How To Support Racial Justice, Diversity And Activism This Weekend In Louisville (9/18) – Louisville Eccentric Observer

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FRIDAY, Sept. 18

Old School FridaysThe Palm RoomNo cover | 5 p.m.-closeJoes Palm Room, the famous Russell jazz club, has been reopened and reinvented by Black business owner Marcus Withers. Check it out at the Palm Rooms new, weekly event, Old School Fridays, featuring The Palm Room House Band and happy hour from 5 to 9 p.m. and music and live visuals from DJ K-Dogg from 9 p.m. to close. Calling all steppers and ballroom dancers, organizers say.

Arrest the Cops RallyOffice of the Attorney General, Louisville Branch OfficeFree | 5:30 p.m.Protesters, led by the family of Breonna Taylor, are rallying at the Kentucky Attorney Generals Office to demand that the police officers who fired their weapons in the raid that led to Breonna Taylors death are arrested. This event is also organized by Until Freedom and Louisville activists.

Statements After an Arrest Under the Immortality ActOnlineFree | 8 p.m.UofLs Department of Theatre Arts presents this reading of a play about a white librarian and a Black school principal in South Africa, whose love affair is reported to the police during apartheid. You can watch virtually on Friday or on Saturday at the same time. After the performance, there will be talkbacks with specials guests. On Friday, hear from Actors Theatre of Louisville Executive Artistic Director Robert Barry Fleming, playwright and translator Amlin Gray and UofL Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Cherie Dawson-Edwards. And, on Saturday, playwright Larry Muhammad, former South African resident Shachaf Polakow and UofL law professor Enid Trucious-Haynes, will discuss the show.

Voter Services Pop-upPortland KrogerFree | 11 a.m.-1 p.m.The Louisville Democrats will have a booth at the Portland Kroger offering help for voters. You can get started on requesting an absentee ballot, register to vote and, if youre formerly incarcerated, volunteers can check to see if your voting right has been restored. Then, on Sunday, the League of Women Voters is sponsoring a rally encouraging the public to vote. Bring noisemakers and signs to the corner of Douglass Boulevard and Eastern Parkway from 4 to 6 p.m. (The event is nonpartisan; organizers ask that you do not bring signs promoting specific candidates.)

Taking Up Space: Art as BusinessChange Today, Change TomorrowFree | 7-10:30 p.m.This is a new, monthly networking and educational space for Black creatives, created by Change Today, Change Tomorrow and A Well Written Photograph. This month, Ashley Cathey, a Louisville painter, will speak about Art as a Business over free cocktails and food from My Cafe, a locally-owned Back eatery.

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I’m Thinking Of Ending Things: Who The Caller On The Phone Is – Screen Rant

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In I'm Thinking of Ending Things, a young female character receives mysterious phone calls, so who's on the other end? Here's our breakdown.

WARNING: Spoilers for I'm Thinking of Ending Things.

In I'm Thinking of Ending Things, a young female characterreceives mysteriousphone calls, so who's on the other end? The Netflix film initially plays out like a quirky relationship drama, but then evolves into a surrealist character study about love, loss, and regret. Written and directed by the eclectic filmmaker Charlie Kaufman, I'm Thinking of Ending Thingsis based on Iain Reid's 2016 eponymous novel.

Starring Jesse Plemons andJessie Buckley,I'm Thinking of Ending Things' titular concept stems from insecuritiesfaced by a couple during the early stages of their relationship. On a snowy evening, Jake (Plemons) drives girlfriendLucy (Buckley) to his parents' home for a first meeting, only something feels off from the start. Jake can seemingly hear Lucy's inner dialogue, and then behaves oddly when arriving at the country destination; he refuses to enter his formerhome right away, and instead gives Lucy a property tour while explaining the deaths of various sheep and pigs. When the couple finally joins "Mother" (Toni Collette) and "Father" (David Thewlis) for dinner, Lucy comes to realize that Jake most likely had a difficult childhood. But what troubles her the mostare incoming phone callsthat she doesn't respond to.

Related:I'm Thinking Of Ending Things: How The Movie Compares To The Book

Within the first 10 minutes of I'm Thinking of Ending Things, Lucy receives a call from someone named "Lucy."Shortly after, Jake references an early 19th century poem by English writerWilliam Wordsworthentitled "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood." Jake then informs his girlfriend Lucy thatWordsworth once wrote a series of poems for a woman named Lucy, whom he describes as a "beautiful, idealized woman who dies young." Later, during the family dinner, Lucy notices that she has several missed calls from "Lucy" and now"Louisa." After the family dinner, she spots a photo that appears to be herself as a child, and theface then changes to a younger version of Jake during a second glance. Seconds later, Lucy receives a phone call from "Yvonne." From this point forward, it's heavily implied in I'm Thinking of Ending Things that Lucy is a figment of Jake's imagination, and that the older janitor (Gus Boyd) - who frequently appears in side sequences -has dreamed up the entire narrative while reflecting about his life. The mysterious calls are messages from the janitor to his subconscious.

The cryptic phone calls in I'm Thinking of Ending Things thematically link tothe opening minutes. During voiceover narration, Lucy states that "It feels like I've known Jake longer than I have." The character stands on a city sidewalkand looks to the sky as snow falls, and then feels drawn to something in the second or third level of a nearby building. The aforementioned janitor looksdown at Lucy and mutters to himself: "The assumptions are right. I can feel my fear growing. Now is the time for the answer. Just one question." Seconds later, Plemons' Jake shows up, and the narrative properly begins, or so it seems. With this early passing moment in I'm Thinking of Ending Things, Kaufman establishes the premise for the cryptic phone calls, evidenced by the fact that the mid-movie voicemail from"Yvonne" includes a line from the opening: "There's only one question to answer."

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Cubs: 3 players whose futures with team are doomed after shortened season – Cubbies Crib

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Cubs pitcher Tyler Chatwood has likely thrown his last pitch for the team. (Photo by Duane Burleson/Getty Images)

Despite carrying the second-best record in the National League into Wednesday nights matchup with the Cleveland Indians, the Chicago Cubs have a great deal of uncertainty around them.

The pitching staff feels like trying to plug holes in a sinking ship using your fingers, guys you counted on to carry the offense havent showed up and beyond 2020, the financials for the organization will be a huge focus for ownership.

Underperforming stars like Kris Bryant, Anthony Rizzo, Willson Contreras, Kyle Schwarber and Javier Baez arent going anywhere. Why? Because Theo Epstein isnt about to sell low on any of them. It seems far more likely the club hopes for a return to form with eyes cast toward some potential trade deadline deals in 2021.

Chicago is hoping to pull off one more deep postseason run before the group that gained baseball immortality in 2016 begins to go its separate ways. Next years Cubs could look vastly different and for a variety of reasons, these three guys seem highly unlikely to be a part of the 2021 club.

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The Water Man | TIFF 2020 Review | The GATE – The GATE

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With his feature directorial debut, the Spielbergian family adventure and drama The Water Man, actor David Oyelowo shows that he might have a true knack for big budget blockbuster filmmaking. An unabashed love letter to young adult literature and the slightly-scary coming of age stories that were all the rage in the 1980s, The Water Man is a moving, well performed, and gorgeously shot effort that should entertain viewers of almost any age.

Twelve-year-old bookworm and budding graphic novelist Gunner Boone (Lonnie Chavis) sets aside his dream of writing a detective series when he learns his mother (Rosario Dawson) is battling an aggressive form of leukemia. With his father (Oyelowo) not offering much support, Gunner puts all his bookish efforts into trying to find a cure for moms suffering. One day, he stumbles upon a young girl named Jo (Amiah Miller) telling a bunch of kids about her encounter with a mythological legend known as The Water Man, an immortal humanoid creature that dwells in the forests. Gunner goes down another rabbit hole of research and begs Jo to help him find The Water Man, believing that the mythological beings immortality holds the key to curing his mothers cancer.

Oyelowo and screenwriter Emma Needell refuse to take easy or hammy shortcuts with their story, instead preferring old school, layered storytelling and character work over jump scares, set pieces, and teary eyed manipulation. Unlike many family films pitched at a similar level, The Water Man (executive produced by Oprah Winfrey) comes about its adventure and heart-tugging emotions naturally, with Oyelowo preferring to focus on performance and story. Its a story that couldve been cheesy in lesser hands, but Oyelowo and his young stars who boast exceptional chemistry together have crafted a genuine, cynicism-free bit of wonderment.

The Water Man is nostalgic and modernist in equal measure, with lots of nice touches that enhance the overall tone and entertainment value. Theres some clever use of animation, delightful supporting performances from acting luminaries Alfred Molina and Maria Bello (as a local historian and the town sheriff, respectively), and it builds to a perfect emotional payoff. Hopefully this film finds the audience it deserves, because The Water Man has the potential to be a family movie classic in the making.

The Water Man screens at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival outdoors at the Visa Skyline Drive-In at Cityview on Saturday, September 19 at 7:30 pm and indoors at TIFF Bell Lightbox on Saturday, September 19 at 4:00 pm. It will also be available to stream online for a limited time during TIFF 2020 via Bell Digital Cinema starting at 6:00 pm on Saturday, September 19. All online screenings during TIFF 2020 are geolocked to Canada. If seeing a film in cinemas, please take all necessary precautions. Practice social distancing, wear a mask, and stay home if feeling ill.

