of Office with Teams, allowing you to get your maximum productivity.

After one week, Im now a believer in Microsoft Teams being used by consumers. Although most features are already on iMessage, WhatsApp, and other platforms, its great to see Teams expand its reach. After all, most people already likely use Teams for work, so why not bring it into their homes, too?

But, not everything is perfect. Currently, Teams consumer features are only available on the mobile apps. There is no way to enjoy it on the desktop. Photos, videos, and other content sent on Teams dont easily transfer to desktop, as they would with enterprise and business.

Also, switching between work and personal accounts could lead to some serious problems. It really annoyed me to get double notifications, from both work and my personal account when using a single app for communication

This experience is still in beta, so more changes could be coming soon. Until then, I am a believer. Heres to hoping that Teams become just as popular as WhatsApp.

Read the original post:

I used the consumer features in Microsoft Teams for one week, and it's better than you'd think - OnMSFT

Welcome toMovie DNA, a column that recognizes the direct and indirect cinematic roots of new movies. Learn some film history, become a more well-rounded viewer, and enjoy likeminded works of the past. This entry recommends movies to watch after you stream The Old Guard.

The concept of immortality has been around since the dawn of storytelling. And its an idea that will probably, appropriately, live forever. Gods, vampires, masked slashers, childlike androids audiences never get tired of such everlasting characters. Now we can add the eternal warriors of The Old Guard, a Netflix movie based on the comic books of the same name.

Led by the ancient figure Andromache, the titular group also consists of a pair of lovers who met during the Crusades, another man born in the 19th century, and a newbie who has just learned shes immortal. They tend to take on missions to help others in need but are now fighting for their own freedom against a pharmaceutical company that wants to use them as guinea pigs.

Gina Prince-Bythewood, who directed The Old Guard from a script by creator Greg Rucka, has mentioned some of the movies she watched as inspiration for her adaptation (you should also watch her previous movies, especially Love & Basketball). Those titles are joined below by some personal picks that seem relevant in a kindred manner.

I recommend you watch them all sooner than later because nobody really lives forever.

Before creating The Old Guard, Greg Rucka wrote many superhero comics, including award-winning runs of Wonder Woman for DC Comics. He didnt have anything to do with the Wonder Woman movie (though he did receive a special thank you in the credits), but the way the title character is depicted here an immortal figure stemming from a world thought to be mythological easily comes to mind while watching Andromache, an immortal figure thought to be mythological, in The Old Guard.

Also, Wonder Woman comes up in interviews with Prince-Bythewood about The Old Guard because she called the movies director, Patty Jenkins, for advice on doing a big comic book movie. She also says in an interview for the BFI, I remember going to the premiere of Wonder Woman and just being so floored and full of pride. Patty stepped up and succeeded and opened the door for the couple of us that have now come after her.

I was going to just recommend the sequel Maze Runner: The Death Cure, but that movie doesnt make much sense without seeing the prior two adaptations of James Dashners YA book series. The Maze Runner is about a bunch of boys trapped in the center of a maze, and while its not clear in the first movie, the boys are all guinea pigs in an experiment because theyre immune to a virus that has wiped out much of the world. In later movies, you learn that the evil organization behind the maze is also attempting to harvest enzymes from the immune in order to create a cure.

The trope where a character is immune to a specific disease and may be the source for a cure or vaccine is common. The idea of imprisoning and harvesting some humans to save the rest of humanity is still a bit far fetched, however. Another movie I thought of recommending for a twist on the idea is I Am Legend. In that, Will Smith plays a survivor of an apocalyptic disease thats turned everyone into vampire-like creatures. He uses himself as a lab rat in the effort to find a cure, which if the creatures were truly vampires would mean trying to find a cure for not becoming immortal.

There are no documentaries about real immortals (that we know of), but there are a few films warranting a recommendation as this weeks obligatory nonfiction pick. I could have recognized Transcendant Man for the umpteenth time; the doc is about Ray Kurzweil and includes his idea of achieving immortality by uploading your mind to a computer. Theres also the 2009 doc How to Live Forever, which does concern the quest to live forever but also just deals with how to live as long as possible (and Kurzweil is in that as well). But The Immortalists is a little more interesting while also being more easily digestible.

The documentary focuses primarily on two doctors, Aubrey de Grey (who is also in How to Live Forever) and Bill Andrews who are attempting to find a cure for aging. Not unlike the villain in The Old Guard, but theyre not searching for human immortals to use as guinea pigs. That isnt to say theyre the most likable people either, however. Obviously, theres not much in the way of how to solve the problem of aging and death, so the plethora of information shared and the science explored here involves the study of how and why living things (and our cells) do age and then die the way that we do. Its a fascinating primer.

Immortals dont really exist (that we know of), but when someone lives to be around 100 years old, they sure seem like they lived forever. Especially if their life was filled with a lot of different events. (Like we saw with the recently deceased Carl Reiner.) Or a fictional character like Allan Karlsson, the protagonist of this movie (and its source novel). Through flashbacks, we see that the centenarian touched many significant things throughout the 20th century, including the Spanish Civil War and the Manhattan Project. Hes like the immortals in The Old Guard or like Forrest Gump but a little more believable maybe.

The most recent of a number of known martial arts movies that Prince-Bythewood watched in preparation for The Old Guard (she says in one interview there were twenty but has only named five that I can find).Wong Kar-wais Oscar-nominated biopic looks back on and dramatizes the life of Wing Chun master IP Man. Instead of following him from birth through death, the movie picks up his story when hes in his forties and sometimes reflecting back on earlier events, shown in flashback. Not that unlike how the past of the immortals of The Old Guard is shown.

In addition to Asian action movies, Prince-Bythewood has cited Zero Dark Thirty, Logan, Man on Fire, and the bathroom fight scene from Mission: Impossible: Fallout as inspirations for The Old Guard. Logan likely because of Wolverine finally becoming more vulnerable after being seemingly immortal due to his healing factor. Man on Fire, which she discusses at length on a new episode of the Switchblade Sisters podcast, but I just recommended that recently (albeit a different version) with another Netflix Original. Zero Dark Thirty, though, seems to be a more significant influence, and not just because its also made by a woman.

Zero Dark Thirty for the grounded feel of it and the way that Kathryn [Bigelow] stayed with the action, Prince-Bythewoood tells Slashfilm of borrowing the hand-held style of filming. Shooting it in handheld with 65-millimeter cameras, which hadnt been done until now, because theyre so heavy. The clarity that they give, I just wanted to try it and props to our camera folks for doing that for sixty-three days. They did get massages every week. But also being able to really tell that story by being able to see the action, feel the action, and you certainly do that with what am I going to do with the handheld, being up in there.

Another of the Asian action movies that Prince-Bythewood names as an influence on The Old Guard. As she says about the lot of them in the BFI interview, Over here, we are desensitized a bit to violence. We watch people like Rambo, who kills a bunch of people and then hes pumping his fists and making a cool quip after it. In Asian cinema, you see the effect of it not only on the person that has been hurt or killed but on the person that did the killing. That makes for more interesting storytelling.

The plot of the first Raid movie doesnt have much in common with The Old Guard, but the climax of the latter does involve the main characters having to make their way to the top of a pharmaceutical companys building, where the evil CEO is hiding in the penthouse, killing many anonymous minions along the way. The Raid, meanwhile, follows a member of a police force making its way upward through a building to get to a crime boss, killing many anonymous minions along the way.

You might expect Blade of the Immortal to be the recommended Takashi Miike film, but 13 Assassins is the one that Prince-Bythewood acknowledges is among her influences. And at least the BFI interviewer assumes she means this remake and not the 1966 original. The film follows a bakers dozen men united to kill an evil feudal lord in 19th century Japan. Though its not likely a part of why Prince-Bythewood chose it, 13 Assassins does have a hint of an immortal character at the end.

Of the martial arts films included on this list, Prince-Bythewood has named The Raid the most in interviews. Ong Bak 2 is a close second, though, as being among her favorites. It goes without saying that you will likely first want to watch the original, Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior. But Ong Bak 2, which again stars Tony Jaa, is actually a prequel. So you should be just fine skipping the initial installment and watching this movie following the hero Tien during his martial arts training.

Years ago, Prince-Bythewood noted that she went through a whole Zhang Yimou phase just after film school. She apparently watched at least this one again in preparation for The Old Guard. Featuring Christopher Doyles most deliciously colorful cinematography, the wuxia film is set in Ancient China and stars Jet Li on a mission to kill a king after successfully defeating three other assassins, the stories of which are told in flashbacks.

When I think of immortal warriors, I first think of Highlander. The movie has spawned a number of sequels and television series, but for me, there can be only oneentry in the franchise. The big difference between Highlander and The Old Guard is that the immortals in the former are more powerful in their rarity, so some of them wish to eliminate all others like them. Also, they can be killed, and only be killed, by beheading, which made me wonder throughout The Old Guard what would happen to its characters if their heads were cut off.

