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Trump Advisers Want to Get WiFi, Amazon Deliveries in National Parks

Posted on November 10, 2019 by Danzig

A number of Trump advisers have offered their

WiFistone

If the current administration has its way, your next outdoor camping experience at Yellowstone could include things like WiFi connectivity and Amazon deliveries.

A number of Trump administration advisers have offered their “modernized” vision of national park campgrounds, including WiFi, food trucks, electric bike rentals, flushable toilets, and even Amazon deliveries, the Los Angeles Times reports.

It’s a troubling instance of a much larger attempt to privatize a large number of public services by the White House, including the U.S. Postal Service and even public education.

Heritage on the Line

The advisors’ proposal was summarized in a public letter to the Interior Department.

“Our recommendations would allow people to opt for additional costs if they want, for example, Amazon deliveries at a particular campsite,” Derrick Crandall, vice-chairman of an outdoor recreation advisory committee, told the Los Angeles Times. “We want to let Americans make their own decisions in the marketplace.”

But critics argue that it could threaten the sanctity of national parks and give too much control to private industry players.

“America’s outdoor heritage is on the line,” Jayson O’Neill, deputy director of the Western Values Project, a nonprofit public lands group, told the LA Times. “The trouble with these recommendations is that they were written by concessionaire industry representatives vying for more control of national parks.”

READ MORE: Trump team has a plan for national parks: Amazon, food trucks and no senior discounts [Los Angeles Times]

More on National Parks: Virtual Travel: Google is Bringing the National Parks to a VR Headset Near You

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Kanye West Unveils Yeezy Sneakers Made of Algae Foam

Posted on November 10, 2019 by Danzig

Kanye West just shared a new shoe prototype from his Yeezy fashion line — and the kicks contain environmentally friendly algae foam.

While on stage at the Fast Company Innovation Festival on Thursday, Kanye West shared a new shoe prototype from his Yeezy fashion line — and the kicks contain environmentally friendly algae.

“Eco-concerns are intersecting with what we do,” Steven Smith, the head designer at Yeezy, said from the stage. “This is just the beginning of the future that Kanye envisioned for us to start working on.”

The sneaker prototype was manufactured in Atlanta from a combination of petroleum-based ethylene-vinyl acetate and foam produced from algae. West told the audience that the new Yeezy headquarters in Cody, Wyoming, will include a hydroponic farm where the company can grow its own algae.

“We’re going to be farming and going seed to sole,” West said.

According to a Thursday tweet from the official Yeezy Twitter account, the shoes are Yeezy Foam Runners, a style first unveiled in September and set for a 2020 release.

It’s not yet clear whether all Yeezy Foam Runners will be made with algae or if the algae shoes will be a subset of the line. But either way, the eco-friendly sneakers will be available in early 2020 for $75, according to the tweet.

The prototype pair West showed off on Thursday were a bland khaki color, but he said the company is looking into environmentally friendly dyes. Regardless of color, though, the Croc-esque style of the sneakers might not appeal to everyone — though the emphasis on using eco-friendly materials in fashion probably should.

The fashion industry pumps millions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere every year, while many of the chemicals and dyes used during manufacturing end up polluting Earth’s waterways.

By switching to more eco-friendly materials and processes, players in the fashion industry can do their part to stop this harm from befalling the planet — one ugly sneaker at a time.

READ MORE: Kanye just unveiled a new foam sneaker made from algae [Fast Company]

More on sustainable fashion: Seaweed Sneakers Look Fly, Could Help Save the Environment

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Someone Published All the Membership Data From a Neo-Nazi Website

Posted on November 10, 2019 by Danzig

Someone just released a massive amount of data from Iron March, one of the most influential neo-Nazi websites in the world.

Data Dump

Prior to its abrupt close in November 2017, Iron March was one of the most influential neo-Nazi websites in the world. Investigators have linked the site to murders, acts of terrorism, and fascist groups in at least nine different countries.

And now, thanks to a leak from an anonymous source, researchers have access to the entire contents of Iron March — including the user names, registered email addresses, and IP addresses of nearly 1,000 site members.

Hate Speech

On Wednesday, someone using the handle “antifa-data” posted a 1GB SQL database appearing to contain all of the data from Iron March to the Internet Archive.

In addition to info that could lead to the identification of Iron March members, the database also includes the contents of members’ public messages and private chats, much of which — as you’d expect from a neo-Nazi site— is rife with hateful speech and white supremacist rhetoric.

Dropping Names

Disturbingly, as noted by Bellingcat, an open source journalism website, early analysis of the leak suggests that several Iron March members were active military personnel at the time they posted to the site. Others, meanwhile, expressed a strong desire to join the military.

Several members of the site have been outed directly on social media already, including a former congressional candidate — and the leak is likely to help researchers and investigators identify numerous other neo-Nazis.

More on neo-Nazis: Facebook Reportedly Let Marketers Advertise to Nazis

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Someone Published All the Membership Data From a Neo-Nazi Website

Scientists Detect Huge Thermonuclear Blast in Deep Space

Posted on November 10, 2019 by Danzig

NASA scientists detected a thermonuclear explosion in space, which they believe was caused by a fusion reaction on the surface of a pulsar.

Big Boom

NASA recently detected a massive thermonuclear explosion coming from outer space.

The culprit seems to be a distant pulsar, the space agency reports, which is the stellar remains of a star that blew up in a supernova but was too small to form a black hole. NASA spotted the burst because it sent out an intense beam of x-rays that got picked up by the agency’s orbital observatory NICER.

All in all, it serves as a potent reminder: space is an extremely dangerous, extremely metal place.

Cosmic Annihilation

The August explosion released in 20 seconds the same amount of energy our Sun would need 10 days to unleash, according to research published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters last month.

“This burst was outstanding,” NASA astrophysicist Peter Bult, who led the research, said in NASA’s statement. “We see a two-step change in brightness, which we think is caused by the ejection of separate layers from the pulsar surface, and other features that will help us decode the physics of these powerful events.”

Space Forensics

Astronomers think the thermonuclear explosion was caused by helium that sunk beneath the surface of the pulsar and fused into a ball of carbon.

“Then the helium erupts explosively and unleashes a thermonuclear fireball across the entire pulsar surface,” NICER head Zaven Arzoumanian explained.

More on space: Pulsar Finally Found in the Andromeda Galaxy

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Ambrosia Is Back to Selling Transfusions of Young People’s Blood

Posted on November 10, 2019 by Danzig

Ambrosia Health is back.

Following a brief shuttering — and then a rebranding effort during which it was known as Ivy Plasma — the “young blood” clinic has gone back to its roots: selling plasma sourced from the blood of 16- to 25- year-olds to healthy patients who believe the transfusions can give them ill-defined health benefits.

“People really like the Ambrosia name and brand, so Ambrosia is going to continue,” Ambrosia founder and young blood advocate Jesse Karmazin told OneZero. “The resounding response from people wanting to sign up was, ‘keep things the same.’ So that’s what we’re going to do.”

With the return to its original branding, Ambrosia is also embracing a new business model.

When it was Ivy Plasma, the clinic offered transfusions in San Francisco and Tampa. It since shuttered the clinic in Tampa, but Karmazin told Futurism that Ambrosia will ship plasma directly to any customer’s doctor so they can get their dose of young blood without having to fly to California.

“We use overnight shipping to deliver the plasma to patients’ doctors‘ offices, and provide training for the doctors to infuse it,” Karmazin told Futurism last month. “This way, the number of patients we are able to serve has increased dramatically. I don’t operate a blood bank.”

Ambrosia’s checkered, on-again-off-again status was spurred by an FDA statement issued in February in which the regulatory agency warned that transfusions of young blood didn’t have any of the health benefits — especially enhanced youthfulness, improved longevity, or reversed memory loss — that advocates claimed it did.

In slightly more words, the FDA essentially called young blood transfusions dangerous scams.

Because of the FDA warning, Karmazin’s clinic offered off-label treatments when it resurfaced as Ivy Plasma. That meant that customers could get their treatments if they desired, but they did so at their own risk and then-Ivy Plasma wasn’t legally permitted to claim it would do them any good.

