Category Archives: Transhuman News

Ben Stiller is known for directing, as well as being the face in front of the camera - but which are his best directorial efforts?

Ben Stiller is one of a handful of famous actors who directs his own films from time to time. His big break as an actor came in the 1998 comedyThere's Something About Mary,but before that he had directed several projects, including two feature films. He's also directed himself on occasion, doing his films' heavy lifting behind and in front of the camera.

RELATED: Top 10 Ben Stiller Cameos

From goofball comedies to dramatic miniseries, from micro-budget indies and canceled TV series to massive box-office hits, Stiller has amassed an eclecticbody of work as a director. Here are all of his major directorial projects, ranked according to IMDb.

Aspopular as the originalZoolanderis, questions remained as to whether or not it had the cache to warrant a sequel 15 years after its release. Stiller directed the first film, and returned for the second, hoping to defy the odds and bring Derek Zoolander and co. back with a bang.

To put things mildly, it didn't quite work out. The film was a failure with critics and audiences alike, hence its meager 4.7 IMDb rating and 22% Rotten Tomatoes Score. It's considered an unnecessary and uninspired sequel that's overly derivative of the original, and not nearly as funny.

Ben Stiller directed this 1996 dark comedy which featured Jim Carrey at the height of his popularity. Between 1994 and 1995, Carrey had starred in 5 major films: twoAce Venturamovies,The Mask, Dumb and Dumber,andBatman Forever.

RELATED: Jim Carrey's Dramatic Roles Ranked (According To Rotten Tomatoes)

InThe Cable Guy,audiences were a bit thrown by the darkness of the material, and Carrey's character in particular, who begins the movie as an awkward but affable loner, and ends up a crazed stalker.This left an awkward taste in viewers' mouths, as they were so accustomed to loving Carrey's characters at the time. Nonetheless, the movie has its defenders to this day.

Stiller directed, co-wrote, and starred in the title role in this 2001 comedy about a fashion model who's brainwashed into committing an international crime after his career takes a turn for the worse. Unapologetically silly but also genuinely funny,Zoolanderwas a modest hit at the box office, and gained a significant following on DVD in subsequent years.

The ensemble cast is great, including Owen Wilson, Will Ferrell, and Ben's father, Jerry Stiller, and as zany as the script is, the story is fast-paced andentertaining throughout.

Link:
Every Project Ben Stiller Has Directed, Ranked According To IMDb - Screen Rant

The cult of QAnon is at a crossroads. Adherents of the conspiracy theory/new religious movement convinced themselves that Donald Trump was poised to purge the cannibal pedophile cabal and its traitorous enablers in a cleansing burst of political violence. But with Joe Biden in the White House, and Capitol rioters facing charges for their insurrection of January 6, prophecy has apparently failed. QAnon has been banished from major social media platforms. You can't even sell Q merch on Etsy anymore. True believers are struggling to make sense of it all. Q himself has fallen silent. It has been over a month since his last dispatch to the faithful.

In just three years, QAnon has exploded from an anonymous post on 4chan to a household word. The FBI has declared QAnon a domestic terrorist threat and the QAnon ideology has been the impetus for numerous terrorist attacks, not even counting the major role played by QAnon adherents in the assault on the US Capitol. QAnon has fractured families and destroyed lives. Astonishingly, we still don't know who Q is.

The enduring mystery of Q's identity has led to speculation about QAnon being an influence operation, (aka a psyop). Which raises the question of who's supposedly running this operation. QAnon's critics typically blame Russia or an alliance of Russia and Trump's inner circle. Disillusioned former QAnon sympathizers including Trump advisor Steve Bannon have also embraced a version of the psyop theory, claiming that QAnon was a deep state hoax designed to fool patriots.

Whatever role Russia may have played in promoting this conspiracy theory, the real problem is that there's a huge market in the United States for conspiracy theories that promise the violent overthrow of democracy.

Influence operations are typically military- or intelligence-led efforts to shape how a population thinks or feels without resorting to physical force.

