A fresh new look: Rotary Track getting resurfaced this weekend – Medicine Hat News

By MO CRANKER on July 18, 2020.

mcranker@medicinehatnews.com

The Rotary Track is getting a face lift this weekend and people are being asked to avoid the area until work is done.

The track was built in 2007 and every five years the lines need to be repainted. Every 10 years the surface needs to be redone. Both will take place this weekend.

We were planning to do the resurfacing last year, but the weather was giving issues to the company that does this, said Medicine Hat Track and Field Society member Marg Derbyshire. We pushed it back a few times, but just rescheduled for this year.

Its wind and rain that gives them problems, and were looking clear right now.

The Rotary Track is a certain location in Medicine Hat for track and field events over time, the track takes a beating.

General use and the winter weather damage the track over time, said Derbyshire. We had the lines repainted in 2015 and its definitely ready to be redone.

It seems like everyone is always using the first lane. The number one on the track is really worn out and it needs a new coat.

The track was established in 2007 and was paid for through a number of different organizations, including the Rotary Club, different school boards and grants.

The city needed a new track, said Derbyshire. This location was picked by the games committee as the prime spot for this.

The large fields here gave us space to work with and space for the throwing events.

The work will be done Sunday, but the track will need to sit for about a week before it is used again.

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A fresh new look: Rotary Track getting resurfaced this weekend - Medicine Hat News

Sports Medicine Market was estimated to grow at a rate of 7.0% CAGR during the forecast period due to rising rate of sports injuries globally, says…

Generally, sports medicine is considered as a distinct field of healthcare. sports medicine healthcare providers are available in most part of the regions worldwide. The application of sports medicine comes when a child is injured while running, doing any sporting activity, or doing any type of physical exercise, then it is usually recommended to cosult a sport medicine healthcare doctor for medical purposes. Sports Medicine is a branch of medicine that bridges the difference between research and experience by offering physical fitness and adequate treatment and prevention of sports-related injuries and daily workouts. Sport medicine doctors usually have special training to repair the damaged part of wounded patients body so that they can be cured in a limited time frame. While sports medicine doctors work predominantly with professional athletes, they are also interested in the treatment of children and teenagers participating in athletics and adults practicing personal fitness, as well as those with physically demanding jobs, such as construction workers.

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The whole sports industry is undergoing a disruption. Thanks to the evolving cutting-edge technologies, the role of athletic activities and events but also recovery following sport accidents is increasing. In sports medicine, the future holds a swing towards prevention by genomics, nutrigenomics, endless trackers and wearables, whereas there are other excellent innovations aimed at easing the pain and shortening recovery time. The various programs introduced include the usual incidence in orthopedics and recovery alongside pioneers such as sports psychology, diet, and even research and technology efforts to quantify and evaluate data points in order to assist in addressing the after effects of injury. Technology captures data about the players success during training or the real competition in any second. Data not only serves to evaluate but develop new tactics, thus improving the efficiency of the players in the field. It also enables in tracking the current state of safety and warn concerned officers about overtraining. Current medical advances will also provide sports people with the ability to learn further to uncover the various health hazards that could be impaired or what lifestyle they will adopt to allow them to succeed in the long term. Athletigen Technologies Inc., headquartered in Nova Scotish, is committed to offer expertise for many athletes in analyzing acquired DNA material to improve results, fitness, and safety. These genetic examinations help in revealing additional insight regarding potential elevated risk of injuries or basic dietary needs. Later, these results allow the concerned officials to adjust work out or nutrition routine according to the dynamic physical state. Sports exercising medicines are another major revelation in the field. BTE, a multinational organization headquartered in Baltimore, operates diverse recovery services in more than 35 countries. It has different devices for recovery, such as the Primus RS dynamometer or the Eccentron, a resistance simulator. The former tests the movements of patients as to how firm their grip is, whether they can lift a box before the doctor can give them the correct recovery exercises. In case of the Eccentron, aerobic simulator is an integral aspect of both recovery and efficiency enhancements. For each evaluation, it aims at solely eccentric practice and then develops an effective training curriculum.

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Injury levels in the developed part of the world are expected to surge, as athletics and sports activity are gaining popularity in the region. The current high injury prevalence in the developed and developing countries are projected to boost the sport medicine market worldwide. It has been duly reported that an average annual total of 8.6 million sports and recreational-related accident incidents are recorded in the United States, with an age-adjusted incidence of 34.1 per 1000 population and accident rates among males is usually higher than among females. Sports medicine helps in bridging science, exercise and health. In addition, it helps in boosting the scientific assessment, examination, and knowledge regarding sport performance. It involves integrated effort by the entire sports staffs which includes athletic trainers, physicians, physical therapists, and sports scientists to collaborate and enable the finest medical care that can be provided to prevent athletic injuries and illnesses.

The detailed research study provides qualitative and quantitative analysis of sports medicine market. The market has been analyzed from demand as well as supply side. The demand side analysis covers market revenue across regions and further across all the major countries. The supply side analysis covers the major market players and their regional and global presence and strategies. The geographical analysis done emphasizes on each of the major countries across North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East & Africa and Latin America.

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Key Findings of the Report:

Amongst the sports medicine market product category, body reconstruction segment holds significant share in the market owing to the rising demand for arthroscopy devices coupled with mounting change from conventional open surgeries to minimally invasive surgeries. According to the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine, approximately 4 million patients undergo knee arthroscopy, while 1.4 million patients undergo shoulder arthroscopy per annum. Due to its related advantages such as quick turnaround time and reduced pain, arthroscopy is ideal for both geriatric community and professional athletes, as compared to conventional surgical procedures. In 2016, an additional 55,529 people in the United States were diagnosed with bone and joint cancer. Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) is the most prevalent in reconstruction category which is mostly targeted to breast reconstruction patients. Body dysmorphic disorder is a mental health condition where one or more perceived issue in appearance is creating mental problems in the person. It has major consequences for patients who is wished to have breast reconstruction, because patient satisfaction is a major component for the required procedure

In application category in the sports medicine market, knee injuries hold significant share of the market. It has been reported that 17,397 patients has 19,530 sport injuries over a time frame of 10 years. 6434 people suffered 7769 knee joint-related injuries. Among all people, 68.1 percent were men, and 31.6 percent were women. At the time of the accident, approximately 50 percent of patients were between the ages of 2029. Anterior cruciate ligament lesion, medial meniscus lesion, lateral meniscus lesion, Medial Collateral Ligament Lesion, Lateral Collateral Ligament Lesion, and Posterior Cruciate Ligament Lesion were the major injuries reported. Football and skiing were the activities which led to most injury types. Lateral Collateral Ligament injury was associated with tennis and gymnastics, Medial Collateral Ligament lesion is related with judo and skiing, handball and volleyballs are associated with anterior cruciate ligament lesion, Posterior Cruciate Ligament lesion is affected mainly due to injuries related to handball, lateral meniscus with gymnastics and dancing, and medial meniscus with tennis and jogging.

Amongst the regional outlook, North America sports medicine market held more than 40% of the overall market in 2018 and is expected to continue the same trend over the next eight years. The major factor that is attributing to the change is the rising popularity of sports and mounting investments in sports medicines. In North America, the United States held more than 85% in 2018 and Canada is expected to witness the highest CAGR over the forecast period. Generally professional sports league is generating huge revenue in sports industry in the United States. Sports leagues majorly includes major league baseball (MLB), the national basketball association (NBA), the national football league (NFL), and the national hockey league (NHL), among others. According to a study, the market for professional sports in the United States is roughly half of the whole sports revenue held in Europe. Its majorly due to the huge disposable income available for the people in the country. Another reason for the rising popularity is the fact that sports are majorly linked with education in the United States, with most high schools and universities organized sports, and this is a unique footprint for the United States that college sports competitions play an important role in the American sporting culture, and college basketball and college football are popular in the country.

The major sports medicine market players includes Smith & Nephew Plc, Stryker Corporation, Johnson & Johnson, Arthrex, Inc., Conmed Corporation, Zimmer Biomet Holdings, Inc., Breg, Inc., Mueller Sports Medicine, Inc., DJO Global, Inc., and Wright, Medical Group N.V among the other market participants

Sports Medicine Market:

By Product

Body Reconstruction (Arthroscopy devices, Implants)

Body Support & Recovery Products (Physiotherapy Equipment, Compression Clothing, Braces & Supports)

By Application

Knee Injuries

Shoulder Injuries

Ankle & Foot Injuries

Back & Spine Injuries

Elbow & Wrist Injuries

Hip Injuries

Other Injuries

By Geography

North America

U.S

Canada

Mexico

Rest of North America

Europe

France,

The UK

Spain

Germany

Italy

Nordic Countries

Benelux Union

Rest of Europe

Asia Pacific

China

Japan

India

New Zealand

Australia

South Korea

Southeast Asia

Rest of Asia Pacific

Middle East and Africa

Saudi Arabia

UAE

Egypt

Kuwait

South Africa

Rest of Middle East & Africa

Latin America

Brazil

Argentina

Rest of Latin America

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Sports Medicine Market was estimated to grow at a rate of 7.0% CAGR during the forecast period due to rising rate of sports injuries globally, says...

Portland protest organizer calls for abolition of United States – TheBlaze

There was a rally outside the Mark O. Hatfield Courthouse on Friday, which marked the 50th day of protests in Portland. One of the speakers at the event was Lilith Sinclair, a self-described "afro-indigenous non-binary local organizer." During her speech, she called for the abolition of the United States as we know it."

Sinclair, who is a Black Lives Matter supporter, told the crowd that she is not just "organizing for the abolition of the militarized police state," but also for the "abolition of the United States as we know it." The crowd cheered and applauded for Sinclair's proposal to tear down the United States.

Sinclair also said that Portland was "stolen land," and instructed the crowd to carry out a "land acknowledgment."

Sinclair labels herself as a "Black and Indigenous queer, non-binary femme sex worker." She also identifies as "AFAB," which stands for "assigned female at birth."

In an interview published last month, Sinclair talked about a "global uprising."

"I think it's apt that we are looking at a global uprising against oppressive structures during the month where we celebrate the anniversary of another uprisinganother movement to not just ask for but to demand our rights," Sinclair said.

Following the rally, the tensions flared. People were walking the streets with katanas. Rioters launched fireworks and set off smoke bombs near the Portland Police Bureau.

Vandals attempted to use fencing to barricade the Justice Center and the Internal Revenue Service building. Rioters threw projectiles, such as glass bottles, rocks, and broken pieces of metal from fencing, at Portland police officers.

The street preacher who was assaulted at the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone in Seattle was also in Portland on Friday. The street preacher was allegedly punched in the face and carried away.

Portland has been in headlines this weekend, following videos of law enforcement officers taking away protesters during demonstrations. The mysterious officers are reportedly U.S. Marshals Special Operations Group and Customs and Border Protection's BORTAC. They were deployed to Portland since at least July 14 in an effort to protect federal property.

During clashes with rioters, federal law enforcement officers deployed tear gas on Friday night.

Oregon Governor Kate Brown (D) said, "Having federal troops here is like pouring gasoline on a fire," Portland-based KOIN-TV reported.

"This is appalling," Brown said. "When we need help from the federal government, testing supplies, personal protective equipment, they are missing in action."

On Monday, President Donald Trump commended the federal officers for their work in Portland.

"Portland was totally out of control, and they went in, and I guess we have many people right now in jail and we very much quelled it, and if it starts again, we'll quell it again very easily," Trump said. "It's not hard to do, if you know what you're doing."

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Portland protest organizer calls for abolition of United States - TheBlaze

A Conversation About Imagining a World Without Police – Slate

The inaugural episode of Conversations had to include Angela Peoples.

Unlike so many of us, Peoples has range. Shes a seasoned organizer who has a keen sense of Black activisms past, present and future. Currently, shes the director of Black Womxn For and co-founder of The South. And shes a personable, hilarious interviewee who can easily translate complex thought processes to those who may not be as well-versed in the scholarly side of Black activism.

Thats why I keep coming back to her guidance for envisioning a world without police: Actually imagine the world that you want to live in. What is the outcome that you actually want when youre in a car accident, when theres someone whos without a home and you see them and they need care? Or there seems to be drug sales that are happening in your neighborhood to children that youre concerned about, what do you actually want to happen? And then, think about what actually happens when you call the police.

An America lacking carceral consequence and no police to enforce said outcomes can be difficult to conceptualize. But Peoples, whose love for her people is so evident, gingerly walked us through this and more during our conversation. Above you can watch our chatproduced by Britt Pullie and Faith Smithand below is a transcript of the discussion.

Hi, everyone. Welcome to Q-Tip Mondays. Im Julia Craven. With me, I have Angela Peoples. Shes the Director for Black Womxn For and co-founder of The South. Im really happy that you were able to join me for this. Im so happy.

Thank you for inviting me, Julia. Im really happy to be here, especially today, especially right now. This is a really, really good time for this conversation.

I agree. Yeah, lets just hop into it. So Im super interested to hear what you think about the current wave of protests versus the protest against police violence that we saw between 2014 and 2016, because this moment feels a little bit different.

Yeah. I mean, it feels a lot different to me. I think that this moment, it builds and sits on top of the moments, and the work, and the mobilizing that happened, that was sparked by Mike Browns death and the uprisings in Ferguson. And even before that, with the murder of Trayvon Martin and the mobilizing that happened in Florida. What were seeing today, and what weve seen over the last few weeks is not even a rebirth, but a leveling up of the work that has been And also even just an exposing of the work that has been done.

One of the things that I always laughed a little bit about, in those years between the moments where it seemed like Black Lives Matter was on the news every single day, and now its folks would say, What happened to Black Lives Matter? Wheres the Movement for Black Lives? And the reality is that folks were working. Folks have been in cities like Minneapolis, in cities like Washington DC, in places like Atlanta. In places all over the country, people have been building, theyve been working to create demands of their local politicians, and to build a community that could withstand and respond to an uprising like this.

And so, what were seeing now, whats different now is I think that folks have learned a lot of lessons, a lot of hard lessons, a lot of pain, a lot of challenge, a lot of principled struggle, honestly, of organizers trying to figure out, what does it mean to be in a movement? What does it mean to take on white supremacy, to call in our allies or call them out when we need to? How do we do that in a way that actually moves us forward and doesnt just sort of keep having those same conversations over and over again?

The other thing I think that were seeing is the results of when you hear people say, Defund the police, thats a demand that is coming from the reality that we dont just want police to be arrested and charged and convicted of murdering Black women and children and men. Its not actually safety or justice if an officer is arrested or fired. We need systematic transformation. And so when you hear people say, Defund the police, thats because we recognize that simply arresting an officer, simply charging them, wasnt going to be enough for us to actually live the lives that we want to.

