Category Archives: Transhumanist

Here are Titan Comics May 2021 solicits which include highlights like V. E. SCHWABS EXTRAORDINARY #0, DOCTOR WHO: MISSY #2, MINKY WOODCOCK: THE GIRL WHO ELECTRIFIED TESLA #2 and more!

ANIMATION

MINIONS: MINI BOSS #1Writer: Stephane LapussArtist: Renaud CollinSC FC 28pp $3.99On Sale May 26, 2021

Hilarious and mischievous comic strip adventures with Illuminations Minions!

Hot off their new movie, Minions The Rise of Gru ARRIVING IN CINEMAS JULY 2, 2021, the Minions are back for more chaotic action!

In a world where monster wrestling is a global sport and monsters are superstar athletes, teenage Winnie seeks to follow in her fathers footsteps by becoming a coach and turning a loveable underdog monster into a champion.

CRIME

DOUBLE DOWN TPWriter: Max Allan CollinsSC 352pp $12.95On Sale May 26, 2021

Veteran thief Nolan tangles with a skyjacker and vigilante in two full-length novels from Grandmaster Max Allan Collins (Road to Perdition), collected in one volume for the first time ever.

COVER ARTIST(S): ROBERT MCGINNIS (CVR A), BURLESQUE PHOTO COVER (CVR B), CYNTHIA VON BUHLER (CVR C)

TITAN BESTSELLING HARD CASE CRIME SERIES IS BACK!

A stylish, glamorous feminist take on the classic gumshoe!Private investigator Minky Woodcock becomes involved in an investigation of maverick genius and reclusive pigeon-fancier, Nikola Tesla, and discovers a horrifying conspiracy involving corrupt politicians and Nazis.

MAGIC/ FANTASY

LONE SLOANE DELIRIUS 2Author: Jacques LobArtist(s): Phillipe Druillet and Benjamin LegrandHC FC 72pp $19.99On Sale September 1, 2021

Lone Sloane, the Ulysses of space, cosmic freebooter and rebel, endlessly struggles against dark gods, robotic entities and alien forces!

The lonely traveler is in trouble, Lone Sloane is stuck on the planet aptly named Delirius!

COVER ARTIST(S): ENID BALAM (CVR A)

BRAND NEW SERIES expands deeper into the world of Schwabs critically acclaimed novels Vicious and Vengeful.

Set in the years between VICIOUS and VENGEFUL, ExtraOrdinary follows a teenage girl named Charlotte Tills who survives a bus crash and becomes EO-ExtraOrdinary, gaining the ability to see peoples deaths in reflective surfaces.

Entertainment Weeklys 27 Female Authors Who Rule Sci-Fi and Fantasy Right Now!

MANGA

GAMMA DRACONIS HCCreator: Eldo YoshimizuHC B&W 64pp $14.99On Sale August 25, 2021

Eldo Yoshimizu, the creator of the epic Yakuza Manga, Ryuko, teams up with Benoist Simmat to create another dazzling crime tale.

Aiko Moriyama studied religious art at the Sorbonne, but her research in occultism quickly led her down a dangerous path. When several experts around her come under attack from a mysterious entity rising from the depths of the web, she finds herself embroiled in a police investigation involving the sinister leader of an international organization. From London to Tokyo, between transhumanism and black magic, Aiko is determined to solve the enigma of Gamma Draconis and to discover how exactly her family is involved

SC-FI

BLADE RUNNER ORIGINS #4Writers: K. Perkins, Mellow BrownArtist: Fernando DagninoFC 32pp $3.99On Sale May 19, 2021

COVER AComic WatchRTISTS: JESUS HERVAS (CVR A), ROBERT HACK (CVR B), FERNANDO DAGNINO (CVR C)

LOS ANGELES: 2009 UNCOVER THE STORY BEHIND THE FIRST BLADE RUNNERS! A TYRELL CORPORATION SCIENTIST IS DEAD the victim of an apparent suicide. But when LAPD Detective CAL MOREAU is called in to investigate, he uncovers secret documents revealing a new kind of Replicant and a conspiracy that could change the world.

LIMITED TO 500 PACKS! COLLECTS THE STUNNING ARTWORK OF FAN FAVORITE ARTIST PEACH MOMOKO!

COVER ARTISTS: DAVID BUISN (CVR A), PHOTO COVER (CVR B), CLAUDIA CARANFA (CVR C)

NEW SERIES CELEBRATING THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE MASTERS FIRST APPEARANCE!THE DEBUT OF THE DOCTORS DEADLIEST ADVERSARY! MISSY wages war on the THIRD AND TWELFTH DOCTORS! Can they stop her from executing her lethal plot? Announced on Doctor Who official social media 5 MILLION FANS

Over the 50 incredible years of Star Trek TV shows and movies, the franchise has produced many stand-out villains.

Collected here are features on some of the very best or worst villains and classic interviews with the actors who portrayed them. Includes the Borg (Alice Krige as the Borg Queen), Khan (Ricardo Montalban, Benedict Cumberbatch), Q (John de Lancie), Shinzon (Tom Hardy) and many, many more.

Discover how the most iconic Star Wars heroes were brought to life in this collection of incredible interviews and articles.

The actors and creators behind 15 of Star Wars most popular heroes discuss the process behind creating some of the most iconic characters in cinematic history.

NEWS WATCH: Titan Comics MAY 2021 Solicitations and Covers

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South African father, technology, sci-fi, fantasy nut and lifelong comic reader..... my love of costumed capers started very early after a chance encounter with a spinner full of comics in a local convenience store. I am a fan of all things Marvel, Dc, and Image including X-men, X-force, New Mutants, Teen Titans, Saga, Hellboy, Wayward, Gen13, Nightwing, Sandman and many more.

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NEWS WATCH: Titan Comics MAY 2021 Solicitations and Covers - Comic Watch

The poet Richard Brautigan said that one day we would all be watched over by machines of loving grace. It was a nice sentiment at the time. But I surmise Brautigan might have done a quick 180 if he was alive today. He would see how intelligent machines in general and AI in particular were being semi-weaponised or otherwise appropriated for purposes of a new kind of social engineering. He would also likely note how this process is usually positioned as something good for humanity in vague ways that never seem to be fully explained.

As both a technologist and a journalist, I find it very difficult to think of transhumanism and what Ill call the New Eugenics as anything less than deeply and literally dehumanising.

The hits, as they say, just keep on coming. Recently I ran across an article advising recent college graduates looking for jobs that they had better be prepared to have their facial expressions scanned and evaluated by artificial intelligence programs during and after interviews.

An article in the publication Higher Ed warned that:

Getting a job increasingly requires going through an interview on an AI platform If the proprietary technology [used to ] to evaluate the recordings concludes that a candidate does well in matching the demeanor, enthusiasm, facial expressions or word choice of current employees of the company, it recommends the candidate for the next round. If the candidate is judged by the software to be out of step, that candidate is not likely to move on.

If this were happening in China, of course, it would be much less surprising. You dont have to be a Harvard-trained psychiatrist to see that this kind of technology is violating some very basic human boundaries: how we think and feel and our innermost and private thoughts. And you dont have to be a political scientist to see that totalitarian societies are in the business of breaking down these boundaries for purposes of social and political control.

Facial recognition has already been implemented by some law enforcement agencies. Other technology being used for social control starts out in the corporate world and then migrates. Given the melding of corporate and government power thats taken place in the US over the last few decades, whats impermissible in government now can get fully implemented in the corporate world and then in the course of time bleeds over to government use via outsourcing and other mechanisms. Its a nifty little shell game. This was the case with the overt collection of certain types of data on citizens which was expressly forbidden by federal law. The way around it was to have corporations to do the dirty work and then turn around and sell the data to various government entities. Will we see the same thing happen with artificial intelligence and its ability to pry into our lives in unprecedented ways?

There is a kind of quasi-worship of technology as a force majeure in humanitys evolution that puts AI at the center of human existence. This line of thinking is now linked to the principles of transhumanism, a set of values and goals being pushed by Silicon Valley elites. This warped vision of techno-utopianism assures us that sophisticated computers are inherently superior to humans. Implicit in this view is the notion that intelligence (and one kind of intelligence at that) is the most important quality in the vast array of attributes that are the essential qualities of our collective humanity and longstanding cultural legacies.