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Regular Exercise and Lifting Weights Might Be the Key to Immortality – The Great Courses Daily News

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ByMichael Ormsbee, PhD,Florida State UniversityEdited by Kate Findley and proofread byAngelaShoemaker, The Great Courses DailyAging doesnt cause the dramatic drop in muscle mass that we often see; rather, it is chronic disuse of muscles due to inactivity that is primarily responsible. Photo By DenisProduction.com / ShutterstockAging and Lifting Weights

Research has repeatedly shown that lifting weights can help prevent age-associated chronic diseases like osteoporosis and type 2 diabetes. It is also a major factor in allowing you to move around and maintain your independence.

You need at least enough muscle mass to walk unassisted, get out of a chair, and carry groceries. The best part about lifting weights is that there are no age restrictions.

Now, you may need a modification of an exercise or two, but that is where a certified personal trainer can come into play and show you proper form to prevent injury and make any changes you may need to accommodate any physical limitation. Consider Ernestine Shepherd, who began to lift weights at age 56 and started competing as a bodybuilder in her 70s.

As we age, a phenomenon called sarcopenia occurs, which is the natural, progressive loss of muscle mass. Studies have shown that between the ages of 40 and 50 years old, we can lose more than 8% of our muscle mass, and that can accelerate to more than 15% per decade after the age of 75, if measures are not taken to prevent it.

Fortunately, we can do much to slow this process down. Most people think that aging alone causes us to lose muscle. Now, though, research is showing that its not simply aging but rather the lack of physical activity that is responsible for sarcopenia.

One study looked at lifelong exercisers to determine if chronic exercise could prevent the loss of muscle mass and strength in aging adults. The researchers took 20 men and 20 women between the ages of 40 and 81 years old who exercised at least four to five times per week and competed as triathletes.

These older athletes were put through a series of tests to study their health, strength, and body composition using magnetic resonance imaging or MRI technology. MRI gives us a precise view of the fat and muscle in specific regions of your body. This study used it on the quadriceps muscles of the thigh to look at muscle quality.

As you might expect, the younger people in the study did have a lower body mass index, or BMI, and body fat percentage compared to older athletes. However, the lean muscle mass and strength were no different between the younger and the older athletes.

Whats more is that these benefits were similar in both men and women. This highlights the fact that long-term exercise training can aid in preserving muscle mass and may also prevent increases in body fat as we age.

Additionally, this study helps to debunk a common myth by showing that aging alone doesnt cause the dramatic drop in muscle mass that we often see. Rather, its the chronic disuse and inactivity that are primarily to blame.

One of the most interesting people to discuss is a man who is a prime example of how exercise and a healthy diet can improve your muscle mass and quality of life, Professor Ormsbee said. Hes John Nagy.

Nagy is a participant in the Physical Activity Centre of Excellence at McMaster University in Canada. Not only does he exercise vigorously, but he is also 97 years old.

A recent interview described his daily routine like this: his warm-up begins with movements in the shower, followed by floor and ball exercises for his core and his back. Hell then walk to the Universitytwo miles each wayor make up for it on his treadmill, followed by a 90-minute workout at the University.

He also keeps dumbbells, resistance bands, and a Swiss Ball in his apartment next to the treadmill along with a stationary bike. Mr. Nagy embodies the idea of using regular exercise to maintain his quality of life and to stay able-bodied so that he can live to the fullest.

Just like Ernestine Shepherd, Professor Ormsbee said. Maybe we should all take a pageor maybe a few chaptersout of their books.

Michael Ormsbee is an Associate Professor in the Department of Nutrition, Food, and Exercise Sciences and Interim Director of the Institute of Sports Sciences and Medicine in the College of Human Sciences at Florida State University. He received his MS in Exercise Physiology from South Dakota State University and his PhD in Bioenergetics from East Carolina University.

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Tomase: There’s no defending voting for 10 Hall of Famers this year – NBC Sports Boston

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At the risk of denigrating the accomplishments of this year's nominees, it's hard to recall a weaker Hall of Fame ballot.

Of course Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens deserve enshrinement, depending on your tolerance for their truthfulness before Congress, but their case stopped being argued on its merits a long time ago.

I'll always consider Curt Schilling a slam-dunk choice for his postseason exploits alone, but I can see why others disagree, and frankly, in light of the comically toxic disinformation that spews from his feeds in a Deepwater Horizon-style geyser, I don't mind seeing him twist in the wind, because I am incredibly petty.

The fourth and final name on my ballot, Gary Sheffield, receives even less support, but I happen to believe he's one of the 30 greatest hitters ever, and if we won't reward that just because he plodded across the outfield like a hastily recommissioned Soviet Era tank, then what are we doing?

So we can quibble about this candidate or that, but here's what I can't countenance: examining this ballot and deciding that eight, nine, even 10 names belong in Cooperstown.

It is time to stage a BBWAA-wide intervention.

Over the last seven years, a record 22 players have earned enshrinement from the writers, finally breaking the PED backlog that basically coincided with the arrivals of Bonds and Clemens.

The 2021 ballot includes 25 names and if you pick 10 of them, that means you believe 40 percent of the qualifiers deserve immortality. That's not exactly an Ivy League acceptance rate, and we're supposed to be honoring the absolute best of the best.So what's going on?

Chalk it up to a pair of developments ruining our lives in different ways -- social media and the statistical revolution.

The former speaks for itself. Loudly. And not always with real people supplying the words.

Though the One True Ballot police have thankfully lowered their weapons since the overheated heyday of 2014, there's still an element of the voting populace that would rather satisfy Twitter banshees than defend leaving someone else's favorite player off their ballot. Easier to just check the maximum and then back away slowly with hands raised. "I would've voted for your guy, but the limit is 10. Can I go now? I have a wife and family."

I believe it was the great Ray Ratto who boiled this conflict down to, "I want a vote / you can't have one." The armchair experts -- whose theoretical ballots look suspiciously homogenous, by the way -- believe that their choices are The Way with the fervency of a Mandalorian. And if you disagree, it's to be expected, because that what happens when you entrust the vote to a group cursed with such breathtaking collective ignorance.

So where do they derive their preternatural confidence? Statistics, of course. The rise of analysts like Jay Jaffe of Fangraphs has given voters new ways to consider the ballot. Jaffe's case for Sheffield, for instance, helped clarify my own stance on his candidacy. (As an aside, I'm just not holding defensive metrics against someone who played the majority of his career before that data was even tracked accurately).

The larger point that's missed when considering his work, and others like it, is that it's not presented as definitive. Jaffe makes a case. His JAWS metric provides context for how a candidate's peak seasons compare to the average Hall of Famer's.

It's not meant to be absolutist, but it's often interpreted that way. When the Hall of Fame becomes an actuarial exercise of sorting career WAR and JAWS in descending order, and go bleep yourself if you even consider subjective measures like MVP votes or All-Star games or postseason dominance or hell, how watching Sheffield swing his bat like a cornered antihero made you feel, then we've lost our way in a style befitting today's broken game, where a Cy Young winner can get lifted in Game 6 of a World Series shutout after only two hits and 73 pitches, because that's what the numbers say.

The numbers also say that Bobby Abreu is a Hall of Famer. They say the same thing about Todd Helton and Andruw Jones and Scott Rolen and Billy Wagner.

They were all very good players. Rolen probably borders on great. But I'll again ask: what are we doing? Are we granting every above-average player immortality? Or are we holding the Hall of Fame to a higher standard than enshrining four out of every 10 nominees?

I know where I fall, which is why I'm comfortable submitting a ballot with four names total. Feel free to @ me. I will definitely ignore you.

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Emily Dickinson is the unlikely hero of our time | Opinion – Pennsylvania Capital-Star

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By Matthew Redmond

Since her death in 1886, Emily Dickinson has haunted us in many forms.

She has been the precocious little dead girl admired by distinguished men; the white-clad, solitary spinster languishing alone in her bedroom; and, inmore recent interpretations, the rebellious teenager bent on smashing structures of power with her torrential genius.

As the world continues to endure the ravages of COVID-19, another ghost of Dickinson steps into view. This one, about 40 years old, seems by turns vulnerable and formidable, reclusive and forward. She carries the dead weight of crises beyond her control, but remains unbowed by it.

It was while drafting my dissertation, which explores the meaning of old age in America, that I first encountered this Dickinson. She has been with me ever since.

Most admirers of Dickinsons poetry know that she spent a considerable part of her adult life in what we callself-imposed confinement, rarely venturing outside the family homestead in Amherst, Massachusetts. Less known, perhaps, is that the final 12 years of her life were passed in a state of nearly perpetual mourning.

It began with the death of her father. For all his stern comportment, Edward Dickinson had enjoyed a special relationship with Emily, his middle child. When her surviving letters declare him the oldest and oddest sort of a foreigner, one hears the affectionate annoyance that comes with real devotion. He died in 1874, away from home.

Loss followed loss. Favorite correspondent Samuel Bowles died in 1878. With the passing of Mary Ann Evans, otherwise known asGeorge Eliot, in 1880, Dickinson lost a kindred spirit a mortal who, in her words, had already put on immortality while living. A very different loss was that of Dickinsons mother, Emily Norcross Dickinson, with whom she enjoyed little or no rapport for much of their life together, but who became at least somewhat precious to her daughter on her deathbed. That was in 1882, the same year that took from her literary idolRalph Waldo Emersonand early mentorCharles Wadsworth.

