Category Archives: Futurist

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Colorado's Jason Crow, US House Democrat and member of the House Intelligence Committee, really wants you to steer clear of DNA testing platforms.

Axios reports that the lawmaker made his feelings clear during an appearance at the Aspen Security Forum on Friday, where he urgently warned that DNA-based bioweapons, created to "target specific people" on a battlefield, are on the horizon and that private DNA-testing companies like Ancestry.com and 23andMe may make them possible by selling genetic data about users.

"People will very rapidly spit into a cup and send it to 23andMe and get really interesting data about their background and guess what? Their DNA is now owned by a private company," the lawmaker reportedly claimed. "It can be sold off... with very little intellectual property protection or privacy protection, and we don't have legal and regulatory regimes that deal with that."

The ethics of genetic data have had a long and muddy past, and as the lawmaker hints, the modern legal system has struggled to keep up with rapidly evolving biotech.

And while Crow didn't appear offer much in the way of evidence for his statements, genetic profilers like the ones he called out have made headlines for alleged data abuses in the past. Like Facebook's many data controversies, several of these organizations exploded in popularity before any legal precedent or even social norm for the use of such data were established, and some extremely questionable behavior followed suit.

It's also worth noting that given the popularity of these platforms, it's quite difficult to opt out even if you don't choose to partake, your relatives might, which can have some pretty revealing consequences for just about anyone in the family tree.

Still, whether these terrifying weapons are genuinely in development, the lawmaker's claims are cause to more deeply examine our relationship to our most personal data which, as Crow additionally warned, are already perhaps too lax.

"You can't have a discussion about this without talking about privacy and the protection of commercial data because expectations of privacy have degraded over the last 20 years," said the rep, according to Fox News. "Young folks actually have very little expectation of privacy, that's what the polling and the data show."

Crow's comments are certainly unsettling. In truth, there's only so much we can do, but it's true that data protection especially when it comes to information so incredibly personal is always something that deserves our attention. It's easy to get jaded, but we implore you: read the fine print.

READ MORE: Biological weapons could target DNA, food supply, two U.S. lawmakers say [Axios]

Originally posted here:
House Rep Worried 23andMe Will Lead to Bioweapons That Kill Specific People Based on DNA - Futurism

The black-hulled XV Patrick Blackett sailed into the citys harbour this afternoon, ahead of a formal naming ceremony at Portsmouth Naval Base on Friday.

The vessel will join the Senior Services NavyX team, which aims fast-track the development of cutting-edge tech from the laboratory and into the hands of sailors.

Not much is known about exactly how the vessel will be used. However, she has been designated as a dedicated experimentation ship and is expected to make her seafaring debut in autumn.

The ship is named after a renowned British experimental physicist known for his work on cloud chambers and cosmic rays, winning the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1948.

Patrick Blackett was also a veteran of the Royal Navy, serving in the First World War. During the Second World War he a scientific adviser to Lieutenant General Sir Frederick Pile, commander in chief of anti-aircraft command.

He then became the director of operation research with the admiralty, from 1942 to 1945, with his research helping to directly improve the survival odds of convoys and bombers.

Taking to Twitter, Rear Admiral James Parkin said: Having fought in World War 1 as a naval officer, in World War 2 he was critical to the UKs war efforts as an eminent scientific advisor, developing ideas on subjects as diverse as convoy protection, anti-aircraft defences, and the futility of strategic bombing.

Although not a household name today, Patrick Blackett has a crater on the moon named after him, as well as a lecture theatre and hall at @ManchesterUniv and a laboratory at @imperialcollege, and a Blue Plaque was unveiled at his house in 2016.

However, the @RoyalNavy has not, until now, found an appropriate way to honour a man who did so much for his nation, and the world. Which is why Im thrilled the Experimental Vessel (XV) Patrick Blackett will arrive into @HMNBPortsmouth.

XV Patrick Blackett will be formally named on Friday, after which a process will take place to train her new crew, transfer her on to the Defence Shipping Register, etc. Then, in the autumn, the ship will go to sea as the @RNNavyX dedicated experimentation ship.

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The Royal Navy's new dedicated experimentation ship has arrived in Portsmouth for the first time - Portsmouth News

For over a decade, Shavone Charles has always put her people first as a Black woman and Black leader in tech. After penetrating some of the worlds most influential spaces, Charles is now the Head of D&I Communications, the first role of its kind, at the wildly popular video-based social media app, TikTok. But no matter which space she occupies, her success has been the direct result of her curiosity and commitment to her community.

