#No because the first panel was published 2 decades ago
Text
What if I’m crying in the club what then?
#I don’t know if the illustrators did this deliberately#or if they just thought oooh colourful ice cream for his milkshake#But I took one look at his milkshake and immediately imagined the panel where Bruce talks to Cass#where he tells her about Jason and the things Jason loved#No because the first panel was published 2 decades ago#And the whole scene is from when Jason was a child#when he was MURDERED as a CHILD#when Bruce grieved for the young boy he had#the boy who loved Neapolitan ice cream#He was too young#Also idk why I laughed ‘’hE lOveD gIrLsS’’#But also canon Jason loved cars#Love that for him#Also also imagine if he just went yep I’m Green Hood#batfam#dc comics#dc#red hood#jason todd#batfamily#Red rambles#red needs to stop rambling and go to sleep how about that#Detective Comics 790#and#Detective Comics 1042
641 notes
·
View notes
Link
About 164 light-years away, a Hot Jupiter orbits its star so closely that it takes fewer than four days to complete an orbit. The planet is named WASP-69b, and it’s losing mass into space, stripped away by the star’s powerful energy. The planet’s lost atmosphere forms a trail that extends about 560,000 km (350,000 miles) into space. Scientists know that stars can strip mass from planets that get too close. It’s called mass loss, and it’s driven by extreme UV (EUV) and/or X-ray energy from a star and by the stellar wind. It’s not a rare phenomenon, even though researchers don’t fully understand it. But seeing the actual stream of gas coming from the planet is a rare opportunity to study mass loss. Researchers have known about WASP-69b’s predicament and have predicted how much of the planet’s atmosphere is being stripped away. Previous research even identified a very small, subtle tail. But new research shows that the tail, which would stretch from Earth to well beyond the Moon in our Solar System, is much longer than previously thought. The new research is titled “WASP-69b’s Escaping Envelope Is Confined to a Tail Extending at Least 7 Rp.” It’s published in The Astrophysical Journal. The first author is Dakotah Tyler, a doctoral student in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at UCLA. “Work by previous groups showed that this planet was losing some of its atmosphere and suggested a subtle tail or perhaps none at all,” said first author Tyler. “However, we have now definitively detected this tail and shown it to be at least seven times longer than the planet itself.” As we began to detect more and more exoplanets with NASA’s Kepler mission, followed by the TESS mission, something became apparent. There are gaps in the exoplanet population. The Neptunian Desert refers to the dearth of Neptune-sized planets on two to four-day orbits around their stars. The Small Planet Radius Gap refers to a dearth of exoplanets with radii between 1.5 and 2 times Earth’s radius. Scientists think that mass loss plays a role in both phenomena, and it’s unlikely that there’s a lack of exoplanets that form in the Gap and the Desert. But the details of atmospheric loss are not well understood. WASP-69b and its extended tail of stripped gas give astronomers a rare opportunity to study it more closely. “Studying the escaping atmospheres of highly irradiated exoplanets is critical for understanding the physical mechanisms that shape the demographics of close-in planets,” the authors write in their paper. Previous researchers found the tail, so Tyler and his co-authors knew where to look. But Tyler and the other researchers used a much larger telescope for their observations. They used the 10-meter telescope at the Keck Observatory and its high-resolution spectrograph, NIRSPEC. They found that the stream, which is primarily hydrogen and helium, is much longer than thought. This figure from the research illustrates some of the findings. In the left panel, T1 through 4 represent observation times with Keck. The orange circle is the star, and the black circle is WASP-69b. The right panel shows what the system would look like from the top down. Image Credit: Tyler et al. 2023. “Over the last decade, we have learned that the majority of stars host a planet that orbits them closer than Mercury orbits our sun and that the erosion of their atmospheres plays a key role in explaining the types of planets we see today,” said co-author and UCLA professor of physics and astronomy Erik Petigura. “However, for most known exoplanets, we suspect that the period of atmospheric loss concluded long ago. The WASP-69b system is a gem because we have a rare opportunity to study atmospheric mass-loss in real-time and understand the critical physics that shape thousands of other planets.” There are two different forces at work here. Radiation from the star and the stellar wind. Both forces work together to strip away WASP-69b’s and then shepherd it away. The tail is a direct result of how both of those forces work together. “These comet-like tails are really valuable because they form when the escaping atmosphere of the planet rams into the stellar wind, which causes the gas to be swept back,” Petigura said. “Observing such an extended tail allows us to study these interactions in great detail.” Neutral hydrogen is really hard to see, so the researchers measured the Helium in the tail and used it to estimate the overall mass loss from the planet. One of the reasons that previous research found a smaller tail is because the telescope they used is smaller. Larger telescopes gather more photons from whatever they’re observing. The figure below compares the current research, done with a larger telescope, with the previous observations. Both show helium light curves. This figure from the research shows two nights of observations from CARMENES with four observations from the much larger Keck and its NIRSPEC instrument. Notice that the point-to-point scatter for CARMENES is much larger than with NIRSPEC, which has a higher signal-to-noise ratio. NIRSPEC’s better performance allowed the researchers to measure the helium more accurately. Image Credit: Dakotah et al. 2024 The researchers say that the star is losing about one Earth mass of material every 100 million years. But WASP-69b is a massive gas giant of about 0.29 Jupiter’s mass. This means that it would take an awfully long time to be reduced to nothing. But it’ll never be reduced to nothing, according to the authors. “At around 90 times the mass of Earth, WASP-69b has such a large reservoir of material that even losing this enormous amount of mass won’t affect it much over the course of its life. It’s in no danger of losing its entire atmosphere within the star’s lifetime,” Tyler said. Exoplanets may also stabilize once they’ve been reduced to a specific mass. Some research shows that exoplanets with atmospheres that are double the radius of their core are the most stable and resist atmospheric loss. If the atmosphere is larger than this, then the planet is susceptible to atmospheric erosion and will eventually reach the more stable state outlined above. For planets with smaller atmospheres than this, runaway atmospheric loss is likely. This figure is from separate research published in 2017. It shows the erosion of atmospheres as a function of time for planet models with a range of initial envelopes. Low-mass envelopes are stripped clean, while higher-mass ones are herded toward a stable state. Image Credit: Owen and Wu, 2017. This new research is based on fairly brief observations. The authors point out that there’s likely more variability in the system that changes the mass loss rate over time. Understanding the variability is critical to understanding the mass loss in more detail. “Repeat observations are valuable to probe any variability in the outflow properties, especially with different instruments,” they conclude. The post A Hot Jupiter With a Comet-Like Tail appeared first on Universe Today.
0 notes
Text
batfam new 52 timeline, ver 1
Version 1, because I still have a few years of new 52 comics to read before I am out of hell, and those will presumably have more details. And wildly contradict this :) :) But here is my current best guess at the timeline, based on comics published from 2011-2012. @silverwhittlingknife
I’m using the very start of the New 52 as the origin point for all these numbers. Also, note that anything said to be “X years ago” isn’t necessarily exactly X years ago, so there’s room for rounding.
Jim Gordon has been on the force for at least a decade, but it could be multiple decades (Detective Comics #2).
Bruce left Gotham some time after his 18th birthday (Batman: The Dark Knight #0). We also know he started his training at least 10 years ago (DC#0). This makes his minimum age now 28. I hate it here.
Bruce returned to Gotham 7 years ago (DC#0, second story).
Bruce tried to operate as an un-costumed vigilante before becoming Batman 6 years ago (Batman #0). The Joker has also been active for 6 years (DC#1). Jim Gordon was a lieutenant at the time (Batman #0).
5 years ago: Tim was in middle school, and implied by dialogue to be the correct age for his grade; Jason had already lost his mother and was involved in petty crime; Barbara was in school (Batman #0, second story).
Dick’s parents died 5 years ago, on his mother’s birthday. He was initially taken to a Wayne Care Center. (Nightwing #0) I’ve heard people say he was 15 at the time, and others say 16, but I have yet to come across an explicit reference to either age.
Dick trained with Bruce and worked the computers for months while still under the care of the center, before becoming Robin (Nightwing #0).
Barbara, then in college, became Batgirl 4 years ago .
I don’t yet have an explicit reference to when Jason became Robin, but working backwards I am forced to say it was at least 3.5 years ago (see his resurrection below). He was with Bruce for two years (Red Hood and the Outlaws #4), with the first six months spent in training (RHatO#0).
(This means Dick was Robin for around 1.5 years, or less if we push Jason’s introduction back.)
Dick had an older, blue version of the Nightwing costume when Jason was Robin. While in that costume, at some point he worked with Roy and Kory. This is shown a single panel without explanation, so I have no other information here. (RHatO #6)
Still in college, Barbara moved on from Batgirl and then was shot and paralyzed 3 years ago (Batgirl #0). She was 17 at the time (Batgirl #16). She was in a wheelchair for those next 3 years (Batgirl #1). There has so far been no mention at all of Oracle and I am extremely upset.
Jason came back to life roughly 1.5 years ago, and Dick had swapped to his current red Nightwing costume by the time they fought (RHatO #2). In order to give Dick as much time as Robin as possible, I have opted to say Jason came back very soon after dying. But you could say he died even earlier if you’re willing to shorten Dick’s tenure.
Tim and Bruce met after Jason’s death, and Tim became Robin (Batman #1; Batman and Robin #1, #10; Teen Titans #1, Annual #1). Wait! No!! DC changed their mind!!!! He was never Robin; he was only ever Red Robin (TT#0, #15).
Just after his 10th birthday, also 1.5 years ago, Damian met his father (Batman and Robin #0).
(This means Tim had approximately twelve seconds as the youngest child, but it’s not like N52!Tim cares about Bruce or Robin or anything but his own ambitions anyway, so probably he doesn’t care.)
Barbara started treatment on her spine 1 year ago (Batgirl #4).
Barbara met future Birds of Prey Black Canary and Starling 1 year ago, while she was Batgirl, completely contradicting the 3 year injury timeline (Birds of Prey #0). Or...perhaps this was not a year ago, but shortly before the New 52 starts? See below.
Dick was Batman for almost a year (Nightwing #1). I’m not sure if there have actually been any references to Bruce being “dead” though, so who can fucking say if that happened.
The New 52 current time begins. Chronologically, the first Bat issue is Detective Comics #1. Barbara has recently become able-bodied and returned to being Batgirl. Dick has recently taken off the cowl and gone back to being Nightwing. Bruce and Damian have recently started working together as Batman and Robin, probably, I think, maybe. The characterization certainly feels like it, but we are short on details, so idk maybe they’ve been working together for ages.
Barbara is old enough to legally drink (Batgirl #2). Since we know she was 17 when shot 3 years ago, this must mean that “3 years” is rounding down a bit, and she is exactly 21 now.
Damian is still 10 (Batman and Robin #1, #4).
No other ages can be pinpointed yet, but Dick is probably 21 as well, Jason is mumblemumble, and Tim is presumably 15-18.
Tim starts forming the Teen Titans, which is probably maybe the first team with that name, except maybe not, but also yes (but is it?) Science cannot say.
The events of Death of the Family occur 1 year after the New 52 began (Batman #13 is a year after the Joker ditched his face in DC#1. Nightwing #15 is a year after Dick returned to the circus in N#1. Batgirl #15 confirms it has now been 4 years since Barbara’s injury.).
Damian is still 10 (Batman and Robin #14).
There are two big notes to add to this. First, the #0 issues of all these books came out one irl year after the New 52 began, between #12 and #13 issues. (And #13s were also an in-universe year after the New 52 began, per the DotF crossover.) Therefore, it is possible some of the dates given by those issues should actually have a year subtracted. This is what I chose to believe in order to make BoP#0 make any sense.
However, there are some places where we can be certain the dates given in #0s are correct--e.g. Dick’s parents dying 5 years ago, Barbara being injured 3 years ago--because they’re confirmed by other issues.
Second, as you may notice, Damian has been 10 for about two and a half years now, which is not usually how aging works. Characters not aging even as time passes in-universe is something I am willing to accept in comics, but this is a lot more bothersome to me when it’s also wrong in backstory.
You could also chose to apply the previous point here, and say “1.5 years ago” in Batman and Robin #0 meant 1.5 years before the then-current state of the DCU, so only 0.5 years before the start of the New 52. This is slightly problematic in conjunction with Dick being Batman for “almost a year,” but we can stretch and say Dick was slightly overestimating, and “1.5 years” was slightly underestimating, to line those dates up. That means Damian first meets the fam shortly before Dick takes over as Batman, which is pretty similar to post-crisis.
And that’s what I’ve got so far, which I will eventually return to update as it is surely wildly contradicted by the next set of comics :) Welcome to my nightmare :) :)
#the temptation to instead say welcome to my twisted mind...#*#*dc#dc#dc ref#dc meta#batfam#oof okay...#bruce wayne#barbara gordon#dick grayson#jason todd#tim drake#damian wayne#and no one else exists anymore :(
39 notes
·
View notes
Text
Uncollected Mysteries
I bought a few Mack White comics care of Austin English’s Domino Books distro. Two issues of Villa Of The Mysteries, a Fantagraphics single-artist anthology from the mid-nineties, telling paranoid short stories involving government agencies, religion, and the like; and Mutant Book Of The Dead, which is a little earlier and more of a humorous underground comics kind of thing, but similarly well-told. These comics have been out of print for decades, and are hard to find. (I’m still trying to track down a copy of issue 3 of Villa Of The Mysteries.)
I first encountered White’s work in an issue of the anthology Snake Eyes, where he does a story, “Cindy The Tattooed Sunday School Teacher,” that’s reprinted in issue 1 of Villa Of The Mysteries. This story is incredibly tight and focused, home to a variety of ambiguities about who exactly is lying, and how the author feels about the nature of the lie. My take is that while the title character’s running a complicated scam, White nonetheless approves of it as an alternative to the more repressive Christianity she’s replacing in the lives of the people she’s fleecing. But his approval or disapproval doesn’t really matter, and since the whole thing is a fiction, neither does the notion of an unreliable narrator. What matters more is how the story’s built around memorable images, and how concluding on a panel that explains the story is being narrated by a member of the church to FBI interrogators reframes how the piece is read. It’s a representative story in a lot of ways.
These comics are great, but theirs is an unfashionable style now. An EC-influenced visual style is itself dated, and that such influence was common among underground cartoonists then becomes another reason for people to look at such work only with an eye towards dismissing it as politically uncouth. White’s a Texan, and there’s both a comic and a text piece in issue 2 about the Branch Davidians and the possibility Bill Clinton had a personal stake in their being killed by federal agents. While what happened in Waco feels similar in broad outline to incidents that have upset radicals in the past — Specifically, I think there’s a great many parallels to be drawn to the Philadelphia Police Department’s bombing of MOVE — it’s conservatives objecting to the Federal government that dictated the conspiracy narrative, and led to the FBI afterward playing a hands-off role with heavily armed right-wingers, which also makes the story of this time they did intervene seem exceptional in a way that’s even more suspect.
Mack White doesn’t seem to have had many people clamoring to publish his work in the recent decades. He did have work run in the three issues of the Hotwire anthology, edited by Glenn Head and published by Fantagraphics a decade ago. (Head also edited Snake Eyes.) Hotwire sort of posited itself as a trashy, lowbrow thing, despite having many of the same contributors that ran in Zero Zero, which was Fantagraphics’ house anthology during the nineties, when that would’ve been, you know, essentially considered the height of snobbery. Underground stuff, humor stuff, artsy Europeans working themselves into a frenzy. White contributed a serial to Zero Zero, called Homunculus, but while there have been collections of the Richard Sala, Kim Deitch, Dave Cooper, and Ted Stearn material that ran alongside it, there’s no such collection of the Homunculus material, which I have not read. I also haven’t read the first two issues of Hotwire, however I found the third volume to be remarkably coherent in its mixture of short humor pieces, extremely focused narrative short stories, and purely visual art. It’s a portrait of its segment of the comics world that feels far more satisfying than Now’s sampler-platter approach to younger artists, who have colorful and distinct visual styles but cumulatively make little narrative impression.
I’m not suggesting there’s some sort of liberal conspiracy dedicated to suppressing Mack White’s work but I do find the passive rejection of an artist whose work holds up fascinating, in light of how many comics that are considerably less satisfying as reading experiences are widely available and marketed like they’re literature. Granted, I don’t know how a book-length collection of these short stories would read. It does feel like there’s a good deal of repetition of similar themes and maybe it’s more powerful in small doses than it would be in a great heaping portion. I do still feel like this stuff seems like a difficult “sell” to the current comics market, because people don’t want to be challenged, and whether it’s for reasons of content or form, this work feels vaguely challenging.
One of the things that has replaced the ECs and the undergrounds in the hearts of the reading public is manga. In a certain light, even the U.S. comic market’s current fascination with manga seems suspect, because it’s the product of a more repressive culture. Yes, the comics are good and many of the comics intended for kids there are so wild they’re marketed towards adult audiences here. But even that is strange and suggests something strange about where we in the U.S. are at. Maybe we like manga because we simply know we don’t understand the cultural context and so don’t need to worry about it. It’s also a better value economically than American comics, and many surely view their entertainment budgets with an austerity mindset, which in turn leads to a certain conservatism even if that isn’t the intent at the outset.
For all my cohort might identify as socialists, we are still suffering under the condition of having arrived at such a place by having passed through liberalism, and have, I think, a certain self-consciousness in our thinking that worries too much to take things on their own terms. In the same way that someone might identify as “progressive” and say “Well, of course, I’d prefer if Elizabeth Warren were president, but I don’t think she could win in the rust belt! That’s why I support Joe Biden as the most electable choice” I have this tendency to see a piece of art I think is really strong — Bong Joon-Ho’s “Oasis,” for instance, and become self-conscious about recommending it to someone. Not to act like someone bemoaning the idea of “trigger warnings,” but it feels like now that’s common parlance, the only way to treat art is that it’s something many grown adults will not be able or inclined to handle, and the only people that will, are those that hunger for the transgressive as a way of establishing their bad boy credentials. This self-consciousness in presentation makes it incredibly difficult for people to simply communicate with one another, to present realities and ambiguities without couching them in a series of flags that tells you exactly how one person feels and expects the other person to feel in turn.
Mack White’s comics aren’t even rough! Certainly less so than, say, Jeff Johnson’s Nurture The Devil, another Fantagraphics series from the nineties not reprinted. (Although a friend did suggest the rape played for laughs, based around mythology, could be a stumbling block for people. He might’ve been referring to something in the Homunculus story, but there’s also a Priapus story that features this trait.) I don’t think there’s anything offensive in these comics, but I think the same culture anxious not to cause offense is also squeamish about conspiracy plots these days. Too many premises originate from a place of right-wing reality denial, and as we’re continually inundated with stimuli too overwhelming to process, those who’ve bought into a fiction feel too far gone to communicate with. A politics oriented towards consensus fears the counternarrative. There’s a hermetic, self-referential quality to the true believing mindset that feels shockingly alien when encountered by an outsider.
What makes Mack White’s comics so compelling, so assured as stories, is how tightly structured they are. Despite how their ambiguities play out, with punctures that reframe them, they reestablish themselves along these throughlines, based on these things like government agencies, paranoia, psychedelic drugs, an alien overmind. The trick to reading material like this is to not look down on it, but to go through it. In this work that feels paranoid, that can function, like a Philip K Dick story, the same way as a drug trip might, the sense that to advocate for the work feels taboo at present provides its own lesson, in the importance of attempting to embrace fearlessness.
11 notes
·
View notes
Text
Catwoman 80th Anniversary
In 1940, one of the now most popular comic book heroes of all time got his very first solo run. It would become a milestone in comic book history. But he wasn’t the only one who had a chance to shine. In that premiere issue, even TWO of his most famous antagonists would be introduced: The man who laughs and the woman who steals.
That woman was intended to become the love of the hero’s life. The good guy and the naughty girl, the appeal was palpable. However, she wasn’t just a love interest or a generic thief or only another villain in the ever growing gallery of rogues the hero would face over decades to come, no - she was quite the character.
Her first alias was “The Cat” which would ultimately become Catwoman. Selina Kyle, the best thief in the world, a literal cat burglar, a classy seductress and queen of sass. And fans loved her so much that over time, she grew to become just as famous as the hero.
Her story has had its ups and downs. Mostly ups. ;) Going from the pages of the comics to the little and the big screen in the 60s, then she disappeared for a while, then made a comeback. She married the hero and had a child, though that marriage was later rebooted and was followed by a depressing origin story a sexist author made up for her in the 80s.
The 90s then turned out to be her decade! She found herself on the TV screen again, animated this time. She was portrayed by a Golden Globe winner on the big screen again. And she finally got her very own solo run in comics.
Her solo title was successful enough to run for over 20 years, a time in which her development from antagonist to anti-heroine would pan out. She would be a member of several teams, dance on both sides of the law, and even have another child. The screen called her back in form of a movie and a tv show. In one she was a thief with a love for killing, in the other a teenager. And we already know that her movie career will soon continue with two more projects.
