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Euphoria taps into the idea that adolescence these days is bleak, so bleak that there's nothing anyone can do but laugh and walk away.

This article contains spoilers through the Season 2 finale of Euphoria.
Toward the end of Euphoria's second-season finale, which aired Sunday, two former best friends, Cassie (played by Sydney Sweeney) and Maddy (Alexa Demie), take a breather after a vicious fight. Cassie's nose is bleeding; Maddy's foot needs ice. "Don't worry," Maddy says when Cassie breaks the silence with a self-deprecating comment. "This is just the beginning." She delivers her words with a smile, but they come off as a threat, leaving Cassie looking uncertain. What, exactly, is "beginning"?

Watching Euphoria evokes a similar sense of unease. Loosely based on an Israeli drama of the same name, the graphic HBO series chronicles the lives of a group of high schoolers grappling with addiction, sexual identity, and mental health. Teenagers are regularly shown having sex, using drugs, and carrying out or suffering physical and emotional abuse; many such scenes are depicted in a bold, kaleidoscopic manner. The first season rooted these visual flourishes in the point of view of Rue (played by Zendaya), the 17-year-old protagonist, which resulted in an inventive study of a modern teenager's colorful inner reality.

Season 2, however, has been fuzzier in its intent, reducing Rue's role to the degree that her seemingly pivotal partnership with a local drug queenpin wasn't mentioned at all in the finale. Instead, the show just became violent and explicit in other ways. One character threatened another with a game of Russian roulette; the agonizing scene did little to move the story forward. An extended sex fantasy about Cassie looked like soft-core pornography. The finale killed off a child. Teen dramas can certainly be intense, but Euphoria, with its focus on trauma, operates on a different level-a level that's more stressful than satisfying to watch.
Read: The dark teen show that pushes the edge of provocation
And yet, the series' second season has been wildly popular. According to HBO, the premiere has garnered nearly 19 million viewers across its platforms since it first aired, an explosive growth of more than two and a half times the number of viewers the first-season premiere has attracted. Meanwhile, off-screen, Euphoria has transformed into a watercooler show for the digital age-the kind of series meant to be not analyzed but repurposed into bite-size pieces made for online consumption. The show became Twitter's most-tweeted-about series of the decade so far, and every episode yielded a torrent of social-media activity in which viewers aired out their anxiety about the drama-while, at the same time, lamenting their devotion to it. "I am so aggravated by this show," one TikToker said in a post midway through the season, "and I will watch absolutely every episode."

I'd been feeling the same way, but I needed until the credits rolled on Sunday to understand why Season 2 kept such a hold on audiences. After all, I'm fairly certain that the creator, Sam Levinson, a notoriously fastidious filmmaker who writes without a writers' room and directs almost every episode himself, didn't intend to make a show that would thrive in the form of screenshots. Yet the second season delivered the necessary ingredients for collective processing: The visual flair that made Euphoria stand out overshadowed the writing, the story hopscotched from one salacious vignette to the next, and the rumored behind-the-scenes clashes between Levinson and some cast members amplified the show's air of confusion and calamity. The series was running on showy performances and shocking moments but little else-which meant that those of us who watched Euphoria weren't really watching Euphoria; we were rubbernecking.

Take the scene in which several characters converge in a school bathroom and question Cassie's over-the-top outfit. The camerawork is zippy, each movement choreographed perfectly. The teenage girls can't stay on topic because they've been distracted by their friend's attire, and Cassie's breakdown, culminating in her imagined outburst-"I have never ever been happier!"-lands as a twisted punch line. Yet for all its impeccable timing, the entire sequence feels staged and unnatural, too absurd to yield a deeper understanding of Cassie despite Sweeney's obvious dedication to the role. The scene turns into an impassive collection of jokes about her appearance instead of a drama worth emotionally investing in. No wonder viewers created several meme templates out of it.

Levinson takes a similarly detached approach to the show's grittier moments. In the same episode, a man finally learns what his son has been keeping from him; simultaneously, a 12-year-old he's never met before beats him bloody with a gun. The revelations should be crushing, but Levinson plays the violence and the conversation for laughs, training the camera on the rivulets of blood obscuring the man's eyes and emphasizing his bewilderment. The gore becomes hard to watch, while the tension is rendered inert. At least the lighting looks great.

In other words, Euphoria has become an aimless show-even though it remains a hypnotizing one. In the disarray of Season 2, the series' sense of nihilism is magnified. Familiar characters, such as Kat (Barbie Ferreira), regressed after making strides in Season 1. Fresh faces disappear after making little impact on the story. Lexi (Maude Apatow) spent the entire season writing a play that narratively and stylistically rehashed the show itself: indulgent, with a wildly impressive budget, but pointless. Rue wraps up the season assuring viewers that she stayed clean through the end of the school year, but doesn't clarify whether that means she relapsed afterward. Euphoria's teenagers lead extremely unrealistic lives, yet that feeling of meaningless chaos perhaps rings true for a generation that faces a largely image-driven, digital world, navigating global crises and cynical outlooks on the future. Euphoria taps into the idea that adolescence these days is bleak, so bleak that there's nothing anyone can do but laugh and walk away. Pity the youth, the show says; they don't control much, aside from maybe glittery eye makeup.

Then again, Levinson would probably disagree that the show has devolved into aesthetically pleasing social-media fodder for cynics and disaffected teens. "That's what makes life beautiful," he argues in a behind-the-scenes interview for HBO. "The messiness and the faux pas and the mistakes." Beautiful, yes, but according to what's been happening on Euphoria? Nothing more.

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The Gen-Z Drama That Launched a Million Memes

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Euphoria taps into the idea that adolescence these days is bleak, so bleak that there's nothing anyone can do but laugh and walk away. This article contains spoilers through the Season 2 finale of Euphoria. Toward the end of Euphoria's second-season finale, which aired Sunday, two former best friends, Cassie (played by Sydney Sweeney) and Maddy (Alexa Demie), take a breather after a vicious fight.

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Procrastination isn't shameful or a character flaw. Instead it's rooted in a very human need: the need to feel competent and worthy, says educator Nic Voge.
This post is part of TED's "How to Be a Better Human" series, each of which contains a piece of helpful advice from someone in the TED community; browse through all the posts here.
"It's 11 o'clock. You're in your dorm room, and you have a paper due in a day or so. You sit down at your desk, you open up your laptop to get started, and then you think, 'I'm gonna check my email just for a minute; get that out of the way.' Forty-five minutes later, you've checked a lot of email," says Nic Voge, senior associate director of Princeton University's McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning in New Jersey, in a TEDxPrinceton talk. "You've done a really good job of that, but now you realize, 'You know what? I'm pretty tired. I'm kind of exhausted, and that's not conducive to writing a good paper. What do I need? I need to go to sleep." And you do - only to wake up and go through the whole cycle of delays-and-excuses the next day.

Is this you? Rather than a college paper, maybe it was a report for work, graduate program application, peer review, or some other important thing that you kept kicking down the road until the road ran out and you had to deliver.

You probably scolded yourself for your behavior. And wondered, "Why am I so lazy /weak-willed /disorganized /unmotivated /hopeless /[fill in other belittling adjective]?"

Well, Voge has good news for you. "Procrastination isn't shameful. It's not a sign of weakness. It's not a flaw," he says. "It's actually pretty predictable; it's something we can really expect if we understand the dynamics of motivation," At Princeton, Voge develops, designs and directs academic support programs for undergraduates. He's seen procrastination in all its forms, and he has also, he confesses, "mastered the craft and art of procrastination - the mind games, the rationalizations, the justifications."

There are many theories about why we procrastinate. Some have said it's about the inability to cope with difficult emotions; others, that it's connected to faulty time management or perfectionism. Voge, however, believes it is rooted in our self-worth. He explains, "The paramount psychological need that all of us have is to be seen by ourselves and others as capable and competent and able ... and we will actually sacrifice or trade off other needs to meet that need."

To be clear, the need to be seen as worthy or worthwhile is not the problem. Where things go wrong is that some of us depend heavily on external feedback - in the form of good grades, praise from bosses, parents, in-laws or other authority figures, or the acceptance of prestigious organizations - for those feelings of worthiness. Voge says, "People who procrastinate a lot have a kind of simplistic equation in their mind: their performance is equal or equivalent to their ability, which is equal or equivalent to their self-worth as a person." Or, as he puts it: performance = ability = self-worth. The reason we're so terrified about performing poorly on that paper, application, analysis, etc. is because we feel our ability rests on it - and our value as a person.

In the performance = ability = self-worth equation, the only variable we can control is how much effort we put into our performance. When we procrastinate and put in less effort, we're doing it as a form of self-protection, according to Voge. That way, if we earn a bad result, it doesn't mean we're not talented, able or worthy; we were just too busy or distracted to do our best.

Think about the murmurs you inevitably heard before exams in high school or college. Voge asks, "What are people saying? 'I only studied three hours.' 'I only studied two hours; my computer froze.' Everyone's explaining how they're not ready. Why? Because if they don't achieve, then they have this built-in excuse not only for themselves but for others."

Anyone who has ever procrastinated has experienced that feeling of stuckness. "Many people describe procrastination as being stuck at or against a wall or an obstacle they can't get over," says Voge. "We are often agitated, we can't sleep - but we [also] can't work." At those times, we find ourselves pulled between two equally strong and compelling forces: the drive to achieve and the fear of failure. We come unstuck only when the fear of not getting things done overrides our fear of failure.
How do we break the cycle? Voge highlights three strategies:
1. Be aware of what you're doing and why.

"We know from the research on procrastination and overcoming it that gaining knowledge and being aware of self-worth theory in these dynamics helps people over these things," says Voge. "To understand the roots of procrastination helps us weaken it." Your procrastination is probably not coming from a place of self-loathing or self-sabotage but from a need to protect yourself.

Know when you're procrastinating. Sometimes it's obvious; there is absolutely no reason for us to do the laundry before we write that grant application. At other times, it's more subtle, so you may need to check in with yourself: "Yes, removing old files from my computer desktop will give me a less distracting workspace, but is it essential that I do it right now? Or am I just postponing writing the application?" Pro-tip: If you have to ask yourself whether you're procrastinating or not, chances are you are.

Get familiar with your "greatest hits" of wasting time. Most of us have specific fall-back activities that we do when we're playing the delaying game. What's yours - house-cleaning, napping, shopping, reading email, catching up on Netflix? Learn to recognize it so you can nip it in the bud; it's much easier to prevent falling down the cleaning /napping /shopping rabbit hole rather than pulling yourself out. Voge says, "The greater awareness we have of our tendencies and our motivations, we're more likely to overcome them."

2. Tip the balance.

Our progress towards completing any activity is affected by "approach" motives (reasons why we want to do this thing) and "avoid" motives (reasons we don't want to do this thing). With activities that we have no hesitations doing - let's say, eating something that's delicious and healthy - it's because we have many "approach" motives and very few "avoid" motives.

Many procrastinators have the mistaken belief that the reason they're putting off a task is because there's an underlying reason they don't want to do it. "Often, that's not the case. It's simply that their fears dominate or overwhelm their 'approach' motives," says Voge. When you're playing solitaire instead of performing a competitive market analysis for your boss, it could be because your "avoid" motives - in particular, you're avoiding the project because you're terrified you'll fail - outweigh your "approach" motives.

When this happens, think of all the reasons why you want to do this activity. It might help to remind yourself of how completing it fits into your larger goals, objectives or mission. Then, if it seems especially big or intimidating, break it down into manageable pieces. When Voge found himself procrastinating writing his TEDx talk because it seemed so daunting, he decided to create an outline so he could write his script section by section. Warning: Just resist turning that outline or to-do list into an invitation to procrastinate further.

3. Challenge your beliefs.

We need to undermine the ideas that brought us to procrastinate in the first place, says Voge. "The equation that we carry around in our head is flawed ... your ability is not equivalent to your worth." He adds, " Our worth derives from our human qualities of kindness and thoughtfulness and our vulnerabilities."
Watch his TEDxPrincetonU talk now:

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Tired of procrastinating? To overcome it, take the time to understand it

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This post is part of TED's "How to Be a Better Human" series, each of which contains a piece of helpful advice from someone in the TED community; browse through all the posts here. "It's 11 o'clock. You're in your dorm room, and you have a paper due in a day or so.

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When You Can’t Change the World, Change Your Feelings

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Adjusting your attitude is easier than you think.

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Editor's note: For those who are wondering about the retro title of this black history series, please take a moment to learn about historian , author of the 1934 book 100 Amazing Facts About the Negro With Complete Proof, to whom these "amazing facts" are an homage. This column was originally published on March 18, 2013.

(The Root) - Amazing Facts About the Negro: No. 23: When did black literature begin to address African-American sexuality?

Though many will find this difficult to believe today, in a hip-hop era defined in part by graphic depictions of sexuality, sex was a taboo subject throughout much of the history of African-American literature. In fact, black authors, male and female, traditionally were downright prudish, avoiding black sexuality in their texts like the plague. (Cases of rape were an exception, seen as a sign of the brutality and psychosis of white oppression.) Reading classic black literature might lead one to conclude that black people abstained from having sex!

In a famous speech that he delivered at the Chicago convention of the NAACP in June 1926, where he was presenting the coveted Spingarn Medal to the historian Carter G. Woodson (the founder of "Negro History Week" and a fellow Harvard Ph.D. in history), W.E.B. Du Bois addressed the vexing subject of the depiction of sex in African American Literature: " ... the young and slowly growing black public still wants its prophets almost equally unfree. We are bound by all sorts of customs that have come down as second-hand soul clothes of white patrons. We are ashamed of sex and we lower our eyes when people will talk of it." And why was this true? Du Bois explained that "Our worst side has been so shamelessly emphasized that we are denying we have or ever had a worst side. In all sorts of ways we are hemmed in and our new young artists have got to fight their way to freedom."
An Early Exception
Du Bois claimed that the sole exception to this tendency to censor sex out of black literature was the work of Jean Toomer, who had published his brilliant experimental novel in 1923. Cane is, to me, the most significant work of literature published in the entire Harlem Renaissance. Among other reasons that I make this judgement is that Toomer, as Du Bois wrote in a 1924 book review in the Crisis magazine, liberated sexuality in the black novel: "The world of black folk will someday rise and point to Jean Toomer as a writer who first dared to emancipate the colored world from the conventions of sex. It is quite impossible for most Americans to realize how straight-laced and conventional thought is within the Negro World, despite the very unconventional acts of the group. Yet this contradiction is true. And Jean Toomer is the first of our writers to hurl his pen across the very face of our sex conventionality."

Du Bois then pointed to the innovative ways that Toomer depicted the sexual lives of his female characters: "Here is Karintha, an innocent prostitute; Becky, a fallen white woman; Carma, a tender Amazon of unbridled desire; Fern, an unconscious wanton; Esther, a woman who looks age and bastardy in the face and flees in despair; Louise [sic], with a white and a black lover; Avey, unfeeling and unmoral; and Doris [sic], the cheap chorus girl. These are his women, painted with a frankness that is going to make his black readers shrink and criticize; and yet they are done with a certain splendid, careless truth." Granted, Toomer was writing about women's sexuality, rather than from a woman's point of view. Still, his female characters were a bold - indeed, shocking - departure in African-American literature.

Langston Hughes, Toomer's contemporary, echoed Du Bois' sentiments about Toomer's significance and about the role of black sexuality in literature in his famous essay, " The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain." Had Toomer been foolish enough to ask his black readers for permission to do what he did, Hughes says, they "would have told [him] not to write Cane. The colored people did not praise it. The white people did not buy it. Most of the colored people who did read Cane hated it." Why? Because "they are afraid of it," afraid that admitting that black people cared about sex would hurt the fight for civil rights by suggesting that they were not respectable - that they were debauched or impure - and this would reinforce popular stereotypes of black people as lascivious and wanton.

Du Bois concluded his speech by demanding that young black writers of the Harlem Renaissance have the courage to ignore what Evelyn Higginbotham calls "the politics of respectability," and tackle black sexuality head-on, fully, honestly and imaginatively. Who would have the courage to do so?
Heavy Baggage
Two years later, Nella Larsen in her novel created the light-skinned character Helga Crane,who marries a very dark man, the Reverend Pleasant Green, primarily because of the deep sensuality he awakens in her, a "longing for the ecstasy that might lurk," as the text puts it. Helga marries Reverend Green and enjoys sex with him, until multiple childbirths kill her. So, even for Larsen, fulfilled desire suggested the dangers of sex, not its pleasures, since Helga's sexuality leads literally to her downfall, her demise.

Until James Baldwin, only Zora Neale Hurston heeded Du Bois' call for an explicitly full and celebratory representation of black sexuality, and Hurston was the first to do so through a female protagonist, Janie Starks, in Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937). And she got into serious trouble with her contemporary black male authors for doing so, especially with the great novelist Richard Wright.

In a 1975 essay titled "In the Space Where Sex Should Be" (echoing a phrase that James Baldwin had used about the same subject), Marilyn Nelson Waniek observed that far too many black writers - especially male writers, including Richard Wright - traditionally substituted the figure of white men (as the embodiment of an all-encompassing and all-determining anti-black racism) precisely in the place in their texts where a reader might expect to find the development of healthy sexual relations between black characters. "Many critics have complained of a scarcity of fulfilling heterosexual relationships in novels by Black American authors," Waniek wrote, and this "would include most of the novels written by black men in this country," novels that lack "a lasting sexual relationship between the Black protagonist and a woman."

On the other hand, though Waniek doesn't say this, in the "underground" black vernacular traditions - such as the blues and jazz, or oral poetry such as "Shine and the Titanic" and "The Signifying Monkey" - black sexuality was always alive and well. But these were the people's art forms, expressions created by and for the consumption and enjoyment of other "regular" black people hungry to consume images of themselves, and not concerned in the least about middle-class readers and their values, whether white or black. Far too often, the vitality of black vernacular expression didn't spill over into the written tradition.

With the exception of Hurston, this sad state of affairs remained generally the case in the black novel until the revolution in the representation of black sexuality created after 1970 by black women writers such as Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Terry McMillan and a host of others, drawing upon the precedent set by Hurston's bold representation of Janie, and James Baldwin's controversial depictions of both homo- and hetero-eroticism in his novels of the '50s and '60s.
Heavyweights Spar
Despite Du Bois' charge to his audience that night in 1926, and his and Hughes' praise of Jean Toomer's Cane, the politics of sexuality remained deeply problematic within black literary circles, reaching a boiling point in the heated, vitriolic exchange between Richard Wright and Zora Neale Hurston in the late '30s, whose root cause, I believe, was Hurston's creation of a black female protagonist who was comfortable with and celebrated her own sensuality, and who insisted on her right to choose her own lovers in spite of the strictures of the black community. In reviews of each other's books, sexual politics met literary politics for the first time in public in all of African-American literary history.

In an angry and suggestive essay on Hurston's masterpiece, which reads more like an example of playing the dozens than a book review, Wright charged Hurston with pandering to the lurid tastes and fantasies of white males: Hurston's "prose," he says, "is cloaked in the facile sensuality that has dogged Negro expression since the days of Phillis Wheatley." Wright then accuses Hurston of "voluntarily continu[ing] in the novel the tradition which was forced upon the Negro in the theater, that is, the minstrel technique that makes 'the white folks' laugh." Wright reveals what most bothers him about Hurston's novel: its "sensory sweep," which, he continues, "carries no theme, no message, no thought." Why? Because "her novel is not addressed to the Negro, but to a white audience whose chauvinistic tastes she knows how to satisfy [emphasis added]," with the word "satisfy" doing double-duty here as a not-so-veiled reference to Hurston's principal "offense," her celebration of Janie's enjoyment of her own sexuality, which, as we shall see, Wright specifically mentions and insultingly mocks. But first, Hurston's rebuttal.

In self-defense, she gave as good as she got: A year later, in a review of Wright's four inter-related novellas, , Hurston charged that Wright's novel wasn't concerned with "understanding and sympathy"; rather, it was "a book about hatreds," composed of "stories so grim that the Dismal Swamp of race hatred must be where they live." And the only role of sex in his book, she said, was as a motivation for murder: The "hero gets the white man most Negro men rail against - the white man who possesses a Negro woman. He gets several of them while choosing to die in a hurricane of bullets and fire because his woman has had a white man. There is lavish killing here, perhaps enough to satisfy all male black readers." [Emphasis is mine.]

For good measure, Hurston added that Wright's use of black dialect in his book "is a puzzling thing. One wonders how he arrived at it. Certainly, he does not write by ear unless he is tone deaf!" Make no mistake: This was some high-class signifying and playing the dozens!
A Heroine Unloosed
So what really lay at the core of this dispute? Wright accused Hurston of using what he called "highly charged language" to titillate white readers, especially white males. (Hurston felt, on the contrary, that it was Wright who pandered to white readers, especially to white males, by writing about black male violence against white racists.) He was deeply troubled that Hurston had created a black female character who not only has healthy sexual fantasies, as we will see, but who also goes through two marriages to black men whom she realizes that she doesn't love, black men who abuse her in one way or another, one of whom she leaves and the other of whom she metaphorically "kills" by disparaging his manhood in public.

And as if that weren't offense enough, Jane then ultimately finds an exciting and fulfilling sexual relationship with a man much younger than she, a man who is also much darker and poorer and who is uneducated, but who treats her as an equal, not as an object, teaching her how to play checkers, how to shoot a gun, how to work and, yes, make love for the sheer pleasure of it. Black literature had never seen anything like this: a female character as free, as liberated, as self-determining and as sexual as Jane Crawford.

Richard Wright was appalled. One scene in particular drove Wright crazy, as he admits: when Janie experiences her first orgasm.

"She was stretched on her back beneath the pear tree soaking in the alto chant of the visiting bees, the gold of the sun and the panting breath of the breeze when the inaudible voice of it all came to her. She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight. So this was a marriage! She had been summoned to behold a revelation. Then Janie felt a pain remorseless sweet that left her limp and languid."

This is, I believe, the first orgasm depicted in the entire history of African-American literature. And if this was not sufficiently offensive to Wright and some of Hurston's other male readers, the structural center of the novel depicts Janie freeing herself from her oppressive second husband, Joe Starks, by playing the dozens on his manhood (or lack of it), angrily calling out his impotency in front of his friends and neighbors in his own store:

"Naw, Ah ain't no young gal no mo' but den Ah ain't no old woman neither. Ah reckon Ah looks mah age too. But Ah'm uh woman every inch of me, and Ah know it. Dat's uh whole lot more'n you kin say. You big-bellies round here and put out a lot of brag, but 'tain't nothin' to it but yo' big voice. Humph! Talkin' about me lookin' old! When you pull down you' britches, you look lak de change uh life."

To which her husband's friend, Sam Watson shrieks, "Great God from Zion! Y'all really playin' de dozens tuhnight!"

Janie's husband, of course, is devastated: "'Wha-whut's dat you said?' Joe challenged, hoping his ears had fooled him. 'You heard her, you ain't blind,' Walter taunted, driving the knife into Joe even more deeply." Devastated, "unmanned," Joe soon dies of a displaced "kidney failure"!

Not only do Janie's words symbolically kill her second husband, but they seemed to just about kill Richard Wright, too, especially Hurston's lyrical depiction of that orgasm, which Wright singled out to mock: "The romantic Janie, in the highly-charged language of Miss Hurston, longed to be a pear tree in blossom, and have a 'dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace,' " quoting the crucial section of the passage, as if its supposed vulgarity would be self-evident to any sensible reader.

And Wright wasn't the only black male writer who trashed Hurston's novel: Alain Locke and Ralph Ellison denounced it as well, with Ellison dismissing it as merely "the story of a Southern woman's love-life against the background of an all-Negro town into which the casual brutalities of the South seldom intrude." What was up with this?
Passion Subverted
James Baldwin once said of Wright and his fellow black male writers that "In most of the novels written by Negroes until today (with the exception of Chester Himes' ) there is a great space where sex ought to be; and what usually fills this space is violence. This violence, as in so much of Wright's work, is gratuitous and compulsive because the root of the violence is never examined." To what was Baldwin referring in Wright's fiction?

Wright included three sex scenes in his great novel, (1940),two of which he allowed to be cut when it was chosen to be the first black Book-of-the-Month Club selection. (These scenes have been fully restored in the Library of America edition of Native Son, superbly edited by Arnold Rampersad.) Each is troublesome in a different way, and none of these scenes even remotely began to fulfill the challenge that Du Bois issued, or speak to the concerns that James Baldwin would later express. In one of the cut scenes, Bigger masturbates in a movie theater ("I'm polishing my night stick," he tells the boy sitting next to him, who is masturbating as well) while watching a newsreel detailing the latest exploits of Mary Dalton, the pretty daughter of his new employer.

In the second excised passage, Bigger kisses this same Mary as he carries her, blind-drunk, up the stairs to her bedroom, feeling "her body moving strongly" and "the sharp bones of her hips move in a hard and veritable grind." And then, when Mary's blind mother walks into the bedroom, Bigger smothers Mary to death to avoid detection. Not exactly the stuff of romance.

Bigger does have a sexual relationship with his black girlfriend, Bessie, but it, too, is deeply problematic. After Bessie joins him in his hiding place following Mary's murder, Bigger rapes her. And what does he do afterward? He murders her, just as he did Mary. Sex, for Bigger, is inextricably intertwined with what he hates, the system he finds emasculating and castrating, and to which he wishes to do violence. From rape to murder seems like a natural progression for Bigger, fueled as his desire and sexuality are by anger. This is most certainly not what Du Bois was calling for in his 1926 speech.

At the end of her pioneering essay, Marilyn Nelson Waniek observes that "It is interesting to note that the most completely developed relationships [in the novels of black males] are those between the Black protagonists and their white male friends, who tend to be older than the protagonists. All of the protagonists are finally alone, left to build their own identities out of the division within their psyches and in America. And in the space where sex should be is instead the awful confrontation of Black self with white self, and Black self with white society."

Fortunately, the representation of both black heterosexuality and homosexuality has been a fundamental part of both the gay and black women's literary movements over the past few decades, so that Du Bois' and Baldwin's concerns have now been addressed. But perhaps this tendency in earlier African-American literature written by men foreshadowed and helps to explain the crisis in black male-female relations that has been such a deeply troubling aspect of contemporary African-American culture.
As always, you can find more "Henry Louis Gates Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and founding director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. He is also editor-in-chief of The Root. Follow him on and. " on The Root, and check back each week as we count to 100.

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Why Richard Wright Hated Zora Neale Hurston

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Editor's note: For those who are wondering about the retro title of this black history series, please take a moment to learn about historian Joel A. Rogers, author of the 1934 book 100 Amazing Facts About the Negro With Complete Proof, to whom these "amazing facts" are an homage.

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By Eve Dunbar, Associate Professor of English, Vassar College

This year marks the 80 th anniversary of Zora Neale Hurston's best-known novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. Though the book is currently hailed as one of the most important in American literature, its initial reception wasn't completely rosy. Richard Wright, often considered Hurston's chief literary rival, wrongheadedly criticized her novel for not explicitly addressing the "race problem," and for allegedly choosing sensuality over social commentary.

I, too, met the novel with a certain amount of skepticism. I first encountered Their Eyes Were Watching God like many young people coming of age in the late-20 th century, in an introductory Women's Studies course. While I can't recall much of the classroom conversation on the novel, I do remember not being particularly impressed by the book. Unlike Wright, I source my early lack of reverence to my limited understanding of one of the novel's salient and enduring themes: love, in the context of Black American life. I would eventually come to realize just how radical this meditation on love and self-determination was, and why it was so audacious that Hurston set her heroine's romantic adventures in the poor, rural South.

As a young undergraduate student, I couldn't fully appreciate the extent to which love permeates the pages of Hurston's work. Their Eyes Were Watching God centers a Black heroine's sensuality in a way that was uncommon in American literature at the time of its publication. Take for instance the novel's opening metaphor, in which a flower budding illustrates protagonist Janie Crawford's first encounter with romantic desire:
"It was a spring afternoon in West Florida. Janie had spent most of the day under a blossoming pear tree in the back-yard. She had been spending every minute that she could steal from her chores under that tree for the last three days. That was to say, ever since the first tiny bloom had opened. It had called her to come and gaze on a mystery. From barren brown stems to glistening leaf-buds; from the leaf-buds to snowy virginity of bloom. It stirred her tremendously."
Something special is happening to Janie in this moment; that bud, surrounded by barren branches, holds the mystery of life, love, and sex. But unless one has seen this blooming play out season-after-season, one probably won't easily recognize the wonder. To the contrary, Janie's grandmother, Nanny, knows what's in store just by watching the first beguiling flashes of love and lust flicker across Janie's face as she kisses the neighbor boy, Johnny Taylor. And knowing such, Nanny attempts to snuff out Janie's bud with marriage. Hurston's narrative, then, is a resistance to Nanny's respectability politics, which seek to limit with propriety Janie's sensuality and sexual autonomy.

Nanny, living in the wake of slavery's oppression, struggles with Janie's budding identity as a modern woman, one free to love who and how she chooses. This tension of grasping towards a future of unbridled blackness while also being weighed down by a history of chattle slavery was a theme common to many Harlem Renaissance writers attempting to create what a scholar of the period, Alain Locke, described as the "New Negro." The New Negro stood in opposition to the "Old Negro." In his introductory essay to the benchmark anthology of the Harlem Renaissance, The New Negro: An Interpretation, Locke describes the antiquated artistic representations of blackness that modernity has ushered out. He decried "the day of 'aunties,' 'uncles' and 'mammies'" over. In its place, a new type of black experience was made possible.

For many of Hurston's artistic peers, creating art during the Harlem Renaissance meant focusing on the black experience with the Great Migration, which was the movement of millions of black Americans from the rural South to the urban North. Many of the migrants left their familial homes to avoid the threat and violence promised by white supremacists, or a general desire to escape a land soaked in too much bad blood, or to find work and opportunities in an increasingly industrialized urban context. These "New Negroes" were often imagined as the antidote to the historical pain associated with the black, Southern experience.

For Hurston, unlike her peers and scholars like Locke, black rural life needn't be synonymous with the "Old Negro" and, thus, the region needn't be left behind for something new. Instead, she saw black culture, in all its geographical incarnations, as constantly developing and recreating itself. So while Janie Crawford spends the bulk of Their Eyes Were Watching God literally traipsing through the Florida muck and surrounded by black men and women who would sound a lot like the "mammies" and "uncles" against which Locke warns, Hurston is intent of bringing these characters into the modern era. Love was the vector through which she allowed her readers to see the modernity of rural blackness. Hurston's work asks if it is possible to be a free, black woman and be in love? And if those two might be possible, how would that love look and what would one have to do to get it?

"[Hurston] shows us that it is possible for all black women, no matter their location or socio-economic status, to be worthy of a love they desire."

The relationship between Janie and Nanny is symbolic of the generational shift that Locke details, without removing it to an urban setting. For Hurston, a New Negro woman has the capacity to love as she sees fit, no matter her region. In another moment we see Nanny explain to Janie how impossible it was for someone of her generation to imagine experiencing love, security, and freedom: "Ah was born back due in slavery so it wasn't for me to fulfill my dreams of whut a woman oughta be and to do." Nanny dreams of the stability and hetero-normative domestic life that was denied to her as a formerly enslaved person. However, this dream isn't Janie's and she responds to Nanny's proposal that she marry a man very senior to her by stating she'd, "ruther be shot wit tacks then tuh turn over in de bed and stur up de air whistles his is in dere. He don't even never mention nothin' pretty."

The aesthetic possibilities of love, not the pragmatic, are what matter to Janie Crawford. We follow Janie's journey through life as she attempts to follow her heart in search of romantic love that is fulfilling to her emotionally and physically. When Janie finally meets Tea Cake, a man at least a decade her junior (as she's in her forties by the time this love comes), we realize that Hurston is offering us a number of revolutionary possibilities: first, that financial security needn't be the foundation of a modern black women's love; second, that romantic love isn't merely for the young; and third, that modernity doesn't only happen in the city.

This is what I've learned to value most about Hurston's representation of black modern womanhood: she shows us that it is possible for all black women, no matter their location or socio-economic status, to be worthy of a love they desire. The reclamation of that space and possibility may not seem revolutionary, but history continues to show us that black love and freedom are unceasingly difficult to arrange. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston offers a moving call for black people to embrace a new kind of love, one based upon partnership and not ownership.

"'Their Eyes Were Watching God' continues to challenge readers to find themselves again and again."

In her 1942 autobiography, Dust Tracks On A Road, Zora Neale Hurston wrote: "Love, I find, is like singing. Everybody can do enough to satisfy themselves, though it may not impress the neighbors as being very much." These are world-weary words. Not negative, but deeply understanding of the difficulties of human interactions. In that sense, Hurston offers her readers the chance to consider the difference between romance and reality. The latter has the responsibility of reckoning with life and death.

Eighty years after its introduction to the world, Their Eyes Were Watching God continues to challenge readers to find themselves again and again, just like Janie does. With every return to the book, I learn a bit more about the importance of the radical embrace of love and new ways to imagine freedom.

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What I Learned About Love from Rereading "Their Eyes Were Watching God" | Blog | American Masters | PBS

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By Eve Dunbar, Associate Professor of English, Vassar College This year marks the 80th anniversary of Zora Neale Hurston's best-known novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. Though the book is currently hailed as one of the most important in American literature, its initial reception wasn't completely rosy.

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A new, highly contagious variant could have terrible consequences. But if it ends up causing milder symptoms than Delta, there's a real upside.

World, meet Omicron; Omicron, meet a lot of people who are very, very anxious to know more about you.

The arrival of the newest coronavirus variant, first identified in Botswana and South Africa and now present in the United States, might be bad news, or it might be terrible news-or maybe it's just a temporary distraction from Delta. Ultimately, Omicron's effect on the course of the pandemic will be determined by three factors: its transmissibility; the degree to which it evades our existing immune defenses; and its virulence, or the severity of the disease that it causes. If Omicron turns out to jump between hosts with ease, blow past our neutralizing antibodies, and cause unusually dangerous complications, we'll all be in deep trouble. But it could also turn out to do a lot of other things, with more subtle implications. If Omicron ends up being super contagious, for example, but mild in its symptoms, that might even be a good thing-a perfect variant, just in time for Christmas.

At this point, living with the coronavirus for years to come is all but inevitable. In many countries that have had vaccines in hand for the better part of a year, inoculation rates still aren't close to 100 percent. Even if every human on Earth gained a degree of immunity from vaccination or infection, the virus could retreat into its many animal hosts, only to reenter the human population in a slightly different form. "There's no reasonable person, I think, in public health now who thinks that eradication or elimination or having zero COVID is a realistic goal," says Tara Kirk Sell, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

Given that this enemy cannot be vanquished, we'd all stand a better chance at survival if it were armed with a slingshot rather than a cannon. Doctors from South Africa and Israel have said that cases of Omicron seem to be less serious than Delta, so far. Zero severe cases or deaths have been reported among the nearly 60 confirmed cases in the European Union. But the data are very limited and prone to bias. Fewer than 250 cases have been reported worldwide, and the plurality of them are from South Africa, where a younger-than-average populace might be less susceptible to COVID complications in general.
Read: The Omicron information vacuum
If Omicron continues to show signs of being milder than Delta, that's good news, of course. But if it also turns out to spread more quickly than Delta, that could be great news. When two variants are circulating, the one that infects more people more quickly will tend to dominate, said Samuel Scarpino, of the Rockefeller Foundation's Pandemic Prevention Institute. That variant could win out either because it replicates more quickly in its human hosts and spreads more efficiently between them-that is, it's more transmissible-or because it more deftly evades the immunity we already have.

Immune escape sounds especially scary; after such a hard-fought battle to stay healthy until the vaccines arrived, or a hard-fought battle against the virus itself, no one wants to be told they're susceptible again. But a reinfecting variant that doesn't come with the risk of chronic symptoms or ventilators might not be such a bad thing, Elizabeth Halloran, a biostatistician at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, told me. "If it can get around the vaccines, but in the end really causes less severe disease, that's probably a step in the right direction."
Read: The coronavirus could get worse
One possible downside to a super-contagious (or immune-evading), super-mild Omicron would be that those who catch it won't end up with much protection afterward, Scarpino said. As my colleague Katherine J. Wu has reported, mild COVID cases may not lead the immune system to produce as many antibodies as do more serious illnesses. But Ali Ellebedy, an immunologist at Washington University in St. Louis, told me that mild infection doesn't necessarily preclude a robust immune response. "Once you have a productive infection, your immune system has been engaged," he told me. Even if you don't feel sick, your body might be pumping out antibodies and training up T cells to fight off the invader the next time it arrives. And by stimulating even a relatively gentle immune response in enough people, a new, widespread version of the virus would make the global population that much better prepared for the future. "Any variant that comes will make it harder for the variant that comes next," Ellebedy said.

Omicron could, of course, turn out to be pretty much anything. Maybe it's somewhat more transmissible than Delta, but no more virulent; that, Kirk Sell said, could send us back to stricter masking and social-distancing programs for a while. Or else it might be less transmissible than Delta, and no better at slipping past our immune barriers, in which case "it's going to be a blip on the horizon" regardless of how virulent it is, according to Halloran. If that happens, we'll effectively be back where we were two weeks ago: stuck with Delta and waiting for the next shoe to drop.
Read: What we know about the Omicron variant
There are worse fates. "In some ways, Delta is the ideal variant," Scarpino said: It's transmissible enough to dominate more dangerous variants, and its virulence can be controlled through vaccination. In the next few weeks, we'll find out whether Omicron will have its own silver lining-or whether it'll be catastrophically worse.

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you.the arrival of the newest coronavirus variant

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A new, highly contagious variant could have terrible consequences. But if it ends up causing milder symptoms than Delta, there's a real upside. World, meet Omicron; Omicron, meet a lot of people who are very, very anxious to know more about you.

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Adele Adkins doesn't just write songs; she writes anthems. Over the course of her 15-year career, she's become the patron saint of heartache in mainstream music, penning tear-jerking songs about the woes of love. Dating back to her debut album, 2008's 19, the singer has filled airwaves and late-night headphones with tracks recounting failed love, longing, and the often fraught depths of devotion found in tempestuous relationships.

But Adele has never been as soul-stirring, vulnerable, or captivating as she is on . In the six years since her monstrously successful third record, , she's been busy raising a son, as well as marrying-then divorcing-her now ex-husband. After all of this (or, as legions of her fans have argued in recent months, maybe because of this), she's returned to share the long journey she's been on.

30 opens with the mournful "Strangers By Nature," a lulling, foreboding song in which views her heart as a cemetery filled with now deceased loves. It immediately showcases how her sound has expanded, with the arrangements taking on a new, more cinematic quality. (Perhaps she was eager to revisit the sonic palette of "Skyfall.") Adele's voice comes out delicately, as strings softly hum in the background. Twinkling synths give way to a swelling, dark chorus, the mood riddled with grief as she pays respects to those left behind.