That practice continues today in the newly rebranded Ambrosia, according to OneZero. But the clinic’s updated website includes more details about the treatment.

“Our treatment has been found to produce statistically significant improvements in biomarkers related to Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, inflammation, and stem cells in our clinical trial,” the website reads. “Patients have reported subjective improvements in athletics, memory, skin quality, sleep, and other areas.”

When asked whether the FDA’s rules had grown more lenient, Karmazin told Futurism he had consulted with the agency as well as “a number of lawyers” and wasn’t worried about the claims made on his website.

“I’m comfortable with going ahead and offering this treatment commercially to patients,” he told OneZero.

The post Ambrosia Is Back to Selling Transfusions of Young People’s Blood appeared first on Futurism.

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Ambrosia Is Back to Selling Transfusions of Young People’s Blood

The CDC Says It Really Knows What’s Causing “Vape Lung” This Time

Posted on November 10, 2019 by Danzig

New CDC research solidifies scientists' hunch that a compound called vitamin E acetate is causing the ongoing

Finally, the government says it’s pretty sure what’s behind the mysterious “vape lung” epidemic that’s been spreading across the country, affecting more than 2,000 people and killing at least 39.

A compound called vitamin E acetate has been found in all 29 lung fluid samples taken by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), The Washington Post reports. And while the CDC was looking for a wide range of other toxins and dangerous compounds, it didn’t find any in those particular samples.

The FDA first identified vitamin E acetate as a possible cause for vape lung back in September. The compound, which WaPo reports is used as a cutting agent in black market THC vapes, is considered safe to eat and touch. But scientists have a poor understanding of what vaporized vitamin E acetate does when inhaled.

The CDC research strengthens the vitamin E acetate hypothesis because the 29 lung fluid samples came from people in 10 U.S. states, helping to rule out other, more local causes for infections. Still, it doesn’t serve as a definitive explanation for vape lung.

“While this is a big step in helping us understand what may be causing these injuries, these findings do not rule out the potential for other compounds or ingredients as contributing factors,” public health expert Scott Becker, executive director of the Association of Public Health Laboratories, told WaPo. “There may be more than one cause of the outbreak.”

Still, CDC principal deputy director Anne Schuchat told WaPo that the research paints vitamin E acetate as “a very strong culprit of concern” for vape lung. Even if other factors are at play, that knowledge could help prevent the outbreak from spreading even farther.

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‘Midway’ review: Celebrating heroism with an epic | Movie-reviews – Gulf News

Posted on November 10, 2019 by Danzig

MID_D36_11971.NEF Image Credit: Reiner Bajo

Midway is so square, so old-school and old-fashioned, it almost feels avant-garde. Ambiguity is not its goal, nor is nihilism its motivating philosophy. It aims to celebrate heroism, sacrifice, determination and grit, and if you dont like that it really does not care.

Though its appearing some 70 years after the epochal Second World War battle it re-creates and more than 40 years after a Hollywood film with the same name on the same subject this Midway, as directed by Roland Emmerich and written by Wes Tooke, pays no attention to the notion that times have changed.

This is a film where men stand on top of bars when they have important speeches to make, where dialogue like thats the bravest damn thing Ive ever seen and lets take it upstairs to the old man is thick on the land, and an officer who neglects his wife to help fight the war promises he will spend the rest of my life making it up to her.

Though it is unlikely to win any awards for its words, Midway has two things going for it. Its based on the exploits of real men who did truly heroic things in a battle that changed the direction of the Pacific War, and it has Emmerichs gift for epic images.

A director best known for science fiction extravaganzas like Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow (though he also helmed the Revolutionary War historical drama The Patriot), Emmerich knows his way around stirring visuals.

Led by cinematographer Robby Baumgartner and production designer Kirk M Petruccelli, the Midway visual team managed to convincingly re-create nautical action, complete with swooping planes and massive aircraft carriers, on a soundstage surrounded by blue screen walls.

Although the 1976 Midway boasted many stars including Charlton Heston, Henry Fonda, James Coburn, Glenn Ford, Robert Mitchum, Toshiro Mifune and more this years version takes a different tack.

The bigger stars on the marquee do cameos as Navy bigwigs (Woody Harrelson is Admiral Chester W Nimitz. Dennis Quaid is Admiral William Bull Halsey) while solid young actors including Ed Skrein, Patrick Wilson, Luke Evans, Nick Jonas and Mandy Moore carry the brunt of the dramatic action.

Also noteworthy is that the filmmakers have taken pains to present the Japanese in as even-handed a way as possible. In fact Midway begins with a 1937 heart-to-heart chat that starts in subtitled Japanese between Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto (Etsushi Toyokawa) and Tokyo-stationed US Naval Intelligence officer Edwin Layton (Wilson).

Japan is at a crossroads, the admiral, whose life has been threatened for being too moderate, tells Layton. Dont push us into a corner.

Cut to 1941 December 7, to be exact where the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and, in particular, the sinking of the battleship USS Arizona are re-created with considerable oomph.

At sea nearby is the massive aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, home base to hot dog pilot Dick Best (Skrein), a gum-chewer from New Jersey whose gifts as an aviator are overshadowed by a hot-headed desire to throw caution about the Japanese fleet to the winds and put a 500-pound bomb down their smokestack as soon as possible.

While Best, aided by ever-understanding wife Ann (Moore), has to learn to moderate his temper to become a better leader of men, Layton, now stationed at Pearl, has to convince his dubious superiors he knows what hes talking about when he insists that the Japanese are up to something involving the tiny but strategic atoll known as Midway.

Though the exploits of the Navy pilots, particularly the remarkable ones of the real-life Best, are at the heart of Midway, the film also finds the space to include both submarine action and the raid on Tokyo led by Army Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle (Aaron Eckhart.)

In fact, in an attempt to convey multiple stories, Midway introduces so many characters it can be difficult to track who is who and hard to figure what the exact story of the battle is.

The fact that heroes were involved, however, is the one thing that does come through loud and clear, and that, Emmerich and company no doubt feel, is the thing that really counts.

Midway is now showing across the UAE.

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MID_D56_17754.NEF Image Credit: Reiner Bajo

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For Artist Tobias Spichtig, Shopping is a Way of Sculpting – Interview

Posted on November 10, 2019 by Danzig

Should a luxury store design offer shoppers an idealized vision of the human experience? The Swiss artist Tobias Spichtig doesnt think so. Spichtig has taken his series of Gheist sculpturesethereally thin, human-like figures that at first glance may appear to be some sort of demented mannequinto Balenciaga, a perfectly dystopian complement to the stores new design. With tubular aluminum railing, suede couches, and cloudscapes projected onto the ceilings, the new stores carry the aura of a movie set in which a group of models flee a climate change-destroyed earth in a minimalist escape pod.

This strain of Balenciaga nihilism, designed by Demna Gvasalia and Niklas Bildstein Zaar, can be experienced at the stores new flagship on Madison Avenue, the first to include a sculpture by Spichtig. Aside from the flagship, Spichtigs sculptures will also be featured in new stores in Paris and London, among other cities. To celebrate Spichtigs love of the macabre (and luxury goods), Interview spoke with Spichtig over the phone from his studio in Berlin about his sculptures, the art of shopping, and the Grim Reaper.

PATRICK MCGRAW: You once told me that you starting making the ghost sculptures because you felt lonely and wanted to fill your apartment with friends.

TOBIAS SPICHTIG: Yeah, I was living on my own and thought it would be nice to have people around all the time. So I took these clothes that people had left in my apartment after a New Years party. You know that feeling you get when there are all these clothes lying around, that theyre kind of looking at you? Or you think for a second, Oh shit, thats a person? So I made the first one with these clothes and kept making more.

MCGRAW: Did you throw more parties to get more clothes?

SPICHTIG: I eventually started going to thrift stores to get more clothes, so the sculptures were also a bit of an excuse to go shopping. I had always wanted to be into fashion but I didnt really have money. So I told myself I could buy clothes because Im making works out of them.

