In anticipation of her upcoming keynote at SB'20 Long Beach, we revisit this groundbreaking blog series from renowned author and regenerative business expert Carol Sanford. This is part 4 of 6.

This is the fourth blog in a series on the seven First Principles of regeneration, drawing from living systems sciences. Read parts one, two and three.

A current, prevailing worldview is that everything and everyone can be categorized as a particular type. Each of us plant, animal, or human can be classified within a system of limited possibilities. Based on this belief, all of us humans are hungry to know who we are and how we fit into our time and place. We so eagerly want to know what types of lovers, wives, parents, or people we are that when magazines promise us quizzes to sort ourselves out they quickly disappear from newsstands. This helps us identify ourselves, and it may seem to help us understand nature and other beings. But despite its allure, by itself it cannot give us real knowledge.

On the other hand, we hate it when we are compared to a specific other person or when our situation is described as a generic example of things as they are. We love the idea that no two snowflakes are alike. We know from genetic science that there are no combinations that repeat. Nature does not create exact duplicates. From microbe to baby deer to human brain, every particular example of each life form is unique.

To overcome confusion about the degree or quality of likeness and difference among living beings requires discernment developed over time. It is true that based on surface characteristics, a person, a tiger, or a watershed is not unique and can be identified and categorized according to rating scales similar to the ones we enjoy reading about in magazines. Personality characteristics and personal strengths are easily organized into typologies. Nevertheless, at our cores each of us is singular, and every whole, living being has an essence that is permanent not an accident of birth, and not the result of socialization. This irreducible reality is captured in the root meaning of essence, which is not to become something, but to be something.

Hear from Janine Benyus and Biomimicry 3.8 about the latest innovations in biomimetic design being implemented by forward-thinking companies and practitioners at SB'20 Long Beach.

In the business world, we have a firm grasp of differentiation, which is often the basis of branding. A truly great business one with a long and consistently creative life goes beyond differentiation to essence or singularity. It becomes aware of its unique identity early on and adheres tenaciously to it over the long term; it hires to preserve it, develops products and services that express it, and makes it the basis for orientation and development. Singularity is the source of disruptive innovation, and a wise business jealously guards it. Yet even so, a great business often does not express equal understanding of singularity with regard to people and natural systems.

In a living system, the only lasting and precise way to augment health and wellbeing is to work with the essence of a particular whole the same way we work when were raising a child, governing a city, or growing a brand. For example, when we mistakenly set out to make a child more like an idealized someone else, she quickly loses her identity, which is the source of her intelligence and vitality. The best way to set a child on the wrong track is to tell her to be more like your father or more like your sister.

Advocating or advising from ideals of any kind interrupts essence expression. Ideals arise from societal or cultural aggregations of assumed truths. We form them in order to corral people who seem to be wandering beyond the bounds of accepted society. In other words, we use them to standardize norms, to make people all alike so that we can predict and control their behaviors. The imposition of ideals for the purpose of dominating is not only characteristic of our relationships with children, we extend it to everything alive. John Mohawk, a tribal elder and a professor at New York University, has said ideals are how one culture eradicates another, as the Europeans have come close to doing with the Native Peoples of North America. Within the context of standardized identity, people learn to normalize themselves by mimicking others.

In the business world, this can show up as the imitation of products or approaches that belong to other brands, a symptom of the failure to identify and adhere to singularity. And because we have spent so much time collecting and organizing ideals, standards, best practices, competencies, and categories, most of us havent learned to recognize and value singularity in any aspect of our own businesses.

In a regenerative process, we look for singularity not in existence, but in potential. I love to suggest that the essence of the IRS is not collecting taxes - that is only the surface. At its founding, the IRS was intended to increase the wealth-producing capacity of citizens and fund the agreed-upon costs of existing as a nation. How would our relationship with the IRS change if we were able to see through to that essence? How would the IRS work with us if they were able to hold in mind their unique identity? Would the nation ever experience a shortage of revenue? I suggest that every one of us living in the United States would be wealthier and probably happier.

It isnt easy to see the essences of people around us because they are often obscured by the challenges of family, school, and work life. When people are persuaded to conform, their essences are overtaken by personality traits, and the characters they play take center stage, nudging out their true selves. In order to develop the capability to recognize and engage with essence our own and others we must hold it in mind and pursue its living expression in all of our efforts.

Every watershed, community, and business has an essence. No two businesses are alike, although at a functional or object level (as with personality in humans), they may share many traits. We may classify types of employee, natures of raw material, categories of business plan, but until we take the time to know people, materials, and systems as their singular selves, we are failing to know and nurture them in the same way we fail to know and nurture a child when we exhort her to be like her father.

A regenerative view of the world sees phenomena not only as dynamic, but as singular.

That is, instead of categorizing, identifying, and grouping according to what things have in common, a regenerative business always seeks to discern the essence that makes each thing distinctly itself. It accepts and welcomes the realization that each expression of being is one of a kind.

This ability to appreciate singularity becomes the basis for deep creativity and motivation, a diametric opposite of the deflating belief that everything has already been seen and done by others before us. It requires constant resistance of the tendency to categorize and pigeonhole. Instead it seeks to see each phenomenon, each customer or retail location or product, as unique and new and deserving of our full presence and attention.

Looking to existence, writing down our observations or collecting facts, will not reveal singularity. In order to sniff out essence, we must become trackers and look for it in the same way that native peoples follow the traces of animals who have passed by. Essence becomes apparent in the patterns that are specific to a person, those that reveal how they engage with the world, their purpose in life, the unique value they create as the result of their endeavors. The same is true for the essence of any natural system, community, or organization.

Published Mar 23, 2020 10am EDT / 7am PDT / 2pm GMT / 3pm CET

Carol Sanford has four decades of experience working side by side with Fortune 500 and new economy executives, in designing and leading systemic business change and design. Through her university and in-house educational offerings, global speaking platforms, award-winning books and human development work, Carol works with executive leaders who see the possibility to change the nature of work through developing people and work systems that ignite motivation everywhere.

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Regenerative Business, Part 4: Singularity and Why It Matters - Sustainable Brands

In late December 2019 Dr. Li Wenliang, an ophthalmologist at Wuhan Central Hospital, sent a WeChat message to his medical school alumni group telling them that seven people with severe respiratory and flu-like symptoms had recently been admitted to the hospital. One thing they had in common, besides their symptoms, was that theyd all visited a local wet market at some point in the previous week.

The illness bore an uncanny resemblance to SARS, but with a novel aspect as well; could it be an outbreak of a new disease? If so, what should be done?

But before any of the doctors could take action or alert local media outlets, the chat thread was shut down by the Wuhan police and Li was accused of spreading rumors. Mind you, the chat wasnt in a public forum; it was a closed group exchange. But the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is able to monitor, intercept, and censor any and all activity on WeChat; for the Chinese people, theres no such thing as a private conversation.

The police gave Li an affidavit stating hed spread false information and disturbed public order. He was instructed to sign this document retracting his warning about the virus and to stop telling people it existed, otherwise hed be put in jail.

So he did. A little over a month later, on February 7, Li died of the novel coronavirus in the same hospital where hed workedhed been infected with the virus while trying to treat sick patients, whod continued pouring into the hospital throughout the month of January.

By this time the CCP had leapt into action, unable to deny the existence of the virus as hundreds then thousands of people started getting sick. Travel restrictions and quarantines went into effectbut it was already far too late. As of this writing, the virus has spread to 168 countries and killed almost 21,000 people. Schools and businesses are closed. Were in lockdown mode in our homes. And the economy is taking a massive hit that could lead to a depression.

How different might our current situation be if the CCP had heeded Lis warning instead of silencing itor if the virus had first been discovered in a country with a free press?

People are arguing that China has done a good job of handling the virus. I disagree, said Alex Gladstein, chief strategy officer at the Human Rights Foundation. The reason we have this global pandemic right now is because of Chinese censorship and the governments totalitarian nature.

Last week at Singularity Universitys virtual summit on COVID-19, Gladstein pointed out what we can learn from various governments responses to this pandemicand urged us to keep a close eye on our freedoms as this crisis continues to unfold.

The rate at which this disease has spread in different countries has varied wildly, as have the numbers of deaths vs. recoveries. Western Europe houses some of the wealthier and more powerful countries on Earth, but now isnt a great time to be living there (and were not doing so hot in the US, either). And though Singapore is known for its rigidity, it was a good place to be when the virus hit.

Given a half-century of research, the correlation is strong: democracies handle public health disasters much better than dictatorships, Gladstein said, citing a February 18th article in The Economist that examines deaths from epidemics compared to GDP per person in democracies and non-democracies.

Taiwan has also fared well, as has South Korea, though their systems of government function quite differently than Singapores. So what factors may have contributed to how fast the virus has spread and how hard the economys been hit in these nations?

There are two axes that are relevant, Gladstein said. One is the openness of a society and the other is its competency. An open but less competent government is likely to perform poorly in a public health crisis (or any crisis), as is a competent but closed government.

Long-term, some of the best-performing societies are open, competent democracies like Korea and Taiwan, Gladstein said. Taiwan is a somewhat striking example given its proximity to China and the amount of travel between the two.

With a population of 23 million people and the first case confirmed on January 21, as of this writing Taiwan has had 235 cases and 2 deaths. They immediately started screening people coming from China and halted almost all incoming travel from China within weeks of the outbreak, creating a risk-level alert system by integrating data from the national health insurance database with the immigration and customs databases (this did involve a degree of privacy infringement that we probably wouldnt be comfortable with in the US; more on that later). High-risk people were quarantined at home, and the government quickly requisitioned the manufacture of millions of masks. There was less panic and more belief in the government, and this paints a picture of what we should all aspire to, Gladstein said.

Iran is on the opposite end of the spectrum in both competency and openness; theyve recorded over 27,000 cases and over 2,000 deaths. Thousands have died in Iran, but well never know the truth because theres no free press there, said Gladstein.

Then theres China. In addition to lockdowns enforced by neighborhood leaders and police, the government upped its already-heavy citizen surveillance, tracking peoples locations with apps like AliPay and WeChat. A color-coding system indicating peoples health status and risk level was implemented, and their movement restricted accordingly.

Theyve now used the full power of the state to curtail the virus, and from what we know, theyve been relatively effective, Gladstein said. But, he added, this comes with two caveats: one, the measures China has taken would be unthinkable in a democracy; and two, we cant take their data at face value due to the countrys lack of a free press or independent watchdogs (in fact, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post were expelled from China on March 17; this may have been a sort of retaliation for the US State Departments recent move to cap the number of Chinese journalists allowed to work in the US for a handful of Chinese state media outlets).

