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67,889 | birminghammail--2019-11-12--ITV set to launch new weekend entertainment show with John Bishop | 2019-11-12T00:00:00 | birminghammail | ITV set to launch new weekend entertainment show with John Bishop | The comedian will look back on the week's biggest events with the help of guest stars. John Bishop At The Weekend will dissect the news in his own comic style. Katie Rawcliff, of ITV, said: "We're thrilled to have John and his new show for ITV. "With his irrepressible wit, we can't wait to see what he and his star-studded guests make of each week." Bishop hosted the annual ITV Palooza event in London, welcoming a glittering array of stars from the TV channel's biggest shows. Simon Cowell appeared on the red carpet, along with Amber Gill and other stars of Love Island. | [email protected] (James Rodger) | https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/showbiz-tv/itv-set-launch-new-weekend-17247442 | Tue, 12 Nov 2019 23:43:01 +0000 | 1,573,620,181 | 1,573,605,227 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
73,495 | breitbart--2019-09-22--Update Breitbart Entertainment Editors Book Rockets to 5 on Amazon | 2019-09-22T00:00:00 | breitbart | Update: Breitbart Entertainment Editor's Book Rockets to #5 on Amazon | Jerome’s book, released nationwide on Sept. 17, was billed by his publisher, Harper Collins, as being chock full of the facts “TV talking heads, Hollywood celebrities, your teachers, professors, your politicians, and your local paper are not likely to ever tell you and don’t want you to know:” “Jerome is a fighter, a nightmare for Hollywood elites, and an integral part of the Breitbart family,” said Breitbart News President and CEO Larry Solov. “This book is a must-read for anyone who still cares about truth prevailing in America’s public discourse.” Breitbart News Editor-in-Chief Alexander Marlow said, “Jerome does something invaluable with this book: he precisely and concisely gives you history and arguments you can use to combat the left, or at least understand it. I learned a lot from this book and was reminded of a lot of things I wished I remembered. Buy two copies, and give one to a friend.” Jerome appeared on Fox News this week and called out the left’s lies on immigration, climate change, and Silicon Valley’s potential to secretly sway millions of votes. Jerome Hudson’s book 50 Things They Don’t Want You to Know has jumped to number 7 on the Amazon best seller’s list. Jerome’s book 50 Things They Don’t Want You to Know has now rocketed to number 5 on the Amazon best seller’s list. | Breitbart News | http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/breitbart/~3/yKF_X06V18Y/ | 2019-09-22 13:16:50+00:00 | 1,569,172,610 | 1,570,222,470 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
74,046 | breitbart--2019-10-08--Blizzard Entertainment Bans Pro Gamer, Strips of Winnings for Supporting Hong Kong Protests | 2019-10-08T00:00:00 | breitbart | Blizzard Entertainment Bans Pro Gamer, Strips of Winnings for Supporting Hong Kong Protests | Blizzard is facing backlash from consumers angry that the company banned Hearthstone eSports champion Ng Wai “blitzchung” Chung, a native of Hong Kong, for making comments in favor of the pro-democracy protests in the city. After expressing his support for the pro-democracy protests sweeping Hong Kong, Chung was banned by the multi-billion dollar entertainment company under a nebulous catch-all conduct policy that reads: Engaging in any act that, in Blizzard’s sole discretion, brings you into public disrepute, offends a portion or group of the public, or otherwise damages Blizzard image will result in removal from Grandmasters and reduction of the player’s prize total to $0 USD, in addition to other remedies which may be provided for under the Handbook and Blizzard’s Website Terms. Chung spoke to the official Taiwanese Hearthstone organization wearing a gas mask in protest after his victory against South Korea’s Jang “DawN” Hyun Jae. As soon as he was on camera, he proclaimed: “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our age!” The camera was immediately cut, the casters attempted to distance themselves, and videos of the match itself have been removed. Blizzard also fired both casters for good measure. In an official blog post, Blizzard said: It is important to note that Blizzard is partly owned by the monolithic Chinese multinational conglomerate, Tencent Holdings Limited. Today, Tencent also announced a suspension of their ties with the National Basketball Association, after Houston Rockets’ General Manager tweeted support for the Hong Kong protesters. Just like the NBA, Blizzard is facing a pervasive negative response from the public. Customers are boycotting the company, and declaring their support for Chung and the pro-democracy demonstrators through the #BoycottBlizzard hashtag — including numerous posted screenshots showing Blizzard products deleted from their personal computers. The response has been so intense that Blizzard has even shut down r/Blizzard, the company’s official fan subreddit, in an attempt to silence the overwhelming criticism. Meanwhile, fellow online card game “Gods Unchained” has decided to express their support for Chung by paying out all of his lost winnings: “@Blizzard_Ent just banned @blitzchungHS and stripped his Hearthstone winnings because they care about money more than freedom,” they tweeted early this morning. “We will pay for ALL his lost winnings and a ticket to our $500k tournament: no player should be punished for their beliefs. #freegaming” Even Blizzard’s employees may be feeling the heat. Unconfirmed reports claim that “incensed” employees have covered up the “Think Globally” and “Every Voice Matters” values from the company’s corporate display. Without any real chance of a South Park style “apology” from the communist corporate overlords, Blizzard is betting on silence being their best chance of escape… It is not working. | Nate Church | http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/breitbart/~3/OZxAqt3FZcc/ | Tue, 08 Oct 2019 22:13:10 +0000 | 1,570,587,190 | 1,570,623,196 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
80,162 | buzzfeed--2019-08-09--Amid The Equinox Boycott Armie Hammer Called Out The Marvel Entertainment Chairman For Trump Donati | 2019-08-09T00:00:00 | buzzfeed | Amid The Equinox Boycott, Armie Hammer Called Out The Marvel Entertainment Chairman For Trump Donations | This week has seen Equinox and SoulCycle customers — including celebs — cancel their memberships in protest against Stephen Ross, the wealthy owner of the gyms’ parent company, hosting a Trump fundraiser in the Hamptons on Friday. As liberals debate if they’re comfortable spending their money at places where some of it may end up supporting the president, actor Armie Hammer (Call Me by Your Name, Sorry to Bother You) on Friday sought to call attention to another wealthy Trump benefactor. “Hey, while everyone seems to be on this Equinox thing,” he tweeted, “it might be a good time to mention that one of Trump’s largest financial contributors is the chairman of Marvel Entertainment (Isaac Perlmutter)..... jussayin." Until September 2015, Perlmutter oversaw the development of film projects at Marvel Studios before the company went through a reorganization, effectively removing the billionaire from any substantial input on the studios’ movies. This year, Perlmutter — who has a net worth of $5 billion, according to Forbes — gave $360,600 of his own money to the Trump Victory Committee, a fundraising enterprise between the RNC and the Trump campaign. Perlmutter’s wife, Laura, matched her husband’s donation, helping the president raise more than $100 million in campaign funds this year. In 2016, the executive also donated $1 million to Trump’s veterans fundraiser during the election primary season that year. (Trump held the event as a televised boycott of one of the Republican primary debates when Fox News would not replace Megyn Kelly as moderator.) But the relationship between Perlmutter and Trump goes quite deep. | Michael Blackmon | https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/michaelblackmon/armie-hammer-trump-marvel-isaac-perlmutter-equinox-soulcycle | 2019-08-09 23:33:59+00:00 | 1,565,408,039 | 1,567,534,548 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
80,167 | buzzfeed--2019-08-11--Amid The Equinox Boycott Armie Hammer Called Out The Marvel Entertainment Chairman For Trump Donati | 2019-08-11T00:00:00 | buzzfeed | Amid The Equinox Boycott, Armie Hammer Called Out The Marvel Entertainment Chairman For Trump Donations | This week has seen Equinox and SoulCycle customers — including celebs — cancel their memberships in protest against Stephen Ross, the wealthy owner of the gyms’ parent company, hosting a Trump fundraiser in the Hamptons on Friday. As liberals debate if they’re comfortable spending their money at places where some of it may end up supporting the president, actor Armie Hammer (Call Me by Your Name, Sorry to Bother You) on Friday sought to call attention to another wealthy Trump benefactor. “Hey, while everyone seems to be on this Equinox thing,” he tweeted, “it might be a good time to mention that one of Trump’s largest financial contributors is the chairman of Marvel Entertainment (Isaac Perlmutter)..... jussayin." Until September 2015, Perlmutter oversaw the development of film projects at Marvel Studios before the company went through a reorganization, effectively removing the billionaire from any substantial input on the studios’ movies. This year, Perlmutter — who has a net worth of $5 billion, according to Forbes — gave $360,600 of his own money to the Trump Victory Committee, a fundraising enterprise between the RNC and the Trump campaign. Perlmutter’s wife, Laura, matched her husband’s donation, helping the president raise more than $100 million in campaign funds this year. In 2016, the executive also donated $1 million to Trump’s veterans fundraiser during the election primary season that year. (Trump held the event as a televised boycott of one of the Republican primary debates when Fox News would not replace Megyn Kelly as moderator.) But the relationship between Perlmutter and Trump goes quite deep. | Michael Blackmon | https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/michaelblackmon/armie-hammer-trump-marvel-isaac-perlmutter-equinox-soulcycle | 2019-08-11 02:25:50+00:00 | 1,565,504,750 | 1,567,534,428 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
83,884 | cbsnews--2019-05-27--Georgia hit with backlash from entertainment industry over new abortion law | 2019-05-27T00:00:00 | cbsnews | Georgia hit with backlash from entertainment industry over new abortion law | Missouri's last abortion clinic may lose license this week | null | http://www.cbsnews.com/video/georgia-hit-with-backlash-from-entertainment-industry-over-new-abortion-law/ | 2019-05-27 23:30:28+00:00 | 1,559,014,228 | 1,567,540,104 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
92,064 | chicagosuntimes--2019-01-08--Alderman kills Lincoln Yards soccer stadium and live entertainment district | 2019-01-08T00:00:00 | chicagosuntimes | Alderman kills Lincoln Yards’ soccer stadium and live entertainment district | Ald. Brian Hopkins (2nd) on Tuesday put the kibosh on two major elements of Sterling Bay’s massive Lincoln Yards development: a 20,000-seat soccer stadium and a live entertainment district controlled by LiveNation with large music venues. In a move that’s expected to be wildly popular with his park-starved constituents, Hopkins demanded that the site earmarked for a stadium that would have been home to a team owned by the billionaire owner of the Cubs be “repurposed as open and recreational space.” The now-nixed entertainment district would have been co-owned by LiveNation and included multiple venues seating anywhere from 3,000 to 6,000 patrons. In November, the Hideout and several other small music venues in Chicago said they were “banding together” in an effort to slow the project for fear it would starve them of talent and drive them out of business. Hopkins’ opposition to that aspect of Sterling Bay’s plan means that the proposed entertainment district “will be eliminated from a revised plan and replaced by restaurants, theaters, and smaller venues that will be scattered throughout the site.” LiveNation “will have no ownership interest in any of these venues,” Hopkins said. The alderman said his decision to nix the two key elements stemmed from an avalanche of opposition to the stadium and entertainment district unleashed in a pair of neighborhood surveys and in emails, phone calls and testimony at jam-packed community hearings on the Lincoln Yards development. “The idea of 20,000 fans coming to an event, then leaving hours later creating massive traffic tie-ups throughout the community—not just on the Kennedy. All the arterial streets in the vicinity would have become gridlocked,” Hopkins said. “There would have been many other events besides soccer matches. Concerts and other things. In order to justify the cost of building such a structure, it became clear that it would need to be utilized somewhat regularly. That just put an undue burden on the neighborhood. There didn’t seem to be a way to solve that.” The entertainment district raised similar concerns because of the size of the venues that would have been included, Hopkins said. “A 6,000-seat venue, a 5,000-seat venue and a 4,000-seat venue…That was over 10,000 right there in that same location. Same impact,” the alderman said. “In addition to that, the independent music scene in Chicago was very concerned that LiveNation was one of the owners of the district. They had an equity stake in it. They felt that would be unfair competition to the independent music venues. By removing the entertainment district, that takes LiveNation’s equity stake out. That should satisfy concerns of the independent music promoters.” The proposed stadium would have been home to a United Soccer League franchise owned by Cubs chairman Tom Ricketts, though it would also have hosted other community and sporting events. Dennis Culloton, a spokesperson for the Ricketts family, said the family’s “potential involvement was focused on the soccer team and contingent on city approvals.” “While we are disappointed the concept is no longer included in the master plan, we understand the ambitious Lincoln Yards project needs to move forward,” Culloton said in a statement. Andy Gloor, managing principal of Sterling Bay, could not be reached. In a statement, Sterling Bay accepted Hopkins’ stand as the final verdict. “Alderman Hopkins and residents have been very clear: they do not want a stadium. And we want to say: we heard you loud and clear,” the statement said. “We have removed the stadium and broken up the entertainment district, allowing for assorted smaller venues throughout Lincoln Yards where all independent music operators will have the opportunity to participate. We have also heard the desire for improved transit and infrastructure in the area, a desire we share.” Under the developer’s revised plan, the proposed Concord/Wisconsin Bridge will now be for both vehicular and pedestrian access, the statement said. “This bridge, along with the renovated Cortland Bridge, new Armitage bridge, new Dominick bridge, and extended 606, creates five viable routes across the Chicago River,” the developer said. “Further, Ald. Hopkins has received a commitment from CDOT that they will swiftly pursue the realignment of Elston/Armitage/Ashland.” Hopkins’s stand appears to remove at least one obstacle to Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s plan to persuade the City Council to approve $1.7 billion in tax-increment-financing (TIF) subsidies to unlock the development potential of four megasites in and around the downtown area. The largest subsidy — up to $800 million — would be earmarked for Lincoln Yards. That will require the city to create a new TIF. “The project has the ability to be extremely successful without a large stadium and without an entertainment district . . . There’s a path to make this work with the kind of limited venue approach the alderman referenced,” Planning and Development Commissioner David Reifman said. “The main direction from the mayor on this is, find that balance that is fair overall . . . This is a step toward achieving that balance . . . This opens up a path to a level of compromise to move the project forward.” | Fran Spielman | https://chicago.suntimes.com/business/hopkins-kills-lincoln-yards-soccer-stadium-and-live-entertainment-district/ | 2019-01-08 16:57:04+00:00 | 1,546,984,624 | 1,567,553,390 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
92,064 | chicagosuntimes--2019-01-08--Alderman kills Lincoln Yards soccer stadium and live entertainment district | 2019-01-08T00:00:00 | chicagosuntimes | Alderman kills Lincoln Yards’ soccer stadium and live entertainment district | Ald. Brian Hopkins (2nd) on Tuesday put the kibosh on two major elements of Sterling Bay’s massive Lincoln Yards development: a 20,000-seat soccer stadium and a live entertainment district controlled by LiveNation with large music venues. In a move that’s expected to be wildly popular with his park-starved constituents, Hopkins demanded that the site earmarked for a stadium that would have been home to a team owned by the billionaire owner of the Cubs be “repurposed as open and recreational space.” The now-nixed entertainment district would have been co-owned by LiveNation and included multiple venues seating anywhere from 3,000 to 6,000 patrons. In November, the Hideout and several other small music venues in Chicago said they were “banding together” in an effort to slow the project for fear it would starve them of talent and drive them out of business. Hopkins’ opposition to that aspect of Sterling Bay’s plan means that the proposed entertainment district “will be eliminated from a revised plan and replaced by restaurants, theaters, and smaller venues that will be scattered throughout the site.” LiveNation “will have no ownership interest in any of these venues,” Hopkins said. The alderman said his decision to nix the two key elements stemmed from an avalanche of opposition to the stadium and entertainment district unleashed in a pair of neighborhood surveys and in emails, phone calls and testimony at jam-packed community hearings on the Lincoln Yards development. “The idea of 20,000 fans coming to an event, then leaving hours later creating massive traffic tie-ups throughout the community—not just on the Kennedy. All the arterial streets in the vicinity would have become gridlocked,” Hopkins said. “There would have been many other events besides soccer matches. Concerts and other things. In order to justify the cost of building such a structure, it became clear that it would need to be utilized somewhat regularly. That just put an undue burden on the neighborhood. There didn’t seem to be a way to solve that.” The entertainment district raised similar concerns because of the size of the venues that would have been included, Hopkins said. “A 6,000-seat venue, a 5,000-seat venue and a 4,000-seat venue…That was over 10,000 right there in that same location. Same impact,” the alderman said. “In addition to that, the independent music scene in Chicago was very concerned that LiveNation was one of the owners of the district. They had an equity stake in it. They felt that would be unfair competition to the independent music venues. By removing the entertainment district, that takes LiveNation’s equity stake out. That should satisfy concerns of the independent music promoters.” The proposed stadium would have been home to a United Soccer League franchise owned by Cubs chairman Tom Ricketts, though it would also have hosted other community and sporting events. Dennis Culloton, a spokesperson for the Ricketts family, said the family’s “potential involvement was focused on the soccer team and contingent on city approvals.” “While we are disappointed the concept is no longer included in the master plan, we understand the ambitious Lincoln Yards project needs to move forward,” Culloton said in a statement. Andy Gloor, managing principal of Sterling Bay, could not be reached. In a statement, Sterling Bay accepted Hopkins’ stand as the final verdict. “Alderman Hopkins and residents have been very clear: they do not want a stadium. And we want to say: we heard you loud and clear,” the statement said. “We have removed the stadium and broken up the entertainment district, allowing for assorted smaller venues throughout Lincoln Yards where all independent music operators will have the opportunity to participate. We have also heard the desire for improved transit and infrastructure in the area, a desire we share.” Under the developer’s revised plan, the proposed Concord/Wisconsin Bridge will now be for both vehicular and pedestrian access, the statement said. “This bridge, along with the renovated Cortland Bridge, new Armitage bridge, new Dominick bridge, and extended 606, creates five viable routes across the Chicago River,” the developer said. “Further, Ald. Hopkins has received a commitment from CDOT that they will swiftly pursue the realignment of Elston/Armitage/Ashland.” Hopkins’s stand appears to remove at least one obstacle to Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s plan to persuade the City Council to approve $1.7 billion in tax-increment-financing (TIF) subsidies to unlock the development potential of four megasites in and around the downtown area. The largest subsidy — up to $800 million — would be earmarked for Lincoln Yards. That will require the city to create a new TIF. “The project has the ability to be extremely successful without a large stadium and without an entertainment district . . . There’s a path to make this work with the kind of limited venue approach the alderman referenced,” Planning and Development Commissioner David Reifman said. “The main direction from the mayor on this is, find that balance that is fair overall . . . This is a step toward achieving that balance . . . This opens up a path to a level of compromise to move the project forward.” | Fran Spielman | https://chicago.suntimes.com/business/hopkins-kills-lincoln-yards-soccer-stadium-and-live-entertainment-district/ | 2019-01-08 16:57:04+00:00 | 1,546,984,624 | 1,567,553,390 | sport | sport venue |
92,072 | chicagosuntimes--2019-01-08--Hopkins kills Lincoln Yards soccer stadium and live entertainment district | 2019-01-08T00:00:00 | chicagosuntimes | Hopkins kills Lincoln Yards’ soccer stadium and live entertainment district | Ald. Brian Hopkins (2nd) on Tuesday put the kibosh on two major elements of Sterling Bay’s massive Lincoln Yards development: a 20,000-seat soccer stadium and a live entertainment district controlled by LiveNation with large music venues. In a move that’s expected to be wildly popular with his park-starved constituents, Hopkins demanded that the site earmarked for a stadium that would have been home to a team owned by the billionaire owner of the Cubs be “re-purposed as open and recreational space.” The now-nixed entertainment district would have been co-owned by LiveNation and included multiple venues seating anywhere from 3,000 to 6,000 patrons. In November, the Hideout and several other small music venues in Chicago said they were “banding together” in an effort to slow the project for fear it would starve them of talent and drive them out of business. Hopkins’ opposition to that aspect of Sterling Bay’s plan means that the proposed entertainment district “will be eliminated from a revised plan and replaced by restaurants, theaters, and smaller venues that will be scattered throughout the site.” LiveNation “will have no ownership interest in any of these venues,” Hopkins said. The alderman said his decision to nix the two key elements stemmed from an avalanche of opposition to the stadium and entertainment district unleashed in a pair of neighborhood surveys and in emails, phone calls and testimony at jam-packed community hearings on the Lincoln Yards development. “The idea of 20,000 fans coming to an event, then leaving hours later creating massive traffic tie-ups throughout the community—not just on the Kennedy. All the arterial streets in the vicinity would have become gridlocked,” Hopkins said. “There would have been many other events besides soccer matches. Concerts and other things. In order to justify the cost of building such a structure, it became clear that it would need to be utilized somewhat regularly. That just put an undue burden on the neighborhood. There didn’t seem to be a way to solve that.” The entertainment district raised similar concerns because of the size of the venues that would have been included, Hopkins said. “A 6,000-seat venue, a 5,000-seat venue and a 4,000-seat venue…That was over 10,000 right there in that same location. Same impact,” the alderman said. “In addition to that, the independent music scene in Chicago was very concerned that LiveNation was one of the owners of the district. They had an equity stake in it. They felt that would be unfair competition to the independent music venues. By removing the entertainment district, that takes LiveNation’s equity stake out. That should satisfy concerns of the independent music promoters.” The proposed stadium would have been home to a United Soccer League franchise owned by Cubs chairman Tom Ricketts, though it would also have hosted other community and sporting events. Dennis Culloton, a spokesperson for the Ricketts family, said the family’s “potential involvement was focused on the soccer team and contingent on city approvals.” “While we are disappointed the concept is no longer included in the master plan, we understand the ambitious Lincoln Yards project needs to move forward,” Culloton said in a statement. Andy Gloor, managing principal of Sterling Bay, could not be reached. In a statement, Sterling Bay accepted Hopkins’ stand as the final verdict. “Alderman Hopkins and residents have been very clear: they do not want a stadium. And we want to say: we heard you loud and clear,” the statement said. “We have removed the stadium and broken up the entertainment district, allowing for assorted smaller venues throughout Lincoln Yards where all independent music operators will have the opportunity to participate. We have also heard the desire for improved transit and infrastructure in the area, a desire we share.” Under the developer’s revised plan, the proposed Concord/Wisconsin Bridge will now be for both vehicular and pedestrian access, the statement said. “This bridge, along with the renovated Cortland Bridge, new Armitage bridge, new Dominick bridge, and extended 606, creates five viable routes across the Chicago River,” the developer said. “Further, Alderman Hopkins has received a commitment from CDOT that they will swiftly pursue the realignment of Elston/Armitage/Ashland.” Hopkins’s stand appears to remove at least one obstacle to Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s plan to convince the City Council to approve $1.7 billion in tax-increment-financing (TIF) subsidies to unlock the development potential of four mega-sites in and around the downtown area. The largest subsidy — up to $800 million — would be earmarked for Lincoln Yards. That will require the city to create a new TIF. “The project has the ability to be extremely successful without a large stadium and without an entertainment district…There’s a path to make this work with the kind of limited venue approach the alderman referenced,” said Planning and Development Commissioner David Reifman. “The main direction from the mayor on this is, find that balance that is fair overall…This is a step toward achieving that balance…This opens up a path to a level of compromise to move the project forward.” | Fran Spielman | https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/hopkins-kills-lincoln-yards-soccer-stadium-and-live-entertainment-district/ | 2019-01-08 16:57:04+00:00 | 1,546,984,624 | 1,567,553,390 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
92,072 | chicagosuntimes--2019-01-08--Hopkins kills Lincoln Yards soccer stadium and live entertainment district | 2019-01-08T00:00:00 | chicagosuntimes | Hopkins kills Lincoln Yards’ soccer stadium and live entertainment district | Ald. Brian Hopkins (2nd) on Tuesday put the kibosh on two major elements of Sterling Bay’s massive Lincoln Yards development: a 20,000-seat soccer stadium and a live entertainment district controlled by LiveNation with large music venues. In a move that’s expected to be wildly popular with his park-starved constituents, Hopkins demanded that the site earmarked for a stadium that would have been home to a team owned by the billionaire owner of the Cubs be “re-purposed as open and recreational space.” The now-nixed entertainment district would have been co-owned by LiveNation and included multiple venues seating anywhere from 3,000 to 6,000 patrons. In November, the Hideout and several other small music venues in Chicago said they were “banding together” in an effort to slow the project for fear it would starve them of talent and drive them out of business. Hopkins’ opposition to that aspect of Sterling Bay’s plan means that the proposed entertainment district “will be eliminated from a revised plan and replaced by restaurants, theaters, and smaller venues that will be scattered throughout the site.” LiveNation “will have no ownership interest in any of these venues,” Hopkins said. The alderman said his decision to nix the two key elements stemmed from an avalanche of opposition to the stadium and entertainment district unleashed in a pair of neighborhood surveys and in emails, phone calls and testimony at jam-packed community hearings on the Lincoln Yards development. “The idea of 20,000 fans coming to an event, then leaving hours later creating massive traffic tie-ups throughout the community—not just on the Kennedy. All the arterial streets in the vicinity would have become gridlocked,” Hopkins said. “There would have been many other events besides soccer matches. Concerts and other things. In order to justify the cost of building such a structure, it became clear that it would need to be utilized somewhat regularly. That just put an undue burden on the neighborhood. There didn’t seem to be a way to solve that.” The entertainment district raised similar concerns because of the size of the venues that would have been included, Hopkins said. “A 6,000-seat venue, a 5,000-seat venue and a 4,000-seat venue…That was over 10,000 right there in that same location. Same impact,” the alderman said. “In addition to that, the independent music scene in Chicago was very concerned that LiveNation was one of the owners of the district. They had an equity stake in it. They felt that would be unfair competition to the independent music venues. By removing the entertainment district, that takes LiveNation’s equity stake out. That should satisfy concerns of the independent music promoters.” The proposed stadium would have been home to a United Soccer League franchise owned by Cubs chairman Tom Ricketts, though it would also have hosted other community and sporting events. Dennis Culloton, a spokesperson for the Ricketts family, said the family’s “potential involvement was focused on the soccer team and contingent on city approvals.” “While we are disappointed the concept is no longer included in the master plan, we understand the ambitious Lincoln Yards project needs to move forward,” Culloton said in a statement. Andy Gloor, managing principal of Sterling Bay, could not be reached. In a statement, Sterling Bay accepted Hopkins’ stand as the final verdict. “Alderman Hopkins and residents have been very clear: they do not want a stadium. And we want to say: we heard you loud and clear,” the statement said. “We have removed the stadium and broken up the entertainment district, allowing for assorted smaller venues throughout Lincoln Yards where all independent music operators will have the opportunity to participate. We have also heard the desire for improved transit and infrastructure in the area, a desire we share.” Under the developer’s revised plan, the proposed Concord/Wisconsin Bridge will now be for both vehicular and pedestrian access, the statement said. “This bridge, along with the renovated Cortland Bridge, new Armitage bridge, new Dominick bridge, and extended 606, creates five viable routes across the Chicago River,” the developer said. “Further, Alderman Hopkins has received a commitment from CDOT that they will swiftly pursue the realignment of Elston/Armitage/Ashland.” Hopkins’s stand appears to remove at least one obstacle to Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s plan to convince the City Council to approve $1.7 billion in tax-increment-financing (TIF) subsidies to unlock the development potential of four mega-sites in and around the downtown area. The largest subsidy — up to $800 million — would be earmarked for Lincoln Yards. That will require the city to create a new TIF. “The project has the ability to be extremely successful without a large stadium and without an entertainment district…There’s a path to make this work with the kind of limited venue approach the alderman referenced,” said Planning and Development Commissioner David Reifman. “The main direction from the mayor on this is, find that balance that is fair overall…This is a step toward achieving that balance…This opens up a path to a level of compromise to move the project forward.” | Fran Spielman | https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/hopkins-kills-lincoln-yards-soccer-stadium-and-live-entertainment-district/ | 2019-01-08 16:57:04+00:00 | 1,546,984,624 | 1,567,553,390 | sport | sport venue |
113,915 | cnsnews--2019-07-28--ABCs Matthew Dowd Bashes Media for Expecting Mueller Entertainment | 2019-07-28T00:00:00 | cnsnews | ABC's Matthew Dowd Bashes Media for Expecting Mueller Entertainment | On ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos on Sunday, political analyst Matthew Dowd lamented that the media judged the Robert Mueller hearings on their optics or entertainment value...and forget that the Democrats told us this would be the "movie" that would bring the Mueller Report to vivid life. | null | https://www.cnsnews.com/video/abcs-matthew-dowd-bashes-media-expecting-mueller-entertainment | 2019-07-28 22:55:00+00:00 | 1,564,368,900 | 1,567,535,525 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
115,070 | cnsnews--2019-09-10--List Variety Labels Entertainments 25 Climate Movers and Shakers | 2019-09-10T00:00:00 | cnsnews | List: 'Variety' Labels Entertainment’s 25 ‘Climate Movers and Shakers’ | Entertainment magazine “Variety” has published a list of “25 Climate Movers and Shakers in Entertainment” – along with monikers characterizing their climate claims to fame. Actor/Rapper Jaden Smith, for example, is labeled a “Plant-based multitasker” for “launching a free vegan food truck (named, naturally, I Love You) to serve the homeless population lining Skid Row.” The article’s list of media climate-activist “movers and shakers,” along with their “Variety” nicknames, follows: | Craig Bannister | https://www.cnsnews.com/blog/craig-bannister/list-variety-labels-entertainments-25-climate-movers-and-shakers | 2019-09-10 20:44:59+00:00 | 1,568,162,699 | 1,569,330,529 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
126,897 | dailyheraldchicago--2019-05-20--Des Plaines turns to familiar name in suburban entertainment to operate historic theater | 2019-05-20T00:00:00 | dailyheraldchicago | Des Plaines turns to familiar name in suburban entertainment to operate historic theater | Des Plaines is poised to pick a familiar name in suburban show business to operate its historic downtown theater. The city council is expected to vote Monday on a deal to lease the Des Plaines Theatre to Onesti Entertainment Corporation, which will book shows and operate a restaurant at the 1925 Art Deco-style building at 1476 Miner St. Ron Onesti, the president of the company, said he realizes the project is important to Des Plaines residents and business owners. "Let me just make it clear that this is all subject to the city council approval, and if it does go through, I would consider it an honor and responsibility that I wouldn't take lightly," Onesti said. City officials began searching for a company to run the day-to-day operations of the theater in July 2018 and interviewed three firms. The city council interviewed two of those companies and then authorized City Manager Mike Bartholomew to negotiate the lease agreement with Onesti. Bartholomew cited Onesti's track record of success operating the Arcada Theatre in St. Charles as a reason for choosing his company as the finalist. Onesti also operates Rock 'N Ravioli Restaurant and Music Hall and the Bourbon 'N Brass Speakeasy & Jazz Club in Evanston. "We were aligned on the vision of the theater," Bartholomew said. "We want the theater to be an experience. We want people to go to the theater, no matter what the show is." Under the proposed five-year agreement, the city will lease the theater to Onesti for free during its first six months of operations and $10,000 per month the next six months. Rent will increase to $12,000 per month the second year, $14,000 per month the third year, $16,000 per month the fourth year and $18,000 per month the fifth year. The city has the option to renew the lease. However, the city is less concerned about earning money and more focused on the number of people the theater can draw downtown. City leaders view the theater as the anchor of an entertainment and restaurant district and even has a grant program to give new restaurants up to $100,000 to locate there. "The payoff isn't how much money we can make on rent," Bartholomew said. "The payoff is people." The proposed deal is unique because Onesti will help the city decide the layout and design of the restaurant on second level, a bar concept on the first level and seating for anywhere between 600 to 900 people. The agreement stipulates the city will prepare the restaurant space to "vanilla box form" -- meaning it will install electrical, drywall and a layer of paint. The cost of installing a kitchen, tables and chairs and all other aspects of the restaurant will be paid by Onesti. The city estimates construction could take between six and nine months. Though Onesti is staying quiet about the type of restaurant that may open, he pointed to the shows and the overall experience at the Arcada Theatre as a blueprint for what he envisions for Des Plaines. Typically, the Arcada books a wide variety of musical acts. For example, recent and upcoming acts include Jay and the Americans, B.B. King's Blues Band featuring Michael Lee from "The Voice," Warrant, Steven Adler of Guns N' Roses and Dwight Yoakam. "Everything is ambience-driven, themed and upscale," Onesti said. "The experience is as important as the quality of food and the level of the cocktails." The city entered an agreement with Rivers Casino in May 2018 to buy the shuttered theater, with the casino pledging up to $2 million to help purchase and renovate the building. The city completed the purchase of the building in June and has been completing improvements to the venue. The city council meeting is at 7 p.m. Monday at 1420 Miner St. | null | http://www.dailyherald.com/news/20190520/des-plaines-turns-to-familiar-name-in-suburban-entertainment-to-operate-historic-theater | 2019-05-20 06:07:28+00:00 | 1,558,346,848 | 1,567,540,470 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
148,410 | drudgereport--2019-05-29--POKEMON turns sleep into entertainment | 2019-05-29T00:00:00 | drudgereport | POKEMON turns 'sleep into entertainment'... | A new Pokémon app called Pokémon Sleep is in development that will track player's sleep and use the data for game play. Information about how long the user has slept for and when they wake will play a part, but it's not been made clear exactly how. Nintendo has been capitalising on the game's appeal since Pokémon Go proved to be a global phenomenon in 2016. "We want to turn sleep into entertainment," an exec explained. Speaking at a press conference in Tokyo, chief executive of the Pokémon Company, Tsunekazu Ishihara, revealed the release will be next year. It's also hoped that this new game will attract those who have an interest in sleep and a healthy lifestyle. Other projects were announced relating to Pokémon including new games, devices and a cloud service. More than 340 million units of various Pokémon games have been sold since 1996. 1. Pikachu's name is mix of the Japanese for sparkle, pikapika, and the sound of squeaking, which is chūchū. 2. The name of Pokémon only came about because of a copyright issue during the creation of the video game - its original name was Capsule Monsters, before it changed to CapuMon, then Pokémon. 3. Drowzee, the dream-eater Pokémon, is based on a tapir. In South American folklore, the mammal would use its long snout to eat dreams as people slept. 4. The first Pokémon to be created was actually the rhino-like Rhydon, not Pikachu. 5. The most sought-after Pokémon trading card to this day is Charizard. Listen to Newsbeat live at 12:45 and 17:45 weekdays - or listen back here. | null | http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DrudgeReportFeed/~3/Sx2Rbw6GiL8/newsbeat-48443194 | 2019-05-29 21:25:37+00:00 | 1,559,179,537 | 1,567,539,904 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
148,483 | drudgereport--2019-05-30--POKEMON turns sleep into entertainment | 2019-05-30T00:00:00 | drudgereport | POKEMON turns 'sleep into entertainment'... | A new Pokémon app called Pokémon Sleep is in development that will track player's sleep and use the data for game play. Information about how long the user has slept for and when they wake will play a part, but it's not been made clear exactly how. Nintendo has been capitalising on the game's appeal since Pokémon Go proved to be a global phenomenon in 2016. "We want to turn sleep into entertainment," an exec explained. Speaking at a press conference in Tokyo, chief executive of the Pokémon Company, Tsunekazu Ishihara, revealed the release will be next year. It's also hoped that this new game will attract those who have an interest in sleep and a healthy lifestyle. Other projects were announced relating to Pokémon including new games, devices and a cloud service. More than 340 million units of various Pokémon games have been sold since 1996. 1. Pikachu's name is mix of the Japanese for sparkle, pikapika, and the sound of squeaking, which is chūchū. 2. The name of Pokémon only came about because of a copyright issue during the creation of the video game - its original name was Capsule Monsters, before it changed to CapuMon, then Pokémon. 3. Drowzee, the dream-eater Pokémon, is based on a tapir. In South American folklore, the mammal would use its long snout to eat dreams as people slept. 4. The first Pokémon to be created was actually the rhino-like Rhydon, not Pikachu. 5. The most sought-after Pokémon trading card to this day is Charizard. Listen to Newsbeat live at 12:45 and 17:45 weekdays - or listen back here. | null | http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DrudgeReportFeed/~3/Sx2Rbw6GiL8/newsbeat-48443194 | 2019-05-30 01:52:37+00:00 | 1,559,195,557 | 1,567,539,762 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
156,197 | drudgereport--2019-12-14--Too much entertainment 'stressing' people out... | 2019-12-14T00:00:00 | drudgereport | Too much entertainment 'stressing' people out... | At first, I thought my brain was broken. Every time I had a spare evening, I would sit down in front of my TV, open Netflix, and be presented with an array of brilliant film and TV. After 20 or 30 minutes of hemming and hawing, I'd watch something I'd already seen before. Up until recently, I assumed I had so damaged my attention span with social media, games, and screens in general, that I had lost the capacity to engage with anything remotely smart or interesting. And maybe that's true. But last week, I tweeted about my affliction, asking if anyone else had ever felt this strange aversion to starting a new movie or show — and the response was overwhelming. Even with my modest follower count, more than 100 people chimed in with similar experiences. It was fascinating. And just as interesting were the variety of reasons people cited for their aversion to pressing play: stress, anxiety, the content of most modern entertainment, a fear of missing out, or a fear of wasting time — it was a long list. Here we are at a moment in history where we are spoiled for choice when it comes to entertainment, and this is stressing some people out. What's going on? My Netflix dilemma is hard to explain. The feeling I get when confronted with a decision about what to watch is almost like revulsion, as if I've been assigned a task I hate and am loath to start it. I should just pick what I want to watch and be happy with my choice. But we've become familiar with how the digital world has changed things. Now, we have the paradox of the "tyranny of choice," a concept from psychologist Barry Schwarz, which suggests abundant choice makes people miserable because it paralyzes them with too many options. That makes an intuitive kind of sense. Not only do we now have Netflix, but also Disney+, Amazon Prime, Apple TV+, regular cable TV, traditional movies, not to mention the entirety of the internet, including the seemingly limitless content on YouTube. With such an array of content, our day-to-day choices have become loaded. Instead of there being one thing everyone you know is talking about, the fragmentation of shared culture means that in order to participate in some fashion, you have to pick one stream or another. Even now, cultural discourse is lit up with talk of Succession, Watchmen, The Mandalorian, Marriage Story, The Irishman, not to mention the films nominated now that we've reached award season. You can't watch all of them — who has the time? — so maybe it's just easier to give up. Many people who responded to my tweet said that delving into challenging material was particularly difficult, especially given the problems on display and ever present in our various social media feeds. When it feels like fascism is on the rise or that climate change will kill us all, who wants to slog through an awkward or difficult film, when you could instead just watch reruns of The Great British Baking Show? The tension between entertainment that is comforting and that which is challenging is centuries old. In Western literature, everyone from Sir Philip Sydney to Alexander Pope to Immanuel Kant made the argument that good work required effort to understand — that it needed critics to tease out its meaning. That dynamic turned into its own sort of culture war: Are you going to engage with something hard and artistic, or are you going to wallow in mainstream pablum? That kind of elitism has, for a variety of reasons, fallen out of favor. But perhaps it's not just that postmodernism has reconfigured how we create hierarchies of art, but more simply that when there is too much stuff, things that are easy suddenly feel more valuable. We tend to think art is a mirror held up to society. But in times of great change or distress, it's important to remember German playwright Bertold Brecht's rejection of that notion. He said "art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it." You would think that in these difficult times, we would want art to challenge the status quo, that we would gravitate toward film and TV that speaks to how we might react to dark forces rising. But is it possible that the rise of digital technology is changing the social function of entertainment, more sharply cleaving a line between the sort that is meant for pleasure and the kind that is meant to edify, or connect you with, the human? That is perhaps too large a question for now. But it seems there is something about modern life that is changing how we relate to the things we previously used as distraction tools. With the infiltration of work into daily life, to-do lists pinging on our phones, and a set of digital tools designed to keep us hooked and never at rest, is it any wonder that YouTube is preferable to a hard film about a failing marriage? Maybe my brain is broken. But maybe, as 2019 draws to a close, it isn't the only thing that is. Want more essential commentary and analysis like this delivered straight to your inbox? Sign up for The Week's "Today's best articles" newsletter here. | null | http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DrudgeReportFeed/~3/ukUcWgr_YkU/anxious-press-play | Sat, 14 Dec 2019 00:16:37 GMT | 1,576,300,597 | 1,576,282,699 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
156,274 | drudgereport--2019-12-15--Too much entertainment 'stressing' people out... | 2019-12-15T00:00:00 | drudgereport | Too much entertainment 'stressing' people out... | At first, I thought my brain was broken. Every time I had a spare evening, I would sit down in front of my TV, open Netflix, and be presented with an array of brilliant film and TV. After 20 or 30 minutes of hemming and hawing, I'd watch something I'd already seen before. Up until recently, I assumed I had so damaged my attention span with social media, games, and screens in general, that I had lost the capacity to engage with anything remotely smart or interesting. And maybe that's true. But last week, I tweeted about my affliction, asking if anyone else had ever felt this strange aversion to starting a new movie or show — and the response was overwhelming. Even with my modest follower count, more than 100 people chimed in with similar experiences. It was fascinating. And just as interesting were the variety of reasons people cited for their aversion to pressing play: stress, anxiety, the content of most modern entertainment, a fear of missing out, or a fear of wasting time — it was a long list. Here we are at a moment in history where we are spoiled for choice when it comes to entertainment, and this is stressing some people out. What's going on? My Netflix dilemma is hard to explain. The feeling I get when confronted with a decision about what to watch is almost like revulsion, as if I've been assigned a task I hate and am loath to start it. I should just pick what I want to watch and be happy with my choice. But we've become familiar with how the digital world has changed things. Now, we have the paradox of the "tyranny of choice," a concept from psychologist Barry Schwarz, which suggests abundant choice makes people miserable because it paralyzes them with too many options. That makes an intuitive kind of sense. Not only do we now have Netflix, but also Disney+, Amazon Prime, Apple TV+, regular cable TV, traditional movies, not to mention the entirety of the internet, including the seemingly limitless content on YouTube. With such an array of content, our day-to-day choices have become loaded. Instead of there being one thing everyone you know is talking about, the fragmentation of shared culture means that in order to participate in some fashion, you have to pick one stream or another. Even now, cultural discourse is lit up with talk of Succession, Watchmen, The Mandalorian, Marriage Story, The Irishman, not to mention the films nominated now that we've reached award season. You can't watch all of them — who has the time? — so maybe it's just easier to give up. Many people who responded to my tweet said that delving into challenging material was particularly difficult, especially given the problems on display and ever present in our various social media feeds. When it feels like fascism is on the rise or that climate change will kill us all, who wants to slog through an awkward or difficult film, when you could instead just watch reruns of The Great British Baking Show? The tension between entertainment that is comforting and that which is challenging is centuries old. In Western literature, everyone from Sir Philip Sydney to Alexander Pope to Immanuel Kant made the argument that good work required effort to understand — that it needed critics to tease out its meaning. That dynamic turned into its own sort of culture war: Are you going to engage with something hard and artistic, or are you going to wallow in mainstream pablum? That kind of elitism has, for a variety of reasons, fallen out of favor. But perhaps it's not just that postmodernism has reconfigured how we create hierarchies of art, but more simply that when there is too much stuff, things that are easy suddenly feel more valuable. We tend to think art is a mirror held up to society. But in times of great change or distress, it's important to remember German playwright Bertold Brecht's rejection of that notion. He said "art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it." You would think that in these difficult times, we would want art to challenge the status quo, that we would gravitate toward film and TV that speaks to how we might react to dark forces rising. But is it possible that the rise of digital technology is changing the social function of entertainment, more sharply cleaving a line between the sort that is meant for pleasure and the kind that is meant to edify, or connect you with, the human? That is perhaps too large a question for now. But it seems there is something about modern life that is changing how we relate to the things we previously used as distraction tools. With the infiltration of work into daily life, to-do lists pinging on our phones, and a set of digital tools designed to keep us hooked and never at rest, is it any wonder that YouTube is preferable to a hard film about a failing marriage? Maybe my brain is broken. But maybe, as 2019 draws to a close, it isn't the only thing that is. Want more essential commentary and analysis like this delivered straight to your inbox? Sign up for The Week's "Today's best articles" newsletter here. | null | http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DrudgeReportFeed/~3/ukUcWgr_YkU/anxious-press-play | Sun, 15 Dec 2019 00:16:37 GMT | 1,576,386,997 | 1,576,369,131 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
