Monthly Archives: June 2020

The Simsis still going strong as a series, allowing players to project their personalities in a whole new world. The possibilities are endless, and having more creators is a key part of that. With EA finally going beyond the Origin platform,The Sims 4 will finally be on Steam later this year, as the team revealed at EA Play Live 2020. Of course, being able to create, live, and enjoy a utopia created by your own hand is always awesome. EA also celebrated the many fans that made the series what it is, a heartwarming message that many sorely need right now.

Having made its debut back in 2000,The Simshas certainly come a long way as a franchise. Giving players the freedom to create virtual people, construct dream homes, and living out virtual lives, it was escapism that retained a touch of reality. It was a huge hit with fans, and has spawned a legacy that is envied by many. With its latest iteration, The Sims 4, arriving in 2014, the game has reached over 20 million players and counting.

That has plenty to do with the support coming from the developers as well. Each entry came with its own set of downloadable content and expansions. Not only did this keep fans coming back for more, but it also breathed new life into the game every time. WhileThe Sims 4 has always been an Origin exclusive, the move to Steam will surely benefit the community even more.

The message of a better life, one where you are not judged, and makes you feel included is one we can get behind. WithThe Sims 4 coming to Steam, hopefully, more players will have the opportunity to experience that in a whole new world.

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The Sims 4 will bring the good life to Steam soon - PC Invasion

This essay is the seventh in a series of memos by artists, writers, curators and scientists written to the world after the COVID-19 crisis. In homage to Italo Calvinos Six Memos for the Next Millennium (1988), they are divided into six categories: lightness, quickness, exactitude, visibility, multiplicity and consistency.'Rethinking Community in the Wake of the Pandemic'was written in response to multiplicity.

After Italo Calvino, lets begin with a story, a Tantric Hindu myth. Sat wants to leave. iva, god of destruction, bars the departure of his good wife. An ascetic, Sat summons the fiery energy of opposition; iva shuts his eyes in fear. When he opens them to descry an escape route, the walls of his mountain seat are surrounded. The supreme Goddess speaks herself forth; Himalaya shudders as thousands of names emanate in omnipresent sound. In Sats anger, the Goddess assumes multiple forms: a blood-drenched lotus (Kamal), many wilful arms (Mtag), the power to silence enemies (Bagalmukh), holy smokes revenge (Dhmvat), her formidable studiousness (Bhairav), sacrificially devoted to you (Chinnamast), the cosubstantiality of earth (Bhuvanevar), girls playing, laughing (Tripura Sundar), a bridge of stars (Tr), times hunger (Kl). The story ends here, as stories proliferate.

This myth helps me to refigure the feeling of blockage that accompanies anger into an anger that blossoms and transforms space. The circumscription of power can produce a centrifugal force, from oppression to entropy: Sats resistance is the mother of insurrection. During a recent talk for The Lab, San Francisco, on Militant Care: Limits and Horizons, Hannah Black discussed the ways in which the horror conditions of the global pandemic bring about new political possibilities and coalitions, from the complete terraforming of the terrain of politics (e.g. mutual aid, rent strikes) to the peristaltic closure of reaction that moves to shut down these possibilities (e.g. community policing, closed borders). We are neither levelled nor unified by facing the same threat. The pandemic manifests the reality of our interrelation, the density and ineluctability of that entanglement, its potential for support and harm. As douard Glissant writes in The Poetics of Relation (1990): Relation contaminates, sweetens, as a principle, or as flower dust.

Glissant distinguishes between Einsteins theory of relativity and relations science of chaos-monde (chaos-world), contrasting what he describes as the formers arrowlike projection with the latters circular nomadism. Where Einstein sought a grand unified theory to prove the harmony of the universe, Glissant perceived a desire to flatten difference, silence the disharmonious, to measure everything in the world according to the same ideal scale. In his assertion of the right to opacity, Glissant seeks liberation for those who are not seen or measurable, who are unintelligible in the cosmic song or refuse to play along.

Im interested in this turn to physics to think about sociality and poetics. In his notes on Visibility, Calvino correlates the endless triangulations of atomic particles, lived experiences and the impalpable, powder-fine dust of words that seek to know through representation. He writes: The poets mind, and at a few decisive moments the mind of the scientist, works according to a process of association of images that is the quickest way to link and to choose between the infinite forms of the possible and the impossible. What image expresses every single relationship between every single existent in the expanding universe? What image expresses the oscillation of existence and non-existence contingent on relation, on contact that entails creation and destruction, as in particle colliders and political uprisings?