, Adele said her fourth album would help to explain her divorce to her 9-year-old son, Angelo. This dedication comes most plainly in "My Little Love," a heady, bass-forward song about the desire to be strong in front of her son even when she's crumbling. Adele refers to herself in the third-person as "mama," while singing directly to him, and the track includes snippets of conversation between Adele and her son, telling him how she's "been carrying a lot of emotions lately." There's a push and pull in the lyrics-of a mother needing her son for support while feeling guilty about wearing these emotions on her sleeve for him to see. The song's outro almost plays like a confessional: Discussing feelings of loneliness, her voice breaks, and sobs burst out.

The tears dry soon, however. "Cry Your Heart Out," a spunky, jazzy offering reminiscent of '60s girl groups, employs bongos, clapping, and spirited backup vocals to celebrate taking time for yourself and giving yourself love. Singing about feeling devoid of emotion, fragile, and outright scared, she instructs, "All love is devout, no feeling is a waste, but give it to yourself now," a reminder that in the fallout of a relationship, self-love remains crucial. Her voice rises and falls in runs over the swinging beat, guiding listeners into a more energized portion of the album.

"Oh My God" and "Can I Get It" are the most pop-oriented and straightforward pairing on the album, with the incorporation of high-pitched synths and-dear god-, a hollow carry-over from 2010s radio pop. The two songs provide the most uptempo section, both driven by steady hand claps. The former uses layered vocals to toast the pursuit of love in trying times, while the latter harnesses a sensuality not often heard in Adele's work, as she moans during the chorus, asking if she can get someone's love, come hell or high water. Unfortunately, neither cut is particularly interesting-exceptions to the otherwise excellent material on the album.

While the expansion of her sound really begins to pay off with "I Drink Wine"- an organ leads the way as she lets her vocals run wild, building to a final chorus of cathartic release-it's with "All Night Parking (With Erroll Garner) Interlude" where 30 reaches new heights. In the song, Adele steps away from pop structures and delves into a richer sound infused with gospel, jazz, and soul. This R&B number lets her get back in touch with her tenderness: Whimsical and dreamy, she sings about an infatuation, confessing to impetuous desire as the late Garner's piano lines give new life to the music-outstripping the more generic piano melodies found on 25, for example - and reaches for something deeper, rooted in complex desire.

Adele grapples with grief and loneliness many times throughout 30, but anger only arises on "Woman Like Me," in which she drags a certain man through the filth for not appreciating her and reciprocating her efforts in their relationship. Her vocals falling low over a finger-plucked guitar melody, she sings fiercely of giving her all and receiving nothing in return, ending with a demand for consistency (as that's what will keep a "woman like her").

"Hold On" serves as Adele's gospel, her heavenly vocals ringing out like a beautifully secular hymn. Lyrics about feeling lost, tired, and weary give way to a promise that things will get better, and love will return. Unlike the deep, anger-tinged vocals of "Woman Like Me," Adele's voice shimmers in high registers in "Hold On," producing some truly chill-inducing moments. What starts with just her and the piano opens up to a choir and a full band arrangement: Riding the wave of the moving bridge, strings enter and follow Adele's lead as she sings of patience and graciousness, preaching the need to just hold on- something her friends tell her time and time again, which may be why the choir is credited as "Adele's crazy friends" in the liner notes.

After bolstering herself with the voices of friends, "To Be Loved" finds Adele all on her own. With just the backup of a simple, measured piano line, "To Be Loved" is a wrenching confessional that finds the singer at the absolute top of her game. With poetic lyricism, she sings of a willingness to make the sacrifice needed for love, vocals echoing as if she's singing on an empty stage. As her voice cracks during the bridge, she reaches her limits, resulting in a raw, powerhouse performance. Upon its finish, a listener could be forgiven for having the impulse to stand and erupt into applause.

Inspired by the films of Audrey Hepburn, the final track, "Love Is A Game," is pure romance, swirling with imagery of old movies. The grandiose strings take center stage throughout, swooning behind Adele's vocals. Evoking classic jazz singers like Billie Holiday or Etta James, Adele pushes the limits of her range as she sings about the pain she's endured and the "foolish game" of pursuing love in this life. It's dramatic, triumphantly rising into a glorious and joyous denouement, like the perfect end to a film.

Although the potency of 30 diminishes with "Oh My God" and "Can I Get It," the final three songs are so raw, moving, and perfectly executed that the two lesser tracks become mere blips in the grandeur of the rest of the album. While there are no bellowing, radio-friendly bops like "Hello" or "Rolling In The Deep," she has tapped into something more exciting.

In the final moments of "Love Is A Game," Adele shouts she'll "do it all again." Even though love is "a game for fools to play," she considers herself foolish in this way-willingly offering herself up as a sacrifice once more when the time is right, and in the process, breaking out of her mold to deliver the richest and most musically adventurous album of her career.

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Adele reaches new heights on 30, her best album to date

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Adele Adkins doesn't just write songs; she writes anthems. Over the course of her 15-year career, she's become the patron saint of heartache in mainstream music, penning tear-jerking songs about the woes of love.

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Adele is a volcano, stewing in secret for years until the moment she cuts loose and melts everything in her path. Her studio albums - 19, 21, 25, and the new 30 - are snapshots of unique junctures in her personal life. Like British director Michael Apted's Up documentary series, which has checked in on the lives of a string of subjects at seven-year intervals since the 1960s, the London-born singer lets us in every few years to share what she's learned about love and loss and creativity and art. On 19, Adele arrived amid a new wave of U.K. soul revivalists, successful artists like Duffy and Amy Winehouse who, at that moment, were being touted as a kind of new British invasion. Adele's soulful, cinematic "Chasing Pavements" was a hit on both sides of the Atlantic, this after the maudlin ballad "Hometown Glory" fared decently on European charts.

But we lost Amy to tragedy, and Duffy (whose 2008 debut beat out Coldplay's Viva la Vida and Radiohead's In Rainbows for top honors at the 2009 Brit Awards, where Adele was nominated three times but shut out, marking the last time she left that show empty-handed), began an indefinite hiatus in 2011 that she hasn't come back from. Adele, who gigged with "Thamesbeat" acts like Jamie T and Jack Peñate and whose debut album carried a whiff of the Thames scene bands' wholesome genre-bending, particularly in songs like "Right As Rain" and "Cold Shoulder," filled the void. Her next album, 2011's 21, leaned into qualities that guided the last album's singles to acclaim. 21 made more room for pop gestures like "Set Fire to the Rain," "Rolling in the Deep," and "Rumour Has It," calling in successful pop-rock engineers like Rick Rubin, Ryan Tedder, and Paul Epworth to produce, where 19 had gone to rock engineer Jim Abbiss (Arctic Monkeys, Kasabian, Peñate) and Mark Ronson for ideas.

The passage from 19 to 25 is a series of breakthroughs in which Adele releases songs that elevate her to new levels of esteem, then the sound of the hits prevails on the next record. 19's "Hometown Glory" did well; 21 centered stormy piano pop. The plodding-forward push of 21's "Set Fire to the Rain" telegraphs 25, a work too full of that kind of song. 25 was a juggernaut, an adult-contemporary blockbuster that set about appealing to the masses by sanding all of its rough edges down, leaving little else but the vocalist and whatever sleek and saccharine sounds drove the chorus home. It is a deeply affecting record and an intermittently middle-of-the-road one, a line drive straight toward the shared tastes of the millions it stood to reach. The lead single, "Hello," flows toward a loud finish like flood waters wreaking havoc after a dam breaks. Adele's voice is elemental, pliable with perfect pitch, devastating everywhere between a low whisper and a yelp, as 25's gutting ballad "Remedy" bears out. But it was a mistake not to have the music push back and challenge her much. When the arrangements pick up a bit of speed and intrigue, as they do in "Water Under the Bridge" and "Send My Love (To Your New Lover)," she responds in kind, skipping delightfully across the track. Leaving upbeat tunes like "Right As Rain" and "I'll Be Waiting" behind in favor of torch songs like "Hello" and "When We Were Young" narrowed the creative breadth of Adele's albums, a streamlining that succeeded beyond anyone's wildest dreams. 25 sold millions worldwide in a week, but now, fame was a cage. The singer recalled the response to "Hello" in a recent Vogue profile: "I don't want another song like that. That song catapulted me ... to another level that I don't want to happen again."

This time around, "Send My Love" is the epiphany lighting the way to a new era. That single's methodical build and slowly evolving groove are mirrored in the highlights of 30, the long-awaited follow-up to 25 and a chronicle of the turbulence in the wake of the end of the star's marriage. In 2019, the singer left Simon Konecki, the entrepreneur she met in 2011 and wed in 2018. Now divorced, the two live on opposite sides of the same street to smooth joint-parenting of their 9-year-old son, Angelo. 30 wears the grace of that arrangement on its sleeves. The ex here doesn't catch a tenth of the hell the ex from 21 did, though when 30 does cut loose, it nearly scorches the earth. Instead, these songs are concerned with the betterment of Adele as a musician, a mother, and a woman. She's sharpening her writing and pushing her voice. She's working with more challenging compositions. 30 is breaking up with the placid tastefulness of the records Adele released in her 20s, in a sense. The new songs start in familiar scenarios, sneaking in quietly with a skeletal piano melody, as "Hold On" does, and building to a powerful gospel chorus, or juggling Motown soul and reggae, like "Cry Your Heart Out," which takes after Stevie Wonder's "Master Blaster (Jammin')."

There's a sly balancing act happening here: Adele reconciles her romantic past and present and opens new sonic avenues in her music without abandoning the last two albums' lucrative deference to classic ' 70s singer-songwriter pop. 30's "Oh My God" gestures to Afrobeat between rock-oriented verses and a dance-pop chorus. The Max Martin and Shellback collab "Can I Get It" is a hodgepodge of jarring ideas, alternately conjuring Oasis's "Wonderwall," George Michael's "Faith," and Aloe Blacc's "I Need a Dollar." It's here that 30 starts to feel like it's trying a little too hard, like there is a market-tested intelligence to the bases it touches in its production, though, to its credit, a useful side effect of that care is that this album comes across more like someone letting us ogle their extensive record collection and less like the sound of cultures being glommed onto. 30 treads into R&B in "My Little Love" and "Woman Like Me," but "Hold On" and "I Drink Wine" pull the listener elsewhere, into rootsy pop-rock. The strings and showy vibrato of "Strangers by Nature" give off acute Judy Garland feels. (In certain cuts - like "All Night Parking," where Adele sings over samples of late jazz pianist Errol Garner outfitted with trap drums, and this works so well you wish the album took bigger swings - 30 feels like a knowing tribute to the slippery, intergenerational soul of Amy Winehouse's Back to Black. Is our closer "Love Is a Game" a nod to Back's "Love Is a Losing Game"? Are the smoky tones and jazzy delivery in "Parking"? Or did they both stan Dinah Washington?)

As producers like Martin, Greg Kurstin (Beck, Sia, Foo Fighters), and Inflo (Sault, Little Simz) hammer out a livelier palette of sonics, Adele rises fitfully to the task, revealing impressive command of her instrument as she affects the chipper, lilting notes of old-time jingles ("Cry Your Heart Out"); plays enticing tricks with her volume ("To Be Loved"), vibrato ("Hold On"), and falsetto ( "Easy on Me"); shares diaristic private voice notes ("My Little Love"); and dabbles delightfully in vocal manipulation ("Oh My God"). She learned a little something with every release. 30 sometimes calls back to the experimentation Adele explored as she and the London Thamesbeat acts of the late '00s chipped away at the barriers between pop and indie rock in the 19 era. It processes hurt via soul-searching and withering emotional directness, as 21 did, and relies on the brute force of the singer's instrument to sell us on the messages in the lyrics, the same way 25 did. What's new now is that she's asking different questions, not settling for reading a bad boyfriend for filth or walking through the complicated dissolution of a relationship that seemed built to last. Outside of the fury of "Woman Like Me" - "I don't think you quite understand / Who you have on your hands / How can you not see / Just how good for you I am" - 30 wants self-sufficiency. "Why am I obsessing about the things I can't control?" Adele asks in "I Drink Wine." "Why am I seeking approval from people I don't even know?"

By the end of the album, on "Love Is a Game," a mix of Philly-soul brass and girl-group vocal harmonies, Adele has sworn off romance entirely: "Love is a game for fools to play / And I ain't fooling / What a cruel thing / To self-inflict that pain." Disappointment is tiring. "To be loved and love at the highest count," as the chorus of the breathtaking late-album scorcher "To Be Loved" goes, "means to lose all the things I can't live without." It's a sentiment you can only arrive at after having made the trip around the sun a few times, having failed and been failed enough to know your limits and get militant about preserving your time, honor, and energy. Songs written about the intersection between our 20s and 30s, like Danny Brown's "30" or Bo Burnham's "30," often touch on the dread of reaching the point where we are tacitly expected to have figured ourselves out, being written amid the mid-grade panic of 29. Adele's 30 is less interested in this fear than in the steps we can take to abate it. The lyrics see Adele tracing a path to emotional wellness. The music is seeking fresh approaches to her craft. Her songs are getting looser, more conversant in global trends. 30 is where she realizes that she doesn't have to always pitch us slow, sad, jilted tunes to stay in the game. This is still every bit the savvy act of demographic outreach the old records were. It's just better. 30 is the best Adele album. If it sells less than 25, so what. This is the music she should've been making all along.

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Adele is a volcano, stewing in secret for years until the moment she cuts loose and melts everything in her path. Her studio albums - 19, 21, 25, and the new 30 - are snapshots of unique junctures in her personal life.

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Stephen Sondheim made his last public appearance at the first preview of the revival of "Company," his 1970 classic, last Monday night, the fifteenth of November. Ninety-one, and a little slowed but not visibly ailing, Sondheim was greeted by the Broadway audience, as he took his seat, in the left orchestra, with an emotional intensity that was tidal in its ferocity and duration. The emotion was doubled, perhaps tripled, by the relief at Broadway's returning to life at all-it was, without exception, the most overwhelming tribute that I have ever experienced in the theatre. Now that moment is sealed as history, since Sondheim would die less than two weeks later, on Friday the twenty-sixth, at his house in Connecticut.

No artist since George Balanchine had so entirely dominated an art form as Sondheim had his. It was a truth of which he was ruefully aware, writing, in a song called, caustically, "God," "Still you have to have something to believe in / Some things you appropriate / Emulate / Overrate / Might as well be Stephen." A generation of musical-theatre artists were defined by their relationship to him-some to a point almost self-destructive, measuring themselves against the Druid of Turtle Bay in ways that he didn't exactly welcome but couldn't exactly prevent. Adam Guettel, the brilliant composer of "The Light in the Piazza"-and, as Richard Rodgers's grandson, hardly innocent of dominant theatrical figures-recalls having Sondheim come to see an early performance of the show in 2007, and how everyone's eyes fixated on the back of Sondheim's head, just to try to discern, by its movements, the oracular verdict. (It was, Guettel recalls, a happy and nimble neck, until a second-act violation of the fourth wall offended Sondheim's sense of story decorum, and all hell broke loose around the collar.)

Yet his was a late-arriving legend, hard won from a resistant Broadway commercial culture; unlike Balanchine's art form, Sondheim's counted box-office, and labelled hits and flops irrevocably. Sondheim was perhaps more aware of the commercial uncertainties of his own work than his worshippers quite knew or wanted. (Once, in conversation, he asserted to me the truth that a musical's destiny is determined by its first ten minutes, which lay out the evening's rules for the audience. Well, I asked impertinently, what about "Follies," whose first ten minutes are notably knotty? "Yes," he snapped back, not entirely good-naturedly. "And 'Follies' has never made a penny back to any of its investors.")

The lineaments of Sondheim's ascent are part of musical-theatre legend: how he was rescued from a troubled childhood-his mother once wrote him a cheerily confidential letter saying that she regretted ever having given birth to him-by the lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II, a near neighbor in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, who taught him the professional rudiments of musical-theatre construction and the human possibilities of a warmer heart. Relegated by his obvious dexterity to be a mere lyricist, Sondheim had to fight to be taken seriously as a composer. It was a hard climb, assisted, as all such are, by perseverance, and the occasional orneriness of those who refuse to be nice at the expense of their own talent.

When this writer first encountered Sondheim's work at length-outside the inevitable collision with the lyrics to "West Side Story," at which he usually winced ("I feel pretty and witty and bright," sung by a Puerto Rican teen-ager?)-it was in the 1977 London revue "Side by Side by Sondheim." Sondheim was a cult taste, brought forward by English discernment against the run of American favor. Before " Sweeney Todd" or " Into the Woods," Sondheim's fame rested on the equivocal success of "Company," the art-house shine of "Follies," and the perfect romantic roundelay of "A Little Night Music."

Yet the revue was one of the great revelations of a lifetime-and not for the "sophistication" alone, the dazzling casual linguistic virtuosity, exemplified by throwaways, such as the bridge of "Uptown Downtown," about a woman divided between her two identities: "She sits at the Ritz with her splits of Mumm's / And starts to pine for a stein with her village chums, / But with a Schlitz in her mitts down at Fitzroy's Bar, / She thinks of the Ritz, oh it's so schizo." No, even that virtuosity could not obscure the more important side of Sondheim, the depth and wonder and empathy of his articulate passions. Though he wrote few mating calls of the sort that dominate pop songwriting, no songwriter-not Rodgers, not Schubert-has ever written so many great songs of longing and wanting, from "Too Many Mornings," in "Follies," the song of a man rediscovering a decades-lost love, to "Loving You," from "Passion," the anthem of a psycho stalker made humanly plausible. Sondheim was accused by some critics of being merely "sour," and nothing dates so fast as sourness-if that had been what Sondheim counted on, he would have passed into history along with other cynics. Wits who remain famed for wit, from Oscar Wilde to Dorothy Parker, are rarely cynical; just the opposite, they come to us shining with faith and hope, but are too smart to pretend that it's been rewarded. Sondheim, similarly, was never really sour. He was, instead, consistently bittersweet, like the best, and darkest, dark chocolate.

Sondheim could be ferociously ornery with performers, and God knows with critics. He once wrote a memorable no-thank-you note about a singer who was too unsubtle for his songs: "She screws up the lyrics royally, she even sings the wrong tune. . . . You call it sprightly for her not to change her tune. I call it lazy and selfish. . . . I told you I'd be candid. Actually I'm being kind." He noted in an e-mail that another singer "was so off-pitch that in order to keep my cool in public I had to pretend to myself that I was at some peaceful blue Fiji lagoon, the sun setting and squads of flamingos gracefully flapping around." (John Mulaney captured that Sondheimian face in a hilarious impersonation in a "Documentary Now!" parody.) In a world gone vanilla-bland, there was something bracing about his orneriness, and it was meaningfully varied by the care and attentiveness- hundreds of e-mails, countless notes, hard and soft-to performers he thought worthy of his work, or just worthy in their own. Toward the end of his life, particularly, he seemed to have beaten down his demons, and his exchanges with younger performers and composers, or even, occasionally, with those horrible critics, were appreciative and funny, with ornery a mere bracing savory flavor among the sweets.

His legacy is one that will be debated and argued over as long as people care about musical theatre. John Lahr, for years the theatre critic of this magazine, was one of the few to offer heresy about the Church of Sondheim: "Sondheim spoke to the disenchantment of the times," he wrote, "and his approach turned him not so much into a celebrity as a theology." It is possible to worship Sondheim just shy of idolatry and not tip over. There is a half-silenced school of thought that almost wishes Sondheim had been adopted by Larry Hart rather than Oscar Hammerstein-he never quite outgrew the older man's taste for greeting-card uplift and fortifying sentiments. Songs like "Children Will Listen" and "No One Is Alone," however moving when well sung, may come to be seen as the "Climb Ev'ry Mountain" and "You'll Never Walk Alone" of our time. (That is not meant as praise.) The first act of "Sunday in the Park with George," achieved with James Lapine, may be the single best thing in American musical theatre; the second act, despite strenuous efforts, is almost unsalvageable. And, like Balanchine's edicts of abstraction, Sondheim's "No!"s-no off rhymes, no songs for their own sake, no mere lists, no self-conscious wit of the Porter-Hart kind-were both empowering and limiting. Empowering because they gave shape and high seriousness to an art form too often patronized; limiting because they reshaped musical theatre to a narrowly specific rule and may have squeezed some of the joy and juice out of it in doing so.

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Stephen Sondheim made his last public appearance at the first preview of the revival of "Company," his 1970 classic, last Monday night, the fifteenth of November. Ninety-one, and a little slowed but not visibly ailing, Sondheim was greeted by the Broadway audience, as he took his seat, in the left orchestra, with an emotional intensity that was tidal in its ferocity and duration.

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Since 1976, the month of February has been recognized in the United States as Black History Month to observe and celebrate the Black diaspora. Forty-five years later in the middle of a pandemic, Black History Month returns with the activism of the Black Lives Matter movement and a newfound urgency for social change.

Amid the civil unrest, ignited by multiple Black deaths related to police brutality and racial discrimination, is a sense of loss and a need for joy. The idea of "Black joy" as a movement and a form of rebellion has been taking root. Cal State Fullerton African American studies professor Mei-Ling Malone explains: "Black joy is an act of resistance. The whole idea of oppression is to keep people down. So when people continue to shine and live fully, it is resistance in the context of our white supremacist world."

Black people are able and allowed to find happiness and comfort despite their tribulations. In the 1600s, slaves used to go swimming for pleasure after their day's work, according to Malone. This idea that Black people can be happy, despite their trauma and history of oppression, is Black joy.

"Like other communities, Black folks, of course, feel tremendous pain, outrage, sorrow and depression, and we struggle with our mental health. But there is also a necessary longing and practice of joy," Malone said. "As long as there has been racial oppression, there has also been resistance and Black joy."

Malone went on to say that the Black community faces enough challenges due to the preventable issue of racism alone. But that even in the darkest times in a white supremist society, Black people still find a way to laugh and love.

Rather than romanticize the struggles of the Black diaspora, Black joy reveals Black folks' humanity and their simplest need to feel free and safe in their pursuit of happiness. One way of doing this is in allyship and solidarity against a future where joy has to be defined in a trauma-inflicted context.

"Black joy is a beautiful thing but what would be even more beautiful is if all of us band together in solidarity to destroy and dismantle our system of white supremacy so that all joy is just human joy and Black folks can live freely in the world and strive," Malone said.

Bringing Black Joy to the Protests

Upset Homegirls of Fullerton is an activist organization that emerged last summer amid the plethora of Black Lives Matter protests in Orange County and nationwide. While most protesters will walk around the block and hold up a few signs, these girls asked the attendees at their protests to dance.

Last July, the founders of Upset Homegirls invited their community to march with them in solidarity for Black Lives Matter. At the end of their march, they invited everyone to dance while sporting their "BLK JOY" T-shirts in front of Fullerton City Hall, with carefully curated music from Black artists playing in the background.

Drivers going down Commonwealth Avenue honked along to the protesters' display of joy as Cupid's "Cupid Shuffle" commanded their movements "to the right" and "to the left." As if entranced by Cupid's lyrics, the protesters carried on his message as they danced along to "I just let the music come from my soul / So all of my people can stay on the floor."

"It's important, even in all that bad space, to bring all of that goodness," said Brandy Factory, a founding member of Upset Homegirls. "Because you can't fight anything without love and I think there's a lot of love that's rooted in Black joy."

Factory inherited her passion for justice from her parents, both of whom were involved in protests for their communities. In the generation before her parents, Factory's grandfather was simultaneously a member of the Black Panther Party and a proud Los Angeles police officer during the 1980's.

As an officer who lived in the community he served, Factory said her grandfather saw how the police treated civilians who weren't their neighbors, and that it was one of the reasons why police brutality persisted.

"I think that's also why he took on being a Black Panther as well. Because he knew what the history was with police officers and how they don't really need as much funding and armories," Factory said.

Having grown up connected to her family's history of activism, service and an unfaltering dedication to fight for one's people, Factory protests today with the understanding that the police are not going to protect her community, just as they didn't her parents' nor her grandfather's.

Just as her mom took to the streets in 1992 to protest at the Los Angeles Rodney King riots, Factory went to Fullerton City Hall on July 4, 2020 to light candles for the Black lives that were lost rather than fireworks for a country that made them victims.

"You did your part, so now it's time for me to do my part," Factory said in reference to her mom. "Some people don't go out and start activism to be influencers. They just do it because they feel like that's what's in their heart. And that was a big starting point with Upset Homegirls."

Esther Fagbamila, one of the founders of Upset Homegirls, was the catalyst in her organization's formation. According to Factory, it was as simple as gathering the girls and saying "Hey, I'm not happy with what's going on and I want to do something. Can you help me?"

And in her pursuit of the happiness that was lost due to America's current political climate, Fagbamila and her friends created Upset Homegirls to help serve their communities while also teaching, spreading and displaying joy.

"I can't let myself stay in the position of victimhood, or believe that I am in any way, shape or form a victim to my circumstances. I can believe that I can be full of joy, and happy, and still be able to fight against my oppressors," Fagbamila said.

Laryssa Odd, another member of Upset Homegirls, said that Black joy doesn't have to be isolated and that it can stem from the creativity that flows through the Black community.

"If you have a Black business, that's Black joy right there, because you're supporting the community, and you're spreading to other Black folk. If you're a Black musician, you're spreading your creativity. There's so many different ways that Black joy can be spread," Odd said.

While the Label is Trending, the Idea is NotForeign

Throughout all civil rights agendas in history, Black people could be partially, if not fully, credited with integrating music into their protests, according to Cal State Fullerton African American studies professor Natalie Graham.

Graham explained that the influence of activism in art is powerful because it represents the tenacity of Black culture in American society, which is not something that forces of violence and oppression can easily strip away.

Graham referenced Kendrick Lamar's 2015 song "Alright" as an example of powerful art and creative activism. Graham argued his lyric "we gon' be alright" is powerful because it represents hope - hope that they will be OK and hope to experience joy.

"Many Black thinkers talk about the power of hope and the power of joy, the power of Black celebration. It's outside of the white gaze. That's outside the confines of the cultural expectations of white culture," Graham said.

Graham taught "Black Men in America" at Cal State Fullerton and asked her students, "What does it mean to be a Black man?"

In response, nearly all her students' answers included words like "pain," "strife" and "challenge," as opposed to "joy," "peace" and "pleasure." In her students' minds, this is what Blackness looks like, which is representative of the idea that Black laughter and Black joy has been weaponized against Black people.

"When you think of a person as fundamentally angry, or fundamentally aggressive, then it's a lot easier to justify hurting that person, or diminishing that person's rights or even killing that person," Graham said. "So I think there's this really powerful thing that we're saying no, Black people are joyful, they're not angry."

On Jan. 20, Kamala Harris became the first Black American, Asian American and woman to hold the second-highest office in the U.S. On the same day, 22-year-old Black American poet Amanda Gorman delivered a powerful, joyful composition, and became the youngest inaugural poet in American history.

With so much left for people of color to accomplish and moments to celebrate, Graham affirms that Black people, regardless of circumstance, have the full right to celebrate themselves and feel joyful doing so.

"I think Black joy acknowledges that, alongside whatever else is happening, it acknowledges that we have the full right to feel our emotions," Graham said.

She emphasized that while Black joy is resistance, it is not the full picture.

"It's about honoring our humanity, in the fullness of what it means to be alive and to be human," Graham said.

Malone brings up a similar idea when she said that it's just as important to challenge white supremacy as it is to practice self-love, which leads to joy. She said that embracing our humanities will naturally lead us to reject the status quo that violence and hate are normal.

"Black joy is about affirming one's beautiful life. Black joy rejects the pathology of racism. Black joy is being fully human. Black joy is pride. Black joy is self-love. Black joy is shining bright. Black joy is living your best life despite living in a racist world setup against your very being," Malone said.
Kim Pham is a writing fellow for Voice of OC Arts & Culture. She can be reached at kimhphm@gmail.com.

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Celebrating Black Joy as an Alternative Form of Resistance and Reclaiming of Humanity

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We have been your lifeline during the pandemic, economic fallout, wildfires, protests and the election. Support us with a tax-deductible donation . Since 1976, the month of February has been recognized in the United States as Black History Month to observe and celebrate the Black diaspora.

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The anonymous hucksters behind a Squid Game cryptocurrency have officially pulled the rug on the project, making off with an estimated $ 3.38 million. Remember on Friday morning when Gizmodo told you it was an obvious scam? It was only obvious because investors could purchase the crypto but couldn't sell it. But plenty of people didn't get the warning in time.

The SQUID cryptocurrency peaked at a price of $2,861 before plummeting to $0 around 5:40 a.m. ET., according to the website CoinMarketCap. This kind of theft, commonly called a "rug pull" by crypto investors, happens when the creators of the crypto quickly their coins for real money, draining the liquidity pool from the exchange.

The SQUID crypto coin was launched just last week and included plenty of red flags, including a three-week old website filled with bizarre spelling and grammatical errors. The website, hosted at SquidGame.cash, has disappeared, along with every other social media presence set up by the scammers. You can see an archived version of the website .

Other red flags included the fact that SQUID's Telegram channel, set up by the unknown scammers, didn't allow comments from outsiders. And the Twitter account made it impossible for anyone to reply to posts.

But the biggest red flag was that no one who purchased the coin was able to sell. That didn't stop mainstream news outlets like the , , Business Insider, , and from running headlines about how the new Squid Game cryptocurrency had soared by over just a few days.

This is just the latest example of scammers utilizing pop culture to get media attention. A similar rug-pull occurred earlier this year with Mando, a cryptocurrency that used images from Disney+'s TV show-without permission from Disney, of course.

Does this mean that investors have finally learned their lesson and won't invest in shady cryptocurrency projects anymore? That seems unlikely. Scam artists love the crypto space because it's incredibly difficult to differentiate the scammers from someone who's earnestly trying to create a legitimate cryptocurrency-perhaps because the idea of making your own currency is inherently fraudulent.

There's a reason traditional currency has largely been the domain of governments throughout recorded history. Everyone participating in a given society needs to agree that a currency is worth something, and there are few institutions outside of government that can lend credibility to something so important. Libertarians will tell you otherwise, but we'll have to disagree on this one.

Does this mean you can't make money trading crypto? Obviously there are a lot of people making real dollars in the crypto space selling "mainstream" coins like bitcoin or even smaller coins like , which has skyrocketed in price recently. But just because people are making money at it today doesn't mean it'll be around forever. Cryptocurrency will only survive if people have faith that it's real money. And that sentiment can change from day to day.

If you're going to buy cryptocurrency, the most important thing to look out for isn't necessarily the price. First, figure out whether you can sell the coin after you bought it. If you can't sell-like the people who invested in SQUID discovered they can't-it doesn't matter how high the price goes, just as it doesn't matter how large of a number someone writes on Monopoly bills.

Cryptocurrency is only worth what someone else is willing to pay for it. And if the rules say you can't even sell, you've just been scammed. Sorry, folks.

Update: This post originally estimated the amount stolen at roughly $2.1 million. The amount was closer to .

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Squid Game Cryptocurrency Scammers Make Off With $2.1 Million

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The anonymous hucksters behind a Squid Game cryptocurrency have officially pulled the rug on the project, making off with an estimated $ 3.38 million. Remember on Friday morning when Gizmodo told you it was an obvious scam? It was only obvious because investors could purchase the crypto but couldn't sell it.

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The anti-Biden meme is meaner than your grandfather's shoot or heck. It also offers a fascinating view of how language changes.

About the author: John McWhorter is a contributing writer at The Atlantic. He teaches linguistics at Columbia University, hosts the podcast Lexicon Valley, and is the author of the upcoming Nine Nasty Words: English in the Gutter Then, Now and Always.

I know how I am supposed to feel about "Let's go, Brandon": Mocking the president this way is uncivil, a sign of the collapse of once-routine public courtesy, etc., etc. How I really feel about it, though, is that it's fascinatingly serendipitous, seriously funny, and intriguingly fecund. From that one meme, others are being born.

Last month, an NBC reporter interviewing the victorious NASCAR driver Brandon Brown heard fans in the stands chanting "Fuck Joe Biden" in lustily contemptuous unison. The reporter insisted to viewers that the fans were in fact chanting "Let's go, Brandon." This improvisation made no sense. Brown had won, so why would anyone cheer him on by saying "Let's go!" after he'd just accomplished quite a bit of going? Since then, Biden's detractors have adopted "Let's go, Brandon" as a kind of in-group salute-a coded way of saying, well, the other thing. The meme has found its way onto T-shirts, masks, signs at other sporting events, the House floor, and (reportedly) airplane intercoms, and was parodied this weekend in an online video from Saturday Night Live.

Interestingly, despite its very American origins, the catchphrase is rather South African. Stay with me: In traditional societies there, such as in Zulu and Xhosa communities, a woman marrying into a family shows respect by refraining from using any words that sound like her husband's or in-laws' names and subbing in other words. Imagine if someone married William Green, the son of Robert Green, and instead of saying, "She will not eat green yogurt," had to say, "She refuses to eat grass-colored yo-mix"-because will and green are her husband's names and the second half of yogurt sounds like the end of Robert. The practice is called hlonipha, and "Let's go, Brandon" is a coy substitution of the same kind.
Conor Friedersdorf: The fight against words that sound like, but are not, slurs
However, the anti-Biden euphemism is of a meaner tone. This is not your grandfather's darn, heck, shoot, or fudge. Those are polite terms, expressed without the teeth-baring ardor of the words they stand in for, imaginable as things that characters played by Edie McClurg might say in '80s movies such as Ferris Bueller's Day Off. "Let's go, Brandon" springs from the mangier, madder place of euphemisms such as snafu-which during World War II everyone in the American military knew was an acronym for "situation normal, all fucked up"-or right-wingers' dismissal of conservatives who do not toe the party line as cuckservatives, rooted in the word cuckold.

Those who dislike seeing President Biden's name used disparagingly should welcome the latest development: People on the left are declaring "Thank you, Brandon" in praise of the administration's accomplishments thus far. We are witnessing the birth of a diagonal reference to Biden that signals a defense of him from the slurs of the right. Brandon could well take its place as one of those bemusingly opaque code names such as Yeezy for Kanye West or Boz for Charles Dickens-or as one of those pseudonyms that some members of Congress direct their staff to use for them when talking about work in social settings. (A friend of mine who worked on Capitol Hill in the late 1980s referred to her boss as "Bubo," lest eavesdroppers in public spaces pick up insider gossip about congressional business.)

We might simply embrace that sentiments will differ about this Brandon person in exactly the same way as they do about, well, Biden. Calling him Brandon when dissing him could be seen as a kind of American hlonipha. And yet, in elite circles, one senses a bifurcation: Brandon is warm and wise when preceded by Thank you but an unacceptable epithet coming from Republicans.

Few of the commentators who decried the supposed vitriol and vulgarity of "Let's go, Brandon" appear to mind Democrats' attempt to repurpose the race-car driver's name. The tacit idea would seem to be that when the left throws shade, it counts as speaking truth to power and is thus okay. Until the late '80s, some people on the left used politically correct unironically to suggest, without saying so, that right-wing views are inherently and incontestably wrong. The designation of conservatives outside Democratic enclaves as " deplorables " didn't come from the right, either.
Read: When deplorability is no longer a dealbreaker
Overall, "Let's go, Brandon" is simply fascinating. A time traveler from 2019 would have been mystified at the bewigged people going as Karen this Halloween (I saw two) as well as those in mustaches going as Ted Lasso (of which I also saw two). In the same way, think how utterly opaque "Let's go, Brandon" would be to a time traveler from just Labor Day. The meme is a wild, woolly kink in the intersection of language, politics, wit, and creativity, and is a prime example of why language change is a spectator sport.

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The anti-Biden meme is meaner than your grandfather's shoot or heck. It also offers a fascinating view of how language changes. About the author: John McWhorter is a contributing writer at The Atlantic. He teaches linguistics at Columbia University, hosts the podcast Lexicon Valley , and is the author of the upcoming Nine Nasty Words: English in the Gutter Then, Now and Always.

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The singer's 10-minute performance of "All Too Well" was a dazzling reminder of how far she has come as an artist.

Updated at 4:53 p.m. ET on November 14, 2021.
When Taylor Swift was only 22, she lay awake at night and worried about her age. That's the confession the now-31-year-old singer makes on "Nothing New," a track she wrote for her 2012 album, Red, but released only on Red (Taylor's Version), the new, rerecorded version that came out on Friday. In the song, she describes how society tells young women to have fun and then shames them for experiencing life. She wonders why she seems to lose confidence with each passing year. "Lord, what will become of me," she sings, "once I've lost my novelty?"

Sad as it may seem, this was a fair question for a prodigy to have been asking. In pop, success is fleeting: Conventional wisdom says that an act's "imperial phase"-a career-defining hot streak-rarely lasts for more than a few years. Many women in the entertainment business can attest to the public's limited appetite for ingenues who continue to evolve. When she was writing the original Red, Swift was already three hit albums into an astonishing career that began when she was just 16 years old. Even though she'd barely matured into drinking age, continued relevance wasn't assured.

Swift's latest project, rerecording her first six albums, not only demonstrates how impressively long her reign has turned out to be. It also is helping extend that reign while illuminating the secrets to her success. When in 2019 she announced her plan to recycle her own catalog to thwart a business rival, many observers suspected that the undertaking would be a minor diversion. Instead, it has been a dazzling victory lap that seems likely to inspire a whole new race. On Red (Taylor's Version), her second rerelease, she continues to push herself to new places as she doubles down on the things that make her beloved. A walloping performance on Saturday Night Live last night showed exactly how she's pulling that off.
Read: Taylor Swift knew everything when she was young
Rather than following the playbook of singing two separate songs during the comedy show, she saved up her time for one tour de force: "All Too Well (10 Minute Version)." A breakup ballad with an epic scope, the original "All Too Well" was a fan favorite on Red. For the rereleased album, Swift added on an extended cut that nearly doubles the original's runtime. Sound like a bonus for only the most curious listeners? The track is a stunner, the ultimate Swift statement, and she has audaciously made it the centerpiece of the Red 2.0 rollout.

The original "All Too Well" told a story that was clear-cut and also richly layered: Swift's narrator pines for the bygone bliss of a failed relationship. But in a late-song tonal swerve, she asserts that her ex can't move on from her either-why else would he not return her scarf? "Time won't fly; it's like I'm paralyzed by it," goes one line that helps summon the telescoping, time-travel feeling that defines so many of her best songs.

The new version intensifies that feeling. Fresh specifics emanate both warm nostalgia and cooling disdain (no fans saw an ironic "fuck the patriarchy" coming). Ready-to-borrow breakup bumper stickers abound ("You kept me like a secret, but I kept you like an oath"). Rather than clutter the song, this extra material mesmerizes as Swift's cadence slips and slides against the steadily pounding beat. Late in the song, a tempo shift jolts the listener and helps the narrator zoom out from the story she's told.

On SNL, Swift turned this improbably riveting song into improbably riveting TV. She likely didn't even need to project the track's music video-a literal dramatization of the lyrics, played by very good-looking people-behind her to make it work. Maybe she didn't need the autumn leaves falling from the rafters, but they were a nice touch. And though it helped that she graciously performed her celebrity-guest duties elsewhere during the episode (appearing in a musical sketch about "three sad virgins"), that wasn't really what made her turn on SNL memorable.