The most hardcore transhumanists believe that our role is simply to step aside and assist in the creation of new life forms made possible by hooking up human brains to computers and the Internet, what they consider to be an evolutionary quantum leap. Unfortunately, people in powerful corporate positions like Ray Kurzweil, Googles Director of Engineering, and Elon Musk, founder of Neuralink, actually believe in these convoluted superhero mythologies. This line of thinking is also beginning to creep into the mainstream thanks to the corporate-driven hype put forth by powerful Silicon Valley companies who are pushing these ideas for profit and to maintain technologys ineluctable more, better, faster momentum.

The transhumanist agenda is a runaway freight train, barely mentioned in the mainstream media, but threatening to run over us all. In related mad science offshoot, scientists have succeeded in creating the first biological computer-based hybrids calledXenobotswhich theNew York Timesdescribes as programmable organisms that live for only about a week. The corporate PR frontage for these breakthroughs is always the same: they will only be used for the highest purposes like getting rid of plastics in the oceans.

But still the question remains: who will control or regulate the use of these man-made creatures?In the brave new world of building machines that can think and evolve on their own because they combine AI programming with biological programming, we have to ask where all this is headed. If machines are being used to evaluate us for job interviews, then why wont they be eventually used as police officers or judges? (In fact, Singapore is now using robotic dogs to police parks for Covid-related social distancing.)

As both a technologist and a journalist, I find it very difficult to think of transhumanism and what Ill call the New Eugenics as anything less than deeply and literally dehumanising. In the aftermath of WWII, eugenics used to be widely reviled when Nazi scientists experimented with and so highly valued it. Now its lauded as cutting-edge.

There are two ugly flies in this ointment. The first is the question of who directs and controls the AI machines being built. You can make a safe bet that it wont be you, your friends, or your neighbors but rather technocratic elites. The second is the fact that programmers, and their masters, the corporate Lords of Tech, are the least likely candidates to come up with the necessary wisdom to imbue AI with the deeper human qualities necessary to make it anything more than a force used for social and political control in conjunction with mass surveillance and other tools.

Another consideration is: how does politics fit into this picture? In the middle ages, one of the great power shifts that took place was from medieval rulers to the church. In the age of the enlightenment, another shift took place: from the church to the modern state. Now we are experiencing yet another great transition: a shift of power from state and federal political systems to corporations and, by extension, to the global elites that are increasingly exerting great influence on both, the 1 percenters that Bernie Sanders frequently refers to.

These trends have political implications because they have happened in tandem with the neoliberal sleight of hand that began with President Reagan. Gradually anti-democratic policy changes over a period of decades allowed elites to begin the process of transferring public funds to private coffers. This was done under the neoliberal smokescreen of widely touted but socially hollow benefits such as privatization, outsourcing, and deregulation bolstered by nostrums such as Government must get out of the way to let innovation thrive.

Behind the scenes, the use of advanced technology has played a strong role in enabling this transition but it did so out of the publics watchful eye. Now, it seems abundantly clear that technologies such as 5G, machine learning, and AI will continue to be leveraged by technocratic elites for the purposes of social engineering and economic gain. As Yuval Harari, one of transhumanisms most vocal proponents has stated:

Whoever controls these algorithms will bethe real government.

If AI is allowed to begin making decisions that affect our everyday lives in the realms of work, play and business, its important to be aware of who this technology serves: technologically sophisticated elites. We have been hearing promises for some time about how better advanced computer technology was going to revolutionise our lives by changing just about every aspect of them for the better. But the reality on the ground seems to be quite different than what was advertised. Yes, there are many areas where it can be argued that the use of computer and Internet technology has improved the quality of life.

But there are just as many others where it has failed miserably. Healthcare is just one example. Here misguided legislation combined with an obsession with insurance company-mandated data gathering has created massive info-bureaucracies where doctors and nurses spend far too much time feeding patient data into a huge information databases where it often seems to languish. Nurses and other medical professionals have long complained that too much of their time is spent on data gathering and not enough time focusing on healthcare itself and real patient needs.

When considering the use of any new technology, the question should be asked: whom does it ultimately serve? And to what extent are ordinary citizens allowed to express their approval or disapproval of the complex technological regimes being created that we all end up involuntarily depending upon? In a second Gilded Age where the power of billionaires and elites over our lives is now being widely questioned, what do we do about their ability to radically and undemocratically alter the landscape of our daily lives using the almighty algorithm?

Republished from Common Dreams and with the authors permission under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

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A closer look at the AI hype machine: who really benefits? MercatorNet - MercatorNet

The past 12 months have been tough; however, many businesses have not only survived but thrived in the ever-changing market. From company pivots and creating digital connections to adapting to remote work, there have been plenty of successful adaptions.

In celebration of our exciting milestone the 10th Executive of the Year Awards weve added some new categories inspired by the triumphs of the industry.

From entrepreneurs to global pioneers, explore some of our most inspiring new categories that well be celebrating at our annual awards ceremony in November.

The prestigious title of CEO of the Year is not new, as many of our regular Executive of the Year Awards attendees would know, but it has been given a fresh new look.

For the first time in our awards history, we will be celebrating not one but three CEOs of the Year.

Lauded as the pinnacle of awards, three influential CEOs will be recognised for their incredible achievements over the previous year.

The three categories will be determined by annual turnover of the past 12 months: A$0 to 50 million; $50 million to A$100 million; and A$100 million-plus.

Each applicant will be required to submit a video to introduce themselves and their companys finances. Finalists must also be available for an interview with the judges (if necessary).

With everything that is going on in the world, we need to recognise and celebrate good leadership when we see it, Louise Adams, Aurecon, Australia and New Zealand, Chief Executive, said when she was crowned 2020 CEO of the Year. We often see what poor leadership looks like; however, we dont often celebrate what good looks like, especially at an individual level. Now, more than ever, we need it.

As the world becomes more globally connected than ever, its time to celebrate the companies that have expanded beyond their founding shores.

Our Global Pioneer Executive of the Year accolade is for a senior executive who has introduced new international opportunities to an Australian business.

Whether the executive has expanded an Australian business overseas or theyve brought business into Australia, the award recognises those creating international connections.

Just as The CEO Magazine launched its inaugural Mandarin magazine in China this year, this honour celebrates the feat of bridging Australia with the world.

Commending the efforts of the property industry, the Real Estate Executive of the Year award highlights those making a difference in their field.

A senior executive working for a real estate agency as director, broker, property manager, consultant, sales agent or a similar role will wear the title for 2021.

As real estate plays a large role in local communities, its important to acknowledge the efforts of industry leaders.

Shining a light on the risk takers of the industry, the Entrepreneur of the Year award will commend the most inspiring go-getter of 2021.

The tireless businessperson will have transformed an idea into a financially successful business.

General startup challenges were only amplified during the pandemic, forcing many new companies to sink, swim or swivel.

Australia is a hub of innovation and home to some of the brightest minds in the world, Amanda Johnstone, Transhuman Founder and CEO, said when she was named the 2020 Startup Executive of the Year. Highlighting how Australians have the ability to create global change will only create a positive environment for Australias business community.

As the world faces the reality of environmental and social factors, it is one of the most important sectors to acknowledge.

Our new Corporate Responsibility Executive of the Year Award honours an individual who is leading the corporate, social and environmental responsibility in an Australian business.

Internal company relations and external client-based strategies are also included.

Register your interest for 2021

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7 new categories of the Executive of the Year Awards 2021 - The CEO Magazine

In the year 2045, a post-cyberpunk Japan has emerged in an increasingly de-centralized, globalized world. Yet despite a host of breakthrough innovations and technical advancements, many of these have developed out of necessity. In a future time period where the countrys national security has become increasingly volatile, the government and its people are faced with organized high-stake crimes, rebel opportunists, cyberbrain hackers and meddling foreign government operations invested in securing military secrets. To combat these growing threats to public security, Motoko Kusanagi and her team of Ghosts are pulled from their mercenary work with the private military company Obsidian and are re-activated as government-hired specialists of Section 9: an anti-crime, counter-cyberterrorism task force. In this Netflix Original series, Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045, the world is bleak and the stakes are high: economies have fallen, cities lie empty and war has become big business.