In 2016, DC rebooted their entire universe. Catwoman’s origin story was changed, her relationships were lost, her solo run got canceled. No one knew what was real anymore - and fans didn’t like it. Only a year later, a retcon followed in a pathetic attempt to restore a status quo fans were familiar with and approved of. Even her solo run came back and today, in June 2020, we celebrate her 80th anniversary!
Catwoman is my favorite DC character ever. She’s clever, she’s funny, she’s stubborn, she’s classy, she’s confident, she plays by her own rules. When written right, she is such an entertaining character, unpredictable and fun.
In 80 years, there have been countless appearances, so many incarnations and interpretations of her - sure, I didn’t like all of them but you can say there’s something for each one of us. You don’t like her in the 2010s? Check out the 90s. You don’t like her in the 40s? Check out the 80s. There’s a version of Catwoman for many different tastes. She never goes out of fashion.
So to celebrate one of DC’s most famous women, they published a collection of 10 stories in total, written and drawn by people who have had touched her character over the past years.
Did Catwoman 80th Anniversary - Celebrating Eight Decades of Beauty and Burglary do her justice?
Warning: Spoilers!
Let’s check out each story and see what the writers came up with for this very special occasion. Except for one, none of these are meant to be canon, it’s just a collection of shorts meant to emphasise why Catwoman is so good. Something I noticed was that each writer had not picked any Catwoman to write but “their” Catwoman. A nice detail. Consistency, why not? Write what you feel comfortable and familiar with. This can only help with the quality of the stories, right? ... Right? ...
Strap in folks, this is going to be a LOOOOONG post!
Story #1: Skin the Cat by Paul Dini
Selina’s just living her normal life with her cats, occasionally stealing some money and jewels. Hey, a girl’s gotta eat. ;) What catches her attention are news reports about stolen big cats. I’m a cat lover myself and this series of crimes would worry me just as much as it worries Selina. She deduces where in Gotham someone could hide those wild cats, breaks in, and is welcomed by an eerie voice - as well as the taxidermied cats. Fucking bastard...
The villain Taxidermist, quelle surprise, is behind the cat murders. He now intends to gas Selina and add her to his cat collection but Selina reveals that she’d already turned off the gas before breaking in. She escapes his long knives and watches as three big cats she had brought with her attack and kill him.
What an intro! A story about Selina’s love for cats and her strategic thinking. I really liked the first half! But once the Taxidermist shows up, it loses itself in drawn out exposition. Selina goes on a long monologue to explain to the reader who the Taxidermist is, how she knew it was him, how she turned off the gas, and how she replaced three of the dead cats with alive ones. I would have preferred to actually SEE her preparations for the face-off in flashback panels instead of having to read it. It didn’t feel natural at all. Also how the fuck did she bring 3 wild cats and switch them for the stuffed ones?! How?! And when?! I’m also quite sad that she didn’t get to save the cats. That was a bummer. So all she basically did was bring 3 big cats to kill a killer.
The art’s gorgeous, nothing else to say here!
6/10
Story #2: Now You See Me by Ann Nocenti
Ann Nocenti’s name immediately made me go uh-oh... Her bad and convoluted writing style made readers drop the Catwoman books which eventually lead to the solo run’s cancelation so you can understand why I was concerned.
So Catwoman is hiding a little pouch in a pigeon loft on a roof while pondering who to sell her stolen goods to - as well as where to vacation afterwards. She then notices a surveillance camera. The scene cuts to two cops on surveillance duty. They’re both bored as hell so when one spots Selina, he quickly distracts his colleague and leaves to find her. He takes the pouch out of the pigeon loft and a fight between him and Catwoman ensues. He reveals that he wants to become her partner. He wants to feed her any intel he can see on his screens so she could steal and sells some goods, and they’d split the money. When Selina refuses, he tries to blackmail her into complying. Selina presses a button on a little device and whatever’s in the pouch the cop sacked, explodes, sending him over the edge. Luckily, he lands on an umbrella Penguin had sent off apparently because we see him in one panel, angered that his plan was foiled. I’m not entirely sure what his “brilliant plan” was supposed to be. Something with gas tanks that were strapped to the umbrella I assume? I have no idea.
This one is missing too much context for my taste. What was in the pouch? Did the explosion kill the guy? What was Penguin doing there? What was his plan? Why did we need the second cop? For a super obvious but unnecessary parallel between Catwoman vs. corrupt cop and random woman vs. random man on one of the surveillance screens? Why give Catwoman so little “screen time” and so little dialogue? Is this short story referencing anything from Nocenti’s awful run and I just forgot? To quote Val Kilmer Batman: “It just raises too many questions.”
The art’s okay, nothing too special.
3/10
Story #3: Helena by Tom King
Oh boy. This is the big one. The one everyone’s been waiting for, I guess. The man who not so long ago had promised us a BatCat wedding just to shove a huge middle finger in our faces, promised us a pregnant Selina this time. I was skeptical of course. Also other readers were convinced he’d just let Selina have a miscarriage. Well, the good news is it wasn’t a miscarriage. The bad news is he almost makes Selina seem like she would have preferred a miscarriage.
The story goes like this: Selina hasn’t been feeling well so instead of going to a doctor like a normal person, Bruce scans her head and checks her vitals and blood (I can only assume because we’re not shown). Selina’s convinced that she’s seriously ill but a gentle, hopeful smile on Bruce’s face reveals the actual truth: She is pregnant. And her first reaction is shock and denial. We cut to BatCat fighting Tweedledum and Tweedledee (I think, you can’t really see them but the two men they knock out look identical). Selina then bends over and says that she’s about to throw up. Followed by a Batbucket joke. I’m getting so tired of all the forced self-awareness, guys. We cut to Catwoman, now sporting a baby bump underneath the skin-tight leather, sitting on a roof. She prepares a glass of wine while telling the baby that it is just like Bruce and it’s such a dick for taking away her freedom. After one sip, she chucks the glass away and curses. We’re then treated to a montage of BatCat fighting several rogues while Selina’s belly grows with each panel until it’s an 8, maybe 9 months along belly. I... I have no words. Except for yes, this was written by a man. BatCat are then standing on a roof and Selina laments that she’s a thief, not a mother, and the baby will derail her life and plans. The scene switches to Bruce and Selina in bed, arguing because she’s in labor. Bruce is ready to roll while Selina is STILL in denial, crying that she’s not a mother, that she’s not a hero or a good and brave person like him. Bruce tells her she didn’t run off so that means she’s a good person and they agree that it’s time to have the baby. Another cut to Selina having to take care of a crying baby Helena, asking why she’s crying when it’s Selina’s turn to stay at home and not Bruce’s. Selina talks to Helena, saying she’s luckier than Selina was because Selina’s mom ran off. She fucking FINALLY says something nice about her own child (”You’re a cute little kitten.”) and wonders what they’re going to do with her. The last page is old Selina and grownup Helena after Bruce’s death. Selina’s complaining about the pretty cemetery while Helena likes it. Her daughter’s ability to not shit on just everything and not be a total killjoy all the time causes Selina to say again that Helena is like Bruce. Upon Helena’s question if she’s anything like her mother, Selina answers that she’s just as stubborn as her. If she wants something, she steals it. Helena asks what she ever stole and Selina delivers the last predictable cliche of the story: “You stole my heart.”
Ugh. King’s Selina is just such a boring read. She’s not charming or interesting or sympathetic. Maybe I’m too used to a fun Selina but this one’s just a drag. A heavily pregnant Catwoman fighting Joker, yeah sure, totally not absolute bullshit. And the way Selina keeps distancing herself from the child inside her? For over 9 months?! Is she going out in that ridiculous catsuit because she wants to cause a miscarriage, is that it? So she doesn’t have to make a decision like abortion, adoption or leaving the baby with Bruce? Her constant cussing over the situation and crying and whining turns the pregnancy of my favorite DC couple into such a depressing ordeal.
The art is very pretty! Thank God.
4/10
Story #4: The Catwoman of Earth by Jeff Parker
After the depressing pregnancy of Catwoman, we switch to the wacky 60s version of her. Catwoman and her henchmen are robbing a science fair when suddenly, a UFO arrives. WTF?! Four aliens and a robot are beamed down to the surface and the group’s leader, an arrogant jock-like guy proclaims that they will take over the planet and enslave humanity. Catwoman angrily stands up to him. Turns out the evil aliens are sexist too when the male one tells Catwoman females have to ask for permission to speak and the female alien in the group unhappily agrees. The jock alien tells the muscly male alien to dispose of Catwoman but she’s not easy to dispose of! She fights off the brawler, she cuts the tentacles off the tentacle alien (someone WILL jerk off to that one panel), dodges the jock’s laser gun, steals the laser gun with her whip, shoots the robot to bits, and lets the police take the males away. The female alien seems much happier now and invites Catwoman to a flight around the world in the UFO. Catwoman suggests a trip to Paris so she can loot the Louvre.
Aliens and Catwoman don’t mix. I didn’t really care for this story. I mean it’s great to see Catwoman in action and taking down four guys on her own but... aliens and Catwoman just don’t mix. It was a bit jarring to me. Also the aliens’ designs weren’t super interesting. They were basically pink elves.
The art is beautiful. Catwoman looks like Julie Newmar and the entire color scheme is very 60s.
4/10
Story #5: A Cat of Nine Tales by Liam Sharp
Catwoman’s caught stealing a diamond necklace by an armed security guard. He seems a bit scared of her but knows it’s his job to stop her. She’s not engaging in a fight - of course not, he has a gun pointed at her! So instead, Catwoman relies on her talking skills. And intimidation skills. She tells the guard that there are 9 ways their situation could play out:
1. The guard lets her tie him up and escape with the necklace.
2. She beats his ass.
3. He kills her.
4. She scratches his eyes out.
5. He slips and gets knocked out.
6. He fires his gun, misses her, and the bullet ricochets until it kills him.
7. They team up.
8. She gives up.
9. She kills him.
However, the story ends with the guard fainting because Catwoman’s just so damn scary.
Very short, very simple. Even the art is simple, on one page there are 3 very similar panels with only minor changes. Nothing memorable but not too bad. It shows how Catwoman can take someone out even without touching them. It’s okay.
The art reminds me of a comic from the 80s or maybe 90s. Hard to describe why. Guess you have to see it. Again, it’s okay.
5/10
Story #6: Little Bird by Mindy Newell
Selina learns from a news report that a priceless mezuzah has been found at a flea market. It’s currently at the Jewish Museum of Gotham City and Selina immediately steals it. Later, Batman shows up at her place and asks why she wants the mezuzah. She doesn’t give him much of an answer so he leaves. Pretty pointless scene I would say. A flashback reveals that a young Selina used to live with a Jewish lady. I dunno, I guess she’s a foster mother? And the woman liked Selina so much and considered her family so she gave her that mezuzah to pass it on to her own kids one day (even though Selina doesn’t want kids, is not related to the lady, and isn’t Jewish). Back to the present, Selina’s punishing a client. That prostitute background made an unwanted comeback for this story because Selina’s resisting and denying herself love so she’s “whoring”, to prove to herself how despicable she is. Okay...? There’s an inner turmoil going on, she’s torn between selling the artefact or not. Eventually, she decides to bring the mezuzah back to the lady she used to live with. The lady’s grown old and demented, lives in a home and is at the verge of dying. Selina places an envelop between the lady’s hands and leaves. The home’s director finds the envelop which contains the mezuzah, an official document which basically ensures that the lady will be taken care of before and after her death, and a poetic note from Selina.
My least favorite story out of them all - and that is quite an accomplishment when there are King and Nocenti in the same book! It had that Frank “I’m an insane sexist racist asshole” Miller prostitute bullshit in it and Selina hating herself again. This time, the “whoring” (and this word is not me, it’s from the actual story) is used as a way of self-punishment. Because it’s disgusting and wrong and Selina only does it to torture herself. Dunno if that’s the right message you wanna send here... The Jewish lady was kinda random to me because Selina’s not Jewish and never has been Jewish. This is not a negative point, it’s just so random. And the Batman scene was pointless, I have no idea what purpose it served. Except for showing us Batman pay Selina like a john and having Selina make jokes about “whoring.” Ugh.
The art was great, very clean.
1/10
Story #7: Born to Kiln by Chuck Dixon
Going from my least favorite to my favorite story in this book!
Catwoman knows there’s a diamond in a safe on a boat that is set to leave the harbour in the morning. So she climbs aboard at night to steal the gem. She finds several dead sailors and they’re all covered in mud. Who could have done this? Yes, you guessed right - it’s Clayface! He’s already at the safe, opens it, and retrieves the big stone. Catwoman reveals herself and aims a fire hose at him. Her confidence, however, dies the moment the hose doesn’t work. Clayface swallows the diamond and starts chasing after her. There’s apparently a machine to spray-paint cars on the boat so she lures him inside, activates the paint to blind him, and the hot lamps for the drying process immobilise the big pile of mud. Now that he’s nothing more than hard clay, Catwoman takes a wrench to him and takes the freed diamond.
FINALLY a story I really, really like from beginning to end! First off, IT’S PURPLE CATWOMAN!!! Selina is wearing my favorite costume, the iconic Jim Balent suit from her 90s solo run in this story - and I LOVE IT!!! Yeah, her boobs are quite loose in it and sometimes dangle in strange ways but fuck it! LOL I prefer hanging boobs over a tight corset that should reduce her agility or a back breaking pose anytime! We get sneaky Selina, we get playful Selina, we get over confident Selina who has to think fast and run even faster, and she gets what she wants in the end without killing anyone.
The art is gorgeous! It’s very fluid and alive. I also absolutely adore the cute facial expressions on Kitten’s face, especially when she locks Clayface in. I miss Catwoman being fun. In this, she’s just adorable and not sexualised at all.
8/10
Story #8: Conventional Wisdom by Will Pfeifer
Selina finds herself at a Bat Con and is supposed to give autographs. The whole scenario seems weird and confusing to her, she doesn’t remember how she got there or what is going on. Bruce, Joker, Riddler, and Two-Face being there with her to give autographs is even weirder. And why does no one except for her react to that unconscious, bloody man on the floor?! On her way to her panel, she runs into several cosplayers which is basically only fan service. But you will find the male, dark-skinned version of me at her panel, asking when the fuck she will finally put that 90s suit back on!!! The dialogues keep breaking the fourth wall, pointing out that this story is about to end. One of the panel’s attendees looks like Marvel’s Taskmaster and another is Selina herself in her Catwoman suit. Selina slowly remembers what happened: The Taskmaster dude is Doctor Destiny, she broke into his lair and stole his reality distorter, a little machine she’s been carrying around for the entire story. She smashes the machine to wake up back in the lair and cracks her knuckles, ready to take down Doctor Destiny and his goons.
And it was all a dream! That twist has never been a favorite of mine. Even though it’s not really a twist; you know immediately that it’s a dream. We don’t learn anything new about Selina or see anything Catwoman-y in this. It’s really basically fan service. They wanted Selina to see and interact with real life fans of hers so they made it happen. She also comments on various versions of her costume. It’s cute but kinda forgettable.
The art is good, it’s rare to see light and bright colors in a Catwoman book so it was a nice change. And the cosplayers looked nice. But they could have used different body types to make the fans more diverse and visually appealing.
3/10
Story #9: Addicted to Trouble by Ram V
And here we are, the premiere of the duo that will take over Catwoman’s current solo run from #23 onward. We get a first taste of the writing and art and I must say it’s a good taste.
This short story serves as a continuation of Joelle Jones’ #21 issue where at the end of the arc, Selina and her sister Maggie left Gotham in a purple car. So we see a short recap of how they got the car and where they were headed but unfortunately, the engine dies. They hitchhike to Memphis. Selina’s frustrated that Maggie doesn’t talk to her. They get drunk and start a fight at a bar. The cops show up and arrest them. While sitting in the back of the cop car, the girls start laughing together and steal the car. They leave behind their luggage which only contains stuff they won’t miss - including Selina’s cat funeral dress. They drive back to Gotham, Selina steals food and drinks on the way, and they cuddle on a rooftop overlooking the city. The story cuts to Selina and Leandro, a character I would know if I had continued the Jones run. She tells him she wants to lay low for a while and stay out of trouble. When he asks “Oh? Really?”, Selina throws a naughty smile towards the reader. Yeah yeah, lay low my ass. :D
First off, I have no idea what happened before the road trip, I don’t know why they took it or why Maggie doesn’t talk or what the purpose of all of this was because all they do is get drunk, fight an entire bar, and go back. No idea what that accomplished. And I feel sorry for the car because it was so gorgeous. Anyway, I am happy to say that Ram V has a great writing style! He gave a good voice to Selina, it sounded very natural and like a human would talk, no forced exposition or fake deepness.
The art was good, there were a few expressive faces and the bar fight was well executed.
5/10 (because I don’t know the context)
Story #10: The Art of Picking A Lock by Ed Brubaker
Instead of ending with a transition to the next Catwoman issue (which I would have preferred), the collection offers one more story and it’s written by the man who successfully handled the second half of Selina’s first solo run. He turned her stories more into the film noir direction and gave her sidekicks. The run also gave her a fugly suit and made her have sex with old men and Brubaker wanted to kill her off and have her not know who the father to her unborn child was so... yeah, I’m torn about that guy.
The last story shows us Catwoman breaking into a warehouse full of Joker goons while thinking about the thrill of breaking locks and how she learned how to do it when she was at a juvenile detention center. She beats them all up and demands to know where “he” is. Later, her friend Holly is on a motorcycle chasing after a cab while Catwoman is riding on top of a subway. Both reach Gotham’s harbor. We see that the cab is filled with Joker gas and the driver is laughing maniacally. Holly can’t reach the cab in time and it drives off into the water. Catwoman swings down and jumps after it. She breaks the trunk open and reveals a handcuffed Slam Bradley. Cut to the three back on dry land. Holly chides him for going after Joker alone and not waiting for backup. He admits that it was dumb, then shares intel on where Joker will strike and Selina should tell “her friend.” She says she will and Slam ends the book with the words that he could really use a cigarette. NO, this book was not that good that it would warrant a cigarette at the end!
This short obviously takes place during the second half of the first solo run. We see Catwoman in action, that’s cool. Taking down almost a dozen of armed Joker henchmen, that’s pretty badass! And a woman saves the man damsel in distress at the end, that’s a nice ending as well. However, I don’t care about the costume so the visual appeal wasn’t there and I really don’t care about Slam Bradley so the reveal at the end was pretty ugh to me.
The art is great! It’s like a modernised/smoother version of Darwyn Cooke’s style, the artist Brubaker worked on the Catwoman title in the 00s with. So that gives it a pretty nostalgic feel.
5/10
In addition to the 10 stories we’ve now covered, there are pages to show off the Catwoman costumes of each decade as well as pinups. The costume pages are designed in the decade’s style (the 40s are black and white, the 60s psychedelic etc). But what I don’t get about the 90s one: It’s purple Catwoman grayed out in the background and gray BTAS Catwoman in color in the foreground - why make the purple outfit gray when you have an already gray outfit?! Just switch them! Also who put together the 70s one, couldn’t they find better costume examples?!
The seven pinups are pretty, unfortunately the majority feature the black outfits. I was surprised that even Tim Sale drew the black costume and not the purple one from his Long Halloween series. We get one of the gray BTAS costume and Jim Balent thankfully gives us BatCat with his purple creation. Nice!
Well, looking back at my personal scores for this collection of stories, Catwoman’s anniversary issue reached a total of 44/100 points in my book. Wow. That’s... not that good.
Most of the stories ranged from average to bad. Nothing spectacular, nothing memorable. There’s a lack of witty dialogue, Catwoman’s rarely fun to watch. In six stories she’s seen fighting, in three she’s seen being chased so I’m missing the variety here. I would assume you can do more with Catwoman than that. She often rather fights instead of using her wits and smarts. And actual cats are only featured in two stories but in one they die and in the other, Selina says she should drown them. -_-
A collection of 10 new stories was a great idea but celebrating the character this is not. I’m happy that the next writer for Catwoman left a positive impression on me and the story feat. Balent’s Catwoman was a delight. However, the writers didn’t really bring their “A” game for this anniversary issue which is disappointing.
Would I recommend it? Hmmm. It pains me to say: not really, no. You don’t miss much by skipping it. You don’t miss sassy lines or breathtaking art, you don’t miss out on funny scenes or emotional depth. This anniversary issue is merely average and I highly doubt I’ll go back to reread it.
(a huge THANK YOU to everyone who read this entire, way too long post! i highly appreciate it 💜you’re a real trooper!)
15 notes
·
View notes
Text
The Feast of the Annunciation at 35,000 ft
March 25th, Tolkien, and the X-Men
[Content Warning for discussion of Panic Attack Disorder and Anxiety Disorders as well as Dissociation]
Panic attack disorder really messes with you.
It stops you from doing the things you really want to do. It prevents you from enjoying life. And because—intellectually—you know the fear it generates is irrational, it not only steals life from you, but leaves you feeling guilty for letting it.
“If only I could have been brave,” you think. If only you could have stared down the beast.