Charles resume is a vision board of Silicon Valleys biggest companies. In 2014, she was named Head of Global Music and Culture Communications at Twitter, where she also helped found the Black employee resource group, Blackbird. The following year, she became Instagrams first music and youth culture hire, creating the companys first Black History Month program and launching major initiatives including #CelebrateBlackCreatives and the #BlackGirlMagic partnership with Spotify. During her two-year stint at VSCO, she spearheaded the #BlackJoyMatters campaign as the director of communications before taking her talents to TikTok. She also formed her own creative collective and in-house agency, Future of Creatives and Magic in Her Melanin, to continue opening doors for creatives of color.

During her formative years, the 2019 Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree says there was no blueprint for a career in tech she could follow or any kind of foreshadowing for her successful future. She remembers that social media was limited to smartphones (remember Sidekicks?), America Online, AOL Instant Messenger and MySpace. Facebook was also fairly new by the time she left college. When I was in high school, the jobs that Ive held now didnt even exist, she says. The platforms werent even around.

Once in college, the self-proclaimed multi-hyphenate creative, had a vague idea of her career path. She was an English literature major at the University of California, Merced and pursued many passions including writing, music, arts and media. As a child, Charles loved learning and recalls locking herself in a bathroom to read books from literary icons like Langston Hughes, Audre Lorde, bell hooks, Maya Angelou and Emily Dickinson.

Im always a student and Ive always been a sponge for knowledge. Ive found my voice in leaders, women, writers and authors, whove helped shape the way I think about the world, the way I talk, everything that I am, she says. We are all a byproduct of what we consume.

With a deep love for hip-hop, Charles is also a classically-trained flutist and a respected MC herself. In 2021, Charles, whose artist name is SHAVONE., racked up 178,000-plus streams on Spotify with her lyrical offerings Sheryl Swoopes and 4C, per her Spotify Wrapped. She cites Missy Elliott, Lauryn Hill, Tupac Shakur and JAY-Z among her sources of inspiration. Im a huge fan of multi-hyphenate creatives, she says. People who just refuse to be caged into whatever you expect them to be doing.

It wasnt until an internship for Google in 2011 that tech became a part of her brand. Charles secured communications-based internships at various places like BET Networks and Capitol Hill before working at Googles campus (also known as the Googleplex) in Mountain View, California, as part of the BOLD (Build Opportunities for Leadership & Development) program for undergraduates. She contributed to a variety of projects including Google Plus and other products, giving her a birds eye view of the industry. I saw early on that tech would be the nucleus and it is of all these industries politics, government entertainment, music, fashion. What motivated me to go into tech was just the expansiveness of it, the speed at which it moves, and the flexibility in being able to work on different topics and work across all verticals that I really care a lot about.

For Charles, working hard is hereditary. Her parents were self-made entrepreneurs. Her mother owned a hair salon for 30 years, while her father ran his own Chicken Shack food truck and restaurant in San Diego. The latter also did community work, including gang prevention. Offering a deeper dive into the family history, Charles also acknowledges her grandmother, who marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and her grandfather, who escaped poverty from Trinidad and Tobago to arrive in the US and join the Navy, an example of just defying odds and not being a victim of circumstance.

Her familys values were instilled in her at an early age. While in high school, Charles spent her free time, helping out with the family businesses and immersing herself in the San Diego community, a goal that remains constant to this day. By nature, youre already thinking community-first in everything that you do, she says thoughtfully. [My familys] influence has definitely shaped my approach in trying to lift those around me, even as Im rising, and [has shown me] the importance of taking care of your people and making sure that access and equity exists for us in whatever space were in, whether it be a rec center, an office, the runway or media. Its important to have that accountability every step of the way.

That mentality could also be applied to the tech sector. While companies have been ramping up diversity and inclusion efforts, the number of Black tech employees has been slow to grow. Despite making up 13% of the workforce, Black professionals represent 4.4% of board roles, 3.7% of those in technical roles, and just 4.0% of those in executive leadership, according to a 2022 report from The Kapor Center and the NAACP.

As for people of color currently employed at tech companies, coming as you are can be a major struggle. Theres always the push and pull of bringing your whole self to work and feeling like you have to choose or compromise yourself to thrive in a certain area, a certain lane or a certain industry, Charles says. Its not easy and its a constant tug of war. Her north star: Fearlessly fighting for her purpose and community.

She also asserts that creating change isnt just her job, but a shared responsibility. I think its collective accountability. Yes, Im the head of Diversity and Inclusion Communications at TikTok, but Ive been doing this work in this space since the very early days [of tech]. When I went to Twitter, it was a small startup company. Whether its in my job title or not, Ive been doing it for a long time. It starts with the space that you take up, holding yourself and people around you accountable. The second part is collectively looking around and making sure your room is diverse. I think the closer we can get to having our boardrooms, offices, work spaces, communities and the decision makers around us be representative of the users were serving, that is how you bridge the gaps.

