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Celtic and Rangers title race outcome predicted by betting supercomputer – HeraldScotland

Posted on July 31, 2020 by Danzig

CELTIC will make history with ten in a row as the Scottish Premiership season gets underway, according to betting firm unikrn's supercomputer calculations.

Brainboxes at the bookmaker have used a number of different markets and a prediction algorithm to determine the final table and it's good news for the Hoops' quest to make history.

Rangers find themselves in a familiar spot in second place with Aberdeen booked for another bronze medal to complete the top three.

At the bottom of the table, the number crunching doesn't bode well for Hamilton, who are predicted to finish at the bottom of the table, while St Mirrens fate will be decided in the play-offs.

The system is based on factoring a range of the most informative betting markets in terms of influencing the final outcome of the season including title winner, 'without the Old Firm', bottom 6 and bottom place.

A unikrn spokesperson said: "It might not come as much of a surprise that Celtic are booked for ten in a row and our calculations read well for Hoops fans ahead of the restart. Steven Gerrard's Rangers will be hoping to run them close, but the numbers suggest they're booked for second place again.

"Things are looking bleak for Hamilton, who will fight with St Mirren to avoid finishing last and earn a last-chance place in the play-offs."

Scottish Premiership Supercomputer from unikrn

1. Celtic (1/2) (title odds)

2. Rangers (7/4)

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3. Aberdeen (2/1) (winner without Celtic and Rangers)

4. Hibernian (7/2)

5. Motherwell (5/1)

6. Kilmarnock (14/1)

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7. Livingston (2/5) (to finish bottom 6)

8. St. Johnstone (1/2)

9. Dundee United (3/5)

10. Ross County (1/10)

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11. St Mirren (7/4) (to finish bottom)

12. Hamilton (6/4)

Nvidia reportedly in advanced talks to buy Arm – ZDNet

Posted on July 31, 2020 by Danzig

Nvidia is in advanced talks to acquire chip designer Arm from Softbank, according to reports -- a move that would be sure to draw regulatory scrutiny. According to the Financial Times and Bloomberg, the potential deal could value Arm at more than $32 billion, the price at which it was acquired by SoftBank four years ago.

Nvidia's market value has already surpassed that of Intel, and purchasing Arm could give the GPU maker a much broader footprint in the semiconductor industry. The deal could elicit objections from companies that license Arm's technology, including Apple, Broadcom or Qualcomm.

While Arm's technology is already dominant in mobile devices, the company has recently expanded its reach in several other areas as well. The company hit a huge milestone in the infrastructure space last month when Japan's Fugaku supercomputer became the first ARM-powered supercomputer to be dubbed the fastest computer in the world. And last year, the company finally gained real traction in the data center market with the debut of Amazon Web Service's Arm-based Graviton2 processor. Additionally, Apple last month announced plans to move the Mac to its own processors based on Arm.

SoftBank is now considering selling Arm to bolster the firm's cash reserves as part of a $41 billion debt reduction program. Earlier this month, Arm announced plans to shed its two IoT Services Group (ISG) businesses, spinning them off into new entities owned and operated by SoftBank. The move would let Arm focus more on its core semiconductor IP business.

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Nvidia reportedly in advanced talks to buy Arm - ZDNet

NVIDIA Claims To Have Won MLPerf Benchmarking, But Google Says Otherwise – Analytics India Magazine

Posted on July 31, 2020 by Danzig

With the third round of MLPerf benchmarking results coming out, graphic giant, NVIDIA announced breaking AI performance records becoming the fastest products available commercially for AI training. However, on the other hand, Google has also proclaimed acing the MLPerf tests with the worlds fastest training supercomputer.

Although both companies have showcased significant achievements in creating faster training processes of ML models, which indeed would be critical for research breakthroughs, there is a hidden element that needs to be paid attention to.

Similar to System Performance Evaluation Consortium benchmark and Transaction Processing Council benchmark, MLPerf is an industry-standard benchmark that has been designed to measure the time to train ML models on a few specific tasks. Comprising some 80 companies and universities from all over the world, some other prominent vendors competing in the MLPerf benchmark tests were Intels Xeon processors and Huawei.

Also Read: How MLPerf Will Propel A New Benchmarking Era For Machine Learning

The current result announced by MLPerf was similar to its last two results where NVIDIA stood firm in the top position for all 16 benchmarks with its commercially available hardware and software products for a variety of ML tasks. However, on the other hand, Googles Tensor Processing Unit has surpassed NVIDIAs results in most tasks for the category of research projects.

In a recent tweet, Google AI lead, Jeff Dean shared his excitement on setting records in six out of eight benchmarks in MLPerf tests. According to the results Google topped in training DLRM, Transformer, BERT, SSD, ResNet-50 and Mask R-CNN leveraging its new machine learning supercomputer and TPU chip. In fact, it is believed that Googles supercomputer is 4x larger than Googles Cloud TPU v3 Pod, which made records in the previous results, becoming the first cloud provider to outperform on-premise systems.

While Google has powered up its Cloud TPUs providing faster training time for ML models, NVIDIAs advanced GPU A100 also proved to execute five petaflops of performance excelling on all eight benchmarks of MLPerf. A100 has been the first processor designed on NVIDIAs Ampere architecture, which allows the GPU to address different sized acceleration needs from small to big multi-node workload.

Strangely enough, realising the advanced capabilities of A100 that could easily dominate the field, the only companies to put their submission for commercially available servers were Google and Huawei, that also for only for two categories image classification and natural language processing. Thereby, NVIDIAs results remained high in system design and training models beating Huawei, Googles TPU as well as Intel, which has recently switched to Habanas AI chips.

According to the results, it took about 49 seconds for NVIDIAs DGX A100 to train BERT, which is better than Google with 57 minutes. Understanding its position, Google, therefore submitted its V4 chip in the research category to build its position for the same, with an astounding performance for many training tasks. With that being said, the company hasnt yet released it on the Google Cloud, which again can put it way behind in the race against A100, which is commercially in production.

Also Read: TPU Vs GPU Vs CPU: Which Hardware Should You Choose For Deep Learning

These pointers above highlight how NVIDIA single-handedly dominates the commercial category with other vendor companies like Dell EMC, Alibaba, and even Google using A100 for submitting their performance results. However, even though Googles TPU will still not be available in the market for some time, it indeed showcased intensive performance for many tasks in MLPerf. Interestingly, Intel has also joined the force with its soon-to-be-released CPU, however too early to predict its success in applications.

Home NVIDIA Claims To Have Won MLPerf Benchmarking, But Google Says Otherwise

On another note, MLPerf added a new test to reflect upon the growing application of machine learning in production settings Deep Learning Recommendation Model. Although NVIDIA has performed brilliantly on the newly added benchmarking test, it might still lag in building recommendation engines due to the requirement of a massive amount of supercomputing memory. Google, on the other hand, with its supercomputing abilities, has recently launched a beta version of Recommendation AI, making building recommendation engines super easy for developers.

Having said that, even though MLPerf assesses almost all aspects of AI performance, two vital parameters left out in this benchmarking test are the comparison of the price of chips and computers, and the consumption of energy, which are critical for todays era. It is believed that machines with better accuracy and more chips are going to consume more energy and are going to be heavier on the pockets, which might put Google on the lead once again.

With all that information in hand, it can be established that a usual trend of bigger hardware is indeed gaining traction, which will drastically reduce the amount of training time of machine learning models. However, NVIDIA cannot be the only one dominating the market. Googles supercomputer also showed tremendous results in training ML models to perform tasks.

While NVIDIA and Google are still going to continue the race of achieving the highest AI performance record, NVIDIA stated in their company blog, the real winners are the customers who will now be able to leverage this advancement to transform their businesses faster with AI.

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NVIDIA Claims To Have Won MLPerf Benchmarking, But Google Says Otherwise - Analytics India Magazine

Continental is supercharging the development of driver-assistance tech – CNET

Posted on July 31, 2020 by Danzig

There's not much to see here, but the processing power in this room is staggering.

No self-driving cars are available today, but like it or not, they're coming. Automakers and supplier companies around the world are hard at work developing the technology that will enable these autonomous machines. Accelerating its own efforts, German firm Continental has set up a new supercomputer specifically for developing advanced driver-assistance technologies.

The unit in question is built around more than 50 Nvidia DGX systems and has been up and running since the beginning of the year. This supercomputer dramatically increases Continental's number-crunching capabilities. In the same amount of time, researchers can now run more than 14 times as many tests as they could before.

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It's difficult to say if this is the most powerful supercomputer in the automotive industry, but it's certainly near the top. "It puts Continental in a pretty good spot," said Phil van den Berge, Nvidia's vice president of automotive. Developing advanced driver-assistance technology is tremendously intensive work, he added, and having a purpose-built architecture like this one is a major help.

"That is now the game-changer," said Christian Schumacher, head of program management systems in Continental's advanced driver-assistance systems business unit. The new supercomputer can enable things the company only dreamt of doing just a decade ago.

Autonomous cars are coming whether you like it or not,

To help develop advanced automotive technologies, Continental operates a large fleet of evaluation vehicles around the world. Combined, they log around 9,300 miles of driving per day, collecting around 100 terabytes of data in the process. "In the past, it was impossible to deal with this [volume of] data," explained Schumacher. But thanks to the new computer, Continental can actually use it. He said tasks that took weeks to run can now be completed in just days -- a huge improvement.

Not only can this supercomputer chew through all the information collected from real-world testing, it can also generate data synthetically. "A lot of the situations out there we cannot predict," said Schumacher, so their new system can basically conjure up new simulations out of thin air. Of course, this sort of testing will never replace physical cars and actual driving, but he noted this capability is still hugely important in the development of driver-assistance tech.

