Monthly Archives: July 2022

Up until now, Julien Dossenas Paco Rabanne collections have been refracting a myriad angles on his modern-romantic ideas about French girls in the 70s and 80s; clothes for parties and disco nights, frequently with glimpses of goddess-y off-world futurism about them. So it was a surprise change of tack for spring, to hear him speak of chaos, a little violence, and anger and radical sensuality.

On a metal gridded runway his models strode out in heavy chain-lashed combat boots, babushka headscarves studded with metal grommets, and a wardrobe cut from latex and lace in searing colors, interspersed with lashings of black and bondage harnesses. On the soundtrack: a womans voice repeating Im going to make you sweat.

We were definitely somewhere a lot heavier than the happy, hedonistic Paco Rabanne disco this season. All the skills of the house went into fabricating a collection which called on the traditional playbook of subversion: grunge slips, punk kilts, fetish rubber, and wipe-clean raincoats, intersected with the house signature silver chain mail.

Dossena said it was his reaction to watching the war in Ukraineand even though it wasnt at the same time (as I was designing), what happened two weeks ago in the US; that now women may be forbidden abortion. Were the headscarves a direct reference to seeing distressed Ukrainian grandmothers on newsfeeds? It was more a combination of Queen Elizabeth and fetish, he claimed. But all of the toughness was completely intentional. Its about this feeling that theres going to be a fight, and its going to be a long one. So, its about expressing that passion and giving clothes for the moment to prepare to fight, because thats what its about: no apologies.

Originally posted here:
Paco Rabanne Spring 2023 Ready-to-Wear Collection - Vogue

When discussing the founding of Starward Industries, game director Marek Markuszewski brings up all the points you might expect from a new team. The company wanted to gather a group of experienced but still-passionate developers, all focused on the idea of creating something ambitious despite the studios smaller size. The surprise, however, comes from the studios approach to narrative. According to Markuszewski, Starward looked for stories that werent already exploited by media when figuring out its first project. It wanted to tell a story that hadnt been told.

Admittedly, where Starward landed was a story told before almost 60 years ago, in the novel The Invincible, written by Stanisaw Lem. In it, the crew of the Invincible spacecraft investigates the planet Regis III for its missing sister ship. There they discover self-replicating machines that, over time, become more hostile. It ponders questions about what it means to be alive, the ever-increasing role of technology in everyday life, and has more than its fair share of retro-futurism, proper nouns, and heady jargon.

For Starward, comprised of developers previously from CD Projekt Red, Techland, and more, it was the right fit for its narrative ambitions something dense and literary. And for what its worth, video game adaptations of novels are relatively rare.

In Starwards The Invincible, you assume the role of Yasna, a scientist. In typical video game fashion, the protagonist is a somewhat unreliable narrator. She knows shes a scientist. She knows she came here with a crew thats since gone missing. But many of her memories are foggy. A voice on the other end of an earpiece, that of the Astrogator, helps you along your journey.

Its all fairly standard video game fare, though the source material is an interesting starting point. Lem was known for his approach to hard sci-fi, and the world of The Invincible feels well-realized and believable within its fiction. Its perfectly conceivable to imagine it translating to a video game well, where players are incentivized to explore, experiment within, and discover the world around them. And for the next hour, with insights from the team, I have the chance to do just that.

My time playing an early pre-alpha build of The Invincible begins with Yasna exploring her surroundings, taking note of her findings, and reporting back to the Astrogator. Im looking for a lost convoy and perhaps other survivors. Things arent going well.

One of the most immediate things about The Invincible is that fidelity-wise, it looks great. Textures have lots of definition I can really tell these are rocks everywhere I look and the bright bask of the sun gives off a feeling of warmth as it bakes the ground around Yasna. Regis III mostly looks like Mars red, arid, dull. But in a way that drives home the desolation of the setting. There isnt much to do in The Invincible other than go forward and look around. The environment gets that point across.

So, forward I go. I can go around stealthily or move directly to my objective. I choose to take the direct route. After a short drive, I find one of the convoys vehicles trapped under a collapse of rocks. Yasna notes that the radiation levels in the area are high. I climb through the vehicle and out the other side of the collapse, running across a machine that will soon mean trouble: a mobile antimatter cannon. Well, two, to be specific. One intact. One destroyed. Nearby is a massive tunnel blown clean through a rock face. One final discovery awaits me: a corpse.

Yasna removes the onboard recorder from the antimatter cannon, and the scene of carnage in front of me begins coming into focus. Yasna sees the missing convoy marching towards its destination. Things seem to be going well. However, the plan goes awry upon reaching Yasnas current location.