MCGRAW: So if clothes are the artists materials, then buying clothes is like sculpting

SPICHTIG: Well, if youre doing figurative sculpture, and you want to make a body, the proportions are already built into the clothes. Clothes are also empty, and I wanted them to stay that way. When I started making them, there were mannequins in every museum show. But the ghosts are kind of the opposite of mannequins. Theyre just empty clothes. I wanted them to be ghostly, or like the Grim Reaper.

MCGRAW: Did you shop for a specific type of clothes?

SPICHTIG: Mostly clothes that I would wear. Then theres certain things you cant buy. I mean if you buy shorts, then its going to look like somebody cut their legs off, you know? So its kind of specific.

MCGRAW: And you started pouring resin all over them.

SPICHTIG: My dad built airplanes, and a lot of the parts they used were with this type of resin that you mixed with fiberglass, like for sailing boats or surfboards. I called up this company that my dad used to work with. The best resin to use with cotton is the same resin they use with sports equipment and airplanes. So with the ghosts, Im drenching resin on clothes, whereas with planes, you would drench it on fiberglass.

MCGRAW: Theyve traveled such a long distance from being objects in your living room to being in luxury retail stores. Do you think thats changed the sculptures?

SPICHTIG: In a way, its the success story of the ghosts. First they were from a thrift store, and now theyre luxury clothes. But to me, they havent changed at all.

MCGRAW: It almost turns the ghosts into one big performance. Once they were poor, and now theyve become rich.

SPICHTIG: But theyre still doing the same act. Theyre just annoying and standing around and nobody knows what theyre there for. In a strange way, theyre unspectacular. Because theyre empty. Theyre really empty. I like that.

MCGRAW: How do you think the average shopper is going to interact with the sculptures?

SPICHTIG: I think the average shopper would look at them the same way they might look at any other sculpture, person or clothes. Some people might not even notice them.

MCGRAW: I feel like that would upset most artists.

SPICHTIG: Well of course they would notice them, but the ghosts are like an object, but also nothingBut because theyre nothing, they become more than nothing. People fill them with love because they cant wear them.

MCGRAW: What does it say to show the same works in a store after a gallery? Is a gallery just a store anyway?

SPICHTIG: Yeah, except in a store you cant buy the sculptures, and in a gallery you cant buy the clothes a gallerist is wearing. But its the old question of money and art. And I dont think you can have an opinion on money and art because thats like having an opinion on water.

MCGRAW: Is there a relationship between the fashion of your sculptures and your paintings? They often include things like models, clothes, or sunglasses etc.

SPICHTIG: Yeah, its just whats around. Its what people do, and what they wear. With the sunglasses youre not sure if the painting is looking at you, or youre looking at the painting. My neighbor also has an amazing sunglasses collection. But the painting could just as easily be a flower, but a flower doesnt look at you.

MCGRAW: Do you believe in ghosts?

SPICHTIG: There are all these chapels around where I grew up that are from medieval times, and they all had these bone walls and sculptures of death and monks and so on. All of these sculptures looked like ghosts and they had this crazy presence that came from an emptiness that they had. Not in a scary way, but more in an elegant way. They were also kind of funny actually. So I wanted to recreate that presence, only with sports clothes.

MCGRAW: Humor plays a big part in your work, although I have trouble identifying it directly. Its just kind of there

SPICHTIG: Well, whenever I try to be serious, people think its funny. Serious things are always funny.

MCGRAW: So the Grim Reaper is like a comedian.

SPICHTIG: If you stand on a stage, youre already funny. If you really stand for something, its always going to be comical. And of course, the Grim Reaper is the last one standing.

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For Artist Tobias Spichtig, Shopping is a Way of Sculpting - Interview

"The darkest things are the hungriest" – AdVantageNEWS.com

Posted on November 10, 2019 by Danzig

Doctor Sleep

Rated R

4 stars

Inner demons, in whatever form they may take addiction, ghosts, vampires are a reliable go-to for what really scares us.

In the case of Doctor Sleep, combining all three doesnt bode well, but makes for a good film.

Writer and director Mike Flanagan (The Haunting of Hill House) was faced with a problem when tackling his newest project how do you make a sequel when the original novel and subsequent film adaptation are so vastly different?

Considering the conundrum, Flanagan chose the only scenario that would work, taking the best elements of Stephen Kings 1977 novel The Shining and combining them with the changes that Stanley Kubrick incorporated into the 1980 film version.

The result is a big-screen attempt at Kings 2013 sequel novel that straddles the fence and courts fans of both versions. Mostly, it works.

Doctor Sleep tells the tale of a grown Danny Torrence (Ewan McGregor), the little boy with the big ability who escaped the evil of the Overlook Hotel as a child. The ensuing years have not been easy ones, as Danny runs from the shadows of his father, the ghosts who continue to pursue him, and the genetic curse of addiction. A young girl (a gifted Kyliegh Curran) with similar psychic gifts (called shining) forces Danny to fight his demons once and for all, personified by a cult of energy vampires known as the True Knot.

While serving as a direct sequel, the films in question are very different The Shining was a straight-up ghost story; Doctor Sleep is a tale of vampire hunters. The Shining was claustrophobic, with only a handful of characters and a boxed-in feeling that grew more magnificently unbearable as the story progressed. Doctor Sleep is much more expansive and has more room to breathe; multiple storylines and characters jump across the country (as well as in and out of the Great Beyond).

As a result, the creeping horror of its predecessor does not permeate Doctor Sleep as effectively. If The Shining is a childs nightmare, then this new film is an inspection and dissection of that nightmare sacrificing terror for the sake of resolution.

That is not to say this film is not scary. The savagery of the True Knot can be downright chilling, and the heartbeat pulsing throughout the entire film tells the viewer that a return to the oppressive Overlook Hotel, and the ghosts that dwell within, is inevitable.

When it comes, the payoff is both satisfactory and frustrating. The sense of nihilism also threatens at times to be too much of a bummer (The whole world is one big hospice with fresh air, Danny says early in the film).

For nostalgias sake, Flanagan revisits Kubricks directing style, along with the familiar soundtrack, without imitating either to the point of redundancy. The acting is less over-the-top, and while McGregor and Curran give fine performances, the real standout is Rebecca Ferguson as the head of the vampiric cabal, Rose the Hat. She truly becomes the films boogeyman unrelenting, vicious, and diabolical.

Doctor Sleep had a myriad of challenges in the transition to the big screen. With a few missteps (mostly in the finale, as is the fate of so much of Kings work), it makes a return to one of Kings most iconic settings a thoroughly enjoyable ride.

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"The darkest things are the hungriest" - AdVantageNEWS.com

Review: Its The End of the World, and Youll Know It – The New York Times

Posted on November 10, 2019 by Danzig

Season 2, which continues the story past the end of the graphic novel, is haunted by those events in a literal way: They keep flashing onscreen, in the jagged, agonized memories of Alyssa and James (yes, hes alive). Its two years later, but neither can move forward from what were the most horrible and, in the unexpected closeness they shared, the happiest moments of their lives.

It might be the biggest spoiler to say that this eight-episode coda involves them finding their way back to each other and figuring out how to express their feelings despite their terminal awkwardness and protective armor of nihilism. But what else would it be about? To complicate the process, Covell introduces a third young character, a woman named Bonnie (Naomi Ackie), who like Alyssa and James has been warped by the harsh indifference and creepiness of the adult world.

Bonnies damage intersects with that of Alyssa and James, and she joins them in a violent misadventure that recapitulates some of the motifs of the first season aimless road tripping through a backwoods British countryside reminiscent of Twin Peaks, severe harm to an adult male who probably deserves it. The shows attitudes and comic strategies are still in place, too, with the not-too-subtle punch lines delivered in an affectless deadpan and the reflexive undercutting of sincerity or sentiment.

Its all still amusing, and the notes of strangled romanticism and just-perceptible nobility are still in place. But the plot doesnt have the momentum and the crazy energy it did the first time around, and its harder to ignore the shows calculating nature: how it uses Alyssa and Jamess interior monologues to tell us what to think, and the constant musical cues to tell us how to feel, and the flashbacks to continually remind us of the stakes. You could make an argument in favor of this, as forthrightly postmodern mediation, but its really just predigestion.

