Daily Archives: March 15, 2020

MEDICINE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But theres no time for a victory lap.

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

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

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

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

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

Image Credit: Wolfgang Hasselmann /Unsplash

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

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

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

From the event description:

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

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

Click here for more details, and to get your tickets

From the event description:

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

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

Click here for more details, and to get your tickets

From the event description:

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

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

Click here for more details, and to get your tickets

From the event description:

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

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

Click here for more details, and to get your tickets

From the event description:

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

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

Click here for more details, and to get your tickets

This story was created automatically using local event data, then reviewed by an editor. Click here for more about what we're doing. Got thoughts? Go here to share your feedback.

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Here's what to do in Houston this week - KPRC Click2Houston

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Kill It and Leave This Town': Film Review

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

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

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

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

Originally posted here:

Kill It and Leave This Town: Film Review - Variety

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

RELATED:10 Horror Games That Take The Longest To Beat

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now PlayingThe Best TV Shows of the Decade (2010-2019)

This week, the entire world is socially distancing to avoid the spread of the coronavirus, which means everyone is staying home. And what do you do when your plans have been canceled and you're stuck at home? You watch TV. If you need a break from CNN whipping everyone into a frenzy with its pandemic coverage, here are some recommendations for what to watch this week.

The best shows and movies to watch this week includes a chillingly resonant HBO miniseries about an alternate-history version of the United States, the long-awaited return of TV's most expensive sci-fi Western, and the apocalyptic final season of a comedy about baseball that's even more relevant than ever, now that baseball has been postponed due to pandemic. (If you want to learn more about pandemics, we have recommendations for that, too.)

If you're looking for even more hand-picked recommendations, sign up for our free, daily, spam-free Watch This Now newsletter that delivers the best TV show picks straight to your inbox, or check out the best shows and movies this month on Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime.

Now on HuluWhen you were in high school, did you ever know that guy who graduated from high school years ago but still hung out with high schoolers? Perhaps YOU were that older guy or gal who still hung out with high schoolers. No judgments, sometimes we want to be the Matthew McConaughey in the teenage ecosystem. Saturday Night Live's Pete Davidson gets to be that guy in Hulu's film about friendship and growing up, as his character Zeke, a drug-dealing college dropout, strikes up a palship with high schooler Mo (Griffin Gluck), much to the annoyance of Mo's parents and friends. Slightly more than just a stoner bro hangout comedy, Big Time Adolescence tackles some of the same difficult themes as Boyhood and other coming-of-age movies, but with Davidson doing bong rips in the background. -Tim Surette

Season 3 premieres Sunday at 9/8c on HBOThe robot uprising moves out of the theme park and into the real world in Season 3 of HBO's Westworld, a cautionary warning against technology, and the good news is that it's not nearly as confusing as Season 2 was. Gone are (most of) the storytelling tricks and the one-note Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) who murdered humans, and in is a more straight-forward story about the Singularity, privacy issues, and deep dives into human consciousness. Don't get me wrong, you'll still be scratching your head a-plenty, but your scalp will remain intact as answers come more quickly. Aaron Paul joins the cast as a wayward low-level criminal who gets caught up in Dolores' plans, and expect some pretty exciting cameos in the first few episodes. -Tim Surette [Read our review of the season]

Limited series premieres Monday at 9/8c on HBOThis limited series is written by The Wire's David Simon and Ed Burns and based on a book by legendary novelist Philip Roth. It presents an alternate version of American history in which celebrity aviator Charles Lindbergh beat Franklin D. Roosevelt in the election of 1940 on a fascist, isolationist platform. It tells the story through the eyes of the Levins, a working class Jewish American family in Newark whose pursuit of the American Dream gets halted as America slides into fascism. The book was written during the George W. Bush presidency, but the limited series is a Crucible-esque allegory for the Trump era. The premiere will take you right back to how you felt in 2015-16, as Lindbergh's rise makes people uneasy, but they don't think he could actually be elected.

