Category Archives: Transhuman News

Complied by Ezra Haber Glenn

Long before the current writers strike, Hollywood was sounding the alarm about the dangers of AI.

A scene from a stage production of Karel apeks R.U.R. Photo: Wiki Common

For as long as weve had work which is to say, ever since we left the Garden of Eden our societys boldest prophets and inventors (and a few profit-seeking investors) have sought new ways to replace human labor with the effortless ease of technology. But while each new development may lead us closer to a brave new labor-free world, not everyone has welcomed these changes. Most notably, workers who have found themselves and their livelihoods in the headlights of automations onrush have resisted with their voices, their sabots, and their very lives but such resistance has often been dismissed as little more than self-serving Luddism, ignored by others in the name of progress and the greater good.

And now, after replacing everyone from farmers and cobblers to taxi drivers and toll collectors, the bots have come for the creative class. Yesterdays fiction is becoming todays reality, as each week we hear news of yet another generation of AI tools and wizardry being prepared to replace human workers. Programs such as DALL-E and Midjourney have ingested the collected art of all of humanity; they are now able to churn out endless reels of soulless imagery to feed our demand for custom-made illustration, everything from a daguerreotype of Abraham Lincoln punching Joseph Stalin to pornographic iguana-sex rendered in the style of Pieter Bruegel the Elder. As for the more text-oriented professions, OpenAIs ChatGPT, Googles Bard, and a host of similar generative AI are able to produce reams of seemingly novel text on command, including restaurant (or film) reviews, business plans, academic articles, and even stories, poems, scripts, and screenplays. What began as a diversion has become an existential threat.

To their credit, the artists and storytellers of the world have long been among the most vocal critics of the unchecked spread of technology, even before they found themselves confronting automation and replacement. Whether spinning tales on a stage or around a campfire or through the flickering light of a film projector writers have warned of the dangers of technology unchecked, hoping to spray some cold water on these sparking Promethean fires before they burn out of control. From the lessons of The Sorcerers Apprentice (whether Goethe or Disney) through Luddite anthems and pro-labor protest songs, right down to the modern-day fables of WarGames, The Terminator, Ex Machina, M3GAN, and just about every episode of Battlestar Galactica and Black Mirror, popular media has sounded a steady alarm to warn us of the inherent dangers of powerful automation, whether robotic, AI, or something entirely new. (Indeed, the very first use of the word robot a hundred years ago in Karel apeks R.U.R. foretold of the coming robotic uprising and the eventual extermination of humanity at the hands of our own creation.)

How to mark the current moment, when global forces of labor, creativity, capital, automation, and invention are once again locked in struggle? Weve decided to collect short reviews from a range of critics exploring films throughout the ages that explore the threats posed by robots and artificial intelligence. Some are outright Apocalyptic or dystopian works. Others present more nuanced, subtle, and blended takes. What will be lost, what can be preserved, are there ways we can control these changes in the service of a more humane post-human future? Or: are we even sure that we are actually human now?

Given how rich this particular vein is, this list is more illustrative than exhaustive. Here is a rundown of a handful of thoughtful or thought-provoking films that are worth rewatching. Readers are sure to have their own contributions and wed love to hear about as well feel free to drop them in the comments.

A captivating scene from The Twonky.

The Twonky (Arch Oboler, 1953)

Though screen time is a relatively modern concept in regard to our relationship with technology, its associated anxieties have been with us for as long as weve invited screens into our homes. Consider Arch Obolers oddball 1953 comedy The Twonky, one of the earliest films ever made about television, and one of the strangest this side of Videodrome. Hans Conried plays a harried college professor whose wife leaves him alone for the weekend to set up their brand new TV set. What neither of them realize is that their newfangled device has a mind of its own; it skitters around the house on a set of table-legs, emits lasers from its screen (which it uses to light Conreids cigarettes), and neutralizes anyone who attempts to stop it by turning them into zombies muttering I have no complaints. Eventually, Conreid reasons that this Twonky (as his best friend, the hard-drinking local football coach, dubs it) is not actually a television at all, but rather a shape-shifting robot from Earths future, designed to keep the populace in line to serve a dictator named Super Snake.

At press time, Super Snake has yet to be elected to office, but The Twonky is nevertheless surprisingly prescient in many other ways. In 1953, the idea of a television which could anticipate its owners needs was a fanciful bit of whimsy; today, we walk past aisles of smart TVs at Best Buy without blinking an eye. Like modern algorithms which invisibly guide users toward the lowest common denominator, the Twonky zaps classical records and fine literature out of Conrieds hands, forcing him to listen to nothing but Sousa marches and read trashy paperbacks. When the Twonky overhears Conried bemoaning his loneliness with his wife out of town, it picks up a phone and requests a human blonde from the Bureau of Entertainment, eerily foreshadowing the contemporary targeted ads which seemingly prove that our devices are listening to our conversations. The Twonky is a deeply silly film, closer in spirit to Bewitched than Blade Runner, but its vision of the helpful technologies which end up running our lives remains timely 70 years later.

Oscar Goff is the Editor in Chief and Senior Film Critic at Boston Hassle.

Art for Colossus: The Forbin Project

Colossus: The Forbin Project (Stanley Chase, 1970)

Based on a 1966 sci-fi novel, this cold-war thriller sets up a situation where the U.S. turns over control of its nuclear weapons to a computer. It removes the human element from war and, theoretically, makes us safer. But, as with Hal in 2001: A Space Odyssey, its all in the programming. Colossus discovers that theres a Russian counterpart and demands to be linked to it, and starts to take punitive steps when such connection is not immediately forthcoming.

