Category Archives: New Utopia

PROSPECT PARK, BROOKLYN A large artwork set up headed to Prospect Parks bandshell will think about a utopia the place partitions of separation are damaged down.

The piece, created by artist Emily Oliveira, is about to debut on the Lena Horne Bandshell on Friday and can be on show via subsequent May, the Prospect Park Alliance introduced this week.

The 19-foot by 28-foot mural options people, bugs, goddesses and different beings becoming a member of to dismantle a brick wall as a logo of rebirth for the post-COVID period, in line with the group. It is totally titled We Are At a Moment That Will Be Remembered as the Beginning of the Great Change, For Who Can Say When a Wall Is Ready To Come Down.

Emily Oliveira offers a utopian vision of a future that tantalizes but doesnt overpromise, stated Jenny Gerow, Contemporary Art Curator at BRIC and curator of the mural.

As the title reflects, who can say when the wall is ready to come down? Still present in the foreground and the background are the remnants of the present, systems of hierarchy and oppression. The artist is masterful in the art of seduction, often achieved in her textile-based work, through the use of shiny and silky textiles and embroidery, but here created through vibrant color and the temptation of touch and care we all have longed for over the past year.

The artwork piece is put in place by BRIC, the Alliance and towns Parks Department.

It will debut with a gap celebration from 4 to 7 p.m. on Friday on the bandshell, which was one in all 16 parks websites throughout the 5 boroughs renamed for outstanding Black New Yorkers earlier this year.

Oliveira, whos a masters candidate at Yale, was impressed by WPA federal mural initiatives and Mexican muralism in creating the work. Her artwork is rooted in queer principle and science fiction, together with those that embrace the potential to collectively imagine a new cultural and social fabric, organizers stated.

In Oliveiras conception of utopia, leisure and frivolity can and must coexist with direct action: milk and honey with fire and brimstone, they wrote. In this landscape, leisure and care are not seen as idle tasks but upheld as the driving force of radical change.

The artwork piece will exchange a former set up on the bandshell that was put in place final fall.

The new piece can be on show till May 31, 2022.

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New 28-Foot Art Piece To Debut At Prospect Parks Bandshell - News Chant USA

Britney Spears says the story of her conservatorship still isnt being correctly portrayed in the media, claiming that a lot of a new documentary on the subject is simply not true.

The pop star posted a video of herself on Instagram on Monday posing in a white crop top and matching shorts using the caption to address a new documentary about her which she doesnt mention by name, but according to a source who spoke to Page Six is in reference to CNNs Toxic: Britney Spears Battle for Freedom, which aired on Sunday. Its really crazy guysI watched a little bit of the last documentary and I hate to inform you but a lot of what you heard is not true !!!, Spears wrote. I really try to disassociate myself from the drama!!! Number onethats the past!!! Number twocan the dialogue get any classier??? Number threewow they used the most beautiful footage of me in the world!!! What can I saythe EFFORT on their part!!! According to Page Six, the post was deleted shortly after it was posted and then later reposted with the not true portion removed and I must say I scratched my head a couple of times!!! added in its place.

The singers post came shortly after her lawyer Mathew Rosengart told the Los Angeles Superior Court in a filing on Monday obtained by Page Six that Jamie Spears has allegedly engaged in horrifying and unconscionable invasions of his adult daughters privacy. Rosengart was specifically addressing new revelations by The New York Times that claim Jamie hired security to secretly record his daughter. Specifically, the [New York] Times reported that [Jamie] and others ran an intense surveillance apparatus that monitored [Ms. Spearss] communications and also evidently captured attorney-client communications with her prior lawyera sacrosanct part of the legal system, Rosengart told the court. The recordings also allegedly include conversation between Britney and her two teenage children with ex-husband Kevin Federline, Sean Preston and Jayden James, which could be a felony under California law given that both boys are underage and thus unable to give permission to be recorded.

In response to to the Times latest reporting, a lawyer for Jamie issued a statement that read, All of his actions were well within the parameters of the authority conferred upon him by the court. His actions were done with the knowledge and consent of Britney, her court-appointed attorney, and/or the court. Jamies record as conservatorand the courts approval of his actionsspeak for themselves.

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Britney Spears Says a Lot of the New Documentary About Her Is Not True - Vanity Fair

By Pamela Bedore, Ph.D.,University of Connecticut Theres a utopian impulse associated with the cyborg, and with the cyberpunk genre. (Image: LightField Studios/Shutterstock)Defining a Cyborg

I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess. This is the closing line of literary critic Donna Haraways very famous 1984 essay, A Cyborg Manifesto. What exactly does she mean by that? Well, first we need to think about a cyborg.