The real appeal was Swift standing at a mic. As she moved through different phases of action-still at the start, light headbanging in the middle, dreamy swaying at the end-she created a sense of progression. Meanwhile, she used her eyes as an instrument by flicking her gaze into the camera to deliver the most damning lines, as if directly to her ex. Though her band was far away from her for most of the performance, two backup singers pulled up beside her for the chilling final refrain, cementing the feeling that an exorcism had been completed and Swift was ready to reenter the world.

Perhaps Swift could have pulled off a performance like this at age 22; she says she wrote the lyrics to this extended version back when she was first recording Red. But having the guts to sell the world on a 10-minute ballad about a scarf feels like the product of assurance that only comes with age. Swift's power, you could see in this performance, lies in the way her ambition-as a songwriter and as a public figure-is served by her preternatural wisdom about time. She knows how it flows, and she knows how it feels, and it turns out she knows how to stop it for 10 minutes at once.
This article originally misstated that the new, extended version of "All Too Well" introduced a detail about childhood photos.

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The singer's 10-minute performance of "All Too Well" was a dazzling reminder of how far she has come as an artist. Updated at 4:53 p.m. ET on November 14, 2021. When Taylor Swift was only 22, she lay awake at night and worried about her age.

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Even a guilty verdict would not have answered the questions the case had come to symbolize.

About the author: David A. Graham is a staff writer at The Atlantic.

Updated at 12:54 p.m. ET on November 20, 2021.
A jury has found Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenager who shot three men during protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in the summer of 2020, not guilty of the charges against him. Jurors deliberated for more than three days before delivering the verdict this afternoon, accepting his attorneys' argument that Rittenhouse was acting in self-defense.

The trial was inevitably a media circus, spurring intense criticism of the judge and prosecutors from commentators across the political spectrum. Much of that attention offered little insight, and sidestepped the point. The predicament of the Rittenhouse trial was that it could never do what many Americans, especially on the left, wanted. It couldn't produce a plain answer as to whether Rittenhouse was a hero or a villain. It couldn't say something about the state of race relations in America. The jury could never have rendered a yea-or-nay verdict on the saturation of guns in American society.
Read: The Second Amendment's second-class citizens
These are political matters, not judicial ones. The trial itself turned on narrow and prosaic questions: Beyond a reasonable doubt, did Rittenhouse commit homicide or reckless homicide and recklessly endanger people? During the trial, the judge also dismissed two misdemeanor charges, for breaking curfew and unlawfully possessing a dangerous weapon while younger than 18, citing errors by prosecutors. Ultimately, the not-guilty verdict means simply that Rittenhouse's self-defense argument was convincing to the jurors.

From the start, the events that led to Rittenhouse fatally shooting Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber, and injuring Gaige Grosskreutz, are incomprehensible without considering the role of race in how things unfolded. The shootings occurred during protests after a white police officer shot Jacob Blake, a Black man, on August 23, 2020. The United States was already in the midst of huge protests following the May murder of George Floyd by a white Minneapolis police officer. But the case could never serve as a plain assessment of race in America, in part because the three men Rittenhouse shot were all white.

The most striking element of Rittenhouse's experience, and one of the reasons it became such a focal point for national attention, was the way he was treated by police. Rittenhouse was 17 when he self-deployed to the streets of Kenosha, not far from his home in Illinois, carrying an AR-style rifle. Just a few minutes before he shot the three men, footage showed police greeting Rittenhouse and giving him a bottle of water. After the shooting, he then went home, where his mother persuaded him to turn himself in. At the police station, detectives cut off his interview when he plainly did not understand Miranda rights.

As many commentators have pointed out, a young Black man in the same situation would almost certainly not have been afforded all-or perhaps any-of these indulgences. The Second Amendment may be written in a race-neutral way, but in practice Black Americans do not have the same rights that their white compatriots do. A Black boy might never have had the audacity to go to protests with a rifle on his back. If he had, he almost certainly wouldn't have been able to waltz past friendly police, turn himself in on his own timeline, and have his rights so carefully protected. But this injustice was outside the scope of the trial. Racially disparate enforcement is a travesty of justice, but undue clemency is not a crime. Neither the police nor our hypothetical Black counterpart were on trial.

Or set aside questions of race. Outside the bounds of a polarized court case, most Americans would likely agree that untrained 17-year-olds armed with high-powered rifles should not be appointing themselves property defenders and stationing themselves on the streets of cities in the midst of tense protests. A group of conservatives, largely of the MAGA variety, have chosen to make Rittenhouse into a hero. That's disgraceful, and not merely because much of the effort has been shameless profiteering. Rittenhouse's choices during the summer of 2020 aren't something that anyone should emulate. Even if you are more sympathetic-if, for example, you found yourself moved by Rittenhouse's apparent breakdown on the witness stand during his trial-you should object to the commodification of the worst moment in a teenager's life.
David French: Kyle Rittenhouse's acquittal does not make him a hero
Besides, no such heroes should be necessary. We already have a force that is granted the right to carry and use firearms in defense of the peace. This is, of course, the police. They are trained, regimented, and in a command structure, and they are all legally adults. (The rub in protests like the ones that swept Kenosha is that by the time they begin, the police have by definition lost legitimacy in the eyes of many of the demonstrators.)

Moreover, there is the question of whether 17-year-olds should even possess rifles. Rittenhouse initially faced a charge of unlawfully possessing a dangerous weapon, but the judge tossed that charge in a dispute over the length of the gun. The larger and more socially important matter of whether 17-year-olds-or anyone else-should be acting as a vigilante defense force is not strictly a legal issue, but a political one. No judge or jury can resolve that.

Once Rittenhouse was out on the streets of Kenosha, carrying his rifle, and got into a confrontation with the men he shot, a legal question did come up: the doctrine of self-defense. As Shaila Dewan of The New York Times wrote in an excellent piece over the weekend, self-defense laws are being stretched to their limits by the number of people carrying guns in the United States today. Going to a protest armed may be a stupid and provocative thing to do, but it is not (necessarily) an illegal one, and the legal parsing of self-defense does not take prior wisdom into account, but begins at the moment of conflict. A reasonable jury might have reached a different conclusion on these charges, but its ambit was always going to be narrow.

The Rittenhouse trial has underscored how exceptional this spring's trial of Derek Chauvin, in which he was convicted of Floyd's murder, was. To begin with, the prosecution in Minneapolis was extremely effective, expertly using witnesses and knocking down defense attorneys' arguments. More often in recent high-profile cases with strong culture-war elements, prosecutors have flailed. From the 2013 George Zimmerman trial to the 2016 charges against militants who occupied a federal facility in Oregon, prosecutors overreached, erred, clashed with judges, and failed to win cases.

Independent experts have identified prosecutorial mistakes in some of these prior cases. In the Rittenhouse case, too, observers from both the left and the right took issue with the prosecution's decisions. Over time, the repeated failures to convict white defendants erode trust and legitimacy. A functional justice system will produce both convictions and acquittals, but the disproportionate burden borne by Black Americans is a sign that our justice system is not a functional one.

The Chauvin case was also exceptional because it was straightforward. Not only were the facts relatively clear-one reason Chauvin was convicted, while so many other police officers charged in killings have not been-but the symbolism of Floyd's murder and the stakes of the case were closely matched. In the Rittenhouse trial, by contrast, the expectations and symbolic baggage were wholly out of proportion with the actual issues on trial. The desire for the justice system to sort out messy questions with what can seem like careful objectivity is understandable, especially when our (explicitly) political institutions are struggling so mightily. But no shortcuts are available here. Americans cannot rely on the justice system to do what the political system will not.
This article originally misstated the timing of when the police gave Rittenhouse water. This article also originally stated that 17-year-olds cannot legally possess rifles.

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The Rittenhouse Trial Could Never Have Been What Americans Wanted

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Even a guilty verdict would not have answered the questions the case had come to symbolize. About the author: David A. Graham is a staff writer at The Atlantic. Updated at 12:54 p.m. ET on November 20, 2021.

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After 27 hours of deliberation over the course of four days, a jury declared Kyle Rittenhouse not guilty on the five charges he faced after fatally shooting two people and wounding a third during a night of unrest in Kenosha, Wis., last year.

Rittenhouse trembled as the verdict was read, count by count, then collapsed in sobs.

"There were times we doubted the case. There were times when we were confident," said Mark Richards, Rittenhouse's lead defense attorney, speaking to reporters outside the courthouse after the verdict was read.

Rittenhouse faced five felony counts after he shot and killed Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26, and wounded Gaige Grosskreutz, then 26. The most serious charge, first-degree intentional homicide, carried a mandatory sentence of life in prison.

Though jurors did not speak to the media to explain their decision, legal experts contacted by NPR throughout the trial said an acquittal was not surprising.

"I think that anyone who saw the evidence could see that the jury might have a difficult time coming to a unanimous decision that Kyle Rittenhouse wasn't defending himself," said Julius Kim, a defense attorney and former prosecutor based in the Milwaukee area.

Rittenhouse had a strong self-defense case

Prosecutors said that Rittenhouse had put himself in danger through a series of reckless choices: He came to Kenosha during a period of violent and destructive riots; he armed himself with an AR-15-style rifle; he stayed there past curfew and after being separated from his group. They emphasized that he was the only person there to shoot someone.

But the law of self-defense in Wisconsin allows someone to use deadly force if they reasonably believe they are in imminent danger of death or great bodily harm.

"And if so, he's allowed to use essentially as much force as he thinks is reasonably necessary to stop the threat," said Kim.

Rosenbaum, the first person Rittenhouse shot, had acted belligerently throughout the night, according to video evidence and witness testimony. Later, he chased Rittenhouse through a used-car lot. Rittenhouse and another witness both testified that Rosenbaum had reached for Rittenhouse's gun. Rittenhouse shot four times within a second, killing him.

"Mr. Rosenbaum was chasing me. I pointed my gun at him, and that did not deter him. He could have ran away instead of trying to take my gun from me, but he kept chasing me. It didn't stop him," Rittenhouse testified last week.

Afterward, Rittenhouse ran away toward a police line, he said during the trial. While he was running, several people started to chase him, including Huber and Grosskreutz. Huber struck Rittenhouse with a skateboard, evidence showed, and Grosskreutz was armed with a Glock pistol.

Prosecutors said that the two men had believed Rittenhouse was an "active shooter" and were trying to disarm him. But Rittenhouse testified that he feared for his life.

The defense had a "very disciplined message" throughout the trial, said Steven Wright, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin. They consistently emphasized Rittenhouse's stated intentions that night - acting as a medic and protecting private property - and the threats to his safety, Wright said.

That message was clearest when Rittenhouse himself testified, a turn on the stand that several experts said was very effective for the defense.

"He was very well prepped. He did not come off as smug or indignant," said Charles Coleman Jr., a civil rights lawyer and former prosecutor, who said that Rittenhouse came off like a "regular teenager." "That needed to be something that the jury was reminded of."

Richards, Rittenhouse's defense attorney, told NPR's All Things Considered that he thought Rittenhouse "did a very good job for an 18-year-old kid who was testifying for his life."

Prosecutors had a very high bar to overcome Rittenhouse's self-defense claim

In Wisconsin, once a defendant has made a self-defense claim, prosecutors must then disprove it "beyond a reasonable doubt," experts explained.

The prosecution's case depended on video evidence that was often dark and blurry. One key video was shot from far away, and in others, the action was at times obstructed, making it difficult to draw definitive conclusions.

"Some of the video footage, some of the still frame shots appeared to support the self-defense claim," said Chris Zachar, a criminal defense attorney based in La Crosse, Wis., who said prosecutors had "squandered" their case.

Prosecutors attempted to convince jurors that Rittenhouse had provoked the encounter with Rosenbaum, which would have undercut his self-defense claim. But the interaction they described as Rittenhouse pointing his rifle at other people before the chase was captured only by a single drone video, filmed from over a block away, in which Rittenhouse and Rosenbaum are tiny and distant.

Another video that captured Rittenhouse's encounter with Huber and Grosskreutz was analyzed frame by frame during the trial. Defense attorneys and prosecutors urged jurors to draw opposite conclusions from it - including, crucially, whether Grosskreutz had pointed his pistol at Rittenhouse before being shot.

"The state has to prove that Kyle Rittenhouse provoked the attack by proof beyond a reasonable doubt. And so, the question is: If everyone in that courtroom is still not sure, if the judge wasn't sure, then how are 12 jurors going to be sure?" said Kim.

The state's own witnesses at times helped Rittenhouse's case

Prosecutors called more than a dozen witnesses to help make their case. But legal experts said that, at times, those witnesses seemed to bolster Rittenhouse's self-defense claim.

The state called two men who had accompanied Rittenhouse that night, also intending to help protect private property. Both witnesses, Ryan Balch and Jason Lackowski, said Rosenbaum asked to be shot and "false-stepped" armed men in an attempt to provoke a reaction. One described him as "hyperaggressive."

"They all painted a picture that Mr. Rosenbaum was definitely the aggressor," said Wright, of the University of Wisconsin. "There was testimony that he lunged for the gun."

Another one of the state's witnesses, Richie McGinniss, a video director for a conservative news site who witnessed the Rosenbaum shooting, testified that Rosenbaum was reaching for Rittenhouse's rifle.

And Grosskreutz, who was the prosecutors' star witness as the only person who survived being shot by Rittenhouse, gave testimony that underscored the challenge facing prosecutors.

Grosskreutz ran after Rittenhouse after the first shooting and was approaching him, Glock pistol in hand, as Rittenhouse shot Huber. Grosskreutz testified that he believed Huber was trying to harm Rittenhouse.

For a moment, Grosskreutz paused and raised his hands in the air, gun held limply in his right hand.

But then he saw Rittenhouse adjusting his weapon, he testified, so he brought his arms back down and moved toward Rittenhouse. In doing so, he pointed his weapon at Rittenhouse, he admitted during cross-examination.

"It wasn't until you pointed your gun at him - advanced on him with your gun, now your hands down, pointed at him - that he fired, right?" defense attorney Corey Chirafisi said.

"Correct," Grosskreutz replied.

Kim, the former prosecutor, pointed to that exchange as an especially bad moment for the prosecution.

"I think the defense did an effective job of taking one of the state's witnesses and using him to start building their case," he said. "There were times where I had to remind myself who called him as the witness."

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Why the Kyle Rittenhouse 'not guilty' verdict is not a surprise to legal experts

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After 27 hours of deliberation over the course of four days, a jury declared Kyle Rittenhouse not guilty on the five charges he faced after fatally shooting two people and wounding a third during a night of unrest in Kenosha, Wis., last year. Rittenhouse trembled as the verdict was read, count by count, then collapsed in sobs.

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the Netflix show that dramatizes the horrors of both capitalist society and failing to employ proper tug-of-war strategy, is enormously popular. And with that popularity has come the inevitable moral panic, this time centered on the fact that kids are playing non-deadly versions of its deadly playground games and trying to wear green tracksuits as Halloween costumes.

The Washington Post that "principals at three New York elementary schools outside Syracuse" are sufficiently freaked out by kids "mimicking the violent series at recess" that they're they're banning these kids games from being played by kids and "telling parents that Halloween ensembles paying homage to the show won't be allowed on school grounds."

The statement sent out to parents says that "due to concerns about the potential violent nature of the [ Squid Game-inspired] game" kids have been playing, the show and its playground amusements are "inappropriate for recess play or discussion at school."

Parents were also told "that it would be inappropriate for any student to wear to school a Halloween costume from this show." This is terrible news for kids who have saved up their allowance to buy jeweled animal heads and prised the buttons off their PlayStation controllers so they can stick them onto fencing masks.

On one hand, this statement makes sense since children really shouldn't be watching Squid Game but, on the other, banning kids from playing tug-of-war, marbles, and red light, green light because kids somehow managed to watch nine episodes of a Korean television show is pretty hilarious. We didn't know kids were into subtitles-reading truly is fun-damental. Still, kids probably shouldn't be adding violent elements to these games. Also, making sure that no child gets to enjoy the simple comforts and enormous sartorial benefits of walking around in a tracksuit and slip-ons is just plain cruel, Halloween or not.

Send Great Job, Internet tips to gji@theonion.com

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Schools ban Squid Game's playground games from playgrounds

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the Netflix show that dramatizes the horrors of both capitalist society and failing to employ proper tug-of-war strategy, is enormously popular. And with that popularity has come the inevitable moral panic, this time centered on the fact that kids are playing non-deadly versions of its deadly playground games and trying to wear green tracksuits as Halloween costumes.

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“Horror has always been a genre where the difficult can be addressed.”

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"My Body, My Choice" Doesn't Meet the Demand of this Moment

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As millions of Americans rally around their right to refuse the COVID-19 vaccine and avoid masks, many have used a phrase familiar to feminist movements: "my body, my choice." Citing a right to "bodily integrity," Republican state legislators are proposing " medical freedom bills" that would allow individuals to control what happens to their bodies without the federal government encroaching on their "personal choices."

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Selena Gomez may be one of the most followed people on Instagram, but she personally has been off social media for a few years. Now she's talking about the moment she "snapped" and decided to stop using social media altogether.

In an interview with Selena shared that her turning point came three years ago, in part because of the constant need to be "on" all the time, the barrage of information, and the focus on her personal life and negative comments.

"To be honest, I was just, like, 'This is too much information.' This is too much of my personal life spread out everywhere, and it just felt uncontrollable. I felt like my thoughts and everything I was consuming revolved around a million different other people in the world saying good things and bad things," she explained. "And I just thought, 'I don't get anything from it. Nothing is giving me life.' And I just snapped, and I was over it."

According to Selena, she wanted to delete her profiles altogether, but her team advised against it - and it turned out OK. "I'm happy I didn't, because it is such a wonderful way to stay connected, and when I do go on, it makes me happy to know that I'm just being completely honest and being true to who I am." When Selena wants to post something, she sends it to an assistant and they post it to her profiles.

Living a mostly social-free life has been good for Selena; she says quitting the online world made her IRL life better overall. "I say that because that's a huge, significant part of why I feel like I've been as healthy as I have been," she explained. "I'm completely unaware of actually what's going on in pop culture, and that makes me really happy. And maybe that doesn't make everybody else happy, but for me, it's really saved my life."

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Want more from Teen Vogue? Check this out: Those Selena Gomez / Chris Evans Dating Rumors Are a Whole Mess

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Selena Gomez Says Quitting Social Media Saved Her Life

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Selena Gomez may be one of the most followed people on Instagram, but she personally has been off social media for a few years. Now she's talking about the moment she "snapped" and decided to stop using social media altogether.

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The first time I celebrated Pride, I was sort of sure I wasn't straight. I knew I found women attractive, but reasoned that everyone does. Was that really enough to justify calling myself queer? I didn't think so, especially since my only "experience" was kissing a few girls in college.

Still, I was excited at the idea of meeting more queer people. So, lacking any connection to Philly's LGBTQ+ community, I asked my straight roommate if she'd come with me to a "big gay boat party" on the Delaware River. I was thrilled when she said yes.

But almost as soon as we arrived, I felt like we were intruding. It felt deceitful to be there, decked out in rainbows, enjoying a queer space when I wasn't yet sure I belonged. When I later kissed another woman on the dance floor, I couldn't tell how much of my motivation came from wanting to, and how much came the feeling that I had something to prove.

Early the following year, I moved to Brooklyn. By this point I'd started to think of myself as bisexual, but still didn't outwardly claim the label as I had yet to date anyone who wasn't a man. I re-downloaded Bumble and Hinge shortly after and set my preference to solely women for the first time. I loved matching with, messaging, and dating women, and I was excited to finally explore this part of my sexuality. I figured I'd date casually for a bit and was happy to be single while I settled into a new city.

Less than three months later, that plan was thrown off track by my now-girlfriend. I knew I liked her almost immediately, but was hesitant to agree to exclusivity. On the surface, my rationale was that I just wasn't looking for commitment. But the real reason was that part of me felt like I still hadn't earned the right to call myself bisexual.

At 26, I'd spent a decade dating boys and men. Was I allowed to call myself anything other than straight after just a handful of dates with women?

I felt bisexual, but I'd spent enough time on Twitter to know that bi women who've primarily dated men in the past are often accused of being performative, or "bi for clout." I also worried that I looked too straight to claim otherwise. I wondered if I should chop off my long hair, dress a bit less feminine, or maybe pierce something-anything that would make my queerness more visible.

In retrospect, it's clear that this was rooted in internalized biphobia.

Biphobia is a pervasive issue, even within the LGBTQ+ community. Though I've now been with my girlfriend for almost a year and a half, she told me not long after we started dating that she'd previously avoided dating bi girls. The aversion isn't an uncommon one, and it's also nothing new.

In a 1995 study, 96% of lesbians said they would prefer to date another lesbian, and 74% described their preference to avoid dating bisexual women as "very strong." A later study in 2005 found that lesbians described bisexual women as "trendy," "going through a phase," and simply "not good dating material."

More recently, a 2018 study found that both lesbians and gay men believe that bisexual men and women are both more attracted to men than they are women. This reinforces the harmful stereotypes that bisexual women are straight women "going through a phase" and bisexual men are gay men who haven't yet "admitted" that they're gay.

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Not Feeling "Bi Enough" Kept Me in the Closet For Years

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The first time I celebrated Pride, I was sort of sure I wasn't straight. I knew I found women attractive, but reasoned that everyone does. Was that really enough to justify calling myself queer? I didn't think so, especially since my only "experience" was kissing a few girls in college.

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The House That Inspired ‘The Conjuring’ Has Two Fearless New Owners. They Say It’s Still Haunted.

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The House That Inspired ‘The Conjuring’ Has Two Fearless New Owners. They Say It’s Still Haunted.

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The Conjuring house is a real-life 18th-century farmhouse of horrors in Harrisville, Rhode Island where seven children have died over the years.

It may seem like any other peaceful, historic farmhouse in the quaint Rhode Island suburbs. But this is actually the notorious house of horrors from The Conjuring franchise - and it has a new set of owners who insist that this home is far from peaceful.

Cory and Jennifer Heinzen bought the farmhouse formerly known as the Old Arnold estate in June of 2019 and have already documented several instances of paranormal activity.

Luckily, the couple is well-equipped to handle such happenings as they are paranormal investigators. Cory Heinzen told the Sun Journal that they witnessed "doors opening, footsteps and knocks."

He added that he had "a hard time staying there by myself. I don't have the feeling of anything evil, (but) it's very busy. You can tell there's a lot of things going on ..."

The Conjuring house's storied past spans eight generations during which residents allegedly died by drowning, murder, and hanging.

The Reports That Made The Conjuring House Famous

The horror franchise surrounding The Conjuring house is based around the accounts of the Perron family. Carolyn and Roger Perron together with their five daughters moved into the house during the 1970s and almost immediately reported small yet inexplicable events within the home.

It wasn't long before those events escalated.

Carolyn Perron claimed to have noticed how the broom would move from place to place or disappear altogether. Then she'd notice small piles of dirt in the center of a freshly-swept kitchen floor. The children also said that they witnessed spirits - at first, most of them harmless.

Then the family said they began to experience horrendous smells. Smells that stank of rotting flesh. They said their beds shook at 5:15 each morning. Roger Perron would enter the basement and feel a "cold, stinking presence behind him."

The family typically stayed away from the dirt-floored cellar, but the heating equipment would often fail mysteriously causing Roger Perron to venture down.

Bathsheba, The Main Spirit In The Conjuring House

The main spirit shown in The Conjuring, Bathsheba, was allegedly every bit as angry in real life as she was in the movie - according to the Perrons.

"Whoever the spirit was, she perceived herself to be mistress of the house and she resented the competition my mother posed for that position," said Andrea Perron, the oldest daughter.

Objects were inexplicably launched across rooms and smashed into walls. Doors slammed. Glass shattered. One night, as Carolyn Perron was sitting in the living room, she felt a piercing pain in her leg. Looking down, she said she saw blood trickling from a small, open wound - like from a large needle.

It turns out a woman named Bathsheba Sherman had actually lived on the Perron's property in the mid-1800s. Rumor had it she practiced witchcraft and there was some evidence of her involvement in a local infant's death. Many believed that Bathsheba killed the child in a Satanic ritual with a large sewing needle to the brain, but she was never convicted of the crime.

Bathsheba is consequently buried not far from the Perron house.

Enter Ed & Lorraine Warren

The Perron's called on paranormal experts Ed and Lorraine Warren to investigate the farmhouse and to hopefully eradicate the evil spirits within.

The couple, probably the most well-known paranormal detectives in history, reported that they have investigated over 10,000 cases. Lorraine Warren, who claimed to be a clairvoyant, held a seance at the Perron's farmhouse. The goal was to make contact with the ghosts tormenting the family.

Well, goal achieved, so to speak.

In the middle of the seance, Carolyn Perron seemed to become possessed; speaking in tongues and rising chair and all into the air. Oldest daughter Andrea Perron watched in secret, and would later describe the incident. "I thought I was going to pass out," she said. "My mother began to speak a language not of this world in a voice not her own. Her chair levitated and she was thrown across the room."

Afterward, Carolyn Perron seemed to return to normal, and Roger Perron told the Warrens to leave. According to Andrea, the family actually stayed in the house until 1980 when they could finally afford a new home. When they left, they said the spirits stopped contacting them. The family was finally at peace.

To those who don't believe their story, Andrea Perron said, "People are free to believe whatever they want to believe. But I know what we experienced."

She added that The Conjuring house is "magical...It's a portal cleverly disguised as a farmhouse. It's multiple dimensions, interacting simultaneously."

The Conjuring Franchise

Warner Brothers released the movie inspired by the Warrens, the Perrons, and the house itself in the summer of 2013. Audiences flocked to theaters under the premise of seeing a film "based on true events" - and it delivered. The Conjuring received accolades from audiences and critics alike.

Director James Wan ( Saw, ) was eager to work on the film.

"When Insidious came out and was successful, the story about the Warrens came to me and I was like, 'Oh, my gosh, this is really cool.'[...] One thing I had never explored was the chance to tell a story that's based on real-life characters, real-life people. So those were the things that led me to The Conjuring." Wan explained.

While the director was excited to be a part of making the film, he did not want to visit the actual Conjuring house when the producer offered to arrange it.

"Just because I make movies in the scary world doesn't mean I want to visit scary worlds...I believe in these movies, I believe in ghosts, and the supernatural, and the spiritual world. But I don't want to go there."

The Next Chapter For The Conjuring House

As for those who do want to go there, it's not always for the reasons you'd expect, as is the case with the Heinzens.

"We immediately fell in love with it," Cory Heinzen remarked. "Eight-and-a-half acres, a river in the back and a pond, it's so serene down there, never mind the story behind the house, it's a beautiful home."

It's even harder to understand how they can disregard the home's past when they've reportedly experienced such strange incidents for themselves.

"Footsteps, knocks, we've had lights flashing in rooms ... And when I say lights flashing in rooms, it's rooms that don't have light in there to begin with." Heinzen told the New York Post.

"We've had a few moments in here that have made us jump a bit," he adds. "We've had doors open on their own, footsteps, disembodied voices, electronic voice phenomena, and some awesome spirit-box sessions."

However, the Heinzen's have big plans for The Conjuring house. They want to repair and preserve it, perhaps shoot a documentary, and open the home up for paranormal tours.

All this sounds like a perfect plot for a future sequel, and they have Andrea Perron's blessing. "They're mature, responsible adults and they're not going to turn it into a circus," Perron told a local news outlet. "They're going to treat it with the respect that it deserves."
After learning about the house from The Conjuring, explore the haunted Amityville house and the demons there that may have driven a man to murder. Then, check out the woman who claims to have had sex with some 20 spirits.

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The House From 'The Conjuring' Has New Owners - And They Say The Place Is Still Haunted

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It may seem like any other peaceful, historic farmhouse in the quaint Rhode Island suburbs. But this is actually the notorious house of horrors from The Conjuring franchise - and it has a new set of owners who insist that this home is far from peaceful.

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The dystopian reality of ‘White Women’s Instagram’

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The dystopian reality of ‘White Women’s Instagram’

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The dystopian reality of “White Woman’s Instagram”

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“White Women’s Instagram” is not about the ridiculousness of white girls. It’s about the commodification of human life.

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The dystopian reality of ‘White Women’s Instagram’

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Netflix has a monster hit on its hands with Squid Game, its most popular Korean drama ever, and what is shaping up to be one of its most-watched foreign-language productions period. The show is planted at #1 on the service, even in the US, and has been trending on social media non-stop since its release.

I've noticed something interesting going on with Netflix though in the wake of Squid Game's popularity. Squid Game is actually so popular that it's causing a surge of interesting in similar shows that Netflix offers, so much so that it's boosting them to the "trending" page, despite many being older.

Two notable examples?

Right now the first show listed on my Trending on Netflix tab is Alice in Borderland, which originally was released in December of 2020. It's a Japanese series about competitors playing a deadly game in an abandoned, post-apocalyptic Tokyo, and it's one of the shows you can immediately recommend to people after watching Squid Game, due to the similarities. Clearly it's worked, and it's surging in popularity as we speak.

The second is Sweet Home, which was previously Netflix's most popular Korean drama before this. That show chronicles a landscape where humans have turned into monsters, and a young man must defend those in his building, rising to the challenge. No games here, but it's certainly a similar vibe and another great, brutal Korean series, another easy recommendation after Squid Game. That show too is about a year old, coming out at nearly the same time as Alice in Borderland.

Both of these shows are trending despite neither releasing new episodes or a new season. It's really just the Squid Game effect. Netflix has not yet renewed Sweet Home, though it has renewed Alice in Borderland. Squid Game itself has not been given a season 2 yet, but it's as sure thing. The only issue is that the man who wrote and directed every episode, Hwang Dong-hyuk, is unsure about future ideas for the show, and he says he'll need help if he returns for another season.

My guess is that Squid Game will return for a second season in the end, and I bet Sweet Home will too. Netflix sometimes takes a weirdly long among of time to greenlight stuff like that, but Sweet Home may also benefit from this additional surge in popularity as people want more of their Squid Game fix.

As ever, watch Squid Game if you haven't, it's exceptional, and I can't wait to see more of it.

... Read More

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Netflix's 'Squid Game' Is So Popular It's Boosting Similar Shows

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Netflix has a monster hit on its hands with Squid Game, its most popular Korean drama ever, and what is shaping up to be one of its most-watched foreign-language productions period. The show is planted at #1 on the service, even in the US, and has been trending on social media non-stop since its release.

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Resident Evil Raccoon City Upcoming movie !

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Resident Evil Raccoon City Upcoming movie !

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https://www.avclub.com/resident-evil-welcome-to-raccoon-city-gets-an-itchy-1847820057

-gianna M

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Willow Smith has a new Paramore-inspired emo-slash-pop punk track with a formidable drum groove powered by Travis Barker. Over churning guitars she sneers at fake friends: "smile in my face, then put your cig out on my back." As we headbanged along we found ourselves asking "why did we sleep on Willow Smith?"

Maybe because we had not taken Willow seriously, knowing her only as the nine (!) year-old singer behind the precocious hit "Whip My Hair" back in 2010. In the ensuing decade, your hosts missed out on the rise of a talented musician. Her slow-burn, consciousness-expanding, galaxy-brain funk track "Wait A Minute!" from 2015 showcased the voice of a full-fledged artist. So why weren't we listening? Because we perceived nepotism or industry sleight-of-hand as the cause of her success, or maybe because we just didn't think a celebrity kid could also have anything to say worth hearing.

Whoops. And it's not just Willow. Turns out the whole Pinkett-Smith clan have discographies worth taking a closer listen to. Who knew Jaden was sampling 1930s jazz wailer Cab Calloway? Or that Jada fronted a death metal band who got booed for being Black in a white genre? Or that the much-maligned "Getting' Jiggy Wit It" by Big Willie Style himself....actually bangs?

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Turns out Willow Smith rocks - Switched On Pop

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Willow Smith has a new Paramore-inspired emo-slash-pop punk track with a formidable drum groove powered by Travis Barker. Over churning guitars she sneers at fake friends: "smile in my face, then put your cig out on my back." As we headbanged along we found ourselves asking "why did we sleep on Willow Smith?"

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mikayla berry

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LOS ANGELES - Northern California wildfires may have killed hundreds of giant sequoias as they swept through groves of the majestic monarchs in the Sierra Nevada, an official said Wednesday.

"It's heartbreaking," said Christy Brigham, head of resource management and science for Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks.

The lightning-caused KNP Complex that erupted on Sept. 9 has burned into 15 giant sequoia groves in the park, Brigham said.

More than 2,000 firefighters were battling the blaze in sometimes treacherous terrain. On Wednesday afternoon, four people working on the fire were injured when a tree fell on them, the National Park Service reported.

The four were airlifted to hospitals and "while the injuries are serious, they are in stable condition," the report said. It didn't provide other details.

The KNP Complex was only 11% contained after burning 134 square miles (347 square kilometers) of forest. Cooler weather has helped slow the flames and the area could see some slight rain on Friday, forecasters said.

The fire's impact on giant sequoia groves was mixed. Most saw low- to medium-intensity fire behavior that the sequoias have evolved to survive, Brigham said.

However, it appeared that two groves - including one with 5,000 trees - were seared by high-intensity fire that can send up 100-foot (30-meter) flames capable of burning the canopies of the towering trees.

That leaves the monarchs at risk of going up "like a horrible Roman candle," Brigham said.

Two burned trees fell in Giant Forest, which is home to about 2,000 sequoias, including the General Sherman Tree, which is considered the world's largest by volume. However, the most notable trees survived and Brigham said the grove appeared to be mostly intact.

Firefighters have taken extraordinary measures to protect the sequoias by wrapping fire-resistant material around the bases of some giants, raking and clearing vegetation around them, installing sprinklers and dousing some with water or fire retardant gel.

However, the full extent of the damage won't be known for months, Brigham said. Firefighters are still occupied protecting trees, homes and lives or can't safely reach steep, remote groves that lack roads or even trails, she said.

To the south, the Windy Fire had burned at least 74 sequoias, Garrett Dickman told the Los Angeles Times. The wildfire botanist has recorded damage as part of a sequoia task force preparing and assessing trees in the fire zone.

In one grove, Dickman counted 29 sequoias that were "just incinerated," he told CNN.

"There were four of those that had burned so hot that they'd fallen over," he said.

The 152-acre (395-square-kilometer) fire was 75% contained.

Giant sequoias grow naturally only in the Sierra Nevada. The world's most massive trees, they can soar to more than 250 feet (76 meters) with trunks 20 feet (6 meters) in diameter and live for thousands of years.

The trees need low-intensity fire to reproduce. Flames thin out the forest of competitors such as cedars, clearing away shade, and the heat causes the seedlings to open. But fire officials say recent blazes have been much more intense because fire suppression efforts left more undergrowth that's turned bone dry from drought, driven by climate change.

Last year's Castle Fire in and around Sequoia National Park is estimated to have killed as many as 10,600 giant sequoias, or 10% to 14% of the entire population.

While some groves may have received only patchy fire damage and will recover, every burned giant sequoia is a loss, Brigham said.

"When you stand by a tree that big and that old, 1,000 to 2,000 years old, the loss of any is a heartbreak," she said. "You can't get it back, it's irreplaceable."

California fires have burned more than 3,000 square miles (7,800 square kilometers) so far in 2021, destroying more than 3,000 homes, commercial properties and other structures. Hotter and drier weather coupled with decades of fire suppression have contributed to an increase in the number of acres burned by wildfires, fire scientists say. And the problem is exacerbated by a more than 20-year Western megadrought that studies link to human-caused climate change.

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California fires may have killed hundreds of giant sequoias

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LOS ANGELES - Northern California wildfires may have killed hundreds of giant sequoias as they swept through groves of the majestic monarchs in the Sierra Nevada, an official said Wednesday. "It's heartbreaking," said Christy Brigham, head of resource management and science for Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks.

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The video game company responsible for games like World Of Warcraft, Diablo, Call Of Duty, and Candy Crush, has been smacked with a lawsuit by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing which alleges pervasive discrimination and sexual harassment toward female employees. Activision Blizzard, one of the titans of the video game world, is being sued for creating a toxic "frat boy culture" and for the unequal treatment of its employees on all levels of employment.

After a 2-year investigation, the state agency alleges that the company discriminates against female employees in every facet of employment, including compensation, assignment, promotion, and termination. The state agency also alleges that company leadership consistently fails to take steps to prevent discrimination, harassment, and retaliation. In the history of the company, women have rarely reached higher level positions, which are held exclusively by white men. Women at the company start in lower positions-with significantly lower salaries-and are far less likely to receive promotions and are terminated much faster than their male counterparts.

Women and girls make up half of all gamers in America, yet women make up just 20 percent of the Activision Blizzard workforce. The lawsuit explains that these women-once in the office-are subjected to "cube crawls," where male co-workers drink copious amounts of alcohol, moving from cubicle to cubicle and engaging "in inappropriate behavior toward female employees." According to the complaint, this behavior is increasingly common and women working for Activision Blizzard face groping, sexual comments, unwanted advances, and other forms of harassment.

During the workday, the men at the company allegedly delegate tasks to their subordinate women employees and play videos games, all while making inappropriate and sexual jokes, talking about women's bodies, and openly joking about rape. In one instance, a supervisor is said to have encouraged a male employee to "buy" a prostitute to "cure his bad mood." The women working under the World Of Warcraft team echoed many of these allegations.

One of the most heinous findings concerns a female Activision Blizzard employee who died by suicide while on a company trip with her male supervisor. She is said to have been the target of intense sexual harassment leading up to her death, including having nude photos of her genitals passed around at a company holiday party.

The investigation also found that women of color were more vulnerable to this unfair treatment from supervisors and coworkers at Activision Blizzard. According to the complaint, the discriminatory behavior includes micromanagement. One Black woman states that though her male coworkers could play videos games during the work day unsupervised, she would receive calls from her bosses the moment she stepped outside to go on a walk. After requesting time off, another Black woman employee was reportedly required by her supervisor to write up a page-long summary of how she would spend her time-something she says her peers were never asked to do.

The complaint states that when these women employees would go to HR, nothing would be done to mitigate the behavior and they felt like the complaints "fell on deaf ears." The state agency found that supervisors not only do fail to curb the behavior, but they also perpetuate the toxic culture themselves.

In response to the filed lawsuit, a statement from Activision Blizzard calls the findings "distorted" and include "false descriptions of Blizzard's past."

"We value diversity and strive to foster a workplace that offers inclusivity for everyone. There is no place in our company or industry, or any industry, for sexual misconduct or harassment of any kind," the statement says. "We take every allegation seriously and investigate all claims. In cases related to misconduct, action was taken to address the issue."

You can read all of the details of the lawsuit here.

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california department of fair employment and housing

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Activision Blizzard sued by state of California over toxic workplace

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The video game company responsible for games like World Of Warcraft, Diablo, Call Of Duty, and Candy Crush, has been smacked with a lawsuit by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing which alleges pervasive discrimination and sexual harassment toward female employees.