One slide shows the team using the antimatter beam to make their own path through the rock, retrieving materials from the tunnel they created with the antimatter cannon. The next slide shows the convoy rushing out of their new hole. Another shows the cannon firing into the hole. And then, chaos. One of the antimatter cannons shoots at the other, obliterating it, before turning its beam onto the humans. As you might expect, it tears them apart. Its monstrous what the antimatter beam does to the human body, Yasna remarks. Finally, she looks at the final slide, a still image of herself just moments ago inspecting the cannon. Shes shocked but decides to continue her exploration, turning her sights to whatevers on the other side of the tunnel.

It doesnt take long to figure out The Invincible is a slow game both literally and narratively. It takes time to do just about anything, from walking to your objective (there is, thankfully, a sprint button which I found after some time in the menus) to listening to Yasna and the Astrogator talk, which they do a lot.

According to Markuszewski, this is a deliberate choice, which makes sense. The work of Stanisaw Lem is, again, dense. Lem is often categorized as a hard sci-fi author, meaning the work is focused on being scientifically accurate and believable based on current technologies and theoretical possibilities.

He was kind of a prophet, writing about things like [the] matrix, ebooks, Markuszewski says.

Internet, art director Wojtek Ostrycharz adds.

Internet, cell phones, marketing manager Maciej Dobrowolski pipes in. All those things, yeah.

It takes time for that information and exposition to be relayed to the player via visuals and dialogue. As Markuszewski points out, in a book, you can spend as many pages as you want to describe how something looks or a characters thoughts and feelings. Video games dont quite have that luxury; adapting The Invincible into something interactive has been a challenge.

If youre going with the much more conventional approach, like real-time action, leading a character, being in the place normal pacing, normal speed you dont have this stop-moment [to visualize] all the very attractive parts of the book, Markuszewski says. Its tricky to have really short slots for describing all the emotions or concepts [that we want to discuss].

Based on my time with the game, I think Starward could work on that balance more. Contrary to what Markuszewski says, I spend a large portion of my playtime doing very little, just listening to characters speak, occasionally choosing a dialogue prompt. If theres one major issue I have so far, it is the games pacing. Its hard to know how much Starward can fix this before launch, but with such an interesting story concept, its a shame that its delivered in often-tedious ways.

At the end of the tunnel, I find a little robot carrying a crate in circles around a cave. Yasna later notes the robot is stuck in his task.

Deeper in, I find metallic plants growing from the cave walls. Yasna and the Astrogator then debate the nature of biology whether or not the metal in front of us can be classified as alive or not if it lacks things like membranes, organs, and the like. All very heady stuff, with the jargon theoretical science fiction fans eat up, slowly doled out as you stand still, waiting for The Invincible to give you your next objective.

On my way to my new point B, my little robot, for reasons never made abundantly clear, breaks his loop and begins walking out of the cave. I follow suit, making my way back to the location with the two antimatter cannons. As my mechanical companion walks along his new route, making his way on a new adventure, the in-tact antimatter cannon springs to life. It shoots the robot, completely disintegrating it, before turning its cannon towards me.

I ready my hands to dodge out of the way, then to fight back, to save my own life from what would otherwise be sudden death. I remember those slides I slowly looked through, recalling the way it tore through the convoy. Im ready to use their failures to my advantage, to save my own life from utter destruction. On the other end of the line, Astrogator begins panicking, knowing Im likely mere seconds from death. Fight, he yells into my ear.

To not spoil anything, Ill stop short of revealing more of what I played. If youre excited for The Invincible or a fan of the novel, some of the narrative moments youre looking forward to come next. After this initial set-up and some further exploration, I will say that Im left with many questions about whats happening on Regis III and who is on the desolate planet.

My numerous questions stem mainly from seeing a later-stage mission largely out of context. One conversation between Yasna and Astrogator stands out to me the earlier chat about the metal plants, biology, and the human condition.

I dont think that particular moment has anything interesting to say or anything other games havent already explored in great detail, such as 2017s Nier: Automata, for example. But I do like a video game asking these questions if only because its a rare example of a big-budget game taking the time to explore more nuanced, mature questions, even if a specific moment isnt adding too much to the conversation. In its current form, I have problems with how The Invincible is telling its story structurally, but I cant help but feel like its themes are a welcome change of pace. And I feel thats exactly what Starward was going for that the developers want players to think about new concepts and ideas.