The following year saw the death of her cherished eight-year-old nephew, Gilbert, from typhoid fever, his illness having spurred one of Dickinsons rare excursions beyond the homestead. The year after that, Judge Otis Phillips Lord, with whom she pursuedthe only confirmed romantic relationship of her life, finally succumbed to an illness of several years and was wearily dubbed by the poet our latest Lost.

What impact did so much grief have on the mind of one of Americas greatest visionary artists? Her letters say little enough. Writing to Mrs. Samuel Mack in 1884, however,she frankly admits: The Dyings have been too deep for me, and before I could raise my heart from one, another has come.

The word deep is an arresting choice, making it sound as though Dickinson is drowning in a pile of dead loved ones. Each time she comes up for air, yet another body is added to the great mass.

This is characteristic of Dickinson. If her imagination shrinks from visualizing breadth, it thrives on depth. Some of the most captivating images in her poetry are piles of things that cannot be piled:thunder,mountains,wind. During the Civil War, she uses the same technique to represent soldiers heroic and terrible sacrifice:

In describing her more personal losses of the 1870s, Dickinson seems to imagine yet another pile of human corpses rising before her eyes. Or maybe it is the same pile, her loved ones added to the dead troops whose fate she kept contemplating to the end of her own life. Seen in this light, the Dyings appear not just too deep but unfathomably so.

At the time of this writing, the pile of lives that overshadows our livesis 800,000 deepand getting deeper by the hour. Dickinsons imagery shows how keenly she would have understood what we might feel, dwarfed by a mountain of mortality that will not stop growing. The same anger, exhaustion and sense of futility were her constant companions in later life.

Fortunately, she had other companions. Asrecent studieshave shown, Dickinson was the best kind of social networker, maintaining profoundly generative relationships by correspondence from the family homestead. Her poetic output, though greatly diminished toward the end of her life, never ceases, and its offerings include some of her richest meditations on mortality, suffering and redemption.

These words resonate in the current crisis, during which protecting the daily mind has become a full-time job. News reports, with their updated death tolls, erode our intellectual and spiritual foundations. All seems lost.

But if strain and sorrow are palpable in this poem, so is courage. Dickinsons lonely speaker chooses to express what she has felt, to measure and record the burden of loss that life has thrust upon her. Beliefs, once bandaged, may heal. And while no man has ever been bold enough to confront the deeper Consciousness that so many deaths expose within the human mind, the speaker will not rule out doing so herself. There is still room in this blighted world for the kind of visionary experience from which hope not only springs, but flourishes.

Living in the shadow of death, Dickinson remained enamored of life. This, as much as anything, makes her a hero of our time.

Matthew Redmond is a Ph.D candidate in the Department of English at Stanford University. He wrote this piece for The Conversation, where it first appeared.

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Covid Is Reshaping Death. And Maybe Life. – The Wall Street Journal

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The desire to die in the presence of those we love is so deeply ingrained that during the Civil War, soldiers dying on battlefields pulled out family photographs to create the experience in their imaginations. In 2020, the face-to-face family death vigil largely became an impossible luxury. While relatives wept on sidewalks, people with Covid died in isolation by the tens of thousands, attended only by masked nurses and aides holding iPads and dressed in hazmat suits.

Just as deeply honored, for millennia, is our unspoken promise to handle the bodies of our dead with reverence. So visceral is this obligation that in the powerful Greek tragedy Antigone, the heroine knowingly courts imprisonment when she ventures onto a battlefield to give her disgraced brother a proper funeral, rather than leaving his body to be chewed up by birds and dogs and violated. Now, during Covid surges, the dead are zipped into body bags and stacked in refrigerator trucks.

During the Great Plague of London in the mid-1600s, church bells tolled day and night, each peal announcing a single death to everyone within earshot. Today the death toll arrives quietly, in a daily email from my county health department.

The novel coronavirus is the third-leading cause of death in the U.S. this year and responsible for roughly a tenth of all American deaths in 2020. We are in for some horrifying months before widespread mass vaccination reduces these grim statistics. Death, which once seemed tamable, hidden away in nursing homes, and pushed into the upper reaches of the lifespan, came out of the closet in 2020: contagious, capricious and striking people of every age. This is forcing a profound reckoning with the limits of free will, American exceptionalism and technological utopianismin short, with human powerlessness in the face of death.

This is a profound surprise for many people in the U.S. and the wealthy developed world. For three-quarters of a century, deadly contagions (with the exception of polio and AIDS) had mainly been problems for another century or continent. Average lifespans for the comfortably off were lengthening. Futurists, misreading the science, wistfully imagined that ordinary people might someday live to be 120 or even 150. Alphabet Inc.s Calico division and Oracle Corp. founder Larry Ellison sank millions of dollars into research on extending longevity. One of the stated goals of Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Changs $3 billion foundation is to cure, prevent, or manage all diseases by the end of the 21st century.

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One Piece: Every Devil Fruit With More Than One User | CBR – CBR – Comic Book Resources

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Devil Fruits hold unique powers in the world of One Piece. Here is every Devil Fruit that had more than one user.

Devil Fruits are a source of great power in the world of One Piece. Those who consume these magical fruits gain tremendous power in exchange for their ability to swim. Although the user of Devil Fruit can die, the power itself cannot, as seen multiple times in the story so far.

RELATED: One Piece: 5 Pirates That Smoker Can Defeat (& 5 He Doesn't Stand A Chance Against)

Once a Devil Fruit user dies, the fruit reincarnates into a nearby fruit and can thus be eaten by another person, meaning a Devil Fruit power can have more than one user and fans have seen a handful of such fruits already.

Mane Mane no Mi is a Paramecia type of Devil Fruit that was eaten by none other than Bon Clay, Mr. 2 of the Baroque Works organization. This Devil Fruit allows him to take on the appearance of anyone whose face he touches with his right hand.

Before Bon Clay, this fruit belonged to Kurozumi Higurashi, who was introduced to the fans in a flashback during the Wano Country arc. Higurashi was executed by Kaido after helping in the battle against Oden and the fruit then went on to reincarnate.

One of the most powerful Devil Fruits in the One Piece world, Ope Ope no Mi allows the user to control nearly everything within a certain range as if they were on an operation table for them. It is a heavily coveted power that the Navy was willing to pay 5 billion Berries for, likely due to its ability to make someone immortal. This Devil Fruit is currently being used by Trafalgar Law, one of the strongest of the Worst Generation members.

RELATED: One Piece: 5 Marines Zoro Can Defeat (& 5 He Can't)

Before Trafalgar Law, it was eaten by a world-renowned doctor who is known to have successfully completed the Perennial Youth Surgery and granted immortality to someone, losing their life in the process.

Another Paramecia type of Devil Fruit, Soru Soru no Mi gives the user the ability to control souls at will. It is quite a powerful fruit that can take away the lifespan of others, which can then be used to create homies.

This fruit was first eaten by Mother Carmel at an unknown time, who herself was eaten by Charlotte Linlin, now known better as Big Mom, on her sixth birthday. As a result, the Devil Fruit ability was transferred to Linlin and with its powers, she has risen to the level of a Yonko.

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Graphic Novel Review: 10 Billion is a sci-fi tale of astonishing scope and visual imagination – Resilience

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10 BillionAdapted by Marcu Knoesen, based on an original story by John Michael GreerIllustrated by Darryl Knickrehm86 pp. Lulu.com Sept. 2020. $27.95.

People in the modern industrial world tend to believe either that our current civilization is destined to advance forever, or that its imminently doomed to collapse. That is a longtime lament of author John Michael Greer, who rejects both views. The former is fallacious, he argues, because it ignores the fact that infinite growth of anything is impossible, whereas the latter flouts the overwhelming body of historical evidence showing that civilizations end gradually, not abruptly. In a 2013 blog post titled The Next 10 Billion Years, Greer outlined an alternative scenario in which our current society neither grows forever nor crashes spectacularly, but slowly runs its course. A brilliant critique of present-day human hubris, this scenario reveals our civilization to be subject to the same natural processes as all civilizations that have come before it.

10 Billion vividly reimagines Greers blog post as a graphic novel. Told and illustrated in an immersive comic book style, it gives potent visual form to the original text. Marcu Knoesens adaptation is completely faithful, using Greers essay as an almost verbatim script, but adds some elements out of narrative necessity. For example, Greers piece, being more of a scenario than a story, mostly lacks characters and interpersonal conflicts, hence Knoesens creation of determined billionaire businessman Mr. Davon. Hes bent on achieving immortality by transferring his consciousness into an artificial intelligence his company is developing. However, progress on this breakthrough has stalled, and Davon has decided to turn to the counsel of a famed oracle known as the Master, whose predictions have been astoundingly accurate. Upon journeying to the Masters remote forest dwelling, Davon is permitted a glimpse into an unexpected, almost incomprehensibly strange future.

The divination ceremony takes place around a fire. The wizened Master sits in a lotus pose while robed priestesses sprinkle spiritual herbs into the fire. As its flames grow, they send vast smoke tendrils into the sky, and the Master into an otherworldly trance. Some of the books most captivating images show the Master entering into his prophetic state. As his mouth begins to gape and his eyes roll backward, his shift in consciousness is conveyed by illustrator Darryl Knickrehm through canted and low-angle perspectives, outward-rushing radial lines and washes of bright color.