You never feel so much like an animal as when you are having a panic attack; the urge to escape is all-encompassing. Your heart is pumping blood faster than it ever has before. Every second is elongated. Whatever you didn’t smell before is suddenly suffocating you. Whatever you didn’t see before is suddenly ballooning across your visual field and, oh, was that color always so bright? Noises are all so loud, touch is all so much. You must get away, your body tells you, your cells tell you, your bile tells you—get away or you’ll die! But where do you go? You start to disassociate. You sink into feelings of surreality. Is this you? Whose are these eyes you’re seeing out of? There’s an extra step between the thought and the movement of the hands. The part of your mind that is not ruled by the clump of cells that kept your distant ancestors safe from Things With Jaws is perfectly aware there is nothing to be afraid of. There are no jaws. There is no predator. There is no cause for fear. But there is still fear.
Gripping, penetrating, chemical, animal fear.
Against the wash of hormones, the cerebral cortex holds no power, it can only watch you, watch itself, detached and analytical. It realizes—quite quickly, really, and in parallel—two things. One: that the thing you need to escape from is yourself, and Two: that, therefore, there is no escape. Be reasonable, it asks you. But who can escape their own mind?
No matter. The urge is still there, and it’s so hard to suppress.
Now extrapolate the fear of having a panic attack to the enclosed cabin of an airplane at 35,000 ft.
You see the problem, I’m sure. And yet...
A year ago today, after a lifetime in fear of flying, I got on a plane for the very first time. How? The Maker of Middle-earth exhibit came to New York.
I’d been drawn back into my Tolkien Obsession about 4 years before, digging deeper than I had in over a decade into notes and reference books. I was remembering what Middle-earth had meant to me—what it had given me—when I was a teen. In light of all that, could I miss what might be the only chance in my entire life to see some of these things in person?
But it was a long drive, I didn’t want to go alone, and we only had so many free days during my husband’s spring break. And it was New York! I’d never been to New York. Think of all the other things we could see while we were there! Did we want to spend that time driving instead? I tied myself in knots for days while ticket prices rose, until a scant week remained before we’d have to leave.
Watching the turmoil practically radiate from me, my husband turned to me and said, “If you go, and you see it, will you cry?”
I didn’t even have to think: “Yes.”
He smiled, though he had already known the answer. “Then you should go. Do you want me to order the tickets now?”
I swallowed, then froze.
This was a trip about Tolkien, about my greatest love, the primary lease-holder of my brain.
So why am I peppering this with comic panels?(1)
In 1976 Chris Claremont and Dave Cockrum decided to shake things up in a comic called The Uncanny X-Men. They wanted to add a cosmically powerful character, and they wanted this character to be a woman—a first for parent company, Marvel.
Marvel hadn’t had the most progressive run with their female leads. X-Men in particular had started out with only a single woman on the team: the kind telekinetic Jean Grey, whose primary characterization seemed to be her gender. She had experienced some changes in the 13 years since the first issue of X-Men was published, the revelation that she was also a telepath among them. We’d later learn that her powers developed too early when she telepathically linked, in desperation, with her best friend, Annie, as Annie lay dying, allowing Jean to feel what it was to die without dying herself, causing her to grow into the fundamentally compassionate human being we knew so well. But back in the mid 70s, compared to the more diverse and exciting cast that Claremont had devised just a scant year prior, Jean seemed rather dull, and not long after Claremont took over, her character decided to leave superhero life behind.
Or so it seemed.
Pulled out of retirement on a space mission gone wrong, Jean finds herself trapped with her former teammates on a space shuttle. The shuttle is on a re-entry course, but must pass through a massive solar flare. Sealing her teammates, many against their will, in the shuttle’s only shielded chamber, Jean does the most quintessentially Jean thing: she decides to sacrifice herself for her friends. She telepathically absorbs the flight training of the only pilot on board, locks herself in the cockpit, and prays she can use her telekinetic shield to keep herself alive long enough to land the shuttle.
We do not get to see what happens to her, and nor do her friends, as the shuttle crashes into Jamaica Bay.
But we know. This time Jean did die: either her flesh was burned to ash by the sun’s fury, or her body was crushed in the crash, or was she drowned in the depths of the bay.
She is truly gone.
But Phoenix Rises in her place.
Claremont took the woman perceived as both the kindest and the weakest of the X-Men and made her Marvel’s first cosmic female hero, a being that has “the power to cut and re-grow any part of the universe, as well as destroy it entirely, which is part of the Phoenix's purpose: ‘The Judgment of the Phoenix’, to burn away what doesn’t work.” The Phoenix Force is described as being “the embodiment of the very passion of Creation—the spark that gave life to the Universe, the flame that will ultimately consume it.” And the first thing she destroys and remakes is herself.
Not many issues hence, she’ll do the same for the whole of Creation. Claremont even goes so far with his purple prose to dip into Kabbalah. Phoenix becomes Tiphareth(2), the Sephiroth at the center of the Tree of Life, “the force that integrates the Sefira of Chesed ("compassion") and Gevurah ("Strength, or Judgment (din)"). These two forces are, respectively, expansive (giving) and restrictive (receiving).”
If you search for info on Phoenix you’ll inevitably be inundated with articles about the span of Uncanny X-Men issues known as The Dark Phoenix Saga, and with good reason: The Dark Phoenix Saga—the events that follow Jean’s transformation and quest to save Creation—is still considered one of the greatest of all comics stories. In it Jean-Phoenix—under the influence of a powerful, manipulative telepath who wants to use her limitless power—is twisted into something fundamentally without compassion, a threat to the whole of the universe. Understanding this, she chooses to die again, to save the world and the people she loves from what she has become.
The intricacies(3) and implications of this transformation and the devolution that followed it are a post for another time. Suffice it to say that any human, even a supremely compassionate one, struggles to adjust to godhood; the ability to care, empathetically, and so deeply, about all of life made the Jean-Phoenix capable of rebuilding a dying universe, but it also made everything in that universe lose all meaning.
But Tolkien. This was about Tolkien. And airplanes. And New York. And the Feast of the Annunciation.
Before I knew Frodo, even before I knew Taran and Eilonwy, I knew Jean; I knew the gentle, compassionate woman who died twice for those she loved--once to save them from the burning heat of re-entry and once to save them from herself--and in between looked the universe in the eye, and understood it was good, and gave it another chance.
Before Tolkien codified in me a kind of personal mythology, gave me a vocabulary for my spiritual relationship to the world, I had Phoenix and her birth from the ashes of what had been Jean Grey.
Now, sitting there with my husband waiting for an answer, I opened up my iPad and pulled up flight dates and our potential flight path on Google (because I deal with fear through research). And I laughed.
We’d be there on March 25th, and we’d have to pass over Jamaica Bay as we came in to land.
“Buy it,” I said. And I, a 38 year old woman, dyed my hair red, threaded my film reproduction One Ring onto a silver chain around my neck(4), and boarded a plane for the first time.
Fortified by love, Xanax, and a personalized mythology, I saw clouds from the top side. Imagine how many tens of thousands of years humans existed when not one of them could have said that(5).
I saw dinosaurs, I saw Madame X(6), I saw an amazing view for three nights from our hotel room.
And I saw Maker of Middle-earth.
Today is March 25th, The Feast of the Annunciation and, not coincidentally, the day the One Ring falls into the fires of Orodruin.
It’s the day I flew over Jamaica Bay and burned away the part of me that didn’t work. It’s a day of promise. Of expectation. Of new life. The promise of redemption, and the power of compassion—and pity—to change the world.
And that is what stories can do. That is why we tell them. That is why we read them. That is how we live in times that are good and in times that are bad. That is why, when there were only stars in the night to give light, those stars became things with stories—people, animals, gods—and like lanterns they illuminated the dark of both the sky and the soul, mapping out meaning, obliterating the shadows where the Things With Jaws dwelt.
Notes
Comic panels are taken from The Uncanny X-Men issues #100, #101, and #108.
“A new pattern forms—shaped like the mystic Tree of Life—with Xavier its lofty crown and Colossus its base. Each X-man has a place, each a purpose greater than himself or herself. And the heart of the Tree, the catalyst that binds these wayward souls together, is Phoenix, Tiphareth, Child of the Sun, Child of Life, the vision of the harmony of things.”
There is very little in the Marvel universe as intricate as Jean and Phoenix.
The Ring is treacherous. As we were sitting down to dinner just before we left the Ring somehow caught on the underside of the table, broke the chain, and forced me to wear it on my finger for the rest of the trip.
I realize it is entirely possible to climb high enough to be above certain types of clouds without the need for aircraft, and that clouds can form quite low to the ground, but I’m speaking both more abstractly about the nature of fantastic experiences and in the specific about cirrus clouds.
I also saw the Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, but I talked about that here.
#tolkien#phoenix#namesake#stories#xmen#x-men#new york#lord of the rings#the one ring#maker of middle-earth#the feast of the annunciation#march 25th#fear of flying#cw: anxiety#cw: panic attack#cw: dissociation#cw: fear of flying#dark phoenix#jean grey
16 notes
·
View notes
Photo
AAS NOVA An Iced Cosmic-Ray Macchiato By Astrobites Our universe is littered with particles of unbelievably high energy, called cosmic rays. The most extreme of these particles carry the same amount of energy as a professional tennis serve, like the Oh-My-God Particle detected nearly 30 years ago. The catch: we don’t know exactly what processes can pack so much energy into a single particle. The authors of today’s article discuss how these particles might gain their energy in a way analogous to your morning trip to Dunkin’™. Cosmic Rays at a Glance Cosmic rays are atomic nuclei that have been accelerated to high energies in astrophysical environments, such as supernova remnants or active galactic nuclei. Although they might seem like a great tool in the multi-messenger astronomy toolbox, astronomy with cosmic rays is no simple task, as these particles get deflected by extragalactic magnetic fields. Despite efforts to pinpoint the origins of cosmic rays, especially those of the highest energies, we’ve come up empty-handed (check out these bites for previous studies: Galactic cosmic rays, cosmic-ray anisotropy). Even though we can’t measure where they come from, we do know their energies, and a variety of cosmic-ray experiments detect millions of these particles every year. Many of them are thousands to millions of times more energetic than the particles in the largest terrestrial particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider, but we don’t know how the highest energy cosmic rays get their energy. Cosmic-Ray Acceleration: Old News Many theories of cosmic-ray acceleration tend to revolve around the idea of Fermi acceleration. In this scenario, objects such as supernova remnants can create shocks, consisting of material moving together with supersonic speeds, and these shocks can accelerate particles to high energies. As a shock wave propagates, particles bounce back and forth across the shock boundary. Over time, successive bounces across the shock front lead to a net transfer of energy to the particles. While Fermi acceleration does a good job of explaining cosmic rays with moderate energies and has been a staple of models for decades, it has a few pitfalls, and many argue that it can’t provide the whole story for cosmic-ray acceleration at the highest energies. A Cosmic Cup o’ Joe The authors of today’s paper propose a new way of looking at cosmic-ray acceleration: the espresso mechanism. Why espresso? Because instead of gradually gaining energy over time, particles gain their energy from a single shot. Consider an object with a jet, such as an active galaxy. If a low-energy cosmic ray enters the jet (or steam), then it can be shot down the barrel of the jet and get kicked out at much higher energy. In many cases, particle energies can increase by a factor Γ2, where Γ is the Lorentz factor (this reflects how fast the jet is moving). For some jets, this means particles can exit nearly 1,000 times as energetic as they were when they entered the jet. While this espresso scheme sounds great in principle, many previous calculations have relied on spherical cow treatments of jets, when in reality they are remarkably dynamic and complex structures. That’s where the authors of today’s paper come into play. These authors take a simple treatment of the espresso mechanism and complexify it by performing a full magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulation of ultrarelativistic jets. This takes factors like small-scale fluctuations of jet speed and jet density into account, to give a more accurate picture of the dynamics of jets. By simulating the full structure of jets, the authors find that complex environments don’t weaken the promises of espresso acceleration. In fact, the very imperfections that manifest in realistic jets can help with particle acceleration. What’s more, jet perturbations allow particles to receive double or even triple shots of energy. Throughout the paper, the authors describe the emergent spectra of espresso-accelerated cosmic rays. In doing this, they find that espresso acceleration is consistent with current measurements of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays in terms of energy, chemical composition, and spatial distributions, an accomplishment which no other model of cosmic-ray acceleration can boast. In light of all of this, it’s probably safe to say that the future of cosmic-ray science will be very caffeinated. IMAGE 1....Artist’s impression of the shower of particles caused when a cosmic ray, a charged particle often produced by a distant astrophysical source, hits Earth’s upper atmosphere. [J. Yang/NSF] IMAGE 2....Cosmic rays (red) consist of individual protons and nuclei of heavier elements. They are deflected by magnetic fields along their cosmological odysseys and can’t be used to point back to the place of their origin. [IceCube Neutrino Observatory] IMAGE 3....In the “espresso mechanism”, particles gain tremendous amounts of energy from entering a jet for a short period of time. Here, a particle with initial momentum and energy pi, Ei enters a jet with characteristic Lorentz factor Γ and leaves the jet with an energy equal to roughly Γ2Ei. [Caprioli et al. 2018] IMAGE 4....In realistically modeled jets, material tends to clump in some regions, and these regions of overdensity (color scale in figure) cause the jet to locally move faster or slower. [Mbarek & Caprioli 2019] IMAGE 5....Sample particle trajectories (black curves) are overlaid on top of slices of the jet, with jet velocity represented by the color in the top panels. Bottom panels show the amount of energy gained along the particle paths, showing that particles can leave jets with much more energy than they entered with. [Mbarek & Caprioli 2019] Title: Bottom-up Acceleration of Ultra-High-Energy Cosmic Rays in the Jets of Active Galactic Nuclei Authors: Rostom Mbarek and Damiano Caprioli First Author’s Institution: University of Chicago Status: Published in ApJ Editor’s note: Astrobites is a graduate-student-run organization that digests astrophysical literature for undergraduate students. As part of the partnership between the AAS and astrobites, we occasionally repost astrobites content here at AAS Nova. We hope you enjoy this post from astrobites; the original can be viewed at astrobites.org. About the author, Alex Pizzuto: Alex is a PhD candidate at the Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His work focuses on developing methods to locate the Universe’s most extreme cosmic accelerators by searching for the neutrinos that come from them. Alex is also passionate about local science outreach events in Madison, and enjoys hiking, cooking, and playing music when he is not debugging his code.
1 note
·
View note
Text
Harvey Weinstein Trial: Jury Suggests It Is Split on 2 Most Serious Charges https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/21/nyregion/weinstein-verdict.html
Harvey Weinstein jury suggests it’s deadlocked on two counts, unanimous on others in sexual assault case
By Shayna Jacobs | Published February 21 at 3:30 PM EST | Washington Post | Posted February 21, 2020 |
NEW YORK — The jury in Harvey Weinstein's sexual assault trial suggested Friday that it was hung on the two top counts but unanimous on the others as it headed into a break for the weekend.
Justice James Burke gave juror a brief instruction, roughly a minute long, asking them to continue trying to reach a verdict on all counts. The panel of seven men and five women must be unanimous to reach a verdict — but the language of a note they sent to the judge indicates they are not there on the counts of predatory sexual assault, which are the most severe in the case and carry a sentence of 10 years to life in prison.
“We the jury request to understand if we can be hung on 1 and 3 and unanimous on the other charges,” said the note, which Burke read aloud before calling the jury in to address them.
The note, despite its specificity, does not necessarily reflect the jurors’ eventual verdict — it could have been posing a hypothetical scenario, or could simply reflect their confusion over the complicated charges.
About a half-hour after Burke addressed jurors, they were sent home. The session was already set to end early, at 3 p.m., because Weinstein attorney Donna Rotunno needed to travel home to Chicago to attend a funeral.
In the courtroom, Weinstein, leaning over his walker, looked downtrodden after conferring with his lawyers about the developments. Later, in the hallway, the once-powerful movie producer shrugged and stayed silent as reporters shouted questions about the jury indications.
Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., who has a lot riding on the high-profile case, had a wide grin across his face as he left the courtroom.
The predatory sexual assault charges that seem to be in dispute both stem from an accusation from “The Sopranos” actress Annabella Sciorra, 59, who testified that Weinstein raped her in late 1993 or early 1994. Jurors would need to conclude that there was a pattern of sexual assault that includes Sciorra’s allegation and the allegations of either or both of the other accusers: Mimi Haleyi and Jessica Mann.
The other charges in the trial are for individual acts alleged by Haleyi and Mann. Haleyi, 42, a former production assistant, testified that Weinstein forced an act of oral sex on her on July 10, 2006, at his New York apartment. Mann, 34, had a consensual five-year relationship with Weinstein but said he forced sex on her twice — once in New York at a DoubleTree Hotel on March 18, 2013, and once in Los Angeles. (He is not being charged in the latter case.)
The jury’s suggestion that they are unanimous on those individual Mann and Haleyi charges could mean that it is planning to convict on at least one of them. If jurors’ unanimity on Mann and Haleyi were for acquittal, they would presumably have to be unanimous on acquittal on the predatory sexual assault charges, since those involve endorsing Mann or Haleyi’s allegations — but they are suggesting they’re hung, not unanimous.
Weinstein, 67, has said that all sexual encounters were consensual.
Three other women were allowed to testify as supporting witnesses in the trial, which began Jan. 6.
Weinstein’s lawyers argued at trial that the women were seeking access to the industry through the powerful producer of Oscar-winning films such as “Shakespeare in Love” and “Pulp Fiction.”
Earlier Friday, the jury heard a requested read-back from Sciorra’s cross-examination. Since the jury began deliberations Tuesday, they have also asked for read-back from the testimony of actress Rosie Perez, Sciorra’s longtime friend, who testified that Sciorra told her decades ago via phone conversation that she had been raped. The jury has also requested emails and read-backs related to Haleyi’s accusation.
Weinstein’s legal team sought to cast doubt on Sciorra’s story by pointing out that it is nearly 30 years old, and arguing that, like the other two accusers, Sciorra did not come forward to authorities with a claim about Weinstein until news reports of his sexual misconduct were published in October 2017.
At the conclusion of this trial, Weinstein will face another set of sex crimes charges in Los Angeles.
_____
Kevin Armstrong in New York contributed to this article.
*********
Harvey Weinstein Trial: Jury Suggests It Is Split on 2 Most Serious Charges
The judge told jurors to keep deliberating after they sent a note asking if they could be deadlocked on the top counts, but unanimous on others.
By Jan Ransom | Published Feb. 21, 2020 Updated 5:13 p.m. ET | New York Times | Posted February 21, 2020 |
The jury in Harvey Weinstein’s rape trial sent a note to the judge on Friday afternoon suggesting that it was deadlocked on the most serious charges in the indictment, but that it might have reached a verdict on three other counts.
In their note, on the fourth day of deliberations, the jurors asked if they could return a unanimous verdict on one of the lesser charges of rape or criminal sexual act, but remain split on two charges of predatory sexual assault, which carry a possible life sentence.
“We the jury request to understand if we can be hung on 1 and /or 3 but unanimous on the other charges,” read the note, which was entered during the lunch break.
Mr. Weinstein’s lawyers said they would accept a partial verdict, but prosecutors said they were not yet willing to do so.
Justice James M. Burke of State Supreme Court in Manhattan told the jurors to continue deliberating. Minutes later, at 3 p.m., he adjourned the proceedings and sent the jurors home for the weekend because one of the defense lawyers had a funeral to attend. Deliberations resume on Monday.
The jury did not say what it had decided on the lesser counts. The predatory sexual assault count requires prosecutors to prove that Mr. Weinstein committed a serious sexual felony against at least two people.
The case against Mr. Weinstein, 67, was built primarily on the accusations brought by two women: Miriam Haley, 42, a former production assistant who testified that Mr. Weinstein forced oral sex on her in 2006; and Jessica Mann, 34, an actress who said Mr. Weinstein raped her in a Midtown Manhattan hotel room in 2013.
In weighing the predatory sexual assault charges, the jury was also asked to consider testimony given by the actress Annabella Sciorra, who said Mr. Weinstein raped her in the early 1990s. Prosecutors were barred by New York State’s statute of limitations from bringing charges in the incident involving Ms. Sciorra, 59, who was the prosecution’s strongest witness.
The jury’s note suggested that one or some jurors did not believe Ms. Sciorra. In previous notes, jurors have asked to review testimony given by both she and Ms. Haley, as well as to review communications and emails related to the two women.
Mr. Weinstein has pleaded not guilty and claims all his sexual encounters with his accusers were consensual. He did not respond to reporters’ questions as he left the courthouse on Friday.
_____
Michael Gold and Emily Palmer contributed reporting.
*********
Harvey Weinstein Trial: What Happened This Week
By Andrea Salcedo | Published Feb. 21, 2020 Updated 3:07 p.m. ET | New York Times | Posted February 21, 2020 |
On Friday, jurors suggested they were split on the two most serious charges.
After listening to weeks of testimony, the jury in Harvey Weinstein’s rape trial began deliberations this week. For reporters, as well as stakeholders in the case, the waiting began.
By yesterday afternoon, the jury of seven men and five women had not reached a decision.