Calvino seems to respond to Glissants opposition to the desire for harmony in his memo on Multiplicity: What matters is not the enclosure of the work within a harmonious figure but the centrifugal force produced by it a plurality of languages as a guarantee of a truth that is not merely partial. Knowledge is opposed to singularity of language, culture or perspective; knowledge moves, goes in circles, gets knotted, activates nodes and networks.

The Mahvidys named above great goddesses of knowledge and language offer an image.Their shared attributes (icons, mantras, social contexts) render them a loose, constantly reorganizing community. Attributes function like hyperlinks, so thatshellor xsacred syllableorcremation groundenables transition before you realize youre moving. Black articulates her political horizons as a movement for homes that makes the world a safer place for wandering. These horizons are far out, but theyre not confined to the future, she says; apocalypse and utopia are already with us. I wander through language, conveyed by microscopic waves and macroscopic spirals, in search of revolutions that already exist and supportive forms of relation and homes and wormholes

Main Image:Mahavidya. Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons

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Rethinking Community in the Wake of the Pandemic - frieze.com

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Covid-19 Lockdown Impact On Global Hand Pin Vises Market Growth and Demand, Projected MarketResearchStore - Cole of Duty

Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams is not, by any means, a prison or police abolitionist. But you may be forgiven for thinking so if you listen to some of the language he uses to describe his vision of what the future of public safety could look like.

Hopefully one day we can evolve to the point, as human beings, that we dont need any form of policing, Adams tells The Root over the phone on Wednesday morning. How do we address our issues? How do we use community-based systems of resolving conflicts? I think thats quite possible. I dont think thats a utopia.

But, Adams, cautions, Are we there now? No, were not.

The journey to this moment has been a long one for Adamsspanning more than 20 years as an NYPD officer and another 20 years in public service. He has always positioned himself as a reformer, particularly when it comes to policing: Adams was a vocal opponent of stop-and-frisk policies during his time in the police force, joining the force under the guidance of Rev. Herbert Daughtry, who told him and other young black men to infiltrate the nations largest police department.

These experiences mean he can talk about policing with a specificity that many other politicians cant. Hes called for more robust data collection of arrests based on race and ethnicity, to better track patterns of biased policing within the NYPD. Hes calling for allocating substantial portions of the NYPD budget to other departments, like education. He wants to completely transform the criteria used to select precinct commanders, emphasizing metrics that show engagement with the community (like how many police assisted local residents with getting city identification cards, or helped hand out Census forms).

Six months ago, these proposals would have certainly seemed radicaland compared to other prominent city and state leaders, they still are. But the conversation in the last month around policing has shifted dramatically from transformative reforms to defunding and abolition. For Adams, the question is how effectively he can sell his vision of public safety to a city with a long and tumultuous history with policing.

G/O Media may get a commission

Racist policing is, of course, a nationwide problemone that the breadth, diversity, and persistence of the countrys Black Lives Matter protests speaks to. But in a city policed by 36,000 officers, the borough of Brooklyn has been at the forefront of discussions about the NYPD and its disproportionate impact on black and brown communities. The rapidly gentrifying borough has had a strained relationship with the police force for decades; given Brooklyns size (it is, by population, the largest borough in New York) and relationship to policing, its no wonder that the citys largest protests have occurred there.

Born in Brownsville, Adams is very much a native son of the borough, and as its president, Adams has been one of Mayor Bill de Blasios most vocal critics when it comes to policing. This was true particularly during the height of the coronavirus pandemic. After several high-profile social distancing arrests of black men occurred in his borough and in other parts of the city, Adams compared the police tactics to the stop-and-frisk arrests of the early aughts (data about these arrests would soon confirm that there was a marked racial disparity in who was arrested for not social distancing adequately).

Now, as the institution of policing itself is being debated, Adamswho has repeatedly voiced interest in a mayoral runsays he is heartened by the progress the Black Lives Matter protests have brought and the newfound political will to look at community-based models of policing. He tells me he has been in conversation with the mayor about a proposal where civilians would have a greater say in picking precinct commanders. Adams is also encouraged by the charges brought not just against former Minneapolis officer Derek Chauvin, who killed George Floyd last month after kneeling on his neck for nearly nine minutes, but against the three officers who didnt intervene.

These are some reforms that weve called for for so many years and they seem to be taking root, says Adams, before emphasizing theres still a lot of ground to be gained.

There is an entire puzzle that needs to be put together of what policing and public safety need to look like, he continues. We only put a few pieces on the board. A lot of big pieces remain.

