Seems to be more Hollywood-based than security-based

A viral post shared on X claims New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently removed her preferred pronouns from her bio on the platform. HOLY SHT AOC just took her pronouns OUT of her X bio. ??? pic.twitter.com/EO7D7ZfaH0 — American AF ?? (@iAnonPatriot) November 14, 2024 Verdict: False An archived screenshot of Ocasio-Cortez’s X account […]

'I was caked!'

There is no evidence to suggest anyone has been chosen for the position at the time of writing.

News Forbidden Planet Brian K. Vaughan Will Write a Forbidden Planet Remake for Warner Bros. What will Robby the Robot look like now? By Molly Templeton | Published on November 15, 2024 Comment 0 Share New Share Almost 70 years after its release, Forbidden Planet is getting remade. Deadline reports that Warner Bros. has hired producer Emma Watts and screenwriter (and comic book creator) Brian K. Vaughan to create what they call a “revisionist” take on the class film. The original film was written by Cyril Hume, based on a story by Allen Adler and Irving Block, and based loosely on The Tempest. As Kali Wallace wrote for her Science Fiction Movie Club series, “Its impact is so widespread, its influence so lasting and profound, that there are elements of it everywhere you look: Star Trek, Star Wars, Doctor Who, the films of James Cameron and Ridley Scott, and so much more.” As Deadline notes, James Cameron himself once reportedly considered tackling a remake, but one obstacle was a complicated rights situation. That’s apparently been sorted by Warner Bros. and longtime producer/former studio head Watts, who previously worked for Fox and Paramount. For his part, Brian K. Vaughan has a long and impressive SFF resume, from writing Saga to writing for Lost. Three of his comic series have, in recent years, been adapted into TV series: Runaways, Paper Girls, and Y: The Last Man. In 2021, he was reported to be writing a Gundam movie for Netflix and director Jordan Vogt-Roberts, but there hasn’t been any news on that project since. No casting or release date has been announced for Forbidden Planet.[end-mark] The post Brian K. Vaughan Will Write a <i>Forbidden Planet</i> Remake for Warner Bros. appeared first on Reactor.

