Do you remember the old Firesign Theatre? On their records (do you remember records?), an absurd scene would dissolve into another absurd scene, until you dissolved in laughter.

To put a period on our annus horribilis, Ike Holters I Hate It Here uses the Firesign Theatre motif. Absurd scenes dissolve into other absurd scenes. But what you dissolve inisnt laughter.

Like Firesign Theatre, this production uses uniformly fine acting and excellent, integrated sound design (Mikhail Fiksel) to turn the soundscape into a dreamscape. Occasionally the tension breaks out into a musical number, just like it does on the Firesign Theatre albums (they are all in exceptional voice in I Hate it Here). But there the resemblance ends.

Another title for Holters work, which is now available for free in audio form on Studio Theatres website, might be I Hate You Here, because its business, like the years, is to strip away our pretensions to reasonableness and good will to reveal the loneliness, fear, and hatred that lies beneath.

Thus, for example, a mother of the bride, a White woman (Jennifer Mendenhall) has a conversation with an African-American guest (Jaysen Wright) which begins with her strategy to be free of responsibilities by her mid-forties but turns into an abstract discussion about the beating of a Black man by police and then turns into a harrowing tale of personal responsibility.

Thus, for example, a schoolteachers (Sydney Charles) monologue about the familiar afflictions of her profession parent-teacher conferences, parents who abdicate responsibility for their childs learning suddenly warps into an account of a profoundly racist act, and of her supervisors decision to accommodate those involved rather than right the wrong. The teacher complains that her supervisor did not hear her, but we know that he did. He just didnt care.

Thus, for example, a woman marks the beginning of the reign of King Covid by noting the death of her dog and then spins a narrative about a world gone completely out of control. (Because the character was never identified by name in this audio piece and is not otherwise identified in the program, I cant name the actor).

In the most compelling piece, Frank (Gabriel Ruiz) and Wash (Tony Santiago) have won a singular victory in their war against the system: the city has installed a stop sign on the corner of their street. Tanya (Charles), a second-generation activist and an old friend of Wash, scoffs at their accomplishments. Is this what they struggled to achieve? Shes meeting the Mayor next week but to what purpose? And so Wash and Tanya go at it, with bad intent: is it better to shoot for the Moon, and achieve nothing? Or to aim lower, and achieve a stop sign?

In this twenty-minute episode, Holter has identified the dilemma of the present movement. The objective is not to change laws, its to change hearts and minds. Its easy to change laws. All it takes is a little marching, some beatings, being torn apart by dogs, going to jail, having a national leader who can play Congress like a bass fiddle, and having your own leader assassinated. But its harder to change hearts and minds. We humans are hard-wired to see the world as sum-zero, and to believe that the only way to be safe is to subdue or kill everyone else. So if the mission is to bring us to the civility and good will we pretend to have, its not the heart and mind that needs to be convinced. Its the amygdala.

Besides, thanks to covid, a lot of folks have lost their minds. And their hearts.

The works subtitle is Stories from the End of the Old World. This implies that there will be a new world. Good luck with that.

Ive made I Hate It Here sound pretty grim. It is. But if this year has made you feel anger, despair, sadness, frustration, hate and depression, its satisfying to know that youre not alone.

It is a clich to say that a work of art captures the zeitgeist of the age. But I Hate it Here does, and thats that.

I Hate It Here: Stories from the End of the Old World1 hour, 22 minutesStreams for free thru March 11, 2021

I Hate It Here: Stories from the End of the Old World, written and directed by Ike Holter, with Sivan Battat as Assistant Director . Featuring Sydney Charles, Behzad Dabu, Kirsten Fitzgerald, Jennifer Mendenhall, Gabriel Ruiz, Tony Santiago, and Jaysen Wright . Sound design by Mikhail Fiksel . Noel Nichols is the audio engineer and dialogue editor . Adrien-Alice Hansel is the dramaturg . Luisa Snchez Coln is the stage manager . Produced by Studio Theatre . Reviewed by Tim Treanor.

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Review: I Hate It Here: Stories from the End of the Old World - DC Theatre Scene

DECEMBER 14, 2020

COFFEE-TABLE BOOKS about swimming pools are a surprisingly well-established genre. Lavish, glossy, and tempting, theyre almost like pop-up books their images practically lunge at the reader, a medley of splashes and bodies. They dont look particularly serious and seem to make the perfect winter gift, if you can withstand the tease of aquatic pleasure while its freezing, raining, or snowing outside.

The latest entry in this increasingly crowded field is Lou Stoppards Pools from the house of lavish itself, Rizzoli. Like the editor of most such books, Stoppard is light of touch and low of word count, including just a few choice paragraphs to accompany photographs that are intended to speak for themselves. But what are they saying? To distinguish this book from several similar ones, Rizzoli has wrapped the cover in a latex-like transparent blue sleeve. This slightly kinky touch makes the book appear to be submerged in water, beckoning the reader to dive in. Several of the pictures Stoppard includes have been reproduced before in recent books like Hatje Cantzs stunning album of classic 20th-century images, The Swimming Pool in Photography (2018). Stoppard, however, juxtaposes canonical shots with pool photography from the present, allowing the reader to see how the cultural imagination of the swimming pool has evolved.

These utilitarian exercise machines, these mere accessories to boutique vacations, possess a very varied cultural backstory. Enjoy your workout! my friendly neighborhood pool attendant yells at me just before I enter the water. I always bristle at this aggressively cheerful exhortation, because swimming is much more than exercise. Its a form of ritual that involves a highly deliberate process of transformation: the careful, even fetishistic shedding of a quotidian skin. One doesnt have to accept the Freudian notion that swimming enacts a return to the womb and some form of prelapsarian amniotic nirvana to appreciate that bathing originated in the ancient world as a component of religious ritual, and that the act has by no means entirely lost the aura of a baptismal rite. The Great Bath at Mohenjo-daro in Sindh, Pakistan, which dates as far back as the third millennium BCE, appears to have encouraged bathing for just this sort of reason, and remains an archaeological site of considerable historical value. The ancient Greeks and Romans constructed pools for athletic purposes, it is true, but employed them for many other purposes besides, including ritualized social bathing and the keeping of fish, resulting in the term piscine.

Our modern image of the swimming pool as exercise machine and Olympic arena thus possesses a richly complicating global history. In the early modern era, Europeans shunned bathing as an activity for savages Africans and Asians were brilliant divers whose skills they could barely comprehend, let alone emulate. When Westerners finally embraced swimming again as a mass pursuit by the turn of the 20th century, it was with a dramatic sense of rediscovery and rapture. The avatar of the Surrealist movement Andr Breton rhapsodized about what he called the voluptuousness of swimming, declaring himself born under the sign of Pisces. Swimming not only changed ones body, he insisted, but transformed ones mind, freeing it from the shackles of rationalistic thought to a more authentic dimension of imaginative consciousness.

Lou Stoppards juxtapositions of classic and contemporary photos suggest how the swimming pools cultural meaning has shifted during the century since Breton. Consider, for instance, the following carefully curated double-page spread. On one side, the reader is greeted by Jacques-Henri Lartigues adoring portrait of Marie Helvin at the French Rivieras Eden Roc Hotel pool in 1977. On the one hand, its just another glamour shot: big-name photographer, top model, high-end digs. But the picture is exquisitely realized, a vision of ecstasy. Helvins head thrown back, eyes closed, her expression is beatific. Her jet-black locks dance mesmerizingly in the water around her. The portrait dazzlingly records the play of light on her chest, tracing wild light-lines across her skin, which looks as though it is swathed in sunlit Jell-O. In Helvins profoundly private sense of repose and pleasure, Lartigue captures the paradox of erotic desire as innocent bliss.

Opposite this blast from the 1970s, Stoppard reproduces two bright and striking images by Karine Laval shot in 2010. Laval calls these images Poolscapes. Four-plus decades on from Helvins hedonistic headshot at Eden Roc, Lavals pictures offer few anatomical, social, or geographical coordinates. No details of place or person are deemed worthy of inclusion even in the titles of these shots. Lavals are not pictures of a swimming pool as such, more an exercise in the production of disorientating chromatic-aquatic effects. A submerged human figure, clad in red, can be seen in some sort of agitated pose, like a cubist minotaur strutting against the currents. The viewers gaze is dashed by shards of light and color that come flying out of the image. Brittle and crystalline, they cut up the humanoid form: all that is soft shatters into lines. If this is the picture of a swimming pool, youd never know it, since Laval has abstracted it into a set of tones, lines, and ripples. We have left Bretons voluptuousness of swimming and Helvins fleshy ecstasies far behind. The question is how and why?

Its crucial here to go back to the early part of the 20th century, when Breton and many others dreamt of swimming as a revelatory and paradisiacal form of experience, to understand how the archetypal pool photo was invented. A better description than ecstasy for Helvins portrait is reverie: closing ones eyes while in the water, escaping into a personal and private realm not merely of physical pleasure but intimate emotional and psychological experience, enabled by the act of immersion. This is the classic photographic conceit of the swimming pool as an entity that transports its subject to a dream-like world beyond the quotidian and beyond the limitations of gravity. Invented in the 1920s and 30s during the zeitgeist of Surrealism and psychoanalysis, this kind of photo features the swimming pool not as an arena of competition or consumerism, but as the trigger of subconscious desires for personal transformation.

There are many versions of this archetype, and Stoppard lovingly reproduces several of the best. Perhaps the first great psychological pool picture is George Hoyningen-Huenes masterpiece from 1930 featuring two bathers sitting together on a diving board. Their backs are turned to us and we cannot see their faces. They are modeling elegant designer beachwear, but this mundane act of salesmanship is completely transcended by the existential quality of their pose. They look away to the horizon, following the trajectory of the diving board, perhaps with excitement, perhaps trepidation. We cannot know. But we have been fooled. The viewers mind has responded to the diving board and imagined the presence of water below it. There was no pool: Hoyningen-Huene took the picture on a rooftop high above the Champs Elyses in Paris.

The conceit of the swimming pool as a portal to other mental, historical, and even mythological dimensions is also superbly suggested by Louise Dahl-Wolfe in Night Bathing, shot in 1939. A woman in a delicately striped one-piece bathing suit stands at the edge of a pool by night, mirrored in her pose by a statue of Aphrodite, goddess of love. Both figures look shyly away from the camera, as the darkness presses in. This pool is a scene of metamorphosis; indeed, it is reminiscent of the tales of Ovids Metamorphoses, such as Narcissus falling in loving with his own reflection. The juxtaposition of the two female figures implies the pools hidden power to transform the living woman into a goddess.

Pools, bathing, swimming, swimwear: in the post-Freudian imagination, the superficial accessories of luxurious living become tools of psychological emancipation and emotional self-expression. Yet they also became instruments of fascist conformism, racialist theorizing, and eugenic ideology. Between Hoyningen-Huenes divers and Wolfes Aphrodite, Leni Riefenstahl filmed Olympia, her unsettlingly brilliant documentary on the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Riefenstahls Aryanist dogmas led her to combine bravura images of swimmers and divers competing in front of cheering stadiums in Nazi Germany with a fantastical sequence featuring Greek statues coming to life as German athletes. The modernist swimming pools dream of transformation was as politically dangerous as it was personally alluring.

The psychological pool photo enjoyed a long afterlife, flourishing well into the 1970s. Martine Francks image of a boy in a hammock gazing at sunbathers round the curves of Alain Capeilleress pool near Marseilles suggests those curves as the very contours of his mind. Horst P. Horst who posed as one of Hoyningen-Huenes divers in 1930 shot Janice Dickinson cocking her head to one side, eyes closed, in that eternal yet fleeting instant before exiting a sun-drenched pool. Its 1979, and like Helvin, Dickinson is a nude supermodel. But Horsts portrait is still an image of innocence and experience still the picture of swimming as flight to a private mental paradise.

Such images of bathing as reverie coexisted, however, with two main rivals in the late 20th century: social shots of public pools as riotous lower-class playgrounds; and luxury shots of private pools as pure consumer glamour. Exceptionally, all three visions might converge in the same image, like Helmut Newtons virtuosically overloaded panorama of Pariss Piscine Deligny in 1978. Newton fused sexuality, surrealism, and glamour with dark humor. Worlds collide with magnificently absurd results. In the foreground, two models in black evening gowns pose with incongruous campy melodrama, as male bathers stripped down to their briefs look on with a mix of desire and exasperation under a hot sun. Yet the humorous center of the photograph is a wonderfully oblivious topless female bather who entirely ignores the absurdity around her, hunched with Rodin-like concentration over the book she is reading. Newtons photo captures the invasion of the swimming pool as a public institution and its denaturing by money, glamour, and fantasy, presaging the shift in pool photos since the 1980s from a public resource for ordinary people to a moneyed private oasis. Newton played a leading role in this transformation, especially in all the celebrity shoots he did in the 80s; perhaps the Deligny panorama is a confessional premonition, a mea culpa before the fact. Anyone who has floated idly in the Standard Hotels enticing rooftop pool in downtown Los Angeles, to name just one of todays most photogenic boutique destinations, might well conclude that glamour won, the spirit of the bains publics is dead, and Newton helped kill it.

It would likewise be tempting to read pictures of bathers taken in momentous political years, like Olaf Martenss portraits of swimmers in the German Democratic Republic in 1989 (which Stoppard also includes), in a similar light. 1989, after all, is famously taken to mark the end of the Cold War, the end of history, the end of the public, and the dominance of capital. In the vanished world of the GDR, now a distant mirage of social unity and fodder for Ostalgie, a regimented body is about to spring into a pool like a wind-up toy programmed to win an Olympic medal for the communist bloc. Meanwhile, Martenss portraits of the naked yet submerged Simone evince the distinctive German Freikrperkultur (free body culture) that encouraged public nudism as a form of salubrious self-expression in the absence of political or economic freedoms.

If 1989 does mark the caesura between 20th and 21st centuries, what does recent photography reveal about the cultural meaning of the swimming pool of the present? One answer lies in the utterly banal celebrity culture that Newtons Piscine Deligny image foreshadowed. We have ended up with images like supermodel Gisele Bndchen striding past a pool, staring straight to camera, being ogled by some starry-eyed dude in sunglasses. And with shots of former James Bond star Pierce Brosnans teenage sons Dylan and Paris lounging in jeans, backs turned to their Bel Air pool, occupied instead by two inflatable swans. The pool as designer accessory is wholly evacuated, a reference point you dont even have to look at. Its just a checklist luxury. In the absence of any social realism or public context, glamour, wealth, and privilege have bored themselves, and the viewer, to death, making the pool itself invisible.

A second answer is to be found in Stoppards canny juxtapositions. Opposite Janice Dickinsons glamour shot, for example, Stoppard places a double-portrait taken from 2018 by the fashion photographer Joyce Sze Ng. This picture features two women of color, elaborately clothed in gowns, staring from distance straight at the camera. They stand on the other side of a motionless, mirror-like pool that reflects their dignified yet expressionless faces. The photograph is neither one of pleasure nor psychological depth; indeed, it seems to disavow any invitation to depth. The picture is a hybrid: a fashion photographer evidently making a political statement, but what is the statement? Sze Ngs subjects appear to demand that the viewer acknowledge their presence but without any promise of revelation or intimacy, since they parry the viewers gaze. The inward gaze of reverie has turned outward to repel the viewer. Sze Ng seems to want to make a point about identity but, perhaps wanting to disavow the history of female nudity in pool art, feels it necessary to disavow the pool itself, converting it instead into a conceptual abstraction.

Sze Ngs double-portrait has a self-consciously pristine quality that is even more evident in the photography of Slve Sundsb, although Sundsbs pristineness is of a different character. It is technological, and showcases a third trend in recent pool imagery: the abstraction of pools and bodies into technical virtuosity. Sundsb does still take photos of people in water. One portrait of a young woman in a dark asymmetrical bathing suit shows her gazing wide-eyed under sanitized steel-blue water, like a doll in suspended animation or an amniotic spa. She enjoys no state of reverie, however; her open eyes appear lifeless. But the viewer is distracted by Sundsbs bubbles, which the speed of his camera recasts as beads of blown glass. Sundsb loves his bubbles; other shots engulf human forms in vast bubble clouds that fan out like Rorschach patterns. Sundsb says he strives for purity in such images, but the result is really pure mechanism: one cant help look at these pictures without thinking of the lens rather than the artist. What is absent from this kind of work is not merely the psychological charisma of classic pool photography, but the social reality of the swimming pool and its storied cultural identity. Instead of accumulating and drawing on this history, it is all but erased.

Why has pool art taken these turns? Several predictable answers naturally suggest themselves. We now possess more powerful cameras than ever before, with much faster lenses, and greater capacity for manipulating images. At the same time, our culture has tired of meaning and come to mistrust the promise of depth. We have rejected not only Freud but, seemingly, the whole nave project of self-discovery, settling instead for anti-depressants, cheaper consumer goods, harder bodies, and endless Instagram posts. Most importantly of all, we have retreated from public life to private islands. If photography provides any sort of guide to our collective imagination and it may not we no longer marvel at the grand architectural designs of public baths but dream of the hotel spa and the exclusive infinity pool. Twentieth-century photographers loved social realism and the hedonistic playfulness of the madding crowd; their 21st-century heirs are private clinicians who shun the mixing of different social classes in public waters.

But lets go easy on the jeremiad. Stoppards selections undeniably show that the dream of the swimming pool in all its different forms is far from over. There are a number of contemporary photographers who resist the current vogue for the clinical and the impersonal, the luxurious and the technical. For these artists, the pool is not an abstraction but an enduringly meaningful dream-machine that continues to inspire compelling, humorous, and imaginative visions.

Stoppard includes many extraordinary images of public pools as social panoramas that continue to be shot around the world, showcasing multitudes of bathers clambering en masse for the physical pleasure and psychic relief of water from the multiracial swimmers of the French banlieues to the vast crowds happily hugging the shores of indoor beaches complete with artificial wave machines in Japan. The reverie shot is not dead either, but lives on, poignantly renewed in Diana Markosians portraits of Afghani refugees floating in pools in Germany. They lie on their backs, gazing heavenward, dreaming of a better life. Even America boasts trusty throwbacks to bygone pool pleasures. Alice Hawkins is an expert in the popular sublime: she knows how to take sparkling shots evoking dreams of glamour that are far from faded for her subjects. These include gangs of girls lounging on dusty pool decks, wedding parties thrilling to kitsch joys of liquor and love, and close-ups of a cheeky blondes Lucky Bum, poolside in Vegas. Hawkinss bathers have no doubt that the swimming pool can still sprinkle magic dust on ordinary life.

Finally, Stoppard includes one of the most striking pool photos of recent years, and quite possibly of all time a remarkable untitled image made by the British photographer Polly Brown, taken in France in 2015. Like much recent pool art, the picture admittedly has a clinical quality, lacks an explicit psychological appeal, and offers no portrait of society. Unlike almost all recent work, however, it possesses a genuinely exhilarating grandeur of conception. Browns camera tracks a lone female swimmer in mid-stroke from high above a large multi-laned pool. All geared up, she wears a dark blue one-piece, cap, goggles, and even fins. The aerial distance between camera and subject makes the picture impersonal. Bright but sunless, its steely blue colors cool the viewers eyes. We are too far to sense the swimmers emotions.

There is, however, no flight to abstraction here: this is a swimmer in a pool. Yet we cannot see the pools edges. This is crucial. We cannot see where the pool begins or ends, that it begins or ends. Through her cropping, Brown has given us a subtly yet profoundly suggestive portrait of the pool as an infinite expanse, and of the swim as a limitless odyssey. The notion is reinforced by two telling details. Painted dots mark distance in each lane like repeating metronomic beats; and the swimmer swims through an opening or gate, the width of a single lane, leading her from one section of the pool to another. She is going somewhere. This is not the 20th-century dream of the inner life; indeed, in the pandemic year of 2020, it could be read merely as an image of persistence or survival in an evacuated world. But it is undoubtedly the image of an existential quest. The majesty of Browns photograph lies in its liberation of the viewers mind from the narrowness of much recent pool art, returning the swimming pool at last to the free rein of the imagination.

James Delbourgo is professor of history at Rutgers University, where he teaches the history of science, collecting and museums, and the history of the Atlantic World. His most recent book is Collecting the World: Hans Sloane and the Origins of the British Museum (Harvard University Press, 2017).

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The Dream of the Swimming Pool - Los Angeles Review of Books - lareviewofbooks

The New Yorker has released a preview of the magazines second-to-last cover of 2020. The cover features an original digital painting by David Hockney, titled Hearth. It depicts a fireplace and is decidedly juvenile in execution. The brushwork appears childish and has sparked a Twitter backlash and outcry.

This is very funny. Hockney is perfectly capable of using digital brushes properly, can only assume he hates someone in the TNY art dept, Jo Livingstone of the New Republic noted in now-deleted tweets, Either that or somebody at TNY doesnt care enough to protect his legacy. Livingstone pointed to a number of Hockneys recently exhibited digital paintings as evidence of his mastery, supporting the supposition that the New Yorker cover might be, in some way, a troll.

Along with the cover in question is a brief synopsis and Q&A with Hockney conducted by Franoise Mouly, the New Yorkers art director. In it we learn that Hockney, after doing 220 digital paintings in 2020, will be returning to oils for a large mural in 2021. While not a sweeping or in-depth discussion of his work, the interview touches on his now decade-long fascination with the iPad as an artistic device and his taking inspiration from tapestries. The piece also features a time-lapse of the digital painting being created.

If anything, the interview raises more questions than it answers. Why, if Hockney went to such great pains over the course of the year to produce this great and specific quantity of work, did Mouly not choose to elevate one of better quality? For these short, dark days, she writes, David Hockney offers the traditional comfort of a hearth.

Hockney is 83 years old and considered among the greatest living British artists for his contributions to the pop art movement in the 1960s. Over the course of his career, he has used a wide range of media and has not shied away from technology.

But Hearth simply does not justly represent Hockneys digital work. Just last month The Art Newspaper featured an item on his digital art in quarantine, highlighting the hope that his most recent work is capable of eliciting.

The Art Newspaper featured two digital paintings in particular, first The Big Tree in Autumn, has a remarkable skyblue in the center of the frame, breaking through the clouds behind the branches of the tree. There are layers of gray in the clouds. The details of the trees branches and leaves show deliberate use of different textures and opacities. These are advanced techniques regardless of medium.