As long as youre watching Highlander, which features Sean Connery in a supporting role as the immortal who trains and teaches the main character, you might as well also watch Zardoz. Connery stars in this movie one of his first big titles after retiring from the James Bond franchise for the second time and famously wears one of the most ridiculous costumes in all of cinema. Anyway, Zardoz is a weird post-apocalyptic sci-fi movie in which immortals rule over mortals. Of course, that description makes it sound like the plot of the movie is so simple when its anything but.

Charlize Therons character in The Old Guard, fully named Andromache of Scythia, is possibly based on the mythological character who was the wife of the Trojan prince and warrior Hector (and/or shes an Amazonian warrior, another way she links to Wonder Woman). The Trojan Women, adapted from the ancient Greek tragedy play by Euripides, stars Vanessa Redgrave as Andromache opposite Katherine Hepburn as Hecuba, Genevive Bujold as Cassandra, and Irene Papas as Helen. The story depicts the aftermath of the Trojan War as the surviving women consider what happens next for them and their ruined kingdom.

The same Andromache character appears in any number of other movies set during the Trojan War. In the most famous of these, 2004s Troy, Saffron Burrows plays the role. Patricia Marmont portrays her in a smaller capacity in the 1956 film Helen of Troy. As far as I can tell, there are no films featuring the Amazon called Andromache, who is more likely the inspiration for Andy in The Old Guard. Most movies featuring Amazonian warriors leave such character nameless. But there were Amazons in the Trojan War, so watching films like Troy and The Trojan Horse can sort of fit regardless.

Read the original:

Watch The Old Guard, Then Watch These Movies - Film School Rejects

This is the second in a series of invited responses to some of the big, unanswered questions facing Americas schools as they prepare to reopen in the fall. The Center on Reinventing Public Education, in partnership with The 74, fielded responses from a diverse roster of educators and policymakers in order to promote creative thinking and debate about how we can collectively meet student needs in an extraordinarily challenging school year, and beyond. You can see previous installments here.

Black and Brown children need a radical new beginning

By Lakisha Young

Oaklands education system was in crisis before COVID-19. One-third of our district schools are labeled as some of the lowest-performing schools in California.

Now, closing school buildings amid the pandemic has only raised the stakes, exacerbating the inequities that have left our Black and Brown students underserved and undereducated for decades.

When schools first closed, our leaders began describing steps they would take to ensure the continuity of learning. At The Oakland REACH, we are shouting from the rooftops to say we dont want that: The learning experience our children have been receiving cannot continue. Less than 30 percent of African-American and Latino students are reading on grade level. Continuity of learning keeps our kids on a pipeline to prison not college.

So, if you want to know what features our systems should keep in place, my answer is: None.

We need to tear down this system that has failed us for generations and rebuild it from scratch. We cant just work to bring our Black and Brown students closer to an equal playing field. We owe them a massive leg up that we build into the system from the start. And if theres ever going to be a moment when we have the community on board with this kind of bold thinking, it is now.

There is something new since this pandemic started that I do want to keep in place: the anger, the passion and the spotlight on injustice. I want to keep our demands for change too big and too loud to ignore.

For so long in Oakland, too many privileged folks have sat at make-believe tables of equity with Black Lives Matter signs in their windows. Meanwhile, they are taking full advantage of an out and exercising choice for their own kids, buying their way into expensive communities or sending their kids to private schools, while they fight to curb our families access to choice in policy debates.

Now, with a global pandemic and systemic racism thrust into our headlines every day, no one can look away and pretend injustice isnt there. We are all getting mad, and we are all demanding something new. But like a lot of people, I worry that this sense of urgency for change will fade. My hope is that from this painful time of massive upheaval in all of our lives will come inspiration to move forward with radical, innovative transformation for our kids. If that means staying loud and starting over, lets do it.

Lakisha Young is co-founder and executive director of The Oakland REACH, a parent-led group committed to empowering families from the most underserved communities to demand high-quality schools for our children.

Universal technology access: An overdue necessity, especially for students with disabilities

By Margaret Molloy

COVID-19 forced schools to seriously consider a long-overdue priority: one-to-one technology and universal internet access in and out of school.

Remote learning demands that every student have internet access and a laptop, something students with disabilities have needed for a long time. Now, any student with a disability can receive text-to-speech, read-aloud or other accommodations that allow them to access the curriculum at all times. Likewise, students learning English can use online dictionaries and translation features seamlessly.

Ubiquitous technology access allows all students to work the way adults do. When they find unfamiliar words and concepts, they look them up. When they need to figure out how to complete a task, they watch tutorials. If theyre reading a book set in a place thats unfamiliar to them, they can pull up a map. Technology is an essential tool, not a crutch; we must teach students the specific skills they need to expertly wield it.

Hopefully, now is when we realize that technology benefits all students so we can move beyond criticisms like Its too expensive, Thats an unfair advantage or The real world isnt like that. The real world is like that! All working adults rely on technology, and it behooves educators to strengthen the technological skills students can use to solve problems.

I have the privilege to work at a school that made tech and internet access a top priority upon closing for the pandemic. My school also cultivates community and trusting family relationships that enabled us to have not just a successful technology rollout but also a partnership culture that kept students and parents engaged in remote learning. We leveraged student relationships and family partnerships to ensure that students had access to all school-provided social services, including meals, mental health supports, translation services, rent relief and health consultations with our school nurse.

Had we not had these trusting relationships prior to the onset of the pandemic, the technological progress we made would not have happened. Schools have long served as community centers, and the pandemic proved that they must continue to do so.

Not all school districts made technology and internet access a priority, and not all districts sincerely strove to provide all students with the accommodations and social services they needed prior to or during the pandemic. After ensuring student and family safety and access to food, clothing, shelter and mental health services, technology access should be every districts priority.

Margaret Molloy is a fifth-grade English teacher at Excel Academy Chelsea in Massachusetts.

Teacher training, parent choice and technology access are three important areas of progress

By Louis Algaze

There are three educational areas that have had an increased focus that I would like to see continue: professional development for teachers on navigating the online learning environment, educational choice and an investment in technology.

Districts, schools and teachers in Florida moved quickly to transition to remote learning. With school in session, they had to be nimble and work with the infrastructure in place to finish out the year. The verdict is still out for many schools on plans for reopening in the fall, but many are evaluating a blend of traditional school and online courses. By providing teachers with more intensive training for the online classroom, districts can better prepare to make sure students education needs are met.

There is an increase in awareness of the educational choices available to families. The ability for parents to select the learning environment that best fits their childs needs is a critically important focus. Some families may find that a comprehensive online education is a better fit for their child. Others may feel it is not right for them. Regardless, it is imperative that we put the needs of our students first.

Technology and internet access are key to an online or blended learning environment. Investing in devices and internet access for students and teachers, as well as expanded server capacity, will bridge the digital divide and ensure that students are able to stay on track with their education. Florida Virtual School created an online learning community as a free resource with best practices, information, webinar recordings and more for teachers, school administrators and parents who are new to the online learning environment. We also upgraded servers and systems to expand our capacity to be able to support up to 2.7 million students in Florida.

This is an important safety net that is now in place, should we see a need in the future.

Louis Algaze is president and CEO of Florida Virtual School.

The future of education: Parents living, working and learning alongside their children

By Cath Fraise

A quiet revolution is going on that is not just about education. It is about reinventing the way we live, learn and work, and it is about having flexibility in how families can organize their lives. Gone are the days when every family was subjected to the snails pace of large, highly regulated, self-serving systems that did not serve their needs.

Families are waking up to the fact that children do not need to be in a school five days a week to learn. In fact, learning happens all the time, and there is an abundance of resources that configure learning to suit the needs of every member of a family. The conventional structure of schooling is inefficient, and it breeds conformity and passive consumption of material that is learned outside of context and soon forgotten.

We actually need the opposite: a generation of divergent thinkers, solving real-world problems, finding meaning and collaborating with others, preferably embedded in a community.

During this time, liberated from the four walls of a classroom, children are getting a chance to explore. Parents are finding online spaces where children can safely discover what resonates with them. People are also finding that you can build a powerful and dynamic community online quite well just look at teens playing multiplayer video games. To create such a community, you just need to be meeting regularly to master something together.

The schools of the future will be combinations of online and offline interdependent communities, with families coming together to create the education they need for their children by choosing from a vast array of available options. It is already happening. Families will be able to customize their lifestyles as easily as their Starbucks orders.

A new type of social architecture will be a fixture in every town or school system: a vibrant co-learning community with professional guidance to serve every child, with an attached co-working space for parents to reinvent themselves, learn alongside their children or lend their own expertise to the learning community. After all, we are all lifelong learners.

There are many benefits of creating communities of learners, and schools need to be exploded into vibrant learning communities with much more flexibility. This requires a shift in perspective, and the pandemic has opened up the possibility to design the learning infrastructure of the future.

Cath Fraise is the founder and executive director of Workspace Education, a co-learning community in Bethel, Connecticut, and the founder of the International Association of Colearning Communities.

We cant simply return to normal; normal didnt work for many kids

By John Deasy

This pandemic has been a terrible event. It has laid bare the known, but often not discussed, situation that many youth and, in particular, youth who live in circumstances of poverty and peril were never getting a quality education. These youth have constantly fallen behind their peers academically and in terms of access to quality instruction and supports. For decades, their outcomes have been tragic, even before the pandemic.