For Adams, these big pieces include taking substantial portions of the police budgetwhich currently sits at $11 billionand funneling them toward initiatives that could prevent crime; in Adams words, a proactive, rather than reactive approach to public safety. Here, he cites the high instances of dyslexia and mental health issues among those imprisoned at Rikers Island. At the infamous New York City Jail, nearly half have mental health issues, while 30 to 40 percent are dyslexic, he told AM NY last year. Eighty percent of those incarcerated at the jail dont have a high school diploma.

To him, these statistics indicate that more money ought to be going to youth services, public schools and, in particular, learning disability programs, which can help support young people in their education.

But Adams position, which emphasizes tackling the root causes of crime, is not necessarily an abolitionist one. Adams very much believes in the necessity of a police force, and wants to see the city take incremental, tactical steps to fixing policing rather than an outright disbandment.

Adams points to high rates of gun violence to explain why Brooklynand New York City, broadlystill needs the NYPD, citing several recent shootings in his borough.

Theres a level of professionalism that goes with responding to a shooting. Everybody cant walk around with a gun. Everyone cant walk around dealing with those extreme investigations that come with serious crimes, he says. There are, at this point, still roles that police officers have to take...to get to the root of a serious criminal action.

But Adams also emphasizes that he has lived experience with the mutual aid, community-care model of public safetyone that doesnt rely on police. Adams tells me that before becoming a police officer, he took part in a community safety initiative on his block in Prospect Place. He describes his particular street as being high in drug crime, and subject to abusive policing.

Then, it turned out later that some of the police were involved in the selling of drugs and guns, he says. We organized the block and said, hey, we got this. You dont even have to come down this block.

He doesnt go into the specifics about how this was donefocusing instead on the countrys collective addiction to using police to solve myriad problems, ranging from loud music to mental health concerns.

I saw how neighborhoods stopped going from believing the answer was 911, says Adams. We evolved in a city, in a country where resolutions to issues were in three numbers: 9-1-1.

To get a clearer idea of Adams values and approach to community care then, its helpful to look at his time as a state senator. In 2010, Adams, who said he acted at the behest of a group of young college women, launched a Stop the Sag campaign in the city, directed at getting young black and brown men to pull their pants up. The campaign included billboards and a political ad that connected pants-sagging to a long history of racist stereotyping. The video begins with a series of racist caricatures, before landing on footage showing young, black men walking with their pants down.

It is disturbing that today we see similarly negative and degrading imagery, but this time it is self-imposed, Adams says in a voice over.

Ten years later, Adams remains proud of the campaign, which provides a revealing look into his values and his approach as a community leader. While many might be wary of the respectability politics that come with policing how black people dressparticularly with such a public-facing campaignAdams sees it differently. To him, the trend of sagging pants is indicative of a failure of community care.

During that time, you were seeing 30 and 40-year-old men walking down the street, showing their pubic hairs, showing their underwear. Thats not civilized, he says. How did we go from the men of the 50s and 60s, always impressive attire, business attire, no matter what the economics was, to a point where we walk the streets showing our undergarments.

When we do a real reflection of that period, I just think we made a great mistake. We were trying to be cool with our children, Adams continues.

But when we talk about how dress codes have historically been weaponized against black folksin the streets, in schools, in the workplaceAdams makes clear he never intended for the campaign to be punitive in nature. What he wants is community interventionsadults pulling children aside and telling them that their behavior is not acceptable.

It is fair to say that Adams defies easy categorization as a politician. He was a vocal critic of NYPD policing practices as a member of the police force, but still managed to climb the ranks of the department. He cites experience with robust community care that exists outside police patrols, but remains focused on reforming and improving the institution of policing itself.

Its important to note here that abolitionist philosophywhich is the driving force behind calls to defund police departmentsis focused on defunding as just one step toward prison abolition. But in order to successfully do this, we need to ensure that other facets of our societyour schools, our workplaces, our mental health services, housingdont replicate the same patterns of discrimination, harassment, and abuse found in policing. While city councilors and other elected officials are pushing to cut funding to the NYPD, considerations like how the citys deeply segregated school system can successfully use these new funds in a way that advances racial progress remain to be articulated by any city leader. Notably, Adams says he wants to see the citys schools using a restorative justice approach, working with students and the community when discipline or behavior issues arise, rather than kicking them out of school. But how this wide-scale transition would look, particularly in a pandemic, is a conversation the citys leaders have not arrived at yet.

This is the task that lies before Adams and other elected officials as they grapple with reforms at a time when the Black Lives Matter movement is driving the conversation of what a substantive transformation of American society ought to look like. Every politician is charged with developing and selling a vision of the community, of the city they want to lead. For decades, Adams vision has been one of reform and, ultimately, a faith that policing can and ought to work for vulnerable communities. The question that remains to be answered is no longer just a matter of how to accomplish this kind of reform, but who in his community believe the same.