The Pond in Autumn, made two days later, is even more impressive. Again the range of detail, color, texture, and gesture, while not entirely controlled or pristine, still shows the hand of a skilled and dedicated artist. The tranquility of the water Hockney is able to portray is masterful.

Given the well-honed skill and style evident in these works and others exhibited over the years, why the New Yorker chose or accepted upon commission such a seemingly anomalous painting is a valid question. Hockney is clearly in command of his faculties, making it seem all the more likely that the irreverence and slap-dash nature of Hearth are an intentional thumbing of the nose at the magazines grandiosity.

This is also not the first iPad sketch from Hockney that has graced the New Yorkers cover. The three previous digitally produced Hockney covers featured beneath the interviewstill lifes from 2010 and 2011 and a landscape from 2018are all vastly more complex and impressive. It is not just that the study of the fireplace is weak or a departure from the other iPad work he has done at largeit is a departure in quality from what he has submitted in the past to this same magazine and this same art director.

Responding to Livingstones critique, Sterling Crispin suggested that Hearth was in continuity with Hockneys previous digital work:

But thats part of the appeal, hard for people to understand its supposed to be sort of shitty, Crispin continued.

Given, again, Hockneys stated mission to complete 220 paintings in 2020, its safe to say we cant expect all of them to be bangers. So yes, some are going to have that intentional shitty crude quality to themthat is not the surprise. The surprise is that he chose to shoddily iPad it in for the cover of one of the most prestigious magazines in the world after a year of social uprisings calling for the cultural standard bearers to be more inclusive in who and what they chose to promote. At a moment when art, almost alone among human endeavors, can offer us beauty and inspiration, or solace and consolation, or distraction and humor, or any other variety of grace, Hockney and the New Yorker give us this?

Kyle Chaykausing a logical fallacy to bait the conversation away from why or why not the painting is shitty and why was it chosen to well actually, it is a virtue that the painting is shittychimed in with this bit of wisdom: making people mad is a great side-effect of art. It can be, yes. It is also the intended effect of trolling.

Chayka goes on to invoke a well-known anecdote of dubious origin:

It always reminds me of the story about the woman who approached Picasso in a restaurant, asked him to scribble something on a napkin, and said she would be happy to pay whatever he felt it was worth. Picasso complied and then said, That will be $10,000.

But you did that in thirty seconds, the astonished woman replied.

No, Picasso said. It has taken me forty years to do that.

This vignette does not contradict Livingstones point, though. Dashing off a scribble for someone seeking, and willing to pay for, the work of a master is inherently an act of trolling: an instance of behaving provocatively or antagonizing someone. The crux is the irreverence and the New Yorkers acceptance and elevation of it.

Suggesting that the iPads paint app is unforgiving is an insult to Hockney, who has demonstrated that he is perfectly capable of producing very fine work in the medium. It is not difficult to grasp that some media are cruder than others. That is not what is at issue here.

Chaykas and Crispins defenses of the cover are silly. To suggest that there is something shallow or misinformed in taking umbrage at the covers juvenile quality is simply pretentious. This is not a case of my kid could do that but a moment to reflect on editorial integrity (and the possible virtues of shitposting). Because ultimately an editor made the choice to feature that image in all its mediocritychoosing to capstone the year by having an old white man dash off an image severely lacking in technical qualities and at odds with his proven abilities and reputation.

Even so, there is something pleasurable about seeing something done so terribly appear on the cover of the New Yorker. The disjunction is genuinely hilarious. Some have gone so far as to call it iconic. By being elevated to the cover it is able to capture a bit of the 2020 zeitgeist. This is not enough to redeem the digital painting as a standalone work of art. A fittingly shitty end to a shitty year.

Abstraction is still difficult for people!!! Chakya exclaims. Indeed, it seems at least some of the meta aspects of trolling have gone over quite a few heads. But saying a work is purposefully bad doesnt make it good.

Original post:

How David Hockney Trolled the New Yorker - The Bulwark

From being the biggest Korean outfit on the scene, the boy band BTS has now become the biggest band in the world. Its the impression youd get from their majestic presence as the Times Entertainer of the Year & theres no exaggeration in this. If pop stardom in 2020 had a mascot, BTS would be it.

Sure, Taylor Swift has given us some of the best music with a countryside aesthetic a much-needed comfort in the year 2020, but BTS has kept the spirits upbeat. They released multiple albums, broke so many records across the board including their own, had a busy life appearing on live streams & bonding with their fanbase, lovingly referred to as the BTS ARMY.

To be able to do that in a year when all the live, in-person concerts stood cancelled is no mean feat, and BTS has shown what theyre capable of, while simultaneously keeping their empathy & love front & center. Which is why when other celebrities seemed to leverage the lockdown, they seemed disingenuous, but when BTS brought new music, it indicated hope.

When Time says 2020 was the year of BTS, theyve evidence to back it up. They talk of the success of BTS, From propelling their label to a $7.5 billion IPO valuation to inspiring fans to match their $1 million donation to Black Lives Matter, BTS is a case study in music-industry dominance through human connection. This sums up the impact of the band very well, so lets expound this evidence.

When it comes to their sticky popularity, the band has its BTS ARMY to thank. The year began with the release of Map of the Soul: 7, the fourth Korean-language seventh overall studio album by the band. Among the many records that the band broke this year is the most views on the music video for their single Dynamite, where they surpassed 100 million views on its debut day itself.

Today, the video is nearing 700 million views. Even on streaming giant Spotify, BTS took away the metaphorical awards. Dynamite is the most-streamed K-pop song this year and Map of the Soul: 7 is the most streamed K-pop album on Spotify. Dynamite opened at the top spot on Spotifys daily Global Top 50 chart when it released in August this year.

While the boy band garnered money & accolades for their work, they were always empathetic & aware of the trials & tribulations plaguing the world. Their activism has an ethos of anti establishment & compassion. Multiple members of the band have been extremely vocal about their challenges with mental health, the quirks of fame, and have embraced non-toxic masculinity as exhibited in their performance.

Even though same-sex marriage is still not legal in their country, South Korea, theyve been vocal about their support for LGBTQ+ rights. This year, they donated $1 million to the Black Lives Matter movement, something Jin from the band claimed was not politics. It was related to racism. We believe everyone deserves to be respected. Thats why we made that decision.

This donation amount was matched by their fandom BTS ARMY in no time. Thats their impact.

Even though their initial plans for a world tour stood cancelled, they ended the year with a bang by releasing their latest album BE. It has been hailed as the music thats closest to BTS aesthetic. With that album, they debuted a song & album at No. 1 on Billboard charts in the same week. More recently, they got another feather in their cap they got nominated or a Grammy.

Even in their interview with Time, theyre candid, It was a year that we struggled a lot. We might look like were doing well on the outside with the numbers, but we do go through a hard time ourselves, Jimin said.

No one can deny the impact of the band on the current zeitgeist & how they made the tough year better for all of us.

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Was 2020 the year of BTS? Here's why 'Time' magazine thinks so - Film Daily

Butch Vig is a pioneer who, somewhat accidentally, found himself at the forefront of a zeitgeist movement in the 1990s after he produced some of the defining records of the decade and, thanks to his magic touch, the genre of grunge became a worldwide sensation. Following the success of albums such as Nirvanas Nevermind and Smashing Pumpkins Gish, for which Vig worked as ringmaster, he then took a step back from the production desk before stepping into the limelight with Garbage who, in turn, excelled as one of alternative rocks fiercest outfits.

Last month, Vig shared Divine Accidents from his passion project 5 Billion In Diamonds, the cinematic album is the second record from his band with Bristolian Andy Jenks and Southamptons DJ James Grillo. The sonic world which Vig has created with his side-project is a far cry from the brand of rock that he makes with Garbage. 5 Billion In Diamonds has provided him with the perfect opportunity to experiment with a new sonic structure which has helped keep his creative juices flowing.

The band released their debut album in 2017 and Divine Accidents offers up a compelling soundtrack to an imaginary piece of cinema which is utterly gripping. Releasing music at a time like this, when the world is in a state of incomparable flux, is a source of anxiety for most artists but because 5 Billion In Diamonds is a passion project, they just want as many people as possible to put their free time to good use by giving the record a spin. Although the pandemic has tried its best to murder the music industry, incredible records have been one of the few tonics for 2020 has had to offer and Divine Accidents acts as a delightful source of escapism from all the noise going on outside.

People want music, Vig said on the topic of releasing a record in the midst of a global pandemic to Far Out from his home studio in Los Angeles. I mean, streaming is up what Ive been hearing thats people listening to new music. This is a good time to release because music is an escape for them, so theyre looking for great new music.

The record has been one that the three-piece have been working on intermittently since November 2018 but because its none of their full-time focuses, it wouldnt be completed until January this year. This is a project that theyve carefully poured whatever hours possible they can into and thankfully, it was completed before the world turned upside down. The sacred time they spent making the record, was not only fulfilling from a creative standpoint but just the opportunity to hang out together made it a heavenly experience for Vig.

Ive known James for 20 years and because of that, Ive known Andy, Vig noted as he explained how this peculiar triumvirate began making music together. James is a unique individual, he has a gigantic collection of vinyl like 20,000 albums and hes probably got the same amount of CDs. We were out drinking wine one night like four years ago, and I challenged him and said, Why dont you write some music, James? Hes not a musician, but hes a DJ and knows he knows what he likes musically.

So we start working on some music. Basically, James would play like a part from a record, like some obscure record I had never heard before, and we would use that as a reference point to start writing music. When Andy, James and I made the first 5 Billion In Diamonds record, we wrote all these sonic landscapes that, in our head, was music that would work in a film soundtrack.

They then started reaching out to guest vocalists such as The Ocean Blues David Schnelzel, James Bagshaw from Temples and Helen White, who used to bandmates with Andy Jenks in Bristol trip-hop band Alpha. This vast array of different artists helped bring a unique spin to 5 Billion In Diamonds which gives their work an irresistible dynamic feel.

It was quite a slow process, Vig noted about making their 2017 debut. In the end, I think the record turned out great. When we started writing the music for the new album Divine Accidents, we had a much clearer idea of how the process would unfold. We actually wrote pieces of music, specifically for singers like sort of tailor-made for each singer and so the process was a lot easier on Divine Accidents.

Its just sonically the approach that the band (Garbage) takes has a different vibe than 5 Billion In Diamonds, Vig notes on the differences between the two groups before expanding: We let James sort of dictate where were going sonically, even though hes not a producer or a musician and I just trust his taste to define where a song should go. Its fun, we drink lots of wine, were in the studio, we take breaks and go on have really nice dinners and at some point, we want to tour.

Touring was financially impossible to make work on the first 5 Billion in Diamonds record. The cost of creating a cinematic experience which would match the one that comes from listening to the album made the task hard enough, then accounting for taking singers on the road and paying crew fairly, it would eclipse whatever money was paid through the door by fans. This is something that Butch is determined to change in the future.

Weve only played one show, the drummer recalled. We played four songs at a show for James birthday party and the only reason we were able to do that was because he invited all his friends there. We were all like in the same space it was like, Okay, why dont we play some songs? So we rehearsed very quickly, the night before, it was kind of ramshackle. But man, it was fun, he said whilst wearing a giant smile as his mind travelled back to the show.

Even if touring still remains out of the realms of possibility for 5 Billion In Diamonds next year, Vig and Garbage will be hitting the road on an unmissable co-headline UK arena tour alongside Blondie. They have got a brand new record that they are ready to unleash on the world in 2021 and the itch to play live is burning bright. The album format remains something that Vig still holds dearly in his heart, however, hes not naive about being in the minority of modern listeners. The musician is an ardent believer in an artist doing whatever possible to get their music heard. When I started making music in the 80s and 90s, it was verboten to have your music in a commercial or in a TV show, Vig said on the change in tastes. Everybody thought you were selling out but now because no ones selling CDs and streaming pays such a small pittance of a royalty, artists can make some really good income if they can licence your music in TV and film or commercial.

I still feel like music should be listened to as its own entity, Vig maintains. Im old school. I still listen to an album all the way through. But I know thats not the way most people consume music anymore. If it can get at a TV show then its possible millions of people might hear it. I think thats a good thing no matter what vehicle it is.

The record that helped make Vig one of the worlds most sought after producers was Nirvanas seminal LP Nevermind, a project which was not only a great album on tape but it was relentlessly pushed on MTV. Back then, the network was the vehicle that helped spread the word of Nirvana to the masses who, if it wasnt for Smells Like Teen Spirit being on a constant loop, perhaps wouldnt have checked out the record and made the band such a bastion of rock. This philosophy of doing whatever possible to spread the word of your music is something that Vig can champion from experience.

Nevermind was a special record, Vig fondly recollected. I mean, the band had been playing really well and they were really tight and focused when they came into the studio. Kurt had written a bunch of amazing songs that were super hooky but I had no idea it was gonna be a zeitgeist moment, it just completely exploded, it really was like a revolution. It completely changed my life for the better, everybody I know closely associated with the band will say the same thing. No one saw it coming but were all really thankful that we were along for the ride.

The funny thing is, I started getting a lot of calls from publishers, from managers, major labels and they thought that I had tapped onto some sort of formula, Vig says whilst trying and failing to contain his laughter. They thought I could take any type of artist, it could be a blues singer, it could be a folk artist, a country singer, and I knew how to make them sound like Nevermind. Some of the things I was pitched were absolutely ludicrous. I mean, it didnt make any sense at all.

This success, however, did provide him with the freedom to work solely with artists that he wanted to and, therefore, not have to compromise in order to make rent. It gave him the platform to form Garbage and have the backing from a label because of his tried and tested credentials, they became one of the biggest bands to emerge throughout the 90s. Whether they would have the same level of success or even formed, if it wasnt for the stratospheric success of Nevermind, remains unknown.

Garbage have sold over 17 million records worldwide and 27 years after forming are still as strong as ever, with their relationships being the key to their longevity according to Vig: First of all, you have to like the people you hang out with. As a producer, I cant tell you how many bands Ive worked with there that musicians hate each others guts. A lot of bands are run by one person, then everybody else has to fall into place. Garbage is a democracy even though its a very dysfunctional democracy, but we listen to each other and understand each other, Vig proudly declares.

Vig has had a wildly eclectic career that saw him be at the forefront of grunge, but Nevermind is surprisingly not the piece of work from his career that he is most proud of despite it being the one that has had the greatest impact of his life. Every record Ive done is like a bastard child. Theyre all beautiful in their own way, Vig jokes before revealing the identity of his favourite child.

I have to say Smashing PumpkinsSiamese Dream; Im very proud of because that was a really difficult record. It was before Pro Tools, Billy and I set the bar really high in terms of how sonically we wanted it to sound. I had to deal with all of the dysfunctionality of them as four people together but I think the record still sounds really good. It has a sound to it that we kind of came up with in the studio and to me, it still sounds as powerful now as it did when I recorded it.

The sheer number of classic records that Vig is the man behind, from both a production perspective and as a drummer, is awe-inspiring. Despite being 65-years-old, that passion for travelling into new musical landscapes and dipping his toes into unknown territory is perhaps greater now than it has ever been. Vig never set out to sell millions of records but hes thankful that it allows him the freedom to focus solely on fulfilling his own creative ambitions. Now, 5 Billion In Diamonds has allowed him to expand his horizons even further and learn from new people, challenge himself but, most importantly, having fun in the process.

Read more:

Far Out Meets: Butch Vig on Garbage, Nevermind and 5 Billion In Diamonds - Far Out Magazine

Ten years ago, New York food writer Josh Ozersky barreled into Portland for a 36-hour food binge. He prowled the city for honest Americana food, fuel for his legendary anti-modern food screens. He found it here, calling Portland America's New Food Eden in Time magazine. He even moved here years later. But his hunger was not truly sated before he died in 2015. Where are the burgers? he bellowed incessantly. Ozersky had a point. Weird-ass chef burgers were everywhere, stacked with barbecued pork or perhaps, dear God, donuts. But good luck finding a transcendent exaltation of the humble American icon, with its molten American cheese and squishy bun.

Now, in Portland dining's darkest hour, as the very places that won his heart and stomach hang by their fingernails, Ozerky's burger heaven has arrived. We're in the midst of a Burger Reformation. Food carts kicked it off a few years back, followed by Super Deluxe's drive-through rebirth and miles-long line of cars. The movement is still steaming, incomprehensibly, during the pandemic. To wit: three of the city's best classic cheeseburgers were born in this godforsaken upside-down world. Across the city, cooks are paying homage to the cheeseburger icons, among them: McDonald's Big Mac (double decker with special sauce), Shake Shacks ShackBurger (thin, fast-griddled smash burger with lettuce, tomato, and special sauce on a potato roll), and In-N-Out's cheeseburger (frilly lettuce, tomato, onion, and secret sauce).

Perfecting a classic burger is nowhere near as easy as it seems. Any teenage employee or backyard barbecuer can serve up a patty on a bun. To fine-tune each element to perfection, to create a chorus of flavors, to find and release our inner burger endorphins, is no easy task. But when done right, few things in life are more satisfying. So we had to know. Where are they? Which ones would Josh eat?

Enter The Burger Cabal. A year ago, Portland Monthly food critic Karen Brooks invited four burger nuts to join the quest: famed fast-food poet-reviewer Bill Oakley, the former Simpsons writer behind the much-memed Steamed Hams sketch; legendary Portland diner Gary Okazaki (aka Gary the Foodie), and hard-core food couple Drew and Pauline Lewis. To be considered, a contender had to be nominated by one of us, based on personal experience, reputation, or word-of-mouth buzz. Roughly 60 places made the first cut. Then we set out to eat with one goal: to give you our Top 20 recommendations, ranked.

The rules: Classic cheeseburgers only, topped with classic condimentia. No fast-food chain burgers, no outr toppings, no sliders (sorry Canard, you super delicious ode to White Castle).

How we scored: We filled out secret ballots, scoring burgers on a 100-point system. Once revealed, we had to defend our scores like prosecuting attorneys. Turns out, even for burger purists one person's meat heaven is anothers over-salted poison. To reach consensus, dozens of contenders were tossed. To reach the final ranking, we averaged our final scores. In the end, our favorites flashed a distinctive meat flavor, contrasting temperatures (cold toppings against the warm elements), and a sensual texturethat swoon of creamy sauce and cheese goo; that magic crunch; a beautifully toasted bun. Ultimately, every burger faces the moment of truth. Will it haunt your dreams and craving zone? You know it when you taste it.

Our mission is now complete. Take note: during the pandemic freeze, burgers are take-out or delivery only. The wise eat them in the car, as the cheeseburger gods intended, hot and fresh off the grill.

AMERICAN STANDARD

5424 NE 30th Ave, @expatriatepdx

Take-out only

DEETS 4-ounce patty, onion, ketchup, mustard, 1 slices American cheese, An Xuyen Bakery butter roll

PRICE $18, two per order

CABAL CONSENSUS We arrived at Expatriate one evening last spring, full of burger exhaustion and eater's remorse, slumped in a corner booth. But then a tell-tale smell from the kitchen revved our salivary glands. Just as whales have sonar, burger people can communicate via scenta beefy perfume that taunts olfactory caverns and shouts, Baby, you're home. Then they landed: a sea of shiny bun domes, their mouths opened like Pac Man to reveal juicy meat; an extra-thick blanket of American cheese, ecstatically melted; and two onion slices with the gravitational pull of planetary rings. No lettuce, no tomato, no secret sauce; just a big plunk of Heinz ketchup and French's mustard on top.

As a fun quest, Naomi Pomeroy, Kyle Webster, and their merry crew once set out to create the perfect burger. Based on our scores, four of us agreed: Expatriates American Standard is Portlands best burger. Even the one hold-out on that designation gave it 96 points, noting, Hey, I like my toppings. What united us? The dialed details, top to bottomthe buttered bun, toasted golden; the excellent meat with just the right grind, flavor, and texture; the artful proportions. Call it a chef burger without the chef burger trappings. Even now, as a pandemic take-out option, it hasn't missed a beat.

RANDOM NOTE The hot and sour spiced Indian fries elicited F-bombs of joy all around, down to the dippershouse curry ketchup, sumac ranch, and cilantro-raita aioli. Drew said it all: Just the right level of weird.

QUOTABLE It's not a smash burger, says Pomeroy on bucking the trend. Smash burgers are made for high-volume, fast-cooking. We're not trying to turn and burn. Our burgers take 6 minutes. We love a juicy burger. We are a medium-rare family.

CHEESEBURGER

4835 NE Sandy Blvd. @hitthespotburgers

Take-out, delivery

DEETS 3.2 ounce beef patty, shredded iceberg, tomato, sweet onions, dill pickles, smoky chipotle aioli, Franz bun

PRICE $4.99

CABAL CONSENSUS Instagram, avert your eyes. Behold: the anti-food porn burger, humble and homely. To us, this single cheeseburger best resembled its counterpart at the legendary In-N-Out chain, but with better execution. The building blocks are similar: the smash burger etched in crispy, caramelized crust; the toasty, pillowy bun; the blissful contrasts of sweet/crunch/warm/cold that burgerheads crave. But the sauce goes its own way, subtly infused with the smoke and dry heat of chipotle peppers. We cheered the qualitynatural beef; sweet onions shaved right off the bulb; home-canned Pennsylvania farm picklesfrom a parking lot food cart with a farm-to-table fast food motto. All this for five bucks? No arguments here. This is Portlands best food cart burger.Most impressive: the sense that every burger is carefully made just for you. Owner Jeremy Sivers takes your order, spins around to man the grill, then delivers your bag out front. Sorry, In-N-Out.

QUOTABLE On two occasions, we asked Sivers if In-N-Out is his muse. Once, he said, Not a huge fan. The other: I love what they do. We're all complicated.