This November, Charles will spread her message even further when she releases her debut book, The Black Internet Effect, via Penguin Random House Books and the Pocket Change Collective. A strong advocate of knowledge-sharing, Charles gets candid about her experiences rising through the ranks in tech. She describes the book as a manifesto to help underrepresented creatives and creators consider the possibility of a career in the tech industry.

The title is also a raised fist to the influence and power of Black people on the internet and culture. Everything you love about the internet, your social apps, culture and online is the Black internet effect, she explains. Charles says she has also seen the data to prove it. I realized the power of Black Twitter in my early days at Twitter. Before the world acknowledged it, it was evident. I looked at the data, worked alongside engineers to look at source trends and looked at the way trends took off all around the world on the platform and looked at the offline effects of the online things that have happened and continue to transcend culture. Black internet effect is just self-explanatory in thinking about Black culture and Black people, and the profound impact that we have on the internet, but also the effect of that in everyday life and everyday culture.

Beyond publishing the book she had written over the pandemic, Charles is also growing her creative collectives, Future of Creatives and Magic in Her Melanin. As platforms for underrepresented creatives and women to tell their stories and build community, she describes the organizations as an evolution of so many of my passions, interests and network.

With the goal of creating more resources and access for people of color across disciplines, Charles looks to grow FoC into a membership-focused organization with a newsletter, community programming and events for creative minds to connect and share opportunities. While the collective is still in its building phase, Charles will continue to scale it virtually and connect the dots in real life.

As for her role at TikTok, Charles keeps a tight lip on specific projects but is generous with her gems. She champions authenticity for people to find their tribe online and stresses the importance of making sure the internet is an inclusive and safe space for all.

Her two biggest pieces of advice to creators: Lean into what youre passionate about and define your own criteria for what success looks like for you. Being in a very social media, internet-first age, people can get lost in the idea of perception, she says. People wanna see everyday content. People wanna see the blurry video of you and your nephew singing Mariah Carey in the back seat. People wanna see real things in real life. Right now, authenticity is resonating more than any other kind of vertical or aspect of content.

As someone who is always on and online, Charles also believes in the power of self-care and mental health. I feel like Im a better teammate, a better collaborator at work, if Im serving my creative needs and doing my community work, says Charles, who admits finding balance requires constant juggling. Im a better musician and artist if Im in tune with my family, locked into the culture, on TikTok, working, understanding new things and new ideas You dont have to make time because your time is being spent serving your passions and what you care about.

But even Charles knows that you cant be what you cant see. She hopes her story and mission will empower people of color and equip them with the tools they need to succeed. Its important for us to be seen and for young people to know that you can chart your own path. You dont have to confine yourself to what people expect you to do or want you to be, Charles says. You can show up as yourself and win.

Credits:

Photography: Dante Marshall

Styling: Ayanna James

Make Up: Nimai Marsden

Hair: Fesa Nu

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TikTok Executive, Shavone Charles, Merges The Creative Worlds Of Music, Style And Tech With A Futuristic Flair - Vibe

Photo : IANS

The trailer is strung together with a lyrical motif of Bob Marley's ageless 'No woman, no cry', moving between riveting images of Wakanda's aquatic environments, futuristic technology and what appears to be a funeral with crowds of Wakandans dressed in white.

"I am Queen of the most powerful nation in the world, and my entire family is gone," Angela Bassett's Ramonda declares, according to 'Variety'.

A question lingers over the trailer: who will take on the mantle of the Black Panther? A figure is seen in the hero's suit at the end of the trailer, though it isn't clarified who is in the costume.

This trailer included a nod to Boseman. His image, as 'The Direct' notes, came on a piece of art in the streets of Wakanda, helping the people remember their fallen king:

Coogler also introduced 'Black Panther' stars Lupita Nyong'o, Letitia Wright, Danai Gurira, Florence Kasumba and Winston Duke on the Comic-Con stage, and then declared: "It's a labor of love, and I have so much gratitude to be a part of it and be able to share it with you."

The trailer is strung together with a lyrical motif of Bob Marley's ageless 'No woman, no cry', moving between riveting images of Wakanda's aquatic environments, futuristic technology and what appears to be a funeral with crowds of Wakandans dressed in white.

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Black Panther: Wakanda Forever trailer OUT! A whirlwind of futuristic technology and emotions - Zoom TV

In a time when it has become fashionable to revisit forgotten people from historical art scenes, a figure such as Elsa Baroness von Freytag-Loringhoven poses a complex question to curators, historians and contemporary artists. How to remember and respond to someone who was influential within an important movement, but was marginalized or treated solely as a muse and, for whatever reason, did not produce enough work for a retrospective?