The worst effect of this spelling everything out is the way it boxes in the actors theres not much left for them to communicate, and Bardens relentlessly flat affect, in particular, starts to have diminishing returns. Lawther fares better if only because Jamess cringing neediness is inherently funnier. Ackie, whose face fully registers the tumble of emotions inside Bonnie, dominates the scenes among the three of them.

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Review: Its The End of the World, and Youll Know It - The New York Times

Poet and producer James Massiah remembers the times he’s felt most free – Dazed

Posted on November 10, 2019 by Danzig

To celebrate the launch of Burberrys Monogram puffer collection, Dazed partnered with the iconic British brand to spotlight young pioneers breaking boundaries across the globe. We asked four creatives to make a piece of work which responds to the ideas of boundlessness, weightlessness and freedom.View Massiahs zine and the rest of the work in a digital gallery, here.

Usually found rooted behind the decks or deep on the dancefloor at any given night, poet, producer, DJ, and performerJames Massiah is a boundless force in London nightlife, everywhere and nowhere all at once.

This apparently limitless energy has propelled the poet into proclivity, whether hes hosting ongoing NTS broadcast The Potry Show, penning verses in celebration of Prince Charles 70th birthday or performing Optimism 101, a reading of 101 poems orbiting stoicism, materialism, hedonism, and happiness live at the ICA. Last month, the Dazed 100 alum teamed up with director Ian Pons Jewell on aUKMVA-nominated video for his track Natural Born Killers (Ride for Me), a film which sees the poet and a disparate cast of characters crawling through an uninhibitedly overheated dystopian cityscape in an amoral tale of divine retribution or environmental ruin.

Seventh-day Adventist turned amoral egoist, Massiahs is a purposefully self-deterministic philosophy blending moral nihilism with psychological egoism. Freedom, through Massiahs eyes, Looks like Prince, sounds like funk music and feels like being high. It lives in the endless potential of a night out, in altered states and the sense that anything could happen - if you keep your mind open.

Firstly, can you tell us about the work you created for Boundless?

James Massiah: I wrote a series of poems in response to the theme. I recorded them and collaborated with graphic designerPeter Kent to visualise them for a final digital zine.

The poems themselves, what are they about?

James Massiah:Freedom, essentially. Times I've felt free and situations I've been free in. One line talks about having the feeling that no one else exists. I guess relating to feeling free from the expectations and condemnations of others. Another poem describes a party situation, the freedom that is felt in dancing and being in an altered state of consciousness.

I'm a determinist, so I have some interesting perspectives on the notion of freedom. I think I write a lot about freedom from moral or ethical constraints through nihilism and about the freedom to decide what you want for yourself within the constraints offered by your reality through egoism.

I was definitely thinking about nights out, being in a slightly altered state and enjoying the adventures that come at such times, the feeling of freedom from deadline or obligation or routine.

Freedom, through Massiahs eyes, Looks like Prince, sounds like funk music and feels like being high.

What was your first experience of freedom?

James Massiah:Hard to say. I'm sure at the point of birth there was something like that felt and then at many other points in my early childhood. Playing my Nintendo 64, riding my bike, being told I'm not grounded anymore, the end of Sabbath hours, and so many other instances I could imagine.

Give us an insight into the method through which you make your work.

James Massiah:I try not to think too much, opting for impulse and feeling where possible, just to get started having a simple idea in my mind; a word or a picture or a sentence or an idea. Any hard thinking or fact checking or research comes once Ive got that initial burst of inspiration out of the way, it may or may not return, but I try not to burden or inhibit that feeling with too much concern for 'rightness.

Do you have a typical creative process?

James Massiah:It's pretty straightforward for me. Writing down ideas as they come, generally into apps on my phone. I sat down to try and knock out some ideas in a session, and there was some procrastination and doodling. I watched some standup, listen to some rock music, watched some of my favourite series and then got back to it.

I think people underestimate the value of time in these processes though. It's all about being happy with the work, and that may take a day or an hour or a year. So I left it alone and then came back to it, and found myself cutting a bunch of the stuff I'd written and landed on new ideas that I was happy with having had some time to look away and then look back at the poems with fresh eyes.

I love coming up with ideas in the shower or when cycling. Those two modes really seem to help generating ideas.

Finally, what you are looking forward to seeing next from Riccardo Tisci at Burberry?

James Massiah:I've always been a fan of the trench coat, I'm excited to see how it can be reimagined for the future.

Click here to be transported into Boundless, a weightless digital realm

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Poet and producer James Massiah remembers the times he's felt most free - Dazed

Sandworm and the GRU’s global intifada – Reason

Posted on November 10, 2019 by Danzig

This episode is a wide-ranging interview with Andy Greenberg, author of Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin's Most Dangerous Hackers. The book contains plenty of original reporting, served up with journalistic flair. It digs deep into some of the most startling and destructive cyberattacks of recent years, from two dangerous attacks on Ukraine's power grid, to the multibillion-dollar NotPetya, and then to a sophisticated but largely failed effort to bring down the Seoul Olympics and pin the blame on North Korea. Apart from sophisticated coding and irresponsibly indiscriminate targeting, all these episodes have one thing in common. They are all the work of Russia's GRU.

Andy persuasively sets out the attribution and then asks what kind of corporate culture supports such adventurism and whether there is a strategic vision behind the GRU's attacks. The interview convinced me at least that the GRU is pursuing a strategy of muscular nihilism"our system doesn't work, but yours too is based on fragile illusions." It's a kind of global cyber intifada, with all the dangers and all the self-defeating tactics of the original intifadas. Don't disagree until you've listened!

Download the 286th Episode (mp3).

You can subscribe to The Cyberlaw Podcast using iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Pocket Casts, or our RSS feed!

As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with @stewartbaker on Twitter. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to CyberlawPodcast@steptoe.com. Remember: If your suggested guest appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug!

The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of the firm.

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Sandworm and the GRU's global intifada - Reason

Pixar’s hyper-existential Soul gets its first teaser – The A.V. Club

Posted on November 10, 2019 by Danzig

Soul, otherwise known as the Pixar film featuring a Trent Reznor score, just got its first teaser, which teases an existential journey not unlike that of the studios Inside Out.

Jamie Foxx lends his voice to Joe Gardner, a burgeoning jazz musician who, uh, dies after landing his dream job. In an alternate dimension, he meets another soul named 22 (Tina Fey), whose nihilism strikes uncomfortably against his own passion for art. The two then embark through cosmic realms to try and bring Joe back to the living world. Whats especially interesting is how the film interrogates the idea of suffering for ones art. For anyone who has a profession in the creative arts, its an almost religious obsessiveness you have to have to have success and a career in the arts, Kemp Power, a writer and co-director on the film, told Entertainment Weekly. At any point, no matter how happy you are doing what you do, it feels like that obsessiveness is detrimental to the rest of your life. Gardner, producer Dana Powers continues, has lived his whole life like he was meant to do this one thing [music] to the exclusion of pretty every other thing. Soul, then, is about embracing the breadth of everything life has to offer.

Pete Docter, the mind behind Inside Out, is also responsible for this existential piece, the creator having emerged as Pixars creative leader in the wake of John Lasseters departure. Questlove, Phylicia Rashad, and Daveed Diggs round out the cast, while acclaimed musician Jon Batiste penned the jazz tunes that serve to accent Reznor and Atticus Ross score.

Of the films afterlife animation, Docter told EW, We talked to a lot of folks that represented religious traditions and cultural traditions and [asked], What do you think a soul is? All of them said vaporous and ethereal and non-physical. We were like, Great! How do we do this? Were used to toys, cars, things that are much more substantial and easily referenced. This was a huge challenge, but I gotta say, I think the team really put some cool stuff together thats really indicative of those words but also relatable.

Watch the gorgeous teaser below.

Soul hits theaters on June 19, 2020.

