There are eighteen songs in Taylor Swift's new album "Lover" which has just been released and for some people, that might be overwhelming. Not to mention, the themes and subject matter that her songs talk about may seem a bit lacking in depth to others but a lot of people relate to them on some level.
The songs included in the album have been teased over the past several months and now, they have come out in their full glory. On that note, here's an analysis of every song in the album "Lover".
When I first watched the original Matrix trilogy, it got me thinking about the nature of our consciousness and the way we perceive reality apart from ourselves, and whether we can even rely on the information we receive through our senses, that is, can I reliably say that I am real and that everything I perceive is real? Thinking of which brought me into a spiraling existential crisis. But that is beside the point. We're getting a new Matrix sequel.
Warner Bros. Pictures and Village Roadshow Pictures will produce and globally distribute the film. Warner Bros. Picture Group chairman Toby Emmerich made the announcement on Tuesday.
“We could not be more excited to be re-entering ‘The Matrix’ with Lana,” said Emmerich. “Lana is a true visionary — a singular and original creative filmmaker — and we are thrilled that she is writing, directing and producing this new chapter in ‘The Matrix’ universe.”
In addition to Wachowski, the script was also written by Aleksandar Hemon and David Mitchell. Wachowski is also producing with Grant Hill. Sources say the film is eyed to begin production at the top of 2020.
It's been 20 years since the first movie came out and it has made an indelible mark on science fiction in the past decade. Also, several things have changed since then. The speculative elements within the film are no longer just visions or concepts of a distant future rather they are becoming reality. The groundwork has already been laid out for things like artificial intelligence and virtual reality. It might not be too long before we find ourselves living in the landscape imagined in the Matrix.
Red Pill Junkie gives his take on this new announcement and the surprising absence of Lilly Wachowski who co-directed with her sister, Lana, on the original trilogy. That and other things on the Daily Grail.
NASA's human space flight program retired in 2011 as intended however, there haven't been any successors to the program since then. NASA has expressed their interest in renewing such programs and they have partnered with several private companies in order to launch crewed missions once again. At the moment, Boeing and SpaceX are on a race to be the first to revive human space flight.
NASA is paying SpaceX and Boeing nearly $7 billion combined to build rocket-and-capsule launch systems for ferrying astronauts to the space station.
Reuters was given rare access at Houston’s Johnson Space Center to NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Mike Fincke, and Boeing astronaut and test pilot Christopher Ferguson, who will crew the ISS mission, along with other astronauts training for future missions.
The exercises included training underwater to simulate space walks, responding to emergencies aboard the space station, and practicing docking maneuvers on a flight simulator.
What happens when a relatively unknown actor takes the villain's role in a movie that becomes a classic? It becomes hard for everyone from children up to casting directors to see you in any other kind of role. And that was the story for Margaret Hamilton, a serious actress who took on the role of the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz after another actress was afraid it would make her look unattractive.
Hamilton received hundreds of letters from other children all over the country, who would recall her notorious witch cackle and, in some cases, ask why she was so mean to Dorothy. Even during filming, Hamilton worried that her role would leave kids with the impression that she was scary — according to another Wizard of Oz expert, film critic Ryan Jay. Mild-mannered and sweet in real life, Hamilton would never have wanted anyone to be terrified of her.
“Everyone described her as so sweet and so approachable and so kind in her demeanor and personality,” Jay reported. “People of all ages wouldn’t believe it was really her until they asked her to do the cackle.”
But the role of the Wicked Witch of the West would take on a life of its own. Hamilton’s ability to scare became firmly rooted in the public’s mind. In the years that followed the film, she would take on a number of different roles, but it became nearly impossible for anyone to see her as anything other than the witch bent on destroying Dorothy and her dog Toto. Eventually, she started turning down opportunities to appear as the Wicked Witch.
The role that typecast Hamilton was not an easy one. She suffered both injuries and indignities to create the Wicked Witch of the West. Read Hamilton's story at Narratively.-Thanks, hearsetrax!