And if they do run short of number-crunching capability, researchers and engineers can still tap into internet-based services for a little extra horsepower. Continental's new supercomputer is located in Frankfurt, Germany, a city with nearby cloud providers and other benefits. Helping keep the local environment just a little cleaner, Schumacher said, "We have certified green energy that is used to power the computer," which is air cooled and, as you might imagine, hungry for electricity.

Dude, you're getting a Dell... or rather, something much more powerful from Nvidia.

On the road to autonomy, "What we are currently targeting is Level 2 [plus]," said Schumacher, which Continental is looking to roll out in the 2022-to-2023 timeframe. The SAE vehicle autonomy scale runs from Level 0, which offers no automation whatsoever, to Level 5, where the vehicle drives itself under all conditions. Level 2 provides things like lane centering and adaptive cruise control, while Level 3 throws traffic-jam assistance and automatic steering into the mix, though the driver must still pay attention and be able to take over if the system demands it.

Autonomous vehicles are not here yet, and it's debatable when they'll arrive, but they're likely just a little bit closer to reality now that Continental has invested in extra processing power.

Now playing: Watch this: Super Cruising with the 2018 Cadillac CT6's autonomous...

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Continental is supercharging the development of driver-assistance tech - CNET

COVID-19 Pandemic Can Help More of Us Learn About Climate Change – UT News | The University of Texas at Austin

Posted on July 31, 2020 by Danzig

In a climactic scene in the 1983 movie WarGames, as the supercomputer rushes to find a pattern of missile launches that would win a nuclear war with the Soviet Union, the protagonist has the computer play tic-tac-toe against itself. After learning that neither side ever wins in tic-tac-toe, the computer recognizes the analogy to nuclear war and decides not to launch a strike.

Usually a gifted writer finds analogies that are perfect learning opportunities, but COVID-19 can help us learn our lesson about another potential catastrophe climate change.

The pandemic has several key properties. Without good social distancing behaviors, the growth of the number of cases is exponential. There is also a delay of about two weeks from the behaviors people engage in and the time it takes for people to get diagnosed with the disease. So, when regions relax their social distancing measures, it takes a few weeks before the cases start to be recorded.

Finally, exponential growth is hard to detect at first because early on when you plot the growth in cases over time, it is hard to tell the difference between exponential growth and straight line growth. Unfortunately, by the time you really can tell the difference between them, the number of cases is growing very quickly.

This combination of factors contributed to the recent surge in COVID-19 cases in many states. Governors and local officials began relaxing social distancing rules. For about a month, cases in those states rose slowly in ways that could easily have been interpreted as demonstrating that the increased social contact was not contributing significantly to the spread of the disease.

Now we know that it has to the point where many states that had taken a relaxed attitude toward the pandemic are placing restrictions on business openings and are requiring people to wear masks in public.

Even if people do start engaging in more social distancing now, it will be a few weeks before the growth in the number of cases starts to flatten out, because our current behavior affects the cases we are able to detect in about two weeks. And knowing what we do now it probably would have been best if we had acted more quickly to get people to wear masks in public and to keep their distance from other people.

This situation is an excellent analogy to climate change. Increasing greenhouse gas emissions are leading to an exponential increase in temperature on Earth. The effects of climate change are delayed, though, so the greenhouse gases released now have their impact on climate in the future. For years, temperatures have been rising slowly, in ways that were hard to distinguish from simple linear growth, but now they are growing more quickly. Yet, people have not been willing to change their individual behavior much, and governments have been reluctant to pursue environmentally friendly policies.

The critical lesson is that we do not have to wait for more evidence that we are in an exponential growth situation before acting to protect the climate. Because of the lag between action and effect, we need to take steps now to reduce our carbon footprint.

In addition, like the pandemic, it is the collective action of the world community that is required. That means we need to put social pressure on other countries to reduce emissions even as we take steps ourselves. Reengaging with the Paris Agreement would be a step in that direction. Just as many governors have reversed course on relaxing social distancing guidelines in the face of new infections, the United States must admit that we have not taken climate change seriously enough while there is still time to prevent catastrophe.

Ultimately, the pandemic has taught us that changing behavior only after the growth in cases is clearly exponential has made it difficult to get the number of new cases under control and has threatened to overrun the capacity of hospitals in many regions.

Will we be able to apply this logic to climate change before it is too late? Perhaps we can take time during the pandemic to start flattening the climate change curve.

Art Markman is a professor of psychology and marketing and executive director of the IC2 Institute at The University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of Smart Thinking, which explores the role of analogies in effective thought.

A version of this op-ed appeared in the San Antonio Express News.

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COVID-19 Pandemic Can Help More of Us Learn About Climate Change - UT News | The University of Texas at Austin

From rocks to icebergs, the natural world tends to break into cubes – Science Magazine

Posted on July 31, 2020 by Danzig

A scanning electron micrograph of dolomite, a mineral with a striking rhombohedric structure

By Adam MannJul. 27, 2020 , 3:25 PM

Perhaps the Cubists were right. Researchers have found that when everything from icebergs to rocks breaks apart, their pieces tend to resemble cubes. The finding suggests a universal rule of fragmentation at scales ranging from the microscopic to the planetary.

Its a very beautiful combination of pure mathematics, materials science, and geology, says Sujit Datta, a chemical and biological engineer at Princeton University who was not involved in the work.

The finding builds on the previous work of mathematician Gbor Domokos of Budapest University of Technology and Economics, who in 2006 helped prove the existence of the gmbc, a gemstonelike shape that has only one stable balance point. Set a gmbc down on a table, and it will always come to rest in the exact same position, unlike, say, a cylinder, which can rest on its end or its side. In subsequent work, Domokos and his colleagues found that entities such as pebbles washing downriver and sand grains blowing in the wind tend to erode toward gmbcish shapes without ever achieving that ideal. The gmbc is part of nature, but only as a dream, Domokos says.

He and his team then turned to the other side of this processhow rocks themselves are born. They started their study fragmenting an abstract cube in a computer simulation by slicing it with 50 2Dplanes inserted at random angles. The planes cut the cube into 600,000 fragments, which were, on average, cubic themselvesmeaning that, on average, the fragments had six sides that were quadrangles, although any individual fragment need not be a cube. The result led the researchers to suspect that cubes might be a common feature of fragmentation.

The researchers tried to confirm this hunch using real-world measurements. They headed to an outcrop of the mineral dolomite on the mountain Hrmashatrhegy in Budapest, Hungary, and counted the number of vertices in cracks in the stone face. Most of these cracks formed squarish shapes, which is one of the faces of a cube, regardless of whetherthey had been weathered naturally or had been created by humans dynamiting the mountain.

Finally, the team created more powerful supercomputer simulations modeling the breakup of 3D materials under idealized conditionslike a rock being pulled equally in all directions. Such cases formed polyhedral pieces that were, in an average sense, cubes, the researchers report this week in theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Skeptics might point out that many things in the natural world dont fragment into cubes. Minerals such as mica, for instance, come off in flakes, whereas basaltic formations including the Giants Causeway in Northern Ireland break into hexagonal columns.

Thats because real materials are not like the idealized forms found in the teams simulations, says Douglas Jerolmack, a geophysicist at the University of Pennsylvaniaand co-author of the paper. They usually contain interior structures or properties that favor noncubic breakages. For example, mica flakes because it is weaker in one direction than in the perpendicular directions. But in a statistical averaged sense, rocks are born as something thats a vague shadow of a cube, Jerolmack says. The findings, he adds, could help hydrologists predict fluid flow through cracks in the ground for oil extraction, or help geologists calculate the sizes of hazardous rocks breaking off cliff faces.

Some find the study a bit difficult to parse, however. You need to have this abstract theoretical view of earth surface processes to really dig into what this can mean, says Anne Voigtlnder, a geologist at theGFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences. Its sometimes hard for geologists to understand the value of it, or to see where it applies.

Jerolmack agrees that, in some sense, the result is more philosophical than scientific. He notes that his team took inspiration from the Greek philosopher Plato, who related each of the four classical elementsearth, air, fire, and waterto a regular polyhedron, coincidentally linking earth with the cube. But Plato is more remembered for his allegory of the cave, in which he speculated about certain idealized and eternal forms, of which only garbled versions existed in the real world. With the naked eye you see distorted imagesthe fragments, Domokos says. But in order to see the ideal, you have to use your mind.

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From rocks to icebergs, the natural world tends to break into cubes - Science Magazine

New Data on Genetic Expression In Severe COVID-19, Pre-Existing Immune Response – Bio-IT World

Posted on July 31, 2020 by Danzig

July 31, 2020 |Research continues to uncover the underlying biology of SARS-CoV-2 and reveal some surprises. A German team found that 35% of their healthy controls had pre-existing SARS-CoV-2 cross-reactive T cells, and several groups are narrowing down the gene expression signatures that might explain why COVID-19 is so severe in some patients.