South Korea and Singapore, the worlds other two containment success stories, both used some form of surveillance to fight the virus. In Korea, the 2015 MERS outbreak resulted in a law that lets the government use smartphone and credit card data to see where people have been then share that information (stripped of identifying details) on apps so that people they may have infected know to go get tested.

In Singapore, besides launching a contact tracing app called TraceTogether, the government sent text messages to people whod been ordered to stay at home and required them to respond with their live GPS location. As of this writing, Singapore had reported 631 cases and 2 deaths.

Does the success of these countries and their use of surveillance mean we need to give up some of our privacy to fight this disease? Would Americans and Europeans be willing to do so if it meant this terrible ordeal would be over sooner? And how do we know where to draw the line?

To Gladstein, the answer is simple. We dont need a police state to fight public health disasters, he said. We should be very wary about governments telling us they need to take our liberties away to keep us safe, and that theyll only take those liberties away for a limited amount of time.

A lot of personal data is already being collected about each of us, every day: which ads we click on, how long we spend on different websites, which terms we search for, and even where we go and how long were there for. Would it be so terrible to apply all that data to stemming the spread of a disease thats caused our economy to grind to a halt?

One significant issue with security measures adopted during trying times is that those measures are often not scaled back when society returns to normal. During the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, the government said the new security measures were temporary, but they turned out to be permanent, Gladstein said.

Similarly, writes Yuval Noah Harari in a Financial Times piece (which you should read immediately in its entirety if you havent already), Temporary measures have a nasty habit of outlasting emergencies, especially as there is always a new emergency lurking on the horizon. Many of the emergency measures enacted during Israels War of Independence in 1948, he adds, were never lifted.

This is key: though surveillance was a critical part of Taiwan, Korea, and Singapores success, widespread testing, consistent messaging, transparency, and trust were all equally critical. In an excellent piece in Wired, Andrew Leonard writes, In the United States, the Trump administration ordered federal health authorities to treat high-level discussions on the coronavirus as classified material. In Taiwan, the government has gone to great lengths to keep citizens well informed on every aspect of the outbreak.

In South Korea, President Moon Jae-in minimized his own communications with the public, ceding the sharing of information to those who actually knew it: health officials updated the public on the state of the pandemic twice a day. Singapores government provided consistent, clear updates on the number and source of cases in the country.

Gladstein re-emphasized that democracies are better suited than dictatorships at handling public health crises because people need to be able to innovate and collaborate without fear.

But despite a high level of openness that includes democratic elections, some of the heaviest emphasis on individual rights and freedoms in the world, and a free press, the US response to coronavirus has been dismal. As of this writing, more than 25 US states have ordered residents to be on lockdown. But testing, trust, and transparency are all sorely lacking. As more people start to fall seriously ill in the coming days and weeks, what will the US do to stem Covid-19s spread?

Secrecy, lies, and censorship only help the virus, Gladstein said. We want open societies. This open society is about to be put to the testbig-time.

For more from Gladstein on this topic, read his recent opinion piece in Wired.

Image Credit: Brian McGowanonUnsplash

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Do We Have to Give Up Our Personal Freedoms to Beat Coronavirus? - Singularity Hub

'Ghost in the Shell' and 'Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex' are both fan-favorite properties with massive followings and now a new installment to the saga is on the way. Netflix is all set to debut 'Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045', a 3-D CGI animated original net anime sequel to 'Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex'.

The title is believed to be a reference to Ray Kurzweil's 'The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology', which predicts that human and machine intelligence would merge into a Singularity by the year 2045.

Heres everything you need to know about the project:

'Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045' will be dropping on Netflix on April 23.

Picking up fifteen years after the beginning of 'Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex', the new series looks at a world where Artificial Intelligence is beginning to threaten humanity's continuation as a species. However, the public at large hasn't realized this threat yet. But when mysterious beings called "post-humans" begin to appear, the former members of Public Security Section 9, the protagonists of 'Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex', are called back into action to protect humanity from its impending doom.

Here's the official synopsis for the new ONA series: "In 2045, the world has been thrown into a state of systematic 'sustainable war', but the threat of human extinction at the hands of AI hasn't yet pervaded the public consciousness. Former members of Public Security Section 9, including full-body cyborg Major Motoko Kusanagi, are working as hired mercenaries when mysterious beings known as 'post-humans' begin to emerge. The worlds superpowers are trying to come to grips with the threat, and so Section 9 is reorganized."

Atsuko Tanaka

Atsuko Tanaka has been the voice of Major Motoko Kusanagi in all anime adaptations of the 'Ghost in the Shell' manga except 'Ghost in the Shell: Arise'. The voice actor will be reprising her role as Major for the upcoming Netflix anime alongside other returning cast members Akio Ohtsuka as Batou, Kichi Yamadera as Togusa, Yutaka Nakano as Ishikawa, Toru Ohkawa as Saito, Takashi Onozuka as Paz, Tar Yamaguchi as Borma, and Sakiko Tamagawa as Tachikoma. Osamu Saka will also be returning from the 'Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex' anime as Daisuke Aramaki.

The music for the series is being composed by Nobuko Toda ('Sweetness & Lightning') and Kazuma Jinnouchi ('Busou Shinki: Moon Angel). Toda was also the composer for the 'Metal Gear Solid' series alongside Harry Gregson-Williams. The duo has previously collaborated on the 'Ultraman' anime, as well as the soundtracks for the 'Halo 4' and 'Halo 5' games.

The show's opening song is titled 'Fly With Me' and it is performed by Millennium Parade, a creative team led by King Gnu member Daiki Tsuneta. According to Anime News Network, other vocalists on the track include ermhoi, HIMI, Cota Mori, and Kento Nagatsuka (WONK)

Shinji Aramaki and Kenji Kamiyama

The project is being directed by Shinji Aramaki and Kenji Kamiyama for Sola Digital Arts and Production I.G. Kenji Kamiyama has previously worked on all the 'Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex' projects.

'Ghost in the Shell' is based on the highly successful manga series by Masamune Shirow. The character designs for 'Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045' were completed by Russian illustrator Ilya Kuvshinov. According to Production I.G. USA president Maki Terashima-Furuta, the first 12-episode season will be directed by Kamiyama and the second by Aramaki.

The first teaser for the new series was released on October 22, 2019. The short clip showcases the photorealistic artwork of the show and introduces Major's new look as a mercenary.

The first proper trailer for the series was released on January 27 and it features the rest of Major's team. The clip also gives us our first look at a post-human, a being with massive physical and technological abilities which threatens humanity as a whole.

The series' final trailer was dropped on March 20 and it builds on the previous trailer by revealing that post-humans are a direct result of the "Sustainable Wars" that countries have been fighting with each other in the aftermath of the fall of global capitalism. The clip also reveals that the purpose of post-humans is to overthrow the existing social structure and bring about the age of post-humanity.

'Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex'

'Code Geass'

'Mobile Suit Gundam SEED'

'Cowboy Bebop'

'Neon Genesis Evangelion'

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'Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045': Release date, plot, cast, music, trailer and all you need to know about anime - MEAWW

The classic hockey stick curveits what investors and entrepreneurs desire but what medics despise. In the past week, Italy has seen that kind of curve in its coronavirus case numbers, leaving people and systems overwhelmed. German chancellor Angela Merkel has described coronavirus as Germanys greatest challenge since World War II.

This pandemic is the biggest black swan" event we have witnessed in our lives so far. A black swan event is characterized by a very low probability but extremely high impact. The last one was 9/11 in the US, which some still saw coming. But Covid-19 has taken us all by surprise.

Cases and deaths have had a geometric rise, which defeats understanding, because our minds tend to think in terms of linear progression. Were not programmed to fathom something that multiplies. India hasnt yet seen the ugly tipping point, and I hope we dont. This piece is not about hope against hope, but an earnest call for widespread adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) to counter such unpredictable events.

The initial, and by far most successful, application of AI is on the warfront. Thanks to the deployment of drones, unmanned craft, intelligent machines, humanoid robots and the like, the US has managed to drastically cut its casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq compared to the Vietnam and the Gulf wars. AI has not only lowered collateral damage but also radically increased the accuracy of assault.

But AIs applications can be far greater and more useful in humanitarian and disaster relief, conservation, disease control and waste management, among others. Machines have been shown to outperform humans in terms of labour, memory, intelligence and, in some cases even creativity.

At a time when citizens have been advised to practise social distancing, and we are fearfully confined to our homes, who will run the essentials? Someone will have to weather the storm, or perhaps something? We already have so much power offered by the brute force of machines that its up to us to tame it in meaningful ways, and Covid-19 could offer a precise opportunity.

At the time of writing this piece, Summit, the worlds most powerful supercomputer, housed at the US Department of Energys Oak Ridge National Laboratory, had identified 77 drug compounds that might stop coronavirus from infecting cells, a significant step in vaccine development. We are getting to know more about the spread of disease, hotspots and mortality rates on an almost real-time basis, thanks to affordable computing and communication networks. Can we up the ante further by relinquishing more control to machines?

Winston Churchill famously said, Never let a good crisis go to waste", and I think we have a great opportunity at hand. We can make machines take on the more hazardous tasks, while we watch and survive from the sidelines. This is the time for tech startups to leverage the power of general purpose technologies and conceive radical new solutions to address pandemics.

Private Kit: Safe Paths is an app developed by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard. With help from Facebook and Uber, it lets you know if you have crossed paths with someone who is infected while protecting privacy. Its a first step, and like most technologies, it will improve with adoption. OneBreath, a Palo Alto-based medtech startup, has been working on an affordable, reliable ventilator for over a decade now, and should be ready to meet Covid-19.

As geography becomes history, we have become one large family. Our more robust, fast-learning cousins, the machines, must be deployed on the frontlines faster. We are truly at the inflection point towards singularity, and its a choice between speed and accuracy. A useful ethos for the times could be from Mark Twain who reminded us, Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection."

Pavan Soni is the founder of Inflexion Point, an innovation and strategy consultancy.

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To fight the coronavirus spread, give artificial intelligence a chance - Livemint

Most Jon Hopkins fans already know what an incredibly talented producer he is and that reflects in a lifelong career and an impressive discography of emotive and substantive electronica.

His last album Singularity, released in 2018 was one of his best in many peoples eyes and earned a solid year-plus of touring that led him around the world and coincidently, to the stage of The Sydney Opera House.

From all reports, it was a spectacular not be missed with towering visuals coupled with Hopkins consistent blows and breaks of electronica that shook the place and included unreleased music that looks to be paving the way for a new album.