I often hear the phrase We must get back to normal. I hope we do not go back to normal, the way things used to be, because it was never good for so many of our youth. I urge us to use this horrible event to establish a new normal, one that so many have hoped for and tried to establish for so long.

Therefore, among the things that would be good to keep from our unplanned national experiment with distance learning are the new methods of building and sustaining constant connection with families and youth. Weekly calls, principal and superintendent town halls, home visits, and customized tutorials for those who never had tutorial support are among a few examples. Another is the creation of astonishing content and interactive processes that teachers have created out of whole cloth and, more importantly, shared with their colleagues. The experience of seeing true open-source material created by teachers, and teachers helping each other, has been a joy in a dark time.

We must never give up the practices that engage families and youth in authentic ways. Learning and the development of executive function are communal events in so many ways. Returning to classrooms from a distance learning format will give us the opportunity to learn again the power of individual and collective support, in and out of the classroom.

Lastly, among the less-discussed results of distance learning has been a dramatic fall in reports of bullying. In fact, many students report this as a bright spot on the terrible times we are going through. When we return from distance learning, we must not give up on a bullying-free experience for all.

John Deasy is the former superintendent of Stockton and Los Angeles unified school districts.

Our families need a more resilient education system

By Brbara Rivera Batista

Understanding the basic needs and circumstances of each student and family has been key to our purpose. Aiming to eradicate poverty is our mission. We help the next generation succeed by providing an excellent education for young people, sustainable economic alternatives for their parents and social-emotional resources for families.

Vimenti School is in its second year of operation as the first charter school in Puerto Rico, with 92 students from kindergarten through second grade and 83 families, 80 percent of them living under the poverty level.

COVID-19, like many other disasters, such as hurricanes and earthquakes, has continuously impacted our students and families. And focusing and maintaining a connection with the families have proved essential.

A census of our families at the beginning of the pandemic showed that 65 percent did not have computers at home, 47 percent did not have internet access, and 31 percent lost their jobs during this challenging period. We needed to move fast to address those challenges in a creative way.

Focusing on family relationships was crucial to ensuring their well-being. Weekly calls from case managers, teachers, and economic and health support staff were part of the family support network.

Other efforts include cash assistance for families, internet connectivity, and identifying the necessary equipment and platforms for distance learning.

To accommodate the needs and challenges of distance learning without devices or connectivity was difficult. Teachers were very sensitive to these situations and worked with each family to provide support. This time of remote learning has strengthened teachers ability to be empathetic, meeting families where they are, and creating solutions that will work for everyone. This will continue into the next phase of remote, hybrid or in-person learning, and we must not forget how important it is to have strong school-home relationships to meet students needs.

Individualized instruction, sending assignments to students homes, was the first step to education continuity, but we knew that not all children and parents could handle information in the same way. We organized students into small groups according to their needs and looked for ways to reach everyone according to their resources. We transferred the classroom structure to an online environment, meeting the students at their levels. From now on, maintaining an alternative system for teaching will be crucial to ensuring that we are able to continuously serve our community and fulfill our mission.

Brbara Rivera Batista is director of Vimenti School, an initiative of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Puerto Rico and the first public charter school on the island.

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated our distance learning infrastructure overnight

By John Legg

We have learned some valuable lessons as a result of transforming our brick-and-mortar classrooms into digital remote learning experiences.

First, educators no longer fear technology and can use it to provide content, assess students and collaborate. This forced immersion into remote learning has demonstrated that educators can be proficient with digital curricula and platforms if we give them the support they need.

Too often, school leaders underestimate the skills and ability of our educators to integrate content and technology.

Educators have awakened to the idea that they are able to unlock a wealth of resources that make learning more engaging, efficient, relevant and easily accessible to a broader range of learners. This spring, I witnessed educators collaborating and using innovative educational programs such as Nearpod, Newsella, Loom, Kahoot and Quizizz.

However, no software could substitute for live, real-time interaction between students and their teachers and classmates. As students interacted with the teacher and their peers, the level of engagement, excitement and learning increased dramatically.

Second, students are masters of technology and need the proper connectivity, digital devices and instructional platform to succeed. When digital resources are available to everyone, learners of all socioeconomic backgrounds can excel. Too often, adults make excuses for why learners cant do something, before even allowing the students to attempt to succeed. At the charter school I co-founded, in a matter of hours, learners as young as kindergarten were navigating educational platforms such as Schoology and Google Classroom. Students were uploading and downloading lessons and interacting with teachers and other students often with little to no assistance from adults. The challenge is ensuring that each learner has a functioning device. The low cost of Chromebooks allowed us, as a tech-oriented school, to provide a device for each learner. We partnered with our local internet provider so all learners were able to have access to free internet.

Finally, rigorous content, collaboration and customization must be safeguarded and not sacrificed. Far too often, schools inadvertently focus on digital implementation, instead of actual learning, as the goal. Educators must resist the temptation to simply celebrate the success of delivering digital content. We need to make sure the content itself remains robust and rigorous. A less-than-engaging in-person educator will be the same lackluster educator via distance learning perhaps even more lackluster. But great educators can deliver engaging lessons that enable all learners to reach their intellectual potential even in the face of a global pandemic.

John Legg is co-founder and business administrator of Dayspring Academy, a pre-K-12 charter school near Tampa. He served for 12 years in the Florida Legislature, including four as chairman of the Senate Education Committee.

The current crisis has forced some important innovations

By Jennifer Charlot

Some say that the only way education will change is if a monumental event causes the system to fall off a cliff. It could be argued that the system has fallen.

This sudden fall has had serious consequences. It has not only exposed, but deepened, inequities. However, as we observe in 3 Jobs That Matter for Schools Navigating a COVID World, it has also forced schools to lean into reinvention and opened space for educators to unlock their own innovation potential.

For example:

Understanding learners lives: Having learning occur in the home can make it much more intimate. It enables educators to see whether their students prefer to work at a table or under their bunk bed. They meet the family pets. Parents and siblings pop in to say hello. What happens in the home is top of mind and cant be ignored. This level of vulnerability creates the possibility for deeper relationships.

Relevance: Students are getting bored; they arent signing on. This concern plagued many educators and caused them to ask what they could do to make learning more engaging. Some opted for more relevancy a shift that learning science has been pushing for years. For example, instead of doing science worksheets, some students were asked to study the soil samples in their backyard and explain their findings on a video call with their peers. Others assumed the role of journalists and investigated the lives of essential workers during the COVID pandemic.

Family engagement: This homeschool situation has invited families to gain closer insight into learning and determine their own views on their childrens education. In the best of situations, teachers are coaching caregivers on how to support learners, and families are doing more than ensuring compliance with schoolwork. At one school we work with, families advocated that teachers send a smaller amount of disconnected work home and instead make assignments more coherent.

Learner agency and personalization: When asked, one of the biggest things students elevate when reflecting on distance learning is the control they have over their time. It also enables teachers to target their attention to the learners who need it most for more extended periods of time. This kind of individual attention was rare in our pre-COVID learning environment.

These changes arent universal, but where they are happening, we shouldnt turn back.

Jennifer Charlot is a partner at Transcend, where she focuses on school design services and learning science. Transcend is a national nonprofit organization focused on supporting communities to create and spread extraordinary and equitable designs of school.

The rest is here:

Reality Check: What Will It Take to Reopen Schools Amid the Pandemic? 8 Experts Weigh In on What Parts of Remote Learning and In-Person Teaching We...

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Singapore Blogger, social media beauty and lifestyle influencer Wendy Cheng, most famously known by her online handle Xiaxue, is known for stirring up online controversy with unpopular opinions on social issues.

Most recently she has come under fire for herstance and opinion on the police reports made against Workers Party (WP) Raaesah Khan.

Ms Khan has since been elected into Parliament after her team won over Peoples Action Party (PAP) in Sengkang GRC in the 2020 General Elections.

The 36-year-old influencer is now being targeted by netizens for accusing Ms Khan in an Instagram story of stirring up racial sentiment, and has also been subjected to her share of police reports and petitions for allegedly racist and seditious social media posts made in 2010 and 2011.

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Xiaxues Instagram story about Ms Khan sees her calling Ms Khan a racist and a toxic woman.

Xiaxues Instagram story calling Raaesah Khan out for her tweets. (Photo: Screengrab from Xiaxue Instagram story)

Ever since she posted these controversial remarks, netizens have banded together in an attempt to boycott Ms Cheng, with hashtags such as #PunishXiaxue that reached No. 1 trending on Twitter in Singapore. Users have also started to send emails out to brands that are partnering with Xiaxue to stop working with her. Brands such as Fresh and Daniel Wellington have announced that they have stopped their partnership.

Similarly, Xiaxues old tweets have also been dug out and police reports have been filed against her for her racially offensive tweets made in 2010 and 2011 regarding foreign migrant workers.

A video that has over 20,000 views has also circulated of Instagram user @biggyviggy whofilmed himself making a police report against her tweets.