Some Massachusetts elementary schools are observing “Transgender Awareness Week” in a district that bars parents from opting their children out of lessons about gender identity and sexuality. “November 13th through November 19th is Transgender Awareness Week,” Angiers Elementary Principal Orla Higgins Averill said in an email obtained by The Daily Signal. “This week helps raise the visibility about transgender people and address issues members of the community face.” The link provided takes parents to the website of GLAAD, a radical LGBTQ activist group that claims so-called gender-affirming care is lifesaving for young people who believe they are transgender. Angiers Elementary teaches kindergarten through fifth grade as part of Newton Public Schools in Newton, Massachusetts, a predominantly liberal area north of Boston. Parents whose children are enrolled in Newton Public Schools can’t opt them out of lessons on sexual orientation or gender identity, according to guidance approved in October by the district’s school board, called the Newton School Committee. “While parents/guardians/caregivers may opt out of the health curriculum specifically related to sexualreproduction, our commitment to gender and sexuality education remains firm,” the document says. “Our curriculum aligns with state guidelines to promote understanding and inclusion of diverse identities andorientations.” A footnote clarifies that parents and guardians legally may exempt their kids from sex education lessons, but this doesn’t include lessons where themes of “sexuality, gender identity, or sexual orientation” are “embedded in the course material or instructional lesson but not the course’s primary subject.” Newton Public Schools told The Daily Signal the guidance on gender identity is not a policy. The district did not immediately respond to a follow-up question about why that distinction matters. “Regarding district policy related to sexual education,” the communications office said, “parents have the option to exempt their student from any portion of the curriculum that primarily involves human sexual education or human sexuality issue.” The district did not address the “gender identity” portion of the policy. Guidance on the Basis of Gender Identity – DRAFT (1)Download Massachusetts’ 2023 standards for health include lessons on “Gender, Sexual Orientation, and Sexual Health” beginning in kindergarten, from which Newton parents are not allowed to pull their children. In third grade, students learn to “describe the differences between biological sex and gender identity, and explain how one’s outward behavior or appearance does not define one’s gender identity or sexual orientation.” The standards say 8-year-olds in Massachusetts should be able to describe “a range of ways people may express their gender and that some people’s gender identity (how they think about themselves) matches others’ expectations about what their bodies look like on the outside and others do not.” Also, children should be able to explain “how gender identity and sexual orientation can vary in each individual,” according to the standards. healthdraft.coDownload Under the state standards, Newton Public Schools “integrate LGBTQ+ inclusive content across all grade levels (PK-12) and subjects in age-appropriate practices, and provide ongoing professional development for educators,” according to the gender identity guidelines. An individual claiming to be a Newton parent posted anonymously in a “Newton Community” Facebook group claiming that she asked her child’s principal for permission to opt her child out of lessons about Transgender Awareness Week, but the principal declined her request. The parent didn’t specify which school her child attends. However, the moderator of the Facebook group confirmed that she is a parent. Anna Nolin, Newton’s school superintendent, responded to the anonymous parent by saying that Transgender Awareness Week doesn’t include lessons at school. Rather, she wrote, parents are encouraged to use recommended resources to discuss transgenderism with their elementary schoolers at home. The anonymous parent said her child’s principal didn’t inform her that there were no specific lesson plans, but that her child’s teacher told her the class wouldn’t learn about transgenderism. Newton Public Schools’ communications office told The Daily Signal that the information posted on the Facebook group “was not accurate, as the district does not have curriculum on the topic of Transgender Awareness Week.” “Transgender Awareness Week is recognized by the Human Rights Campaign as a time to acknowledge transgender people in our society,” the school district said in an emailed statement. “Newton Public Schools did not create this awareness week, and any mention of it was meant for informational purposes only.” Critics say that the Human Rights Campaign, a major LGBTQ rights group, supports irreversible transgender medical interventions for children and peddles the lie that children are less likely to commit suicide if they “transition” to the opposite sex. Another parent shared a screenshot of an email from the principal of Bowen Elementary School informing parents of Transgender Awareness Week. The week aims to “raise the visibility about transgender people” to children in kindergarten through fifth grade, according to a screenshot of the email. Recommended library books include “I am Jazz,” “Julian is a Mermaid,” “When Aidan