Advanced robot AIs capable of emotion, bio-tech enhancements, and cybernetic neural-linking: these are some of whats possible in future Japan. Every aspect of the show seeks to explore our relationship with technology, but it also touches on the concept of our own social and human evolution. What would it look like if we could upgrade our bodies and minds, expanding our abilities beyond our known and accepted limitations? How would the creation of superhuman transhuman cyborgs affect social attitudes and are we to think of them as separate to or beyond human definition?

Unit members of Section 9 define these future realities in their bio-technological augmentation. For example, Batou (Kisanganis second in command) has replaced his eyes with artificial ones allowing him to track and scan easier. A sniper has implanted a targeting device with satellite feed in his left eye which increases his deadly accuracy. Meanwhile all team members have the ability to remotely sync their cyborg brains, enabling them to brain dive and connect to each other regardless of distance. This technical harmonization of coherent thought processing gives them an edge and creates a more effective fighting unit. But despite all these flashy advances, Motoko Kusanagi possesses something entirely unique that separates her from her counterparts: a full-body prosthesis. Major, as she is also known, possesses a body that is a completely fabricated android shell. This shell houses her cyberbrain which contains or expresses the electrical code of her conscious self or ghost. This is the real conceptual lynch pin on which the show is based and compels viewers to think a little deeper about the questions surrounding cyborgism and its links to artificial or enhanced consciousness. Thinking further, we quickly find ourselves in a dimensional quagmire and identity paradox: who is Major Motoko Kusanagi if her body is a technological recreation? Is she still human despite the fact that her brain (which is itself cyber-enhanced) is the only human part of her left?

Human consciousness and its evolution, location AND definition, still have managed to largely escape understanding

These questions tie into two relevant topics. Firstly it relates to the real-world applications of cybernetics. Already we can see through current research that we are on the cusp of becoming cyborgs ourselves through the following ways: neural linking the brain to mind-controlled robotic prosthetics, theoretical thought messaging or technical telepathy, brain and heart implants designed to monitor or support regulatory systems, and inserting sub-cutaneious chips, the mass-commercialization of which will allow people to control features in their Smart Homes. Secondly, human consciousness and its evolution, location AND definition, still have managed to largely escape understanding by even our most advanced minds. It is what Brian Cox and other physicists call the hard problem in that they cannot agree on what consciousness is, where it resides or if its just an epiphenomenon. This idea has been expanded upon by Rupert Sheldrake who outlines these problems:

Consciousness itself is problematic. It ought not to exist, we ought not to be conscious. Its an embarrassment for materialism that we are.

Right at the outset, Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045 pulls no punches. It begins laying out the contextual groundwork that details how warfare as an industry began. In the year AD 2042, the following transpired:

The Great 4 (American Empire, China, Russia, and EU) sought economic sustainability for its members. Using AI code 1A84, the American Empire initiated war as an industry. The world dubbed it sustainable war.'

This speculative cyberpunk paradigm is alluring as it leans straight into the style of cognitive dissonance that George Orwell popularized in 1984. The term sustainable war, is itself fascinating primarily because it fits two ideologies together that are diametrically opposed in that they are not, in any way, possibly sustainable at all. The widespread violence and threat escalation between powers or rival military companies would eventually wipe everyone out. This volatile industry, created by a future American government, reveals a hard truth: that its symptomatic of an unstable, autocratic control system that is bringing the entire social order into further collapse.

This speculative cyberpunk paradigm is alluring as it leans straight into the style of cognitive dissonance thatGeorge Orwellpopularized in1984

This is most relevant as Major Kusanagi and her team of mercs operate in the aftermath of the aforementioned destabilization of the four superblock powers which happened when each nation power sought their own interests. If there is anything familiar about this, there are some real world/Orwellian parallels that add plausibility to Ghost in the Shell. Beside the post-war connotations, a cataclysmic collapse of all society has rocked the world. This involved a major global default of all transactions (akin to financial depressions of the past and present) where paper money has become useless (as it did in the Second World War) and digital currencies, both saved and indebted, have all been wiped clean (a growing concern as monetary systems shift towards a cashless society). Further to this, the real 1984 moment comes when viewers learn that anyone with a cyberbrain can be infiltrated, fed false memories or can be possessed/controlled in Manchurian Candidate like fashion. This is war on the final frontier: that of the mind.

Also it shows how warlike civilization still is. This is totally believable when viewers consider that, after endless decades of military engagements, people are still fighting with and in foreign countries now. So in 2045, the ongoing warring between nations is not just a continuation of modern political divisions, social unrest and human misery, but some go so far as to claim that this is a reflection of the war machine propagated by the military-industrial complex which President Eisenhower warned us about:

All of these combined realities have pushed many people to the brink and has triggered a rapid escalation of war as an industry. Every nation, even the more advanced ones, now suffer from both internal and external threats such as widespread rioting, cyberterrorism, and civil war. One only needs to look at the pages of recent history to know that these things are prodromic (in that theyre a symptomatic representation of the current era of global expansion).

As highly trained as Section 9 is, their battle experience and cyber skills are nevertheless challenged with the advent of a new enemy: the post-human. After their first chilling encounter with such an inhuman entity, the Major and her team later discover that the government has captured one of them in a secure facility. They soon are briefed on a sergeant major who began life as a normal citizen. Then some radical shift in his psyche occurred, which began as a mysterious fever and progressed into a catatonic state where he ceased to be able to move independently or communicate. When this sickness had abated, the soldier had changed dramatically, losing his personality, his capacity for empathy and acquiring superhuman abilities that enabled him perform multiple cyberbrain hacks simultaneously as well as predetermine bullet trajectories before guns have been fired.

What we could be seeing is the dawn of a new intelligence

This concept brings viewers back to Major Motoko Kusanagi and the paradox of the ghost that inhabits her manufactured shell. Yet here the idea takes on a more insidious tone: the cyberbrain itself has evolved, taking over the human mind. What we could be seeing is the dawn of a new intelligence. Not just of artificial consciousness, but one where the post-human cyber mind has become the dominant mental force of its host organism. As the character, John Smith, explains: it is now in control and operates on its own agenda. If this is true, then who are post-humans and what do they want? What will happen to a society overrun with something that looks human but is without feeling? Could the characteristics of this intelligence, including its thought processing, be simply adaptive in that they have merely copied and internalized human traits such as aggression and a war-like nature?

Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045s high-concepts of transhumanism, sustainable war, and post-humans paint a bleak picture of our future, but its a future that we could very well be headed towards.

Link:
'Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045's Exploration of Transhumanism and a Post-Human Future - LIVING LIFE FEARLESS

A snowy scene, Narnia

We must go as quietly as we can, said Mr Tumnus. The whole wood is full ofherspies. Even some of the trees are on her side.

Another snowy scene, a popular hillside in Somerset, January 2021

Its a Sunday and families living under lockdown are having fun near a remote car park, parents building snowmen with their children. Then a police car arrives and parks for a while. Similar scenes happen elsewhere in Britain. Why?

Since the end of the first lockdown in March 2020, this Somerset hillside has never been busier. It has become the go-to place to find some sort of normality.

The local hunt, for example, held a memorial gathering in one of the hills car parks before Christmas for a young lad killed in a car accident. They knew that such a gathering would not be allowed elsewhere.

Why are we all being forced to live like this? Why is the constabulary now becoming such a powerful presence throughout the land? (We couldnt summon any police when we needed them to stop an illegal rave on the same hillside years ago.)

Is it because there is a realisation that the public is losing respect for authority and more coercion will be needed to implement the global Build Back Better agenda?

Maybe the penny has begun to drop that there is insufficient support for fascism, even if it is re-labelled stakeholder capitalism?

Certainly in continental Europe there is growing resistance to Planet Lockdown, often of a violent nature. In Europe they have a better understanding of the nature of fascism, unlike in Britain where we lack historical experience of mass arrests, deportations and arbitrary shootings.

The parallels with the 1930s are, however, becoming obvious to the extent that the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, used his contribution to the World Economic Forums annual Davos meeting last month to warn the world. In his view, the situation could develop in an unpredictable and uncontrolled manner and risks a fight of all against all.