Singer Narelle Kheng also publicly took a shot at Xiaxue by uploading screenshots of Xiaxues open support for U.S. President Donald Trump.

Narelle Kheng posting a series of Xiaxues support for President Donald Trump. (Photo: Screengrab from Narelle Khengs Twitter)

This prompted a reply from Xiaxue, LOL wow didnt know you were such a fake bitch the entire time we were filming together. To which Ms Kheng responded, I guess I grew up :(.

Twitter thread (Photo: Screengrab from Twitter)

The two worked together on a 2017 web-series calledLifeSpam.

The two then took to a private conversation to discuss their disagreements. This, however, backfired when Narelle Kheng openly continued to denounce Xiaxue on Twitter which led to Xiaxue posting a series of Instagram stories.

Xiaxue commenting on Narelle Kheng being stabby. (Photo: Screengrab from Narelle Khengs Twitter)

Ms Kheng then posted a series of private Instagram DMs with Xiaxue over this.

Xiaxue has also compiled a Google document with screenshots of the two of their conversation that happened on Whatsapp. Ms Kheng has since posted a video explaining what happened and concluded that My truce to XX is that we can disagree on a personal level, we dont have to be friends and then apologized, Im sorry that I hurt you, but I still believe that your opinions are harmful.

A petition has also been circulating around social media titled Punish Xiaxue for seditious content that currently has more than 25,000 signatures. Influencer PreetiPls has also been vocal about her denouncing of Xiaxue and has encouraged her followers to also sign the petition.

Photo: Screengrab from Twitter

In response to the comments and DMs that Xiaxue has been receiving from netizens, she posted a series of Instagram posts standing up for her opinions.

Photo: Screengrab from Xiaxue Instagram

In one Instagram post, it captioned:

Authenticity > money. Ive been posting unpopular views since 2003.Blogged when nobody was paying me, will continue to post if nobody is paying me now either. You want politically correct influencers who grovel and backtrack at every criticism and give fake apologies you can find them a dime a dozen. You may not like my views but I have a right to say them.You are not going to bully me into silence, or force me to be a hypocritical woke sheep like you, echoing the same tired sanctimonious virtue-signaling crap every other person on social media is repeating ad nauseam. Its like all of you are infected by the same mind virus. Blah blah patriarchy blah blah intersectionality blah blah internalized systemic institutional structuralism blah blah cis-heteronormative inclusivity representation acknowledge your privilege blah blah blah. Dude. Have some original thought. And heres something that will shock you: if your ideologies are all backed up by giant corporations, you are not that radical.I post not to please you. I post because I think its important to have diverse viewpoints out there for people to decide for themselves. Why? Are your arguments so weak you want to shut down anyone who disagrees with you?I have the strength to carry on no matter how hard you fuckers try to bring me down because my supporters expect me to always be real, and to say the hard truths on their behalf when they cant. Facts are sometimes not nice, but someone has to say it. If it has to be me, so be it. You hateful people dont matter. My supporters that have been here for years and years matter.#punishxiaxue

She has also responded with a blogpost citing that her reason for releasing those tweets in 2010 and 2011 was due to her past experiences of sexual assault. She also explained her reason for disagreeing with Raaesahs political views such as aligning with intersectional feminism and Angela Davis political views and questions Workers Party for fielding a candidate who holds extreme left-wing views.

In an interview with Marketing, in response to brands halting partnerships with her, she said, I personally feel that every brand that has worked with me knows my history. This does not mean that they fully agree with me, but they still chose to work with me. There are brands out there who feel that they are bullied into disassociating with me.

I genuinely feel that it is very sad that the mob is doing this to brands and companies are forced to take a stance. When they do dissociate with me, the mob then celebrates because they think this proves that the influencer is indeed a racist when in fact, the company might have been pressured to take such a stance, Cheng explained.

Similarly, she also tells netizens that You are not going to bully me into silence.

The police have since visited Xiaxue for questioning and it is still ongoing.-/TISG

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Could GE2020 result in the downfall of influencer Xiaxue? - The Independent

For readers looking for an educational and fun way to beat both the heat and the coronavirus blues this summer, the Alliance Historical Society may just have an answer.

The society has launched "Marking Time in Alliance," a series of videos on its YouTube channel, called Alliance History. The videos are the brainchild of Karen and Jim Perone, who long have been affiliated with the group.

Karen, a past president and current board member of the historical society, and Jim, a former board member, told The Review they have been uploading entries in the series for the past six months. They were inspired by similar videos in other communities.

Now, thanks to their industriousness, residents can learn of the Stark County connection to the Sultana tragedy, when a steamboat exploded near Memphis in 1865. Other videos include lively, entertaining lessons on the Main Street Caboose, the intriguingly named Goat Hill, and the Lexington Quaker Cemetery.

Having watched several, we can attest that they make viewers see familiar landmarks with fresh eyes and an increased awareness of the role they have played in local history.

We look forward to future installments, especially if one includes an abbreviated history of Alliances most visible landmark, Glamorgan Castle, and the citys connection to the scarlet carnation. And, while were in a requesting frame of mind, weve always wanted to know more about the infamous olive poisoning of 1919.

With no Greater Alliance Carnation Festival this summer or its informational tours at various historical sites, these videos are the best way to increase our knowledge of local history.

Applause all around to the Perones for their willingness to research, write and record these video nuggets and extend the Alliance Historical Societys reach online.

Color us ready for coronavirus relief

Gov. Mike DeWines release of a color-coded system for virus threats provides necessary clarity to Ohioans during the coronavirus pandemic.

Under the system, counties are assigned the color yellow if they are at level one (active exposure and spread), orange for level two (increased exposure and spread), red for level three (very high exposure and spread) or purple for level four (severe exposure and spread).

Stark and Mahoning counties, and thus much of The Reviews readership, are both orange at the time of this writing. This means, according to the state, that residents should "exercise [a] high degree of caution."

DeWine has issued orders for mandatory face coverings in public for counties designated red or above. (No county is yet purple, although Franklin County is close.)

Readers are reminded that, in the considered medical opinions of many experts, masks are one of the best ways to limit the spread of the virus. They may not be mandated in public for Alliance residents, but this doesnt mean they arent highly recommended.

Based solely on anecdotal evidence, recent days have seen an uptick in the number of local folks who are wearing masks in public. This is terrific, as the more people who do so, the better the chances of putting this virus in our rearview mirrors.

And despite strong differences of opinion about coronavirus, one thing everybody can agree on is that we cant put it behind us soon enough.

Read the original here:

Editorial: Getting historical on YouTube - News - The Review - The-review

NEW DELHI: Indian Statistical Institute admission test 2020 has been postponed again. The ISI admission test 2020 which was earlier scheduled to conduct on August 2, has now been postponed. The rescheduled date for the exam will be released later.An official notice issued in this regard available on the official website says that "The ISI Admission Test 2020, which had earlier been rescheduled to August 02, 2020, is postponed. In view of the uncertainty prevailing on account of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, it is not possible to declare a firm date for the Test at this time, but it is not expected to be held before the second week of September 2020. Announcement of the exact date will be made after proper assessment of the situation, bearing in mind the well-being and safety of the candidates, and ensuring that they are able to appear for the Test without any risk or hardship. Candidates will be duly notified of the new date for the Admission Test well in advance."Once the exam date is announced, the registered candidates will be given an option to change their exam centre preferences and uploading pending documents such as results of qualifying exams (if appeared in 2020). The notice further reads that As soon as the date is announced, all registered candidates will be provided a small window for making changes in their centre preferences and uploading pending documents like results of qualifying examination (if appeared in 2020), and those related to reservation category (OBC- NCL/SC/ST/PwD), GATE and INMO, by logging into their accounts on the online Application portal.

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ISI admission test 2020 postponed again - Times of India

Video compression tech doesnt seem to change all that often, but when it does it sure takes some big leaps. H.264/Advanced Video Coding (AVC) was first introduced back in 2003. Its still pretty prevalent today, despite H.265/High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) being released a decade later in 2013. Now, the Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute has done it again with H.266/Versatile Video Coding (VVC), cutting the files sizes down to a quarter of H.264.

The lack of h.265 adoption has largely been due to patent issues but it brought massive benefits over its predecessor, including higher quality footage with a big reduction in filesize. H.265 also has some pretty demanding hardware needs and its taken a while for some companies to catch up. Premiere Pro, for example, only really started to get GPU acceleration for H.265.

But H.265 allowed you to get a similar level of quality at half the file size of H.264. The new Versatile Video Coding engine, also known as H.266 looks set to cut those file sizes in half essentially offering you the same level of quality as H.264 but at only a quarter of the file size.

According to The Verge, Fraunhofer says that VCC could be the path forward for the industry. It will allow companies to completely skip H.264 and H.265 without having to deal with patents, royalties and licensing headaches.

Through a reduction of data requirements, H.266/VVC makes video transmission in mobile networks (where data capacity is limited) more efficient. For instance, the previous standard H.265/HEVC requires 10 gigabytes of data to transmit a 90-min UHD video.

