Spying @ Home

Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic drove a wave of working from home, companies have been relentless in their efforts to digitally police and spy on remote employees by using what's known as "bossware." That's the pejorative name for software that tracks the websites an employee visits, screenshots their computer screens, and even records their faces and voices.

And now, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), an agency of the federal government, is looking to intervene.

"Close, constant surveillance and management through electronic means threaten employees' basic ability to exercise their rights," said NLRB general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, in a Monday memo. "I plan to urge the Board to apply the Act to protect employees, to the greatest extent possible, from intrusive or abusive electronic monitoring and automated management practices."

Undoing Unions

In particular, Abruzzo is worried about how bossware could infringe on workers' rights to unionize. It's not hard to imagine how such invasive surveillance could be used to bust unionization. Even if the technology isn't explicitly deployed to impede organization efforts, the ominous presence of the surveillance on its own can be a looming deterrent, which Abruzzo argues is illegal.

And now is the perfect moment for the NLRB to step in. The use and abuse of worker surveillance tech in general — not just bossware — has been "growing by the minute," Mark Gaston Pearce, executive director of the Workers' Rights Institute at Georgetown Law School, told CBS.

"Employers are embracing technology because technology helps them run a more efficient business," Gaston explained. "… What comes with that is monitoring a lot of things that employers have no business doing."

Overbearing Overlord

In some ways, surveillance tech like bossware can be worse than having a nosy, actual human boss. Generally speaking, in a physical workplace employees have an understanding of how much privacy they have (unless they work at a place like Amazon or Walmart, that is).

But when bossware spies on you, who knows how much information an employer could be gathering — or even when they're looking in. And if it surveils an employee's personal computer, which more often than not contains plenty of personal information that a boss has no business seeing, that's especially invasive.

Which is why Abruzzo is pushing to require employers to disclose exactly how much they're tracking.

It's a stern message from the NLRB, but at the end of the day, it's just a memo. We'll have to wait and see how enforcing it pans out.

More on surveillance: Casinos to Use Facial Recognition to Keep "Problem Gamblers" Away

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US Gov to Crack Down on "Bossware" That Spies On Employees' Computers

Chinese scientists are reportedly planning to send monkeys to its new Tiangong space station for experiments that will involve the animals mating and potentially reproducing, the South China Morning Post reports.

It's a fascinating and potentially controversial experiment that could have major implications for our efforts to colonize space: can mammals, let alone humans, successfully reproduce beyond the Earth?

According to the report, the experiment would take place in the station's largest capsule, called Wentian, inside two biological test cabinets that can be expanded.

After examining the behavior of smaller creatures, "some studies involving mice and macaques will be carried out to see how they grow or even reproduce in space," Zhang Lu, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, said during a speech posted to social media earlier this week, as quoted by the SCMP.

"These experiments will help improve our understanding of an organism’s adaptation to microgravity and other space environments," he added.

Some simpler organisms, including nematodes and Japanese rice fish, have been observed reproducing in space.

But more complex life forms have struggled. In 2014, a Russian experiment to see whether geckos could produce offspring in space failed when all the critters died.

And the failure rate for mammals, so far, has been total. Soviet Union scientists got mice to mate during a space flight in 1979, but none of them gave birth after being returned to Earth.

In other words, getting monkeys to reproduce on board a space station will be anything but easy. For one, just dealing with living creatures in space can pose immense challenges. The astronauts will "need to feed them and deal with the waste," Kehkooi Kee, a professor with the school of medicine at Tsinghua University, told the SCMP.

Then there's the fact that astronauts will have to keep the macaques happy and comfortable, something that experts say will be challenging since long term confinement in the spartan environments of space habitats could cause immense stress for the simians.

And even if astronauts successfully set the mood for the monkeys, the physics of sex in space are predicted to be challenging.

"Firstly, just staying in close contact with each other under zero gravity is hard," Adam Watkins, an associate professor of reproductive physiology at University of Nottingham, wrote in a 2020 open letter highlighted by the SCMP. "Secondly, as astronauts experience lower blood pressure while in space, maintaining erections and arousal are more problematic than here on Earth."

With its new space station in nearly full operation, China isn't shying away from asking some big questions — but whether these experiments will play out as expected is anything but certain.

READ MORE: Chinese scientists plan monkey reproduction experiment in space station [South China Morning Post]

More on sex in space: Scientists Say We Really Have to Talk About Boning in Space

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China Plans to Send Monkeys to Space Station to Have Sex With Each Other

Droning On

Someone thinks it's a great idea to fly 500 drones over New York City to create a huge ad in the sky on Thursday evening. Because New Yorkers certainly don't have any historical reason to mistrust unknown aircraft over their skyline, right?

As Gothamist reports, the drone swarm is part of a "surreal takeover of New York City’s skyline" on behalf of — we shit you not — the mobile game Candy Crush.

Fernanda Romano, Candy Crush's chief marketing officer, told Gothamist that the stunt will "turn the sky into the largest screen on the planet" using the small, light-up drones.

Though this is not the first time the Manhattan skyline has been used as ad space — that distinction goes to the National Basketball Association and State Farm, which did a similar stunt this summer during the NBA draft — local lawmakers are ticked off about it nonetheless.

"I think it’s outrageous to be spoiling our city’s skyline for private profit," Brad Hoylman, a state senator that represents Manhattan's West Side in the NY Legislature, told the local news site. "It’s offensive to New Yorkers, to our local laws, to public safety, and to wildlife."

Freak Out

Indeed, as the NYC Audubon Society noted in a tweet, the Candy Crush crapshoot "could disrupt the flight patterns of thousands of birds flying through NYC, leading to collisions with buildings" as they migrate.

Beyond the harm this will do to birds and the annoyance it will undoubtedly cause the famously-grumpy people of New York, this stunt is also going down with very little warning, considering that Gothamist is one of the only news outlets even reporting on it ahead of time.

While most viewers will hopefully be able to figure out what's going on pretty quickly, the concept of seeing unknown aircraft above the skyline is a little too reminiscent of 9/11 for comfort — and if Candy Crush took that into consideration, they haven't let on.

So here's hoping this event shocks and awes Thursday night city-goers in a good way, and not in the way that makes them panic.

More drone warfare: Russia Accused of Pelting Ukraine Capital With "Kamikaze" Drones

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Huge Drone Swarm to Form Giant Advertisement Over NYC Skyline

Observatory Offline

The Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) Observatory in Chile has been hit with a cyberattack that has taken its website offline and forced it to suspend all observations, authorities there said.

Even email services were limited in the aftermath, illustrating the broad impact of the hack.

Nested high up on a plateau in the Chilean Andes at over 16,000 feet above sea level, ALMA is one of the most powerful and advanced radio telescopes in the world. Notably, ALMA helped take the first image of a black hole in 2019, in a collaborative effort that linked radio observatories worldwide into forming the Event Horizon Telescope.

Thankfully, ALMA's impressive arsenal of 66 high-precision antennas, each nearly 40 feet in diameter, was not compromised, the observatory said, nor was any of the scientific data those instruments collected.

In High Places

What makes ALMA so invaluable is its specialty in observing the light of the cooler substances of the cosmos, namely gas and dust. That makes ALMA a prime candidate for documenting the fascinating formations of planets and stars when they first emerge amidst clouds of gas.

Since going fully operational in 2013, it's become the largest ground-based astronomical project in the world, according to the European Southern Observatory, ALMA's primary operators.

So ALMA going offline is a distressing development, especially to the thousands of astronomers worldwide that rely on its observations and the some 300 experts working onsite. Getting it up and running is obviously a top priority, but the observatory said in a followup tweet that "it is not yet possible to estimate a date for a return to regular activities."

As of now, there's no information available on who the hackers were, or exactly how they conducted the attack. Their motivations, too, remain a mystery.

More on ALMA: Astronomers Think They Found the Youngest Planet in the Galaxy

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Hackers Just Took Down One of the World's Most Advanced Telescopes

Spaceplane Buddy

After launching into orbit roughly three months ago, China's top-secret spaceplane has released a mysterious object, which is now circling the Earth behind it, SpaceNews reports.

There's very little we know about China's "reusable experimental spacecraft," except that it launched atop a Long March 2F rocket back in August. We don't know its purpose, what it looks like, or what cargo it was carrying during launch — but it's an intriguing development, nonetheless, for China's reusable launch platform.

Mysterious Object

The object was released between October 24 and October 31, according to tracking data being analyzed by the US Space Force's 18th pace Defense Squadron.

We can only hazard a guess as to what the mysterious object's purpose is. According to Harvard astronomer and space tracker Jonathan McDowell, it "may be a service module, possibly indicating an upcoming deorbit burn."

Based on the size and weight of payloads Long March rockets usually carry, China's mysterious spaceplane is likely similar to the Air Force's X-37B spaceplane, which is similarly shrouded in mystery and currently on its sixth mission.

We also don't know when the Chinese model will make its return back to Earth, but given recent activity at the Lop Nur base in Xinjiang suggests, it may land there in the near future, according to the report.

It's a puzzling new development for China's secretive spacecraft — but it does raise the possibility of a renewed interest in spaceplanes, a potentially affordable and reusable way to launch payloads into orbit.

More on the spaceplane: China Launches Mysterious "Reusable Test" Spacecraft

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Chinese Spaceplane Releases Mystery Object Into Orbit

Latest Feud

Another day, another Elon Musk feud on Twitter — except now, he's the owner of the social network, and he's beefing with a sitting member of Congress.

The whole thing started innocently enough earlier this week, when firebrand Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY, and better known by her initials, "AOC") subtweeted the website's new owner.

"Lmao at a billionaire earnestly trying to sell people on the idea that 'free speech' is actually a $8/mo subscription plan," the New York Democratic Socialist tweeted in a post that, upon Futurism's perusal, appeared to load only half the time.

Sweat Equity

Not one to be shown up, Musk later posted a screenshot of an AOC-branded sweatshirt from the congressperson's website, with its $58 price tag circled and an emoji belying the billionaire's alleged affront at the price.

In response, Ocasio-Cortez said she was proud her sweatshirts were made by union labor, and that the proceeds from their sales were going to fund educational support for needy kids. She later dug in further, noting that her account was "conveniently" not working and joking that Musk couldn't buy his way "out of insecurity."

Yo @elonmusk while I have your attention, why should people pay $8 just for their app to get bricked when they say something you don’t like?

This is what my app has looked like ever since my tweet upset you yesterday. What’s good? Doesn’t seem very free speechy to me pic.twitter.com/e3hcZ7T9up

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) November 3, 2022

Bricked

To be clear, any suggestion that Musk personally had anything to do with any Twitter glitches on AOC's part would seem ludicrously petty. But then again, this is a guy who once hired a private detective to investigate a random critic.

Occam's razor, though, suggests that it was probably AOC's mega-viral tweet that broke the site's notoriously dodgy infrastructure. Of course, that's not a ringing endorsement of the site that Musk just acquired for the colossal sum of $44 billion.