Right. And thats what feels different to me, is it feels like the prior bulk of protests that we saw between Ferguson and 2016 around the time of the election, it seemed like those were a bit more focused on reform, and now abolition and defunding the police has become a mainstream conversation. And, of course, that narrative has always been around, but that was not something that me and you would have been having a conversation about on Facebook Live a couple of years ago.

Absolutely. I think that part of what were also seeing, frankly, is that some of those reforms were tried. You know what I mean? A lot of police forces adopted body cameras. That was a call that came out of the initial protest in 2014 and 2016. Some was like, Okay, we got body cameras. Body cameras didnt work. Increased training didnt work. Some of these community accountability forces havent been working, right?

So all have been these reforms that have been tried. And organizers and abolitionists have been saying for a long time, We cannot reform police. We cannot reform the system. We need to dismantle it, defund it, and reimagine safety. As these reforms have been tried, and we still see video after video after video of the police harassing, killing, murdering, lying about all of these things, its become clear to more people that we simply cant reform, that these adjustments cant be made in a way thats actually going to be sustainable.

And there were frustrations at the time. I remember many organizers saying, Reform isnt the move. But part of what is required also is a level of community education, and public education, and increasing awareness.

Thats why organizing matters so much. Thats why being connected to different formations and different organizations that are trying to really change the awareness, change the analysis, change the way that we all are thinking about and imagining safety, that is what has brought us to this moment of saying, Actually, when you bring up a reform agenda, we know what that means and we know that its not going to work. Its not going to bring the systematic change that we need.

So what do you say to people who get antsy when you talk about abolishing the police, people who dont have the framework and cant really imagine what a world post-police, as it exists currently, looks like?

I will say a few things. The first thing I would say is to actually imagine the world that you want to live in. What is the outcome that you actually want when youre in a car accident, when theres someone whos without a home and you see them and they need care? Or there seems to be drug sales that are happening in your neighborhood to children that youre concerned about, what do you actually want to happen? And then, think about what actually happens when you call the police.

For many people, when they talk about what they want, they will name some version of a community intervention, right? Because we have this awareness, especially for Black folks and people who live in the areas that are overpoliced, that have a lot of really heavy police presence. We see on a day-to-day the response and what happens when the cops show up, and its almost never the outcome that you want.

Then I also would tell people to think about, does the current policing system actually solve crime? Does it prevent crime? Does it prevent? And again, thinking about what do we consider as crimes? I think one thing that we cant take for granted about whats happening right now is this moment where were seeing police use excessive force against protesters, simply for demanding dignity for Black lives. Seeing them use really aggressive force juxtaposed to seeing Donald Trump and all of his cronies on TV every day doing a lot of things that seem really clearly to be against the law to many of us, without any consequence.

So a lot of folks I find are asking, What is criminal? Or what should we be considering crime? And what harms are we putting resources in to actually address, versus what harms are having the most impact on people? So thats a conversation that I see more and more people having of, we want to talk about, we need the police to prevent crime and to keep us safe. But then we see a lot of things happening in our lives on a day-to-day that are not making us safe, and that are caused because of a lack of resources. Then we see the police getting all of this money, but not being able to address any of those harms.

So I think that when people are sitting and wondering, What do we do if we abolish the police? Think about what you actually want to happen and how close or far away that is from the reality based on our policing system right now.

Right. No, I think its great that you said all of that because I personally have not seen a well articulated argument that really explains how the police operate as a functional institution, especially when so much data and evidence shows us that there are a lot of issues with policing. I mean, just a myriad of problems.

So the Minneapolis school district broke their contract with the police department, and I would love to get your thoughts on that because policing in schools is just super problematic.

Yeah. Seeing that headline last week really gave me chills. I have a young daughter, and thinking about the chance for her to go to school without having police there, just really I was so inspired and hopeful for that. There has been a long campaign and a long effort led by many organizations talking about, Monique Morris in her book about the pushout of Black girls and being criminalized in school, or the Advancement Project and their campaign to get police out of schools.

Theres been a long ongoing effort, and I think that what were seeing in the case of police in schools and school boards like in Minneapolis, the L.A. teachers, folks in Portland, all making moves now, its a result of many years of pushing and making the case that we dont need police in schools. And I think policing in schools, or the idea of ending a police contract is a really great example of thinking about, what are the alternatives? Because right now there are much more what they call resource officers or police in school than there are nurses, counselors, social workers, even adequate food and space and teachers.

Last summer we saw all of these teachers taking to the streets saying, We need more resources for our students. We need more support. And you hear governors and state legislators saying, We dont have the money. We dont have the money. We dont have the money. But yet there are tons of policing in these schools, and these contracts are very expensive and the equipment, all the things that go into that.

And so, I think that schools are a really great example and a really great place to start right now. Get the police out of schools and then move those resources around to get the care that kids need in school right now, so that there isnt that higher rate And thats also about preventing crime.Its about preventing crime. Having more resources into schools means that you can prevent and change or adjust some of the outlying issues that come up and that might move someone to have to interact with the police department.

And just having police in school, it really speaks to how we criminalize kids and just the way the kids act and the issues that children have, particularly when those kids are Black. So yeah, I never really understood the idea of criminalizing a child who is acting out, criminalizing a kid who has ADD or ADHD. Maybe they just need somebody to talk to, right? They dont need to be arrested.

Right. When you put law enforcement in the calculation of school and of education, it forces any institution to judge a child based on these adult standards, the standards that we set by adults, not the standards that we set for children, you know what I mean? Its not as if these resource officers are specially trained to deal with children or to address adolescent issues. Theyre just police officers.

Part of it is, again, because school districts and states, they dont have the resources that they need, the money that they need to have those counselors and those social workers and those alternative institutions in schools, so they just shortcut it and say, Well, well have a resource officer and they can deal with all of the things. But those resources officers, theyre not equipped totheyre equipped to police and to patrol and to enforce, theyre not equipped to teach and to learn and to support.

Again, it really goes back to asking people when theyre raising questions about, What will we do without the police, or how could we abolish the police? What do you actually want to happen when your child acts up in school? Think about that, and then imagine whats happening now because the police are there.

And as we know, being tough on someone who needs help is not You cant bully people into being better.

Another thing that I really want to get your take on is, there have been so many protests for Black lives globally. I really just want to ask you what you think the movement looks like going forward.

Yeah. This is a really exciting question. I mean, I would just say hold onto your seats, guys. Its going to be a really powerful, a really intense summer, for sure. What were seeing right now, what we saw in Minneapolis, the community holding their elected leaders accountable in real time, thats where this movement is headed. Thats what were going to be seeing. Folks are mobilizing across the country, putting forward similar demands to defund the police.

Folks have already been running these campaigns, have these demands, shout out to the group here in D.C. where Im living that has been trying to hold our mayor accountable, who has not been prioritizing Black lives despite what it says on 16th and Pennsylvania Avenue. This is a movement of folks that are going to be putting pressure on candidates especially, you know this is an election year.

Theres going to be a lot more elected officials who are going to have to answer the question, why are we giving hundreds of millions of dollars to this police force that is literally killing us, in real time, and were watching it happen on our televisions, why? And what are you going to do to address that? What are you going to do to address this systematic impact of racism and white supremacy across our government?

And something that we did with Black Womxn For is really modeling what it means to be accountable to candidates. Its not just about election day. Its not just about election year. If you want our support, you want us to register voters for you, you want us to get people out for you, you want us to flank you when youre pushing some policy position? Cool. We have some asks too, and those asks need to be met. And if you dont meet them, were going to come and hold you accountable.

For elected leaders that want to be in that right relationship and want to be in that accountable relationship, I think youre going to see theyre going to feel what it looks like to be flanked and supported by a community that isnt just simply about donations or kickbacks, but is actually about a collective effort towards progress and accountability, not just for this group or that group.

The other thing I would just say is that Im a part of a group of folks that has been thinking about, what does it mean to really get at the root of, what is the foundation of the challenges that are coming up day after day after day? We see that especially when you talk about policing, but this is a stance across issues of disparity, the foundation of policing just like the foundation of the U.S. economy is built through chattel slavery and maintaining white supremacy, white male dominance.

And so, if we actually want to have a conversation about moving forward to an America that gets to realize and be who she actually says shes going to be, then we need to have a movement towards telling the truth, reconciling that and building towards reparations. Im working with a group thats trying to build that movement right now. Were really excited about helping to support the folks that are acting right now to hold police accountable in building momentum across institutions to really break and shake that foundation so that we can rebuild to be who we need to be as a country.

Right, because a lot of people dont even realize that modern day policing is a derivative of slave patrols.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And if you imagine why they would have a slave patrol, and then you put that idea or that notion on top of what you experience today, it makes so much sense. The way that the police sort of hunt Black and brown men, capture them in ways that dont seem to have a lot of rhyme or reason, and they take them away and families cant get ahold of them, are not able to track them down, and really just use force as a way to move and control people around.

The connections are very, very clear. What we need to do is to build a movement to tell those truths, to get the US government to recognize that, to apologize, and to make it right through reparations.

The last thing I want to run by you before we Because we have a few questions from people who are watching. So, were still in the middle of a pandemic.

Talk about it.

Coronavirus is still a thing. As much as it seems like some people would like to forget, its still a very real threat. And so, weve seen these mass protests against state violence during a crisis. What does that say about the urgency of addressing racism, which is the reason why more Black people are dying from coronavirus, the reason why more Black people have lost their jobs, et cetera.

Totally. I mean, Ill say a couple of things. One, we are still in the pandemic. So please, if youre out on the streets, thank you for being in the streets. Thank you for protesting. Please wear your face masks. Shout out to the movement for Black lives that is equipping people with beautiful face masks. Please stay six feet, wash your hands, all of that because were going to need each other. Three months from now, six months from now, we really are going to need people so please take care.

I would just say that in terms of the urgency question, I think it really speaks to Oh, and Ive been talking about this to a lot of folks that people are making the connection, maybe not verbally, but certainly cognitively between seeing report after report after report of disproportionately Black whole families being killed by the coronavirus because of a lack of access to healthcare and because of being at higher risk, because of our work and all of these things. Right?

So people are seeing these stories about Black folks and brown folks dying at disproportionate rates, and thats moving them and agitating them in a particular way. Then theyre also seeing this video really, really violent images, not just of George Floyd, but the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, the killing of Breonna Taylor. All of these things on top of each other, I think really have blown up frankly, the imagination and the apathy that some folks might have felt towards showing up and going to the streets for Black lives.

So I think that there is a lot of urgency. I think frankly white folks feel like they need to be Folks are almost wanting to be held accountable for this, which is also again, why we need to have this truth and reparations process, because people are wanting to be able to find a way to make it right. People are seeing that at our core, its just not working.

And so, I think that the amount of folks that were seeing in the streets, especially white folks and non-Black people of color, is indicative of even in this pandemic, the fact that people are connecting the dots between racial and economic and health disparities, and are also willing and ready to make whatever sacrifice might need to be to make it right, which is inspiring and exciting.

So its up to us, for those folks that are wanting to be in that community, to then get connected to organizations whether organizations that are working with other white folks or other people in their community, whether its teachers or health professionals or retail workers, any folks that are in your community. Find that core of folks and figure out how you can get organized, how you can be pushing back. Black folks in workplaces across the country are figuring out how they can band together to hold their employers accountable.

All of that matters and its important that we get together and stay connected and stay in community, and dont just wait for whatever the politicians are going to do or whatevers going to happen on election day, or whatever any other entity or individual might be doing. Its on all of us to stay connected to move this movement forward to the next stage.

All right. We have quite a few questions. Lets see where we should start. Katherine asked, Why do yall feel like the Black Lives Matter movement was controversial up until now? What was the factor that made the world care this time around?

I cant say one factor but I do think that its a couple of I would observe and name a couple of things. One is there has been a lot of work in the last six years and even before that but I think particularly in the last six years, to change the conversation about race, whether it was in newsrooms, right?

Yeah.

Whether it was in our schools, whether it was folks showing up in sports, the issue with Colin Kaepernick. Theres been a lot of conversations and a lot of repetition of this messaging of Black lives. Its not as if police werent killing Black folks between 2017 and 2020. They definitely were. And folks were definitely mobilizing and organizing for that. But its that repetition that were hearing over and over again in the media, in movies.

Its this idea, this notion of Black lives mattering. Also the lifting up of how racism and white supremacy shows up in all of these institutions, has created a drum beat that folks cant deny and now has given people the rhythm to march to, do you know what I mean?

So we were beating that drum for a long time and now folks have heard it so much that even the most off-beat person can vibe. And I think that thats a part of what were seeing. Thats how we know that movements and organizing work is that we were beating the drum, were going to continue to march and youre going to hear it so much that you get to join us. Youll feel the rhythm and youll join us. Youll be able to come in.

Right. Even if you on one and three, youll feel it. Youll feel it. I would just add to that. From the news side, I do think that the shift in how news organizations cover racism has played a really big role in it because so many people And also Twitter. Just the thing that struck me as so different about Ferguson and everything after it was that people were able to tell their own stories and share what was happening themselves. And they didnt have to defer to reporters who at the time were still very much taking the word of the police officers. And as we know, that narrative if its half true, thats a good story. And thats just what the evidence suggests. So I definitely think that Ferguson and social media just pushed newsrooms to do a better job, which in turn got more information out to more people.

Yeah. And also it helps that theres a blatant white supremacist, unapologetic white supremacist in the White House that says something racist every two weeks and folks are at home like, What? Thats the stuff that we whisper to each other. We dont say that on live TV. I think that theres a little awakening that folks are having of feeling a little bit uncomfortable of seeing who the United States of America has lifted up to be their leader, our leader and are wondering now, feeling that that being a very controversial perspective and wanting to align themselves at something different.

Even if they dont completely understand what the Black Lives Matter, or the movement for Black lives is meaning, folks are clear that they dont want to align themselves with this blatantly racist man in the White House.

Right. Another question we got is, would you share your thoughts on 8 Cant Wait? Do you think the changes proposed are enough?

I dont think the changes that are proposed are enough. I think that both from what the call from the communities have been, and what research and our knowledge over the last few years has shown us, is that reforming policing does not work. What needs to be done is a complete re-imagining of how we keep our community safe and where were putting those resources. And so, the 8 Cant Wait campaign initiative, therere a couple of things that I think are particularly challenging.