With this new technology, only 5 gigabytes of data are required to achieve the same quality. Because H.266/VVC was developed with ultra-high-resolution video content in mind, the new standard is particularly beneficial when streaming 4K or 8K videos on a flat screen TV. Furthermore, H.266/VVC is ideal for all types of moving images: from high-resolution 360 video panoramas to screen sharing contents.

Primarily, the benefit mentioned is on the bandwidth requirements for mobile networks. But it has further implications. I know people who still dont even upload to YouTube in 4K because of the file sizes required (4x larger than 1080p if you want the same level of quality). The new H.266 codec would bring those 4K videos down to the same file sizes as their current 1080p videos, making it much easier to deal with those higher resolution upload times, especially on slower connections.

And with the push to 8K (which would be 16x larger files than 1080p at the same codec and relative bitrate) very few will be uploading in that resolution, even if theyre able to shoot it, due to the massive data requirements. And phones are shooting 8K now, too, even if its pretty terrible. So H.266 would allow you to save some of that precious storage space especially as so many Android device manufacturers seem to be ditching microSD card slots now.

Fraunhofer says that the Media Coding Industry Forum (which includes companies such as Apple, Canon, Intel and Sony) is working towards chip designs that can support H.266 at the hardware level. Itll probably be at least a couple of years before we see any serious implementations but it sounds very promising for the future of video delivery.

[via The Verge]

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H.266 is coming and your video files will be half the size they are with H.265/HEVC - DIYphotography

Graphic tees are an art form. The medium is ink and the canvas is cotton jersey, screen printed and heat pressed (among other methods) with a message to say. Whether that message is profound or not, is another question.

It could be a tee to represent your alma mater or your local pizza joint, to commemorate an event, or to support a movement like Black Lives Matter. For many, it's a way to show your allegiance (or sense of irony) to your favorite band.

Band tees have been pumped out for every album release, world tour and local show, but what about other artists? What about pivotal art exhibitions? That's what the team behind Flat File had in mind when creating the brand.

Courtesy Flat File

The side project of the denim brand 3sixteen's Andrew Chen and Wesley Scott, and graphic designer Jordan Butcher, Flat File launched this year with the approach of making something like a concert tee, but for artists. The team released their first capsule in late April and featured exhibitions of Isamu Noguchi, Sol Lewitt, Ellsworth Kelly and Alexander Calder. The second release drops today and includes Constantin Brancusi, Donald Judd, Henri Matisse and Jackson Pollock.

To learn more, we talked with Wesley Scott about the project.

Learn More: Here

What is Flat File? Whats the concept?

We think of Flat File as a bootleg art merch project. On multiple occasions, Andrew and I left museum exhibitions or gallery shows wishing there was some sort of merch we could buy that was well-designed. I think that harkens back to buying merch at a concert. There's that feeling of leaving a show with something to memorialize the experience that is so impactful.

For Flat File, were making merch for shows we never had the chance to see. Its our way of memorializing some of these major events in the art worlds history. For example, we have a Donald Judd t-shirt this drop from his first solo sculpture show. That show marked huge shift in his career and for us, as Judd fans, its exciting to be able share that moment through a t-shirt. All of us at Flat File come from graphic tee backgrounds in some form so t-shirts are the vehicle to share our interests. Our graphic designer, Jordan Butcher, has an incredible ability to take exhibit or show posters and flyers and distill them down to something that feels reminiscent of the bootleg tees we love without losing the artists ethos.

Courtesy Flat File

How do you select the artists and posters for each drop? Do you think of the artist first? Do you come across an art exhibit poster first?

Honestly, it all starts with a good poster. We have a Slack channel and Pinterest board where we are constantly uploading photos and screen grabs of great exhibition posters. For each release we might have 25 posters we are discussing until we eventually land on four.

Sometimes, though, it does start with the artist. Like this Brancusi tee for example. We knew we wanted to do a Brancusi tee and found a show that resonated with us. Given how long ago he was showing, its much harder to find information on his shows than others we do so that took more digging to pull all the elements from this show in place rather than just pulling from one poster.

Courtesy Flat File

What else is coming up for the future? Can we expect to see more lesser-known niche artists, or even up-and-coming contemporary artists?

Were definitely going to be releasing some niche artist pieces in the future. Initially, we wanted to share some heavy-hitters that we love, but with each additional release there will be more niche artists or movements appearing. The three of us have a wide variety of interests, so Im excited for some surprise that will come in future releases.

Our dream one day is to get the opportunity to design and produce promotional merchandise for museums or galleries in the same vein as what weve been doing.

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This Brand Is Turning Art Exhibition Posters into Graphic Tees - Gear Patrol

AUGUST Alsina shared a cryptic message in the wake of Jada Pinkett Smith confirming her romance with the 27-year-old singer.

Following August's revelation in early July that he had been in love with the actress, the 48-year-old admitted to a relationship with the rapper when he was 23 during a break from her marriage to Will Smith.

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However, in the hours after Jada's appearance on her Facebook Watch series Red Table Talk, he took to social media to reveal he was moving on, writing: "Anyway, NEXT!!!"

He tweeted: "Imagine not knowing how to mind the business that pay you.

"I catch all the subliminals. (Not just about today) & you can call me whatever you like, Mess is constantly inserting yourself in topics you have nun to do w/. Go play w/ ya MAMMY! Not me!"

He added: "If you have something to say, say it w/ ya CHEST kids.

"Its always very perplexing cause I real deal be showing people genuine love. Whole time that envy eating ya lil heart. Anyway, NEXT!!! (sic)"

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His comments came after Jada explained that she had met August through their then 18-year-old son Jaden.

Jada said: "Four-and-a-half years ago [I] started a friendship with August and we became really, really good friends and it all started with him just needing some help, me wanting to help his health and mental state."

Speaking directly to Will in the heart-to-heart chat, Jada shared: "The outpouring for him from our family was initially about his health.

"We found all those different resources to help pull him through and, from there, you and I were going through a very difficult time."

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Will, 51, added: "I was done with your a**, marriages have that though," to which Jada said: "We broke up."

Pushing her to continue, Will asked: "And then what did you do, Jada?"

She replied: "As time went on I got into a different kind of entanglement with August."

When Will asked what she meant by entanglement, his wife told him: "It was a relationship, absolutely."

Who is August Alsina?

August is 27 years old and from New Orleans.

He began singing aged 14 and started uploading covers to YouTube, and as a singer-songwriter, he is most known for his hit I Luv This S*** with Trinidad James.

His music falls into the hip hop and R&B genres.

August had a troubled childhood as both his dad and stepdad were addicted to crack cocaine, then he later got kicked out of home by his mum.

He's been open about his own health issues in recent years; in 2014 he collapsed on stage and a few years later revealed he has an autoimmune disease that attacks his liver, causing him health scares.

Jada refused to call the relationship a "transgression," revealing she "learned so much" about herself during that time but said "it was a little weird" it was coming out now as August had chosen to stop all contact when she reunited with Will.

August had formed a friendship with the family in 2015, accompanying the famous clan on a vacation to Hawaii in 2016 and attending the 2017 BET Awards with Jada.

But he made bombshell revelations in an interview in July, in which he claimed: "I actually sat down with Will [Smith] and had a conversation due to the transformation from their marriage to life partnership... he gave me his blessing."

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He added: "I totally gave myself to that relationship for years of my life, and I truly and really, really deeply love and have a ton of love for her."

Discussing the "blessing" claim Jada said on Friday's show: "The only person that can give permission in that particular circumstance is myself.

"I could actually see how he would perceive it as permission because we were separated amicably and I think he also wanted to make it clear that he's also not a home-wrecker. Which he's not."

Read the original:

August Alsina shares cryptic message after Jada Pinkett Smith confirms romance during split from husband Will - The Sun

This practice of picture-posting is referred to as sharing thirst traps. The Cambridge dictionary defines thirst trap as a statement by or photograph of someone on social media intended to attract attention, or to make people who see it sexually interested in them.

Thirst-trapping is a pronounced culture in the US, popularised by influencers like Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner over the last couple of years. At least 150-200 thirst trap tweets are posted every hour on Twitter on a daily basis and more than half of these are from the US, as per analytics portal Hashtagify. The practice is age-agnostic, with celebrities in their 60s, like Madonna, making headlines for posting thirst traps on Instagram earlier this week.

Thirst trap culture has gained traction in India recently. Google Trends India suggests the interest for the term has peaked thrice in the last six months, indicating its growing influence among Indian social media users. The last spike was seen in May 2020.

These Gen Z women are part of over 470 million people in the country as per Bloomberg analysis born roughly between the year 1996 and 2010. They were born alongside the birth of the internet. Growing up, theyve had their accounts on every social media platform from Facebook to Instagram. And their internet habits are very different from their predecessors, the millennials.

According to Facebooks advertising vertical, Facebook.com/Ads, over 4 million women Instagrammers from India in the 18-24 age group show interest in human sexuality as a topic, as opposed to 2.7 million in the 25-31 cohort.

