Daily Archives: June 4, 2020

Rutger Bregman begins his new book Humankind: A Hopeful History with what he calls this "radical idea" that most people deep down are pretty decent.

Bregman is a historian and writer for The Correspondent in the Netherlands and author of the previous bestseller Utopia for Realists.

"If we can actually trust each other, if we do have the courage to move to a more realistic, hopeful view of human nature, then we can move to a very different kind of society as well and build very different kinds of schools and democracies and workplaces," Bregman tells NPR.

On whether this is a good or bad time to make his argument

You know, I think it's actually exactly the right time. We often assume that during times of crises, the veneer that we call civilization cracks and that people reveal their true selves. And that we really become quite horrible versions of ourselves. But in the first chapters of the book, I go over all the evidence of sociology that we have and it's quite a lot. It's actually more than 700 case studies that show that, especially in times of crisis, we show our best selves. And we get this explosion of altruism and cooperation. This happens again and again after natural disasters, after earthquakes and after floodings. And I think that, if you zoom out a little bit during this pandemic, you see the same phenomenon.

On thinking this way amid all of the discouraging news

It's one of the ironies of writing a book about the power of human kindness is that you have to go on for hundreds of pages about all the dark chapters in our history. Right? Because on the one hand, biologists say we are one of the friendliest species in the animal kingdom. And they literally talk about survival of the friendliest, which means that for millennia it was actually the friendliest among us who had the most kids and so had the biggest chance of passing on their genes to the next generation.

But then, on the other hand, we're also the cruelest species, right? We do things that other animals just don't when you think about wars or ethnic cleansing or, you know, racism, discrimination, you name it. It's true. Both of these things are true at the same time.

On media raising misperception of risk, anxiety, contempt and hostility

Well, the news is mostly about things that go wrong, right? It's about sensationalist incidents that happened today, instead of things that happen every day. So if you watch and follow a lot of the news, at the end of the day, you know exactly how the world is not working. And you'll have a quite bleak view of human history and human nature. And this is what you can see with people who, basically, just follow too much of the news. You know, they've become cynical and depressed and feel anxious. So, yeah, there's a real mental health hazard here. ...

Maybe we have to make a distinction here between the news and journalism. So I think that good journalism helps you to zoom out, to focus on the structural forces that govern our lives. And I think that good journalism is also not only about the problems, but also about the solutions, and the people who are working on these solutions. So I'm not saying that journalism should all be happy ... But it can give us hope, because there are a lot of reasons for hope in this world today as well.

On rules to live by

I think it's rational to assume the best in other people because most people are pretty decent. And it's, as I said, it's actually the reason why we have conquered the globe. You know, human beings are just incredibly good compared to other species at cooperating on a skill that other species just can't. Do you really want to live your whole life distrusting other people? That price is way too high to pay. I think it's more rational to say, OK, this is just going to happen a couple of times in my life that I'll be the victim of some confidence game. And if you've never been conned, then maybe you should ask yourself the question: Is my basic attitude to life trusting enough?

I'm just saying that we have to remember here that cynicism is, in the first place, it's a synonym for laziness. It sort of gives you an excuse to do nothing. And in the second place, it's often used as a legitimization of hierarchy, because if we cannot trust each other, then we need them we need the CEOs and the monarchs and the generals and the kings and you name it. But if we can actually trust each other, if we do have the courage to move to a more realistic, hopeful view of human nature, then we can move to a very different kind of society as well and build very different kinds of schools and democracies and workplaces. So people may think, oh, this is this guy has written this nice book about the power of kindness, but it's actually quite revolutionary in a subversive idea to go in that direction.

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In 'Humankind,' Rutger Bregman Aims To Convince That Most People Are Good - NPR

This column originally appeared in the Washington Times.

Courtesy of our educational infrastructure having been transformed into leftist indoctrination centers, the result is politicians who care only about ideology where citizens are collateral damage in their march toward a leftist utopia.

Our media is populated with news-actors who are similarly bound to their teachers idols of social justice, political correctness and identity politics. All of our institutions are suffering from the twin masters of identity politics and woke philosophy.

In New York City during the riots, two individuals were arrested for attempting to bomb a marked New York Police Department cruiser with a Molotov cocktail. Upon arrest, police found additional material in the car to make more Molotov cocktails, and the booking complaint alleges they intended to hand out the bombs to other rioters.

BEN SHAPIRO: GEORGE FLOYD'S DEATH, RIOTS AND THE LIBERAL MEDIA'S NONSENSICAL, DANGEROUS GAME

The kicker? Both of the suspects are lawyers.

One, Colinford Mattis, a 32-year-old man had been working with a corporate law firm in New York City, and is a graduate of Princeton University. The other, Urooj Rahman, a 31-year old woman, is a graduate of Fordham Law School and was admitted to the bar in 2019.

On her Facebook page, she fashions herself a human rights lawyer. His background as an anti-poverty intern for a mayor of San Francisco was listed on LinkedIn, as well as being president of the Princeton Black Student Union.

With such promising backgrounds and illustrious educations, we must ask, what went wrong?