Elsa Baroness von Freytag-Loringhoven, Earring Object, c.191719. Courtesy: Mimosa House, London

Born Elsa Hildegard Pltz in Pomerania (now part of Poland) in 1874, she trained as an actress and vaudeville performer, becoming a Baroness when she married her third husband, Leopold von Freytag-Loringhoven, in New York in 1913. Their union was brief, but she assumed the persona of The Baroness as she started to move in dada circles, making a short (and lost, if it ever existed) film with Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp, creating a handful of sculptures and costumes from found objects, and writing experimental poetry. She moved, penniless, to Berlin in 1923, where her mental health declined, and then to Paris in 1927. She died that December of gas suffocation, with the most substantial part of her output her poetry not collected into a volume until 2011, having been preserved by her editor and some-time lover, Djuna Barnes.

Sadie Murdoch, Here Crawls Moon Out of This Hole, 2022, gicle print on archival paper.Courtesy: the artist and Mimosa House, London

This poetry forms the cornerstone of The Baroness at Mimosa House, London, an exhibition that brings together her distinctive handwritten manuscripts re-created in part across the walls of the gallery and a small selection of her surviving objects with new or recent works by a range of contemporary artists. Some respond directly to Freytag-Loringhovens output. Astrid Semes audio work Figures for Dashing (2019), for instance, pays homage to her frequent use of the em-dash in her poems by repeatedly asking listeners to take a breath, prompting us to think about the nature of performed poetry (a favourite medium of the Baroness) and what happens when we translate written punctuation into the spoken word. Seme has also painted dashes across the walls, connecting Freytag-Loringhovens work to the various responses notably Linda Stuparts Cathedral (2022), a large sculpture made from rescued wood, like the Baronesss tiny 1918 piece of the same name, exhibited in a nearby vitrine.

Elsa Baroness von Freytag-Loringhoven, Cathedral, c.1918. Courtesy: Mimosa House, London

Sadie Murdochs diptych, Pathway Where-To and Pass-Way into Where-To (2021), plays with the Baronesss absence from cultural histories, re-creating images of her trying on self-made outfits in her New York apartment in 1915, but replacing Freytag-Loringhoven with a ghostly shadow, leaving viewers to contemplate the reason for her reputation fading. Sensibly, the curator Daria Khan gives short shrift to the rumour, refuted by art historian Dawn Ads and writer/publisher Alastair Brotchie in a series of letters to The Art Newspaper in 202021, that Freytag-Loringhoven provided the idea, or even the object, for Duchamps urinal, by projecting an image of Fountain (1917) onto a toilet door at Mimosa House, next to lines of her poetry: When I was young foolish I loved Marcel Dushit. The question of whether she inspired a male genius is not allowed to overshadow her work; instead, the focus remains on how she has influenced younger artists.

Linda Stupart,Cathedral, 2022, installation view. Courtesy: the artist and Mimosa House, London

Such influence is hard to measure and, obviously, this show actively aims to increase it both by commissioning direct responses and by constellating existing works around the Baroness. In Euro(re)vision (2019), Libby Heaney performs as former UK Prime Minister Theresa May and former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, using AI trained on debates in English and German to create algorithmic performances that combine the gestures of pop singers with fragments of political rhetoric, mirroring some of Freytag-Loringhovens poetry, to produce better public speaking than the real politicians. Reba Maybury also takes an experimental approach to poetry, using fragments of text compiled from the abuse she received from right-wingers over her work as a political dominatrix. In A Good Individual (2019), Mayburys submissive men recite love poems produced from the fragments of abuse. Their different body parts appear on five stacked video screens with their backs to the camera, turning the recital into a cut-up exercise in a way that would not have been possible in the Baronesss lifetime.

Elsa Baroness von Freytag-Loringhoven, c.192025. Courtesy: Mimosa House, London

Zuzanna Janins beautiful statuettes (all Femmage a Maria & Elsa, 201821) are prizes for an international award for women artists in Poland that she founded, named after the Baroness and Janins mother, the painter Maria Anto. The resin globes present a collage-portrait of the two women, made from images of their artworks, and are placed amongst Elsas sculptures and jewellery. I found these the most moving of the contemporary works here, striking an intriguing balance between a literal tribute, a more conceptual response, and an inventive, loving way of continuing the Baronesss legacy. It cannot fix the historical exclusion nothing could, even if proof existed of her influence on Duchamp but it uses that marginalization as a prompt to work towards preventing it from happening again. Hopefully, the people showcased here, many of them queer or from working-class backgrounds and amongst my favourite contemporary artists and poets, will not have to suffer a similar fate.

The Baroness is at Mimosa House, London, until 17 September 2022

The title quote is by Marcel Duchamp from Kenneth Rexroth, American Poetry in the Twentieth Century, 1971

Main image:Elsa Baroness von Freytag-Loringhoven, Enduring Ornament, c.1913. Courtesy: Mimosa House, London

Link:
'The Baroness Is Not a Futurist. She Is the Future': Celebrating Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven - frieze.com

Freya the Conqueror

No one does it quite like Freya, Sinker of Ships and solo travel icon.