Theyre fluid about their identity online, notes Ishtaarth Dalmia, an anthropologist and AVP at digital agency Dentsu Webchutney. Most of these womens social media bios don't reflect their names but have emoticons or random words instead. They are quick to open and shut social accounts. They have private Instagram accounts dedicated to posting thirst traps that have several thousand in followers.

Seeking Validation

Thirst trapping is also a shortcut to getting validation, an important marker of identity formation for Gen Z.

This generation feels so overwhelmed by its inability to control everything thats going on in the world that fetching likes and shares brings in a sense of control to them. Its something they can rely on, says Dalmia.

Influencers like the Kardashians glorify this idea as well. They are indirectly sending this message that posting provocative content can make you the next youngest millionaire, says Sascha Kirpalani, a Mumbai-based psychologist.

However, the motivation behind posting thirst traps is a lot deeper, she quickly adds. It is a means to self-expression for a lot of women in this generation, a form of feminism, of reclaiming power over their own body.

To some, like Pooja Mishra from Mumbai, it implies breaking away from the repression theyve seen the previous generations of women go through.

I dont mind sharing thirst traps. Its a part of me, not my entire personality. That's my face and body I walk around with 24x7. I shouldn't have to hide it in the online world because of the threat of someone being creepy, says the Gen Z chartered accountant.

Even its predecessors note that this cohort is far more vocal about its sexuality and love for erotica, both in words and visuals, than they are. What you see them post online is actually a manifestation of what we used to write in our diaries, says Shreemi Verma, a Mumbai-based content creator in her late 20s.

A lot of these women post thirst pictures via their alt-accounts (alternate accounts). Perhaps thats why they find it to be a safer space as it doesnt come with judgement from peers or family, Verma reckons.

Changing Perceptions

Gen Z women are now having an outsized influence on the way women, in general, express their sexuality online.

Before Gen Z Twitter became popular, hardly anyone spoke of erotica. People labelled it as explicit content, notes Srishti Millicent, a digital marketer based in Chandigarh.

Now these 18-23-year-olds put thirst traps and they go viral, she adds.

By the way, Millicent is only 25. But she too feels it's the "younger" girls who make her feel more comfortable about posting thirst traps online now.

On Twitter, thirst traps start with one person from this Gen Z community tweeting and urging others to post their pictures, notes Kejal Shah, a 27-year-old HR professional from Mumbai. Thats how it starts trending. You dont feel awkward doing it because everyone else is getting on board as well.

Shah herself has posted an occasional thirst trap on her social media accounts in recent times.

Pune-based Ira, a 24-year-old radio jockey, sees this trend as part of an attempt where Women make online spaces safer for women.

Ira shares a story of a fellow Gen Z woman who was recently harassed by a man about one of her pictures online. She traced him to his Facebook account which led her to the guys mothers profile. She then confronted him with screenshots of his inappropriate messages, asking if she should show his mother what her son is up to. The guy was profusely apologetic.

Across social media platforms, these women have now created a sorority of their own.

Every Gen Z woman in India, who is comfortable posting thirst traps online, is likely to follow several others like her. Inside this tiny community, people hype each other as enthusiastically as they cancel a member who isnt genuine, says Ira.

They operate under pseudonymous accounts, but a look at the list of people they follow gives an insight into their minds. It has artists, poets, activists, fake news and misinformation fighters. Satire and irony are dominating themes of their content.

For advertisers targetting Gen Z, this segment is still an enigma theyre trying to decrypt, notes Dentsu Webchutney anthropologist Dalmia.

Some of them also post pictures of celebrities they are thirsting for. Others highlight the problematic nature of 365 Days, a Polish erotica movie streaming on Netflix that has been trending on the platform in India for weeks now arguing that it glorifies molestation and abduction.

Many have developed a thick skin when it comes to receiving unwarranted comments from men on their posts. However, some question if these lot are indeed being anti-feminist since they eventually end up catering to a male fantasy of women.

Many thirst trappers end up deleting their pictures after uploading them, fearing negative attention. Some of them also worry they may attach their self-esteem to the number of likes they get on these pictures for good.

They say thirst traps are part of the larger realm of body-positivity content. But they also know that while every thirst trap is body-positive, not all body-positive posts are thirst traps.

On social media, however, all are happily welcome to co-exist.

(Illustration and graphics by Rahul Awasthi)

See the original post here:

The rise of Thirst Trap culture among Gen Z Indian women - ETtech.com

When Christina Curfman thought about whether she could return to her second-grade classroom in the fall, she struggled to imagine the logistics. How would she make sure her 8-year-old students kept their face masks on all day? How would they do hands-on science experiments that required working in pairs? How would she keep six feet of distance between children accustomed to sharing desks and huddling together on one rug to read books?

The only way to keep kids six feet apart is to have four or five kids, says Curfman, a teacher at Catoctin Elementary School in Leesburg, Virginia, who typically has 22 students in a class. Her district shut schools on March 12, and at least 55 staff members have since tested positive for the coronavirus. Classrooms in general are pretty tight, she says. And then how do you teach a reading group, how do you teach someone one-on-one from six feet apart? You cant.

So Curfmanwho has an autoimmune disease that makes her more vulnerable to COVID-19consulted her doctor, weighed the risks of returning to school and decided to retire early after 28 years of teaching. At 55, shes eligible for partial retirement benefits and will take home less pay than if she had worked for a few more years, but the decision gave her peace of mind.

Its either that or risk your health, she says. Its kind of a no-brainer.

Recent surveys suggest shes not alone. Faced with the risks of an uncertain back-to-school plan, some teachers, who spent the last few months teaching over computers and struggling to reach students who couldnt access online lessons, are choosing not to return in the fall. The rising number of coronavirus cases in many parts of the country, and recent evidence that suggests the virus can spread indoors via tiny respiratory droplets lingering in the air, have fueled teachers safety concerns, even as President Trump demands that schools fully reopen and threatens to cut federal funding from those that dont. (Trump has said that older teachers, who are more vulnerable to the virus, could sit it out for a little while, unless we come up with the vaccine sooner.)

About 20% of teachers said they arent likely to return to teaching if schools reopen in the fall, according to a USA Today/Ipsos poll conducted in late May. EdWeek Research Center surveys conducted around the same time found that more than 10% of teachers are more likely to leave the profession now than they were before the pandemic, and 65% of educators said they want school buildings to remain closed to slow the spread of the virus.

But the pressure to reopen schools is strong. Recent studies show that students have likely suffered significant learning loss during this period of remote schooling, worsening the achievement gap between affluent and low-income students. Meanwhile, research shows that children are much less likely to suffer the most severe health effects of the virus. The American Academy of Pediatrics released guidance on June 25, recommending that all back-to-school policies aim to have students physically present in school, citing the importance of in-person learning and raising concerns about social isolation, abuse and food insecurity for children forced to remain at home. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the countrys top infectious disease expert, agrees. I feel very strongly we need to do whatever we can to get the children back to school, he said during testimony before the Senate on June 30.

But the health risks are greater for some educators and other school employees, including bus drivers and custodians, than they are for children. Adults over age 65 account for the vast majority of COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. And 18% of public and private school teachers and 27% of principals are 55 or older, according to federal data. Thats why researchers at the American Enterprise Institute warned of a school personnel crisis, recommending in May that school districts provide early retirement incentives or create a virtual teaching corps for those who feel safer working remotely.

I still have not seen any state really address this in their reopening plans. Theres passing references to schools needing to do something for their vulnerable population, but you just dont see the activity that would match the personnel challenge that schools are going to face, says John Bailey, an American Enterprise Institute visiting fellow, who wrote the May report. We shouldnt be putting teachers in a situation where they have to decide between their financial security and their health security.

In Connecticutwhere a union survey found that 43% of teachers think theyre at higher risk for severe illness if they contract COVID-19 because of their age or an underlying medical conditionAndrea Cohen, who is over 65, decided to retire as an elementary school social worker. The decision was driven by concerns she could bring the virus home to her 95-year-old mother and to her grandchild, who is due to be born in September. I felt like this was the safest thing to do, she says.

I trust that theyre going to try to come up with some good system, but I just didnt know what the system was going to be, and I couldnt visualize how it was going to work for me in my school office, Cohen says. All I could see was me in my tiny little office, with six kids, and how it wouldnt be safe for anybody.

In Michiganwhere 30% of teachers told the Michigan Education Association they were considering leaving teaching or retiring earlier than planned because of the pandemicTheresa Mills, 58, decided to retire after an anxiety-ridden spring of teaching literature remotely and trying to build relationships with students online. The whole idea of being remote and disconnected was equally daunting as the fear of not being safe, she says about the upcoming school year.

Many school districts are considering hybrid plans that involve students rotating between in-person classes and remote learning on different days of the week. But Education Secretary Betsy DeVos criticized those plans during a call with governors on Tuesday, urging schools to be fully operational with in-person instruction five days a week, the Associated Press reported.

Loudoun County Public Schools in Virginia, the district where Curfman taught, is planning for students to attend in-person classes two days a week and learn at home the rest of the time, but it is also allowing parents to opt for full-time remote learning.