Education went wrong, which is a dangerous realization, considering its importance not just as a conveyer of information, but as an important and formidable influence on character and values. With the breakdown of the American family, for many, the leftist indoctrination at the academy is the only instruction on life and principles to which theyve been exposed.

On Twitter, the Federalists Molly Hemingway noted, Battle lines are more clearly being drawn these days, between those who clearly believe America is irredeemably evil and must be violently overthrown and those who believe America remains greatest country on earth, based on rule of law, individual liberty, inalienable rights. Decades of public education have given former group a *huge* advantage, reinforced by media that awards itself prizes to indoctrinate message. Seriousness of that side now being impossible to ignore, however, finally forces rule of law side to realize fight must be engaged.

Colinford Mattis and Urooj Rahman

As leftists consumed public education, they accepted open-minded young people into their realm and are now vomiting them back up as heartless anarchists. The issue is not just at Ivy League institutions, it is a systemwide problem.

Case in point is brought to us by the University of Alabama Birmingham (UAB). In the midst of violent rioting in dozens of cities across the United States, and on the same night rioters set fire to Washington, D.C.s historic St. Johns Episcopal Church, Sarah Parcak, a faculty member of UAB went to Twitter encouraging people to topple a local monument she deemed a racist insult.

Ms. Parcak began coaching rioters about how to tear down monuments as networks covered the unrest in Washington on Sunday night. PSA for ANYONE who might be interested in how to pull down an obelisk* safely from an Egyptologist who never ever in a million years thought this advice might come in handy, Ms. Parcak tweeted. She went on to fire off more than a dozen tweets demonstrating how protesters could topple obelisks , The Washington Times reported.

As leftists consumed public education, they accepted open-minded young people into their realm and are now vomiting them back up as heartless anarchists.

On Parcaks bizarre tweet frenzy encouraging mayhem, Mark Bauerlein, the editor of First Things Magazine, a journal on religion and public life, said, The crucial point in this maniacal tweet is that this professor has been honored by TED, the Smithsonian, and the Guggenheim, and asked, Many advocates of disorder now occupy elite institutions that have in the past been the guarantors of order. Who let them in?

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Kyle Shideler, the director/senior analyst for homeland security andcounterterrorism at the Center for Security Policy, has the most direct answer: They took over the academy and all credentialing. The middle and lower-middle-class families in this country paid millions to let the Weather Underground raise their kids in hopes they would climb the social ladder, as he responded on social media.

A Fox News producer inquired with UAB if it had any comment about a faculty member encouraging the destruction of property and mayhem on a night when the nation was aflame in violence.

UAB responded, These are not the opinions of the university. Our 45,000+ students, faculty and staff often use social media to express thoughts that do not necessarily reflect the voice of the university. If a public comment by a member of the campus community needs to be addressed by Student Affairs or Human Resources, it would be. However, personnel and student conduct matters are addressed privately between the individual and the institution.

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Whoever Mattis and Rahmans professors were, they werent out fixing up Molotov cocktails Sunday night, but for some reason their young charges allegedly were.

And Parcak was no doubt comfortable in a chair during the 10 p.m. hour on a Sunday as she was tweet-inciting others to put themselves and their futures at great risk. Why put yourself on the line when others who look up to you are too naive to know youre stuffing them into a cannon?

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Originally posted here:

Tammy Bruce: Education gone wrong riots reveal this about nation's colleges, professors - Fox News

This past week, Lori Lightfoot released her guidelines for safely opening Chicagos restaurants as new COVID-19 infections begin to wane. The asks are onerous: plexiglass between tables, temperature checks upon entry, customers only being able to remove their masks once their food is served, and eliminating waiting areas and bar seating. By turning dining out into a grueling ordeal, the mayors new ruleslike the CDCs new recommendations for office spaces, some impractical, if not near impossible to implement, argues The New York Timeswill likely collapse the industry theyre meant to salvage.

Should it open its doors in the fall, the University must not make the same mistake with its own public spaces and sense of physical community.

As weve learned through our quarter learning (and in my case, also teaching) on Zoom, our universitys life is about so much more than classroom instruction. In fact, it is perhaps primarily about chance encounters: with an old acquaintance in a study lounge or at a house party, with an unexpected book on some shelf in the Reg or Powells, with a beloved professor in a hallway or on 57th Street on a Saturday afternoon. This shouldnt be surprising: True education is relational, as all the critics of the banking model from Paulo Freire to bell hooks have long told us, and it is such non-transactional relationships that certain shared public spaces make possible.

This is why, all fiscal cynicism aside, the best American universities mandate that their students reside at least initially on campus: the campuss ambulatory lifestyleone of the last truly pedestrian spaces in American lifeis what permits certain pedagogical relational qualities to flourish. Our most important spaces as a scholarly community are thus the Reg, the main quad, the coffee shops that dot campus and, expanding our scope, Hyde Parks many conversational hauntsJimmys, our bookstores, our parks, the Point. Knowing, sharing, and bumping into one another in these spaces is what defines life as a University of Chicago student at any level, and that of most of our professors as well. We need these spaces as fish need water.

