#COVID-19 Safe Products

[kickmuncher3]

Dimension 20 Season Master List

Dimension 20 is Dropout’s TTRPG actual play comedy anthology series known for its high production value and shorter self-contained seasons. It has a core cast of improv comedians and rotating guest casts from the worlds of tabletop and comedy. All of Dimension 20 can be found on the streaming service Dropout.tv, but many episodes and seasons are available for free. Below is a regularly updated list of the seasons’ premises and where to watch them:

Fantasy High: D&D races in a John Hughes-esque suburbia, set at a high school for adventurers. The full season is free on YouTube HERE and is uncensored on Dropout. Also, there are two Dropout exclusive live shows that take place chronologically between the first and second seasons of Fantasy High. The first live show from Brooklyn is HERE. The second one from Austin is HERE.

Fantasy High: Sophomore Year: A sequel to Fantasy High with a lower production value and no battle sets (due to the fact that it was livestreamed and not prerecorded). The full season is free on YouTube HERE and is ad-free on Dropout. There are also two one-shots that take place between the second and third seasons of Fantasy High. First one is only on Dropout HERE. Second one is free on YouTube HERE.

Fantasy High: Junior Year: Part 3 of Fantasy High, featuring the return of high production value and physical battle sets. The first episode is free on YouTube HERE. New episodes posted on Dropout every Wednesday.

Escape from the Bloodkeep: A shorter season with a guest cast. A workplace comedy about the end of Lord of the Rings from the perspective of the villains. Full season is free on YouTube HERE and is ad-free on Dropout.

The Unsleeping City: The secret magical world of New York City. The full season is free on YouTube HERE and is ad-free on Dropout.

The Unsleeping City: Chapter II: A sequel to The Unsleeping City with a lower production value due to COVID-19. The first episode is free on YouTube HERE and the full season is on Dropout.

Tiny Heist: A shorter season with a guest cast. Ocean’s Eleven meets The Borrowers meets Toy Story meets A Bug’s Life. The first episode is free on YouTube HERE and the full season is on Dropout.

A Crown of Candy: Game of Thrones meets Candyland. The first episode is free on YouTube HERE and the full season is on Dropout.

Pirates of Leviathan: A spin-off of Fantasy High: Sophomore Year set on a floating pirate city. A shorter season with a guest cast and lower production value due to COVID-19. The first episode is free on YouTube HERE and the full season is on Dropout.

Mice & Murder: An anthropomorphic turn-of-the-century murder mystery. Agatha Christie meets The Wind in the Willows. A shorter season with a guest cast, shot remotely due to COVID-19. The first episode is free on YouTube HERE and the full season is on Dropout.

Misfits and Magic: Four American exchange students at a Hogwarts-esque magic school. A four-part mini-season with a guest cast and a guest GM. The first episode is free on YouTube HERE and the full season is on Dropout (along with a holiday special and a live show).

The Seven: The adventures of a girl group of heroic high schoolers. A Fantasy High spinoff taking place in an alternate timeline after the events of Sophomore Year. A shorter season with a guest cast. The first episode is free on YouTube HERE and the full season is on Dropout.

Shriek Week: The love lives and adventures of the students at a university for monsters. A four-part mini-season with a guest cast and a guest GM. The first episode is free on YouTube HERE and the full season is on Dropout.

A Starstruck Odyssey: A zany space opera set in Elaine Lee’s Starstruck universe. The first episode is free on YouTube HERE and the full season is on Dropout.

Coffin Run: A gravely injured Count Dracula’s followers’ quest to safely return him to his castle. A shorter season with a guest cast and a guest GM. The first episode is free on YouTube HERE and the full season is on Dropout.

A Court of Fey & Flowers: A Regency inspired comedy of manners set in the Feywild. A shorter season with a guest cast and a guest GM. The first episode is free on YouTube HERE and the full season is on Dropout. 

Neverafter: A fairytale multiverse of horror. The first episode is free on YouTube HERE and the full season is on Dropout.

The Ravening War: A prequel to A Crown of Candy, taking place over the course of a years-long war between the food groups. A shorter season with a guest cast and a guest GM. The first episode is free on YouTube HERE and the full season is on Dropout.

Dungeons and Drag Queens: A D&D campaign with all drag queen players. A four-part mini-season with a guest cast. The first episode is free on YouTube HERE and the full season is on Dropout.

Mentopolis: A hard-boiled detective story set inside a human brain. Inside Out meets film noir. A shorter season with a guest cast. The first episode is free on YouTube HERE and the full season is on Dropout.

Burrow’s End: A family of stoats’ struggle to survive against mysterious outside forces. A shorter season with a guest cast and a guest GM. The first episode is free on YouTube HERE and the full season is on Dropout.

The seasons can be watched in any order (except for the sequel seasons to Fantasy High and Unsleeping City), but that’s what’s available for free in case you’re on the fence about getting Dropout, which is totally worth the small subscription fee. They have a bunch of other awesome non-D20 series like Total Forgiveness and Game Changer, not to mention the Dimension 20 after-show Adventuring Party. 

#i decided to make this it's own separate post #dimension 20 #fantasy high #escape from the bloodkeep #the unsleeping city #tiny heist #a crown of candy #pirates of leviathan #mice & murder #misfits and magic #the seven #shriek week #a starstruck odyssey #coffin run #a court of fey and flowers #neverafter #the ravening war #CollegeHumor #dungeons and drag queens #dropout #mentopolis #burrow’s end

[raindovemodel]

Tried this again- washing hands, entering, exiting, and using restroom stalls.

I’ve done this experiment prior to Covid-19 and in it I found that it was far more dangerous and confrontational to enter the women’s restroom in gender nonconformity. People hit, shouted, and even had me dragged out. However in a new 2022 study of over 75 binary bathrooms tested (in london area) things were noticeably shifted. I was stopped and confronted about an equal number of times in both restrooms. People in the mens room were more likely to get security involved than before. People in the womens room were more likely to accept that I was allowed to be in there if I explained. But people in the mens room were more likely to demand proof of some kind. Such as an ID or even use of urinals. Overall both were unsafe feeling at times. But to the credit- I felt safer in the womens room than the mens for the majority of the time (and for the first time since doing these experiments). Although in the womens room I have always felt a huge amount of empathy or guilt whenever my natural aesthetic scares someone because I know that fear is rooted in trauma which is valid. But yet- if I have to use the bathroom on my “birth certificate” then this is what a “woman’s room attendee looks like”. Even in a dress I can get reported in the “womens room” often as a product of transphobia when people assume I’m a transwoman. Typically my encounters, even if I’m hit by someone, lead to me holding them in their trauma and telling them it will be ok. That weighs a lot on my conscience sometimes- creating that amount of disturbance and anguish just by existing. We still have a long way to go to create safe places for people just to relieve themselves. But for my safety for now- if I just want to feel the safest and don’t have capacity to educate- I’ll be using the mens room in a collared shirt or jacket. That seems the safest combo.

What do You think?

#social experiment #gender fluid #gender #lgbtq community #funny tumblr #viral video

[fuckyeahfluiddynamics]

#COVID-19 #disease transmission #fluid dynamics #medicine #numerical simulation #physics #science

[beardedmrbean]

A disorienting and blinding fog connected to a store's alarm is a relatively new security measure to stop would-be thieves as organized retail crime spirals out of control.

The technology, which was created by DensityUSA, is already in use in several countries in the European Union and Australia but is becoming more prevalent in the U.S., said Mike Egel, president of DensityUSA.

Stores lost an estimated $86.6 billion to retail theft in 2022, and projections indicate that amount may reach $115 billion in 2025, according to Capital One Shopping Research.