As with Greers original scenario, the Masters prophecy consists of 10 snapshots, each peering 10 times further into the future than the one before. The first one looks 10 years ahead. Consistent with Greers mantra that civilizational decline happens gradually, the world seems little-changed. Global population has peaked at around eight percent above what it is today. Oil companies have managed to keep liquid fuel production steady despite the relentless march of depletion. The ever-rising costs of weather-related disasters continue to pound the economy. As living conditions keep worsening across the developed world, politicians and the media continue insisting emptily that a return to prosperity is around the corner. Proponents of fusion power, artificial intelligence, interstellar migration and other supposed saviors of our modern way of life are no closer to realizing their dreams. Neither are those whose hopes for a better future lie in the prospect of a global cataclysm capable of wiping out the evils of industrial civilization.

Davon is initially unimpressed. This is seeing the future? he asks contemptuously, figuring he could have predicted as much. He demands the Master look further, whereupon were allowed a glimpse at life a century from now. The illustrations and captions here do a great job of showing how incremental changes pile up over time. We see that wars, pandemics and famines have ravaged the world; and that public health, civic order and the human population have all plummeted. There are images of hospitals and service stations turned to ruin, famous landmarks half-submerged by rising waters, shantytowns littered throughout the streets of forsaken cities and hillsides blanketed with headstones. The businessman now turns from dismissive to rapacious. Leaning in toward the Master with a conspiratorial grinlike Satan trying to tempt a monkhe exults, A crisis is always an opportunity for those who take it!

But the Masters next set of predictions puts an end to Davons scheming. Davon is dismayed to learn that by the 3020s, the troubles of the early 22nd century will have been not a temporary crisis to be profited from, but one phase of a permanent decline. Not only will artificial intelligence never be invented, but the entire technological regime of our time will have long since disappeared in the course of a bitter dark age. A greatly reduced human population will be living lives very different from ours on a planet that hearkens back to the tropical, nearly ice-free Earth of 50 million years ago. Their technologies will reappropriate the remains of ours in ingenious ways.

Desperate for reassurance that the modern world will eventually return, Davon implores the Master to keep looking into the future. The Master does so, but his next few rounds of prophecies only further dispirit Davon. Ten millennia from now, industrial civilization has vanished from memory and five subsequent global civilizations have come and gone. One hundred millennia from now, the climate impacts initiated in our time have finally played out and humanity is on its 79th global civilization, which is no closer to fusion power, artificial intelligence or interstellar travel than we are today. A million years from now, humans live in aerostat cities on an ice age Earth. With the passing of more millions of years, humanitys influence lessens and a series of non-human sentient species inherits the Earth. Billions of years hence, Earth succumbs to the expanding sun, and the remnants of her demise seed life elsewhere.

The wonders to behold in this grand exercise in speculative future history are a sci-fi illustrators delight, and you can tell Knickrehm is having a great time with them. The movie director, writer, magazine editor and illustrator is a sci-fi aficionado who has aptly branded himself Creator of the Fantastic. Greer doesnt go into detail about the physical appearances of the various life forms he imagines succeeding modern-day humans, leaving Knickrehms imagination to run wild. Knickrehm dreams up creatures that look as distant in time from us as the alien-looking beings that inhabited the warm, shallow seas of the early Cambrian.

As fascinating as these windows into a possible far future are, they arent what 10 Billion is really about. What the book is truly about is the psychological journey of a man whose belief system is dashed by a look into the future. When Davon first meets with the Master, he does so fully believing in the conventional wisdom of our time. He believes technological progress to be impervious to ecological limits. He thinks nature is obliged to give humans all the resources we need to keep advancing. Most grandiosely of all, he assumes human prowess to be so indomitable as to render the very destruction of Earth by our sun a mere inconvenience, one to be skirted by simply growing out of our earthly existence and spreading across the galaxy. All these assumptions are upended.

Knoesen could just as easily have had his main character be a doomsayer as an acolyte of faith in progress. This individual would go in expecting details of a near-term apocalypse of epic proportions, only to be disappointed. To this person, the oracles prophecies would reveal that while human activity is indeed having grave impacts on the planet, we flatter ourselves as a species to think that were mighty enough to destroy her. The doomsayer would be dumbfounded to learn of the innumerable ways in which humanity will come to flourish in the wake of our current civilization and its legacy of ecological impacts. The insignificance of industrial civilization would stand out just as sharply as in the existing version of the story. And the chief lesson also would be the same: namely, that since we cant count on some almighty forcebe it progress or apocalypseto determine the future for us, we should all actively work to bring about the best possible future for our descendants.

Though I applaud the idea of using the graphic novel format to spread Greers ideas to a wider audience, I should note that those who arent already familiar with Greers work wont be able to appreciate this book quite as fully as those who are. Like the blog post on which its based, 10 Billion mentions some important terms and concepts without defining or explaining them, since they had already been explored in depth in previous blog entries. Those who have been reading Greer for some time will immediately grasp these elements; those who havent, wont.

Fortunately, this situation doesnt arise often enough to affect the entire book. And Knickrehms fine illustrations are exemplary in their ability to convey the gist of a complex or unfamiliar concept through simple imagery. For these reasons, I recommend 10 Billion as an accessible introduction to Greers extensive body of scholarly writings on the future of industrial civilization.

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Graphic Novel Review: 10 Billion is a sci-fi tale of astonishing scope and visual imagination - Resilience

Diego Maradona did ‘everything better and bigger, but fell more dangerously and darker’ – WDJT

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By Matias Grez, CNN

(CNN) -- Dawn had barely broken and already the queue of people waiting to pay their respects to Diego Maradona, who was lying in honor at the presidential palace in Buenos Aires, was estimated to be more than a mile long.

Some media outlets put the number of fans that would eventually gather there at around one million.

Across the Argentine capital, the city of his beloved Boca Juniors, many more paid their own special homage throughout the night, the innumerable murals of Maradona painted around the city each acting as a shrine.

Fans laid out the shirts of Argentina, Boca and Argentinos Juniors -- Maradona's first club -- across the pavements, lit candles and brought flowers. As they congregated, there was a mixture of celebration for what was and grief that his enigmatic story had ended.

His death on Wednesday prompted an outpouring of sorrow, led by President Alberto Fernndez who quickly announced three days of national mourning.

The impact of Maradona's passing, however, will be felt for many years to come in Argentina.

READ: The tormented genius who became one of football's greatest players

"For many reasons, which would probably take anthropologists and sociologists years to unravel, in Argentina football has a significant cultural role as a unifying factor in the forging of our national identity," Argentine journalist Marcela Mora y Araujo tells CNN Sport.

"So the combination of the game that people like to identify with and the best player in the world also identifying with that national emblem has led to him becoming a very treasured Argentinian -- almost national monument.

"His coffin is lying in wake today, in exactly the same way and place, where Evita's was and Peron's [former Argentina president and first lady] after her and so, in a sense, he is continuing a tradition of time honored Argentines who are also quite divisive.

"It doesn't mean everybody feels the same way about them all or that they're not controversial figures, but they represent something very, very, very key to the core of being Argentinian."

READ: Naples mourns Diego Maradona as his former club bids to rename the stadium in his honor

Maradona was Argentina's "Golden Boy," unquestionably the greatest player of his generation and one of the greatest in the game's history.

While he was already an icon before Argentina's victorious 1986 World Cup campaign, his performances in Mexico -- in particular the quarterfinal against England, which was played four years after the bloody Falklands War -- ensured his immortality in Argentina.

"D10s" -- with the letters 'i' and 'o' replaced by his iconic No. 10 -- would go on to become one of his enduring nicknames. "God."

Maradona, as has been widely documented, was flawed, but perhaps people saw some of themselves in those imperfections.

Born in the poor Villa Fiorito area of Buenos Aires, he raised himself out of poverty but never forgot where he came from.

"He was quite unique in the ability to be quite so vulnerable, so weak, so damaged, if you like, and also so successful, so gifted, so brilliant," Mora y Araujo says. "So in a way, we are all a little bit like him and he represents all men and all humans.

"We all identify to some level with some of his contradictions, some of his vulnerabilities, some of his issues and he was just an extreme exponent, like a pendulum. He did everything better, bigger, more, and he fell lower, more dangerously and darker.

"I would suggest that's the universal aspect of his appeal. I think people all over the world identify and acknowledge and recognize that and feel somehow reassured by the incredible humanity of someone who is seemingly superhuman."

READ: Diego Maradona lying in honor at Argentina's presidential palace

On the field, however, Maradona was as close to perfect as the game is ever likely to find.

He played football in an era not meant for players of his abilities; pitches were mud baths or dry and dusty and defenders were given free rein to scythe him down as they pleased.

But still Maradona shone, and far brighter than any of his contemporaries.

In other parts of the world -- notably England -- Maradona's "Hand of God" goal continues to remain arguably his most defining moment.

In Argentina, however, that incident is just a side note in an extraordinary legacy.

For many, it was sad to watch Maradona's health deteriorate following the end of his playing career, as he sought to fill the void that the joy of playing football had left.

"Definitely the images of the young, able Maradona dribbling, kicking the ball up in the air, smiling, training to music will prevail and they will be played over and over on a loop," Mora y Araujo says.

"I think the images of the more deteriorated Maradona might well be the more recent, but I don't necessarily think they will be the more enduring.

"If you look at pictures of him over time, he, you know, balloons in and out, he looks ill and well, old and young at various points. It's not a linear transformation at all.