Meanwhile, the WEF is trying to distance itself from any accusations that its Great Reset is a conspiracy that is masking some nefarious plan for world domination (?!)

But then its plans are hardly nefarious, given that the WEF is so blatant about its role in bringing together global leaders and mega-corporations to rebuild the world along sustainable lines.

Sadly for the WEF, its own benign belief in its motives is not shared universally. Of the 200,000-plus views of its latest YouTube video, it could muster only 1,500 likes compared with 19,000 dislikes and openly hostile messages in the comments below. Not exactly a good indicator of widespread support. The UK government would do well to take note.

While there might not be agreement about return to pre-Covid ways of living were it possible or whether change is necessary, neither is there any consensus on what form that change should take.

In particular, there is increasing cynicism about an elite group of globalists lecturing us on how to collectively improve life on the planet without destroying it. It does not sit well with the public that the same billionaires who form the WEF are those who have profiteered from their misery during the pandemic.

Mega-corporations and their supporters politicians, financiers, non-governmental organisations, etc also have zero credibility as eco-warriors.

They are more closely associated in the public mind with creating problems rather than solving them. Pollution and destructive business as usual have continued unabated under a cover story of environmentalism.

The examples of cobalt and lithium alone reveal the empty virtue-signalling in the pious rush for the windmills and solar panels that are the basis for the WEFs Build Back Better campaign.

Cobalt and lithium are widely used in electronics for energy storage, whether a solar panel or a mobile phone. Yet the way cobalt is mined (using child labour) is never discussed, nor is the damage to Chiles Atacama desert, where lithium extraction displaces the flamingos. The billionaires have failed so far to provide viable alternatives.

There is also nothing remotely sustainable about increasing our reliance on electricity. It would take only a coronal mass ejection a gigantic release of plasma and magnetic field from the sun to wipe out the National Grid, as Sir Oliver Letwin so eloquently pointed out in his March 2020 bookApocalypse How?It makes no sense that a British government continues to take us on the doomed path that WEF promotes.

History will not judge kindly a government that abandons its people in favour of the diktats of a foreign entity. Our government needs to learn the lesson of Brexit. The British people want their independence. It is the reason we as a nation have been willing to fight wars.

Now is the time for the Government to abandon Build Back Better, and focus instead on building back without the WEFs fake sustainability and its Fourth Industrial Revolution, which is synonymous only with yet more unemployment and misery.

A useful first step would be for the Government to restore hope, at the very least, to the lost generation. The traumatising of the young, and their consequent despair, is one of the most distressing aspects of the mishandling of the pandemic.

The lack of support for the most disadvantaged white working-class boys is nothing short of a scandal. The Government is sending a clear message that these children have no future in the technocratic world.

This attitude toward the disadvantaged speaks to C S Lewiss grim prophecies of the 1940s. In his novelThat Hideous Strength,he blames advances in technology for the reductions in industrial and agricultural workforces, with no mention of retraining.

Instead, a large, unintelligent population is now a deadweight. In his view the masses are therefore to disappear the human race is to become all technology.

In 1945, George Orwell wrote a review in theManchester Guardianof Lewiss novel. The title of the review was The Scientists Take Over.

He believed that Lewiss dystopian vision was realisable and that there could be a time when the common people are to be used as slaves and vivisection subjects by the ruling caste of scientists Man, in short, is to storm the heavens and overthrow the gods, or even become a god himself.In effect, he was predicting transhumanism, artificial intelligence and genetic engineering.

At some point it will become obvious in the UK if the oppression we currently face is about keeping us safe from a virus, or about preparing us for life under the WEF reset.

The pandemic itself is likely to fade. Covid has now replaced seasonal flu in the official statistics, thus suggesting that it is no more deadly than a flu. Cases are on the decline. With Covid gone, what will be the excuse to bully us?

The narrative has already begun to change in the US. No sooner was it clear that Donald Trump would leave the White House, than theNew York Timesran an article suggesting that coronavirus will come to resemble the common cold and be no more than a minor annoyance,and the most draconian governors in California, New York and elsewhere began to lift restrictions.

It would seem that the pandemic had done its job: it left Trumps economy in ruins, and provided the perfect pretext for mail-in ballots and for keeping poll watchers at bay during the election count.

So, when can we expect a similar shift in the UK? Liberation cannot come quickly enough. We are fast turning into a nation of zombies. Nothing is working properly. People cant think straight. They demand vaccines in the hope of a return to normality, but fail to hear the Government telling them that nothing will change. The sunny uplands continue to recede.

We are now facing an unholy mess with a shrunken economy, no shiny new Fourth Industrial Revolution to fill the gap, and the potential for hordes of disaffected and disturbed masses to threaten us all.

Is this what is anticipated for us? We can only hope that there is no significance in the evidence coming from one part of Somerset, where an abandoned quarry is used for training police marksmen.

Locals tell me that the police have recently increased their use of the quarry and the barrage of shots can be heard more frequently over a wide distance. What hope is there?

Maybe, once it has sorted itself out, the US will once again help rescue us from fascism, as it did in the 1940s. My great-grandfather certainly believed in June 1940 that the US would rise to the occasion when he wrote to my grandmother from his hotel in Liverpool before setting sail for the States.

We were pleased to see the Americans when they did finally arrive. But more than 80 years later, perhaps such thoughts of rescue are more fiction than fact. Like Mr Tumnus, we may have to wait instead for The Last Battle for freedom to return, and who knows when that will be?

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The Chronicles of Covid, or why we must kill the Great Reset Witch - The Conservative Woman

A former independent presidential hopeful is vexed at the COVID-19 vaccine at the moment, and for multiple reasons. That would be Zoltan Istvan, a self-described transhumanist candidate who was billed as the cyborg who is running against President Trump in press reports throughout 2020. The California hopeful who ran in the Republican primary based his campaign on a futuristic message of fusing radical technology with daily life under the motto Upgrade America.

Mr. Istvan recently looked into how long it would be before he got a COVID-19 vaccine.

I took the New York Times Find your Place in the vaccine line report, and I was near the bottom 15% of the timeline for getting the vaccine meaning Ill be nearly last, Mr. Istvan wrote in an email to Inside the Beltway.

He refers to an online tool that the aforementioned news organization offered in early December that has users enter personal particulars to receive a calculation suggesting when they will be eligible to get the vaccine.

Being almost last that upsets me since, as a successful business person, I pay a lot of taxes, and frankly, the creation and distribution of the vaccine rests mostly on high taxpayers such as myself not the homeless or prison population which is way, way ahead of me in line, Mr. Istvan continued.

I think this is atrocious of our government. My solution: I think there should simultaneously be a private market for the vaccine along with giving it out freely to everyone else, and I posted this on social media and lots of people were upset. Even if just 3% of the vaccine was made to go on the open market, Id be happy. But none of it is, Mr. Istvan continued.

Its not that I dont want to freely give the vaccine to people. That people who actually create the wealth in this country are being relegated to the back of line is unbelievable and upsetting. I feel like shouting Who is John Galt? Im really astonished by how stupid our government is and how it is treating people like me, he concluded.

John Galt, incidentally, is a fictional character in Ayn Rands iconic 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged.

MONICA LEWINSKY, PRODUCER

The former White House intern who once dallied with President Clinton is getting cordial reviews for her work on Impeachment: American Crime Story, set to air on FX in the near future. Monica Lewinsky served as producer for the series, named one of the 21 most-anticipated new scripted TV series coming in 2021 by the Hollywood Reporter.

Originally intended to air before the 2020 presidential election, the third season of the Emmy-winning FX anthology from Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk turns its lens on the Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton scandal, the industry publication noted.

Lewinsky produces the season, which is based on Jeffrey Toobins best-seller A Vast Conspiracy: The Real Story of the Sex Scandal That Nearly Brought Down a President. Sarah Paulson stars as Linda Tripp; Beanie Feldstein plays Lewinsky; and Annaleigh Ashford is set as Paula Jones, the publication noted.

ILLINOIS TOPS IN GUN SALES

Gun sales have soared in the past year. They have reached 35,758,249 through November. That is more than the 28,369,750 for all of last year. Growing civil unrest may have prompted people to buy guns for personal and family protection, says a new analysis of FBI data by 24/7Wallstreet.com, a news organization which noted that in 1999, the number of guns sold stood at 9,138,123.