Dr. Forbin suggests that those working in his field should be required to read Frankenstein in order to consider what happens when science spins out of the control of the scientists. When I screened the film for my students and we reached the less than happy ending I would wish them pleasant dreams that night. This is the real fear of AI: we expect we will control our tools. But, when the tools can think for themselves, will they bother to listen to us?

Daniel M. Kimmel is the author of Jar Jar Binks Must Die and other observations about science fiction movies.

Are we home yet? Julie Christie in Demon Seed.

The House of Tomorrow: Demon Seed (Donald Cammell, 1977) and Smart House (LeVar Burton, 1999)

In celebration of its 75th anniversary in 1967, the Philco-Ford Corporation produced 1999 A.D., a short film showcasing its vision for the House of Tomorrow, which would be equipped with futuristic technology that would allow Americans to have live video chats with friends, pay their bills automatically, and set their thermostats to the perfect temperature year round. The house, the film suggests, would be operated by a central computer that could serve as a secretary, librarian, banker, teacher, medical technician, bridge partner and all-around servant. This para-utopian vision traded in the domestic Space Age optimism previously seen in cartoons like The Jetsons, but it came one year before 2001: A Space Odyssey, which helped introduce the specter of rogue A.I. into the cultural consciousness.

A decade later, Donald Cammells Demon Seed transformed the House of Tomorrow into a psycho-sexual nightmare, in which an advanced A.I. called Proteus goes from servant to captor. Its target is suburban housewife Susan (Julie Christie), for whom Proteus acts as an abusive partner, making excuses to her friends and creating proto-deepfake videos of her claiming to be fine. Why? The computer is planning to rape and impregnate her with a human-machine hybrid. In Demon Seed, A.I. transforms Edenic suburbia into a futurist dungeon one of pop cultures many warnings to come about the unknown dangers of advanced technology.

A scene of mutual happiness in Smart House.

By 1999, the real life smart homes of Alexa and affordable IoT appliances were nearer to becoming a reality than many realized; Philco was only off by about a decade or so. Still, fears of AI in the nuclear household persisted. The LeVar Burton-directed Disney Channel Original Movie Smart House created a kid-friendly version of Demon Seed, in which a single-parent family wins a free computer-operated home. Thirteen-year-old Bens (Ryan Merriman) mother has died, and to fill the void he trains the houses central AI, PAT (Katey Sagal), on footage from old 50s sitcoms (pastiches of Father Knows Best and Leave It to Beaver) to teach her how to be a perfect matriarch. PAT goes in another direction and begins to resemble Proteus, imprisoning the family via an overbearing maternal instinct and a hyperbolic fear of the outside world. Researchers warn of AI reflecting the biases of its human programmers and users. Smart House dramatizes that prediction: the once rational computer succumbs to the patriarchal beliefs that drive American pop culture and absorbs the paranoia spread by television news.

Brad Avery is a journalist and writer based in Boston. He is a member of the Boston Online Film Critics Association.

A scene of mutual uncertainty in Moon.

Moon (Duncan Jones, 2009)

Moon is the debut effort of filmmaker Duncan Jones, who wrote the story and directed. The narrative posits a near-future that is not so much about AI controlling human beings, but a dark anti-capitalist vision of how corporate America will use such technologies to exploit us for profit. One humans experience is presented sort of. Sam Bell (a tour-de-force performance by Sam Rockwell) is the lone technician for a mining outfit that is harvesting helium from the moon for fusion reactors back home on earth. Sam monitors the mostly automated operations of the equipment, occasionally checking on and fixing malfunctions, during a three-year stint on the moonbase. His only companion and helper is Gerty (voiced by Kevin Spacey), an AI who ensures that Sam stays healthy.

The big twist in Moon is that Sam Bell is not Sam Bell, not really. He is a clone of Sam Bell, who is either dead or back on earth (it is never settled). The clones are how the mining company makes us of infinite free labor. When things go awry on the base, the machinations of the plot eventually gives us two Sams. In fact, the base is outfitted with thousands of Sam clones in cold storage, since each clone can only function for three years before degrading and being destroyed by the bases technology. Gerty, meanwhile, is programmed to help Sam, even if there are two Sams. (The existential side-story of Sam1 and Sam2 relating to each other is fascinating on its own, as both realize what it means to be a fully conscious clone with the real memories of the original Sam. Plus we get two Rockwells playing ping pong with each other, which is never a bad thing.)

In regard to AI, the film allows for a glint of hope. Humans can overcome the crush of plutocratic hegemony by using technology against itself. Gerty at first appears to be a HAL9000-like threat to Sam, siding with the corporation and doing their bidding early on. But ultimately the program enables Sam (and Sam) to undermine the system that is degrading them. Gerty cannot allow Sam to die and, in an ambiguous turn of events, it turn out the computer cannot distinguish between the two Sams. As such, Gertys programming only serves to bring about its own downfall. The Sams sense this: when it becomes a choice between Sams health and the well-being of the moon base and mining operation, Gerty will choose to help Sam.