Became a Mermaid,” and “They She He Me: Free to Be!,” all controversial titles that teach children they could have been born in the wrong body. In June, someone dressed as Bowen Elementary’s mascot waved a “pride” flag before an assembly of students to celebrate Pride Month, according to footage obtained by the Massachusetts Family Institute. A school mascot waves a pride flag at Bowen Elementary in Newton, Massachusetts, in June.This is the same school district where parents can't opt their kids out of gender and sexuality lessons. More coming soon. @MAInformParents pic.twitter.com/eq51ZMMZBu— Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell (@TheElizMitchell) November 15, 2024 Sam Whiting, general counsel at the Massachusetts Family Institute, said he believes sexuality and gender identity lessons should be included under the umbrella of human sexuality lessons, which parents are allowed to exempt their kids from. The district’s legal counsel did not immediately respond to The Daily Signal’s question about Whiting’s statements. This article will be updated if a response is received. “When you’re talking about what we’ve seen many times, which is something framed as an anti-bullying presentation, but it’s really just indoctrinating kids into however many genders there are, and how great it is to celebrate LGBT and all that, we think that definitely falls under the sex-ed opt-out law because it’s a human sexuality issue,” Whiting told The Daily Signal.  The Massachusetts Family Institute’s legal wing is looking for a plaintiff to bring a lawsuit against school districts with guidelines like Newton’s.  The mom of an elementary schooler in Newton Public Schools who asked to remain anonymous told The Daily Signal that schools shouldn’t teach young children about transgenderism. “They suggest that if a child feels they are not a boy but a girl, then they can become a girl solely based on those feelings,” the mother said. “This approach is concerning.” “We are responsible for our children, and I and many parents don’t want our children to be taught in a way like ‘If you want to be a girl, I will support you,'” she said. “Kids are kids, they live in another world, they believe in Santa Claus, they can believe anything an adult says, if this adult is someone very close to that child.” It is “emotional manipulation” and “legalized abuse” for parents to transition a son because he likes to play with dolls, the mother told The Daily Signal. “Children often live in a world of imagination—they may pretend to be animals, or boys might play with dolls while girls play with cars,” she said. “There’s nothing unusual about this; they’re simply exploring and having fun.” The post Parents in Massachusetts School District Can’t Opt Out of ‘Sexuality,’ ‘Gender Identity’ Lessons appeared first on The Daily Signal.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) member Brendan Carr is asking Alphabet, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft to provide answers regarding their censorship-related activities over the past four years. Reclaim The Net has access to a letter addressed to the tech giants’ CEOs, where Carr mentions controversy-riddled NewsGuard – which is promoted by those running it as “a rating system for news websites.” We obtained a copy of the letter for you here. But the commissioner, citing information revealed in the Twitter Files, placed it within “the broader censorship cartel” and as one of the so-called fact-checkers and media monitors whose main business, in reality, is to suppress free speech in general, and certain voices in particular. And, according to him, NewsGuard and its ilk have been targeting conservative media with defunding, demonetizing, and other methods of harming their business, notably by working with ad agencies. Chinese state-controlled media fare better in NewsGuard’s “credibility” ranking than conservative outlets in the US, the commissioner remarked. Carr, a Republican, point-blank accuses the four major tech companies of improper conduct as they played “a significant role” in what he said was “an unprecedented surge of censorship” Americans have been exposed to during recent years. Carr’s message for the CEOs is that he is confident once the new US administration is in place, both the White House and Congress will take “broad-ranging actions” aimed at restoring free speech protections guaranteed by the First Amendment, but also that one of those actions could be “a review of your companies” along with their third-party partners involved in censorship running afoul of those protections. The four tech giants have until December 10 to respond to the letter and explain how they use fact-checkers, raters, etc., but also which ad agencies they partner with. The commissioner accused Big Tech of subjecting Americans to censorship and media bias in a separate statement to Newsmax, essentially arguing that this has gone too far, and has been going on for too long. Reacting to Carr’s letter, a NewsGuard spokesperson told NewsMax it was being “littered with falsehoods,” while at the same time claiming that the organization is not only “apolitical” – but also plays no part in online censorship, or in “blocking” conservative news sources. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post FCC’s Carr Demands Answers From Big Tech and Media Hall Monitor on Speech Suppression Claims appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