170,184 | eveningstandard--2019-04-03--New Tottenham stadium Fans encouraged to arrive early for pre-match entertainment | 2019-04-03T00:00:00 | eveningstandard | New Tottenham stadium: Fans encouraged to arrive early for pre-match entertainment | Tottenham have encouraged fans to arrive at the new stadium as early as possible this evening. The stadium will open at 4.45pm, three hours before kick-off with the Tottenham Hotspur Marching Band set to perform a 45-minute medley of Spurs classics pitch-side from 5.30pm. There will be live music at The Shelf, Dispensary, and White Hart bars, as well as in the north-west concourse on Level 1. An opening ceremony, expected to include a nod to the 2011 London riots, will begin 30 minutes before kick-off. Banners will be displayed on the High Road and inside the ground fans will be given flags, as they were in the final game at White Hart Lane Souvenir programmes will be on sale for £10. For the game against Crystal Palace, Spurs players will wear a commemorative home shirt, inscribed with details of the fixture and Robbie Keane will be interviewed on the pitch at half-time. | Standard sport | https://www.standard.co.uk/sport/football/tottenham/new-tottenham-stadium-fans-encouraged-to-arrive-early-for-prematch-entertainment-a4108121.html | 2019-04-03 09:51:00+00:00 | 1,554,299,460 | 1,567,544,149 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
170,184 | eveningstandard--2019-04-03--New Tottenham stadium Fans encouraged to arrive early for pre-match entertainment | 2019-04-03T00:00:00 | eveningstandard | New Tottenham stadium: Fans encouraged to arrive early for pre-match entertainment | Tottenham have encouraged fans to arrive at the new stadium as early as possible this evening. The stadium will open at 4.45pm, three hours before kick-off with the Tottenham Hotspur Marching Band set to perform a 45-minute medley of Spurs classics pitch-side from 5.30pm. There will be live music at The Shelf, Dispensary, and White Hart bars, as well as in the north-west concourse on Level 1. An opening ceremony, expected to include a nod to the 2011 London riots, will begin 30 minutes before kick-off. Banners will be displayed on the High Road and inside the ground fans will be given flags, as they were in the final game at White Hart Lane Souvenir programmes will be on sale for £10. For the game against Crystal Palace, Spurs players will wear a commemorative home shirt, inscribed with details of the fixture and Robbie Keane will be interviewed on the pitch at half-time. | Standard sport | https://www.standard.co.uk/sport/football/tottenham/new-tottenham-stadium-fans-encouraged-to-arrive-early-for-prematch-entertainment-a4108121.html | 2019-04-03 09:51:00+00:00 | 1,554,299,460 | 1,567,544,149 | sport | sport venue |
170,355 | eveningstandard--2019-04-04--Grand Designs The Street Solidly built rigidly structured welcome to the dream home of DIY ente | 2019-04-04T00:00:00 | eveningstandard | Grand Designs The Street: Solidly built, rigidly structured... welcome to the dream home of DIY entertainment | Grand Designs is a fabulously successful series that has been presented by Kevin McCloud since it first aired back in April 1999. Tonight sees the launch of its twentieth series, not counting all the spin-offs (Grand Designs Indoors, Grand Designs Abroad, etc). The time has surely come to evaluate exactly what the impact of Grand Designs has been on us. Quite possibly almost entirely deleterious I suspect. The show follows a remarkably stereo- typed format. McCloud introduces us to the people, usually a couple, who have come up with a plan for making their stirringly original property dreams come real. We’re shown a model of what the place is supposed to look like when it is finished. Then he makes site visits as the build proceeds. All begins well but then there’s trouble in the form of delays, budget over-runs, construction problems and relationship bust-ups. Finally, though, the proud owners move in and McCloud visits one last time. They weepily attest it is everything they dreamed of, he thrills them by admiring the marvels of their achieved grand design. It’s a drama more rigidly structured than a play by Racine. On screen, McCloud’s role is to sympathise with and encourage the clients, sometimes even momentarily assisting them. In his voiceovers, however, he remains more sceptical, racking up the tension as we wonder if they will make it through to that final act. But there is never any doubt that following your dreams and making your home express your personality is the highest aim. So, Grand Designs has encouraged millions to follow suit, if not to build complete houses, at least to put forth their very own hot tub or novel extension. I have a creeping suspicion that McCloud himself is not as keen on people expressing the originality of their personalities through buildings as the programme requires him to be. Twenty years of it would wear down Candide. Poetry, said TS Eliot, is “not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality”, woundingly adding, “But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to escape from these things.” In an interview McCloud once admitted that he himself likes to stay in the same hotel he has stayed in 80 times before and eat the same food he has had 80 times before. Similarly, it might, even now, be thought that when it comes to say, a fork, a chair, or even a house, originality, the expression of personality, is not the prime desideratum. But it sure is in Grand Designs. This series is dedicated to following self-builders at Graven Hill near Bicester in Oxfordshire, a site where planning restrictions have been relaxed so that up to 1,900 houses can be self-built to personal designs, in “a literally ground-breaking experiment”. Tonight Terry, 65, and Olwyn, 74, put up their dream house (blue steel roof, quartz tile cladding) fairly smoothly. Though Terry gets carpal tunnel problems, the hard work helps him beat a diabetes diagnosis. Win win! Luckily, from the viewer’s point of view anyway, their neighbour Lynn (shower-room shaped like an oast-house) suffers problems calamitous enough for two, with a roof collapse and lots of sobbing. Still, she too makes it through to completion and McCloud congratulates them both. “A remarkable house, jam-packed with personality”, he affirms to Terry and Olwyn. “It’s you, this house, outside and in — it shouts character!” he assures Lynn. Still, best not try this at home, perhaps. | David Sexton | https://www.standard.co.uk/stayingin/tvfilm/grand-designs-the-street-solidly-built-rigidly-structured-welcome-to-the-dream-home-of-diy-a4109786.html | 2019-04-04 17:48:21+00:00 | 1,554,414,501 | 1,567,544,004 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
174,669 | eveningstandard--2019-05-15--Entertainment giant Sony in the mother of all rows over sexism | 2019-05-15T00:00:00 | eveningstandard | Entertainment giant Sony in the mother of all rows over sexism | Entertainment giant Sony usually likes to make a lot of noise about what it does. It’s the film-maker behind hits including Spider-Man. Its music division’s acts stretch from Beyoncé to George Ezra. Its Playstation is the “ultimate home entertainment centre”. But insiders at its UK offices claim there’s one thing Sony doesn’t like to talk about: the Japanese firm’s treatment of female executives here. The allegations come from insiders working at different branches of Sony UK’s empire who claim “you have to navigate a boys’ club culture”. One (male) senior manager at one of Sony’s biggest offices in the UK told the Standard about a “discriminatory” hiring policy where departmental budgets are cut to pay for maternity leave. That means, in his words, that “at Sony, it’s easier to hire men”. The insider, who has over a decade of management experience at multinationals, claimed that when a member of his team went on maternity leave, he was told the cost to pay for her cover would come from his staffing budget. “No extra money is made available — as it normally is, and has been at every major firm I’ve worked for previously — so to meet my targets I had to make significant cuts elsewhere. “Covering the cost of just one woman’s maternity leave becomes really onerous.” He adds: “This would never sway my hiring decisions but others might opt for not hiring women of a certain age because of Sony’s HR policy. If you’ve got two equally good candidates, one male and one female, are you going to go with the man because you then won’t potentially face this problem?” The insider says he raised the issue three times with HR and board-level managers, “but I was told ‘it’s difficult to change things at Sony’”. The policy is also a source of tension within teams, because the source says expenses such as travel and training have to be slashed to accommodate someone on maternity leave. A female Sony executive, who recently left, alleged one of her managers had “said that he did not want another female colleague to go for a senior position in his team because she was a mother, as this was where her priorities were, and that she might have a second baby”. Joeli Brearley, founder of Pregnant Then Screwed, which campaigns against maternity discrimination, says: “Hiring practices across the board are skewed to encourage people to recruit men rather than women,” she says. “Some create a budgeting system, which means that employers save money by hiring men. Other employers decide to save money and don’t recruit a replacement for the mum on leave, instead they distribute the work to current employees. This creates animosity that is directed at women, rather than the employer. “A third of employers actively discriminate against women of child-bearing age in the recruitment process.” Sony refused to comment on its maternity pay policies but says it “embraces diversity and the working contributions of women”, and provides “opportunities for career development and assisting the professional growth of women”. In Japan, the company says it has set a target for women to hold 10% of management roles in the Sony Group. But each insider spoken to by the Standard said it was “a talking point how very few women are in management roles”. Sony Europe’s pay gap report for 2018 showed men occupy almost 80% of the highest-paid jobs at the firm. Men earn, on average, 24% more than women. One ex-employee claimed she was told their manager “was frustrated that myself and another colleague had fallen pregnant at the same time”. Other women said they had signed non-disclosure agreements and left Sony after struggling at the firm when returning from maternity leave. They said they are afraid to tell their stories for fear of court action. Another executive, who worked at Sony for five years before leaving for a rival US tech household name, said: “I never really saw myself as different to my male colleagues until after I became a mother and went back to work at Sony. I would progress in terms of my business impact, but this was never reflected in title, recognition or team growth. Male colleagues at a lower grade than me were treated very differently. “After I came back from maternity leave, my role had been reduced significantly, and I was overlooked in team meetings. The contractor who’d been hired to cover my leave was earning £10,000 a year more than me, despite the fact that I had more experience both within and outside of the company. Her departure and that of others cast a bitterly ironic shadow on the corporate giant’s slogan: Be Moved. | by Lucy Tobin | https://www.standard.co.uk/business/entertainment-giant-sony-in-the-mother-of-all-rows-over-sexism-a4143071.html | 2019-05-15 11:51:00+00:00 | 1,557,935,460 | 1,567,540,566 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
204,422 | fortune--2019-06-24--Carl Icahn Backs Eldorado Resorts 86 Billion Deal for Caesars Entertainment | 2019-06-24T00:00:00 | fortune | Carl Icahn Backs Eldorado Resorts’ $8.6 Billion Deal for Caesars Entertainment | Eldorado Resorts Inc. is buying Caesars Entertainment Corp. for about $8.58 billion in a deal backed by activist billionaire Carl Icahn that will create the largest U.S. gaming operator. The agreed equity value of $12.75 a share — in a mix of cash and Eldorado stock — represents a premium of about 28% to Caesars’s Friday closing price. Including debt, the deal is worth approximately $17.3 billion, the companies said in a statement. Caesars shares rose 13% to $11.25 in pre-market trading as of 8:06 a.m. in New York. Eldorado dropped 6.8%. Casino and hotel operator Caesars had been pushed to consider a sale by Icahn, its biggest shareholder according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Earlier discussions had focused on a deal that would have valued Caesars at $11 a share, a person familiar with those talks had said. Caesars, whose properties include the flagship Caesars Palace and the Harrah’s chain, is still coping with the fallout of a 2008 leveraged buyout led by Apollo Global Management LLC and TPG that left it with a mountain of debt. The company completed a bankruptcy of its largest unit two years ago that brought in new board members and shareholders, including distressed-debt investors. Apollo and TPG have sold their shares. Eldorado and Caesars said they have identified benefits of $500 million by creating a company with 60 owned, operated and managed casino–resorts across 16 states, and expect the deal to boost cash flow immediately. A parallel agreement will see VICI Properties Inc. acquire some of the companies’ real estate, generating $3.2 billion of proceeds to help pay down debt. Eldorado’s management team will lead the new company, which will continue to operate under the Caesars name and to trade on the Nasdaq Global Select Market. “We intend to allocate the significant free cash flow from the combined company to reduce leverage while investing to improve the customer experience across the platform,” said Eldorado’s Chief Executive Officer Tom Reeg. Before Monday, Eldorado shares had risen 17% in the past year, compared with a 12% decline in Caesars’s stock. The S&P Supercomposite Casinos & Gaming Index, which tracks the performance of nine stocks including the two companies, slumped about 20%. “While I criticized the Caesars Board when I took a major position several months ago, I would now like to do something that I rarely do, which is to praise a board of directors for acting responsibly and decisively in negotiating and approving this transformational transaction,” Icahn said in a statement. Eldorado, which had a market value of about $4 billion as of Friday, wasn’t Caesars’s only suitor. Golden Nugget owner Tilman Fertitta proposed merging his restaurant and casino empire with Caesars last year, but was rejected by Caesars. Eldorado, which dates back to a single casino opened in Reno, Nevada, in 1973, has grown exponentially in recent years under the direction of Tom Reeg, who is now chief executive officer. The company in recent years acquired MTR Gaming Group Inc. and Isle of Capri Casinos, and last year added Tropicana Entertainment Inc., which was controlled by Icahn. The business, which still counts the founding Carano family as its largest shareholder, now has 26 casinos in 12 states. —Here’s when most economists think the next recession will happen —There are now three people worth over $100 billion —This pot company stock is now more popular than Apple among millennials Subscribe to Fortune’s CEO Daily newsletter for the latest business news and analysis. | Scott Deveau, Christopher Palmeri, Liana Baker, Bloomberg | http://fortune.com/2019/06/24/eldorado-caesars-carl-icahn/ | 2019-06-24 12:32:38+00:00 | 1,561,393,958 | 1,567,538,308 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
207,178 | fortune--2019-11-09--Gift Guide: Home Entertainment | 2019-11-09T00:00:00 | fortune | Gift Guide: Home Entertainment | The Maker of White Claw Is Now a Multibillionaire, Thanks to the Hard Seltzer Craze | Chris Morris | https://fortune.com/2019/11/09/holiday-gift-guide-home-entertainment/ | Sat, 09 Nov 2019 12:00:30 +0000 | 1,573,318,830 | 1,573,344,410 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
208,192 | fortune--2019-12-30--Hasbro’s Toy Box Is Bigger Than Ever With $3.8 Billion Entertainment One Takeover | 2019-12-30T00:00:00 | fortune | Hasbro’s Toy Box Is Bigger Than Ever With $3.8 Billion Entertainment One Takeover | Why Your Next Dress Could Be Made of Horseradish | Isaac Feldberg | https://fortune.com/2019/12/30/hasbro-entertainment-one-eone-peppa-pig-pj-masks-ricky-zoom-movies-television/ | Mon, 30 Dec 2019 20:30:00 +0000 | 1,577,755,800 | 1,577,750,749 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
240,092 | hotair--2019-05-31--Entertainment giant built on audience of children may join Georgia boycott | 2019-05-31T00:00:00 | hotair | Entertainment giant built on audience of children may join Georgia boycott | The irony is rich here. Disney has weighed in on the entertainment business boycott of the State of Georgia over the passage of the fetal heartbeat bill. The CEO of Walt Disney Co., Bob Iger, says it “would be very difficult” for the company to continue filming in Georgia if the new law goes into effect. Let’s step back and ponder that opinion for a moment. Walt Disney Co. was built around marketing to children. It was at the forefront of the American animation industry. It’s the house Mickey Mouse built, for heaven’s sake. It is not lost on me or anyone else that the current CEO now considers a boycott of the State of Georgia due to a bill that will save the lives of the unborn. Disney mega money-makers like “Black Panther” and “Avengers: Endgame” were filmed in Georgia. Iger seeks cover behind Disney employees who he claims may feel uncomfortable filming in Georgia if the new law goes into effect. “I think many people who work for us will not want to work there, and we will have to heed their wishes in that regard. Right now we are watching it very carefully,” Iger told Reuters. The exec added that if the law does come into effect, he didn’t “see how it’s practical for us to continue to shoot there.” I realize that in today’s woke world, a huge entertainment conglomerate like Disney struggles to remain in step with the times. The Disney brand has expanded to so much in the retail sales world that pandering to special interests is unavoidable. Perhaps Iger is concerned with women consumers since women manage households and make the majority of purchasing decisions for families. Does he really think, though, that before purchasing movie tickets for a popular new Disney film, for example, that an adult is going to check first to see where it was filmed? I can’t imagine any woman multi-tasking her way through her day denying her children a trip to the movie theatre because the movie was filmed in Georgia. Your mileage may vary. The Disney of my childhood is not today’s Disney. The company has really stepped up its woke game. “Black Panther” was marketed as the first movie based on a black superhero. The Disney Princess franchise has expanded to ethnic princesses, including Princess Tiana, the first black princess in 2009 and Moana, a Polynesian princess in 2016. That’s all fine. But, to deliberately pander to the pro-abortion crowd is a bridge too far. Iger falls into the same trap as the rest of the elites in Hollywood, trying to score points with only part of its viewing audience. This public declaration is a slap in the face to pro-life women and men. I have to think that Iger is simply following the lead of Netflix, as the streaming company announced Tuesday that it will “rethink their investment in Georgia.” Netflix also stated it will join in the fight against Georgia’s new law with the ACLU. The company is the first true industry heavyweight to weigh in on the subject. Perhaps Iger doesn’t want another heavy-hitter to get ahead of him. “We have many women working on productions in Georgia, whose rights, along with millions of others, will be severely restricted by this law,” Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos said Tuesday in a statement. “It’s why we will work with the ACLU and others to fight it in court. Given the legislation has not yet been implemented, we’ll continue to film there — while also supporting partners and artists who choose not to. Should it ever come into effect, we’d rethink our entire investment in Georgia.” Lesser known production companies have weighed in but Disney and Netflix are the first of the biggies to take a stance. Hollywood actors and directors have made their pro-abortion opinions perfectly clear. Even former child actor and current Hollywood power player Ron Howard said he’ll join in the boycott, though he tempers his pledge by saying he’ll continue plans to film “Hillbilly Elegy” next month. Say it ain’t so, Opie! Filmmaker Ron Howard and producer Brian Grazer have joined the list of Hollywood stars who say they will boycott Georgia after the state’s governor signed the controversial “heartbeat bill” into law. Howard and Grazer, who run Imagine Entertainment, told The Hollywood Reporter in an exclusive statement that although they are continuing with their plans to film the movie “Hillbilly Elegy” in Georgia next month, they will boycott the state as a production center if the law goes into effect in January. “We see Governor Kemp’s bill as a direct attack on women’s rights, and we will be making a donation to the (American Civil Liberties Union) to support their battle against this oppressive legislation,” the statement read. Yes, even Ron Howard turned into a run-of-the-mill Hollywood elitist years ago. He and his business partner spout the same talking points as the others do. Now we wait for the lawsuits to play out in the court system and see if the Hollywood crowd carries out their threats if the law survives the legal challenges. | Karen Townsend | https://hotair.com/archives/2019/05/30/entertainment-giant-built-audience-children-may-join-georgia-boycott/ | 2019-05-31 02:01:54+00:00 | 1,559,282,514 | 1,567,539,616 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
241,994 | hotair--2019-10-12--Blizzard Entertainment reduces punishment for Hong Kong gamer, but more protests are coming | 2019-10-12T00:00:00 | hotair | Blizzard Entertainment reduces punishment for Hong Kong gamer, but more protests are coming | Blizzard Entertainment finally responded to the international controversy that has been swirling since they punished a Hong Kong gamer for shouting “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our age!” during a live stream. The company responded by banning the player from competition for a year and taking away his prize money. The two “casters” who were hosting the live stream were also banned. That didn’t sit well with a lot of gamers who responded with memes and a boycott that involved uninstalling the company’s games until the decision had been reversed. Yesterday, Blizzard cracked and partially reversed its decision. From the company’s statement: Over the weekend, blitzchung used his segment to make a statement about the situation in Hong Kong—in violation of rules he acknowledged and understood, and this is why we took action… In the tournament itself blitzchung *played* fair. We now believe he should receive his prizing… When we think about the suspension, six months for blitzchung is more appropriate, after which time he can compete in the Hearthstone pro circuit again if he so chooses. There is a consequence for taking the conversation away from the purpose of the event and disrupting or derailing the broadcast. The company claimed Blitzchung’s views and its own relationship with China played no role in his punishment: The specific views expressed by blitzchung were NOT a factor in the decision we made. I want to be clear: our relationships in China had no influence on our decision. We have these rules to keep the focus on the game and on the tournament to the benefit of a global audience, and that was the only consideration in the actions we took. If this had been the opposing viewpoint delivered in the same divisive and deliberate way, we would have felt and acted the same. I’m not sure I believe that but even if it’s true, I don’t think showing strict neutrality between western democracy and Chinese communism is really the winning argument Blizzard thinks it is. Blizzard is an American company based in California. It should be a given that freedom and democracy are superior values. The idea that you’d punish proponents of freedom and proponents of communist autocracy equally seems like a very bad idea. And just like the situation with the NBA, Blizzard’s own hypocrisy is pretty glaring. In the NBA’s case, you have a bunch of woke coaches and players who have suddenly gone silent about Chinese communism because they are worried about their shoe deals and marketing rights. In Blizzard’s case, the crackdown on Blitzchung presents a stark contrast with its own products. This is, after all, a company whose motto is “Every voice matters.” From Kotaku: As has been stated multiple times by fans, players, and commentators throughout the week, it’s hard to square this kind of faux-neutral political stance with the games Blizzard creates and the values it espouses. This is a company whose games are full of heroes fighting for freedom and equality, and China’s handling of Hong Kong has been anything but. All political statements are not equal—especially where human rights violations are concerned—and it’s disheartening to see a company with Blizzard’s legacy stand behind that kind of false equivalence in a time when games are, more than ever, intertwined with culture. Reducing Blitzchung’s suspension is a step in the right direction, but in the face of all this, it’s still hard for the company’s games and statements not to ring hollow. Blizzard hosts an annual convention called Blizzcon which brings together about 40,000 players. This year’s Blizzcon takes place in Anaheim, CA three weeks from now, which seems like very unfortunate timing for the company. There are already multiple groups looking to protest outside this year’s convention: Fight For The Future’s protest will take place outside the Anaheim Convention Center at noon on November 1, the first day of BlizzCon. The organization is asking protesters to bring umbrellas as a sign of solidarity with protesters in Hong Kong—who’ve adopted umbrellas as a symbol—or to cosplay as their favorite Blizzard characters… “What is happening are horrible human rights violations and suppression,” Thompson told Kotaku in an email. “When Blizzard, whose games and mottos support heroes and freedom, and [who] has stated on their company grounds [that] every voice matters, took away Blitzchung for simply saying he supports Hong Kong as the revolution of our times, I was shocked… He never used any foul or extreme language about China. It shows how companies are willing to say they support diversity and heroes until it doesn’t pay.” I’m sympathetic to the idea that gamers should remain focused on the game. I’m sure a lot of NBA fans don’t enjoy listening to Steve Kerr’s mind-thoughts about gun control. But the NBA Commissioner is right when he says he isn’t going to become a minder of other people’s speech. The problem is that no one in the NBA is actually using that freedom to criticize China or support Hong Kong despite offering opinions on everything else. As for Blizzard, if they really want people to believe this wasn’t about the content of what Blitzchung said, just about enforcing the rules, they can prove it. All they need to do is issue another statement that would go something like this: If they can’t say that loudly and clearly, and so far they haven’t, then gamers are right to suspect the company’s financial relationship with China is playing a role in this decision. | John Sexton | https://hotair.com/archives/john-s-2/2019/10/12/blizzard-entertainment-reduces-punishment-hong-kong-gamer-protests-coming/ | Sat, 12 Oct 2019 20:01:10 +0000 | 1,570,924,870 | 1,570,919,770 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
288,101 | lewrockwell--2019-12-21--Clint Eastwood’s ‘Richard Jewell’ Reveals An Appetite For Libertarian Entertainment | 2019-12-21T00:00:00 | lewrockwell | Clint Eastwood’s ‘Richard Jewell’ Reveals An Appetite For Libertarian Entertainment | I generally resent recommending art for political reasons. I believe art and beauty transcend ideology and should be judged on aesthetic merit first and foremost. In the case of “Richard Jewell,” however, the unusual point of view moves the film in a novel direction and makes it a compelling standout feature. Director Clint Eastwood is an avowed libertarian, and “Richard Jewell” is probably the single most self-consciously libertarian film he’s ever made. Of course, I don’t understand everything about Eastwood’s brand of libertarianism. His support of gun control, for instance, is a major departure from libertarianism. It’s also hard to take his 2012 Chrysler Super Bowl commercial as anything other than support for the Obama auto bailout, even if Eastwood claimed that’s not what he intended. Moreover, the actor/director has endorsed an array of big-government politicians in California. Amazon.com Gift Card i... Buy New $25.00 I am going to give Eastwood a pass on all of that, however, because his job isn’t to be consistent. His job is to create compelling cinema, and he delivers that, film after film. “Richard Jewell” is probably not his strongest work. It leaves little room for suspense and is a bit predictable, in part because we all know the story: Security guard Richard Jewell find a suspicious backpack at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, which turns out to be a bomb that kills two people and injures more than 100. At first heralded as a hero, Jewell soon becomes the FBI’s primary suspect and the target of a media rampage. It is exquisitely acted, however, with Eastwood’s minimalist directing style shining through. The characters Eastwood introduces are as familiar to the American psyche as they are unusual to meet onscreen: a hard-working and loving, if TV-addicted, single mom; a geeky, libertarian lawyer; an overweight, overzealous copper. The cop is an interesting stage in the artistic trajectory of the director, whose iconic ’70s role was “Dirty Harry,” the out-of-bounds police officer pursuing rough justice in San Francisco, a city gone awry. My guess is that Eastwood feels more like the libertarian lawyer these days. Nonetheless, the cop he’s created with actor Paul Walter Hauser is highly sympathetic, if flawed. | No Author | https://www.lewrockwell.com/2019/12/no_author/clint-eastwoods-richard-jewell-reveals-an-appetite-for-libertarian-entertainment/ | Sat, 21 Dec 2019 04:01:00 +0000 | 1,576,918,860 | 1,576,931,511 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
291,904 | liveaction--2019-08-05--Abortion in video games The next frontier of entertainment | 2019-08-05T00:00:00 | liveaction | Abortion in video games: The next frontier of entertainment? | When it comes to culture, abortion advocates have some big goals. They want to see abortion positively portrayed in movies and television shows, and already, they’re getting their wish. Abortion is, indeed, being shown positively in media, but movies and television aren’t enough. Now, abortion advocates want video games to reflect a pro-abortion agenda. Newsbusters reports on a recent episode of the tech-oriented “Chips with Everything” podcast, which featured feminist tech writer Laura Hudson and game developer Mary Flanagan of Tiltfactor as guests. They discussed their desire to insert pro-abortion storylines into video games, and gave a Polish game called “Fantastic Fetus” as an example. Created after protests formed in Poland against stricter abortion laws, “Fantastic Fetus” is a Tamagotchi-style game in which players can choose a character and then walk them through nine months of a pregnancy. The characters need to be fed, kept happy and clean, given medicine when they’re ill, and even pray. As the characters move throughout the pregnancy, players also create their own “fantastic” baby. But if anything goes wrong — gaining too much weight, becoming too afraid or too sick — the mother will die. And then, at the end of the pregnancy, regardless of how well the mother is taken care of, her baby will end up with a life-threatening birth defect, like hydrocephaly or twin reversed arterial perfusion. Afterwards, players are shown a series of messages about the need for abortion to remain legal. The insinuation is clear: women need to have abortions, because pregnancy is hard, and you could end up with a defective baby. To tech writer Hudson, this kind of game is ideal, because it could help change people’s minds on abortion. “I think when you look at what tends to change people’s hearts around politics it’s not usually because somebody made a really good argument, y’know,” she said. “As much as I’d love to believe in the pure power of debate to change minds, I don’t often think that that’s the case. I think a lot of what changes people’s hearts, particularly around divisive issues, is knowing someone or meeting someone who is personally affected by it.” Video games, then, can be another way to make people look at abortion more positively, without getting into any actual facts. Game developer Flanagan explained, “What we try to do is put people in situations where they’re open and can explore a world or they can play a game that is like a trivia game,” with the goal of “shifting attitudes, mindsets, and possibly behaviors.” And she doesn’t want to make abortion-specific games, either; instead, she wants existing games to have pro-abortion messages inserted. “Fantastic Fetus” is not the first video game created by abortion activists. After Texas banned late-term abortions, a game was created called “Choice: Texas” that purported to show how difficult it was for women in the state to undergo an abortion. Another offering was billed as a “choose-your-own-adventure” style game, where you choose what kinds of decisions a woman facing an unplanned pregnancy makes. However, the game stacks the choices against life, with a hasty abortion presented as the best choice — and choosing life ends up with the woman ultimately needing a late-term abortion anyway, or sick, in premature labor, and with crushing debt. The idea of changing people’s minds on abortion through video games is an odd one, especially considering that people are not especially fond of abortion. Even when Americans want it to be legal, they want it to be heavily restricted — and a video game is not going to manipulate people into changing their minds. “Like” Live Action News on Facebook for more pro-life news and commentary! | Cassy Fiano-Chesser | https://www.liveaction.org/news/abortion-video-games-next-frontier-entertainment/ | 2019-08-05 18:40:55+00:00 | 1,565,044,855 | 1,567,534,786 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
295,828 | mail--2019-02-20--Billionaire Icahn wants Caesars Entertainment to sell itself | 2019-02-20T00:00:00 | mail | Billionaire Icahn wants Caesars Entertainment to sell itself | Caesars' stock is undervalued and the best way to boost it would be to sell the company, Icahn's filing states. Shares of the Las Vegas-based company jumped more than 5 percent Tuesday. "We believe that our brand of activism is well suited to the situation at Caesars, which requires new thought, new leadership and new strategies," the filing adds. Icahn intends to continue talks with Caesar's board of directors and management, and if necessary, he may nominate a slate of directors at the company's annual shareholders meeting, according to the filing. He also wants CEO Mark Frissora out. Frissora, who joined Caesars in 2015 and guided it through bankruptcy reorganization, was scheduled to leave his role Feb. 8, but his departure was pushed back to the end of April. Icahn does not want Frissora's tenure to be extended again, according to the filing, and expects the company to not appoint a new leader until after he and the board have engaged "meaningfully." Caesars emerged from an $18 billion bankruptcy in late 2017. Icahn's move comes after the casino operator was approached by at least two companies. Caesars in November confirmed that it had received a proposal from casino operator Golden Nugget LLC, owned by Houston billionaire Tilman Fertitta. The proposal called for Caesars to "acquire substantially all of Golden Nugget's restaurant, hospitality, entertainment and gaming businesses in exchange for a significant minority of Caesars' common shares." Caesars at the time said its board rejected the proposal, but "continues to be open to reasonable alternatives to enhance long-term shareholder value." The Wall Street Journal last week reported an official with Eldorado Resorts Inc. also "made a preliminary approach" over the past several months. Caesars did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the filing. It is scheduled to report its fourth-quarter results Thursday. Its stock ended up 47 cents to $9.62 on Tuesday and is up almost 42 percent so far this year. But it's still down 27 percent in past 12 months. Analysts at J.P.Morgan in a note to investors said they do not see an obvious suitor that could or would take Caesars' entire portfolio of assets, including the nine properties on the Las Vegas Strip. They pointed to MGM Resorts International as the "most obvious potential acquirer," but said that company has been clear about giving priority to its current projects. Alex Bumazhny, gambling analyst with Fitch Ratings, told The Associated Press Icahn "has a good track record" in the gambling sector. "When news breaks of (a merger and acquisition) transaction, the target's stock will gravitate towards the premium price being offered by the acquirer," he said. "Seeing that Caesars has potential suitors it's possible Icahn is simply banking he could push Caesars to accept an offer and bank the (merger and acquisition) premium." Icahn last year sold his Tropicana Entertainment casino company for $1.85 billion. David Katz, equity analyst at Jefferies, said there are things Caesars could do to capture a better value for its stock that do not involve selling itself, including sharing expectations more effectively. He said Caesars' "value story" has not been told effectively since the company emerged from bankruptcy. "That story is about the brand and the loyalty program that they have," he said. "We know that that brand has value because when you visit their properties, whether or not they are the nicest, they are consistently the busiest, and that's because of the loyalty program they have." | null | https://www.mail.com/news/us/9016502-billionaire-icahn-wants-caesars-entertainment-to-s.html | 2019-02-20 01:22:00+00:00 | 1,550,643,720 | 1,567,547,842 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
309,773 | mercurynews--2019-01-20--50 moments from 1969 that shaped entertainment and pop culture | 2019-01-20T00:00:00 | mercurynews | 50 moments from 1969 that shaped entertainment and pop culture | It was the last year of the ’60s, and the last year for Boris Karloff, Judy Garland and the Beatles, too. But it was also the first year for Led Zeppelin, Jennifer Aniston, “Easy Rider” and Jay-Z, too. John Lennon and Yoko Ono spent part of it in bed in public. The Doors’ Jim Morrison spent part of it in jail. Moviegoers spent time watching “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” while at home they watched a brand-new show called “The Brady Bunch” about a brand-new kind of blended family, the youngest ones in curls. There were also other big moments outside the bounds of entertainment — a moon landing, a war that rolled on despite rising protests against it — but those too had implications for pop culture in decades to come. This is 1969 from 50 years on, the good, the bad, the ugly and the odd. 1) British rock band Led Zeppelin releases its self-titled debut on Jan. 12, and if you started with the opening track your introduction to the band was the song “Good Times Bad Times.” By the end of the year, Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones and John Bonham would return with “Led Zeppelin II,” their first No. 1 album in the United States. 2) “Portnoy’s Complaint,” published on Jan. 12, was Philip Roth’s fourth book, but it’s the one that made him a literary star, in part because of the candid way he wrote about sex. It quickly became iconic, a book used as a reference in TV shows from “Get Smart” to “Bojack Horseman.” You can also draw a straight line from Portnoy’s liver to the titular baked good in “American Pie,” but of that we’ll say no more. 3) Musician Dave Grohl and actor Jason Bateman both are born on Jan. 14 and fans of Nirvana, Foo Fighters and “Arrested Development” should retroactively thank their parents. 4) Richard M. Nixon sworn in as president on Jan. 20. A few months earlier he’d gone on “Laugh-In” and awkwardly asked viewers to “Sock it to me.” Congress and the Watergate investigation eventually complied. 5) Elvis Presley enters American Sound Studios in Memphis on Jan. 26 for the comeback sessions that result in the album “From Elvis in Memphis” as well as such classic singles as “In The Ghetto,” “Kentucky Rain,” and “Suspicious Minds.” 6) The Beatles head to the roof of Apple Records on Jan. 30 to play live versions of songs such as “Get Back” and “I’ve Got A Feeling,” the police-shortened set ending up as their final public performance and the highlight of the film “Let It Be.” 7) Actor Boris Karloff, who starred as the monster in “Frankenstein” and as the title character in “The Mummy,” dies on Feb. 2 at the age of 81. He is cremated and as far as anyone knows has not returned to haunt our cinemas and dreams in any form or fashion. 8) Jennifer Aniston is born on Feb. 11. Twenty-five years later hair stylists will be grateful for her “Rachel” hairstyle. Thirty-five years later they’ll be cursing her for it. 9) Jim Morrison of the Doors nearly sparks a riot on March 1 during a concert in Miami where police alleged he exposed himself, though it seems likely he only simulated the dirty deed. 10) The supersonic jet the Concorde gets its first test flight on March 2, though passenger service does not begin until 1976, possibly to give jet-setters time to save up for the pricey fare. The jet, which was immortalized in the not-beloved film “The Concorde: Airport ’79,” also made it possible in 1985 for Phil Collins to perform at both London and Philadelphia Live Aid concerts — on the same day. 11) “The Godfather” by Mario Puzo is published on March 10. It’s unclear whether G.P. Putnam’s Sons made him an offer he couldn’t refuse but it goes on to create a pair of classic films. 12) At San Francisco State University, the longest student strike in U.S. history ends on March 20. Pressure by protesters including members of the Black Student Union and the multi-ethnic Third World Liberation front had gone on strike on Nov. 6 in pursuit increasing the diversity of the student body, faculty, courses and departments. One major result of the strike was the university’s agreement to create the first College of Ethnic Studies in the world as well as the first Black Studies Department in the country. 13) John Lennon and Yoko Ono hold their first Bed-In for Peace starting March 25 at the Hilton in Amsterdam. This is their honeymoon after they wed on March 20. During a second Bed-In in Montreal in May, Lennon writes the anti-war anthem “Give Peace A Chance,” which folk singer Pete Seeger will sing for a huge crowd outside the White House on Nov. 15 during the Moratorium March, which with as many as half a million demonstrating against the war in Vietnam is said to be the largest anti-war protest in U.S. history. 14) The Allman Brothers Band make their live debut with a concert in Jacksonville, Florida, on March 30 and the Southern rock that will dominate much of the following decade takes off. 15) “Midnight Cowboy” starring Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight is released on May 25 and goes on to become the first X-rated movie to win the Oscar for best picture. 16) “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” by illustrator and writer Eric Carle is published on June 3. It’s an instant success both critically and commercially and 50 years and 30 million copies later parents still read it to their toddlers. 17) “Game of Thrones” actor Peter Dinklage is born on June 11. Little does anyone suspect that years later he’s gonna be big in Westeros. 18) The Winstons record “Amen, Brother” on June 13. Six or seven seconds of a drum solo from that obscure B-side, the so-called Amen break, will become the most-sampled piece of music in history, showing up on as many as 3,000 tracks from Salt-N-Pepa’s “I Desire” and N.W.A.’s “Straight Outta Compton” to Oasis’ “D’You Know What I Mean” and the Prodigy’s “Firestarter.” Even the theme to the TV series “Futurama” uses it. 19) Rapper Ice Cube is born on June 15. MC Ren is born one day later, and with Eazy-E, Dr. Dre, Arabian Prince and DJ Yella already toddling around, the entire future membership of N.W.A. is now on the planet. 20) The badly polluted Cuyahoga River near Cleveland catches fire on June 22 eventually inspiring bad jokes by late-night TV hosts, environmental action that led to the Clean Water Act and Environmental Protection Agency, and eventually a pair of fine songs, “Burn On” by Randy Newman and “Cayahoga” by REM. 21) Actress Judy Garland is found dead on the floor of her London bathroom on June 22. Cause of death is ruled an accidental overdose of barbiturates. She is 47. 22) A police raid at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village on June 28 that targets its gay clientele sparks rioting that kickstarts the modern-day gay rights movement. A year later, marches were held on the anniversary in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago, establishing the end of June as the time when gay pride parades and celebrations are held everywhere today. In 2016, seven acres around the still-operating inn were designated a national monument. 23) Brian Jones, a founding member of the Rolling Stones who had just left the group, is found dead in his swimming pool in Sussex, England on July 3. Two days later the Rolling Stones play a concert in Hyde Park before which singer Mick Jagger reads from “Adonais,” a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley about the death of his close friend John Keats, and scores of white butterflies are released in his honor. 24) David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” single is released on July 11, five days before Apollo 11 lifted off for a trip to the moon. 25) “Easy Rider,” starring Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper, is released on July 14, a landmark counterculture film that sparked new wave of storytelling in film in the decade that followed. 26) Sen. Ted Kennedy drives off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island on July 18 and Mary Jo Kopechne, a former campaign worker for his brother Robert Kennedy, drowns in the car. As well as the tragedy of Kopechne’s death, the scandal sticks to Kennedy for the rest of his career in public life. It was fictionalized by Joyce Carol Oates in the novella “Black Water” in 1992 and later inspired the 2017 feature film “Chappaquiddick.” 27) The Apollo 11 lunar module Eagle lands on the moon on July 20. Neil Armstrong becomes the first man to walk on the moon with Buzz Aldrin right behind him. The solar system suddenly felt much larger, not only for the possibilities that opened up for science and humanity but for entertainment, too, inspiring space films almost from Apollo 11’s splashdown all the way to 2018’s dramatization of the landing, “First Man.” . 28) Jennifer Lopez is born in the Bronx on July 24. Don’t be fooled by the rocks that she got, she’s still, she’s still Jenny from the block. 29) Members of the so-called Manson Family break into the home of actress Sharon Tate and her husband Roman Polanski on Aug. 9 and kill Tate, who was 8 months pregnant, and four others. They next night they kill Leno and Rosemary LaBianca. The crimes shock the nation and fascination with the murders continues over the years with books such as “Helter Skelter,” the non-fiction account of the case by its prosecutor Vincent Buglioisi, to Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming movie “Once Upon A Time In Hollywood,” in which Manson and the murders are woven into the plot. 30) The Haunted Mansion attraction at Disneyland opens on Aug. 9, six years after its original target date and three years after the death of Walt Disney. 31) The Woodstock Festival is held in New York from Aug. 15-18 and the culture of music festivals is born amid the mud, naked hippies and rock acts such as Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, the Who and the Grateful Dead. Coming in the summer when the soundtrack to “Hair” held the top spot on the charts for several months, this might be the peak of counterculture entertainment. 32) The first Gap store opens on Aug. 21 in San Francisco, only selling Levi’s products and LP records for the first few years. 33) The first ATM machine in the United States debuts on Sept. 2 at a Chemical Bank branch in Rockville Centre, New York. The bank boasted in advertisements, “On Sept. 2 our bank will open at 9 a.m. and never close again.” 34) Lieutenant William Calley is charged on Sept. 5 with six counts of murder for the 1968 My Lai Massacre in Vietnam in which 109 Vietnamese civilians were killed by U.S. troops. News of the atrocities remained under wraps until Nov. 12 when reporter Seymour Hersh broke the story. 35) Those pesky kids and their dog arrive on CBS when “Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!” debuts on Sept. 13. Several decades later someone will think it a good idea to make a live-action version. It will not be. 36) Tyler Perry is born on Sept. 13. His family has no idea their darling boy will one day gain fame and fortune as a Big Momma. 37) “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” opens on Sept. 23, the teaming up of Paul Newman and Robert Redford making for an iconic screen duo. 38) The Chicago 8 trial of anti-war protesters such as Abbie Hoffman, Tom Hayden and Bobby Seale begins on Sept. 24 in Chicago. 39) The Beatles album “Abbey Road” is released on Sept. 26 and like the self-titled so-called White Album earlier in the year it goes to No. 1 on the charts. Two months earlier, John Lennon had told Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr he was leaving the band. 40) “The Brady Bunch” debuts on ABC on Sept. 26 with a story — stop me if you heard this — of a lovely lady who was bringing up three very lovely girls. Oh you have? OK then. 41) Singer Gwen Stefani of No Doubt and solo fame is born on Oct. 3. At the time she’s just a girl, she’s just a girl in the world. 42) “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” premieres on the BBC on Oct. 5. It will be five more years before a PBS station in Dallas starts to air the series and Americans are finally able to debate whether that parrot is dead or just sleeping, knowwhatahmean, nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more? 43) Writer Jack Kerouac dies at the age of 47 on Oct. 21, though he lives forever for “the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes ‘Awww!’ “ 44) The first message is sent between computers at UCLA to Stanford over ARPANET, the network that is the foundation on which the internet was built, on Oct. 29. A permanent link is established on Nov. 21. UC Santa Barbara and the University of Utah join the network on Dec. 5. As for Facebook, porn, selfie addiction, the breakdown of interpersonal relations, the destruction of brick-and-mortar retail, the decline of print media and allegations of Russian interference in our presidential elections, those take a little more time. 45) The now-iconic Adidas Superstar sneaker debuts in 1969, exact release unknown so we’ll call it Nov. 3, the birthday of Adi Dassler, Adidas’ founder. It’s not that wild of a leap to call this one of the cornerstones of the sneaker culture to come. Quoth Run-DMC in the 1986 song “My Adidas,” “Now the Adidas I possess for one man is rare / Myself homeboy got fifty pair.” 46) Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs and Matthew McConaughey are born on Nov. 4. The first says he wants to be called Puff Daddy, no, P. Diddy, well maybe just Diddy, wait, Puffy? Brother Love? The second says alright, alright, alright and goes back to playing his bongos naked and unafraid. 47) “Sesame Street” premieres on Nov. 10. Sunny day, sweepin’ the clouds away, on my way to where the air is sweet. Can you tell me how to get, how to get to Sesame Street? 48) The first Wendy’s hamburger restaurant opens on Nov. 15 in Columbus, Ohio. The hamburgers are square, the Frosty is chocolate only, it will be 15 years before the name of the fast-food chain becomes the understood answer to a little old lady’s question: “Where’s the beef?” It’s 50 years before the Wendy burger is served at an official White House dinner for college football players. 49) Jay-Z is born on Dec. 4 though technically he’s still Shawn Carter. A few decades later he’s a millionaire mogul in hip-hop and other ventures including a high-profile marriage to the queen Beyoncé. 50) The Altamont Free Concert is held on Dec. 6 at the Altamont Speedway with the Rolling Stones headlining a day after they release “Let It Bleed.” It bled. One concertgoer was fatally stabbed after he brandished a revolver near the stage, three others died in accidents, and the vibe all day was so ominous the Grateful Dead decided not to play their set. in an article on the festival Rolling Stone magazine called it “rock and roll’s all-time worst day, December 6th, a day when everything went perfectly wrong.” | Peter Larsen | https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/01/20/50-moments-from-1969-that-shaped-entertainment-and-pop-culture/ | 2019-01-20 14:43:18+00:00 | 1,548,013,398 | 1,567,551,629 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
