Category Archives: Survivalism

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The video game franchise ofThe Last Of Usis undeniably one of the best in the last dozen years. BothThe Last Of Us and the sequelwere nominated and won numerous awards from gamers and critics in major categories.

Due to the popularity and success of these games developed by Naughty Dog and penned by writer Neil Druckmann,HBO is adapting them into a television series set to release in 2023. But with the dramatic changes at WB Discovery ordered by CEO David Zaslav,fans worried that the project was in jeopardy and at risk of cancellation, like theBatgirlmovie.

Thankfully, we got confirmation recently that the series will see the light of day. Its exciting news, but video game adaptations are challenging, and one might wonder, can the show maintain the quality of the games stories and gain popularity? Im going to analyze some of the news recent news about the show to see if it stays true to the promise of the games.

[Warning: Spoilers from The Last Of Us game are below!]

The gameThe Last Of Ustells the story of Joel & Ellie, set in a post-apocalyptic zombie world. Before Joel met Ellie, he had a daughter, Sarah, who died the day of the zombie virus outbreak. That was in 2013, but the main story in the game takes place 20 years later, and we learn almost nothing about what happened between those events.

We meet Joel after this time jump. Hes a 50-year-old guy with depression, anger issues, and no purpose in life. Hes a smuggler in a quarantine zone at the side of his partner and the person he cares deeply about, Tess.

Theres also Marlene, whos the one that introduced Ellie to Joel. In doing so, we learn that she did this because Ellie is immune to the zombie virus and cant turn into one. The people Marlene knows can help and produce a cure with Ellies help.

Tess decides to help them escape from the quarantine zone and dies right before they reach their destination, so Joel and Ellie continue on their own. As they travel, they became friendlier to each other, and Joel, though he wouldnt admit it, begins to care about Ellie.

Their destination is Salt Lake City, where they find a group called Fireflies. The Fireflies are a group of revolutionary militias intent on restoring government control.

During their journey, Joel and Ellie go through some really harsh adventures. They first meet Joels brother Tommy, but since they quarreled, it takes time to repair their relationship. After leaving their base, Joel has an accident, and while healing, Ellie has to step in and take care of him. While doing so, she encounters a pack of cannibals, so its a rough few months before reaching their goal.

When Joel and Ellie reach the city, he learns that by finding the cure in Ellies body, she must die, so he kills everyone who was there and saves her. In doing so, they become a target for the Fireflies and flee to Tommys, where he and his men construct a larger village to get as much of their old life as possible back and be protected in the process.

I liked the first game very much. When I had the opportunity to play it myself, I never thought I would like it so much and cry for a long time. The story is very well written, with many twists and turns, difficult decisions, very emotional moments, and even some easter eggs from other Naughty Dog games.

All the characters are there for a purpose, from telling a story from the past and explaining how certain relationships went to teaching our characters something new and helping them grow.

As we know, the HBO series will be very different from the game, both in major and minor aspects. The timeline being one of the biggest differences. The game world takes place in 2033 and Outbreak Day is famously in 2013. The show from HBO is set in 2023 and Day Zero (aka Outbreak day) is 20 years before that, in 2003.

In my opinion, the best thing that the writers and showrunners of the show (Craig MazinandNeil Druckmann) can do is expand the story from games and enhance our perspective on the world and characters.

We probably wont see much action in HBOs The Last of Us compared to the games because many of those sequences from the game wouldnt fit to be adapted into live-action.

Instead, well likely see more scenes focused on creating relationships between Joel (Pedro Pascal)and Ellie(Bella Ramsey), introducing new characters we havent seen in the game, and creating something other than another typical zombie show.

Of course, there will be 1:1 scenes from the games and those we know but changed. But well also get a lot of new scenes better suited to some episodes.

The most exciting thing for gamers is to visit all those famous game locations, like the city of Lincoln, Austin (Joel and Tommys hometown), Boston, Pittsburgh, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and Jackson. Each of these places is important in the arc of our characters, both in terms of the journey and the development of their relationships and character.

Well see Bostons famous skyscrapers, which are characteristically tilted. Some other locations above will be altered to fit more closely with the series, like Jackson, where well see it upgraded and secured. In contrast, we didnt get to see that in the game.

As for the zombies, theyre sure to look fantastic and realistic. We already got some look at so-called runners, stalkers, and clickers in promotional material released so far. While zombies are an indispensable part of The Last Of Us, I think there wont be as many of them as we believe.

Of course, well see a fight with bloater, but with it being only season one, the number of zombies may be reduced. But dont worry! There should still be plenty of them.

Well also get to see the live-action version of Henry (Lamar Johnson) and Sam (Keivonn Woodard), who are brothers and essential partners for a while in Ellie and Joels adventure. Sam will be deaf because the actor who plays him is also deaf. I think it is a great change because it will not only add drama to what they face but will show us how people with disabilities cope in this world.

Another thing that makes me very happy is that well see more scenes with Bill (Nick Offerman), Tess (Anna Torv), Joels brother Tommy (Gabriel Luna), and Marlene (Merle Dandridge), who were all minor characters that only appeared in one chapter in the game. The decision to make season 1 of the series an enhancement of the story, rather than the entire plot of the first game, is a very good move. This will give us more time to understand these characters, learn about their behavior and see how they develop over time.

As far as we know, all these characters will appear in at least half of the episodes of the series, If not in almost all of them. This may suggest how big their role is in telling the story, not just from Joel and Ellies perspective.

Bill, for example, in the game is the only one alive in the city of Lincoln, where the whole city was without energy and he placed a lot of battered traps, etc. In the series, Bill will have a lot of camera surveillance, more weapons, and better equipment.

The latest trailer also shows us Bills partner and likely lover Frank (Murray Bartlett). They were close, but at some point, Frank decided to leave Bill and went on his own.

Tess and Marlene will be an important part of the story. Especially since it was thanks to them that Joel undertook the mission to deliver Ellie to the Fireflies. I guess therell be more stories about Joel and Tess adventures as well as Marlene and Ellies relationship.

Like the rest of these important characters, Tommy will also get a lot of screen time, which makes me happy. The thing is, Ive always wanted to see more of Joel and Tommys relationship, but we only got such a small glimpse of it in the games, so I hope Neil Druckmann decided to show us an exceptional amount of footage of their brotherhood past.