There are a lot of different definitions for cyborg, but broadly, we usually think of a cyborg as a hybrid, a combination of organic and mechanical matter. Our imaginations might jump immediately to science fiction, to the Cybermen of Doctor Who, the replicants of Bladerunner, or the Cylons of Battlestar Galacticabeings neither human nor machine, beings that certainly dont exist in our world today.

But the term is also used for much less science-fiction technologies, including medical devices. A person with a pacemaker or an artificial hip might be considered a cyborg since her organic matter is combined with a mechanism that ensures her survival and wellbeing.

Under that definition, cyborgs are actually quite common in our world today. Some people even go so far as to argue that a human being with a cell phone that is central to her wellbeing and identity can be thought of as a cyborg. Because really, that cellphone, although not literally implanted into the persons forearm, is so present in the hand or pocket that the person can be seen as having a cyborg presence in the world.

This is a transcript from the video series Great Utopian and Dystopian Works of Literature. Watch it now, on Wondrium.

Donna Haraway would rather be a cyborg than a goddess. Why? A goddess is the most powerful female presence in a universe, right? And yet, the goddess is still defined by a masculine term, the god. One of the great questions of the feminist utopians of the 1970s is, what would a world without gender binaries look like?

The concept of the cyborg, for Haraway and others, might be a way to actually get there, to get to a utopian place in which gender differences are neither divisive nor laden with power imbalances. Its not that a cyborg is stronger than the human or the machine. Instead, it allows us to think beyond our binaries. To think beyond human and machine as opposites, beyond male and female as opposites.

Learn more about utopian hybridity.

Thats why theres a utopian impulse associated with the cyborg, and with the cyberpunk genre that developed in the 1980s withsuch foundational novels as William Gibsons Neuromancer, a sci-fi adventure novel that takes cyberspace as a major setting and computer hackers as the central characters. Cyberpunk novels often feature advanced information technology that allows much of the action to take place in cyberspace rather than physical space, with an emphasis on the dangers and the pleasures of the spaces between the cyber and physical worlds.

This means that the characters who navigate cyberspace, whether they have implanted devices or not, are often punks, performing identities often subversive identitiesthat are not dependent on their physical bodies.

How does someone perform an identity? Well, on a basic level, a 14-year-old girl may have an avatar who looks just like her. Or, she might have an avatar thats a thirty-year-old security specialist with an alpha-male body and personality, and she gets treated as such within cyberspace.

In all three casesher physical self or either cyber selfa combination of her appearance and her behavior affect how she is treated by other people in that world. Thats what we mean by performing an identity, and we all do it, all the time, even when we arent conscious of it. In part because of the power of any user to enact a new and different identity, cyberpunk is a perfect genre for thinking about the conflict between the individual and society, a conflict we see at the center of much utopian literature.

Learn more about apocalyptic fiction.

We might initially think of a punk as an undesirable person, perhaps a hoodlum, in the vein of A Clockwork Oranges Alex DeLarge. But if you have a totalitarian society, a straight-up dystopia, as Anthony Burgess and others have shown, a punk can be a hero, someone who subverts the power structures.

Cyberpunk privileges the outsider, or sometimes the group of outsiders, who are usually young and incredibly talented hackers, and who mount a seemingly impossible attack against the megacorporations that attempt to fully control cyberspace, which is impossible when punks like our heroes are there to preserve the freedoms of the individual, often through completely illegal means.

As we see repeatedly, wheretheres utopian potential, theres also dystopian potential. So whether youre an adult reading YA cyberpunk and wondering what the world is coming to or youre a teenager whose own generation is the object of scrutiny in these books, you come to the same point.

Through satire or earnestwhat Tom Moylan would call critical utopia and classical utopiawe get at the same anxieties about contemporary American society. The internet has amazing potential to create a better, more egalitarian world, but we may be going about it all wrong in allowing totalitarian governments or corporations to control it, which may lead us to create not only a more oppressive world but a new generation of young people who rely on technology without truly understanding it.

Imagining a utopian future in the 21st century means committing to understand technology, not just as a user but as a creator. And whether youre mocking or admiring, you can see that the cyborg isnt just a representation of a possible dream of a future that moves beyond hierarchies and binaries. For better or worse, the cyborg is here.

We usually think of a cyborg as a hybrid, a combination of organic and mechanical matter. But the term is also used for much less science-fiction technologies, including medical devices. A person with a pacemaker or an artificial hip might be considered a cyborg.

The concept of the cyborg might be a way to get to a utopian place in which gender differences are neither divisive nor laden with power imbalances. A cyborg allows us to think beyond binaries. To think beyond human and machine as opposites, beyond male and female as opposites.

Cyberpunk privileges the outsiders, who are usually young and incredibly talented hackers, and who mount a seemingly impossible attack against the megacorporations that attempt to fully control cyberspace.