Literature Updates

In a preprint made available byNature(peer reviewed and accepted for publication, but not copy edited or typeset), a German team from Charit - Universittsmedizin Berlin and the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics detected SARS-CoV-2 S-reactive CD4+ T cells in 83% of 18 patients with COVID-19 but also in 35% of the 68 healthy controls. The role ofpre-existing SARS-CoV-2 cross-reactive T cellsfor clinical outcomes remains to be determined in larger cohorts, the authors write. However, the presence of S-cross-reactive T cells in a sizable fraction of the general population may affect the dynamics of the current pandemic, and has important implications for the design and analysis of upcoming COVID-19 vaccine trials.DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-2598-9

A German team has characterized thepapain-like protease PLprothat is implicated in evading host anti-viral immune responses. They have just published biochemical, structural and functional characterization of the SARS-CoV-2 PLpro (SCoV2-PLpro) in Nature and outlined differences to SARS-CoV PLpro (SCoV-PLpro) in controlling host interferon (IFN) and NF-B pathways. While SCoV2-PLpro and SCoV-PLpro share 83% sequence identity, they exhibit different host substrate preferences. In particular, SCoV2-PLpro preferentially cleaves the ubiquitin-like protein ISG15, whereas SCoV-PLpro predominantly targets ubiquitin chains. Their results highlight a dual therapeutic strategy in which targeting of SCoV2-PLpro can suppress SARS-CoV-2 infection and promote anti-viral immunity.DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-2601-5

Analyses of lung fluid cells from 19 COVID-19 patients and 40 controls conducted on Oak Ridge National Laboratorys Summit supercomputer fastest supercomputer point togene expression patterns that may explain the runaway symptomsproduced by the body's response to SARS-CoV-2. The computational analyses suggest that genes related to one of the body's systems responsible for lowering blood pressurethe bradykinin systemappear to be excessively "turned on" in the lung fluid cells of those with the virus. The results were published ineLife.Based on their analyses, the team posits that bradykininthe compound that dilates blood vessels and makes them permeableis overproduced in the body of COVID-19 patients; related systems either contribute to overproduction or cannot slow the process. Excessive bradykinin leads to leaky blood vessels, allowing fluid to build up in the body's soft tissues.DOI: 10.7554/eLife.59177

In a new published study inCell Discovery, researchers from Nanjing University and two other groups from Wuhan Institute of Virology and the Second Hospital of Nanjing present a novel finding that absorbed miRNA MIR2911 inhoneysuckle decoction (HD) can directly target SARS-CoV-2 genesand inhibit viral replication. The authors posit that drinking HD may accelerate the negative conversion of COVID-19 patients.By reconstructing the evolutionary history of SARS-CoV-2, an international research team of Chinese, European and U.S. scientists has discovered that the lineage that gave rise to the virus has been circulating in bats for decades and likely includes other viruses with the ability to infect humans. They published their findings inNature Microbiology. The team used three different bioinformatic approaches to identify and remove the recombinant regions within the SARS-CoV-2 genome. Next, they reconstructed phylogenetic histories for the non-recombinant regions and compared them to each other to see which specific viruses have been involved in recombination events in the past. They were able to reconstruct the evolutionary relationships between SARS-CoV-2 and its closest known bat and pangolin viruses.DOI: 10.1038/s41564-020-0771-4

In a paper published inNature Microbiology, an international team from Germany, Switzerland, and the US showed that lymphocyte antigen 6 complex, locus E (LY6E) potentlyrestricts infection by multiple CoVs, including SARS-CoV, SARS-CoV-2 and MERS-CoV. Mechanistic studies revealed that LY6E inhibits CoV entry into cells by interfering with spike protein-mediated membrane fusion. These findings advance our understanding of immune-mediated control of CoVin vitroandin vivoknowledge that could help inform strategies to combat infection by emerging CoVs, the authors write.DOI: 10.1038/s41564-020-0769-y

Researchers at Yale tracked the progress of 113 patients admitted to Yale New Haven Hospital for COVID-19 and analyzed the varying immune system responses they exhibited during their hospital stay. They found anassociation between early, elevated cytokines and worse disease outcomes. Following an early increase in cytokines, COVID-19 patients with moderate disease displayed a progressive reduction in type-1 (antiviral) and type-3 (antifungal) responses, the authors wrote. In contrast, patients with severe disease maintained these elevated responses throughout the course of disease and saw an increase in multiple type 2 (anti-helminths) effectors including, IL-5, IL-13, IgE and eosinophils. They published their findings inNature.DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-2588-y

Using cohort of 782 COVID-19 positive patients and 7,025 COVID-19 negative patients, a team of researchers in Israel identified thatlow plasma vitamin D levelsappears to be an independent risk factor for COVID-19 infection and hospitalization. The research was published inThe FEBS Journal. The mean plasma vitamin D level was significantly lower among those who tested positive than negative for COVID19.DOI: 10.1111/febs.15495

Dutch researchers have identified agenetic link to severe COVID-19 disease among healthy, young men. In two separate families with severely sick young me, the researchers found mutations in the gene encoding for the Toll-like receptor 7. Rare putative loss-of-function variants of X-chromosomal TLR7 were identified that were associated with impaired type I and II IFN responses, the authors write inJAMA. These preliminary findings provide insights into the pathogenesis of COVID-19.DOI: 10.1001/jama.2020.13719

Loss of smellis the main neurological symptom of COVID-19, but the underlying mechanism has been unclear. New research published inScience Advancessuggests that olfactory sensory neurons are not vulnerable to SARS-CoV-2 infection because they do not express ACE2, a key protein that the virus uses to enter human cells. Instead, loss of smell stems from infection of nonneuronal supporting cells in the nose and forebrain.DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abc5801

A global research team has identified21 existing drugs that stop the replication of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 at safe human doses. They found the drugs by analyzing 12,000 clinical-stage or FDA-approved small molecules for their ability to block the replication of SARS-CoV-2. Their findings will be published in Nature.DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-2577-1

Researchers atKing Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)used comparative pangenomic analysis of all sequenced reference Betacoronaviruses to determine that the envelope protein E is shared between SARS and SARS-CoV-2. They suggest E protein as an alternative therapeutic target to be considered for further studies to reduce complications of SARS-CoV-2 infections in COVID-19. The spike (S) protein of SARS-CoV-2 has been the prime target of vaccine work thus far, and while the S proteins from SARS and SARS-CoV-2 are similar, structural differences in the receptor binding domain (RBD) preclude the use of SARS-specific neutralizing antibodies to inhibit SARS-CoV-2. The KAUST team looked elsewhere for similarities, using comparative pangenomic analysis complemented with functional and structural analyses, and found that among all core gene clusters present in these viruses, the envelope protein E shows a variant cluster shared by SARS and SARS-CoV-2 with two completely-conserved key functional features, namely an ion-channel, and a PDZ-binding motif (PBM). The work was published inFrontiers in Cellular and Infection Molecular Biology.DOI: 10.3389/fcimb.2020.00405

In a study published inJAMA Cardiology, German researchers looked at 100 patients aged 45-53 who had recovered from COVID-19 (67 at home; 33 had been hospitalized) and had no pre-existing heart conditions. Cardiac MRI after recovery showed 78% with some cardiac involvement; 60% of those showedongoing myocardial inflammation. Our findings reveal that significant cardiac involvement occurs independently of the severity of original presentation and persists beyond the period of acute presentation, with no significant trend toward reduction of imaging or serological findings during the recovery period, the authors write. Our findings may provide an indication of potentially considerable burden of inflammatory disease in large and growing parts of the population and urgently require confirmation in a larger cohort.DOI: 10.1001/jamacardio.2020.3557

In a separateJAMA Cardiologypublication also from German researchers, a study of 39 autopsy cases of patients with COVID-19 found thatcardiac infection with SARS-CoV-2was found to be frequent but not associated with myocarditis-like influx of inflammatory cells into the myocardium.DOI: 10.1001/jamacardio.2020.3551

Researchers at theUniversity of Texas, Austin, have engineered the spike protein of the SARS-CoV-2 virusa critical component of potential COVID-19 vaccinesto be more environmentally stable and generate larger yields in the lab. They characterized 100 structure-guided spike designs and identified 26 individual substitutions that increased protein yields and stability. Testing combinations of beneficial substitutions resulted in the identification of HexaPro, a variant with six beneficial proline substitutions exhibiting ~10-fold higher expression than its parental construct and the ability to withstand heat stress, storage at room temperature, and three freeze-thaw cycles. They published their findings inScience.DOI: 10.1126/science.abd0826

David Mitchells new novel is the story of a rock band – The Economist

Posted on July 31, 2020 by Danzig

In Utopia Avenue he turns down the high jinks and puts the emphasis on characterisation

Jul 25th 2020

Utopia Avenue. By David Mitchell. Random House; 592 pages; $30. Sceptre; 20.

USING DIVERSE voices and styles, and telling several stories together, David Mitchells finest novels conjure up multiple worlds, both real and fantastical. Each of their chapters transports readers to a different time or place and revolves around a new theme or idea. These sections are discrete enough to resemble stand-alone stories, but recurring motifs or reappearing characters provide unity. For all the singular events and far-reaching chaos they encompass, these are books about interconnected lives and shared fates.

His kaleidoscopic and polyphonic novels showcase their authors capacious imagination. The globe-spanning miniature dramas that make up his debut, Ghostwritten (published in 1999), chart the wayward progress of, among others, a pair of jazz aficionados, a nuclear physicist, a member of a doomsday cult and a disembodied, transmigrating soul. Bigger and bolder, The Bone Clocks (2014) follows a character from 1984 to a post-apocalyptic future, by way of a cosmic conflict between immortal beings. Mr Mitchells most ambitious work, Cloud Atlas (2004), is also his best. Intricately structured and deftly plotted, its contrasting ingredientsthriller, history, farce, dystopia, science fictionmake a potent blend.

His ninth novel is, for the most part, a more conventional affair. Utopia Avenue tells the story of a fictitious British rock band of that name which experiences fame, triumph and tragedy in the late 1960s. The book lacks the formal daring and dizzying inventiveness of its predecessors. This time, though, Mr Mitchell places a stronger emphasis on characterisation. By rotating the narrative between the players perspectives, he ensures that each emerges as a fleshed-out human being as well as a member of the collective.

The group forms in Soho (The saucy twinkle in Mother Londons eye) in 1967. It consists of Dean Moss, a blues bassist, folk singer and keyboardist Elf Holloway, virtuoso guitarist Jasper de Zoet and Peter Griff Griffin, a jazz drummer. They harness their influences and pool their talents to create a winningly eclectic sound. Aided by their enterprising manager, Levon Frankland, they secure a record deal, play gigs, appear on television and gradually make a name for themselves in the autumn of the Summer of Love.