We can safely assume that the expansion of these stories will be in the form of long flashbacks, or maybe even entire episodes. Im just glad that well have the opportunity to see more scenes and characters from all these great actors.

There will also be an episode based on The Last Of Us DLC called Left Behind, in which we learn how Ellie was bitten and how she lost her friend Riley, with whom she was very close.

Whatever happens, I trust in Neil Druckmann. He knows a lot more about this world than we do, so we should see what happens and how.

The series budget is at least $10 million per episode. According to HBOs budgets for other series, this could be an even more expensive season than the final seasons of Game Of Thrones. Damian Petti, president of IATSE 212 told Forbes that the series budget, well exceeds the eight-figure per episode mark, suggesting that The Last Of Us budget is indeed one of the largest in the history of HBO series.

The series will consist of ten episodes in season 1, which will be about an hour long. I think an hour per episode is long enough to tell the story of these characters, without having to end the story of the games exclusively in season 1.

For example, we may get to see only half of the game timeline in season 1, and the other half in season 2, which would be good If HBO decided to also adapt the second game in the series. This way, they would have earned some time for Bella Ramsey, who would have aged and looked more mature for the story from The Last Of Us II.

Usually, when HBO or another streaming service announces that theyll make a movie or series adaptation of a game, I try not to get my hopes up. But there are only two examples for now, where no matter what, I will believe in what directors, producers, and actors say. These adaptations are Netflixs Assassins Creed and, of course, The Last Of Us.

The connection I have with both parts of The Last Of Us is very unique and emotional for me. There are no words to describe how happy, hyped, and excited I am about this show since they announced it.

After the casting and creative announcements, I was sure that The Last Of Us would be one of the best series from HBO if not the best. The atmosphere of the series, the locations were going to see, the easter eggs from the games, and the feeling of survivalism, will make fans of the games simply delighted with what they get.

One great thing is Gustavo Santaolallas commitment to the project. Hes the main creator of the soundtrack for both games in the series, and will also create the music for the TV series. This is an excellent creative decision, because he knows the sounds of this world best, and who else but he could create the best soundtrack for the series with musical elements taken from the games.

There have been a lot of live game adaptations, some of them okay and some of them really bad. The Last Of Us series will definitely be a huge event and one that I believe well be talking about for a long time.

Alongside our main cast, were also going to see Jeffrey Pierce, Ashley Johnson, Troy Baker, Storm Reid, Melanie Lynskey, and Nico Parker. The Last Of Us will premiere in 2023 only on HBO Max.

Are you excited about HBOs The Last of Us series? Do you think it could be one of the best live-action game adaptations? Let us know on social media!

Destiny Has Great Potential for Live-Action Adaptation

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'The Last Of Us' - Potentially the Best Live-Action Game Adaptation - The Cosmic Circus

Right now, cooking competition shows feel like theyre in the midst of an arms race of absurdity. Each new show attempts to make the process of cooking even more challenging in its own unique way, like the switcheroo kitchens in Gordon Ramsays Next Level Chef, or the trompe loeil trickery of Is It Cake? But forthcoming series Chefs vs. Wild ups the ante significantly, challenging its contestants to hunt, fish, forage, and cook, all in the middle of nowhere.

In each episode of Chefs vs. Wild, produced by Leftfield Pictures and David Chang in conjunction with Vox Media Studios, two contestants will be helicoptered into remote locations where theyll be tasked with sourcing enough wild ingredients to create a fine dining meal. (Vox Media Studios is part of Eaters parent company, Vox Media. No Eater staff member is involved in the production of those shows, and this does not impact coverage on Eater.) The chefs are each paired up with a survivalist and outdoor expert, who will ostensibly be on hand to keep the chefs from killing themselves by accidentally eating poisonous mushrooms or falling into a ravine as they seek out oysters and seaweed and other edibles. Watch the trailer below:

Once theyve sourced all their ingredients, the chefs will then head to a wilderness kitchen, where theyll be tasked with preparing a meal for host Kiran Jethwa, a chef and adventurer in his own right, and wild foods expert Valerie Segrest. The judges then pick a winner, who takes home bragging rights and presumably all of their extremities after braving the elements.

The shows contestants are all trained chefs, most of whom already have a strong interest in foraging, butchery, and other techniques that might be helpful in a competition like this. Theres Katie Coss, a Tulsa, Oklahoma native who formerly served as the executive chef at Sean Brocks Husk in Nashville, and James Beard Award winner and author Alan Bergo, who spends his time foraging for plants and mushrooms in rural Wisconsin. Chefs vs. Wild premieres on Hulu on September 26.

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So Were Doing Survivalism in Cooking Shows Now

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This is a recap and review of Episode 6 of Alone: Frozen, which takes place over days 30 25. Three contestants remain at the start of the episode.

As I expected, Callie did not go home due to stomach poisoning. Instead, we find her having a smoke bath and cleaning her clothes (using the smoke from spruce boughs, which have antibacterial properties). As she does so, she gives us more details about the tragedies in her childhood and how she chooses to undertake challenging activities to honour her lost brothers, and how these challenges help her grow and expand as a person.

After showing us what indeed is a really cool view of the wind over the water, she checks her traps. She finds a squirrel in one, which she case skins (where you remove the pelt in one piece). I never considered using a squirrel skin as a bag before this.

A few days later, she gives us a tour of her shelter, showing her collection of heart rocks and grass feathers, tools, bed, and her chair. That same evening, she plans to sleep under the stars despite the snow (though Im not sure why she pulled her sleeping stuff out of her shelter when it was still light, but maybe she goes to bed early). She survives the cold and wakes up having had a wonderful night under the stars. She did make a bet with herself, though: if there are animals in her traps that day, she plans to stay, but if they are empty, she will leave. Of course, the show ends there. Well have to wait and see whether the remaining trio becomes a duo.

We first find Woniya leaving her shelter to gather mussels. After what happened to Callies guts, my only reaction was, no!

As she gathers, she explains how her relationship with nature was her compass as a child during her parents divorce. She then shows us her huge mussel farm, which honestly boggled my mind. She explains that shes a naturalist with an MA in environmental science, so the seaside is a natural place for her to forage. On top of the mussels, she finds three sea urchins, then the sea urchin motherload.