One is that it offers reforms in a way that requires more resources to policing, like more training, different review boards and things like that. Thats more money into policing, which is a part of the big problem, right? There have been different charts and graphs that Ive seen on social media the last few days, showing just how significant the citys police budget is versus its education budget. And so, defunding the police is just a call to defund police and take resources out of policing because its violent and harmful to our communities, but its also a call to invest in education, invest in healthcare, invest in alternatives to punishment, alternatives to incarceration.

The idea of an 8 Cant Wait kind of plan says, Lets continue to tinker around these edges while were ignoring the systematic and the foundational problems. And I would just lift up if folks are looking for more information about some alternatives, the 8 to Abolition campaign was just put out by my good friend K, who is @sheabutterfemme on Twitter, and a bunch of Ks homies. But it gives you eight points for how you can get from where we are now to abolition, and defunding the police is one of those eight points. But its just a part of it, right?

And so if youre thinking about, we need a plan towards actually addressing the harms that were facing and not maintaining the system as it is, then you really have to ask yourself, what would it mean to reform a system that was at its core rooted to hunt down and capture Black folks who were running away from chattel slavery. If youre thinking about trying to reform that policy, that institution, its going to be really, really hard and damn near impossible.

So if we want to build a world where all of us are safe in our communities, then we actually need to completely remove that form and that way of policing and of law enforcement, and really reimagine what were trying to keep safe, who were trying to keep safe and what does that even really look like? And I just dont think the 8 Cant Wait campaign does that. I think it also gives frankly politicians an out. We have people in these streets that are literally talking to their mayor, talking to their city council, Tell me to my face that youre not going to defund the police and invest in the education system. Tell me to my face.

An 8 Cant Wait campaign, it lets those elected officials off the hook to say, Well, this is another thing that a lot of other activists and a lot of other people are trying, which just isnt true and it does harm to the work that folks have been doing for the last few years, decades even. You can say a few years.

We have a question from Laura. She says, I am the wife of a police officer, and I would like to know how to have conversations about reform. I am 100 percent behind you, but how do I have the conversation with him? I dont know because I like to argue, so I cant answer you. I will let Angela answer that one.

Yeah. Thats a tough question. I have some friends and family in my life whose family are also in law enforcement, and were all having that conversation right now. I think that the place to start is really sharing your story and sharing your perspective. This has happened with a lot of issues in politics and in general. When were trying to persuade someone or change someones mind, we immediately go to like, These are the talking points. X percentage of these million dollars, X,Y, and Z.

What I find is most useful for me, particularly talking about policing and abolition, is to start from your own personal journey. I wasnt always someone who believed in abolishing the police or abolishing prisons. It took me some time to get there. And I think being clear and being open and honest about that, and also being clear that we dont have all of the answers. I may not have all the answers, but what we need to do and what we can commit to do, and I think that one thing to ask your husband to do is to commit to do something different.

We may not have all the answers. And a lot of people like to say, Well, how are you going to deal with this situation, and that situation, and this situation, and that situation? Some of those we have answers to, some of them we dont. But we do get to commit to figuring them out together in a way that recognizes that what were doing now just does not work and is not going to work.

Then the other thing I would just say is a lot of people try to bring up this question about jobs. A lot of Black folks work in the carceral system. A lot of Black people, a lot of working class Black folks are in police. And so the question comes, Well, what would I do? What will my job be? And again, this is about opening it up to the alternatives. Its not as if we say defund the police and then everybodys fired tomorrow.

Its about making some changes to the systems and the way that we imagine policing and safety, that can create other jobs and other opportunities, other openings and other ways to use our resources than simply grabbing someone up or putting a gun in someones hand and saying, Tell these people to get in order. Do you know what I mean?

Its a process, but right now were seeing that decisions can be made very quickly and in real time, that can have transformative outcomes. I think the best example is in a matter of two weeks, weve seen the Minneapolis City Council go from, Were going to fire these officers and we need to move to reform, to, Were going to dismantle the police department, and these are the ways that were going to do it.

Right. Which really speaks to, I think, how rioting works. It does compel people to be like, Oh wow, folks are really upset about this and maybe we should take them seriously. And so, that actually we have a question about Black police officers. Its from PJ. It said, How about more Black police officers in black communities?

I have written about this before. Black police officers dont really change the ways in which police interact with communities just because everyone is Black. Its really more about the system. It really is systemic because Black police officers can be just as forceful if not more forceful in Black communities, because the system is pushing them to prove themselves. So I just dont think more Black police officers or diversifying the force is necessarily the answer here. I mean, history just shows us that that also has not worked.

Totally. I completely agree with you. Its not about the individual, which is again why you see kind of an evolution of where the movement was. It went from calling for indictment, calling for arrest, calling for guilty verdicts on these individual actors. Weve moved and evolved from those individual asks to a systematic ask, an institutional ask, which is to defund the police. Because these one actor, two actors, individual people, thats actually not a solution thats going to stop police from killing black folks or frankly stop the police from beating protesters when theyre out in the streets demonstrating.

Right. Exactly. And lets see what those three got. Okay, let me rewind that because I jumped a question, because we were on Black police officers. So Christina asked, As people and institutions as diverse as Mitt Romney, Gushers , Muriel Bowser and Garfield shaped pizzauh, okaypublicly acclaimed that Black Lives Matter, do you worry that the messaging of the campaign may become diluted and less meaningful?

Ive been thinking quite a bit about this, because I live in DC and I saw the Black Lives Matter mural that Mayor Bowser put up. And I was shocked. I was shocked in a way of like, How dare you, Mayor Bowser? There have been a number of Black folks that have been killed by the police, even just in the last two years, Mayor Bowser has said nothing of remorse or challenge or adjustment. We love our police, we have to work with them. That just doesnt track with the experience of Black people in D.C. that I know.

Shes increased their funding and she continues just to sort of cape for them no matter what the harm is that they do. And so I really loved and appreciated the organizers of Black Lives Matter D.C. and BYP100 D.C., that added to that mural made to say, Black Lives Matter equals to defund the police, just so that were all clear on that.

But I think that to the question of the message being diluted, I think its two things to think about. One is, if you study social movements in moments of mass change, it does sort of require a bit of critical mass. You need your message, you need this issue and this story to reach a level of saturation across the country or just with the general public in order for the big transformative change that were seeing.

Think about the Civil Rights Movement. When that movement first started there was very little support, even among Black folks, right? But as you kind of grow and grow, it does become a bit of a mantra and becomes saturated, like I said in the media or in the discourse. And thats a good thing. The reason Im not so worried about the message being diluted is because I know that there are organizations, there are formations, there are leaders that have been around for many years and ones that are growing, that are emerging, that are popping up right now as we speak. That are going to be pushing the message further, that are going to be building

Its not just Black Lives Matter now, its Black Lives Matter and defund the police. Its defund the police and abolish prisons. Its abolish prisons and give us reparations. Do you know what I mean? I feel so confident in folks ability to hold the line of wanting to have as many people as possible aligning with the vision and showing up for Black lives, with also holding a strong firm line on what our demands actually are.

And thats why its important to be leery of campaigns like 8 Cant Wait, because thats one of those ways that the message can get diluted. Yeah, you might have these mainstream leaders or even people Kim Kardashian talking about our issues and thats fine. But if theres also then that counter voice, that can be seen as a representation of the community or what the movement demands are, that are also saying that more watered down version of the demands, thats where it can get dangerous.

But I just feel really confident in what Ive seen in the community of organizers that Ive been able to work with for the last few years, that weve got this, and were going to be welcoming more folks into our movement and into our organizations. Helping people to hold that line and that message, to get what we need and not just what the elected officials have decided is palatable for them.

Also just to add to that, I feel like companies and corporations and politicians saying, Black Lives Matter. I mean, theyre really just generating a statement of fact, like its true Black lives should matter, anyway. And I see it as just pushing a more truthful narrative, Black lives do matter. We should do something to address the system of policing in this country, we should address economic inequality, et cetera.

It looks like we have two more questions left.

Okay.

Because Im keeping you over time.

No, Im loving it. Lets do it.

Were just going to take over the live stream, like this is going on forever, its never ending. Recently de Blasio, Mayor de Blasio in New York, for watchers who may not know who that is, has mentioned cutting six billion from the NYPD budget of 90 billion dollars.

Really? I mean, who knows?

I would have to fact check that, but he wants to cut a sizable portion of money from a sizable budget. So the question is, do we as a community have a say in where that money will be reallocated? If so, how do we exercise that right?

Yes, absolutely.

Let me fact check that.

Yeah. We do and we should and we can. Thats why its really important to get connected to different efforts in your communities that are trying to figure out where that resource allocation goes. There might be a way for the Mayor to put in his budget but there is a review board of community groups, representative of folks from different bureaus or other kind of Is it 90 billion?

I really just want to fact check that now.

Read more:

A Conversation About Imagining a World Without Police - Slate

VOICE OF THE PEOPLE JULY 17, 2020 – TheChronicleHerald.ca

Out of touch

I just finished reading a very disturbing article in the Chronicle, Why nurses are joining the call for policing and prison abolition, July 16. Three PhD nursing candidates at Dalhousie University sent a letter calling for nurses across the country to join the movement for police and prison abolition.

My question to them would be: What do you plan to do with the murderers, rapists, drug dealers who suck people in, child abusers and all the other violent criminals?

What planet are those three and anybody who agrees with them living on? To even suggest getting rid of police and jails is insane. Who will they rely on if any of them ever get assaulted, raped, mugged, run over by a drunk driver or have some other criminal act done to them?

We often hear of nurses being abused by unruly patients. I guess for these three, it will never be an issue as they just wont allow it to happen to them. Im sure from their dislike of police involvement and jails, they certainly wouldnt call on police for help.

So far, at least, according to the article, letters sent to several nursing organizations across Nova Scotia and Canada have received no endorsements. Good to know there are still some people living in the real world.

W. N. Thompson, Upper LaHave

With regard to the recent Cats Meow Readers Corner (July 15), I think that is a great idea and encourages tourism within Nova Scotia. It would be good to let the public buy tickets and have some use of it.

Nonetheless, I cant help thinking the Cat has met the better part of its porpoise, or purpose rather, by providing employment to Bay Ferries and cover to the governing party.

One might say the Cat has meowed already!

Dermot Monaghan, Kingston

Premier Stephen McNeils comments last month concerning shutting down the Cat this year were not acceptable.

Nova Scotia taxpayers spent $17.8 million on a ferry service that didn't run in 2019 because work on the ferry terminal was needed in Bar Harbor. Why would we have to pay for a service not delivered and, on top of that, help pay for a terminal upgrade in Bar Harbor? In June, when asked by the Herald the cost to taxpayers in 2020, Premier McNeil said I dont know the exact number. This is a public health decision, not a financial decision. This is a financial disaster.

$34 million spent over two years for nothing. If we are bound to pay, we should get some service in return. We now have an Atlantic bubble. Why not use the Cat to ferry to P.E.I., Newfoundland, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia? It would be fast and increase tourism. Why pay to have the Cat docked in Charleston, S.C. for two years doing nothing? Lets put it to work.

The last question for the premier is why are we in a contract with an American company with an American crew and an American-registered ship, with all of the advantages in their favour?

Grant Bergman, Halifax

We could all learn a lesson from a child.

One day (before quarantine) my seven-year-old granddaughter and I were driving in the car. The radio was reporting on a news item concerning the Home for Colored Children. She asked, Did they just say colored children? Yes, I replied. What are colored children? she asked. Uh thats what some people called children whose skin was darker than, say, yours or mine. She thinks for a sec and says, Well, why didnt they just call them children? Or by their names?

Bravo Bernadette! If only more of us could think like you!

Sally Walsh, Timberlea

Read more:

VOICE OF THE PEOPLE JULY 17, 2020 - TheChronicleHerald.ca

Why advocates make the case for abolishing the whole prison-industrial complex – AlterNet

Although it was the brutal killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25 that set off huge protests all over the world, theres another name echoing in the chants of those demanding criminal justice reform: Breonna Taylor. The 26-year-old African-American woman and emergency medical technician was killed by police during a no-knock drug raid in Louisville, Kentucky on March 13.

Activists have been calling for the prosecution of the officers involved in that shooting. But writers Mariame Kaba and Andrea J. Ritchie, in an op-ed published on Essence Magazines website on July 16, stress that prosecutions are not enough and that Taylors memory should be honored by a full-fledged abolition of the prison-industrial complex.

Taylors death shows why no-knock raids, in drug cases, are a terrible idea as journalist Radley Balko (who now writes for the Washington Post) pointed out time and time again in his articles for Reason Magazine. The main targets of the March 13 raid were Jamarcus Glover and Adrian Walker, who Louisville police suspected of selling drugs. Walker, a licensed gun owner, has said that during the raid, he believed he was the victim of a home invasion or a robbery and was acting in self-defense. Shots were exchanged, and Taylor was caught in the crossfire. No drugs were found during a search of the house.

One of the officers involved in the shooting, Brent Hankison, was fired from the Louisville Metropolitan Police Department, while two others were placed on administrative leave. So far, however, none of them have been arrested or prosecuted.

Kaba and Ritchie, in Essence, note: The FBI and a special Kentucky prosecutor are investigating Breonnas killing and whether charges can be brought against the officers. We fully support demands for accountability for Breonnas death, and her family and loved ones quest for justice. When agents of the state act violently against an individual and in this case, callously and negligently takes their life there is no doubt that collective responses are absolutely warranted and essential.

But Kaba and Ritchie quickly add that real justice for Taylor as well as George Floyd needs to involve comprehensive criminal justice reforms in the United States.

As Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) abolitionists, we want far more than what the system that killed Breonna Taylor can offer because the system that killed her is not set up to provide justice for her family and loved ones, Kaba and Ritchie emphasize. Experience shows that officers who harm are rarely arrested by the departments that employ them, and prosecutions and convictions are even more unlikely. Since 2005 there have only been 110 prosecutions of police officers who shot people, while police have killed 1000 people a year on average since 2014.

Kaba and Ritchie go on to say that while police officers who use excessive force are given every benefit of the doubt in the U.S., many African-Americans are guilty until proven innocent under the countrys criminal justice system.

The officers who killed Breonna Taylor will claim self-defense because a confused, half-asleep person defending his home and his fiance against what he reasonably believed to be a home invasion fired shots, Kaba and Ritchie write. And, even if they are arrested and brought to trial if past experience is any indicator the law will once again provide them with cover for killing another black person. Meanwhile, countless black women and trans people who act in self-defense when police fail to protect them languish in prison.

In their article, Kaba and Ritchie call for a broader and deeper conception of justice for Breonna Taylor and other survivors and family members harmed by police violence one rooted in reparation.