This is not waxing poetic or why-cant-we-get-back-to-normal-ism: It is about the Universitys institutional and economic survival. Aside from the overwhelming empirical evidence that in-person instruction, absent niche conditions, universally trumps tele-learning, the ongoing lawsuits throughout the country show that undergraduates are keenly (and rightly) aware that their college educations Zoomification is daylight robbery. Undergraduates do not pay up to $80,000an admittedly absurdly inflated sumto read the canon in their bedrooms: They could do that on their own. What being a student at UChicagoor any great universitygives is the chance to cultivate oneself in an intensely intellectual, and intellectually successful, milieu, and that mainly through friendships. Graduate students like myself can sneer at this as mere networking, but if were honest, wed admit that getting, say, a UChicago doctorate is valuable for the same reasons. As a Divinity School professor once told our entering cohort: After all, if youd just wanted to write a book on your favorite obscure monk, you couldve stayed at home. (We now feel the full weight of this witty aside.)

This means that, if the administration moves forward with fall reopening plans, maintaining students access to shared spaces, and ability to engage one another in those spaces, must remain a priority. It is not realistic, or right, to expect students to socially isolate from one another or to limit essential scholarly resources such as the Regenstein (and other University libraries). Recent library communiques have suggested, for example, that in-person visits to the Reg may be appointment-based and time-limited. This may be a good transitional solutionand is certainly better than nothingbut it cannot become long-term policy. The praxis of browsing the stacks, for example, of returning to collect new sources, and of perusing more volumes than one could possibly pick up curbside to get a sense of some scholarly landscape, is a basic humanistic method. One could say the same of shared lab benches in the natural sciences. Sharing research facilities with ones peers for prolonged periods is just a core feature of what it physically means to be a student and scholar. It isneeded.

To speak of these as needs is to challenge one of the most contested aspects of the political and societal response to COVID-19: our dividing human life into essential and nonessential activities. What boggles the mind here is not so much the categories themselves, but both whats slotted into each and the mistaken belief that we can defer the nonessential forever. Through our duly elected representatives in Chicago, for example, weve decided that our ability to buy liquor is essential, but to use our own parks for exercise and a brief respite from cramped apartments is not. The same goes for our ability to meet family, friends, or lovers: that, too, is apparently nonessential to human life (as some now say). The result is that, even in the worlds most robustly democratic countries, discontent, goaded by extreme agendas, is boiling over.

Since it is clear that our federal (and in many cases state) governments are neglecting their civic responsibility to provide guidance, respected institutions like UChicago must embrace their trendsetting role. This means, first of all, recognizing that something like higher education is indeed essential to societys well-being and should not only exist in fair-weather conditions. It also means recognizing that a shared social and physical life is essential to that educational mission. Our response to the pandemic must thus be guided by that realityas opposed to us radically redefining the character of university life in search of a utopia of perfect safety.

This may come at a high logistical cost, such as universal COVID-19 testing of all returning students, staff, and faculty; large, randomly selected testing thereafter; and a robust contact-tracing program run by the University. It may also require new restrictions like an ongoing ban on international or even domestic travel, even if not on official University business (e.g. for Thanksgiving and winter break). We must also summon newfound levels of self-discipline and responsibility, such as by practicing meticulous personal hygiene.

The UChicago community is capable of these virtues, but only if their upkeep means to permit students and faculty to take part in those relational and, yes, social and physical practices at the core of our pedagogy and scholarship. Otherwise we will have not only betrayed our institutional principles but will find ourselves crafting restrictions that will not only be unlivable, butabsent the most draconian measures repulsive to a free society, such as RHs roaming the dorms to prevent late-night trystsalso ultimately unenforceable. If we are unable to bear this risk (legally or morally), we might as well delay.

Kristf Oltvai is a student in the Divinity School.

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Overabundance of Caution - The Chicago Maroon

Early-stage startups and social entrepreneurs with solutions that can help shape the Lagos of the future have been invited to participate in the first-ever Lagos Uban Innovative Challenge with $10,000 in view. Put together by Utopian conjunction with Future Africa, Business Insider, Skoll Foundation, the Mansueto Institute for Urban Innovation, Lagos Innovates and Rain Tree, the challenge seeks to financially empower startups with ideas that can help solve critical urban issues in Lagos, in areas such as energy, food and water, gov-tech, mobility, infrastructure, and public health and safety.

According to a statement by Emmanuel Adegboye, managing partner of Utopia Lagos, the company is very pleased to be supporting the entrepreneurs putting in the work now to build the future Africa deserves while placing the continent on the path to a new model of urban growth. He further added that shaping Lagoss urban future will require innovative approaches and collaboration between government, citizens, innovators and corporates.

Some of the major challenges that directly limit the growth of the Nigerian tech ecosystem include lack of finance, poor infrastructure, insecurity, lack of trust by security agents among many others. In comparison to the countrys worth, the Nigerian government have not done enough in recent years to support the growth of technology in the country. There are no concrete systems put in place to encourage and empower tech startups with further skill sets that could help them compete favourably on the global stage.

In August 2019, a 9-year -old tech genius, Basil Okpara Jr, was discovered somewhere in Lagos. As of then, he has invested 30 games with his parents laptop. According to Okpara, he learnt to build games at a boot camp and currently builds whenever he is bored. Similarly, 25-year-old Jerry Isaac Mallo in December 2019 manufactured Nigerias first carbon fibre-sports-car plus a ventilator invention in March 2020 to aid the fight of the coronavirus. He called on the federal government for support with access to raw materials and funds to improve on his inventions but that was how far it could get. Nothing more is known about what the government is doing to support these geniuses.