While the public was treated to that, he also recorded a special, intimate performance for a tiny audience of videographers which captured a piano rendition of one of his latest singles Scene Suspended.

The performance was filmed on the 28th March, which for those not in the know was global Piano Day and who better to flex it than talented player Jon Hopkins himself?

Bask in the exclusive video below, hint; Nils Frahm makes a cameo as well.

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News Watch Jon Hopkins perform to no one at The Sydney Opera House - Stoney Roads

With Canadians spending most of their time indoors amid the COVID-19 pandemic, its fortunate that streaming services were already rampingup a busy month of programming for April.

Netflix is set to feed reality-series buffsanother conversation starter on April 17 withToo Hot to Handle, whichgathers a group of beautiful people at a resort before revealing they could win a pot of$100,000 by holding off on sex for the duration of their stay. Spoiler: things get complicated very quickly.

And on Disney Plus, two wildlife docs debut on April 3: Elephant, narrated by Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, and Dolphin Reef with Natalie Portman.

Meanwhile, newcomer streaming service Quibi gets off the ground on April 6 with a selection of 50 short-form programsthat can only be watched on mobile devices. Among the highlights are a refresh onprank series Punkd with Chance the Rapper, home renovationshow Murder House Flip andReese Witherspoons animal doc series Fierce Queens. The platform offersa 90-day free trial for viewers who sign up before the launch date.

Heres a roundup of whats worth streamingin April:

Defending Jacob

An assistant district attorney, played by Chris Evans,confronts the ultimate moral and ethical dilemma when his son is accused of murdering one of his schoolmates and leaving his body in a forest. First assigned to investigate the case, hes pulled offitwhen details emerge of his sons potential involvement. But that onlypushes his resolve to prove his sons innocence. Based on the 2012 novel,this eight-episode limited seriesgives Evans the sort of meaty role that could land him in contention at the Emmy Awards. Hes backed up by a stellar supporting cast that includes Michelle Dockery as his shell-shocked wife. (Apple TV Plus, April 24)

Run

Scene-stealing Merritt Wever, who played Scarlett Johanssons kooky sister in last years Oscar-nominated Marriage Story,has thespotlightin thiseight-episode dramedy on HBO. Wever plays Ruby, a suburban mother who drops her comfortable life the instant she gets a text from her old college flame that simply reads: Run. She meets up with Billy (played by Domhnall Gleeson from Ex Machina) at Grand Central Stationand together they embark on a cross-country train ride that spirals fast. Co-created by Phoebe Waller-Bridge (Fleabag)and Vicky Jones (Killing Eve), theseries takes a few episodes to really find its footing, but once it does, the twists are delicious. (Crave/HBO, April 12, weekly episodes)

Cooked with Cannabis

R&B singer Kelis brought all the boys to the yard with her hit Milkshake, but these days shes doubling as a professional chef serving up cannabis dishes. This new competition series pairs her withPortland chef Leather Storrs as they oversee experienced culinary artists who are racing against the clockto make the best tasting cannabis-infused dishes. A rotating lineup ofcelebrity judges stop by, including Ricki Lake, Elle King and NBA player John Salley. But what makes Cooked with Cannabis stand out from other cannabis cooking shows is its spirited effort to explain theintricacies of cooking with marijuana to newcomers.(Netflix, April 17)

Outer Banks

After a hurricane sweeps through their town, agroup of mischievous teenagers discover a sunken ship filled with a boatload of secrets one of whichcould answerwhat happened to the ringleaders missing father.Set against the backdrop of the Outer Banks of North Carolina, this modern pulp mystery is packed with chiselled bodies and steamy locales, and should finda strong following withfans of Riverdale who like their drama with a side of youthful angst.(Netflix, April 15)

Bad Education

High school can be so dramatic, and especially so within the upper ranks of the Roslyn School District where Long Island superintendent Frank Tassone (Hugh Jackman) is doubling as mentor and embezzler alongside his colleague Pam Gluckin (Allison Janney). But when he encourages a young student reporter to start looking deeper into a story, he winds up sending her on a path that winds all the way back to his own shady dealings. Acquired by HBO at last years Toronto International Film Festival, this sharp-witted comedy is based ona real scandal that rocked aNew York school district.(Crave/HBO, April 25)

In Case You Missed It (titles already streaming):

The Other Two

When their little brother rockets to fame as a teenage pop star on social media, two adult siblings ride his coattails in hopes of reigniting their own failedshowbiz aspirations. Thats the starting point for this sometimes cringeworthy but often hilarious take on the power struggle of a family hypnotized by celebrity culture. Molly Shannon plays the single mom whos turned her sons popularity into her own road to success, one shes dubbed her Year of Yes. Created by Saturday Night Live writers Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider, this underappreciated episodic seriessets a fire underneath the YouTube era. (Crave)

Scoresby Quincy Jones

Unmistakable in his singularity, 28-time Grammy winner Quincy Jones is often described as a purveyor of popular music production but hesan influential film composer in his own right, too. Criterion Channel has brought together many of his best works in this collection that pays tribute to his unique cinematic sound, a blend of blues, funk, bossa nova and pop. Start with a Sidney Poitier double bill of In the Heat of the Night and They Call Me Mister Tibbs! before moving along to Truman CapotesIn Cold Blood, and then round it out with the decidedly lighter psychedelic flair of Cactus Flower and 1970 comedy-adventure The Out-of-Towners. (Criterion Channel)

Unorthodox

A young Brooklyn woman flees the world shes known in a strict Hasidic community to start anew in Berlin, splitting from an arranged marriage with the help of a friend. But her disappearance doesnt go unnoticed, with her husband trailing closely behind her as she attempts to escape a past of limitations and find her own identity. Inspired by Deborah Feldmans memoir of the same name, this four-part series could position Israeli actress Shira Haas as one to watch for her nuanced turn as the lead character. (Netflix)

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Crime thrillers and cannabis cooking competition among April streaming picks - CityNews

Art and Technology Exhibitions Present an Unsettling Take on Contemporary Reality

Artists have engaged technology to aid and enhance their creations at least since the Renaissance and possibly as early as prehistoric times. Consider, for example, David Hockneys book Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters or Penn & Tellers documentary Tims Vermeer. Both make a compelling case that the camera obscura, a comparatively simple optical device, was a revolutionary technological breakthrough for artists capacity to render images with great accuracy and linear perspective.

Now that we are marching with reckless abandon toward the high-tech crisis point known as The Singularity, contemporary artists appear to comfortably employ all manner of technology as both artistic tool and subject of contemplation. A cross section of current exhibitions in our region shows an inventive array of art-meets-tech explorations laced with unsettling consequences.

The Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art in Manhattan, Kansas, hosts Charles Lindsay: Field Station 4, a spaced-out immersive installation that repurposes government surplus equipment into five funky multi-media sculptures.

Lindsay, a formerexploration geologist and photojournalist who lived for a while with a shaman in Tibet and did research at NASA Ames, brings a broad range of experience and knowledge to his Field Station, including his current work at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute in Mountainview, California.

One can hear the eerie soundtrack gurgling from the Field Station as it draws the visitor into a cluttered, darkened space. Enclosed by dozens of white stacked equipment cases marked with unsettling stencils like ALL FLUID DRAINED, and thick bundles of colored cables snaking through the space, it feels like entering an abandoned space station in which the scientific research has taken on a strange sentient twist.

One of the cases is splayed open to reveal a small bronze sculpture of a fierce Buddhistic deity wired up to a circuit board with an emergency off button. A small video screen shows two metallic balloons anchored to a large rock in a mountainous landscape. Is this science fiction or just weird science? Both would apply, and the visitor, as the only human presence in the space, is left to ponder just what scientific paradigm has been discovered here.

Lindsay provides a clue in two adjacent works that feature the ancient and medically important horseshoe crab, one of the oldest species to continuously inhabit our planet.

In a case resembling a fish tank, several gilded crabs with their distinctive helmet shapes are illuminated from below with erratic flashes of bluish light suggesting a communicative capacity. An underwater soundtrack clicks and pops like a pod of intelligent cetaceans from a small speaker. Buddhist iconography appears again in the form of a painted wooden panel inside the case. Can marine organisms be Buddhist too?

Clad in aluminum tape, the horseshoe crabs become slithering cyborgs in another large storage case in which they are halved to reveal their hybrid technological undercarriage. They are tethered to an emergency shut off button and a whizzing 12-digit LED countdown clock with a mysterious ravioli-like form bursting its carbonaceous guts.

At the back of the installation, one discovers the source of the sci-fi sound effects. A transparent canister, connected by hoses rising to the rafters, holds chunks of fluorescent minerals that sound like theyve come from deep Earth or deep space. Towers of stacked equipment cases add to the claustrophobic atmosphere and the mystery of the seemingly abandoned Field Station.

Outside the main exhibition space, another bizarre object defuses the tension with a bit of levity. Early Tibetan Computer, a clunky old desktop computer outfitted with yak horns, provides another clue to the artists interdisciplinary intent. Charles Lindsays Field Station 4 points to an expanded consciousness where science and shamanism, inquiry and imagination, intersect in the fluid boundaries of contemporary art.

A Tech Trio at the Ulrich

A trio of solo exhibitions at the Ulrich Museum of Art in Wichita, Kansas, addresses parallel artistic responses to the increasingly insidious relationship between humans and our technological creations.

New York based Scottish artist/filmmaker Zoe Beloffs carnivalesque installation Emotions Go to Work disarms the visitor with large cartoon cutouts linking early 20th-century anthropomorphic animation to the current proliferation of smart devices endowed with artificial intelligence, surveillance and data harvesting capabilities that effectively quantify and commodify our very existence.

Things that seemed outlandish almost a century ago, such as Betty Boops wacky, lifelike machines, have now come to pass in the form of Internet-connected doorbells, drones and dolls. Beloffs related film, The Cognitive Era, mimics a slick corporate animation and lays bare the frightening economic motive behind the so-called Internet of Things: nothing short of complete domination of the biological sphere from cradle to grave. Surely thats a fair price to pay for consumer convenience. Right, Alexa?

On a somewhat lighter note, Beloff plays with the now ubiquitous emojis that standardize our emotional responses into reductive digital icons. In a triptych of large panels, she presents uniform grids of expressive facial drawings. One panel calls to mind Charles Darwins pioneering scientific investigations into human and animal emotions as registered by minute variations in facial musculature. In another, she plays with the origins of several familiar emojis by exaggerating the features and restoring the nuances inherent in the human face.