People who have been or who see their loved ones arrested, prosecuted, incarcerated, and killed for the slightest infraction or none at all want the system to act fairly by arresting, prosecuting and incarcerating those who harm and kill us, Kaba and Ritchie stress. People who have consistently been denied protection under the law desperately want the law to live up to its promises.

then let us make a small request. AlterNets journalists work tirelessly to counter the traditional corporate media narrative. Were here seven days a week, 365 days a year. And were proud to say that weve been bringing you the real, unfiltered news for 20 yearslonger than any other progressive news site on the Internet.

Its through the generosity of our supporters that were able to share with you all the underreported news you need to know. Independent journalism is increasingly imperiled; ads alone cant pay our bills. AlterNet counts on readers like you to support our coverage. Did you enjoy content from David Cay Johnston, Common Dreams, Raw Story and Robert Reich? Opinion from Salon and Jim Hightower? Analysis by The Conversation? Then join the hundreds of readers who have supported AlterNet this year.

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Why advocates make the case for abolishing the whole prison-industrial complex - AlterNet

Column: Should Slave Owner Jefferson Be a Hero? – Southern Pines Pilot

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.

Those are the transcendent words that begin the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson. But was he a true American hero? Does he deserve the major monument building erected in his honor and superbly visible to all as they cross the Potomac into Washington, D.C.?

Let us consider some facts that can be assembled about the man. He owned more than 600 people over the course of his life and profited directly from the institution of slavery. It is also contended, with convincing evidence, that he fathered a number of children with one of those slaves.

Just stopping here, we might conclude that he was no hero, but just another enslaving despot who should have the historical cloak of heroism snatched from his back. But if we look closer if we look broadly with an eye that is not only critical but discerning and circumspect a singular conclusion becomes more difficult.

At the time of the American Revolution, Jefferson was actively involved in legislation that he hoped would result in slaverys abolition. In a draft of the Virginia Constitution (actually the second draft he submitted on June 13, 1776) he would have prohibited the importation of enslaved Africans.

Then again, on June 18, 1779, he proposed an ordinance that would ban slavery in the Northwest territories. Admittedly, in a sea of complacency, he always maintained that the decision to emancipate slaves would have to be part of a democratic process.

Abolition would be stymied until slave owners consented to free their human property, together, in a large-scale, orchestrated act of emancipation. To Jefferson, it was contrary to the principles of the American Revolution for the federal government to enact abolition by forcing planters to free their slaves. He knew that realistically, it would never happen.

But in a preserved letter to Thomas Cooper on Sept. 10, 1814, he continued to describe slavery as a moral depravity and a hideous blot, and in another to William Short on Sept. 8, 1823, he voiced the opinion that slavery presented the greatest threat to the survival of the American nation.

Jefferson consistently espoused the opinion that slavery was contrary to the laws of nature, views that were radically liberal in a world of Southern states where slave labor was the norm and reality was that slavery was becoming more economically entrenched. The slave population in Virginia skyrocketed from 292,627 in 1790 to 469,757 in 1830.

Jefferson had hoped that the slave trade would weaken, and slavery would come to an end. Instead, slavery became more widespread and profitable. In an attempt to erode Virginians support for slavery, he discouraged the cultivation of crops heavily dependent on slave labor, specifically tobacco, and encouraged the introduction of crops that needed less field labor, such as wheat, sugar maples, short-grained rice, olive trees and wine grapes. But by the 1800s, Virginias most valuable economic asset was neither crops nor land but slave labor.

Jeffersons belief in the necessity of ending slavery never changed. From the mid-1770s until his death, he advocated the same plan of emancipation. First, the trans-Atlantic slave trade would be abolished. Second, slaveowners would improve slaverys most violent features, by bettering Jefferson used the term ameliorating living conditions and moderating physical punishment. Third, all born into slavery after a certain date would be declared free, followed by total abolition.

Like others of his day, he supported the removal of newly freed slaves to the lands of their origin. However, the unintended effect of his plan was that the goal of improving slavery, as a step toward ending it, was used as an argument for its perpetuation. Pro-slavery advocates after Jeffersons death argued that if slavery could be improved, abolition was unnecessary.

Jefferson had written that maintaining slavery was like holding a wolf by the ear. We can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. He was concerned that his cherished federal union, the worlds first democratic experiment, would be destroyed by slavery.

To emancipate all slaves, immediately, on American soil, Jefferson feared, could result in a large-scale race conflict that could be as brutal and deadly as the slave revolt in Haiti in 1791. But he also believed that to keep slaves in bondage, with part of America in favor of abolition and part of America in favor of perpetuating slavery, could only result in a civil war. It did, and the result was more young American deaths than any other war we have ever fought.

Our forefathers should have listened to him early on from the beginning. He was right. I submit that his monuments should stand.

Don Tortorice is a former attorney and professor at the Law School of the College of William and Mary.

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Column: Should Slave Owner Jefferson Be a Hero? - Southern Pines Pilot

Teen’s mission to be first person to walk on Mars – WISHTV.com

Shes the youngest person to graduate from the advanced space academy and her personal mission is to be one of the first people to walk on Mars. Alyssa Carson, astrobiology student joined us today to talk about that and other weird true facts by Ripleys Believe It or Not.

Alyssa is 19 years old, and her goal is not that far-fetched she was selected as one of seven ambassadors representing Mars One,a mission to establish a human colony on Mars in 2030.In 2016 Alyssa was the youngest to be accepted and graduate the Advanced Possum Academy, officially making her certified to go to space and an astronaut trainee. She also has a foundation designed to offer scholarships for students to attend STEM programs.

Weird True Facts by Ripleys Believe It or Not! and IFLScience is a collaboration of two amazing brands to create one unbelievable book. From historical oddities to cuttingedge technology and cosmic conundrums, the books 192 pages are filled with the strangest stories Ripleys and IFLs editors could find:

Weird True Facts by Ripleys Believe It or Not! is on sale now at all major retailers. Find more information on their website.

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Teen's mission to be first person to walk on Mars - WISHTV.com

Money for teachers to buy pencils, crayons on chopping block – Las Vegas Sun

School supplies and information are shown at booths at the Cox Back to School Fair at the Galleria at Sunset mall on Saturday, Aug. 6,2016.

By John Sadler (contact)

Saturday, July 18, 2020 | 2 a.m.

Kristan Nigro, a kindergarten teacher in Clark County, has bought math games, pencils, crayons and other supplies out of her own pocket for years.

After eight years teaching, she estimates she spends about $500 to $750 a year on supplies.

Without those things, I dont think I could do what I do in my classroom, she said.

To help offset some of those expenses, a special state fund reimbursed teachers a couple hundred dollars a year.

It appears thats about to end.

A budget-cutting bill expected to pass the Legislature today eliminates the Teachers School Supplies Reimbursement Account, initially earmarked to get $4.5 million in fiscal 2021.

Its a tiny part of a plan to close a $1.2 billion hole in the state budget caused by a steep drop in tax revenue from business closures during the coronavirus pandemic.

For Nigro and other teachers, its something else.

This is kind of just another slap to the face that just shows Nevada has no desire to better education, Nigro said.

According to the National Education Association, U.S. teachers on average spend $459 annually of their own money on school supplies. In Nevada, the average is $534 a year.

The reimbursement program is a popular one in Nevada. During the 2019-2020 school year, an estimated 15,644 teachers in the Clark County School District participated in the program.

A total of $3.1 million was sent to Clark County teachers through the program in fiscal 2020. The average was a little over $190 per teacher.

The cuts to the teachers reimbursement fund are part of a much larger expected cut to K-12 education. A total of $156 million was targeted from K-12 schools over the protestations of educators and education activists.

The cuts come as public school districts are facing unprecedented health and safety expenses as they prepare for instruction to resume during the pandemic.

The likely effects will be felt in the fall, as programs that would decrease class sizes, work toward making sure kids can read by third grade and help English-language learners are all on the chopping block.

The Nevada State Education Association said the cuts could hurt some of the states neediest students.

Monies cut from school equity programs will erase years of work to meet the needs of the most vulnerable students, the association said in a statement submitted for public comment.

Read the rest here:

Money for teachers to buy pencils, crayons on chopping block - Las Vegas Sun

Book Review: Interrogating Womens Leadership And Empowerment By Omita Goyal – Feminism in India

6 mins read

Posted by Dr G. Uma

Book:Interrogating Womens Leadership and Empowerment

Author: Omita Goyal

Publisher: Sage Publications, 2015

The edited book titled Interrogating Womens Leadership and Empowerment has been published with the objective of tracing the process of womens empowerment and development in India. There are notable contributions at the international and national level by certain organizations, institutions, individuals and governments for womens development and empowerment. It is pertinent to trace everyones efforts and to improve historic understanding to progress as a society.

The term empowerment is a contested one. The interpretation of the term varies according to the contexts and issues. It is mostly used to define and measure womens progress in various fields. Leadership plays a crucial role in the process of empowerment in every field whether political, social and economical.

The term empowerment is a contested one. The interpretation of the term varies according to the contexts and issues. It is mostly used to define and measure womens progress in various fields. Leadership plays a crucial role in the process of empowerment in every field whether political, social and economical. Identifying, building and nurturing leadership potential among women is a noteworthy step in empowering women. This will encourage them to move from panchayats to the parliament. Once we form a critical and equitable representation of women in policy-making institutions, it will subsequently reflect in every field. Feminists researchers like Naila Kabeer, Srilatha Batliwala and Deepa Narayan have defined empowerment and have developed certain methodologies to measure the same. The issues of gender are interdisciplinary in nature. Women face hardships and difficulties irrespective of their social and economic locations. The sufferings and burdens may vary according to caste, class, education and location (rural/urban). Hence different perspectives and methodologies have to be applied and analysed in every field to understand gender issues and to know womens present condition in a particular field. In this context, the author has identified suitable research articles and brought out an edited volume by including articles from various disciplines. She has chosen articles that have strongly applied feminist research methodology.

Also read: Womens EmpowermentThe Missing Piece Of Environmental Policies

Womens movement in India has played a noteworthy role in bringing womens issues to the mainstream. It also facilitated in bringing appropriate laws to improve womens position in the society. Till Chapter 7, the significance of womens leadership in different fields/areas has been dealt with. Chapter 1, by Devaki Jain, deals with womens movement, which encouraged womens leadership and empowerment. In chapter 2, Padmini Swaminathan has brought out the significance of womens leadership in empowering grassroots people through two case studies. According to the author, the policies of the government and other institutions are instrumental in leading to womens empowerment or disempowerment. She has documented two case studies from two southern states. One study draws the conclusion that the mere distribution of welfare measures might not alter social and gender relations. According to the study, engendering development is meant to address range of issues like redistribution of resources, restructuring gender and social relations, restructuring socio-political and bureaucratic institutions. Restructuring gender and socio-political relations is a slow process unless we implement social polices with the aim of restructuring of gender and social relations.

In chapter 2, Padmini Swaminathan has brought out the significance of womens leadership in empowering grassroots people through two case studies. According to the author, the policies of the government and other institutions are instrumental in leading to womens empowerment or disempowerment.

Chapter 3 titled Women Leaders in Every Mohalla Every Village traces the history of SEWA movement and women leaders contribution, the crux of the chapter being Movements grow through their leaders and leaders are shaped by the movements. J. Devika in Chapter 4 analyses womens leadership in the context of 33.3 percent reservation of seats for women in local bodies after the enactment of 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendment Acts. The act opened up opportunities for women to exercise power in the area of development femininity in Kerala. Or else, politics is considered as masculine and patriarchal. The elected representatives in local bodies use gentle power associated with femininity. According to her study, which applies the Gentle Power theory, Dalit and upper-caste women use Gentle Power differently. The study further states that empowerment is not a linear process. There are complexities involved in the process of empowerment. This needs to be considered while applying the theoretical framework of empowerment to do research on womens issues.

Chapter 5 Labouring Intellectuals by Gopal Guru explores the impact of globalization and the introduction of new media services in the lives of dalit women. Oral tradition, that is, sharing pain and pleasure through songs, played a vital role in Dalit intellectualism and personal stamina. After television found its way into Dalit households, they started watching and discussing TV serials rather than expressing their feelings.Pushpa Sundar, in chapter 6 has discussed women in the corporate sector. The article insists the benefits of gender diversity for women empowerment in corporate sector. It has also suggested policies to increase womens percentage in the corporate sector. Karuna Chanana examined an important programme implemented by the UGC for teachers in higher education. The impact of the programme among teachers sense of empowerment was huge. There were two levels of capacity building workshops for women managers in higher education. These were analysed using case studies of the participants.

Karuna Chanana examined an important programme implemented by the UGC for teachers in higher education. The impact of the programme among teachers sense of empowerment was huge. There were two levels of capacity building workshops for women managers in higher education.

Chapter 8 titled Anatomy of Change explores the lives of two extraordinary women from the eastern and western parts of India, who had to struggle to become doctors. The existing scenario in the 19th century, entrenched patriarchy and the realisation of the need for female doctors inspired them to become doctors. In 19th century, women, except those from a few educated families, hesitated to consult male doctors. Hence, they realised the significance of female doctors to address maternal and child health. Chapter 9 by Sudha Pai analyses the life history of women leaders in India. From this chapter, we can conclude that a change in the attitude of people concerning patriarchal norms might bring a large percentage of women in decision-making levels.

Women, arts and literature are significant themes for the chapters 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 and 16. It is important for every person specialising in gender to trace the history of women contributors and their sense of empowerment. These chapters trace the works of author Mahasweta Devi, explored Dalit narratives, trace the history of rebuilding handicrafts in India and examined the contribution of Rukmini Devi Arundale to establish Kalakshetra and institutionalising Bharathanatyam. Mahasweta Devis works brought back the narratives of tribals, which were silenced, neglected and erased from history for centuries. Hence, here Dalits themselves narrated their history.The so-called mainstream literature failed to imbibe Dalit womens experiences. The struggles of the Dalit community, especially women, their experiences, their perceptions, enables the reader to ponder over the issues of Dalit women and how much at all, were they woven into the vision of women empowerment. Kamaladevi Chattopadhyays hard work took handicrafts industry to the next level by recognising and institutionalising it. This chapter described the establishment of institutions like NIFT, INTACH, SEWA and the involvement of women in cinema to recognise Indian handicrafts. Chapter 15, Ascribing Feminist Intent by Deeptha Achar attempts to locate Sheikhs paintings in the political realm. Sheiks paintings required to be understood by linking them with feminism and womens movement in India. Chapter 16 is about independent Hindustani singers and their emergence and struggles.