SINGLE CHEESEBURGER

6620 SW Scholls Ferry Road (outside Uptown Beer Co), @rdburgershop

Take-out; outdoor seating available, depending on restrictions

DEETS 2.5-ounce patty, onions, pickle, Rough Draft sauce, American cheese, Franz hamburger bun

PRICE $6

CABAL CONSENSUS How excited were we to try this Seattle transplant when it appeared last August, out of nowhere, in the midst of pandemic, in a bare bones,, half-hidden food cart in a deep Southwest parking lot? Day 1: Okazaki, who does not drive, took a $70 ride to taste a $6 smash burger. Day 2: Oakley was first in line at opening time; 15 minutes later, he dropped a rave review on his Instagram story. Even Pauline dug it! And consider this: no lettuce, no tomato, no plot twists. Just the art of simplicity. Every move has been considered by friends and co-owners Nick Jarvis and Aaron Wilcenski: Oregon's prized, pasture-raised Painted Hills Natural Beef, fast-griddled into a crispy-edged beauty; wonderfully molten cheese; some pickle snap; thin onions melting into the action, and a notched-up mayo-ketchup/mustard sauce throwing faint notes of funk and barbecue. Oakley proclaimed it the Platonic ideal of a McDonald's regular cheeseburger but with a taste and execution far better than that inspiration.

RANDOM NOTE If the super-crispy waffle fries ($5) were any lighter, they would levitate from the box. Best deployed with the cheesy house whiz.

SMASH BURGER

Pop-up Dec. 12-13, 11 am 3 p.m., 8212 N Denver Ave; @derbykenton

DEETS Two 4-ounce patties, shredded lettuce, house pickles, two slices American cheese, Derby sauce, Portland French Bakery brioche bun, with house potato chips

PRICE$12

CABAL CONSENSUS Make no mistake, Judith Stokes is determined: solo business owner, proud Filipino American and, with Tita's Pista, a one-time pioneer of Mississippi's food-cart scene. Her philosophy at Derby Kenton, opened in 2018, was direct: My burger, my place. I'll put chocolate sauce on it if I want. Alas, her turmeric-laced burger experiment flopped. So she dove into classic burger research and emerged with Portland's best-kept smash burger secret. Behold: two melty cheese-clad patties; the sublime crunch of lettuce ribbons and homemade pickles; a ketchup/mayo sauce boosted by the kitchen's stoneground mustard aioli. Okazaki is still talking about it. Pauline called it a Top 5 favorite. Moaned Oakley, This is Heaven's version of a Big Mac. Imagine those rough flavors and textures, done to perfection.

CIVIL WAR We battled over the brioche bun, more typical of a bistro burger than a purist's classic. Said Oakley: The best non-Franz, non-Martin's bun yet. Honestly, I am reminiscing about the bun, which I rarely do. Retorted Pauline: Too soft, too floppy.

RANDOM NOTEDerby Kenton is currently closed to remodel its new location, reopening in early spring. Last chance till then: mid-December's window pop-up. We'll fight you for the last one.

QUOTABLE We had to ask: Is a Big Mac Stokess new muse? I've boycotted McDonald's for twenty-three years now. By no means an homage. I'm super anti-them. I support small businesses. Got it.

LOUNGE BURGER

5474 NE Sandy Blvd., @clydesprimerib

Take-out and delivery; indoor and patio dining available, depending on restrictions

DEETS 4-ounce patty, shredded lettuce, tomato, pickles, onion, burger sauce, American cheese, Franz pub bun; fries included

PRICE $9

CABAL CONSENSUS The Cabals biggest surprise. A legit, soul-warming drive-in burger (humble, detailed, crave-inducing) hiding inside of an ancient, dimly lit, beef-meets-Goodfellas steakhouse, complete with creepy chandeliers and curvy leather booths as big as Tilt-A-Whirls. At the helm: newish chef Will Boothe, who flipped the beloved burgers at historic Lighthouse Restaurant & Bar. His little-known Lounge Burger elicited gasps of happiness. The meat: Booth is bringing itrib eye, tenderloin, brisket, ground in-house. His smash burger crust is magnificent; fuhgeddaboudit. The condiments: fully loaded for crunch, contrast, and mayo-ketchup-pickle drip. Only quibble: the brioche bun, a bit heavy and bistro burger-ish.

MAJOR BONUS Stellar fries, served gratis on the side. A killer deal for 9 bucks.

QUOTABLE A lady who's worked here for 20 years breaks down fresh potatoes every week, confides Boothe. Its a whole different ballgame to make all the fries in-house.

"BEAST BURGER"

1845 NW 23rd Place (Nob Hill Food Carts), @farmerandthebeast

Take-out and delivery; outdoor seating available, depending on restrictions

DEETS Two 3-ounce patties, lettuce, shaved onion, pickles, special sauce, two slices American cheese, Franz sesame bun

PRICE $10

CABAL CONSENSUS Two laid-off pandemic-era cooks are making a last stand in a food cart that espouses dueling thoughts on the mind-body connectionone half is devoted to unrepentant, meat-rampaging smash burgers; the other, artisan bowls and salads via their longstanding farm connections. What's surprising is how well it works. The burger captures the zeitgeist of a Big Mac without the middle bun, backed by lots of crust and crisp edges, assorted textures and crunches, and what Okazaki deemed a truly special sauce. We all loved that brain-transporting fusion of warm gooey cheese and sauce, what Oakley calls the glorious glop. Points lost: the meat density is fierce, without a ton of seasoning or vegetable contrast, despite good quality beef. But overall, quite satisfying.

RANDOM NOTE Hard not to love a food cart serving polenta from Oregon's erudite Ayer's Creek Farm.

QUOTEABLE The secret to that sauce? A hidden thrum of spicy brown mustard. It's the most underrated condiment out there, confides co-owner Jeff Larson.

CHEESEBURGER

10131 NE Cascades Pkwy, @fullersburgershack

Takeout/delivery during freeze; indoor dining availabledepending on restrictions

DEETS 4-ounce patty, lettuce, tomato, crinkle-cutpickles, sweet onions, secret sauce, American cheese, Franz sesame bun

PRICE $6.95

CABAL CONSENSUS The cheeseburger is still a fixture at Fullers Coffee Shop in the Pearl, an icon and relic ofDrugstore CowboyPortland. And, as legend has it, Fuller's cheeseburger has not changed since 1947. Now, under a local restaurant group, it has a secondary lifestar attraction and raison d'etre of sister operation Fullers Burger Shack, a sterile mall spot with dreams of franchising. If anything, the Burger Shack version is a hair better than the coffee shop original. What we loved: the warm creaminess, the perfect proportions, the luscious char, the splendid crunch of whole iceberg leaves, the way the cheese pooled over the edges.

CIVIL WAR We clashed over the sauce's uber-sweetnessdistinct note or palate killer?Yes, this is the lone burger blessed with 100 points, via Oakley, who swooned, It's nearly identical to Burger Kings Whopper in construction and the Platonic ideal of that style. Its everything I want in a burger. Brooks logged in 96 points. But Drew was less convinced, going 85, and Pauline locked down at 78 points, deriding its fake-y sweetness.

QUOTEABLEUnder phone interrogation, a Fuller's employee revealed the secret to its secret sauce: mayo, ketchup, and six exotic spices, including cayenne, curry powder, and white pepper. Somewhere in Portland, its still 1947.

CLASSIC SINGLE

5410 NE 33rd Ave., @byhpdx

Pick up or delivery; outdoor dining available, depending on restrictions

DEETS4-ounce patty, shredded lettuce, sweet onions, homemade pickles, Dukes mayonnaise, brown mustard, ketchup, American cheese, Martins potato roll

PRICE$6.95

CABAL CONSENSUS Famed founder John Gorham is famously gone. But the house classic is the same as it ever was, backed by chef-loved Duke's mayo, a Southern specialty, and East Coast cult-worshipped Martin's potato rolls, made famous at Shake Shack. We found it handsome and nicely scaled, with a party of long lettuce shreds falling all about. The patty boasted a juiciness that eluded many burgers we tried. Where it lost points: the bun (despite that nice squish, needed more toasting), the sweet onions (elusive), and the zucchini pickles (slightly weird). But bottom line, overheard at first bite: Damn, thats good. Sweet price, too.

CIVIL WAR We battled over the impact of brown mustard, an unconventional choice. Okazaki called it a nice touch, an unexpected zing. Oakley cringed.

RANDOM NOTE $3 for a can of Diet Coke? For two buckeroos, we coulda ordered your Miller High Life instead. The Cabal rage-sipped.

CHEESEBURGER

1207 SE Hawthorne Blvd., @bottlerocketpdx

Take-out, delivery, outdoor seating available depending on restrictions

DEETS 4-ounce patty, shredded iceberg, raw and grilled onions, kosher dills, Sriracha mayo, Cheddar cheese, Franzpubbun

PRICE $10

CABAL CONSENSUS Head into the heart of Cartopia, Portlands OG food cart pod, to find a fun-loving, hand-hewn burger-joint diner without walls, with calls out to Asian kitsch, artisan culture, and Portland's beloved, R.I.P. dive-bar Club 21 burger. First, let's be clear: the house mayo sauce is hoo-boy spicy, but in other respects, this burger worships classic form. What grabbed us: the rich flavors, the cold-crisp-crunchy elements, the toasty Franz bun, and the hard-formed, nicely charred patty flashing chuck from esteemed meat purveyor Nicky USA. Kudos on the onions, which go acoustic and electric, some raw, some sweetly caramelized. Drawback: the M.I.A. cheese flavor on the burger's back half.

CIVIL WAR That Sriracha mayo sauce. Most agreed: the heat overwhelmed an otherwise lovely burger. Only Okazaki dissented, arguing: I gave it extra points. It's different.

QUOTEABLE Opined Oakley mid-bite: After years after worshipping Martins potato rolls, I now conclude that a well-toasted Franz bun can be superior.

''PORTLAND"

3111 SE Division St., @pdxsliders

Take-out and delivery; indoor and outdoor dining available, depending on restrictions

DEETS 6-ounce patty, raw onions, pickle, aioli, American cheese, Portland French Bakery brioche bun; fries included

PRICE $11

CABAL CONSENSUS In 2016, a Yelp army rallied behind this Sellwood food truck. Aa year later, it was a brick-and-mortar and now, PDX Sliders has Portlands mini-chain fever. Though best-known for playful sliders, the kitchen also erects a full-sized classic cheeseburger. Its not The Wire of burgers, but more like Friends: rewatchable, well-crafted, very likeable. Noteworthy: the ring of smoky char on a tasty bun; that little smack of salt in the beefy meat; the right cheese drip; and big-tasting pickles. What it lacked: contrast, so key to a truly great burger. With lettuce and tomato, or maybe ketchup and mustard, it could be pretty perfect.

RANDOM NOTE The deal includes, seriously, a tray of fries. Noted Drew: Its like a generous pour. You taste something more than potatoes here.

TAVERN BURGER

825 N Killingsworth Ave., @tulipshoptavern

Take-out only; indoor dining available, depending on restrictions

DEETS 4-ounce patty, shredded lettuce, dill pickles, onion, special sauce, American cheese, Dos Hermanos milk bun

PRICE$8

CABAL CONSENSUS When we extracted insider lists from other classic burger hunters, one name kept popping up: the tasty drive thru model at Tulip Shop Tavern, open mid-2019. The place immediately grabbed us, a new spot that feels like an old shoewarm and personal; crooning vinyl music; spot-on vintage drinks. Burgers to beer list, it's what you might expect from industry vets with trench time at Higgins, Rum Club, and Saraveza bottle shop. Admittedly, the vibes elevated the pleasure of a solid, straight-up 1960s-era burger with some loving touchesa thin smash patty, cooked just crisp-right; a fluffy milk bun toasted in clarified butter for a cleaner flavor. Happy to eat one again. Wish list: more cheese, please.

RANDOM NOTE Surprisingly great fries, hand-cut and double fried. Choose a trio of gratis sauces from eight options, curry ketchup to honey mustard.

See more here:

Portland's 20 Best Cheeseburgers, Exhaustively Argued and Ranked - Portland Monthly

Natalie Palamides stands center stage under a showerhead. Shes topless and soaking, whimpering beneath a black Lorax mustache, clumps of glued-on chest hair trickling down her chest. She pauses and cocks her hip, modeling her oversized strap-on while morosely staring off into the distance, a petite statue of David with a loofah for a fig leaf. Of course, this isnt really Natalie; this is Nate, the titular tortured douchebro at the center of her one-man show, now on Netflix. Produced by Amy Poehler, who became aware of Palamides from her performances at the Upright Citizens Brigade, Nate is an hour-long experiment in pushing the audience to its most queasy edge, playing with gender in ways that somehow still feel uncharted. Almost entirely naked throughout the show, Nate chugs La Croix, asks to touch an audience members breasts (second times the charm), and challenges another to an on-stage wrestling match. A date with a mannequin has Nate pleading the audience for help around defining consent, and their answers are uncertain. Its a poignant, albeit shamelessly absurd, look into the psyche of a man navigating the debris of 2017s #MeToo tidal wave, and those of everyone watching him.

Palamides is well-trained in the art of absurdity, with a background in drag, improv, and clowning. Nate is her follow-up to 2017s Laid, about a woman who gives birth to an egg, for which she won the Best Newcomer Award at the Edinburgh Film Festival. The costume she used was repurposed from an earlier UCB sketch in which she played an anthropomorphic egg who would like to speak to the manager of the L.A.-based chain and food porn vehicle Eggslut. While her work is decidedly provocative, its only a couple degrees more absurd than this absurd world. And for Palamides, as she tells Poehler on a mid-afternoon Zoom call, thats part of the job.SARAH NECHAMKIN

NATALIE PALAMIDES: Amy, hey!

AMY POEHLER: Hi, Nat! This is exciting. Were doing this for Interview magazine. Youre nervous.

PALAMIDES: Im nervous.

POEHLER: Well, I wish they would start this interview like, She walked into the restaurant and took off her cardigan sweater, her bare shoulders glistened in the sunlight. She ordered poached salmon and the waiter was enthralled.

PALAMIDES: I wish that was more the energy as well.

POEHLER: Its hard to distill Nate into a few sentences, but how would you describe the character to someone who knew nothing about the show?

PALAMIDES: I would probably describe Nate as a macho douchebag with a heart of gold. Hes plagued with toxic masculinity, but is always trying to do better and always failing. Thats the idiot inside of him. And I think thats why we can laugh at him, because hes so deeply complicated by what hes been taught about how a man should act, but still his heart of gold is always seeping through. And you can see that hes really earnestly trying to be good.

POEHLER: Lets go back in time to how you first started playing that character. Where did he come from?

PALAMIDES: He first popped out when I was doing a drag workshop with a theater company in Philadelphia called the Pig Iron Theater Company about eight years ago. I was doing a bunch of men, and Nate was just one of the characters that I drummed up. The first piece I did with him was five minutes, all silence. It was the vibe of a lonely bachelor pad. Hes just sitting there watching TV, sullenly chugging this two-liter bottle of soda, and hes really sad, but you can see that hes having trouble being vulnerable. Hes this really macho dude chugging a bottle of soda who is really sad. And then he keeps burping. Every once in a while, he burps. He chugged the whole bottle in five minutes.

From there, I just had him in my back pocket. I would pull him out in sketches with my friends at UCB or in my clown group, Little Red Feathers. We made a little video with Nate who I call baby Nate because he didnt have a mustache. Back then I just kind of put some stubble on and I actually cut black hair off of a wig and glued it to the side of my face for sideburns. Now I just use mascara instead. Its much simpler, much easier to clean up. After I got back from doing my first Edinburgh, a bunch of stuff was coming up about toxic masculinity in the zeitgeist. And I thought Nate would be a good vehicle to explore a show about toxic masculinity. Honestly, I was scared about exploring the gray area of consent at first, and I kind of shied away from it. But at the time, in 2017, so much of the #MeToo movement was coming up. I was like, I cant do a show about toxic masculinity and not explore consent.

POEHLER: You just explained whats so beautifully complex about the show. There are these really big physical, clowning, slapstick, humorous moments, on top of a very deep message underneath, which is unpacking consent. Youre really comfortable with making yourself and other people uncomfortable. How do you see this as furthering the conversation about consent?

PALAMIDES: I think in that way where Im making myself uncomfortable, as well as the audience, its all fair game. Were in this room experiencing this situation together. And my goal in making everybody uncomfortable is to rip off the Band-Aid of talking about consent. I feel like so much of the discourse about consent happens online because people are uncomfortable addressing it face-to-face. They dont want to hurt their friends feelings, they dont want their friend to think badly of them. And I think that bringing it into the theater, bringing it into a room, into a situation where we cant escape talking about it with each othereven though it feels uncomfortable, we need to get over that bridge before we can start having productive conversations about the gray area of consent. What were lacking online in the discourse is empathy. Theres a point in the show where Nate asks everybody a question and he waits for a response. And I see people who came together and the audience give different responses to that question, but they still leave the show friends. And a lot of them report back to me after coming to the show a second time, or seeing me out around town saying, I had a conversation about the show and it helped my friend and I come to a better understanding of consent and masculinity. I think many conversations about all sensitive issues would go in a much better, more productive direction if we looked at each other when were saying it.

POEHLER: Thats so good. Whats so exciting about the show is youre watching the struggle of a person trying to learn in real time. And thats also very funny. In this case, its Nate trying to figure out how he can be better, but also hes limited. So what you fall into is all this kind of physical action to show how hes feeling, because hes no poet.

PALAMIDES: Hes not.

POEHLER: So what did you have to do? I keep talking about you as if you were an athlete, but watching you perform night after night, you have to really put it on the line. What do you change physically to get into Nate, night after night?

PALAMIDES: You just get in shape as if youre working out every day. I definitely did train. I wanted to be looking maybe a little bit ripped. I was doing intermittent fasting. I had worked with my friend, Chad Damiani. After the special I stopped weight training with him, but I missed being really strong. Its just a fun tool to use in physical comedy, having strength that nobody expects from a person of small stature.

POEHLER: Yes.

PALAMIDES: My younger brother grew up wrestling, and he would always pay me in packs of gum to try out new wrestling moves on me. And so I kind of had a little bit of wrestling training.

POEHLER: You do wrestle audience members in one scene. Its Andy Kaufman-esque in the way that you put yourself forward. But whats so fascinating is the man that youre wrestling with is often much more seemingly vulnerable than you are. Its really fascinating to watch them have to figure out. Because youre there to wrestle. Youre not there to fuck around.

PALAMIDES: Thats right.

POEHLER: They learn that really fast. Do people sometimes really come at you?

PALAMIDES: Yeah. I try to sense that in them, whether they really want to wrestle me or if theyre a bit hesitantthen I do a little bit of staged combat. But, a couple of times, especially in Edinburgh, when people are drinking, a few people get a bit rough and I just have to take a step back and be like, Whoa, this is a show. Its me, Natalie. Hello.

POEHLER: Youre talking about being in staged combat training, and we mentioned a little bit in your clown training. I feel like clowning as an art is very misunderstood. Improv can sometimes fall into that category, too. Its kind of discarded by the cool kids, because it takes a lot of commitment, a certain amount of vulnerability and earnestness.

PALAMIDES: I think clown and improv similarly can get a bad rap for being hokey. Thats what I bump up against a lot. On TV shows youll see like the hokey college improv team and people making fun of improvisers and wearing the plaid shirt uniform, and same with clowning. People just automatically assume its a bad birthday clown that squirts water at your face and does bad tricks with streamers and stuff. What I like to reference for the clown are the Three Stooges and Lucille Ball. Carol Burnetts a great clown, Steve Martin, Mr. Bean. Theres all these modern day clowns that people dont realize are clowns because they dont have the red nose. People dont recognize that the clown is just physical comedy.

POEHLER: Do you know Sebastian Maniscalco? He moves in a way thats completely clown based. Katt Williams used to have that too, in the sense that his body is yet another joke and its so satisfying to watch. Who are your influences? Artists, musicians, dancers, TikTokers. Is there anyone you see right now that you really dig how they move?

PALAMIDES: This is maybe a really obscure influence, but there was this man named Charles Ludlam, who was really famous in the eighties for remounting classical plays, but performing them in drag and being super campy, but still being able to move people to tears. He passed from AIDS in the eighties. I also love the PEN15 girls. I think an element to what they do is clowning because part of clowning is being the child, and they play the innocent child so well to the point where you dont even recognize that theyre 30-year-old women. And its such a beautiful, pure spirit that they produce.

POEHLER: I like a lot of TikTok dancers. Theres this guy Tristan Rubiano that I think is amazing. But also Jack Black. I love how Jack moves.

PALAMIDES: Hes a clown.

POEHLER: Hes a total clown. Hes so funny and precise. Theres just so many levels of talentIm always so impressed.

PALAMIDES: Thats such a good example. Im racking my brain right now. Of course Ill think of 50 people after we hang up.

POEHLER: You can email Carol Interview, the woman that owns Interview Magazine. Its [emailprotected].

PALAMIDES: Great. Awesome.

POEHLER: Theres a lot of absurdity in the show, balanced with these really deep and thoughtful in-the-moment moments. Our world is so absurd right now, you couldnt have dreamed how absurd it is. How do you think absurdity can be used in an absurd world?

PALAMIDES: As artists, I think were challenged to be more absurd than this absurd world. So youve just got to let your freak flag fly and you got to pull out all the stops when it comes to absurdity. Because like you said, the world is a crazy place right now. So on stage you got to be even crazier. And then I think using absurdity as this tool to take out of the emotion that they might feel and bring them to a place where they can have an open mind about it. I think creating comedy and absurdity around sensitive issues allows people to take a step back to a place where they can look at it more objectively. To think about it more, more critically, and not just from a place of emotion. Emotion is important, of course, but sometimes it clouds our ability to have a reasonable discourse.

POEHLER: Speaking of discourse, now were in a time where gender is so fluid and masculinity is changing, and its so great. Because Nate is in the middle of the change. Hes this guy who realizes, Okay, things are different and I need to get in touch with my feelings. How does one do that? And in the news now, Harry Styles is on the cover of Vogue.

PALAMIDES: Good for him.

POEHLER: And hes beautiful wearing dresses. And then Natalie is playing Nate, whos this kind of man trapped in a body that might not feel like his. Theres a long history of men playing women, and I just think its really interesting to see women play men. What could we learn about ourselves and about men and women when we watch somebody take on that character? Thats what I really love about how you play Nate.