The first morning when snow appears, its 24 degrees Fahrenheit (-4 Celsius). Woniya heads to her snares and discovers shes caught a rabbit in one. Shes super excited, and as she works on it, she explains that survivalism requires confidence in yourself to succeed, and its taken her time to build this within herself.

Michelle is not as upbeat as the other two women, but she also operates on a more even keel. She explains how shes lost 14-pounds since drop-off, which is better than the 21-pounds she had lost by this day on her last time on Alone. She adds that she is inspired by her paternal grandmother, in how hard she worked for her family.

As she heads for her snares, she spots a pair of grouse and manages to headshot one.

She heads back to her camp to clean it, telling us that she was anorexic for years, but nature was what helped her heal. To bolster her spirits, she decides to carve a chess set in the evenings. As she begins, she talks about how she is on Alone because she wants to inspire others to get involved in nature, and viewers seeing her (and not the stereotypical outdoorsman) would relay to them that they can do it too. I agree with this, as while Ive always loved nature (except for spiders), watching Alone (especially the women) has really made me want to do more wilderness camping and ensure my kids grow up with an appreciation for nature.

Im still betting on Woniya, as Callies staying on the show seems to be based on luck at this point. Though, Michelle could surprise us and be the last woman standing.

The next episode airs on Sept 22 on History Channel and StackTV.

T. S. Beier is obsessed with science fiction, the ruins of industry, and Fallout. She is the author of What Branches Grow, a post-apocalyptic novel (which was a Top 5 Finalist in the 2020 Kindle Book Awards and a semi-finalist in Hugh Howey's 2021 Self-Published Science Fiction Competition) and the Burnt Ship Trilogy (space opera). She is a book reviewer, editor, freelance writer, and co-owner of Rising Action Publishing Co. She currently lives in Ontario, Canada with her husband, two feral children, and a Shepherd-Mastiff.

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Alone: Frozen Episode 6 Recap and Review - Post Apocalyptic Media

The Office is one of the most popular shows to have ever aired. The series, filmed in a mockumentary format, aired for nine seasons and featured many hilarious characters. One such character was Dwight Schrute, whose unlikeable personality endeared him to fans of the show. Dwight was known to have amazing one-liners and punchlines. However, the actor who played him would never say one of Dwights quotes from The Office because hes vegan.

Dwight is a competent salesperson at one of Dunder Mifflins branches. He was an Assistant to the Regional Manager but always referred to himself as Assistant Regional Manager, trying to elevate himself to a second in a command position.

Dwight respects his boss Michael Scott and often thinks of Scott as his hero. In the episode where he leaves the company briefly, it is revealed that Dwight often arranged the toys in Michaels office in a way that always pleased his boss, who wasnt aware of the gesture.

Dwight relishes any minor task Michael assigns him and thrives on the prospect of having authority over his coworkers. While Dwight has proven he can handle crises very well, he is gullible and ignorant with some naivety that often leaves him at the mercy of his coworkers, who delight in tricking him.

The character is also known for his regular formal wear consisting of a brown suit jacket and a mustard-colored short-sleeved shirt. Dwight likes bragging about his lifes accomplishments (some questionable), including claiming to have absorbed his twin in the womb, performing his own circumcision, and taking care of his siblings.

However, the character is efficient in paintball, and survivalism and has an affinity for ping pong, karate, and weapons. He is also a notary public and a volunteer sheriff deputy. He stepped down from his role as the latter when he helped Michael illegally ace a drug test by giving him his urine.

Dwight has several quotes that make his character more entertaining. However, the character and his portrayer are different in real life. In The Office, Dwight loves indulging in meat and dairy products. He also lives with his family on a farm, ensuring the character doesnt miss out on his meat fix.

However, the actor who plays the character is a vegan, and as an animal lover, he would never say one iconic Dwight line. In season 3, episode 4, titled Grief Counselling, Dwight proclaims his love for meat by saying, Im sorry! I grew up on a farm! We killed a pig whenever we wanted bacon!

Rainn Wilson appeared on Conan in 2017 and shared the reason he went vegan. He told host Conan OBrien that he had a revelation one day while having some bacon and looking at his beloved rescue pigs. Then, he realized he didnt want to continue that lifestyle and decided to shift to veganism.

The actor, who calls himself The Fifty-Year-Old Vegan, told his millions of followers on Instagram that since he became a vegan, he noticed he had more energy and was sleeping better.

One of Dwights legendary lines just so happens to be a Mandela Effect. Many people have approached Wilson to ask him to repeat his characters iconic Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica line. But as it turns out, Dwight never uttered those three famous words.

The actor shared that his co-star John Krasinskis character, Jim Halpert, was the one who said those words while impersonating Dwight. The actor said he doesnt like correcting people and goes along with it but wanted to clarify it to his fans.

RELATED: The Office Star Rainn Wilson Hilariously Avoided a Fan at the Dentist

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Rainn Wilson Would Never Say 1 'The Office' Dwight Quote Because He's a Vegan - Showbiz Cheat Sheet

Our arsenal of amazing reviews this week includes Andrea Long Chu on Ottessa Moshfeghs Lapvona, Lauren Groff on Sarah Stodolas The Last Resort, Brian Dillon on Hilary Mantels Learning to Talk, Dan Piepenbring on Werner Herzogs The Twilight World, and Julie Zickefooseon Ed Yongs An Immense World.

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At first glance, Lapvona is the most disgusting thing Moshfegh has ever writtenYet Moshfeghs trusty razor can feel oddly blunted in Lapvona. In part, her characteristic incisiveness is dulled by her decision to forgo the first person, in favor of more than a dozen centers of consciousness. This diminishment is also a curious effect of Lapvona itself Lapvona is the clearest indication yet that the desired effect of Moshfeghs fiction is not shock but sympathy. Like Hamlet, she must be cruel in order to be kind. Her protagonists are gross and abrasive because they have already begun to molt; peel back their blistering misanthropy and you will find lonely, sensitive people who are in this world but not of it, desperate to transform, ascend, escape This is the problem with writing to wake people up: Your ideal reader is inevitably asleep. Even if such readers exist, there is no reason to write books for themnot because novels are for the elite but because the first assumption of every novel must be that the reader will infinitely exceed it. Fear of the reader, not of God, is the beginning of literature. Deep down, Moshfegh knows this.Yet the novelist continues to write as if her readers are fundamentally beneath her; as if they, unlike her, have never stopped to consider that the world may be bullshit; as if they must be steered, tricked, or cajoled into knowledge by those whom the universe has seen fit to appoint as their shepherds Its a shame. Moshfegh dirt is good dirt. But the author of Lapvona is not an iconoclast; she is a nun. Behind the carefully cultivated persona of arrogant genius, past the disgusting pleasures of her fiction and bland heresies of her politics, wedged just above her not inconsiderable talent, there sits a small, hardened lump of piety. She may truly be a great American novelist one day, if only she learns to be less important. Until then, Moshfegh remains a servant of the highest god there is: herself.