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Cyborgs and Cyberpunk Dystopian Fiction - The Great Courses Daily News

Looking for the New World server list? There are plenty of New World servers available at launch for North America East, North America West, Central Europe, Australia, and South America. Some of these servers have suggested languages, but otherwise they have no further focus PvP, roleplay, or otherwise so it can be a little confusing figuring out where to make your character.

If youre on the lookout for New World streamer servers, there are a fair few substantial communities that have already pledged their allegiance to particular servers. This fact may be important for you to consider when deciding on a New World server, as these servers could be imbalanced when it comes to New World PvP if thousands of people choose the same New World faction as their streamer of choice.

Its also important to remember that different servers will launch at different times when the New Worldreleasetime arrives, starting with the EU servers. Names are global, so there may be a New World server queue as players scramble to secure their names before anyone else. Here are all the New World servers available at launch

On EU, there are several officially suggested servers for different languages, but there are also a fewother servers with a high number of players from one particular country. A significant Dutch population plan to play on Barri, and a large number of Russian players on Hyperborea. There is a Polish community playing on Karkar, a Swedish and Finnish interest in Midgard, and several Hungarian companies on Muspelheim.

As for streamers impact, several prominent streamers plan to play on Hades, Inferni, and Jotunheim, according to theStreamers on New Worldfansite.

The most significant streamer servers on NA East are Olympus, where Asmongolds community (Marauders) plans to go, and Valgrind, which is where StoneMountain64s community (Syndicate) is heading.

In NA West, most of the streamers plan to congregate on El Dorado.

Australian servers dont have many pledged big streamers, but many players plan to assemble on Utopia to guarantee a high population server.

These are all the New World servers that will be live at launch, but there may be changes depending on how the launch goes. If youre setting out on your New World adventure for the first time, check out our New World beginners guide, New World leveling guide, and find out how to play New World with friends.

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New World server list and streamer servers to join or avoid - PCGamesN

The son of a metal worker with patents to his name, Andrei Platonov was born near Voronezh in 1899. He was an early supporter of the Bolshevik cause, coming of age with the October Revolution, and embraced the aspiration towards radical change that fuelled the many political and artistic movements of the period. In his twenties, he worked as a land-reclamation engineer draining swamps, and as a journalist. Thanks to the chaos and devastation of this period the years of Civil War in the aftermath of the First World War drought and famine were as formative for his politics as collectivist utopia and techno-optimism.

Contradictions between the modernist desire to engineer the human soul, and the horrors that transformative projects inflict on the people they seek to change, are at the heart of Platonovs fiction. In his world, most characters have a chimera-like quality: they are part-individual, part-archetype or social role, studies in how everyone is part of a common world, relying on the same words, caught up in the same plots. They are secular creatures inhabiting feeble, machine-like bodies, speaking a language that fuses vernacular with official jargon, making their way in a half-undone, alien world.

What makes reading Platonov an experience unlike pretty much anything else lies in his politics, and the words he uses to accommodate them. Odd phrasings, twisted idioms push language off its convenient, beaten track. The result is dizzying, funny, and unpredictable. It suits the frontlines he describes, where new, urbanised, industrialised lives are made from formerly rural, destitute millions. Platonovs world is grotesque and ironic, but in a way that resists attempts to separate satire from genuine ideological dedication. Harsh critiques of Stalinism and bureaucracy abound, but always crosshatched with communist commitment. He remains an insider of the Revolution.

From the early 1930s, when Stalinist purges destroyed the revolutionary generation, putting an end to much of the Soviet avant-garde and the possibility of aesthetic and political criticism, Platonov could hardly publish. Doubts about technocratic solutions intensified in his work. He sought compromise with the literary establishment, to little avail. In 1943, his son, who had been arrested and sent to a labour camp, and whom he had cared for since his return, died from tuberculosis, infecting Platonov. He succumbed to the same disease in 1951.

Here is a selection to explore.

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Andrei Platonov: where to start with his literature - The Calvert Journal

When hope seems to be proven wrong

When hope vanishes and fades away. When realities seem to contradict deep-held hopes, worse still, when they seem to gain ground. Thats a tough one, when hope seems to be proven wrong.

Is it worth holding fast to deep-held hopes, when evidence speaks such a strong opposite language. What to do with that hope, when faced with adverse realities?

I remember back in Chile, serving as a pastor, when I sat down for a conversation with an elderly woman. I have decided not to have any hope anymore, she said. It is just too painful to have it.

Indeed, she had too many stories of disappointed hopes in her life, of broken vows, of stabs in her back. Yet: how does that work, a life without hope? Can you decide not to have hope anymore?

The dilemma and the challenges of hopes against evidence is not new. It is one of the main themes in the letters of the apostle Peter, also in todays passage.