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How Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams Envisions the Future of Policing in New York City - The Root

I have two different thumbs. The right one is short and squat, narrow at the base and rounds to a thick bulb at the top, like a mushroom. It is identical to my mothers. My left thumb is long and slender, extending a good half-inch past the other. This one is from my father.

I was thirty-three years old the day my dad sat in his doctors office and received news of his leukemia. Forced to face his own mortality, he cried. Although I was not present at the exchange, I saw it in my mind as clear as a photograph when Mom told me, and the photo disappointed me. Throughout the years my family endured countless heartaches: bankruptcy, incarceration, drug abuse. Dad remained indifferent to all of it. It took the thought of losing his own life to bring tears to his eyes for the first time.

In the midst of my resentment and confusion over his diagnosis, my left thumb, my dads imprint on my DNA, gnawed at me. How had his existence shaped mine? There had to be more than just a skinny thumb.

My mom was talented, attractive, personable. I grew up in the countryside of Oregon in an unincorporated area outside of Woodburn, but Mom originally came from the East Coast and wore fashionable outfits with matching shoes. She enjoyed reading books and going to the theater. Her work ethic was uncompromising. I adored everything about her. I wanted to be her.

But I was not her. My mom could not understand any of the adolescent angst I had about my appearance. She never dealt with being heavyset or acne-prone or having oily hair. These were traits I inherited from my father. As a teenager, I believed everything I hated about myself came from him.

Dad was messy. He abhorred physical activity. He wanted easy money. Playing solitaire on the computer was his only discernible hobby.

I spent my life disassociating from Dad, identifying so strongly with my mother it was as though I had convinced myself I was a virgin birth. If I could just will him out of my genetic pool, I could will away the worst qualities in myself. But my left thumb was a constant reminderhe was, inevitably, part of me.

A professional studio portrait hung in my parents living room. My mom sits with perfect posture next to me as a toddler. My older brother kneels next to us on the floor. The portrait must have required coordination, a scheduled appointment and money to arrange. My dad is conspicuously absent. Why isnt he in it? Did my mom want it to be just the three of us? No, she said, he forgot to show up.

He skipped from job to job, refusing to stay anywhere that displeased him in the slightest, even if we were desperate for the money. He did not attend my school functions or any of Moms work parties. He would not even tolerate sitting through a movie if he hadnt been the one to choose it. Unlike Mom, who was consumed by duty and responsibility, Dad could not be bothered to do anything he was not interested in.

In the wake of his diagnosis, I began to see a watered down version of his self-indulgence staring back at me in the mirror. I sometimes quit jobs mere days after starting. I did not cook or clean unless the mood struck me. I returned calls sporadically or not at all. I showed up at parties and left two minutes later, already bored. I was not beholden to dead-end jobs, dead-end relationships or dead-end towns. Moving on was simple for me. I put myself and my needs first, just like Dad.

My dads closet was always full of Army-issued grey T-shirts and dress uniforms that no longer fit him. He had some affiliation with the military throughout most of his life. When he went away to Army Reserve training camp each summer he never failed to bring a T-shirt home for me. I shoved them all into my bottom drawer and refused to wear a single one in public. As a twelve-year-old girl, I wore peace sign earrings to symbolize my political feelings about the first Iraq War. Dad was furious. He screamed things at me about Hanoi Jane, a cultural reference I was too young to understand, and demanded I take the earrings off.

In my freshman year of college I decided to major in sociology. The issues around class resonated deeply with me; I was the first one in my family to go to college. I came home bursting at the seams with Marxist social theory, waxing poetic on the slogan from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.

Dad was incensed.

Do you really think all people are created equal and entitled to the same things? he snarled.

It was such a strange question to come from such a poor man. Surely he could see the beauty of a socialist utopia for people like us?

I remained determined, Yes.

His voice increased an octave with each subsequent word, You dont think youre any better, any smarter, than ALL THOSE IDIOTS OUT THERE?!

Timidity seeped in. I grew confused about what we were debating. Well, no, not really.

Youre wrong! Were not all equal. Youre not equal. Youre better! You deserve more! He spat the words at me, red-faced.

When I was seven years old, my grandpa, Dads dad, told me plainly, Youre going to be the first Zumwalt to make something of yourself. And at seven years old, I knew what he meantthat our family was essentially a pack of losers, but I was supposed to be different. I was supposed to be special. That must be where Dad learned it, flattery intertwined with disdain.