Russian intelligence operates within the vast QAnon ecosystem but QAnon is a home-grown phenomenon, deeply rooted in American prejudices and preoccupations. QAnon and its forerunner Pizzagate were forged on 4Chan, a crucible of both the Alt-Right and American conspiracy culture. Understanding the racist, ultranationalist, conspiratorial culture of /pol is key to understanding the likely origins of QAnon. It's also important to understand how contemporary conspiracy theorizing incorporates and elaborates on older conspiratorial themes.

Many of the central tenets of QAnon are retreads of the antisemitic hoax tract, "The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion," which purports to be the minutes of a criminal conspiracy of rabbis to take over the world. The Protocols, in turn, recycles the ancient antisemitic superstition known as blood libel, the notion that Jews are harvesting the blood of Christian children.

Q asserts that the Houses of Rothschild and Soros are "puppet masters" covertly manipulating historical events. (Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene notoriously speculated that a space laser from "Rothschild, Inc" might have caused the Camp fire in California. Video of Greene berating a Parkland shooting survivor as a pawn of George Soros resurfaced recently.) Many of the QAnon faithful have their own take on blood libel, with the cannibal pedophiles being said to harvest a molecule known as adrenochrome from the blood of their child victims.

Ironically, the Protocols were commissioned by the head of the Russian secret police in the late 19th or early 20th century. The goal was to set back the cause of liberalism by convincing Czar Nicholas the II that the rise of capitalism in Russia was a conspiracy by Jews and the Freemasons. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was created by Russian conservatives to fool their own ruler, but the impact of the document was much broader. The forgery became the Ur-text of global conspiracy culture. Henry Ford's newspaper published the Protocols in 1920. The Nazis cited the Protocols to justify the Holocaust. The influence of the Protocols can even be seen in Dan Brown's bestselling Da Vinci Code novels.

In 2017, Vladimir Putin's personal confessor was hyping the idea that Czar Nicholas and his family were ritually murdered by Jews. (In fact, the deposed Nicholas and his family were assassinated by Bolsheviks shortly after the Revolution of 1917. The leader of the death squad was commended by Lenin for his work.)

QAnon sprang from the primordial soup of 4chan's Politically Incorrect board, aka /pol. 4chan is an anonymous imageboard where anyone can post almost anything. 4chan is often described as the birthplace of the Alt Right. Users are known as "anons."

"Q" is short for "Q Clearance Patriot." Q purports to be a high-ranking US intelligence official leaking details of Donald Trump's campaign against his enemies in the deep state. Q's revelations began in late October of 2017. The researcher who posts as Q Origins on Twitter has published his findings on the investigative news site Bellingcat.

Some have speculated that various pro-Russian themes in Q's body of work are evidence that the QAnon phenomenon was a Russian influence operation, but this argument ignores the fact that Vladimir Putin's Russia is organically popular in the Alt Right and /pol. Q and his message board disciples may admire Putin's brand of hyper-masculine authoritarianism without being Russian agents.

In order to understand the origins of QAnon, it is necessary to understand the imageboard tradition of LARPing. "In the 4Chan context, a LARP is when you pose as a big insider," explains the anonymous author of the Q Origins Project.

There's a long history of imageboard anons pretending to be high-ranking national security officials who, for inexplicable reasons, have decided to divulge highly classified information to one of the web's most notorious cesspools. In imageboard culture, LARPing is like spinning ghost stories around the digital campfire. Most people know it's fake, but it's fun to pretend that it might be real. Before Q, posters with names like FBIAnon and MegaAnon acquired followings as LARPers, often exploring themes that would later be featured in Q drops. LARPers will often entertain their followers with puzzles and cryptic predictions--a style that is familiar to anyone who has read Q drops. Followers become invested in decoding the riddles. A LARPer may gain respect if their predictions seem to come true.

The anonymous researcher behind the Q Origins project has painstakingly reconstructed the pre-history of QAnon. He notes that, like other LARPers before him, Q constructs his pronouncements out of conspiracy theories that are already popular on /pol.