The production design by Tony Noble uses a cool palette of greys and blues for the moon base, but tosses in some neat counter-touches. Aside from Gertys voice, the machine is represented by a small screen with a bright yellow emoji that reflects Gertys mood: a smiley face most of the time if Sam is happy and healthy. Eventually, there is expressionlessness, followed by confusion. Gertys limited emotional landscape is overpowered by the very human presence of Sam: Rockwell is moody, sardonic, and self-aware in a way that Gerty could never be. Sams humanity clone or not is never called into question. He is not a machine. He is not artificial. And it is the characters humanity that shapes the movies satisfying, if troubling, conclusion.

Neil Giordano

Joaquin Phoenix longing for his significant other in Her.

Her (Spike Jonze, 2013)

Much of the animosity towards artificial intelligence these days tends towards practical matters, with loss of livelihood being paramount. But, prior to the recent controversy surrounding the writers and actors strike in Hollywood, most people felt artificial intelligence to be a mild existential threat. This was technology that re-shaped our very humanity because it could do so many things, including mundane chores like shopping, cleaning, and cooking. Some people are thrilled to leave these dull tasks to others; others find such routines and rituals meaningful, even and comforting. Even more challenging: this technical revolution clearly has implications for gender roles that even today, are still mired in traditional sexist grooves. It is exciting and progressive to think that we might have the opportunity to reinvent stale customs and assumptions (i.e., women shouldering the main burden of domestic duties). Even love might take on new meaning.

With the 2013 film Her, Spike Jonze dabbles in the dystopian notion that artificial intelligence can fulfill our every need, including, for those lonely enough, the role of a romantic soulmate. Joaquin Phoenix plays Theodore, a recently-divorced writer who works for a virtual greeting card company that creates digital messages for all occasions: a sort of troubadour for the age of technology. He tries dating, but cant quite figure out what hes doing wrong. When his new operating system and virtual assistant, Samantha, proves to be not only competent and helpful but warm and personable, he finds himself smitten.

Voiced by Scarlett Johansson, Samanthas mercurial, soulful personality carries unexpected appeal. But when Theodore discovers he is one of many who are also romantically involved with this virtual dynamo, his sense of being chosen, of being special, is betrayed. Artificial intelligence is an affront to the idyllic belief that lovers are drawn together by fate, by a shared sense of discovery and recognition. Theodores loneliness is briefly eclipsed by what he perceives to be a real relationship. This dissonance mirrors the odd phenomenon of dating apps; they make information and engagement readily available, but true connection remains elusive. With its carnival dusk color palettes and intense, nuanced performances, Her invests its cold dystopia with suprising pathos as well as haunting sense of inevitability. As the sun goes down each day on the films city of glass and pedestrian walkways, there is a sense that the self, the true one that melds body and heart and mind, is being reinvigorated and recharged. Emotional autonomy is still there for the choosing. At least, for now.

Peg Aloi is a freelance film and TV critic who has an uneasy relationship with technology.

A scene from #PostModem

#PostModem (Jillian Mayer, 2013)

Much of visual artist Jillian Mayers body of work concerns the relationship between humanity and technology, particularly the absurd intrusions modern tech makes into our lives. Take for instance her short film Hot Beach Babe Aims to Please (2014) in which Mayer emerges from the ocean only to be chased by a swarm of cursors, or her Makeup Tutorial (2013) where, in the language of YouTube vloggers, she instructs viewers on how to paint their faces with jagged patterns to confuse and hide from facial recognition devices.

Her 2013 collaboration with Lucas Leyva, #PostModem, is among her most enjoyable film projects a 15 minute sci-fi musical inspired by the theories of futurist Ray Kurzweil and the concept of the technological singularity, the theorized moment when artificial intelligence, capable of nigh-infinite self-improvement, surpasses human intelligence. In #PostModem, Mayer becomes immortal by uploading her consciousness to an open internet website called MegaMegaUpload (achieved by drawing the AOL logo on her face and drinking a blend of orange juice and her own hair filtered through a CD-R disc). What will she do throughout eternity? Watch infomercials alongside her digital doppelganger, a cheap digital avatar a la Second Life or The Sims. #PostModem stands as one of the sharpest satires to date on the sputtering of Mark Zuckerbergs Metaverse. Instead of Oculus headsets, Mayers super-intelligence future involves crude at-home surgery and implanting motherboards into ones own forehead (now thats biohacking). Ultimately, the film questions what enlightenment, if any, will be gained with our diaspora to VR.

Brad Avery is a journalist and writer based in Boston. He is a member of the Boston Online Film Critics Association.

Chiwetel Ejiofor and Emilia Clark as proud parents in The Pod Generation.

The Pod Generation (Sophie Barthes, 2023)

In the 1965, The Rolling Stones sang:

Kids are different today. I hear every mother say/Mother needs something today to calm her down/And though shes not really ill, theres a little yellow pill/She goes running for the shelter of her mothers little helper.

Meprobamate, marketed as Miltown, helped relieve a mothers insomnia, anxiety, and emotional upsets. Today, wet nurses are out of fashion, day care costs are prohibitive, and mothers juggle work, kids, social life, parenting groups, and husbands. From stretch marks to intimacy, sleep deprivation to post-partum depression, motherhood can be a bitch. Whats a mom to do?

Sophie Barthes new film The Pod Generation imagines what it would mean for women to cast off the burdens of childbearing through the use of synthetic egg-shaped pods. With the couples permission, the company Pegazus will arrange to have a baby raised in a Womb Center, where it is nurtured with music, taste sensations, and all the nutrients necessary for a healthy birth. A helpful strap-on device allows dad or mom to carry the pod/child for brief periods. There is a downside: the child wont dream. As the spokesman for the company explains dreams are not reliable analytical material thats so 20th century.