His words address the early Christian community that was in effervescence: because for those touched by faith in those early times, the end of the world, the coming of the Kingdom of God was imminent, just around the corner. They were all sure it would happen at any moment soon. And so, the delay in the fulfilment of promises, on the one hand, but then also the opposition and challenge they experienced as they stood by their hopes, shook the foundations of their faith. They must have wondered: can we still believe in all of this?

True, there is something which goes deeper than the spirit of that time that was bubbling over with the peoples expectations for an imminent completion of Gods promises. Human nature has a strong tendency toward wanting to see things happening here and now. Inmediatismo, we call this in Spanish, an attitude that doesnt know of times, of growth, of sowing and harvesting, but only of the present time. Often, we live, as if there was no tomorrow.

This is why I am always grateful for the seasons of Advent and Lent, which teach us about waiting and preparing, about not anticipating things. They nurture a spirituality that knows about a tomorrow, and waits for it. Nurturing such a spirituality, and hence such a consciousness in todays time, could be one of the most genuine additions we may offer as people of faith during this time when humankind rallies to address climate change.

Back to Peter: unfortunately, the apostle plays a bit into that immediatism, when he fully embracing the spirit of the time asks the early Christians to wait just a little longer. I wish he had taken Jesus advice closer to heart: dont put a timeline to God, Jesus told his disciples. Not even I can do so, he added. Things will come when they have to come. God knows when, and that shall be enough for you to know.

All the rest of Peters advice and admonition, however, is of great encouragement. Particularly when he powerfully links Christian hope to Christ himself, to his death and resurrection. In doing so, Peter connects the early community of Christians, but surely also our generation today, to the very source of our hope, aligning their experiences our experienceswith the life and ministry of Jesus.

In the journey of Jesus, the cross of Christ represents the rebellion of humankind to Gods justice, as it surfaced in Jesus ministry on earth. Or, maybe I should be more nuanced in what I say: it represents the rebellion of all those who could not see what they had gained for their lives by receiving Gods justice, but saw only what they had to lose for the sake of their own lives: notably their privileges. Religious, political, gender-based and ethnic-based privilege.

The cross, therefore, represents the last attempt of those with power to still eradicate from earth the hope in what God is making new. Wipe it out, dont let it take root among us, was the rationale behind the torture and killing of Jesus at the cross, stating a harsh example to everyone on earth to simply forget all he brought to humankind. Push it out of the world.

It was the attempt to convert hope into utopia. Utopia, as the Greek roots of the word say, is about things that have no place, ou-topos, on Earth. It is about things that we think, dream and wish for, but with no place other than in our wishes and minds.

Christian hope, instead, entered the world and stays in it. That is why it became so challenging to those in power. It became rooted in our world in the manger of Bethlehem and took hold of lives, people, communities, up to this very day. Not even the last-minute attempt to push it out by crucifying Christ worked out. This is why Peter speaks powerfully of Christs resurrection, thereby reminding Christians of then and today that our hope is not wishful thinking, nave optimism, but serious business, sealed and confirmed by Jesus death and resurrection. Hope found a place on earth to unfold. It is not a dream, it is a seed already planted and sprouting.

As I reflect today about this admonishment by Peter, I take great courage from it. I dont know what you think, colleagues and friends, but goodness my, what are these times all about? We seem to be going back in so many aspects. I remember discussions with the United Nations on the Beijing+20 commemoration, and their advice: do not push for anything new, just hold the ground! What has happened to the dynamism of the Paris agreement? Will Human Rights be a footnote in history books, 20 years from now?

Where is the significant breakthrough ecumenically? Are we too accommodating to the reality of our brokenness? Where is the church going? Will her message amplify Gods liberating grace, or will she be swallowed by the current meltdown that focuses so much on the but: oh yes, God loves all, but Will she be the guardian of traditions only, or will she also seek to become the midwife of all that God is about to do? Will it be a church focused on her past, or a church aware of its past, yet pressing toward the future, and therefore with a burning hope?

And here we are again, back to the main theme of the apostles letter: hope.

There is this one moment narrated in the Gospels, when Jesus, after revealing to the disciples that his journey would entail suffering and death, told them that they were free to return to their boats at the shores of the lake. Where shall we go after this? was Peters horrified response. There is no back to normal, there is no way to forget what you came to bring to us, there is no way to resume a life that could probably be safer, much quieter, but otherwise so poor, because it would be a life without tomorrow. That is what he said then, and this is why he writes as he does, and encourages us as he does today.

Colleagues and friends: let us start this week of work, knowing that we are part of that uninterrupted story of transformation and hope, of which we do not know when it will end, but of which we know exactly how it will end. In whatever we do and say, let us not become responsive to the hopelessness that might be around uswe would only amplify it. Instead, let us be strong in announcing and expressing all that has entered into our world and continues to unfold through Christ. Let us offer words and signs of hope, and add our own chapter to a story, which is not ours, but Gods. Hope shall be the driver of our work and our witness as ecumenical organizations.