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Pixar's hyper-existential Soul gets its first teaser - The A.V. Club

Earl Sweatshirt’s Eccentricity on Full Display in EAST – The Heights – The Heights

Posted on November 10, 2019 by Danzig

The enigmatic rapper Earl Sweatshirt solidified his reputation as one of the industrys most innovative talents with the release a strange, disorderly music video for the song EAST on Friday. The video follows the recent arrival of Earls EP Feet of Clay. The EP builds on the discordant, choppy sampling techniques used on his previous project released this year, Some Rap Songs, while Earls lyrics reflect the despondency found on his 2015 album I Dont Like Shit, I Dont Go Outside.

The music video manifests the songs choppy production aesthetic through a visually compelling yet bizarre piece of art that appears fractured and unrelated to the song on first viewing yet ultimately succeeds in reflecting Earls struggling mental state.

The video opens with Earl standing on a beach in slides, Corona in hand, smoking a cigarette and hanging out with friends. A superimposed photograph of the moon floats about the screen, and another smaller video of a man running in a parking garage flipping off the camera pops up in the upper right-hand corner. There is not only a lack of cohesion at this point in the video, but a clearly intentional decision by Earl to offer something utterly original and unpredictable to the viewer. The lyrics of EAST deal with alcoholism and his struggles in coping with the passing of his father. He seems to be forgoing representing the plotline of the song in favor of depicting his own scattered and more abstract feelings of loss of direction and meaning.

Shot on an iPhone, the video reflects the independent ethos of Earls music along with his musics lo-fi production quality. Due to his sparse production style, his lyrics have space to operate outside the constraints of more polished instrumentation. Earl is serious about the content and wordplay of his lyrics, despite how outlandish his personality and nonchalant style may seem.

EAST is benefited by the frenetic, carnival-style accordion loop that sounds almost like the flying monkeys from the Wizard of Oz are about to appear at any moment. And with the amount of strange images popping up in the video, it was almost disappointing when they didnt. The video ends with Earl walking off camera, leaving viewers just as unsettled and confused as they were at the start and ultimately wondering, What was the point?

This resigned nihilism pervades Earls work and has almost caused him to quit rapping multiple times. Most notably, he talked about his feelings of disillusionment with the rap industry after a return from a center for troubled youth in Samoa on his 2013 album Doris. On the song Chum, he sadly confesses, Been back a week and already feel like calling it quits. Although Earl is certainly still struggling with finding meaning in the commercial rap industry, in the video for EAST he shows that he is channeling these emotions into compelling, utterly original art.

Featured Image by Warner Records

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Earl Sweatshirt's Eccentricity on Full Display in EAST - The Heights - The Heights

Why Skip Ad must die on the Brains Byte Back podcast – The Sociable

Posted on November 9, 2019 by Danzig

1234Skip ad. You can probably relate to this, waiting a few seconds to skip to the content you actually want to see.

We are bombarded with ads all over the internet, but how many successfully get your attention, probably just a small few right?

Listen to this podcast below and onSpotify,Anchor,Apple Podcasts,Breaker,Google Podcasts,Overcast, andRadio Public.

It takes a very special ad to connect with us, arguably something we rarely see in the modern world of digital ads. But there are companies out there that want to give consumers a better advertising experience while enabling companies to better communicate their message.

One of which is Streann, an SaaS platform that empowers content providers with innovative distribution, engagement and monetization tools for a better end-user experience.

Joining us on this podcast is the companys CEO, Giovanni Punzo, to explain how they are making an impact on the digital advertising industry. In this episode, you will learn about the current digital advertising landscape, where it is heading, and how companies can successfully connect with users without them counting down to the skip ad button.

And for our Good News feature, we have a story about the BBCs new page on the dark web.

Adverts from Punzo:

#EatLikeAndyThe Whole Whopper

2018 Lincoln Navigator: Uncharted Waters (Official Commercial) | Lincoln

ULTRA Pure Gold Super Bowl Commercial with Zoe Kravitz ASMR

Good News Link:

Instead of visitingbbc.co.uk/newsorbbc.com/news, users of the Tor browser can visit the newbbcnewsv2vjtpsuy.onionweb address. Clicking this web address will not work in a regular web browser.

Disclosure: This episode includes a client of an Espacio portfolio company

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Why Skip Ad must die on the Brains Byte Back podcast - The Sociable

Law debated allowing confiscation of Bitcoin by the police – ZDNet

Posted on November 9, 2019 by Danzig

Russia is considering a change in the law that would permit law enforcement to confiscate cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin (BTC).

As reported by local media publication RBC, Russia's Ministry of Internal Affairs aims to develop a form of "legal mechanism" for the seizure of cryptocurrency and other "virtual assets" by 2021.

Proposals are being developed at present by the ministry, the Federal Financial Monitoring Service (Rosfinmonitoring), the Prosecutor General's Office, the Justice Ministry, and customs service, alongside other agencies.

See also:Fake Tor Browser steals Bitcoin from Dark Web users

Tracking cryptocurrencies can be difficult, but it is not impossible. Assets can be 'washed' in which otherwise 'tainted' cryptocurrencies can be cleaned up through services that convert coins into other types but otherwise, if computer systems are confiscated, law enforcement may be able to find and access active wallet addresses.

However, keys may not be recoverable and the police would need to prove a wallet is owned by a suspect, leading to a raft of potential technical and legal challenges in cryptocurrency seizure.

CNET:IBM calls for regulation on facial recognition tech instead of bans

In order to bypass some of the challenges with virtual asset seizure, officials have suggested that coins stored on exchanges could be subject to requests by law enforcement to freeze an account or to transfer funds to a state-owned wallet address.

Such requests, as cryptocurrency exchanges do not operate inside Russian territory, could still be ignored.

During investigations, equipment including PCs and mobile devices may be seized, and according to Nikita Kulikov, a member of the State Duma's council as quoted by RBC, such seizure should also apply to virtual assets.

The publication added that cryptocurrencies are in a gray area in Russia, and so would need to be recognized legally as either a "commodity or a cash equivalent."

TechRepublic:How boot camps may fill the need for more white hats in the US

A draft law has been in development since 2017. The State Duma has adopted its first reading and a second is underway.

Russia's attitude to cryptocurrency appears to be in a constant state of flux. The country has previously introduced the CryptoRuble, a stablecoin intended to rival Bitcoin, and yet, the central bank and President Vladimir Putin have deemed cryptocurrencies a serious risk to existing financial systems and little more than a tool for criminal activity.

Have a tip? Get in touch securely via WhatsApp | Signal at +447713 025 499, or over at Keybase: charlie0

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Dogolachan And The Ghost Of Massacres Past – bellingcat – bellingcat

Posted on November 9, 2019 by Danzig

On March 13, 2019, two young men entered their former high school in the small city of Suzano in So Paulo, Brazil. The first one in, Guilherme Taucci, age 17, immediately opened fire with a .38 revolver. Luiz Castro, 25, followed him inside. So began the eighth massacre in Brazilian schools since 2002.

Five students and two employees were killed that day. Many others who managed to survive were injured by bullets and an axe swung by the killers. After the police stormed the building, eight minutes in, Taucci killed Castro and then committed suicide.

Yet the bloody trail followed them even outside the school. Before the attack, both men had killed Tauccis uncle and stolen his car.

While the Suzano Massacre, as it came to be known, caused tremendous sorrow and grief, it gained little international attention. Yet the Suzano Massacre was destined to become part of the same web of international fascist violence that includes the massacres in Christchurch, Halle (Germany) and El Paso. While those shootings were all tied together by the website 8chan, Suzano became wrapped up in the sordid tale of a website similar to 8chan: Dogolachan.

In December, 2013, Marcelo Valle Silveira Mello founded Dogolachan on the surface web as a haven for his particular brand of free speech. He had been an active user of the social network Orkut since 2005, regularly posting his support for pedophilia and racism, and sharing pictures of violent crimes.

Prior to founding Dogolachan, Mello had a history of launching online hate campaigns. In 2009, he was the first person in Brazil to be formally condemned for the crime of racism. His lawyer successfully appealed, stating that his client had mental issues. Because of that, Mello avoided prison at that time.

Three years later, in 2012, Mello was finally arrested by Brazilian Federal Police (BFP)along with his cohort Emerson Setimfor a series of hateful websites they created and managed. These sites spread a bevy of racist and sexist articles directly aimed at several universities with articles like How to rape a girl at [insert University], attributing their authorship to various individuals the chan community considered their enemies, a tactic used to this day.