Chicago Trib Editorial Board: $1M? WTF, Oprah?

Fear and Loathing in the Leviathan - Trump Assembling a General Officer 'Review Board'

CNN senior political commentator and possible future White House Press Secretary Scott Jennings entered into Thursday’s CNN NewsNight — which could easily be referred to as the Thunderdome — to do battle with liberal host Abby Phillip and a team of fellow progressives over the lack of trust in public health and President-Elect Trump’s choice of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. The opening segment largely centered around Kennedy’s controversial claims about vaccinations and autism (which the study often cited to support this having been debunked), including Georgia Republican-turned-Democrat Geoff Duncan huffing that “there’s really no good reason why” Kennedy “should be HHS secretary” given that he has “no managerial experience.” Jennings triggered the first uproar with a simple question: “Why?”     Duncan began stammering and insisting he only wanted to discuss the position “looking forward,” so Jennings explained the reality that Biden-Harris HHS Secretary “Xavier Becerra was just a lawyer and a politician with no management experience.” Jennings went back to the two women who served in the position under Barack Obama: “Sylvia Burwell was a Walmart lobbyist. Donna Shalala was a university person.” Duncan didn’t have any response, so he blurted out none of that matters because “RFK Jr. is nut,” leaving the humorously opportunistic Jennings to school him that his opposition is first and foremost political before making a broader point about trust in health agencies: You just said he doesn’t possess the requisite managerial experience, but then we get to the real issue here, which is you want to insult the man, which is your right to do because you opposed them in the election...[Y]ou are raising the issues that he has been raising and I think they’re appropriate questions to raise. I don’t know whether he can be confirmed or not. The vaccine stuff at the table is obviously going to be the flashpoint of this hearing. But I’ll tell you one thing, this whole issue of the CDC and these public health agencies, look, public trust in the health regime in this country is as low as it’s ever been. Former CNNer-turned-failed Democratic congressional candidate John Avlon tried to interject and blame Kennedy and Trump for why so many people died from COVID-19, leaving Jennings to school him and an interrupting Phillip on how America “was drug through a bunch of condescending and heavy-handed mandates” during the pandemic “that all turned out to be garbage” (click “expand”): AVLON: But why, Scott? JENNINGS: It’s because of COVID — AVLON: Right. JENNINGS: — because of school closures, because of mask mandates — PHILLIP: Wait, wait, wait. Hold on, let me — JENNINGS: — because this country was — PHILLIP: — I’m going to let doctor — let the doctors get in on this. JENNINGS: — because this — but let me just finish — because this country was drug through a bunch of condescending and heavy-handed mandates that all turned out to be garbage, and that’s why it’s low — AVLON: Scott! JENNINGS: — and the questions are valid. AVLON: Scott! Scott! DUNCAN: And RFK is the answer to all of that? AVLON: Yeah, but, dude — JENNINGS: Yeah, but, I don’t know if he’s going to confirmed. AVLON: — RFK helped promote the — the assault on the CDC that lowered — the disinformation that led to — JENNINGS: No. The CDC led to its own demise. AVLON: — more than a million deaths, Scott, more than a million deaths in the United States, higher than any other industrialized nation per capita. That’s the result of failed policies and the demonization of the conspiracy theory that killed people. JENNINGS: Whose policies? PHILLIP: All right. AVLON: Under the Trump administration. Phillips played a Trust the Science card by tossing to Columbia University Dr. W. Ian Lipkin, who argued that yes, we should still have complete trust in public health agencies. Notice how he even admitted the coronavirus vaccines weren’t as sturdy as they were billed, but refused to acknowledge that was a hit to their credibility (click “expand”): PHILLIP: John, let me let Dr. Lipki in, because, again, we got experts at the table. Go ahead, Doctor. LIPKIN: So, first of all, the vaccines we’re talking about have been tested. We know they have to go through safety testing. They have to go through efficacy testing, and it’s only when they get through that final step — that final hurdle that they’re produced and distributed. So, it’s not something that we need to revisit. I disagree. The other thing I wanted to refer to is the discussion about the NIH and the CDC. These agencies are jewels. They’re considered as such by the rest of the world. The National Institutes of Health has given drugs that I would venture to say everybody in this room has taken, and the FDA has approved those. So, if we lose those agencies, we’re going to have unproven drugs, we’re going to have a whole series of problems. You were talking about COVID. I was in China in January of 2020. I saw what it did to that country. I was in China in 2003 for SARS. I’ve seen outbreaks. I’ve seen thousands of people die. When we had a vaccine for COVID, the major advantage we hoped initially was that it was going to prevent transmission as long as well as reduce disease and morbidity — mortality. We found out that it wasn’t as effective in reducing transmission as we had hoped, but it definitely reduced morbidity and mortality — PHILLIP: And one — when you hear — LIPKIN: — and let me just finish one last thing. It saved people who otherwise couldn’t have gotten care for a heart attack or a stroke or anything else because the hospitals would have been completely overwhelmed. Jennings made clear he hasn’t been “suggesting that agencies should be done away with,” but rather “reformed for the purpose of increasing public trust.” The condescending Phillip lectured Jennings with what seemed as though was a demand to never question public health experts because it’s dangerous.  Thankfully, Jennings clapped back that “the doubts in the public health regime in this country were not made up out of whole cloth” and the economic impacts of lockdowns were scarring for so many.     Despite Jennings saying he strongly supports vaccines, Phillip again demanded we Trust the Science and deemed questions about public health bad faith (click “expand”): JENNINGS: We have to restore trust in them. PHILLIP: — the issue about the public trust thing is that this is almost like election denialism. You screamed that the election was stolen and then when people believe you, then suddenly you’re saying, well, if only there weren’t these questions that I made up. You cannot just create doubts and then blame the doubts — JENNINGS: Well, wait, the doubts — PHILLIP: — that you created for the skepticism. JENNINGS: — the doubts in the public health regime in this country were not made up out of whole cloth.  PHILLIP: I guess, but — but — JENNINGS: They are fully derivative of what happened to this country during COVID and the people and the families and the businesses who were devastated by these mandates. PHILLIP: — right — there — there are economic impacts and then there are the health impacts that we are talking about here. RFK Jr. is trying to blame vaccines for health impacts based on no science, no science. We can talk about the economic impacts, but let’s talk about the health impacts and whether there is truth to that. I don’t think there’s that evidence. JENNINGS: I’m also a supporter of vaccines. I believe vaccines work and I think his skepticism of vaccines and some of the statements that he has made are going to be the most problematic things in his nomination, but you cannot separate these — he has raised real concerns that real people have and, by the way, Trump’s not hiding the ball here. He campaigned with this guy virtually every day and the American people said, you know what, some of this sounds pretty good. After New York University Dr. Debbie Nampiaparampil defended patients asking questions is usually a good thing and said other questions Kennedy raised are legitimate, Duncan injected more silliness: “And — and he has no experience...This is like sending a car salesman to go engineer a bridge, right?”     Jennings ended whether he began with Duncan: “Is the current HHS secretary a doctor?” Duncan whined he recycled a previous argument and won’t acknowledge that “the clown car has arrived” to takeover the country. Phillip would move on, but not before Jennings calmly told Duncan that “you’re still campaigning” even though his side lost. Duncan’s hilarious retort? Despite having been a Harris-Walz surrogate, he argued he “actually call[s] balls and strikes.” To see the relevant CNN transcript from November 14, click here.