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Nobody really won in the battle royale between Apple and Fortnite

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Epic Games partially gets what it wanted, but Fortnite might still never return to iPhones

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Well, it may finally be time to subscribe to Peacock because Universal and Miramax have announced that Halloween Kills, starring Jamie Lee Curtis, will be released simultaneously in theaters and on the NBCUniversal streaming service on October 15. While the news of Halloween Kills streaming may be a bit of a surprise - David Gordon Green's Halloween reboot was a box-office hit, and, more recently, Disney's Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings brought in such a promising box office that even Venom: Let There Be Carnage finally committed to an early October release date - we're still in a literal ongoing pandemic. And per , the move is "all about eventizing the sequel," which, okay, Peacock gets more subscribers, and Universal gets some box-office profits too. But hey, at least now you can watch Halloween Kills as Michael Myers intended: in your house, too occupied to notice that he's right behind you ...

This Halloween, Michael Myers comes home. #HalloweenKills is in theaters & streaming only on Peacock October 15. pic.twitter.com/9SiR023VvJ
- Peacock (@peacockTV) September 9, 2021

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Halloween Kills Will Make Its Way to Theaters and Peacock

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Well, it may finally be time to subscribe to Peacock because Universal and Miramax have announced that Halloween Kills , starring Jamie Lee Curtis, will be released simultaneously in theaters and on the NBCUniversal streaming service on October 15.

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The leak also includes documents outlining a secret competitor to Steam being developed by Amazon.

Photo: Robert Reiners/Getty

You might want to update your Twitch password and activate two-factor authentication ASAP. The streaming platform confirmed this morning that it has been hacked.

"We can confirm a breach has taken place," reads a tweet from the official Twitch handle. "Our teams are working with urgency to understand the extent of this. We will update the community as soon as additional information is available. Thank you for bearing with us."

We can confirm a breach has taken place. Our teams are working with urgency to understand the extent of this. We will update the community as soon as additional information is available. Thank you for bearing with us.
- Twitch (@Twitch) October 6, 2021

Although Twitch did not go into detail regarding the extent of the breach, reports by Kotaku and Video Game Chronicle reveal the gravity of the situation at the tech company today, as it wades through the chaos of a massive leak posted in the form of a 125GB torrent link on a 4chan forum. The leak contains not only the source code for the platform itself but a detailed record of the millions of dollars in payouts earned by Twitch's most popular streamers since 2019 as well as information on "Vapor," which is allegedly the Steam rival being developed by Amazon.

The user who posted the torrent link outlined all of its contents on the forum:

Ad - content continues below

Entirety of twitch.tv, with comment history going back to its early beginnings

Mobile, desktop and video game console Twitch clients

Various proprietary SDKs and internal AWS services used by Twitch

Every other property that Twitch owns including IGDB and CurseForge

An unreleased Steam competitor from Amazon Game Studios

Twitch SOC internal red teaming tools (lol)

"Creator payout reports from 2019 until now. Find out how much your favorite streamer is really making!"

Images of a spreadsheet revealing that "81 Twitch streamers have been paid more than $1 million by Twitch since August 2019" quickly found their way to other social media platforms, according to VGC. It's a major breach of privacy that could have long-reaching consequences for the streaming service as well as its talent pool, which already finds itself on the receiving end of attacks by Twitch's most toxic users. Ultimately, it's too early to speculate how this will all play out as everyone navigates the chaos that'll continue to unfold in the next few days.

The leaker claimed that today's leak was just "part one," promising more leaks to come to "foster more disruption and competition in the online video streaming space" beyond the "disgusting toxic cesspool" of Twitch.

The breach comes at a tumultuous time for Twitch, which has not only seen boycotts for its inability to stop "hate raids" against streamers on the platform but also recently faced reckonings for its allegedly toxic workplace culture as well as its handling of sexual misconduct cases within its community of streamers.

We'll keep you updated as we learn more.

John Saavedra is the Managing Editor of Den of Geek. He lives in New York City with his two cats.

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Massive Twitch Leak Reveals Stunning Streamer Payouts - Den of Geek

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The leak also includes documents outlining a secret competitor to Steam being developed by Amazon. You might want to update your Twitch password and activate two-factor authentication ASAP. The streaming platform confirmed this morning that it has been hacked. "We can confirm a breach has taken place," reads a tweet from the official Twitch handle.

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New "Scream" movie to come out in 2022! Starring the original actors from the 1996 "Scream."

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New "Scream" movie to come out in 2022! Starring the original actors from the 1996 "Scream."

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https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2021-10-12/ghostface-still-making-neve-campbell-and-friends-scream-in-remakes-new-trailer

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After the pandemic and accusations of racism almost destroyed the gym brand, a new owner tries to bring it back.

Early on an October morning, I met Eric Roza for a workout at a CrossFit gym in Boulder, Colorado. Roza, who is fifty-three, was a few months into his tenure as the owner and chief executive of CrossFit, Inc., the preëminent gym brand of the twenty-first century. A typical class is an hour long, with a warmup and a cooldown bookending twenty to thirty minutes of punishing strength movements, Olympic lifts, gymnastics, and body-weight exercises. CrossFit is designed for general fitness or, as its disciples say, general physical preparedness for whatever life might throw at you, from helping a friend move a couch to competing in the Olympics.

I hadn't been in a CrossFit gym in years, so I was relieved to find that the session would consist mostly of endurance work: three rounds of a five-hundred-metre row, a four-hundred-metre run, and thirty burpees. My goal was simply to keep moving and, of course, not to finish last. Rowing with a mask made the workout feel considerably harder, but voluntary hardship is the point of CrossFit. Its adherents believe that it leads to human optimization, and willingness to seek out physical adversity has helped build CrossFit's fervent community. The workout of the day is tough, but everyone is pleasant and supportive. It's competitive, but not ostensibly.

Boulder being Boulder, a National Geographic Adventurer who has climbed Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen finished first. Roza was third in our six-person class, limited because of COVID-19, and I finished a few minutes after him, but not last.

The pandemic accelerated a move in the fitness industry from physical locations to streaming, at-home workouts offered by brands such as Peloton, Apple Fitness+, and Mirror. Twenty per cent of CrossFit affiliate gyms closed during the pandemic, and, without a return to larger classes, even the most successful and popular ones would go out of business and stop paying fees to Roza's company. But the pandemic wasn't fully to blame for CrossFit's troubles. Since its inception, in 2000, the company has been both heralded and derided for its intensity, in the gym and outside of it. Last June, in response to the killing of George Floyd, Greg Glassman, CrossFit's founder, made statements that many people considered racist. Soon afterward, several former employees accused Glassman of sexual harassment. (Glassman denies being a racist and all accusations of sexual impropriety.)

The pandemic exposed flaws in the business plan. Societal turmoil exposed flaws in the leadership, and the allegations proved that, when Glassman needed the benefit of the doubt, it was no longer available. The math didn't work, and he was forced to sell the company. Speaking publicly for the first time since the allegations were levied, Glassman told me, "I ran a gym I would join. Formed an affiliate program that I would participate in, wrote material that, had I seen it twenty years ago, we'd all be a whole lot fitter." He added, "CrossFit succeeded because I was willing to tell the truth that no one else would tell. The world's changed and I haven't."

Now Roza is in the process of attempting to reassemble the company's early success. It's difficult to see why Roza, who has an M.B.A. from Stanford, sees any promise in the brand. The answer comes from CrossFit's long, checkered history of providing life-changing experiences for hundreds of thousands of people.

In 1972, when Greg Glassman was a teen-ager, his father bought him a Ted Williams weight-lifting set, so that he could train for gymnastics, a sport that he had become obsessed with. Jeff Glassman, a scientist at Hughes Aircraft, stressed the importance of math and the scientific method to his son.

In an attempt to simulate the way in which a difficult ring routine left him gasping for air, Greg combined a barbell-thruster exercise with pullups, twenty-one repetitions of each, then fifteen, then nine. Pressing the pace with an eye on the clock caused him to work so hard that he threw up. Then he recruited a friend to try the workout. He threw up, too.

After becoming a serial college dropout, Glassman took a job at a Gold's Gym in Venice, California. He began putting his clients through circuits-which were made popular in the mid-seventies by Arthur Jones, the founder of Nautilus-using free weights instead of machines. This, he thought, was a way to get strong and build cardiovascular fitness simultaneously, while leaving him with measurable variables: force, distance, and time. But it went against the standard protocol: clients weren't supposed to drop weights, rush between exercises, monopolize equipment, or climb ropes hung from the ceiling frame. Glassman found that he was also at odds with gyms' business arrangements, which saw most employers take half of the client's fee. He bounced between gyms and was often fired, but his clients became remarkably fit.

After training a client, Lauren Jenai, to what she called "spectacular results," Glassman married her. In 2001, the couple opened their own gym-which they named CrossFit, for cross-discipline fitness-focussing on group classes. After Glassman posted the workouts on the Internet, so that clients could stay in shape while travelling, they began to spread through police stations, special forces, and military outposts.

Coaching is a confidence game, and it would be an understatement to say that Glassman is self-assured. He calls the name brands of the workout business "globo gyms" and argues that their business model is predicated on people signing up but not showing up. Even when people do show up, CrossFit acolytes claim, they don't get in shape, because most gyms' programming relies on exercise machines with pulleys that isolate and strain individual muscles but fail to properly train functional movement patterns.

CrossFit ushered in what the physical-cultural historian and author Daniel Kunitz calls the "New Frontier" of fitness. "The New Frontier athlete trains for life-to improve how she meets it and to deal productively with its pathos," he writes. There is a "widespread embrace of suffering for something other than religious reasons." Glassman has called CrossFit "a religion run by a biker gang."

In 2002, a former powerlifter and research biochemist named Robb Wolf found Glassman's Internet posts, and he and two friends began incorporating the designs into their training regimen. The group e-mailed Glassman for advice, visited him in California, and eventually asked to open the first affiliate gym-CrossFit North, in Seattle. Glassman told them he'd be honored and charged them a five-hundred-dollar annual fee to make it official, then promptly waived the payment, knowing the group had limited funds. He developed a training curriculum, which he began teaching across the country. Hundreds of aspiring trainers paid a thousand dollars to be certified by Glassman. "We told a profound and elegant truth about performance, metabolism, and chronic disease," Glassman said. "It was like throwing a lit cigarette into dried grass."

To open a Gold's Gym, there are investment requirements of more than two million dollars. The initial franchise fee is forty thousand dollars, and there's a long list of monthly expenses owed to the franchise. CrossFit affiliates, by contrast, pay only a yearly fee of three thousand dollars for the right to use the name.

By 2005, more than fifty affiliates in twenty-one states and five countries had opened, in warehouse spaces called "boxes" for their lack of gym flotsam. To this day, most CrossFit gyms remain simple, utilitarian spaces, without up-sell displays, mirrors, or rows of machines. By doing CrossFit, "you're saving your life," Glassman once said. "It's health. . . . The fitness is a Trojan horse."

Wolf became the brand's nutrition guru, and taught the CrossFit community the supposed benefits of eating a diet that would be recognizable to our ancestors. His 2010 book, " The Paleo Solution," became a Times best-seller.

When CrossFit began, few women were doing Olympic lifts at their local gym. The workouts effectively removed the chromosome-based gym division, where women work on cardio machines and men strain under barbells. Affiliates promoted female athletes, often pitting them against the men of other workout regimens. They mocked the expectation that women who work out should be concerned only with how small they can become. It's not hyperbolic to say that CrossFit changed societal notions of beauty.

CrossFit also spawned innumerable businesses, as members started ventures in everything from insurance to nutrition. The Ohio-based gym-equipment manufacturer Rogue Fitness was launched to meet the demands of the new CrossFit gyms; it grew to employ hundreds of people. RxBar, which makes energy bars with ingredients that hew to CrossFit's nutrition guidelines, sold to Kellogg's, in 2017, for six hundred million dollars.

CrossFit's ascent was not uninterrupted. In December, 2005, the Times published a piece titled "Getting Fit, Even if It Kills You," which documented a CrossFit athlete who gave himself rhabdomyolysis, a condition in which muscle cells die from overexertion, resulting in possible renal failure and death. Glassman told the Times, "It can kill you. I've always been completely honest about that." In fact, CrossFit had chosen as a mascot a muscular puking clown named Uncle Rhabdo.

CrossFit members embraced a narrative of redemption through physical suffering. I heard from many adherents that the daily practice of hard work spilled over into their everyday lives, making them better people, or at least capable of setting goals and achieving them. But, interspersed with aspirational photos, the company posted sexually suggestive images on Facebook, among them images of a woman with her legs spread while climbing a rope, and a woman who tripped and momentarily had her head in position for a sexual act. Photos you wouldn't post of your friends, basically.

Coaches and gym owners with flair or specialized knowledge became independently famous. But former employees told me that, whenever someone grew too big for Glassman's comfort, he banished them. (Glassman denies this.) After a former CrossFit trainer named Mark Twight began working with Hollywood celebrities, including the cast of the 2006 movie "300," Glassman accused him of stealing his intellectual property.

Wolf, who had a public altercation at a CrossFit seminar with a favored Glassman employee, a former Navy SEAL named Dave Castro, was fired. "You have to kowtow and not let your star shine too brightly," Wolf said, in 2013, of Glassman. "He's always had this tendency toward incredible kindness, but he also has this rattlesnake intensity and cruelty." Gym-goers were undeterred, however, and by 2015 there were eleven thousand affiliate gyms. Forbes estimated CrossFit's revenues at a hundred million dollars, and wrote, "CrossFit CEO Greg Glassman has turned the fitness industry on its head. He's done it, I think, by making CrossFit a mirror image of himself." That's not entirely true; as many have pointed out, Glassman is less Adonis and more high-school gym teacher, who, at sixty-four years old, walks with a limp from a childhood bout of polio and a gymnastics accident years later.

"Once you brand and sell fitness, you have to try to prove your version is better than all the others," Brad Stulberg, a performance coach who has taken heat online from the CrossFit community about his health-and-fitness writing, told me. In CrossFit's efforts to set itself apart, its most pious members defended the brand with a mocking élitism that was modelled by Glassman.

Until CrossFit, the dominant accreditation body in the fitness industry was the National Strength and Conditioning Association. In 2013, the N.S.C.A.'s Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research published a study about CrossFit's efficacy. Out of fifty-four people who undertook a CrossFit program for ten weeks, the research claimed, nine had failed to finish, owing to injury.

The study quickly spread through the fitness world. Outside published a piece titled "Is CrossFit Killing Us?" and with the subtitle "The CrossFit backlash is in full swing-led by a long list of injured participants." The article touted the study's sixteen-per-cent injury rate.

Glassman and his community were incredulous, and angry. In their nearly ten thousand gyms, they had never seen such injury rates. CrossFit sued the N.S.C.A. for false advertising and unfair competition. The discovery process revealed that management at the N.S.C.A. had essentially told the researchers to add injury data where there was none. In December, 2019, a court found in CrossFit's favor and ordered the N.S.C.A. to pay the company four million dollars in sanctions. (The N.S.C.A. declined to comment, except to say that the matter was settled without any admission of liability.)

All physical pursuits come with risks. Of my personal obsessions, running has uniquely gruesome statistics. The numbers are imprecise, but it's often estimated that between forty and eighty per cent of runners will injure themselves in a given year. In my experience, these estimates are likely low. But this does little to diminish the elegance of such a simple and effective mode of exercise.

I was injured during my second time in a CrossFit gym. In an off-season effort to regain some foundational strength I had lost after a decade of ultra-endurance racing, I paid to work with a trainer. He began by testing me. Baselines are important in the gym, and essential in CrossFit. We started by doing jump squats with a weighted seven-foot barbell across my shoulders. I didn't notice that the weight was lifting off my upper back at the top of the jump and coming down on my spine when I landed. Neither did the trainer. The following day I awoke to neck pain and a bruise. More than seven years later, I can't sleep on my stomach, lest I risk a day of not being able to turn my head.

My next foray into CrossFit was more fruitful. Down the street from me in Salt Lake City, where I was living, was a gym run by a former college-football player, Tommy Hackenbruck, who had a vibrant CrossFit community. Hackenbruck, a hulking yet gracious man, coached me to proper form and then provided me with workouts to do on my own. A combination of regular CrossFit classes and Hackenbruck's individual programming worked well for me, and I became considerably stronger, more agile, and more confident in my athletic abilities that off-season.

On June 5, 2020, a co-owner of a Seattle affiliate, Alyssa Royse, posted to her gym's Web site an e-mail exchange she had with Glassman. She had challenged management about what she considered their "moral ambiguity . . . in the face of both COVID and the massive social unrest the US is now reckoning with," and added that her gym was likely to de-affiliate because of it.

"I sincerely believe the quarantine has adversely impacted your mental health," Glassman had replied. "You've let your politics warp you into something that strikes me as wrong to the point of being evil. I am ashamed of you."

The next day, during a Zoom call with a group of affiliates, an owner in Minnesota asked why corporate headquarters had remained silent during the national unrest over racial injustice. "We're not mourning for George Floyd. I don't think me or any of my staff are," Glassman said, according to a recording of the meeting published by BuzzFeed News and reviewed by The New Yorker. "Can you tell me why I should mourn for him? Other than that it's the 'white' thing to do." He then mentioned a conspiracy theory about Floyd, who he said was murdered in an effort to silence him over his involvement in a counterfeit-money ring, citing inside information from the F.B.I. in the affiliate's Minnesota neighborhood.

Later that day, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation tweeted that racism and discrimination were "critical public health issues that demand an urgent response." Frustrated with what he saw as the I.H.M.E.'s role in shutting down the economy, which Glassman believed disproportionately harmed minority communities, he responded, "It's FLOYD-19."

Within forty-eight hours, a reported three hundred CrossFit boxes had pledged to de-affiliate. Some of the brand's famous athletes denounced Glassman's comments and said that they would withdraw from the upcoming CrossFit Games-the company's annual competition to crown the "Fittest on Earth." Reebok, which was nearing the end of a ten-year Games sponsorship deal, announced that it would not renew its contract.

On June 7th, one of CrossFit's longest-tenured employees, Nicole Carroll, called Glassman and resigned. "I didn't see a way forward that I believed in anymore, not on the mission level, but on a leadership level," she told me. "I can't align with Greg anymore."

Two days later, Glassman stepped down as C.E.O. and announced his retirement on the CrossFit Web site. He handed over the chief-executive role to Dave Castro, his longtime lieutenant. But many people in the CrossFit community think that Castro can be as abrasive as the founder himself. Commenters on social media called Glassman a racist and Castro (who is Mexican-American) complicit. They demanded that Glassman sell the company to save CrossFit. "I equate being a racist with being stupid," Glassman told me.

Soon, the Times published accusations of workplace sexual harassment by Glassman. Among the claims were an account of a former employee who was paid by Glassman in lieu of a sexual-harassment lawsuit, a lewd Wi-Fi password used in the San Diego CrossFit office (as well as in Glassman's home, according to his ex-wife), and an environment in which the founder demeaned women, openly assessing whether he'd have sex with them.

Glassman denies any accusations of sexual harrassment, and explained to me that there was a sexually charged office environment that was "fucking one-hundred-per-cent consensual in all directions." Glassman added, of the way in which he ran the business, "I'm proud of the way everyone was treated and the way I treated everyone. I have no regrets."

A couple of months after our workout, I met Roza at the new CrossFit offices, a block from a Whole Foods Market in north Boulder. A row of standing desks is flanked by a kitchen and a mini-gym outfitted with new Rogue equipment. A conference room has a view of Mt. Sanitas, a popular peak named for the sanitarium, an early health resort, that once sat on its lower slopes.

In appearance, Roza is everything you'd expect from the chief executive of a global fitness brand. He's muscular, with a shaved head; he drives a Tesla and has a subscription to The New Yorker but admits that he's too busy to read it. A self-described "math guy," Roza attended the University of Michigan, then worked in management consulting for Bain & Company and in the music industry before matriculating at Stanford.

His introduction to CrossFit is a familiar story. Caught up in the reinvigorated interest around long-distance running caused by the best-seller " Born to Run," he hired a coach to get him to his goal of a three-hour marathon. He tried ChiRunning and ran in "barefoot" shoes, but ended up injured.

"I had magic the first time," he said, of CrossFit. He was forty years old, but he found that the varied workouts made him resilient to many of life's insults. It was such a dramatic, world-changing discovery that Roza started to think about buying the company. But, when he put out feelers, he said, "It was 'There is no way in hell Glassman will ever sell the company.' "

Instead, in 2013, Roza opened a CrossFit gym in Boulder with his now ex-wife. At the time, he was the C.E.O. of DataLogix, a marketing data-analytics firm that he had founded. When the company was acquired by Oracle for more than a billion dollars, in 2014, he stayed on to run Oracle's data-cloud business and brought CrossFit with him, opening two separate gym spaces at the corporate offices in Westminster, Colorado. Roza, who left Oracle in 2019, says that CrossFit improved the data-cloud division's business relations by breaking down its hierarchy.

When Glassman stepped down, a friend of Roza's named David Woods connected the two men. Now, Glassman was open to selling. He said that he had a number and that, if Roza could meet it, he would consider selling. The founder sent his chief financial officer and his private plane to bring Roza and Woods to Santa Barbara, where, for nine hours, Glassman pontificated, describing the business environment and what he felt CrossFit should focus on. "Business is the art and science of offering uniquely attractive opportunities for other people," Glassman told me.

That night, in his hotel room, Roza felt that he was letting the opportunity slip through his fingers. He hadn't said much during the meeting, and knew that he hadn't made a significant impression on the founder. The next day he took the whiteboard marker from Glassman's hand and laid out a plan for the brand with such passion that he teared up.

Roza followed up over text with an offer. Roza said that Glassman wrote back, "Yes!! Yes!! Yes!!." In late June, Roza visited headquarters, met Castro and the team, then took calls with dozens of people who felt disenchanted with the CrossFit brand.

Glassman's number was two hundred million dollars. He would keep the company's two corporate planes, and he made it clear that there would be no negotiating. Buoyed by the community's encouragement, Roza, backed by investment from the private-equity firm Berkshire Partners, signed the paperwork.

All of the CrossFit Games athletes who had denounced Glassman returned to compete this past October. Of the three hundred gyms that threatened to de-affiliate, less than half followed through. Nicole Carroll even returned to her role as the head of the CrossFit seminar business.

Roza has launched a diversity council and created a seven-million-dollar endowment to fund public-health programs in underserved communities. He aims to have a hundred million people doing CrossFit within ten years, a plan that depends on the success of the affiliate gyms. So far this has included more guidance about class management, along with a program that CrossFit calls "The Affiliate Roundtable," in which a group of eight gym owners meet twice a week with a moderator, over Zoom, to discuss personal and professional issues in a confidential setting. "It's peer mentorship, almost like a group therapy session," Roza said. But it's not mandatory. "We have a credo of tools over rules."

Yet it's still to be seen whether Roza can bring CrossFit back from the brink. Glassman ran the business without oversight and turned down innumerable opportunities-from CrossFit-branded fish oil to CrossFit weight-lifting chalk-that Roza may now have to consider in an effort to increase revenue and placate his investors. "I didn't do this for the money," Roza told me. "The reason I'm doing this is because I'm completely in love with CrossFit and I want to bring it to other people."

New Yorker Favorites

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After the pandemic and accusations of racism almost destroyed the gym brand, a new owner tries to bring it back. Early on an October morning, I met Eric Roza for a workout at a CrossFit gym in Boulder, Colorado.

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The case over Britney Spears' conservatorship goes back to court in Los Angeles today, with a hearing scheduled to start 4:30 p.m. ET/1:30 p.m. PT.

Both Spears and her father, Jamie, have petitioned the court to end his role in the 13-year conservatorship, after a whirlwind series of recent events. But there are a couple of ways the judge could rule, including denying their petitions, replacing Jamie or terminating the arrangement altogether.

NPR's Andrew Limbong tells Morning Edition that today's proceedings will be pretty focused on Jamie's involvement in his daughter's estate - he points out that another conservator, Jodi Montgomery, handles issues of Spears' health and well-being.

Jamie has previously said that he'd consider stepping down, without providing a specific timeline. Spears' new lawyer, Mathew Rosengart, has argued since his appointment in July that Jamie should be removed immediately.

Spears has said in the past that she found her father intimidating and abusive, and three recent documentaries from The New York Times and Netflix raise more questions about the degree to which she has been controlled and even exploited under the arrangement.

For example, Limbong says, Britney vs. Spears shows how hard those in charge of Spears were working her, noting their financial incentive for putting her on tours and booking her shows. And Controlling Britney Spears alleges that her guardians planted a listening device in her room to record private conversations without consent.

He also notes that while this case is very much about Spears' future, it also has broader implications: Conservatorship reform advocates are watching it closely, and politicians across the aisle are also paying attention (among other developments, a Senate subcommittee held a hearing yesterday on "toxic conservatorships").

There's a lot at stake, and a lot to digest. Check out these recommended reads and listens while you wait:
Reporting for this story originally appeared in the Morning Edition live blog.

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Britney Spears Has A Chance To Be Free From Her Father Today. Here's What To Know

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The case over Britney Spears' conservatorship goes back to court in Los Angeles today, with a hearing scheduled to start 4:30 p.m. ET/1:30 p.m. PT. Both Spears and her father, Jamie, have petitioned the court to end his role in the 13-year conservatorship, after a whirlwind series of recent events.

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If Giannis did what I think he just did, the rest of the NBA is in trouble, with or without Kyrie- Justin

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If Giannis did what I think he just did, the rest of the NBA is in trouble, with or without Kyrie- Justin

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https://deadspin.com/if-giannis-did-what-i-think-he-just-did-the-rest-of-th-1847865334

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When we last left two-time NBA MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo he was ordering a cheat meal fit for a champion: 50 ( not 51, not 49) chicken minis from Chick-Fil-A, with a large Sprite/lemonade. This was a month after narrowly defeating the Brooklyn Nets while we all complained about his jump shot holding back the Milwaukee Bucks from living their best life.

The Bucks have played two preseason games, and there is a real chance that Antetokounmpo might finally break the NBA by adding a consistent jump shot to his game.

He only took two on Sunday against the Oklahoma City Thunder and missed both, but then came Wednesday night against the Jazz. Antetokounmpo took seven shots outside the paint and made four on his way to 21 points on 75 percent from the field. However, this wasn't simply a hot night from the field. The shot looked legitimately different.

Against the Jazz it wasn't as obvious. He only took nine shots in that game, two outside the paint, and that Charles Barkley golf swing pause at the top of his jump shot was still there even though the bend in his elbow was clearly better. On Wednesday though, his elbow looked like it got hit with a reflex hammer. The shot release was that quick and clean.

All three of his 3-point attempts had that look, and the only one he missed was blocked. Antetokounmpo also showed a solid midrange game. He made three of his five shots from that part of the floor, but what should terrify the NBA from owner to video coordinator is the turnaround jumper.

Antetokounmpo took two and made one, but the shot was butter. The ball was high, but not in that awkward pause spot. The elbow bend was great, as was the release, and then there was the footwork. On the one that Antetokounmpo made you would've sworn it was Kevin Durant if not for those boulders for shoulders. He backed down Royce O'Neal twice outside the paint, took one step into the paint and squared up, bang!

The one that Antetokounmpo missed was a catch and one dribble turnaround that probably would have gone in, but the defender behind him disrupted the shot.

His free throws still look the same, but he's a career 71.7 percent shooter from there during the regular season. If he simply maintained that throughout the postseason, no one would discuss foul shooting anymore and maybe Antetokounmpo figured that out. He did go 17-19 from there in that all-time great 50-point closeout performance against the Phoenix Suns.

Antetokounmpo's scoring average was already hovering around 30 points per game during the past three regular seasons and during the Bucks' championship 20201 postseason run, he averaged 30.2. This was all with a sporadic 3-point shot and no midrange game or footwork. If he becomes a player that can burn teams when they play loose defense on him in the halfcourt offense then Durant and James Harden are going to have to get Kyrie Irving out of Jay Pederman's cave in Burma and into the nearest clinic, or the Bucks will be making a return trip to the NBA Finals.

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If Giannis did what I think he just did, the rest of the NBA is in trouble, with or without Kyrie

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When we last left two-time NBA MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo he was ordering a cheat meal fit for a champion: 50 ( not 51, not 49) chicken minis from Chick-Fil-A, with a large Sprite/lemonade. This was a month after narrowly defeating the Brooklyn Nets while we all complained about his jump shot holding back the Milwaukee Bucks from living their best life.

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How Far Can the Browns’ Running Game Take Them? - Logan Hajduk

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How Far Can the Browns’ Running Game Take Them? - Logan Hajduk

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https://www.theringer.com/nfl/2021/10/15/22725387/browns-running-game-nick-chubb-kareem-hunt

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How Far Can the Browns’ Running Game Take Them?

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Nick Chubb and Kareem Hunt have combined to make Cleveland the NFL’s most effective team on the ground. But close losses to the Chiefs and Chargers raise questions about what it’ll take to get the team over the hump.

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Game of Thrones: George R.R. Martin Admits He Should Have Stayed Ahead with the Books - Madison Caruso

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Game of Thrones: George R.R. Martin Admits He Should Have Stayed Ahead with the Books - Madison Caruso

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While, in an ideal scenario, Martin's inspiration for The Winds of Winter would remain untainted by how the show ultimately unfolded and the audience's reaction, that can't possibly be the case. He's only human, and the book's decade-long gestation has likely been frustratingly reshaped numerous times, which would explain the seemingly interminable delay. However, said delay will give Martin the chance to redeem, in literary form, a television ending widely considered controversial.

"That made it a little strange because now the show was ahead of me and the show was going in somewhat different directions," explains Martin. "So, I'm still working on the book, but you'll see my ending when that comes out." Indeed, while the question of why the climax of Game of Thrones was so unsatisfying to a significant portion of the fandom could probably fill a book as long as A Song of Ice and Fire entry, Martin chooses his words carefully when he intriguingly hypes " my ending," which should resonate with fans who were left dejected by the way the series unfolded, even two years after the fact.

Martin's now-famous inertia on the novels could yield a satisfying course correction, albeit tangentially, based on the large scope-of two prospectively 1,000+ page novels-it will enjoy. After all, the decision-purportedly by showrunners Benioff and Weiss-to reduce the number of episodes for Game of Thrones' final season to a scant six created crippling pacing issues, resulting in the rushed nature of the finale. In the very least, those storylines needed to play out across the typical ten episodes the series regularly released through Season 6, which was the point of the aforementioned source material drought.

The quick conclusion arguably did a disservice to the major characters, most notably Emilia Clarke's Daenerys Targaryen, whose arc had gone from being bartered into bridal slavery by her own royal brother into becoming an enlightened ruler in the East, poised to take her accrued army of Dothraki and Unsullied back to Westeros for a justice-motivated invasion and restoration of her family's usurped throne. Of course, that all rapidly came to a visually-stunning, but anti-climactic end across the few final episodes, which turned her from a dragon-riding populist hero and defender of the realm into a lovelorn, megalomaniacal, genocidal pyromaniac. If Martin's ending plays out similarly in that regard, we can at least hope the turn occurs more organically.

While the process of being excited by Martin's auspicious-sounding updates on The Winds of Winter has become a perfunctory exercise in goal-post-moving for fans, there is actually something to be excited about on the book front-really, there is! His last major update, from this past February, revealed that pandemic-era extended home time allowed him to write " hundreds and hundreds of pages" of the book. Considering that he has posted sporadic completed chapters of the book on his "Not a Blog" (which is totally a blog) website over the years, he is likely close to finishing the book. However, even after that monumental event finally unfolds, the process will simply start over again when Martin commences writing the literary conclusion, A Dream of Spring. It will therefore be interesting to see if said dream ever commences. He'll first have to pry himself away from other projects such as a co-creator position on developing fantasy video game Elden Ring.

In the meantime, Game of Thrones fans will have no shortage of content on the television side of things, with the 300-year-rewind prequel series, House of the Dragon, currently in production and on track for a 2022 premiere. That series will eventually be complemented by yet-to-be-titled spinoff projects set across various eras of Westeros history, such as , The Sea Snake, Dornish princess Nymeria, and a series set in King's Landing slum Flea Bottom.

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Game of Thrones: George R.R. Martin Admits He Should Have Stayed Ahead with the Books - Den of Geek

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While, in an ideal scenario, Martin's inspiration for The Winds of Winter would remain untainted by how the show ultimately unfolded and the audience's reaction, that can't possibly be the case. He's only human, and the book's decade-long gestation has likely been frustratingly reshaped numerous times, which would explain the seemingly interminable delay.

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https://pitchfork.com/reviews/tracks/mitski-working-for-the-knife/

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https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/09/moon-moving-away-earth/620254/

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And we can't stop it.

The moon is drifting away from us.

Each year, our moon moves distinctly, inexorably farther from Earth-just a tiny bit, about an inch and a half, a nearly imperceptible change. There is no stopping this slow ebbing, no way to turn back the clock. The forces of gravity are invisible and unshakable, and no matter what we do or how we feel about them, they will keep nudging the moon along. Over many millions of years, we'll continue to grow apart.

Given this rather melodramatic description, you might wonder: Don't you have better things to think about than the moon? Well no, not really, because I'm a space reporter and it's my job to contemplate celestial bodies and write about them. And also because a representation of this phenomenon recently played out in China during festivities for the Mid-Autumn Festival, which marks the full moon closest to the fall equinox. A giant balloon designed to resemble the moon, craters and all, broke free and rolled into the street. Video footage of the unscripted moment shows two people running after the massive moon as it tumbles away. Bye!

The moon used to be closer. When it first formed, about 4.5 billion years ago, molded out of rocky debris that had been floating around Earth, the moon orbited 10 times nearer to the planet than it does today. The debris, scientists believe, had come from a collision between Earth and a mysterious Mars-sized object. Fresh out of the cosmic oven, the moon was hot and molten, glowing red in the night sky. Back then, scientists say, the moon was moving away at a rate of about eight inches per year.
Read: Everyone can chill out about the moon
Our planet and its moon were always going to grow apart like this. The gravity of moons, small as they are in comparison, can still tug at their planets, causing the larger worlds to bulge outward a little bit. On an ocean-covered planet like ours, the effect shows up in the shifting tides. The moon pulls at our oceans, but those oceans pull back, making the moon speed up in its orbit. And "if you speed up while orbiting Earth, you are escaping Earth more successfully, so you orbit from a farther distance," James O'Donoghue, a planetary scientist at JAXA, Japan's space agency, explained to me. Scientists refer to this phenomenon as "lunar retreat"-a delightful term, as I'd prefer to imagine the moon enjoying itself at a relaxing getaway, bending its rocky body into various yoga poses, rather than slowly ghosting Earth.

Scientists have measured this retreat by beaming lasers at mirrors that the Apollo astronauts left on the moon, using that data, along with other sources, to estimate past movements.The rate of lunar retreat has shifted over the years; spikes have coincided with significant events, such as a bombardment of meteors on the moon and fluctuating ice ages on Earth. The constant retreat has influenced Earth beyond the ebb and flow of its tides. The forces that draw the moon away from us are also slowing down the planet's rotation, stretching out the length of our days. In the beginning, when the moon was cozying up to us and Earth spun faster, a day lasted just four hours. At the current rate of lunar retreat, it would take a century to tack on an extra two milliseconds or so to the length of the day.

The moon is expected to continue drifting this way for the very scientific measure of forever. And, despite the premise of an upcoming action movie called Moonfall, it's not going to smack into us either. Someday, about 600 million years from now, the moon will orbit far enough away that humankind will lose one of its oldest cosmic sights: total solar eclipses. The moon won't be able to block the sun's light and cast its own shadow onto Earth. But the moon will remain bound to Earth, looking out onto a very different, much hotter version of the planet, as oceans start to evaporate. Of course, a few billion years after that, the sun will derail the moon entirely, and Earth too, when it runs out of fuel, expands, and engulfs the inner solar system in a spectacular act of star death.
Read: The mystery of moon water
This weekend, I looked through a telescope for the first time, into a much calmer solar system. (I know, right? Some space reporter I am!) A neighbor had set one up on my building's roof, and I tried to pay attention as he explained the different lenses and their amplification capacity, but I was too excited, thinking only, Let me see, let me see. I had seen the moon just as a bright two-dimensional orb in the sky, with dark spots that play tricks on our brains, making us see familiar patterns where none exist. People have interpreted these glyphs in many ways: a human face, the silhouette of a rabbit. What has the moon seen in us? "The moon had been observing the earth close-up longer than anyone," the Japanese writer Haruki Murakami wrote in his novel 1Q84. "It must have witnessed all of the phenomena occurring-and all of the acts carried out-on this earth." The moon is still watching. What must it be thinking now, after such a horrid year and a half?

My neighbor swiveled his telescope across the cloudless sky. There was Jupiter and its twisty bands, faint but unmistakable, and three tiny points of light just off to the side-its largest moons. There was Saturn, a perfect ball, its rings sticking out at each side. And then there was the moon: covered in craters and cracks and shadows, so richly textured that the skin of my fingertips prickled at the sight, as if I were rolling the moon around in my hand like a marble, feeling its jagged edges. I decided not to spoil the moment for everyone else on the roof that night by telling them that the moon was, slowly but surely, distancing itself from us. The experience of distance-from our families, from a time of relative normalcy-had already tormented many of us enough. Better to focus on the little image in the lens, on seeing the moon properly for the first time. It may be wishing Earth a very long goodbye, but it was nice to say hello.

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And we can't stop it. The moon is drifting away from us. Each year, our moon moves distinctly, inexorably farther from Earth-just a tiny bit, about an inch and a half, a nearly imperceptible change. There is no stopping this slow ebbing, no way to turn back the clock.

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For almost as long as there have been movies, there have been movies based on literature. Even in the age of superhero spectaculars, novels remain one of Hollywood's prime sources of source material. But transporting a story from page to screen isn't always so simple. On this week's brand-new episode of Film Club, critics A.A. Dowd and Katie Rife explore the tricky art of adaptation, identifying the pitfalls of this common practice, and why the expression "The book is better" still rings plenty true much of the time.

You can hear the entire conversation in the episode above, or read a lightly edited excerpt down below.

Katie Rife: As an awards consideration, there is a difference between an adapted and an original screenplay-that's been part of the Oscars since the very beginning, since 1929. And the Writers Guild Awards-you know, people who write screenplays for a living-also make the distinction. Not all awards ceremonies do; the Golden Globes, Independent Spirit Awards, for example, don't make distinctions between adapted and original. But when it comes to awards that are voted on by screenwriters, there does seem to be a distinction made between the art of writing an original screenplay and the art of adaptation.

What I'm really interested in is how they're different creatively. We see all kinds of different adaptations. Most common are novels. Also nonfiction articles, video games, and now with tweet threads have entered the conversation of things that can be adapted. But we'll concentrate on books today. I know you have some thoughts about the challenge of adapting a novel for the screen.

A.A. Dowd: I think that writing an original screenplay is a lot like taking a lump of clay and building something out of it. You take this raw material-something from your imagination-and you build it into a coherent piece of work. With adapting something, you're kind of chipping away at a block. There is already this existing work, and you are trying to make something different out of it.