More on Twitter: Twitter Working on Plan to Charge Users to Watch Videos

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AOC Says Her Twitter Account Broke After She Made Fun of Elon Musk

Jeff Bezos' former housekeeper is suing the Amazon founder for workplace discrimination that she says forced her to literally climb out out the window of his house to use the bathroom.

In the suit, filed this week in a Washington state court, the former housekeeper claimed that she and Bezos' other household staff were not provided with legally-mandated eating or restroom breaks, and that because there was no "readily accessible bathroom" for them to use, they had to clamber out a laundry room window to get to one.

In the complaint, lawyers for the ex-housekeeper, who is described as having worked for wealthy families for nearly 20 years, wrote that household staff were initially allowed to use a small bathroom in the security room of Bezos' main house, but "this soon stopped... because it was decided that housekeepers using the bathroom was a breach of security protocol."

The suit also alleges that housekeepers in the billionaire's employ "frequently developed Urinary Tract Infections" that they believed was related to not being able to use the bathroom when they needed to at work.

"There was no breakroom for the housekeepers," the complaint adds. "Even though Plaintiff worked 10, 12, and sometimes 14 hours a day, there was no designated area for her to sit down and rest."

The housekeeper — who, like almost all of her coworkers, is Latino — was allegedly not aware that she was entitled to breaks for lunch or rest, and was only able to have a lunch break when Bezos or his family were not on the premises, the lawsuit alleges.

The Washington Post owner has denied his former housekeeper's claims of discrimination through an attorney.

"We have investigated the claims, and they lack merit," Harry Korrell, a Bezos attorney, told Insider of the suit. "[The former employee] made over six figures annually and was the lead housekeeper."

He added that the former housekeeper "was responsible for her own break and meal times, and there were several bathrooms and breakrooms available to her and other staff."

"The evidence will show that [the former housekeeper] was terminated for performance reasons," he continued. "She initially demanded over $9M, and when the company refused, she decided to file this suit."

As the suit was just filed and may well end in a settlement, it'll likely be a long time, if ever, before we find out what really happened at Bezos' house — but if we do, it'll be a fascinating peek behind the curtain at the home life of one of the world's most powerful and wealthy men.

More on billionaires: Tesla Morale Low As Workers Still Don't Have Desks, Face Increased Attendance Surveillance

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Jeff Bezos' Housekeeper Says She Had to Climb Out the Window to Use the Bathroom

You know that "research" going around saying humans are going to evolve to have hunchbacks and claws because of the way we use our smartphones? Though our posture could certainly use some work, you'll be glad to know that it's just lazy spam intended to juice search engine results.

Let's back up. Today the Daily Mail published a viral story about "how humans may look in the year 3000." Among its predictions: hunched backs, clawed hands, a second eyelid, a thicker skull and a smaller brain.

Sure, that's fascinating! The only problem? The Mail's only source is a post published a year ago by the renowned scientists at... uh... TollFreeForwarding.com, a site that sells, as its name suggests, virtual phone numbers.

If the idea that phone salespeople are purporting to be making predictions about human evolution didn't tip you off, this "research" doesn't seem very scientific at all. Instead, it more closely resembles what it actually is — a blog post written by some poor grunt, intended to get backlinks from sites like the Mail that'll juice TollFreeForwarding's position in search engine results.

To get those delicious backlinks, the top minds at TollFreeForwarding leveraged renders of a "future human" by a 3D model artist. The result of these efforts is "Mindy," a creepy-looking hunchback in black skinny jeans (which is how you can tell she's from a different era).

Grotesque model reveals what humans could look like in the year 3000 due to our reliance on technology

Full story: https://t.co/vQzyMZPNBv pic.twitter.com/vqBuYOBrcg

— Daily Mail Online (@MailOnline) November 3, 2022

"To fully realize the impact everyday tech has on us, we sourced scientific research and expert opinion on the subject," the TollFreeForwarding post reads, "before working with a 3D designer to create a future human whose body has physically changed due to consistent use of smartphones, laptops, and other tech."

Its sources, though, are dubious. Its authority on spinal development, for instance, is a "health and wellness expert" at a site that sells massage lotion. His highest academic achievement? A business degree.

We could go on and on about TollFreeForwarding's dismal sourcing — some of which looks suspiciously like even more SEO spam for entirely different clients — but you get the idea.

It's probably not surprising that the this gambit for clicks took off among dingbats on Twitter. What is somewhat disappointing is that it ended up on StudyFinds, a generally reliable blog about academic research. This time, though, for inscrutable reasons it treated this egregious SEO spam as a legitimate scientific study.

The site's readers, though, were quick to call it out, leading to a comically enormous editor's note appended to the story.

"Our content is intended to stir debate and conversation, and we always encourage our readers to discuss why or why not they agree with the findings," it reads in part. "If you heavily disagree with a report — please debunk to your delight in the comments below."

You heard them! Get debunking, people.

More conspiracy theories: If You Think Joe Rogan Is Credible, This Bizarre Clip of Him Yelling at a Scientist Will Probably Change Your Mind

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That "Research" About How Smartphones Are Causing Deformed Human Bodies Is SEO Spam, You Idiots

Artist Matt Furie created Pepe the Frog as an easygoing, bro-like character in his 2005 comic series, The Boys Club. In one comic, Pepe urinates with his pants down at his ankles. Sporting a relieved grin, Pepe says, Feels good man.

Pepes creator told The Daily Dot in April 2015 that the name Pepe (though pronounced differently) evokes pee-pee, in keeping with the literal bathroom humor the original character is known for.

According to Know Your Meme, users began creating their own Pepe images in 2008 in forums on the imageboard site 4chan. These Pepes, riffing on the frogs signature smile, spread online as a humorous reaction, much as people post GIFs to illustrate how they feel about something. One common variant shows a smirking Pepe, often called Smug Pepe, his thumb tucked knowingly under his chin. Additionally, the variants Sad Pepe and Angry Pepe are also common.

By 201415, Pepe had gone full mainstream, with singers Katy Perry and Nicki Minaj notably posting Pepe memes on Twitter. But as The Daily Beast reported in May 2016, some white supremacists were disappointed by Pepes widespread popularity. And so, as a dark and shocking joke, they fashioned Pepes with various anti-Semitic and other racist imagery in efforts to make Pepes widespread use less appealing to those outside their circle. One depicts a caricatured Jewish Pepe smiling at burning Twin Towers on September 11. Another swaps out Pepes Feels good man for Kill all Jews.

Starting around 2015, alt-right supporters of Donald Trump embraced the bigoted Pepe memes, spreading suited-up and blonde-coiffed versions of the frog after the likeness of their candidate. While apparently unaware of Pepes symbolism, Donald Trump retweeted a Trump Pepe in October 2015, as did Donald Trump Jr. following Hillary Clintons basket of deplorables comment in September 2016. Many alt-right social media users have even deployed the frog emoji in their online monikers to represent Pepe and their political affiliations. Pepe has also inspired a hand gesture, resembling the OK sign, that Mediaite claims a ten-year-old flashed on a tour of the White House in March 2017.

This unassuming cartoon frog became so established as a racist symbol that the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) labeled Pepe the Frog as a hate symbol in September 2016. Around this time, the Clinton campaign released their own explainer on Pepe, commenting that the cartoon frog is more sinister than you might realize. Another one of Pepes political iterations is as Pepe Le Pen, which depicts French far-right nationalist politician Marie Le Pen as the frog.

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Pepe the Frog Meme | Meaning & History | Dictionary.com

This article is about the character. For the cancelled film of the same name, see Pep Le Pew (film).

Pep Le Pew

Pep Le Pew is a character in the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series. An anthropomorphic French skunk, Pep is in search of romance, but his scent, self-delusion, and his overly persistent manner inhibit his efforts.

Chuck Jones first introduced the character, originally named Stinky, and once called Henry, in the 1945 short "Odor-able Kitty". This differs from later entries in several areas: Pep spends his time in pursuit of a male cat, who has disguised himself as a skunk with a Limburger scent in order to scare off a bunch of characters mistreating him; in the closing gag, Pep is revealed to be a philandering, hen-pecked American skunk named Henry with a wife and children. For the remaining cartoons Jones directed, Pep retained his accent, nationality, and bachelor status throughout.

There have been theories that Pep was based on Maurice Chevalier. However, in the short film Chuck Jones: Memories of Childhood, Chuck says Pep was actually based on himself, but that he was very shy with girls, and Pep obviously was not. A prototype Pep appears in the 1948 cartoon "Bugs Bunny Rides Again", but sounds similar to Porky Pig.

An antecedent in 1944's "I Got Plenty of Mutton" is a ram called Killer Diller that behaves very much as Pep later would, pursuing a reluctant female, speaking with a French accent (Mel Blanc used the same voice as he would for Pep), smothering the female with kisses, constantly turning up in the victim's hiding places, and nonchalantly bouncing after a frantically scrambling target.

Pep Le Pew cartoons typically feature the amorous polecat pursuing what he believes is a "female skunk." Usually, however, the supposed female skunk is actually a black cat who runs away from Pep because of either his putrid odor or overly assertive manner or both, but the skunk won't take "no" for an answer, and hops after her at a leisurely pace.

A running gag often found in the Pepe Le Pew cartoons are instances of the side characters encountering skunks (either Pepe or any cat in skunk disguises, such as Penelope Pussycat) and fleeing away from their putrid odor and/or skunk-like appearances in a comical fashion at the start of the cartoon. Very often, since the Pepe series are set in France beginning with the Academy Award-winning "For Scent-imental Reasons", many of these side characters tend to react to this with exaggerated French accents (and very often, are given minimal dialogue, often nothing more than a repulsed, "Le pew!").

A skunk often identified as Pep appears in the Art Davis-directed cartoon "Odor of the Day" (1948); in this entry, the theme of romantic pursuit is missing as the skunk (in a nonspeaking role, save for a shared "Gesundheit!" at the finish) vies with a male dog for lodging accommodations on a bitterly cold night. This should be noted as one of the two cartoons where the character, if this is indeed Pep, used his scent-spray as a deliberate weapon: delivered from his tail in a machine gun-like fashion. The other one is "Touch and Go", where he frees himself from the jaws of a shark.

In a role-reversal, the Academy Award-winning short "For Scent-imental Reasons" ends with an accidentally painted (and, at this point, terrified) Pep being amorously pursued by a love-struck Penelope (who has been dunked under dirty water, leaving her with a ratty guise as well as a developing head cold that has completely clogged up her nose). Penelope locks him up inside a perfume shop, hides the key down her chest, and proceeds to turn the tables on the now-imprisoned and effectively odorless Pep.

In another short, "Little Beau Pep", Pep, attempting to find the most arousing cologne with which to impress Penelope, sprays a combination of perfumes and colognes upon himself. This results in something close to a love-potion, leading Penelope to fall madly in love with Pep. Pep is revealed to be extremely frightened of overly-affectionate women, as Penelope quickly captures him and smothers him in more love than even he could imagine.