This colossal walrus, easily distinguished by an adorable pink spot on her nose, has been on a grand European tour, slumbering and sunbathing on a number of seaborne vessels as she's traveled. She's been spotted off the coasts of Germany, Denmark, and Scotland, as well as the Netherlands, where we kid you not she took to snoozing on the roof of a "Walrus-class" Dutch submarine.

But now, upon arriving at harbors in Norway, this massive mammal has chosen chaos: Nordic outlet NH Nieuws reports that in her endless pursuit of sunny naps, the 1,500-pound Freya has been sinking comparatively tiny Nordic boats left and right.

As you can imagine, some boat owners who dock at Freya's new Nordic digs are pretty ticked off.

"I don't want her on the dock or on my boat," one angry marina goer told German broadcaster Deutsche Well.

Thankfully, local authorities and marine scientists have hatched a plan. As NBC reports, Freya will be gifted a floating dock worthy of her magnificent heft. Once she's taken to it, officials say they'll gently carry her to a new home along the coast.

Freya's developed quite the celebrity status, as walruses are exceedingly uncommon in these regions. Normally found in the Arctic circle, she's about 400 miles from home, and it's unclear why she's ended up down South.

We know boats aren't cheap, and we sympathize with folks whose crafts have been damaged or destroyed by the famous walrus' blubbery mass. Hopefully, Freya likes the custom-made floating dock, and the plot to diffuse the situation goes according to plan.

Still, we have to admit. As far as vandalism goes... this is pretty awesome.

More on Walrus tourism: Walrus Falls Asleep on Iceberg, Drifts Across Ocean

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Chaotic Walrus Keeps Climbing on Small Boats and Sinking Them - Futurism

Its the wild west out there. Just when you think youve graspedand perhaps mastered with more than a reasonable amount of certaintythe latest innovation, technical revolution, platform, app, digital breakthrough or content activation, theres something new waiting for you as you attack a new day. Its not like things havent been moving fast for the past decade. But this is different.

In the 1980s, there was a popular futurist named Faith Popcorn. At the time, her theories and projections were met with some consternation and more than a little well-oiled doubt. She predicted a time when the world would exist through an effect she coined as cocooning, a sort of hyper-nesting where people could work remote, live in an insulated environment, avoid others or anything and control their own lives. Its hard to believe its been forty years since her book The Popcorn Report was quoted in every marketing presentation. She was followed by another futurist named Watts Wackerodd names for futurists were evidently a thing at the timewho wrote a book based on the name of this article: The 500 Year Delta: What Happens After What Comes Next? where he outlined strategies for companies to reset their course toward an unpredictable future, offering new models to accommodate the chaos caused by increasing change and splintering of social, political and economic organizations.

Theres a reason Faith Popcorn and Watts Wacker were called futurists. And, in hindsight their indisputable accuracy is astounding. So, where does that leave us as public relations and marketing communications professionals?

Cocooning is real. Ms. Popcorn certainly predicted the onset of the remote workplace, Amazon and Netflix. And, the subsequent chaos caused by increasing change is something we have to deal with in our industry every day.

As we consider the road forward for our clients or our organizations, we may not have time to evaluate the true impact of all this change. Because theres more comingand its coming fast.

Who wouldve predicted that the QR code would have a reversal of fortunes and become the popular go-to for a contemporary call-to-action? Five years ago, if you had suggested a QR code to a client they wouldve thought youd lost touch. The QR code appeared to come, go and be forgotten with the likes of virtual reality, direct mail, variable printing and, oh wait those are all in vogue again too.

Not only is virtual reality a real thing, but its also opening doors that arent all that virtual. Despite the not-so-trend-setting goggles, Marriotts wedding experience in New York was awesome. And, the promise of destination experiences brought to life through virtual reality around the world is truly mind-blowing. And, now Navitaire, the Amadeus company, is introducing the worlds first virtual travel search and booking experience.

Virtual reality has the potential to change the way we communicate and how we operate as marketing professionals. It was not long ago when the idea of VR as a tool or concept was dismissed as one more innovation that sounded great but had no place in the real world. Truly an idea whose time has come and may well create a paradigm shift for the world of communications.

Consider bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general. It wasnt long ago that Expedia was embracing cryptocurrency as a way to pay for travel. The number of sites and collateral that highlighted the acceptance of crypto was increasing daily. And, hotels and travel companies looked at this new form of currency as a dealmaking launching pad for brands and their guests. The fast and unkind downfall of bitcoin has been covered by every information source from CNN to Saturday Night Live and criticized by business leaders from Elon Musk to Bill Gates. Not surprisingly, you can no longer use crypto to pay for your trip on Expedia.