The struggles of the Dalit community, especially women, their experiences, their perceptions, enables the reader to ponder over the issues of Dalit women and how much at all, were they woven into the vision of women empowerment.

The final four chapters are about womens contribution to institution building. Chapter 17 traces the history of establishing Indraprastha School. Chapter 18 is about governance indicators. Based on the mentioned indicators in the chapter, we could analyse the status of women in society. Chapter 19 traces the history of law-making related to women and gender. Chapter 20 is about women and their struggles in conflict zones, particularly the north-east Indian states. The data to write this chapter has been collected directly from the field. Every person in the conflict zone had their own experiences and they might get affected psychologically for various reasons. The study has prescribed certain policies that would help women overcome their psychological problems.

Also read: On Feminism And Writing: A Path To Self-Realisation And Empowerment?

The book reflects our general understanding of feminism, women empowerment and asserts that the issues of women are intersectional in nature. It had strong theoretical and feminist methodological components. The author has carefully picked articles from contemporary and historical issues. The edited volume could be useful for research scholars, academicians and journalists dealing with gender components. However, the author could have also added a few more articles related to the issues of the LGBTQ+ community. The discipline of Womens Studies became more inclusive in 21st century and it broadened its scope by including development studies, gender studies and sexuality studies. The author must consider bringing one more volume by selecting research articles from the fields of gender and science, sexuality studies, gender and agriculture and the impact of globalization on women. Secondly, the emergence of feminist research methodologies tries to explore gender issues employing standpoints. The author could also consider using the word Gender in the book title itself, if she wishes to bring one more volume.

Dr G.Uma is Assistant Professor in the School of Gender and Development Studies, Indira Gandhi National Open University. Her primary focus areas are Grassroots Governance, Gender and Development with a focus on agriculture, Public Policy and Social Capital. She is a PhD degree holder in Gender and Governance from the Department of Political Science and Development Administration, Gandhigram Rural Institute (Deemed University). Her PhD research outcome focuses on redefining the policy at the micro-level, ensuring the stakeholders to recognize the significance of federating women leaders at the grassroots level to realize the affirmative action given through reservation at the Panchayat level in India. Central European University and University of Cologne awarded scholarship. She has 10 years of work experience in the field of governance and development with a gender perspective.She can be found on Facebook and Twitter.

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Book Review: Interrogating Womens Leadership And Empowerment By Omita Goyal - Feminism in India

Heroes: Sister Susan Gardella and the LIFE Center – The Hudson Independent

By Annabelle Allen

The RSHM Life Center (Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary), a community center focused on education and social services located in Sleepy Hollow, celebrated its 25th anniversary in June. With the belief that Learning Is For Everyone (LIFE), the center offers programs and services to the lower income immigrant population of Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow. The goal of the center is to focus on the needs of each family and help them improve their lives through empowerment.

The celebration was in proper LIFE Center stylenot with cake, not with balloons but by launching a massive service effort. Since March, the center has distributed over 12,000 meals and 14,000 pounds of groceries/produce to vulnerable families, as well as opening one of the only in person day camps in the region so that parents could return to work. Its not exactly how we expected to spend our anniversary summer, said Sister Susan Gardella, executive director and co-founder of the Life Center

Sister Susan is the driving force behind the centers dedication to the community. Gardella is a part of the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary, an international congregation of religious women who have served in the Sleepy Hollow/Tarrytown area for over 100 years. From working with the homeless in Long Island, to family courts in the Bronx, and opening the center in 1995, Gardella has dedicated her life to serving those in need.

She brings unwavering commitment to a world where everyone can have enough, where everyone can get an education, regardless of who they are and their economic status. I think she has been an incredible gift to Sleepy Hollow and Tarrytown, said Fiona Matthew, a grant consultant for the LIFE Center and friend of Sister Susans. She is not good at promoting herself. Thats not who she is. She just quietly gets on with things.

Characteristically, Sister Susan credits her staff for the successes of the center. We have people that have been here for 15, 17 years. Theyre certainly not doing it because theyre making a lot of money. They get it. They see it as more than just a job. Its important for me as director to surround myself with people that get it. I think thats what makes the life center special. The staff care as much about the families as I do.

The program started by asking the question: What can we do for you. Gardella, and her co-founder Sister Betty Kolb, invited the mothers in to talk amongst themselves about the issues affecting them. This eventually became the Parents and Tots Program a preschool for toddlers, with a support component for the parent or guardian who accompanies the child. In the program, the children are immersed in English language lessons and begin to separate from their mothers for periods of time, which prepares them for school. While the children are in their group, their parents have an opportunity to study English and participate in discussion groups that allow them to develop as individuals and provides them with a peer network. Twenty-five years later, Parents and Tots remains one of RHSMs more popular programs.

They set up programs that their families need and theyre always talking to the families and finding out what the need is, said Matthew, Then they adjust their programs, and add more programs on. No big fan fair, no patting on the back. I never see them toot their own horn at all.

Now, Sister Susan and the center are working to pull together an in-person summer camp to help parents find relief after months of online schooling and amidst surging unemployment rates. Most camps in the area have gone remote, as COVID-19 remains a risk, but Sister Susan heard a call from families that parents needed to go back to work and restore their finances.

The Hudson Valley has lost 165,400 jobs for the period ending May 2020, according to The Department of Labor. Still, this number does not account for undocumented workers who dont meet the governments official definition of unemployed. Their families have received zero unemployment benefits during this time. Parents are in a bind, said Gardella, and they have to start getting back into the workforce especially for those who might be undocumented.

Opening camp hasnt been easy. The center must adhere by strict state guidelines for in-person camp during the COVID-19 pandemic: no field trips, no swimming pool, and temperatures must be checked every morning. Instead, the center has converted the parking lot into a space for socially distanced games like jenga and connect four. The camp is now entering its third week, allowing many of the parents to return to work.

Cumulatively, Life Center programs are making a profound difference in the community. Of the 27 most recent alumni of its programs (elementary aged children who remained in the Tarrytown/Sleepy Hollow school district), 100% graduated from high school in the Class of 2019. The state-wide graduation rate that year was 39% for English Language Learners and 75% for Latinx students. Twenty-three of those 27 students went on to college. One entered the Culinary Institute of America and three students entered the Marines.

The children that enter the program not being able to speak English, within three or four years are in the accelerated programs at school and achieving off the charts, said Matthew. Its crazy the results [Sister Susan] gets.

Matthew has observed that as kids arrive at the Center, Sister Susan will stand outside the building and greet each one personally, ruffling their hair or telling a joke. Shes a lot of fun, a lot of love, but is very parental and very guiding, says Matthew. I think that they count on her. Shes a beacon to them.

Gardella has been a Catholic Sister for 35 years, committing her life to serving those in need. The decision to become a Catholic Sister is one that is difficult to explain, she says, but similar to making any other big decision in ones life. How do you ever really know? It just feels right. It feels like the thing that makes life worth it, said Gardella. People have these stereotypes from years ago of the sister with the ruler or something like that. Were just regular people.

I think that we are put on this earth and given gifts and talents by whomever we feel in our personal beliefs is our creator, she says. And if we dont use them for good, whats the purpose of them? We have an obligation to do whatever good we can. Each of us can do something.

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Heroes: Sister Susan Gardella and the LIFE Center - The Hudson Independent

Remember when the internet was supposed to be transparent and democratic? There’s still hope – Salon

Once upon a time, the internet was seen a wondrous fount of knowledge and information, empowering users and spreading democracy. This utopian view resonated widely with early adopters in the 1990s, after the end of the Cold War, but it resonated much more broadly around the world in 2011, during the Arab Spring. There were always dark shadows noted by observers, as in Gene Rochlin's 1997 book, "Trapped in the Net," but collectively we've been blindsided and bewildered by how different the online experience has become how much of a marketplace for rumor, fear, conspiracy theoriesand polarized worldviews, all watched over by purportedly neutral platform manipulations bringing us exactly what we're told we want.

Could it be possible to recover that original promise? In a way, that promise was always nave, as illuminated by Paulina Borsook's 2000 book, "Cyberselfish: A Critical Romp Through the Terribly Libertarian Culture of High-Tech." As Borsook notes, it took more than half a century of government investment to make the internet's commercial incarnation possible, contrary to Silicon Valley's self-serving mythos. But democratic theory, history, philosophy and psychology is far richer than libertarians suppose, and there is a much more sober, realistic version of that promise one that, for example, scientists collaborating worldwide have experienced for more than a generation now.

Socouldsomething like that become possible for all of us? A new paper in the journal Nature Human Behaviour strongly suggests that it could, and lays out an initial framework for what it might belike, reshaping things from the bottom up: "How behavioural sciences can promote truth, autonomy and democratic discourse online." As the abstractexplains, the problem can be simply put:

The current online ecosystem has been designed predominantly to capture user attention rather than to promote deliberate cognition and autonomous choice; information overload, finely tuned personalization and distorted social cues, in turn, pave the way for manipulation and the spread of false information. How can transparency and autonomy be promoted instead, thus fostering the positive potential of the web?

Framed like that, thisis a scientific problem, susceptible to scientific solutions. Of course, knowing that solutions exist and implementingare two different things: Consider the climate crisis. For a better understanding of how such a future could come to be, and what some specific steps would look like, Salon reached out to lead author Philipp Lorenz-Spreen, a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. Thisinterview has been edited, as is customary, for clarity and length.

What struck me first on seeing your article was that it's not reactive, but ratheraffirms a positive, arguing that behavioral science"can promote truth, autonomy and democratic discourse online." Sobefore talking about the paper itself, I'd like to ask about what informs your positive approach.

I think a bit of forward-looking is probably necessary. We need to be careful we don't get into a whack-a-mole game. So, I was searching for more sustainable solutions, and you get end up getting less reactive and trying to find solutions that come from the bottom up, to think about how to change the system itself.

Were there any previous examples in internet history that were resonant for you?

One of the rare examples of online environments that promote truth one of the shining examples is Wikipedia. This was an inspiration, to think about how different this website looks, compared to Amazon, how it's designed and how things are arranged.

Your paper draws attention to the asymmetry between what platforms know about users and viceversa. How do you characterize that asymmetry, and what negative consequences result that you propose to address?

The asymmetry probably comes out of dependencies we live with in this information-rich world. It gives the human brain too much to process, so we must rely on some kind of curation. That's what the platforms do for us. That's probably why they are successful. Google and Facebook are skyrocketing, successful, because we really, really depend on them to navigate through this information world.

Additionally, "intransparency" contributes to it. We get recommendations that we cannot really follow where they actually come from, what factors contribute to them. Sowe are getting increasingly dependent on intransparent platforms, wherewe have to rely on trust. And the remedy we propose is increased transparency, and givingback a bit of autonomy to the user.

To improve the online environment, you identify available but untapped cues and two kinds of behavioral interventions "nudging" and "boosting" that employ these cues. The cues differ in different contexts, so let's start with the interventions. Folks may have heard of them, but just to be clear, what do each of them do?

They are both classic behavioral interventions, so they're more umbrella terms. They both interact with the decision process. "Nudges" do that mainly or exclusively through the choice architecture. So whenever parts of the choice architecture are emphasized to steer behavior or influence behavior, that's nudging. In our case, we just try to draw the attention of the reader to some pieceof information that might be good for them that will be the broad class of nudging.

Boosting goes a bit further into the educative direction. Soit's not education, but it's pieces of the environment or external tools that help the decision-maker, within the process of making the decision, to acquire some competencies. Often in this context, we refer to digital media literacy as a competencethat a boost would help the user to acquire or develop. That can be done through the environment, by giving useful hints that you can remember, and then you use them even if the hints are missing. Soyou can actually incorporate that boost and take it along with you.Second can be external tools, like rules of thumb that you can actually use to evaluate sources of information.

One aspect of boosting you mention is "self-nudging." Could you explain what that is?

Self-nudging is when you yourself change your environment in a way that nudges you to a certain behavior that you want for yourself.An alarm clock is a self-nudge, a very elementary one. If you want not tobrowse certain apps so often, you might delete them from your phone. Or if we want to eat less sweets, we might not buy them. Sowe ourselves change our choice architectureso we make decisions that we want to make.That's a boost, in a sense, because self-nudging itself is a competence. If you're good at designing your own choice architecture, your own environment, to the choice you want to achieve, that's what we call a competence. That's why we would classify it as a boost.

You discuss what you call"endogenous" or "exogenous" cues as being important in interacting with the internet. Give me some examples.

Endogenous cues are cues that describe the content itself. Sowhen we talk about an online article, that would be the characters thatappearin the article, the relationships that may be the part of the story,stuff like that we would call endogenous cues. Andof course, it can be helpful to evaluate the truthfulness of the story. If the characters do not exist, or the story doesn't have a logic it's evidence it might not be true.

Exogenous cues, on the other side, are context-dependent. So they do not regard the content of the article itself, but for example, the source of the article, who has written the article, which other outlets or sources the article cites. Where did it come from?How did it reach you?Who else has recommended it for you? Thingslike that. So the context around the story itself is an exogenous cue.

In the paper, you focus your attention on exogenous cues. Why is that?

We just experience how difficult judgments are about the content itself. There are extreme cases where you should make a judgment maybe when it's about violence but youalways runinto the danger of either censorship or the accusation of censorship when you're making judgments about content itself. Sowhen you make a judgment about context, I think this is more robust against accusations or dangers of censorship. If you only provide more context, that could allow people to make the judgment themselves, without you or a third-party fact-checker or a platform or anyone else to make that judgment for you. That's going inthe empowerment direction we want to let people make these choice decisions themselves. That's why we focus on exogenous cues.

You examine three different contexts: online articles, algorithmic curation and social media. I'd like to go through each of them with you, to understand the challenges you identify and how to propose to meet them. Let's start with online articles. What are the challenges they present? And what cues are available?

The main challenge we think we are facing here is the overabundance of articles, of content being produced. There's a multitude of sources, a high number of articles reaching us and also the consumption patterns have changed.People do not consume a whole newspaper as one piece, and they do not subscribe to one newspaper for a long time. Some do, but we much more consume them on an article basis. So, we are moving from long-term decisions to rather short-term decisions, and we have this huge information overload at the same time. So that makes it very difficult to make decisions about the trustworthiness or reputation of the source. So that's the challenge with news articles online.

And what kinds of cues are available?

We can check if the publisher has an "About"section on the website, or if it's a known publisher one can check for an external validation by making a Google search and finding reports of the same story. But one can also check if the article cites external evidence, if there are other articles of this article's type, if they are clearly marked and if they come from other publishers and not just themselves. These would be some exogenous cues that one can check on which,by the way, are not always readily accessible,which adds to the challenge of information overload.