It is a gleaming future of 3-D printers, oxygen inhalers for fresh air, and a Siri/Alexa type virtual assistant, named Elena, that can help with such mundane tasks as preparing breakfast and choosing outfits for the day while also maintaining an individuals bliss index based on voice and behavior patterns. The films conclusion is hurried but that didnt bother me because the point had been made: we lose something valuable when technology provides shortcuts to chores that were once part of a normal life. Of course, there is a need for surrogate parenting, in vitro fertilization, and so forth, but outsourcing motherhood to plastic pods (which are shaped to fit corporate imperatives) is a sharp parody of the obsession with convenience. The relentless progress of technology undercuts the value of imagination, labor, and even physical and mental duress.

Will AI replace or even enhance art and creativity? One answer is posed by Noah Baumbachs film While Were Young. At one point, Adam Drivers Jamie asks Ben Stillers Josh about the ingredients of a certain dessert. Lets look it up, advises Josh. Waving his phone and giggling, Jamie, the hipper of the two, responds: Thats too easy. Lets just not know what it is.

Tim Jackson is a Boston musician, actor, and retired college teacher, currently a member of the Boston Society of Film Critics.

Ezra Haber Glenn is a Lecturer in MITs Department of Urban Studies & Planning, where he teaches a special subject on The City in Film. His essays, criticism, and reviews have been published in the Arts Fuse, CityLab, the Journal of the American Planning Association, Bright Lights Film Journal, WBURs ARTery, Experience Magazine, the New York Observer, and Next City. He is the regular film reviewer for Planning magazine, and member of the Boston Society of Film Critics. Follow him on https://www.urbanfilm.org and https://twitter.com/UrbanFilmOrg.

Continued here:
Film Commentary: How I Learned to Start Worrying and Fear the Bot" - artsfuse.org

As the year has ticked over into its second chapter and programming is settled and smooth in our post-pandemic push forward ArtsHub checked in with curators across Australia to find out which artists are on their watch list.

Selected by: Rachel Ciela, Lead Creative Simon Lee Foundation Institute of Contemporary Asian Art, Art Gallery of Western Australia (WA)

Why: The paintings and drawings of Ipeh Nur depict elaborate worlds filled with a multitude of characters, both real and imagined, and carefully crafted stories. Her works negotiate the complex intermingling of historical memory and tradition in Indonesia with great warmth and generosity while simultaneously offering a raw and unfiltered view of the artists personal experience of contemporary life.

Nur was recently included in ART JOG 2023. She lives and works in Yogyakarta.

Follow Ipeh Nur on: Instagram @ipehnurberesyit

Selected by: Beatrice Gralton, senior curator, Brett Whiteley Studio, Art Gallery of New South Wales (NSW)

Why: Heather B Swann is having a moment. For over three decades the Hobart-based artist has worked rigorously and ambitiously between drawing, sculpture, painting performance and installation, and we are now beginning to see her work consistently included in major exhibitions around the country. Ive known her for 20-something years and had the privilege to include her series of works, Leda and the Swan in The National 4.

The years that it takes Swann to produce a body of work is testament to her endurance and commitment as an artist. It is a long road, and her work is a complete surrender to the process of making art. There is something exhilaratingly vital and expansive about this journey, inviting us below a surface of perfectionto embrace our own messy and physical selves.

Right now, Swann has work in the exhibition Twist at the Tasmanian Museum and Gallery and is working towards the National Gallery of Victorias Triennial in December, as well as some other major (and, as yet, unannounced) projects for 2024. She shows with Station Gallery.

Follow Swann on: Instagram @heatherbswann

Selected by: Sophie OBrien, Head of Curatorial and Learning, Bundanon (NSW)

Why: This exciting collective of performance-makers represents a wonderfully experimental energy that continues to thrive in Australia an impulse that often emerges from a devised theatre-making context, but draws on other performance disciplines to fuel its explorations. They prove cultural organisations and arts schools to still be essential in providing meeting places for artists who will go on to collaborate or connect for many years into the future.

Often celebratory in nature and irreverent in performance, the group relishes non-theatrical spaces, collaborating with intergenerational communities. Borrowing from the live art field to put the audience at the centre of the work, the group creates spaces that feel risky and alive.

They are comparatively emerging, having only formed after training together a few years ago, but have already started winning awards with Green Room and Melbourne Fringe Festival. They describe their practice as instinctive, physical and highly playful that is, offering us all a sense of unrepeatable, uplifting joy.

Follow Pony Cam on: Instagram @ponycamcollectiveand its website.

Selected by: Francis E Parker, Curator Exhibitions, Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA) (VIC)

Why: Its hard to comprehend in reproduction, but Josh Foley often creates a simulation of impasto in a totally flat surface, like a kind of trompe lil, so passages that look loose and spontaneous are actually the result of meticulous work. That kind of contradiction fascinates me. Being from just outside of Launceston myself, I also detect a Tasmanian sensibility in some of his paintings.

In 2011 Foley won the John Glover Prize, which was then the richest landscape prize in Australia. Winning this award at the age of 27, he remains the youngest person to achieve this.

Josh Foley currently has a show on at Despard Gallery in Hobart.

Follow Josh Foley via Despard Gallery or his website.