Limited series Episodes 1-3 available Wednesday on HuluHulu's Little Fires Everywhere, an eight-episodes adaptation of Celeste Ng's 2017 novel of the same name, is a soap that won't admit it's a soap. The limited series tackles cultural differences, class issues, and immigration through a story involving two mothers, played by Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington, who take opposing stances in a legal battle involving a couple trying to adopt a baby from China. Although it's a bit of a slow burn, the show takes enough liberties with the source material to offer a few surprises for readers of the book while also expanding on its exploration of race and class tensions. -Kaitlin Thomas [Read our review of the season]

Fourth and final season premieres Wednesday at 10/9c on IFC; Now streaming free on IFC.comHank Azaria's hilariously profane comedy Brockmire, about alcoholic, self-destructive baseball announcer Jim Brockmire, returns for its final season, and it's going down swinging and taking the whole world with it. This season jumps forward in time to 2030, and baseball is dying out as a sport due to climate change making it too hot to be outside for long periods of time, a problem compounded by games getting longer and longer. So Major League Baseball turns to Brockmire to save it, and hires him as commissioner. The season is bleak, apocalyptic, and cathartically funny. Watch the Season 4 premiere now.

Friday on NetflixClassism gets the incredibly potent metaphor it deserves in this acclaimed Spanish thriller. Set in a tall, dystopian prison, the titular platform is a massive dumbwaiter loaded with a feast that starts at the top and slowly makes it way down to other inmates who can only eat the leftovers of the level above them. It looks gross, funny, twisted, and eerily insightful. -Tim Surette

Stop searching, start watching! TV Guide's Watch This Now! page has even more TV recommendations.

Aaron Paul, Westworld

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The Best Shows and Movies to Watch This Week: Westworld, The Plot Against America - TV Guide

Fresh from roles in Deadpool, If Beale Street Can Talk and Kill Your Friends, London actor Ed Skrein stars on one of four covers for GQ Style SS20. Shot by Ben Weller and styled by GQ Style Editor Luke Day, Skrein is every inch the leading man in looks by Vivienne Westwood, Levis, Dsquared2 and Carolina Herrera.

In an in-depth interview in East London with journalist Caspar Salmon, Skrein is refreshingly candid and no-nonsense on his rise to become to worldwide acclaim, his collaboration with Carolina Herrera as the face of the brands Bad Boy fragrance and his pivot to indie gems this year, acting alongside John Boyega and Bill Skarsgrd in the forthcoming Naked Singularity.

Read on for an exclusive preview of Ed Skreins shoot and interview

On being his authentic self as an actor:

Im a six-foot white man with brown hair and blue eyes... if you never heard me speak, I could be part of RADA and have a double-barrelled surname and all of that which is fine, but its not my route. I feel like as actors, what we can offer is only us, our true selves, our authentic selves, and Im proud of my authentic self, I dont want to hide it and furthermore, Ive been having conversations in recent times with fellow actors from similar demographics and we say that we now have a responsibility to be more honest about us to tell our stories, tell our truths and not feel like we have to fit into this Hollywood, safe, diplomatic mould. We dont have to put on a posh accent and toe the line. We should be honest, and we have a responsibility to our community. And Im repping...

On the statement he released announcing he was stepping down from his Hellboy role:

He wrote the statement from the heart, and I only showed it to three people my brother and father and Riz Ahmed. He carries on: I want to be an ally for people, for my friends that I care about.

I didnt put that statement out for everyone around the world, it was for my friends, my people, he says, sincere as ever, before adding, randomly, I was sitting in The Dumpling House when I sent that tweet.

GQ Styles Spring/Summer 2020 issue is out on 12 March via newsstands and the GQ Style app.

Ezra Miller: Were not fighting for equality. We are fighting for regard of our supremacy

Orville Peck: People think that masks are there to conceal something...

Egyptian-Italian musician Mahmood stars in the AW19 issue of GQ Style

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Ed Skrein: As actors, we dont have to put on a posh accent and toe the line - British GQ