And yet again, in "Really Scent", Pep removes his odor by locking himself in a deodorant plant so Penelope (or "Fabrette," as she is called in this cartoon) would like him (this is also the only film-short in which Pep is acutely aware of his own odor, having checked the word "P.U." in a dictionary). However, Penelope (who in this cartoon is actually trying to have a relationship with Pep because all the male cats of New Orleans take her to be a skunk and run like blazes, but is appalled by his odor) has decided to make her own odor match her appearance and has locked herself in a Limburger cheese factory. Now more forceful and demanding, Penelope quickly corners the terrified Pep, who, after smelling her new stench, wants nothing more than to escape the amorous female cat. Unfortunately, she will not take "no" for an answer and proceeds to chase Pep off into the distance, with no intention of letting him escape. (Credited to Abe Levitow, this cartoon is the only film-short in the Pep Le Pew series not directed by Chuck Jones, besides the disputable "Odor of the Day").

Although Pep usually mistakes Penelope for a female skunk, in "Past Perfumance", he realizes that she is a cat when her stripe washes off. Undeterred, he proceeds to cover his white stripe with black paint, taking the appearance of a cat before resuming the chase.

Penelope is always mute (more precisely - does only natural cat sounds) in these stories; only the self-deluded Pep speaks (several non-recurring human characters are given minimal dialogue, often nothing more than a repulsed, "Le pew!").

Throughout the 90s, merchandise, including statuettes, apparel, and framed pictures, mostly from the now defunct Warner Brothers studio store, showed Pepe and Penelope as a mutually loving couple.

Sometimes this formula is subverted. In his debut appearance, "Odor-able Kitty", Pep (technically he is a different character because he is eventually revealed to be an American-accented family skunk named "Henry" with two sons and a wife who beats him up for his "unfaithfulness") unwittingly pursues a male cat who disguises himself as a skunk. "Scent-imental over You" has Pep pursuing a female dog who has donned a skunk pelt (mistaking it for a fur coat). In the end, she removed her pelt, revealing that she's a dog. Pepe then, "revealed" himself as another dog and the two embrace. However, he later revealed to the viewers that he's indeed a skunk. In "Wild over You", Pep attempts to woo a wildcat who has escaped from a zoo (during what is called "Le grande tour du Zoo" at the start of the 20th century exhibition), and painted itself to look like a skunk to escape its keepers. This cartoon is notable for not only diverging from the usual Pep And Penelope dynamic, but also rather cheekily showing that Pep likes to be beaten up, considering the wildcat thrashes him numerous times.

Chuck Jones, Pep's creator, wrote that Pep was based (loosely) on the personality of screenwriter Tedd Pierce, a self-styled "ladies' man" who reportedly always assumed that his infatuations were requited. Chuck also created Pep because he saw Pep as the person he wanted to be as a young man, thinking of himself as "unattractive"[1]. Pep's voice, provided by Mel Blanc, was based on Charles Boyer's Pp Le Moko from Algiers, a remake of the 1937 French film Pp Le Moko.[citation needed]

Eddie Selzer, animation producer (and Chuck's bitterest foe) at Warner Bros. Cartoons then once profanely commented that no one would laugh at those cartoons. However, this did not keep Eddie from accepting an award for one of Pep's pictures several years later.[citation needed]

In the shorts, a kind of fake French is spoken and written primarily by adding "le" to English words (example: "le skunk de pew"), or by more creative mangling of French expressions with English ones, such as "Sacre Maroon!", "My sweet peanut of brittle", "Come to me, my little melon-baby collie!" or "Ah, my little darling, it is love at first sight, is it not, no?", and "It is love at sight first!" The screenwriter responsible for these malapropisms was Michael Maltese.[citation needed]

Some transcribed Maltese dialogue from the Oscar-winning 1949 short "For Scent-imental Reasons":

A possible cameo appearance is at the end of "Fair and Worm-er" (Chuck Jones, 1946). This skunk doesn't speak, but looks identical (or is a close relation) and shares the same mode of travel and a slight variation of Pep's hopping music. His function here is to chase a string of characters who had all been chasing each other ( la "There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly").

Pep himself made a more obvious cameo in "Dog Pounded" (1954), where he was attracted to Sylvester after the latter tried to get around a pack of guard dogs, in his latest attempt to capture and eat Tweety, by painting a white stripe down his back (in his only appearance in a Freleng short).

Pep possibly makes a small appearance as a baby skunk in "Mouse-Placed Kitten" (1959), where he is reluctantly adopted by a mouse couple at the cartoon end.

Pep makes an appearance at the beginning of the "The Oswald Awards" section of the 1981 compilation movie Looney Looney Looney Bugs Bunny Movie.

Pep made several cameo appearances on the 1990 series Tiny Toon Adventures as a professor at Acme Looniversity and the mentor to the female skunk character Fifi La Fume. He appeared briefly in "The Looney Beginning" and had a more extended cameo in "It's a Wonderful Tiny Toons Christmas Special". The segment "Out Of Odor" from the episode "Viewer Mail Day" saw character Elmyra dressed As A Pepe Le Pew Costume in an attempt to lure Fifi into a trap, only to have Fifi begin aggressively wooing her In A Chase.

Pep also makes cameo appearances in the Histeria! episode "When America Was Young" and in the Goodfeathers segment, "We're No Pigeons", on Animaniacs.

In the 1995 animated short "Carrotblanca", a parody/homage of the classic film Casablanca, both Pep and Penelope appear: Pep (voiced by Greg Burson) as Captain Renault and Penelope (voiced by Tress MacNeille) as "Kitty Ketty," modeled after Ingrid Bergman performance as Ilsa. Unlike the character's other appearances in cartoons, Penelope (as Kitty) has extensive speaking parts in Carrotblanca.

In the The Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries episode "Platinum Wheel of Fortune", Sylvester gets a white stripe on his back and a skunk immediately falls in love with him. This is not Pep, but his fourth cousin, "Pitu Le Pew". He says, "What can I say, Pep Le Pew is my fourth cousin. It runs in the family". Pep would later appear in the episode "Paris is Stinking", where he pursues Sylvester who is unintentionally dressed in drag. Pep would appear once more in Tweety's High-Flying Adventure, falling in love with both Sylvester and Penelope (Sylvester had gotten a white stripe on his back from Penelope as they fought over Tweety), actually showing a preference for Sylvester.

Pep also appears in Space Jam, where his voice has curiously been changed into an approximation of Maurice Chevalier, as opposed to more traditional vocalization.

Pep was, at one point, integral to the storyline for the movie Looney Tunes Back in Action. Originally, once Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, DJ, and Kate arrived in Paris, Pep was to give them a mission briefing inside a gift shop. Perhaps because of the group receiving their equipment in Area 52, Pep's scene was cut, and in the final film, he plays only a bit part, dressed like a police officer, who tries to help DJ (played by Brendan Fraser) after Kate (played by Jenna Elfman) is kidnapped.[citation needed]

However, some unused animation of him and Penelope appears during the end credits, thus giving viewers a rare glimpse at his cut scene, and his cut scene appears in the movie's print adaptations.

Pepe also appeared in Bah, Humduck! A Looney Tunes Christmas, working in the Lucky Duck Department store, as a more controlled but still quite amorous perfume salesman trying to sell perfume to Penelope. She's still put off by his odor, though after Daffy's rude and aggressive sales pitch, It's the duck she clobbers. Ultimately, Penelope is the one who pulls Pepe into a romantic embrace and under the mistletoe.

In Loonatics Unleashed, a human based on Pep Le Pew named Pierre Le Pew (voiced by Maurice LaMarche) has appeared as one of the villains of the second season of the show. Additionally, Pep and Penelope Pussycat appear as cameos in a display of Otto the Odd, in the series. In the episode "The World is My Circus", Lexi Bunny complains that "this Pep Le Pew look is definitely not me" after being mutated into a skunk-like creature.

A 2009 Valentine's Day-themed AT&T commercial brings Pep and Penelope's relationship up to date, depicting Penelope not as repulsed by Pep, but madly in love with him. The commercial begins with Penelope deliberately painting a white stripe on her own back; when her cell phone rings and displays Pep's picture, Penelope's lovestruck beating heart bulges beneath her chest in a classic cartoon image.[2]

Pep Le Pew has appeared in the The Looney Tunes Show episode "Members Only" voiced by Ren Auberjonois. He also made a short cameo appearance with Penelope Pussycat in the Merrie Melodies segment "Cock of the Walk" sung by Foghorn Leghorn. He appeared in his own music video "Skunk Funk" in the 16th episode "That's My Baby". He also appeared again in another Merrie Melodies segment "You Like/I Like" sung by Mac and Tosh. His first appearance in the second season was in the second episode, entitled, "You've Got Hate Mail", reading a hate-filled email accidentally sent by Daffy Duck.

Pep Le Pew made a cameo in a MetLife commercial in 2012 titled, "Everyone". In it, he was shown hopping along in the forest and when he sees his love interest, Penelope, atop the back of Battle Cat, he immediately hops after her.

Pep Le Pew has appeared in Looney Tunes: Rabbits Run voiced by Jeff Bergman.

In New Looney Tunes, Pep Le Pew is a James Bond-esque spy who hits on Claudette Dupri.

Pepe made a cameo Appearance in the Looney Tunes Cartoons short "Happy Birthday Bugs Bunny!" The character was removed when the short was released as Warner Bros. - 60th Anniversary on the Annecy Festival's YouTube channel.

Pep appeared in the Animaniacs segment "Yakko Amakko", being placed on top of Yakko Warner's ice cream cone by an offscreen animator In A Duck Amuck Homage And then promptly erased,

In 2021, controversy arose over Pep's sexually aggressive antics that have been compared to sexual harassment ever since New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow accused the character of promoting rape culture. This led to the 7 March announcement that Pep Le Pew had been removed from the 2021 film Space Jam A New Legacy.[3] Articles report that Warner Bros. plans no future appearances of the character in subsequent Looney Tunes media.[4][5]. Pep was planned to appear in Space Jam A New Legacy during the Casablanca world scene when Terence Nance was directing in 2019. He originally was planned to appear alongside Jane the Virgin actress Greice Santo in a scene where LeBron James tells Pep about consent. As Terence Nance was replaced by Malcolm D. Lee weeks into filming, the scene was cut out of the film due to creative differences. The scene was rewritten to feature Yosemite Sam in Casablanca world.