But their journey to the top has downs as well as ups. They encounter shady promoters and snarky critics. They weather erratic sales and dented self-confidence. Jasper goes AWOL in New York; in Rome, Dean faces imprisonment. Eventually the band wins critical acclaim and commercial success on both sides of the Atlantic. Can anything derail this rollercoaster career?

Utopia Avenue itself is not a fast ride. Some scenes go on too long, others take unnecessary tangents. Nevertheless it is a consistently absorbing book, which skilfully conveys the excitement and mayhem of the era, and the hopes and dreams of those swept up in it. Elfs sections sketch a voyage of self-discovery, during which she recognises her abilities, moves on from a sponger boyfriend and embraces her true sexuality. Deans story is a cautionary tale rich with lurid scandals, comic misadventures and family feuds. Jasper develops into the novels most complex character. A former patient of a Dutch psychiatric clinic, he wrestles with emotional dyslexia and a fear of mirrors. But when he is plagued by persistent knocking from the squatter in his skull, both his sanity and the bands future are threatened.

The later sections told from Jaspers perspective are filled with what one figure in The Bone Clocks termed magickery-pokery. Mr Mitchell overdid his mind-bending flights of fancy in that book; in this one there is method in his madness. There are entertaining cameos from famous faces, notably David Bowie, Francis Bacon and Janis Joplin. As ever, characters from the authors earlier stories pop up and pass through this one, often in intriguing new guises. A lot of fun is had along the way, by both Mr Mitchell and the reader.

This article appeared in the Books & arts section of the print edition under the headline "The band played on"

Trailers of the Week: Bill & Ted Face the Music, Utopia, The Weight of Gold, and More – Rolling Stone

Posted on July 31, 2020 by Danzig

Bill & Ted Face the Music

Bill (Alex Winter) and Ted (Keanu Reeves) arent exactly on track to fulfill their duty of writing the song that will unite the world. For starters, they each have marriages that need fixing, and their idea of joint couples therapy doesnt seem very promising. Plus, their band, Wyld Stallyns, receives more grimaces than applause. With no world-uniting material on their hands, they resort back to time travel to steal the song from their future selves. This time, they arent the only ones traveling by telephone booth; their daughters are making their way through history, too. (September 1st)

His Dark Materials, Season Two

The new season of the HBO fantasy series finds Lyra (portrayed by Dafne Keen) in an unfamiliar city; in an unfamiliar world, for that matter, where she meets an orphan, Will (portrayed by Amir Wilson), who recognizes her as a fellow outsider. In this new realm, Lyra is trailed by many some benevolent, and some who wish to do her harm. With Will by her side, the two teens are immersed in a greater battle and journey closer to their fates. (Fall 2020)

Immigration Nation

The new Netflix documentary gives the public unprecedented access to what goes on behind the scenes of ICE operations, as well as a personal look into the lives of immigrant families who are living with the fear and consequences that come with being targeted by ICE. The film sheds insights on tensions within ICE itself. One ICE agent says, I cant tell you how exhausting it is day in, day out, to be putting cuffs on people doing exactly what I would do in their situation. On the other hand, another ICE agent bluntly says, The government didnt hire me for my moral views. (August 3rd)

Oliver Sacks: His Own Life

The new film explores the life of Oliver Sacks, whose compassion and dedication medicine launched his career as the first public intellectual in the field. His writing brought back a central aspect of medicine: Treat the person and not the disease, says one admirer. Elsewhere in the clip, Sacks curiosity and compassion are traced back to his relationship with his brother Micheal, who was diagnosed with Schizophrenia. Sacks says, much of my life has been spent trying to imagine what its like trying to be another human being.

Utopia

As wildfires rage on the TV news, a voiceover laments that we have no idea what the end of the world is going to bring. However, a few select comic book fans have an idea. Ian (portrayed by Dan Byrd), Becky (portrayed by Ashleigh LaThrop), Samantha (portrayed by Jessica Rothe), Wilson (portrayed by Desmin Borges) and Grant (portrayed by Javon Wanna Walton) are devoutUtopiareaders, and as the world unravels, they begin to realize that within the pages of their favorite comic are secret messages that predict the upheaval going on around them. (Fall 2020)

The Weight of Gold

For Michael Phelps, Shaun White, Sasha Cohen and other celebrated Olympic athletes, their whole lives from childhood to adulthood were building up to the sheer seconds that determined their Olymp accomplishments. However, after the medals and the media attention came an empty feeling. Were just so lost, Phelps says. A good 80%, maybe more, go through some kind of post-Olympic depression. Phelps and his peers open up about their depression in this new documentary, breaking the silence that often surrounds athletes when the topi of weakness arises. (July 29th)

Trailers of the Week: Bill & Ted Face the Music, Utopia, The Weight of Gold, and More - Rolling Stone

Cyprus Makes Mask-Wearing Compulsory in Large Indoor Spaces – The New York Times

Posted on July 31, 2020 by Danzig

NICOSIA, Cyprus Cyprus on Friday made mask-wearing compulsory in all indoor areas where people gather in large numbers, like malls and supermarkets, and is significantly ramping up random coronavirus testing at its two main airports. An upsurge of new confirmed cases in the last week has alarmed authorities.

Health Minister Constantinos Ioannou said that a rollback of COVID-19 restrictions combined with a low infection rate led to excessive complacency by some people, whom he blamed for choosing to recklessly violate health protocols and put public health at risk.

He said the latest spike is exceedingly worrying because people infected with the virus who dont show any symptoms are spreading the disease in a way that is making containment efforts difficult.

Ioannou said its a utopia to believe COVID-19 can be completely eradicated and that the best outcome is to keep infections at a low, controllable level until a vaccine is developed.

Starting midnight Friday, anyone not wearing a mask in busy places like hospitals, banks and churches faces a fine of 300 euros ($366). Random testing at airports will increase from 600 to 1,000 a day, with emphasis on Cypriots returning from vacation.

The maximum number of passengers on public transport is again being cut to half of the vehicles capacity and police will enact a zero tolerance policy on businesses that dont conform to hygiene and social distancing rules.

Ioannou announced additional measures affecting the coastal town of Limassol, where most of the new infections have been registered. The measures, to last for three weeks, include the return of a 10-person limit at all social functions and a 75-person limit for indoor seating at bars and restaurants. That limit is double for outdoor seating.

Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades warned in a written statement that flouting these new restrictions would lead to even stricter measures that would have grave economic repercussions.

Divided Cyprus, with a population of around 870,000 people in the southern, internationally recognized part has registered 1,084 COVID-19 infections and 26 deaths.

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Cyprus Makes Mask-Wearing Compulsory in Large Indoor Spaces - The New York Times

Ireland isnt really a Utopia. Its just our neighbour is a gurning claptrapocracy – The Irish Times

Posted on July 31, 2020 by Danzig

I think being a woman is like being Irish, the novelist Iris Murdoch, who was born in Dublin, wrote. Everyone says youre important and nice, but you take second place all the time.

I sometimes think this sentiment reflects my own wariness as an Irish person of taking too many compliments from overseas, and explains why I find congratulations for our Government both the new one and the last a bit unsatisfying.

The Economist recently called Ireland an unlikely diplomatic superpower, while the Guardian praised the enviable beauty of the Irish political climate. After years of alternating between calling Irelands Brexit tactics cynical and naive, even the Telegraph this month praised Ireland for taking over the euro zone and extending their grip on the continents institutions.

Having negotiated its way through the Brexit morass, swerved the worst of Covid-19, secured a seat on the UN Security Council, and won a historic EU judgment that means it has the right to insist the worlds richest company does not pay us any tax hurrah! Ireland appears to be on its way up the global hierarchy, and Britain has continued to marvel at the shrewd cunning of its plucky little neighbour.

Why, then, does this praise seem faint, or unearned? Its not that we hate adulation. Seeking flattery from abroad is one of our most crippling and shameful addictions, right up there with Garth Brooks or pairing coleslaw with lasagne. This is a fact confirmed any time a foreign celebrity appears on Irish telly. So tell me, Ryan Tubridy will dutifully ask Greta Thunberg or Kiri Te Kanawa on The Late Late Show, right after theyve finished talking about their work clearing minefields for Unicef,what is your favourite thing about Athlone?

Its just that Ireland hasnt turned into some 24th-century futurist Utopia so much as installed sensible public policy that should seem unremarkable in a modern democracy and in fact, given most western responses to coronavirus, actually is unremarkable. This Government and the previous one have been praised at home, too, for their response to the crisis, but we should remember that the new Coalition of the boring was instituted to obstruct Sinn Fin after its unprecedented leftward surge in support from people tired of Fine Gael and Fianna Fil.

And although Ireland has received plaudits from the World Health Organisation for its handling of the Covid-19 crisis, we made the same mistakes with care homes as other countries did, and small clusters of infection have re-emerged recently.

The idea of Ireland as a model of competence in social and public health is also one most of us might find surprising, as our country also has issues that rarely attract attention from afar: a mounting housing crisis that currently means 10,000 people are homeless in one of the hemispheres richest states; a rolling series of healthcare scandals surrounding everything from poor bed provision to faulty cervical-cancer tests; and the remarkable saga of the new national childrens hospital, in Dublin, originally budgeted at 400 million but now forecast to be costing about 2.4 billion, making it one of the planets most expensive buildings.

Irish people have largely followed the protocols as advised, but we have also enjoyed relatively consistent, sober messaging from government, media and health experts. This is in contrast to Britains bewildering stew of denials, contradictions and outright political chicanery around adherence to their own guidelines none of which has faced any serious consequences from the UKs parliament or largely right-leaning press.