The websites were a form of an extremely high pressure harassment campaign targeting both people and institutions, disrupting classes and the well-being of said communities in coordinated efforts at intimidation that only grew over the years.

The equation of online anonymity as a weapon to be used against opponents, not to mention the excuse of humour and irony , all made worse by a lack of police power to monitor forums like these, resulted in a spike in hate websites. Safernet, a Brazilian non-governmental organization that combats Internet crime, says that at least five domains linked to Dogolachan users generated, in their lifespan, more than 160,000 complaints.

The BFP also stated that Marcelo and Emerson were planning a massacre against leftist students at the Universidade de Braslia (UNB). This planned shooting was inspired by the deadliest school massacre in Brazilian history; the murder of 12 children (including 10 girls) at the Tasso da Silveira Municipal School in Rio de Janeiro by a mentally ill man. The murderer had known links to online hate communities, like the ones frequented by Mello.

The duo spent a little over a year in federal prison and was released in May 2013. Just a few months later, they created Dogolachan.

The original picture that became the Dogola meme was snapped in Russia

Inspired by 4chan, 8chan, and numerous other chan-style image boards, the name Dogolachan is a reference to the dogola meme, a picture taken in Russia and embraced by Brazilians. It is frequently spammed in online discussions. The countrys online culture is known for its memes and online trolling.

While the dogola meme, as it is commonly known, was fairly innocuous in its Russian form, it quickly spread as a forced meme, winning the hearts of spammers and shitposters worldwide, especially in Brazil, where it became the visual basis for the mascot of the newly created chan.

From the beginning, the forum was a hate site on par with 8chans /pol board. It focused on inspiring and celebrating attacks, flamebaiting and trolling campaigns, with doxxing of women, minorities and leftists. Mello and his fellows on Dogolachan also advocated mass harassment of individuals they saw as enemies.

One such enemy is Dolores Aronovich, known publicly as Lola, an English literature professor at the Federal University of Cear and author of the most influential feminist blog in Brazil, online since 2008. For her advocacy in fighting against hate crimes in digital communities, Aronovich has received countless threats, mainly linked to mens rights activists or Dogolachan users. Aronovich was the inspiration behind a congresswomans bill, named after Lola herself, that allows the federal police to take over any investigation into online crime of a misogynistic nature. Aronovich was recently nominated for the 2019 Press Freedom Award by Reporters Without Borders.

Channers also celebrate mass shooters. This was a common practice on 8chans /pol board. They saluted shooters inspired by the board by declaring them Saints and co-opting religious iconography:

Likewise, on Dogolachan, users honour the saint acts (actum sanctus) of those they call saint men (homini sanctus), like Wellington Rodrigues, the perpetrator of the Rio de Janeiro Massacre. While the attacks inspired by this site have not garnered widespread global attention, Dogolachans users see themselves as members of an international movement, since they also award this title to foreign murderers, like Elliot Rodgers and Anders Breivik

On June 16, 2018, Dogolachan moderator Andr Luiz Gil Garcia, known online s Kyo, posted about his suicidal feelings. He then went out and sexually harassed a young woman, Luciana de Jesus do Nascimento. The womans response to the harassment was not to his liking, so he shot her in the back of the head as she tried to get away from him. Andr fled the scene and committed suicide when the police arrived. The victim would die twenty days later as a result of her injuries.

On the original thread, printed below, Anes (a self-deprecated version of the word anon that mingles its meaning with the Portuguese translation for people with dwarfism) lamented that Garcia had not been able to kill more women. In the months following the murder/suicide, the rhetoric on Dogolachan grew more violent and radical.

Translation: Kyo here folks. A note for everyone: I am quitting this world. The impures do not touch me. It was good while it lasted, but I have not been feeling a part of this world anymore. the sorrow I feel made me blue for life. To those that hurt me I curse you while searching for you in hell, I will be watching over the pure ones. Marcelo, when you get out of prison, be happy, something that I was never able to do.

Many of the members began referring to themselves as falhos, or flawed, a term which seems to have broadly similar connotations on Dogolachan as incel does in English-language chans. Falhos saw their lives as essentially over, and urged each other to take the scum with you or take the cattle with you, when committing suicide, as it is written in the highlighted part above.

8chans /pol board is well known for its role in inspiring at least three mass shootings. After the El Paso shooting in the summer of 2019, the website was forced off of the Internet under the weight of public outrage though it is doing its damnedest to come back.

Dogolachan is still online, albeit in the deep web due to Mello transferring control of the site to other people when he was sent to prison for a variety of crimes, including transmission of pedophilic images, incitement to commit crimes and terrorism.

After Mello was finally sentenced to 41 years behind bars, the chan, nonetheless, continued. Over the years, it has evolved its own repertoire of terror tactics that allow it to function as something very much like a melting pot for terrorists, creating an atmosphere of what some are calling stochastic terrorism.

The Suzano Massacre in March, 2019, for example, was carried out by two young men who are widely believedalthough not confirmedto have been channers. The only proof of their involvement are the statements made by one of the anonymous administrators in the forum itself on the day of the massacre, saying that the killers were definitely members. No further proof was presented, but the media was thirsty for any answers that could help complete the picture.

In the main Dogolachan board, /b/, journalists found a thread with a screengrab of a suspected secret board inside the forum. In the screengrab, dated seven days before the massacre, the killers thanked the administrator in helping them plan their rampage, stating they would post a secret warning in the form of music lyrics before acting. The screengrab and translation are as follows:

Translation: Thanks for the counseling and the orientation DPR (the administrator). We hope to not commit this act in vain. We, and mainly the precinct (Dogolachan) will be cited and remembered. We were born flawed but will go out as heroes. This contact brought us everything according to plan. We were flabbergasted with the quality, Hollywood like. Unfortunately there were no places to test and we will do it naturally, on the spot. Stay with God, my mentor. The sign will be music and 3 days later well be with God, together with our 7 virgins. We will take this message with us.

Two days before the shooting, someone translated and posted the lyrics of Foster The Peoples hit Pumped Up Kicks which is sung from the perspective of a troubled young person with homicidal thoughts and is frequently described as a song about school shootings and this was interpreted by the press and the Brazilian online community as a confirmation of their suspicions:

Even though no news outlet nor the police could confirm the existence of this secret board and its content, the attack is to this day connected to Dogolachan, which widely celebrated the massacre. The chan moderators claim that the audience of their deep web website (only accessible via a Tor browser) skyrocketed since Suzano due to the press bringing attention to their forum.

It is possible that members fabricated the connection between the chan and the massacre to achieve Lulz (basically, for fun). Its also possible they co-opted the shooting to raise the profile and notoriety of their site, so future threats made by members would be taken more seriously. Police investigating the Suzano case confirmed that the shooters were assisted in the planning stage by another minor (now detained) who did not participate in the attack, and who told journalists that the killers did not know what Dogolachan was.

This same tactic was used later, in August, when members of the forum planned to falsify the authorship of a school attack. They suggested members to retroactively create a fake post in order to bait the school, the police, and the press into believing a channer had forewarned his friends about an imminent massacre.

Its also known that the individuals involved were deeply influenced by the Columbine shooting, which has inspired dozens of copycat attacks around the world. Just this October, a Florida woman was arrested with 24 pipe bombs. Materials found at her house indicated an obsession with the crime.

Its important to remember that these massacres and threats of massacres are all part of a connected campaign of international fascist violence, even though the movement behind these killings is completely decentralized. It consists of different nodes, including 8chan and Dogolachan, which work in predictable ways. After Christchurch, 8chan users took to giving one another advice on weaponry and bomb-making tactics:

Meanwhile, in the immediate wake of the Suzano Massacre, a user on Dogolachan posted this question: How can I engage in such a Saint Act without money or guns?. The main collective wet dream of the channers, according to screengrabs provided by Lola Aronovich, is easier access to guns and ammunitions. Historically, these have been very hard to acquire legally in Brazil.