"They love them a conspiracy theory and Q built on that. He stitches together the various LARPs and just creates this Frankenstein that very quickly explodes off of /pol."

The first major proselytizers for Q were two /pol moderators and a YouTuber named Tracy Diaz. Within weeks, they started spreading Q content to YouTube and other social media platforms.

There is evidence that trolls from the Kremlin-linked Internet Research Agency helped to disseminate the forerunner conspiracy to QAnon, Pizzagate. The breakout Q drop of 2017 continues the Pizzagate narrative of the year before. We're told that Hillary Clinton is going to be arrested.

If Pizzagate is the Old Testament, QAnon is the New Testament. Pizzagate diagnosed the cannibal pedophile problem and Q framed Donald Trump as the solution. Q is the prophet, the self-proclaimed intelligence insider who reveals the "truths" the OPs of /pol expected to hear: Donald Trump is the messiah who is going to usher in a golden age through a spasm of apocalyptic violence.

Russia hacked the Democratic National Committee in order to sabotage Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. One of their prizes was a trove of personal emails by Hillary Clinton's campaign chair, John Podesta.

The basic tenets of the Pizzagate conspiracy gelled on 4Chan's /pol board on or about November 3, 2016, as users combed through Podesta's hacked emails. They fixated on banal emails chronicling Podesta's social life, which included references to DC restaurants like Comet Ping Pong as well as to home cooking. The anons decided that words like "cheese pizza" were actually code for "child porn." This collective world-building exercise eventually decreed that Podesta and Clinton were part of a network of pedophiles enslaving children in the (non-existent) basement of Comet Ping Pong.

The Trump campaign, like the Republican community at large, were enthusiastic consumers and distributors of lurid anti-Clinton conspiracies. Trump campaign luminaries like Gen. Michael Flynn and right-wing media outlets like Breitbart and InfoWars furiously amplified Pizzagate content. This content was discussed by anons on 4chan's /pol, reworked and elaborated into their conspiratorial worldview, including the next round of LARPs.

We know that accounts linked to the Internet Research Agency, the notorious Kremlin-linked troll farm, hyped Pizzagate and QAnon. Russian state-controlled media like Sputnik and RT have also given sympathetic coverage to these narratives, in keeping with Russia's well-known strategy of amplifying existing rifts within the United States. Russian disinformation takes many forms, including amplifying content created by others. It's easier and often more effective to amplify an American voice rather than to try to imitate one.

The researcher behind the Q Origins Project cautions against putting too much weight on the theory that QAnon was created by Russians. We don't know exactly who Q is, but the researcher's investigations have convinced him that Q is primarily a domestic phenomenon. Q's writings show a deep familiarity with U.S. evangelical culture, he notes. The researcher observes that Q has an uncanny knack for distilling only those elements of /pol culture that would be acceptable on Fox News. Unlike his fellow chan anons, who have no compunctions about racial slurs, Q works just clean enough to be mainstream. In the researcher's opinion, navigating the subtleties of U.S. racial politics would be very difficult for someone who wasn't raised in the United States. Q also has a deep familiarity with US pop culture, particularly Hollywood movies. The famous "Where We Go One We Go All" slogan is from a 1996 Jeff Bridges sailing movie called White Squall, not the kind of material you'd expect an IRA troll to be familiar with. The researcher points out that the time stamps on the Q drops suggest that the author is working on West Coast time.

Whatever role Russia may have played in promoting this conspiracy theory, the real problem is that there's a huge market in the United States for conspiracy theories that promise the violent overthrow of democracy.

It's comforting to tell ourselves that QAnon is an exogenous phenomenon foisted upon us by a demonic Other. But that only distracts from the deeper rifts in our society that allow QAnon to flourish and thrive.