310,314 | mercurynews--2019-02-01--Theater review Sweeney Todd offers bloody good entertainment | 2019-02-01T00:00:00 | mercurynews | Theater review: ‘Sweeney Todd’ offers bloody good entertainment | Who doesn’t love those cute little meat pies called pasties that British pubs sell? Certainly the townspeople who chow down on them with fervor love them in Stephen Sondheim’s macabre musical masterpiece, “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” now doing its bloody thing at Hillbarn Theatre in Foster City through Feb. 10. That scene induced an audible “ughhhh” from many in the audience, but just about everything else in this weirdly fascinating show was greeted with laughter and appreciation. No one deserves these accolades more than Keith Pinto, a pint-sized Sweeney who delivers a riveting, wild-eyed and wily performance. Pinto inhabits the crazed, vindictive title character as if he had been through the same horrible life events (losing his wife and child and going to prison for 15 long years) that Sweeney did. He’s absolutely compelling. Since it slashed its way onto Broadway in 1979 (winning a slew of Tonys that year), Sweeney and his conniving, flirtatious sidekick, meat-pie goddess Mrs. Lovett (a no-holds-barred Heather Orth) are a maniacal match. Orth’s heartfelt portrayal of Mrs. Lovett lingers long after the curtain call because she’s, by turn, flirty, dirty, chatty, sassy, and all-around terrific. When she serves up her version of “A Little Priest” — a droll musical dissertation about those special meat pies she makes and what, or who, is in them — it’s deliciously divine. A sample lyric: “If it’s stringy, it’s a fiddle player.” It’s obvious from all the little touches in most of the actors’ characters that director Joshua Marx wanted to make this production a memorable one. And, happily, Rick Reynolds’ offstage 14-piece orchestra never drowns out any singing voices. That may also be because the voices in this “Sweeney Todd” are strong and vibrant. Ting Na Wang’s scenic design is straightforward enough, though there’s precious little room for Mrs. Lovett’s living room to hold her miniature piano. It’s definitely not simple to put together all the contraptions needed for the demon barber to do his dirty work. On opening night, the barber’s chair that slides directly into a furnace works fine most of the time, although on one occasion audience members see a victim fall below when the furnace door flies open and a black curtain falls off to one side. Pinto and Orth are buffeted by a talented cast of rascals: a hapless Chris Vettel as Judge Turpin, who lusts after Sweeney’s daughter Johanna, now his ward; Samuel Nachison as the comical Beadle, the judge’s associate; and Jesse Cortez as Pirelli, who sells useless bottles of liquid he guarantees will grow hair. These scoundrels are somewhat offset by the gentle lovebirds Anthony Hope (Jaron Vesely with his strong, sonorous vocals) and the beauteous Johanna (golden-throated Jennifer Mitchell). They are joined by sweet, baby-faced Tobias (nicely performed by Ross Briscoe). These three are just about the only characters in “Sweeney” who exemplify the positive virtues of compassion, honesty and tenderness. It must say something about Sondheim’s faith in goodness because they’re also the only ones walking off into the sunset at play’s end. Juliet Green’s Beggar Woman is a whirlwind of bitterness and bombastic rhetoric who flies up and down the theater’s stairways, brown rags flying every which way, as she begs sweetly for a few pence, then suddenly pulls up her skirts and screeches at men who she thinks will pay money to ravish her wasted body. Beggar Woman is a sad, wrenching role for anyone, but Green is up to the task. Her voice is one of the best in a cast that has a number of excellent singers. Some of the ensemble members also demonstrate their singing chops, in particular Molly Thornton, Elana Ron and the three men who make up (but are not identified in the program) the trio singing “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd.” Obviously, there are many pleasures to enjoy here — even the ones that involve innocent men sitting in the barber chair, having their throats slit and sliding down into the flames below. “Sweeney Todd,” of course, has impeccable credentials. Besides Sondheim’s music and lyrics, there’s Hugh Wheeler’s book. And, while some Sondheim musicals produce more hit songs, audiences will likely recognize a few in this production. There’s the sweetly ironic “Pretty Women” which Todd sings while preparing to slit a man’s throat, the appealing “Kiss Me” duet and the melodic, lilting “Johanna.” As grisly as this production gets (despite Marx downplaying that side most of the time), it’s surprisingly disarming. “Kiss Me” has an operatic rhythm to it, and Orth’s tenderness to a fearful Tobias, “Not While I’m Around,” is perfection. She also brings her special blend of tart and longing to “By the Sea” where she dreams of living with “Mr. T” by the sea, while Sweeney boringly nods and responds “Anything You Say.” But sound difficulties sometimes garble the British dialects and leave the audience wondering who a character is or how he/she fits into the storyline. Toward play’s end, it’s downright disconcerting to see the now-deceased Sweeney Todd and the beggar woman he has killed just get up and walk offstage. There has to be a better way to stage that! Another nit: The two center aisles are used a lot throughout “Sweeney,” and while this is fine when it’s done sparingly, in this production audience members have to twist their necks too often to see what’s happening on the stairways. Costume designer Yichuan Sharon Peng creates magic here by making all the Londoners look appropriately upscale or down-on-their-heels as their roles demand, and her wigs and make-up are spot on (especially the ones worn by Orth). Overall, there are so many devilishly good moments to this interpretation of the demon barber’s tale that it makes sense to sit back and enjoy Sondheim’s incredible score and unmatchable lyrics. Just don’t eat the pasties. Joanne is a member of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle and Theatre Bay Area. Email her at [email protected]. | Joanne Engelhardt | https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/02/01/theater-review-sweeney-todd-offers-bloody-good-entertainment/ | 2019-02-01 11:01:14+00:00 | 1,549,036,874 | 1,567,549,957 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
310,468 | mercurynews--2019-02-06--Disneylands new Mickeys Mix Magic light projection show reflects a trend in entertainment | 2019-02-06T00:00:00 | mercurynews | Disneyland’s new ‘Mickey’s Mix Magic’ light projection show reflects a trend in entertainment | Mickey Mouse glows as he dances across the storefronts on Main Street at Disneyland. Speakers blare out dance tunes seemingly from from thin air. This same fantastic scene is occurring elsewhere in the park, where entranced people gather to watch the enormous, colorful light show created by hidden projectors that give the impression of a magical transformation. This is “Mickey’s Mix Magic” — the latest show at Disneyland that premiered in January. It’s the latest example of the types of state-of-the-art light shows that are providing a new type of entertainment at Disneyland and other theme parks around the world. “I decided to do something crazy this time and surprise people,” said Steven Davison, the Disney creative executive for parades and spectaculars. He was referring to the lively Mickey Mouse animated dance party that is showing nightly, but he might as well have been talking about the state-of-the-art technology of projection mapping, which allows companies to create elaborate light shows in places that were formerly considered off-limits. It’s a special challenge to create colorful and recognizable images on other surfaces such as castles, theater fronts, storefronts and even water. Not only must the images be easy to recognize, but they must also be able to tell a story seamlessly, over a large area, with visual, music and other special effects. Outdoor spaces create even more challenges, such as the level of darkness and rain, for example. A large surface requiring multiple projectors means there has to be a way to blend the images so that viewers don’t see any seams, and so that, if one projector goes down, there’s a fail-safe system in place to keep the show going. To create the types of large-scale projection shows that have been running at Disneyland, Disney took elaborate measures to map the park, including flying drones with infrared sensors over key elements in order to scan in and create a virtual model, Davison said. Developing a show across a three-dimensional space, such as buildings, requires a special kind of complicated computer modeling. The good news is — once the modeling is completed — the scan can be reused when the current show is replaced or rejuvenated. “It’s a very inexpensive way to create a big effect,” said Brent Young, president of Silver Lake’s Super 78, which specializes in creating immersive entertainment. “You don’t have to do a lot of sets, painting or lighting and, other than regular maintenance. All the updating can be done in the computer.” As technology grows more sophisticated and accessible, many entertainment companies have been jumping on board. Even classical music venues like the Hollywood Bowl and organizations such as the LA Opera are using it to enhance their live performances. In 2016, for example, the LA Opera mounted a groundbreaking production from Berlin of the Magic Flute that used humorous animation, together with live performers, to update Mozart’s 1791 opera into the 1920s era. And the Hollywood Bowl’s 2018 concerts of “Beauty and the Beast” and “The Nightmare Before Christmas” both used projections to augment the music. Meanwhile, theme parks have been using projection mapping for some time, creating elaborate sound-and-light shows to supplement their brick-and-mortar fantasies after dark. At Universal Studios Hollywood, for example, “The Nighttime Lights at Hogwarts Castle,” which shows seasonally, uses projections and surround sound to show the four student houses of Hogwarts: Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff and Slytherin onto the sides of the brick-and-mortar castle. Building a show with the depth and sophistication of Mickey’s Mix Magic takes a huge investment in technology, requiring 28 laser projectors that can easily cost $100,000 or more each, 100 special rooftop lighting fixtures, elaborate surround sound systems, special computer servers and highly specialized technicians to create and run them. The good news for theme park executives? “These shows can cost millions of dollars, but updating costs far less than a fraction of that cost,” Young said. The Walt Disney Co. is in a unique position to create animated light shows, with its ownership of Pixar Studios, Star Wars and also the rights to Marvel properties. Similar shows have been mounted at other Disney parks around the world. “Disney has the cash to spend on whatever they want to, but they also have the discipline to ask, ‘What can we get done in five months, what can we create, get tested and execute and what is it going to cost?’” said Marty Shindler, a technology entertainment business consultant. Unlike a live show that could require hundreds of people dancing, twirling, riding, building sets and floats, making costumes and putting on makeup, a projection light show can wow visitors, while being operated by a comparative handful of people who quietly operate powerful computers stationed around the park. These computers drive the projectors and sound system that put on the show, which are hidden in places such as windows, flower boxes, lamp posts and towers. Theme parks take pains to ensure that their guests don’t peek behind the curtain. “I never want people to see the technology,” Disney’s Davison said. “When you’re watching a show, it’s better to just let the magic happen.” Industry expert Ron Martin agreed, saying that “the whole basis of the industry is illusion.” “It takes people aback because it really is like magic,” said Martin, who is senior vice-president of research and development for industry leader Panasonic North America. “The last thing you want is for a guest to say, ‘Oh, look, there’s the projector.’” Martin, who has worked on theme park projects all over the world, recalled that for Disneyland’s 60th anniversary show in 2015, hundreds of hidden projectors “lit up the entire park from one end to another.” The new technology has enabled theme parks around the world to more easily create new shows that can rotate with the seasons, expanding their entertainment offerings. As new theme parks are built, projection mapping is built into the architecture. Experts said they expect that Disney is installing such effects into the new Star Wars land that’s under construction now. One of the most pressing questions that Disneyland fans want answered is whether the nightly projection shows will lead to the phasing out of the live fireworks spectaculars that guests have come to expect. Currently, the park shuts down Toontown and part of Fantasyland in order to run the fireworks shows, because the two areas are located close to the backstage launching pad. People are braving long lines right now at Disneyland — for a popcorn bucket, not a ride Disneyland’s Space Mountain reopens after state investigation into man who climbed out of moving ride Disneyland’s Space Mountain remains closed after visitor climbs off ride in motion You can have breakfast with a Disney princess — for only $125 per person Disneyland has a new popcorn bucket, but only some people can buy it Observers speculate whether, since Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge land is equally close, it would also have to be shut down during fireworks —certainly an unhappy choice considering the expected crowds when the new land opens in June 2019. “Star Wars land is right in the middle of where the fallout zone is right now,” said Todd Regan, who runs the MiceChat.com fan site under the pen name Dusty Sage. Currently, fireworks are only launched on what Disneyland is calling “selected dates,” which tends to mean weekends and holidays. Davison said there is no current plan to do away with fireworks in favor of projections. “We are not doing projections just to get rid of fireworks,” Davison said. “There’s a lot of stuff we can do to mitigate the (problems). Our launchers can send shells anywhere we want.” Disney has yet to reveal what the future holds for pyrotechnics, though the projection shows are probably here to stay. “I wouldn’t say we are going to get rid of fireworks for Star Wars land. In fact, it will be a great place to watch them,” Davison said. | Marla Jo Fisher | https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/02/06/disneylands-new-mickeys-mix-magic-light-projection-show-reflects-a-trend-in-entertainment/ | 2019-02-06 18:11:37+00:00 | 1,549,494,697 | 1,567,549,441 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
317,099 | mintpressnews--2019-02-07--US Army Documents Reveal Massive Support for Long Road Home Miniseries Possible Fraud at Military | 2019-02-07T00:00:00 | mintpressnews | US Army Documents Reveal Massive Support for ‘Long Road Home’ Miniseries, Possible Fraud at Military’s Entertainment Liaison Office | The National Geographic drama series, “The Long Road Home,” tells a version of the story of the battle for Sadr City in 2004, a key moment in Iraq War, and newly-released emails and other documents from the United States Army detail the extensive military support for the TV series and how the Pentagon repeatedly bent its own rules on providing assistance to entertainment productions. Until April 2004, Sadr City was one of the quietest areas of Baghdad and coalition troops stationed there saw little action. That all changed on the night of April 4, known as ‘Black Sunday.’ Muqtada al-Sadr, the leader of a prominent Shia militia, had his newspaper shut down by Paul Bremer, leader of the Coalition Provisional Authority. A few days later, one of al-Sadr’s top lieutenants was arrested. This sparked a vicious retaliation from the Sadrist movement, which ambushed a routine U.S. Army patrol in Sadr City and then attacked the forces sent in to retrieve them. It was a harbinger of what was to come, as the multi-form insurgency against the Western occupation of Iraq rapidly grew in size and violence in the following years. The unanticipated siege of Sadr City was writ large across much of the country, with coalition forces frequently struck by attacks from unexpected sources. Back home in the U.S., the death of Army Specialist Casey Sheehan in the Sadr City battle saw his mother, Cindy, become one of the foremost anti-war voices in the country. “The Long Road Home,” based on the book of the same name, portrays the Pentagon-approved version of this story. Emails released under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) show that the Army considered refusing the producers’ requests for assistance but felt that this would risk “loss of ability to shape the Army portrayal and inclusion of Army messaging.” One example of this “messaging” is that the series omits the context involving al-Sadr’s newspaper and opens with the attack on the patrol. Chris Henrikson, a veteran and outspoken critic of the Iraq War, highlighted this omission, commenting, “Much easier to hate the enemy when they attack for no reason.” US Army emails on The Long … by on Scribd Ultimately, the Army provided such extensive support that the drama probably could not have been made without Pentagon approval. The show was mostly filmed via months of shooting on Fort Hood, home to the 1st Cavalry Division, who were attacked on Black Sunday. Much of this filming made use of Fort Hood’s “Iraqi village” training set, which doubled for Sadr City. Cindy Sheehan commented on the production. “To use the set that my own son trained on to go and be killed is appalling.” Asked if she was contacted by the producers or had any input on the show, which briefly portrays her in two episodes, Sheehan replied, “Not at all, as a matter of fact.” Sheehan was interviewed by Martha Raddatz, author of the original book, but according to Sheehan, Raddataz “didn’t really include anything that I said.” She has never seen the series. “How could I?” she said. Many of the families of the ones who died that day were very upset about the show.” “My other son watched it, and it was very traumatizing for him,” Sheehan shared. “I was trying to watch the World Series the year the film came out because the Dodgers were playing, and there were so many ads for it. It was hard for me to watch.” She added, “I don’t think it was right that they made this movie without getting any input or at least waivers from the families of those that were killed that day.” This insensitive approach by the producers was echoed by the military, who realized that one of the men portrayed as dying in the battle, Sgt. Mitchell, “didn’t die in that mission, but in a different mission later.” The email additionally noted, “If the change in fact was intentional for story purposes, understandable.” The finished series not only contains dialogue referring to Mitchell’s death but also scenes of Lt. Col. Gary Volesky (the commander on the ground) asking for details about Mitchell and praying that he and another soldier are the last men to be killed in the operation. Henrikson said, “It is a callous choice for a film to change the date and time of a soldier’s death.” He speculated as to why this inaccuracy was included, suggesting it “allowed the emphasis from the Colonel on the ‘last ones to die today.’ Maybe the writers felt it would help viewers trust the Lt. Colonel more, because he said those men would be the last two and they were, at least to the viewers.” “Filmmakers always want military battles to be linear, for ease of storytelling, but reality seldom agrees,” Henrikson suggested. Despite the callous nature of these inaccuracies, the military made no objections. Army entertainment liaison Lt. Col. Timothy reviewed a rough cut of the first episode and commented, “No real issues. I can’t believe we missed the chin strap not being right on one of the actors’ helmet, but that’s pretty much it so far.” This is not only misleading but also a flagrant violation of Defense Department instruction 5410.16, which says that, ‘DOD assistance may be provided to an entertainment media production…based on whether the production presents a reasonably realistic depiction of the Military Services and the DOD, including Service members, civilian personnel, events, missions, assets, and policies.’ It was not only the rules on accuracy that the Army broke in their eagerness to support “The Long Road Home.” The emails, along with reports from the Army’s entertainment liaison office, show that the production company started building on Fort Hood before the contract between the military and the producers was completed. Instruction 5410.16 makes clear that the Pentagon needs to “ensure that no material assistance is provided before a Production Assistance Agreement is signed.” When it came to the company reimbursing the Pentagon’s costs, the producers balked at the initial estimate of $500,000. For decades, the military has only been allowed to provide production assistance on a no-cost basis to the taxpayer so the production company has to pay for the fuel, vehicle maintenance, staffing hours, and so on. But the military broke the rules in order to reduce the amount of money the producers would have to pay, by “removing the cost to convoy to the set; calling all of it training, and some other variable that an inventive G3/S3 or G8/S4 invents to reduce the cost.” In the same email, the Army noted that they could not redefine much of the ground action as STX (situational training exercise) because ‘it is COIN [counter-insurgency] based and does not support our current DATE [Decisive Action Training Environment] mission.’ But if ‘staged shots, where a driver is told to drive to a spot and stop and the gunner told to slew a certain direction’ cannot be called training, then how can driving a vehicle out to a movie set be called training? This is potentially fraudulent activity by the Army’s Hollywood office, resulting in the Pentagon subsidizing a TV film series in exchange for it including what the Army emails called “strategic messaging.” One example of this is especially galling. Army Specialist Tomas Young was shot during the fighting in Sadr City and paralyzed from the waist down. He had been in Iraq for only five days, having signed up just after the 9/11 attacks. Young became an anti-war campaigner, one of the first Iraq war veterans to do so, and he met Sheehan at Camp Casey, the long-term protest outside President George W. Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas. (Young was later profiled in the documentary, “Body of War,” before he tragically died from his injuries.) “The Long Road Home” depicts this meeting between Tomas and Cindy, but in a move Sheehan described as ‘cowardly’, the producers asked the military’s permission to include banners and t-shirts in this scene bearing the names and logos of various peace and anti-war organizations. The Army’s assessment was that they were “not using overtly political signs” and so there were “no red flags.” Henrikson offered the opinion that “the signs, from the standpoint of the military, allow mentions of these anti-war orgs without diving too deeply into what they truly stand for.” “Each one will have a specific philosophy on why they believe war is wrong, but if you’re trying to tacitly include groups with which you fundamentally disagree and whose views may upset your more neoconservative viewers, showing signs without talking philosophies allows them to make both sides happy or at least content.” He went on, “And who is the dumb ass at the Army who decided their signs weren’t overtly political? Most of these groups are anti-war, anti-interventionists types; to say their signage wasn’t overtly political is to completely miss the point.” The film does not reference Camp Casey or even identify it in a subtitle. While Tomas, Cindy, and others are shown attending an event, there is no dialogue. None of them articulate to the audience why they became peace activists or how they went from signing up for the war to protesting the war. Over 8 hours, it devotes much of its time to glamorizing the war, and never allows 30 seconds for a main character to explain why they changed their mind. As Sheehan put it, ‘The military [was] involved to make war look heroic and glamorous. It’s almost as bad as the overt propaganda films of World War II.” ”The fact that it doesn’t let Tomas or Cindy voice their strong views against war and simply shows signs demonstrates their desire to push the real notion of anti-war belief away from those who it might offend,” Henrikson concluded. Top Photo | A screenshot from the National Geographic’s, The Long Road Home. Screenshot | YouTube Tom Secker is a British-based writer who covers the security services, Hollywood and the history of terrorism. He runs the SpyCulture blog which can be supported via Patreon.com. His work has been covered by The Mirror, The Express, Salon, TechDirt and elsewhere. | Tom Secker | https://www.mintpressnews.com/us-army-documents-reveal-massive-support-for-long-road-home-miniseries-possible-fraud-at-militarys-entertainment-liaison-office/254771/ | 2019-02-07 17:48:37+00:00 | 1,549,579,717 | 1,567,549,277 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
342,628 | newsbusters--2019-05-31--Entertainment Media Hail Groundbreaking First Sexually Fluid Dating Show | 2019-05-31T00:00:00 | newsbusters | Entertainment Media Hail 'Groundbreaking' First ‘Sexually Fluid’ Dating Show | From Flavor of Love to Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?, there have been some pretty crazy dating shows during the reality TV era. Some of them have included LGBTQ contestants but never before has the entire cast been “sexually fluid." MTV to the rescue! The eighth season of MTV’s Are You the One? (AYTO?) will rectify the grievous wrong of the sexually fluid, which pretty much means bisexual, being unrepresented on TV, it was announced on Thursday. Hailing the series as “groundbreaking,” The Hollywood Reporter raved, “For the first time ever on a dating competition show in the U.S., there will be no gender limitations, as each castmember identifies as sexually fluid.” AYTO?, which premieres on June 26, promises to share “powerful stories about what it means to find love as a sexually fluid individual” - “from coming-out moments to exploring the intricacies of sexual and gender identity.” Yippie! Sounds more like a gender studies class than entertainment television. The basic premise of AYTO? is for singles to attempt to figure out their perfect match among the other contestants, as defined by a dating compatibility algorithm beforehand. If the whole group guesses their matches correctly, they split $1 million. Presumably, having everyone be sexually fluid will add a new level of difficulty to the game; instead of half the cast being one’s potential “perfect match,” it could be any one of them. As if dating isn’t hard enough already. People called the new sexuality gimmick an “epic twist” while E! News proclaimed, “There still hasn't been a gay Bachelor or Bachelorette, but MTV is coming for those barriers.” Of course, MTV has produced shows that featured LGBTQ couplings before. As Entertainment Weekly noted: MTV may no longer play music videos, but one thing hasn’t changed since its founding, they’re still on the front lines of the culture wars. | Alexa Moutevelis Coombs | https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/culture/alexa-moutevelis-coombs/2019/05/31/entertainment-media-hail-groundbreaking-first-sexually-fluid-dating-show | 2019-05-31 12:00:00+00:00 | 1,559,318,400 | 1,567,539,634 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
342,773 | newsbusters--2019-06-18--Entertainments Winners Losers Summer Edition | 2019-06-18T00:00:00 | newsbusters | Entertainment’s Winners & Losers: Summer Edition | There are plenty of winners & losers this summer when it comes to the entertainment industry. But only two winners and two losers make the cut when it comes to columns like this. And the following list features the topics that have made the cut so far this summer. There’s no doubt that the American entertainment industry has followed its news media peers in going further and further to the left. But in a refreshing twist, Warner Bros. has decided not to go this route with their revival of the iconic cartoon franchise Looney Tunes. Instead of doing a politically correct retooling of pander to millennial progressives who get offended at everything as Warners’ Cartoon Network brand did recently, the studio decided to go back to what made characters like Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Porky Pig so beloved in the first place as seen from this sneak peek: This is the kind of humor America needs, now more than ever. And it’s good to know that the people behind these new shorts understand that changing a familiar franchise to suit the needs of the far-left is not the way to go. This revival definitely has a lot of potential, and Warner Bros. is a Winner as a result. The 1997 Will Smith/Tommy Lee Jones sci-fi comedy movie Men in Black was one of Sony Pictures Entertainment’s most successful releases of the year at the time of its debut, and led to the creation of a multimillion dollar franchise which includes an animated TV series and two sequels. But unfortunately, the spinoff film Men in Black International, starring Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson, decided to go woke on its audience and bombed at the box office as a result. Critics were brutal when writing about the film. Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal referenced the classic 90’s sitcom Seinfeld and called the film a ‘movie about nothing: If Seinfeld was a show about nothing, this sorry contrivance is less than a nullity, with an off-putting plot—there’s a mole in the Men in Black organization, but so what, since all the suspects look ready to be stuffed to begin with—and no one to care about for a single moment. That’s a shame—not a crying shame, because it’s only a movie, but no laughing shame either, since the talented stars, Tessa Thompson and Chris Hemsworth, have basically been given babble for dialogue; it’s painful to watch them failing to be funny. As a result of those brutal reviews and said propaganda, the movie ended up bombing at the box office by earning just $28 million. Social justice pandering doesn’t do any good for an established franchise, does it? The director of Men in Black International, F. Gary Gray, is a Loser. Disney and its Pixar Animation Studios subsidiary are very consistent when it comes to the critical and financial success of the Toy Story franchise. Its apolitical stance always makes the entire family and people from both sides of the political spectrum go see every installment in droves. Not to mention it’s one of the few film franchises where the elites and the general public agree on something. And as seen in this trailer, the fourth installment seems to follow that tradition: The film is set for release this weekend. Of course, judgement should be reserved for when the film is released. But rest assured, the movie will continue to consistently entertain young and old alike. As always, Disney is a Winner. There’s a lot of nostalgia lately for classic movies and TV shows, hence one of the reasons why Warner Bros. has decided to jump into the bandwagon with their Looney Tunes revival. Unfortunately, the people behind Warners’ revival of The Banana Splits, which is being produced by NBCUniversal’s Syfy channel, has decided to make it an R-rated horror movie rather than an all-out revival of the classic series that captures the essence of what made it so beloved: The Los Angeles Times reports the that the synopsis is similar to the popular survival horror video game Five Nights at Freddy’s. A young boy named Harley is spending his birthday with his family at a taping of the Banana Splits TV show. The trip soon involves a rising number of brutal deaths after learning that the series is canceled, resulting in the characters – who are actually robots in this movie – taking on lives of their own. What a way to continue to dishonor the legacy of feel-good kids’ TV from William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. Warners’ direct-to-video division has been struggling due to the decline of home video sales, and they should know better than to do something like this. So they’re Losers, and they need to wise up fast. | Matt Norcross | https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/matt-norcross/2019/06/22/entertainments-winners-losers-summer-edition | 2019-06-18 19:45:00+00:00 | 1,560,901,500 | 1,567,538,961 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
345,256 | newsbusters--2019-11-06--CBS Anchor Advertises Televised Impeachment Hearings Like Fight Entertainment | 2019-11-06T00:00:00 | newsbusters | CBS Anchor Advertises Televised Impeachment Hearings Like Fight Entertainment | By her excitement and choice of words, one could easily think failing-CBS Evening News anchor Norah O’Donnell was promoting a pay-per-view boxing or pro-wrestling match during Wednesday’s newscast. But no, she was hyping the televised impeachment hearings that would start next week. In addition to that, NBC Nightly News chided Republicans were wanted the public to know the identity of the infamous anti-Trump whistleblower who helped to start the investigation. “Tonight, lights, cameras, testimony. The stage is set for the first televised hearings of the impeachment inquiry,” O’Donnell excitedly proclaimed during the program’s opening tease. “We now know when they will happen and who may be the Democrats’ star witness.” Once they were finished with the teases, O’Donnell could barely contain her glee as she sprinted to call them “historic,” adding, “televised impeachment hearings begin a week from today, and it promises to be must-see TV.” “It promises to be must-see TV,” really?! She was acting more like a fight promoter for a UFC match than a journalist. She even touted the combatants for the Democrats: Later in the segment, chief congressional correspondent Nancy Cordes pooh-poohed House Republicans for insisting the public listen to the special envoy to Ukraine, Ambassador Kurt Volker, who says there was no “quid-pro-quo.” “House Democrats say that's just the beginning,” O’Donnell continued to hype and praised Democrats for releasing more deposition transcripts, “and Nancy Cordes says they offer a preview of what's expected to be bombshell testimony.” The only thing missing from O’Donnell’s broadcast was a microphone hanging from the ceiling and her going: “Let’s get ready to rumbllleee!” Meanwhile, on NBC Nightly News, White House correspondent Kristen Welker was critical of Republicans who wanted America to know who the whistleblower was. “Also tonight, Republicans taking aim at the whistleblower who first raised alarms about that call,” she huffed. “Donald Trump Jr. retweeting a report with a possible name, Senator Rand Paul calling for the whistleblower to be outed.” Trump Jr. retweeted a Breitbart News report. But the original reporting came from RealClearInvestigations reporter Paul Sperry, who details how all the evidence allegedly points to one man: Eric Ciaramella. The report also alleges that nearly every major news outlet already had his identity. According to the investigation, Ciaramella was “a registered Democrat held over from the Obama White House, previously worked with former Vice President Joe Biden and former CIA Director John Brennan, a vocal critic of Trump who helped initiate the Russia ‘collusion’ investigation of the Trump campaign during the 2016 election.” NBC may be refusing to tell their viewers the identity of the whistleblower, but they had no qualms and even bragged about outing a CIA asset pulled out of Russia and relocated to the U.S., putting he and his family’s lives at risk. >>Help fight against the liberal media’s impeachment crusade<< The transcript is below, click "expand" to read: NORAH O’DONNELL: Tonight, lights, cameras, testimony. The stage is set for the first televised hearings of the impeachment inquiry. We now know when they will happen and who may be the Democrats’ star witness. O’DONNELL: Good evening and thank you for joining us. It's official. Historic, televised impeachment hearings begin a week from today, and it promises to be must-see TV. The Democrats plan the start with their star witness: a west point grad with 50 years of public service, acting U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Bill Taylor will testify Wednesday alongside Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent. Then on Friday, former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch will testify. House Democrats say that's just the beginning. Today more Democrats -- I should say more of the Democrats released more transcripts from those closed-door depositions, and Nancy Cordes says they offer a preview of what's expected to be bombshell testimony. | Nicholas Fondacaro | https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/nicholas-fondacaro/2019/11/06/cbs-treats-televised-impeachment-hearings-fight-entertainment | Wed, 06 Nov 2019 22:45:00 -0500 | 1,573,098,300 | 1,573,132,476 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
361,971 | newsweek--2019-02-05--Will BTS Be at the 2019 Grammys Big Hit Entertainment Confirms Appearance | 2019-02-05T00:00:00 | newsweek | Will BTS Be at the 2019 Grammys? Big Hit Entertainment Confirms Appearance | Months after becoming the first Kpop act nominated for a Grammy, Big Hit Entertainment confirmed that BTS will present an award at the 61 st Grammys on Feb. 10. Though reports haven’t revealed which award the group is set present, RM, Suga, Jimin, J-Hope, V, Jin and Jungkook’s first Grammy appearance came after their album, Love Yourself: Tear, and its art director, Doohee Lee, has been nominated for Best Recording Package. The album is up against Mitski’s Be the Cowboy, St. Vincent’s Masseduction, the Chairman’s The Offering, and Foxhole’s Well Kept Thing. Love Yourself: Tear debuted at No.1 on Billboard’s top 200 albums chart last year, which included their second collaboration with Steve Aoki. Suga (Min Yoongi), a member of the group’s rap line, expressed interest in appearing on the event multiple times. When the group sat down with Jimmy Fallon, the host asked the group about their next goal. Suga responded, “Go to Grammys.” Alicia Keys will be hosting the Grammy awards on Sunday. Cardi B, Camila Cabello, Dan + Shay, H.E.R., Miley Cyrus, Brandi Carlile, Post Malone with Red Hot Chili Peppers, Kacey Musgraves, Janelle Mon áe and Shawn Mendez are confirmed to perform live from Staples Center in Los Angeles to be aired on CBS. The seven-member South Korean boy group made their first American TV appearance at the 2017 Billboard Music Awards and has appeared in shows like The Ellen Degeneres Show, The Graham Norton Show, Jimmy Kimmel Live! and The Late Late Show. Burn the Stage:The Movie, a documentary featuring the lives of BTS members behind the scenes, made $2.4 million in the US during opening its weekend in November according to Forbes. #BTSXGrammys recently trended in reaction to the news. @Choi_bts2 tweeted, “K media said @BTS_twt broke ‘impregnable fortress’, Grammy awards which is known as such conservative & prejudiced. Their entry into Grammy castle is more meaning than just K-pop’s first. It’s remarkable that as Korean artist and boy band." @MicheBangtan tweeted, “ Every time Yoongi brought up the Grammys to a western host he and all of BTS giggled like it was a crazy dream. But Liam and Jimmy Fallon and others all said ‘just watch, it’s gonna happen’ and here we are. We believe in you @BTS_twt. # BTSxGrammys.” @valliyrien tweeted, “ like namjoon said, "its 2019, its gonna be bts' year one more time" and armys we better work our ass off to make it come true. # BTSxGrammys pic.twitter.com/euW9mrBKJj.” | null | https://www.newsweek.com/bts-grammy-appearance-confirmed-1319116?utm_source=Public&utm_medium=Feed&utm_campaign=Distribution | 2019-02-05 23:10:35+00:00 | 1,549,426,235 | 1,567,549,523 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
364,858 | newyorker--2019-05-30--When They See Us Is Both Memorable Political Art and Misfired Entertainment | 2019-05-30T00:00:00 | newyorker | “When They See Us” Is Both Memorable Political Art and Misfired Entertainment | “When They See Us” is a four-episode dramatized Netflix series, directed and co-written by Ava DuVernay, about the Central Park Five. That byname, by the nature of DuVernay’s project, almost immediately comes to seem not merely inadequate but unjust. The phrase presses five teen-age boys into a faceless gang, or a multiheaded monster, and the miniseries insists that we state their names: Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, and Korey Wise. The boys, four of whom were black and one of whom was Latino, were in the wrong place at the wrong time. This was Central Park on the night of April 19, 1989, when a female jogger named Trisha Meili was beaten, raped, and left for dead—and it is also the United States of America anytime since its founding. In revisiting this infamous miscarriage of justice, the miniseries presents an odd compound of memorable political art and misfired entertainment. Like “13th,” DuVernay’s excellent documentary about the legacies of slavery, “When They See Us” is guided by a strong historical analysis. But unlike “Selma,” her drama about Martin Luther King, Jr., it can seem awkwardly sermonic, relaying its ideas by way of familiar tropes. It unsteadily treads the line between the effectively excruciating and the plainly tedious. Viewers with a lick of conscience will know what to think, but the score keeps swelling to tell them how to feel. Its bluntest images—a rat in a prison cell, for instance—do a disservice to its many graceful characterizations. The series is lyrical in its fleeting visions of the children’s shattered lives and deadeningly prosaic in its deconstruction of how those lives were shattered. The first five minutes sketch the boys’ personalities as they enjoy moments of teen freedom on the eve of spring break: a burger with a father, a stroll with a sibling, a bit of banter with a witty girl. A gorgeous green dusk falls as they swell the ranks of a group of thirty or forty kids who enter the park to make a ruckus, which a blurry selection of them escalate into a small rampage of hassling bicyclists and mugging pedestrians. Kevin, the most tender of the five boys, watches, appalled, as roughnecks in the group beat a passerby; then a cop clobbers him in the head and calls him an animal. Around the same time as these boys were witnessing the criminal misdeeds of their peers and scurrying away from trouble, Meili suffered a vicious attack—very approximately around the same time. The prosecutor in charge of the sex-crimes unit—Linda Fairstein, played by Felicity Huffman—massages the police department’s time line of events to resolve a forty-five-minute discrepancy and place the teen mob at the site of the attack. One of the series’ nice notes of ambiguity concerns whether Fairstein’s drive to convict these kids, despite copious evidence calling for their exoneration, is strictly a matter of careerism or of sincere beliefs, suggested by her avid megaphoning of the “animals” refrain. Either way, the authorities intend to quickly author a story of order restored and vengeance achieved. The boys’ fate as fall guys is sealed when a local-TV-news van pulls in among the cruisers parked outside of the precinct house. “When They See Us” is rich in such moments of quiet juxtaposition, with, say, the matter-of-fact set dressing of a DARE poster in the background, gesturing beyond the story to the drug war. It’s also compelling as a meta-narrative about the control of story lines, as when the chatter of talk radio sounds like a chorus calling for the blood sacrifice of scapegoats. If this were not based on a true story, you could call the motion of it schematic: it is a procedural of injustice. In the first episode, with its depiction the coerced confessions, good-cop-bad-cop routines come to seem routine quite quickly. The second episode, in which the defense lawyers, with their cheap suits and high ideals, are outmatched by the connivances of the district-attorney’s office, moves all too easily from the poignant specifics of each boy’s feelings, and of Meili’s halting turn at the witness stand, to the generic territory of courtroom drama. The third episode features many reprises of the opening sequence. Initially, it’s poignant to see these flashbacks to the unspoiled boyhoods of incarcerated men (and, later, frustrated parolees)—a welcome jolt of warm humanity amid scenes featuring sadistic inmates. But, by the fourth episode, when a memory of an innocent dalliance with a girlfriend flowers into a fantasy sequence set among the amusements of Coney Island, it’s cheap. When the narrative arc has bent toward justice, with the confession, in 2002, by the actual rapist and the vacating of the convictions, and the present-day faces of the five real men appear onscreen, you may feel that a more satisfying miniseries would have focussed closely on any one of them. As it is, the many excellent small performances in “When They See Us” feel especially small because of the series’ ambitious sweep. There are a lot of full characters here, but we only get partial views of them, and the interplay between the poetic evocations of these individual souls and the grand indictment of the criminal-justice system is rarely as compelling as one might like. Maybe it’s asking a lot, these days, to expect one’s preferences in social-justice essayism and narrative art to be satisfied by the same story. The series represents an important act of witness—strange to say, considering the fame of the case and its rehashing in memoirs, popular histories, and a Ken Burns documentary. Significantly, we’ve been forced to revisit it on account of the rise of Donald Trump. In May of 1989, in an early phase of his eruption from local nuisance to global menace, Trump took out a full-page newspaper ad agitating for the execution of these five children. This incident takes up a lot of oxygen in the second episode. “They need to keep that bigot off TV,” one character says. It is relevant to the plot and necessary to the atmosphere that this “real-estate hustler” should rear his head. But, seeing the series in the cold shadow of Trump’s Presidency, we find ourselves doubly fatigued, watching a nightmare still going on, at a larger scale, while the need for urgent action overwhelms the desire for subtlety. | Troy Patterson | https://www.newyorker.com/culture/on-television/when-they-see-us-is-both-memorable-political-art-and-misfired-entertainment | 2019-05-30 18:28:56+00:00 | 1,559,255,336 | 1,567,539,768 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
372,565 | newyorkpost--2019-03-20--Disney closes 71B deal for Fox entertainment assets | 2019-03-20T00:00:00 | newyorkpost | Disney closes $71B deal for Fox entertainment assets | Disney has closed its $71 billion acquisition of Fox’s entertainment business, putting “Cinderella,” ”The Simpsons,” ”Star Wars” and “Dr. Strange” under one corporate roof. The deal is likely to shake up the media landscape. Among other things, it paves the way for Disney to launch its streaming service, Disney Plus, due out later this year. It will also likely lead to layoffs in the thousands, thanks to duplication in Fox and Disney film-production staff. By buying the studios behind “The Simpsons” and X-Men, Disney aims to better compete with technology companies such as Amazon and Netflix for viewers’ attention – and dollars. Disney needs compelling TV shows and movies to persuade viewers to sign up and pay for yet another streaming service. It already has classic Disney cartoons, “Star Wars,” Pixar, the Muppets and some of the Marvel characters. With Fox, Disney could add Marvel’s X-Men and Deadpool, along with programs shown on such Fox channels as FX Networks and National Geographic. Fox’s productions also include “The Americans,” ”This Is Us” and “Modern Family.” The deal helps Disney further control TV shows and movies from start to finish – from creating the programs to distributing them though television channels, movie theaters, streaming services and other ways people watch entertainment. Disney would get valuable data on customers and their entertainment-viewing habits, which it can then use to sell advertising. Disney CEO Bob Iger said in an earnings call in February that Disney Plus and other direct-to-consumer businesses are Disney’s “No. 1 priority.” Cable and telecom companies have been buying the companies that make TV shows and movies to compete in a changing media landscape. Although internet providers like AT&T and Comcast directly control their customers’ access to the internet in a way that Amazon, YouTube and Netflix do not, they still face threats as those streaming services gain in popularity. AT&T bought Time Warner last year for $81 billion and has already launched its own streaming service, Watch TV, with Time Warner channels such as TBS and TNT, among other networks, for $15 a month. In addition to boosting the Disney streaming service, expected to debut next year, the deal paves the way for Marvel’s X-Men and the Avengers to reunite in future movies. Though Disney owns Marvel Studios, some characters including the X-Men had already been licensed to Fox. Disney also gets a controlling stake in the existing streaming service Hulu, which it plans to keep operating as a home for more general programming. Family-friendly shows and movies will head to Disney Plus. No pricing has been disclosed for Disney Plus. The streaming service will feature five categories of material: Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars and National Geographic. Disney charges $5 a month for ESPN Plus, a service that offers programming distinct from the ESPN cable channel. Meanwhile, Fox Corp. — the parts of 21st Century Fox that are not part of the deal, including Fox News, Fox Sports and Fox Broadcasting — started trading on the Nasdaq under the “FOX” and “FOXA” tickers on Tuesday. | Associated Press | https://nypost.com/2019/03/20/disney-closes-71b-deal-for-fox-entertainment-assets/ | 2019-03-20 07:40:39+00:00 | 1,553,082,039 | 1,567,545,547 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
374,170 | newyorkpost--2019-04-09--Hedgie to pitch Sony on selling off entertainment division | 2019-04-09T00:00:00 | newyorkpost | Hedgie to pitch Sony on selling off entertainment division | He claims that Sony Music Entertainment hasn’t made good on... | Josh Kosman, Richard Morgan | https://nypost.com/2019/04/08/hedgie-to-pitch-sony-on-selling-off-entertainment-division/ | 2019-04-09 02:00:31+00:00 | 1,554,789,631 | 1,567,543,490 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