Andrea Long Chu on Ottessa Moshfeghs Lapvona (Vulture)

Stodola is, like me, skeptical about the beach idyll, constantly seeing the darker forces of environmental and cultural degradation amid all the luxury she describes. She is at her most incisive when she calmly, clearly lists what is lost when beach resorts take over a place Stodolas careful critique of the invasive species that is the luxury resort helped clarify my beach-haters reflexive outrage. And yet, as she piled on her profiles of resorts all over the worldand Tulum blended into Sumba, which blended into Barbados, which blended into Bali, which blended into Acapulco, their high-priced cocktails and corrosive effects becoming a repetitive blurI felt dizzy and exhausted. Luxury can swiftly glut. I also felt morally queasy about her pursuit. Her travels officially counted as research, I understood. But I began to wonder how someone so perceptive, intelligent, and ethical could so studiously anatomize the pervasive harm wreaked by these places, and yet take long-haul flights around the globe to spend time at many (many!) more of them than nailing her argument required. She recognizes the ways in which she is complicitshe makes that clear in The Last Resortand still she kept choosing to be complicit If I cant help feeling that Stodola tries to have it both ways, which I read as a kind of hypocrisy, the reason I find it hard to swallow is that I so often do the same If we all paid attention to what is happening to the planet in the Anthropocene, wed be running around with our heads on fire.

Lauren Groff on Sarah Stodolas The Last Resort: A Chronicle of Paradise, Profit, and Peril at the Beach (The Atlantic)

How unexpected, how consoling, that one of the best-selling British novelists of recent decades should also be such a peculiar, stringent prose stylistand gothic affronter of authority Mantel evokes beautifully a place ingrained with the soot and sweat of labor, a time populated with racist landlords and dental cripples, when relatives were the only domestic visitors, and ones parents seemed to have no actual friends The drowned village is one of the larger conceits in Learning to Talk; usually, Mantels imagery is less allegorically freighted, less amenable. Her particular, unsettling skill lies in discovering queasy equivalents for physical sensations and emotional statesthe body is always there, as metaphor, to remind us of its unmetaphorical heft and threat The innocent cruelty of childhood, youths horror at the alien predicaments of adult bodies and adult lives: Mantel conjures all this with nerveless precision Sickness also haunts Learning to Talk: an intermittent presence in childhood, a horizon, perhaps, toward which everything is moving. Its part of the wider project or tendency in Mantels work: to explore, as she does so lucidly and strangely here, the hinterland between emotional history and anxious embodiment.

Brian Dillon on Hilary Mantels Learning to Talk (4Columns)

Few writers are better equipped to capture a place so overwhelmingly opaque that it lapses into absurdity, and a life that became an exercise in purposed purposelessness. In Herzogs hands, Lubang exists outside of time, and Onodas war has the eerie gravity of a thought experiment come to life The Twilight World has the unenviable task of dramatizing nearly three decades of acute emptiness. Onoda and his companions lived like a millenarian cult, anticipating a salvation that never camethe action was all in the future, and all in their minds. Herzog has written a clipped, economical account that sometimes explodes into lyricism, turning their waiting into a thing of numb, antic beauty. His trick is not to put us in Onodas head but to remain so resolutely outside of it that we feel immured in the same wilderness Herzog has always been attuned to the ways in which survivalism functions as a form of existentialism. The brutal irony of The Twilight World comes in moments like these, when Onoda succumbs to what a psychologist might call patternicity. He finds meaning everywhere, hearing signals that soon fade into the endless noise To call it dark, dry, or deadpan is an understatement; its more like cosmic farce, or field recordings of the hiccups of fate. The novels most humorous events are also its most despairing Herzog, who has made a career studying the emptiness of meaning-making, celebrates Onodas noble crusade even as he dismisses its abject triviality; it takes a kindred spirit to admire someone who held himself hostage to a lost cause.

Dan Piepenbring on Werner Herzogs The Twilight World (The New Yorker)

a dense and dazzling ride through the sensory world of astoundingly sophisticated creatures. Who wouldnt want to tag along on a field research trip or peek into the lab of a sensory biologist? rich with stories from lab and field, with lucid explanations of the mechanics behind sensory perception. There is more than enough mind-boggling science, with delightfully distracting footnotes on most pages and a whopping 45-page bibliography. Yet Mr. Yongs storytelling will carry most readers through the thicket with ease Its Mr. Yongs task to expand our thinking, to rouse our sense of wonder, to help us feel humbled and exalted at the capabilities of our fellow inhabitants on Earth. This rich and deeply affectionate travelogue of animal sensory wonders ends with a plea to usnoisy, light-polluting anthropoid apesto stop and consider others needs: for silence, for darkness, for space. Despite the stunning discoveries chronicled here, what we dont know about these animals experience in the world we share is still virtually . . . everything.

Julie Zickefooseon Ed Yongs An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us (The Wall Street Journal)

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5 Book Reviews You Need to Read This Week - Literary Hub

Will Wilson, Auto-Immune Response (2005), multi-media installation detail, Heard Museum, Phoenix, Arizona (all images courtesy the artist)

One little-known legacy of the Cold War is the hundreds of abandoned uranium mines (AUMs) across Indigenous lands in Utah, Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico that at one time provided ore for nuclear bombs. Although the mines are closed now, they are by no means inert. Disposal sites contain tailings and contaminated building materials such as concrete blocks and rebar that release radioactive dust into the air when the wind blows across the desert, and radioactive silt into nearby water bodies when it rains.