PS! Sunday is the 80th anniversary of The Wizard of Oz, which was released on August 25, 1939. I did not realize that, but found strange things happening when I Googled The Wizard of Oz to find an image for this post. Try it yourself! Click on the ruby slippers in the search results. When your computer settles down, you can click on the cyclone to "return home."
Residents in Virginia woke up to a surprise gift at their front door - an old TV. The gift only gave birth to more questions and intrigue, as no one knew how the old TV ended up in their front door, nor who was responsible for it.
Adrian Garner, however, managed to catch the culprit on a home security camera. He told Sky News about who he saw from the recording:
"It was a guy dressed in a jumpsuit with a TV for a head. It's the weirdest thing. He squats down, puts the TV there and walks off. It's really weird.”
So far, 60 TVs were retrieved and collected by the police. The TV man and his reasons for the old TV gifting remained a mystery.
As researchers find out more about our genetic material and come up with ways to engineer our genes to enhance certain traits or prevent certain diseases from emerging, the less we should worry about genetic conditions or disorders arising from heredity. Right?
If you could use reproductive genetic technology to make sure that your child did not have a genetic disease, would you do it? That question is not science fiction anymore for many prospective parents.
If you have an increased risk of breast and ovarian cancer because of a variant in your genes, there are now ways to make sure you don’t pass that pathogenic variant along to the next generation.
If you and your partner each harbor a single gene for spinal muscular atrophy—and with it a 25 percent chance that each of your children will be born with a life-threatening degenerative disease—we can remake the odds, assuring that all your children will be born healthy.
However, the question is no longer whether it is possible but rather is it accessible? These procedures aren't cheap which means only those with the resources can afford them leaving out people in lower economic classes who would also benefit if they could only gain access to it.
Apart from accessibility, there are the moral implications. Others doubt the ethics of the practice. Now that we are able to manipulate our genes, there is always the risk that this will be misused and abused.
Americans approve of interventions to reduce a child’s lifetime risk of cancer, but don’t want parents choosing their child’s eye color or selecting for higher intelligence, says an AP-NORC poll from 2018. We are in favor of healthier babies, but not “designer babies.”
Humans would do anything to survive but we're not the only ones. Many animals have different strategies for survival and in this particular case, bobcats from southern Texas find an interesting place to live.
Bobcats facing pressure from hunting in southern Texas have found shelter in rural backyards as they continue to lose their habitats. Even though it's legal to hunt them, they found an area where they are relatively safe.
When conservation photographer Karine Aigner first started photographing bobcats on a friend’s ranch in south Texas in 2017, she knew most of the community’s human residents were more likely to see the cats as a nuisance — or a target — than as a species to be admired and protected.
In the beginning, her only goal was to see if the cats might allow her into their world. But the more time she spent watching a fiercely protective mother raise her always-curious-and-sometimes-precocious kittens, the more she began to hope that showcasing the lives of these animals might change the way they are perceived and treated.
Known for creating Monopoly and GI Joe, toy and board game company Hasbro, for $4 billion, will buy Entertainment One Ltd., a British entertainment company that produced animated shows for preschoolers such as “Peppa Pig” and “PJ Masks.”
“Peppa Pig,” which stars a pink cartoon pig with a British accent, airs worldwide and is translated into over 40 languages.
Shares in Entertainment One jumped 30% in London on Friday.
Hasbro Inc., based in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, says the deal will help it turn more of its toy brands into shows or movies. Many of its brands, including My Little Pony and Transformers, already appear in TV shows and movies.
The deal is expected to close before the end of the year.
Robb Manes called it “The Great Mattress Migration of 2019”. What resembled migration of a flock of animals was actually a group of air mattresses laid out in Denver for an outdoor movie night that got carried by the strong wind.
The Great Mattress Migration was an instant hit on the Internet when Manes uploaded his recording of the whole event. Don’t do outdoor events on nights where strong winds are prevalent!