So, back to the beginning of my reflection: what do we do when it gets tough? What Peter suggests: read the present times from the end. Assess history and developments not only from what they are today, but let them stand in light of how things will be at the end. Because of what God has done and continues to do. And, because of what God will eventually do. Knowing this, we are called to a life with hope. It cannot be pushed out of the world. We cannot switch it off like a lamp anyway. It has taken roots among us like a strong tree. Maybe it is like a mustard tree, with its little, tiny seed, and its amazing robust presence in Gods garden. Amen.

Rev. Dr Martin Junge is the General Secretary of the Lutheran World Federation.

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Hope has entered in this world to stay - The Lutheran World Federation

Welcome to Telosa, a $400bn city of the future, according to its founder, the billionaire Marc Lore. The city doesnt exist yet, nor is it clear which state will house the experiment, but the architects of the proposed 150,000-acre project are scouting the American south-west. Theyre already predicting the first residents can move in by 2030.

Telosa will eventually house 5 million people, according to its website, and benefit from a halo of utopian promises: avant-garde architecture, drought resistance, minimal environmental impact, communal resources. This hypothetical metropolis promises to take some of the most cutting-edge ideas about sustainability and urban design and make them reality.

The plan combines ideas about urban farming (the beacon tower of the project will house aeroponic farms) and quality of life (a city where everyone can live and work and play within a 15-minute commute) alongside new green technologies and a model of land ownership proposed, but never executed, by the nineteenth-century economist Henry George. These are ideas that have remained in the abstract or only attempted on a small scale; now they will have a whole American metropolis to experiment with, brought to life by the creative ambitions of one very rich man.

Telosa certainly is a city of the future, but not in, like, a great way. Yes, it probably will have a very shiny public transportation system, but it seems futuristic more in the sense that, as the world deteriorates, the ultra-rich seem increasingly interested in telling the rest of us how to live. No longer content to just sneer down at us from their private jets, they take over our homes, our towns, our society. Clearly Lore has gone to the Aspen Ideas festival at least once, and at some point maybe, I dont know, a curator he hired to fill his shelves with aesthetically pleasing old books accidentally included some economic theory (if only he had found Charles Fourier before he got to the George!), and now he has notions.

As anyone who has an adult relative who rules over their basement miniature train set with an iron fist, or who has spent any time on social media listening to 22-year-old leftists talk about what life will be like after the revolution, knows, a lot of people have ideas about the way cities, countries, and societies should work. We are usually protected from seeing those ideas realized, and dealing with the consequences of their megalomania, simply by preventing any one person from building enough wealth or power. But I have something to tell you about the tax policy of the last couple decades and the way a small number of people have benefited, and youre not going to like it

Now that individual men and women possess more wealth than entire countries, they find themselves trying to circumvent politics and make their mark on the Earth in a much more literal way. What if I built something that looked more or less like a penis, and made everybody look at it? Such thoughts continually plague billionaires such as Amazons spacecase Jeff Bezos and now tower-builder Marc Lore.

Look, I get their hesitancy. Pay taxes? To this government? The same government that decided to nation-destroy and nation-build and nation-destroy Afghanistan for almost 20 years instead of feeding and educating American children? The same government that subsidizes factory farming, despite its deleterious effects on our environment and our health and the wellbeing of animals? The same government who heard the pain and outrage about the misuse of power by police across America and answered, How about more police, is that what you want, even more police?

Watching all this, it almost makes sense that someone with the means and the desire to help might want to take a more direct route. And the ideas of this fake little town are grand! Green architecture, environmental technology, transparent governance, innovative urban planning ideas if this works, it could advance our thinking on how humans can exist in a changing world and live harmonious lives during the coming environmental and economic calamities.

But it wont work. It wont work because one guy doesnt get to decide how the world, or even a city, should work. Even if hes collaborating with the greatest thinkers and architects and scientists of our time, just a glance through Lores portfolio will reveal that all of his big ideas and fancy language about the betterment and advancement of society are pretty hollow.

This is a guy who built his fortune in part through Walmart, a labor-busting company that pays its own workers so little that they often have to rely on government-funded welfare programs despite being employed full-time.

Lore made another chunk of his fortune by selling a venture to Amazon, a company so odious in its treatment of workers that even the Wall Street Journal has turned up its nose. Both of these companies have been instrumental in funneling money and joy from the lower classes and handing it over to a select few who can think lofty thoughts about, What would make society better?

What would make society better? Is it skyscrapers in the desert? Or would it actually benefit the world more if billionaires had less influence over the way society operates?