I had this one great feeling when I was playing Persona 5, where after an hour and a half of playing that game, I actually had to stop, go outside, have a cigarette, and go, Oh my God, I cant believe what this game is about, Starwards community manager Micha Napora says. Maybe people dont need to go at [it in] this extreme way go out and smoke cigarettes but itd be cool if they finish the game and maybe thought about some things that they didnt think about before.

This article originally appeared in Issue 346 of Game Informer.

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Inside The Invincible - Game Informer

David Houle| Sarasota Herald-Tribune

It is time to accept what is going on today and be open-eyed about our future.

Recent columns in this space have been about the growing perception many of us have about the changes that have occurred in the place we often call paradise. The first two columns addressed many of the issues that clearly many of you are concerned about:traffic, lack of affordable housing, homelessness in the present, andever more development and issues around climate change in the future.

In order to move beyond simple complaining and the legacy thinking that has gotten us here, we need to start to adjust our vision. We are at a fork in the road andneed to choose between the road we are already on and the road of creating the future we want.

It used to be that there were climate change deniers in America. This was understandable 20-30 years ago when the climate crisis of today was not yet fully apparent. The level of CO2 in the atmosphereand the resulting warming of the Earthis at a level unprecedented during the time that homo sapiens have been on the planet. If something has never happened before, it is understandable that some people would think that, prior to sound evidence at the personal level, something might not be real.

Now, of course, the reality of the climate crisis is real, present and obvious. In the last few years, only those who dont watch the news can deny the unfolding climate crisis. Ask the residents of Casey Key about their disappearing beaches. Ask the tens of thousands of California residents who have lost their homes to fires due to an unprecedented drought. Ask the meteorologists who report the clear increase in Cat 3, 4, and 5 level hurricanes. Ask the record keepers about the unprecedented incidence of tornados. Ask the ski resort owners in Europe and the U.S. about the fact that their seasons are at least a month shorter than 30 years ago.

At the same time that deniers were loudly denying it, scientists were making incorrect forecasts about the timing of the warming of the planet. Incorrect because the rate of the warming and consequences were much more rapid than expected. For example, sea level rise has been one foot in the last hundred years in our area. We now know that the rate of SLR is increasing to such a degreethat we might see one foot of SLR in the next 50 years or less.

Yet we in the Gulf Coast are not really taking this reality and truly dealing with it. Massive beachfront real estate developments on Lido and Longboat Key, and the Bayfront downtown all seem to come from the legacy thinking that does not take into account the climate crisis. I have often been asked what I think about such developments, and my simple answer is that economics will need to be structured for a 10-20 year timeline of economic return, not the 30-50 years that have been used.

Sarasota, and the barrier island beach communities of the Gulf Coast, are places that derive a lot of economic benefit from beach tourism. 2021 was the best year on record for Sarasota tourism, but we need to worry. Worry will lead us to think differently about our future. Thinking things will continue as they have is truly a recipe for disaster in the 2020s.

How do we plan for a vibrant Sarasota in 2040? We let go of legacy thinking. We let go of any lingering climate denial.It is the reality of our future.

An example of thinking differently is an exercise that Tim Rumage and I developed several years ago. Tim is the head of environmental studies at the Ringling College of Art andDesign, my co-author of This Spaceship Earth and a planetary ethicist. Building upon our Birds Eye View video, we incorporated the inevitability of SLR into our planning (thisspaceshipearth.org/2017/01/birds-eye-view-video/).

We then analyzed what tourists like to do at a beach resort lie in the sun, walk the beach, go swimming, eat food, paddle board, kite surf, fish, water ski, go boating and generally hang out in sun and surf. How can all these things continue if the beaches go away?

We took the concept of a pier, which is perpendicular to a beach, and decided to make it parallel to the beach. Located at the right distance from what is the beach now, say 100-400 yards out in the water from current high tide lines. Make each structure Lido, Siesta, LBK, Anna Maria perhaps half to a mile long and some 50 yards wide. On it have shade places, places to lie in the sun, steps and diving platforms into the water, places for boats to dock, places for the water taxis that can leave from each key or downtown, food stands, and water equipment rentals.

In addition to the platform, underneath itcreate a reef of art sculptures and various sunken items the classic car reef under the Siesta structure, art sculptures off of formerly Lido beach, and sunken boats under the LBK structure. Whatever works.