So how can nudging and boosting be used to makethings more transparent?

Nudging can be used to draw attention to the external cues, so the sources that an article is citing could be listed on top of the article with a very clear color, or something.Or there can be a warning message if there areno external sources cited. There one can actually be inspired by Wikipedia, whichoften has warning messages with articlesif there are not enough sourcesor if quality is lacking in the sources. That would be a very simple nudge. You can go a bit further when you think about sharing an online article, and then a warning message could require you to click a second time to confirm that youwant to share the article even though it doesn't cite any external sources. Sothe main process of the nudges in this context would be to draw your attention to the external cues.

A boost would be more like a tool:In the article show a decision tree that's a tool that has been used to improvemedical decision-making by having, like, three or four questions that one can go through systematically to evaluate the trustworthiness of an article, for example. It can become like a cognitive tool kit. A person can remember this cognitive process and it will help them anytime they encounter an article, for example.

The second context you discuss is"algorithmic curation," the often opaque process by which things are delivered to us on the internet. What are the challenges that presents and what cues are available?

We talked about transparency here. Usually the problem is that a lot of things end up on my newsfeed and it's often very unclear for what reason, and these algorithms that source the news feed, for example, are hidden. They are not known to the user. It becomes extremely difficult to understand why a specific article is ending up in the newsfeed. We do not know this gets back to asymmetry what they know about many other people who are consuming similar content, for example.That makes it extremely difficult for us to understand this curation.

The biggest challenge in the whole paper is that it's very unclear what cues could be available. But if you think about a less sophisticated algorithm not a machine-learning AI algorithm, but rather a simple, rule-based algorithm that could help provide cues. Because if it's just a linear combination of a few factors that source my content which, for example, could be recency, and how many of my friends have engaged with this article, and apreference that I have, for sportsor something that could be displayed. Sothere would be cues that in principle a platform with a rule-based algorithm could show and help people understand much better why some things came up and others not.

So how can nudging be usedhere?

When we talk about nudging in this situation, we're very close to just information providing. Sothe factors that led to the decision could be displayed more clearly, or displayed at all that would already help. Another nudge that would help would be a clear separation, even a visual separation, between different types of content. Currently in the newsfeed, everything is very blurred so a post frommy friends looks very similar to a commercial, or something from a politicianor political partyor a company. Sothese different entities and players could be much more clearlydifferentiated. That would change the choice architecture, to help us understand, for example, which is a paid ad and which is not. This is not in the best interest of the platform, because making an ad seemingly appear within the posts of my friends makes it much more personal than if I realize that's an ad. But I think we should make that newsfeed more "overviewable."

And how can boosting be used?

If the newsfeed is more transparent,it could also be customizable. Of course, you can customize the feed in a way by following certain people and outlets, but you cannot determine the order or frequency. So that would be possible, to actually change your preferences and say, "I want to see more sports and less politics,"or "More from my friends and less from news."That could allow the user to do self-nudging, so if I want to be more informed I can increase the amount of news I want to get. That gives the user back a bit of agency, at least.

Somoving on, the third category is social media. What are the challenges they present? And what cues are available?

The challenge here is that we certainly have access to a huge number of other people, and we can communicate with them in different forms, but this kind of communication is like nothing we are used to. It's difficult to have a feeling for what the numbers mean, social metrics likes for example, or uploads, downloadsor shares. We only see one number, the number of likes, for example. But there could be much more information available that could help us access the real consensus. We have access to such a large group of people, we can feel that even a very weird conspiracy theory, for example, is actually believed by many others. Two hundred seems like a very big number of other people believing it. So, you might actually think you are right in the middle of the conversation when actually you are on the outskirts of the discussion. That would be the challenge.

So how can nudges and boosts be used here?

A nudge in this context would be quite simple. It would be having just additional social information these are sometimes called social nudges. If we know what others are doing, this is influencing our behavior quite heavily. One example would be to show what the average reading time of other people were on this article, on a newsfeed in social media. That information would give us a hint that something is clickbait, or that most people just stayed on this article for a few seconds or just a minute, and that would help us make a decision to maybe not click on those things. So that's one thing. But also we can provide more information what other people on this network are doing not only aroundmy direct neighborhood, but rather on another side of the network so I can see other opinions, so we can have a feeling what the discussion is actually looks like.

Boosting has a more educated character, it would be more like a tool. One thing that would really help us is adding to social media posts a hint of trustworthiness. Soif sharing is very narrow, often it's a niche topic, not so trustworthy, and if it's broadly distributed, and many people at each point share it, it might be more true. So that's something one could teach people to learn, basically to understand the social spreading pattern. Currently we don't have much accessto this information, but if it were provided we could actually learn such patterns, and see if someone was, for example, replicating posts several times, artificially amplifying the message, or if someone was picking up an old story from someone very far away in the network and trying to push that. So that would be a skill that people could acquire with such a tool. They could see the social spreading pattern whenever they encounter something on social media, so they can actually learn what the patterns mean and get a feeling for social media and social dynamics.

In your conclusion, you write:"In our view, the future task for scientists is to design interventions that meet at least three selection criteria." What are they and why?

First, of course, is the need to be transparent, because we said the core of the problem is he intransparency of the platform. Soif scientists or regulators make new regulations, they have to be fully transparent for people to become trustworthy, I think that's a second point. I was talking about the danger of censorship early on, and so that's what we try to avoid here with transparency and trustworthiness, with cues providing context that cannot be confused with censorship. Because you never know who is in the endimplementing such tools and if they are by definition not able to do censorship, there might not be a danger of that. And the last criteria, specifically, is that it can't be gamed. What we mean here is that social media metrics that we have now are often gamed. Sothe "likes" are a very simple metric that can be gamed by increasing social engagement, by either paying for itor getting other people to click the "like"button, so it appears to be popular, but actually it isn't.

If we come up now with new cuesthat should help people to assess the quality, there need to be protections. So, for example, if you have a very simple metric like the numbers of references that an article cites, that's something that's quite easy to game by just typing them into the article or something like that. Soit has to goa bit deeper. It also has toshow which articles are actually cited, for example, which would make it a bit more difficult to game. But that's something you really have to think about and maybe even run experiments and check if it works and if anyone in the internet comes up with a solution to get around it that's something that happens a lot. That's also in the conclusion: all these things need to be independently tested.

Yes, you say it's important to examine a wide spectrum of interventions. Thisseems like an invitation to furthering empirical process, correct?

Definitely. The whole paper is a call for more research in this direction, more solution-oriented research, how to improve that environment. There's a lot of empirical work to be done. These are just ideas and suggestions. So yes, it's definitely a call for much more empirical work, and also independent from the platforms themselves.

Your focus is on what might be called normal users, notmalicious ones. In fact, you argue that "it is not necessary that all or even the majority of users engage with nudging or boosting interventions." Why are you confident in taking this approach?

We can never assume that everyone would engage with all the tools or interventions we are proposing. It will always be just a fraction. These external interventions are not making any judgments, they are getting people to make decisions for themselves. They of course cannot catchmalicious actors who have an agenda, so they can only help people who by accident fall prey to their tactics. So that's one reason. Another one is of course that we believe that we are very social beings. So, I was talking about Wikipedia as one of the examples of collective intelligence that actually has worked out. So that's what we try to use as a parallel once our online environments are more promotions of quality, in a collective-intelligence way, it will be pushed upward and reach people that would not have engaged with it before.

Finally, what's most important question I didn't ask and what's the answer?

Well, one important question is "Who should do that?' 'Who would be interested?"I think the answer is that maybe the platforms have someinterest in implementing such measures to improve quality,but it's always important to keep in mind that they are commercial entities and that they have a certain goal, which isto maximize user engagement so they can make their ad revenue.

Soit's probably also the responsibility of a democratic society to participate in this process of designing our online world. We have now let the platformsdo that for us for a very long time, for the 10 years or so that they been around. Now we think it's about time that, as a democratic society, we should come up with our own solutions. The option space for doing this is huge. There are a lot of options that we have not even touched or thought about yet.

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Remember when the internet was supposed to be transparent and democratic? There's still hope - Salon

Posthuman | Transhumanism Wiki | Fandom

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A posthuman or post-human is, according to the transhumanist thinkers, a hypothetical future being "whose basic capacities so radically exceed those of present humans as to be no longer unambiguously human by our current standards."[1]

The difference between the posthuman and other hypothetical sophisticated non-humans is that a posthuman was once a human, either in its lifetime or in the lifetimes of some or all of its direct ancestors. As such, a prerequisite for a posthuman is a transhuman, the point at which the human being begins surpassing his or her own limitations, but is still recognisable as a human person or similar.[1]

Many science fiction writers, such as Greg Egan, Bruce Sterling, Greg Bear, Charles Stross and Ken MacLeod, have written works set in posthuman futures.

Posthumans could be a symbiosis of human and artificial intelligence, or uploaded consciousnesses, or the result of making many smaller but cumulatively profound technological augmentations to a biological human, i.e. a cyborg. Some examples of the latter are redesigning the human organism using advanced nanotechnology or radical enhancement using some combination of technologies such as genetic engineering, psychopharmacology, life extension therapies, neural interfaces, advanced information management tools, memory enhancing drugs, wearable or implanted computers, and cognitive techniques.[1]

At what point does a human become posthuman? Steven Pinker, a cognitive neuroscientist and author of How the Mind Works, poses the following hypothetical, which is an example of the Ship of Theseus paradox:

In this sense, the transition between human and posthuman may be viewed as a continuum rather than an all-or-nothing event.

A variation on the posthuman theme is the notion of the "Posthuman God"; the idea that posthumans, being no longer confined to the parameters of "humanness", might grow physically and mentally so powerful as to appear possibly god-like by human standards. This notion should not be interpreted as being related to the idea portrayed in some soft science fiction that a sufficiently advanced species may "ascend" to a superior plane of existence - rather, it merely means that some posthuman being may become so exceedingly intelligent and technologically sophisticated that its behaviour would not possibly be comprehensible to modern humans, purely by reason of their limited intelligence and imagination. The difference here is that the latter stays within the bounds of the laws of the material universe, while the former exceeds them by going beyond it.

As used in this article, "posthuman" does not necessarily refer to a conjectured future where humans are extinct or otherwise absent from the Earth. As with other species who speciate from one another, both humans and posthumans could continue to exist. However, the apocalyptic scenario appears to be a viewpoint shared among a minority of transhumanists such as Marvin Minsky and Hans Moravec, who could be considered misanthropes, at least in regards to humanity in its current state. Alternatively, others such as Kevin Warwick argue for the likelihood that both humans and posthumans will continue to exist but the latter will predominate in society over the former because of their abilities.[3]

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Posthuman | Literary Theory and Criticism

Author(s): William S. Haney II

Series: Consciousness, literature and the arts, volume 2

Publisher: Rodopi, Year: 2006(1MB)

Author(s): Jodey Castricano

Series: Environmental Humanities

Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, Year: 2008(2MB)

Author(s): Joan Broadhurst Dixon, Eric Cassidy

Publisher: Routledge, Year: 1998(1MB)

Author(s): R. L. Rutsky

Series: Electronic mediations #2

Publisher: University of Minnesota Press, Year: 1999(1MB)

Author(s): Tyson E. Lewis, Richard Kahn

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan, Year: 2010(9MB)

Author(s): Daniel Dinello

Year: 2006(4MB)

Author(s): Kim Toffoletti

Year: 2007(1MB)

Author(s): Jeff Wallace

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan, Year: 2005(1MB)

Author(s): N. Katherine Hayles

Publisher: University Of Chicago Press, Year: 1999(8MB)

Author(s): Judith Halberstam, Ira Livingston

Series: Unnatural Acts

Publisher: Indiana Univ Pr, Year: 1995(8MB)

Author(s): Rosi Braidotti

Publisher: Polity, Year: 2013(2MB)

Author(s): David Roden

Publisher: Routledge, Year: 2015(1MB)

Author(s): Colebrook, C.

Series: Critical climate change

Year: 2014(4MB)

Author(s): Patricia MacCormack

Publisher: Ashgate, Year: 2012(1MB)

Author(s): Zoe Jaques

Series: Childrens Literature and Culture

Publisher: Routledge, Year: 2014(2MB)

Author(s): Arthur Kroker

Publisher: Polity, Year: 2014(1MB)

Author(s): Hauskeller, Michael

Series: Palgrave pivot

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan, Year: 2014(1MB)

Author(s): Taylor, Matthew A

Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press, Year: 2013(2MB)

Author(s): Victoria Flanagan (auth.)

Series: Critical Approaches to Childrens Literature

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan UK, Year: 2014(1MB)

Author(s): Carol A. Taylor, Christina Hughes (eds.)

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan UK, Year: 2016(6MB)

Author(s): Catherine Adams, Terrie Lynn Thompson (auth.)

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan UK, Year: 2016(4MB)

Author(s): Jami Weinstein, Claire Colebrook

Series: Critical Life Studies

Publisher: Columbia University Press, Year: 2017(2MB)

Author(s): Kristen Lillvis

Publisher: University of Georgia Press, Year: 2017(2MB)

Author(s): Rosi Braidotti, Maria Hlavajova (eds.)

Publisher: Bloomsbury, Year: 2018(9MB)

Author(s): Annouchka Bayley (auth.)

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan, Year: 2018(3MB)

Author(s): Erika Cudworth, Stephen Hobden and Emilian Kavalski (eds.)

Publisher: Routledge, Year: 2018(4MB)

Author(s): Silvia Battista

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan, Year: 2018(3MB)

Author(s): Bruce Clarke, Manuela Rossini (eds.)

Series: Cambridge Companions to Literature

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, Year: 2017(1MB)

Author(s): Christina Bieber Lake

Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press, Year: 2013(1MB)

Author(s): Debra Benita Shaw

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield, Year: 2018(8MB)

Author(s): Haraway Donna

Author(s): Joanna Zylinska

Series: Technologies (London, England)

Publisher: Continuum International Publishing Group, Year: 2002(11MB)

Author(s): James A Inman

Publisher: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Year: 2004(4MB)

Author(s): Anne Balsamo

Publisher: Duke University Press Books, Year: 1995(15MB)

Author(s): Margret Grebowicz, Helen Merrick

Publisher: Columbia University Press, Year: 2013(1MB)

Author(s): Sue Short (auth.)

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan UK, Year: 2005(1MB)

Author(s): Garfield Benjamin (auth.)