PALAMIDES: Yeah. And thats whats fun about using drag as this tool. Historically drag has been used to poke fun at gender roles. We see a lot of men playing women in drag, and I think its good that now were seeing more drag kings out on the scene. I like exploring Nates insecurity about expressing more feminine qualities like vulnerability and just having emotions in general. Its so funny that we perceive the hiding of emotions as something thats masculine. Thats just a person with some unhealthy ways to deal with their feelings. That doesnt make someone masculine.

POEHLER: Its an old story. How do you think Nate would be handling quarantine?

PALAMIDES: Well, little pieces of Nate come from the men who I love in my life, and when you mention Nate and quarantine, I think about my brother, who I quarantined with for a month.

POEHLER: Wow.

PALAMIDES: He signed up for the Navy and his ship out date was pushed when COVID started, and he had already gotten rid of his apartment in San Francisco. And so we were quarantined together for a month while he was looking for a place, but every part of the day he was working out. Anytime I rounded the corner, he had a chain strapped to his head that was like strapped to something heavy and hes lifting it up. And then he would have a case of beer at night and watch National Geographic. My brother loves to paint too. They have that in common. My brother would either be working out, eating or watching Bob Ross and trying to do a painting. I imagine Nate doing something a bit similar.

POEHLER: So, if you like to laugh and then you like to all of a sudden turn the corner and really be encouraged to think deep stuff, then Nate is a special for you because youre going to laugh really hard. And then a second later youre going to be like, Whoa, how do I feel about this? And thats whats so interesting about your work, Natalie, is how deep youre willing to go and how funny you are. Those two things dont always coexist.

Hair: Matthew Collins

Makeup: Loren Canby

Here is the original post:

Amy Poehler and Natalie Palamides on Finding the Comedy in Consent - Interview

NOVEMBER 30, 2020 Updated December 1, 2020

Jim Pinckney aka Stinky Jim is a DJ, writer, broadcaster and producer. His Stinky Grooves show on 95bFM is currently celebrating 30 years on air.

ReadingRoom

Jim Pinckney reviews an ode to a prog-rock band by legendary music writer Gary Steel

I gave progressive rock my best shot on a wet weekend in Barcelona in the mid 1980s. We raided my flatmates older brotherss record collection and proceeded to unscientifically absorb and assess the fiddly fantasies and grandiose virtuosity of the prog-rock movement. Primarily fuelled by criminally cheap gutrot wine from the bodega three floors below, those two days felt so long they may still be carrying on somewhere.

We listened to King Crimson, ELP, Yes, Van Der Graaf Generator and others. It was an arduous and at times ridiculous mission but ultimately time well spent. Prog-rock fans can tend towards zealotry; like conspiracy theorists, if you're going to cross swords with one youd best have some information ammunition.

With a lifetime of keen listening and top-drawer music writing to his name Gary Steel is an excellent man to have an argument with. Over the counter of his much missed Beautiful Music store in K Road we would Statler and Waldorf it on the merits of soporific German ambience versus hectoring dancehall vocalists or a myriad of other musical battlegrounds. Garys got a great mind and formidable knowledge so it was always a respectful, enlightening joust - except when it came to prog, which is where he can get somewhat heated.

Who better then to write a track by track, manual for the faithful, accounting the 10-year lifespan of UK prog legends Gentle Giant. His love for the band is profound, exhaustive and at times wearying. Formed in 1970 after a failed stab at pop stardom as Simon Dupree And The Big Sound, Gentle Giant spent a decade bashing out their own brand of minutely detailed, bumptious baroquenroll. Beloved as a cult outfit, they never really cracked it commercially and a seemingly endless raft of reasons are offered up for that. Curiously an absence of self-awareness and repeated missteps that are only a spontaneously combusting drummer away from Spinal Tap arent among them. By 1980 their final studio album, Civilian, wasnt even getting stocked in some stores and the patience of the press had probably worn out a few years before with the petulant, portentous, anti-media concept album Interview.

Its Garys description of the band as "five hairy, sweaty men on stage going for it" that will be the line that continues to haunt my memory

Gary manages a frugality and focus with his writing that feels refreshingly at odds with the bands why play one note when you can have 15 with a counterpoint in 4/7 time? philosophy. Hoary old rock critic cliches like the incendiary live show or artistic tour de force are pleasantly absent and instead we get "declamatory guitar riffs" and "juicy marimba solos". Tellingly its Garys description of the band as "five hairy, sweaty men on stage going for it" that will be the line that continues to haunt my memory. Its all very very male. Outside of the biographical bookends there isnt a great deal of colour about the players themselves. Presumably the Gentle Giant fanatics already know that form inside out, and theres no mistaking who this is written for.

The oft-trotted out, false dichotomy that casts punk rock as a response to prog and thus its executioner is wisely avoided. Johnny Rotten may have worn an up-cycled Pink Floyd T-shirt with "I Hate" added as a prefix but he was also an avowed fan of Van Der Graaf Generator. There are no absolutes. Punk was as much a reaction to the execrable cabaret mulch polluting the airwaves from the likes of Brotherhood Of Man, Showaddywaddy and the Wurzels as it was to the melanin-challenged boogie of Gentle Giant and their ilk. Unlike Genesis who coalesced in luxury at the centuries old elite Charterhouse School, Gentle Giant were formed around a core of three brothers born in Glasgows notorious Gorbals tenements and raised in Portsmouth. They may well have related to punk's class-battling philosophy considerably better than many of their contemporaries.

Ultimately the wrestling of the zeitgeist from the pompous public schoolers and the dregs of the working mens club scene did everyone a favour, even if its one that Gary sniffs at, saying he first stopped listening to Gentle Giant when he "stupidly bought into (punk), wholesale". Knowing the wide breadth of his taste and knowledge, that's an uncharacteristically disingenuous statement, only really serving to offer up raw meat for the prog balcony and their feelings of victimhood.

After over 120 pages of being on first name terms with Derek, Gary, Kerry, John and Ray I felt I was being lulled into some curious kind of Stockholm Syndrome. It was time to face the elephant in the room - their actual music. Following the authors recommendations and perhaps a little carried away by his eloquent passion I took a curated graze through their back catalogue. I think its kindest to say it very much remains not for everyone.

Gentle Giant: Every album, every song by Gary Steel is available via Sonicbond Publishing

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The greatest rock is prog rock - Newsroom

Y

ou f**cking onion dont you f***ing get it?

It could only be Sir Philip Green on the phone. The negative piece the Evening Standard had written on his Arcadia retail empire had ticked him off royally and, as was his wont, he was straight on the phone to bark what he thought of it. And me.

You always knew such barrackings were coming, and when they did, you also knew his initial burst of fury usually with the funniest concoctions of abuse and faux threats of violence - would eventually give way to a joke, a gossip and the invitation to a cup of tea.

It was precisely that mixture of brawn and charm that got him to the riches he achieved as the undoubted kings of the British high street.

As recently as 10 years ago, he held such a position of power in UK retail that his offices at Arcadia, off Oxford Street, were like a sultans palace, where retailers, property barons and bankers would come to have him pass judgement on their feuds and disputes.

For, when it came to retailing of the bricks and mortar type at least there were few big players whose secrets and needs he didnt know.

He was a trader first and foremost. A born negotiator of deals, be they for cloth, property, finance, taxes, and even, latterly, pension liabilities.

So, just how did he get to be in this humbled position?

Green was born in 1952, the North London son of a father who owned property, garages and electrical businesses. His parents sent him to a Jewish boarding school, Carmel College in Berkshire, and gave him a fairly unaffectionate childhood.

He left Carmel with no O-Levels, but learned to be crafty negotiator at the knee of Rodney Geminder, a successful shoe wholesaler based in Old Street.

As told in Oliver Shahs biography Damaged Goods, he learned to buy low and sell high, particularly bankrupt stock, which was traded from the pubs north of Oxford street a district that remained his stomping ground for the rest of his career.

With his mother Alma, he went into clothes manufacturing and importing. Often not successfully and usually underwritten by her money.

But he learned from his mistakes.

With his knowledge of buying stock for Geminder from companies in trouble, he made his first major success in his twenties buying a distressed retail chain called Bonanza Jeans using borrowed money from Bank Leumi.

Green knew it had 400,000 pairs of jeans in stock which had been totally undervalued by the receivers and bought the whole chain for little over 1 million.

Within a month, hed repaid the bank its 1 million and, after roasting its buyers into driving better bargains, he was living high on the hog, working hard during the day and spending fast in the Ritz casino by night.

He learned that menacing style reportedly from an unsavoury loan shark he used to use called Anthony Schneider.

Then, he bought Jean Jeanie, another chain in distress, for around half a million pounds, adding it to Bonanza, turning it into profit and selling the combined group to Lee Cooper for 7 million.

The press, who he assiduously courted even then, called him the Jean Genius.

It was 1986. Green was 34, loaded, and sporting a Spandau Ballet hairstyle.

His barrowboy trading style initially went down well in his next venture, a stock market quoted menswear business called Amber Day. By force of his personality, and trading prowess, he turned the business around, moving manufacturing to Hong Kong for cheaper supplies.

He restructured its Woodhouse and Review chains then bought What Everyone Wants, sending his share price soaring as staid City institutions were drawn to this epitomy of the Eighties , winner takes all zeitgeist.

But when recession came, sales crashed brutally. The same City which once loved his maverick style fled, citing fears of lack of transparency and good practice. They muttered darkly about an apparent share support operation (which he denied) and his connections to characters such as the convicted fraudster Roger Levitt and Schneider.

Green was out, with news leaking about a Department of Trade and Industry Investigation hovering over him. The probe came to nothing and Green was left with a resentment for the Citys posh boys that never left him.

He soon bounced back, teaming up with Scottish tycoon Tom Hunter, fashion importer and now restaurateur Richard Caring and the Telegraph owning Barclay brothers to buy Sears for 548 million. He asset stripped the empire within months, and he and his fellow investors made a 280 million profit.

In 1999, having proved the City he didnt need it to make money, he bid for Marks & Spencer with a view to making a killing selling the freeholds on its 300-strong store estate.

Again though, the double barrelled c***s, as Green called City types were to be his undoing as his banking advisers took fright at dark rumours that his wife Tina had been buying shares in M&S before the bid.

He would not lick his wounds for long. Soon after, he bought BHS in a move that would both propel him to billionaire status and destroy his reputation.

He and his crack management team, including ex-Debenhams chief Terry Green and Allan Leighton of Asda fame, set to work on boosting BHSs profits through skillful buying and stock management, quickly turning a business hed bought for 100 million into a 1 billion one.

He went on to buy Arcadia, where retail veteran Stuart Rose was chief executive, sealing the deal with Rose in a final round of haggling outside the George Club in Mayfair.

Arcadias TopShop brought him glamour as well as wealth. He turned it into the hottest retail property on the street, signing up celebrities like Kate Moss to design ranges and appear with him at parties and fashion shows.

Buoyed by success, he made another bid for M&S, which at that stage was being run by Rose. He failed, and famously had a handbags-at-dawn moment with the suave CEO on the street, jumping out of his limo and grabbing him by the lapels.

At the height of Arcadia-BHSs profitable heyday, Tina, in whose name his empire was owned, took out a record breaking 1.2 billion tax free thanks to her being based in Monaco.

It was 2005, and while some in the business world applauded his success, others found it distasteful. More still were baffled as to how the company could afford it. That question came back to haunt the Greens in future years.

As the retail world moved increasingly online and big, legacy store chains like Woolworths and HMV fell by the wayside, Green neglected to invest in taking his brands digital.

Even in bricks and mortar, competition was leaving his chains behind. Fast fashion chains capable of switching ranges in a heartbeat were beating his brands at every turn. Primark, Zara, H&M began to rule the roost.

BHS was the first of the Green empire to crumble, and the halcyon days of racy profit margins dramatically turned into a miserable tale of contraction.

Worse still, it had a massive hole in its pension scheme.

Green spent his days and nights trying to figure out an exit.

That eventually came in 2015, when he sold the business for 1 to Dominic Chappell, a former bankrupt racing driver.

Green rejoiced at the sale, thinking it had lifted a huge weight from his shoulders. But it was not to prove so.

He was totally incapable of turning the business around and the company collapsed into bankruptcy with 11,000 job losses and a 571 million pension deficit.

The row that ensued was to destroy Greens reputation and almost claim his knighthood. He was pilloried by MPs and the pension hole he had left the company with when he passed it on was described as the unacceptable face of capitalism. A bizarre, six hour, performance in front of the business select committee saw him berate one MP for staring at him.

Eventually, he paid 363 million into the pension fund after lengthy negotiations with regulators. Over the years, he and his family had collected some 580 million from BHS in dividends, rents and interest on loans.

He had once been a regular on the party circuit. Newspapers and glossy magazines salivated over extravaganzas as his 60th birthday party, where he flew 150 of his closest friends to Mexico, including Naomi Campbell, Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Moss.

But since the BHS scandal, he has been often exiled in his Monaco base.

Dont feel too sorry for him at the height of the BHS pensions fiasco, he took delivery of a 100 million yacht, Lionheart, on which he spends much of his time.

He became a bogeyman of the #MeToo movement. The friends who remained loyal despaired. Harold Tillman, veteran retailer and former owner of the Jaeger chain, says: Ive known him 40 years. I have seen him do so many kind, good things for people.

But, as even TopShop losses soared to nearly 500 million, he was being seen as a dinosaur in a world of rising online giants like Boohoo, Asos and the Hut Group.

Like his retail empire, he had failed to keep up with the sensibilities of the modern world.

As in so many industries, the coronavirus pandemic accelerated trends that had been running for years.

Covids lockdowns of shops and malls have seen not only Greens own stores suffer like never before, but his sales in Debenhams, the chain on the brink of collapse where he is the biggest holder of concessions.

However, few will feel too sorry for him. The Greens are still one of Britains richest couples.

They have long since diversified their wealth away from retail and into property and other ventures.

But as far as his reputation on the High Street goes, with Arcadia set to follow Debenhams into administration, the king has fallen far.

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The rise and fall of Sir Philip Green, the retail king who fell to ground - Evening Standard

Loungewear, Home-Office- timeless tracksuits for the year 2021

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Bella Hadid in sweatpants.

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Dua Lipa in an unwinded Ensemble.

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Loungewear stays! And so the Jogging match being used in the following year - Play Crazy Game

Stjepan Kljuji, Radovan Karadi, and Alija Izetbegovi

There is one case in which inter-nationalist cooperation manifested in an electoral process: that of Bosnia and Herzegovina on November 18th, 1990. The first multi-party elections after the socialist era saw the triumph of the three parties on an ethnic basis

The emergence of a potential "alliance between nationalisms" on a European scale has been a constant theme on the political scene in recent years. Although there was no boom in the European elections and despite the difficulties of the Covid crisis, the question remains open. What unites today's right-wing nationalisms is well known: a shared vision of the world based on traditional values and, above all, a common enemy the so-called European super-state and the ideology it stands for. However, any reflection leads to a fundamental question: can movements that look by definition only at the borders of their own community of reference really share a joint strategic horizon? Are they not bound to clash if the common enemy really were to fall or if those borders, as often happens, overlap with those imagined and claimed by other communities?

Dossier

In November 1995, the Dayton Agreement ended the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The solution adopted with its contradictions, including the de facto recognition of ethnic cleansing was born as a result of a compromise to obtain peace. Now, in a country that is losing young people who emigrate in search of a future, it is clear that, without a reform, Bosnia and Herzegovina may remain a dysfunctional state that will not be able to proceed towards European integration. Our dossier

Mutatis mutandis, this reflection cannot but recall, perhaps with some potential analogy, episodes of contemporary European history. In the long phase of Yugoslavia's dissolution, the synergies between opposing nationalisms were far more numerous than the official narratives can tell. And there is one case in which inter-nationalist cooperation manifested in an electoral process: that of Bosnia and Herzegovina on November 18th, 1990. The republic's first multi-party elections after the socialist era saw the triumph of the three ethnic parties: SDA (Muslim nationalists), SDS (Serbian nationalists), and HDZ (Croatian nationalists). Compared to the "memory loads" that abound in the country, that event is hardly remembered in the press and in the collective sentiment.

How did those elections come about? It was not as fast a process as in Slovenia and Croatia, where elections were held already in spring 1990, nor as linear as in the other republics, which voted in the autumn with a sequence of steps similar to that of the post-socialist European countries. The League of Bosnian Communists (SKBiH) initially tried to manage the transition in a different, more gradual way: the creation of so-called "parties on a national basis" was prohibited by law, even if these already existed in the other republics and, informally, were developing in BiH too.

Coming from a tradition of dogmatism, in which they had historically stood out even from their counterparts in other Yugoslav republics, the leaders of SKBiH were sincerely convinced that the only way to protect multi-culturality was normative. But they miscalculated the legitimacy and real power of the party, a section of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (SKJ) which by then in fact no longer existed after the disaster of the 14th Congress. Furthermore, the SKBiH was deeply weakened by the general economic crisis and by the many corruption and embezzlement scandals that raged in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the late 1980s another topic on which, with exceptions such as the accurate Bosnia-Herzegovina, the end of a Legacyby Neven Aneli, less has been written than would be appropriate, and on which elements remain to be clarified.

Even before the nationalist parties, which would jump to the chance of presenting themselves as victims of repression, it was the progressive and liberal circles of Sarajevo that publicly protested against the restrictions imposed by SKBiH. Among these were the youth organisations, the newspapers Valter and Dani, the anti-nationalist intellectuals of the UJDI, andvarious public figures who, consistently with their radical anti-authoritarian position, advocated unlimited pluralism. The already well-known Goran Bregovi and Miljenko Jergovi took a stand, equating with contempt the Bosnian Communists with the North Korean ones. Given the growing indecision in the League, the ball went to the Bosnian Constitutional Court. On June 12th, 1990, in a controversial decision, the Court ruled that norm unconstitutional, thus allowing the formation of ethno-nationalist parties.

It is possible that, even if the ban had remained in force, it would have been circumvented or simply overcome by fait accompli. But in the years to come, many continued to look at that decision as a crucial event of Yugoslav dissolution, a what-if moment on which to project scientific hypotheses and, probably, some human regret. Political scientistNenad Stojanovi suggested that a popular referendum on the issue a hypothesis that some Communist leaders had actually contemplated at the time could have been an "elegant and democratic solution to avoid this Hobbesian dilemma". In a survey carried out in April 1990 in Mostar, Sarajevo, and Banja Luka, around 70% of those interviewed said they were in favour of maintaining the ban. Come November, a very similar percentage of voters voted for nationalist parties. Time went by very fast in 1990.

The campaign of the three nationalist parties could then begin, combining radicalism and moderation with almost scientific shrewdness. They amplified narratives of danger that became real performative acts from the alleged repression against cultural differences to suspected ethnic discrimination in the workplace, from the perception of insecurity to the conflicts of memories concerning the Second World War to then show themselves as the only forces able to both express and control fear, legitimising each other.

We have been waiting for you, this Bosnia and Herzegovina needs you. People have stopped believing in the high-sounding words [of communists], but they will never stop believing in love, good neighbourliness, and community", said SDA leader Alija Izetbegovi on July 12th, 1990 in the founding assembly of the SDS. He stood in front of Radovan Karadi who, a year and three months later, in hisfamous speech to parliament, announced the beginning of the war and the annihilation of Bosnian Muslims. Gestures and words of good will were reciprocated by representatives of all three parties, who even carried out joint events to show together their respective religious symbols and national flags, waiting to share power.

It must be said that the three nationalist parties cautiously avoided the term "alliance", always using the term "collaboration". It soon became clear that their strategic objectives were clearly irreconcilable. The SDS had announced since the campaign the creation of parallel institutions on an ethnic basis (another performative act, which materialised a year later), the HDZ advocated a cantonised, Swiss-style Bosnia, and the SDA called for a unitary republic. Everyone's tactical goal was, after all, only one, as HDZ leader Stjepan Kljuji dryly admitted in an interview: "First of all, we must free ourselves from communism".

But the Communists by then "post", having added the label of social democrats as was the case everywhere, with the slogan "We will live together" echoing Titoist brotherhood and unity, were still the favourite party according to all polls. Many still wonder why these macroscopic errors were made. In addition to the possible inexperience and incorrect methodology of the operators, several believe that there was a real silent voter effect: many people would not reveal their real preference for ethnonationalist parties, either because they still feared repercussions from the authorities, or because they did not dare to admit to supporting what seemed socially not accepted, but responded to one's desire for change at any cost.

Immediately behind in the polls was another non-nationalist party, which gathered a lot of expectations in Bosnia and Herzegovina: the Alliance of Reformists (SRSJ). The movement founded by Federal Prime Minister Ante Markovi had the ambitious plan of economic transition and a democratic, plural Third Yugoslavia , ready to approach the European Community without completely giving up its origins.

Someone talks about coexistence, but we don't want to live in coexistence. We don't want to coexist. We want to live!, said writer Abdulah Sidran, candidate for the reformists, at a rally, to claim what was then the normality of a common citizenship and daily life. Someone said that the reformists were like a dream team, bringing together prestigious names among intellectuals, artists, activists, and entrepreneurs. But several factors led to their defeat: the ambiguous relationship with the post-communists (they harmed each other, running more as competitors than allies despite similar programmes) and the failure on a federal scale of Markovi's project, caught in the crossfire between the Slovenian and Serbian leadership another of the many synergies between nationalisms of the Yugoslav dissolution. Some of the reformists, realising they had boarded the wrong wagon, would soon ride the nationalist zeitgeist. One of them was Emir Kusturica.

Overall, the impression is that the 1990 election campaign took place in a more ordinary, calm atmosphere than one might imagine in hindsight. We expected more problems than there have been, said Alija Izetbegovi himself two days before the vote. But there were some episodes of tension in some areas, mainly in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina. In Foa, the unrest resulting from the conflict between employees of the local bus company lasted for months and became violent, also leading to a state of emergency and a rift between the local Serb and Muslim communities.

It was one of the hundreds of cases of protests related to productive activities, to conflicts between workers, business leaders, and local administrators in the context of extreme uncertainty of the economic transition. In a few and limited cases, like in Foa, they resulted in identity tensions. There are no cases in which the opposite happened, at least before the elections. However, it must be said that, even with the temporal distance and the sources available today, it is not easy to fully grasp the real significance of those events. Newspapers of the time could minimise or amplify reports from the ground according to editorial interests. Nor is it easy to disentangle the testimonies, which at times tend as is inevitable in subjective memories to deterministically mix or connect that period with the descent into war and the terrible sufferings that followed; or they even idealise, or remove, that strange time window on which much remains to be heard and understood.