In my late twenties I relocated to San Francisco and rarely went back to Oregon to visit. There was one Thanksgiving holiday I did come home for the weekend. It had been almost two years since I saw my dad last. As he came in from work, he made no move to hug me. I guess it suited me fine since I did not feel like getting up from the couch. He asked, Hows the job? and shuffled on to play solitaire in the next room.

Communication on my dads side of the family was sparse. Extended family members were like the Loch Ness Monster. I heard rumors of their existence, but I never spotted them firsthand. I had a mysterious Aunt Joyce and two half-sisters I never met. This lack of communication was not unique to my dad, it was the whole clangrandma, grandpa, cousins, aunts, uncles, all acted in the same way. None of them felt bound by any sense of familial obligation to keep in touch. It was peculiar, because there were no dramatic falling-outs. They all just stopped talking to each other at some point, as if by a silently understood family code. I guess that code lived on in me too.

It was not surprising, then, that I was not with him at the end. He had been diagnosed with leukemia for about a year when Mom took him to the hospital, unwell. I considered flying up to see him but figured I would wait until it got really serious. Dad had already been hospitalized four days when he passed away. I have no idea how I would have defined really serious.

Our last conversation had been two months prior to his hospitalization. I was on the phone with my mom, and he wanted to speak to me. Mom handed him the receiver, and I sighed under my breath.

He got on the line and said, Im so proud of you and your promotion, punks. Youre really doing great. I told him I was nervous about the new responsibilities I had at work and what would be expected of me.

It was the best conversation we had ever had.

Growing up, we constantly found new objects strewn about the yardbattered oxygen tanks, discarded boat motor, pieces of sheet metal twenty feet long, winemaking equipment. Dad had a ludicrous scheme in mind for all of it. Some of his get-rich notions included restoring dilapidated VW Bugs, planting Christmas tree farms, marketing homemade cherry moonshine, starting a security firm, and constructing beaded earrings by hand. Not one of his plans ever came to fruition or produced any income, but that never inhibited him. He spoke about each new idea with a conviction normally reserved for a lawyer arguing a case.

When Mom spotted the latest addition in the yard, she demanded, What is that? Whats that metal for?

Im going to build a two-person passenger plane, he replied in all seriousness. I can fly you to Chicago to visit your sister when its done. Think of the money well save on airfare.

As a child, I was mesmerized by movie musicals and fairy tales of hardscrabble kids from Nowhere, USA, showing up on the doorstep of New York City where they were discovered for their undeniable talents. These fantasies infiltrated my psyche to the point where, in the summer of my twenty-third year, I emerged from Penn Station into the muggy afternoon air of New York City. I hugged a paper shopping bag to my chest, my pet lizard inside. As I tried not to gawk at the skyline towering above, I thought, I live here now. I had moved three thousand miles cross-country to the most imposing city in the US with no job, no prospects of a job, no apartment, no moneyand a lizard in a bag.

When I reflect on that moment a decade later, I realize how representative it was of a lifetime of ill-advised choices. Like my father, my thinking has never been constrained by the limits of reality. All my life I watched him suspend disbelief; its in my blood.

I have come to understand that Dad has given me the ability to dream crazy ideas, and that my mom has given me the work ethic and pragmatism to accomplish them. It turns out I needed both of them, just like a right and left thumb.

Melissent Zumwalt is an artist, advocate and administrator who lives in Portland, Oregon. She learned the art of storytelling from her mother, a woman who has an uncanny ability to recount the most ridiculous and tragic moments of life with beauty and humor.

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My Left Thumb - oregonhumanities.org

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That is exactly what fans of Season 5 of A Place can expect if the NBC series returns for another incident. The fantasy comedy was made by Michael Schur, who is also famous for his work in shows such as Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Parks and Recreation, and The Office. When The Place debuted in 2016, it was highly praised by viewers and critics, but all great things must come to a conclusion.

The Good Place initially followed Eleanor (Kristen Bell) when she had been at the afterlife that looked like a beautiful utopia. While inGood location, Eleanor met Chidi (William Jackson Harper), Tahani (Jameela Jamil), and Jason (Manny Jacinto) while secretly knowing that she had not earned a spot in an afterlife celestial lifestyle. It was later demonstrated that the set of four had been in thebad place and has been tortured by Michael (Ted Danson), the community architect who supported the group.

Even though the show had garnered ratings on NBC, it seems like the show is gone for good. The manager of this show, Michael Schur, also known for his work in The Office and Brooklyn Nine-Nine, stated he had the ending for the series mapped out since season two.

Fans were quite hopeful using the future of the show, however, when NBC declared the renewal after season 3, months later Schur announced that it would be the final one.