Read the original:
The truth about Russia's role in pushing the QAnon canon of conspiracies - Raw Story

Theres no better way to assess a recruiting class than waiting to see how it actually performed. Its time once again to review how college footballs highest-rated recruiting classes from four years ago panned out. This year, were re-ranking the best recruiting classes of 2017.

During this four-year period, 16 programs that inked top-25 classes on signing day in 2017 have made head coaching changes. More than one-fourth of the top 100 recruits in this class have transferred. Which programs managed to overcome all that volatility and find success thanks to this recruiting cycle?

Weve made this a signing day tradition at The Athletic with our re-ranks of the class of 2014, class of 2015 and class of 2016. The annual goal of this project is to recognize the programs and coaching staffs that have done the best job of identifying great players, developing them, retaining them and winning with them. This year, six programs are making repeat...

Here is the original post:
College football recruiting rankings: Grading the Class of 2017 - The Athletic

Its always good for consumers to have options, right? And indeed, the United States should soon have three Covid-19 vaccines being injected into peoples arms, with more potentially on the way in the coming months, accelerating the race to vaccinate hundreds of millions of people as quickly as possible.

But all vaccines are not equal, and increasingly, health authorities and providers will be dealing with shots with varying attributes: different storage requirements, efficacy, dosing regimens, and manufacturing platforms. That, plus the possibility of a pickier public who may want a certain shot over another, could complicate an already-messy rollout. But the different features also open the door to greater access beyond just more supply a more convenient one-shot vaccine will likely soon be available.

The main point, experts stress, is how remarkable it is the U.S. has multiple Covid-19 vaccines just a year into the pandemic. All the immunizations that regulators authorize will have been shown to be safe and effective, so you should get whichever one you have the opportunity to get, they say.

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In the event that you have the choice to get vaccinated, Id encourage you to take the vaccine that youre given, John Brooks, the chief medical officer of the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions Covid-19 response, said at a briefing Friday.

Johnson & Johnson, which on Friday reported its vaccine was 66% effective in preventing moderate to severe disease and 85% effective in preventing severe Covid-19 in clinical trials, plans to file for emergency use authorization with the Food and Drug Administration in early February. Presuming regulators move quickly, health authorities will have the advantage of a third shot to distribute with millions more in supply.

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Unlike the two-dose mRNA vaccines already authorized from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, the J&J vaccine requires only one dose. It is also cheap, and can be kept in normal refrigerators, making it easier to store and transport than the mRNA vaccines, which have to be kept at subzero temperatures, sometimes in special freezers that smaller clinics might not have.

Thats going to be huge for rural populations, Alan Morgan, the CEO of the National Rural Health Association, said about J&Js shot.

Similarly, it could now be easier for vaccine campaigns to go out into communities instead of requiring people to come to hospitals to get vaccinated, which could reach people who dont have access to health care or who are mistrustful of health institutions but may listen to community leaders. Polling data, for example, have shown that people of color, who have faced historic and ongoing mistreatment by medical providers, are less likely to get Covid-19 vaccines as quickly as other people. Plus, early vaccine distribution data show disproportionately low numbers of Black and Latino adults have received shots.

Its easier to bring the vaccine to hard-to-reach areas, Mitchel Rothholz, chief of staff of the American Pharmacists Association, said about J&Js vaccine.

Some people, however, may want to pick their vaccine as if it were a piece of produce they could squeeze to find the choicest option. Clinical trial results or reports about side effects could steer what people want.

Its difficult to compare clinical trials of different products against each other. The pandemic has also changed: J&Js trial occurred as at least one variant that appears to have some impact on vaccine efficacy was circulating, while the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech trials were completed before variants of concern started transmitting widely. Without clinical data to evaluate each vaccine against the newer strains, its difficult to determine if the existing Covid-19 vaccines could be less effective against variants of the virus.

Still, some people might remember the headlines of Modernas and Pfizers product offering greater than 90% effectiveness against Covid-19 and question J&Js announcement of 66% effectiveness.