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan UK, Year: 2016(2MB)

Author(s): David Greven

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA, Year: 2017(2MB)

Author(s): Jacob Johanssen; Bonni Rambatan

Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform, Year: 2013(8MB)

Author(s): Gill Kirkup, Linda Janes, Kathryn Woodward and Fiona Hovenden

Publisher: Routledge, Year: 2000(2MB)

Author(s): Jeanine Thweatt-Bates

Series: Ashgate Science and Religion

Publisher: Ashgate, Year: 2012(1MB)

Author(s): Matthew K. Gold

Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press, Year: 2012(3MB)

Author(s): Susan Schreibman, Ray Siemens, John Unsworth

Series: Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture

Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell, Year: 2008(4MB)

Author(s): David M. Berry

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan, Year: 2012(7MB)

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Comprehensive Report on Industrial Robotics Market Set to Witness Huge Growth by 2026 | Abb Ltd., Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Ltd., Yaskawa Electric…

Industrial robots are machines used inside manufacturing units for performing various industrial procedures like welding, painting, packaging and labeling, palletizing product inspection, and testing. They are of various types, some of which include articulated robots, cylindrical robots, SCARA robots, and Cartesian robots. APAC region is the largest producer and employer of industrial robots in the world with a regional share of 40%-50% in 2018, owing to the thriving automotive industry in developing countries like China, Japan, and India.

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https://www.a2zmarketresearch.com/sample?reportId=138257

Note In order to provide more accurate market forecast, all our reports will be updated before delivery by considering the impact of COVID-19.

Top Key Players Profiled in This Report:

Abb Ltd., Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Ltd., Yaskawa Electric Corporation, Fanuc Corporation, Kuka Ag, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, Denso Corporation, Nachi-Fujikoshi Corp., Comau S.P.A., Universal Robots A/S, Cma Robotics S.P.A.

The key questions answered in this report:

Various factors are responsible for the markets growth trajectory, which are studied at length in the report. In addition, the report lists down the restraints that are posing threat to the global Industrial Robotics market. It also gauges the bargaining power of suppliers and buyers, threat from new entrants and product substitute, and the degree of competition prevailing in the market. The influence of the latest government guidelines is also analyzed in detail in the report. It studies the Industrial Robotics markets trajectory between forecast periods.

Segmentation analyzation- To experience profitability and make critical decisions for business growth, it is very essential to understand this complex Industrial Robotics market. So to reduce this complexity, the Industrial Robotics market is divided into various segments.

Market Segmentation by Type:

Traditional Industrial RobotsCollaborative Industrial Robots

Market Segmentation by Application:

AutomotiveElectrical And ElectronicsMetals And MachineryPlastics, Rubber, And ChemicalsFood And Beverages

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Global Industrial Robotics Market report provide insights on following points:

Table of Contents

Global Industrial Robotics Market Research Report 2020 2026

Chapter 1 Industrial Robotics Market Overview

Chapter 2 Global Economic Impact on Industry

Chapter 3 Global Market Competition by Manufacturers

Chapter 4 Global Production, Revenue (Value) by Region

Chapter 5 Global Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by Regions

Chapter 6 Global Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by Type

Chapter 7 Global Market Analysis by Application

Chapter 8 Manufacturing Cost Analysis

Chapter 9 Industrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream Buyers

Chapter 10 Marketing Strategy Analysis, Distributors/Traders

Chapter 11 Market Effect Factors Analysis

Chapter 12 Global Industrial Robotics Market Forecast

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Comprehensive Report on Industrial Robotics Market Set to Witness Huge Growth by 2026 | Abb Ltd., Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Ltd., Yaskawa Electric...

Weve lost our ability to be nuanced about the… – Enumclaw Courier-Herald

In The Six Grandfathers, Mount Rushmore, and our national identity July 8, ECH editor Ray Miller-Still mentions the Sioux name for Mount Rushmore no less than eight times.

He goes on to list the sins of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt. What a pity. The writer correctly points out that the four images were originally conceived to represent the founding, expansion, preservation and unification of the United States. I would guess that most visitors to the site understand that. Some people apparently now believe that statues, carvings and other images of historical Americans are similar (in a way) to the saints of the Catholic Church, i.e. that they are to be personally hallowed because of their perfection, but that is not true in the case of American icons they are not saints. Their images represent an idea and an ideal most often related to an accomplishment intended to invoke inspiration, aspiration and appreciation but not veneration.

Unfortunately it seems that we have lost the ability to consider this type of nuance, subtlety and ambiguity in our national discussions. What a pity. About 10 years ago, I was inspired by an article in the Wall Street Journal by Bret Stephens entitled Our Incompetent Civilization. The principles he cited are timeless, namely that there are limits to virtue and that while we must learn from history we cannot let it cripple us. As we try to cleanse our history we go too far, we inflict a deeply debilitating wound on ourselves a self loathing that is polarizing and immobilizing. What a pity.

Orwell said, The most effective way to destroy a people is to deny and obliterate their understanding of their own history. The high priests of the new totalitarianism preach this gospel of nihilism. Theyre unaware that their scripture and orthodoxy are not new, it never works, it leads to destruction but I fear we will travel down this dangerous path anew. Again, what a pity.

Brian DiNielli

Enumclaw

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Weve lost our ability to be nuanced about the... - Enumclaw Courier-Herald

Atomic Blonde Captures What It Feels Like to Live Through the End of the World – The Escapist

Atomic Blonde is a film about living through the end of the world.

Adapted from Antony Johnston and Sam Harts graphic novel The Coldest City, David Leitchs espionage thriller is set primarily in Berlin against the backdrop of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The individual elements of the plot are standard spy thriller stuff: There are two sides fighting over a MacGuffin that could radically alter the balance of power, several untrustworthy double agents, innocents who get caught in the crossfire.

Indeed, Atomic Blonde seems to deliberately invite comparisons to John le Carrs Cold War thrillers. Toby Jones is cast as a shady and careerist MI6 handler, evoking his role in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy six years earlier. The film refers to the real-life C as the head of British intelligence operations to add a hint of authenticity, just like le Carrs novels. Even the title of the source comic feels like an allusion to le Carrs own Berlin-set masterpiece, The Spy Who Came In from the Cold.

However, what distinguishes Atomic Blonde from the work of le Carr is the way in which the film filters le Carrs cynicism and wariness through a fin de sicle nihilism. Le Carrs plots tend to be tight and well-structured; his characters suffer at the whims of forces outside their control, but those forces at least move according to a discernible internal logic. In contrast, the plot of Atomic Blonde is a deliberate mess. Its character motivations are fuzzy, its internal logic hazy at best.

The plot of the movie focuses on MI6 agent Lorraine Broughton (Charlize Theron), who is dispatched to Berlin to solve the murder of James Gascoigne (Sam Hargrave) and identify the identity of the double-agent Satchel, who has been passing British secrets to the Russians. Her point of contact is local agent David Percival (James McAvoy), who has in the absence of a British embassy to control him gone somewhat native.

The plot of Atomic Blonde makes more sense in terms of spy movie clichs than it does in terms of narrative coherence. Unlike Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, the film is not a mystery. The character arcs seem determined by characters position in the plot and the expectations of the genre, rather than developing organically. Percival inevitably serves as Lorraines primary antagonist. Lorraine is inevitably revealed to be Satchel, working for the Americans while playing the British and Russians.

Atomic Blonde is aware of this. Late in the film, Lorraine is watching MTV News as host Kurt Loder broaches the big question of November 1989, Sampling: is it art, or is it just plagiarism? The ending of the movie pushes this idea to the fore, with Lorraine manipulating and splicing recordings to falsify audio evidence that Percival was Satchel all along. Words and ideas are taken out of context, jumbled up, and restructured to present a disjointed but familiar narrative.

This is because Atomic Blonde is more about mood than it is about actual plot. Indeed, the movie repeatedly underscores that the plot of the movie is entirely pointless. Lorraine is told that she has been dispatched to Berlin to recover an atomic bomb of information that could extend the Cold War another 40 years, but the audience knows this is nonsense. The film opens with a title card contextualizing events, reminding audiences that the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989.

As a result, everything in Atomic Blonde is completely pointless. Nothing that happens in the film will prolong the Cold War. All the plotting and scheming means absolutely nothing. Lorraine accuses her superiors of wanting nothing more than to clean up their own messes before the Iron Curtain comes crashing down. Atomic Blonde repeatedly juxtaposes Lorraines adventures with the civil protests taking place across the Eastern bloc, the events that will actually bring the Cold War to an end.

The end of the Cold War represented a seismic shift in the political order. Perhaps prematurely, Francis Fukuyama heralded the end of history. Phillip E. Wegner classified the long nineties the gap between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the attacks of Sept. 11 as life between two deaths. President George H.W. Bush would declare that there was a new world order following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War as an ordering principle.

Atomic Blonde embraces the idea of the collapse of the Berlin Wall as an apocalyptic event. West Berlin is portrayed as a truly hedonist space. Cars burning in the night, gunfire flares in the background, fireworks burst in the sky. Percival sees it as a playground, where he has set himself up as something approaching an outlaw king. Even Lorraine becomes embroiled in a doomed affair with French agent Delphine Lasalle (Sofia Boutella).

MI6 classifies Cold War Berlin as the Wild West. Its not an unfair description. Berlin was perhaps the last frontier. The Berlin Wall was one of the last obstructions to globalization, delineating East from West. The Iron Curtain marked the end of the West as firmly as the unyielding Pacific marked the boundaries of the American frontier. The dismantling of the Soviet Union brings all that crashing down. Without borders there can be no liminal spaces. The Berlin Wall was load bearing.

Atomic Blonde reinforces this sense of apocalypse by heightening its style. It juxtaposes horrific violence with catchy pop music (99 Luftballons) or gentle ballads (Father Figure). While the films plot is convoluted nonsense, director of photography Jonathan Sela bathes the film in neon colors to convey mood cool blues, rich reds, alien greens. The films choreography emphasizes the brutality of combat. Lorraines mission might be meaningless, but the pain she feels is real.

Atomic Blonde was released in July 2017. That summer, a lot of walls came crashing down. Two weeks earlier, War of the Planet of the Apes focused on the efforts of the deranged Colonel McCullough (Woody Harrelson) to build a wall to keep out more insanity. Less than a month later, the seventh season finale of Game of Thrones would demolish its own wall, allowing the Night Kings madness to spill forth onto Westeros. Walls and madness seemed linked in the popular imagination.

Of course, none of this was planned or intentional. These examples predate Donald Trumps campaign promise to build a border wall. Game of Thrones had been building to the collapse of that wall since G.R.R. Martin wrote the first book in 1991. Director Matt Reeves insisted that any contemporary parallels in War for the Planet of the Apes were totally unintentional. Atomic Blonde was based on a graphic novel from 2012 about events in 1989. Still, that resonance is inescapable.

This gets at the interesting aspect of the apocalypse at the heart of Atomic Blonde. The audience knows that the world will live through the collapse of the Berlin Wall. As much as Atomic Blonde captures the apocalyptic mood of Berlin on the eve of reunification everything you want is on the other side of fear, promises a neon sign in a dingy basement bar both film and audience understand that the world did not actually end when the wall came crashing down. It simply felt like it did.

This is what is most striking about revisiting Atomic Blonde three years after its release. It is apocalyptic, but it captures the sense of the end of the world as something perpetual and eternal. The world can feel like it is ending, even if it never actually does. This has a strange resonance with the times around the film: the cracks in the established political order during the second decade of the 21st century, two once-in-a-lifetime global recessions, a once-in-a-century pandemic.

Cold War thrillers often present the end of the world in stark terms, through the specter of atomic warfare and nuclear annihilation. These fears even found expression in apocalyptic science fiction of the era. Atomic Blonde takes the structure of a Cold War thriller and applies it to a more existential apocalypse. The threat in Atomic Blonde does not derive from a rigidly defined enemy, but instead from the breakdown of the ordering principles that structure the world itself.

Atomic Blonde understands what it feels like to live through the apocalypse and to discover that the world has not actually ended.

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Atomic Blonde Captures What It Feels Like to Live Through the End of the World - The Escapist

The 5 Best (& 5 Worst) ’90s Romance Movies | ScreenRant – Screen Rant

The nineties was a decade known for its cynicism, but it still produced some epic romances, like Titanic. But the genre also delivered some duds too.

After the sentimental warmth and flashy pop of 80s movies, 90s movies captured the nihilism and too-cool-for-school attitude of Generation X with much more cynical fare like Fight Club and Reality Bites. This put love stories in a tough spot, because romance requires writers to be earnest and emotional, but the social climate called for the exact opposite.

RELATED:The 5 Best (& 5 Worst) '90s Comedies

Naturally, the 90s brought some terrible movie romances, just as any decade does, but it also brought some great ones. Oddly enough, one of the greatest 90s love stories came from the mind of Quentin Tarantino. Here are the five best and five worst romance movies from the 90s.

It can be easy for a movie like Groundhog Day to use its high-concept premise as a crutch and fall into clichs, but Danny Rubins masterfully crafted screenplay remains inspired and story-minded in every single scene.

A lot of movie romances dont give their characters a reason to fall in love, which ends up ringing false, but in Groundhog Day, getting stuck reliving the same day forces Bill Murrays curmudgeonly character Phil Connors to grow as a person and learn from his mistakes as he tries to woo Andie MacDowells Rita Hanson.

Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger fell in love on the set of The Marrying Man, and according to reports from the set, it made them both a nightmare to work with. Baldwin threw temper tantrums in which he broke equipment around the set and Basinger refused to do more than one take on any scene (so its no wonder her performance was nominated for a Razzie).

This movies screenplay is credited to Neil Simon, one of the greatest comedy writers who ever lived, which is confusing because the finished movie is entirely devoid of wit and humor.

Tony Scott brought Quentin Tarantinos script for True Romance to the screen as a masterpiece. The only changes the director made to Tarantinos original script were linearizing the story and switching out the tragic ending for a happy one.

RELATED:All Of Quentin Tarantino's Screenplays (Including The Ones He Didn't Direct), Ranked

The movie combines a pulpy crime tale with a gripping love story about an escort who falls for her first client. They steal some cocaine from her pimp and head to Hollywood to sell it. Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette have fantastic chemistry in the lovable lead roles.

Mickey Rourke returned to the role of John Gray from Adrian Lynes 9 Weeks in 1997 for a sequel called Love in Paris (or Another 9 Weeks, as its called in some markets).

The first 9 Weeks movie at least got some excitement out of its erotic overtones; in the sequel, the eroticism falls flat and, against all odds, grows boring.