Among all states, Illinois has posted the highest sales so far this year, by far, at 6,625,082. That is almost 18% of U.S. gun sales in 2020, although the state has less than 4% of the nations population, writes Douglas A. McIntyre, editor-in-chief of the news organization.

Kentucky is in second place with 2.9 million sales, followed by Texas (2.1 million), Florida (1.7 million), Indiana (1.6 million), California (1.5 million); Pennsylvania (1.3 million), Utah (1.1 million), Alabama (984,548) and Michigan (974,072). These figures cover January through November.

Hawaii had the least number of gun sales, with 18,096 so far this year.

GET READY

The end of the year looms in about 48 hours or so. So now what? Many Americans are happy that 2020 is over and theyre jittery about the near future. They also could be surprised by their personal, potential role in it all.

Our hopes for 2021 wont be fulfilled by a politician, but by us, writes by Salena Zito, a columnist and political reporters for the Washington Examiner.Americans need something to aspire to a purpose or someone who will take us to a better place. If 2020 taught us anything, it taught us that journey upward will not come from a politician, nor will it come from the loudest voices, which means it will likely come from within us as a people. That might be the best news for 2021, Ms. Zito advises.

AN UNEASY YEAR

Reporters, anchors, photographers, camera operators, producers and technicians who brought 2020s biggest stories to the public often risked their own physical safety and psychological well-being and found themselves the subjects of increased digital abuse, advises the Committee to Protect Journalists, an independent nonprofit that says it assisted 750 journalists this year through emergency grants and safety consultations.

Wildfires, social unrest and the coronavirus posed the biggest threats to journalists along with one other activity.

The U.S. presidential election brought its own set of reporting risks< the organization said, citing its own U.S. elections safety kit, which highlighted the risks of protests, rallies, and online and digital attacks against journalists who were covering the vote.

POLL DU JOUR

43% of U.S. adults plan to be vaccinated against COVID-19 when the vaccine becomes available; 35% of Republicans, 34% of independents and 60% of Democrats agree.

30% overall do not plan to be vaccinated; 37% of Republicans, 34% of independents and 10% of Democrats agree.

26% are not sure what they will do; 28% of Republicans, 29% of independents and 21% of Democrats agree.

2% have already been vaccinated; 1% of Republicans, 3% of independents and 1% of Democrats agree.

Source: An Economist/YouGov poll of 1,500 U.S. adults conducted Dec. 19-22.

Kindly follow Jennifer Harper on Twitter @HarperBulletin.

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Inside the Beltway: Transhumanist Zoltan Istvan is vexed by the COVID-19 vaccine - Washington Times

If you act fast, you can pick up the Altered Carbon tabletop adventure for 50% off.

Tabletop roleplaying game publisher Hunters Entertainment recently announced its dystopian cyberpunk neo-noir Altered Carbon: The Roleplaying Game Core Rules is finally available on DriveThruRPG. The PDF is currently carrying a 50% discount to $24.99 for an unknown amount of time, so grab it now while the sale lasts.

The Altered Carbon Core Rules PDF is 328 pages, and there doesnt seem to be a print-on-demand option available for it, yet. Hopefully, that option will be added with the release of the physical version, which is still currently scheduled to happen in January 2021. If thats the version you want, you can submit your preorder via the sourcebooks page on the Renegade Game Studios webstore. The Standard Edition is $50, and the Deluxe Edition is $90.

Related:Cyberpunk 2077: 5 Things We Love About Johnny Silverhand (& 5 Things We Can't Stand)

ICYMI, the Altered Carbon RPG Kickstarter ran in February of this year, smashing past a $20,000 goal in less than two hours, and finally ending with over $372,000. It is of course based on the hit and criminally-shortened Netflix series that starred Joel Kinnaman (season one) and Anthony Mackie (season two) in the lead role. As with the show, the RPG deals with a transhumanist vision of the future, where the human mind is nothing more than digital code Digital Human Freight saved and stored in a Cortical Stack, advanced technology that allows you to re-sleeve your entire consciousness into a new body.

In the RPG, this mechanic allows you to roleplay as a possibly immortal character; when your sleeve (body) dies, as long as your Cortical Stack remains intact, your consciousness can be re-sleeved into a new body. A body that you can afford, that is. Additionally, you can apply augmentations to your sleeve that upgrade any number of your physical traits. These options make the prospects of long-term play unique in that you can play through a campaign with a single consciousness, but with multiple physical characteristics.

For a closer look at the sourcebook before making your buying decision, check out the free-to-download Rules Summary and GM Screen Panel from the Hunters Entertainment website. You can also watch the How To Play video on the studios YouTube channel and have the wonderful Becca Scott explain the RPG to you in less than five minutes. And theres a near four-hour early playtest video over on the Hyper RPG YouTube channel.

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It's Time To Slip Into Your New Sleeve Now That Altered Carbon Is On DriveThruRPG - TheGamer

It's been a year for glumly refreshing live blogs and breaking news websites. But we have managed to get some reading done too. Here, our writers and editors have picked out our favourite books released in 2020 across the broad range of areas that WIRED covers.

In this memoir, New Yorker tech correspondent Anna Wiener recounts her experiences as a millennial diving into San Franciscos tech startup scene. Disillusioned with her job in publishing, Wiener moves from New York to Silicon Valley, with its promises of building a better future for all and a more exciting present for those in its club. The book follows her experiences working for multiple startups, with skewering descriptions of a sector that, while ahead technologically, seems in other ways to be wildly out of touch. Covering issues such as sexism, surveillance and San Franciscos homeless crisis, it reveals a world that hides a pit of moral quandaries beneath its shiny facade. Victoria Turk

Price: 16.99 | Amazon | Waterstones | Foyles | Bookshop

The Covid-19 pandemic may have made armchair epidemiologists of us all, but it has also underscored how important statistics are in our everyday lives; what numbers can tell us about how the world is changing, and what happens when we don't have access to the data we need. Financial Times journalist and host of the BBC's More or Less Tim Harford explains how to decipher the numbers that surround and befuddle us by applying ten simple rules. Rather than simply rebuffing statistical trickery, Harford's book implores us to look past the bluster and our own biases to really figure out what data can tell us, and where the limits of its usefulness might be. This is required reading before hitting send on any tweet mentioning R numbers or false positives. Matt Reynolds

Price: 10 | Amazon | Waterstones | Foyles | Bookshop

Maria Konnikova pressed pause on her work as a journalist for The New Yorker and The New York Times and gave herself a year to make it as a poker pro. Armed with the mentorship of American poker champion Erik Seidel and a cast of other professionals, Konnikova set her sights on the biggest stage the game has to offer: the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. The Biggest Bluff is a poker book thats not really about poker. Its about getting to grips with uncertainty and learning to take control of your own decision-making processes in order to handle the game of life with a little more confidence. MR

Price: 13.60 | Amazon | Waterstones | Foyles | Bookshop

In this timely book, economist Hertz explores the loneliness epidemic that was sweeping the world even before the coronavirus took hold. She looks at the ways tech thats meant to bring us together is driving us apart, the impact isolation is having on our health, and the bizarre loneliness economy thats springing up to fulfil the needs of people desperate for human contact, from lifelike sex dolls to a service offering cuddles for cash. The book is a fascinating look at a key societal question: in an age where technology means were more connected than ever, why do we feel so alone? Amit Katwala

Price: 10 | Amazon | Waterstones | Foyles | Bookshop

Netflix may dominate our television consumption today, but its future was never certain: the ubiquitous online video giant could have never survived the rise of streaming. This story takes us back to its more humble beginnings, when Netflix decided to take on bricks and mortar video rental king Blockbuster in the 90s, with an ambitious mail rental video service. In a tale with more twists and turns than a bowl of spaghetti, WIREDs very own Matt Burgess dissects the life and choices of famously elusive Netflix founder Reed Hastings, the man behind the successful media empire. Natasha Bernal