Beloff extends this study in the projected video Future Emoji with real human faces masked into the circular format of the emoji with their corresponding color tints. Her rehumanization of the form reminds us that much emotional experience is lost in translation to digital platforms. However, the larger implication in the work is that through our voluntary interaction with the AI behemoth, we are teaching it how to emotionally manipulate us into predictable behavior monetized for life and beyond.

Curated from the Ulrichs permanent collection, Lee Adler: A Mad Man Amid the Machines brings to light a little known painter and printmaker active in the 1960s and 70s. Lee Adler (1926-2003), a native of Brooklyn, worked on Madison Avenue in the advertising industry before honing his skills as a graphic artist preoccupied with a society in technological ascent. His flat, hard-edged machine forms, rendered in the bright color schemes of Pop art, coincided with the development of cybernetics and systems art. Adlers work retains a surprising conceptual relevance 50 years later the convergent evolution of technological humans a.k.a. cyborgs interacting with ever more humanistic robots. How long before we can no longer recognize the difference?

One of the many consequences of the Digital Revolution has been the irreversible transformation of the photographic medium from a chemical process of image making to an electronic one. In the process, our relationship to the photographic image has destabilized from one of reliable representation to unprecedented manipulation. Photoshop and Instagram filters are commonplace, but now we face deepfake videos and de-aging movie actors that point to a breakdown of trust in the image itself.

That crisis in the medium becomes an opening for artists like A.P. Vague who exploit the tools of manipulation to discover the layered potentials of digital image making. Vagues exhibition of Digital Palimpsests comprises gicle prints and moving image works that range from painterly to geometric abstraction with ghostly traces of representation. Sometimes referred to as glitch art, Vagues work celebrates the open-ended process of liberating images from their original matrix.

Charles Lindsay: Field Station 4 continues through Oct. 17 at Kansas State Universitys Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art in Manhattan, Kansas. For more information, 785.532.7718 or http://www.beach.k-state.edu.

Zoe Beloff: Emotions Go to Work, Lee Adler: A Mad Man Amid the Machines, and A.P. Vague: Digital Palimpsests continue through March 29 at Wichita State Universitys Ulrich Museum of Art in Wichita, Kansas. For more information, 316.978.3456 or http://www.wichita.edu/museums/ulrich.

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Marching Toward the Singularity - kcstudio.org

Tackling the emergence of a new global pandemic is a complex task. But collective intelligence is now being used around the world by communities and governments to respond.

At its simplest, collective intelligence is the enhanced capacity created when distributed groups of people work together, often with the help of technology, to mobilize more information, ideas, and insights to solve a problem.

Advances in digital technologies have transformed what can be achieved through collective intelligence in recent yearsconnecting more of us, augmenting human intelligence with machine intelligence, and helping us to generate new insights from novel sources of data. It is particularly suited to addressing fast-evolving, complex global problems such as disease outbreaks.

Here are seven ways it is tackling the coronavirus pandemic.

On December 31, 2019, health monitoring platform Blue Dot alerted its clients to the outbreak of a flu-like virus in Wuhan, Chinanine days before the World Health Organization (WHO) released a statement about it. It then correctly predicted that the virus would jump from Wuhan to Bangkok, Seoul, Taipei, and Tokyo.

Blue Dot combines existing data sets to create new insights. Natural language processing, the AI methods that understand and translate human-generated text, and machine learning techniques that learn from large volumes of data, sift through reports of disease outbreaks in animals, news reports in 65 languages, and airline passenger information. It supplements the machine-generated model with human intelligence, drawing on diverse expertise from epidemiologists to veterinarians and ecologists to ensure that its conclusions are valid.

The BBC carried out a citizen science project in 2018, which involved members of the public in generating new scientific data about how infections spread. People downloaded an app that monitored their GPS position every hour and asked them to report who they had encountered or had contact with that day.

This collective intelligence initiative created a huge wealth of data that helped researchers understand who the super-spreaders are, as well the impact of control measures on slowing an outbreak. Although the full data set is still being analyzed, researchers have released data to help with modeling the UKs response to Covid-19.

Created by a coding academy based on official government data, Covid-19 SG allows Singapore residents to see every known infection case, the street where the person lives and works, which hospital they got admitted to, the average recovery time and the network connections between infections. Despite concerns about potential privacy infringements, the Singapore government has taken the approach that openness about infections is the best way to help people make decisions and manage anxiety about what is happening.

For dashboard enthusiasts, MIT Technology Review has a good round-up of the many coronavirus-related dashboards tracking the pandemic.

In early February, Wired reported how researchers at Harvards medical school were using citizen-generated data to monitor the progress of the disease. To do this, they mined social media posts and used natural language processing to look for mentions of respiratory problems and fever in locations where doctors had reported potential cases.

This builds on evidence published in a January article in the journal Epidemiology that found that hot spots of tweets could be good indicators of how a disease spreads. It remains to be seen how effective these initiatives are or whether they will succumb to the problems that beset Google Flu Trends.

The reality of peoples experience of the virus is largely absent from media reporting so far, but the importance of social sciences in pandemic preparedness and response is becoming increasingly recognized. We should therefore all tip our hats to the citizens of Wuhan who have been archiving and translating social media data from inside China, creating chronicles of testimonies of those affected before they get censored by the government.

To speed up the development of drugs to combat coronavirus, researchers at the University of Washington are calling on scientists and the public to play an online game.

The challenge is to build a protein that could block the virus from infiltrating human cells. The game is on Foldit, a 12-year-old website which has crowdsourced contributions to important protein research from more than 200,000 registered players worldwide.

Responding to concerns about lack of access to testing for Covid-19, Nesta Collective Intelligence grantee Just One Giant Lab is behind an effort to develop a cheap, quick coronavirus test that can be used anywhere in the world. The initiative is crowdsourcing ideas from do-it-yourself biology communities, with the ambition to open source and share designs so that certified labs can easily produce test kits for their communities.

In a global crisis, sharing collective intelligence about the virus will be a significant factor in our ability to respond and find new treatments. NextStrain pulls in all the data from labs around the world that are sequencing SARS-CoV-2s genome and centralizes it in one place for people to see in a genomic tree. This open repository, which is built on GitHub, is helping scientists studying coronavirus genomic evolution and enabling tracking of how the virus is passed between people.

Researchers have also been sharing new findings about the virus genomic profile through open source publications and preprint sites such as BioRxiv and Chinaxiv. Paywalls are being temporarily lifted on content related to coronavirus in scientific publications such as BMJ, and the public is demanding that major news outlets follow suit.

Activists on Reddit have gone one step further and bypassed paywalls to create an open archive of 5,312 research articles mentioning coronaviruses, citing a moral imperative for the research to be openly accessible. Newspeak House is crowdsourcing a handbook of tools, tech, and data for technologists building things to respond to the coronavirus outbreak.

The World Health Organization (WHO) is also compiling all published research into a global databaseand making learning resources about managing Covid-19 for health professionals, and decision makers have been made available on the WHO online learning platform. But they have also been criticized for not replying to comments left on their channels, leaving a vacuum instead of a response to rumors and falsehoods.

At Nestas Centre for Collective Intelligence Design, well keep tracking how collective intelligence is being used during the current crisis and updating our public online noticeboard of collective intelligence projects as often as we can. Please share any examples you come across in the comments.

By working together and sharing knowledge, we have a better chance of beating the pandemic.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Image Credit: Pete Linforth /Pixabay

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Coronavirus: Seven Ways Collective Intelligence Is Tackling the Pandemic - Singularity Hub

Consciousness is one of the greatest mysteries of the human species. Where and how does it originate? Why do we have it? Is it even real, or just an illusion?

These questions arent just hard to answereven looking for answers is difficult. But scientists are slowly chipping away at them, with teams all over the world carrying out studies on the brain aimed at cracking the consciousness code.

One of the most recent studies showed a clear relationship between two brain networks critical to consciousness. In a paper published this week in Science Advances, a team from the University of Michigan described their finding that the default mode network (DMN) and the dorsal attention network (DAT) are anti-correlated, meaning that when one is active, the other is suppressed. The team also found that neither network was highly active in people who were unconscious.

These findings suggest that the interplay of the DMN and the DAT support consciousness by allowing us to interact with our surroundings then to quickly internalize those interactions, essentially turning our experiences into thoughts and memories.

Say youre walking through your neighborhood on a sunny afternoon. Youre thinking about the party you went to over the weekend, remembering people you met and conversations you had. Then theres a crashing noise and a car horn starts honkinga biker has run into a car and fallen over not ten steps from you. No one appears to be hurt, but you rush to the bikers side to see if she needs help.

In a few seconds, youve switched from using one brain network to another. The default mode network (DMN) is active when were internally focused, thinking about ourselves and using our memory and imagination. The dorsal attention network (DAT), on the other hand, is activated when were aware of and paying attention to the environment around us.

Of course, switching between different brain networks happens constantly, as does simultaneous use of multiple networks; wed use both the frontoparietal network (active in higher-level processing) and the visual network (used for sight) to analyze and react to images we see or words we read, for example.

But when it comes to the default mode and dorsal attention networks, the situation is a little different; the two are rarely, if ever, active at the same timein fact, neuroscientists had long suspected the two networks werent simultaneously active. The relationship between the two has been studied before, but the Michigan teams research yielded the first definitive proof that the DMN and DAT are, in fact, anti-correlated.

If you think about it, it makes sense; its hard to be fully engaged with your surroundings and be deep in thought about yourself at the same time.

People meditate to try to get out of their heads and focus on the present moment, that is, to quiet the DMN and activate the DAT. Psychedelics like psilocybin or LSD have the same effect: the default mode network is quieted, often resulting in intense feelings of connection to the natural world, other people, or ones surroundings. Since the DMN is where our egos live and where negative thought loops about ourselves take place, the use of psychedelics to quiet this brain region is increasingly being studied as a treatment for depression, PTSD, addiction, and other neurological disorders.

Indeed, were trying pretty hard these days to get out of our own headsand its not easy. This study showed that not only can we not be in our own heads and out of them at the same time, but this mutually exclusive relationship between the DMN and the DAT and the consistent switching between them is what enables us to interact with our environment then internalize and process our experiencesin other words, to be conscious.

The results provide novel scientific insight into the neuronal mechanisms of consciousness, said Zirui Huang, the lead author on the study, and these insights could eventually be used to develop an indicator of the state of consciousness in patients with brain disorders.

The team used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which measures brain activity by detecting changes in blood flow, to study the brains of 98 participants. Some of the participants were awake, while others were mildly sedated or generally anesthetized, and some suffered from brain disorders of consciousness.

The team built a machine learning model to analyze when different parts of participants brains were in use at the same time. Many previous studies of these patterns used fMRI data averaged over several minutes, but the Michigan team took second-to-second images of brain activity.