377,140 | newyorkpost--2019-06-19--Women slowly taking on more leading roles in entertainment | 2019-06-19T00:00:00 | newyorkpost | Women slowly taking on more leading roles in entertainment | Female filmmakers are seeing more representation in Hollywood’s less mainstream corners. Women are writing, directing and producing more independent films than ever, but they’re still getting less work than their male counterparts. Women are making strides as directors (they directed 33 percent of independent films between 2018 and 2019, up from 29 percent); writers (32 percent, up from 26 percent); producers (37 percent up from 36 percent); executive producers (32 percent up from 26 percent); and editors (29 percent up from 27 percent), according to the latest study by the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University. The survey looked at over 10,700 credits on more than 970 independent films in 2018 to 2019 and over 80,000 credits on more than 8,000 films over 2008 to 2019. “After many years of tracking stubbornly stagnant numbers, this year women achieved healthy gains in a number of key behind-the-scenes roles,” said Martha M. Lauzen, executive director of the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University, in an interview with Variety. “Despite these increases, it is important to note that women remain dramatically underrepresented, with independent films employing more than twice as many men as women in these roles.” Indeed, men made up 68 percent of indepedent filmmaking jobs overall, compared to just 32 percent of women in roles like directors, producers and writers, the survey found. Independent films generally refer to smaller-budget movies made by production companies that aren’t major Hollywood studios. How can this disparity be addressed? The report offered a simple solution: put more women in charge of movies. Women-led films bring forth more jobs for other women, disrupting male-dominated hiring patterns, the report found. On films with at least one female director, 72 percent of the writers were women, compared to 11 percent on male-directed films. On movies with at least one woman director, women made up 45 percent of editors compared to 21 percent of male-led movies. In the past 11 years, just 4 percent of the top-grossing films have been directed by women. To combat this disparity, filmmakers and Dr. Stacy L. Smith, the founder and director of media, diversity and social change at the Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism at the University of Southern California, launched the 4 Percent Challenge at the Sundance Film Festival this year, asking production companies and studios to hire a female director in the next 18 months. It’s even worse for women, particularly women of color, in animated films. Just 2.5 percent of directors on the top 120 top-grossing animated films released between 2007 and 2018 had a female director, a study from earlier this month by USC’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative with nonprofit Women in Animation found. On average, US women make about 80 cents to a man’s dollar and the gap is even wider for women of color: Black women who work full-time make 63 cents to a white man’s dollar. The gender pay gap for women in entertainment has also been an ongoing issue. Actress Michelle Williams revealed she was paid $1,000 for reshoots of her film “All the Money in the World” to Mark Wahlberg’s $1.5 million in 2017. (Wahlberg donated his salary to the Time’s Up Fund after the news broke.) And actress Octavia Spencer has talked about being paid less than her costars, revealing that her colleague Jessica Chastain helped her get paid five times more than her original salary offer. There’s plenty of evidence that women-led films become box office blockbusters. Take Patty Jenkin’s “Wonder Woman,” in 2017, which raked in more than $103 million on its opening weekend, the highest-grossing superhero origin story, outranking 2002’s “Spider-Man,” and making Jenkins the highest paid women director of all time. And as of late, women have been dominating the big and small screens. Mindy Kaling wrote, produced and starred in “Late Night,” a workplace comedy about a female talk show host (Emma Thompson) who hires a female writer (Kaling). It’s based on her own experience being the only female minority on the writing staff of NBC’s “The Office.” Amazon bought the film at the Sundance Film Festival for $13 million and it raked in $5.1 million during its limited release at the box office. Netflix released Ali Wong’s romantic comedy “Always Be My Maybe,” earlier this month and HBO unleashed the second season of its powerhouse female-led “Big Little Lies” series. The cast includes Meryl Streep, Reese Witherspoon and Nicole Kidman. | Marketwatch | https://nypost.com/2019/06/19/women-slowly-taking-on-more-leading-roles-in-entertainment/ | 2019-06-19 20:20:41+00:00 | 1,560,990,041 | 1,567,538,768 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
387,245 | npr--2019-10-08--Blizzard Entertainment Bans Esports Player After Pro-Hong Kong Comments | 2019-10-08T00:00:00 | npr | Blizzard Entertainment Bans Esports Player After Pro-Hong Kong Comments | Blizzard Entertainment, the game developer behind hugely popular titles such as World of Warcraft and Overwatch, has banned a professional esports player from competing and taken away his prize money after he expressed support for Hong Kong's protest movement. Ng Wai Chung, who lives in Hong Kong and plays under the name Blitzchung, is one of the top players in the Asia-Pacific region for the online card deck game Hearthstone. Blitzchung made the comment on an official Hearthstone broadcast on Twitch, the video streaming platform, after his last game in the 2019 Hearthstone Asia-Pacific Grandmasters Tournament. Blitzchung wore a gas mask and dark goggles during that interview last Sunday, evoking the gear activists have worn during months of street protests. Toward the end of the segment, he shouted the popular protest chant, "Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times!" In an announcement released Tuesday, Blizzard Entertainment said the player's statement violated a tournament rule that prohibits any acts that "brings you into public disrepute, offends a portion or group of the public, or otherwise damages Blizzard image [sic]." Blitzchung, a Hong Kong native who started playing Hearthstone in 2015, was banned from participating in Blizzard esports for a year. He told several media outlets that his tournament winnings, said to be $10,000, have been rescinded. Blizzard also announced they will no longer work with the two Taiwanese streamers who interviewed the esports player on Twitch. After his punishment was announced, Blitzchung spoke to his fans on his personal Twitch account. "Today I lost Hearthstone, it's only a matter of four years," he said, referring to his years playing the game. "But if Hong Kong lost, it's a matter of a lifetime." The gaming community has largely denounced Blizzard's actions, accusing the California company of caving in to China. Some of them also note that Tencent Holdings Limited, a Chinese conglomerate, owns a 5% stake in Blizzard's parent company. Hearthstone is not the only piece of pop culture embroiled in Chinese political controversy. Yesterday, South Park was scrubbed clean from Chinese internet after the episode "Band In China" criticized the communist government's censors. Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of the animated show, responded to the ban with a faux apology. "Like the NBA, we welcome Chinese censors into our homes and into our hearts. We too love money more than freedom and democracy," Parker and Stone wrote. "Xi doesn't look just like Winnie the Pooh at all. Tune into our 300th episode this Wednesday. Long live the Great Communist Party of China! May this autumn's sorghum harvest be bountiful." Parker and Stone's comment referred to yet another Hong Kong-related controversy, which surrounds Daryl Morey, the Houston Rockets' general manager. Morey posted and quickly deleted a tweet supporting Hong Kong protesters, prompting the Chinese Basketball Association to announce it will suspend cooperation with the Rockets. After the team's owner and an NBA spokesman denounced Morey's statement — prompting a separate backlash in the U.S. — the league's commissioner clarified Tuesday that the NBA supports free speech. As part of the fallout of that controversy, Tencent — which is a media partner of the NBA in China with a deal worth $1.5 billion — said they won't be airing Rockets games. NPR's Jingnan Huo contributed to this report. Paolo Zialcita is an intern on NPR's News Desk. | Paolo Zialcita | https://www.npr.org/2019/10/08/768245386/blizzard-entertainment-bans-esports-player-after-pro-hong-kong-comments?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=news | Tue, 08 Oct 2019 14:41:18 -0400 | 1,570,560,078 | 1,570,574,124 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
387,326 | npr--2019-10-11--Blizzard Entertainment Faces Public Backlash Following Esports Player Ban | 2019-10-11T00:00:00 | npr | Blizzard Entertainment Faces Public Backlash Following Esports Player Ban | After Blizzard Entertainment banned professional esports player Blitzchung from competitions for 12 months over his support for Hong Kong's pro-democracy protests, there is a growing movement in the gaming community to boycott the company's decision. Last Sunday, Blitzchung, whose real name is Ng Wai Chung, appeared on a Twitch broadcast after playing in a Hearthstone tournament. Blitzchung ended his remarks by reciting the popular Hong Kong protest slogan, "Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times." At the time, he was wearing a gas mask and dark goggles, evoking the gear activists have worn during months of street protests. For his actions, Blitzchung, who lives in Hong Kong, was handed a one-year ban from Blizzard's tournaments. The company also rescinded his 2019 winnings, said to be $10,000. Nathan "Admirable" Zamora, a commentator for the Hearthstone Grandmasters tournament, announced Thursday that he was stepping down from his role as a "caster" on the Hearthstone broadcast team. "In Hearthstone, good strategic play involves making the right choice, even if that choice will sometimes cost you. You think about the range of possibilities from the other side," Zamora said in a tweet. "With the hand you're dealt, you make the best choice you can, even if the foreseeable outcomes hurt. That doesn't mean you should make worse choices — it means do the right thing, even if you pay the price." Zamora is the second esports caster to step down from his position. Brian Kibler also announced his departure, saying he "will not be a smiling face on camera that tacitly endorses this decision." Two of their colleagues released statements denouncing Blizzard's action, but it seems they will continue to cast the Grandmasters tournament. In another act of solidarity with Blitzchung, a user claiming to be a Blizzard employee posted a photo to Reddit showing people holding umbrellas — a reference to 2014's Hong Kong Umbrella Movement — as they congregated around an orc statue on the campus at Blizzard's headquarters in California. Players are also finding ways to protest Blizzard. During a Hearthstone Collegiate Champs match, which was organized by esports company Tespa in partnership with Blizzard, players from American University held up a sign that read "Free Hong Kong, boycott Blizz." Casey Chambers, one of the players on the team, said that they, at minimum, expected a ban in retaliation for their actions — but they were not given one by Tespa officials. The team was scheduled to compete in another game next week, but Chambers told NPR they intend to forfeit the tournament in solidarity with Blitzchung. "This shows Blizzard's hypocrisy in how it treats different regions," the team said in a statement. "They are hesitant to suppress free speech when it happens in America, on an English language stream, but will throw casters' and players' livelihoods under the bus if they are from Hong Kong or Taiwan." Over the past week, gaming fans have found creative ways to show their support for Blitzchung and Hong Kong. Some have created pro-Hong Kong fan art of Mei, a Chinese character in the Blizzard game Overwatch, in an attempt to have Blizzard ban the game in China. And a look at the official Hearthstone Twitch stream shows users have been spamming a ping pong paddle in the chat box accompanied by the sentence, "Spam this pong to free Hong Kong." Gamers aren't the only ones incensed by Blitzchung's ban. U.S. Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., tweeted statements denouncing Blizzard's action, saying it had given in to capital influence from China. As we reported earlier this week, Tencent Holdings Limited, a Chinese conglomerate, owns a 5% stake in Blizzard's parent company. Blizzard Entertainment and Blitzchung have not responded to requests for further comments. Paolo Zialcita is an intern on NPR's News Desk. | Paolo Zialcita | https://www.npr.org/2019/10/11/769362193/blizzard-entertainment-faces-public-backlash-following-esports-player-ban?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=news | Fri, 11 Oct 2019 15:21:00 -0400 | 1,570,821,660 | 1,570,832,978 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
425,085 | powerlineblog--2019-08-08--Civil War as Entertainment | 2019-08-08T00:00:00 | powerlineblog | Civil War as Entertainment | Universal Pictures has produced a film called The Hunt (originally titled Red State vs. Blue State), which begins with rich liberals capturing “deplorables” from red states to hunt down and murder. If you lived in Dayton, Ohio, you might consider this a realistic premise, although I don’t think that is what the filmmakers had in mind. This is the trailer; if I interpret it correctly, the “deplorables” fight back and win what looks like a civil war. In that respect, one might say that the film is realistic. Hollywood Reporter headlines: “Ads Pulled for Gory Universal Thriller ‘The Hunt’ in Wake of Mass Shootings.” In the wake of a trio of deadly massacres, the studio is evaluating its strategy for the R-rated Blumhouse satire in which elites stalk “deplorables.” “Did anyone see what our ratfucker-in-chief just did?” one character asks early in the screenplay for The Hunt, a Universal Pictures thriller set to open Sept. 27. Another responds: “At least The Hunt’s coming up. Nothing better than going out to the Manor and slaughtering a dozen deplorables.” Hollywood Reporter repeatedly refers to the film as a “satire.” Apparently standards for satire have slipped over the years. More: In the aftermath of mass shootings within days of one another that shocked and traumatized the nation, Universal is re-evaluating its strategy for the certain-to-be-controversial satire. The violent, R-rated film from producer Jason Blum’s Blumhouse follows a dozen MAGA types who wake up in a clearing and realize they are being stalked for sport by elite liberals. Over the Aug. 3 weekend, ESPN pulled an ad for the film that it had previously cleared, while AMC ran the spot during the season premiere of its drama The Preacher. It’s unclear whether the ads were identical, but the one yanked by ESPN opened with a sound resembling an emergency broadcast signal. A rep for ESPN parent Disney declined to comment on the move, but an ESPN source says no spots for the film will appear on the network in the coming weeks. The Hunt stars Betty Gilpin from GLOW and Hilary Swank, representing opposite sides of the political divide. It features guns blazing along with other ultra-violent killings as the elites pick off their prey. The script from Damon Lindelof and Nick Cuse reviewed by The Hollywood Reporter revolves around third-rail political themes. It is hard to say these days what “third-rail political themes” might be. Many on Twitter and other social media, along with mobs assembled–for example–on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s front lawn, are demanding that conservatives be murdered. Does echoing such homicidal intent in a movie constitute “satire”? Hollywood Reporter points out that the track record of films analogous to The Hunt is not promising: From a business perspective, The Hunt presents a gamble for Universal in these divided times. The satire Assassination Nation, which also pitted the woke versus the unwoke in uber-violent fashion, represented the top sale at Sundance 2018 at $10 million. But the film fizzled upon its release later that year, earning just $2 million with no international rollout. Says one person involved with that film, “We thought people would get the joke.” Joke? What joke? Back to The Hunt: The script for The Hunt features the red-state characters wearing trucker hats and cowboy shirts, with one bragging about owning seven guns because it’s his constitutional right. The blue-state characters — some equally adept with firearms — explain that they picked their targets because they expressed anti-choice positions or used the N-word on Twitter. “War is war,” says one character after shoving a stiletto heel through the eye of a denim-clad hillbilly. “Employees in different departments were questioning the wisdom of making such a movie in these times,” says one filmmaker with ties to Universal. “In light of the horrific [recent shootings], is this not the most craven, irresponsible, dangerous exploitation?” Heh. I suppose it is. But when has that ever stopped Hollywood? I just hope that my reading of the trailer is correct, and the “deplorables” go from hunted to hunter. | John Hinderaker | https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/08/civil-war-as-entertainment.php | 2019-08-08 01:38:39+00:00 | 1,565,242,719 | 1,567,534,607 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
427,030 | prepareforchange--2019-06-14--The Satanic Entertainment Industry | 2019-06-14T00:00:00 | prepareforchange | The Satanic Entertainment Industry | If you believe that the music and entertainment industry is there simply to entertain us and make money in the process for its artists, promoters and producers, please think again. Popular music especially and its highly-paid exponents are merely pawns of the Elite and are there in order to further manipulate our minds – especially those of impressionable youth and now even young children. There is a long history of manipulation in the music industry, going back many, many years. The music ‘business’ itself has actually been around since medieval times, but can only be referred to as a true ‘industry’ since the early nineteenth century with the simultaneous developments of the orchestra, the employment of conductors and certain publishing and printing innovations that allowed music to be easily transcribed, passed-on from person to person and to be sold as sheet music. In the early eighteenth century, there is recorded to have been around 8500 composers of music in Europe alone and yet around 8400 of them, despite the fact that their music may have been brilliant or innovative, have never had their music extensively published or played, other than in small, localised concert halls and much of it is today now long-forgotten, lost or deliberately buried. Why should this be? Mainly because, as today, the music industry then had its favourites and certain personalities including the likes of Mozart, who whilst feted as a celebrity of his time, probably did not compose much of the music attributed to him then and since. Mozart was simply a manufactured ‘focal point’ in effect, upon which the money-interests of the music business of the time could focus and from whom it could derive its profits, as was Beethoven. This may well sound cynical and possibly unbelievable, but I can assure you that it is true. How similar to today then? Today’s music industry is rife with such characters, people who have been chosen and indeed ‘created’ to be focal points and the personalities, celebrities if you will, who carry the burden of providing profits for an intensely money-focussed industry, ultimately regardless of the degree of talent they may or may not possess. Musical history does not wish us to be aware of this fact; it just wishes to continue to promote the popular icons of the day, focussing on an artificially generated, elite group of composers who with the passage of time have been placed on pedestals and thus made immortal, just as many famous rock stars have been made the ‘saints’ of the new religion that is music, today. The involvement of occultists in the creation of the ‘superstars’ of their day, such as Mozart, Beethoven and Haydn, cannot be ignored. Indeed the occult influence in music has always been a factor and today is absolutely rife throughout the whole of the music industry. There is also a long history of connectivity from music to mind control going back to the 1950s when ‘pop music’ in its present form was first pushed upon an unsuspecting world by the mass-manipulators of the Frankfurt School and the Tavistock Institute and many performers, singers and members of bands are manipulated into promoting a satanic agenda by recording labels and producers who are also ‘up to their eyes’ in the deadly scheme. Is it at all artistic for people to sing about pain, suffering, death, sadness and despair in such quantities and who would want to taint the formerly beautiful art of music with such things? It is actually an essential aspect of the latter-day degeneration of music and the lowering of consciousness. This works in the same vein as film and television programmes that seem to have now evolved into excessively depressing and/or violent experiences for the viewer, even for very young children who are being increasingly exposed to overt sex and violence and when those few who still actually care about such things complain or point it out they are often labelled as a ‘prude’ or ‘old-fashioned’. Often today music is excessively depressing, replete with songs contain lyrics extolling the virtues of extreme selfishness, greed, violence, death, suicide and murder. And this is not just in heavy metal (the previous chief culprit) any longer but has now been expanded to all forms of modern music even the ‘middle of the road’ ballads aimed at the younger, more impressionable generation. Even fun ‘children’s’ pop music, the likes of which our children and grandchildren listen to all the time, is not immune and is often riddled with overt, sexually explicit and satanic and occult lyrics. Interestingly, a huge number of artists have commented publicly and even composed songs about literally ‘selling their souls’ to the devil to further their musical careers. Many well-known rock artists are well-versed in the occult and are aware that spiritual entities and multidimensional ‘demons’ can manifest themself through music of a lower vibrational nature. They have admitted that they use rock music and the rhythms, the lower guttural tones, and their insidious lyrics to lower the vibrational levels of concerts and thus their attendees. They have also even admitted countless times that they are possessed by their own music and have little control over where these vibrations lead them. This is typical of almost any satanic ‘ritual’ or practice; the lowering of consciousness and allowing lower vibrational entities to control a person. These practices often lead to complete loss of control and it was well known to the people at the last Woodstock anniversary concert that a form of ‘bad energy’ had manifested itself throughout the huge audience following many hours and days of extremely heavy, depressive and violent songs. This information emanates from many sources; there have been many books written and several films made on the subject and many well-known artists have been exposed and even admitted themselves that this is taking place. However, the idea that rock music is a tool of the ‘devil’ has been pushed so relentlessly by religious leaders and evangelists that people are now more often likely to laugh at or mock the idea, rather than take it seriously. Nevertheless, well-known musicians are often reported as admitting to the practice of Satanism and their friends or colleagues will often mention that they have multiple personalities and that ‘what you see on the stage is not really that person’. Unfortunately, rock and pop music has become mostly a grossly degenerative art form. Some musicians are exempt from this tag, but the music industry contributes to this view generally by actually enhancing and promoting the popularity of the ‘heaviest’ bands or the most emotionally depressing artists. The rock music of today is several magnitudes darker and more depressing than Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and other well-known ‘devil-rockers’ of past decades and at the time these bands were considered the very epitome of evil by the deeply religious. Heavy metal music has now become almost completely demonic per se and many performers revel in this fact, openly flaunting it. It is devolution of society and the art of music for the purpose of lowering the vibration of the consciousness in order to manipulate the youth of today into fulfilling the purposes of the Elite. It is, in short the next baby-step on the road to the complete undermining of human society and the human psyche in order to exert control over minds. As I say, many artists are aware of this and some became aware of the fact that they have been manipulated by the music industry or began to recollect memories of their brainwashing, either through the military or through ‘handlers’ who often happen to be their manager. These are often the artists we know to have so famously died by ‘drug overdose’ or have suffered other strange deaths. Many of these artists have either confided before their deaths in individuals who would later relay this information to those behind the scenes in the music industry or indeed may even ‘go public’ with their knowledge as did Michael Jackson shortly before his untimely demise at the hands of his ‘doctor’. Jackson had been telling anyone and everyone during the period prior to his death that the CEO of Sony, Tommy Mottola (who by the way virtually owned Jackson body and soul, if not actually literally) was ‘the devil incarnate’. A metaphor or figure of speech? Maybe, maybe not. The deeper that one delves into this murky pit, the more one realises that the ‘musical greats’ are often occultists with exceptional talent and who are intentionally using that talent to manipulate the consciousness of listeners. However, I also believe that many of the ‘household-name’ musicians early in their careers are lured into a subtle trap baited with money and fame but then once their handlers in the recording companies completely sink their claws and teeth into them, they realise that they are caught, with no possible escape route and thus are condemned to continue with their charade for the rest of their careers, which often ends prematurely for one reason or another. The premature end to musical careers can and does occur for several reasons. Obviously, there are some genuine cases of accidental drug overdoses, but I am equally sure that some of these are murders and some suicides. But in any case we should also then ask the question as to why drug overdose and suicide (murder?) is so prevalent among this group of people? There is so much information on this topic that could be included, that to do it justice would really justify a book in its own right. The number of examples of the satanic nature of the entertainment business is truly staggering and so we will concentrate on a few specific examples and events, but please bear in mind that this is only the tiniest sliver of ice on top of the very tip of an extremely large iceberg. Premature death seems to be an occupational hazard amongst so-called celebrities in all fields. Again there are many reasons for this, some of them even genuine ones, but there are also many suspicious ones, some of them extremely suspicious bordering on the blatantly obvious. As stated above, Michael Jackson would fall neatly into that particular category, as would Whitney Houston who died shortly before my writing of this article in early 2012 and as the most recent incidents tend to be the ones that are freshest in the mind, let us concentrate on that particular one. “It’s a very predictable pattern that happens with all famous artists. They become valuable commodities. If they were shares, you would see Bay Street buying them up and fundamentally, it’s the realisation that it’s the end of the artist’s productivity, that they won’t produce anything more that sparks the buying frenzy.” Theo Peridis, professor of strategic management at York University Regarding Whitney Houston’s sad demise (11th February 2012) and as with any other recently deceased ‘megastar’, it is a fact that the record company stood to gain massively in terms of vastly increased sales, albeit short-term. However how much better for them to have a short, one-off major boost than a long, lingering virtually profit-less demise to any artist’s career? The 2012 Grammy Awards took place shortly after the sudden, mysterious death of Whitney Houston. As the old tradition would have it, the show went on nevertheless, but not without an abundance of strange symbolism and ritualism that made it extremely clear that there is a definite ‘dark side’ to the entertainment business. Upon retrospective analysis of the facts surrounding Whitney Houston’s death coupled with the symbolic elements of the 2012 Grammy awards, the entire event has the look and feel of an occult ritual, complete with a blood sacrifice, a celebration and even a ‘re-birth’. Some of the things described below were pre-planned, while others were possibly just odd coincidences. Let us now examine the most significant events that happened during the fateful weekend of Houston’s death. Whitney Houston’s untimely death is strikingly similar to many other celebrity ‘sacrifices’. Accounts of strange events before the death, the bizarre behaviour of the so-called authorities when the death was discovered, conflicting reports, the vagueness surrounding the cause of the death and last but not least, a typical response from the music industry via the Grammys ‘ceremony’. Her case indeed followed the same pattern as several other celebrity deaths that were blamed on drug excesses, despite much conflicting, albeit circumstantial evidence to the contrary. As was the case for other celebrities, the controlled media almost immediately began a campaign depicting Whitney as a hopeless drug addict. Maybe she was a drug addict, but if so, that is probably just a convenient side-issue, a symptom of the true killer of Whitney, ie. the much vaunted entertainment industry itself. As with the recent cases of Michael Jackson, Amy Winehouse, Heath Ledger, Brittany Murphy and many others too numerous to mention, going back through the years, bizarre events both preceded and followed the death of Whitney Houston and after even a cursory examination of those events, it is impossible not to ponder as to whether her death (and the others) was truly an accident or a deliberate ‘sacrifice’ planned and undertaken by hidden hands? The majority of mainstream media sources have emphasised the drugs connection ad nauseum but several, more reliable sources have revealed other details that may provide evidence for an alternative view of the situation. At the Beverley Hilton where Whitney Houston died, in the ballroom several floors below her suite of rooms at the time of her death, there was a ‘pre-Grammys’ party in full-swing. As the news broke regarding her death, Whitney was still lying there in her room in her fourth floor suite. She had been discovered dead in her bath, but it is unclear exactly by whom as there were several people in her suite at that time (3.50pm local time). Her body was not moved out until shortly before the party ended around midnight. What has not been made public (at least in the mainstream) is that at around 11pm, paramedics were called again and security services and police also rushed to the scene and a medical-type wheelchair with restraints was also wheeled-in as Whitney’s daughter Bobbi Kristina had become hysterical and paramedics were on the point of removing her to the hospital. Why should this happen, at least seven hours after Whitney’s death? Very strange indeed. Also, at 2.30am during the night immediately preceding Whitney’s death, a man in a 3rd floor room immediately beneath her suite complained that water was cascading into his room from above. This was no mere trickle this was a full-blown gushing of water. He called security and accompanied them upstairs to see for himself what on earth was going-on. According to this man, it was the bathtub that was overflowing but he noticed that a large-screen television had also been smashed. Significant or not, neither of these incidents were reported by the mainstream media at the time or as far as I know, since the event and from an organisation that usually picks-up on the most trivial of incidents and blows them out of all proportion, I have to say I find that fact more than a little strange, to say the least. So as it turned-out then, there was a party in full-swing going on three floors below Whitney’s body whilst it just lay there for hours on end. Is this not more than a little distasteful especially given the fact that many of the attendees were Whitney’s close colleagues and friends and acquaintances in the music business? Why was it not simply cancelled out of respect for her death or was there some kind of warped thrill to be had in partying-on below the dead body? Could it even have been part of some sick ritual or ceremony? It would not surprise me in the least, given the track record of these people. Immediately before Whitney’s death, in another strange occurrence, she had been seen fraternising with a person who had also been hanging around Michael Jackson through his last few months alive and in the hours leading up to his death. This man goes by the name of Raffles van Exel (a pseudonym if ever I heard one). He apparently is from Amsterdam in Holland and has also been known to use the aliases of Raffles Dawson and Raffles Benson. He was present in Whitney’s suite of rooms at the time of her demise and apparently appeared downstairs in the hotel lobby shortly thereafter wearing aviator-type sunglasses and ostentatiously weeping and wailing. His usual entourage was there with him, including Quinton Aaron, a Hollywood B-grade movie actor and despite his terrible shock at Whitney’s death he still somehow managed to force himself to attend the party in the ballroom. He was bearing Whitney’s entry ticket in his hand when he entered the room to what was apparently an outpouring of sympathy, but obviously not enough sympathy to actually halt the party. A security guard confirmed that Exel had been hanging around Whitney for a few days and was actually pictured standing behind her as she emerged from a nightclub earlier that week, looking confused and disorientated. So who really is this Exel character? He apparently was to be seen hanging around Michael Jackson and his family and friends during Jackson’s child molestation trial also. No-one really seems to know who he is for sure, but he is often seen and pictured around celebrities. Exel claims to own several companies including Raffles Entertainment and also claims to be the manager of Chaka Khan. There are a multitude of photos of him on the Internet posing with almost everyone who is anyone. He apparently does not respond to any emails or phone messages to his published contact points and thus very much remains the archetypal ‘mystery man’. So, was Exel an instrumental part in Whitney’s death in any way and had she become persona non gratis to the Elite’s music industry in some way? Was she becoming ‘out of control’ or ‘losing’ her programming perhaps? It has been reported that she had had premonitions about her own demise (where have we heard this before?) and shortly before her death she allegedly passed a note to her friend, the singer, Brandy who flatly refused to reveal its contents, other than to ambiguously state that ‘Whitney meant everything to me. She’s the reason that I sing’. There is also an occult/numerology connection to Houston’s death, in this case a connection with the number 11. In occult rites the number 11 is a master number as it cannot be reduced and because it exceeds the number 10 (regarded as perfection) by 1, it is also linked to black magic and ‘bad vibrations’. Kabbalists tend to associate this number with transgression of the law, sorcery and possibly significantly, martyrdom. It is also linked to sacrifice. For example, 9/11, the twin towers looked like a large number 11 and Remembrance/Veterans Day the 11/11 at the 11th hour. There is yet another link to consider and that is concerning Lady Gaga (another mind-controlled MK Ultra slave) and previous Grammy awards ceremonies. Gaga had close links to the fashion designer, Alexander MacQueen who was strongly involved with the occult and mind control and who himself died on the 11th February 2010, exactly two years to the day before Houston. Could it also be significant that Whitney Houston’s room number the day that she died, was 434 which in numerology equates to 4+3+4 =11. Again, certainly food for thought. At the Grammy awards ceremony in 2011, Lady Gaga said, “I need to thank Whitney Houston. I wanted to thank Whitney, because when I wrote ‘Born this Way’, I imagined she was singing it because I wasn’t secure enough in myself to imagine I was a superstar. So, Whitney, I imagined you were singing ‘Born This Way’ when I wrote it.” ‘Born this Way’, surprise of surprises was released on the 11th February 2011, exactly one year to the day before Whitney’s death. Significant? Most certainly, I would venture to suggest. It is highly likely that Gaga (or more likely her controllers) in conjunction with Houston’s, planned it all very carefully. Gaga’s outfit for the 2012 awards was all-black, possibly symbolically signifying death? Celine Dion was extraordinarily quick in apportioning the blame for Whitney’s death. During a TV interview shortly after the event, she blamed the bad influence of the industry and even stated the need to be ‘afraid’ of it and its over-reaching influence. “It’s just really unfortunate that drugs, bad people or bad influence took over. It took over her dreams. It took over her love and motherhood. When you think about Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe and Michael Jackson and Amy Winehouse, to get into drugs like that, for whatever reason, is it because of the stress and bad influence? What happens when you have everything? What happens when you have love, support, the family, motherhood? You have responsibilities of a mother and then something happens and it destroys everything. That’s why I don’t do parties and I don’t hang out. That’s why I’m not part of show business. We have to be afraid. I’ve always said you have to have fun and do music and you can never be part of show business because you don’t know what it’s going to get you into. You have to do your work and get out of there.” Celine Dion “I think we all, as artists, because we’re highly sensitive people and this machine around us, this so-called ‘music industry,’ is such a demonic thing. It sacrifices people’s lives and their essences at the drop of a dime … I had a manager once say to me, ‘You know you’re worth more money dead than alive’.” Chaka Khan Are Chaka Khan’s references to ‘demonic’ and ‘sacrifices’, to be taken literally? Judging by the symbolism at the Grammy awards and the strangeness surrounding Whitney Houston’s death and that of many others down the years, it would certainly appear so. Please understand however that the above events are just one example and one tiny pinprick on the finger-tip of the very large body of evidence linking show business to the satanic arts. Many, many artistes are said to be involved in this whole charade, many knowingly but nevertheless unable to escape its clutches for fear of the Michael Jackson / Whitney Houston experience befalling them and many unknowingly through subtle mind-control techniques as described previously in this book. The presence of occult, satanic and Illuminati/freemasonic symbolism throughout the whole entertainment industry is rife, to say the very least. During the 1950s and 60s, occult practices were slowly but surely absorbed into popular music and today the industry literally thrives by using an outward spectacle of occult and satanic rituals and symbolism. The entire music and entertainment industry is an important indoctrination tool used by and for the Elite and many musicians are introduced to Satanism and occultism. Today, the most popular musicians, such as for example, Lady Gaga and Britney Spears are totally controlled by the occult and the music industry and Hollywood are fixated by Black Magic and Witchcraft. Music has always been associated with the occult and can be effectively used as a tool for programming minds. Satanism and the occult are also known to specifically extract energy from humans who are manipulated into trances. Throughout the twentieth century and now into the twenty-first, music has been manipulated from its initial state of innocence, goodness and wholesomeness to become in many cases, downright vile and nasty. Throughout the world many people, especially the 10-30 age range are listening to vacuous, emotionally-numbing and trance-inducing negatively-vibrational music and demonic lyrics, which at one time were uniquely present within heavy metal rock, but now seem to emanate from and be present in all genres. ‘Rock and Roll’ originally emerged as a defined musical style in the United States in the early to mid-1950s. It is descended directly from the rhythm and blues music of the 1940s, which itself developed from earlier blues, jazz and swing music and was also influenced by gospel, country and western and traditional folk music. Rock and Roll in turn gave birth to ‘rock music’ in general and over the last fifty years the individual musical genres have expanded greatly, presumably in order to cater for everyone’s individual tastes and ensure that no-one escapes the net. It is extremely important to identify which types of music are harmful to the human psyche and which are negative. The vast majority of pre-1950s music calibrates in our consciousness as positive and positive consciousness in turn creates high levels of confidence and a healthy self-esteem. This cannot be said however of a vast majority of post 1950s music, especially from the 1980s onwards. Its insidious influence on our psyches has no doubt left its mark on us all to a greater or lesser degree and there is no doubt that certain songs, artists and lyrics contribute in some way, however large or small, to the huge increase in suicide among the under 25 age groups, which stands at record levels and is no doubt welcomed enthusiastically by the Elite in line with their stated policy of huge population reduction. Indeed, music has a very strong, very definite physiological and psychological effect on people, especially the more impressionable among us. Disharmonic, discordant and cacophonic music engenders a number of negative behaviours, although those affected are often unaware of the extreme effect it is having upon them. When Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones wrote the song ‘Sympathy for the Devil’, in the 1960s, this was one of the first examples of Satanism in rock music. To many observers, the occult and Satanism began to expand its influence through such bands as Led Zeppelin and even the Eagles a band which is generally regarded as being ‘soft’ rock oriented. And so the Elite now performs its satanic rituals upon us all, via our favourite musicians and through all the dozens of pop music TV channels that exist today and also their contrived, highly ritualistic awards ceremonies in front of millions of deluded viewers. The American researcher and author, David McGowan in his serialised Internet story, ‘The Strange Story of Laurel Canyon’, relates how most of the popular musicians and entertainers in the 1960s had some connection to the American military and thus to the myriad of intelligence networks. He tells the totally credible story of how these artists were ‘artificially’ brought to prominence at this time and describes the strange goings-on around the music scene in those days and the insidious influence that these people and their suspect connections had on the music of that period and henceforward from that time. In 1985, the New Solidarity newspaper, which has since been closed-down by the US federal government, conducted an interview with Hezekiah Ben Aaron, who at the time was the third-ranking member of the Church of Satan. In this interview, Aaron revealed that it was his ‘Church’ that started such heavy-metal genre rock groups as Black Sabbath, The Blue Oyster Cult and many others. The Church of Satan was then headed by its high priest, Anton LaVey but many people believe that LaVey, was just a front man for the real high priest, Kenneth Anger, the man who had been responsible for introducing the Rolling Stones to the occult. It is a fact that the human brain thinks at a rate of approximately eight thoughts per second and that the eyes see 20 to 30 separate actions per second, but the brain only uses eight of these to send to the conscious mind. The subconscious absorbs the rest, subliminally and indiscriminately. However, most live musical performances incorporate video screens with their music at 30 frames per second at the standard American television resolution but they colour eight of the 30 frames differently. They choose which ones we think consciously about and which are just subconsciously absorbed as programming. Hollywood has used this trick, invented originally by Disney, for many years. It is now illegal in television commercials and regarded as subliminal advertising, which, as most people know is an extremely powerful conditioning tool. The ‘eight per second’ frequency is also used by bass tones or bass drums or lights or all together, in a concert or live-show setting and this has the same effect upon the brain as does hypnosis. That is it fragments analytical thoughts so that certain mispronounced or difficult to understand lyrics are immediately absorbed by the subconscious mind. If we then add in a mix of illegal drugs and fake (or even real) sacrificial blood, create a circle with a pentagram using the stage lights and positions of the musicians within it, place large speakers in strategic positions for 13 separate points of origin of musical sound, altogether this constitutes a bona fide ‘Black Mass’ replete with ‘sacred geometry’. So we have now seen how pop culture is filled with occult and masonic symbolism. The Illuminati symbolism apparent in Gaga’s stage and TV appearances is utterly blatant and is becoming so transparent that analyses almost become a simple statement of the obvious. Her whole persona, whether it is an act or not, is a tribute to mind control, freemasonry and the occult where being vacuous, compliant, incoherent and simply absent-minded is manipulated into being a ‘fashionable’, desirable state. Incorporated in the videos, photos and shows of Lady Gaga and many other pop icons, is symbolism that refers explicitly to the Elite and to mind control. This symbolism is deep, esoteric and even pseudo-spiritual and whilst millions of young people imitate Gaga’s gestures, her act is part of a much bigger picture that includes many other ‘stars’ displaying and promoting the same overt symbolism. ‘Lady Gaga’ is in fact a fake persona, a manufactured Illuminati puppet, created to unduly influence the impressionable youth of today and to indoctrinate them into the insidious ways of the Elite. In this she is not alone, by far the vast majority of the mainstream music industry is also under their deceptive spell. Disclaimer: We at Prepare for Change (PFC) bring you information that is not offered by the mainstream news, and therefore may seem controversial. The opinions, views, statements, and/or information we present are not necessarily promoted, endorsed, espoused, or agreed to by Prepare for Change, its leadership Council, members, those who work with PFC, or those who read its content. However, they are hopefully provocative. Please use discernment! Use logical thinking, your own intuition and your own connection with Source, Spirit and Natural Laws to help you determine what is true and what is not. By sharing information and seeding dialogue, it is our goal to raise consciousness and awareness of higher truths to free us from enslavement of the matrix in this material realm. | Edward Morgan | https://prepareforchange.net/2019/06/14/the-satanic-entertainment-industry/ | 2019-06-14 23:59:29+00:00 | 1,560,571,169 | 1,567,539,088 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
427,067 | prepareforchange--2019-06-23--THE GOAL OF HOLLYWOOD AND THE ENTIRE ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY IS TO NORMALIZE SATANISM AND THAT MISSIO | 2019-06-23T00:00:00 | prepareforchange | THE GOAL OF HOLLYWOOD AND THE ENTIRE ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY IS TO NORMALIZE SATANISM AND THAT MISSION IS NOW NEARLY COMPLETE | In 1988, I left my parent’s home in New Jersey and headed west to California. In A very short period of time I found work as an actor, became a stand-in and double for then-stars like Richard Gere and Matt Dillon, acting in dozens of commercials and enjoyed small roles on many of the popular shows of the day. I was a card-carrying member of SAG and AFTRA for 18 years. From what I personally saw during the 6 years I was actively involved, before the Lord called me out of it in 1994, it was not an overly wholesome place. Many crazy things were done behind closed doors. But in 2019, not only are those things now done openly, you can also see that Hollywood, the music industry, and even formerly family friendly companies like Disney are working to normalize the occult in general and satanism in particular. “…but this is your hour, and the power of darkness.” Luke 22:53 (KJV) Never before has the influence of mass culture and the media been so predominant or so powerful. 24 hours per day, we are bombarded by ads, videos, sound bytes, music, billboards, with our every move being tracked on our mobile phones. People are shocked to find that after they had a conversation in the living room with a friend about buying a new Chevy, the next time they use their computer or mobile device, there’s an ad for the exact car they were just discussing. How can this be? Simple, your phones are listening to you, even when turned off, and ads are sent to you based on what you were talking about. It happens to me multiple times per week. “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” Mark 8:36 (KJV) This article is not going to contain a lot of words, because words will not be nearly as effective as the videos you are about to see. And after you watch them, if you can watch them all the way through, you will no longer be under the illusion of America being a “godly nation” or about Americans being “one people under God” because we are not under God. These videos will show you that America is firmly in the grip of the occult and satanism to a degree that you never thought possible. And it gets worse every day. “And we know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness.” 1 John 5:19 (KJV) Nearly every Hollywood and music superstar now claims association with the Illuminati, Freemasonry, OTO or the Church of Satan. They flash occult signs and symbols in all their music videos, and we the same in nearly all films and movies. But it is useless for me to spend overly many words telling you when I can show you. “Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience:” Ephesians 2:2 (KJV) GRAPHIC WARNING: The images you will see in these videos are beyond disturbing, and the language at times equally so. Please pray before watching any of them. I would say to not let your children watch them, but guess what? They have probably been seeing them for years as well as buying their occult-themed music. Jay-Z just became a billionaire because millions and millions of people buy his music. People like your kids, people like you maybe, too. “And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.” Revelation 12:9 (KJV) People, we are losing this battle, and maybe from a biblical point of view these things cannot be stopped. But what can be stopped is you and I being a part of it. After you watch these videos, you will see how pervasive satanism in America truly is, and shockingly, you will see how perhaps you have been a part of it because it is just so deeply ingrained in our culture by this point. This first video is an excellent overview proving beyond the shadow of any doubt that the music and entertainment industry is controlled by Satan. So you think you listen to “clean” rock music, do you? You like your favorite “christian” heavy metal band, yes? No such thing as you will see here. Everywhere you look in movies and on television, we see the same themes of the occult and satanism being played out over and over again. If you think that people are famous because of their talent, you won’t after you watch this. Hollywood hates God and the Bible, and you will see here in this video. Watch how easily they can mock Him, mock Jesus Christ and mock Christianity. Only devils could produce a ‘comedy’ skit like this one. These are the popular YouTube influencers our youth is watching – James Charles & Bretman Rock. Hide your kids from the internet… Why does nearly every famous person, at some point, take photos of themselves or engage in photoshoots where they cover one eye? In this video you will learn about the ancient Babylonian mystery religions where formed the basis of the Illuminati. This is a 5-part series on the satanism in Hollywood, and it show real celebrities doing what they do, and it is very hard to watch. VICE’s Charlet Duboc travels to Little Rock Arkansas to meet with Lucien Greaves and the members of the Satanic Temple to find out why they’re trying to install a statue of Baphomet in protest of religious freedom on the Capitol’s lawn. If you have watched some of all of these videos, then by now you know the true state of America, our culture, and who it is that is running it. God has given me this amazing platform of NTEB, this ‘pulpit’ if you will, that allows me to reach deeply into the whole world. I am using it to warn you in the hopes you will start disconnecting from Hollywood, from the music industry, even from organized sports. These things are being used to program us, to control us, to accept as normal things that are perversely abnormal. What do you think Pride Month is, anyway? It is a celebration of the normalization of everything that hates God and hates the Bible. Why are transgenders being pushed so heavily now? The symbol of Baphomet in satanism has both male and female genitalia, it is transgender. Do you get it now, are you starting to see what I am talking about? It is everywhere you look, in everything you purchase, and in everything that comes over the airwaves or the wifi. “He beholdeth all high things: he is a king over all the children of pride.” Job 41:34 (KJV) I will leave you with this last thought. Stop making excuses as to why you can’t witness for the Lord Jesus, turn off the television set, get some gospel tracts and get busy. Because as you can see in this article, things are getting ready to ‘wrap up’ soon, with you or without you. Make a stand or be forever on the sidelines, the choice is yours. You have free will, use it. But know this. While you’re sitting back praying “Lord, make me willing to be willing” and all the rest of that Laodicean junk, people are dying and going to Hell. 151,000 minimum per day every day. Tick, tock. Disclaimer: We at Prepare for Change (PFC) bring you information that is not offered by the mainstream news, and therefore may seem controversial. The opinions, views, statements, and/or information we present are not necessarily promoted, endorsed, espoused, or agreed to by Prepare for Change, its leadership Council, members, those who work with PFC, or those who read its content. However, they are hopefully provocative. Please use discernment! Use logical thinking, your own intuition and your own connection with Source, Spirit and Natural Laws to help you determine what is true and what is not. By sharing information and seeding dialogue, it is our goal to raise consciousness and awareness of higher truths to free us from enslavement of the matrix in this material realm. | Edward Morgan | https://prepareforchange.net/2019/06/23/the-goal-of-hollywood-and-the-entire-entertainment-industry-is-to-normalize-satanism-and-that-mission-is-now-nearly-complete/ | 2019-06-23 17:24:53+00:00 | 1,561,325,093 | 1,567,538,375 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