The outcome of those elections is sometimes rather equated to that of a census. The three nationalist parties won over 70% of the votes for the Bosnian parliament, which yielded 83% of the seats, guaranteeing them a comfortable division of power and relegating the reformists to irrelevance and the League of Communists to the lowest result of a post-communist party of all Yugoslavia (and among the worst in the whole of Central-Eastern Europe). However, several authors, such asNenad Stojanovi and Asim Mujki , argued that those elections and all subsequent ones were not really the expression of a widespread, conscious nationalist sentiment. Rather, many voters were motivated by a "prisoner's dilemma": in the expectation that the "others" would vote for "their" nationalist party, they did so in turn, fearing that their own interests and, later, their biological safety would be threatened if there was an uneven outcome between groups. The synergy between the nationalists started from the top of meetings and rallies, but took form in the intimate solitude of the ballot, through a careful sequence of calculations and fears. After thirty years this dilemma has not yet been solved, leaving incalculable damage behind it.

Dossier

In November 1995, the Dayton Agreement ended the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The solution adopted with its contradictions, including the de facto recognition of ethnic cleansing was born as a result of a compromise to obtain peace. Now, in a country that is losing young people who emigrate in search of a future, it is clear that, without a reform, Bosnia and Herzegovina may remain a dysfunctional state that will not be able to proceed towards European integration. Our dossier

See the rest here:

The elections of 1990, the year zero of Bosnian ethnocracy - Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso

Arun Srivastava of Paul Hastings

There is currently significant interest in ESG and sustainable investing. The UK Government is pivoting further towards the greening of the UK economy.

In his recent Financial Services Statement, Chancellor Rishi Sunak committed the UK to extending is leadership in green finance.

This statement was accompanied by important announcements around sustainable finance, including Government plans to issue green bonds and to impose mandatory obligations on asset managers and advisers in relation to climate related disclosures.

Asset managers, investors and financial advisors alike will need to focus their efforts in this area - the green movement isn't going away anytime soon.

On the contrary, it is clear that firms will need to embed ESG principles into the fabric of their governance structures and their investment and advisory processes.

Climate policy formed a fundamental part of the US election and will likely play an increasing role in how the UK interacts with both the EU and the US, especially as the UK emerges into the post-Brexit world.

The reboot of the UK Government has injected increased energy into ESG initiatives in the UK. However, 2021 has for some time been pencilled into the regulatory calendar as a year of change for ESG.

In March 2021, the EU's Disclosure Regulation will come into force, with the EU's Taxonomy Regulation following in 2022. These new rules will address the current vacuum in which there are no mandatory provisions relating to ESG compliance.

This often means that investors are unable to verify whether a fund or investment service is in fact operating in a manner consistent with ESG principles, leading to concerns about the practice of greenwashing that permits products and services to be held out as ESG compliant when they are not.

The new rules will impose obligations to make disclosures to investors of ESG processes, and also to require the screening of investments for ESG compliance purposes.

Firms already have a huge incentive to adopt ESG requirements, given that the demand for ESG compliant products is increasing. This is clearly demonstrated when comparing the value of ESG funds in 2020 to 2019 - with ESG funds from this year attracting three or four times the value of funds in 2019.

ESG investing certainly appears to have captured the current zeitgeist, and these new regulations will only increase this further.

To date, international efforts around climate change and ESG issues have produced various recommendations and guidance, which have all been in the form of soft law, which is non-binding.

This will change rapidly and remarkably over the coming months and years as mandatory legal obligations come into force. These requirements are targeted at requiring firms to build consideration of ESG issues into their investment and advisory processes, and to provide clients and investors with consistent and reliable disclosures of ESG issues in their products and services.

While this will create new burdens, sustainable investing is also good from the perspective of attracting investor funds, as mentioned above, and in preserving investor value.

Climate change creates major risks, including physical risks, as well as those posed by the transition to a low carbon economy, which will undoubtedly be disruptive to revenues and asset values. Investors need to take these risks into account in allocating capital and pricing risks.

See the original post:

ESG disclosure regulations: What do investors need to know? - Investment Week

In the 2020 election, Donald Trump received more votes from Black male voters than he did in the 2016 election, and Barack Obama has thoughts on why that is.

In an extensive interview for theAtlantic, former President Barack Obama spoke about the coronavirus, his legacy, and the idea that Trump's support from Black men might be due to "the bling, the women, the money" in hip-hop. The 59-year-old former president suggested there's a comparison to be made between how Trump values success and the way a lot of the genre's videos convey success.

"Its interestingpeople are writing about the fact that Trump increased his support among Black men [in the 2020 presidential election], and the occasional rapper who supported Trump," said Obama. "I have to remind myself that if you listen to rap music, its all about the bling, the women, the money. A lot of rap videos are using the same measures of what it means to be successful as Donald Trump is. Everything is gold-plated. That insinuates itself and seeps into the culture."

NBC's exit pollindicates Joe Biden received 80 percent of the support of Black men, whereasHillary Clinton got 82 percent of the demographic in 2016. Comparatively, Obama got 95 percent and 87 percent in 2008 and 2012.

"America has always had a caste systemrich and poor, not just racially but economicallybut it wasn't in your face most of the time when I was growing up," added Obama. "Then you start seeing Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, that sense that either you've got it or you're a loser. And Donald Trump epitomizes that cultural movement that is deeply ingrained now in American culture."

Obama also said he believes Trump's popularity on TV translated over to the world of politics, showcasing "the power of television in culture." He said he misses a lot of the popular culture zeitgeist because he doesn't really watch TV. "I certainly don't watch reality shows," he specified.

As for Trump's refusal to concede following the results of the 2020 election, in which Joe Biden won both the popular vote and the electoral college, Obama compared the current situation to when he won in 2008.

"For all the differences between myself and George W. Bush, he and his administration could not have been more gracious and intentional about ensuring a smooth handoff," Obama recalled. "One of the really distressing things about the current situation is the amount of time that is being lost because of Donald Trumps petulance and the unwillingness of other Republicans to call him on it."

See what Twitter had to say about Obama's divisive comments below.

See more here:

Barack Obamas Comments About Hip-Hop and Trumps Increased Support From Black Men Stirs Up Debate on Twitter - Complex

What are some of the central characteristics of the solution proposed?

Automation of Labor

As the trend of what appears to be an exponential increase in the evolution of information technology, robotics, and computerization continues, it is apparent that human labor is becoming more and more inefficient in regard to meeting the demands necessary for supporting the global population. From the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, we have seen an increasing trend toward technological unemployment, which is the phenomenon where humans are replaced by machines in the work force. This trend, while debatable in regard to its ultimate long term effect on employment, creates a propensity to displace the worker and hence the consumer, slowing consumption.

That stated, this issue is actually overshadowed by a larger social imperative: That the use of machine labor (mechanization) is provably more efficient than human performance in virtually all sectors. For example, if one was to track the performance output of factory production within the US steel industry for the past 200 years, we find that not only do less than 5% of the workforce now work in such factories, the efficiency and output capacities have increased substantially. The trend, in fact, now shows that Employment is Inverse to Productivity. The more mechanization occurs, the more productive an industry becomes.

Today, there are repetitive occupations which simply do not need to exist given the state of automation and computerization (cybernation). Not only would mechanization in these areas reduce the mundane burden and allow more free time for people, it also would, more importantly, increase productivity. Machines do not need breaks, vacations, sleep, etc.. The use of mechanization on its own means to create many forms of abundance on this planet, from food to physical goods.

However, to do this, the traditional labor system we have simply cannot exist. The reality is that our labor for income system is stifling progress in its requirement to keep people working for the sake of economic stability. We are reaching a stage where the efficiency of automation is overriding and making obsolete the system of labor for income. This trend shows no sign of slowing, especially in regard to the now dominant Service Industry, which is increasingly being automated in the form of kiosks, robotics, and other forms. Likewise, due to phenomena related to Moores law and the growing in-expense of computers and machines, it is likely that it is simply a matter of time before corporations simply can no longer rationalize keeping human labor anymore, as the automation systems will become too cheap. Of course, this is a paradoxical market phenomenon, called by some theorists as the contradiction of capitalism, for it is, in effect, removing the consumer (laborer) itself and hence reducing consumption.

Apart from those issues, it is important to also consider human labor contributions based on social relevance, not monetary gain. In a RBE, there would be no reason to have occupations such as Banking, Trading, Insurance, Cashiers, Brokers, Advertising or anything related to the governance of money.

All human actions in the form of institutionalized labor should also have the highest social return. There is no logic in wasting resources, time, and energy on operations that do not have a direct and tangible function. This adjustment alone would remove millions of jobs, for the idea of working for money as a purpose would no longer exist.

In turn, all the poor demographic, shoddy goods, vanity items, and culturally contrived creations designed to influence people for reasons of status (for the sole sake of profit) would also no longer exist, saving countless amounts of time and resources.

One final note on this issue: Some hear this and they assume that this voids the Communicative Arts, and personal and social expression as far as painting, sculpture, music, and the like. No. These mediums of expression will likely thrive like never before, for the amount of free time made available to people will permit a renaissance of creativity and invention, along with community and social capital. The elimination of the burden of labor obligation will also reduce stress and create a more amiable culture.

There is a difference between creating for the sake of keeping society sustainable and efficient, focusing on resource preservation, product efficiency, and strategic allocation of labor for those things which generate a tangible social return versus creating for personal expression, exploration, experimentation, and hence art, which has been a staple of human evolution since the dawn of time.

Access over Property

The concept of property, unannounced to most people today, is a fairly new social concept. Before the neolithic revolution, as extrapolated from current hunter and gatherer societies existing today, property relationships did not exist as we know them. Neither did money, or even trade, in many cases. Communities existed in an egalitarian fashion, living within the carrying capacity of their regions and the natural production built in. It was only after direct agricultural development was discovered, eventually proceeding with resource acquisition by ship traders and the like up to modern day power establishments and corporations that property became a highly defined staple of society as we know it today.

With that understood, which dismisses the common notion that property is a result of some kind of empirical human nature, the notion of no property is also today often blindly associated with Communism and the works of Karl Marx. It is important to point out TZMs advocation of no property is derived from logical inference, based almost explicitly upon strategic resource management and efficiency, rather than any surface influence by these supposed Communist ideals. There is no relation between the two, for communism was not derived from the needs to preserve and manage resources efficiently. Communism, in theory and practice, was based on a social/moral relativism which was culturally specific not environmentally specific which is the case with a RBE.

The real issue relevant to meeting human needs is not ownership it is access. People use things; they do not own them. Ownership is a non-operational, protectionist advent, derived from generations of scarcity over resources, currently compounded by market-based advertising which supports status/class division for the sake of monetary gain . To put it another way, ownership is a form of controlled restriction, both physically and ideologically. Property as a system of controlled restriction, coupled with the monetary value inherent, and hence the market consequences, is unsustainable, limiting, and impractical.

In a NL/RBE model, the focus moves from static ownership to strategic access, with a system designed for society to obtain access as needed. For example, rather than owning various forms of recreational sporting equipment, Access Centers are set up, typically in regions where such actions occur, where a person simply checks out the equipment, uses it for as long as they want, and then returns it. This library type arrangement can be applied to virtually any type of human need. Of course, those reading this who have been conditioned into a more individualistic, materialistic mindset often objects with claims such as What if I want green, custom golf clubs, but only white are available?. This is a culturally contrived, biased reservation. The issue in question is utility, not vanity. Human expression has been molded by the needs of the current market based system (consumption) into values which are simply nonfunctional and irrelevant. Yes, this would require a value adjustment to quality rather than identity. The fact is, even for those who object from the standpoint of their interest in personal identity, the overarching social ramifications of such an social approach will create benefits that will greatly overshadow any such arbitrary personal preference, creating new values to replace the outdated ones.

These include : (a) No Property Crime: In a world of access rather than ownership, and without money, there is no incentive to steal, for there is no resale value. You can not steal something that no one owns and you certainly couldnt sell it. (b) Access Abundance: It has been denoted that the average automobile sits in parking spaces for the majority of its life span, wasting space and time. Rather than having this wasteful consequence of the ownership system, one car could facilitate a large number of users in a given region, with only a fraction of the production/resources needed. [c) Peak Efficiency of Production: Unlike today, where the market system must perpetuate inherently inferior products for the sake of economic turnover, we could actually design goods to last, using the best materials and processes strategically available. We no longer make cheap products to serve a poor demographic (which is the majority). This attribute alone will save cataclysmic amounts of resources, while also enabling a society to have access to goods and services that they would never have had in a world based on money, inherent obsolescence, and property.

Self-Contained/Localized City and Production Systems

There are many brilliant engineers who have worked to tackle the issue of industrial design; from Jacque Fresco, to R. Buckminster Fuller, to Nicola Tesla. Behind such designs, such as Jacque Frescos famed Circular Cities or Fullers Geodesic Domes, rests a basic train of thought: Strategic Efficiency and Maximization of Productivity.

For example, Frescos circular city is constructed of a series of belts, each serving a social function such a energy production, research, recreation, living, etc.. Each city is a hence a system, where all needs are produced within the city complex, in a localized fashion, whenever possible. For example, renewable energy generation occurs near the outer perimeter. Food production is produced closer to the middle within industrial-sized greenhouses.

This is very different in its logic from the globalization-based economy we live in today, which wastes outrageous amounts of energy and resources due to unneeded transport and labor processing. Likewise, transportation within the circular cities is strategically created to eliminate the use of detached automobiles, except for rare cases such as emergency vehicles. Homes are created to be micro-systems as well, with much power generation occurring internally, such as from sunlight absorbed by the building structure using photovoltaic technology. More information on these city system can be found at https://www.thevenusproject.com.

The Geodesic Dome, perfected by Buckminster Fuller, offers another efficiency oriented medium within a similar train of thought. Fullers goal was to build designs to do more with fewer resources. He noticed problems inherent in conventional construction techniques, and recognized the indigenous strength of naturally occurring structures. The advantages include: a much stronger structure than a conventional building while using less material to construct; domes can be built very quickly because they are of a modular prefab construction and suit being mass produced; They also use less energy to keep warm/cool than a conventional box structure. More information can be found at http://www.bfi.org/

In the end, the fundamental interest is, again, sustainability and efficiency on all levels, from the housing design to the earth design. The market system actually fights this efficiency due to the broken, competitive nature inherent.

Technological Unification of Earth via Systems Approach

We live in a symbiotic/synergistic planetary ecosystem, with a cause-effect balance reflecting a single system of earthy operation. Buckminster Fuller defined this well when he referred to the planet as Spaceship Earth. It is time we reflect this natural state of affairs in our societal affairs on this planet. The fact of the matter is that human societies, which are dispersed across the globe, require resources which are also un-uniformly dispersed across the globe. Our current procedure for enabling resource distribution comes in the form of corporations which seek and claim ownership of our earthly resources, which they in turn sell to others in the name of profit. The problems inherent in this practice are numerous, again due to the self-interest based disposition inherent in selling anything for personal gain, as denoted above. But in the larger scheme of things, this is only partially the issue when it come to the reality that we live on a finite planet, and where resource management and preservation should be the number one concern in regard to human survival, especially with the population explosion of the last 200 years.

Two people are born every second on this planet, and each one of those humans needs a lifetime of food, energy, water and the like. Given this fundamental need to understand what we have, the rates of depletion and, invariably, the need to streamline industry in the most efficient, productive way, a Global System of Resource Management must be put in place. It is just common sense. This is an extensive subject when one considers the technical, quantitative variables needed for implementation. However, for the sake of overview, it can be stated that the first step is a Full Global Survey of all earthly resources. Then, based on a quantitative analysis of the properties of each material, a strategically defined process of production is constructed from the bottom up, using such variables as negative retroactions, renewability, etc. (More on this can be found in the section called Project Earth in the ZM lecture called Where Are We Going?). Then consumption statistics are accessed, rates of depletion become monitored, distribution is logically formulated, etc.. In other words, it is a full Systems Approach to earthly resource management, production, and distribution, with the goal of absolute efficiency, conservation, and sustainability. Given the mathematically defined attributes, as based on all available information at the time, along with the state of technology at the time, the parameters for social operation within the industrial complex become self-evident, with decisions arrived at by way of computation, not human opinion. This is where computer intelligence becomes an important tool for social governance, for only the computation ability/programming of computers can access and strategically regulate such processes efficiently, and in real time. This technological application is not novel. It is simply scaled out from current methods already known.

The Scientific Method as the Methodology for Governance

The application of the scientific method for social concern is an oft-repeated mantra for the basis of social operation in a RBE model. While the obviousness of this in regard to industry is simple enough to understand, it is important to also realize its value in regard to human behavior. Science, historically speaking, has often been derailed as a cold, restrictive discipline, reserved for the sake of mere technology and invention. Little regard seems to be currently given to its use in the understanding of human behavior.

Superstitious thought, which has been powerfully dominant in human evolution, has worked on the basis that the human being was somehow detached from the physical world. We have souls; spirits; we are divine; we are related/guided by an all seeing, all knowing, controlling god, etc..

Conversely, yet oddly similar, there is an argument that humans have free will in their decisions and that we have the open ability to choose our actions, absent of the influence of our environment or even education. Now, while the vastness of the prior two statements and many reading those could find numerous cultural arguments to claim the contrary, this doesnt change the basic reality that we humans have historically liked to think that we are special and unique from the rest of the organisms and natural phenomena around us.

However, as time has gone on, it has become increasingly obvious that we are not special and that there is no such thing as special in the natural worldfor everything is special based on the uniqueness of all organisms. There is no reason to assume the human being is any more important or intrinsically different or special than a mole, a tree, an ant, a leaf or a cancer cell. This isnt New Age rhetoric it is fundamental logic. We are physical phenomena nothing more or less.

We are greatly influenced by our culture and our values and behaviors can only mostly be a result of our conditioning, as external phenomena interacts with our genetic predispositions. For example, we have a notion called talent, which is another word for a genetic predisposition to a given behavior, or set of behaviors. A piano prodigy might have an inherent ability that enables them to learn more quickly and perform in a more acute way than another, who has spent the same time in practice, but doesnt have the genetic predisposition. Be that as it may, that talented person still had to learn what a piano was and how to play it. In other words, genes are not autonomous initiators of commands. It takes an environmental trigger to allow for the propensity to materialize.

At any rate, it is not the point of this article to expand on the argument of nature and nurture. The point is that we have proven to be scientifically defined and a product of a traceable causality and it is this understanding that can allow us to slow and even stop the aberrant, or criminal behavior we see in society today such a abuse, murder, theft and the like. The logic, once the effects of human conditioning are understood, is to remove the environmental attributes which are enabling the reactions.

Just as an abused dog who has been starved for a week might have a knee jerk reaction to react very violently to an otherwise innocuous passerby, we humans have the same behavior dynamic. If you dont want people to steal food, do not deprive them of it. It has been found that prisons are now generating more violence than they are curbing. If you teach a child to be a hateful racist, then he will carry those values into the rest his life, very often. Human values and hence human behavior are shaped by the environment in a cause and effect based way, no different than a leaf being blown by the wind.

In a RBEM, the central focus in regard to removing aberrant human actions is not to punish them, but to find the reasons for their offensive actions and work to eliminate them. Humans are products of their environment and personal/social reform is a scientific process.

Moving away from money and markets

Market theory assumes a number of things which have proven to either be false, marginally beneficial, or outright socially detrimental.

The core problems to consider are the following:

A) The need for Infinite Growth, which is mathematically unsustainable and ecologically detrimental. The entire basis of the Market System is not the intelligent management of our mostly finite resources on this planet, but rather the perpetual extraction and consumption of them for the sake of profit and economic growth. In order to keep people employed, people must constantly consume, regardless of the state of affairs within the environment, and often regardless of product utility. This is the absolute reverse of what a sustainable practice would require, which is the strategic preservation and efficient use of resources.

B) A Corruption Generating Incentive System. It is often said that the competitive marketplace creates the incentive to act for the sake of social progress. While this is partially true, it also generates an equal if not more pronounced amount of corruption in the form of planned obsolescence, common crime, wars, large scale financial fraud, labor exploitation, and many other issues. The vast majority of people in prison today are there because of monetary-related crime or non-violent drug offenses. The majority of legislation exists in the context of monetary-based crimes.

Also, if one was to critically examine history and peer into the documented biographies/mentalities of the greatest scientists and inventors of our time, such a N. Tesla, A. Einstein, A. Bell, the Wright Brothers, and many others it is found that they did not find their motivation in the prospect of monetary gain. The interest to make money must not be confused with the interest to create socially beneficial products and very often they are even at odds.

C) A disjunct, inefficient industrial complex which wastes tremendous amount of resources and energy. In the world today, with the advent of Globalization, it has become more profitable to import and export both labor and goods across the globe rather than to produce locally. We import bananas from Ecuador to the US and bottled water from Fuji Japan, while western companies will go to the deprived 3rd world to exploit cheap labor, etc.. Likewise, the process of extraction, to component generation, to assembly, to distribution of a given good might cross through multiple countries for a single final product, simply due to labor and production costs / property costs. This cost efficiency generates extreme technical inefficiency and is only justifiable within the market system for the sake of saving money.

In a RBE model, the focus is maximum technical efficiency. The production process is not dispersed, but made as centralized and fluid as possible, with elements moving the very least amount, saving what would be tremendous amounts of energy and labor as compared to methods today. Food is grown locally whenever possible (which is most of the time given the flexibility of indoor agriculture technology today), while all extraction, production and distribution is logically organized to use as little labor/transport/space as possible while producing the strategically best possible goods (see more below). In other words, the system is planned to maximize efficiently and minimize waste.

D) A propensity for Establishments. Very simply, established corporate/financial orders have a built-in tendency to stop new, socially positive advents from coming to fruition if there is a foreshadowed loss of market share, profit, and hence power. It is important to consider the basic nature of a corporation and its inherent need for self-perpetuation.