The latest brain drain in Nigeria is happening in its tech industry. Many Nigerian tech developers are beginning to migrate to countries like Canada in search of a better quality of life and incomes because the countrys system is not lucrative enough for them.

As of 2019, machinery including computers cost Nigeria $9 billion of its import, taking the largest import slot by 18.9 percent. The Nigerian government needs to take proactive steps to make the tech space truly conducive for its tech innovators. Infrastructures like constant power supply, affordable internet services and access to raw materials should be among its top priorities. If not considered, the country would keep spending more on the importation of technology while losing its prospective tech geniuses to other countries.

Utopia is the worlds first urban innovation group that centres solely on using innovation to transform emerging cities and their slums. The company aims to support startups with solutions that can help solve critical urban issues in Lagos. Winners in the competition would be given access to a virtual urban accelerator, over $10,000 worth of resources, and access to a support network from the challenge partners.

Read more:

Utopia to fund Nigerian startups with over $10,000 via its Lagos Urban Innovation Challenge - Ventures Africa

Crystal Z Campbell, Notes from Black Wall Street #77 (2016), mixed media, 11 x 8.5 inches (all images courtesy the artist/author)

Dear Tulsa,

Recently, a youthful physicians assistant used a medical-grade version of a hole punch to extract layers of tissue from my right arm. My skin, the largest organ on my body, now features a gaping hole, clumsily held together by two meager stitches. Despite this invasive procedure, my body is expected to make the repairs on its own.

A biopsy reminded me of you, Tulsa. I thought about how we can grow new skin, but the scar remains. Scars are histories written upon our skin.

Steps from my front door is the site of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. This land was once called Black Wall Street. Imagine over thirty-five bustling blocks of mostly Black homes and businesses being firebombed, in one of the wealthiest Black communities in the United States. Imagine being one of hundreds detained, shot, or worse killed blocks from your home or place of business. Imagine a city ordinance forbidding you to rebuild on your own land. Imagine a century of silence, with little to no trace of your relative, neighbor, friend, or partner. Imagine the bounty of fear and rumor.

Despite coming of age in this state and taking mandatory classes on Oklahoma history, I had never heard of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre until I turned 30. By chance, an artist I met in New York City mentioned the massacre in passing. Just shy of a century after-the-fact, the massacre is now a mandatory part of the curriculum in Oklahoma schools, though the massacre was referred to by many Oklahoma state officials as The Tulsa Race Riot as recently as 2018. In archives, some newspaper articles about the riot are literally punched out, missing from record.

Who imagined someone in the future would search for this? Who omitted bits of evidence surrounding the massacre from the archive? What stake did they have in doing so? I search archives for shelved witnesses while fast-forwarding past land grabs, urban renewal, and gentrification. I wonder about Black residents who resisted during the Tulsa Race Massacre a resistance omitted by popular media.

Tulsa, I have a complicated relationship with you, and to you, but there is also love. It is the kind of love like familial love which you didnt quite ask for, nor choose, but that you know will always be the haint of your existence.

In my creative research, I have made several attempts to think through these historical gaps shrouded in silence. In 2013, I was an artist-in-residence in Lake Como, Italy. A week upon arrival, I made the first of many works I still make around the Tulsa Race Massacre. Paradise is an installation that poses questions about the idea of a Black utopia. Who is accountable for such racially motivated destruction, and who might be accountable for reparations, for healing, for the absence of this narrative in public memory? A minimal gesture, the installation featured a large, empty room bathed in blue light. Within closed doors, viewers were immediately immersed in the smell of burning wood. The smell was more of a phantom no visible objects were burned, nor was there any source of fire.

In Notes From Black Wall Street, I have been compiling one-hundred archival images from Greenwood before, during, and after the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. As we reflect on the recent centennial of other instances of racially motivated domestic terrorism, such as the Red Summer, and approach that of the Tulsa Race Massacre, I meditate on these images through the application of tactile layers of paint, like scars, atop archival photographs. I offer these works as prompts to meditate on the future of our complicit fictions, suppressed memories, and united histories.

Walk with me.I am in search of an elevator. A black man. A white woman. Escaped goats.Walk with me.I am in search of traces of a former community thriving in exile because of segregation.Walk with me.I am in search of pennies, melting together by fire.

To be truthful, for most of my youth, I planned to escape this arid, open plain. This was not because I did not find your red dirt beautiful. This was not because I was not enamored by your rose rocks, your sweeping wind, or your thunder. My father, who chose to retire here from the military, later claimed the most racist experiences hes had in his sixty plus years of living have been in Oklahoma. When he returned from war, my parents moved us from a mostly Black township to a sundown town: Norman, Oklahoma. Traces of racial segregation littered my childhood bus rides through the countryside, tainted my impressions of cowboys, and instilled a perpetual anxiety about open land. I grew up here, but this has never been a place of comfort.