Cameron Crowes Jerry Maguire starts off as the story of a sports agent, played by Tom Cruise, who leaves his firm and tries to break out on his own, struggling to get anyone to go with him. But the film morphs into a love story when he falls for Rene Zellweger.

Jerry Maguire is the source of some of the most romantic quotes in movie history, including You had me at hello.

Sandra Bullock and Ben Affleck have each starred in plenty of bad romantic comedies in their time, so it came as no surprise when they paired up for a romcom and it was reallybad.

The plot of Forces of Nature stumbles from scene to scene and Bullock and Affleck dont have a dash of chemistry.

Robert Zemeckis Forrest Gump is about a lot of things. Throughout the title characters life, we get a Disney-fied take on major milestones in 20th century American history the Vietnam War, the Watergate scandal, the Black Panther Party, the rise of Apple, the HIV crisis etc. but at the heart of it all is Forrests love for Jenny.

RELATED:Like A Box Of Chocolates: 10 Wild Behind-The-Scenes Facts About Forrest Gump

Its not a particularly great romance, since Jenny leads on Forrest for decades and only has pity sex with him when shes got an incurable STD, but the fact that Forrests adoration gets him through incredibly tough times is heartwarming.

As the story of two teenage cousins going through puberty alone and falling in love, the first Blue Lagoon movie was pretty creepy, but it was a masterpiece compared to the sequel.

In Return to the Blue Lagoon, Milla Jovovich and Brian Krause star as two new characters who similarly get stranded on a tropical island, come of age, and fall in love. Somehow, it was even worse the second time around.

James Cameron reportedly only made Titanic so that Fox executives would pay for him to dive down and look at the remains of the shipwreck, but for a movie made to fund a hobby, its a cultural landmark.

Cameron uses foreshadowing brilliantly as Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet fall in love, headed toward an inevitable tragedy that only the audience knows is coming.

Nathaniel Hawthornes The Scarlet Letter is one of the most classic works of literature ever written. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of this 1995 adaptation, which deviated wildly from the source material, and not for the better.

The only way to enjoy this version of The Scarlet Letter is to view it as an unintentional comedy. Taken as a parody of the classic story, its hilarious.

NEXT:The 5 Best (& 5 Worst) 2000s Romance Movies

Next Harry Potter: Which Hogwarts Professor Are You Based On Your Chinese Zodiac Type?

Ben Sherlock is a writer, filmmaker, and comedian. In addition to writing for Screen Rant and CBR, covering a wide range of topics from Spider-Man to Scorsese, Ben directs independent films and takes to the stage with his standup material. He's currently in pre-production on his feature directorial debut (and has been for a while, because filmmaking is expensive). Previously, he wrote for Taste of Cinema and BabbleTop.

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From ‘Beastie Boys Story’ to ‘Hamilton,’ these are the best movies of 2020 so far – AZCentral

Its been a weird year for movies.

Ha. Of course it has. Its been a weird year for everything. The COVID-19 pandemic has closed theaters since March, more or less. Production has ground to a halt. Plans for reopening and release dates for big films like Tenet keep getting pushed back.

Its a mess, but so is everything.

And yet! There have been some really good movies so far in 2020. Granted, you have to watch from your couch or on your laptop, which means a movie like Da 5 Bloods, good as it is, cant be seen the way it was intended to be, on a giant screen with thunderous sound.

But at least you get to see it, provided you have Netflix. And you can always turn up the volume.

You should see it.

In fact, there are several you should see. Here are the 10 best movies of the year so far.

Kelly Reichardt makes exceptional movies, and this is no exception. Shes the perfect antidote to the blockbuster mentality, making small, character driven films. "First Cow"is a little different its the story of a cook and his eventual business partner who cookup a nice little business making oily cakes and selling them to settlers in the Oregon Territory in the 1820s. The problem is that they have to steal milk from the only cow in the territory to make them. In Reichardts hands this is far more tense than it sounds, and by the standards of her films, its practically an action thriller. John Magaro and Orion Lee are outstanding as the two men. The cow is pretty dang good, too (really).

How to watch: Available to rent or buy on Amazon Prime, iTunes, YouTube and Google Play.

The Beastie Boys started out as obnoxious brats, or at least pretending to be so thoroughly that the ruse overtook reality. Who could have guessed Spike Jonzes documentary about them would be the feel-good film of the year? Of course, they changed over the years, matured. Jonze filmed three appearances as part of a tour to promote Beastie Boys Book, but its very much a performance by surviving members Michael Diamond and Adam Horowitz (Adam Yauch died of cancer in 2012.) Its entertaining, funny, the music is good and its unexpectedly moving. Really good stuff.

How to watch: Streaming on Apple TV+.

Jonathan Majors as David, Isiah Whitlock Jr. as Melvin, Norm Lewis as Eddie, Clark Peters as Otis, Delroy Lindo as Paul of "Da 5 Bloods."(Photo: David Lee/Netflix)

Spike Lees had a late-career resurgence; BlacKkKlansman was a welcome return to form, and so is this. Its the story of four Black Vietnam veterans who return to the battlefield of their youth both to find the remains of their beloved leader and take care of a little business. (The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is just one of the films that inspired Lee.) Its a little all over the place and theres enough plot for several movies. But Lees direction is, as always, powerful, and Delroy Lindo ought to win in Oscar (if they have them).

How to watch: Streaming on Netflix.

This may not be the best movie on this list, but its probably the coolest. Director Andrew Pattersons feature debut is made to look like an episode of a Twilight Zone-like TV show, but the framing device is just window dressing. The real story is about a small town in New Mexico in the 1950s where strange things start happening one night. We see the goings-on through the actions of a DJ (Jake Horowitz) and a high school girl (Sierra McCormick) as they sort out just who, or what, is causing the weird sounds on the radio waves. Its a little on the nose, story-wise, but the direction is terrific, and its a lot of fun.

How to watch: Streaming on Amazon Prime.

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Yes, its great. It just is. (And yes, it's a movie, sort of.) Lin-Manuel Mirandas groundbreaking musical, about Alexander Hamilton and other founding fathers, wound up on Disney+ thanks to COVID-19 (it was originally set to open in theaters in 2021). The timing, as it turns out, was perfect. Its true that the story merely touches on slavery. But thecasting actors of color as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson (Daveed Diggs is flat-out fantastic) made waves when the musical opened for good reason. Also, Miranda has turned some of the criticism into a conversation about race. Plus, its history you can dance to.

How to watch: Streaming on Disney+.

There are many variations on the Groundhog Day theme; this is one of the best. Andy Samberg has found the perfect role as a low-energy sort trapped in an endless time loop, an unhappy guest at a wedding. Hes smarmy yet likable, and eventually Cristin Milioti (as good or better than Samberg) gets sucked in, too. (A funny, angry J.K. Simmons was already there.) Director Max Barbakow doesnt skimp on the nihilism, much to his credit, and Samberg and Milioti have charmingchemistry. Also: one of Sambergs best lines feels especially relevant now: So this is today. Today is yesterday. And tomorrow is also today.

How to watch: Streaming on Hulu.

If you only know Julia Garner from Ozark, well, lucky you shes a blast as the sly, smart hillbilly Ruth Langmore (and won an Emmy). But you should definitely check out her work here, as a quiet assistant to a powerful producer in Kitty Greens film. It never mentions Harvey Weinstein, but he is a clear inspiration for the abusive boss. Garner quietly, brilliantly reveals the cost of working for someone like this. She soldiers on in the face of it, but the toll is clear and haunting.

How to watch: Available to rent or buy on Amazon Prime, iTunes, YouTube and Google Play.

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Eliza Hittmans judgement-free film, about a teenager traveling to New York with her cousin to get an abortion, is remarkably original. Sidney Flanigan, in her first role, shines as the young woman, whose life in Pennsylvania is depressing. The bulk of the film is a road trip, as the two sort out the dicey finances and the mountains of paperwork and red tape. The scene that gives the film its title is heartbreaking, and perfectly performed.

How to watch: Available to rent or buy on Amazon Prime, iTunes, YouTube and Google Play.

A different kind of role for Hugh Jackman, who plays a meticulous school superintendent who has led the school to glory while systematically ripping it off. Its based on a true story, and director Cory Finley keeps things breezy. Allison Janney is good as Jackmans assistant, whos got her own scams going on. But its really Jackmans film, and he carries it well. (Bonus points for the power-of-journalism story within.)

How to watch: HBO.

"The Lodge" isn't exactly the feel-good story of the year. Know that going in. If you saw directors Severin Fiala and Veronika Franzs Goodnight Mommy, thats no surprise. They dont skimp on the horror. But Riley Keough as a woman about to marry a man with two children makes it all worthwhile. She has an interesting history she grew up in a death cult. She and the children wind up stranded in a winter storm in the lodge of the title. Things go south from there. An exceptionally creepy film.

How to watch: Stream on Hulu; available to rent or buy on Amazon Prime, iTunes, YouTube and Google Play.

Reach Goodykoontz at bill.goodykoontz@arizonarepublic.com. Facebook: facebook.com/GoodyOnFilm. Twitter: @goodyk.

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From 'Beastie Boys Story' to 'Hamilton,' these are the best movies of 2020 so far - AZCentral

Roaming Charges: The Meaning of BB King in the Age of BLM – CounterPunch

B.B. King performing at Sing Sing Prison, 1973.

In the summer of 1998, Alexander Cockburn and I spent a few days in North Richmond, California, a battered industrial city just outside of Berkeley. We had just published our book Whiteout on the CIA and drug trafficking and had been invited to speak at a black church about the horrific toll of the drug war on urban America. North Richmond was the Antietam of this senseless slaughter, its neighborhoods ravaged by gang shootings and police killings, most of them fueled by the crack trade abetted by US intelligence agencies to help fund their covert wars in Central America. At the time, North Richmond was staggering under the highest murder rate in California, more than 50 killings per hundred thousand residents. We spent the afternoon helping local organizers and grieving families place over 200 black crosses at sites where drug killings had occurred during the past few years.

After a somber day, Alex and I drove down to Oakland in Cockburns notoriously temperamental 1960 Valiant to see B.B. King perform. King was touring with his big band, under the immaculate direction of pianist Millard Lee, and they were smoking hot that night, opening with a driving rendition of Sweet Little Angel and closing it down 90 minutes later with a fiery version of Let the Good Times Roll. King had swelled to a Pantagruelian girth by then and he spent most of the evening performing from a chair. Even so, his voice remained robust and he picked and bent his notes as soulfully as ever. About halfway through the show, King summoned the bass player to hoist him from his seat. King strolled to the mic and told the crowd that he had spent the afternoon visiting with inmates at San Quentin. I jotted down what he said that night in my notebook. Friends, there are too many of us locked away. Locked away and forgotten. Theyre in prison, but lets not think of them as prisoners. They are people, like you and me, down on their luck. Then he launched into Ten Long Years. Afterwards, Alex told me it was the best concert hed ever heard. (Of course, Cockburn had also made the same snap declaration about a Little Richard gig, during which Alex had nodded off 30 minutes into the performance.)

Thirty years earlier, King released LiveinCook County Jail, a scorching performance recorded before a thousand inmates in one of Chicagos most notorious facilities. The platform King and his band played on during that seminal concert had served as a gallows for executions not too many years earlier. While he was at the jail, King spent the day talking to inmates, about 80 percent of whom were black. They told me how they came to be locked up, King said. They would stay for seven or eight months before the trial took place because they couldnt afford the bail. And then when they did go to trial, if they were guilty, the time was not deducted from the time they were given. And if they were innocent, they got no compensation.

Like Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard, King made a point to perform in prisons and jails for decades until the American incarceration industry became sadistic enough to prevent inmates from enjoying live music. He played a stunning set at Sing Sing with Joan Baez, performed many times at San Quentin and in 1981, invited Congressman John Conyers to attend his concert before 3,000 inmates at the infamous Jackson State Penitentiary in Michigan, then the largest walled prison in the world. When King was asked why he played in prisons so often, he said he had envisioned himself behind bars. Ive never been in trouble myself but I think about, it could have just as easily been B.B. King inside, instead of B.B. King going out there to play.

King was so serious about the state of American prisons that in 1971 he teamed up with defense attorney F. Lee Bailey to start the Foundation for the Advancement of Inmate Rehabilitation and Recreation, which advocated for humane conditions in jailhouses, the education and training of inmates, an end to solitary confinement, and the introduction of more art and music into prison life. The timing for such a campaign couldnt have been more urgent. That very year, Nixon had inaugurated his war on drugs, a cruel and relentless blitzkrieg against black Americans that would eventually ensnare Kings own daughter Patty, landing her in a grim Texas prison. In Nixons own words, scribbled down by HR Haldeman, its all about the blacks.

When King recorded Live inCook County Jail, the US prison population stood at 450,000, less than 100 inmates per 100,000 people. By the time King died in 2015, the US sported the highest incarceration rate in the world, totaling about 2.3 million prisoners, more than 712inmates per 100,000 people. The vast majority are jailed for drug crimes.

Riley B. King, great-grandson of liberated slaves, was born in 1925 on the Berclair cotton plantation outside of Ita Bena. Late in his life, King dispelled any notion that he left rural Mississippi for the neon lure of the big city. Instead, King said he fled Indianola for Memphis out of fear: I saw lynchings, seen people hanging, seen people drug through the streets. I had to get away.

For the next 70 years, the hellhound of race-hatred haunted his trail, claiming friends, family and lovers, as the terrorists in white sheets of his youth mutated into state-sanctioned violence by men in blue. Yet BB King never surrendered to despondency. The great Buddha of the Blues remained a voice of compassion, a voice charged with the faith that no human lifehowever desiccated by the cruelties of the worldis ever beyond reclaiming.

When Im down, I drop the needle on BB King. Almost any record will do, but theres nothing quite like his raucous version of Help the Poor, from Live at the Regal, for psychic uplift. In his singing and playing, I hear the sounds of fierce struggle, of shackles breaking, of unyielding aspiration toward a freer future. Kings music is, and will always remain, an antidote to despair and nihilism.

BB King Live at Sing Sing

Booked UpWhat Im reading this week

Separated: Inside an American TragedyJacob Soboroff(Custom House)

Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the Worlds Most Dangerous ManMary Trump(Simon & Schuster)

The Life and Death of Ancient CitiesGreg Woolf(Oxford)

Sound GrammarWhat Im listening to this week

Bloody NosesRichard Thompson(Bandcamp)

Pursuance: the ColtranesLakecia Benjamin(Bandcamp)

InterloperHoly Wave(Reverberation Appreciation Society)

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Roaming Charges: The Meaning of BB King in the Age of BLM - CounterPunch