"Interestingly, the still images of him overtime do exactly the same thing. You just see somebody that ages and rejuvenates and gets fatter and thinner and fitter and iller over time, not in a linear way.

"So I suspect that is what we will be left with, is this incredibly transformative being that in every expression of themselves actually had the same effect, ultimately, which is to impact millions and millions of lives."

With his death, millions of Argentines have lost a link to a glorious past, one in which they and Maradona ruled the world of football.

The-CNN-Wire & 2020 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.

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Oakland As not likely to add another Hall of Famer this year – White Cleat Beat

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The announcement of the Hall of Fame ballot is an exciting time for every fanbase. It is a chance to look back at some of the players that played for the franchise, and hope that maybe they can get their due. For the Oakland As, there are five former players on the ballot that are seeking immortality.

However, it does not seem likely that any of them will be inducted. While each of these players had excellent careers, they did not have the type of production that would lead to Cooperstown. In the case of the one player that does, PEDs have tainted his accomplishments.

Normally, Manny Ramirez would be a sure-fire Hall of Famer. His .312/.411/.585 batting line, along with 555 homers and 1831 RBI, would seemingly lead to his induction. However, the one time As minor leaguer had been suspended twice for PED usage, effectively ending his chances at induction.

Nick Swisher also finds himself on the ballot, albeit for the first time. The former All Star spent a dozen years in the majors, posting a respectable .249/.351/.447 batting line with 307 doubles and 245 homers. However, it is unlikely that Swisher will even receive a vote, let alone remain on the ballot for a second year.

The same could be said for two of the As former trio of pitchers. Barry Zito had an excellent run in Oakland, but his career flamed out with the Giants. The 2003 Cy Young winner and three time All Star posted a lifetime 165-143 record with a 4.04 ERA and a 1.337 WHiP, striking out 1885 batters with 1064 walks in his 2576.2 innings.

Dan Haren was also a solid pitcher, but not a Hall of Fame caliber arm. He was also a three time All Star, posting a 153-131 record with a 3.75 ERA and a 1.181 WHiP. Haren struck out 2013 batters with 500 walks in his 2419.2 innings, and even notched a save back in 2013.

If any of the As newcomers receive a second year on the ballot, it would be Tim Hudson. He was a four time All Star, a solid pitcher throughout his 17 years in the majors. Overall, Hudson posted a 222-133 record along with a 3.49 ERA and a 1.239 WHiP, striking out 2080 batters with only 917 walks in his 3126.2 innings.

Want your voice heard? Join the White Cleat Beat team!

The Oakland As have 37 former players that have been inducted in the MLB Hall of Fame. It seems unlikely that this number will increase in 2021.

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Oakland As not likely to add another Hall of Famer this year - White Cleat Beat

Is Christianity rooted in psychedelic rituals? – Big Think

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Brian Muraresku wants to be very clear: the immortality key is not psychedelics. He's referring to the concept of "dying before dying," a mystical, near-death state spiritual figures from around the worldand in his book's case, possibly early Christiansentered into during ritual. As the author stated during our recent interview,

"Certainly, psychedelics seem to be an awfully fast-acting, reliable way to enter into that statethat state between life and death. But it's not the only one, and I want to be very, very clear about that."

Still, "The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion With No Name" is kind of about psychedelics. The main thesis of Muraresku's exceptional investigative work: the modern Eucharist is a placebo variation of a psychedelic brew that originally represented the body and blood of Christ, as was likely practiced during the secret Eleusinian Mysteries. Unlike other religions and mythologies (which acknowledge prior influences), Christian leaders have remained steadfast in the assertion that Christianity emerged whole-cloth as a unique (and, in the eyes of believers, true) faith.

That's just not how religion works. Nothing is created in a vacuum.

This power playone that, Muraresku writes, potentially demonized psychedelics and ousted them from spiritual rituals, as well as the keepers of ancient ritualistic secrets, womenhas forced us to attribute the foundations of Western civilization to Christianity. The real lineage belongs to Greece. Muraresku, who holds a degree in Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit, spent 12 years investigating this book due to his longstanding love of the Classics, which he believes to be the West's actual inspiration.

When beginning his studies, Muraresku had Homer in one hand and the Bible in the other. He realized these works addressed the same communities. Paul's letters, which comprise 21 of 27 books in the New Testament, were addressed to "Greek speakers in Greek places." While the roots of Christianity are in Galilee and Jerusalem, the seeds were planted in Corin, Ephesus, and Rome. And if the Greek language underlies early Christian thought, then so do the philosophy and rituals.

"Would you study the Torah with somebody who didn't know Hebrew? Would you study the Quran with somebody who didn't know Arabic? It's really hard to make a left turn into Christianity and divorce everything that came before, which is not what happened, obviously."

Muraresku was drawn into this research due to the mystical concept of dying before dying, as expressed during the Mysteries of Eleusis. He uncovered parallel narratives while conducting research with God's librarian in the Vatican Secret Archivesa research trip few people ever have an opportunity to experience.

"This is something preserved in St. Paul's monastery, for example: if you die before you die, you won't die when you die. That's the key. It's not psychedelics; it's not drugs. It's this concept of navigating the liminal space between what you and I are doing right now, and dreaming, and death. In that state, the mystics tell us, is the potential to grasp a very different view of reality."

Something funny happened on the way to the Archives, however. Muraresku, who has never taken a psychedelic drug, read about terminally-ill patients having a similar revelation after ingesting psilocybin. "Dying before dying" succinctly describes what they felt; the overwhelming sensations prepared them to actually die with confidence and grace. Could this be the same experience discovered by initiates at Eleusis and, later, early Christians?

The key to immortality might be dying before dying, and psychedelics appear to be one method for unlocking this mystery.

Muraresku spends the bulk of 400 pages chasing down archaeological and scriptural evidence for spiked wine. The wine and wafer of today is a far cry from the kukeon of the ancient Greeks, drunk by pilgrims, who were given the title epoptes, "the one who has seen it all." That's a heavy ask for a grape.

But if you were to mix that grape with blue water lily (with its psychoactive compounds, apomorphine and nuciferin), henbane, lizardsancestral food choices that put Brooklyn hipsters to shameor ergot, the fungal disease that gives LSD its kick, you might just "see it all." As Muraresku points out, the Greek language is descriptively rich and extensive, yet these philosophers somehow never invented a word for "alcohol." Their chalices weren't for wine alone.

The Telesterion at the Archaeological site of Eleusis ( or "Elefsis) or "Elefsina", Attica, Greece

Credit: Iraklis Milas / Adobe Stock

While he calls psychedelics "just one, perhaps very tiny piece" of early Christian rituals, it could be an essential one. Sadly, archaeochemistry isn't the most funded discipline, especially after asking the Vatican to hand over guarded relics in hopes of discovering trace amounts of psychedelics. And yet, even with those restrictions, Muraresku gains access to the Vatican Secret Archives and jet sets with a sympathetic Father Francis through the Louvre and Rome in search of potential connections in the literature and art.

There are plenty. While the gospel writers were busy writing what would become the world's most lasting bestseller, Dioscorides was penning his unforgettable recipe book, "Da meteria medica." The five-volume drug manual's influence lasted for 1,500 years before Renaissance botanists usurped his reign. Regardless, Dioscorides included cocktails spiked with plants, herbs, and toxins, some of which inspire a hallucinogenicsome would say religioussentiment.

"It's no mistake that the Eucharist is described as the 'drug of immortality' by the early Church fathers because there was this sense of really sophisticated botanical understanding that goes all the way back to Homer. Obviously, it goes back a lot further, and so part of the reason I wrote the book is to show people that within Western civilizationat its roots, in factis this very pharmacopoeia. This tradition was certainly there, and it begs the question of how prevalent and widespread it really was."

Add to this already riveting tale the fact that the gatekeepers of Eleusis were womena practice Christianity abandoned. Women were likely the distributors of the spiked beverages that helped initiates "see it all." Modern precedent exists, though not in American Christianity. The Western world was introduced to psilocybin after R Gordon Wasson sat in on a ceremony led by the curandera Mara Sabina. Likewise, ayahuasca is called "godmother" for a reason.

We live in a world that went from honoring goddesses to hunting witches, though we shouldn't glorify ancient Greece. The first democracy didn't allow women to vote and likely didn't let them partake in epic plays. Men performed as women in the Tragedies. Highborn women often become slaves in these plays, such as with Cassandra, Hecuba, and Tecmessa. Misogyny is ancient. While Greek city folk were jacked up on testosterone, Eleusis offered a different landscape.

Regardless, Christian leaders exiled women from both leadership and ritual. While in the Archives, Muraresku found evidence of at least 45,000 so-called witches being executed, with "countless more" tortured or imprisoned. The patriarchy initiated a pattern:

"[The leadership] wasn't just trying to rid Christianity of folk healers. It was trying to erase a system of knowledge that had survived for centuries in the shadows."

The knowledge was the pharmacological expertise these women had amassed over untold generations. The two banes of the Churchmind-altering substances that afford the initiate a mindset comparable (or, perhaps exactly akin) to prophets and sages and women, the holders of the Secretswere swept up in one millennia-long cover-up. As Muraresku succinctly phrases it, "the Catholic Church started the War on Drugs." Perhaps the War on Women, too.

Perhaps they're two aspects of the same war.