Public health officials were quick to tout J&Js data as a strong result, particularly given that regulators initially said a vaccine would only have to be 50% effective to be authorized. A vaccine thats 66% effective is an incredibly powerful tool in fighting respiratory viruses, they stressed. We would be celebrating a seasonal influenza vaccine with 60% efficacy, Jay Butler, the deputy director for infectious diseases at the CDC, told reporters.

In the U.S. arm of the clinical trial, J&Js vaccine was 72% effective, which, in the absence of the mRNA data, one would have said this was an absolutely spectacular result, Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said at a separate White House briefing. Whats more, the immunization was 85% effective at preventing severe disease and, in the trial, all hospitalizations and deaths occurred among people who got the placebo. None of the vaccinated people diagnosed with Covid-19 got sick enough to need hospital care.

If it comes to getting my family members vaccinated, and all thats available is J&J or Novavax, Id tell them to take it, said Robert Hancock, president of the Texas College of Emergency Physicians.

Novavax is another vaccine maker that, on Thursday reported that its vaccine was 90% effective in one trial in the United Kingdom, but 49% effective in another trial in South Africa, likely because of the B.1.351 variant circulating in that country, which appears to evade some aspects of the immune response. The company has not said when it might apply to the FDA for authorization.

The differing efficacy levels among vaccines could also complicate the logistical advantages J&Js shot provides. If states started allocating J&Js shot only to rural areas, there may be concerns that thats inequitable, said Marcus Plescia, chief medical officer of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. People in rural areas might feel like theyre getting short shrift.

Julie Swann, the head of the department of industrial and systems engineering at North Carolina State University, who advised the CDC during the H1N1 pandemic, agreed. She said providers should start surveying their communities to see whether people have a preference for which vaccines they receive. It would be a real mistake to distribute J&J solely based on infrastructure, she said.

Eventually, as more vaccines get authorized, health officials could recommend that certain people, based on age or other risk factors for more severe Covid-19, are prioritized for certain shots. Perhaps the mRNA vaccines could be reserved for people who are most vulnerable to the coronavirus, suggested Swann, while the J&J vaccine could be deployed to more general populations.

For now, federal health officials havent issued guidelines for who should get which vaccines.

Another question looms for the vaccine drive: the variants. It appears that B.1.351 has some impact on at least some of the vaccines, though experts note that immunizations dont work like light switches that are either on or off. Rather, people vaccinated may be less defended from getting infected against B.1.351 than other forms of the coronavirus, but the vaccines could still protect them from getting severe Covid-19.

For now, health authorities and companies say the emergence of B.1.351 and other variants serves as a signal they need to be ready to adapt vaccine designs if and when a form of the virus emerges that could significantly escape the immune protection conferred by vaccines. Some vaccine makers have started studying booster shots engineered specifically against B.1.351, and federal health authorities said Friday they are reviewing contingency plans to tweak the vaccines if needed.

We will continue to see the evolution of mutants, Fauci said. We, as a government, the companies, all of us that are in this together will have to be nimble to be able to adjust readily to make versions of the vaccine specifically directed towards whichever mutation is actually prevalent at any given time.

The variants add pressure to the vaccine campaigns in other ways. B.1.351 and other variants that have been confirmed in the United States appear to be more infectious than earlier forms of the virus, which means a higher proportion of the population will need to be vaccinated to drag down the U.S. epidemic. If more people get vaccinated and cases decrease, that lowers the chance of even more nefarious variants popping up.

The sooner we can get people immunized, the better chance we have that this will not keep happening with more and more variants emerging because theres such a large population of viruses, Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, told reporters Friday.

Rachel Cohrs and Matthew Herper contributed reporting.

Read more from the original source:
More Covid-19 vaccines bring choices and complications to rollout - STAT

The Yukon Rendezvous Festival found itself enveloped in controversy today after announcing whats appearing to be a very unpopular name change.

By Tim Giilck on January 29, 2021

The Yukon Rendezvous Festival found itself enveloped in controversy today after announcing whats appearing to be a very unpopular name change.