"I think the COVID-19 pandemic tore the social and economic fabric of America," Egel told Fox News Digital. "Pre-pandemic, crime was on the decline. But when the nation shut down and the economy stepped backwards, common sense went to an all-time low. And sadly, crime rose and continues to grow."

Businesses have been forced to hide products behind registers or lock them up in glass cases to protect their inventory.

That hasn't stopped orchestrated smash-and-grab robberies in which thieves execute intricate plots to grab as many items as possible and leave before witnesses get a good look or police respond.

DOLLAR TREE TAKING ‘VERY DEFENSIVE APPROACH’ TO SHOPLIFTING, CEO SAYS

Egel said there was one instance in the United Kingdom where a truck took out the entire front of a jewelry store, but the fog covered the 900-square-foot space in less than five seconds.

"Once it's activated, the DensityUSA system creates a dense fog with near-zero visibility conditions in just seconds," Egel said. "The fog is designed to be dense and disorientating to deter an intruder from following through with their intentions."

In the case of the U.K. jewelry store, the thieves came away empty-handed, he said: "Thieves can’t steal what they can’t see."

The company is based in St. Louis, but the European Union was the first to approve the fog machine as a crime deterrent.

After seeing its success, Egel said he and his business partner, Scott Bader, introduced their security measure to the United States, which is used in stores in a handful of states.

"After seeing the rise in crime across the United States and billions of dollars lost to intrusions, including burglaries, riots and looting, we partnered with our colleagues in the European Union to bring Density Global to the U.S. as DensityUSA," Egel said.

"The system can be used in all retail settings, from clothing stores and pharmacies to cannabis stores, from convenience stores to gun shops."

A 2022 report from the Retail Security Survey found $94.5 billion in losses in 2021 because of shrink – losses coming from causes other than sales – which includes shoplifting and damaged products.

That's up from $90.8 billion in 2020.

"The study found that, similar to the last five years, the average shrink rate in 2021 was 1.4%," according to the study.

Organized retail crime, which increased on average by 26.5% in 2021, is the driving force, the study says.

Retailers, on average, saw a 26.5% increase in organized retail crime (ORC).

"Eight in 10 retailers surveyed report that the violence and aggression associated with ORC incidents increased in the past year," the 2022 Retail Security Survey says.

"The current climate of active assailants and gun violence add to retailers' concerns about being able to keep employees and customers safe."

#nunyas news

[brian-in-finance]

Image: Punch Drunk Critics

The Rami Malek movie The Amateur from 20th Century Studios takes the old date of Deadpool 3, that being November 8, 2024. The pic, directed by James Hawes, follows a CIA cryptographer who, after his wife is killed in a London terrorist attack, demands his bosses go after them. When it becomes clear they won’t act due to conflicting internal priorities, he blackmails the agency into training him and letting him go after them himself.

From left: The new 'Captain America' movie, 'Avatar 3', new 'Alien' film and new 'Blade' movie among the major release date changes for Disney /Everett Collection

‘Thunderbolts’, ‘Blade’, ‘Avengers: Kang Dynasty’, ‘Secret Wars’ Among Disney Release Date Changes Due To WGA Strike

It feels like Covid all over again, but it’s not. Disney has just made a slew of release-date changes, many due to the impact of the WGA strike and screenplays not being ready and productions paused.

We already know that Thunderbolts and Blade are waiting the strike out before rolling cameras. Scripts aren’t fully ready in regards to the new Avengers movies. Avengers: Kang Dynasty goes from May 2, 2025, to May 1, 2026. Avengers: Secret Wars is also pushed another year from May 1, 2026, to May 7, 2027.

We told you that 2023 largely was safe in regards to staying intact (knock on wood), but the ramifications of the writers strike and productions paused will be felt throughout 2024 and beyond. Commence the great release-date shuffle by the motion picture studios.

Also the other delay here with the MCU titles is that Disney wants to make sure they’re better — better than what they’ve been doing from script stage to VFX in the wake of fan pans and lower post-pandemic box office results for such films as Eternals, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Thor: Love & Thunder and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.

First major change is that the untitled Deadpool movie will fire off next summer, May 3, while Captain America: Brave New World, gets pushed to July 26, 2024. Thunderbolts stays in 2024, moving off July 26 to December 20. Deadpool 3, in a vote of confidence moves up from Nov. 8, 2024.

Blade goes from September 6, 2024, to Feb. 14, 2025 — that Valentine’s Day/near Presidents Day frame which has been a sweet spot for MCU.

Fantastic Four shifts deeper into 2025, from February 14 to May 2.

Avatar 3 officially is delayed a year from December 20, 2024, to December 19, 2025. Which thus pushes other sequels from James Cameron as Avatar 4 shifts from December 18, 2026, to December 21, 2029, and Avatar 5 goes from December 22, 2028, to December 19, 2031. While these scripts already are locked, the shift of movies due to the WGA strike is pushing the Avatar sequels around. Producer Jon Landau said the following today about the moves:

The Star Wars movies, which still are being baked, are getting kicked down the road like cans: One of them goes from December 19, 2025, to May 22, 2026. A another untitled one gets added on December 18, 2026.

The new live-action Moana movie with Dwayne Johnson has staked out the summer date of June 27, 2025, about a week earlier from its previous July 2 date.

The new Alien movie, which is shooting overseas, takes the Disney RSVP date of August 16, 2024.

The Rami Malek movie The Amateur from 20th Century Studios takes the old date of Deadpool 3, that being November 8, 2024. The pic, directed by James Hawes, follows a CIA cryptographer who, after his wife is killed in a London terrorist attack, demands his bosses go after them. When it becomes clear they won’t act due to conflicting internal priorities, he blackmails the agency into training him and letting him go after them himself.

Disney also has RSVP’d the following dates for untitled films: September 6, 2024; March 21, 2025 (instead of April 11, 2025); a Marvel movie for July 25, 2025; August 8, 2025 (instead of August 15 that year); and an MCU title on November 7, 2025. A Disney movie that was set for May 22, 2026, has been removed from the schedule.

Deadline

Remember when we learned when The Amateur would be released?

#Tait rhymes with hat #Good times #The Amateur #8 November 2024 #Deadline #13 June 2023 #Thanks castlemaine123

[materialsscienceandengineering]

Color-changing material indicates when medications get too warm

Some foods and medicines, such as many COVID-19 vaccines, must be kept cold. As a step toward a robust, stable technique that could indicate when these products exceed safe limits, researchers in ACS Nano report a class of brilliantly colored microcrystals in materials that become colorless over a wide range of temperatures and response times. As a proof of concept, the team packaged the color-changing materials into a vial lid and QR code.

Walk-in freezers and refrigerated trucks generally maintain their set temperatures, but accidents can happen. Wireless sensors can monitor the temperature of individual products, but these devices produce a lot of electronic waste.

Recently, researchers have suggested using materials that act as visual indicators to provide this information with less waste. Yet some current options using colorful reactions or dyes produce hues that can fade, or they only track above-freezing temperatures, which isn't useful for some COVID-19 vaccines that can actually start breaking down below freezing—above -4° or -94° Fahrenheit. So, Yadong Yin, Xuemin Du and colleagues wanted to develop a better color-changing material with tunable melting to track a wide range of temperatures.

Read more.

#Materials Science #Science #Color #Temperature #Smart materials #Structural color

[maximumwobblerbanditdonut]

Did PCJ and SH take COVID-19 protocols seriously? Because their behaviours showed the opposite.

PCJ and SH in People’s chat have pointed out how Covid protocols were followed, during the filming of Love Again (previous title Text for You) when PCJ was stranded in London with her husband to shoot the film in 2020.