Interestingly, this 12-year-long odyssey only deepened Muraresku's Catholicism, which is rooted in the Jesuit tradition. As he says, Christianitya religion that was a cult for over 300 years before being catapulted onto the global stagehas always evolved. Could the Church possibly change again and offer the psychedelic sacrament that might lie at the heart of the religion? Is another Reformation possible?

As Muraresku concludes during our talk, each attempt to get back to the roots, beginning with Martin Luther and continuing right through to Pope Francis, is an analysis of the origins of the faith. To know your history is to understand where you're heading. Muraresku would like to see another step forward.

"There was no monolithic Christianity. Just like today, you look around and see 33,000 denominations of Christianitya few of which include psychedelics as their sacrament, such as the Santo Daime or the Native American Church, which has some Christian syncretism to it. The possibility of a psychedelic sacrament in antiquity is not laughable. In fact, it's quite plausible according to some of the literature and data that's just beginning to emerge on the scientific front.

"When I look and see Hellenic Christianity that was very much at the roots of the Catholic Church, and the more I found that Greek influence underneath the Vaticanin some cases, literally, in the catacombsthe more I began to really love and appreciate what this was all about. The more I read the Greek and the more evidence that I see, the more in love with Christianity I become. Now, it might not be some people's definition of Christianity today, but again, if you just step back and take a very honest look at the Greek of the New Testament and the Greek landscape in which it emerged, it's a really powerful statement."

--

Stay in touch with Derek on Twitter and Facebook. His new book is "Hero's Dose: The Case For Psychedelics in Ritual and Therapy."

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Requiem For A Theme: Film Composer Clint Mansell On The Sound Of Sadness – Delaware First Media

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The 2000 film Requiem for a Dream celebrates its 20th anniversary this fall, and in that time there's at least one part of its legacy that's never faded: the music. The movie's haunted original score spawned a kind of breakout hit that would ripple through media for years to come, while also kickstarting a new career for its British-born composer, Clint Mansell.

Mansell churned out a whole batch of disparate musical ideas after reading the script for the film, which director Darren Aronofsky co-adapted with Hubert Selby Jr. from the 1978 novel of the same name, about four characters succumbing to addiction. The sketch that became the score's central theme, Mansell remembers, was track 17 out of 20 on a demo CD he'd made, and sounded like kind of a hip-hop slow jam: "It even had sort of an 808 beat under it," he says. It didn't yet have the stabbing melody line that would become its hallmark; for now it was just three sad, descending chords.

Aronofsky had originally asked Mansell to write a hip-hop score for the story, since that was the music of the Brooklyn director's youth, but Mansell kept getting stuck. He was on the verge of quitting when Aronofsky flew to New Orleans where Mansell was living in an apartment owned by and adjacent to Trent Reznor for a desperate session of just throwing ideas from the CD against scenes in the film. They randomly tried the theme track under a scene where the character Marion (Jennifer Connelly), who has just slept with her therapist for drug money, stumbles out into a violent thunderstorm and vomits. "And it was just like, oh my God, what's this?" Mansell says. "It was one of those magical moments where image plus music creates this third element."

He developed that seedling into a piece called "Lux Aeterna," and it became the core idea of the score, an addictive uroboros of despair that was further elevated by the artistry of Kronos Quartet, who performed it for the recording. "It's not just the chords, it's not just the melody," Mansell says of the track's essential power, "it's the life that [Kronos] breathed into it." The theme plays in slightly different variations throughout the film during the speed-fueled montage of Sara (Ellen Burstyn) cleaning her apartment, or when Tyrone (Marlon Wayans) flees a drug dealer's limo after a violent shootout and it crescendos in the finale as the four main characters each curl up into a fetal position. "Darren had said, 'It's like a horror movie, really. Every time that the addiction wins, that's a win for the monster,' " Mansell recalls. " 'Lux Aeterna' is basically a monster theme."

Requiem was only the composer's second film score, and he says he felt way out of his depth. A self-taught guitar player from the industrial town of Stourbridge, 100 miles north of London, Mansell formed the band Pop Will Eat Itself when he was 19. The group's sample-heavy style a mashup of post-punk, rock and hip-hop was dubbed "grebo." They didn't garner any big hits, but "like the best music of that time, you felt like you were in a club," Reznor says. "If you saw other people at that rack in the record store, or wearing a t-shirt, you shared some common insight and secret society vibe. [The band] felt like a refreshing breath of truth. It wasn't concerned about political correctness or anything else. It just felt like an interesting collage of music and presentation. It just felt alive."

Reznor liked PWEI so much that he signed the band to his label, Nothing Records. He says that in his New Orleans base of operations at the time, "We had a big studio with a lot of rooms for people to hang out, and it also had two separate apartments attached to the building. At some point, after we had toured together and Clint and I had become friends and drinking buddies and kind of comrades, I vaguely remember he was in some form of crisis in his life, and was living in New York and needed to get away. And I said, 'Well, there's an apartment here. Anytime, you know indefinitely if you want to stay there, there's nobody living there.' "

Mansell was transitioning out of PWEI, and had just written an electronic score for Aronofsky's first feature, Pi. He moved into one of the apartments, and Reznor bought him his first Apple computer and Pro Tools setup. "I remember him working super hard, and my recollection is it taking quite a bit of time, and just hearing peripherally about the frustrations and the learning curve but a real excitement," he says. "And to my amazement, this incredible film pops out, with this incredible soundtrack. I was really happy for him. And suddenly he's a big film composer."

Though Reznor says Mansell didn't directly inspire his own evolution into a film composer 10 years later with The Social Network, he adds: "Clint would have given me the confidence to feel like it could be done. You know, it's not an impossible thing. He's proven you can do that, without 20 years of university studies and degrees."

Requiem for a Dream premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2000, and was released in theaters that December. Burstyn received an Oscar nomination for her performance as an aging woman in unglamorous descent, but the film a relentlessly bleak, hallucinogenic trip that crescendos into a symphony of debasement wasn't exactly a smash. Aronofsky chose to release it unrated to avoid an NC-17 rating, which all but relegated it to art houses.

Likewise, the "monster theme" for this controversial, indie downer should have faded into obscurity. Instead, it quietly became a monster hit not on the radio, but relentlessly licensed in other media. Most of that can be traced to its usage in the theatrical trailer for The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers in 2002, where it was given an "epic" remix, goosed with a warlike choir and full orchestra, which was created specially for the trailer by Simone Benyacar, Daniel Nielsen and Veigar Margeirsson.

After that, the "Requiem for a Tower" remix kept getting used in movie trailers including for The Da Vinci Code, I Am Legend and Sunshine as well as for video games (Assassin's Creed), advertising campaigns (Canon cameras, Molson Canadiaan beer) and on TV shows (The Late Show with David Letterman, So You Think You Can Dance). Mansell wasn't paid much up front for the score, but he held onto the writing and publishing rights. Each licensing fee would have brought in somewhere between $35,000 and $100,000. "If I could do that every day, you know, fantastic," he says, laughing.

Mansell's film scoring career ignited after Requiem. He scored four more films for Aronofsky, including Noah, the Grammy-nominated Black Swan -- where he applied a remix approach to the music of Tchaikovsky and The Fountain, about a man whose wife is dying of cancer and his desperate quest for immortality. It had been discovering David Bowie that turned a young Mansell onto music in the 1970s; in 2009, Bowie's son Duncan Jones found himself using the scores from Requiem and The Fountain as reference tracks for his sci-fi thinker, Moon so he asked Mansell to score it.

Moon and Requiem became favorites of another director, Ben Wheatley, leading him and Mansell to collaborate on 2015's High-Rise and, most recently, a new adaptation of the Daphne du Maurier classic Rebecca for Netflix. "The thing that I love about his music in general," Wheatley says, "is the sorrow, the sadness of things. As light and as romantic as it can sound, there is always that underscore, undertow, of sadness. And I definitely feel that is totally appropriate for [Rebecca,], because the story is sad about things."

In 2014, sorrow paid a personal visit to Mansell: His girlfriend, actress Heather Mottola, died of complications from pneumonia at just 29. The last thing they'd seen in a theater together was a concert film of Lou Reed performing his polarizing album Berlin.

"Obviously I was grieving, and in a lot of shock," Mansell says. "It was traumatic. I did therapy and grief counseling, and they all kind of pointed at the idea that, 'You should express yourself through music, and do something musical for her.' " He ultimately decided to make a track-for-track cover album of Berlin, which he released this summer.

Even though Reed's subject matter is grim drugs, murder, doomed romance Mansell and his collaborator, Clint Walsh, decided to make it in the glam punk style that Mottola loved. "The reinterpretation of the music actually became about us doing it, not what it represented," he says. "We had fun making that record. The original record is very downbeat, and it's bleak. I think we found some hope in our version."

Mansell's collaborators tend to say he's a pretty cheery and funny guy, who happens to be drawn to stories in the realm of requiems. "But I think it's more than that," Mansell says for his own part. "I think it's to do with the authenticity of those things, you know, and the stakes of them. They're just the ones that feel real to me, that musically bring something out of me. I want to spend the time with them you know? It feels important to me."

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Confronting The Dead In The Actun Tunichil Muknal Cave In Belize – TravelAwaits

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The sheer number of pots, dark and brown pottery of all sizes, was staggering. Early explorers say more than 1,400 pots were found just laying in plain sight in the flowstone pools, visible to the naked eye with no need for excavation. Thousands more are likely buried under layers of calcite, each one begging Chac for rain, rain, please bring the rain.

We all slinked along the ridges of the pool, inches away from artifacts that had survived for centuries in the dark.