455,699 | redstate--2019-04-10--Foxs Last Man Standing and Conservative Entertainment Reaches a Milestone | 2019-04-10T00:00:00 | redstate | Fox’s ‘Last Man Standing’ – and Conservative Entertainment – Reaches a Milestone | It’s not just a show victory; it’s a conservative one. On May 10th, 2017, after six successful seasons — and despite being the second-most-watched ABC sitcom during the 2016-17 season — the Tim Allen hit Last Man Standing was abruptly canceled. Did parent company Disney just not like money? Why else would the show have gotten the ax? Tim had an idea, expressed on Norm Macdonald LIve: Aside from the “danger” of his conservative bent, Tim was at a loss: “I have no idea why they did what they did. … Second biggest show, [ABC] hadn’t won a Friday night in 15 years. They put us out to pasture on Friday and we won Friday. Big night for us. Big night for them. I would have put Roseanne after us. Use us just to launch shows, if nothing else.” A year later, a television miracle happened: after much protest over the inexplicable canning, Fox revived the show. “Team LMS was in the sixth inning, ahead by four runs, stands were packed and then for no reason, they call off the game. It leaves you sitting in the dugout, holding a bat and puzzled. Now we get the news from Fox that it’s time to get back out on that diamond – hell yes, I’m excited! When I heard the offer to create more episodes of Last Man Standing, I did a fist pump so hard I threw my back out. I could not be more grateful for the fans who wrote petitions and kept up the passion and incredible support for the show.” As of October, the comedy was killin’ it in the ratings, averaging 8 million viewers on Friday nights (see my coverage here). In January, it was still going strong, as reported by Deadline: So how’s it doing now? The sitcom centered around a Republican dad and husband is set to return April 19th — for its milestone 150th episode. Congratulations to Tim and the crew, and to those of us supporting a true act of diversity in Hollywood network programming. BY THE WAY: I HEARTILY RECOMMEND TIM’S BOOK, DON’T STAND TOO CLOSE TO A NAKED MAN. See 3 more pieces from me: Superman & Lois, a Christmas miracle, and saving yourself. And please follow Alex Parker on Twitter and Facebook. Thank you for reading! Please sound off in the Comments section below. For iPhone instructions, see the bottom of this page. If you have an iPhone and want to comment, select the box with the upward arrow at the bottom of your screen; swipe left and choose “Request Desktop Site.” If it fails to automatically refresh, manually reload the page. Scroll down to the red horizontal bar that says “Show Comments.” | Alex Parker | https://www.redstate.com/alexparker/2019/04/09/foxs-last-man-standing-conservative-entertainment-reaches-milestone/ | 2019-04-10 00:26:25+00:00 | 1,554,870,385 | 1,567,543,364 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
457,232 | redstate--2019-07-21--By Fundraising With Scooter Braun Is Kamala Harris Standing Up for Women in Entertainment | 2019-07-21T00:00:00 | redstate | By Fundraising With Scooter Braun, Is Kamala Harris Standing Up for Women in Entertainment? | Music mogul Scooter Braun, recently in the news regarding his business dealings with Taylor Swift, hosted a “fireside chat” fundraiser for Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) Saturday night at his Brentwood mansion. Katy Perry, Ariana Grande and Demi Lovato were among the Hollywood heavyweights who turned up for a fireside chat with the Democratic hopeful in Brentwood. The cozy gathering took place at the $20 million compound of starmaker Scooter Braun, who has helped guide the careers of A-listers including Justin Bieber, Kanye West and supermodel Karlie Kloss. Taylor Swift (and her fans) have a very different view of Braun. That’s because Braun recently acquired Big Machine Label Group, Taylor’s former label, and with it, her complete catalog of recordings to date. “Since Swift signed with Big Machine Records at 15, the label owns her master recordings “for the life of the author plus an additional 70 years.” The contract essentially shackles Swift to the label forever, with very few legally permissible ways to escape. Conceivably, Big Machine Records could transfer from owner to owner, and any star must continue to follow the label as it changes hands.” And, according to Taylor, he’s bullied her for years and encouraged some of his clients (Kanye West, Justin Bieber) to bully her as well. She wrote on her Tumblr page: I learned about Scooter Braun’s purchase of my masters as it was announced to the world. All I could think about was the incessant, manipulative bullying I’ve received at his hands for years. Like when Kim Kardashian orchestrated an illegally recorded snippet of a phone call to be leaked and then Scooter got his two clients together to bully me online about it. (See photo) Or when his client, Kanye West, organized a revenge porn music video which strips my body naked. Now Scooter has stripped me of my life’s work, that I wasn’t given an opportunity to buy. Essentially, my musical legacy is about to lie in the hands of someone who tried to dismantle it. This is my worst case scenario. This is what happens when you sign a deal at fifteen to someone for whom the term ‘loyalty’ is clearly just a contractual concept. And when that man says ‘Music has value’, he means its value is beholden to men who had no part in creating it. By associating herself with Braun, Kamala Harris’ commitment to standing up for women can certainly be called into question. Sunday morning Harris posted a video to Twitter aimed at President Trump, saying that “real strength is building people up” and not using a position of power to demean them. As yet, Taylor Swift hasn’t commented on the irony. Jennifer Van Laar is RedState’s Deputy Managing Editor. Follow her on Twitter @jenvanlaar, or on Facebook. | Jennifer Van Laar | https://www.redstate.com/jenvanlaar/2019/07/21/fundraising-scooter-braun-kamala-harris-standing-women-entertainment/ | 2019-07-21 20:30:44+00:00 | 1,563,755,444 | 1,567,536,257 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
458,605 | redstate--2019-10-08--Blizzard Entertainment Suspends Player from Championships After He Voices Support for Hong Kong Prot | 2019-10-08T00:00:00 | redstate | Blizzard Entertainment Suspends Player from Championships After He Voices Support for Hong Kong Protests | If you grew up playing games like World of Warcraft or Diablo, or have even enjoyed more recent games like Overwatch or Hearthstone, then you’ve been playing Blizzard games. But Blizzard has apparently sunk down to the level of appeasing China like many other American businesses have done, and suspended a player from their Hearthstone championships after the player had conducted a post-victory interview wearing goggles and a gas mask, which has become something of a symbol for the Hong Kong protests. The player also said “Libertate Hong Kong, revolution of our age!” In response, Blizzard suspended the player for a month and removed any prize money he may have accumulated in the process. Blizzard posted a statement on their website detailing their decision: During the Asia-Pacific Grandmasters broadcast over the weekend there was a competition rule violation during a post-match interview, involving Blitzchung and two casters, which resulted in the removal of the match VOD replay. Upon further review we have found the action has violated the 2019 Hearthstone Grandmasters Official Competition Rules section 6.1 (o) and is individual behavior which does not represent Blizzard or Hearthstone Esports. 6.1 (o) is found below. Blizzard posted the rule that was violated in full: It’s likely that Blizzard was operating on the “offends a portion or group of the public” part of their rules. Why is this important? Because it’s one more company that is caving to China as quickly as it can, joining other companies like the NBA and Disney when it comes to kissing Chinese boots in order to stay in its market. Recently, Houston Rockets coach Daryl Morey tweeted out his support for the Hong Kong protests and was immediately denounced by the NBA and the owner of the Houston Rockets, Tilman Fertitta As I covered earlier, China banned any mention of the show South Park from its internet after the show creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker wrote an entire episode dedicated to slamming this very thing. Chinese censorship has made companies alter its product so it can sell in its market, effectively censoring our content here in America. The only people who seemed to understand that and not cave to the Chinese are Stone and Parker, who wrote their brand of an “apology” to China. Blizzard acted fast in order to stay afloat in the Chinese market. While I understand that a good chunk of cash comes from China, companies are effectively sacrificing the principles of free speech and freedom in order to make money. This would be better bitten in the rear now than later, and people should make sure these companies understand that they’re American, not Chinese. That they’re better off embracing American values, not those of totalitarians. | Brandon Morse | https://www.redstate.com/brandon_morse/2019/10/08/blizzard-entertainment-suspends-player-championships-voices-support-hong-kong-protests/ | Tue, 08 Oct 2019 14:00:46 +0000 | 1,570,557,646 | 1,570,543,722 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
539,144 | sputnik--2019-07-29--Five Million Britons Tune in But is Love Island Opium of the People or Light Entertainment | 2019-07-29T00:00:00 | sputnik | Five Million Britons Tune in, But is Love Island ‘Opium of the People’ or ‘Light Entertainment’? | The latest series of hit TV show Love Island finishes in the UK on Monday evening and Tommy Fury - brother of boxer Tyson Fury - and his girlfriend Molly-Mae Hague are the hot favourites to win the £50,000 prize. ITV’s chief executive Carolyn McCall said last week Love Island was the most profitable show on the channel, and UberEats reportedly paid £5 million to sponsor the series, which gets five million viewers per episode, most of them aged between 16 and 34. The current series, which is due to end on Monday, 29 July, is filmed in Majorca but next year ITV plans to add a second winter series, which will be filmed in South Africa. Two former contestants - Mike Thalassitis and Sophie Gradon - have committed suicide in the last year but Ms McCall said it had been almost two years since they appeared on the show and it was misleading and “strange” to link their deaths to Love Island. Love Island is fairly cheap to make and the format has proved popular in Germany, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Australia and is set to be rolled out later this year in Hungary, Poland, New Zealand, Poland and the United States. H. N. Lloyd, an author and social commentator, has said he felt Love Island and other reality TV shows were part of the “slow dumbing down of TV and society in general.” “Karl Marx said religion was the opium of the people, well know the opium of the people is watching people with all the charm, wit and sophistication of a plate of mince rutting in a Spanish villa. We’ve turned people with no discernible talent or personality into heroes and figures to aspire to be like.” Naomi Watson, a teacher from London, disagreed: “I watch Love Island and I enjoy the fact that it’s light-hearted after a long, hard day at work. It’s a nice way to unwind, to watch something that doesn’t require much mental power. There is something quite comforting in watching other people’s drama. In 2019 there are lots of different things to watch on TV. It’s about choice and variety. They are making it because there is an audience for it. If people want to watch documentaries they can watch them on the History Channel or Netflix.” Her friend, Eloisa Fitzgerald, who is also a teacher in London, said: “I watch it because it’s a way to de-stress. I find it funny. It’s not serious. It’s just temporary, a short experience that people are having and you can see how relationships develop and learn about people’s values.” She said: “It’s not dumbing down TV. It’s just the way the world is moving. There are a lot of reality programmes and people love watching things like Gogglebox, which is hilarious.” Ms Fitzgerald said she was a bit “concerned” about the influence Love Island might have on children and she said parents should not let them watch it under a certain age. “Too many parents don’t keep an eye on what their kids watch,” she said. Mr Lloyd said: “What really annoys me about Love Island and these other shows is we live in a country where people should be really, really angry. We’ve got one of the most incompetent governments ever, where a fifth of the populace live in poverty. Schools, the police and the NHS are massively under-funded. The masses should be angry as Hell and out on the streets protesting. Instead they’re sat at home, their minds numbed by reality TV and the latest flavour of Pringles.” Mr Lloyd said he felt Love Island was “damaging” not just to the viewers but also to the contestants. “They get their five minutes of fame and then are left to cope in the real world. The Mental Health Foundation has said that Love Island gives young people unrealistic expectations of body image, wrapped up as being aspirational,” said Mr Lloyd. He said: “People watch it and think ‘I want to be like that. I want to be like them. I want that lifestyle’. Yet they have no talent or discernible way of becoming famous. They think fame just comes to them without having to put the graft in.” Ms Watson again disagrees: “You can actually use it as a talking point to discuss with young people about unrealistic body goals and some schools are using it in PHSE (Personal Social Health and Economic education) lessons to debate body image and mindfulness.” She said: “It’s just light entertainment and people should not take it too seriously. I certainly don’t aspire to be like some of the contestants. But I imagine some viewers may have an unhealthy relationship with them.” Mr Lloyd accused other shows, like The X Factor, of deliberately mocking people with mental health issues and “getting them on the show so that viewers can laugh at and mock them like a sad and tawdry 21st century Victorian freak show.” Ms Watson and Ms Fitzgerald were both concerned about how black women in particular struggle to succeed in Love Island. This year Yewande Biala, a scientist from Dublin, crashed out of this year’s show early as did Samira Mighty last year. Ms Fitzgerald said: “Black contestants find it difficult to get into the final. This year it was Yewande - who was very intelligent and attractive - and last year Samira, so it highlights the challenges particularly black women have in forming relationships with men.” Ms Watson said: “In that micro-habitat it amplifies everything and especially attitudes men have towards women. Samira was comparing herself to Megan (Barton-Hanson) who was fake. She was built in a factory.” Last month Samira told the Mail on Sunday the producers of Love Island were failing when it comes to diversity. She said Love Island would have “token” black women contestants but she claimed they were failing to select men who wanted women who were not “blonde with big boobs.” Views and opinions, expressed in the article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik. | null | https://sputniknews.com/europe/201907291076395340-five-million-britons-tune-in-but-is-love-island-opium-of-the-people-or-light-entertainment/ | 2019-07-29 11:15:25+00:00 | 1,564,413,325 | 1,567,535,485 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
540,096 | sputnik--2019-08-05--Nevada Erotic Entertainment Firm Vows to Bring Strippers to Storm Area 51 Flash Mob | 2019-08-05T00:00:00 | sputnik | Nevada Erotic Entertainment Firm Vows to Bring Strippers to ‘Storm Area 51’ Flash Mob | Déjà Vu Services, Inc., a Las Vegas-based company operating strip clubs and adult theatres, has jumped on the Storm Area 51 bandwagon and promised to bring strippers to the event. “Come September 20, we’ll be there,” the company’s director of operations, Ryan Carlson, said in a press release. “We know that most Americans know: that strippers make any event better, and this one will be no exception.” He added: “We don’t know if there are aliens at Area 51, but if there are, they’ll be entertained upon their rescue, along with any party-goers that attend. After all, if an iconic institution like the American strip club isn’t a way to welcome our extraterrestrial friends, then we don’t know what is.” The company is ready to entertain earthlings and aliens alike, if they find any, with a dozen strippers and a strip club on wheels called the Strippermobile. In the same tongue-in-cheek manner as the Area-51 Facebook event, the strippers participation is being billed as the “Ultimate Alien Tailgate Party”. Area 51 is a US air force facility which has ostensibly been used to test top-secret American aircraft, such as the U-2 spy plane and the B-2 stealth bomber, along with aviation technologies. However, the overall secrecy surrounding the base and multiple reported UFO sightings in the area, have lead many alien enthusiasts to believe that this is where US military is hiding secrets about alien encounters (or even keeping aliens themselves). Yet-unfounded claims by a physicist named Bob Lazar that he has been reverse-engineering recovered alien spacecraft in the closely-guarded Nevada desert barracks have only fueled conspiracy theories, and Area 51 has left a massive footprint in American pop culture, as well as movies and video games. It could become just another legend, along with the likes of Loch Nessie and the Bermuda Triangle, but a Facebook user has created a parody event calling on people to raid the facility and “see them, aliens”. Over 2 million people have signed up for the prank, planned for 20 September. Regardless of whether most netizens signed up in jest, the military has issued a warning against breaking into the base. Earlier this year, a man was shot dead after driving into the adjacent Nevada National Security Site – a former nuclear test site – and failing to respond to officers’ commands. | null | https://sputniknews.com/us/201908051076471811-nevada-erotic-entertainment-firm-vows-to-bring-strippers-to-storm-area-51-flash-mob/ | 2019-08-05 14:57:23+00:00 | 1,565,031,443 | 1,567,534,844 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
547,484 | sputnik--2019-10-18--Sex and the City: Berlin Hosts Massive Adult Entertainment Fair | 2019-10-18T00:00:00 | sputnik | Sex and the City: Berlin Hosts Massive Adult Entertainment Fair | The Venus Erotic Trade Fair, which is probably the world’s largest the world’s adult entertainment trade show, kicked off in Berlin on 17 October. The four-day event, scheduled to end on 20 October, is being hosted at the Messe Berlin exhibition grounds, offering the attendees an opportunity to learn about new erotic products and partake in what joys adult entertainment has to offer. The fair also offers an opportunity to obtain autographs from adult entertainment stars and starlets, and to attend seminars hosted by industry experts. Other attractions include a cam girl hall, an area dedicated to BDSM and even “fashion shows in the field of latex clothing from well-known labels.” | null | https://sputniknews.com/society/201910181077088663-sex-and-the-city-berlin-hosts-massive-adult-entertainment-fair/ | Fri, 18 Oct 2019 20:52:40 +0300 | 1,571,446,360 | 1,571,423,664 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
547,587 | sputnik--2019-10-19--Stan Lee Entertainment Sues Marvel Creator's Daughter - Reports | 2019-10-19T00:00:00 | sputnik | Stan Lee Entertainment Sues Marvel Creator's Daughter - Reports | The company Stan Lee founded is now battling the late Marvel legend's daughter and sole heir for the rights to his extremely valuable name, likeness, and ideas, according to TMZ on Friday. Stan Lee Entertainment (SLE) claims that it is suing Joan Celia Lee for trying to capitalise on her father's legacy without the legal right to do so, despite being the only heir to his fortune, claiming she has failed to protect SLE's legal hold on its right to Stan's intellectual property. The company also accused POW! Entertainment, another media production company partly set up by Lee, for "interloping" or attempting to "loot SLE's intellectual property." The company claims that as a trustee for the Lee Family Survivor's Trust, Joan has a "duty to vindicate the rights" of SLE against organisations like POW! trying to steal her father's ideas. SLE are asking the court to force Joan to uphold her signatory to the trust and defend SLE against POW! and other entities as well as a declaration that SLE is the rightful owner of Stan's creations. The company Stan Lee founded in 1998, which is an animation publishing and entertainment company, was given full legal rights to his name, likeness, ideas, characters, stories, logos, and more, effectively rendering the entirety of Lee's legacy, even his ideas, to SLE. After her father's death, Joan began a lawsuit against POW! Entertainment in September of this year following reports of elder abuse by Lee's former manager, Keya Morgan, who has since been arrested on the charge. The complaint states "By this lawsuit, Stan Lee's heir and Estate seek to perform the covenant Stan Lee made with his namesake company and remedy the wrongs inflicted by trusted business associates over the last two decades." "It is intended to restore the rights he assigned to the namesake company he founded when he was liberated from a 60-year career with Marvel Comics, the comic book company he founded and creatively directed to become the preeminent Superhero entertainment company in the world." The suit continues to accuse Gill Champion and Arthur Lieberman for allegedly "misleading" Lee into reassigning rights "on no less than 6 occasions." "When Stan Lee died in November 2017, his daughter, as his only heir and Trustee of his Estate, gathered a forensic team of lawyers and accountants to investigate the facts surrounding the actions of Stan Lee's supposed partners with whom Lee had stopped communicating during the last year of his life." "In so doing, it was learned the extent to which the rights to Stan Lee's intellectual property had been looted, muddied and entangled by POW! and a range of bad actors enabled by POW!" The Marvel comics creator had himself dropped a $1 billion lawsuit against POW! for using his name and likeness before he passed away in November 2018 at the age of 95. Lee also entered into a legal battle with Stan Lee Entertainment for the rights to iconic superheroes such as Iron Man and Thor in 2011, after numerous bi-coastal lawsuits throughout which the company claimed it had been assigned Stan Lee's intellectual property in 1998, months before his deal with Marvel Entertainment. | null | https://sputniknews.com/us/201910191077089929-stan-lee-entertainment-sues-marvel-creators-daughter-reports/ | Sat, 19 Oct 2019 01:35:05 +0300 | 1,571,463,305 | 1,571,446,719 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
550,223 | sputnik--2019-11-21--BigHit Entertainment to Sue Cosmetic Brand for Using Same Abbreviation as K-Pop Stars BTS | 2019-11-21T00:00:00 | sputnik | BigHit Entertainment to Sue Cosmetic Brand for Using Same Abbreviation as K-Pop Stars BTS | On 20 November, BigHit Entertainment, BTS' home-label, started a trademark invalidation lawsuit against the cosmetics company Dreams Korea, which owns the rights to the trademark “B.T.S.” with dots in between the letters in the logo. Despite the registered trademark with dots, the company in Hong Kong, Australia, Poland, Thailand, Vietnam, and China sells cosmetics such as perfumes and BB cushions under the brand "Back to Sixteen", abbreviated "BTS" without dots on the packages, which could obviously be associated with the K-pop boy band. Earlier, in 2018, Big Hit submitted more than 180 products under the trademark "BTS", but among them some positions were rejected for registration because they had the same trademark as Dreams Korea. Thus, the company filed a patent lawsuit against the cosmetics brand. The group's label also appeals to the fact that the Dreams Korea trademark application was issued in October 2014, while the boys debuted in 2013. In relation to this situation, the cosmetics company said, "The brand existed regardless of BTS", and stated that "Big Hit sued trademark rights after BTS became famous". | null | https://sputniknews.com/asia/201911211077370485-bighit-entertainment-to-sue-cosmetic-brand-for-using-same-abbreviation-as-k-pop-stars-bts/ | Thu, 21 Nov 2019 21:58:39 +0300 | 1,574,391,519 | 1,574,383,736 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
550,668 | sputnik--2019-11-24--Losing its Backbone? Legendary K-Pop Girl Band 2NE1 Not a Part of YG Entertainment Anymore | 2019-11-24T00:00:00 | sputnik | Losing its Backbone? Legendary K-Pop Girl Band 2NE1 Not a Part of YG Entertainment Anymore | Fans of the legendary K-pop girl group on 22 November noticed that the profile of 2NE1 had disappeared without any notices from the official website of the label YG Entertainment, one out the biggest entertainment agencies in South Korea. In addition to deleting the 2NE1 profile page, it also became known that one of the members of the group, Dara, who held the position of PR director at YG, left her position after the disbandment of the group, but resigned her contract as a solo artist. Dara confirmed this in a Twitter thread in a reply to a fan who was asking whether she was still working at YG as a public relations director. The singer replied herself from her official account that it is not true. Earlier this month, the former leader of the band, CL, officially parted ways with YG Entertainment and made her own YouTube channel with Dara's support on Instagram, asking fans to subscribe. 2NE1 was a South Korean girl group composed of Bom, CL, Dara, and Minzy, formed by YG Entertainment in 2009. 2NE1 was one of the most popular and selling girl groups in South Korea - and of all time. Billboard magazine ranked 2NE1 as one of the best K-pop girl groups of the past decade. Sandara Park, known as Dara, is a South Korean singer, actress, and MC, as well as an ex-member of 2NE1. Not only has she had an impact on music over the course of the past decade, but she is also considered to be the woman with the most iconic and memorable styles in the Korean music industry. | null | https://sputniknews.com/asia/201911241077385641-losing-its-backbone-legendary-k-pop-girl-band-2ne1-not-a-part-of-yg-entertainment-anymore/ | Sun, 24 Nov 2019 08:30:00 +0300 | 1,574,602,200 | 1,574,644,558 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
584,909 | theblaze--2019-08-26--Entertainment lawyer and one-time record label exec shares what success really looks like Most of | 2019-08-26T00:00:00 | theblaze | Entertainment lawyer and one-time record label exec shares what 'success' really looks like. Most of modern culture won't understand it. | Entertainment lawyer and one-time record label exec shares what 'success' really looks like. Most of modern culture won't understand it. Don't use other people; serve them instead | Billy Hallowell | https://www.theblaze.com/news/former-record-exec-shares-true-success | 2019-08-26 12:49:35+00:00 | 1,566,838,175 | 1,567,533,390 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
585,762 | theblaze--2019-10-08--Major video game studio Blizzard Entertainment becomes the latest American company to kowtow to Chin | 2019-10-08T00:00:00 | theblaze | Major video game studio Blizzard Entertainment becomes the latest American company to kowtow to Chinese censorship demands | Major video game studio Blizzard Entertainment becomes the latest American company to kowtow to Chinese censorship demands | Leon Wolf | https://www.theblaze.com/news/blizzard-chinese-censorship | Tue, 08 Oct 2019 15:44:17 +0000 | 1,570,563,857 | 1,570,573,246 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
592,116 | thedailybeast--2019-03-11--Scouted Target Is Cutting an Extra 15 Off Already Discounted TV Stands and Entertainment Centers | 2019-03-11T00:00:00 | thedailybeast | Scouted: Target Is Cutting an Extra 15% Off Already Discounted TV Stands and Entertainment Centers | A good entertainment center can handle both housing the various electronics you’re forced to set up and aesthetically enriching your living or TV room. If you’re looking to upgrade yours, you’ll find them on sale for up to 25% off at Target for the next two days — and you’ll also get an extra 15% off on your purchase with code SWISH. There are styles for everyone in this sale — rustic, industrial, mid-century modern — so you should be able to find something to match your taste. The Amherst mid-century modern TV stand is designed to hold up to 60 inches of television and features both open and closed shelves — all told, you can get it for $175 (down from $275). When all you want is less, the minimalist Saracina Home console could be your way there, packing in open shelves and openings for power cords for your electronics — this’ll run you $115 total (down from $170). Finally, for the rustic-minded is another Saracina Home model: Able to support a 70-inch TV, this TV stand gives you adjustable shelves and the choice of eight dark color options — buy it before Wednesday for $190 (down from $280). Whether you’re looking to step up your living room furniture or get some inspiration from the in-house product photos, we definitely recommend you scroll through this Target sale before it ends. Scouted is internet shopping with a pulse. Follow us on Twitter and sign up for our newsletter for even more recommendations and exclusive content. Please note that if you buy something featured in one of our posts, The Daily Beast may collect a share of sales. | null | http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/thedailybeast/articles/~3/7XsnhIFxW9o/target-sale-on-tv-stands-entertainment-centers-media-furniture | 2019-03-11 12:40:00+00:00 | 1,552,322,400 | 1,567,546,669 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
604,662 | thedailycaller--2019-07-01--Taylor Swift Is Feuding With Entertainment Mogul Scooter Braun | 2019-07-01T00:00:00 | thedailycaller | Taylor Swift Is Feuding With Entertainment Mogul Scooter Braun | Taylor Swift is in a massive feud with entertainment mogul Scooter Braun. According to Variety on Sunday, Braun acquired Big Machine Records, which owns all of the Taylor Swift content through 2017. The singing superstar called it her “worst case scenario” and sounds like she’s ready to engage in war over the decision. In case you didn’t know, Swift really seems to dislike Braun, who works with several major entertainment figures. (SLIDESHOW: These Women On Instagram Hate Wearing Clothes) Swift wrote the following in part when explaining her anger about the situation and her dislike for Braun: All I could think about was the incessant, manipulative bullying I’ve received at his hands for years. Like when Kim Kardashian orchestrated an illegally recorded snippet of a phone call to be leaked and then Scooter got his two clients together to bully me online about it. (See photo) Or when his client, Kanye West, organized a revenge porn music video which strips my body naked. Now Scooter has stripped me of my life’s work, that I wasn’t given an opportunity to buy. Essentially, my musical legacy is about to lie in the hands of someone who tried to dismantle it. Justin Bieber also rushed to Instagram in an attempt to defend Braun, who he’s done business with for as long as he’s been famous. He wrote in part, “I’m sure Scooter and i would love to talk to you and resolve any conflict, pain or or any feelings that need to be addressed. Neither scooter or i have anything negative to say about you we truly want the best for you. I usually don’t rebuttal things like this but when you try and deface someone i loves character thats crossing a line..” You can read his whole post below. Bieber wasn’t the only one to get in on the action. Erik Logan, who is on the board of directors for Big Machine, said Swift’s “power is fading,” according to TMZ. The whole thing might be off the rails, but you’re an idiot if you think Swift’s power is fading or that she’s losing ground. She might be the most famous woman on the planet. I’m so pro-Taylor Swift on this one that it’s not even funny. I find it extremely hard to believe that she could fake the anger and emotion in her Tumblr post. She seems pissed as all hell, and that’s the kind of content I’m here for. We all know Swift is much better when she’s on edge. When she feels backed into a corner, that’s when she really thrives with her content. If there is a “Game of Thrones”-style war brewing, then you can count on me defending Swift on 100 different fronts in 100 different wars, if necessary. I don’t know Scooter Braun at all. He could be a wonderful guy. I have no idea. What I do know for sure is that if Swift is preparing for battle, then sides must be chosen. Trust me, I’m riding with the former country star. While I’m usually for de-escalating tense situations, I’m willing to make an exception here. Let’s get this cranked up to 100! | David Hookstead | https://dailycaller.com/2019/07/01/taylor-swift-justin-bieber-scooter-braun-feud/ | 2019-07-01 11:53:31+00:00 | 1,561,996,411 | 1,567,537,422 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
614,268 | thedailyecho--2019-10-04--When the biggest name in entertainment came to Southampton | 2019-10-04T00:00:00 | thedailyecho | When the biggest name in entertainment came to Southampton | HE was the highest paid entertainer of his time; a pianist, singer and actor with such flamboyance he became known as Mr Showmanship. About 40 women and girls gave 35-year-old American artist Lee Liberace a hysterical welcome as he arrived in Southampton on board the 81,000-ton Queen Mary. The welcome on September 25, 1956, was the largest given to a member of the entertainment world at the port since the North Atlantic service was reconvened after the Second World War. When Liberace appeared, accompanied by his mother and violinist brother George, the fans went wild. They surrounded the performer shrieking with joy as he made his way to his special six-coach train. The welcome continued after Liberace boarded the train. He sat with a beaming smile as the welcoming party surrounded his coach. Many of the ecstatic girls pressed kisses on the glass, others put their hands through the coach window in an attempt to touch their hero. Dock workers enjoying the scene added to the excitement with shouts of “Swoon.” In the welcoming party were Eastleigh residents Sheila Dean and her daughter Eileen. “We both like Liberace and his playing very much,” said Sheila. “We have seen him on the films, we love listening to his records, and we keep all the press clippings about him.” Extra British Transport Commission police were on duty on the Terminal platform to keep the welcome under control. Before coming ashore, Liberace spent nearly an hour on the Queen Mary’s sun deck posing for the press with his mother and brother. He told the reporters of how he wanted to be a typical American tourist in England, getting into the back roads, seeing the countryside and meeting the people there and in the suburbs. “I understand you’ve had a rather unpleasant summer here,” he said. “Perhaps we will bring a little sunshine into it.” As well as being in the United Kingdom to take in the sites, Liberace delivered eight concerts - three in London and the rest in Leicester, Croydon, Manchester, Sheffield and Dublin. As these pictures from the time show, the star wore a black and white pebble heather two-piece suit with black tie and black shoes. He explained to the press that he dressed in somewhat flamboyant style because he was a member of a glamorous world - the entertainment world. Liberace brought his concert grand piano over on the ship which was sent to London by road. At Waterloo a large crowd cheered wildly as the star’s train arrived at 12.25pm. Boos could also be heard coming from a group of students who marched in carrying a banner declaring “We hate Liberace. Charlie Kunz forever.” | null | https://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/17946604.biggest-name-entertainment-came-southampton/?ref=rss | 2019-10-04 04:23:05+00:00 | 1,570,177,385 | 1,570,633,651 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
620,999 | thedailymirror--2019-01-03--Video games now account for more than 50 of UK entertainment sales | 2019-01-03T00:00:00 | thedailymirror | Video games now account for more than 50% of UK entertainment sales | The video games sector now accounts for more than half of the entertainment market, according to new figures. The Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA) said the gaming market's value rose to £3.864 billion, more than double what it was worth in 2007. It now makes gaming a larger market than video and music combined for the first time. The figures show three games - Fifa 19, Red Dead Redemption 2 and Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 - each sold more than one million physical units in the UK across games consoles during 2018. ERA chief executive Kim Bayley said: "The games industry has been incredibly effective in taking advantage of the potential of digital technology to offer new and compelling forms of entertainment. Despite being the youngest of our three sectors, it is now by far the biggest." The figures also do not take into account digital game sales as well as mobile and free games downloaded and played, the most notable of which is Fortnite - the free-to-play battle royale game which now has more than 200 million players globally. The ERA said despite physical unit sales shrinking by about 2.8% in 2018 and digital growth categorised as a "modest" 12.5%, the industry now accounts for 51.3% of the total entertainment market. Overall, the entertainment market grew to an all-time high of £7.537 billion, the ERA said, driven by the growth of digital streaming services such as Spotify and Netflix, with revenue from such services accounting for more than three quarters (76.1%) of total sales. | Martyn Landi | https://www.mirror.co.uk/money/video-games-now-account-more-13804167 | 2019-01-03 05:00:00+00:00 | 1,546,509,600 | 1,567,554,124 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
633,912 | thedailymirror--2019-06-02--BGTs Marc Spelmann said show made mockery of entertainment in scathing Twitter rant | 2019-06-02T00:00:00 | thedailymirror | BGT's Marc Spelmann said show 'made mockery of entertainment' in scathing Twitter rant | Britain's Got Talent star Marc Spelmann declared the show "made a mockery of entertainment" in a scathing Twitter rant before he returned as mystery magician X. The illusionist was on the reality show last year, but returned for the 2019 series in a mask performing under the name X. Last year, he was embroiled in controversy as he got caught slamming the show in a series of blistering tweets, sent before his first audition. In unearthed tweets from 2013 - the year shadow theatre act Attraction won - the magician blasted BGT, calling it a "mockery of entertainment" and urging his followers to switch off. One tweet referred to the musician who left her seat to egg show boss Simon Cowell during the live final of the series. It stated: "#bgt #eggattack musician chucking eggs at Simon. Wonder if it was truly random or a publicity stunt to detract from poor final..??" Another unearthed by The Sun fumed: "This is the last I'll say I promise. #bgt is a mockery of entertainment. It's a joke. Simon is laughing at the deluded public. Do not vote!" Spelmann told Mirror Online: "I've changed rather a lot in the last six years and the off-hand tweets I made about Britain's Got Talent many years ago in no way reflect my thoughts and feelings on the show now." The tweets shocked BGT fans as the news came after his performance on last year's show left viewers in tears. He tugged at heartstrings as he opened up about his wife's struggle with IVF and battle with cancer while pregnant in the middle of his performance. "Oh god it's emotional," wailed Ant as tears streamed down his face as he watched from the sidelines with buddy Dec Donnelly, who was also crying. After getting a standing ovation from the audience, Marc also received a hug from teary Ant, who said: "You had me in tears man." Spelmann returned to the show for the 2019 series and kept his true identity under wraps as he performed as X during the audition phase and the semi-final this week and hadn't even spoken on stage before tonight. The talented illusionist finally took off the creepy white mask to show who was hiding beneath - and the judges' jaws were left on the desk when they saw who it was. He said: "It was always about hope. I’m never giving up. It’s been an honour sharing X with you. I’m X." The reveal was made using a powerful montage of his previous performances which ended with Ant repeating: "Imagine at the end he take it off and it's someone we know?" | [email protected] (Vicki Newman, Louise Randell) | https://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/bgt-marc-spelmann-x-mockery-12389262 | 2019-06-02 22:00:00+00:00 | 1,559,527,200 | 1,567,539,364 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
645,814 | thedailyrecord--2019-03-14--Castle Douglas High School organises entertainment evening to raise funds | 2019-03-14T00:00:00 | thedailyrecord | Castle Douglas High School organises entertainment evening to raise funds | Castle Douglas High is hosting an evening of entertainment at 7pm on March 28 to raise funds for the school. The event will feature a fashion show from Wilkie’s spring collection and include music and dancing from pupils. Janice Craig, a member of the organising committee, said: “Mr Ray Jackson, store manager from Wilkie’s, and his staff have been very supportive towards the event and with generous raffle donations from local businesses we are looking forward to a fun and enjoyable evening.” Everyone is encouraged to go along and support the event. Tickets cost £6 and include a glass of prosecco or a soft drink. One lucky ticket will win a prize. Tickets are available from the post office and Heart of Galloway in Castle Douglas. | Stuart Gillespie | https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/local-news/castle-douglas-high-school-organises-14129598 | 2019-03-14 09:11:24+00:00 | 1,552,569,084 | 1,567,546,287 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
651,265 | thedailyrecord--2019-08-02--Enjoy a feast of entertainment in West Lothian this month | 2019-08-02T00:00:00 | thedailyrecord | Enjoy a feast of entertainment in West Lothian this month | There’s entertainment to suit all ages and tastes in West Lothian to keep everyone happy. Held in the famous and historic setting of the Linlithgow Palace Courtyard, you can dance to live music from great Scottish bands. You don’t need to know the dances, the ‘caller’ will talk you through all the routines and make sure you have a memorable experience. Scotch Hop is an unforgettable experience attracting people from across the world each year so go along and join in. Scotch Hop runs every Wednesday at 7.30pm until August 14. Tickets are available at the door and include tea and shortbread. Budding paleontologists can take part in the the dino-hunt around The Centre. Pick up your explorer booklet from the customer service desk, find the missing letters around the centre and guess the word for your chance to win a £50 gift card. All participants will receive a certificate and sticker for taking part. Little ones can also take part in a dinosaur egg hunt, and spot 10 dinosaur eggs hiding in store windows. The professor will be visiting The Centre every Thursday from 12 pm until 4pm, until Thursday, August 15. There will also be dinosaur-themed arts and crafts every Monday and Friday from until August 16 from 12pm until 4pm. Or why not join the tribe for daring daily adventures exploring some of the wildest and most remote corners of the Almond Valley with outdoor den-building. Become an expert explorer, learn how to build shelters and survive in the wilderness with our hands-on interactive sessions throughout summer. Get your wellies on and get ready to experience a day where you can get muddy, forage for food, keep a look out for wild animals and learn how to survive in the walk for at least half an hour. This runs until Tuesday, August 20, at Almond Valley Heritage Cente in Livingston. | [email protected] (Debbie Hall) | https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/local-news/enjoy-feast-entertainment-west-lothian-18812434 | 2019-08-02 09:02:00+00:00 | 1,564,750,920 | 1,567,535,031 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
651,580 | thedailyrecord--2019-08-19--Music and entertainment festival that raises money for charity is returning to Livingston next month | 2019-08-19T00:00:00 | thedailyrecord | Music and entertainment festival that raises money for charity is returning to Livingston next month | A music and entertainment festival that raises money for Marie Curie is returning to Livingston next month. Livi Live Aid takes on extra poignance this year due to one of the founding members, Linda Tierney, passing away earlier in the year after a long battle with cancer. Despite being told in 2017 that she only had months to live Linda decided to fundraise and for over two years her pals - Catherine Dray, Kevin Henderson and Wullie Langdon - helped her to raise thousands of pounds for Marie Curie. This is the third year the festival has taken place and because of circumstances Catherine Dray is faced with the task of organising the event alone but it is not something she is daunted by. She said: “It is a lot of work but it helps me too and gives me a purpose. I had breast cancer and had to give up my work so this has kept me going in the past three years and this year my friend Debbie Logue is helping me out a lot too. “The original committee was just a few of Linda’s pals who all had personal experience with cancer and we just wanted to do something for the local community. Nothing has changed and everything we do is geared toward working hand and hand with the local community. “The Livi Live Aid platform is simply to showcase local talents whilst also at the same time raising money for charity.” As usual this year an abundance of local acts will all be playing, including DopeSickFly, Flash Back, Gary Burns, Screaming Target, The Super Moons, Megan Black and Gary Johnston. The event will take place on September 27 at the New Almondvale Suite at Livingston Football Stadium. Tickets can be bought here: https://www.skiddle.com/whats-on/Livingston/Livingston-Football-Club/Livi-Aid-Live-2019-/13587494/ | [email protected] (John-Paul Clark) | https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/local-news/music-entertainment-festival-raises-money-18963525 | 2019-08-19 18:09:00+00:00 | 1,566,252,540 | 1,567,534,030 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
661,126 | thedenverpost--2019-03-20--Disney closes 71B deal for Fox entertainment assets | 2019-03-20T00:00:00 | thedenverpost | Disney closes $71B deal for Fox entertainment assets | Disney has closed its $71 billion acquisition of Fox’s entertainment business, putting “Cinderella,” “The Simpsons,” “Star Wars” and “Dr. Strange” under one corporate roof. The deal is likely to shake up the media landscape. Among other things, it paves the way for Disney to launch its streaming service, Disney Plus, due out later this year. It will also likely lead to layoffs in the thousands, thanks to duplication in Fox and Disney film-production staff. By buying the studios behind “The Simpsons” and X-Men, Disney aims to better compete with technology companies such as Amazon and Netflix for viewers’ attention – and dollars. Disney needs compelling TV shows and movies to persuade viewers to sign up and pay for yet another streaming service. It already has classic Disney cartoons, “Star Wars,” Pixar, the Muppets and some of the Marvel characters. With Fox, Disney could add Marvel’s X-Men and Deadpool, along with programs shown on such Fox channels as FX Networks and National Geographic. Fox’s productions also include “The Americans,” ”This Is Us” and “Modern Family.” The deal helps Disney further control TV shows and movies from start to finish – from creating the programs to distributing them though television channels, movie theaters, streaming services and other ways people watch entertainment. Disney would get valuable data on customers and their entertainment-viewing habits, which it can then use to sell advertising. Disney CEO Bob Iger said in an earnings call in February that Disney Plus and other direct-to-consumer businesses are Disney’s “No. 1 priority.” Cable and telecom companies have been buying the companies that make TV shows and movies to compete in a changing media landscape. Although internet providers like AT&T and Comcast directly control their customers’ access to the internet in a way that Amazon, YouTube and Netflix do not, they still face threats as those streaming services gain in popularity. AT&T bought Time Warner last year for $81 billion and has already launched its own streaming service, Watch TV, with Time Warner channels such as TBS and TNT, among other networks, for $15 a month. In addition to boosting the Disney streaming service, expected to debut next year, the deal paves the way for Marvel’s X-Men and the Avengers to reunite in future movies. Though Disney owns Marvel Studios, some characters including the X-Men had already been licensed to Fox. Disney also gets a controlling stake in the existing streaming service Hulu, which it plans to keep operating as a home for more general programming. Family-friendly shows and movies will head to Disney Plus. No pricing has been disclosed for Disney Plus. The streaming service will feature five categories of material: Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars and National Geographic. Disney charges $5 a month for ESPN Plus, a service that offers programming distinct from the ESPN cable channel. Meanwhile, Fox Corp. — the parts of 21st Century Fox that are not part of the deal, including Fox News, Fox Sports and Fox Broadcasting — started trading on the Nasdaq under the “FOX” and “FOXA” tickers on Tuesday. | Mae Anderson | https://www.denverpost.com/2019/03/20/disney-fox-entertainment-deal/ | 2019-03-20 13:33:42+00:00 | 1,553,103,222 | 1,567,545,448 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