In reality, there are some deviations from how PCJ and SH understood following the COVID-19 protocols, infringing the Covid restrictions. It's not the fault of the pandemic 😷 or the Government, and don't blame the virus for having irresponsible behaviour with actions that broke the UK COVID-19 rules and British Film Commission coronavirus guidance.

PCJ was reportedly in violation of the strict UK lockdown rules, to curb the rising number of Covid-19 cases. She was photographed visiting the salon alongside her mother and dog open privately to colouring her hair, saying it was for a film role. PCJ didn't say which film her mom would be in, to allow enter the salon with her.

The Met Police were alerted to reports of a Covid breach taking place within hairdressers. The regulations stated that ‘personal care services’, including salons and spas, should close. Hairdressers by law shouldn't have been opened, she should have been fined with the hairdressers. There are no excuses for her actions. No one is above the law— They thought they didn’t have to do the lockdown like the rest of us?

On the other hand, her co-protagonist SH has a history of breaking the law during the Covid-19 pandemic. At that time the reality regarding the COVID-19 pandemic was true and it was surprising to see SH and some cast of the film not knowing how to behave during this period and acting confused thinking that they were schoolmates in the playground at Lunch time. Why would the rules be any different for them?

Social distancing cost every production a fortune during the pandemic. Which was the result? You can't control what an actor (Covidiot) does at all times? Face covering and social distancing was required by COVID-19 Guidance: British Film Commission (BFC), especially in enclosed areas without adequate ventilation or where cast and crew are working closely. In a lockdown, Quarantining the cast and crew of a film or series was a key part of the plan.

His quarantine with loopholes. Outside the bubble, It was prohibited him from mixing with anyone from outside during filming or training.👇He broke the rules by not covering his mouth and nose without a face mask and taking photos with strangers 😷 “The rules applied to everyone and were put in place to keep people safe.” But, SH was not very careful. That sounds like he was determined to do as He, pleased. Was that one rule for him and another rule for everyone else?

SH’s actions were “totally indefensible” as people across the country made great sacrifices every day to help beat Covid. He openly branded himself a 'COVIDIOT' after regularly flouted government guidance during the coronavirus pandemic. So we could define it in another way: he was the perfect buffoon. SH never apologised for his mistakes and selfish behaviours.

This proves PCJ and SH things that they adopted to do for fun don't really seem fun anymore. Tired of them complaining about self-distancing in their sprawling jobs while a record number of Brits file for unemployment help. They are trying to save their skins to clean up actions and behaviours in their backyard and have used their platforms to do more than complaint about how hard it is to be rich in a plague, showing a different understanding of accepting Covid-19 protocols than the rest of us. His mask slipped, and his ugly truth was revealed. People’s chat, however well-intentioned, will not change that grim reality.

Either way, we must never forget the changes that the COVID-19 pandemic, an international public health emergency, brought to our society. They could not handle the pandemic like the rest of us, showing a selfish response when no one else could do such a thing. They will be remembered, and they will live with it, forgetting the essential…… Weren't We All In This Together?

COVIDIOT... (during the Covid-19 pandemic) a person failing to observe regulations or guidelines designed to prevent the spread of disease. 😷

"of course, some covidiots used this as an excuse to breach the rules"...👆

[kylesvariouslistsandstuff]

So this year, we're getting yet another GHOSTBUSTERS movie in the re-rebooted franchise, and a new Star Wars feature film looks to shoot later this year for a penciled-in May 2026 release.

I see a lot of skepticism on the internet over these particular developments, and I think a lot of it is rooted - in some way or another - in a legitimate concern. It seems most of the consensus on GHOSTBUSTERS: FROZEN EMPIRE, and its 2021 predecessor GHOSTBUSTERS: AFTERLIFE, is that it's taking a simpler property way too seriously. Treating it as if it's some serious legacy franchise, that has to be honored to the letter. Like it's... Star Wars!

I have yet to see GHOSTBUSTERS: AFTERLIFE, I'm actually really not that big of a Ghostbusters person. I had seen the first movie a while ago and thought, "Yeah, that was kinda cool." But that's about it. I didn't remember it having a presence when I was a kid in the '90s. I do know that there was a cartoon airing on Saturday mornings in the late '90s called EXTREME GHOSTBUSTERS (how of the era!), but I never watched it. So, yeah... Ghostbusters is not exactly my jam, but I do think there is some overreacting going on here regarding this new movie.

I totally get it, though. GHOSTBUSTERS III stalled and stalled and stalled, and then Harold Ramis - Egon - passed away, so Sony/Columbia opted to just reboot it entirely with a different continuity... And with four women playing the Ghostbusters, only to get greeted with nothing but contempt. Regardless of the 2016 movie's quality, it created this aggressively no-nuance situation where it was this ultra-hated movie (for all the wrong reasons) and that YOU - if you weren't a raging misogynist racist asshole - were morally obligated to LIKE the movie... Regardless of what you thought of it, in terms of its quality. Ya know, script, acting, direction, etc. The movie ended up flopping, so there was no future in this team, though they did appear in an IDW-published comic thereafter.

So, Jason Reitman, son of the franchise's co-creator Ivan Reitman, started a "true" third Ghostbusters that took place in the same continuity as the first two movies and brought back the remaining actors to play the Ghostbusters... Passing the baton to a group of kids, two of which were girls. Sort of treating it all as a legacy brand, which I understand can be annoying to those who feel like GHOSTBUSTERS - the 1984 movie - was at its core a small-scale comedy and not this worldwide thing. At the time, I definitely saw that particular movie as spite. A sort of kowtowing to the angry male nerds who honk "WOKE" like a defective goose at everything. But that apparently was not the case during production, it was just... Ghostbusters is a franchise, and in capitalism... Things *must* continue (facetious), even if it's well past its expiration date. An animated Ghostbusters movie is also in the works, which is being done up at Sony Pictures Animation... And me? I think this concept works great in animation, and after all, the cartoons are an important part of the whole thing so... Yeah, I'll likely see the animated Ghostbusters movie. I think exploring that universe in the animated medium might be a fresh spin on a chestnut property. Heck, SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE came off of *three* theatrical live-action iterations of the character, so you never know!

This FROZEN EMPIRE sequel, I'm just indifferent. It exists. Someone will like it, for sure. AFTERLIFE did pretty well at the box office amidst the Delta and emerging Omicron variants of COVID-19. I was working the box office the week it came out, and I had a family come up to me to get their tickets for it... All dressed as Ghostbusters, complete with a homemade proton pack. And I thought to myself, "That's what it's aaaall about."

Star Wars, admittedly, has gone in directions that I just don't care for. The last movie I genuinely had a good time with in the franchise was SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY, which was already a very safe and workmanlike movie. The cast and old school space western vibe save it. Despite what we now know what it's like to work under Phil Lord and Chris Miller (as made clear by the stories that got out on ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE), I honestly would love to see what their version of that story would've looked like... But, we ultimately didn't receive that movie, so... And of course, I really liked THE LAST JEDI. Really liked how Rian Johnson took the franchise, which was becoming well-worn, and cracked it open and took a look at it with a fresh new perspective. And naturally, it was hated beyond belief, and mostly by the usual suspects... I think such a fervent backlash played a part in how Lucasfilm and Disney went forward with this franchise.

So when THE RISE OF SKYWALKER came out, I also took it as spite. Bowing to the angry assholes who just couldn't stomach that the franchise featured people other than white guys and had something more important to say. I was quite pissed off with how they significantly dialed down Rose Tico into a nothing character, instead they gave more time to this new character - whose name I, no shock, forget - who was played by some friend of J.J. Abrams that won a bet during development... Like, what the hell was that all about? Also didn't care for a number of things that just got... Thrown at you. It felt like it was made in panic mode, a Disney-mold please-all movie to end the sequel trilogy and the entire Skywalker saga as a whole. I could go on and on, but I wasn't necessarily upset with developments like "Rey is actually related to Palpatine"... They just come too late and are super-undercooked, all of it in one 2 1/2-hour movie that was following two movies that were saying and building up to something entirely different. The death of Carrie Fisher certainly didn't help, either. I didn't hate THE RISE OF SKYWALKER per se, I was left feeling "whatever"... Like... What the hell was that?