Look down, said Ian.

It took me a second to realize I was staring down at a skull, its yellowed jaw missing its two front teeth like some cheerful toddler. Several years before, a photographers long lens knocked the teeth out as he bent over too far for that perfect picture.

Above and past the ladder of doom, another skull laid face down. A large hole in the back of the skull made me think this soul was bludgeoned, but I was wrong.

A man, holding his own and his wifes digital camera, had struggled for a couple of shots, and he accidentally dropped his wifes camera, which burst through the cranium.

For the powers that be in Belize, that was nearly the last straw. Terrified of the continued damage to the relics and remains, the government planned to close the cave, but the official guides begged and pleaded, and a compromise was made.

No photos. No cameras. No gear. So far, that rule has worked, and no other major incidents of damage have occurred since, Ian said.

This is our livelihood, he said. We fought to keep the cave open for tours. We go through a long training to become guides. Its an honor.

Staring at my crystallized boy, it was an honor for me to be in the dark with him, to remember him in some small way for what he gave up to try to save his people.

His death wasnt enough for Chac. The rains didnt come. Massive cities were left abandoned for the jungle to reclaim, and his people scattered defeated and lost across Belize, Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico.

But still, The Crystal Maiden remains silent and still and glowing under the eyes of tourists curious for a glimpse of immortality. For me, the dangers of the underworld were worth the chance to slip back into history and honor the dead.

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Confronting The Dead In The Actun Tunichil Muknal Cave In Belize - TravelAwaits

Steam: Mesmer, Prodigal & 3 Other Titles You Should Play | CBR – CBR – Comic Book Resources

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From Raji to Space Crew, here are five of the best games to play on Steam this week.

In the weeks leading up to the launch of next-gen gaming consoles, dozens of titles are still being released across a wide range of platforms. Steam is having a massive Sega 60th anniversary sale and there are a ton of new indie titles available, as well, which means players will have plenty to choose from when they pick their weekend gaming experience.

This week, we're highlighting five new titles on Steam, including a choose-your-own-adventure fantasy novel, a social survival game, a 2D puzzler, an action-adventure game with historical and fantasy elements and a space management sim with plenty of ship-to-ship combat. Here are five of the best games to check out on Steam this week.

Related:The Microsoft & Nintendo Partnership Is Opening New Doors

Fox Spirit: A Two-Tailed Adventure is a 250 thousand-word, choose-your-own-adventure fantasy novel by Amy Clare Fontaine. Players control a magical fox and seek the mystical Star Ball, which will grant them immortality. Their decisions determine the course of the story in the text-based game and they can wreak havoc, make friends, or take a number of other possible paths.

Available on Steam; $5.99

Related:Vampire: The Masquerade - Night Road Revs Up the World of Darkness

Mesmer is a social survival game wherein players act as the fearless adventurerTeri De Belle. Teri has been branded an enemy of the state and must form a revolution to break down the social hierarchy of Mesmer and establish a better future. Narrative-driven gameplay is determined by each choice the player makes and it's pertinent to remain out of the spotlight while pushing for change -- otherwise, it's game over.

Available on Steam; $14.99

Prodigal is a 2D puzzle adventure whereinOran returns home after his parents die and must reconfigure his place in his hometown community. Players will meet the townsfolk, help their grandfather's apprentice with a new project, earn their place once more and maybe even get married.

Available on Steam; $9.99

Related:Pony Island: Spend Halloween Escaping Limbo in a Suspenseful Puzzle Game

Raji: An Ancient Epic is an adventure game that takes place in ancient India. Players will take the role of Raji, a young girl chosen by the gods to defeat the demons invading the human realm. The attacking hordes have separated her from her younger brother, Golu, whom she has to rescue as she saves the world.

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Steam: Mesmer, Prodigal & 3 Other Titles You Should Play | CBR - CBR - Comic Book Resources

Cyberpunk 2077 Is Officially Gold Night City Opens November 19th – Wccftech

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Cyberpunk 2077 has officially gone gold, developer CD PROJEKT RED announced moments ago. This means that the game is completed and the final build has been sent for disk replication, though of course we know that CD PROJEKT RED will likely continue working on fixes and improvements to be delivered through the now-canonical day-one patch.

The good news is that there won't be another delay and Night City will open up November 19th, when Cyberpunk 2077 will become available on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

Cyberpunk 2077 Main Quest to Be Shorter Than The Witcher 3s Due to Complaints of Excessive Length

Cyberpunk 2077 is an open-world, action-adventure story set in Night City, a megalopolis obsessed with power, glamour and body modification.

You play as V, a mercenary outlaw going after a one-of-a-kind implant that is the key to immortality. You can customize your characters cyberware, skillset and playstyle, and explore a vast city where the choices you make shape the story and the world around you.

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Cyberpunk 2077 Is Officially Gold Night City Opens November 19th - Wccftech

Review: ‘The Invisible Life Of Addie LaRue,’ By VE Schwab – NPR

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Addie LaRue was born in France at the very end of the 17th century but no one remembers that. No one, that is, except for Addie herself and the devil she makes a deal with to escape an unwanted marriage and an ordinary life. But bargaining with wild gods always comes with hidden costs. Addie willingly trades her soul for immortality, but she doesn't realize until too late that the price of her freedom is her legacy for now she is doomed to be instantly forgotten by everyone she meets.

What follows is an ouroboros of a tale as Addie slips through time, desperately trying to have some influence on the world and the people she meets. For while she can't leave a mark or memory in her wake, she finds that she can plant ideas and tend to them, filling art and music with echoes of her presence. Her devil appears occasionally to taunt her and push her, but no hardship he can conjure is enough to make her give in and surrender her immortal life and her soul along with it.

Then, someone remembers her.

Henry is a just a normal guy who works in a bookstore. When Addie steals a book from him, she's sure he'll forget her, just like everyone has for the past 300 years. But Henry remembers her. He can say her name. It seems like Addie has finally found a loophole a cure for her lonely existence. But there's something Henry isn't telling her, and it may be enough to bring and end to Addie's three centuries of resistance and survival.

It's a bit cheeky to call The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue Faust for romantic bisexual goths, but it's not wrong.

It is definitely romantic, though it's not exactly a romance, at least not primarily. Addie is first and foremost infatuated with life, even if it's a slightly dysfunctional relationship. Her yearning to tell her story and leave her mark is her true love, more yearned for than any boy, girl, or devil. Her escapades through time are sometimes grand and sometimes hardscrabble. Her strange life is itself romantic, as she weaves in and out of history, invisible but ever-present.

Addie and Henry are both bi in a way that feels refreshingly casual for fiction, and other queer characters surround them. Each relationship is unique and beautifully painted, even when they sometimes turn sour as Addie's lovers slip through her fingers again and again. Because Addie exists on the fringe of people's lives, she can be whomever she wants, even if it's only for a day at a time.

And there is an element to this book that feels undeniably and delightfully goth. It features a beautiful black-haired devil made of night and a girl doomed to wander through the years alone and watch everyone she loves forget her and die. What could be more goth than that?

... while I don't want to say too much and spoil the effect, I loved that as 'Addie LaRue' unfurls its final pages, we discover that we've been a part of her story all along without even knowing it.

But I think the most unique and interesting thing about Addie LaRue is its relationship to art. In a very clever touch, the different sections of the book are broken up with works of art and the sort of descriptive text that would accompany them if they were being sold at an auction. We're told the artist, the date, the medium, and then a little bit of a blurb, and in that blurb we see Addie's influence. Her seven signature freckles, her blur of dark hair over and over she has attempted to imprint herself in an artist's mind. A collection of these would almost work as a short story on their own, offering fleeting impressions of a forgotten immortal. Together, they give us a sweeping feeling of urgency as we understand Addie's longing to be remembered in such a concrete and visceral way.

And while I don't want to say too much and spoil the effect, I loved that as Addie LaRue unfurls its final pages, we discover that we've been a part of her story all along without even knowing it. What might feel meta or too cute in less competent hands, Addie LaRue manages to pull of like the prestige of a particularly elegant magic trick, leaving us with the feeling that we too have been a part of Addie's long and invisible life. I for one will most certainly remember her.

Caitlyn Paxson is a writer and performer. She is a regular reviewer for NPR Books and Quill & Quire.

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Review: 'The Invisible Life Of Addie LaRue,' By VE Schwab - NPR

Rarefied air: Spokane’s Tyler Johnson joins Spokane elites at pinnacle of sports – Sports and Weather Right Now

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Spokane native Tyler Johnson has the reputation as a winner and rightfully so.

He can now add Stanley Cup champion to his lengthy list of achievements.

Johnson played a pivotal role for the Tampa Bay Lightning as they defeated the Dallas Stars in the Stanley Cup finals, winning Game 6 2-0 on Monday in the NHLs bubble site in Edmonton, Alberta.

Johnson, 30, along with his coaches and teammates, will have his named engraved upon the Cup, etching his name into hockey immortality.

He scored 14 goals with 17 assists in 65 games this season for the Lightning, and had four goals and three helpers in 25 games during the championship run.

An eight-year veteran of the NHL, Johnson joins an exclusive club of players to have won a major junior championship (WHL; 2008), Memorial Cup (2008), World Junior Championship (USA; 2010), Calder Cup (AHL; 2012) and Stanley Cup.

The Central Valley High School grad becomes the latest member of Spokane high school sports royalty to have achieved greatness in their profession (in alphabetical order).