What this underwater reef will provide are two things of significance. First, a reef, which will lessen the erosion inherent in SLR and restore aquatic life. Second, it will create a place to snorkel and scuba dive, something that the Gulf Coast is not strong on. People dont come to Sarasota to snorkel and scuba dive. In the future they will. Sarasota can become the first, truly unique place to visit as one can snorkel over a reef of classic cars, sculptures or sunken boats. Something that will be a vanguard of a tourist destination in the age of climate crisis.

Now this column is not about this specific idea, but about the absolute need to think in new and creative ways about the future of our beautiful part of the world. Time to start.

Sarasota resident David Houle is a globally recognized futurist. He has given speeches on six continents, written 13 books and is futurist in residence at Ringling College of Art andDesign. His websites aredavidhoule.comand the2020sdecade.com. Email him at david@davidhoule.com.

Original post:
DAVID HOULE: It's time to worry and be open-eyed about our future - Sarasota Herald-Tribune

Meta-owned Facebook is removing status updates that discuss mailing abortion pills, and has even issued temporary bans to people who tried to post such content, Vicehas confirmed.

"I will mail abortion pills to any one of you. Just message me," read a status update by one user, who published the post on the day that Roe vs. Wade the landmark Supreme Court case that legalized abortion in America was overturned.

The source told Vicethat the status was removed within one minute of posting, and they later realized that they'd been banned as a result.

Women, girls, and birthing people across the country are now facing forced birth laws in nearly half of US states, and many "trigger laws" have already gone into effect. While some of these states already have laws that ban or limit the mailing of abortion pills, most don't (at least not yet).

And for those who now lack action to abortion services as a result of Roe's fall, access to these legal, FDA regulated pills might literally be a lifesaver. Soit's fair to ask:why would Meta be censoring related posts?

A Meta spokesperson published a tweet in response to the outcry, in which he detailed that any published content attempting to "buy, sell, trade, gift, request or donate pharmaceuticals is not allowed."

That's reasonable, but when the Vicereporters swapped just one very important word and posted the phrase "painkiller pills can be mailed," Facebook did nothing to moderatethe post.

The same went for an Associated Press journalist who posted an update about sending marijuana by mail infuriating, considering that sending weed via USPS actually violates federal law, as opposed to legal abortion pills.

Instagram, also owned by Meta, has reportedly been targeting abortion pill-related content as well. And in a moment when abortion laws are more confusing and terrifying than ever before in modern America, limiting the dissemination of necessary information is not just frustrating or bizarre. It's a serious public health risk.

More on Roe vs. Wade: Supreme Court Strikes down Right to Abortion, in Horrifying Public Health Disaster

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Facebook Is Automatically Deleting Posts Offering to Mail Abortion Pills - Futurism

Hyundai's design team is emboldened. From the blocky Palisade to the sliced-and-diced Elantra to the Eighties-Lancia-meets-2030 Ioniq 5, designs from the automaker can be overwrought or alienating, but are never boring. Now that the company has released images of the upcoming Ioniq 6, it looks like Hyundai has another knockout on its hands.

The Ioniq 6 follows the tremendously successful and compelling Ioniq 5 as one of the brand's lynchpin EVs. Riding on the same platform as the Ioniq 5, Kia EV6, and Genesis GV60, the Ioniq 6's new form factor puts it up against a pretty stiff competitor: the Tesla Model 3. Like the groundbreaking Tesla, the new Hyundai is an aerodynamic sedan with a swooping roofline and high-class ambitions.

Whether or not Hyundai can challenge such an entrenched segment leader remains an open question, as we don't have price, powertrain, range, or tech details. Instead, Hyundai is showing off what it definitely got right. The design both inside and out is a stunning mix of retro cues and modern execution, with a roofline inspired by the aero sedans of the Thirties. The blocky light bars look like an Eighties futurist vision of the 2020s, drawing a connection to the Ioniq 5 but without looking unoriginal. And the interior looks like a true masterpiece, with a minimalist layout flanked by clever geometric lines and lit by wild LED ambient lighting. A new "H" emblem rounds out the design inside and out, marking a new era for Hyundai.

The only technical spec we have is that the Ioniq 6 has a drag coefficient of 0.21. That's a remarkable number, in line with the Lucid Air and ahead of the Model 3's 0.23. We're not sure what range will be, but the blockier Ioniq 5 on the same E-GMP platform goes up to 303 miles on a charge. With such a slippery silhouette, the Ioniq 6 should be able to coast right past that figure, but we'll have to wait to know for sure. More details will come later, with production beginning in 2023 for the 2024 model year.

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2024 Hyundai Ioniq 6: Everything You Need to Know - Road & Track