Linda Jones-Clough, daughter of Pep's creator Chuck Jones, was unhappy about this claim that the Pep Le Pew character glamorized rape culture[6] . She defended against those claims, claiming that Pep did not rape any female character in the show, nor did he inspire rape and sexual harassment cases in real life.[7] In fact, when Chuck Jones and Michael Maltese created Pep Le Pew back in the 1940s, it wasn't intended to glorify bad behavior or to cause outrage, but to poke fun as screenwriter Tedd Pierce's "ladies' man" status and his then-lack of success with romancing women at the time. "Pierce's attitude toward sex 'was direct and uncompromising'," Jones wrote in his 1989 memoir, Chuck Amuck: The Life and Times of an Animated Cartoonist, adding, "It was only logical, of course, that Tedd would be in on the beginnings of Pep Le Pew. His devotion to women was at times pathetic, at times psychological, but always enthusiastic. Tedd could not really believe that any woman could honestly refuse his honestly stated need for her."[8]

Despite this, Pep made His cameo in the Animaniacs segment "Yakko Amakko" which Made the report of him being removed from future Warner Bros. projects.

Stamped on May 2017. This article or section does not cite any sources. Please add reliable citations to help verify the article's content.Do not use Wikipedia or any other wikis as a source. Unsourced info can be questioned and may be removed without notice.

Do not remove this template until all conditions have been met.

In October 2010, it was reported that Mike Myers would voice Pep Le Pew in a feature-length live action film based on the character, although no information about this project has surfaced since. In July 2016, it was revealed at San Diego Comic-Con that Max Landis was penning a Pep Le Pew feature film for Warner Bros.[9] There has been no new information since then due to sexual assault allegations against Max Landis in 2017. On 8 March 2021, the film was confirmed to be scrapped because of the development of Space Jam A New Legacy.[10]

(Directed by Chuck Jones unless otherwise indicated)

(From the Pep Le Pew Shorts)

See the original post here:

Pep Le Pew | Looney Tunes Wiki | Fandom

Pepe the Frog is a cartoon character that has become a popular Internet meme (often referred to as the "sad frog meme" by people unfamiliar with the name of the character). The character first appeared in 2005 in the on-line cartoon Boy's Club. In that appearance, the character also first used its catchphrase, "feels good, man."

The Pepe the Frog character did not originally have racist or anti-Semitic connotations. Internet users appropriated the character and turned him into a meme, placing the frog in a variety of circumstances and saying many different things. Many variations of the meme became rather esoteric, resulting in the phenomenon of so-called "rare Pepes."

The majority of uses of Pepe the Frog have been, and continue to be, non-bigoted. However, it was inevitable that, as the meme proliferated in on-line venues such as 4chan, 8chan, and Reddit, which have many users who delight in creating racist memes and imagery, a subset of Pepe memes would come into existence that centered on racist, anti-Semitic or other bigoted themes.

In recent years, with the growth of the "alt right" segment of the white supremacist movement, a segment that draws some of its support from some of the above-mentioned Internet sites, the number of "alt right" Pepe memes has grown, a tendency exacerbated by the controversial and contentious 2016 presidential election. Though Pepe memes have many defenders, the use of racist and bigoted versions of Pepe memes seems to be increasing, not decreasing.

However, because so many Pepe the Frog memes are not bigoted in nature, it is important to examine use of the meme only in context. The mere fact of posting a Pepe meme does not mean that someone is racist or white supremacist. However, if the meme itself is racist or anti-Semitic in nature, or if it appears in a context containing bigoted or offensive language or symbols, then it may have been used for hateful purposes.

In the fall of 2016, the ADL teamed with Pepe creator Matt Furie to form a #SavePepe campaign to reclaim the symbol from those who use it with hateful intentions.

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Pepe the Frog - Anti-Defamation League

HIGHLAND PARK, United States Before he allegedly murdered seven spectators at a US Independence Day parade, the Highland Park community knew Robert Crimo as a quiet kid and former Cub Scout.

But online, the 21-year-old known to friends and family as Bobby showed a strong inclination for violence and anger at being overlooked.

I know him as somebody who was a Cub Scout when I was the Cub Scout leader, Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering told NBC on Tuesday, describing Crimo as just a little boy.

It is one of those things where you step back and you say, What happened?'

Crimo, who grew up in Highland Park, just outside Chicago, lived in an apartment behind his fathers house. His dad, Bob Crimo, owned a local deli and had run against Rotering for mayor in 2019.

Crimos uncle, Paul Crimo, described his nephew on CNN as a lonely, quiet person who spent much of his time in front of his computer, not saying much.

A day after the shooting, authorities revealed that in 2019 Crimo had been visited twice by police, first after a suspected attempt at suicide, and a second time to remove a collection of knives, after he allegedly threatened to kill everyone.

Awake A thin white man with a patchy beard, Crimo sports several tattoos on his neck and face, including one above his left eyebrow of the word Awake, a reference to his stage name.

Multiple songs and videos posted online by Awake the Rapper include several references to mass shootings.

In one cartoon-style music video, the protagonist is seen shooting people with a rifle before finding himself lying in a pool of blood, shot dead by the police.

I just want to scream. Sometimes it feels like Im living a dream, sings the rapper.

Another video is of Crimo in a classroom, wearing a helmet and bulletproof vest and standing next to an American flag as he throws bullets on the floor.

The voiceover on that video says, I need to leave now, I need to just do it. It is my destiny. Everything has led up to this; nothing can stop me, not even myself.

In another clip, Crimo says, I hate when others get more attention than me on the internet.

The videos and songs have now been removed from YouTube and Spotify.

Crimos social media pages have also been taken down, but archived photos from his accounts appear to show him at a rally for then-president Donald Trump.

In another, Crimo appears to have a Trump flag draped around his shoulders. He also posted a picture of Pepe the frog, a cartoon character that has become a rallying symbol for the American far right.

Bennett Brizes, a friend who had recently become estranged from Crimo, told the Washington Post the young man was consistently apolitical, and when asked about current events would always answer, Man, I dont know.

Crimo seems to have intended violence for a long time, even illustrating it in his videos, said Emerson Brooking, a research fellow at the Atlantic Council think tank specializing in extremist internet and social media usage.

But even with the apparent pro-Trump images, so far it does *not* appear that he was partisan or ideological, Brooking said on Twitter.

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Suspect in July 4 shooting an alienated youth with dark online persona - Manila Bulletin

Behind Nick Fuentes, the host of America First, follows a new group of far-right conservatives. They call themselves the Groypers. And theyve launched a war against the Republican party.

Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, and Donald Trump Jr. do not seem like likely targets for a rising right-wing faction. But much to their surprise recently, the Groyper army chose events hosted by Kirk and Trump to descend upon.

Groypers attended a Turning Point USA conference at Ohio State University to heckle speakers with loaded questions. Turning Point is a conservative nonprofit that mobilizes Republican students on college campuses.

Trump, meanwhile, was booed off the stage at a free speech event at the University of California Los Angeles. The Groypers are claiming these two events, along with seven others, as victories against the mainstream Republican party, which they now consider to be fake conservatism.

A Groyper is a member of Fuentes movement of his brand of alt-right white nationalism. The alt-right is a loose collection of conservatives that harbor white nationalists. Fuentes is currently one of its most public faces.

As their chosen mascot, Groypers took hold of an exploitable illustration of Pepe the Frog. While iterations of Pepe are commonly used within the far-right, this version is of Pepe resting a conspicuous face against his two hands.

The meme appears in different forms on Groypers Twitter pages to show their allegiance.

https://twitter.com/that_groyper/status/1203275552636973059

Fuentes Twitter bio declares himself as the Groyper leader. His image header illustrates Pepe soldiers holding up a flag that states Groyper War, Total Victory!

The header also has the names of the events, primarily on college campuses, and dates of when the Groypers heckled conservative events, all claiming victory.

The Groypers galvanize around the idea that the current Republican party is fake conservatism. Basically, they try to push each conservative position farther to the right by supporting a white, male, heterosexual America. They embrace white nationalism in support of policies that, although they have foundations in conservatism, even some Republicans find too far.

The group is extreme on immigration restrictionism, often calling for a total shutdown of immigrants into America, and pushes anti-LGTBQ propaganda to continue to fight a culture wore they believe the right gave in on.

Support of Israel is one major difference between the Groypers and what they call the traditional Conservative Inc. While the Republican party remains firm in supporting its Israeli ally, the Groypers extreme nationalism and anti-Semitism pushes them outside the bounds of normal right-wing discourse.

America is NOT a propositional nation. We have NO ALLEGIANCE to Israel, Fuentes posted on his Telegram according to Vox. We are CHRISTIANS and we dont promote degeneracy. Demographic replacement is REAL and it will be CATASTROPHIC.

Fuentes is also known for casting doubt on the number of Jews that died in the Holocaust, using crude analogies relating to cookies and baking.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9aco6o5WBE

He described the above cookie comparison as his hilarious and epic Holocaust joke on his Telegram channel.

The Groypers are loyal to Fuentes and share this anti-Semitic perspective. For example, one Groyper page posted a tweet with a photo of a blimp that says jews rape kids.

your uber driver has arrived, @ayyyetone tweeted with the photo.

Fuentes, an extremely online pundit, thinks he can shape youth conservatism because hes better at catering to the internet culture that many Gen Z or Zoomer college students are inclined to consume.

I think the generational style is so important, Fuentes posted on Telegram. Idk if its post modern or post ironic but the style and tone is very native to Zoomers which is i think why ppl like Shapiro or Kirk imagine theyre check mating me with some of these controversies but in reality its just turning young ppl onto my content.

Fuentes and the Groypers primarily target the bulk of the Republican party.

In the past, they have heckled speakers like right-wing talk show host Ben Shapiro, as well as Trump Jr. and Kirk.

Their goal is to expose high-profile Republicans by asking loaded questions, often about Israel and homosexuality, to prove their distance from the extreme or true right.

There were a number of trolls who sabotaged the Q&A portion of tonights @tpusa event, Turning Points Benny Johnson tweeted following an event at Ohio State University. Many of the questions were abhorrent and were not asked in good faith.

Fuentes responded to Johnson by calling out Turning Points moderate stance. Turning Point has been scrutinized in the past for its own racist biases.

Turning Point is now making a concerted effort to slander all critics of their bullshit fake conservatism as extremist trolls,' @NickJFuentes tweeted. We are America First and you are being exposed for the sellout frauds you are.

Fuentes has been promoting the Groypers next event on Dec. 20. White nationalists Patrick Casey and Jacob Lloyd will join Fuentes in West Palm Beach for the Groyper Leadership Summit. The Groypers will also be mobilizing against Republicans again, as the event is set to overlap with another Turning Point conference.

The GLS will feature speeches by myself, Patrick Casey, and Jacob Lloydwe invite all Groypers to join us for a celebration of our Total Victory over Charlie Kirk in the Groyper Wars! Fuentes posted on his Telegram board.

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Originally posted here:

What is a Groyper? It's a Combination of Nick Fuentes and Pepe the Frog

Guides

Breaking down Poggers!