Despite this, the Irish press has landed more recent hits on our Government than their English counterparts. Earlier in July, Barry Cowens 17-day tenure as minister for agriculture was ended after a slew of coverage of a years-old, and spent, conviction for drink-driving. Compare this with the lack of any consequences for Dominic Cummings, or the fact that both Priti Patel and Gavin Williamson regained senior ministerial posts shortly after being sacked for actions that almost reach the definition of espionage.

Its this sense of political unseriousness that seems the most marked difference between the two places, and it says less about the enviable beauty of Irelands system than about Britains further slide into a fact-averse, consequence-free banana republic of malevolent toffs. This style of politics had ruinous effects on the Brexit referendum and the subsequent EU negotiations, and has now become criminally disastrous in a pandemic thats costing many more lives in Britain than in is here.

For all our other ills, we have not yet disposed of experts, accountability or political memory. We take these things seriously, and a combination of steady, boring diplomacy and common-sense public-health measures are bringing us greater praise than they should, now that those approaches can be so readily contrasted to our American and British counterparts. Its a sort of clowns to the left of us, jokers to the right arrangement, which continues to herald great acclaim for a Government so dysfunctional that Leo Varadkar spent a day last week briefing against Taoiseach Michel Martin, his coalition partner, on whether their green list of accepted travel destinations should even be released.

Praise for us as shrewd and canny operators gets the diplomatic calculus back to front. Ireland is not outflanking a competent, long-standing neighbour. We just have the pleasure of being compared with the gurning claptrapocracy next door. So long as Boris Johnson waffles, prevaricates and sees fit to place the NHS on the table for sale, amid the strongest surge in its appreciation since its founding, Irelands mundane governing coalitions will continue looking important and nice by comparison. Guardian

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Ireland isnt really a Utopia. Its just our neighbour is a gurning claptrapocracy - The Irish Times

How Brave New World designed its ‘curvaceous’ and ‘American trash’ dystopia – SYFY WIRE

Posted on July 31, 2020 by Danzig

New London, the main setting of Brave New World, looks perfect, elegant, and, well, empty. For the people responsible for bringing Aldous Huxleys vision of a futuristic society numbed by pleasure to life in the recently released Peacock television series, that was the point.

We quite quickly agreed that its not a sci-fi, Blade Runner, Matrix environment we were trying to convey, production designer David Lee tells SYFY WIRE. Its utopia.

New London, a sleek but high-tech city built over the rotting carcass of the London we know, is full of pure white spaces, long curves, and no clutter. Lee says he and showrunner David Wiener wanted to find a way to convey something that was bold, iconic, and sculptural.

It quickly became apparent that Modernism a clean and minimalistic architectural style which, it so happens, was becoming prominent in the 1930s when Huxleys book first came out would be the main source of inspiration for New London. Lee cites famed architect Oscar Niemeyers planned city of Braslia, perhaps the closest real-life thing we have to New London on an aesthetic level, as their starting point. Lee says they also looked at Soviet monumental architecture, and tried to synthesize that into sculptural, sympathetic utopia.

Modernism, Lee says, has a curvaceous, elegant quality that humans respond to. It feels at once both futuristic and, somehow, timeless. Thats good for Peacocks Brave New World, which is a 2020 imagining of the future based on a vision from the '30s. Lee says the design has nods to the retro nature of the source material, while costume designer Susie Coulthard bridged the gap between these two versions of the future, separated by nearly a century, in the clothing New Londoners wear, too.

Lets not forget the novel was written 90 years ago. I wanted to give a nod to this by looking at the fashion of the '30s when the novel was written, she tells SYFY WIRE via email, calling the decade a super-stylish and fashion-forward era. To that end, she incorporated somewhat dated styles, like pleating, into the New London wardrobe.

New London looks great, but the not-so-secret darkness at the heart of Brave New World is that its all empty. The mood-leveling drugs, orgies, and stability all mask the fact that New Londoners really have no say in their lives or any real semblance of choice. The citys hallways reflect that emptiness, although as Lee notes, there was a practical reason for that in addition to the thematic one.

The citizens have an optic interface that artificial intelligence generates, like a heads-up display, he says of the high-tech contacts New Londoners wear. So we needed quite soft backgrounds so you were able to read and interact with each others heads-up.

For viewers, New London seems cold despite all the natural light that Lee says they deliberately emphasized in the designs, rather than more conventional LED-filled halls. The lack of personality, art, and most tangible objects of any sort is certainly jarring to John the Savage (Alden Ehrenreich) when he comes to New London from the Savage Lands themselves a whole other design challenge which Lee describes as juxtaposing American trash. In New London, we see John attempt to refashion the simple objects around him into speakers and other things that allow him to customize his plush-but-spartan apartment. It was really fun to work out how he would use elements of this world and adapt them to his world, Lee says.

Perhaps no part of New London captures the strange split between utopian and dystopian as much as The Bureau of Stability. Lee says its a contradiction of terms in a utopia where nobody has anything to do.

We built a town hall where people could pretend to go to work, he continues. It had to have a vast, majestic quality. That was a real challenge and very rewarding. I think it has a uniqueness about it and a majesty about it. It has a splendor despite it being an office block.

However much you might miss going to your office, you cant deny that the idea of a splendid office block inspires just a little bit of despair in you.

All episodes of Brave New World are now streaming on Peacock.

SYFY WIRE and Peacock are both owned and operated by NBCUniversal.

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How Brave New World designed its 'curvaceous' and 'American trash' dystopia - SYFY WIRE

Ireland isn’t really a utopia it’s just its neighbour is a gurning claptrapocracy – The Guardian

Posted on July 31, 2020 by Danzig

I think being a woman is like being Irish, wrote Dublin-born novelist Iris Murdoch, everyone says youre important and nice, but you take second place all the time. I sometimes think this sentiment reflects my own wariness as an Irish person of taking too many compliments from overseas, and explains why I find congratulations for the countrys current government a bit unsatisfying.

The Economist recently called Ireland an unlikely diplomatic superpower, while a leader on these pages praised the enviable beauty of the Irish political climate. After years of alternating between calling Irelands Brexit tactics cynical and naive, even the Telegraph this month praised Ireland for taking over the Eurozone and extending their grip on the continents institutions. Having negotiated its way through the Brexit morass, swerved the worst of Covid-19, secured a seat on the UN security council, and won a historic EU judgment that means they have the right to insist the worlds richest company does not pay us any tax hurrah! Irelands place in the global hierarchy appears on the rise, and the UK has continued marvelling at the shrewd cunning of their plucky little neighbour.

Why, then, does this praise seem faint, or unearned? Its not that we hate adulation. Seeking flattery from abroad is one of Irelands most crippling and shameful addictions, right up there with Garth Brooks or pairing coleslaw with lasagne. This is a fact confirmed any time a foreign celebrity appears on Irish telly. So tell me, RTE talk show host Ryan Tubridy will dutifully ask Greta Thunberg or Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, right after theyve finished talking about their work clearing minefields for Unicef: What is your favourite thing about Athlone?

Its just that Ireland hasnt turned into some 24th-century futurist utopia so much as installed sensible public policy that should seem unremarkable in a modern democracy and in fact, given most western responses to the coronavirus, actually is unremarkable. This government has received praise at home for its response to the crisis, but we should remember that its unheralded Fianna Fil/Fine Gael coalition-of-the-boring was instituted to obstruct Sinn Fin, who just this year saw an unprecedented leftward surge in support from people tired of both main parties.

While Ireland has received plaudits from the World Health Organization for its dealing with the current crisis, the same mistakes with care homes were made in Ireland as elsewhere, and small clusters of infection have re-emerged in recent days. The idea of Ireland as a model of competence in the field of social and public health is also one most Irish people might find surprising, since it has its own issues that rarely attract attention from afar: a mounting housing crisis that currently means 10,000 people are homeless in one of the hemispheres richest states; a rolling series of healthcare scandals surrounding everything from poor bed provision to faulty cervical cancer tests; and the remarkable saga of the new National Childrens hospital in Dublin, originally budgeted at 400m but is now forecast to be costing around 2.4bn, making it one of the planets most expensive buildings.

Irelands decision to enter lockdown earlier than Britain was a good one, but only in comparison with the grievous laxity of our easterly neighbour. The early days of Irelands track and trace app are showing positive results, but this is a success unduly magnified by the British governments initial resistance to such technologies, and subsequent failure to launch one that doesnt break its own data protection laws. Irish people have largely followed the protocols as advised, but theyve also enjoyed relatively consistent, sober messaging from government, media and health experts. This is in contrast to than Britains bewildering stew of denials, contradictions and outright political chicanery around adherence to their own guidelines none of which have faced any serious consequences from the UKs parliament or largely right-leaning press.

Its on this last point that one might find a meaningful distinction between the two countries. While Englands political culture is notoriously barbed and acerbic, Irelands is rather strait-laced and sedate. Irish newspapers may be dismissive and hectoring when it comes to Sinn Fins surge in support, but they rarely depict them as communists who live in bins. They afford a soft touch to government ministers who have to be woken from a nap in the Dil to vote against workers rights, but stop short of exalting them as celestial objects bestowing sunshine on their grateful subjects. Despite this, the Irish press has landed more recent hits on their government than their English counterparts. Earlier in July, Barry Cowens 17-day tenure as a minister for agriculture was ended after a slew of coverage of a years-old, and spent, conviction for drink driving. Compare this with the lack of any consequences for Dominic Cummings, or the fact that both Priti Patel and Gavin Williamson regained senior ministerial posts shortly after being sacked for actions that almost reach the definition of espionage.

For all its other ills, Ireland has not yet disposed of experts, accountability or political memory. These things are taken seriously, and a combination of steady, boring diplomacy and common-sense public health measures are granting Ireland greater praise than they should, now that those approaches can be so readily contrasted to our American and British counterparts. Its a sort of clowns to the left of us, jokers to the right arrangement, which continues to herald great acclaim for an Irish government so dysfunctional that Leo Varadkar spent a day last week briefing against his coalition partner, Taoiseach Michel Martin, on whether their green list of accepted travel destinations should even be released.