Recently, my work rooted in the massacre was pulled from a high-profile exhibition in Oklahoma. Another potential collaboration regarding the massacre was cancelled, with an explanation that Tulsas sensibilities were peculiar. I wondered if support for the organization would be revoked; if my work would create discomfort, if it didnt align with the politics of the institution, if it was a history they didnt want to be affiliated with, if it would prompt a conversation they did not want to have.

I am not particularly concerned about my work being shown. I am concerned about critical narratives of this city, this state, this nation, being omitted from history. I am concerned about the culture of silence and censorship that has forced many to try to heal themselves, even if such wounds are beyond repair.

Narratives are skins.

Narratives are tools.

Narratives are weapons.

Narratives are scars.

Rooted by your central Council Oak Tree, Tulsa, you are a place that was founded by Creek Indians following forced removal; they named this old town Talasi in 1836. This area of Indian Territory became home to both forced Indigenous migrants and actual outsiders (yes, the namesake film was shot here), attracting outlaws and freed slaves who migrated here in search of land of their own.

Amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, I have been investigating my own rootedness. Ancestry.com searches suggest that my fathers family was rooted in Indian Territory (prior to Oklahoma statehood in 1907), and were Creek Freedmen descendants. I am left to imagine if they had any connection to Black Wall Street, or where they would have landed, were it not for waves of racial intimidation. I am here now, by choice, because I want to unearth these narratives.

Oklahomas history is riddled with pioneers on Indigenous land, land grabs, oil extraction, boomtowns, unchecked privilege, and waves of settler colonialism. I never imagined as a child that some parcels of Oklahoma would be someones version of utopia. However, I find comfort in picturing the over fifty Black townships that Oklahoma boasted after the Civil War.

I have always found this state beautiful and ugly too. I ask, in 2020: How can we be truthful? How can we revisit history in a reparative way? How can we move closer to the impossibility of this utopian vision?

Dear Tulsa, you are famous now, as much as youve ever been. Will oil be slick enough to preserve our futures? Ask Larry Clark if his pictures of hard-lived Tulsa still hold true. Ask viewers of HBOs Watchmen how a graphic novel adaptation can instantly amplify otherwise hushed, historical transmissions? Ask the Supreme Court if the reclamation of Indigenous land should proceed. Ask if art can reframe one of our states greatest public secrets. And while all of this is happening: Where do you want us to look?

Lets begin by scanning holes, historical omissions, and instances of deliberate extraction. Following the current mayors suggestion, lets reckon with history and acknowledge that the Tulsa Race Massacre was a crime. If the past is a lesson, a crime cannot be placated by gifting survivors with medallions in lieu of reparations. Justice extends beyond a pending excavation of mass graves. Justice requires that the identification of victims be paralleled by the identification of perpetrators. Justice is a prerequisite to healing.

Dear Tulsa, today marks the ninety-ninth anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre. Will justice take another hundred years?

The Tulsa Race Massacre, formerly known as the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot, took place from May 31 to June 1, 1921 in the Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma.

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99 Years After the Tulsa Race Massacre, an Artist Reflects - Hyperallergic

To make them lightweight, production designer Sabu Cyril got them made in carbon fibre instead of steel. So what happens to such mega productions?

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From the days of silent, black-and-white films, there has been tremendous progress in every aspect of filmmaking. Even the numbers have grown exponentially. Tens of thousands of feature films, documentaries, TV serials, and commercials are made every year, making it an industry worth billions of dollars.

But the one thing that hasnt changed is the waste generation and the silent damage to the environment! It is in the use of plastics on props and sets, and smoke from action-packed scenes, increasing carbon footprints by the globetrotting crew.

Sadly, including the viewer, no one notices or talks about this.

Cinema can fill in the empty spaces of your life, said Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar, known for films like Women on the verge of a nervous breakdown, High heels etc.

He aptly described the role of cinema in our lives. Producers of this profit-making industry will go to any length to ensure that the celluloid world transports us into a Utopia.

For any historical film, huge sets are maintained in a pristine condition until the shoot is complete. Artificial and aesthetic weapons are made. It is reported that for the epic fight scenes in the film Baahubali, nearly 10,000 weapons consisting of swords, helmets, and armour, were created. To make them lightweight, production designer Sabu Cyril got them made in carbon fibre instead of steel, which is recyclable, whereas carbon fibre isnt.

What happens to the temporary sets or other paraphernalia once the shooting is complete?

With minute detail, we had constructed the replica of a Boeing 747 plane which was hijacked in 1986, for the film Neerja, says Aparna Sud, the production designer. Since the film was released in 2016, the aeroplane has been lying in a heap in Nitin Desais famous ND film studio near Mumbai.

Sud has won several awards, including the Filmfare, Zee Cine Award, and an International Indian Film Academy Award for this films production design. Although she loves her job, she regrets the waste generated by her work.

At the end of the shoot, we just pay Rs 3,500 per truck of waste, and our responsibility ends! Some items like iron and wood may be retrieved by the kabadiwalas, but the rest of that waste goes to landfills, accepts the set designer.

Like other production designers, she too retrieves many items from her sets and stores them to be used in other shoots later.