Published on June 22, 2022 John Esposito

Home Guides The Meaning and Origin of Poggers

Twitch has seen a massive rise in popularity over the years with gamers looking to become the next top streamer. The rise in the streaming platforms popularity has also brought the invasion of Twitch culture into the world we live in with everyone shouting and using Twitch lingo in their everyday talk track. One of the mot popular terms is poggers and, if you have no idea what it means, keep on reading as were breaking down what poggers means and the origins of the word.

Poggers is used as a term to express excitement or celebration.

For example;

I just got a new car bro.

Thats poggers.

Poggers essentially is a substitute for the word cool or a similar term to share excitement. Any way that you express cool, poggers can be substituted in its place.

For example;

I just lost my car keys.

Thats not poggers.

In Twitch chat, it often is depicted with an emote of Pepe the Frog expressing excitement or celebration. However, it has evolved beyond Pepe as streamers will create their own version of the emote.

The earliest recollection of the term was back in February 2017, when a user uploaded the emote to BetterTTV: an emote platform that can be linked to a Twitch channel for additional chat emotes. After it was uploaded to BetterTTV, it saw a huge increase in usage amongst the League of Legends community as players would use the term to describe a nice or exciting play. From there, the term took off in popularity seeing huge usage in Fortnite for the same reason.

That is everything we know about the meaning of poggers and its origin. As you look to become more versed in the universe of Twitch, be sure to check out our guides on how to create Twitch clips to make awesome memories or how to change your name on Twitch.

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The Meaning and Origin of Poggers - Twinfinite

In the Sothebys salesroom one evening in late February, fluorescent lights beamed down on the assembled crowd. A sea of spectators is not unusual for Sothebys the 278-year-old auction house typically hosts more than 600 sales per year but this sale was different. It was the auction houses first-ever evening sale dedicated solely to NFTs.

Sothebys described the event, titled Punk it!, as a truly historic sale for an undeniably historic NFT project. It consisted of a single lot 104 CryptoPunks sold as an all-or-nothing bundle. Sothebys estimated the bundle would go for $2030 million, on par with sales of paintings by David Hockney or Jean-Michel Basquiat.

To drum up interest, the auction house had thrown a series of events aimed at attracting prospective punk-buyers. There was a pre-auction dinner for VIP Punk holders and an afterparty with DJ Seedphrase, known for the enormous CryptoPunk headpiece he wears while playing sets. The campaign worked: the crowd on the day of the auction included Nicole Muniz, the CEO of Yuga Labs, as well as NFT influencer Andrew Wang and Nifty Gateway co-founders Duncan and Griffin Cock Foster.

Eli Tan, a writer at crypto news outlet CoinDesk, remembers a party atmosphere. The actual sale seemed like kind of a secondary thing, he explains.

Then, things got weird. The indicated start time of the sale, 7PM, came and went. Five minutes passed, then 20. Finally, a voice on the intercom announced that the lot had been withdrawn. Gasps could be heard in the salesroom. After weeks of preparation, the sale was canceled and no one was sure why.

Sothebys says the lot was pulled after discussions with the seller, but theres been little other explanation including whether the decision came from the auction house or the seller. Artnet reported that Sothebys pulled the lot due to lack of interest, while the seller tweeted simply that they had decided to hodl.

Its not uncommon for lots to be pulled ahead of sales, although its typically the result of legal concerns or fear of a flop, as The New York Times noted after the failed auction. But for anyone dealing with auction houses or NFTs, it was hard not to speculate on the mysterious no-show. Kenny Schachter, art world provocateur and NFT collector who attended the sale, believes the seller pulled the lot after being informed by the auction house that it was unlikely to sell for the low estimate. Schachter even heard rumors of a legitimate and significant offer that the seller declined in advance of the failed auction one that cleared $10 million but still fell short of the lower end of the estimate.

It should have been a high point for CryptoPunks as a collection. Just a few months earlier, BAYC had sold a bundle of 101 tokens for $24 million, and CryptoPunks fans were primed for a similar victory. Instead, punk-holders left the auction feeling burned and for good reason. They were pretty devastated, Tan says. They were showing me their Punks and they were like, this is the end, probably.

They werent the only ones watching. Less than three weeks after the auction, Yuga Labs would acquire CryptoPunks, effectively ending the projects run as an independent NFT juggernaut. Tan suspects the Yuga Labs team, including CEO Muniz, could have been at the sale to scope out the Punks market.

But despite the risks, theres a real value to putting NFTs up for auction and the anonymous seller seems to have come away from the auction just fine. A few weeks after the sale, it was reported that the seller took out an $8 million loan against the Punks with the help of NFTfi and MetaStreet.

Stephen Young, co-founder of NFTfi, a platform that allows NFT collectors to use their NFTs as collateral on loans, explains that selling at a traditional auction house is a way to give a collection an institutional stamp of approval a precursor to this kind of loan. According to Young, if an NFT from a collection has sold once at Sothebys or Christies, its enough to inflate the price and legitimize the entire collection.

Thats the only reason they do it, Young said of NFT collectors selling at the big houses. You pay the 20% that gives you that [stamp of approval], but its made all of your other CryptoPunks worth 20 percent more, so its more than worth it.

Before Christies $69 million sale of Beeples opus put NFTs on the mainstream art worlds radar in March 2021, Sothebys and Christies were known, at least to those outside the art world, as places to buy expensive rare objects from the collections of the well-off (and often, the recently deceased). Now, the auction houses are selling NFTs of Pepe The Frog with the same pomp and circumstance.

But it didnt happen overnight. Both Sothebys and Christies have been forced to modernize to keep up with an increasingly young and international collector base. Both houses have expanded into selling sneakers and pop culture memorabilia. In the process, theyve elevated Nike SBs and T. rex skeletons into rarified cultural artifacts. It follows that the houses foray into crypto may look like an attempt to elevate NFTs to the status of Monet and Rembrandt, but its actually much simpler: Theres a market.

They would like a chunk of [the NFT] market, of course, says Schachter. They would like a chunk of selling dirty underwear, if there was a market for it. They dont care.

According to Tim Schneider, art business editor at Artnet News who has covered NFTs since before the CryptoKitties days, businesses like Christies and Sothebys have an interest in converting anyone with cash to spend into a power bidder.

Some corners of the crypto world clearly have cash to spend, and NFT sales last year allegedly brought in significant amounts of new bidders (according to Sothebys end-of-year report in 2021, about 80 percent of NFT bidders were new to the auction house). A high-level official at the auction house confirmed that part of their long-term goal is to make it easier for crypto-native collectors to transact, as well as establish NFTs as a new collecting category for the traditional art world.

And in brief flashes, it seems like Sothebys strategy may be working: Crypto billionaire Justin Sun spent more than $100 million on art last fall, including $78 million on a record-breaking Giacometti sculpture at Sothebys but that may be one of the only examples weve seen so far, at least publicly, where a crypto bro has shown a noted interest in fine art.

For all of the lip service being paid to the notion of cross-collecting and people who started off in NFTs getting interested in other traditional artworks, Schneider explains, were not seeing a tremendous amount of organic integration between NFTs and the art establishment. After we spoke, Schneider reported in Artnet that Sothebys has pulled back on the crypto-art-crossover: The auction house notably did not accept cryptocurrency as a payment for any lots during their most recent slate of evening sales, as they had done in 2021.

As embarrassing as the failed auction was in the short term, Schachter still thinks Sothebys and the other houses got back more than they put in. The auction houses are not going to weep, he says. One deal goes down, and then they just move on to the next.

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Why a $30 million CryptoPunks auction fell apart at the last minute - The Verge

The Muppet performer who co-wrote Muppets Haunted Mansion is currently set to write, direct and star in a series centered around Dr. Teeth & the Electric Mayhem for the streaming service Disney+.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

For nearly seven decades, The Muppets have entered the homes and hearts of audiences around the world, bringing laughter, adventure and a whole lot of joy along with them. In the mid-1950s, their leader, the late Jim Henson, created iconic characters like Kermit the Frog and Rowlf the Dog that would remain staples of pop culture to this day. Lets face it, The Muppets are timeless, and many of them feel as real as you or I.

Bill Barretta, who joined the renowned troupe of artists a year after Jims untimely death in 1990, would inherit some of Jims most beloved roles including Rowlf, Dr. Teeth, Swedish Chef and Mahna Mahna and indeed they are big shoes, or rather butts (because theyre puppets!) to fill. Barretta is perhaps best known, however, for creating and performing his own characters that include Pepe the King Prawn, Johnny Fiama and Bobo the Bear.

Like many die hard-fans, Barretta was introduced to The Muppets at an early age.

Im kind of a broken record, Ive probably told this story many times, Barretta told The New School Free Press on a Zoom call. My brother [Gene Barretta] was kind of the orchestrator of our lives. He was interested in arts, drawing, making movies, and Jim Henson. Sesame Street was huge in 1969 and he was drawn to these new puppets. So, he actually wrote to Jim Henson, fearlessly as a kid and said, how do you make your Muppets? Jim wrote back and sent instructions on how to make a Muppet!

Bill, who has performed with The Muppets for over 30 years, wears many hats, and many different bodies on his hands.

I was always interested in performing and entertaining people, Barretta explained. My goal wasnt to be a puppeteer; my goal was to be an actor.

Puppeteering and acting are but just a few skills a Muppet performer must hone to do their job.

There are many aspects to what the Muppets do, Barretta told the Free Press. A lot of people think of it as what voice do you do? As Frank Oz would say, thats probably only about 10% of it. Its an interesting dance we do. Literally sometimes we dance.

There are a lot of moving parts to executing a Muppet performance, making it a complicated and collaborative effort. Humans are often only born with two arms and Muppet performers are no different. With one hand up a puppets butt, and one controlling the puppets left limb, each performer needs another puppeteer to operate the right.

We see what the camera sees, Barretta said. Were helping the director make the characters look good in the frame by how close they are, how far away, how much the audience isnt supposed to see, the angle so it doesnt look like the eyelines are off, a lot of the technical stuff, and then theres the acting. We sing, we act, we try to figure out where we are, just like a person would do, except its coming through our arms.

A Muppet performer has to be all-encompassing as acting, singing, dancing (apparently), puppeteering and character development are all part of the job.

Were not great singers, we try, and thats part of the charm of the Muppets, Barretta laughs. Theyre not supposed to be great singers, they kind of, hopefully get by.

Barretta, who grew up in Yardley, PA, found summer work as a teenager at Sesame Place, a local Sesame Street-themed amusement park, where he befriended fellow coworker Brian Henson, Jims son.

We were sweeping up cigarette butts and cleaning toilets, we became friends and kept in touch, Barretta said. It was about 10 years later, his father passed away, I was living in New York studying acting with Sanford Meisner, we reconnected. When I moved out to California, he was going to make a show called Dinosaurs on ABC, and I just begged to audition, or pull cords or cables, whatever I could do to be close to the business, and I happened to get the part of the dad. There, I was working with other Muppet performers who were on the show. There were hand puppets on the show as well as these big walk around characters, and thats what I was. Occasionally when I wasnt doing that, I was trying to watch them, and learn and assist.