683,258 | theguardianuk--2019-01-04--Beyonces Parkwood Entertainment sued over website accessibility | 2019-01-04T00:00:00 | theguardianuk | Beyoncé's Parkwood Entertainment sued over website accessibility | A class action lawsuit claims that Beyoncé’s official website violates the Americans With Disabilities Act (1990) by denying visually impaired users equal access to its products and services, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Web accessibility requires photos to be coded with alt-text so that screen-readers used by visually impaired users can speak the alternative text. Dan Shaked, attorney for plaintiff Mary Conner, said: “There are many important pictures on beyonce.com that lack a text equivalent … As a result, Plaintiff and blind beyonce.com customers are unable to determine what is on the website, browse the website or investigate and/or make purchases.” The Guardian has contacted representatives for Beyoncé for comment. Conner is described in the suit as having “no vision whatsoever”. Shaked describes music as “the one and only form of entertainment that truly presents an even playing field between the visually impaired and the sighted”. Conner’s hopes of attending a Beyoncé concert were restricted by her lack of access to the website, the suit claims. The complaint lists further issues including the lack of accessible drop-down menus and navigation links, and the inability to navigate using a keyboard instead of a mouse. The proposed lawsuit includes “all legally blind individuals in the United States who have attempted to access Beyonce.com and as a result have been denied access to the enjoyment of goods and services offered by Beyonce.com, during the relevant statutory period.” Conner seeks a court injunction that would require Beyoncé’s company to make the site accessible to blind and visually impaired customers in accordance with ADA rules, and is pursuing damages for those who have “been subject to unlawful discrimination”. | Laura Snapes | https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/jan/04/beyonce-parkwood-entertainment-sued-over-website-accessibility | 2019-01-04 10:50:38+00:00 | 1,546,617,038 | 1,567,553,985 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
701,289 | theguardianuk--2019-05-30--Its entertainment Love Island attempts to justify lack of body diversity | 2019-05-30T00:00:00 | theguardianuk | ‘It’s entertainment’: Love Island attempts to justify lack of body diversity | Love Island’s creative director, Richard Cowles, has sought to justify the lack of body diversity on the hit reality TV programme, explaining that contestants need “to be attracted to one another” for the show to work. The programme, which has become one of ITV’s most high-profile shows, returns to screens next month amid growing scrutiny on the impact that reality television has on those that take part. Critics such as actor Jameela Jamil have called on the show to feature more plus-size participants to reflect the wider population, rather than simply selecting skinny individuals to lounge around the pool in a Spanish villa. But in remarks that quickly came under fire from body image campaigners, Cowles said the show’s aim was to provide entertaining programming rather than set an example. “First and foremost, it’s an entertainment show and it’s about people wanting to watch who you’ve got on screen falling in love with one another,” he said, according to Radio Times. “Yes, we want to be as representative as possible but we also want them to be attracted to one another. “Also, we’re not saying that everyone that’s in there is how you’re supposed to look. We’re saying here’s a group of people that we want to watch for eight weeks, and we want to watch them fall in love. That’s not at the front of our mind, but we do want to be as diverse as possible.” Love Island has already instituted new measures to ensure participants are looked after by the production team for more than a year after they take part in the programme, following multiple suicides by former contestants and the cancellation of the Jeremy Kyle show. The programme is also set to be examined as part of a House of Commons select committee into reality programming, while Ofcom has raised concerns about the show’s use of lie detector tests. In the UK, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email [email protected]. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international suicide helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org. | Jim Waterson Media editor | https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/may/30/it-is-entertainment-love-island-itv-attempts-to-justify-lack-of-body-diversity | 2019-05-30 17:33:59+00:00 | 1,559,252,039 | 1,567,539,736 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
703,802 | theguardianuk--2019-06-28--Lego consortium buys Merlin Entertainments theme parks for 59bn | 2019-06-28T00:00:00 | theguardianuk | Lego consortium buys Merlin Entertainments theme parks for £5.9bn | A consortium led by the family that controls the Lego toymaking empire has agreed a £5.9bn takeover of Merlin Entertainments, the theme park operator which runs the Legoland attraction. Merlin, which also counts waxworks Madame Tussauds and the London Eye among its attractions, had come under pressure from an activist investor to find a private buyer after struggling in recent months. The consortium taking over the company is 50% owned by Kirkbi, the private investment company of the family of Kirk Kristiansen, the inheritor of the Lego fortune who is said by Forbes magazine to have a net worth of $5.7bn (£4.5bn). The other half is owned by private equity buyer Blackstone and CPPIB, the Canadian pension fund. The bid values Merlin’s shares at £4.8bn, plus a further £1.1bn in debt. The 455p per share terms represent a 15% premium to the closing price of 395p on Thursday evening, although it is a 37% premium to the price before US investor ValueAct wrote a public letter urging the Merlin board to find a buyer. However, the offer price remains significantly lower than the company’s value two years ago, when shares traded as high as 537p. Sir John Sunderland, chairman of Merlin’s board, said multiple fatal terrorist attacks, particularly in Westminster, London Bridge and Manchester, had had long-lasting effects on people’s willingness to visit city centre attractions. “The markets were in a different place at that time [in 2017] and it was prior to the series of terrible events in our capital city,” he said. “This is a very attractive offer for our shareholders.” Sunderland said he had turned down four inadequate offers for the business from the consortium. The first offer came in at 425p per share two days before ValueAct published its letter. The deal is not expected to affect the vast majority of the company’s 28,000 employees, although some jobs relating to public company reporting requirements may be redundant, Sunderland said. The acquirers said they recognised the need for “significant long-term investment” in Merlin’s attractions. Kirkbi has owned a stake in Merlin since 2005 and holds 29.6% of shares. Søren Thorup Sørensen, Kirkbi chief executive, emphasised Lego’s close relationship with Merlin’s Legoland attractions. He said the investors were committed to “Legoland and the other activities of Merlin”. The acquisition would also represent a coup for ValueAct. The San Francisco-based activist investor’s chief investment officer, Mason Morfit, and partner Jake Welch in May wrote: “Simply put: Merlin has struggled as a public company. “Private ownership is simply better placed than current public shareholders to underwrite the investments Merlin must make and to align employee incentives appropriately.” ValueAct owns 9.3% of shares, while other major owners include US hedge fund Marathon Asset Management and the Wellcome Trust’s investment arm. Sunderland said Merlin, which made profits of £230m from revenues of £1.7bn in 2018, would not be significantly affected by political and macroeconomic uncertainty in the UK as the second scheduled Brexit date approaches. He said: “Clearly there is a degree of uncertainty about the future. In my experience people still want to enjoy themselves.” | Jasper Jolly | https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jun/28/lego-consortium-buys-merlin-entertainments-theme-parks-for-59bn | 2019-06-28 06:57:28+00:00 | 1,561,719,448 | 1,567,537,743 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
711,946 | theguardianuk--2019-10-11--HMV to open Europe's biggest entertainment store in Birmingham | 2019-10-11T00:00:00 | theguardianuk | HMV to open Europe's biggest entertainment store in Birmingham | The biggest music and movies store in Europe opens on Friday as the new Canadian owner of HMV takes the first step in a bold expansion plan he hopes will defy slumping sales of CDs and DVDs. The size of a supermarket and called HMV Vault, the Birmingham shop is stocking 80,000 CDs and 25,000 vinyl albums. It is a brave move at a time when traditional high-street retailers are closing in record numbers and in a business where online streaming has battered sales of physical entertainment products. But it is a statement of intent by Doug Putman, the 35-year-old boss of Sunrise Records, which rescued 100 HMV stores from administration in February. He has pledged to invest at least £10m in reviving the chain and wants to make his shops part of local communities, work with charities and – in a sideswipe at Amazon – has promised to “pay our tax”. UK sales of physical media, including CDs, DVDs and games, shrank by nearly 13% in the year to 25 August, according to market analysts Kantar. In video – mainly DVDs – sales plunged 28%. HMV’s share of the market sank three percentage points to 14.4% in the three months to 30 June, compared with the same quarter in 2018. But HMV’s loss was Amazon’s gain, because the internet giant’s market share climbed by nearly the same amount and it now accounts for £1 out of every £4 spent on physical entertainment products. As he puts the finishing touches to his new store, Putman is optimistic: “The market is definitely down but we are way ahead of the market. I’m really happy.” He said the chain had increased its movie sales despite the hefty downturn in the market. The self-confessed vinyl nut, whose family owns Canadian toymaker and distributor Everest, has already re-opened 14 of the 28 HMV stores that closed after the retailer went into administration in December last year, taking the chain back to 114 outlets. “I believe we can grow the chain,” he said. “A lot of high streets are challenged and struggling. The UK has got an amazing high street and we want to support that. There is something really special about it and when it’s gone, it’s gone.” He said HMV had an advantage over Amazon because it offered an experience and was a part of local communities. “We hire people in communities and work with charities and we pay our tax. We do care. Amazon gives huge convenience but every time you get something amazing you are sacrificing something for that.” “The world’s a scary place if there is just Amazon and ultimately we are all starting to realise that.” The Birmingham store – underneath a carpark in a less salubrious part of the city centre shopping district – is aiming to offer something Amazon cannot. It has a stage to host bands and DJs and a screening room with space for 50 people alongside its music, film, books, band paraphernalia such as posters, T-shirts, mugs and technology such as headphones and turntables. “We have more vinyl titles in stock in this store than sold in the whole of last year in the UK,” said Putman. “We need this to be a destination.” The plan is to open a cafe, too – making it a destination entertainment store in the same way as Primark’s giant store down the road, which draws coachloads of shoppers with its cafes, beauty salon and barbers alongside cheap fashion. Putman is also confident the UK chain can turn a profit in his first year. Moving out of HMV’s heavily loss-making Oxford Street store in London and agreeing rent cuts elsewhere have helped the bottom line, along with other savings. “The market will contract but I don’t think HMV will. We will always beat the market,” he said. “I’m really surprised how supportive customers and the public have been and how much people care and want us to succeed,” he added. “This is just the beginning; people will see more change coming in the next three to six months.” The company has already achieved Putman’s aim of introducing more vinyl into its outlets. Each now stocks 3,000 to 7,000 albums, up from an average of just 500 before. Later this month, HMV will relaunch online, making it easier to search for and order items. He is also giving more freedom to managers to stock goods they know will go down well locally. Stores are hosting local bands – and selling their CDs, vinyl or merchandise – and can pick up on regional trends, such as demand for reggae at the Birmingham Bullring store down the road. Staff recommendations will also be an important part of the future. “We have got so much talent and knowledge in the teams. There are one million songs a month released on streaming services. How can anyone digest that? It’s up to us to say: ‘Here are the best 10 things which came out this week.’ We are trying to be the expert,” Putman said. | Sarah Butler | https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/oct/11/hmv-vault-europes-biggest-entertainment-store-birmingham | Fri, 11 Oct 2019 05:00:46 GMT | 1,570,784,446 | 1,570,799,635 | arts, culture, entertainment and media | arts and entertainment |
71,098 | breitbart--2019-02-20--Global Warming Doomsday Prophesy 100 Million Climate Refugees by 2050 | 2019-02-20T00:00:00 | breitbart | Global Warming Doomsday Prophesy: 100 Million Climate Refugees by 2050 | James Delingpole, the executive editor of Breitbart London, has written about Wallace-Wells’ previous over-the-top predictions about global warming, including an article in the magazine last year: Climate change is going to kill at least 150 million people and there’s nothing we can do to stop it. Well, at least it is if you believe climate doomster David Wallace-Wells in the latest issue of New York magazine. Things are bad. Really bad. We didn’t listen and now we can expect to pay a terrible price — starting with all those deaths: Numbers that large can be hard to grasp, but 150 million is the equivalent of 25 Holocausts. It is five times the size of the death toll of the Great Leap Forward — the largest non-military death toll humanity has ever produced. It is three times the greatest death toll of any kind: World War II. Now that the book is in print, the author is making the rounds to promote it, including in an interview with National Public Radio (NPR) where he announces more staggering numbers attributed to climate change. • “4.3 degrees of warming would mean $600 trillion in damages from climate impacts. Six hundred trillion dollars is double all of the wealth that exists in the world today. Our agriculture would probably be about half as bountiful, so the same plot of land would be producing about half as much yield in a world that we would have at least 50 percent more people to feed.” Delingpole is not the only critic of Wallace-Wells’ climate change reporting. The Washington Post did a round up of scientists panning his 2017 article: The temptation to paint a dire picture of climate change, at a time when the Trump administration seems bent on questioning a widely accepted body of climate science and withdrawing from international agreements, is clear. But the picture still has to be plausible and accurate, a number of scientists argued this week in response to a lengthy article in New York Magazine. The article by David Wallace-Wells is entitled “The Uninhabitable Earth” and begins with the sentence, “It is, I promise, worse than you think.” It runs through a number of extreme climate possibilities — most prominently, the idea that some parts of the Earth will experience a combination of heat and humidity so intense that human beings won’t be able to survive outdoors in some regions. The article gives the sense of being fairly definitive, saying it is “the result of dozens of interviews and exchanges with climatologists and researchers in related fields and reflects hundreds of scientific papers on the subject of climate change.” Wallace-Wells also warns that he’s describing worst-case scenarios that might not be realized but could occur if the world does not take action. “But those scenarios, and not the present climate, are the baseline,” he writes. “In fact, they are our schedule.” Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University is a climate researcher who isn’t always kind to climate change skeptics. “The article argues that climate change will render the Earth uninhabitable by the end of this century,” Mann wrote. “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The article fails to produce it.” “The evidence that climate change is a serious problem that we must contend with now is overwhelming on its own,” Mann continued. “There is no need to overstate the evidence, particularly when it feeds a paralyzing narrative of doom and hopelessness.” “Overall, the article highlights important effects that have been discussed in the literature, but in a manner that is often sloppy and hyperbolic,” Bob Kopp of Rutgers University said of Wallace-Wells’ reporting. “It would have been helpful had the reporter identified his sources, which makes it difficult to check what he intended in some points.” “My purpose in writing the story wasn’t to survey the median scenario, it was to survey the worst-case scenarios because I believed — and still believe — that the public does not appreciate the unlikely-but-still-possible dangers of climate change,” he said. “It is difficult to tell the story of climate change,” the Post reported. “It never happens on any particular day; it never moves very rapidly; it does not directly cause individual weather events.” “But a number of scientists are saying that this particular story has gone too far,” the Post reported. | Penny Starr | http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/breitbart/~3/cHE_7-vhwmc/ | 2019-02-20 12:53:49+00:00 | 1,550,685,229 | 1,567,547,850 | environment | climate change |
111,555 | cnsnews--2019-04-03--Schumer If There Were Ever Evidence of Global Warming or of Climate Change This Would Be It | 2019-04-03T00:00:00 | cnsnews | Schumer: ‘If There Were Ever Evidence of Global Warming or of Climate Change This Would Be It’ | (CNSNews.com) - Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D.-N.Y.) said on the Senate floor on Tuesday that the natural disasters the United States has experienced over the last two years—including a major hurricane in Puerto Rico—are evidence that “global warming” is in fact taking place. "Over the last 2 years, the American people have endured staggering natural disasters that have devastated communities across the country,” Schumer said. “These Americans need help. They need help now,” he said. “I would parenthetically add, if there were ever evidence of global warming or of climate change, this would be it--despite the fact that just about every Republican has his head or her head in the sand and won’t admit it.” Schumer made the remarks while criticizing President Donald Trump’s opposition to providing additional disaster relief to Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico was hit by Hurricane Maria in September 2017. “Maria was a very severe Cape Verde Hurricane that ravaged the island of Dominca at category 5 (on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale) intensity, and later devastated Puerto Rico as a high-end category 4 hurricane,” says a report on the storm published by the National Weather Service. “It also inflicted serious damage on some of the other islands of the northeastern Caribbean Sea,” says the NWS report. “Maria is the third costliest hurricane in United States history.” Here is the excerpt from Schumer’s speech where he discusses the disaster assistance and the evidence for global warming: “Mr. President, the Senate failed to pass emergency relief funding yesterday to help the American families recovering from natural disasters. It failed for one reason--the Republicans removed critical aid for Puerto Rico and other territories from the House bill after President Trump told them to do it. Under this administration and with Leader McConnell's blessing, even disaster relief has now become political. “I don't need to litigate why we are here. Over the last 2 years, the American people have endured staggering natural disasters that have devastated communities across the country. These Americans need help. They need help now. I would parenthetically add, if there were ever evidence of global warming or of climate change, this would be it despite the fact that just about every Republican has his head or her head in the sand and will not admit it. “Regardless of what you think the causes were, Americans have always stood together when American citizens have been hit by disaster. We band together and say we are going to help one another--all American citizens, all. Yet one part of America is not being treated like the others, and why not? It is because President Trump, for reasons that defy decency, harbors an apparent contempt for the people of Puerto Rico. He tweeted again last night and erroneously claimed that $91 billion has been afforded the people of Puerto Rico. He ridiculed the leadership that has desperately tried to rebuild the island in the wake of these megastorms. “Let's get the facts straight. The Republicans know the storms that hit Puerto Rico over a year ago were not ordinary storms; they know these were historic catastrophes. We are talking about the deadliest disasters to hit American soil in over a century. We are talking about the worst power outage in American history. We are talking about 3,000 lives lost. Yet here we are, 18 months later, and the island hasn't recovered. “It is surreal that a disaster so awful has been met with a Presidential response that is so tepid and so heartless. It is surreal that our Republican colleagues go along with this and say we are not going to help Puerto Rico in the way that is needed. Billions in funding for recovery and mitigation efforts right now remain locked in the Treasury. Congress already appropriated $20 billion that the administration has not allocated. All we want to do is make sure the money is allocated. That is one of the things we want to do. “Are our Republican colleagues opposed to that? That is what it sounds like. Some of them say it is political. What is political is President Trump's saying no aid for Puerto Rico and having the Republicans jump in line, even those with many Puerto Ricans in their States. Make no mistake, we have reached this impasse because the President has said himself he opposes help for Puerto Rico, and the Republicans follow along. “Some of my colleagues from the other side came up with another shibboleth; that we opposed the House bill because it didn't provide funding for the Midwest. First of all, the House bill was aimed at disasters in 2018, not in 2019. Second, Senator Leahy offered an amendment that would have added funding for the Middle West and funding for Puerto Rico. What did the Republicans do? They blocked it anyway. “So this undoes their fantasy that the Democrats are opposed to aid for the Middle West. Senator Leahy and I will be offering an amendment that will give aid to the Midwest and to Puerto Rico. Let's see where our Republican colleagues stand. Will they block that too? “Yesterday's vote boiled down to a simple question: Do the Republicans believe the people of Puerto Rico deserve relief for their natural disasters as do all Americans? Do they believe the families of Puerto Rico--whatever you think of this elected official in Puerto Rico--deserve to be helped just like the families of the Midwest and California?” | CNSNews.com Staff | https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/cnsnewscom-staff/schumer-if-there-were-ever-evidence-global-warming-or-climate-change | 2019-04-03 18:29:36+00:00 | 1,554,330,576 | 1,567,544,138 | environment | climate change |
121,070 | crikey--2019-03-14--We are already feeling the effects of global warming | 2019-03-14T00:00:00 | crikey | ‘We are already feeling the effects of global warming’ | How will climate change affect day-to-day life in Australia? Crikey spoke with Dr Andrew Glikson to find out. Dr Andrew Glikson is an Earth and paleo-climate scientist at the Australian National University's Climate Change Institute. He has written exhaustively about climate change, the failures of policy in this area (and compliant dissemination of junk climate science through areas of politics and the media) which amount to, in his words, a "betrayal of the future". Crikey spoke with Glikson about the concrete changes we will see in Australia thanks to this betrayal, and the possibility of real action and hope in that context. | Charlie Lewis | https://www.crikey.com.au/2019/03/14/climate-change-andrew-glikson/ | 2019-03-14 01:27:08+00:00 | 1,552,541,228 | 1,567,546,212 | environment | climate change |
129,033 | dailyheraldchicago--2019-09-18--Could planting 1 trillion trees be the answer to global warming Study says yes | 2019-09-18T00:00:00 | dailyheraldchicago | Could planting 1 trillion trees be the answer to global warming? Study says yes | In recent years, climate change has loomed like a dark specter over the globe, contributing to everything from gentrification in Miami to refugees fleeing drought and crop shortages in Guatemala. But the urgency around the issue reached new heights in 2018 when the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated that rapid, "far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society" would be needed in order to drop carbon dioxide levels by 2030 and prevent catastrophic global warming. Scientists have indeed proposed drastic measures -- just not in the way that you might think. In the same report, the U.N. suggests adding 2.5 billion acres of forest to the world could limit global warming to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit by 2050. In other words: Responding to climate change will require planting new trees. A lot of them. And now, the U.N. might have the data to back up its proposal. In a study released in July in the journal Science, a group of researchers associated with the Crowther Lab in Switzerland found that global tree restoration to the tune of 223 million acres of canopy cover -- an area that's approximately the size of the United States -- is "our most effective climate change solution to date." These trees would store 205 billion tons of carbon, or roughly two-thirds of the carbon that has been emitted "as a result of human activity since the Industrial Revolution," according to a news release. Although some news reports have said this much forest restoration is the equivalent of roughly 1 trillion trees, this statistic is actually linked to an estimate from a 2015 study. Jean-François Bastin, the Crowther Lab's study lead author, breaks down the 2019 analysis by email. "The idea was to estimate what tree cover could be expected when you removed the 'human factor,' i.e. what specific types of forest would naturally occur in the absence of other development, and where," he says. Bastin and his team used machine learning to build "a model to link tree cover with climate/soil/topography, based on 78,000 observations of tree cover in protected areas." The researchers then projected the data further to estimate the "total potential tree cover of the planet," Bastin explains. Afterward, the team excluded land currently being used for urban settlements, croplands and existing forests, which yielded the total amount of land available for restoration. The study includes a map showing how much tree coverage different parts of the globe can support; the top three areas include Russia, Canada and the U.S. In many ways, the study's timing couldn't be more perfect, as it aligns with current global efforts around ecological restoration. One example is the Trillion Trees Vision, which seeks to restore 1 trillion trees by 2050. Another is the Bonn Challenge -- a partnership between the government of Germany and the U.N.'s International Union for Conservation of Nature that aims to restore 371 million acres of deforested land by 2020. You might think that sounds pretty easy. Let's all roll up our sleeves and save the planet by planting one tree at a time -- right? Some experts say the situation is a little more complicated, especially if most nations don't chip in to help. "Implementation of forest restoration on the scale discussed in this paper is not as straightforward as it might seem," says Jim Hallett, chairman of the Society for Ecological Restoration. "By 2018, there were commitments of over 420 million acres by 58 nations, which exceeds the Bonn Challenge goal. Current estimates indicate around 29 percent of the committed lands are now under restoration, but most of this work has been done by a few countries." Although Hallett agrees forest restoration is important to addressing climate change, restoration alone likely will not be enough. It takes time, after all, to implement such big restoration projects and also for these trees to store carbon. Other scientists question not only the practicality of the study's claims but also the study's very methodology. "Many of the allegedly available restoration areas are clearly unsuitable for more trees than they currently support. If you look closely at the map, a large proportion of these areas are in regions where soils are permanently frozen," says Eike Luedeling, a climate change researcher and professor of horticultural sciences at the University of Bonn. "The methodology implicitly implies that carbon stock is proportional to canopy cover, i.e. ecosystems without trees contain no carbon. This is clearly false and strongly inflates the global estimate (of restoration)." Jan Börner, Luedeling's colleague, is similarly skeptical. Börner says some areas being proposed for restoration already are being used for other purposes. Börner considers the study to be an "interesting academic exercise ... but as a (climate change) mitigation strategy proposal, it sends a misleading signal to the international climate policy debate." Don't fret just yet. Both Bastin and Hallett emphasize the U.N. has declared 2021 to 2030 the "Decade on Ecosystem Restoration," which could spur nations to act quickly -- and some countries are already tackling the initiative head on. "What we need is universal action: international agencies, NGOs (nongovernmental organizations), governments, all citizens -- anyone can be involved," says Bastian. "Local communities and small organizations may be especially effective. While they do not have the same reach as national agencies, they have the benefit of knowing what works best in their own backyards." • This story originally ran on howstuffworks.com. It is republished here as part of the Daily Herald's partnership with Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of more than 250 news outlets to strengthen coverage of the climate story. | null | http://www.dailyherald.com/news/20190918/could-planting-1-trillion-trees-be-the-answer-to-global-warming-study-says-yes | 2019-09-18 14:03:31+00:00 | 1,568,829,811 | 1,569,330,003 | environment | climate change |
150,546 | drudgereport--2019-08-01--114 private jets for elite to talk global warming with GOOGLE | 2019-08-01T00:00:00 | drudgereport | 114 private jets for elite to talk 'global warming' with GOOGLE... | Who better than the actress herself to model off her... | null | http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DrudgeReportFeed/~3/dvz_-WcUhIs/ | 2019-08-01 00:31:38+00:00 | 1,564,633,898 | 1,567,535,161 | environment | climate change |
164,878 | eveningstandard--2019-02-15--School strike for climate change UK Greta Thunberg inspired students protest global warming by walk | 2019-02-15T00:00:00 | eveningstandard | School strike for climate change UK: Greta Thunberg inspired students protest global warming by walking out of school today | Students in 60 towns and cities across the UK are set to miss school and go on strike for a second time this Friday in a fight against climate change. Inspired by Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, environmentally conscious students are calling for the government to take action on global warming. Greta Thunberg is a 16-year-old schoolgirl from Sweden who has made headlines for her action against climate change. In August 2018, Greta decided she would stop going to school on Fridays, choosing instead to picket outside the Swedish parliament (Rikstag) to raise awareness of global warming. Her mission was to pressure the Swedish Government to pass legislation that would reduce carbon emissions in line with the Paris Agreement. Since her strike action began, she has addressed world leaders at the COP24 United Nations climate chance summit and the World Economic Forum. A coalition of students from Youth Strike 4 Climate, the UK Student Climate Network and the UK Youth Climate Coalition are striking to demand action from the Government. The coalition says its students are "driven by an alarming lack of Government leadership on climate action over previous decades." Demonstrations will take place in more than 64 places in the UK, including in London, Bristol, Cornwall and the Scottish Highlands. Anna Taylor of the UK Student Climate Network said: “Young people in the UK have shown that we’re angry at the lack of government leadership on climate change. "Those in power are not only betraying us, and taking away our future, but are responsible for the climate crisis that’s unfolding in horrendous ways around the world." The second day of strike action is Friday, March 15, when students skip school to demonstrate against global warming. This follows the first day of climate action in February, when thousands of students took part in marches up and down the UK. Jake Woodier of Youth Strike 4 Climate said: “Youth voices are too often left out of the discussion when it comes to climate change. "Our current trajectory is completely incompatible with a clean, safe environment not only for ourselves but future generations as well." The coalition is calling on the Government to declare "a state of climate emergency" and educate the British public in the seriousness of global warming. They are also demanding changes to the school curriculum which will include education about climate change. The coalition wants young people to be included in decision-making and is also calling for the voting age to be lowered to 16. | Jessica Taylor | https://www.standard.co.uk/futurelondon/cleanair/school-strike-climate-change-network-uk-students-youth-protest-greta-thunberg-global-warming-a4064246.html | 2019-02-15 10:03:00+00:00 | 1,550,242,980 | 1,567,548,392 | environment | climate change |
174,830 | eveningstandard--2019-05-17--Is plastic driving climate change Plastic production contributing to global warming almost twice as | 2019-05-17T00:00:00 | eveningstandard | Is plastic driving climate change? Plastic production contributing to global warming almost twice as much as aviation, research reveals | Whilst the devastating effects of plastic waste on the world's flora and fauna has been well-documented in recent years, the impact of plastic production, use and disposal on our climate has largely stayed out of the headlines – until now. Research has uncovered that emissions from plastic in 2015 equated nearly 1.8 billion metric tons of CO2 and predicts demand will rise 22% over the next five years. On this trajectory, the report forecasts that by 2050, emissions from plastic will climb to 17% of the global carbon budget. The study also reveals that plastics account for 3.8% of global greenhouse gas emissions over their lifecycle - that's almost double the emissions from aviation. The research, carried out by scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara and published by journal Nature Climate Change, claims to be "the first global assessment of the life cycle of greenhouse gas emissions from all plastics". The report went on to describe how the global carbon footprint of plastics could be reduced through four key strategies: “We thought that any one of these strategies should have curbed the greenhouse gas emissions of plastics significantly,” said study co-author Sangwon Suh, professor at UC Santa Barbara’s Bren School of Environmental Science and Management. “We tried one and it didn’t really make much impact. We combined two, still the emissions were there. And then we combined all of them. Only then could we see a reduction in future greenhouse gas emissions from the current level.” | Edwina Langley | https://www.standard.co.uk/futurelondon/theplasticfreeproject/emissions-from-plastics-will-reach-17-of-global-carbon-budget-by-2050-study-finds-a4145096.html | 2019-05-17 12:51:00+00:00 | 1,558,111,860 | 1,567,540,517 | environment | climate change |
216,385 | france24--2019-08-02--Scientists link Europe heat wave to man-made global warming | 2019-08-02T00:00:00 | france24 | Scientists link Europe heat wave to man-made global warming | Jon Nazca, Reuters | People are silhouetted against the setting sun at "El Mirador de la Alemana" (The viewpoint of the German), as the summer's second heatwave hits Spain, in Malaga, southern Spain July 24, 2019. The heat wave that smashed temperature records in Western Europe last month was made more likely and intensified by man-made climate change, according to a study published Friday. The rapid study by a respected team of European scientists should be a warning of things to come, the report's lead author said. "What will be the impacts on agriculture? What will the impacts on water?" said Robert Vautard of the Institut Pierre-Simon Laplace in France. "This will put really tension in society that we may not be so well equipped to cope with." The report concluded that the heatwave in late July "was so extreme over continental Western Europe that the observed magnitudes would have been extremely unlikely without climate change." In countries where millions of people sweltered through the heat wave, temperatures would have been 1.5 to 3 degrees Celsius (2.7 to 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) lower in a world without human-induced climate change, the study said. Global warming is also making such extreme heat more frequent, the study by experts from France, the Netherlands, Britain, Switzerland and Germany found. The scientists said that the record temperatures recorded in France and the Netherlands could happen every 50-150 years in the world's current climate. Without "human influence on climate," the temperatures would likely happen less than once in 1,000 years. Vautard said Europe needs to get used to such heat waves, which are likely to become more frequent and intense. "This will go up and if we don't do anything about climate change, about emissions, these heat waves which today have an amplitude of 42 degrees, they will have three degrees more in 2050 so that is going to make 45 (degrees) roughly speaking," he told The Associated Press. While the heat wave broke in Western Europe after a few days late last month, the extreme temperatures have since shifted north and are causing massive ice melts in Greenland and the Arctic. The scientists calculated the odds of this type of heat occurring now and how often it would have happened in a world without man-made global warming and compared them. They created the simulations by using eight different sets of complex computer models. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 2016 studied this new scientific method of climate attribution and pronounced it valid. Kathie Dello, a climate scientist from NC State University in North Carolina, said the study helps to pin the blame for the heat wave on climate change. "If searching for a culprit for the intensity of these recent European heatwaves, climate change is the obvious culprit," Dello said in an email. "Attribution is just dusting for fingerprints. Climate change will continue to be a menace when it comes to extreme heat, making these events more likely and more intense." Another expert not connected to the study, Celine Bonfils of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, said the findings are clear: "record hot weather events are becoming more likely, and human-induced climate change is causing this increase in heat wave frequency." The new report agreed with their assessments, saying that every recent European heat wave that has been analyzed "was found to be made much more likely and more intense due to human-induced climate change." | NEWS WIRES | https://www.france24.com/en/20190802-scientists-europe-heat-wave-man-made-global-warming | 2019-08-02 14:29:31+00:00 | 1,564,770,571 | 1,567,535,061 | environment | climate change |
219,999 | freedombunker--2019-02-26--Scientists Are Hatching Mad Plans to Geoengineer Earth to Save Us from Global Warming | 2019-02-26T00:00:00 | freedombunker | Scientists Are Hatching Mad Plans to Geoengineer Earth to Save Us from Global Warming | Harvard’s Gernot Wagner wants to save the world from global warming. His method? Develop a new type of plane that will fly more than 4,000 missions a year dumping particulates into the stratosphere. Wagner and his colleague Wake Smith call the proposed plane “SAI Lofter (SAIL).” Anonymous individuals at “Airbus, Atlas Air, Boeing, Bombardier, GE Engines, Gulfstream, Lockheed Martin, NASA, Near Space Corporation, Northrup Grumman, Rolls Royce Engines, Scaled Composites, The Spaceship Company, and Virgin Orbit” provided input. Estimates for SAIL’s design and operation seem sophisticated but are fabricated. Wagner and Smith admit, “No existing aircraft design—even with extensive modifications—can reasonably fulfill [their] mission.” No doubt, Wagner and others will tell you careful calculations will limit global cooling to just the right degree. Wagner and others believe that scientists can calculate how many particulates will be needed to cool the Earth to a desired temperature. Wagner and Smith are not alone in their geoengineering dreams. As early as 2006, Paul J. Crutzen, Nobel laureate in chemistry, called for “stratospheric geoengineering research.” Harvard professors David Keith and Frank Keutsch hope to experiment via balloons spraying “a fine mist of materials such as sulfur dioxide, alumina, or calcium carbonate into the stratosphere.” Wagner, Keith, and Keutsch are all part of the Solar Geoengineering Research Program at Harvard. Geoengineering is gaining global traction. Last fall, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a report saying geoengineering could be used as an emergency “temporary remedial measure.” Spraying aerosols in the stratosphere would “mimic what large volcanoes do.” In 1815, Mount Tambora in Indonesia erupted, spewing “millions of tons of dust, ash, and sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere, temporarily changing the world's climate and dropping global temperatures by as much as 3 degrees.” As the particulates moved around the global atmosphere, “1816 became the year without a summer for millions of people in parts of North America and Europe, leading to failed crops and near-famine conditions.” Some scientists warn geoengineering will have unintended consequences. No doubt, Wagner and others will tell you careful calculations will limit global cooling to just the right degree. Skeptics might conclude otherwise: scientists blinded by unlimited hubris are partnering with crony capitalists to threaten humanity. To be sure, some scientists warn geoengineering will have unintended consequences. MIT’s Daniel Cziczo, an atmospheric scientist, warns that geoengineering could destroy the ozone layer. Without the ozone layer, photosynthesis would be difficult, the food chain would be destroyed, and life on Earth would perish. In this case, unintended consequences would be apocalyptic. In his book The Fatal Conceit, F.A. Hayek observed, “The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.” Is Hayek’s statement equally applicable to scientists imagining they can safely modify the biosphere? Regardless of your beliefs about global warming, Nassim Taleb’s “precautionary principle” would rule out plans altering the biosphere. Taleb writes: In the late 1980s, outside Tucson, Arizona, scientists built a closed ecosystem (all food and water had to be obtained from inside the dome) to replicate the Earth’s biosphere. Eight humans resided in the biosphere for a short period of time. Not long into the experiment, project organizers had to open the sealed doors of Biosphere 2: “Oxygen levels got so low halfway through the first year that they had to put more in over fear for the safety of the Biosphere residents.” "What they did learn, and in my opinion the single most important lesson, was just how little we truly understand Earth's systems." John Adams, deputy director of Biosphere 2, clearly states the takeaway: "What they did learn, and in my opinion the single most important lesson, was just how little we truly understand Earth's systems." I suspect that Wagner won’t be calling Adams soon. If you think Wagner’s plan to cool the atmosphere by mimicking the effects of volcanoes is bonkers, consider the Atlantropa project—"the craziest, most megalomaniacal scheme from the 20th century that you never heard of.” After World War I, German engineer Herman Sörgel had a plan to prevent mass starvation in Europe. Sörgel called his plan the Atlantropa Project. The heart of the Atlantropa madness was to block the Atlantic Ocean from entering the Mediterranean by damming the Strait of Gibraltar. Deprived of a significant source of water flow, the Mediterranean would drain. Sörgel imagined the dams would produce almost unlimited energy and the reclaimed land used for farming. World peace would reign when Europe and Africa were linked as a giant continent—Atlantropa. Sörgel’s mad scheme had the enthusiast support of many expert engineers and the German public. Without government support, Sörgel had no power to impose his crazy dream on others. Yet, problems with Sörgel’s mad scheme were endless. An enormous amount of concrete would be required to build a dam across the Strait of Gibraltar. If the dam would fail, millions might die by floods. As for the reclaimed land, salt left behind on the seabed would prevent farming and turn the land into a desert. Herman Sörgel’s crazy scheme is not so different from Gernot Wagner’s—both imagine they know how our biosphere works. In Sörgel’s case, dams would have altered the Gulf Stream with catastrophic global cooling the result. Without government support, Sörgel had no power to impose his crazy dream on others. Humanity averted disaster when the Nazis rejected Sörgel’s engineered “utopia.” In another instance, the Soviets were not as lucky. Consider the Aral Sea. The Aral Sea—once the fourth largest body of water on the planet—is now a vast wasteland that has shrunk to less than 25 percent of its former size. The Aral Sea in Uzbekistan (formerly part of the Soviet Union) stands as a tragic monument to the environmental carnage that often occurs under socialism. How could this have happened? Was it a change in weather? No, the destruction of the Aral Sea was the consequence of the Soviet decision to divert waters that flowed into the Aral Sea to irrigate land for cotton farming. In their book World Politics: International Politics on the World Stage, John Rourke and Mark Boyer write of the Aral Sea: Then, beginning in the 1960s, Soviet agriculture demands and horrendous planning began to drain water from the sea and from the two great rivers that feed it (the Amu Darya from the north and the Syr Darya from the south) faster than the water could be replenished. The sea started to shrink rapidly. As it did, the level of its salinity rose, and by 1977 the catch from the once-important fishery had declined by over 75 percent. Still the water level continued to fall, as the sea provided irrigation for cotton fields and for other agricultural production. The same Soviet planning that brought the world the Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster in Ukraine, stood by paralyzed as the Aral Sea began to disappear before the world’s eyes. Now, in reality, geographical name Aral Sea is a fiction, because it has shrunk in size and depth so much that a land bridge separates the so-called Greater Sea to the north from the Lesser Sea to the South. What was a single sea has lost 75 percent of its water and 50 percent of its surface area in the past 40 years. That is roughly equivalent to draining Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. The Uzbek town of Munak was once the Aral Sea’s leading port, with its fishermen harvesting the sea’s abundant catch. Now there are few fish, but even if there were many, it would not help the people of Munak. The town is now in the middle of a desert; the shoreline of the Lesser Sea is 50 miles away. Let’s put all of this together. Human hubris and madness will always exist. Scientists can dream of controlling the uncontrollable, but they need an agent of coercion to implement their dangerous schemes. Their tool of coercion can only be government. | Sean McBride | http://freedombunker.com/2019/02/26/scientists-are-hatching-mad-plans-to-geoengineer-earth-to-save-us-from-global-warming/ | 2019-02-26 19:00:22+00:00 | 1,551,225,622 | 1,567,547,213 | environment | climate change |
220,461 | freedombunker--2019-04-02--Hey NYers Debate the Severity of Global Warming on April 15 | 2019-04-02T00:00:00 | freedombunker | Hey NYers: Debate the Severity of Global Warming on April 15 | On Monday, April 15, the next Reason-sponsored Soho Forum, a monthly debate series, will engage the proposition, "There is little or no rigorous evidence that rising concentrations of carbon dioxide are causing dangerous global warming and threatening life on the planet." Craig Idso, the founder and chairman of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, will take the affirmative position and Jeffrey Bennett, an astrophysicist and former visiting scholar at NASA, will argue the negative. The Soho Forum is an Oxford-style debate, meaning the audience is polled before and after the debate and the winner is the person who moves the most people to his side. Tickets must be purchased in advance and admission includes access to a cash bar and free buffet of light fare. Use the discount code REASON and get 25 percent off. Resolution: There is little or no rigorous evidence that rising concentrations of carbon dioxide are causing dangerous global warming and threatening life on the planet. Seating must be reserved in advance. Use REASON code to get 25 percent off! All Soho Forums are released as Reason videos and podcasts. Go here for a full archive. | Ed Krayewski | http://freedombunker.com/2019/04/02/hey-nyers-debate-the-severity-of-global-warming-on-april-15/ | 2019-04-02 18:50:00+00:00 | 1,554,245,400 | 1,567,544,274 | environment | climate change |