The tentpole series for the streaming TV service called Disney+ is The Mandalorian. He's not Boba Fett, nor Jango Fett, but another warrior from the same planet. According to Wikipedia, it takes place in the Star Wars universe a few years after The Return of the Jedi. It has a star-studded cast, lots of violence, and it's Star Wars, so what could possibly go wrong? The Mandalorian will premiere when the channel does, on November 12.
On the surface, the job of a restaurant critic seems like heaven. You get paid to eat at restaurants. You may have the power to make or break a business. You get to express yourself. Great job, huh? Sure, but there's a lot more to it than most of us realize. Eater talked with critics Julia Kramer and Ryan Sutton about the details of their jobs. One of the drawbacks could be a punishing schedule that affects one's body.
When she’s on the road scouting new places, Kramer eats at least two lunches and two dinners every day, and often visits bars, coffee shops and bakeries between those stops to maximize her time in each city. “The back-to-back tasting menu is rough,” she explained. “I did it multiple times this year, and I do not recommend. It’s hard to enjoy the first meal because you’re so anxious about how much you’re going to have to eat at the second meal. And then it’s hard to enjoy the second because you’re so full from the first.”
Sutton says his job has impacted his health. “I used to have a pretty athletic body in high school,” he said. “Athletics are still a huge part of my life. I love skiing and cycling and what have you, but I’m not going to be a pure climber as a cyclist because I have a little bit of a gut and that’s simply the fact of the job impacting me.”
Have you ever used an e-scooter? They're a popular form of transportation in many urban environments. If you've ridden one recently, you may have noticed a message in Braille.
Don't worry: it isn't a set of instructions and there's no expectation that visually impaired people should be able to ride the scooters. The messages provide contact information for the scooter company. Luz Lazo explains at the Washington Post:
No, blind people aren’t riding scooters. They do, however, need to know how to contact the scooter companies when they encounter the devices, which present a hazard when left lying around.
“We may not ride it, but if we trip over it, we can read the Braille on it and find out who to report it to,” said Shawn Callaway, president of the D.C. Chapter of the National Federation of the Blind. “We want the Braille on them to identify the company and their contact information.”
This rankles my librarian soul. On the other hand, a newly-minted library school graduate struggling to find work could hustle his/her way into a job like this.
In 2001, actress Gwyneth Paltrow decided that the bookshelves in her home needed to present a particular look. Instagram didn't exist at the time, but you could say that she wanted her home library to have an Instagram-worthy appearance. So she hired a "personal book curator" to decorate her shelves with books that were appropriate for the task. The photo above shows the results.
It's the work of Juniper Books, a firm that provides this service. The founder, Thatcher Wine, thoughtfully selects and arranges book in a visually appealing manner. Yahoo News explains:
“I looked at books she already owned, which focused on fashion, art, culture, photography, and architecture, as well as books that her kids liked,” he told the publication. “We expanded on those topics, and for the kids, we included a selection of classics that we thought they might like as they got older.” [...]
Over in the dining room, Wine made sure to organise the books in a more minimal fashion in keeping with a “rigid colour palette of black, white, and grey since it was less of a space where one might hang out and read”.
Upon closer inspection, heavyweight coffee table books take price of place with shelves dedicated to artists including Frida Kahlo, Salvador Dali and Leonardo Da Vinci.
Who doesn’t love to throw pillows at friends or roommates during sleepovers or school trips? Japan takes the long-lasting tradition of pillow fights into a more competitive and serious form - the All Japan Pillow Fighting Championship.
The game is a mix between dodgeball and chess, as Reuters details:
The game starts with all five players ‘sleeping’ under duvets on futons before the whistle goes and they leap to their feet and reach for a pillow.
The aim is to protect each team’s ‘King’ from being hit by pillows whilst trying to hit the opposition’s ‘King’ during two-minute sets. One player on each team can also use a duvet as a shield.
The championship attracts different people from different walks of life, regardless of age - single, married, athletes, and students alike.
The lizard probably thought that it has its next lunch as he planned to lunge at a nearby praying mantis. However, the mantis decided to pull a cunning counterstrike hold the lizard’s jaws apart.