Praise for Ireland as shrewd and canny operators gets the diplomatic calculus back to front. Ireland is not outflanking a competent, longstanding neighbour. She just has the pleasure of being compared with the gurning claptrapocracy next door. So long as Boris Johnson waffles, prevaricates and sees fit to place the NHS on the table for sale, amid the strongest surge in its appreciation since its founding, Irelands mundane governing coalitions will continue looking important and nice by comparison.

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Ireland isn't really a utopia it's just its neighbour is a gurning claptrapocracy - The Guardian

Watch the first trailer for Amazon Prime’s adaptation of conspiracy thriller UTOPIA – Boing Boing

Posted on July 31, 2020 by Danzig

Utopia was a short-lived BBC black comedy/thriller series about a few fans of a cult graphic novel, whose search for original manuscript pages brings them into the orbit of a massive conspiracy that involves unleashing a man-made "Russian Flu" pandemic to cull the population and carefully cultivate human eugenics. With just 12 episodes spread across two seasons, it's succinct and consistently exciting, with stunningly gorgeous cinematography.

So naturally, Amazon Prime is making an Americanized adaptation of it, during a pandemic when conspiracism has reached fever heights. Gone Girl writer Gillian Flynn is a co-writer and executive producer on the new series, which, judging by this new comic-con trailer, looksfine. I'll watch it. And then I'll probably go back and re-binge the original again.

There's no release date yet, but here's the official synopsis:

Utopia centers on a group of comic fans who meet online and bond over their obsession of a seemingly fictional comic called Utopia. Together, Ian (Dan Byrd), Becky (Ashleigh LaThrop), Samantha (Jessica Rothe), Wilson Wilson (Desmin Borges), and Grant (Javon Wanna Walton) unearth hidden meanings cloaked within the pages of Utopia, predicting threats to humanity. They realize these are not just the makings of a conspiracy; they are very real dangers coming alive right now in their world.

We will permanently suspend accounts Tweeting about these topics that we know are engaged in violations of our multi-account policy, coordinating abuse around individual victims, or are attempting to evade a previous suspension something weve seen more of in recent weeks. Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) July 22, 2020 These actions will be rolled out []

A recent Pew Research Center survey found that 36% of US adults believe false conspiracy theories about COVID-19, such as the one claiming Bill Gates wants to inject people with vaccine medication that contains microchips that will be activated by 5G cell towers. MIT Technology Review interviewed various experts and moderators of Reddits r/ChangeMyView to []

COVID-19 has created a perfect storm for conspiracy theorists, said Joseph E. Uscinski and Adam M. Enders in an article for The Atlantic titled The Coronavirus Conspiracy Boom. In the most recent episode of Last Week Tonight, John Oliver takes a look at some of these theories, the belief in which, is literally causing people []

Its summer. And this year, Europe and Disney World just arent really all that feasible as part of your travel plans. Yet especially with the last few months weve all endured, the need to get away and experience something new is like a raging fire in many of us. So if you cant be around []

Where would we be without Alexa? Without Amazons virtual assistant, who would we ask to play back our favorite songs or tell us the weather or beatbox? No, seriouslyask Alexa to beatbox. Of course, Alexa does have her limitations. The biggest one being that shes tethered to an electrical outlet. For the vastness of her []

Learning a new language is like stepping up to the base of Mount Everest. You know youve got one heck of a climb ahead of you. But while the sheer magnitude of the task ahead scares away many climbers, the real trick is finding the path up that best fits with your skills and capabilities. []

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Watch the first trailer for Amazon Prime's adaptation of conspiracy thriller UTOPIA - Boing Boing

A ‘Suitable’ Planet: Mars Turns Battlefront for New-Age Space Race Between the US and China – The Weather Channel

Posted on July 31, 2020 by Danzig

Ranking up the headlines once again are the two wealthiest nations of the worldthe United States and China. For the past few decades, these two countries have competed on every front. And now, even in space, they have started to chase each other to explore unexplored. In the 21st century, the space race has accelerated again and several countries are eager to showcase their technological prowess.

July 2020 has come as a flag-off and both China and the US are launching lander missions to Mars within a span of one week. Over the next seven months, the orbits of Mars and Earth will be closest to each other and this period is the most optimal time for the journey. In fact, the distance between the two planets will drop to 62 million kilometres in October 2020, which is half the average distance of 104 million km.

Mars is regarded as the most suitable contender to host humans in future. Therefore, nations are leaving no stone unturned to decipher the mysteries of the red planet and enabling future human settlements. Even the United Arab Emirates (UAE) launched its first interplanetary mission to Mars last week. So, as both the US and China race towards the red planet, here is how the two heavyweights stack up to each other.

On Thursday, July 23, Chinas space agency blasted off its maiden mission to Marsa week before NASA's most anticipated Perseverance rover launch on July 30. Its the first independent mission of China to reach the soil of another planet in our solar system, after its first orbiter mission to Mars, Yinghuo-1, but failed to leave Earths orbit in November 2011. Therefore, if the mission is successful, it can put China into the league of elite space nations.

While it is the first lander and rover Mars mission for the National Space Administration of China, its counterpart National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has landed five times on the Red Planet, and is gearing up for a sixth. NASAs last mission to Mars, InSight, is about to celebrate its second year anniversary and is regarded to be one of the most successful missions that continue to study the deep interiors of the planet Mars.

The Chinese space agency has designated several scientific goals for the Tianwen-1 mission. The main objective of the rover is to detect the presence of water, and ice on the planet. Moreover, it will also investigate the soil properties, create a geological map, examine the atmosphere, and collect samples of soil and rocks for further studies.

In February 2021, NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover and NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter (shown in an artist's concept) will be the agency's two newest explorers on Mars.

The NASA mission, on the other hand, aims to find clues about the possibility of ancient life on Mars. The space agency has set four scientific goals for rover and helicopterstudying Mars' habitability, seeking signs of past microbial life, collecting samples, and preparing for future human missions.

In its second attempt at reaching Mars, China has sent an orbiter, rover, and a lander onboard the powerful rocket Long March 5. Reportedly, Tianwen-1s orbiter is equipped with seven instruments, while the rover contains six instruments including two cameras, radar, and three detectors.

NASAs mission will have a rover and a helicopter for the first time. NASAs rover is also set to carry about seven payloads. In each case, the scientific payloads will acquire information on the Martian atmosphere, geology, environmental conditions, and signatures of life.

The Chinese lander is set to touch down at Utopia Planitia, which is a large plain area within the largest-recognized asteroid impact basin on the Solar System, Utopia. The estimated diameter of this giant crater is a whopping 3,300 km, which is 11 times the largest-known crater on Earth, Vredefort Dome (300 km).

Jezero a 49-km-wide crater near the Mars Equator is the carefully selected landing spot for the US mission, Perseverance. While Utopia Planitia lies 46.7 north to the equator, Jezero is 18.4 North. The Jezero crater was formed billions of years ago and was filled with water for millions of years. As the Martian climate changed, all surface water disappeared from the planet, but an ancient lake proves to be an ideal spot to determine if life ever existed on the red planet, says NASA.

The mission duration for Perseverance and Tianwen-1 is said to be at least one Mars yearequivalent to 687 Earth days. The prime mission duration of NASA's Perseverance is said to be 1.5 Mars yearsequivalent to nearly three Earth years. While the US has spent a whopping $2.1 billion on Perseverance, China has remained tight-lipped about the cost of Tianwen-1 so far.

Both Perseverance and Tianwen-1 will collect samples of rocks and soil which will be sent back to Earth for further analysis. Travel time for both the spacecraft also remains roughly the sameseven months and therefore, could reach Mars somewhere around February. Whichever mission succeeds in revealing more scientific data, the dual missions will be a milestone for humanity in space exploration.

For weather, space and COVID-19 updates on the go, download The Weather Channel App (on Android and iOS store). It's free!

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A 'Suitable' Planet: Mars Turns Battlefront for New-Age Space Race Between the US and China - The Weather Channel

New trailers: Bill & Ted Face the Music, Beyoncs Black is King, and more – The Verge

Posted on July 31, 2020 by Danzig

I spent last week burning through The Great, Hulus new-ish series that has Elle Fanning playing a very fictionalized version of a young Catherine the Great. The first season is about Catherine (not yet the Great) preparing to overthrow her husband, the emperor, and take power, which is a pretty amazing conflict to center on.

The show is very reminiscent of The Favourite (it shares both a writer and a very identifiable shooting location), infusing this period drama with modern absurdity and some very over-the-top characters. Nicholas Hoult plays the amazingly pompous and bro-y emperor in a way that almost makes him feel like a tech CEO at times at one point, hes even wearing what looks a lot like a hoodie.

I dont know if the show can thrive once Catherine is no longer the underdog and spoiler alert, per Peter IIIs Wikipedia page Hoults levity is gone. But for now, its a wonderful series, and I wish there were three more seasons to speed through.

Check out 11 trailers from this week below.

Bill & Ted are returning at long last, and the pandemic isnt going to put a hold on our already long wait. It was announced this week that rather than being delayed, the film is going to head on-demand the same day it hits theaters (whatever theaters are open, that is). It comes out on September 1st.

After Hamilton, Black is King is the next big reason to sign up for Disney Plus: a new visual album from Beyonc, supposed to be tied back to her work on last years Lion King remake. It looks every bit as visually magnificent as the others in Beyoncs discography. It comes out July 31st.

I didnt hear a ton about His Dark Materials when its first season debuted last year, but the show really looks like its hit a stride in this trailer for season 2. The series returns some time this fall.