So I didn't bother with THE MANDALORIAN and anything else thereafter, in terms of live-action. And it appears that the Mando side of things informs the franchise going forward. The new movie is called THE MANDALORIAN & GROGU, and that just tells me everything I need to know. I'm curious about the movie featuring Rey 15 years later, that's to be directed by Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy. James Mangold could possibly make something cool out of his ancient Jedi movie, but... Honestly, it's all a big bag of "who cares" to me. With a universe so big and wide, with all kinds of planets everywhere... why does it always have to be about the Skywalkers, the Jedi, etc.? Just give me a Disney+ National Geographic-style documentary about banthas, that would be infinitely more interesting to me. That's why STAR WARS: VISIONS is on my watch-list, like... Enough about the Skywalkers and the Jedi already...

But, Star Wars is owned by big bad Disney. And Disney is going to milk this franchise until audiences collectively get sick of it. Sure, there has been plenty of Star Wars media made before the Disney buyout of Lucasfilm: Comics, video games, novels. It's always been around in some way or another, but I feel Disney just doubled-down on it. Probably because of the abundance of movies made and the amount of shows they're cranking out.

And then I try to place myself in 1977, when STAR WARS first came out. The original movie, before any sequels, before any TV specials, before the added "A NEW HOPE" subtitle, etc....

STAR WARS, alongside Steven Spielberg's JAWS and CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, are often seen as the end of "New Hollywood" and the beginning of the blockbuster era of Hollywood... And yet, STAR WARS was being made before that all really took off. When George Lucas and his crew were planning and shooting what would become the first movie, how they would they have known what kind of monster it would create? Not just the Star Wars franchise as a whole, but the blockbuster in general. JAWS was the only "blockbuster" at the time of this movie's making, having grossed over a record $130m domestically in 1975. In 1976, the highest grossing movie was ROCKY, with $55m. STAR WARS was one of those movies where it was looking like it was going to be this big mistake, this big flop. Who in 1977 wanted to see some pulpy kid-friendly space adventure movie? By late 1976, the movie industry was still in the era of adult auteur-driven films. Dramas, political thrillers, and smaller pictures that would be called "prestige pictures" today. Films that would struggle to make $50m domestically in 2024, let alone be released in theaters. It was the era of THE GODFATHER, TAXI DRIVER, DOG DAY AFTERNOON, THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR, etc. Isn't it something that those kinds of movies were once regularly the biggest hits at the box office? And you wonder why Martin Scorsese voiced his concerns about Marvel movies...

You look at STAR WARS, and it is indeed part of that waning era of American cinema. At first glance, it's a kids' space adventure movie featuring a WIZARD OF OZ-esque band of weirdos, where people fight with laser swords and there's ships flying around... But it's actually, through and through, a 1970s movie. It's informed by Lucas' politics, the Vietnam War, the Richard Nixon administration... And to think that people complain that the franchise had gotten too political or too "woke" under Disney's ownership? Don't make me laugh.

In a way, you kind of come to realize... Well, this little space movie from the 1970s somehow became the highest-grossing movie ever for a period of time (Steven Spielberg's E.T. took the record in 1982), it spawned two sequels and a few TV specials and cartoons... And tons of comic books and novels and toys... And then three more movies, and more cartoons, and more movies, it's now owned by a massive multimedia conglomerate that wants MORE MORE MOOOOOOORE of it out there... And well... Capitalism. It becomes big, new people take it over every now and then, it's soooooooo far removed from the little anti-Vietnam War space movie it was in 1977 that could've gone down as an embarrassing box office disaster and subsequent cult classic.

And then you realize when it's time to get off the train, and quit going after the wrong people, aiming for the wrong targets. In that, the thing wasn't ruined, it's just so big now that it's not its earliest roots. When I see these new Star Wars things that throw in cameos and try very hard to play to fans who want Star Wars done up in a very specific way, I can't get too too angry... Because this whole "Star Wars, the way you've always loved it" thing seems to fundamentally misunderstand what the original movie, NOT the Original Trilogy, was in 1977. Repeating the past, instead of being someone's unique vision informed by the events of the era it was made in. It became a franchise, but it's okay to say when it's time to cap it off and go watch something else.

I extend this to my current gripes with Walt Disney Animation Studios and the majority of Disney's modern movie output that isn't Pixar, 20th Century Studios, and Searchlight. WDAS may never be what it was a few decades ago, it'll certainly never be what it was under Walt's watch. I can gripe all I want about their recent films not entirely doing it for me, but I can still look for the things I like (for example, STRANGE WORLD had some really cool stuff in it, have yet to see WISH all the way through) and hope for the best next time. "The best", as in, a picture I really really dig and cherish. Even if I may not get just that. The reality is, these things grow and balloon way beyond what they started out as, and many different people are now involved, money drives it all, and thus those in charge take it the direction that they THINK is the right direction. It's never easy to guess what it is the audience might want or will like, ya know?

Sometimes things are truly special before they blow up into something else where there's too much money at stake and too many people making what they feel are the right decisions... Sometimes those things can still be special, too...

[altamont498]

So the BBC are shutting down CBBC (their kids channel) on TV and are moving it all online (because "people like Netflix/Disney+/YouTube")

And I must say how big a loss this is for British television.

For starters:

Not every household has "stable" broadband or mobile data access for streaming/watching stuff online—especially people who live in rural areas or people on low incomes.

The other platforms mentioned aren't 100% safe for kids (see the countless stories of kids getting hit with blood and gore videos that abuse the algorithms of YouTube or the Perfect Parent Brigade letting kids watch Squid Game and getting traumatised by the violence featured).

Plus it seems that every kids channel/platform aimed at kids these days is either something you have to pay for (like Netflix or Disney+) which, again, cost of living crisis, people might not necessarily be able to afford.

And not only that, but the ones that are free/available through terrestrial TV are often loaded with product placements and advertisements trying to get kids to buy (or nag their parents to buy) the Next Big Toy™.

CBBC doesn't have any of that. It's all 100% ad-free.

And not only that, but the programs that it does (and did) have are good for kids. Not just kid-friendly, but actually good for kids.

For example:

Newsround

It's news for kids, and quite popular with both kids and adults alike. It allows kids to learn about current affairs and learn about what's going on in the world now (and has done for 50 years) without dumbing it down too much or acting patronising.

Fact: It was through a Newsround bulletin that the news broke in the UK of the attack on the Twin Towers on September 11th 2001.

And they've kept it up throughout Brexit, Covid, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and then some.

But at the same time, not forgetting that the news can be, as it often is, upsetting, and encouraging kids to talk about stuff in the news that upsets them and facilitating a lot of that.

Horrible Histories

🎵Gory, ghastly, mean and cruel; stuff they don't teach you at school!🎵

Teaching history to kids in a way that's fun and goes surprisingly in-depth for a kids' show. Even in earlier series it was brave enough to say (though not depict fully; remember it's a kid's show) that the British Empire was Not A Good Thing and that a lot of Britain's "greatness"—and the stuff it basically runs on like tea, sugar, etc.—was all derived from slavery and the products/goods of other countries around the world.

Plus I think everyone either knows the Charles the Second rap or the Kings & Queens song by now.

And CBBC took on the act of broadcasting a TONNE of educational content suitable for kids of all ages during the Covid-19 lockdown like Horrible Histories and Operation Ouch, which loads of parents, kids and teachers genuinely did find to be helpful.