Telosas name, as has been mentioned often in its promotional materials, comes from Aristotles use of the word telos to mean highest purpose. Perhaps a better name could have been derived from Hybris, the Greek goddess of insolence and reckless pride. But its best not to wait for some divine act to mete out judgment for our little Icarus here. We the people are in a much better position to bring about his fall. Send in the taxman.

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A billionaire wants to build a utopia in the US desert. Seems like this could go wrong - The Guardian

Ever since Nyle DiMarco came in first place during season 22 of America's Next Top Model in 2015 he was the second male winner and first deaf winner he hasn't stopped. Case in point: he took home the mirrorball trophy during Dancing With the Stars, starred in Hulu's comedy series Difficult People and walked for Giorgio Armani at Milan Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2017.

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Now, the 32-year-old has something else up his sleeve he will be releasing a book about his life in the near future, and it's safe to say he doesn't hold back.

"I want to be able to tell my story from a deaf perspective and from someone who is in a fourth-generation deaf family and to have the opportunity to be heard is completely mind bending," the model exclusively tells OK! at the The Runway of Dreams Foundation's fashion show in New York City. "Its something that I have trouble believing sometimes, but my book is called Deaf Utopia, and if you have ever heard me talk about my childhood, its because, truthfully, my childhood was a utopia, and it brought me to where I am now."

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The New York native wants others to know that he "100 percent" grew up within the deaf community, and going forward, he hopes to educate others on his background. "I hope that they take away a little bit of my story and understand that its such an environment really built for deaf kids," he says.

DiMarco admits writing the tome was "a bit cathartic."

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"At first, when I was interested in writing the book, I thought, 'I dont know if I really have enough story to fill these pages.' But once I really got through the process, it helped me in so many ways make connections from my past to today, which has been incredibly interesting and therapeutic in a way," he shares.

Although the handsome hunk is looking forward for others to hear his side of the story, he is a "bit nervous" for the release.

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"A part of me does feel that its in an invasive process," he explains. "I am offering full transparency into my life, and I might lose every sense of privacy that I have had in all of this time, but I am very excited to share my story with people in the world who really need to hear it. I think I have given everything I have to this book its all on the table."

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In the meantime, DiMarco is thrilled that he was able to attend The Runway Of Dreams Foundation Fashion Revolution Event, which took place during New York Fashion Week.

"I am most excited that I have the opportunity to assist adaptability and fashion is so much more mainstream now and for Runway of Dreams to host this show where all of these amazing people with different disabilities can come and really rock the runway is really amazing and feels full circle," he gushes.

Even though DiMarco is busy, he isn't planning on slowing down anytime soon.

"I think next for me, honestly, is really more work in the entertainment industry," he says. "Pitching more ideas, pitching more TV showsand more films I mean, why not? We are seeing those types of people in our every day life, why is that not reflected on the big screen? We want to be seeing them more on TV and more in film."

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Model Nyle DiMarco Reveals His Upcoming Book 'Deaf Utopia' Offers 'Full Transparency Into My Life': 'It's All On The Table' - OK!

Maine Lobster WeekThrough Saturday. Locations statewide.mainelobsterweek.comIf you love lobster, youre going to have a shell of a good time gobbling up Maines favorite crustacean during Maine Lobster Week. Upwards of 50 restaurants are offering mouth-watering lobster specials and classic lobster rolls. Here are a few examples: At Boones Fish House & Oyster Room in Portland, theyre serving a three-course meal with lobster bisque, lobster fritters and your choice of steamed or baked stuff lobster. And at Peppers Landing in Brunswick, theyre offering six variations of lobster rolls. The Maine Lobster Week site has the full rundown of offerings, so hop online and get cracking!

David Byrnes American Utopia7 p.m. Thursday, 5:30 and 8 p.m. Friday. Strand Theatre, 345 Main St., Rockland, $9, $8 seniors and under 12. rocklandstrand.comYou may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile as you make your way to Rockland for a screening of David Brynes American Utopia, one of the most epic concert films you could ever hope to see. Filmed in 2020 by none other than Spike Lee, the film captures Byrnes Broadway performance, and youll hear songs from Byrnes solo career along with several Talking Heads classics like Once in a Lifetime, Slippery People and Road to Nowhere. All told, there are a dozen musicians on stage, and their singing, playing and choreography will knock the socks clear off your feet.

Harvest Moon Craft Festival11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday. Mindful Folk Farm, 290 Morse Road, New Gloucester, $5 at the gate. mindfulfolkfarm.comMake your way to New Gloucester for the Harvest Moon Craft Festival, where youll find more than 30 makers as well as live music, food trucks, face painting and farm animals. When word got out that the Common Ground Fair wasnt happening this year, several of its vendors put their heads together and came up with this wonderful alternative. The tunes will come courtesy of Ellen Gawler, The Pineland Fiddlers, Pam Weeks and T-Acadie. Rain date is on Sunday.