But lets see matters if season 5 occurs later and try to be a little optimistic.

Team Cockroach had the ultimate afterlife experience that is peaceful, not in the last season while the fans had always expected for it all.

The season could ignite a new problem with a loophole or the system to describe that there is a man wiped out through the doorway out of the fantastic Place.

Honestly, we should accept the fact that all good things must conclude although there are infinite possibilities.

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The Good Place: Season 5? Release Date Reportedly Revealed? All The Latest Updates Here - Auto Freak

New Delhi: Housing societies in NCR are now creating a isolation room within the society to keep the suspected COVID19 patients. As cases continue to rise in NCR, Noida, Ghaziabad, Delhi and Gurgaon are coming up with innovative ideas.

Eldeco Utopia, in sector 93A of Noida have turned club house into a alternate isolation room with provisions of beds, oxygen cylinders and equipment for monitoring oxygen levels.

We have in-house doctors who are helping us in setting up the facility. This is for the temporary stay till the governments team takes the patient away, said Sayama Sahar, Vice President of the RWA of Eldeco Utopia.

Supertech and Mahagun Mascot in Crossing Republik in Ghaziabad have also started preparation.

We already have bed along with basic facility in the club. Initially, it was created to ensure the stay of maintenance staff but it can be converted into a isolation facility, said Virender Singh, RWA president of Supertech.

A resident of Mahagun Mascot also confirmed that residents are deliberating concerting the club house into a isolation facility since, government takes time in admitting the COVID patient.

In Delhi too, some RWAs are converting the club house and making provision of isolation room.

In Gurgaon, plan of converting EWS flats into a isolation facility was dragged in controversy after the objection of residents.

Vatika management has not given any consent for making a covid Isolation centre at any of its residential sites. We have also requested the residents to neither participate nor believe in such rumours. Vatika group is following all precautions that have been laid down by the competent authorities, said Lt Col Mehta, VP, Residential, Vatika Group.

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Housing societies in NCR converting club house into a Covid isolation facility - Economic Times

Colin Firths The Secret Garden heads straight to VOD

STXfilms and Studiocanal has announced that directorMarc Mundens forthcoming film adaptation of The Secret Garden is officially foregoing its previously scheduled theatrical release and has opted for a digital release instead. Originally set to hit the theaters in April, the film will now be making its debut on Friday, August 7 on PVOD at the suggested retail price of $19.99.

RELATED:Unlock Your Imagination in the New Secret Garden Trailer

Set in England, The Secret Gardentells the story of Mary Lennox, a prickly and unloved 10-year-old girl, born in India to wealthy British parents who never wanted her. When her parents suddenly die, she is sent back to England to live with her uncle, Archibald Craven on his remote country estate deep in the Yorkshire moors. There, she begins to uncover many family secrets, particularly when she meets her sickly cousin Colin (Edan Hayhurst), shut away in a wing of the house. It is a story of two damaged, slightly misfit, children who heal each other partly through their exposure to a wondrous secret garden, lost in the grounds of Misselthwaite Manor.

The film starsDixie Egerickx (The Little Stranger) as Mary Lennox and Colin Firth (The Kings Speech) as Archibald Craven along with Oscar nominated and BAFTA-winning Julie Walters (Paddington 1 & 2) as Mrs Medlock, the head housekeeper at Misselthwaite. Amir Wilson (The Kid Who Would Be King) andIsis Davis (Guilt, Electric Dreams) will also part of the film, portraying roles ofDickon andMartha, respectively.

RELATED:The Mysterious Benedict Society Series Adaptation In The Works At Hulu

The film will be directed by Marc Munden (Utopia, The Mark of Cain, The Devils Whore). He is most known for his incredible work on TV and for creating brilliantly authored, highly visual worlds for viewers to experience.The Secret Gardenmovie was adapted by screenwriter Jack Thorne (Shameless) and has reset the adaptatationin a slightly later period, removing it from the Edwardian era to 1947, on the eve of Partition in India, and in the aftermath of WW2 in Britain.

David Heyman (Harry Potter,Gravity) andRose Alison(Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, Testament of Youth) will be producing. Jane Robertson (Danish Girl, Breathe) will co-produce. Didier Lupfer, Danny Perkins, and Dan MacRae will executive produce for StudioCanal.The Secret Gardenreunites StudioCanal and Heyday following their successful collaboration onPaddington 1 & 2.

Originally posted here:

Colin Firths The Secret Garden Heads Straight to VOD - ComingSoon.net

Netflix's Sex Education takes a microscope to the intimate lives of teenagers living in a small town, but is it an ideal world?