We know the brain is changing second to second with different networks engaged in collaboration, said Anthony Hudetz, Professor of Anesthesiology and Director of the Center for Consciousness Science, and a senior author of the paper. Temporal averaging can miss the actual dynamics of the brain and what underlies everything the brain does, from our thinking to our imagination.

They observed eight primary brain networksfrom higher-level processing to visual processing and the activity of the whole brainin addition to the aforementioned DAT and DMN. Using the first 98 participants, the team created a model of the activity patterns of these networks, including which ones were activated simultaneously, for how long, and which network activated subsequently.

Once they had a reliable model, the team further evaluated their results in an additional group of 248 participants, all of whom were conscious but some of whom had psychiatric disorders that could alter the functioning of their brain networks.

The researchers saw that the brain quickly transitions from one network to another in regular patterns, and the conscious brain cycles through a structured pattern of states over time, including frequent transitions to the default mode and dorsal attention networks.

But in patients who were unconsciouswhether theyd been sedated or they suffered from brain disorderstransitions to the DMN and DAT were much less frequent.

This is key: though the experiences of unresponsive patients would have differed depending on how they became unconscioustheir brain networks would have been impacted and reorganized in different waysthey all shared the same isolation of the DMN and DAT networks.

In people who are conscious, turning off the DMN (which is what happens when you take psychedelics) results in an inability to deeply self-reflect. Turning off the DAT, on the other hand, would result in an inability to be aware of and respond to ones surroundings. Its the switching between these two networks that allows us to be engaged, aware, self-reflective humansconscious beings, you could say.

We wanted to pinpoint which networks are related to consciousness, said Huang. By suppressing consciousness, we developed a better sense of which networks are important for consciousness by process of elimination.

We already knew that youre in a conscious state whether youre daydreaming and caught up in memories or out of your head and engaged with the world around you.

But now we have further proof that, one, you dont use the brain networks required for self-reflection and external engagement at the same time, and two, you dont use much of either when youre unconscious.

Huang hopes to next identify how the brain regulates these moment-to-moment changes from one network to another. These structured patterns of brain changes are important for consciousness, he said.

Cracking the codeor, rather, the many codesof the human brain will likely take decades, and thats taking into account the decades scientists have already devoted to studying, probing, imaging, and analyzing the three-pound ball of neurons and fatty acids inside our heads.

But after all, the brain is the seat of consciousness, as well as that of every thought, memory, emotion, and sensation we have; we couldnt have expected its inner workings to be straightforward.

Image Credit: Greyson Joralemon on Unsplash

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Scientists Just Proved These Two Brain Networks Are Key to Consciousness - Singularity Hub

This is an unprecedented moment in American history, Bernie Sanders said on Sunday night. It certainly produced an unprecedented debate, the singularity of which was captured in a superficially odd but profound bit of business near the start.

Both Sanders and Joe Biden volunteered proudly that they hadnt shaken hands. Both sang the praises of soap. And both spoke of hand sanitizer as if it were holy water.

The pandemic caused by the coronavirus changed and governed everything about the evening, in ways overt and oblique. It determined the first question that the two candidates were asked. It informed the last. It was the focus of many of their remarks in between.

Above all, it was the terrifying context in which their inevitable policy disagreements, aspersions on each others characters and exhumations of each others records took on a wholly different cast. All that stuff was unquestionably important and yet.

There was a life-threatening, nation-shuttering, wealth-decimating crisis at hand. Did Bidens decades-old comments about Social Security or onetime support of the Hyde Amendment matter even an eighth as much? Did Sanderss long-ago votes on gun control or kind words about Fidel Castro?

And wasnt the most important takeaway that neither of the candidates dwells in the truth-free, information-barren, delusion-rich bubble surrounding our current president, whose irresponsibility is having epic consequences? The two Democrats criticisms of each other, which grew heated at times, seemed almost immaterial next to what needed to be said and sometimes was about the denier in chief, Donald Trump.

That dynamic favored Biden, for several reasons. Hes now the far-and-away front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, with a lead in delegates that Sanders probably cant overcome, so any sense of urgency for the party to unite in common cause against Trump becomes a summons to send Biden into the general election in the strongest shape imaginable. I suspect many Democrats tuned into this debate, almost certainly the last of the Democratic primaries, not to see Biden tested but to will him onward unscathed.

Bidens position in the race, coupled with his message of national healing, meant that he more than Sanders had an interest in floating above the details of issues and painting a larger, gauzier picture. That approach suited this moment of utterly warranted panic.

So practiced riffs that were somewhat pat before the pandemic were wholly pertinent, such as Bidens recognition that while he and Sanders differ on how to improve health care or tackle other problems in America, We dont disagree on the principle. We fundamentally disagree with this president on everything.

So, he added, this is much bigger than whether or not Im the nominee or Bernies the nominee. We must defeat Donald Trump.

And Biden was able to portray Sanderss grander plans for transforming the American economy as luxuries unaffordable in the face of a scourge, as distractions from the emergency upon us. People are looking for results, not a revolution, Biden said.

Barring some remarkable, unforeseeable development, Sunday night was likely the valediction to Sanderss bid for the Democratic nomination. Thats not because there was any particular, glaring deficiency in Sanderss performance, a thorough and sometimes fierce grilling of Biden that correctly identified his evasions, inconsistencies and episodes of flawed judgment.

Sanders projected passion and self-assurance. He defended himself well against Bidens attacks. And he raised fair, even necessary questions about whether, on issues like climate change, Bidens proposals were more timid than the stakes demanded.

But there was something strained and strange about Sanderss repeated pivots from the pandemic to income inequality, from the pandemic to corrupt pharmaceutical executives, from the pandemic to how many millionaires and billionaires have contributed to Bidens campaign. The world has been transformed; the script remains the same.

And he couldnt claim the kind of experience that Biden repeatedly did, the intimate knowledge of what its like to be at the center of crucial national decisions.

Biden smartly understood that his eight years beside the last Democratic president and his foreign-policy seasoning are probably more reassuring to voters now than they were a month or even a week ago. So he marinated in them.

And to guarantee further that the media wouldnt fixate on who had got the better of whom, he threw in some major news, promising outright that he would pick a woman as his running mate. Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg: You can officially stand down.

There were also bad moments for Biden: selective retellings and lavish sugarcoating of votes and comments hed made in the past. But they werent nearly enough to alter the current trajectory of the Democratic contest.

And Biden provided a mostly reassuring answer to perhaps the biggest question coming into this debate: With only one opponent sharing two full hours and a whole lot of talking to do, could he communicate his thoughts sharply enough, make his points with sufficient force and keep his sentences from running out of gas on a road to nowhere?

Squaring off against Sanders was a preview of squaring off against Trump, not because Sanders and Trump are anything alike, but because the initially crowded nature of the Democratic contest meant that Bidens debates until now were populous affairs, when he was on the hook for maybe 20 minutes total and not the only or even the main candidate under fire.

But Sunday nights debate was a two-person face-off, of the kind bound to occur in a general election. Did the extra time mean added peril? Biden was plenty repetitive and occasionally misspoke, but it was nothing to bolster team Trumps gross caricature of him as a barely animated corpse.

Biden mostly came across as calm and resolute in the face of dire circumstances that had forced a relocation of the debate to Washington from Phoenix, the elimination of an audience and the addition of an extra few feet between his lectern and Sanderss.

The two candidates may have stood at a greater distance from each other than they normally would, but somehow they were closer together. Even during the debates bitterest exchanges, I never got the sense that either of them was really and truly intent on savaging the other.

You cant tell Americans to pull together at this frightful juncture if youre pushing them apart. The Democrats seem to get that. If only the president did, too.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. Wed like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And heres our email: letters@nytimes.com.

I invite you to sign up for my free weekly email newsletter. You can follow me on Twitter (@FrankBruni).

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Biden, Sanders and a Debate for This Moment of Panic - The New York Times

MEDICINE

Flattening the Coronavirus CurveSiobhan Roberts | The New York TimesThe ideal goal in fighting an epidemic or pandemic is to completely halt the spread. But merely slowing itmitigationis critical. This reduces the number of cases that are active at any given time, which in turn gives doctors, hospitals, police, schools and vaccine-manufacturers time to prepare and respond, without becoming overwhelmed.

Autonomous Robots Are Helping Kill Coronavirus in HospitalsEvan Ackerman | IEEE SpectrumTo prevent the spread of coronavirus (and everything else) through hospitals, keeping surfaces disinfected is incredibly important, but its also dirty, dull, and (considering what you can get infected with) dangerous. And thats why its an ideal task for autonomous robots.

Quarantined Italians Are Singing Their Hearts Out. Its Beautiful.Emily Todd VanDerWerff | VoxTheCovid-19 coronavirusand the associatedsocial distancing that nearly everyone on the planet is being encouraged to practicewill presumably hinder people from making and listening to music together, but tweets from all over Italy (which is under heavy lockdown) reveal a country where citizens are taking to their balconies and windows to enjoy music together.

These Industrial Robots Get More Adept With Every TaskTom Simonite | Wired Were paying people trillions of dollars a year to do stuff that robots have been physically capable of doing for the last 30 or 40 years, Phoenix says. Anyone who can make industrial robots more adeptand Vicarious is not the only one tryingcould transform the economy by shifting the balance of labor between people and machines.

How Wikipedias Volunteers Became the Webs Best Weapon Against MisinformationAlex Pasternack | Fast Companywhile places like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter struggle to fend off a barrage of false content, with their scattershot mix of policies, fact-checkers, and algorithms, one of the webs most robust weapons against misinformation is an archaic-looking website written by anyone with an internet connection, and moderated by a largely anonymous crew of volunteers.

Cosmos: Possible Worlds Review Gorgeous Scientific Escapism Advocates for Rebels and OptimismSteve Greene| IndieWireThe most valuable part of Cosmos: Possible Worlds is its merging of boundless optimism and the necessity of urgency. Not merely content with being restricted to doomsaying or cheerleading, theres a healthy blend of both that sticks to a central thesis: Were capable of understanding what mystifies us now, but only if were willing to display some humility and cooperation in the process.

Dont Go Down a Coronavirus Anxiety SpiralLouise Matsakis | WiredThe stock market had its biggest decline in decades, Sarah Palin rapped to Baby Got Back dressed in a bear suitit feels like the world is unraveling. There is so much going on, and so much uncertainty, it is all too easy to get trapped watching cable news or scrolling through Twitter all day. If all this news is making you feel stressed, youre far from alone.