From there I became friends with people, and we would play. Its all about playing all the time. I felt comfortable having fun, and we just got along. I dont know when it happened, but at some point, I did a voice that reminded someone of Rowlf the Dog. They were thinking about looking for a Rowlf, it was a very sensitive subject because it was Jims first big character. I built a really bad version of Rowlf on my own, they didnt give me the part, but they said oh, well lets bring him in on some things. This all came out of Sesame Place, really.

Many have passed through the gates of Sesame Place for employment, but not many of them went on to become Muppets. Nonetheless, there must be something in the water at the Pennsylvania amusement park.

It wasnt just me who came out of Sesame Place, Barretta said. Three of our friends and my brother also have done well in the industry. My friend Michael Newton is a producer, weve worked together out here [in Los Angeles]. Two other guys, Mark McCorkle and Bob Schooly, are executive producers and creators of Kim Possible and a lot of Disney animation stuff. Theres my brother with his career, and theres John Tartaglia, who is a huge Muppet performer now. Hes the executive producer of the new Fraggle Rock. So, a lot of people came out of Sesame Place, and thats really fun!

Last October, Muppets Haunted Mansion was released on Disney+ to critical acclaim. The special, which, surprisingly, is The Muppets first foray into the realm of Halloween-themed content, stars Baretta as Pepe the King Prawn and original Muppet performer Dave Goelz as Gonzo the Great. The duo spend a night at the infamous titular mansion, where they encounter special guests, chills and spooks along the way. The series, which was co-written by Barretta, frequent Muppet collaborator Kirk Thatcher and Kelly Younger, incorporates classic elements of both the ride and the original Muppet Show which is sure to satisfy fans from each realm.

The Muppets Studio was really a big part of how we thought we should approach this, Barretta said. First it was, well, we should come up with a Halloween special. Then it was, well maybe we should connect it to the mansion in some way. Can we do that? Theres a lot of different things going on at Disney, you dont know whos doing what project. The timing was right for us to be able to access the mansion. Because there are different mansions in different parks, the preference was not to put us in the park mansion, but to say, heres the mansion that bloomed all these other mansions. Our amazing production designer incorporated things from all of them in our house. It was our own mansion, but the wink was, youre going on a ride.

Barretta, who played a large role in the creative development of the special, is currently one of three executive producers behind Muppets Mayhem, an upcoming series he co-created with The Goldbergs creator Adam Goldberg, and Jeff Yorkes. The show will follow Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem as they attempt to record their long overdue first album and is slated for release on Disney+. The trio are currently writing the series with several other writers including Julie Bean, Hannah Friedman and Crystal Shaw. Barretta remains tight-lipped about what fans might expect in the upcoming series.

Its about the band making their first album and theres this music executive thats trying to wrangle them, Barretta said. In the broadest sense, thats what its about. We get to know them better. Its crazy and fun, and Im sure well have lots of cameos to stick in there. Its one of my favorite writing experiences actually, its been really good.

Barretta will play Dr. Teeth, one of many roles he inherited from original Muppet master Jim Henson. Other iconic characters who have had Barrettas hands up their butts also include Swedish Chef, Rowlf the Dog and Mahna Mahna.

I could never be those characters, really. Theyre not me. Barretta explained. These characters that I created or have been a part of creating, are a part of me. So, its the same with Jim. Swedish Chef, Rowlf the Dog, Dr. Teeth, theyre all a part of Jim in some way. First, I have to tell myself youre never going to be them, so dont pretend to be. But if I can find the heart, the soul and the motivation behind these characters, and try to interpret that part of what Jim did, if I can find the essence of what each one of these characters is based on what Ive seen Jim do, then I feel like I can continue to allow them to grow, as long as Im true to the original essence of them.

Muppet characters certainly are extensions of their creators, and this remains true with Barretta and his own.

Bobo is probably the most like myself, Barretta told us. The way that I usually put it is that he just cant believe hes allowed to be out in the world, that people havent put him in prison for being out at a restaurant. Hes just grateful to be a part of something, and thats really me. Im so grateful to be a part of such an amazing group, and an iconic, historical group of characters. So thats me, the guy who came in late.

Bobo the Bear debuted in 1996 on Muppets Tonight.

His voice has this gravel, Barretta said in Bobos voice. The only reason I did Bobo, was because no one was doing Rowlf, and no one had done Dr. Teeth for a while. It was like my personal tribute to a Jim voice because there werent other people doing that in other characters when I started.

Perhaps Barrettas most well known character, Pepe the King Prawn, was based on his wifes aunt, who is from Spain, the puppeteer told the Free Press.

She would always put an okay? at the end of her sentences, Barretta explained, switching momentarily to Pepes voice. I took that and her characteristics and added a part of myself which I think is the ego. I dont put it out there, but we all have one.

Johnny Fiama is based on my father and grandfather. Not the most educated guys in the world, but they both were musically driven. Although my father never entered the music business he could sing beautifully. My grandfather was an amazing dancer, but was never a dancer, right? Both sides of my family were innately musical. Thats part of Johnny. Its still me, because theyre huge parts of who I am. So, that feeds Johnny, as well as Johnny thinking hes a contemporary of like, Tony Bennett or Frank Sinatra, although hes never met them. He may have served them soup at a restaurant or something.

Since joining the Muppets over three decades ago, Barretta has seen many of the groups iconic characters change hands, most recently and prolifically with Matt Vogel stepping into the role of Kermit the Frog, a character he inherited from original Muppet performer Steve Whitmire, who inherited the character upon the death of Jim. He created characters like Rizzo the Rat and Lips, a member of the Electric Mayhem. Whitmire was dismissed from the Muppets in 2017 and audience reactions to Vogels performance as Kermit have been mixed at best.

Its hard, Barretta said. Theres always been this core group of performers who have been doing these characters that then got handed down in different ways. But its about the dynamics and relationships under the puppets thats really important, thats what feeds these characters that are up in the frame. My relationship with Steve can never be replaced. The dynamics we had with Pepe and Rizzo, and Kermit and Pepe, theres nothing like it for me, and that can never change.

It takes a long time I think, for any of us to feel like its okay to let these characters grow and change. There has to come a point where you go okay, I have to let it become part of me now and let myself feed the character. Stop doing an imitation, trust that youre going to maintain the essence of that character, play and let things happen. Otherwise, the character is stuck, all he is, is an imitation. With Matt having to take on what Steve did and Steve having to take on what Jim did, its the same thing. When I first heard Steves Kermit, I just didnt hear it right away. I thought, whos that? To me, theres a very clear difference, for a new generation, theres a very clear difference between Matt and Steve.

I think Matt has actually gone back to something that sounds a little closer to Jim. I think its still developing and growing, and hes still working on it all the time. You can imagine the pressure he must feel. Im not saying its better, but its his take and approach to Kermit. Steves Kermit is phenomenal, how could anyone think it could be replaced or changed? I miss him, but I love Matt, hes also a brother. Im encouraging him all the time, and I think hes doing an amazing job.

The prospect of seeing what lies ahead for the Muppets is indeed exciting.

I think theres something to branching out these characters more, Barretta said. I love being able to explore and see what other people do with characters theyve taken on and are fortunate to be able to present again. I think theres so much more fun to be had.

You can stream a plethora of Muppet content, including Muppets Haunted Mansion at Disney+ now.

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Bill Barretta, Muppet performer who created Pepe the King Prawn & more talks Haunted Mansion, stepping into Jim Henson's roles and more - The New...

Seattle and good food go together like PB & J, which is why were always excited about new restaurants. If youve been waiting to eat out or are curious about what restaurants are opening in the future, weve got you.

Here are 5 of the tastiest new and soon to open restaurants in Seattle.

If youre looking to enjoy Filipino eats you need to try Ballards Bunsoy. The new spot has a menu bursting with southeast asian flavours. Youll find menu items like duck confit adobo, lumpiang sariwa, lechon porchetta and more.

Where:2221 NW Market StHours: Sunday-Thursday 5 pm-9 pm,Friday & Saturday 5 pm-10 pm

Money Frog serves up pan-Asian cuisine in the former location of Capitol Hills Vios. You can dine on items like condensed milk peanut prawns, soft shell chilli crab, and green beans. Youll also find menu items like fried frog legs, cacio e pepe with yakisoba noodles and curry ketchup fried rice. Our mouths are already watering.

Where:903 19th Ave EHours:Wednesday-Sunday 4 pm-9 pm

Recent Posts:Heres the tea: The first ever Seattle Boba Fest is happening in the U District this weekendOne of the nations largest carnivals is happening in Washington State this weekend & heres where

The Fairmonts new restaurant has a brasserie-inspired menu with a showcase of PNW seafood, dry-aged meats, produce, sustainably foraged items, and more. To fully package the experience, guests will be able to dine in a stunning interior bySpanish design studio Lzaro Rosa Violn (LRV).

Where: 411 University StreetHours:Tuesday-Thursday 5 pm9:30 pm,Friday & Saturday 5 pm10:30 pm

MariPili is taking over Seattles beloved Cafe Presse space. When it opens youll be able to dine Galician cuisine with menu items like Spanishmeatballs and avariety of croquettes among other items. Tasty tasty!

Where:1117 12th AvHours: Opening in late May

Seabird is taking over Bainbridge Islands Hitchcock space. When it opens youll be able to find a menu with an iced shellfish section with items like local oysters, spot prawns, geoduck, and green sea urchin. Additionally, youll be able to find small plates like albacore tartare, octopus salad, chinook salmon Crudo, and more.

Where: 133 Winslow Way East #100,Bainbridge Island, WAHours: Opening in June

Enjoy, Seattle!

With a curated slate of what matters in your city, Curiocity presents you with the most relevant local food, experiences, news, deals, and adventures. We help you get the most out of your city and focus on the easy-to-miss details so that youre always in the know.

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5 of the tastiest new and soon to open restaurants in Seattle - Curiocity

It was evolutionary biologist (and real love-him-or-hate-him guy) Richard Dawkins who coined the term meme in his 1976 bookThe Selfish Gene. He wrote that in the same way that a gene is a self-replicating unit of biological evolution, a meme is a self-replicating unit of cultural evolution. That is to say, its an idea that spreads and changes the more it spreads. And, not to get too meta, just look at how the idea of a meme (itself a meme) has changed. Nowadays, when the average person says the word, they mean a funny image someone shared online.

And theyre partly right.

Funny online memes are like digital genes, carrying information from person to person, being altered and progressed as they go. Except instead of carrying the blueprints for life, they carry doges, Shreks, and Sean Beans. Sometimes, memesbe they pictures, hashtags, challenges, or not digital at allhave had a huge cultural impact. Here are ten such memes, those that were so dank they changed history.