Netflix'sSex Educationtakes a microscope to the intimate lives of teenagers living in a small town. The intricacies of the characters make for an enthralling and genuinely educational show, creating an atmosphere that is sex-positive and encourages viewers to be more open and accepting of unfamiliar ideas.

RELATED: Sex Education: Every Episode In Season 1, Ranked (According To IMDB)

What is less talked about are the qualities of the very world that the characters exist in. What is it that makes this world different from that of the average viewer, and what things are the same? Is the world of the characters an ideal one, though?

The setting of the show is stunning. The town is made up of winding country roads lined with lush forests, everybody's house is tucked away in some charming corner, and even the High school is a classic, dignified look that makes it look welcoming. It's a dreamy, idyllic backdrop making even the most stressful storylines feel as though they are occurring in a utopia.

The teens in the show are known to get into just as bad of antics as those in real life, often turning against each other for the sake of themselves or making fun of other kids in school out of fear of been seeing for theirtheir insecurities, as with Eric and Adam, or when one girl pretends a photo going around isn't her and instead pretends it's her friend.

The show boasts a spectrum of people from varying racial and sexual backgrounds. There isn't much as far as gender expression goes, but it's likely that will come with season three, knowing the show's track record for introducing more and more types of identities.

RELATED:Sex Education: Every Episode In Season 2, Ranked (According To IMDb)

However, characters do challenge binary gender expression by dressing in unconventional ways while still identifying as men and women.

It seems like every character comes from a loving, supportive, cozy upbringing, but Maeve's character breaks this trend, and then Isaac follows after her in the second season. One could almost forget that class is an issue until Maeve or Isaac come on screen and remind other characters as well as viewers that there are issues beyond identity expression and sexual frustration.

One of the best parts of the show is watching the progression of the characters as they open their minds to new ways of thinking and actually apply them to their lives.

RELATED: Sex Education: 5 Reasons Maeve And Otis Should Be Together (& 5 They Should Not)

Otis's assistance almost always works, something that's unrealistic considering he's just a teenager, but it's also an unusual thing for people to actually take advice well in the first place, and have their change in actions accepted by those around them.

The high school cliques in the show are familiar because they are the same that can be seen in most teen TV shows and movies, and often in real-life high schools. It's an aspect of reality that reigns rampant on the lives of teenagers and provides one of the greatest sources of stress and isolation, and without it, people's lives would be a lot more peaceful.

For living in what appears to be a pretty spread-out country town, the kids in the show get around pretty easily. Otis's mother does drive him around pretty often, but even then it seems like she doesn't have to go very far. It's a small town offering the benefit of privacy, but also the easy access to the community when people want it--a happy medium.

An aspect of the show that rings very familiar is the persistence of corrupt authoritative leaders. The principal of the school is a prime example.

RELATED: Sex Education: 5 Most Likeable Characters (& 5 Fans Can't Stand)

He embodies the prejudice, selfishness, and toxic insecurity that is a regular combination of traits for many villains, particularly those in real life--and he wreaks just as much havoc as the wrongful leaders of reality in similarly nightmarish ways.

It's subtle because viewers grow accustomed to it the more they watch the show, but the aesthetic atmosphere of the entire show is touched with an artistic quality of charm and whimsy as if the creators curatedit to be a retro dreamland.

Perhaps it's fitting that a show based on the intimate lives of teenagers features mostly disappointing adults. The parents are barely involved, or if they are they are too involved, like Otis's over-protective mother or Eric's moralizing mother and father. Or if the adults aren't disappointing exactly, they are at best just as flawed and confused as the teenagers, which is actually more honest than trying to make them out as any better than young people, which, in reality, they usually aren't.

NEXT: Sex Education: 10 Best Friendships On The Show

Next Game Of Thrones: 10 Things That Make No Sense About The Greyjoys

Glenna is a Glasgow-based writer from New England. She studied English Literature and Music and loves babbling about pictures.

Original post:

Sex Education: 5 Ways The World Of Sex Education Is Ideal (& 5 It's Not) - Screen Rant

Pope Francis wants the Church to rebuild a more economically just and ecologically conscious human family in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to the priest helping co-ordinate the Vaticans response.

Fr Augusto Zampini Davies is a leading member of the Covid-19 commission set up by Pope Francis, and adjunct secretary of the human development dicastery which is leading work in the area.

The Pope asked us: prepare the future, which is different from prepare for the future, Fr Augusto told The Tablet.

This [pandemic] is terrible, but lets take this as a wakeup call, to change things that were not working.