Will Wilson remembers hanging out at the Rare Metals Disposal Cell near the western edge of the Navajo reservation where he grew up. For his ongoing photo series Connecting the Dots, Wilson uses a drone-mounted camera to document the remains of these mining operations. The images of mounds, hollows, and scars are sweeping and evocative, calling to mind the notion of the hyperobject, something almost too big to contemplate in their physicality, their numbers, and how they represent our hubristic tendency to simultaneously stumble toward both progress and self-destruction. They also resemble large-scale land arts of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

I recently photographed the disposal site with Rodin Crater in the distance, said Wilson, referring to James Turrells iconic work. I want to do four of these pairings the Mexican Hat Disposal Cell reminds me of Spiral Jetty.

Many AUMs are on or near places sacred to the Din: Mexican Hat is a stones throw from the buttes of Monument Valley, Rare Metals rests in the shadow of the San Francisco Peaks, and the Shiprock disposal site is not only near Shiprock but also the San Juan River, which is used for drinking, irrigating crops, and watering livestock. During heavy rains, water collects in the giant depressions left by mining activity where sheep drink and become contaminated. Sheep are part of the Navajo food supply.

Theyre trying to figure out what the vectors of exposure are. Food is definitely one of them, said Wilson, referring to a 2010 study in which researchers at the University of New Mexicos Community Environmental Health Program found high rates of uranium in Navajo mothers and infants blood.

Wilson, who currently heads Santa Fe Community Colleges photography program, has devoted years to surveying environmental conditions in the Navajo Nation. His photo and video series Auto-Immune Response (AIR) is a haunting tale of native resilience through years of racism, genocide, theft of homelands, and air and water poisoned by uranium mining and coal-burning power plants.

In AIR, Wilson renders himself as a survivor of some future apocalypse, wandering the canyons and playas of the high desert in a gas mask. A companion piece, AirLab, takes the form of a steel-frame hogan (a Navajo dwelling with spiritual significance) transformed into a kind of ark. Edible and medicinal plants grow in pots arranged inside the structure, symbolizing the determined survivalism of a people who have struggled against obliteration for centuries. After making the dome, Wilson discovered that its geometry was similar to the explosive lenses of the first atomic bomb.

They had explosives that would focus energy toward the plutonium core at the center. Instead of putting plutonium at the core, I used corn pollen, so it was kind of like a beauty bomb, he told Din College photography students during a recent talk.

Wilson also conducts ongoing explorations in portraiture, working with wet plate collodion process which he came to, in part, as a reaction to the ubiquity of digital photography. Wilson constructed the Critical Indigenous Photos Exchange (CIPX) as a relational work, inviting the public to have their own pictures taken. In this way, the subjects of the art can witness for themselves the transformative power of the photograph, interrogate the role of photography in creating identity, and question the cameras potential to capture a human being.

CIPX serves as a commentary on the 19th-century images of Edward Curtis, who famously portrayed his subjects as members of a vanishing race. The tintypes are distinctive not only for the way they alter the skin tone of their subjects but in the way they present friends and neighbors in the semblance of the late 19th century, suggesting historical and social continuity between the endangered figures of Curtiss photos and Wilsons living subjects.

Talking Tintypes plays on this aliveness: By means of augmented reality technology, it blends still images with video and sound to produce unexpected, sometimes whimsical mini-performances. Viewers must download an app on their phone in order to engage with these works; for example, to hear Swil Kanim performing a melancholy version of Ten Little Indians on the violin, or Storme Webber reciting her poem Grace, or to see Melissa Pochoema as an Insurgent Hopi Maiden in a white dress, her hair in whorls.

Wilsons work has been recognized throughout the United States. Earlier this month, the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, opened a mid-career retrospective of Wilsons major works (AIR, Connect the Dots, and CIPX). Wilson is also collaborating with Senior Curator of Photographs John Rohrbach to create an exhibition for the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth this fall. Speaking with Light: Contemporary Indigenous Photography will lead visitors through a progression of still photos, videos, installations, and new media. Beginning with a display of historic delegation photographs, depicting Indigenous leaders gathering in Washington, DC, for (ill-fated) treaty negotiations, moving into a section that develops White Earth Ojibwe scholar Gerald Vizenors concept of survivance, a neologism combining survival and resistance.

Its an ongoing process of suing for recognition, said Wilson of the exhibition, of insisting that Indigenous people continue to be here. Were suing for awareness.

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Will Wilson's Portraits of Survivance - Hyperallergic

Tradecraft /// Covert Operative Lifestyle + CIA Training Guide

A covert operative method of remembering new faces you come across and recognizing them in further encounters for the purposes of both casual and professional interactions.

A tradecraft method of instant decision-making to enact the best situational response during prespecified mission obstacle or otherwise critical scenarios.

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by ALIAS X

by ALIAS X

TRADECRAFT ]

Covert Operative Guide CIA Training Method

A covert operative method of remembering new faces you come across and recognizing them in further encounters for the purposes of both casual and professional interactions.

The Tradecraft Guide

Skillset, lifestyle and professional tactics + concepts of the CIA, Mossad, MI6, VDR and US Special Operations Forces. The TRDCRFT site is focus on a more decisive state of mind and being. By the deliberate practice and strategic application of tacticalism, nomadism, minimalism, adventurism and urban survivalism to everyday life the directive covert agent lifestyle methodology. * Tradecraft is a dynamic guideline of techniques and proficiency measures as well as relevant equipment and human resources. Developed or adapted for use in the dexterity of intelligence operations and functionality. A tactician and strategist approach to planning, control, performance and execution. A mindset directive of operating just as effective when utilized in everyday life. Also known as the CIA training method. The operative lifestyle guide to operate deliberately with strategy and purpose, precision and preparedness, in a more engaged, optimized and adaptable way of life and professional direction with intelligence craft concepts, active urban survival guide directives and special forces military training.