Curfman says about five families have already asked her to privately tutor her former students and their siblings at home on distance-learning days. Its one example of the nontraditional approaches to schooling caused by the pandemic. As long as she can do so safely, Curfman is considering it.

Theres no evidence that teachers are retiring en masse. In the middle of an economic crisis that has left millions unemployed, including public school employees, many teachers arent looking to flee the profession, despite their concerns about this fall.

I kind of dont come from a family that retires, says Vicki Baker, a 64-year-old math teacher at the Philadelphia High School for Girls, but she wants to feel safe when she returns to her classroom. I feel like we have one time to get this right because theres so many things at risk, she says. If somebody gets sick because theyre at school, the students bring it home to their families. I bring it home to mine.

Rachel Bardes holds a sign in front of the Orange County Public Schools headquarters in Orlando, Fla., on July 7, 2020, as teachers protest a mandate that all public schools open in August despite the spike in coronavirus cases in Florida.

Joe BurbankOrlando Sentinel/AP

College professors have raised similar concerns. Hundreds of Georgia Tech faculty members called for the continuation of remote learning this fall, arguing in an open letter that no faculty, staff, or student should be coerced into risking their health and the health of their families by working and/or learning on campus when there is a remote/online equivalent. Professors at the University of Notre Dame asked that they be allowed to decide individually whether to teach in-person or online.

Meanwhile, the surge in coronavirus cases from Florida to Texas to Arizona has added urgency to the need for safe back-to-school plans.

Before the pandemic, Caren Gonzalez, a chemistry teacher at Tuloso-Midway High School in Corpus Christi, Texas, was planning to retire next year, having promised the Class of 2021 that she would be there to teach them AP Chemistry. During the last few months, she shifted her lesson plans online, uploading videos of herself writing out chemical equations and offering students one-on-one help over Zoom, sometimes meeting as late as 10:30 p.m. to accommodate their schedules. These are not normal times, she told them. You dont need to apologize.

But Gonzalez, who will turn 60 in July, questioned whether it would be safe to return to school before theres a coronavirus vaccine, and she decided to retire now. Its just the uncertainty, she says. Nobody knows quite whats going to happen.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that schools space desks six feet apart; seat only one child per row on school buses; discourage students from sharing toys, books or sports equipment; close communal spaces, such as cafeterias and playgrounds; and create staggered drop-off and pick-up schedules to limit contact between large groups of students and parents. On Wednesday, Trump said he disagreed with the CDCs very tough & expensive guidelines for opening schools. While they want them open, they are asking schools to do very impractical things.

Guidance released Tuesday by the Texas Education Agency requires schools to hold daily in-person instruction, but allows parents to opt for remote learning instead. The guidelines say schools should attempt to have hand sanitizer or hand washing stations at every entrance and in every classroom, should keep windows open to increase airflow when possible and should consider spacing desks six feet apart.

Gonzalez worries that such guidance will be difficult to implement on the ground and that students or teachers will suffer the consequences.

Six feet apart becomes three feet apart, becomes Dont worry about it at lunchtime in the lunch room, so it just kind of degrades, Gonzalez says. And its not because the districts are trying to cheat teachers or their students or anything. Theyre just trying to do what theyre told with the resources that they have.

Without a boost in state or federal funding, many school districts might not have the resources they need. An analysis by the American Federation of Teachers estimated that the average school will need an extra $1.2 million, or $2,300 per student, to reopen safely. An analysis by the School Superintendents Association estimated it would cost less, but still nearly $2 million for the average school district to buy enough hand sanitizer, disinfectant wipes and masks and to hire more custodial staff and nurses or aides to check temperatures regularly.

I dont think anybody is going back, thinking, This is fine, everythings normal,' Gonzalez says. I think everybodys got a little bit of apprehension if theyve been paying attention.

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Write to Katie Reilly at Katie.Reilly@time.com.

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With No End in Sight to the Coronavirus, Some Teachers Are Retiring Rather Than Going Back to School - TIME

Moyra Davey:Drifts [2020] is your most voluptuous and sensuous work to date, even though much of the novel is about struggle and feeling at a miserable impasse with the book you are writing. You manage to both write the problem and, simultaneously, provide the solution. You talk about block, but the writing feels like its opposite: flow. You invoke the [new] texture of boredom, the energy of the internet, its distracted nature and wonder how to invest the writing with these particular drives, how to replicate the mind wandering. You name the affect you crave for your novel and, immediately, the writing serves it up. You have found the perfect form: a novel made up of fragments, using the note-taking practice you find so vital.

I know from the conversations between you and your friends in Drifts that, like me, you prize your relationships with writer-friends, the (usually women) interlocutors who prod us, open doors and offer sympathetic guidance, often with lightning speed. Try to be with flowers, the poet Bhanu Kapil says to you in Drifts; later, in an exchange with the writer Sofia Samatar, you talk about empty[ing] a text in order to fill it. This speaks to a particular difficulty Im having with a shapeless, bloated text, about which Ive come to feel phobic. I wondered if you could expand on that particular point: the emptying out that might lead to structure.

Kate Zambreno:Theres something monstrous to the shapeless. I have a fear of it as well. I like to think of writers block, the dread of it, as resulting from too much material too many notebooks filled up. For the period I dramatize in Drifts, it was also about the desire for my work to feel private and ongoing rather than being instantly published and commodified to be read only by my correspondents, my addressees, entirely women and non-binary writers.

In the book, one of the characters, Anna, says to the narrator that the notes are the work. I tend to gravitate towards writing that is about process yours, Kapils, Samatars, Herv Guiberts and W.G. Sebalds. I dont think about structure, per se, or story, but I am interested in narrative and form and repetition. Theres such an organic flow to the form of your books Les Goddesses/Hemlock Forest [2017] and Burn the Diaries [2014] the titles, the places, the sense of travelling through that every writer who reads them begins to mimic it. These books read like they were written in the time they were conceived and are about time. When my writing feels shapeless and bloated, like it does now, malingering for years around the study of Guibert I have been working on, which was supposed to be a short text, I realize that writing is time, and must take the time it needs.

Ive always been drawn to the suspense in Thomas Bernhard, Sophie Calle, Guibert and Sebald. Their works are note-like and documentary, but also read like detective stories. Theres an atmospheric moodiness or tension, also something thats withheld from us throughout. In The Compassion Protocol [1995], Guiberts narrator says Im paraphrasing here that he most feels like hes writing fiction when hes writing in a diary. Theres a noir or speculative quality to Drifts the sense of a coded reality that the narrator is trying to figure out.

MD:The last line of Drifts mentions beauty not knowing what beauty is, but that it adheres to many things. I wondered how you would end this book, as it builds towards an almost unbearable tension: your fear of not being able to finish it, mounting material anxieties, your pregnant body about to explode. The pressure seems almost uncontainable. And then there is a pause, a muting and you re-emerge using the beautiful device of simply noting a date, 7 December, to mark the event of your daughters birth. It is the opposite of Maggie Nelsons choice to narrate the minutiae of giving birth in The Argonauts [2015], but your laconic version is extraordinary in its own way, communicating something momentous with a rare economy of means. It shifts from the compulsive, yet no less compelling, uploading of life that characterizes most of the book. Drifts gives the fantastic impression of living and writing life simultaneously, and of doing it without shame, or perhaps doing it in such a way that shame becomes beautiful.

KZ:Originally, the ending included more of the duration and exhaustion of my labour; I was in prodromal labour for almost a month. I had already written about this fugue state in Appendix Project [2019], and I always imagined Id pick it up again in Ghosts, the as-yet-unwritten novel thats supposed to be its sequel. Vertigo the second half of Drifts is elliptical and fragmentary; less an exhaustive recitation of the facts of a life and more about the claustrophobic intimacy of it. It was important to me that the book didnt show a journey of motherhood; I didnt want a baby to solve the main protagonists existential crisis, which is a crisis of the book she is trying to write. It was Samatar who told me that too much of the baby even the joy of her overdetermined the book. In a way, it goes against what some readers might want. Also, I am resistant to the ways a birth story is often told as a coherent narrative. Trauma is more fragmented, remembered later, in glimpses.

MD:The few details you give us wholly convey this bewildered state, but you make the experience completely your own. Your tender, yet slightly detached, observations of the baby and the hilarious depiction of the postpartum, scatological scene of retention/expulsion are consistent with all the earlier, non-maternal writing in Drifts. Ive read quite a bit of the literature of motherhood and your voice is like no other Ive encountered.

KZ:I want to hear more about writing and shame, its relationship to beauty, as its something I think about a lot. I wonder if its why we are both so drawn to Guibert, Kapil and David Wojnarowicz. Theres this moment at the end of Drifts where I cite you, trying to reference a work of yours, Dr. Y., Dr. Y. [2014], in which you are naked and pregnant in bed with your dog. A line from Anne Sextons Words for Dr. Y. [1978] frames the central image: Why else keep a journal, if not to examine your own filth? So much of your work, both the videos and the writing, engages with the diary or notebook the intimate space of the domestic. But theres also an intriguing opacity in your work that I identify with, in tension, perhaps, with this beautiful transparency of the daily: the refusal to go back to trauma or childhood, that space of memoir you refer to as the wet in Les Goddesses/Hemlock Forest.