Gillian Flynn is behind the adaptation of Utopia, a show about fans of a comic book digging into the surprisingly real events depicted in its stories. The show is based on a British series of the same name. John Cusack, Sasha Lane, and Rainn Wilson star in the remake. It debuts on Amazon this fall.

Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke has a new sci-fi thriller about a high school student who starts to uncover lost memories that suggest she isnt human. It comes to Quibi on July 27th.

Netflix has a new documentary coming up that looks at Americas immigration system through the eyes of immigrants facing deportation and the federal agents tasked with removing them. It appears to offer a sad, difficult view into a broken and contentious system responsible for tearing families apart. The film comes out August 3rd.

Nick Frost and Simon Pegg are back together again in Truth Seekers, a new series that has them playing members of a group of clearly unprepared paranormal investigators who get tied up in some big conspiracy. The show is coming to Amazon, but it doesnt appear to have a premiere date yet.

Quibi already brought back Punkd, and now its adding a Jackass-esque show that has Adam Devine messing with celebrity friends. It comes out on July 27th.

Netflix has picked up a German series about a student who starts diving into an increasingly twisted community of biohackers. I dont know how accurate the series science will be, but the questionable decisions of the biohacking scene dont seem entirely unfair. The show debuts August 20th.

Stranger Things star Joe Keery takes on a very weird role in Spree, which has him playing a twisted, fame-hungry cab driver who live streams himself torturing the riders he picks up. This film is far from the first to offer a twisted critique of social media, but it stands out by filming everything to look more or less like a YouTube video. It comes out August 14th.

Creepy stuff happening to astronauts is a classically winning recipe for a sci-fi film, and the latest to use that formula is Sputnik, which seems to be about a cosmonaut who returns to Earth with an alien parasite inside him. The film seems to start out as a thriller and eventually gets a lot more action packed. It comes out August 14th.

Correction July 25th, 12:30PM ET: Utopia is on Amazon, not HBO, as originally stated.

New trailers: Bill & Ted Face the Music, Beyoncs Black is King, and more - The Verge

Six things that I think are just plain outrageous – Antelope Valley Press

Posted on July 31, 2020 by Danzig

As the sands run through the hourglass each day more rapidly and another month comes to an end, it is time for the July Outrage Column.

Vandalizing freedom There is perhaps no better symbol of the victory of freedom over totalitarianism than the Berlin Wall.

Chapman University has a chunk of the wall on its campus, and it was vandalized the other night. Someone covered a portion of the wall with brown paint, obscuring the graffiti scrawled there by those who sought freedom from the Communist East German regime.

Beware the new totalitarianism rising out of college campuses in America.

No way we delay President Donald Trump suggested we may need to delay the election because of voter fraud involving mail-in ballots.

Never happened, never will. Constitution is clear.

If he no longer wants the election to be on Nov. 3, he can just delay his own participation in the election and not vote.

Part of the game? Many people are celebrating a Dodger pitcher who threw a baseball in the proximity of an opposing players head the other night.

Joe Kelly was ejected. I know all about the bad blood between the Dodgers and Astros, and you always hear its part of the game, but there is also the little matter of endangering someones livelihood and very life.

With all the talk of keeping players safe from Coronavirus, how about keeping them safe from deliberate attempts to hit them in the head?

The National League was right to suspend Kelly for eight games. Its time throwing at opponents was no longer part of the game.

Mask mania Has the whole issue of wearing masks brought out the worst in people or just exposed it?

There have been reports of people having meltdowns or even physically attacking others when asked to wear a mask.

A Lancaster barista was punched for asking a man to put on a mask when he entered Starbucks.

A woman maced a family in a San Diego park for not wearing masks.

Wear your mask. Social distance. This too shall pass.

Peaceful protests Can the national media please stop with the charade of mostly peaceful protests?

No, if you are assaulting police officers, burning down buildings, throwing Molotov cocktails, pointing lasers to blind law enforcement, and beating videographers and anyone else who gets in your way, you are not in a peaceful protest.

Call it what it is. A riot.

Fifty-nine officers injured in Seattle the other night. A liberal Democratic state senator beaten and kicked in Madison, Wisconsin. It goes on and on.

And look whos doing it almost all whites in their 20s and 30s, who want to destroy America and start over with a glorious Marxist utopia. They say so on video.

They have long since drowned out the voices of the people actually protesting for better treatment of Blacks by police.

Clown show We were all reminded the other day of why House Speaker Nancy Pelosi last year took the job of running the failed impeachment away from Jerry Nadler, D-New York.

Nadler made a fool of himself trying to interrogate the much brighter and better prepared Attorney General William Barr.

Barr had to explain over and over to grandstanding Democrats that the federal government has a duty to protect the federal courthouse in Portland, and that is what it is doing.

And, no, the Republicans on the committee did not cover themselves in glory, either, from clips I saw.

Let us just say neither side instilled confidence that the government is in good hands. Anyone surprised?

William P. Warfords column appears every Tuesday, Friday and Sunday.

Why Trump Canceled the Convention – The New York Times

Posted on July 31, 2020 by Danzig

To the Editor:

Re Trump Cancels Party Conclave in Jacksonville (front page, July 24):

Even on those infrequent occasions when President Trump actually does the right thing in this case, canceling the Republican convention in Jacksonville, Fla. he is pathologically incapable of being anything other than disingenuous about it.

Although he laughably claims to be doing this to keep America safe, it is painfully obvious that his true agenda is to avoid the humiliation of sparse attendance at what he had hoped would be his coronation spectacle.

Michael SilkLaguna Woods, Calif.

To the Editor:

If it will not be safe for the Republican faithful to attend the partys convention in late August, how can President Trump continue to claim that it will be safe for parents to send their children back to school?

To the Editor:

Re Baseballs Nightmare: One Team, 14 Infections (front page, July 28):

Many Miami Marlins players and coaches have tested positive for Covid-19 now up to 17 as of this writing. Allowing the Major League Baseball season to be played in the middle of a deadly pandemic is the worst decision the league has made since allowing Roseanne Barr to sing the national anthem 30 years ago.

Kenneth L. ZimmermanHuntington Beach, Calif.

To the Editor:

Re Feeling Hopeless? Embrace It, by Eric Utne (Op-Ed, July 25):

Wow! What a scenario! Nothing left to do but eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow, we die.

Wake up! Look around you. Read history. This president and his allies are responsible for the social instability, the mismanaged pandemic, the very hard economic times, the police brutality, federal forces in Portland, Ore. all calculated to divide the Democratic Party as the election comes closer.

The president has warned that he would use executive powers we have not yet imagined to invalidate an unfavorable election return and, effectively, refuse to leave the White House.

I would recommend that Mr. Utne and his baby boomer followers suspend for a moment their blissful dreams of utopia, register to vote and work on behalf of the Democratic Party for the next 90 days.

Our united goal must be to defeat Donald Trump in November. A second term would be worse than we all might imagine. This is not the time for the baby boomers of America to drop out and turn off. There is too much at stake.

Robert S. AprilNew York

To the Editor:

Thank you, Eric Utne, for giving voice to such courageous and useful thoughts. Your words allowed me to see that hope is by definition directed toward a different future.

I am more or less your age, and my political trajectory is similar to yours. So I have recently felt the need to redefine the value of my life away from reaching a future goal, and basing it instead on making each day as filled as possible with creative energy.

Katherine EllisNew York

To the Editor:

Re A Clothier Woven Into the American Fabric Frays, by Lisa Birnbach (Styles, July 23), lamenting the Brooks Brothers bankruptcy:

I remember buying my first Brooks Brothers suit when I started working in a corporate law firm while I was in law school. I remember the wooden floors and the austere atmosphere. I was always a good dresser, even winning best dressed in high school. The preppy look was de rigueur when I attended Cornell University, so I blended in right away with a wardrobe influenced by Brooks Brothers.

It is sad to see an institution in trouble, but thanks to Ralph Lauren and other designers the all-American clean-cut look will continue. You can always order from the overseas branches of Brooks Brothers, but the store at 346 Madison Avenue is a shrine. Now when I wear a rep tie with a button-down shirt and blue suit, I will do my part to keep the tradition alive.

The outfit worked when I went to my admission interview for college and when I was hired at the Salomon Brothers investment bank. It always makes sense to dress for success. Dont forget the pocket squares.

Steven A. LudsinEast Hampton, N.Y.

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Why Trump Canceled the Convention - The New York Times

The week’s top stories on Policy Watch | The Progressive Pulse – The Progressive Pulse

Posted on July 31, 2020 by Danzig

1. Along now-defunct Atlantic Coast Pipeline route, landowners are left in the lurch

Environmental destruction, property entanglements will take years to address

Behind a black wooden farm gate, near Wade in Cumberland County, used to lie a meadow. Serene, tree-lined, it was a spot of utopia where Donovan McLaurin had planned to build a small house for himself.

Instead, the land has been defaced. Hills of dirt two stories tall are splayed to reveal a rugged gash in the earth. This is part of 11 acres that Atlantic Coast Pipeline, LLC, seized from McLaurin to build its ill-fated natural gas project.

McLaurin, who is 73, was among the holdouts. He never agreed to allow the utilities Duke Energy and Dominion Energy to cross his property. He wouldnt accept their offer of $36,000 that was supposed to compensate him for land that has been in his family for five generations. When they doubled the price, he turned them down again.[Read more...]

2. Special report: The national crisis in unemployment insurance

Balky technology, expiring benefits worry workers, state leaders.

Congress is still squabbling over whether to extend a federal supplement of $600 a week to unemployment insurance and if so, by how much. Meanwhile,out-of-work Americans worry whether they can survive on state benefits that often are a small part of their normal pay pay that for many was inadequate in the first place.