Selected by: Anna Briers, Curator, UQ Art Museum (Qld)

Why: A creative to watch right now is Alicia Frankovich, a Naarm/Melbourne-based artist originally from Aotearoa/New Zealand, and previously located in Berlin. Frankovich has an impressive track record working across performance, sculpture, video and photography. Her practice is the kind of thing Im drawn to at the moment. Shes an artist who is critically engaged with current discourses, but who has developed an artistic methodology that is visually arresting and compelling on an embodied level a practice that is open and generous to audiences.

Her work is collaborative and relational, and she works with a diverse array of professional and untrained performers to tease out the important questions of our time through dance. Most recently, in March, I saw Atlas of Anti-Taxonomies (2019-22) at the Gus Fisher Gallery in Tmaki Makaurau/Auckland, a work which developed as part of the artists PhD research.

The work undertakes a reordering of Western knowledge systems, drawing on thinking by Mori scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith and art historian Aby Warburg. Presented as an installation, it consists of a series of illuminated suspended screens depicting images of flora, bacteria, symbiotic organisms such as lichen, fungi growths and their mycorrhizal networks, climate phenomena and so on. It speaks to our entanglement with ecological planetary systems, which are in fact borderless anti-taxonomical if you like. It resists the separation between nature and culture, decentres the notion of human supremacy and affirms the relational interconnectedness of all things. It is the severing of these entanglements that got us into this mess.

She also recently developed a major choreographic installation in response to the Australian bushfire crisis in the summer of 2019-20 entitled AQI2020 for the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tmaki, which oddly hasnt been presented in Australia yet.

Frankovich is included in Melbourne Now at the National Gallery of Victoria, and has an upcoming solo exhibition at 1301SW, Melbourne in February 2024. She is also developing a major new performance work for a UQ Art Museum group exhibition for 2025.

Performers in Rich in World, Poor in World, 2023 (pictured top): LJ Connolly-Hiatt, Mara Galagher, Shelley Lasica, Shian Law, Enzo Nazario, Erin ORourke, Lana prajcer, Angelita Biscotti, Jesse Gall, Erin Hallyburton, Alexis Kanatsios, Daniel R Marks, Rajdeep Puri. Music: Igor Kaczyski.

Follow Alicia Frankovich via her website.

Selected by: Con Gerakaris, Curatorial Program Manager, 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art (NSW)

Why: With a brazen palette and effortless style, Jacquie Meng conjures vivid parallel universes populated by folkloric tales both historic and contemporary. Meng equally draws upon lived experiences and whimsical situations to present an ever-changing visual lexicon of cultural symbology, rendered in caricatured figures in a flattened perspective borrowed from woodblock prints. Objects of the everyday and treated with the same importance as universal signifiers of Chinese heritage: the Bic lighter is as fundamental as the carved jade chamber within which a joss stick burns. Her exalted avatar traverses the divide between real and imaginary, a post-human protagonist mythologising the idyllic daydream of driving a flame-decal monster truck down Northbourne Avenue, phosphorescent Nalgene in hand.

Jacquie has just completed a residency atKunstraum, Brooklyn New York (01 April 30 June), and is currently undertaking one at Pilotenkueche, Leipzig (4 July 23 September).

Follow Jacqiue Meng via Instagram @jacquiemeng or her website.

Check out our 2022, 2021 and 2020 iterations of curators on artist to watch.

Read the rest here:
Six curators talk about the artists on their radar - ArtsHub

The last five years have been pretty wild for the X-Men. For a while, Marvel was doing its best to marginalize the team but they've become the publisher's biggest comics again. Things have cooled off recently, but fans have been treated to some amazing stories, many of which saw the X-Men triumph over tremendous odds, saving their newly minted mutant nation of Krakoa and sometimes the universe.

The X-Men have had some impressive wins in the last five years. The team has always been in the upper echelons of Marvel's heroic community, but they've changed tremendously since 2018. They proved they can handle circumstances no one imagined they could.

RELATED: Every X-Men Comic Currently Running (& Their Most Recent Issue)

Wolverine is the X-Men's most popular member, so it makes sense that he is responsible for at least one of the team's massive victories. Mikhail Rasputin, working for the Russian government, was able to get his hands on the Cerebro Sword. Using that and his reality-altering powers, he used Wolverine's and Xavier's memories to use Omega Red to assassinate Professor X at multiple points in the past. Xavier and Jean Grey used their mental powers to send Wolverine back to stop them.

Wolverine battled Omega Red in multiple situations, from saving the Xavier family on the night of Charles' birth to stopping the assassinations of Xavier's ancestors. After halting Rasputin's plans, Wolverine was able to not only defeat Omega Red but retrieved the Cerebro Sword. Wolverine, Xavier, and Jean Grey saved the X-Men, and with them the universe, by ending Rasputin's plans.

Not every win for the X-Men came through force of arms. After X Of Swords, the mutant team had a big problem. The mutants of Arakko had spent millennia battling the demonic hordes of Amenth and formed a martial culture. They wouldn't have fit in very well on Earth, so the Quiet Council thought outside the box. Gathering their most powerful mutants, they set out to do something unprecedented.

Mutants of Krakoa and Arakko alike worked together to take Mars, a planet incapable of supporting life, and terraformed it. They gave it a heavier core, a breathable atmosphere, and water. They made the red planet into a new world and named it Arakko, giving it to the mutants who had survived millennia of death and destruction. The Quiet Council promised fireworks for the first Hellfire Gala, and they delivered with a win unlike any other in history.