Mr. Weinstein, 67, has pleaded not guilty in State Supreme Court in Manhattan to five felony counts, including two charges of predatory sexual assault.
Though six women testified at the trial, the charges hinge on allegations made by two women, Jessica Mann and Miriam Haley. In deciding the predatory sexual assault charges, however, the jury was asked to consider the testimony of the actress Annabella Sciorra, who said Mr. Weinstein raped her in the early 1990s. (Her accusation is too old to qualify as a crime under state law.)
Mr. Weinstein’s lawyers say that the encounters between their client and his accusers were consensual, and that the women used him to advance their careers.
I talked to my colleague Jan Ransom, who is covering the trial for The Times, about the recent developments in the courthouse. This is a condensed version of our conversation.
WHAT HAPPENED IN COURT THIS WEEK?
Jurors began deliberating on Tuesday. Soon after, they rang a bell to alert the court that they had a question. The first three days of deliberations continued this way.
At the end of each day, Mr. Weinstein typically responds to reporters’ questions, even if sarcastically, as he shuffles with a walker toward the elevators outside of the courtroom. But since the deliberations began, he has been quiet — opting to just crack a slight smile, keeping moving without a word.
WHAT QUESTIONS HAS THE JURY ASKED?
The jury has sent seven notes with multiple questions; it wanted, for instance, an explanation of the charges and legal terms such as “consent” and “forcible compulsion.” It also requested to hear the testimony of Annabella Sciorra and Miriam Haley, as well as to review emails and communications related to the women.
Ms. Sciorra was the prosecution’s strongest witness. On Tuesday, the jury asked for an explanation as to why they could not convict on Ms. Sciorra’s allegation and for clarification on the statute of limitations.
It seemed the jury was assessing the credibility of the accounts provided by Ms. Sciorra and Ms. Haley, and trying to determine whether the evidence supports a conviction on the predatory sexual assault charge.
WHAT OTHER NEWS HAS COME OUT? (SEE BELOW)
The lead prosecutor, Joan Illuzzi, accused Mr. Weinstein’s lead lawyer, Donna Rotunno, of jury tampering after she wrote an op-ed in Newsweek telling the jury to do “the right thing.”
When should we expect a verdict?
Those of us covering the trial have labored over this question, knowing an answer does not exist. It’s all a guessing game that no one can resist.
We can assume what might happen, and when, based on the jury’s questions, but it is hard to know. At the end of the day, only 12 people — the jurors — really know when a verdict will be reached.
*********
Who’s Who in the Harvey Weinstein Trial
Mr. Weinstein, once a powerful Hollywood producer now accused of sex crimes, could be sentenced to life in prison if convicted of the most serious charge against him.
By Michael Levenson | Published Feb. 19, 2020 Updated Feb. 21, 2020, 3:15 p.m. ET | New York Times | Posted February 21, 2020 |
Jury deliberations began this week in the trial of Harvey Weinstein, setting the stage for a watershed moment that will test whether the allegations that helped ignite the #MeToo movement can sustain a conviction against a man who was once one of the most powerful producers in Hollywood.
Mr. Weinstein, 67, has pleaded not guilty in State Supreme Court in Manhattan to five felony charges, including rape, criminal sexual assault and predatory sexual assault. His lawyers have argued that his accusers engaged in consensual and often transactional relationships with him to advance their careers.
If convicted of the most serious charge against him, predatory sexual assault, Mr. Weinstein could be sentenced to life in prison.
Here’s a look at some of the key figures in the trial.
THE JUDGE
Justice James M. Burke
The task of presiding over the trial has fallen to James M. Burke, a former prosecutor appointed to the bench in 2001. Justice Burke clashed with Mr. Weinstein’s lawyers early in the trial after the judge suggested that Mr. Weinstein might end up in prison for life for repeatedly violating an order not to use his cellphone in court. Mr. Weinstein’s lawyers argued that the comments were evidence of bias and asked the judge to recuse himself. Justice Burke refused, saying he was merely using “hyperbolic language.”
THE JURY
The 12 jurors who will decide Mr. Weinstein’s fate were chosen after an arduous two-week process during which the prosecution argued that the defense was systematically eliminating white women from the panel, even though a majority of Mr. Weinstein’s accusers were from that demographic. In the end, the jury included seven men and five women, two of them white women. Among them are a public housing worker, an Upper East Side businessman, an East Harlem security guard, the managing partner of an investment firm, a banking executive, the co-founder of a start-up, a real estate tax accountant and a lawyer whose sister is a federal prosecutor in Chicago.
THE DEFENSE
Donna Rotunno, Arthur Aidala and Damon Cheronis
Harvey Weinstein’s legal team
Donna Rotunno, Mr. Weinstein’s lead defense lawyer, is a brash and outspoken combatant in the cultural wars and in the courtroom. A former Illinois prosecutor, she has been hailed as “a bulldog” by the men she has defended from sexual misconduct charges. Ms. Rotunno has lost only one sex-crime trial, and has been known to wear a gold chain to court bearing the proclamation “Not Guilty.” She has assailed the #MeToo movement, arguing that it has wrecked reputations and careers without due process, and has contended that women bear equal responsibility for protecting themselves from sexual assault. In a recent interview on “The Daily,” she said she had never been sexually assaulted “because I would never put myself in that position.”
Damon Cheronis, Ms. Rotunno’s frequent legal collaborator, is a Chicago lawyer who specializes in defending clients against serious state and federal charges. He has called the trial of Mr. Weinstein the “type of case that trial lawyers live for.”
Arthur Aidala, the sole New York-based lawyer on the team, is a frequent commentator on Fox News who has defended other prominent men accused of sexual misconduct, including Roger Ailes, Alan Dershowitz and Lawrence Taylor, the former N.F.L. linebacker.
DEFENSE WITNESS
Talita Maia
Among the key witnesses called by the defense was Talita Maia, a former friend of one of Mr. Weinstein’s two main accusers, Jessica Mann. Ms. Mann has said that Mr. Weinstein raped her, but Ms. Maia testified that Ms. Mann had described Mr. Weinstein as her “spiritual soul mate” and had never said that he had assaulted her. “She would say he is a wonderful person,” Ms. Maia said. “There was flirtation between them since the first day.”
Mr. Weinstein’s lawyers also called several other witnesses to bolster their claim that the relationships were consensual or cast doubt on his accusers’ accounts. One of those witnesses was Elizabeth Loftus, a cognitive psychologist who suggested that Mr. Weinstein’s accusers might not recall incidents from years ago. “It doesn’t take a Ph.D. to know that memory fades over time,” she said.
THE DEFENDANT
Harvey Weinstein
Harvey Weinstein was for years a Hollywood kingmaker, turning out Oscar-winning movies and presenting himself as a champion of liberal causes, even as he was shadowed by sexual misconduct allegations. Then, in October 2017, an investigation by The New York Times found previously undisclosed allegations against Mr. Weinstein stretching over nearly three decades. Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina Jolie, Ashley Judd and Rosanna Arquette were among the actors who accused Mr. Weinstein of misconduct. More than 90 women have since come forward to allege sexual misconduct by Mr. Weinstein, though the trial hinges on accounts from just two key accusers, Jessica Mann and Miriam Haley. Mr. Weinstein has maintained that all the encounters were consensual.
THE PROSECUTION
Cyrus R. Vance Jr.
Manhattan district attorney
The trial represents a critical test for Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney, who has been criticized for not pursuing charges against Mr. Weinstein in 2015. Mr. Vance has said there was not enough evidence to prosecute the case, despite an audio tape that an Italian model, Ambra Battilana, made for the police on which Mr. Weinstein apologized when she asked him why he had touched her breasts. Mr. Vance, who was elected in 2009 on a promise to aggressively pursue sex crimes, has worked to clear a backlog of rape-evidence kits and convict people charged with the sex trafficking of minors. A conviction of Mr. Weinstein could help restore his reputation as a champion of women’s issues. A loss could damage his legacy and political fortunes.
Joan Illuzzi and Meghan Hast Assistant district attorneys
Regarded as one of the most successful prosecutors in the Manhattan district attorney’s office, Joan Illuzzi has been in charge of Mr. Weinstein’s case since April 2018, when the allegations against him were still under investigation. She is known for securing the 2017 conviction of the former bodega stock clerk who killed Etan Patz, the 6-year-old boy who disappeared in 1979 as he walked to his school bus stop in SoHo. In 2016, she ran unsuccessfully as a Republican candidate for district attorney on Staten Island.
Meghan Hast, the second prosecutor on the team, has offered graphic details in the trial, such as when she said Mr. Weinstein injected erection medication into his genitals and showed up in his underwear outside the hotel room of the actress Annabella Sciorra, with baby oil in one hand and a videotape in the other. Ms. Hast joined the Manhattan district attorney’s office in 2007. In 2018, she was named deputy chief of the Violent Criminal Enterprises Unit, which prosecutes interstate gun traffickers, armed street gangs and drug dealers.
Jessica Mann and Miriam Haley Key witnesses for the prosecution
Six women testified for the prosecution that Mr. Weinstein attacked them, though the charges he faces were based on the allegations of two main accusers: Jessica Mann and Miriam Haley.
Ms. Mann, an aspiring actress raised in Washington State, said Mr. Weinstein raped her in a Manhattan hotel room in 2013. Her case was challenging for prosecutors because she said she was assaulted during a long relationship with Mr. Weinstein that included some consensual sex. Ms. Mann said she had maintained the relationship to protect her career and defuse Mr. Weinstein’s “unpredictable anger.”
Ms. Haley, a former assistant on a TV show produced by Mr. Weinstein, said he forced oral sex on her at his home in 2006. Two weeks later, Ms. Haley said, she reluctantly had sex with Mr. Weinstein in a hotel. She said she also sent him emails, took a work meeting and approached him at film events because she wanted to “just put it away in a box and pretended like it didn’t happen.”
ANNABELLA SCIORRA
WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION
The actress Annabella Sciorra, known for her work in “The Sopranos,” testified in detail about the night in late 1993 or early 1994 when she said Mr. Weinstein shoved his way into her Manhattan apartment and sexually assaulted her as she tried to fight him off. The incident was too old to be prosecuted under state law. But prosecutors obtained an indictment from a grand jury that let Ms. Sciorra testify in support of the predatory assault charge, which requires the state to prove that Mr. Weinstein committed a serious sexual offense against at least two people.
DAWN DUNNING, TARALE WULFF AND LAUREN YOUNG
Three other women — Dawn Dunning, Tarale Wulff and Lauren Young — also appeared for the prosecution as so-called Molineux witnesses, testifying about alleged sexual assaults that are not part of the indictment; their testimony was sought to demonstrate a pattern of predatory behavior by Mr. Weinstein. Molineux witnesses, also known as prior bad act” witnesses” were used to help convict Bill Cosby of sexual assault during his second trial in 2018.
______
Reporting was contributed by Jan Ransom, Jodi Kantor, Megan Twohey and James C. McKinley Jr.
*********
Weinstein Jurors Focus on ‘Project Runway’ Assistant’s Complaint
The jury is reviewing testimony from Miriam Haley, who said Harvey Weinstein sexually assaulted her in 2006.
By Jan Ransom | Published Feb. 19, 2020 | New York Times | Posted February 21, 2020 |
The jury in Harvey Weinstein’s rape trial began its second day of deliberations by asking to review testimony and other evidence related to a former production assistant on “Project Runway,” who said that the producer had forced oral sex on her in 2006.
The jury sent a note to the judge at 9:50 a.m. on Wednesday, requesting to hear all of the testimony from the production assistant, Miriam Haley. Ms. Haley is one of two women whose allegations form the basis of the indictment against Mr. Weinstein.
Mr. Weinstein, 67, has pleaded not guilty in State Supreme Court in Manhattan to five felony counts, including rape and predatory sexual assault. The two charges of predatory sexual assault require the jury to find that Mr. Weinstein committed a serious sexual assault against at least two women. If convicted on that charge, he would face up to life in prison.
By late Wednesday morning, the courtroom was again transformed into a stage for Ms. Haley’s recollections, as jurors listened intently as two court reporters read Ms. Haley’s testimony from Jan. 27.
Ms. Haley, 42, had testified that she first met Mr. Weinstein at a movie premiere in London in 2004. Two years later, she said, Mr. Weinstein got her a job on the reality television show “Project Runway.”
Ms. Haley testified that the producer tried to sexualize the relationship, commenting, for instance, on her legs. He also asked her to give him a massage, she said.
Another time, he showed up to her apartment unannounced and invited her to go to Paris with him, which she declined to do. Later, Ms. Haley agreed to go with Mr. Weinstein to a film premiere in Los Angeles. She said she did so because she would be traveling alone and because one of her friends in California was about to give birth.
On July 10, 2006, Mr. Weinstein invited Ms. Haley to visit him at his apartment in Manhattan’s TriBeCa neighborhood. After a brief conversation, she testified, he lunged at her.
“I pushed him away, and he kept kissing and fondling me,” Ms. Haley told the jury. “I got up and tried to walk away, and he pulled me toward him.”
She testified that Mr. Weinstein backed her into a bedroom where she fell onto the bed. She said she continued to tell him: “I don’t want this to happen. I’m on my period.” But, she said, he was not deterred.
“I was telling him, ‘No, no, no, don’t do that,’” Ms. Haley said. “It was as if he didn’t believe me.”
About two weeks later, Ms. Haley said, she met Mr. Weinstein at the TriBeCa Grand Hotel. When she entered his room, she said, the producer pulled her toward the bed. Though she was sobbing, Ms. Haley said, she had sex with him. Mr. Weinstein has not been charged in that encounter. Ms. Haley acknowledged on the stand that she did not “physically resist.”
Ms. Haley also acknowledged on cross-examination that after her second sexual encounter with Mr. Weinstein, she did not stop seeing him. She said she tried to maintain “a professional connection” with him. She passed scripts to Mr. Weinstein from friends and had pitched him on her own idea for a project.
Mr. Weinstein’s lawyers suggested that Ms. Haley and Mr. Weinstein had a consensual relationship. He gave her tickets to movie premieres and paid for her to fly to London shortly after the alleged assault.
The jury also asked for a read back of Ms. Haley’s cross-examination, as well as copies of friendly emails the two had sent to each other and of correspondence that Mr. Weinstein and his company had sent to others about Ms. Haley.
The emails included one from June 2008: “Hi Harvey, how are you?” Ms. Haley wrote. “Great to see you.” She signed off, “Lots of Love Miriam.”
Though six women testified at the trial, the criminal charges hinge on allegations made by Ms. Haley and Jessica Mann, 34, who testified that Mr. Weinstein raped her at the Doubletree Hotel in Midtown Manhattan in 2013.
In deciding the predatory sexual assault charges, however, the jury is also being asked to consider the testimony of Annabella Sciorra, the actress known for her work on “The Sopranos.”
Ms. Sciorra testified that Mr. Weinstein barged into her Manhattan apartment and raped her in the early 1990s. Her rape allegation is too old to be charged as a separate crime.
On Tuesday, the first day of deliberations, Justice James M. Burke instructed the jury to first consider predatory sexual assault as it relates to Ms. Haley and Ms. Sciorra. The notes that jurors sent out on Wednesday suggested they were still discussing that count, the first on the verdict sheet.
On Wednesday afternoon, the jury seemed to home in on Ms. Sciorra’s account. They asked to hear the testimony of the actress Rosie Perez, who said Ms. Sciorra had told her she had been raped after the incident and who later had identified Mr. Weinstein as her attacker.
The jury also requested copies of communications between Mr. Weinstein and Paul Feldsher, a writer and former talent agent who testified for the defense. Mr. Feldsher said Ms. Sciorra had characterized her encounter with Mr. Weinstein as a “crazy thing,” not an assault. “My understanding was that she fooled around with him,” he said.
Ms. Sciorra, best known for her roles in “Jungle Fever” and “The Sopranos,” denied saying that to Mr. Feldsher.
The jury also wanted to review emails that mentioned Ms. Sciorra, including communications with Guidepost Solutions, a private investigations firm, and Black Cube, the Israeli intelligence firm Mr. Weinstein hired to investigate certain people he believed were speaking to reporters.
*********
Weinstein’s Lawyer Wrote an Article Addressing Jurors. The Judge Is Unhappy.
The film producer’s lawyer urged jurors to do “what they know is right,’’ prompting the prosecution to complain of jury tampering.
By Jan Ransom | Published Feb. 18, 2020 Updated Feb. 21, 2020, 3:14 p.m. ET | New York Times | Posted February 21, 2020 |
Over the weekend, just days before jurors in the Harvey Weinstein case were set to begin deliberations, his lead defense lawyer, Donna Rotunno, wrote an opinion piece imploring them “to do what they know is right.”
The article in Newsweek magazine infuriated the Manhattan district attorney’s office, and on Tuesday the lead prosecutor, Joan Illuzzi, called Ms. Rotunno’s behavior “inappropriate,” and tantamount to jury tampering.
The judge ordered the defense team not to speak to the news media until after a verdict is reached.
“Defense team you are ordered to refrain from communicating with the press until there is a verdict in the case,” Justice James M. Burke told Mr. Weinstein’s lawyers. “I would caution you about the tentacles of your public relations juggernaut.”
The jurors were not in the courtroom at the time. As in many high-profile cases, jurors have been reminded every day by the judge not to follow any news media coverage of the case.
The judge’s order came just before he gave the jury final instructions. The panel of seven men and five women began deliberating at 11:30 a.m.
A half-hour later, the jurors sent a note to the judge asking for definitions of legal terms like consent and forcible compulsion, as well as written definitions of the charges against Mr. Weinstein and whether they could find him guilty of certain combinations of charges.
Mr. Weinstein, 67, has pleaded not guilty in State Supreme Court in Manhattan to five felony charges, including rape, criminal sexual assault and predatory sexual assault.
The main charges in the indictment rest on the testimony of two women: Miriam Haley, a former production assistant who said the producer forced oral sex on her at his home in 2006, and Jessica Mann, a former actress who accused him of raping her in a Midtown Manhattan hotel in 2013.
But prosecutors are also using the testimony of the actress Annabella Sciorra, who said Mr. Weinstein raped her in the early 1990s, to bolster the charge that he is a sexual predator, even though the alleged attack is too old to be charged as a separate crime.
In their first note, the jurors also asked for an explanation about why the statute of limitations prevented a conviction based solely on Ms. Sciorra’s account. Her testimony was pivotal because if the jury finds her credible and also finds Mr. Weinstein guilty of sexually assaulting Ms. Haley or Ms. Mann, he can be found guilty of predatory sexual assault, which carries a life sentence.
To demonstrate a pattern of abuse, three other women were allowed to testify about their accusations that Mr. Weinstein sexually assaulted them. But he is not charged with crimes in those cases.
Shortly after 3 p.m., the jurors sent out a second note requesting the layout of Mr. Weinstein’s Manhattan loft, suggesting they were reviewing Ms. Haley’s allegation that the producer forced her to let him perform oral sex on her there in 2006. The jury also requested three emails in which Mr. Weinstein had listed people — he called them “red flags” — he wanted an Israeli intelligence firm, Black Cube, to investigate. Ms. Sciorra was on that list.
The argument in the morning was the third time the prosecution had called Ms. Rotunno’s public comments into question since the trial began with jury selection on Jan. 6.
Last month, prosecutors requested a gag order after Ms. Rotunno criticized Mr. Weinstein’s accusers in interviews with reporters. They made the same complaint after she participated in a New York Times podcast, in which she said, among other things, that she had never been sexually assaulted “because I would never put myself in that position.”
Prosecutors said Ms. Rotunno had also, in The Times’s podcast, called the accusers liars who were seeking fame. At the time, the judge warned the defense not to talk about the witnesses.
On Sunday, Ms. Rotunno took a new approach, addressing the jury of seven men and five women directly in her 284-word opinion piece in Newsweek.
“I implore the members of this jury to do what they know is right and was expected of them from the moment they were called upon to serve their civic duty in a court of law,” she wrote.
“The facts are the facts. Harvey Weinstein is innocent,” she went on. “His fate hangs in the balance, and the world is watching.”
Ms. Illuzzi, who read an excerpt from Ms. Rotunno’s essay, asked Justice Burke to order that Mr. Weinstein be held in custody during the jury deliberations. She suggested that the film producer was behind the decision to make a last-minute appeal to the jury through Newsweek.
“It is 100 percent inappropriate behavior,” Ms. Illuzzi said. “No way Ms. Rotunno did this without the prompting and encouragement and the knowledge and the permission of this defendant. It cannot be allowed in this courtroom or any courtroom in the country.”
Ms. Rotunno told the judge that she was seeking to counter the prosecution’s narrative that Mr. Weinstein is a predator.
“It is one small piece of a large media attack on Mr. Weinstein every single day and for the D.A.’s office to act like they don't talk to the media just because their name isn’t in the article is ridiculous,” Ms. Rotunno said. “I did not say anything beyond the bounds of what our system should do.”
*********
Weinstein’s Lawyer Says Accusers Had a Choice in Sexual Encounters
During closing arguments, the defense said Harvey Weinstein was a victim of “overzealous prosecution.”