Price: 10.65 | Amazon | Waterstones | Foyles | Bookshop

Unconscious bias has become a buzzword in the modern office, but what does it actually mean? How does it work, what are the effects, and can we do anything about it? Behavioural scientist Pragya Agarwal digs into the research, taking us through the many ways bias can manifest, from stereotyped assumptions to confirmation bias and status quo bias, and how these can all result in prejudice and inequality. She highlights in particular the intersectional nature of our biases, and how this can compound privilege or disadvantage for different groups. There are no easy solutions on offer here, but Agarwal urges that only when we become more attuned to our own unconscious biases can we begin to make conscious changes to our behaviour. VT

Price: 12.99 | Amazon | Waterstones | Foyles | Bookshop

Where do concepts like disruption content and dropping out come from? And beyond the unthinking way they are thrown around in Silicon Valley, what do they really mean? Daub tries to historically anchor the most common concepts used in Silicon Valley in their philosophical origins. A professor of comparative literature and German studies at Stanford, Daub is an elegant and clear writer, good at breaking down the jargon of the philosophers he says have so profoundly influenced the industry WIRED covers. Will Bedingfield

Price: 10 | Amazon | Waterstones | Wordery

Were it not for SARS-CoV-2, The Precipice would likely have remained a book read only by the far-sighted futurists, the rationalists, and the transhumanists (plus, Id wager, blogger and former government aide Dominic Cummings). But as things turned out, this clinical, no-holds-barred dissection of existential risks i.e. all the ways humankind could perish or self-destruct has acquired an urgent and vaguely prophetic character. Ord, a philosopher at Oxfords Future of Humanity Institute, lists all risks, assesses their likelihood and potential to kill us all off, and suggests strategies to mitigate each of them. Asteroids, nukes, and climate change all get honourable mentions. So do pandemics, even if Ord is mostly worried about artificially engineered ones. The big bugaboo, however, is unaligned artificial intelligence machines or algorithms that go rogue, or simply embrace an idea of the good that does not entail our survival. In a year in which our everyday lives were upended by the unexpected (or rather the expected yet neglected), The Precipice is a good way to put everything in perspective: much worse things could easily happen and they likely will. Gian Volpicelli

Price: 17 | Amazon | Waterstones | Foyles | Bookshop

At last, one of the greatest secrets of the London fintech scene is out. The reason behind the major fallout between the founders of Starling Bank and Monzo, two of the UK's major neobanks, has for years been the cause of much speculation. In her bombshell book, Starling Bank founder Anne Boden breaks ranks to rip into her major rival and former partner Tom Blomfield, with a portrait of biblical-level betrayal, break-ins and sabotage. Though it packs in loads of drama, Boden also exposes exactly what it's like to be an older, female entrepreneur in an industry where the odds were stacked against her and how she succeeded. NB

Price: 14 | Amazon | Waterstones | Bookshop

This essay collection is an excellent window into the four years running up to the pandemic. Britain, Davies says, is suffering from the abandoning of liberal economic rationality, the declining authority of empirical facts, the mainstreaming of nationalism, the hatred of liberal elites, the effects of big data and real-time media on our politics, the new mould of celebrity leaders, the crisis of democratic representation. Its a depressing state of affairs that Davies documents smartly. Pick up his magnum opus Nervous States at the same time. WB

Price: 12 | Amazon | Waterstones | Foyles | Bookshop

The devastating human cost of a mental health data breach

Russias vaccine has attracted criticised. Heres what is really happening with the Sputnik V vaccine

The Netflix Christmas Cinematic Universe is being torn apart

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The best science and tech books of 2020 - Wired.co.uk

When it comes to skincare, Croatian-born, London-based skin health specialist Jasmina Vico insists on taking a holistic approach. Using skin as an indicator for whats happening inside the body and vice versa, when treating someone Vico looks at gut health, sleeping patterns, stress levels, micronutrient intake, overall diet, and stress levels, which she combines with her bespoke laser treatments, needling, LED facials, and gentle acid peels. There are no quick fixes only continuous care and the investment should be long term, she warns. Its an approach that has earnt her a cult following, including make-up artist Isamaya Ffrench, actors Killing Eves Jodie Comer and The Crowns Claire Foy, and model Shanina Shaik.

With a belief in the power of prevention and a keen interest in biohacking, Vico imagines a future where we will be able to hack our own bodies with the help of science and advanced technologies in order to prolong our lifespan tracking our sleep patterns, monitoring our gut health and even printing our own skin. Here, she shares her predictions for the future of skincare, debunks some of the myths and misconceptions underpinning the industry, and outlines the best ways to protect your skin.

Over-using products that are not suitable for your skin type or condition is something Im correcting and educating my clients about daily. More importantly, spending your hard-earned money on skincare can be a folly if you are not protecting your skin every day from the sun and HEV blue light. Protection is key. There is a misunderstanding that the skin is a surface.

Follow the science is a phrase weve all heard a lot of recently, but when it comes to skincare you cant hear it enough. Many products and procedures promise results that the science if it exists at all does not back up. I also think there has been a lack of industry-led focus on education around the impact that lifestyle choices have on our skin.

My own skincare approach is focused on prevention inside and outside. Im interested in gut health, micronutrient intake, overall diet, regular sleep patterns, and stress levels. Staying out of the sun is obviously the big one. Reducing inflammation is my mission. Inflammation ages the skin, weakening its structure, and degrading the collagen and elastin. Our diet sugar being the worst offender our stress levels and our environment [chemicals/pollution] all profoundly impact and exacerbate inflammation.

Many of us are living at such speed and all of us experience stress. Its necessary to unplug. The Japanese practice shinrin-yoku which translates as forest bathing: a walk in the forest, phone-free, using your senses we could all take a leaf out of that book. A walk in nature, meditation, breathwork, slowing down and being present: these practises have skin benefits too.

Flawlessness is an unrealistic goal. That doesnt mean we cant dramatically improve our skin and make it be the best version of itself. I am a problem solver and one of the things I do is identify issues even when they arent visible and find solutions.

I think the future will focus more on prevention than it has done and at a cellular level. Well be tracking our sleep patterns and sleep depth with monitors on our beds and using grounding mats to help reduce inflammation. Well use our own personal 3D skin printers to deposit sheets of skin, which sounds wild but a handheld printer has already been developed to deposit bio-ink on large burns to help with wound recovery.

Skin bio-printing will use self-assembling peptides and amino acids that create almost a scaffolding-like structure that grows within the skin. There are going to be more devices and bio-electrics, bio-tech and nanorobots to track our sleep because sleep is one of the most important things for skin.

I am naturally a curious person I want to know how the body works, to understand how we age, increasing our life-span. I have always been interested in science and developments in technology. Self-tracking our health will help us understand how our body works and responds to internal and external factors, which will be different for each of us and will be the key to understanding what triggers inflammation in us.

Transhumanism is already with us whether were ready for it or not or even want it. We are already cyborgs in a way Im certainly smarter just by having my phone next to me.

I think it will offer us some control and autonomy over our own health as well have greater access to information but also through our own experimentation. But just as Im interested in the impact on individuals, Im interested in societal patterns and greater understanding. We are all connected, physically, cognitively, mentally and socially.

Im also fascinated by the developments in [the study of] sleep and the effects it has on our overall health not just for the skin. I have been using my Oura ring for about two years to track my sleep. Its essential for mental and physical health to have proper, restful sleep. The developments in grounding mats are helping us reduce inflammation and promoting a good nights sleep.

Socio-economics will play a big part. We understand so much more about ageing because of the research invested into science and biotech. Its going to be about tracking your health. Skincare brands that manage to customise and tailor-make products for the individual with bio-tech will do well. But only if they are transparent and dont make misleading claims.

We will also be looking more into the pillars of health, which has been my approach for many years, to ensure they are working in synergy and functioning at their optimum. Self-discipline will play a big part in this.

Id like to think it is about being unique, and happy in your own skin. When Im with my clients, I want to release their essence, their innocence which is associated with youthfulness and happiness.

Having things wed like to improve on is one thing but acceptance is also important: bottled youth doesnt exist Yet. But who knows in the future with bioprinting, 3D matrix skin, AI, etc.