Like QR codes and VR, perhaps well be looking back five years from now as blockchain technology and the world of Web 3.0 opens the world to crypto as a primary source of currency. Its not easy to counsel clients on speculation.

And, if thats not enough, the world of NFTs is worth more time and consideration than simply explainingor trying to explainwhats fungible and whats non-fungible. Marriott once again jumped to the forefront of innovative technology embracing an NFT collection as a form of reward through Marriott Bonvoy that was introduced at Art Basel. And destinations like Belize are using NFTs in partnership with renowned artists to help express and expose the audience to experiences that await them. It has yet to be seen if NFTs are worth the hype and return the value, but we must give them consideration, nonetheless.

While were considering three-letter acronyms, the world of college athletics has been changed considerably with the introduction of NIL, or Name Image and Likeness. An athlete cant be paid for their performance, and absolutely cant be paid by the institution. So, NIL must rely on collectives and corporate sponsors or organizations that believe theyll gain influence and positive exposure through association with the athlete. Theres a womens collegiate basketball player that has had her influence valued at more than $65,000 per tweet. But it takes a partner willing to pay to make that happen. And, it takes a public relations or marketing professional to make the recommendation.

If all of this doesnt make your head spin, get prepared for Web 3.0. The only thing that can slow it down is the lack of 3.0 developers. But, when it gains steam it will provide the ability to process and apply data at a much larger, much faster and considerably safer capacity. Content will be created in 3D and virtual. Your mobile device will become a powerful data center through edge computing. And, the user experience will be extraordinarily personal. The speed of change will be faster than anything we have seen in history. Not even Popcorn could have predicted what will happen next.

***

Curtis Zimmerman is Co-Founder of The Zimmerman Agency.

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PR News | The Struggle of Adapting to Constant Change - Thu., Jul. 21, 2022 - O'Dwyer's PR News

It's been 10 years since Futuristic announced his arrival on the hip-hop scene with an album whose title served as something of a mission statement: "Dream Big."

He's spent the years since thensteadily growing his brandas one of Arizona's most successful rappers, with more than 800,000 monthly listeners on Spotify, where several of his biggest songs have pulled in more than 40 million streams.

He's released 10 solo albums, two collaborative albums (with Devvon Terrell and Michael Minelli), three EPs and countless singles.

And that's notcounting all the CDs he madein his father's basement studio to sell at school as a talent show regular as early as the fifth grade.

In 2015, he appeared on "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon."Two years later, hespent the summer as the only rapper on the Warped Tour.

Interview:How tragedy helped Phoenix rapper Mega Ran embrace his inner nerd and stress the positive

Now, Futuristic wouldlike to introduce youto the other side of who he says he's always been a kid who grew up listening to Blink-182 as much as Ludacris or Eminem on an album of pop-punk songs he's hoping to release before the year is out titled "Never Too Late."

"I've been rapping for 25 years," he says.

"It just doesn't excite me. It really doesn't. Hopefully, I get that excitement back for rap after I do this. But as of right now, rapping just does not excite me."

The Tempe musicianhas already shared two singles from "Never Too Late" an existential pop-punk anthem devoted to making the most of the time you've got called "Highs & Lows" andaneffervescent adrenaline-rush called "Gucci."

Both tracks feature rapsbut those chugging guitars and sugar-coated chorus hooks are straight-up pop-punk.

"I grew up with all sorts of musical influences," Futuristic says.

"I'm one of nine kids. And all my siblings play instruments, sing, whatever. So when I started making music, it was a little bit of everything. I did show choir as a kid."

When Futuristic started playing in Arizona, where his family moved from Illinois when he was 15, it was with a full band.

"The whole point of the band was basically to play every genre," he says."We did reggae. We did heavy metal. We did rap.

"The only reason that stopped was because I started getting some notoriety and started touring. And it's like, 'There's no way I can take these five guys on tour;I'm getting paid $250, $300 a show.'"

Since 2017, he's done an R&B project and a couple other more experimental efforts.

"I did one album where I made every beat from scratch with household items, basically," he says. "So I've just always messed around with lots of different things."

'Funky Broadway': How 1 night at a Phoenix Elks Club changed the history of funk

When he turned his attentions to making a pop-punk album, he says, "It just felt really good. And it felt right. It felt like this is what I was probably supposed to be doing the whole time."

There's an energy he brings to his performances that fit right in that summer on the Warped Tour.

"I've always had a wild show, from the mosh pits to the crowd surfing," he says.

"I do this thing called the crowd dunk, where my DJ goes in the crowd, they hold him up by his feet, he holds up a basketball hoop, like a nerf hoop, and I jump off stage, dunk it and surf the whole crowd."