The Story of Tracy Beaker/The Dumping Ground

This one holds a very special place in my heart.

It depicts children, living in foster care (in a children's home non-affectionately nicknamed "The Dumping Ground" by its residents) and being actual kids.

Yes, it does show them (or at least strongly implies) they came from bad backgrounds—like Tracy herself being a child of neglect, kids like Jackie or Justine having parents/carers that weren't fit to look after them, or kids like Crash coming from abusive backgrounds and toxic environments—but shows that they are tough and they survive and they go through all the stuff that other kids go through and going on to do great things in their lives.

Like Tracy (spoilers!) later being adopted by her foster mother Cam (who, in later seasons, comes out as Lesbian and marries another woman) and countless kids going into good homes with good foster parents/adoptive parents.

As far as I'm aware,

This is the ONLY show on British TV that depicts foster kids in such a positive light.

Opposed to the stereotype of "Baby ASBO" running drugs on an estate somewhere or getting into fights and being up to no good 24/7/365.

Plus even back when it started in the early 2000s, it was very diverse for a program, and still is—with main characters who have learning disabilities, main characters of colour, main characters with physical disabilities (played by actual disabled actors).

So yes:

CBBC is special.

And it's something that absolutely deserves protection from being all transferred online and leaving kids (and adults who are kids at heart) to miss out.

#CBBC #BBC #british broadcasting corporation #thoughts #altamont498 #long post #the story of tracy beaker #the dumping ground #horrible histories #newsround #rant #vent

[liesmyteachertoldme]

Planned genocide: Covid jabs were designed to cause harm, warns pharmaceutical executive

It’s not that covid so-called “vaccines” just so happened to turn out ineffective and deadly. Rather they were designed as such, according to Alexandra “Sasha” Latypova, a 25-year pharmaceutical industry veteran-turned-investigator who says the Department of Defense (DoD) had “very clear intent to harm” by executing a “mass genocide of Americans.”

Under the DoD’s control and direction, drug manufacturers like Pfizer, Moderna, and Janssen started mass-producing the shots for Operation Warp Speed – long before the first cases of “covid” even appeared, it turns out. These “figurehead” organizations, Latypova insists, were just obeying the DoD’s orders.

What this means is the United States military oversaw the creation and rollout of these “covid countermeasures,” as they were classified before being erroneously dubbed as “vaccines.” This is why they called it Operation Warp Speed: because it was a military warfare operation, not a “public health” operation.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) also played their role by fast-tracking emergency use authorization (EUA) for the deadly drugs, followed by official approval for some of them – and the rest is history.

Covid jabs train the body “to destroy itself,” Latypova warns

“The evidence is overwhelming that there is an intent to harm people by the covid-19 injections, so-called ‘vaccines,’ and other nonsensical covid response measures implemented in lockstep by governments all over the world,” she said.

Again, it is not that the shots were designed to help people but just so happened to be dangerous. Latypova says they were designed that way on purpose as a chemical and / or biological weapon against the people, which she says is substantiated by an extensive body of literature, studies, scientific discussions, (and) evidence published on this matter.”

“There are numerous mechanisms of injury built into the covid-19 injections,” she further explained. “The most important one being that these shots are designed to make your cells attack themselves, make your cells express antigens that are toxic spike proteins, and then create antibodies to attack the cells. So, it trains your body to destroy itself.”

There is nothing safe, let alone effective, about these injections, in other words – unless the effective goal was to massively depopulate the world. In that case, the injections are working exactly as designed – and the worst is yet to come.

From the very beginning, the safety signals were “obvious,” Latypova says. And yet nobody in any position of power seemed to notice, or perhaps they deliberately ignored these safety signals because killing people was the goal.

“There is no efficacy in these shots,” Latypova reveals. “In fact, we know there is negative efficacy, meaning that these shots make you more likely to get sick and die.”

During the shots’ production, good manufacturing practices (GMP) were completely ignored, also apparently by design, to further ensure a deadly product outcome. Had proper safety standards been upheld, the shots might have ended up less deadly, which would have gone against the agenda.

“We found that these products are dirty, contaminated, do not conform at all to what the label says,” Latypova says. “And they’re hugely toxic by design.”

“They should all be stopped immediately, and this should be investigated properly. And we should bring those responsible to justice, to accountability. Until that happens, we cannot move on from this.”

#covid deaths #covid homicides #eugenics by covid

[mit]

Germicidal UV lights could be producing indoor air pollutants, study finds

While useful for killing pathogens including SARS-CoV-2, the lights may cause unwanted chemical reactions and should be used with ventilation, researchers say.

David Chandler | MIT News

Many efforts to reduce transmission of diseases like Covid-19 and the flu have focused on measures such as masking and isolation, but another useful approach is reducing the load of airborne pathogens through filtration or germicidal ultraviolet light. Conventional UV sources can be harmful to eyes and skin, but newer sources that emit at a different wavelength, 222 nanometers, are considered safe.

However, new research from MIT shows that these UV lights can produce potentially harmful compounds in indoor spaces. While the researchers emphasize that this doesn’t mean the new UV lights should be avoided entirely, they do say the research suggests it is important that the lights have the right strength for a given indoor situation, and that they are used along with appropriate ventilation.

The findings are reported in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, in a paper by recent MIT postdoc Victoria Barber, doctoral student Matthew Goss, Professor Jesse Kroll, and six others at MIT, Aerodyne Research, and Harvard University.

While Kroll and his team usually work on issues of outdoor air pollution, during the pandemic they became increasingly interested in indoor air quality. Usually, little photochemical reactivity happens indoors, unlike outdoors, where the air is constantly exposed to sunlight. But with the use of devices to clean indoor air using chemical methods or UV light, “all of a sudden some of this oxidation is brought indoors,” triggering a potential cascade of reactions, Kroll says.

Initially, the UV light interacts with oxygen in the air to form ozone, which is itself a health risk. “But also, once you make ozone, there’s a possibility for all these other oxidation reactions,” Kroll says. For example, the UV can interact with the ozone to produce compounds called OH radicals, which are also powerful oxidizers.

Barber, who is now an assistant professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, adds, “If you have volatile organic compounds in the environment, which you do basically in all indoor environments, then these oxidants react with them and you make these oxidized volatile organic compounds, which in some cases turn out to be more harmful to human health than their unoxidized precursors.” The process also leads to the formation of secondary organic aerosols, she says. “Again, this stuff is harmful to breathe, so having it in your indoor environment is not ideal.”

The formation of such compounds is particularly problematic in the indoors, Kroll says, because people spend so much of their time there, and low ventilation rates can mean these compounds could accumulate to relatively high levels.

Having studied such processes in outdoor air for years, the team had the right equipment in hand to observe these pollution-forming processes indoors directly. They carried out a series of experiments, first exposing clean air to the UV lights inside a controlled container, then adding one organic compound at a time to see how they each affected the compounds that were produced. Although further research is needed to see how these findings apply to real indoor environments, the formation of secondary products was clear. 

The devices that make use of the new UV wavelengths, called KrCl excimer lamps, are still relatively rare and expensive. They’re used in some hospital, restaurant, or commercial settings rather than in homes. But while they have sometimes been touted as a substitute for ventilation, especially in hard-to-ventilate older buildings, the new study suggests that’s not appropriate. “Our big finding was that these lights are not a replacement for ventilation, but rather a complement to it,” says Kroll, who is a professor of civil and environmental engineering, and of chemical engineering.

Some have proposed that with these devices, “maybe if you could just deactivate the viruses and bacteria indoors, you wouldn’t need to worry about ventilation as much. What we showed is that, unfortunately, that’s not necessarily the case, because when you have less ventilation, you get a buildup of these secondary products,” Kroll says.