The Argentine priest, who worked as a theological adviser to Cafod during a stint living in the UK, said the crisis is a chance to rethink the global financial system, tackle inequality and examine questions such as a universal basic income.

Born in Buenos Aires in 1969, before ordination Fr Augusto worked at Argentinas central bank and the international law firm Baker and McKenzie.

He argued that it isLaudato si, the Pope's encyclical on protecting the environment, which offers a roadmap out of the crisis. The document, which updates Catholic social doctrine to include care for creation, links ecological and social concerns.

Like the climate crisis, Fr Augusto argued, Covid-19 is a global problemrequiring international co-operation and a change in behaviour. He pointed out there is no techno-fix to the pandemic and it is impossible to 'get out' isolated.

For its part,the Vatican has releaseda guide to implementingLaudato si'while setting outthe green measures the Vatican City State has taken over the last five years. The Holy See has also announced its intention to adhere to theKigali Amendment to the Montreal Accord, which aims to reduce the emission of gases responsible for the weakening of the ozone layer.

This is a time to show that change is possible, that change in our lifestyle is possible. It is a time to help the economy recover [but] we need to do it in a way that doesnt damage the planet otherwise we will have more problems than solutions, Fr Augusto explained.It is a time of healing: of healing people, of healing institutions, of healing the planetto push for a new universal solidarity asLaudato sisays.

The Covid-19 commission established by the Pope hasfive working groupsand is looking at both how the Church can respond practically to the Covid crisis while offering proposals in fields of economics, health and security. To this end, the Holy See is working with universities across the world including Georgetown in Washington DC in the United States and University College London, UK.

Francis, Fr Augusto said, is excited by this work which is using the see, judge act methodology. He added: We provide a lot of material, and he [the Pope] provides a lot of inspiration to us. He suggests things and we explore.

Governments, Fr Augusto said, need to learn the lessons of the 2008 financial crash which saw banks bailed out but millions of ordinary people lose jobs and livelihoods.

Due to Covid-19 lockdowns, governments across the world intervened to keep their economies on life support and are now exploring ways to rejuvenate them through state assistance. But Fr Augusto said interventions can't be about corporate welfare which saves the bottom line and forgets wider society.

This is the time to rethink the entire international financial system, he said.One of our main analyses and proposals is around the bailouts, and what to do because it's public money. We are not saying we dont have to rescue anybody, but this public money should serve the public interest - what we describe as the common good.

He went on: Part of the reason banks and financial institutions are not doing as badly as other industries are because they were bailed out with public money ten years ago.

Fr Augusto offered this challenge to financial institutions: Now that we are really in trouble you need to pay back, not just with charity but starting with investment decisions. How are you going to forge the market? Where are you going to put the money to help regenerate the economy rather than mere recovery?

While governments need to rescue companies they also have to do something about those people who have no state or company assistance. To help them, the Pope has proposed theidea of a universal basic wage, a concept which dates back to St Thomas Mores 1516 political treatise,Utopia.

A universal basic income has gained traction more recently after becoming the singular policy ofAndrew Yangs presidential campaign.

Critics on the left, however, see it as a libertarian measure, while those on the right dismiss the idea as too much state intervention. As a result, the Vatican has been criticised for supporting the idea.

We have been accused of being neo-liberals and socialists at the same time, Fr Augusto said.There are a lot of pros and cons in the application of universal basic income, but the pros for this crisis are substantially bigger than the cons because it is an immediate response that countries can do. They know how to do it because it has been applied before it is not reinventing the wheel.

He added: This is a concrete possibility that countries could do to respond to this situation, particularly to the millions of people who deserve to have some help. This is one instrument. The position of the Church is that this instrument is okay in so far that we review or promote policies for new employment, otherwise it could be problematic.

Fr Augusto is a moral theologian who has lectured in theology, ethics and human rights. He holds a masters degree from the University of Bath in wellbeing and human development and a doctorate in theology from the University of Roehampton.

With public liturgies suspended for weeks, he said he celebrated Holy Week and Easter alone in Rome.

It is the first time in my life that I celebrated the Easter Triduum in my room, I never thought it was possible, he said.

The pandemic, Fr Augusto argued, is not just a moment to rethink the economy but also a chance for the Church to decide on what is essential for its mission, and a time to press reset. Coronavirus is challenging our ideologies: our political ideologies, our economic ideologies and our religious ideologies, he said.

What is essential? This is the question. What is essential for the Church to resume, to regenerate and to allow the Holy Spirit to ignite the essential dimension of Christianity? If Christ is walking with us in this tragic moment, where does he want to lead us?

More here:

Vatican pushing for rethink of financial system post-Covid - The Tablet