Katie Rife: There are a lot of elements in novels that don't necessarily translate well to the screen. Novels are great for interiority, and getting inside a character's head. That's significantly more difficult to do in a film.

A.A. Dowd: Yeah, filmmakers have been finding easy and convenient ways to get around that aspect for years. Voiceover is the one that I feel like is cited the most often. And sometimes when [a writer is] adapting a novel, they will just take passages of first person musings and narration from the book and turn it straight into voiceover. That's obviously the easiest way, but I think it's a very poor substitute for the interiority that a novel can provide through prose.

Katie Rife: I agree. And most of the time when you're using a lot of voiceover like that, it drags down the movie, too. It's hardly ever an asset, honestly.

A.A. Dowd: Well, we could do a whole episode on that, honestly, because I do think there are lots of very creative and very interesting uses of voiceover. I think there are filmmakers who are excellent at it. Somebody like Charlie Kaufman, an adaptation expert in some ways, or at least one who has some really radical ideas about how you can transform a preexisting work into a movie. But I think [voiceover] ends up being a crutch, for a lot of filmmakers.

The issue of interiority is big. When you're reading a novel, something that prose can offer is a direct window into what a character's thinking in a really organic, natural way. Movies have to fight a little harder to make that interior space legible to us.

Listen to the podcast above, subscribe on Apple Podcasts, and give us a five-star rating to help other listeners find us. And while you're there, check out The A.V. Club's other podcasts, and.

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Why turning books into movies is such a challenge

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For almost as long as there have been movies, there have been movies based on literature. Even in the age of superhero spectaculars, novels remain one of Hollywood's prime sources of source material. But transporting a story from page to screen isn't always so simple. On this week's brand-new episode of Film Club, critics A.A.

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Village brings kooky new energy and some very old monsters to Resident Evil

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Village brings kooky new energy and some very old monsters to Resident Evil

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The Resident Evil games have always looked to Hollywood creature features for inspiration. But as the series shambles into its 25th year, Capcom has reached back further than ever before, past even the ravenous ghouls of George Romero's 1968 Night Of The Living Dead, to a kind of ground zero of things that go bump in the night. Resident Evil Village, the 10th installment in the main line of games (and umpteenth to bear the general brand), takes place for long stretches in an actual castle, situating the usual formula of treacherous scavenger hunts across sprawling manors directly within the esteemed lineage of Gothic horror. Infesting its corridors and dungeons and spires are veteran Halloween attractions, less mutant than mythological: werewolves, vampires, mummies, lurching Frankensteinian mistakes, even a creature from the black lagoon. It's a monster mash with a Universal guest list.

Village doesn't just plunder the crypts of the classic studio system (and much older folklore) in search of fresh scares. It goes looking for them in its own ancestral burial ground, too. Yes, this is a direct sequel to 2017's Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, one of the most frightening and ingeniously designed of the whole franchise. But though Village borrows its predecessor's revitalizing first-person vantage, it takes plenty of cues, too, from an older fan favorite. That much will be crystal clear to dyed-in-the-wool Evil junkies around the time that Ethan Winters, beleaguered returning protagonist of RE7, finds himself scrambling between dilapidated shacks, an army of weapon-wielding beasts draining his ammo in relentless pursuit. That's right, this time around, Capcom is also resurrecting the white-knuckle thrills of 2005's beloved , the first entry in the series to truly privilege combat over evasion.

There's lots of RE4's iconic DNA here. It's obviously there in the eponymous setting: a snowier, marginally more open variation on the besieged European backwater of the older game. The enemies sometimes attack in swarms; among their ranks is something scaly and scary and large lurking beneath the surface of a murky body of water. Perhaps most notably, Village revives the marketplace inventory supply system of RE4, merchant duties passing to a rotund dandy called The Duke whose magical ability to be anywhere and everywhere stretches the limits of Resident Evil's already negligible realism. (Those who like their nostalgia trips heavy on winking callbacks will be delighted to learn that this talking in-game store knows the catchphrase of his slimmer inspiration.) Capcom is supposedly working on an actual, official remake of RE4, but that may look even more redundant after this unofficial one.

Resident Evil Village

PLATFORM

Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, PC

Still, for all it owes to Leon Kennedy's misadventures through parasite-plagued Spain, Village is its own game with its own offbeat personality. If it can be believed, it may well be the kookiest Resident Evil yet. A storybook prologue sets the uniquely whimsical tone, far removed from the dystopian action-movie vibe of prior installments. Still shaken by the horrors he survived in Louisiana, Ethan finds himself rushing to save another damsel in distress-this time his infant daughter, who's been kidnaped by a counsel of eccentric monster barons not unlike the weirdo bosses of a Metal Gear game. ( Village makes that unlikely parallel quite explicit, in fact, with a late, heavy-artillery showdown.) These colorful super-villains deliver dastardly monologues, leave you alone to escape unguarded rooms after capturing you, and curse your name ("Damn you, Winters!") as you inevitably blow them to smithereens. The most memorable of the lot is almost certainly Lady Dimitrescu, the already internet-famous, nearly 10-foot-tall vampire countess that stalks you from room to room, like a more glamorous (and taunting) version of the Nemesis.

The game keeps throwing curveballs, narrative and conceptual. For a while, you have to wonder what any of this Underworld nuttiness has to do with a bioweapon corporation and its baffling ability to just keep covering up a new outbreak every few years. (How does Umbrella have any stockholders left?) Village finds shrewd ways to at least briefly complicate our relationship to past Resident Evil heroes, and one big twist plays like a clever commentary on the unlikely durability of video game avatars, taking a licking (sometimes ) and still ticking. To match the unpredictable trajectory of its melodramatic story, the obstacles shift, too. The game knows just when to rob you of your slowly assembled arsenal and when to supply you with a new one: There's a surprising variety to the gameplay, which pivots from the kind of back-against-the-wall, evade-or-die suspense of the original to a late, run-and-gun mission that rewards your prior restraint with a much larger stockpile of resources and a much less conservative strategy for dealing with the unholy.

If there's a dark-comic center to all this goofiness, it's once again Ethan, prototypical wife guy and harried, suburban alternative to the steely special-ops professionals who once invariably headlined Resident Evil. Perhaps the dude's everyman quality is meant to match the first-person perspective of the new games, which seek to thrust us ever more deeply into the nightmare scenario they unfurl. Ethan suffers a lot of abuse over roughly 10 hours of game, much of it directed at his hands-the only part of him we ever see, holding a gun or rising to ineffectually block his face. Is this, too, an attempt at forced identification, constantly brutalizing the body part players themselves use to control the character? Regardless, the constant assault on his vulnerable digits accumulates a slapstick absurdity. It's more charming, certainly, than the sense that this is all some parable of threatened masculinity-an impression fortified by Ethan's tussles with various emasculating harpies and a climactic struggle that amounts, ultimately, to a very intense custody battle. (The word "bitch" flies as frequently as the squirting blood in this game.)

Part of what made Resident Evil 7 special was that it felt like both an evolution and a throwback. The first-person approach offered a literal new point of view on the usual narrow escapes and hideous encounters. At the same time, the series was reconnecting with its roots, reviving the low-ammo, flight-instead-of-fight fundamentals that it had lost sight of over the previous decade. Village isn't quite as elegant a revival; its Doom vision doesn't suit frantic warfare as well as it did the old-school hiding and running of RE7, and there are times when a player might wish that the camera would drop behind the shoulder again, completing the RE4 effect. But this is still a fast-paced, addictive, and gorgeously immersive addition to Capcom's undying series. And for one tense, inspired detour-an unarmed ramble through a haunted house, adding some energy to the grab bag of genre tricks-the game finds an angle Resident Evil never has. You may think you've seen every unspeakable monster these games have to throw at you. Baby, think again.

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Village brings kooky new energy and some old monsters to Resident Evil

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The Resident Evil games have always looked to Hollywood creature features for inspiration. But as the series shambles into its 25th year, Capcom has reached back further than ever before, past even the ravenous ghouls of George Romero's 1968 Night Of The Living Dead, to a kind of ground zero of things that go bump in the night.

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Study finds that the Jackass guys have suffered $24 million in injuries

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Johnny Knoxville, who suffered a brain hemorrhage during the filming of Jackass Forever, tops the list with a purported $8.6 million bill

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Features
These horror movies are so good that they even inspired their own video games!

While watching your favorite horror movies, you may have missed one of the gaming industry's favorite pastimes: adapting great scary films into games. From The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Halloween to Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street, all of these franchises have been adapted into video games at one or another.

Many of the early ones are cash grabs while some of the more recent adaptations are excellent. Some of these games, like an endless runner based on the Child's Play franchise, are just plain weird.

Den of Geek is taking a look back at 25 games - some direct adaptations while others are heavily inspired by horror movies - that will make you scream just like you did in the movies!

Chucky: Slash & Dash

2013 | Slimstown Studios | iOS

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Child's Play is one of the more underrated slasher series of the '80s. Even today, while other mainstays of the genre, like Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger, seem to be dead and buried, Chucky movies are still being made, and they're actually pretty good.

As for Slash & Dash, it's a bit of a mixed bag. It's cool to control Chucky and Tiffany as they run around a Good Guy factory a la Temple Run, but the graphics and controls aren't quite up to par with other games in the genre. At least it's only 99 cents on the App Store.

The Ring: Terror's Realm

2000 | Asmik Ace Entertainment | Dreamcast

Technically, this is based on The Ring series of novels (and it even came out before the first American movie), so don't expect to see Samara or any creepy videotapes. In fact, this Resident Evil-clone actually involves solving the mystery of a computer virus called RING. Unfortunately, Terror's Realm wasn't terribly well-received, but it's worth a look for hardcore horror fans, or those really into The Ring books (which happen to be excellent, by the way).

Friday the 13th

1989 | Atlus | NES

The NES's Friday the 13th game has gained a rather infamous reputation as one of the worst games ever made. Is it a classic? Absolutely not. And like a lot of games of the era, it can be incredibly frustrating. But the music and sense of dread found in the game did nail a certain '80s horror vibe that few other 8-bit games of its time did, and it's worth playing for a few minutes just to experience that.
Read More: The Evolution of '80s Video Game Gore

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The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

1983 | Wizard Video | Atari 2600

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre would be looking at an AO rating if it came out today with modern graphics. While many horror games put you in the shoes of people getting away from baddies, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre allegedly let you play the role of Leatherface as he cut victims down with his legendary chainsaw. I say "allegedly" because Leatherface is just a mass of baby blue pixels. It's not really clear what he's doing or even if he's holding a chainsaw. That said, it's still better than every Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie sequel to date.

Halloween

1983 | Wizard Video | Atari 2600

It's not the best looking horror game out there, and it's certainly not the prettiest, but this early interpretation of the slasher genre still provides fun, simple enjoyment. You play as a babysitter protecting a child from Michael Myers while trying to make your way to a safe room. In some ways, Halloween's simple setup provided the foundation for many modern horror games that are more about avoiding monsters than engaging in combat.
Read More: The Unmade Halloween Movies You Never Saw
Predator: Concrete Jungle

2005 | Eurocom | PS2, Xbox

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The Predator is one of the most iconic aliens to ever hit the silver screen, yet most of his video game appearances have been accompanied by the even more popular xenomorphs. Concrete Jungle was an opportunity for the Predator to show off his hunting abilities solo in a lengthy action game. Unfortunately, the controls are a little wonky, but if you're willing to put the time in, there's a solid game to be found.

Fright Night

1988 | MicroDeal Ltd. | Amiga

In this writer's opinion, horror games are just more interesting when they let you play as the bad guy. Fright Night could have been another Castlevania clone where you set out to slay the vampire, but instead, you play the part of the villain, Jerry Dandridge, as he scours his house for victims while avoiding crucifixes.

While Fright Night was a solid game for its time, it was unfortunately rushed to release and doesn't have a real ending. Once you complete the game, it just loops back to the beginning. There's still fun to be had, though.
Read More: 10 Horror Games from the '80s That Scared Us
Alien: Resurrection

2000 | Argonaut Games | PS1

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The '90s and 2000s were not a great time for the Alien movie franchise. Alien vs. Predator was arguably the best film released during that period, and even the most hardcore fans are pretty critical of it. Oddly enough, this was a great time for Alien video games.

Resurrection pretty much defined how first-person shooters are played on a console using two analog sticks. The tough, varied campaign easily rivals other, better known first-person shooters of the time.

Bloodwings: Pumpkinhead's Revenge

1994 | Adventure Games | PC

This might be the most obscure game on the list. Pumpkinhead isn't even particularly popular in most horror circles, so it should come as no surprise that the game was released to virtually no fanfare 20 years ago.

Bloodwings: Pumpkinhead's Revenge is a pretty typical Doom clone, with the added bonus of video clips and adventure elements. You actually have to answer questions based on the videos to progress through the game. It's a tough title, and admittedly pretty nonsensical, but that actually adds to its creepiness.
Read More: A Brief History of Retro Horror Gaming

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Jaws Unleashed

2006 | Appaloosa Interactive | PC, PS2, Xbox

Of all the horror franchises out there, Jaws seems one of the least likely to be turned into a video game, yet Appaloosa managed to create a flawed but fun take on the films in 2006. Rather than the hunt the titular shark, you play as Jaws, eating other sea creatures and people as you see fit to complete missions. While not a terribly deep game, Jaws Unleashed is a lot of fun, coming across as an ultra-violent version of the Ecco the Dolphin games (which Appaloosa also developed).

Land of the Dead: Road to Fiddler's Green

2005 | Brainbox Games | PC, Xbox

George A. Romero's Dead movies are almost universally loved by horror fans and are responsible for our modern obsession with zombies. Somehow though, there's only been one game based on the films, and it's admittedly not great. In fact, you'd probably be better off picking up almost any other random zombie game and pretending it's based on Night of the Living Dead. But for those who want to experience the official game based on what was arguably Romero's last great film, it's at least nice to know there's an option.
Read More: The George Romero Resident Evil Movie You Never Saw
A Nightmare on Elm Street

1990 | Rare | NES

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It's easy to see why Rare was one of the most respected developers of the '80s and '90s, especially after the release of A Nightmare on Elm Street. What could have been a cheap cash-in like the Friday the 13th NES game is a Castlevania-style sidescroller that's surprisingly respectful of the source material.

You play as one of four teenagers trying to collect the bones of Freddy Krueger to put an end to him once for all, but you're also constantly in danger of falling asleep and forced to face Freddy in his dream realm. Only by collecting coffee can you stay awake.

While Freddy Krueger remains a horror icon, he's been relegated to cameo appearances in other games ever since the NES title, but plenty of fans would certainly welcome a modern reimaging of this title.

Sweet Home

1989 | Capcom | Famicom

Released simultaneously with the Japanese horror film of the same name, Sweet Home received critical acclaim in the East for its intricate level design (all of which takes place in one mansion), tricky puzzles, and overall creepy atmosphere. Interestingly enough, Capcom would later look to Sweet Home for inspiration when developing Resident Evil. Despite its merits, the publisher has never released an official English language version of Sweet Home. Luckily, translated ROMs have been floating around the internet for years.
Read More: How Sweet Home Inspired Resident Evil

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Evil Dead: Regeneration

2005 | Cranky Pants Games | PC, PS2, Xbox

It was a very long wait between Army of Darkness and the Ash vs. Evil Dead TV show. Thankfully, Ash made plenty of appearances in other media, including this 2005 hack-and-slash. While not terribly complex, it does provide pretty much everything you could want from an Evil Dead game, including plenty of Deadites to take out with your boomstick and a demonic sidekick named Sam you're free to regularly kill and abuse to get through the game.

Nightbreed: The Action Game

1990 | Impact Software Development Ltd. | Amiga

While Clive Barker is best known as the mind behind Hellraiser, Nightbreed is arguably the best movie based on his works. Sadly, it was completely overlooked upon release and still remains something of a cult movie to this day. This 1990 title is one of two Nightbreed games released for the Amiga, the other being an interactive movie. Nightbreed: The Action Game is a pretty standard sidescroller, but still pretty cool adaptation for fans of the film. A third Amiga Nightbreed game was actually planned but never released.
Read More: Revisiting Splatterhouse, the Cult Horror Arcade Game of 1988
The Thing

2002 | Computer Artworks | PC, PS2, Xbox

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The Thing is a surprisingly faithful take on its source material, and the game was better off for it. While a traditional third-person shooter at its core, The Thing also featured squad mechanics as well as a brilliant "trust system" that could be the difference between your teammates following you or suspecting you're actually the titular creature. These NPCs could also turn into creatures at various points during the game. It's a nice homage to the movie that makes The Thing a unique experience to this day.

A sequel that would have expanded on these ideas was in development in 2003 but was quietly canceled when Computer Artworks went into receivership. It's a real bummer.

Bram Stroker's Dracula

1993 | Psygnosis | NES, SNES, Genesis, Sega CD, Game Boy, Game Gear

Focusing more on the romantic aspects of the original novel, Francis Ford Coppola's vampire film was an admittedly odd choice for a video game, but this was the '90s. Pretty much every notable movie and TV show got a video game, regardless of how much sense it made. As for the game itself, it's a pretty respectable Castlevania-clone, with protagonist Jonathan Harker making his way through the Count's castle while facing a variety of creatures and multiple forms of Dracula himself.
Read More: The Bleeding Heart of Dracula
Dead by Daylight

2017 | Behaviour Interactive | PC, PS4, XBO

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One of the newest games on this list, Dead by Daylight is an asymmetrical multiplayer game in which teams of four playing in third-person must avoid a killer who plays the game in first-person. While most of the killers are original to the game, Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Michael Myers from Halloween, and Freddy Krueger from A Nightmare on Elm Street have been added as DLC characters so horror fans can re-live classic moments from those series. Most recently, the game added the Pig guy from the Saw franchise. Dead by Daylight is basically the ultimate experience for slasher fans.

Aliens versus Predator

1999| Rebellion Developments | PC

AVP isn't just a great horror game, it's a great game that pretty much anyone can enjoy regardless of how familiar they are with the source material. The title features three different campaigns featuring xenomorphs, predators, and a colonial marine. Each has different objectives and weapons, creating three totally different experiences.

Unlike a lot of other older games on this list, this one is thankfully still readily available on Steam. Unfortunately, while there have been several attempts at sequels, none of them have recaptured the magic of this title.
Read More: Konami's Aliens Arcade Game Is Still Amazing
Evil Dead: A Fistful of Boomstick

2003 | VIS Entertainment | PS2, Xbox

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A Fistful of Boomstick isn't a pretty game. It was released as a budget title and time hasn't been particularly kind to its visuals. But who wants a super glossy Evil Dead game anyway? While all of Ash Williams' games are a little rough around the edges, this one at least has the best story, and the hack-and-slash gameplay, unlike the graphics, still stands the test of time.

Mortal Kombat X

2015 | NetherRealm Studios | PC, PS4, XBO

While there's never been any shortage of gore in the Mortal Kombat series, the most recent title in the series makes this list, not for its fatalities but for its DLC characters. The Mortal Kombat X roster features The Predator, xenomorph, Jason Voorhees, and Leatherface, so you can finally live out your dream monster movie matchups (sadly, Freddy Krueger from 2011's Mortal Kombat didn't make the cut here). Director Ed Boon has said in the past that he'd be open to a fighting game full of horror icons, so here's hoping this was just a taste of what's to come.
Read More: Why Mortal Kombat Is Still the Definitive Video Game Movie
Dead Rising

2006 | Capcom | X360

Officially, Dead Rising isn't based on any specific horror movie, but let's face it: this is the Dawn of the Dead game we always wanted, featuring a group of survivors escaping from thousands of zombies in a shopping mall. The MKR Group, which holds the trademark for Dawn of the Dead, even filed a lawsuit against Capcom to get Dead Rising off the shelves, but a federal judge ruled that the idea of humans battling zombies in a shopping mall isn't protected by copyright law.

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Until Dawn

2015 | Supermassive Games | PS4

Until Dawn isn't based on any single horror movie. It's something much better: a lengthy, gripping interactive horror movie. The characters, while often trope-y, are all well written to the point you actually care about them and want them to survive the night. On top of that, all of the choices you make in the game affect the multiple outcomes to the story, so you have to really think things through, although sometimes the monsters don't really give you the time to make a pros and cons list. While many games have strived to be interactive movies, Until Dawn is the first to really succeed at it.
Read More: The Best Horror Game Box Art
Friday the 13th: The Game

2017 | IllFonic | PC, PS4, XBO

The second (and much better) Friday the 13th game had a rough launch that initially rendered it almost unplayable online, but the title has come a long way over the last year. From the moment you launch this game and watch its faux VHS opening, it's clear the developers have a lot of passion for the franchise and '80s horror overall. Much like the Friday the 13th movies themselves, this is a flawed game, but dammit if it isn't a ton of fun when you get a few friends together to try to escape a bloodthirsty Jason Voorhees.

Alien: Isolation

2014 | Creative Assembly | PC, PS3, PS4, X360, XBO

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While there have been quite a few Alien games over the years, none match the spirit of the franchise as well as Isolation. This isn't a game about gunning down hundreds of xenomorphs. Instead, you're constantly avoiding one very smart, invincible creature, and the slightest mistake results in death. Add in level design based on the original movie, and you have a recipe for the greatest horror movie game of all time. It's just a shame that lower-than-expected sales seem to have doomed any chances of a sequel.

Chris Freiberg is a freelance contributor. Read more of his work here.

Chris Freiberg is a freelance writer and attorney (but not the cool Phoenix Wright kind) living in the Chicago area. His work has previously appeared in...

Movies

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25 Horror Games Based on Scary Movies - Den of Geek

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Features These horror movies are so good that they even inspired their own video games! While watching your favorite horror movies, you may have missed one of the gaming industry's favorite pastimes: adapting great scary films into games.

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As women rally for abortion rights this weekend, the law faces mounting challenges in the courts.

About the author: Jill Filipovic is the author of OK Boomer, Let's Talk: How My Generation Got Left Behind.

One month ago today, abortion opponents in Texas won a major victory: The Supreme Court allowed a novel and near-total ban on abortion to go into effect, making the state the first since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973 to effectively outlaw the procedure.

The law now faces multiple challenges in the lower courts after two out-of-state men sued a Texas abortion provider; they say they plan to collect a bounty if they win, making the stakes of the law-and its Wild West absurdity-remarkably clear. The Department of Justice has sued Texas over the law, aiming to prevent its enforcement; the first hearing on that case is happening today.

As the ban goes to court and the backlash against it grows, abortion opponents are claiming to be surprised that the law is being used as written-and are perhaps realizing, belatedly, that their vigilante strategy comes with more than a few perils. Meanwhile, demonstrators will gather this weekend for the fifth annual Women's March, a mass protest that, this time around, is explicitly in defense of reproductive rights.
Read: The messy post-Roe legal future awaiting America
The Texas law is as shocking as it is inventive. It allows any private citizen, anywhere in the United States, to sue anyone in Texas who "aids or abets" an abortion performed after six weeks of pregnancy (roughly two weeks after a missed period, and before most people know they're pregnant). Aiding or abetting is defined broadly enough to include not just doctors who perform abortions, but receptionists who schedule appointments, Uber drivers who drop women off at clinics, boyfriends who accompany their partners, and moms who hold their daughters' hands through the procedure. Any person who sues and wins is entitled to have their legal fees repaid and can collect a $10,000 sum. Defendants-even if they win-are barred from recovering their own legal costs.

The law, which essentially offers a bounty for harassment and public shaming, feels uncomfortably close to some of the most dangerous anti-abortion tactics. Among the most infamous are the Old West-style Wanted posters of doctors that abortion opponents disseminated through the 1980s, '90s, and 2000s; several of the physicians whose faces were on those posters were later gunned down, including the Kansas doctor George Tiller, who was murdered at church. Some members of the radical anti-abortion movement offered reward money to any "informant" who proffered information leading to the conviction of abortion providers. They also focused on "collaborators" who they believed aided or abetted abortion, harassing everyone from clinic administrative assistants to car services that gave patients rides to landscaping companies that mowed clinics' lawns.

The Texas law mirrors this reliance on vigilantism-and is an invitation for any yahoo with a grievance to file a lawsuit and reap the benefits. Predictably, two yahoos-disbarred attorneys, one from Arkansas and the other from Illinois-have. They both filed suit against Alan Braid, a San Antonio abortion provider who wrote an article in The Washington Post saying he had provided an abortion after the six-week mark, essentially in an act of civil disobedience. "If there's a $10,000 pot of gold at the end of this rainbow, I want it," one of the men, Oscar Stilley, told the Y'all-itics podcast. "Why shouldn't I get it?"

The law, in other words, is being used exactly as intended. But the same abortion opponents who wrote it are crying foul.

"Neither of these lawsuits are valid attempts to save innocent human lives," John Seago, the legislative director of Texas Right to Life and the man behind the Texas law, told The New York Times. "Both cases are self-serving legal stunts, abusing the cause of action created in the Texas Heartbeat Act for their own purposes."

Neither of the men who filed a lawsuit opposes abortion rights. One has explicitly said that he filed his suit to demonstrate how preposterous the law is. Abortion opponents had apparently hoped that the law would be enough of an intimidating force to shut down clinics. And it was working -until Braid wrote his op-ed. Now both lawsuits against him pose a direct challenge to the law's constitutionality. And they highlight for the public just how dangerous it is to functionally outlaw abortion and empower random citizens as enforcers.

This is a terrifying moment for supporters of reproductive rights, without question. But it may also be more precarious than it appears for abortion opponents. Yes, they have ridden a wave of abortion restrictions all the way to the Supreme Court, but they've also awakened America's pro-abortion-rights majority-and that majority now has its eyes turned on the nine Supreme Court justices.
Chavi Eve Karkowsky: Another extremist law that Americans have to live with
For the first time in nearly half a century, a majority of the justices on the Court seem to side with abortion opponents. In December, they are set to hear arguments on a Mississippi law that bans most abortions after 15 weeks, in direct violation of Roe's requirement that abortion remain generally legal before the point of fetal viability. The Mississippi case could be a vehicle for overturning Roe outright or gutting it beyond recognition. If the Court uses this opportunity to dismantle abortion rights, that would initially kick the question of the procedure's legality to the states. But there's little doubt that the anti-abortion movement would quickly organize attempts to outlaw abortion nationwide. It is closer than ever to achieving its ultimate goal: ending the era of safe, legal abortion in the United States.

Yet there has long been a tension within the anti-abortion movement between the radicals who use vigilante tactics and those who want to put a kinder, gentler face on opposition to reproductive rights. The latter group has often quietly enabled the former, but has also typically favored an incremental approach of dismantling abortion rights piece by piece using the respectable mechanisms of the legislatures and the courts. Their slower, more deliberate strategy has culminated in the Mississippi case.

The Texas law throws a wild card into the mix. Because it relies on the civil system instead of criminalizing abortion, and because it survived requests for the Supreme Court to prevent it from going into effect, it offers a model to other states that want to functionally outlaw abortion right now. But it has also inflamed abortion-rights advocates at a crucial juncture, and made them all the more determined to send the message that banning abortion will not be met with quiet acquiescence.

It's impossible to know what goes on in the minds of Supreme Court justices. But many abortion-rights proponents and Court watchers believe that pro-choice protests and a fear of undermining the public's trust by appearing to be political have influenced the Court's decisions in past abortion cases. And that's a real concern for the Court: Last week, its public approval hit an all-time low, according to a new Gallup survey. Nearly twice as many Americans say the Court is too conservative as say it's too liberal. And liberals aren't the only ones who are losing confidence: In the past year, both approval of the Court and confidence in it have dropped by more than 10 points among Republicans and independents.

The long-growing perception of partisanship and attendant lack of confidence encouraged progressives to float the idea of expanding the Court-something that had been politically taboo for decades. In April, President Joe Biden, hardly a radical, issued an executive order to form a commission tasked with considering the Court's size and the justices' tenure. An expanded Court would lessen the conservative justices' power; new tenure rules could put some of them out of a job.

The waning public trust in the Court, and its potential consequences for the Court's makeup, seems to be on several of the justices' minds. Four of them have spoken publicly about it in recent weeks, defending the Court against accusations of politicization. ("This court is not comprised of a bunch of partisan hacks," said Justice Amy Coney Barrett, whose warp-speed confirmation just before Donald Trump lost his reelection campaign outraged liberals.)

Few issues stand to undermine public confidence in the Court more than curtailing abortion rights. Despite the narrative that abortion is a singularly polarizing matter in the United States, the reality is that a significant majority of Americans oppose overturning Roe, and fewer than a third say they want the Court to reverse the 1973 decision. Even Republicans are nearly evenly split on Roe; 46 percent want it overturned, and 43 percent say the Court should leave it in place. There is a similarly surprising diversity in views among self-identified pro-lifers: Nearly 40 percent of them want Roe upheld. And Americans oppose Texas-style abortion bans beginning at six weeks by a 20-point margin.

Meanwhile, thousands of Texans are being forced to seek services far from home, inundating neighboring states' clinics. Others may be taking matters into their own hands. And still others find themselves forced to continue a pregnancy they don't want, and will have a child they did not intend to have. All Texas women have received a clear message: Your constitutional rights don't apply here.

The Supreme Court justices are no doubt paying attention. When asked to keep the Texas law from going into place, they punted, allowing the state to effectively ban abortion but leaving the door open for challenges in the lower courts. Letting the law go forward was a troubling sign to be sure, but also something of a trial balloon.

Now the Court is being asked to issue a much more expansive ruling on abortion rights. The result very well may be as dire as abortion-rights supporters fear. But it's also possible that enough of the Court's conservative justices-or even just one-will see the growing backlash and correctly assess that the Mississippi case is about much more than abortion-that the public's trust, the Court's legacy, and the stability of the institution itself may all hinge on its result.

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members of the radical anti-abortion movement

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supreme court justices.chavi eve karkowsky

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Is the Texas Abortion Law Backfiring on the People Who Pushed It Through?

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As women rally for abortion rights this weekend, the law faces mounting challenges in the courts. About the author: Jill Filipovic is the author of OK Boomer, Let's Talk: How My Generation Got Left Behind.

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"Why Does Coffee Sometimes Make Me Tired?" 

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"Why Does Coffee Sometimes Make Me Tired?" 

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-Callie Carfagno

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Lethargy, blood sugar and dehydration explain in part the paradoxical effects of coffee on our energy levels.

Credit... Getty Images

Caffeine, the main active ingredient in coffee, has a well-justified reputation for being an energy booster. But caffeine is also a drug, which means that it can affect each of us differently, depending on our consumption habits and our genes.

"The paradox of caffeine is that in the short term, it helps with attention and alertness. It helps with some cognitive tasks, and it helps with energy levels," said Mark Stein, a professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington, who has studied the impact of caffeine on people with A.D.H.D. "But the cumulative effect - or the long-term impact - has the opposite effect."

Part of the paradoxical effects of caffeine results from its effects on what researchers refer to as "sleep pressure," which fuels how sleepy we become as the day wears on. From the moment we wake up, our bodies have a biological clock that drives us to go back to sleep later in the day.

Seth Blackshaw, a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University who studies sleep, said that researchers are still learning about how sleep pressure builds up in the body, but that over the course of the day, our cells and tissues use and burn energy in the form of a molecule called adenosine triphosphate, or ATP. As that ATP gets expended - as we think, exercise, run errands or sit on conference calls - our cells generate a chemical called adenosine as a byproduct. That adenosine goes on to bind to receptors in the brain, making us more sleepy.

Chemically, caffeine looks similar enough to adenosine on the molecular level that it occupies those binding sites, preventing adenosine from binding to those brain receptors. As a result, caffeine works to temporarily suppress sleep pressure, making us feel more awake. Meanwhile, adenosine continues to build up in the body.

"Once caffeine wears off, you get a very high level of sleep pressure, and you have to pay it back," Dr. Blackshaw said. In fact, the only way to relieve and reset an elevated level of sleep pressure is with sleep.

Compounding the issue is that the more we drink caffeine, the more we build up our body's tolerance to it. Our liver adapts by making proteins that break down caffeine faster, and the adenosine receptors in our brain multiply, so that they can continue to be sensitive to adenosine levels to regulate our sleep cycle.

Ultimately, continued or increased caffeine consumption negatively impacts sleep, which will also make us feel more tired, said Dr. Stein.

"If you're sleeping less and you're stressed, and you rely on caffeine to improve it, it's just a perfect storm for a short-term solution that's going to make things much worse in the long term," he said. "You're going to be adding more shots to your espresso, but the negative impact on your sleep is going to continue, and that is cumulative."

Caffeine may also cause spikes in blood sugar or lead to dehydration - both of which can make us feel more tired, said Christina Pierpaoli Parker, a clinical researcher studying sleep at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

If you're feeling an afternoon slump even after a cup of coffee, the solution may be to consume less of it, scientists say. Don't drink it every day, or go cold turkey for a few days so that your body can clear any caffeine in your system, and then gradually add it back to your routine. Ideally, drinking coffee "should be fun and useful, and really give you a boost when you need it," Dr. Blackshaw said.

In the meantime, if you feel like caffeine is no longer giving you an energy spurt, experts recommend taking a nap, getting some exercise or sitting outside and getting some exposure to natural light, which can add a boost of energy - naturally.

"Monitor your sleep and make sure you're sleeping well," Dr. Stein said. "Adequate sleep and physical activity are the first-line interventions for attention problems and sleepiness. Caffeine is a useful adjunct, but you don't want to become dependent on it."
Wudan Yan is an independent journalist in Seattle, covering science and society.

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Why Does Coffee Sometimes Make Me Tired?

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Lethargy, blood sugar and dehydration explain in part the paradoxical effects of coffee on our energy levels. Caffeine, the main active ingredient in coffee, has a well-justified reputation for being an energy booster. But caffeine is also a drug, which means that it can affect each of us differently, depending on our consumption habits and our genes.

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Over the past 48 hours, as I gasped, stared, shrieked, hid, laughed, and sort of incoherently burbled my way through Squid Game, the astonishing new South Korean survival thriller whose nine episodes have just been released on Netflix, two famous declarations kept popping up in my mind. The first is by François Truffaut, the great director of the French New Wave. Truffaut said that there's no such thing as an anti-war film. The second declaration is usually attributed to Fredric Jameson, the great Marxist political theorist. Jameson said that it's easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism. Squid Game is a show in which masked soldiers in hot pink tracksuits force adults to play schoolyard games in a giant children's playland. I binged it in three total sittings, and thought about both film theory and economic determinism a lot.

There is no way to describe the premise of Squid Game without sounding like you ate Tide Pods for breakfast. I'll plunge in. The series, which was written and directed by Hwang Dong-hyuk, tells the story of a deadbeat dad and likely gambling addict named Seong Gi-hun. Gi-hun owes a small fortune to the bank, and another small fortune to a bookie whose gang comes around to rough him up; he lives, humiliatingly, off his elderly mother's meager income, and resorts to stealing her ATM card for money he can bet on horse races. He has a 10-year-old daughter, and he loves her, but he doesn't get to see her much, and when he does see her, he can't seem to help letting her down. Gi-hun is played by the legendary star Lee Jung-jae, who imbues these early scenes with a madcap pathos as Gi-hun lurches between reckless optimism and reluctant despair.

One night, in a subway station, Gi-hun meets a strange man in a suit (Gong Yoo, another international superstar) who makes him a proposition. Let's play ddakji, he says, referring to a game in which one player throws a folded paper at another paper belonging to the second player, trying to flip it over. If Gi-hun wins, the stranger promises to give him 100,000 won; if he loses, Gi-hun has to give the stranger the same amount or let the stranger slap him in the face. After a long and degrading scene, the stranger gives the newly red-cheeked Gi-hun a card with a phone number on it. He says: Call that number if you want to play a game for higher stakes.

I don't want to spoil any more than I have to, but before long, Gi-hun finds himself drugged in the back of a minivan driven by a man in a gas mask. He wakes up on a mysterious island, where he discovers that he's now Player 456, part of a group of men and women, all heavily in debt in the outside world, who have come here for the chance to earn money by playing games. They're guarded by men in masks adorned with PlayStation-esque circles, squares, and triangles (the shapes also reflect characters in the show's title). Soon they're herded up a flight of blazing-pink princess-castle stairs, emerging in a bizarre field surrounded by painted sky. Here, a giant doll leads them in a Korean version of Red Light, Green Light. Players who win advance to the next round. Players who lose are shot to death.

Squid Game belongs to the growing category of recent books, movies, and TV shows that use genre elements to construct an allegorical critique of social evils. Get Out used horror to anatomize American racism; Squid Game uses the survival thriller to anatomize economic exploitation. (People will say it's a critique of capitalism, and it is, but the story of money, power, and corruption it depicts would have been familiar in the Middle Ages.) The last surviving player on the island will leave with a fortune worth almost $40 million; this minuscule hope of riches, combined with the pressure of life-or-death competition, persuades players either to betray their true natures or to reveal their true natures, depending on how Lord of the Flies you like to go with your personal view of humanity.

Seemingly normal people become conniving and vicious. Seemingly proud people submit to extreme degradation. Gi-hun's relationships with other players-including a childhood friend, an old man, a Pakistani immigrant, and a young North Korean pickpocket-unfold as a series of moral test cases. Can people ever trust each other when they're forced to contend for limited resources? Can they work together? At what point do "good" people decide to betray each other? Do our affections have any meaning? If you strip away society's comforting fictions, are people anything to one another but bodies?

The island, in other words, is an allegorical microcosm, a kind of snow-globe miniature of human relations in which the white flakes are paper money. None of this is remotely subtle. Squid Game makes Parasite, the Oscar-winning Bong Joon-ho film with which it shares its class-skewering themes, look like a Nicholson Baker novel. Hwang wants to tell us that we're habituated to an absurd struggle from the moment we're born-that we can't imagine the end of capitalism because it shapes the way we think-so he shows us traumatized adults playing marbles at gunpoint. He makes sure to throw in a lot of dialogue about how the outside world is even worse. But subtlety isn't Hwang's aim. If the lurid color schemes and surreal set designs don't make that clear, the flamboyant plot twists leave no doubt. This is a series that wants to dazzle, shock, and overwhelm you, not nudge you into gentle agreement. And it's terrifically compelling, both in the sense of moment-to-moment entertainment and in the sense-and yes, I'm using this term about a show whose masked antagonist likes to unwind after a long day of slaughter by drinking a glass of scotch and watching a mechanical-puppet theater play a lounge-jazz rendition of "Fly Me to the Moon"-of moral seriousness.