Another award-winning production designer, Sukant Panigrahy, says, Many times, I tried to initiate a dialogue with the officers at the Film City (Dadasaheb Phalke Chitranagari) in Mumbai about starting a waste management centre on the premises. But the talks never concluded. Even when I was working with Yash Raj Films, I tried; the problem was accepted, but it was never given serious thought.

Art director and designer of films like Chak De! India, Dev D, Tashan, Ek Tha Tiger, Panigrahy has started waste recycling in his capacity. More than a design director, he wishes to be known as an installation artist and collects reusable items like pipes, nuts, bolts, and flex sheets from his film sets. Some of these were displayed at the 2013 Kala Ghoda Art Festival in Mumbai.

Set materials like Flex sheets arent recyclable and damage the environment extensively. They are painted, used as backdrops on film sets and name boards for shops or advertising hoardings. They are made of PVC (Polyvinyl chloride) and dont decompose.

Other items used in large quantities are plastic cups, plates, small mineral water bottles, hand tissues used in makeup and supari packet wrappers.

Besides these materials, carbon footprints are added when the crew goes on location hunting or visit the location to shoot. Large generators are used, and the damage is greater in an action film due to the use of smoke, which harms the air quality.

We have to accept that some kind of waste will be generated on the film sets, with damage to the environment, but the new trend is to minimise the damage as much as possible. A lot of things depend on the story; for example, if the story is based abroad, then one has to fly. But that part is minimised if it is based in India, explains Ravi Popat. Hes the award-winning art director of the Gujarati film, Hellaro.

Luckily for Popat, Hellaros story was Kutch-based. So, he used local material to build 15 Bhungas (traditional houses of Kutch, Gujarat) and labourers, with minimal waste.

Another new trend is to rent equipment from local outlets even when shooting abroad, except cameras. Even the support crew and actors are hired locally. This not only cuts costs but also reduces travel miles. The crew, including directors and actors, have also started replacing plastic water bottles with flasks which are refilled from common storage units.

To reduce travel miles and damage to the environment, big guns in the industry with no financial restraints, use VFX (visual effects) and CGI (computer-generated imagery) to get the required effect. For example, 90 per cent of the action and scenic beauty of Baahubali was created on VFX.

There is increasing use of this technique. And if done well, only experts can identify that it is not a real location. We have expertise but fall short on finances. Hollywood films have immense budgets which help their films look better with these new techniques, says Ramesh Meer, the chief creative director and CEO of the FX Factory.

In nearly five decades, he has made hundreds of films, including Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam, Pardes, Don and television serials and commercials.

Meer agrees that the increasing use of VFX and CGI will reduce the damage to our environment. In fact, in the latest film, War, a majority of the chase scenes between Hrithik Roshan and Tiger Shroff in the Arctic Circle were done on VFX and CGI.

Although many in India are using this technique, others are strapped for finances and depend on real location shooting. And they are the ones who need to be careful.

Meer says that VFX and CGI will be preferred if budgets are increased, which will help decrease the waste and carbon footprints.

Also Read:Heres Why These Mumbai Scriptwriters & Engineers Become Idol-Makers Once a Year!

In Hollywood, special NGOs like the Ecoset and Earth Angles are hired by filmmakers to manage their waste. The Indian film industry needs to wake up. People like Sud, Panigrahy, Popat are willing to work, and all they need is a little help from the film fraternity.

(Edited by Shruti Singhal)

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What Happened to Baahubalis 10,000 Weapons? Hint: You Wont Like The Answer - The Better India

The trials and tribulations of the X-Men are never-ending, but the period of history following M-Day was particularly difficult for mutantkind. One event during this time was the macabre Necrosha, by creators including Craig Kyle, Christopher Yost, Clayton Crain, Zeb Wells, Mike Carey, Clay Mann and more. Diminished, downtrodden and decimated, the majority of Marvel's remaining mutant population took refuge with the X-Men on an island off the coast of San Francisco. However, this proved to be a double-edged sword, as the island consolidated a lot of remaining mutant power while also painting a huge target on the vulnerable people who resided there. Knowing that mutantkind was on the ropes, the island became a target for anti-mutant hate groups and X-Men villains alike.

One particularly sadistic foil for the X-Men, the immortal, vampiric Selene Gallio, decided to wreak havoc by raising an army of undead mutants. She tried to use the X-Men's vulnerable state to settle her old grudge against Emma Frost and to attempt to ascend to godhood. Selene's aim was to resurrect the fallen mutants from the nation of Genosha, along with other prominent figures from the X-Men's past, to then absorb their essence to transcend her mortal form. What followed was a horrific physical and psychological onslaught on the X-Men.

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Long before she debuted in Chris Claremont and Sal Buscema's New Mutants #9, Selene began life centuries ago. Even as a child, Selene required the life force of those around her to thrive. Before being unleashed on the world, she absorbed the essence of the entire tribe she had been born into. From there, she sought to become even more powerful, believing that if she absorbed enough essence from living beings, she would become a god. However, this required a huge number of human lives, and her earlier attempts throughout the ages were foiled orfolded after betrayal.