230,882 | globalresearch--2019-09-07--Portents of 21st Century Global Warming | 2019-09-07T00:00:00 | globalresearch | Portents of 21st Century Global Warming | Global Research has decided to publish different perspectives and competing viewpoints regarding Climate Change, with a view to promoting debate and critical analysis. “We will be in a position where we set off an irreversible chain reaction beyond human control that will most likely lead to the end of our civilization as we know it”… “Now we probably don’t even have a future anymore, because that future was sold so that a small number of people could make unimaginable amounts of money. It was stolen from us every time you said that the sky was the limit, and that you only live once. You lied to us. You gave us false hope. You told us that the future was something to look forward to. And the saddest thing is that most children are not even aware of the fate that awaits us. We will not understand it until it’s too late. And yet we are the lucky ones. Those who will be affected the hardest are already suffering the consequences. But their voices are not heard.” Greta Thunberg The extreme GHG and temperature rise rates since the mid-1970th raise questions over linear climate projections for the 21st century and beyond. Under a rise of CO equivalent reaching +500 ppm and 3.0Wm-2 relative to 1750, the current rise rates of CO by 2.86 ppm per and recent global temperature rise rate (0.15-0.20°C per decade) since 1975 are leading to an abrupt shift in state of the terrestrial climate and the biosphere. By mid-21st century at >750 ppm CO-e climate tipping points indicated by Lenton et al. 2008 and Schellnhuber 2009 are likely to be crossed. Melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets has increased by a factor of more than 5 since 1979–1990. As the ice sheets and sea ice melt the albedo flip between reflective ice surfaces and dark infrared-absorbing water results in significant increase of radiative forcing and complete removal of Arctic sea ice would result in a forcing of about 0.7 Wm−2 (Hudson, 2011). The confluence of climate events, including a breach of the circum-Arctic jet stream boundary and a polar-ward migration of climate zones at a rate of 56-111 km per decade, induce world-wide extreme weather events including bushfires, methane release from Arctic permafrost and sediments. For a climate sensitivity of 3±1.5°C per doubling of atmospheric CO , global warming has potentially reached between +2oC to +3oC above mean pre-industrial temperatures at a rate exceeding the fastest growth rate over the last 55 million years. As ice melt water flow into the oceans temperature polarities between warming continents and cooling tracts of ocean would further intensify extreme weather events under non-linear climate trajectories. The enrichment of the atmosphere in GHG, constituting a shift in state of the terrestrial climate, is predicted to delay the onset of the next glacial state by some 50,000 years. The paleoclimate record suggests that no event since 55 million years ago, the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), when global temperatures rose by more than +5 to +8oC over a period of ~20,000 years, with a subsequent warming period of up to 200,000 years, has been as extreme as atmospheric disruption since the onset of the industrial age about 1750 AD (the Anthropocene), accelerating since 1975. During this period greenhouse gas levels have risen from ~280 ppm to above >410 ppm and to 496ppm CO2-equivalent (Figure 1), the increase of CO reaching near-47 percent above the original atmospheric concentration. However linear climate change projections are rare in the recent climate history (Figure 2) and linear future climate projections may not account for the effects of amplifying feedbacks from land and oceans. Given an Anthropocene warming rate faster by ~X200 times than the PETM (Figure 3), linear warming trajectories such as are projected by the IPCC may overlook punctuated tipping points, transient reversals and stadial events. Figure 1. Growth of CO -equivalent level and the annual greenhouse gas Index (AGGI[1]). Measurements of CO to the 1950s are from (Keeling et al., 2008) and from air trapped in ice and snow above glaciers. Equivalent CO amounts (in ppm) are derived from the relationship between CO concentrations and radiative forcing from all long-lived greenhouse gases. According to NOAA GHG forcing in 2018 has reached 3.101 Wm-2 relative to 1750 (CO =2.044Wm-2; CH = 0.512 Wm-2; N O = 0.199Wm-2; CFCs = 0.219Wm-2) with a CO -equivalent of 492 ppm (Figure 1). The rise in GHG forcing during the Anthropocene since about 1800 AD, intensifying since 1900 AD and sharply accelerating since about 1975, has induced a mean of ~1.5oC over the continents above pre-industrial temperature, or >2.0oC when the masking role of aerosols is discounted, implying further warming is still in store. According to Hansen et al. 2008 the rise in radiative forcing during the Last Glacial Termination (LGT –18,000 -11,000 years BP), associated with enhancing feedbacks, has driven GHG radiative forcing by approximately ~3.0 Wm-2 and a mean global temperature rise of ~4.50C (Figure 2), or, i.e. of similar order as the Anthropocene rise since about 1900. However the latter has been reached within a time frame at least X30 times shorter than the LGT, underpinning the extreme nature of current global warming. Figure 2 (Hansen et al. 2008). Glacial-temperature and GHG forcing for the last 420,000 years based on the Vostok ice core, with the time scale expanded for the Anthropocoene. The ratio of temperature and forcing scales is 1.5°C per 1 W/m2. The temperature scale gives the expected equilibrium response to GHG change including slow feedback surface albedo change. Modern forcings include human-made aerosols, volcanic aerosols and solar irradiance. The CO equivalent levels and radiative forcing levels constitute a rise from Holocene levels (~280 ppm CO ) to >410 ppm compared with Miocene-like levels (300-600 ppm CO ), at a rate reaching 2 to 3 ppm/year, within a century or so, driving the fastest temperature rise rate recorded since 55 million years ago (Figure 3). Figure 3. A comparison between rates of mean global temperature rise during: (1) the last Glacial Termination (after Shakun et al. 2012); (2) the PETM (Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, after Kump 2011); (3) the late Anthropocene (1750–2016), and (4) an asteroid impact. In the latter instance temperature due to CO rise would lag by some weeks or months behind aerosol-induced cooling Considering the transient mitigating albedo effects of clouds, seasonal land surface albedo, ice albedo, atmospheric aerosols including sulphur dioxide and nitrate, the potential rise of land temperature could have reached -0.4 to -0.9 Wm-2 in 2018, masking approximately 0.6 to 1.3oC potential warming once the short lived aerosol effect is abruptly reduced. The fast rate of the Anthropocoene temperature rise compared to the LGT and PETM (Figure 3) ensues in differences in terms of the adaptation of flora and fauna to new conditions. The shift in state of the Earth’s climate is most acutely manifested in the poles, where warming leads to weakening of the jet stream boundaries which are breached by outflow of cold air fronts, such as the recent “Beast from the East” event,and penetration of warm air masses. As the poles keep warming, to date by a mean of ~2.3oC, the shrinking of the ice sheets per year has accelerated by a factor of more than six fold (Figure 4). Warming of the Arctic is driven by the ice-water albedo flip, where dark sea-water absorbing solar energy alternates with high-albedo ice and snow, and by the weakening of the polar boundary and jet stream. Greenland. The threshold of collapse of the Greenland ice sheet, retarded by hysteresis , is estimated in the range of 400-560 ppm CO , already transgressed at the current 496 ppm CO (Figure 4). The Greenland mass loss increased from 41 ± 17 Gt/yr in 1990–2000, to 187 ± 17 Gt/yr in 2000–2010, to 286 ± 20 Gt/yr in 2010–2018, or six fold since the 1980s, or 80 ± 6 Gt/yr per decade, on average. Antarctica. The greenhouse gas level and temperature conditions under which the East Antarctic ice sheet formed during the late Eocene 45-34 million years ago are estimated as ~800–2000 ppm andup to 4 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial values, whereas the threshold of collapse is estimated as 600 ppm CO or even lower. The total mass loss from the Antarctic ice sheet increased from 40 ± 9 Gt/yr in 1979–1990 to 50 ± 14 Gt/yr in 1989–2000, 166 ± 18 Gt/yr in 1999–2009, and 252 ± 26 Gt/yr in 2009–2017. Based on satellite gravity data the East Antarctic ice sheet is beginning to breakdown in places (Jones 2019), notably the Totten Glacier (Rignot et al., 2019), which may be irreversible. According to Mengel and Levermann (2014) the Wilkes Basin in East Antarctica contains enough ice to raise global sea levels by 3–4 meters. Figure 4. (A) New elevation showing the Greenland and Antarctic current state of the ice sheets accurate to a few meters in height, with elevation changes indicating melting at record pace, losing some 500 km3of ice per-year into the oceans; (B) Ice anomaly relative to the 2002-2016 mean for the Greenland ice sheet (magenta) and Antarctic ice sheet (cyan). Data are from GRACE; (C) the melting of sea ice 1978-2017, National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NCIDC) The expansion of warm tropical zones and the polar-ward migration of subtropical and temperate climate zones are leading to a change in state in the global climate pattern. The migration of arid subtropical zones, such as the Sahara, Kalahari and central Australian deserts into temperate climate zones ensues in large scale droughts, such in inland Australia and southern Africa n the northern hemisphere expansion of the Sahara desert northward, manifested by heat waves across the Mediterranean and Europe (Figure 5) Figure 5 (A) Migration of the subtropical Sahara climate zone (red spots) northward into the Mediterranean climate zone leads to warming, drying and fires over extensive parts of Spain, Portugal, southern France, Italy, Greece and Turkey, and to melting of glaciers in the Alps. Migration, Environment and Climate Change, International Organization for Migration Geneva – Switzerland (GMT +1); https://environmentalmigration.iom.int/maps Figure 5 (B) Southward encroachment of Kalahari Desert conditions (vertical lines and red spots) leading to warming and drying of parts of southern Africa. https://environmentalmigration.iom.int/maps Since the bulk of terrestrial vegetation has evolved under glacial-interglacial climate conditions, where GHG range between 180 – 300 ppm CO , Global warming is turning large parts of Earth into a tinderbox, ignited by natural and human agents. By July and August 2019, as fires rage across large territories, including the Amazon forest, dubbed the Planet’s lungs as it enriches the atmosphere in oxygen. When burnt the rainforest becomes of source of a large amount of CO (Figure 6B), with some 72,843 fires in Brazil this year and extensive bushfires through Siberia, Alaska, Greenland, southern Europe, parts of Australia and elsewhere, the planet’s biosphere is progressively transformed. As reported: Extensive cyclones, floods, droughts, heat waves and fires (Figure 6B) increasingly ravage large tracts of Earth. However, despite its foundation in the basic laws of physics (the black body radiation laws of Planck, Kirchhoff’ and Stefan Boltzmann), as well as empirical observations around the world by major climate research bodies (NOAA, NASA, NSIDC, IPCC, World Meteorological Organization, Hadley-Met, Tindale, Potsdam, BOM, CSIRO and others), the anthropogenic origin, scale and pace of climate change remain subject to extensively propagated denial and untruths. Figure 6.(A) Extreme weather events around the world 1980-2018, including earthquakes, storms, floods, droughts. Munich Re-insurance. (B) A satellite infrared image of South America fires (red dots) during July and August, 2019, NASA. Whereas strict analogies between Quaternary and Anthropocene climate developments is not possible, elements of the glacial-interglacial history are relevant for an understanding of current and future climate events. The rise of total greenhouse gas (GHG), expressed as CO – , to 496 ppm CO -e (Figure 1),within lessthan a century represents an extreme atmospheric event. It raised GHG concentrations from Holocene levels to the range of the Miocene (34–23 Ma) when CO level was between 300 and 530 ppm. As the glacial sheets disintegrate, cold ice-melt water flowing into the ocean ensue in large cold water pools, a pattern recorded following peak interglacial phases over thelast 450,000 years, currently manifested by the growth of cold regions in north Atlantic Ocean south of Greenland and in the Southern Ocean fringing Antarctica (Figure 7). Warming of +3oC to +4oC above pre-industrial levels, leading to enhanced ice-sheet melt, would raise sea levels by at least 2 to 5 meters toward the end of the century and, delayed by hysteresis, likely by 25 meters in the longer term. Golledge et al. (2019) show meltwater from Greenland will lead to substantial slowing of the Atlantic overturning circulation, while meltwater from Antarctica will trap warm water below the sea surface, increasing Antarctic ice loss. Whereas the effect of low-density ice melt water on the surrounding oceans is generally not included in many models, depending on amplifying feedbacks, prolonged Greenland and Antarctic melting and consequent cooling of surrounding ocean sectors as well as penetration of freezing air masses through weakened polar boundaries may have profound effect on future climate change trajectories (Figure 8). Figure 7(A)Global warming map (NASA 2018). Note the cool ocean regions south of Greenland and along the Antarctic. Credits: Scientific Visualization Studio/Goddard Space Flight Center; (B) 2012 Ocean temperatures around Antarctica (NASA 2012). Climate projections for 2100-2300 by the IPCC AR5 Synthesis Report, 2014 portray predominantly linear to curved models of greenhouse gas, global temperatures and sea level changes. These models however appear to take limited account of amplifying feedbacks from land and ocean and of the effects of cold ice-melt on the oceans. According to Steffen et al. (2018) Linear temperature models appear to take limited account of the effects on the oceans of ice melt water derived from the large ice sheets, including the possibility of a significant stadial event such as already started in oceanic tracts fringing Greenland and Antarctica (Figure 7) and modelled by Hansen et al, (2016). In the shorter to medium term sea level rises would ensue from the Greenland ice sheet (6-7 meter sea level rise) and West Antarctic ice sheet melt (4.8 meter sea level rise). Referring to major past stadial events, including the 8200 years-old Laurentian melt and the 12.7-11.9 younger dry as event, a protracted breakdown of parts of the Antarctic ice sheet could result in major sea level rise and extensive cooling of southern latitudes and beyond, parallel with warming of tropical and mid-latitudes (Figure 8) (Hansen et al.. 2016). The temperature contrast between polar-derived cold fronts and tropical air masses is bound to lead to extreme weather events, echoed among other in Storms of my grandchildren (Hansen, 2010). Figure 8. (A) Model Surface-air temperature (oC) for 2096 relative to 1880–1920 (Hansen et al 201 6). The projection betrays major cooling of the North Atlantic Ocean, cooling of the circum-Antarctic Ocean and further warming in the tropics, subtropics and the interior of continents; (B) Modeled surface-air temperatures (°C) to 2300 AD relative to 1880–1920 for several ice melt rate scenarios, displaying a stadial cooling event at a time dependent on the ice melt doubling time (Hansen et al., 2016). Courtesy Prof James Hansen. Within and beyond 2100-2300 projections (Figure 8A, B) lies an uncharted climate territory, where continuing melting of the Antarctic ice sheet, further cooling of neighboring sectors of the oceans and climate contrasts with GHG-induced warming of land areas (Figure 8A), ensue in chaotic climate disruptions (Figure 8B). Given the thousands to tens of thousands years longevity of atmospheric greenhouse gases (Solomon et al., 2009; Eby et al 2009), the onset of the next ice age is likely to be delayed on the scale of tens of thousands of years (Berger and Loutre, 2002) through an exceptionally long interglacial period (Figure 9). Figure 9. Simulated Northern Hemisphere ice volume (increasing downward) for the period 200,000 years BP to 130,000 years in the future, modified after a part of Berger and Loutre 2002. Time is negative in the past and positive in the future. For the future, three CO scenarios were used: last glacial-interglacial values (solid line), a human-induced concentration of 750 ppm (dashed line), and a constant concentration of 210 ppm inducing a return to a glacial state (dotted line). As conveyed by leading scientists “Climate change is now reaching the end-game, where very soon humanity must choose between taking unprecedented action or accepting that it has been left too late and bear the consequences” (Prof. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber)…“We’ve reached a point where we have a crisis, an emergency, but people don’t know that … There’s a big gap between what’s understood about global warming by the scientific community and what is known by the public and policymakers”( James Hansen). Climate scientists find themselves in a quandary similar to medical doctors, committed to help the ill yet need to communicate grave diagnoses. How do scientists tell people the current spate of extreme weather events, including cyclones, devastating islands from the Caribbean to the Philippine, floods devastating coastal regions and river valleys from Mozambique to Kerala, Pakistan and Townsville, and fires burning extensive tracts of the living world can only intensify in a rapidly warming world? How do scientists tell the people that their children are growing into a world where survival under a mean temperatures higher than +2 degrees Celsius (above pre-industrial temperatures) is likely to be painful and, in some parts of the world, impossible, let alone under +4 degrees Celsius projected by the IPCC? Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc. Dr Andrew Glikson, Earth and Paleo-climate science, Australia National University (ANU) School of Anthropology and Archaeology, ANU Planetary Science Institute, ANU Climate Change Institute, Honorary Associate Professor, Geothermal Energy Centre of Excellence, University of Queensland. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research. [1] The index uses 1990 as a baseline year with a value of 1. The index increased every year since 1979. https://www.co2.earth/annual-ghg-index-aggi [2] where a physical property lags behind changes in the effect causing it | Dr. Andrew Glikson | https://www.globalresearch.ca/21st-century-global-warming/5688105 | 2019-09-07 17:22:06+00:00 | 1,567,891,326 | 1,569,330,874 | environment | climate change |
231,125 | globalresearch--2019-09-25--Dr Gottschalks World War II Heat Bump Did the War Contribute to Air Pollution and Global Warmin | 2019-09-25T00:00:00 | globalresearch | Dr. Gottschalk’s “World War II Heat Bump”: Did the War Contribute to Air Pollution and Global Warming? | On January 19, 2017 a New York Times front-page story, “For Third Year, the Earth in 2016 Set Heat Record,” featured a complex NOAA chart showing multiple global temperature readings taken from 1880 to 2016. Studying the front-page chart, Harvard physicist Dr. Bernard Gottschalk noticed an intriguing anomaly, a brief but suggestive ‘bump’ in temperatures that coincided with WW2 (1939-1945). Relative to the big sweeping curve of climbing temperatures over the prior hundred years, the bump was not particularly noticeable, at least to the average person. But it was noticeable to Gottschalk’s expert eye. He decided to see whether or not the WW2 temperature bump was a robust feature of the NOAA data. He applied what statisticians call ‘curve fitting’ techniques and ‘parametric analysis’ to eliminate the scatter in the data and discern the forest from the trees. He submitted his results to Cornell University’s online archive [Type here] 2 of scientific pre-publication articles in March 2017. Here is what Gottschalk’s curve-fitted ‘bump’ looks like. Gottschalk showed the rise-and-fall behaviors common to eight of the NOAA data-set measurements, four land-based and four ocean-based, during WW2. Of the possible explanations for the WW2 heat bump, Gottschalk concluded the “simplest and most likely” one was that it was “a consequence of human activity.” [1] The following year, in 2018, a colleague showed Gottschalk’s online paper to geoscientist J Marvin Herndon. Herndon was immediately struck by the WW2 heat bump. If CO2 had caused the sudden rise in temperatures in 1939, their abrupt fall in late 1945 and 1946 could not have happened, because CO2 has a very long residence time in the atmosphere. Once in the atmosphere, CO2 and its presumed heat effects don’t suddenly disappear. Moreover, ice core data showed “no significant increase in CO2 during the war years 1939– 1945.” [2] What then could have ramped up the heat in 1939-40 and subsequently caused it to plummet in 1946, after the war had ended? Gottschalk’s WW2 temperature bump was a provocative anomaly in the 136-year global heat record, especially given the ‘consensus’ that anthropogenic CO2 is the primary cause of global warming. Herndon surmised that unlike greenhouse gases, air pollution particles have a short residence time in the lower atmosphere, or troposphere, time measured in days and weeks. If war-related particulate air pollution had caused the heat bump, then Earth’s surface temperatures could be expected to fall abruptly with the cessation of global hostilities. As in fact happened. Herndon decided “to consider the broader activities of WW2,” especially the role of particulate matter that might act to alter Earth’s delicate energy balance. Particulate air pollution is comprised of small, including microscopically small, solid or liquid particles light enough to float in air. Aerosols are particulates that are immersed in a gas or liquid and are produced by fires, fossil fuel use, agriculture, industry, mining, marine-aviation-and-vehicular transport (especially diesel), unpaved roads, construction and demolition, among other human activities, all producing dust (vehicular road traffic), fly ash (coal), soot (coal and diesel), smoke (forest fires), and fumes (mining and metallurgy). Relative to earlier years, WW2 produced significantly more amounts of particulate aerosols. Early in the war the Allies, possessing superior airpower and led by Great Britain’s Royal Air Force (RAF), developed the practice of ‘area bombing’—to an extent already carried out by Japan in China, and by Germany in Poland—that deliberately targeted civilian and non-military zones for wholesale demolition. [4] In early March 1945, to take but one notable example, [Type here] 4 hundreds of US B-29 Superfortress bombers dropped 1,700 tons of incendiary explosives over Tokyo, creating a firestorm that burned for days, incinerating 16 square miles and killing as many as 100,000 humans, all in one blow. The near-total instantaneous destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki five months later ended the war in the Pacific. By war’s end in 1945, the Allied Forces had dropped over 2.7 million tons of bombs in Europe alone, creating maelstroms of smoke, debris, dust, and soot, with fires that could rage for days. Coal was still the world’s primary energy source during WW2, essential to iron and steel production, electricity generation, and rail transport, among other uses fundamental to the conduct of the war. The United States, the Allies’ industrial workhorse, consumed 12.5 quadrillion Btu of coal in 1940. By 1945 US coal consumption had grown to 16 quadrillion Btu. By 1949 US coal consumption had plummeted 25 percent to 12 quadrillion Btu—less than was consumed at the war’s outset. [5] Herndon noted that “the aerosolized particulates settled to the ground after the war, Earth radiated its excess trapped energy, and global warming abruptly subsided. But only for a brief time, as particulate pollution began to rise again from ramped-up post-WW2 industrial growth, initially in Europe and Japan, and later in China, India, and the rest of Asia, dramatically increasing worldwide aerosol particulate pollution.” [6] Global warming soon resumed its steeply rising course. Lacking “reliable, historical, global aerosol-particulate data” to measure the growth of particulate pollution during WW2, Herndon decided to use proxies “to demonstrate the reasonableness of the proposition that increases in aerosolized particulates over time is principally responsible for the global warming increase.” [7] To Gottschalk’s figure (see Figure 3 above) he added three “relative-value” proxy curves illustrating three major industrial sources of air pollution: global coal and oil production, and global aviation fuel consumption. When burned, these fuels emit both gases and aerosol particulates. With Herndon’s first peer-reviewed paper on the subject published in September 2018, Gottschalk’s WW2 heat bump due to “human activity” launched a serious scientific case for particulate pollution as the primary, unheralded anthropogenic cause of global warming. The question that needed to be answered was: How do particulate aerosols alter Earth’s delicate thermal balance? How do they heat the planet? To maintain its thermal balance, “Earth must return to space virtually all the energy it receives from the sun as well as the energy it produces internally.” [8] The two most important ways Earth thermoregulates are via convection, the “mass-transport of energy” in the lower atmosphere or troposphere, and via infrared radiation from Earth’s surface. According to Herndon, the climate science community focuses almost exclusively on the role of radiation transport, and generally “fails to understand the significant role atmospheric convection plays” in the removal of heat from Earth’s surface. [9] The troposphere is the lowest region of Earth’s atmosphere, the region where the air mixes and roils, where 99 percent of Earth’s water vapor is, and where the weather happens. It is also the region where convection—the uptake of Earth’s surface heat—occurs. Convection is a natural, ongoing, and constant process whereby the heat from Earth’s surface is transported to the upper troposphere, and from there eventually back into space. It is driven by the temperature difference between the upper and lower surface layers of air in the troposphere. (The Greek tropo means turning or changing.) Hotter, lighter surface air rises and colder, denser air falls, driving the atmosphere’s turbulence, which allows heat to escape. This difference in temperatures between layers causes the natural disturbance that is the troposphere’s signature characteristic, its continually changing movement of air, moisture, and weather. Convection’s efficiency depends on what scientists call the ‘adverse temperature gradient’, meaning the amount or degree of difference between Earth’s surface atmospheric temperature and its upper troposphere temperature. The less difference, the less adverse temperature gradient. The less adverse temperature gradient, the less efficient the removal of Earth’s surface heat by convection. To show how convection works, Herndon described a simple classroom-demonstration experiment in which he used “a 4 liter beaked-beaker, nearly filled with distilled water, and heated on a regulated hot plate.” As an indicator of convection, celery seeds were added to be “dragged along by convective motions in the water.” Due to the constantly maintained temperature difference between the heated bottom and the cooler top of the beaker, with heat venting out the top, a constant, regular circulation of the fluid was established, signaled by the movement of the seeds. “When stable convection was obtained a ceramic tile was placed atop the beaker to retard heat loss, thereby increasing the temperature at the top relative to that at the bottom, thus decreasing the adverse temperature gradient.” [10] The whole process was videotaped. [11] The video shows a dramatic reduction in convection when the lid is placed on top of the beaker, with a “markedly” rapid decrease in the movement of the beaker’s celery seeds, “demonstrating the principle that reducing the adverse temperature gradient decreases convection” and warms the planet. In other words, don’t place an aerosols-pollution ‘lid’ on the open tropospheric air beaker if you want Earth to thermoregulate properly. There is a common misunderstanding, both among climate scientists and the press covering future geoengineering schemes, that air particulate pollution acts to shut out sunlight and cool the atmosphere. This does in fact happen when particulates are placed deep in the stratosphere—high above the troposphere, which itself only extends to about 10 km or 6-7 miles above sea level. We have seen the example of the 1991 Mt. Pinatubo eruption, when the Philippine volcano “ejected 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide…more than 1 cubic mile of material that rose in an ash cloud 22 miles into the air” deep inside the stratosphere “and caused global temperatures to drop from 1991 to 1993 by about 1º F (0.5º C).” [12]. But air particulate pollution is primarily a tropospheric phenomenon, not a stratospheric one. Indian scientists, measuring the heating rates of the lower atmosphere over the Indian Ocean, found that the “atmospheric heating rate…due to aerosol over the tropical Indian Ocean was many times larger than that due to CO2.”[14] Coal fly ash is a known efficient radiation absorber, prominently due to its components of iron, iron oxides such as hematite and magnetite, carbon and carbon black, as well as other elements (e.g., aluminum, magnesium). India is heavily dependent on coal and mortally dependent on its monsoon. Recently Indian researchers used state-of-the-art instruments to measure the effects of pollution particulates such as black carbon on the movement of the monsoon. They discovered a “higher amount” of black carbon particulates that “can disturb the normal upward movement of moist air” because they heat the atmosphere and reduce convection. [15] The adverse thermal gradient directly affects the lives of billions of human beings. And not only in Asia, but the whole world. “The one generalization that can now be made,” Herndon asserts in his sixth and most recently published paper, “is that virtually all tropospheric aerosol particulates, including cloud droplets and their aerosol components, absorb short- and long-wave solar radiation, and absorb longwave radiation from Earth’s surface.” [16] When millions of tons of heat-absorbing particulate pollution in the form of soot, dust, smoke, and coal fly ash are deposited in the troposphere they heat the surrounding air masses and, acting as a lid on the atmospheric ‘beaker’, they directly lower the adverse temperature gradient between Earth’s surface and the troposphere’s upper layer. Such interference directly reduces atmospheric convection and allows incident solar radiation to build up and warm the planet. Herndon concludes: “The lowering of the adverse temperature gradient in the lower atmosphere is the primary way global particulate pollution causes global warming.” [17] Over the last two decades geoengineering has been much discussed and hyped as a possible anthropogenic antidote to human-caused CO2 global warming. The two have been coupled as a single problem/solution conundrum in the minds of scientific and political elites at least since the National Academy of Sciences’ massive 1992 report Policy Implications of Greenhouse Warming. [18] The ‘the Pinatubo option’ of ameliorating CO2-caused heat by spraying millions of tons of sulfur dioxide or aluminum nanoparticulates into the stratosphere, what geoengineers call ‘stratospheric radiation management’, is their currently favored solution to the problem of global warming. [19] And political elites are peering over the engineers’ shoulders with close attention to the political intricacies of eventual implementation. [20] The problems with this ‘solution’ are manifold and obvious, yet underappreciated. The problem posed, for instance, by aerosolized pollution nanoparticulates to the stratospheric ozone layer, which shields the entire biosphere from ultraviolet radiation, though mentioned, is rarely stressed. Even in the dry stratosphere, which is far less turbulent than the moisture-laden troposphere, gravity operates. Particulates precipitate out, falling first into the troposphere where the weather occurs in form of rain and drought (among other events), and from the troposphere onto agricultural fields and gardens, into reservoirs and lakes, into the ocean, and into vertebrate lungs. Even though the residence time of particulates in the stratosphere is measured in years (one, two, or three), not days and weeks, to keep ‘managing’ incoming solar radiance the stratospheric pollutant shield will have to be continuously renewed, and aerosols more or less constantly sprayed, at least for decades, and possibly longer. [21] Leaving the long-term effects on local, regional, and global weather systems aside, once in the troposphere aerosols have mortal effects. Indeed, humanity and all other living beings would have to adapt to unprecedented levels of invisible aerosol pollution whose health effects are known [22] but grossly underappreciated. Last October the head of WHO warned that “the simple act of breathing is killing 7 million people a year and harming billions more.” He added that “air pollution now causes more deaths annually than tobacco,” and that “over 90% of the world’s population suffers toxic air…with profound impacts on the health of people, especially children.” [23]. There is, as readers of Herndon’s [24] or my work [25] know, another form of geoengineering. It takes place in the lower atmosphere, and constitutes a different, covert kind of enterprise, conducted by the military and its subcontractors, whose purpose can only be speculated upon. What can no longer be denied, however, is that deep state tropospheric geoengineering’s principal and most significant result is to warm the planet. In the early post-WW2 years John von Neumann, one the last century’s most influential scientists and mathematicians, claimed that “using computer-generated predictions…weather and climate systems ‘could be controlled, or at least directed, by the releases of perfectly practical amounts of energy’.” [26] Humans now possess those ‘perfectly practical amounts of energy’ in the form of globally dispersed ionospheric heaters and electrically conducting aerosols. Toward the end of his life, von Neumann pronounced: “All stable processes we shall predict. All unstable processes we shall control.” [27] Von Neumann spoke for a community whose power has grown steadily over the last 60 years, the community Eisenhower warned of in his Farewell Address. The weather and the climate are preeminent examples of ‘unstable processes’ whose complexities, though huge, do not appear to daunt von Neumann’s scientific and military heirs. Meanwhile, our civilization is profoundly dependent on fossil-fuel energy. Virtually all official sources indicate that we will remain heavily dependent on fossil fuels for at least another generation. Given our dependency, there are two reasons for optimism. One, it is technically more feasible to reduce particulate air pollution than to reduce carbon dioxide. Two, if the NOAA WW2 temperature data as interpreted by Gottschalk and by Herndon is correct, then reducing particulate emissions will have an immediate beneficial effect on global warming. Ian Baldwin is an environmentalist and co-founder of Chelsea Green Publishing Company in Vermont. He has written on geoengineering issues under the rubric “Our Geoengineering Age” at www.vermontindependent.net.” [1] Bernard Gottschalk, “Global surface temperatures trends and the effect of World War II: a parametric analysis (long version),” arXiv, March 19, 2017; expanded October 15, 2018. http://arxiv-export-lb.library.cornell.edu/pdf/1703.09281. Accessed Sep 06, 2019. [2] J Marvin Herndon & Mark Whiteside, “Further Evidence that Particulate Pollution is the Principal Cause of Global Warming: Humanitarian Considerations,” Journal of Geography, Environment and Earth Science International, 21 (1), May 08, 2019. http://www.journaljgeesi.com/index.php/JGEESI/article/view/30117. Accessed Sep 06, 2019. [3] J Marvin Herndon, “Air Pollution, Not Greenhouse Gases: The Principal Cause of Global Warming,” Journal of Geography, Environment and Earth Science International, 17 (2), September 22, 2018. http://www.journaljgeesi.com/index.php/JGEESI/article/view/11231. Accessed Sep 06, 2019. [5] “History of Energy Consumption in the United States, 1775–2009,” US Energy Information Administration, February 09, 2011. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=10. Accessed Sep 06, 2019. [6] J Marvin Herndon “Role of Atmospheric Convection in Global Warming,” Journal of Geography, Environment and Earth Science International, 19 (4), March 13, 2019. http://www.journaljgeesi.com/index.php/JGEESI/article/view/30091. Accessed Sep 06, 2019. [8] J Marvin Herndon, “Fundamental Climate Science Error: Concomitant Harm to Humanity and the Environment,” Journal of Geography, Environment and Earth Science International, 18 (3), December 28, 2018. http://journaljgeesi.com/index.php/JGEESI/article/view/28790. Accessed Sep 06, 2019. [13] Ian Baldwin, “Origins of the ‘Climate Change’ Threat to National Security—and the Geoengineering Response,” vermontindependent.net, June 13, 2017. https://vermontindependent.net/origins-of-the-climate-change-threat-to-national-securityand-the-geoengineering-response-our-geoengineering-age-part-6/. Accessed Sep 06, 2019. [14] M V Ramana et al, “Albedo, atmospheric solar absorption and heating rate measurements with stacked UAVs,” Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, 133 (629), September 18, 2007. https://www.academia.edu/25247234/Albedo_atmospheric_solar_absorption_and_heating_ra te_measurements_with_stacked_UAVs. Accessed Sep 06, 2019. [15] Shamitaksha Talukdar et al, “Influence of Black Carbon Aerosol on the Atmospheric Instability,” Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 124 (10), April 29,2019. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2018JD029611. Accessed Sep 06, 2019. [16] J Marvin Herndon, “Geophysical Consequences of Tropospheric Particulate Heating: Further Evidence that Anthropogenic Global Warming is Principally Caused by Particulate Pollution,” Journal of Geography, Environment and Earth Science International, 22 (4), August 19, 2019. http://journaljgeesi.com/index.php/JGEESI/article/view/30157. Accessed Sep 06, 2019. [19] Douglas G MacMartin, Katharine L Ricke & David W Keith, “Solar Geoengineering as Part of an Overall Strategy for Meeting the 1.5 Degrees Celsius Paris Target,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, April 02, 2018. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/abs/10.1098/rsta.2016.0454. Accessed Sep 07, 2019. [22] Mark Whiteside & J Marvin Herndon, “Geoengineering: The Deadly New Global ‘Miasma’,” Journal of Advances in Medicine and Medical Research, 29 (12), June 20, 2019. http://www.journaljammr.com/index.php/JAMMR/article/view/30151. Accessed Sep 06, 2019. [23] Damian Carrington & Matthew Taylor “Air pollution is the ‘new tobacco’, warns WHO head,” The Guardian, October 27, 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/27/air-pollution-is-the-new-tobaccowarns-who-head. Accessed Sep 06, 2019. | Ian Baldwin | https://www.globalresearch.ca/dr-gottschalks-world-war-ii-heat-bump-did-the-war-contribute-to-air-pollution-and-global-warming/5690184 | 2019-09-25 20:19:16+00:00 | 1,569,457,156 | 1,570,222,227 | environment | climate change |
232,326 | globalresearch--2019-12-17--Huge Climate Victory! Denmark Mandates Global Warming Cure…By Law! | 2019-12-17T00:00:00 | globalresearch | Huge Climate Victory! Denmark Mandates Global Warming Cure…By Law! | Friday, Dec 6, 2019, saw the most important victory to date in the battle against Global Warming. Denmark’s “Climate Act” will entirely revamp Denmark’s climate policy – by law- and thrust it onto the world’s centre stage by showcasing the only effective political solution: Changing the “system itself.” Eight out of the ten parties in the Danish Parliament agreed on the new national Climate Act that mandates binding targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 70 per cent (compared to the 1990 level). 2030, not the belayed 2050, is the target date for tangible reductions. In a world-first, Danish law requires consideration of methane gas, consumption, and imported emissions along with CO2.Denmark has also eliminated the trickery of Carbon credits while a new expert body of climate scientists will be placed with the newly formed Climate Council. They and the Climate Minister must annually submit to a parliamentary progress review. The first of two five year plans of action are now being developed for approval. Also, a new Committee for the Green Transformation will ensure that climate considerations are taken into account in every major political decision and include 13 climate partnerships with Denmark’s leading private sector organizations. The aim of this historic legislation is a path to sustainable solutions of the future. Better, the Danish law requires it to take a leadership role in international climate engagement. Every year it will present to the world its “Climate Action Programmes” that showcase concrete political initiatives to decarbonize every Danish civic sector. This is a victory for Denmark and also climate activists. No longer can other world leaders mitigate and marginalize Global Warming by using the tricks of denial and delay. Nor can they cast aside factual science as a mere conspiracy. One small nation, Denmark, has now vindicated-forever- climate activism and in turn, vilified the mercenary deniers of the obvious. Denmark has thus become the world’s first nation to legitimize the rebellion against Global Warming. Said Minister for Climate, Dan Jørgensen, “We hope Denmark can inspire other countries to follow suit.” Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc. Brett Redmayne-Titley has published over 180 in-depth articles over the past ten years for news agencies worldwide. Many have been translated and republished. On-scene reporting from important current events has led to his many multi-part exposes on such topics as the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations, NATO summit, Keystone XL Pipeline, Porter Ranch Methane blow-out, Hizbullah in Lebanon, Erdogan’s Turkey and many more. He can be reached at: live-on-scene ((at)) gmx.com. Prior articles can be viewed at his archive: www.watchingromeburn.uk Featured image is from the author | Brett Redmayne-Titley | https://www.globalresearch.ca/huge-climate-victory-denmark-mandates-global-warming-cure-law/5697730 | Tue, 17 Dec 2019 17:29:35 +0000 | 1,576,621,775 | 1,576,627,493 | environment | climate change |
234,018 | hitandrun--2019-04-02--Hey NYers Debate the Severity of Global Warming on April 15 | 2019-04-02T00:00:00 | hitandrun | Hey NYers: Debate the Severity of Global Warming on April 15 | On Monday, April 15, the next Reason-sponsored Soho Forum, a monthly debate series, will engage the proposition, "There is little or no rigorous evidence that rising concentrations of carbon dioxide are causing dangerous global warming and threatening life on the planet." Craig Idso, the founder and chairman of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, will take the affirmative position and Jeffrey Bennett, an astrophysicist and former visiting scholar at NASA, will argue the negative. The Soho Forum is an Oxford-style debate, meaning the audience is polled before and after the debate and the winner is the person who moves the most people to his side. Tickets must be purchased in advance and admission includes access to a cash bar and free buffet of light fare. Use the discount code REASON and get 25 percent off. Resolution: There is little or no rigorous evidence that rising concentrations of carbon dioxide are causing dangerous global warming and threatening life on the planet. Seating must be reserved in advance. Use REASON code to get 25 percent off! All Soho Forums are released as Reason videos and podcasts. Go here for a full archive. | Nick Gillespie | http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/reason/HitandRun/~3/hFRZNisfhys/hey-nyers-debate-global-warming-learn-ab | 2019-04-02 18:50:00+00:00 | 1,554,245,400 | 1,567,544,319 | environment | climate change |
310,159 | mercurynews--2019-01-28--Letter Action not awareness needed in global warming | 2019-01-28T00:00:00 | mercurynews | Letter: Action, not awareness, needed in global warming | An article by John Schwartz of the New York Times in the Jan. 23 edition of the Mercury News summarized recent polls indicating that 73 percent of Americans now understand that global warming is happening, and 69 percent are worried about it. This is great news. But awareness is one thing; action is another. In the Bay Area, we are fortunate to have access to Community Choice Aggregation programs, such as Silicon Valley Clean Energy and Peninsula Clean Energy, which buy electricity from renewable sources and provide it directly to customers. Switching over to these programs is automatic, and a higher percentage of renewable power is provided than is available from PG&E and at a lower price. However, for the cost of a large latte each month, you can sign up for 100 percent renewable power. Letter: Ross has no idea about government loans On a personal level, this is one of best actions we can take to combat global warming. Submit your letter to the editor via this form Read more Letters to the Editor | Letters To The Editor | https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/01/28/letter-action-not-awareness-needed-in-global-warming/ | 2019-01-28 11:10:47+00:00 | 1,548,691,847 | 1,567,550,527 | environment | climate change |
341,266 | newsbusters--2019-03-17--NBC CBS Promote Teens Skipping School to Protest Global Warming | 2019-03-17T00:00:00 | newsbusters | NBC, CBS Promote Teens Skipping School to Protest Global Warming | On Friday evening, the NBC Nightly News caught up with CNN in highlighting a couple of teenage environmental activists who are promoting an alarmist agenda against global warming while encouraging students to skip school to pressure adults into taking action on the issue. The CBS Evening News also gave the protests a 17-second brief. Anchorman Lester Holt introduced the one-sided report: "Students took to the streets today in this country and far beyond, calling on our leaders to do more to protect the planet." No one makes the middle-schoolers prove they got an A in Science. Correspondent Kelly Cobiella began: "Across America and around the globe, students today went on strike for the climate. ... Alexandria Villasenor is just 13 years old, and has been on strike for nearly four months after seeing Swedish teen, Greta Thunberg, calling out world leaders." Then came a clip of 15-year-old environmental activist Greta Thunberg speaking at an event: "You say you love your children above all else, and yet you are stealing their future in front of their very eyes." Cobiella then returned to Villasenor's activism as the NBC reporter continued: "Alexandria helped organize the protests across the U.S." The NBC correspondent added: "And to the adults who say these kids should stay in school?" The seventh grader oozed with disdain: "Adults didn't do anything to prevent this, so they shouldn't be telling us that. If enough youth keep striking, going out into the streets, having civil disobedience, we'll get the action that's needed." Cobiella concluded: "Whatever it takes, they say, to save their future." How much might that be? NBC didn't report "Their demands are uncompromising: Nations must commit to cutting fossil-fuel emissions in half in the next 10 years to avoid catastrophic global warming." How drastic will the "solutions" have to be on the American people and the American economy? Apparently, all that matters is striking a pose for the TV cameras. Over on the CBS Evening News, anchorman Jeff Glor read a brief, hyping the number of participants (on behalf of leftist groups, your usual "organizers estimate" hype): | Brad Wilmouth | https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/2019/03/15/nbc-hypes-call-kids-skip-school-environment | 2019-03-17 00:30:00+00:00 | 1,552,797,000 | 1,567,545,955 | environment | climate change |
383,371 | npr--2019-01-22--Concern About Global Warming Among Americans Spikes Report Says | 2019-01-22T00:00:00 | npr | Concern About Global Warming Among Americans Spikes, Report Says | Concern About Global Warming Among Americans Spikes, Report Says In 2018, Americans watched as California towns were incinerated by fires, hurricanes devastated coastal communities and a government report sounded the alarm about the impacts of a changing climate. All those factors contributed to significant changes in perceptions of global warming in the U.S., according to the authors of a new public opinion survey. The proportion of Americans who said global warming is "personally important" to them jumped from 63 percent to 72 percent from March to December of last year. There has also been an 8-percent rise in the number of Americans who are "very worried" about global warming – 29 percent said they feel that way, while 40 percent said they are "somewhat worried." And 56 percent of Americans said their family will be harmed by global warming. "Americans have, unfortunately, had far more experience with what climate change looks like," researcher Anthony Leiserowitz told NPR. He led the team behind the survey, "Climate Change in the American Mind," which was a collaboration between Yale and George Mason Universities. He said the biggest surprise for researchers was how Americans' worry about global warming spiked between their surveys in March and December of last year. "It really does indicate that Americans are increasingly seeing this not as a distant problem, but as something that's here and now," Leiserowitz said. While scientists often can't tie specific weather events to climate change, global warming is leading to warmer oceans and hotter summers – the kinds of conditions that exacerbate the high-profile storms and fires that are impacting the U.S. A major federal government climate assessment released in November painted a stark picture of the costs and dangers the country faces as global temperatures continue to climb: From billions of dollars in infrastructure damage and disaster response funds, to the spread of disease and rising seas. Fifty-four percent of Americans said they haven't yet felt the effects of global warming, but that number is at its lowest level in a decade. The survey, released Tuesday, also took stock of how Americans see the role of humans in global climate change. Sixty-two percent of those surveyed said global warming is mostly caused by humans – which is what science has shown. Twenty-three percent of Americans said it is "mostly caused by natural changes in the environment," the lowest number of people to say so since the survey began in 2008. Leiserowitz said he thinks the survey also shows the impact of media coverage on public impressions of climate change. "The only way most Americans even know about these issues is because of coverage," Leiserowitz explained. "So when the media does not report this, it is literally out of sight, out of mind. But when the media does report it, it becomes salient." The presence of climate change in public debate – and in Americans' consciousness – has both grown and faded over the years. A look back at Leiserowitz's data from the last decade shows that Americans' concern about the issue has only recently matched or surpassed public opinion in 2008. Leiserowitz explained that a combination of media (Al Gore's climate change documentary An Inconvenient Truth and the climate change disaster film The Day After Tomorrow) and politics (John McCain was vocal about the threats of global warming) drove increased levels of awareness and concern about the problem at that time. He said their research shows the subsequent rise of the conservative tea party – which sidelined concerns about climate change — erased those gains. The survey says that 48 percent of Americans feel hopeful about global warming, while 51 percent feel helpless. Just 14 percent of Americans think it is too late to do anything about it. | Ian Stewart | https://www.npr.org/2019/01/22/687487496/concern-about-global-warming-among-americans-spikes-report-says?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=news | 2019-01-22 21:08:21+00:00 | 1,548,209,301 | 1,567,551,411 | environment | climate change |