He suggests a different approach: “There may be a sweet spot in which you’re getting the health benefits of the light, the deactivation of pathogens, but not too many of the disbenefits of the pollutant formation because you’re ventilating that out.”

The results so far are from precisely controlled lab experiments, with air contained in a Teflon bag for testing, Barber points out. “What we’re seeing in our bag is not necessarily directly comparable to what you would see in a real indoor environment,” she says, “but it does give a pretty good picture of what the chemistry is that can happen under radiation from these devices.”

Goss adds that “this work allowed us to validate a simple model that we could plug in parameters to that are more relevant to actual indoor spaces.” In the paper, they use this information “to try to apply the measurements we’ve taken to estimate what would happen in an actual indoor space.” The next step in the research will be to attempt follow-up studies taking measurements in real-world indoor spaces, he says.

“We’ve shown that these are a potential concern,” Kroll says. “But in order to understand what the full real-world implications are, we need to take measurements in real indoor environments.”

“These 222-nanometer radiation devices are being deployed in bathrooms, classrooms, and conference rooms without a full accounting of the potential benefits and/or harm associate with their operation,” says Dustin Poppendieck, a research scientist at the National Institute for Standards and Technology, who was not associated with this study. “This work lays the foundation for a proper quantification of potential negative health impacts of these devices. It is important this process is completed prior to relying on the technology to help prevent the next pandemic.”

The work was supported by the National Science Foundation, the Harvard Global Institute, and an NIEHS Toxicology Training Grant.

#pollution #chemical engineering #viruses #covid 19 #pandemic #health

[beardedmrbean]

NEW YORK -- New York City Mayor Eric Adams is classifying social media as a "public health hazard" and an "environmental toxin," saying young people must be protected from "harm" online.

"Today, Dr. Ashwin Vasan is issuing a Health Commissioner's Advisory, officially designating social media as a public health hazard in New York City," Adams announced during his State of the City address Wednesday.

An advisory from the city said mental health for young New Yorkers "has been declining for over a decade." The advisory said that data from 2021 showed that on weekdays, 77% of New York City high schoolers spent three or more hours per day in front of screens, not including homework.

Adams claimed TikTok, YouTube and Facebook are "fueling a mental health crisis by designing their platforms with addictive and dangerous features."

"We are the first major American city to take this step and call out the danger of social media like this," the mayor said. "Just as the surgeon general did with tobacco and guns, we are treating social media like other public health hazards and ensuring that tech companies take responsibility for their products."

RELATED: How much is too much? Exploring possible dangers of teen social media use

In May 2023, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued an advisory warning that excessive social media use could be a "profound risk" to youth mental health.

The advisory recognized that social media has both positive and negative effects on young people. According to Pew Research, 59% of adolescents reported that social media helps them feel more accepted. But the advisory said ultimately there wasn't enough "research and clear data" to determine if social media is "safe" for adolescents to use.

"I issued my advisory on social media and youth mental health because the most common question parents ask me is if social media is safe for their kids. While some kids experience benefits from social media, there is not enough evidence to conclude that social media is sufficiently safe," Murthy told ABC News last year. "Instead, there is more evidence that many kids are harmed by their use of social media."

"Our children have become unknowing participants in a decades-long experiment," Murthy said last year. "And while there is more we have to learn about the full impact of social media use on their health and well-being, we know enough now to take action and protect our kids."

In a response issued at the time of the advisory from Murthy, a representative for Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, referred to mental health as a "complex issue" and pointed toward other contributing factors such as limited access to health care, the COVID-19 pandemic and academic pressure.

ALSO SEE: Meta collected children's data, refused to close under 13 Instagram accounts, court document alleges

Representatives for YouTube told ABC News at the time that they have implemented a variety of safeguards for young users, including adding "digital wellbeing features," removing content that "endangers the emotional wellbeing of minors or promotes suicide and self-harm," and "exploring ways to further collaborate with researchers."

A TikTok spokesperson told ABC News that its companies have added user aids to improve youth mental health, such as bedtime reminders and age restrictions. The company also said that it built an application programming interface that includes public data on content and accounts on the platform, which is available to U.S. researchers.

#nunyas news

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

A Montana Republican is pushing a bill to bar those who have received a COVID-19 vaccine or suffer from "long COVID" from donating blood—a proposal some critics say could effectively eradicate the state's supply of blood.

Formally introduced in the Montana State Legislature on February 17, House Bill 645 proposes a misdemeanor offense for anyone who knowingly donates whole blood, plasma, blood products, blood derivatives, human tissue, organs, or bones containing "gene-altering proteins, nanoparticles, high-count spike proteins from long COVID-19, or other isolates introduced by mRNA or DNA vaccines, mRNA or DNA chemotherapies, or other novel mRNA or DNA pharmaceutical biotechnologies."

The legislation, which has yet to receive a committee vote, comes over what the bill's sponsor, Representative Greg Kmetz, described as fears from his constituents of ensuring a "safe" blood supply—even as experts assert that it is safe to donate blood after receiving a COVID vaccine or being diagnosed with COVID.

"Many of my constituents question just because we hear these two words, 'safe and effective,' a million plus times, does that make them true?" Kmetz asked colleagues in a hearing on the bill last week. "[...] These are the people that are concerned about our blood supply. These are the people that put me in this office. These are the people that I represent."

Kmetz has been backed by fellow Republicans, Rep. Jodee Etchart, who is the bill's requester, and Rep. Lola Sheldon-Galloway.

Many of the concerns pushed by the bill's proponents often cited uncredible or even biased information to support them.

Some who testified in favor of the bill claimed, without evidence, that friends and family died prematurely as a result of receiving the vaccine. There is currently no proof linking the COVID vaccine to premature death.

Another woman cited a Facebook post pushing claims that COVID-19 vaccines turned the blood of embalmed corpses into fibrous clots, a finding medical fact checkers have already debunked as the result of a heavily flawed study.

Others cited concerns over a spike in myocarditis cases among teens who received some types of vaccine, which U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data found to be rare.

Meanwhile, opponents of the bill, which included multiple medical professionals, said its language was overly broad and would, in effect, decimate Montana's blood and organ donor supply.

According to data from the CDC, approximately two-thirds of Montanans have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, while just 3% of eligible donors nationwide donate blood. Cliff Numark, the Senior Vice President of Donor Services for blood supplier nonprofit Vitalant, said the bill would cause "devastating harm" to the state's healthcare system, and potentially reduce the state's overall blood supply by as much as 80%.

Numark said there is no test available to verify whether the vaccine was in someone's bloodstream, making the bill impossible to comply with if passed into law.

In recent weeks, Vitalant has urged blood donors to come forward amid a shortage that has been worsened by adverse weather. Nationwide, the American Red Cross, which in January 2022 declared its first-ever blood crisis, says that someone in the U.S. needs blood and/or platelets every two seconds.

"Our blood is safe," Vicky Byrd, CEO of the Montana Nurses Association, told lawmakers. "Our scientists and our practitioners, we have to trust them. We know what they're doing."

While COVID-19 patients are barred from donating blood while infected with the virus—primarily because of the precondition for donors to be in "good health" when donating—all blood donation groups and the American Red Cross have maintained that it is safe to donate blood after receiving the vaccine.

"Blood donations from individuals who have received a COVID-19 vaccine approved or authorized for use in the U.S. are safe for transfusion," Red Cross officials told Newsweek in a statement.

"Similar to other vaccines such as those for measles, mumps or influenza, COVID-19 vaccines are designed to generate an immune response to help protect an individual from illness, but vaccine components themselves do not replicate through blood transfusions or alter a blood recipient's DNA."