Translation of highlighted parts: Elliot Rodgers life was not in vain. It motivated others and opened the hearts for a beta uprising. Do not commit suicide yet, NOT NOW. Wait for Bolsonaro to legalize gun carryingDegeneration will always happen, and more and more will occur. Whenever youve done everything you want with your life, get a gun and shoot the scum. Die fighting the cops. And always shoot women to KILL. The life of a man has no value in matriarchal society. A 7/10 whore is worth more than a 1000 betas. The world revolves around them.

Those regulations are currently being relaxed by President Jair Bolsonaro. The far right politician was passionately supported by channers long before he even launched his campaign due to his history of hateful, misogynistic, racist and anti-left statements. Marcelo Mello, the founder, even created a fork of litecoin called Bolsocoin to be used by channers.

According to UOL, after Suzano, at least 18 universities throughout Brazil received threats of all types, mostly explained by the copycat effect. Not all of them could be directly linked to Dogolachan, but at least six have been independently confirmed by the authors as tracing back to the forum or its users.

In fact, Suzano is just another chapter in a broader campaign that Dogolachan users have embarked on since the original site owner began acting out in criminal ways in 2005. This harassment against individuals and institutions have been unprecedented in its scope and scale, at least in Brazil, as Safernet claims showed.

All the hyperlinks belowexcept for threeoriginated in the Brazilian press and were translated automatically by Google. This is just a selection of the most pertinent threats, not a comprehensive list:

Sept, 23, 2016: Federal University of Minas Gerais A Dogolachan user posts a direct threat, which includes a picture of the Columbine shooting and expresses a desire to target leftists. The perpetrator states his desire to kill men and torture women. Many students refuse to attend class, for several days. Security at the school is heightened.

May 29, 2017: New York City, Atlanta, Asheville (NC) Dozens of bomb threats are faxed to seemingly random businesses, demanding $25,000 in ransom. Emerson Setim (Mellos former partner) is identified in the faxes as the sender. But this is almost certainly not the case. Setim and Mello had a well-known falling out after their time in jail and these faxes were likely an act of revenge against Emerson. Several businesses are evacuated as a result of the threats.

March 21, 2019: Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul A threat written directly by someone posting in Dogolachan. After a post threatening a massacre somewhere in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, a fellow channer suggests the UFRGS university as a target, citing supposed security breaches. Even though the institution does not cancel classes or activities, many teachers and students skip classes for several days. Security is reinforced.

April 10, 2019: Federal University of Paran Threat directly written by someone posting in Dogolachan, showing a picture of a handgun and listing places where the purported shooter planned to execute black people, women, and people with AIDS. All classes are postponed for one day.

June 8 2019: Federal University of Pernambuco Threat directly written by someone posting in Dogolachan. Targets leftist students and claimed to have an AR-15 to kill the stoners that criticize Bolsonaro. Classes are not postponed, but many students choose to skip classes.

June 16, 2019: Federal University of Espirito Santo Threat directly written by someone posting in Dogolachan. Shows an image of a handgun and of known places at said university, targeting leftist students. Security is reinforced, and more students choose to skip classes.

October 14, 2019:UNICARIOCA (CARIOCA UNIVERSITY) A small private university in Rio receives direct threats of a massacre via Dogolachan. A Dogolachan user says they would go to campus to supposedly get revenge on everyone who bullied them, showing off pictures of weapons.

The anons of Dogolachan have committed far fewer killings than their ideological comrades on 8chans /pol board. Even their supposed milestone crime the Suzano school massacre is not confirmed to have been their doing.

But despite a relative lack of actual violence on their record, Dogolachans users have managed to mount a high pressure campaign of harassment against their enemies. Universities and businesses have been shut down, classes disrupted, and lives severely impacted by a mixture of coordinated attacks from its core members and a decentralized campaign of intimidation against generalized foes, such as leftists, women or any progressive figure.

What Dogolachan seems to have done, very successfully, is to build a reputation that other disaffected and violent people identify with. This has allowed them to outsource their brand and their portfolio of attacks in the press and social media. Now individuals make threats in Dogolachans name simply because they know they will get a reaction. We see evidence of this with the template threat copied by a criminal that menaced the Federal University of Gois (UFG).

In this, the anes of Dogolachan may have found a way to artificially magnify the ghosts of past massacres, in Brazil and elsewhere. They celebrate this reputation in much the same manner 8chan has done, by adopting the slogan Embrace Infamy. For Dogolachan, even unfulfilled threats produce real consequences to real people and institutions. Given the difficulty of acquiring firearms in Brazil, it may be statistically unfounded to fear massive attacks like El Paso or Poway from Dogolachans users. But countless anes are waiting in the wings for laxer gun laws, so they can graduate from threats to body counts.

Research and concept by Leonardo Coelho, edited and organized by Robert Evans.

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Dogolachan And The Ghost Of Massacres Past - bellingcat - bellingcat

Migrant Workers Rally to Call for an End to the Broker System – New Bloom

Posted on November 9, 2019 by Danzig

by Brian Hioe:EnglishPhoto Credit: TIWA/Facebook

MIGRANT WORKERS rallied last Sunday outside representative offices in Taipei, calling for an abolition to the current broker system and the institution of direct hiring practices.

While migrant worker groups have been calling for an abolition of the broker system for years, the demonstration Sunday was notable as a coordinated action between migrant workers from Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam. Migrant workers staged separate protests outside the Indonesia Economic and Trade Office, the Manila Cultural and Economic Office, and the Vietnam Economic and Cultural Office, all of which are located in Taipei.

Migrant worker groups see the current broker system, in which broker agencies arrange for migrant workers transportation to and employment in Taiwan as exploitative. Broker agencies often impose exorbitant work placement fees on migrant workers. Migrant workers are charged fees between 20,000 NT and 100,000 NT in order to secure employment and there oftentimes is no consistency in how migrant workers are charged fees. Migrant workers that come at different times may be charged different fees for a similar work placement. The fees imposed on migrant workers differ based on what profession they work in, as well as what country they come from.

Migrant workers unable to pay such fees are usually referred to loan agencies by broker agencies. Late payments can result in penalties based on a promissory note, with loan agencies sometimes not having to explain how penalties were calculated. Broker agencies sometimes also charge migrant workers for board and lodging, forcing migrants to pay them for something that is actually provided by their employer.

Migrant workers already work long hours for low pay, regardless of whether they work as caregivers, domestic workers, factory workers, or as inshore or offshore fishermen, these being the four major categories of migrant workers in Taiwan.

Migrant workers are not subject to the provisions of the Labor Standards Act, meaning that migrant workers are sometimes paid less than minimum wagesometimes less than 18,000 NT a month. Migrant workers are usually given very few days off, if any at all, regardless of whether they work in Taiwanese households, in factories, or on fishing vessels, and they are often expected to work around the clock.

As such, having to pay expensive work placement fees or to pay back loans taken out in order to pay work placements simply proves another way of forcing migrant workers into conditions resembling indentured servitude more than anything else.

Past demonstrations by migrant worker groups have involved protests outside the Taiwanese Ministry of Labor, alongside Taiwanese workers on International Workers Day, and outside representative offices in Taipei. In these past demonstrations, migrant worker groups of differing nationalities have worked together to collaborate on joint actions, along with their Taiwanese counterparts. However, it is an unusual protest to see coordinated protests taking place outside of three representative offices in Taiwan, whether regarding migrant issues or other issues.

Migrant workers groups have in past years called for direct government-to-government hiring, which is referred to in shorthand as a G-to-G system to replace the current broker system. At the same time, the Taiwanese government has been reluctant to abolish the broker system. In past years, the Tsai administration has claimed that the broker system exists because of a market need for such a mechanism. In reality, broker agencies are only allowed to continue to exist because of the close ties that broker agencies enjoy with the statedespite flagrant violations of the law. The Taiwanese government also claims that the current broker system is simply more convenient for employers, who prefer to go through such a system, despite that it could easily set up its own mechanisms to addressing the issue.