As Krakoa was still establishing itself, an alien invasion ravaged the Earth. The mutant nation was targeted as well when the alien Cotati attacked the island. The mutants of Krakoa were sorely outnumbered, but their teamwork allowed them to at least hold back the invaders, keeping the island from falling completely. Then Magneto decided to intervene.

Since the establishment of Krakoa, Magneto had been acting as a leader. He let others get their hands dirty, relishing his position of power in a place that was basically the culmination of his wildest dreams. However, with aliens overrunning the island, Magneto donned his old purple and red costume and unleashed his full power on the invaders. He broke their beachhead on Krakoa, shredding the Cotati with his powers. With Magneto at the head of their forces, the X-Men kicked the invading forces off their soil.

RELATED: 10 Biggest Changes Marvel Made To X-Men's Lore Over The Years

Powers Of X took place in multiple universes, several made possible by the powers of Moira MacTaggert. In her ninth life, a hundred years after the establishment of the X-Men, Nimrod and the Sentinels had taken over the Earth, slaughtering mutants to nearly nothing and transforming humanity into post-human machine hybrids. The only ones fighting them were a group of X-Men led by Apocalypse, and they made one final play to stop their future from happening.

The X-Men attacked Nimrod's data vault, led by Apocalypse himself. Sorely outnumbered, the group was violently cut down as Apocalypse battled Nimrod to a standstill. However, even with their horrific losses, they got the information they needed. Wolverine gave Moira the data and then killed her, resetting the timeline and giving her the knowledge she'd need to slow down Nimrod in her next life.

Extermination saw the X-Men beat an old foe. Ahab, a mutant-hating cyborg from a future where humanity enslaved mutants, came back in time to kill the original five X-Men, who had been transferred to the present by Beast. As that was happening, a younger version of Cable had come back to send the young mutants back to the past to stop Ahab.

At first, the X-Men fought against Cable, thinking he was the one trying to destroy their time-tossed teammates. However, Ahab's plan was laid bare and the X-Men and this younger Cable worked together to stop him. The original X-Men were sent back to the past, their minds altered so they wouldn't remember their time in the present until it was necessary, and Ahab's terrible quest was stopped.

X-Men Red's early issues concentrated on Storm, Magneto, Sunspot, and the Fisher King working to consolidate power on Arakko. Meanwhile, Abigail Brand, the leader of SWORD, Krakoa's space agency, had secretly allied with the Orchis Initiative and was working to destabilize the Arakkii government by placing Vulcan in their Great Circle. After this failed, Brand's coup plans continued apace.

The Arakkii Brotherhood, working with SWORD's X-Men Red team, led by Cable and Thunderbird, recognized Brand's threat and worked to stop her. After Brand unleashed a newly resurrected and angry Vulcan on the Brotherhood and X-Men Red, the combined mutant heroes were not only able to stop her but forced her out of SWORD. Arakko remained independent and SWORD was no longer Orchis's secret pawn.

A.X.E. Judgment Day shook the Marvel Universe. It all started with new Eternal Prime Druig working to cement his power base among his people. Discovering that mutants evolved from Deviant genes, he was able to get the majority of the Eternals to agree to war against Krakoa and Arakko. The immortal forces of the Eternals did their best to raze the mutant homelands to the ground, but the mutants stood firm.

In order to end the conflict, rogue Eternals worked with the Avengers and Mister Sinister to create a new Celestial god for the Eternals, the Progenitor. Unfortunately, the Progenitor decided to judge the whole of humanity and destroy Earth if it found the world wanting. The X-Men allied with the Avengers and the Eternals, and were instrumental in defeating the Progenitor, their powers and mutant technology giving the heroes the advantage they needed to win.

Krakoa was swept up in the attack of Knull. Knull was able to get control of Cable with a symbiote, who used a Krakoan gate to bring more symbiotes to the island nation. The mutant island was overrun and soon mostly under Knull's control. The only mutants ready to stand against him were the members of SWORD, safe in the orbiting Peak space station.

A group of mutants made their way to Earth, but Knull's symbiotic mutants were able to hold them at bay. Manifold, whose mutant powers allow him to shape the universe in any way he needs, stepped up. He was able to open a portal over Krakoa and suck the symbiotes into it, saving those the aliens were bonded to and freeing the nation.

RELATED: 10 Best Female X-Men Characters, Ranked

X Of Swords was a supernatural war against the demonic hordes of Amenth. Led by the Golden Helm of Annihilation, the Amenthi were responsible for the sundering of the ancient mutant nation of Okkara into Krakoa and Arakko, with the Arakkii traveling into Otherworld to battle them. Amenth was able to conquer the Arakkii, who challenged the Krakoans to a contest of swords.

Traveling to Otherworld, champions of both sides participated in contests that Krakoa eventually won. However, the Amenthi still attacked. The X-Men were sorely pressed until Captain Britain and the Captain Britain Corps entered the fight. Together, they were able to defeat Amenth and free the Arakkii, saving the world from the demonic invasion.

House Of X was brutal, forcing the X-Men to pay dearly for their greatest victory. Using knowledge gained from Moira's ninth life, Xavier and Magneto sent a team of X-Men to the Forge, a sun-orbiting space station, to stop the Orchis Initiative from activating the ultimate Sentinel, Nimrod, by destroying the Mother Mold. A bloodbath followed.