Improbably, given that the series's body count reaches well into the hundreds, it's the moral element of Squid Game that I found most striking. I'm generally a skeptic when it comes to the popular-genre-as-political-allegory trend. I often find shows and movies like this thrilling as stories but not quite persuasive as critiques. The reason, I think, is that genre elements often can't help but read as fun and cool, which makes them tricky to deploy as symbols of real historical or social monstrosity. If there's no such thing as an anti-war film, it's because cinema as a medium is so biased toward kinetic action that movies can set out to condemn war and end up unintentionally celebrating it; war is almost the most charismatic thing on the screen. In the same way, it's hard to feel fundamentally anti-horror when you are watching a horror movie whose horror is viscerally exciting. A story like The Hunger Games might register intellectually as a metaphor for society's mistreatment of young people, but you don't actually want the Hunger Games to stop happening, because watching Katniss shoot her bow is more fun than watching the closing credits. ( The Hunger Games is one of the obvious reference points for Squid Game, though the online nerd community will take my membership badge if I don't point out that the Japanese film Battle Royale influenced both.) The death cult in Mad Max: Fury Road might be an overt allegory for the patriarchy, but it's also the force that gives the movie most of its energy. And so on.

Squid Game,by contrast, never makes its action look glamorous. It's at least as exciting as those other stories, but there's nothing cool about watching middle-aged people play marbles; the intensity comes from feeling that you've gone beyond the end point of a chain of absurdist logic and you really might not want to see what comes next. Even the masked guards are depicted less as faceless supersoldiers than as downtrodden schlubs with a job to do. They have their own troubles, which we follow through a subplot involving a cop who's infiltrated the island in search of his missing brother. Some of them are working their own side rackets. The show pays a surprising amount of attention to how its allegorical island physically operates. The most visceral fight scenes fade into shots of post-fight logistics: debris being cleared, minions sluicing blood into grates. A tense scene in which a player goes on a spy mission culminates in a glimpse of cooks making sugar cakes in an enormous kitchen. Everything here, even the murder, is labor. For all but a few gold-masked VIPs, drudgery is inescapable; you're a drone, even if you work in the cartoon villains' megafortress.

When you consider how common it is for even the best TV shows to become advertisements for the crimes they're critiquing-how this has been the defining moral compromise of a whole generation of prestige television- Squid Game 's refusal to cross that line looks even more admirable. There's no "I am the one who knocks" here, no Don Draper looking suave while acting sexist; there's no Tony Soprano strangling a guy in a scene where you kind of know it's wrong but also like it. I say this even as someone who does not habitually look to art for moral affirmation: I was moved by this gleefully violent show's basic goodness. The end of the series is deliberately, and brilliantly, ambiguous. It can be read as a pessimistic denial of the hope of redemption or as a tentatively optimistic assertion that some form of meaningful virtue can exist. (It can also be read as an incitement to post fan theories on the internet, and it's succeeding wildly on that front.) Personally, I'm inclined to side with hope; either way, the suspension of certainty is its own comment on human possibility. I don't know if Hwang's series is truly anti-war (or anti-wealth) in the Truffaut sense. I don't know that Hwang has imagined the end of capitalism. I think he's trying to imagine as much as he can, and that's something.

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There Is More to 'Squid Game' Than Gleeful Violence and Viciousness

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Netflix's South Korean survival thriller never makes its action look glamorous. Its intensity comes from feeling that you've gone beyond the end point of a chain of absurdist logic and you really might not want to see what comes next.

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-abby plante

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Which is the worse sin: Creating a cockfighting simulator? Or creating a cockfighting simulator so boring that no one would even want to play it?

This question is, somehow, at the heart of Far Cry 6, the latest big-budget installment in a video-game franchise that often feels like it's aspiring to be the playable version of that "Change My Mind" meme, the one with the smug guy sitting behind the table and demanding to be debated by people who couldn't actually be bothered. It's a question central to a game that desperately wants to be denounced for its provocative, edgy stances, and the seduction of its mass violence-but which never actually makes its violence all that seductive, or its stances solid enough to merit any kind of strong response.

We're not talking theoretical cockfighting here, by the way: Said bloodsport is one of Far Cry 6's premiere minigames, complete with collectible roosters scattered around the islands of its made-up Caribbean nation of Yara, and cheesy, Street Fighter-esque graphics splashed on the screen before each bloody match. Cockfighting in Far Cry 6 promises a subversive good time-and then follows it with rote gameplay, buggy implementation, and a thin spackle of enthusiasm to try to convince you that you're having fun. It's a remarkably solid metaphor for the game itself.

Far Cry 6

Platform

Windows, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S

One caveat, before we dig in deeper here: This review was written after 15 hours with a pre-release build of Far Cry 6, i.e., enough time to complete one of the title's three major gameplay areas. It's entirely possible that patches will shore up some of the technical weirdness we experienced, and that some of the writing, hidden in one of the two other major gameplay sections, might transcend what we experienced during our time with the game. But for Far Cry 6 to fully make up for these early woes would require it to become much more than the sum of some extremely shoddy parts, to an extent that would border on the miraculous. This is a game that manages to make Giancarlo Esposito profoundly boring to spend time with, and that's one hell of a perverse accomplishment.

Before we get ahead of ourselves, though: Far Cry 6 puts you in the guerrilla boots of Dani Rojas, a young man or woman (your pick) who finds themselves throwing in with the rebels of Libertad, an underground group hoping to unseat brutal strongman Antón Castillo (Esposito) from his throne atop the nation of Yara. Yara is, per series tradition, fake, but plagiaristically so: Imagine a blend of Caribbean history (Haiti and Cuba, especially) that has been frothed up in such a way as to listlessly prevent people from being able to yell at Ubisoft for directly appropriating any one people's histories. (A French corporation using elements of the history of Haiti-a country founded by revolutionaries who overthrew the French who had enslaved them-for one of its violence-heavy playground romps is just one portion of the game's many colonial indulgences.)

Yara is thus, like Hope County, Kyrat, and the Rook Islands before it, a theme park version of multiple real places, dotted with guerrilla paths and violent distractions to fill out its lush, mountainous roads. (Amazingly, you do not fill your map here by climbing ubiquitous towers and "syncing up" with random gadgets; instead, people hand you assignments on iPads, flagging you down with a persistence normally associated with people trying to get you to sign a petition outside a grocery store.) It's abstractly beautiful and totally unreal, feeling exactly like the assemblage of reference photos that obviously lurk front and center in its DNA.

The characters who populate the islands are no less Mickey Mouse, meanwhile, and it's here that the poisonously consistent " Far Cry tone" does the most damage to this latest installment. Dating back to the disastrously successful Far Cry 3, this franchise has always aspired to be about deeply meaningful real-world violence... and goofy, wacky, meme-y bullshit. (This is, after all, the franchise that paired its harrowing entry on cult brainwashing with a beef-loving bear named Cheeseburger.) The narrative of 6 veers wildly as ever between its somber meditations on the perils of dictatorship, radicalization, and the way violence begets violence-while constantly screaming at you about how much fun you're having building a rocket launcher out of a bunch of strapped-together packs of fireworks, or introducing you to another cheerful weirdo whose quirks are meant to paper over the game's endlessly thin characterizations.

And if Far Cry 6 actually was fun-if it genuinely provided the giddy, explosively improvisational thrillride that it constantly screams at you that you're already having-then there might be some real artistic merit to this juxtaposition of death and joy. As it is, though, it's a game hard to recommend even as a fresh dose of nihilistic escapism. The shooting is at least more solid than the frequently loose and unsatisfying driving, and the basic unit of Far Cry gameplay-sneaking into a base, either stealthily, or with flamethrowers and friendly alligators akimbo-retains a simple satisfaction. But the new emphasis on crafting and customizing weapons feels fairly hollow, while the majority of firefights are reduced to little more strategy than "point cursor toward where the facemeat is, then pull trigger until problem stops."

Add in the brutal quickness with which damage accrues, the occasional glitches, and the stinginess of checkpoints, and you have a game that's often more chore than chaos. Your Libertad comrades constantly crow about the fun of revolution-at least, when they're not somberly reflecting on the brutal cruelty of revolution. To the game's credit, the player experience is less split: Being bored one way isn't noticeably different from being bored another way.

Even within the meandering and aimless boundaries of the open world big-budget shooter genre-games designed to lovingly transform vast hours of human existence into points map percentage completion, without involving the brain in all but the most cursory of ways- Far Cry 6 stands as a disappointment. As a political statement, it's cruel, bleak, and simplistic. As a game, it's rote, repetitive, and only surface-level innovative. As a hybrid of the two, it's an outright disaster.

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Far Cry 6 has all the intelligence and charm of a video game cockfight

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Which is the worse sin: Creating a cockfighting simulator? Or creating a cockfighting simulator so boring that no one would even want to play it?

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“God Of War’s rebirth makes time for introspection among unmatched spectacle”

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“God Of War’s rebirth makes time for introspection among unmatched spectacle”

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The new God Of War bears all the hallmarks of a series reboot. There's no number at the end of its title. It's retained the series' main character but changed the time, place, and tone completely, trading out the edgy '90s-comic-book look and feel of the Grecian originals for the gray, grim retreats of Norse myth. It's even overhauled the series' mechanical foundations, slowing its furious button-mashing combat to a tense, deliberate pace and taking a camera that was formerly perched high above the game's blood-soaked arenas and sticking it right behind the player's shoulder. Other than the bulky silhouette and ashen skin of its star-a permanently scowling demigod named Kratos-there's not much here that resembles the old God Of War, at least not at first glance.

But the new God Of War is not another gritty reboot of an aging cartoonish hit. It's a transformative, introspective sequel, taking up the Herculean task of shunting a series that, for as thrilling as its spectacle was, epitomized an embarrassing adolescent phase of games into something resembling actual maturity. Part of that is baked into the premise, which takes Kratos and has him settle down as a family man in Scandinavia after centuries of wandering, soul searching, and letting go of the rage and selfishness that drove him to murder countless people, decimate the Greek pantheon, and basically destroy all of Greece.

God Of War

Developer

Santa Monica Studio

Publisher

Sony Interactive Entertainment

Reviewed on

PlayStation 4 Pro

The more meaningful sign of growth, though, is how willing the game is to confront the troubling legacy of its predecessors. It constantly wrestles with the history of its leading man and the concept of legacy itself, never minimizing or excusing the unimaginable suffering Kratos has wrought. Instead, his past looms over the game like the sinister mark of shame it is, threatening to come erupting out in moments of exertion or disappointment and being used to subtly generate all sorts of dread. Worse, we know the same destructive rage could be bubbling in his young son, Atreus, which makes it utterly heartbreaking every time he loses control and starts hacking away at a dead monster or snaps at a friend who did nothing wrong. We've seen the horrible fate he could be drifting toward, and Kratos, having lived it, wants nothing more than to make sure it doesn't befall his son as well.

As far as we know, that's been a pretty achievable goal up to this point. Atreus has lived a secluded childhood in the woods with Kratos and his mother, Fae, not knowing his father's past or the godhood that lies inside both of them. After Fae dies from some unexplained illness, father and son set out to honor her final wish of having her ashes spread from atop the tallest mountain in all the realms of this Norse fantasy land. The journey ends up being a long and winding one, complicated by violent interference from a few members of Odin's family who claim to know the truth about Kratos. Part mythological odyssey, part The Road, the heart of the adventure ends up being the slow, quiet strengthening of the relationship between father and son across the game's 30-some-odd hours, told through decreasingly hesitant pats on the back and words of encouragement.

The growth is woven directly into the game's rebuilt combat, too. The controller has a button dedicated to calling on Atreus to fire his bow at enemies. The utility is pretty limited at first and it takes a while to even get in the mindset where you're remembering to use him, but over time and with a few upgrades to his abilities, he becomes an indispensable partner, opening enemies up to attacks, taking it upon himself to work his way into some of Kratos' maneuvers, and eventually having the capability of doing some serious screen-clearing damage. That progression leads to some of the most charming signs of Kratos' softening exterior, as the kid, who's always trying to help and impress his dad, will sometimes use the end of a battle as a chance to ask how he did, and Kratos' responses slowly change from "sloppy" to "adequate" to, eventually, a heart-melting "you did well" over the dozens of hours you'll spend watching them bond.

And thanks to game's ambitious camerawork, it really does feel like the player is tagging along for this entire journey. From the moment you choose to start a new game and the main menu transitions into a scene of Kratos chopping down a tree with his magical axe, his new weapon of choice, the camera never cuts away. There are no loading screens as you move from location to location, no cuts to new angles during cutscenes, no fades to black as Kratos passes out and time skips ahead. (There are some fades to white, to be fair, but even then the camera moves into the light in a way that mimics how filmmakers hide cuts to give the appearance of scene being shot in a single take.) You're with these characters every step of the way, and the result is a much more intimate view and organic unfolding of this father-son-relationship than you'd get from a game with a more disruptive divide between moments of play and moments of idle storytelling. It also leads to a few spectacular fight scenes, the god-powered fisticuffs captured with all the grace and flair of ostentatious long-takes that get film buffs salivating.

One drawback of the new camera style is that the game lacks the immediate, awe-inducing sense of scale its predecessors so famously drew upon. In those games, it was common for your vantage point to be pulled way out, revealing Kratos to be a speck charging across the limbs of a living titan. With the camera now often pressed up against Kratos' back, such moments are rare, but they are effective when they do hit, showing off fantastical landscapes or letting you look out over the long path you've carved through the world and cementing how far you've come in the most direct, powerful way possible.

The other potential hiccup is this new angle's effect on combat, as it greatly reduces your field of view and makes keeping track of everything around you that much harder. The designers account for this by putting indicators around Kratos that point to off-screen enemies and turn red when an attack is headed his way, giving you a chance to dodge and reorient. This over-the-shoulder sword combat is a pretty unexplored style-strangely enough, the closest comparison is last year's Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, also a game based on Norse myth-and it takes a few hours of getting used to, but once you're settled in, those indicators and the accompanying warnings Atreus shouts are enough to keep you informed in all but the most hectic scrambles. Even in those cases, getting hit from off-screen doesn't usually feel unfair or irritating. Maintaining control and being aware of your surroundings is half the battle. That new demand, plus your vantage point on the action and Kratos' quickly diminished health, make fights infinitely more tense than they ever were in the older games.

This is especially true of the sidequests and secret fights hidden throughout the game's world. God Of War hasn't gone full-on Assassin's Creed-style open world, but once outside the starting area, you get dumped into a lake that houses a bunch of cliff-side beaches and sprawls into several bigger locations. You can explore all of it at your leisure, picking up menial tasks from lonely ghosts (the kid wants to help them; Kratos thinks he's crazy) and looking for resources you can use to improve your equipment or make new gear. The larger areas, all mines and caves and fortresses carved into mountains, are elaborate mazes of splintering paths, always looping back on themselves to provide shortcuts and branching out into tons of treasure-filled dead ends. There's also a bit of Metroid-style gating, teasing players with all manner of locks (both literal and figurative) they won't be able to open until they've grabbed some magical ability later in the game. Behind those doors and hidden inside portals around the world are the game's most difficult fights, intense tests of pattern-recognition, patience, and timing that show off just how flexible the fighting system and RPG-lite upgrades for Kratos and his equipment can be. None of it is necessary for finishing the game, but it's easily the most satisfying action God Of War has to offer.

That's not to say the combat along the main path is a drag. There's pleasure in the tension of it, in the heft of every hit and the devastation you can rain down when Kratos and Atreus are in sync, but it was never the main thing pulling me along. That credit goes to the writing, which ably juggles the tasks of bringing us into this father-son relationship, giving both Kratos and Atreus their own personal arcs, and establishing the setting without collapsing into eye-glazing fantasy rambling. It's worth noting, however, that the script lets down the game's only major female character, who spends much of her screen time sounding like an overwrought, lore-spewing robot. It's undoubtedly an improvement over the past games' awful depiction of women (frankly, you couldn't get much worse), but it's disappointing to see the lone living woman in this story rendered as such a flat character for much of it.

The only reason she stands out as a relative letdown is that every other character is written so well. The dynamic between father and son never ceases to be entertaining, for example, with Atreus playing the role of an eloquent, chipper ray of sunshine who's constantly at adds with his stoic, grunting counterpart. And the game's capability for subtle, impactful character moments, especially ones that give us windows into the grief underneath Kratos' steely demeanor, never ceases to shock. The writing even adds some much needed thematic heft to the handful of sidequests you'll find, which are otherwise an uninspired assembly of "go here, get that" scavenger hunts. The stories they tell and the conversations between Kratos and Atreus they prompt all carry morals relating to the life Kratos used to live and is fighting to make sure his son doesn't replicate.

That fight means staring down everything he was and always will be-an unequivocal, unforgivable monster-and doing the one thing he's always been afraid to do: take some damn responsibility for his own actions. The game is unafraid of going on that journey with him, taking a long hard look at the character it brought into this world and asking us not to forgive or even pity him, but to hope that, after finally accepting who he is and what he's done, he can turn all that regret into something that actually benefits the world.

It's a surprisingly emotional story for one of gaming's most emotionally stunted characters, told with care and wrapped in a production that's a flat-out technical marvel, visually spectacular from start to finish and captured with an omnipresent, unflinching camera that makes it look unlike anything we've seen before. Its combination of all these disparate parts-the series' bombastic setpieces; Naughty Dog-like character-focused writing; slower, more high-stakes combat; bits and pieces of the open-world and RPG elements that have infected every major-publisher release-comes together into a shaky but genuine step forward for big-budget games. This is the first time in years it's felt like one of these unfathomably expensive blockbusters is putting its weight into moving that field in a different direction rather than riffing on one of its standardized formulas, and it's every bit as jolting as that Hydra fight was 13 years ago.

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God Of War's rebirth makes time for introspection among unmatched spectacle

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The new God Of War bears all the hallmarks of a series reboot. There's no number at the end of its title. It's retained the series' main character but changed the time, place, and tone completely, trading out the edgy '90s-comic-book look and feel of the Grecian originals for the gray, grim retreats of Norse myth....

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"You Might Never Guess that Jacob Collier was a Genius"

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"You Might Never Guess that Jacob Collier was a Genius"

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These Artists Got Us Through a Pandemic Year

These Artists Got Us Through a Pandemic Year

These Artists Got Us Through a Pandemic Year

These Artists Got Us Through a Pandemic Year

These Artists Got Us Through a Pandemic Year

These Artists Got Us Through a Pandemic Year

These Artists Got Us Through a Pandemic Year

These Artists Got Us Through a Pandemic Year

These Artists Got Us Through a Pandemic Year

These Artists Got Us Through a Pandemic Year

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You Might Never Guess That Jacob Collier Was a Genius

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These Artists Got Us Through a Pandemic Year These Artists Got Us Through a Pandemic Year These Artists Got Us Through a Pandemic Year These Artists Got Us Through a Pandemic Year These Artists Got Us Through a Pandemic Year These Artists Got Us Through a Pandemic Year These Artists Got Us Through a Pandemic Year These Artists Got Us Through a Pandemic Year These Artists Got Us Through a Pandemic Year These Artists Got Us Through a Pandemic Year

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:D

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Nobel Peace Prize Awarded to Journalists Who Bolster Free Press

The journalists, Maria Ressa of the Philippines and Dmitri A. Muratov of Russia, were recognized for their work in promoting freedom of expression in their home countries.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2021 to Maria Ressa and Dmitri Muratov for their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace. Ms. Ressa and Mr. Muratov are receiving the Peace Prize for their courageous fight for freedom of expression in the Philippines and in Russia.

The journalists, Maria Ressa of the Philippines and Dmitri A. Muratov of Russia, were recognized for their work in promoting freedom of expression in their home countries. Credit Credit... Heiko Junge /NTB, via Reuters

Seeking to bolster press freedoms as journalists find themselves under increasing pressure from authoritarian governments and other hostile forces, the Norwegian Nobel Committee on Friday awarded the Peace Prize to two journalists thousands of miles apart for their tireless efforts to hold the powerful to account.

The journalists, Maria Ressa of the Philippines and Dmitri A. Muratov of Russia, were recognized for "their courageous fight for freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace."

"They are representatives of all journalists who stand up for this ideal in a world in which democracy and freedom of the press face increasingly adverse conditions," the committee said in a statement released after the announcement in Oslo.

Ms. Ressa - a Fulbright scholar, who was also named a Time magazine Person of the Year in 2018 for her crusading work against disinformation - has been a constant thorn in the side of Rodrigo Duterte, her country's authoritarian president.

The digital media company for investigative journalism that she co-founded, Rappler, has exposed government corruption and researched the financial holdings and potential conflicts of interest of top political figures. It has also done groundbreaking work on the Duterte government's violent antidrug campaign.

"The number of deaths is so high that the campaign resembles a war waged against the country's own population," the committee said. "Ms. Ressa and Rappler have also documented how social media is being used to spread fake news, harass opponents and manipulate public discourse."

She is only the 18th woman to win the Peace Prize in its 120-year history. Speaking on Rappler's Facebook Live platform, Ms. Ressa said she hoped the award was a "recognition of how difficult it is to be a journalist today."

"This is for you, Rappler," she said, her voice breaking slightly, adding that she hopes for "energy for all of us to continue the battle for facts."

Mr. Muratov has defended freedom of speech in Russia for decades, working under increasingly difficult conditions. Within hours of news of the award breaking, the Kremlin stepped up its crackdown on critics, labeling nine journalists and activists as "foreign agents," a designation that imposes onerous requirements on them.

One of the founders of the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta in 1993, Mr. Muratov has been its editor in chief since 1995. Despite a continual barrage of harassment, threats, violence and even murders, the newspaper has continued to publish.

Since its start, six of the newspaper's journalists have been killed, the committee noted, citing Anna Politkovskaya, who wrote revealing articles about the war in Chechnya.

"Despite the killings and threats, editor in chief Muratov has refused to abandon the newspaper's independent policy," the committee wrote. "He has consistently defended the right of journalists to write anything they want about whatever they want, as long as they comply with the professional and ethical standards of journalism."

Many Russian dissidents had hoped and expected that the prize would go to Aleksei A. Navalny, the imprisoned opposition leader, expressing anger and disappointment that he was passed over.

Mr. Muratov said the award had come as a surprise - and that he, too, would have given it to Mr. Navalny. He told Russian media that he had ignored several unidentified calls from Norway on Friday while arguing with one of his journalists; in the end, his press secretary gave him a heads-up seconds before the announcement.

He said he would donate some of the prize money to the fight against spinal muscular atrophy, a cause for which he has long advocated, and to support journalism against pressure from the Russian authorities.

"The fight against the media is not a fight against the media," Mr. Muratov said in a radio interview on Friday. "It is a fight against the people."

This year was only the third time in the 120-year history of the prize that journalists were honored for contributions to the cause of peace. Ernesto Moneta, a newspaper editor and leader of the Italian peace movement, won in 1907. And Carl von Ossietzky, a German journalist, pacifist and opponent of Nazism, who was imprisoned by Hitler, won the 1935 prize.

The Nobel committee chose from 329 candidates, one of the largest pools ever considered. Those who had been regarded as favorites included climate-change activists, political dissidents and scientists whose work helped fight the Covid-19 pandemic.

In its citation, the committee said that "free, independent and fact-based journalism serves to protect against abuse of power, lies and war propaganda."

"Without freedom of expression and freedom of the press," the committee said, "it will be difficult to successfully promote fraternity between nations, disarmament and a better world order to succeed in our time."

The award of the Nobel Peace Prize to two journalists, Maria Ressa and Dmitri Muratov, comes at a time of growing assaults on a free press across the world, as authoritarian governments extend their reach and the slogan of "fake news" is used to suppress dissenting views.

Ms. Ressa has faced multiple criminal charges for the way her news website Rappler has challenged the rule of President Rodrigo Duterte. Both she and Mr. Muratov, whose Novaya Gazeta newspaper has been a persistent critic of President Vladimir V. Putin, work under governments that use a range of methods - from repressive legislation to arrests - to muzzle criticism.

Last year, both UNESCO and the Council of Europe issued reports deploring the erosion of media freedom. They noted growing police attacks on journalists covering protests, including intimidation and beatings, and the passing of so-called "fake news" laws in countries from Hungary to Russia that can be used to repress legitimate journalism.

The Committee to Protect Journalists reported that 274 journalists were imprisoned in 2020, the highest rate since 1992, and said "the number of journalists singled out for murder in reprisal for their work more than doubled in 2020."

The V-Dem Institute, a Swedish organization that tracks democratic indicators, said in their 2020 report that "media censorship and the repression of civil society" were "typically the first move in a gradual process" of moving toward autocracy and so "an early warning signal for what might yet be to come."

It reported that, with respect to freedom of the media, "32 countries are declining substantially, compared to only 19 just three years ago."

The Committee to Protect Journalists has noted that authoritarian governments have repeatedly taken cover in "anti-press rhetoric from the United States."

Leaders including Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and Hungarian President Viktor Orban have used former President Trump's term "fake news" as a means to discredit the press in general.

The existence online of a growing volume of disinformation becomes a means to undermine real and challenging journalism that adheres to the facts, especially for the growing number of governments across the world that brook no criticism.

Both the Council of Europe and the Committee to Protect Journalists have expressed concern over the way the Covid-19 pandemic has led to violations of journalists' freedom.

"Despite the importance of media freedom, which arguably has never been more important than during this public health crisis, the pandemic has led to an array of restrictions on reporting," Scott Griffen, the deputy director of the International Press Institute, said earlier this year.

Among the repressive methods being used to intimidate the press are censorship, restrictive legislation, harassment and, as in Egypt's case, sweeping curtailment of any social media accounts or websites that are deemed to constitute national security threats.

Of her client, Ms. Ressa, Amal Clooney, a British international human rights lawyer, said: "I am grateful to the Nobel Committee for shining a light on her incredible courage." She added that she hopes "this prize helps to protect the press around the world."

Announcing the award, the Nobel committee chair, Berit Reiss-Andersen, said: "Free, independent and fact-based journalism serves to protect against abuse of power, lies and war propaganda. Without freedom of expression and freedom of the press, it will be difficult to successfully promote fraternity between nations."

Among the prominent journalists murdered in recent years have been Daphne Caruana Galizia of Malta, the Slovakian investigative journalist Jan Kuciak, and, this year, Peter R. de Vries in the Netherlands. All had made it their business to reveal uncomfortable truths.

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The Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the Peace Prize to Dmitri A. Muratov, a Russian newspaper editor, along with a fellow journalist, Maria Ressa of the Philippines, for their work seeking to bolster press freedoms. Credit Credit... Alexander Zemlianichenko/Associated Press

Dmitri A. Muratov, the Russian newspaper editor awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, said he would have given the honor to a different Russian: Aleksei A. Navalny.

Mr. Navalny, the opposition leader jailed since January, had been seen as a favorite to win the prize. On Friday, some of Mr. Navalny's supporters reacted with anger to the Nobel announcement, because they see Mr. Muratov as a figure open to compromise with the Kremlin rather than one who remains in principled opposition.

"If I had been on the Nobel Peace Prize committee, I would have voted for the person whom the bookmakers bet on," Mr. Muratov said in a news conference outside his newspaper's Moscow headquarters. "I mean Aleksei Navalny."

In an earlier interview, Mr. Muratov cited Mr. Navalny's courage.

The prize announcement came amid a monthslong crackdown on the independent news media in Russia. Popular outlets and even individual journalists have been declared "foreign agents" by the government for allegedly receiving foreign financing, forcing them to include onerous disclaimers alongside all of their content, even on social media.

Mr. Muratov noted that accepting the Nobel 's prize money could, in theory, open him up to being declared a foreign agent. It was an indication of how far the Kremlin's campaign against the independent news media has gone that Mr. Muratov's comment about that scenario did not come across as only a joke.

"I posed this question today to the government officials who decided to congratulate me," Mr. Muratov said. "Will we be declared foreign agents by receiving the Nobel Prize? I didn't get a straight answer."

Mr. Muratov said his prize was posthumous recognition of the six journalists who had worked with Novaya Gazeta and been killed; he repeated all of their names twice. The most famous was Anna Politkovskaya, the investigative journalist who was murdered in Moscow on Oct. 7, 2006. As Mr. Muratov spoke, he urged the scrum of reporters listening to him to avoid trampling on the garden that the staff had planted in front of the newspaper's offices in her memory.

"They don't give these Nobel Prizes posthumously," he said. "I think they came up with this as a way for Anya to get the prize, through other, old hands."

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'Personal Sacrifices Are Worth It,' Says Nobel Peace Prize Winner

Maria Ressa, one of two journalists awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for promoting free press, said the Philippine government had filed 10 arrest warrants against her and banned her from traveling.

I am honored that the Norwegian Nobel Committee has honored me and my fellow journalist Dmitri Muratov in this way. This relentless campaign of harassment and intimidation against me and my fellow journalists in the Philippines is a stark example of a global trend that journalists and freedom of the press facing increasingly adverse conditions. The Philippine government filed 10 arrest warrants against me in the last year. The government has prevented my travel four times, including to - when my mother was diagnosed with cancer, and I needed to go to see my aging parents. I think this just shows you that the battle is worth it. The personal sacrifices are worth it.

Maria Ressa, one of two journalists awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for promoting free press, said the Philippine government had filed 10 arrest warrants against her and banned her from traveling. Credit Credit... Aaron Favila/Associated Press

Maria Ressa said on Friday that her being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize was a recognition of the dangers of being a journalist at a time when freedom of the press was under attack.

In an interview, Ms. Ressa said she was "breathless, stunned and happy" upon hearing about the honor, which she shared with the Russian journalist Dmitri A. Muratov. She said she was in the middle of a live panel discussion about a PBS documentary - which follows her struggles in the war that President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines has waged on the press - when she got a call telling her that she had been awarded the prize.

"I didn't know how to react, and then, wow," Ms. Ressa said. "The folks clapped and asked me for a reaction and it hit me. It's so much that we've gone through in the last five and a half years and then this. These highs and lows are making me crazy."

Ms. Ressa, a co-founder of the independent news site Rappler, said that the Philippine government had filed 10 arrest warrants against her, with seven legal cases still pending. The authorities have essentially banned her from traveling, denying her last four requests to go overseas.

"I've just seen my rights being taken away, very slowly," she said. "What we're seeing is a thousand cuts to the body politic, to our democracy."

In selecting two journalists for the Peace Prize, Ms. Ressa said, the Nobel committee showed the world "how dangerous it is to be a journalist today. We've never been under attack as much as we have been in the last few years."

Speaking earlier on her publication's Facebook Live platform, Ms. Ressa referred to Mr. Duterte's sweeping crackdown on drugs, which Rappler has covered extensively, uncovering evidence of extrajudicial killings.

She called it a "moment that is so existential, the defense of our democracy in the Philippines, the defense of our rights, human rights, the fact that we have no idea exactly how many people have been killed in a brutal drug war."

In the drug campaign, she said, police had issued conflicting figures on the numbers of people killed - while rights groups have said that the true toll could reach 30,000.

"This hall of mirrors has to change at a time when accountability does count," she said. "And I think that what we have to do as journalists is to just hold the line."

"When you don't have facts, you don't have truth," she added. "You don't have trust. Trust is what holds us together to be able to solve the complex problems our world is facing today."

In the hours after Dmitri A. Muratov was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, reactions in Russia were mixed, exposing a deep divide among the Kremlin's embattled critics on how to best push back against an increasingly authoritarian state.

Many Russians rejoiced at Mr. Muratov's award and celebrated the success of his newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, which has produced hard-hitting investigations despite tremendous pressure since it was founded almost three decades ago. But supporters of the jailed opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny, who was poisoned last year in an operation that Western officials say was organized by the Russian security services, and subsequently jailed, were particularly disappointed.

Mr. Muratov, himself, said on Friday that if it were up to him, Mr. Navalny would have won the prize, citing his courage.

While Mr. Muratov has grown increasingly disillusioned with politics in Russia, he has sought to find ways to engage with the Kremlin. That was evident in the reaction of Mr. Putin's chief spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, who congratulated him on the award.

That more compromising approach has angered hard-line dissidents like Mr. Navalny, who from his prison cell rejects the prospect of cooperation with the authorities. Last month Mr. Navalny sought to organize a "smart voting" platform in Russia's September parliamentary elections, but it was declared "extremist" by the Kremlin, which forced Google and Apple to remove apps related to the app store.

"Instead of pretentious and hypocritical speeches about 'freedom,' they could protect a person who survived the assassination attempt and is now taken hostage by the murderers," wrote Ruslan Shaveddinov, a project manager for Mr. Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation.

Mr. Muratov is a member of the liberal Yabloko party, which did not support the " smart voting " initiative. That was in part because the app recommended that all opposition forces select one candidate most likely to beat Mr. Putin's United Russia party. The recommended candidates included many from the Communist Party, an anathema to Mr. Muratov who believed it harkened back to the time of dictator Joseph Stalin.

Mr. Muratov has also mounted a defense of Aleksei Venediktov, the editor in chief of the liberal radio station Ekho Moskvy, who oversaw the controversial online voting platform in the September elections. Many anti-government groups were concerned that the online voting system enabled what they alleged was election fraud that favored Mr. Putin's party.

Some observers argued that the choice of Novaya Gazeta, which is one of the last independent media outlets in Russia not to be named a "foreign agent," sent the wrong message at the wrong time.

"The decision to reward Muratov, not Navalny, is an attempt to keep the maximum distance from the current political process," the political analyst and former Kremlin speechwriter Abbas Gallyamov wrote on Facebook. "We, they say, do not interfere in politics, we only support the principle of freedom of speech," he added, referring to the Nobel committee. "This is probably correct."

Mr. Muratov said the prize, which is not awarded posthumously, was in honor of six colleagues on Novaya Gazeta who died doing their jobs.

"This is the prize of my dead colleagues," he said, "those who gave their lives for people who fought against dictatorship, who stood up for freedom of speech."

In receiving the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, the Philippine journalist Maria Ressa became only the 18th woman to be selected for the award in its 126-year history.

With half the world made up of women, the obvious question arises: Why have so few been granted the committees' most prestigious prize and, more broadly, been generally underrepresented across the Nobel Prizes?

Addressing the criticism, the Nobel Foundation, which administers the prizes, in 2017 acknowledged its poor track record.

"We are disappointed looking at the larger perspective that more women have not been awarded," said Göran Hansson, vice chair of the foundation's board of directors.

"Part of it is that we go back in time to identify discoveries," he said. "We have to wait until they have been verified and validated before we can award the prize. There was an even larger bias against women then. There were far fewer women scientists if you go back 20 or 30 years."

But he acknowledged other problems, including the way people are considered for prizes. Starting in 2018, he said, the committee would take steps to address the imbalance.

"I hope that in five years or 10 years, we will see a very different situation," he said.

A total of 109 individuals have received the Nobel Peace Prize, which has also been awarded to organizations. The first woman to receive the prize was Bertha von Suttner, an Austrian writer who was a leading figure in a nascent pacifist movement in Europe. She was recognized in 1905, two years after Marie Curie became the first woman to receive a Nobel Prize, in physics.

It would be 26 years before another woman was selected for the award: the American Jane Addams, regarded as the founder of modern social work and an advocate for the concerns of children and mothers. She shared the 1931 prize with Nicholas Murray Butler, then the head of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Other women to receive the honor include Mother Teresa in 1979; the legal reformer Shirin Ebadi of Iran in 2003; the Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai in 2004; and in 2014 the education activist Malala Yousafzai, the youngest recipient of the award.

In 2011, three women shared the award: Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the former president of Liberia; Leymah Gbowee, a peace activist from Liberia; and Tawakkol Karman, a journalist from Yemen who became the face of the "Arab Spring" uprising in her country.

Here are the other women laureates, listed chronologically:

1946 - Emily Greene Balch, American economist, sociologist, pacifist and educator.

1976 - Betty Williams and Mearead Corrigan, founders of a Northern Ireland peace movement.

1982 - Alva Myrdal, Swedish diplomat and disarmament advocate.

1991 - Aung San Suu Kyi, pro-democracy activist in Myanmar.

1992 - Rigoberta Menchú Tum, leading advocate of Mayan rights and culture.

1997 - Jody Williams, American disarmament activist who campaigned to abolish land mines.

2018 - Nadia Murad, Yazidi activist from northern Iraq who escaped enslavement by the Islamic State and led campaign against sexual violence as a weapon of war.

Rick Gladstone contributed reporting.

Correction:

Hours after a Russian newspaper editor received the Nobel Peace Prize for helping to "safeguard freedom of expression," the Russian government made another move to muzzle that expression.

Nine activists and journalists, including prominent Russian-language correspondents for the B.B.C. and the American-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, were declared "foreign agents" by Russia's Justice Ministry. They now have to submit to onerous disclosure requirements, including having to attach a lengthy disclaimer to every social media post.

It was the latest evidence that the Nobel for Dmitri A. Muratov came amid the most intense campaign of repression against the independent news media in Russia's post-Soviet history.

"The Parliament does not represent all the people, it does not represent the minority with an alternative point of view," Mr. Muratov said outside his newspaper's office in Moscow on Friday. "The media represents them, and this is exactly why, I believe, these attacks on the Russian press are taking place."

Leading Russian-language news outlets such as Meduza, TV Rain and Proekt have been declared "foreign agents" or banned outright in recent months, and investigative journalists have been driven into exile.

Mr. Muratov's Novaya Gazeta is the most prominent independent outlet remaining that has not been declared a foreign agent. Unlike some other independent journalists, Mr. Muratov has sought to find ways to engage with the Kremlin, and he took part in a meeting of Russian editors in chief with Mr. Putin earlier this year.

But he has grown increasingly pessimistic about the future of political freedoms in Russia. Increasingly, he has said, it is the powerful Federal Security Service - the main successor agency to the K.G.B. - that is charged with managing domestic politics, limiting the space for activism or independent journalism ever more.

In recent months, the Kremlin has been able to carry out its crackdown on dissent without provoking a widespread public backlash. That has emboldened the authorities, he says.

"The authorities have suddenly realized that most people have absolutely no need for freedom," Mr. Muratov told the Russian news website Znak.com in August.

Some Russian analysts and journalists have speculated that it would be only a matter of time until Novaya Gazeta were outlawed or forced out of business. With its extensive coverage of sensitive matters like rights abuses in the Russian republic of Chechnya, environmental disasters caused by leading Russian companies and torture in prisons, the newspaper has earned many enemies.

The recognition by the Nobel committee could give the newspaper a fresh lease on life, its supporters hope.

On Friday, even Margarita Simonyan, the editor of the pro-Kremlin television channel RT, congratulated Mr. Muratov, noting he worked to help ill children. Mikhail V. Mishustin, the Russian prime minister, through his spokesman lauded Mr. Muratov for "his high professionalism, his loyalty to his convictions, and, importantly, his human qualities."

"We can congratulate Dmitri Muratov," President Vladimir V. Putin's spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, told reporters. "He consistently works according to his ideals. He is committed to his ideals, he is talented, he is brave and of course this is a high-level recognition."

The question now is whether the award for Mr. Muratov - the first Russian Nobel Peace Prize laureate in post-Soviet times - helps protect what remains of independent journalism in Russia. Some critics were quick to allege on Twitter that the award could serve the Kremlin by allowing Mr. Putin to point to Novaya Gazeta as proof that freedom of expression in Russia still exists.

"We will try to help those people who are now being declared agents, who are being repressed, and who are being exiled from the country," Mr. Muratov told a Russian news website, Podyom.