If a person starts a company, hires employees, creates a market and becomes profitable, what has thus been created, in part, is the means for survival for a group of people. Since each person in that group typically becomes dependent on that organization for income, a natural, protectionist propensity is created whereas anything that threatens the institution thus threatens the well-being of the group/individual. This is the fabric of a competition mindset. While people think of free market competition as a battle between two or more companies in a given industry, they often miss the other level the competition against new advents which would make them obsolete, outright.

The best way to expand on this point is to simply give an example, such as the US Government and Big Oil collusion to limit the expansion of the fully Electric Car (EV) in the US. This issue was well-presented and sourced in the documentary called Who Killed the Electric Car?. The bottom line here is that the need to preserve an established order for the sake of the well-being of those on the payroll, leads to an inherent tendency to stifle progress. A new technology which can make a prior technology obsolete will be met with resistance unless there is a way for the market system to absorb it in a slow fashion, allowing for a transition for the corporations (i.e. the perpetuation of Hybrid cars in the US, as opposed to the fully electric ones which could exist now, in abundance). There is also a large amount of evidence that the FDA has engaged in favoritism/collusion with pharmaceutical companies to limit/stop the availability of advanced progressive drugs which would void existing/profitable ones.

In a RBE, there is nothing to hold back developmental/implementation of anything. If safe and useful, it would immediately be implemented into society, with no monetary institution to thwart the change due to their self-preserving, monetary nature.

E) An inherent obsolescence which creates inferior products immediately due to the need to stay competitive This little recognized attribute of production is another example of the waste which is created in the market system. It is bad enough that multiple companies constantly duplicate each others items in an attempt to make their variations more interesting for the sake of public consumption, but a more wasteful reality is that, due to the competitive basis of the system, it is a mathematical certainty that every good produced is immediately inferior the moment it is created, due the need to cut the initial cost basis of production and hence stay competitive against another company which is doing the same thing for the same reason. The old free market adage where producers create the best possible goods at the lowest possible prices is a needlessly wasteful fantasy and detrimentally misleading, for it is impossible for a company to use the most efficient material or processes in the production of anything, as it would be too expensive to maintain a competitive cost basis.

They very simply cannot make the strategically best physically it is mathematically impossible. If they did, no one would buy it, for it would be unaffordable due the values inherent in the higher quality materials and methods. Remember people buy what they can afford to. Every person on this planet has a built in limit of affordability in the monetary system, so it generates a feedback loop of constant waste via inferior production, to meet inferior demand. In a RBEM, goods are created to last, with the expansion and updating of certain goods built directly into the design, and with recycling strategically accessed as well, limiting waste.

You will notice the term strategically best was used in a statement above. This qualification means that goods are created with respect to the state of affairs of planetary resources, with the quality of materials used based on an equation taking into account all relevant attributes, rates of depletion, negative retroactions, and the like. In other words, we would not blindly use titanium for, say, every single computer enclosure made, just because it might be the strongest materials for the job. That narrow practice could lead to depletion. Rather, there would be a gradient of material quality which would be accessed through analysis of relevant attributes such as comparable resources, rates of natural obsolescence for a given item, statistical usage in the community, etc. These properties and relationships could be assessed through programming, with the most strategically viable solution computed and output in real-time. It is mere issue of calculation.

F) A propensity for monopoly and cartel due to the basic motivation of growth and increased market share. This is a point that economic theorists will often deny under the assumption that open competition is self-regulating and that monopolies and cartels are extremely rare anomalies in a free-market system. This invisible hand assumption holds little validity, historically, not to mention the outstanding legislation around the issue which proves its infeasibility. In America, there have been numerous monopolies, such as Standard Oil and Microsoft. Cartels, which are essentially Monopolies by way of collusion between the largest competitors in an industry, are also persistent to this day, although perhaps less obvious to the casual observer. In any case, the free market itself does not resolve these issues it always takes the government to step in and break up the monopolies.

This aside, the more important point is that in an economy based on growth, it is only natural for a corporation to want to expand and hence dominate. After all, that is the basis of economic stability in the modern world expansion. Expansion of any corporation always gravitates toward monopoly or cartel, for, again, the basic drive of competition is to out-do your competitor. In other words, monopoly and cartel are absolutely natural in the competitive system. In fact, it is inevitable, for again, the very basis is to seek dominance over market share. The true detriment of this reality goes back to the point above the inherent propensity of an Establishment to preserve its institution. If a medical cartel is influencing the FDA, then new ideas which void that cartels income sources will often be fought, regardless of the social benefits being thwarted.

G) The market system is driven, in part, by Scarcity. The less there is of something, the more money that can be generated in the short term. This sets up a propensity for corporations to limit availability, and hence deny production abundance. It is simply against the very nature of what drives demand to create abundance. The Kimberly Diamond Mines in Africa have been documented in the past to burn diamonds in order to keep prices high. Diamonds are rare resources which take billions of years to be created. This is nothing but problematic. The world we live in should be based on the interest to generate an abundance for the worlds people, along with strategic preservation and streamlined methods to enable that abundance. This is a central reason why, as of 2010, there are over a billion people starving on the planet. It has nothing to do with an inability to produce food, and everything having to do with an inherent need to create/preserve scarcity for the sake of short term profits.

Abundance, Efficiency and Sustainability are, very simply, the enemies of profit. This scarcity logic also applies to the quality of goods. The idea of creating something that could last, say, a lifetime with little repair, is anathema to the market system, for it reduces consumption rates, which slows growth and creates systemic repercussions (loss of jobs, etc.). The scarcity attribute of the market system is nothing but detrimental for these reasons, not to mention that it doesnt even serve the role of efficient resource preservation, which is often claimed.

While supply and demand dictates that the less there is of something, the more it will be valued and hence the increased value will limit consumption, reducing the possibility of running out, the incentive to create scarcity, coupled with the inherent short term reward which results from scarcity driven based prices, nullifies the idea that this enables strategic preservation. We will likely never run out of oil in the current market system. Rather, the prices will become so high that no one can afford it, while those corporations who own the remaining oil will make a great deal of money off of the scarcity, regardless of the long term social ramifications. In other words, remaining scarce resources, existing in such high economic value that it limits their consumption, is not to be confused with preservation that is functional and strategic. True strategic preservation can only come from the direct management of the resource in question in regard to the most efficient technical applications of the resource in industry itself, not arbitrary, surface price relationships, absent of rational allocation.

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About | The Zeitgeist Movement

Peter Josephs Zeitgeist: The MovieThe Greatest Story Ever Sold is one of the most popular and influential Internet films to appear in recent years. Tragically, it has effectively deceived many undiscerning people who have been mesmerized by its fast pace and have accepted it prima facie without carefully examining the films claims. Sadly, the net effect has turned countless people away from Christ by using a pack of devilish lies.

Zeitgeist presents a long debunked theory that claims early Christians created a Christ myth that is loosely based on an alleged amalgamation of ideas that were borrowed from various pagan religions. However, serious scholars, long ago, refuted the ideas promulgated in Zeitgeist. To its own detriment, Zeitgeist quotes plenty of biased occult sources and very few, if any, primary sources.

Skeptic Magazine did a review of Zeitgeist entitled, The Greatest Story Ever Garbled by Tim Callahan, who made the understatement of the year when he spoke of a certain navet on the part of Peter Joseph in regard to his knowledge of the Bible. The Skeptic article stated that the worst thing about the movie is that it mixes some truth with much that is plainly and simply Bogus. (e-Skeptic, Vol. 15 No. 1 p. 61)

Horus and Jesus Compared

Historically, the Bible never speaks of three kings worshiping Jesus, but a group of magi from the east. And contrary to subsequent traditions, the Bible does not specify any number (Matthew 2:1-11). Furthermore, the Bible never portrays Jesus as a sun god and expressly forbids the worship of the sun or any other created thing (Deuteronomy 4:15-16, 19; 17:2-5; Ezekiel 18:15-18; Matthew 4:8-11; Revelation 19:10).

The most disturbing thing about this film is that Zeitgeist falsely claims that Jesus is mere myth and not the Savior of the world. However, these claims clearly go against historical evidence to the contrary. Serious scholars and historians no longer question Jesus existence. Beyond reliable biblical witnesses, there are reputable first century historians like Josephus, Flavius, Pliny the Younger, Tacitus and Suetonius who make mention of Jesus as a historical figure. Josephus refers to Jesus, who was called the Christ, when referring to the execution of his half brother James (Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, book 20, chapter 9, item 1), and Tacitus, writes of Christ, [who] had been executed in Tiberius reign by the governor of Judea, Pontius Pilatus. (The Annals of Imperial Rome, Book 1, Chapter 15)

Overall, Zeitgeist repeatedly relies on the views of Satanists and famous occultists like Madame Helena Blavatsky and Manly P. Hall. Many historians document that Blavatskys occult teachings inspired the occult worldview of Adolph Hitler and the Nazi movement. One of the astonishing ironies about the Zeitgeist movement is that it came under the guise of exposing pagan beliefs and globalism only to end up leading people away from the truth of Gods word and into the occult and The New World Order!

Zeitgeist takes its name from the German word which means time spirit and means the spirit of the age, which ironically sum up the very spirit of the antichrist that is prophesied would to delude the world at the end of the age (1 John 4:1-4).

Contrary to the lies propagated by Zeitgeist, there is absolutely no record of any God in antiquity, prior to Jesus Christ, who was said to have become a man, experience death by crucifixion, and then be raised from the dead on the third day as the Savior of the world! Moreover, Jesus death, burial, and resurrection were prophesied in the Old Testament, several centuries before He came to earth and these biblical prophecies were fulfilled when He died for our sins (Isaiah 53). Truly, this is by far, the Greatest Story Ever Told!

Roots and Fruits

We have already found that the bogus claims that Jesus Christ never existed and Christianity was some lunar myth to be totally unfounded and a pernicious lie. When we examine Zeitgeist it is important to consider the sources. If you want to find the truth behind a movement it is wise to examine the roots and the fruit of the movement in question. When one investigates the roots and fruits of Zeitgeist, one finds that Zeitgeist is rotten at its very core!

Zeitgeist begins with the voice of Jordan Maxwell, who is billed as one of Zeitgeists main authorities and whose bizarre views are brought to the fore throughout the film. Incidentally, Jordan Maxwell has managed to gain quite an audience despite his ludicrous claim that he was brought to planet earth by a group of aliens and that he will be presented to the world as an occult Messiah. Usually people who claim to be talking to little green men or to be the latest messiah find themselves in mental institutions, not in the forefront of the so-called truth movement!

Maxwell, like most false messiahs, seeks to trash Christ and Christianity in an effort to promote his own messianic claims. Another big flashing red light that reveals Maxwell to be a fraud is, that while Maxwell tramples underfoot the beloved name of the Lord Jesus Christ, he turns around and makes money by selling little statues of Jesus, as well as copies of the shroud of Turin, on his website. Maxwell is obviously not a man who can be trusted with truth.

Moreover, Maxwell blasphemes Christ from one side of his mouth and from the other side uses Jesus words as though they were his own. A case in point is the very beginning of the first Zeitgeist film, where those of us who were unfortunate enough to see the film hear Maxwell seeking to trash Christianity and then quoting Jesus words from John 8:32:

The religious institutions of this world are at the bottom of the dirt. The religious institutions in this world are put there by the same people who gave you your government, your corrupt education, who set up your international banking cartels, because our masters dont give a [expletive] about you or your family. All they care about is what they have always cared about and thats controlling the whole [expletive] world. We have been misled away from the true and divine presence in the universe that men have called God You have to know the truth and seek the truth and the truth will set you free. Jordan Maxwell, Zeitgeist-The Movie

Russell Pine(aka Jordan Maxwell)

The name Jordan Maxwell appears to have been borrowed from the Luciferian occult traditions in which he is immersed. Jordan Maxwell is yet another name for the new age occult messiah. We read in the occult teachings of Theosophical Society, founded by the confessed Luciferian, Madame Blavatsky, upon whose occult teachings Maxwell admittedly relies:

There are three Trinities in the Nazarene system as well as in the Hindu philosophy The third is Lord Jordan (Jordanus Maximus), the Water of Life. He is the one through whom alone we can be saved; and thus he answers to the Holy Ghost (the feminine principle) and to the Shekinah (veil), or spiritual garment of En-Soph. (Source)

Maxwell claims that when he was a child a very evil demonic entity appeared to him in his bedroom, and that this encounter marked the beginning of his experiences with super entities and occult revelations. It was through subsequent encounters with alien beings that Maxwell alleges he discovered that aliens brought him to planet earth and have since guided his occult journey. Incredibly, Maxwell claims that one of the greatest influences on his life was the admitted Luciferian and 33rd degree Mason, Manly P. Hall, who boasted of the esoteric mason, The seething energies of Lucifer are in his hands (Manly P. Hall, The Lost Keys of Freemasonry, p. 48).

The irony is that Maxwell warns against secret societies and their use of symbols to communicate illumination concerning the coming new world order to the elite, while Maxwell himself is reading this symbolism and claiming that hybrid super beings are going to reward him when they set up the new order. In reality Maxwell is being used to teach the doctrines of demons to lead people away from Christ and into the very new world order he claims to be warning against. (1 Timothy 4:1; 2 Thessalonians 2:9-12; Revelation 13:1-18)

Maxwell states that the world is heading toward a new world order wherein the powers of the universe are going to set things right and will enlighten mankind. Maxwell states that there will soon be a revelation of the sons of God mentioned in the Old Testament who will soon bring about this happy new world order. Maxwell states, There are people on the earth that are divinely ordained in there positions of power from another place and another time who have extraordinary wisdom, power, and knowledge. Jordan tells us that these sons of God mated with women and now there are entities here who are not completely human, but who are a combination of the divine and human. Maxwell tells his audience that these entities, when they come to establish the new world order here on earth, will reward him and his audience, exclaiming, I see no problem with this. I accept that there are powers over us and I think they will reward you for your diligence and intelligence.

Many biblical scholars believe that the sons of God mentioned in Genesis 6:4-6 refers to fallen angels who were judged by God in the days of Noah. This was certainly the understanding of the Hebrew scholars who translated the term sons of God to angels in the first Greek translation of the old Testament, known as the Septuagint, and was the understanding of the early fathers of the Christian church (2nd and 3rd century). This also appears to be the apostolic understanding as well. (2 Peter 2:4-5; Jude 6)

Regardless of ones view on the identity of the sons of God, it should be clear to those of us who are aware of what the bible says about the coming new world order under Antichrist (Revelation 13:1-18), that Jordon Maxwell is leading his audience into following the wicked rulers of the darkness of this world (Ephesians 6:12) and into the coming satanic age of the beast, while claiming to be exposing the new world order!

Madame Helena Blavatsky

Isnt it incredible that Zeitgeist came on the scene under the guise of exposing a populace-controlling myth and the evils of a new world order, yet has ironically ended up leading so many people astray by employing occult myths and leading the masses into the new world order through the back door? Isnt it tragic and strange that a film that is suppose to be about the truth has led countless people away from the truth of Gods Word (John 17:17) and the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6), and led many to follow the obviously fraudulent, alien-occult messiah, Jordan Maxwell? All of this screams of mass deception! Those who want truth should run, not walk, to the nearest exit when it comes to considering Zeitgeist as anything more than bad fiction and a blatant pack of lies. Indeed, Zeitgeist has the fingerprints of the devil all over it!

It is our prayer that God will guard our hearts and minds from the spiritual deceptions that Jesus warned would plague the world in the last days (Matthew 24:24-25). May God help those who have been bamboozled by the Zeitgeist deception (and similar lies) come out of darkness and into the glorious light of the Lord Jesus Christ, the King of kings and Lord of lords (Revelation 19:11-21). May the Lord Jesus, who died for our sins and conquered the grave, rescue them before its too late and they die in their sins and are sentenced to eternal condemnation for rejecting the only One who could save their souls:

Jesus answered him, Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God. Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him. (John 3:3, 16-21, 36)

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The Zeitgeist Deception | Good Fight Ministries

This article requires expansion. Please help.

Though not a stub by pure word count, this article lacks depth of content.

The Zeitgeist Movement is a grass-roots international network poorly organized crank movement promoting a change[1] in the current spirit of the time (hence the name "The Zeitgeist Movement") that was formed in response to Peter Joseph's Zeitgeist: Addendum documentary.

Basically a conspiratorial fringe re-hash of the Technocracy movement, their ideas are derived from multiple sources, primarily from that of The Venus Project and Buckminster Fuller. Indeed, the movement's Activist Orientation Guide defines itself as "the activist arm of the Venus Project",[2] despite their split with the Venus Project in April 2011.[3] They consider themselves to be a "sustainability advocacy organization."[4] The community is largely concentrated on the internet and have their own live broadcasting shows.[5][6]

In a sentence: The organization is based on undirected whining about capitalism, accompanied by a belief that somehow computers should be used excessively to do all future resource planning for the purpose of maximum efficiency and sustainability, and that shortly robots will be doing most work in summary, something one could call techno-utopianism, but with most corners cut and a dose of Alex Jones-esque thinking mixed in.

The Zeitgeist movement is organised into various different 'chapters' across more than 50 different countries, though just how active these chapters are is probably only known to those involved in them[7] and differs greatly from chapter to chapter.

Recordings of most chapter meetings are freely available online, where all types of chapter-related matters like activity are discussed.

A quick glance at some chapter websites reveals they have at least some presence in certain university societies and at the local level. Nevertheless, most of their forum posting seems to be discussions about the movement's philosophy and what activists intend to do in the near future.

It is however difficult to measure if the movement achieves its goals seeing their sole intention is to be an educational movement[8] and "spread awareness," it seems there aren't, given there has been a consistent decrease in chapters, membership, and Internet presence on a monthly basis (see chapter list on the website) and the userbase on the different Facebook pages[9] show a decrease.

The movement is made of frothing abusive nutters, getting more so as it gets smaller.

See the rest here:

The Zeitgeist Movement - RationalWiki

Is hard seltzer a revolution, or a fleeting alt-alcohol trend thatll fizzle as fast as vapourised cocktails? It might be tempting to side with the latter, but with the way this market is rolling along, its looking like a major step forward for the better for you drinks movement. Labels like White Claw have swiftly become big players in the North American market, to the point where the seltzer sector is expected to hit a US$2.5 billion valuation as early as next year.

The answer is as simple as soda or sparkling water thats been spiked with alcohol and finished with (usually natural) fruit flavours. The alcohol base can either be naturally occurring, thanks to natural fermentation, based on a brewing process, or simply an old fashioned triple-distilled vodka. Whether its made or mixed, seltzer fits into the health-conscious, sober curious zeitgeist with a barely-there caloric density that typically ranges between 60-90 calories per can, hardly ever exceeding the mental barrier of 100.

Increasingly, craft breweries are making the easy switch to supplement their existing ranges with a few seltzers. And its a smart move, seeing as brewing a seltzer requires little equipment and usually doesnt require an additional license. The combination of little effort and the potential to grab a slice of a burgeoning market is evidently hard to resist, seeing as some of Australias best craft breweries are already making their own seltzer, alongside the bigger names like Lion, Asahi, and Carlon & United Breweries.

To give you a bit of perspective on just how big seltzer is getting, weve rounded up the brands currently available in Australia. As you can see below, there are plenty of choices already, with the multitude of seltzer labels swelling considerably since late 2019, all competing for your attention before summer hits.

Although Fellr wasnt the first hard seltzer to hit the Australian market, its one of the most recognisable and is firmly established as a favourite amongst drinkers. The brand was created by two Sydney blokes, Andy Skora and Will Morgan, who left their day jobs at the top of this year to tackle the pre-mix category hard. With a focus on simplicity, theyve formulated one of the more refreshing and lighter seltzers around, brewed in Sydney at just 4% ABV with a gluten-free alcohol base and summer-twisted, coast-inspired flavours like watermelon, dry & lime, and lime & soda. At only 83 calories per can, its got the small body, big taste approach that defines this growing category, yet retains a rounded and full mouthfeel thanks to a custom developed brewing method.

Vacay is the first seltzer brand in Australia to be worked up in collaboration with an award-winning sommelier Alex Kirkwood who was bought on-board by the new Sydney-based label to help develop the flavour profiles of raspberry, lime, Kakadu plum, and pure. Brewed off a malt base, the alcoholic water has all artificial colours and preservatives removed before all-natural ingredients are infused and then carbonated, resulting in a seltzer thats vegan-friendly and less than 62 calories per can.

Quincy has been around since late last 2019 as Australias first hard seltzer and one of the few to use fermented rice alcohol. Drinks giant Lion, which is owned by Japanese company Kirin, is the sizable shadow behind Quincy, giving it a considerable push into the market which is why you can easily find it at most Dan Murphys, Liquorland and BSW stores across the country. Its low bitterness and crisp, dry finish sets this gluten-free seltzer apart and has already proven a summer favourite, keeping it simple with lime or passionfruit flavours.

Melbournes Moon Dog brewery is no stranger to experimental releases, so its not surprising to see them make the incremental leap to hard seltzer so quickly with Fizzer. And theyve been quite playful with the pivot, deviating from seltzers established flavour profiles and messing around with four standouts: strawberry & cream, Passiona-inspired tropical crush, piney limey (pineapple and lime, obviously), and the Weiss bar-like coco mango. If youre going to dive headfirst into a new and increasingly competitive drinks market, you might as well have a bit of fun with it, right?

The team at Margaret River brewery Cheeky Monkey have entered the ring with their own inventive to take on a hard seltzer, off-shooting to the standalone label Great White. Already stocked in places like Dan Murphys and BWS, the gluten-free seltzer comes in either black cherry, raspberry, or orange & grapefruit, sitting at a saintly 97 calories per can.

Two Birds is another Melbourne brewery thats sidestepped beer momentarily to try their hand at a seltzer. Although they brand it as simply a soda in an effort to avoid the label which they obviously arent rushing towards given that theres only one flavour: watermelon. Then again, this is a brewery known for their bold brews, like taco beer, so thered be little surprise if they were to pump out a few more flavours before summer hits.