// Tradecraft :: trd-kraft //Less formally referred to as spycraft, its the methodologies and philosophies of engaging in clandestine operations and general espionage.The skillsets, techniques, CIA training directives and mindsets associated with the trade are designed to optimize mission objective parameters, operational cohesion and personnel capability / viability. With strategic implementation, tradecraft can be applied to augment any other profession or standardized into everyday normal lifestyles. Incorporating the applicable ways of the covert agent to your own ways of operating. Effectively modernized urban survival tactics. This website does not pertain to how to become a covert operative, intelligence agent or clandestine operative including but not limited to engaging in espionage (spycraft) or any type of government sanctioned or sponsored covert operation. Instead using those skillsets and CIA training directives (tradecraft definition) to shape a more deliberate lifestyle with applied urban survival. By using the information and opinions provided by this site, you agree to use its content at your own risk. TRDCRFT assumes no responsibility or liability from any potential damages incurred legal or otherwise.

Tradecraft Assets | Self Sovereignty

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Tradecraft /// Covert Operative Lifestyle + CIA Training Guide

The dress was long. It was white. It was Versace. And it wasnt just a wedding dress.

Well, it was, literally, a wedding dress the dress Britney Spears wore to marry Sam Asghari on June 9 in Los Angeles. But it was also a symbol of Ms. Spearss new era of independence, and a relatively restrained choice for a woman who has lived a lot of her pain, and her fame, in public. While it may be her third marriage, its the first since the end of the conservatorship that defined a large part of her adult life. So why not dress for it as if it is a fresh start?

Not so much a fairy tale ending as a beginning, in off-the-shoulder ivory silk cady with pearl buttons down the back, a high slit to free the leg, a nearly 15-foot flowing veil and a matching choker a nod of sorts to her own 1990s trendsetting self.

And for that, why not turn to a designer who knew her when? Enter Donatella Versace.

Back in March, Ms. Spears posted a picture of herself with Ms. Versace on Instagram, suggesting that the two of them were peas in a pod (in somewhat saltier language). Ms. Versace, in turn, told Variety later in the month that Ms. Spears was in an amazing state of mind.

I know its been such a long time, she said. Im very happy to see her like that.

Indeed, the wedding may have consecrated Ms. Spearss relationship with Mr. Asghari, but her relationship with Ms. Versace has been going on for decades. The two women have long had more in common than a poptastic aesthetic, a love of body-conscious clothing, bleach and a bit of a spray tan.

Ms. Versace, after all, went through her own public trial by fire when she was forced to assume the reins of the Versace brand after the murder of her brother Gianni. She endured substance abuse issues and family trauma to keep the business going no matter what. (Sound familiar?) She knows something about being stuck under the celebrity microscope.

Perhaps as a result, she and Ms. Spears have had each others backs and share of mind since at least 2001, when Ms. Spears chose a backless green chiffon minidress with black beading to perform with Michael Jackson at Madison Square Garden.

In 2002, Ms. Spears wore a long, rainbow-toned, flesh-flashing Versace gown to sit in the front row at the Versace show during Milan Fashion Week, and in 20008 she wore two different sparkling Versace minidresses to the MTV Video Music Awards.

Ms. Versace once even defined her clothes according to Ms. Spearss reputation. They are young and rock n roll, she said of the looks in her spring 2003 collection. Britney things.

After the nuptials, there were more Versace Britney things, including an assortment of minidresses in black and red that Ms. Spears wore to the reception and dance party.

And together the mini wedding wardrobe suggests there may be even more Britney-related inspiration come September and the next Versace runway. Its not hard to imagine that this could be the start of a whole new Spears-Versace era (not to mention ambassadorship), one that defines the look of a certain unapologetic and triumphant feminine survivalism.

If so, it would mark a fashion marriage of the most enduring, and authentic, kind.

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Britney Spears: The Once and Future Versace Muse - The New York Times

Fifty years on, how Ziggy Stardust and the first UN climate summit changed our vision of the future.

DAVID Bowie released his seminal album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars 50 years ago, on June 16, 1972. It was an artsy and ambitious rock album which captured the times sense of being on the cusp of new technological and cultural frontiers.

In the early 1970s, the US Apollo programme was, briefly, making men visiting the moon seem like a routine event. The possibilities of computer power were beginning to unfold, and the countercultural youth revolt was challenging prevailing values and norms. Bowies fictional alter ego encapsulated all these groundbreaking developments: an androgynous rockstar from outer space with, in the words of the albums title song, a god-given a**. Bowie-Ziggy wore heavy makeup, dyed his hair red, and dressed in clothes inspired by Japanese kabuki theatre.

But coupled with its playful fascination for space technology, the Ziggy Stardust album also described a dread of the Pandoras box that might be opened as a result. Its opening track, Five Years, warned listeners that Earth was really dying. During the cold war, the prospect of man-made armageddon through nuclear war was never far away. And by the early 1970s, fears of an ecological crisis and overpopulation were starting to take on similar apocalyptic proportions.

Indeed, the day of Ziggy Stardusts release coincided with the final day of a landmark gathering in Sweden to discuss the future of the planet. The Stockholm Conference, which began on June 5, 1972, was the first United Nations conference on the human environment, and the starting point for global environmental governance.

Todays global climate summits, most recently COP 26 in Glasgow last November, are its direct descendants. And like Bowies album, the Stockholm Conference began amid conflicting emotions: hopes of a new dawn of environmental awareness and technological possibility set against fears of global conflict and planetary collapse.

Moonage daydream

Bowies obsession with outer space predated the creation of Ziggy Stardust. In June 1969, what would become his first major hit single, Space Oddity, was released. It told the story of an astronaut losing contact with Ground Control while gazing at the Earth from afar in his tin can. In July 1969, the BBC used the song in its broadcast of the first moon landing, apparently unaware of the tragic lyrics.

As Bowie clearly grasped, the Apollo space programme was central to the birth and early growth of the global environmental movement. It was during the manned moon expeditions that Earth was first photographed from space. The most iconic image, Earthrise taken over Christmas 1968 with a Hasselblad camera by the crew of Apollo 8 shows our planet rising over the lifeless landscape of the moon, like a sun at the horizon. It has become one of the most widely shared and reproduced photographs of all time.

The original Earthrise photograph taken from Apollo 8. Nasa, CC

Astronauts Frank Borman, James Lovell and William Anders had become the first humans to venture outside the Earths orbit. New satellite technology also made it possible for their space adventures to be followed via television broadcasts. On Christmas Eve, they read the opening verses of Genesis and sent festive greetings to an estimated one billion people watching around the world. Six months later, the first moon landing drew an even greater audience, offering those watching further spectacular views of the Earth.