By Jan Ransom and Alan Feuer | Published Feb. 13, 2020 Updated Feb. 15, 2020 | New York Times | Posted February 21, 2020 |
A lawyer for Harvey Weinstein told jurors on Thursday that he was the victim of an “overzealous prosecution” and that prosecutors were acting like moviemakers, inventing an alternative world in which women are not responsible for their own behavior.
During a five-hour closing argument, the lawyer, Donna Rotunno, argued that Mr. Weinstein’s accusers had chosen to engage in consensual and often transactional relationships with him to advance their own careers.
Ms. Rotunno said prosecutors from the Manhattan district attorney’s office had woven “a sinister tale” during Mr. Weinstein’s rape trial, depicting him as a monster and his accusers as innocent, passive victims. But, she asserted, the prosecution lacked the evidence to prove it.
“In their story, they have created a universe that strips adult women of common sense, autonomy, and responsibility,” she said. “In their universe women are not responsible for the parties they attend, the men they flirt with, the choices they make to further their own careers, the hotel room invitations, the plane tickets they accept, the jobs they ask for help to obtain.”
The trial is widely seen as a watershed moment for the #MeToo movement, which gained momentum in October 2017 after Mr. Weinstein was publicly accused of assaulting and harassing numerous women.
Mr. Weinstein, 67, a former powerhouse producer in Hollywood known for films like “Pulp Fiction” and “Shakespeare in Love,” has pleaded not guilty to five felony charges, including rape, criminal sexual assault and predatory sexual assault. Prosecutors will present closing remarks on Friday. The jury of seven men and five women will begin deliberating on Tuesday.
Ms. Rotunno said her client had become “a target of a cause and of a movement.” She implored the jury not to give in to public pressure, but to focus on the facts in the case.
“You don’t have to like Mr. Weinstein — this is not a popularity contest. But you have to remember that we are not here to criminalize morality,” Ms. Rotunno said, adding moments later: “If you had to look at the evidence alone from their perspective, they lose.”
For a month, Mr. Weinstein listened as six women took the stand and testified that he had sexually assaulted them. He declined to testify himself.
He faces charges based on the allegations of only two of his accusers: Jessica Mann, a former actress who testified that he raped her in a Midtown Manhattan hotel in 2013, and Miriam Haley, a former production assistant on his show “Project Runway,” who said he forced oral sex on her at his TriBeCa apartment in 2006.
Both women acknowledged on cross-examination that they not only had friendly communications with Mr. Weinstein after their alleged attacks, but later had consensual sex with him.
The presiding judge, Justice James M. Burke, allowed four other women to testify about their own encounters so that prosecutors can establish a pattern of behavior, even though their allegations are too old to be charged as crimes under New York State law. The actress Annabella Sciorra, for instance, took the stand under the legal theory that her testimony would support the charges of predatory sexual assault, which carry a life sentence.
Ms. Sciorra testified that Mr. Weinstein pushed his way into her apartment and raped her after giving her a ride home from a dinner party in the early 1990s. The other accusers — Tarale Wulff, Dawn Dunning and Lauren Young — were all aspiring actresses who said Mr. Weinstein lured them to hotels on the pretense of helping their careers, and then sexually assaulted them.
Over and over, Ms. Rotunno returned to her central theme that Mr. Weinstein’s accusers were not passive victims of assaults, but active participants in consensual acts. “Women have choices,” she said.
Ms. Rotunno said that Ms. Haley’s relationship with Mr. Weinstein was something close to a romance, which began after he had gotten her the “Project Runway” job. “They have to label it as a professional relationship because if they labeled it as what it was, we wouldn’t be here,” Ms. Rotunno said.
Ms. Haley had also used Mr. Weinstein to further her career, Ms. Rotunno said, and had kept in touch with him through seemingly friendly emails well after she said he had attacked them. One email asked how Mr. Weinstein was doing and was signed “lots of love.”
“She was using him for jobs,” Ms. Rotunno said.
Ms. Rotunno argued that what Ms. Mann had described as a rape was sex between consenting adults. She said the evidence showed that Ms. Mann went willingly to Mr. Weinstein’s hotel room, got undressed and laid down on his bed. Ms. Mann never tried to stop Mr. Weinstein, and after the encounter, the lawyer said, she went to brunch with him.
“This is not rape,” Ms. Rotunno said. “This is not sexual assault. This is someone who agrees to do what had been discussed.”
Ms. Rotunno highlighted dozens of friendly and sometimes flirtatious emails Ms. Mann had sent to Mr. Weinstein from 2013 to 2017. Each time Ms. Mann got a new telephone number, Ms. Rotunno noted, she made sure Mr. Weinstein had it. “Five or six times she says, ‘Oh, here’s my new number,’” Ms. Rotunno said.
Ms. Sciorra, who gave some of the strongest testimony, had misremembered what happened, the defense lawyer argued. She pointed to evidence the actress had told a friend at the time that “she did something crazy” with Mr. Weinstein, but did not describe the encounter as rape.
Yet when a reporter reached out to Ms. Sciorra in 2017 about Mr. Weinstein’s treatment of women, Ms. Rotunno said: “She has changed her memories, and now she was raped. Now she is the darling of a movement.”
Ms. Rotunno said Ms. Young, Ms. Wulff and Ms. Dunning had also changed their stories over time, and she suggested they came forward only in the interest of fame.
She urged the jurors to consider how Mr. Weinstein’s accusers behaved and what they said in communications with him. The prosecution, she said, had created a fictional world — a “story that they spun” — where “women have no free will and no choice.”
“In that world, facts don’t matter,” Ms. Rotunno said. “In this world, facts matter. Evidence matters.”
*********
Weinstein Has the ‘Mark of a Predator,’ Prosecutor Says as Trial Nears End
Harvey Weinstein stayed in touch with women he assaulted to ensure their silence, a prosecutor said in her closing argument.
By Jan Ransom and Alan Feuer | Published Feb. 14, 2020, Updated Feb. 18, 2020 | New York Times | Posted February 21, 2020 |
A prosecutor said on Friday that the Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein was “an abusive rapist” and “a predator” who used his power to manipulate and assault several women in the movie business, then stayed in touch with them to ensure their silence and compliance.
“He had a surefire insurance policy: That the witnesses were standing in line to get into his universe,” Joan Illuzzi, an assistant district attorney, told the jury during her closing arguments at Mr. Weinstein’s rape trial.
“The universe is run by me,” she added, adopting Mr. Weinstein’s point of view, “therefore they don’t get to complain when they’re stepped on, spit on, demoralized and yes, raped and abused by the defendant.”
Ms. Illuzzi’s summation of Mr. Weinstein’s tactic — “trick and surprise,” she called it — was a dramatic finale to the trial in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, which has emerged as a watershed moment for the #MeToo movement.
In her presentation, Ms. Illuzzi returned repeatedly to the difference in power between Mr. Weinstein — “a giant” in the film industry — and his accusers, who worked as cocktail waitresses or models and were trying to break into the film industry.
“It is a complete dichotomy,” she said. “Here is the defendant with everything using and abusing people who he knows has nothing.”
Mr. Weinstein, 67, has pleaded not guilty to five felony charges in the case — including rape, criminal sexual assault and predatory sexual assault — which carry a maximum penalty of life in prison.
Six women testified at trial that he had sexually assaulted them, though he faces charges in connection with only two of them. The others were allowed to testify to establish a pattern of behavior.
On Thursday, his lawyers made their own closing pitch to the jury, claiming that he himself had been the victim of an “overzealous prosecution” and that the six women who took the stand to accuse him of assault and other crimes were not passive victims, but active participants in ongoing and often transactional relationships.
Standing before the jury on Friday, Ms. Illuzzi sought to counter that narrative, arguing that Mr. Weinstein purposefully maintained ties with his victims to keep them under his control.
“He made sure he had contact with the people he was worried about,” Ms. Illuzzi said, adding, “That’s the mark of a predator.”
The indictment rests on the accusations of two women: Miriam Haley, a former reality television show production assistant who testified that Mr. Weinstein forcibly performed oral sex on her at his TriBeCa apartment in 2006; and Jessica Mann, an aspiring actress from a small town in Washington State, who claimed he raped her in a Midtown Manhattan hotel room in 2013.
Both women acknowledged during cross-examination that they not only had friendly interactions with Mr. Weinstein after their alleged attacks, but later had consensual sex with him.
Four other women also testified that Mr. Weinstein attacked them in various ways — among them, the actress Annabella Sciorra, best known for her role in “The Sopranos.” She testified last month that Mr. Weinstein pushed his way into her Gramercy Park apartment in the winter months of 1993 or 1994 then violently raped her even as she kicked and punched him.
Prosecutors are using her testimony to support the top charge of predatory sexual assault, which carries a possible life sentence.
The accusations of Ms. Sciorra and three other accusers were barred by the statute of limitations from being charged as separate crimes. Still, the presiding judge, Justice James M. Burke allowed them to take the stand to bolster the prosecution’s contention that Mr. Weinstein engaged in a pattern of abusive behavior over decades.
Ms. Illuzzi stood directly in front of the jury delivering closing remarks in a conversational style and the occasional lighthearted quips. She began her closing remarks with the prosecution’s strongest witness: Ms. Sciorra.
The prosecutor acknowledged Ms. Sciorra never reported the alleged rape to the police, but she did tell her friend and fellow actress, Rosie Perez, though in veiled terms.
Not reporting the assault left Ms. Sciorra, who soon began self-harming, a damaged woman and made her vulnerable to further abuse by Mr. Weinstein, the prosecutor said. “The defendant knew her now as a weak link, a weak mark he could get again,” Ms. Illuzzi said.
Mr. Weinstein sought to control Ms. Sciorra again in August 2017, Ms. Illuzzi said, as rumors began to swirl that journalists were going to expose his sexual misconduct. That month, Mr. Weinstein hired an Israeli intelligence firm, Black Cube, to investigate certain “red flags” like Ms. Sciorra, whom Mr. Weinstein believed were speaking to reporters.
Ms. Illuzzi focused the jury’s attention on an email dated Oct. 26, 2017. In it, Mr. Weinstein instructed a subordinate to handle questions from Ronan Farrow of The New Yorker about his relationship with Ms. Sciorra by saying, “We are going to say it was consensual or deny it.”
“Truth be damned,” Ms. Illuzzi said, referring to his email. Then she told the jury, “I submit to you, that’s a confession.”
In the defense’s closing arguments on Thursday, Donna Rotunno, Mr. Weinstein’s lead lawyer, said several times that the accusers in the case had chosen to engage in consensual sex with him to advance their careers, and their decisions to visit Mr. Weinstein in hotels and at his apartment supported that argument.
On Friday, however, Ms. Illuzzi took direct issue with that position. “When an adult goes to another adult’s home, should they expect that they’re going to have to engage in sex?” she asked the jury.
Ms. Illuzzi was talking about Ms. Haley, who testified that when she visited Mr. Weinstein at his Manhattan loft, he pulled her into a bedroom, pushed her onto a bed, held her down and forcibly performed oral sex on her.
“This is a crime and a wanton disregard for other people,” Ms. Illuzzi said.
She later suggested that Mr. Weinstein could have hired sex workers, but had instead targeted women who badly wanted to break into the business: “Maybe his kink,” she said, “is the fear in their eyes.”
Toward the end of her statement, Ms. Illuzzi turned her attention toward Ms. Mann, the aspiring actress who earlier this month gave a complicated and emotional account of how Mr. Weinstein raped her during a long relationship that included some consensual sex.
Ms. Mann’s testimony was emblematic of the difficult questions that the jury will ultimately have to wrestle with when they begin their deliberations as early as Tuesday. Did the fact that some of the women benefited professionally from their association with Mr. Weinstein suggest their relationships with him were consensual and transactional? And does the fact some of his accusers also had consensual sex with him undermine their claim that he on other occasions sexually assaulted them?
Ms. Illuzzi addressed those questions head-on.
“The question is not whether or not Jessica made a bad decision,” Ms. Illuzzi told the jury. “The question for you is whether or not Jessica Mann is lying about it. She’s telling you the truth. She’s the victim of rape.”
“She could have been writing him love notes every single day,” Ms. Illuzzi added. “She could have been married to him. It still wouldn’t make a difference. He still would not be allowed to rape her.”
*********
#u.s. news#politics#politics and government#sex criminals#sex crimes#me too#me too campaign#me too movement#me too me too#harvey weinstein#weinstein trial#nyt > top stories#top news#top stories google news#trending topics#worldpolitics#world news#uk news#entertainment#arts and entertainment#international news#national news
1 note
·
View note
Text
'We have a once-in-century chance': Naomi Klein on how we can fight the climate crisis
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/sep/14/crisis-talk-green-new-deal-naomi-klein
On a Friday in mid-March, they streamed out of schools in little rivulets, burbling with excitement and defiance at an act of truancy. The little streams emptied on to grand avenues and boulevards, where they combined with other flows of chanting children and teens. Soon the rivulets were rushing rivers: 100,000 bodies in Milan, 40,000 in Paris, 150,000 in Montreal. Cardboard signs bobbed above the surf of humanity: THERE IS NO PLANET B! DON’T BURN OUR FUTURE. THE HOUSE IS ON FIRE!
There was no student strike in Mozambique; on 15 March the whole country was bracing for the impact of Cyclone Idai, one of the worst storms in Africa’s history, which drove people to take refuge at the tops of trees as the waters rose and would eventually kill more than 1,000 people. And then, just six weeks later, while it was still clearing the rubble, Mozambique would be hit by Cyclone Kenneth, yet another record-breaking storm.
Wherever in the world they live, this generation has something in common: they are the first for whom climate disruption on a planetary scale is not a future threat, but a lived reality. Oceans are warming 40% faster than the United Nations predicted five years ago. And a sweeping study on the state of the Arctic, published in April 2019 in Environmental Research Letters and led by the renowned glaciologist Jason Box, found that ice in various forms is melting so rapidly that the “Arctic biophysical system is now clearly trending away from its 20th-century state and into an unprecedented state, with implications not only within but also beyond the Arctic.” In May 2019, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services published a report about the startling loss of wildlife around the world, warning that a million species of animals and plants are at risk of extinction. “The health of ecosystems on which we and all other species depend is deteriorating more rapidly than ever,” said the chair, Robert Watson. “We are eroding the very foundations of economies, livelihoods, food security, health and quality of life worldwide. We have lost time. We must act now.”
It has been more than three decades since governments and scientists started officially meeting to discuss the need to lower greenhouse gas emissions to avoid the dangers of climate breakdown. In the intervening years, we have heard countless appeals for action that involve “the children,” “the grandchildren,” and “generations to come”. Yet global CO2 emissions have risen by more than 40%, and they continue to rise. The planet has warmed by about 1C since we began burning coal on an industrial scale and average temperatures are on track to rise by as much as four times that amount before the century is up; the last time there was this much CO2 in the atmosphere, humans didn’t exist.
As for those children and grandchildren and generations to come who were invoked so promiscuously? They are no longer mere rhetorical devices. They are now speaking (and screaming, and striking) for them selves. Unlike so many adults in positions of authority, they have not yet been trained to mask the unfathomable stakes of our moment in the language of bureaucracy and overcomplexity. They understand that they are fighting for the fundamental right to live full lives – lives in which they are not, as 13-year-old Alexandria Villaseñor puts it, “running from disasters”.
On that day in March 2019, organisers estimate there were nearly 2,100 youth climate strikes in 125 countries, with 1.6 million young people participating. That’s quite an achievement for a movement that began eight months earlier with a single teenager deciding to go on strike from school in Stockholm, Sweden: Greta Thunberg.
The wave of youth mobilisation that burst on to the scene in March 2019 is not just the result of one girl and her unique way of seeing the world, extraordinary though she is. Thunberg is quick to note that she was inspired by another group of teenagers who rose up against a different kind of failure to protect their futures: the students in Parkland, Florida, who led a national wave of class walkouts demanding tough controls on gun ownership after 17 people were murdered at their school in February 2018.
Nor is Thunberg the first person with tremendous moral clarity to yell “Fire!” in the face of the climate crisis. Such voices have emerged multiple times over the past several decades; indeed, it is something of a ritual at the annual UN summits on climate change. But perhaps because these earlier voices belonged to people from the Philippines, the Marshall Islands and South Sudan, those clarion calls were one-day stories, if that. Thunberg is also quick to point out that the climate strikes themselves were the work of thousands of diverse student leaders, their teachers and supporting organisations, many of whom had been raising the climate alarm for years.
As a manifesto put out by British climate strikers put it: “Greta Thunberg may have been the spark, but we’re the wildfire.”
For a decade and half, ever since reporting from New Orleans with water up to my waist after Hurricane Katrina, I have been trying to figure out what is interfering with humanity’s basic survival instinct – why so many of us aren’t acting as if our house is on fire when it so clearly is. I have written books, made films, delivered countless talks and co-founded an organisation (The Leap) devoted, in one way or another, to exploring this question and trying to help align our collective response to the scale of the climate crisis.
It was clear to me from the start that the dominant theories about how we had landed on this knife edge were entirely insufficient. We were failing to act, it was said, because politicians were trapped in short-term electoral cycles, or because climate change seemed too far off, or because stopping it was too expensive, or because the clean technologies weren’t there yet. There was some truth in all the explanations, but they were also becoming markedly less true over time. The crisis wasn’t far off; it was banging down our doors. The price of solar panels has plummeted and now rivals that of fossil fuels. Clean tech and renewables create far more jobs than coal, oil, and gas. As for the supposedly prohibitive costs, trillions have been marshalled for endless wars, bank bailouts and subsidies for fossil fuels, in the same years that coffers have been virtually empty for climate transition. There had to be more to it.
Which is why, over the years, I have set out to probe a different set of barriers – some economic, some ideological, but others related to the deep stories about the right of certain people to dominate land and the people living closest to it, stories that underpin contemporary western culture. And I have investigated the kinds of responses that might succeed in toppling those narratives, ideologies and economic interests, responses that weave seemingly disparate crises (economic, social, ecological and democratic) into a common story of civilisational transformation. Today, this sort of bold vision increasingly goes under the banner of a Green New Deal.
Because, as deep as our crisis runs, something equally deep is also shifting, and with a speed that startles me. Social movements rising up to declare, from below, a people’s emergency. In addition to the wildfire of student strikes, we have seen the rise of Extinction Rebellion, which kicked off a wave of non-violent direct action and civil disobedience, including a mass shutdown of large parts of central London. Within days of its most dramatic actions in April 2019, Wales and Scotland both declared a state of “climate emergency,” and the British parliament, under pressure from opposition parties, quickly followed suit.
Humanity has a once-in-a-century chance to fix an economic model that is failing the majority of people on multiple fronts
In the US, we have seen the meteoric rise of the Sunrise Movement, which burst on to the political stage when it occupied the office of Nancy Pelosi, the most powerful Democrat in Washington, DC, one week after her party had won back the House of Representatives in the 2018 midterm elections. They called on Congress to immediately adopt a rapid decarbonisation framework, one as ambitious in speed and scope as Franklin D Roosevelt’s New Deal, the sweeping package of policies designed to battle the poverty of the Great Depression and the ecological collapse of the Dust Bowl.
The idea behind the Green New Deal is a simple one: in the process of transforming the infrastructure of our societies at the speed and scale that scientists have called for, humanity has a once-in-a-century chance to fix an economic model that is failing the majority of people on multiple fronts. Because the factors that are destroying our planet are also destroying people’s lives in many other ways, from wage stagnation to gaping inequalities to crumbling services to surging white supremacy to the collapse of our information ecology. Challenging underlying forces is an opportunity to solve several interlocking crises at once.
In tackling the climate crisis, we can create hundreds of millions of goods jobs around the world, invest in the most systematically excluded communities and nations, guarantee healthcare and childcare, and much more. The result of these transformations would be economies built both to protect and to regenerate the planet’s life support systems and to respect and sustain the people who depend on them.
This vision is not new; its origins can be traced to social movements in ecologically ravaged parts of Ecuador and Nigeria, as well as to highly polluted communities of colour in the United States. What is new is that there is now a bloc of politicians in the US, Europe, and elsewhere, some just a decade older than the young climate activists in the streets, ready to translate the urgency of the climate crisis into policy, and to connect the dots among the multiple crises of our times. Most prominent among this new political breed is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who, at 29, became the youngest woman ever elected to the US Congress. Introducing a Green New Deal was part of the platform she ran on. Today, with the race to lead the Democratic party in full swing, a majority of leading presidential hopefuls claim to support it, including Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris and Cory Booker. It had been endorsed, meanwhile, by 105 members of the House and Senate.
The idea is spreading around the world, with the political coalition European Spring launching a green new deal for Europe in January 2019 and a broad green new deal coalition of organisations in Canada coming together (the leader of the New Democratic party has adopted the frame, if not its full ambition, as one of his policy planks). The same is true in the UK, where the Labour party is in the middle of negotiations over whether to adopt a green new deal‑style platform.