You wouldnt expect a zero-sugar, zero-carb drink from the same team behind the Australian push for infamously sweet Rekorderlig cider, yet seltzer continues to bring out the health-conscious in all. The newly created Saintly brand is easily found at any Dan Murphys or BWS and comes in either mango, watermelon & mint, lime, or pink grapefruit flavours. Those first two flavours sit at what seems to be the standard ABV for seltzer, that being 4%, but the latter two push things up to a bit to 6% if you want more of a buzz, go for those.

Asahi-owned Good Tides is designed a bit differently to most other seltzers available in Australia; instead of the brew method employed by most, this drink takes Australian sparkling water and blends it with triple-distilled Vodka O before adding a hint of natural fruit flavours. The zero-sugar seltzer is gearing up for its first Australian summer with both lemon & lime, and raspberry flavours, so if you would prefer a vodka-based seltzer, Good Tides should do the trick.

Kiwi brand Hint has hit Australian shores, bringing another seltzer based on triple-distilled vodka, though this time using New Zealands famously crisp water from Bay of Plenty. Sitting at the low end of the calorie scale, with just 66 per can, the zero-sugar seltzer is carbon filtered and is distinguished by its crisp finish. Launching in Australia recently, Hint can be bought from Dan Murphys with either citrus or watermelon vodka.

Straight from Sydneys Northern Beaches, Lust Liquors modest range of vodka-based RTDs should be looking at a huge uptick come summer, thanks to their sole lime & soda seltzer. Its only slightly higher in ABV (4.2%) than your average seltzer, naturally sweetened with zesty lime, a smooth citrus body, and clocks in at 88 calories per can.

Part of Sydneys Dad & Daves Brewery, Wildspirit Distilling Co. has put out a four-flavour range of hard seltzer, cutting a bit below the average alcohol content at 3.5% ABV. They use a gluten-free grain-spirit base to craft what they claim to be a superior tasting seltzer, spread across lime, passionfruit, mango, and raspberry flavours.

It was only a matter of time before Smirnoff jumped on the seltzer train, throwing their own hat in the ring with three varieties of the zero-sugar spiked water. The cans sit at a nice 5% ABV and come in lime, passionfruit, or raspberry ros flavours.

With an ABV of between 6% and 8%, the Woolworths-backed Rainbird from Pinnacle Drinks is one of the stronger seltzers on the market. Liberty Coast (also on this list) comes from the same family but sits at a much more modest alcohol content, with Rainbird clearly the pick for drinkers who like a stronger punch. The cans come in natural or lemon-lime flavours, with each packing in 135 calories.

As with Rainbird above, Liberty Coast has the comfortable backing of Woolworths Pinnacle Drinks, coming in at a sesh-friendly 3.5% ABV and 63 calories per can. Clearly, Pinnacle want to fill out both ends of the seltzer spectrum, even if the flavour range is so far limited to just raspberry and lime.

Trust Byron Bay favourite Stone & Wood to enter the seltzer market in style. The eye-catching slim cans in their sorghum-brewed range echo the quintessential flavours of Australia, spanning blood orange & grapefruit, native Davidson plum & berry, or ginger & lemon.

You cant have a seltzer revolution in Australia without the brand that started it all. We have Lion the thank for bringing the unstoppable White Claw to Australia, and oddly cutting the ABV down to 4.5% thats 0.5% less than in the US. Theres little doubt the brand will be just as successful over here though, with the first wave of release sporting popular flavours like ruby grapefruit, mango and natural lime. It shouldnt be long before the other flavours hit our shores, bringing in watermelon, raspberry, tangerine, and black cherry.

Straight out of Footscray, Hop Nations Ray (named for the eternally hip Melbourne suburb) is as simple and straight-forward as the drinks minimally designed cans. Cutting above average at 4.5%, Ray comes in three naturally brewed flavours, ranging from peach to watermelon & mint, and lemon & lime.

Itd be unexpected for Carlton & United Breweries not to throw themselves at such a high-octane market as seltzer. With Actual, they make a well-timed play ahead of summer, pushing out their take with just two flavours: pure (vodka and soda), and lime, with the latter using actual lime juice instead of just extract.

A sub-brand of Mornington Peninsulas St Andrews Beach Brewery, Tidal Artesian, gets a bit slick with their interpretation of the seltzer craze making use of pure water from an underground spring with yeast, cane sugar and malted barley. The sharp focus on purity comes across in just two flavours, either yuzu citrus, or lime.

Melbourne-based independent water brand Sips Sparkling has made the leap to triple-distilled vodka-based seltzer with Sips, planting roots firmly in the tastes of Australia much like Stone & Wood have with four flavour-forward varieties: lemon & lemon myrtle, pink grapefruit & Davidson plum, raspberry & riberry, and cucumber with mint & strawberry gum. Its definitely a major step away from the standard flavours of watermelon and lime, offering something a bit different (and much fruitier), to the scene.

Delvi claims their seltzer is tree to tongue in a nod to the farm-to-fork movement, focusing on locally farmed and organic ingredients used with pure Australian waters. Its certainly a way to stand out, crafted into the two distinct flavours of either blood orange, or desert lime.

As one of the only seltzers coming down from the sun-soaked Queensland, Lost Palms have put forth a namesake entry thats brewed from rice and blended with real fruit. At 4.5% ABV, the spiked sparkling sticks to the tried-and-tested flavours of peach, and watermelon.

Representing Victorias coastal town of Torquay, Coast rolls out of Blackmans Brewery, sticking close to the classic profiles with watermelon, blood orange, lime, and cucumber & mint flavours. Physical stockists are limited to Victoria at the moment, but these gorgeous looking cans can be bought online directly as four and sixteen packs, or in a mixed pack.

Another one from the Victorian coast, NoSh Boozy Seltzer comes from Torquay Beverage Company and has already been given a considerable boost in reach from a partnership with Woolworths. The attention-grabbing brand has only two flavours so far, focused on fruit with either peach, or mango & pineapple, but both contain a comfortable 5% ABV.

Like Quincy, Somma got in early, hitting Australian shores late 2019 with the backing of Coles. Marketed as alcoholic sparkling water, without the official hard seltzer label, the vegan-friendly drink uses water drawn from an extinct volcano in regional Victoria and comes in just two flavours: cucumber & mint, and watermelon & lime.

Small-batch seltzer Splash launched earlier this year from co-founders Jeff Gobbels and Neighbours actor Olympia Valance, committed to the artisanal approach and aiming to offer the cleanest vodka-based RTD on the scene. Just two flavours come from this young brand: raspberry, and lime.

Another one that can be traced to Carlton & United Breweries, Brookvale Union enter the market by adding two seltzers to their range, landing on the flavours of lime & orange bitters, and juicy grapefruit.

Based along the Great Ocean Road, this newly launched seltzer brand was started by uni mates Thomas Hogan and Jeremy Irwin, joining the Australian-only approach, employed by the likes of Sips and Delvi, by crafting flavours with native ingredients. Here youve got mango & finger lime, and pink grapefruit & lemon myrtle, waving the flag high for the countrys growing seltzer market.

Original post:

A Definitive List Of The 28 Hard Seltzers In Australia - Boss Hunting

There are all kinds of horror-tinged media to choose from nowadays, but games may be the most chilling medium of all due to the level of immersion and interactivity they impart. If you've ever sat in a dark room with headphones and played something like Silent Hill or Resident Evil, you know that unique feeling of terror we're talking about. And god forbid you need to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. Horror games aren't exactly for the weak of heart.

But as Halloween approaches, there's no more fitting genre for the season, and luckily, there are a wealth of horror games out there well worth your time. The genre had humble beginnings in the late '80s, with a wave of fantastic games coming out in the three subsequent decades. And thanks to the rise of indie games, there are more scary games out now than ever before.

In 2020 we've seen some excellent horror games released, such as Capcom's follow-up to its Resident Evil 2 remake, Resident Evil 3. But even more are yet to come; we're still looking forward to horror games like The Dark Pictures: Little Hope and Amnesia: Rebirth to keep genre fans busy this fall.

Whether you plan to work your way through your horror backlog on your own or invite friends over to experience the jump scares with you, we've got you covered this Halloween season and beyond. We've gathered a list of the most terrifying and memorable games every horror enthusiast should experience this Halloween season. Genre classics like Silent Hill 2, Resident Evil Remake, and Dead Space are represented here, but you'll also find more surprising and modern choices interspersed throughout. Regardless of their notoriety, the horror games we highlight below (listed in no particular order) are all ones that left us with lasting memories.

Which horror games will you be playing this fall? Shout out your favorites in the comments below.

After creating a phenomenon with Amnesia: The Dark Descent and following it up with the existential horror of Soma, Frictional Games is going back to the series that put them on the map with Amnesia: Rebirth. Taking place in 1937, Rebirth's aesthetic finds itself somewhere between the Victorian-era castles of The Dark Descent and the hyper-futuristic underwater facility of Soma. Of course, with this being a Frictional game, nothing's as it seems, and even in the release date trailer, there are signs we're in for an even wilder and scarier ride than we might think. Amnesia: Rebirth is set to release October 20, which is a great time to get some good, new scares in on Halloween. -- Suriel Vazquez

Horror is more fun with friends. Unlike other action-oriented multiplayer horror games like Left 4 Dead and Dead by Daylight, Phasmophobia capitalizes on the lighter social elements of the genre, essentially turning the business of ghost hunting into a party game. Don't take this to mean the four-player co-op game isn't played straight--on the contrary, Phasmophobia is a serious paranormal investigation simulator, complete with a sanity meter, an arsenal of tools and surveillance equipment to monitor ghostly activity, and a checklist of objectives to guide you in testing and finally identifying whatever entity is haunting your assigned location. But between its charming early access jank and clever use of voice recognition, a single game of Phasmophobia has the potential to shift from a goofy seance with friends to survival horror at the flick of a switchsometimes literally.

Working together with up to three other players, you'll need to navigate haunted homes, farmhouses, and even a school, setting up cameras and other devices in order to monitor, coax, and even aggravate whatever spirit or demon is lingering in the area. Cameras let you detect paranormal activity remotely, while a handheld EMF reader lets you scan for atmospheric changes as you explore. The entity might leave an angry message scrawled in a notebook left in one room while you join your friends scanning for fingerprints or a drop in temperature in another part of the house. A ouija board even lets you communicate with the ghost directly, though sometimes shouting its name or even swearing at the spirit using a microphone is enough to taunt it out of hiding.

This is where some of the party game antics come in. While the stated goal is to collect enough evidence to reasonably guess the nature of the entity haunting the area (poltergeist? demon? banshee? the list goes on), all of the technical setup and ensuing tests to lure some of that evidence out is where the fun of Phasmophobia really lies. Bursting into a room and calling a ghost a dumbass. Hanging out in the surveillance truck out back and watching a live feed of your friends scrambling around in the dark after the front door mysteriously locks. Getting completely owned by a ghost (complete with silly ragdoll physics), then becoming a ghost yourself and following your friends around as they struggle to complete the mission with one person down. While it won't actually let you play as the ghost and freak out your friends, Phasmophobia is still very, very early in developmentat this stage, who knows what can happen? -- Chloi Rad

It's an Early Access title at the moment and thus feels a bit incomplete, but don't sleep on World of Horror, a lightly animated text adventure that's all spooky vibes, all the time. Inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft and horror manga artist Junji Ito, the roguelite game sends you out into a strange town beset by twisted people and supernatural horrors. World of Horror feels like you're playing through one of Ito's strange short stories, where you might search through a school for a murderous, scissors-wielding substitute teacher with a carved-up face, or investigate the apartment of a researcher who was extremely interested in eels--but, like, in an evil way.

Each of your investigations takes you through various locales, where you'll meet allies, find weapons, and engage in text-based combat with creatures, all in an effort to discover what eldritch horror is trying to be born into the world so you can put a stop to it. World of Horror is constantly creepy, often funny, consistently challenging, and always compellingly weird, and especially if you like Ito's works and fresh spins of Lovecraft tropes, you shouldn't miss it. -- Phil Hornshaw

Since 1984's The Thing, there have been plenty of games directly inspired by John Carpenter's classic film, putting you in the role of a scientist or soldier who must fight against an alien threat. However, it's rare to see a game that puts you in the monster's shoes--and that's exactly what Carrion does. You control an amorphous monster whose only goal is to devour everyone in its path, grow larger, and spread its biomass throughout the world. You crawl through each area with your fleshy tendrils, pulling every human into your toothy maw. The movement feels fast and satisfying as you slip into pipes and small crawl spaces to reach new locations. Of course, the humans won't go down without a fight, so you'll need to figure out ways to outmaneuver and outsmart them as their arsenals expand from pistols to flamethrowers. If you've ever wanted to play the monster, then Carrion is a way to do just that. -- Mat Paget

This year's Resident Evil 3 remake shows a different side of the infamous outbreak we first saw in Resident Evil 2. After surviving the Spencer Mansion incident, Jill Valentine must now escape zombie-ridden Raccoon City while being pursued by the bloodthirsty Nemesis. RE3 requires resource-management, puzzle-solving, and a cool hand to take out the zombies and other monsters that threaten your life. It's definitely a more brief experience than the Resident Evil 2 remake, but Resident Evil 3 is still worth playing for fans of Resident Evil, horror, and zombies. And once you're finished your first playthrough, you can partake in victory laps with unlocks like more powerful guns, infinite ammo, and more. -- Mat Paget

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Until Dawn developers Supermassive haven't quite found a hit on that game's scale since 2015, but they've slowly been getting their groove back. The first part of The Dark Pictures Anthology, Man of Medan, had a lot of what made Until Dawn shine, so we're hopeful Little Hope improves on the formula and has some great scares of its own. It's also primed to be a good Halloween game, releasing on October 30 and likely being short enough to get through in a single sitting with a group of friends -- Suriel Vazquez

See on digital stores: Xbox Store | PlayStation Store | Steam

Polish developer Bloober Team is releasing its next psychological horror outing, The Medium, in December--and while you won't have it for Halloween, you've got a great stand-in with Layers of Fear, the team's first horror game. The first-person title has you exploring a haunted house as a painter as he tries to complete his masterpiece, wandering shifting halls in search of macabre ingredients to make the perfect colors. What's great about Layers of Fear is the way that it manipulates space and perspective to freak you out, with the house shifting around you when you turn a corner, spin around to check behind you, or open a door.

As horror games go, Layers of Fear requires little from you outside the occasional bit of light puzzle-solving or searching for notes and clues. You won't have to run from or fight any monsters, so you won't have to contend with any difficulty spikes or skill issues. That said, the scares are still highly effective thanks to Layers of Fear's expertly crafted atmosphere. This is a great game to turn off the lights and get lost in. -- Phil Hornshaw

See on digital stores: Xbox Store | PlayStation Store | eShop | Steam

The remake of a horror classic, Resident Evil 2 released last year and was one of our top picks for Game of the Year. The remake doesn't change the story of the original, for the most part: You still get the choice to play as either Leon Kennedy or Claire Redfield as they make their way through zombie-infested Raccoon City. The storylines and settings for each character are similar, but there are unique side characters and other differences that make playing each character's path worth it. Plus, it's not that long--only about 3-5 hours for each campaign.

Resident Evil 2 is a brilliant remake that improves and expands upon the original. The creepy atmosphere left me constantly on edge, holding my breath as I turned every corner, but it balances that fear with a huge sense of satisfaction at solving challenging puzzles and taking down enemies without exhausting all my ammo. While I didn't find Resident Evil 2 quite as frightening as Resident Evil 7, it's still one of the best horror games out there, and I was enthralled by its story until the very end. -- Jenae Sitzes

See on digital stores: Xbox Store | PlayStation Store | Steam

Until Dawn has become a classic among story-driven games. The survival-horror adventure follows a group of friends on a winter getaway to a snowy mountain lodge, where, one year prior, two of their friends disappeared and were never found. It's the stereotypical setup for a slasher film, complete with flirty teens and a masked stalker on the loose, but the story takes some unexpected and unforgettable turns along the way. Most notably, Until Dawn is driven by player choice, and the consequences of your choices are deeply felt throughout the entire game. On your first playthrough, there are no redos if your action gets someone killed--only in subsequent playthroughs can you go back to specific chapters to make a different decision.

Because the story branches off in so many directions and has multiple endings, there's a ton of replayability to Until Dawn. While technically a single-player game, Until Dawn is equally fun to play with a group of people. While a bit long for a single session--it'll take you eight or nine hours to complete--you could easily break Until Dawn into two or three sessions and play through it with friends, with each person choosing a character to control and passing the controller back and forth. Having played it both alone and with friends, I can attest that it's fun to experience over and over, and there are still characters I haven't figured out how to keep alive (I refuse to look it up). It's not on the same level as something like Outcast or P.T. in terms of scariness, but there are some truly terrifying moments in Until Dawn I'll never forget. -- Jenae Sitzes

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Red Dead Redemption quickly became one of my favorite games of all time when it was released back in 2010. This was thanks in most part to the wonderful setting, quirky yet lovable characters, and increasingly engaging story. I was ready to take any excuse to spend more time in that world, and you can bet your butt I was excited for a zombie-themed expansion. Undead Nightmare is supposed to be a bit more silly and nonsensical than scary, but I don't think a single game has unnerved me as much as it. Seeing the familiar Wild West turned into a desolate, fog-filled wasteland of zombies was shocking.

It was as close as I've felt to actually experiencing a zombie apocalypse breakout in my hometown. Even my family had been turned, and though John Marston was reacting in a humorous way, I couldn't help but be totally stressed out by the entire situation. And these zombies aren't the slow and lumbering type you find in the halls of Resident Evil 2's police station: they sprint right at you, make the absolute worst noises, and need to be shot in the head. All of this, and that very sad Sasquatch mission, made me feel incredibly uneasy in a world I had fallen so much in love with.

Red Dead Redemption and Undead Nightmare are both playable on Xbox One, thanks to Microsoft's backward-compatible program. There's even a 4K patch for the game on Xbox One X, which looks fantastic. -- Mat Paget

See on digital stores: Xbox Store | PlayStation Store

Amnesia: The Dark Descent, its expansion, Justine, and the sequel, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, comprise what is still one of the best horror franchises of all time. You can grab all three of them in the Amnesia Collection, available on the PlayStation and Xbox stores. Amnesia is undoubtedly the series that ignited my love of the horror game genre, and like many, I first experienced the game through Let's Plays by a then-little-known YouTuber called PewDiePie. It's terrifying enough to watch someone else to play, but getting behind the screen yourself is another experience altogether.

Released in 2010, Amnesia: The Dark Descent follows a man named Daniel, who wakes up in a dark castle with no memory of who he is, aside from his name. In exploring the castle, Daniel must fight to maintain his sanity while putting together pieces of his past and avoiding the dreadful monsters that lurk in the shadows. The first-person survival horror game was followed by a 2013 sequel, A Machine for Pigs, that begins with a wealthy industrialist waking up in his London mansion with (once again) no memory of the past few months, only the feeling that something is terribly wrong. If Amnesia has somehow flown under the radar for you over the past decade, then wait for a dark night, grab some headphones, and dive in. -- Jenae Sitzes

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Metro Exodus isn't strictly a horror game. There aren't many jump scares, there are no re-animated corpses, and you spend a lot of time on a train chatting with your comrades. What Metro Exodus does have is dark, cramped corridors oozing with a foreboding atmosphere. Sure, Exodus also has a lot of open areas, but some of the most terrifying moments are when you're trapped in the metro, scrounging for supplies, while avoiding irradiated beasts. -- Jake Dekker

See on digital stores: Xbox Store | PlayStation Store | Steam

With Little Nightmares 2 confirmed to release on February 11, 2021, there's no better time to play the original. Little Nightmares is a Tim Burton-esque puzzle-platformer first released in 2017 that follows a small, hungry child in a yellow raincoat known only as Six. The child is trapped in a horrifying, mostly underwater island location called the Maw, which is home to numerous strange and deplorable creatures. From a long-armed blind janitor to a chilling, shadowy Lady, Six must avoid capture while navigating her way out of the Maw.

Little Nightmares is far scarier than you might expect--I was on edge during my entire playthrough. Like Playdead's Limbo or Inside, Little Nightmares has no dialogue, letting the creepy environments and tense atmosphere drive all of the suspense. It culminates in an ending that, while a bit open-ended, is definitely satisfying. The game has also received three DLC chapters, and you can get the whole experience in Little Nightmares: Complete Edition. -- Jenae Sitzes

See on digital stores: Xbox Store | PlayStation Store | Nintendo eShop | Steam

A lot has been said about Silent Hill 2, so I'll spare you any overt critical analysis I have on this beloved survival-horror sequel and instead share with you why this game still rocks. The premise alone should be enough to captivate you. As the widowed James Sutherland, you travel to the foggy town of Silent Hill in search of your dead wife, who has somehow managed to send you a letter. As a middle-schooler (yes, I played this game in 8th grade), Silent Hill 2's story was like nothing else I had encountered. There were no action heroes, explosions, or convoluted government conspiracies. Just a crippling sense of dread, an eerie atmosphere, and intriguing characters that kept my hands glued to my PS2 controller.

Silent Hill 2 expertly handles its myriad horrors, pulling you in with disturbing creatures, clever puzzles, and haunting sound design. I can't help but be in awe of how well it stands up whenever I revisit the game every few years. Its Historical Society area remains one of its crowning achievements and one of horror gaming's most expertly designed environments, brilliantly handling tense foreboding with unexpected pathways and puzzles. There are some slow moments interspersed between its most terrifying ones, but they're never enough to detract from the chilling horror and thought-provoking storytelling on display.

If you haven't played Silent Hill 2, you're in for quite a spooky adventure. It's one of the genre greats for a reason, and it only continues to stand the test of time. You can buy it as part of the Silent Hill HD Collection for PS3 and Xbox 360; fortunately, it can also be played on Xbox One due to backward-compatibility. -- Matt Espineli

See on digital stores: Xbox Store

Red Barrels' Outlast has always stood out to me for how the game presents its world. Mount Massive Asylum is blanketed in absolute darkness, so the only way to see where you're going most of the time is by using the night vision function on protagonist Miles Upshur's video camera.

Because I'm terrified of the dark, I use the camera all the time, and this transforms everything I see into a murky green where faraway environmental details aren't clear and enemies' eyes shine with a ghoulish glow. Also, this mechanic forces me to explore--batteries need to be found to keep the night vision function on the camera working--and Outlast's chilling soundtrack makes those unscripted moments of searching very tense.