Mother Jones in Heaven7 p.m. Saturday. St. Lawrence Arts Center, 76 Congress St., Portland, $25 in advance, $32 at the door. stlawrencearts.orgThrough a dozen original songs interwoven with stories, youll come to know and love labor organizer Mary Harris, who was better known as Mother Jones. Mother Jones in Heaven is a musical written by playwright, folk musician and labor activist Si Kahn, and its a one-woman show starring Vivian Nesbitt, with musical accompaniment by John Dillon.

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Things to Do: Film, theater, crafts and lobsters galore - Press Herald

In 1917, in the same month of the Russian Revolution that swept Lenins Bolsheviks to power in Petrograd, the New Statesmans founders, Sidney and Beatrice Webb,drafted Clause IV of the Labour Partys constitution. According to the clause, the aim of the Party would be to secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service.

It was a constitutional commitment to full-blooded socialism, based on the belief that working people were, under capitalism, denied the full fruits of their industry, that value was created collectively by workers through their work, but appropriated privately by the owners of capital. The remedy would be common ownership, popular administration and equitable distribution. This was a party founded to represent the labour interest and defend the dignity of work.

Over a century later, the Labour Party, and the late-Victorian economic model that spawned its creation, have been transformed beyond recognition. The factory-based mass production that had once made Britain the workshop of the world has given way to a service-based economy. Labour-intensive manufacturing has declined. It has been replaced with highly automated, data-driven, advanced methods of specialised production that employ a fraction of the workforce. Assembly lines have moved abroad in search of cheaper workers. The primary industries that fuelled a coal-fired economy have all but disappeared; the manual, back-breaking work that accompanied it replaced by so-called immaterial, cognitive labour carried out in silicon-dependent offices. An all-pervading finance sector powered by algorithms, high frequency trading and speculation sits alongside a debt-driven retail sector, the creative industries, the knowledge economy, and low-paid gig workers (for whom back-breaking work is still very much a reality) taking orders from mobile phone apps. Rapid advances in bots and computer software have decimated industries that were once thought immune to automation. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning have spread the threat of mechanisation from blue collar, manual work, to white-collar, service-sector jobs as well. A 2018 report by PwC found that 30 per cent of jobs in finance and insurance were at risk of automation by 2029. Clerical work and human resources departments are being transformed by robotic process automation (RPA). Under these circumstances, under an economic model in which fewer tangible goods are produced, in which value is seemingly ever more detached from productive activity, in which technology is driving exponential productivity gains, and in which the manufacture of scarce objects seems to happen in another world entirely, ideas about work and the dignity of labour have altered dramatically.

Clause IV was dropped in 1995 as Tony Blair attempted to rid Labour of its militant leftwing image. But rather than reject automation as a threat to job security and workers livelihoods, a significant faction on the partys activist left has embraced it, taking up the promises of emerging technology, automation and AI to espouse a post-work futures and fully automated luxury communism. Recent technological advances, so this interpretation holds, have made possible an (almost) workless utopia, in which human needs and wants are satisfied by the ever-expanding productive capacities of robots and machines. The post-work Labourites are inspired by sections from Karl Marx, reinterpreted by leftwing Italian postworkerist theorists several decades ago: the Fragment on Machines predicted that as large industry develops, the creation of wealth comes to depend less on labour time, and thus the free development of individualities would be made possible. This is a post-scarcity world of publicly owned fleets of driverless cars, of mass-produced synthetic meat, of asteroid-mining for rare minerals, of state-run, solar powered dark factories churning out the latest goods, and of a digital and creative commons providing the wealth of humanitys cultural and intellectual output free at everyones fingertips. AI and automation have provided the catalysts for the party of labour to go from advocating full employment to one which attracts those that advocate for no employment.

The tendency reached the height of its influence during the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, when it found fledgling expression in 2019 manifesto policies like Universal Basic Income pilots, the move towards a four-day week, and free universal broadband for all. Former shadow chancellor John McDonnell promised socialism with an iPad and a hi-tech economy of the future even as critics lambasted his broadband communism as unworkable and unaffordable.

From 2015 onwards there was a flourishing of literature that was, says Jon Cruddas, Labour MP for Dagenham, intertwined with Corbynism. Influential texts emerged from leftwing academics. Inventing the Future by Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams implored readers to demand full automation and demand universal basic income on its cover, while espousing a left accelerationism that embraced full-throttle technological change and a post-work left modernity. Leftwing writers like Paul Mason embraced visions of tech-enabled, automated post-capitalism, with machine learning, big data and computer algorithms working in the service of radicalised networked youth. The late pro-Corbyn anarchist academic David Graeber published Bullshit Jobs, which explained that automation had not led to shorter working weeks because people were increasingly employed in pointless professions that could easily be abolished. And pro-Corbyn journalist Aaron Bastani introduced the FALC acronym to a reenergised, youthful British left in a manifesto on fully automated luxury communism.