I am fortunate enough that I have a twin I can compare myself to. In the future we will all have a digital twin that we look at each day in the mirror, on our phone, or as a hologram. The twin will be your double and will help you track your health. For example, it will allow you to see your UVC [ultraviolet] face, your gut face, your hangover face. It will also allow you to see your biological age and therefore help you to experiment and find preventative solutions.

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Is Biohacking The Future Of Skincare? - British Vogue

Im a sucker for the sort of film that messes around with style, and especially for the kind of film that uses style to get away with saying things that you couldnt in a serious social realist drama. Sorry To Bother You is so surreal and absurd, yet the truth of the subject matter has never been less subtle or more accurately told. Even if it does include horse-humans. Many films designed to make a statement do anything but in the long run, because you know what the message is going to be before you start. The film becomes part of the conversation rather than creating a new one.

Take Ken Loachs filmI, Daniel Blake (2016), which caused questions to be asked in Parliament about the unfairness of the British welfare system. The conversation around it was fervid but centred around whether it was an accurate representation of the experience of poverty (spoiler: it is) and reduced it to a political statement. It became the sort of film you watch either to shout about what you think already, or to pick holes in.

But genre films have been sneaking this sort of thing past audiences for a long time. Thats not always a good thing: cinema audiences arent necessarily aware enough to get the point (seeThe Matrix). But there is a simple joy to be found in a film which slips things past people even if these things are blindingly, sledgehammer obvious.

Many reviews of Sorry to Bother You suggest its messy, ill-conceived, or self-contradictory. Its not. Its absolutely logical in where it goes, political like nothing else Ive seen and a delight on every level. Sorry To Bother You is very, very funny, set in the future, and hides a horrific premise, so I guess that means its a Horror Sci-fi Comedy.

Were introduced to Cassius Green (LaKeith Stanfield), as he is interviewed for a telemarketing job with a company called Regalview. He blatantly lies about his experience and qualifications and is caught out immediately by the slimy manager, who tells him that hes got the job anyway because they hire literally anyone and hes clearly got ambition. This is true; Cassius does have ambition, and its illustrated throughout the film. Even in his name Cassius is pronounced Cashus, so his name is the truism, cash is green, and everyone calls him Cash.

Cash hustles, because Cash is poor. He lives in his uncles garage, which has a faulty door that keeps opening just when hes about to have sex, and he cant even afford to pay the rent here. He drives a battered old car that has clearly been cobbled together from parts of other cars; you can still see the serial number scrawled in chalk on his second-hand windscreen and the doors are a different colour to the body. Every day he calculates the exact amount of gas he needs to get to work and back in pocket change.

People who have never been poor cant really comprehend how much hard work it is. How much enterprise, thought and effort you have to put into just surviving. How you have to count every penny, devise workarounds and continuously hustle. It doesnt actually matter if your hustles go to plan or not, because their ingenuity has barely any impact on whether you get out of the poverty trap.

Cashs entry-level job as a telemarketer selling obsolete things no one wantsencyclopedias doesnt go well initially because Cash is, well, a bit green. Everything about the job sucks. No one is paid enough. The bosses are terrible: manager Anderson doesnt give a toss about any of it, team leader Johnny is probably a serial killer and HR rep Diana DeBauchery is deceitful, self-interested and sleazy, in both an Im not your boss, Im your friend way, and a throws herself at the guy with the promotion wayespecially because he is black, because you know her white girl mind thinks of him as an exotic fruit.

The director Boots Riley sets a beautiful sequence where Cash rings people and literally crashes right into their homes, in the middle of what theyre doing, whether theyre sitting alone having their breakfast or sitting on the toilet. These visual similes, aside from being very funny (and a wonderful homage to Rileys inspiration, Michel Gondry), get across just how intrusive it is for the people on the end of the line and how disorienting it is for the new telemarketer, still burdened with ideas of dignity and common decency. Cash tries to stick to the script (STTS, written on the walls of Regalview), but he cant do it.

His breakthrough comes when his veteran colleague Langston (Danny Glover) explains where hes going wrong. He needs a White Voice. Langston demonstrates a young middle-class white guys voice coming out of his mouth. Cash baulks. He could never do that. And then he does. Spectacularly.

And when Cash finds his White Voice (the voice of David Cross, and its never less than hilarious when he opens his mouth and David Crosss voice comes out), Cash turns out to be gold. Suddenly hes selling shedloads, and his success begins to change things for him. Hes good at this, and the bosses shower him with praise. So, while his mate Sal (Jermaine Fowler) and his awesome way-out-of-his-league artist girlfriend Detroit (Tessa Thompson) are getting involved in organising a union at Regalview to demand better pay and conditions, along with shop floor firebrand Squeeze (Steven Yeun), Cash is becoming increasingly focused on his work. Cashs White Voice is a ticket to success. The day after he reluctantly joins in with strike action, the bosses tell him hes being promoted. Now hes a Power Caller. Now he works for Steve Lift.

Boots Rileys 2012 album, Sorry to Bother You, as part of hip-hop collective The Coup, features a cast of characters who overlap with those in this filmthere is a guy called Cassius Green and a privileged fratboy douche called Steve. But mostly, the whole thing is a furious, hilarious call to full-on revolt, the sort that aims to reclaim revolution from right-wing assholes and multinational CEOs. Sellouts, silver spoons and squeamish liberals are all lined up in the crosshairs. Its one of the cleverest, funniest, angriest albums Ive heard in years and its also packed with banging tunes, as white Brits of a certain age are embarrassingly prone to say.

Both the album and film are furious and playful. Like horror, comedy is one of the genres that can, if done right, have real teeth. Both deal with the absurd, both provoke extreme emotion. Laughs and screams are closer to each other than we think. And Rileys day-glo dystopia is horrific and hilarious in equal measure.

Cash lives in a world where everyones favourite show is calledI Got the S*** Kicked Out of Me. The main innovation in labour is WorryFree, a program where people willingly sell their lives to their work. They move into corporate dorms that look like prison cells and work long shifts for nothing other than their cheap blue and yellow uniforms, crowded beds and hideous-looking food. Cassiuss uncle Sergio (Terry Crews) is short enough of cash that hes seriously considering WorryFree Living. Like so many people, Cash is under pressure to save his own finances and his familys.

As a Power Caller, Cash is suddenly vaulted up into a world where hes above all that. This new existence is completely ridiculous and absurd. Theres a gold plated lift with an access code with hundreds of digits, the elevator voice (Rosario Dawson) tells him it hopes he hasnt masturbated today because he needs to be sharp and that 35% of men who wear pink shirts start a franchise. Then it is revealed that hes expected to sell WorryFree slave labour to multinational corporations and unscrupulous governments.

Theres a running joke where Cash asks, Wait, you mean Im actually supposed to be [doing something utterly odious] for you?. The authority figure goes yup, and this is really pretty funny on a fundamental leveluntil it isnt because its sort of true. At some point, Western governments realised that the best way to get away with atrocity is not to deny youre doing it. No, you own it: you just talk about it as if its OK. Like when the US government started putting small children in concentration camps recently, the tactic was not to deny it but to get annoyed about calling them concentration camps as if the language used to describe them was what made it not OK. The appalling thing is that this seems to have worked, because the US government is still putting small children in concentration camps and no-one with any authority appears to be doing a single thing about it. This tactic works until, hopefully, it doesnt, and the perpetrators might at some point be brought to account.

In its absurd, brightly coloured world,Sorry to Bother You portrays a place one step removed from that. It shows the peoples world; ordinary decent people who dont see indentured slave labourers, they see numbers on Excel spreadsheets. Cashs scruples extend precisely as far as seeing what his salary will be. He struggles! He lives in a carport! He pinches pennies in spectacularly creative ways! And here he is, being offered financial security, even after telling his bosses to go f*ck themselves if they think hes going to rat on the union. Bosses who grin throughout his obscene ranting then tell him hes being promoted.

Cash is promoted because he is good at what he does, but hes not the only person with a White Voice. What about Langston? Even Detroit has a White Voice (although we dont find that out until later and in a different context). Cash is good at the job, but that is not the reason that hes elevated. Hes advanced partly because hes been identified as able to be turned, and its a management tactic to prevent organisation by splitting the floor. Cash is green, you see.