Looking for batteries isn't even the scariest part of Outlast, though. It's the inhuman Variants that create most of the game's scares. Desperately running through an insane asylum while cannibalistic twins, a scissor-wielding mad scientist, and a seemingly unkillable monster chase after Upshur is terrifying. The worst of these Variants, Eddie Gluskin, appears in Outlast's Whistleblower expansion. Gluskin, aka The Groom, is a deranged serial killer who mutilates his male victims' genitalia in order to create the "perfect wife." Watching what he does--in first-person I might add--to the DLC's protagonist, Waylon Park, haunted me for days, and is still nauseating to even think about. -

If you buy Outlast, you might as well pick up the Outlast Trinity bundle, which includes Outlast, its Whistleblower DLC, and Outlast 2 (which is also very good). - Jordan Ramee

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Three years after Resident Evil 4 squeezed new scares from one of gaming's best horror series, Visceral Games might have perfected the third-person survival horror formula with Dead Space. Players control engineer Isaac Clarke as he and a rescue team land on a city-sized spaceship to find out why it's not responding to communications. They quickly discover the reason is that the ship has been overrun by monsters that used to be its crew, which are nearly impossible to kill unless players use various sci-fi mining tools to hack off the creatures' limbs.

Dead Space is a perfect confluence of modern sensibility and old-school survival horror, pairing fantastic graphics and gameplay, specifically its limb-cutting mechanics, with slightly uncooperative controls and the desperate hunt for items to keep Isaac healthy. The game uses everything at its disposal to scare you. Its industrial setting pairs with sound design that makes you constantly feel like you're not alone, and every surface is covered in air vents perfect for delivering popcorn-tossing moments as lethal mutated creatures come squirming out, straight at your face. Visceral tops it off with a spooky story that combines Alien, Children of the Corn, and Evil Dead.

Developed for Xbox 360, PS3, and PC, you can also play Dead Space on Xbox One via backward-compatibility. -- Phil Hornshaw

See on digital stores: Xbox Store | PlayStation Store | Steam

Devil Daggers may not be a traditional horror game by any means, but that makes it no less scary every time I play it. It throws you into a dark arena and tasks you with eliminating waves of flying skulls, disgusting, multi-legged beasts, and other demonic monstrosities.

There is no winning in Devil Daggers; death is inevitable, whether that comes after 10 seconds or 100 (if you're good). It's minimal in terms of visuals and sound; there's no music to accompany the onslaught of enemies. Instead, enemies produce terrifying but distinct noises. This serves to assist you by letting you know where enemies are, but it also creates an inescapable sense of dread as these horrifying monsters box you in. I find it hard not to jump out of my seat when I turn and see that I'm face to face with a flying horned monster.

It's unusual that a game designed around high score runs evokes fear, and the threat of failure is undoubtedly part of what makes Devil Daggers so tense. But it's the combination of this tension with the haunting imagery and sounds that create a legitimately terrifying experience. -- Chris Pereira

I'll admit to being the perfect mark for Slender: The Eight Pages when it was released for free in 2012. The tiny, minimalist Unity experiment by developer Mark Hadley capitalized on peak Slender Man interest, expounding on the Internet-born folklore creature that was already doing a phenomenal job of absolutely creeping me out. Hadley's little game was a tightly made little nightmare: you're exploring a small, darkened park from a first-person perspective, and you're being hunted by a supernatural creature that you can't even look at without dying. Players try to gather eight pages from around a park, which detail some other poor victim's descent into madness, while the thing keeps appearing in front of you, ever closer. It was a perfect storm of jump scares, ambient dread, and a spooky creation of the zeitgeist at the height of its power.

Slender: The Arrival expanded the game with multiple levels, a full story and prettier graphics to fully realize Hadley's original concept. It didn't change the core principle of being hunted, with nothing to help you except fleeing in desperate terror, and hoping that looking away from what stalks you might be enough to save you a few moments more. -- Phil Hornshaw

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To play Resident Evil 7 is to willingly put yourself in an inhospitable environment. The decrepit mansion where the game begins is filthy, with peeling, yellowed wallpaper, broken drywall, and garbage littering the scarred wooden floor. Wind blows through the cracks in drafts, emitting a low, constant howl. The kitchen, scattered with moldy food and unidentifiable skeletal remains, is unspeakable. You can almost smell the rot.

This is not a place you want to be--and that's before you meet the family that lives there. There's the dad, who stalks after you even after you've killed him numerous times. Mom doesn't bat an eye when he severs junior's hand at the dinner table. Somehow even worse is grandma, a catatonic woman in a wheelchair who can appear and vanish any time and anywhere when you're not looking.

The horror game improves on the best aspects of the series, while throwing out everything that had grown stale in recent installments. Playing Resident Evil 7 is a thrilling, crazy, scary-as-hell experience. And if you think it's terrifying on a TV screen, you gotta try it in VR. -- Chris Reed

See on digital stores: Xbox Store | PlayStation Store | Steam

The Xbox 360 had a generally strong launch lineup, despite lacking a killer app like Halo. There was a Majora's Mask-lite in Kameo: Elements of Power; sports games like Amped 3 and Madden, and for those who passed on the heavily flawed, but creative Perfect Dark Zero, Call of Duty 2 was there to satisfy action fans when WWII shooters were in their prime. With other titles with mass appeal like Tony Hawk's American Wasteland or Gun, who had time for a psychological horror game?

That juxtaposition between Condemned: Criminal Origins and the rest of the launch lineup was perfectly clear in the music of the title screen. Half Se7en, half Shutter Island, you play as detective Ethan Thomas, who has to track down a serial killer to prove his innocence after his partner is murdered. Along the way, you're attacked by rattled-up drug addicts and hallucinations of demons who strategically flee, hide behind corners, and fight back in the game's surprisingly effective first-person melee combat.

What made Condemned such a memorable horror experience was the feeling of being alone in the grittiest, most desolate parts of town, with intimate combat against people who hated you. You could hear them seething around corners, flanking you in the darkness, and that was all before the game throws demonic hallucinations at you. Sprinkle in a memorable final boss, a couple of solid jump-scares, one of the best uses of Xbox achievements in requiring you to forgo using guns, and a level set in a mall with walking mannequins that culminated in one of my favorite video game moments, and you've got a horror classic. Not bad for a launch-title. -- Nick Sherman

See on digital stores: Xbox Store | Steam

2014's Alien: Isolation was a bit of tough sell as a horror game. After spending many years as disposable cannon fodder in other Alien games, most notably in Aliens VS Predator and Aliens: Colonial Marines, the Xenomorph was elevated to boss status in Creative Assembly's survival horror FPS. Serving as a sequel to the original film, it moved away from the shooting galleries and action-horror from previous games, and honed its focus on dread, anxiety, and fearing the lone alien creature that stalks the halls of Sevastopol Station.

As a deep admirer of the original Alien, more so than the sequel Aliens, I longed for the day where we could get a game more influenced by the first film--with its quiet moments of dread and low-fi sci-fi aesthetic in full swing. What I appreciated most about Alien: Isolation was that it not only respected the original film, but it also fully understood what it made it so scary. As you're desperately scavenging for supplies throughout the corridors, those brief moments of calm would almost inevitably lead to situations where you'll come face to face with the Alien, who is all-powerful and cunning in its approach to slay any human that comes across its path.

For more of my thoughts on Alien Isolation, check out my retrospective feature discussing why the game is still an unmatched horror experience. -- Alessandro Fillari

See on digital stores: Xbox Store | PlayStation Store | eShop | Steam

Don't judge a visual novel by its cover. Doki Doki Literature Club looks like a simple anime-inspired visual novel packed with tropes; you have a love triangle (or quadrilateral?), the tsundere, the shy one, and the childhood friend as a potential love interest all thrown into a high school club. While the free-to-play game is front-loaded with your typical story progression, it's expected that you make it past a certain point where things really pick up.

Take note of the content warning presented upfront, as Doki Doki Literature Club uses sensitive subjects and graphic visuals throughout its narrative. It'll subvert expectations in clever and terrifying ways that can be either subtle and in-your-face. Since this is a PC game, it has the unique ability to be meta; breaking the fourth wall is used to great effect and a few secrets get tucked away within the game's text files. There are a few moments that allow the player to impact progression, such as dialogue options or choosing which of the club members to interact with at certain moments. But that's all in service of building you up for when the game reveals its true nature. Even the wonderfully catchy soundtrack gets twisted to create an unsettling atmosphere.

It's hard to communicate exactly why Doki Doki Literature Club is one of the most horrifying games because it relies heavily on specific story beats and meta-narrative events, and we wouldn't want to spoil the things that make it so special. You'll just have to experience it for yourself. -- Michael Higham

When Resident Evil first hit the Playstation back in 1996, it revolutionized video game horror and created a new sub-genre in the process--survival horror. Its GameCube remake in 2002--and subsequent remaster for the PS4, Xbox One, and PC--utilized improved graphics and lighting to greatly enhance the haunting atmosphere of the first game.

You have the option to play as one of two STARS members (elite police officers), who have come to a mansion investigating a number of strange murders. Unbeknownst to them, this mansion is home to a number of illegal experiments operated by the Umbrella Corporation, leading to zombified humans and creatures attacking the STARS.

The entire game takes place from fixed camera angles, and you never know what's on the other side of the door, or around each corner, meaning you're just moments away from walking into a scare. You're given limited ammo and even a limited number of opportunities to save your progress, and this formula works perfectly in tandem with the foreboding atmosphere.

In one particular moment, I hadn't saved in hours and was running through a room I'd revisited multiple times in the past with 0 health left--when suddenly zombie dogs decided to jump through the windows scaring the crap out of me. A room I thought was safe had betrayed me at the worst time. This moment alone is easily one of the most impactful scares I've ever had playing a game and cements Resident Evil as a mastercraft in horror video games. It's available as part of the Resident Evil Origins Collection, which also gets you Resident Evil 0. -- Dave Klein

See on digital stores: Xbox Store | PlayStation Store | eShop | Steam

Eternal Darkness took the concept of survival horror--already well-established by games like Resident Evil, Clock Tower, and Silent Hill--and added a brand new element designed exclusively to screw with the player: the sanity meter.

Alexandra Roivas returns to her family's estate after discovering her grandfather has been murdered. The police have found nothing, so she decides to look for herself, and finds a secret room with a book the Tome of Eternal Darkness. The game then takes place in multiple timelines and locations, with players choosing who they want to follow as characters battle with, or are corrupted by, ancient artifacts and the Eternal Darkness.

This allows the game to utilize a vast array of settings for its horrors, as well as having every character affected by a sanity meter, which slowly drains if players are spotted by enemies. Sanity effects range from statue heads following you, to weird noises and strange camera angles. In one particular instance, I went to save my game, only to find the game telling me it was deleting my save. I jumped off of my couch, ran over to my GameCube to turn off the game, only to realize the game was screwing with me, and my save wasn't being deleted. You win that round, Eternal Darkness you win that round. -- Dave Klein

In the years since the release of the first game, the Five Nights At Freddy's series has gone from popular YouTube Let's Play game to massive phenomenon. As gaming's Friday The 13th, the horror series manages to get another sequel, even when people are just experiencing the previous game. While the franchise has spiraled out in a big way, the original game still manages to turn a mundane job into nerve-wracking nightmare scenario. As the late-night security guard for Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria, your job is to make sure no one breaks into the place, and to ensure that the walking animatronic puppets don't murder anyone--namely you. That second part is important.

With no means of self-defense, your only hope is to survive until early morning by blocking doors and obstructing the paths of the roaming animatronics puppets, who desperately seek any humans after hours. My expectations for the game were low, mostly due to how played-out it seemed in the months after its release. However, once I got to play it for myself, I was surprised at how quickly it ramped up in intensity, despite its ridiculous premise.

Even though it manages to revel in jump-scares, almost comically so, the tension and moments leading up to those genuinely chilling encounters make for some rather memorable frights. Just when you think you're safe and only minutes away from sunrise, Freddy Fazbear waltzes into your safe room and gets the jump on you. I'll never forget the moment that this game, which I grossly underestimated, got the best of me. -- Alessandro Fillari

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Editor's note: This article is the updated version of a story first published on October 30, 2018.

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The 25 Best Horror Games To Play On Halloween 2020 - GameSpot

In a few days, Jewish-Americans are going to take part in an inexplicable assault on themselvestheir culture and heritage, their religion and their very future. They do so every two years in November in the United States, with seventy-five percent of the Jewish-American electorate going to the polls to cast their ballots for the party of the BDS movement, the party wishing the worst upon Israel, the party that stands against everything that has held Judaism together over millennia.

Three years ago the Democrat party wondered for a brief moment if making their malice against Jews too obvious might harm them at the polls. They had just installed Keith Ellisonformer associate and colleague of Louis Farrakhanas their Deputy Chair. But calmer heads at the Democratic National Committee who assured everyone that American Jews would vote Democratic no matter who was nominated were proven correct. Indeed, the very next year the same 75% of the Jewish electorate voted as they always had.

Keith Ellison is hardly the only questionable individual insofar as anti-Semitism is concerned holding high office and a leadership position among the Democrats. To the contrary, Linda Sarsour, Al Sharpton, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib head a long list of leaders whose rhetoric one might hear being repeated the next time Jews are chased down and assaulted in the Crown Heights section of New York City.

That Jewish-Americans should choose by such a wide margin the political party that makes plain its distaste for all things Jews hold dear is truly one of the most bizarre political facts of the modern world. Family and children are foundational for Jews, the same Jews incongruously aligned with extremists conducting a non-stop assault on the nuclear family. Judaism is the bedrock of the Jewish people, who nonetheless inexplicably affiliate with the party of atheism, the party whose adherents work to erase in God we trust from our money, to remove the Ten Commandments from our courtrooms and statehouses, to side with twisting the law into permitting Satanic monuments to be erected and displayed.

There are no people more law-abiding, self-reliant, decent, honorable and dependable on Earth than Jews, none instilled with a deeper work ethic or a more abiding history of great intellectualism. Yet in scant days they will vote for the party that has instigated and then turned a blind eye to months of anarchistic rioting, arson, store-looting, window-smashing, synagogue-vandalizing, flag-burning, and monument-despoiling having ravaged dozens of American cities.

What is even more incomprehensible is from whom Jewish-Americans will be turning away. There was no president in the history of the United States who ever had a Jewish daughter, a Jewish son-in-law and Jewish grandchildrenuntil the current Republican president took office. And the last four years has been nothing short of a renaissance in bringing back respect for Jews. The Republican administration recognized Jerusalem as Israels capital, and ignored the pained howls from capitals all around the world, standing resolutely and unabashedly with Israel. This same administration has wrought the almost miraculous dtente between Israel and the UAE and Bahrain, and with quite a few more Arab nations seemingly on the brink of joining in normalizing relations.

And, insofar as Crown Heights is concerned, that is hardly the only place where Jewish-Americans are set upon with impunity by forces that have abandoned them while still somehow inveigling their votes. There has been a veritable scourge of anti-Semitism across progressive US college campuses from coast to coast. At Portland State University in 2016 students were captured on video signing up to give money to terrorist organizations for the express purpose of bombing Israeli schools, hospitals and synagogues. At New York University the deans at that institution were not only unconcerned about Jewish students being harried, bullied and assaulted on their campus but went so far as to award the organization of their aggressors, the Students for Justice in Palestine, the University Presidents Service Award for outstanding contribution to NYU life.

No Democrat stepped in to bring an end to such outrages; to the contrary, Democrats fueled the anti-Semitism. Again, it was left to the Republican administration to come to Jewish students aid, with President Trump signing an executive order in 2019 to include Jewish students under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.

One is constrained to ask then, is science aware of any collective neurosis which can afflict whole peoples with this kind of shared malaise, a dysfunction causing the oppressed to vote for their oppressors? In history are there cases of nations which have simply given up on themselves and opted for communal negativity and defeatism?

Perhaps the Byzantines offer a window into something of that sort of mindset. Suffering through a series of almost unending setbacks after holding sway over a wide section of Eastern Mediterranean lands for over a millennium, the shock of coming to grips with their own lack of invincibility sent the peoples of the Eastern Roman Empire into a long, uncomfortable and pessimistic decline toward their eventual extinction at the hands of the Ottoman Turks in 1453 AD. Prior to the utter collapse there were centuries of bizarre outbreaks of iconoclasm, an inward finger-pointing and degradation of their culture as the alleged cause of their misfortunes at the hands of external foes, divisive hatreds unleashed on supposed internal enemies, and a gloomy zeitgeist which can be seen and appreciated in an instant simply taking in morose Byzantine art with its hauntingly cynical and doubtful look stamped in the eyes of its portraiture.

So for those Jews planning on casting their ballots for the party that despises them, before pulling the voting lever, one would strongly advise taking a quick perusal of the events of May 29, 1453 in Constantinople. When the end came, it wasnt with a whimper, but with terrible and excruciating cries and shrieks that cause the blood to run cold, and that should cause even blind Jewish eyes to open.

David Nabhan is a science and science fiction writer. He is the author of "Earthquake Prediction: Dawn of the New Seismology" (2017) and three other books on seismic forecasting.

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Jewish-American Will to Electoral Self-Destruction | David Nabhan - The Times of Israel

Book review: Duncan McCargo and Anyarat Chattharakul Future Forward: The rise and fall of a Thai political party(NIAS Press, 2020)

Youth-led protests in Thailand inrecent months have rocked the army-backed ruling elite which has been politically ascendant since a military coup in 2014 with a state of emergency declared in Bangkok on Thursday. One of the harbingers of this rising discontent, whichhas included calls for the government to step down, a new constitution and, more boldly, a curbing of the powers of the monarchy, was the rise of the progressive Future Forward Party, a new force in a polarised political landscape.

Led by a wealthy young businessman, Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, Future Forward surprised many with a strong showing in Thailands 2019 general election, winning the third-largest share of seats, with 6.3 million votes, despite having been launched barely a year earlier. That vote, carefully engineered to favour a military-aligned government, resulted in the appointment of coup leader Prayuth Chan-ocha as prime minister. But Future Forwards popularity clearly sat uneasily with Thailands conservative establishment.

The party was dissolved by the Constitutional Court in February this year, and its core leaders, including Thanathorn, were banned from politics for a decade. In response, the party has since rebranded: in parliament, as the Move Forward Party, and as an activist organisation called the Progressive Movement.

In Future Forward: The rise and fall of a Thai political party, Duncan McCargo and Anyarat Chattharakul explore how this new political entity surged to prominence. The authors profile Future Forwards key leaders, trace its support, and examine the mix of policy and strategy that attracted a younger generation of voters steeped in the increasingly vigorous online sphere of Thai political activism.

Thanathorn is central to the partys popularity. The authors view him as an example of the hyperleader, a term coined by Paolo Gerbaudo, describing a highly personalised and charismatic style of leadership, propelled by continuous media appearances and canny use of social media.

A prolific online presence, Thanathorn frequently appears on YouTube shows, Facebook Live eventsand a steady stream of party-produced images and videos, invariably wearing his signature white shirt with a row of pens tucked into his top pocket. He currently has 1.2 million followers on Twitter.

But party figures, and Thanathorn himself, are wary of fostering a cult of personality. The authors point to the cautionary example of another Thai hyperleader, Thaksin Shinawatra, who exercised his own brand of personalised politics and was ultimately removed in a coup in 2006 (accused, among other things, of undermining the monarchy).

In some respects, Thanathorn is difficult to pin down. On the one hand, he is the wealthy heir to an auto-parts conglomerate, a billionaire whose company once laid off more than 200 unionised workers involved in strike action. On the other, he is the political activist who espouses socialist ideals, rejects consumerism, and has been an active figure in various protest movements, including as part of pro-Thaksin red shirt protests in 2010, which were violently suppressed.

Future Forward also seemed to signal a break from Thailands fraught colour-coded politics that (broadly) pitted conservative yellow shirts, supported in Bangkok and parts of the south, against red shirts with a strong rural base in the populous north and northeast.

Alongside Thanathorn, two other prominent figures, profiled in the book, are seen as making up a dynamic and influential leadership trio.

Piyabutr Saengkanokkul, an activist legal scholar with a purported personal library of 2500 books, drove the partys intellectual agenda. Pannika Wanich, a former journalist and TV presenter, was the partys spokesperson, a gifted public speaker who garnered attention following her exclusion from parliament with a no confidence speech described as a spectacular monologue of denunciation against the Prayuth government.

The trio had significant public cut-through, and their opponents seemed to agree, with all three at various stages accused of being anti-monarchist (a serious charge, given Thailands lese-majestylaw) and eventually banned from politics until 2030. McCargo and Anyarat note that the party faced at least 19 legal cases during its short existence.

What was behind Future Forwards success? The partys policies included rewriting the constitution, reforming the military (including reducing military expenditure and ending conscription)and decentralising political and budgetary power. However, party figures were doubtful that any one policy had attracted voters.

Instead, it was what Future Forward represented more broadly: a vote for change and strong opposition to military interventionism. As McCargo and Anyarat put it, the party had captured the zeitgeist of a new generation that was utterly sick of being patronised. Their message was amplified through social media channels that the party used more effectively than its opponents.

Future Forward also seemed to signal a break from Thailands fraught colour-coded politics that (broadly) pitted conservative yellow shirts, supported in Bangkok and parts of the south, against red shirts with a strong rural base in the populous north and northeast. For one supporter interviewed by the authors, Future Forward represented a new politics with no colour. Even its official colour, orange a mix of red and yellow seemed to signal a third way.

There is reason to temper expectations about Future Forwards rise not least as it is now officially banned. Although the party won votes around the country in 2019, it performed best in Bangkok, suggesting any parliamentary offspring would have work to do in winning constituencies in the north and northeast, where Thaksin-aligned parties were still overwhelmingly popular.

But the broader progressive movement, reflected in part in ongoing student-led protests, may have a lasting impact on the Thai political scene.

As McCargo and Anyarat note, by declaring Future Forward illegal, the government effectively quashed the political aspirations of a younger generation, leaving them with no incentive to work within the system. That younger generation is now responding on the streets.

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Progressive politics in Thailand's polarised polity | The Interpreter - The Interpreter