Every member of the X-Men's Forge team was killed but they still completed their objectives. In a final stroke, Nightcrawler and Wolverine teleported into space to destroy the last strut holding up the Mother Mold. They died but their sacrifices saved the nascent mutant nation. Brought back by a new method of mutant resurrection, the team celebrated the victory that made Krakoa's survival possible.

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The Biggest X-Men Wins In Marvel Comics Last Five Years - CBR - Comic Book Resources

Bridget Narsh at her home in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Narsh's son has autism, post-traumatic stress disorder, and ADHD. In 2020, he spent more than 100 days at Central Regional Hospital, a state-run mental health facility. The state billed the family nearly $102,000 for the hospitalizations. Eamon Queeney/KFF Health News hide caption

Bridget Narsh at her home in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Narsh's son has autism, post-traumatic stress disorder, and ADHD. In 2020, he spent more than 100 days at Central Regional Hospital, a state-run mental health facility. The state billed the family nearly $102,000 for the hospitalizations.

Bridget Narsh's son, Mason, needed urgent help in January 2020, so she was offered the chance to send him to Central Regional Hospital, a state-run mental health facility in Butner, North Carolina.

The teen, who deals with autism and post-traumatic stress and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorders, had started destroying furniture and running away from home. His mother worried for the safety of Mason and the rest of the family.

But children in crisis in North Carolina can wait weeks or months for a psychiatric bed because the state lacks the services to meet demand. And when spots do become available, they are expensive.

The standard rate at Central Regional was $1,338 a day, which Narsh could not afford. So, when a patient relations representative offered a discounted rate of less than $60 a day, her husband, Nathan, signed an agreement.

Mason, now 17, was hospitalized for more than 100 days in Central Regional over two separate stays that year, documents show.

But when requests for payment arrived the following year, Narsh said she was shocked. The letters which were marked "final notice" and requested immediate payment were signed by a paralegal in the office of Josh Stein, North Carolina's attorney general. The total bill, $101,546.49, was significantly more than the roughly $6,700 the Narshes expected to pay under their agreement with the hospital.

"I had to tell myself to keep my cool," says Bridget Narsh, 44, who lives with her husband and three children in Chapel Hill. "There is no way I could pay for this."

Medical bills have upended the lives of millions of Americans, with hospitals putting liens on homes and pushing many people into bankruptcy. In recent years, lawmakers have railed against privately operated hospitals, and states have passed laws intended to make medical billing more transparent and limit aggressive debt collection tactics.

Some state attorneys general as their states' top law enforcement officials have pursued efforts to shield residents from harmful billing and debt collection practices. But in the name of protecting taxpayer resources, their offices are also often responsible for collecting unpaid debts for state-run facilities, which can put them in a contradictive position.

Stein, a Democrat running for governor in 2024, has made hospital consolidation and health care price transparency a key issue during his time in office.

"I have real concerns about this trend," Stein said in 2021 about the state's wave of hospital consolidations. "Hospital system pricing is closely related to this issue, as consolidations drive up already inordinate health care costs."

Stein refused an interview request about Mason's bills, which arrived at the end of 2021 because the North Carolina government suspended debt collection in March 2020 as the nation felt the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Across the nation, states seize money or assets, file lawsuits, or take other steps to collect debts from people who stay at state-run hospitals and other institutions, and their efforts can disproportionately affect racial and ethnic minorities and the poor, according to health care consumer advocates. In North Carolina, officials looking to collect unpaid debt are permitted to garnish residents' income tax refunds.

Attorneys general must balance their traditional role of protecting consumers from harmful debt collection practices and the state's obligation to serve taxpayers' interests and fund services, said Vikas Saini, a cardiologist and the president of the Lown Institute, a Massachusetts-based nonpartisan think tank that advocates for health care reform.

The Narsh case is "the perfect storm of every problem in our health care system," says Saini, who at the request of KFF Health News reviewed the payment demand letters the family received. Far too often health care is unaffordable, billing is not transparent, and patients end up facing enormous financial burdens because they or a loved one is sick, Saini said.

Bridget Narsh holds one of the letters demanding payment from the North Carolina attorney's general office. Her son's service dog, Koko, specially trained to help people with autism, is at her feet. Eamon Queeney/ KFF Health News hide caption

Bridget Narsh holds one of the letters demanding payment from the North Carolina attorney's general office. Her son's service dog, Koko, specially trained to help people with autism, is at her feet.

The Narsh family had Blue Cross and Blue Shield health insurance at the time of Mason's hospitalizations. Bridget Narsh has records showing insurance paid about $7,200 for one of his stays. (Mason is now covered by Medicaid, the state and federal health insurance that covers some people with disabilities and low income people.)

In a written statement, Nazneen Ahmed, a spokesperson for Stein's office, said state law requires most agencies to send their unpaid debts to the state Department of Justice, which is charged with contacting people who may owe money.

Ahmed directed KFF Health News to the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees Central Regional Hospital.

Bailey Pennington Allison, an agency spokesperson, said in a written statement that officials researched the Narsh case and determined the state had properly followed procedures in billing the family.

The state bases its rates for services on the costs of the treatment, nursing, professional consultation, hospital room, meals, and laundry, Pennington Allison said. Hospital staffers then work with patients and families to learn about their income and assets to determine what they can afford and what they will be charged, she said.

The spokesperson did not address why Mason's parents were offered, but did not ultimately receive, a discounted rate both times he was admitted in 2020.