424,007 | powerlineblog--2019-01-22--Global Warming The Big Picture | 2019-01-22T00:00:00 | powerlineblog | Global Warming: The Big Picture | Regular readers know that we have been debunking global warming (aka “climate change”) hysteria for a long time. As data accumulate the realist position that we have espoused becomes ever stronger. While it is often useful to take a deep dive into the data, it is also helpful to step back and see the big picture. That is what Ken Haapala, President of the Science and Environmental Policy Project, did in the most recent The Week That Was–an email to which you should subscribe, if you haven’t already. Turning the floor over to Haapala: Last week’s TWTW discussed the two primary energy flows from the surface through the atmosphere into space as speculated in the influential 1979 Charney report: 1) carbon dioxide (CO2) absorbing and re-radiating (interfering with) some of the outbound long-wave radiation from the surface to space and 2) increased water vapor absorbing and re-radiating (interfering with) even more outbound long-wave radiation. According to the Charney Report, the increased water vapor is more significant than the CO2 in causing a warming of the planet. Two key points here: 1) pretty much everyone agrees that the scientifically supportable consequence of doubling the CO2 in the atmosphere, a 1 degree increase in mean global temperature, would be a good thing. To get to the alarmists’ horror stories, you need to assume that increasing temperature by 1 degree would entail positive feedbacks that would quadruple that increase, or more. (This supposition seems obviously false, since in the past, when global temperatures were more than 1 degree warmer than they are today, no such feedbacks appeared.) The main positive feedback is a hypothetical increase in water vapor, which is far and away the main “greenhouse gas.” There is no basis in observation for this theory. Further, TWTW discussed the 1997 model of the earth’s “Annual Global Mean Energy Budget” as presented by Kiehl and Trenberth paper published by the American Meteorological Society. In their graph, Figure 7, one can see the component allocated to outgoing longwave radiation and the component allocated to increasing water vapor, evapotranspiration and latent heat. Other publications disagree with the specific numbers but accept the concept. According to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and their followers, there is a water vapor component of release of latent heat in the upper troposphere. This is the so called “hot spot,” which is assumed to be located over the tropics and strongest at a pressure between 300 to 200 millibars (mb) (roughly 9 to 11 km, 30,000 to 36,000 feet above the tropics). Over 50% of the atmosphere is below 6 km. This “hot spot” has not been found and is not increasing as it should if the water vapor component of “CO2- caused global warming” is as strong as claimed in the Charney Report and repeated by the IPCC and others for 40 years. The recent McKitrick and Christy paper demonstrated that 60 years of weather balloon data have shown no such warming is taking place. Many other publications have likewise not found it. If the “hot spot” doesn’t exist, the models on which global warming hysteria is based are wrong. Period. Sunlight creates thermal chaotic motion of the atmosphere, which causes air with water vapor entrained to rise up. This convection process drives the winds and turbulence of the atmosphere. At the much cooler temperatures of altitudes like 10 km, water vapor condenses and becomes liquid, then ice. The conversion (phase change) from a gas back to a liquid (or solid) releases the latent heat into the atmosphere, slightly warming the nitrogen and oxygen. From high altitude, some heat is radiated into space, and part remains in the atmosphere. The entire process can be called a heat engine, or weather engine. When the Charney Report was written, the process was understood. This issue in question was: will a CO2-caused warming increase the intensity of this process, the weather engine? That would seem to be an empirical question. But for the global warming hysterics, theory predominates over observation. That is the opposite of the scientific method. Forty years of comprehensive atmospheric temperature trends, the last twenty years with no statistically significant warming, and 60 years of balloon observations show that the global atmosphere is not warming in a way indicating that the process is intensifying. The weather engine is not becoming more extreme. Thus, projections / forecasts / predictions from climate models or other means that CO2 warming is causing more extreme weather events are not supported by the hard evidence of temperature trends in the atmosphere. If there is any greenhouse gas effect that is significant at this time, it is the warming of the Arctic, not the Antarctic that is both warming and cooling. The Daily Mean Temperature graphs of the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI), from 1958 to current, north of the 80th northern parallel, show that temperatures are rising in the cold months, not the summer. In the cold months, the Arctic is extremely dry, thus the warming may be from an increase in water vapor from El Niños, the causes of which are not understood. Please note that the above discussion does not include transport of heat from the tropics to the polar regions both by the oceans and the atmosphere. As Richard Lindzen has discussed, any greenhouse gas warming of the polar regions is likely to be beneficial, because it lessens the temperature extremes (temperature gradient) between the tropics and the polar regions, thus reducing the driving forces of winds and severe storms. As climate change pioneer H.H. Lamb discussed in his book, “Climate, History and the Modern World,” the fiercest storms to hit Western Europe occurred during the Little Ice Age, a cold period. To repeat: the alarmists’ models predict warming over the poles. That would reduce severe weather events, which are largely driven by the temperature difference between the poles and the equator. The corrupt alarmist kleptocracy ignored this rather obvious fact and propagandized a non-existent increase in severe weather events to keep the cash flowing. However low your opinion of global warming hysterics may be, it isn’t low enough. | John Hinderaker | https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/01/global-warming-the-big-picture.php | 2019-01-22 00:16:46+00:00 | 1,548,134,206 | 1,567,551,416 | environment | climate change |
426,712 | prepareforchange--2019-03-26--Evidence for man-made global warming hits gold standard scientists claim | 2019-03-26T00:00:00 | prepareforchange | Evidence for man-made global warming hits ‘gold standard’: scientists claim | And the push for the agenda continues on…….who more trustworthy than Reuters…?….. OSLO (Reuters) – Evidence for man-made global warming has reached a “gold standard” level of certainty, adding pressure for cuts in greenhouse gases to limit rising temperatures, scientists said on Monday. They said confidence that human activities were raising the heat at the Earth’s surface had reached a “five-sigma” level, a statistical gauge meaning there is only a one-in-a-million chance that the signal would appear if there was no warming. Such a “gold standard” was applied in 2012, for instance, to confirm the discovery of the Higgs boson subatomic particle, a basic building block of the universe. Benjamin Santer, lead author of Monday’s study at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, said he hoped the findings would win over skeptics and spur action. “The narrative out there that scientists don’t know the cause of climate change is wrong,” he told Reuters. “We do.” Mainstream scientists say the burning of fossil fuels is causing more floods, droughts, heat waves and rising sea levels. U.S. President Donald Trump has often cast doubt on global warming and plans to pull out of the 197-nation Paris climate agreement which seeks to end the fossil fuel era this century by shifting to cleaner energies such as wind and solar power. Sixty-two percent of Americans polled in 2018 believed that climate change has a human cause, up from 47 percent in 2013, according to the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. Monday’s findings, by researchers in the United States, Canada and Scotland, said evidence for global warming reached the five sigma level by 2005 in two of three sets of satellite data widely used by researchers, and in 2016 in the third. Professor John Christy, of the University of Alabama in Huntsville which runs the third set of data, said there were still many gaps in understanding climate change. His data show a slower pace of warming than the other two sets. “You may see a certain fingerprint that indicates human influence, but that the actual intensity of the influence is minor (as our satellite data indicate),” he told Reuters. Separately in 2013, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that it is “extremely likely”, or at least 95 percent probable, that human activities have been the main cause of climate change since the 1950s. Peter Stott of the British Met Office, who was among the scientists drawing that conclusion and was not involved in Monday’s study, said he would favor raising the probability one notch to “virtually certain”, or 99-100 percent. “The alternative explanation of natural factors dominating has got even less likely,” he told Reuters. The IPCC will next publish a formal assessment of the probabilities in 2021. “I would be reluctant to raise to 99-100 percent, but there is no doubt there is more evidence of change in the global signals over a wider suite of ocean indices and atmospheric indices,” said Professor Nathan Bindoff, a climate scientist at the University of Tasmania. Disclaimer: We at Prepare for Change (PFC) bring you information that is not offered by the mainstream news, and therefore may seem controversial. The opinions, views, statements, and/or information we present are not necessarily promoted, endorsed, espoused, or agreed to by Prepare for Change, its leadership Council, members, those who work with PFC, or those who read its content. However, they are hopefully provocative. Please use discernment! Use logical thinking, your own intuition and your own connection with Source, Spirit and Natural Laws to help you determine what is true and what is not. By sharing information and seeding dialogue, it is our goal to raise consciousness and awareness of higher truths to free us from enslavement of the matrix in this material realm. | Derek Knauss | https://prepareforchange.net/2019/03/26/evidence-for-man-made-global-warming-hits-gold-standard-scientists-claim/ | 2019-03-26 20:09:03+00:00 | 1,553,645,343 | 1,567,544,881 | environment | climate change |
430,163 | prisonplanet--2019-04-24--Fifty Years Of Apocalyptic Global Warming Predictions And Why People Believe Them | 2019-04-24T00:00:00 | prisonplanet | Fifty Years Of Apocalyptic Global Warming Predictions And Why People Believe Them | Two of the most important problems that the so-called Green New Deal will attempt to solve at the cost of incalculable trillions are global warming and its consequences, including drought, famine, floods and massive starvation. You may recall that Obama in his 2015 State of the Union speech declared that the greatest threat facing us was neither terrorism nor ISIS. It wasn’t nuclear weapons in rogue states either. “No challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change,” said Obama. His entire administration including Vice President Joe Biden, and Secretary of State John Kerry, frequently repeated the claim that climate change was the greatest threat facing the world. It was a sentiment Obama stressed again during an Earth Day trip to the Florida Everglades where he said, “This is not a problem for another generation. It has serious implications for the way we live right now”. More recently, presidential hopefuls like Beto O’Rourke, along with most Democrat candidates, declared their zealous support for the Green New Deal in forecasting that the world will end in 12 years if nothing is done. This leads to the question I pose in this brief, data-driven, essay: What kind of track record do the politicians and their experts have in their climate predictions? After all, some of these predictions were made 10, 20 or even 50 years ago. Can’t we now look back at their predictions and begin to hold them accountable? As others have done, I have chosen to begin with the first Earth Day “Celebration” in 1970. Now who can be against Earth Day? It’s a charming idea, and I have been an enthusiastic supporter since my college days in Ann Arbor, when we celebrated the event on the campus of the University of Michigan. Here’s what the experts were saying almost a half century ago on : I will focus my attention on the two most important predictions: Global Warming and Massive Starvation. If we return to the failed prediction of global cooling noted above, we can put the temperature data in a wider perspective. NASA data show that a period of warming in the 1920’s and 30’s was followed by two or three decades of cooling temperatures, from the 1940s to 1970. At that time many experts, including Carl Sagan, warned us of a possible ice age—only to have the climate change on them. From the 1970s to the late 1990s, scientists began to record slightly warmer temperatures. Curiously, as we look back at this period NASA sounded the alarm for global warming while a short time later the New York Times cited NOAA [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] data showing no warming over the past 100 years in the US. Since then, group think and political correctness, plus rewards in government grants and university promotions, have created incentives for nearly everyone to jump onto the current bandwagon of projecting an escalating warming trend. Once again we came back to the doomsday scenario that characterized 1970’s. Then, out of the blue, the darned climate changed again. Global temperature data has been roughly flat since about 1998, even cooling by .056 degrees C from February 2016 to February 2018, according to official NASA global temperature data. Of course, this is just a two-year trend. You may have noticed that nearly all of the doomsday theories seem to begin with the phrase, “if current trends continue.” But, as I have just reviewed, current trends don’t continue. Global temperatures go down, then up, then stay flat. Population growth tapers off, new oil reserves are discovered, agricultural yields increase at even higher rates. Doomsday forecasters always overestimate gloomy trends and underestimate human ingenuity in problem solving. This raises the question: How would an informed citizen make sense of our current predicament? Without question there has been an increase in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases released by the burning of fossil fuels and other human activities. A majority of scientists believe this to be the primary source of the global warming that has occurred. Just how much warming has occurred? The scientific consensus is that the average temperature of the Earth has risen about 0.4 °C over the past 100 years. This is far less than experts predicted. And therein lies the problem: scientists are better at observation than prediction. A case in point: experts from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate carrying out global warming research have now predicted that average global temperatures could increase between 1.4 and 5.8 °C by the year 2100. Notice the nearly 5-fold difference between the conservative and more liberal (one is tempted to say “progressive”) estimates. This strikes me as akin to meteorologists predicting tomorrow’s high as somewhere between 40 and 80 degrees. Not much of a forecast if you are trying to decide whether to head to the beach or not. The confidence interval seems pretty safe, but the precision leaves much to be desired. Just how much faith should one put in such projections, given the flawed models and track record of failed predictions? Regarding the other staggering Earth Day forecast of widespread starvation into hundreds of millions, recent satellite data from NASA and NOAA offer a compelling explanation for the spectacular failure of these predictions. Almost half of Earth’s vegetated lands have shown significant greening over the past 35 years largely due to rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, according to a recent study published in the journal Nature Climate Change. An international team of 32 authors from 24 institutions in eight countries led the effort, which involved using satellite data from NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer instruments to help determine the leaf area index, or amount of leaf cover, over the planet’s vegetated regions. This greening represents an increase in leaves on plants and trees equivalent in area to two times the continental United States, or more than two million square miles of extra green leaf area per year, compared to the early 2000’s. That increase represents an enormous amount of food to feed a hungry planet, which is one reason the Earth Day predictions of mass starvation never materialized. Because the mainstream media refuses to report such important data as this is from NASA and NOAA that do not support their doomsday narrative, I have never actually met anyone who knew anything about this when I mention it. I only learned about this myself a few years ago because of Matt Ridley, whose excellent blog I recommend without reserve: This is clearly the opposite of what you hear from the mainstream media, which loves to provide as much coverage as possible of one disaster after another. A more rational analysis would examine the average number of deaths per decade from 1920-1917. But this would show a “huuuge” decline in deaths caused by climate change, and we can’t have that now can we? The data below are from the most respected global database, the International Disaster Database. In contrast to the dire Earth Day predictions of 1970, climate-related deaths have been declining strongly for 70 years. Notice that this decline in the absolute number deaths occurred while the global population increased four-fold. Thus, the individual risk of dying from climate-related disasters has declined almost 99% from the 1920s to the present day. Our increased wealth and technological capacity to respond to natural disasters has greatly reduced our collective human climate vulnerability – Good news for rational beings, bad news for Democrat candidates. This article was posted: Wednesday, April 24, 2019 at 4:24 am | admin | https://www.prisonplanet.com/fifty-years-of-apocalyptic-global-warming-predictions-and-why-people-believe-them.html | 2019-04-24 09:24:29+00:00 | 1,556,112,269 | 1,567,541,967 | environment | climate change |
481,643 | shareblue--2019-11-29--UN says immediate changes needed to stop global warming before it's 'locked in' | 2019-11-29T00:00:00 | shareblue | UN says immediate changes needed to stop global warming before it's 'locked in' | Countries need to begin making steep cuts to their greenhouse gas emissions immediately or risk missing the targets they’ve agreed for limiting global warming, with potentially dire consequences, senior United Nations officials said Tuesday. A report by the U.N. Environment Program, published days before governments gather in Madrid for an annual meeting on climate change, showed the amount of planet-heating gases being pumped into the atmosphere hitting a new high last year, despite a near-global pledge to reduce them. Man-made greenhouse gas emissions rose in 2018 to 55.3 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide, according to the U.N.’s annual "emissions gap" report. While much of the increase came from emerging economies such as China and India, some of those emissions are the result of manufacturing outsourced from developed countries. “We need quick wins to reduce emissions as much as possible in 2020,” said the agency’s chief, Inger Andersen. “We need to catch up on the years in which we procrastinated.” To stop average global temperatures from increasing by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) this century compared with pre-industrial times, worldwide emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases will have to drop by 7.6% each year in the coming decade, the agency said. Scientists say the 1.5C target — contained in the 2015 Paris climate accord — would avert some of the more extreme changes in global weather patterns predicted if temperatures rise further. “What we are looking at is really that emissions need to go down by 55 percent by 2030,” said John Christensen, lead author and director of the UNEP-Danish Technology Institute Partnership. Even the less ambitious goal of capping global warming at 2C (3.6 F) would require annual emissions cuts of 2.7% between 2020 and 2030, UNEP said. That currently seems unlikely. At present, national pledges would leave the world 3.2 degrees Celsius (5.8 Fahrenheit) warmer by 2100 than pre-industrial times, with dramatic consequences for life on Earth, the U.N. agency said. Getting the world back on track to 1.5C would require a fivefold increase in measures pledged so far, it calculated. Last week, UNEP published a separate report, which found that countries are planning to extract more than twice the amount of fossil fuels from the ground than can be burned in 2030 if the 1.5C target is to be met. This includes countries such as Norway, which touts its green credentials while it continues to drill for oil in the North Sea. Officials appealed to governments that have already laid out targets for reducing their emissions to see if they can do more, and insisted that industries like power, transport, building and shipping can find opportunities to lower their emissions too. “As individuals, we have a choice about how we live, what we eat and how we go about our business ... and opportunities to live a lower-carbon life,” said Andersen. Governments’ plans to reduce emissions haven’t been universally welcomed, however. A $60-billion package of measures agreed by the German government recently has been criticized as a further burden on businesses, while environmentalists say it is too little, too late. Presenting a study Tuesday showing average surface air temperatures in the country have already risen by 1.5C since 1881, German Environment Minister Svenja Schulze insisted that Europe’s industrial powerhouse “is one of the countries that is doing a lot." "There are other countries which are quitting climate accords," she added, without explicitly naming the United States, which under Donald Trump announced its withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. Experts agree that the longer countries continue burning fossil fuels, the more warming will be “locked in” as emissions stay in the atmosphere for years or even decades. Conversely, the sooner countries take steps to wean themselves off gas, coal and oil — such as by ending government subsidies for fossil fuels — the more warming will be prevented in the long term. “There has never been a more important time to listen to the science,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said of the UNEP report. “Failure to heed these warnings and take drastic action to reverse emissions means we will continue to witness deadly and catastrophic heatwaves, storms and pollution.” | Associated Press | https://americanindependent.com/un-report-climate-change-dire-immediately-reduce-emissions-united-nations/ | Fri, 29 Nov 2019 22:00:44 +0000 | 1,575,082,844 | 1,575,137,743 | environment | climate change |
523,464 | sputnik--2019-01-30--Researcher Arctic Domain is Shrinking in Response to Global Warming | 2019-01-30T00:00:00 | sputnik | Researcher: Arctic Domain is Shrinking in Response to Global Warming | Sputnik has discussed climate change with Dr Sigrid Lind, from the Institute of Marine Research and the Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research in Norway. Dr Sigrid Lind: The Arctic is shrinking, the Arctic domain is shrinking in response to global warming. The northern Barents Sea has had an Arctic type of climate over the last 12,000 years, but it is now changing towards an Atlantic type of climate, and that's alarming. Sputnik: Can you tell us the primary differences between an Atlantic type of climate and an Arctic type of climate? I know that an Arctic climate would have a layer of freshwater sea ice, and can you tell us perhaps how important that is? US Still Not Intending to Participate in Paris Climate Deal Dr Sigrid Lind: The fresher layer protects the sea ice cover from the heat and you only have to cool down the upper part of the ocean before you start to produce sea ice in late autumn and winter, whereas in an Atlantic type of climate, you have Atlantic water which is warm and saline in the whole water column and then you have to cool down the whole water column to freezing point temperature before you start to freeze sea ice; that doesn't happen in the southern Barents Sea today, and it's likely that we will get this kind of climate also in the northern Barents Sea within one to two decades. Sputnik: That's actually quite rapid, isn't it? Dr Sigrid Lind: Yes, it's an example of a rapid climate shift that previously was known to have occurred during the last Ice Age that ended 12,000 years ago and lasted about 100,000 years before that, and during that time period there were warm climate periods and cold and it was shifting back-and-forth. There was much bigger variability in global temperatures than there is now and we know that the Northern Sea was sea ice covered with an Arctic type of climate during the cold period and it rapidly shifted to an Atlantic type of climate without that freshwater cap and without sea ice, only Atlantic water. And it happened really fast, from paleoclimate studies, we can see that it happened within decades. Sputnik: Now what's being said now is that the Barents Sea is at a tipping point. Is it too late in the game to tip it back in the right direction? Dr Sigrid Lind: Well, if you would have large sea ice inflows for several years, you could probably rebuild the stratification that it used to have. There is still stratification there, but when the stratification breaks down and Atlantic water occupies the whole water column, then it's probably irreversible in the sense that you will need large sea ice inflows over several consecutive years to rebuild the fresh water reservoir once it's gone. Sputnik: There's something called a feedback loop, which means the more the layers mix, the warmer water and the saline, the colder freshwater, the warmer the surface gets and the more the waters mix… Dr Sigrid Lind: Yes, it's actually the more saline the upper, fresher layer becomes the more they mix, because they become more equal in density; so the density difference between the upper fresher layer that we call the Arctic and the Atlantic layer below, that density is important and as the layers mix, the density difference decreases. Sputnik: Can you tell us about some of the impacts in terms of the species that would be most under threat as a result of these changes? Dr Sigrid Lind: Well, the whole region has an Arctic ecosystem; the species there are adapted to the to the cold, stratified and sea ice covered Arctic type of climate, and it's clear that they're already under pressure because species are coming in from the southern part of the Barents Sea into the northern region in summer now, that was shown in 2015. The Arctic species are likely outcompeted when they have these southern species coming in into their region and the Arctic species have already withdrawn towards the north and east. Sputnik: This past year we've seen these horrible images of polar bears that are dying because they hunt primarily on the ice caps and when they melt, they can't effectively hunt. Is this part of this problem? Dr Sigrid Lind: Yes, it's part of it; they are using sea ice and the sea ice cover is diminishing; that makes it harder for them. There's a lot of research ongoing on exactly how the polar bears are responding to this, but we know that also they probably have to find a new habitat and new sources for food — not only them, but also a lot of different sea species that are using sea ice, and other species that are connected to sea ice. Views and opinions, expressed in the article are those of Dr Sigrid Lind and do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik | null | https://sputniknews.com/analysis/201901301071972486-global-warming-arctic/ | 2019-01-30 18:45:00+00:00 | 1,548,891,900 | 1,567,550,291 | environment | climate change |
523,943 | sputnik--2019-02-03--Doing Their Part Pakistan to Plant 10 Billion Trees to Counter Global Warming | 2019-02-03T00:00:00 | sputnik | Doing Their Part: Pakistan to Plant 10 Billion Trees to Counter Global Warming | In addition to releasing more oxygen into the environment, the trees will safeguard the Pakistani landscape by decreasing the risk of floods from melting glaciers in the nation's famous mountain ranges. Following his party's July victory in the National Assembly, Khan, who founded the centrist PTI [Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf] party in 1996, pledged that he would tackle unemployment, poverty and corruption in the country, as well as introduce police reforms and focus on health and educational issues, Sputnik previously reported. Although the environment was not a significant election topic, Pakistan is the seventh-most vulnerable country to climate change, the Sustainable Development Policy institute, a Pakistani think tank, has reported. According to Khan's PTI party, rising temperatures, flooding, droughts and unpredictable rainfall has cost Pakistan between $6 billion and $14 billion in relief aid and economic recovery, NBC said, citing a report published by the party. "It is now imperative to tackle climate change and reverse environmental degradation as Pakistan's situation will only worsen as the economy grows," the party wrote. Khan's party has taken steps previously to restore trees in the country. Between 2014-2017, Khan led a ‘Billion Tree' restoration project which planted some 865,000 acres in the Kyber Pakhtunkhwa Province. "The project is naturally restoring a previously deforested landscape, which will assist in meeting present and future needs and offers multiple benefits for climate adaptation and mitigation in a very climate-vulnerable province," Muhammad Tehmasip, the project director for the Billion Tree Tsunami, said in 2017. In June 2013, an estimated 300 volunteers planted about 847,275 trees in the city of Thatta during the course of a single day, setting a Guinness World Record for the most trees planted in a 24-hour period. "We have been consumed for so long by so many other challenges such as the war on terror that has engulfed our cities, suicide bombings, public health, that kind of thing," Ali Tauqeer Sheikh, the founder and CEO of LEAD Pakistan, an environmental think tank, recently told NBC News. "But it is extremely important also that we ensure we have enough fresh water and that our development does not destroy our own coastline. We have one of the largest deltas in the world, but it is dying because of climate change." | null | https://sputniknews.com/asia/201902031072089964-pakistan-to-plant-10-billion-trees-counter-global-warming/ | 2019-02-03 20:43:00+00:00 | 1,549,244,580 | 1,567,549,792 | environment | climate change |
597,816 | thedailycaller--2019-01-17--Study Stop Driving Flying Living A Modern Life For A Chance At Limiting Global Warming | 2019-01-17T00:00:00 | thedailycaller | Study: Stop Driving, Flying, Living A Modern Life For A Chance At Limiting Global Warming | A group of researchers laid out what they believe humanity will need to do in order to limit future global warming — immediately cease one’s modern lifestyle and give up fossil fuels. That would mean “fossil fuel power plants, cars, aircraft, ships, and industrial infrastructure are replaced with zero carbon alternatives” over the next 40 years, according to the study. And even all that would only give humanity a 64 percent chance of keeping future warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century, the study found. But not even the study’s authors seem to really believe these actions will be taken. “We do not seek to assess the practical feasibility of this transition, but merely to report on the consequences in the context of keeping global mean temperature rise below 1.5 [degrees Celsius],” reads the study, published in the journal Nature Tuesday. “Delaying mitigation until 2030 considerably reduces the likelihood that 1.5 [degrees Celsius] would be attainable even if the rate of fossil fuel retirement was accelerated,” reads the study. However, the world gets roughly 80 percent of its energy from fossil fuels — coal, natural gas and oil. Replacing all those is not only economically problematic, but it may not even be technically feasible. It’s one thing to replace coal plants on an electric grid, but for other sectors there are no readily available substitutes to fossil fuels. Airplanes and cargo ships, for example, don’t really have any alternatives. (RELATED: Jeff Flake Backs Tax Redistribution Scheme To Cut CO2 Emissions) “Maybe the solution here is flying less,” the study’s lead author Christopher Smith told The Guardian. Interestingly enough, The Daily Caller News Foundation asked dozens of businesses, organizations and wealthy individuals that support the Paris climate accord if they’d support a ban on private jet. All but two companies ignored TheDCNF’s question. Environmental economist Richard Tol wryly pointed out that simply lowering one’s standard of living or even letting billions of people die from a lack of fuel would curb global warming. “Turn of your computer and fridge, stop trucks supplying supermarkets, end drinking water purification. Several billion dead would stop climate change alright,” Tol tweeted Wednesday. However, Smith’s study is only the latest to warn of dangerous global warming without getting rid of fossil fuels. The United Nations released a report in October that kicked off the scare of temperature breaching 1.5 degrees Celsius — a goal of the Paris climate accord. The U.N.’s report said societal changes that are “unprecedented in terms of scale” were needed to meet the Paris accord goals, which included between $51.2 trillion and $122 trillion in zero-carbon energy investments by 2050. “Although the challenges laid out by the Paris Agreement are daunting, we indicate 1.5 °C remains possible and is attainable with ambitious and immediate emission reduction across all sectors,” reads Smith’s study. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact [email protected]. | Michael Bastasch | https://dailycaller.com/2019/01/17/study-modern-life-global-warming/ | 2019-01-17 16:23:10+00:00 | 1,547,760,190 | 1,567,552,112 | environment | climate change |
683,739 | theguardianuk--2019-01-07--Global warming of oceans equivalent to an atomic bomb per second | 2019-01-07T00:00:00 | theguardianuk | Global warming of oceans equivalent to an atomic bomb per second | Global warming has heated the oceans by the equivalent of one atomic bomb explosion per second for the past 150 years, according to analysis of new research. More than 90% of the heat trapped by humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions has been absorbed by the seas, with just a few per cent heating the air, land and ice caps respectively. The vast amount of energy being added to the oceans drives sea-level rise and enables hurricanes and typhoons to become more intense. Much of the heat has been stored in the ocean depths but measurements here only began in recent decades and existing estimates of the total heat the oceans have absorbed stretch back only to about 1950. The new work extends that back to 1871. Scientists have said that understanding past changes in ocean heat was critical for predicting the future impact of climate change. A Guardian calculation found the average heating across that 150-year period was equivalent to about 1.5 Hiroshima-size atomic bombs per second. But the heating has accelerated over that time as carbon emissions have risen, and was now the equivalent of between three and six atomic bombs per second. “I try not to make this type of calculation, simply because I find it worrisome,” said Prof Laure Zanna, at the University of Oxford, who led the new research. “We usually try to compare the heating to [human] energy use, to make it less scary.” She added: “But obviously, we are putting a lot of excess energy into the climate system and a lot of that ends up in the ocean,. There is no doubt.” The total heat taken up by the oceans over the past 150 years was about 1,000 times the annual energy use of the entire global population. The research has been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and combined measurements of the surface temperature of the ocean since 1871 with computer models of ocean circulation. Prof Samar Khatiwala, also at the University of Oxford and part of the team, said: “Our approach is akin to ‘painting’ different bits of the ocean surface with dyes of different colours and monitoring how they spread into the interior over time. If we know what the sea surface temperature anomaly was in 1871 in the North Atlantic Ocean we can figure out how much it contributes to the warming in, say, the deep Indian Ocean in 2018.” Rising sea level has been among the most dangerous long-term impacts of climate change, threatening billions of people living in coastal cities, and estimating future rises is vital in preparing defences. Some of the rise comes from the melting of land-bound ice in Greenland and elsewhere, but another major factor has been the physical expansion of water as it gets warmer. However, the seas do not warm uniformly as ocean currents transport heat around the world. Reconstructing the amount of heat absorbed by the oceans over the past 150 years is important as it provides a baseline. In the Atlantic, for example, the team found that half the rise seen since 1971 at low and middle latitudes resulted from heat transported into the region by currents. The new work would help researchers make better predictions of sea-level rise for different regions in the future. “Future changes in ocean transport could have severe consequences for regional sea-level rise and the risk of coastal flooding,” the researchers said. “Understanding ocean heat change and the role of circulation in shaping the patterns of warming remain key to predicting global and regional climate change and sea-level rise.” Dana Nuccitelli, an environmental scientist who was not involved in the new research, said: “The ocean heating rate has increased as global warming has accelerated, and the value is somewhere between roughly three to six Hiroshima bombs per second in recent decades, depending on which dataset and which timeframe is used. This new study estimates the ocean heating rate at about three Hiroshima bombs per second for the period of 1990 to 2015, which is on the low end of other estimates.” | Damian Carrington Environment editor | https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/07/global-warming-of-oceans-equivalent-to-an-atomic-bomb-per-second | 2019-01-07 20:00:22+00:00 | 1,546,909,222 | 1,567,553,636 | environment | climate change |
778,074 | theindependent--2019-12-05--Global warming causing birds to shrink, scientists say | 2019-12-05T00:00:00 | theindependent | Global warming causing birds to shrink, scientists say | Birds are getting smaller, according to an analysis of migratory birds that died after colliding into buildings in Chicago and were collected as specimens for the Field Museum of Natural History. David Willard, a Field Museum ornithologist, has measured the Windy City’s dead birds since 1978. Data from his calipers and scales reveal decades-long trends in bird bodies: Their legs, on average, are growing shorter. They have lost weight. Their wings are getting slightly longer. These changes are present in nearly all of the species he measured, according to a study of 70,716 bird specimens from almost 40 years published in the journal Ecology Letters. Morphing birds, Mr Willard and his colleagues say, reflect a changing climate. “Warming temperatures seem to be having a pretty consistent and almost universal effect on a large number of different species, regardless of other aspects of their biology,” said study author Benjamin Winger, who studies the evolution and ecology of birds at the University of Michigan. The basis for the study began after an acquaintance mentioned to Mr Willard birds often dashed into a glassy convention centre, McCormick Place, near the museum. (The convention centre, the biggest in North America, reduced its nighttime lights about 20 years ago; as a result, bird deaths there have dropped by about three-quarters, Mr Willard said. McCormick Place also recently installed a bird habitat over one of its underground parking garages.) Climate change was not on his mind, Mr Willard said, when he started gathering the birds to add to the museum’s collection. He measured their beaks, legs, mass and wings – standard ornithological dimensions – because he was curious about seasonal trends. As the years passed, Mr Willard was joined by other museum staff and a volunteer organisation, Chicago Bird Collision Monitors, which also collects birds harmed by windows. The volunteers rehabilitate injured birds and only donate the departed ones to the museum. By 2016, Mr Willard had recorded the measurements of more than 70,000 birds, representing 52 species, in his ledgers. Simon Griffith, an ecologist at Macquarie University in Australia who was not a member of the research team, said it was “just amazing” that a single scientist measured such an extensive collection. “It reduces the noise in the data-set,” which he said was more standardised in methodology and geology than previous studies that suggest climate change influences bird size. Fifteen species of common birds, including swamp sparrows and dark-eyed juncos, made up the majority of the specimens. But elusive birds ended up in Mr Willard’s ledgers of measurements, too, like a single yellow rail, a rarely seen marsh bird. Mr Willard said he identified Illinois’ first Brewer’s sparrow, a tiny bird that usually keeps to the western US. From 1978 to 2016, birds on average lost 2.6 per cent of their mass and their legs shortened by 2.4 per cent. Their wings, meanwhile, lengthened by 1.3 per cent. “The changes that are being documented are not something you could see with your eye,” Mr Willard said. But that they appear in such a large sample, and one involving diverse bird species, indicates the trends are real and widespread, he said. Mr Winger said it was unclear whether small reductions harm the birds. “We don’t really know what the biological significance is, of this difference,” he said. But this observation was potentially concerning to Mr Griffith, who compared this with other broad-scale patterns in birds, like the recent study reporting the 29 per cent decline in North American bird populations since 1970. The study authors examined precipitation, vegetation and other factors that could contribute to bird size. They determined an increase in summer temperatures is the strongest predictor for smaller birds. “In years when temperatures were a bit warmer, the bodies got smaller. In years when temperatures were a bit cooler, we saw an increase in body size, even though the long-term trend was to decline,” Mr Winger said. “So that leads us to believe that temperature is pretty important here.” Smaller animals have larger surface-area-to-volume ratios, and this allows them to lose body heat more quickly. Mr Winger proposes that hotter temperatures could apply pressure on birds to become smaller to stay cooler. Mr Griffith offered another possibility: His research, studying zebra finches and house sparrows in laboratories and in the wild, shows hot temperatures during the breeding season reduce the size of bird offspring. When young birds are stressed by the heat, they don’t grow large, he said. The lengthening wings were unexpected, the scientists said. Flight requires the most energy of all the ways back-boned creatures move. The study authors hypothesise the wingspan changes could help the birds eke out an energetic edge. “Birds with longer and more pointed wings,” Mr Winger said, “might be more efficient fliers.” Mr Willard, now retired, said he plans to continue measuring birds for as long as he can. On Tuesday, in the museum’s storage, 1,000 birds awaited his rulers. “When I’m done talking to you,” he said, “I’m going to do a few more.” | Ben Guarino | https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/global-warming-bird-species-biodiversity-climate-change-crisis-a9233611.html | Thu, 05 Dec 2019 10:27:50 GMT | 1,575,559,670 | 1,575,549,005 | environment | climate change |
955,757 | thesun--2019-04-18--Is climate change reversible is it the same as global warming and is it caused by humans | 2019-04-18T00:00:00 | thesun | Is climate change reversible, is it the same as global warming and is it caused by humans? | CLIMATE change has been a touchy topic of conversation more than ever before, and unless tackled quickly, it can destroy the planet we live on. But is climate change reversible and is it caused by humans? Here's what we know. Last year, Sir David Attenborough warned that climate change will destroy civilisation unless it is tackled quickly. His ominous message was delivered to world leaders at the United Nations’ environmental talks in Poland. He warned: “Right now, we are facing a man-made disaster of global scale. Our greatest threat in thousands of years. Climate change. “If we don’t take action, the collapse of our civilisations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon." Greenhouse gas emissions must be slashed by 45 per cent by 2030 to hit the target. The World Bank has pledged £157billion over five years to support countries taking action against climate change. Climate change can be reversed if immediate action is taken. Is it the same as global warming? Global warming describes a set of changes to the climate that is causing the Earth to heat up. This rising of the Earth's temperature is often talked about in the context of the "greenhouse effect" to explain the damage being wreaked on our planet. Without the greenhouse effect the Earth's surface would be an average of about 60 degrees Fahrenheit cooler, and therefore unlivable. The effect allows gases in but keeps heat from escaping from the earth, like the glass walls of a greenhouse. Greenhouse gases are believed to be higher now than in the last 650,000 years Is it caused by humans? Over the past century humans have aggravated the greenhouse effect by dramatically increasing the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Human sources of CO2 come from activities such as deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gas. Since the Industrial Revolution the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has rocketed by a third. This rapid rise has had a direct impact on the Earth's average temperature, with potentially catastrophic consequences. In December 2018, a study "comprehensively disproved" the "myth" of a pause in global warming that took supposedly place between 1995 and 2013. This period – believed to have lasted a decade and a half – was held up as evidence that humans might not be causing significant climate change. Dr James Risbey, of CSIRO Australia, lead author on one of the studies, said: "Many studies over the past decade have claimed to find a pause or slowdown in global warming and have typically posited this as evidence that is inconsistent with our understanding of global warming." Last year, Sir David Attenborough warned that climate change will destroy civilisation unless it is tackled quickly What effect is it having on earth? The rise in the average global temperature has already had a demonstrable impact. Greenhouse gases are believed to be higher now than in the last 650,000 years. Melting glaciers, rising sea levels and dying cloud forests have all been directly linked to climate change. Humans too are already suffering directly - with deadly heatwaves and catastrophic flooding becoming a regular occurrence. David Attenborough's Climate Change: The Facts documentary airs tonight at 9pm on BBC1 Arrests as police clash with Extinction Rebellion climate change protesters on Waterloo Bridge | Nika Shakhnazarova | https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/8893740/is-climate-change-reversible-is-it-the-same-as-global-warming-and-is-it-caused-by-humans/ | 2019-04-18 16:54:43+00:00 | 1,555,620,883 | 1,567,542,559 | environment | climate change |
998,282 | thetelegraph--2019-02-04--Oceans to turn bluer due to global warming | 2019-02-04T00:00:00 | thetelegraph | Oceans to turn bluer due to global warming | The sea will turn a brighter shade of blue due to global warming, a new study predicts. Experts believe that changing ocean temperatures will alter the distribution of tiny organisms called phytoplankton, which play a crucial role in absorbing sunlight. As a result, swathes of the subtropics and temperate regions such as the North Atlantic are likely to turn a more brilliant blue due to a diminution of the creatures. Meanwhile colder waters near the north and south poles will become a deeper green as the algae increasingly flourish. Published in the journal Nature Communications, the study relied on computer modelling of temperature-based phytoplankton quantities, combined with estimations of... | Henry Bodkin | https://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2019/02/04/oceans-turn-bluer-due-global-warming/ | 2019-02-04 13:33:49+00:00 | 1,549,305,229 | 1,567,549,672 | environment | climate change |
1,043,764 | thinkprogress--2019-01-24--Heres how global warming leads to colder winters in the Northeast | 2019-01-24T00:00:00 | thinkprogress | Here’s how global warming leads to colder winters in the Northeast | The jet stream is the result of the difference in temperature between colder northern latitudes and temperate southern latitudes. Warm air from the equator is colliding with cold air from the Arctic, and a ribbon of powerful winds runs the length of the collision. Ushered along by the rotation of the Earth, this air current is moving west to east at speeds upwards of 200 miles per hour. The jet stream is strongest in the winter months when the temperature difference between north and south is greatest. Cold air is denser than warm air, so when the difference in temperature is greater, the difference in density is also greater, and the barrier between cold air and warm air is firmer. Think of cold air and warm air like vinegar and oil, which are kept distinct by their different densities. Climate change is weakening the jet stream by reducing the difference in temperature between cold, northern air and warm, southern air. As the Earth warms, it’s not warming evenly. The Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the planet, meaning it is growing closer in temperature to more southern latitudes. As a result, the barrier between cold and warm air is growing weaker, and the jet stream is going wobbly. Instead of forming an even ring around the Arctic, the jet stream is now twisting and contorting, allowing the polar vortex, the mass of cold, dense air over the north pole, to reach its tendrils further south, chilling large parts of the United States and Europe. Think of the jet stream as a fence around the polar vortex. Climate change is letting the polar vortex break out of the fence. Just as changes to the jet stream are allowing cold, Arctic air to reach further south, they are also allowing warm equatorial air to reach further north, fueling more unusual weather across the globe, both hot and cold. Last February, for example, the mercury reached 76°F heat in New York City at the same time that it dipped to 35°F in Southern California, all thanks to a squishier, wavier, wobblier jet stream. As the planet warms, the problem is likely to get worse. Once the polar vortex breaks out of its pen, it takes a while to get it back in. The current spate of unusually cold weather could last several weeks, meteorologists warn, chilling much of the Eastern United States. So bundle up. Winter is going to be around for a while. Jeremy Deaton writes for Nexus Media, a syndicated newswire covering climate, energy, policy, art and culture. You can follow him @deaton_jeremy. | Nexus Media | https://thinkprogress.org/climate-change-making-winter-colder-30871bb3e2b4/ | 2019-01-24 16:35:34+00:00 | 1,548,365,734 | 1,567,551,077 | environment | climate change |
1,045,280 | thinkprogress--2019-07-05--High temperatures break records in Alaska as climatologists warn of global warming | 2019-07-05T00:00:00 | thinkprogress | High temperatures break records in Alaska, as climatologists warn of global warming | Anchorage, Alaska, broke its own state record on the Fourth of July, recording a high of 90 degrees Fahrenheit — five degrees above the previous record of 85 degrees Fahrenheit, set in 1969. The National Weather Service in Anchorage warned of high temperatures earlier this week, explaining that a building high-pressure ridge would blanket the state in a heat wave. Climate researchers have said the unprecedented high temperatures are “unusual.” “It’s entirely possible that the warmest temperature ever recorded in Anchorage could be exceeded three to five days in a row,” Brian Brettschneider, a climate researcher at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, told NBC News. “That’s the definition of unusual.” The record-breaking day follows a string of extreme weather events for the state. Temperatures last month reached above average numbers, making it the warmest June on record. The state also saw growing reports of wildfires. These incidents are likely to continue occurring in July, experts say. “These kind of extreme weather events become much more likely in a warming world,” Rick Thoman, a climatologist based in Fairbanks, Alaska, told NBC News. “Climate change is not causing it, but it is contributing to it. When other pieces line up like high pressure over the state and very warm sea surface temperatures, all the pieces fit together and make these extreme, or even unprecedented, events that much more likely.” Across the Arctic, Alaska’s story is a familiar one. As ThinkProgress previously reported, high air temperatures in the past five years have caused Arctic sea ice has to rapidly disintegrate. That melting Arctic ice has fueled more extreme weather, faster increases in sea levels, and more rapid disintegration of the carbon-rich Arctic permafrost, which leads to faster global warming. | Elham Khatami | https://thinkprogress.org/high-temperatures-break-records-in-alaska-as-climatologists-warn-of-global-warming-264441489b7f/ | 2019-07-05 13:17:52+00:00 | 1,562,347,072 | 1,567,536,801 | environment | climate change |
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