Following another, more recent betrayal from Emma Frost and the Hellfire Club, Selene sought to make Emma and Utopia suffer. She assembled a group of mutants and cohorts, either disenfranchised by the X-Men or simply fanatically loyal to her. Her most notable servant was Eli Bard, who had been imbued with the Techno-Organic virus. He was also entrusted with the ceremonial dagger to initiate Selene's ascension, although he lost it in a battle with a spiritual force protecting an Apache burial ground, the same tribe the X-Man Warpath belongs to.

With the virus, he was able to reanimate the dead, including all of the victims of the genocide on Genosha years prior. Given that Genosha once boasted a population of 16 million mutants, this would be more than enough life essence to allow Selene to ascend. Another caveat with the use of the techno-organic virus was that Bard could control those resurrected. In some cases, the resurrected mutants were aware they were being controlled, some even tried to fight it. For the most part, however, Selene had a ready-made army of the undead and set them on the X-Men.

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The first attack wason the prison under Utopia, which occupied Danger and began to sew chaos beneath the island. During the attack on the prison by a resurrected Shinobi Shaw, Donald Pierce, was present and relaying information back to the leader of the Sentinels. While this didn't have an immediate bearing on the conflict, it set in motion the events of X-Men: Second Coming, another devastating struggle for the X-Men. The New Mutants were attacked by a revived Cypher, though with the help of Warlock and Magik, they managed to purge him of the virus' controlling aspect.

Next, Selene unleashed a personal attack on Emma Frost. Selene resurrected the Hellions, Emma's first team who perished while under her tutelage. They lured her away from the rest of the X-Men and attempted to kill her. Although Cyclops managed to get to her in time, Frost was left confused and traumatized by the confrontation. After Wolverine tried to dispatch one of the Hellions, the X-Men realized that the resurrected could not be killed. Selene and her reanimated mutants also cut off the X-Men from themainland, intercepting half of X-Force as they tried to rejoin the X-Men.

During a battle with a resurrected Pyro, Archangel's aggression overtook him, beginning his descent into becoming the heir of Apocalypse later inUncanny X-Force. He cut the former Brotherhood member in half with his wings, but in a display of unnerving body horror, Pyro's body began to rebuild as he taunted Warren. Banshee and Risque also returned to life, attacking the X-Men. The two former X-Men allies appeared to be fighting the virus, verbally warning their friends to run, as they couldn't control their actions. Warpath. who still had possession of Selene's lost ceremonial dagger, was captured and taken to Genosha.

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Onyxx, Meld and Diamond Lil perished during the battle on Utopia. Onyxx in particular was killed by former student and ally, Wither, who had joined Selene's entourage after running away from the X-Men. This loss of life also began to escalate tensions between Cyclops and Wolverine, who had recently argued over sending X-23 into dangerous situations. Wovlerine wanted to keep the younger mutants safe whereas Cyclops believed all mutants should fight for their future. This would be the foundation for the Schism event later, which split the X-Men down the middle.

Another figure who perished was an Asgardian wolf-person known as Hrimhari, a descendant of Fenris. The Asgardian had fallen in love with Rahne Sinclair, the mutant Wolfsbane, and had been traveling to Utopia with X-Force to seek help for her. Hoping that the mutant healer Elixir could help, he was dismayed to find the young mutant dead on arrival. As Utopia was under siege, Hrimhari desperately appealed to Hela, the Asgardian Goddess of death. After she offered him the chance to exchange his life for Rahne's, he instead sought to trade his life for Elixir's, knowing that the young man could save Wolfsbane.

The capture of Warpath brings him face-to-face with his resurrected brother, Thunderbird. It's revealed that Warpath's blood is needed for the ascension ritual, and a sigil is drawn with it. Though under Selene's thrall, Thunderbird retains his mind, warning Warpath that Selene willnot stop after the ascension and implores his brother to kill him and then Selene. This is because Selene would move from consuming life on Earth to ravaging the spirit world, which would make her unstoppable. He tells Warpath how to kill Selene, before being mercifully ended by his brother.

RELATED:X-Men: Whatever Happened to the Phoenix Saga's Original Villain?

While escaping, Warpath comes across X-Force, who were on mission to rescue him and stop Selene. He imparts the knowledge about how to defeat Selene and confronts the villain with their help. Elixir also does battle with Wither, his former friend and classmate, killing him by disintegrating him. In the tumultuous final battle, Warpath stabs the ascending Selene with her own ceremonial dagger, calling on the energies of the spirits protecting his tribe to push her from her course to godhood.

In the aftermath, the X-Men were afforded no rest. Directly after this, X-Men: Second Coming kicked off, which saw the further loss of friends and family, pushing mutantkind closer to extinction. Selene didn't perish in Nerosha either and has caused trouble in the pages of Captain America. Necrosha exposed Utopia as a vulnerable location, and the event set off tensions between Wolverine and Cyclops that the events following only magnified. As both a horrific battle for survival and an omen of things to come, Necrosha was one of the darkestevents in recent X-Men history.

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Gary is a writer on all things Marvel and hails from Newcastle, England. His favourite heroes are Nova, Moon Knight and Elixir of the X-Men. He also likes listening to Japan and brooding on balconies in old buildings.

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COVID-19 has driven a major reconsideration of how professional and managerial ("white-collar") Americans work.