Festival organizers dropped the traditional Sourdough out of the name earlier this week.

They said it had some negative connotations to some people.

By this morning, the proverbial excrement had truly hit the fan on social media over the issue.

A member of one group on Facebook, the Yukon Helpers Network, had posted that threats were being made against the festivals organizers and the building.

Members of the festival team were difficult to reach and would offer only this as a comment to the Star:

At this stage while we would prefer that you would not publish an article, we understand if you chose to go ahead without our comment, said Saskrita Shrestha, the festivals executive director.

Other, long-term Rendezvous supporters such as Gordie Ryder are outraged at the change.

In an interview with the Star, Ryder said he couldnt believe what is happening.

Is it true? he asked a reporter in sheer disbelief. I didnt know about it, and no one was consulted.

I certainly am upset about it.

Ryder said the Sourdough name for the festival dates back at least to the 1950s, and harkens to the rich history, heritage and tradition of the Yukon.

He said he was walking across the road to talk to them about this today.

Another long-time supporter, who didnt wish to be identified, had harsher words.

Its our tradition, our heritage, he fumed. Why change it? Its been there forever.

They need to give their heads a shake, he added. They did it without consultation; they did it without getting anyones opinion.

They should all resign.

Festival organizers sent out a notice on May 12, 2020, that contained a link to a survey about rebranding the festival.

Many people involved in supporting the festival, however, may not have paid much attention to it in the middle of the pandemic.

More than 400 comments on the issue on a Facebook page called My Life in the Yukon had piled up by mid-morning today.

You have ruined the uniqueness of our Rendezvous, Lynn Bartsch wrote. This is very important for Yukon! You have lost my support.

Sandra Lynn wrote, Put Sourdough back into the name. I have yet to speak to anyone that approves of the change. This word is part of our history and tradition....

Will there still be Can Can dancers? I would think that would be more offensive to some people than bread.

As a former Yukoner of 22 years, I have many fond memories of the Sourdough Rendezvous, Bonnie Simenson wrote.

If people feel that some events are not inclusive, dont go. Dropping part of the festivals name just seems silly.

Jack Laitinen wrote, until I get a lucid, coherent, reasoned explanation, I want Sourdough to stay.

It didnt take long for a petition against the name change to show up on the Change.org website.

Initiated by Matthew Janiga, the petition had nearly 1,000 signatures by 11:30 this morning.

Some things that have been done in this country were awful and should be rectified, he said about the petition.

However, I dont believe this is one of them.Yukon Sourdough Rendezvous has been a Yukon tradition for 57 years. Its been enjoyed by people from all around the world and of different nationalities. If its not broke, it doesnt need fixing.

I figured Id pass this petition on to the Yukon Rendezvous society. If that doesnt work, then I guess Ill be bringing it to the City of Whitehorse or maybe a minister. Well see how it goes.

In a letter sent to the Star, T.Z. Rogan had a different perspective.

She wrote, Lets start this off with stating that I was born right here in the Yukon. I have celebrated Rendezvous every single year of my life with the exception of the years I was outside the territory going to school.

I grew up with the shufflers, the Cabane Sucre, the chainsaw chucking and all of the zaniness that accompanies our winter festival.

In 2017 I ran for, and was crowned Rendezvous Queen. I have volunteered in countless years, performed at, and was an eager participant in all that I could be a part of every year.

And I am disgusted. As I am typing this, there are posts all over the internet, some with over 400 comments attacking Rendezvous for their decision to rebrand the festival, removing the word sourdough from their organization.

Over 90 per cent of the comments are angry, hateful, and nasty. The few of us who speak up are attacked personally.

And this morning I found out that because of the behaviour of these people, Rendezvous not only took down their Facebook page, but closed their offices to work from home and protect their staff from the overwhelming amount of cyber bullying and threats to their staff they are receiving.

I am so disappointed in my community today, Rogan said.

Originally posted here:
'You have ruined the uniqueness of our Rendezvous' - Whitehorse Star