Image Credit:Ari He /Unsplash

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This Week's Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through March 14) - Singularity Hub

In 1931, Winston Churchill made a bold prediction: We shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing, by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium. It must have sounded like pure science fiction back thenbut not anymore.

Today, thanks to scientific innovations in tissue engineering for human medicine, were very close to fulfilling Churchills vision for food.Researchers and the media have variously called this new kind of food cell-based, cultured, or lab-grown meat, but I prefer the more palatable cultivated meat. Unlike plant-based alternatives, cultivated meat islike its conventional counterpartmade up of animal muscle and fat cells. But because these cells can be cultivated at the cellular level, we dont have to grow a whole animal to make meat from only some of its cells.

Since early cultivated meat company Memphis Meats launched in 2015, more and more startups have focused on producing animal meat without the animal. By removing the animal, these companies aim to produce meat with a fraction of the environmental footprint, needing as little as 45 percent less energy, 96 percent less water, and 99 percent less land than conventional meat.

As we race to find sustainable ways to feed the worlds insatiable appetite for meat, the field of cultivated meat has exceeded annual exponential growthmore than doubling every year in terms of the number of startup companies and investment dollars. In late 2015, one startup raised a few hundred thousand dollars. In 2020, there are dozens of cultivated meat companies around the world pursuing everything from shrimp and bluefin tuna to steak and kangaroo.

This year, the sector took another significant step forward when cultivated meat first-mover Memphis Meats closed a $161 million Series B funding round from lead investors Softbank, Norwest, and Temasek. This amount is greater than all other publicly disclosed investments in cultivated meat companies combined and brings total investment in the startup to $181 million.

What does an investment like this mean for cultivated meat companies and the field as a whole? Having tracked the sector since its inception, I think there are three key takeaways.

Funding at this level enables a cultivated meat company to move beyond the proof-of-concept phase. It allows them to dive into the juicy engineering challenges associated with scale-up and enables the construction of a pilot facility representative of true commercial-scale production.

This funding milestone serves to validate the technological soundness of the concept of cultivated meat and Memphis Meats approach to it. With a Series B funding round, scrupulous investors evaluate not just a research plan and a teams credentials but also actual progress toward technical and business milestones. They see a path toward commercial viability and profitability tooall within the time horizon of a typical venture capital fund.

The fact that Memphis Meats has been able to secure follow-on investments from their previous funders and also bring in noteworthy new investors shows theyve made impressive progress to date de-risking their technology.

While this is a win for Memphis Meats, the investment is also a validation for the entire field and the concept of cultivated meat as a solution to some of the problems inherent in conventional meat production.

But theres no time for a victory lap.

Momentum for meat alternatives is building. Plant-based meats from Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat made a splash in fast food restaurants like Burger King and KFC last year. And Beyond Meats initial public offering had a historic post-IPO pop (though its since retreated).

Cultivated meats may capture a further slice of the market if they can offer something even closer to a true replacement for conventional meat. But it will take more investment. And cultivated meat companies still need to pass regulatory scrutiny and convince the public that their products are not only healthy and safe, but also desirable and delicious.

Financial support will come from the private sectoras the Memphis Meats Series B seems to showbut the public sector can help keep things moving too.

Governments, which are heavily invested in renewable energy, should become heavily invested in renewable meat as well. The sector is still nascent. Continued resources are needed to address challenges, drive innovation, and enhance efficiencies to rapidly scale animal-free meat production. Given the vast promise of better meat production, governments are overdue for writing some of the critical checks to broaden the foundation of fundamental research.

As the climate crisis unfolds, we need to invest in the science that can save us, including methods that can produce truly sustainable meat. If the US is to maintain its lead in feeding the world safely and sustainably, we need public support for better forms of meat production.

Image Credit: Wolfgang Hasselmann /Unsplash

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Huge $161 Million Investment Means Meat Without the Animal Is Here - Singularity Hub

There's a little something for everyone coming up on the events calendar this week. From a card tournament to an improv show, here's a rundown of options to help you get out and about in the days ahead.

Hoodline offers data-driven analysis of local happenings and trends across cities. Links included in this article may earn Hoodline a commission on clicks and transactions.

From the event description:

We're playing spades, and you're invited. CReed Global Media is hosting game night. Calling all spades players. Bring your partner.

When: Friday, March 13, 7-11 p.m.Where: CReed Global Media Studios, 6363 Richmond Ave., Suite 350Admission: Free

Click here for more details, and to get your tickets

From the event description:

It's official! Crawling for charity is more fun. This is the official charity pub crawl, which supports the parade. Drink specials at participating bars for crawlers only.

When: Saturday, March 14, 3-9 p.m.Where: Downtown HoustonAdmission: $5 (Super Pre Sale (83% off); $7.50 (Pre Sale (75% OFF)). More ticket options available.

Click here for more details, and to get your tickets

From the event description:

Learn to make beautiful holiday icicle ornaments from molten glass in this introductory flameworking class.

When: Saturday, March 14, 4-5 p.m.Where: Verlocal, 214 E. 27th St.Admission: $75

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From the event description:

Insane salsa night party at Capitol Bar. It's off the hook. You get three dance lessons in salsa merengue and bachata. Then dance inside and outside to salsa, bachata, cumbia reggaeton and more till 2 a.m. with two DJs!

When: Saturday, March 14, 8 p.m.- Sunday, March 15 2 a.m.Where: Capitol Bar Midtown, 2415 Main St.Admission: $10

Click here for more details, and to get your tickets

From the event description:

Saturday Singularity at Station Theater welcomes the best in live independent improv and sketch comedy from Houston and beyond!

When: Saturday, March 14, 8-9:15 p.m.Where: Station Theater, 1230 Houston Ave.Admission: $8

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An utterly bizarre, frequently grotesque, occasionally obscene singularity, Polish artist Mariusz Wilczynskis abrasive animation Kill It and Leave This Town exists so far outside the realm of the expected, the acceptable and the neatly comprehensible that it acts as a striking reminder of just how narrow that realm can be. Occupying a conceptual space several universes away from (or perhaps, given its intensely personal nature, deeply nested inside whatever it is we recognize as) reality, the scratchy, hand-drawn interior epic is alarmingly niche in appeal, but if you can slip into that tiny schism, it certainly rewards with one of the most nightmarishly original dystopian visions you are likely to encounter this year.

Willfully lo-fi, rendered in often crude black and white lines and smudges occasionally accented with tiny spots of color a pilot light, a row of cigarette packs, a fizzing neon sign in the shape of a ram the film is noted animator Wilczyskis first feature, but has been in the works for 11 years, which maybe accounts for why its 88 minutes play out like a decade-long anxiety attack. Within it, memory abuts dream, which in turn jostles against long tracts of defiantly self-indulgent navel-gazing that play as a kind of therapeutic exercise for an author experiencing an ontological crisis. So if a linear narrative is impossible to discern among such densely surreal imagery, the mood of circular despair, self-recrimination and intense melancholy is just as impossible to miss.

Loosely speaking, it is set in Wilczynskis childhood home of Lodz, in the 1970s, when a browbeaten Poland was still firmly in the clutches of the communist regime. The city backdrops are rendered in unusual detail, with plumes of smoke puffing from the industrial skyline, which has the eloquent effect of oppressing the more crudely-drawn human characters that populate it. These people officious shopkeepers, unhelpful station-masters, truant schoolboys all seem alienated from one another even as we swim in and out of their nervily chattering, nonsensical monologues.

Bobbing fish in a tank turn into decapitated heads that roll across trainyards and rasp incomprehensible, vaguely satanic-sounding messages to the living. An ancient sailor with a medal and a beak for a mouth bickers with his wife on a train ride. A man and his son go to the beach for the day and forget to telephone home where mother becomes increasingly frantic. And Wilczynski himself appears, a lumbering Brobdingnagian giant in this Lilliputian world (its as unflattering a self-portrait as you can imagine) while he waits at his dying mothers bedside later, we will watch in ghastly close-up as the mortician chats offhandedly while sewing up the genitalia on her shriveled corpse.

The film does not feel directly political, yet the style still recalls the politicized caricatures of George Grosz or the ghouls of Otto Dix meeting the surreal grotesqueries of Jan Svankmajer or Jiri Barta, minus the aesthetic intricacy. The transitions between disparate scenes are haphazard, sometimes simply fading in and out of black, sometimes eliding into each other as in a dream, and sometimes cutting on a sound element (old Polish pop music dots the soundtrack) or the wail of an electric guitar riff from Tadeusz Nalepas twanging score. The varying strokes and weights of the individual animators styles further challenge the films flow, with characters rendered so differently from one scene to the next its surprising that we can still ascribe them any object permanence at all. But despite the jarring form, Kill It and Leave This Town is still oddly immersive: a peculiarly vivid, monochromatically psychotropic bad trip.

These are Wilczynskis memories but also his nightmares, fears and neuroses made manifest in ink on paper backgrounds. Sometimes that paper is lined and ragged, stuck together with visibly yellowing tape that testifies to both the spontaneous, even hasty, nature of the images, but also to their ancientness, like marginalia doodles discovered in an old school copybook. And the naivet of the presentation is clamorously dissonant with the artistic ambition, which is little less than the tortured representation of an already unruly psyche gathering together fragmentary impressions churned up in the wake of the specific type of existential grief that occurs when orphanhood happens to an adult.

I simply dont believe in death, says Wilczynskis bloated, scraggly avatar at one point. Everyone who is gone is just gone. They didnt die, they are alive in my imagination. That might well be the kind of cozy blandishment wed expect of a much easier, more lighthearted film about death, one designed to comfort rather than provoke. But here it is anything but a consolation. The imagination that Kill It and Leave This Town illustrates may indeed be a sort of afterlife for people of Wilczynskis past, but if so, it is Purgatory.

'Kill It and Leave This Town': Film Review

Reviewed at Berlin Film Festival, Feb. 22, 2020. Running time: 88 MIN.

Production:(Poland, Animation) A Bombonierka production, in co-production with the National Film Archive, Adam Mickiewicz Institute, Ec1 Lodz - City Of Culture, Letko, NoLabel, DI Factory, Gigant Films and the Polish Film Institute. (International Sales: Outsider Pictures, LA.) Producers: Ewa Puszczynska, Agnieszka Scibior. Co-producers: Piotr Szczepanowicz, Jakub Karwowski, Grzegorz Waclawek, Krzysztof Hrycak, Lukasz Czyczylo, Jedrzej Sablinski, Rafal Golis, Julia Skorupska, Michal Herman, Radoslaw Drabik, Teresa Siwicka, Jacek Siwicki, Michal Chacinski. Executive producer: Lucja Kedzior-Samodulska.