In a year marked by climate change-driven disasters, political turmoil and the enduring devastation wrought by the coronavirus, the Norwegian Nobel Committee chose this year's winners from a diverse array of 329 candidates for the Nobel Peace Prize.

The candidates - whose names are not publicly revealed, but represented the third highest number of submissions in history - ranged from climate activists to political dissidents. Organizations including Reporters Without Borders and movements like Black Lives Matter were also in the running.

The pool of candidates had been chosen from the thousands of nominations submitted to the committee by academics, scientists, former winners and politicians from around the world.

Every year, speculation is rife over who will emerge from the intensely secretive voting process.

Scientists whose work has helped combat climate change and improve the environment were recognized in Nobel Prizes handed out earlier this week. Two scientists were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics on Wednesday for work that "laid the foundation of our knowledge of the Earth's climate and how humanity influences it." Two chemists were honored for findings that have helped lessen the impact of chemistry on the environment.

Greta Thunberg, the 18-year-old climate activist from Sweden, was widely thought to be in the running for the peace award. She has been a top contender for the prize since 2019, when Time magazine recognized her as its "Person of the Year."

Among the hundreds of submissions, 95 were organizations. Last year, the $1 million cash prize went to the World Food Program, the United Nations agency that is the world's largest humanitarian organization, for its efforts to combat a surge in global hunger amid the pandemic.

With the world still struggling to emerge from a pandemic that has killed more than 4.6 million people, observers speculated that the Nobel committee might reward work being done to lessen the suffering. At the top of many shortlists was the U.N. World Health Organization, which has sought to act as the voice of authority amid a cacophony of misinformation surrounding the coronavirus.

Scientists whose work over decades led to the rapid development of vaccines that have changed the course of the pandemic, to the surprise of many, were passed over when awards for Medicine and Chemistry were announced earlier in the week. But the global vaccine initiative, Covax, was a favorite of some odds makers who thought it might be selected for its ambitious, though struggling, efforts to promote equal access to the lifesaving vaccines.

The committee did not wade into some of the most geopoliticaly charged waters by selecting a prominent political dissident. Among those believed to be in the running were Svetlana Tikhanovskaya of Belarus and Aleksei A. Navalny, whose strident opposition to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia galvanized some of the nation's largest protests to his rule.

But in choosing to award the work of two journalists who persist at great personal risk, they sought to elevate the struggle of reporters around the world working in increasingly repressive environments.

Rappler's newsroom buzzed with activity on Friday, the last day for candidates to file papers for an election in the Philippines next year, and young reporters were chatting about the day's news over Slack.

Then a reporter who was watching the Nobel Peace Prize announcement online told the team that Maria Ressa, one of their outlet's founders, had won.

"We are blown away," said Pia Ranada, a political journalist who has been barred from official presidential events because of her aggressive coverage of President Rodrigo Duterte's administration.

Speaking in a phone interview, Ms. Ranada said, "I'm just full of gratitude for this recognition. We feel that Maria's win is a win for our entire news organization and, in general, also for the Philippine press, especially those who've been trudging on and shining the light, despite the kind of governance we have now, where journalists are harassed for their work."

On its website, Rappler said it was "honored and astounded" by the award.

"It could not have come at a better time - a time when journalists and the truth are being attacked and undermined," the news organization said. "We thank the Nobel for recognizing all journalists both in the Philippines and in the world who continue to shine the light even in the darkest and toughest hours."

Rappler, a scrappy investigative and entertainment website that Ms. Ressa co-founded in 2012, has been a focus of Mr. Duterte's campaign against the news media in the Philippines. In 2018, the news site's license was revoked, and Ms. Ressa has been charged with defamation, tax evasion and the violation of complex security laws.

In July 2018, a court sided with Rappler, saying the revocation of the license was wrong, allowing the site to continue to publish.

Ms. Ressa created Rappler with three other high-powered women journalists - Lilibeth Frondoso, Glenda Gloria and Chay Hofileña - who cut their teeth as reporters during the " people power " revolt that brought down President Ferdinand E. Marcos in the mid-1980s.

They have been arrested and faced death threats. A black funeral wreath was once delivered to the door of Ms. Gloria's family home. Ms. Frondoso, Rappler's head of multimedia, was once thrown in prison with her newborn child.

"We have government officials who publicly denounce the journalism we do," Ms. Ranada said, "so it's really a huge moment for all of us here."

Across Asia, authoritarian governments and strongmen leaders are imprisoning reporters, imposing stifling legal requirements on news outlets and running independent websites out of business, exacerbating fears among journalists about the state of press freedom in the region.

Rappler, the Philippine media organization co-founded by Maria Ressa, stood out as a beacon of hope.

President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines was fond of accusing reporters of deceit and "fake news," even warning that they are "not exempted from assassination." His government removed the country's largest broadcast network, ABS-CBN, where Ms. Ressa once worked, from the air last year.

Yet Rappler's dogged coverage of the Duterte administration has continued. In a statement, the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines said Ms. Ressa's win was "a victory for press freedom advocates across the Philippines, which remains one of the most dangerous countries for journalists."

"We hope that Ressa's win drives international attention to the plight of the Philippines' local media workers, and sends a signal that a free, unstifled and critical press is necessary for a healthy democracy," the group said.

Across Asia, independent news outlets have faced growing pressures, sometimes being forced to close.

This week, Singapore passed a contentious law barring foreign influence over politics, which gives the government the power to demand that social media platforms disclose user data or remove posts that are deemed to be antigovernment. Last month, the government suspended the license of The Online Citizen, an independent website offering social and political commentary, saying it had failed to comply with rules requiring it to declare its funding sources.

In Myanmar, the military government that seized power this year has arrested at least 98 journalists, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a watchdog. Five have been convicted of violating a law that makes it a crime to publish or circulate comments that "cause fear" or spread "false news," according to Human Rights Watch.

Next Digital, a media company that was long the leading pro-democracy voice in Hong Kong, said last month that it would close after a crackdown by Beijing. That was the latest in a series of blows to Hong Kong's once freewheeling press, which has been stifled by the national security law that the mainland Chinese government imposed on the former British colony more than a year ago.

In India, watchdog groups say that press freedom has eroded under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose government has used legal threats and investigations to cow media outlets. This year, the government enacted rules granting it broad power to take down digital content, a move that many said was aimed at upstart independent news sites that offered some of the most critical coverage of Mr. Modi's government.

The Nobel Peace Prize "is a message to governments everywhere that genuine journalism cannot be suppressed," said Sidharth Bhatia, a founding editor of The Wire, a news site in India that has faced numerous defamation lawsuits from members of Mr. Modi's party. "It comes as a boost to journalists everywhere, especially to those in small, independent websites who face pressures from governments and continue to ask questions to power in the pursuit of truth."

During the tenure of President Vladimir V. Putin, six reporters for Novaya Gazeta, the newspaper that Dmitri A. Muratov co-founded in 1993, have been killed for their work. Most prominent was Anna Politkovskaya, an investigative journalist who was shot and killed on Oct. 7, 2006.

Ms. Politkovskaya, a vocal critic of Mr. Putin and his policies in the Chechen war, was shot in the elevator to her apartment building in Moscow. While a court convicted several men for carrying out the assassination, the authorities left unanswered the question of who organized it. Mr. Putin, speaking soon after her death, denied any role by saying Ms. Politkovskaya's death had created a bigger problem for Russia because of international criticism than her life and work as an investigative journalist.

Founded in 1993, Novaya Gazeta has become the highest-profile independent newspaper in Russia for social and political affairs. The newspaper has three main owners: the last Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev, who used proceeds from his Nobel Peace Prize to finance the venture; Aleksandr Y. Lebedev, a former KGB agent turned banker and critic of the rise of a new police state; and the newspaper staff, which owns shares.

In one of the early murders, the investigative reporter and member of Parliament Yuri Shchekochikhin died of a mysterious and painful illness that caused the epidermis, or upper layer of skin, to slough off, in a rare symptom caused by some drug allergies but which Novaya Gazeta newspaper concluded in its own investigation was poisoning.

Mr. Shchekochikhin became ill days before he planned to travel to the United States to share information with American law enforcement about suspected corruption and money laundering at a furniture importing business, the Three Whales, linked to the Federal Security Service, the successor agency to the K.G.B., touching a nerve on an important trend of the security services moving into business. His autopsy results remain classified.

In 2009, Russian nationalists shot to death another of the newspaper's journalists, Anastasia Boburova, on a sidewalk in the capital together with a human rights lawyer.

In another high-profile killing in 2009, the human rights activist Natalia Estemirova was kidnapped in the Chechen capital of Grozny and subsequently killed. Ms. Estemirova cooperated with Novaya Gazeta in cataloging killings, torture and abductions in Chechnya and linked them to the region's leader, Ramzan A. Kadyrov. Ms. Estemirova continued this work even after the death of Ms. Politkovskaya in 2006, with whom she had begun her collaboration with the Novaya Gazeta newspaper.

In recent years, the newspaper's reporters have broken stories investigating the deaths of Russian soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

Their leading reporter on the war, Pavel Kanygin, was kidnapped and beaten by separatists, but nonetheless returned for on-the-ground reporting for the newspaper's investigation into the shoot-down of a civilian airliner over Ukraine in 2014.

Since it went live in January 2012, Rappler, the website co-founded by Maria Ressa and three other female journalists, has become one of the Philippines' most popular and influential media platforms, mixing reporting with calls for social activism. Rappler's reporters, most of whom are in their 20s, have been especially critical of President Rodrigo Duterte, investigating his extrajudicial killing campaign against people suspected of dealing or using drugs, documenting the spread of government disinformation on Facebook and reporting on malfeasance among his top advisers.

As a result, the site has incurred Duterte's wrath and been targeted by his loyalists; Ms. Ressa has been forced to increase her personal security and been in and out of court to answer a litany of charges - from libel to tax evasion - that she describes as politically motivated.

In 2020, after years of government threats and accusations, Ms. Ressa and a former Rappler colleague were convicted of cyber libel by a court in Manila. Each could face up to six years in prison, and each was fined $8,000; Ms. Ressa has appealed the ruling.

At the time, she said her conviction should serve as a warning. "We're redefining what the new world is going to look like, what journalism is going to become," she said. "Are we going to lose freedom of the press?"

While former President Donald J. Trump called American reporters "the enemy of the people," Mr. Duterte goes a step further, calling them "sons of bitches" who are "not exempt from assassination." He has publicly targeted Rappler, calling it a "fake news outlet" sponsored by the C.I.A.

Ms. Ressa, 58, is a dual citizen of the Philippines and the United States, where she spent part of her childhood in Toms River, N.J. She attended Princeton and returned to the Philippines in 1986 on a Fulbright fellowship, as the country was transitioning away from authoritarianism and adopting liberal, democratic ideas.

CNN was looking for a fluent English speaker to report on the transformation and hired Ms. Ressa. She became a fixture of the network's Asia coverage. After a stint at the ABS-CBN network, she left to start Rappler.

In 2016, Rappler began dispatching reporters into the barrios to investigate the drug killings. Ms. Ressa's reporters found that the police versions of the murders often didn't match witness accounts. "Some of the victims seemed to be innocent men whom the police had set up, planting drugs and guns to make it look like these were suspects who resisted," said Rambo Talabong, a Rappler intern at the time who covered the drug war.

Rappler disputed the death count of 2,167 announced by the Duterte administration at the end of 2016, reporting that about 4,000 more shootings that the government had listed as "unexplained homicides" were in fact part of Mr. Duterte's drug war.

Later, Rappler reporters uncovered evidence that Mr. Duterte's loyalists had manipulated Facebook to spread misinformation, prompting Facebook to take down hundreds of pages, accounts and groups for "coordinated inauthentic behavior," all of them linked to a group started by Nic Gabunada, Duterte's social media strategist at the time.

For more than a century, the annual announcement of the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize has generated global fascination, making the award a byword for selflessness and integrity.

Some of the Norwegian Nobel Committee's selections, however, have also created controversies that have cast a shadow over the award.

In 2019, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed of Ethiopia was honored for his "efforts to achieve peace and international cooperation," especially his initiative to resolve a long-running border conflict with Eritrea. In his Nobel laureate's lecture, Mr. Abiy spoke of the need to "plant seeds of love, forgiveness and reconciliation in the hearts and minds of our citizens."

Two years later, Mr. Abiy has faced condemnation from human rights groups for unleashing a brutal military offensive in Ethiopia's northern Tigray region. Pro-government forces have been accused of massacres, sexual assault and ethnic cleansing, and United Nations officials have said the fighting has worsened a famine in which hundreds of thousands are going hungry.

Even at the time of his award, some experts questioned the wisdom of granting the prize to a young leader who had only been in office for a year, and whose commitment to peace had not been tested. Asked by Al Jazeera in late 2019 whether Mr. Abiy deserved the award, the Nobel committee declined to address concerns about human rights, saying in a statement: "The Norwegian Nobel Committee hopes the peace agreement will help to bring about positive change for the entire populations of Ethiopia and Eritrea."

To some, the questions recalled those raised about another young, unproven leader: President Barack Obama, who was awarded the prize in 2009 after less than a year in office. The committee honored Mr. Obama for "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples."

Three years later, after Mr. Obama had led the overthrow of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi in Libya, surged U.S. troops into Afghanistan and escalated U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen, the author and security analyst Peter Bergen described him as "one of the most militarily aggressive American leaders in decades."

Other selections have also generated criticism. Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was awarded the prize in 1973 for his efforts to negotiate an end to the war in Vietnam, despite his alleged involvement in the devastating U.S. bombing campaign in Cambodia. Aung San Suu Kyi was given the award in 1991 for her opposition to military rule in Myanmar; two decades later, she is better known as the elected leader who defended the army's brutal offensive against Rohingya Muslims, and who was ousted in a coup earlier this year.

The controversies have dogged the committee, which according to Nobel rules cannot withdraw a prize once it is given. Some commentators have called for the committee, which is made up of five members appointed by Norway's Parliament, and often include retired politicians, to resign and for international experts to take their place.

"The Nobel name carries international weight and a committee with world-class capabilities should protect it," Kjetil Tronvoll, director of Peace and Conflict studies at Bjorknes University College in Norway, wrote this year in the Guardian.

The choice of a Nobel Peace Prize recipient has often been viewed by autocratic governments as a provocative and hostile act, especially when the winner is a political opponent, an advocate of free expression or an agitator for greater liberties. Some authoritarian countries have even created their own anti-Nobel awards.

The best-known recent example is the 2010 establishment of the Confucius Peace Prize in China, named after the venerated Chinese sage of the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. The prize was part of the angry official reaction to the Nobel Peace Prize that year, which was awarded to Liu Xiaobo, a prominent dissident and author imprisoned by the Chinese Communist authorities for subversion.

The first Confucius Prize ceremony was timed to coincide with the Nobel ceremony in Oslo, Norway, which Mr. Liu, who was imprisoned, and his wife, who was under house arrest, had been banned from attending. Even though Confucius Prize officials said their award's creation had nothing to do with the Nobel, a booklet distributed at their ceremony stated: "China is a symbol of peace" and "Norway is only a small country with scarce land area and population."

The Confucius award appeared to have been organized so hastily that the winner, a Taiwanese politician who advocated greater ties with the Chinese mainland, was not even aware that he had won.

Another well-known instance of anti-Nobel vindictiveness came after Carl von Ossietzky, aGerman journalist and pacifist who opposed the Nazis, was awarded the 1935 Nobel Prize, in what was widely viewed as a world repudiation of Adolf Hitler and everything he stood for.

Hitler not only banned Mr. Von Ossietzky from accepting the prize, he prohibited any Germans from accepting any Nobel award in any category. Instead he established the German National Prize for Art and Science, an annual award given to three German citizens. The award was disbanded when World War II began in 1939.

Awards traced to criticism of the Nobels also have derived from the opposite political direction - activists who say they need to be broadened to better reflect a wider spectrum of achievements in the fields of justice, education and social change. A well-known example is the Right Livelihood Award, sometimes called the "Alternative Nobel," established in 1980 by Jakob von Uexküll, a Baltic-German writer and philanthropist.

According to the Right Livelihood Award's website, Mr. Von Uexküll had first proposed two additional Nobel Prizes to the Nobel Foundation, one for environmental work and the other for promotion of knowledge. When the foundation rejected the proposal, he founded an award himself, selling his stamp collection to initially finance the prize money.

Right Livelihood laureates span a wide array of social activists and others from more than 50 countries. This year's winners, announced Sept. 29, were from Cameroon, Russia, Canada and India.

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Nobel Peace Prize Awarded to 2 Journalists, Highlighting Fight for Press Freedom

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Seeking to bolster press freedoms as journalists find themselves under increasing pressure from authoritarian governments and other hostile forces, the Norwegian Nobel Committee on Friday awarded the Peace Prize to two journalists thousands of miles apart for their tireless efforts to hold the powerful to account.

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Justice Department again presses to halt Texas abortion law

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The Biden administration is again urging courts to step in and suspend a new Texas law that has banned most abortions in the state since early September

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Imagine if millions of people had seen you naked before you were old enough to say "embarrassing." That's the story of Spencer Elden, whom you may know as the little baby floating toward a dollar bill on the cover of Nirvana's 1991 album, Nevermind.

Nearly 17 years later, amid hating school and playing water polo, Elden is still struggling to make sense of his (very) public image.

"Quite a few people in the world have seen my penis," he says from his home in Los Angeles. "So that's kinda cool. I'm just a normal kid living it up and doing the best I can while I'm here."

Nevermind is often credited with changing the face of rock. Elden's naked participation in this important moment in music history was rather accidental; Kirk Weddle, the photographer working on the cover, was simply a friend of Spencer's dad, Rick.

"[He] calls us up and was like, 'Hey Rick, wanna make 200 bucks and throw your kid in the drink?,'" Rick recounts. "I was like, 'What's up?' And he's like, 'Well, I'm shooting kids all this week, why don't you meet me at the Rose Bowl, throw your kid in the drink?' And we just had a big party at the pool, and no one had any idea what was going on!"

Three months later, while driving down Sunset Blvd., the Elden family spotted a 9-foot-by-9-foot Spencer floating across Tower Records' wall. Two months later, Geffen Records sent 1-year-old Spencer Elden a platinum album and a teddy bear.

Over the coming years, 26 million albums were sold. As Elden learned to walk, talk and sing - his pale baby arms stretched across millions of grungy fans' walls; his private parts stood magnified across billboards and floors.

In some places, his image stuck. The other day, his friends spotted a giant Nevermind photo on the floor of a record store in Hollywood.

"My friend is all like, 'Hey I saw you today.' And I'm like, 'Dude, I was working all day.' And he's like, 'No, I went to Geffen Records, and you're on the floor and you're floating and I stepped on your face. 'Cause I guess they have like a floating thing where people can like walk on me and stuff ... so it's kinda cool," he says.

Life in general isn't quite as "cool" as it was when he jumped naked in the pool in the early '90s, though, he says. These days, his peers are too stuck on the Internet and video games. Ironically, he yearns for the era that gave Kurt Cobain, the lead singer for Nirvana, so much angst.

These days, Elden says, his peers concentrate on "playing Rock Band on Xbox, like, that's not a real band! That's the difference between the '90s and kids nowadays; kids in the '90s would actually go out and make a [real] band!"

But overall, life is good, he says. When he's not being repressed by video games and computers, Elden blasts music - mostly techno - and carries around a big bag of angst, mostly around the fact that he is "so over" high school.

"Same people, same teachers ... going to your locker, worrying about stupid girls ... I wanna get something going, I wanna travel," he says.

Last fall, travel he did - all the way to military boarding school for six months. All his parents will say is that he's done his fair share of "testing authority."

Now he's trying to graduate from high school a year early. And he's talking about applying to West Point or becoming an artist ... or something.

As Spencer is wont to say, "I just take it as it comes. If I like it, I like it; if I don't like it, I don't like it."

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Once Naked For Nirvana, Now A Teen Spirit

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Imagine if millions of people had seen you naked before you were old enough to say "embarrassing." That's the story of Spencer Elden, whom you may know as the little baby floating toward a dollar bill on the cover of Nirvana's 1991 album, Nevermind.

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For more than a decade, the studio's films and shows have been paragons of careful continuity. So far, Loki does away with that.

This article contains mild spoilers for the first two episodes of
For 13 years, the Marvel Cinematic Universe built up the Infinity Stones as objects of grand power, capable of manipulating all existence when united. In Avengers: Infinity War, they turned half of the cosmos to dust; in Avengers: Endgame, the surviving heroes chased them down across time. In Loki, the Disney+ series released today, they're nothing more than colorful paperweights.

The cheeky gag befits a series about a trickster god, but it's a surprising one for Marvel to pull. The studio has never dismissed its own storytelling this way-more than a dozen films insisted on the profundity of the stones. Yet in a single scene, Loki (Tom Hiddleston) learns that the objects he's long sought-and by extension, the objects fans have long been conditioned to care about-are mere office supplies at the Time Variance Authority, the bureaucratic entity that has captured him. Not only that, but Loki's told that the TVA controls time itself, and thus has "allowed" his every move. His actions have never been his own.

By placing a fan-favorite character in an unfamiliar world populated with unrecognizable characters, and then promptly introducing him to an existential crisis, Loki challenges Marvel's tried-and-true formula of lighthearted action plus airtight continuity. Each of the studio's films and TV shows has not only told its own story but made sure to connect to the others through shared characters, common settings, and scenes that advance an overarching narrative. WandaVision was stylistically weird as a sitcom pastiche, but the series remained tethered to the MCU's conventions, as a dutiful sequel to Endgame and a precursor to the next Doctor Strange film. Loki, however, is neither epilogue nor prologue, at least not in the two episodes screened for critics; its structure, ideas, and visual language feel unconstrained by the MCU's blueprint. Instead, the series traffics in true comic-book storytelling. It's an experimental, self-contained, and thoroughly welcome reprieve.
Read: The deep sadness of Marvel's 'WandaVision'
After all, Hiddleston's not even playing the Loki that audiences know, but a Loki "variant" from another timeline-in other words, a version of the villain without all of the MCU-imposed character development. He's been boiled down to the central components of his personality-petulant, entitled, mischievous-and given room to be chameleonic as soon as the series begins. In Episode 1, he's a fish out of water, verbally sparring with his handler, the TVA agent Mobius (Owen Wilson), in what amounts to a supervillain therapy session. In Episode 2, he becomes the TVA's key to hunting down another Loki variant, putting on the guise of an untrustworthy informant. Plopping a well-defined character into audacious scenarios feels classically comic-book-ian: The younger Loki trying to prove that he can be redeemed in the Loki: Agent of Asgard comics is very different from the politician who campaigns on a platform of lies in the miniseries Vote Loki, for instance, but neither iteration abandons his impish core.

The look of the new Disney+ show, too, evokes comic-book versatility: The TVA's headquarters is awash in mid-century-meets-futurist architecture, while its agents' missions will take them to branched timelines riffing off the aesthetics of works such as Before Sunrise and Inglourious Basterds, according to the head writer Michael Waldron. As a result, the show looks nothing like previous Marvel properties.

Loki also complicates the MCU's tendency to situate its central conflict between two characters who represent opposing values. In the show, Loki's threatened not by a superhero but by another Loki version whose trickery he begrudgingly admires. And the greater threat appears to be the TVA itself: Everyone Loki meets at the organization comes off as somewhat inhuman-alien not just in lifestyle, but in personality. If even the wackiest MCU characters emanate some humanity, the TVA staff remain strangely apathetic, even cruel. One TVA captive gets disintegrated for arguing with an agent; the hunters-agents who prune the branches of errant timelines-use devices that wipe out all living things affected by a variant.

Such brutal efficiency, the show suggests, comes from the all-powerful nature of the Timekeepers, a trio of unseen figures who created every TVA agent and who keep the so-called Sacred Timeline intact. The administration's staff worship the Timekeepers like gods, believing wholly in their mission to keep the flow of the universe's events to one trajectory. The TVA conducts its affairs so tightly that an office drone Loki meets has never heard of a fish, and Mobius admits that he yearns to ride a jet ski but cannot for unspecified fears of damaging the timeline. These are small, seemingly throwaway revelations that ultimately feel more sinister than absurd. At the TVA, continuity is essential, but suffocating.

That's a provocative idea from a studio that's known for meticulously planning every step of its storytelling. And it's a risky one: As much as Loki may buck tradition, it remains a Marvel show, watched by fans who celebrate that granular attention to the bigger picture. Waldron also worked on the script for the Doctor Strange sequel. The chances that this six-episode season eventually yields a tie-in to that Sacred MCU Timeline are high.

Yet two episodes in, Loki plants the idea that order as exemplified by the TVA-and in a meta way, by the MCU-is nowhere near as fun as leaning into the chaos of comic books. Whenever Loki disrupts the TVA's strategy and encourages Mobius to tag along, he introduces a sense of play that Mobius begins to relish. Similarly, Loki, in drawing inspiration not from the established MCU method but from the looser narratives of comic books, feels like a refreshing reset for the franchise. The series indicates to fans that it might not be essential for everything to be thoroughly connected. Perhaps some stories can be enjoyed as, say, stand-alone variants.

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A Marvel Series That Cares Little for Marvel's Universe

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For more than a decade, the studio's films and shows have been paragons of careful continuity. So far, Loki does away with that. This article contains mild spoilers for the first two episodes of For 13 years, the Marvel Cinematic Universe built up the Infinity Stones as objects of grand power, capable of manipulating all existence when united.

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HyunA and Dawn say love is a riddle with ‘Ping Pong’

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HyunA and Dawn say love is a riddle with ‘Ping Pong’

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HyunA and Dawn say love is a riddle with ‘Ping Pong’

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Soloist HyunA and singer-songwriter Dawn of P Nation released their first-ever duo album, “[1+1=1],” on Thursday, dazzling fans with their sizzling chemistry. The four-track album is packed with stories about love and talks about turning big dreams into reality, conveying their honest feelings, th…

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The Regrettes return with new song ‘Monday’.

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The Regrettes return with new song ‘Monday’.

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The Regrettes have shared a new song, 'Monday' - which arrives accompanied by a music video introducing the character of 'Joy' whom the band's Lydia Night describes as "representing the false image of one's 'perfect and ideal self' which began to taunt me and I think many people in middle school. She will be an ongoing character and theme in music to come."

About the new song, Night says: "I wrote our new song 'Monday' on Zoom during the pandemic with my producer Tim Pagnotta and talented writer Michelle Buzz. At the time I was pretty much at the peak of my anxiety disorder, every morning I was waking up and absolutely dreading the idea of functioning and being 'productive' (whatever the hell that even means) for another day. Like most of us, I was still at home, where all my issues still existed. So, whatever I was dealing with didn't slowly fade away while stuck in traffic on the way to go write somewhere. I didn't have the space to think of 'what do I want to write about', instead, I just rolled out of bed and all my horrible fucking thoughts were still with me, just waiting to be unboxed. As LA locked down, I felt a huge part of my Identity and ego being stripped away because of no touring, and no connecting with people at our shows. I've been touring since about age 12, so I had to come up with a new way to function in the world. It was really rough, and still is rough, but I found writing this song to be super therapeutic. It's special that this is the first song we've put out in a while because it's an important moment in time for me to mark. Part of the healing process for me is really learning and trying my best to keep on dancing the pain away so I hope people can relate to that and dance with me, even if it's not at a show and in the safety of their own kitchen."

Watch the 'Monday' music video below (which features a cameo from Olivia Rodrigo as a DJ)...

Zine #46 - BENEE

Our BENEE x Coup De Main limited-edition zine features a selection of exclusive photos and polaroids shot for her CDM covershoot,BENEE's 🧟‍♀️ 'What Would Benee Do In A Zombie Apocalypse?' 🧟‍♂️ handwritten back-page, and also folds out into an A2 sized poster.

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The Regrettes return with new song 'Monday'.

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The Regrettes have shared a new song, 'Monday' - which arrives accompanied by a music video introducing the character of 'Joy' whom the band's Lydia Night describes as "representing the false image of one's 'perfect and ideal self' which began to taunt me

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https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/pandemic-nostalgia-tiktok/620230/

-jaida

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An Ancient Tablet, Stolen Then Acquired By Hobby Lobby, Will Be Returned To Iraq

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Known as the Gilgamesh Dream Tablet, it was looted from Iraq and made its way through several hands before Hobby Lobby purchased it for the Museum of the Bible in 2014.

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China’s new rules allow kids on video games just 3 hours a week – but gaming addiction isn’t about time, it’s about attitude

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China’s new rules allow kids on video games just 3 hours a week – but gaming addiction isn’t about time, it’s about attitude

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https://theconversation.com/chinas-new-rules-allow-kids-on-video-games-just-3-hours-a-week-but-gaming-addiction-isnt-about-time-its-about-attitude-167104

- Sierra Grady

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People in China under the age of 18 will only be allowed to play video games between 8pm and 9pm on Fridays, weekends and on public holidays, under new rules introduced this week. China's state media service says the rules aim to curb gaming addiction.

China has a history of making dramatic moves aimed at cutting down children's gaming time, which have included a cyber curfew set in 2019 restricting game play at night, to forcing players to make their real names and identification numbers visible when playing. Some parents have sent kids to military-style anti-gaming camps.

It's clear China is associating time spent gaming with addiction; that more time gaming equals addiction.

However, the way the World Health Organization defines addictive gaming disorder is different. It's not about time, it's more about the attitude and intensity a person brings to the gaming. Addiction means being obsessed to the point where other things in life are falling down due to the gaming.

Read more: Gaming has benefits and perils - parents can help kids by playing with them

My research, which has involved speaking to many children about their gaming, suggests most kids are drawn to gaming chiefly because it is a way to hang out with friends. And even when strict rules are introduced, many kids will try very hard to find a way around them.

How to recognise gaming addiction

True gaming addiction is like gambling addiction; it goes beyond a fun past time to a no-holds barred intense approach.

People might stop showering, they may lose friends, they may find themselves thinking about it day and night, watching as their grades go down.

The WHO says to be diagnosed with gaming addiction, a person needs to demonstrate all three of these symptoms for at least 12 months:

losing control over how much you're gaming

prioritising gaming to the extent that it takes precedence over other activities and interests

continuing to game despite negative effects on school, family life, work, health, hygiene, relationships, finances or social relationships.

There is a big difference between being an enthusiastic gamer and being addicted to gaming. So as long as these things aren't happening, spending time gaming isn't found to be harmful in the long run. In fact, some studies are showing the benefits of gaming on children's well-being.

True gaming addiction affects only a small number of people. The American Psychiatric Association estimates that around 0.3 to 1% of the population will be diagnosed with this condition.

ALEX PLAVEVSKI/EPA

Three hours a week is not much

When I heard about these new rules, I thought: to an average 15 year old boy, three hours a week is not a lot. Many would clock that up in an average day. So for many kids in China, this will feel like a big change.

If players all game at the same time, there will be a lot of pressure on the servers and a lot of lag time. Many games will not function properly, which will be very frustrating for players. In response, the gaming industry may develop games that can be completed in a shorter amount of time.

Gaming could also shift to other kinds of platforms that are not official video game platforms, such as unlicensed games accessible on foreign platforms such as Steam, or gaming on virtual private networks (VPNs).

China's ruling may reduce video game play at first. However, one thing we know for sure is that the online world always adapts.

What about parents who say 'I wish we had China's video game rules'?

A lot of parents really struggle to get their kids off the games, especially in lockdown. It still tends to be boys (usually between about the ages of 10 and 18) who game a lot, although girls are getting there.

I can understand parents who have heard about China's new rules and thought it sounded pretty good. Having the government take the reins would appeal to some parents.

But I would urge parents worried about their children's gaming to really sit down and ask their child why they are drawn to gaming so much. Not in a judgemental "Why are you always on there? Why can't you give it a break?" way, but in the spirit of true curiosity.

When I talk to children for my research, the number one thing they say about why they game so much is that they like hanging out with friends.

It is a sense of community. It's like going to the park or hanging out at a mall, but it occurs in an online space. Some kids talk about how they don't even really play the game, they are just hanging out with friends on that platform.

Yes, the games are designed to be competitive and there is an adrenaline rush and lots of action, which of course they are attracted to as well. But for many kids, it's chiefly about the social aspect.

Understanding why your kid is drawn to gaming may help you contextualise your own concerns around their gaming time.

What if I brought in the three-hours-a-week rules at my home?

Some parents may be considering implementing the three hours a week rule in their own home.

I can understand the appeal, but everything in my research shows most older kids will find ways to get around the rules. They may game at odd hours, when parents are not watching or disguise their gaming as other online work.

Yes, parents need to set boundaries around gaming. It should not be 24/7. It's healthy to have rules around when they can play, how long they can play and the types of games allowed.

TRACEY NEARMY/AAP

Parents need to properly understand the ratings for games; I have encountered cases of six year olds playing R-rated games, which have very strong sex and violence themes.

Look up your games on YouTube to see the type of imagery and game play involved. Play them with your child and talk together about the content.

Children often tell me they are drawn to gaming because they feel there's nothing else to do at home. In lockdown, that may feel especially true.

So think about creating space for other activities kids can do at home. We don't expect parents to be their child's social concierge and organise all of their activities, but if you can do some non-screen family activities that may help give the child a more diverse diet of playtime.

And lastly, parents should be aware of their own screen time. Kids can perceive rules restricting gaming time as hypocritical if the parent themselves spends a lot of time watching TV or on their phone.

Read more: Forget old screen 'time' rules during coronavirus. Here's what you should focus on instead

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China's new rules allow kids on video games just 3 hours a week - but gaming addiction isn't about time, it's about attitude

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People in China under the age of 18 will only be allowed to play video games between 8pm and 9pm on Fridays, weekends and on public holidays, under new rules introduced this week. China's state media service says the rules aim to curb gaming addiction.

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The entertainment industry spends millions researching what we watch and why every year. As climate destruction and a global pandemic make it more difficult to turn away from our social media feeds, CBS has found a new way to exploit these horrors with its show "The Activist." Doomscrollers are their new audience.

According to Deadline, the five-week CBS reality series will "feature six inspiring activists teamed with three high-profile public figures working together to bring meaningful change to one of three vitally important world causes: health, education, and environment."

"The show is perfectly timed"

The show is perfectly timed: For the last few years, we have been stuck in a crisis loop. When California catches on fire, the streets of New York flood with toxic waters, or police officers skate by without consequences after murdering the most vulnerable on camera, we become an audience to catastrophe.

Last week, as rain water slapped at my window - helpless - I scrolled through Twitter. Powerless, I posted. My eyes turned away from any show I may have been binge-watching and turned towards my social media feeds, filled with hopeless posts from my friends and colleagues. It's this audience and those eyes CBS and its producers likely identified as the makings of a new market for entertainment. We're already doomscrolling. We're already posting - mostly performatively - social and climate justice slide shows to our Instagram stories. Why not turn our terrifying reality into its own reality television show?

Real activists were quick to point out the dystopian premise of the show. "I'm confused: Is this an advanced Marxist critique to expose how competition for money and attention pits activists against each other [and] undermines deep change? Or just the end of the world," Naomi Klein, journalist and author, wrote in a tweet Thursday.

"Such obscene shows make total sense in a disconnected, elite world where activists are nothing more than entrepreneurs-to-be. It's dehumanising," said Joey Ayoub, a writer and researcher.

"It's performative at best, and kinda makes light of the hard work a lot of grassroots organisations do on the ground, on a daily basis. Gross," wrote Stephanie Yeboah, a writer and activist.

It's not just "The Activist"'s premise that's hollow, but the solutions the show offers as well. The show measures "success" through "online engagement, social metrics, and hosts' input" and, ultimately, the groups will head to Rome to attend the G20 Summit where they will meet with world leaders to secure funding for their causes. At its heart, "The Activist" buys into the liberal dream that simply raising awareness can enact radical change, a much easier task than approving laws or boycotting destructive companies. And when awareness itself doesn't work, perhaps approaching Justin Trudeau as a venture capitalist for justice may do the trick.

The show turns the collaborative nature of activism into a competition and exploits the hopelessness experienced under the US's highly unproductive two-party system. While social media can, and has, been used in transformative ways in politics, the reductionist nature of the internet has created a new breed of empty activism.

This emptiness has already expanded out of the personal social media accounts belonging to friends and family. Just last week, I saw a member of the Kentucky State Senate post a TikTok where he flailed his arms rapping "Rick and Morty" by Soulja Boy, a recently popular trend, facing "the Senate Chambers until we raise the minimum wage in Kentucky." Simply pointing out the issue isn't enough. But virality can certainly feel like doing something. Kevin Paffrath, who is running to unseat Gov. Gavin Newsom in the California recall gamified voter engagement in his app. Five social media posts in favor of his campaign earn you points which could, in turn, earn you a selfie on a private jet with Paffrath.

It sure feels like "The Activist" will portray organizing and political action in a similar way, all while providing handsome salaries to already wealthy celebrities like Priyanka Chopra, Julianne Hough, and the guy who wrote "Yeah!"

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CBS's 'The Activist' seems to think doomscrolling equals activism

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The entertainment industry spends millions researching what we watch and why every year. As climate destruction and a global pandemic make it more difficult to turn away from our social media feeds, CBS has found a new way to exploit these horrors with its show "The Activist." Doomscrollers are their new audience.

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If you're a novelist who takes a decade or so between books, you can only hope that your readers remember how much they loved you in the past. It's a saturated market out there, and brand loyalty doesn't always extend to novelists.

But ever since the news broke that Donna Tartt's new book The Goldfinch would soon be published, many readers have been waiting in a state of breathless excitement. They've never quite gotten over how much they loved Tartt's 1992 novel, The Secret History, a tale of friendship and murder set at a college, which went on to become not only an international hit but also one of those rare books that are read over and over, in hopes of reliving that initial literary rush.

Would Tartt's latest book inspire the same kind of devotion? After all, she published a second novel, The Little Friend, that was frequently described as a letdown. Is The Goldfinch more like The Little Friend, or - fingers crossed - The Secret History?

As it turns out, it's not much like either The Secret History or The Little Friend, and if I hadn't known that Donna Tartt had written it, I would never have guessed. This dense, 771-page book tells the story of a boy named Theo Decker, whose mother is killed in a terrorist act early in the novel. In the midst of the trauma and chaos, Theo steals a famous painting, "The Goldfinch," by the Dutch painter Carel Fabritius, setting the sweeping, episodic story in motion.

Several reviewers have compared her book to Oliver Twist, but when I started it I was more reminded of the Harry Potter series (a comparison that is actually made later in the book). The contemporary plot is often nervily improbable and outsized, and Theo, age 13 at the start, is a lot like Harry, in that both boys are gifted, tender-hearted and woefully unsupervised. Theo's scar, while deep and permanent, is of the invisible kind.

The day The Goldfinch arrived I promptly cracked it open, remembering how my sons would pounce on the latest Harry Potter on the day it was published. J.K. Rowling transformed a generation of kids into passionate readers. Donna Tartt does something different here - she takes fully grown, already passionate readers and reminds them of the particularly deep pleasures that a long, winding novel can hold. In the short-form era in which we live, the Internet has supposedly whittled our attention-spans down to the size of hotel soap, and it's good to be reminded that sometimes more is definitely more.