With centralized, high-density open office floor plans presenting a major risk of mass spreading events, knowledge workers have been logging in from home.

Large social changes like the end of the office carry costs, benefits and risks which are not evenly shared by all the stakeholders involved. Before declaring a post-pandemic revolution toward remote work, workers, employers, and anyone else impacted by such a shift should think carefully about all of its implications.

Back in 2016, the love of my life decided she was going to attend law school in North Carolina, so I approached my employer about the possibility of working remotely. After implementing a few technological tools, the transition went smoothly, and I haven't looked back.

Remote work has been a wonderful experience. Gone are hours of commutes, replaced with more comfortable attire, canine friends beside my desk, and the chance to make a real lunch at home instead of trying my luck at the deli.

Flexibility to quickly duck out to the grocery store, get a workout in, and sleep a bit later is helped along by being productive at night or on weekends when that better fits my schedule. Communication is easy with instant messages and cloud tools for our shared work output.

Add in relaxing trees out the window of my house (something I and most of my peers would have a hard time affording in New York or San Francisco) and I'm very happy and many others would be too.

Even for workers that take a pay cut to work remotely (as Facebook proposed last week), equivalent salaries in different cities may leave an employee better off because what they want to spend their salary on isn't available near the office but is remotely. Housing (and those trees out my window) is definitely the best example of this.

It's important to acknowledge that being able to work at home is a privilege mostly reserved for the relatively educated and those in specific occupations. Black or Latino workers are also much less likely to work remotely.

George Pearkes

For those whose occupations do allow remote work, there are still risks.

A shift away from offices could be yet another way for businesses to crush labor. For instance, if Facebook decides to claw back more than the "fair" adjustment to a lower cost of living outside of the Bay Area, workers might pay a penalty.

For workers that already have a lot of bargaining power due to special skills, high degrees of responsibility, or lots of demand for their capabilities, any change will always be easier to manage than for workers who have less bargaining power. The way remote work impacts workers is in no small part a function of the status quo.

Venture capitalist Jeff Morris Jr argued last week that remote workers may face a penalty in terms of perception, with folks who choose not to show up at the office in person signalling they are less willing to "do what it takes" for advancement.

There are also concerns that once workers aren't tied to physical locations anymore, they will effectively be competing in a global market where they are relatively expensive versus workers in other countries, Higher-prerequisite jobs that shift remote within the US might shift remote outside of it. This process played out in the 1990s through 2010s with manufacturing jobs; does remote work open the door to a similar effect in remote work-enabled occupations?

Employees working remotely also may struggle to network, both inside and outside their companies, which hurts both their bargaining power with employers and productivity within their firms. That's especially true for young workers at the start of their career.

As a related issue, unless whole industries go remote, it may prove hard to find a new role if you're fired as a remote worker outside a major center for your industry than if you had stayed in a big, expensive city.

Finally, family and gender need consideration. With persistent gender inequity in terms of household chores and childcare, there's reason to worry that remote work will free up time for fathers and mothers alike, but women will have that dividend taken up by expectations of non-career work, whether it's chores, childcare, or other gendered tasks.

The challenge with most of these problems is that they are not directly caused by remote work as a new concept, but exacerbate or focus existing conflicts within society. On the other hand, that opens the door to avoiding some of the worst outcomes.

I have no grand pronouncements about what needs to be done to make remote work a viable option for all workers or employers, but I can draw on personal experience to highlight some factors that have made my experience not just viable, but optimal.

First, I had already worked for my employer for years before approaching them about the idea of remote work. Those years had built up trust and rapport in-person, and the fit I had with my team before taking the leap made it all much easier. Workers and businesses who launch into remote work as the starting point may have a harder time.

Second, I had a professional network in the financial industry developed through years spent living in New York City. My specific line of work makes remote professional networking very easy, so my Twitter presence and other professional communication tools meant there wasn't a big networking penalty leaving the city I had lived in.

Third, my work is not very dependent on collaboration. While any written work needs editing, and any team needs to get on the same page from time-to-time, it's rare that I need to sit down with the rest of my firm to discuss something. Roles that are more dependent on that sort of meeting may not find a permanent switch to Zoom calls or webinars as easy.

Fourth and finally, my firm is small. That limits the cross-organization interactions which can be eased significantly by in-person meetings, happy hours, or lunches. Firms that have a more developed "office politics" that comes with bigger, more siloed teams may penalize workers that are remote and less able to participate in struggles for promotion or new responsibility.

It's unlikely we'll see a policy solution for the question of how employers shift to remote work, leaving decisions in those employers' hands.

Some of the loudest voices advocating for remote work within an organization may be those least exposed to its costs or risks, and employers should think carefully about who they listen to in that conversation. Over-weighting the voices of the wrong stakeholders raises the risks of botching the transition and leaving everyone worse-off.

For employees, there might not be a decision to make, but opting-in to remote work arrangements has big risks as well as big opportunities. I've tried to lay out as many as I can and hope that workers can use that perspective making their own decision.

One thing I'm sure about: remote work is neither the first step towards utopia nor a surefire negative outcome for workers. The details, approach, and tools used for remote work are incredibly important, and suitability also varies dramatically across society.

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