Such images resonated among the new breed of environmentalists. In the words of historian Robert Poole, It gave people a picture to think with. Other scholars talked about the overview effect: by seeing the Earth from space, people became aware that life on their planet was interconnected, limited and vulnerable giving impetus to the emerging survivalism movement.

The opening track of Ziggy Stardust, Five Years, echoes some of the survivalist debates darker sentiments, with its weeping newsguy confirming the end of the world is nigh. Yet just five years earlier, during 1967s utopian summer of love, this message would hardly have resonated in popular culture.

In Swedish history, the pivotal moment for the awakening of environmental consciousness came in the autumn of 1967. At that time, a choir of prominent Swedish scientists publicly warned of an impending global environmental crisis. Foremost among them was the chemist Hans Palmstierna, whose book Plundering, Starvation, Poisoning became an instant bestseller. Palmstierna argued there was an urgent need to act before the hourglass expires for humanity. He linked environmental destruction to other global issues, including world poverty, war and overpopulation thereby emphasising that environmental hazards were just as severe a threat to humankind.

The impact of Palmstiernas and other scientists collective intervention was powerful. There was talk of a general environmental awakening in Sweden, as the national press, radio and television reported on mercury-poisoned fish, biocides and acid rain with unprecedented intensity.

In the words of the Swedish historian Lars J Lundgren, it was as if a new continent of problems had been discovered. Where previously, environmental hazards had been regarded as individual problems to be solved in isolation, more and more people were beginning to see them as connected and constituting a severe crisis.

Five years

From an international perspective, Swedens breakthrough of environmental concern occurred remarkably early. Intrinsic to this reorientation was the very concept of the environment (in Swedish, milj).

The word had not been used in the early 1960s for example, during the intense debate sparked by Rachel Carsons book Silent Spring, which awakened public understanding of the links between industrial pesticides and the die-out of insects and wildlife in the US. At that point, people discussed nature, conservation and the threat modern industrial civilisation posed to wild birds and animals. But the environmental debate which arose in Sweden in the late 1960s put the threat to humankind at the forefront.

The discovery of acid rain was of particular importance. The finding that it was being caused by sulphur dioxide emissions from across Europe was first reported in October 1967, in an article in Swedens largest morning paper, Dagens Nyheter, by the scientist Svante Odn. The story caused an immediate stir and frantic political action.

Inspired by the debate at home, Swedish diplomats suggested to the United Nations that a large environmental conference should be organised. Their initiative set the ball rolling towards what would eventually become the 1972 Stockholm Conference, the UNs first global Conference on the Human Environment.

Delegates gathering at the 1972 Stockholm Conference. UN.org

Over the intervening five years, the Swedish public became acutely aware of the Earths environmental crisis a chain of events I examine in my book, The Environmental Turn in Postwar Sweden: A New History of Knowledge. A key voice in this national debate was Gsta Ehrensvrd, professor of biochemistry at Lund University, who calculated that the depletion of the planets limited resources, combined with accelerating population growth, would lead to a global crisis in around 2050 followed by centuries of famine and anarchy.

Ehrensvrd was accused by his opponents of being a gloomy doomsday prophet. But he saw it differently: Planning to clean up the Earths affairs in the long term is realism, not pessimism. What was needed, he said, was to steer development in new directions, and to take precautions against overexploitation and natural destruction. This would require an array of technological expertise, wisdom, humanity and foresight and he hoped the Stockholm Conference would be a step in the right direction.

It aint easy

Half a century ago, in the summer of 1972, the future of humanity was looking increasingly precarious in many other ways, too. In the US, the racial divide and ongoing Vietnam war spurred civil unrest. On a global scale, in addition to the cold war, the process of decolonisation highlighted stark differences between the global north and south. Threats of overpopulation and dwindling natural resources were made real by catastrophic famines in India and Biafra.

Despite the Stockholm Conferences focus on humankinds shared destiny, it like the world was deeply polarised. With East Germany barred from participating because it was not a member of the UN, most of the Eastern Bloc announced they would boycott the event. (The only communist countries to attend were Yugoslavia, China and Romania.) The conference was also sharply criticised by emerging environmental movements who argued it was a top-down, inadequate and purely symbolic event. Parallel environmental conferences were organised in Stockholm, such as the radical left-wing Peoples Forum.

The main conferences inaugural speech by Swedens prime minister, Olof Palme, was also controversial. He highlighted the tremendous destruction caused by indiscriminate bombing and the large-scale use of bulldozers and herbicides. Although not stated explicitly, there was no doubt his remarks were aimed at US conduct in Vietnam, which included use of chemical herbicides and weather modification technologies that were elsewhere described as ecocide.

Palmes speech was not appreciated in Washington. A spokesperson for the US state department said that deep unease was felt over the way the prime minister of the host country had raised this issue, which (in US eyes, at least) had nothing to do with an environmental protection conference.

The discussions in Stockholm went on for two hot June weeks, based on a growing realisation that humans were on the verge of destroying their own living environment. While the assembled world leaders sought to instil hope and spark international commitments, some environmental activists objected that the conference was excluding the general public. It only existed, one wrote, so that the real decision-makers could meet and discuss the problems they themselves have caused. On a diplomatic level, however, there were reasons for optimism, with the Peoples Republic of China having been admitted to the UN in October 1971 making its first appearance on the global scene.

Two concrete results of the conference were the Stockholm Declaration, which laid the groundwork for international environmental jurisdiction, and the foundation of the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP). Based in Kenyas capital, Nairobi, UNEP became responsible for coordinating international responses to environmental issues, and was the first UN body located in the developing world.

Much of the conferences focus ended up being on the global north-south divide. The western worlds efforts to deal with environmental degradation and overpopulation were pitted against developing countries desire for industrialisation and prosperity. Knowledge of an ongoing environmental crisis was circulating globally by now, but it was understood and handled in very different ways by the conferences various power blocs and countries.