Indeed, efforts by migrant worker groups and migrant worker advocacy groups to push with reform have encountered obstacles. Apart from the fact that government-organized forums on the issue of broker agencies have proved more performative than anything else, a draft bill that sought to extend the amount of time that foreign caregivers are allowed to work in Taiwan did not clear the Social Welfare and Environmental Hygiene Committee of the Legislative Yuan after disagreements between DPP and KMT lawmakers. One generally expects that it will continue to be an uphill struggle to push for the abolition of the broker system in Taiwan.

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Migrant Workers Rally to Call for an End to the Broker System - New Bloom

Science, Scientism, and Magic – Discovery Institute

Posted on November 9, 2019 by Danzig

Editors note: Phillip E. Johnson, Berkeley law professor and author ofDarwin on Trialand other books, died on November 2.Reproduced below, his Foreword to John Wests collection, The Magicians Twin: C.S. Lewis on Science, Scientism, and Society, was among his last writings.

C.S. Lewiss many admirers will be eager to read this collection of articles, collected and edited by Discovery Institutes John West, concerning Lewiss views of science, which he respected, and scientism, against which he warned. The book contains a timely and well-reasoned chapter about Lewis and intelligent design, which seems to have replaced creationism as the alternative most feared and reviled by Darwinists. Another chapter describes the subtle interconnection between That Hideous Strength (my favorite Lewis novel) and his much admired philosophical work, The Abolition of Man.

As West notes in Chapter 1, C.S. Lewis remarked that [t]he serious magical endeavour and the serious scientific endeavour are twins an image that gives this book its title. Lewis meant that modern science and magic have a common starting point in history, arising from efforts to understand and manipulate nature, and they have retained important and perhaps unexpected similarities down to the present. His point makes me think of what scientific studies of identical twins, separated at birth and raised apart, have shown. Such studies consistently demonstrate that, aside from physical resemblance, when the twins first meet each other decades later, they display striking similarities in matters so unexpected and detailed that they seem eerie. It is as if the studies were aimed at proving that, despite all we have learned about the stars since 1600, astrology may nonetheless still have an impressive power of prediction.

Of course, the twin studies support genetics, not astrology, but what they teach us about identical twins raised apart makes it unsurprising that the scientific culture of the 19th and early 20th century produced three great wizards Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud whose concepts were so spellbinding that they set the intellectual agenda for the entire 20th century. In many ways, they still hold us in their grasp.

I would add to the list of scientific magicians the DNA is everything biologists, including the brilliant popularizer Richard Dawkins and the physicalist neuroscientists who assure us that our thoughts and decisions (including the conclusions of neuroscientists?) are no more than the effects of electro-chemical events in the brain. These have sought to make science indistinguishable from scientism, and thus have inadvertently alerted us to the continuing importance of C.S. Lewiss exposure of the irrationality of scientism.

Overall, this collection charms the reader, not because Lewis has necessarily said the final word on every subject covered, but because his perceptive words illuminate every subject and inspire discussion in which participants can employ their own intellects to move ever closer to the truth.

Photo: The Searcher, statue of C.S. Lewis, Belfast, Ireland, by Paul Bowman via Flickr (cropped).

Science, Scientism, and Magic - Discovery Institute

We need to talk about slaverys impact on all of us – The Guardian

Posted on November 9, 2019 by Danzig

When my new role as professor of the history of slavery at the University of Bristol was announced, some peoples reaction was, about time. The role, in which I will research the universitys ties with enslavement, will bring together various existing scholarships, and is part of a debate that has been taking place for decades.

But in further exploring the past of the institution within the broader history of the city, I hope to help the public as well as the university to better understand its place, role and responsibilities towards Bristols inhabitants. My research should have a significant impact on the way educational and cultural institutions remember the past, and how they support social equality now.

Universities such as Georgetown, Yale and Harvard in the US, and Glasgow, Oxford and Cambridge in the UK, are already looking at how they benefited from the labour of enslaved people. It is crucial, however, that the University of Bristols approach is different, because the history of the city is so different.

Academic research into Bristols involvement in enslavement started nearly four decades ago. It has taken a long time for those findings to reach a broader audience, but now, thanks to a growing demand for more inclusive narratives of the past that reflect the diversity of the nation, they will. Students and activists, within and outside these universities, have played a huge role in persuading institutions to look at stories of subjugation of human beings in their histories.

These debates are linked to broader, important discussions about colonialism and the legacies of the past. I often hear that slavery and colonialism led to vibrant, culturally diverse societies. It is certainly not what colonisers and slave traders were hoping to achieve when they funded vessels to sail the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean, though diversity has indeed been one result. Our celebrated, culturally diverse societies are, however, rigged with racism, social inequalities and discrimination.

Protest about those legacies and the representation of that past have increased in recent years. We have seen demonstrations about the Confederate flag in the US, and the Rhodes Must Fall movement, both in South Africa and Oxford. Embedded in the history of enslavement are economic, social, cultural, political and ideological ideas that shape the way we represent the past. Countries, cities and communities all reshape their own urban and rural landscapes in different ways to tell their stories and showcase their histories and identities.

These campaigns have challenged the way we memorialise a past that is the source of intergenerational trauma what the scholar Marianne Hirsch called post-memory.

The important question now is: what should societies, cities and institutions do to address the impact of slavery a history that has led to such trauma and division? These questions are part of Bristols broader response to its past, and the answer, as I see it, involves a conversation about reparations or reparative justice.

My plan in Bristol is to start by looking at donors who funded the university. The university was created in 1909, long after the abolition of the slave trade (1807) and the abolition of slavery (1833). The University College was set up in 1876, and from the very beginning it received the support of an educator called John Percival, who sought financial support among his circle.

Lewis Fry, a businessman from a prominent anti-slavery family, got on board in 1906. Two years later, donations were made by the Wills family, who made their fortune in various trading ventures, including tobacco produced by enslaved people in North America. Soon after that, the Merchant Venturers College agreed to fund the new engineering faculty. The Merchant Venturers was a guild whose members traded extensively in what was called the African trade. That trade funded slave voyages, bought and sold African captives, invested in plantations and so on.

I suspect there are a number of small businesses and individuals who also gave a helping hand through various donations. I want to find out who they were and how much they donated. If possible, I want to know where that money went and what other investments were made with those funds.

This is about the university but also about the city as a whole, and it will be very important to share my research every step of the way with various communities. The African Caribbean community is central, and I will talk to them about what is learned as we go along, working together to see how we can use the findings to teach that history at various levels. We must also look at the contribution of people of African descent. Their ancestors labours produced wealth that enriched the city, including the university.

I want to be part of this new episode in the history of the city for several reasons. I have been working on the history of Bristol for nearly two decades, and I have made comparative studies between Bristol and other European cities. I have looked at questions of memory, memorialisation and colonial legacies on both sides of the Atlantic. Bristol has gone through incredible changes since the 1990s. It is important that we continue to challenge urban representations of the past, and reinvent the way we look at the memory of enslavement, for example through guerrilla arts and graffiti.

The passion that African-Caribbean communities have put into telling their stories for decades is impressive. From the work done by the Malcolm X Elders, the Kuumba Project, and the Black South West Network to Michael Jenkins work in film revealing the untold stories of Bristolians, Michele Curtiss celebratory Seven Saints of St Pauls murals and the poignant art installation, CARGO, by Lawrence Hoo, Bristolians have found wonderful ways to tell the stories of changes within the city.

These stories need to be embedded in the timeline of the history of the city. It is happening now and it says something profound about where the city is heading. We are working towards social justice. We must also use the narratives, methods and material of that community and other community groups to rethink the way we teach history. The Centre for Black Humanities at the University of Bristol, the first of its kind in the south-west, is the ideal place to bring this work together.

The centre is one of many reasons I wanted to work on this project. The other important reason is the University of Bristols commitment to relocalising teaching and learning to a campus that will be located close to underprivileged communities. This is an opportunity that will allow those communities better access to higher education.

There will be challenges, but those are part of the healing process. A citys memory is truly collective when each community has found ways to acknowledge the past and address the social inequalities created by it. What is happening now in Bristol is truly inspirational. Its history in the making.

Olivette Otele is a professor of the history of slavery at the University of Bristol

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We need to talk about slaverys impact on all of us - The Guardian

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