His go-to pop-punk inspirations are the sort of acts you'd expect an artist born in 1991 to favor.

"I can't lie and say I was ever, like, a crazy pop-punk fan, as far as diving deep and knowing all the unheard-of bands," he says.

"Just your normal, you know, Blink-182, Good Charlotte, Sum 41. Those type of bands are definitely, like, you grew up and you knew all their songs."

That music spoke to him the same as any hip-hop songs in third or fourth grade.

"The attitude and the energy are kind ofthe same," he says.

"And rappers were like the new rock stars, putting on crazy shows, doing wild stuff, getting known for what they were doing outside of music. Even the subject matter. All music country, rap, rock we're all talking about the same things, just in different ways."

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As Futuristic has grown and matured, the way he talks about those same things has evolved with each release.

"That first record, I don't love it," he says of "Dream Big" 10 years later.

"Some people will say that's their favorite from me. So it is what it is. ButI think every album has progressively gotten better, in my opinion. It's just being aware of myself, I think, over time."

"Dream Big" was a step up from the CDs he was selling to his classmates back in fifthgrade.

"They are so bad," he says, with a laugh. "My voice doesn't even sound like me. And I'm talking about stuff I knew nothing about because I'm hanging out with all my older brothers and their friends. Butthat was childhood, I guess, for me."

He was in fifth grade when his parents split, and every time he visited his dad, he and his brother would retire to the basement and record more music.

"I performed at all the talent shows," he says."That was my hustle as a kid.

"And beinga 7-year-old rapper, I was definitely gonna get first, second or third no matter what. So that was my grind. Then after I performed, I'd walk the crowd and sell CDs. As a fifth grader, I would do a show and literally make 500 or 600 bucks."

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Those formative experiences shaped the way he's always looked at his career.

"It's been a business to me from the jump," he says.

When iTunes came along, he figured out how he could sell the most on iTunes. As he learned whatblogs were, he was targeting specific records to specific blogs.

"What I realized was that every song needs its own platform," he says. "If I'm making a song that sounds a certain way, it's always 'How do I get this song to that demographic?' That's how I just thought about everything."

If he made a track that had more of a rock feel, he says,"I thought, 'OK, I need to get this on the rock blogs.' And I need to then open a show for a rapper that has a rock influence. I need to open for Machine Gun Kelly. Or Yelawolf."

If he wrote a fast rap, he'd reach out to Tech N9ne or Hopsin to get them on the track.

"My whole career has been based on kind of using different platforms to catapult me," he says. "Now I've become the platform."

It's a strategy that's helped him grow his fan base through the years.

"My thing is, you're gonna snatch fans from every little pocket and some of those fans will stay and some of them will only like that song," he says. "But you've just got to snatch here, there and everywhere. That kind of makes your melting pot of fans."

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He realizes that melting pot includes some fans who may not want to hear him do a pop-punk record. That's part of the reason he's been rolling out the music one song at a time.

"I'm gonna drop the album in December because I know it's gonna take some time to get them acclimated," he says. "So far it's been, I'd say, 65, 35. Sixty-five percentof them are receiving it well and 35 percentare like, 'What the hell are you doing? Please stop.'"

The way he sees it, he's been losing a certain percentage of fans this whole time, yet his fan base just keeps getting bigger.

"I guess the reason why I wasn't tripping too much is I ask my fans at every show, 'Who here it's their first time seeing me?'" he says.

"And 50 percentof the crowd, at least, it's their first time. No matter how many times I've been to a market, how many times I've sold out the same place, it's never the same 500 people as the last time I played Utah."

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He's hoping to roll out his new pop-punk era in those markets in two stages.

"Ideally, I would want to open fora bigger rock tour in the spring and probably drop another project midsummer, maybe, of next year, and domy headline tour next fall," he says.

And that next project will be punk-pop.

"I think I'd be doing myself a disservice to just put out one and then go back to rapping," he says. "No offense to my rap roots.I feel like I write much better songs in this lane. I sayhalf the words but say more at the same time."

"Never Too Late" was produced by local pop-punk band This Modern in their home recording studio with guest appearances by FigureItOut and the Color 8 guitarist Kal.

"We made three songs the first day and I was like, 'Yo, I haven't felt this good making music since maybe forever," Futuristic says.

"And then, the concepts just flowed out of mefor two weeks, every day, making two or three songs. And that was the whole project. It was liberating."

He found himself addressing aspects of his life in ways he'd never rapped about those feelings.

"I've been rapping for 25 years, and I don't have a song about me and my dad's relationship like this, or me and my ex, or me and my girl or me and my cousin," he says.

"I don't know why or how, but the music itself brought new things out of me that I didn't know were in there."