Initially I found this post-work stuff quite compelling, says Dr Harry Pitts, a lecturer in management, co-editor of the online magazine Futures of Work and specialist in work futures at the University of Bristol. When I entered the labour market in my teens I was doing a lot of precarious, service-based jobs and I was looking for a way of understanding how that differs from the type of jobs that my dad did, or my brother, or my grandfather the meaning and purpose and community that they got from their work was absent in mine. But, Pitts adds, the post-work tendency wishes away things that are going to be much more permanent and longer-lasting, and also some things that are worth returning to about work as well Theres something about work even the so-called Bullshit Jobs that can be a source of meaning and social life and enjoyment, which of course are quite important to keep as part of our lives.

For Cruddas, the emergence of techno-utopian and post-work thinking amongst Labours left wing factions coincided with a period of intellectual bankruptcy on the Labour right. This was a time when [that side of the Party] had nothing to say and hadnt had anything to say since Blair and Brown had gone, he told Spotlight. They were devoid of energy, and it looked like the energy and vitality was on the left.

A generation of activists had come of age during the direct action, anti-austerity struggles of #Occupy and UK Uncut, and had made headlines during the student protests and occupations of 2010. Some of the oldest of their cohort had been involved in Camps for Climate Action, alter-globalisation movements and anti-G8 and G20 protests, and when Corbyn became leader, many joined the Labour Party. But unlike in previous waves of the UK lefts resurgence, workplace struggles had taken a back seat. There was no equivalent of Arthur Scargill, Red Robbo or Jimmy Reid on the picket lines for the new urban service workers or the underemployed precariat. The industries that they represented as shop stewards or union bureaucrats had dissappeared, and this newer left wing emerged at a time when trade union membership and militancy remained at historic lows following the defeats of the Thatcher era. The stage was set for a left that was detached from the labour movement, and one that saw the world of work as something not to be transformed or to be decommodified, but to be liberated from via breakneck automation. The philosophy, Cruddas says, is underpinned by a crude technological determinism, which holds that the inexorable rise of AI and automation technologies will inevitably lead to an overcoming of capitalism and a new post-capitalist future.

Post-workerism, according to Pitts, prematurely serves up the fruits of struggles that havent yet been waged or won. The imposition of technology in the workplace in the past has tended to dovetail with workers militancy, struggles for higher wages, or with bargaining around productivity with strong trade unions coordinating industrial relations, he says. That infrastructure of gains, of struggle, of militancy, isnt necessarily so much in evidence. We have a kind of economy that doesnt make that possible since the role of unions has been eroded. This is a contradiction that post-work advocates are aware of and account for, but not one that has been resolved through a groundswell of grassroots action around implementing a shorter working week, or on introducing labour-saving technology into workplaces. When Corbyn led Labour, the strategy had been informed by what Pitts calls a populist left electoral turn the automated, post-work revolution would be implemented top-down by a rebuilt, Corbynite state following a general election victory. But that model of social and political change has come a cropper, he says, following the 2019 defeat and Keir Starmers ascendancy to the leadership of the Party.

A year into the Starmer era, the post-work left have settled into a period of waning influence but remain as a definite intellectual strand and even inter-Party, factional presence, organising around groups such as Forward Momentum. Theyre subtly trying to present themselves as innovative political strategists for Labour post-Corbyn, Cruddas says. The Dagenham MP and former Policy Coordinator under Ed Miliband has written extensively on the need for his Party to reconnect with its working class roots. His recent book, The Dignity of Labour, earned praise from the current leadership. Post-work leftists, according to Cruddas, jettison the working class as the agent of left politics they double down on what they say is the new base of the left the urban, educated, networked youth and in political strategy that translates into doubling down on the cities, the new heartlands, the university towns, and saying the red wall voters are nativist and reactionary, and that they dont have a future in left politics.

Debates on the evolving nature of class, and on who the Labour Party should be for in an age of increasingly automated, hi-tech, cognitive-cultural, advanced capitalism, rage on. The Labour Partys key demographic has undoubtedly become younger, more metropolitan, more educated, and more scarce in areas where traditional industries and the organised working class once dominated. The post-work left can promote a focus on the new heartlands with confidence that a one-two punch of technology and demography is on their side, Cruddas tells me, and that the red wall can be safely abandoned, its voters dismissed as asset-rich pensioners or hopeless reactionaries. Im of a certain age and background where I find that a bit uncomfortable, he laments.I think were in a terrible state.

This article originally appeared in our policy report on The Future of Work: AI and automation. To read the full report click here.

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Automatons of the world unite! - New Statesman