MD:Shame is only ugly when its hidden. It can be breathtakingly beautiful when a writer puts it out there without fanfare. Im quite preoccupied with shame, so I home in on authors whove found ways to write it. Thats what good literature does: in the right hands, shame doesnt even exist because it becomes something else. I think it was Nadine Gordimer who said: Write as if you were dead. This is something I try to do, but I am not there yet. The artwork with my dog and me in bed is surrounded by little photos of her shitting. I thought the curve of her arched back mimicked my pregnant belly; I was no doubt projecting onto her defecation a wish to empty myself out. The unofficial title for that piece was Ante-Partum Document. I showed it to my gallerist at the time, Colin de Land, and he recoiled from it, compared it to the worst of feminist art. I dont hold any of this against him, but I was ashamed and put the piece away. I have Gregg Bordowitz to thank for encouraging me to revisit it nearly 20 years later and remake it using the Sexton quote. I was reading Sexton for another project, the video Notes on Blue [2015], and came across that line in Words for Dr. Y., which is dedicated to her analyst. Entirely coincidentally, Dr. Y. was the name I gave my shrink in the video Fifty Minutes [2006], so I titled the new piece Dr. Y., Dr. Y.

KZ:So much of your art seems to be about The Problem of Reading, to quote the title of a 2003 work of yours.

MD:There are many problems of reading. There is the research problem trying to put your hand on the right thing, and often not knowing what that is. I met a graduate student in Toronto, named Kate Whiteway, who used the expression: Being in the Eros of research. My oldest friend, the writer and translator Alison Strayer, spoke of that zone of reading as a state of bliss, when theres never a question, where one thing leads to another. But, for me, there is also the problem of being over-identified with reading, and so I am trying to change it up. In my latest work-in-progress, I originally decided there would be no citations, but then I felt utterly compelled to write about Hilton Als, Carson McCullers and Christa Wolf. I dont know that Ill ever write something that is not dependent on communion and connection.

KZ:I also feel Im often over-identified with reading. It seems people sometimes read my work to get a bibliography out of it. Which is perverse because I frequently go through periods of extreme reading allergy. So much of Drifts involves searching for books to read but finding everything too porous. Its a relief when I am reading ecstatically, when I have the time and space. Especially when Im pregnant Im again in my second trimester I cant read much. I spend a lot of time looking and thinking and feeling, and then eating and sleeping. I become like my dog. Which reminds me of that moment in Burn the Diaries, where you describe Eileen Myless passage about her dog, Rosie, shitting and you feeling a kinship looking at your own dog, Bella. I felt such an uncanny affinity reading that passage, because so much of my notetaking was observing dailiness. Im inspired by the way your mind makes connections over texts. Much of Drifts came from walking around my neighbourhood and the city, desiring to take series of photographs, whether of my dog on the porch or the bark of the trees or the feral cats or Halloween decorations. Throughout, I was thinking about images, like the 16th-century prints of Albrecht Drer, Peter Hujars photographs of animals [1960s80s], Sarah Charlesworths Stills [1980]. The book includes not only some of my amateur photographs but also collages and diptychs. I admire how you use and philosophize photography, including your own, in your writing. Was your writing practice always concurrent with your image-making practice?

MD:For a long time, I only made photographs, and dabbled in the moving image. I didnt really start to write until after editing Mother Reader [2001], at which point I wanted to take a break from photography and focus on writing and video. My most recent photographs are black and white images of chickens, horses and dogs taken with my late-1960s Hasselblad. The series was spawned partly by a recent film project and partly by a desire to actively channel Hujars animal portraits. That was a humbling learning experience. Its uncanny how we have overlapping spheres of influence and projective desire for certain artists and writers, even down to the title of your forthcoming book on Guibert, To Write as if Already Dead. I love hearing that the impulse to write Drifts was so strongly linked to your photographic drive. Maybe that is the answer to my bloated, stalled text: to reconnect again with images, as filtered through writing.

This article first appeared in frieze issue 212.

Main image: Moyra Davey, Jane (detail), 1984, gelatin silver print, 5141cm. Courtesy: the artist, greengrassi, London, and Galerie Buchholz, Berlin/Cologne/New York

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Moyra Davey and Kate Zambreno on Writing As If You Were Dead - frieze.com

Ah, the Trending tab. YouTubes showcase of videos that a wide range of viewers would find interesting. Like many other facets of the platforms content recommendation algorithm, the Trending tab has been a frequent target of suspicion from creators who want to know more about its inner workingsnotably how and why it surfaces some seemingly popular videos, but not others.

Well likely never get a true peek under the hood from YouTube itself. But thanks to data scientist Ammar Alyousfi, we now have a massive amount of data about every single video that hit the tab in 2019, as well as corresponding conclusions about what qualities these videos tend to share.

To compile his report, Alyousfi ran an automated script that scraped data from YouTubes Trending tab every day throughout the year. According to YouTube, Trending isnt personalized and displays the same list of trending videos in each country to all users so he didnt have to account for the possibility that different videos might show up for users in different regions.

Alyousfi found that over the course of 2019, YouTubes Trending tab displayed 11,177 unique videos. If that sounds smaller than expected, its because Trending actually displayed 72,994 total entries, or around 200 videos per day, but a number of those videos trended for multiple days. For the purpose of his report, Alyousfi chose to examine data on all of the 72,994 trending videos, not on unique trending videos only, he said. The reasoning behind this is that we are interested in videos considered trending by YouTube. So if a video is considered trending for 3 days, then we believe it has more trending power and more trending characteristics than a video trending for 1 day only; thus, it should have more weight. So we include the 3 occurrences of that video in the analysis.

So, which videos had the most trending power? In 2019, six videos appeared on the Trending tab for a staggering 30 days:

Perhaps unsurprisingly, three of them are music videos, and two are related to mega-popular kpop band BTSwhich was also behind YouTubes most-watched Trending video of 2019. The music video for Boy With Luv, its Halsey collaboration, had 195,376,667 views when it first appeared on the tab April 23,Alyousfi found. (For scale, he found 90% of videos hit Trending for the first time when they had less than 2,752,317 views. The smallest number of views a Trending video had when it entered was 53,796, and the average view count was 1,387,466.)

None of the longest-trending videos came from YouTube channels that most frequently produced trending content. Alyousfis data showed that, globally, the top Trending channel of 2019 was Canadian YouTuber Linus Sebastians Linus Tech Tips(11 million subscribers, 120 million views per month), which had a whopping 365 uploads appear on the tab. His channel was closely followed by cooking-focused Binging with Babish (7.3 million, 70 million), which produced around 360 Trending videos.

Other top Trending channels include: culinary magazine Bon Apptit (likely thanks to its incredibly popular, recently controversial series Bon Apptit Test Kitchen) with 355 videos; life hack channel The King of Random (12 million, 40 million) with 350; tech creator and YouTube Original star Marques Brownlee (11 million, 60 million) with 350;WWE (62 million, 1.5 billionyes, seriously, 1.5 billion views per month) with around 345; and Tati Westbrook (9.3 million, 10 million) with 330.

Here are all 19 top Trending channels:

Creators have long wondered whether uploading on specific days or at specific times, using all caps in their titles, or having lengthy/link-riddled descriptions affects the reach of their content. Alyousfi broke down these and a few more hypotheses to find out if any, well, trends show up amongst videos that appeared on the tab.

He found that Trending uploads were spread pretty evenly across days of the week. Tuesday, with 11,986 trending videos, was the highest posting day, while Saturday (7,345) lagged noticeably behind all other days. As for time of day, he found that videos uploaded between noon and 2 p.m. Eastern were the most likely to hit Trending, while videos uploaded between 6 a.m. and 11 a.m. Eastern were the least.

With that in mind, though, its worth noting that the majority of videos did not appear on Trending on the actual day they were published. On average, a video appears on the trending list after 5.6 days of publishing, Alyousfi wrote. Also, 95% of the videos took less than 13 days to appear.

His data showed several additional trends among video titles, including: a full 50% of Trending videos had no all-caps words in their titles; titles were generally between 36 and 64 characters in length; and the most common words used in Trending titles were official, video, 2019, vs, trailer, music, game, new, highlights, first, and challenge. (Also, the fire emoji was the most commonly used on Trending videos.)

One of the last findings Alyousfi discusses is video tags. He says almost all Trending videos used tags, and the average number used per video is 21. But, he notes, YouTube tells creators that, Tags can be useful if content in your video is commonly misspelled. Otherwise, tags play a minimal role in helping viewers find your video.

But if that was true, why would YouTube add a lot of tags to their videos? he asks, pointing out that YouTubes 2019 Rewind video had 39 tags. He didnt reach any concrete conclusions about whether tags affect video surfacing, but said that just 3.5% of Trending videos had no tags.

You can see his full report here.

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What Makes A YouTube Video Hit The Trending Tab? This Data Scientist Broke Down Every Single Video That Trended In 2019. - Tubefilter