Crew:Director, screenplay: Mariusz Wilczynski. Lead animators: Wilczynski, Agata Gorzadek, Jakub Wronski. Animation supervisor: Piotr Szczepanowicz. Editor: Jaroslaw Barzan. Music: Tadeusz Nalepa.

With:Krystyna Janda, Andrzej Chyra, Maja Ostaszewska, Malgorzata Kozuchowska, Barbara Krafftowna. (Polish dialogue)

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Kill It and Leave This Town: Film Review - Variety

Were approaching the video game singularity, where platform and hardware no longer matter. Sony and developer Guerrilla games took us one step closer to that singularity this week with the official announcement that Horizon Zero Dawn is coming to PC.

The announcement comes straight from the most official source possible. Head of Sonys Worldwide Studios Helman Hunst, who ran Guerrilla Games before stepping into the Sony position last year, announced the release via Sonys official PlayStation blog.

I can confirm that Horizon Zero Dawnis coming to PC this summer, Hunst said. There will be more information coming from Guerrilla, from the new studio directors pretty soon.

The announcement was rumored earlier this year, and its not completely without precedent. Also releasing this summer is Hideo KojimasDeath Stranding,which Kojima built using Guerilla Games Decima Engine. In that light,Horizon Zero Dawnmakes more sense than any other Sony game for this move. Its also one of the biggest Sony properties to appear on PC; its not hard to start fantasizing about games like God of War or The Last of Us joiningHorizon Zero Dawn. Word from Sony suggests that this might be just the start.

If you havent come acrossHorizon Zero Dawn yet, the game follows a woman named Aloy, outcast from her tribe. She searches for clues to her origins in a world overrun by imposing and dangerous mechanized creatures, modeled in the shapes of dinosaurs, predators, and other wildlife. Signs of an old world are out there, and call to Aloy as she unravels the mystery of her own life and that of the dinosaurs roaming the planet. As a PlayStation exclusive, the game has held a steady 89 on Metacritic.

Horizon Zero Dawn isnt available for pre-order just yet, but it does have a page on the Steam store for theHorizon Zero Dawn Complete Edition.The package includes the game, the Frozen Wilds expansion, and some special weapons and item packs. Theres no word on price just yet.

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PS4-exclusive Horizon Zero Dawn is coming to PC - The Tech Report

If someone was to ask most gamers to name a first-person shooter they most likely answer would either be Call of Duty, Battlefield, or even Halo. Which is unsurprising considering how popular these games are with fans of multiplayer shooters.

RELATED:5 Multiplayer Games Best Played Solo (& 5 With Friends)

One only has to look at the Call of Duty franchise topping the number one selling game every Christmas for the last few years to see its dominance on the market. Unfortunately, this has meant that many great first-person shooters that perhaps focused more on its single-player than the multiplayer have gone under the radar. Lets take a look at ten great but forgotten single-player shooters that gamers should check out if they want something different from the CoD series.

Released in 2005 for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and the PC, F.E.A.R. is an atmospheric survival horror first-person shooter developed by Monolith Productions. The game offers players a well rounded single-player campaign with an interesting story taking inspiration from Japanese horror films like Ju-On: The Grudge and Ring.

RELATED:10 Horror Games That Take The Longest To Beat

F.E.A.R. also uses its own version of the bullet-time mechanic called Reflex Time which comes in handy against the games advanced artificial intelligence. The long-haired little girl Alma may be pretty scary but the true star of the show is the unpredictable A.I. The enemy soldiers coordinate with teammates, use suppressive fire, blind fire, and really seem to make an effort in taking down the player by not repeating the same mistakes.

Released on the Nintendo Wii in 2010, Red Steel 2 is a first-person action shooter that combined themes from samurai and Wild West movies. It also implemented cell-shaded visuals which still look great giving it an anime-style appearance.

Red Steel 2 also made excellent use of the Nintendo Wiis motion controls delivering some of the best swordfight mechanics in any game and it transitions fluidly into gunplay very nicely. Unfortunately, a planned sequel was canceled by its developers by Ubisoft due to its low sales, but Red Steel 2definitely deserves another chanceand could be the perfect candidate for the PSVR.

Released in 2006 for the Xbox 360 and PC formats in 2006, Prey is a science fiction horror first-person shooter developed by the now-defunct Human Head Studios. It was created using the Doom 3 engine also known as id Tech 4 and unsurprisingly the graphics still hold up well. Level design is top-notch, and monster design is gruesome in all the right ways.

Its a completely different game to the very good 2017 reboot of the same name developed by Arkane Studios. The gameplay implements the use of portals that are there to interconnect the levels and create new methods of attack. In addition, the Spirit Force mechanics allows the protagonist Danny to enter the spirit realm to solve puzzles and surprise enemies.

First released in 2011, Bulletstorm was released on the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and the PC. Despite being well received by critics, the game was a commercial failure. Bulletstorm was released again on the Xbox One and the PS4 in 2017, and the Nintendo Switch in 2019.

In spite of the remasters, Bulletstorm is still not a game that is considered to be a mainstream hit. For lack of a better term, Bulletstorm is an absolute blast to play and has a great sense of humor. The Skillshot mechanic is what will keep players hooked from beginning to the end, however, letting players pull off some amazing feats with the games unique weapons.

Developed by Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay creators Starbreeze, The Darkness is another fantastic first-person shooter based on thecomic book series if the same name. The gunplay is solid but the games most unique mechanic is the Darkness powers such as Creeping Dark allowing stealth attacks and Dark for more violent tentacle attacks that can impale enemies in lots of creative ways.

In addition to the excellent gameplay, The Darkness world is a joy to explore with lots of characters and items to interact to help bring the game to life, and the storyhas lots of twists rig.

Mace Griffin: Bounty Hunter was released on the Xbox, PC and PlayStation 2 in 2003. It is a futuristic science fiction game with inspirations from classic Wild West movies. Mace Griffin allows players to switch between space ship fights and first-person viewpoints and was way ahead of its time in terms of loading speeds and transitional gameplay.

The game features solid voice work from Henry Rollins as the titular character, and the interesting and involved sci-fi story builds and develops at a great pace in relation to the mission design.

Released in 2012, Syndicate was a first-person shooter reboot of the cyberpunk real-time strategy series. It was developed by Starbreeze Studios. Just like The Darkness, theres a lot more to this game than simply running and gunning. However, it must be said that running down a corridor John Woo-style taking out enemies with ease is very satisfying.

Syndicate gives its players an incredible amount of tools to use in battle from the DART chip that can tag enemies through walls, hacking techniques and lots of weapons that feel great to use. Despite being on the PS3 and Xbox 360, Syndicate still holds up well visually with great art design and excellent animations.

The Chronicles Of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay is another great action title from Starbreeze Studios and arguably their best effort to date. First released in 2004 on the original Xbox it was best looking and performing game on the machine. However, the remastered edition included with Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena is the best version giving gamers two great games in one.

RELATED:The 10 Best Stealth Games Ever Made (According To Metacritic)

The lighting and shadows look realistic and really add to the games stealth mechanics which are among some of the best in the genre. Furthermore, in terms of hand-to-hand combat in the first person, there are very few games that can match the fluidity of the Riddick games.

Released in 2010 on the PS3 and Xbox 360, Singularity is a first-person science fiction horror shooter developed by Raven Software. Even though Raven is perhaps now better known for developing Call of Duty games Singularity is a narratively driven FPS that has more in common with the Bioshock series.

RELATED:Call of Duty: 5 Reasons Why Its WW2 Era Was The Best (& 5 Why It's The Modern Warfare Era)

In addition to its very good storyline, Singularity implements an innovative time manipulation mechanic that can be used as a weapon and solve several puzzles as the game progresses. Theres an alternate timeline storyline thats inspired by classic science fiction TV shows and was far more imaginative than it was given credit for at the time of its release.

Released as a launch title for the Xbox 360 in 2005, Condemned: Criminal Origins is a survival horror FPS developed by Monolith Productions the same team behind the F.E.A.R. series. Unlike F.E.A.R. however, theres a stronger emphasis on horror and successfully making the player jump out of their skins - gamers will never look at a store mannequin in the same way again.

The shooting mechanics areweighty and satisfyingbut its brutal melee combat that stands out among the best in the genre. Despite its age, Condemned is still one of the more visually striking games on the system and quite possibly one of the most underrated horror games of the last two generations.

NEXT:10 Great RPGs That Flew Under The Radar (And Their Metacritic Scores)

Next10 Ridiculously Long PC Games (& How Long They Take To Beat)

Writer for GameRant, The Gamer, The Sportser, and ScreenRant. Gaming, wrestling and film fan for over 35 years. He's a Schwarzenegger and Stallone fanatic that considers himself something of an expert in all things RPGs and cheesy action films from the 80s and 90s.

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10 Forgotten First Person Shooters You Need To Play | Game Rant - GameRant

AQ Arif accentuates brave nature of defending warriors in Epic Mughals

The genesis of war is as old as history. Human beings have been fighting for power and supremacy from the moment they began to run out of resources and starve, leading to ruthless greed, writes art critic Saeed Kureshi (Sitara-e-Imtiaz).

The ArtCiti Gallery, which is hosting AQ Arifs solo art exhibition titled Epic Mughals until March 17, quotes Kureshi as saying: Today history is replete with conflicts, battles and wars that were fought for a variety of reasons, such as forcing ideological change, settling border disputes and capturing mineral resources among others.

Accentuating the brave nature of defending warriors, AQ Arif has put together a unique set of aesthetically modelled artworks. Additionally, being a highly acknowledged painter of cityscapes and Islamic buildings, the artist in the current exhibit introduces a new wave of captivating structures draped in Muslim architecture.

The set of paintings depicting the grand era of the Mughals reflects the artists vivid vision, eye for detail and a keen urge to define the atmosphere of combat. The visually complex subject of armed conflicts comprising armour, weapons and dynamic articulation is a daunting theme that Arif confronts head-on. The historical nature of painted episodes is crucial to the preservation of past history of the Subcontinent; some of it grand and some humiliating.

The artist indeed has manifested his command over this exclusive subject, narrating some of the significant junctures of battle, which now stand preserved. The remarkable demeanour of courage, gracefully composed for movement and posture, these paintings exude inspiration and induce a winning spirit to struggle.

The artist through his extraordinary arrangements on the canvas has revived the powerful imagery of the regions ancestors, which oozes with inspiration to fortify the defences of the motherland.

Retrospectively, ever since the Indus Valley Civilisation (3300-1300 BC), successive kingdoms and empires invaded and ruled the region and enriched its culture: from the Persian Achaemenid Empire to Alexander the Great.