Even as Cash makes bank, the shop floor organising goes to the next level; theres strike action. Cash has to cross the picket line and become a traitor. All Cash gets for being a scabapart from losing Detroit and all his friends, is a full soda can chucked at his head by a demonstrator. This moment is caught on video and goes viral, giving him unwelcome social media notoriety and a bandage that he wears on his head for the rest of the movie.

Cashs new mentor is a fabulously dressed and perfectly groomed black guy whose name is bleeped out of the soundtrack (Omari Hardwick) and who, in the voice of Patton Oswalt, advises Cash that up here its White Voice Only. That mans namelessness is pretty chilling. Hes redacted from everyones hearing, which is scary, partly because the company can do that in the first place, and partly because hes a cartoon of a black guy, so given over to the companys narrative that even his identity is gone. Its only when he says his one line in his own voice that he gives you an idea of what he really is, and thats someone just like Cash, a man looking out for an opportunity.

The reason they want Cassius is that they wish for a tame black guy on their side. They want one whos willing to sell out. Mr [REDACTED] might have qualified, but hes already sold out, so they need a new one. It becomes apparent when Cash gets invited to a party at the home of Steve Lift (Armie Hammer), a hybrid of all the very worst inspirational billionaire assholes; part Steve Jobs, part Elon Musk, part Jeff Bezos. In an excruciating scene, Lift orders Cash to rap, and the direction that scene goes is painful and hilarious and is a perfect indicator of what Lift wants: he wants someone to perform blackness when he needs it.

And when we find out Lifts plan, we realise we dont know the half of it because Cash discovers, in the weirdest left turn of the film, that Lift is planning on turning WorryFree workers into mutant horse people Equisapiensand that he is going to turn Cash into one too. His plan is then to make Cash a sort of tame liberator for them, but not really a liberator, the kind of inspirational figure who gets them some concessions and rights but crucially keeps them pacified. And Lift calls that an Equisapien Martin Luther King.

Yikes.

Boots Riley isnt afraid to make sour offhand references in the script to the kind of black people white people like (Langston describes the White Voice as not Will Smith white for example). Riley isnt afraid, full stop. Hes not afraid to be spiky and difficult. Hes not afraid to say painfully honest things about capitalism and what it does to you and how it exploits you. Hes not afraid to show his disdain of the way working-class people and black people get told to perform who they are.

Class is partly a performance. Thats what the whole White Voice thing is really a metaphor for. In the UK, we have the assumption that class is something you are born into, that its in your blood. If youre reading this and youre British and you scoff at that; consider the way that people act like you kicked a puppy when you point out how morally abhorrent it is that royalty exists. Or that someone had the power to end British democracy simply because they were born into that position.

If you think class is in the blood, its only one step away from treating the workers as a different species. Never forget that until the Second World War, it was taught as a fundamental truth of science on both sides of the Atlantic that black people and white people were different species. This was used to justify slavery. This is part of white history. Making the wealthy a different species is an underlying part of transhumanist ideology, but what if they revert to making poor people a different species? What if they actually make true what they believed all along?

Cash has to play white to succeed, and that means hes got to talk white.

Your voice, the language you use, is the central point of how you present your identity. How you look might inspire judgement, but its your voice that hammers down what people think of you. Its the moment that you open your mouth that forever confirms whether or not youll be accepted in any social grouping, in whatever class (consider especially how much of a struggle it is for trans people). Your use of grammar, your rhythm, all of it, it holds you down. Its why its so hard to take working-class characters seriously in movies when posh people play them.

Langston: Youve got it wrong. Im not talking about sounding all nasal. Its, like, sounding like you dont have a care. You got your bills paid, youre happy about your future, and youre about ready to jump in your Ferrari out there after you get off this call. Put some real breath in there. Breezy, like, I dont really need this one. Youve never been fired, only laid off. Its not really a white voice. Its what they wish they sounded like. So its like what they think theyre supposed to sound like. Like this young blood. [Speaks with the voice of a young, middle-class white man] Heyyy, Mr Kramer, this is Langston from Regalview. I didnt catch you at the wrong time, did I?

But it only gets you so far. Because people assume that class is innate, and while you can play the part of another class, youll probably never be one of them. All that Cash achieves by selling out is proving that he can play white enough to be safe for the bosses, succeed at his morally void work, and play black in a non-threatening way when he is asked to.

And yet somehow Mr [REDACTED] is still himself; hes not a dupe. He chose this, and we can see that in the one instance in the film where hes not using his White Voice, the moment when he tells Cassius that when people like them are presented with opportunities, they have to take that opportunity, and not f*ck it up. You might compromise your identity by selling out, but it is a choice. You dont cease to be you. You make a deal.

WorryFree is the Left Eye movements main target, a loose conglomeration of activist groups who paint a black stripe under their left eye (a nod to the outspoken and tragic Lisa Left Eye Lopes, from the 90s RnB group TLC). When she isnt working as a street corner sign twirler, Detroit keeps busy defacing WorryFree ads and organising labour activism with Squeeze and co. How any sole human being can have the time to do all that is pretty amazing, but then Detroit really is amazing.

Detroit is the films moral heart, and after Cash, the character with the most screen time. She hates Cashs White Voice. But whats interesting is that when we finally see her gallery opening, we discover that she has a White Voice of her own, and its the whitest voice imaginable as it belongs to Downton Abbeys Lily James; honey-sweet and impeccably posh.

But somehow Detroit wears it lightly. She knows that the hustle is nonsense; she knows that its a performance, and shes a performance artist. She understands. Her performance art is framed as a bit ridiculous because its performance art and performance art knows its ridiculous, but she knows its ridiculous, and its also kind of great. Wearing a bikini made from black leather gloves (where the glove/thong is giving the audience the finger), Detroit quotes The Last Dragon (1985), a movie almost as bonkers as Sorry to Bother You. She reads a scene where the character turns her back on selling out, while allowing herself, Marina Abramovic-style, to be pelted with empty bullet casings, dead mobile phones and balloons full of blood.

And Cash doesnt get it. The whole spectacle makes him so uncomfortable that he interrupts the performance. And that means that Detroits art succeeds because it makes him uncomfortable.

Detroits art also works because it is not a pose. It is the real deal. She is actually out there on the streets, putting herself on the line in solidarity with her fellow workers. Shes got to hustle, but shes wearing it lightly, which is an interesting contrast with Mr [REDACTED]: both she and Cassius Faustian mentor are making deals and using their White Voices, and for both of them the White Voice is a tool for navigating the world of white people. Its how they wear it that differs.

Thats a lovely thing about this film. It recognises that sometimes you have to play the game, but that in the end, doing the right thing by the people with you on the ground is what matters. Detroit might have a White Voice, but she is not a sellout. Its in her that we see the right way to get by in a world where it is impossible to be perfect.

Detroit makes her own jewellery; spectacular, flamboyant earrings that say MURDER MURDER MURDER/KILL KILL KILL or which look like tiny models of electric chairs. Shes never going to be as rich as a Power Caller, but shes a success as a human being, and shes a fighter. She stands on the front line.

Because of its absurdity, Sorry to Bother You is probably the most realistic film about capitalism and work and selling out. It is about what you sacrifice to succeed and how the wealthy look at the rest of us. And for that to work, it has to carry it all the way through to the end.

And what an end it is. Cassius makes Steve Lifts Equisapiens plot public by going on I Got the S*** Kicked Out of Me and showing the video he captured of the horse people on live TV. The stock market surges in Steves favour because white, rich people are the worst. The striking telemarketers get a few concessions, but theyre still going to have to go to work, and while they may not have the long faces, they are as much workhorses as the hybrids. Steve Lift remains a billionaire (although he might, the film hints, be subject to a very final and personal form of revenge a short time after the credits roll). And Cassius and his friends still have jobs. Because as much as Regalview is complicit in the subjugation of humanity, and these folks are its enemy, the system still exists, and it needs its employees just as much as they need to eat. Cash (the object) is still green, but Cash (the protagonist) is not. The real victory is in Cassius heart. He finds his voice. He finds his courage.

And the fight is going to go on. Winning one battle doesnt fix a regime; its more complicated than that, just as it is in real life.

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Sorry To Bother You: A Hybrid Tale of Capitalism & The White Voice - 25YearsLaterSite.com