Images of Winnie the Pooh blocked on Chinese socia media

The memein this case, really any image of Pooh Bearis heavily censored in China. The country even went so far as to ban the release of the film Christopher Robin within its borders just to prevent showing any image of the cuddly ol bear. And why? It all dates back to 2013 when President Xi Jinping visited the U.S. and some memers compared him and President Barack Obama to Pooh Bear and Tigger.

Xi was not a fan and considered being memed an affront to the dignity of himself and his office. He is particularly touchy as, in part, his goal to be the figurehead of both a cult of personality and an authoritarian regime. This has made the memeagain, just any image of one simple cartoon bearinto both a symbol of Chinese governmental corruption and protest.

The 50 Best Celebrity ALS Ice Bucket Challenges

In 2014, a challenge trend emerged online, organically and gradually growing from a series of unrelated charitable cold-water challenges to a massive worldwide meme dedicated to raising money for ALS (also commonly known as Lou Gehrigs disease). Raise money they did: over $220 million in 2014 alone.

And the trendwhich operates by one poster challenging another to post as wellhas made multiple resurgences in the years since. Though none have attained 2014 levels of success, they have generated more and more revenue for ALS-related charities and organizations. The meme has shown an incredible ability to produce grassroots funding and demonstrates the potential memes have to change finance going forward.

Radiation is Good For Your Skin Shocking 50s Commercial

Nowadays, even the scientifically illiterate understand that radiation can be dangerous. But in the first half of the complicated 20th century, newly-discovered radioactive elements like radium were thought to be safe. More than that, they were all the rage.

Radium in particular was used in every product imaginable, from makeup to clocks to clothes to medicine. Between being considered a cure-all and its fun self-luminous quality, radium became the catchword of quality in its day. You can find the word on/in all sorts of product labels, commercials, posters, and signs. It was a viral buzzword that brought the dangers of radioactivity worldwide fame.

Decorating with Death | The Depressing World of VANITAS Paintings (Memento Mori Part I)

It is impossible to pick the single most influential and widespread meme today, but in the Medieval and Renaissance periods, the winner is clear: the memento mori. Memento mori, meaning remember that you will die, is a motif that appeared in a huge amount of paintings over hundreds of years (and is still in use today).

The gist of the meme is simple: include some object in your work to remind the audience that death is inevitable. This was most often either some timekeeping device set to a penultimate time, some living thing clearly on its way out, or simply a skull.

Even limiting the meme to just skulls, you can easily find hundreds of examples from paintings. Some are hiddenperhaps a small skull on a shelf whose contents are otherwise normaland some are the central focus, as in Holbeins The Ambassadors. Its safe to say that no Renaissance nobles ever forgot that death was drawing nearer.

Eric Clapton Speaks About Clapton is God Graphiti

Before the internet, perhaps the single most common way to spread visual memes was graffiti. With obvious placement on or around high-traffic and high-visibility areas, many graffiti phrases spread from creator to viewer to creator, just as online memes do today.

A notable example is the phrase Frodo Lives!, which was spray-painted across the world in the 60s and 70s as a slogan for the hippie movement, green movement, and Vietnam protests. Another is Clapton is God, referencing musician Eric Clapton, which went up across the U.K. and U.S. during the guitarists tenure with the band Cream. Another still would be the Kilroy was Here drawings that soldiers spread across the world during World War II, bringing a connectedness and levity to soldiers bleak tours in combat.

YOUTUBERS REACT TO TIDE POD CHALLENGE

Like the ALS Ice Bucket Challenges idiotic, malicious twin, the Tide Pod Challenge arose to show us the power that memes have to effect change. Only this time, the change is stupid and harmful. In 2018, videos began to be posted online in which peopleusually teens and 20-somethingsate Tide Pods. Ate them. They ate Tide Pods.

Tide Pods, compact packets of laundry detergent, are colorful and bite-sized and became increasingly compared to candy. They are, however, incredibly unsafe to eat and the challenge, as well as the flurry of memes surrounding it, led to a spike in injuries from Tide Pod ingestion and even a few deaths. YouTube has since banned the videos, though the phenomenon is undoubtedly not the last meme-generated epidemic of stupidity.

The real history of Mad Magazines Alfred E. Neuman: CBC Archives | CBC

Mad Magazineis a comedic institution, influencing and even defining satire for generations. The bucktoothed, big-eared mascot that so frequently graces its cover actually has a name: Alfred E. Neuman, and the character has a long and winding history.

In short, the images creation is still unknown, but it quickly spread to become a catchall mascot for turn-of-the-20th-century advertisers, being used to sell food, appliances, and services. Its other prominent use was in racist propaganda. Pamphlets and posters from the time show the character, with his exaggerated features, smiling dumbly alongside slogans like, Irish Need Not Apply and Kill the Jews. AsMad Magazine(before that a comic) gained popularity, they gradually gained control over the character and now his catchphrase has become the much-less inflammatory, What, me worry?

Trump beats up CNN in wrestling meme tweet

In 2017, Donald Trump tweeted a short meme video edited to look like he was beating up a personification of news network CNN outside a wrestling ring. It ends with the CNN logo being replaced with one that says FNN: Fraud News Network. The clip stirred up a great deal of concern and anger and changed the way memes are perceived in politics for a number of reasons.

For one, it is unprecedented for a sitting leader of a first-world nation to spend so much of his day paying attention to memes. For another, the meme was created by a Reddit user with a long history of racist and anti-semitic posts. For another still, newly-positioned leaders attacking the integrity of the free press has historically been a common tactic of authoritarians. Trumps oft-repeated fake news slogan has drawn many comparisons to Hitlers lying press slogan.

Both Trump and the clips creator apologized for posting the video.

How This Frog Meme Became A Symbol Of Hope And Hate

The story of Pepe the Frog is a tragedy. The meme began as innocently as possible. Pepe was a character in the online comic Boys Club, where the frog mostly just hung out, smoked weed, and joked about silly nonsense. He then became a meme, his face used as a blank canvas to convey a million different ideas and emotions. And then

We lost him. From 2015-2017, there was a snowball effect, centered at first around Donald Trump and then later around 4chan culture, which took Pepe from the feels good man frog to a central symbol used by the alt-right. He has become enmeshed with hate speech, Nazism, and even the 2021 storming of the U.S. Capitol. Pepes creator, Matt Furie, has been very outspoken about his dislike of Pepes cooption and has sued multiple parties and organizations who have profited from using Pepe as a symbol of extremism and hate.

Unlike Pepe, the doge meme began as pure as fresh snow and has remained that way ever since. Doge is easily one of the most popular memes of the internet age and has taken on countless variations over its lifetime. It has appeared in ad campaigns, video games, phone apps, and every corner of the internet. The doge was most famously used as the name and symbol of one of the largest cryptocurrencies, Dogecoin.

Dogecoin is currently valued hundreds of times beyond its initial price, and thanks to repeated endorsements from personalities like Elon Musk, is becoming almost as renowned as Bitcoin. Doge has done more for Dogecoin than lend its face, however. The doge embodies the philosophy of the currencys creators, who wished to create a fun, relaxed cryptocurrency with an equally fun, relaxed community. Serving as the inspiration for a major currency system, the doge meme proves the potential of memes to effect sweeping change on previously stagnant systems.

fact checked by Rachel Jones

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Top 10 Memes that Changed History - nation.lk - The Nation Newspaper

January 4, 2021 marks the 300th straight day I haven't stepped inside a movie theater.

As a professional film critic for nearly 20 years, the cinema has always been a second home to me. Early in my career, I would be at the theater at least three or four times a week, sometimes more. This was before advances in technology allowed film studios to send online screeners to critics, so they could watch a film and review it from home.

This year, after the pandemic hit and studios realized that in-person screenings were not an option, most of them were receptive to making their films available to see online. So, that is how I watched movies in 2020 exclusively on my laptop, desktop, phone and TV. Did I miss the theater? Sure, but a good movie is a good movie no matter if its seen on an old console TV or a towering IMAX screen. I could watch the following movies on VHS and they would still be wonderful films.

With that said, here are the 10 best films of 2020.

10. My Octopus Teacher

Nature documentaries have never been as introspective as when directors Pippa Ehrlich and James Reed went diving with film subject Craig Foster, also a documentarian, to tell the story of the unusual friendship he formed with an octopus off the shores of South Africa during a difficult time in his life. Visiting the mollusk every day for about a year, Foster established trust with the animal and then slowly developed a unique bond with it in its natural habitat. It is an emotional and stunningly shot adventure that is even more compelling because of the enthusiasm Foster expresses for every moment he shares with the exceptional creature. My Octopus Teacher is currently streaming on Netflix.

9. Feels Good Man

No one knows the darkest corners of cyberspace as much as comic book creator Matt Furie. In 2005, Furie created Pepe the Frog as a character for an independent comic he was working on. Before he knew it, Pepe became a popular meme and was eventually hijacked by white nationalists who transformed the frog into a symbol of hate. In the documentary, first-time director Arthur Jones takes audiences to the fringes of the internet where Pepe started his fascinating evolution from carefree cartoon to alt-right amphibian. The true story is bizarre, funny and terrifying, and Jones manages to take all these elements and form something wholly entertaining. Feels Good Man is currently streaming on VOD platforms.

8. Dick Johnson is Dead

Filmmaker Kirsten Johnson turns her camera on her father to record lasting memories during his twilight years and does it with a creative twist. Along with capturing some heartfelt moments, Johnson also eliminates the fear of death by imagining and filming her octogenarian dad, now a retired psychiatrist who is starting to lose his memory, dying in a series of accidents. Using stuntmen and dark humor, she reenacts scenes of her dad tumbling down a flight of stairs and getting struck in the head by a falling AC unit. Her father is game and its wonderful to see them having fun during production. The documentary has a somewhat gimmicky feel to it at times, but when Dick Johnson is front and center, it is hard not to be charmed out of your knee-high socks. We would watch that man eat alphabet soup for hours. Dick Johnson is Dead is currently streaming on Netflix.

7. The Painted Bird

Czech director Vclav Marhouls film is one of the most disturbing WWII-era films to come around in a while. Based on author Jerzy Kosiski's controversial 1965 novel of the same name, the black and white drama follows a 6-year-old Jewish boy, who is sent by his parents to live with his elderly aunt in a war-torn Eastern European village near the end of the war. It is a visceral nightmare that is brutal and beautifully photographed. Czech cinematographer Vladimr Smutn captures the inhumanity through elegant camerawork and uncompromising violence. The film is about the ultimate suffering of one child who fights for his survival by any means necessary. It is a tragic, soul-crushing experience. The Painted Bird is currently streaming on VOD platforms.