Muslim rule in the Subcontinent began in 712 AD, when Muhammad bin Qasim conquered Sindh and Multan, setting off several successive invasions leading to the forming of Muslim empires of the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal Empire.

It was the Mughal rulers who introduced Middle-Eastern art and architecture to India. The emerging Mughal army developed a superior cavalry branch. The cavalrys horsemen possessed horses and used a wide variety of weapons like swords, shields, lances and, more rarely, guns.

Their armour was made of steel or leather, and they wore the traditional dress of their tribes. Arif portrays the aforesaid with masterful imagination deploying painterly realism, especially the Mughal cavalry with elephants bearing richly ornamented sturdy armour.

Among the Mughal military, the artist portrays warships and boats which were used for defending coastlines, controlling piracy and for transportation of men and goods.

The inclusion of maritime activity amid the subject of warriors strengthens the artists archival aspiration, capturing the essence of the 16th century Akbarnama paintings of Mughal court painters that depict battles on the Ganges river.

Arif underpins the soft aspect of the Mughal lifestyle through artistic representation of royal attire of men and women. Portraits of graceful women dressed in glorious apparel of that era convey an insight into feminine grandeur and beauty.

Imparting a majestic textural persona to the paintings, the artist handles paints in a variety of application techniques, ranging from scumbling and stippling to bold impasto strokes.

Culminating into an enhanced and a more gratifying style, Arif has achieved a distinguished disposition among leading painters. The singularity of the artists concepts and perception emerging from history emphasises the significance of learning from the past, specifically when the homeland is threatened by conniving adversaries.

Pictures courtesy: ArtCiti Gallery

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AQ Arif accentuates brave nature of defending warriors in Epic Mughals - The News International

I point up at the kite, hoping shell see how I picked out a fairy whose face looks like hers. But the kite is too high up now for her to notice the resemblance. Ive let out all the string . I wish the kite could fly higher, I say, desperate to keep the words flowing, as though unspooling more conversation will keep something precious aloft.

This particular story, as well as Altogether Everywhere, Vast Herds of Reindeer, are sort of structural analogs to a stark, short sketch called Memories of My Mother, in which a mother cheats death and time by electing to see her child only in slices, like a two-dimensional person might experience a three-dimenional person, once every seven years through a time-dilatory trick that swells the heart and ultimately reverses their roles.

The Hidden Girl and Other Stories by Ken Liu | Buy on Amazon

Absent and illusory though Lius parents often are, their love remains fiercely real. (When the mother and daughter in Seven Birthdays are reunited after aeons, at the center of the galaxy, the world brightens with the light of a million billion suns.) That kind of tension between being together and being apart, between reality and non-reality, between corporality and etheriality, suffuses many of the stories. In The Hidden Girl, the narrator relishes the physicality of this mortal coil: I like to stay in this world, to remain surrounded by the night breeze and the distant hoots of the owl.

These stretchy dichotomies are particularly apparent when it comes to Singularity Stuff. What if humans uploaded into the Matrix become gods who long to fall back to earth? From The Gods Have Not Died in Vain: It turned out that deep down, all the gods had similar vulnerabilities, a kind of regret or nostalgia for life in the flesh that seemed reflected at every level of organization. It was a blind spot, a vulnerability, that could be exploited in the war against the gods.

Or is what we think of as our existence really something set in motion by some kind of superintelligence? Is a living planet just a computing machine powered by a sun? From Seven Birthdays: Even if weve always suspected that we also live in a grand simulation, we prefer the truth to be otherwise.

Woah man, that's deep. Yes, let the marble that is your (non-uploaded) brain roll around in that cosmic Klein bottle as you make your way through the book. Some of the stories, though, are less delicious to inhabit. Liu, who is also a Harvard-trained lawyer, says in his intro that a good story cannot function like a legal brief, which attempts to persuade and lead the reader down a narrow path suspended above the abyss of unreason. Hes right, and in a few places, like Byzantine Empathy, his characters start speechifying to each other and those tales are less delightful, less emotional (in a story about empathy, no less). In those (rare) moments, he loses the audience. But even in that story, hes navigating the space between whats real and whats not, tumbling and faceting that notion just as he does elsewhere, examining the people and aliens in this hot-fleshed chaotic world and how they might interact with spirits and memory, say, or even how they might express their love for the cool post-singularity mathematical souls that live inside the machine.

Further Reading

The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories by Ken LiuAgain with the parenting themes in the titular story! And Lius first collection is just as varied and full of thought experiments as The Hidden Girl, from an ice cube soul (State Change) to the moment one soul engenders another in a kind of spiraling creation myth (The Waves) to an explication of horrific, real war crimes (The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary.).

Cloud Atlas by David MitchellThis 2004 novel makes some of the same back-and-forth-through-time moves that Liu explores, with the requisite voice shifts, and the V-structure reminds me of Ghost Days.

The Three-Body Problem by Cixin LiuKen Liu famously translated (and reorganized) this wild and brilliant epic that starts during the Cultural Revolution and leaps to another solar system. Barack Obama liked, it; Zuckerberg liked it; you will almost certainly like it too.

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Ken Liu's 'The Hidden Girl' Loops Through Space and Time - WIRED

In the world of physics, a singularity is a concept that shifts the laws of physics as we know them. The theories on singularity came about when people first discovered black holes. The unusual nature of black holes has made scientists ask the question - what lies beyond?

Singularity, in this context, serves as a theoretical framework to explain the Big Bang, and gravity becomes the focus of the exploration.

Physicists have proposed the idea of the so-called gravitational singularity. From this type of standpoint, a gravitational singularity is an occurrence or an object where common laws of physics do not work. This type of singularity is a specific point in space-time, a construct that views the notions of time and space like they are almost glued together.

This gravitational singularity is a hard one to measure, at least in a traditional sense of the word. In fact, a space-time singularity becomes virtually independent of the coordinate system, or space, where it is observed. The data that is measured becomes, in a way, infinite. Because of this, a singularity creates a system where time and space no longer affect each other and practically become one thing. That is why the phrase space-time is so essential because the two entities stop having self-governing properties.

It does not come as a shock, how Albert Einstein, arguably one of the greatest minds of the 20th century, is the person responsible for this hard-grasping concept. After Einstein came out with his Theory of General Relativity, it was possible to discuss singularities. It could be said that the black holes themselves were, in a way, predicted by Einstein and that he created a theoretical frame from where scientists could start to unveil the mysteries that lie beyond the event horizon.

The theory of how black holes, and therefore singularities, are possible, is not that hard to conceptualize. When a particular star becomes to approach a certain point of its mass, it creates a force of gravity that is so strong that the star collapses into itself. This breaking point is called the Chandrasekhar limit. This limit is exactly 1,39 solar masses, which means mass that is 1,39 times bigger than the mass of our own Sun. When a star collapses, nothing, not even light, can escape it. When that happens, we are talking about something called the event horizon.

There are two distinct types of singularities that exist if the event horizon covers them. The first one is known as Curvature singularity. It got its name because of what happens inside the black hole. At the very center, a black hole holds up enormous amounts of mass. Because of this, gravity becomes infinite, which leads to the, also infinite, curving of space-time.

The other type that goes by Conical singularity happens when the singularity reaches a point where all the variables are finite. In this scenario, the space-time is not infinite, but it looks more like a cone, with the Conical singularity at its very top.

Another type of singularity is the one that does not depend on it being covered up by the event horizon. In this case, we are talking about Naked singularity. The Naked singularity does not stay hidden behind the event horizon. In theory, this type of singularity existed before the Big Bang.

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What Is A Singularity? - World Atlas

Tesla is having a banner year, and were not even two months in. After reaching what was an all-time high in December at a value of $393.15 per share, last Wednesday the companys stock closed at more than double that: $917.42 per share.

While its car sales are strong, theyre not the source of Teslas skyrocketing value; people are investing in the company because they see it as the future of electric vehicles. After clearing a legal hurdle last week, Tesla is set for more growth, and in a brand-new market: Europe. Germany, to be specific.

CEO Elon Musk announced plans last November to build a fourth Gigafactory outside Berlin (the first three are in Nevada, New York, and Shanghai). But construction involves cutting down a pine forest the size of 100 soccer fields (not to mention removing buried World War II ammunition), and work was halted after local environmental groups protested. On top of having to cut down thousands of trees, the factory will border a nature reserve, and theres been much concern raised about how the areas water supply and wildlife will be impacted.

A Berlin-Brandenburg court stopped Teslas forest-clearing with an injunction earlier this month, but last Thursday overturned the injunction and granted the company permission to resume activity, finding that the legal requirements for early construction had been met.

The factory will be located in Gruenheide, a small town about 33 kilometers (20 miles) south-east of Berlin. Tesla intends to have the plant completed and fully functional by mid-2021, and will eventually produce up to 500,000 cars a year there. Though its moving forward with land-clearing and other construction preparations, the company technically doesnt have final project approval from German authorities. Tesla has projected that the factory will employ about 12,000 people.

Getting the state governments approval is just one of a few hurdles left to clear, and in fact may be more straightforward than the other tasks awaiting Tesla as it builds this factory.

German environmental laws dictate that construction must not interfere with the breeding period for wildlife, which starts in March; this essentially means that for the project to move forward on its planned timetable, tree-cutting would need to be completed in the next couple weeks.

Speaking of protecting wildlife, Tesla will also have to provide bats living in the forest with alternative spots to hibernate, put up fences to prevent reptiles from entering the area, relocate ant nests without destroying them, and find a way to humanely expel any wolves living in the area.

In a tweet from January 24, Musk emphasized that the factory will absolutely be designed with sustainability and the environment in mind. He added that Tesla will plant three trees for every tree it cuts down in the area.

Home to iconic brands like BMW, Mercedes, Audi, and Volkswagen, German car manufacturing has been disrupted by companies that got an earlier and stronger start in electric vehicle technologyspecifically, Tesla. The companys Model 3 outsold all German competitors in both the US and European markets last year, and Germanys auto industry is now at a 22-year low.

The arrival of Tesla will, in the best-case scenario for German automakers, spur innovation through competition and encourage more private-sector investment. The Germans may not be leaders in electrification, but they certainly have a reputation for high-quality engineering. They would do well to follow in Teslas footsteps and start investing in energy storage technology and research; perhaps this could be the path to a rejuvenated German auto industry and economy.

But first, lets make sure those bats, wolves, lizards, birds, and ants are taken care of.

Image Credit: Artist rendering, Gigafactory. Image courtesy of Tesla

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Tesla Is Building Its First European Factory But It Has to Clear a Forest First - Singularity Hub