"In summary, there is no scientific evidence that demonstrates adverse outcomes from the transfusions of blood products collected from vaccinated donors and, therefore, no medical reason to distinguish or separate blood donations from individuals who have received a COVID-19 vaccination," they said.

Though the bill's opponents said there was no evidence to support a ban on vaccinated donors giving blood, the bill's proponents said that was because studies have not yet been done.

From a practical standpoint, Numark said a ban would result in "unnecessary and unconscionable" death.

"This house bill would criminalize the act of attempting to altruistically donate blood," Numark said. "It would decimate the blood supply."

Newsweek reached out to Greg Kmetz for comment.

#us politics #news #newsweek #2023 #montana #republicans #conservatives #gop #gop policy #gop platform #blood donations #covid vaccine #covidー19 #coronavirus pandemic #coronavirus vaccine #Montana Legislature #long COVID #House Bill 645 #Greg Kmetz #Jodee Etchart #Lola Sheldon-Galloway #center for disease control and prevention #Cliff Numark #Vitalant #American Red Cross #Vicky Byrd #Montana Nurses Association

[mariacallous]

The Biden administration has always tried—and mostly failed—to win Beijing’s support for what it believes should be natural areas of cooperation. From his first year in office, U.S. President Joe Biden sought to render climate change an engine for U.S-China cooperation. But two years of unilateral U.S. pleas bore few results. Despite multiple visits and statements by U.S. climate envoy John Kerry, Beijing explicitly responded that the issue cannot be separated from broader U.S.-China relations.

More recently, as fentanyl increasingly became a social problem for the United States, Washington made it clear that it hoped for Beijing’s assistance on combatting drugs. Both efforts were an expression of Biden’s policy of “compartmentalization”: the idea that cooperation on certain issues can be separated from the U.S.-China competition because it is in the interest of both parties to do so.

But compartmentalization with China has proved a failure—and a report last month in the Wall Street Journal seemed to signal its death knell. The newspaper reported that the Biden administration is considering lifting sanctions on a police forensics lab accused of human rights violations in Xinjiang province in return for Beijing cracking down on fentanyl. This marks an embarrassing policy reversal for the Biden administration—but an entirely unsurprising one.

On the surface, compartmentalization sounds tenable, especially when it comes to seemingly apolitical issues such as climate change or global health. After all, there seems to be little reason to disagree. COVID-19 clearly demonstrated that it’s not enough to just keep your own citizens safe from epidemics—global collaboration is essential in this interconnected world. The global commons need to be sustained in one way or another. Why don’t the great powers cooperate on these issues, even as they compete geopolitically?

But compartmentalization with China is fundamentally futile as long as Beijing continues to engage in what it has referred to as “unrestricted warfare,” which goes beyond the conventional realm of conflict and peace. The term was first coined in 1996 by Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, two colonels in the People’s Liberation Army, and is a concept that envisions how China can defeat a technologically superior adversary through a variety of means that transcend the traditional military domain. Methods encompassing but not limited to cyber warfare, economic warfare, and media infiltration are exploited to overcome military disadvantage. An report this month by the Center for Strategic and International Studies noted China’s “aggressive and unprecedented political warfare campaign” encompassing espionage, offensive cyber operations, social media disinformation, economic coercion, and irregular military action. All these disparate measures are intertwined and geared towards a unified objective: undermining both the capacity and the will of the United States to contend with China.

But China’s inclination for unrestricted warfare is not just a product of its unique ambition to reinstate a Sino-centric global system. It is also the result of the international system’s structure.

China is a challenger, not an existing hegemon, in an unprecedentedly interconnected world. Granted, China’s gigantic state power nearly rivals the United States’. Its economy is expected to surpass the U.S. economy in the next few decades. Beijing is proactively expanding its partnerships, working with both authoritarian and democratic states. However, it lacks the global legitimacy, network of alliances, and the military capacity to displace the United States. China still faces the Malacca Dilemma, two decades after then-Chinese President Hu Jintao lamented it in 2003: The Chinese economy relies on a strategic waterway (the Strait of Malacca) that it does not control. Most importantly, China has no concrete sphere of influence that it can stand on to claim primacy or use as a springboard for global hegemony. China is no hegemon, for now.

This seemingly disadvantageous condition as a challenger presents a major benefit to China, one that renders compartmentalization unrealistic: it allows Beijing to free ride on the world’s existing hegemon to remedy shared problems.

China has shown a seemingly puzzling tendency to portray itself as either a global superpower or a developing country, depending on the context. When it comes to mediating peace in the Middle East or demanding a “new type of great power relations” with the United States, China positions itself as a great power. At international conferences discussing carbon emissions, however, China positions itself as a developing state that should not be stunting industrialization. The futility of compartmentalization is intertwined with the Kindleberger Trap—“the under-provision of global public goods” during a hegemonic transition, in the absence of a clear leader. China hoped to geopolitically exploit the Obama administration’s eagerness for the Paris Climate Accords, to no avail. When the Trump administration exited the agreement, China continued with its own lackluster brake on carbon emissions. Beijing can do this because the reputational responsibility still largely falls to the United States, the existing hegemon.

Even when China does seemingly work on a global scale, it is rarely out of a sense of a great power duty. Beijing’s global provision of masks and vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic was carefully tailored to maximally expand its influence. In Europe, China’s mask diplomacy sought to divide the European Union; Beijing coined the phrase “Health Silk Road” to add a geopolitical touch to vaccine provision. And despite being the largest global donor of vaccines by far, the United States was hardly lauded—rather, its clumsy response was criticized universally—because the international community took for granted the U.S. role as the provider of shared global goods.

Similarly, China’s recent bids to mediate peace between conflicting parties are not intended to protect the rules-based order. To the contrary, in Chinese thinkers’ own words, they provide Beijing a “golden opportunity to shape new international norms” and promote Chinese initiatives such as the “community with a shared destiny for mankind,” Global Security Initiative, Global Development Initiative, and Global Civilization Initiative. At the heart of these slogans is China’s ambition to establish hierarchical regional hegemony and exercise autocratic global leadership.

But it’s not just China’s structural role as a challenger that undermines the Biden administration’s compartmentalization strategy. It’s also the philosophy of hegemony that China has cultivated for itself.

Chinese discourse on the so-called “China Century” revolves around the idea that returning China to its “rightful place” is a matter of historical destiny. China, in other words, seeks to restore global supremacy primarily out of a sense of historical fulfillment, rather than for material gains. In Beijing’s view, a world dominated by China but disrupted by chaos and conflicts is still preferable to the existing, lopsided, West-dominated order. Xi has openly expressed his intent to drag his people through times of struggle and hardship, en route to the ultimate dialectical victory of “Chinese-style socialism.” There is little reason to believe he would be more sympathetic for the rest of the world in China’s journey to supremacy.

Even when it comes to the international economy, where win-win cooperation is traditionally considered the optimal result, China has a different idea. The Chinese effort to lead the advanced technology industry, represented by the now-flailing Made in China 2025 initiative, is at least partly driven by the desire to dominate the global economy—regardless of its implications for the world. The emergence of China’s electric vehicle industry is “just one example of a trend toward a China-centric integrated regional economy in Asia,” the Christopher Vassallo wrote recently in The Diplomat.

Even in the semiconductor industry, whereby complete decoupling is considered unrealistic for both the West and China, Beijing seeks to maximally absorb Western technology and minimize outflow of its own know-hows. Former Chinese Premier Li Keqiang’s belief that “the U.S. role in the future global economy would be to provide China with raw materials, agricultural products, and energy to fuel its production of the world’s cutting-edge industrial and consumer products” is not an aberration. In practice, consigning the most modern economy in the world to such a role would be counterproductive for the world and China—but that cost is secondary to the realization of China’s global ambitions.