Those of us who advocate for this kind of transformative platform are sometimes accused of using it to advance a socialist or anticapitalist agenda that predates our focus on the climate crisis. My response is a simple one. For my entire adult life, I have been involved in movements confronting the myriad ways that our current economic systems grinds up people’s lives and landscapes in the ruthless pursuit of profit. No Logo, published 20 years ago, documented the human and ecological costs of corporate globalisation, from the sweatshops of Indonesia to the oil fields of the Niger Delta. I have seen teenage girls treated like machines to make our machines, and mountains and forests turned to trash heaps to get at the oil, coal and metals beneath.
The painful, even lethal, impacts of these practices were impossible to deny; it was simply argued that they were the necessary costs of a system that was creating so much wealth that the benefits would eventually trickle down to improve the lives of nearly everyone on the planet. What has happened instead is that the indifference to life that was expressed in the exploitation of individual workers on factory floors and in the decimation of individual mountains and rivers has instead trickled up to swallow our entire planet, turning fertile lands into salt flats, beautiful islands into rubble, and draining once vibrant reefs of their life and colour.
I freely admit that I do not see the climate crisis as separable from the more localised market-generated crises that I have documented over the years; what is different is the scale and scope of the tragedy, with humanity’s one and only home now hanging in the balance. I have always had a tremendous sense of urgency about the need to shift to a dramatically more humane economic model. But there is a different quality to that urgency now because it just so happens that we are all alive at the last possible moment when changing course can mean saving lives on a truly unimaginable scale.
#naomi klein#green new deal#reposted the whole extract because IMPORTANT#climate crisis#my emphasis#important
6 notes
·
View notes
Text
D.Gray-Man Chapter 231 Translation Notes
Hi DGMers! jeidafei from Kougeki Scans here. I’m a total newbie to scanlation and I’ve never made my own note before. However, I’ve read all THREE versions of the DGM translation for reference, (This just goes to show this fandom’s undying love for the subject matter) and noticed some discrepancies between scan groups...
Not to say who is wrong or right, as translators are also humans (unless AI got over its Google Translate phase and take over our jobs someday!) with different experiences and backgrounds, and as such there is no such thing as right or wrong in a translation.
So, in addition to my translation, I would also like to give readers the opportunity to interpret things freely without the language barrier as well, and maybe share some of my knowledge regarding Japan and the Japanese language accumulated from over a decade of learning Japanese (mostly through D.Gray-Man and Ghibli animes XD) and around three years of living, studying and working full-time in Japan.
1. “生々流転” (seiseiruten or shoujouruten)
The cover art is mind-blowingly beautiful this time. So much so that I’ve been secretly wondering whether Hoshino-sensei spent even more time on the cover than the actual content itself and that’s why we have 20 instead of, like, 40 pages.
Anyway, it also gives us this little conundrum...
@panthaleia has already done a marvelous analysis here and you should check it out! so I won’t be going into details much; I would just like to give you a definition and leave it to your imagination. I admit I’m pretty much stumped by this as it isn’t clear what exactly Hoshino-sensei is referring to by this concept.
Japanese culture and language takes heavy influence from Chinese since ancient times, and there are plenty of these four-letter Chinese idioms in daily use, called 四字熟語 (Yojijukugo), some of which can be challenging for non-native learnersーand even the Japanese themselvesーto fully grasp its concept, considering the wealth of yojijukugo-themed dictionaries and games published in Japan.
The Japanese definition of 生々流転 goes as follows:
すべての物は絶えず生まれては変化し、移り変わっていくこと。▽「生生」は物が次々と生まれ育つこと。「流転」は物事が止まることなく移り変わっていく意。「生生」は「しょうじょう」とも読む。 (source)
A compilative translation of the above and other versions in the source would be nothing is unchanging; all existence is born, constantly changes (and dies) in a cycle that repeats itself endlessly. The emphasis seems to be put on the term of “constant change” and the “neverending cycle” of all existence, rather than the birth and death of living beings, however, and thus I believe my own and Mangastream’s translation of it as “Circle of Life” may not be comprehensive of what Hoshino-sensei is trying to convey.
In my opinion, it could either be interpreted literally to mean the cycle and flow of energy and soul-force that Past!Allen had mentioned to Nea all those years ago, or considering the plot of the current chapter it can also refer to the story coming full circle and returning to the point of its birth, by taking Allen back to Eddystone...Edinston...Edinburgh...Edinsーargh dammit I give upーwhere his story began with his meeting with Mana Walker.
Speaking of which...
2. The Town Where Allen Began
Mangastream called it Eddingston. Starbuds called it Edinston. The D.Gray Wikia adopted Edinstown and that’s what I decided to go with for now.
However, the actual Japanese text is エディンストン, phonetically E-din-su-ton. Thus, the most phonetically accurate would probably be Starbuds’ Edinston. Edinstown can be transliterated back into Japanese as エディンスタウン, whereas Eddingston would probably be エッディングストン to the Japanese folk (I’ve highlighted the difference in spelling).
There you go! Now y’all can call it whichever way you want!
3. Why is Allen so alarmed?
Right after Mana said that he draws all those little “I am here”s like a street graffiti punk so God would be able to find him, Allen looked as if he had recalled something significant. Seeing as Allen is about to tell the tale of his beginnings, this would probably be clarified in the next chapter. However, in my opinion, Mana saying “so he would be able to find me” is reminiscent of this sentence back in Reverse: Lost Fragment of Snow:
Back when he still remembers Nea and his purpose of searching for him, Mana was taking every measure to make sure Nea recognizes him, as he now looks different from his 17-year-old self. Sure, Mana might actually be referring to God this time as he said it; we’d never know until the next chapter at the least, but the memory of Mana’s words back at the circus must have been what shook Allen to the core.
4. はじまり
The term はじまり (hajimari) or “the beginning” seems to be the central theme in this chapter; appearing on the cover page, the first page and the last page of last chapter, emphasizing the fact that both Allen and the plot has now come full circle and returned to where “Allen” began.
This cliffhanger freaks me out though, as I couldn’t see how Hoshino-sensei could tell Allen’s story without repeating Reverse: Lost Fragment of Snow, as that is stated to be the story of how Allen came to be:
Anyway, my fear and frustration of waiting-six-months-for-new-developments aside, hajimari is a very popular to the point of cliched concept in Japan, in my opinion. If you go to karaoke in Japan and type in hajimari in the machine, it would come up with a SH*T TON of songs containing hajimari in the song name, with hajimari no uta (The song of beginnings) and hajimari no basho (The place where it all began, which is also mentioned in this chapter) being some of the most repetitive.
As much as the cherry blossoms are a symbol of Japanese culture, the Japanese people themselves regard the month when the cherry blossoms bloom, April, and the season of Spring, as the marker of new beginnings, of significant turning points in life. The start of school term, start of fiscal year, start of working life and end of childhood, Your Lie in April , etc. all happen in April.
This phenomenon is especially remarkable in Japan. Being the country of uniformity, virtually every school and workplace throughout the country would start their activities in April.
In my experience, Japanese aesthetics revolve around the changing seasons and times a lot, and countless pop songs that are released around March-April would sing of the blooming cherry blossoms swaying to the wind and new beginnings for students graduating from high school or university. In the same manner, songs coming out in Winter would feature slower melodies and the distinctive, ringing, Christmas-ey chime from the likes of music boxes, glockenspiels, triangles or celestas, and songs released in Summer would usually be quicker, livelier with lyrics retelling a fun trip to the beach, firework shows and sunshine (－and bikinis, if you’re listening to AKB48!).
To someone who came from a tropical country with three pretty much indistinguishable, unpleasant seasons (Damn-you-Summer, Damn-you-Summer-with-Rain-and-Floods and Damn-you-Summer-with-Three-Days-of-Winter), the beauty of the Japanese seasons and how the Japanese culture and lifestyle intertwine so closely with it has always fascinated and charmed me.
5. The Gratitude Dilemma
In addition to the seiseiruten conundrum, this chapter also throws up some more challenges for translators. One notable example for me being how to accurately capture the essence of this panel:
Both Starbuds and Mangastream worded this bubble very differently, and I won’t say who is the most accurate, but I will explain my choice of wording the best I can (with a few tips to weary Japanese learners along the way, hopefully). The actual Japanese raw is below:
My atrocious highlighting skills aside, we can clearly see the emphasis given to the suffix てあげよう (te-ageyou) here.
Allen didn’t say it straight out that he’s pitying Kanda or the like, but he’s using the te-ageru form, which means “ [doing something] for your sake” .
The concept of gratitude is important in a strict, seniority-based society like Japan, and accordingly there are two verb suffixes just to show gratitude: when someone else does a favor for us: te-kureru, and when we receive a favor from someone else: te-morau.
Yes, there’s a difference. And this is one of the most troublesome head-scratchers and trick-question-subjects for intermediate learners of Japanese taking the JLPT test (and translators of Japanese songs and manga as well), as to make things worse the Japanese usually omits the subject and/or object of the sentence.
My tip for making sense of this is for te-kureru, the other person must be the subject of the sentence, whereas for te-morau, I/me must be the subject.
Starting to see now why so many of my classmates gave up on Japanese and why so many anime subs/manga translations are sometimes inaccurate?
We also get another instance here:
(watashi ha kami ni) mitsukete-moraeru you ni would literally mean something along the lines of so (I) could be found by (God) for my sake. I put parentheses here to show you how both the subject and object of this sentence is omitted, and why we must be extremely careful in cases when it is less clear than this who is doing what for whom. To learners, you MUST pay attention to the conjunctions.
For the sake of convenience and more natural speech I just used so God would be able to find me.
Back to Black Allen, te-ageru or its more casual/demeaning form te-yaru, on the other hand, is used for when we’re doing a favor for someone’s sake and should be used sparingly/carefully to people of the same status or lower, as it could sound patronizing depending on context. So Allen using it to Kanda is meant to be very cheeky and infuriating, as if he’s trying to emphasize that his giving up is more out of pity/sympathy for Kanda’s hapless persistence than his own being tired of or incapable of escaping.
Because in reality it is just as he personally admitted in the earlier page: he’s got no money and cannot elude the Order without Kanda’s help, and decided to just twiddle his thumbs and wait around for now.
But food and a man’s pride are everything to Allen...
That’s all for now. I hope you enjoyed our translations. See you in three months, fellow DGMers!
134 notes
·
View notes
Link
This article appeared in the July 25, 2019 issue of the Spokane (WA) Inlander.
1. SAVE THE ICE
It's been well over a decade since Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth showed many viewers for the first time just how dire the consequences of global warming would be in their lifetimes, with ice sheets melting at an accelerated rate, severe storms likely to happen more often, and heating and cooling around the planet gone haywire.
For scientist Leslie Field, an inventor and electrical engineer, watching that movie when her kids were just 6 and 10 really put things in perspective.
"I've always been environmentally minded, but to see a movie that made it so clear how bad the consequences could be within my kids' lifetimes living here in California was like, 'Wow,'" Field tells the Inlander by phone. "I hadn't realized the extent to which it was going to affect my own family."
Luckily, her then-new job at Stanford allowed her access to some of the best environmental minds around. She learned many people were focusing on solar technology, so instead she dove into fixing another problem: saving the ice.
See, in addition to affecting sea levels, the ice sheets on our planet's poles act as reflective blankets, bouncing a lot of the sun's heat back into space. Without the ice, warming will get far worse, far faster.
For more than a decade, Field has been exploring how to save that ice in the least-damaging way possible.
Her team, Ice911, is currently studying how nontoxic silica microspheres — currently used in things like vitamins, insulation and medical applications — can help reflect the sun's heat, allowing ice sheets to grow thicker and last longer. The material, which looks like a white powder, floats on water, and so far doesn't have any apparent detrimental effects to wildlife or the ecosystem.
"I'm absolutely uninterested in doing something that's going to do more harm," Field says. "We're working with the least amount of intervention, as natural as possible, and we want to make sure it's localized and reversible. With those principles, I'm really comfortable with this material."
Ice911 is currently testing on a lake in Utqiagvik (formerly Barrow), Alaska, the northernmost point in America. Between that and testing conducted in Minnesota, the team is hopeful they've shown the material is effective and affordable.
"Think about $1 billion to $5 billion per year to do an at-scale deployment," says Field, referring to the amount needed to cover a targeted 100,000 square kilometers of the Arctic, "and then you compare that to the cost of just one climate devastation-type disaster, like last year was something like $400 billion from the California wildfires."
Field says she's inspired by the results her team is seeing and the work of other scientists trying to tackle climate change problems as fast as possible.
"People are working so hard in very focused ways that are showing some real impacts. There really is cause for hope and action," she says. "It's so much better than to just dwell in despair. Instead it's 'Wait, there's stuff to do!' but by all means we've got to get on it now."
2. TURN PLASTIC INTO FUEL
Despite the growing popularity of recycling, the U.S. sent 26 million tons of plastic — more than 75 percent of what was generated — to landfills in 2015, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
But recently, Washington State University scientists have found a way to efficiently convert common plastics into needed fuels. Using a combination of products like milk bottles, plastic bags and water bottles, ground down to pieces, the team used heat and activated carbon to convert the plastics into a mix that can be separated out into jet fuel and diesel.
"We can recover almost 100 percent of the energy from the plastic we tested," says WSU associate professor Hanwu Lei in an announcement about the project. "The fuel is very good quality."
Just changing how we farm could help us store more carbon in soil and get closer to global carbon reduction goals.
3. SEQUESTER CARBON IN SOIL
Adjusting worldwide farming through methods "such as incorporation of organic manures, cover cropping, mulching, conservation tillage, some types of agroforestry practices, rotational grazing" and other practices could significantly increase the amount of carbon stored in soils, which would help the world get closer to the Paris Agreement goals, according to a 2017 study published in Nature. In particular, North America, Europe and India present large opportunities for storing more carbon in soil, according to the paper, "Global Sequestration Potential of Increased Organic Carbon in Cropland Soils."
4. HUMAN COMPOSTING
Making caskets, filling bodies with embalming fluids, and even reducing a body to ashes using natural gas all comes with a carbon footprint and environmental impacts. Now there's another option in Washington, the first state to allow human composting. The composting process speeds up natural decomposition and is expected to save a metric ton of carbon dioxide emissions per person who opts in, according to the organization Recompose, which fought for the law.
5. CONVERT METHANE TO CARBON DIOXIDE
Stanford researchers acknowledge their newly announced technology for addressing climate change might be counterintuitive: It actually involves the creation of carbon dioxide. But the key is they're taking methane, which is 84 times more potent of a greenhouse gas, and converting it into the less harmful CO2. Because people are likely to keep eating cows and growing rice, both of which produce lots of methane, it makes more sense to find ways to convert the methane into something less harmful, the Stanford researchers note.
"If perfected, this technology could return the atmosphere to pre-industrial concentrations of methane and other gases," says lead author Rob Jackson, a Stanford professor, in a May 2019 announcement.
Researchers led by WSU associate professor Hanwu Lei figured out a good way to convert plastic waste into jet fuel.
6. DITCH THE CHEMICALS
Remember when the big deal in reducing bad chemicals was telling your mom to stop using that old hairspray because aerosols were depleting the ozone layer? Well, it turns out in some cases we replaced those aerosols and other "ozone-depleting substances" with chemicals that are pretty harmful, too. Some hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) now used in spray foams, refrigeration, air conditioning and other applications are up to 14,000 times more potent greenhouse gases than carbon dioxide. Under a Washington law passed in 2019, the use of many of those chemicals will be phased out over the next few years, and by December 2020, the state will issue a list of the best substitute chemicals with lower global warming potential.
7. HARNESS THE SUN MORE EFFICIENTLY
When you think of solar panels, the image that likely comes to mind is of the increasingly common smooth black silicon solar panels that are often installed on homes, office buildings and in large solar arrays. For the last decade or so, scientists have been working to improve solar efficiency because most panels now only convert about 15 to 18 percent of solar energy into power. Now, promising new research from the University of Oxford has shown that using a combination of silicon and crystals known as "perovskites" can increase the efficiency of solar panels up to about 28 percent. Better efficiency makes the panels more affordable and worth adopting.
Electrochromic "smart glass" uses electricity to instantly change from clear (on the left) to tinted (right), which can help reduce cooling costs for buildings and eliminate the need for blinds.
8. BUILD WITH SMART GLASS
With more buildings featuring vast glass walls, there are several new types of "smart glass" that aim to help save on cooling and heating costs in buildings suddenly flooded with light. Some smart glass windows can instantly dim and block out sunlight that would otherwise increase cooling costs, or turn transparent when it's beneficial to let more light and heat in. The technology, which frequently requires electricity to work, can be programmed to automatically adjust window tinting based on temperature, saving energy. For example, compared to transparent glass, electrochromic glass reduced the energy required for heating and cooling a model office building by 41 percent in a 2018 South Korea study.
9. USE BETTER BUILDING MATERIALS
One way to reduce the carbon footprint of concrete, which contributes 8 percent of the planet's CO2 emissions, is to incorporate carbon capture technology. California company Blue Planet essentially creates limestone rocks by sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and binding it in layers onto junk rock. Those rocks can then be used as fill in the concrete, significantly reducing the carbon footprint of projects.
Another alternative to concrete gaining popularity is Cross-Laminated Timber, or CLT. The wood product is made from gluing lots of smaller pieces of wood together to create incredibly strong beams. And the Inland Northwest is poised to lead in the CLT industry, as Katerra has opened a new factory in Spokane Valley. CLT is lauded for storing carbon, recycling wastewood, and for reducing the need for concrete in smaller multistory buildings.
10. SOLAR ROADWAYS
Imagine if every road, parking lot, sidewalk, highway, tarmac, and paved surface on the planet was able to generate electricity, eliminate the need for shoveling snow and light the way with instantly changeable LED lighting configurations.
"If every walking and driving surface in the U.S. were installed with solar road panels, it would produce three times more energy than we use."
It's an idea that went viral five years ago with an enthusiastically narrated video that let the world know about "Solar Freakin' Roadways," a clean energy idea born in Sandpoint.
The thinking is this: In the U.S., there are millions of square miles of paved surfaces, seeing as we need them for everything from walking and biking to moving around in our cars. Why not put them to better use by paving them with solar panels?
"We believe Solar Roadways implemented on a grand scale is the most viable solution to the climate crisis," Solar Roadways inventors Julie and Scott Brusaw tell the Inlander by email.
With lessons learned from a pilot installation in Sandpoint, a driveway installation at their shop, and testing performed under federal Department of Transportation grants, the fourth iteration of their prototype, the SR4, is closer to being road-ready than ever. The new panels are 50 watts, and that could get even better over time as technology improves.
"Even prior to the SR4 wattage upgrade, Scott calculated that if every walking and driving surface in the U.S. were installed with solar road panels, it would produce three times more energy than we use," Julie writes. "We'll continue to use more efficient solar cells as that industry moves forward, so those numbers will continue to get even better."
The hexagonal panels not only produce electricity, but contain heating elements and LED lighting that enables road lines to be changed in an instant. The road could light up to warn drivers an animal is in their way up ahead, and with heating, the panels won't need plowing or shoveling in the snow.
Now Scott is working to further engineer the panels to include dynamic charging, which could allow electric vehicles to charge on the road while driving.
Solar Roadways, based in Sandpoint, aims to literally pave the way to a clean energy future using solar panels like those shown here. The lighting patterns can make lane lines, warning signs and more.
While they're still in the early stages and working on a second pilot installation across the country this fall, the couple says that the Inland Northwest is expected to be among the first places to see adoption of the new technology.
"We've always planned that roads will be our last application. We are perhaps two to three years away from being ready for roads. First, we'll focus on driveways, sidewalks, parking lots, etc.," the couple writes. "But highways will be our final goal. The city of Sandpoint says it would like to be the home of many more firsts. We also have interested customers in Coeur d'Alene, Spokane and many other nearby cities."
11. MAKE PLANTS TASTE LIKE MEAT
By this point, you've probably heard of at least one of the companies marketing plant-based burgers meant to taste as good as the real thing. Whether it's the Beyond Burger, the Impossible Burger, or another plant-based patty, the common theme is that food scientists are doing their best to make plants taste, and in some cases even feel, like meat, in the hopes that more meat eaters will make the switch to veggies. Meat production accounts for a massive portion of our global emissions: A 2018 study published in Science magazine found that for the U.S. in particular, switching from a meat-based diet to a plant-based one could reduce greenhouse gas emissions from our food by up to 73 percent. That's pretty major, considering the overall food system accounts for about a quarter of emissions.
Cross-laminated timber appears to be a promising building material that can replace carbon-intensive concrete in many buildings.
12. HIT 100 PERCENT CLEAN ENERGY BY MIDCENTURY
In order to truly limit warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, all power plants around the world need to transition to clean energy by midcentury, according to a study published in Nature this month. Without sunsetting power plants that currently use fossil fuels, those plants will use up the rest of the planet's carbon budget. The urgency of those calculations has led states like Washington and even private utilities in Idaho to declare they will be 100 percent carbon-neutral by 2030 and use completely clean energy (with no purchase of offsets) by 2045.