Old technology has already forced millions to wait on badly needed unemployment checks. Now state officials who run unemployment systems are concerned about how to adjust to changes or delays, while keeping the money flowing through their overwhelmed infrastructure. [Read more]

3. Unprecedented crisis demands strong medicine from the federal government

Its been more than six months now since the novel coronavirus produced its first diagnosed infection in the United States and to say that the nation has botched its response to the crisis would be a massive understatement.

Rather than tackling the virus head-on by implementing a comprehensive national shutdown and marshaling a massive and immediate federal economic intervention capable of sustaining the nation while a huge share of the workforce stayed home, the U.S. dilly-dallied. [Read more]

4. Reopening public schools: A look inside one districts decision-making process

On July 16, the Onslow County Board of Education weighed one of the biggest decisions it had ever faced.

Should it bring nearly 27,000 students back to 39 school buildings for in-person instruction in the middle of the deadly COVID-19 pandemic thats killed more than 1,800 people in North Carolina? Or should it exercise an abundance of caution and offer students remote learning only?

Going into that meeting, we had a couple of board members who were not sure what they wanted to do, said Pam Thomas, chairwoman of the OCS school board. [Read more]

5. UNC not releasing worst case scenario budget proposals

A week after UNC System leaders required chancellors at the 17 campuses to submit plans for budget cuts of up to 50%, the system is still not publicly releasing those plans.

The systems lawyers are still vetting the documents, according to Josh Ellis, associate vice president for media relations. The system hopes to make them available in the near future, he said, but cannot give a timeline for their release.

Its an answer that frustrates parents, students and faculty concerned about the future of the university system as students begin returning to campus next week, as well as open government advocates who say people should be given access to public documents as quickly as possible.

Policy Watch first reported UNC Board of Governors Chairman Randy Ramseys email directive to the chancellors earlier this month.[Read more]

6. As COVID numbers show signs of stabilizing, North Carolina rolls out statewide curfew on alcohol sales

Health and Human Service Secretary Mandy Cohen offered a glimmer of good news on Tuesday:

Key metrics used to measure North Carolinas trajectory of COVID-19 cases are showing signs of leveling.

These early signs are a testament to hard work folks have been doing across the state. They show what is possible when we all work together, said Cohen.

With the state performing an average of 29,000 tests a day, roughly eight percent of the cases have been positive over the last 14 days. Today there were 1,749 new cases of the virus.

The number of hospitalizations is up, but the state still has capacity.

And as for those masks that were growing accustomed to wearing? [Read more]

7. Weekly interviews/podcasts and radio commentaries with Rob Schofield:

Click here to listen.

8. Weekly Editorial Cartoon:

4 French Revolution Trends That Have Started In The United States – The Federalist

Posted on July 31, 2020 by Danzig

Many recently celebrated Bastille Day, the day French radical revolutionaries stormed a prison, released its prisoners, and brutally murdered the warden. That fateful day, now more than 200 years ago, set in motion a revolution that led to bloodshed and a devastating loss of liberty in France. It also set the precedent for many future revolutions that took an unbelievable toll on human life.

Contemporary British politician Edmund Burke lamented that French Revolutionaries could have repaired the walls of their government and society instead of tearing them down. In an attempt to found an egalitarian utopia, the French Revolutionaries tore down almost everything that was traditionally French. An eerily similar purge is taking place in America.

To found their society anew, the French Revolutionaries created a new education system, a new calendar, a new system of measurement, and a series of new public symbols and festivals. Most forebodingly, they did their best to cleanse France of religion in all of its forms, opting instead to pay homage to the god of Reason.

The new French Calendar the Revolutionaries used in place of old the Gregorian calendar deliberately left out the Sabbath as well as religious holidays. In a preview of the self-centered nature of modern radical leftists, the French Calendar reset French history to the start of the Revolution essentially labeling it Year One. Today, The New York Timess 1619 Project attempts to do the same historical trick in rebooting Americas true founding to the date the first black slaves arrived in Virginia.

Now, there are calls to cancel Independence Day, change the name of Thanksgiving to Thanks-taking, and eliminate Columbus Day. Presidents Day, which is George Washingtons birthday, may also be on life-support, considering the Berkeley Unified School District announced that it will rename schools named after George Washington and Thomas Jefferson because the two former presidents owned slaves. But dont worry, new holidays such as Non-Binary Day are being ginned up, and Google Calendar now warns us when Black History Month and Womens History Month begin.

Leftist cancellations havent stopped at renaming institutions and holidays, but have also aimed at brand names, theme park rides, classic movies, television shows, and even innocuous titles like master bedroom. Recently there was a boycott against Goya foods because its CEO praised President Trump.

All across the country statues of American historical figures have lost their heads. In Boston, a statue of Christopher Columbus was beheaded, as were four Confederate statues in Portsmouth Virginia. A George Washington statue in Washington Park was vandalized and a white hood was placed on his head. Another George Washington statue in Portland, Oregon was toppled with a burning American flag draped over it.

Statue toppling is only the most visible sign of the cultural genocide that has been taking place for decades. Since the 1960s more Americans have rejected our founding principles and replaced them with radical utopian abstractions.

Instead of celebrating a nation built on equality, freedom, self-government, and a limited constitutional government, those on the left have taught an alternative history. In their telling, America has been racist from the start. The insinuation is that since racism is in Americas very DNA, there is no cure. Thus, the need for a new founding based on enigmatic utopian ideals.

Its a dark omen when language itself starts to be canceled. Classic childrens books are being banned because some on the left dont like their language. The North American Scrabble Players Association has recently announced it is canceling certain offensive words from the game.

People may not be burning books, but the National Public Radio station has exhorted Americans to decolonize their bookshelves. Truly, the current neo-Marxist movement enveloping the nation has done more to attack and stifle freedom of speech than Joseph McCarthy ever did in the height of the Red Scare of the 1950s.

More and more, our public schools are ceasing to be places of genuine learning but are quickly becoming boot camps in activism. Instead of being taught civics, children are learning about antiracism, white privilege, and political agitation. Likewise, French Revolutionaries took control of schooling and replaced it with their own.

Recently, New York City schools sent out a letter affirming the existence of systemic racism and assuring parents the school district will work to dismantle institutional racism. The email goes on to recommend resources that teach children police are targeting nonwhite people and that there is systemic racial bias in education, media, employment government, and the criminal justice system.

A large school district in North Carolina created a website that provides racial equity resources for teachers and parents. The site instructs those wishing to be racially affirming allies to first do so by recognizing privilege and how to utilize social capital to promote equity and social justice.

Finally, and most disturbingly, material for the 1619 Project is being taught in at least 3,500 schools nationwide, teaching children Americas founding ideals were a lie when they were written and the United States has never recovered from slavery and racism.

To say the French Revolution was hostile towards religion is an understatement. Church property was nationalized, tithing was outlawed, church authorities were made employees of the state, and 30,000 priests were exiled. To confuse Christians so they wouldnt be able to figure out which day was Sunday, a new ten-day week was implemented. In what became known as the September Massacres, three bishops and more than 200 priests were murdered by mobs.

Traditional religion in the United States has also come under attack by the modern radical left. And, while things havent yet got to the level of the French Revolution, the current anti-Christian climate does not bode well for the future. During the first weeks of the riots, for example, St. Johns Church, a historic house of worship near the White House, was set on fire. The media erupted in anger when police cleared the streets in front of the church so President Trump could pose in front of it holding a Bible.

In response, the D.C. mayor renamed the area Black Lives Matter Plaza and painted the slogan over the road. The area has become a hub for Black Lives Matter activists. There also have been repeated attempts to establish a Black House Autonomous Zone in the area. The area has developed its own religious feel, with multiple murals and tributes to George Floyd and others considered martyrs by the group.

Suffering the same fate as many of Americas founders and heroes, religious statues have been torn down as well. Black Lives Matter commentator Shaun King has stated depicting Jesus Christ as a white man is evidence of white supremacy. Churches have been vandalized, a Florida man drove his vehicle into a church, a statue of the Virgin Mary was torched in Boston, and at a Tennessee parish, a statue of Mary was beheaded. Because their pastor spoke out against the rioting in the streets, churchgoers in Troy, New York were verbally harassed by Black Lives Matter protestors as they entered Grace Baptist Church.

In the meantime, despite facing the threat of physical violence, some brave Americans continue to stand up against this neo-Marxist cultural revolution. In Washington D.C., when protestors wanted to tear down the Emancipation Statue, elder black activists showed up to protect it. They stood against the screaming hordes, representing a former generation, one ruled by reason and wisdom instead of rage.

In Ventura, California, a small group of brave Catholics stood against a mob to protect a statue of Saint Junipero Serra. As the small band surrounded the statue, they were surrounded by more than 200 protestors intent on tearing the statue down. The protectors stood strong, prayed the rosary amid taunts, threats, and even acts of violence. When one protestor riled the crowd into a frenzy and led a rush on the statue, Serras defenders closed ranks around the pedestal and defended it.

In another instance of bravery, when every player from the Giants and Dodgers knelt before the National Anthem to show solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement before playing their first game of the season, one player decided to stand. San Francisco Giants pitcher Sam Coonrod refused to kneel because of his faith and because he knows what the Black Lives Matter movement truly represents.

This one player who decided to stand is the one we should focus on, and is the sort of citizen we should praise. His courage and strength show that remnants of an old American spirit still exist, and that hope remains for our great republic.

Americans recklessly wishing to continue following in the footsteps of France should remember Burkes caution that the abolition of all history and tradition is a recipe for disaster. Future generations will understand what our nation eventually decides to honor by what statues replace the many that have been torn down.

Krystina Skurk is a research assistant at Hillsdale College in D.C. She received a Master's degree in politics from the Van Andel School of Statesmanship at Hillsdale College. She is a former fellow of the John Jay Institute, a graduate of Regent University, and a former teacher at Archway Cicero, a Great Hearts charter school.

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4 French Revolution Trends That Have Started In The United States - The Federalist

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