This starkly contrasts with the United States’ own experience. The United States stepped up as the leader of the free world because American statesmen saw it as necessary to stay on the global stage to prevent another world war, not because they believed global hegemony was their fate. U.S. involvement in international affairs did not begin as an end in itself. American leaders defied their centuries-long instinct and tradition for a clear strategic purpose that went beyond status aspirations. China is profoundly different. If the Truman Doctrine was the United States’ grudging response to impending Soviet domination, Xi’s Global Security Initiative is a vision brought about by China’s independent desires.

Hence, unlike the postwar United States, China would willingly embrace a less prosperous, less stable, and less predictable world—as long as it retains the top seat. It would be a mistake to assume that China fears what the United States fears, and that the two countries can cooperate on all issues that harm mutual interests. Displacing the United States, first from China’s neighborhood and then from the global stage, remains Beijing’s top priority. Instability in the process is a negligible cost, especially when the other side is much more desperate for cooperation.

Compare this quandary with the uneasy—and often overlooked—superpower partnership between the United States and Soviet Union during the Cold War. Strict bipolarity, whereby Moscow held ownership over a significant portion of the international system, enabled the two rivals to cooperate on some critical issues.

Despite intense rivalry with occasional thaws, the two superpowers maintained a surprisingly close partnership when it came to managing global issues. For example, the White House easily won support from the Kremlin in constructing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty regime. It was U.S. allies such as France and Canada, not the Soviet Union, that often posed problems in ensuring nuclear weapons did not proliferate further. In 1977, the Soviets discovered a clandestine South African nuclear program, shared the intelligence with the United States and its allies, and “implored them to intervene.”

The United States and the USSR also implicitly understood the need to restrain their respective allies. Then-U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower pressured his Western allies into withdrawing from Suez Canal in 1956, in a remarkably forceful fashion that risked weakening crucial ties. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev used his leverage over Soviet troops in East Germany to preclude East German leader Walter Ulbricht’s unapproved attack on East Berlin. The United States and the Soviet Union restrained their respective Korean clients to ensure that a second Korean war did not break out. Even the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, a prime example of alliance entanglement, de-escalated through the Soviet Union’s refusal of Cuban and Chinese demands for intransigence. This awkward yet enduring symbiosis was summarized in then-Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev’s private conversation with then-U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in 1973, where the former noted: “Look, I want to talk to you privately—nobody else, no notes. You will be our partners; you and we are going to run the world.”

In essence, the USSR had some sense of ownership because it was one of the co-owners of the international system. For the Soviets, global bipolarity translated into a sense of responsibility; Soviet prestige now hinged on maintaining stability in the Eastern Bloc, for which the broader international system had to remain fairly predictable. This rationale incentivized two rounds of détente. Even the invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, which killed off the first détente, was the result of the Kremlin’s miscalculation that the country was peripheral to the international system.

China does not share the same urge to maintain global stability, because it is a challenger—not an established hegemon. Intransigence on climate change and narcotics are just two examples of an apparent pattern. China’s relationships with its allies are even more telling. Denuclearization of North Korea has long remained on Washington’s list of potential areas of cooperation between the United States. and China. However, China uses North Korea as a pawn, doing little to denuclearize the reclusive regime. It provides diplomatic cover and economic assistance for the North Korean nuclear weapons program. It seeks to remove U.S. troops stationed in South Korea and weaken the U.S.-South Korea alliance by using North Korea as a bargaining chip.

China also maintains a strong partnership with Russia. It has not gone so far as to sponsor Russia’s war in Ukraine. However, even this measured approach is intended to ensure that Europe does not fully align with the United States in the so-called New Cold War. Beijing’s charm offensive is intended to drive a wedge between the transatlantic allies. Moreover, should Russia get cornered to the brink of a defeat, China is highly likely to intervene to ensure its most crucial Eurasian ally does not collapse. With China’s own aspirations regarding Taiwan, Beijing can hardly be against Moscow’s historical revanchism.

None of this is to argue that the United States should grant China a sphere of influence in the Indo-Pacific to turn Beijing into a more responsible stakeholder. This would entail abandoning Washington’s most steadfast allies and handing over the most geo-economically important region in the world. Millions of people would find their way of life undermined by habitual Chinese interferences, if not outright meddling. U.S. credibility would be totally devastated, incentivizing other revisionist powers to stir problems elsewhere. A China that controls the Indo-Pacific is also likely to eventually vie for global hegemony, just as the United States’ own expedition for international leadership began with dominating its neighborhood.

To the contrary, this finding empowers the notion that the U.S. response to China’s all-out competition should be equally sweeping, cross-departmental, and whole-of-nation. The United States should also exploit the asymmetric advantage of alliances. Expending assets and capital for areas of cooperation that are unlikely to bear fruit is wasteful. Washington should muster a grand strategy that can comprehensively deal with Beijing’s challenge, acknowledging that compartmentalization doesn’t work. The myriad of euphemisms such as “cooperative competition” and “healthy competition” may be useful in signaling harmless intent, but do not reflect reality. Within the broader context of extreme competition, compartmentalization is a hope, not a strategy.

This is also not to argue that Washington should give up on cooperating with Beijing where it can. Indeed, domains of collaboration exist where China already feels an independent, urgent, and significant need to address its own problems. For example, China has consistently, proactively cooperated with the West on counterterrorism because it faces its own issues in its western regions. China could also become more cooperative on climate change in the future, once it starts seriously affecting economic growth. However, the United States should not fall for any traps by granting concessions elsewhere to elicit cooperation.

The idea of compartmentalization is contingent on “strategic hubris”—the assumption that the other side assumes, thinks, and behaves like you. This assumption can’t be more wrong when facing an opponent, like China, with a cost-benefit calculus completely different from one’s own.

[vulgartrader]

Lab Grown Meat Approved For Sale in US

From Scientific American:

Last week the U.S. Department of Agriculture granted its first-ever approval of cell-cultured meat produced by two companies, GOOD Meat and UPSIDE Foods. Both grow small amounts of chicken cells into slabs of meat—no slaughter required. It was the final regulatory thumbs-up that the California-based companies needed in order to sell and serve their products in the U.S.

The approval comes less than a year after the Food and Drug Administration declared the companies’ products safe to eat, and it represents a major milestone for the burgeoning cultured meat industry.

The National Pulse has more:

But GOOD Meat’s filing reveals the China-linked firm JOINN is integral to the production... 

News of the purchase led to the revelation that JOINN, like most Chinese companies, has extremely close ties to the Chinese government and its biowarfare program.

A number of key personnel who work for JOINN Biologics and its parent company studied or worked at the Academy of Military Medical Sciences in Beijing. In 2021, the Academy was added to the U.S. trade blacklist for supplying biotechnology to the Chinese military.

“The idea that we would permit a … biotech firm with ties to the Chinese military to breed lab monkeys on U.S. soil is baffling, especially after China unleashed the Covid-19 pandemic on the world...”

The idea that this is a moral alternative to traditional meat is of course entirely farcical:

Despite CEO Josh Tetrick’s claims it is “real meat without slaughter”, GOOD Meat’s product is and always has been made with fetal bovine serum (FBS), an ingredient the company is careful to avoid mentioning, with good reason. FBS is extracted directly from the hearts of unborn calves in slaughterhouses, often while they are still alive.

Adding this to the fact that GOOD Meat’s product is made by a firm that breeds thousands of primates for experimentation, all moral grandstanding evaporates.

Is it safe?

The problem is that the materials used to make the product – “immortalized cell lines” – replicate forever, just like cancer. Which means, in effect, that they are cancer. Although these cell lines are widely used in scientific research, they’ve never been used to produce food before.