13. EDUCATE GIRLS
What does education have to do with climate change? It turns out, a lot. Education of girls in particular plays a huge role in providing reproductive justice and decreasing a country's overall poverty. Girls with more education tend to lead healthier lives and have fewer children, which is one of the biggest ways to reduce impacts on the planet. That's why Project Drawdown, a research collaboration that ranked 100 of the top climate change solutions, places education of girls near the top of its list. The Brookings Institution think tank also notes that less educated girls are more likely to be disproportionately impacted by climate change events. Ensuring girls have more education not only makes their country more resilient to climate change, but it also helps set them on a path to become particularly effective conservation leaders, Brookings notes.
14. PLANT 1 TRILLION TREES
Splashy headlines this summer pointed out that planting trees could be the best way to fight carbon dioxide pollution. That's because the recent study, "The Global Tree Restoration Potential," published in Science, called reforestation on the scale of planting 1 trillion trees the "most effective climate change solution to date." But it's not quite that simple. As the researchers note, because of the changing climate, it might not be possible to actually plant that many trees and have them survive in changing ecosystems unless immediate action is taken.
"We estimate that if we cannot deviate from the current trajectory, the global potential canopy cover may shrink by about 223 million hectares by 2050, with the vast majority of losses occurring in the tropics," the researchers note. "Our results highlight the opportunity of climate change mitigation through global tree restoration but also the urgent need for action."
15. CAPTURE CARBON TO MAKE GASOLINE
Just north of the Washington border in Squamish, British Columbia, a private company partly funded by Bill Gates has spent the last few years pulling carbon dioxide from the air and converting it into usable fuel. The company, Carbon Engineering, is working on its low-carbon or carbon-neutral fuel along with underground storage that can be used for the indefinite capture of carbon from the atmosphere.
Their work has Canada and private investors excited: The government just invested $25 million Canadian into the company, and private investors put in $91 million Canadian in a recent investment round, according to a June company press release.
"We would like people to be recycling their fuel in the same way as they recycle other things," Carbon Engineering CEO Steve Oldham told VICE in September.
He explains the real innovation is that, unlike a switch to electric vehicles, which globally would be extremely expensive and require massive changes in infrastructure, pulling carbon from the atmosphere to make gasoline or diesel allows for an instantly cleaner transportation system.
"That car you just drove up in, we can make that carbon-neutral tomorrow," Oldham continues telling VICE. "Any performance vehicle, any battered old truck, airplanes, we're compatible with all of those, which is significant because nobody's making any electric tractors or electric planes."
16. SEA WALLS TO PROTECT GLACIERS
Glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica are melting at unprecedented rates, and once they hit a breaking point, they're expected to completely collapse and never return, contributing to sea-level rise and overall warming. But what if you could somehow keep warm ocean water far enough away from the most important glaciers, saving them from reaching that collapse point? That's the subject of research published by Michael Wolovick and others in the journal The Cryosphere in 2018.
Their study used modeling to see what might be achievable, and for now, it kind of amounts to "so you're saying there's a chance."
"The easiest design that we considered would be comparable to the largest civil engineering projects that humanity has ever attempted, it would be located in a much harsher environment than the ones in which those projects were built, and our results suggest that it would only have a 30 percent probability of success," the researchers note in their paper.
That's why they'd advocate a long-term approach in exploring wall construction, improving technology to the point where such an undertaking would be more feasible and more likely to succeed.
17. THINK SMALL
As utilities and environmentally minded developers plan to test the best ways to switch between wind, solar and battery storage in a new clean-energy world, they're also thinking about how buildings and developments can better share electricity and heating with each other. Two of the main concepts that are gaining traction are microgrids and district heating. With a microgrid, a neighborhood or development with its own solar panels and other power generation can be fully in control of its power without interfering with the overall electric grid that we're used to. However, it would still be possible to create tie-ins where those buildings could draw power from the grid when needed. For district heating, a single source — say a furnace burning the biomass leftover from a nearby mill — can provide heat throughout an entire area, eliminating the need for unique furnaces in every unit. Avista will be testing similar ideas and methods in a new eco-district in Spokane anchored by the Catalyst Building, which is designed to be the smartest building in North America when it is finished some time next year.
9 notes
·
View notes
Link
Fresh off the excellent meeting we had with Paradox and White Wolf in Berlin a week or so ago, and a week before we open the tomb of the Mummy: The Curse 2e Kickstarter, I figure it’s a good time to give you a look at some of my thoughts on a bunch of our game lines.
Scarred Lands:
With that lead-in paragraph, I bet you expected WW-IP stuff, but there is just so much happening with Scarred Lands that I wanted to get all that out first. To be honest, the interest in SL has been a real surprise. A great surprise, because there just seems to be a constant stream of folks that remember the setting from years ago and are excited to play and create with our new edition.
Which is wonderfully gratifying. Not only for the love and interest, but because we (I) was slow on the uptake on getting SL back on track after our original Scarred Lands partnership with Stewart Wieck came to an abrupt end with his passing. If I look back, I’m pretty sure I just delayed dealing with it, as jumping in where Stew was originally going to handle things reminded me of my friend too much.
But this year, we made huge strides – in a large part helped by the awesome efforts of all the creators on the Slarecian Vault (SL‘s community content site), our recently finished Creature Collection KS, and next year we’ll be presented monthly releases of Yugman’s Guide to the Scarred Lands, and the Vigil Watch project. There are weekly Twitch actual plays, and the amazing adventures of an awesome ratman (is it not all about him?) by Devil’s Luck Gaming that’s been running for months with all the twists and plot turns you could ever want.
Plus, just today Matt McElroy let us know that we’ll have a “What’s Up with 5e and Onyx Path” panel at Gamehole Con in Madison at the end of the week: https://www.gameholecon.com/events/event/7956 and he is running a “meat grinder” Scarred Lands game after hours at the con. If you’re interested in participating, let him know at our booth.
And then, we also have heard that the Scarred Lands supplement to Expedition, the exciting card and app-based RPG is going on sale the start of November. Here’s a description from Eddy Webb, who has been overseeing the project:
A lightweight, card-based roleplaying game that’s fun for players – and storytellers. Whether you’re playing alone, with a group of friends, your spouse or with your kids – anyone can learn to play in less than 5 minutes! Powered by a free companion app with hundreds of free adventures and new quests every week, there’s always something new to play! For 1-6 players, 20+ minutes, ages 8+
More on this as it’s released! Suffice to say, Scarred Lands has been reborn, and we’re just thrilled with how players have responded to its return!
M20 Book of the Fallen art by Sam Araya
World of Darkness:
We’ll be Kickstarting the traditionally printed and in-stores version of V5 Cults of the Blood Gods soon, and coming out of Berlin, our team has several more V5 projects to get rolling on. While we’ve been finishing the Stretch Goal rewards for several past 20th Anniversary Kickstarters, we also have a few more 20th projects that WW/Paradox is cool with us doing, so keep an eye out for those.
Overall, as WW/Paradox‘s method of handling the licensing of WoD changes as they continue moving to “5th Edition WoD”, we are comfortable with pitching individual projects or whole lines depending on the parameters they use on each line. Right now, if we get an idea we pitch it their way and see if it works with their plans.
Chronicles of Darkness:
Much like with WoD, we pitch interesting CofD projects to Paradox, and they can OK them or not according to their overall plans.
Which works out just fine for us right now, as we’ve got plenty to keep us busy as Dark Eras 2 proofs get finalized and out to backers, which has so many CofD lines in it, and with Geist 2e going to press, and Mummy 2e‘s KS and Hunter 2e‘s not far behind- plus all the attendant KS Stretch Goal projects, plus plus starting a couple of projects not yet on the progress report that WW/Paradox is OK with.
Exalted:
The big books roll along with Lunars and Exigents at different stages and with smaller books/stretch goals also rolling. We’re getting close to wrapping up the two monthly EX3 projects. There’s a very special secret project that we’ve been working on that we’re going to announce at PAX Unplugged in early December, and we’re really looking forward to letting our EX3 audience in on that!
In general, while we know folks might look back at the previous two editions’ release schedules and count the numbers, we are looking at how far our “new” Exalted team has come and the overall quality of the projects seems pretty satisfying. While we’re not aiming to return to the frenetic release pace of old, EX3 looks well positioned to deliver a more regular series of releases in the coming year.
Deviant: The Renegades art by Michael Gaydos
Scion:
For a while I’ve been thinking about how there’s really two tracks for Scion: the Mythic track, which contains Scion: Origin, Hero, Demigod, and God, and the projects that talk about The World and our take on how real-world pantheons would work in it like Titanomachy, and then there’s the Expanded track, which looks at ways to add further ideas on what could be considered a pantheon, or a god, or what else could exist alongside or outside the Mythic track. These would include Scion: Dragon, and Masks of the Mythos.
We’re aiming to create projects that provide value to both tracks, even if they are more firmly situated in a single one, and to release those projects so that everyone into Scion will receive a steady stream of excellent material. Having the Storypath Nexus community content site up and being the repository of even more potential Scion goodness is definitely part of the plan.
Trinity Continuum:
Sort of similar to Scion but the key design decision to build everything as a Continuum helps folks understand that we’re not going to stop with just the original eras but expand the potential eras from the past to the far future and eras in-between what we already have. Plus sideways and upways and downways. I’ve taken to considering the TC not as a linear time track alone, but as one with bubbles of eras that run parallel and drift closer or farther together depending on the interests of our players.
To use my favorite example, the hidden ultra-tech city of the intelligent gorillas may exist in a bubble that in your TC:Adventure! game is very close or even touching your TC:Adventure! era, but that same gorilla bubble may be far away and so unreachable in your TC:Aeon game.
So with the Trinity Continuum Core and TC: Aeon books shipping RIGHT NOW to backers, work progressing nicely on the final TC: Aberrant text, and TC:Adventure! on the progress report chart below, we’ve got all sorts of added Stretch Goal projects that are getting ready to come out, plus unannounced projects for both the Core and the TC itself that we’ll let you in on very soon.
They Came From Beneath the Sea!, Dystopia Rising: Evolution, Realms of Pugmire, and Cavaliers of Mars:
These are all verrrry different games, but all share the same publishing philosophy of launching and fulfilling a Kickstarter campaign to get the books into stores, and of working to provide a first wave of releases that support and add to the game line’s core book(s). Mostly via Kickstarter Stretch Goal rewards.
With Cavs and Pugmire, we try and work within the schedules and interests of the creators, Rose and Eddy respectively, so as they come up with ideas we bat those back and forth until a new project forms out of all of it. For They Came From and DR:E, we’re working on getting the core books created, as well as the supplements from their KSs. From there we’ll see if the interest is there for more projects with the line…but it’ll be a few months before those triggers are pulled and we have anything to announce.
Dark Eras 2 art by Luis Sanz
Legendlore:
This is one that I’m really interested in seeing how it hits. If you listen to developer Steffie de Vaan’s deep dive with Matthew and Dixie on last Friday’s Onyx Pathcast, she stresses that this fantasy world that has been around for decades as a comic book series contains a lot of inherent world design that she and her team took and expanded on – always with an eye towards the central premise of the setting: you the player are playing some version of yourself transported to this fantasy world.
This can be a touchy premise for a game, though. A lot of folks who play RPGs are playing to NOT be themselves, but to explore different types of characters. Steffie has that covered too, in much the same way that she has looked at how to make the premise work so that players have options that work for them, for their personal beliefs and ideas as to what sort of character they are comfortable playing.
It’s only one aspect of a rich fantasy world, but it is so intrinsic to the setting (even beyond how important regular character creation is for any game world) that it had to be handled with thought and empathy. If you have the time, take a listen – you’ll also get a chance to hear a lot more about the warring nations, and the skullduggery of appeasing a dangerous aggressive neighboring realm, and that there’s several different types of playable trolls (!), and much, much, more.
There you go – and I’m not even getting into the possible new licenses and other new lines we continue to look into. Truly, we have so:
Many Worlds, One Path!
BLURBS!
Kickstarter!
The Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition Kickstarter arises next Tuesday, Nov 5th, at 2pm Eastern US time. Be there to witness the majesty and terror of this new version of Mummy: The Curse!
Onyx Path Media!
This Friday’s Onyx Pathcast features the recorded Worldbuilding panel from the Save Against Fear convention – Eddy, Dixie, RichT, surprise guest Neall Raemonn Price, and other game creators answer questions from the moderator and the audience as to what challenges creators face in world building for their games. The answers are often surprisingly personal, and no one held back their opinions, that’s for sure!
What a week we have in store for you on the Onyx Path Twitch channel! Matthew has already hosted the Onyx Path News today in a bumper, hour long edition, and we’ve got games of V5, Scion, Pugmire, Hunter: The Vigil, Aberrant, Changeling: The Lost, Mage: The Awakening, and Scarred Lands all to come! Check us out and give us a follow on twitch.tv/theonyxpath
It really helps us to have subscribers on our Twitch channel, and you can do so for free and catch premieres as they go up if you have an Amazon Prime account. Just type Twitch Amazon Prime into Google and you’ll be shown how to subscribe for free.
Do you follow us on YouTube? Well, if you haven’t subscribed to us on Twitch, do not despair, as a couple of weeks after each episode on Twitch we transfer the videos over to YouTube right here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzN5jRB35OvnC-6gxnRY4gQ
We already have episodes of Aberrant and Changeling up, with more to come!
Meanwhile, our fans keep creating excellent content for us, not limited to:
Occultists Anonymous continues with their fantastic Mage: The Awakening game right here:
Episode 54: A Marrow Escape The cabal travels into this strange Atlantean temple and tries to decipher the purpose of the building. The ancient defenses still work though…https://youtu.be/_6asdJMHo00
Episode 55: Judgment Call Shaking the remains of the Temple’s defenses off of themselves, the cabal begins to discover the heart of the Temple and it’s possibly dark purposes…https://youtu.be/S9eSLKTnUR8
Plus, the Story Told Podcast posts another episode of their fantastic Exalted: Dragon-Blooded series right here: http://thestorytold.libsyn.com/episode-17-welcome-to-daric
Do not miss Devil’s Luck Gaming with their superb Scarred Lands content: https://www.twitch.tv/DevilsLuckGaming
Watch Geek & Sundry‘s Eric Campbell discuss his love of Geist: The Sin-Eaters right here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=es7G-P9iou8
Twin Cities by Night continue their fantastic Chronicles of Darkness chronicle right here on Podbean: https://twincitiebynight.podbean.com/
Did you miss the Ragnarok & Roll podcast’s coverage of Scion Second Edition and their actual play spanning first edition’s Hero to Ragnarok? If so, please check them out here: https://ragnarokandroll.podbean.com/
If you want a fresh new take on Chicago by Night, complete with animated opening, please give the fine folks (with superb voice acting) a look at Windy City Kindred right here: www.twitch.tv/wickedstudiosllc
Drop Matthew a message via the contact button on matthewdawkins.com if you have actual plays, reviews, or game overviews you want us to profile on the blog!
Please check any of these out and let us know if you find or produce any actual plays of our games!
Electronic Gaming!
As we find ways to enable our community to more easily play our games, the Onyx Dice Rolling App is live! Our dev team has been doing updates since we launched based on the excellent use-case comments by our community, and this thing is awesome! (Seriously, you need to roll 100 dice for Exalted? This app has you covered.)
On Amazon and Barnes & Noble!
You can now read our fiction from the comfort and convenience of your Kindle (from Amazon) and Nook (from Barnes & Noble).
If you enjoy these or any other of our books, please help us by writing reviews on the site of the sales venue from which you bought it. Reviews really, really help us get folks interested in our amazing fiction!
Our selection includes these latest fiction books:
Our Sales Partners!
We’re working with Studio2 to get Pugmire and Monarchies of Mau out into stores, as well as to individuals through their online store. You can pick up the traditionally printed main book, the screen, and the official Pugmire dice through our friends there! https://studio2publishing.com/search?q=pugmire
We’ve added Prince’s Gambit to our Studio2 catalog: https://studio2publishing.com/products/prince-s-gambit-card-game
Now, we’ve added Changeling: The Lost 2nd Edition products to Studio2‘s store! See them here: https://studio2publishing.com/collections/all-products/changeling-the-lost
Scarred Lands (Pathfinder) books are also on sale at Studio2, and they have the 5e version, supplements, and dice as well!:
https://studio2publishing.com/collections/scarred-lands
Scion 2e books and other products are available now at Studio2: https://studio2publishing.com/blogs/new-releases/scion-second-edition-book-one-origin-now-available-at-your-local-retailer-or-online
Looking for our Deluxe or Prestige Edition books? Try this link! http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/Onyx-Path-Publishing/
And you can order Pugmire, Monarchies of Mau, Cavaliers of Mars, and Changeling: The Lost 2e at the same link! And NOW Scion Origin and Scion Hero are available to order!
As always, you can find most of Onyx Path’s titles at DriveThruRPG.com!
The big Halloween Sale on DriveThruRPG and Storytellers Vault continues until Halloween.
Most of our Chronicles of Darkness PDFs will be on sale on both sites, plus there will be some Halloween Treats (i.e. free PDFs) hidden around the sites.
On Sale This Week!
This Wednesday, we’ll be resplendently releasing our monthly Exalted 3rd PDFs on DTRPG!
Conventions!
GameHoleCon: This week: October 31st – November 3rd in Madison, WI!
PAX Unplugged: December 6th – 8th, in Philadelphia, PA.
2020: Midwinter: January 9th – 12th, in Milwaukee, WI.
And now, the new project status updates!
DEVELOPMENT STATUS FROM EDDY WEBB (projects in bold have changed status since last week):
First Draft (The first phase of a project that is about the work being done by writers, not dev prep)
Exalted Essay Collection (Exalted)
Exigents (Exalted 3rd Edition)
Many-Faced Strangers – Lunars Companion (Exalted 3rd Edition)
N!ternational Wrestling Entertainment (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)
Creating in the Realms of Pugmire (Realms of Pugmire)
Contagion Chronicle Ready-Made Characters (Chronicles of Darkness)
Trinity Continuum: Adventure! core (Trinity Continuum: Adventure!)
Redlines
Kith and Kin (Changeling: The Lost 2e)
Crucible of Legends (Exalted 3rd Edition)
M20 Victorian Mage (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)
Dragon-Blooded Novella #2 (Exalted 3rd Edition)
Contagion Chronicle Jumpstart (Chronicles of Darkness)
Second Draft
Across the Eight Directions (Exalted 3rd Edition)
Wraith20 Fiction Anthology (Wraith: The Oblivion 20th Anniversary Edition)
Contagion Chronicle: Global Outbreaks (Chronicles of Darkness)
Player’s Guide to the Contagion Chronicle (Chronicles of Darkness)
Tales of Aquatic Terror (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)
Development
Heirs to the Shogunate (Exalted 3rd Edition)
City of the Towered Tombs (Cavaliers of Mars)
TC: Aberrant Reference Screen (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)
Titanomachy (Scion 2nd Edition)
Trinity Continuum Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum Core)
Monsters of the Deep (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)
One Foot in the Grave Jumpstart (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2e)
Lunars Novella (Rosenberg) (Exalted 3rd Edition)
Scion: Demigod (Scion 2nd Edition)
Manuscript Approval
Scion: Dragon (Scion 2nd Edition)
Terra Firma (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)
Masks of the Mythos (Scion 2nd Edition)
Post-Approval Development
Trinity Continuum: Aberrant core (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)
Deviant: The Renegades (Deviant: The Renegades)
Scion LARP Rules (Scion)
Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition core rulebook (Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition)
Editing
Lunars: Fangs at the Gate (Exalted 3rd Edition)
Hunter: The Vigil 2e core (Hunter: The Vigil 2nd Edition)
Let the Streets Run Red (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)
Geist 2e Fiction Anthology (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition)
Dragon-Blooded Novella #1 (Exalted 3rd Edition)
Scion Companion: Mysteries of the World (Scion 2nd Edition)
Cults of the Blood Gods (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)
Legendlore core book (Legendlore)
WoD Ghost Hunters (World of Darkness)
Mythical Denizens (Creatures of the World Bestiary) (Scion 2nd Edition)
Vigil Watch (Scarred Lands)
Pirates of Pugmire KS-Added Adventure (Realms of Pugmire)
M20 The Technocracy Reloaded (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)
Yugman’s Guide to Ghelspad (Scarred Lands)
Post-Editing Development
Chicago Folio/Dossier (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)
TC: Aeon Ready-Made Characters (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)
Night Horrors: Nameless and Accursed (Mage: the Awakening Second Edition)
City of the Towered Tombs (Cavaliers of Mars)
Oak, Ash, and Thorn: Changeling: The Lost 2nd Companion (Changeling: The Lost 2nd)
W20 Shattered Dreams Gift Cards (Werewolf: The Apocalypse 20th)
TC: Aeon Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)
Tales of Good Dogs – Pugmire Fiction Anthology (Pugmire)
Indexing
ART DIRECTION FROM MIKE CHANEY!
In Art Direction
Contagion Chronicle – Sent out contracts.
Trinity Continuum: Aberrant
Hunter: The Vigil 2e
Ex3 Lunars – Contracted.