He's quick to credit This Modern for helping him tap into that energy.

"They've just been been helping me the whole time," he says. "Even the lead singer, there's no reason for him to be there. But he's there at every session. And it's really, really dope. I've made great friendships with those guys."

There is a chance he'll come up with a different title by the time the album drops, but at the moment, he feels pretty good about"Never Too Late" and what it says about the essence of this record.

"I just think in life, it's never too late foranything," he says.

"Like for me and this album. It's never too late to make the switch. It's never too late to do something you love. It's never too late to move in a new direction. It's never too late to follow your dreams."

Reach the reporter at ed.masley@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-4495. Follow him on Twitter @EdMasley.

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Does Futuristic still rap? Here's the latest on his career - The Arizona Republic

Are we one step closer to remote controlling human brains?

According to a peer-reviewed study published in the journal Nature Materials, we just might. A team of researchers at Rice University have officially been able to hack into the brains of fruit flies and successfully command them to make a specific movement with just a click of a wireless remote control.

The team an assemblage of experts in genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and electrical engineering first created genetically modified flies bred to express a specific heat-sensitive ion channel which, when activated, caused the insects to spread their wings.

They then injected the gene-hacked buggos' brains with a heat trigger: magnetic iron oxide nanoparticles, which quickly heat up in the presence of a magnetic charge.

Then, by switching on a magnetic field, the scientists were able to warm those iron oxide nanoparticles and in turn, those heat-sensitive, wing-specific ions.

In other words, the study showed that within half a second of a human clicking a button, the bugs would spread their wings.It's a crude hack, but an intriguing proof of concept for altered animals controlled by technology.

The researchers are hopeful that this newfound success with genetically targeted cells will be a gamechanger for studying human brain function.It could lead to new treatments for a number of neurological diseases, they say,and even new brain-machine communication devices.

"To study the brain or to treat neurological disorders the scientific community is searching for tools that are both incredibly precise, but also minimally invasive," said coauthor Jacob Robinson in a press release. "Remote control of select neural circuits with magnetic fields is somewhat of a holy grail for neurotechnologies. Our work takes an important step toward that goal because it increases the speed of remote magnetic control, making it closer to the natural speed of the brain."

Notably, Robinson is the principal investigator for the US military's DARPA-funded project MOANA. Shorthand for "magnetic, optical and acoustic neural access," MOANA is currently working to create wireless headsets that, through nonsurgical means, facilitate brain-to-brain communication.

If all goes to plan, the MOANA headsets will be able to decode the neurons in one individual's mind, then download that information into the mind of another. So, essentially, Bluetooth telepathy. Spooky!

But even with millions from the Department of Defense behind them, Robinson says that goal is still far off.

"To get to the natural precision of the brain we probably need to get a response down to a few hundredths of a second," he continued. "So there is still a ways to go."

More on neuroscience breakthroughs: Scientists Say Brain Implant Let Completely Paralyzed Man Communicate Again

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Scientists Hijack Fruit Fly Brains to Remote Control Their Wings - Futurism

Image by Getty Images/Futurism

In news that seems like it just might lead to a strange new superhero, Japanese scientists say cultured human muscle cells can stay swole with an injection of, well, bear serum.

The secret, according to a press release from the University of Hiroshima, is bears' ability to hibernate for extended periods of time without losing muscle mass.

Humans live with a "use it or lose it" rule when it comes to muscle gain and physical activity, but bears don't have the same problem. Hibernating bears bunker down for months without eating or drinking, yet they don't lose significant muscle mass or strength when they wake up. Humans start losing muscle mass after three weeks of inactivity, and prolonged bouts of lying still without eating or drinking can lead to serious health problems or even death.

A team of researchers from the university published a study on their findings in the journal PLoS ONE earlier this year.

"Hibernating animals are likely better described to be under the 'no use, but no lose'phenomenon, in that there is potential resistance to muscle atrophy during continued disuse conditions," study author Mitsunori Miyazaki said in the press release.

Scientists still don't know exactly what causes the proteins and compounds in bear muscles to react to hibernation the way they do, but the answer could be a key to improving the quality of life for humans.

"By identifying this 'factor' in hibernating bear serum and clarifying the unexplored mechanism behind 'muscles that do not weaken even without use' in hibernating animals, it is possible to develop effective rehabilitation strategies in humans and prevent becoming bedridden in the future."

Sure, getting jacked and lifting a ton of weights is cool. But maybe someday we'll be able to supercharge our muscles in a whole new way.

More on the amazing human body: "Game of Thrones" Star Emilia Clarke Had "Quite a Bit" of Her Brain Removed

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Scientists Supercharge Human Muscle Cells By Injecting Them With "Bear Serum" - Futurism