He was a three-time All-American at Washington State, where his 62-yarder in 1991 remains the longest in school history, and was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2020. The 19-year NFL veteran ranks seventh in NFL history with 1,890 points, and holds the record for most 50-yard field goals with 45. A two-time pro bowler, Hanson played his entire career with the Detroit Lions and holds the NFL record with most games with the same team at 327.

At LC, January earned first-team all-state basketball honors by both the Associated Press and the Seattle Times and led the Tigers to the state semifinals as a junior. She won the State 4A high jump title in 2004. January led Arizona State in steals and assists four straight years and is a six-time selection to the WNBA All-Defensive Team. She won an NBA title with the Indiana Fever in 2012 and has played in four WNBA finals.

Johnson was born in Michigan but moved to Spokane at a young age and attended LC, where he once long-jumped 23 feet, 4 inches, a record that has stood at the school for more than 100 years. After high school, Johnson attended the University of Michigan where he was a star, winning 16 Big Ten Conference individual track titles. He won a silver medal in the long jump at the 1920 Olympics, jumping 1 inch shy of his high school record.

Lindgren set eight national high school track records and won 11 NCAA track and cross country championships. In 1964, Lindgren became the first American to beat Russian runners in the 10,000 meters. Favored for gold in the Tokyo Olympics that year, an ankle injury limited him to a ninth-place finish. He is a member of the National Track and Field Hall of Fame. In 1965, he broke the world record for the 6-mile run at the AAU National Championships.

Led Mead to a state runner-up finish his senior season, scoring 37 points in the title game. The co-national player of the year at Gonzaga in 2006 was also a finalist for the Naismith and the Wooden Awards. He was the third pick in the NBA draft by the Charlotte Bobcats and went on to win two NBA titles with the Los Angeles Lakers though he didnt play a minute in either finals.

An all-state football, basketball and baseball player at Shadle, Rypien is regarded as one of the greatest all-around athletes in Washington high school history. He passed for 292 yards and two touchdowns in Washingtons 37-24 win over Buffalo in the 1992 Super Bowl, earning him MVP honors, and was named to the 1991 All-Pro second team, totaling 3,564 yards and 28 touchdowns.

A three-sport star at NC, Sandberg was a Parade All-American quarterback and opted out of a letter of intent at WSU after being drafted in the 20th round of the 1978 MLB draft by the Philadelphia Phillies. Sandberg was a 10-time all-star, won nine Gold Gloves, set the career fielding percentage record for second base and played a record 123 consecutive games without an error. He hit .285 with 282 home runs and 344 stolen bases in 16 seasons. Sandberg was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2005.

Though he never won an NBA championship with the Utah Jazz, losing to Michael Jordans Chicago Bulls in the 1997 and 98 finals, Stockton is the NBA career leader in assists (15,806) and steals (3,265). A 10-time all-star and two-time Olympic gold medalist, Stockton led the NBA in assists a record nine times. He averaged 13.1 points during a 19-year career and was voted one of the 50 best NBA players of all time. He was inducted to the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2009.

Sneva won the Indianapolis 500 in 1983 after three runner-up performances. He won the IndyCar season championship twice and became the first driver to top 200 mph in Indianapolis 500 qualifying. Sneva was inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame in 2005.

Angie Bjorklund (University): All-state guard named Gatorade State Player of the Year and WBCA All-American. Earned gold at 2007 FIBA U-19 world championship in Slovakia. Holds career records at Tennessee for most 3-point attempts in a season (239) and most 3-pointers made in a career (305). Bjorklund was part of the schools last NCAA Division I title, though injuries derailed her WNBA career.

Gail Cogdill (LC High/WSU): The 1960 NFL Rookie of the Year played in three Pro Bowls and caught 34 touchdown passes in 11 pro seasons. His 252 receiving yards against Northwestern in 1958 stood as an NCAA Division I record for 33 years.

Annette Hand (Central Valley/Oregon): Set the American womens record in the 5,000-meter run in 1993. She won the NCAA 5,000 title in 1988 and later won U.S. national championships in the 1,500 and 3,000 (twice).

Ray Flaherty (Gonzaga High, Gonzaga): Two-time all-pro with the New York Giants. He won two NFL titles as a player and two more as a coach, which earned him enshrinement in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Mary Lou Petty (LC): Finished fourth in the 400-meter freestyle at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin.

The LC grad set a world record for the 300-yard freestyle and held six American swimming records (mostly in relays).

Brad Walker (University/Washington): Competed in football, basketball and track and field for U-Hi. Walker was a four-time NCAA All-American and set the U.S. pole vault record of 19 feet, 9 inches in 2008. Walker won the world indoor title in 2006 and the outdoor title in 2007.

At the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, Walker reached the final but finished 12th.

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Rarefied air: Spokane's Tyler Johnson joins Spokane elites at pinnacle of sports - Sports and Weather Right Now

Everything new on Disney+ UK in October from The Mandalorian to Onward – Yahoo Movies Canada

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The Mandalorian S2 lands on Disney+ in October, watch the first trailer here:

Its the moment Star Wars fans have been waiting for: October marks the launch of the second season of The Mandalorian on Disney+.

But theres more to just the return of Mando and The Child to look forward to on Disneys streaming service in October, with new stuff being added throughout the month.

Highlights include the launch of space race drama The Right Stuff, Pixars latest animated adventure Onward and a new Frozen short.

Also, from 1 October Disney+ will be the new home for Disney Channel, DisneyXD and Disney Junior in the UK. Every show, season, and episode will be available in one place for the first time ever. Thats over 4,000 episodes of Disney Channel shows, and over 1,000 Disney Junior episodes too.

Meet the sixyearold Blue Heeler dog, who turns everyday family life into extraordinary adventures. The hit Australian animation is the number one childrens show Down Under.

Streaming from 1 October.

Watch the teaser trailer for Onward below...

Onward is arriving on Disney+ on 2 October, so get ready to dive into a suburban fantasy world and allow Disney and Pixar to introduce you to two teenage elf brothers who embark on an extraordinary quest to discover if there is still a little magic left out there.

Streaming from 2 October.

Also new to Disney+ on 2 October: Disney Upside-Down Magic, Penny On M.A.R.S (S3), Primal Survivor (S3), Weird But True! (S3), Zenimation (Shorts).

Watch a trailer for new drama The Right Stuff below...

What does it take to be first? Would you risk it all? How are legends made?

These are all questions we ask in this new National Geographic eight-episode, scripted series that follows the incredible story of Americas first astronauts. The series is an inspirational look at what would become Americas first reality show, when ambitious astronauts and their families became instant celebrities in a competition of money, fame and immortality.

Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Davisson are Executive Producers.

Streaming from 9 October.

Also new to Disney+ on 9 October: Oil Spill of the Century.

The logo for Disney+ show Marvel 616. (Disney)

Find out how the Marvel Universe continues to influence our society, culture, history and lives. Marvels 616 explores Marvels rich legacy of pioneering characters, creators and storytelling to reflect the world outside your window. Each documentary, helmed by a unique filmmaker, showcases the intersections of storytelling, pop culture, and fandom within the Marvel Universe. Episodes in this anthology series will cover topics including Marvels world-spanning artists, the trailblazing women of Marvel Comics, discovering the forgotten characters of Marvel, and much more.

Streaming 16 October.

Fin Argus, Sabrina Carpenter in Clouds. A teenager is diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer and finds a way to inspire others with the little time he has left. (Disney/ Laurent Guerin)

Clouds is the true story of Zach Sobiech, who captured the hearts of people everywhere when his original song Clouds debuted and became a viral sensation in 2012. Based on the book Clouds: A Memoir by Zachs mother Laura Sobiech, the film is a poignant beautiful look at the heart-breaking duality of life and a testament to what can happen when you start to live as if each day might be your last.

Streaming from 16 October.

Also new to Disney+ on 16 October: Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted, Ever After: A Cinderella Story, Rio 2, Meet The Chimps, Disney Junior The Rocketeer.

Story continues

The previously untold origins of Frozen's Olaf are revealed in Once Upon A Snowman. (Disney)

The previously untold origins of Olaf, the summer-loving snowman who melted hearts in the 2013 Disney animated feature, Frozen, and its acclaimed 2019 sequel, are revealed in the all-new Walt Disney Animation Studios animated short, Once Upon a Snowman. The film follows Olafs first steps as he comes to life and searches for his identity in the mountains outside Arendelle.

Streaming from 23 October

Also new to Disney+ on 23 October: The Last Secrets of the Nasca, The Big Fib.

The Mandalorian and the Child continue their journey, facing enemies and rallying allies as they make their way through a dangerous galaxy in the tumultuous era after the collapse of the Galactic Empire. The Mandalorian stars Pedro Pascal, Gina Carano, Carl Weathers and Giancarlo Esposito. Directors for the new season include Jon Favreau, Dave Filoni, Bryce Dallas Howard, Rick Famuyiwa, Carl Weathers, Peyton Reed and Robert Rodriguez. Showrunner Jon Favreau serves as executive producer along with Dave Filoni, Kathleen Kennedy and Colin Wilson, with Karen Gilchrist serving as co-executive producer.

Starts streaming 30 October.

Also new to Disney+ on 30 October: Disney The Owl House, PJ Masks.

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Everything new on Disney+ UK in October from The Mandalorian to Onward - Yahoo Movies Canada