To an observer in 2022, with last years COP26 still fresh in the memory, the dividing lines of Stockholm 1972 look eerily familiar. Then, as now, young environmental activists viewed the conference as a slow and insufficient way of dealing with urgent problems. Greta Thunbergs famous blah, blah, blah speech could have been spoken by protesters in 1972. Fifty years on, we have grown accustomed to recurring meetings, declarations, goals, bleak scenarios and calls from scientists and environmental activists to change the system. Much of this was present at the birth of global environmental politics.

Starman

Gran Bckstrand had not long been working at the Swedish foreign ministry when a telegram from the Swedish delegation to the United Nations landed on his desk. They had just put forward the idea of a UN-led conference focused on the environment. Over the next five years, Bckstrand was directly involved in the preparation and organisation of the 1972 Stockholm Conference.

Now in his mid-80s, Bckstrand remains a vigorous and politically engaged figure. Over the last five years, we have discussed environmental history and contemporary concerns both in-person and over the telephone. He is a joyous soul who does not seem to despair even though the road ahead has proven far longer and more complicated than we imagined in 1972.

My vocation for international relations got an essential new twist by being part of the Swedish team preparing the substantial scientific input for that conference, Bckstrand recently told me. At one point, Professor Bert Bolin [who later became the first chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)] presented a preliminary report to our minister for the environment. He asked Bolin if he was 100% sure about the predictions in the report. Bolin said no as there were too many variables to consider, and the minister remarked that he had always to be 100% convinced in proposing political action.

"To me, this illustrates why decisive political action on climate change has been neglected.

Looking back, Bckstrand thinks the most important result of the Stockholm Conference was helping to build a global environmental consciousness. It also created a framework for environmental governance at an international level, and indirectly led to the founding in most states of national environmental authorities.

On June 2-3, the 1972 event was commemorated in the Swedish capital during Stockholm+50, a UN conference jointly organised by Sweden and Kenya. Its organisers are seeking to highlight the importance of multilateralism in tackling what they call Earths triple planetary crisis: climate, nature and pollution. But just as collective action proved difficult at the original Stockholm Conference, is it possible for the nations of the world to act any more decisively now?

Bckstrands expectations are set low hardened by recurring experiences of gruelling international climate negotiations. Pondering the developments of the last 50 years, he told me: In 1972, there existed some kind of harmony between certain aspects of science and politics, and there was a mild confidence among the participating nations of the environmental crisis as a unifying mission.

Today, he says, the relationship between politics and science is much more problematic, and the environment has become polarising. There are two parallel processes of the last 50 years: the exploitation of natural resources has accelerated, and trust in the international system, and the constructive role of the UN, has gradually disintegrated.

Before our latest conversation ended, I had to ask one more question of this lifetime civil servant and globally minded environmentalist. Did you listen to the new Ziggy Stardust album when it came out that year? And did you feel any resonance with the messages you were discussing in Stockholm?

No, Bckstrand confessed. In fact, I have never heard of it until you told me about it now. But I am glad you have made the connection to music history. I think it is an important one.

The day of Ziggy Stardusts release coincided with the final day of a landmark gathering in Sweden to discuss the future of the planet, The Stockholm Conference. Agencies

Blackstar

The final day of the Stockholm Conference June 16, 1972 was the day that Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders of Mars was released to the world. Fifty years on, the hopes and fears evoked in this album, like the conference, still feel disturbingly relevant particularly amid the heightened nuclear tensions following Russias invasion of Ukraine.

So what would Bowie have made of the way things have turned out for the planet? He may have left some clues in his final album, Blackstar, released two days before his death in January 2016. The music videos for the title song and second single, Lazarus, were directed by another Swede, Johan Renck. At the centre of the Blackstar video is an empty space suit, blinking back to the Major Tom character in Space Oddity and Ashes to Ashes a distinctly gloomy echo of that groundbreaking time when men first walked on the moon.

Bowies death coincided with a renewed interest in outer space. In our time, however, it is not superpower states that are leading the way to the final frontier, but superwealthy individuals such as Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, who have made their billions through the digital revolution of the 21st century and whose companies and personal fortunes arguably epitomise the staggering inequalities that new technologies emerging in the 1970s have enabled.

Environmentally, the picture feels similarly bleak. This Novembers COP 27 will return to Africa in Sharm El-Sheik, Egypt. The continent, despite contributing a mere 4% to global emissions of greenhouse gases, is bearing the brunt of their impacts, with the combined effects of severe drought, flooding and pestilence along with conflict in Africa and Ukraine now threatening a full-scale catastrophe across East Africa.

The challenges facing those following in the footsteps of Bckstrand and his fellow attendees of the 1972 Stockholm Conference appear daunting, to say the least. The Conversation

David Larsson Heidenblad is Associate Professor of History at Lund University

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

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World Environment Day: David Bowie and the birth of environmentalism - The Star Online

EDGEHill University will welcome a debut novelist back to campus for a reading of her book exploring survivalism and the legacy of Chernobyl.

Dr Philippa Holloways first novel The Half-Life of Snails is set across a narrative split between North Wales and Ukraine during a time of civil unrest.

The free reading and Q&A will take place at Edge Hill University on Wednesday 11 May from 4.30pm to 6pm.

Professor Jo Crotty, director of Institute for Social Responsibility at Edge Hill University and an expert in the former Soviet Union, will host the Q&A and draw on her experiences of travelling to Chernobyl and Kyshtym the site of a 1957 nuclear accident.

She said:"ISR is delighted to welcome Dr Philippa Holloway to celebrate the release of her debut novel,The Half-Life of Snails.

"This event willexplore the themes of the book, including nuclear power and communities, the legacy of disaster, borderlands and the use of psychogeography as research for fiction writing,and a guest appearance by Alex Lockwood, author ofThe Chernobyl Privileges."

A former Graduate Teaching Assistant at Edge Hill, Dr Holloway is an internationally published short fiction writer and academic, and a Senior Lecturer in English and Creative Writing at Staffordshire University. Her debut novel is drawn from extensive research in Chernobyls Exclusion Zone and North Wales.

The Q&A will be held with Edge Hill academics:

The event is free but people are asked toregister their place in advance.

ISR aims to make a positive impact on societal issues through cross-disciplinary research and knowledge exchange activities.Italsoregularly holdsevents,seminars, workshops and lecturesso check for updatesor join the mailing list.

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Debut novelist to give reading and take part in Q&A at Lancashire university - Lancashire Telegraph