So we get a whole lot of Theo here, and also his friend Boris, a kid with a Ukrainian passport and a multi-national history who befriends him after he's forced to leave New York City and go live with his deadbeat dad and his dad's new girlfriend Xandra in a horrible development in Las Vegas. Boris is a great character - totally appealing, a victim of appalling parental neglect, and together he and Theo forge a friendship that's believable, destructive, and comical:

"Don't go!" said Boris, one night at his house when I stood up toward the end of The Magnificent Seven" ... "You'll miss the best part."

... "You saw this movie before?"

"Dubbed into Russian, if you can believe it. But very weak Russian. Sissy. Is sissy the word I want? More like schoolteachers than gunfighters, is what I'm trying to say."

The Las Vegas section is long and detailed, just like all the other sections of this novel. Tartt almost seems to be writing in real time, and yet I was never bored. A series of long set pieces moves the story from the suspenseful opening to the rich, dense, leisurely middle and eventually the action-packed end, which is set in Amsterdam. That part, weirdly, feels as if it was grafted on from a different novel. Or no, it almost feels as if it was grafted on from a particularly literate, stylish indie crime film on the Sundance Channel.

But the occasional disjointedness doesn't affect the overall success of the novel, which absorbed me from start to finish. While The Goldfinch delves seriously and studiously into themes of art, beauty, loss and freedom, I mostly loved it because it kept me wishing I could stay in its fully-imagined world a little longer. Donna Tartt was right to take her time with this book. Readers will want to take their time with it, too.

Meg Wolitzer's latest novel is The Interestings.

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More Is More In Donna Tartt's Believable, Behemoth 'Goldfinch'

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The author of The Secret History returns with a novel about art, love and loss that's drawn comparisons to Oliver Twist and the Harry Potter series. Reviewer Meg Wolitzer says The Goldfinch marks a departure from Tartt's previous work, but it's a rich, absorbing read - all 771 pages of it.

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NFT mastermind says he created Ethereum because Warcraft nerfed his character

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NFT mastermind says he created Ethereum because Warcraft nerfed his character

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https://www.polygon.com/22709126/ethereum-creator-world-of-warcraft-nerf-nft-vitalik-buterin

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Maybe take this with a grain of salt, but, the creator of Ethereum - the blockchain that spawned the NFT craze - says he was driven to create decentralized money because his World of Warcraftcharacter was cruelly nerfed.

"I happily played World of Warcraft during 2007-2010, but one day Blizzard removed the damage component from my beloved warlock's Siphon Life spell," Vitalik Buterin, the programmer who developed Ethereum's original concept in late 2013, says in a bio hosted at about.me. "I cried myself to sleep, and on that day I realized what horrors centralized services can bring. I soon decided to quit."

Ethereum's World of Warcraftties have been mentioned by Buterin before, including in a 2017 Wired profile. His about.me bio created a social media stir this weekend when Thomas Shadwell, a Google engineer, noticed and tweeted the comment.

Polygon has reached out to an Ethereum Foundation representative to ask if Buterin wants to elaborate on his remarks. No reply was received at publication time.

Buterin expressed broad suspicion of corporations in that Wired profile (but did not mention Blizzard Entertainment by name), telling the publication, "I saw everything to do with either government regulation or corporate control as just being plain evil. And I assumed that people in those institutions were kind of like Mr. Burns, sitting behind their desks saying, 'Excellent. How can I screw a thousand people over this time.'"

Siphon Life was indeed removed by World of Warcraft patch 3.1.0 - "Secrets of Ulduar," the first major content patch for the Wrath of the Lich King expansion that launched in November 2008. Patch 3.1.0 rolled out April 14, 2009. Buterin was 15 years old at the time.

At the time it was nerfed out of the game, Siphon Life would transfer 15 health per 3 seconds from the target to the spellcaster, for a maximum of 30 seconds. Patch 3.1.0 replaced that with a healing effect caused by the Warlock's Corruption spell - they get healing equivalent to 40% of the damage done by Corruption. At the time, Engadget said the change was "one of Blizzard's ways of simplifying [the Affliction tree's] complicated repertoire."

"It's a buff to Corruption, but the talent itself no longer offers a DPS boost," Engadget said, getting to the heart of Buterin's teenage anguish. Paraphrasing Buterin's own words, Wired said he "had recently quit playing World of Warcraft, and perhaps he was just looking for the next obsession to take its place."

Buterin conceived of the platform that would become Ethereum in late 2013, announcing it along with three financial backers at a Bitcoin conference in Miami a few months later. Ethereum was positioned as a more robust platform that could incorporate real-world assets, such as stocks and property. This led to NFTs, or Non-Fungible Tokens, which have effectively turned digital items like art, NBA video highlights, someone's tweets, and, of course, porn, into assets commanding eye-popping prices.

So, there you have it: No Warcraft nerf, no NFTs! Of course, that's a very reductionist view, even if it comes from the creator himself. The creator himself also lists his political affiliation as "intellectual hipster meta-contrarian," and his occupation as "it's complicated," so maybe this origin story is similarly tongue-in-cheek.

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NFT mastermind says he created Ethereum because Warcraft nerfed his character

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Maybe take this with a grain of salt, but, the creator of Ethereum - the blockchain that spawned the NFT craze - says he was driven to create decentralized money because his World of Warcraft character was cruelly nerfed.

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 “The 2021 Quarterback Commitment Index, Week 1 Edition” 

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 “The 2021 Quarterback Commitment Index, Week 1 Edition” 

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https://www.theringer.com/nfl/2021/9/9/22663732/nfl-preseason-qb-commitment-index-aaron-rodgers-rookies-russell-wilson

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The 2021 Quarterback Commitment Index, Week 1 Edition

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A team's relationship with its quarterback is like a romantic partnership: There are a thousand ways to make it work and a billion ways to screw it up. This year in particular, QB situations across the NFL have presented plenty of drama.

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Ariana Grande Tells the Cold Truth on Thank U, Next

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Ariana Grande Tells the Cold Truth on Thank U, Next

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https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/02/ariana-grande-thank-u-next-album-review-cold-truths/582376/

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The pop star's second album in six months rewrites mushy cliché with a sharp personal edge.

Courtesy of Ariana Grande, here's a new breakup phrase to fear: "Don't want you in my bloodline." Yes, the 25-year-old singer has thought ahead to the far-off century when she is but a leaf on Ancestry.com. She has determined the desired height and hair-shininess of the future influencers who will call her nonna. Your genome, sir, has been sequenced and found wanting. Take your trash DNA and go.

What a reversal. Grande's bubblegum used to peddle true love and triumph, or it offered escape: Unplug your brain, take home a stranger, surrender to the stair machine. In the singer's brief but seismically active career-quakes of news, aftershocks of hits-child-star rituals (like discovering sex) and awful realities (like terrorism) have been polished into tales of uplift. The starkly beautiful 2018 hit "No Tears Left to Cry" could well have been her last word on trauma. But only six months after the confetti-strewn therapy session of Sweetener, a fresh Grande album tends to new wounds while insisting, per one chorus, "Fuck a fake smile." Thank U, Next, brittle and biting, could be called February: The Album.

Grande's post- Sweetener life has been tough, with an ex's fatal overdose and a kiss-and-break-up saga that could hardly have been more public. As important, though, has been her realization about why the imperial-diva business model of the Katy Perry class faltered in recent years. "It's just like, 'Bruh, I just want to fucking talk to my fans and sing and write music and drop it the way these boys do,' " she told Billboard, contrasting her cumbersome promotional machine against the single-a-minute flexibility of SoundCloud rap. So when the chatter around her split from the comedian Pete Davidson began to hijack her image, she quickly cut a song that snatched back control. "Thank U, Next" wasn't musically pioneering, but it packed personality and specifics. Like with the hip-hop guys she's jealous of, her new music names names.

Both the strengths and flaws of Thank U, Next stem from a sense that, with just a few months to make an album, a brash attitude and the appearance of honesty are really all that matter. Which is not to slight the music, created by Grande with the seasoned smash-makers Max Martin, TB Hits, and Pop Wansel, as well as with younger songwriters in her posse, such as Tayla Parx and Victoria Monét. Again and again, the team alloys Grande's old tools-toy-box chimes, cutesy background refrains, satiny whispers and yodels-with stainless steel. The poignant opener, "Imagine," for example, revisits her first flirtations with the now-deceased Mac Miller, using dreamy waltz time, airy whistle tone ... and gear-grinding clank s. It's a sandcastle built on rock bottom.

If the instrumentation is distinctive, so are Grande's vocals, which continue her career-long melding of Broadway-isms, breathiness, and tricky rap imitations. But there's something locked in, by the book, about the underlying tunes. With Police-like guitars, sludgy trip-hop interludes, and Grande cleverly underplaying her delivery, the Martin-produced "Bad Idea" has the elements of a future-pop breakthrough. Yet it distractingly cops the melody, cadences, and even abject but defiant tone of that Gotye hit from a few years ago, " Somebody That I Used to Know." Elsewhere, the swirling R&B of "In My Head" slathers on Grande's tics-including a glass-shattering vocal run in the chorus-without landing a clean, memorable hook.

Yet Grande's personal edge ensures that even the duller portions of the album will leave a mark. Rewriting mushy clichés with a wary eye, the singer empathizes with an omnipresent "you" but doesn't ever give up agency to him. On the top-tier bop "NASA," which evokes Grande's sonic godmother Mariah Carey without recycling her, she kindly but firmly asks a lover for a night apart. The confessional centerpiece "Ghostin," all whooshing synths and sad strings, appears to time warp back to her wrenching moment of mourning Miller while trying to stay connected to Davidson. Then there's "Break Up With Your Girlfriend, I'm Bored," whose story line is right in the title. With Grande acknowledging the ugliness of the home-wrecker impulse, the song does a rare thing in pop: It takes a risk.

Still, nothing jolted me like "Bloodline," that track informing a fling that he's just not mating material. Martin's crew conjures fake dancehall, and while cribbing from the Caribbean is certainly an overplayed move for white pop stars (Grande went reggae-lite back on 2016's "Side to Side"), there's somehow still a live energy in the song's horns and pulsing bass. Thank U, Next is generally icy, but this track is hot, and despite the curt dismissal at its core, it actually doesn't read as bitter. "No need to apologize," Grande sings: the kind of truth-telling born of neither hurt nor callousness-both of which she has absolutely earned a right to-but mere freedom.

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Ariana Grande Tells the Cold Truth on 'Thank U, Next'

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The pop star's second album in six months rewrites mushy cliché with a sharp personal edge. Courtesy of Ariana Grande, here's a new breakup phrase to fear: "Don't want you in my bloodline." Yes, the 25-year-old singer has thought ahead to the far-off century when she is but a leaf on Ancestry.com.

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If you love ATLA, “Our Hopes and Predictions for the ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’ Movie” 

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If you love ATLA, “Our Hopes and Predictions for the ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’ Movie” 

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https://www.theringer.com/movies/2021/8/13/22623504/avatar-studios-the-last-airbender-new-movie

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Our Hopes and Predictions for the 'Avatar: The Last Airbender' Movie

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Thirty years ago this week, a rising but not-yet-ubiquitous kids network by the name of Nickelodeon launched its first original animated series. Introduced on August 11, 1991, under the brand of "Nicktoons," Doug, Rugrats, and The Ren & StimpyShow would quickly become hits and change the course of animation, television, and popular culture at large.

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Very funny article about, "Dear Evan Hansen'

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Very funny article about, "Dear Evan Hansen'

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https://www.vulture.com/2021/09/dear-evan-hansen-movie-how-old-does-ben-platt-look.html

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In 2009, Warner Bros. released Orphan, a horror movie about a young child who worms her way into a normal American household using perverse psychological manipulation before (spoiler alert) being revealed as an adult woman. On Thursday night, the audience at the opening night of the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival was lucky enough to be treated to an unofficial Orphan remake. It is called Dear Evan Hansen, and it is nominally the story of a high schooler who tells a white lie that spirals out of control. But based on what's staring us in the face from the movie's very first frames, it is hard to read that plot as anything other than a grown man's elaborate scheme to distract a bunch of teenagers from the fact that he is actually twice as old as they are. And even more chillingly, he gets away with it!

Since the film's trailer debuted last spring, much has been made of the fact that star Ben Platt - the only cast member to reprise his role from the stage, where Evan Hansen debuted to great acclaim in 2016 - now appears slightly too old to convincingly play a high-school senior. This is like saying that the cats in Cats look slightly more humanoid than my sister's cat, Jill. It's true, but it undersells the sense of physical revulsion just a tad. What's disturbing about Dear Evan Hansen is not just that the 27-year-old Platt is unbelievable as someone ten years younger. It's that all the film's efforts to transform him into a plausible teenager have the reverse effect of making the character of Evan Hansen appear to be somewhere in his mid-40s. When he gets up onstage for the second act's big musical number, I wasn't sure if he was going to memorialize his dead classmate or speak on the importance of 401(k) matching.

On the matter of Platt's advanced age, the filmmakers have employed a few key tricks. The first is to absolutely slather his face in pancake makeup, the better to conceal his decrepit 20-something wrinkles. This might have worked had director Stephen Chbosky set most of the film in dark alleyways or shot Platt from very far away. But no. The movie takes place almost exclusively under bright fluorescent lights, and its opening scenes feature the actor's face in extreme close-ups that show off every inch of his miraculously poreless skin. The effect lands somewhere between the Mystery Man in Lost Highway and Martin Short in Clifford.

To obscure the lines that appear on his forehead whenever Evan Hansen looks concerned, which is always, hair and makeup have given Platt a curly, bang-heavy hairstyle last seen on Howie Mandel in the '80s*. This was not the only occasion I suspected the film's craftspeople were enacting a subtle revenge on their leading man. The costume department frequently dresses him in a manner reminiscent of iconic SNL sketches where adults play children, from Jonah Hill's Benihana 6-year-old to Molly Shannon's Mary Katherine Gallagher. In flashbacks, Evan sports a boxy blue button-up that, combined with the wig, makes him a dead ringer for Julia Sweeney's Pat, which only heightens the sense that the entire movie is taking place in Studio 8H.

Physically, Platt has been instructed to mimic a high schooler by slouching a lot. This does not make him look like a teenager; it makes him look like an adult trying very hard to look like a teenager. In the '90s, films like Cruel Intentions and She's All That got away with casting actors in their late 20s as teens because they owned it; no one was trying to make viewers believe Paul Walker or Ryan Phillippe was an actual minor. But it also worked because the characters were swaggering alphas. Here, having a grown man play a diffident introvert makes him read not as vulnerable, but as shifty and evasive. Call it the Michael Jackson paradox.

The total failure of Evan Hansen's de-aging efforts is all the more surprising because the rest of the film is actually not terrible. The songs are catchy, the cast delivers them with appropriate emotion, and Chbosky's direction has a verve that's missing from other recent musical adaptations. (He appears to be the only guy left in Hollywood who knows that when characters dance, it helps to show their whole bodies.) But you never get used to the age thing. It's the best example I can remember of a film being sunk by a solitary bad decision - in the words of my colleague Alison Willmore, "an act of sabotage that's near avant-garde."

But hey, Orphan made nearly $80 million worldwide and has a prequel coming later this year. So maybe there's hope for Dear Evan Hansen yet.

*This article originally claimed that Ben Platt's Dear Evan Hansen haircut was a wig. It is, astoundingly, his own hair.

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How Old Does Ben Platt Look in Dear Evan Hansen?

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In 2009, Warner Bros. released Orphan, a horror movie about a young child who worms her way into a normal American household using perverse psychological manipulation before (spoiler alert) being revealed as an adult woman. On Thursday night, the audience at the opening night of the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival was lucky enough to be treated to an unofficial Orphan remake.

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Fallout: New Vegas (2010)-"Democracy Inaction"

Let's be honest: Fallout: New Vegas is the Fallout snob's Fallout game. Created by Obsidian Entertainment-one of two studios to rise from the dissolution of Interplay's legendary Black Isle Studios, creators of the original Fallout games and other classic RPGs-the Vegas-set spin-off is full of story nods and design decisions hearkening back to the series' pre- Fallout 3 history. Buggy, fiddly, and occasionally too complicated for its own damn good, New Vegas also offered up some of Fallout 's best writing and storytelling, something exemplified by its best vault-and, thus, the best vault in the entire series-Vault 11.

There's been a lot of Vault Talk on the internet of late, courtesy of Bethesda Softworks and the slowly growing hype push for its latest post-apocalyptic mystery project, . Although there's been plenty of speculation about what FO76 might actually turn out to be-with rumors leaning toward some kind of online survival game in the style of DayZ or Rust, which, sure, fine, whatever, if that's what brings you joy-the focus of the actual marketing has been on the vaults, one of the series' most distinctive features.

That's with good reason. Not only are these fortified bunkers-ostensibly designed to keep thousands of people alive during the nuclear war that set up the series' post-apocalyptic setting-one of the most distinct elements of Fallout's semi-satirical universe, but they're also one of Bethesda's best personal additions to the Fallout playbook. The studio didn't invent the vaults; the original Fallout starts with the player having just been kicked out of one, and Fallout 2 establishes the all-important twist that the vast majority of them were designed, not as life-saving measures, but as sick psychological experiments of the scientific sadists at the Vault-Tec corporation. But Fallout 3,which saw the studio resurrect the series as a first-person phenomenon, is the game that established the modern vault template: Find a reason to lure the player into a dimly lit, decrepit cave of steel and glass, throw a few monsters in their way to liven things up, and then use the environment and the occasional audio log to tell a tight, tragic little story. But while Fallout 3 -with its vaults full of homicidal musicians, mutation-generating viruses, and a whole lot of guys named Gary-set up the basic vault idea, it was up to another game and studio to take it to new heights.

But New Vegas is weirdly reticent about showing off its hidden masterpiece. Situated close to the center of the game's map, the player will only ever be directed to Vault 11 as part of a late-stage quest from reclusive techno-fetishists the Brotherhood Of Steel. Even then, the item the Brotherhood needs can be snagged after exploring just around half of the bunker. At that point, there's little keeping you in Vault 11 beyond its fundamental mystery, and designer Eric Fenstermaker is confident enough in the story that there's nothing but curiosity dragging you to its end.

Things start on an ominous note: When you arrive-decades too late, as ever-the big metal vault door has been inexplicably left open and its interior exposed to the elements. The fact that the only enemies in the vault are wildlife, like giant praying mantises and rats, helps establish an eerie, abandoned feeling as you wander its halls; it also means the focus here is less on combat and more on navigation and teasing the story apart. The first weird touches, visible from the very first room, are campaign posters. They're slathered on every surface, in the familiar red, white, and blue of the games' typically uber-patriotic take on Americana. But there's something weird about them, too.

It's almost like nobody wants the job they're campaigning for.

That unease quickly escalates when you check a computer sitting near the door leading deeper into the vault. Its sole contents are a voice recording of a conversation between five people, four of whom judge themselves to have been damned by whatever went on below, and who promptly take their own lives on-mic. (In a nice touch, you can find their skeletons and guns scattered around the room.) Descending into the vault itself, it's clear some kind of violent conflict broke out; not only is there overturned furniture and bodies everywhere, but some of the posters have been very intentionally defaced, changing the already-weird "I hate Nate" into the even less explicable "I hate Kate."

Poking around the vault's still-glowing computer terminals, we get a few more clues: a series of campaign messages from the various "candidates," each promising to do a worse job than the one before if elected vault overseer; a note, announcing that elections have been postponed; and an order from 11's latest leader, Katherine Stone (who shares a last name with one of the listed candidates, Nathaniel-a.k.a. "Nate"). Kate's message is the strangest: Citing her power as vault overseer, she's declared that elections have now been abolished, and that selection of the next overseer will now be done entirely by random assignment.

By this point, players with even a passing familiarity of The Twilight Zone or O. Henry will be pretty sure we've wandered into Shirley Jackson territory. Vault 11 doesn't spend a lot of time pretending the overseer job everyone is fighting to avoid is anything other than some kind of death sentence. The brilliance, then, is in the specificity and the pacing. The story-which the game categorizes under the quest name "Democracy Inaction"-isn't some generic, "Ha ha, politics sure are screwed up!" comedy. Rather, it's a very specific tale about the consolidation and abuse of power, about the way ethical lines erode when survival is on the line, and, in its own way, about the dangers of unchecked optimism from people who don't have to pay the costs when it ultimately turns out they're wrong.

We get our next piece of the puzzle when we descend into the vault's living quarters: a conversation between two men, one of whom is the head of the Justice Bloc, the largest collection of voters in Vault 11's fractured constituency. That mattered, back when enough votes was all it took to send a man or woman to their still poorly defined death. Now that Overseer Kate has abolished elections in favor of a true lottery, that power, and the safety it brought, has suddenly evaporated. The conversation ends with the pair plotting armed revolt. We've already seen the result of the campaign, in the morgue full of vault-dweller bodies and the booby-trapped mines and grenades strewn throughout 11's bullet-pocked halls.

A trip to the security offices on the next floor down fills in even more details, containing as it does the transcript of the murder trial of one Katherine Stone, future overseer of Vault 11. Her husband, Nate, got a little too lucky at poker night, you see, and that was all it took for the leaders of the Justice Bloc to put his name up as their next "endorsement," complete with enough votes to send him to his death-unless Kate was willing to "intervene." Hoping to save her husband from the dark side of democracy, Kate took the Bloc's exploitative deal, only to be stunned when, a month later, they put Nate's name up anyway. Pushed to the edge by an unfair system run by disgusting men, she decided to murder members of the Justice Bloc in an attempt to erase its majority and save her husband.

The most chilling part of Kate's testimony comes when she admits she wanted to be caught for the killings. That way, she notes, everyone in the vault would vote her to be the next overseer as punishment. ("They have to pick someone and live with their reasons," she resignedly remarks, one of the first real hints at Vault 11's satirical push.) By this point, we already know how her term in office played out, flipping the situation on the Justice Bloc, breaking its power, and leaving the vault's fate entirely to chance and anarchy. That's only emphasized when we fight our way through all the bugs, vermin, traps, and flooded passageways to reach the atrium, where the final piece of the puzzle seemingly locks into place: a speech from the vault's ombudsman, Gus Olson, revealing what most players probably already guessed.

There's still power in the bluntness with which the game lays out what it's been coyly talking around for the last hour, as Gus recites lines like, "The last overseer has finished his term and walked to his death in the chamber beneath his office," and, "We want it to make sense. To understand why the vault's mainframe will kill us if we do not offer one of our own as a yearly sacrifice." And he tells the story of the vault's first overseer, the only person to enter vault 11 already knowing the death sentence its inhabitants would live under, and who was shocked when his citizens forced him to be the first sacrifice on the block, fusing together the practice of "leader" and "martyr" for years to come.

In some lesser draft of Vault 11, this is the end of the story. It's everything you'd expect from a Fallout vault: a horrible psychological experiment, human frailty, a lot of dead bodies to step over, a nasty twist, a hero or two, and some loot. Now that we've gotten the catharsis of discovery, it should be time to trek back to the door and find some place to plop down all your latest scavenger swag.

Except... there's still that recording from the entrance, the one where the burned-up residents shot themselves. And the locked terminal in the overseer's office, presumably leading down to the sacrificial chamber. And the password to open it, hidden at the end of Gus' speech. Walking into a death chamber-as so many Vault 11 overseers did before you-is an objectively bad idea. There's no in-game reason to do it; no extra weaponry, no important quest item locked away down there. That's how you know New Vegas ' designers understand the power of the vaults as storytelling tools. They know you're going to go down there, not because of some extrinsic reward, but because at this point, you've simply got to know.

What lays beneath the overseer's office is some of Fallout's finest dark comedy, as well as one of its nastiest, most gut-slugging twists. As you walk down a solemn metal corridor, a soothing voice encourages you to "walk into the light" (cue blinding spotlights). On the other side is a ratty chair, a projector, and a vase full of "calming" flowers. Once you sit down, a video plays, pitched at that sort of folksy '50s insincerity that Fallout does so well. The newly minted martyr is invited to think back on the best moments of their life. Playing catch with dad. Doing well at school. Kissing a cutie. "These are just examples," it cheerfully notes. Then, in that same smarmy tone, the video asks the viewer to contemplate what comes next. "Close your eyes now, and imagine what joys await you in the next life-in the afterlife. Can you see them? Good." And that's when the walls open up, and the killer robots start spraying you with lasers and lead.

Even if you're expecting it (and how could you not be, at this point?), this fight can be a sudden shock to the system, but you can survive, and there's far worse still to come. Beyond the walls the robots emerged from, there's a door into the vault's mainframe. On it are two messages, recorded many years ago. One is from the final five survivors of the community's bloody infighting, telling the system they're finally, after years of elections and consequence-free murder, refusing to give in to its whims and send another sacrifice into the waiting maw. The second is the system's auto-reply, congratulating the residents for successfully completing the intended experimental goals by doing the decent thing and refusing to sacrifice one of their own:

Despite what you were led to believe, the population of Vault 11 is not going to be exterminated for its disobedience. Instead, the mechanism to open the main vault door has now been enabled, and you can come and go at your leisure. But not so fast! Be sure to check with your overseer to find out if it's safe to leave. Here at Vault-Tec, your safety is our number one priority.

Now that they've passed the test, the residents are free of the artificial demands; hell, the computer even unlocks the door so they can spread their message of thoughtful nonconformity to the rest of the wastes.

Fallout is often labeled a cynical series. This is, after all, a world where humanity jammed a gun against its own head and pulled the trigger, where the few survivors were kept alive largely by the foresight of insane scientists drooling at the thought of helpless batches of test subjects locked in sterile metal tombs. And yet Vault 11's shaggy dog story is worse, in its way, because its creators had hope. They had hope that humanity could be better when it came together, that people in their aggregate could find a nobility and courage that the individual might lack. They failed to understand that the vaults carried a label of their own-"CONTENTS UNDER PRESSURE"-and that people can and will do terrible things to survive, especially if you've got a process in place, like, say, an election, to diffuse and absolve them of their guilt.

On your way back up and out of the vault, past all the bodies, the posters, the self-interest, the death, you walk by the computer with that first message on it, with the five voices arguing out their fates. It's worth playing again, just as a refresher. "'A shining example.' That's what it called us," one voice hollowly notes. Another dissents, "Anybody would have done what we did!" "You ask me," a third replies, "that's exactly the problem. Now let's get on with this." There are four gunshots. The last man drops his gun and runs. War's not the only thing that never changes.

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Fallout's best vault elected to tell the series' darkest story

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Let's be honest: Fallout: New Vegas is the Fallout snob's Fallout game. Created by Obsidian Entertainment-one of two studios to rise from the dissolution of Interplay's legendary Black Isle Studios, creators of the original Fallout games and other classic RPGs-the Vegas-set spin-off is full of story nods and design...

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Once Naked For Nirvana, Now A Teen Spirit

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Once Naked For Nirvana, Now A Teen Spirit

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https://www.npr.org/2008/07/23/92833535/once-naked-for-nirvana-now-a-teen-spirit

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Imagine if millions of people had seen you naked before you were old enough to say "embarrassing." That's the story of Spencer Elden, whom you may know as the little baby floating toward a dollar bill on the cover of Nirvana's 1991 album, Nevermind.

Nearly 17 years later, amid hating school and playing water polo, Elden is still struggling to make sense of his (very) public image.

"Quite a few people in the world have seen my penis," he says from his home in Los Angeles. "So that's kinda cool. I'm just a normal kid living it up and doing the best I can while I'm here."

Nevermind is often credited with changing the face of rock. Elden's naked participation in this important moment in music history was rather accidental; Kirk Weddle, the photographer working on the cover, was simply a friend of Spencer's dad, Rick.

"[He] calls us up and was like, 'Hey Rick, wanna make 200 bucks and throw your kid in the drink?,'" Rick recounts. "I was like, 'What's up?' And he's like, 'Well, I'm shooting kids all this week, why don't you meet me at the Rose Bowl, throw your kid in the drink?' And we just had a big party at the pool, and no one had any idea what was going on!"

Three months later, while driving down Sunset Blvd., the Elden family spotted a 9-foot-by-9-foot Spencer floating across Tower Records' wall. Two months later, Geffen Records sent 1-year-old Spencer Elden a platinum album and a teddy bear.

Over the coming years, 26 million albums were sold. As Elden learned to walk, talk and sing - his pale baby arms stretched across millions of grungy fans' walls; his private parts stood magnified across billboards and floors.

In some places, his image stuck. The other day, his friends spotted a giant Nevermind photo on the floor of a record store in Hollywood.

"My friend is all like, 'Hey I saw you today.' And I'm like, 'Dude, I was working all day.' And he's like, 'No, I went to Geffen Records, and you're on the floor and you're floating and I stepped on your face. 'Cause I guess they have like a floating thing where people can like walk on me and stuff ... so it's kinda cool," he says.

Life in general isn't quite as "cool" as it was when he jumped naked in the pool in the early '90s, though, he says. These days, his peers are too stuck on the Internet and video games. Ironically, he yearns for the era that gave Kurt Cobain, the lead singer for Nirvana, so much angst.

These days, Elden says, his peers concentrate on "playing Rock Band on Xbox, like, that's not a real band! That's the difference between the '90s and kids nowadays; kids in the '90s would actually go out and make a [real] band!"

But overall, life is good, he says. When he's not being repressed by video games and computers, Elden blasts music - mostly techno - and carries around a big bag of angst, mostly around the fact that he is "so over" high school.

"Same people, same teachers ... going to your locker, worrying about stupid girls ... I wanna get something going, I wanna travel," he says.

Last fall, travel he did - all the way to military boarding school for six months. All his parents will say is that he's done his fair share of "testing authority."

Now he's trying to graduate from high school a year early. And he's talking about applying to West Point or becoming an artist ... or something.

As Spencer is wont to say, "I just take it as it comes. If I like it, I like it; if I don't like it, I don't like it."

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Once Naked For Nirvana, Now A Teen Spirit

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Imagine if millions of people had seen you naked before you were old enough to say "embarrassing." That's the story of Spencer Elden, whom you may know as the little baby floating toward a dollar bill on the cover of Nirvana's 1991 album, Nevermind.

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https://www.avclub.com/grim-star-studded-time-loop-game-twelve-minutes-doesn-1847561136

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Every Friday, A.V. Club staffers kick off our weekly open thread for the discussion of gaming plans and recent gaming glories, but of course, the real action is down in the comments, where we invite you to answer our eternal question:

If a video game is going to make you repeatedly drug your wife in order to progress, it should at least have the good grace to not make doing so a massive pain in the ass.

That's the crux-several of the cruxes-the cruces of what's wrong with Annapurna Interactive's new "guy stuck in a time loop" game Twelve Minutes. It's not just that its story, operating in a genre ideally built on letting players do whatever the hell they want, is so tightly constrained that it resembles a rather mean-spirited spin on old-school adventure game design. It's that it makes performing all these acts of minor-to-heinous evil such a stiff, click-heavy, and above all else repetitive chore to perform. As someone who's done some awful (virtual) things in video games-shout-out, with a shudder, to the Dark Side path in the original Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic-I don't necessarily have a problem with a game requiring me to do twisted shit to move forward. (Even if making a time loop game with one correct path does feel like something of a waste.) But as something of a connoisseur of this particular thriving little sub-genre, I can promise you that there are ways to make going through the loop feel less punishing and dull than Twelve Minutes ultimately does.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's dispense first with the premise of the game, which stars high-powered, weirdly anonymous voice talent James McAvoy, Daisy Ridley, and Willem Dafoe, and was created by Luis Antonio, who I talked to for a preview of the game a few months back. The story concerns an unnamed man who comes home to his unnamed wife, only for an unnamed cop to barge in after a few minutes of domestic bliss, insist the wife is a murderer, and then beat or kill the man into unnamed submission. At which point, time rewinds to the moment the man first entered his apartment, and you get to do it all again, searching for a way out of the mess.

There are compelling ideas here-obviously, which is why there's been an uptick in Groundhog Day riffs in gaming in recent years, from the various games by The Sexy Brutale's Tequila Works, to the Shakespearean Elsinore, to recent delight . Time loops are a natural fit for video games, since, in some way, every non-procedurally generated game operates in one: Mario might die, but the player's knowledge of the world he exists in, and the consequences of possible actions, all persist. The idea of repeating a sequence of events, trying to figure out the perfect solution, is baked right into the medium. What, then, makes Twelve Minutes one of the worst time loop games we've ever played?

First: It's hard to over-emphasize how unpleasant it is to navigate the game's exceptionally small world. Viewed from a top-down perspective that feels design-built for an eventual mobile release, the game lets you move the man around the room by listlessly clicking, tapping on named hotspots to try to interact with a cup or a knife or a bottle of sleeping pills or whatever. All of these little movements (only made even more fiddly when there's another character also moving in the environment) have been calculated to eat some of your ticking time, and none of it has been calculated to feel good in the hands. Ditto the conversation system, which sometimes allows you to skip through dialogue, but often forces you to sit through the same conversations over, and over again-especially when you're prodding at the edges of the game's strictly dictated decision trees, looking for differences in each loop to find the next step forward. Other games in this space quickly work out that repetition isn't the fun part of the timeloop fantasy- Elsinore lets you institute a sort of fast travel, while The Forgotten City gifts you a helpful NPC who you can assign to complete any chores you finished on a previous task. Twelve Minutes does very little of this lifting of inconveniences; it's like if Groundhog Day made you watch Phil fully brush his teeth before starting every single version of February 2. For a game where you're obviously interested in running as many loops as you can to see how it all plays out? It's utter death.

And what do you get for all this struggle with the base act of playing the game? A story that compares poorly to pretty much every other game I've mentioned. I'm not going to go into spoilers- our colleagues at Kotaku have a takedown of many of the more tawdry elements of the game's plot, including an ending that is perversely easy to see coming because it's so "shocking" and "unpredictable"-but Antonio's stated desire to make a game about the power of remembering has created a narrative that's strangely forgettable. The game tries to wrestle with the gravity of the depraved acts that being trapped in a loop like this can (and, if you're trying to move the game forward, will) force your protagonist to perform, but even here, it all feels like lip service. And it doesn't help that every single character in the game is some flavor of massively unsympathetic; it might be kind of clever, in a meta sort of way, to make the woman you're ostensibly trying to save a massive obstacle to your forward progression, but it doesn't make the plot of "Man" or "Wife" any easier to relate to.

That's the bad news. Here's the good: You don't have to play it, even if you love time loops! Go try Elsinore or The Forgotten City; they both outpace this higher-budget offering in pretty much every regard. That's the great thing about time loops, right? You can always undo a mistake.

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Star-studded time loop game Twelve Minutes doesn't bear repeating

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Every Friday, A.V. Club staffers kick off our weekly open thread for the discussion of gaming plans and recent gaming glories, but of course, the real action is down in the comments, where we invite you to answer our eternal question: If a video game is going to make you repeatedly drug your wife in order to progress, it should at least have the good grace to not make doing so a massive pain in the ass.

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God of War Ragnarok: “Fat Thor” Design Divides the Internet Despite Being Perfect

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God of War Ragnarok: “Fat Thor” Design Divides the Internet Despite Being Perfect

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https://www.denofgeek.com/games/god-of-war-ragnarok-thor-design-controversy-reactions-memes/

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Of course, that brings us to the main controversy at the moment: the divide between those who love this design and those who look at it and simply see "Fat Thor" (a label also applied to Chris Hemsworth's aforementioned look in Avengers: Endgame).

Look, you probably already know what the dissenters are saying. In their mind, Thor should be a muscular warrior with abs that cut diamonds and biceps that would have gotten him kicked out of the WWF in the early '90s. That's certainly how we're used to seeing such characters portrayed in most modern forms of entertainment, despite the fact that some of the strongest, toughest, and most athletically impressive people in the real world look nothing like on-screen superheroes. Not only are there various body types in the world, but the popular perception of what kinds of people have what body types and how we perceive their abilities based on a quick look at those body types has become warped to the point of absurdity.

While some are saying that they're not going to buy God of War: Ragnarok due to their belief that this design is somehow mocking Thor, Vikings, and (in some especially sad cases), human males everywhere, we highly doubt that PlayStation Studios is sweating the heat. Actually, the majority of people seem to be rushing to the defense of Thor's design via hilarious and accurate observations.

Don't you love it when dudes complain that women only like guys with unrealistic bodies like the second Thor here, but are now crying 'cause GOW Thor looks like a realistic weight-lifter? https://t.co/AnypHsK6S4
- ☔ Noiry ☔ (@Noiry) September 10, 2021

People r complaining about how Thor looks in God of War Ragnarok.

1) He looks closer to the stories than like any other version in modern media.

2) He looks strong AF and I'd be terrified if that man came running up on me. pic.twitter.com/A2yiDTz0VR
- 🏳️‍⚧️Goat Demon Bitch🏳️‍⚧️ (@GoatDemonBitch) September 10, 2021

Funny how people have been laughing at GoW Thor for being "fat" but he's got a similar build to a lot of the strongest competition strongmen

He may be big but he could absolutely kill you pic.twitter.com/8nXYd4HS4f
- Andrew (@Swordfish978) September 10, 2021

To the people hating on Thor's look in #GodofWar ...

Please, JUST ONCE, let us fluffy guys have a character who looks like us and isn't a joke character. It's nice to see someone who is badass but also has fluff.

Sincerely,

The dad bod (now officially god bod) community. pic.twitter.com/ytxHDAY9wl
- ThatOldGamerGuy (@thatoldgamerguy) September 10, 2021

That really is the best thing about this design. Whereas Hemsworth's look in Endgame was mostly played for laughs (which is honestly pretty much how many body types are still treated in mainstream media when they're portrayed at all), it's pretty clear that this point that 's Thor is no laughing matter. He looks like he's going to be one of Kratos' toughest challenges yet, and we can't wait to see these two face off in what should be a truly epic battle.

It's a shame that such a logical, consistent, well-done, yet still different character design still seems to be a lightning rod of controversy, but since this is becoming a bit of a talking point at the moment, let our final word on the matter be that God of War: Ragnarok's Thor looks amazing and that we can't wait to see more of him whenever the game is eventually released for PS4 and PS5.

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God of War Ragnarok: "Fat Thor" Design Divides the Internet Despite Being Perfect - Den of Geek

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Of course, that brings us to the main controversy at the moment: the divide between those who love this design and those who look at it and simply see "Fat Thor" (a label also applied to Chris Hemsworth's aforementioned look in Avengers: Endgame ). Look, you probably already know what the dissenters are saying.

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How Marvel’s New TV Triad Will Shape the MCU’s Next Phase

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How Marvel’s New TV Triad Will Shape the MCU’s Next Phase

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https://www.vulture.com/article/marvel-disney-series-mcu-phase-4-loki-wandavision-falcon.html

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How Marvel's New TV Triad Will Shape the MCU's Next Phase

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Let's review the key takeaways from the first three Disney+ Marvel series-WandaVision, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and Loki-to see what the series tell us about the movies and TV shows to come, and the major characters who will shape Phase 4.