Narsh contacted an attorney, who negotiated the bill with the state. In April, her family reached an agreement with North Carolina officials to pay $100 a month in exchange for the state reducing the charges by roughly 96% to about $4,300. If Narsh defaults, however, the deal stipulates she must come up with the original total.

States can take a variety of approaches to debt collection. North Carolina is one of about a dozen that can garnish residents' income tax refunds, says Richard Gundling, a senior vice president for the Healthcare Financial Management Association, a membership organization for finance professionals.

Gundling says state officials have a responsibility to protect taxpayer money and collect what is owed but that seizing income tax returns can have more severe consequences for people with lower incomes. "There is a balance that needs to be struck to be reasonable," he says.

With health care a leading cause of personal debt, unpaid medical bills have become a major political issue in North Carolina.

State lawmakers are considering a bill called the Medical Debt De-Weaponization Act, which would curb the ability of debt collectors to engage in "extraordinary collection" such as foreclosing on a patient's home or garnishing wages. But the current version of the bill would not apply to state-operated health care facilities like the one Mason Narsh went to, according to Pennington Allison.

In a written statement, Stein said he supports legislative efforts to strengthen consumer protections.

"Every North Carolinian should be able to get the health care they need without being overwhelmed by debt," Stein said. He called the bill under consideration "a step in the right direction."

Narsh said the unexpectedly high amount of the bill was frustrating, at least in part because for years she struggled to get Mason more affordable, preventive care in North Carolina. Narsh says she had difficulty finding services for people with behavioral issues, a shortage acknowledged in a state report released last year.

Multiple times, she says, she has been left with no option but to take him to a hospital to be evaluated and admitted to an inpatient mental health facility not suitable for people with complex needs.

Community-based services that allow people to receive treatment at home can help them avoid the need for psychiatric hospitals in the first place, Narsh said. Mason's condition improved after he received a service dog trained to help people with autism, among other community services, Narsh says.

Bridget Narsh shares a cell phone picture of her son and Koko attending school. Her son's condition has improved since he got the service dog and other community-based services. Eamon Queeney/KFF Health News hide caption

Bridget Narsh shares a cell phone picture of her son and Koko attending school. Her son's condition has improved since he got the service dog and other community-based services.

Corye Dunn is the public policy director at Disability Rights North Carolina, a Raleigh-based nonprofit mandated by the federal government to monitor public facilities and services to protect people with disabilities from abuse. The irony, she says, is that the same system that's ill-equipped to prevent people from falling into crisis can then pursue them with big bills.

"This is bad public policy. This is bad health care," Dunn says.

KFF Health News, formerly known as Kaiser Health News (KHN), is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF the independent source for health policy research, polling, and journalism.

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A mom owed nearly $102000 for her son's stay in a state mental ... - NPR

schwit1 shares a report from NPR: In a blow to tribes, a U.S. appeals court has denied a last ditch legal effort to block construction of what's expected to be the largest lithium mine in North America on federal land in Nevada. In a decision Monday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the U.S. government did not violate federal environmental laws when it approved Lithium Nevada's Thacker Pass mine in the waning days of the Trump administration. Lithium is a key component of electric vehicle batteries, and despite pressure from west coast Paiute tribes and environmentalists, the Biden administration did not reverse the decision and had continued to advocate for the mine, which would be located on remote federal land near the Nevada-Oregon border.

Several area tribes and environmental groups have tried to block or delay the Thacker Pass mine for more than two years. Among their arguments was that federal land managers fast tracked it without proper consultation with Indian Country. "They rushed this project through during COVID and essentially selected three tribes to talk to instead of the long list of tribes that they had talked to in the past," Rick Eichstaedt, an attorney for the Burns Paiute Tribe, said in an interview late last month. But in their ruling, the Ninth Circuit judges responded that only after the mine was approved by federal land managers did it become known that some tribes consider the land sacred. Full construction of the mine is expected to begin in earnest this summer.

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Federal Ruling Approves Construction of North America's Largest ... - Slashdot

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBC.ca: A government program meant to attract highly skilled tech workers from the U.S. closed for applications the day after it launched when it hit its maximum number of applicants. Last month, Immigration Minister Sean Fraser announced a new work permit for H-1B visa holders in the U.S. -- part of a larger federal government strategy to poach talent from abroad. H-1B visas allow foreign nationals to work temporarily in the U.S. in certain specialized occupations, including some in the technology sector. Tech companies went on a hiring binge during the pandemic but have since starting laying people off in large numbers. That has left a lot of H-1B visa holders scrambling to find new jobs before they're forced to leave the U.S.

Applications for the work permits opened on Sunday. By Monday the program had reached capacity, with 10,000 applicants bidding for a permit. "This temporary policy will last for 1 year or until we get 10,000 applications (whichever comes first)," the program's website says. The program is a response to massive layoffs in the U.S. tech industry. Since last summer, hundreds of thousands of workers have been laid off from such major firms as Google, Microsoft and Amazon. Fraser said he was watching the situation in the U.S. and saw it as an "opportunity" for Canada when he first announced the program.

Nick Schiavo, director of federal affairs for the Council of Canadian Innovators, said he's not surprised that applications filled up so quickly. He said the government should now consider expanding the program to more applicants. "The more that we can pull from these highly qualified individuals that we know have the work experience, the skill set the better," Schiavo said. "As this program develops, it would be great to see it expanded."

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Program To Attract Tech Workers From the US Hits Capacity On ... - Slashdot