TCfBtS!: Heroic Land Dwellers
Night Horrors: Nameless and Accursed
Ex3 Monthly Stuff
Trinity RMCs – Finals in.
Cults of the Blood God (KS) – Mark finals rolling in.
Chicago Folio – Finals rolling in.
Mummy 2 (KS) – Ready for KS.
City of the Towered Tombs – Contracted.
Let the Streets Run Red – Figuring out probable page count.
CtL Oak Ash and Thorn – Awaiting artnotes.
Scion Mythical Denizens
Deviant
Trinity Continuum Aeon Jumpstart
In Layout
They Came from Beneath the Sea! – Template created… system chapter done.
Trinity Continuum Aeon: Distant Worlds
VtR Spilled Blood
Geist 2e Screen – Putting it together.
Pirates of Pugmire
Proofing
M20 Book of the Fallen – At WW for final approval.
Memento Mori
Dark Eras 2 – First dev pass ready to go back to designer.
At Press
Trinity Core Screen – At Studio2 – shipping to backers.
TC Aeon Screen – At Studio2 – shipping to backers.
Trinity: In Media Res – PoD proofs coming.
Trinity Core – At Studio2 – shipping to backers.
Trinity Aeon – At Studio2 – shipping to backers.
V5: Chicago – Printing.
Aeon Aexpansion – PoD proofs ordered.
W20 Art Book – On sale next week.
W20 Auspice Gift Cards deck – Backer PDF out to backers, PoD proofs ordered.
Geist 2e (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition) – Getting print files ready.
DR:E – Getting print files ready.
DRE Screen – Getting print files prepped.
C20 Cup of Dreams – Backer PDF with backers.
DR:E Threat Guide – Helnau’s Guide to Wasteland Beasties – PDF out to backers.
Today’s Reason to Celebrate!
Eight years ago, I let the ever-optimistic Impish Ian Watson know that Onyx Path had purchased the Trinity IP from White Wolf/CCP. And that we were going to bring it back and he was going to be as involved as he wanted, after all his years of keeping the flame lit. Today, Ian received his KS copies of the Trinity Continuum Core, and Trinity Continuum: Aeon. Took longer than either of us expected, but the dream is now real!
2 notes
·
View notes
Text
Sometime in the first few months of 2000, I dropped Stan Lee a line saying I’d love to do some work for Stan Lee Media, Stan’s well-publicized and multi-staffed dot-com company, if he could ever use me. He replied that, while he’d like to work with me again, I would’ve had to be around L.A. to work for SLM, but that, by coincidence, he really needed a writer to work with him on the SPIDER-MAN comic strip… to plot out and do the first-draft script of the seven-days-a-week King Features strip. I said that sounded fine to me (even though I’d never really been wild about writing Spidey compared to the F.F., Avengers, Conan, etc.). He replied with a chuckle that maybe I should wait till I heard his offer, because the money was so minuscule… just $300 a week. I laughed, and told him that he had no idea how little money it cost me to live on my 40-acre place in the middle of South Carolina. The mortgage and both our vehicles were paid off, so Dann and I had no expenses except what we spent month-to-month. So a deal was quickly struck, and I went to work, with my first strip (a Monday, of course) appearing on July 17, 2000.
As it turned out, although I never got a raise in 18 1/2 years I basically ghost-wrote the strip (though, until recent years, with his often hands-on editing), it was a great gig. I spent maybe two days a month writing four weeks’ worth of strips, and another day 2 or 3 times a year doing outlines for upcoming storylines.
After Stan cut back his activities a few years ago, following installation of his pacemaker, etc., I worked primarily with his longtime assistant, Michael Kelly, with some indirect verbal input from Stan, and in some ways I liked that even better, since Stan and I were only about 80% on the same page as to what made a good comic strip. Despite his well-known (and correct) views on how important the writing was to the success of Marvel Comics from 1961 on, he would often talk about how it was the artwork that sold the strip. I didn’t think that reflected the realities of the situation, particularly after John Romita left the strip a few years after it began, and as the printing of the strips grew smaller and smaller. Stan’s brother Larry Lieber was a good journeyman penciler (and Alex Saviuk considerably better), but the artists didn’t really have the scope, especially in the dailies, to do the kind of artwork that was going to excite readers the way, say, Milt Caniff once had in Terry and the Pirates. The sight of Spidey or Dr. Octopus in a strip might draw people in, but the writing had to bring people back, day after day, since Spidey and Peter and MJ and Doc Ock would always look basically the same, squeezed into small panels–with no “full-page spreads” like in the comicbooks. And yes, I wrote a bit more text and dialogue than he did… but that was partly because, otherwise, I wasn’t sure people could really follow the strip from day to day… or at least, no new readers would be brought in if it was hard to start reading the strip at any given point.
Mostly, though, Stan and I got along fine. For the most part, he liked what I submitted, accepted most (not all) of my ideas for stories… and until a few years ago often “suggested” (or insisted upon) alterations in them. For some years, he would rewrite a panel or balloon here and there, or even more… while other dailies or Sundays would sail through without a single word change.
The major change I tried to effect, after the first “Spider-Man” movie, was to go back to a time when MJ and Peter weren’t married. Stan agreed, and seemed halfway enthusiastic about the change at first, and we did one whole storyline (involving Electro) that way. But then Stan changed his mind, and I saw at once that I wouldn’t be able to change it back. So I wrote a “Dallas”-type scene in which Peter woke up (after going to sleep in Aunt May’s apartment as a single young man) to find himself married (again) to Mary Jane… and that’s the way we kept it from then on. Actually, I was increasingly happy with that, as an alternative to the bouncing around of the comicbooks, in which MJ and Peter totally forgot each other and their marriage, and who-knows-what occurred. Left increasingly to my own devices, and building on MJ’s modeling career in the comicbooks, I gradually took her from working in a computer store to becoming a Broadway star and movie actress, playing a super-heroine called “Marvella” (before the female Captain Marvel was a big deal, or maybe even was around at all)…but I kept her and Peter, somewhat incongruously, in their relatively small Manhattan apartment (except when they were in L.A., of course)… although they occasionally shopped around for something bigger.
In recent years, I had taken increasingly to using guest stars: Wolverine, Iron Man, Thor, Black Widow, Ant-Man, most recently Iron Fist and Luke Cage. We never bothered to try to follow the current Marvel continuity, which Stan didn’t want to do… the more so, I suppose, as from time to time it was given increasingly to violent wrenches and re-starts, such as when MJ and Peter were abruptly uncoupled. If there were eventually several Spider-Man universes in the comics (with different Spider-Men, a Spider-Girl, whatever), well, our comic strip universe was yet another one… just about the only one, in recent years, in which Peter and MJ were a married couple, continuing the original direction of decades of the comicbooks. We were all kind of proud of that.
When the strip died (i.e., was killed), the Mammon Theatre where MJ’s hit play was running was shuttered by damage (in a Spidey-related fight, of course), and “Marvella II” had flopped, so the two of them took off to Australia for a vacation, and I wrote a couple of weeks of a continuity (along with a full outline approved by Michael Kelly) involving the villain the Kangaroo. Then Marvel decided to kill the strip and not print the final couple of weeks, and I declined to rewrite the last published strip or two to turn it into a “goodbye” strip. My feeling was that I had accepted the snuffing of the strip, and didn’t take it personally… it was just a business move (although when I was told the strip was being killed I wasn’t told—perhaps because those who informed me didn’t know–that Marvel was planning to either revive the strip with a new team or to start a new strip that might not be a Spidey strip per se, but more the equivalent of DC’s latter-day successor to its Superman strip, The World’s Greatest Heroes, which had featured the whole panoply of DC heroes). I felt that I had written what I had written for the strip, and they were welcome to do whatever they wanted to with the script (as long as I was paid for what I had done, naturally), but I preferred never to touch it again. When I’m done with something, I’m done with something.
Alex Saviuk, bless him, graciously reworked the final strip to show the two of us in it, and to add a “‘Nuff Said!” headline on the Daily Bugle. He was perhaps a better sport about things than I was… and I admire him for that, since he had spent well over two decades penciling the Sunday Spider-Man and then had only recently been promoted to seven-days-a-week penciler… only to see the strip almost immediately canceled so that he was out of a regular gig. I hope he finds one. He deserves it.
Naturally, I was sorry to see the strip end (the more so because it signaled the finale of the only long-lasting adventure strip launched in the past half century), just at the time when I could finally have begun to receive on-strip credit for the work I did… although of course I did have that for two years on the Conan the Barbarian comic strip at the end of the 1970s. But at least, once Stan wrote vaguely, maybe a decade ago, in his introduction to the hardcover volume Marvel Visionaries: Roy Thomas, that I “help[ed]” him with the Spidey strip, everybody with half a brain knew what I was contributing to the strip anyway. That didn’t bother Stan, and it didn’t bother me. The strip was Stan’s, and I was happy to co-write or write it under his name… although I wouldn’t have been willing to go on writing it anonymously once he had passed on, had that alternative been suggested to me.
Working with Stan and Michael Kelly (as well as with Larry, Alex, and the ever-amiable Joe Sinnott–with Joe spelled occasionally by Jim Amash or Terry Austin) on the Spider-Man strip was an enjoyable experience, and I’m grateful to Stan for offering me that “pittance” back in 2000. The strip became the last of our many collaborations of one sort or other, which began when, in early July of 1965, I inherited a Modeling with Millie story that he had previously talked over (I suppose) with penciler Stan Goldberg.
Best wishes,
Roy Thomas
The LAST SPIDER-MAN Daily newspaper strip! It’s been a fabulous time for me being part of such an iconic character for so long. I’ve drawn Spider-Man in comics and newspapers for 32 years in a row and unless I get another crack at him NEXT year that run will come to an end. But I am digressing a bit; I’m here to talk about the newspaper strip which for me OFFICIALLY started in the spring of 1977 probably around April-May. I say OFFICIALLY because back in 1980 , John Romita, Sr. who was still drawing the entire strip at that time called me and asked if I had the time to ghost lay out some Sunday strips for him since he was incredibly busy with everything else he had on his plate for Marvel. John lived ( and still lives, I believe ) in the town next to mine on Long Island when I was there and I actually met him about 10 years earlier since I was in high school with his sons. ( that’s right, I went to high school with JR, Jr.— he IS four years younger than me to the day and when I was a senior he was a freshman and today looks 20 years younger than me!) I was in a club in school with the older son Victor who over time found out I was interested in drawing comics and came to me one day and said “… my father draws comics — would you like to meet him?” Of course I knew that but I would never impose. We met soon after that. What happened after that is another story!
BACK TO THE STRIP: I did at least 4 Sunday layouts for John on vellum tracing paper and he took it to the next level and beyond yet saving him a ton of time. I was really happy and excited just to be called to assist him , first of all, and then get the privilege and honor of working with one of my comic book artist “heroes”. IDW just recently published that volume of reprints and it was fun to see our collaborations again.
FORWARD to 1997: Ralph Macchio at Marvel calls me up and asks if I would be interested in penciling the Spider-Man Sunday strip since fill-in penciler old time artist Fred Kida wanted to leave. Of course I agreed — i would get to work directly with Stan Lee and Joe Sinnott! I put a package together of my Web Of Spider-Man and Spider-Man Adventures books and sent them to Stan. His assistant Mike Kelly called a few days later and said Stan liked the work but wanted to see how I would handle a “horizontal” strip in a six panel grid format. I admit I was a bit surprised by that request since with my 20 years of experience at that time I figured i showed what I can do in just the comic books. But I went ahead and penciled a six panel episode of an encounter with Spider-Man saving JJonah Jameson from a few muggers with the end panel having an ungrateful JJJ waving his fist at Spidey as he swung away from the scene. I sent that in and a few days days after returning home from running errands I found a message from Stan Lee on my answering machine. “ Hi, Alex… this is Stan Lee. I LOVE your work and I’d love to work with you. It doesn’t pay that much but think of the GLORY!” Actually the page rate was as much as I was making at the time so i couldn’t complain. No raise in 22 years ( but from what I understand things havent changed that much for mainstream freelancers even today. ) I got my first script a few days later and in May 1977 I penciled a Sunday in the middle of a Kingpin storyline which was inked by Joe Sinnott , lettered by Stan Sakai and was published in August 1977. Sundays were always drawn 3 months ahead of publication. What a rush to see those preview Xeroxes and then the colored version in the newspaper( which I had to hunt down ! There were no papers in Florida where I lived carrying the strip but the local Barnes & Noble sold out of town newspapers so I managed to find one that published the Sundays )
FORWARD to Feb 2003: Got a call asking me if I could ink a week of Dailies drawn by Larry Lieber because inker John Tartaglione needed to go to the hospital for a procedure. John ended up being OK after that week but I had a blast inking Larry’s pencils since I really never inked anybody else other my own pencils for my Web Of Spider-Man covers. Sadly that November , I got a call that John Tartaglione has passed away at 82 because he lost the fight with his particular illness. At the same time I was asked if I would be able to take over the inking of the Dailies. Affirmative….
FORWARD to July 2018: Larry Lieber wants to retire at 87 after 25+ years ( maybe 30+? ) and I inherit the penciling duties! Pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. I thought the Stan Lee would live forever especially since a few years ago when he got his pacemaker he felt he was the next Tony Stark and felt stronger than ever. Unfortunately and sadly as we all know , that didnt happen and Marvel decided the strip shouldn’t go on without STAN LEE at the helm. But I am forever in Stan Lee’s debt for having me join him, Joe Sinnott, Roy Thomas and letterers Stan Sakai, Kenny Lopez, and Janice Chiang for all these years in bringing our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man to our readers each and every day for these months and years! It’s been a joy, an honor and privilege which I will never forget!
( I do want to add that since since the Sundays were done so far in advance there are TWO more Sundays that followed March 17 that we did together that are now considered to be officially UNPUBLISHED! )”
-Alex Saviuk
P.S. Putting aside how Roy got his timeline mixed up because the back int ime stuff happened in 2008 not 2002, and just so you heard it louder at the back, Stan Lee and Roy Thomas 100% didn’t care fro OMD and actively sought to keep the marriage in the comics.
#Spider-Man newspaper Strip#Amazing Spider-Man Newspaper Strip#Roy Thomas#Alex Saviuk#Stan Lee#spider-man#peter parker#mjwatsonedit#mary jane watson#Mary Jane Watson Parker
30 notes
·
View notes
Photo
Danny Hicks revisits Intruder 30 years later: The interview.
1428 Elm has published a new interview with Danny Hicks. You can ready the interview above or added in below.
Danny Hicks revisits Scott Spiegel’s Intruder 30 years later with 1428 Elm in an exclusive interview. It’s time to remember a horror classic with one of Sam Raimi’s favorite players.
Danny Hicks has been a fixture in the horror community since he first graced the silver screen in Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead 2. But that’s not the only genre film he has been a part of. 30 years ago, he starred in Scott Spiegel’s underappreciated slasher classic, Intruder.
We were fortunate enough at 1428 Elm to sit down with the legendary character actor to discuss his beginnings on the stage and his successful associations with the persons involved in the Evil Dead universe. Prepare for a retro invasion!
The Interview
Treading the Boards
1428 Elm: Did you always want to be an actor?
Danny Hicks: No, absolutely not. In high school, I was so shy, I couldn’t even read a book report in front of the class. It was beyond me. I got started in acting very, very late. I was 29 years old before I ever set foot on a stage. A friend of mine was involved in community theater. He talked me into doing this tiny role in a film noir. So, I got on stage. I didn’t even think about having stage fright or anything like that. After the show, a film executive came up to me and asked how I would feel about getting naked in a hot tub. I thought, “I could get paid for this.” So, that’s how I became an actor.
1428 Elm: Talk to us about your theater years.
DH: I got on that stage one night and didn’t get off stage again for 5 years. I would do one play, while rehearsing another play, I was making extra money off of it. So, I quit my day job. I had a VERY good day job. I was a union heavy equipment operator making very good money. So, I thought I wonder if I can make a living as an actor? Then I got the part in Evil Dead 2 and that changed the way I thought about acting forever. Because film work is so much easier than stage work.
How to Become a Scuzz Bucket
1428 Elm: How did you get cast in Evil Dead 2? Did you audition?
DH: Evil Dead 2 was my first feature film. I had done industrial films before. I didn’t know Bruce (Campbell) or Sam (Raimi). I had met Ted (Raimi). My agent called me and told me about this horror movie and the character description was “a scuzz bucket.” So, I made myself as scuzzy as I could that morning. I put on these ripped up overalls that I had and combed my hair with grease and rubbed some gravel in it. Then, at the audition, I popped my fake teeth out and smiled at the camera. Sam Raimi loved it. That’s how I got the part.
1428 Elm: Wow! You really did quite a bit of work to get cast!
DH: If you’re playing a character well, people are not looking at you. They are seeing the character. I could basically get away with murder.
1428 Elm: Making that transition from stage to film is always about learning that “less is more.” Did you struggle with that? Because as you know, on stage, you have to be a big presence so as the old adage goes, you can be seen and heard at the back of the theater.
DH: I knew from my work on industrial films that you had to be “small” for the camera. I continue to struggle with that. My face is still too expressive. It’s a constant battle.
1428 Elm: Did you find Evil Dead 2 to be a difficult shoot because we all know Bruce Campbell’s recollections of working on those films?
DH: Physically, it was a hard shoot because it was so very hot. If you watch the movie, you can see the sweat on the actor’s faces. That’s not sprayed on, that’s real. It was brutal. Sam is very, very good at getting a performance out of an actor. He might like Bruce said, torment his talent but I felt it worked very, very well. He is a marvelous director because he can relate to the actors.
1428 Elm: Do you have any anecdotes or behind the scenes tales from making that movie?
DH: There was so much physical work. We really beat the crap out of each other. I was so hot and sweaty that I actually slipped and I hit Bruce in the mouth. They used that take. You can see his lip begin to swell. That was the first time I ever worked with him and I thought that’s kind of cool. You work with the lead guy; the star of the show and you knock all of his teeth out. That’s pretty damn good.
Intruder- 3 Decades of Slicing and Dicing
1428 Elm: Let’s talk about Intruder. It is the 30th anniversary of that film. What was it like working with Scott Spiegel and Lawrence Bender? Because this is right before Bender met Quentin Tarantino and started his partnership with him.
DH: Scotty had actually filmed a smaller version of Intruder with a different name. I met him on Evil Dead 2. After watching me work, he ended up rewriting the part of Bill Roberts just for me. He really wanted me to play that role. So, I got along with Scott very, very well. Lawrence Bender, not so much. It was his first feature film and he would just yell at people, very disrespectful in that way.
1428 Elm: In Intruder, you had a really meaty role (no pun intended) and your performance was top-notch. Some actors enjoy playing evil characters, others enjoy portraying heroes. Do you have a particular preference?
DH: No. I look for interesting characters with something to work with. I don’t care if he’s a hero or a bad guy, it doesn’t matter to me.
1428 Elm: There were so many inventive kills in that movie. Did you have a favorite?
DH: The bandsaw scene. Greg Nicotero and Robert Kurtzman did such a terrific job of FX with that one. What they did for Intruder was just awesome and so real. It looked and felt believable.
Danny Does Cleveland
1428 Elm: You will also be appearing at Retro Invasion Weekend in Cleveland, Ohio, May 31-June 2. It will be a reunion with Robert Kurtzman your colleague from Intruder and countless other films. What can fans expect? Will you guys be doing a panel?
DH: I know they will be showing the film. I don’t know the schedule or how many times they will show it. There will probably be some panels afterward. This should be interesting because I have never really talked about Intruder.
1428 Elm: Intruder has always been an underrated gem for horror lovers. It’s great that you are discussing this production with fans at Retro Invasion Weekend because it truly is a classic slasher.
DH: Thank you. That movie never had a chance. Because somehow or other, Paramount bought it and they had no idea what to do with it. Obviously, it’s too violent for little kids to see it. Not a lot of people saw it. It wasn’t like Evil Dead 2. I watched it when the Blu-ray came out and it was the first time I had seen it in years. I am very proud of Intrude rand I can’t say that about a lot of movies I have done.
1428 Elm: Let’s talk about your latest project, The Blood Hunter about an elite group of vampire slayers. What can you tell us about your role?
DH: It was a small part. I did it in about 2 days. It was a fun role. I’m retired and I don’t do as many movies as I used to.
1428 Elm: Is there anything else on your horizon that you would like your fans to know about?
DH: Other than Retro Invasion Weekend, I don’t have anything planned for the next 6 months or so. I’m just going to take it easy and enjoy life.
Many thanks to Danny Hicks for taking time to speak with us at 1428 Elm. If you want to watch Intruder with him and Robert Kurtzman, check out Retro Invasion Weekend in Westlake, OH at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel located at 1100 Crocker Road.
8 notes
·
View notes
Last Seen Blogs
satorudoll
.°◌𓆧༄𓇼°.
jggfff
Outdoor Furniture
4promill
Promill
takadaryuji
A favorite thing, in the shape.
parker-fluff
Spider-Man Obsessed TK Writer