6. The Assistant

Jane (Julia Garner) is suffering in a toxic work environment. She is an entry-level office employee who seems to have a handle on all her daily responsibilities as mundane as they may be. What she cannot tolerate anymore, however, is the unchecked power of her misogynistic boss, a top New York-based film executive. Her resentment and the shameful aspects of the company employing her makes the film, at times, uncomfortable and nerve-wracking to watch. Taking a minimalist approach, filmmaker Kitty Green guides her drama like she is making an observational documentary about her lead character. The decision to establish the narrative so subtly and with an underlying eeriness makes the film even more compelling. The Assistant is currently streaming on VOD platforms.

5. La Llorona

The folklore tale of La Llorona has been told countless of times in films and TV shows, but never very convincingly until now. In Jayro Bustamante's version, the Guatemalan writer and director tells the story of the iconic weeping woman through a political drama that follows a retired Guatemalan dictator, General Enrique Monteverde (Julio Diaz), found guilty of the genocide of tens of thousands of native lxil Mayan people during the early 1980s. The unique, slow-burning, political horror/thriller he has created is ominous, atmospheric and never reduces itself to cheap scare tactics. Bustamante has tapped into something that brims with cultural significance and dread. La Llorona is currently streaming on Shudder.

4. Sound of Metal

Director and co-writer Darius Marder follows heavy metal drummer Ruben Stone (Riz Ahmed in an Oscar worthy performance) at the moment he realizes that he is rapidly losing his hearing. Afraid that the devastating news will cause him to relapse, his girlfriend and bandmate Lou (Olivia Cooke) helps him find a sober living home for deaf men where Ruben must cope with his loss. There, he embraces the deaf community to a point but finds it difficult to fully accept that his life will never be the same. Using inventive sound design throughout the film, Marder illustrates the varying vibrations and frightening silences that make up Rubens new soundless world. Ahmed is extraordinary in the role as he adjusts to his new reality while holding hope that he is still in control of his fate. Sound of Metal is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

3. The Trial of the Chicago 7

The best script of the year comes from director and Oscar-winning screenwriter Aaron Sorkins (The Social Network) version of the trial of seven anti-Vietnam War protesters charged with conspiracy during the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. This courtroom drama is the epitome of what an ensemble cast should be, which includes solid performances by Oscar winners Eddie Redmayne (The Theory of Everything) and Mark Rylance (Bridge of Spies) to a scene-stealing Oscar-worthy performance by Sacha Baron Cohen (Borat). Like Sorkins past work as a screenwriter, the dialogue in Chicago 7 is smart and witty and the sprawling issues are packaged together in a way that makes the storytelling engaging and well-defined. As far as the films parallel to Americas current political climate, it could not be more symbolic and timelier. The Trial of the Chicago 7 is currently streaming on Netflix.

2. Never Rarely Sometimes Always

Authenticity is on full display in this poignant drama about a 17-year-old girl named Autumn (first-time actress Sidney Flanigan), living in small-town Pennsylvania, who sets out with her cousin Skylar (Talia Ryder) to New York City to have an abortion. Although the film centers on a polarizing topic, it never feels preachy or controversial.Wherever you come down on the abortion debate, there's no denying that options for obtaining the procedure have become severely restricted in recent years. Writer and director Eliza Hittman (Beach Rats) steps in to tell this story in such a personal way, viewers may feel like they are on this delicate journey with Autumn, maneuvering all the roadblocks and coming to terms with her difficult decision. While movies like 2014s Obvious Child and 2015s Grandma took on the subject of abortion with a comedic perspective, Hittmans piece gets to the heart of the matter with realism and sensitivity. Never Rarely Sometimes Always is currently streaming on VOD platforms.

1. Minari

Set in rural Arkansas in the 1980s, writer/director Lee Isaac Chungs intimate and tender drama follows a young Korean family as they struggle to realize their American dream when they start a farm to raise vegetables and attempt to assimilate within their new community. The hardships the Yi family must confront are relentless, but they struggle together and put their faith in one another, especially father and husband Jacob (Steven Yeun in an Oscar worthy performance), who wants nothing more than to succeed on his own terms and make a living independently. Chung, who based the script on his own upbringing, creates a beautiful and touching dynamic between each of the family members. This is especially true between young David (Alan S. Kim) and his grandmother Soonja (Youn Yuh-jung in an Oscar worthy performance), who he is mostly annoyed with for moving into his room and not doing grandmotherly things like bake cookies. Grandma smells like Korea! he exclaims at one point. Minari is reminiscent of an incredibly tense scene in the 2003 masterpiece In America, which is also about an immigrant family, where a father risks everything on the outcome of a carnival game. In comparison, Minari feels like a more subtle version of that scene stretched into a feature film. All eyes are on Jacob as he stakes his familys future on his own abilities as a provider. It delivers an extremely effective message about love and devotion that is equal parts charming, heartbreaking and humorous. Minari is scheduled for a theatrical release on February 12, 2021.

Also, here are a few Honorable Mentions: Collective, Emma, The Nest, Nomadland, The Painter and the Thief, Shithouse, Small Axe: Mangrove, Soul, Totally Under Control, Wolfwalkers

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La Llorona, immigrant dreams and an aquatic doc: the San Antonio Current's 10 best films of 2020 - San Antonio Current

By James Owen| Columbia Daily Tribune

The year ends today mercifully.

On most other trips around the sun, I seeover 100 flicks in theaters. This year, I hit about a third of that.

Which means Ive rethought what to includeon my inventory of the best cinematic experiences of 2020. I usually reserve this list for films with some theatrical run but, with theaters closed more often than not, Iexpanded consideration to movies only available on cable or streaming services.

I still cannot pull the trigger on including limited series; they either don't tell one coherent story or don't have the same behind-the-scenes talent guiding every segment. In a single case, I treat one segment as its own experience, meriting high praise.

Enough talking, lets get to the 10best flicks of this miserable, lousy year.

10. "Borat Subsequent Moviefilm"Sacha Baron Cohen pulls off a feat: creating a sequel that not only captures the strength of the first film but makes a second outing feel relevant. Our titular character comes to Trumps America with a nastier, darker sense of humor that matches the nations mood. Imagine Tocqueville with gratuitous jokes about bodily functions. Plus, Maria Bakalova as Borats long-lost daughter turns in a performance that demands Academy attention. Really!

9. "The Invisible Man"H.G. Wells horror classic has been redone so often there should be no life left in the tale of a scientist who develops a God complex with translucence. But this new version offers jaw-dropping twists; relegating the title character to a supporting villain is just the start of its innovation. Elizabeth Moss plays the abused beau of the madman in an update that captures the dynamics of the #metoo movement. Proof horror can capture our real-life fear and loathing.

8. "The Personal History of David Copperfield"Another classic with modern blood flowing through its veins. Armando Iannucci strips away the dark cynicism of his usual style, exploringhow Charles Dickens developed his mythology and partially deconstructingthe concept of autobiographical fiction. Iannucci mines a similar vein aslast years Little Woman adaptation, and pulls off a gorgeous re-telling with a phenomenal cast that includes Dev Patel, Tilda Swinton, and Hugh Laurie.

7. "Tenet"I hoped Christopher Nolans brain-bending thriller would usher people back to theaters, but the timing didn't work. A shamesince this sci-fi take on the spy thriller contains vibrant ideas and epic stylings that demanda big presentation. Nolan relies on themes of obsession and regret to continue a streak of deeply personal blockbusters. Perhaps the most nakedly ambitious project of a daring directors catalogue.

6. "Let Him Go"In 1960s Montana, a couple lose their adult son, then see their grandchild fall into the clutches of a dangerous family when their sons widow remarries. The husband-and-wife team (Diane Lane, Kevin Costner) go toe-to-toe with a nasty matriarch (Lesley Manville, chewing up scenery like Barbara Stanwyck) in a battle that will remind you of the melodramatic Westerns of Howard Hawks and Sam Fuller. But the intimacy brought by our leads keeps the audience enthralled. Let Him Go is about the tension of loss and Lane, whose shift from tender to merciless is urgently dignified, is incredible.

5. "Bad Education"To understand the challenges to the education system is to understand the publics expectations of what a school is supposed to accomplish. In short, everything. Thus the subtext of Cory Finleys retelling of an early '00s scandal involving a charismatic superintendent (Hugh Jackman) and his lieutenant (Allison Janney). Theres money and sex, but all means to an end for a school district that keep property values in the community high. Skillfully unspooled, Bad Education isas smart as it is entertaining and entertaining.

4. "Mangrove"Just one segment of Steve McQueens Small Axe series on Amazon, this story centersa restaurant owner who battles the police who target his business. This part of the story is urgently relevant, but the later trial has all the drama of a great courtroom yarn. McQueens style cuts to the heart of a story thattackles plenty of historical and contemporaneous issues. Each episode is worth watching, but Mangrove"is worth celebrating.

3. "City So Real"/"Feels Good Man" (tie)To understand 2020 is to understand the unbelievable politics afoot. Both of these True/False Film Festhighlights tackle modern mechanisms in their own way. City So Real is an epic document of aChicago mayoral race that dealt with race, violence andgentrification. Covering multiple candidates, filmmaker Steve James never loses sight of the city, its issues and its people.

While City looks at the big picture, Feels Good Man focuses on a seemingly harmless cartoon frognamed Pepe and how he became a symbol of white supremacy and, ultimately, a mascot for President Trumps supporters. If you want to figure out how politics became so dark and weird, theres no better shortcut than Arthur Jones deep dive into the online rabbit hole.

2. "Soul"I often lament giving Pixar films short shrift; expectations for their work is so high. But the studio's newest entry transcends even its high standards by tapping into themes of spirituality and philosophy. I am reluctant to even get into the plot involving a jazz musician (Jaime Foxx) and a lost soul (Tiny Fey), except to say the film tackles the very meaning of life. Plus, its gorgeous. Its as though Terrence Malick hijacked a Disney cartoon. Will kids like it? I am unsure if I even care.

1. "The Assistant"The best film of the year should also be a film of the moment, and Kitty Green has crafted a precise piece of horror about sexual harassment in the workplace. Jane (Julia Garner) works for an unseen movie executive and confronts indignity in every corner, while many simply turn away or feed the hostility. What makes The Assistant so horrific is the sheer banality of Janes situation. The dull breakroom, the snickering co-workers, the trash in her boss' office. With every detail lurks complicity and, within Garner'seyes, we see her own calculations of acceptance. Not a pretty sight, but a necessary one.

Many of these films might not have made my Top Ten list during a normal year. I should also note I cut The Way Back, with Ben Afflecks haunting performance as an alcoholic basketball coach, and First Cow, with its gentle portrayal of the unforgiving frontier. 2020 stunk, but it did allow us to explore some interesting work from some very daring artists.

In real life,JamesOwen is a lawyer and executive director of energy policy group Renew Missouri. He created/wrote for Filmsnobs.com from 2001-2007 before an extended stint as an on-air film critic for KY3, the NBC affiliate in Springfield. He was named a Top 20 Artist under the Age of 30 by The Kansas City Star when he was much younger than he is now.

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Celebrating the best movies from an otherwise lousy year - Columbia Daily Tribune